Cult of Mac

The Google Chrome Beta for Mac has a lot of holes in its feature set compared to the more mature Windows and Linux ports. The biggest omission is probably extension support, which allows Chrome’s functionality to be broadened similarly to Firefox thanks to small code plugins.

Extensions still aren’t live in the Google Chrome for Mac beta, but if you’re willing to test drive the Chrome for Mac developer channel, you can start expanding your Chrome experience now.

In my experience the developer channel has been pretty stable, and I was actually playing with Chrome for Mac for months before the beta, but if you’re not interested in the risk, the Chrome for Mac developers are insistent extensions will roll out to the beta soon.

If it walks like an App Store and quacks like an App Store, it’ll succeed like an App Store, right? Well, that’s certainly Intel’s hope as it unveils AppUp, a site promoting applications built around the Atom processor for the growing number of netbooks.

The beta version was introduced Thursday, during the first day of CES in Las Vegas. AppUp is a ‘white label’ version of Apple’s App Store, which recently celebrated topping 3 billion downloads for the iPhone and iPod touch. Although Intel introduced AppUp, we’re likely to see customized versions from Dell, Acer, Samsung and other makers of netbooks powered by Intel’s Atom processor.

Apple has gained initial approval to build a ‘prototype’ retail location which puts education and customers ahead of products, according to Friday reports. The concept could replace Apple’s first store in Palo Alto, Calif. with a transparent design complete with trees growing indoors.

“Fully half the function of the store serves to provide education and service to business as well as customer patrons in addition to product sales,” according to the proposal approved unanimously by the city’s architectural review board.

LAS VEGAS — Peter Sisson is the CEO of Toktumi, a San Francisco company with a cool app that adds a second phone number to your iPhone. He kinda looks like Roger Sterling, the silver-haired, hard-drinking, hard smoking character from Mad Men.

Except Peter isn’t smoking, and he isn’t drinking. But he’s certainly got the same moxie. Sisson borrowed someone’s badge to gain entrance to an exclusive, invite-only CES event so that he could pitch a new version of his iPhone app to some of the hundreds of press in attendance. I’m glad he did, because it’s a doozie.

Gadget producers seem to have gotten the message that more bang-for-buck is what sells products in the current economic climate. In keeping with this philosophy, Altec Lansing are showing off three new/refreshed budget-minded offerings at CES.

Left: Altec Lansing says its InMotion Compact is the most compact yet in its line of portable docks. The slim little system was designed with some impressive traits: it’s GSM shielded (so no annoying iPhone buzz), runs on AC or four AA batteries and is faux-leather wrapped. Available for $80, Feb.

Center: The Octane Plus 2.1, a three-piece speaker set with a 6.5-inch subwoofer and 3-inch down-firing mid-range speakers. It’s also much prettier than the VS4121 speaker system it replaces. The set runs $80 and will be available this Spring.

Right: Portable sound from Altec Lansing for a Jackson? Yup. Altec Lansing will offer three versions of their neatly designed, $20 MUZX earbuds, including one with pivoting earpieces. Available March.

UPDATE: My apologies, this story is incorrect. I followed up with Buffalo Technologies, who now say Apple had only an advisory role in the inclusion of Firewire. The decision was not an Apple mandate, and not all portable drives sold in the Apple Store have Firewire as well as USB, as readers have noted. In an email, Buffalo’s Brian Verenkoff says:

“Apple never insisted we do anything, nor can they force any company to do something they don’t want to. Obviously given the nature of this product, we designed it for the iPod/iPhone user base and did have ongoing dialog with Apple to make sure we developed a product that was compatible with their store and their customers. At the end of the day, every decision was made by Buffalo as to the product features.”

LAS VEGAS – Here’s something I bet you didn’t know. Every portable hard drive sold in Apple’s retail stores must include a Firewire port.

I found this out while getting a demo of Buffalo Technology’s Dualie, a combination iPhone/iPod dock and 500-Gbyte dockable hard drive.

LAS VEGAS — Camera snobs are up in arms about Samsung’s brand new NX10 compact DSLR, which is built on a proprietary lens format, making it incompatible with thousands of lenses out there.

But the NX10 isn’t aimed at lens junkies. It’s meant for soccer moms looking to step up from point-and-shoots, who could give two-hoots that the NX10 is incompatible with other cameras’ lenses.

A quick hands-on at CES gives the impression that Samsung hit the sweet spot. Wifey and I have 30,000 digital pictures of the kids, most of them terrible because they were taken with point-and-shoots. The NX10 is the kind of camera we might like: easy to use, easy to carry around and capable of taking damn fine pictures.

Playing around with it, I can say the NX10 is a well-built, fast and responsive camera that promises the quality pictures of a DSLR without the bulk or complexity.

