Cult of Mac

Last month, the always somewhat suspect Digitimes asserted that Apple intended on going head-to-head with the netbook market by releasing an 11.6-inch MacBook Air something later this year. Here’s one fan’s wishful thinking Photoshop on what such an Air might look like.

There’s nothing too hard to buy about the way Apple would choose to layout the keyboard on an 11.6-inch MacBook: as netbooks have shown, twelve inches is the sweet spot when it comes to not compromising keyboard size. Nor is the trackpad hard to swallow, given the fact that Apple will doubtlessly eliminate the physical button from future Air trackpads.

Making the Air even thinner seems like a pipe dream, though: Apple’s not about to switch over to an Atom chip, which means a thinner Air would come at the expense of battery life. And where’s the black glass bezel that Apple’s favored for all of their modern computer designs?

Still, I’d buy a smaller Air if the price was right and Apple could match the existing MacBook line’s battery life: my Hackintosh netbook is getting woefully long in the tooth.

[via 9to5Mac]

Remember Clear’s iSpot, a wireless hotspot that gives $25 all-you-can-eat WiMax to any iOS device wirelessly connected to it? It was a great deal, but the only limitation was that it couldn’t be used with your MacBook, iMac or — horf — PC.

Some plucky modders, though, have come to the rescue, ungimping the iSpot for use with any device you want to connect to it. It’s a simple fix: all you do is load a new config file in the iSpot’s web portal. Once it reboots, your iSpot will be completely unrestricted, and you’ll be able to connect the $99 device to anything you choose to throw at it, making the iSpot an even more stellar deal than ever before.

[via Gizmodo]

We were delighted by Apple’s surprise roll-out of a battery charger last month, having long wanted a solution as green-friendly as Cupertino to the problem of peripheral juicing. It’s also a pretty good deal: Apple’s charger comes with six batteries capable of retaining 75% of their original charge after three years, all for the song of $29.

We might have gotten a better deal with the Apple Battery Charger than we thought, though. According to Czech site Superapple, Apple’s batteries and charger appear to simply be a rebranding of Sanyo’s Eneloops… which are actually a little cheaper than Apple’s own. Good to know.

Monday’s rumor that Apple would throw its annual iPod event next week has been flatly contradicted by Cupertino’s failure to send out press invites, but don’t worry: according to AllThingsD, it’s definitely happening this year.

The rub? It’ll be later than usual, not earlier: Kara Swisher’s floating a mid-September date as the most likely bet for the event. As for what we’ll be seeing, a new iPod Touch with a FaceTime-capable camera, an A4 CPU and a Retina Display is probably a given, with a new iOS-driven AppleTV called the iTV also looking possible, and maybe even a new multitouch iPod Shuffle.

Following up their earlier report that the next iteration of the AppleTV would be a $99, iOS-driven device, Engadget is now reporting that when that device arrives, it’ll be an AppleTV no longer. Come this autumn, prepare to meet the iTV.

Internally, the iTV will be very similar to the iPhone 4, right down to an A4 CPU. According to Engadget’s sources, though, the A4 won’t be able to output full high-def, 1080p video, but will max out at 720p… prompting some truly bitter internal debate in Cupertino’s halls, we’re told.

Why not? Engadget’s source says it’s because the A4 CPU can’t handle 1080p output, but that doesn’t make any sense, given the fact that the iPhone 3GS could play full HD video just fine. And why would there be any internal debate about maxing out at 720p if it was an unavoidable hardware limitation, and not a conscious choice? Are they planning the iTV’s second-generational obsolescence right out of the gate?

Half of U.S. retail stores can’t keep the iPhone on their shelves – but that’s an improvement, one analyst said Thursday. Additionally, the ‘antennagate’ mess of a few weeks ago had little or no effect on demand.

Seven weeks after the iPhone 4 was launched, barely half – 16 of 30 stores – had the new handset available. To try to keep up with the continuing demand, Apple is shipping the handset out every day, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

I like to keep my todo list nice and simple, so for a while now it has been a plain text file that sits inside Dropbox.

