US college students and teachers who buy a Mac get an iPod Touch thrown in a back-to-school promotion. (Fine print: you have to buy before Sept. 8 and shell out the cash for the iPod touch, which you get back via rebate. Full details here.)
The ad shows a cheerful student whose iPod Touch displays “Monopoly” but with the iPod Touch being used more frequently in colleges for orientation, class lectures and in some cases required or in place of textbooks having one is becoming less of a plus and more of a necessity.
Apple’s entry-level white MacBook received a hardware update on Wednesday, possibly foreshadowing revisions to the aluminum unibody MacBooks.
For the same $999 base price, the WhiteBook now gets:
* CPU bump from 2.0 GHz to 2.13 GHz.
* Hard drive from 120 GB to 160 GB.
* RAM boost from 667 MHz to 800 MHz.
*Battery life upped from 4.5 hours of “wireless productivity” to 5 hours. And now rated Energy Star EPEAT Gold, up from EPEAT Silver.
Thanks to the updates, the WhiteBook now has a faster processor than the entry-level aluminum MacBook, and a bigger build-to-order hard drive (500GB). And it still has a FireWire port. Updates to the unibody soon?
Apple is rumored to be offering similar upgrades to the aluminum MacBooks at WWDC, and rebranding the machines as MacBook Pros to further distinguish them from the white plastic MacBook.
Can you think of another company whose outdated and obsolete products get repurposed as art pieces even a fraction as often as do those from Apple?
How about a late 20th century PowerMac G4, which, as a 10 year-old desktop might possibly still be good enough to run your elementary school children’s games and learning software, but for all practical purposes is probably better suited as the inspiration for a wall clock to remind you, time after time, how gear Apple cool is.
At a mere $60, these may not last long and you should look into turning your own dusty G4 into a DIY project.
Microsoft will release a Web-surfing, HD-video-playing, multitouch Zune in the fall to compete with the iPod touch — and the hardware actually looks pretty cool. But as Apple well knows, the gadget is one thing, the software and services are another.
Sporting a sexy metal case, the Zune HD will have a 3.3-inch, 480 x 272 OLED capacitive touchscreen display (16:9 widescreen); a built-in HD Radio receiver, and WiFi. The “HD” refers not to the touchscreen, but the HD radio and HD out (720p), though that’s only available with an optional cradle. Pricing was not released, and release is “early fall.”
San Francisco’s No Starch Press has posted a big chunk of it’s popular My New iPhone book on Scribd for free, plus is selling it cheap as a PDF.
No Starch has a new version of Wang’s iPhone book coming out with the release of iPhone OS 3.0 this summer. In the meantime, the publisher is making about 50% of the current version of the book available for free.
“We have this content ready to go, but with the OS 3.0 release looming, it didn’t make sense to print and ship a book just to have it go out of date in a month,” said Leigh Poehler, No Starch’s sales manager. “It also didn’t make sense to hoard this information. So we’re making the content available to people via Scribd.”
More recently, No Starch has posted several samples of its books on Scribd, including an excerpt from its “Manga Guide to Databases,” which has been read over 9,600 times). But this is the first time it has given away such a large chunk of a book and let Scribd sell the full PDF (for $9.95).
What it was: A trackball-controlled arcade classic, released by Atari in 1984. You had to guide your marble through six perilous courses. Think Super Monkey Ball’s granddad, with a penchant for Escher and isometric projection, minus the monkeys.
What we’d like to see: Although there were, at the last count, 46 billion iPhone ‘marble rolling’ games, most of them suck, and none hold a candle to Mark Cerny’s Atari classic. Since other Atari games have made it to iPhone relatively intact, there’s no reason why Marble Madness couldn’t make an appearance, perhaps with the choice of of tilt-based controls or a virtual trackball, as per our mock-up above. How about it, Atari?
UPDATE: iPhone gaming website Slide to Play reports that a tilt-controlled Marble Madnessis due on the App Store “in the next couple of weeks” and will include bonus tracks, content and modes. No trackball, alas.
Maybe old iPods turned into sequencers only sound good at 2 am, as the guys who made these one late night admit.
But maybe not. This nifty 16-step sequencers with sounds from iconic video game Mario + bass use pdPod on iPodLinux; if you want re-purpose your old iPod this way, check out the re-ware project, then let us know if your sounds are worthy of daytime broadcast.
Consumer Electronics Show (CES) organizers have supersized the iPod and iPhone showcase at the January 2010 event. The next iLounge Pavilion will offer over six times the floorspace dedicated to Apple accessories and software sellers, from 4,000 square feet to 25,000 square feet.