LAS VEGAS — Businesses must have a mobile app. That was the message from a CES panel discussion of iPhone apps and their impact on culture, technology, advertising and entertainment.

At the session — iPhone Apps-Change Agents-App Breakthroughs, Video, Games, Mobile Engagement and Advertising — panelists urged companies to get working on mobile apps. Not just for the iPhone, but Android and Palm as well.

“It’s like 10 years ago when the debate was: ‘do I have to get a website or not?’” said Walker Fenton, GM of NewsGator’s Media & Consumer Products. “People were unsure, but these days, the answer is obvious: if you’re not on the Web, it’s like you don’t exist.”

Fenton added that companies must be on the iPhone.

“It’s almost a requirement,” he said. “You’ve got to be on the iPhone; same as you’ve got to be on the Web.”

He concluded: “If you are wondering about whether or not to get on the mobile, the answer is ‘yes’.’ Get on the mobile now.”

LAS VEGAS — The movie ticketing website Fandango is adding paperless movie ticketing to its iPhone app, an executive said at CES.

Fandango is currently testing an app upgrade that shows Fandango’s ticketing barcode on the screen of the iPhone, instead of having to print it out.

“We’re testing it now,” said Darren Cross of Fandango at a session on iPhone apps. “It’s not too far away. We’ll have it pretty soon.”

An iPhone app that could get you into movie theaters is a big step towards the long-promised ticketless future.

Right now, tickets purchased through Fandango’s site must be printed out at home, and the ticket’s barcode scanned at the theater. It’s pretty painless, but it would be much easier to simply display the barcode on screen.

However, tickets purchased through Fandango’s iPhone app (which is actually easier to use than the website) must be picked up physically at will call. It’s a minor inconvenience, but undermines the electronic nature of the transaction.

Here’s a good idea for virally marketing apps that Apple should think about — wirelessly beaming apps to other iPhones like the Zune’s music sharing feature.

Microsoft’s Zune is mostly a me-too product, but it’s one great feature is being able to lend music to friends Zune-to-Zune via Wi-Fi. Shared tracks can be played three times, after which they must be purchased from the Zune marketplace. It’s a great idea but tragically underused because there are so few Zunes out there.

LAS VEGAS — It was too early for most hungover CES attendees, but the brilliant computer scientist and former Apple Fellow Alan Kay explained the basis of all knowledge at a 9AM keynote speech here.

On the first day of CES, we start off with three prime deals on Apple hardware. The Apple Store has a number of 20-22″ iMacs, starting at $849 for a 20-inch 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo. A step up the ladder are MacBook Pros, starting at $999 from Apple. We cap of the hardware trio with an 8GB iPhone 3G for $49 from AT&T.

Along the way, we check out other deals on iMacs, plus a blast from the past: an iBook G4 for $350. Finally, we wrap up by looking at new software, including the ‘Gunman’ app for the iPhone and iPod touch.

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

Canada’s Cignius Thursday unveiled a free iPhone app to control its NAO Symphony and NAO Symphony Noir Music Stations. The products let you wirelessly stream music from your iPod, controlled by your iPhone or iPod touch.

“We all know the iPhone and iPod touch are some of the most elegant music players on the planet, but getting that music to play on home speakers can be cumbersome,” Cignias CEO Shawn Saleem said.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aDE5GcriHc

Even though Apple isn’t part of this year’s CES, the floor has been buzzing with news of new hardware accessories for Apple’s multitouch devices. One of the most interesting of these is the AR.Drone, a quadricopter that you can control via iPhone or iPod touch.

As you can see from the video, the four rotors that give it lift are selectively turned on and off as you move your iPhone, and via the chopper’s forward-facing camera, the game positions killer robots for you to fire rockets at through the touchscreen. There’s even multiplayer for AR dogfights. No word on pricing yet, but looks like a heck of a lot of fun to fly if you’re on the floor.

Parrot — AR.Drone

Can AT&T survive the end of its exclusive iPhone contract? Probably. But one analyst believes the carrier won’t come away from its arrangement with Apple unbruised. “With its iPhone exclusivity likely to end in 2010, we believe performance could weaken,” Jefferies analyst Jonathan Schildkraut said Thursday.

The analyst put a “Hold” on AT&T shares with a $30 target. AT&T rival Verizon was given a “Buy” rating. Verizon shares could gain if it sells the iPhone later this year.

The carrier, hurting from a dust-up with iPhone owners over talk of reigning in increasing data usage, used the CES in Las Vegas to repair the relationship while also unveiling its after the iPhone plans.

Thieves looking to get their hands on iPhones have streamlined operations by snatching them while the owner is on the phone,  if recent police reports are anything to go by. (If it happens to you, try writing Steve Jobs — he may render justice when police can’t).

