Leander Kahney - page 23

Google’s Eric Schmidt may have just pre-announced the iPhone with NFC.

Steve Jobs calls Android a “probe in your pocket” because it spies on users, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Kara Swisher.

Apple’s iCloud music locker will not require users to laboriously upload all the music in their iTunes libraries, but will instead rely on “scan and match.”

There’s something fishy about this, but iPad 3G has supposedly been hacked to make phone calls and send SMS messages — just like a giant iPhone!

Check out the video of the supersized iPad/iPhone in action:

Business mag Fast Company had funnyman Conan O’Brien pose as eight of history’s greatest innovators for its latest issue on the 100 most creative people in business.

For the cover, Conan dressed as Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein, Frida Kahlo, Steve Jobs, Madonna, Moses, Socrates and Teddy Roosevelt. Weirdly, Jobs doesn’t make Fast Company‘s 2011 list, but his software lieutenant Scott Forstall does.

Here’s a bigger version of the cover:

An Apple store at New York’s Grand Central Terminal is back on.

To celebrate Apple Retail’s tenth anniversary, Gary Allen just drove 3,200 miles, crossed 12 states, and burned 100 gallons of gas.

His destination?

Although the Third Man theme will quickly drive you crazy, this clever video makes inventive use of three iPhone screens.
written/choreographed by Ronen Verbit and Vanya Polunin

Written/choreographed by Ronen Verbit and Vanya Polunin.

Party planner Stephanie Gordon was flying from New York to Palm Beach when the caption told passengers they might witness the final launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour this morning.

As the plane descended, Gordon pulled out her iPhone and snapped some incredible pictures of Endeavour as it punched through the clouds:

Here are the new wallpapers in OS X Lion Developer Preview 3, released this afternoon. There are poppies, ducks, and an actual lion.

They come courtesy of it’s all tech, who bundled them up into a downloadable zip file (26.1MB).

Check them out:

This is new the login screen in Lion Developer Preview 3, which was just released this afternoon. And we also have a list of some of the biggest changes.

Apple has just released the third major Developer Preview of Lion, the upcoming update of Mac OS X.

The 1.07GB update is avaliable to registered Mac developers running developer preview 2 update 2.

There’s also an update to Xcode, which is now version 4.1. Developers must upgrade Xcode to 4.1 after installing Lion Preview 3.

We’ll have more details soon…

UPDATE: Gladwell debunks the old story that Jobs “stole” the Mac from Xerox PARC. See below.

In the latest edition of The New Yorker, preeminent business writer Malcolm Gladwell takes on Steve Jobs and the creation of the mouse.

The piece is called “Creation Myth: Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation.”

Apple’s giant datacenter in North Carolina may bring advanced voice controls to the iPhone and iPad, reports Techcrunch.

The function of Apple’s massive datacenter — one of the biggest in the world — has been kept firmly under wraps. The North Carolina facility is like Area 51: everyone knows it exists, but few know its true purpose. Observers believe it is primarily for iTunes in the cloud, but Techcrunch suggests it is already set up to bring voice recognition to iOS 5.

According to Techcrunch reporter MG Siegler, Apple is already running advanced voice-recognition software from Nuance Communications – the company behind the Dragon Dictation applications for the iPhone and iPad — at the massive datacenter. The two companies will announce a deal at WWDC in early June.

And that likely means that iOS 5 will feature a plethora of advanced voice controls when it also is unveiled at the programmers’ conference.

One of the most interesting revelations of the Fortune piece “Inside Apple” that’s making headlines this weekend is how Steve Jobs thinks Apple will be OK without him.

Fortune reporter Adam Lashinsky writes:

“Jobs himself believes he has set Apple on a course to survive in his absence. He has created a culture that, while not particularly jolly, has internalized his ways.”

The iPad 2 came to China this morning and sold out in less than 4 hours, according to our friends at M.I.C. Gadget.

Apple’s flagship store in Beijing attracted a massive crowd of customers and scalpers, who started lining up at 5 p.m. on Thursday. Overnight customers were treated well: there was a special waiting room for them to sleep in, and everyone got a wristband, allowing them to leave the line for an hour and return to their place in line.

There was even a special section for scalpers, who set up shop behind a barrier. Here’s the details:

Review: Early 2011 Apple iMac (27-inch screen, 3.1GHz quad-core Intel Core i5)

Apple updated its venerable iMac this week with new machines that are fast, sleek, and beautifully packaged.

Sporting Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, powerful new graphics cards and Thunderbolt ports that can support two external monitors, the new iMac is the undisputed champion of all-in-one machines. Plus, it’s the only one out there that’s not butt ugly.

