News - page 2365

Image © Charis Tsevis

UPDATE: With thanks to reader James of RetroMacCast, credit is due to the original creator of this and many other wonderful mosaix-technique portraits, Athens, Greece-based artist, Charis Tsevis. You can download and listen to a podcast interview with Tsevis here.

Flickr user mic.imac has a fascinating portrait up of Steve Jobs, comprised entirely of artfully arranged Apple products. The portrait echoes a theme that runs through the upcoming Welcome to Macintosh documentary my colleague Nicole Martinelli wrote about on Monday, which is that the people who work at Apple give themselves entirely to the work of designing and producing the products the company makes.

Of no one is that statement more true than Steve Jobs. As CoM founder Leander Kahney says in the documentary, “Apple is Steve Jobs.”

When Steve Jobs convened the “Let’s Rock” event to unveil the new iPod Nano in September, he made a point of whetting our appetites for premium in-ear headphones with remote and mic that were said, at the time, to be shipping in October. It’s now December and the Apple website still says “Coming Soon.”

Apple engineers were ordered to revise the design, which required Apple’s overseas contractors to retool their manufacturing process, resulting in the extended delay, according to sources cited by MacBloz on Monday.

The premium headphones, slated to retail for $79, are intended to compete with high-end audiophile headsets costing two and three times that amount from the likes of Bose and Sony, and according to the MacBlogz sources, that standard has not yet been achieved. On the other hand, it should be premature to rule out a splashy marketing deployment of the eagerly anticipated headphones just in time for last minute holiday shopping.

Via MacBlogz.

I got an email today from some friends who run a Bay Area IT consultancy. They deal almost exclusively in the PC trade but are Mac savvy themselves, so I was startled a bit by the subject line for their monthly Good News / Bad News newsletter: Two Very Bad Mac OSX Viruses.

Of course, I knew from chatter over the summer and from more recent conversation that the days of Macs being impervious to viruses and malware are probably numbered and sure enough, even Apple Support now officially recommends users install antivirus protection on Mac systems:

Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.

The Apple knowledge base article goes on to recommend programs from Intego, Symantec/Norton and McAfee, all of which are commercially licensed products.

My consulting friends recommended iAntivirus, which is a free program, and said, “We have never used it but reviewers say it is good for being a free program. Download and use all free software with caution!”

Another free Mac virus checker (though the developer gratefully accepts all donations) is ClamXav, an updated version of which was released on Monday; the program gets 4.25 stars at Mac Update.

So, is that it? Are we all going to opt for the flu shot from now on? If you’ve installed antivirus software on your Mac, tell us how it’s going and what you like. If you haven’t, or don’t plan to, tell us why in comments.

Apple wrestled more computer users from the grasp of Microsoft, according to a November survey of Web users released Monday. Macs comprise nearly 9 percent of computers online, Net Applications announced.

The November marketshare of 8.82 percent is an increase over Cupertino’s 8.21 percent share NA reported in October.

Conversely, Microsoft’s share of Internet usage fell in November. Windows fell to 89.69 percent of online users, slipping below the nine-out-of-10 marketshare Redmond has enjoyed for years.

Disney animation movie “Bolt,” where John Travolta lends his voice to the dog-hero in the title, has a brief, fleeting moment of Apple product placement.

Pixar blogger and CoM reader Guido Rogall explains: in Bolt “there’s a chase scene on a train. For a few seconds you see a young woman with a laptop, either a MacBook or iBook, but what is funny about it is that the Apple logo is not lit.”

As another one of our sharp-eyed readers pointed out, this Apple turn-off  scenario happens every so often in movies.

Wonder if it’s a mistake or makes it product placement more memorable to clued-in viewers…

In spite of the general economic downturn, ‘Black Friday’ sales of Apple computers were “better than expected,” analysts told investors Monday.

Like past Black Friday sales, Apple offered discounts on seven products with an 8 percent discount.

However, Mac sales we more than six times what they were in November, according to Piper Jaffray. Analyst Gene Munster said an average of 13 Macs per hour were sold Friday compared to two computers per hour in November. Munster based his numbers on 10 hours of monitoring five Apple retail stores.

