Cult of Mac

The Uffizi Gallery in Florence is one of the largest treasure troves of Renaissance art in the world, but getting around the meandering rooms searching for sparse or missing signage can be a challenge.

Getting good information about the paintings usually means bringing a guide book and often overlooking anything but the A-list paintings.

Enter the official Uffizi iPhone app, which will get you from Giotto to Botticelli and back again in Italian and English.  The best part:  you can download it for free for the first two weeks, until April 26.

This isn’t the first time the gallery has tried to get more hands on with visitors: they also recently launched a touch screen system to give more info about the paintings.

Via the Uffizi web site

After much speculation about whether 3G iPads pre-ordered in the U.S. might be delayed until early May, Apple cleared up the questions, announcing customers who ordered the devices early will receive them on April 30.

“The Wi-Fi + 3G models of its magical iPad will be delivered to US customers who’ve pre-ordered on Friday, April 30 and will be available in Apple retail stores the same day starting at 5p.m.,” the Cupertino, Calif. company announced early Tuesday.

Some of our previous tips have guided you around the Dock, but you might not always want to use that.

Sometimes, you just want to quickly flit between applications, and constantly taking your hands off the keyboard to use the mouse or trackpad can be annoying.

This tip shows you a quick way to switch from one app to another, without taking your hands off the keyboard at all.

Ahead of today’s earnings report by Apple, analysts are weighing-in on what we could expect to hear from the Cupertino, Calif. electronics powerhouse. Mac sales were up 25 percent in the March quarter, according to one analyst.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimated Apple sold between 2.8 and 2.9 million Macs during the second quarter, based on the 25 percent figure from retail watcher NPD. Although the sales number was close to Wall Street’s consensus of a 22 percent jump in Mac sales (2.7 million) for the March quarter, the news sent Apple shares down nearly 2 percent in Monday afternoon trading. The reason: The 25 percent sales jump in March was seen as a sign of slowing down from the 43 percent growth in February.

Even with a little boost to 20MB over a 3g connection, and VoIP recently being allowed thanks to an SDK update, the iPhone’s potential continues to be impaired by data restrictions set by AT&T. If you’ve taken the plunge and jailbreaked your device, there’s a $2 app that will let you stick it to the man with unlimited data access over 3G. Incidentally, 3G Unrestrictor was one of my reasons to jailbreak way back in 2009.

This is the first installment of “My Close Encounters with Steve Jobs,” a fantastic series of stories about the early days of the Mac written by the founder of Macworld magazine, David Bunnell.

Bunnell meets Jobs for the first time. He’s nervous because Jobs is in “an extremely foul mood” says the receptionist, maybe because he had an unsuccessful date with Joan Baez the night before.

Also, Bill Gates tells Bunnell he’s going to buy a Mac for his mother. Gates and his cohorts are so excited about the Mac, they’re all buying up Apple stock (possibly in violation of SEC insider-trading rules).

Microsoft and its upstart search engine Bing have partnered with mobile music system developer Melodeo to bring iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users 100 great songs from every year between 1947 – 2009 – for free. Since coming out earlier in April at $1.99, the app Top 100s by Year has taken on sponsorship by Bing, been transformed into Top 100s by Year by Bing and is now free “for a limited time” on the iTunes App Store.

The app allows users to pick any year from ’47 – ’09 and hear 100 “songs that have stood the test of time to become the greatest songs for any given year” (according to the app description), streamed in random order over WiFi, 3G or Edge networks. Users can view a list of songs for any year and listen to a short preview of each, as well as buy the song on iTunes — but listening to songs in their entirety requires listening to the randomized stream. If a distasteful song comes up in the stream users can tap to move on to the next tune.

Bing, of course, offers up ads promoting its search engine every four or five tunes, though ads can be disappeared with a tap.

Another downside is that, unlike listening to songs from an iTunes library on the iPod app, Top 100s won’t permit other apps to run on a user’s device while it’s playing, at least not until iPhone OS 4.0 comes out and Melodeo upgrades the app to take advantage of the new OS’s multitasking functionality.

