We’re big fans of the unauthorized doc “Welcome to Macintosh” — a true love letter to the history of Apple and its community.
Now this indie film is available on iTunes.
Well, it’s also available on Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Netflix etc., but we love the idea that what is a totally handmade film (tagline: “a documentary for the rest of us”) is now worthy of being sold by Apple.
In what’s turning out to be a busy few weeks for the team at Bare Bones, their information manager app Yojimbo has just been bumped up to 2.0. The new version is a 20 dollar upgrade for owners of older versions, is Snow Leopard compatible, and has this spectacular new icon.
There are a lot of Apple-inspired confections out there, but this apple pie with a logo at the center by a photographer in Uruguay who goes by Miss Gong looks almost too yummy to eat. (Not sure if the reverse logo was intentional or just turned round in the photo).
Imagine inviting your Mac user group over and serving this apple pie for dessert…
Mobile phone gadget maker Parrot Tuesday introduced one of the few in-dash car stereos meant for iPhone users. The RKi8400 ($400 in the U.S.) was unveiled at the Frankfurt Auto Show.
“All iPhone functions — music, navigation of the music directory and playlists and Bluetooth phone capabilities — have been adapted for in-car use,” said Henri Seydoux, Parrot founder and CEO.
The more I play with Snow Leopard, the more it looks like it’s designed to run Apple’s upcoming tablet.
Look at Expose in the Dock — the new feature that reveals all an application’s open windows when you click and hold the application’s icon. It’s tailor-made for fingers. Even more convincing is Stacks in the Dock. Hit a folder icon in the dock, and up pops the folder and all its files. Each icon is a big target for your finger, and the window has a big, fat slider for scrolling up and down (no more fiddly little arrows at the top or bottom). Both of these UI tweaks scream ‘touchscreen.’
And then today I discovered an unheralded feature that the minute I saw it, I thought, “Game over! Here’s rock-solid proof that Snow Leopard is designed for touchscreens. This is a tablet operating system.”
Rockstar Games’ critically-acclaimed Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is coming to the iPhone/touch this fall, the company says.
Released last year for the Nintendo DS, the game got reave reviews and is still the highest-rated DS game on GameRankings, with an average review score of about 93%.
“Chinatown Wars is a big fat raspberry to the competition; a masterclass in not only hand-held development, but video game design as a whole, exploring exactly how to craft Liberty City around the console’s unique strengths without compromising the series’ character,” said the Daily Telegraph.
The game follows the misadventures of Huang Lee, a young Triad, as he investigates the mysterious death of his dad, kills his rivals, steals cars, deals drugs and evades the cops — all in a miniature version of the company’s infamous virtual playground, Liberty City.
Sounds fun. Here’s the trailer:
As expected, Apple is hosting a special “Rock and Roll” media event on Sept. 9 and is sending invites to members of the press.
The tag line for the event is: “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it” — a play on the Rolling Stones song “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It).”
Some had speculated the event would be tied to the reissue of the Beatles catalog on the same day: 09/09/09. The band is re-issuing its entire remastered catalog and The Beatles: Rock Band game. But using a line from Rolling Stones now makes that seem unlikely.
The event is likely to showcase Apple’s holiday lineup of iPods, which are widely expected to get cameras, and a new version of iTunes with social networking features.
Although many are hoping the event will also see the introduction of an Apple tablet, that seems unlikely. But an appearance by Steve Jobs does not. If he hosts the event, it’ll be the first public appearance by Steve Jobs since his liver transplant earlier this year.
The event is being held at 10:00 AM PST at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the venue of several previous Apple media events.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking for insider traders of Apple stock — possibly Apple staff — who made suspicious trades of the company’s stock, according to the Huffington Post.
The SEC is asking brokerage firms for the identities of clients who made suspicious trades, HuffPost financial columnist Dan Dorfman says.
The SEC is looking at suspicious stock trades during four specific time periods, which is unusual, Dorfman says; investigations are usually limited to single time periods — not multiple.
Insider trading is the buying and selling of stock by people with access to information not available to the general public, and is closely watched by the SEC. Insider trades often revolve around news that moves the company’s stock, such as good or bad revenue reports, or the announceent of new products.
The SEC would not reveal any details of its investigation, but traders contacted by Dorfman speculated that it concerned reports about Steve Jobs health and liver transplant, and/or sales of the iPod. News about either create volatility in Apples stock, which insiders can profit from.
As Dorfman notes, Apple’s stock has been great for traders: insider or not. It’s almost doubled in 8 months, jumping from $85.35 to $170.05, just below the 52-week high of $176.25.
Snow Leopard is being widely touted as a performance increase, but the OS upgrade resulted in a 10-15% performance DECREASE on both my Mac Pro as well as my MacBook Pro — at least, according to the Xbench benchmarking tool.
