Those crazy MacHeisters are at it again, and this time the deal is even harder to resist.
The first ever MacHeist Nano won’t cost you a penny. You can download, without charge, fully licensed copies of ShoveBox, WriteRoom, Twitterific, TinyGrab, and Hordes of Orcs. If 500,000 people take part (which I think is a pretty safe bet), they’ll throw in a copy of Mariner Write as well.
Sweet deal? I reckon. All of these are great apps. What’s the catch?
If you liked Wednesday’s interview with Apple ad man Ken Segall, just wait until you see what we’ve got coming next week.
We have an exclusive interview with one of the top people in the Apple story. I’d say they were number 3: the third most influential person in Apple’s history.
This is the first time they spoken publicly about Apple in many, many years. They have some good stories, a lot of fascinating insights, and a couple of surprises.
Can you guess who it is?
Apple today opened the first of a series of stores planned for Paris. The first, located near the famous Louvre art museum, coincided with the release of the Musee du Louvre iPhone app showcasing among other exhibits, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
The Paris store, first reported in 2008, includes a 7,700-square foot two-story layout with diamond-shaped windows.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was named “CEO of the Decade” by Fortune Magazine. The magazine calls the 2000s “the decade of Steve.”
Despite surviving a very public death watch, being tossed out of his own company in the 1980s and what Fortune calls “his own often unpleasant demeanor,” Jobs “has transformed American business.”
Apple’s come-back under Jobs spans 2000, when the company was worth $5 billion through today’s $170 billion valuation, edging out even the mega-bucks of Internet giant Google. In August, Apple reported having $31.1 billion in cash, a record for a technology company. Over that period, the Cupertino, Calif. company has become involved in music, videos and cell phones.
The Droid provides Verizon Wireless a ‘more credible alternative’ to Apple’s iPhone, according to Walt Mossberg, a technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
“Like the iPhone, the Droid is really a powerful handheld computer that happens to make phone calls,” Mossberg wrote at All Things Digital. After testing a review version of the Droid, the Wall Street Journal writer told readers the Motorola-made device using Google’s Android 2.0 software has some advantage, as well as disadvantages to the iPhone.
The mystery object in Monday’s contest is a Quadra 700. (Yes, the image was flipped in an effort to make it a slightly more challenging).
Winner named after the jump.
Virgin’s new Flying Without Fear app — an interactive guide to easing panic — left us with a few questions that we got answered by Mickey Beyer-Clausen, who co-developed the app for Mental Workout.
CoM: Can you use the app during take off and landing?
MBC: Unfortunately, passengers cannot use any electronic device – including the iPhone in airplane mode – during take-off and landing but the app is developed to prepare users for flight whereby making the brief “no electronics” period at the beginning and end of the flight more manageable.
The panic button is intended to be used during the flight when turbulence is encountered or other events occur which make the user uncomfortable.
Isamu Sanada’s day gig is photography, but his passion is Apple mock-up design.
An amateur designer of fantasy Macintoshes with a website that showcases dozens of his speculative designs for Apple gear, Sanada got his mock-up cred back when he posted an amazingly prescient take on the Titanium G4 PowerBook months before the real deal was released.
Though he’s gotten lots of praise for his designs, Sanada has been quoted regarding his design chops humbly, saying, “Apple’s thought is more splendid than my thought.”
Hit the jump for more Steve Jobs lookalikes and if you find one out and about — or happen to be one yourself — send us a pic or post it on our Facebook wall and we may feature yours in a gallery post down the road.
Is this Steve Jobs driving a tank in a classic Apple TV spot from the late 1990s? That was the rumor at the time: Jobs was making cameos in Apple commercials.
Ken Segall, the TBWA ad man responsible for naming the iMac and Think Different, reveals the truth after the jump. He also shares some rare behind-the-scenes photos he took during the filming of this commercial and another from the same era.
Some readers might remember the fuss a few weeks ago, when Snow Leopard came out and people noticed that it did something screwy to the way files behave.
Best known for its awesome teardowns, the Mac-oriented repair company iFixit is launching a online community devoted to fixing high-tech products, rather than tossing them away.
“The world has a problem with rapidly consuming devices and tossing them aside, ignoring long-term environmental impact,” said iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens on the company’s blog. “With your help, we are going to change that. I’m confident that we can change our culture of ephemeral ownership.”
Currently in private beta, iFixit Answers looks like a cross between a forum and a wiki. In a blog post announcing the launch, Wiens outlines four points that should be of interest to all publishers focused on building productive online communities:
- It’s important that posts get more useful over time. It’s not uncommon for a traditional repair forum response to become the canonical source for an answer to a problem, only to get outdated and stagnant as technology changes.
- It’s important that we recognize expertise. It matters if the author of an answer is a professional technician, or has helped 200 people fix their problems.
- It’s important to make helping people fun. There’s a rush that comes from helping someone solve a tricky problem, being recognized by people for the research you put into a question before asking it, or testing your hardware diagnosis mettle against others.
