Apple - page 49

Taking Steve Jobs at his original word – that web apps would make the best use of iPhone and iPod Touch capabilities – iPorn launched Monday a new web app developed using Apple’s iPhone specifications and applying its unique accelerometer and touch navigation.

As Apple prepares to open the doors on WWDC in San Francisco on Monday and possibly announce a new video-capable iPhone, few may be as excited about the possibilities to come as the adult entertainment industry.

The iPorn app is loaded with social networking features such as high-res video streaming, the ability to post and share photos and videos, create member profiles, exchange private messages and more. Registered users can personally interact with amateur and professional adult performers via live video webcams, chat and mobile texting. Members can send adult videos from the website to their iPhone or iPod Touch-equipped friends. Versions optimized for other mobile phones, such as the Blackberry, Android and Palm Pre, are expected to follow later this summer.

To help celebrate iPhone 3.0 firmware and the possibility of video-capable mobile devices from Apple, iPorn is sending the iPorn Bikini Girls to Moscone Center in a high-tech iPorn-equipped vehicle for free photo ops with conference attendees. Later in the evening the company will host an (unofficial) 9-hour launch party at San Francisco’s famed Gold Club, just a block away from the conference site at Moscone Center West.

The party, which will go from 5:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m., is open to WWDC attendees, investors, and media.

It’s no secret the adult entertainment industry has often been at the forefront of technology, producing some of the Internet’s most sophisticated websites and multimedia-rich user user experiences well ahead of many more mainstream and socially acceptable industries.

It’s therefore no surprise the porn industry will among the first fully equipped to let users get the most out of Apple’s innovations in mobile device technology.

By Peter Yan, a graphic designer from Melbourne, Australia.

Steve Jobs is recovering from his mystery illness and is set to return to Apple at the end of the month, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Jobs will not however make a surprise appearance at WWDC on Monday. Instead, he’ll host a product presentation or other special event later in June, the Journal says.

“He was one real sick guy,” added this person. “Fundamentally he was starving to death over a nine-month period. He couldn’t digest protein. [But] he took corrective action.”

The story is hidden behind the Journal‘s pay wall, but is free to read on the iPhone.

(The Journal also reports that the next-gen iPhone will be unveiled during the keynote address on Monday but won’t be available until July, to coincide with the two-year anniversary of original iPhone purchases. The iPhone will have a faster processor and a better camera with video editing, the Journal says, citing someone who’s actually seen the phone).

The story also notes that Tim Cook is doing a good job in Steve’s absence — the stock is way up.

Via Tuaw.

For anyone whose history with Apple dates to their first iPod, it can be really hard to fathom just how different a company it was before Steve Jobs came back in December 1996 and fundamentally turned it around.

I haven’t found a better example recently than these renderings of a project that Apple actually announced in November 1996: a series of cybercafes worldwide offering video conferencing, web surfing, and delicious Appley food and beverage. All from the comfort of an environment that looks like something you might envision if you start snorting ’57 Chevys.

I repeat. Apple actually announced that they were doing this and held a press conference to unveil it, as this CNET article proves:

“The time is right,” said Satjiv Chahil, senior vice president of marketing for Apple, in a telephone interview. “Cybercafes are in. The technology finally is reaching out to ‘the rest of us.’ This will be a place to showcase our products in the real world.”

Can you imagine if this were Apple’s retail vision today? Of course not. They would be out of business if Steve hadn’t come back.

Via GUIFX

Apple is preparing to open a huge new retail store in China’s capitol just steps from the historic Tiananmen Square.

Renderings of the giant, three-story store have been published on the website of U.S. architect Ben Wood, who is based in Shanghai.

The store will be built on Qianmen Street, an up-and-coming shopping strip just blocks from the great square, which has seen huge military parades as well as student protests.

Expected to open as soon as the fall, the store will be Apple’s second in Beijing and its ninth in Asia.

The design mixes traditional Chinese architecture with Apple’s signature glass and steel. It will feature a glass staircase spiraling through all three stories, plus a huge white Apple logo above the front door.

Link.

Via IFOAppleStore.

Labor protesters demonstrating outside Apple’s Taiwan offices in May. The Apple laptop says “Responsibility.” Images: Global Post.

Asian labor unions will be putting more pressure on Apple on Tuesday with a protest at Computex Taipei, Asia’s largest electronics show.

The unions are hoping to force Apple to intervene in a labor dispute with one of the company’s major suppliers, Wintek, which makes LCD screens and is rumored to be working on the upcoming Mac/iPod tablet.

Wintek has been accused of unfairly laying-off workers and poor and exploitative working conditions in factories in Taiwan and mainland China. Wintek denies the charges.

The protest will “expose the reality to the public, and request Apple Inc. to execute its Code of Conduct, to end the exploitation of labors in Taiwan and China,” one of the unions said in a news release.

