News - page 2295

Hands up who loves the Muppets and I’ll count, starting with me.

Disney’s just released an “Animal Drummer”, a rhythm game for people who enjoy Animal’s unique (and somewhat insane) drumming style.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihXtbB-4GWw&feature=player_embedded#

Remember Lily Sussman, the 21-year-old American tourist whose MacBook was shot up by Israeli security?

TheDailyNewsEgypt interviewed Sussman, who explains what happened. She also gives some different views of the destroyed machine. Look what a rifle round does to a MacBook.

As the FCC calls Fake Steve’s fast-growing Operation Chokehold “irresponsible,” Fake Steve is backing down from the protest he started as a joke.

Contacted by ABCNews, the chief of the FCC’s public safety and homeland security bureau warned iPhone users against crashing AT&T’s network. In a statement, he said:

“Threats of this nature are serious and we caution the public to use common sense and good judgment when accessing the Internet from their commercial mobile devices… To purposely try to disrupt or negatively impact a network with ill-intent is irresponsible and presents a significant public safety concern.”

As reported earlier, Fake Steve’s Operation Chokehold — which started as a joke — is growing fast. The number of Facebook fans has jumped from about 300 on Tuesday to more than 2,000 by Wednesday afternoon.

Indeed, the protest is growing so fast it has alarmed Fake Steve, aka Newsweek columnist Dan Lyons, who is backing down.

“I’m trying to find a way to spin it down and get everyone to back off,” he said in an email.

On his blog, Lyons is now asking protesters not to overwhelm AT&T’s network. Instead, Lyons is suggesting a flashmob-style protest outside AT&T’s stores. The suggestion isn’t going down so well with some readers.

“Don’t turn pussy, Lyons,” wote mark2000 in the comments.

“Don’t apologize, backpedal, or otherwise wimp out,” added reader jycitizen. “I don’t think this will have a Y2K effect on the overall service if people participate in this so called flash mob. I do hope it will be enough of a PR gaffe that companies like AT&T will stop taking their customers for granted, and will shine the light back on issues of consumer protection and net neutrality.”

Fake Steve called on disgruntled AT&T customers to bring AT&T’s data network “to its knees” at 12 noon PST this Friday, December 18. (Here’s Fake Steve’s original Operation Chokehold post).

The action was prompted by comments made by AT&T’s CEO Ralph de la Vega that some iPhone users are using too much data.

Fake Steve’s Operation Chokehold is growing fast. The number of Facebook fans has jumped five-fold overnight, from about 300 fans on Tuesday to more than 1,600.

Fake Steve is calling on disgruntled AT&T customers to bring AT&T’s data network “to its knees” at 12 noon PST this Friday, December 18. (Here’s Fake Steve’s original Operation Chokehold post).

The action is in protest of comments made by AT&T’s CEO Ralph de la Vega that some iPhone users are using too much data. The protest started as a joke, but is taking on a life of its own.

On Tuesday, AT&T dismissed the planned protest as a publicity stunt. A company spokesman downplayed any effect it may have — but that was when there was only 300 fans.

If you’re looking for a sleek and tiny external hard drive, LaCie Wednesday unveiled the Rikiki, a USB storage device able to hold up to 640GB of data. Named after the French word for “tiny,” the drive measures 4.3 inches x 2.5 inches by .5 inches and weighs just 5.5 ounces.

LaCie claims the drive is one of the smallest on the market. According to one review, the storage device beat Seagate’s FreeAgent.

The iPhone may be the face of the future. Smartphones like Apple’s iconic handset are on target to take 55 percent of the cell phone market value in 2010, analysts said Wednesday.

