Cult of Mac

RBC Capital Markets Thursday downgraded Apple to ‘underperform,’ also slashing the stock’s target price to $70 from $125.

The analyst firm also told clients the percent of people who say they expect to buy a Mac or iPhone over the next three months slipped in January.

Just 28 percent of people responding to a January RBC/Changewave survey reported they would buy a Mac laptop, down from 33 percent in Nov. Likewise, 30 percent of people said they intend to purchase an iPhone, when asked in December, slipping from 34 percent in September.

I’ve spent a week or so playing around with the beta release of Picasa for Mac, and here are some thoughts.

• – It’s FAST. It does a superb job of pulling in your iPhoto collection in no time at all. Scrolling through it all is much faster than similar scrolling in iPhoto itself.

• – It’s considerate. It makes a point of co-existing with iPhoto, and asks nicely for your permission before making a copy of an image that’s being edited. As a consequence, it means people can try Picasa out without worrying about damage to their iPhoto database.

• – It finds your photos without fuss. Start it up, and it pokes around in all the usual places (and any other places you instruct it to poke in), looking for new pictures. These then get neatly added to the archive.

• – It does things my mum will love. The collages, the integration with Picasa Web Albums – these are features I have little interest in myself, but my mum (who has never got on well with iPhoto) will love them.

• – I like the the color searches (as shown in the photo above). Ask it to find “red” stuff and it will. Great for collages, photo books, or artistic projects.

Naturally, as with any beta, there are going to be some teething problems. One bug I’ve noticed is that right-clicking on an image and selecting “Move to (named) album” doesn’t work. And Picasa does seem to take a loooooong time to look through the images already on the camera, and decide if they are duplicates or not. But it does get there in the end.

Beta status or not, Picasa offers a decent alternative for photo management for people who don’t want to spend the kind of money required for Aperture or Lightroom.

Apple products are a natural for high falutin’ teen drama “Gossip Girl,” where just about everything the upper East Siders use has a recognizable brand name.

Gossip Girl, however, is sponsored by Verizon. To keep them happy, producers artfully block the Apple logos from getting into shots, but as a result Apple’s presence is almost more consipicous than it would be otherwise. The shot on the left reminds me of the trick directors use to hide pregnant actesses by placing plants and furniture to hit just mid-tummy.

A nice slide show non-Apple Apple product placement on Gossip Girl at Geek Sugar settles an ongoing argument I’ve been having with a friend over whether Dan’s laptop is a Mac or not…

Photos courtesy of The CW

Funnyman Jim Carrey keeps his love alive with wife, former playmate and comedian Jenny McCarthy, by dancing for her on iChat.

McCarthy tells OK magazine (with much enthusiasm!)  that she and her Yes Man text and use iChat to keep in touch while he’s on the set.

Jenny says she and Jim also use a web cam from time to time.

“I haven’t done any dancing, but I make him do that!” she says. “It’s nice! With the iChat, we’re always afraid that there’s a third party watching! We’re a little bit careful, but it’s a great way to have that face connection!”

She also confesses that between the two of them there’s not much ha ha-ing around the house. Somehow I find that hard to believe, especially if he’s shaking his groove thing for her regularly.

Via OK

Mac Tower from Sait Alanyali on Vimeo.

So here’s another fantasy Mac design from Sait Alanyli, the guy who did the [L-shaped Mac mini](https://cultofmac.com/l-shaped-mac-mini-might-be-shape-of-things-to-come/5523) concept that we featured here back in December.

This is the Mac Tower, and I have to confess there are some things about it that I find rather appealing. The ideas of a pop-up casing and a pop-up remote are very cute, and the thought of putting a battery inside with enough juice to power a Time Machine backup in case of sudden mains power loss is, well, one of those things you wonder no-one has done before.

Image via Flickr, used with permission

Steve Jobs is in a no-win situation right now. Either he’s healthy and he keeps coming to work every day and the question on everyone’s mind remains, “is Steve really healthy?” or, he’s not healthy and he takes some time to go get better, and the question on everyone’s mind remains, “how long is Steve going to live?” In either case, Apple is deprived of the singular focus of its driving force; in either case no one stops wondering about his health.

Many hope beyond hope that Jobs will regain his health and his drive and his focus, that he will return to Apple this summer, or sometime, and lead the company to many more years of innovating and producing products that “put a ding in the universe.”

Some believe his decision Wednesday to absent himself from the day-to-day operations at Apple signals the beginning of the end, that he is taking time to spend with his family and to prepare for his inevitable death coming sooner rather than later. And many wish him all the peace and comfort he can find in the love of those closest to him if such should indeed be the case.

What’s certain is there will be oceans of ink poured into writing about Steve Jobs and the unique place he has made for himself in his life and times. Whether he dies tomorrow or lives another twenty, thirty, fifty years, he has assured for himself a legacy of renown unlike anyone of his generation.

