Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry owned the first Mac Plus, and it’s about to be auctioned off next month.
Roddenberry’s Mac Plus will join one of Michael Jackson’s gloves in an auction on October 8-9 by Profiles in History, an auctioneer of Hollywood memorabilia.
The Mac Plus — serial number F4200NUM0001 — was given to Roddenberry in January 1986. The auction house expects it to fetch $800 to $1,200.
One year after disgruntled iPhone App developer Mike Ash wrote about his frustrations trying to get his software approved by Apple, he says nothing has changed. The App approval process is so bad, in fact, he’s giving up altogether.
“I have abandoned the platform,” he writes. “Apple’s nonsense is just too much for me. There’s no joy in iPhone development, and an enormous amount of frustration.”
Last year, Ash wrote a high-profile blog post about his experience working with Apple. Detailing all the hoops he had to jump through, and several rejections of his software, Ash’s post drew a lot of attention from blogs and a lots of comments from developers who’d had similar experiences.
Apple’s approval process has long been the subject of criticism and frustration. The process is secretive and opaque, and developers often complain apps are often rejected or held up without good reason. Google’s Voice App, for example, is still undergoing approval — a roundabout way of rejecting an app from a big and important partner without actually rejecting it.
Apple’s head of marketing, Phil Schiller, has tried to smooth ruffled feathers by reaching out to unhappy developers. The biggest problem with Apple’s process is the sheer volume of apps submitted for approval. Apple’s 40 full-time testers must scrutinize about 8,500 apps a week, according to information from Apple in response to an FCC inquiry. Each app is reviewed by two testers, so that’s about 80 apps a day, per reviewer — every day.
In his latest post, Ash says the consumer’s experience of the App Store has marginally improved, but behind the scenes, nothing has changed for developers.
“Apple VP Phil Schiller has been making noises about trying to improve things, but so far this is just talk,” Ash writes. “Apple’s improvements, virtually insignificant already, have mostly gone to improving the store, not the development process.”
It’s so bad, he’s given up completely. Ash says he’ll write software for the Mac instead, which requires no approval process.
This video of a slowly rotating iPhone through an X-Ray is surprisingly cool. There’s no word on where the video came from, or why it was made. Strange.
The music industry is planning to introduce new laws that would require Apple to pay for music in downloaded movies and TV Shows — and iTunes’ 30-second song previews.
The move comes from the industry’s royalty-collection agencies — ASCAP, BMI and others — which collect royalties on music that’s broadcast or performed.
The agencies collect royalties on songs played on the radio or your local dive-bar jukebox, but say they are left out of the digital revolution. Artists are not being paid for music downloaded in movies and TV shows, or previews on Amazon, iTunes and other digital outlets, the agencies say. So they’re lobbying Congress to bring Apple and others in line with cable and broadcast outlets.
On the one hand, the agencies make a compelling point about the consumption of music. Music used to be public. It was broadcast on the radio of performed at concerts, and the industry had mechanisms for collecting royalties on this. But now music is private. It’s loaded onto iPods and played through computers — but there’s no mechanisms for monetizing these new consumption patterns.
“This is really a fight about the future,” one industry spokesman tells CNet. “As more and more people watch TV or movies over an Internet line as opposed to cable or broadcast signal, then we’re going to lose the income of the performance.”
This doesn’t sound unreasonable, but 30 second song previews? As CNet notes: “For many, this would also undoubtedly confirm their perception that those overseeing the music industry are greedy.”
Look at this fascinating graph of Apple’s rollercoaster stock price over the last year, charted against major news events, courtesy of Silicon Valley Insider’s Chart of the Day.
The low point was last winter, with investors spooked about global economic meltdown and Steve Jobs’ unexpected medical leave. But in the last year, the stock has doubled, fueled by the run-away success of the iPhone and building ecitement about the upcoming tablet.
As SVB notes, Apple’s stock is nearing its all-time high, while Microsoft’s stock is trading at a about a third of its highest price.
AT&T is bringing Multimedia Messaging to the iPhone on September 25. But if you can’t wait ten days or so, here’s how to get it now.
Jim “Mad Money” Cramer boosted Apple’s stock last night on his CNBC show, and today it’s up 3.83% to $181.87.
Earlier in the day Apple’s stock was $182.72, Apple’s best since August 2008, just before the global economic meltdown.
This is the same Jim Cramer that told The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart how easy it is to manipulate Apple’s stock. See the video after the jump.
In this case, Cramer seems to be sincere. Cramer pumped the stock on the prospect that changes in accounting rules will realize significantly higher quarterly revenue for Apple. At present, Apple spreads revenue from Apple TV and iPhone sales over 24 months, like a subscription. If new accounting rules come into effect, Apple will be able to report this revenue immediately.
As a result, Cramer estimates that Apple’s 2011 earnings will likely jump from $9 to $12 per share.
“I’m raising my price target on Apple,” he said during the show. He raised his price target for Apple stock from $200 to $264.
Some analysts, like the Yankee Group’s Carl Howe, have said for a long time that Apple’s subscription revenues aren’t being accounted for properly by Wall Street.
