Cult of Mac

Doom now runs on the iPod nano, the iDoom project has announced.

Check the video of Doom on the Nano.

Note: the game requires installation of iPodLinux first, which likely voids the warranty.

The iPod nano now ships with a little plastic sheath to protect it, notes a poster on the iLounge forums.

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.

What ever happened with that lawsuit?

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 CD in question was Imogen Heap’s new Speak For Yourself, and there’s lots of discussion about the sneaky software on her messageboards.

(Via Boingboing)

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.”

There’s a new Flickr group dedicated to glowing Apple logos. Some of them are pretty good – like the picture above, which was taken from Eric Payette’s photostream.

(Thanks Steffen Nork!)

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.

The RAZR is “the first choice for a select group of fashion elite and Hollywood ‘it’ girls,” according to the Moto press release. That may be, but the Register isn’t impressed:

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.

PS: Be sure to check the Register’s graphic.

The French site MacBidouille has detailed step-by-step instructions for souping-up a 12-inch iBook and turning it into a something comparable to the 12-inch PowerBook — at a considerable saving.

It requires disassembing the iBook, swapping out the optical drive and hard drive, and adding Bluetooth and a ton of RAM. It takes a couple of hours, and “this transformation is not a piece of cake,” but:

All parts including the iBook have been purchased for 1,598 euros VAT included. To compare, the same iBook 80GB 5400rpm without the SuperDrive costs : 1,677.99 euros VAT included and the PB 12″ Superdrive 1.2 GB with 80 GB 5400rpm : 2,168 euros VAT included.

Steve Jobs is a money machine. His other company, Pixar, reported profits of $27.4 million on revenues of $45.8 million for the last three months — double Wall Street estimates, according to Reuters.

The windfall was due to strong home video sales of Finding Nemo, as well as lower taxes and “a one-time reduction in expenses.”

In a separate AP report, Jobs said Pixar was “deep in discussions” with Disney, and may strike a partnership by year’s end.

Meanwhile, Pixar has amassed a huge horde of cash, which will likely be used to finance future flicks:

Pixar has said that it would like to own 100 percent of its films in the future. The company has amassed cash of more than $1 billion as it prepares to fully finance its own films.

For the first nine months of the year, Pixar reported net income of $122 million, or 99 cents per share, compared with $86.5 million, or 73 cents per share in the same period last year.

Revenue for the first nine months was $233.5 million compared with $165 million in the same period last year.

BoingBoing has a pic of a pack of chocolate cigarettes picked up in Mexico with a really nice iMac design.

The graphic is really good — as are the others BoingBoing points to. Graphic design is alive and well in Mexico.

Two more TV networks will begin offering primetime shows on demand for a buck a pop, but not through iTunes online store, reports Reuters, because of fears of digital piracy.

“NBC and CBS unveiled separate plans on Monday to make some of their hottest prime-time shows available for viewers to watch at their leisure — without commercials — for 99 cents an episode, throwing open the door to “on-demand” television,” the Reuters report says.

NBC will offer “Law & Order SVU” and “Criminal Intent,” “The Office,” and the cable show “Battlestar Galactica” to viewers with a DirecTV Plus DVR.

Likewise, CBS will offers four hit shows on demand — “CSI,” “NCIS,” “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race” — to Comcast digital cable customers in various cities.

Both platforms are pretty well locked down, with no easy way for owners to get video off the settop boxes and onto file-sharing networks.

In a seperate Reuters report, NBC said it will offer movies and hit shows online only when watertight copy-protection mechanisms are in place.

“We can’t provide them (Google, yahoo and presumably Apple) with content unless they can adequately protect it,” said NBC Universal Chairman Bob Wright.

MacAlly’s mTune is a sweet looking set of cans with a dock for the iPod nano. Only $50 — though no ship date has been set.

They’re cordless, naturally, and don’t even require any batteries. There’s a standard jack for use with a computer or other music player.

Update: There’s also white headphones for the iPod shuffle!

A new BitTorrent tracker devoted to video, movies and music in iPod-friendly formats has just launched.

Called Podtropolis, the site says:

“Our streets are filled with loads of high quality content for your iPod including movies, television programs, music videos and of course music. All video is encoded in iPod compatible formats (H.264, MP4, M4V) so you do not need to bother with conversion.”

So far, the offerings are fairly thin: a dozen TV shows, half-a-dozen movies (including Pixar’s Finding Nemo — Steve Jobs isn’t going to like that), and a handful of music CDs.

However, there are dozens of music videos. It looks like people who’ve bought Apple’s $2 music videos through iTunes, which are pre-formatted for the iPod, are uploading them to BitTorrent.

Of course, BitTorrent is highly trackable. Use at your own risk, and karma.

At a reunion of the legendary Homebrew Computer Club at the weekend, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak recalled his hack0r early days with Steve Jobs. Reports CNet:

“… Wozniak related a story about figuring out how he and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had broken into the digital user group account of John Draper–the inventor of the blue box, a device that allowed its user to make illegal free long-distance calls from any phone.

“We found his resume,” Wozniak remembered, “and we were going to add something about his arrests, but we didn’t.”

