hardware - page 43

This is the sound of slork, the Stanford Laptop Orchestra.

All instrumentalists are equipped with a black MacBook and a hemispherical speaker pod made out of Ikea tableware.

The brain behind the orchestra is Ge Wang, and if his name sounds familiar that’s because you might have seen it mentioned recently in connection with the superb app Ocarina.

Recently highlighted at apple.com, slork makes use of custom software written by Ge Wang:

“I wanted to focus on the intersection of music and computer science. So I authored a language with my advisor, Perry Cook, and researchers at Princeton and beyond. We called it ChucK. It’s a programming language completely tailored for sound. It let us quickly synthesize sound and use various controllers in our performances.”

We’ve written before about some of the creative ways Mac users act to protect their gear and to foil the nefarious intentions of would-be thieves. This week brings another, called MacTrak, from GadgetTrak, Inc., makers of the new anti-theft software for mobile devices.

MacTrak features location-awareness from Skyhook Wireless’ Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) and integration with Flickr to capture the location and images of laptop thieves.

“Skyhook’s cutting-edge location technology allows our software to send the location of the device to the owner along with a photo of who is using the system, greatly increasing the chances of getting the stolen device back,” says Ken Westin, founder and CTO of GadgetTrak.

When a MacTrak-enabled laptop is stolen, the device owner can remotely activate tracking for their stolen system. Once the stolen device connects to the Internet, MacTrak determines the device location using WPS. It will also activate the Mac’s camera and photograph whoever is using the device. The image, location and network information are then uploaded to Flickr and an email is sent to the owner with the same information. Data will continue to be sent over time until tracking is disabled.

“Skyhook’s Wi-Fi Positioning can pinpoint the location of a stolen device within 20-30 meters even in dense urban areas or indoors, meeting the tough performance standards of security applications,” says Kate Imbach, director of marketing at Skyhook Wireless.

You can buy MacTrak directly from GadgetTrak.

Blake Patterson has the kind of monitor set up that makes some of us drool. It’s even sweeter when three monitors, plus Spaces.app, plus Exposé, produces an image like this; the symmetry and balance turns it into a work of art.

(Photo of Expose+Spaces used under Creative Commons license. Thanks Blake!)

UPDATE: This post has been edited for statistical clarity.

iPhones fail at roughly half the rate of Blackberry smartphones after one year of operation, according to a study by Square Trade research. Square Trade, a company that sells add-on warranties covering electronic devices beyond their manufacturer warranty periods, looked at the failure rates of 15,000 phones covered under its plans. According to their data, the malfunction rate for iPhones after one year is 5.6 percent, compared to 11.2 percent for the Blackberry and 16.2 percent for the Treo.

The study projects the failure rate for the iPhone after two years will be between 9.2 and 11.3 percent, compared to actual two-year failure rates of 14.3 percent for BlackBerries and 21.0 percent for Treos.

Of course, the sample size producing these numbers is a tiny fraction of the millions of smartphones on the market and may or may not be a truly accurate picture of the actual failure rates of the three kinds of phone.

Interestingly, the study found neither battery life nor call quality problems to be major issues for the iPhones that did fail. As was true with all three models in the study, the predominance of failure-related issues had to do with the touchscreen interface.

One area where iPhone does appear to lag its two main competitors is in failure due to accident: 12 percent of iPhone failures happen because the owner drops it, spills liquid on it, or otherwise stops treating it like the sensitive mobile computing device it is.

Via MobileCrunch

Say Hello to Steve! is a Flickr pool that celebrates, even embraces the highly reflective screens on recent MacBooks and iMacs.

A lot of people have complained about the glossy screens. They have expressed their displeasure with protests and polls. Some wish that Apple still offered a matte alternative. Others have tried the glossies and found that, because the LCD panel display is so much brighter, they’re not so bad after all.

But the folks at the Say Hello to Steve! group are happy with their glossy screens. They like to see themselves – and their surroundings – reflected in the screens when they’re dark. The upshot is some nice, sometimes quite artistic, photographs. What can you see in your screen when your MacBook’s not switched on?

(Photo by Mojo.D, used with permission.)

Dead Macs. You see them sometimes. Upended in a trash bin or shopping cart. Pilfered for parts, poked and prodded by scavengers who have left just the most useless innards behind.

Erratic behavior with the glass trackpad on new Mac notebooks appears to be a growing concern for some Apple customers. A buyer emailed Steve Jobs over the weekend complaining the trackpad on his new MacBook Pro was not registering physical clicks consistently and received a telephone response from Apple support indicating the company is investigating the matter, according to a report today at AppleInsider.

