Apple - page 53

Here’s an iPhone concept sent in by an anonymous Cult reader overnight. Looks pretty fly to me, but then I’m still on a PowerBook G4 and an original iPhone.

What say you, dear reader?

Two stories in the iPhone developers ecosystem Thursday illustrate the challenges of navigating the path to fame and fortune on the back of a cleverly written app and its AppStore sales.

First comes news from AppCubby, whose experiment with 99¢ pricing we reported on a few weeks ago, saying, indeed, selling apps for 99¢ and depending on voluntary donations to cover the gap between success and failure is, for AppCubby anyhow, unsustainable.

Blogger/developer Erica Sadun relates how Apple’s own Department of AppStore Security is quashing some innovative developer marketing efforts and refusing to approve any app that advertises a contest or promises prizes or awards in the app itself or in its AppStore description.

Sadun uses the example of iFartMobile’s currently selling app, which advertises a $5000 prize to one lucky user for submitting a winning video of the app in action, saying Apple’s lawyers want no part of being named in potential suits against developers who may fail to deliver on contest prizes advertised through the AppStore. Developers are now being told no app using contest or sweepstakes marketing will be approved.

With the news this week there are now more than 20,000 apps on iTunes, it’s clear a lot of people out there are hoping to strike it rich panning for AppStore gold.

One can hardly blame Apple for trying to police the panhandlers, though, as Sadun points out, it can be frustrating for developers when the policing lacks transparency.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOdhudBl3Vc&eurl=https://macenstein.com/default/archives/2710&feature=player_embedded

The ever-amusing Dr. Macenstein has unearthed a pitch for a new Apple advertising campaign meant to counter the growing prevalence of lawsuits charging the company with misleading consumers.

The new angle would show real-world Mac users and how they use their Macs in the real world. Simple is brilliant, eh?

In this test pilot, author/evolutionist Richard Dawkins uses his PowerBook to read hate mail.

Who would you use out there, dear reader?

Is Justin Long over?

Apple may be putting the finishing touches on a new streaming video service that would allow iTunes users to access purchased video content without the need to download and store it on a local machine, according to a report Wednesday at AppleInsider.

iTunes Replay would let users stream content such as movies and TV shows directly from Apple-owned servers in a manner similar to Amazon’s Video on Demand (formerly known as UnBox) and the Instant Watch service from Netflix, and may also improve the experience of the company’s Apple TV set top box, allowing users to stream purchased media directly from Apple’s servers without syncing or copying files between Apple TV and a computer running iTunes.

The report is unclear whether Apple intends to move toward a “streaming only” distribution model for the typically large files created by video content, or if iTunes Replay would merely represent an option for consumers with fewer concerns about retaining physical control of their purchased media content (and less storage in which to keep it).

To the extent that media distributors such as Apple, Amazon and Netflix embrace the streaming distribution model, consumers may find relief from the need to maintain ever greater storage capacity for growing media libraries. Though the trade-off – and guaranteed consumer dissatisfaction – will arise over bandwidth limitations that already make even a YouTube-watching experience sub-optimal at peak demand times in some places in the US.

Apple’s new 24″ LED Cinema Display suffers the fatal flaw of “ridiculous, terrible glare,” according to Jason Snell, editor of Macworld, who informed his Twitter followers Monday he’s putting his monitor back in the box and returning it to Macworld Labs.

Snell has spent his professional career as a writer covering Apple and, despite the presumed objectivity of his position as the editor of one of the larger, more recognizable mainstream media brands associated with the Cupertino computer maker, likely wouldn’t give up on such a major piece of Apple hardware unless he felt it was poorly executed.

Snell, of course enjoys a luxury many consumers do not, in that he can give his display back to the magazine’s lab and not have to worry about its cost or the space it may take up sitting unused in a corner or on a shelf. Average folk who’ve bought Apple’s new display and discovered after using it for a time that the glare is unbearable have far fewer options for doing anything about it.

What about you, dear reader – how do you feel about Apple’s embrace of the glossy screen on its flagship display? Is it worse in the wild than the glossy notebooks’ display? Would you send it back to “the Lab” if you could?

