John Brownlee - page 197

Next Monday is November 1st and for us would-be wordsmiths, that date has special import as the first day of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. Over the next thirty days, tens of thousands of would-be novelists will smash out as much prose as they can, trying to finish the first draft of a short, complete novel before the clock strikes midnight on November 30th.

In order to help novelists prepare for the orgy of fiction that will all but consume the lives of Mac-using NaNoWriMo next month, Scrivener — our favorite project planner for writers and novelists — has seen fit to release the public preview of the much anticipated 2.0 update… and it’ll be completely free to use until December 7th.

Remember last week’s report that said that almost one-third of all iPad owners had never downloaded an app?

We bought it — after all, the iPad is a compelling device right out of the box without ever plugging in a credit card company — but it looks like we were being overly credulous. Nielsen Group, who originally posted the numbers, has just released a huge honking update on their previous numbers… this time claiming that only 9% of iPad users have never downloaded an app.

One of the little secrets that has made Apple the most profitable company in tech is their ability to achieve high margins on their gizmos, but the new MacBook Airs might set a record even for Apple: according to analysts who have estimated its bill of materials, the entry-level, 11.6-inch MacBook Air costs only $718 to make.

That means that for every 11.6-inch MacBook Air Apple sells, they make $281, a profit margin of 28.1%. That’s for the 64GB: buy yourself a 128GB MacBook Air and the profit margin jumps to 34%. Buy a 128GB 13.3-inch MacBook Air and that margin nudges forward again, this time to 37%.

Those margins are excellent, even comparatively: Apple, on average, achieves a profit margin of just 20% on the rest of their laptops.

The AppleTV has been jailbroken and we’ve already seen the release of the first AppleTV app courtesy of nitoTV, but how to install it without an AppleTV version of Cydia? Jailbreak maestro MuscleNerd gives us the four-one-one:

1) Jailbreak your AppleTV using PwnageTool
2) SSH into your Apple TV2, the default password is “alpine”

3) Type “passwd” and enter a new password (if you haven’t already)

4) Type: echo “deb https://apt.awkwardtv.org ./” > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/awkwardtv.list

5) Type: apt-get update

6) Type: apt-get install com.nito.nitoTV

7) Type: killall Lowtide

Done and dusted! Enjoy the amazing ability to get weather… on your television! The future is now!

Despite the wary uncertainty of several Secret Service agents, Sylvester Cann was able to get President Obama to autograph his iPad at a recent rally at the University of Washington in Seattle. Much to Apple’s chagrin, the autograph was captured through their arch-nemesis Adobe’s Adobe Ideas app.

Obama — cool as a cucumber — seems to have been a sport about it all: he reportedly thought autographing an iPad was pretty awesome.

For the past three years, AT&T’s constabulary of phone-slinging retail monkeys have been rigorously trained in all aspects of the iPhone so as to best pimp Ma Bell’s exclusive handset… but as rumors about the end of that exclusivity have increasingly gained traction, so have AT&T’s efforts to train their employees in other smartphones, says Bloomberg.

Last week, we reported that Apple’s new MacBook Airs were shipping without Adobe Flash preinstalled… a radical departure from the norm for Apple, which has been bundling Flash with OS X (and OS 9 before it) as the default for seemingly ages. Was it a fluke, or is this Apple’s new policy?

Nope, not a fluke, according to Apple, who say that Adobe Flash will not come preinstalled on any of their machines in the future.

iPhoto ’11 is an incredible update to Apple’s casual photo managing/editing suite which makes organizing and tweaking your digital snaps simpler and more streamlined than ever, but only if iPhoto ’11 doesn’t gobble up your existing library as part of the upgrade process… a mishap that is striking an alarming number of upgraders.

During his time as head of Microsoft, Bill Gates was famously anti-Apple, going so far as to issue an emphatic decree banning all Apple gadgets on the software giant’s mega-campus. Since then, however, Gates has been replaced by Steve Ballmer and the prohibition against iPods and iPhones has gradually loosened up… but there’s one place where Gates’ fierce rivalry with the House that Jobs built continues unabated: the palatial mansion of Bill and Melinda Gates.