In a press release, Jeremy Horwitz, Editor-in-Chief of iLounge.com and co-sponsor of the iLounge Pavilion said the 525% space increase is due to the surge in iPhone and iPod touch popularity from the App store. It also probably has to do with Apple’s decision to pull out of Macworld and Macworld’s move to February.
Signed up companies so far include Griffin Technology, Scosche, Incase Designs, iSkin, Incipio Technologies, Jaybird Gear, MusicSkins and AAMP of America.
iPhone applications and the increasing popularity of smartphones, driven especially by growth in the developing world, pose the greatest threats to the long-term relevance of mobile search engines such as Google and Yahoo, according to a report Monday at TechRepublic.
Jason Hiner, Editor in Chief of the widely read technology web portal, argues that a personal experiment he’s undertaken using his Apple iPhone leads to the inescapable conclusion that “trends [in mobile computing] add up to bad news for Google in mobile search because it translates into fewer people needing its search engine,” offering several pertinent examples of his own behavior in addition to statistics about the growth in smartphone use over the past year that bolster his thesis.
There’s little argument that iPhone changed the mobile phone game entirely with its arrival on the scene two years ago, as all the major mobile handset makers have since come to market with their versions of touchscreen smartphones to compete with Apple.
In addition, Apple revolutionized the environment for mobile software development by creating the App Store, which both provided a brand-new arena for software developers to work in and suggested a model for distribution that had previously been limited to the distribution of entertainment titles through the iTunes music store. Apple’s competitors Blackberry, Google (Android) and Microsoft (Windows Mobile) launched App Store-like marketplaces in response.
But does all of this development, do all of these trends in mobile computing spell the eventual end for search as a relevant tool on mobile platforms?
Certainly Google’s voice search functionality adds to its relevance and appeal on a mobile device, but as Hiner argues convincingly, limitations of mobile device screen sizes and challenges related to typing on small handsets do make traditional desktop search functionality far less appealing in the mobile environment.
What do you think? Do you use Google less on your iPhone? Should Google be worried about the trends in mobile computing as a great threat to its core search product? Let us know in comments below.
The cover of the June 1, 2009 edition of the New Yorker magazine will feature art composed completely on an iPhone for the 1st time, according to multiple reports Monday.
Artist Jorge Columbo used the iPhone app Brushes to “fingerpaint” a street scene of people gathered by one of the city’s iconic hot dog & pretzel carts, elevating art on the iPhone to yet one more level of acceptance few could have imagined when Apple’s mobile device first came to market less than two years ago.
Hit the jump for a video made with the Brushes companion app Brushes Viewer showing just how Columbo used Brushes to create his work.
It’s a classic skull design, made with the keys from a pair of Apple keyboards. The white keys come from an extended white Mac keyboard; the black keys were taken from the original iMac (the one with the half sized F keys). Says Roger:
“I could say it depicts the obsolescence that all computer equipment faces, but really it’s just skulls make great tees! What Mac geek wouldn’t like to see a design featuring Mac keys, and only only closer inspection can you find the classic Apple command key.”
Hit the jump for a bigger picture of the skull — and the elusive command key.
However—and this is important—flagrant and blatant IP infringement is apparently fine, judging by Luigi Vs Pac.
And, yeah, we know Apple shouldn’t have to be the IP police when it comes to App Store content, and that some properties being ripped off are somewhat obscure. But, c’mon—Luigi and Pac-Man? In one game? Oh dear.
Apple’s Safari 4 browser is a pig. It’s a resource hog that doesn’t clean up after itself — and it remembers every site you visit, even in “porn mode.”
Safari records every site you visit, even if you turn on the “Private Browsing” feature or clear the browser history. And the files it generates can consume gigabytes of disk space.
“This is a huge privacy concern,” writes designer and musician C. Harwick, from Chapel Hill, NC, who did some snooping in Safari’s hidden system folders. “With no good way of getting rid of them except manually (clearing the history doesn’t do it, and I don’t think resetting Safari does either), these hidden files are strewn all over the user’s hard drive unbeknownst to him waiting for snooping relatives (or more pertinently, law enforcement) to dig them up. I really like Safari, but I’m going to have to seriously consider using Firefox now (ack).”
Who says Apple doesn’t listen to customers? Thanks to a public outcry, Apple has reversed course and accepted the Eucalyptus eBook reader into the iPhone App Store.
The web erupted in outrage last week when developer Jamie Montgomerie’s eBook reader was rejected by Apple because it allowed readers to download the Kama Sutra from Project Gutenberg — which Apple deemed “inappropriate sexual content.”
But on Sunday Montgomerie received a call from Apple. The Apple representative chatted with the developer about his app and invited him to resubmit it.
“We talked about the confusion surrounding its App Store rejections, which I am happy to say is now fully resolved,” Montgomerie wrote on his blog.
David Leibowitz is a veteran fine art photographer who’s lately been making some pretty amazing art using his iPhone.
