Cult of iPod contains several JoT cartoons, like the iPod madness comic above. (Click the link for the full cartoon).
Entering the contest is easy — simply post a reply in the forum thread. The contest closes Friday November 18th at 8PM Pacific. Winners will be chosen at random.
There’s a lot of criticism of Apple’s copy-protection scheme, Fairplay, in the news today.
Tidbits Adam Engst describes the headaches he encountered trying to make an audio book, which had been split into four chunks, into one easy-to-use file — a perfectly legal and reasonable thing to do.
Newsweek columnist Steven Levy chastises Apple for refusing to license Fairplay and allow consumers to play iTunes songs on other devices.
Ex-Wired News columnist Adam Penenberg, now writing for Slate, wraps it up with a cogent explanantion of why we, the consumers, have to put up with limiting copy-protection schemes. It has little to do with protecting content, and everything to do with protecting business models:
While Apple stands alone and Sony self-destructs, Microsoft is practically giving away its digital-rights-management tool in an effort to pick up market share against Apple (so far with little success). We may even see a replay of the Apple-Microsoft battle over the desktop, which ended with Apple holding on to a tiny sliver of the computer market. There is, however, a big difference between then and now. Steve Jobs has a hefty market share and a massive content library made up of millions of songs at a price that people like. As long as the record companies license their content to Apple and consumers flock to the iPod, Apple is in a powerful — some might say Gatesian — position.
What’s hardest for the consumer to swallow, then, is that anti-piracy schemes like DRM look like the subtle tactic of the monopolist. Neither Apple nor Microsoft is hurt by music piracy. Instead, they use it as a marketing ploy to force people to use their products. It doesn’t have to be this way. The companies could agree on one standard that allows people to play the music they lawfully purchase on whichever player they choose. The music industry is supposed to sell music, not the medium it comes in, right?
The iPod “Mega Helmet” was made by duct-taping a loud Radio Shack megaphone to an old motorcycle helmet, allowing its wearer to broadcast their taste in music to everyone in earshot. It also includes a microphone in the chin strap.
Its makers advise: “Go play softball wearing the helmet. It is very good for antagonizing the pitcher, and trash-talking in general. The helmet allows both for amplification of your voice, and playback of mp3s from the iPod.”
In the comments, someone else notes: “I’m Loving it! At the movie theater, not only can you block the view of the person sitting behind you but you can also make clever comments about the actors on the screen. Perhaps you could duct tape an egg timer to the side of the helmet to see how long it takes before you’re kicked out of the theater. I give it the maximum five star rating.”
At first the PowerBook looks like it’s displaying a regular “transparent desktop,” made by snapping a pic of the scene behind the computer and displaying it onscreen, giving the impression the LCD is transparent.
But then the PowerBook is picked up and the background stays stationary in space — just as though it would if the screen were truly transparent. It’s a really convincing illusion.
The clip was made by Jose Izquierdo of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and he explains how he did it after the link:
Love Labs, a UK sex-toy manufacturer, has devloped an iPod vibrator that buzzes in time to the music.
The 2-inch, $30 iBuzz plugs into the iPod’s headphone jack and vibrates in sync with the rhythms of the iPod.
The only online retailer that seems to be selling it — Lovehoney — describes it thus:
A super-fun sex toy that plugs into your iPod! The music-activated vibrating bullet stimulates you in time with your favourite music. And you can listen to your songs while you’re enjoying the vibrations…
Use the his-and-hers attachments to add extra excitement. Turn him into a vibrator with the stretchy ring and use the soft sleeve for sensitive stimulation.
Out of Japan, a set of stackable add-ons for the Mac mini that transforms it into a towering music system.
Made by a company called Greenhouse, the components are a 15 Watt subwoofer (bottom); a speaker and USB hub (the one with the knob); and a hard-drive case for storing gigabytes and gigabytes of digital music. On top is the mini itself.
Unfortunatley, there’s no other information about cost or shipping — or how it sounds. Sure looks good though.
Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab was offfered Mac OS X for free for his $100 laptop project, the WSJ reports.
Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.’s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company’s operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative’s founders. “We declined because it’s not open source,” says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
Under present plans, the first production version of the laptop will be powered by an AMD microprocessor and use an open-source Linux-based operating system supplied by Red Hat.
Most observers had expected low-end products like the Mac Mini to switch first, but AppleInsider says:
Although Apple has only committed to introducing the first Intel-based Macintosh systems by mid-2006, extremely reliable sources and a several-month-long investigation have revealed that January’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco is being primed as the launch-pad for at least one of the Mac maker’s next-generation Intel systems.
