Leander Kahney - page 72

Apple has become the third largest music retailer in the U.S., besting Amazon in fourth, according to the latest quarterly survey by NPD Group.

Apple now has a 10 percent market share behind Wal-Mart (15.8 percent) and Best Buy (13.8).

Previously in fifth place, Apple leapt over Target and Amazon.

NPD said Apple benefitted from sales of iPods over the holidays, and a slowdown in CD sales. Year-on0year, CD sales are down by 20 percent in the first quarter, according ot Nielsen Soundscan.

Apple and Amazon are the only companies in the top 10 that sell digital downloads.

Reuters.

Pic by ShadowzBlog

There are waiters advertising on Craigslist these days — iPhone waiters, that is.

Several people are advertising on Craigslist their willingness to line up for others for an iPhone later this week — for a fee, of course. The going rate is about $250 a day — 6AM to 6PM, when the device goes on sale.

Some have suggested this service will be performed by desperate homeless people, but a quick survey of the ads suggests that unemployed clowns make up the ranks of iPhone waiters.

“3 clowns, unemployed and hungry, willing to wait in line for three separate individuals, 250 a pop, guaranteeing you get yourselves that tasty little iPhone,” says a San Francisco ad: iPhone Professional Waiters – $250 (downtown / civic / van ness)

The same clowns, or perhaps stunt doubles, are willing to wait in line in New York:

“2 clowns, unemployed and hungry, willing to wait in line for two separate individuals, 250 a pop, guaranteeing you get yourselves that tasty little iPhone on June 29th! email me asap, I will spend all day and night that day and bring it to you!” — Need an iPhone? I’ll WAIT ON LINE FOR YOU for TWO ppl! – $250 (Upper West Side)

Here’s a few more:
New York
WHO NEEDS AN APPLE IPHONE
Student willing to stand in line overnight for iPhone release. Will either buy and deliver or hold spot in line .
Danville, Calif.
YOU WANT AN IPHONE I WANT TO STAND IN LINE
Los Angeles
Professional line waiters near Pasadena! Guaranteed to get an iPhone on the 29th. Multiple waiters available upon request. For more info email me.
and another:
Will Stand In Line For a IPhone for peole who can’t

iPhone Wallpaper

Originally uploaded by zeronine.

There’s a slick iPhone ad shot in New York City at iPhoneNewYorkCity.com. It’s clearly made by pros — there was a casting call in April — but there’s no info on the ad’s site except the creators’ names: Alec Sutherland, Anthony Hechanova, Todd DosSantos and Shane Annas.

Reminds me of George Master’s unofficial iPod ad.

Delicious Library 2, which has a snazzy new UI based on Core Animation, wins an Apple’s 2007 Design Award for Best Leopard Application. Still no screenshots of it though.

For discussion of Core Animation and how it might change interfaces, see here: Kiss Boring Interfaces Goodbye With Apple’s New Animated OS.

The other winners are:

Best Mac OS X User Experience: Coda. Panic.

Best Mac OS X Developer Tool: CSSEdit 2.5. MacRabbit.

Best Mac OS X Game: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade 2.0. Blizzard Entertainment .

Best Mac OS X Scientific Computing Solution: Papers 1.0. Alexander Griekspoor and Tom Groothuis.

Best Mac OS X Dashboard Widget: BART Widget 1.0. Bret Victor.

Best Mac OS X Student Product: Picturesque 1.0. Zac Cohen.

It’s a beautiful sunny morning here in San Francisco, and Wired News will be liveblogging Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC. We have reporters. We have cameras, and we have press passes. Check it out here at 10 AM. Don’t forget to refresh.

I predict Steve Jobs will introduce a multitouch mousepad at WWDC tomorrow morning — and that finger input will be one of the “top secret” features of Leopard.

The multitouch pad will look like a standard mousepad, but it’ll be finger sensitive, like the touchpads on most notebooks. But instead of one finger, it’ll be sensitive to multi-finger gestures and commands, like the iPhone.

The pad will completely replace the mouse, allowing users to control the Mac with their fingers — moving the cursor, selecting files and double clicking with a quick double tap of the index finger.

The pad will also respond to a whole new vocabulary of gestures, like Mouse Gestures in Firefox, which execute common commands (backwards, forwards, reload) with a sweep of the mouse. Using your fingers, you’ll open files by twisting to the left, as though turning an imaginary dial. Twist your fingers to the right to close the file.

The pad will be USB powered, and will have “soft buttons” for common commands like cut and paste, and delete.

Jobs will unveil multitouch at WWDC to give Mac programmers time to incorporate gesture commands into their software before Leopard’s release in October.

Of course, this is pure speculation. I’ve no evidence whatsoever this is going to happen. I’ve no idea if it’s even realistic. Can developers incorporate an entirely new UI into their software in a few months? Will people even want it? Don’t forget, the QWERTY keyboard is still around. People don’t like whacky new interfaces.

Still, Jobs made a big deal of the multitouch finger interface of the iPhone, proclaiming it the third great “revolutionary” interface after the mouse and the scroll wheel. It seems natural we should be using our fingers to interact with computers.

