BoingBoing guest blogger Lisa Katayama has tracked down an amazing work by Japanese cartoonist Mitsuru Sugaya, recounting the story of the founding of Apple from the 1970s to about 1984. The full series of comics is on uagaya’s web page, and it must be seen, if only for the scene of young Woz speaking to an octopus alien via Ham Radio.
Sugaya via BoingBoing
Shouldn’t the Dems be on the Left and the Repubs on the Right?
Just in case you didn’t get enough of the Democratic and Republican conventions from the mainstream media during the past fortnight, Apple has kindly made the speeches from both conventions available for free on iTunes. The collections include audio files for almost every speaker as well as audio and video for the more prominent ones.
Given how often politicians are known to be for something before they are against it, these could come in handy someday.
Check out our gallery of original artwork from Swedish painter Erik Saxen, who painted the work in 1987 for a huge poster campaign and newspaper run promoting the launch of the Macintosh SE in Sweden.
Saxen is seeking a serious collector for the set of oil paintings (some with mixed media), which are currently in climate-controlled storage in Florida. For additional information and contact links see My Old Mac.
Startup 280 North on Thursday released a new online programming language that promises to bring Mac-like software to the web.
Called Cappuccino, the programing language will allow developers to bring the look and feel of Mac OS X desktop apps to online apps. 280 North promises that online apps will have drag ‘n drop, copy and paste, undo and redo, and document saving functionality simply by pointing your browser at a URL.
A major trend in the development of Web 2.0 functionality is toward applications that work within your browser as opposed to relying on desktop programs that live on your hard drive and use up CPU resources every time you call on them. Cappuccino will let designers create apps like 280 Slides, the highly regarded presentation application the 280 North shop released in June to showcase the framework’s robust capabilities.
Unlike existing web app development frameworks, such as Prototype or Sproutcore, Cappuccino doesn’t expect its developers to know any HTML, CSS, and JavaScript – the languages used traditionally for standards-based web development. Cappuccino’s Objective-J works in every major browser, is completely extendable and comes with useful language features not available in JavaScript.
280 North co-founder Ross Boucher says “Cappuccino is an attempt to restore control of the language and basic building blocks of web development to the developers” and is quick to point out that it’s not about building web pages. “Cappuccino is about building applications – think 280 Slides, GMail, Meebo,” he says. “We believe the future of the core technologies of the web should not be in the hands of a select minority and that no one company [should] control the destiny of any other.”
Cappuccino is being released as open source software under the lesser general public license which Boucher and his colleagues hope will build a strong open source community around the development platform. “We believe in the importance of getting the entire community involved, so that we can experiment and move forward at our own pace.”
In addition to the 280 Slides site, Cappuccino developers have a Flickr Photo Demo and a Puzzle Demo to showcase the platform’s capabilities.
I just caught the “Pizza Box” Get a Mac spot during the Top Design premiere, and it struck me. Not because it’s particularly brilliant — it hits the same mark exactly that all the other college-related Apple ads have lately — but because I realized it was the first time I had actually paid attention to a Get a Mac ad in almost three months.
Nor have I talked about one with anybody in more than a year. People don’t even get upset about it or make parody ads anymore. PC and Mac have been up there so long that I’m expecting them to introduce their children at any minute. Worse than being annoying or controversial, Apple’s core Mac marketing campaign has become the one thing the Cupertino Collective can never allow itself to be: boring.
Apple’s been here before. Switch had its (rather desperate) day. Think Different saved Apple during its darkest times. But each of them eventually outlived its usefulness based on where Apple was as an organization.
Today, Apple has become a powerhouse in media and a top-three computer maker. The iPhone is poised to become as ubiquitous as the iPod. And Get a Mac‘s playful jabs are starting to make Apple look small. “Able to run Microsoft Office” isn’t news to anyone who could be swayed by a TV ad. What’s the next narrative? How does Apple start its next growth curve, whether through marketing or design?
iTunes 8 will launch next Tuesday at Apple’s “big” media event in San Francisco, according to Digg founder Kevin Rose. Rose was the first to report rumors of a September 9 Apple event back on August 23rd, which the company confirmed with media invitations issued yesterday.
Among the new features in iTunes 8 is something called Genius, which makes playlists from songs in your library that go great together, according to the “tipster” Rose cites in his blog posting. Genius also includes Genius sidebar, which recommends from the iTunes Store music you don’t already have.