- And most important, we need to close the feedback loop between the people answering questions and those asking them. Repairing things is uniquely tangible — when you use a solution proposed by someone, you know for a fact whether or not it worked. Finding out that the answer you gave someone actually fixed their problem is one of the greatest feelings in the world.
It’ll be very interesting how iFixit makes good on these points. The future on online publishing is nurturing community, and Wiens has nailed some of the key points. We’ll be keeping a close on the project.
To sign up as an Answers beta tester, add your name to the list.
Last week’s bombshell that Apple’s upcoming OS 10.6.2 update dropped support for Atom processors seems to be unfounded.
The Atom is the chip of choice in netbook hackintoshes, and many speculated that Apple was trying to kill the hackintosh market.
But Stell, the hacker who first sounded the alarm, now says support for Atom is mysteriously back.
“… in the latest development build Atom appears to have resurrected itself zombie style in 10C535. The Atom lives another day, but nothing is concrete until the final version of 10.6.2 is out.”
New on the app store is Car Finder, a clever app that leads back to your parked car using augmented reality.
The app uses the iPhone’s camera to overlay the direction of your car and how far away it is. The app relies on the camera and a digital compass, and is compatible only with the iPhone 3GS running 3.1 or later.
The Fab Four still haven’t made it to iTunes, but if you want to shell out $280, you can have some of their stuff on a limited-edition USB stick.
Collectors may crave 16GB key that comes with 14 stereo titles, plus re-mastered 13 mini-documentary films about the studio albums, replicated original UK album art, rare photos and expanded liner notes.
The USB “core” pulls out of an apple, recalling the Granny Smith from the record company founded in 1968. Some 30,000 keys are available from the online store, from December 7 in the UK and December 8 in North America. (You can also pre-order online now.)
If you’re more interested in their music, it sounds like slim pickings for a hefty price — at least one fan, alluneediscash, on the site argued:
“But the BOX SET is only $219! ($179 at amazon) no one loves the beats more than me, but shouldn’t they charge LESS for the usb?”
Which raises the perennial question of when this icon of Brit pop will finally make it to iTunes. Although the Beatles settled the marathon trademark dispute with Apple two years ago, the use of this apple key, meant as a nod to Apple Records, might stir the embers of animosity rather than hasten them for Apple downloads.
The App Store, not even two years old, has crossed the 100,000 mark for apps available to iPhone and iPod touch owners, Apple announced Wednesday. The milestone comes less than two months after the Cupertino, Calif. company said users downloaded more than 2 billion apps.
In September, the App Store reached 85,000 available applications.
The swivel goodness at the base of the iMac G4 had a near-human flexibility and was nicknamed the iLamp in a nod to Luxo Jr., star of a short Pixar film.
Now, one of those aging bases from the early 2000s is living out its retirement as a lamp.
Creator Nicolas didn’t tell hardmac exactly how he did it, but did say it was easy:
“I decided to recycle my old iMac G4. With some spare parts, one can easily transform it into a nice lamp fully articulated thanks to the famous arm.”
Another illuminating idea courtesy Apple.
Via hardmac
Meet Ken Segall — the man who dreamed up the name “iMac” and wrote the famous Think Different campaign.
Segall is a veteran creative director who worked at Apple’s agency, TBWA\Chiat\Day, back in the day.
“I’ve put in 14 years working with Steve Jobs on both Apple and NeXT,” says Segall. “I’m the author of the Think Different campaign and the guy who came up with the whole “i” thing, starting with iMac.”
Segall collaborated closely with advertising legend Lee Clow, chief creative officer of TBWA\Chiat\Day, whose retirement was widely — but prematurely — reported last week.
In this exclusive interview, Segall talks about working with Steve Jobs, how Jobs initially hated the word “iMac,” and the importance of the Think Different campaign to Apple.
Security software developers must think Mac users are quite daft. Tuesday afternon Symantec sent out a press release flogging its ‘discovery’ of a new trojan horse targeting Apple’s OS disguised as a ‘space invaders’ style video game in which killing invading aliens results in the program deleting files from the user’s hard drive.
Ooo.
The game in question is an art project called Lose/Lose that first appeared on the web back in September, created by digital artist Zach Gage and featured in Electrofringe’s current exhibition of online art, Electro Online 2009.
The idea behind the project is to use game mechanics to call into question the idea of mindless killing for fun. Are gamers so obsessive they must kill aliens at any cost? In the game, each alien is based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted.
Gage asks, “Why do we assume that because we are given a weapon an awarded for using it, that doing so is right?”
The game has a clear warning at start-up that says, in scary red letters: killing aliens in this game will delete files from your hard drive.
Now Symantec is sending out an alert flagging the art project as malware.
