Lonnie Lazar - page 30

UPDATE: This piece has been edited for clarity on the timeline for the legality of same-sex marriage in California.

Citing the vote as an issue of “a person’s fundamental rights,” Apple today made a $100,000 contribution to the NO on 8 campaign, an effort to defeat a measure on next Tuesday’s ballot in California that would overturn the state’s laws permitting same-sex couples to marry.

Apple’s contribution and public stance supporting the No on 8 campaign is noteworthy not only because it is rare for the company to take a public position on political matters, but also because it helps combat the effects of millions of dollars that have been spent by out-of-state religious groups on TV advertisements threatening dire consequences if gays are allowed the right to marry.

California gays and lesbians were first able to marry in 2004, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom arranged for ceremonies at City Hall. Conflicting rulings at the state level confused the issue until the California Supreme Court ruled this year to allow gay marriages throughout the state on equal protection grounds.

The Apple announcement came on the heels of similar public support for defeating the Proposition from Google. Sergey Brin, CEO of the Mountain View-based company wrote in the company blog, “we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument [but] we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 — we should not eliminate anyone’s fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.”

Apple’s Hot News release on the matter says, “Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.”

Eleven years ago, Michael Dell, CEO of Austin, TX-based Dell Computers was asked what he would do if he were CEO of Apple Computers. His answer: “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”

It’s hard to know what Steve Jobs would say if he were asked the same question today, because he rarely speaks to the press. But if he wanted to, he could do the very same thing for Dell, Inc. shareholders tomorrow and still have about $10 billion left in the bank.

Apple reported nearly $25 billion cash-on-hand at the end of FY2008 Tuesday and Dell had a market cap of about $24 billion with $9 billion cash of its own at the close of trading on Thursday, graphic indications of the changed fortunes of the two companies over the past decade or so.

Mr. Dell retains a considerable advantage over Mr. Jobs in personal wealth, however, with a Texas-sized net worth of $17.3 billion compared to Jobs’ mere $5.7 billion.

Looking at the chart above comparing the price movements in the stock of the two companies in the past ten years, you have to wonder what they’ve been up to down there in Austin, don’t you?

Via Fortune

Developers Phil Ryu and Andrew Kaz are about to release an iPhone eBook reader with a very cool interface. Flip the iPhone’s screen to turn the page, and the page turns as though it’s a real book! It’s very slick.

Ryu’s $2.99 “Classics” app will feature 10 to 12 books including Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

“We’ll be adding books with free updates,” says Ryu, 20, who lives in Boston.

Ryu is probably best known for his work at MacHeist, and Kaz, 18, was just 14 when he worked on delicious library. Kaz is based in New Jersey.

The pair are planning to submit the app to the app store in a few days.

Meanwhile, they have a preview available, and more details about the app here.

iPhones could be a big part of the changes coming to Washington, DC in the post-George W. Bush era if a House Chief Administrative Office (CAO) test deems them suitable for use by members of congress and their staffs.

At the request of a number of congressional representatives, the CAO has begun testing a small number of iPhones within its ranks to see if they are compatible with the working needs of lawmakers and staff, according to a report at the Hill.com.

RIM’s Blacberry handhelds have been the communicator of choice in Washington since 2001 and today nearly 8,200 rely on a dedicated Blackberry exchange server to deliver email to people affiliated with the House of Representatives. “We’re trying [iPhones] out … because we heard a lot of people wanted the option to have them,” said Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the CAO.

Should the iPhone become widely adopted after congress reconvenes in January, it will require costly investments including a new email server, in addition to the handsets themselves, funds for which would be required to come from the Member’s Representational Allowance, which is a government term for “paid for by taxpayers.”

Does your member of congress deserve an iPhone?

An unannounced Apple product with a display somewhere between an iPhone and a MacBook is lurking out there somewhere, according to an anonymous source at an unnamed search engine company.