Other goodies supposedly will allow you to browse your library’s artists and albums visually with a new Grid view; download your favorite TV shows in HD quality from the iTunes Store; sync your media with iPod nano (4th generation), iPod classic (2nd generation), and iPod touch (2nd generation); and enjoy a stunning new music visualizer.
Salling Software’s MediaSync is a brand new application that synchronizes playlists, music, and podcasts in iTunes onto mobile devices from Sony, Nokia and Sony Ericsson. President of the Swedish software maker, Jonas Salling, says “There are a lot of frustrated phone owners out there who love iTunes, but can’t easily get their tracks onto their non-Apple device.” His application works with iTunes 7.6.x and 7.7.x, is compatible with many popular phone models, and requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or 10.5.x. A Windows version is also available for Windows XP SP2 and Vista with Windows Media Player 11.
The basic installation is free, though the paid app features “smart” sync, allowing you to sync faster by minimizing the amount of data transferred in incremental syncs.
With a compatible phone connected to a USB port, you simply select the playlists and podcasts you want on your device. Media Sync not only uploads the music tracks and podcast episodes, but also replicates each actual playlist on your device and–on devices that support it–transfers play count metadata for each item, reinforcing the sense of having a piece of iTunes in your pocket. Although Media Sync works with most media in iTunes, it will not transfer DRM-protected content.
Apparent dimensional drawings for both the fourth-generation iPod nano and second-generation iPod touch have appeared, suggesting the devices will have familiar measurements but with interesting new shapes and features, according to a report at iLounge.
With all eyes looking toward Apple’s “Big Event” scheduled for next Tuesday in San Francisco, rumors of what might be announced are sure to come fast and furious over the next several days.
Zach over at Boy Genius Report shares that he’s getting tons of e-mail from iPhone owners on the East Coast reporting that data services are completely out, but that it’s iPhone-specific. AT&T is investigating and has issued # TT000008107719 to blanket all such problems.
What are you seeing, Eastern Seaboard?
Or maybe, in the best Super Hero tradition, it started out that way.
Steve Jobs will host Tuesday’s “Let’s Rock” media event at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco
Apple PR is pulling out the stops to get media in SF next week, saying the announcement on the 9th is a “big deal.”
One East Coast journalist, who writes for a big news weekly, said Apple PR called and urged him to fly to San Francisco next week for the press event.
“Apple just told me it’s a big deal and I should try to be there,” said the journalist, who asked to remain anonymous.
The call is unusual for Apple’s PR department, which rarely gives clues to the import of its press events.
The event is scheduled for 10am, September 9th at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and is widely expected to showcase updates to the iPod product line, with some hoping for new Mac notebooks and even possible indications of a touch-screen Mac tablet.
Veteran Mac expert and writer Joe Kissell is among the first to report that Google’s brand new Chrome browser appears to be “way faster” than Safari, even running in a virtualization environment like VMWare Fusion.
Kissell ran a quick, informal head-to-head on his MacBook Pro, comparing Safari on OS X to Chrome running under Windows XP and VMWare Fusion.
“Chrome launched in the blink of an eye (really shockingly fast) and I tried a few web pages side by side in Chrome and the Mac Safari, and they loaded noticeably faster in Chrome,” said Kissell.
Chrome is Google’s entry in the web browser sweepstakes, currently a Windows-only offering that launched today. The browser is based, however, on Apple’s webkit, the same rendering engine that powers the Safari browser. Mac and Linux versions of Chrome are in the works but Google has yet to announce a time frame for releasing those versions.
Kissell’s initial report came over Twitter, saying he ran Chrome in XP under VMware Fusion on a MacBook Pro and that it “is way faster than the Mac version of Safari on the same machine. Wow.” But some of his reaction may be chalked up to perception, and later off-the-cuff speed tests presented a mixed bag.
In tests done on a regular work machine with a zillion things running in the background, not a clean environment to be sure, but representative of the “real world” in which many are likely to use the browser,
Despite his admittedly highly unscientific testing, Kissell reported “AJAXy things like Google Docs seemed zippier in Chrome, but it’s possible that my perceptions are incorrect, because I expect everything in a Windows VM to be slower.”
Let us know in comments below how Chrome works for you.
Via Gizmodo
Apple has scheduled a “special event” for September 9th at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The event is presumably to announce long awaited, much-rumored updates to the iPod product line and, who knows what else?
