Apple today announced that 2009 will be the last year the company exhibits at Macworld Expo.
Citing the declining efficacy of reaching its audience through participation in trade shows, the company issued a press release indicating Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo. Schiller’s will be Apple’s last keynote at the show, which held its debut event in 1985.
The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.
With the increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website, the company is able to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in ways a trade show could never hope to.
Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.
Apple released the 10.5.6 update to Leopard on Monday with a feature that makes it impossible to jailbreak and/or unlock an iPhone or iPod Touch using PwnageTool or QuickPwn, according to a report at iPhoneAlley.
Blogger Erica Sadun explains in more detail that engineers at Apple propagated to all 10.5.6 loaded Mac systems USB kexts (kernel extensions) that prevent a Mac from recognizing an iPhone or iPod in Device Firmware Update mode, a high level communication protocol used for firmware restores among other things.
The battle between Cupertino and a dedicated band of Apple users who believe the company’s mobile platform should be opened for general use and development outside the limitations of the AppStore has been going on since the original iPhone was unlocked weeks after its initial release in June 2007. Subsequent updates to the mobile firmware have ben decoded within days of their release.
Many, though not all users who jailbreak/unlock their iPhones do so to enable them to operate on cellular telephone networks other than AT&T, the exclusive authorized service provider in the US. Others see the advantage of an unlocked phone that can run software developed for it that has not otherwise been approved by Apple for sale and distribution in the iTunes AppStore.
Sadun confirmed with sources inside Apple that the current roadblock to unlocking efforts was deliberate and both she and iPhoneAlley suggested those wanting to operate jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches ought to wait to install the 10.5.6 update on their Macs until developers working to maintain the open mobile platform have devised a workaround.
One possible avenue around the DFU mode restriction has been suggested by Phone developer Steven Troughton-Smith, who told Sadun the problem relates to devices plugged directly to Macs. He relates that DFU mode can be used with a unit connected via a hub and can be pwned as normal, even with the 10.5.6 update.
Chimp 65 Productions announced Monday the premiere of its documentary film “MacHEADS The Movie” at the 2009 Macworld Conference & Expo. The attendees-only special screening is scheduled for Wednesday, January 7, in room 131 of the North Hall of San Francisco’s Moscone Center.
MacHEADS is an in-depth examination of the cultural phenomenon of Apple fandom, using events from Steve Jobs’s historic Keynote addresses, the iPhone’s first release in NYC, and other historic moments in recent Apple history to explore the loyalty of Apple followers and their obsession. The film also combines visual evidence from archives of early Macworld Expos.
“Two years after shooting the first reel at Macworld 2007, we’ve come full circle with this special premiere at the leading event of the Mac community,” says producer Ron Shely. “Macworld Expo & Conference 2009 is truly the natural place for telling the story of Apple and its followers. We are thrilled to screen the movie at the Moscone Center a place of tradition and innovation.”
Director Kobi Shely added, “We wanted to answer the core questions: ‘How was a community formed around a brand, and how did this phenomenon contribute to Apple’s success? During the film-making process, it became obvious that there is a community and there is Apple. Although they correlate, in many ways they are separated.”
The film features several key Mac personalities in the company-community ecosystem, including one-time Apple Chief Evangelist Guy Kawasaki; Apple’s first official employee Daniel Kottke; and a special guest appearance by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Authors including Adam Engst, who created the first Apple newsletter, Tidbits and Chicago Sun-Times tech columnist Andy Ihnatko are also featured in the film.
If I have one complaint about my aluminum MacBook (and I think I might literally have only one complaint), it’s that I don’t have an elegant method for hooking the machine up to my HDTV. As part of the 99.997 percent of the population who don’t own an AppleTV, this means I don’t have any way to watch the video in my living room. The laptop’s Mini DisplayPort is an absurdly new standard, and that means it plays well with virtually nothing. I could buy an MDP to DVI cable from Apple, then use a DVI-to-HDMI cable to provide video and an additional TOSLink cable to deliver audio, but that sounds like a poor way to spend a Sunday evening. It would be nice just to have one cable to do everything.