Planning a banquet? Got royals coming to dinner? Or just hosting your daughter’s wedding? TablePlan is the app you had no idea even existed, and turns the nightmare that is making-sure-Aunt-Clara-doesn’t-sit-next-to-any-vegetarians into a delight!

Drag-and-drop re-seating on the fly. Built-in RSVP management. Faster than Excel. (Let’s face it, almost anything on Earth is faster than Excel.) And only 20 bucks.

When I got married, we didn’t bother with a table plan. We just stood up and said: “Sit wherever you like!” It was almost not a total disaster.

“Welcome to Macintosh” (subtitle: the documentary for the rest of us) features a mix of history and cult with interviews from ex-Apple employees, engineers and community members, shedding light on the company’s innovations, failures, cultural impact and what the future holds post co-founder Steve Jobs.

As we noted, it was announced out on DVD this fall, but the delay makes this a good bet for the Mac fanatic on your Christmas list. (Word to the wise: pre-order, since it won’t ship until mid-December).

On sale from the official site, the DVD, which costs about $20, offers three hours of extra content including extended interviews, a “making of” feature, trailers and photo journal.

The doc features a number of Macsperts including CoM’s Leander Kahney. In the trailer he speaks on design: “That’s what makes these products so beautiful, that level of comittment and dedication to the thing. To make it the best thing possible.”

Pretty things, we like.

Just in case you don’t have such a great photographic eye, or perhaps are not completely satisfied with the images produced by your iPhone’s distinctive optics, there is help available.

More than 30,000 people have downloaded French photographer Eric Lafforgue’s free iPhone app Hervé Péroteau. He released version 2.1 on Sunday with more than 800 pictures available for use as screensavers for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Lafforgue’s work has been published in prestegious magazines worldwide, including Geo, National Geographic, CNN Traveler, The Times, Stampa and UNESCO magazine. His app will fill 25MB of space on your device, but it automatically lets you know when there are photo updates available and includes professional tips from one of the world’s most successful freelance photographers.

Check out some of his images in the gallery below and be sure also to visit his stunning website.

All images © Eric Lafforgue

Blogger Charles Teague has done some comprehensive analysis of emerging trends based on the AppStore’s first 5 months of business and there’s no denying Apple’s online distribution model has exploded out of the gate.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the proposition that the AppStore could be Apple’s most revolutionary development of all, which Teague’s research would appear to confirm in many respects.

The chart below shows the number of applications being released per day, with momentum clearly trending upward and sitting currently at more than 140 new apps per day. There are more than 9000 apps available on the AppStore, with the ratio of paid to free apps at about 7:2.

Stainless is a multi-purpose browser for OS X inspired (according to its developers) by Google Chrome. The early beta version (0.4) available for download works only with 10.5 (Leopard) and appears to be a fun side project for the engineers at Mesa Dynamics, who developed Stainless to leverage multi-processing technologies they developed for one of their other products, Hypercube.

Blogger Jackson Chung has taken Stainless for a spin and writes that it has potential. “It is a fair bit more stable, quicker and simpler to use [than other Mac browsers] – and that appeals to most people who are stuck with the productivity-driven mindset of Do more with less time.” He applauds Stainless’ simple UI and the fact that every browser tab runs under a separate process.

Unlike Safari, for instance, which runs tabs under a collective process, Stainless ‘feels’ lighter, according to Chung, and the whole surfing experience seems quicker and more responsive.

Google is working on a Mac version of Chrome and Media Dynamics gives the impression that Stainless may well be no more than a demonstration of the possibilities we could see when Chrome for the Mac is finally released. Until then, however, Stainless looks to be a taste of things to come.

Via Make Use Of

The iPhone DevTeam took another brick out of Apple’s walled garden on Friday, successfully booting the Linux operating system on the iPhone, iPhone 3g and the original iPod Touch, according to a report at AppleInsider.

The “draft version” of the first alternative OS to run on Apple’s mobile devices includes the main Linux 2.6 kernel as well as “rudimentary graphics, serial, and other functional drivers that are enough to get a command line running when input is sent over the USB interface; the accelerometer, audio, networking and even the touchscreen have yet to receive any kind of software support,” according to the report.

