Leander Kahney - page 65

When I’m barrelling down the freeway in my four-ton Land Rover, I like to check Google Maps on my iPhone and email my friends. Trouble is, I can’t see where I’m going.

Email ‘N Walk, a new super-clever iPhone app, offers the perfect solution.

It uses the iPhone’s camera to display on screen what’s up ahead. It’s designed for pedestrians  — to stop them walking into lampposts as they read or send email — but it’d work in automotive settings too.

Shame it doesn’t work for text , Web browsing, maps, or video, but it’s a start.

Available for free — for a limited time — from Phase2 Media.

iTunes link for Email ‘N Walk.

Like everyone else, I’m dying to know if Steve Jobs will be returning to work at the end of June.

Since I haven’t got a clue, and neither does anyone else, I figured I’d ask someone who might know. Not the usual blowhard pundits, but Barbara Courtney, a corporate psychic known as the “Seer of Silicon Valley.”

Personally, I’m very skeptical of psychic predictions, but Courtney has a long and storied history as Silicon Valley’s leading clairvoyant. Indeed, she’s the only person on record who correctly predicted Steve Jobs’ return to Apple back in 1997.

Speaking by phone from her home in Redwood City, Courtney said Jobs will return to Apple in June as promised — but he won’t stay long.

“My feeling is he will come back,” said Courtney. “I’m not seeing June as too soon.”

Jobs took six months medical leave in January saying his ongoing medical problems were “more complex” than suspected and he needed time off work to concentrate on his health. The company has promised several times that Jobs will return in late June as planned, but many are pessimistic.

On Tuesday, hopes were further dashed when Apple said the WWDC keynote in early June will be given by a team of executives led by head marketer Phil Schiller. The slot has traditionally been Jobs’, and many hoped (and are still hoping) he’d put in a surprise appearance.

Reader Jay Floyd was cruising L.A.’s Sunset Strip on Thursday afternoon when he spotted Steve Wozniak fleeing some video paparazzi on his Segway. See the photo above — you’ll need a microscope to spot Woz, who’s behind the dark blue SUV.

Says Jay: “He was crossing Crescent Heights at Sunset Blvd, and went whizzing down the strip on the sidewalk. Some videographer paparazzi popped out to take pics.”

The video paparazzi must have been from TMZ.com, which has obsessed over Woz since he dated comedian Kathy Griffin and burned up the dancefloor on Dancing With the Stars.

But as with any great tabloid story, there’s a sex angle. Woz was either on a Segway date with a sexy blonde, or chasing afer her.

Explains Jay: “If you look ahead of him, there was some way-too-pretty blonde woman on another Seqway. Not sure who that was.”

So who is the mystery Segway bombshell? Unfortunately, Jay didn’t have a gigantic zoom lens to snap her mug.

“I only had my iPhone so I couldn’t zoom,” he says. “A bit ironic, I suppose.”

Full pic after jump. Plus useless fuzzy pic of mystery blond.

CC-licensed picture by Ben Stanfield.

A hacker claims to have broken into Steve Jobs’ private Amazon.com account.

The hacker is trying to sell details of Jobs’ Amazon.com account to journalists, including Jobs’ purchase history for several years and his credit card number.

According to the hacker, who identifies himself as “orin0co,” Jobs is an avid online shopper. Jobs has purchased 20,000 items from Amazon.com in the last 10 years, the hacker says. That’s 2,000 items a year, or more than 5 items a day, every day.

“I got myself a hold of this information,” the hacker wrote in an email sent from a secure Hushmail account. “No one else has it. I didn’t misuse it, otherwise Mr. Jobs would long ago change his login detail, wouldn’t he?”

Remember the fantastic portrait of Steve Jobs using Apple’s classic typefaces from last week? Here’s a step-by-step guide showing exactly how designer Dylan Roscover created it in Illustrator and Photoshop. It was 24-hours of work, he says, with no sleep.

A chandelier inside Steve Jobs’ abandoned mansion. Photo by Jonathan Haeber, Bearings.

On Tuesday night, Woodside town council granted Steve Jobs a controversial demolition permit to tear down his rotting mansion in Woodside, California — one of Silicon Valley’s nicest and poshest towns.

Jobs bought the mansion in 1984, the year the Mac was released, and lived there with no furniture for almost a decade. But he hasn’t lived there for nearly 10 years, and he now wants to raze the house and build a smaller, greener dwelling on the land.

The mansion is locked up, but urban adventurer and photographer Jonathan Haeber sneaked into the house and took some rare and unbelievably beautiful pictures.

