News - page 2360

Amid tight security, Apple shot a TV advert for an unreleased product at Jax Truckee Diner on Tuesday afternoon.

Unfortunately, there are no pictures or even a description of the mystery product. Because of the security, no photographers or reporters were allowed on set. Filming took place on Tuesday afternoon.

“Apple found us, they’re trying to show us as a hip and cool spot for the 20-something crowd,” Jax on the Tracks owner Bud Haley told the Sierra Sun newspaper.

Of course, rumors that Apple is about to release a Web tablet are reaching fever pitch. Many think the tablet will be announced next month in time for the holiday season; but conflicting reports say the tablet will be launched early next year.

But if Apple is already shooting ads for the new product, chances are its release is imminent. After all, the probability of leaks are much greater when products are sent to outside partners like advertising agencies.

Jax Truckee Diner is a classic 1940s-style diner next to the railroad tracks in downtown Truckee, California.

The question is, why would Apple put a Web tablet in a diner? Perhaps to show a crowd of hip 20-somethings sitting around a booth, playing digital 45s before watching a streaming MTV video and then ordering waffles over WiFi?

UPDATE: I called Bud Haley, owner of the diner, who in a roundabout way confirmed the shoot, and said it was “exciting.” Unfortunately, Apple has him tied up in a confidentiality agreement, and he couldn’t/wouldn’t say if the ad was for a new product or an existing one.

“As you can imagine, I’ve got to be careful and confidential,” he said. “I can’t say anything about it, I’m afraid. I’d love to give you more info, but I can’t. No comment is the best comment.”

Asked if his afternoon yesterday was exciting (I was desperate), Haley said: “Obviously, anything where Apple is involved is exciting. But I still can’t tell you anything. Sorry.” Haley has taken several calls from reporters and was very patient and gracious. He’s a good sport and is handling the nosy questions very well.

Here’s what Jax looks like inside:

iPod/iPhone fans are always in search of the perfect speakers to blast their favorite tunes in the most comfortable, affordable and longest-lasting way. While the search for that holy grail continues, Logitech early this morning provided two new entrants – one boast near ’round the clock music and another promising portability but with booming bass.

After our post on yesterday’s en masse binning of hundreds of working Macs from a “PC only” school district in Florida, a reader who wished to remain anonymous sent us pics of those computers destined by that school for the trash. We also received comment from a school administrator.

First things first: here they are, stacks of laptops and neat rows of Macs destined for the rubbish heap. Our tipster says more than 208 perfectly good Macs are headed for the dump.

As many of you pointed out in the comments of yesterday’s piece, even if the school district didn’t want to use the Macs, they could’ve sold them and used the money — or given them away instead of just dumping them.

More pics of the great Florida Mac massacre & commentary after the jump.

iHome Audio has unveiled its iP1 high-end portable stereo for the iPhone or iPod. The $299 iP1 features the company’s Bongiovi Acoustics’ Digital Power Station (DPS), touted to create richer sound without bigger speakers. The iP1 includes a dock for the iPhone, or iPod, plus a 3.5-inch auxiliary input.

Although not available until October, iHome is taking pre-orders for the stereo. The stereo includes two 40W 4-inch woofers and two 10W 1-inch tweeters.

Along with the iPhone/iPod dock, the iP1 also includes a remote for iPod menu navigation.

[Via iPodNN and iHome Audio]

Sling Media has submitted an update to its groovy SlingPlayer Mobile app for iPhone that promises, among other things, true 16:9 widescreen support and, in markets not saddled with an exclusive AT&T service provider’s agreement, TV streaming over 3G.

Slingbox owners with DISH Network will also be able to navigate using a touch-supported native browser, instead of pushing through the TV-standard browsing screen being streamed in by the current version of the app.

Of course, the upgrade must first be approved by the App Store review overlords, and by now it’s well known what a capricious bet that can be. Sling Media has submitted a version for use outside of the US that would allow for streaming over a 3G connection, according to reports, and it’s no certainty Apple will approve such functionality for its customers abroad, either.

