Could Apple be planning on signing a deal with legendary radio shock jock Howard Stern to exclusively host a new iTunes show? That’s the rumor amongst Sirius investors, and it’s food for thought, if not terribly likely.
iPhoto is one of Apple’s most popular applications. Bundled with every new Mac since 2002, millions of people have imported and manipulated billions of photos with this useful software. Every time you plug your iPhone or another camera into your Mac, iPhoto leaps to the assistance (whether you want it to or not).
With success come challenges. One common thing I’m asked about as an Mac consultant is how to manage iPhoto libraries that have gotten out of hand – thousands of photos, lots of duplicate items, and sometimes multiple copies of libraries. How do you get all this under control?
FireCore, makers of aTV Flash, a popular commercially available hack for the original Apple TV have announced a Mac OS X only public beta for the next generation Apple TV hack.
The new hack, aTV Flash (black), only works with Apple’s second generation Apple TV running iOS 4.0. That’s unfortunate since most of us have already updated to iOS 4.1, but an update to support that version of iOS is coming soon. This renders the beta completely useless for most of us, myself included, making the release of this public beta a bit awkward and ill-timed.
Good piece from music writer/analyst Bob Lefsetz on why he’s an Apple fan:
That’s what’s selling Apple. Friends. People hear these amazing stories and take a chance. And they become members of the cult and have insanely great experiences and drag their friends in too. To the point where anything Apple sells, people will buy. Just like you’ve got to have the latest work of your favorite act.
Bob Leftsetz: Customer Care.
Sometimes a story seems too good to be true. Last month we reported about a charming Geek Wedding Proposal Video, presumably made by Frank when proposed to his girlfriend Kasey on a bridge in Central Park. A band played her favorite song, Frank appeared in a rowboat under the bridge, and a perfectly executed ring-toss was made to his fiancé-to-be – all captured by four synchronized iPhones and a MacBook Pro.
It appears The Cult and the video’s viewers were the victims of a hoax. According to Mashable, it was made to promote a new business venture that specializes on mining the marketing potential of viral videos.
The Ballistic HC iPhone 4 case is made for ruffians. Even if pink is their favorite color. Personally I’ll stick to black and that’s the color of the case I tested for this review.
The Ballistic HC case is the most heavy-duty iPhone case I’ve ever used or more accurately ever had on any cell phone. The case wraps your iPhone 4 in four layers of protection. The beautiful iPhone 4 disappears and becomes a rugged, rough and tumble cell phone suitable for, but not limited to very active people, a rodeo bull rider, Ninjas, or public safety professionals.
Apple’s North Carolina data supercenter is soon to go live, but it will sadly have to do so without the man most largely responsible for its creation: Apple’s Global Data Center Director Oliver Sanche passed away of a heart attack on Thanksgiving Day.
Although they were once Thor-like with the Mjolnir of the ban hammer, Apple has become much more sparing and reluctant to ban apps outright from the App Store in recent months… a sea change that can probably be leveled more at Cupertino’s belated but common sense clarification of the App Store approval guidelines.
Bans still happen, though: an emulator here, a program tapping private APIs there, but these days, Apple’s bans are a lot less sensational than they once were. That’s what makes Apple’s latest ban so puzzling: they decided to ban a small Danish magazine app about Google’s Android OS from the App Store.
Why? According to the CEO of publisher Mediaprovider, his conversation with Apple about the app went something like this:
“So what’s the problem?” Dixon asked, knowing full well what the problem was.
“You know… your magazine,” replied the Apple rep, who identified himself only as Richard. “It’s just about Android…. we can’t have that in our App Store.”
Although this wouldn’t be a surprising ban a year ago, these days, it seems more like Richard was being a little overzealous than official Apple policy against informational Android apps to us: after all, the App Store has several apps dedicated to competing products, such as Windows 7. Granted, the war between iOS and Android these days is a lot more heated than the one between Windows and OS X — largely because Apple recognizes that mobile is the future of computing, and desktop OSes are the past — but Apple already knows that Android will eventually dominate iOS when it comes to total marketshare. Why ban an app about Android, then? Apple’s not concerned with total domination of the market… just the domination of the slice of the market that matters most.
