Cult of Mac

Designer Derek Yee won a prestigious honor for his fantastic work on my Cult of iPod book.

Derek’s work was selected as one of the best design pieces last year by Step Inside Design magazine, a leading journal that every year runs a competition to find the 100 top designs.

Derek, who runs Octopod Studios, was honored in the Editorial category. Derek also designed my Cult of Mac book.

Step Inside says:

The front cover, which met initial opposition from Yee’s colleagues, successfully avoids generic iPod imagery, while referencing its predecessor, The Cult of Mac. Yee, founder of Octopod Studios, reflects, “I really wanted to stay away from anything that showed an actual iPod, that was silhouetted, or had white ear buds and wires. I didn’t want to sell the iPod. I wanted to sell the people that love their iPods. And I wanted to do it in a way that was pure.”

I’m in the process of updating my Cult of Mac book for a paperback edition, to be published in the fall.

Some of the graphics are looking a bit dated, epecially the mockups of future Apple products, like those submitted to Engadget’s recent WWJD competition.

Trouble is, I’m having a hard time tracking down mockup makers. So I’m putting out the call.

If anyone has high-resolution, print-ready mockups, and they’d like them included in a new edition of the book , please contact me at mockups -AT- cultofmac -DOT- com.

Photo courtesy of Engadget.

The first public screening of Pixar’s Cars was at the ShoWest conference in Las Vegas this week. Directed by Toy Story genius John Lasseter, the film is due this summer.

Writer Joseph L. Kleiman has the first review. He writes:

“Equal parts humor – there’s references to everything from the anti-establishment disobedience of the 1960’s to newer pop culture standards like “The Fast and the Furious” – and tenderness, the packed house openly combined laughter with tears. During a very touching scene about how the Interstate Highway system decimated towns along Route 66, there was barely a dry eye in the house. You heard me right. Looking around, I could see grown men sobbing (though I’m a bit modest to admit to anything myself). The scene was reminiscent and on a par with the scene where Jessie is thrown away in “Toy Story 2.”

(Via Kottke’s Remaindered links)

Slashdot commentator on Windows on a Mac:

“We’ve figured out how to put an inferior OS on more expensive hardware! That way, we can have both the frustrations of Windows and pay out of the ass for Mac. Everybody wins!”

And here’s Joy of Tech’s take. Click the pic for the entire cartoon.

It reminds me of my experience of installing Linux on a Mac a few years ago — which was, “great, now what?”

Another Slashdot poster has a good point about Windows-running Macs being attractive to businesses — they won’t:

“First, dual boot is a myth, it is damn annoying and so counterproductive. Most people dont realise that until they actually experiment it, it’s hype now, but all Linux users know it’s a pain, and I know from experience that a dual boot Windows/Linux means one thing… Windows 90% of the time. Vmware and others solutions are the way to go for people who need Windows professionaly for a given application, I can’t wait for a Mac OS X version. Second, some people try to makes us believe that companies will buy Apple PC to their employees now that they can run Windows, yeah right, serious manager will buy more expensive hardware, plus a Windows licence, so that their employees can have an Apple design and the joy of using Mac OS X out of the office… “

An experiment by CNet to see whether copy-protected music files sucked the life out of player’s batteries is interesting but flawed.

According to CNet, DRM copy-protected music can decrease battery life by up to 25 percent thanks to the processing overhead necessary to play them.

But as one commentator on the story points out, the test compared protected WMA files with unprotected MP3 files. It should have compared protected-WMA to unprotected WMA, or Apple’s FairPlay AAC versus unprotected AAC.

The Dutch MacNed website has copies of the controversial pictures of a magsafe power connector that were removed from Flickr on Thursday at the request of Apple.

The magnetic MagSafe power connector allegedly burned up. Its owner, Rogier Mulder, posted some pictures to Flickr, which immediately caught the attention of Apple. He was asked to remove the pictures while the company investigates. He writes on Flickr:

“Apple support responded very well (thanks Klaas) and fast. Before I called our local Apple support line, the dutch engineers were already contacted by their US collegues (who saw the pics) to inquire if I already called in. I’m getting a new Macbook asap and I will return my current one.”

