Cult of Mac

Eastman Kodak sued Apple Thursday, claiming the Cupertino, Calif. company infringed patents used to preview images on the iPhone. The lawsuit, before the U.S. International Trade Commission, seeks a stop to the alleged infringement and unspecified damages.

RIM’s BlackBerry is also named in the lawsuit.

A celebrity gossip blog squarely targeting the lives of Silicon Valley eggheads, anti-socials and mouthbreathers has always been one of Gawker founder Nick Denton’s stranger and least accessible publication ideas, and it’s not so surprising that the once prolific Valleywag has gone from its own website to a mere tag over at Gawker over the last year or two. Odd to see Valleywag, then, announce a bounty of up to $100,000 for information about the forthcoming Apple Tablet… a bold play at relevancy, to be sure.

Back in November, our own personal Aleister Crowley of Cult of Mac, Leander, sat down and interviewed Ken Segall, the originator of the iMac name. According to Segall, Steve Jobs recognized he was “betting the company on the machine and so it needed a great name.” The only problem: the name Jobs had his heart set on was so bad it would “curdle your blood.” The original product name? MacMan, says Gizmodo.

Luckily, at the end of the day, iMac won out… but it wasn’t because Jobs let himself be swayed, according to Gizmodo’s sources, but rather because the name was already trademarked by a company called MidiMan, who had released a serial-to-MIDI adapter under that brand name. Apple made an offer; Midiman declined; Steve Jobs fumed and Segall got his way.

As everyone prepares to hear how Apple did financially during the first fiscal quarter of 2010, analysts are releasing numbers on the Cupertino, Calif. company’s success during the fourth quarter of 2009. IDC said Apple’s U.S. sales rose 31 percent for the quarter, a day after Gartner researchers announced a 24 percent jump.

Apple’s 31 percent growth rate was higher the most computer makers, who saw a 24 percent jump during that three-month period, according to IDC. The Mac maker is in fifth plan, selling 5.6 million Macs for 8 percent of the market, according to IDC.

Although the Tablet is obviously prompting a degree of speculative slathering unlike anything we’ve seen for the last years, the last month has seen a persistent trickle of next-gen iPhone rumors coming out as well. The latest is courtesy of Goldman Sachs analyst Robert Chan, who claims (amongst some “no duh” predictions like a 5-megapixel camera and a June release) that the 4G iPhone will have a new plastic casing similar to that used by Apple’s touch-panel Magic Mouse.

Apple has lost more than $450 million from App Store piracy, according to a published report Wednesday. “A conservative estimate of the average piracy rate is that for every paid application developed and sold at the App Store, three more are pirated,” a financial blog claims.

The $7 game Rally Master Pro 3D has a 95 percent piracy rate, according to publishers Fish Labs. The $1.99 game Tap-Fu has a 90 percent piracy rate, says publisher’s Neptune Interactive and Smells Like Donkey. Even developers of applications costing less than $1 suffer piracy. The 99 cent iCombat has a 75 percent piracy rate, publisher Web Scout said.

Ever have that feeling that you’ve had a rotten night’s sleep, and the last thing you want to do is get up out of bed?

Yeah, me too.

Sleep Cycle is an iPhone app that says it might be able to help.

We take pictures to remember our own lives better and tell stories about the people who matter most to us. In older days, we had photo albums. These days, we have gigantic digital libraries on our computers, and a lot of the time it’s pretty disorganized. Sure, the most important photos are grouped into albums and what-not, but little else is. The meaning behind the pictures isn’t obvious.

Apple has taken steps to address this in iPhoto 09, adding in face detection and the ability to take people in pictures for searching by participant and searching by geography via GPS data, but these elements aren’t well-intertwined — and it does a bad job of considering the long view. That’s where MemoryMiner, a very nice piece of shareware from GroupSmarts, steps in.

Creating an iPhone app is one thing, but making something that stands out in an increasingly deep, expansive crowd is something else entirely. And yet Tapbots have managed just that. Describing their trio of apps as “robots for your iPhone and iPod touch,” Tapbots has managed to infuse the most utilitarian of concepts with genuine personality, and this is largely down to playful and innovative interfaces. We caught up with Paul Haddad (“the programmer”) and Mark Jardine (“the designer”) to find out more about how Tapbots was born, the thinking behind its apps, and what their newest creation, Pastebot, can do for your Apple device.

