Pete Mortensen - page 23

Now that YouTube has set the tone for how short video clips should operate on the Internet, the race is on to define what the future of broadcasting might look like. The makers of Miro, a free, open-source Mac video player that’s near release-candidate readiness, suggest that it looks a lot like podcasting in iTunes.

The application, which is in universal binary, essentially aggregates channels of free TV that are open to the Internet, including public TV from all over the world. It can play virtually any video format, and it can also be fed BitTorrents and RSS feeds of TV shows from tvRSS. Basically, you can see anything ever when you want to, and download multiple streams from thousands of channels in the background. And it’s free. Some of it’s illegal, but a lot of it’s legit. In other words, it hints at what Internet-enabled TV should be like in the future. Any other Miro fans out there?

There’s a video that shows how it all works — it’s pretty incredible.

Thanks, Andrew!

Though no photos have surfaced yet, Entertainment Weekly reports that Emmys host Ryan Seacrest interviewed Kathy Griffin on the red carpet tonight, and a certain burly, bearded founder of Apple named Woz a few minutes ago. This is contrary to several denials of the relationship between Woz and Griffin.

Apparently, Seacrest had no idea who Woz was and suddenly opened his eyes after being informed through his ear piece. The clip should air on the west coast around 7 p.m., so keep your eyes peeled for it. I’ll post the red carpet clip as soon as it makes it to the Internet. In the mean time, enjoy a video of Woz explaining Griffin to a fan.

Other than Steve Jobs himself, now single figure has defined Apple’s resurgence since 1997 more than Jonathan Ive, the company’s senior vice-president of industrial design.

It’s a constant worry among watchers of Apple (especially those who own stock) that the company won’t be able to sustain its growth if Steve Jobs retires, quits, or gets hit by a bus on his way to work some time.

So my friend Jess McMullin postulates over at bplusd, why not line up the designer-in-chief as Apple’s next CEO? Ive makes beautiful, functional, intuitive objects, and is better than anyone in the business at getting others to do the same.

He’s a designer who taps into the wells of unmet consumer need that fuel Apple’s ongoing growth. With the exception of Steve himself, he’s tuned to the zeitgeist that determines winners more than anyone else at Apple. Moreover, he’s able to articulate that vision with consistent grace and precise execution. He’s got a track record of hitting home runs. If you want to keep the innovation leadership that makes Apple, well, Apple, then you’ve got to have the driver’s seat firmly bolted to the flow of trend, meaning, and consequence. That’s the domain of Design, and Jonathan Ive is your Designer.

Now, I don’t entirely agree with Jess on this one. Jony Ive is a brilliant designer. That doesn’t mean he would be a great CEO — he certainly doesn’t have the sales flair that defines an Apple product introduction. Still, an interesting and provocative reminder of the need to figure out what comes after Steve. What say you, Mac-heads?

True to its word, Apple has now opened the door for people who bought iPhones at full price prior to August 22 to received a $100 store credit for use at the online Apple Store or in the company’s physical retail facilities.

All you have to do is go to this web site, enter your phone number and serial number (on the back of the iPhone), and submit. A text message from Apple with an access code pops back, and you’re good to go — $100 for anything carried by Apple, including third-party products.

Steve Jobs shocked many by dropping the 8 gigabyte iPhone’s price from $600 to $400 at a media event last week, just 66 days after the product was first introduced. He shocked still more by offering the $100 credit for those who would be ineligible for fair price-matching, which Apple only offers within two weeks of purchase.

The same day that a friendly Mac-head uploaded some unboxing pictures of his new iPod Touch, he also got the notion to shoot video of the iPhone-without-a-phone. It’s kind of what you would expect: A lot of swooping icons, scrolling on touch, video playing, the accelerometer not detecting an orientation shift…

It’s absolutely beautiful, though. If someone figures out Skype for this thing, it could be the greatest telecom network-free communication device ever built. It’s interesting to note that the iTunes Store Mobile didn’t finish loading in the video. Since this is over WiFi, I can only cringe to imagine an iPhone trying to download a song over EDGE…

Anybody out there already got a Touch? Do you ever leave the house now?

