I didn’t keep up on the Apple-related halloween costumes as well as I like to, but I did see one that I thought you guys just had to see. It’s Bobby Hartman and Reko Rivera as a pair of iPhones with functioning displays. According to the page about their costumes (weighing in at 60 pounds and using LCD-TVs hooked up to Video iPods for their feeds), Reko is a DJ, so this is all old hat to him.
The clip is killer.
Thanks, Scott!
I love the NBC and Apple feud so much. Sometimes, the companies overtly bash each other. For every other moment, there’s fun speculation. Take for instance, the latest volley, which likely has nothing to do with the epic rumble between Jeff Zucker and Steve Jobs, but it’s fun to pretend otherwise. Here’s the set-up: NBC’s Saturday Night Live had a sketch featuring an iPhone that Gizmodo believes to have the illicit installer app that graces all jailbroken iPhones — and then, today, Apple issues iPhone firmware 1.1.2 on UK iPhones, which closes the exploit that enables the current group of jailbreaks. Coincidence? Or distant shots in a hundred-years war?
(No further word on features for 1.1.2. Best not to install for now.)
Via digg.
Illusionist Andrew Mayne is using a special filter in iChat to make it look like he’s bored to death or his soul is being ripped out.
It’s pretty effective.
Check his page for video of the effects in action.
Instructions for using the quartz filter called “HoloGit” is here on MacRumors.
Remember when Mac OS X only ran on Macs? That era is a thing of the past, as a group of hackers have already managed to install Leopard on vanilla PCs, with only a modicum of effort required. As DailyApps reports:
Well its been only a day since the Mac OSX Leopard was released officially by Apple and the hackers have managed to create a patched DVD that everyone like you and me can use to install Leopard on PC’s without having to buy a Mac. Please note the tutorial that I am going to post is still experimental and things might not work the right way simply because it is still early days in hacking Leopard to work on PC’s. Well if you don’t mind your PC getting screwed then go ahead and try out this tutorial.
I always expected that this was a possible consequence of Apple’s shift to Intel processors, but this still boggles the mind. Has anyone else tried to non-suckify their Wintel box yet? And does the vibrant iPhone hacker community have anything to do with this change?
Hack Attack : Install Leopard on your PC in 3 easy steps! | dailyApps
Via Laughing Squid
Do you Hulu? Well, you might just be the only one. Hulu is the new, still closed-to-the-public video service from NBC and the Fox network’s parent company. Originally mooted as a corporate-friendly alternative to Youtube’s freewheeling territory, recent events have helped position the site as a competitor to the iTunes Store, Cable On-Demand Service, and even a floorwax/dessert topping. Though the parent companies involved clai that their service will immediately start to steal eyeballs from its more seasoned competition, it remains to be seen what they have to offer that, you know, everyone else doesn’t already deliver.
A private beta of the service launched this morning, though they haven’t sent me an invite yet (I registered in August). But check out this screenshot from the home page, I mean where else are you going to go to check out reruns of “Pretender” or “Rob & Amber.” Steve Jobs must be quaking in his boots right now.
Anyone gotten in the door yet? Is it corporate-tacular?
Watch this video interview with MS CEO Steve Ballmer and see if you don’t conclude he’s a coke head.
Ballmer sniffs and snorts throughout and he’s constantly rubbing his nose as if he’s dying to take giant snot snorts.
If you were sitting in a bar with him, there’d be no doubt he just did a couple of fat rails.
As promised in Friday’s NY Times, Apple aired an updated and official version of Nick Haley’s brilliant homemade iPod Touch commercial. I caught it during the pre-game for the World Series. Apple calls the spot “Nylon,” which is a search term during the Safari demo they show. The commercial is very faithful to Haley’s ad, but with a few additions. From what I can tell, the new stuff includes showing a Foo Fighters video, lingering a bit longer on a web page, and then really emphasizing iTunes online. Other than that, it’s the same.
Watch Apple’s official version here, and then click through to watch Nick’s ad for comparison.
Oh, Apple. You shouldn’t have. It’s far too accurate (discovered by David R. Perek)
Via Digg.
Having spent a lot of time on Twitter (You can follow my goings-on there for up-to-the-second mac thoughts) now, I’m starting to get a sense of the community. As I poked around, I found that the micro-blogging community (or “Presence” app, to be buzz-wordy) is full of people posing as Steve Jobs — 7 in all. Consider this post the official guide to the Many Steves of Twitter.
1. Fake “Fake Steve Jobs”
Seen above, an earlier Twitterer claimed the territory of the web’s most famous fake CEO in micro form — only he’s obviously not the real Fake Steve Jobs — he isn’t half the writer of the genuine artificial article: ” Backstage – having some probs with the Powerpoint to Keynote file convertor. I wonder if they notice if we used Powerpoint (on Vista…hmmm)” Pathetic.
