Apple - page 47

Welcome to Macintosh, the feature length documentary that explores the many ways Apple, Inc. has changed the world, jumped from the international, independent film festival circuit to pay-per-view cable TV Wednesday.

The film, which relies on notable personalities associated in one way or another with Apple, such as Andy Hertzfeld, co-creator of the original Macintosh, and long-time Mac evangelist Guy Kawasaki, tells the inside story of what makes Apple different and will now be available to over 20 million subscribers to the Comcast cable network in both the Pay-Per-View section and the “Movie” section of Comcast’s On Demand service.

“The goal was to make a film that you can show to anyone, even someone that has never used a computer, and have them understand why so many people love Macintosh,” says Josh Rizzo, Co-Director. “Availability to all US Comcast customers goes a long way toward completing that goal.”

If you’ve seen it, you know Welcome to Macintosh is really a love song to Apple and though the film is in no way authorized, sponsored or otherwise approved by the company, it’s a good bet there will be cheering in Cupertino once the ancillary sales begin to roll in from people who come to Apple through having seen the film.

The iPhone 3.1 beta has been released to developers, and includes some cool features, including Voice Control over Bluetooth.

Baseband has been updated to 5.08.o1, so don’t install the beta if your iPhone has been unlocked with the ultrasnow hack — it will permantly lock it.

The beta also allows edited videos to be saved as a copy, preserving the original. And MMS is on by default, but doesn’t work for AT&T subscribers.

The full list, via the QuickPwn website, after the jump.

Apple is advertising a rare job in its storied design department — and it’s a cool one.

Apple is looking for a computer modeling expert to make 3D renderings of concept products.

“CAD sculptor/digital 3D modeler needed to create high quality CAD models used in the industrial design and development of new products,” says the job posting on the Dezeenjobs website.

Headed by Jonny Ive, Apple’s design department is one of the most famous industrial design groups in the world. Employing about a dozen world-class designers, the studio is responsible for a string of trendsetting products, starting with the original iMac (which launched an industry see-through electronics) to the iPod and it’s iconic white earbuds.

Whoever gets the job will be one of the first people in the world to get a peek at whatever Apple is working on. Only CEO Steve Jobs and a handful of top executives get to see products in development.

The vast majority of Apple employees don’t see a final product until the day it is launched, even if they helped build it. Software programmers never see the actual hardware, and hardware engineers work on bulky prototypes housed in big polypropylene boxes.

Only the design department gets to see the final shape of the new product, and the studio is ultra-secretive. Housed in a nondescript building off Apple’s main campus, entry is limited to a chosen few. Even Apple’s previous CEO, John Sculley, was denied entrance. His electronic badge wouldn’t let him (he threw a fit).

The job sounds cool, but the job posting warns it is not a design job, nor a stepping-stone to a design job. Too bad.

The full job posting after the jump:

UPDATE: The headline and photograph in this article have been updated to correctly state the standard agreed to by the handset makers referenced in the story.

Major cell phone handset makers including Apple, Nokia and Research in Motion (RIM) have agreed to back a European Union initiative to support standard device chargers that will charge any phone through a micro-USB port, according to a Reuters report Monday.

The agreement among 10 companies controlling 90% of the cell phone market in Europe calls for phones compatible with standard charging devices to be available in Europe beginning next year, according to EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, who said, “People will [no longer] have to throw away their charger whenever they buy a new phone.”

At its inception, the agreement applies only to data-enabled smartphones, perhaps the fastest growing segment of the mobile handset market, and will affect only devices produced for use in Europe.

Verheugen hailed the agreement as a boon for consumers as well as the environment and estimated it will help reduce tons of eWaste generated annually by consumers.

Significant unanswered questions remain: what took them so long, and where is the rest of the world in this deal? Do device manufacturers have to be cajoled by regulatory bodies continent by continent to adopt a standard that should have been in place at least a decade ago?

Steve Jobs is officially back at work after six-month’s medical leave, an Apple spokesperson just told Bloomberg reporter Connie Guglielmo in a phone interview.

“Steve is back to work,” said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling on Monday. “We are very glad to have him back.”