Others are doing it. Microsoft has it’s Surface table, and I saw a new HP TouchSmart PC at the weekend, which is controlled by a large touch screen. A woman was playing Solitaire on the screen with her fingers, and it worked really well. I was quite impressed.

Apple is already making moves towards gesture interfaces. The touchpads on MacBooks support two finger scrolling. And there’s the iPhone.

Part of the iPhone’s multitouch interface is based on the work of two University of Delaware professors, John Elias and Wayne Westerman. Elias and Westerman owned a company called FingerWorks that sold a multitouch Touchstream keyboard and an iGesture Numeric Keypad, which worked like the multitouch mousepad described above.

Apple bought FingerWorks in early 2005, along with the professors’ patents, which look like an entire platform for finger-based interfaces.
For one thing, using your finger seems to help with RSI, according to FingerWorks’ testimonials:

“I’ve been a LP user for about 8 months. It’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to me in the world of computers. I’m a mechanical engineer and I use it for 2D and 3D CAD drafting, as well as ‘normal’ office type use. Also, I’m a Linux and Windows user, and I love how it works easily in both environments.

I have RSI in both my left and right forearms and wrists. Since using the Touchstream, I’ve reduced pain considerably, and I am able to do work with much less pain.”

BBC News: “A video has appeared on the internet showing the first pictures of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston since his abduction in Gaza on 12 March.
It is said to have been posted by the Army of Islam, the group that says it is holding the reporter.
In the video, Mr Johnston says he is in good health and that his captors have treated him well.”
This is great news. I hope to God he’s released without harm.

At the D Conference today, Steve Jobs admitted he likes the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.

Walt Mossberg asked: Do you read the Fake Steve Jobs blog?

Jobs: I have read a few of the FSJ things recently, but I thought it was pretty funny!

Steve Jobs is a reverse switcher! He’s switched back to New Balance sneakers after a couple of token months wearing Nike. Could his Nike + iPod deal be in trouble?

Via Engadget.

Mr. Hopkinson’s Computer is, well, a computer that sings cover versions of The Stone Roses, Radiohead and Portishead. You’d think it would be dreadful, but the machine really knocks it out. The computer sounds like a falsetto Stephen Hawking, and it really works, especially singing The Stone Roses’ Fools Gold. Check out the MySpace page.

Via Cool Hunting.

The Chop Shop t-shirt website has a very unusual Apple II t-shirt design for sale. The front of the shirt looks like a template for a plastic toy — like a model airplane.
But turn the shirt around and the assembled model is on the back — an Apple II. The site says each tee comes with a limited edition temporary tattoo.

Apple: Get Your Defective Laptop Replaced By Sending Well-Written Emails To Steve Jobs – Consumerist

Steve Jobs on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Weight Recycled as % of Past Sales. Credit: Apple

In a case of life imitating art, the Real Steve Jobs is following the Fake Steve Jobs’ green lead.

On Wed. April 11, Fake Steve wrote:

By the end of this year I want Apple to be known as the greenest company in the world — not just in tech but in everything. If we’ve got to make hydrogen-powered computers and iPods that run on solar energy, so be it. Let’s get this done.

On Tue. May 2, Real Steve wrote:

Apple has been criticized by some environmental organizations for not being a leader in removing toxic chemicals from its new products, and for not aggressively or properly recycling its old products. Upon investigating Apple’s current practices and progress towards these goals, I was surprised to learn that in many cases Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors in these areas.

Great visual joke from TUAW. Link.

In the Times, reporters John Markoff and Matt Richtel cast about for the motives behind Fred Andeson’s statement on Tuesday that he warned Steve Jobs about the legal and accounting ramifications of the controversial 2001 “executive team” options grants.

Markoff and Richtel say the statement against Jobs was “an extraordinarily sharp elbow” and a “shot heard round Silicon Valley.” Speaking to various analysts and observers, they speculate that Anderson may be contributing to the “legal cloud remaining over Jobs.”

There’s a couple of interesting tidbits. It reveals that Anderson, when serving on Apple’s board, volunteered to conduct an internal investigation into how the company handled options when the SEC first started investigating widespread backdating practices. He “did so at the time not because Apple was suspected of having a problem but because many major companies were trying to understand their practices in case they did face scrutiny or accusations,” the Times says.

Irish rock star Bono, a co-founder with Anderson of Elevation Partners, a venture capital firm, said: “He is a man to whom you would give the keys to your life and know it would be calmer, tidier and better organized every day he was in it.”

Another Elevation colleague, said Anderson had been” deeply hurt by insinuations from Apple that he was responsible for the option accounting problems.”

He said the comments by Mr. Anderson’s lawyer were an attempt to clear Mr. Anderson’s name and “set the record straight in a way that has not been possible because of the pending legal action.”

The BBC is asking bloggers and website publishers to post a button in support of Alan Johnston, a BBC journalist missing in Gaza, presumed kidnapped. Johnston was the last international journalist reporting from Gaza, and was highly respected, even by many Palestinians. Remember Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor journalist kidnapped in Iraq who was released safely? International pressure does work.

