News - page 2288

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The Toronto District School Board decided to phase out Apple computers — about 8% of the 63,000 machines used by some 250,000 kids — in mid-November.

It seems board members bought in to the idea that Macs are more expensive than PCs:

“The Apple computer in a large-scale network―their capabilities for automatically managing that many machines really pales to what’s available in the PC world,” Lee Stem, general manager of Information and Technology Services for the Board, told Torontoist.

“At the end of the day, it really comes down to getting as many devices in the hands of as many people as possible,” added Stem. “Every penny that we save…all that money is going to bring more technology into the hands of kids.”

Teachers in the district are using those last Apple computers to plead with the bureaucrats to keep Macs in the mix.  (No more Apple computers will be bought for general use, though they may still be purchased for “special use” classes, like art, video editing or music composition.)

If visions of 3G networks tied in a knot by a deluge of frenzied tablet owners keeps you awake at night, fear not – at least not immediately after Apple’s rumored device makes its first appearance. Why so much calm? Experts predict a high price coupled with low initial adoption could give networks breathing space to prepare for the eventual onslaught.

Although Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu said earlier this week he expects a 3G cellular connection not be included to prevent further clogging “already strained” high-speed networks, others don’t agree. “I can’t imagine it not having it,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told All Thing Digital.

Although there is a frenzy of hype and curiosity surrounding Apple’s as-yet unseen tablet, it appears many consumers have a limit on how much they’ll pay to own the near-mythical device: $700. Seven in 10 people surveyed said they would not spend more than that amount for a tablet, according to a consumer research firm.

The amount seems to fall midway between $600 to $800, a figure that Piper Jaffray predicts could be the tablet’s selling point. Wall Street wisdom appears to peg the device at below $1,000. The eventual price tag could be lower if carriers agree to subsidize the cost. Reportedly, Apple is in discussions with AT&T and Verizon on a deal to offer the tablet.

Apple’s iPhone is gaining strides in both North America and Western Europe, quickly turning Nokia into a marginalized player leading only in Africa and Asia, a new survey of smartphone usage indicates.

The iPhone, with 40 percent of the market, represented 54 percent of smart phone usage in North America during the fourth quarter of 2009, according to AdMob, the mobile advertising firm Google acquired in last year. In Western Europe, the iPhone and the iPod touch comprised more than half of smart phone usage, the company said Thursday. The gains were at the expense of Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, the researchers said.

John Gruber’s favorite iPhone notepad app, Simplenote, got an updated earlier this week. From now on, it’s free and supported by advertising.

Gaines Kergosien filmed this amusing little interlude at Trevecca Nazarene University the other day.

A student politely asked Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to sign his Mac – and Ballmer genially played along.

Next week, Sergey and Larry will be doing guest slots in a “Get a Mac” ad, with Sergey as Mac and Larry as PC.

(Via The Guardian.)

Behold! The OfficePOD!

The OfficePOD gives you just over 4 square metres of space to swivel your chair and tap on your Mac keyboard. It comes with LED lighting, secure locks, and an electrical connection to your home. All you need to do is move yourself and your Mac inside, and you’re ready to work!

But what else does it have going for it?

Our friend Seth Weintraub at 9to5Mac has written a great curtain raiser on the upcoming tablet. His lengthy posts covers everything you ever wanted to know about the tablet, including the likely surprises.

We especially like the way he starts by recalling the way Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone:

At the introduction of the iPhone, Steve Jobs touted that new device as a “Widescreen iPod”, “Revolutionary Mobile Phone” and “Breakthrough Internet Communications Device”.

I believe the same type of convergence thinking is going into the tablet. It can’t just be a “Kindle-killer” eBook reader. It can’t just be a “Media Pad”. It can’t be only a Nintendo DS or PSP competitor. It can’t just be a small NetBook-sized MacBook either. It has to be all of these things. At the same time. Say it together:

“The best eBook reader. The best Netbook. And the best portable media player and gaming device.”

Repeat.

Well worth reading the entire thing.

