Cult of Mac

Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller took the time to craft a lengthy, detailed statement of the company’s position with respect to criticism leveled Wednesday by this site and others, over the App Store review process Matchstick Software’s Ninjawords application endured on its way to appearing as a 17+ rated selection on the iTunes App Store in mid-July.

As it had been initially reported on Tuesday evening at Daring Fireball, Apple “required” Ninjawords — an iPhone dictionary app that delivers Wiktionary.org content to iPhone and iPod Touch users — to censor certain vulgar content in order to gain approval as a title in the App Store, and yet the company still gave the app a 17+ rating, which requires purchasers to provide proof of age before they can purchase apps so rated.

In a response published Thursday to Daring Fireball author John Gruber, Schiller clarified certain facts and the chain of events that led up to Ninjawords finally appearing on the App Store after having first been rejected by Apple review staff. As Gruber acknowledged Thursday, in actuality, Apple reviewers merely suggested that Matchstick Software developers wait to re-submit their application until Apple had in place Parental Controls (ie: 17+ ratings) on the App Store and in no way suggested that content on the app had to be censored in order to gain Apple’s approval for sale.

Because Parental Controls were not yet available at the time Matchstick wanted to take its product to market, the developers acted of their own accord to censor the app’s content, hoping it would thereby pass Apple’s review process.

As Gruber wrote, “it really came down to bad timing around the launch of parental controls.”

Matchstick spokesman Phil Crosby told Gruber via email, “17+ ratings were not available when we launched, which means at that time, it was simply not possible for our dictionary to be on the App Store without being censored. Given the options of censoring or sitting on the side lines while our competitors ate our lunch, we chose to launch.”

All in all, one can take it as a good sign that Apple cares enough about public perception of the App Store and its often-criticized review policies for Schiller to explain the company’s position so clearly as he did to Gruber.

It’s even better to know that Apple finds — as Schiller put it — “Wiktionary.org is an open, ever-changing resource and filtering the content does not seem reasonable or necessary.”

Logitech Thursday introduced the G330 gaming headset, designed to “combat fatigue” with a claimed ‘first-of-its-kind” behind-the-head design and a silicon-lined headband with pivoting ear pads to relieve pressure points.

An iPod Touch plus a mobile WiFi router is better and cheaper than an iPhone, says Wired.com’s Charlie Sorrell.

Sorrell just got the MiFi — a mobile, battery-powered WiFi hotspot that can share a high-speed cell connection with several devices via WiFi. It’s sold in the U.S. by Verizon for $100. (Requires a two-year contract and a monthly plan costing $40 or $60 — 250MB or 5GB of data, respectively.)

The MiFi is fast and reliable, he says, and can be used with an iPod Touch to make Skype calls and play music streaming from Spotify’s fantastic music library.

“The real point is that if you have a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot in your pocket, it is going to be cheaper than an iPhone contract pretty much anywhere, and can not only enable your iPod Touch to have an always on connection, but let you make Skype calls and stream music without having to worry about the usual iPhone size limits, as you’re on Wi-Fi. You can also share the connection with five machines in total, including a netbook, for true on the go video calls and (gasp) Spotify.”

Setup was a little tricky and he’s not been using the setup long, but Sorrel thinks the combo could be all he needs. He’ll be testing his new setup in coming weeks and promises to report back.

Today’s deals include $649 Apple Intel Mac Minis , 75% off MacMall items, new App Store price drops and many more.

Details of these and other Daily Deals can be found on the CoM Daily Deals page.

If you’re running Leopard, hit Command + Shift + 4 and then the space bar, and you’ll see an icon of a camera that harks back to Steve Jobs’s days at NeXT.

The decades-old icon is one of the last visible vestiges of NeXTStep, the old operating system that laid the foundation for OS X in the late ’90s.

The camera icon looks dated, but it’s pretty good by today’s standards. Look at some of the Windows icons from the same period.

The NeXTStep camera can be found in the Resources of the Grab tool (in the Utilities folder) and comes in several different versions with eyes, stopwatches and camera flashes.

Other holdovers from NeXT in Leopard include various system sounds, including Basso, Frog, Funk, Ping, Pop, and Tink, as one commenter notes at Robojamie.net, which first pointed out the camera icon.

And as another commenter says, there’s another old icon in: /System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Resources/NSMultipleFiles.tiff

It doesn’t seem to be used anywhere though.

Steve Jobs founded NeXT in 1985 after he was booted from Apple. He had the company build advanced workstations, hoping to drive Apple out of business. But its black magnesium NeXT Cubes were too expensive except for select clients in academia and the CIA. NeXT eventualy dropped the hardware to concentrate on the its state-of-the-art software and operating system, which Apple bought in 1996 as the foundation for the Mac OS.

