Apple’s sprucing up their online Support Discussions boards to incorporate more social networking features like user profiles, biographies, user avatars and even the ability to have personalized home pages, complete with widgets.
Apple’s announcement about the new Apple Support Communities is terse: “Very soon a major change will be taking place here at Apple Discussions. To help you prepare we have created some documents to give some insight and instructions on this major upgrade.”
Until the rollouts occur, it’s hard to say just how extreme a revision the new Support Communities will be, but somehow I doubt we’re about to experience the 4chanificiation of Apple’s official forums.
Overheating iPods have been consistently making the news in Japan over the last week. First, Apple admitted that their first-generation iPod Nanos can suffer meltdowns, and offered free replacements to any Japanese iPod owners who’ve experienced the problem. On the heels of that comes this story from Reuters, in which an iPod going nuclear knocked a Tokyo rush hour subway train out of commission.
If not for the bad timing, the story’s pretty funny. Around 8:20am, a train in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward was stopped by officials who noticed a strange, burning smell in the train. Staff members quickly investigated, only to be approached by a sheepish and embarrassed commuter with a smoldering, burst-apart iPod in her hands.
It’s not clear at this point what model iPod burst apart yesterday morning, and it’s almost definitely just a fluke, but one thing’s for sure: Apple Japan is going to have a public relations debacle on their hands if iPods don’t stop melting down.
Paul Devine — the Apple global supply manager who was arrested over the weekend for allegedly accepting over $1 million in kickbacks from Asian iPod and iPhone accessory manufacturers for privileged insider information — has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Federal Court.
The plea comes even as Pegatron (a division of Asustek) has suspended the head of one of their units for doing business with Devine.
Pegatron says they thought the money was a brokerage commission, and paid it to an intermediate trading company between 2005 and 2008, but occurred before Pegatron bought up Kaedar, a company which has supplied iPod boxes to Apple for years.
According to Pegatron, the executive responsible for paying Devine the kickback thought she was paying money for a legitimate commercial purpose and not as a kickback.
Pegatron isn’t the only company to have either conspired or been burned by Devine’s scheme. South Korea’s Cresyn andJin Li Mould Manufacturing have also been named in Apple’s civil lawsuit against Devine. It’s not clear at this point if these companies were actually conspiring with Devine, or if they’ve just been burned by one rogue, criminal mid-level manager.
iPad furniture may be a growing trend, but not everybody can afford $2500 for an iPad Chair (myself included). Now the cheap geeks are getting in on the fun. iVan at iPadFORUMS.net tells us of this useful domestic repurposing project:
I bought a microphone boom stand. Unfortunately this one is a little cheapish and not quite sturdy enough so I had to add a 5 pound counterweight to offset the iPad’s heft and that of the supporting panel.
That panel is cut from half inch MDF covered in black self adhesive felt material. So are the rails that maintain the pad. I affixed it to the boom with a speaker wall mount bracket.
Total cost of project, $80.
Armchair not included. You knew you were saving that weight set in the basement for something!
Apple’s flagship product, the iPhone 4, will arrive in China in early September, according to one report. The new handset will allegedly be sold by Apple’s partner in the Asian giant, China Unicom. The iPad will also arrive in the country sometimes afterward, although specifics are unknown.
MarketWatch, citing a China media group, reports China Unicom has acknowledged the iPhone 4 and the iPad will ship to the nation soon. However, the two products won’t be introduced into the China market simultaneously.
Apple will build future iPhone and other gadgets from Liquidmetal, says a former top researcher at Liquidmetal Technologies, whose technology Apple is licensing.
“I think they’re going to make the iPhone out of it,” said Dr. Jan Schroers, the former director of research at Liquidmetal Technologies, the first company to commercially develop the space-age technology. “It’s quite obvious from what Liquidmetal has done in the past and what the technology is capable of.”
Apple has signed an exclusive agreement to use the Liquidmetal Technologies’ IP in consumer electronic products. Liquidmetal is a high-strength metal that can be processed like plastic. NASA has says it is “poised to redefine materials science as we know it in the 21st century.”
