Cult of Mac

The drumbeat continues as Barclays Capital Friday became the latest analyst firm to trim its projection of iPhones sales for the first quarter of fiscal 2009. Citing the weak economy, analyst Ben Reitzes believes 5 million handsets will be sold during the quarter, down from the previously expected 6.2 million.

In a note to investors, Reitzes cited a “continued weakness in the economy” and an inventory already flush with 2 million iPhones.

Barclays also cut its target price for Apple shares to $121 from $125, however retained the Cupertino, Calif. company stock as overweight.

Apple will report $9.6 billion in revenue for the December quarter and $35.7 billion for fiscal 2009, down from $36.1 billion, the note predicted Friday. Apple reported $7.8 billion for the quarter ended Sept. 31.

Say Hello to Steve! is a Flickr pool that celebrates, even embraces the highly reflective screens on recent MacBooks and iMacs.

A lot of people have complained about the glossy screens. They have expressed their displeasure with protests and polls. Some wish that Apple still offered a matte alternative. Others have tried the glossies and found that, because the LCD panel display is so much brighter, they’re not so bad after all.

But the folks at the Say Hello to Steve! group are happy with their glossy screens. They like to see themselves – and their surroundings – reflected in the screens when they’re dark. The upshot is some nice, sometimes quite artistic, photographs. What can you see in your screen when your MacBook’s not switched on?

(Photo by Mojo.D, used with permission.)

Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple is finding a warmer reception in Europe than at home, two new surveys indicate. The iPhone, which sold 6.9 million units during the third quarter, now owns 17.5 percent of the smart phone market, beating RIM for second place among European mobile phone users.

Analysts at Canalys reported Thursday Apple experienced 523 percent growth during the quarter, outpacing RIM, which registered an 83 percent increase to 15.2 percent market share compared to 2007.

Apple’s rise trimmed Nokia’s market leadership, the Finish handset giant slipping to 38 percent of European cell phone sales, down from 51 percent a year ago.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told a developers’ conference in Australia yesterday he thinks the idea of using Webkit as the rendering engine for Internet Explorer is “interesting” and that his company “may look at that” as the Microsoft web browser continues to evolve.

Asked directly why IE remains relevant and what is the value of a proprietary rendering engine “when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster,” Ballmer responded by admitting that Microsoft would need to consider the future of the browser and determine if there is any lack of innovation for the company to capitalize upon with “proprietary extensions that broaden its functionality.”

Since defeating Netscape, once the lone challenger to its dominance of the browser market, IE has been wildly outpaced by the likes of Firefox, Safari and Opera in the past five years, while the speed and standards compliant advantages of Webkit have led a number of developers to make it the foundation for their web browsers and other web related tools. Among them are Nokia’s mobile browser, Google’s new Chrome, and of course the mobile Safari browser used by Apple’s iPhone.

With Microsoft having long preached the gospel of praising developers for the innovations brought to its core product, the company would no doubt gain the undying gratitude of the developer community should it adopt Webkit and free developers from the extra work currently required to make their code render predictably in Internet Explorer.

Via AppleInsider

I just love this picture. It sums up perfectly the progress that’s been made in computing over the last couple of decades. That which was once beige and plasticky is now sleek and silvery. (I know some people still swear by those old clacky keyboards, though: John Gruber once called the Extended Keyboard II “the single best hardware product Apple has ever manufactured.”)

You get the same feel from this one. I remember being utterly amazed by the G4 iMac’s design. I borrowed one from Apple to write a review, and marveled at the computer’s shiny hinged neck and (for the time) large, bright display. Now compare it to a modern iMac. It looks like a toy. (Those of you still using a G4 iMac and enjoying it, get in touch to tell me how and why. Send pics.)

(Photos used under Creative Commons licence. Thanks to: Blakespot and Editor B

Today, Stanford professor Dr. Ge Wang and his company, Smule, introduced Ocarina, the first and only app that transforms the iPhone into an expressive musical wind instrument.

The app synthesizes sound in real-time, just like a regular instrument, based on actual gestures including wind input, tilt, and finger placement over the four holes overlaid on the multi-touch pad. Unlike other iPhone audio apps, the sound is not pre-compiled but is generated by the notes, gestures and nuance of the individual performer. As a result, it allows an iPhone user to explore and master the musical sounds of an entirely iPhone-native version of an ancient flute-like instrument.

Smule’s audio engine (CHiP) and the Smule Sonic Network make it possible to hear live performances around the world. With the globe view, you can hear performances, and see the origin of that performance.

Dr. Wang, in addition to being CTO of Smule, is director of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra, and the author of the Chuck audio programming language.

Formation of the first iPhone Philharmonic cannot be far behind. Perhaps one day, iPhone music will be its own category at the Grammys.

Danny Hutton, founder of rock group Three Dog Night, credits his successful 40-something years in the band because of what could be described as shuffle music.

“We basically were doing iPods in the 1970s,” Hutton said. “Our songs were all over the place. We’d go from ballads to hard rock to country songs to an R&B song.”

