Apple has ordered millions of earth-friendly packaging trays from a Dutch company that makes injection-molded shipping products from potato starch, according to The Register. After weathering criticism in the past from the likes of Greenpeace for the company’s use of Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) in its products, last year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs promised a greener Apple. Turning once again to the company that made shipping trays for the first generation iPod nano and iPod video, Apple plans to ship its new iPhones in cardboard boxes with a fully recyclable tray made from 100% natural sources such as potato or Tapioca starch, according to Hans Arentsen, CEO of the Dutch company PaperFoam.
Channel Flip is a “video magazine” produced in London with a focus on Mac tech-tips, video gaming and film. Instead of writing articles, the Channel Flip team produces short, snappy clips of how-tos and reviews of mobile phones, HDTVs, laptops and portable technology, as well as gaming titles on console, portable and PC. The film department looks at the week’s must-watch DVD releases, including film analysis and a close view of things going on in the movie world.
The clip above shows how to use Apple’s Time Capsule for something more than a mere back-up device and network router.
Officials in China have confirmed the location of Apple’s first retail operation on the Mainland, in Beijing’s Sanlitun district, according to China Tech News. The 3000+ square foot outlet, which will be managed and operated by employees of the Cupertino, CA-based computer giant, has been developed by Hong Kong’s Swire Properties as part of a 580,000 square foot mixed use project that includes additional retail and boutique hotel space housed in a 17 building complex.
The expectation is Apple will display and sell its full range of products directly for the first time to Chinese consumers, who up to now have had to acquire Apple gadgetry through licensed third-party retail agents.
Apple will open the three-floor store on July 19 and plans to launch a second Retail Store in Beijing during the Olympics, according to a report today in The Shanghai Daily.
Apple’s App Store, the online distribution channel for applications being developed for the iPhone by third-party software makers, will presumably open its virtual doors with the release of iPhone’s 2.0 firmware and the debut of the 3G model hardware on July 11. Phone users and developers alike are understandably excited about possibilities on the horizon, but as developer Paul Kafasis writes for Inside iPhone, many aspects of the way forward remain uncharted.
With Apple having no previous experience in the role of software publisher for outside developers, Kafasis is concerned about uncertain protocols on issues including support, free trials, review copies, refunds, discounts, bulk sales, and upgrade pricing. On behalf of consumers he wonders if software will be tied to a single device, if it will be able to be backed-up and recovered later and what will happen when a user gets a new iPhone.
Most importantly, perhaps are unanswered questions about who will have and control the all-important customer information. “When we sell software to a customer, we can track visitors, hits, downloads, and more. We also get a name and email address we can use to contact the customer later, if needed,” he writes, and then wonders, “will [developers] get any of this from the App Store? If so, what pieces of it?”
Many people felt the initial release of the iPhone last year was badly hobbled by the restriction against native third-party applications. The emergence of such applications soon, and their distribution through the App Store, are thus as likely to be roundly welcomed as it is certain the roll-out will encounter bumps in the road. With a future all three parties – Apple, developers and consumers – would like to see as fulfilling, whether and when that might be the case will depend on the answers to some of Kafasis’ questions.
I had the great fortune to attend an early screening of WALL*E, Pixar’s latest feature film, on Tuesday night. And, like just about every Pixar movie ever, it’s absolutely phenomenal. As much as I love Apple, I have to admit that the output of Steve’s other company is a lot more consistently excellent. Even more wonderfully, WALL*E is filled with references to Apple. It’s a fun bonus in an already great film.
Lots of people have remarked that Apple Design Chief Jonathan Ive was involved in designing EVE, the sleek, white, glossy robot that WALL*E falls in love with. As much as she resembles an older iPod, however, the cleverest thing about EVE is that she appears to have no seams in her surface, though they appear when she lifts her arms. There’s even one scene (pictured) where WALL*E tries to find her hand while it’s in locked position, and he struggles to find the gaps — an obvious reference to the notoriously difficult-to-open iPod or iPhone.
But the Apple references run deeper. Every morning, WALL*E opens up a solar array in order to charge himself up for the workday to come. Hilariously, as soon as he reaches 100 percent power, the classic Mac booting chime goes off. And it’s definitely the older sound — it’s quite tinny. I’d bet they taped it off of a Quadra rather than a current Mac.
One last Apple reference: WALL*E’s favorite way to unwind is to watch an old VHS tape of the Barbra Streisand movie Hello Dolly (it’s OK; it is actually totally weird, if in a sweet way). But that tape then plays through a circa 2006 video iPod, which WALL*E then magnifies with an enormous lens into a projection screen.
WALL*E: Come for the love, stay for the Apple in-jokes. What could be better than that?