That still meant that remote edits of the file using my iPhone were tricky and fiddly. They won’t be any more, though, because I’ve just spent a dollar on Nebulous Notes, a new text editor for iOS devices that’s designed for dealing with documents stored in the cloud.

Specifically in this case, documents stored inside Dropbox. You have to tell Nebulous Notes your Dropbox sign-in credentials, and it offers to remember them for you (with added protection of a four-digit PIN for security’s sake).

The editor itself offers a choice of a handful of fonts and colors (including green-on-black for you green-on-black text editor fans).

There are a few other basic Dropbox-level functions, too: the app can create new folders and text files, as well as delete stuff you’ve already got in your Dropbox. It is strictly limited to displaying and editing plain text, though: it can’t handle rich texts, and it won’t display images or PDFs. But if – like me – the main thing that matters is the words, that’s not going to be a problem.

This is the Option symbol, which you’ll see quite a lot of as you use Mac OS X.

Depending on the age of your Mac or your keyboard, the key itself might have all sorts of different things on it. It might just have the option symbol. It might have the word “Alt” on it, or the word “Option”; or both; or some combination of one of those words and the symbol.

This can make things confusing for newcomers. To make it easier, remember that Option = Alt = ⌥, and that the key you need is adjacent to the Command key.

Just as the Mac Command key is similar to the Windows Control key, so the Mac Option key is similar to the Windows Alt key, or the AltGr key. Hold it down while pressing other keys, to make them do different things. It’s a modifier.

Dear Steve Jobs:

What happened to quality?

Not long ago, before Apple became big and popular, your company was loved by many of us without hesitation. We still love Apple, but it’s getting harder to feel that way. Apple is clearly loosing a foothold on quality. Perhaps you are taking on too much at one time.

I’m writing this letter after experiencing a ton of problems with my new iPhone 4, including issues with Bluetooth, the proximity sensor, and yellow-tinged photos from the camera. I just took it back to the Apple Store to be replaced. Customer service is still awesome, but quality is slipping.

It’s obvious you’ve noticed quality problems too. That’s why you just appointed Jeff Williams as a Senior Vice President of Operations, and gave him the job of ensuring the highest standards in quality for Apple products. He’s got his work cut out for him. So we hope he’ll hit the ground running.

Steve, please consider the following examples of why Apple’s attempts to do too many things at once are resulting in quality failures in just about everything it does.

Remember the recent iPod Shuffle rumor predicting Apple will shortly launch a new version with a 3-inch multitouch screen?

Well, here’s how it might look.

Our friend Graham Bower from MacPredictions made this mockup. He has some good ideas about how it might work. Graham predicts the device is a bit bigger than the current iPod shuffle. It has two buttons on the bottom: On/Off and Shuffle. The square screen shows nothing but album art.

In shuffle mode, it transitions quickly between multiple album covers, moving in different directions to suggest shuffling.

Swiping your finger from left to right across the screen cues the next track, and in the other direction it goes back to the previous track.

Swiping your finger up and down controls the volume. Tapping on the screen toggles between pause and play. It’s that simple.

No need to resort to physical violence to escape from jail, just let an engrossing iPhone game do the work for you.  GamePron brings us of this tale of a gaming fix with a higher cost than usual:

Everybody knows that there’s a certain risk one takes when playing addictive, engrossing games when you’re meant to be doing something else.  The prevalence of awesome games on the iPhone hasn’t helped that risk – as a Philippines police officer has learned.

Five inmates recently escaped from a police precinct in Cagayan de Oro City, snatching up the officer’s keys where he’d left them while playing a quick few levels of Plants vs. Zombies.   Apparently, the convicts had no trouble getting the keys and gaining their freedom – although four of the five were recaptured shortly after.

A cautionary tale for those playing addictive games on the clock – though I suspect one (likely) former prison guard now has a lot more time to work on his high score!

[via SlashDot]

I love my iPhone photography apps, and I thought I knew about all the best ones. Turns out there’s always something new to learn.

Heather Powazek Champ posted a list of her favorite iPhone photography apps, and among them was one that was totally new to me: Diptic.

The gaping security hole in Mobile Safari has been fixed with updates to Apple’s iOS operating system.