He’s been called a tyrant and a diva, a rock star and a king – and such superlatives are not out of proportion to the impact he has made on the way people live, not only in contemporary times, but on the way people will live long after he is gone.

I saw on Wednesday a piece about Jobs, written by music industry analyst Bob Lefsetz, who laments his feeling Jobs’ demise is imminent, saying his death “will be like the loss of Lennon. We will feel collectively that we’ve lost something that can’t be replaced.” And I have no doubt many will feel that way.

But the fact is, music didn’t die with the passing of John Lennon, as sad and incomprehensible as his death was, and as big and unfixable a hole as there seemed to be in his absence. His work lives on, for one thing, but also his example and his influence continue to inspire songwriters and musicians a generation later. The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, ironically, had a prominent place just a week ago at Macworld, where Jobs’ presence was so sorely missed.

The day Steve Jobs dies may seem, as Lefsetz wrote, “like one of those great teen songs, where the lover dies and the singer just can’t move on.” But, like Lennon, his work will also live on. His example and his influence will continue to inspire people in many walks of life, I daresay, for generations to come. And that is something to be happy about.

Back in December, Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen put up an entertaining spoof of the iconic children’s book series Choose Your Own Adventure, in which the game is to pick Apple’s next CEO.

Perhaps you saw it. Even if you did, my guess is that you didn’t think it was quite as poignant then as it seems today. Chen probably didn’t think, either, his post might enjoy the second life it’s getting out of Jobs’ announcement Wednesday that he’ll take a leave of absence from day-to-day Apple affairs until June.

It is clever, and it’s fun, and everyone can use a little adventure now and then.

Via Gizmodo

Photo: James Merithew/Wired.com

While I was researching Inside Steve’s Brain, I read everything I could lay my hands on about Steve Jobs, including just about every book and magazine article published in the last couple of decades. One of the most striking things was how many times Jobs mentioned death as the driving force in his life.

Over and over Jobs said he was driven to make an impact before his time ran out.

It was such a recurrent theme, I thought of devoting an entire chapter to the subject in the book. Jobs had an obsession with death to rival Emily Dickinson’s.

Even in his twenties, Jobs obsessed about death. He told former Apple CEO John Sculley he was convinced he would live a very short life and urgently needed to have an impact before he died. Sculley thought this was why he was so driven and ambitious, according to Sculley’s autobiography. Of course, Jobs lived much longer than he suspected.

Best known perhaps, are Jobs comments during his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” he said. “Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

It’s comments like this that makes me pessimistic about today’s news that Jobs is stepping aside, even if he claims it is only temporary.

For the last four decades, since Jobs cofounded Apple in his bedroom, he’s worked like a horse — rising early, taking short vacations, avoiding parties and sacrificing holidays to prepare for Macworld.

Work and family — that’s all he does.

I think he’s now focusing on his family.

I hope it’s not the case, but I suspect Jobs will not return to Apple.

Today’s announcement makes me think he’s focusing on “what’s truly important” — his family.

The ad targeting algorithm they use over at the Washington Post has either got a sick sense of humor baked-in, or perhaps the instance of the ad running with the story above is a stone cold coincidence. Either way, it’s a chance to seek levity in a bit of a heavy moment for the Apple community.

Godspeed, Mr. Jobs.

Via TechCrunch

Now, I know what you’re thinking: There’s an Apple II conference? And they do it *every year*?

Yup. There is. And they do. And they have been for the last 19 years. They call it KansasFest.

Come this July (21st – 26th), it will be 20 years, and the organizers are celebrating the anniversary with some special speakers and, they hope, lots and lots and LOTS of Apple IIs and associated stuff.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced he will take a medical leave of absence until June in an email letter sent Wednesday to all Apple employees.

Citing continued distractions stemming from curiosity over his personal health that have affected him, his family and “everyone else at Apple,” Jobs admitted his health issues are “more complex than [he] originally thought” and has asked Tim Cook, Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations until Jobs’ intended return to the company in June.

Jobs said that he plans to remain involved in major strategic decisions while he is away and said the company’s board of directors fully supports this plan.

The full text of Jobs’ email is after the jump.

Etsy seller creativedexterity‘s Mac jewelry made my heart jump. How awesome is a command key tie pin, an escape key ring, or eject earrings? Here are a couple other pictures to whet your appetite:

My bank account is glad I don’t have anybody to buy jewelry for right now.

A handful of Web browsers for the iPhone have silently appeared at the App Store, a seeming reversal of Apple’s policy to block sales of applications that competed with the cell phone’s built-in Safari.

The four applications — Edge Browser, Webmate, Incognito and Shaking Web — employ Apple’s Webkit framework, the software used to build Safari.