Image via Engadget

The biggest announcement at today’s fairly lackluster All Things D7 conference is that the very intriguing Palm Pre will sync easily with iTunes — it even pops up an iPod icon in the process. It won’t be able to play any old iTunes DRM’d films, but anything else is fine.

Now, assuming that Apple lets this stand, this is a very bold move by Palm. Apple’s ecosystem of iTunes, the App Store and its various hardware devices is the real strength of the iPhone. With Palm offering its own App Catalog and iTunes integration, it really will come down to which OS is nicer, and which hardware is more appealing.

Honestly? If the Pre weren’t limited to 8 GB, it would be hard for me to say with any certainty that I’ll be picking up a next-gen iPhone. Credible competition is grand, ain’t it?

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Apple’s Retail division has no plans to scale back its ambitions, according to a report Thursday in USA Today, and in fact sees opportunity in the recent economic contraction.

“We’re investing in the downturn,” said Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice president of retail. Apple plans to remodel 100 of its existing stores this year, adding space for customer training and room for displaying more product. The company also plans to open 25 new stores, including a fourth location in New York City, and new ones in Paris, Italy and Germany.

Stores will soon display “twice the amount” of Mac computers and other products, according to Johnson, and Genius Bars will get 50% more room to serve up free tech support for Apple products.

Beginning June 2, Apple’s One to One product training program will limit sign-ups to purchasers of new Mac computers at Apple Stores or via the company’s website, although any of the half million current One to One subscribers will be able to renew their $99 one year subscriptions .

“We originally set up One to One to get people to switch to the Mac,” Johnson said. “Now we want to expand it to make it even more relevant to people who have bought their Mac.”

Still priced at $99, the annual subscription includes personal setup, transferring of files from an older computer (Windows or Mac) and help with projects.

Previously, sessions timed out at one hour; new policy will extend the limit to three hours, but sessions could also include up to three participants.

Even in the light of his division’s expansion plans, Johnson conceded the recession has affected in-store traffic. Apple reported a 3% decline in sales during the most recently reported quarter. Traffic remains strong, he said, but has cooled off since last summer, when long lines greeted the introduction of the second-generation iPhone.

With many expecting an update to the iPhone to be announced at next week’s WWDC in San Francisco, Apple stores could well see the return of long lines and a need for all that extra space.

[USAToday]

Chinaontrade.com, an electronics wholesaler based in China has just made available for purchase what it purports to be authentic parts for the new iPhone. Don’t get too excited — it’s just the internal screen bezel and the screen, which is an ordinary LCD instead of a sexy OLED. And it’s literally impossible to tell if these are new in any way — you could tell me that these were for the original iPhone, and I would believe it. Doesn’t mean that they aren’t legit, just that they reveal nothing exciting about the new iPhone and might squash some dreams, too. Still: Only $73.40!

China Ontrade via iPhone Ticker via Gizmodo

Woz signing his book, “Woz,” in 2007. CC-licensed photo by bangdoll@flickr.

Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak on Wednesday said Steve Jobs is “healthy, energetic” and “doesn’t sound like he’s sick.”

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s All Things D conference in Southern California, Woz said Jobs doesn’t “seem to be in a health crisis,” according to the WSJ.

However, Woz said he’s never asked Jobs directly about his health.

Jobs is expected to return to Apple at the end of next months after taking six months medical leave to concentrate on his health. In a January letter to Apple’s employees, Jobs said his health issues “are more complex than I originally thought.” He lost an alarming amount of weight in 2008, leading to speculation his cancer had returned. Jobs was treated for pancreatic cancer in 2004.

AT&T is promising more and faster bars. CC-licensed photo by daBinsi (Vegas).

Hot on the heels of the faster iPhone expected this summer, AT&T is promising to double the speed of up its 3G network.

AT&T on Wednesday said it is bumping its 3G network to support HSPA 7.2, which offers download speeds up to a peak of 7.2 Mbps, which is double its current capacity.

The rollout will begin later this year, AT&T says. The company also promises it will “introduce multiple HSPA 7.2-compatible laptop cards and smartphones beginning later this year.”

One of the smartphones is likely Apple’s next-generation iPhone. Apple is expected to introduce a faster iPhone that will support HSPA 7.2. The new iPhone will also likely have a faster processor, which will be better able to handle the faster data stream, quickly updating content like web pages and maps.

Apple’s entry-level white MacBook received a hardware update on Wednesday, possibly foreshadowing revisions to the aluminum unibody MacBooks.

For the same $999 base price, the WhiteBook now gets:

* CPU bump from 2.0 GHz to 2.13 GHz.
* Hard drive from 120 GB to 160 GB.
* RAM boost from 667 MHz to 800 MHz.
*Battery life upped from 4.5 hours of “wireless productivity” to 5 hours. And now rated Energy Star EPEAT Gold, up from EPEAT Silver.

