If smartphones were judged on component pricing, Apple’s iPhone would best RIM’s BlackBerry Storm. The iPhone 3G costs $174 to make, versus $203 for the Storm offered from Verizon Wireless, according to a new report.
The data from iSuppli suggests carrier Verizon Wireless is greatly subsidizing the $200 touch-screen BlackBerry. AT&T, the exclusive U.S. AT&T has indicated subsidizing the iPhone 3G cost it $450 million in the fourth quarter.
The manufacturing cost difference appears to hinge on component choices, including transmission technology.
This Shel Silverstein inspired iPhone sticker is bound to bring a smile to anyone who grew up on his quirky tales like “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and “Falling Up.”
CoM reader Flunkycarter made the sticker inspired by Silverstein’s 1964 “The Giving Tree,” a tale about a boy who enjoys the fruits (including apples) of a tree without giving back…
He even wrote an an Apple-update of the work:
But soon the boy grew older and one day he got on the iPhone and said,
“Can you make me some money, iPhone, to buy something I’ve found?”
“I have no money,” said the tree, “Also, no copy, no paste and no MMS”
“But you can take my SDK, boy, and make apps to sell them in the store”
And so he did and…
Oh Steve Jobs was happy.
Oh Steve Jobs was glad.
He’s now “obsessed with getting a green case, to match the real book cover more and also printing the branch that is tossing the apple to the boy.”
Don’t know, I like it as it is. Can think of a few people I’d like to give this to…
Here’s an early Mac movie product placement. In the opening minutes of 1989’s “Back to the Future II,” Marty McFly lands in 2015, where hover cars loom, “Jaws 19” in 3D plays in movie theaters and folks sport layered outfits that only a daltonic could love.
In an antiques store, Michael J. Fox does a double-take over a “vintage” Mac sitting next to other 80s relics like a Dust Buster and a bottle of Perrier.
As Apple’s App Store grows and more publishers seek recognition, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is set to highlight ‘premium’ games priced at $19.99, reports said Thursday.
The action is viewed as yet more confirmation traditional game publishers see the Apps Store and the iPhone and iPod touch as new vehicles to reach customers.
Athough the move would allow big-name games to stand-out from the $0.99 apps, the move is being criticized for a form of red-lining. The new ‘premium’ games section would be limited to large publishers, such as Electronic Arts.
Apple faces another lawsuit over iPhone 3G performance. The latest, a class-action lawsuit filed in Northern California, asks a court to award more than $5 million to iPhone 3G buyers.
In the 14-page lawsuit, California resident Jason Medway alleges Apple knew the “iPhone 3G cannot maintain consistent service” and has only offered buyers replacement phones.
The legal action claims iPhone 3G purchasers “have experienced broken promises regarding the phone’s transmission speeds.”
AT&T, after using the iPhone to salvage its fourth-quarter revenue, is in talks with Apple to team up for a 3G data service aimed at MacBook owners, reports said Thursday.
At the heart of the speculation is a brief comment to Fortune by the carrier’s Emerging Devices group president Glenn Lurie. Lurie said he’s talked recently with interim Apple CEO Tim Cook.
“I would very much like to do more business with Apple, and I hope that we do,” Lurie said Wednesday. Although the AT&T executive said he was having similar conversations with other companies, Apple has been an especially profitable partner.
Eagle-eyed CoM reader Joaquin Jang spotted what looks like a either a Pismo, the last G3 PowerBook launched in 2000, or its close cousin, the Lombard PowerBook G3 laptop launched a year earlier, in a recent Wells Fargo bank banner.
He writes, “Imagine my surprise when I went to log in to my bank account at Wells Fargo’s website and found this picture which appears to show my first Mac laptop, the Pismo, it could also be a Lombard which had a similar form factor.
While the Pismo still does some work for me, it’s not my everyday machine since it is nearly ten years old. Yet, it still makes it into a website ad nine years after it was introduced.”
So, which one is it?
Many thanks to Joaquin for the tip and screenshots.
CoM readers: if you spot other interesting Macs starring in ads, let us know!
If we ever do become a paperless society, Houdah Software’s ACTPrinter apps for Mac, iPhone and iPod Touch are likely to be among the solutions credited with helping to get there.
With a Mac running OS X Tiger or Leopard and an Airport/WiFi card installed, ACTPrinter Mac (a free DOWNLOAD) works in concert with ACTPrinter 1.1 ($1.99 for iPhone or iPod Touch) allowing you to “print” from any application which uses the standard “Print” dialog. On the Mac you simply “Print to iPhone” and documents (emails, web pages, letters, and more) are sent wirelessly to your iPhone. With this app, documents have finally become mobile.
Aside from being a handy way to store important papers on your mobile device, one of ACTPrinter’s most effective uses stems from the fact that bar codes embedded in documents can now be scanned directly from the touch screen.
The US Transportation Security Administration is currently testing a pilot program at 13 US airports, with the intention of standardizing the electronic boarding pass nationwide in about a year.
