Giles Turnbull - page 42

The keen Mac cultists among you will already know the story behind the cloverleaf Command symbol (⌘) but for those of you who don’t, this photo (by cogdogblog on Flickr, used under CC license) tells the story rather well.

The ⌘ was discovered for Apple by bitmap artist Susan Kare in a dictionary of symbols, where it was said to be commonly used in Scandinavia to identify places of interest or camp sites.

Cogdogblog’s photo shows the symbol alive and well in Iceland, 1300 miles or so away from Stockholm but culturally close nonetheless.

Where else has the command symbol been spotted? In a jellyfish. In a bakery. In a bedroom. If you’ve seen it anywhere interesting, do let us know.

Say Hello to Steve! is a Flickr pool that celebrates, even embraces the highly reflective screens on recent MacBooks and iMacs.

A lot of people have complained about the glossy screens. They have expressed their displeasure with protests and polls. Some wish that Apple still offered a matte alternative. Others have tried the glossies and found that, because the LCD panel display is so much brighter, they’re not so bad after all.

But the folks at the Say Hello to Steve! group are happy with their glossy screens. They like to see themselves – and their surroundings – reflected in the screens when they’re dark. The upshot is some nice, sometimes quite artistic, photographs. What can you see in your screen when your MacBook’s not switched on?

(Photo by Mojo.D, used with permission.)

I just love this picture. It sums up perfectly the progress that’s been made in computing over the last couple of decades. That which was once beige and plasticky is now sleek and silvery. (I know some people still swear by those old clacky keyboards, though: John Gruber once called the Extended Keyboard II “the single best hardware product Apple has ever manufactured.”)

You get the same feel from this one. I remember being utterly amazed by the G4 iMac’s design. I borrowed one from Apple to write a review, and marveled at the computer’s shiny hinged neck and (for the time) large, bright display. Now compare it to a modern iMac. It looks like a toy. (Those of you still using a G4 iMac and enjoying it, get in touch to tell me how and why. Send pics.)

(Photos used under Creative Commons licence. Thanks to: Blakespot and Editor B

I don’t know about you, but I get funny looks from folk when I show off my iPhone, then have to sheepishly confess that it doesn’t do MMS messages.

“Phhhfft,” people say, pulling out their 2-year-old Nokias that they got for free. “Even this crappy old thing can do MMS.”

Apple’s workaround is to send iPhone owners a plain text message with a link to a webapp, where they can view their MMS. In the UK, the O2 webapp is horrible. No-one at O2 has bothered to make it iPhone-friendly. The whole setup is clunky, to put it mildly.

Ross McKillop thinks so too, and that’s why he decided to build a better webapp, one that is designed for iPhone. The result is the newly renamed iPhoneMMS, which lets you view incoming and send outgoing MMS messages, via a complex arrangement of protocols and emails.

It’s still clunky compared to proper MMS support, but it’s a good deal better than the shoddy mess supplied by O2. Until they and Apple get their collective act together to make a decent built-in MMS application, it’s the best option.

Like most nerdy types, I went through a phase of being the family tech support guy. Back in the days when I knew a few tricks to make Windows co-operate, this was occasionally a productive use of my time. These days, it’s a complete waste of it.

So I’ve refused to take on tech support jobs for family and friends over the last couple of years. To avoid causing offense, I’ve usually just shrugged my shoulders and said in a regretful tone: “Sorry, I don’t think I’ll be able to help. I’ve not used Windows for years and I wouldn’t have a clue where to start.”

This get-out sounds even better because it’s the truth.

So this has popped up in the feeds this afternoon, and after my initial excited clicking all I can say is “Oh.”

Because it really isn’t a proper keyboard, it’s a tiny clip on thing that does little more than recreate the built-in software keyboard in plastic. The typing’s slow, and all thumbs anyhow.

I know I’ve been banging on about iPhones and keyboards recently, but this? This is not what I was banging on about.

Wait, what? Barack who?

(Via CrunchGear)

Dead Macs. You see them sometimes. Upended in a trash bin or shopping cart. Pilfered for parts, poked and prodded by scavengers who have left just the most useless innards behind.