Jobs is working at Apple a few days a week and working from home the remainder of the time, Dowling added. Jobs reportedly returned to work last week, but Monday’s statement is Apple’s first official word.

Jobs took six month’s medical leave in January, promising to return by the end of June. Monday is June 29. During his absence, Jobs had a liver transplant in Memphis, TN.

LINK.

The iPhone Dev Team, the tireless hackers who provide software to jailbreak iPhones, know how to unlock the iPhone 3G S, but have decided to hold off releasing the software publicly pending Apple’s next move in the two year-old cat and mouse game between the company and the rogue user community.

“We can jailbreak the 3GS right now,” said a statement at the Dev-Team Blog, “but making our jailbreak public at this point … would in fact be detrimental to many more people than it would help. So we feel it’s best to keep our version of the jailbreak out of Apple’s sights for the time being.”

The crux of the problem seems to be a Dev Team concern that Apple will soon release an update to 3.0 software that will close the ultrasn0w exploit released last week that jailbreaks iPhone 3G running 3.0 software, and that many people who want to get an iPhone 3G S don’t have one yet.

“Once the [3G S] jailbreak is out, Apple will fix the iBoot-family bug we use to accomplish it,” the blog post explains. “[Apple] will simply stop signing the old iBoots and only sign the fixed ones. If you bought your phone after Apple has done this, there’s nothing you can do…the jailbreak isn’t going to work for you.”

For now the team has decided to work on 3.0 software issues such as push notification and will wait and see what Apple does next.

[The iPhone Blog]

Apple has spoken on the issue of porno iPhone apps, and it’s, ‘No way Jose.’

An Apple spokesman says the company will not approve iPhone apps with “inappropriate” content, especially pornography, despite the iPhone 3.0 age restriction system.

The question of porno apps arose after Hottest Girls appeared on the iPhone app store — the first app to feature saucy photos of naked women. Promising “2200+ sexy bikini babes and lingerie models,” the app is decidedly softcore. (The app disappeared for a few hours on Thursday, apparently because Apple had pulled it, but the developer had removed Hottest Girls voluntarily because of the strain on the image servers.)

Thanks to age restrictions in the new iPhone 3.0 OS software, mature apps can be blocked from download from the App Store. Many observers expected the App Store to be flooded with pornographic apps, especially because mobile porn is turning into big business. Juniper Research estimates the mobile porn market to be worth $3.5 billion by 2010. Growth will come from streaming video and video chat. The biggest market will not be the U.S., but Western Europe, Juniper said.

But now Apple says categorically it will not approve porno apps now or in the future. In a statement received by Cult of Mac, spokesman Tom Neumayr said:

“Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography. The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.”

UPDATE 2: The app is available again from the App Store. Just checked at 4PM 6/25/09.

UPDATE: Apple hasn’t removed the app, the developer has, thanks to the strain on the saucy images server. “The server usage is extremely high because of the popularity of this app,” says the developer. “Thus, by not distributing the app, we can prevent our servers from crashing.” The app still works for those who have already bought it,  the developer says.

The first iPhone porn app has been removed from the iPhone App Store.

The softcore app, Hottest Girls, was downloadable for a few hours on Thursday, but is now unavailable. Neither Apple nor the developer were immediately available to provide an explanation, but it appears Apple changed its mind after the app received so much press attention on Thursday.

The $1.99 app for the iPhone and iPod touch featured 2,000 images of “topless, sexy babes and nude models,” according to reports.

Wired.com’s Charlie Sorrell, who downloaded the app before it was removed, said it was “terrible.”

“There is no slideshow to display a progressive striptease of the same model, so you are limited to one picture at a time before you have to navigate back to the main screen, which shows a lack of understanding as to how a porn app should work,” he wrote.

The brief approval of the app had many wondering if Apple was now willing to approve adult content on the App Store. The iPhone 3.0 OS includes age restrictions on applications.

Joining other experts, billionaire investor Warren Buffet says Apple might have violated the law by keeping quiet about Steve Jobs’s liver transplant.

The head of Berkshire Hathaway said Jobs’s life-saving operation was a “material fact” that Apple was legally obliged to report to investors. The Securities and Exchange commission requires public companies to report material facts to shareholders. Failure to do so is in breach of the law.