Via Engadget

It’s still arcane and command-line driven, but the hackers at iPhone Dev Team have created an unlock application that’s free to the world. The iPhone can head to T-Mobile, Europe and the rest of the world…now.

All the details are here, but the rest of us might still want to wait for the GUI version. This is not simple stuff, and many report that YouTube gets broken. Still, I’d love to see this become so prevalent that Apple starts selling the iPhone unlocked out of the box. And while I’m at it, I would like American cell carriers not to suck, so I guess I can dream on…

Via Engadget.

Earlier this year, a bunch of people wrote automatic scripts that video-recorded people using Macs they weren’t supposed to. A commercial version of such programs (combined with network logging and screenshots), Undercover, was recently used to bust a crook who took 4 brand new MacBooks from an elementary school in April. At least according to software-maker Orbicule:

Fortunately, it did not take the thief long to come online as he had no idea that the computers he stole were running Undercover. Within 9 hours of the computers being stolen, our recovery center was sending Mr. Kenneth Burman the screen shots of the web sites and programmes a totally clueless thief was going through as well as the snapshots of the thief himself. Later, Mr. Kenneth Burman delivered this information to the local police office. Real samples of the screenshots and iSight pictures taken by Undercover can be seen below. Some details are blurred in order to protect everyone’s privacy.

Although we have all been exposed to the MacBook thief’s moustache, which is almost too perfect to believe.

More than 25 years later, Steve Wozniak has returned to the scene of his greatest triumph, re-making his enthusiastic endorsement of the Nissan (and then-Datsun) Z car. The new version promotes the 350Z, which he was selling off for charity to benefit his alma mater, UC Berkeley. And it. is. AWESOME.

Via Macenstein 

God bless Andy Ihnatko. He’s America’s finest geek humorist.

Via Daring Fireball 

From a current advertising circular. But the proximity of the “i” and the “Phone” must be a coincidence, right? Right?

Don’t buy them all at once, now. Plenty of Ralph’s “iPhones” to go around.

Thanks for the tip, SBI!

UPDATE: Another online back-up solution to consider is Mozy, which gives out 2 gigs for free and charges for any additional storage. You can check them out here.

Backup remains the most elusive and under-appreciated form of computer technology. Though everyone knows we should, no one actually backs up other than the most diligent among us. I have a huge external hard drive, but I manage to put things on it maybe once every few months, if that. Good thing I did that at all, of course, as my hard drive just died on my Powerbook.

Anyway, until Apple unleashes Time Machine in Leopard to change back up forever, there are other things to try. One such as Carbonite, an online backup service that’s got some decent buzz on the PC side and now has a Mac client in beta. I haven’t given it a shot myself yet (will report back soon), but hey, free software!

If you’d like to get in on the beta, send a note over to [email protected] and mention Cult of Mac. The old high school friend who tipped me off claims that’s all there is to it. Let me know how it goes — he’ll hear about it if there are any troubles.

As you’ve no doubt seen by now, Apple announced the sale of its 1 millionth iPhone Monday morning, just five days after Steve Jobs cut the multimedia communicator’s price by $200. No one can seem to agree whether this is a successful launch or not. Some folks even predicted that Apple would sell 1 million iPhones would sell in the first weekend.

So it might make sense to look back at the historical data. How long did it take to sell 1 million iPods? According to official sales data, Apple didn’t pass the psychological barrier until July 2003, almost 21 months after the company first put 1,000 songs in our pockets. It took eight times as long, and for a device that was cheaper, didn’t require a subscription and was going after a completely unclaimed market, whereas the iPhone is aiming for the strengths of the mobile handset market.

Now, the first iPod was only available for Macs, but even the first quarter of the 3G iPod that finally got Apple over the one million hump only included 304,000 iPods sold, despite being designed for Windows. No matter how you slice it, the iPhone has been a break-out hit from day one. And with the price finally in line with the competition, the future’s only looking better.

We’ve known the new iPods for just a week, but they’re already getting a bit too familiar. The guys over at iFixit performed strip searches of both the iPod classic and the new “fatty” iPod nano and posted the evidence. I’ve got shot of the nano in the raw after the jump, then head over to the full gallery.