Simple but effective: it’s easier than snatching a bag and hoping there’s something good inside, right?

Chicago-based columnist Mark Bazer wrote an open letter to the person who snagged his wife’s month-old iPhone on a train:

Congratulations on your new iPhone! I just know you’re going to love it, as it’s a fantastic device with an easy-to-use interface and photos of my relatives. Heck, they’re now your relatives, too — we’re on the same family plan! That reminds me: It’s your turn this year to host Thanksgiving.

But back to your shiny new iPhone, because there are a number of things you should know to ensure it gives you so much enjoyment that you forget your shame.

For starters, it’s got plenty of room for music, but we weren’t sure what kind you liked. We were hoping Simon and Garfunkel , but if not, just sync that baby up to your PC and create your own mix. (If you don’t have a PC, they can be stolen from most homes.)

Also, we had the foresight to buy you the AppleCare protection plan, so your iPhone is covered for two years if anything goes wrong — with the exception of someone stealing it.

Funny, but it kinda makes me want to grab one, too.

Via Baltimore Sun

If you take a lot of photos, you know it’s all about storage and organization.

Enter Eye-Fi’s Pro X2 8GB Wi-Fi memory card with Endless Memory Mode.

The software recognizes the pics and videos that have already been uploaded and wipes them from the card faster than you forgot which co-worker you slurred sweet nothings to at the company Christmas party. (The self-cleaning card may also help curb bad habits, if, like me, you tend to leave stuff on the camera out of  laziness or fear and loathing of iPhoto).

What else has it got? Class 6 read and write speeds for a minimum transfer speed of 6 MBs and Wi-Fi with built-in 802.11n,  plus a bunch of features for sharing your pics: geotagging, free HotSpot access for a year, uploading to Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, MobileMe and YouTube (and it’ll also alert you via text message when your photos are uploading).

Price: $150.

I grabbed the Eye-Fi 4GB for my mom after realizing her new point-and-shoot came sans memory card — for $80, it’s been a great buy.

Via Wired

Apple appears to be moving closer to a cloud-based iTunes, now offering 30-second sound clips via its browser-based iTunes Preview. The new feature may be a result of the Cupertino, Calif. company’s $85 million acquisition of Lala.

The new feature, noticed this week, allows people to listen to a sample of songs available through the Web-based service silently introduced in November. Itunes Preview lets customers view song titles without requiring they open Apple’s iTunes application.

Former Senior Market Manager at Apple John Martellaro has a thoughtful post up at the Mac Observer explains how and why Cupertino occasionally leaks information about its own products to major news outlets.

Martellaro notes, “Often Apple has a need to let information out, unofficially. The company has been doing that for years, and it helps preserve Apple’s consistent, official reputation for never talking about unreleased products.”

Apple’s method of leaking product or company news is always done in such a way as to guarantee that no one can accuse them of trying to manipulate stock prices, by making sure the leak goes live after the close of the markets.

Surprising absolutely no one, The Street is reporting that the Apple Tablet to be announced on January 27th has no Intel processor inside.

According to their source, Northeast Securities analyst Ashok Kumar (who apparently has had conversations with Apple’s tablet design partners), Apple has predictably eschewed an Intel CPU for a low-power ARM processor created by P.A. Semi, a company which Cupertino acquired a couple of years ago.

To be honest, you’d have to be completely out of touch with the Apple landscape of the last couple of years to be flabbergasted by this news. Apple did not pick up P.A. Semi on an idle whim, and given that the Tablet is more likely to run an evolution of the iPhone OS than OS X, an ARM chip seems pretty much a given, especially given the power efficiency requirements of a tablet? Yet the Street reports:

There has been speculation that Intel’s new generation of Atom chips was in the running for the slot… If you believe that the closely-watched Apple Tablet will reshape the mobile computing landscape, then the snub deals Intel a significant defeat. Intel had a lock on the netbook market with its Atom processors and it was widely assumed that the chip giant would win the Tablet contract at all costs.

“Widely assumed?” Who seriously thought the tablet would pack an Atom processor? Heck, Apple’s been dropping Atom support, at least in Snow Leopard. Given Apple’s ownership of P.A. Semi, it’s been a lock since the get go.

Although it’s been promised for awhile, a new update to Facebook’s popular iPhone app has hit the iTunes App Store, finally bringing push Facebook notifications to your iPhone.

As soon as you update the Facebook app to version 3.1, you’ll be given the option of turning on push notifications, which will pop up on your phone anytime someone send you a new message, writes on your wall, requests to be your friend, lurid new sexts, tags you in a photo or… jeez, whatever Facebook kiddies are doing these days… throwing vampiric llamas at each other, I guess. However, if you don’t want your iPhone chirping in your pocket every time your mother buys a new sheep in Farmville, the selective push notification options seem robust.