Microsoft’s attempts out replicate Apple’s successes in the retail space have always seemed… well… rather bereft of imagination and mindlessly emulative. Microsoft Stores almost always are opened in the same malls as Apple Stores, sometimes directly across the way. Instead of a Genius Bar, there’s a Guru Bar. And so on.
Microsoft’s “Me Too”ism in the retail has simply been painful to watch… so painful that it prompted us to write a post entitled “Why Microsoft’s Mall of America Store Will Fail” just last month.
Looks like we were right. According to the LA Times, Microsoft’s retail stores are a complete bust, despite having been designed by George Blankenship, who helped build Apple’s own retail stores.
Apple’s iPad is the first generation of what I hope will be a long line of magical tablets. Unfortunately, it has one minor problem that will be more evident now that iOS 4.2.1 has been released.
That problem will be the made evident by the over zealous use of multitasking on a device that only has 256MB of memory in which to run applications. The iPhone 4 twice that or 512MB. Users won’t be able to help themselves because multitasking is just to valuable to ignore or give up.
So the problem of having less memory to run apps will be frequent warnings that “your device is running low on memory. ” I’ve seen it happen to others and the image above is my own personal encounter with the problem. Apple had given the iPhone 4 pretty liberal amounts of application RAM, so I was a bit taken aback that the iPad didn’t have at least 512MB to 1GB of RAM when it was released.
Fortunately, the work around is easy.
Leaping right out of the “What the heck?!?!” category comes Welcome to the CrApple Store a blog for disgruntled Apple Store employees. A couple of readers pointed it out to me today
The complaints touted on the blog range from the size of repair parts packaging to things like brain-washing and drinking the Apple Kool-Aid. It just goes to show you that you cannot make everyone happy.
Looks like Apple will be offering offering about 10% off for Black Friday — if Apple Australia’s prices are anything to go by.
Apple has posted sale prices down under, offering 10-15% off many items, including iPad (A$50 off),, iMac and MacBook Pro (A$121 off) 13-inch MacBook Air (A$121.00 off), iPod nano (A$25 off).
The best deal looks like the iPod Touch at about 20% off (up to A$51). Also on sale are the Time Capsule, Magic Trackpad, and a range of iPad accessories. The same savings are likely to carry across to U.S. sales, which are one-day only.
Here’s details of Apple Australia’s other sale items:
Apple previously claimed the flaky proximity sensor in the iPhone 4 had been fixed by the iOS 4.1 update. But there was mounting evidence that the proximity sensor wasn’t fixed at all.
Shortly after the release of iOS 4.1 iPhone user Ryan Bell performed a series of comprehensive tests using Apple’s iPhone configuration utility, and came to the conclusion that iOS 4.1 doesn’t fix the proximity sensor.
The proximity sensor problems were being blamed on software bugs, relocation of the proximity sensor due to the addition of the front facing camera, or greasy ear canals.
This bobble-headed Steve Jobs statuette is both horrifyingly creepy and yet undeniably compelling, but unfortunately, its makers has already been asked by Apple’s legal team to lay off… not because it makes portrays Steve like some sort of murderous, hydrocephalic homunculus, but because they didn’t get permission to use the Apple logo or the likeness of iPhone in Steve’s hands.
Probably for the best: I’d almost definitely get one, put it on a shelf somewhere, then inevitably start fantasizing about it creeping into the bedroom with sewing needles in its hands during some midnight’s delirium tremens.
Was the Beatles on iTunes worth the ten year wait and the thousands of hours of negotiation? Probably not, but Beatles songs and albums are still selling pretty damn well now that they’re finally available, even if they’re not really setting any sales records.
I feel pretty good about being a 13-inch MacBook Air owner, but as the computer becomes more popular I’m no longer unique. My MacBook Air looks just like all the other ones out there, but it doesn’t have to thanks to Colorware.
[polldaddy poll=4138392]
Apple released iOS 4.2.1 for the iPad and true to their word converted the iPad switch from screen orientation lock to mute and un-mute. If you’ve had an iPad since it launched you’ll understand how convenient that switch can be when using your iPad. Of course, this change brings the iPad into alignment with the iPhone. The iPhone switch has always been used to mute and un-mute that device.
Both devices now use the switch in the same way and the screen orientation lock has been moved to the running tasks bar which is accessible by double-tapping the Home button and swiping to the left.
