Leander Kahney - page 66

Microsoft’s $300 million Vista ad campaign has ditched comedian Jerry Seinfeld in favor of a John Hodgman-alike Microsoft engineer who says: “Hello, I’m a PC, and I’ve been made into a stereotype.”

Microsoft on Thursday is set to air several new ads, according to the New York Times, including one starring a lookalike of the bumbling but lovable PC character in Apple’s Get a Mac ads, played by Daily Show correspondent and author John Hodgman.

The Times says the ad is an “audacious embrace” of Apple’s Windows-baiting, and typical of MS’s new agency, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, which has a history of turning negative perceptions into advertising counterstrikes.

Apple has been “using a lot of their money to de-position our brand and tell people what we stand for,” Microsoft brand marketer David Webster told the Times. “They’ve made a caricature out of the PC.”

Other ads in the series will include musician Pharrell Williams, actress Eva Longoria and author Deepak Chopra, the Times says.

Guess which one is Steve? Clue: The only one thinner than Sir Mick.

Steve Jobs is hobnobbing with Sir Mick Jagger in Brussels, according to the EC press service.

Jobs met with Sir Mick at an online commerce roundtable to discuss “opportunities and barriers” to online retailing in Europe, the EC says. Other bigwigs included EC competition commissioner Neelie Kroes and the heads of LVMH, Alcatel, eBAy, Fiat and EMI, and others.

The business leaders met on Wednesday.

Jobs may be in Europe to attend Apple Expo in Paris, which just opened, although Apple doesn’t have a booth at the show.

The annual Apple Expo trade show is the biggest Apple-oriented show in Europe. Until 2003, Jobs has delivered a keynote speech there. But as Apple has expanded its chain of stores around the world, it has been pulling out of more and more conferences: Macworld in New York, NAB in Las Vegas and Apple Expo in France.

“Apple is participating in fewer trade shows every year, because often there are better ways for us to reach our customers,” an Apple spokesman told Macworld.

More details and pictures after the jump.

On Tuesday morning Steve Jobs will take the stage to deliver one of his singular infomercials. He’s expected to introduce a new iPod, but the only thing I care about is how healthy he looks. Sod the iPod, how’s Steve Jobs?

Jobs’ health has been the burning issue surrounding Apple this year. The company is firing on all cylinders (except the odd glitch like MobileMe) but the CEO’s health is an ongoing issue of extreme concern that will not go away. All eyes on Tuesday will be looking to see how healthy Jobs looks –and fingers crossed he’s OK.

After the jump: did Jobs treat his cancer at Greens veggie restaurant in SF?

CC Pic by reinvented

Crews working at the front of Yerba Center for the Arts.

SAN FRANCISCO — There’s a lot of busy bees preparing for Apple’s special “Let’s Rock” event on Tuesday.

Two days before Steve Jobs hosts a special press event, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is humming with Apple staffers, TV crews and scores of security guards. See the pictures below.

A crew of three or four hung a huge silhouette iPod poster over the Center’s facade, while half-a-dozen Apple staffers watched from the curb, fussing over the details.

The center is lousy with Apple security guards. There’s a guard posted at every one of the center’s half-dozen doors — back and sides. The guard pictured below stood inside a door at the back, which appeared to be securely locked. Apple seems to be taking no chances that nosy bloggers might break in for a sneak peek of what Jobs is going to announce.

Around back, several Apple staffers were busy setting up computers in an office at the rear of the center.

At the side, there’s already a large satellite TV truck parked on Third Street (again, carefully guarded).  A San Francisco police officer has parked his patrol car at the back of the TV truck. Presumably, SFPD will be stationed there for the next two days.

Though Apple has held special events at the Yerba Buena center before, the preparations for Tuesday’s event seem more elaborate than just a new iPod nano would warrant. I may, however, be imagining things. I’ve got a bad cold, and I’m as high as a kite on DayQuil.

An Apple security guard at the back of Yerba Center for the Arts. 

Writer Scott Gilbertson has a very cool Mac netbook that cost him only $550.

It’s got a slick black case, weighs nothing, gets hours of battery life and runs Leopard, the latest version of Mac OS X. It’s not a MacBook Air.

It’s a hacked EeePC — a tiny liliputer , as they’re now called, fresh from Asus, a Tawainese manufacturer best known for PC motherboards.

Gilbertson’s netbook is the device Mac fans have wanted for years: A low-cost cousin to the beautiful but pricey MacBook Air.

It runs like a champ but has a couple of quirks (one big one) and may not be strictly legal, though Apple’s never going to prosecute unless these machines are sold commercially. Hit the jump for details.

