News - page 2125

Master storyteller Mike Daisey takes to the stage in a one-man show about Apple founder Steve Jobs debuting in Berkeley.

Titled “The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” the monologue will likely have a new resonance since Jobs announced his medical leave from the Cupertino company January 17.

“It is almost impossible to imagine Apple without him, and there’s a palpable sense of loss and change as the tech industry struggles to know what this will mean for its future,” Daisey wrote on his blog after the announcement.

In addition to being “obsessed” with Apple, Daisey is his known for talking intelligently about tech on stage, from his monologue on Nikola Tesla called “Monopoly!” to recounting his own stint in the customer service trenches at Amazon.com in “21 Dog Years.”

The show launches Sunday, January 23 and runs through February 27 at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

We’ll be talking with Daisey and attending the show, so look for that interview and a review in the next few days.

From BBC One and The One Ronnie Show comes this delightful spoof poking fun at the challenges of all those fruit themed devices in our lives these days. A lighthearted dose in true Python’esque fashion – lest we take our tech too seriously!

It’s not bad. Don’t miss the YouTube comments. Here’s a typical sample:

I can’t wait!!!!!! Finally!!!! iPhone on Verizon!!!!!

I get to dump my crapass Android piece of poop for a real smartphone!

yay

The senseless attack on a Tucson, Ariz. political rally for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords two weeks ago has had many secondary effects: a million accusations from both sides of the political aisle accusing the other side of bearing some culpability or seeking some advantage; calls for some measure of weapons control from both the right and left (including by Dick Cheney); and, most signifcantly, eloquent and sincere memorials from across the country.

And, though this is a small thing in the larger scheme of things, I find downright moving the fact that part of Rep. Giffords’s remarkable recovery has been flipping through family photos on an iPad with her husband.That’s a heart-rending scene if I’ve ever heard of one.

It might be sappy to say, but I genuinely feel it’s an endorsement of the view of technology that Apple has been championing from the start. Why should computing be made as simple and intuitive as humanly possible? To let the maximum number of people possible use them.

And that means a public official and wife brutally cut down in broad daylight can touch a magic window and see her family. Technology can’t aspire to higher aims. Our best wishes to Rep. Giffords and the other survivors of the Tucson attack for their continued speedy recoveries.

USA Today: Gabrielle Giffords stands with help for first time

Your vintage Macintosh Plus might not get a lot of playtime anymore now that you’ve got an iMac and a new MacBook Air, but there’s no reason it can’t still be a valuable part of your home Mac office… as long as you’re willing to do a little bit of hacking.

Over at Macenstein, hacker Dean Gray talks about how he took his old 1986 Macintosh Plus 1MB and turned it into a working Time Machine server… about as pitch perfect a use for an old Mac as I can think of.

According to Dean, the hack was pretty easy: he just ripped out the innards and filled it with six different hard drives equaling 2.3TB of space total. An Intel Atom motherboard ties those drives together, and since he couldn’t find a display that fit, Dean decided to install a 10.4-inch digital picture frame instead.

Too bad: if Dean had found a display of the right size, he could have had a vintage Macintosh Plus emulator running full-screen all the time, while the Time Machine server quietly backed up his data in the background. Maybe this would work, Dean?

One of the most irritating things about upgrading your version of iOS as a jailbreaker is losing all of the Cydia tweaks you’ve installed. Even if you re-jailbreak the next version of iOS, there’s no easy way to re-download and install all of your favorite apps and tweaks… especially if you’ve been grabbing them from third-party repositories.

Luckily, that seems like that’s about to change. Cydia’s newest feature allows you to re-download all of your apps easily in case you have to wipe and restore your device through the “Manage Account” section, which lets you keep track of your packages and app purchases through a Google or Facebook account.

Surely, there will be some who won’t entirely be comfortable handing over their Facebook or Google login details to a bunch of jailbreakers, but I just can’t wait to if it means I never have to find and download 5 Icon Dock again.

T-Mobile has hinted it may be the third U.S. wireless carrier to get the iPhone.

“Ask Apple,” said T-Mobile executives when asked whether it was getting the iPhone 4 at a press conference in New York today, according to Electronista.

Though neither confirming or denying, T-Mobile’s answer suggests that talks between the carrier and Apple are ongoing. Verizon used similar language in the run up to its announcement that it would be carrying the iPhone.

