For Beatles fans looking to download the iconic British rockers from Apple’s iTunes, it appears its going to be another ‘Hard Days Night.’ Paul McCartney now says negotiations are at a stand-still.
“The last word I got back was it’s stalled at the whole moment, the whole process,” the musician told the Associated Press.
The sticking point, according to McCartney is EMI, which owns the Beatles song catalog, and Apple Corps, a holding company run by surviving members of the UK band.
Apple shares climbed 12.5 percent Monday to close at $92.77 amid bullish analysts who saw demand for MacBooks breaking from the trend to lower expectations.
Despite reducing expectations on iPhone and Mac desktops sales for 2009, several Apple analysts told clients they expected sales of new MacBooks to increase.
On Monday, Oppenheimer’s Yar Reiner raised his projection for MacBook demand to 1.61 million, up from 1.54 million. Reiner pointed to the new unibody construction for his increased enthusiasm.
Artcoustic has come up with a clever solution for small spaces or people who like music but want speakers to be good-looking or at least unobtrusive. It looks like a painting but this iPod dock with speaker blasts your sound without any of the bulk, the only thing not super cool about it is the name — SUPERSTAR iPod Music Centre.
The makers assure it’s a plug and play setup for these state-of-the art speakers with built-in
2x150watt Amplifier.
The front panel of the SUPERSTAR (what were they thinking?) comes in solid colors, jaunty stripes, a ton of patterns and even a series of Buddha portraits. And if you get tired of the look, move or repaint, you can always change it. Available in 2009, no word on price.
Via Smarthouse
Green is the new black. And once again Apple is in the forefront, for better or worse, of a coming trend. It’s hard to imagine any technology company having the stones to advertise its products as good for the environment, which, to be fair, Apple doesn’t say here.
But the ad does tout the new notebook line’s aluminum enclosures and glass screens as 100% recyclable, points out that their power consumption is less than that of a light bulb and says they are mercury free. All steps in the right direction, to be sure.
Here’s a gallery of a dozen very cool Apple/Mac wallpapers you can use to liven up your desktop or simply go for a change of scenery. These were sent in by reader Henrik Andersson, who blogs for We Find the Stuff and found these at deviantArt, where there’s even more to be found.
You can see Henrik’s original posting here.
You don’t need to be in holiday stress mode to realize the zen benefits of playing with Koi Pond on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Tis the Season, however, and the dev team at The Blimp Pilots studio have added a holiday theme for your added enjoyment of one of the best apps I’ve seen to leverage the awesomeness that is Apple’s touch interface and accelerometer.
Koi Pond is an application with a graphically realistic pond filled with Koi fish. You can move your finger around the screen to create ripples in the water that send the fish scurrying for safety off the screen. You can rearrange the lily pads, feed the fish, even get them to come and nibble your finger by leaving it in the water. The app has beautiful 3D sound, too and rates, for my money, among the best bucks I’ve ever spent.
On the Apple Store website, it seems clear your choices among the iPod Touch offerings are 8GB, 16GB and 32GB models. Alerted by a photo posted by Flickr user iTomath, however, I was drawn to the What’s New with iTouch info page on the Apple site and, sure enough, the photo on the page as of this writing appears to indicate a 33GB device. Not that 1GB makes any difference in this day and age, but it does seem odd, doesn’t it?
A few weeks back, we featured a post on design student Kyle Buckner’s wooden iPhone pedestal. Kyle contacted us today with news and info on his latest Apple-inspired creation, a custom timepiece commissioned by the Apple Store in Richmond, VA for one of their special customers.
Buckner built the clock over the weekend, using hand-cut and polished plexi-glass. “I went out and bought a clock , and stole the motor out of it,” he told Cult of Mac, adding “then I searched on the internet and found a free background that referred to Apple, edited a few things in Photoshop and printed them out to attach underneath each piece.”
Check out the gallery below and follow after the jump for more on Buckner’s background and plans for the future in Apple-inspired design.
Whacky journo types at the Super Soaraway Sun (as it used to be known when I was a lad) have discovered that you can turn VEGETABLES into BATTERIES.
