News - page 2380

The Apple nay-sayers love to pretend that Mac OS X and all of Apple’s other products are destined to be destroyed by hackers. Although Apple has marketed its products as being far less hackable than Windows, someday, the Mac will just be riddled with viruses. It’s inevitable! Except that it’s never happened, and what do you know, Mac OS X is far less troubled by malware than Windows is.

Still, the notion persists, and Apple detractors such as the bearded man at right, Roger L. Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates, will continue to draw irrelevant correlations between minor software hacks on Apple products and overall platform insecurity.

Hilariously, Mr. Kay is under the impression that iPhone jailbreaks and the major unlocking project “Project Pwned” are somehow indicators that virus writers will soon over-run all of Apple’s products. Riiiiiiight. Because individual users finding ways to maximize the value of their own machine is exactly the same as a random prankster taking control of someone else’s machine. His poorly reasoned opinion, courtesy of BusinessWeek, argues that unauthorized iPhone apps will stink, and people will blame Apple for no apparent reason:

Apple, welcome to Microsoft’s world! This is an environment in which you have to support thousands of developers of varying quality, and all sorts of apps, well made or not. Some of these developers make you look good, but others end up trashing your reputation. And despite your best efforts to monetize what they do, it’s not always possible. The elegant simplicity of your platform just makes hacking easier. There is no such thing as real security. All you can do is throw up roadblocks–which, by the way, make it harder for both crooks and law-abiding citizens to drive on your roads.

Wait, what? You think Apple will feel bad that some of the jail-broken apps will suck? That will provide additional evidence that Apple is right to lock down the iPhone. I think the iPhone should be a lot more open than it is, but the only possible conclusion to this situation is the opposite of what Kay argues. But who am I to disagree with a man who has this to say?

UPDATE: The survey has concluded. Thanks to everyone who took part.We’d like to ask you — the readers — for a favor.We’re trying to get a better idea of who you are and what you like to do — more than your thoughtfully-written comments can tell us.So, we’ve crafted a little questionnaire. Click here to take our Cult of Mac reader survey. We’ve kept it as painless as possible. It’s just two pages and it takes about a minute or so to complete. Everything is totally anonymous.Most of it is the standard reader survey stuff (did we mention it’s fast and anonymous?), but when you’re done, we’ll have a better understanding of each other. And really, isn’t that reason enough?

At the Mix 08 conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft CEO and noted iPhone fan Steve Ballmer reprised two of his greatest hits in a panel with Apple Evangelist Guy Kawasaki. First Ballmer suggested Apple was trying to get too big of a cut from iPhone application sales (30 percent is fine, in my opinion; exposure on iTunes is worth the royalty). Second, Ballmer did something truly sublime: he actually responded to a “fan’s” request that he do the “Developers, Developers, Developers” chant. And then, HE DID. It’s awesome. You have to hit the link.

CNET via Gizmodo

From user ndhmashfan: I thought this would be a good use for Legos.

It’s the night before the last Tuesday of February, and you know what that means: Rumors! It’s been widely speculated that Apple is holding a secret event tomorrow, likely for the roll-out of the iPhone SDK or new hardware. And now…proof. Or something very like it. Photos of an inventory sheet from a store with new hardware SKUs that suggest new MacBooks, MB403LL/A and MB402LL/A. Initially, some speculated that these must be new MacBook Pros (because they desperately need updating), but these numbers suggest an update from the low end.

BusinessWeek claims they have it confirmed that the iPhone SDK will be late. What do you think will happen tomorrow?

Via Gizmodo.

Nineteen-year-old Mac enthusiast Cameron Kerr has made a spot-on parody of the HP Hands ad campaign to detail his own life. Though he doesn’t mention it in the actual spot, he did put together a clever how-to which reveals that a Mac can make it so easy to create a visually stimulating ode to HP computers.

A shame. Of course, the only thing wrong with today’s HP laptops is that they ship with Windows, so maybe the celebrity endorsers of the famous campaign just aren’t telling us something.

Via Winandmac.

My colleague Chris Kohler at Wired News has a thought-provoking piece on the iPhone’s potential as a games platform. Since the day Apple introduced it, I’ve been waiting for Apple to unleash multi-touch games, and many of Chris’ sources think that the impending release of Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch SDK might let that happen at long last:

Whether or not iPhone gets a gaming-centric redesign, the release of the SDK makes it all but certain that we’ll see some touchscreen games from the development community.