Buried in an update to his post about Steve Jobs’ participation on yesterday’s Apple 4Q earnings call, New York Times technology writer John Markoff says a source to whom he promised anonymity confirmed the search engine company has spotted visits from an Apple product with a display that is neither iPhone nor MacBook.

Should we be looking for iPhone 3.0 or NetMac 1.0?

Photo credit: Suzanne Tindal/ZDNet.com.au

Senior executives from Intel yesterday called Apple’s bet on ARM chipset technology for its mobile phone platform “not very smart.”

Pankaj Kedia, director of ecosystems for Intel’s ultra-mobility group told attendees at the Intel Developers Forum in Taiwan, “I know what their roadmap is, I know where they’re going and I’m not worried.”

Kedi appeared with Shane Wall, Intel mobility group VP and director of strategic planning, who said iPhone “struggles” running any application that “requires any sort of horsepower at all.” Their comments came on a day when Apple reported 4Q earnings and, in particular, sales of the iPhone roundly acknowledged as a “home run.”

Kedia tarred the entire smartphone market with the same brush, saying reliance on ARM technology makes “”the smartphone of today … not very smart.”

Of course Intel has a dog in this fight, as the chipmaker is known to be working on a mobility chipset of its own, known as Moorestown, and is likely feeling left out of Apple’s earnings party, having been rebuffed by the company’s purchase of P.A. Semi and its decision to develop iPhone ARM chips in-house.

Wall brushed off the success of the iPhone as a phenomenon combining clever UI and Steve Jobs’ knack for hype.

Claiming Intel processors achieve two to three times the performance of ARM equivalents, Wall said “”If you want to run full internet [on a mobile platform], you’re going to have to run an Intel-based architecture.”

For his part, Jobs joined an Apple earnings call yesterday for the first time since 2000 to celebrate the company’s success with the iPhone, telling those who wonder when Apple will start selling a less-expensive “netbook” computer that the iPhone is already leading that nascent market segment. He also said his company “had some pretty interesting” ideas if the category continues to evolve.

And so, the gauntlet in the mobile platform war appears to have been thrown. Let the chips fall where they may.

Via ZDNet

Paramount Digital Entertainment has revived the School of Rock brand with an application that teaches you principles of music education on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

The 2003 movie starring Jack Black tells the story of a struggling musician who scams a job teaching at an upper-crust private high school and ends up teaching the kids how to form a band and play rock music. The app gives users the opportunity to experiment with a variety of authentic virtual instruments ranging from guitar and bass to piano and drums. Users can also learn to play tracks from legendary artists including Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Scorpions and Royal.

The $6.99 app is organized as a game that incorporates features allowing players to explore the history and diversity of music and instruments through a series of quizzes and challenges. Players are challenged to identify brand-name guitars and keyboards using “axes” from well known musicians, receive instruction in the areas of melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo and beats, and have the ability to record and play back jam sessions.

As the game progresses, the songs and variations become more challenging, allowing players to master instruments, advance to different levels and accumulate points that eventually result in graduation from The School of Rock. Groupies and backup singers not included.

Last Friday we issued the call for our designer savvy readers to create Sheppard Fairey-style posters of your favorite Apple luminaries.

unravel stepped up. A graphic designer from the San Fernando Valley, unravel told us, “I admire [Ive’s] work. Besides, I figured people would be doing Jobs first, so why not create one for somebody who deserves recognition too.”

Who’s Next?

AppLoop released a program today that turns any web content into a native iPhone app in under two minutes.

Because many websites are produced by people with few to no developers’ skills and because the iPhone does not store web content locally on the device, developers at AppLoop sensed the need for a way to let content providers do a better job of extending their material to mobile platform users.

Enter the Mobile Application Generator, which converts any RSS feed into a brandable mobile application in less than two minutes. It requires no programming, software downloads, or code maintenance – AppLoop does the nerdy stuff. For free.

Along with generating a fully brandable native app for you – you customize the appearance of the application and include your own logos and color schemes in the set-up process – AppLoop provides an end-to-end analytics library so you can track real-time usage, popular content, and application engagement across various platforms.