Sun senior editors, average age 57, found that they could fill a few precious inches of newsprint with a story of a man who recharges his iPod with an onion, a technique well documented in school-level science for donkeys years.
An onlooker said: “If they hadn’t been able to get an iPod angle on it, they’d never have considered it as a story at all.
“But anything iPod is worth a hundred words here and there, mainly because everyone in the newsroom owns one.”
Continued on page 94.
Here’s some news for you:
Mac OS X is, and always has been, vulnerable to trojans.
The whole point of trojans is that they exploit the most serious security problem of all: gullible users. A trojan does not take advantage of any holes in the code, all it needs is to persuade someone to click an “OK”, or to run an installer, and it has done its job.
The problem with a lot of the reporting of malware, especially by traditional media, is that the word “virus” is widely used to mean “malware”.
Most of us who are half-way to computer literate know the difference between a trojan and a virus, but most of the rest of the world has no idea.
That’s why we’re seeing news articles about “Mac viruses”, and we shall continue to see them in future. That’s also why your Windows-using friends are going to be smirking at you, saying: “Heh. And you said you didn’t get viruses on your Mac. Bet you feel stupid now, huh?”
Any computer is vulnerable to trojans. The security hole they exploit is not in the operating system, it’s the one sitting in the chair and tapping on the keyboard.
Wanna keep your computer clean? Next time you’re surfing some random porn site and a pop-up tells you to “Install a codec” so you can watch the movies, it’s a good idea to click Cancel.
The developers behind Boxee, the social media center that distributes video content between your computer and TV, announced Monday a fix for Apple’s recent update of AppleTV.
The fix, outlined on Boxee forums, replaces a manual hack to get the application working after disabled by Apple TV 2.3, which Apple released last week.
In a blog post, the Boxee team provided instructions on how to update the USB Creator application. So far, around 35,000 people have downloaded the fix.
Boxee, which includes CBS, Netflix and Hulu among partners, recently received $4 million in venture funding.
Last week, Apple released update 2.3 for its AppleTV devices. Among the new features introduced: AirTunes streaming and wider iTunes support.
Jesse Grosjean at Hog Bay Software has released Taskpaper 2.0, an impressive update to an already impressive app.
Taskpaper is the simplest sort of task management environment you can think of, and that’s why it’s so useful. It doesn’t try to do everything. But it does one thing – manage lists – extremely well indeed.
The new release has lots of new features, such as a new search system, custom themes (so you can have green-on-black Terminal style lists if you like), and (my favorite new addition) a system-wide keyboard shortcut that calls up a Quick Entry Window for, erm, quickly adding entries.
I’ve seen people criticize Taskpaper because of the features it lacks, but I don’t see it that way. It omits many things that appear in other task management apps, and it does to with purpose. Taskpaper keeps things simple. If you want to put more focus on getting things done than you do on Getting Things Done, Taskpaper is the app for you.
Apple faces new lawsuits over its popular aledgedly, including one asking a court to award $5 million because of advertising claims.
San Diego, Calif. resident Peter Keller named both Apple and AT&T in a lawsuit alleging fraud and deceit. Keller’s lawsuit charges the maker of the iPhone 3G and its exclusive American carrier, created false and misleading advertising claims regarding the speed of the 3G network.
“Apple and AT&T have engaged in a collaborated scheme to deceive plantiff and other consumers, since the iPhone 3G and AT&T 3G Network is faulty and rarely provides 3G connectivity to its customers,” the lawsuit reads.
The week on Wall Street kicked off with a mix of projections for iPhone sales. On Apple desktops, there was consensus: 2009 will be the year of the notebook.
Continuing the revised iPhone outlooks of last week, Openheimer nearly cut in half its expectations for the December quarter, projecting 4.8 million iPhone sales will be reported for the quarter, down from analyst Yair Reiner’s previous 7.5 million. Reiner also cut his forecast of yearly iPhone sales to 21.3 million from 27 million.