What is certain is that, regardless what Apple may feel about streaming TV over 3G, the specter of AT&T’s exclusive service agreement in the iPhone’s largest market effectively prevents US consumers from realizing the full potential of Apple’s inventiveness.

There are two things that really piss me off about iPhone… Actually, that’s a huge lie. There are loads of things that piss me off about iPhone, but two things in particular make me want to HULK SMASH. The first is that you can’t back-up individual app data. Delete Peggle from your iPhone, reinstall and you have to start from scratch. Clearly, whoever decided on that gem went to ‘cheapskate DS games without battery back-up’ school.

The other issue is that it’s a major pain in the arse (or ass, if you’re American) to rearrange apps on your device’s home screens. The current ‘drag everything about’ system was clearly designed for hardware where it wasn’t possible to download fifty billion apps. And although Spotlight in OS X iPhone 3.0 enables you to find apps within the mess, you shouldn’t be using text-based searching to find apps on such a tactile, touch-based system.

What we’d like to see is this:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wfv0OJ1oMQ

If you can’t be bothered to watch that, it shows an iTunes interface for dragging and dropping apps about, the organisation of which would then sync with the device itself. Rumours suggest this functionality might appear in iTunes 9, but I remember similar things being promised before.

A press release I received this morning about ShareAppScreen made me hope that someone had somehow managed this, outside of Cupertino. I was hoping for magic beans: someone to have figured out how to rearrange iPhone screens using a widget. What I got was baked beans—a widget that’s awkward to use and that doesn’t realise that different iPhones actually have different apps pre-installed. And when you’re done, it can share your screens with your friends, but not with your device, sadly.

Overall, it’s better than using something like Photoshop for testing app arrangements, but other than that, it’s a case of ‘roll on iTunes 9’.

Today’s deals include iMacs starting at $399, refurbished MacBook Pro laptops at $999 and wake up to your favorite iPhone/iPod tunes with the iHome Clock Radio. Details of these and plenty more can be found on the CoM Daily Deals page.

Here’s a game that 3D Realms has actually shipped. Duke Nukem 3D, the classic first-person-shooter from the mid ’90s, is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

3D Realms is famous of course for not shipping games. It’s follow-up to Duke Nukem — Duke Nukem Forever – has been promised for more than a decade, earning a top slot on Wired.com’s Vaporware awards year after year.

Duke Nukem 3D is a simple port of the 13-year-old game. It’s pixely and low res — but who’d want it any different? The controls are a little difficult to master, according to reviews on iTunes, which are generally favorable. Players are reveling in gaming nostalgia.

No word on whether the hookers, sex shops and bare-breasted strippers are still in the game though.

Duke Nukem 3D currently costs $2.99, a “One Day Launch Special.” No word on how much it will cost tomorrow.

Buy from the iTunes App Store.

Good news for haters of Apple’s glossy MacBook screens: the matte display is back as an option on the 15-inch MacBook Pro, although Apple is charging an extra $50 for it.

Check Apple’s online store. The glossy widescreen display can be replaced with an optional antiglare display. The specs are the same — 1,440 x 900 pixels and a LED backlight — but the matte display has a silver bezel around it instead of a black one. Plus it costs an extra $50.

Apple’s not selling it though. Look how the website copy downplays the antiglare option:

“Choose a standard glossy display that lets you view graphics, photos, and videos with richer colors and deeper blacks, or an optional antiglare display.”

The matte screen was already an option on the top-of-the-line 17-inch MacBook Pro, but isn’t yet offered on the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro. It’s just a matter of time though. I personally like the glossy screens, which I think look great. I’ve never, ever been distracted by its much hated “mirror” effect.

Meet Tadataka Goh, a Japanese jazz bassist who is perhaps the world’s biggest collector of Apple-branded goods — you know, Apple t-shirts, pens and hats.

Over the last 15 years, Tadataka has amassed the largest collection of Apple knickknacks on the planet. He has thousands of items, including hundreds of pens, t-shirts, baseball caps, posters and buttons. He has the first issue of Macworld magazine and an Apple-branded traffic cone.

Tadataka has possibly spent more than $100,000 on them. That’s right — more than $100,000.