Thanks to the updates, the WhiteBook now has a faster processor than the entry-level aluminum MacBook, and a bigger build-to-order hard drive (500GB). And it still has a FireWire port. Updates to the unibody soon?

Apple is rumored to be offering similar upgrades to the aluminum MacBooks at WWDC, and rebranding the machines as MacBook Pros to further distinguish them from the white plastic MacBook.

White MacBook tech specs.

White MacBook at Apple’s online store.

Can you think of another company whose outdated and obsolete products get repurposed as art pieces even a fraction as often as do those from Apple?

How about a late 20th century PowerMac G4, which, as a 10 year-old desktop might possibly still be good enough to run your elementary school children’s games and learning software, but for all practical purposes is probably better suited as the inspiration for a wall clock to remind you, time after time, how gear Apple cool is.

At a mere $60, these may not last long and you should look into turning your own dusty G4 into a DIY project.

[iPhoneSavior]

Apple’s Safari 4 browser is a pig. It’s a resource hog that doesn’t clean up after itself — and it remembers every site you visit, even in “porn mode.”

Safari records every site you visit, even if you turn on the “Private Browsing” feature or clear the browser history. And the files it generates can consume gigabytes of disk space.

“This is a huge privacy concern,” writes designer and musician C. Harwick, from Chapel Hill, NC, who did some snooping in Safari’s hidden system folders. “With no good way of getting rid of them except manually (clearing the history doesn’t do it, and I don’t think resetting Safari does either), these hidden files are strewn all over the user’s hard drive unbeknownst to him waiting for snooping relatives (or more pertinently, law enforcement) to dig them up. I really like Safari, but I’m going to have to seriously consider using Firefox now (ack).”

Who says Apple doesn’t listen to customers? Thanks to a public outcry, Apple has reversed course and accepted the Eucalyptus eBook reader into the iPhone App Store.

The web erupted in outrage last week when developer Jamie Montgomerie’s eBook reader was rejected by Apple because it allowed readers to download the Kama Sutra from Project Gutenberg — which Apple deemed “inappropriate sexual content.”

But on Sunday Montgomerie received a call from Apple. The Apple representative chatted with the developer about his app and invited him to resubmit it.

“We talked about the confusion surrounding its App Store rejections, which I am happy to say is now fully resolved,” Montgomerie wrote on his blog.

The application is now available for purchase from the App Store for $10. A small victory for common sense.

Via Macworld.

Swiss insurance company Mobiliar gave knockoff iPods to guests at the Swiss Economic Forum. Pic: Berner Zeitung.

The head of Apple Switzerland has threatened legal action after a Swiss Insurance company gave 1,200 iPods to bigwigs at the tony Swiss Economic Forum. Trouble is, the iPods were cheap Chinese knockoffs.

At the Swiss Economic Forum last week, the insurance company Mobiliar surprised guests with an MP3 player that looked very much like a second-generation iPod shuffle.

But when Adrian Schmucki, the head of Apple Switzerland, received his, he threatened legal action against Mobiliar.

Add insult to injury, several of the guests asked Schmucki if the knockoffs would work with iTunes.

The Swiss Economic Forum is a two-day gathering of Switzerland’s leading companies, politicians and academics.

Berner Zeitung (Google German-to-English translation).

Many thanks to Renato Mitra of ApfelBlog. Link to Renato’s post.

My friend Jeffy picked up this pack of stickers at a Macworld past. Do Mac users have a sense of humor ? Should they be printed up as stickers for MacBooks?

The Mounties in British Columbia just busted their biggest counterfeiting operation ever — and the brains of the operation were a very sinister and criminal-looking iMac and MacBook.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia raided a counterfeit “currency lab” in Surrey, B.C. last week, seizing more than $220,000 in American and Canadian notes and arresting four people.

They also seized a new iMac, a MacBook, and what look like a pair of inket printers and a laser printer. HP is the ink of choice for funny money, looks like.

(I’ve always suspect Macs were the machine of choice for counterfeiters, given their graphics history. I’ll look into it).

RCMP news release.

Vancouver Sun story.

Via TUAW.

Labor protestors outside Apple’s Taiwan Office on Thursday. The Apple laptop says “Responsibility.” Images: Global Post.

Apple’s office in Taiwan drew protesters on Thursday complaining about layoffs and unfair working conditions at one of Apple’s main contractors.

A group of 30 to 45 workers complained of exploitation at Wintek, one of Apple’s major suppliers of LCD panels. The company is rumored to be supplying screens for the long-awaited Apple tablet. The workers chanted slogans and held signs saying “black-heart business” and “responsibility” outside Apple’s office in Taipei.

“We want to go through Apple to put pressure on Wintek,” one of the protestors told the Global Post.