Explains Jonathan: “As far as how I obtained access, I can’t really say much, other than the fact that it was back in 2006. I found the gate open (I believe there was some landscaping work being done at the time) and the font door slightly ajar. I had my camera on me, and being substantially curious found myself inside of the mansion. I came back soon afterward for a night trip, explicitly to photograph the architecture.  It was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life and I don’t regret doing it.”

Haeber’s photographs show Jobs’ mansion in all its faded glory. Haeber’s haunting pictures include dusty copies of The Godfather videotapes; vines creeping across interior ceilings; and the front of the boarded-up mansion with its immaculately-maintained front lawn.

The pictures are poignant and lovely, and are possibly the last that will be taken of the mansion. On Tuesday, the Woodside town council approved a demolition permit.

Jonathan is an architecture buff who is working to catalog abandoned historical buildings on the West Coast.

He lives in Richmond, California, across the Bay from Woodside, and documents his adventures at his Bearings website. There’s a video explaining his project on the TBug website.

Jon has also photographed Michael Jackson’s empty Neverland Ranch and a flooded Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans.

All Photos used with kind persmission of Jonathan Haeber.

The Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update is one of the biggest Apple has ever released — but there appears to be no major new features, just a bunch of bug and security fixes.

It looks like Apple is putting the finishing touches to OS 10.5 before releasing Snow Leopard in the fall, which will have major code changes under the hood.

The Mac OS X 10.5.7 delta update, which updates 10.5.6 to 10.5.7, weighs in at 442MB; while the combo update, which transforms any version of 10.5 into 10.5.7, is a whopping 729MB.

According to an Apple support document, the update fixes bugs and security issues in the core OS, iCal, Mail and printer controls. Possibly the biggest change is adding RAW support for several new cameras, and improved video playback on recent Macs with Nvidia graphics cards.

But according to Macworld Rob Griffiths, who examined installer log files, the update tweaks a long list of applications, from Address Book to Terminal.

“What’s most surprising about the number of modified applications is that very few of those are mentioned on Apple’s 10.5.7 notes page–only Dashboard, Time Machine, iCal and Mail are directly called out, but none of the rest,” writes Griffiths. “(The log) reveals a total of 16,915 changed files on my MacBook Pro. Despite that, things seem to be running very smoothly here after the update.”

Jobs’ Woodside mansion in its glory days. Photo by Friends Of The Jackling House.

After a long legal battle, Steve Jobs has been granted permission to tear down his crumbling mansion in the posh Silicon Valley town of Woodside, California.

At a hearing of the Woodside town council on Tuesday night, councilors voted 6 to 1 to approve a demolition permit allowing Jobs to tear down his neglected, 14-bedroom Jackling mansion.

“It’s an unfortunate thing that Mr. Jobs doesn’t like the house,” Woodside’s Mayor Peter Mason told the Palo Alto Daily News. “It’s really sad that we’re going to continue to tear down historic resources in this town because they’re old.”

The mayor, who is also an architect, cast the sole dissenting vote.  

Jobs bought the mansion in 1984 and lived there for a decade with barely any furniture until he got married and started raising a family. He currently lives with his wife and children in Palo Alto. The 17,000-square-foot mansion has remained empty and neglected since.

In 2004, the Woodside town council granted a demolition permit, but it was blocked by a local preservationist group called Friends Of The Jackling House, which claimed the mansion is a national treasure. The mansion was built in 1925 for copper millionaire Daniel C. Jackling by architect George Washington Smith.

At one point, Jobs offered to give the mansion for free to anyone who would haul it away.

CC-licensed photo by Dario Melpignano.

Steve Jobs will not headline Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June as many fans had hoped.

Instead, a team of executives led by Phil Schiller will deliver the keynote, according to an Apple press release issued Wednesday morning.

The news is a big blow to Apple fans, who were hoping Jobs would mark his return to Apple with a big splashy appearance at the conference.

Jobs took six months medical leave in January to focus on his health, which had appeared to be in serious decline during 2008. In public appearances, Jobs appeared alarmingly gaunt and thin. Jobs said he would return to work at the end of June, but many hoped he might make an earlier appearance at the week-long programmers conference, which will start on Monday, June 8.

The full press release after the jump.

Via Gizmodo.

Designer Dylan Roscover has created a fabulous portrait of  Steve Jobs using the words of Apple’s seminal “Think Different” campaign.

At first, Dylan’s portrait looks like a pointillist painting. But on closer inspection, you see that Jobs is rendered in the words of “the crazy ones” TV ad, using a variety of Apple-related fonts — Motter Tektura, Apple Garamond, Myriad, Univers, Gill Sans, and Volkswagen AG Rounded, to be exact.