Surprisingly, the most reliable information indicates that the iMac and PowerBook — two of the company’s most recently revised Mac offerings — are targeted to be the first two Mac models to receive Intel processors in January. The iMac and PowerBook are also believed to be Apple’s best-selling Mac models, which explains why the company will be upgrading them with Intel processors first and refreshing their associated product lines for the second time in as little as four months.
A several-month-long investigation! Well, it must be true. We’ll see. Macworld rumors sure are flying early this year. But, people are saying AppleInsider is the new ThinkSecret.
A Monument businessman convicted of theft and securities fraud won’t be allowed to travel to China to market a product he invented, a judge ruled Friday.
Sanford Schupper, 56, has been convicted of defrauding Citibank Visa of as much as $200,000 and sentenced to six years in prison. In another case, Schupper was convicted of swindling a family out of $872,000 and sentenced to eight years in prison.
Friday, Schupper’s lawyer asked senior state District Court Judge Donald Campbell to grant Schupper permission to go to China to market his latest invention, an accessory for Apple iPods.
Schupper says the product could make him millions and allow him to pay court-ordered restitution to victims of his crimes. He hasn’t revealed specifics about the product because of fears someone might steal the idea.
Sell it as soon as you can! The longer that Mac sits unused, the lower its price will be when you finally sell it. I’ve personally made that mistake several times, sitting on a used Mac for months (or even years) before finally getting around to listing it. It’s not a pleasant realization that your procrastination lost you hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Shawn Morton has published a very handy howto for converting a classic Mac into a bog roll dispenser, or Apple iWipe. Now that’s time well spent.
One of my co-workers was giving away and old Atari 800XL and Macintosh SE case. He had been planning to do a mini-ITX project, but had never gotten around to it. Always wanting an excuse to tinker with something, I decided to take them off of his hands.
Well, as soon as I saw the Mac SE case, I realized that this one had the most potential. So this weekend, I bought a few things at Home Depot and got started making my Apple-power, wireless, portable toilet paper dispenser — the iWipe.
The whole project took a couple of hours and cost about $15.
Mark Williams, a programmer from Nottingham, UK, had dreams of hitting the big time by designing and selling an iPod case that “isn’t a glorified condom.”
This morning I could hardly contain, cough cough, my excitement as I get the box of samples. I open it up to reveal about a 100 solid perspex cubes containing chinese figurines dressed up as a western bride and groom. WTFF?
You COULD NOT make this stuff up. Its like a sitcom – Carry on manufacturing. Mix up at the depot you say, stickers on the wrong boxes you say. Hmm. I feel sorry for the person who was expecting their kitsch loveliness and instead gets a box of tri-colored vaginas.
Coming soon: the iLoad, a gizmo for loading CDs right onto the iPod. There’s no details except the promise it’s “coming soon” and this:
iLoad copies your CDs onto and iPod or other Digital Music Player, along with all album and track data at a high rate of speed.
The site says the “iLoad” trademark is owned by Wingspan Partners of Campbell, CA, which claims to be also working on a MagLev train between Los Angeles and Las Vegas!
I wonder why anyone would want a CD loader when the computer already does a pretty good job ripping CDs. And where will the track data come from? ITunes goes online to fetch them; will this?
Behold the i-Stones, a pair of stone iPod docking stations.
Sold by Brand Incubator of Japan, the i-Stones come in two models: Wabi and Sabi. They feature USB 2; audio and S-Video out.
Wabi-sabi, according to Wikipedia, “represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic.”
It is difficult to explain wabi-sabi in Western terms, but the aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, or incomplete. A concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the first noble truth – Dukkha.
… Many Japanese arts over the past thousand years have been influenced by Zen philosophy, particularly acceptance and contemplation of the imperfection, constant flux, and impermanence of all things. Such arts can exemplify a wabi-sabi aesthetic.
Recognizing the diversity of new distribution channels, the Daytime Emmys are about to announce a new award for video aired on computers, cellphones and video iPods, reports the New York Times.
The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, best known for handing out the Daytime Emmy Awards, is expected to announce on Tuesday that it has created an award category to recognize original video content for computers, cellphones and other hand-held devices, like the video iPod and PlayStation Portable.
The category is to have its debut at the academy’s next Sports Emmys presentation, and ultimately be added as a category for other Emmy presentations as well, including those for news and documentary, business and financial reporting and daytime television. The category will not be included in the prime-time Emmy Awards, which are overseen by a sister organization.
It’s the first test by a respected testing lab I’m aware of. All went smoothly and ZDNet was impressed.