FreeiPods.com, the wildly popular marketing scheme that offers free iPods for trying out various subscription offers, sold the data it gathered on 7.2 million Americans to an email advertising firm, according to a story at Wired News by my colleague Ryan Singel.

(New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer) announced Monday that e-mail marketing giant Datran Media had agreed to a $1.1 million fine for knowingly buying marketing lists from companies with privacy policies that promised not to sell or transfer the lists to a third party.

… Datran’s biggest purchase, according to the text of the settlement (.pdf), was a list of 7.2 million Americans’ names, e-mail addresses, home phone numbers and street addresses from Gratis Internet, a company best known for promising free iPods, televisions and DVDs to users willing to sign up for promotions offered by partners such as Citibank, Blockbuster and BMG’s music club.

The sites inspired dozens of “Is there really such a thing as a free iPod?” stories in the press (including one by Wired News), and internet forums were packed with pleas for information on how to acquire a free version of Apple Computer’s signature fetish item. The freebie required a registrant to sign up five others into the program, and eventually the legalized pyramid scheme reached its inevitable saturation point.

While many did indeed get a free iPod, all ended up with inboxes full of marketing pitches, which began showing up within hours of registering.

Gratis lied to me for the story I wrote originally about the company (also linked above), which did wonders for their early credibility, and then lied again for a follow-up story I wrote about it’s privacy practices that was prompted by the avalanche of spam its customers mysteriously received.

In addition, Gratis Internet was a member of Truste, which provides a “privacy seal” to companies it says have a trusted privacy policy.

When asked by Wired News in 2004 how third-party spammers got hold of Gratis members’ e-mail addresses, Truste said it could not find a problem with Gratis’ practices.

“The results of our investigation indicate that Gratis Internet did not violate their privacy policy,” Truste investigator Alexander Yap wrote in an October 2004 e-mail. “Truste did, however, work with them to strengthen and clarify their privacy statement.”

Several months later, Truste revoked Gratis’ seal of approval, then quickly reinstated it, then pulled it again, but declined to state publicly its reasons.

In the wake of this week’s settlement, Truste’s spokeswoman did not return repeated phone calls, and executive director Fran Maier did not respond to e-mailed questions about why Truste never discovered the alleged sale or informed the public that Gratis was not adhering to its privacy policy.

As a million posts of New York Craiglist attest, there’s a lot of people on public transit wondering about the hottie across the way with the iPod on. What are they listening to? Will they go out with me?

The latter question is what “Missed Connections” is for, while the former may one day be answered by a device like the iPod Status.

Created by designer David Lu, the iPod Status is a “wearable information display” — a small screen attached to a shoulder strap that displays the song and artist information for a currently-playing tune.

“Many of us have taken rides on public transportation and wondered what the interesting-looking person beside us is listening to,” says a description. “IPod Status is intended to encourage social connectedness by making this hidden information visible.”

The device — presumably a prototype — was shown at the Seamless Fashion Show in Boston last month. More photos from the show on Flickr.

Take a craft knife, an iPod nano, some iPod Linux and a copy of MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) and what do you get?

Pacman on an iPod in its own 6-inch tall arcade cabinet!

Now you can create your very own Steve Jobs keynote, thanks to a soundboard with 50 of the great man’s utterings.

Made by a Japanese website, the soundboard includes gems like:

“But there is one more thing.”

“We think video is the wrong place.”

“Do you have an iPod?”

“It scrolls like butter.”

“We have this rotating Apple sign on the top, which is popular in Tokyo.”

Unfortunately, the site is slow and may be having server problems. It doesn’t appear to be loading the entire soundboard. I get only 6 phrases, including a very tinny and disappointing, “Hi, I’m Steve.”