But hey, what do you expect for free?

Assuming that the price of Tiffen’s soon-to-be-released Smoothee iPhone Steadicam would be beyond his budget, Babyology writer Ben Gurnsberg built this amazing iPhone steadicam robotic arm out of spare LEGO Technic pieces.

It looks cool, but how’d it work? Not well, says Gurnsberg.

Apple has just unveiled a new iPhone app that, as usual, focuses on taking existing iPhone apps and functionality and applying them to a relatable real-world experience, as conveyed by a pleasant and unassuming narrator.

The “Backpacker” ad follows a young traveler in Barcelona as he uses his iPhone 3GS to find hostels with the free Hostelworld.com application, email pictures to his mom and use the $24.99 Jibbigo app to translate for him on the fly.

Not covered in the commercial? The kidney the narrator had to sell to afford the AT&T 3G international roaming charges he incurred when he returned from his trip. You should have switched to WiFi only, my son.

Inside every iPhone is a moisture sensor: a small dot of liquid-sensitive material that turns bright pink if the iPhone’s insides have been exposed to being submerged. It’s the method Apple uses to protect itself from having to replace iPhones that clumsy customers have dropped in a puddle, their beer or a toilet.

Now a California woman is suing Apple over these moisture sensors, claiming that two separate iPhones died and were then denied replacement by Apple because the moisture sensors had been triggered. The woman, Charlene Gallon of San Francisco, claims otherwise.

Want porn on the go? Go buy an Android phone is the advice of none other than Apple founder Steve Jobs.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOKu9uwdwZI

I use my MacBook Pro as my main work computer thanks to a Logitech notebook keyboard stand and an external monitor, but I’ve often wanted something cleaner: a simple and elegant docking solution without any need to manually connect DVI cables and USB umbilicals.

Henge Docks’ line of MacBook docking stations seems to be just solution. All you do is slap your MacBook into the docking station and it’ll drive an eternal keyboard, mouse, printer, hard drive, stereo and any FireWire or USB hard drives you care to connect to it… all in a clean, compact and efficient design. It even uses your existing MagSafe charger.

Very nice indeed, and with prices starting at $59.95, this looks like an easy product to recommend to any Apple fan who uses their MacBook as their main work machine.

When it was first unveiled at CES 2009, one of the things I really liked about the Palm Pre was its integrated Facebook functionality. Instead of merely adding contacts to your phone manually, you had the option of subscribing to their Facebook contact details, which would automatically merge their phone numbers, email addresses and profile pictures into your local address book.

To me, it represented a much welcome paradigm shift in the way contacts are handled: instead of entering contact details manually, you subscribe to them and have them automatically updated on your handset.

So I’m delighted to see that the Pre’s approach to Facebook / Address Book integration looks like it will be heading to iPhone OS 4.0 too, at least if this rogue PLIST file in the SDK is anything to go by.

Apple’s perverse obsession with miniaturizing the iPod Shuffle doesn’t seem likely to stop until they bring it down to the size of a nanoangstrom, but one of the biggest drawbacks of making a music player smaller than the controls needed to use it is that the user interface needs to be offloaded to a peripheral: in the third generation iPod Shuffle’s case, the stock ear buds.

It’s a bad approach. The Shuffle was already small enough, and since ear buds tend to be easily damaged, it meant that anyone who owned a Shuffle who lost or damaged their stock ear buds would have to lay out for a replacement pair instead of just plugging in another set of cochleal cans.

From Apple, though, comes slightly encouraging news for third-gen Shuffle owners: they will replace your ear buds free of charge for up to two years if they stop working. Just call up Apple or drop by an Apple Store and they’ll send you off with a new pair of ear buds.

Personally, though, I’ll stick to my second gen Shuffle: an MP3 player the size of a box of matches (as opposed to the matches themselves) is plenty small enough for me already, thank you.