Native applications will eventually be deployed across multiple mobile platforms, though Apple’s is the only one operational at present. The company expects to be distributing to Android soon.

Creating a native app allows users to access content regardless of internet connection availability. Images, text, and other data are stored locally for access at any time. Users can also share and promote content on a variety of social services, including Digg, Twitter, FaceBook, and Email, as well as mark items as favorites for later access to read and share with friends. The company envisions support for multiple feeds within the same application in the near future, so larger websites can have different categories and a more customizable user experience.

Via Read Write Web

Designers at FullSIX have a handy little website where you can post your recommended fixes to the iPhone, a resource the company created as “a technological ode to our favorite phone.”

At this writing, 99 total wishes have garnered almost 5000 votes and 1 wish has been granted by the Firmware Update gods.

You can add your own wish(es) to the list, at the top of which resides (not surprisingly) “cut and paste,” or simply add your vote to one of the wishes listed.

Boxee announced product upgrades today giving users of its Mac-Ubuntu-AppleTV media center application seamless integration with Hulu and CBS.com offerings through the Boxee interface.

Making a bid for wider recognition of its product at CEA i-Stage in Las Vegas, Boxee is preparing to move from the invitation-only Alpha stage into beta release of a service that aims “to bring all your entertainment into one place.” The company plans to send out 10,000 invitations to its final Alpha release today.

Be sure to watch the video embedded above for a good overview of what Boxee is all about, and check out the Techzilla Boxee Review we posted a few weeks ago.

The iconic HOPE poster of Barack Obama by the artist Sheppard Fairey has inspired a slew of knockoffs and imitators, many of which have been collected at Rene Wanner’s poster page.

I took a shot at it using a widely known Steve Jobs portrait and the how-to tutorial from Vectortuts, and invite Cult of Mac readers to do the same.

Send us your Fairey treatments of Jobs, or Jony Ive, Phil Schiller, Tim Cook or any of your favorite Apple luminaries, and we’ll feature the best here on the site.

To kick start your inspiration, here’s a gallery of some we like from Wanner’s page:

 
Bubble Telescope, by Ciro Marchetti                     Epilogue, by Chet Phillips

Digital artists of all backgrounds are invited to submit original works of art created or enhanced using Mac hardware or software tools for a chance to be exhibited at the Macworld Conference & Expo January 5 – 9, 2009. Thirty selected images will be displayed to thousands of Macworld attendees at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center and will also be presented in the Digital Art Gallery section of the Macworld Conference & Expo website.

All submissions will be reviewed by a distinguished panel of industry luminaries including: Rudolf Frieling, Media Arts Curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder; Pop artist icon Peter Max; and Nathan Moroney, Principal Scientist, HP Labs. Judges will determine the top thirty works to be showcased during the event.

Artists must be 18 years of age or older, and must reside in the United States. There is a $20.00 entry fee and a 3-image submission limit. Each winning image will be printed on the new HP Designjet Z3200 Photo Printer for exhibition in the conference hall. The deadline to enter is Friday, October 31, 2008.

Early reviews on Google’s Android smartphone indicate the Mountain View-based company may not knock Apple’s iPhone out of the ring, but Blackberry could soon look like an afterthought.

Walt Mossberg, the Dean of Technology writers, says Android is in the same class as iPhone, but allows the two devices will probably attract different types of users. For him, the physical keyboard is the notable differentiator, but he finds the T-Mobile G1 – Android’s lead-off batter, set to debut October 22nd – “only fair…with keys that are too flat and that can be hard to see in bright light.” Mossberg says the G1’s touch interface is “slick, clever…fast and smooth” and provides “much more flexibility in organizing your desktop than on the iPhone,” and he notes it includes some key features omitted on the Apple phone. The G1’s limited copy and paste functionality, and the ability to send photos via MMS may not convert the Apple faithful, but unlike AT&T, T-Mobile will allow users to legally unlock the phone after 90 days and start using it on another carrier, with a hefty early-termination fee.

