Cult of Mac

We recently wrote about iBreviary, an iPhone and iPod Touch app that gives the morning prayer, evening prayer and night prayer or complines for the day.

The Italian priest who had the brainwave for the app, Don Paolo Padrini, informed us that the 1.2 version of the prayer app, which he says has the blessing of the Vatican, is now available in Spanish, French, English and Latin (for those, like the Pope, who want a return to pre-Second Vatican Council days) and a version that follows the Ambrosian Rite, for the five million Catholics or so in the Milan area.

iBreviary costs $0.99 on iTunes and now also comes with a how-to page to help those unfamiliar with daily prayer rituals. The original Italian-language version was gratis, Father Padrini says the price of the app is a contribution for the developers.

Don Padrini also says an app is in the works for Facebook called that “Praybook” that will let groups use the Breviary via social network.

In a nod to reality, Apple Monday began listing worldwide carriers offering ‘unlocked’ iPhones. Just a year ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs described the struggle between hackers and Cupertino as a “cat-and-mouse game.”

Now the Apple Website includes “Carrier offers authorized unlocking” on a support page.

Nearly 40 of the 105 countries listed offer unlocked iPhones. However, some handsets are unlocked through just one carrier.

Singer Katy Perry made her fame with pop try-bianism, but her heart is in a long-distance love with a boy. Perry is a Mac user who credits iChat with keeping up the relationship:

“Her current love is Travis McCoy, singer for the indie hip-hop band Gym Class Heroes, whom she met two years ago when they were recording in the same studio complex in New York, although he remained on the East Coast while she went back to L.A.

This summer they were together for 10 weeks during traveling music festival the Warped Tour,but “I [last] saw him three, four weeks ago,” says Katy wistfully. “It’s definitely difficult. I was really lonely for a couple of weeks, but that’s the name of the game. To me, iChat is the most beautiful technology invented, ever!”

Wonder if she iChatted a girl, just to try it, would the experience be as beautiful?

Photo: Perry’s website

Via Page Six

The iPhone nano is back. The vaporware – part handset, part iPod – has re-emerged more than a year after first speculation. The newest iteration comes from China.

The latest rumor is that iDealsChina is producing a case for the unnamed product that supposedly will be unveiled at Macworld in January.

The Chinese company, which MacRumors says has “a very mixed track record” when it comes to leaking news of actual products, notes the case’s dimensions “have the same height as the just release Nano but wider and thicker and with the same iPhone 3G contours.”

First: Try My Nose!! No, really! Try it!

“Just select a nose you like, hold it next to you current nose and surprise your friends!”

Or – now here’s a radical thought – just stick with the nose you were born with! Maybe it suits you just fine! Maybe – oh never mind. Next!

Analyst David Bailey told investors Monday shipments of iPhones, iPods and Macs are lower than expected as the company copes with a tighter economy.

As a result, Bailey also cut his target price for Apple shares to $115 from $125.

Bailey said the apparent lack of any new product category for the upcoming January MacWorld 2009 removes “a potential catalyst” for shares, causing “Apple to try to generate demand in a tough environment.”

Despite the short-term challenges, the analyst told clients he believes Apple will remain ahead of competitors.

Bailey’s downgrade follows last week’s target price cut by Morgan Stanley’s Kathryn Huberty. Huberty cut her target price to $95 from $100, citing the weak economy. Along with trimming Apple stock, the analyst also lowered projections for iPhone sales during calendar 2009 to 14 million units, down from 19 million handsets.

Fans don’t listen to our albums, said Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, because
iTunes favors the single and the shuffle mentality.

In a Q&A with the Chicago Tribune, Corgan said the tepid reception of last year’s comeback album “Zeitgeist,” makes it the last effort the band will produce in album format.

Chicago Trib: So “Zeitgeist” was the last album?

Corgan: “We’re done with that. There is no point. People don’t even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles and skip over the rest,” said Corgan.

“The listening patterns have changed, so why are we killing ourselves to do albums, to create balance and do the arty track to set up the single? It’s done.”

With “Zeitgeist,” the Smashing Pumpkins did try to adapt to new musical habits, releasing a pre-sale version with bonus tracks and covers especially on iTunes — to the outrage of some fans who felt obliged to buy more than one copy of the album to get the title track.

Much like Metallica’s rage against the iPod, this probably won’t win the Smashing Pumpkins any new fans.