Later tonight I’ll be moving the Cult of Mac blog to WordPress, which means there’ll be less outages, less spam and less squinting at the teeny weeny type.

The blog is currently run on b2evolution, which has some nice features and has been pretty straightforward to use, but unfortunately has a serious spam problem. B2evolution is not much good managing comments and attracts a ton of spam. It’s the number one problem b2evo users complain about, and maddeningly, there’s no easy fix.

In addition, the b2evo developer community is small and there’s not many plugins and extras keeping it current. It’s also a hackers’ system. If you’re happy tinkering with code, this system’s for you. But I’m not, and it isn’t.

WordPress, on the other hand, seems to be a very slick. It’s mature and flexible and it’s going places. It’s 20-times more popular than b2evo, and already I’ve benefetted from a fantastic B2evo-to-WP import script, and a lot of easy-to-follow setup tutorials — the kind of stuff that popularity brings.

The big problem is the old RSS feed, which will no longer work.

The new RSS WordPress feed can be found here, though it may be an hour or two before it’s working:

https://cultofmac.com/?feed=rss2

It is possible to get audiophile quality sound out of an iPod, but probably not from Apple’s iPod Hi-Fi boombox, says technologist Tim Bray.

“I gather that on stage today, Mr. Jobs freely flung about the word ‘audiophile’ while pitching the new iPod Hi-Fi. Well, I’m one of those: wrote for the mags, have gear from obscure British manufacturers, turn off a fridge thirty feet away to listen. I’ll look forward to giving the Hi-Fi a listen. It seems fantastically dubious that something 43 cm wide, with a listed bass floor of 53Hz (the bottom string on a bass is 42Hz), weighing 6.6kg, and costing $349, could actually produce ‘audiophile’ sound.”

Bray, Sun’s Director of Web Technologies, suggests instead plugging in a good pair of in-ear canalphones. Bray recommends Etymotics or Shure. I have a pair of Xtrememac FS1, which have heartier bass than the Shure or Etymotic. But Bray says most important of all…

… get your music off CDs and use lossless compression. The D/A in an iPod is really not bad at all; if you send all of the music through it and play it through first-class transducers, you’ll be happy.

Anna of iPorn Directory (definitely not safe for work) writes via email:

“I wanted to let you know that I’ve started a new site (totally free) that indexes all of the web’s free iPod porn — https://www.iporndirectory.com.

There are videos and links to podcasts, etc. as well as reviews and ratings of each site.

I started this site for fun, after getting my video iPod and finding out how difficult it was to find porn in mp4 format!”

The Joy of Tech on Steve Jobs’ unfun products event yesterday in a cartoon entitled, “Post Traumatic Apple Event Disorder.”

Stevesoutfit is a website where you can buy a wardrobe just like Steve’s — all three items of it.

The site is an Amazon affiliate with links to a black St. Croix shirt, a pair of Levi 501s, and New Balance 991 sneakers.

The best part? The email link at bottom right that says, “Click here to sue.”

Apple has bought a giant data center in Newark, Calif., the San Jose Business Journal reports:

The 107,000-square-foot facility, originally conceived for communications company MCI WorldCom before getting mothballed after its 2001 completion…

… Data centers generally house computing, data-storage and networking equipment assisting in Web-based services and transactions.

… Apple, with Mr. von Thaden’s assistance, also just signed deals for the entire 116,830-square-foot office complex at 10400-10450 Ridgeview Ct. in Cupertino. This includes about 56,315 square feet leased directly from property owner Grosvenor International (represented by Brad Martin and Rich Hardy of Cushman & Wakefield) and 60,515 subleased from IBM (represented by CBRE’s Frank Friedrich, Don Lonsinger and Doug Beck).

A datacenter this size seems like overkill for .Mac. Perhaps it’ll house Apple’s widely-expected iFlix online movie store?