Good news, not-so-good news on the tablet, according to a “double-sourced” story from iLounge:

Good News: The tablet will have two dock connectors, one on the bottom edge, the other on the side for charging/docking in both portrait and landscape mode. “… accessory companies have struggled for the past three years to figure out ways to accommodate Cover Flow and the like in their speakers and docks,” says iLounge EIC Jeremy Horwitz. “Two Dock Connectors fixes this, and depending on how Apple handles multiple accessory connections, could have some other nice benefits, as well.”

Horwitz also notes the tablet with an aluminum backplate with a wide plastic strip to enable clear radio reception for the device’s wireless antennae. The size of the strip “suggests room for nice-sized antennas, and 802.11n compatibility,” says Horwitz.

Not So Good News: The tablet will be offered with optional cell service, iLounge reckons, with data plans in the $30-$60 per month range. Curiously, iLounge thinks AT&T might offer a combined iPhone and tablet plan to attract  users already paying monthly iPhone data fees.

We start off with a new batch of App Store freebies from Apple, including the game Brain Balance Pro. You can never have too much spare juice when your iPhone’s battery is on its last legs. For such an occasion is Cable Unlimited’s Battery Boost. Finally, Apple’s iLife ’09 productivity suite on sale.

For details on these and many other items, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Savant Systems is a home automation company that sells a range of wireless control tablets that may illustrate how Apple’s tablet will work in the real world.

Unlike the endless mockups and magazine-publisher demos, Savant’s line of Rosie Touch systems are real products.

Based on OS X, the Rosie Touch panels control the home’s heating, lighting, security and entertainment systems. They run an iPhone-like touch interface based on a photo-realistic model of the house’s interior. Built on pictures of the actual home, the UI allows users to control the lights and AV components by interacting with pictures of the actual components onscreen.

In other words, tap the hallway light onscreen, and the actual hallway light turns on or off. Slide your finger down the picture of the kitchen window, and the blinds in the kitchen are drawn down.

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Matt, whose website describes him as a “normal dude that likes to talk about Apple and technology in general,” made this “what-if” trip down memory lane — an alternate reality version of what the Apple website might have looked like from the pre-Internet days.

The farther back you go, the more fun it is, check out the “See Our Ads in Byte Magazine” button and a photo of Jobs & Woz that looks snapped in the founding garage.

For a longer trip down pseudo-memory lane,  check out his slideshow here.

Thanks to reader Thomas for the tip!

Joe Mansfield, whose trade is laser customizing books, engraved 550 MacBook Pros for the University of Oregon’s new Center for Student Athletes.

A custom version of the university’s “O” logo  was also etched into entry mats, lockers and laptop cases to great effect. Though computers are the backbones of study centers, they usually end up looking out of place, here they’re an integral part of the decor.

The only problem: who wants to hit the field or gym when you can hang out at the “Taj Mahal of academic services?”

Cult of Mac talked to engraver extraordinaire Mansfield about how he got started, an upcoming iPhone case and the weirdest thing he’s ever been asked to etch.

When is the last time you paid $80 for a book? When it held your MacBook, of course. Mac lovers have gone through countless attempts to disguise and protect your Apple laptop, from high-end leather briefcases we saw at CES to a faux newspaper. Now comes Mac developer Twelve South with the BookBook, a case that looks exactly like a vintage hardbound book.

The leather-bound “book”, along with two rigid book covers, also includes a padded leather spine to keep your 13-inch or 15-inch MacBook safe and secure. “When it comes to safeguarding your Mac, there is no comparison between BookBook and the typical, floppy neoprene zipper bag,” claims the company.

Apple’s highly-expected tablet device, although still underwraps, was built with roots in many other popular products sold by the Cupertino, Calif. company. Along with the iPhone’s OS, the tablet could borrow batteries from Apple’s MacBook laptop computer, according to a Taiwan report Thursday.

Two companies – Simplo Technology and Dynapack International Technology – have received orders for the rumored tablet, said Digitimes, quoting China’s Commercial Times.