Via Mac World UK

If I have one complaint about my aluminum MacBook (and I think I might literally have only one complaint), it’s that I don’t have an elegant method for hooking the machine up to my HDTV. As part of the 99.997 percent of the population who don’t own an AppleTV, this means I don’t have any way to watch the video in my living room. The laptop’s Mini DisplayPort is an absurdly new standard, and that means it plays well with virtually nothing. I could buy an MDP to DVI cable from Apple, then use a DVI-to-HDMI cable to provide video and an additional TOSLink cable to deliver audio, but that sounds like a poor way to spend a Sunday evening. It would be nice just to have one cable to do everything.

Well. This frustration should soon be gone. According to MacYourself, an MDP-to-HDMI cable will be arriving in late January from Monoprice.com, the leading source for really cheap cables on the Internet. It looks like a separate audio cable will still be necessary (though no one is really sure), but I’m still a big proponent of the direct to HDMI solution, especially because it should support HDCP protection for watching iTunes HD downloads on an external screen.

I’ll buy one on day one. Who’s with me?

The Blagoblogs are a-buzz this evening with word that Microsoft, though it definitely has no ZunePhone to show at next month’s CES (I know, I’m just as heart-broken as you are), will almost certainly launch some sort of software ‘n’ services platform for Windows Mobile called Zune Mobile. According to ZDNet’s Mary-Jo Foley, who is as interested in Zune Mobile as it is possible for a non-Microsoft employee to be, the platform may include “music purchase, playing, sharing and subscribing — and maybe even a little something special for podcasters/podcast listeners, too.”

Or, in other words, Microsoft may, if it plays its cards right, bring the technical media functionality of the iPhone to the legendarily poor interfaces of a thousand mediocre Windows Mobile phones, many of which have enough on-board storage for two or even three albums worth of music. Rather than attempting to a build a ground-up 21st century mobile platform, Microsoft is attempting to bolt on features that meet current user expectations, and then leave it up to dozens of hardware makers to see if the experience actually holds together. If true, this is a pretty sad bit of competitive response out of Redmond. At best, it’s a duplicate of a famous Apple failure — iTunes for the Motorola ROKR.

In that unfortunate experience, Apple brought iTunes support to a third-party phone, and then ran screaming as it realized the only way to ensure its name would only appear on a great phone would be to build the software and the hardware from the ground-up on its own. The iPhone resulted. Zune was Microsoft’s first attempt to follow such a strategy, to poor results thus far (in large part because Apple’s ecosystem was much stronger). Now, it would appear, Microsoft is relying on its standard software-only approach to respond to the iPhone juggernaut.

That’s pretty sad. As an enormous Apple fan, I would like nothing better than a credible challenge to the iPhone’s dominance — it means an even better iPhone than I can imagine in two years’ time. But if this is the best the Distinguished Competition has to offer, all we have to rely on is the vision of Steve Jobs. Good thing he can see for miles and miles, eh?

Via ZDNet

Found this pretty cool Mac tree ornament, courtesy of Flickr user Chris Dejabet, who is also responsible for the stocking below, featuring the groovy Mac applique, and it got me thinking that – given the almost unbearable cuteness of Apple products, as well as the legendary inventiveness and creativity of the Legions of the Cult – I haven’t seen a whole lot of Apple-oriented Christmas decorations.

I did poke around a little bit and found some pages at The Apple Collection featuring very handy pdf files you can download to make your very own paper Apple ornaments like Chris’ above.

I’ve included a couple of screen grabs indicating some of the choices available, and if you’re interested in folding more than just wrapping paper this holiday season, click here and here.

History has shown again and again that truck accessories are the best of all possible holiday gifts. That’s why I was delighted to discover this shot on Flickr of some beautiful Apple mudflaps outfitted on a fine 4×4 of GMC persuasion.

I mean, it’s like I HAVE to buy a truck now. Even if there’s nowhere to park it in San Francisco. Or I can just wear mudflaps off my pant legs. Whichever makes more sense.

Full pic after the jump.

Flickr via Digg

Microsoft finally got around to testing Apple’s AppStore waters this weekend with the release of Seadragon, a free project of Micrsoft’s LiveLabs that lets you see giga-pixel images on your iPhone using a nifty zooming algorithm to get super-close on a map or photo, with just a few pinches or taps of your finger.

The app comes pre-loaded with images and lets you view yours or others’ Photosynth images, or content from any RSS feed.

The embed above shows of the experience in a fashion similar to the one you’ll find on the iPhone or iPod Touch, according to a report at TechCrunch.

Via 148Apps

Seems like the big news over the past few days at the AppStore tends mostly to the questionably mature, if not downright asinine.

First, the re-emergence of Pull My Finger, an ingenious application that produces the sound of flatulence, generated over 200 stories in the Apple web-osphere yesterday. After initially rejecting the app as something with no discernible utility, Apple has reportedly sorted out how to handle this particular genre of application, according to Pull My Finger’s developer.