“It’s a material fact,” said Buffett on CNBC on Wednesday. “Whether he is facing serious surgery or not is a material fact. Whether I’m facing serious surgery is a material fact. Whether (General Electric CEO) Jeff Immelt is, I mean, so I think that’s important to get out. They’re going to find out about it anyway so I don’t see a big privacy issue or anything of the sort.”

An intrepid software developer has published a thorough memoir that details many reasons why Apple is so far ahead of the field in the mobile applications game, and why Blackberry, Palm and Android will have a hard time catching up any time soon.

Marcus Watkins found himself developing an application for his mobile phone in much the same way that countless other developers undoubtedly realized their inspirations: he was minding his own business when he realized one day his life would improve if his phone could do something that, at the point of his epiphany, it couldn’t.

He did his research, found out there wasn’t an application to meet his needs, realized the size of the potential market for his app in the many millions of people with his phone – a good percentage of whom might find his application useful – and he went to work.

Unfortunately (perhaps) for Watkins, his phone is a Blackberry, but fortunately (for Blackberry users) he persevered, and his story shows just how far behind Apple the other smartphone makers are as the device category enters its third year in existence.

UPDATE: Hospital spokeswoman Ruth Ann Hale declined to add any more information to hospital’s statement. She would not say when the transplant was performed (the Wall Street Journal said about two months ago); how long Steve Jobs had been on the transplant waiting list; nor where the donor organ came from. “We’re not saying anything beyond what it says in the statement,” she said by phone on Tuesday night. It’s safe to assume the donor liver came from a deceased patient — otherwise Jobs wouldn’t be on a waiting list. But the lack of a time frame for the operation is curious. Perhaps it’s to protect the identity of the donor? If the time of the operation is known, maybe it makes it easier to identify potential donors?

Methodist University Hospital in Memphis has confirmed that Steve Jobs had a liver transplant — and the disclosure was made with Jobs’s permission, the hospital says.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the hospital said Jobs was the sickest person on the waiting list at the time the donor organ became available.

The hospital’s statement is likely in response to growing questions about the transplant. On Tuesday morning, the New York Times published a high-profile story asking whether Jobs’s money and power helped him to jump to the front of the queue. “Whenever someone rich and famous receives a transplant, suspicions inevitably arise about whether that person managed to jump to the head of the waiting list and take an organ that might have saved the life of somebody just as desperate but less glamorous,” the paper said.

The hospital’s statement appears to be a flat denial that Jobs received any preferential treatment.

“He received a liver transplant because he was the patient with the highest MELD score (Model for End-Stage Liver Disease) of his blood type and, therefore, the sickest patient on the waiting list at the time a donor organ became available,” the hospital said.

The hospital said Jobs is doing well.

“Mr. Jobs is now recovering well and has an excellent prognosis.”

Full text of the statement after the jump.

Apple broke the law by lying about Steve Jobs health, says a top marketing professor.

But whether the Security and Exchange Commission has the “balls” to prosecute is unclear.

Paul Argenti, Professor of Corporate Communication at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, says that Apple’s communications about its CEO’s health violated the SEC’s full disclosure regulations.

UPDATE: Reuters reports that Steve Jobs was seen leaving Apple’s campus on Monday. “He was seen leaving the main Apple building in Cupertino, California and getting into a black car alone that was then driven off by men in black suits with ear-pieces,” the news service reported.

CNBC’s Jim Goldman is saying that Steve Jobs returned to work at Apple on Monday.

Employees have seen Jobs around Apple’s campus, Goldman says. “Officials at Apple have yet to respond to multiple phone calls and emails seeking guidance about Jobs and his whereabouts, but employees are doing what Apple PR isn’t, and that’s confirming that he’s here at work,” says Goldman.

The information jibes with this morning’s iPhone 3G S press release,
which quoted Jobs for the first time since he took his medical leave,
implying he’s back in charge.

This is great news – if it’s true. I’d be delighted to see Jobs back in charge at Apple, but trouble is, I’m not sure I trust Goldman. He’s proven as unreliable as Apple’s own PR surrounding Jobs’ illness. Goldman last year said Steve Jobs wasn’t sick, just days before he took sick leave. For this, he was accused by NewsWeek columnist Dan Lyons (aka Fake Steve) of being “played and punked” by Apple PR.