“Looking at his collection, he’s probably spent several hundred thousand dollars,” says Steve Naughton, co-owner of RedLightRunner.com, which sells Apple collectibles and counts Tadataka as its best customer ever.

The Japanese are well-known for being enthusiastic collectors, and the most otaku can be fanatical completionists. Even so, the scope of Tadataka’s collection boggles the mind.

He’s got so much stuff, even he doesn’t know how much he’s got. He recently posted pictures of more about 4,000 items to an online gallery, and has scores more pictures to upload.

Click on to see some of Tadataka’s collection. You have to see the photos to appreciate how big this collection is.

Corporate IT support for the iPhone is on the rise, according to a report Monday at Tech Republic, though many CIOs and IT directors remain wary of the Apple smartphone’s security vulnerabilities.

Using an interesting (if not altogether scientific) polling strategy pioneered by Silicon.com, Tech Republic finds 42% of corporate IT departments are now willing to support the iPhone in its 3rd iteration, which is quite a swing from the near-universal skepticism with which corporate IT greeted the device upon its initial launch two years ago.

Results of the poll ought to be taken with a grain of salt, as the numbers themselves are based on the responses of just 12 individuals, but the comments included with the report are interesting nonetheless, and say as much about the way some corporations think as they do about Apple’s gadget itself.

Some corporate leaders, such as Mike Wagner, CIO of Stone & Youngberg in San Francisco seem to just get it. “The iPhone is one of the most innovative and revolutionary end-user products developed in the last 5 years,” Wagner said, adding “The support and training requirements for the iPhone are orders of magnitude less than the mobile OSes offered by competing vendors.” Wagner also noted “the general excitement and enthusiasm from the end users” in his company with iPhones, linking it directly to “a corresponding decrease in the perception that IT is a wet blanket that is an impediment to the use of consumer-friendly products.”

Still, the majority of corporate IT geeks don’t consider supporting the iPhone because, as Lisa Moorehead, Director of IT for MA Dept of Public Utilities put it, ““iPhones are not supported because they are considered personal gadgets.”

It’s interesting to note that among the CIOs and IT directors who report not supporting the iPhone, several quoted in the report placed the point of failure at service problems and bad coverage from AT&T.

Perhaps the most telling comment of all, however, came from Chuck Elliott, IT Director for Emory University School of Medicine, who reported “we are finding more and more of our users are buying and using the device without assistance from IT.”

An elementary school in Sarasota, Florida is sending several hundred working Macs to the trash heap — in keeping with the school district’s “PC-only” policy.

Piled up in the cafeteria of the Emma Booker school, 140 G3 and G4 laptops and over 50 iMac and eMac machines await the scrap heap.

An account in the local paper takes on dramatic overtones:

Sarasota County Public School system employees who alerted the Pelican Press to the salvage effort asked not to be identified because they feared retribution. “All of the machines are still working,” said one. “The teachers asked if they could buy them or give them to the kids. We were told, ‘No.’”

Putting the Macs out to pasture is the result of a decision by Superintendent Gary Norris, who headed the school system from 2004-2008, who declared the school system would be PC-only, the paper said.

Even the county school district’s program that donates computers to needy kids, called Texcellence, is a Mac-free zone.

“We’ve never used Macs,”  foundation spokeswoman Laura Breeze told Pelican Press. The group recently received 1,100 used PC computers and is refurbishing them and adding software before giving them out.

At a time when budgets are tight, you have to wonder why a school district would send working computers to the scrap heap.

Who hasn’t splashed coffee on their keyboard or sprinkled water or their candybar phone? After skipping a heart beat or two, you find the gadget seems no worse the wear. But not so for the iPhone – and its great timing for a waterproof life vest for your iconic handset. The vest is inflatable, and protects your screen with a clear plastic cover.

The waterproof cover comes with earphones with a waterproof connection and a lanyard. (Although Wired’s Gadget Lab suggests an arm band would be a better choice.)

While iPhone cases are common, they usually stress the bling or cool factor. This Japanese entry ($34), while not high on anyone’s list for style, actually saves you some money.