Sure, they’re not likely to impress Apple fans, but Samsung’s actually one of the few companies around that is managing to release products to rival Apple’s iOS devices. The Samsung Galaxy S is a capable smartphone that almost has the luster of the iPhone 4; likewise, the Galaxy Tab is probably the only real competition to the iPad out there in the tablet market.

What about Samsung’s answer to the iPod Touch, though? Meet the Samsung Galaxy Player in this utterly charming little commercial.

id America’s Gasket series of brushed aluminum cases for the iPhone 4 aren’t available yet, but I can’t wait until they are: the bronze colored case, in particular, is just a few glued-on wristwatch cogs away from a thorough steampunking.

In the meantime, we’ll have to wait, but the Gasket cases should cost just $30 when they’re made available, and id America promises that they will provide owners with “perfect fitment.” You can’t put a price on that, can you?

Last week, Microsoft released the anticipated Office 2011 for Mac update, the first OS X version of their popular Office suite for several years. It’s getting good reviews, but you know who hates it? David Pogue, who describes it as utterly broken in a lengthy review.

The whole thing’s worth reading, but here’s the takeaway:

[I]t’s sad to see such unpolished work from Microsoft’s Mac team. Looks like they had their eye on the big-ticket items—and simply left the smaller cookies to crumble.

I have no thoughts to share yet on the matter, except to say that I wanted to dump sewage all over Steve Ballmer’s head when I installed the application suite and it immediately dumped seven or eight hideous icons into my dock without once consulting me.

For those of us who practically live in third-party apps, it can be hard to believe that it’s even possible to own an iPad without immediately hitting the App Store… but a new Nielsen survey says that the app-less iPad is a common occurrence.

How common? According to the Nielsen Company, who polled over five thousand owners of “connected devices,” one-third of the iPad owners surveyed have never downloaded an application at all.

Taking its audiophonic cue from the giant brass horn your crotchety grandfather greasily crams down his cochlea when his nurses attempt to shout pleasantries at him, the Bone Horn Stand is an unpowered amplifier that slips over your iPhone’s bottom half and channels the sound of your speakers up through the trumpet shaped gramophone tube at top, amping up the output by another 12 decibels. It even works as a stand. Only $25!

Well, that didn’t take long: the first MacBook Airs were barely in users’ hands before Apple has seen fit to squirt out their new laptop’s first Software Update.

What does the update fix? Mostly graphics issues, including one which strikes when a user opens iMovie ’11. It also fixes some sleep issues when the MacBook Air is hooked up an external display.

Here are the official notes:

This update fixes a few graphics issues including: Resolves an issue where the system becomes unresponsive while playing back a movie trailer in iMovie. Resolves an issue where the system becomes unresponsive after waking from sleep when an external display is connected. This update is recommended for users of all MacBook Air notebooks manufactured in late 2010.

The update weighs a paltry 368KB and can be downloaded here.

FaceTime for Mac is pretty cool, but it lacks spice. As Chatroulette amply proved, the thril of cold video calling random strangers is spicy indeed. Who will pick up? A nose-picking teenage girl? A throbbing erection with googly eyes glued upon the glans? A foul-mouthed puppet? If only FaceTime could match that degree of titillation!

Well, now it can, thanks to an enterprising programmer named Zach Holman, who has thrown together Facelette. It’s essentially Chatroulette for FaceTime, pairing two random people together through a FaceTime connection.

Yesterday, Apple quietly announced that they would cease future distribution of their own custom Java packages, concerning some Java developers. But no need to worry, Steve’s already already explained Apple’s thinking on the matter, and it makes sense to us.

First, Apple’s announcement of Java deprecation. According to the updated developer documentation for the Java updates for OS X released yesterday, Apple will no longer be maintaining their Java runtime at the same level, and it may even be removed from future versions of Mac OS X.

So does that mean that Macs will no longer have up-to-date Java? A concerned Java Developer from Portico Systems emailed Steve Jobs, asking that very question.