So I’m willing to give a prize to the first reader who sends in a picture of Steve Jobs at Apple’s campus or a picture of his car (preferably parked in a handicapped spot).

Yeah, I know, it’s stalkerish. But I’d like to know if Steve Jobs is really back at work, and this is one way of getting to the bottom of it.

BTW, I’ve called and emailed Apple’s PR asking if Jobs is back at work — but I’m not holding my breath.

Show us Steve’s smiling face. Let’s cheer his return to work and good health!

“Customers are voting and the iPhone is winning,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in his first officially quoted statement for the company since taking a medical leave of absence in January.

Jobs’ comment came in the wake of a news release touting one million iPhone 3G S units sold in its first weekend since being released last Friday. “With over 50,000 applications available from Apple’s revolutionary App Store, iPhone momentum is stronger than ever,” continued Jobs in the release, which also noted that six million customers have downloaded the new iPhone 3.0 software since it was released last Wednesday.

The statement did not indicate whether or not Jobs would return to work at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, CA on Monday.

Apple issued $30 iTunes store credits over the weekend to some US customers whose iPhone 3G S models were not able to be activated for service with AT&T when the phones were released on Friday.

In an email sent to customers who had ordered the new smartphone through Apple’s online store prior to the official release, Apple apologized for delays “due to system issues and continued high activation volumes,” which the email said “could take us up to an additional 48 hours to complete.”

Customers were told to expect an email with the iTunes credit authorization on Monday and asked to accept the company’s “sincere apologies for the inconvenience this delay has caused.”

Some customers were particularly miffed last week after having received initial notice from UPS that their phones were scheduled for delivery on Wednesday, but saw deliveries rescheduled to Friday’s official release date, apparently at Apple’s behest.

Steve Jobs had a liver transplant about two months ago but is making a speedy recovery and will return to Apple in June, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“Steve continues to look forward to returning at the end of June, and there’s nothing further to say,” Apple spokeswoman Katie Cotton told the Journal.

Jobs had the transplant in Tennessee and may return to work part time, the Journal said.

In January, Bloomberg News reported that Jobs was considering a liver transplant.

Jobs took six months medical leave in January, promising to return to work in June, but many have been pessimistic about his prospects.Jobs lost weight rapidly in 2008.

The Journal said Jobs had the surgery in Tennessee because of the state’s short waiting list — 48 days compared to 306 nationally. A cancer expert told the Journal that Jobs’ pancreatic cancer may have metastasized and spread to his liver, requiring a transplant.

Five-year survival rates for liver-transplants is about 75 percent, the Journal said. The survival rate of slow-growing tumors like Jobs’ — with or without liver surgery — is usually longer than a decade, the expert said.

The Journal said Jobs has been spotted at Apple’s HQ during his leave.

Apple may have contributed to iPhone 3G S activation delays Friday that have many device users hopping mad and may leave some customers without telephone service through the weekend.

An AppleInsider report during the day Friday indicated that Apple’s activation servers were under strain even greater than those Wednesday that made it difficult for some users to download and install the new 3.0 version of iPhone’s operating software.

Cult of Mac has learned that at least one customer, who pre-ordered a 3G S from the Apple website shortly after the device was announced on June 8, received a message from UPS on Monday this week saying that his order for the 3G S would be delivered on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Apple sent him a message saying the courier had made a mistake. The UPS site Wednesday showed the delivery was delayed by request of the recipient, which, of course had not been the case. On Thursday, The ‘recipient request’ notice had been removed, though there was still no word on expected delivery.

It would appear from this user’s experience that Apple told UPS to delay iPhone 3G S shipments until Friday, the official release date.

Of course, it’s unclear whether early delivery of some customers’ phones would have affected the activation delays other users experienced Friday. iTunes gave many trying to activate their devices a message reading “Your activation requires additional time to complete. Due to the current activation volumes, it may take up to 48 hours to resolve your issue,” and many were quick to blame AT&T for the delay.

