John Brownlee - page 153

The lights have dimmed, the Aretha Franklin has been muted, and Steve Jobs has just taken the stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco to head up the 2011 World Wide Developer’s Conference.

Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon that leads us to interpret a random image as somehow being informationally significant. It’s why you see Jesus in the char on the face of your morning slice of toast, and it’s why you see Kermit the Frog on Mars.

It’s also why several prominent Apple blogs think they see an S (if they squint) in Apple’s WWDC invite, heralding the arrival, perhaps, of an iPhone 4S. Or it could be a 5, proclaiming the announcement of iOS 5. If you really squint, it even looks a little like an ampersand!

Hey, this is fun. What do you see? As a little bit of pre-WWDC frivolity, tell us in the comments the wackiest thing you see in the pareidolia of the WWDC invite.

[via Razorian Fly]

Apple’s been promising that come Lion, OS X and OS X Server will be united… but with Snow Leopard Server costing $470 more than a retail copy of OS X, how will that go down?

New evidence suggests it’ll be simple: every copy of Lion will be able to function as a server, but you’ll need to enable that functionality by purchasing it through the Mac App Store.

Following reports that Apple will refresh the Time Capsule line-up at next week’s WWDC, possibly to enable background caching of software updates, comes new word about what to expect: the new Time Capsules will run on iOS and come with embedded A4 or A5 CPUS.

Hey, what do you know? It’s the beta login page for Apple’s soon-to-launch rebranding of MobileMe, iCloud.

In just three days, Steve Jobs will take the stage at San Francisco Moscone Center and kick off this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference, or WWDC. In so doing, he’ll announce new software, new products and end months of speculation about the new iPhone, iOS 5, iCloud music streaming and OS X Lion.

Here’s Cult of Mac’s complete overview of what we’re expecting to hear about at this year’s WWDC.

One of these iPhone 4s is the real thing. The other’s a fake so good that it’s actually compatible with Apple’s own 30 pin iPhone connector, as well as its headsets. Are you savvy enough to spot the fake?

The headline says it all really, doesn’t it? A man dressed in a white ninja outfit tried to rob the Greensboro, North Carolina Apple Store this morning by smashing through the plate glass facade with his Honda. How do you think that went for him?

Evidence is mounting that when iOS 5 debuts at WWDC next week, it’ll feature some deep integration with microblogging service Twitter. Not only has Twitter launched a new photo sharing service just days before Apple is expected to unveil the ability to share photos via Twitter in iOS, but now blogger and tech evangelist Robert Scoble is saying that “next week will be a huge week for those of us who have lived on Twitter for the last few years.”

Interested in getting a closer look at Apple’s new iCloud logo, as spied behind the closed doors at the Moscone Center in preparation for Monday’s WWDC kick-off?. Check out this version of the logo mocked up by letemsvetemapplem.

For the tenth anniversary of the opening of the first Apple retail location, the stores themselves got new, cutting edge signs made out of iPads.

A lesser talked about gift to celebrate the occasion, given to every Apple Store on earth? A seemingly crummy poster. Make that, a seemingly crummy poster with no images or colors. Make that, a crummy poster with no images or colors packed with over eighteen hundred wordsof dense verbiage.

Don’t let your initial impression fool you, though. A poster this may be, but it’s a great read, full of fascinating tidbits about the Apple Store that I’ve never read before. Here’s some examples.

Ouch! Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen took stage today at the All Things Digital D9 conference to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg.

Watch the smug get slapped right off of Narayen’s face after he laughably tries to claim that contrary to Steve Jobs’s argument that Flash is a dead technology, it’s currently running on 130 million Android devices.

There are many reasons to envy the British. Marmite. Branston Pickle. Savory Pies. First Run Doctor Who. Kelly Brook. Now there’s a new reason to envy them: they can pick up an iPhone 4 and an iPad 2 for just £99, or around $162.

With the last remaining label having just inked a deal with Apple to launch iCloud, music industry insiders are now talking to the press about what they know about Cupertino’s upcoming music streaming service. Specifically, they’re answering the question everyone’s been asking all along: how much will iCloud’s music streaming cost?

The last major music label has finally been wooed by Apple, just in time for Steve Jobs to present iCloud at Monday’s WWDC.

Just like last year, Apple’s kicking off WWDC a little earlier than its June 6th start date with an official WWDC 2011 app, which is now available for download on the App Store.

I’m not exactly sure that this custom sewn slipper for the aluminum foot of an iMac or Cinema Display is worth €29.00 when my girlfriend could probably sew one up for me for the price of a couple of Milky Way bars, but crafted from vegetable tanned leather and premium wool, it sure is gorgeous.

In fact, it transforms the iMac’s ascetic aluminum foot into something that would look totally at home in the mahogany-lined smoking room of a 19th Century Gentleman’s Club….

Hmm. Wait, actually, I take it back. This is totally worth your €29.00, which translates roughly to about $42.

Need a little more wiggle room for media on your iPad? Want to share a movie to your girlfriend on her iPhone while you simultaneously watch the same movie on your iPad in the other room? Kingston’s Wi-Drive has you covered, but some serious drawbacks make this a hard recommendation to make.

When it comes to mobile, Microsoft has been caught with its pants down twice in the last four years.

The first time was when the original iPhone completely turned the smartphone industry upside down overnight back in 2007. Microsoft was so slow to respond that by the time they released their first true touch-based operating system, Windows Phone 7, in November of last year, they had gone from a dominant player in the smartphone market to losing almost all of their market share.

Before Microsoft could even get Windows Phone 7 out the door, though, it happened again. Apple released the iPad in 2010, and this time, iOS didn’t just revolutionize smartphones… it attacked the very foundations of Microsoft’s Windows empire itself, cannibalizing laptop sales and utterly destroying the netbook market.

Now that ex-Microsoft business veep Stephen Elop has taken over the floundering handset giant Nokia and inked deals with his old employer to use their mobile operating system, you’d think he’d want his employees to start using Windows Phone 7 handsets… preferably Nokia ones.

Not so. He wants them using iPhones.

When MobileMe gets rebranded as iCloud on Monday, it’s most anticipated feature is the ability to scan your iTunes library and automatically mirroring it in the cloud without uploading a single audio file. The big question about scan and sync has been whether it will only work with tracks purchased in iTunes, or if it’ll work with tracks ripped from CDs, purchased from Amazon MP3 or — yes — even pirated. Apparently so… because Apple will pay the record industry for every pirated track.

We don’t know where this came from.

We don’t know who made it (J.G. Thirlwell, perhaps?).

We don’t even know if there’s an iPad or iPad 2 ensconced within this case’s leathery, plush-lined folds.

We’d love to find out (tell us if you know), but until we do, mere ignorance will not stop us from posting this exquisite iPad Case, because all we can see is that gorgeously medieval gold emblem, showing Isaac Newton lazing under an apple tree, waiting for the full weight of gravity to come crashing down on his head. That was Apple’s original logo back in 1976.

GarageBand and iMovie for iOS, and while iMovie’s update is just a bug fix patch, GarageBand has gotten some more meaty improvements.

I love this little mini-episode of How It’s Made. It takes an almost antediluvian bit of tech — rolls for automated player pianos — and then shows how two Apple computers almost as ancient help make them.

Making rumors that Apple would be integrating Twitter support directly into iOS’s photo sharing functionality just a little more likely, Twitter has just announced that they are baking native photo sharing into the microblogging service. Is this just the laying of groundwork for a more unified iOS/Twitter experience?