Jobs’ response:

Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms. They have their own release schedules, which are almost always different than ours, so the Java we ship is always a version behind. This may not be the best way to do it.

In other words, Apple’s leaving Java to the company that does it best… that is, if Oracle decides to step up and produce their own version of Java for Mac, as they do for every other platform. My guess is they will quickly fill the void and it’ll be a win for everyone: Apple no longer has to spend the money to produce custom-baked, already-obsolete versions of Java, and Mac users will get Java of the same level and quality as it is available on other platforms.

For a few hours yesterday, the Internet lit up with reports originating from Macwelt.de that there was a serious security hole in the FaceTime for Mac beta.

Frankly, calling it a “security hole” seemed even at the time a tad hyperbolic. Basically, the hole in FaceTime for Mac beta meant that once a user had logged into his account, that user’s AppleID and password could be altered within the app by anyone with physical access to the computer, without any other security checks.

At this point, we’re not really surprised when Apple’s new software drops support for old PowerPC Macs. Apple’s been building PCs on Intel hardware for four years now: at some point, going through all the expense and bother of coding for obsolete hardware just stops being worth it.

So when iLife ’11 dropped PowerPC support, we weren’t surprised. It’s not really a big deal: the previous version of iLife works just fine on the PowerPC architecture, and if you’re going to work on a five year old computer, you can live with a two year old media productivity suite, we reckon.

More surprising to us is iLife ’11’s strict requirement for a minimum OS install of Snow Leopard. That’s more than a little strange, although during the presentation, Jobs did mention that iLife ’11 was built upon many of the core technologies introduced in Snow Leopard.

Apple’s hissy catfight with Adobe over the future of Flash on the web has reached storied proportion at this point, with Apple claiming that Flash is buggy and slow and Adobe… well… not so much saying otherwise as whining about the unfairness of it all.

Given Apple’s strong feelings about Flash, it’s hard not to give perhaps undue importance to word that the new MacBook Airs are actually shipping without Adobe Flash pre-installed… even though it’s been preloaded on all of Apple’s past hardware.

The forthcoming Mac App Store is pretty exciting news, but one thing I didn’t really get a good handle on during Steve Jobs’ keynote is if apps were distinct from programs in Apple’s mind. For me, an app is a smaller bit of less fully-functioned code, easily digested, while a program affords a much more substantial suite of functionality. Would the Mac App Store just be selling tinier programs, eschewing beefier applications like Photoshop or even Apple’s own iLife and iWork suite? I wasn’t quite sure.

It seems, though, that Apple answered my question during their own presentation. During Wednesday’s “Back to Mac” event, the keen-eyed fellows over at Electric Pig spotted iPhoto, GarageBand and iMovie as being apps on sale in the Mac App Store, each for a price of $14.99.

No, really, that’s not a GameBoy Color… it’s a decal slapped on the back of an iPhone 4.

I’m totally dropping $6 on this: I actually still have the exact model of the GameBoy Color this decal is based upon, right down to the fluorescent 90s hue.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWTgarcCWZc&feature=player_embedded

Halloween’s just ten days away and two of the most popular games on the App Store are getting in the ghoulish spirit of things wit All Hallow’s Eve themed updates. Both are just skinjobs on existing titles.

Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s three-years-late response to Apple’s iOS, is officially being released in Europe today, and even though America won’t get the first WP7 handsets until November, the European release means that review embargoes are over and the first blushes are starting to trickle in.

The good news? Most reviewers agree Windows Phone 7 is a significant improvement over its predecessor, and even a pretty smart mobile operating system… but it’s still about a year behind iOS.

Before the iPhone 4, the worst that could happen to the back of your handset in a clumsy drop is a few dings or scratches, but the new iPhone’s all glass back makes the accidental spill twice as hazardous as it was before by doubling the glass surface area that can be cracked, splintered or shattered in a fall. Add antenna attenuation issues into the mix and a case becomes a better investment than before, but some people simply prefer the pristine look of an uncovered iPhone.

This iPhone 4 accessory is an interesting solution to the problem of Apple’s latest smartphone’s fragile backplate. In essence, it’s a just $14.

[via Technabob]