Whether questions like “Will the iPad will live up to its hype?” or “Should I stay or should I go to the Apple store?” are what keep you on edge, now you can ask Steve Jobs.
Head over to Ask El Jobso, the oracle for Apple lovers.
The random response generator was devised by the team at The Apple Lounge after one of their bloggers got a one-word answer from Jobs, generating a ton of newsstories last week.
Kinda like the Magic 8 Ball for Apple addicts, some of the answers generated are from real email answers that the King of Cupertino has recently fired off to people.
Let us know if El Jobso solves your dilemmas big and small.
Although they are supposed to be mortal enemies, Steve Jobs was just spotted chatting amiably with Google’s Eric Schmidt at a coffeeshop in downtown Palo Alto, reports Gizmodo.
Overheard from the conversation were two lines by Jobs. Enthusiastically, “They’re going to see it all eventually so who cares how they get it.” Which seemed to be about web content, said the tipster. And, “Let’s go discuss this somewhere more private,” after they noticed the crowd gathering around… Schmidt was very quiet, listening, and Jobs was doing a lot of the talking.
And as Giz notes, what’s that black thing on the table? An iPad maybe?
Someone just forwarded me this hilarious story about a woman who was pinned to the floor by her Mac Pro.
The Mac Pro is a big, heavy machine and can weigh upwards of 40 lbs. The story circulated on an Apple consultant mailing list recently. Here it is, typos and all:
This is by far one of the funniest tech calls that I have ever recieved. One of my clients called this morning to say she is trapped under her MacPro tower and she needed me to come asap to help her out. I asked “where are you?” and she said “at home not at the studio”. She screamed “just get here!”. So I rushed over there, punched in the key code to get through the gate and entered her house calling out her name. I found her laying flat on her back on the staircase with the MacPro crushing her chest. I ran up there to pull the tower off her and I couldn’t help but to laugh. You see she is this small 4 foot 6 inches middle aged tiny lady. She just didn’t have the strenght to push the tower off. She had this idea to move the tower upstairs but because the tower was so heavy for her, she thought she could pull the tower while laying flat on her back over her body. Crawling the machine slowly up the stairs. It didn’t work. Helped her move the tower upstairs but the tower ended back down stairs anyway. It was just too funny.
So there you have it. Pro tip: Don’t move heavy machines around by putting them on your body and crawling across the floor.
With the update of many of Apple’s pro apps including Final Cut, and Aperture, the hardware they’re designed to run on is starting to feel a little stale. Certainly the top of the line Mac Pros, still dominate Geekbench scores for the first thousand pages or so, but for the first time in the Intel era, the MacBook Pro is no longer the dominant laptop. So too, is the fate of the entry model Mac Pro, which is finding itself out-classes by average gaming rigs on the PC side.
These updates are Waaaaay past due, I know I’ve got both a Mac Pro and a 17” Macbook Pro in need of an update, but for those of you not staying up every Monday night in the hopes of a Christmas-like Tuesday morning, here’s the skinny:
Mac Pro: last updated 03 March 2009, 388 days ago. Average release cycle: 236 days.
Macbook Pro: last updated 08 June 2009, 291 days ago. Average release cycle: 200 days.
Certainly Apple dominates profitability in the computer market, but they do that by staying far, far ahead of the curve in technology, innovation and design. But that competitive advantage is only sustainable as long as you drive as hard as Apple has historically to stay out front. That’s not happening here with this generation of machines. This has been the longest wait for Pro Laptops in the Intel era, and so far the second longest wait for a pro tower.
Of course, Steve has words of comfort for the faithful, “Not to Worry” he wrote in response to a like-minded cultist’s query last week.
I’m not worried, Steve. I’d like to say I’m running out of patience, but what choice do I have, really?
This week hasn’t heralded any major App Store gaming releases, so this weekend, in the wake of the inamorata’s shamelessly bragged-about decimation of my all-time high score, I’ll be revisiting an old iPhone favorite: GeoSpark ($1.99) by Critical Thought Games.
As we reported earlier this week, gaming appears to be an early market for the iPad. Now comes word of some of the games that could be ready to download from the the iTunes App Store when the tablet device begins shipping April 3. Before Apple closed the leaky search engine, a blogger Thursday captured a partial list of game titles update for the iPad.