What is it about MacBooks and stickers? What drives people to cover that pristine white (or black) plastic with other people’s brands and logos?

Some people even start putting stickers on the inside. Maybe they ran out of space on the outside.

But now, you see, I’m wondering. Who has the most stickered MacBook of them all? Should that even be a contest that people would want to win? Are the MacBook-stickerers good or are they bad?

So who’s got the most-stickered Macbook around here? Links to your be-stickered masterpieces, please.

All pics used under Creative Commons license. Top: State of the Macbook by psd; middle: untitled by sunshinecity; bottom: Okay, I think I have enough now by Mat Honan. Thanks to all.

Hands up if you’re a fan of Fluid, the app that turns any web site (or web application) into a standalone application. Yeah, me too.

If you’ve been following the screencasts and Twitterings of Fluid developer Todd Ditchendorf, you might have noticed some news floating around; he has now launched his official browser spin-off, Cruz.

If you’re confused about the name, don’t worry, you have every right to be. This app was going to be called “Mecca”, but then Todd changed his mind. What was that all about?

The Cult decided to get in touch with Todd and ask him to explain the background. He was kind enough to give us some answers…

Continuing my personal obsession with software cameras (see recent ravings about CameraBag for the iPhone), today’s work time has been largely spent faffing about with Poladroid, a free desktop app that turns photos into Polaroids. It’s fantastic.

WorldView puts global webcams in your pocket, in a really lovely little free app.

What’s lovely about it isn’t the webcam shots themselves – frankly, once you’ve seen one blurry shot of the Eiffel Tower in the rain, you’ve seen ’em all – but it’s the little extras alongside the images.

It’s easy to think that software developers spend all their time furiously typing code, but that’s not the case at all.

Rory Prior, developer of nifty photo gallery app Instant Gallery, recently published a little PDF booklet showing off some of the design work he has put into his software over the years. Tucked inside it – and also revealed on this blog post of his – were some pen-and-paper sketches of software idea in progress.

The blog post shows how work is progressing on Rory’s iKanji app for the iPhone. There’s some much older work (not just sketches, but also mockups and early application designs) in the booklet.

This is a rarely seen side of software development, and one that deserves a little more limelight, I think.

Do you draw your software ideas? Let us know.

Proving yet again that it pays to shop around, at least two recently-released apps are offering broadly the same functionality. One is free; the other is free (with adverts) or costs three bucks. But which is the better option?

A nice article by Mark Hachman at PCMag.com looks at Steve Jobs’ comments during the quarterly earnings conference call, and comes up with a promising line of thought.

Jobs, as we suspected and made plain here at the Cult a few days ago, doesn’t have anything against a netbook style Mac per se; he simply cannot see how Apple could produce one that wouldn’t suck. Or to put it another way:

“We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that.”

Jobs is waiting patiently to see what happens next to netbooks. I postulated last week that the Air would morph into a cheaper device (which I’ve no doubt it will), but perhaps I missed something more obvious: the iPhone will morph into a more flexible device. It’s already cheap (well, affordable at any rate).

There’s no hurry, at least not from Apple’s perspective. It is already making plenty of money from the products it has on offer right now, especially iPhones. And as John Gruber points out today, might soon be putting more focus on its phones than on any other part of the business – simply because that’s where the money is, and will continue to be for some time yet.

Which means Apple has time to watch how netbooks evolve, particularly how they evolve with regard to connectivity options, and this is an important factor, I think.

The first gen netbooks appeared with simple wifi connectivity, which is fine for a lot of people in a lot of circumstances. But the old fashioned “road warrior” (yuk, what a horrible phrase) needs connectivity from anywhere, and cannot depend on the availability of wifi networks. They need to be able to open their computer at a moment’s notice, and just get their online stuff done.

Right now, the only feasible way of managing that is via the telephony data network, 3G or otherwise.

So we’re now seeing new generation netbooks with 3G cards, and what’s interesting isn’t the tech inside, but the shop windows they’re appearing in. These netbooks are being sold from phone stores.