Dylan is a self-described ‘design nerd’ who lives in Aloma, Florida.

Says Dylan: “This is a typeface-driven design based on the “Here’s to the crazy ones” ad campaign from Apple in the 90s, using… fonts present in Apple branding and products.”

Hit the jump for a detail pic and link to the fullsize picture.

Via Macgasm.

To advertise it’s recycling chops, a Canadian home improvement company has cleverly recycled a giant Apple billboard in Montréal.

Canada’s version of Home Depot, Rona, hung a banner underneath an Apple billboard with a line of multicolored iPods dripping colored paint.

Rona’s banner shows the paint being collected in paint buckets. The clever mashup advertises the company’s paint recycling program.

“Nous recuperons les restes de peinture,” the tagline says, which translates to: “We collect leftover paint”

Link to Cyberpresse report in French.

Thanks Hypersky.

Following rumors that Apple and Verizon are wooing each other, Wired.com is asking, “Which cellphone network is the best?”

To answer that question, Wired.com is asking for your help testing the speed of U.S. cellphone’ networks.

The test is open to all smartphones on all networks. Simply:

1. Ensure Wi-Fi is turned off and 3G is enabled on your smartphone (not the slower EDGE connection).

2. Load your smartphone’s browser and visit https://inetworktest.com/wired.*

3. The test will run automatically as the page loads. When it’s done loading, tap your carrier (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile or Sprint), and your results will appear.

4. Add your details to Wired.com’s results map here: https://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/05/3gstudy

Wired.com’s study follows up on an iPhone-only survey last year, which concluded connection problems were AT&T’s fault, not the iPhone’s.

As Wired.com notes, “A carrier’s network performance is a dealbreaking factor for consumers shopping for a smartphone, whether it’s the iPhone, the HTC G1, or a BlackBerry Storm.”

The test is .

Woz’s dancing was hilarious. The kids stayed up specially to watch him and we laughed our heads off. Especially when he first came out on his Segway and went into a dance pose.

Woz had some great moves, saluting his slinky partner, twisting his meaty hips and dropping to his knees. For a big guy, he had surprising energy.

We were expecting a cringe-worthy disaster, but he comported himself superbly. It was a genuine a hoot. Can’t wait till next week.

I’m long on Woz. He might go to the finals, just like the BBC’s pudgy John Sergeant in the UK last year.

UPDATE: The stupid judges gave Woz and Karina Smirnoff low marks. Idiots.

See Also: Voting for Woz on Dancing with the Stars? Here’s how

Story and photos by Natalie Guillén

SANTA FE, New Mexico — As Arch Sproul unpacked half a dozen Macintosh Classic IIs, all six of his employees hovered around in excitement.

It was fall of 1992, and most of the employees had never used a computer before.

Today, four of those original computers are still in use, working overtime seven days a week at the Virginia Trading Post arts and crafts store, nestled next to dozens of other shops downtown. They are used mainly as cash registers, scanning bar codes, and keeping tabs on inventory.

The machines are rare examples of aging Macs that are still in daily use. They are a testament to the utility and longevity of the Mac, which celebrates its 25th anniversary on Sunday.

Documentary film maker Gary Hustwit recently got to interview top Apple designer Jonny Ive for Objectified, a movie he’s making about industrial design.

The interview took place inside Ive’s ultra-secretive design studio near Apple’s campus, which is harder to get into than Fort Knox. This is the first interview I’ve ever heard of taking place inside the studio. Quite a coup for the film. I can’t wait to see it.

In the meantime, I’m dying to know what machines are in the background of this still. I knew the studio was filled with CNC mills and 3D fabricators. Does anyone know what machines are shown in this shot?

Photo: James Merithew/Wired.com

While I was researching Inside Steve’s Brain, I read everything I could lay my hands on about Steve Jobs, including just about every book and magazine article published in the last couple of decades. One of the most striking things was how many times Jobs mentioned death as the driving force in his life.

Over and over Jobs said he was driven to make an impact before his time ran out.

It was such a recurrent theme, I thought of devoting an entire chapter to the subject in the book. Jobs had an obsession with death to rival Emily Dickinson’s.

Even in his twenties, Jobs obsessed about death. He told former Apple CEO John Sculley he was convinced he would live a very short life and urgently needed to have an impact before he died. Sculley thought this was why he was so driven and ambitious, according to Sculley’s autobiography. Of course, Jobs lived much longer than he suspected.

Best known perhaps, are Jobs comments during his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” he said. “Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

It’s comments like this that makes me pessimistic about today’s news that Jobs is stepping aside, even if he claims it is only temporary.