Ehrenberg sees iPhone games as a sort of warm-up for a dedicated gaming system to come later: “This could be a launching point to get people thinking: Apple, games, Apple, games. A device may well follow from that that’s more tailored to the gaming experience.”

What’s really interesting is that 2008 promises to be a huge battle in mobile gaming. Nokia has relaunched N-Gage as an Xbox Live-like social gaming service for its highest-end phones like the N82 and the impending N96. Samsung could easily go this direction in a heartbeat, and if Microsoft ever does make a ZunePhone (as Zune fans believe), you can bet that gaming would be a major component of it to leverage the Xbox brand. Can Apple get there first and best? Only time will tell.

One thing is certain, however. Analyst Roger Ehrenberg of Information Arbitrage could stand to do some more research on the screen resolution of most handheld game systems:

But if the iPhone and iPod Touch are going to be serious contenders for gamers’ attention, they’ll need a screen upgrade, in more ways than one. Ehrenberg says gamers will want a higher-res display: “Right now, the screens generally don’t have the clarity to get the most out of the videogame programming that exists today.”

Um…yeah. Here’s the thing. The Nintendo DS? Uses two screens, each at 256×192, which is a total of 98,304 pixels. The Sony PlayStation Portable? One screen at 480*272, which is 130,560 pixels. The iPhone? One screen at 480×320, or 153,600 pixels. It would be the highest-res gaming platform on the market, not the lowest. That said, maybe there’s a screen-refresh issue that I don’t know about that could make the iPhone weak for action games. It would surprise me, given how nice “Pirates of the Caribbean” looks on it, but one never knows.

Gamers Eye the iPhone, As SDK Approaches

Tags: iphone, games, uninformed analysts

MacWorld was oddly devoid of non-MacBook Air, AppleTV software and Time Capsule product announcements this year. No new MacBooks, iMacs, or MacBook Pros, and no new iPods or iPhones. Apple remedied the latter this Tuesday with double-capacity iPod touch and iPhones, but other new hardware or the iPhone and touch SDK were nowhere to be seen.

TUAW claims to have a tip that the company that typically broadcasts Apple events, MIRA Mobile, is looking to hire people for an unannounced Apple event at the end of the month. My top priority is a new MacBook Pro, but my old iPod just conked out, so the SDK for the touch would be pretty compelling, too…

Via TUAW

As part of the launch of new how-to video site Neulio, Steve Wozniak, the Woz himself, has created a brief course on the basics of his favorite sport, Segway Polo. Having been nearly run down by Woz and his Segway, I can confirm that he knows what he’s doing.

Thanks, Christina!

In a clear sign that everyone is really frantic to get Super Tuesday over with already, the New York Times has published the article contrasting Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama the world wasn’t waiting for. Noam Cohen has the temerity to ask: Is Obama a Mac and Hillary a PC?

I started cringing before I even started reading. Essentially, it comes down to the idea that Obama’s website looks like Apple’s (it doesn’t – looks more generic Web 2.0), and that Hillary’s looks like a typical business-solutions provider (maybe? I’d say it looks more like Foxnews.com). Some of the quotes are quite hilarious.

With Obama’s site, all the features and elements are seamlessly integrated, just like the experience of using a program on a Macintosh computer,” said Alice Twemlow, chairwoman of the M.F.A. program in design criticism at the School of Visual Arts (who is a Mac user).

And what does this mean for those of us voting on Tuesday? Absolutely nothing. The story doesn’t even bother to mention if either Obama or Hillary use Macs. Seems like that might have proven relevant…

On a more relevant front, I’ve reposted the Hillary 1984 video after the jump.

Though it’s actually a slightly older commercial, I was struck during the Super Bowl pre-game today by Dell’s ad for the XPS-One, the Austin PC-maker’s all-in-one iMac competitor. The commercial is nothing but 30 seconds of vanilla PC box destruction. Exploding. Getting hit with wrecking balls. And then the (semi) attractive XPS One pops out. The tagline: “Dell – now available in beautiful.” I was so shocked that I rewound it and watched it again. Does Dell hate itself this much?