Having led the way from the very beginning with efforts to jailbreak and unlock the iPhone, the Dev Team is working to enable Google’s equally Linux-based but more complete Android mobile operating system on the iPhone and is searching for programmers to help with the project.

Via AppleInsider

iPhone has a handy TV-Out functionality that lets you watch stored video on a TV monitor connected to the iPhone, and as demonstrated in the video above, can even push live camera input through the updated MediaPlayer framework included in version 2.2 of the iPhone SDK.

Developer/blogger Erica Sadun enlisted members of her family to assist in documenting this cool development over the Thanksgiving holiday, and credits fellow developers Drunkenbass and Greg “go2” Hartstein with helping her integrate user input through iPhone’s on-screen controls.

As Sadun mentions in her post at Ars Technica, this feature may useful in making the iPhone an active participant in the development of new video/phone hybrid apps and as a vehicle for delivering Keynote/PowerPoint-style presentations.

With iPhone, it just keeps getting better and better.

Via Ars Technica

The first Apple reseller is as good a reason as any to fly through Montreal’s Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport.

The recently-launched Boutique iStore, a petite 225 square feet, offers free Wi-Fi, an iPod bar as well as a few useful accessories, like the power cord you left in the office in a hurry to dash.

It’s the sister store to an Apple retailer in central Montreal, which gives some assurance that the operation isn’t fly-by-night — and that if you need to service on something you bought at the airport, you don’t have to trek back out there.

ifoAppleStore, a site dedicated to keeping an eye on Apple stores, said that Apple retail execs once mentioned the mini-store prototype might move into airports, but the concept was never expanded beyond the original nine stores.

With long layovers the norm, this is an idea whose time has come.

Via Softpedia

MacBook Air from Yurii Smitana on Vimeo.

Yurii loves his MacBook Air so much, he made an advertisement for it. I like the moment at 1:33, when he compares the thickness of an old Acer machine with the thinness of an Air.

Have you made any Apple product advertisements recently?

Come to think of it, have you made any advertisements for products you like recently? Even Acers? Just wondered.

Apple’s latest lstandalone Cinema Displays, the 24″ widescreen with LED backlight technology announced in August, have shipped and began arriving Wednesday for customers also fortunate enough to own Apple machines with mini-Display port connectors.

The new 21lb bright, shiny things work only with the new MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks and the Macbook Air, a limitation puzzled over by many in the wake of the August announcement, but now that they are here, object lust would seem to be kicking in predictably for many.

Ars Technica blogger Clint Ecker did an unboxing first impressions post on Wednesday, a few shots from which can be seen in the gallery below. Of note is the high-gloss reflectivity of the display glass and the fact that Mac OS X elegantly defers to the display’s iSight instead of the notebook’s. It also uses the USB audio on the display, disabling the output on the notebook until you plug into the notebook’s headphone jack. Ecker says the Cinema Display appears “slightly brighter” than the display on a similarly sized iMac.

Via Ars Technica

Caption contest!

And this time: LOLspeak is allowed! Go crazy!

The winner – as judged by me at midnight GMT tomorrow (November 27th, which is also my birthday, yay) – will be sent a unique, once-in-a-lifetime PDF containing the word “Woof” in 27 different fonts.

Never say that Cult of Mac doesn’t offer you the most amazing prizes.

(Photo used under Creative Commons license, thanks to Arroz con Nori on Flickr).

So, erm, I’m not quite sure what to make of these.

Flickr user CoreForce posted these two, erm, stimulating images this week.

I know some people love their gadgets but the iPhone as a sex object? Not convinced about that. No.

(Photos iPhone tease and iPhone tease used under Creative Commons license, thanks to CoreForce.)

For MacAddict and MacUser editor Rik Myslewski has penned the second in a series of essays about Apple’s place in the world for The Register. This one looks at the company’s environmental and philanthropic activity.

Myslewski says that in both areas, Apple has only very recently showed signs of the kind of corporate responsibility commonly displayed publicly by its rivals and peers in the business.