Despite a faltering general handset market, smartphones will comprise 27 percent of all handsets purchased in 2010, according to the UK analyst firm Informa. Because carriers can sell smartphones at a higher price and require expensive data plans, smartphones will grab 64 percent of mobile phone revenue, the analysts said.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBL2h3GgyKM

Microsoft has a rather ignoble history when it comes to trying to counter Apple’s hyper-effective and popular “Get a Mac” campaign. Their first efforts were just embarrassing: a series of advertisements featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates awkwardly mumbling non sequiturs at one another. That desperate bid for hipness failed, and so Microsoft launched their Laptop Hunter ads, which were comparatively straightforward: a camera crew followed “real” computer shoppers as they looked for new machines, and documented their ultimate choice of Windows laptops. Simple, pleasant and marginally effective… even if they did repeat all of the old, stupid fallacies about Apple computers costing significantly more than similarly specced Windows machines.

Pretty soon, though, controversy hit. Lauren deLong, an adorable red ead featured in the “Laptop Hunter” ads, turned out to be an actress with a filmography of ten movies to her credit. Since Microsoft’s ads purported to be following “real computer shoppers,” that made the ads’ truthfulness somewhat dubious.

So here’s the question: were the Laptop Hunters ads what the proclaimed themselves to be, or completely fictional? The “behind-the-scenes” footage of the Laptop Hunter ads shoot, as embedded above and first posted back in September, baldly asserts that participants were not told they were in a commercial until after they had picked their machines.

I’m not buying it. Not only are the individuals in the ads just a little too pointed in their dismissal of Apple products — I think a more common response to why a PC users would reject a Mac would be “I’ve always used Windows machines!” and not “It really seems like you’re paying for the aesthetics” — but surely, a professional actress like Ms. deLong would be savvy enough recognize the financial opportunity that had just presented itself if a film crew that had followed her around all day told her she’d be in a national campaign for Microsoft. The next thing she would have said is, “I have to call my agent,” not “How’s my hair?”

What do you guys think?

[Thanks, David!]

If you use the MobileMe to view or share files on your iDisk — and if you use your iPhone to do it — you might want to hit the App Store and click on Updates: Apple has just bumped the app up to version 1.1.

What’s changed? The new features include:

• Tthe ability to auto-complete email addresses when choosing recipients for a shared file.

• Automatic saving of file sharing emails to your Mail account’s Sent folder

• Images can now be tapped-and-held to save it to your photo roll or copy to another app.

• The maximum cache size has now double to 500MB.

• Faster technologies, various bug fixes and numerous localizations.

The MobileMe iDisk app is free, but you’ll need an iPhone running 0S 3.0 or later and a MobileMe membership to use it. Go get it.

The connection between Apple and Disney keeps appearing, the latest link coming with news the animation giant will begin selling its classic comics via the iPhone. “We expect it to become the gold standard for comics in a digital world,” a Disney executive said Wednesday.

The Digicomics will be sold through the iPhone and iPod touch, as well as other platforms in the U.S., UK and other English-speaking nations.

In January of 2009, I spent almost $2,500 on a top of the line, 15-inch unibody MacBook Pro, glutted with as much RAM and hard drive space as its belly could handle. Less than four months later, it was stolen.

Oh, it was my own fault. The whole tale involves a midnight rendezvous with a bartender I had my eye on at the time. She had the face of Natalie Portman, the eyebrows of Roger Moore and the constitution of Oliver Reed; in her presence, one drink became two, and two became twelve, and when we stumbled back to my apartment, I somehow forgot my laptop bag back at the bar… but only for five minutes! Alas, five minutes was too late, and by the time I’d rushed back, it was gone.

Since then, I’ve spent a good amount of time upbraiding myself about the loss. What has always bugged me most about the theft was that I always knew that there were countless programs available (such as Undercover) that would help you track down your Mac if it was stolen. I knew about these programs. I wrote about them, even. But I never once installed one. I just couldn’t imagine the scenario where I would have my laptop stolen. Dumb.

The news feeds bring me further fodder for my self-incrimination this morning. Over at TUAW, they are reporting that one of their readers. Jim, managed to safely recover his stolen Macbook using the MobileMe’s service, Back to My Mac, to take pictures of the perps and gather information about them gleaned from watching them surf the web.