Apple has just updated iOS to 4.0.2 for the iPhone (and iPod touch) and iOS 3.2.2 for the iPad. The updates patch a security vulnerability that allowed Safari to run code embedded in PDF files.

The updates are available through iTunes. Click “Check for Update” to download.

If you are plannign to jailbreak your device, do it before updating. o not get surprised, if the latest firmware includes a baseband update as well. If that happens, it will block the ultrasn0w carrier unlock as well.

Obviously, the new iOS updates break the jailbreak at JailbreakMe.com, which exploited the vulnerability.

The updates may also contain new baseband firmware, which will break carrier unlocking. To jailbreak and unlock your iOS device, see our Jailbreak Superguide.

Here are the details from Apple:

To celebrate Woz’s 60th birthday today, his wife Janet commissioned this song as a gift.

“That’s Woz,” is sung by Jonathan Mann, an up-and-coming YouTube singing star whose song about the iPhone 4 antenna was played by Steve Jobs at a press conference. Mann followed this up with a song about Jobs. A song once wrote a tune about Paul Krugman that went wildly viral and landed him on the Rachel Maddow Show.

Mann’s song about Woz is a tribute to the Apple co-founders pure geek values. “Do it for fun,” he sings during the chorus. “Don’t do it for the money. That’s just Woz.”

Mann is singing a song a day and posting them to his YouTube channel and his Song A Day website.

(See also Mann’s funny NSFW tribute to heroic JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater.)

We start another day of deals with something for everyone. Today’s featured bargains include a leather case to protect your iPad, a 1.33Ghz iBook G4 for $269 and Apple’s on-going Back-to-School hardware sale, which offers a free iPod touch when you buy a computer.

Along the way, we’ll also check out new iPhone and Mac software, hardware deals and gadgets that caught our eye. As always, details on these and many more items are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Are notebook PC makers feeling the pinch from Apple’s line of portable computers? A trio of Taiwan-based notebook manufacturers announced July orders fell by up to 25 percent.

Quanta, which had a goal of 10-20 percent growth for the third quarter, announced July notebook shipment fell 25 percent to 3.6 million units compared to June. Compal said shipments dropped 20 percent to between 3.2 million and 3.3 million units for the same period. Wistron announced June shipments were off 13.7 percent.

There’s no shortage of purveyors of dead tree flesh out there willing to swaddle your iPhone in a wafer-thin bisection of maple or walnut, or at least the simulacrum of such, but Portland-based Recover seems to be the best-of-breed of such Apple-accessorizing lumberjacks: they offer a number of attractive skins for the iPhone, iPad and MacBook each made out of real wood and priced as low as $15 for an iPhone skin, or $30 to slather your MacBook.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83eXWu9_BRs&feature=player_embedded#!

The most obvious reason not to perform a death grip on your iPhone is to prevent it from dropping your signal, but as the above video by Israeli software company Tawkon shows, there’s also a more invisible and dastardly effect: the death grip also causes your iPhone 4 to pump more radio frequency radiation into your brainpan.

It makes sense: when your iPhone 4 senses that it’s losing its connection to the nearest cell tower, it increases its radio frequency output to try to get a better signal. That’s true for all smartphones. It’s just how cell phones work.

As for whether or not you have anything to worry about by that radiation increase, no one knows the long term health effects of cellphone use, but me and Herb — the sentient, Kuato-esque goiter growing out of my left temple — say hell no. You cell phone hypochondriacs in the audience might want to start bumpering your head in tin foil anyway.

Apple next-generation iPad is rumored to appear later this year or early 2011. Along with a smaller form-factor, the new tablet may include some technology already unveiled for the iPhone 4, such as 3-axis gyroscope.

Apparently, an iPad prototype included a gyroscope, but Apple decided to use that technology in its new iPhone handset. That’s the word from a company that tore apart an iPad and poked around inside.

If you’re a true iPhone 4 shutterbug, you’ve probably expressed irritation at one point or another that the built-in Camera app doesn’t tie into a physical shutter button. If you act quick — real quick — Camera+ has you covered: they just added a feature that allows the app to take over the volume button to trigger a snap.

