The iconic HOPE poster of Barack Obama by the artist Sheppard Fairey has inspired a slew of knockoffs and imitators, many of which have been collected at Rene Wanner’s poster page.
I took a shot at it using a widely known Steve Jobs portrait and the how-to tutorial from Vectortuts, and invite Cult of Mac readers to do the same.
Send us your Fairey treatments of Jobs, or Jony Ive, Phil Schiller, Tim Cook or any of your favorite Apple luminaries, and we’ll feature the best here on the site.
To kick start your inspiration, here’s a gallery of some we like from Wanner’s page:
Steve Jobs' health is a topic of concern for the Apple community -- and for Wall Street. Photo: Apple
In the Cold War era, a cottage industry was created around determining the geopolitical significance of Khrushchev or Brezhnev not appearing at the May Day reviewing stand. For silicon valley, it is Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Tuesday’s new product announcement.
Was Tuesday’s announcement of new MacBooks a cryptic message to investors worried about Jobs’ health? We all remember the dive Apple’s stock took when a rumor (which turned out to be false) spread that the Apple leader had been rushed to the hospital for heart trouble.
So, when Jobs shared the stage with Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook and Senior Vice-President of Industrial Design Jonathan Ive, speculation began that Apple was sending a message to Wall Street: don’t worry, we have a plan.
I walked into the Apple Store in San Francisco tonight fully expecting to walk out with a brand-new MacBook Pro — the 2.53 GHz model, if at all possible. After 30 minutes playing with all of Apple’s latest laptops, I was stunned to find myself instead walking out the door with a 2.4 GHz MacBook and a smile on my face.
The Top Line: The Aluminum MacBook is the perfect heir to the 12″ PowerBook G4. It’s light, rugged, and meant to be used as a true laptop — it actually runs cooler than my 12″ PowerBook from 2003. Apple hit it out of the park with this thing, and I couldn’t be more delighted. To learn why, click through.
Bubble Telescope, by Ciro Marchetti Epilogue, by Chet Phillips
Digital artists of all backgrounds are invited to submit original works of art created or enhanced using Mac hardware or software tools for a chance to be exhibited at the Macworld Conference & Expo January 5 – 9, 2009. Thirty selected images will be displayed to thousands of Macworld attendees at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center and will also be presented in the Digital Art Gallery section of the Macworld Conference & Expo website.
All submissions will be reviewed by a distinguished panel of industry luminaries including: Rudolf Frieling, Media Arts Curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder; Pop artist icon Peter Max; and Nathan Moroney, Principal Scientist, HP Labs. Judges will determine the top thirty works to be showcased during the event.
Artists must be 18 years of age or older, and must reside in the United States. There is a $20.00 entry fee and a 3-image submission limit. Each winning image will be printed on the new HP Designjet Z3200 Photo Printer for exhibition in the conference hall. The deadline to enter is Friday, October 31, 2008.
Early reviews on Google’s Android smartphone indicate the Mountain View-based company may not knock Apple’s iPhone out of the ring, but Blackberry could soon look like an afterthought.
Walt Mossberg, the Dean of Technology writers, says Android is in the same class as iPhone, but allows the two devices will probably attract different types of users. For him, the physical keyboard is the notable differentiator, but he finds the T-Mobile G1 – Android’s lead-off batter, set to debut October 22nd – “only fair…with keys that are too flat and that can be hard to see in bright light.” Mossberg says the G1’s touch interface is “slick, clever…fast and smooth” and provides “much more flexibility in organizing your desktop than on the iPhone,” and he notes it includes some key features omitted on the Apple phone. The G1’s limited copy and paste functionality, and the ability to send photos via MMS may not convert the Apple faithful, but unlike AT&T, T-Mobile will allow users to legally unlock the phone after 90 days and start using it on another carrier, with a hefty early-termination fee.
Rachel Metz, writing for Associated Press, says the Android is “smart” but it needs work. She found the phone’s built-in support for YouTube “underwhelming” and complains that video and song playback is hampered by “a major hardware shortcoming”: no standard headphone jack. The G1’s earbud headset plugs into the same mini USB port used to charge the phone, which poses several problems for Metz, “as you can’t use your favorite headphones without an adapter and it’s impossible to charge the G1 while listening to music or watching videos, unless you want to use the included speaker.”
Tech Radar notes the G1 has a “kill switch” similar to the iPhone and is impressed that it is explained openly in the terms and conditions. They also like the fact that if you don’t like an app you’ve downloaded, “Google kindly lets you refund your money within 24 hours of purchase, which means you can try all the probably rubbish location based ‘find your friend’ apps without worry.”