It took Jim many months to get his laptop back: it had changed hands at least five times since it was stolen, at least once as payment in a drug deal. But when he got it back, it was in surprisingly good nick… with most of his files still intact on the disk.

That’s great news for Jim, but as another object lesson in my own amazing stupidity, it’s like a punch to the gut. Guess who also didn’t have a MobileMe account when his MacBook Pro was stolen? Yup. What a maroon.

We’ve all been gleefully following the seventeen month legal battle between Apple and Mac clone maker Psystar, but it looks likes the credits are finally about to roll. Yesterday, United States District Judge William Alsup granted a permanent injunction to Apple that will prevent Psystar from ever again selling hardware with Apple’s operating system already installed.

Over the years, the tear-down gurus at iFixit have opened  up 91 Mac models, 34 iPods and a couple of iPhones to repair what ailed them.

Now, they’ve released the guides in CC-BY-NC-SA license, with the blessing of Lawrence Lessig, who has also delved into a few computers himself thanks to the guides.

The nice thing about the content being CC-licensed is that by following a few rules (attribution, not using the material for commercial gain) you can recover, modify, publish these documents giving them a longer shelf life than the site if necessary — and translators around the world can get to work with non-English versions.

While DIY repairs aren’t for the fainthearted, I’ve used iFixit to transplant a MacBook hard drive and change a first-gen iPod battery, the step-by-step instructions got the job done flawlessly.

Via Hardmac

Apple has a two to three-year lead over its rivals with adoption of the iconic iPhone and iPod outpacing other technology giants by up to eight-fold, Morgan Stanley analysts announced Tuesday.

Using a 92-slide presentation, a team of 27 Morgan Stanley analysts presented a seminar on “The Mobile Internet” with the stars being Apple and its users. “Apple has a two or three-year lead,” analyst Katy Huberty told reporters gathered on a conference call. That head start comes with Apple’s 57 million iPhones, 100,000 App Store entries and 200 million iTunes customers.

Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz wouldn’t recognize an understated argument if it politely coughed, tapped him on the shoulder, and then promptly blew his face off with a bazooka, so it’s no surprise that his latest post about the so-called “Apple Gestapo” Godwin’s itself from the start. It’s a hysterical and stupid overreaction to the practices Cupertino employs to maintain secrecy about upcoming products.

But even so, it’s worth a gander, because while Diaz’s interpretations of Apple’s procedures are utterly facile, it’s still a rare and unique look at exactly how Apple manages to keep some of the most widely anticipated products in the consumer electronic market quiet, year after year.

Microsoft just launched an app for its search engine Bing for iPhone.

Offered gratis on iTunes, the idea is to put a Microsoft search engine in the hands of iPhone users who have shunned Microsoft smartphones.

Capturing the iPhone market might be a way for Microsoft to bump up traffic for the “decision engine,” which currently has about 10% of the US Internet search market.

Wishful thinking?  Maybe not: the first 247 reviews, 191 are five star — 77% — though some of the comments “I love this app, it’s a great Christmas present from Microsoft” set the BS-ometer spinning.

Any Bing aficionados out there planning to download the app?

I gave the web version a quick whirl when it first came out, but it didn’t blow my hair back.  Haven’t bothered since.

Via Silicon Valley Insider

AT&T is threatening to terminate the accounts of a pair of iPhone users because they’re costing the company too much money.

“AT&T is firing us as iPhone users,” says Penny Alexander, who lives in Dadeville, Alabama, with her husband John.

In late November the Alexanders received a letter from AT&T saying that because they didn’t live in an area directly serviced by AT&T’s network, more than half their calls were being routed through another company’s network. Thanks to roaming charges, the pair are costing AT&T too much money.

“This situation is rare,” the letter said, “but when it happens, our operating costs increase significantly which makes it difficult for us to keep our rates affordable for all other customers.”

AT&T has dismissed Fake Steve’s Operation Chokehold protest as an attention-getting stunt.

