Cult of Mac

One look at this vintage pic of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates from the early days of each man’s career says a whole lot about the ultimate trajectories of both their businesses and their customers, dont’cha think?

The original provenance of the photo is unknown, though it clearly predates the historic conversation the two tech titans had at the All Things D conference in 2007.

From the looks of it, we’ll hazard a guess here it’s from a visit Gates made to Jobs’ California home back when the battle between Microsoft and Apple was more of a fair fight. What do you think?

[Awesome People Hanging Out Together]

15% of all iPhone owners use one of just ten passwords on their lock screen, making it trivial for thieves with physical access to hack into their device with just some remedial trial-and-error. Is your passcode on the list?

Looking to avoid an outright banning ahead of Apple’s move to jettison all such apps from the iOS App Store, Trapster has taken the preemptive step of removing the DUI Checkpoint functionality from their popular app.

Steve Jobs wanted to build his futuristic spaceship campus thirty years ago, reports the San Jose Mercury News.

Jobs wanted a “shimmery glass structure” surrounded by trees in rural San Jose. He had purchased the land and had lined up world-class architect I.M. Pei to design it.

“To me, it’s as if time hasn’t shifted — 30 years, same vision, same scope, same dream,” said real estate consultant Bob Feld, who worked with Jobs at the time.

So what happened?

To celebrate IBM’s centenary next week, the world’s leading financial magazine, The Economist, took a look at what high-tech companies might survive 100 years.

Apple made the cut, but Microsoft didn’t. And Google is looking sketchy. Why?

Apple’s iCloud may be looking to revolutionize the way consumers interact with the cloud, but that doesn’t mean Cupertino’s not drawing on its competitors expertise when it comes to actually hosting their online services.

In fact, Apple’s pushing the iCloud online with more than a little bit of help from both Microsoft and Amazon.

We start another week of deals with bargains on iMacs, Mac software and storage. First up is a series of aluminum iMacs from the Apple Store, including a 22-inch iMac powered by a 3.06GHz Core i3 processor for just $929. Next is “Chronories,” a diary management tool for your Mac. Finally, you can never have enough storage, like this Fantom 2TB external USB hard drive for just $85.

We’ll check out other items. Details of these and many other products can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

New to iOS will be the ability to use the volume up button on an iDevice to take a picture. Because of this, you’re also able to use the volume up button on your headphones to do the same thing.

Obviously, you’ll need a headset or pair of ear buds that support Apple’s volume-up/volume-down functionality (like Apple’s official ear buds) to get this to work.

Once it’s set up, though, this is just great additional functionality for those of us who take pictures with our iPhones using a tripod, or those of us who want to take really steady shots. Just plug in your headphones, line up your iPhone on a table, and use your headset to trigger the shutter, with no resulting wobble!

One tech reviewer has likened RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook to “the herpes of tablets.” Although the CNN writer was joking, not so funny is how consumers are shying away from the iPad rival.

Here’s another little neat trick from the latest developer beta: in iOS 5, you’ll be able to download and install more than one app at a time, even on 3G.

Need a clue to how fast the world’s changing? Apple – which has been in the phone business less than five years – is about to sell more smartphones than Nokia for the first time ever. That’s the last laurel Nokia has left.

Apple has just confirmed that they are recalling a limited number of Verizon iPad 2s, and now we know the reason why.

The bleeding just won’t stop for BlackBerry-maker RIM. A half-dozen Wall Street analysts are cutting the share’s target prices amid concern the Canadian company is in free-fall and Apple’s iMessage just cut the emergency parachute.

If you’re still hosting on iWeb and worried about what yet another year without an update means especially after the announcement of iCloud, prepare to have your worst fears confirmed.

Mobile is the future. Despite App Store integration in OS X Lion and Apple’s increased excitement about the Mac, the number of iOS developers also working on Mac applications has dwindled to single digits.

The iPhone 4S might not be out until September, but that doesn’t mean a new iPhone won’t be released in its traditional launch window that June. In fact, new iPhones could hit the Apple Store as early as Wednesday… but don’t expect new hardware. Instead, if the latest report pans out, expect carrier unlocked iPhones that could work on both Verizon and AT&T.

Well here’s something you don’t see every day. I’m the Computer Man is a bizarre, funny parody of Apple Macintosh tech support services. Shot with a 70s disco flavor and sung in Scatman John style, this is one unique Mac related video. Entertaining, in a cloyingly sweet way.

I’m the Macintosh man with the virus scan

Moving your files all across the land

Some Photoshop photos and After Dark

Get your Microsoft Office, XPress your Quark
Millions of colors with a VRAM chip
How about a system crash that will make you flip?

A reader comment on YouTube notes that the video was created by the McCann Erickson Agency IT staff back around 1997. I hope they gave these guys some time off…

Apple announced Mac OS X 10.7 Lion on June 6th and shortly there after renamed it to OS X Lion. If you are using the non-server version of OS X Lion you’ll be eligible for a free update under specific circumstances.

Since Apple started popping out the first mouse to be packaged with a personal computer with the Macintosh back in 1984, designers have been trying to find alternatives to the ubiquitous rodent. Apple itself seems to be out front in terms of interesting creations, experimenting on their mice with intriguing, if not always satisfying results. In this case, Smartfish, with their Whirl Mini laptop mouse ($50), have focused on perfecting the ergonomics of the mouse instead of trying to reinvent it. Did they pull it off?

Now that WWDC is over for another year and we’ve put all the excitement behind us, this coming week is going to be a little dull without something good to keep us entertained. Thankfully, our list must-have games is here to help. This week’s roundup features Dream:scape — the latest eye-popping game to use Epic Games’ Unreal Engine; 1000 Heroz which promises a new adventure every day you play; plus more great titles that are guaranteed to please.

The New York Times offered up a classic piece of long-form Sunday reportage with an article on how people around the world are creating “Internet in a suitcase” projects, in part funded by the U.S. State Department to detour repressive regimes.

Microsoft has been hawking pen-based tablets since 1991, when it first launched Windows for Pen Computing, a version of Windows with a pen interface layer. In 2002, the company introduced Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.

Although the Tablet PC has won a few fans over the years, Microsoft’s whole pen initiative didn’t succeed like Bill Gates always wanted it to. In fact, Microsoft’s approach to pen tablets is very much a product of Gates’ personal vision for how mobile computers should work. He’s always envisioned tablets that use a combination of handwriting recognition and voice recognition to replace the functionality of the keyboard and mouse.

The strength of Microsoft’s belief in this vision is pretty astounding, enabling the company to continue to support and promote the idea for 20 years without ever having what you might call a runaway success.

Gates was right about one thing: The functionality of keyboard and mouse would be replaced on tablets in a big way. And that’s starting to happen, thanks mainly to the iPad.

He was also right about predicting the widespread use of pens or styli on tablets. No, really!

We met some amazingly fantastic people at our first-ever shindig (at San Francisco’s Il Pirata) and gave out a smorgasbord of smashing raffle prizes.

Kicking off this week’s list of must-have iOS apps is a great new iPad 2 title from Evernote called Peek – the first iOS release that uses the Smart Cover to create a quiz game. We have a terrific new note-taking app from Junecloud, the developers behind the highly acclaimed Delivery Status Touch. Plus an app that will ensure you never get hit with a parking fine again, and plenty more.

Are you eager to jump into iOS 5, but not willing to risk your device with the sometimes unstable, developer-only beta? Well, as you may know, many of the new iOS features already exist in some form or another between the App Store and the Cydia Store, which is the jailbroken alternative to the Apple’s App Store. In this video, you’ll see how you can get most of the new iOS 5 features with your jailbroken device.