Rachel Metz, writing for Associated Press, says the Android is “smart” but it needs work. She found the phone’s built-in support for YouTube “underwhelming” and complains that video and song playback is hampered by “a major hardware shortcoming”: no standard headphone jack. The G1’s earbud headset plugs into the same mini USB port used to charge the phone, which poses several problems for Metz, “as you can’t use your favorite headphones without an adapter and it’s impossible to charge the G1 while listening to music or watching videos, unless you want to use the included speaker.”

Tech Radar notes the G1 has a “kill switch” similar to the iPhone and is impressed that it is explained openly in the terms and conditions. They also like the fact that if you don’t like an app you’ve downloaded, “Google kindly lets you refund your money within 24 hours of purchase, which means you can try all the probably rubbish location based ‘find your friend’ apps without worry.”

T-Mobile has reportedly sold 1.5 million of the Android G1’s by pre-order, but buyers may be surprised that when they open up their boxes they will be getting what BusinessWeek writer Stephen H. Wildstrom calls “a developers’ release: a preliminary, unfinished version of a program that lets engineers kick the tires and gauge its potential.”

Apple introduced a trio of new notebook computers and a new 24″ LCD display monitor yesterday, and judging by reader reactions in the Apple blogosphere, the company kept alive its multiyear, unbroken streak of failing to be all things to all people.

Steve Jobs gave ample stage time to Apple design chief Jony Ive, who pulled back the curtain on the company’s design and manufacturing processes to try and impress the assembled media with Apple’s industry-leading, visionary thinking about laptop design and production.

Much of the discussion at the event centered around “under-the-hood” improvements to the new Macs’ graphic display processors (Nvidia GeForce 9400M and 9600M) and to the increasingly fine distinctions between Apple’s “Pro” line of MacBooks and those geared toward average consumers. In a nutshell, consumers are expected to make do with smaller display screens and no Firewire.

Toward the end of the event, Jobs showed an illustrative documentary about the new manufacturing and machining processes, which build the notebook cases out of solid blocks of “environmentally responsible” aluminum in a manner that VP of Product Design Dan Riccio described as “kinda like how you make pasta.”

In all, the presentation seemed designed to let people know, in Ive’s words, “how much we care.”

But do Apple’s customers care how much the company cares? Follow the jump for some choice user comments on the company’s latest offerings.

Steve Jobs and company introduced us to a bevy of new products today, and though it’s not hard to find pictures of them all over the web and at the Apple website, for your convenience we’ve gathered some images here.

Click through the thumbnails for larger images.

Photo credit: Wired

Before the QA at Tuesday’s MacBook rollout, Steve Jobs said there’s a few things he wouldn’t talk about: Apple’s latest quarter, the global financial meltdown, and his health.

With that he put up a slide showing his blood pressure: a healthy 110/70.

“This is all I’m going to talk about on my health today,” he said.

The gathering of the tribe has begun at Apple HQ in Cupertino this morning, where, in 30 minutes or so, the company will turn the spotlight on its line of notebook computers. I’ll be updating this post with relevant details of the pronouncements from the Town Hall stage during the event, so refresh the post to keep in the news and check back later today for Cult of Mac reaction to and analysis of all the new gear.

The Apple Store has gone off-line in preparation for the stocking of new inventory; no doubt the company’s server array will get a workout in the next 24 hours.

Follow the news after the jump.

The creators of Where To, one of the more successful iPhone applications to appear in Apple’s AppStore since its launch in July, have decided to divide their company (tap tap tap) and its assets, and to continue on separate creative and business paths.

tap tap tap co-founder John Casasanta detailed circumstances underlying the split in a blog posting today, indicating the success of his venture with Sophia Teutschler had led to insurmountable differences between them about everything from advertising and marketing expenditures to design decisions.