Image courtesy Bearotic (probably NSFW)

In case you were wondering, Steve Wozniak (pictured is now confirmed to be a competitor on the next season of “Dancing with the Stars,” alongside Steve-O, Jewel, and many other formerly famous people. Because he couldn’t just start working for a new company, which was announced last week. He needed to make a series of embarrassing appearances on TV.

Edit: No offense intended in link; was more looking out for people on the internet who haven’t figured out what the suffix “rotic” means at this point. Have revised to reflect.

Via Zap2It

Even after 25 years of Mac, Apple is growing like a high-tech start-up, according to Forbes magazine.

An upcoming issue of the venerable business and money magazine places Apple at #14 on its annual list of the 25 fastest growing tech companies of the past year, which is quite a feat for a company as large as the Cupterino computer maker.

To make the list, companies must have latest 12-month revenues of $25 million or more, annualized sales gains of at least 10% over the past five years and a profit over the past 12 months. In addition, a company must have a long-term consensus profit-growth forecast of at least 10%, annualized.

Surprizingly, this is the first time Apple has made the list since Forbes began publishing it in 2003, but even more remarkably, many of the other companies on it are tiny in comparison to the House that Jobs built.

With revenues of $33 billion per year, Apple is 60 times bigger than No. 1 on the list, biotech tool-maker Illumina (ILMN), and nearly 500 times bigger than No. 5, semiconductor designer Techwell. Apple has grown at an annualized rate of 40% per year over the past five years.

The only other company of Apple’s size on the list – Google, with revenues nearing $22 billion and growing at the rate of 72% a year, good enough for the #2 spot.

See the full list here.

Via Fortune

Independent Mac repair shops all over the world are rejoicing this week, after Apple’s announcment the company will phase out repair support for certain G4 machines, xserve products and other “vintage” and “obsolete” gear.

After March 17th, Apple will no longer provide service parts or documentation for the products listed after the jump, and the items will not be accepted as Mail-In Repairs to AppleCare Repair Centers.

It’s mighty kind of Apple to support the Apple repair ecosystem this way, and yet gives incentive to the consumer to buy new gear at the same time.

Sheer brilliance.

Via AppleInsider, via MacMerc

The BBC’s coverage of the Mac’s 25th has in some cases left something to be desired, the nadir being a bizarre video showing a Microsoft employee battling with an original Mac and comparing it against her Windows laptop. Ex-Macworld UK head honcho Simon Jary rightly pulled said video apart on his PC Advisor blog, although he didn’t note how, amusingly, the Mac boots much faster than the PC, despite MSN tech editor Jane Douglas cunningly refraining from giving the Mac its system disk until the PC’s been whirring away for a good few seconds.

Presumably wanting to avoid the same level of oddness, BBC Radio Five Live’s Pods and Blogs scoured the internet, looking for a Mac expert to chat to. Failing that, they ended up with me (Oho! You self-deprecating Brit, you!–Ed.), and I spent a happy 20 minutes talking to the extremely personable Jamillah Knowles about all things Mac.

As is always the case, the interview itself was knifed somewhat (due to it being nearly as long as the entire podcast was supposed to be), but there’s still a reasonable chunk left. Importantly, the Mac doesn’t come off looking too bad, although I do wonder what Jamillah’s co-presenter is going on about regarding how rubbish Macs used to be for getting online. (I’ve never had such a problem.)

Anyway, the podcast is at https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/pods/, and the Mac bit’s at the 14-minute mark.

Apple’s advertising for the iPhone is changing in interesting ways. When the product was brand new, all of the attention was on the interface, just introducing people to the idea of multitouch. Now, the focus has shifted to what you can do with an iPhone that you either can’t do or is too much harder to do on any other phone. The one above, “Fix,” is all about the little everyday problems the iPhone can solve, like finding a taxi, calculating your tip, or checking how level a shelf is. All of the featured applications (Rocket Taxi, Tipulator and Multilevel) are third-party, and each has a nice UI and a cool hook into signature iPhone 3G features, like GPS or the accelerometer.

Another new ad fits the same pattern, this one entitled “Read,” which goes into the many things you could read on the iPhone, including restaurant reviews (Yelp), an MRI (!) (OsiriX), or, well, a book (Classics). I’ve embedded it after the jump.