A survey of the discussion forums on the Apple website indicates nearly 100 threads have been opened in the past week on the subject of “trackpad problem” for the new unibody aluminum notebooks, with most users complaining the trackpad does not always register a click when it should, while some also report the pad loses all functionality at its outer edges, and several believe the sensitivity of the trackpad leads to erratic, unpredictable behavior.

With any new product there is bound to be something of a learning curve while users become familiar with its capabilities, and the new trackpads certainly have been designed to support a wide range of two, three, and four-finger gestures that could be causing some users confusion and frustration.

I asked my colleague Pete Mortensen, who wrote glowingly about his new MacBook a couple of weeks ago, how he’s finding life with the new trackpad. “I actually do get some of those issues some of the time – not always, but sometimes,” he says, noting, “it’s worst in the bottom edge dead center. Moving up a little or millimeters to the side fixes it.”

How about you, dear reader? Have you found the new trackpads quirky? And if so, do you think it’s something you’ll get used to, or does Apple have a production issue on its hands?

I asked Pete if the trackpad behavior made him long for his 12″ PowerBook G4 and he replied, “I don’t miss my 12″ G4 at all!”

This iPod speaker dock has been on display in Carnegie Mellon University’s design department for quite some time now. After weeks of trying to remember my camera when I’d be near the building, Lonnie’s post helped put the camera in my hands and my body in front of the display case.

It seems as though iPod docks are in vogue for design students. How many of you have made iPod “pedestals”?

Other World Computing, an Illinois-based technology company, announced today the availability of a new service that converts your existing Intel Core 2 Duo based MacBook into a tablet computer that lets you draw and write directly on the screen.

Called Modservice, for prices starting at $1300, OWC will convert your Apple machine into an Axiotron Modbook.

MacBook owners who want to convert their computer into a Modbook can also have OWC upgrade the base features of the MacBook for additonal performance and capabilities. Available services include memory upgrades up to 4.0GB; higher capacity and/or faster internal hard drives up to 500GB; and faster DVD and CD burning with a new SuperDrive. They offer a Hard Drive Data Transfer option so your data can be backed-up and reloaded after the Modbook conversion is completed.

The Modbook has the same input/output features of the MacBook, retaining the full range of MacBook connectivity options via 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 (two ports), FireWire® 400 (one port), Bluetooth 2.0 and AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi 802.11n.

Intended for artists, mobile users, students and professionals, the Modbook uses integrated Wacom pen-enabled digitizer technology to offer users unique flexibility and control over the creative process.

It should be noted pre-modded Modbooks are also available from Axiotron, starting at $2200.

Possibly in a fit of friendly rivalry with its competitor Fortune magazine, atop whose list of the 50 Most Admired Companies in the world Apple sits for 2008 at #1, Forbes magazine featured its list of the 10 biggest Apple failures this week, a gallery of which we reproduce for you below.

There are at least a couple of items here that grabbed a few hearts, but what do you think? Are these all Apple strikeouts? Let us know in comments.

I was amused to see early shots of the latest Dell OptiPlex desktops. These are pretty much the mainline of Dell’s line-up, and are among the most popular desktop PCs in the country. Electronista talked about the new line-up’s “industrial, metal” look, which Dell credits for dramatic reductions in power consumption. And despite Dell’s much-remarked-upon commitment to industrial design, the new boxes are incredibly hideous.

Why? Because Dell is perfectly willing to sacrifice a design vision in order to save on manufacturing costs. Compare the box at left to a Mac Pro. Both have metal grill faces, but only one is metal all over and uses modified commodity components in order to maintain a consistent look. Dell, meanwhile, dropped in ugly black plastic components for the drives and sides, presumably because it was a lot easier than speccing a custom mold for all parts. AND they left in the floppy drive, a full 10 years after Apple ditched it.

This, in a nutshell, is the difference between Apple and nearly every other computer company on earth (Sony might be the one exception, and HP is improving): Apple just won’t compromise. If a computer is going to be an imposing metal tower that recalls a steel factory, it will be that all over, even if it’s nearly impossible to engineer. A company like Dell, on the other hand, will throw such interesting design ideas out as soon they get hard to pull off. Apple is committed to engineering designs exactly as crafted, down to the millimeter and the routing of interior cables. A company like Dell wants to provide just enough design and taste that people aren’t actively repulsed by its products.

It’s not even close.