According to the PadGadget site, the following “HD” versions of iPhone entertainment titles were found. “HD” (along with “XL”) is often used by developers to denote games tailored to the iPad’s environment. Here is the list:
Earlier this week, as if in response to the iPhone’s incredible gains on the handheld gaming market, Nintendo announced the successor to their popular DS console, the 3DS. The main difference over their earlier, dual screen device? 3D without glasses.
The problem with this approach is that the Nintendo DS’ screens are too small for true, pop-out-of-the-display 3D to really work… and it also raises some big questions about touchscreen gaming.
Over at Kotaku, Deputy Editor Steven Totilo has an interesting theory on how Nintendo is going to do 3D gaming without 3D displays: they’ll borrow a trick from the book of App Store developers like Ngmoco and fake the 3D by using the accelerometer.
If you don’t purchase an iPad online or in-person at an Apple Store, you may be able to walk into some Best Buy stores come April 3, reports suggest Friday. About half of the electronics giant’s retail location could have Apple’s tablet device available next week.
The retailer’s “Store-within-a-Store” locations, which comprise about half of Best Buy’s 1,000 stores, will become the first to offer the iPad outside purchases through Apple, according to MacRumors. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has indicated as much in emails reported earlier this week. As to where iPads will be sold, Jobs reportedly responded: “Initially at Apple Retail and online stores and Best Buy.”
Star Wars titles on the iPhone tend to be bog-standard, lightsaber-swishing affairs, but THQ Wireless looks like they finally might have a Star Wars game in development that’s worth picking up: Star Wars Cantina.
As the title perhaps implies, this is a light-hearted simulation of running a cantina at the famous Mos Eisley Spaceport.
According to the official blurb, “Your task is to see that the right beverage finds its way to the right customer. And don’t keep them waiting, some of the customers are real troublemakers! Working towards your daily quota, accuracy and speed are essential. As a reward for a job well done, outfit your cantina with decorations and attractions to appeal to even the most difficult customers.”
Star Wars Cantina should be coming to the App Store soon. It looks great. Now what about the HD version?
Pioneer have just unveiled two new high-powered 7.1 SurroundSound AV receivers… both of which come with a homegrown remote app, making them perfect additions to your home theater set-up if you like to do all of your media control through your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Both the VSX-1020-K and VSX-1120-K feature Bluetooth audio streaming, HDMI 1.4 connections for 3D home theater systems, Internet radio support and Dolby ProLogic IIz decoding in the 5.1 channel receivers. For $200 more, the VSX-1120-K includes the Marvell Qdeo video processor, which provides excellent clarity and superb accuracy for the highest quality video switching.
As for the app, iControlAV is Pioneer’s first foray into app development, and predictably allows its flagship AV Receivers to be fully controlled over WiFi.
Unfortunately, there’s no release date available for either model, but the VSX-1020-K starts at $549, and the VSX-1120-K will cost $749.
Photo: Cishore/FlickrApple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook came away Thursday the big winner among a number of Apple executives who cashed-in company stock.
One day after Apple stock granted to four top company executives vested, the 1.1 million shares were sold during a day of record-high trading in the Cupertino, Calif. firm.
After Jerome York’s recent death, the Wall Street Journal has an interesting overview of the history and composition of Apple’s Board.
Apple’s current board is only made up of six individuals, making it one of the smallest boards of the Fortune 500.
One of the reasons Apple’s board is so small is that one of the stipulations of Steve Jobs’ return to Apple was that all of the members who “let things go to hell” were fired, and the remaining board members were hand-picked for their personal loyalty to Jobs, which was tested by Jobs recent illness.
Despite this, the recently deceased York himself was disgusted with the way Steve Jobs handled his illness, saying that Jobs should have publicly disclosed his health problem three weeks earlier in the same news release that announced he was pulling out of the Macworld trade conference. He claimed the concealment “disgusted” him: “Frankly, I wish I had resigned then,” York said last year.
It remains unclear when or even if Apple will choose to replace York, but if so, it’ll be another cherry-picked Jobs candidate.
It’s worth noting that while the remaining members are extremely loyal to Jobs, York’s passing actually removes one of the most vocal and outspoken independents on Apple’s board, which could increase shareholder unrest.