It’s a really smart way for Apple to make the App Store its own…killer app. How long until Apple makes the “Fart” commercial?

Via iPhone Savior

MacHEADS – The Movie, the recently-released documentary on the interesting, outspoken community of people who believe Mac is the Holy Grail of personal computing, went up on Amazon VOD Monday, where you can “rent” the film for a week for $2.99 or buy it outright for $9.99.

MacHEADS debuted at Macworld Expo 2009 with over 1000 people attending the premiere. In an interview for BBC director Kobi Shely added, “The movie explores everything from the early days to the current days. Central to the success of the Mac has been the community that has supported Apple through the good times and the bad. That included the years when the company was written off as having lost its way and the ink on one of its many obituaries was all but dry.”

The film also features footage and commentary from multiple Mac evangelists, including Apple Chief Evangelist and savior Guy Kawasaki; the first official employee of Apple inc., Daniel Kottke; publisher of the first Apple newsletter Adam Engst; Chicago Sun-Times tech columnist Andy Ihantko; and a special guest appearance by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

MacHEADS is due to be available on the iTunes store next week.

Apple fans are famous for making outlandish gestures of their appreciation for the little computer company Steve and Woz built.

There’s the iconic Apple logo shaved head that graces our esteemed masthead, of course.

There’s was the ill-advised henna tattoo episode. And, well, there’s the Apple Tattoo Flickr Pool.

But this guy with the stickers and the car, well, I’m speechless, really.

Via Art Car Central

Documentary film maker Gary Hustwit recently got to interview top Apple designer Jonny Ive for Objectified, a movie he’s making about industrial design.

The interview took place inside Ive’s ultra-secretive design studio near Apple’s campus, which is harder to get into than Fort Knox. This is the first interview I’ve ever heard of taking place inside the studio. Quite a coup for the film. I can’t wait to see it.

In the meantime, I’m dying to know what machines are in the background of this still. I knew the studio was filled with CNC mills and 3D fabricators. Does anyone know what machines are shown in this shot?

Apple interim CEO Tim Cook spoke plainly during Wednesday’s earnings call about the company’s being “ready to suit up and go against anyone” who might try to gain a competitive advantage in the mobile device arena by “ripping off” the iPhone’s IP.

General consensus holds the Palm Pre poses the best competition for iPhone thus far, with some analysts drawing close connections between Apple and Palm around the Pre’s touch interface.

Mike Abramsky, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets put the question directly to Cook on Wednesday’s call, asking, “the Palm device particularly seems to almost directly emulate the kind of touch interfaces that [Apple] innovated…Is that to what you’re referring with regarding to ripping off IP?”

Cook declined to talk about any specific company and reiterated his and Apple’s position that “competition is good [and] makes us all better.” However, he also drew analysts on the call a clear picture of Apple’s belief that the “magic” of the iPhone has little to do with hardware and everything to do with software.”

“We’ve said since the beginning software is the key ingredient and we believe that we’re still years ahead on software,” Cook said, adding “we approach [this business] fundamentally different than people that are approaching it only from a hardware point of view.

It’s obviously way early in the game, and in the event Palm’s Pre never manages to gain significant acceptance in the marketplace, Apple is likely to keep its attention and resources focused on other things.

Should the Pre come on like gangbusters and should there be a lot of “hey, this thing works just like an iPhone” talk, it’s not too difficult to imagine Apple calling on its competitive advantage in cash and legal muscle to put the squeeze on a company that, not long ago, was being written off by many as headed for the dustbin of history.

Wall Street greeted Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th president of the US by shedding more than 5% of its total value Tuesday. Some might interpret the market action as a vote of no confidence in the new administration, others likely view the dip as an indication of challenges ahead for the US economy and still others would say the market for stocks acts as any market with excess inventory on hand – by putting things on sale.

The sale price for shares of Apple (AAPL) closed Tuesday at $78.20, the cheapest price the stock has seen in over two years, more than 60% off its all-time high of $200, set in December 2007. One of the most widely followed Apple analysts, Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray affirmed a price target of $235 for Apple stock as recently as December and today’s price action, coming just one trading session prior to the company’s quarterly earnings announcement, would seem to be Wall Street’s equivalent of a one-day red tag sale.