Follow after the jump for a list of the participating airports and airlines, and for a full list of features included in the latest ACTPrinter 1.1 update.
The BBC’s coverage of the Mac’s 25th has in some cases left something to be desired, the nadir being a bizarre video showing a Microsoft employee battling with an original Mac and comparing it against her Windows laptop. Ex-Macworld UK head honcho Simon Jary rightly pulled said video apart on his PC Advisor blog, although he didn’t note how, amusingly, the Mac boots much faster than the PC, despite MSN tech editor Jane Douglas cunningly refraining from giving the Mac its system disk until the PC’s been whirring away for a good few seconds.
Presumably wanting to avoid the same level of oddness, BBC Radio Five Live’s Pods and Blogs scoured the internet, looking for a Mac expert to chat to. Failing that, they ended up with me (Oho! You self-deprecating Brit, you!–Ed.), and I spent a happy 20 minutes talking to the extremely personable Jamillah Knowles about all things Mac.
As is always the case, the interview itself was knifed somewhat (due to it being nearly as long as the entire podcast was supposed to be), but there’s still a reasonable chunk left. Importantly, the Mac doesn’t come off looking too bad, although I do wonder what Jamillah’s co-presenter is going on about regarding how rubbish Macs used to be for getting online. (I’ve never had such a problem.)
Apple has expanded the refurbished products offered at discounted prices from its online store. The Apple Store now includes newer iPods, as well as refurbished aluminum unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based company now sells its latest 1GB iPod shuffle for $39. Available colors include silver, green, blue and pink.
The latest 8GB and 16GB iPod nano is being sold refurbished for $129 and $169, respectively.
Here’s an Apple keyboard spray painted snowy, pure white — nothing to stop your eye but if your touch typing skills are still at high-school level, you’re in trouble.
“The design snob in me isn’t particularly happy with Apple’s recent trend of using two colors (black and silver, white and silver) on their stuff.
So. Combine my pedantic taste for minimalism with nerdy touch typing abilities and a cheap can of white spraypaint, and you end up with my keyboard – possibly the most pretentious keyboard in existence.”
AT&T Wednesday deemed Apple’s iPhone 3G a “success,” reporting adding 1.9 million of Apple’s smart phones before the end of 2008. The news comes as the exclusive U.S. iPhone carrier appears to have sold double the Blackberry handsets of rival Verizon Wireless.
The carrier said it had activated 4.3 million iPhone 3Gs since the handset’s launch.
Despite being a $450 million drag on AT&T earnings, the carrier announced new iPhone subscribers helped it post a 2.4 percent revenue increase for the quarter, reports said.
The DC Public Library’s first-in-the-nation iPhone App giving users access to card catalog and reservation systems almost cries out for an “if they can do it in Washington” joke.
Still, it’s pretty cool DC residents have access to (indeed, anyone in the world can have it) vital library information, with an iPhone app providing 24 hour a day, on the go access to the Library’s card catalog and reservation systems. One might think any forward-looking City in the nation would want to have one of these in the AppStore in no time.
There’s at least a few jobs in that gig all over the world, right?
FastMac is selling t-shirts with three new retro-inspired designs for $5.25 until midday tomorrow or until supplies are exhausted. This is a Special 1-day only sale, limit 1 per customer of any 25th anniversary design @ $5.25, additional shirts will be priced @ $9.99.
The designs include an homage to Apple’s classic 1984 commercial, and two other designs formed using a “word cloud” that lists every Mac ever made. This is probably one of those “don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it” kind of deals.
CAVEAT EMPTOR: The FastMac store pretty much sucks with respect to navigation and, as of this posting, the special pricing is either not loaded or they have already sold out of the specially priced gear.
UPDATE: I just spoke with FastMac tech support and they are working on getting the pricing into the store as we speak. Check in after 3pm PST.
Japanese photographer Isamu Sanada is no stranger to the enticing realm of Apple mockups, and the whole netbook idea just refuses to die, so it should come as no suprise to see this one, a kind of interesting tri-fold take on the idea.
What do you think? Should Apple spend bandwidth going in such a direction, or is the iPhone/iPod Touch really the end of the story when it comes to an Apple netbook?
Given a recent assessment by pro photographer Rob Galbraith that puts Apple’s MacBook Pro display behind the Lenovo Think Pad and the Dell Mini 9 in color accuracy, Apple may want to take a closer look at what’s already in the line-up before going for new product dollars.
Formerly very appreciative of Apple’s display properties from the perspective of a demanding visual artist, Galbraith says of the new high-end Apple laptop, “in ambient light environments which induce screen reflections, the late-2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch’s glossy screen moves deep into the not acceptable category.”
Back in the dark mists of Time before the internet, Playboy magazine was among the more popular media vehicles serving up a stimulating cocktail of news, opinion, creative writing, gadget reviews and naked flesh. And over the years, the Playboy Interview gained quite a reputation for getting the most interesting newsmakers and personalities of the day to open up about their lives and philosophies in ways other mainstream publications could never quite match.