T-Mobile has reportedly sold 1.5 million of the Android G1’s by pre-order, but buyers may be surprised that when they open up their boxes they will be getting what BusinessWeek writer Stephen H. Wildstrom calls “a developers’ release: a preliminary, unfinished version of a program that lets engineers kick the tires and gauge its potential.”
If you live where the weather behooves you to go out without gloves or freeze your pinkies off, you’ve probably been caught fumbling for speed dial with warm woolies on.
These black leather or stretch gloves with flick-back fingers called Freehands let you “stay warm and keep in touch.” The fingertips stay back with magnets, a handy feature.
Why are they for the iPhone, specifically?
Well, because the guy who designed them, Josh Rubin, father of CoolHunting, said they are.
Rubin also went to the trouble to photograph the gloves with an iPhone, which is more than Fox could do launching its iPhone-optimized service, so we’ll take his word.
$40 for the leather version, $20 for fleece. Bike messenger-techno-geek chic.
You can’t live without your iPhone, now you can live inside an iPhone.
That’s the idea behind The Pad in Dubai. Its designers are billing it as the “most technologically advanced building in the planet.”
One thing’s for sure: the 231 “smart apartments” on the 24-story building are meant to look like an iPhone.
Back in 2006, architects wanted it to look like an iPod. In keeping with the times, they’ve upgraded the theme to iPhone. The basic shape is still pretty much the same.
Not surprisingly, all the nifty doodads are called iFeatures.
Although the site’s a little fuzzy on the details (maybe they should call the iPhone hotel folks?) amenities include iArt, which lets homeowners to download artworks and update their collection.
An “iReality” feature projects the real-time skyline view of any city in the world on to the walls of your flat. So you can live in Dubai but be California Dreamin’.
There’s a health monitor to keep track of your weight in the bathroom and you can clickwheel your pad, moving rooms around to catch a better view.
To mark the one-month anniversary of launching HD sales at its iTunes Store, Apple announced it will offer more than 70 episodes of Fall prime-time hits from ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and cable.
Among the HD episodes are ABC’s “Desperate Housewives,” “Lost,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Eli Stone.” CBS shows include “CSI,” CSI: New York, “CSI” Miami” and “Numb3rs.” NBC show in HD on iTunes include “30 Rock,” Heroes,” “The Office” and “Law and Order: SUV.”
Apple said it has also sold 200 million television episodes and 1 million HD episodes. The HD episodes from ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox cost $2.99 a piece while each regular episode from the iTunes Store carry a $1.99 price tag.
In September, Apple kicked-off HD sales, offering 12 high-definition NBC episodes for free. The announcement coincided with the release of iTunes 8 and the return of NBC, which left the iTunes Store in August 2007, following a dispute over pricing of its television shows.
Now we’ve seen them, now we know. The new MacBooks and MacBook Pros are quite nice in some respects, and quite frustrating in others.
What amuses me about the whole thing, though, is how astoundingly far-out some of the pre-event speculation was. It’s always part of the fun, exploring the gamut of people’s expectations and imaginations as they dream up the kind of product they’d like Apple to create for them.
My favorite this year was the iMac-as-docking-station concept, which showed an iMac-like monitor with a huge hole in one side, into which a folded MacBook could be slotted. A nice fantasy indeed, but still a fantasy. And Apple’s not in the business of fulfilling every fanboy’s fantasy.
No, Apple’s in business to make profit, like every other computer manufacturer. As such, it’s product development decisions are, and will be, driven by the profit they can be reasonably expected to generate.
Reaction is still coming in from analysts on Apple’s decision to drop the price of its plastic entry-level MacBook. While ThinkPanure and others believe the sub-$1,000 notebook isn’t enough to attract worried consumers, some onlookers told Cult of Mac the move was a good beginning.
“They’ve never done cheap well – but the $999 MacBook is a good start,” Piper Jaffray analyst Andrew Murphy e-mailed Wednesday.
Murphy said Apple is positioning Mac sales for a long economic slowdown. Wednesday, JPMorgan said Apple had “meaningful buffers” that could allow the company to ride out any initial impact. Analyst Mark Moskowitz pointed to the value of Cupertino’s brand and iPhone revenue expected later in 2009.
Although the price cut affects a legacy plastic MacBook, more than half of the consumers considering the $999 plastic MacBook will opt for the newly-unveiled $1,299 aluminum unibody design, Murphy wrote.