Then there there was the implication of either uncertainty or perhaps some discrimination with respect to apps intended for “mature audiences,” with developers of apps rated 17+ finding they cannot – as of this writing – issue promotional codes that other app developers were recently given to enable easier review and testing. Apple has described the restriction as a “minor glitch” that should be resolved shortly, according to a report at iLounge.

Finally, also on Saturday, the application Poo Price made its debut. Poo Price counts time while you’re doing your business on the toilet at work and tells you how much money you made during that time “working” based on your salary. What price good humor, eh?

The interesting thing about Poo Price, though, is that it may be an example of an app that works in the background, in violation of the SDK’s prohibition on such functionality, according to a piece at Venture Beat.

Amid recent concern that Apple may have given Google preferential treatment in approving the search giant’s voice search application for sale in the AppStore, and discussion over SDK restrictions that appear to be keeping Flash off the iPhone in any meaningful way, concern over how Poo Price keeps its timer going even when the user switches out of it while, say, checking email in the restroom, may not be the most pressing thing on many people’s agenda.

As MG Siegler writes for Venture Beat, Poo Price “is probably just another crude app in the new, racy App Store.”

Eelke Dekker has found a way to transform ordinary everyday clothing into functional, wearable notebook computer sleeves. Wrap a hoodie around your MacBook and hey presto!

Coming soon: trousers for G4 Cubes, dresses for G4 iMacs, and socks for iPods. Oh, that’s already been done hasn’t it?

Eelke explains his thinking in Dutch on his blog post, so I’ve used Google Translate to turn it into English. Apologies, therefore, for the rough-and-ready nature of the translation:

“After the blog post on jerseys that are transformed into the MacBook Sleeve, a friend came along with an old sweater. While he was in the kitchen to toil on a delicious Italian pasta, I stickte jersey quickly to a precise appropriate, unique laptop sleeve.”

(Photo used under Creative Commons license, thanks to eelke dekker.)

Satta van Dahl wants your old Mac.

They’ll be put to good use: the German-born, Melbourne based artist has an ongoing iPaint myMac project, in the works since 2006, which now counts 50 Macs embellished with stencils and paint.

So far they include an orange-and-red 1991 PowerBook 100 and a iconic Happy Mac Classic.

If you don’t have anything to donate, you can always follow the project on his website or Flickr stream .

His current wish list:
* iMac (the one with the half-sphered foot)
* eMac
* Cube (yes, iKnow, they are hard to come by, but hey, there might be the odd chance.. and if it’s just an empty case …)
* Macintosh Portable (they claim this was the first portable Mac, but it was so heavy, no way anyone took it anywhere)
* anything made after 2000 (there aren’t many dead ones to collect around yet)
* Classic, SE & Plus (I already have a few dozen of them, but I need more …)
* any type of Apple //, the legendary Lisa … ok, I’m dreaming now
* anything odd with an Apple logo on it (instruction VHS tapes, old PR material, shop displays, … you name it).

As part of the collection process, he also runs a “Mac surgery convention,” because most of the donated machines don’t work anymore, but there are enough bits to cobble one working machine out of two or three dead ones.
Last time he invited Mac savvy geek friends to bring their screw drivers around for an evening of pizza and computers, there were 10 running old Macs as a result.

Image via Flickr

This playful polka dot chair comes wired for sound with an audio jack for your iPod, two built-in 10-watt speakers and a 15-watt subwoofer.

The cotton canvas chair slightly rocks (to keep up with your head bobbing) and comes in brown and white dots or light blue and white dots.

Aimed at the teen market (unsurprisingly, the pink version was a sell-out) if it came in a more grown-up print or solids it’d be a great piece for the den.

$349.00 at PBteen

Via Tech Fever

Topping at least one luxe list of trendy items for Christmas are these customized iPhones from Continental Mobile.

The iPhone rimmed in 24k gold costs about $1,800 (£1,199), if that doesn’t wind you up there are ruby and diamond versions, about $4,600 (£3,099) and other serious stones like sapphires and emeralds. iPod Touch versions are also available.

If you decide to put this much sparkle under your tree, make it fast. Each item is “hand crafted in England” and takes seven to 10 days for delivery.

Via Black Book Mag

Palm, the Treo maker that has seen its profits crater and U.S. marketshare dwindle, is promising to stage a comeback at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show. The company plans to unveil a new operating system and handset, according to BusinessWeek.

Although details are sparse, Palm will “finally unveil an oft-delayed new operating system, as well as the first in a new family of smartphones,” unnamed sources told the magazine.