“A new threat cleverly disguised as a classic video game is targeting unsuspecting Mac users,” Symantec said in an email to CultofMac.com. It continued:
The Trojan horse, known as Trojan.Loosemaque, is designed to look like a Space Invaders/Galaga style game. However, for every alien ship the user destroys, the program deletes a file from the home directory. Symantec – the world leader in online security – recently discovered this new Trojan horse targeting Mac users and video of it in action can be seen here. Online games are increasingly becoming a target for virus creators, and this threat shows it’s a possibility regardless of the platform. While the author of OSX.Loosemaque actually informs people on his website that the game deletes files, there’s nothing stopping someone with more malicious intentions from modifying it and passing it on to unsuspecting users who don’t have security software installed.
Symantec is not the first company to flag Gage’s project. Security blockers such as Sophos’ Anti-Virus and Intego’s VirusBarrier X5 also define the game as a threat.
So is it art or is it malware? Are Mac users equipped to know the difference? Seriously, what do security software companies take us for?
An Estonian website claimed Tuesday to have broken news of a major bug in iPhone’s Safari app that could put unsuspecting iPhone users at risk of running up huge bills with their cellular service providers in certain cases.
The danger appears related to Safari’s failure to close connections with web servers that run Motion JPEG to stream video over the Internet. In the case where an iPhone user uses Safari to browse, for example, to the webcam on the island of Keri and then closes Safari in favor of another app or simply returns to the iPhone’s home screen, data continues to stream over the phone’s 3G or EDGE connection from the Motion JPEG-running server.
The Estonian report claims to have been able to run up over 740MB of data transfer in a little over an hour in this manner and that the only way to get Safari to properly sever the data link is to browse to another site before closing the app.
The bug would appear to affect only those iPhone users who do not pay for ‘unlimited data’ as part of their standard service plan, and thus poses no risk to at&t subscribers using their phones in the US, or to many European users with similar plans in their home countries.
With the rise of limited data plans in some countries, however, and in the case of users traveling with iPhones overseas using limited International Data plans, this could cause a real problem.
A request for comment from Apple PR remained unanswered at press time.
Whether funky or fashionable, protective or passe; made of titanium or cardboard, most iPhone cases are predictable. IvySkins Tuesday introduced an interesting twist on the ho-hum case: integrated energy. The SmartCase ($79.99) claim to fame is an integrated an interchangeable battery that supposedly will extend your iPhone 3G or 3GS’ battery by 200 percent.
The key is the case will signal your iPhone to first feed off the SmartCase’s battery, then your handset’s. The device includes a five-LED indicator, built-in power charger and a USB cable. The case itself is made of a polycarbonate and a polysilicon coating protection.
If you’re looking for something a bit more basic, iaPeel has a print-and-peel alternative for $21. You use the included designer software to create your own ‘skin,’ print it out on any inkjet printer and then apply it to a generic case.
[Via IvySkin and Gadget Lab]
Following reports of problems playing Flash video on the new iMac, here’s some footage of a quick video test I conducted. (Hit the jump).
BTW: Don’t miss our comprehensive review of the humungous new 27-inch iMac.
Thanks Dane for fixing the video.
Adobe made its position on the unavailability of Flash for the iPhone clear Monday with a snippily worded announcement that points the finger squarely at Apple for any iPhone user who might end up at the ‘getflash’ web page.
But an interesting comment on the Reddit thread about the long-standing brouhaha makes it appear the Adobe folks might doth protest too much. Flash would suck the iPhone’s battery dry in less than an hour.
Here’s a couple of videos of the new 27-inch iMac in action as an external display. The new iMac is the first that can act as a monitor for another machine, but will only work with devices that output DisplayPort video, like newer MacBooks.
In these videos I’ve hooked my MacBook Pro (13-inch) to the iMac using Belkin’s Mini DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort cable, which is available from Apple’s retail stores for $29.99.
Previously I tried to hook up the iMac using DVI and HDMI cables (and appropriate adaptors), but it didn’t work.
See the monster iMac in action after the jump.
Thanks Emil. And thanks Dane for fixing the videos.
BTW: Don’t miss our comprehensive review of the humungous new 27-inch iMac.
We start out with a number of deals on MacBooks and MacBook Pro laptops. The deals are flying off the shelves at the Apple Store, with a 13-inch MacBook for $899. A similar MacBook from PC Connection is selling for $925. A 17-inch MacBook Pro with AppleCare is offered for $2,348. Also on tap are a number of deals for iPhone and iPod accessories, along with various cases. Finally, we round out the top trio with a number of software deals, including price cuts from the App Store and other bargains.
For details on these and other items, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page for the complete information right after the jump.
China Unicom executives said Tuesday the carrier has added one million subscribers since Oct. 30, but only 5,000 of those are for iPhones. The numbers from Unicom Chairman Chang Xiaobing are far less than the 500,000 iPhones Apple had expected to initially sell. The disappointing figures are prompting many to question whether pricing is to blame.
Although Hong Kong’s China Unicom Ltd. President Lu Yimin said the 6,999 yuan ($1,025) price was not too high for the iPhone 3GS, so-called gray market versions cost around $800 locally. The disparity may serve as “an interesting exercise in how to sell an inferior product at a higher price,” Duncan Clark, a Beijing consultant, told Bloomberg.
