I am a technocrat now, but grew up in the area of pre-Apple, pre internet, pre-electronic age.  The Apple Mac was the second computer I owned.  The first was a now defunct ‘Kaypro’ running on the CPM OS.  CPM was very DOS-like, but was a predecessor to DOS.  I was amused by the Kaypro 4 with high hopes of working its use into my daily life to help with business-related functions.  I had owned it little more than a year when a soon-to-be life-changing event was about to happen. 

My buddy Cliff came to me one day bursting with excitement over his purchase of an  Apple Macintosh 128. He had just bought and took delivery of one of the first Mac 128s in the world! He showed me MacPaint and MacDraw and MacWrite, and I was intrigued, but generally ho-hum about the tour de force of this new way of computing, and missed the point of where computer graphics were headed.

When I heard a movie about this iconic innovator was opening ‘at a theater near me’, I had to see it.

My general impression was, the film showed Steve in a negative light. It was a story about a man abandon by his parents, willing to step on any one to bring his vision to fruition. The film offers vignettes of Jobs cheating on his girlfriend, getting his GF pregnant then abandoning her, lying to WOZ about the money they made on the first Atari programming project, booting his early adopters out of the company and leaving them with no ‘piece of the pie’ for their troubles.

Later in the film we see Steve refusing to acknowledge his first-born child, Lisa (while he is working on the ‘Lisa’ project, no less) and standing by while his buddy and co-owner ‘WOZ’ fades into the shadows of Apple Computer, and later leaves the company he helped form.

The first part of the movie was slow.  Seeing Ashton Kutcher as Jobs walking around barefoot on campus or in a field did nothing for me.  It didn’t move the story along to any great degree either. Things began getting interesting in the film as the Lisa (predecessor to the Macintosh) was in development.  I remember seeing the Lisa in a local computer store. I was intrigued listening to the salesperson explaining what it could do, but realized I would never spend $10,000 on a personal computer.

Ashton was a good fit for the role of Steve.  There were times when he had an uncanny resemblance to the real Mac man.  Something in the eyes I think.  I don’t know where Ashton got that ‘Jobs walk’ from, but in a few scenes – in a profile view – it had me thinkin’ SJ had a load on, and needed to visit the men’s room…

The chronicle opens with the introduction of the iPod, and leaves us there.  We never see the introduction of the iPhone, iPad or the company-changing birth of iTunes.  All three of these Apple events help crush the PC/Windose grip on the computer world and catapult Apple into the forefront of technology world wide.  Will there be a sequel? My guess is ‘yes’. Maybe they could call it ‘Jobs 2.0.16 build 58′.

If you are any way interested in Apple or Steve Jobs, or the Mac, or how a mega-glogal multi-national business got started in a so-cal garage; this movie is a must see.  If you want to preserve your memory of Steve Jobs as a kind, warm and fuzzy technocrat giving birth to the tech toys of our age; you may want to give it a pass.

What snapped this epidemic into focus for the “Deans of Drugs?”  Why the new “green light?”  When the drug manufactures saw tens of millions of new customers to sell to, and a new market opening in the eastern world where the bad eating habits of the westerners’ are being mimicked, they geared up R&D in their labs quicker than you can say hypoglycemia!

Experimental diabetes drugs offer patients hope

By LINDA A. JOHNSON | Associated Press – Sun, Jun 10, 2012

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Some experimental diabetes treatments in late testing offer patients hope of better controlling their blood sugar and weight and preventing dangerously low blood sugar, all big challenges for millions of diabetics.

Results from studies of several new diabetes medicines and insulin products, just announced at the premiere U.S. conference for diabetes specialists, likewise hold the promise of billions in annual revenue for drugmakers that have dominated the diabetes market and for others breaking into it. They have been presenting their data at the American Diabetes Association conference, held in Philadelphia from last Friday through Monday.

Until the last decade, relatively few companies made treatments for diabetes, a chronic condition in which the body either does not make enough insulin to break down the sugar in foods or uses insulin inefficiently.