If you’ve accumulated any amount of gadgetry in the past several years you may consider from time to time the carbon footprint you lay down charging their batteries up every day and overnight.
Well, if designer Vivien Muller ever gets production funding for her concept solar charger, you’ll be able to rest easy and get visitors talking about your impeccable taste in futuristic decor.
Via Gizmodo
Blogger Ian Hoar details a method for creating a custom icon for your website that will show up on iPhones when someone bookmarks your site.
I made icons out of images I created for a couple of projects called China Works and Nickie’s BBQ, and bookmarked them to my iPhone. Hoar’s process is easy and it works!
Basically, just save any graphic image you like as a 57×57 PNG file, name it apple-touch-icon.png, put it in the root directory of your webste, and iPhone will do the rest. Hoar details a method for saving multiple icons in different directories by using a “link rel=” line in the “head” of your web page, so be sure to check it out.
O2 finally announced today its pricing for pay as you go iPhones in the UK. The 8 GB model will cost £349.99 and the 16 GB model will be an extra 50 quid. Bundled in is a year’s unlimited browsing and Wi-Fi, which then costs a tenner a month, although you can unsubscribe prior to that if you feel the need.
The all-important date: September 16. The all-important caveat: no visual voicemail (bizarrely) and call-merging on Pay & Go. Still, for those iPhone-loving Brits who think mobile phone contracts are the work of the evil one, this is clearly great news.
Images: Touch Arcade
Update: Belkin has now confirmed that this story is a hoax.
This past weekend saw the rumor mill go into overdrive regarding iPhone games controllers. While the chaps at iControlPad valiantly soldier on with their home-grown iPhone games controller that relies on jailbroken iPhones, Touch Arcade provided images of a rival (shown above)—supposedly from Belkin—that will have official App Store support.
The two-piece device would slide on to your iPhone, providing a joystick and six face buttons, akin to the configuration on the Nintendo DS. This means games developers wouldn’t have to rely on the iPhone touch-screen and tilting mechanism, instead being able to offer more standard control methods for iPhone games.
Predictably, some screamed “fake” once these images appeared, and others merely screamed, barely coherently ranting something about how AWFUL it would be to have a controller like this, because it’s the iPhone’s bizarre-o-controls that make it what it is regarding games.
Yeah, yeah, whatever. I love innovation, and I love people doing different stuff with iPhone gaming. However, I’m old, and I’d rather like to have a copy of Pac-Man on my iPhone that can actually be controlled via a non-stupid (sorry, non-innovative) method, as I hinted at a couple of months back. (Mind you, I’m probably not going to be totally happy until someone finds a way to run C64 games on iPhone and also plug in a Competition Pro…)
Although not a Mac itself, iPhone instigated a major shift in the personal computing market not unlike the original Mac, and its arrival has propelled Apple’s remarkable turnaround onward–the one started by the Bondi Blue iMac, itself something of a successor to the original Mac. Therefore, at the very least, iPhone deserves to be on this list, because its success means a healthier Apple, which in turn means healthier Macs. However, it also has to be on this list, because iPhone undoubtedly provides a glimpse of what the future of the Mac will be.
Craig Grannell:
Of our list of 25 Mac moments, this is one of the most contentious for me. The iPhone is not a Mac. Its operating system is OS X, rather than Mac OS X. And the only obvious relationship it has with a Mac is that a typical iPhone user is somewhat likely to plug their iPhone into one at some point.
However, some commentators argue that the iPhone is effectively the next-generation of the Mac, and even if that isn’t the case, it’s pretty clear Apple’s smartphone is in one sense a sounding board for the future of its company, and that technology from the device will eventually trickle down to future Macs. And for that reason, iPhone justifies its place in our top 25 Mac moments.
Pete Mortensen: As an audience member when Jobs took the wraps off the iPhone, the biggest impact that it left on me was this: that Apple’s business plan was not just a pattern of steady upgrades across an established product portfolio. This was a company prepared to not just make the best media players and computers in the world, but one that was prepared to bring about world-changing innovations that are years ahead of the competition. It was confirmation, once and for all, that the iPod was never a fluke, but a signal that Apple could do something far more than what it was doing today.
In short, the iPhone made it exciting to think about where Apple is capable of going in the next five years.