Apple sent Gizmodo a formal letter asking for its iPhone back (proving it was genuine) — and Gizmodo is returning it, along with a nice note asking Apple to go easy on the kid who lost it.

Gizmodo editorial director Brian Lam says Apple called him today asking for its iPhone back. He said he’d be happy to oblige, if he received a formal written request from Apple’s legal department.

He duly received the following:

It has come to our attention that Gizmodo is in possession of a device that belongs to Apple. This letter constitutes a formal request that you return the device to Apple. Please let me know where to pick up the unit.

Sincerely,
Bruce Sewell,
Senior Vice President & General Counsel
Apple Inc.

Lam wrote back putting him in contact with his colleague Jason Chen, who actually has the phone.

Happy to have you pick this thing up. Was burning a hole in our pockets. Just so you know, we didn’t know this was stolen when we bought it. Now that we definitely know it’s not some knockoff, and it really is Apple’s, I’m happy to see it returned to its rightful owner.

P.S. I hope you take it easy on the kid who lost it. I don’t think he loves anything more than Apple except, well, beer.

As well as mentioning that Gizmodo didn’t know the iPhone was stolen when they bought it, Lam also says the guy who sold them the iPhone had earlier tried to return Apple it to Apple. Apparently, he called customer service but go the runaround.

The “sorry Apple engineer” who lost a 4G iPhone at a Bay Area bar has been identified as Grey Powell, Gizmodo reports. Powell is a 27-year-old software engineer with a taste for the sauce (judging by his pictures, like this one above with a PBR). He left the test unit at the Gourmet Haus Staudt in Redwood City several weeks ago.

“I underestimated how good German beer is,” he typed into the next-generation iPhone he was testing on the field, cleverly disguised as an iPhone 3GS. It was his last Facebook update from the secret iPhone. It was the last time he ever saw the iPhone, right before he abandoned it on bar stool, leaving to go home.”

Left on a stool, the iPhone was handed to a guy sitting next to Powell. The guy asked around to see if anyone had lost it, but when no one claimed it, he took it home.

When he woke up after the hazy night, the phone was dead. Bricked remotely, through MobileMe, the service Apple provides to track and wipe out lost iPhones. It was only then that he realized that there was something strange that iPhone. The exterior didn’t feel right and there was a camera on the front. After tinkering with it, he managed to open the fake 3GS.

However, Gizmodo does not explain how the iPhone came into their possession — which may be the most important part of the story. “Weeks later, Gizmodo got it,” is all that is said. Gizmodo publisher Nick Denton paid just $5,000 for the iPhone, he admitted to the AP. According to California law, the iPhone is stolen even it was accidentally left at a bar. The finder is legally obliged to return it to Apple. Instead, they sold it to Gizmodo, who at the time of purchase knew it was Apple’s property.

Via 9to5Mac.

This is pretty funny (except for the poor schlub at Apple who lost the iPhone, of course).

Posted to SFBay Craigslist:

So I did it again this last week, consumed way too much straight vodka within perhaps an hour. The party started at 7, I had to be removed by 10pm because I was biting/attacking/wanting/insulting people and in the process lost my employers iPhone 4G prototype model. It was lost at Fahrenheit Ultra Lounge & Restaurant downtown San Jose. The phone was hidden inside of an iPhone 3G case. The device has a front facing camera, 80GB of storage. The device, when found was probably running a newer version of iPhone OS but my employer bricked it remotely within a few hours. Pretty sure i’m going to lose my job over this so if you find the phone please email me. Thanks

Apple’s next iPhone seems to answer a lot of geeks’ prayers. It’s got a forward-facing camera, a flash unit, and a super high-resolution screen. Combine that with multitasking and and universal inbox in OS 4.0, and who could say no?

Well, plenty of people, it seems. There’s lots of haters out there put off by the iPhone’s boxy industrial design. Many prefer curves it seems.

Let’s put it to a poll. Will you be buying the new iPhone this summer?

Gizmodo publisher Nick Denton says the “sorry Apple engineer” who left the 4G iPhone at a bar may have been identified. He says he’s calling the poor bastard, and the story is likely to follow.

