Cult of Mac

Apple’s iTunes – the only online music distributor that matters, according to one well-placed music lawyer – may get additional competition before year-end, if an exclusive Wired report published Monday proves accurate.

Spotify, a music service boasting over 6 million songs that can be accessed on-demand and customized into personalized, editable, downloadable playlists, is currently available only in Europe but the company is feverishly working to sign distribution agreements with copyright holders and music labels to bring both a desktop and an iPhone application to American consumers as soon as possible, according to the report.

Spotify’s potential to compete with iTunes in the US remains speculative at this point, and the company understands that despite having created a slick iPhone app to which Wired writer Eliot Van Buskirk gives rave pre-release reviews, Apple could put the kibosh on the whole thing if it determines Spotify “replicates functionality” provided by Apple’s native iTunes application. “It’s going to be very interesting to see if Apple lets this through or sees us as competition — fingers crossed,” explained Spotify communications manager Jim Butcher.

Whether or not the iPhone app is approved, when the company gets its US distribution agreements in order it seems likely that many will check out some of the interesting features the desktop service will have to offer, such as the ability to stream playlists created by other Spotify members and to access an ad-free version of the service with a premium account.

It will be interesting, too, to see how Spotify differs from and compares with Lala, another iTunes competitor with great potential already available in the US.

Apple has officially declared the iconic “Luxo lamp” iMac as an “obsolete” computer.

Several models of the iconic machine, which won as many enemies as fans for its unusual lamp-like design, will be declared obsolete on September 15, according to HardMac.com.

The obsolete designation means that Apple service centers will no longer stock parts for the machines –and will no longer repair them — though third-party repair shops likely will.

The Luxo-lamp iMac caused a huge stir when it was introduced in 2002. It made the cover of Time magazine and is now exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

The machine was the first iMac to feature a flat-panel display, which floated above its CPU, housed in a white plastic dome. The screen was attached by a double-jointed chrome arm, which realigned the screen with the slightest touch of a fingertip, but then kept it in place — no mean feat of design.

The machine was a bear to design, according to Apple’s head designer, Jonathan Ive. At first Ive tried to glom the guts of the computer onto the back of a flat panel display, but the early prototypes were inelegant. Then, during a walk in Steve Jobs’s back garden, Jobs told Ive that each element had to be “true to itself,” which led the designer to look at sunflowers as inspiration, and seperate the screen from the body.

A few years later, Ive was able to marry the guts to the screen, and newer iMacs are much closer to Ive’s original conception, but the freaky-looking Luxo-lamp iMac remains a firm favorite of many.

The family of the Foxconn employee who reportedly committed suicide over a lost iPhone prototype has been compensated for his death, even though the company suspects him of industrial espionage, the New York Times reports.

The family of Sun Danyong, 25, received 300,000 renminbi, or more than $44,000, and his girlfriend got a new Apple laptop.

However, Foxconn, which makes iPods and iPhones under contract to Apple, says the employee had a history of suspiciously “losing” products, suggesting he might be involved in industrial espionage.

“The case also underscores the challenges that global companies face in trying to safeguard their designs and intellectual property in the hotly contested smartphone market, particularly here in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, an electronics manufacturing center known for piracy and counterfeiting,” the Times says.

Today’s deals include refurbished MacBook Air, starting at $999, refurbished 80GB iPod Video, new App Store freebies and many more.

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

Apple is designing an entirely new entertainment experience designed specifically for its upcoming tablet, the Financial Times claims today in an interesting but rather vague story.

Apple’s fabled touchscreen tablet will have a 10-inch screen and will be more like an oversized iPod Touch than a full-fledged tablet computer (a key question is what OS it will run).

Contrary to previous rumors, the tablet hit stores in time for the holidays, the FT says, citing record label sources out of New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

To accompany it, Apple is working on a new entertainment package to rival the album experience in days of yore, when the release of a new album was a cultural and social event.

“It’s all about re-creating the heyday of the album when you would sit around with your friends looking at the artwork, while you listened to the music,” one executive told the FT.