Now of course, that could just be things that Xbench measures, perhaps it doesn’t account or provide sufficient weight for multi-threading, and multi-tasking. But we would like to get to the bottom of this, and are asking for your help.
If you followed our handy dandy upgrade guide you ought so still have a functioning Leopard install to boot from. If so, please follow this testing protocol:
Use the same protocol with your Snow Leopard install, but name the result CoM – YOURNAME – POST.
Thanks in advance I’ll be releasing results in the next few days.
** Why no drive test? XBench places too much emphasis on hard drive performance, and in an era where all hard drives perform basically the same, it skews all performance tests to the center. Running the test without drives provides a better picture of the actual performance delta.
We may be getting closer to a hardware version of hands-free navigation for iPhone users. The FCC has released several documents plus photos of a planned TomTom Car Kit for the iPhone.
The kit (pictured above) includes a mount enabling the iPhone to be positioned either vertically or in landscape mode. Engadget also writes the kit includes Bluetooth and a dedicated SiRFstar GPS chipset.
The announcement may be welcome news to iPhone navigators who hoped an actual TomTom product would follow an iPhone app released earlier this month. The app, priced at $99.99 for U.S. and Canadian iPhone owners, competes with the likes of CoPilot Live ($34.99), Sygic Mobile Maps ($39.99), AT&T’s Navigator ($10 monthly fee) and Google Maps.
[Via iClarified and Engadget]
Apple denied claims that faulty iPhones overheat and explode, saying the shattered, spattering phones that launched a government investigation in the EU are few and not due to a systematic problem.
“To date, there are no confirmed battery overheating incidents for iPhone 3GS and the number of reports we are investigating is in the single digits,” Apple said in a statement to AFP.
“The iPhones with broken glass that we have analyzed to date show that in all cases the glass cracked due to an external force that was applied to the iPhone,” the company added.
So far, 11 cases of snap, crackle and pop iPhones have been reported in France, plus one of an iPod in Britain. Another case surfaced today, with a Belgian teen’s iPhone which reportedly went flambé causing him severe headaches afterwards.
This is the first statement Apple has made since the EU launched a safety investigation Aug. 18.
Herve Novelli, secretary of state for trade and consumer affairs, said he would question Apple’s Michel Coulomb about the “causes of the implosion of these devices and eventual measures they could take,” according to AP.
Back in July, Apple issued a support guide about how to keep the iPhone and iPhone 3GS running cool.
Every Friday, the Mac Games and More website will highlight five different casual Mac games you might not have heard of, to take you into the weekend. I hope you will find something fun here. Click on the images to enlarge them.
Extra-large Apple tablets with screen sizes measuring 13-inches and 15-inches have been spotted in China, and one was running OS X, according to Gizmodo.
Citing a “100% reliable” source, two prototype tablets were seen in a factory in Shenzuen, China. The touchscreen prototypes were made of aluminum and shaped like big iPhones, the source said.
One of them “was running Mac OS X 10.5.” When I asked, the source didn’t know if these were built for demonstration purposes, or if they were preproduction units. The company has a tight relation with Apple but “it’s not FoxConn.”
Many of the rumors surrounding the tablet have focused on a 10-inch model running the iPhone OS. But as we’ve noted before, Apple has made Snow Leopard a very touch-centric operating aystem, with scores of UI touches designed for fingers.
Of course, Apple is famous for its rigorous prototyping process and always makes hundreds of variations of upcoming products before deciding on the final form factor. But many observers think it’s only natural that Apple will eventually offer tablets with several different sizes, just like it offers different sized MacBooks, though possibly not at launch.
In part two of our clever coverup series (yesterday’s installment: MacBooks disguised as newspapers), we offer you the faux shopping bag from Japan. The item is actually a 30-watt speaker for your iPod or other MP3 player. But there are some strings attached – literally.
Defeating the ‘shopping bag’ motif is the need for the device to be plugged in. This not only blows your cover, but puts your iPod on a leash. Then there is the price – $335 US – and that the speaker is not stereo. Maybe it’s all about style. Boing Boing reports the bentwood ‘shopping bag’ was created by artist Yoshihiko Satoh. A $335 non-stereo wired iPod speaker? Reminds me of the $300 tea kettle from Bugatti.
I’m waiting for the wireless version to appear – maybe disguised as a Walmart or Whole Earth bag.
[Via Gadget Lab and Boing Boing]
A lot of people will be upgrading to Snow Leopard this weekend. There’s the right way to do it, and there’s the wrong way.
Here’s how to do it right.
God help us if Mac OS X ever has a system like the App Store policy. This time, Convertbot by Tapbots (a Cult of Mac favorite a while ago) was rejected. Its crime, as the image above shows, was using an icon for Time that Apple considers too similar to the one it uses for Recents.
