Unless you have a Mac Mini or Mac Pro, there’s not a lot of reason to buy a third-party webcam if you’re on a modern Apple machine, but Telcast’s latest webcam, the W900, does one thing your built-in iSight won’t: it’s a wireless web cam that can transmit 5 megapixel video and images at distances up to 200 meters.
A welcome advance in webcam technology that should prevent at least a few MacBooks from vibrating off the lubricated bedside table top on anniversary night. The Telcast W900 costs $117.
I’ve been eagerly anticipating the release of Steam for Mac since it was first announced back in early March, but Valve has continued to be mum about their games delivery platform’s Mac-specific details. An informative thread on the official Steam forums, though, has a lot of information about what Mac gamers can expect when Steam for Mac lands in May.
Google’s Android Marketplace, a rival to Apple’s iPhone App Store, reached the 50,000 mark over the weekend, according to one company tracking cell phone application sites. Although a far cry from Apple’s nearly 200,000 apps, Android may be on pace to hit the 100,000 milestone by September, according to reports.
About a month ago, the Android Market, the nearest competitor to the App Store, reached the 40,000 mark. The 50,000 figure comes from AndroLib, which tracks 10 smartphone marketplaces.
The Gizmodo Leak May Force Apple's Hand, One Analyst Says.
Gizmodo’s unofficial unveiling of Apple’s iPhone 4G may force the Cupertino, Calif. company to launch its next handset sooner than planned, a Wall Street analyst tells Cult of Mac. The leak could erode sales of current iPhones as consumers hold off until the new smartphone is available.
“This leads us to believe they [Apple] may come out with a new [iPhone] sooner versus later,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster writes in a Tuesday email.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs isn’t exactly known to mince words with his customers or employees, and his characteristic bluntness even extends as far as his conversations with other CEOs.
Take this conversation he had with eerie William Macy lookalike and Nike CEO Mark Parker upon the introduction of the Nike+ product line. Asking Parker for advice on how to run his company, Jobs bluntly replied: “Get rid of the crappy stuff.”
“I expected a little laugh,” Parker said. “But there was a pause and no laugh at the end.”
No, Mark, Jobs is dead serious about excising the crap. Well, except for the Apple TV.
Artists make use of the tools around them. The iPhone is one of the newer ones in the toolkit, and it’s unique capabilities and limitations make for some interesting results.
Norm Zarr says about the Art of iPhone Photography:
“It’s a challenge to take great photos with an iPhone. Compared to most any digital camera, it doesn’t stand up as a camera. But the integration of the iPhone camera, the internet, and the hundreds of camera App’s has made it truly a mobile photographic workstation. This brilliant connection of technologies makes the power of iPhone far beyond the camera itself.”
Apple’s own iPad dock gives an easy and handy way to use a physical keyboard with your tablet, but one annoyance is the official dock’s inability to allow you to type when the device is in a landscape position.
It’s slightly irritating, but the Book of Joe has an easy-to-follow instruction manual on how to dock your iPad in a landscape position.
Essentially, you prop up your iPad (in Joe’s case, with the official iPad case) and use an iPod cable extender to connect the iPad to the dock connector. It’s a lot more of a kludge than it has to be, and I imagine a bluetooth keyboard and a sixty-nine cent business card holder would be a better solution for the price. Still, if you’ve got this stuff lying around already, it’s not a bad hack… at least until a third-party accessory maker comes out with a dock that allows typing in both landscape and vertical orientations.
Surprise surprise. There’s a new morsel of PC malware out there plaguing Windows machines. Nothing to write about there: it’s non-news, the equivalent of Paris Hilton getting a polite note from the Center of Disease Control.
What makes this bit of malware interesting to Apple heads, though, is the way it’s propagated: through an e-mail urging victims to download a new version of iTunes that has been upgraded for “best iPad performance, newer features and security.” Download the infected executable and the code, called Backdoor.Bifrose.AADY, then tries to slurps up the victim’s software serial numbers, IM, e-mail and protect storage login details.
Needless to say, even if you’re on a PC, you’re better off going directly to Apple.com or allowing iTunes to alert you to a new update than downloading a strange executable from even the most earnest of Russian malware mafioso.
“You are looking at Jason Chen’s computers. They were found lost at the San Mateo Country Police Headqaurters. We got them. We disassembled them. They’re the real thing, and here are all the details.”
A Dell XPS!? An Acer tower?!? Oh, Jason… a gadget blogger should know better.
We’ve shown you a first generation iPhone dual-booting into Android OS, but want to do it yourself? You’re in luck! Here’s an easy to follow seventy step guide, simple enough for that even a drunk, googly-eyed neonate could figure it out.