Way back in January, when the iPhone was young, readers uniformly predicted that unlocked iPhones would hit the streets moments after Apple released the device. I was rather conservative in saying it would take 24 hours — some readers said unlocked iPhones would be common on eBay a week before the street date.

And yet, it’s really taken until…uh, NOW, for widely available iPhone unlocking to arrive. iPhoneSIMFree is a $99 application that makes the iPhone work on any GSM carrier worldwide, including T-Mobile, where I’m stuck for the time-being. Visual Voicemail is broken off of AT&T, but everything else is just fine and dandy. Anyone ready to take the plunge now that the price is down and AT&T isn’t an absolute requirement?

Most of the furor over the big iPhone price cut is over-blown. I’m still frankly amazed that Apple has offered $100 store credit to every iPhone owner who isn’t benefiting from the $200 price drop. It’s unprecedented and creates a dangerous expectation that the same will happen the next time Apple cuts a product’s price.

But at least the people who have complained most loudly about Apple’s decision to me OWN iPhones. I can’t say the same for Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, who claims he would be “iRate” about the price cut. If only he owned one.

This time, though, he has failed to live up to one clause in his implied contract with iPhone buyers. The sky-high price was supposed to guarantee a decent period of exclusivity. For a time, if you bought an iPhone, you were supposed to be the envy of your friends. The ability to show off all the neat things it could do was your compensation for the fact that the iPhone didn’t really change your life.

Hmm. Yes. Other than that, it’s a pretty standard “What’s wrong with the world today?”-type column (Did you know that technology doesn’t actually solve all of life’s problems? Or that people are getting stabbed with knives and forks? And calling each other names like dork?). But he had to change direction at some point — it’s hard to lead the charge of a cause when you’re not actually part of it.

Via Daring Fireball.

Though Apple’s big iPod announcements last week promise to make video playback the new status quo in digital media players, one minor detail got lost amid the excitement. Though the new video nanos, iPod classics, iPod Touches and iPhones are capable of 480p output via a new Component video connection kit, they won’t be capable of working with third-party video accessories released over the last two years, such as those cool portable DVD player lookalikes that were all the rage a few months ago.

According to b, the new iPods’ TV-out feature requires an authentication chip found almost exclusively in Apple accessories, such as the (now-dead) iPod HiFi and the Universal Dock. Otherwise, the menu item is locked out. There is no apparent technical reason for this, just a monetary one. Pretty skeevy of Apple. anyone feeling burned right now?

Boffo scuttlebutt out of Lalaland: Fruit-tech tells the Nets to chop epi-bucks in half! Socko! Peacock.

(Non-Variety translation: Rumor has it that Apple wants to change the price of iTunes TV downloads to 99 cents.)

I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about why Apple would want to force the networks to make less money per download on TV shows, and the best answer I’ve heard comes from my fiancee: Apple believes cheaper downloads will lead to more sampling, and therefore greater popularity for newer shows.

Think about it. You’ve heard great things about “How I Met Your Mother,” but you don’t want to spend the time or money to get the first DVD on NetFlix. The whole series isn’t available through On-Demand cable, and you’re definitely not sold enough to buy the box. With a full iTunes archive, you could try out the pilot for a buck. At $2, it feels too much like you’re over-paying for a set you might want later, as sets average out to about $2 per episode. At a dollar, it’s a product sample. For $2, you’ve already invested.

The real competition for iTunes downloads isn’t DVD box sets — it’s cable On Demand service. That’s what hasn’t clicked until now. The TV networks, because many of them also own record companies, can only view their product compared to song prices. But it’s an artificial comparison. Which will you play more times: A hot song you love or an hour-long episode of Heroes? If anything, songs should cost more than TV shows.

For myself, I would buy a lot more shows on iTunes if the price goes down — especially for series I don’t watch or from channels I don’t subscribe to. The more I think about it, the more I like it. It’s incredibly consumer-focused, but also focused on growing the audiences of series with niche followings. It means more revenue than On-Demand for the networks, as well as possible boosts for DVD season box sets.

What do you think, how would your iTunes habits change if the TV prices drop?

Via Buzzsugar.

The legions of iPhone owners who were enraged by yesterday’s $200 price cut on the device they paid $599 for have been heard in Cupertino, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs has announced a $100 store credit good for any purchase at physical Apple Stores or the online Apple Store. The offer applies to anyone whose purchase fell out of the 10 business day window where Apple gives out price break credits.