It’s a hidden feature, and when Apple gets wind of it, they’re going to pull Camera+, so if this is the sort of feature you’ve been looking for, download the latest version of the app and then type this URL into Mobile Safari to turn the feature on: camplus://enablevolumesnap. Turning it off is done the same way: camplus://disablevolumesnap.

What’s the point of this kind of functionality? Well, it can be particularly difficult to take a good picture with an iPhone if you’re taking a self-portrait, since it can be difficult to hit the shutter trigger button on the touchscreen when you can’t actually see it. Repurposing a volume button as a physical shutter button takes care of that problem nicely, but obviously, Apple’s worried about confusing users.

It makes me wonder why Apple doesn’t introduce a single physical shortcut button on the iPhone 4, which can be assigned to functionality in any application. I suppose it’s a slippery slope, but I can’t be the only one who has wanted a physical Instant Rimshot button on my iPhone. Can I?

[via Gadget Lab]

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zVmW4NYkwE&feature=player_embedded

Perhaps the most bizarre meta deconstruction of Oregon Trail for the Apple II ever made hit the App Store this week. So Long, Oregon! by BlinkBat Games takes the trappings and retro-style of Oregon Trail, but where the latter title is all about historical edutainment, resource management and not dying of dysentery, this one’s all about hurtling your team of bison over mountain ranges as you commit xenocide against the native fauna while batting back plagues, pestilences, venereal diseases and infections.

Not sold on the concept? One review in the App Store remarks, “[T]here is no way to improve upon this game. It’s a masterpiece of game design and modern thought.”

You can get So Long, Oregon! now as a universal app for just $1.99.

Good news! You can now have H.264 hardware-decoded Flash on your Mac without resorting to installing beta software… just like Windows users have been enjoying for years!

Yep, Adobe Flash Player 10.1 is now official and available for download. But it doesn’t work on all Macs. The new video acceleration API is only available in Mac OS X 10.6.3 or later and it’s limited to Macs with GPUs like the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M.

More specifically, here are the Macs that can take advantage of the new Flash player’s hardware decoding:

• MacBooks shipped after January 21st, 2009
• Mac Minis shipped after March 3rd, 2009
• MacBook Pros shipped after October 14th, 2008
• iMacs which shipped after the first quarter of 2009

For the record, we loved the earlier Adobe Flash 10.1 beta: it’s a huge leap forward for Flash performance on Macs, specifically when it comes to streaming high-definition video. If you’re rocking one of the supported Macs listed above, you should install the latest Flash update now.

[via Hard Mac]

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has an excellent track record when it comes to casually dropping details about the next Apple product, so we’re inclined to believe his latest:

[I] if you wait a few weeks to buy the Touch, you’ll get one with a Retina Display and dual cameras.

The Retina Display has been an assumed given since the iPhone 4 hit the market, but the insistence on dual cameras is interesting. We knew the next iPod Touch was bound to have at least a FaceTime camera, but according to a story last month, the iPhone 4’s 5MP camera module simply can’t fit into the existing iPod Touch, so Apple would either need to make the iPod Touch thicker or max the iPod Touch’s back-facing camera out at 3.2MP.

The “within a few weeks” is also interesting, since it seemingly contradicts a rumor that we heard earlier this week that Apple would be hosting their annual iPod event by August 17th. Then again, since we haven’t yet seen press invitations for that event, that rumor’s pretty much contradicted itself.

The death of reformed cad and marginally inept Mac writer John Brownlee was predicated by what seemed to him, at the time, to be the most innocuous sally into pre-dinner small talk.

“I heard today, baby, that OK Cupid says that iPhone users have twice as much sex as Android owners. Isn’t that interesting?”

Brownlee only realized his mistake as the first of many skull-crushing blows rained down upon his head, but by then it was too late to identify himself as a statistical anomaly: all 4.3-inches of his girlfriend’s discarded Droid X had already been deftly crammed past his uvula while she screamed, “Never again, you bounder, I said never again!”

Apple now admits some early iPod nano devices can overheat. The admission comes five years after Japanese iPod owners reported the units became unusable after overheating, and in some cases caused fires and minor injuries.

In a statement, Apple announced there were “very rare cases of overheating” caused by recharging batteries in iPod nanos sold between September 2005 and December 2006.