Apple’s apparent thaw in its refusal to add some applications to the App Store doesn’t seem to extend to heavy-weight Safari rivals Firefox and Opera. Cupertino maintains projects relying on non-Apple software development techniques,cannot be sold via the App Store.

Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab has an interesting series on changing journalism, both in terms of what the digital backpack journalist uses and how they use it.

NBC news journalist Mara Schiavocampo opened up her 30-pound reporter’s backpack (a custom job with wheels) for them in a two-part interview about her work.

In addition to the newsroom standard issue Sony HVR-V1U HDV camcorder and a bunch of other expensive stuff, she uses an Apple MacBook Pro (in the image above), edits with Final Cut Pro and totes an extra MacBook battery for staying power.

The Motown label is celebrating half a century of hits with a free podcast series on iTunes.

Dubbed “mo-casts,” they’re behind-the scenes interviews with pop greats including Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, the Temptations and the Four Tops.

The first 15 episodes include the Anatomy of a Hit: “Love Hangover,” Stevie Wonder in a rare archive interview and hip-hop artist Q-tip on his favorite Motown hits.

Apple has begun approving the first wave of browser products to compete with Mobile Safari on the iPhone and iPod Touch, signaling the company may not be the great curmudgeon of handheld computing after all.

The apparent shift in Apple’s previous policy of denying AppStore certification to software products that “duplicate the functionality” of its own applications that ship with the devices, a handful of browser apps have begun showing up in recent days on the iTunes store.

Incognito, from developer Dan Park, promises completely anonymous browsing, with all history cleared simply by closing the application.

Edge Browser is a free app that opens up valuable screen real estate, but forces the address and navigation tools into the Settings menu, which doesn’t seem too promising a design feature to me.

WebMate is a 99¢ solution to tabbed browsing on the iPhone, that works by queuing up all the links you click on, then allowing you to view them one by one when you’re ready.

An analyst Wednesday told clients he expects a new 4GB iPhone during the first quarter, pushing sales of the popular handset to 7 million units beyond the 6.9 million iPhone 3Gs sold in 2008.

“Checks indicate a new 4GB iPhone which may be helping to increase build rates,” UBS analyst Maynard Um advised. Taiwan-based chipmakers may be preparing parts for a new iPhone, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Unconfirmed speculation of an iPhone nano priced below the $199 8GB iPhone has swirled for some time.

JPMorgan analyst Mark Moskowitz became the latest on Wall Street to trim expectations for Apple during the fiscal year. Moskowitz Wednesday lowered slightly his guidance for Apple shares to $102 from $104.

Earlier this week, Citi’s Richard Gardner reduced his target price for Apple stock to $132 from $153, citing the need to “reflect a more conservative view of consumer spending.”

Moskowitz, however, told clients Apple’s value is “holding up better than feared” despite lower demand for PCs and other high tech gadgets.

Ian Betteridge is a brave man. Not only is he a Mac user who has switched to Ubuntu running on Dell hardware, he’s also decided to say so in public.

Some of you may recognize his name: for some years, he was a writer for, and then editor of, the UK version of MacUser magazine.

Why did he do it? Partly because of price, partly because he cares about open software running on open platforms. Apple, he says, is a long way from open and seems to be closing things ever tighter as time goes on. (See also his follow-up post detailing the apps he’s chosen to use on Linux.)

What really caught my eye, though, was one of Ian’s asides. Half way through his post, he predicts that “sooner or later”, the “development ecosystem will increasingly come to resemble that of the iPhone, and for much the same reasons”.

In other words, there will be an App Store for OS X software. An App Store that Apple will keep just as tight control over. Only apps that met with Apple’s approval would be cleared for distribution, and only apps distributed in that manner would actually run.

A bold prediction indeed. A fair one, though? And does the Better World of free software tempt you to switch to Ubuntu (or any other *nix variant)? What do you think?

(Disclaimers: I sometimes contribute articles to MacUser UK; and I know Ian Betteridge personally, have enjoyed a chat and a pint with him, and consider him a lovely chap.)

“Music of the Night” – she plays through the nose!

Smule, developers of the hit iPhone music app Ocarina, announced the winners of the company’s “This Contest Blows” Ocarina video contest Tuesday. Conceived as a way to reward its raving Ocarina fans with $1,000 per winner, the contest attracted a number of surprising and creative videos. Many contestants demonstrated musical talent, as well as Smulean je ne sais quoi.

Because the contest’s intent was to nurture budding Ocarina talent, Smule is extending the contest to Friday, February 13, and will announce 5 more $1,000 prize winners on Smule’s Mule live broadcast February 16th.

Check out a couple of our favorite winners here, plus more after the jump.

Hardrockgrl’s “Oh Shenandoah”

Monkey Head – rubber bannanas, they never go bad…

Ah, the dead mighty mouse. Who hasn’t been there once or twice?