The Financial Services Accounting Board is reviewing a draft rule change after strong lobbying from Apple. The new rules are likely to come into effect in weeks.
Cramer told investors to act fast before the big funds got wise. Looks like it’s too late now.
Snow Leopard can give your Mac a 50% performance improvement when running optimized software, a developer has found.
Running a Mac Pro from 2007, programmer Christophe Ducommun compared Snow Leopard to Leopard while encoding and decoding video with his MovieGate software.
Ducommun is optimizing MovieGate to take advantage of two important new technologies in Snow Leopard: Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. While OpenCL allows powerful graphics processors to perform work for applications, Grand Central Dispatch takes advantage of multiple cores, distributing work among all the available cores.
Together, they apps a pretty big speed bump, according to MacBidouille, which published Ducommun’s results:
Snow Leopard
150 frame/s for encoding in MPEG-2
70% CPU load for decoding
130% CPU load for MPEG-2 encoding (ffmpeg)
Leopard
104 frame/s for encoding in MPEG-2
165% CPU load for decoding
100% CPU load for MPEG-2 encoding (ffmpeg)
Overall, the optimizations give an overall performance increase of about 50%. Ducommun’s Mac Pro is a 2.66 GHz Quad Core machine with a GeForce 8800 GT video card.
The iMac will get a design refresh in coming weeks, according to a report from Wall Street analysts, and everyone’s hoping Apple will finally add Blu-Ray.
Wedge Partners predicts the introduction of an updated iMac with “thinner, organic design, likely with smoothed or rounded edges,” reports Tech Trader Daily. Sounds like the iPhone 3GS to me. The iMac is already styled after the iPhone, and the 3GS is more rounded and organic than previous models. (The MacBook will also get a refresh, Wedge says, but design and hardware changes are likely to be minimal)
There have been rumors of new iMacs for several weeks. AppleInsider reported that an iMac release was imminent, and that the machine would get two “compelling new features.” The iMac is overdue for a refresh, according to MacRumors Buying Guide, which says the current models are 197 days old and the average period between upgrades is 220 days.
Most intriguing is whether the refresh will bring new capabilities. High on everyone’s wishlist for compelling new features is Blu-Ray — see this thread on MacRumors with 850+ comments. What could be better than adding high-def movies to Apple’s premier home machine?
Unfortunately, it’s not going to happen any time soon. Here’s why.
The whole thing is here on The Joy of Tech site.
A teardown of Microsoft’s new Zune HD reveals that’s it’s smaller, lighter and better built than the iPod touch — plus it’s got better battery life.
“Microsoft has taken a long time to get to market with this device, and the hardware shows it,” says Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, which has posted details of the teardown online.
The Zune HD is getting favorable reviews. Wired.com says its the first music player to match the iPod’s wow factor. “It’s a lovely industrial design, has a beautiful OLED screen, packs in HD radio and HD video out, and syncs to software that outshines iTunes in many ways,” Wired.com says. However, there’s almost no Apps in Microsoft’s App Store, no deep catalog of video, oh, and the biggie: no Mac software.
A major update of the Apple TV may be in the works.
Apple has slashed the price of the 160GB Apple TV to $229 (from $329) and discontinued the 40GB model. Meanwhile, it looks like Apple’s new iTunes LP — a new format for multimedia music bundles — is designed for high-resolution output on the AppleTV.
The iTunes LP content is output at 1,280-by-720, the native resolution of an Apple TV when hooked to a high-definition TV. Apple’s new iTunes Extras (bonus movie material usually included on bonus DVDs and now available for download on iTunes) is also designed to be output at the same high resolution. While this is natural for movie content, it’s a curious choice for music content, albeit multimedia music content, which might naturally be formatted for playing on computers and laptops.
Which all points to a major update for the Apple TV in the near future. The AppleTV hardware has remained essentially unchanged since its introduction, although it has received a couple of software upgrades.
The 160GB model is the only configuration of the Apple TV now on offer. The 40GB Apple TV was previously priced at $229.
Steve Jobs usually refers to the AppleTV as a “hobby,” and not a real business. The choice of movies for the device on the iTunes store remains relatively limited.
An astute MacRumors reader compared the pictures from iFixit’s teardown of the latest iPod touch with earlier leaked pictures of a prototype equipped with a camera — and the internal details are the same.
Look at the pictures after the jump. The internal circuit boards are indentical — and both are completely different to the second-generation touch.
Never mind what Steve Jobs tells the New York Times, the iPod Touch is getting a camera, likely sooner than later.
The new iPod Touch has an internal space for a camera, a teardown by iFixit has discovered. And there’s a couple more surprises also.
Apple has three new TV ads today.
Check them out.
A teardown of the new nano throws some light on the two big questions raised by Apple’s new iPod line: Why doesn’t the iPod touch have a camera, and why can’t the iPod nano take still pictures?
A popular tethering hack that allows your computer to access the internet via your iPhone’s cell connection is broken with the iPhone 3.1 update. The update also disables MMS messaging enabled by the same hack.
The hack is enabled by changing iPhone’s AT&T carrier file. It’s easily enabled by visiting sites like BenM.at using mobile Safari on the iPhone, and appears under the Network settings. The option is removed under 3.1.