So what do you think? Is Wall Street giving potential Apple shareholders a gift, or is it trying to unload damaged goods while it still can? Can a guy like Munster, who follows in minute detail every financial move the company makes, who reports, often with uncanny precision, what Apple’s revenue and profit numbers will look like before they are announced to the public, can he seriously set a price target 200% above the stock’s current value?

What I know is that a year ago, after the market had knocked AAPL down from $200 to about $140, I wished I had some money to put into the stock, because I loved the company and its products, and I thought its prospects for the future were great. I know that six months ago, when the iPhone 3G came out and the AppStore launched with the stock trading at $175, I wished I had some money to put into the stock for the very same reasons.

Today, I know I’m kind of glad I don’t have any money to put into the stock because I still love the company and its products, and I still believe its prospects for the future are great, but it seems sometimes that’s not enough to make money in the stock market.

I have a confession to make: despite my worldly exterior, I am a gigantic comics geek. I have a pull list, I can name everyone who has ever been a member of the Justice League, and I had a letter published in Green Arrow #101.

At this point in my life, I finally have the budget to buy a decent number of comics, but this has actually made things much more complex. After all, now I don’t have time to memorize which new books I want to read. Unless a preview makes a real impression on me, I forget I ever wanted to read it.

Thankfully, as it does for most of life’s problems, the iPhone has an answer. It’s called Comixology, and it’s a beautiful thing. Basically an app version (and companion) of Comixology.com, the program allows you to view lists of all the comics being released in a given week, preview artwork and story pages for many of them, and then “pull” interesting books so your local retailer will have everything cool waiting for you the next time you stop by.

It can also bring in podcasts, news, columns, and reviews. It’s pretty much one-stop nerd shopping.

I haven’t had time to get this synced to my actual comics pull list yet, but I’m planning to soon (my local comics impresario is an adviser to the project), and it’s awesome just as a memory-enhancing tool in the first place.

Plus, it doesn’t make farting noises. That alone sets it apart from the App Store pack.

Having read a few of the tutorials on how to install the new Windows 7 beta on a Mac with Boot Camp, I decided to take the plunge myself today on my still sparkling-new unibody MacBook 2.4 Ghz. (This post is actually being written in Firefox on Windows 7 — eww)

And what I learned is that you had really better be prepared to spend several hours to get it working properly. The link I’ve provided above is pretty handy, but it has some tricks to it that will not be immediately apparent without some trial and error. Read on to make the essential tweaks to the tutorial needed to make it work on MacBooks, not just MacBook Pros, read on!

Proving itself to be The Little Engine That Could of an otherwise dismal economy, Apple’s iTunes AppStore has reached an inventory of over 15,000 applications (some of which do not exist to reproduce the sound of flatulence) and has entertained more than 500 million downloads since its debut six months ago.

It took just 5 weeks for the AppStore to deliver more than 200 million downloads, whereas it took 6 weeks to go from 200 million to 300 million. So, the volume of interest in applications for iPhone and iPod Touch is increasing impressively, although the most recent bump is likely a result of Apple’s mobile gadgets having been popular gifts this past holiday season.

Via Mashable!

A couple of the larger media egos on the Apple beat got into a public spat on CNBC Wednesday, in the wake of Steve Jobs’ sudden decision to step aside from day-to-day operations in Cupertino.

Newsweek columnist Dan Lyons, who outed himself as the man behind the formerly wildly popular blog Fake Steve Jobs told CNBC’s Silicon Valley bureau chief, Jim Goldman, he’d been “played” and “punked” by his sources at Apple.

Goldman had previously reported, in the wake of Jobs’ decision to forgo the keynote address at Macworld 2009, that his sources had assured him the Apple CEO was fine and healthy and that the company’s decisions around Macworld had more to do with its long-term market strategy, and had not been guided by any concerns about Jobs’ health.

The clip is a bit of Kabuki theater that reminds one of nothing so much as children squabbling over a dying parent. It devolves, as so many of these things do, into a tempest of shouting and mewling. The conversation’s moderator sums it up nicely at the end, saying, “nobody can hear anything you guys are saying because you’re talking all over one another, and we’re out of time.”

Sad.