Apple got a lot from NeXT: Jobs came on as an adviser, and eventually took on the CEO role. A lot of Apple’s top executives came from NeXT and so did  lot of its technology. As well as basing OS X on NeXTStep, Apple has built a lot of its online offerings on NeXT’s WebObjects, including its first online store, the iTunes Music Store, its DotMac website and the iPhone App Store.

Philadelphia police are trying to identify a woman jogger wearing an iPod who was crushed to death Wednesday night by a falling tree.

Chief Inspector Scott Small of Philadelphia Police says a 30-foot-long tree branch fell on the woman from 50 feet above as she ran at 6:35 p.m. on Forbidden Drive, a popular gravel trail through Wissahickon Valley Park in the Northwest part of the city.

Police suspect she didn’t hear it coming because of her iPod, which they could still hear playing when her dead body was found.

The mystery jogger sustained head injuries, what appears to be a broken neck and a compound fracture of her right leg.

The woman  police are looking for help to ID is described as white, in her late 20s or early 30s about 5-feet-5 and weighing 120 pounds.

Via Fox Philly, Philadelphia Inquirer

Yesterday I posted an interview with NetNewsWire developer Brent Simmons about the addition of advertising to the app.

I’d sent a follow-up question, asking Newsgator’s VP of Marketing about the expected pricing structure; here’s the answer, directly from Brent Simmons himself.

“The switch to in-app ads for NetNewsWire is not to make up for lost revenue from NewsGator Online nor is it about the economy.

“It’s common for consumer products to feature free, ad-supported versions and paid, ad-free versions. For example, Tweetie and Twitterrific — two very popular Twitter clients, as you know — offer free and paid versions. And FeedDemon, our RSS reader for Windows, has had ads for some time.

“This strategy gives people the chance to still use the app for free — while still giving a company a way to make money, which is a good thing. We felt the time was right to do follow this strategy with NetNewsWire. So there will be a free ad-supported version, and soon we will release a paid, ad-free version. (The two will have the same features: the only difference will be the ads.)

“We haven’t finalized pricing yet, but we’re looking at a range of $15 to $20, with special introductory pricing at first.”

So there you have it. Will you pay 15 to 20 bucks to remove ads from NetNewsWire? Your thoughts, as always, are welcomed.

Walt Mossberg yesterday revealed Microsoft’s official chart that explains how you can upgrade your version of Windows. And I use the word ‘explains’ in its loosest possible sense, since Microsoft’s chart looks like this:

Clearly, this is a great example of how extra choice doesn’t always benefit the consumer. And for what it’s worth, all those blue boxes are boxes of doom—‘in-place upgrades’ (green) means the install will keep your files, settings and programs intact, but the more common custom install (blue) refers to a clean install, which will force a user to move their files, install the OS, replace their files and reinstall their apps. (And then, presumably, curl up into a ball in the corner of the room and weep uncontrollably.)

I thought it’d be useful to create a Mac equivalent for Snow Leopard. If you’ve got an Intel Mac, the upgrade path regarding installation is certainly a lot simpler:

And this is simplified even further if you’ve got a PowerPC Mac:

Just one day after earning congratulations for pulling the developer’s license of a prolific producer of useless (and possibly copyright-infringing) applications, propriety demands Apple receive a major Bronx cheer for the way the company treated Matchstick software and their Ninjawords iPhone Dictionary application.

The degree of censorship and hassle Apple forced Matchstick developers to endure in order to get their nifty $2 app listed on the App Store, as reported Tuesday at Daring Fireball, is simply unconscionable.

In recent weeks, Cult of Mac has reported a number of stories showing many holes in the tattered shroud of respectability with which Apple attempts to proclaim the innocence and purity of all things that might ever appear on the iPhone. The tale behind Ninjawords’ (iTunes link) tribulations would seem to set Apple’s high-water mark for institutional hypocrisy to date.

As Daring Fireball author John Gruber put it so well: Apple requires you to be 17 years or older to purchase a censored dictionary that omits half the words Steve Jobs uses every day.

For Shame.

Logitech Wednesday introduced the M505 a new wireless mouse. The ergonomic laser device has a 15-month battery life and is compatible with the company’s Unifying USB receiver which allows you to add different mice and keyboards without additional receivers.

[Via Logitech]

Ready to head-butt your Mac from the onslaught of everyday annoyances?

Use it for something better: emWave is a handy stress reducer just released in a Mac version that charts your heart rate and trains you to relax.