Not sure they embody the eclectic iPod mentality (Beck? Girl Talk? 2 Many DJs?) but It’s better than blaming the iPod for ruining your music.

Via Mlive

I don’t know about you, but I get funny looks from folk when I show off my iPhone, then have to sheepishly confess that it doesn’t do MMS messages.

“Phhhfft,” people say, pulling out their 2-year-old Nokias that they got for free. “Even this crappy old thing can do MMS.”

Apple’s workaround is to send iPhone owners a plain text message with a link to a webapp, where they can view their MMS. In the UK, the O2 webapp is horrible. No-one at O2 has bothered to make it iPhone-friendly. The whole setup is clunky, to put it mildly.

Ross McKillop thinks so too, and that’s why he decided to build a better webapp, one that is designed for iPhone. The result is the newly renamed iPhoneMMS, which lets you view incoming and send outgoing MMS messages, via a complex arrangement of protocols and emails.

It’s still clunky compared to proper MMS support, but it’s a good deal better than the shoddy mess supplied by O2. Until they and Apple get their collective act together to make a decent built-in MMS application, it’s the best option.

The business market, long desired by Apple, picked the iPhone to top a J.D. Power and Associates survey for smartphone customer satisfaction. Ease of operation and the Mac OSX operating system were named the two biggest reasons, according to the survey released Thursday.

The iPhone garnered 778 points out of a 1,000 total possible score. RIM’s BlackBerry scored 703 and Samsung received 701 points. Palm’s Treo took its place in the cellar, getting 644 votes.

Software problems accounted for a quarter of the complaints by corporate users regarding smartphones. Of that group, 44 percent said they were forced to reboot their phone at least once a week during the year.

Poolga has what we think is a pretty excellent collection of iPhone and iPod Touch wallpapers created by a talented and creative group of “designers, artists, illustrators and dopey street bums ” from around the world. According to the site, they do it because “we hate the standard wallpapers and cheesy nature themes available everywhere.”

Check out a few of our favorites in the gallery below and visit the Poolga site as well as their Flickr page – they add new stuff every few days.

Webmonkey thinks iTunes sucks. And gives 10 reasons to bolster the case for saying so, including serious gripes about the infelicity of its library management, slow performance and its demands on system resources.

We agree with the complaint that iTunes refuses to let you take music off your iPod and put it in the library while almost every other music app out there manages to handle that task. And we’re resigned to the inevitability of iTunes for iPhone and iPod updates, but maybe there are better apps for managing a collection of digital music, like Songbird and Amarok.

What do you think? We’re listening…

Is the meteoric rise in demand for Apple’s iPhone cooling off? BMO Capital is the latest to issue a projection of slower production of the handset for the first fiscal quarter of 2009.

BMO’s Keith Bachman Thursday reduced his estimate for first quarter iPhone sales to 5.6 million from 6.6 million. At the heart of the prediction is 2 million of the 6.9 million units sold in September went into inventory.The analyst said due to that “channel fill” it will be difficult for the December quarter to compare to the 6.9 million handsets sold in the quarter ended September 30.

The analyst said the December quarter will bring 5.6 million iPhones sold, down from 6.6 million previously projected. Still the number is expected to be a 15 percent increase in end-user sales over the 4.9 million sold in September.

Like most nerdy types, I went through a phase of being the family tech support guy. Back in the days when I knew a few tricks to make Windows co-operate, this was occasionally a productive use of my time. These days, it’s a complete waste of it.

So I’ve refused to take on tech support jobs for family and friends over the last couple of years. To avoid causing offense, I’ve usually just shrugged my shoulders and said in a regretful tone: “Sorry, I don’t think I’ll be able to help. I’ve not used Windows for years and I wouldn’t have a clue where to start.”

This get-out sounds even better because it’s the truth.

Plenty of people are tut-tutting today about the lavish “transition agreement” outgoing iPod guru Tony Fadell signed in order to spend more time with his young family and act as special adviser to Steve Jobs during the coming year. And surely $300K per year in salary, with stock options worth upwards of $8 million makes the worst economic downturn in 50 years seem like something a 39 year-old guy might survive.

But reports filed with the SEC indicate Apple reimburses Steve Jobs for expenses traveling on the company’s private Gulfstream jet to the tune of 2/3 Fadell’s annual package per quarter, and even that number is well down from the amount the company was spending on the corporate jet just one year ago.

Puts the whole financial crisis thing in perspective, doesn’t it?

In an emailed response to another user disappointed in the performance of the glass trackpad on his new MacBook Pro, Steve Jobs said, “Software Fix coming soon,” according to MacRumors.

We reported on the possible dustup over quirky trackpads on Monday, noting the growing number of threads related to user concerns about it in Apple’s discussion forums. In comments to our post Cult of Mac readers, on balance, haven’t seemed to find it much of an issue, but if a software patch is indeed forthcoming, that should be good news to all who have been bothered by the problem.