The workers hope the action will force Apple to enforce it’s Code of Supplier Responsibility, instituted after 2006 allegations of exploitation at an iPod factory run by Foxconn, another Apple supplier factories in mainland China.

… along with Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates, of course, as part of a stained glass piece spotted on a Chelsea gallery tour recently by tefjr77. I have to say, I find it incredibly funny that Steve holds an iPhone, while Bill Gates is being buzzed by a Steve Ballmer cherub. Charming.

Flickr via iPhone Savior

Apple will launch a $700 touchscreen tablet with a new operating system and optimized apps in 2010, new research claims.

Apple’s response to the fast-growing netbook market will a touchscreen tablet like an outsized iPod touch. It will have a touchscreen measuring 7- and 10-inches; will cost between $500 to $700; and may have built-in 3G wireless, claims Wall Street analyst Gene Munster of investment bank Piper Jaffrey.

But thanks to the complexity of the tablet’s hardware and, more importantly, the new version of OS X and the apps it will run — it will not be ready until early 2010, Munster said i.

In a long and detailed research note to clients, Munster cited “mounting evidence” for his claims:

Apple is indeed working on a version of OS X to power a tablet device more robust than an iPod Touch yet still more limited than the operating system that powers the company’s line of notebook and desktop computer systems, according to Gene Munster, the widely followed Piper Jaffray analyst.

“We expect the development of such an OS to be underway currently, but its complexity, along with our conversations with a key company in the mobile space, leads us to believe it will not launch until CY10,” Munster said (meaning 2010) in a note released to clients Thursday.

Many in the Apple universe have long predicted a tablet device to compete in the growing market for netbooks, smaller, less-powerful – and less expensive – mobile devices designed for surfing the Internet, watching movies, reading and composing email and other “computer-lite” activities.

Not a few people will be disappointed if Apple fails to launch such an offering in the current year, but Munster implies that such a market, while growing fast, remains relatively small and believes Apple has plenty of time to get its entry right before joining the fray.

Parents with children aged 8 – 12 and relatively easy access to an Apple Retail Store might consider enrolling in Apple’s free summer camp workshops during July.

Beginning the week of July 13, Apple stores will offer a series of 3 hour workshops where kids will be introduced to Macs and Apple software and learn how to make a movie, create a photo slideshow, write and record a song or craft a presentation.

Space in each workshop is limited and kids are limited to no more than two workshop sessions each for the summer, but it is a free opportunity to kill six hours out of what can be a long, boring summer break for some – and a chance to get hands-on instruction with some of the hardware and software many kids are likely to encounter in school during the coming years.

The workshops break down into two weekly sessions in movie making, music, photography and presentation arts, where Apple instructional staff will teach kids the ins and outs of iMovie, GarageBand, iPhoto and Keynote.

A quick check of some of the session availability shows all sessions in New York City’s Apple stores are already full, though the rest of the country – even in populous California cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco – have spots still open.

Apple also offers similar youth programs year-round to help cultivate the next generation of evangelists.

Rumors that the new iPhone will feature a glowing Apple logo on the back of the handset have generally been met with derision. The idea that Apple’s designer’s would waste precious battery life with a glowing logo is so abhorrent, many have used it to dismiss the rumors altogether.

But a group of Russian hackers in August last year hacked an iPhone to make the logo glow. The hack — as seen in the video below — involved a Dremel tool and about $300 in parts, according to reports.

And it had no effect on the battery life whatsoever, the Ruskies said.

But why would Apple add a frivolous glowing logo?

To make the Apple logo more visible, of course. Just like glowing lighthouse on the lid of a MacBook, or the iPod’s white headphones, Apple is not shy of using us to advertise its wares.

Chart: Silicon Alley Insider.

UPDATED: YouGov sent a little more info about the survey’s other metrics — posted after the jump. Basically, Apple still leads on quality and reputation, but MS has caught on value, satisfaction and willingness to recommend.

Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunters” ad campaign is hurting Apple, according to a new consmer survey by YouGov BrandIndex.

Redmond’s new ads portray consumers rejecting Apple’s laptops as too expensive. Though clearly a defensive reaction to Apple’s successful “Get a Mac” ads, they are nonetheless reinforcing the stereotype of the “Apple tax,” says YouGov.

“With the Laptop Hunters campaign, Microsoft is making an impact on the perceived value score in the mind of consumers, particularly young consumers,”  Ted Marzilli, global managing director of BrandIndex, said on Tuesday afternoon when I phoned him up.

YouGov is an international market research firm based out of London. Its BrandIndex survey queried about 5,000 people online from a pool of about 1.5 million, Marzilli said. It claims to be representative of the U.S. adult population.

Its latest survey shows a clear uptick in Microsoft’s “value,” and a clear downtick in Apple’s. The change coincides with Microsoft’s high-profile campaign.