Preliminary United States PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 4Q09 (Thousands of Units)

Note: Data includes desk-based PCs, mobile PCs and X86 servers.
Source: Gartner (January 2010)

Apple’s Mac shipments grew 24% in Q4 2009, riding the industry’s strongest growth period in seven years, according to new numbers from research firm Gartner.

Worldwide, the computer market bounced back in a big way at the end of 2009, Gartner says, largely on the back of low-cost netbooks and consumer laptops, which were heavily-discounted for the holidays.

“These preliminary results indicate the recovery of the PC market on a global level,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner in a statement.

Worldwide computer shipments grew 22.1%  in Q4 (numbering 90 million units).

Hewlett-Packard displaced Dell as the biggest PC maker in the U.S., and Acer established itself as the low-price leader.

In the U.S., Apple saw gains of 23.2% compared to Q4 2008 (which was dismal). However, competitors like Toshiba led the PC pack with 70.7% growth, trailed by Acer (48.4%) and HP (45.9%). Dell lagged with only 5.5% growth, largely because it didn’t discount for the holidays. “Dell was not as aggressive on pricing as its competitors in order to protect profits,” Gartner said.

Growth was driven by the consumer market — not the business market — and the Windows 7 was did not create additional PC demand, although Gartner said “the launch was a good market tool during holiday sales.”

“It was the strongest quarter over quarter growth rate the worldwide PC market has experienced in the last seven years,” Gartner said in a statement.

Full release after the jump.

Got your iPhone ready? Great.

Go here. See the pretty animation. You just got Flash on your iPhone.

And people said it would never happen.

It’s midweek, a thaw seems to be sweeping the frozen U.S., and hardware and software are our highlighted deals of the day. Let’s start with a deal on MacBook Pro laptops from ExperComm. The computers feature a 17-inch screen and powered by a 3.06GHz processor. The laptops also include three years of AppleCare, all for $2,949. The same company is selling 27-inch iMacs powered by a 2.66GHz i5 with 8GB of memory. Like the MacBook Pros, the iMacs come with three years of AppleCare, for $2,198. Lastly, we all like free stuff, and a new batch of App Store freebies is available, including Pro Camera Basic.

Along the way, we check out the miniStack storage from NewerTech, giving your Mac mini the perfect storage companion.

As always, details on these and many more bargains can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Maybe a Jan. 27 date where many expected Apple to announce a tablet, could center on a more powerful MacBook Pro laptops, using Intel’s latest Core i5 processor. That’s the suggestion following a promotion for retail workers offering 2 MacBook Pros powered by the i5.

The promotional January contest offers retail employees “2 chances to win one of 2 MacBook Pro laptops with the accelerated response of an Intel Core i5.” The ad was part of an e-mail sent to members of the Intel Retail Edge Program.

You can add one more Apple tablet rumor to your list. The device, which some believe could be unveiled later this month, bears a striking resemblance to an “iPhone on steroids.” The tablet and the handset are so close internally, the Cupertino, Calif. company has delayed updating the iPhone OS to prevent technical details from leaking, according to a new report.

“There hasn’t been an updated iPhone OS build because there’s too much tablet-code/references in the OS,” according to the Boy Genuis Report, citing “close Apple connects who haven’t steered us wrong.”

Keeping to the straight and narrow often sucks: bloviating co-workers, passive- aggressive clients and hobbling back to the homestead to an empty fridge after a long day.
Still, it’s not as bad as being in jail. Or arrested, for that matter.

Busted! Real Mugshots, offers some handy, much-needed schadenfreude for the working stiff, as per the description:

“Real people! Real Arrests! Real Mugshots!”

The iPhone app, gratis on iTunes, serves up police pics from around the US with full names, birthdate, age, arrest date/time of arrest as well as the offending crime. (At least in the first release, it doesn’t give location and does not appear to be searchable).