Codenamed “Cocktail,” the entertainment bundle would resemble an “interactive book,” but be more than a bunch of hotlinked PDFs, the FT says.

Apple is reportedly working on Cocktail with the big four record labels, who describe the project as “revolutionary” and are hoping it will offset declining album sales. When consumers buy music online, they biuy low-margin singles, not profitable albums.

Unfortunately the FT doesn’t have many details of this intriguing idea. Reminds me of the hype surrounding “multi-media CDs” in the late ’90s when CDs with music and video were supposed to provide a similar revolution in entertainment and education.  There was talk about amazing immersive encyclopedias, but instead we got unreadable digital books with tiny embedded QuickTime movies.

Its also hard to imagine friends sitting around an Apple tablet reading band biographies while listening to music.

Much easier to imagine a couple of kids on the couch sharing the device to watch episodes of Spongebob.

Indeed, one record exec told the FT: “It’s going to be fabulous for watching movies.”

The FT says Apple is also in talks with book publishers who are “optimistic about their services being offered with the new computer.”

Cordell Ratzlaff is the man who designed OS X’s interface for Steve Jobs.

Back in 1997, just after Jobs had returned to the ailing company, he saw some mockups for a new operating system interface Ratzlaff and his designers had cooked up.

Jobs was so impressed, he said it was the “first sign of double-digit intelligence” he’d seen since returning to Apple – Jobs’s idea of a complement.

At the time, computer interfaces were dark and gloomy. They were boxy, with hard corners, square windows and gloomy, grey colors. Apple was working on the first iMac, the world’s first fruity-colored computer that had a unique teardrop shape and lots of rounded corners.

Taking the iMac as their cue, Ratzlaff and his designers cooked up an interface to complement it. The result was “Aqua,” an interface inspired by water, as its name suggests, which was bright and blue, with plenty of droplets, translucent menus and reflection effects.

“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them,” said Jobs when introducing it at Macworld.

Now Ratzlaff has designed the interface for a new web-based investing tool called Kapitall.

Apple is introducing dozens of arty new desktop backgrounds in Snow Leopard, the new version of OS X due in the fall.

There are 40 new desktops  in the latest test seed delivered to developers this weekend, including reproductions of famous paintings from artists like Edward Hopper, Van Gogh and Monet.

The new desktops include:

* Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Monet’s Lilies, Hopper’s Nighthawks, Degas’ Ballet Dancers on the Stage, and Katsushika Hokusai’s Tsunami.

* Three graffiti desktops that will make your computer look like a New York subway car circa 1978.

* Several high-res shots of snow leopards, including the one above.

The art is classic, but the themes struck me at odds with Apple’s optimistic image: madness, loneliness, alienation and death. I don;t know if I want my files hanging out with Hopper’s lonely souls.

All 40 Snow Leopard desktops after the jump.

Steve Jobs is fond of the saying “good artists copy, great artists steal,” which would put Microsoft in the great artist category.

Apple’s rival is planning to open retail stores this fall that are a direct ripoff of Apple’s super successful shops.

In a presentation leaked to Gizmodo, Microsoft is planning stores that are “light and airy,” divided into solution areas, and feature a “guru bar.” Sound familiar?

• Different areas for Windows Mobile, Windows Media Center, Windows 7, and netbook
• A Guru Bar where customers can get answers from Windows experts
• Regular demos and events
• A special Microsoft shopping bag

But here’s one idea that’s not ripped off from Apple.

The Microsoft Store will host birthday parties!

The iPhone has hit its lowest price ever.

For $50, AT&T is offering a refurbished iPhone 3G 8GB for $49 with free shipping. Comes in any color you want, as long as its black. Depends on activation of new voice and data plans. This is the lowest price ever for a factory-packaged iPhone, according to DealMac.com.

For $100, refurbished 16GB iPhones are available. The deal is exclusive to the AT&T online store while supplies last.

Find more deals every day on the CoM Daily Deals page.

A bit of fun, here. Multiple websites and stock reporting services today briefly misreported that modest gains in Apple’s stock today (2 points as of 11 a.m.) was actually a titanic leap of 40 points, or more than 33 percent of its gain.