AT&T will roll out multimedia messaging for the iPhone on Sept. 25, but hasn’t given a release date for tethering, saying only it will be available “in the future.”
Apple’s new fifth-generation iPod nano, now with a video camera, is a perfect pearl of 21st-century technology. It’s a lovely piece of electronic jewelry that does almost everything except dispense pints of beer.
It can record video, play movies, store weeks’ worth of music, wake you in the morning, remind you of a dental appointment, record how many steps you walked to work, and how long it took you. It remembers all your contacts, records voice memos, stores your shopping lists and plays a bunch of games that are controlled by tipping and tilting the beautiful little device.
It’s easy to get complacent about Apple’s iPods, new ones come out so often. They’ve got to be 3D holographic auto-mastubators to get anyone’s attention. But take a step back, and it’s pretty astonishing how much advanced technology is stuffed into such a tiny device, and how beautifully it’s done.
Singer Nick Cave has a new novel out: The Death of Bunny Munro, a light, cheery, life-affirming tale of the last days of a the eponymous traveling salesman. Just kidding — it’s dark. It’s also available as an audio book and an iPhone application.
But the best part is, guess what he used to write the first chapter?
When i was younger I worked as a house painter and had a great JVC boombox that blasted punk tunes to everyone’s annoyance.
That’s why I like Altec Lansing’s new $300 Mix iMT800, a ghettoblaster for the iPhone age.
The Mix Boombox is loud and obnoxious, like a boombox should be. It mixes old school block-rockin’ beats with new school digital connectivity. It easily fills a room with sound and can piss off the neighbors, even in the daytime.
Apple has posted some nice, high–res video of today’s “Rock & Roll” special press event. The video is available here and has been added to Apple’s Keynote podcast, although it isn’t yet linked from the iTunes front page.
It’s worth watching for four reasons:
* To see Steve’s heartfelt thanks to his liver donor, to Apple’s staff, and the Apple community, whose best wishes seems to have genuinely buoyed and touched him.
* The gaming demos. The iPhone/iPod touch platform is maturing into an important and fun game platform. The demos make this very clear. It isn’t for hard-core gamers, but the rest of us — the millions of casual gamers that only Nintendo seems to know how to engage.
* To see the preview of iTunes LP, and look for clues what the format might be like on a multitouch device (which I think is what project codename Cocktail is really about).
* To see Steve, who’s magnetic and charismatic and utterly watchable even when he’s very unwell. Who knows how many more times we’ll get to see him? These opportunities are getting rarer and rarer. Here’s hoping he makes an appearance at CES in Las Vegas in January to introduce the Apple tablet. And that he puts on 30lbs eating ice cream. I know it worked for me.
Earlier today Steve Jobs told the New York Times that the iPod touch is first and foremost a gaming device, and that’s why it doesn’t have a camera. We’re not entirely convinced, but look at this chart Apple trotted out this morning’s “Rock & Roll” event.
It shows the number of game and entertainment titles for the iPhone/iPod platform. Apple has almost five times the number of titles as the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS combined.
That’s a huge number. Yes, a lot of those titles are fart apps or simple throwaway games. But that’s still a lot of titles. My kids haven’t touched their GameBoys since we got an iPod touch.
This is why the iPod touch was upgraded with beefier CPU and graphics — to make it a better gaming machine. And no wonder every game company under the sun is rushing out apps — the iPhone/iPod platform is taking over. Add another industry to Steve Jobs’ quiver: PCs, digital music, computer animation, mobile internet and now games.
Remember John Lennon’s famous quip that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus?
Well, now Steve Jobs is bigger than the Beatles, says music-industry pundit Bob Lefsetz.
“Steve Jobs’ appearance today is the biggest story in the world,” he wrote today.
“What kind of crazy, fucked-up world do we live in where the biggest rock star doesn’t even play an instrument? I don’t know if you were online at 10 A.M. (1 P.M. on the east coast), but a roar was heard on the Internet louder than any audience explosion ever noted on a dB meter. Steve Jobs hit the stage!”
Lefsetz has banged on about Jobs being a rock star before, but he is absolutely right.
Who’s heard a peep all day about the Beatles? It’s all been about Steve Jobs. And that’s because Apple has got someting new and fresh and honest, while the music industry is once again repackaging something old, something “that meant something once,” Lefsetz says.
Why doesn’t the new iPod touch have a camera? And why can’t the nano take still pictures? Steve Jobs gave David Pogue of the New York Times some answers…
iTunes 9 is available for download from Apple’s website, even though it isn’t yet showing up in Software Update. According to Apple, here is what’s new:
iTunes LP — song lyrics, liner notes, photos, and more.
Home Sharing — Transfer music, movies, and more between your computers at home.
New iTunes Store — The Redesigned iTunes Store. With a great new look, it’s even easier to explore.
iTunes Extras — Get an inside look at your favorite movies with new special features.
Genius Mixes — Genius makes up to twelve perfect music mixes, automatically.
Improved Syncing — Better ways to sync. And a new way manage apps on your Home screens.