Well. This frustration should soon be gone. According to MacYourself, an MDP-to-HDMI cable will be arriving in late January from Monoprice.com, the leading source for really cheap cables on the Internet. It looks like a separate audio cable will still be necessary (though no one is really sure), but I’m still a big proponent of the direct to HDMI solution, especially because it should support HDCP protection for watching iTunes HD downloads on an external screen.
The Blagoblogs are a-buzz this evening with word that Microsoft, though it definitely has no ZunePhone to show at next month’s CES (I know, I’m just as heart-broken as you are), will almost certainly launch some sort of software ‘n’ services platform for Windows Mobile called Zune Mobile. According to ZDNet’s Mary-Jo Foley, who is as interested in Zune Mobile as it is possible for a non-Microsoft employee to be, the platform may include “music purchase, playing, sharing and subscribing — and maybe even a little something special for podcasters/podcast listeners, too.”
Or, in other words, Microsoft may, if it plays its cards right, bring the technical media functionality of the iPhone to the legendarily poor interfaces of a thousand mediocre Windows Mobile phones, many of which have enough on-board storage for two or even three albums worth of music. Rather than attempting to a build a ground-up 21st century mobile platform, Microsoft is attempting to bolt on features that meet current user expectations, and then leave it up to dozens of hardware makers to see if the experience actually holds together. If true, this is a pretty sad bit of competitive response out of Redmond. At best, it’s a duplicate of a famous Apple failure — iTunes for the Motorola ROKR.
In that unfortunate experience, Apple brought iTunes support to a third-party phone, and then ran screaming as it realized the only way to ensure its name would only appear on a great phone would be to build the software and the hardware from the ground-up on its own. The iPhone resulted. Zune was Microsoft’s first attempt to follow such a strategy, to poor results thus far (in large part because Apple’s ecosystem was much stronger). Now, it would appear, Microsoft is relying on its standard software-only approach to respond to the iPhone juggernaut.
That’s pretty sad. As an enormous Apple fan, I would like nothing better than a credible challenge to the iPhone’s dominance — it means an even better iPhone than I can imagine in two years’ time. But if this is the best the Distinguished Competition has to offer, all we have to rely on is the vision of Steve Jobs. Good thing he can see for miles and miles, eh?
Found this pretty cool Mac tree ornament, courtesy of Flickr user Chris Dejabet, who is also responsible for the stocking below, featuring the groovy Mac applique, and it got me thinking that – given the almost unbearable cuteness of Apple products, as well as the legendary inventiveness and creativity of the Legions of the Cult – I haven’t seen a whole lot of Apple-oriented Christmas decorations.
I did poke around a little bit and found some pages at The Apple Collection featuring very handy pdf files you can download to make your very own paper Apple ornaments like Chris’ above.
I’ve included a couple of screen grabs indicating some of the choices available, and if you’re interested in folding more than just wrapping paper this holiday season, click here and here.
History has shown again and again that truck accessories are the best of all possible holiday gifts. That’s why I was delighted to discover this shot on Flickr of some beautiful Apple mudflaps outfitted on a fine 4×4 of GMC persuasion.
I mean, it’s like I HAVE to buy a truck now. Even if there’s nowhere to park it in San Francisco. Or I can just wear mudflaps off my pant legs. Whichever makes more sense.
UPDATE: This post has been edited for clarity as to search results on the US iTunes store.
Informed of racist content in the music of German neo-nazi band Lancer, Apple moved to pull the content from Germany’s iTunes store within two hours, according to a report at MacBlogz.
Landser had been banned by a German federal court in 2005 for brazenly racist songs with titles such as “Polacken Tango” (Polack Tango) and “Zigeunerpack” (Gypsy Vermin), but an Apple spokesperson was mystified as to how the bands tracks made it on to iTunes, saying, “I don’t know how it made it into the store. We do not tolerate this kind of content.”