According to mobile advertising company AdMob, Apple’s iPhone OS now accounts for fifty percent of worldwide smartphone traffic on its networks, increasing its share from 33 percent just a year ago.
The iPod Touch is also a huge winner: although it’s not a smartphone, the iPod Touch lead AdMob’s Mobile Internet Device (MID) traffic, their biggest source of network growth over the last year.
The venerable but aging Symbian OS was the main loser in Apple’s market gains: the smartphone OS plummeted from 43% in February 2009 to a mere 18% in 2010.
You may want to put your Mac on mute — audiophonic doofus explosion incoming — but what you’re looking at here is the first working, untethered jailbreak of the iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touch G3… and if its developer is to be trusted, it should work on the iPad when it comes out next Friday too.
According to jailbreaking wunderkindGeorge Hotz (aka geohot), the jailbreak should be out soon, although asking for a release date “won’t make it happen any sooner.”
If geohot’s right about the iPad jailbreaking technique being similar to the iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touch G3, we could be looking at a zero day iPad jailbreak. Oh, good. I don’t think I could do without 5 Icon Dock HD.
Almost a week before Apple is expected to begin selling the iPad, an analyst has increased this year’s sales estimate for the tablet device by 30 percent. Apple may also release a new iPhone in June, along with seeing a 17 percent jump in Mac sales, the analyst adds.
BMO Capital analyst Keith Bachman told investors Thursday his initial estimate of 2.5 million iPads sold this year “may be conservative.” In addition, Bachman raised his estimate for 2011 iPad sales to 7.2 million, up 30 percent from his earlier prediction of 5 million.
Trapster is a popular iPhone app that alerts drivers to police speed traps, red light cameras and DUI checkpoints. The company has tried to remove DUI checkpoints, but users kept putting them back in.
Trapster is a popular iPhone app that alerts drivers to police speed traps, red light cameras and DUI checkpoints. It’s attracting between 15,000 and 50,000 new users a day. Among those new users are are some of the most unlikely – the police themselves.
Trapster is partnering with several police departments to get cops to add their own traps to the database. The company is training cops how to use the software. The Travis County Sheriff’s Department in Austin, Texas, is already publicizing its use of the app, and the company expects to announce more partnerships soon.
“It’s more effective at slowing people down than issuing citations,” says Trapster founder and CEO Pete Tenereillo. “It’s not about revenue; it’s about enforcement.”
Travis County Deputy Tom Carpenter told a local TV news crew the same thing: “Our job is compliance, so if I can slow traffic down by just being there, that works too,” he says.
Tenereillo disclosed more interesting facts: Trapster’s biggest competition is not nav apps, but Pandora. And even though navigation apps are popular, people hardly use them.
So you’re browsing around and doing your stuff, and you see some video on a web page that you want to watch.
Most of us will just watch it in situ, but what if it’s something special? What if it deserves to be displayed with a little more respect for the medium?
It’s a tiny utility that displays web videos in a minimal, chrome-less window of their own, very similar to the way QuickTime Player does its job in Snow Leopard.
Using Extract is as simple as pasting in the embed code for the video clip you want to watch.
Introducing Extract, Zach says: “Extract will also modify the embed code so that the video will expand as you resize the window. Then you can have it as large or as small as you want it.”
Here’s a quick demo video (which of course, you could always watch in Extract if you’ve already gone and grabbed it):
Auteurist is an all-purpose multitool for writers with iPhones, boasting an impressive array of features and different writing modes.
Its developer has been keeping users up to date with progress at the Auteurist Posterous, and in the latest post looks in detail at the challenges of creating a decent scriptwriting mode.
One interesting approach is to make the script on the iPhone screen look right, even though it doesn’t actually follow any rigid formatting rules. It looks as it should, and that’s sufficient on the iPhone screen; yet when you choose to export the finished script to a desktop computer, Auteurist will do the proper formatting on-the-fly, ensuring the final output meets the standards that people who read scripts will expect.
It’s still a work in progress, but it’s interesting to see the progress as it happens. And as the developer notes, things will get much more interesting when a future version of the app is ready for iPad.
Part of me wants to run a mile away from writing apps on the iPhone, simply because I can’t imagine wanting to write anything of any length on it. But another part of me knows the feeling of being struck by sudden inspiration, and having nothing but an iPhone with me to start writing on.