Dr. Schroers is the second high-level executive from Liquidmetal to say Apple has ambitious plans for the revolutionary material. Last week, the alloy’s co-inventor, Atakan Peker, predicted that Apple may use Liquidmetal for a new antenna to replace the problematic part in the iPhone 4.
Speaking exclusively to CultofMac.com, Schroers said Apple could create very intricate and beautiful gadget cases by blow-molding melted alloy like glass. Schroers has created one-piece perfume jars from Liquidmetal using a blow mold (see the picture below).
The technology could also create permanent holographic logos that are etched right into the metal, or elaborate patterns that generate color effects.
“You can really do some novel things with metal that previously were impossible,” he said. “In two years, you could see something the world has never seen in metal.”
This perfume bottle is made of metal but was blow-molded like plastic. It is completely seamless.
This Post is Brought to you by our advertiser, CLEAR(R).
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Exclusively for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users, the iSpot can connect up to eight WiFi-enabled Apple mobile devices in any Clear(R) coverage area. Password protection keeps pesky outside users out of your hotspot so you’re ensured a secure connection.
Because style is important to you – you’re part of the Cult, after all – the small, sleek, all-white look syncs well with Apple designs. As for practicality, it fits in your pocket, so you’re always guaranteed a connection, and a super fast one at that. Plus, the battery life and rechargability guarantees you hours of continuous use. Think of the iSpot(R) as bringing balance to the force of iPhone’s notorious low battery issues (sorry, Steve, but it’s true).
And how’s this for on-the-go awesomeness — you can even connect from the car! Just don’t surf and drive! Streaming Pandora(R) music or live sports radio, though, now that’s totally acceptable. Other cool uses include streaming unlimited video and staying connected with work and social media contacts.
The iSpot is available nationwide from https://www.clear.com, and available in CLEAR(R) retail stores and authorized dealers.
Just how difficult could it be to distribute brand new iPads to every single pupil in a school? More difficult than you might think.
Fraser Speirs – caped superhero and Mac developer by night, school IT manager by day – has taken on the task at the school he works for in Scotland, and has started documenting the whole process for the benefit of anyone else who might be thinking of doing the same.
Cult of Mac is making it rain again with some great apps for your iPhone and iPad. We’ll pick 5 random winners to win 6 great apps. If you want a chance to get your hands on some great apps this week, then follow the instructions carefully below:
Tag us Cult of Mac in your status and mention we’re giving away free apps.
Your Status Tag will be your entry into the giveaway, only ONE entry is allowed per person, and the giveaway will last until 11:59pm tonight. We’ll contact the winners on Tuesday or Wednesday and how to get the codes!
Optional step – Tell us what you think about these apps if you own them already in the comments section.
Special Thanks to Appular for helping us put together these app code giveaways! If you’ve got a mobile app that you’d like marketed effectively, contact the good folks at Appular!
Clearly not the sort of person to let this be the end of the matter, Philip didn’t hesitate: he took after after the mugger, screaming “Somebody call the cops!” and “Give me back my phone!” at the top of his voice.
Remember: Fifth Avenue. Broad daylight. Lots of people about.
A passer-by joined the pursuit, and it didn’t take long for the thief to be caught up. He tried bluffing about having a knife, but Philip saw through it and grabbed him anyway. The iPhone was regained, the mugger ran off, and I’ll leave Philip to conclude the tale:
“Owning the newest Apple gadget is apparently very dangerous, ha ha. He didn’t go for my wallet or anything, he went for my iPhone. I might have to be more careful from now on and consider not wearing Apple’s signature ‘please mug me’ white earbuds. Oh well, live and learn, that’s New York City for ya.”
Every time you log in to your user account, you’ll have to wait while a handful of applications and background processes get themselves started.
Finder, for example, has to start running – otherwise you won’t get very far. On a brand new Mac you won’t find a lot of things running as well, but as time goes on and you add more software to the basic system, you might want to make some changes and decide exactly which apps run at log in.