For the rest of the list, read on…
Anyone who has followed Apple for long has seen activists from Greenpeace or other environmental groups bash the company’s use of toxic or difficult to recycle materials in its products. The company recently trashed Apple’s iPhone for what it claimed were extraordinarily high levels of toxic chemicals the company had pledged to stop using. Of course, Apple only promised to stop using them by the end of 2008, so…
Those clever troublemakers over at Gizmodo cited an industry group that challenged Greenpeace’s methods for determining the contents of the iPhone — they only detected Bromine, not which compounds were present. This led to a lot of furor from Greenpeace, as you can imagine. The rebuttal is quite long, but the last quote from its spokesperson is worth the reading:
If you think we just protest against Apple then look out for soon a report covering a wide range of manufacturers as we have done in 2006. While it might not make as many headlines as the iPhone it doesn’t mean that we are not focusing on all manufacturers to remove toxic chemicals from their products.
That sounds like an admission to me… Apple is moving out ahead of its competitors here. Maybe it would help the cause to admit that, guys…
Via Slashdot
Is the future of advertising embedded devices that measure the progress of your life? If the New York Times is right, Nike is already headed in this direction, using its relationship with Apple to move out ahead of the competion. The Nike+iPod Sport Kit is explicitly designed to provide performance feedback. Implicitly, it’s there to make Nike a constant presence in the lives of its users and drive traffic to Nike’s website.
Nike’s global sales have climbed in the last four years to more than $16 billion from $10 billion. And executives say the new type of marketing is a part of that trend.
The company plans to use the Nike+ idea in other sports categories, which could include basketball, tennis and soccer. While $29 for a Nike+ sensor hardly covers the cost of the device and the site maintenance and customer service, Mr. Edwards coolly points out that Nike+ is as much about marketing as it is about product.
People have complained since the Nike+ launched that it’s only for running. I’m glad to hear that the company is expanding into other sports. If they make a cycling model, I’m there.
Via Quantified Self
Tech Prognosticating Really Not Paying These Days [Fake Steve]
Many Methods for Free Jailbreaks on iPhone [TUAW]
Patents Point to Multitouch MacBook? [Machines That Go Bing]
GUI for iPod Classic Brought to 5G iPod [iPod Wizard]
DListed gets the pics as Woz and his lady love Kathy Griffin show up together at the new Diablo’s Cantina at the Monte Carlo in Las Vegas. I guess this is real. Weird, huh?
Via the Raw Feed.
Can you guys keep a secret? This is the first post I’ve written in more than a month that I created on my Mac. Right at the end of August, I opened my faithful 12″ Powerbook only to be greeted by the unwelcome sound of the Click of Death.
If you’ve never had a hard drive die, you might have never encountered the Click of Death. Count yourself lucky. It’s a sad sound. A heart-breaking sound. The sound of things falling apart. A tap, a skip, a whir and failure. Over and over and on into the future. And so, part way through a major writing project, my computer was beloved Mac and constant companion was rendered utterly unusable. Not immediately equipped to pay for the repair, I had to hold off until this last week to get a new drive.
I have walked in the valley of darkness, oh my brothers, and I am more convinced of the Mac’s superiority than ever. Fitted with a new drive, my little Mac feels dozens of times faster than the year-old ThinkPad I have to use at work. It just feels like being home. To make it more like home, over the course of the weekend, I’ve been restoring my Mac to just how I like it. I have five easy steps for doing it yourself, so click through to learn how.
Remember 1988? Bill McEwen certainly does. And that’s why he’s the CEO of Amiga, Inc., a little company still churning along based on the stellar reputation that Commodore’s Amiga enjoyed back in the late ’80s. For awhile there, some actually thought the Amiga would really duke it out with Apple for supremacy. And Bill McEwen still thinks it can happen, as he lays out in a baffling interview on Amiga Web:
16) You’ve claimed earlier that OS5 will be better than Mac OS X. Can you tell us in what way?
Details for OS 5 will be made public in the 4th quarter of 2007, and then you will have a much clearer understanding and I will let you decide if what I know to be true is accurate.
Also:
28) In the era of the Mac mini, iPhone, $100 laptop, and Efika, what innovative products can Amiga Inc. bring to the information technology market?
Our plans and product strategy take all of the above question items and others into account. Until I am able to show it to you, I will just have to say that there is plenty of places for Amiga to succeed.
You hear that Apple? A company that thinks this weird picture of a woman with a cell phone belongs on the front page of their website is taking the Mac mini and the iPhone into account. So there! Just consider yourself accounted for! I love true believers.
Via Slashdot
The Apple blogosphere hills are alive with the sound of rumors!
So, it’s pretty clear that Apple’s iPod and iPhone product line is locked down for the holiday season following last month’s “Beat Goes On” event, right? Right. What’s that leave for new product updates? Why, the glory of the Mac, of course.
The always-enthusiastic, rarely-on-the-money Mac OS Rumors claims that a bevy of big product announcements are coming from Apple “between now and mid-December.”
These include the MacBook Nano (another spin on the long-rumored MacBook Thin) and a rather oddly muddle rumor about both an AppleTV product line featuring optical disc drives (presumably HD-DVD or BluRay) and also a new, even smaller Mac mini replacement called the Mac nano. Now, I have to say, that sounds like exactly the same rumor to me, unless Apple really wants to position the AppleTV as a DVD-player replacement instead of a new device. Personally, I’d rather see them just install some DVR software. But really, would Apple introduce a new AppleTV with a disc slot and lower the profile of the Mac mini? They would look exactly the same.