Electronista via Engadget

What is it about MacBooks and stickers? What drives people to cover that pristine white (or black) plastic with other people’s brands and logos?

Some people even start putting stickers on the inside. Maybe they ran out of space on the outside.

But now, you see, I’m wondering. Who has the most stickered MacBook of them all? Should that even be a contest that people would want to win? Are the MacBook-stickerers good or are they bad?

So who’s got the most-stickered Macbook around here? Links to your be-stickered masterpieces, please.

All pics used under Creative Commons license. Top: State of the Macbook by psd; middle: untitled by sunshinecity; bottom: Okay, I think I have enough now by Mat Honan. Thanks to all.

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

I walked into the Apple Store in San Francisco tonight fully expecting to walk out with a brand-new MacBook Pro — the 2.53 GHz model, if at all possible. After 30 minutes playing with all of Apple’s latest laptops, I was stunned to find myself instead walking out the door with a 2.4 GHz MacBook and a smile on my face.

The Top Line: The Aluminum MacBook is the perfect heir to the 12″ PowerBook G4. It’s light, rugged, and meant to be used as a true laptop — it actually runs cooler than my 12″ PowerBook from 2003. Apple hit it out of the park with this thing, and I couldn’t be more delighted. To learn why, click through.

Now we’ve seen them, now we know. The new MacBooks and MacBook Pros are quite nice in some respects, and quite frustrating in others.

What amuses me about the whole thing, though, is how astoundingly far-out some of the pre-event speculation was. It’s always part of the fun, exploring the gamut of people’s expectations and imaginations as they dream up the kind of product they’d like Apple to create for them.

My favorite this year was the iMac-as-docking-station concept, which showed an iMac-like monitor with a huge hole in one side, into which a folded MacBook could be slotted. A nice fantasy indeed, but still a fantasy. And Apple’s not in the business of fulfilling every fanboy’s fantasy.

No, Apple’s in business to make profit, like every other computer manufacturer. As such, it’s product development decisions are, and will be, driven by the profit they can be reasonably expected to generate.

Reaction is still coming in from analysts on Apple’s decision to drop the price of its plastic entry-level MacBook. While ThinkPanure and others believe the sub-$1,000 notebook isn’t enough to attract worried consumers, some onlookers told Cult of Mac the move was a good beginning.

“They’ve never done cheap well – but the $999 MacBook is a good start,” Piper Jaffray analyst Andrew Murphy e-mailed Wednesday.

Murphy said Apple is positioning Mac sales for a long economic slowdown. Wednesday, JPMorgan said Apple had “meaningful buffers” that could allow the company to ride out any initial impact. Analyst Mark Moskowitz pointed to the value of Cupertino’s brand and iPhone revenue expected later in 2009.

Although the price cut affects a legacy plastic MacBook, more than half of the consumers considering the $999 plastic MacBook will opt for the newly-unveiled $1,299 aluminum unibody design, Murphy wrote.

The upshot of Tuesday’s new products: a slight or no impact on Apple margins. The company is expected to announce third quarter numbers later this month.

I swung by the San Francisco Apple Store this afternoon, and employees told me that, while old-skool MacBooks were out on the floor, they had the new stuff in the back room and it was all ready for purchase. Resisting the urge to buy one sight unseen, I vowed to come and play with the new collection tomorrow, once the demo units are out.

Joe Russell, on the other hand, went for the early purchase and made it first to unboxing:

First thing I noticed on the trackpad, the entire surface is in fact not a clickable button… but rather the lower two-thirds. And as far as it being glass, it feels more like the original textured surface of the trackpad on the MacBook Pro.

I feel like I’m now rolling w/ a MacBook Air that’s been hitting the gym.

Be sure to check out the full gallery. The spongy tab to pull the machine out is ingenious.

I’ll be back this weekend with a report on unboxing the MacBook Pro, if all goes according to plan…

Flickr via TUAW

JPMorgan Wednesday upgraded Apple to Overweight from Neutral, arguing the company is protected from the cold winds of a consumer downturn.

“We think that Apple’s brand and market share momentum offer meaningful buffers” despite 70-75 percent of Cupertino’s sales relying on the consumer, analyst Mark Moskowitz told investors this morning.

Acknowledging even Apple won’t come away unscathed from the current slowdown in spending, Moskowitz wrote “Apple likely has a backstop beyond the first round.”

Apple’s share of the PC market reached nearly 10 percent during the third quarter. Although Cupertino retained the third position in U.S. shipments, Apple posted 29 percent growth, outstripped all other computer makers.