For the last four decades, since Jobs cofounded Apple in his bedroom, he’s worked like a horse — rising early, taking short vacations, avoiding parties and sacrificing holidays to prepare for Macworld.

Work and family — that’s all he does.

I think he’s now focusing on his family.

I hope it’s not the case, but I suspect Jobs will not return to Apple.

Today’s announcement makes me think he’s focusing on “what’s truly important” — his family.

Phil Schiller at a WWDC beerbash. Photo by Graham Ballantyne (CC license).

I’m actually looking forward to Phil Schiller’s keynote on Tuesday for three reasons:

1. He is genuinely funny. He’s been great in keynotes past, and he can easily carry a whole keynote alone. See Charles Arthur’s report from Paris Macworld in 2004, after Schiller stepped in for Jobs. The big surprise? Schiller was a gas: The dramatic news from the Apple Expo: Phil Schiller is *funny*!

2. He’s not Steve Jobs. He’s not perfect like Steve Jobs. He seems like a regular guy and a bit of a schlub — and I like that. Here he is at a programmer’s beer bash — the kind of event you could NEVER imagine Jobs attending.

3. He’ll deliver a great “One Last Thing.” Because of the controversy and disappointment surrounding the speech, Phil must go out on a high note. I’m hoping for a surprise appearance from Steve Jobs. Hopefully he won’t announce his retirement from Apple.

Phil Schiller has a posse; CC photo by JL! who snapped the poster near his office — no other info is given.

iPhone snap of a Macworld banner by Steve Rhodes (CC licensed).

Here’s some useful links for this week’s Macworld:

iMacworld iPhone app — IDG has a handy-looking show guide for the iPhone (I haven’t tried it yet). The app, iMacworld, includes exhibitors, products and conference sessions. You can download the application here.

Hess Memorial Events List — The Hess Memorial Events List (named after the late MacWeek editor Robert Hess and maintained by Ilene Hoffman) is probably the most comprehensive list of happenings, but unfortunately isn’t in a calendar friendly format.

#Macworld and MWSF 09 on Twitter — The Twitter hashtag for this year’s Macworld is a battle between #Macworld and #mwsf09. Try also Macworld

Macworld on FriendFeed

Macworld on Upcoming.org

Macworld on SocialCalendario

Macworld 2009 on Flickr

Several links via Macworldbound.com — “The Definitive Guide to Macworld for First-timers.”

Steve Jobs in January 2008. Picture by Macinate. Creative Commons.

In the wake of Apple pulling out of Macworld — and the prospect that Steve Jobs may leave the company — many are wondering if Apple will survive without him.

The answer is yes, Apple will definitely survive without Steve Jobs. It may even thrive.

Here’s three reasons why, after the jump:

I’m a shy and retiring Englishman, so tooting my own horn doesn’t come naturally, but my brash American wife insist I post this: USA Today named Inside Steve’s Brain, my book about Steve Jobs, one of the best business titles published in 2008.

Says USA Today:

“Offers insightful nuggets on Steve Jobs, who helped create personal computers and digital music while moonlighting as a modern-day Walt Disney at animation studio Pixar.”

Link: Year’s best: These books meant business in 2008

Links: Inside Steve’s Brain on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and 800CEORead.

Pictures: Fantasic mockups by Miguel Surez

This is guesswork, but here’s the likely feature list of the new MacBooks due October 14:

* Penryn Core 2 Duo chips: 2.4GHz, 2.66GHz, 2.8GHz, and 3.06GHz.

* 2GB of RAM (MacBook); 4GB of RAM (MacBook Pro).

* Hard drives: 160GB — 320GB.

* Glossy widescreen TFT screens. On the MacBook: 13.3-inch (1,280×800 resolution); MacBook Pro: 13.8-inch (1,366×768).

* Integrated NVIDIA graphics system.

* New, all-aluminum enclosures, white, black and silver. (Would love to see multiple colors, but think its unlikely — it’s an inventory nightmare, especially for high-priced products).

* Enclosure is tapered: very thin at the sides, thicker inthe middle, like the iPhone 3G and MacBook Air.

* Magnetic lid latch on all models (replacing mechanical clasps on the MacBook Pro).

* All ports on left side — including FireWire 800.

* Slot-loading optical drive on right (no Blu-ray).

* Extra-large battery pack running full width of computer at the front, under the touchpad.

* Recessed keypad like MacBook Air. Keys are Chicklet style on MacBooks, black and backlight on Pros.

* Price: Starting at $800. This is the mysterious “product transition” that Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said in July would impact Apple’s gross margins.