Amid reports of a surge in orders for all flavors of Apple gadgetry, anticipation of the iPhone 3g’s July 11 debut has the Apple Retail division preparing for the onslaught and chipmakers such as Broadcom and Marvel hoping happy days are here again.
Wall Street analyst Craig Berger, speaking for FBR Capital Markerts, says the bump in Apple’s supply chain activity “suggest[s] Apple continues to knock the cover off the ball, that its product cycle momentum is ramping, and that any consumer spending malaise in the U.S. or Europe has yet to impact Apple-related product demand.”
In a memo distributed throughout its Apple Stores division, company executives laid the ground rules for interacting with the public as 3G launch day approaches. Among the anticipated issues, the idea of getting on a waitlist for first dibs was shot down definitively by Apple corporate, and retail employees have been told to call any customer who has reserved an iPhone Personal Shopping session on or after July 11th to inform them Personal Shopping sessions will not apply to the iPhone 3G.
At an Apple Store in New York this week, actor Kiefer Sutherland is said to have made a strong case for obtaining a pre-launch iPhone 3G to no avail.
The company plans to hold worldwide retail meetings on July 6th to begin conveying more specific official launch procedures to its staff, according to a report at the Unofficial Apple Weblog.
UPDATE: This post originally borrowed liberally from an article written by reporter Dan Warne for APC Magazine. Though I linked to Dan’s piece and indicated the “10 Reasons” were his ideas and not mine, I realize now that reprinting his article with only the slightest changes and editing on my part could be seen as misleading at best and were certainly not in keeping with the standards to which I and Cult of Mac aspire. I ask for readers’ – and especially for Mr. Warne’s – forgiveness for my error — Lonnie Lazar.
People have been dying for the iPhone 3G for over a year, ever since the first user attempted downloading a web page on AT&T’s excruciatingly slow EDGE network. And let there be no doubt, when the phone hits global streets on July 11, people will rejoice, the coffers at Apple HQ in Cupertino will once again groan with excess and mobile carriers from AT&T to Vodaphone to O2 will breathe short-lived sighs of relief.
But in spite of the wow-inducing touchscreen interface, the bright and bold display, the push-synching of email, contacts, calendar, tasks and photos from Apple’s new MobileMe services, and the relative pleasures of speed on the 3G network – as always – Apple will have released a product that fails to meet some consumers’ insatiable expectations.
Herewith, 10 reasons to feel like Steve Jobs is ripping you off once again, as compiled by APC Magazine reporter Dan Warne:
Om Malik has a great post up digesting today’s news that Nokia is going all in on Symbian Limited, saying there’s three players now in mobile phones — and Google ain’t one of them.
Noting that today anyone can make mobile phones using off-the-shelf components and factories in Asia, Malik argues the future of mobile computing and communications will focus almost entirely on design, user experience and software. He likens the mobile phone business to the PC business – which Microsoft dominates with its Windows platform – and says the winners in the handset market will depend a lot on the software developers creating apps for mobile platforms.
According to Malik, “In this platform game, the winner is going to be the one that can attract the most developers,” and the problem, for Nokia and some of the Symbian Fondation’s other members (among them, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone) is they are backing a confusing array of platforms, including Linux.
In the blizzard of numbers being tossed around concerning the much-anticipated debut of iPhone 3G, the most significant one could be the price of the phone itself. As Pacific Crest consumer electronics analyst Andy Hargreaves notes, sales of both Apple’s iPod and Sony’s PS2 gamestation saw exponential gains in the wake of being offered below $200.
Aidan Malley reports for AppleInsider on the explosive growth anticipated for new phone sales in the coming year. “The relationship [between price and sales] is shockingly consistent,” Hargreaves says. “At average prices above $200, Apple never sold more than [6 million] units in a rolling four-quarter period. At prices below $200, Apple never sold fewer than [8 million].”
Should Apple fulfill even industry analysts’ most modest sales expectations, savvy decision-making in the company’s sourcing and supply-chain business units could translate into much higher margins on the 3G models than those seen with the original iPhone, all of which adds up to very good news for Apple investors and shareholders.
Thus far, Apple has been using very low-key terms to describe the improvements to OS X 10.5 set to hit with the release of “Snow Leopard” next spring. Despite the company’s insistence the software update promises no more than an overall improvement in how Mac OS X works under the hood, Roughly Drafted has uncovered at least ten improvements it deems worthy of a pat on the back for Apple’s code optimizers.
Some of those improvements, while significant, may in fact be transparent or unnoticed by many users. Additions such as SproutCore, the LLVM Compiler, the CUPS printing engine, native exchange support, and self-contained Web apps can rightly be said to reside “under the hood.”