A documentarian shooting a film about the impact of Haitian poverty filmed more than he was expecting when a calamitous earthquake hit Port-au-Prince nine days ago, crushing him under rubble. His life was ultimately saved not just by rescue workers or foreign aid… but by his iPhone.

The filmmaker, Dan Wooley, first used his DSLR camera to illuminate the wreckage of the building he was in. Finding a relatively safe elevator shaft, Woolley then used the Pocket First Aid and CPR app to make a bandage for his leg and to staunch the bleeding from a head wound, which proved so serious he even used the iPhone’s built-in alarm clock to prevent himself from going to sleep.

An amazing story, but perhaps everything’s best summarized by Wooley’s own five star review of Pocket First Aid and CPR, posted on its iTunes App Store page: “Consulted this app, while trapped under Hotel Montana in Haiti earthquake, to treat excessive bleeding and shock. Helped me stay alive till I was rescued 64 hours later.” Now that’s the kind of review that sells an app.

Until now, Amazon has stood largely unchallenged in the e-publishing arena – some put its dominance at 80 percent of e-book sales and 70 percent of e-book readers. Now, in a bid to counteract a hurricane of hype surrounding Apple’s as-yet unseen tablet device, the giant online bookseller is making some last-minute changes to the Kindle, it’s e-book reader. Amazon Thursday announced it will open its device to software developers, a concession to Apple’s popular App Store.

However, Amazon isn’t uttering the word “app” in describing its move to open the doors to software programming. Instead, “active content” is the label the company uses to define anything from calculators to video games for its e-book platform.

The techno-sweatshops of Beijing have never seen an Apple design they weren’t willing to ineptly rip off, but these MacBook Air knock-offs spotted by M.I.C. Gadget are the first I’ve actually liked.

Basically, what we have here is a white plastic simulacrum of the MacBook Air’s aluminum unibody chassis, crammed with the innards of your stock, last generation netbook: an Intel Atom N280 processor with up to 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive.

I love it, right down to the lid’s pulsing, multichromatic logo! If Apple ever introduces a plastic unibody Air, this is exactly what I would imagine it looking like. It’s unfortunately a Windows machine, but at around $249 I’m tempted to pick one up anyway, just to see if it’s as easily Hackintoshable as my Asus Eee PC 1000HE. What a coup one of these MacBook Air netbooks with Snow Leopard installed would be for my gadget cred next time I showed up at the blogger’s hall at CES.

Apple’s troubles with their 27-inch iMacs just never seem to come to an end.

In December, Apple notified its authorized resellers that new volume orders would be pushed out about two weeks, following numerous complaints about screen flickering and yellowing issues with the showcase Mac, as well as numerous complaints from customers who received broken iMacs in shipping.

Just last week, Apple finally started shipping replacement 27-inch iMacs back to their authorized resellers… but today, Apple Insider is reporting that those same machines now have an estimated three-week ship time when ordered through Apple.com.

In truth, it seems like there’s a load of issues here: while the 27-inch iMac indisputably has some screen issues that need to be further investigated, mostly, it’s just a victim of its own success: it was the best-selling desktop system in America last quarter.

Still, it’s got to be frustrating both for prospective customers and Apple themselves that they just can’t quite seem to squelch the last of their 27-inch iMac issues. Let’s hope this is the last one.

Apple is in talks with the music industry about the advantages of a streaming music service that lets people listen to their tunes from anywhere an Internet connection is available. The report appears to jibe with another suggesting Apple could launch the ‘cloud’ service by June.

The Cupertino, Calif. company is telling publishers such streaming would reinvigorate sluggish sales from music downloads, according to CNET. The service reportedly will be called iTunes.com and is integral to Apple’s new strategy of boosting iTunes sales via numerous linked Web sites, according to the Wall Street Journal.

With the recent release of Song Summoner for the iPhone and iPod Touch, Square Enix basically cemented their commitment to the App Store as a gaming distribution platform, so it’s no surprise that a mere few weeks later, the JRPG makers have announced through their Facebook page that they will be bringing Final Fantasy I and II to Apple handhelds sometime soon.