What appears to be a genuine spy shot of the new iPod nano has surfaced on MacNN (heavily Photoshopped and disguised for some reason) before it got picked up and surfaced for the wider public in this AppleInsider thread.

As rumored, the new nano appears to be taller than the current model, with a rounded body and screen. Presumably, the screen is designed for the iPod to be tilted to watch widescreen movies in landscape mode.

The device is expected to be unveiled at a Steve Jobs “Let’s Rock” special event in San Francisco next Tuesday. But fear not — there’s likely to be other surprises. Apple PR is telling journalists the event is a “big deal,” which implies there’s more than a tarted-up 2G-looking iPod.

The hilariously named VPILF.com — a site devoted to Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin — is made on a Mac, which is excuse enough to mention it here.

More importantly, Palin supports the teaching of creationism in public schools, according to Wired.com.

Photo by ranajune.

Steve Jobs is still parking in handicapped spaces at Apple, according to a new snap posted to Flickr.

Snapper Rana Sobhany spotted Jobs’ Mercedes SL55 AMG parked in a handicapped spot at the Apple campus over the weekend.

“Mercedes? Check. No license plate? Check. Handicap spot? Yep, this is Steve Jobs’ car!!!” she writes.

Jobs, of course, has a long history of parking in handicapped parking spaces at Apple. The reports go back years, and have recently been documented on Flickr.

Since 2006, Jobs’ car has been snapped in handicapped parking spaces at Apple at least five times. See the pictures after the jump.

Via ValleyWag.

The picture above is burning up Digg right now. It supposedly shows the redesign of the MacBook Pro, which is expected to be refreshed any day now.

The new machine looks gorgeous. With smooth, rounded contours, it resemble the MacBook Air, and there appears to be the magnetic hinge borrowed from entry-level MacBook, which would be a big improvement on the Pro’s current latch/hook design.

Alas, it isn’t a leak — it’s a mockup from the MacRumors forums created by user mciarlo.

UPDATE: I just downloaded the 2.0.2 update myself, and overall, it does seem an improvement. Backup is now much quicker — less than a minute with my 16-Gbyte iPhone 3G (which has about a dozen third-party apps installed). Apps seem snappier. The Contacts app, which was annoyingly slow, now loads instantly and scrolls smoothly with no lags. Keyboard also seems much better. It used to hangup occassionally, especially in Mail, but so far no lags at all (however, many people report that the lag gets progressively worse until a hard reset). It’s too early to tell if 3G reception problems are fixed — but then I’ve not had consistent problems. It’s always been unpredictably spotty.

With widespread complaints of iPhone 3G reception issues, you’d think Apple would say whether the latest iPhone software update — version 2.0.2, released Monday afternoon — addresses connectivity problems.

But no. In inimitable Apple style, the release note for the 2.0.2 update says simply that it includes ‘bug fixes.” Nothing more. Thanks Apple. So helpful.

To top it off, 2.0.2 apparently doesn’t fix 3G reception. According to commenters at Apple’s discussion forums, 3G reception is just as bad, and in some cases, worse than before.

“I was getting none-to-2 bars on 3G here in my home, stationary position,” reports commenter Jettergear. “After the 2.0.2 I am getting nothing but a solid NO SERVICE.”

However, it’s not all bad. Others say that the painful lags with the onscreen keyboard and scrolling are much improved.

“The phone is A LOT snappier now,” reports commenter alangsam. “Contacts works much snappier. Email is much snappier – almost instant. SMS is almost instant. Overall BIG improvement.”

Kris Arnold’s pisstake of the Chris Cocker/Britney video starts off pretty funny — see the video below — but like the original, it goes on a bit too long.

Still, there’s some good lines:

“How f—ing dare anyone even think about selling their Apple stock!”

“All you people care about are Mac rumors, and stock shares! He’s human!… mostly… except his brain… we think.”

“You’re f—-ing lucky he even gave you the iPhone, you bastards!”

 Leave Steve Jobs Alone!!!

I just installed the whopping 250-Mbyte iPhone 2.0.1 update, and it seems to fix most of the problems everyone complained about. Among the highlights:

• Everything runs much faster. Could be my imagination, but feels nice!
• Typing is much faster. No more keyboard lag.
• Infuriatingly sluggish Contacts app now loads fast and scrolls smoothly.
• Syncing is much speedier. No longer backs up every app! TTF.
• Google Maps app seems much faster. Loads quick, smoother scrolling and zippy zooming.
• Overall, update procedure is pretty quick: It installs entirely new firmware, but songs, movies, contacts and other data is left untouched — so there’s no 45 minute restore to suffer through.
• NetShare app is not deleted. My copy of NetShare works fine after the update. Be sure to sync everything, including apps, BEFORE updating. BoxOffice also seems to sync correctly, according to reports on other sites.

