If you’re worried about iPods selling out over the holidays, consider the alternative: a fantastic book about iPods and iPod culture — Cult of iPod.
And if you order it here, I’ll autograph the book and write a personal inscription to its lucky recipient. Just fill out the “Your Inscription Here” box on the Paypal order page.
Author Jim Heid has just posted a very nice review.
Coverbuddy is a program that lets you navigate your iTunes library via album artwork rather than lists of songs or artists. It’s nice, but pretty useless.
But now a new version of the software allows iTunes to be accessed via any web browser, including the browser on the Sony PSP, which turns the little game machine into a remote for iTunes.
This is a new player for Windows called Songbird. Recognize the layout?
It seems that they copied iTunes — and there are even links to music stores like Amazon in the player. A wild guess is that it works, and is intended for players other than the iPod.
On Kroll’s Blog:
While I was at the Apple Store last night with my girlfriend getting my nano, some guy brought his old Mac in because he thought it was time to “upgradeâ€. He had been doing his banking on that machine since he got it, using quicken or something. This mac classic came out in 1990, had 1meg of RAM, and a 8mhz processor!
The machine appears to be a Mac SE, which came out in 1987 — making it almost two decades old. That’s a long time to be using the same computer.
When I was in New York a few years ago, I spent an afternoon at Tekserve, a big Mac repair shop in Chelsea.
While there, a couple of people bought in classic Macs for repair, and there were several on the shelves waiting to be picked up. I was surprised there were so many. Tekserve’s owner said they belonged to the many writers in the neighborhood, who considered them perfectly functional for scribbling on.
In one of the episodes of Futurama there was a parody of the classic Apple commercial “1984”.
For those who missed it, or wants to see it again, mac TV has published a short clip of it. Enjoy!
live.watchmactv.com/featured/futurama
It’s pretty common that people buy a Mac mini and connects it to their big plasma screens and use the mini as a media center.
But where to put the mini?
Put it on the wall! Of course! Maybe easiest with a mount like the one to the right. “Mini mount” is the name and you stick it to the wall with two screws. Something nice for the cords and you are game.
50 dollars, 70 if you want it with backlighting. But you don’t want that.
PodDater.com is a new dating service that allows members to download videos of potential dates to their video iPod.
Members create video profiles, search for matches, and synchronize the ones they’re interested in to watch later.
The free service, launched on Wednesday, has about 130 registered users so far. Predictably, few are women.
Potential mates can be sorted by “tags,” which include “mac,” “sports” and “beer.”
Here’s one way to resolve the spat between Lugz footwear and Apple over the copycat Eminem iPod ad — combine them.
iPodz is a seamless mashup that advertises two products in one ad – the iPod and urban streetwear. It’s actually not a bad idea. The products and target audience are complementary.
(Via Fscklog)
There’s a lot of criticism of Apple’s copy-protection scheme, Fairplay, in the news today.
Tidbits Adam Engst describes the headaches he encountered trying to make an audio book, which had been split into four chunks, into one easy-to-use file — a perfectly legal and reasonable thing to do.
Newsweek columnist Steven Levy chastises Apple for refusing to license Fairplay and allow consumers to play iTunes songs on other devices.
Ex-Wired News columnist Adam Penenberg, now writing for Slate, wraps it up with a cogent explanantion of why we, the consumers, have to put up with limiting copy-protection schemes. It has little to do with protecting content, and everything to do with protecting business models:
While Apple stands alone and Sony self-destructs, Microsoft is practically giving away its digital-rights-management tool in an effort to pick up market share against Apple (so far with little success). We may even see a replay of the Apple-Microsoft battle over the desktop, which ended with Apple holding on to a tiny sliver of the computer market. There is, however, a big difference between then and now. Steve Jobs has a hefty market share and a massive content library made up of millions of songs at a price that people like. As long as the record companies license their content to Apple and consumers flock to the iPod, Apple is in a powerful — some might say Gatesian — position.
What’s hardest for the consumer to swallow, then, is that anti-piracy schemes like DRM look like the subtle tactic of the monopolist. Neither Apple nor Microsoft is hurt by music piracy. Instead, they use it as a marketing ploy to force people to use their products. It doesn’t have to be this way. The companies could agree on one standard that allows people to play the music they lawfully purchase on whichever player they choose. The music industry is supposed to sell music, not the medium it comes in, right?
Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab was offfered Mac OS X for free for his $100 laptop project, the WSJ reports.
Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.’s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company’s operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative’s founders. “We declined because it’s not open source,” says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
Under present plans, the first production version of the laptop will be powered by an AMD microprocessor and use an open-source Linux-based operating system supplied by Red Hat.
Steve Jobs will unveil the first Intel-based Macs at Macworld in January — and it’ll be the flat-screen iMac and the 15-inch PowerBook, according to a somewhat-believable report at AppleInsider.
Most observers had expected low-end products like the Mac Mini to switch first, but AppleInsider says:
Although Apple has only committed to introducing the first Intel-based Macintosh systems by mid-2006, extremely reliable sources and a several-month-long investigation have revealed that January’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco is being primed as the launch-pad for at least one of the Mac maker’s next-generation Intel systems.
Surprisingly, the most reliable information indicates that the iMac and PowerBook — two of the company’s most recently revised Mac offerings — are targeted to be the first two Mac models to receive Intel processors in January. The iMac and PowerBook are also believed to be Apple’s best-selling Mac models, which explains why the company will be upgrading them with Intel processors first and refreshing their associated product lines for the second time in as little as four months.
A several-month-long investigation! Well, it must be true. We’ll see. Macworld rumors sure are flying early this year. But, people are saying AppleInsider is the new ThinkSecret.
Shawn Morton has published a very handy howto for converting a classic Mac into a bog roll dispenser, or Apple iWipe. Now that’s time well spent.
One of my co-workers was giving away and old Atari 800XL and Macintosh SE case. He had been planning to do a mini-ITX project, but had never gotten around to it. Always wanting an excuse to tinker with something, I decided to take them off of his hands.
Well, as soon as I saw the Mac SE case, I realized that this one had the most potential. So this weekend, I bought a few things at Home Depot and got started making my Apple-power, wireless, portable toilet paper dispenser — the iWipe.
The whole project took a couple of hours and cost about $15.
Mark Williams, a programmer from Nottingham, UK, had dreams of hitting the big time by designing and selling an iPod case that “isn’t a glorified condom.”
This is his cautionary tale:
The story of Shufflicious – making an ipod case to sell
This morning I could hardly contain, cough cough, my excitement as I get the box of samples. I open it up to reveal about a 100 solid perspex cubes containing chinese figurines dressed up as a western bride and groom. WTFF?
You COULD NOT make this stuff up. Its like a sitcom – Carry on manufacturing. Mix up at the depot you say, stickers on the wrong boxes you say. Hmm. I feel sorry for the person who was expecting their kitsch loveliness and instead gets a box of tri-colored vaginas.
Behold the i-Stones, a pair of stone iPod docking stations.
Sold by Brand Incubator of Japan, the i-Stones come in two models: Wabi and Sabi. They feature USB 2; audio and S-Video out.
Wabi-sabi, according to Wikipedia, “represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic.”
It is difficult to explain wabi-sabi in Western terms, but the aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, or incomplete. A concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the first noble truth – Dukkha.
… Many Japanese arts over the past thousand years have been influenced by Zen philosophy, particularly acceptance and contemplation of the imperfection, constant flux, and impermanence of all things. Such arts can exemplify a wabi-sabi aesthetic.
(Thanks Nobi!)
Although it’s verboten, ZDNet UK installed the x86 version of OS X on a Toshiba Portégé M300 notebook.
It’s the first test by a respected testing lab I’m aware of. All went smoothly and ZDNet was impressed.
Mac OS X looks in amazingly good early form on the x86 platform. As far as power consumption and OS performance are concerned, it can already keep up with Windows XP. Application performance clearly lags behind, though, and still needs to improve.
…
So far, mainly because of performance and price issues, the Apple platform has failed to tempt many Windows users. This could change soon: from the middle of next year, a Mac OS X x86 platform will be available, which will offer more performance to the Windows world.
The iPod nano now ships with a little plastic sheath to protect it, notes a poster on the iLounge forums.
This is clearly a quick fix in the run-up to Christmas.
Says another iLounge poster:
I love Apple and I love my nano… But it seems this is sort of a lame attempt to admit guilt, well… maybe not guilt, but neglect on their part for not including a case with nanos to begin with. At the same time, no press release / news has been made about now including cases… Sneaky.
Let’s at least five them the benefit of the doubt that they’ll handle this properly and offer something to those who bought nanos already.
What ever happened with that lawsuit?