The upshot of Tuesday’s new products: a slight or no impact on Apple margins. The company is expected to announce third quarter numbers later this month.
James Wages is a man on a mission. Where you and I might see a tired old computer that’s not much use to anyone anymore, he sees a decent machine with plenty of potential.
The results of his tinkering are spectacular; this ancient SE/30 is in regular use by the Wages family, for writing things, drawing things, and (most impressively, I think) getting online.
This little puppy is as maxed out as an SE/30 can get. These machines originally appeared in 1989, running System 6 and costing only $6,500. Blimey. Now you can pick them up for nothing – or even cheaper – and if you’re prepared to put the work in, maybe you can get yours doing all the stuff James has got his doing.
This machine was built before the web was invented, but he’s got it surfing quite satisfactorily. How did he do it?
I swung by the San Francisco Apple Store this afternoon, and employees told me that, while old-skool MacBooks were out on the floor, they had the new stuff in the back room and it was all ready for purchase. Resisting the urge to buy one sight unseen, I vowed to come and play with the new collection tomorrow, once the demo units are out.
Joe Russell, on the other hand, went for the early purchase and made it first to unboxing:
First thing I noticed on the trackpad, the entire surface is in fact not a clickable button… but rather the lower two-thirds. And as far as it being glass, it feels more like the original textured surface of the trackpad on the MacBook Pro.
I feel like I’m now rolling w/ a MacBook Air that’s been hitting the gym.
Be sure to check out the full gallery. The spongy tab to pull the machine out is ingenious.
I’ll be back this weekend with a report on unboxing the MacBook Pro, if all goes according to plan…
Apple introduced a trio of new notebook computers and a new 24″ LCD display monitor yesterday, and judging by reader reactions in the Apple blogosphere, the company kept alive its multiyear, unbroken streak of failing to be all things to all people.
Steve Jobs gave ample stage time to Apple design chief Jony Ive, who pulled back the curtain on the company’s design and manufacturing processes to try and impress the assembled media with Apple’s industry-leading, visionary thinking about laptop design and production.
Much of the discussion at the event centered around “under-the-hood” improvements to the new Macs’ graphic display processors (Nvidia GeForce 9400M and 9600M) and to the increasingly fine distinctions between Apple’s “Pro” line of MacBooks and those geared toward average consumers. In a nutshell, consumers are expected to make do with smaller display screens and no Firewire.
Toward the end of the event, Jobs showed an illustrative documentary about the new manufacturing and machining processes, which build the notebook cases out of solid blocks of “environmentally responsible” aluminum in a manner that VP of Product Design Dan Riccio described as “kinda like how you make pasta.”
In all, the presentation seemed designed to let people know, in Ive’s words, “how much we care.”
But do Apple’s customers care how much the company cares? Follow the jump for some choice user comments on the company’s latest offerings.
JPMorgan Wednesday upgraded Apple to Overweight from Neutral, arguing the company is protected from the cold winds of a consumer downturn.
“We think that Apple’s brand and market share momentum offer meaningful buffers” despite 70-75 percent of Cupertino’s sales relying on the consumer, analyst Mark Moskowitz told investors this morning.
Acknowledging even Apple won’t come away unscathed from the current slowdown in spending, Moskowitz wrote “Apple likely has a backstop beyond the first round.”
Apple’s share of the PC market reached nearly 10 percent during the third quarter. Although Cupertino retained the third position in U.S. shipments, Apple posted 29 percent growth, outstripped all other computer makers.
Gartner announced Apple controlled 9.5 percent of domestic PC sales, up from 7.7 percent a year ago. In stark contrast to Dell and HP which had 6 percent and 4 percent growth respectively, Apple had a more than 29 percent increase during the third quarter of 2008.
Apple sold 1.6 million Macs during the third quarter, up from 1.2 million shipped the previous year.
Tuesday, Apple unveiled a lower-priced entry MacBook onlookers saw as a response to concerns of slowing consumer spending. The company has set Oct. 21 to release third quarter sales figures.
No excuse for boring water-cooler conversations: now you can follow must-see TV like “Night Club Confessions” and “Reality Binge” on your iPhone.
“Given the ease of use of the iPhone…we believe that the experience of the user will be exceptional,” said Ed Skolarus, Vice President, Business and Operations, Fox Reality Channel. “Reality fans everywhere will receive real-time updated information along with new and exciting reality content on a daily basis making the service a must have.”