What are you expecting for Christmas from Apple this year?
Image via Guardian.
What can send dozens of Mac-heads and Apple Geniuses running faster than a basket full of free iPhones? Why a fire alarm, of course. Sunday morning at the main Apple Store in San Francisco, everybody hit the street after a two-alarm ire cleared the space and firefighters tramped around the space.
Some Life Blog has the complete story, but the video above is worth watching just to see the parade of Apple Store employees returning to work after getting the all-clear sign. I don’t know if I’ve seen that many black T-shirts since I last went to a Raiders game!
Via SFist.
Everyone who loves Apple’s products is fully aware that the company is innovative, always pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, democratizing breakthrough technologies in the process. How Apple does that, of course, is basically a secret these days. At best, we know that Steve Jobs decrees a product get made, and then it materializes.
The NY Times tries to capture this mystical sense in an article about process innovation published in the Sunday Business section. And I have to say, working in and around this dialogue, the article provides one of the more abstract explanations for the value of innovation I’ve ever seen. It talks about how sweet Intel, Apple and Google are but doesn’t say why they are able to innovate, and what that means to the rest of us. Unless innovation is tied to business growth, it’s an academic exercise. I practically expected a reference to Wikinomics here, the argument is so not grounded in concrete terms:
Yet successful companies realize that maintaining competitive advantage depends heavily on sustaining process innovations. Great process innovators often support basic research in relevant fields, maintain complete control over the creation of every aspect of a product and refuse to rely on outside suppliers for important components. Certainly, there are exceptions to these patterns, but even companies like Apple that buy essential processes on the open market nevertheless invest in gaining a working knowledge of the technologies and an understanding of their future arc.
And that has what to do with process innovation? This is the golden goose so far as companies today are concerned. Apple and Procter & Gamble, for example do have very successful innovation strategies. But abstractly talking about an innovation process and actually realizing one are two different things. And this article provides no actions that can be taken to instill such processes back at our own companies. It’s just more fauning over Google, Apple and Intel. What a squandered opportunity.
Check it out, folks. Though it tastes like Steve’s iLeftovers, the rap in the middle of this clip of “Viking Webcam” is oddly addictive.
Britney’s Gut. Britney’s Gut.
Via Fake Steve.
Silicon Valley Socialite Om Malik reports that the good people of Yahoo! were recently inspired by none other than Steve Jobs himself:
He told the gathering of 300-odd Yahoo (YHOO) vice presidents that they can do anything. The company with one of the largest Internet user bases can do and achieve anything, he apparently told them. (I am channeling a handful of VPs.) He talked about how Apple (AAPL) was down on its luck and made a comeback. Yahooligans were pretty inspired! Now if they made more of their products Mac friendly!
Malik promises more detail on Steve’s speech soon, but in the meantime, ponder this: Yahoo has 300 VICE-PRESIDENTS! No wonder they need motivation from Steve. Stay tuned — this is a very interesting development. Yahoo and Apple are much friendlier than they were a year ago… Steve doesn’t do motivational speaking for just anyone. It’s always as a personal favor.
As I noted back in June, NBC’s new series “Chuck,” which premiered last night, features Macs galore, including the above Mac Plus, the thinly disguised most powerful computer in the world.
“Chuck” is a cute little show, but the Macs are mostly more interesting than the action. You can see the show in full online here.
O iPhoneless brethren, I feel your pain. None of us can afford the glorious device, despite our love for Apple. Fortunately, Paul Waite has created an amazing DIY music-playing PDA for the rest of us. All you need is a stack of index cards and an iPod shuffle. He calls it the Hipster PDA Shuffle, and the video introducing it is amazing. AMAZING.
(If you never saw the original, hysterical Hipster PDA article, get thee to 43 Folders!)
Though no photos have surfaced yet, Entertainment Weekly reports that Emmys host Ryan Seacrest interviewed Kathy Griffin on the red carpet tonight, and a certain burly, bearded founder of Apple named Woz a few minutes ago. This is contrary to several denials of the relationship between Woz and Griffin.
Apparently, Seacrest had no idea who Woz was and suddenly opened his eyes after being informed through his ear piece. The clip should air on the west coast around 7 p.m., so keep your eyes peeled for it. I’ll post the red carpet clip as soon as it makes it to the Internet. In the mean time, enjoy a video of Woz explaining Griffin to a fan.
More than 25 years later, Steve Wozniak has returned to the scene of his greatest triumph, re-making his enthusiastic endorsement of the Nissan (and then-Datsun) Z car. The new version promotes the 350Z, which he was selling off for charity to benefit his alma mater, UC Berkeley. And it. is. AWESOME.
Via Macenstein
From a current advertising circular. But the proximity of the “i” and the “Phone” must be a coincidence, right? Right?
Don’t buy them all at once, now. Plenty of Ralph’s “iPhones” to go around.
Thanks for the tip, SBI!