It’s the brainchild of Doc Childre, who founded a company called HeartMath in 1991 to create medi-gadgets for people seeking relief from stress and looking for greater mental clarity.

What is it?
Billed as a “Stress Relief System,” it promises big but comes in a small package.  You get an ear sensor for your heart rate that plugs into a USB key and a software program that monitors your heart rhythms and breathing, plus a CD training guide.  Initially unimpressed, after taking emWave through its paces for 10 days, I’m convinced nirvana may be something other than a band.

Details and full review after the jump.

Have you ever been in the middle of pitching your $100 million start-up and you interrupt your patter to inform the room of angel investors to turn to the next slide? That’s the situation Logitech hopes to avoid with two wireless professional presenter gadgets introduced Wednesday.

Today’s deals include Apple MacBooks starting at $849, refurbished 8GB iPhone 3G, new App Store price drops and many more.

Details of these and other Daily Deals can be found on the CoM Daily Deals page.

What, you may be wondering, is going on over at Newsgator?

In a recent statement, the company (which owns NetNewsWire, the desktop RSS reader that pretty much defined the category on OS X) announced a fundamental change to its service: from August 31st, it will switch off the web-based RSS reader known as Newsgator Online for consumer users.

Newsgator’s existing desktop apps, including NetNewsWire, will continue to work. But if you want them to sync with other RSS readers, you’ll have to have a Google Account and do it via Google Reader, which will become your web-based viewer, replacing Newsgator Online.

And all this, of course, has consequences for users of NetNewsWire. A new public beta is out now, which supports the Google-based sync.

It also includes ads, distributed via The Deck. This last change has not been trumpeted with quite as much enthusiasm by Newsgator – advertising is not mentioned at all in the blog post that announced the changes.

Cult of Mac got in touch with NetNewsWire’s developer and mastermind, Brent Simmons, to ask him: what’s going on? And why the ads?

Here’s what he said.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giBNazD-Lm4

Apple launched a new pair of iPhone 3GS ads to highlight features common to newer and older devices.

Continuing the “there’s an app for that” meme, the rather underwhelming one above about sharing shows how you can exchange photos using Mover and contact info with Bump.  (The other ad focuses on travel apps for jet-setting iPhone owners).

With gazillions of apps available, the ad uses two that do a lot of the same things –  allowing users to share contact info, photos and files.

Both Mover and Bump are offered gratis on iTunes and earned three out of a five possible stars in customer ratings. (I downloaded Bump following the hype when it was the billionth app downloaded in the iTunes store, but haven’t had much occasion to use it.)

Which is better, or do you use both?

If you were building a better app ad, what would you have mentioned instead?

Apple’s board of directors is a bit light these days. In addition to recently resigned/forced out/exiled Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who is the eye of a hurricane about the notorious Google Voice/App Store rejection/AT&T imbroglio, the company has an internal seat it has kept vacant since the resignation/dismissal/ejection of former Chief Financial Officer Fred Anderson in the wake of the backdating/did Steve or didn’t he/stock options fiasco.

In other words, Apple could add as many as two board members to its strange leadership team, which currently stands as Jobs, Al Gore, Genentech Chairman Arthur Levinson, Intuit Chairman Bill Campbell and the CEOs of both Avon and J. Crew. The ghost of Andy Warhol, despite rumors, does not actually sit on the board.

So who should join this squad? Fake Steve’s had his say, and it’s high time we had ours as well. As BusinessWeek’s Arik Hesseldahl points out, temporary CEO/COO-extraordinaire Tim Cook seems like an obvious addition, especially given his position on Nike’s board, and his value to the company is at this point proven and prominent. He seems like a gimme, particularly if Apple wants him to become the real CEO at some point.

From an external perspective, however, things get much more interesting. At this point, Apple’s board is very light on tech folks. Besides Steve, only Campbell is directly involved in computers, and he’s only on the consumer and small and medium business markets constituted by Quicken and QuickBooks. That said, Apple is running out of friends in technology — virtually everyone is in competition with them in some form or another, which is partially what led to the awkward situation with Schmidt.

Tenuous as their relationship has been in the past (particularly over use of the term iPhone), I would love to see John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, on the board. He’s an incredibly bright guy, a brilliant manager, and he really gets tech and telecommunications without being an Apple competitor in any meaningful sense. Additionally, he has a reputation for remarkable ethics, both personally and across his organization — Cisco was one of the only organizations in Silicon Valley that didn’t have stock backdating issues a few years back. He also gets business customers in a big way.

Chambers is my pick. What say you?