The case comes too late for Brian X. Chen, who lost his iPhone earlier this year from water invading the phone’s dock port.

[Via Gadget Lab]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b58MqoW2ziw

Getting a step closer to completely paperless banking, some customers of USAA will be able to deposit checks using their iPhones.

An updated version of the bank’s mobile app out this week accepts checks that have been photographed with the iPhone.

In the demo above, a bank exec first enters the amount of the check, then lines it up on a desk to take a picture, flips it over to take a shot of the signature. After checking that the images lined up properly and hitting “submit,” the check is in the bank’s system.

“We’re essentially taking an image of the check, and once you hit the send button, that image is going into our deposit-taking system as any other check would,” Wayne Peacock, a USAA executive vice president, told the New York Times.

The check doesn’t have to be mailed or deposited afterward, customers are advised to void or file it.  To avoid fraud trouble, only customers with credit and some kind of insurance are eligible — an estimated 60 percent of the bank’s customers. Since USAA‘s customer base is largely military personnel, for those overseas it might just be the ticket.

The last time I deposited a check, the ATM scanned it directly, but as long as you don’t need to get cash out or do something else this is a nice time saver, especially if you’re a straight shooter.

Just weeks after getting permission to tear down his historic mansion, Steve Jobs is embroiled in more wrecking ball controversy.

Preservationists in Melbourne, Australia, are up in arms about the imminent destruction of a historic art deco building in favor of a new Apple store.

Developers have just received permission to rip down Lonsdale House — described as one of the city’s finest examples of art deco architecture.

In its place they’re building a new shopping center called “Emporium Melbourne,” and are angling for Apple to be the anchor tenant. See the artist’s impression above.

Apple already has four stores in Australia, most notably the huge landmark store on Sydney’s George Street, which drew a huge crowd when it opened last year.

The Save Lonsdale House campaign say there’s no reason the building should be demolished, except to make more room for delivery trucks. In the past Apple has been sensitive to historic buildings. The Apple Store in New York’s Soho district, for example, is housed in a historic post office.

Last month, Jobs reached a deal to save his historic Jackling House mansion in Woodside California, which he’d been trying to demolish for years. Jobs will pay $600K to angel investor Gordon Smythe to have the mansion dismantled and moved.

More on the Lonsdale House controversy in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Via 9to5Mac.

UPDATE: Rogers denies there’s an 8GB iPhone 3GS. It’s a formatting error, a spokesman told Gizmodo and Electronista. “There is no 8GB 3G s iPhone,” the spokesman emailed. “There is a formatting error on our website. It is being corrected asap.” Too bad. There was the Boy Genius memo though, which hasn’t yet been strenuously denied by Rogers.

The existence of an 8GB model of Apple’s hot iPhone 3GS looks more likely if you take a gander at this webpage from Rogers Wireless of Canada.

There it is in full public view in a comparison chart — the iPhone 3GS is available in 32GB, 16GB and — now — 8GB.

The lower-capacity 3GS was rumored last week when photos of a Rogers’ internal memo were published by Boy Genius Report. The memo said the company would sell through all of its older iPhone 3G stock before offering the new 8GB 3GS.

Whether the new phone will be offered outside Canada isn’t clear, but seems likely. It’s also likely to be lower-priced, perhaps replacing the current 8GB iPhone 3G, which is sold by AT&T for $99 with a contract.

New rumors this weekend suggest that Blu-Ray may finally be coming to the Mac. But while Blu-Ray is high on many people’s wish list, the rumors just don’t make sense.

Citing a “pretty reliable source,” Boy Genius Report says Blu-Ray is coming to iTunes 9, maybe as soon as September. The rumor jibes with a particularly vague story on AppleInsider suggesting that new iMacs will get new features (yeah, it’s almost sounds like self-parody), possibly Blu-Ray.

But although Blu-Ray format is gaining popularity, it’s unlikely to come to the Mac, ever. Here’s why:

Pay no attention to the glitches and errors! We’re moving to a new host.

I’m in New York with my family on a work vacation (I work, they vacation), and  have just spent a miserable week sweating in my skivvies in a hot, humid Harlem apartment trying to move this site to a new host.

