Cult of Mac

Good news, not-so-good news on the tablet, according to a “double-sourced” story from iLounge:

Good News: The tablet will have two dock connectors, one on the bottom edge, the other on the side for charging/docking in both portrait and landscape mode. “… accessory companies have struggled for the past three years to figure out ways to accommodate Cover Flow and the like in their speakers and docks,” says iLounge EIC Jeremy Horwitz. “Two Dock Connectors fixes this, and depending on how Apple handles multiple accessory connections, could have some other nice benefits, as well.”

Horwitz also notes the tablet with an aluminum backplate with a wide plastic strip to enable clear radio reception for the device’s wireless antennae. The size of the strip “suggests room for nice-sized antennas, and 802.11n compatibility,” says Horwitz.

Not So Good News: The tablet will be offered with optional cell service, iLounge reckons, with data plans in the $30-$60 per month range. Curiously, iLounge thinks AT&T might offer a combined iPhone and tablet plan to attract  users already paying monthly iPhone data fees.

We start off with a new batch of App Store freebies from Apple, including the game Brain Balance Pro. You can never have too much spare juice when your iPhone’s battery is on its last legs. For such an occasion is Cable Unlimited’s Battery Boost. Finally, Apple’s iLife ’09 productivity suite on sale.

For details on these and many other items, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Savant Systems is a home automation company that sells a range of wireless control tablets that may illustrate how Apple’s tablet will work in the real world.

Unlike the endless mockups and magazine-publisher demos, Savant’s line of Rosie Touch systems are real products.

Based on OS X, the Rosie Touch panels control the home’s heating, lighting, security and entertainment systems. They run an iPhone-like touch interface based on a photo-realistic model of the house’s interior. Built on pictures of the actual home, the UI allows users to control the lights and AV components by interacting with pictures of the actual components onscreen.

In other words, tap the hallway light onscreen, and the actual hallway light turns on or off. Slide your finger down the picture of the kitchen window, and the blinds in the kitchen are drawn down.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI898pp6rxI

Matt, whose website describes him as a “normal dude that likes to talk about Apple and technology in general,” made this “what-if” trip down memory lane — an alternate reality version of what the Apple website might have looked like from the pre-Internet days.

The farther back you go, the more fun it is, check out the “See Our Ads in Byte Magazine” button and a photo of Jobs & Woz that looks snapped in the founding garage.

For a longer trip down pseudo-memory lane,  check out his slideshow here.

Thanks to reader Thomas for the tip!

Joe Mansfield, whose trade is laser customizing books, engraved 550 MacBook Pros for the University of Oregon’s new Center for Student Athletes.

A custom version of the university’s “O” logo  was also etched into entry mats, lockers and laptop cases to great effect. Though computers are the backbones of study centers, they usually end up looking out of place, here they’re an integral part of the decor.

The only problem: who wants to hit the field or gym when you can hang out at the “Taj Mahal of academic services?”

Cult of Mac talked to engraver extraordinaire Mansfield about how he got started, an upcoming iPhone case and the weirdest thing he’s ever been asked to etch.

When is the last time you paid $80 for a book? When it held your MacBook, of course. Mac lovers have gone through countless attempts to disguise and protect your Apple laptop, from high-end leather briefcases we saw at CES to a faux newspaper. Now comes Mac developer Twelve South with the BookBook, a case that looks exactly like a vintage hardbound book.

The leather-bound “book”, along with two rigid book covers, also includes a padded leather spine to keep your 13-inch or 15-inch MacBook safe and secure. “When it comes to safeguarding your Mac, there is no comparison between BookBook and the typical, floppy neoprene zipper bag,” claims the company.

Apple’s highly-expected tablet device, although still underwraps, was built with roots in many other popular products sold by the Cupertino, Calif. company. Along with the iPhone’s OS, the tablet could borrow batteries from Apple’s MacBook laptop computer, according to a Taiwan report Thursday.

Two companies – Simplo Technology and Dynapack International Technology – have received orders for the rumored tablet, said Digitimes, quoting China’s Commercial Times.

A documentarian shooting a film about the impact of Haitian poverty filmed more than he was expecting when a calamitous earthquake hit Port-au-Prince nine days ago, crushing him under rubble. His life was ultimately saved not just by rescue workers or foreign aid… but by his iPhone.