Thing is, Tapbots just used a generic and insanely simple clock icon. Clearly, Apple—a company that bases a lot of its advertising on the fact smart people use Macs and Apple kit—thinks iPhone and iPod touch users are a bunch of f——ing morons, with no understanding of context. Perhaps they’re right and Cupertino has been inundated with frustrated iPhone users, repeatedly stabbing the Convertbot clock icon and yet not being able to access a recent calls list.
Somehow, we doubt it. Also, this icon’s the same one Convertbot’s had since the start—and this is the third point update to the app, and therefore the fourth time it’s been submitted. There were no problems at all the first three times.
With Philip Schiller’s email to John Gruber (regarding Ninjawords) and a similar communication to Panic’s Steven Frank, along with positive noises regarding C64 app finally being approved, we’re for once going to give Apple the benefit of the doubt on this (in that the decision is an isolated error). But here’s hoping things really are improving—that the Convertbot rejection is the blip, rather than the blip being Apple getting things right.
UPDATE: The Yankee Group also says the numbers are way high, and AdMob defends its estimates, kinda, sorta. See below.
Estimates that the iPhone App Store is worth $2.4 billion a year are utterly ridiculous, iPhone developers say.
Mobile advertising firm AdMob on Thursday got a ton of press for estimating that the iPhone App Store earns billions. The number was extrapolated from a survey of about 1,000 users — and is massively overstated, iPhone developers say.
“Do the math and that’s a ridiculous claim,” wrote developer Layton Duncan of Polar Bear Farm, an iPhone developer based in New Zealand.
Duncan did the math: $2.4 billion divided by the 65,000 apps in the App Store is $37,000 per app, per year. And while some developers earn that, many do not. Long Tail anyone?
David Barnard of App Cubby, a developer based in Austin, Texas, says AdMob’s number is at least 5x too big. The iPhone App Store is worth $250 and $500 million per year, estimates Barnard, who keeps a close, professional eye on App Store sales.
Earlier this week we took a look at how Apple’s upcoming tablet will be a paradigm shift by introducing a different kind of computing. Here in more detail is how Apple’s tablet will be great for gaming.
After a long wait, the new Facebook 3.0 App for the iPhone is finally live on the App Store. It offers several new features, including the ability to upload video from the iPhone 3GS, like posts and photos, and RSVP to upcoming events.
If the App Store still says version 2.5, ignore it — version 3.0 will download says developer Joe Hewitt.
– See your upcoming Events and RSVP
– See Pages and post updates and photos to Pages you administer
– Write Notes and read your friends’ Notes
– Upload videos from an iPhone 3GS
– Complete photo management (create albums, delete albums, delete photos, delete photo tags)
– Change your Profile Picture
– Like posts and photos
– See the same News Feed as the Facebook website
– Visit links in a built-in web browser
– Quickly call or text your friends
Starting in September, Zipcar users will be able to reserve wheels via an iPhone app.
Zipcar founder Scott Griffin takes the app for a test drive for CNN:
Griffith enters the parking lot outside his office in Cambridge, Mass., pulls out his iPhone, and taps a button on the screen. Suddenly a yellow Mini Cooper starts honking like a crazed goose.
Griffith approaches the vehicle and taps the screen again. The doors magically unlock, and under the steering wheel the key dangles from a cord. He starts up the car — nicknamed “Meneus” — and drives away at a rate of $11.25 an hour.
The Zipcar app gets works as a wireless key, getting drivers into cars, letting them lock them — and helps find the closest available garage.
The car sharing program I get around with in Milan uses an RFID card to lock and unlock doors (kind of nice if you don’t have an iPhone). Reservations over the Internet work decently, as long as you realize you need a car while sitting at your computer.
Alternatively, you can call them to see what’s available but half the time the operators don’t have key info — like the garage is closed for lunch.
The Zipcar app sounds well thought through, it’ll be interesting to see what it’s like on the ground.
Via CNN Money
Spotify’s app for the iPhone has been approved by Apple and should be available to premium customers shortly. But alas, not in the U.S. — at least, not yet.
“The current status as of right now is it’s been approved and we hope to add the app to the more than 65,000 apps on the app store very soon,” an Apple spokesperson told PaidContent. “We’ve been in constant communication working with the developer and have already notified Spotify that the app will be in the app store very soon.”
This is fantastic news for music lovers, and a big surprise from Apple. If there’s a real threat to iTunes, it’s Spotify.
Spotify’s streaming music service has taken the world by storm with a library that rivals iTunes — about 6 million tracks — and an interface to match. It’s dead easy to search, build playlists, and find new artists. It’s basically iTunes in the cloud — but free.
The $20-a-month premium service dispenses with the occasional ads, which aren’t intrusive. A premium account will be required to use the iPhone app.