Computerbild, a German technology publication apparently made the discovery, while a spokesperson for Jugendschutz, a German youth protection agency, was quoted saying, “the right-wing extremist scene has long identified with and used music to exercise their influence on young people.”
The iTunes Terms of Service for the US store clearly states that “you agree to use the Service at your sole risk and that Apple shall have no liability to you for content that may be found to be offensive, indecent, or objectionable.” A quick search on the US iTunes store for music produced by Detroit-based Resistance Records (alleged to be closely associated with the US Skinhead movement) turned up tracks from outfits such as hard core punk label Fat Wreck Chords and compilations from Rot Records and Riot City Records, though nothing by affirmed neo-nazi bands such as Landser, No Remorse, Bound for Glory or Skullhead.
We reported last week on internet voice service provider Truphone’s mobile app that enables Voice over IP phone calling over WiFi using Apple’s iPod Touch. Wednesday, the company announced availability of Truphone Anywhere, an update to its iPhone app that lets iPhone users make VoIP calls “even if you’re not connected to WiFi or a 3G network.”
With TruPhone Anywhere you pay for a local connection – meaning your call is routed to the cellular network – before the rest of the call is connected using VoIP. Change-o, presto: cheap international calling is here.
Except that it’s been here for more than a year. San Francisco-based service provider RF.com has enabled the same type of calling with any VoIP provider (Skype me, anyone?), and even Asterisk, since shortly after the debut of the original iPhone.
Another mobile VoIP provider, JAJAH, had an app to enable VoIP-completed cellular calling ready for the AppStore launch this past July, but Apple rejected it “because the VoIP service is active over the cellular network, which as outlined in the iPhone SDK Agreement section 3.3.15 is prohibited: ‘If an Application requires or will have access to the cellular network, then additionally such Application: – May not have Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) functionality,” according to JAJAH spokesman Fredrick Hermann.
Perhaps Apple is less concerned with enforcing the SDK’s VoIP via cellular prohibition today; perhaps Truphone’s “Anywhere” functionality slipped through, or perhaps its app will be pulled from the AppStore tomorrow, or next week. As usual, Apple isn’t saying anything publicly.
Apple and Nvidia may be sitting on a potential landmine of defective chipsets in new 15″ MacBook Pros, according to a report Tuesday at the Inquirer.
Citing questions stemming from problems affecting Dell, HP and Apple computers earlier in the year with failing chips due to bad materials and thermal stress, as well as a $200 million charge Nvidia took over the problem in July, the Inquirer commissioned researchers to take apart a new MacBook Pro and investigate Nvidia’s assurances that none of the bad chipsets made it into Apple’s new computers that began selling in the fall.
“A small lab of mad scientists who do not wish to be named, fearing repercussions from Nvidia and Apple” took an off-the-shelf 15″ MacBook Pro apart, desoldered the parts, and “cut the defenseless notebook into many pieces,” according to the report, examining what they found through a scanning electron microscope equipped with an X-ray microanalysis system.
The findings indicate the Nvidia GeForce 9400 GPUs in some unknown number of MacBook Pros are in fact afflicted with material, called “bad bumps”, the tiny balls of solder that hold a chip to the green printed circuit board it sits on, that will crack, causing the computer it is in to die.
The Inquirer article suggests that “barring a total failure of their lot-tracking system, [Nvidia] had to have known the Macbooks shipped with ‘bad bumps’.
Did Apple know? Calls to Apple PR were not returned prior to the story’s publication, and while that might look pretty damning, it isn’t. “Apple will not talk to journalists unless they are assured the response will be fawning,” according to the Inquirer report.
We’ll have to keep an eye on this story to see if the news affects sales of MacBook Pros and whether – or when – Apple support forums might begin to erupt with tales of dying notebooks.
Other than some irritation about the death of FireWire and a few missing video output adapters from the Mini DisplayPort, the new Aluminum MacBooks are pretty much perfect. They’re fast, they run cool, and are incredibly light but also incredibly strong.
