News - page 2346

No laptops. Old PCs with outdated software and broken keyboards. No Internet. No phones. Though his administration has been described as representing “an iPhone kind of future,” the first few hours for Barack Obama staffers were the worst kind of analog past.

According to a Washington Post article:

“One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used.

The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing.

Several people tried to route their e-mails through personal accounts.

But there were no missing letters from the computer keyboards, as Bush officials had complained of during their transition in 2001.”

Looks like time they started shouting, “Yes, we Mac!”
Via  Washington Post

Apple interim CEO Tim Cook spoke plainly during Wednesday’s earnings call about the company’s being “ready to suit up and go against anyone” who might try to gain a competitive advantage in the mobile device arena by “ripping off” the iPhone’s IP.

General consensus holds the Palm Pre poses the best competition for iPhone thus far, with some analysts drawing close connections between Apple and Palm around the Pre’s touch interface.

Mike Abramsky, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets put the question directly to Cook on Wednesday’s call, asking, “the Palm device particularly seems to almost directly emulate the kind of touch interfaces that [Apple] innovated…Is that to what you’re referring with regarding to ripping off IP?”

Cook declined to talk about any specific company and reiterated his and Apple’s position that “competition is good [and] makes us all better.” However, he also drew analysts on the call a clear picture of Apple’s belief that the “magic” of the iPhone has little to do with hardware and everything to do with software.”

“We’ve said since the beginning software is the key ingredient and we believe that we’re still years ahead on software,” Cook said, adding “we approach [this business] fundamentally different than people that are approaching it only from a hardware point of view.

It’s obviously way early in the game, and in the event Palm’s Pre never manages to gain significant acceptance in the marketplace, Apple is likely to keep its attention and resources focused on other things.

Should the Pre come on like gangbusters and should there be a lot of “hey, this thing works just like an iPhone” talk, it’s not too difficult to imagine Apple calling on its competitive advantage in cash and legal muscle to put the squeeze on a company that, not long ago, was being written off by many as headed for the dustbin of history.

Despite Wall Street urgings to introduce an inexpensive product to spur new customers, Apple leaders suggested the Cupertino, Calif. firm is not about to go there.

“It’s a category we watch, we’ve got some ideas here, but for now we think the products there are inferior and will not provide an experience that customers are happy with,” Apple operations chief Tim Cook said in answer to a question Wednesday.

Earlier this week, Berstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi told clients an $800 MacBook could increase demand for Apple products during the weak economy.

We’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Mac by asking Cult readers to get in touch with their stories of Mac ownership over the years.

To start things off, here’s Zev Eisenberg (a man who can solve a Rubik’s Cube while reciting pi) to tell us about his pile o’ Macs.

Apple announced its retail locations brought in $1.74 billion during the December quarter, selling more than a half billion Macs for the fiscal first quarter.

At a time when retailers search for ways to attract customers and announce the shuttering of poorly-performing shops, Apple said it raked in $7 million for each of its 251 stores.

Large discounts and bundling iPods with other Mac items accounted for much of the upturn in retail income.

Apple’s report for the December quarter beat Wall Street expectations, Wednesday. Bucking others in the technology sector hurt by the ailing economy, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company announced quarterly sales of $10.17 billion, surpassing investor predictions of $9.74 billion.

“Even as the consumer disappeared, Apple managed to report record quarterly revenues,” ThinkEquity analyst Vijay Rakesh told clients Thursday morning.

Apple reported selling 2.5 million Macs for December, a nine percent increase over the same period in 2007. Much of that came from new MacBooks launched in October. Although 2007 saw desktop sales climb with the introduction of refreshed iMacs, in 2008 Apple unveiled new unibody aluminum MacBooks, as well as a price reduction for its entry-level white plastic MacBook.

Dunno if you’ve noticed, but a little meme has been spreading across Twitter during the last few days. It’s called “#firstmac”.

You can guess what happens. You announce details of your first ever Mac, and as long as you add the “#firstmac” hashtag, your comment will be collated with all the others over at hashtags.org.

Browsing through the list, there’s a huge variety of first Macs to be found, but a quick scan through the page (at the time of writing) suggests that the iMac’s various incarnations have been the first Mac owned most often – reflecting the model’s bestseller status.

So then, fess up: what was your first Mac? The first one I *used* was an SE/30 in a cybercafe in Cambridge, circa 1989 or 1990. The first Mac I purchased second-hand was an LCII from a friend. And the first I bought brand-new was a lime green iMac. Those, as they say, were the days.

Except they weren’t. That iMac was underpowered and drove me crazy with slowness and crashes. The first Mac I bought and really enjoyed as a G3 iBook, two years later.

Users downloaded Ustream’s free video viewing app for the iPhone more than 113,000 times in the first 24 hours it was available, according to the live video broadcasting company. In only two days the app has vaulted to the top spot in the AppStore’s Entertainment category and is already the number six most popular free app.

As might be expected with such huge demand over such a short period of time, there have been reports of complaints about the app crashing and users who are unhappy that it works only over WiFi (no support for 3G or EDGE viewing), but the intense interest only serves to underscore pent-up demand for video on the iPhone – even for video of purely user generated content such as that available on ustream.tv.