The filmmaker, Dan Wooley, first used his DSLR camera to illuminate the wreckage of the building he was in. Finding a relatively safe elevator shaft, Woolley then used the Pocket First Aid and CPR app to make a bandage for his leg and to staunch the bleeding from a head wound, which proved so serious he even used the iPhone’s built-in alarm clock to prevent himself from going to sleep.

An amazing story, but perhaps everything’s best summarized by Wooley’s own five star review of Pocket First Aid and CPR, posted on its iTunes App Store page: “Consulted this app, while trapped under Hotel Montana in Haiti earthquake, to treat excessive bleeding and shock. Helped me stay alive till I was rescued 64 hours later.” Now that’s the kind of review that sells an app.

Until now, Amazon has stood largely unchallenged in the e-publishing arena – some put its dominance at 80 percent of e-book sales and 70 percent of e-book readers. Now, in a bid to counteract a hurricane of hype surrounding Apple’s as-yet unseen tablet device, the giant online bookseller is making some last-minute changes to the Kindle, it’s e-book reader. Amazon Thursday announced it will open its device to software developers, a concession to Apple’s popular App Store.

However, Amazon isn’t uttering the word “app” in describing its move to open the doors to software programming. Instead, “active content” is the label the company uses to define anything from calculators to video games for its e-book platform.

The latest iPhone photo app to grab my attention and that of a handful of Flickr users is Phototropedelic.

The techno-sweatshops of Beijing have never seen an Apple design they weren’t willing to ineptly rip off, but these MacBook Air knock-offs spotted by M.I.C. Gadget are the first I’ve actually liked.

Basically, what we have here is a white plastic simulacrum of the MacBook Air’s aluminum unibody chassis, crammed with the innards of your stock, last generation netbook: an Intel Atom N280 processor with up to 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive.

I love it, right down to the lid’s pulsing, multichromatic logo! If Apple ever introduces a plastic unibody Air, this is exactly what I would imagine it looking like. It’s unfortunately a Windows machine, but at around $249 I’m tempted to pick one up anyway, just to see if it’s as easily Hackintoshable as my Asus Eee PC 1000HE. What a coup one of these MacBook Air netbooks with Snow Leopard installed would be for my gadget cred next time I showed up at the blogger’s hall at CES.

Apple’s troubles with their 27-inch iMacs just never seem to come to an end.

In December, Apple notified its authorized resellers that new volume orders would be pushed out about two weeks, following numerous complaints about screen flickering and yellowing issues with the showcase Mac, as well as numerous complaints from customers who received broken iMacs in shipping.

Just last week, Apple finally started shipping replacement 27-inch iMacs back to their authorized resellers… but today, Apple Insider is reporting that those same machines now have an estimated three-week ship time when ordered through Apple.com.

In truth, it seems like there’s a load of issues here: while the 27-inch iMac indisputably has some screen issues that need to be further investigated, mostly, it’s just a victim of its own success: it was the best-selling desktop system in America last quarter.

Still, it’s got to be frustrating both for prospective customers and Apple themselves that they just can’t quite seem to squelch the last of their 27-inch iMac issues. Let’s hope this is the last one.

Apple is in talks with the music industry about the advantages of a streaming music service that lets people listen to their tunes from anywhere an Internet connection is available. The report appears to jibe with another suggesting Apple could launch the ‘cloud’ service by June.

The Cupertino, Calif. company is telling publishers such streaming would reinvigorate sluggish sales from music downloads, according to CNET. The service reportedly will be called iTunes.com and is integral to Apple’s new strategy of boosting iTunes sales via numerous linked Web sites, according to the Wall Street Journal.

With the recent release of Song Summoner for the iPhone and iPod Touch, Square Enix basically cemented their commitment to the App Store as a gaming distribution platform, so it’s no surprise that a mere few weeks later, the JRPG makers have announced through their Facebook page that they will be bringing Final Fantasy I and II to Apple handhelds sometime soon.

There’s no official word on pricing or release, but the first two Final Fantasy games have been endlessly re-mastered over the last twenty years (despite — or perhaps even because of — the fact that they are remarkably simple, plotless yet addicting games). The iPhone version seems to take the graphical remastering of the games to a new level: although I’ve played the remastered Final Fantasy I and II package on Sony’s PSP console recently, the crisp, colorful, super-deformed sprites on display in the iPhone version are an improvement of several orders of magnitudes. Final Fantasy I and II on the iPhone looks like it’ll quickly become the new standard for retro-gaming fans of the series.