The new green MacBooks only appeared after pressure by Greenpeace, which included public humiliation of the company in the charity’s 2006 Guide to Greener Electronics, where Apple was placed fourth from bottom. There are no records of charitable giving until the recent, sudden support for the Anti Proposition 8 movement in California.

If Apple has been giving more to charity, says Myslewski, it has been doing so under the utmost secrecy. Which leads him to believe that no such giving has taken place at all.

Which, Myslewski declares, is “shameful” for a company with so much cash in the bank. He gives the company an “F” rating for this particular part of the report card he’s writing.

What do you make of it all? Is Apple being treated harshly here, or is Myslewski making a good point?

Low End Mac figures their time is now.

With the economy exuding the stench of death and government busy creating trillions of dollars worth of fictional capital to “bail out” some of the nation’s brand-name institutions, Low End Mac believes their philosophy of “use it up, wear it out, and then recycle it” could not be more timely.

“We are the kings of making our computers last, last, and last some more,” writes blogger John Hatchett in a great piece describing how he turned his old iMac into a digital jukebox. With a little bit of drive cloning and hooking the iMac up to his home stereo, he now listens to his iTunes library all over his house.

Via Low End Mac

Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end…

That whole Solitaire thing seems pretty quaint now, doesn’t it?

Via Edible Apple, via Married to the Sea

iFrogz, developer of accessories for iPod and iPhone announced the availability of its first line of customizable earphones Tuesday, claiming to offer over 200,000 unique possibilities among three new products.

I could think of any number of words to describe what may be going on in the marketing department at the company’s Logan, UT headquarters, but they can certainly be said to think different.

For starters, the product line is called EarPollution, with individual offerings named Hype, Fallout and Nerve Pipes. The whole campaign calls to mind some kind of industrial accident rather than a new wave of must-have items in the over-saturated earphone market. Then again, standing out from the crowd is a definite strategy.

And stand out the iFrogz headsets do, too. From the ultra-bling options available on the Nerve Pipes to the slightly more downbeat style of Fallout (both over-ear) and the low-profile, in-ear Hype, users can customize color and artwork for headbands, speakers, earpds, even hinges (on Nerve Pipes), giving them what iFrogz CEO Scott Huskinson calls “complete creative control to develop something truly unique and original.”

Styles retail from $19.99 for the Hype earbuds, and $34.99 for both the Fallout and Nerve Pipes. Despite the estimated 235,000 unique combinations currently available the company promises more customizable options will become available at a later date.

Ahead of what is likely the most nervously anticipated Holiday Season for retailers in more than a generation, Apple joined the Black Friday bandwagon Tuesday, announcing a “one-day-only holiday shopping event” for the day after Thanksgiving.

Subscribers to Apple’s Inside Apple News received an email Tuesday announcing the company’s “biggest shopping event of the year” and visitors to the Apple online store found promises of “dozens of great iPod, iPhone and Mac gift ideas” good for Friday only. No word yet on what Friday’s pricing is going to look like or what items in the catalog will be on sale.

Now that Apple holds such a prominent place in the retail trade the company should be expected to follow many of the industry’s marketing rituals, but it’s probably a safe bet they are a little less nervous in Cupertino than in, say, Minneapolis (home of Best Buy) or Bentonville, Ark. (world headquarters of Wal-Mart).

Apple could release an $800 netbook in 2009, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster told investors Tuesday. Munster is just the latest advising the Cupertino, Calif. computer maker to offer an inexpensive laptop.

Although CEO Steve Jobs has poo-poohed talk of a netbook, dismissing the growing trend as just a “nascent market,” Munster believes Apple has the perfect platform: the MacBook Air.

In a note to clients, the Apple watcher said Apple could release an 11-inch version of its MacBook Air notebook and sell the unit for between $800 to $1,000.

For Beatles fans looking to download the iconic British rockers from Apple’s iTunes, it appears its going to be another ‘Hard Days Night.’ Paul McCartney now says negotiations are at a stand-still.

“The last word I got back was it’s stalled at the whole moment, the whole process,” the musician told the Associated Press.

The sticking point, according to McCartney is EMI, which owns the Beatles song catalog, and Apple Corps, a holding company run by surviving members of the UK band.