How do you help a company without officially going to work for the firm? Answer: join a private investment firm that owns a portion of it. That’s how former Apple executive Dr. Avadis ‘Avie’ Tevanian explains his move to Elevation Partners, which owns 25 percent of Apple-rival Palm.

Former Apple senior vice president Jon Rubinstein is now Palm’s CEO. Remember Rubinstein, he recently denied ever using an iPhone.

Hoping to blunt the headlines of yet another former Apple executive joining Palm, Tevanian Wednesday says he’ll spend “almost no time” dealing with Palm. Instead, he’ll help Elevation assess new investments and technology.

Apple announced it will hold its annual shareholders meeting on February 25. It will be the first since 2009, when CEO Steve Jobs didn’t appear due to health reasons. The company Tuesday urged shareholders reject several environmental-centered proposals and will amend its policy to allow greater executive compensation.

Although Jobs will take his usual $1 annual salary, he has 5.5 million Apple shares, outdistancing other executives. The Apple co-founder will receive $4,000 in compensation for using his private jet in 2009 for business. The amount is a far cry from previous years. In 2008, Jobs received $871,000 in compensation for using his Gulfstream. In 2007, the Apple leader received $776,000 for business-related private flights.

Online police reports always turn up a few interesting tidbits. Here’s one from the roster of misdeeds that took place in Elyria, Ohio on January 11:

1:46 p.m. – 3300 block Livingston Ave., iPod Touch reported stolen during a party; also, someone is using victim’s iTunes account to download songs.

My first thought: dumb thief. My second: maybe not, if they don’t keep it up for very long.

As an iTunes account holder abroad with a US credit card, I’ve managed to get locked out of my own iTunes account (shockingly simple to do, time consuming to set right again) and there are a few tales of hacked iTunes accounts with fraudulent credit card charges that took a few rounds with Apple to get straightened out. (If it happens — first step: contact your credit card company).

Thieves have been caught using emailing photos from stolen iPhones and using iPods with the victim’s playlist, but what’s the chance police might  track down the unlawful downloader via an iPod Touch?

Via The Chronicle Telegram

Magic Mouse users over at the Apple.com Discussion Board have been complaining that their multitouch mice require almost weekly battery swaps for a couple of months now. Apple has yet to officially acknowledge the problem, but an experiment by Softpedia confirms the issue.

The good news? It’s not really the Magic Mouse: it’s an issue with the Magic Mouse’s power management software. The bad news: that doesn’t really change anything until Apple issues a fix.

The experiment was simple: Softpedia plugged a fresh set of batteries into their Magic Mouse then let the batteries drain until the Magic Mouse software reports the batteries are dead. Softpedia then took these “dead” batteries and plugged them into an old Mighty Mouse. Voila! According to the Mighty Mouse software, the batteries still had as much as 40% charge remaining.

That’s a pretty astonishing bug. According to Softpedia, even a 50% charge isn’t sufficient to power a Magic Mouse in some cases. If Softpedia’s experiment is true, Apple needs to fix this bug, pronto.

Now, I’ve long since sworn off trusting Apple to sell me a mouse, so I can’t confirm this: that leaves it up to you. Anyone willing to give Softpedia’s experiment a shot and let me know how it goes for them in the comments?

★-y eyed Apple commentator, Internet darling and occasional grouse John Gruber has posted an intriguing nugget about the forthcoming Apple Tablet in a post otherwise filled with routine incredulity at reports that an Orange CEO had “confirmed” Apple’s Tablet as being equipped with a webcam earlier this week.

According to Gruber: “For what it’s worth, I’m hearing there is no camera, webcam or otherwise, on The Tablet.

Excepting only the iPhone platform, Apple’s never been serious about gaming on its computers, often lagging far behind not only PCs but their own hardware in programming support for the latest graphic technologies into its operating systems. Snow Leopard’s no exception: although the OpenGL 3.0 standard was unveiled in July of 2008, and although all Macs currently shipping have graphic cards which support it, Snow Leopard 10.6.2 implements only 15 of the 3.0 standard’s 23 extensions.

Thankfully, Apple appears to be serious about finalizing support for OpenGL 3.0 in the forthcoming Snow Leopard 10.6.3 update. According to a post at netkas.org, 22 of the 23 extensions are now supported in the latest developer build, which should improve the graphics performance of all current Mac computers.