While Dell, HP, and Gateway’s increasing focus on industrial design (only 15 years after Apple and IBM) has made some serious progress toward getting ugly beige boxes off of the desks of America, it’s disturbing to me how much Dell’s approach to design is an attack on itself. Those weren’t just generic PCs – they represented the former soul of the Dell corporation. And while the former Dell corporation made bland, bottom-feeding PCs, at least the company’s point of view on what a computer should be. Now, its designs evoke where Apple and Sony were about four years ago. Is it not possible to make more attractive computers without trashing yourself?

In this regard, Apple will never be in trouble. With Steve Jobs in charge, the company’s identity is rock solid, as its perspective on what technology should be. Every Apple shareholder is thankful for that.

Point well made, Rodrigo. Still, did Apple really need to make the single USB port on the MacBook Air so recessed that you can’t plug in a 3G radio adapter?

Via Digg.

What? Those totally mean the same, don’t they? … OH! Oh, dear.

Stephen Carboni via Digg.

Apple has launched another of its ingenious “Get a Mac” banner ads on the New York Times front page. As Mac and PC chat in a sidebar, a seemingly unrelated ad up above becomes a topic of discussion and then manipulation.

Pretty brilliant — PC “correcting” a “typo” in a Wall Street Journal review so it says “Leopard is better and faster than Vista – NOT!” Nicely done. And now to correct the rest of the Internet, indeed.

The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia

Via TUAW

Tags: advertisingapple internet getamac

Thanks for the link, Nalts.

Eagle-eyed readers of Think Secret may have noticed that the site is still publishing.

Many assumed that Think Secret would cease publishing after the site’s owner, Harvard undergrad Nick Ciarelli, reached a settlement with Apple in December concerning Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit, and Ciarelli’s first amendment countersuit. (For which Ciarelli was rumored to have received a low six-figure sum from Apple).

But on Tuesday, Think Secret published a story and two galleries of photos from Macworld. On Monday, the site briefly published a pre-Macworld rumor, but quickly withdrew said item without explanantion. (There’s a screengrab here).

The site’s last day of publishing will be February 14, 2008, according to Dave Hamilton of BackBeat Media, Think Secret’s advertising partner.

“The last day that BackBeat Media-brokered ads will appear on Think Secret is February 14th, 2008, and content will be posted on the site regularly at least until then,” writes Hamilton.

When asked about the situation, Ciarelli sent a note pointing to Hamilton’s blog post, but declined to elaborate further.

Great new “Get a Mac” spot from Apple last night showcasing the Mac OS X Leopard back-up utility Time Machine. A dozen Justin Longs as Mac — I don’t know whether to cheer or run screaming. Highly effective explanation of the technology, though. And it’s nice to see the campaign get kindler and gentler again after the Vista-attack ads.

Via TUAW

Thank you for all of your entries (23 in all!), but the winner of our recent Bill Gates retiring contest winner is Church of Apple, who managed to slyly take down all of Microsoft without getting juvenile. Nicely done.

I do have a soft spot for DJ Rizzo’s “The iPhone has nothing on Microsoft’s newest user interface: we call it the ‘multi-clapper.’ Not only can you ‘clap-on’ and ‘clap-off’ but you can also clap ‘ctrl-alt-delete’!” Strong second place. Well done.

My two favorite tech news sites — Gizmodo and Ars Technica — are hosting a pre-keynote party in San Francisco on Monday night (the 14th) at Harlot, 46 Minna Street. 8-11.30pm.

Giz editor Brian Lam is promising to buy everyone a beer, and there’s schwag (likely shite) for early birds. I’ll be there, and so apparently will Dan Lyons, aka Fake Steve.

Here’s a handy map to the bar.

UPDATE: I just discovered that the free schwag are copies of my books. Ooops.

David Lynch is a famously outsider filmmaker, from Eraserhead  right through Inland Empire. And he is no fan of handheld movie playing, as featured on the iPhone. Very funny iPhone parody ad by Brittney Gilbert.

Thanks, Gabo!

Tags: iphone, humor, David Lynch

Fake Steve points us to a provocative Discover Magazine commentary by technology visionary Jaron Lanier, best known for putting the virtual reality bug in everybody’s ears at TED II way back in the ’80s. Lanier argues emphatically that open-source software doesn’t automatically yield creativity or innovation.

