SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Here at Macworld, people are raving about the iStreamer, a small metal box that turns your iPhone or iPad into a high-fidelity audio source by connecting it to your home stereo.
Columnist Jeff Yang has a great piece on how Steve Jobs used his extreme focus to make Apple into the new Sony.
There’s tons of great stuff in here. It’s a very well-informed piece.
Here’s Yang talking about how Jobs’ study of Zen has influenced his approach to design, which I’ve never seen discussed before:
The Best App Ever is… Angry Birds, according to the 148Apps website.
On Thursday here at Macworld, the hyper-popular game won the top Best App Ever category in 148App’s third annual Best App Ever awards. The $4.99 game also won the top spot in six other categories. The awards attracted about 500,000 votes for the 609 final nominees.
Angry Birds dominated Apple’s top iTunes download charts for most of most of last year (12 million downloads), and is storming the charts on Android, PlayStation Portable, Windows and is proposed on several other platforms.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — The biggest booth at Macworld used to be Apple’s. Until 2009, when Apple pulled out, the first thing attendees would see was Apple’s giant booth.
That spot is now occupied by, of all things, Sanho Corp., maker of the HyperMac line of external battery packs. The company is best known for being sued by Apple. Apple filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Sanho for using its MagSafe connector in the HyperMac batteries.
HyperMac’s booth is front and center of the show hall. It is draped in a couple of big banners, giving it by far the biggest presence at this show, which is made up mostly of small companies in small booths.
Getting sued by Apple must be good for business.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — The corridors are crowded, the booths are hopping and the registration desk is doing brisk business.
Against expectations, Macworld 2011 is doing pretty well on opening day. Of course, there are a few caveats:
But against the odds, Macworld looks prettty healthy this morning. Macworld isn’t dead! Long live Macworld!
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — If there’s one thing we’re hearing over and over at Macworld this year, it’s the word “enterprise.” There’s a lot of companies getting ready for a huge wave of iOS deployments by enterprise in 2011.
One company ready to jump on the enterprise bandwagon is FileMaker, whose FileMaker Go iOS app allows FileMaker databases to run on the iPad or iPhone. That means businesses can make custom database apps — everything from email clients to iTunes clones — without going through Apple.
“A lot of people think they have to develop their own app to do something but its not necessarily necessary to do an app,” said FileMaker spokesman Kevin Mallon. “If you’ve got FileMaker Pro, you’ve got an app.”
According to FileMaker, its database software is currently the only way enterprise can get custom apps on the iPhone or iPad without coding a custom solution and submitting it through the App Store.
The pharmaceutical company Merck, for example, created an iOS app to share the company lexicon of drug names, special acronyms and competing drug companies’ names and terms.
“You don’t have to be a serious programmer to do an app,” said Mallon. “It’s dead easy.”
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — The world was supposed to go paperless decades ago, but we’re still swamped with paper. You can take pictures of business cards and receipts every now and again, but for serious paper junkies, something like Fujitsu’s ScanSnap S1100 Mobile Scanner may fit the bill.
The ScanSnap S1100 is claimed to be the smallest scanner in the world. Powered by USB, the sheet-feed scanner can suck up everything from receipts to multi-page AT&T phone bills.
Launched at CES earlier this month and being shown at Macworld this week, the ScanSnap S1100 can scan directly into desktop software like iPhoto and Word, or cloud-based apps like Google Docs and Evernote. The scanner costs $199.
Business isn’t usually this cool, but who wouldn’t want this iPhone-dock-cum-desk-phone? Just plug in your iPhone, and it becomes your office phone.
Brand new at Macworld 2011, Altigen’s $169 iFusion Smartstation iPhone dock features a Bluetooth speakerphone and receiver that you can cradle under your chin, Don Draper style.
Paired with the company’s PBX app which provides eneterprise-level phone management features, it allows your iPhone to replace your office phone as well as your home phone. Bye bye landlines.
This is pretty amazing. Hacker Apoc269 has somehow figured out how to make 3D icons on the iPhone’s home screen — and without glasses.
Check out the video. The icons appear to be 3D when the iPhone’s screen is rotated and looked at from diffferent angles. Very cool.
Coming soon via Cydia, Apoc269 says. So get jailbreaking now.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Apple is perceived as closed and proprietary, but the company has been very generous to the open web, and that generosity has benefited Apple in turn, says pundit John Gruber.
Speaking at Macworld 2011’s opening Industry Forum, Gruber noted that most of the best browsers on the market today are based on Apple’s WebKit, an open source browser engine developed and supported by Apple.
Apple allows its competitors to base their browsers on Apple’s technology, including Google, Nokia and Palm. Indeed, Palm’s entire webOS is based on Apple’s Webkit.
Why does Apple do this?
Because an open web is beneficial to Apple. Ten years ago, most software vendors developed for Windows and Apple was locked out. Napster is a good example, Gruber said. Napster was built for Windows, and Apple users were was largely excluded until third-party Mac clients were build much later.
These days, software companies build for the open Web. Twitter and Facebook, for example, were built for the Web.
“When Windows was the baseline platform for the industry, Apple was left out,” Gruber said. “But these days, if companies develop for the Web, Apple is included.”
This wouldn’t have happened if Apple hadn’t supported and encouraged the web as a development environment, partly by giving Webkit away.
“Apple has benefited tremendously from the rise of the Web,” said Gruber. “And the Web has benefited from contributions from Apple.”
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — As one of the key architects of the original Macintosh, programming legend Bill Atkinson is in a good position to make sensible predictions about the future of tomorrow’s computer interfaces.