“We will be delivering state-of-the-art new products that I cannot discuss today that our competitors will not be able to match,” Oppenheimer said during the Q308 conference call.

Is this the new MacBook Pro?

The picture above claims to be a camera phone pic snapped by an Apple employee on the design team.

If the picture is real, it means the new MacBook Pros, expected to be unveiled October 14, have a few design changes:

1. It has a unique two-tone case. A first for Apple. The lid looks like it’s made of glossy black plastic, with an aluminum bottom.

2. The lid dispenses with hook clasps in favor of a magnetic latch mechanism, like current MacBooks.

3. There’s no multitouch sensitive “glass touchpad,” as rumored.

The Apple source also sent an ad featuring the MacBook Pro that is destined for Apple’s website.

The MacBook Pro ad after the jump.

Here’s hoping that Apple’s feverishly-anticipated “Brick” project is the world’s first all-screen laptop — like this mockup of the OLPC version 2 by designer Yves Behar.

There’s slim chance, of course, but I for one would love a computing device like this: A hybrid iPhone-meets-Macbook-Air that would put hot netbooks like the EeePC to shame.

Apple’s “Brick” would be a hybrid laptop/tablet/ebook that dispenses with a physical keyboard and trackpad in favor of a virtual, adaptive UI that blends multitouch, gestures and its own orientation to switch between different modes:

Laptop — When the Brick is held horizontally with the two screens at an angle, the bottom screen turns into a virtual keyboard and touchpad. There’s no tactile feedback for touch typists, but never mind, corrective text handily makes up for the myriad errors. The top screen acts like a regular laptop screen, except that it also is touch sensitive, and is responsive to multitouch gestures like double-tap to zoom, pinching and scrolling.

Tablet — When the two halves are opened fully they snap together in the middle to make a tablet with a continuous touch-sensitive screen. This mode is best for surfing the web, browsing and editing photos, and displaying mind-altering music visualizers.

eBook — Like laptop mode but held vertically. Each screen transforms into an electronic page for easy reading. Displays eBooks, eMags or specially laid out websites. Readers navigate by swiping the screen to turn the pages.

Tabletop — Like tablet mode but for two people. When an onscreen button is pushed, the screens are oriented for two users sitting opposite each other. Great for collaborative tasks and especially games.

And why’s it called “Brick”? Because it smashes Windows!

More pictures after the jump.

Inspired by Computerworld columnist Mike Elgan.

UPDATE: The t-shirts are a protest from Murderdrome, the digital comic Apple banned from the iPhone App Store. As reader Alan notes in the comments, the t-shirts were handed out as protest by infuroiuscomics.com, the Northern Irish outfit behind the banned Murderdrome digital comic.

What is this t-shirt everyone is wearing at the grand opening of Apple’s first store in Northern Ireland?

Watch this BBC News report from the grand opening of the new store in Belfast this weekend. (“It’s absolutely mental,” says the delighted Apple fan above).

The overnight camping, high-fives and excited whooping are very much a part of grand openings in the U.S., but oddly, there’s one weird difference: Few people are wearing Apple shirts. Instead, half the crowd seems to wearing the same skull and bones shirt in either red or black.

Anyone recognize it?

The more I watch Microsoft’s new ad for Windows, the more I like it.

The ad, which debuted on Thursday night, successfully counters the idea promoted by Apple that PCs are bumbling buffoons personified by prematurely middle-aged businessmen.

Instead, the ad convincingly portrays the PC as part of global culture, unpretentious and down-to-earth.

The ad starts with a John Hodgman-alike Microsoft engineer, who proudly declares: “I’m a PC, and I am not alone.” It then swings through Europe, Africa, America and back again, showing people of all nations declaring simply one after the other: “I’m a PC.”

It ends with author Deepak Chopra, who says: “We are all a PC, inseparably one.”

Watch it carefully. The people and locations of the ad clearly reflect Bill Gates’ concerns about the world: disease, poverty, education and opportunity. Bill Gates makes a appearance (a welcome one. I admire him giving away his money), and there’s quite a few people from developing countries in this ad: something I’ve never seen in Apple’s marketing.

They’re real people, with accents and bad teeth (like me). I find it a refreshing antidote to the fake youthfulness of Apple’s iPod silhouettes and the insufferable, elitist hipster who personifies the Mac on TV.

I like Microsoft’s new ad because it portrays the PC through the very ordinary people that use these machines every day — and some extraordinary ones. It’s the opposite of Apple’s phony lifestyle advertising. It’s refreshingly egalitarian. It’s like “The Wire” versus “Law and Order.” Plus, there’s no sign of Jerry Seinfeld.

UPDATE: Two more new ads after the jump.