Now many more drugmakers have jumped in, as the number of American diabetes patients is about 26 million and growing fast, and there are tens of millions more in Western Europe, China and India.

That’s because the global obesity epidemic has caused a similar explosion of diabetes cases. About 95 percent are Type 2 diabetes, usually related to being overweight and sedentary. Type 2, once called adult-onset diabetes, now is also being diagnosed in adolescents, just like insulin-dependent Type 1 diabetes, which used to be called juvenile diabetes.

Both types can cause early death or devastating complications — blindness, amputations, stroke, kidney disease, heart disease and more — when too-high blood sugar steadily damages organs and blood vessels.

Roughly $200 billion a year is spent on treating diabetes and indirect costs such as missed work and premature death, according to the diabetes association.

Last year, U.S. spending on diabetes medicines among insured patients for the first time exceeded spending on cholesterol drugs, according to Express Scripts, a top prescription benefit manager.

“We expect the key diabetes brands and markets to exhibit sustainable high-single-digit growth,” reaching about $54 billion a year by 2020, Jefferies & Company analyst Jeffrey Holford recently wrote to investors. He cited an aging Western population, more health care use and adoption of Western diets in emerging countries, and increased use of new treatments and combination therapies.

Holford expects Denmark’s Novo Nordisk AS to remain the top diabetes company by revenue but Eli Lilly and Co. of Indianapolis to overtake France’s Sanofi SA as the No. 2 player by 2017.

Among other research, the conference highlighted promising new treatments likely to be approved in the next few years:

—Novo Nordisk on Friday reported on results of degludec, its ultra-long-acting insulin for patients with Type 2 diabetes. Its yearlong, 1,030-patient study compared degludec with Sanofi’s Lantus, the world’s top-selling insulin. Degludec reduced low blood sugar during the night, when it’s most dangerous, by 36 percent and also reduced severe hypoglycemia significantly, compared to Lantus. Those problems occurred less than once in a year in both groups of patients, though.

Novo also reported on other studies finding that because degludec is active in the body for more than the standard 24 hours for long-acting insulins, patients can maintain good blood sugar control even if they don’t take it at the same time every day. The Food and Drug Administration was to decide whether to approve U.S. sales by June 29, but just pushed that back until Oct. 29 to allow more time to review data.

—Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Research unit presented five late-stage studies on its daily Type 2 diabetes pill, canagliflozin, part of a newer class of diabetes drugs called SGLT2 inhibitors. They work primarily by increasing how much glucose is excreted in urine. One yearlong study found it reduced long-term blood sugar levels, called A1C levels, and also helped patients lose much more weight than Merck & Co.’s blockbuster pill Januvia. Januvia is in a class called DPP-4 inhibitors, which increase the body’s release of insulin after a meal.

Another study similarly showed canagliflozin decreased A1C levels and body weight significantly more than Sanofi’s diabetes pill Amaryl. J&J applied for U.S. approval of its drug on May 29.

—On Sunday afternoon, Eli Lilly and partner Boehringer Ingelheim of Germany released results from two mid-stage studies of their new short-acting insulin, known as LY2605541. In separate studies comparing it to Lantus, it was slightly better at reducing blood sugar levels in Type 1 diabetics and about the same in Type 2 diabetics. In the eight-week Type 1 study, patients getting LY2605541 lost about 2.5 pounds on average while those on Lantus gained 1.5 pounds. Weight changes were similar, but smaller, in the Type 2 study.

LY2605541 still must go through late-stage testing before approval can be sought.

—Other companies were presenting data on an experimental patch to deliver insulin pain-free and two devices in early development that would work like an artificial pancreas, monitoring blood sugar continuously to help control when an insulin pump releases the hormone into the patient’s blood.

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Linda A. Johnson can be followed at http://twitter.com/LindaJ_onPharma

http://news.yahoo.com/experimental-diabetes-drugs-offer-patients-hope-203134671–finance.html

We’ll keep an eye on the testing and progression of these new medical advances.  In the meantime, knock off the fast food and empty-neutrition in-between-meal snacks.  Drink more water, and get some exercise.  Like the man said “Just do it!”