The 3.1 update also adds contact syncing to the mix, which adds Facebook profile pictures and links to your contacts automatically, although it seems buggy and prone to duplication right now. I’d personally recommend holding off on enabling this little feature, although it would be nice to see this functionality continue to improve, given the growing role of Facebook as a subscribable, automatically updated address book for smartphones.

There’s little reason not to grab this one, so hit the update button in the App Store now.

A few months after the gorgeous — albeit issue prone — 27-inch iMac exploded everyone’s socks, Dell has just unveiled their own 27-incher, the UltraSharp U2711, which matches the iMac’s resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 and throws in HDMI 1.3, DisplayPort, two DVI-D ports, VGA, composite video, component video, four USB ports and an 8-in-1 multicard reader

None too shabby, and Engadget loves it. But man, what is up with the price? Dell says that their new display will go on sale next month for $1049. Granted, the 27-inch iMac is $650 more… but you get a frickin’ top-of-the-line Mac along with it.

On the other hand, Dell does tend to discount heavily through coupon codes and the like, so I imagine we’ll see the price fall over time. In a few months, then, this might be worth considering, if you want to give your laptop another 2500 odd pixels of horizontal real estate.

Dell actually makes quality displays, and I doubt the UltraSharp U2711 is any exception, although it’ll be interesting to see if the display, once shipped, is prone to the same yellowing problems as the 27-inch iMac.

It seems pretty clear that Apple and Google are planning for a ruckus in the mobile app space. Google picked up mobile ad company AdMob in November, right under Apple’s noses; Apple responded by acquiring one of AdMob’s biggest competitors, Quattro Wireless.

Google, on their part, seems pretty blase about the upcoming battle, though. Over on the Google Public Policy Blog, group product manager Paul Feng wrote:

When we announced our planned acquisition of AdMob in November, we noted that the mobile advertising space is highly competitive — with more than a dozen mobile ad networks.  In fact, the experts at MobiThinking recently called mobile advertising a “very fragmented” space, in which “no ad network is dominant” and “no one really knows what ad network is biggest.”

Today’s news that Apple is acquiring one of AdMob’s competitors, Quattro Wireless, is further proof that the mobile advertising space continues to be competitive.  And with more investments and acquisitions in the space, including from established players like Apple and Google, that’s a sign that vigorous growth and competition will continue. That’s ultimately great for users, advertisers and publishers alike.

In truth, there’s room for both Google and Apple in the mobile ad space: Apple will be happy if they can establish control the in-app advertising on their mobile touchscreen devices, while Google will be happy to control the rest of the market. Business isn’t a kilted sword fight amongst Queen-backed space vampires, after all. There can be more than one.

Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer offered a very brief glimpse of Hewlett-Packard’s upcoming tablet during his pre-CES keynote on Wednesday night. An appearance by the HP tablet was the most-anticipated part of his keynote because the device will likely go head-to-head with Apple’s upcoming slate, if and when it is released.

Although it was on stage at the Las Vegas Hilton for only a couple of minutes, the HP Tablet looks thin and polished — hardware wise anyway. Ballmer showed it running Windows 7 and Amazon’s Kindle for the PC software.

“You can flip through pages with your finger,” he said, flipping through pages with his finger. “And you can buy content from Amazon right within the app.”

He then proceeded to show a video running on the tablet, but was briefly frustrated when he couldn’t hit the tiny buttons on screen with his fingers. “Ooops,” he said after trying a couple of times. He eventually got it to play. Microsoft hasn’t yet optimized the tablet’s UI for big chubby fingers.

He didn’t mention the tablet’s name, pricing or ship date. He simply said, “It’s a beautiful little product” and it will be shipping “later this year.”

It appears to have a 10-inch screen and is very thin. It has no visible buttons on the top surface. The HP tablet will be one of the major products from a big-name manufacturer to compete with Apple’s device, which will likely be unveiled at a special media event in San Francisco on January 27.

With the 3GS demanding practically permanent attachment to a power source like a morphine addict to an IV drip, bringing a car charger along to placate the iPhone on a road trip is simply mandatory.

But an iPhone without a Bluetooth headset or backpack battery to play with is both un-fun and/or treacherous. Monster‘s solution, then, is their new iCarCharger 800, a $30 charger that sports an inline USB port. Typical for a Monster product, the 800 veers toward being over-engineered, with gold-plated contacts and an output of one amp (most peripherals typically require only half that).

The other solution is an outlet splitter, an extra USB car plug and another cable; to which the iCarCharger 800 says, “I’m cheaper, less cluttered and I look damn hot. So, ha.”