Gartner announced Apple controlled 9.5 percent of domestic PC sales, up from 7.7 percent a year ago. In stark contrast to Dell and HP which had 6 percent and 4 percent growth respectively, Apple had a more than 29 percent increase during the third quarter of 2008.

Apple sold 1.6 million Macs during the third quarter, up from 1.2 million shipped the previous year.

Tuesday, Apple unveiled a lower-priced entry MacBook onlookers saw as a response to concerns of slowing consumer spending. The company has set Oct. 21 to release third quarter sales figures.

Apple promised that it would finally pull its attention off the cash cow iPhone and iPod product lines to spotlight notebooks at an event this morning, and they weren’t kidding. New MacBook, new Air, new Pro, and a new matching Cinema Display for good measure. The design team absolutely hit it out of the park on these machines, which are all glass, shiny black accents, and subtly tapered corners. Like the iMac whose design they refine and make significantly more appealing, these machines look like they were just made to sync with an iPhone or iPod touch (and, if anything, they make the continued use of white plastic docks for those devices look increasingly incongruous). This is Apple’s best design work, and it’s for a Mac — something we haven’t seen since the 12″ PowerBook G4 that I’m typing on was introduced. Read on for the Pros and the Cons…

New laptops weren’t the only thing Jobs unveiled today—Apple’s also finally provided a new external display. And it’s a strange one.

More information’s available at Apple’s website, but the gist of it is this: the 24″ display is super-thin, uses advanced LED technology, has integrated power with easy connectivity, and includes an iSight, microphone and speakers. All this for the same price as the existing, aging 23″ Cinema Display.

That sounds great until you dig and think a little more. $899 is hardly great value for a 24″ display these days. The display is gloss-only, which will make pros flee. And those that won’t had better have laptops, since unless I’m very much mistaken, this display requires one of Apple’s new laptops to work—it needs a machine with a Mini DisplayPort. So you guys who just dropped $2799 on a new Mac Pro had better look elsewhere.

Apple’s a great company, an innovator that goes where few others dare to tread. But flashes of the old sneak through now and again, and only Apple would dare release a nine-hundred dollar MacBook accessory in the middle of global economic turmoil.

With Apple’s announcements still ringing in the ears of the Mac faithful, it looks like I wasn’t far off the mark a month ago when I asked “Is Apple going to ditch the ‘Pro’ from MacBook Pro and streamline its laptop range, leaving just a ‘standard’ MacBook (with different screen sizes and minor tinkering possibilities under the hood), and the Air for people who happily set fire to 50-dollar bills?”

The revamped line offers a new (and much prettier) MacBook Pro, with a precision-engineered, environmentally friendly case, advanced NVIDIA graphics, and a no-button multi-touch trackpad (which, given Apple’s penchant for incrementing the number of fingers required for gestures will by the next revision also require toes).

It looks like a triumph of engineering, and although the enforced move to glossy displays irks, it’s hard to see how Apple could have improved on today’s announcements, especially when you consider the MacBook also gets to play with the new toys. In fact, bar the different screen sizes and minor tinkering possibilities under the hood (more powerful graphics for the Pro, a lack of FireWire for the MacBook), these machines are more twins than distant cousins.

The one major glitch for me is that it’s so painfully obvious that Apple’s laptop range is now in the middle of a transition. The white MacBook clings on as a much-needed (relatively) low-cost option, but sticks out like a sore thumb, screaming “I’m the cheap Mac–DON’T LOOK AT ME!” while hiding its face behind its pale hands. And in Pro land, the 17″ model looks like its smaller cousin has rapidly beaten it with an ugly stick. However, I suspect this now slightly confused line is a temporary aberration, something somewhat confirmed by Apple’s new Which MacBook are you? page that ignores the old MacBook and MacBook Pro entirely.

The ‘will he or won’t he’ question was answered Tuesday when Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced he’ll offer a $999 MacBook in time for the holiday shopping season.

Although the price cut is on the entry-level 2.1GHz white plastic MacBook and not on one of the nifty unibody aluminum notebooks introduced, the news appeared to satisfy some analysts.

“I think it is important to note that MacBook pricing is coming down. Nobody is immune to the consumer,” Vijay R Rakesh, ThinkPanmure analyst, told Cult of Mac.

Pictures: Fantasic mockups by Miguel Surez

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

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

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

* Hard drives: 160GB — 320GB.

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

* Integrated NVIDIA graphics system.

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

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

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

* All ports on left side — including FireWire 800.

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

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

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

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

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