Mac OS X looks in amazingly good early form on the x86 platform. As far as power consumption and OS performance are concerned, it can already keep up with Windows XP. Application performance clearly lags behind, though, and still needs to improve.
…
So far, mainly because of performance and price issues, the Apple platform has failed to tempt many Windows users. This could change soon: from the middle of next year, a Mac OS X x86 platform will be available, which will offer more performance to the Windows world.
This is clearly a quick fix in the run-up to Christmas.
Says another iLounge poster:
I love Apple and I love my nano… But it seems this is sort of a lame attempt to admit guilt, well… maybe not guilt, but neglect on their part for not including a case with nanos to begin with. At the same time, no press release / news has been made about now including cases… Sneaky.
Let’s at least five them the benefit of the doubt that they’ll handle this properly and offer something to those who bought nanos already.
Sony’s copy-protected CDs — the ones that secretly install a sneaky Hax0r “root kit” on customers’ PCs — can also install copy-protection software on Macs, according to a Macintouch report:
… I was surprised to find a “Start.app” Mac application in addition to the expected Windows-related files. Running this app brings up a long legal agreement, clicking Continue prompts you for your username/password (uh-oh!), and then promptly exits. Digging around a bit, I find that Start.app actually installs 2 files: PhoenixNub1.kext and PhoenixNub12.kext.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of anyone installing kernel extensions on my Mac. In Sony’s defense, upon closer reading of the EULA, they essentially tell you that they will be installing software.
The Nimzy Vibro Blaster is an unfortunately named “vibrator” that turns any flat object into a speaker.
Developed by Digital Infotech of Singapore, the Nimzy Vibro Blaster transforms audio from an iPod or other gizmo into mechanical vibrations. Placed on a flat surface — wood, stone, glass or plastic — the company claims its “advanced electro acoustic technology” sounds “loud and clear!”
A wonderfully cheery e-mail from the company’s new US marketing operation in Plantation, Florida, proclaimed:
Believe it or not, no more bulky speakers, any flat object can become one…
Owners of IPODs or any other MP3 players can use Vibro Blaster to share their favorite music anytime, anywhere; Business executives can travel with this compact toy to do presentations with audio from laptop. Hence they become more convincing to the audience; bored in hotel room, travelers can enjoy their own music while conducting multiple tasks, most importantly, hear the phone ring!
Once again, Digital Infotech Inc brings more fun to life and work with innovative technology.
Here’s a link to the only product page I could find. Warning: the page makes a horrible racket.
The Camino project has released the first full version of its highly-regarded “Firefox-for-Mac” web browser.
Though still a beta, the Camino 1.0 browser boasts a giant laundry list of improvements and additions, including vastly improved tabs; Spotlight search through bookmarks; and support for Midas, an inline, rich text editor.
Based on the recently-updated 1.5 version of Firefox 1.8 version of the Gecko rendering engine, Camino always had a reputation for speed. I used the previous alpha version but it never really grabbed me. It seemed incomplete compared to Firefox. I shall, however, definitely give the new version a test drive. After all, Camino claims to blend the best of the Mac and Mozilla:
Camino combines the awesome visual and behavioral experience that has been central to the Macintosh philosophy with powerful web-browsing capabilities such as the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine.
Update: Chris Lawson writes: “Camino is no more based on Firefox 1.5 than Netscape 7 is. Both Camino and Firefox use the 1.8 version of the Gecko rendering engine for their core HTML rendering. (At least you didn’t make the mistake of saying it’s based on WebKit, which I’ve also seen out there.)
Author Jackie Huba just bought a PowerBook after 20 years of being a PC user, and she’s so psyched about it, she made a pseudo Switch ad.
As you can see, she’s already a Mac zealot. Welcome to the cult, Jackie!
Jackie is also co-author of Creating Customer Evangelists, a word-of-mouth marketing book, and the Church of the Customer blog, which is “all about word of mouth, customer evangelism and citizen marketers.”
The next version of Motorola’s stylish RAZR phone, the RAZR V3i, will come equipped with Apple’s iTunes software.
The V3i is the second Moto phone to carry iTunes. Like its predecessor, the ROKR (dubbed the CROCKR because of its limitations), it will likely be limited to 100 songs maximum.
If Apple and Motorola are serious about phones as a digital music player, they need to shape up fast. Thanks to a single-chip design, Nokia is able to push today’s high-end Symbian smartphones down into the midrange next year, and features like WiFi are standard across next year’s N series and E series models. More importantly, Nokia is determined to allow users to share their songs and playlists over a personal area network connection using WiFi or Bluetooth – something that Apple is extremely reluctant to do. As the cheeky graphic nicely illustrates.