There’s a place to do that in System Preferences, but it’s not immediately obvious exactly where.
If you can’t remember how much you’ve had to drink — or have the bad luck to go out with people who never want to pay — this pub in Manchester has come up with a clever solution.
At Taps, the tables have built-in beer taps and an iPod Touch keeps tracks of just how many pints of the two kinds of beers have been glugged from each spout.
An iPod logging in pints of Heineken and Moretti at Taps in Manchester.
Reader Grzegorz over at Access Advertising sent us these pics of the iPod tab in action, noting that it’s also nice for parties: “You can top up the app at the bar and when your beer runs out, the app will close the tap. You have to go back to the bar to top it up.”
While it’s not fool proof (note the folks at the table drinking wine and what looks like stout — not available from these two lager taps) but it might be a way of avoiding runaway bar tabs.
The iPod tab runs via an app called DraftMagik one of DraftServ’s “point-of-pour” solutions for bars.
The iPad version of a book featuring photos and recipes favored by Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini sits at the number two spot of the top paid apps in Italy’s iTunes store.
Titled “A Tavola con Il Duce” (literally: sitting at the table with Il Duce), the €0.79 ($0.99) book is currently available only in the Italian language but can be purchased in the US and other international iTunes stores.
Promising never-before published anecdotes and pictures from Mussolini’s daily life, it is the iPad version of the 2004 book written by Sophia Loren’s sister, Maria Scicolone, who was married to il Duce’s son Romano Mussolini.
There’s been a lot of speculation that Apple will use space-age Liquidmetal alloys to make morphing iPhones or other sci-fi technology, but the company has already used the exotic alloy — and in the most unlikely place.
We start the week with several deals for the Mac fan. First up is a freebie game from the App Store, “Hungry Shark Part 1” for the iPhone. Next up, MacConnection has a new batch of MacBook Pro laptops, starting at $1,099 for a 2.4GHz unit. We wrap-up the featured deals with a 22-inch iMac from the Apple Store for $929.
Along the way, we’ll check out other Mac deals, including a bargain on an 8GB iPod touch, an iPod charger kit and various iPhone, iPad and iPod software.
As usual, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
Recall all the fuss made when smartphones, such as the BlackBerry and the Droid were lumped in with the iPhone 4 by Apple to prove all phones had reception problems? Although the Cupertino, Calif. company eventually removed the pages from its site, Apple is getting some unexpected support – From Droid 2-manufacturer Motorola.
TechCrunch cites “a good number of reports” from users of the Droid 2 (sold by Verizon) about lost signals, even without touching the phone. The report also points to an Engadget review that demonstrated “endless fluctuating bar counts” and other problems.
As we all know, the iPad has problems charging through some USB ports… specifically if your USB port doesn’t support 10 watts of output. According to XMultiple Technologies, a solution to those beleaguered by iPad charging problems are just a $5 dongle away from serendipitous juicing forever.
Basically, it’s a sort of power-serving bridge device that you slide prophylactically over your existing Apple Dock Connector cable and which will magically allow USB ports that don’t serve 10 watts to juice up an iPad, thanks to some integrated electronics. Hmmm.
XMultiple Technologies says the iXP1-500 is “100% guaranteed to work.” I’m not quite sure how it could work, though. A dongle that isn’t externally powered isn’t going to magically serve up more electricity to an underpowered USB port. I’m guessing that the integrated electronics send a faked message to the iPad that it’s drawing enough power to charge, even when it isn’t.
More to the point, even an iPad that gives a “not charging” message is usually charging, albeit extremely slowly. So what we most likely have here is a placebo: a dongle that probably does nothing but trick the iPad into not serving up the “Not Charging” message. In other words, while the iXP1-500 is “100% guaranteed to work,” it’s still probably something of a scam. For $5, though, you don’t really have a lot to lose to give it a try for yourself.
Genius. In the style of Atom-embedded computer-in-a-keyboard solutions like the Asus EEE Keyboard, a plucky modder gutted a partially dead MacBook Air and crammed its workings into an old, heavily modified Apple Keyboard casing, precisely topped by an Apple Wireless keyboard and Magic Trackpad snuggled together.