Fans of classical literature rejoice. Project Gutenberg – the publisher of thousands of free, public domain eBooks – is coming to Apple’s iBookstore. Having previewed Apple’s iBookstore, AppAdvice.com reported this morning that the iPad book store will include free access to more than 30,000 public domain titles, including Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, and if Apple doesn’t ban it, the Kama Sutra.
The iPad certainly hasn’t made the once-untouchable Kindle look cutting edge, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves: the Kindle’s still got some advantages on Apple’s e-reading tablet. For one, the Kindle’s e-ink screen is much easier for long reading sessions than the iPad’s LED-backlit LCD display… and because of the power efficiency of e-ink, the Kindle can go weeks at a time without needing a charge. For a lot of people, the Kindle is going to be good enough, especially for the $259.99 price.
The problem is, while the Kindle has some advantages on the iPad, what it’s doing technologically is easily done for less. Enter the Kobo, a $150 e-reader that smartly shaves a few specs to undercut the already-ailing Kindle by over a hundred bucks.
According to tech apocrypha, after Commodore International released their revolutionary PET 2001 home PC, a couple of scruffy young men named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak plopped down in Commodore’s offices with a cardboard box full of circuit boards and tried to pitch the more established electronics company the first Apple II prototype, a revolutionary home PC with far more advanced color, graphics and sound capabilities. Jobs and Woz had no money, and they wanted Commodore to push the Apple II to market.
Instead, Commodore balked, following up the PET 2001 with the VIC-20 in 1980, and then finally bringing to market the computer they would become best known for: the Commodore 64. Largely thanks to a sub-$200 price drop, It went on to sell 17 million units, making it the best-selling single personal computer of all time with an astonishing 30-40% market share between 1983 and 1986. The computer was such a success that was only discontinued in 1994.
Oh, how things change. Now, Commodore International is basically dead, and the company Commodore shuffled out the door is one of the most profitable computer companies on Earth. But after sixteen years, the Commodore 64 has finally raised a mottled hand out of the grave. Can it compete with Apple once more?
A prototype Best Buy ad on an iPad tosses in a camera flash along with product info.@WSJ
Brick-and-mortar media may seem tepid about the iPad, but their sales people are not.
According to the Wall Street Journal, interactive iPad ads are selling for figures reminiscent of their paper counterparts, back before magazines made the endangered species watch.
Both Time and The Wall Street Journal are charging — and have sold — iPad ads costing from $200,000 – $400,000, depending on the length of the ad run.
Time will charge $200,000 for an ad in the first eight issues. Clients so far include Unilever, Toyota and Fidelity and three other unnamed “major advertisers.”
Ads in the pricey iPad edition of The Wall Street Journalcost $400,000 for four months. Coke, FedEx and four other “major advertisers” are already on board.
People magazine said it took just two days to line up six advertisers for the first three months of its iPad edition, which won’t even launch until late July.
“Mind-blowing” games, video and interactivity are getting ad folks to write checks, Steve Pacheco, FedEx’s director of advertising, told the Journal. “You are taking something that used to be flat on a page and making it interactive and have it jump off the page.”
I have ridiculously sensitive eyes; the kind of eyes that feel like they’re being repeatedly stabbed with chopsticks if more than just the slightest bit of light hits them before they’ve had time to adjust.
So when I ran across the press release for Wake Up Now? describing an app that makes the iPhone call out the time, I was intrigued.
Police in rural England are offering kits that capture DNA traces so locals can mark high-tech valuables such as iPods in the hopes of preventing thefts.
Similar to the home kit pictured above, the product made by Selecta consists of a water-based adhesive containing a locked-in DNA code, a UV tracer and a series of microdots which can be easily applied to property “such as a TV or an iPod,” police said.
The fluid marks the property with a unique code which is revealed when scanned with a UV light. The DNA marking allows police to place the burglar at the crime scene, which could increase chances of a conviction.
Apple reportedly has inked a deal worth $240 million for Samsung to supply 3 million additional 9.7-inch iPad displays. Although no time period was provided, the deal was confirmed by an industry executive who talked with a Korean publication.
“The most expensive component in the iPad is the display and touch-screen interface that costs $80 for all models,” the person wishing not to be identified told The Korean Times. The iPad display also costs five times as much as the handset’s screen, the person added.
