So, erm, I’m not quite sure what to make of these.
Flickr user CoreForce posted these two, erm, stimulating images this week.
I know some people love their gadgets but the iPhone as a sex object? Not convinced about that. No.
(Photos iPhone tease and iPhone tease used under Creative Commons license, thanks to CoreForce.)
George Sawyer, who describes himself as “raised in a wood shop,” fashioned the Podbark case from flexible veneer adhered to wood-look paper with a protective screen sandwiched between. They wrap around the iPod with a finger joint, adding an authentic touch.
Sawyer started making them a few years ago, when the fifth gen iPod came out. Podbark currently fits those and the iPod classic 80gig, a comfort to those of us who have older models hanging around. They cost $15-$18, available in your choice of maple (pictured) or walnut.
iPhone (iBark?) and newer iPod models are in the works.
Podbark at Etsy
For MacAddict and MacUser editor Rik Myslewski has penned the second in a series of essays about Apple’s place in the world for The Register. This one looks at the company’s environmental and philanthropic activity.
Myslewski says that in both areas, Apple has only very recently showed signs of the kind of corporate responsibility commonly displayed publicly by its rivals and peers in the business.
The new green MacBooks only appeared after pressure by Greenpeace, which included public humiliation of the company in the charity’s 2006 Guide to Greener Electronics, where Apple was placed fourth from bottom. There are no records of charitable giving until the recent, sudden support for the Anti Proposition 8 movement in California.
If Apple has been giving more to charity, says Myslewski, it has been doing so under the utmost secrecy. Which leads him to believe that no such giving has taken place at all.
Which, Myslewski declares, is “shameful” for a company with so much cash in the bank. He gives the company an “F” rating for this particular part of the report card he’s writing.
What do you make of it all? Is Apple being treated harshly here, or is Myslewski making a good point?
Depending on your point of view, Ben Stiller’s “Tropic Thunder” was either a bladder-threatening comedy, a hodge-podge of offensive stereotypes or just plain stupid.
After earning $100 mil at the US box office, it was recently released on DVD. The movie, about a ragtag bunch of actors forced to become real-life heroes, is a triumph of product placement. TiVo plays has a decisive role in the plot and everything from the newly-sexy cherry Chapstick and, yes, the iPod have cameos.
When Stiller’s character Tugg Speedman gets lost in the jungle, he soothes himself by watching Star Trek on his iPod, which was prominently placed in a giant gift basket in an earlier scene.
Not to spoil the plot, but after he’s attacked, he loses his cool and starts wearing his iPod as part of pseudo tribal fetish costume.
Guessing the iPod wouldn’t work with beads strung through it, but it’s a nice idea.
Low End Mac figures their time is now.
With the economy exuding the stench of death and government busy creating trillions of dollars worth of fictional capital to “bail out” some of the nation’s brand-name institutions, Low End Mac believes their philosophy of “use it up, wear it out, and then recycle it” could not be more timely.
“We are the kings of making our computers last, last, and last some more,” writes blogger John Hatchett in a great piece describing how he turned his old iMac into a digital jukebox. With a little bit of drive cloning and hooking the iMac up to his home stereo, he now listens to his iTunes library all over his house.
Via Low End Mac
Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end…
That whole Solitaire thing seems pretty quaint now, doesn’t it?
Via Edible Apple, via Married to the Sea
iFrogz, developer of accessories for iPod and iPhone announced the availability of its first line of customizable earphones Tuesday, claiming to offer over 200,000 unique possibilities among three new products.
I could think of any number of words to describe what may be going on in the marketing department at the company’s Logan, UT headquarters, but they can certainly be said to think different.
For starters, the product line is called EarPollution, with individual offerings named Hype, Fallout and Nerve Pipes. The whole campaign calls to mind some kind of industrial accident rather than a new wave of must-have items in the over-saturated earphone market. Then again, standing out from the crowd is a definite strategy.
And stand out the iFrogz headsets do, too. From the ultra-bling options available on the Nerve Pipes to the slightly more downbeat style of Fallout (both over-ear) and the low-profile, in-ear Hype, users can customize color and artwork for headbands, speakers, earpds, even hinges (on Nerve Pipes), giving them what iFrogz CEO Scott Huskinson calls “complete creative control to develop something truly unique and original.”
Styles retail from $19.99 for the Hype earbuds, and $34.99 for both the Fallout and Nerve Pipes. Despite the estimated 235,000 unique combinations currently available the company promises more customizable options will become available at a later date.
Ahead of what is likely the most nervously anticipated Holiday Season for retailers in more than a generation, Apple joined the Black Friday bandwagon Tuesday, announcing a “one-day-only holiday shopping event” for the day after Thanksgiving.
Subscribers to Apple’s Inside Apple News received an email Tuesday announcing the company’s “biggest shopping event of the year” and visitors to the Apple online store found promises of “dozens of great iPod, iPhone and Mac gift ideas” good for Friday only. No word yet on what Friday’s pricing is going to look like or what items in the catalog will be on sale.
Now that Apple holds such a prominent place in the retail trade the company should be expected to follow many of the industry’s marketing rituals, but it’s probably a safe bet they are a little less nervous in Cupertino than in, say, Minneapolis (home of Best Buy) or Bentonville, Ark. (world headquarters of Wal-Mart).
Apple could release an $800 netbook in 2009, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster told investors Tuesday. Munster is just the latest advising the Cupertino, Calif. computer maker to offer an inexpensive laptop.
Although CEO Steve Jobs has poo-poohed talk of a netbook, dismissing the growing trend as just a “nascent market,” Munster believes Apple has the perfect platform: the MacBook Air.
In a note to clients, the Apple watcher said Apple could release an 11-inch version of its MacBook Air notebook and sell the unit for between $800 to $1,000.
iPods provide welcome respite from annoying incidental music in stores, since retailers don’t understand that no one over 10 wants to buy anything while listening to Britney Spears.
There’s no bringing your own acoustic oasis in a bar for drinks, though.
Enter the WXYZ bar at hip Aloft hotel in Minneapolis, where customers can bring their iPods and blast personalized playlists over the venue stereo while they imbibe. Birthdays, anniversaries, 80s theme nights with office mates, the possibilities are endless.
Manager Amy Phillips said the plug-in-your-iPod idea was meant to provide “a connection to why they are there.”
The only catch? You do have to show them the playlist before hand. Which sort of rules out my favorite, though admittedly disturbing girl’s choir cover version of “I Touch Myself,” but I think it could be worked out. Or maybe I’ll have to sign up for this bring-your-own iPod night instead.
Photo credit: Metro Mix Twin Cities
Via Twin Cities Eater
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