The Playboy interview with Steve Jobs was published in the February 1985 issue of the magazine, just a little more than a year after the debut of the Macintosh and a few short months before the Apple CEO would be ousted from the company he helped found. The long piece finds a 29 year-old Jobs at the top of his intellectual game and elicits commentary that, looking back on it now, makes Jobs appear both prescient and consistent in his views and in his dedication to Apple’s success.
Follow after the jump for a few choice comments from the interview and be sure to click through to the full piece from the Playboy archive.
Mark Papermaster, the former IBM executive at the center of a legal battle, will begin work April 24 as Apple’s senior vice president of devices hardware engineering.
In an announcement, Apple said “the litigation between IBM and Mark Papermaster has been resolved.” The company said Papermaster would lead Apple’s iPhone and iPod development efforts.
Papermaster had sued his former employer after IBM had asked a court to halt him joining Apple. The technology company had argued the new employment would violated a prior agreement not to work for a rival.
Have Apple lawyers targeted Palm as a potential target for patent-infringment lawsuits? Concerns sent shares of the Palm Pre handset slipping Tuesday.
Palm shares were down $0.40 as of 1:22 p.m. Eastern. Apple’s stock was up $0.86.
Worries were renewed earlier today on word Apple had been granted a patent covering a “touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics,” according to the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD.
Turn a humble juice box into an iPod case. These cheap and cheerful cases are the handiwork of Ross, who wanted to create a decoy case to disguise expensive electronics as well as protect them.
You’ll need spray glue, some sand paper, a little knack with a sewing machine and about an hour.
Since the boxes are typically made from six layers of paper plus polyethylene and aluminum foil, Ross reckons they should be sturdy as well as practical, especially with an added velvet lining to protect from scratches.
Can’t afford an iPhone? Me neither. That’s why I was so excited to see this photo of a Nokia phone dressed up as a Mac on Flickr. My old phone could use some panache.
A quick search through the comments shows that this is a theme from Dan Schwartz, and it’s compatible on quite a few different phones. It’s hard to find on his website, tucked into the About pages, but you can get the theme for your Nokia phone here.
Source: Dan Schwartz
The theme imitates the Mac without interfering with the phone’s functions. Dan used the application icons from Mac OS X’s system and one of the gorgeous Apple default backgrounds to give you the full experience. The theme even goes so far as to closely imitate the fonts used in the Mac system. All in all, these themes are an excellent escape for those of us who want to keep a little Apple with us all the time.
Turns out, while the iPhone and iPod Touch are just about the awesomest fart-generating devices ever, the considerable power of Apple’s mobile devices can also be marshaled to more productive uses, such as processing credit card sales.
ProcessAway, a Tustin, CA-based company has submitted to Apple software that will allow busiiness owners to process credit card transactions over any available network connection. The app is designed for use in places such as conventions, street fairs, antique shows, and by business owners performing mobile detailing, on-site consultation or construction, but certainly the list of scenarios is virtually endless where on-the-spot transaction processing could be useful.
ProcessAway software utilizes the Authorize.net gateway (one of the very first Internet payment gateways) with one of the largest customer bases in the card processing industry. “The Authorize.net API fueled development of ProcessAway,” according to spokesman Randy Palermo, allowing “millions of iPhone (and iTouch) users to turn their device into a credit card terminal.”
Authorize.net merchant accounts used with ProcessAway include an option to download transactions into Quickbooks and also a comprehensive Virtual Terminal. This will give business owners the benefit of processing transactions out of the office with ProcessAway as well as in the office through the web-based Virtual Terminal, all with a single account. Even though the Virtual Terminal is available, ProcessAway was designed as a stand-alone comprehensive processing solution that can be used effectively in any environment.
ProcessAway software will be sold through the iTunes AppStore for $19.99. A fully functional free version, called ProcessLite, will also be available, identical to ProcessAway except the charge amount is limited.
The apps were submitted to Apple on January 26 and the developer offers a notification sign-up page should you want to hop on this one as soon as it’s available.
A city councilor in Dartmouth, England has sparked debate by wearing his iPod earbuds to drown out prayers traditionally said before town council meetings.
Brian Boughton, an atheist, put in his earbuds on during the short prayer in protest. His iPod wasn’t turned on but fellow councilors branded the move disrespectful.
Boughton told the BBC: ‘I accept that they want to continue with the tradition but that leaves the problem for those like myself who do not wish to participate.
“I was accused of being disrespectful which I never intended. Listening to the iPod was a way to get the debate going but I never had it switched on. I’ve asked the mayor to consider opening up the prayers to other people.”
Apple was granted a key patent covering many aspects of the iPhone interface as well as potentially other “multi-touch” handsets. CEO Steve Jobs was listed among the inventors in a 358-page filing awarded last week.
The patent covers the iPhone, gestures and the handset’s OS X operating software.
U.S. Patent No. 7479949 comes saber-rattling between Apple and other touch-screen handset makers. Last week, interim Apple CEO Tim Cook warned unnamed competitors that the Cupertino, Calif.-based company would protect its intellectual property.