One issue that T-Mobile did discuss was the readiness of the iPhone’s radio chips. To work on T-Mobile’s network, the iPhone would have to support the 1,700MHz 3G band.

T-Mobile president Philipp Humm said while the current iPhone isn’t compatible with T-Mobile’s network, future 3G chips would support more cellular frequencies.

“We’re not part of the [iPhone] chipset today,” president Philipp Humm said. “But we have chipsets which support five, or up to 10 spectrum bands in the market, so we should expect there will be more degrees of freedom going forward.”

T-Mobile may be eyeing the iPhone 5, which is rumored to have a dual-mode chipset from Qualcomm with both CDMA and GSM. If it includes both 850MHz and 1,700MHz, Apple could produce a single phone that works on almost all carriers.

The great iPad 2 screen resolution debate rages on, this time with a downer rumor from Digg’s Kevin Rose.

There will be no change in the iPad 2’s screen resolution, said Rose on Twitter, citing his “iPad source.” (The tweet seems to have disappeared, but Rose posted a screenshot of his IM on Instagram).

Rose, of course, has a spotty record when it comes to predictions. Less than two week’s ago, he was saying it would have a Retina Display. The news is sure to a bummer for those of us holding out for a Retina Display, or something close.

Behold TankBot, a nifty little robot you can control with your iPhone, iPod or iPad.

Plug in the dongle and you can use your iDevice to control TankBot as it navigates, roams and clears obstacles. Then charge it up with a USB cable instead of batteries, a 30-minute charge gets you 15-minutes of over-hill-and-dale action.

Perhaps the best part: the price should hover somewhere under $20.

Desk Pets International brought it out at the New York Toy Fair, it’ll be in stores sometime this year. They are touting it as the first cheap robot toy that fully integrates with Apple devices.

All I know is that every year, I pretend to buy something for a nephew when it’s really for me. TankBot is going on the nephew wish list.

Via Gizmo Watch

Before Tuesday’s Q1 2011 earnings call, Fortune issued a score card ranking various analysts’ predictions (both pro and amateuralike) on how Apple would do this quarter

Now the results are in, and across the board, the amateurs did far better predicting Apple’s results than the professionals at the brokering houses and banks.

It’s not even close, either. Once ranked, the bottom twenty spots in scorecard accuracy all go to professionals being paid for their insight and accuracy. On average, progessionals were off by a 9.04% margin. Meanwhile, nine out of the ten amateurs made the top ten, and overall were only over by a little under 4%.

Jeez. And to think we bailed out these bozos. Based upon these results, it looks like the average investor would be better off cracking open a blog than employing a pro.

Another intriguing fossil unearthed from the second iOS 4.3 beta is the mention of two new services called Media Stream and Photo Stream, which 9 to 5 Mac’s Marc Gurman speculates is meant to be just one more element of an eventual Apple-run social network which will debut in iOS 5.

If you for whatever reason doubted that the next iPad would be FaceTime compatible, a new screenshot found inside the latest iOS 4.3 beta gives stronger indication than ever that there will be both front and rear-facing cameras in the iPad 2.

Earlier this week, Leander predicted that Apple would sell its ten billionth app this coming Friday, giving the lucky App Store downloader a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card to mark the occasion. CoM Reader Allan disagreed, arguing that it was more likely to happen on Saturday evening, PST.

Here’s some more soothsaying to consider, if you’re holding off on buying some apps in hopes of winning the Golden Ticket: a new website called tenbillionapps.com has launched, and it is counting down to the ten billionth app in projected real time.

When does tenbillionapps.com think the milestone will be reached? Saturday, January 22nd, 2011 at 12:31pm EST.

I have always loved the idea of the iPod Shuffle — an iPod small enough to attach to my keychain and always carry around with me — but unfortunately, the iPod Shuffle just doesn’t fit the way I listen to music. I don’t want to randomly listen to a bunch of tracks — if I want to listen to random music, I want it curated by a DJ or something.

My Shuffle, then, rarely gets used unless I dust it off along with a delusion of jogging. But musician Matthew Irvine Brown’s new project is enough to make me want to pull my old Shuffle out of the drawer: he’s compiled a set of 18 original tracks that are meant to be played in random order on the iPod Shuffle.