As the days tick off before Apple’s “latest creation” announcement Jan. 27, its much-rumored tablet is taking shape in a steady stream of leaked interviews. The over-arching theme seems to be that Apple sees its tablet reshaping publishing the way the iPod was a game-changer for how we buy and listen to music. However, unlike previous media gadgets, Apple could be hoping to attract families – even entire classrooms – with its tablet.

The family was Apple’s focus when developing the tablet, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. “The company envisions that the tablet can be shared by multiple family members to read news and check email in home,” the paper wrote, citing ‘people familiar with the situation.’

We’re down to a week until Steve Jobs reveals the latest something or other from Apple at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Arts Center. Most believe it to be some manner of tablet, of course (which the rounded corners in the above teaser image support), or a widget, gadget, or even a doodad.

With such a major whatsit being announced one week from today, speculation is running rampant. The Wall Street Journal periodical publication today revealed an exclusive, courtesy of an anonymous informant: Apple’s tablet will be amazing for reading books playing games reading magazines communicating with your family video-conferencing ALL OF THE ABOVE!

In a breathless run-down, writers Yukari Iwatani Kane and Ethan Smith essentially list off nerds’ every dream feature for the magical device, citing partnerships with the New York Times, EA, Conde Nast, TV channels, the launch of web-based iTunes and, AHEM, Microsoft’s Bing as clear evidence that the Cupertino Craftsmen will be transforming every industry they don’t already dominate.

And the weirdest thing about it? None of it seems implausible. Not one hyperbolic assertion. If Apple’s doing something beyond the iPhone, it should be the world’s most killer video-watching, game-playing, web-surfing, video-chatting, computer-displacing new platform ever conceived. It should actually be beyond what most of us can dream of. I’m just wondering how Steve’s going to introduce it. “Today, we have 17 new revolutionary products to introduce. But they’re all one product. It’s a washer, a dryer, a thimble, a salad, a painkiller, a television, a TV network, a shoelace, a hamster, a handkerchief, a fax machine, a zipper, a bicycle, a foie gras, a US Senator, a secret lover, and your grandmother’s meat loaf. We call it iPad.”

It’s going to be a wild one on Wednesday, folks. Keep those rumors flying.

Wall Street Journal Via Engadget

More than 20% of Apple fans would buy the upcoming tablet “sight unseen,” according to a poll by 9to5Mac.

That’s a pretty big number, given that the tablet might turn out to be a Jobsian brainfart like the Cube.

But then again, Apple does have a great record of innovative products.

The majority of 9to5Mac readers say they’ll likely buy the tablet (33%), but wait until they see it before parting with their cash.

Only 6% of the 7,454 voter said they wouldn’t buy the tablet.

9to5Mac’s poll is here: Are you gonna buy one of them Apple tablets?

Today’s the day to buy some Mac or iPhone software in support of Haitian relief efforts.

The Indie+Relief one-day charity sale includes well-known titles like Delicious Library 2, Instapaper Pro, MarsEdit, Moneydance, Things and Tweetie — as well as lesser-known but highly-rated apps such as Gas Cubby and Today.

Hardware makers are also getting involved. Twelve South promised to donate $5 for every BassJump Subwoofer for MacBook ($79.99) and BackPack Shelf for iMac ($29.99) sold directly on twelvesouth.com.

“We expected people would be interested, but the response has been overwhelming and amazing,” said Garret Murray, one of the organizers. “I’ve always known the Mac community is very supportive, but even this blew me away.”

All proceeds from the sale will be donated to charities working in Haiti, including Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, the Red Cross, and others.

We reach mid-week with a variety of deals for Mac fans, including 6 bargains on Apple iMacs, starting at $849 for a 20-inch desktop with a 2.66GHz processor. A few steps up the food chain, Apple also offers several Mac Pro Xeon workstations, including a 3.2GHz unit for $3,299. Finally, if you liked the Grammy’s and want to relive the great music, lala.com has an MP3 album of this year’s nominees.

Along the way, we look at a new batch of App Store price drops, new games for your iPhone and various hardware bargains. As always, details on these items and many others are available on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

At this point, conventional wisdom firmly places the stateside release of the forthcoming Apple Tablet in March, with the possibility of a delay to June. That’s a long enough wait for Yanks, but what about the rest of the world? According to The Guardian, Britons can expect a delay of at least a few months.