Leigh McMullen: See now, I absolutely believe that iPhone is a Macintosh. It’s more powerful than all but the top of the line Macs from the 2002-2003 era. As we move more towards “cloud computing” processing power “in hand” becomes less important than connectivity and functionality. iPhone may just be a phone / ipod / camera / blender today, but it is also very much the future of both Apple and Macintosh.
Photographer Pat St. Clair has a couple more panoramic images from Thursday’s big night for the Democratic Party at Invesco field in Denver.
Above is a still shot from his vantage point near the Jumbotron behind the media pavillions. St. Clair made it from three fisheye images stitched and interpreted usung PTGui Pro 7.8 on a McBook Pro. The original size image is here.
Go here for a dynamic four-image shot that captures the enormity of that historic evening.
Unlike St. Clair, I was in Denver without the benefit of a Press Pass or professional photographic equipment and struggled to capture my own memories with the rudimentary camera in my iPhone.
Judge for yourself the quality of the iPhone’s camera by clicking on the gallery thumbnails. Large pics and descriptions after the jump.
The hilariously named VPILF.com — a site devoted to Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin — is made on a Mac, which is excuse enough to mention it here.
More importantly, Palin supports the teaching of creationism in public schools, according to Wired.com.
The Hills screensaver is about the coolest screensaver I’ve seen for Mac OS X, but it’s not easy to get.
The screensaver shows beautifully rendered rolling green hills covered in perfectly-manicured grass. You fly over them as though gliding in a silent helicopter. It’s utterly hypnotic — and very relaxing, especially on a big display.
The developer, Chris Kent, was hosting it on a .mac account, but he exceeded bandwidth limits and it’s now gone.
Searching for it in Google brings up a bunch of old links — it’s very frustrating.
So we’re hosting the file here. Download The Hills version 1.1: hills-1-1.dmg.
Via Flickr
Flickr user Danial Forsythe has taken matters into his own hands and found a way to manually refocus the iPhone’s camera. Long derided as a deficient feature of Apple’s popular handset, the iPhone camera’s default focal length is set to infinity, which makes for less-than-stellar close up shots. Forsythe has posted instructions detailing a way to open up the case, get the screen out of the way, flip the camera up, break the glue, adjust the lens, and plug the screen back in to check the focus.
If that sounds like more getting “under the hood” than you might be comfortable with, third party lenses and filters do exist to help you try and get more out of your iPhone’s camera.
Via Ars Technica
Photographer Pat St. Clair shot a super-cool QuickTime panoramic photo from last night’s historic session of the Democratic Party’s convention at the Pepsi Center in Denver, CO.
Working on assignment for LightSpeed Media, St. Clair shot the DNC image using a new Canon XSi with a Sigma 8mm f3.5 circular fisheye lens. It was four shots around on a custom rig, with the camera set to ISO 1600 and aperture priority metering.
He shot RAW files, used Photoshop Camera Raw to render them to tiffs, stitched the panorama in PTGui Pro 7.8. and authored the final pan in Cubic Converter, all on a MacBook Pro.
Nasty glitch today on the newswires. It seems Bloomberg updated its readymade obituary for Steve Jobs, which sent the article to all of the organization’s subscribers. Most prominent figures have their obits written up in advance, but they usually don’t get sent around unless they, you know, actually need to be used. As a former copy editor, I remember well the day that Pope John Paul II died, which sent every newsroom in the world into a tizzy.
Anyway, a totally false alarm, even if it comes during a renewed period of concern about Steve’s health. It’s interesting reading, but I won’t post it here.
Sitting for my 12th straight hour in a hospital waiting for the wife to download the latest tricycle motor, my mind started to wander and the solution to Psystar’s counter suit just occurred to me: Give Away Mac OS X.
This isn’t an argument for any open-source / open-license nonsense, just that Apple ought to effectively “shelve” Mac OS X as a product folks paid for, and make Mac OS X upgrades akin to firmware updates, completely proprietary to the machine.
By offering customers free upgrades to Mac OS X (presumably your initial copy came free with your purchase of an Apple computer), Apple would completely eliminate the “consumer harm” predicate of the anti-trust suit as one can’t be a “consumer” of a product you didn’t buy.
The revenue hit would be trivial as Mac OS X isn’t a profit center for the company, and the increase in customer loyalty and positive experience would likely offset any losses. Also as an additional carrot for Windows switchers it might prove to be an irresistible temptation. I can see the ads now:
Get the world’s best operating system with free upgrades for life with the purchase of an Apple computer.
That’s all for now, back to labor and delivery”¦