As submitting reader SBI notes:

“WTF?  Just checked AAPL and almost had a heart attack.  I thought maybe Redmond and Enderle just spontaneously combusted.  In all honesty, I don’t know where everybody draws the stock data from, but I saw this on at least 3 diff sites.”

Amazing. Apple announced great results, but that would be something else…

More pics below.

It’s Friday and it’s time for our new weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.

APP OF THE WEEK

Parachute Panic: Fun rescue game, akin to swipe-based G&W Parachute – drawn with a biro. Infectious music. 4/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/1F76A

Grunts: Simplified Cannon Fodder. Retains good humour & graphic design, but controls poor & tactics lacking. 2/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/1F7jF

Air Sharing Pro: Turns device into wireless disk. Good UI. Feature-rich. Good view support. Dire email feature. 4/5 $9.99 https://is.gd/1GffO

iHandy Carpenter: Set of virtual tools. Great UI/calibration and good level tools, but naff, awkward ruler. 4/5 $1.99 https://is.gd/1Hxzs

Poppi: Akin to Electroplankton mixed with pool. Nice idea/sound/graphics, but very harsh difficulty spikes. 3/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/1IMlf

Frogger: Barely adequate update of an arcade classic, lacking the charm, music & nice graphics of the original. 2/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/1KqHl

Not the best of weeks for retro games. A buck for iPhone Frogger is a buck more than it’s worth (is it really too much to ask, Atari, for the original, superior graphics and the old music?), and Grunts looked like it’d be Cannon Fodder for iPhone, but ended up making me want to take a machine gun to my Apple device, due to shoddy controls.

Things were better on the app front, notably the genuinely useful Air Sharing Pro, which turns your iPhone into a wireless drive, although using a third-party server for the email function is a dreadful idea.

App of the week, though, has to be Parachute Panic. A little like Nintendo’s Parachute Game & Watch crossed with Flight Control, the aim is to get parachutists into waiting boats, without getting them killed. The original release of the game was awful, due to some stupidly unfair gameplay components, but this release is a million times better. The title tune is great as well, and I’m happy to admit I nipped into the game’s package to get that track into iTunes. Put it as a download on your website, Parachute Panic guys!

Follow iPhoneTiny on Twitter, or visit iPhoneTiny.com.

This handmade iPhone cover enlists an Apple icon born in the early 1980s to protect your smart device.

The gray felt case sporting a Happy Mac face is 5.125″ high x 3.25″ wide, so it should fit all iPhone models.

I’d buy it just for the tiny, embroidered Apple rainbow symbol in the corner.

$25 on Etsy.

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

Apple recently complained to Microsoft about its “Laptop Hunter” ad series where pseudo-everyday consumers go on a shopping quest to buy computers on a limited budget.

In what Microsoft Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner called “the greatest single phone call,” Apple lawyers rang up to lament the ads weren’t accurate — since the company shaved prices off Macs, some by as much as $300 hundred dollars, in June.
Microsoft agreed to edit the ads to reflect this.

So what changed in the ad campaign? Not much.

The first edited ad is “Lauren and Sue,” where a mom-and-daughter team are in the market for a computer for under $1,700.

Originally, the ad showed law student Lauren declaring:

“This Mac is $2,000, and that’s before adding anything.”

“Why would you pay twice the price?” asks Lauren’s mom. “I wouldn’t,” says Lauren, who heads to the checkout with a $972 Dell laptop.

In the updated version, the specific price is edited out but Lauren does a drive-by of the Macs, dismissing the MacBook Pro (“this one only has a 250GB hard drive”) before sentencing: “It seems like you’re paying a lot for the brand.”

Microsoft’s Turner told journalists that his company plans to “keep running them and running them and running” the Laptop Hunter ads — and it’s easy to see why. They don’t need specific prices to use the expensive-but-not-really-worth-it Mac argument.

Via Ad Age

Apple is adding moisture sensors to everything, from iPods and iPhones to MacBooks and even its latest keyboards.

But recent reports suggest the sensors may be too sensitive, and may even be triggered by high humidity.