Despite losing a bit of its celebrity-like status to the upstart iPad, Apple’s iPhone, which has been around since 2007, brings home more profit for the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant. Earlier this week, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook told reporters the company makes $625 on each handset, compared to $600 per iPad.

The chief reason for the disparity is the iPhone is subsidized by carriers hoping to use the iconic handset to lure lucrative data plans. As a result, Apple sells the iPhone for about $625 per unit and carriers reduce the price for customers. But will that change when the Verizon iPhone and the iPad 2 appear next month?

The scarcely, randomly reputable boys over at Digitimes are recycling weeks-old rumors by insisting that one of their sources from inside AAPL’s component supply chain says that the iPad 2 will boast a Retina Display.

Well, no, it jolly well won’t. But just in case that doesn’t convince you, how about some extrapolation due Moore’s Law?

Apple’s increasing use of tamper-resistant screws is a form of planned obsolescence, says one critic.

As previously reported, Apple is using proprietary five-point security screws in the iPhone 4 and new MacBooks Airs. The special screws were first used in the 2009 MacBook Pro to stop users from replacing the battery.

The screws are unique to Apple and serve one purpose only: to keep users out.

The plan, says iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens, is to force customers to upgrade their gadgets sooner than necessary. They also make them reliant on Apple for expensive repairs and upgrades.

“It’s a form of planned obsolescence,” says Wiens. “General Motors invented planned obsolescence in the 1920s. Apple is doing the same thing.”

Designer Charis Tsevis built this photo mosaic of Steve Jobs for the Italian magazine Panorama. Look carefully: it’s all Apple products. Can you spot the original iSight camera? Check the detail of the eye below.

Wall Street has been falling over themselves singing the praises of Apple stock as the Cupertino, Calif. company smashes sales expectations for its unique gizmos sold at premium prices. However, the average Apple employee salary is about a 10th that of one Wall Street powerhouse, reportedly.

Despite Apple’s returns being much higher than Goldman Sachs (which reported its profit figures Wednesday), the average employee of the tech giant earns $46,000 versus $430,700 at Goldman, according to number-crunchers at the New Yorker.

Apple giveth and Apple taketh away after notifying developers that the new multi-touch gestures for the iPad, discovered in the first beta release of iOS 4.3, will not be available to the public when iOS 4.3 is released.

This bit of news was delivered to developers today in the Read Me file included with the iOS 4.3 Beta 2 release.

Now Apple is claiming that these gestures are now simply there for developers to preview and test with their own apps.

You can see how the new gestures work by clicking the read  link below and watching a video demonstration of them.

Apple released iOS 4.3 Beta 2 to developers this afternoon. The update includes a new firmware update for the new Apple TV, iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS as well as the 3rd and 4th generation iPod touch.

Registered iOS developers can download these updates as well as a new SDK from developer.apple.com.

Let us know if you find anything interesting in the new beta by leaving a comment.

Precorder (on sale now for $1) from Airship Software constantly buffers a few seconds of video before you hit the record button, effectively eliminating “shutter lag.” It’s a brilliant idea that the developers say they borrowed from the Planet Earth team — who used it to film this amazing spectacle of great whites breaching (note: Your results may vary. A lot).

Remember last week, when we reported on Freecom’s 10mm external drive, the thinnest in the world? Turns out Seagate is planning to release their own super-slim USB hard drive that beats Freecom’s by one millimeter. Seagate’s drive will be part of their modular GoFlex system — which means it’ll mesh with USB 2.0, 3.0 and Firewire. Looks like it’ll also be plenty zippy at 7200 rpm, and cost about $100 for 320MB 320GB. Release date? Seagate says later this year.

This week’s photographic obsession is Dominik Seibold’s Hough Transform Camera, which I can explain in two different ways: the simple way, and the science way.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak didn’t see Steve Jobs’ sudden leave of absence coming, according to an email he wrote to CNET.

“The news actually frightened me because I did not expect it,” Wozniak said, before trying to look more brightly at the news as perhaps a personal choice on Jobs’ part to downplay his day-to-day involvement with Apple.

“If Steve is tired and wants a bit more normal life, more power to him,” he said.

At the time of writing CNET on Monday, Woz said he had not yet contacted Jobs, but in an email statement to Cult of Mac the Apple co-founder said that he had since reached out to Jobs directly with his best wishes of rapid recovery.