Photo shows an XServe RAID cluster at University of Wisconsin, courtesy of alienRAID.org.

iFixit has published a disassembly guide for the new MacBook Pro.

iFixit publishes a series of Fixit Guides for Apple laptop owners who want to fix their own machines. iFixit makes the guides in the hope customers will buy the spare parts from them. The guides are exceptional — well illustrated and very clear.
IFixit’s CEO Kyle Wiens writes:

We made some notes in the Guide about new and interesting things. Here’s the highlights:

* All major parts are new, and not backwards-compatible with
PowerBooks. This specifically includes the hard drive (SATA 9mm), and
the SuperDrive (4x Matsushita 9.5mm vs the previous 8x 12.7mm drive).
* I think Apple’s using Intel’s 945PM chipset (see
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/85.1.16.html)
* Apple is using an Intel SATA controller
* The processor is soldered on, so it will be more difficult to
upgrade than the socketed Intel iMac
* The RAM is new, PC2-5300 DDR2
* Speedy 667 MHz bus and 2MB cache on the Core Duo
* The case is easier to get into than the PowerBook G4 15″.
Replacing some parts, like the hard drive or superdrive, will be easier.
Others are about the same, like the keyboard and display.
* Airport and bluetooth are on two separate cards again (they were
previously combined)
* Apple put temperature sensor boards on the heatsink and lower case
assembly:

* iSight, infrared, and bluetooth are all USB.
* The internal case design is different from the PowerBook G4, but
not extensively so. I can tell it was inspired by a combination of the
15″ and 17″ designs.

I’m curious to see what people come up with off the part numbers on
the inside chips. We posted hi-res photos of the logic board:
Logic board top
Logic board bottom

The skeptical commentators at MacShrine were right: the picture of a video iPod posted to every website on the Net last week is as phony as a three-pound note.

Proof? This video at YouTube, which shows how the image was constructed step-by-step.

On the eve of Macworld, who totally nailed the products Steve Jobs unveiled? Was it Think Secret, or Mac Rumors?

No. It was Kevin Rose, founder of Digg and a former presenter of the Screen Savers TV show.

The night before Jobs unveiled the intel iMac and the MacBook Pro, Rose had it all, including the pissy iPod FM radio/remote.

Rose also claimed to have been tipped off to the iPod nano two days before his Jobness pulled it from his hat.

Will Rose and his secret tipster bag Apple’s “fun products” event on Tuesday morning?

Photo of Rose and friends at Macworld pinched from Leo Laporte.

There’s an Apple retail store in the Second Life virtual world that sells iPods, iMacs and even Newtons.

Trent Lapinski at AppleXnet reports:

“Even in an online world the allure of an iPod and those sexy white earbuds exists. Much like the Apple Store down the street, there is an user created Apple Store in the online world of SecondLife. At the store one can purchase wannabe Macs that display video, as well as iPods, or even a Newton.”

Run by Linden Labs, Second Life is a massive 3-D virtual world filled with buildings and objects built by its “residents.” Its “Linden dollar” economy is worth about $2 million a month, according to Wikipedia.

It’s nice for once not to be utterly alone in my opinions.

Earlier this week I wrote the recent security “threats” to OS X are overblown in a column entitled Mac Attacks a Load of Crap.

Most people disagreed. John Dvorak, for example, says malware is “good news for Mac users because now security holes will be fixed early, and users will learn to become aware of these things. It’s a little bit like getting the mumps. You do not want to get this ailment as an adult.”

But veteran tech reporter Tom Yager at Infoworld, who’s as sober and levelheaded as they come, says the panic is much ado about nothing. He writes:

“… rather than marking the first viruses to infiltrate the Mac OS X fortress, as many press reports claimed, the vulnerabilities are among many potential security risks that Apple continuously and proactively tracks. Furthermore, the “critical” label affixed to the viruses by security vendors are alarmist, inciting a code-red threat level for potential security risks that Mac users can avoid through commonsense precautions.