You may have suffered from a few database errors this week and last. It was so bad on Thursday, a couple of readers on Twitter suspected we were under DDoS attack, like Twitter itself that day. We weren’t, but we were being hit by spam bots — and still are. There was a big spike in spam traffic last week and a huge one this week. See the chart below.

Whether the spam is causing the database errors or not, I don’t know. I suspect it’s a combination of the spam, the growing traffic and the crumminess of the current host. As we’ve grown, we’ve attracted hack attacks that infected the site with spam and Windows viruses. The support has been hopeless, which is what you get with the cheapest hosting plan on the planet. It’s time to move up to a bigger, better host.

We’re moving to Laughing Squid of San Francisco. It’s a local, independently owned firm, run with quiet competence by the redoubtable Scott Beale (Here’s Scott’s great Laughing Squad blog). Laughing Squid is home to a lot of companies and people I like and admire. It’s plugged into the tech and arts community, and renowned for its support and reliability.

I did most of  the moving work myself, so fully expect it to melt down. In fact, I’ll flip out if it works. If you’re reading this, it must have worked. So fingers crossed, and please let us know if you spot anything that needs fixing. Thanks for your patience.

— Leander.

Apple’s upcoming iTablet will be a hit and run the iPhone operating system, according to new report out of Wall Street.

Analysts at Piper Jaffray say the upcoming iTablet will be released in 2010, will cost about $600, and will shift about 2 million units in its first year.

“Last week we spoke with an Asian component supplier that has received orders from Apple for a touch-screen device to be fulfilled by late CY09,” the report says. “This data point underscores our thesis that a tablet will likely launch in early CY10.”

The tablet will also run the iPhone/iPod Touch OS — not OS X, the report predicts. CoM believes the tablet will run OS X, which will be the “killer app” that cements the tablet’s success. Apple appears to be prepping Snow Leopard, the next version of OS X, for touchscreen devices.

“Apple could choose to simply run the current App Store apps on the larger device, with enough usable space for multiple apps to run (multi-tasking),” says the investment firm.

The report continues: “Key apps, like Safari and Mail, could be made larger to make use of the larger screen resolution, making Apple’s tablet appealing for more extended use, and the company could continue to leverage its primary asset in mobile computing, the App Store, in this scenario. We believe this is the most likely scenario given the success of the multi-touch platform and the App Store ecosystem, which could be accelerated with a tablet device.”

The analysis says Apple will reap extra revenue from the tablet that hasn’t been included in most forecast models.

“While at first glance this may appear to address a niche market, we believe the addressable market is larger than that of the Apple TV, of which Apple sold about 1.2m in its first year,” the report says.

Via AppleInsider.

Have you ever gotten to a party and forgotten your camera? We’ve all witnessed a great moment and thought: ‘I wish I had my camera ready.’ Well, worry no more because now Sony has the perfect party camera that automatically takes pictures. The Party-shot camera dock uses a face-detection BIONZ image processor to find your friends and snap away.

A nice DIY effort from Denmark, this logo end table is the latest in Apple-inspired furniture we at CoM go nutty over.

This table comes to us from ilove code, not new to Apple-related decor projects, who put it together with help from his mom. The table top is made from medium-density fiberboard (MDF), the logo stands on an old bar-stool.

Especially like how the apple bite might facilitate use as a computer table, depending on the height.

Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller took the time to craft a lengthy, detailed statement of the company’s position with respect to criticism leveled Wednesday by this site and others, over the App Store review process Matchstick Software’s Ninjawords application endured on its way to appearing as a 17+ rated selection on the iTunes App Store in mid-July.

As it had been initially reported on Tuesday evening at Daring Fireball, Apple “required” Ninjawords — an iPhone dictionary app that delivers Wiktionary.org content to iPhone and iPod Touch users — to censor certain vulgar content in order to gain approval as a title in the App Store, and yet the company still gave the app a 17+ rating, which requires purchasers to provide proof of age before they can purchase apps so rated.