Under the terms of their agreement to move forward, Teutschler will get the iPhone app Tipulator and two apps-in-progress, I’m Here and Groceries. She will publish the apps under her Sophiestication brand. Casasanta said, “[Sophia] is a good UI designer and I have faith that she’ll put out a great app even if the direction she takes it isn’t exactly where I would’ve gone with it.”

Casasanta will retain the tap tap tap brand with apps the company had in early development but had not yet announced. A previously assembled design team will remain with tap tap tap and Casasanta expects to name two new programmers to develop both current and future projects.

The fate of the drinking and dining guide whose success prefigured the split, Where To, remains up in the air. With gross sales of around $200,000 in the three months it was available on the App Store, according to Casasanta, he and Teutschler decided to pull it from the App Store pending resolution of their differences. Casasanta reports they will seek a buyer for Where To and its assets via sale by auction, and that he and Teutschler will split the proceeds of any sale.

“I’m going to put out a post in the next couple of days detailing our plans to sell it off,” Casasanta wrote in his blog posting today, saying, “full details will be coming soon along with complete financials for it including the marketing costs, etc.”

Experience the sensations and mind twisting perceptions you get by ingesting psychotropic drugs – without the harmful side-effects – using a cool new app from Reality Jockey, Ltd.

Available today on the AppStore, the free single release and the $2.99 album release of RjDj will amaze and amuse you with its combination of built-in soundscapes and the unique contribution your personal reality brings to the party.

Using the microphone of your iPhone, RjDj takes the sounds of whatever ambient environment you find yourself in and morphs them into the single built-in track on the free version, or into one of six tracks on the album version, to both create and influence the music you hear.

The program also allows you to record the unique sensations you have while walking through the city, sitting with friends at a cafe, or playing with children in the garden, which you can save and listen to like a normal music track. Well, maybe not normal, but the effects are stunning, sometimes jarring, nonetheless.

In a world of one-off apps available for the iPhone, RjDj is one I could see going back to again and again.

The Taiwan-based website apple.pro, source of leaked MacBook photos in July, is busy again today with new photos purporting to show the aluminum casings of Apple’s next-gen line of notebook computers.

AppleInsider claims to have confirmed the photo posted earlier today by The Inquisitr is indeed the aluminum “brick” casing for the new 15″ MacBook Pro.

Other pictures from the apple.pro site purport to show Apple’s upcoming aluminum 13-inch MacBooks.

Click on the thumbs above for larger images.

Apple engineers and “technology evangelists” are preparing a series of events in North America, Europe, India and Asia to teach you how to develop software for the iPhone.

Calling it the iPhone Tech Talk World Tour, the company has scheduled free seminars starting October 22 in San Francisco and Paris, continuing through early December in 22 additional cities world wide, to instruct would-be iPhone developers on the tools and technologies used to create iPhone applications. The one-day intensive sessions promise to reveal details on how to optimize your code, refine your user interface, and enhance the capabilities of your iPhone application – all things developers were presumably prohibited from sharing among themselves under the iPhone developers NDA.

Developers can register online to attend one of the events; Apple warns that space is limited.

Follow after the jump for a list of cities and dates and additional details.

Nearly 75% of US college students believe WiFi access on their college campus helps them get better grades, according to a recent survey conducted for the Wi-Fi Alliance.

Wakefield Research polled 501 US college students in September 2008 and found that nine out of ten say Wi-Fi access is as essential to education as classrooms and computers, while nearly three in five say they wouldn’t go to a college that doesn’t have free Wi-Fi. Almost 80% percent said that without Wi-Fi access, college would be a lot harder.

“Wi-Fi has become a universal expectation among college students, and their attitudes towards technology are a good indicator of broad changes underway in how we as a society learn, work and communicate,” said Edgar Figueroa, executive director of the Wi-Fi Alliance, the global trade organization representing the Wi-Fi industry.