Blogger Chris Ainsworth tried to get his pet pigeon, Brisby, to play the popular iPhone music game, Tap Tap Revolution, a version of Dance Dance Revolution for your fingers. Unfortunately, Brisby wasn’t very good, leading Chris to conclude that pigeons suck at video games. But with the proper operant conditioning, the bird could probably be a killer Tap Tap player.

After all, psychologist B.F. Skinner in 1944 built an experimental guided missile that pinpointed  targets by putting three pigeons in the missile’s nose cone.

The pigeons were trained to peck at an image of the target in the middle of a screen. If the missile wandered off course, the image of the target would wander out of the crosshairs. But when the pigeons pecked the screen to center the target, the missile would correct its flight.

Skinner’s Pigeon Project was judged impractical, but not the pigeons’ pecking skills. The birds performed well, pecking at the target up to 10,000 times in 45 minutes.

Steve Jobs does not have a terminal illness, the New York Times says, in an amazing story that Jobs refused to cooperate in the writing of — but actually did in his own singular way.

Reports Joe Nocera:

On Thursday afternoon, several hours after I’d gotten my final “Steve’s health is a private matter” and much to my amazement Mr. Jobs called me. “This is Steve Jobs,” he began. “You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.” After that rather arresting opening, he went on to say that he would give me some details about his recent health problems, but only if I would agree to keep them off the record. I tried to argue him out of it, but he said he wouldn’t talk if I insisted on an on-the-record conversation. So I agreed.

Because the conversation was off the record, I cannot disclose what Mr. Jobs told me. Suffice it to say that I didn’t hear anything that contradicted the reporting that John Markoff and I did this week. While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than “a common bug,” they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer. After he hung up the phone, it occurred to me that I had just been handed, by Mr. Jobs himself, the very information he was refusing to share with the shareholders who have entrusted him with their money.

The WordPress app for iPhone has just gone live on the iTunes App Store. Here’s the direct link to the WordPress app.

The app allows WordPress blogs to be edited on the iPhone and iPod touch, online and off.

It supports blogs hosted at WordPress.com and self-installed blogs (2.5.1 or higher).

There’s all the features you’d expect for mobile blogging — but best of all, there’s an auto-recovery feature that recovers posts interrupted by phone calls. Let’s hope it works.

More details here on the iPhone WordPress site.

Steve Jobs at WWDC 2008. Photo by MacsimumNews

During Apple’s earnings call, a question was asked about Steve Jobs’ health.

Answer: “Jobs has no plans to leave Apple. Steve’s health is a private matter.”

Apple just announced its best June quarter ever for revenue and earnings in Apple’s history.

Highlights include:

• Almost 2.5 million Macs shipped — 41 percent growth. Highest Mac shipments ever. The Mac is back!
• 11 million iPods sold — 12 percent growth
• $7.46 billion revenue
• $1.07 billion profit

(Last year: $5.41 billion and $818 million profit)

And this is without recording any iPhone revenues, which are being deferred until the fourth quarter.

Webcast of the analyst conference call.
Highlights from the analyst call:

• App store: 900 apps; 25 million apps downloaded; 20 percent free; 90 percent below $10.
• iPhone 3G: 22 Countries. 1 million sold in first 3 days after launch. 20 more countries on Aug 22nd
• Future Product transition: Q4. “Can’t discuss today.”

An upskirt warning poster in a subway station outside Tokyo. Photo by Jeff Epp.

The iPhone 3G in Japan has a special feature unique to that country: The camera always makes a conspicuous “shutter” sound when a picture is taken, even when the phone is set to “silent” mode.

The loud shutter sound is supposed to deter voyeurs from taking sneaky pictures up women’s’ skirts — or down their tops.

In Japan, upskirt and downblouse shots have become increasingly popular with the advent of high-resolution camera phones.

As a result, all cell phones sold in Japan make a conspicuous shutter sound, or say the word “cheese” when a snap is taken, according to Nobuyuki Hayashi, a tech reporter based in Tokyo.

On almost all new cell phones, the camera shutter sound can not be muted, Hayashi says.

“Some manufacturers have even put louder shutter sound,” he reports.

The shutter on the first iPhone sold in Japan could be muted in silent mode; an anomaly that many wondered whether Apple would correct in the iPhone 3G, Hayashi says.

Apple did: The shutter sound cannot be turned off, even in silent mode, Hayashi says.

UPDATED: See comment below.