At the other end of the spectrum were analysts which announced bullish expectations for iPhone sales. J.P. Morgan expert Mark Moskowitz foresees 26.7 million handsets sold in 2009 while Thomas Weisel’s Doug Reid told clients he felt 24.8 million iPhones would sell next year, upping his previous projection of 22.5 million sold.
While there was little agreement on future iPhone demand, no analyst disputed that desktops sales are headed lower as laptops grow in popularity.
If you liked the red-white-and-blue look of the Barack Obama “Hope” poster designed by street artist gone viral Shepard Fairey, Dubi Kaufmann has made a plug-in for Photo Booth that allows you to “Obamafy” your photos.
With over 4,450 downloads and counting, just about any photo you pop into it will take on iconic status. Still, Obamafying yourself won’t get you elected. As Kaufmann says, the free app is “an exercise in pop culture and is not part of any campaign nor it is an endorsement for either candidate.”
Download zip file here, then expand it. Copy the file Obamafy.qtz to /Library/Compositions, then launch Photo Booth and enjoy the Obamafy plugin.
Via Tech Side Up
Lay-offs have become common as a winter cold as companies from New York to Silicon Valley cope with the ailing economy. But Apple, in its inimitable way, is hoping a bit of employee shuffling will prevent any more pink slips.
Friday, Palm confirmed it would drop employees from the Treo maker, telling CNET the move was made due to “challenges facing our company and the industry.” Although Palm didn’t mention the number of layoffs, Silicon Valley blog Valleyway put the figure at 1,050.
Apple, despite recently eating into Palm’s marketshare, hasn’t escaped worrying about a slowdown in consumer demand for gadgets. However, instead of jobs cuts, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is experimenting with reduced hours for its sales staff and extra duty for Apple Store workers more accustom to answering support questions or tackling creative tasks.
Pirates are back. If you’ve been reading the news you know we mean the bad-ass high-seas kind, not the frilly-shirted guyliner ones from the movies.
It’s likely that aught-age pirates who have been terrorizing ships off the Horn of Africa recently have better tools than the odd rusty compass, at the very least iPhones with Google maps.
With this new breed in mind, Glenn Jones, a graphic designer and illustrator from Auckland, New Zealand designed this Modern Pirate T-shirt, yours for $20.
Those thigh-high boots do look good accessorized by an iPhone, we find.
Via Nerd Approved
There’s an idea you have for a killer iPhone app that no one has made yet. Trouble is, you have the idea but aren’t a developer. Step in iPhone Freelancer, a site that aims to pair idea-happy luddites with the tech people to make those apps happen. Employers post projects, then freelancers bid on them. It just launched a couple of days ago, but there’s already one project for a game with a budget of $250-500:
“I am looking for someone to develop an iphone app in the spirit of ibeer. You will have to know the SDK development kit provided by apple or some mobile phone equivalent. The app is meant to be a simple form of entertainment. If you start with an existing game and can just change the images, that would be fine too. I just don’t have the skill to do it on my own.”
Given the recent spate of stories on of developers making big bucks on iPhone apps, the idea is good, though savvy programmers are sharing iPhone-related gigs already.
If you want to use a racy photo as your iPhone wallpaper it will have to be strictly DIY now that Wallpaper Universe has been pulled from the AppStore.
Some will say this turn of events confirms Steve Jobs’ promise to keep ‘porn’ off the iPhone. Others point out that it highlights the inscrutability of Apple’s review process for selecting what does, and what doesn’t make it into the AppStore catalog.
Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether Apple should retain exclusive gatekeeper authority over apps that can be legitimately run on the iPhone, many would be satisfied if the process for AppStore certification was more transparent, according to MG Siegler, writing for Venture Beat.
Last weekend’s snafu over the release of Google’s voice search update, the punting of approved apps on a third update, debacles such as the I Am Rich app – all raise legitimate questions over the capriciousness of Apple’s distribution of tickets to the big show.
Have you loaded up so many apps on your iPhone you’re now pushing the nine screen limit? Do you ever want to just get back to your home Home screen and wish you didn’t have to start swiping screens back across the phone face?