For students today, getting connected no longer means reserving a station at the computer lab or going to the library. Undergrads log-in at coffee shops and restaurants (55%), in parks (47%), and even in their cars (24%). 60% of the survey respondents agreed widely available Wi-Fi on campus is an indication that a school cares about its students.

It’s a given that students will always adapt readily to changing technology and circumstances, that the wide availability of calculators, for example, led to higher grades in Math courses for some students, starting in the 1970s. But can Wi-Fi itself lead to better academic performance?

It depends what it’s used for: More than half of the survey respondents admitted to having checked Facebook or MySpace and sent or received e-mail while using their laptop in class. Just under half sent instant messages to a friend during class. Those uses of Wi-Fi are certainly not apt to produce higher scores.

On the other hand, 48% of the students said they would rather give up beer than give up their Wi-Fi, so perhaps we are in a nascent period of higher academic achievement after all.

Via MacWorld UK

Image via Bob Pearce/smh.com.au

Steve Wozniak thinks “It is time for the whole computer industry to maybe have a bit of a slowdown,” according to comments published in a wide-ranging interview with the Telegraph UK.

With shares of Apple, Inc. off 45% from August highs at $179, Wozniak thinks the spate of analyst downgrades for the near-term prospects of the company he founded are likely “correct.” He said, “For twenty years we have been in this replacement and upgrade market” that he finds unsustainable.

“Things like [the iPod], if you look back to transistor radios and Walkmans, they kind of die out after a while,” he predicted, referring to a major Apple profit center in recent years.

Wozniak also appeared critical of Apple’s latest groundbreaking product, the iPhone, and the direction development of third-party applications has taken. “Consumers aren’t getting all they want when companies are very proprietary and lock their products down,” he opined, saying, “I would like to write some more powerful apps than what you’re allowed.”

And while, as some analysts believe, Apple may be in a better position to withstand an industry slowdown than other technology companies, because of the near-religious devotion some consumers have toward Apple products, Woniak said neither he nor Steve Jobs was ever comfortable with such attitudes. We “don’t like the fact that it’s a bit of a religion,” he said of the company’s cult followers.

“I would like to have the users influence the next generation,” he said. “With a religion you’re not allowed to challenge anything. I want our customers to challenge us.”

One area of the Telegraph interview with a disturbingly false ring to it, however, concerned Wozniak’s description of Steve Job’s position in Apple’s stream of internal intelligence. He claimed that, when it comes to the introduction of new products, “nobody, not even Steve Jobs” knows what’s next.

“I think he would be sitting there [unaware] right up until the day it is introduced.” Ya think?

TidBITS Publishing Inc., publisher of the Take Control electronic book series, is celebrating the 5th anniversary of the Take Control ebook series with a 50%-off sale. Cult of Mac readers are invited to take advantage of this special offer by following this link to access the discounted pricing. Discounts apply to all ebooks and are calculated once items are added to the shopping cart. The sale runs through October 14, 2008.

The Take Control series launched in October 2003 by publishing Joe Kissell’s “Take Control of Upgrading to Panther” simultaneously with Apple’s release of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Since then the series has grown to include 58 titles and numerous free updates, bringing together nearly 8,000 pages of professional content from some of the top names in the Macintosh world: Joe Kissell, Glenn Fleishman, Matt Neuburg, Sharon Zardetto, Ted Landau, and Take Control publisher Adam Engst.

Take Control ebooks use carefully designed layout and typography for easy onscreen reading and printing. They also include bookmarks, clickable links, a feedback channel to authors, and a Check for Updates button that readers can click to access free updates. Print-on-demand versions are available for most titles, and steep discounts are available for classroom and library copies.

Engst is grateful to have been able to keep the series alive for five years and commented, “the people who really deserve credit for Take Control’s success are the readers who trusted us enough to buy our first ebooks and who kept coming back for more. As much as we put a huge amount of thought and design work into making our ebooks more than just digital versions of print books, we know it was leap of faith for many people to try a PDF-based ebook.”