Though making a considerable offer toward appeasement, Jobs did take the opportunity to chastise iPhone owners in his letter:

Second, being in technology for 30+ years I can attest to the fact that the technology road is bumpy. There is always change and improvement, and there is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever. This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you’ll never buy any technology product because there is always something better and less expensive on the horizon. The good news is that if you buy products from companies that support them well, like Apple tries to do, you will receive years of useful and satisfying service from them even as newer models are introduced.

Ouch! What say you, iPhone owners? Is this good enough? Or will nothing less than $200 do it for you?

Thanks for the heads-up, d0b3rmann!c

Nothing Steve Jobs announced this morning was as surprising as the $200 price cut to the 8 GB iPhone and the discontinuation of the 4 gig model (currently blowing out at $299 while supplies last — deal of the century). Less than three months on the market, Apple chopped the price by more than a third.

Readers of the blog (and lots of other sites) are screaming bloody murder, throwing about accusations that defenders of the price cut are Apple employees, demanding refunds and more. I would love to join in on the outrage, but this is entirely typical of the way Apple handles truly new technologies.

The very first Mac debuted in February 1984 for $2,499 with 128k. Just eight months later, the company rolled out the Mac 512k for $3300 in September. That would have been fine, but the Macintosh Plus, with 1 meg of RAM, came out in January 1985 for just $2,600. Anyone who bought a Mac 512k got hosed even worse than the earliest adopters.

When the first iMac came out, it shipped in August with a 233Mhz processor and a stunningly under-powered graphics chip for $1,299. Two months later, a revision tripling the video ram came out for the same price. It was the difference between playing Myth at all and not, on a non-upgradable machine.

The multicolor edition shipped in January for the same price, a 266Mhz chip and a significant better graphics chip. By may, 333Mhz chips rolled for the machines. And then it all got replaced by the iMac DV, which included FireWire, completely obsoleting the previous line.

Perhaps the most egregious recent Apple screwing consumers moment came with the iMac line in 2005 and 2006. The iMac G5 with ambient light sensor shipped in May 2005. Then it was replaced by the iMac G5 with a built-in iSight in October, just three months before the transition to Intel chips, when an identical but much-faster machine came out for the same price.

And, of course, the AppleTV was on the market for just two months before Apple brought out the 160-gig model, with four times the storage of the non-upgradable original.

I’m still paying the price for getting a first-gen Powerbook G4 12″. I got no SuperDrive, no DVI port and no USB 2.0, even though I bought just two months before the upgrade.

At this point, if you buy a first-generation Apple product, you’ll probably see either a huge price drop or feature boost within a couple months of your purchase. It’s nasty, it’s mean and it’s capricious, but it’s the way Apple works. If you want to get the most from Apple, wait for their products to mature and drop in price.

It’s entirely likely that a 3G iPhone with a 16gig drive will be announced in Europe in September. That’s just the way Apple operates. I think the reason it’s so upsetting in this case is that the company always introduces its products with flair and says to the world, “This is the one! This is how it should be done!” And we believe it, we overpay, and watch in dismay as Apple introduces One More Thing after One More Thing…

In what has now become the most frequent and most frequently unrequited Apple rumor, the company did not announce the availability of Beatles songs on iTunes. Despite featuring Paul McCartney in an iTunes commercial, and Steve Jobs downloading a John Lennon song and a McCartney song during the intro of the iPod Touch, the Beatles catalog is still unavailable for sale as a download.

The only reason I care any more is because it’s such a tease. Jobs is a Beatles fanatic. The lawsuit with Apple Corps is settled. At the end of the day, it’s not a big deal, because everyone who likes the Beatles owns their music in other formats already, but this is just starting to get bizarre.

Picture via The Apple Press.

In the most unanticipated news of the Apple “Beat Goes On” event, CEO Steve Jobs announced that the high-end 8 GB iPhone will now retail for $399 with a two-year AT&T wireless plan, a price cut of $200 less than three months after the device first shipped.