But not every MacBook out in MacVille is behaving nicely. As a matter of fact, many users on Apple’s support forums claim that their MacBooks became incredibly unstable after upgrading their RAM with third-party hardware. Frequent freezes, program crashes, garbled data on the screen. Though it’s anecdotal, most also claim that their problems went away upon switching back to the factory-installed memory from Apple, or upon taking it in to Apple for a swap. Even the normally impeccable OWC and Crucial are alleged to be having problems here.
This is a big surprise to me, not least because I installed Crucial RAM in my new MacBook more than a month ago and have experienced nothing but performance improvements ever since. It’s always possible that very minute changes in hardware between models could cause trouble. I have a 2.4 Ghz machine, so there could be an issue with the lower-speed machines, or it could just be that I got lucky. Anyone dealing with this?
Just in time for getting a little bit of the backstory before the 25th Anniversary of Mac kicks into high gear, Computer Shopper has a great look back at the very early years of Apple Computers by Editor in Chief Emeritus Stan Veit. We’re talking early enough that Steve Jobs was willing to give away 10% of the company for $10,000, according to Veit.
The long article is well worth a read for Veit’s inside take on the two young, “long haired hippies and their friends” who eventually revolutionized the world. It’s not an especially flattering portrait of Jobs, though it’s had plenty of company on that score over the years. The article does contain some great early pics of Jobs and Woz and some of the earliest Apple gear.
Apple’s meteoric rise amid a crumbling economy is about to be doused with a cold shot of reality, a financial analyst warned investors Thursday. Mac sales will grow 10 percent in 2009, far below the earlier projected 43 percent increase, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster said.
Munster cut his price target for Apple stock to $235 per share, down from $250.
“The economic and consumer spending outlook has deteriorated significantly over the last month, which we expect to continue through 2009,” Munster told clients.
The analyst expects Apple to earn $41.22 billion in 2009.
Today in Europe, Nokia introduced the N97, its first serious effort to combat the iPhone’s rapid rise in the smartphone market. And I have to say, I’m pretty impressed. It’s chock full of features the iPhone can’t match (twice the storage, higher-res screen, 5 megapixel camera with a real lens and a good flash), and it’s actually attractive, too. Even better, it doesn’t run Windows Mobile, and the S60 OS seems to have been much better adapted to touch form than the BlackBerry OS on the unfortunate Storm. Plus, it has a really nice QWERTY keyboard, for those who are into that kind of thing.
On the downside, it’s thicker than an iPhone, doesn’t sync with iTunes, doesn’t run OS X and can’t run AppStore apps. Precisely the actual competitive advantage that Apple has built in. It also doesn’t appear to use an on-screen keyboard in portrait mode (favoring T9 text entry), which is pretty obnoxious when browsing with one hand (at least until your bookmarks get set).
Still, this looks like a heck of a phone to be reckoned with for Apple in the European market. No North American release announced at this time, but it does support the 3G network already deployed by AT&T and it will be sold unlocked, so enthusiasts can grab it in the first half of next year.
This is what Cultism is all about. Not merely that you make a stop motion movie using your Mac; not merely that you make one featuring dancing Mac buttons; but that you own five of the things in the first place.
Apple wrestled more computer users from the grasp of Microsoft, according to a November survey of Web users released Monday. Macs comprise nearly 9 percent of computers online, Net Applications announced.
The November marketshare of 8.82 percent is an increase over Cupertino’s 8.21 percent share NA reported in October.
Conversely, Microsoft’s share of Internet usage fell in November. Windows fell to 89.69 percent of online users, slipping below the nine-out-of-10 marketshare Redmond has enjoyed for years.
Blogger Charles Teague has done some comprehensive analysis of emerging trends based on the AppStore’s first 5 months of business and there’s no denying Apple’s online distribution model has exploded out of the gate.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the proposition that the AppStore could be Apple’s most revolutionary development of all, which Teague’s research would appear to confirm in many respects.
The chart below shows the number of applications being released per day, with momentum clearly trending upward and sitting currently at more than 140 new apps per day. There are more than 9000 apps available on the AppStore, with the ratio of paid to free apps at about 7:2.