Fake Steve is calling on disgruntled AT&T customers to bring AT&T’s data network “to its knees” at 12 noon PST this Friday, December 18.

The action is in protest of comments made by a company executive that some iPhone users are using too much data. The protest started as a joke, but seems to have taking on a life of its own. Judging by comments on forums, Facebook and Twitter, people are planning to take part.

Contacted by CultofMac.com, an AT&T spokesman said:

We understand that fakesteve.net is primarily a satirical forum, but there is nothing amusing about advocating that customers attempt to deliberately degrade service on a network that provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers. We know that the vast majority of customers will see this action for what it is: an irresponsible and pointless scheme to draw attention to a blog.

The AT&T spokesman doubted the action — if it goes ahead — will have much effect. There’s only about 300 participants committed to take part, according to a Facebook fan page set up for the event. The spokesman also claims that many have criticized the event: several have pointed out that the action may affect emergency calls.

Protesters plan to disrupt AT&T’s data network in several ways:

• Turning off WiFi
• Streaming YouTube videos
• Streaming live video with the new UStream Live Broadcaster app (iTunes link)
• Streaming high-bandwidth video from Akamai’s iPhone Showcase site

It’s unclear whether disruption of AT&T’s data network will affect voice calls.

Our own illustrious Craig Grannell might have had issues with Chrome for its willful transgression of Mac interface design principles, but he still liked it enough to make it his new default browser at the end of the day. Looks like Craig wasn’t alone: after last week’s release of the Chrome for Mac beta, Google’s Chrome browser deftly shoved Safari aside in its ascent to the third place slot in the web browser charts.

According to web analytics company Net Applications, Chrome marketshare leaped to 4.4 percent last week, based on the analysis of 160 million unique visitors to 40,000 sites. Meanwhile, Safari only held 4.37 percent of the market. A narrow victory? Sure. But a victory the nonce.

At the end of the day, though, I doubt this means much: at least on the OS X platform, Safari still reigns supreme, with Chrome only accounting for 1.3 percent of all browsers used on OS X last week. Chrome only beats Safari when you take PCs and Linux into account.

I imagine the gains Chrome for Mac has made against Safari in the last week largely come from curiosity. The question is whether or not Mac users will stick with Chrome once that curiosity fades… and once Google polishes off the last of Chrome for Mac’s missing features, they just might. Safari’s just not as good a browser as Chrome for Mac has the potential to be.

Steve Wozniak takes reader questions put to him by tech reporter Arik Hesseldahl for BusinessWeek.

The interview lasts just under 10 minutes (embedding wasn’t agreeing with our powerful wordpress system, so click on the above image to watch) the questions:

What is Fusion-IO and what does it do?

You once said “never trust a computer you can’t throw out the window,” can we trust cloud computing?

What would your life have been like if you grew up outside the Bay Area with access to the Homebrew Computer Club?

Which Sci-Fi futuristic technologies will come to fruition next?

What’s beyond solid state storage?

And a throwaway question with a cagey answer about the presumed Mac Tablet…

Haven’t happened to see Woz on TV since Dancing with the Stars, he is on much more solid ground talking tech than dancing the tango, but is still pretty entertaining.

Via BusinessWeek

Just a week after Apple quietly upgraded their Mac Pro line to use 3.33Ghz quad-core Xeon CPUs comes our first good look at the processor that will likely drive the next significant refresh of the Mac Pro: the Intel Core i7-980x Processor. Naturally, the ‘x’ stands for ‘eXtreme.’

Hot off the 32nm production lines of Intel’s manufacturing factories, the Intel Core i7-980x shifts away from merely improving frequency towards more tangible performance gains. Although the new chips max out at 3.33GHz, each packs in an astonishing six cores and twelve threads per chip, meaning that a dual processor Mac Pro might boast twelve physical and twenty four logical cores, which would represent a huge performance bump to the video professionals who are Apple’s most expensive desktop’s primary customers.