Lugz footwear has sent Apple a legal cease-and-desist letter ordering it to pull the new Eminem iPod ad because of “disturbing” similarities to a 2002 Lugz spot called “Arrow,” according to AdWeek.

Larry Schwartz, evp and a principal of New York-based JSSI, which makes Lugz, said in a statement, “If you look at these spots, common sense would tell you that there’s a problem here. The Apple commercial uses the most powerful elements of our campaign, making the ads disturbingly similar. We are prepared to vigorously pursue all legal remedies in order to protect our rights.”

The Eminem ad was created by Apple’s longtime agency TBWA\Chiat\Day, which previously denied accusations of plaigarism.

Apple I nerds may be interested in a Homebrew Computer Club retrospective at the Vintage Computer Festival this weekend in Mountain View, California. Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak will be there, as will several other Homebrewers.

“The VCF in conjunction with the DigiBarn Computer Museum is proud to
present a 30th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Homebrew Computer Club, the legendary Silicon Valley institution that helped to launch the era of the personal computer. Bruce Damer of the DigiBarn Computer Museum will moderate this panel of former Homebrew members, including Steve Wozniak, Lee Felsenstein, Allen Baum, Len Shustek, Bob Lash and Michael Holley.

Join the panel as they recount their experiences and gab with the group as we feast on some yummy cake, courtesy of the DigiBarn.”

(The comical Homebrew diorama is taken from an Information Age exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History).

The Festival is at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Doors open 9:30am until 6:00pm; full exhibit is $12 per person per day; $7 per person per day for exhibit and marketplace only. Kids under 17 are free.

On the Applenova forums:

“Apple expected to release new product “Dashcode” for making widgets, unknown when.

Has javascript debugging (breakpoints), WYSIWYG editor, plus a heck of a lot more!”

(Via MacFeber)

BusinessWeek looks at the rapid commercialization of podcasting:

“In February, Volvo agreed to pay $60,000 for a six-month sponsorship of the monthly podcast of Weblog Inc.’s Autoblog, as well as advertising on the site itself. Over that period, the show was downloaded 150,000 times.

Because the number of listeners is changing fast, a flat-rate sponsorship can end up being a bargain or a bust. KCRW, the public radio station in Santa Monica, cut a deal with Southern California Lexus Dealers for a sponsorship this summer, when the station was getting 20,000 downloads a week. Since then the number spiked to 100,000. When the Lexus deal ends, KCRW plans to charge $25 per thousand listeners. “Once we get out of this sweetheart deal, our goal is to cast our net as wide as possible,” says Jacki K. Weber, KCRW’s development director.

The rates podcasters are getting are attracting attention. Although there aren’t reliable figures for the whole field, the $25 per thousand listeners that KCRW plans to charge seems to be about average for popular podcasts. That’s pretty lofty, considering a New York City morning radio show charges between $12 and $15.

…Podcasters are experimenting with ways of pulling in money without advertising. This Week In Tech, an indie podcast with over 200,000 listeners, asks for $2 donations per month and rakes in around $10,000 a month.”

The Fluffer: a $35 fluffy case from NYC’s Fluffpod. Fits 4th-generation iPods.

(Via TUAW)

As noted on MacMischief, Apple’s market cap is nearly $50 billion, pushing into the league of industry giants like Dell and Hewlett Packard.

“With its recent stock price closing of $59.95 per share of stock, Apple Computer Inc. now has a market capitalization of $49.8 billion.

After years of being only a fraction the size of rivals such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard, Apple now appears within striking distance of both companies ($72.3 and 82.5 billion, respectively). Apple’s stock has been on the rise due largely to the continued success of both its iPod and Macintosh product lines.”

Of course, Apple is a weeny minnow compared to Microsoft, which is capped at $283 billion.

The iPod Halloween costumes are finally coming out of the woodwork in a big way, now that people are un-hungover enough to post them.

A search for “iPod” and “Halloween” tags at Flickr — the best place for this kind of thing — returns about 130 pix. There’s some pretty good ones, but this guy is my favorite.

The latest iPod experiment from Make’s Phillip Torrone is the iPod VR: a video iPod hooked to a pair of VR glasses.

Torrone says it works well, especially for long videos, and would be the thing to use on airplanes, if he weren’t more interested in seeing people’s reactions.

There’s more to come. He writes: “And as soon as I get time, controlling iTunes and iPods with a VR glove!”

Over at Low End Mac, Belgian Koen Bogaert tells how his two pet chickens are being watched the world over via webcam for signs of bird flu.

Bogaert has a Mac-powered webcam inside the henhouse where his two chickens, Thelma and Louise, are currently quarantined.

“Since Europe is under the threat of the bird flu, Thelma & Louise became the symbol of the fight against the forced quarantine and massacre of domestic birds,” he writes. “Newspapers, radio, and television are all bringing Thelma & Louise into the picture, and thousands of visitors are watching these funky chicks daily.”

Here’s the Thelma & Louise webcam.

I’ve gotten a few e-mails about this, so for reference:

HOWTO Put Porn On Your iPod

HOWTO Rip DVD Movies To Your iPod

Apple: Creating Video for iPod (with $30 QuickTime Pro).

See also:

iSquint: convert video to iPod friendly formats

Compressing iPod Video: Finding the Perfect Fit