As the phone companies start selling contracts (and with them, heavily subsidised netbook computers), Apple will be watching to see just how much the whole arrangement sucks. Some people will end up with two contracts – one for their existing phone, one for their netbook. Some will have one contract, but still be using two devices, carrying around a separate phone handset.

So when Steve says: “We’ll wait and see how that nascent market evolves, and we have some pretty good ideas if it does,” – what ideas does he have in mind? Something that makes ownership of a tiny portable computer easier. The iPhone’s got the connectivity and the computing power to do what’s needed. All that it needs to get it competing with the netbooks is a keyboard, or something that makes the keyboard redundant.

Might Apple let us use normal Bluetooth keyboard with the iPhone? Possibly. Personally, I’d love that, but Apple doesn’t care about me. It wants to me products that really sing with cool, and I think that Steve Jobs would consider an iPhone propped up on a tabletop and controlled with a Bluetooth keyboard to be uncool.

If there’s one thing you can admire in software developers who rip off other people’s ideas, it’s honesty about what they’re doing.

In building WrongRoom, Joseph Lyman has created something modeled on the longstanding best-in-class full screen editor, WriteRoom. It’s his first OS X app, so we should be gentle: but at least he’s up front about why he made something that’s been made before:

“WrongRoom: A shoddy freeware clone of a perfectly good program”

He even encourages anyone who downloads WrongRoom to go and buy a license for WriteRoom. And he’s right. WriteRoom is a much better app with many more features. WrongRoom offers vaguely similar functionality, but it’s just … well, wrong. Even the icon’s a little wonky.

Top marks to Joseph for being so upfront about it, though.

This is one of those ideas that hits you like a bucket of wallpaper paste, and you think “Why on earth did no-one think of that before?”

Choosy is a utility for anyone who uses multiple browsers and wants to open certain links in certain browsers under certain circumstances. Web developers will know what I mean, but there’s something in this for normal people, too.

For example, if you’ve created any stand-alone webapps using Fluid, you might want to open some links in one or more of those apps. Say you’ve got a Fluid app for your Google Docs. When an email arrives with a link to a shared document, Choosy will let you open it in the right Fluid-created app, not in your default browser.

I suspect developer George Brocklehurst might be a name to keep an eye on in future. What’s the next smart idea up his sleeve? Watch out for more bucket-of-wallpaper-paste moments.

Now we’ve seen them, now we know. The new MacBooks and MacBook Pros are quite nice in some respects, and quite frustrating in others.

What amuses me about the whole thing, though, is how astoundingly far-out some of the pre-event speculation was. It’s always part of the fun, exploring the gamut of people’s expectations and imaginations as they dream up the kind of product they’d like Apple to create for them.

My favorite this year was the iMac-as-docking-station concept, which showed an iMac-like monitor with a huge hole in one side, into which a folded MacBook could be slotted. A nice fantasy indeed, but still a fantasy. And Apple’s not in the business of fulfilling every fanboy’s fantasy.

No, Apple’s in business to make profit, like every other computer manufacturer. As such, it’s product development decisions are, and will be, driven by the profit they can be reasonably expected to generate.

James Wages is a man on a mission. Where you and I might see a tired old computer that’s not much use to anyone anymore, he sees a decent machine with plenty of potential.

The results of his tinkering are spectacular; this ancient SE/30 is in regular use by the Wages family, for writing things, drawing things, and (most impressively, I think) getting online.

This little puppy is as maxed out as an SE/30 can get. These machines originally appeared in 1989, running System 6 and costing only $6,500. Blimey. Now you can pick them up for nothing – or even cheaper – and if you’re prepared to put the work in, maybe you can get yours doing all the stuff James has got his doing.

This machine was built before the web was invented, but he’s got it surfing quite satisfactorily. How did he do it?

I asked him.

You know what it’s like when you’re strolling around looking for networks. They’re all the same. They’re all called “belkin54” or “NETGEAR” or “BTHomeHub”. So generic. So default.