The latest update to iPhone software 2.2 has a nice little feature built in that will take you home – just push the “Home” button.
So simple. Surprising, actually it took ’em this many updates to load that one in, but thanks, Apple!
One of the iPhone’s great uses is as a pocket reference. So much information can be stored on it and accessed immediately, with flair and panache, no less.
Now this capability extends to the world of vintage wine, with the Wine Vintage Card app. For $2 you can have up to date information on the past decade’s wine production in every major wine region of the world at your fingertips. And where some impressions of people who know and love wine conjure visions of stuffiness and seriousness, this app uses an easy to read and understand emoticon system to confirm whether that ’03 Cabernet from Napa deserves a premium over the ’03 Bordeaux.
The card doesn’t break information down by individual producers, nor does it go back to vintages prior to 1998, but what do you want for two bucks?
Via MacsimumNews
The HP TouchSmart laptop computer will get attention from curiosity seekers when it debuts on November 28 because it is the first consumer-grade full touch-screen-capable notebook computer. If you watch the video demoing the the device above, however, you’d be forgiven for thinking HP may be in a bit of an awkward position once the actual sales numbers from this product start to get tallied.
Watch how taking advantage of the touch screen’s functionality requires two hands – one to hold the open screen steady at the side or the base, and another to actually perform the touch gestures on the screen. It also seems from this demo (which is apparently not a final release version of the product) the screen is not especially sensitive to touch gestures, that many “commands” have to be “repeated” twice and three times before the screen registers them. The screen itself is high-gloss and, well, I know how I feel about finger oils on a glossy glass surface. If these machines do end up taking off for some reason, there ought to be a bull market in screen wipes.
When Apple introduced the iPhone in June 2007 it rocked the mobile computing world almost as much as it rocked the mobile phone world. And with the launch of the AppStore this past summer, Apple’s business and iPhone software development exploded, with both continuing to outpace a clearly struggling global economy.
I don’t expect HP is going to have nearly the impact iPhone has had, despite introducing the kind of product many have been clamoring for from Apple.
No one waits until after Thanksgiving any more to start thinking about and marketing Christmas, so why wait to get your iPhone Christmas Advent Calendar?
Available now from developers Gourmet Pixel, the 24 Days app greets the user upon first opening the application with a countdown to December 1st.
Once into December, you’re able to open each relevant window and in return, receive an interactive gift, which culminates to a spectacular interactive finale on Christmas Eve.
“A lot of the standard individual elements built into 24 Christmas Days are actually being sold in a separated form by other developers as single apps,” says Darren Lynch, a Director at Gourmet Pixel. He adds, “our app can also be used year after year, so it really is cost effective. While it ticks all the boxes, in terms of classic Christmas imagery, watch out for some special surprises that our development team has added –œ it’s a real Christmas treat!”
Last week, Jesper at Waffle Software (makers of This Service, among other apps) posted a lengthy critique of his favorite browser, OmniWeb.
Jesper’s been using OmniWeb 5 for years now, but he feels it’s been languishing, unloved and un-updated, for too long. He says:
“Why are you not caring about your product, and if you are, why doesn’t it show? Why are you letting people chatter feature requests on your forums without showing some degree of involvement? What’s with not even letting slip that either something is up for the future or that you’re thinking of letting this go..?”
When I saw Jesper’s comments, I thought he was making a lot of valid points – so I contacted Omni and asked them if they had anything to say about them.
Today, both Jesper and I got a reply when Omni boss Ken Case added a comment to Jesper’s post. In it, he admits:
“OmniWeb has effectively been in maintenance mode for the last few years while we’ve focused the bulk of our attention on other products.”
But during that time, some ideas have been brewing. Omni doesn’t have enough developers to make them happen, so he signs off with an advertisement: “Would any experienced developers like to come work for us? We’re hiring!”
So if you fancy bringing OmniWeb up-to-date, now’s your chance.
An anonymous tipster pointed us to this photo, posted anonymously on the web, of Woz on his Segway at the urinal. There’s just no place left to hide, is there?