However it appears clear that Apple may have played a significant role — aside from being unprepared to meet activation demand through iTunes servers — in spoiling the launch of yet another of the company’s groundbreaking products.

Apple finally made the iPhone 3.0 firmware update available to US customers Wednesday afternoon and anecdotal reports indicate the company’s servers are working hard to meet the demand.

A few readers indicated problems with their downloads timing-out in the comment thread on our review of the software, other readers in a thread at MacRumors indicated painfully slow download speeds for the 230MB file — though some also indicated lightning quick experiences as fast as one minute to download.

I happened to be caught out and about this afternoon and found even getting to the iTunes app store was problematic over a public WiFi connection. Before attempting to fetch iPhone 3.0 I tried downloading a free iTunes U Summer Mix of music, which I gave up on after 3 ‘network connection re-set’ error messages and figured trying to update my iPhone would be fruitless.

How about you? Are you running the software now? Any problems with the download? Let us know in comments below.

Queensland University of Technology, one of the largest universities in Australia, has published health and safety concerns about Apple Macintosh glass or high gloss monitor screens, and recommends students and school employees “consider the purchase of other types of monitors which are not high gloss.”

Because reflections on the screens “could cause the operator to adopt awkward postures when viewing the monitor screen and using related equipment,” which awkward poatures “may in turn lead to an injury,” health and safety officials at the university have come out against the controversial Apple products and published detailed computer safety guidelines for members of the university community.

Howls of protest among many users accompanied Apple’s decision to discontinue matte screen options for its monitor products in 2007, largely from professional photographers and other users who process graphic images in their work, despite some who believe the glossy surface produces more saturated colours, deeper contrast, and sharper images than traditional matte displays.

Asked what might have spurred the university to publish an official position in the matter, Cult of Mac contacts in Australia pointed out that Australian employers must provide workers’ compensation for injuries sustained in the workplace under strict government regulations, and speculated that “the university is playing it safe, so that it can never be said that it did not advise against the use of gloss screens.”

Gives a whole new meaning to “protect and defend,” doesn’t it?

[MacMatte]

Before you rush out and buy that brand new iPhone 3G S, consider the suggestions here. For some iPhone 3G owners, the 3G S may be unnecessary. For those who simply cannot wait read on, because there are ways to minimize the overall cost of the upgrade. In fact, you may even turn a profit.

The iPhone 3G S will be subsidized by AT&T for qualified customers ($199 for the 16 GB model and $299 for the 32 GB model). Unfortunately, if you currently own an iPhone 3G you are not a qualified customer because you entered into a two-year contract with AT&T last year. Unsubsidized, the iPhone 3G S is priced at an exorbitant $599 and $699 (plus the $18 setup fee).

AT&T is probably not going to alter its stance on the matter because, like it or not, offering subsidized phones only to new customers is standard industry practice. If you are an existing iPhone 3G owner, and do not have money to burn, consider all your options after the jump.

Last fall I bought a 13-inch unibody MacBook, and I fell in love. For the last seven months I’ve been head-over-heels with the machine. But now there’s a new love in my life: a brand new 13-inch MacBook Pro, which is shaping up to be the perfect laptop.

Released last week, Apple’s MacBook Pro 13″ is an amazing machine. It’s priced as a starter, but it’s now truly a “Pro” laptop. It’s worthy of real work. It adds many of the “Pro” features previously reserved for its higher-end siblings, but costs hundreds of dollars less.

It now has an awesome, all-day battery; a bright, energy-sipping screen; and a backlit keyboard. Firewire is back, and there’s an indispensible SD Card slot. And yet it starts at just $1,200. For a computer of this quality and power, that’s a steal.

Full review after the jump, including real-world benchmarks and tons of pics.

A new Mac Trojan has been spotted “in the wild” on a porno website, prompting a wave of misleading and inaccurate Mac malware stories.

A Trojan named OSX/Jahlav-C has been spotted on a porno website (xhottube.net), the British security group Sophos said on Friday.

In a blog post about the virus, Sophos also mentioned an update to an email worm called OSX/Tored-A, which has prompted news organizations to warn of renewed malware attacks against Macs.