Link:

BBC correspondent Alan Johnston disappeared on his way home from his Gaza City office on 12 March. He is feared kidnapped in the lawless territory, where he is thought to have been the only international correspondent still working. Intensive efforts have been made to secure his release.

Here’s instructions how to add the link to your blog.

From Jack000’s photostream: My submission to the 7th ipod give-away at mike inudstries: movie poster with Steve Jobs in it. More here.

Apple’s board issued a statement of total support of Steve Jobs this afternoon. It follows ex-CFO Fred Anderson’s ass-covering letter yesterday claiming he was a patsy in the options backdating scandal. Apple’s board said:

We are not going to enter into a public debate with Fred Anderson or his lawyer. Steve Jobs cooperated fully with Apple’s independent investigation and with the government’s investigation of stock option grants at Apple. The SEC investigated the matter thoroughly and its complaint speaks for itself, in terms of what it says, what it does not say, who it charges, and who it does not charge. We have complete confidence in the conclusions of Apple’s independent investigation, and in Steve’s integrity and his ability to lead Apple.

Lots of good news for Apple in its latest quarterly report. The company’s on a roll. Not only are iPod sales up (10.5 million sold), so are Macs, especially Mac Books. Apple sold 1.52 million Macintosh computers, up 24 percent from a year ago. Reuters reports:

The results blew away Apple’s own forecast, which tends to be cautious, of 54 cents to 56 cents. Analysts had expected Apple to earn 63 cents per share, on average, on revenue of $5.17 billion, according to Reuters Estimates… Shares of Apple have climbed about 12 percent this year, after advancing 18 percent in 2006 and more than doubling in 2005, fueled by robust sales of iPods and redesigned Macintosh computers.

UPDATE: NYT:

In an interview, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, called the quarter a “blowout,” and noted that the strong sales and market share gains came even though the company had not made any major upgrades to its lines of portable and desktop computers.

“The Mac is clearly gaining market share, with sales growing 36 percent more than three times the industry growth rate,” Mr. Jobs said. Overall personal computer sales increased only about 11 percent during the quarter, according to the market researcher IDC.

Apple’s strength was particularly notable in that it came during the quarter in which Microsoft finally released the long-awaited Vista version of its Windows operating system, an event that the PC industry was counting on to spur a wave of computer upgrades.

Mr. Jobs noted that Dell had recently returned an earlier version of Windows to its product line, which he said was an indication that demand for Vista had not been overwhelming.

No Charges for Apple Over Options – New York Times

Federal securities regulators said yesterday that they would bring no civil charges against Apple over the backdating of executive stock options. But they stopped short of removing the cloud that for nearly a year has hung over the company’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs.

… “Steve Jobs dodged a bullet,” said Mark C. Zauderer, a trial lawyer in New York specializing in white-collar cases. “This is another circumstance where the government is going after an easier target. It will generally shy away from situations where the evidence is ambiguous or subject to different interpretations.”

The new Coda website development app from the well-regarded software publisher Panic gets a rave review from John Gruber at Daring Fireball. Coda is an all-in-one site creation tool, combining a text editor, CSS editor, FTP, terminal and live preview in one app.
Gruber writes:

It’s about reducing clutter and emphasizing the relationships between the different aspects of web development, making it easier to switch from source code to preview to files. Coda’s advantages are most obvious when you consider working with two or three projects at once. In Coda, each site gets its own window, grouping source code, browser previews, terminals, and file listings together.6 The idea is that all your stuff –œ file listing, source code, browser previews, terminals –œ for site A is here, all your stuff for site B is there. Coda groups and visually organizes these disparate elements by project, rather than by app.

There’s another thorough review here at MacApper.

What do you get if you cross an iPod, a boombox and a Mac Pro?

A: the iPod PowerBox G7

Unfortunately, this is just a mockup by someone called “Greg” but I like its styling. It’s got one too many handles though.

Link.

Time is allowing readers to vote on the year’s list of the top 100 most influential people — and Steve Jobs is rising fast. I confidently predict that Jobs will shortly be #1. (At 6.54am pacific time, Jobs is #5 and comedian Stephen Colbert is #1).

Apple’s ex-CFO has cut a deal with the SEC in Apple’s backdated options scandal, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing anonymous sources. Anderson will pay a fine of $150,000 and repay about $3.5 million worth of options. The deal does not include an admission of wrongdoing, the WSJ says.
The SEC reportedly intends to pursue civil charges against Nancy Heinen, Apple’s ex-general counsel, who will contest the case, according to the WSJ.

The AP reports:

Cris Arguedas, a lawyer for former Apple counsel Nancy Heinen, said Monday that the Securities and Exchange Commission has informed attorneys in the case that it plans to file a lawsuit against Heinen alleging fraud in connection with two options grants. One involved a grant to Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs on Oct. 19, 2001, for 7.5 million shares and another involved a grant made to top executives, including Heinen herself, on Jan. 17, 2001.

“We do expect them to file against our client and we will be defending those charges because they are a misunderstanding of the activities of Apple,” Arguedas said.