A media feeding frenzy has erupted over the OS X Leap.A worm and the Safari browser filesystem metadata proof-of-concept exploit. It is a nonstory that has been given legs by virus software vendors that get their names in the papers by branding as extremely critical malware that’s been harmless to date — the very same vendors that then admit that one check box’s worth of tilting the balance between convenience and safety is all that’s required.”

Also in the comments to the MacShrine post below is a link to a news story about this obviously phony iPod/Newton hybrid, which purports to sport a 260GB hard drive, runs “OS X for Handhelds,” is loaded with a bunch of lite iLife aps, and has WiFi and Bluetooth.

Wasn’t this posted a couple of years ago to the iLounge mockup galleries or The Apple Collection? I don’t have time to go look, but I’m sure I’ve seen this before.

Anyway, from the MacShrine comments comes the following translation:

G5 (imagine display? I guess it’s a new apple product line)

260GB 128MB FLASH EPROM
capacity:260GB, stores 1202000songs; 128MB FLASH EPROM

500MHz
CPU: Motorola Dragonball 500MHZ

MAC OS X for Handhelds 7.1
OS:MAC OS X for Handhelds 7.1

Safari 1.1 Quicktime player Handheld Editon 7.1 iTunes 5 Address Book 1.3 iPhoto 4 Handheld Editon Salling Cliker 2.1 Apple Media Manager 2.1
Firmware software: Safari 1.1 Quicktime player Handheld Editon 7.1 iTunes 5 Address Book 1.3 iPhoto 4 Handheld Editon Salling Cliker 2.1 Apple Media Manager 2.1

WiFi
Connectivity: Wifi, bluetooth, firewire

[ ]
The dude’s name. Mr. Liu

Is this picture from MacShrine the new video iPod — the one that may be unveiled next Tuesday at Apple’s secret “fun products” event?

One analysis at Flickr pegs the pic as genuine — the reflections on the edges match up, and the light bleeding through the label is hard to fake.

But at MacShrine, most commentators think it’s phony. One says:

“Good way to check authenticity in Photoshop is to remove distracting color information, and make the image B&W. Then adjust the Levels in real-time, this usually highlights copy and paste: luminosity is often a problem for fakers. The horizontal black line at top and bottom of the screen and the two black areas are much darker than any other black in the picture, this points towards fake: i.e. the colour screen in the middle being pasted in.

The light blooms around the bright whites are well done if faked, as are the red and cyan colour illuminating the sticker.”

Another Engadget commentator adds:

“I am 95% sure this is a fake.

The artist mirrored an ipod video to get black around the edges, and cloned the middle. Then overlayed a colorbars photo and painted the diffusion. If you gamma-up, you will see the erasure of the dense blacks in the color bars, revealing the lifted blacks of the ipod video screen. If you gamma-down, the whites crush and reveal weird artifacts. FAKE.

The quality of the handwritting is amature – not the way someone who is fluent in chinese would write it.”

Perhaps this pic from TechEBlog is the real thing? The comment consensus over there though is that it’s a pocket mirror or some such trickery.

This is what an exploded PowerBook battery looks like. You wouldn’t want that in your lap when it happens.

Unfortunately, I’ve no idea how it happened. The pictures were posted to the forums at 99Mac, a Swedish website. Not only do the forums require a lengthy registration procedure, they’re in Swedish.

However, there’s a post about it in German at Fscklog, which when translated with Babelfish says:

“A Forumsthread with 99mac (registration necessarily) shows pictures of a PowerBook Akkus exploded. The associated text is in, to that extent Swedish held I unfortunately not too smart from it, was hurt however hopefully nothing and nobody. Whether the Akku was part of Apples of last recall action, might be able to be determined with the current density hardly posthum. It obviously concerned in June 2005 acquired 1,67GHz a PowerBook G4.”

UPDATE: Adrian from 99mac kindly translated the original forum post. Here’s the full, terrifying story!

No one got hurt this time, but he says he doesn’t want to think about what would have been the result if this would have happened when he had the PowerBook in his lap or if he wasn’t at home at the time.”