Sony’s copy-protected CDs — the ones that secretly install a sneaky Hax0r “root kit” on customers’ PCs — can also install copy-protection software on Macs, according to a Macintouch report:
… I was surprised to find a “Start.app” Mac application in addition to the expected Windows-related files. Running this app brings up a long legal agreement, clicking Continue prompts you for your username/password (uh-oh!), and then promptly exits. Digging around a bit, I find that Start.app actually installs 2 files: PhoenixNub1.kext and PhoenixNub12.kext.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of anyone installing kernel extensions on my Mac. In Sony’s defense, upon closer reading of the EULA, they essentially tell you that they will be installing software.
The CD in question was Imogen Heap’s new Speak For Yourself, and there’s lots of discussion about the sneaky software on her messageboards.
(Via Boingboing)
Author Jackie Huba just bought a PowerBook after 20 years of being a PC user, and she’s so psyched about it, she made a pseudo Switch ad.
As you can see, she’s already a Mac zealot. Welcome to the cult, Jackie!
Jackie is also co-author of Creating Customer Evangelists, a word-of-mouth marketing book, and the Church of the Customer blog, which is “all about word of mouth, customer evangelism and citizen marketers.”
There’s a new Flickr group dedicated to glowing Apple logos. Some of them are pretty good – like the picture above, which was taken from Eric Payette’s photostream.
(Thanks Steffen Nork!)
Steve Jobs is a money machine. His other company, Pixar, reported profits of $27.4 million on revenues of $45.8 million for the last three months — double Wall Street estimates, according to Reuters.
The windfall was due to strong home video sales of Finding Nemo, as well as lower taxes and “a one-time reduction in expenses.”
In a separate AP report, Jobs said Pixar was “deep in discussions” with Disney, and may strike a partnership by year’s end.
Meanwhile, Pixar has amassed a huge horde of cash, which will likely be used to finance future flicks:
Pixar has said that it would like to own 100 percent of its films in the future. The company has amassed cash of more than $1 billion as it prepares to fully finance its own films.
For the first nine months of the year, Pixar reported net income of $122 million, or 99 cents per share, compared with $86.5 million, or 73 cents per share in the same period last year.
Revenue for the first nine months was $233.5 million compared with $165 million in the same period last year.
At a reunion of the legendary Homebrew Computer Club at the weekend, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak recalled his hack0r early days with Steve Jobs. Reports CNet:
“… Wozniak related a story about figuring out how he and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had broken into the digital user group account of John Draper–the inventor of the blue box, a device that allowed its user to make illegal free long-distance calls from any phone.
“We found his resume,” Wozniak remembered, “and we were going to add something about his arrests, but we didn’t.”
Lugz footwear has sent Apple a legal cease-and-desist letter ordering it to pull the new Eminem iPod ad because of “disturbing” similarities to a 2002 Lugz spot called “Arrow,” according to AdWeek.
Larry Schwartz, evp and a principal of New York-based JSSI, which makes Lugz, said in a statement, “If you look at these spots, common sense would tell you that there’s a problem here. The Apple commercial uses the most powerful elements of our campaign, making the ads disturbingly similar. We are prepared to vigorously pursue all legal remedies in order to protect our rights.”
The Eminem ad was created by Apple’s longtime agency TBWA\Chiat\Day, which previously denied accusations of plaigarism.
Apple I nerds may be interested in a Homebrew Computer Club retrospective at the Vintage Computer Festival this weekend in Mountain View, California. Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak will be there, as will several other Homebrewers.
“The VCF in conjunction with the DigiBarn Computer Museum is proud to
present a 30th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Homebrew Computer Club, the legendary Silicon Valley institution that helped to launch the era of the personal computer. Bruce Damer of the DigiBarn Computer Museum will moderate this panel of former Homebrew members, including Steve Wozniak, Lee Felsenstein, Allen Baum, Len Shustek, Bob Lash and Michael Holley.Join the panel as they recount their experiences and gab with the group as we feast on some yummy cake, courtesy of the DigiBarn.”
(The comical Homebrew diorama is taken from an Information Age exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History).
The Festival is at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Doors open 9:30am until 6:00pm; full exhibit is $12 per person per day; $7 per person per day for exhibit and marketplace only. Kids under 17 are free.
On the Applenova forums:
“Apple expected to release new product “Dashcode” for making widgets, unknown when.
Has javascript debugging (breakpoints), WYSIWYG editor, plus a heck of a lot more!”
(Via MacFeber)
The Fluffer: a $35 fluffy case from NYC’s Fluffpod. Fits 4th-generation iPods.
(Via TUAW)
