Cult of Mac

In June 2008, on a flight home from Europe to San Francisco, I was given a fascinating demo of some jaw-dropping technology.

I was sitting next Inon Beracha, CEO of Israeli company PrimeSense, which had developed a low-cost chip and software to do 3D machine vision.

The system used a pair of cameras and an infrared sensor to highlight people and track their movements.

On his laptop, Beracha showed me videos of people waving their hands in the air to control Wii-like games. He showed people controlling TV programming menus by gesturing their hands in the air. And, most impressive of all, someone flipping through a photo slide show like they were Tom Cruise in Minority Report. It was so slick, I asked him if it was CGI. It was real, he said, and so cheap, the technology could eventually be found everywhere in the home, office and car.

Of course, PrimeSense’s system is at the heart of Microsoft’s new Kinect game controller, which is getting rave reviews and looks set to be a monster hit. It’s a “crazy, magical, omigosh rush,” says the New York Times‘ David Pogue.

And it almost belonged to Apple.

It’s happened to us all: You delete a file, folder or entire disk, then realize you’ve made a mistake.  You reach for your backup – and you don’t have a backup. What now?

There are several utilities available to help recover deleted files under Mac OS X.  Your chances of success depend on how the file was deleted and what you’ve done since then.  Unfortunately you will also lose your original filenames, though some reconstruction is possible.

Apple has released the second update to its new iPhoto ’11 application today, and version 9.1 reintroduces support for creating photo calendars that had disappeared in the iPhoto ’11 release.

The update also provides additional letterpress themes for holiday greeting cards, and fixes several bugs.

This update adds several new print product options to iPhoto ’11. It also improves overall stability and addresses a number of other minor issues.

• Provides the ability to create and order calendars in iPhoto.
• Additional letterpress holiday greeting card themes are now available.
• Fixes an issue that prevented videos downloaded from MobileMe or Flickr from importing correctly into iPhoto events.

The update is recommended for all users of iPhoto ’11.

This is the second update to iPhoto ’11 since its release just over two weeks ago. Apple quickly released the 9.0.1 update last week to address an issue that caused many users to lose their iPhoto data when upgrading from iPhoto ’09.

The iPhoto 9.1 update weighs in at just over 186 MB and can be downloaded via Software Update on your Mac, or from Apple’s download page.

Ars Technica stumbled upon an interesting tidbit while reviewing their 11-inch MacBook Air.  They found a compelling reason for Apple to not install Adobe Flash on the MacBook Air and it wasn’t just because they wanted to make sure users always had the latest version of Flash.

This is going to become the Must Have item of the Holiday Shopping Season for Apple iOS device owners.

Trust me.

When PC platforms were the central battlefield for technology, Microsoft was Apple’s big threat, hated enemy and all-purpose nemesis. But those days are gone.

Yet some Apple Faithful rage on against Redmond like abandoned Japanese soldiers on remote Pacific islands long after the end of WWII. It’s time for those Apple fans to come back to civilization understand what’s really happening now. Microsoft is more a friend than an enemy to Apple.

With the release Thursday of 5.0 Beta for Mac OS X, Internet communications giant Skype took a big step on the path to aligning the Windows and Mac versions of its flagship calling platform.

Mac users who’d grown used to the modular UI of previous versions may find the new, more unified interface arresting initially, but there’s no question Skype designers have brought their software well within the confines of the “iTunes” UI model and new Skype for Mac users, should there be any left on the planet, ought to feel right at home from the get-go.

The big news with the new release is support for group video calling, for which Skype borrows from Safari’s curved pane effect to display the feeds of individuals on a group call, with the more important feature being that it just works.

If you’ve decided to pick up one of Apple’s miraculously thin new MacBook Airs, but have a large media or photo library, you’re probably going to have to pick up an external USB hard drive to go with it: those SSDs are blisteringly fast, yes, but they’re not exactly voluminous.