Following yesterday’s story that Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch might meet on stage to debut the world’s first iPad-only newspaper, comes a new report suggesting not only that Apple will hold that event on December 9th, but also use it as an opportunity to unveil a new subscription billing option for periodicals on the iPad.
Ever mused on why Apple is Apple, and not, well, anything even vaguely computer related? Steve Wozniak’s disembodied head boils it down for you: it apparently comes from Steve Jobs’ days as a migrant fruit picker in the orchards of Oregon, and was chosen simply because it sounded “unique and interesting.”
Both Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs agree: devices like the iPad are the future of media, and the death of print.
It looks, however, like Apple and News Corp. might be working more closely to bring that end about than it was previously thought: according to WWD, Apple is helping News Corp. build an iPad-only, subscription-based newspaper to devices in early 2011… and Steve Jobs himself might debut it.
How can you tell when a company is in trouble? When the CEO bashes a rising competitor’s strategy while copying it at the same time. Such is the unfortunate predicament with our friends to the north, Research in Motion, makers of the BlackBerry.
Earlier this week, RIM CEO Jim Balsillie proclaimed that “We believe that you can bring the mobile to the Web but you don’t need to go through some kind of control point of an SDK, and that’s the core part of our message”, effectively declaring that Apple is an enemy of freedom or whatever is regarded to be bad at the moment while making the case for its vaporous PlayBook tablet. At the same time, the company unveiled an ad campaign for BlackBerry as the platform of choice for “Super Apps,” which are, wait for it, applications that bring mobile to the Web through an SDK. Basically, they’re like iPhone apps, but of far lower quality.
There’s a lot to criticize here, but I’d like to focus on the core contradiction at hand. RIM is trying to argue that Apple is bad, because its most exciting functionality isn’t vanilla web pages, while at the same time arguing that the BlackBerry platform is exciting because it has applications that are tightly integrated with the OS. You literally cannot have it both ways. Either Apple has cracked the formula on making mobile computing as capable as desktop computing, or mobile is irrelevant as a platform and a good web browser is all we need.
It seems clear to me that the establishment players in mobile are still in a state of shock at the success of both the App Store and the Android ecosystem. When a platform developer is advertising Flash and Adobe Air compatibility as a point of differentiation (also known as the “Hey! We’re like a Netbook without a keyboard!” argument), they have seriously lost the plot of what makes them competitive. It would be nice to see the iPad get some credible competitors. That won’t happen until someone recognizes that tablets are their own category of computer for which application exclusivity matters. If you don’t believe that, read Robert Scoble’s “data points” post and weep.
Concerned with the growing problem with eWaste? Want the ability to upgrade and repair your own electronics? Believe that the throw-away mentality needs to change for the sake of sustainability?
So does iFixIt, teardown-masters extraordinaire and longtime information and parts resource for Apple users. They have just published the Self Repair Manifesto, along with an ambitious call to action to create – via crowd-sourcing – a Wikipedia-style Free Repair Manual for devices of all kinds: electronics, appliances, even a few cars.
On Tuesday, Apple made the addition of the Beatles’ repertoire to iTunes the story of the week (ho-hum though the story was), and this Sunday, the company made the new partnership the centerpiece of every NFL game, flooding the airwaves with multiple ads drawing on still images from the Get Back/Let it Be sessions (and occasional Ed Sullivan performances).
It’s all a bit retro, but there is some kind of nice unifying warmth to the band that made Helvetica rock-and-roll being featured by the company that made Helvetica high-tech.
The ads are nice, though, particularly if you’re enjoying a holiday beverage or two and are feeling nostalgic about the excitement of four friends, a recording studio, and creativity. Take a sip, sit back, and remember that love is all you need.
Apple released a support document yesterday titled MacBook Air (Late 2010): Video anomalies after waking from sleep, wherein Apple says that if you are experiencing these symptoms, “After waking from sleep, your MacBook Air display may flicker or fade from light to dark repeatedly.”
The solution is to: “Download and apply the Mac OS X v10.6.5 update to resolve this issue.”
Apple never mentioned this in the Mac OS X 10.6.5 release notes. I’m not surprised by that, but I’m happy that Apple has a solution to the problem that plagued early MacBook Air adopters – including myself and other staffers at Cult of Mac.
Have you seen any more video anomalies after applying the Mac OS X 10.6.5 update on your MacBook Air? Let us know if it worked for you or not by leaving a comment.