The very last iPhone 3G at the Stonestown store in south San Francisco was just sold to a guy in a Microsoft shirt!

I’m currently at the Apple store in the Stonestown mall, posting from an in-store computer.

I came down to pick up an iPhone 3G, but the last phone was just sold to this guy in a Microsoft shirt. WTF!

The guy, who is very nice, asked me not to use his name in case he gets into trouble at work. He is a trainer for Microsoft Microsoft trainer who works for a third party company.

Staff here at the Apple store say they have no idea when — or even if — they will get new stock of the iPhone 3G.

The concierge is sending people upstairs to a new AT&T store that is apparently taking preorders. The concierge says there’s likely a 21 day wait however.

I phoned other nearby stores in Sand Francisco and Burlingame, but they are sold out also.

As Lonnie reports below, iPhones are available at only one in four stores, and Piper analyst Gene Munster thinks it will take Apple a month to restock.

iBeer is a virtual pint for the iPhone and iPod Touch that is supposed to behave like a real pint of delicious bubbly beer, according to the developers.

Thanks to the iPhone’s accelerometers, it tips, pours and drains like a real pint. It even foams up when you shake the iPhone.

However, the $3 app is getting mixed reviews on the iTunes App Store. Some love it, but many say the fun lasts for about 30 seconds.

“For $3, I can get a real beer,” says one.

Here it is in action on YouTube:

There are still long lines and at least a 3 hour wait to buy the iPhone 2 — four days after the device first went on sale.

I went by the Apple Store near San Francisco’s Union Square on Monday evening. At about 7.30PM there was a long line of about 120 people stretching nearly the entire city block.

The concierge at the front door (pictured above talking to the cop) told me the wait was about 3 hours. The cop told the concierge to call if she needed any help later on. She just laughed. She was about to cut the line off — the store closes at 9PM.

She said the line had been like that all day — a work day for most San Franciscans. A coworker from Wired.com went to the store at lunchtime thinking they could walk right in and pick up a iPhone, and were flabbergasted to see there was still along line.

The problem is the activation procedure, which she said takes an average of 20 to 30 minutes for each customer — even existing AT&T subscribers. Unlike the first iPhone, no one is allowed to leave the store with an inactivated iPhone.

Earlier in the day, my wife went by another San Francisco Apple Store in the Stonestown shopping mall, where there was a line of about 25 or 30 people.

Anyone else seeing long lines?

644642640638636634632630628626624622620618616

Photo by Danny Novo

Everyone is concerned about Steve Jobs’ health, prompting the obvious question about succession plans at Apple. The company seems doomed without him. Who has the vision and drive?

But Apple will be fine without Jobs, although it won’t be the same.

Here’s why, after the jump.

I heard two interesting tidbits about the possible design of the iPhone 2 at the weekend:

Better Battery Thanks To Better Software

3G is generally assumed to be a drain on battery life because of the hardware, which sucks down juice, but it is actually the iPhone’s software that is the problem, according to engineers working on Google’s Android phone. According to a conversation reported to me by a colleague at Wired.com, Google’s engineers say the first iPhone OS was basically a hack. It was adapted from the desktop OS and had none of the advanced power-management features necessary to properly run the networking chips. But the iPhone 2 will have not only better integrated circuits, it will have proper power-management software also.

The iPhone 2 Won’t Have an All-Plastic Case

There are several rumors speculating that the iPhone 2 will have an all-plastic case, replacing the metal back of the current design. But an engineer I talked to last year said the metal cases of the iPod and the iPhone were probably designed to dissipate heat from inside the device . They were likely big heat sinks. And that’s why I doubt the iPhone will have a plastic back, because plastic doesn’t conduct heat as a well as metal.

USA Today, the London Guardian and the Financial Times are all independently reporting that the new iPhone 2 will start at $200, bolstering the rumors we heard last week.

The Guardian says that in some cases, the iPhone will even be free to new subscribers:

… the handset will be offered at lower prices – or even for free. Those who sign up for a contract costing £75 a month will be offered the handset for no extra charge, breaking with Apple’s earlier attempts to avoid the large subsidies common in the rest of the industry. Elsewhere, the gadget is likely to be subsidised to lower the price, which could drop from £269 to as little as £100.

ILounge ran a reader contest to see who could come up with the best iPhone 2 mockup.

We’re running some highlights on Wired: From Mind-Blowing to Mockery The iPhone 2 Mocked Up.

One of the mockups made me laugh — This iPhone Shuffle from Michael Hornbek of Hornslet, Denmark. It has no screen and calls random people.

“Think Indifferent,” Michael says.