What external hard drive can match the Air’s resplendent svelteness, though? Try the Hitachi G-Drive Slim. It’s only 0.39 inches thick and clocks in at 320GB for $99.99. That’s not a lot of storage space for the price, but then again, neither is the Air.

The super slim runway model MacBook Air is the best MacBook I’ve had so far. It’s thin, light, and zippy fast for the work I need to do – like this blog post and everything I need to do while mobile so far. Unfortunately it managed to slip out of manufacturing and into our hands with a few issues.

Now there is definite proof that at least some of the video issues are related to sleep/wake and that Apple, who has been completely quiet about it – knows that the problem exists, but isn’t publicly acknowledging it.

We start out with two MacBook Pro deals, including a unibody 2.26GHz unit for just $929. (There is also a 2.8GHz MacBook Pro powered by a Core i7 processor with a 17-inch screen and AppleCare for $3,197.) Also in the deal spotlight are new price cuts on iPad applications, including “Beachside Solitaire” for just $1. We also take a look at a bundle of Mac games, including “Plants versus Zombies.”

Along the way, we check out a number of other gadgets, including a game grip that turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a game controller. There also are deals on the iPod nano and holsters for your handset. As always, details on these and many more items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

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Well, what do you know: the guys over at Plex, who make one of my favorite media center apps for the Mac, have jailbroken their second-gen AppleTV and managed to get the Plex client up and running on the little $99 box.

The proof of concept’s a little rough around the edges, but once this is polished up, it could be a huge boon for AppleTV owners hoping to expand their box’s capabilities. Sure, you still need to stream your media from a paired Mac, but Plex supports a lot more codecs than AirPlay. I can’t wait to see this project progress.

This is a pretty neat spin on the freemium model: Capcom Arcade is a free title that bundles many of Capcom’s classic arcade games — including Street Fighter II, Commando and 1942 — together in a virtual arcade. Just like in a real arcade, to play the games, you need tokens, which you can buy in-app. Otherwise, Capcom Arcade is happy to dole out free tokens every day, which you can then use for a limited number of plays.

It’s a clever little approach. Usually, freemium games use in-game virtual goods to make money, but Capcom’s turned that idea on its head by making a play of their games themselves into a virtual good to be consumed. I wonder if other classic arcade publishers with a presence in the App Store will catch on: Sega, I’m looking at you.

[via Touch Arcade]

Been holding out for redsn0w before jailbreaking your iOS 4.1 device. Good news: the Dev Ream has just released the latest version which will allow you to jailbreak your iPhone 4, 3GS, 3G, 3rd or 4th generation iPod Touch and second generation AppleTV on either Mac or Windows machines. It uses geohot’s limera1n exploit, and also adds “custom bootlogos for iPhone3G/iPhone3GS/iPod2G users (with qualifying bootroms)” and an option that implements the ‘DFU’ button in PwnageTool” in Windows.

Interested? Grab it here, and let the hacking commence.

Last week, Steve Jobs responded to a Mac owner’s question about future USB 3.0 support by saying that Cupertino didn’t see it taking off yet, specifically because Intel has yet to support it.

When we reported that story, we speculated that Apple might view USB 3.0 as a technology that may — like Blu-Ray — be technically superior to what preceded it, but would be quickly made obsolete by an entirely different approach. In Blu-Ray’s case, streaming video came along; in USB 3.0’s case, we suspected it would be Light Peak, a new optical cable technology that Intel is working on that would be a single universal replacement for pretty much any digital cable out there, from USB to SATA to HDMI.

Maybe we were right. According to Cnet, Light Peak is on target for a 2011 debut, and Apple is expected to start shipping machines with that standard in the first year.

It’s too late for Halloween, but there’s plenty of time to get a mask of your distorted mug taken with Apple’s Photo Booth to make a splash at carnival celebrations.

Brooklyn-based designer Mark Pernice first made these huge grimacing masks out of his own face working with F/X superstar sculptor Christian Hanson. People liked these disturbing, wearable doppplegangers so much that Pernice is stumping to raise money to make more masks.