But as Apple Insider details, others, such as a new multi-touch framework, file size reductions, text-processing features, auto activation of fonts, and full ZFS support may prove quite noticeable, indeed.
Proving themselves every bit as susceptible to consumer hype as their American counterparts, thousands of Apple fans attended the grand opening of Apple’s first retail store in Sydney last week, with several hundred having queued up as long as 31 hours prior to the opening hour.
Accommodated by agreeable weather, the large crowd helped continue Apple’s success in rolling out its innovative retail concept, which makes the stores themselves almost as much of a draw as the products inside.
The newer, faster iPhone 3G, set for release on July 11, promises to chart new frontiers in mobile pornography, according to Time magazine.
The $13 billion adult entertainment industry sees the new Apple phone as a key in the shift from physical distribution (IE. DVDs) to a business model based on downloaded and streaming smut.
The iPhone is “by far the porn-friendliest phone” on the market, says Devan Cypher, spokesman for San Francisco-based porn producer Sin City Entertainment.
The porn industry may have problems with Apple, however. An Apple spokeswoman told Time it does not condone porn on the iPhone and promises to ban adult content from applications being built by third party developers for distribution by the company’s AppStore.
AT&T may be subsidizing up to $425 of the cost of each new iPhone it activates for service when the 2.0 3G models launch next month, Barron’s reports.
According to Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner, AT&T will cover an additional $125 premium over the carrier’s typical $200 smartphone subsidy because the company thinks the iPhone will increase subscribers and average revenue per user. Apple will receive an additional $100 bounty for every new AT&T customer who signs for service at an Apple Store.
The early book on the new phone is very bullish, with Reiner calling for 15 million units to be sold in 2008 and another 33 million in 2009.
Everyone is concerned about Steve Jobs’ health, prompting the obvious question about succession plans at Apple. The company seems doomed without him. Who has the vision and drive?
But Apple will be fine without Jobs, although it won’t be the same.
You’ll notice soon that we’re adding a number of new contributors to our humble abode. We start this week with DJ Rizzo, a frequent commenter and Windows to Mac convert, a story he tells in his first post. Owing to WordPress weirdness, some of you already got to read it via RSS, but it just won’t appear on the main page, so I’m providing a link. Enjoy.
Mythical beast, adrenaline junkie and sometime digital revolutionary Jon Lech Johansen has fired the latest volley in the DRM wars, launching doubleTwist, software promising to make restrictions on purchased digital media a thing of the past. A grizzled veteran of the campaign against DRM, “DVD Jon” has been handing media companies defeat after defeat, nonchalantly toppling flimsy restriction schemes from DVD copy-protection to Windows Media to FairPlay, the encryption scheme “protecting” most purchases from Apple’s iTunes.
It’s not a great stretch to suggest that Johansen’s work has proved to the corporate world that DRM doesn’t work. Tech news outlets received the news of Jon’s calmly, reporting on the announcement with typical restraint and critical analysis. Oh my dear lord, no, they certainly did no such thing. DVD JON CREATES DRM KILLER, Slashdot reported. (“What, again?” responded thousands of readers the world over.) The truth is that doubleTwist is less a direct assault on DRM, like the Pickett’s Charge of Johansen’s PlayFair endeavor, than a preview of a DRM-free world. Bought your favorite album from iTunes and can’t wait to play it on your flavor of the month mobile phone? doubleTwist, it seems, can make it happen. Make the jump to read how.
Or, “How I Learned to Stop Stressing and Love Mac OS X”
In an effort to help bruised and battered Windows users into the kinder world of Macs, I’ll be posting tips and stories garnered from my own switching experience. This first post is my own switcher’s story. And it all begins with I, your humble narrator, with my ears utterly closed to the Apple praise of a friend…
Nine months after initial reports emerged suggested that iPods and other portable media players might have the potential to disrupt life-saving pacemakers, a further study from the FDA suggests that the risk of harm has been over-stated.
“Based on the observations of our in-vitro study we conclude that no interference effects can occur in pacemakers exposed to the iPods we tested,” they concluded.
Previous studies focused on the risks to pacemakers associated with keeping an iPod two inches from your chest. All that makes me think is that the people conducting the study aren’t too clear on how to use an iPod. Why would you strap one over your heart? And how?