The company has submitted for approval by Apple a second application that will permit broadcast of live video from the iPhone, though it remains awaiting clearance to the AppStore.

That one is likely to take off even faster than the viewing app.

Via TechCrunch

Coming Friday from Santa Monica iPhone accessory maker Phonesuit.com, theMili Power Pack promises extended, stable power in a design that compliments your iPhone’s appearance.

Compatible with both 2G and 3G versions of Apple’s mobile communication device, the Mili Power Pack’s 1800mAh battery specs at 350 Hours Standby time and will provide 6 hours of Talk time on 3G, 12 hours on 2G. Browse the Internet for 6 hours on 3G, 7 hours on Wi-Fi and get up to 28 hours of Audio play and 8 hours of Video play.

The battery pack features USB I/O ports to charge your iPhone and the Mili’s battery without removing the phone from the pack, and charge external devices, such as a Bluetooth headset from the juice in the Mili’s battery.

When the iPhone is connected to the Mili power pack, the Mili prioritizes power consumption. If the Mili is connected to a USB power source, consumption comes first from this power source. When the Mili is not being charged, the iPhone’s power consumption comes from the MiLi battery first untill the Mili’s remaining charge is less than 5 percent. When the Mili battery is less than 5% charged, the iPhone power source is used. The iPhone’s power source is always used last so it can maintain its maximum charge.

Using the included USB cable, you can also sync your iPhone without removing it from the power pack.

$79.95, from the phonesuit website.

Apple’s iPhone now comprises 2.2 percent of cell phones sold in Taiwan, reports said Wednesday. More than 12,000 of 546,000 phones sold in December were iPhones.

The December sales put the iPhone in sixth place among handsets sold on the Asian island nation, according to a report in Digitimes.

Although its unclear what impact the iPhone’s appearance had on rivals, a number of handset makers saw losses in market share last month.

Developed by two anesthesiologists, this iPhone app helps log cases, keeping track of who has gone under for what in the operating room.

Some functions include:

— Record a new anesthesia case log on the fly, even if you don’t have a wireless connection (your iPhone will sync data to the CaseLogs server once it regains connectivity).

—  Browse  Case Log History to quickly find a patient record and open the entry for easy editing (your anesthesia records are organized chronologically).

Launched a couple of months ago, iAnesthesia:Case Logs reviews are generally favorable, it seems that the app (view demo here) helps get rid of manual methods like collecting stickers to log patient procedures but has been criticized for omitting a field for patient names over privacy concerns.

Costs $19.99, available on iTunes.

Via Med Gadget

The next version of Google’s Android-based cell phone sold by T-Mobile opts to drop the keyboard in favor of a virtual version to better chase after iPhone fans, a report suggested Wednesday.

The G2, built by Taiwan’s HTC for U.S. carrier T-Mobile, will appear this Spring without a physical keyboard, according to gadget blog Gizmodo. Removing the keyboard in favor of a touch-screen version will better align the Android phone with handsets such as Apple’s iPhone.

The new phone, alleged pictures of which Gizmodo published, provides a “slimmer, rounded design,” wrote Macnn.

Apple’s white plastic MacBook now has the same graphics horsepower of more expensive aluminum MacBooks, reports said Wednesday.

The upgrade, made without any official fanfare, provides buyers of the low-end notebook NVIDIA’s 9400 graphics engine, the same system already available to owners of pricier aluminum MacBooks.

Cupertino also added some oomph to the white plastic notebook’s main processor, upgrading the MacBook to a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and doubling memory to 2GB.

However, the white plastic MacBook’s beefier DD2 memory has a clock speed of 667 MHz rather than the speedier 1.06MHz available with DD3 memory for aluminum MacBooks.

Likewise, Apple still limits white plastic MacBooks to a 20-inch Cinema Display upgrade and retains a Mini DVI graphics output rather than a Mini DisplayPort.

In October, Apple lowered the price of its entry-level white plastic MacBook to $999 from $1,099.

Remember the Talking Moose?

If you don’t, this post will make no sense to you whatsoever.

But if you DO: Hey! Woo! Yay! Talking Moose is back as a Twitter superstar and can provide just as much entertainment from there as it used to back in the day. Probably more.

I had the Moose running on my Lime Green iMac. Annoying as hell. But fabulous none the less.

(You can still get the Moose for OS X, did you know that? Not that you need to now. Twitter! Superstar! Twitter is the new Hotmail, did you hear? Or was it the new Geocities? I forget. Us old timers do that. Often.)

(Via TidBITS.)

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is probing whether Apple sufficiently informed investors of CEO Steve Jobs’ health status, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

An unnamed source told the news organization the review does not mean Apple committed any wrongdoing, according to the report.

Last week, Apple announced Jobs was taking a six-month medical leave of absence after being informed his health troubles were “more complex” the previously announced. Prior to the announcement, Jobs had assured the Mac community an ailment that had prompted speculation was due to a “hormonal imbalance” the Apple co-founder described as “easily treatable.”