Unfortunately, these are just extensions, with most of the specific OpenGL 3.0 functions still unsupported. And OpenGL 3.0 isn’t even the most recent standard: OpenGL 3.2 was released on August 3rd of 2009. Still, progress!

An archeologically stratal cross-section of the port placement of Apple’s metal-skinned professional line of notebooks over the course of the last decade, courtesy of photographer and Mac enthusiast Robert Donovan. Fireflies dance in the background.

From top to bottom, the notebooks pictured are:

• The 13-inch Unibody MacBook Pro (2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo)

• The 15-inch Titanium PowerBook (400MHz G4)

• The 15-inch Aluminum PowerBook (1.25GHz G4)

• The 15-inch MacBook Pro (2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo)

For me, this is morbidly erotic. It’s like four ex-lovers stacked nakedly atop each other, two of whom were dumped for their younger, hotter sisters, one of whom ran off on me because of my drinking problems, and the last so emphysemic from passive smoking that she’s due to cough up a lung any day now… a medical emergency definitely not covered by Apple Care.

GigaOm’s been releasing a slew of admirable, Apple-oriented infographics lately, leading with a fantastic look at the money at stake if AT&T loses the iPhone, and now following with a through vivisection of the thriving App Store economy.

Here’s the jist: 28,000 developers have generated over 133,000 apps to date. Surprisingly, the average approval time is only a little under five days,which is shockingly lower than the collective complaints of Internet developers about long App Store turn-around times… although it’s worth noting that that statistic only applies to apps that are approved, not ones that have been rejected.

In general, the average iPhone or iPod Touch user downloaded 3.7 apps in December, only 25% of which were paid apps. Ninety nine cents is the most popular price for paid apps, although the average app price goes as high as $2.59. Even given the low margins on most apps, though, December saw renuews of $500MM, with $350MM of that going to developers.

As usual, it would be downright rude to just slurp up and regurgitate the whole graphic, so click through to check the full thing out.

When Shawn Ahmed travels to places such as Bangladesh to fight poverty he counts on iPhones and Macs to help him do battle.

Ahmed is the founder of a one-man global relief effort he calls the Uncultured Project and is using technology and social media in inventive ways to engage people across the globe in their common humanity.

In partnership with the Save the Children Foundation and USAID, Ahmed went last summer to a cyclone devastated village in Galachipa, Bangladesh to distribute non-food relief items to victims of the disaster. He provided individual donors to Uncultured Project real-time receipts for their generosity using his iPhone and TwitPic.

As seen in the clip above, Ahmed used his iPhone to show villagers in another Bangladeshi community videos made by the people in the west who helped bring safe, clean drinking water to their lives. “This is not a charity,” Ahmed said, “it’s an experiment in community.”

The 28 year-old native of Toronto, Canada quit his scholarship graduate studies at Notre Dame University after being inspired by Dr. Jeffery Sachs (author of The End of Poverty) to try and make the world a better place — one meaningful difference at a time.

“I’ve also been using the iPhone to report real-time in the field,” Ahmed said in an email. He makes extensive use of Twitter and YouTube to break down the distance between his supporters and the communities they support. Connecting to them with his iPhone, Ahmed said, “I hold votes on how I should help people in Bangladesh. Voting has led [to] school supply distributions to orphans and much more. And, of course, all my videos are edited on a MacBook.”

The Uncultured Project’s YouTube channel just went over 10,000 subscribers and Ahmed is hopeful for the prospects of his unpaid, unemployed, uncultured journey to help the poorest of the poor: “It’s about inspiring others to believe that we can be the generation that ends extreme poverty.”

Apple is back with two hardware deals, including its 27-inch iMac and the iPod shuffle. For iMac fans, the desktop computer is rated 3.06GHz, using a Core 2 Duo processor. If you’re tired of hearing about the iPod touch, you may welcome a change of pace with the tiny shuffle – either the 1GB or 2GB version. Lastly, we highlight Kensington’s LiquidAUX Deluxe car kit for the iPhone or iPod.

We also take a look at more iPhone cases, software and assorted gadgets. As always, for details on these or many other bargains, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.