The Guardian’s sources claim that Apple has only just started looking for a carrier partner in the UK who will be willing to bundle a 3G contract along with the subsidized Apple Tablet. It’s the absence of a British partner that will ultimately delay the Tablet’s release.

Of course, this presumes that the Tablet is only going to be solely available in the UK with a carrier contract… but I highly doubt that Apple is going to make that a consumer requirement for a non-phone device. In that case, I would assume that this delay only faces customers who want to pick up subsidized devices, while people willing to pay full price and supply their own 3G SIM will be able to buy the Tablet will be able to pick it up sooner. Or at least I hope.

Although Bluetooth headsets are a regrettable fashion choice for everyone short of the cyberpunk-enthused Secret Service agent, the Jawbone line has always been one of the more interesting brands out there. They were the first guys to use bone conducting technology to minimize background noise, and they are still one of the few Bluetooth headset manufacturers out there that don’t make their customers look like The Last Starfighter extras when chatting hands-free.

Jawbone’s latest headset, the ICON, continues the company’s trend of attractive, full-featured, understated designs, but also adds some really impressive iPhone compatibility into the mix. The main addition is that when the ICON is paired with an iPhone, its battery meter will display in the status bar, just like Apple’s Blueooth headset did.

Additionally, the ICON allows users to set custom tones and change the voices of incoming call alerts, as well as featuring software called MyTALK that allows you to voice-control mini-apps and assign button.

The ICON is available now in colors including black, gold, pearl and red, but weirdly, you’ll have to pick it up from Verizon for now, although AT&T is supposed to follow shortly.

Okay, Apple’s a couple of weeks in making its self-imposed deadline, but no matter: Apple has just released update 3.1 to their Boot Camp software, enabling official support for Windows 7.

The update comes in two separate flavors — one for 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and one for 32-bit versions — and require official DVD copies of Windows 7 or Windows 7 upgrade to function.

Curiously, not all Intel-based Macs support the update, but only Intel-based Macs released after 2007. That means that my own 2006 MacBook Pro won’t run Windows 7 through Boot Camp. I have a netbook that runs Windows 7 happily, so I assume this is a driver issue, and not because of 2006 models’ paucity of horsepower.

You can grab the Boot Camp updates now over at Apple’s official Boot Camp support page.

‘Minor issues’ with Apple’s tablet could force the Cupertino, Calif. company to delay shipping the highly-expected device until June, suggests an analyst. If correct, the three-month lag would dispute previous claims a tablet would ship by March.

Issues with battery life and durability are suspected culprits of any delay, Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu told investors Tuesday. The holdup would put the tablet, which Wu calls the “iSlate” into a more traditional pattern for Apple. When the company introduced its first iPhone in 2007, it announced the iconic handset in January and began shipping in June.

My inamorata likes, on occasion, to wistfully pine for an alternate reality in which her grade school predictions of Apple’s future success had been funded by a benign patriarch and made her a plutocrat. Instead, she got a cynical ‘C’ from her teacher for her “implausible” stock pick, and now blames this woman every day for her daily diet of bread crusts and dry Ramen.

The point is, it’s foolish to bet against Apple’s stock rising, but could analyst Gene Munster be taking it to far? He told Henry Blodget at The Business Insider that Apple stock could someday be worth $1,000 per share.

Munster’s reasoning is that Apple is well underway towards being the global smartphone leader and that Cupertino will be able to maintain its incredible growth rate. As the iPhone gets cheaper over time, there’s room for explosive growth. In the meantime, Apple seems ready to revisit its iPhone success with the forthcoming Tablet, which will expand Apple’s media profits in bold new directions.

Understandably, it seems like people took Munster’s comments as a reason to pick up Apple stock, as it closed at an all-time high yesterday of $215.04 per share. If you’ve got a few bucks rubbing together, you may as well get in: it’s just only going to go higher.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” It’s an ancient proverb being revived amid reports Apple is turning to its old foe Microsoft to blunt the growth of Cupertino’s newest rival, Google. Apple is mulling making Microsoft’s Bing the iPhone’s default search engine as it increasingly competes with the Mountain View, Calif. Internet giant.

The BusinessWeek report cites two people “allegedly familiar” with the discussions between Apple and Microsoft. The publication says the Redmond, Wash. software giant “is now a pawn” in the struggle between Apple and Google over handsets, browsers, operating systems and advertising.