Do you leave coveted goods like iPods in plain sight around the house and forget to lock doors?

Well, if you live in Nottingham, England you just might find a police officer dressed up as “Burglar Bill”  entering your residence to teach you a lesson.

The charade is being staged to teach locals to wise up after some 285 homes were robbed in April and May by thieves entering through unlocked doors or open windows — police there say one-third of all home burglaries are perped this way.

Must-have gadgets like the iPod are a quick nick and hard to trace, they point out.

Detective Chief Superintendent Neil James said in a press release: “It only takes a couple of seconds for a thief to reach in through an open window or walk inside an unlocked door and steal a handbag, car keys, iPod and all sorts of other valuable items.”

You’ll be able to tell the artificial larcenist from the real deal because the police officer will don a get-up inspired by Hamburglar: striped shirt, mask and loot bag.

Once the fright wears off, police hope people will be more likely to use common sense habits to keep intruders out — close windows, lock doors and when at home, don’t leave keys in locks or on view and put keys out of sight to stop anyone who breaks in using your car as the getaway vehicle.
What’s still not clear: do the fake burglars give the iPods back?

Via This is Nottingham

A ringtone company that professes to hate ringtones has introduced three new sets of  ringers for the iPhone that address cellphone etiquette.

Available now for $10 each, the three new collections from San Francisco-based iRingPro are designed to make your ringing iPhone less shrill, annoying and intrusive.

“We hate ringtones,” said founder Joel Hladecek in a statement. “Which must sound odd coming from a company that makes them. But then I think that’s why iRingPro ringers are more sophisticated – why they sound cooler and seem so much more adult than anything else out there.”

iRingPro’s ringtones come in two versions – long and short. While the short tones have a traditional gap between rings, the long version has a longer period of silence, making it more relaxed and allowing you time to check who’s calling before the next ring.

The ringtones also come in “Meeting Grade” or “Active Grade.” Designed for meetings, the Meeting Grade tones are quieter and softer. When you’re out and about, the Active Grade tones are more vigorous, making them audible from a pocket or handbag, or over traffic noise.

Joining iRingPro’s well-received Zen Collection, the three new collections are:

Tek: A collection of sc-fi tones inspired by the futuristic gadgets of Hollywood. “Everybody looks to see what kind of technology you’re holding,” the company says.

Origin: A collection of “hand-made” sounds that invoke the origins of music. “Each time the phone rings, it sounds slightly different,” iRingPro says.

Zen 2: Designed for meetings or quiet settings. Free to registered owners of the original Zen Collection.

Each collection costs $9.95 and available now in iPhone and MP3 formats. You can preview each collection on iRingPro’s website.

Nikon, known for its skills as a camera maker, is now in the pocket projector business. That seems to be the news coming from the introduction of the Nikon s100pj, a 12.1-megapixel digital camera that also includes a VGA projector.

Maybe the most surprising component in this gadget is neither the camera fans nor projector are slighted. Wired describes the camera as a “solid picture-taker” with a 2.7-inch screen, 5x zoom with optical and digital image stabilization. The projector can throw up a 40-inch image at up to 2 meters. A remote and stand are also provided when you want to show the neighborhood some family snaps.

The 5.5-ounce camera/projector is $429.95.

[Via Gadget Lab and Nikon]

Kensington becomes the latest company attempting to expand the boundary of traditional iPhone/iPod docks. To their credit, Kensington offers a mini battery back pack that can be recharged while your phone or digital music player refuels.

We’ve all run into the situation where our favorite gadget is running low on juice and we are either away from a dock or simply don’t want to interrupt things for a recharge. The mini battery pack provides 30 hours of music, six hours of video or three hours of talk.

The Kensington iPhone/iPod dock and mini battery charger will be available in October for $69.99.

[Via 9to5 Mac and Kensington]

Today’s deals include Apple MacBook Pros starting at $1,299, new App Store price drops, a palm-size LED projector and many more.

Details of these and other Daily Deals can be found on the CoM Daily Deals page.

Apple has revoked the iPhone developer’s license of one prolific mobile app developer, according to a report at MobileCrunch, but the company is still taking heat for inconsistencies in its App Store approval policies.

Kahlid Shaikh and his team of 26 engineers working under the name Perfect Acumen had over 900 apps approved and selling in the iTunes App Store until July 24, when Apple terminated Shaikh’s iPhone Developer Program License due to concerns over “numerous third party intellectual property complaints concerning over 100 of [his] Applications.”