Additionally, each Core i7-980x CPU boasts a 12MB Intel Smart Cache, hyperthreading support and an integrated memory controller, while supporting DDR1066MHz memory and sucking up 130 watts of power.

In short, despite Apple’s last stealthy refresh of the Mac Pro, you should hold off on buying a Mac Pro if you can until the Core i7-980x is released commercially in February or March. Final Cut Pro will thank you.

Apple was named one of the top 10 U.S. Internet brands for November, according to ratings analysis firm Nielsen. The umbrella of Apple sites or applications attracted 62.1 million people, placing it in tenth place. People spent one hour and 18 minutes on average using Apple sites, according to the research.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo were ranked in the top 3, pulling 155.5 million, 137.2 million and 131.4 million Internet viewers, respectively. At more than six hours on average, fourth place Facebook had the longest-lingering audience.

Remember way back in 2007 when Steve Ballmer famously yanked on his oligarch’s suspenders, chomped down on his cigar and told USA Today: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance?” Ballmer then went on to muse that Apple would only ever succeed in getting two or three percent market share, while Windows Mobile would own sixty to seventy percent of the market.

No. Wait. Stop chortling and high fiving each other for a second, I’m trying to make a point here: those are the words of a man who firmly believes his predictions. History has shown otherwise: Microsoft obviously got caught sleeping at the wheel when the iPhone came on the scene and utterly destroyed Windows Mobile’s place in the smartphone arena. Two years later, and Microsoft still hasn’t released a version of Windows Mobile that is even competitive with iPhone OS 1.0, let alone 3.0. But at least Microsoft is no longer feeling complacent about it: speaking to attendees of the Connect! tech summit in London, Microsoft UK’s Phil Moore made a frank appraisal of Windows Mobile when compared to the iPhone.

In a burst of spontaneous Yuletide cheer not informed at all by an interest in showcasing their new iTunes LP format, Apple has knocked up a compilation of holiday tracks called the iTunes Holiday Sampler for free download… although if you live outside the United States, there’ll be no free iTunes Christmas for you.

What sort of songs will you get for your zero dollars and zero cents? Eh: mostly the typical, marginally inoffensive pablum-like tracks favored by American Apparel speaker systems all through December (*cough* Wynonna *cough* *hack* Sarah McLachlan *sputter* *gag*) although there are some decent groups on display here, including the Vince Guaraldi Trio, Barry Mannilow, Aretha Franklin, Weezer and Stephen Colbert.

In short, there should be something here for everyone. Still, I ask you: what kind of holiday mix doesn’t include MXPX’s “Christmas Night of the Living Dead?” Or at least the Kinks’ “Father Christmas?”

Apple’s delays shipping its newest iMacs increasingly point to the Cupertino, Calif. company having trouble pushing the desktop machines out the door fast enough to meet demand. “I can’t imagine in their wildest dreams they would have thought they would sell like this,” one report quoted NPD analyst Stephen Baker.

Debate over why Apple called Monday for a two-week waiting period centered on a rash of reports of buyers experiencing defective iMac displays, ranging from yellow-tinged screens to cracked hardware. In a statement, the Cupertino, Calif. firm apologized for delays due to the iMac being “a huge hit.” The company’s announcement was devoid of any specifics, however.

The avatar of personal computing: a stodgy and cherubic businessman, played by that ineffably awesome hobo-lover, John Hodgman. The avatar of the Apple experience: insufferable smugness and a warrantless sense of privilege as coalesced together in the immensely punchable mug of Justin Long.

The endless gladiatorial battle between Mac and PC in the abstract, white-space limbo of Platonic ideals has entertained Mac fans since 2006…. a Spy vs. Spy for our times. No wonder, then, that AdWeek just named the “Get a Mac” series of ads the Campaign of the Decade as part of their Best of the 2000’s awards. And the “Get a Mac” ads weren’t the only Apple campaigns to be recognized: those trippy, psychedelic iPod Silhouette ads won AdWeek’s award for “Out of Home Ad of the Decade” (re: Billboard Award).