If you’re looking to pick up an iPhone cheap, you may want to avoid any opportunities that arise for you in Russia. It seems there’s an increasingly popular scam there where people want to quickly unload their iPhone with a nearly discharged battery in order to quickly raise funds for a train or plane ticket. They show you the phone with an Apple logo that lights up momentarily when the power button is pressed and say, “just charge it and you have an iPhone!”

Not surprisingly, the insides look something like what you see in the gallery below, complete with a steel plate to give the fake phone some heft, and batteries to produce the lit-up logo. At least the fake Rolex watches tell time, don’t they?

So this has popped up in the feeds this afternoon, and after my initial excited clicking all I can say is “Oh.”

Because it really isn’t a proper keyboard, it’s a tiny clip on thing that does little more than recreate the built-in software keyboard in plastic. The typing’s slow, and all thumbs anyhow.

I know I’ve been banging on about iPhones and keyboards recently, but this? This is not what I was banging on about.

Wait, what? Barack who?

(Via CrunchGear)

This iPhone robot (moves forwards, backwards, turns) from Japan was made using an Arduino CPU board with a TA7291P motor. It runs on four AA batteries.

The Demonstration video is worth a watch just for the techno background music…

Via iPhone World

Not exactly hot under the collar to see this movie, since by most accounts it is a rom-com gone wrong, but Zack and Miri Make a Porno is a hotbed for Apple product placement.

The trailer features an ailing iBook, showing us exactly how desperate our two young friends are for cash. The movie also has a part for Justin Long, “Get a Mac” Apple adman as a gay porno star, leaving at least one person to suggest the actor is an Apple endorsement, too.

Nearly 25 percent of Japan’s music fans use Apple’s iTunes software, compared to 19 percent of the U.S. online population, a media measurement firm announced Tuesday.

The iTunes application, used by iPod and iPhone owners to purchase and organize digital music, found 23.7 percent penetration of the nation’s Internet users, according to comScore. Globally, 11.2 percent of the world’s Internet users prefer iTunes, the study found.

The UK had the second largest percentage of iTunes fans with 23.4 percent penetration coming a close second to the gadget-hungry island nation.

The U.S. was ranked third with 19.6 percent reach of iTunes. France and Germany completed the top five iTunes countries, the company reported.

Dead Macs. You see them sometimes. Upended in a trash bin or shopping cart. Pilfered for parts, poked and prodded by scavengers who have left just the most useless innards behind.

Xgoes.mob is the first iPhone-only porn cam site.
Those who have tried the subscriber service are reluctant to give it the thumbs-up due to sluggish loading times and the quality of the flesh on offer.

For more hot scrolling action: here’s the site (uh, NSFW).

Via GizModo

Is the exit of Tony Fadell, labeled the “Father of the iPod,” a signal Apple has larger plans for the device now partially eclipsed by the iPhone? Yes, say Apple experts.

“We believe this is the second major indication of the future of the iPod as a mobile computing platform,” Andrew Murphy, analyst at Piper Jaffray, told Cult of Mac Tuesday.

The introduction of the iPod Touch was the first tip Apple was moving toward greater mobile computing, Murphy added.

Fadell, who joined Cupertino in 2001, was a senior vice president in the iPod division. He’ll become an advisor to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. The decision, made with his Apple Human Resources executive wife Danielle Lambert, was to “devote more time to their young family,” Apple announced.

Former IBM vice president Mark Papermaster will take Fadell’s position, a move Murphy believes means more emphasis on hardware.

“Papermaster’s experience in chip design and his replacement of Tony Fadell shows Apple focusing on mobile devices and possibly doing their own chips for the devices (iPods and iPhones),” the Piper Jaffray analyst wrote in an e-mail to Cult of Mac.

President Dimitry Medvedev governs Russia from what looks like a Mac Book Pro, if photos released by the Kremlin are any indication. Something about a guy with an open shirt, no tie and a manageable pile of papers running a country doesn’t look right to me. It looks like the Russian government uses plenty of PCs, if the equipment in the background is any indication.
Medvedev, not new to the Apple world, has been also seen with an iPhone, before it was available on the local market.

Via The Unoffical Apple Weblog

Tony Fadell, Apple’s Senior VP of the iPod division and the man who first brought the idea of a small hard drive-based music player to the company, will step down shortly, according to the Wall Street Journal. He joined the company in 2001, setting up the first iPod engineering team and overseeing its design.

According to the Journal, Mark Papermaster, the IBM VP that is being sued by Big Blue to try to stop him from working for Apple, will take over the role. This all makes sense — Steve Jobs has publicly stated that Apple bought PA-Semi in order to develop systems on a chip to power iPods and iPhones, and Papermaster is a total guru of the POWER architecture upon which PowerPC chips and, in turn, PA-Semi’s silicon, are based.

Fadell is one of Apple’s least-known legends, even though he should be credit more than anyone else with creating the iPod. It’s a shame to see him go, but Apple tends to be a place where people burn out fast, and Tony rose incredibly quickly from contractor to SVP in five years.