Earlier in the day Denton promised to reveal the full story of how Gizmodo acquired the next-gen iPhone. The story will is a “corker” (a good story), Denton tweeted earlier.

Minutes ago Denton tweeted the following:

iPhone update. We think we’ve identified the sorry Apple engineer who left the next-gen phone at the bar. Calling in a min.

Earlier Denton tweeted that Gizmodo had paid for the pre-production iPhone, raising the likelihood that Gizmodo is in possession of stolen goods. According to California law, the iPhone is stolen even it was accidentally left at a bar. The finder is legally obliged to return it to Apple. Instead, they sold it to Gizmodo, who at the time of purchase fully knew it was Apple’s property (how could they not?).

Techcrunch and a couple of other sites are saying the price was $10,000 – but no one is offering any evidence.

Apple still hasn’t officially responded to the story.

UPDATE: Denton paid just $5,000 for the iPhone, he told the AP. As Merlin Mann tweeted: “Denton inflates traffic for a gadget blog by buying a stolen phone that doesn’t work? It’s like Christmas Morning for why the web sucks.”

Back in December I wrote about Cinch, a tiny little app that lets you drag application windows around to the edges of your screen, and have them instantly resize to something useful.

Cinch is mouse-oriented, but has a keyboard-oriented cousin called Sizeup. Today, a comment on that old post alerted me to a free, open source rival to Sizeup called ShiftIt.

Police busted a middle school boy for renting out his iPod Touch packed with sexy photos and videos of underage girls.

The iPod Touch’s large storage capacity and big screen were put to use for an increasingly common kind of extracurricular activity. The boy’s business was halted when a renter of the illicit images was caught last week at Pyle Middle School in Bethesda, Maryland.

Students id’d the girls in photos as fellow students — sixth to eighth graders — as well as some from a nearby high school. In a letter to parents, school officials said that their investigation revealed the girls posed willingly and that the photo and video sessions took place outside school grounds.

For the next three weeks we’re going to be publishing a series of posts called “My Close Encounters with Steve Jobs.” Written by David Bunnell, the founder of Macworld magazine, it’s a bunch of great stories about Jobs and the launch of the Mac. It’s a excellent, insightful read with a ton of previously unpublished stories and details. Starting Tuesday — Part 1: Meeting Steve.

We start out another week with more deals on Apple items. A number of iPod touch models are on the block, starting at $169 for an 8GB model. Deals on Intel-based Mac mini desktops are also on tap, starting at $499 for a 2GHz Core 2 Duo unit. We wrap up our top trio with the latest batch of App Store freebies, including WalkJogRunning, which lists running route recommendations. (I hope it includes routes marked by the slowest-running dogs.)

We’ll also check out other Mac-related hardware and software, such as MacGourmet and a Clock Radio for the iPod and iPhone from Sony. As always, details on these and many other items can be found on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYVIHf9KBSE

This mini Apple store is the latest awesome creation from Gary Katz, who has been turning shoe boxes into iPhone theaters.

This time, it took him a weekend to make a store mock-up, and this one requires two iPhones for the full effect. One iPhone slots into the back wall, playing a loop of the iPad intro and Apple ads and another iPhone provides the Apple logo to light the store sign.  The minuscule iPads, iPhone and iMacs are the fruit of long hours with an Exacto knife.

Katz put tiny versions of his own business cards in here, too, in case computer engineer Barbie has some tech dilemmas.

This is a one-of-a kind labor of love to avoid tussles over trademarks, but his other clever iPhone theater kits can either be bought or downloaded, including this drive-in version.

Gizmodo on Monday dropped THE bomb: the site has a pre-production model of the iPhone 4G, due to be launched in June.

The new iPhone was found “lost” in a Redwood City, Calif. bar, according to Gizmodo, which published its findings, along with numerous pictures of the device. Apple, taking a page from Detroit’s practice of camouflaging unreleased autos, made the phone appear like an ordinary iPhone 3GS.