Based in NYC, Leibowitz’s pictures of the city look like a French Impressionist painted the scenes (hit the jump for more pictures). There’s nothing to indicate they were made using his iPhone and about $40 worth of apps from the App Store.
Leibowitz has a long history of using digital tools to make art. He started in the ’80s with a Polaroid camera. He’d hand manipulate the emulsion to create photographs that look also look like Imrpessionist paintings. But now he’s discovered the iPhone, and the results are not your typical iPhone art.
Hit the jump for some of Leibowitz’s latest pictures and an interview explaining how he makes iPhone art.
Solar power has been an obvious answer to many of the world’s daunting energy challenges for a long time, but the expense and relative bulk of solar panels have largely kept solar out of the running when it comes to solutions for mobile power.
Suntrica, a nordic eco-tech company, seems to have found a solution, though, with a line of charging solutions that are small, light, and flexible and could be just the thing energy conscious consumers are looking for to power their gadgets to go.
Suntrica’s SolarStrap™, SolarBadge™ and SolarBadgePRO™ use a flexible, high-efficiency solar panel connected to internal, lightweight batteries for instant or later use. Battery capacities range from 3.7Wh to 7.3Wh and the output of all the chargers is 5.5V DC at 800mA, which makes them perfect for all your portable electronic gear.
Current models are compatible with Apple iPod and Nano, though the company plans to release iPhone compatible chargers in the next couple of months.
A big crowd turned out for the opening of Apple’s latest flagship store in Zurich on Friday.
There’s no official numbers, but pictures at MacPrime, a Swiss Mac magazine, suggest the line snaked several blocks.
Opened at noon, the new Bahnhofstrasse store was mobbed. Several fans camped out overnight, waiting 16 hours to be the first inside.
The Bahnhofstrasse store is the second in Zurich.
It has an unusual design, accoring to Gary Allen of IFOApplestore. It’s only the second Apple store (after 5th Ave.) to have an underground space. A glass staircase leads down to a large Genius Bar for service and training at the “Pro Labs.” More details about the Bahnhofstrasse store at Allen’s site.
Swiss insurance company Mobiliar gave knockoff iPods to guests at the Swiss Economic Forum. Pic: Berner Zeitung.
The head of Apple Switzerland has threatened legal action after a Swiss Insurance company gave 1,200 iPods to bigwigs at the tony Swiss Economic Forum. Trouble is, the iPods were cheap Chinese knockoffs.
At the Swiss Economic Forum last week, the insurance company Mobiliar surprised guests with an MP3 player that looked very much like a second-generation iPod shuffle.
But when Adrian Schmucki, the head of Apple Switzerland, received his, he threatened legal action against Mobiliar.
Add insult to injury, several of the guests asked Schmucki if the knockoffs would work with iTunes.
The Swiss Economic Forum is a two-day gathering of Switzerland’s leading companies, politicians and academics.
With WWDC09 now just weeks away, rumors and predictions regarding what Apple may reveal at the highly-anticipated, sold-out developers conference in San Francisco are sure to spread like a California wildfire.
Anyone interested in being on the right side of such talk would do well to consider the logic and analysis out Thursday from John Gruber, the well-placed author of the blog Daring Fireball, who isn’t prone to talking about things he doesn’t know a little something about.
Citing “information from informed sources,” Gruber believes the processor in the next-generation iPhone is going to be the kind of upgrade to make people crowd around and go, “ooooh!” He looks for Apple’s processing secret-sauce to better the speed of current iPhones by 1.5 times, similar to the bump in performance experienced when Mac users got hands on machines with the first batch of PowerPCs, or PC users moved from 486 to Pentium machines.
Follow after the jump for more of what Gruber expects and how likely his expectations are to be met.
My friend Jeffy picked up this pack of stickers at a Macworld past. Do Mac users have a sense of humor ? Should they be printed up as stickers for MacBooks?
What it is: An iTunes add-on for cleaning mislabeled tracks, downloading art and finding music videos, concert info and artist bios.
Why it’s good: After years of downloading weird crap off the internet, my iTunes library is a swamp of mislabeled and unidentified tracks, and I’m sick of it. So I downloaded TuneUp — and I’m in love. TuneUp handily cleaned up a bunch of mislabeled tracks using the Gracenote database (which uses the track’s “audio fingerprint” to identify it). Cleaning takes a few seconds per track and was about 70-80 percent effective on my odd library (British punk, post-punk and lots of electronica). Previous track cleaners I’ve tried have been useless. But it’s the extra artist info via the Net that I’m really digging. TuneUp sits to the side of the iTunes window and displays all kinds of artist info: Wikipedia bios, Google News stories, music recommendations, upcoming concerts and YouTube videos, which I’ve wasted hours watching. The information is truly useful, fascinating, appropriate and timely. Apple thinks so too. TuneUp was added to the shelves of Apple’s retail stores this week — a rare honor granted only to tip top software.