And he says the future of computers is smartphones with natural language interfaces. We won’t be tapping on our iPhone’s screens, we’ll be talking to them in natural language. And they’ll be talking back.
We’ll wear a tiny video-equipped earpiece that will see, hear and record everything we do. On the other end, in the cloud, will be a virtual personal assistant that will act as a cognitive prosthesis.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — When Apple discontinued the Xserve server last year, there was a huge outcry from the IT crowd.
But as one school in Hawaii has demonstrated, the Xserve platform is a dinosaur.
SAN FRANCISCO, Macworld 2011 — Proving that the show can go on without Apple, Macworld 2011 opens today and is bigger and better than ever.
Well, bigger and better than last year.
This is the second year of Macworld without Apple, but the show has attracted 10% more exhibitors than 2010 and is on track for 25,000 visitors, organizers say.
“The show is shaping up good,” Macworld general manager Paul Kent told CultofMac.com. “If the numbers go right, we’re going to have about a 25% increase in attendance.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXPhoYAqRhE&feature=player_embedded
Apple’s new TV commercial for the iPad shows how versatile the device is. The iPad is… for students, teachers, for news, for reading. the iPad is.. iconic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xVccc22zI0&hd=1
You’ve got to watch this version of Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer performed by the iBand on iPhones and iPads. It’s really pretty good!
And here’s their version of the Black Eyed Peas’ I Gotta Feeling:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkMFBSUH3pI&hd=1
Thanks John!
The white iPhone’s light-leakage issues may have been fixed with a new kind of paint, the Japanese site Macotakara reports.
As previously reported exclusively by CultofMac.com, the white iPhone 4 was delayed because light leaks into the camera ruining photos, especially when the internal flash is used.
According to the Macotakara, Apple has partnered with an unnamed Japanese company that has developed a “miracle painting material.” The new paint helps Apple control the thickness prior to application, solving the light-leakage issues. However, the Japanese blog posts gives new meaning to the term ‘vague.’ Details are scarce.
Either way, the white iPhone 4 looks to be launching soon. The device has already appeared in both wireless carriers’ websites in the U.K.
Verizon is flip-flopping on unlimited iPhone data plans faster than a fish out of water.
This morning, Verizon’s chief operating officer, Lowell McAdam, told the Wall Street Journal that Verizon’s iPhone 4 customers would be treated to an unlimited $30-a-month data plan. Otherwise, the network wouldn’t be able to compete with AT&T, which has grandfathered a lot of iPhone customers to unlimited plans, even though it now offers only tiered plans.
But not so fast. McAdam now says the unlimited data plan will be a “temporary offer,” and that Verizon will also move to tiered pricing in the not too distant future. Better act fast.
How long do you think the unlimited data window will be? A week? A month? Six months?
Procrastinators and cheapskates rejoice. Today is your lucky day!
The popular coupon site Johnny Funcheap is offering Expo tickets for just $10. That’s a $15 savings (normally $25).
Just enter the priority code FunCheap.
Macworld 2011 starts on Thursday, January 27 and runs until Saturday, January 29. The show floor is open from 10am – 6:00pm all three days.
Satarii is a small San Francisco startup trying to get a super cool iPhone video accessory off the ground.
The Satarii Star is a tracking device that follows your every move while shooting video. Just set the iPhone in the cradle and put the tracking device in your pocket. When you move, the tracking cradle swivels around to keep you in the frame. It’s a super clever idea and looks to work pretty well. See the video below (the fun starts a few seconds in).
Master storyteller Mike Daisey’s one-man-show “The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” is a theater piece that every Apple fan should see.
It’s a laugh-out-loud monologue about the world of Apple, but it delivers an important message: The products we love are made under inhumane conditions.
Here’s the moment when Apple sold its 10 billionth app over the weekend. The screenshot was captured by Fabio M Zambelli of the Italin tech blog, SetteB.IT.
Curiously, Zambelli took the screenshot at 10.30AM GMT. However, the winner of the sweepstakes says the winning app was downloaded at 9:30 GMT. “For 1 hour a lot of people wasted time,” said Zambelli in an email.
The winner of the Apple’s 10 billionth App download sweepstakes nearly made a horrible mistake: she hung up the phone when Apple called to say she’d won.
“I thought it was a prank call,” says Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, UK. “I said, ‘Thank you very much, I’m not interested’ and I hung up.”
Apple has just announced the winner of the App Store’s 10 billionth download sweepstakes.
The 10 billionth app was downloaded by Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, UK.
Gail downloaded the free Paper Glider app, netting her a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card.
Congrats Gail!
BTW: Looks like reader @Jack predicted the correct time frame in an earlier post trying to predict when the 10 billionth app would be downloaded.
Gossip rag Valleywag claims Tim Cook is gay. The evidence:
1. He appears to be single, a “lifelong bachelor.”
2. It’s the subject of gossip inside Apple.
2. Two “well-placed sources” say so.
If Cook steps into the CEO role, Apple’s other executives will encourage him to come out, Valleywag says. This would be a good thing for Silicon Valley and for gay rights.
Being gay is certainly no problem here in the San Francisco Bay Area. No one bats an eyelid. But Apple’s other execs are concerned about public perception, Valleywag says. Could it spell trouble for the Apple brand?
It’s not bad. Don’t miss the YouTube comments. Here’s a typical sample:
I can’t wait!!!!!! Finally!!!! iPhone on Verizon!!!!!
I get to dump my crapass Android piece of poop for a real smartphone!
yay