So magnificent is the service, it already has 2 million subscribers in Europe and is adding 50,000 new users every day. It is set to come to the U.S. some time later this year, or maybe next, pending licensing agreements with the record labels.
The only downside is that it’s tied to the computer. But Spotify’s iPhone app promises to change that. The app can cache full playlists to be played offline — thousand of songs can be stored on the iPhone and played at any time. You can store up to 3,333 songs — that’s 10 days constant listening — and the songs will sync over WiFi, no USB cable needed, according to Wired.com. Bye, bye iTunes. This is the future of music. Why would you buy songs any longer?
There was speculation that the app wouldn’t be approved by Apple because it is such a threat to the iTunes business model. Some feared Apple would argue that the Spotify App replicates core functions of the iPhone: IE. playing music. This was the reasoning Apple used for not approving the Google Voice app, which is still under review because it replicates the iPhone’s telephony functions — or so Apple argued to the FCC.
So big surprise that Apple’s giving the go-ahead. Of course, the app might be crippled in key ways. But perhaps the company is softening its stance in the face of ongoing controversy about the App Store? Or perhaps Apple is afraid it might become the target of an antitrust case, a la Microsoft?
Fingers crossed Spotify comes Stateside sooner than later. Here’s a cool video of the Spotify app in action. Watch the offline song caching feature at about 28 seconds in. .
Sony Thursday introduced three new digital SLRs in its Alpha family. The cameras feature a number of innovative features for both professional and value-minded photographers.
The Sony a850 is the little brother of the a900, a pro unit released last year. Like the a900, the a850 features a 24.6 megapixel Exmor CMOS sensor. Two BIONZ processors enable fast data capture and image processing, allowing you to snap photos at three frames per second.
Unlike the a900, however, the new a850 sells for $2,000 (body only).
More details and photos after the jump.
UPDATE: See Developers Call BS On $2.4B iPhone App Store Number
The iPhone App market could be worth $2.4 billion a year, reporter Om Malik of GigaOm estimates based on new numbers from the mobile advertising firm AdMob.
This is a very big number for such a new marketplace; no wonder Microsoft, Google, Palm and everyone else is trying to replicate it.
AdMob is a mobile advertising firm that serves up ads inside apps running on the iPhone, iPod touch and Google’s Android phones. In a survey of more than 1,000 users in July, Ad Mob found:
* Apple’s App Store sells $200 million worth of applications every month, a run rate of about $2.4 billion a year, according to Malik.
* Android apps are bringing in about $5 million a month, or $60 million a year.
* iPhone users download about 10 apps per month, and one in four apps is paid for.
* iPod touch users download 18 apps a month, but only two of those are paid for.
* 50% of iPhone users download at least one paid app a month.
* 40% of iPod touch users download at least one paid app a month.
* Users who download paid apps spend about $10 per month; and the average app price is under $2.00.
The upshot: Users are happy to spend money on apps, especially if they geta chance to ry them frst with a free or lite version.
Have you ever left your MacBook on the train or in a cafe, only to return and find it gone? Maybe the best bet is to hide that sleek know-it-anywhere Apple design behind something more mundane, like a newspaper. That’s the concept behind a zippered laptop case that appears to a passerby as just a discarded newspaper. The advantages of the faux newspapers may be limited to the myopic thief, as Gadget Lab’s Charlie Sorrel notes:
“Spanish readers will note that the name of the paper is spelled wrong (it should be La Vanguardia, with an extra “i” before the final letter).” For English readers, the company also offers “Herold Tribune.” The obvious misspellings are likely due to copyright issues, but it could affect the coverup’s effectiveness. Maybe a licensing deal could be worked out to offer real newspaper front pages?
An alternative is the DIY route, using a common container to hold your valuable Mac. Sorrel puts his MacBook in a Jiffy Bag protected by a Fed Ex envelope. Could these new coverups be the backlash to a plethora of bling iPod/iPhone and MacBook coverings?
[Via Gadget Lab and BBG]
The iPod Classic is also about to get a camera, according to a new report in Taiwan’s DigiTimes newspaper.
The iPod Nano and Touch are about to get cameras – likely on September 9 when Apple is widely expected to unveil its holiday offerings, including a new version of iTunes.
But until now, the iPod Classic hasn’t been mentioned. The Classic is the last iPod based on a spinning hard drive, and is likely to be phased out as the capacities of flash memory increases and prices drop.
According to DigiTimes, the Classic will feature a 3.2 megapixel cameras supplied by Taiwan’s, OmniVision.
OmniVision will supply “3.2-megapixel CIS products for the new iPod nano, iPod classic and iPod touch models which will be launched in September,” the paper claims.
This strikes us as unlikely. The selling point of the Classic is its storage capacity, not add-ons like cameras.