I was going to save this one for a “WTF iPhone Apps Of The Week” post, but then I thought – No. This is Too Good. This needs a space of its own.

Ladies and gentlemen (but mostly, I suspect, gentlemen): I present iPropose. It is an app designed to help the tongue-tied ask for someone else’s hand in marriage.

I think the official blurb from the App Store says everything:

“Make sure the most important event of your lives happens inside your life’s most important gadget. And with iPropose, that special someone will know you really care. iPropose is 100% guaranteed to result with a “YES” or your money back!”

Stop and think, ladies (because I suspect it will be mostly ladies): do you really want to marry a guy who proposed to you on a phone? Do you?

Have you ever designed and ordered a book using Apple’s iPhoto book publishing tool? I have, and they are nice. The quality is quite good and the pricing seems fair value – they make great commemorative gifts and keepsakes. But Apple’s not really in the publishing business. Through iPhoto your options are somewhat limited and somewhat photo-centric, all of which is as it should be.

But say you’ve got a publishing idea that doesn’t fit one of Apple’s iPhoto templates and, well, gosh darn it, also doesn’t seem to be getting much interest from any of the few publishers remaining in the business of making and distributing books. There’s always the so-called “vanity press” – but what if you could just design it and print it on your own?

Well, you can. With free software from Blurb you can write, design and print your own books and sell them online. Books can be up to 440 pages long and come in a variety of sizes in both hardback and softcover, at prices that make you wonder why it’s so hard to make money in the publishing business.

Blurb’s BookSmart software for Mac (cross-platform compatible with Windows) features a ton of professionally designed layouts or lets you create from scratch, integrates seamlessly with iPhoto, lets you import from online sources such as Flickr and Picasa, and supports all of your own fonts in a variety of sizes and text styles.

When you’re done creating, you can sell your masterpiece online in the Blurb Bookstore and keep 100% of the markup.

Blurb may not save the publishing industry the way iTunes saved the music industry, but it’s nice to know you can be a Paperback Writer for just $4.95.

Handicappers currently make the new Palm Pre the most worthy contender for iPhone’s title as The Coolest Handset, so it’s no surprise there’s an “I’m a Mac” style advertising spoof pitting the two devices against one another. Here’s an installment based on Pre’s “wireless” charging capabilities.

The fun just never ends with Apple products and those who’d be like them.

Via blinkx

I thought maybe I’d seen it all when I saw Hasbro’s I-Dog, the plastic, music lovin’ mutt “trained” to obey eight commands, including “Dance!”, “Stay!”, and “Tap paw!” – virtual non-stop entertainment for the pre-tween set with iPods.

But then they went and turned the iDog into a soft, snuggly, squeezable version of the portable kids’ MP3 speaker, complete with LED lights on the pup’s “face” that show its various “moods.”

And now, the giant toymaker comes back to the kids-with-iPods well, bearing I-Turtle, a groovin’ little speaker-toy that can tap its foot along to the music, bob its head and raise its shell with synchronized lights that flash to the rhythm. But this little gem of an ePet doesn’t just play your kid’s music, it’s got its own musical riffs, “tons of blinking light patterns”, a built-in whine for more attention, and a piercing scream it’ll let out when little Susie flicks its tail.

It’s almost as if Hasbro designers took a meeting and said, “we’ll teach ’em to give iPods to 8 year-olds…”

Via SlipperyBrick

Ahead of Wednesday’s report for the first quarter of fiscal 2009, a prominent Apple analyst projects Mac sales rose between six percent and 10 percent in December.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told investors Monday Apple likely sold 2.45 million to 2.55 million Macs during the quarter, recovering from November when Mac sales suffered a double-digit decline.

Using consumer sales data from research firm NPD, Munster said Mac sales in December rose 4 percent, a jump over -1 year-over-year growth reported for November.

As analysts attempt to predict Wednesday’s first quarter revenue report from Apple, one expert trimmed his expectation for both the December quarter and full fiscal year.

Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi told clients Monday he predicts Apple will report $9.3 billion for the December quarter, off slightly from the $9.76 billion Wall Street consensus.

He said data “may not be encouraging, given the lack of new products at MacWorld and Apple’s refusal to cut prices” along with CEO Steve Jobs’ recent health status downgrade.

Here’s a gander at actress Celina Jaitley posing with an strategically-placed iPod  on the cover of this month’s India edition of “Stuff.”

The former Miss India has appeared in about 18 Bollywood productions and has a forthcoming flick called “Showman” where she plays a half-Indian half English pole dancer.

Via One India

This wouldn’t be the most practical way to display your CDs, but it might appeal to some Apple  enthusiasts. Chinese designer Li Jianye took inspiration from Apple’s Cover Flow function for browsing music, more views on his blog.

Via Geeky Gadgets

China’s Apple fans can now order refurbished iPods and iMacs for discounts up to 22 percent retail, the Cupertino, Calif. company announced Tuesday.

An iPod shuffle returned and inspected by Apple sells in China for $44, according to Reuters.

The move echos similar refurbished Macs Apple sells in the U.S. and elsewhere. Best Buy began selling returned iPhones for a $50 discount.

Apple refused to say how many refurbished products have been sold to China.