Yurii loves his MacBook Air so much, he made an advertisement for it. I like the moment at 1:33, when he compares the thickness of an old Acer machine with the thinness of an Air.
Have you made any Apple product advertisements recently?
Come to think of it, have you made any advertisements for products you like recently? Even Acers? Just wondered.
For MacAddict and MacUser editor Rik Myslewski has penned the second in a series of essays about Apple’s place in the world for The Register. This one looks at the company’s environmental and philanthropic activity.
Myslewski says that in both areas, Apple has only very recently showed signs of the kind of corporate responsibility commonly displayed publicly by its rivals and peers in the business.
The new green MacBooks only appeared after pressure by Greenpeace, which included public humiliation of the company in the charity’s 2006 Guide to Greener Electronics, where Apple was placed fourth from bottom. There are no records of charitable giving until the recent, sudden support for the Anti Proposition 8 movement in California.
If Apple has been giving more to charity, says Myslewski, it has been doing so under the utmost secrecy. Which leads him to believe that no such giving has taken place at all.
Which, Myslewski declares, is “shameful” for a company with so much cash in the bank. He gives the company an “F” rating for this particular part of the report card he’s writing.
What do you make of it all? Is Apple being treated harshly here, or is Myslewski making a good point?
Ahead of what is likely the most nervously anticipated Holiday Season for retailers in more than a generation, Apple joined the Black Friday bandwagon Tuesday, announcing a “one-day-only holiday shopping event” for the day after Thanksgiving.
Subscribers to Apple’s Inside Apple News received an email Tuesday announcing the company’s “biggest shopping event of the year” and visitors to the Apple online store found promises of “dozens of great iPod, iPhone and Mac gift ideas” good for Friday only. No word yet on what Friday’s pricing is going to look like or what items in the catalog will be on sale.
Now that Apple holds such a prominent place in the retail trade the company should be expected to follow many of the industry’s marketing rituals, but it’s probably a safe bet they are a little less nervous in Cupertino than in, say, Minneapolis (home of Best Buy) or Bentonville, Ark. (world headquarters of Wal-Mart).
Green is the new black. And once again Apple is in the forefront, for better or worse, of a coming trend. It’s hard to imagine any technology company having the stones to advertise its products as good for the environment, which, to be fair, Apple doesn’t say here.
But the ad does tout the new notebook line’s aluminum enclosures and glass screens as 100% recyclable, points out that their power consumption is less than that of a light bulb and says they are mercury free. All steps in the right direction, to be sure.
A few weeks back, we featured a post on design student Kyle Buckner’s wooden iPhone pedestal. Kyle contacted us today with news and info on his latest Apple-inspired creation, a custom timepiece commissioned by the Apple Store in Richmond, VA for one of their special customers.
Buckner built the clock over the weekend, using hand-cut and polished plexi-glass. “I went out and bought a clock , and stole the motor out of it,” he told Cult of Mac, adding “then I searched on the internet and found a free background that referred to Apple, edited a few things in Photoshop and printed them out to attach underneath each piece.”
Check out the gallery below and follow after the jump for more on Buckner’s background and plans for the future in Apple-inspired design.
If you want to use a racy photo as your iPhone wallpaper it will have to be strictly DIY now that Wallpaper Universe has been pulled from the AppStore.
Some will say this turn of events confirms Steve Jobs’ promise to keep ‘porn’ off the iPhone. Others point out that it highlights the inscrutability of Apple’s review process for selecting what does, and what doesn’t make it into the AppStore catalog.
Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether Apple should retain exclusive gatekeeper authority over apps that can be legitimately run on the iPhone, many would be satisfied if the process for AppStore certification was more transparent, according to MG Siegler, writing for Venture Beat.
Last weekend’s snafu over the release of Google’s voice search update, the punting of approved apps on a third update, debacles such as the I Am Rich app – all raise legitimate questions over the capriciousness of Apple’s distribution of tickets to the big show.