The moisture sensors, or Liquid Submersion Indicators (LSI), are small stickers that change color from white to red if submerged. Apple refuses to honor warranties on products with triggered sensors, assuming they’ve been dropped in a swimming pool or doused with Mountain Dew, no matter what the owner says.

The sensors, which are found in the dock connector ports of iPhones and under the keys of Apple’s latest keyboards, are controversial. There have been complaints that they’re triggered by sweat.

Now, there are reports out of Singapore that high humidity is killing iPhones, but positive LSI indicators are allowing the local carrier to reject warranty claims.

Today’s deals include new App Store freebies, Imation’s iPod Clock Radio, a $1 iPhone and iPod travel charger and many more.

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

One of the biggest drags of the iPhone – its battery — may one day be supplemented with a wireless charging system that recharges the device in your pocket or bag when you walk in the room.

At the TED Global conference in Oxford on Thursday, Eric Giler, CEO of Witricity, demonstrated an iPhone being recharged wirelessly by his company’s new system.

“You’d never have to worry about plugging these things in again,” he said.

Giler explained the system to the BBC (see the video above). He says the technology could be on the market within 18 months.

Witricity’s wireless charging system is based on the physics of “electromagnetic resonance,” the same principle that makes a wine glass shatter when an opera singer hits the right note.

But instead of sound energy, Witricity’s system transports power over electromagnetic waves. The system has two parts: A transmitter unit, plugged into a wall outlet, which uses a vibrating coil to create a resonant magnetic field. In the target gadget, a matching coil tuned to the same frequency transforms electromagnetic vibrations into juice for the device.

The system works without any physical contact. Other wireless charging systems, like Palm’s Touchstone, require contact between the gadget and the charging base.

The system is claimed to be safe, and will charge gadgets and devices within range, including bigger electronics like flat-screen TVs. Giler demonstrated a TV running on wireless power that is commercially-available.

Giler also showed the system recharging a T-Mobile G1 phone, which had all the components packed inside. The iPhone had to be fitted with a special sled.

“They don’t make it easy at Apple to get inside their phones so we put a little sleeve on the back,” he said.

Tod Kurt put together this clean, clear iPhone dock from four pieces of acrylic scraps. He was inspired to create it after buying a case that wouldn’t work with traditional docks. More details and close-up pic after the jump.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWQ_UV-9Wb4

This video, from Drew Carey’s libertarian-leaning ReasonTV, is supposed to convince Americans that they shouldn’t buy iPods.

Why?

They may be “designed by Apple in California” but almost all of the 451-odd parts hail from abroad — the screen from Japan, the battery from Chile the CPU design from Britain — and it’s assembled, of course, in China. (The info comes from a 2007 report you can download the pdf here).

So the iPod, goes the ReasonTV argument, is not an American product.  Buying them is not patriotic — real patriots would take a hammer to them. (Though if you stick with the video until its nearly 10 minute conclusion, it comes back around to why buying them isn’t all bad for the US economy).

The beauty-bashing the foreign-made beast action happens at about 2:30.

Confession: I know I’m missing the point, but even watching these chicks smash what look like fake iPods makes me cringe.

Today’s deals include a refurbished PowerBook G4 for $699, a MacBook Pro with 15-inch screen, an Apple Back-to-School offer and many more.

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

What’s the worst kept secret in China?

The features and dimensions of Apple’s new iPod Touch and iPod Nano, which are hush-hush here in the U.S. ahead of their expected September unveiling, but are well-known in China.

According to more than a dozen pictures of new cases acquired by CoM, the new iPod Touch and iPod Nano will both get cameras.

The big surprise is that the iPod Touch’s camera is in the center of the device, not offset like the camera in the iPhone.

The Nano’s new camera is placed in the bottom left corner, which becomes top left when the iPod is held horizontally to take a picture, with fingers on each corner.

The outside dimensions remain largely the same as previous models, but the Nano gets a widescreen display, the better to take photos with the camera on the back.

This has all been widely rumored, of course. iLounge detailed the new Nano back in May.