Twenty-five years later, that concern seems to have been justified. Open wisdom-of-crowds software movements have become influential, but they haven’t promoted the kind of radical creativity I love most in computer science. If anything, they’ve been hindrances. Some of the youngest, brightest minds have been trapped in a 1970s intellectual framework because they are hypnotized into accepting old software designs as if they were facts of nature. Linux is a superbly polished copy of an antique, shinier than the original, perhaps, but still defined by it.

I think he’s mostly right, although it’s worth noting that many of the works of art in software that he speaks of were built on the backs of open-source software. For example, the iPhone runs on the Mach Kernel, which is open-source, and then OS X BSD above that, all available in Darwin and featuring contributions from the open-dev community.

What Lanier speaks to instead is that different methods are suited best to different kinds of innovation. Vision-driven projects plotting new directions in interface design, radical improvements and others are best served in proprietary contexts. Under-the-hood improvements and refinement can be driven quite effectively through the work of open communities. This is something that Apple has demonstrated for a long time — it’s very hard to come up with the right questions to ask. It’s relatively easy to answer them once asked. Apple and other proprietary visionaries cited by Lanier are asking the right questions. The open-sourcers answer well-known questions that have bubbled up for years. It’s incremental improvement, but no less critical for the future of software and hardware development.

How could this have failed? The Apple Lisa is the computer for Type A personalities who go to work at dawn with their dogs via bike and then continually stare at the same spreadsheet for a half-hour. Sign me up!

YouTube – Kevin Costner in Apple ad

Via SFist

Blogged with Flock

Tags: lisa, apple, costner, advertising

I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of stupid crap vaguely inspired by the iPod. The best of these in recent memory is the iPond, an Australian product that crams a really tiny fish tank — and a Siamese fighting fish — into a weird package that looks sort of like an iPod (and more like a 1G Zune). Oh, and it plays music through a really crummy speaker.

The best part of all of this? The iPond is virtually guaranteed to kill any fish unfortunate enough to get put into the iPond. Fighting fish need 10 liters to live, and the iPond is .65 liters. Oops. The Sydney Morning Herald has the story:

Studies proved fish had memories well beyond a few seconds and were social creatures that experienced pain and boredom, he said.

“The fish in this thing does not look like it has very long to live and it can barely move,” he said.

“Even if it does live it’s not [a] life worth living … it’s really just a torture box.”

Even better? The sound from the speaker leaks inside the tank. So it’s a really loud torture box. I know it’s a little late, but how do I get this on my wishlist?

Via Gizmodo.

The revamped Spaceship Earth ride at Disney’s Epcot Center has a special “Steve Jobs section,” according to the lifthill blog, which tracks news about rides and roller coasters, and was invited to a special preview.

But once at the Steve Jobs area, which is supposed to depict the birth of Apple computer in a garage, the lifthill blogger noticed that the lone figure in the garage looked a lot more like Wozniak than Jobs.

The figure is facing the wrong way, so it’s hard to tell, but it’s wearing the same shirt as Wozniak in a famous early photograph copied below, and has similar hair and beard. Conspriacy theorists note that Jobs is the single largest shareholder in Disney– but I can’t believe he cares that a section of Epcot bears his name or likeness (or not).

Anyway, there’s no second figure in sight, so one of them is slighted. And so too is the third Apple-founder, Ron Wayne, but no one cares about that.

But what is that thing the dummy Woz/Jobs is sitting in front of? It ain’t no Apple I or II — the first and only machines Woz created more or less single-handed. It looks like a big wooden Mac, but none of the Mac prototypes looked like that — they were much more finished.

Higher-res pictures at lifthill.

Via Boingboing.

I just stumbled across Mister BG’s all-too-real parody of Apple’s Product Lifecycle. This is my favorite paragraph:

The haters offer their assessment. The forums are ablaze with vitriolic rage. Haters pan the device for being less powerful than a Cray X1 while zealots counter that it is both smaller and lighter than a Buick Regal. The virtual slap-fight goes on and on, until obscure technical nuances like, “Will it play multiplexed Ogg Vorbis streams?” become matters of life and death.

It’s funny because it’s true. Well done, sir.

Via Digg.