As well as being the most attractive desktop computer available, it offers just about everything modern computer users might need in a self-contained package, from a HD webcam to a gesture-sensitive trackpad.

I’ve been testing a 27-inch model with a 3.1Ghz Core i5 chip (the biggest, fastest stock model currently available at the Apple Store), and it may sound silly, but it’s almost too much machine for my needs. The screen is so big, I have to sit back lest I get motion sickness. And the i5 chip has power to spare for someone like me, who doesn’t do high-end video or graphics work.

Still, I’ll take it. If the chip is too powerful now, it sure won’t be in a couple of years.

Just seven days after Steve Jobs promised to fix the location tracking bugs in iOS, an update is available now for download through iTunes.

A free download, iOS 4.3.3 fixes three bugs related to location tracking:

• The cache of location data is limited to just one week.
• The data is no longer backed up to your computer.
• The cache is deleted when Location Services are disabled in iOS’s Settings app.

The data isn’t encrypted, but Apple says that will be fixed in the next major update, likely iOS 5, which is expected at WWDC in early June.

The 4.3.3 update applies to the iPhone (4 and 3GS, but not the iPhone 3G); iPad (1 and 2); and iPod touch (3rd and 4th gen, but not 1st or 2nd gen).

There’s a separate 4.2.8 update for the Verizon iPhone 4 (the CDMA phone is still on a different fork of iOS).

Update or no, Apple is still expected to testify at a May 10 Congressional hearing about mobile tracking.

Here’s the new 2011 Thunderbolt iMac playing HD movies on three screens simultaneously — without a hiccup.

It’s a 27-inch model with an Intel Core i5 chip and AMD’s Radeon HD 6970 graphics card (1GB of GDDR5 memory).

The two 21-inch Dell monitors either side are connected via the iMac’s pair of Thunderbolt/Mini DisplayPort jacks on the back (with a pair of pricey $30 Mini-DisplayPort-to-DVI adapters).

The main 27-inch display’s resolution is 2,560-by-1,440; while the external monitors are at 1,920 by 1,080 (true 1080p HD).

Pretty impressive.

Look what just arrived at CultofMac towers here in San Francisco. Yes, it’s one of Apple’s awesome new Core i5 iMacs.

It’s a $1,999 27-inch i5 model (It’s stock — no build-to-order options. Couldn’t wait a month).

As you can see, it can handily power another 27-inch iMac as an external monitor. (It’s hooked to a 2010 iMac, reviewed here last year). This is going to replace an aging Mac Pro I use for work. It just radiates awesomeness.

I’ll get started on the review as soon as  deal with a major plumbing emergency here at home.

A pair of Italian Apple fans visiting The Mothership had the good luck to spot Steve Jobs as he arrived for work recently.

They were snapping pictures out front of Apple’s Cupertino HQ when a big black luxury car pulled up. Out steps Dear Leader himself. The gobsmacked Italians asked for autographs and a commemorative picture, but Jobs shooed them away saying he was late to a meeting. He strode right by them into the building. This was a week ago: April 25th.

Good to see the miserable bastard is still hard at work.

Esclusiva iPhoneItalia: Steve Jobs fotografato al campus di Cupertino!

Via iClarified.

Apple applied for a broad patent on location tracking services back in September 2009 — the kind of location tracking that is now causing a storm of controversy.

The patent application, entitled “Location Histories for Location Aware Devices,” throws some light on the iPhone tracking issue, which is soon to be the subject of a Senate hearing.

Earlier this week, I was interviewed by a Russian TV crew about Apple. They were a bit surly and aggressive, not like polished, ingratiating TV people here in the U.S.

They kept asking strange questions about Steve Jobs, as is if he were a crooked oligarch. “Vy does Steve Joybs vant to be dictator? Vy does he vant to dominate ze vorld?”

To celebrate his third wedding anniversary, Sean Ohlenkamp of Toronto, Canada, placed a folder on his wife’s desktop.

When she clicked “Click Here,” she discovered a message written using folders nested within folders. See for yourself. It’s charming and clever:

How did she react?

“She liked it. Wasn’t too happy about me clearing all her icons off her desktop but she liked it. :) We enjoy doing things with or for each other instead of buying gifts.” Ohlenkamp wrote in the comments on YouTube.

Via TUAW, Neatorama, and Nerdcore

Apple has released an update to its Mac OS X 10.7 Lion beta. The 1.24 GB update is third build of the new operating system, which is expected to be shown off at WWDC in June and released to the public in the summer or fall.

The update is available to registered Mac developers running Lion Developer Preview 2. It can be downloaded through Software Update. The release contains no release notes and appears to contain only minor UI tweaks, according to tweets crossing the wire. It’s unlikely to be a big update. That will come with Developer Preview 3.