The series of six masks his making this time will eventually end up in an exhibit– we’ll keep you posted on details — and if you pledge the most, he’ll make one of you.  Or your favorite pet, or maybe a relative.  (Kick in $20 to the cause and you get a poster of one of his masks).

Cult of Mac talked to Pernice about which figure in Apple history he’d most like to make a mask of and why he decided to dress up as Freddie Mercury this Halloween.

Right now, if you want live television on your iPad, you are basically limited to using the EyeTV to stream it from your computer. What if you don’t want to be umbilicaled to your desktop, though>

Meet the Tizi, a small peripheral box being sold in Europe that pairs with your iOS device over WiFi and watch the terrestrial boob tube wherever you are.

Yesterday, Facebook hosted a media event to announce the company’s plans to tie local business advertising into its Places functionality, but at the Q&A following the event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a surprising claim: the iPad’s not mobile.

The characterization came after an attendee asked Zuckerberg when the iPad would get a native Facebook app.

The answer? Never. Facebook expects you to use the Facebook website on the iPad. And why? Because Facebook only makes app for mobile devices, and “the iPad’s not mobile… it’s a computer.”

Ask most iTunes users and they’ll agree that 30 second song previews are simply too short to inform a decision on whether or not to buy a song… but if the music labels had their druthers, they wouldn’t even allow that, which makes it amazing to me that Apple has successfully employed its clout to triple the length of iTunes song samples.

If you’re a Mac developer hoping to squeeze some more sales out of your software by bringing it to the Mac App Store, rev up your engines: Apple has notified developers that they are now accepting submissions.

The Android-based Galaxy S from Samsung has dethroned the iPhone in Japan. Sort of. The headlines are based on just one week of sales during the last week of October, and may represent just pent-up demand. The other proviso is the Samsung device defeated the 16GB iPhone and the 32GB iPhone individually, but not together.

The iPhone has held the No. 1 position in the gadget-hungry nation for more than 18 weeks. Samsung hopes to sell 10 million Galaxy S phones by the end of the year. The device with a four-inch screen launched in the U.S. this summer.

When owners of the iPhone 3G started reporting massive performance issues with iOS 4, we knew it was only a matter of time before the first lawsuit dropped, and here it is, lodged by plaintiff Biana Wofford in the Superior Court of California for San Diego.

The lawsuit’s even crazier than what we expected though: it thinks Apple conspired to make iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G suck so that users would be forced to upgrade to a new model.

Bringing home your new Mac only to notice a perpetually stuck pixel in the display can be teeth-gratingly irritating, especially when it proves impossible to convince a blank-faced Genius that that lodged speck is so distracting that it absolutely demands an LCD replacement.

Here’s some information that will help you know if Apple will be willing to replace your device due to stuck pixels. An internal source at Apple has leaked the complete internal policy on the acceptable number of anomalies in a display required for Apple to issue a replacement.

All aboard! Enterprises can either jump on the hurtling iPad express or hop on the slow-moving freight that other tablet manufacturers promise will be coming along any time now. That’s the conclusion from the analyst gurus at the Gartner Group.

“The iPad looks set to become a market disrupting device, like the iPod before it,” the research firm tells companies. “Even if you think it is just a passing fad, the cost of early action is low, while the price of delay may well be extremely high,” it warns.

When the iPad was first announced, the little “lock switch” was originally intended to be a mute toggle.  When the product launched, it was a “screen orientation lock”.  Apparently it’s headed back for mute purposes.  I think it’s a shame, as I see several paths to more usefulness.

Designed for the Harley rider with an iFetish, Hell’s Foundry has introduced the Dashlink Docking Console for the iPhone and iPod touch.  Integrated atop a replacement gas tank, the Dashlink charges your iDevice while integrating it with your bike’s audio system.  A smart charging system detects when a device is present, and built-in drainage channels are designed to route liquid away from the device and dock connector.  1996 and newer FLHT/FLTR & FLHR models are currently supported.

Sweet. Though how you can actually hear anything while riding a Harley remains a mystery…

[via Born Rich]