In a response published Thursday to Daring Fireball author John Gruber, Schiller clarified certain facts and the chain of events that led up to Ninjawords finally appearing on the App Store after having first been rejected by Apple review staff. As Gruber acknowledged Thursday, in actuality, Apple reviewers merely suggested that Matchstick Software developers wait to re-submit their application until Apple had in place Parental Controls (ie: 17+ ratings) on the App Store and in no way suggested that content on the app had to be censored in order to gain Apple’s approval for sale.

Because Parental Controls were not yet available at the time Matchstick wanted to take its product to market, the developers acted of their own accord to censor the app’s content, hoping it would thereby pass Apple’s review process.

As Gruber wrote, “it really came down to bad timing around the launch of parental controls.”

Matchstick spokesman Phil Crosby told Gruber via email, “17+ ratings were not available when we launched, which means at that time, it was simply not possible for our dictionary to be on the App Store without being censored. Given the options of censoring or sitting on the side lines while our competitors ate our lunch, we chose to launch.”

All in all, one can take it as a good sign that Apple cares enough about public perception of the App Store and its often-criticized review policies for Schiller to explain the company’s position so clearly as he did to Gruber.

It’s even better to know that Apple finds — as Schiller put it — “Wiktionary.org is an open, ever-changing resource and filtering the content does not seem reasonable or necessary.”

An iPod Touch plus a mobile WiFi router is better and cheaper than an iPhone, says Wired.com’s Charlie Sorrell.

Sorrell just got the MiFi — a mobile, battery-powered WiFi hotspot that can share a high-speed cell connection with several devices via WiFi. It’s sold in the U.S. by Verizon for $100. (Requires a two-year contract and a monthly plan costing $40 or $60 — 250MB or 5GB of data, respectively.)

The MiFi is fast and reliable, he says, and can be used with an iPod Touch to make Skype calls and play music streaming from Spotify’s fantastic music library.

“The real point is that if you have a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot in your pocket, it is going to be cheaper than an iPhone contract pretty much anywhere, and can not only enable your iPod Touch to have an always on connection, but let you make Skype calls and stream music without having to worry about the usual iPhone size limits, as you’re on Wi-Fi. You can also share the connection with five machines in total, including a netbook, for true on the go video calls and (gasp) Spotify.”

Setup was a little tricky and he’s not been using the setup long, but Sorrel thinks the combo could be all he needs. He’ll be testing his new setup in coming weeks and promises to report back.

Today’s deals include $649 Apple Intel Mac Minis , 75% off MacMall items, new App Store price drops and many more.

Details of these and other Daily Deals can be found on the CoM Daily Deals page.

If you’re running Leopard, hit Command + Shift + 4 and then the space bar, and you’ll see an icon of a camera that harks back to Steve Jobs’s days at NeXT.

The decades-old icon is one of the last visible vestiges of NeXTStep, the old operating system that laid the foundation for OS X in the late ’90s.

The camera icon looks dated, but it’s pretty good by today’s standards. Look at some of the Windows icons from the same period.

The NeXTStep camera can be found in the Resources of the Grab tool (in the Utilities folder) and comes in several different versions with eyes, stopwatches and camera flashes.

Other holdovers from NeXT in Leopard include various system sounds, including Basso, Frog, Funk, Ping, Pop, and Tink, as one commenter notes at Robojamie.net, which first pointed out the camera icon.

And as another commenter says, there’s another old icon in: /System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Resources/NSMultipleFiles.tiff

It doesn’t seem to be used anywhere though.

Steve Jobs founded NeXT in 1985 after he was booted from Apple. He had the company build advanced workstations, hoping to drive Apple out of business. But its black magnesium NeXT Cubes were too expensive except for select clients in academia and the CIA. NeXT eventualy dropped the hardware to concentrate on the its state-of-the-art software and operating system, which Apple bought in 1996 as the foundation for the Mac OS.

Apple got a lot from NeXT: Jobs came on as an adviser, and eventually took on the CEO role. A lot of Apple’s top executives came from NeXT and so did  lot of its technology. As well as basing OS X on NeXTStep, Apple has built a lot of its online offerings on NeXT’s WebObjects, including its first online store, the iTunes Music Store, its DotMac website and the iPhone App Store.