The result? The MacBook Air Project, an all-in-one Mac-in-a-keyboard: just plug in a monitor to the MacBook Air keyboard’s DVI port and you’re ready to rip. Hey Apple: this is what the next Mac mini should look like!
Apple’s legendary reputation of being full of control-freaks raised its head over the weekend. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, some companies complain it could take more than two months to create and display a spot on Apple’s new iAd mobile advertising platform.
“Apple has kept tight control on the creative aspects of ad-making, something advertisers aren’t used to,” the newspaper reported Sunday, citing ad execs. One source told the Journal, Apple’s involvement could extend building an ad two weeks longer than usual.
We’ve been hearing from analysts how the iPad will destroy the netbook market. Now we see the end result: from one of the companies that began the trend toward inexpensive laptops, Asustek Computer. The maker of the Eee PC expects to ship 1.4 million Eee PC netbooks in the third-quarter – fewer than planned, according to a Monday report.
“Because of decreased shipments of motherboards, notebooks and netbooks, Asustek’s financial performance for the second quarter declined on quarter,” Asustek Computer president CEO Jerry Shen announced August 13.
Remember the Apple Peel 520, a case that allows you to take a jailbroken iPod Touch and turn it into a bonafide phone capable of texting and messaging?
It’s got some competition: the tPhone does basically the same thing, allowing you to slot any SIM into the case to enable calling and texting on your iPod Touch.
The main advantage here, though, is in the enclosed battery, which bests the Peel 520 with the inclusion of a 1200mAh pack, offering 50% more juice than the Peel, as well as a built-in mini USB port for charging.
The only drawbacks? Like the Peel 520, you need a jailbroken iPod Touch to enable calling, and unfortunately, the tPhone case is significantly more expensive than the Peel, costing almost $100.
Tech blogger Keith of Bit-101 just picked himself up a fancy new USB microscope, and as was his geeky wont, he immediately started aiming it at two gadgets just lying around on his desk.
On the left? The Kindle’s e-paper display, magnified 26x and 400x, respectively. On the right? The iPad’s. Thanks to the nature of e-ink, the Kindle display resolves amazingly well even blown up twenty six times, while the iPad must resort to software anti-aliasing to keep things smooth. Imagine how well that would look with a Retina Display, though.
It’s when you get to four hundred levels of magnification that things get really interesting, though, with the Kindle display breaking down into several strata of monochrome granularity, while the iPad ‘s pixels become a series of colorful bumpers of primary RGB dots. Neat!
Can’t bear to part with your mouse, but in love with the slim slate of touch-capable glass and aluminum, the Magic Trackpad? 9to5Mac calls our attention to this gorgeous mousepad by Just Mobile, the Alupad.
Gorgeously carved from a slap of anodized aluminum, then infused with a coating of iPod ivory plastic, the Alupad looks like the mousepad Apple would create if they bothered themselves with such things… and makes me even sadder that the Magic Trackpad itself isn’t large or flush enough to double as a mousepad when it’s not in use.
The price is right, too: $35 is a lot to spend for a mousepad, but most mousepads just wouldn’t go with our iMacs nearly as well.
With Apple’s recent acquisition of LiquidMetal, a lot of people have been wondering just what they’ll use their new and incredibly T-1000-like metal alloy for.
Meanwhile, we’ve been running a contest asking readers to guess what hardware element Apple is already making out of LiquidMetal. The prize? A new Magic Trackpad, which — protip — doesn’t have any LiquidMetal in it at all.
For answers, perhaps we should look at what other highly design focused companies are doing with the alloy. The interesting video from watchmaker Omega embedded above shows one possible use for the Liquid Technologies supermaterial: super durable and gorgeously aesthetic bezels.
Would Apple drop serious bank on an exclusive license to Liquidmetal just to make nicer bezels? Or are they already doing so? Your guess is as good as mine, but Leander will set us all straight later today when he announces the winner of our contest. You may want to get your last minute guesses in now