We’re slightly kidding: a lot of this instruction list is devoted to things like setting up virtualized Ubuntu installs, so it’s really only fifty steps. Still, that’s an order of magnitude too many steps for a guy whose technical sophistication tops out at dragging the install icon to his Applications folder.
Are you Cylon enough to attempt it though? God speed, and let us know how you get along in the comments.
Need another reason to justify your purchase of a frivolous iPad? Pop Cap Games shows us just how valuable the iPad touchscreen surface is for gaming in a demo of Plants Vs. Zombies HD.
Apparently, the iPad can handle 11 simultaneous points of contact, which is perfect for the man with six fingers on his right hand. Or if you’re into playing games with friends and stuff, this makes for some great multiplayer action. Imagine 11-way air hockey, or 11-way Hungry Hungry Hippos. Which reminds me, when is the board game Crossfire coming to the App Store?
This is the cutest game demo video I have ever seen. It’s almost as cute as the trailer for Babies.
In a move to boost iPhone sales, carrier China Unicom may reduce the price of Apple’s handset by $150, or 1,000 yuan. Apple executives recently announced iPhone sales increased 200 percent in the first half of 2009, earning the Cupertino, Calif. company $1.3 billion.
When the iPhone first entered the Chinese market in 2009, it carried a hefty price tag of 6,999 yuan. Although initially slow to compete against a strong black market and inexpensive pre-paid handsets, more than 100,000 iPhones were sold by late last year, reports said.
Man, I want one of these. It would look so good next to my pack of Pall Malls and Royal Portable Typewriter. Freeland Studio sure knows how to cast resin around my heart’s desires. Too bad it’s on back order for 3 weeks, priced at $195 and doesn’t let me talk on my iPhone with that gorgeous handset.
But it would be fun to Bluetooth it up and just pace back and forth holding that thing in a heated conversation about one of the Apollo missions.
The iRetrofone Base is available in clear, black, and pink. I wonder when this will come out in Commissioner Gordon Red?
In part 7 of Macworld‘s founder David Bunnell’s memoirs of the Mac, it’s clear that the machine isn’t ready for prime-time. Macworld‘s editor Andrew Fluegalman tells this to Steve Jobs, who reacts in a surprising way.
When you’re browsing a bunch of files in a Finder window, you can choose whether to view them as icons, as a list, or in columns. This tip shows you how to quickly switch from one view to another.
David Hendrickson heads the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team, the police task force that ordered a raid on Gizmodo editor Jason Chen. Picture: San Jose Business Journal:
Apple sits on the steering committee of the special police task force investigating iPhonegate, Yahoo News reports, raising the possibility that the company may have had a hand in the raid of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s house.
Friday’s police raid on Chen’s apartment was ordered by Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT) task force, which is commissioned to investigate high-tech crimes. Apple is a member of the task force’s steering committee.
Apple is one of the 25 companies that sit on REACT’s “steering committee.” Which raises the question as to whether Apple, which was outraged enough about Gizmodo’s $5,000 purchase of the lost iPhone for CEO Steve Jobs to reportedly call Gawker Media owner Nick Denton to demand its return, sicked its high-tech cops on Chen.
The San Mateo District Attorney’s office said the task force is investigating a “possible theft,” but wouldn’t say whether the target is Gizmodo or the person who found the iPhone in a bar and sold it to the site.
Yahoo News notes that the task force has investigated other cases in response to requests by committee members, including Symantec, Microsoft and Adobe.
“In either case, it’s hard to imagine — even if you grant that a theft may have occurred under California law, which requires people who come across lost items to make a good-faith effort to return them to their owner — how the loss of a single phone in a bar merits the involvement of an elite task force of local, state, and federal authorities devoted to “reducing the incidence of high technology crime through the apprehension of the professional organizers of large-scale criminal activities,” as the REACT website motto characterizes its mission.
Gizmodo’s publisher Nick Denton is not likely to back down to Apple or the police, says a publishing industry executive who has followed Gawker closely for years.
Denton, who owns Gizmodo’s parent company, Gawker Media, relishes a fight in the courts, says the executive, who asked not be named.
The seizure of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s computers is illegal, says Gawker Media, the parent company of the blog.
As a journalist, Chen is legally protected from divulging his sources of a story: in this case, details of Apple’s 4G iPhone, which Gizmodo purchased after an Apple engineer left a prototype in a bar. Gawker says the authorities are not allowed to search his computers in pursuit of a suspect, presumably the person who sold Gizmodo the iPhone.
Gawker cites section 1524(g) of the California Penal Code protecting journalists’ sources. It further cites O’Grady v. Superior Court, which extends the protections to online journalists. The O’Grady case is another Apple case, but one that the company lost. Apple tried to force Jason O’Grady to divulge his sources after his PowerPage website published details of another product Apple was working on.