There’s no official word on pricing or release, but the first two Final Fantasy games have been endlessly re-mastered over the last twenty years (despite — or perhaps even because of — the fact that they are remarkably simple, plotless yet addicting games). The iPhone version seems to take the graphical remastering of the games to a new level: although I’ve played the remastered Final Fantasy I and II package on Sony’s PSP console recently, the crisp, colorful, super-deformed sprites on display in the iPhone version are an improvement of several orders of magnitudes. Final Fantasy I and II on the iPhone looks like it’ll quickly become the new standard for retro-gaming fans of the series.

As the days tick off before Apple’s “latest creation” announcement Jan. 27, its much-rumored tablet is taking shape in a steady stream of leaked interviews. The over-arching theme seems to be that Apple sees its tablet reshaping publishing the way the iPod was a game-changer for how we buy and listen to music. However, unlike previous media gadgets, Apple could be hoping to attract families – even entire classrooms – with its tablet.

The family was Apple’s focus when developing the tablet, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. “The company envisions that the tablet can be shared by multiple family members to read news and check email in home,” the paper wrote, citing ‘people familiar with the situation.’

We’re down to a week until Steve Jobs reveals the latest something or other from Apple at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Arts Center. Most believe it to be some manner of tablet, of course (which the rounded corners in the above teaser image support), or a widget, gadget, or even a doodad.

With such a major whatsit being announced one week from today, speculation is running rampant. The Wall Street Journal periodical publication today revealed an exclusive, courtesy of an anonymous informant: Apple’s tablet will be amazing for reading books playing games reading magazines communicating with your family video-conferencing ALL OF THE ABOVE!

In a breathless run-down, writers Yukari Iwatani Kane and Ethan Smith essentially list off nerds’ every dream feature for the magical device, citing partnerships with the New York Times, EA, Conde Nast, TV channels, the launch of web-based iTunes and, AHEM, Microsoft’s Bing as clear evidence that the Cupertino Craftsmen will be transforming every industry they don’t already dominate.

And the weirdest thing about it? None of it seems implausible. Not one hyperbolic assertion. If Apple’s doing something beyond the iPhone, it should be the world’s most killer video-watching, game-playing, web-surfing, video-chatting, computer-displacing new platform ever conceived. It should actually be beyond what most of us can dream of. I’m just wondering how Steve’s going to introduce it. “Today, we have 17 new revolutionary products to introduce. But they’re all one product. It’s a washer, a dryer, a thimble, a salad, a painkiller, a television, a TV network, a shoelace, a hamster, a handkerchief, a fax machine, a zipper, a bicycle, a foie gras, a US Senator, a secret lover, and your grandmother’s meat loaf. We call it iPad.”

It’s going to be a wild one on Wednesday, folks. Keep those rumors flying.

Wall Street Journal Via Engadget

More than 20% of Apple fans would buy the upcoming tablet “sight unseen,” according to a poll by 9to5Mac.

That’s a pretty big number, given that the tablet might turn out to be a Jobsian brainfart like the Cube.

But then again, Apple does have a great record of innovative products.

The majority of 9to5Mac readers say they’ll likely buy the tablet (33%), but wait until they see it before parting with their cash.

Only 6% of the 7,454 voter said they wouldn’t buy the tablet.

9to5Mac’s poll is here: Are you gonna buy one of them Apple tablets?

Today’s the day to buy some Mac or iPhone software in support of Haitian relief efforts.

The Indie+Relief one-day charity sale includes well-known titles like Delicious Library 2, Instapaper Pro, MarsEdit, Moneydance, Things and Tweetie — as well as lesser-known but highly-rated apps such as Gas Cubby and Today.

Hardware makers are also getting involved. Twelve South promised to donate $5 for every BassJump Subwoofer for MacBook ($79.99) and BackPack Shelf for iMac ($29.99) sold directly on twelvesouth.com.

“We expected people would be interested, but the response has been overwhelming and amazing,” said Garret Murray, one of the organizers. “I’ve always known the Mac community is very supportive, but even this blew me away.”

All proceeds from the sale will be donated to charities working in Haiti, including Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, the Red Cross, and others.