What we really need is networks with imaginative names. Names like “Vicious Evil Network Of Mayhem”, as screenshotted here by Flickr user Ingridesign.

I’m now inspired to change my network name from the stupendously dull “16spring” to “The Network That Performs Somersaults”.

Is your network called something interesting? Something better than “Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem”? Do share.

Oh, and another thing: apparently someone announced some new laptops yesterday. You might want to look that up if you’re interested.

(Picture used with permission. Thanks to Ingrid!)

The App Store just gets weirder with every passing day. To celebrate, consider this the first in an occasional series of posts looking at the weirder stuff that’s popping up there.

10 seconds ago is a strange audio widget that records the ambient sounds coming in through the mic, delays them by, um, ten seconds, and plays them out through the speaker. Or, as the app’s maker puts it:

“When you try, don’t you think your vision sometimes hinders your concentration on the sound? If so, then try this tiny app.”

Couldn’t have explained it better myself. (There’s a pro version too, sonic delay fans.)

Sometimes, when Macs die or are horribly injured, their displays turn into beautiful works of electronic art.

Sometimes, though, they just die ugly.

Maybe this one was upset by the number of files stored on the desktop. Whatever the cause, I think “DesktopImpazzito!” is the perfect reaction, even though I haven’t the faintest idea what it means.

(Image used under Creative Commons license. Thanks to Lozofun on Flickr.)

Wow, it doesn’t get much more thrilling than this: I’m announcing the winner of the first contest-with-Wine-Gums-as-a-prize ever here on the Cult, and probably on any other US-based Mac-centric blogs! Incredible!

We asked you to caption a funny picture of a G5 Mac on a street corner, and loads of you chipped in with witty responses. HUGE thanks to everyone who contributed, what a gorgeous bunch you are.

The winner of the packet of Wine Gums is…

Andy, with his caption: “I’m just waiting for the front side bus.”

Strong contenders for the prize were John Handelaar for “To avoid benzene hazard, keep in a well-ventilated area,” and El Vez for “Will compile for food”.

Things the “brick” is almost certainly not (but see note below):

• a redesigned Mac Mini
• a thing you stick your iPhone into
• a thing you stick your MacBook into
• a thing you watch TV on
• a thing of any sort
• or a manufacturing process
• or a new OS

Something the “brick” absolutely 100 per cent is not:

• a thing that the vast majority of people give a damn about
• worth posting about on Twitter
• going to be dull

(Note: Unless it is, of course)

Your guesses and predictions welcome below, but to make it more fun, you are not allowed to predict anything that’s been predicted before. Your rumor mongering must be strictly original and as creative as you like. After all, it’s not like any other blogs bother with facts these days.

(Image used under Creative Commons license. Thanks to m8f8 on Flickr.)

Your captions, please, for this lonely G5 as it sits watching the world go by in a quiet Danish street. According to Google Translate, the photo’s title on Flickr means “on the walk.”

Clean and funny please. Extra points for poetry, flowery language and use of puns. Lolspeak is banned.

Winner (as chosen by me) will be sent a small packet of Wine Gums. Deadline for entries is midnight (GMT) tomorrow (Friday 10th October 2008).

Photo used under Creative Commons license; thanks to Kofoed on Flickr

All over the place this morning is the latest image of a rumored new Apple laptop. But here at Cult HQ, we’re more interested in The Inquisitr’s claim that the new line-up will include a $800 notebook.

Single piece of aluminum or not, a notebook that cheap from Apple would be a very interesting move indeed. It would be a clear signal that Apple was ready to dive into new consumer territory, pushing the brand awareness it’s built over the last couple of years to really drive sales of more Macs.

How much can we trust The Inquisitr’s scoop? One comment says: “Apple retailers don’t typically get price lists 10 days in advance.” But post author Duncan Riley says his source is “someone with access to the price list”. So six to one, half a dozen to the other.

It just might be that the timing of an announcement like this could work out in Apple’s favor. One argument says that in times of recession, people don’t spend as much on consumer goods. Another argument says yes, but people are still going to need computers, so cheaper ones will be more attractive.