Tomorrow on Cult of Mac, we’re starting a new series: the Top 50 Mac Essentials.
Inspired by our ongoing 100 Tips series, we wanted to put together a list of the desktop applications that newcomers to OS X ought to know about.
Each app has been chosen because it’s great value for money, or the best in its class, or does something useful that no other application does, or is too good to miss, or some combination of all of the above.
We’re still fine-tuning our list of 50, and of course your opinions matter too.
If there’s a desktop application you think should be included – something you’d recommend in a heartbeat to a friend who was just making the switch to OS X – please let us know in the comments.
We’re NOT including software that comes pre-installed with a Mac. But anything else, whether it’s made by Apple or a third party, whether it’s a full-featured suite or a simple one-task Menu Bar widget, is fair game.
(And yes, I know there aren’t 50 icons in the illustration above. That’s just there to, um, illustrate; it’s not intended to be a preview.)
(To see the entire list of 50 Essential Mac Applications: click here.)
Wow. Silicon Valley police have seized several computers belonging to Jason Chen, the Gizmodo editor who detailed Apple’s iPhone 4G prototype for the site.
California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team entered editor Jason Chen’s home without him present, seizing four computers and two servers. They did so using a warrant by Judge of Superior Court of San Mateo. According to Gaby Darbyshire, COO of Gawker Media LLC, the search warrant to remove these computers was invalid under section 1524(g) of the California Penal Code.
Gawker says the seizure of Chen’s computers is illegal. As a journalist, he is legally protected from divulging his sources, and authorities are not allowed to search his computers in pursuit of a suspect (presumably they’re after the identity of the person who sold Gizmodo the iPhone).
Scott Adams, the evil henchman behind the Dilbert Comic Strip, posted two comics about the drunken misplacement of the iPhone Prototype today on his blog. What’s cool is that these strips will never reach the funny pages and are exclusive to Adams’ blog. Thanks for sharing, Scott.
I’m never one to lol when reading print material, but the third frame of the top comic is priceless. Definitely loled.
A couple of Reuters reporters scoured electronics shops in Shanghai for an iPad clone until someone led them to a dark backroom on a fifth floor of one of the city’s many clone marts.
You can’t see a whole lot from the blurry pic, but they report that the counterfeit iPad sports three USB ports in what looks like a heavy-set, pumped-up iPhone. This isn’t the first iPad copycat to come out of the area, but this one looks more like the Apple device.
The price for the faux iPad is just slightly lower than the real deal 2,800 yuan ($410), compared to the iPad’s $499-$699 price. It runs a Windows OS.
Denver police arrested a 20-year-old man in connection with an iPad theft that also cost the victim part of his pinky.
20-year-old Brandon Darnell Smith was arrested early Saturday at a traffic stop.
“It’s bittersweet,” the victim, 59-year-old Bill Jordan, told local ABC affiliate 7NEWS. “The bitter part of it is there is nothing anybody can do to replace this. It is what it is.”
Rhapsody’s music subscription offers virtually limitless musical selections from a library of about 9 millions songs available. And you don’t have to be online to use it. You can create downloadable playlists that play whether you have an Internet connection or not.
“This is the first time Apple has approved this capability for a music app — at least in the U.S.” said Rhapsody spokesman Matt Graves. “While Apple has previously approved apps from many streaming music services, including Rhapsody’s, until now it has never okayed downloading subscription music to its devices.”
Graves noted that Steve Jobs was famously dismissive of the music subscription model, calling these services “bankrupt” in a 2003 interview with Rolling Stone. Of course, subscription models compete with the per-song download model of iTunes.
You don’t even need to pay their reasonable $10-a-month fee to try it out. Rhapsody offers a free trial of their service.
I recommend signing up with your computer: it seems that if you register using a non-mobile device, you get a 14-day free trial. I signed up on my iPhone and only got a 7-day trial period free. Weird.
Jon Maples, Rhapsody Product Lead, brags about his experience using Rhapsody’s Downloadable Playlist feature on the Rhapsody blog and it makes for an interesting read.
My main beef with Rhapsody is the audio quality. I wasn’t able to use Google to divine a solid source for audio quality, but I can tell you it’s not 192-256 kbps which is what it should be.
We start off another week with a trio of deals for Apple fans. First up is the latest batch of free applications from the App for your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, including “Catch the Egg”, an accelerometer-based game. Next we have Montage for the Mac, software enabling you to potentially write the next killer screenplay. Finally, no one can have enough storage. One option might be the Fantom G-Force 1TB eSATA/USB 2.0 hard drive.
Details on these and many other bargains are available on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