During Macworld, Steve Jobs told the New York Times that Apple will not make an e-book reader like Amazon’s Kindle because Americans don’t read any longer.He cited a specific number: 40 percent of Americans read a book or less a year, he said.Jobs may have been referring to a November report from the National Endowment of the Arts, To Read or Not To Read, which found that nearly 50 percent of 18-24 year-olds do not read at allfor pleasure. Described as the most complete survey of reading trends, the report says Americans aged 15-24 spend two hours a day watching TV, but only 7-10 minutes reading. This includes reading for school or college.”The story the data tell is simple, consistent, and alarming,” wrote Dana Gioia, Chairman of the NEA.The decline of reading has considerable social, economic and civil consequences, says the NEA, and coincides with the rise of TV and the internet.
The tech press is missing the boat with the MacBook Air.
All the grumbling about the price, the absence of an optical drive, the irreplaceable battery, shows that the technical minded misunderstand the machine.
Of course it’s not practical, it’s a fashion computer.
Coquette, a blog about ‘digital fashion and style by natalie zee drieu, raves about the Air’s potential as an accessory: “This little thing is ready to tote around in your Balenciaga or Gucci bag,” it says. “I’m so getting one!!!!!”
Judging from the comments on those blogs, lots of their readers are bonkers for it too.
This afternoon’s stock sell off after Apple reported some amazing Christmas numbers was initially puzzling. Apple had its best quarter ever — selling a record 2.3 million Macs — yet Wall Street dumped the stock in after hours trading.
Initial reports blamed the sell off on Apple’s cautious guidance for the current quarter. Plus there’s the receding economy, which will put a pinch on Americans’ gadget buying habits.
But here’s the reason: the iPod’s amazing growth has finally slowed to zero.
For the first time in six years, Apple’s key product saw no growth year-to-year in the crucial Christmas period. And there’s only one way to go form here: down.
Looks like the iPod gravy train is finally slowing, and from here on in, we’ll see declining year-on-year sales of Apple’s key gadget.
Steve Jobs’ much-ballyhooed movie rental service looks all fine and dandy, but the question in my mind is: “How long will it be before the service offers a single decent movie to rent?”
At present, the movies on offer are even shittier than the local video store, or those available on-demand from my cable providor, Comcast, which utterly stinks.
It’d be depressing if all Apple offered was popcorn garbage. Surely the service is serving the wrong demographic. Early adopters, the kind that run out to buy an AppleTV box, are surely more interested in less mainstream fare. How long will it be before there’s some independent movies, classics, artsy fartsy foreign stuff, and genre titles?
Gadget Lab got a hot tip from an “Apple insider” this afternoon about the much-rumored “MacBook Air,” purported to be an ultra-light laptop that relies primarily on wireless technology instead of cables. Though the renderings in this post are merely clever photoshops (pretty clearly based on the new Apple Bluetooth keyboard), our friends at Wired say it sounds real:
An Apple insider told Wired today that the company’s new ultraportable, expected to be seen in public for the first time tomorrow, has an extremely thin profile and is shaped like a teardrop when closed thicker at the top behind the screen, tapering at the bottom behind the keyboard.
“It’s unbelievably thin,” said the source.
The device is made of aluminum and glass, and uses the same design language as recent Apple consumer products: black on silver.
The tapering is an interesting strategy. All of the tapering laptops I can think of are incredible fat at the hinge before getting somewhat thin at the edges. If it got no thicker than existing MacBook Pros and got thinner still? That would be hot. I don’t buy the inductive powering rumor, though. Though seemingly elegant, it would require a charging station, which seems pretty anti-Apple. Still, only 12 hours to go! Anyone else got a crazy rumor for the mill?
Our pals over at Wired Gadget Lab point us toward these humongous banners that Apple has positioned throughout Moscone Center for this year’s Macworld, reading “There’s something in the air.” (They’ll be live-blogging Tuesday — check it out!)
As you might expect, this has led to rampant speculation around the Internets, including the idea that Apple’s new ultra-light and -thin MacBook would adopt the surname “Air,” an idea popularized by the occasionally reliable and occasionally crazy 9to5Mac and MacRumors.
Everyone agrees, however, that this probably has something to do with wireless networking, either the arrival of WiMax on the Mac platform, or (more likely) the availability of HSDPA (3G) networks for new iPhones, true mobile broadband at last. I think the latter is much more likely, if only because the most enthusiastic proponent of WiMax is Motorola, and Steve Jobs absolutely hates Motorola.
After going back and forth, I’m making a very conservative forecast for this year’s Macworld. We’ll see Penryn-based MacBook Pros for sure, maybe Penryn MacBooks (could wait until February), Penryn iMacs, an announcement of new iPhones with more data and 3G (for delivery in the spring), and a thin-and-light MacBook Pro. But nothing with SSD, no multitouch for Mac, and no tabletMac. I think Apple has so many incremental upgrades to perform this time out that there won’t be much room for a huge, earth-shattering kaboom like last time around. I’m certainly hoping to be proven wrong, though.