Where to get it:TuneUp is available as a free download with 100 cleans and 50 album covers. Full version costs $29.95 (or $19.95 for an annual subscription),
NOTE: Use CULTOFMAC activation code to get a 15% discount.
The Mounties in British Columbia just busted their biggest counterfeiting operation ever — and the brains of the operation were a very sinister and criminal-looking iMac and MacBook.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia raided a counterfeit “currency lab” in Surrey, B.C. last week, seizing more than $220,000 in American and Canadian notes and arresting four people.
They also seized a new iMac, a MacBook, and what look like a pair of inket printers and a laser printer. HP is the ink of choice for funny money, looks like.
(I’ve always suspect Macs were the machine of choice for counterfeiters, given their graphics history. I’ll look into it).
Gnh! That’s pretty much the sound we made, surprisingly loudly, on reading Gruber’s ‘Regarding Eucalyptus’ post. The gist? App Store idiocy strikes again! The specifics…
It seems Apple, not content with plumbing the depths by rejecting Tweetie for a rude word being in the day’s Twitter trends, has now rejected an e-book reader, because you can potentially read ‘objectionable’ content on it. Gruber sums things up nicely, calling this the “shittiest and most outrageous App Store rejection to date, and that’s saying something”, and we agree wholeheartedly.
As Gruber notes, Apple’s got a bug up its ass regarding the fact that you can read Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana on Eucalyptus. (Won’t somebody think of the children?) However, you can read this on a few other apps, too—you know, apps like Kindle and Stanza and, er, Safari. So Apple had best get ready to kick those off the iPhone for warping our fragile little minds.
But there’s more! What makes matters even worse is on reading the developer’s blog, it’s pretty clear the approvals process is even more broken than we all thought. Had Apple made a mistake and rectified it (see: Tweetie), fine… Dumb, but fine. Here, though, it’s pretty clear Apple keeps rejecting the app again and again for precisely the same utterly asinine reason. When the developer argues his case, it’s like shouting at a brick wall— a particularly dumb brick wall.
Far be it for us to say that perhaps ‘reversals’ for Tweetie and the NIN app actually came from Apple caving to dreadful publicity. But, hell, if the way to get a perfectly good app into the App Store is for a whole bunch of blogs to kick up a fuss and show, yet again, how the App Store approvals people seemingly have the combined intellect of a drunk, lobotimized woodlouse, we’re happy to do our bit.
Labor protestors outside Apple’s Taiwan Office on Thursday. The Apple laptop says “Responsibility.” Images: Global Post.
Apple’s office in Taiwan drew protesters on Thursday complaining about layoffs and unfair working conditions at one of Apple’s main contractors.
A group of 30 to 45 workers complained of exploitation at Wintek, one of Apple’s major suppliers of LCD panels. The company is rumored to be supplying screens for the long-awaited Apple tablet. The workers chanted slogans and held signs saying “black-heart business” and “responsibility” outside Apple’s office in Taipei.
iPhone game developers must contend with an arguably small but extremely dedicated and fast-moving population of app pirates on the voyage to the Land of iPhone App riches, according to iCombat developer Miguel Sanchez-Grice, who suggests giving away free “lite” versions of an app could be the most effective strategy for the smaller developer.
Sanchez-Grice ‘s shooting tank game was immediately popular on the App Store thanks to coverage in gaming and gadgetry venues, which came about because of its resemblance to Combat for Atari and Wii Tanks games. The developer said he considered the nature of the pirate challenge prior to launching his 99¢ app. and while he chose a path very civilly inviting pirates to support his work by buying a legit copy of the app after reaching level 5 of the 20 level game, he understood he could only hope to “maybe convert a tiny fraction of those users into sales.”
His experience with the pirate community showed hacked versions of his game in use at an astounding ratio of more than 5:1 over paid apps in the first week of release, with cracked apps being posted to Twitter within 30 minutes of the official game going live on the App Store.
“The goal behind launching an app isn’t thwarting pirates, it is getting users and generating sales,” Sanchez-Grice wrote, suggesting game developers “leave the ‘making a point’ anti-piracy measures to the big guys.” With competition so fierce for getting noticed in the App store, he concluded “any attention is good attention.”
In the end, the first-time developer concluded the best strategy for dealing with pirates may be creating a free “Lite” version to give away alongside a more fully functional and fulfilling paid version.
“I think the best solution is to create a version akin to a lite version of the app for pirates. It is no good to shut off access to your app completely, but it also doesn’t get you very far to give away the core value you are offering to the paying user.”