But the dozen pictures of new cases below all but confirm the rumors. Chinese case manufacturers are so certain of the features and dimensions, they are already sending out samples of the cases. They wouldn’t do this unless they were pretty confident.

“My company had got full information and dimension,” wrote a Chinese distributor in an email to a U.S. reseller. “Enclosed some image and instruction for your reference. Most of the sample available now. If you need some sample check quality please freely let me know.”

Hit the jump for dozens of new cases exclusively unearthed by CoM.

Malcolm Gladwell is a very sharp guy, on a whole lot of topics (heck, he liked my book!). One of the most enjoyable reads of the past month is his point-by-point thrashing of Chris Anderson’s book Free in the New Yorker, which basically established that, all protests to the contrary, charging money is a better business than giving things away for free.

But in the course of this deconstruction, Malcolm made a pretty big arithmetic error that made it sound like Apple was on the verge of making the content it sells for its devices more important than the hardware itself:

“And there’s plenty of other information out there that has chosen to run in the opposite direction from Free. The Times gives away its content on its Web site. But the Wall Street Journal has found that more than a million subscribers are quite happy to pay for the privilege of reading online. Broadcast television—the original practitioner of Free—is struggling. But premium cable, with its stiff monthly charges for specialty content, is doing just fine. Apple may soon make more money selling iPhone downloads (ideas) than it does from the iPhone itself (stuff). The company could one day give away the iPhone to boost downloads; it could give away the downloads to boost iPhone sales; or it could continue to do what it does now, and charge for both.”

Actually, Apple is really, really far away from making more money selling iPhone downloads than from the iPhone itself. Let’s take the most recent data we have.

As Apple ponders a makeover of some of its stores — the first international remodel is underway in Bluewater (UK) — it’s a good time to consider which of the over 250 retail outlets are worth making a pilgrimage to, or a slight detour if something goes awry while you’re on the road.

The top five must-see Apple stores, as per travel site Jaunted, are London, Tokyo, Sydney, New York — and Scottsdale.

What’s on your list? Let us know in the comments.

Pics and nominations after the jump.

Now, if I worked in a proper office with a bunch of other people, this app would probably have pride of place on my iPhone’s dock.

It’s called Tea Round, and it’s a work of genius. You enter the names of everyone in your office, then simply give it a shake every time the decision is made that a cup of tea is called for.

Tea Round decides whose turn it is, and the named individual must go and make the tea. After all, “Tea Round’s decision is final and legally binding.”

You can even have separate tea rounds for work, home, and anywhere else there might be a need for a group of people to have a cup of tea. Right now the app is free, which makes it almost as awesome as tea itself.

Unfortunately I work alone, at home, and it is always my turn to make the tea. That is both a blessing and a curse.

Just spent two days recovering from a hack attack at Cultofmac.com. The site was a seething cesspit of Viagra spam and — get this – Windows malware.

Looks like hackers compromised an FTP login to our host (a notorious weakspot), allowing the filthy scumbags to inject hidden spam into almost every post we’ve ever published (more than 3,500 articles).

The lowlifes also added a malware redirect to a couple of index.php files. The redirects were located inside hidden iframes, and took a bit of finding. Not sure how these manifested themselves, but they seem to have popped up in the site’s RSS feed. At least one reader seems to have been infected with the System Security 2009 Trojan and the Bloodhood PDF virus — both Windows malware. Sorry Chris!

Luckily, most of you guys are on the Mac, or I’d have a lot more apologising to do.

I’ve spent the last two days downloading the site database, doing a global search/replace to remove the spam and virus links, and the re-uploading the DB.

I changed all the logins/passwords to everything; killed a bunch of old and dodgy-looking accounts on the site and host; and locked down the site with WordPress plugins to prevent brute-force logins and the like.

Amazingly it all seems to have worked, because I’ve no idea what I’m doing.

There may be a few gremlins in the RSS feed. New feeds are working fine, but I’m unable to get my old feeds to update. If you’re having the same problem, just cross your fingers and we’ll all hope together that the problem magically fixes itself tomorrow, especially because I’ve got a major scoop.