You know what it’s like when you’re strolling around looking for networks. They’re all the same. They’re all called “belkin54” or “NETGEAR” or “BTHomeHub”. So generic. So default.
What we really need is networks with imaginative names. Names like “Vicious Evil Network Of Mayhem”, as screenshotted here by Flickr user Ingridesign.
I’m now inspired to change my network name from the stupendously dull “16spring” to “The Network That Performs Somersaults”.
Is your network called something interesting? Something better than “Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem”? Do share.
Oh, and another thing: apparently someone announced some new laptops yesterday. You might want to look that up if you’re interested.
Apple promised that it would finally pull its attention off the cash cow iPhone and iPod product lines to spotlight notebooks at an event this morning, and they weren’t kidding. New MacBook, new Air, new Pro, and a new matching Cinema Display for good measure. The design team absolutely hit it out of the park on these machines, which are all glass, shiny black accents, and subtly tapered corners. Like the iMac whose design they refine and make significantly more appealing, these machines look like they were just made to sync with an iPhone or iPod touch (and, if anything, they make the continued use of white plastic docks for those devices look increasingly incongruous). This is Apple’s best design work, and it’s for a Mac — something we haven’t seen since the 12″ PowerBook G4 that I’m typing on was introduced. Read on for the Pros and the Cons…
Steve Jobs and company introduced us to a bevy of new products today, and though it’s not hard to find pictures of them all over the web and at the Apple website, for your convenience we’ve gathered some images here.
Before the QA at Tuesday’s MacBook rollout, Steve Jobs said there’s a few things he wouldn’t talk about: Apple’s latest quarter, the global financial meltdown, and his health.
With that he put up a slide showing his blood pressure: a healthy 110/70.
“This is all I’m going to talk about on my health today,” he said.
New laptops weren’t the only thing Jobs unveiled today—Apple’s also finally provided a new external display. And it’s a strange one.
More information’s available at Apple’s website, but the gist of it is this: the 24″ display is super-thin, uses advanced LED technology, has integrated power with easy connectivity, and includes an iSight, microphone and speakers. All this for the same price as the existing, aging 23″ Cinema Display.
That sounds great until you dig and think a little more. $899 is hardly great value for a 24″ display these days. The display is gloss-only, which will make pros flee. And those that won’t had better have laptops, since unless I’m very much mistaken, this display requires one of Apple’s new laptops to work—it needs a machine with a Mini DisplayPort. So you guys who just dropped $2799 on a new Mac Pro had better look elsewhere.
Apple’s a great company, an innovator that goes where few others dare to tread. But flashes of the old sneak through now and again, and only Apple would dare release a nine-hundred dollar MacBook accessory in the middle of global economic turmoil.
With Apple’s announcements still ringing in the ears of the Mac faithful, it looks like I wasn’t far off the mark a month ago when I asked “Is Apple going to ditch the ‘Pro’ from MacBook Pro and streamline its laptop range, leaving just a ‘standard’ MacBook (with different screen sizes and minor tinkering possibilities under the hood), and the Air for people who happily set fire to 50-dollar bills?”
The revamped line offers a new (and much prettier) MacBook Pro, with a precision-engineered, environmentally friendly case, advanced NVIDIA graphics, and a no-button multi-touch trackpad (which, given Apple’s penchant for incrementing the number of fingers required for gestures will by the next revision also require toes).
It looks like a triumph of engineering, and although the enforced move to glossy displays irks, it’s hard to see how Apple could have improved on today’s announcements, especially when you consider the MacBook also gets to play with the new toys. In fact, bar the different screen sizes and minor tinkering possibilities under the hood (more powerful graphics for the Pro, a lack of FireWire for the MacBook), these machines are more twins than distant cousins.
The one major glitch for me is that it’s so painfully obvious that Apple’s laptop range is now in the middle of a transition. The white MacBook clings on as a much-needed (relatively) low-cost option, but sticks out like a sore thumb, screaming “I’m the cheap Mac–DON’T LOOK AT ME!” while hiding its face behind its pale hands. And in Pro land, the 17″ model looks like its smaller cousin has rapidly beaten it with an ugly stick. However, I suspect this now slightly confused line is a temporary aberration, something somewhat confirmed by Apple’s new Which MacBook are you? page that ignores the old MacBook and MacBook Pro entirely.
Now we’ve seen them, now we know. The new MacBooks and MacBook Pros are quite nice in some respects, and quite frustrating in others. 