Via Cnet

Apple has begun approving the first wave of browser products to compete with Mobile Safari on the iPhone and iPod Touch, signaling the company may not be the great curmudgeon of handheld computing after all.

The apparent shift in Apple’s previous policy of denying AppStore certification to software products that “duplicate the functionality” of its own applications that ship with the devices, a handful of browser apps have begun showing up in recent days on the iTunes store.

Incognito, from developer Dan Park, promises completely anonymous browsing, with all history cleared simply by closing the application.

Edge Browser is a free app that opens up valuable screen real estate, but forces the address and navigation tools into the Settings menu, which doesn’t seem too promising a design feature to me.

WebMate is a 99¢ solution to tabbed browsing on the iPhone, that works by queuing up all the links you click on, then allowing you to view them one by one when you’re ready.

Apple sweetened the pot a bit on its new productivity suite Tuesday, with a “Try it Free for 30 days” offer on iWork ’09. The enhanced spreadsheet, desktop publishing and presentation software package must not be flying off the shelves since its introduction last week at Macworld.

I was aiming to get around to it at some point because I’ve come to really like Pages, especially since I got used to its decidedly-different-than-Word workflow.

I’m also interested in checking out Numbers, Apple’s spreadsheet software that was not part of the copy of iWork ’06 I’ve been hobbling along with. I hope not to be involved again too soon in any venture that requires a lot of work with spreadsheets, but if Numbers is a reasonably robust solution it will be nice to know it’s in the file system.

Of course – and I hate to keep going on about this – Keynote is, to me, the star of the iWork show, a truly full-featured, sophisticated piece of presentation software that puts Powerpoint to shame. I’m looking forward to playing with its new bells and whistles and this little free teaser may be just the thing to get me off my duff to check it out.

Thanks, Apple!

Psystar has raised another desperate, if novel claim in its ongoing legal battle with Apple, arguing before a federal judge that since the Mac clone-maker legally purchased its copies of Mac OS X from Apple and resellers, it has the right to do basically whatever it wants with that software under the first-sale doctrine.

In court filings described by Computerworld, Psystar told the court: “Once a copyright owner consents to the sale of particular copies of a work, the owner may not thereafter exercise distribution rights with respect to those copies. See, e.g., Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, 210 U.S. 339, 350-51 (1908) (recognizing more than 100 years ago the concept of first sale and the limitations imposed upon a copyright owner in light thereof). Psystar acquired lawful copies of the Mac OS from Apple; those copies were lawfully acquired from authorized distributors including some directly from Apple; Psystar paid good and valuable consideration for those copies; Psystar disposed of those lawfully acquired copies to third-parties.”

Unfortunately for Psystar, courts have rarely held the first sale doctrine applies to software, considering it a product that is licensed, not sold, and can therefore be distributed with restrictions on further distribution. Psystar’s thin hopes likely hang on the precedent of a case involving Adobe, in which a court upheld the first sale doctrine’s application to software.

Via Cnet

Apple’s Board of Directors is opposing a shareholder initiative to require the company to produce a Corporate Responsibility Report (CSR) detailing Apple’s approach to greenhouse gases, toxins, recycling, and more, according to a report at Environmental Leader.

A shareholder group called “As You Sow,” co-sponsored by the Green Century Equity Fund, reasons that many of Apple’s direct competitors, including Dell, IBM, and HP, already publish CSR reports, as do over 2,700 other public companies. Apple’s board, however, has issued a proxy filing asking shareholders to vote against the resolution, saying publication would be an unnecessary expense and would “produce little added value.”

Apple publishes a Supplier Responsibility report and environmental policies on its website, in spite of which As You Sow and a number of less organized parties have pressured Apple to do more official reporting.

My other blog has gone Apple this week as we close in on the launch of our book Wired to Care. I’ve just gone live on the Empath-o-Meter with a poll to rate how widespread empathy is at Apple. By empathy, I mean the ability of people inside the company to understand the needs of the folks out in the world that they’re trying to serve. As a Macophile, I obviously feel very well-served by Apple, but I have trouble knowing whether it’s because the folks inside the company really get where I’m coming from — or just that Steve Jobs has an amazing intuition for what’s going to connect with people like me.

Check it out — I’m anxious to see your votes and your comments!