The majority of Shaikh’s apps merely aggregated content found on the web and delivered it to iPhone users under titles such as “US Army News”, “Skin Care Updates” and “Economical Crisis Updates”, as well as other questionable content under titles such as “Top Sexy Ladies” and “Top Sexy Men”.

Shaikh admitted he is not concerned about creating particularly valuable apps, according to the MobileCrunch report. Instead, he said, he’s going for “less product value” and “more monetization.” Many of his apps had been sold for $4.99, generating revenue in the range of thousands of dollars per day for Perfect Acumen, according to the report.

Despite having finally grown exasperated with fielding copyright and intellectual property claims against Shaikh, and having acted to remove what some believe was a raft of useless apps from the App Store, Apple is taken to task by the author of the MobileCrunch report for inconsistencies in its App Store review process. The entire brouhaha here is seen as evidence that “Clearly, Apple doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing.”

It appears, in the eyes of some, Apple cannot win for losing, no matter what the company does with the App Store. Either its review process is too open or it’s too restrictive; the store has too many useless apps, bans products users want, or acts to cull sketchy apps — and the end result is “Apple Sucks” no matter what they do.

Apple’s is a difficult position for a company to be in. The company created an entirely new distribution model for an industry that didn’t even exist two years ago. It created opportunity and economic activity that has amounted to one of the few glimmering beacons of hope in what has been roundly described as one of the worst economic downturns in nearly a century. And yet some people seem unable to accept the fact that every single decision made at every step of the way has not resulted in clear skies, smooth sailing and endless joy for one and all.

Make no mistake: Apple is a huge company that can and will act with caprice to get and maintain whatever economic advantage it can in a ruthless marketplace. The FCC appears increasingly interested in the operational nuances among Apple, Google and AT&T, as the formerly moribund antitrust watchdogs of the federal government are starting to prick up their ears under the Obama administration.

However, when Apple acts to shed the likes of Shaikh and his questionable work product from the App Store the company ought to be praised for finally — if belatedly — doing the right thing.

Netflix’s fantastic streaming movie service is coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch, according to a report in the trade mag Multichannel News.

Citing “an industry executive familiar with Netflix’s plans,” the trade mag says Netflix’s Watch Instantly service is headed to the iPhone, iPod Touch and the Nintendo Wii. However, because of bandwidth concerns, it will likely be available only over WiFi  and not AT&T’s 3G network, MN says.

Either way, it’s great news.

I’m a subscriber and a big fan of Netflix’s service, which I find to be easier, more convenient and much, much cheaper than Apple’s iTunes. For about $20 a month, we get to stream a wide a wide variety of TV shows and movies from Netflix instead of paying a la carte for rentals or purchases from iTunes.

Indeed, Netflix’s Watch Instantly is the strongest of the online on-demand video services — the gold standard for content on demand.

The selection isn’t comprehensive, but I find it to be pretty good. There’s not the latest releases, but there’s a pretty deep and wide library of great movies, which is more than can be said for iTunes, which I find unbearably popcorn and shallow.

In addition, Netflix movies stream quickly, the quality is great, even on a big 42-inch HDTV, and we’ve never, ever encountered a problem — a rare and astonishing testament to the company’s technology.  (We use the service through a Samsung Blu-Ray player which streams Netflix and Pandora).

The service is already available on a wide range of devices from Windows PCs and Macs, to the Xbox 360, TiVo and several Blu-Ray DVD players with support for streaming downloads.

Via AppleInsider.

Porno director Matt Morningwood, who shot the first adult scene on an iPhone 3GS, made the mistake of shooting in portrait mode, or “tallscreen.”

The vertical video format presented Matt with problems when it came to displaying the video at 16:9, but here’s how he figured out how to use iPhone video with Final Cut Pro.

Fake Steve has a hilarious series of posts about Eric “Squirrel Boy” Schmidt’s resignation from Apple’s board. Much better than the real news and boring analysis. Starts with Squirrel Down! and continues:

“Eric, let me tell you something. After what you pulled here at Apple, no one will ever trust you again. You’re a dead man. Okay? You are the herpes of the tech industry. You lame-ass spy. You backstabbing, flack-fucking thief. You sat in our meetings and learned all of our secrets. You listened to our product development plans. Then you went off and copied our products and now you’re trying to fuck me in the ear with my own ideas.”

Then he goes on to detail the hilarious phone calls Steve has taken from wannabes looking to fill Schmidt’s empty seat, including Woz, Kara Swisher, Jon Shirley, Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble and Chris Anderson.

Worth reading in order to appreciate how the joke builds (I made the mistake of reading them backwards). Highlights are the Kawasaki and Anderson posts.

Link.