This pic made me smile, my last Apple mouse had too many trackball issues and I’ve used no-name one ever since…

Photo used under Creative Commons license, thanks to riddle on Flickr, who also tagged the photo of the deceased mouse “fifty bucks on a rope.”

Apple sweetened the pot a bit on its new productivity suite Tuesday, with a “Try it Free for 30 days” offer on iWork ’09. The enhanced spreadsheet, desktop publishing and presentation software package must not be flying off the shelves since its introduction last week at Macworld.

I was aiming to get around to it at some point because I’ve come to really like Pages, especially since I got used to its decidedly-different-than-Word workflow.

I’m also interested in checking out Numbers, Apple’s spreadsheet software that was not part of the copy of iWork ’06 I’ve been hobbling along with. I hope not to be involved again too soon in any venture that requires a lot of work with spreadsheets, but if Numbers is a reasonably robust solution it will be nice to know it’s in the file system.

Of course – and I hate to keep going on about this – Keynote is, to me, the star of the iWork show, a truly full-featured, sophisticated piece of presentation software that puts Powerpoint to shame. I’m looking forward to playing with its new bells and whistles and this little free teaser may be just the thing to get me off my duff to check it out.

Thanks, Apple!

Psystar has raised another desperate, if novel claim in its ongoing legal battle with Apple, arguing before a federal judge that since the Mac clone-maker legally purchased its copies of Mac OS X from Apple and resellers, it has the right to do basically whatever it wants with that software under the first-sale doctrine.

In court filings described by Computerworld, Psystar told the court: “Once a copyright owner consents to the sale of particular copies of a work, the owner may not thereafter exercise distribution rights with respect to those copies. See, e.g., Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, 210 U.S. 339, 350-51 (1908) (recognizing more than 100 years ago the concept of first sale and the limitations imposed upon a copyright owner in light thereof). Psystar acquired lawful copies of the Mac OS from Apple; those copies were lawfully acquired from authorized distributors including some directly from Apple; Psystar paid good and valuable consideration for those copies; Psystar disposed of those lawfully acquired copies to third-parties.”

Unfortunately for Psystar, courts have rarely held the first sale doctrine applies to software, considering it a product that is licensed, not sold, and can therefore be distributed with restrictions on further distribution. Psystar’s thin hopes likely hang on the precedent of a case involving Adobe, in which a court upheld the first sale doctrine’s application to software.

Via Cnet

The Juice Wireless iPhone and iPod Touch app Mirror deserves some credit, we suppose, for putting a big bold **DISCLAIMER** right at the top of its description page on the AppStore, calling the application a “fun, joke…for your amusement only.”

99¢ buys you a selection of 9 frames which can be used to border the reflective glossy surface of the models released in 2008, giving the impression you’re holding a mirror instead of a mobile computing device. The developers say they’ve brought you this hilarious bit of software engineering and design so “you’ll never look stupid staring at your iPhone again.” Um, OK.

If you’re really interested in turning your iPhone or iPod Touch into a mirror, you may want to look into the benefits of a protective mylar screen cover from RadTech.

ClearCal is an ultra thin (5 mil) tension adhering screen cover available in Anti-Glare, Transparent and Mirror surface finishes. Its high quality adhesive stays on the film – which can be removed, cleaned and reapplied several times – magically leaving no residue on your device.

Two sets of protective films are included per pack, priced at $9.95 for the transparent version and $12.95 for the other two. The mirror version gives a clear, fully reflective appearance when the device display is off, turning it into a trés chic silver brick. When the display comes on the mirrored appearance fades away and the cover becomes completely transparent; it’s a very cool effect.

OK so the name isn’t quite as snappy as Quicksilver, but the intent is very similar. And at least one of the developers is exactly the same.

Google’s new Quick Search Box for Mac was coded in part by Alcor, aka Nicholas Jitkoff, aka the guy who created Quicksilver and made keyboard-centric launchers the big hit they are today (on pretty much every platform, not just OS X).

This beta release is a good start. It doesn’t spend ages cataloguing your hard disk (at least, not in an intrusive, tie-your-Mac-up-for-minutes sort of way). And the architecture is designed for expansion; more features can be plugged in via, um, plugins.

Note that this is NOT the same as the Google Desktop Search app that you might have played with a while back. Desktop Search used the same Command+Command shortcut but made much greater demands on your system (at least, that’s how I remember it – it lasted about a day on my machine before I removed it, dissatisfied to put it mildly). I’m not very clear right now whether or not Quick Search Box is a replacement for Desktop Search, although I suspect that is the case, or will be in the medium to long term.

The only thing that the older Desktop Search product has got going for it is that it will run on Tiger, whereas the newer app is Leopard-only.

There’s a way to go yet. This new beast crashes, twice in the time it’s taken me to write these words. But hey, if Alcor’s in charge I have high hopes. High hopes indeed.