Jobs said that the company would ship its 1 millionth phone this month and wanted to make the device more accessible, hence the cut. I have to also see the move as strategic related to the new iPod Touch, which delivers every feature of the iPhone except for e-mail, text messaging and phone calls, and will retail for $299 for an 8GB model. Making the iPhone cost $100 more for the same size and costing the same as a 16GB model is a lot more palatable than a $300 premium.

Still, I wonder what this says about the success of the iPhone. We’re talking about a 33 percent price cut. Is Apple disappointed by iPhone sales or merely competing with itself

Via Gadget Lab

At San Francisco’s Moscone Center West, Apple CEO Steve Jobs today met every bit of speculation that fans of the iPod had thrown in his direction in the week leading up — and then some.

The biggest news of the day is the iPod Touch, a virtual twin of the iPhone that eschews phone features and ramps up the multitouch multimedia features. The Touch carries a 3.5 inch screen on a body only 8 mm thick — even thinner than the iPhone. The device has 8 or 16 GB of storage and will sell for $299 or $399.

In a very surprising move, however, the device keeps the iPhone’s WiFi antenna and Safari web browser. It offers almost the full capabilities of an iPhone without the need for an AT&T account. In all likelihood, VoIP calling could be enabled with a microphone accessory, making this a true phone replacement for the adventurous. I had thrown this out as a possibility last week and dismissed it as cannibalizing iPhone sales too much. This is one gutsy move by Apple.

The device can even purchase songs and videos directly from a new WiFi-based iTunes Store that will now also be available to iPhone users. Anything purchased from the store syncs back to users’ computers. All content costs the same as it does on the full store, and everything available through the traditional iTunes store can be purchased from the WiFi store. Perhaps most bafflingly, Apple has a new partnership with Starbucks that will allow iPhone and iPod Touch users to press a fifth button in Starbucks stores to find out which song is playing in the store and instantly download it to their device if they like it. Users can see the last 10 Starbucks songs. Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz joined Jobs on stage for the announcement. Wifi iTunes Store connectivity is free at Starbucks — but not to the wider Internet, which will require a T-Mobile Hotspot account.

Jobs also announced the iPod classic, a revamp of the original iPod in a metal case at 80 GB and 160 GB, selling for $249 and $349 for those with bigger storage demands; oddly squat video iPod nanos at 4 and 8 GB for $149 and $199; color iPod shuffles at 1 GB in a (product) RED configuraiton; and 99-cent ringtones for iPhone.

All images via GadgetLab

We’re all waiting for Steve’s next big announcement, and in the mean time, why don’t we scarf down some of these sumptious Mac cupcakes, brought to you by GeekSugar? I really like the designs, which went straight for icons rather than attempting to represent more familiar Apple artifacts. Can you name them all before we eat them?

Other than the idiosyncracies of its software keyboard and the slowness of EDGE wireless, the biggest deficiency in the iPhone is its lack of instant messaging capabilities. Apple has been slow to bring out a true iChat client, so third parties have introduced a variety of solutions, none of which have been that great. That might be over with the introduction of mobile chat from twenty08 (mirror here), which looks as good as an Apple app and runs twice as nicely. Currently, it only supports AIM protocol, but the developers have GPL’ed the code, so it should get better over time. Get it while it’s hot!

Via Digg.

After Friday’s rumpus relating to NBC’s withdrawal from the iTunes Store, it’s small wonder that the company has already made a business decision to thumb its nose in Apple’s general direction. The Peacock Network will make theirs Amazon Unbox, the amazing new service that no one uses.  And, wouldn’t you know it, Amazon has consumers in mind, right NBC?

“This further expands our longstanding relationship to bring a robust content offering to the marketplace in a variety of ways that will benefit the consumer and, at the same time, protects our content,” said NBC Universal’s president of digital distribution, Jean-Briac Perrette, in a statement.

Whoops! Looks like they’re just being greedy! It’s known that NBC got into a dispute with Apple over fixed pricing on iTunes, and wouldn’t you know? Amazon offers a variety of over-priced options and makes it way harder to actually watch anything you download! In fact, Unbox won’t let two people in the same household share content on a device — in other words, couples are SOL.

What a kinder, gentler model! <Sigh> I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: iTunes saved “The Office.” What a pity that NBC can’t tell.

Ars Technica