But only the OSX/Jahlav-C is in the wild, and even Sophos described the OSX/Tored-A as “lame.”

The new OSX/Jahlav-C Trojan infects Macs when visitors to the “hardcore” porno website try to watch the site’s main video. They are prompted to download a “missing Video ActiveX Object” but are infected with the OSX/Jahlav-C Trojan instead, says Sophos.

The social engineering here isn’t very sophisticated — ActiveX is associated with Windows. In addition, it’s unclear what the OSX/Jahlav-C Trojan actually does. Sophos says “it will eventually run a Perl script that uses http to communicate with a remote website and download code supplied by the attacker.”

What that code does, Sophos doesn’t say. Apparently, it hasn’t executed the Perl script yet. Sophos rates the Trojan as low to medium risk.

“Although there is only a tiny amount of Mac malware compared to Windows viruses, that’s going to be little consolation if your gorgeous new MacBook gets infected,” said a sarcastic post on the company blog. “And sadly we know that many Mac users still believe they are somehow magically immune from attacks.”

The company made a condescending video demonstrating the attack (posted after the jump) — “Is it safe to surf for porn on an Apple Mac?”

UPDATE: ParetoLogic, a Canadian anti-virus company, is also warning about OSX/Jahlav-C. The Trojan is associated with PornTube, says MacNN.

UPDATE 2: Reader Scam Finder says the Trojan doesn’t exist on the xhottube site. Scam Finder tried to purposely infect his Mac but failed. See the comment below.

Safari 4 has been downloaded 11 million times is the first three days of release, Apple said in a press release on Friday — and 6 million of those were on Windows. There’s more Windows users running Apple’s  browser than Mac users.

Eleven million downloads in three days is quite impressive, but not a record. In June last year, Mozilla set a Guinness World Record with 8 million downloads of Firefox 3 in one day — the most downloaded software in 24 hours.

Apple claims Safari 4 is the fastest, most innovative browser available (It executes JavaScript nearly 8x faster than IE 8 and loads HTML web pages more than 3x faster than IE 8, Apple claims).

The browser will get better with the release of Snow Leopard in September. Says Apple:

“In Mac OS X Snow Leopard, available later this year, Safari runs as a 64-bit application, boosting the performance of the Nitro JavaScript engine by up to 50 percent. Snow Leopard makes Safari more resistant to crashes by running plug-ins in a separate process, so even if a plug-in crashes, Safari continues to run and the user simply has to reload the affected page. Safari running on Snow Leopard also delivers HTTP streaming, making it easy to deliver high-quality audio and video in industry standard formats from any web server without the need for browser plug-ins.”

Safari 4 was officially launched on Monday at WWDC, but had been widely available for months as a beta.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7uhO3bM6jw

Apple hired Academy Award-nominated director David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) to show off the latest iPhone in its TV ad debut.

Titled “break in,” (a nod to how most folks got iPhone video capability before the 3S?) the 30-second spot highlights the video angle and hints at other “amazing new features.”

Via Slashfilm

The “sealed” battery in Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Pro is easily replaced with standard screwdrivers, a teardown by iFixit shows.

The MacBook battery is not supposed to be changed by the user. Sealed inside the case, Apple encourages customers to pay Apple $130 to change the battery and dispose of the old one.

However, the battery is easily accessed with a standard Phillips screwdriver, and the battery removed with a tri-wing screwdriver, iFixit found when dissassmbling the device on Tuesday.

In addition, iFixit notes that the single audio jack (see post below) is innapropriate for a “Pro” machine. The jack supports analog and digital audio-out, and analog audio-in, but not digital audio-in.

“If you need digital audio-in, this is not the machine for you.” said iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens in an email.

Wiens also said the MBP’s new SD card slot is “rather unimaginative.”

“Half the card hangs outside the computer,” said Wiens. “Apparently, Apple couldn’t free up enough space for a slot that would make the card completely captive.”

Wiens notes the battery is beefier (360 grams, about 60 grams heavier than the old one), but is rated 60 Watt-hours, compared to the older battery’s 45 W-h. Apple claims the battery will last for 7 hours. The previous MacBook’s battery was rated 5 hours (yeah, right!)

More details and pictures from iFixit after the jump.