The tip may refer to Palm’s Linux-based software Nova, which the company had said it would introduce in 2008, then pushed back to sometime next year.

Netbooks outsold iPhones in the third quarter of this year, according to two recent reports. Netbooks, inexpensive laptops with a smaller footprint, sold 5.6 million units versus 4.7 million of Apple’s touchscreen handsets.

The netbook category grew 160 percent in the third quarter compared to 2007, according to DisplaySearch. Experts predict 14 million netbooks will ship by the end of 2008, boosting notebook PCs along the way.

“With the lone exception of Apple, all of the top 10 PC brands have entered the mini-note PC market, John Jacobs, DisplaySearch Director of Notebook Market Research said earlier this week.

This, lovely readers, is the Girl Who Balanced A MacBook Air On Her Head. Her name is Holden and she’s in San Francisco.

Next week, we shall show you The Man Who Wore An iPhone As A Tie (he lives in Edinburgh), and the Parisian Who Used A Pair Of Old G3 Blue-And-Whites As Boots.

(Photo used under Creative Commons license, thanks holden_helena.)

Soooo, this 3D interface that everyone’s been going crazy about; allow me to add a brief comment:

Arrrrrrrrgghghggghghhhhh.

More Apple-inspired handiwork from the same Japanese fan who ripened Apple logos on to the fruit.

Though not the first Apple nail decals (iPress on or glitter glam version, anyone?) these simple white Apple logo and iPod decals win for elegance, hands down.

Hmmm. Wonder if Apple logos that Mac enthusiasts can suntan on skin might be next? Sure, the execution would be more complicated (how long would you have to wear the sticker to brand your flesh?) but the surprise effect a sure winner.

Image courtesy Nobon

If you’ve got an old 1940s style rotary phone lying around and about 7 hours you’re not sure what to do with, you can contact Michael at fonejackerhacker in the UK and find out how he made this iPhone docking station. It’s powered by a 16W amp with one speaker behind the dial (10w) on the front of the phone and two speakers in the handset (2x 3w).

The IR sensor and controls are fitted to the side of the phone and the docking port is hidden under the receiver when the hand set is off. Because the speaker is an official ‘works with iPhone’ product all of the normal charging and iPhone features are uncompromised.

Michael is working on a version with a microphone on the handset and, with the use of an iPhone app that he is developing, you’d be able to use this as a handset for the iPhone, or as a headset.

Via SlipperyBrick

The developers at Mokugift, the kind-hearted people behind the iPhone/iPod Touch app A Real Tree, may not be the greatest app developers, but they are good at math.

For every one of the 99¢ apps purchased on Apple’s iTunes AppStore, one of Mokugift’s 12 internationally recognized tree planting partners will plant, yes, a real tree in places fighting deforestation such as Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Burundi, Senegal, Zambia, India, Philippines, and Haiti. These countries are in tropical regions where tree planting is the most beneficial in the fight against global warming.

To be sure, the app is not going to wow the average game-addled, accelerometer-addicted iPhone user. When the app is launched an animated tree grows out of the ground into full bloom. Ta-daa! Tap once and watch a little bird circle around and land. But Mokugift’s Hans Chung understands that Apple has sold more than 13 million iPhones. “If every iPhone owner planted one tree,” he says, “the environmental impact would be equivalent to taking 500,000 cars off the road.”

Chung’s A Real Tree project works with organizations that provide materials and education to local communities to plant trees in an ecologically-beneficial manner. Local communities learn how to plant trees while avoiding toxic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. The trees they plant produce nutritious fruits and crops that they can live off and make a living on.

It seems like an effort worth contributing 99¢ to, doesn’t it? “People spent $8,000 dollars on that frivolous “I Am Rich” app, Chung said, “That inspired us. We knew we needed to develop something meaningful.” If that’s not enough to turn you over, Chung promised more small ‘Easter egg’ surprises will be added to the tree and the little bird with future updates.

Via iPhoneSavior

In the wake of developer Craig Hockenberry’s “Dear Steve” letter complaining about feeling forced to drift in a sea of 99¢ “ringtone apps,” and the inevitable charges of petulant whining that some accused him of in response, developers at Appcubby have published detailed financial records showing, down to the dollar, what goes into keeping food on the table for an iPhone app developer.

Among the things Hockenberry mentioned in his developers’ wish list to Steve were: ways to accurately track who exactly is downloading apps (and which ads/links they clicked on to get to the store), and the ability to offer free demo version of apps that expire after a given time, prompting people to buy the full app. Appcubby’s records would appear to support the view that Hockenberry was not just crying in his beer, and their post supports his call for free demos and more ad-tracking capabilities as two things that would greatly help the situation.

Via Gizmodo