Cult of Mac

I love the NBC and Apple feud so much. Sometimes, the companies overtly bash each other. For every other moment, there’s fun speculation. Take for instance, the latest volley, which likely has nothing to do with the epic rumble between Jeff Zucker and Steve Jobs, but it’s fun to pretend otherwise. Here’s the set-up: NBC’s Saturday Night Live had a sketch featuring an iPhone that Gizmodo believes to have the illicit installer app that graces all jailbroken iPhones — and then, today, Apple issues iPhone firmware 1.1.2 on UK iPhones, which closes the exploit that enables the current group of jailbreaks. Coincidence? Or distant shots in a hundred-years war?

(No further word on features for 1.1.2. Best not to install for now.)

Via digg.

Time Machine, the automated back-up system built into Mac OS X Leopard, has been justly celebrated for making the least-fun of all computer practices easy. At the touch of a button, you can find every revision of every single one of your files on hand at the time of its installation. Unfortunately, as Steven Fisher recently discovered, this comes with an ugly side effect: Even executable code can get run from Time Machine. Cool as that might sound, the consequences could be grim:

Let me give you a simple example: You find out Adium (for example) has an available exploit that the developers haven’t patched yet. You remove Adium, but it continues to exist in your backup. You visit a web page that activates the Adium bug, and Adium is launched from your backup. That you can launch Adium from your backup is not a bug. That Mac OS X will do so automatically without confirmation is a bug. The backup should be considered a vault for the user, not Launch Services.

Yikes.  Rogue code is bad. Rogue code that you have to go out of
your way to re-delete from your archives? Really nasty. Apple, let’s get a fix going.

Via Daring Fireball

As reported earlier this week, Apple has pulled out a final hardware revision for the holiday season, pushing out new MacBooks that gain a 200 Mhz speed bump and new integrated graphics hardware replacing the much-maligned GMA 950 with Intel’s GMA x3100. The line starts at $1,099 for a 2 Ghz Core2Duo with a Combo Drive and an 80 Gig Hard Drive, Ranging up to $1,499 for the BlacBook with 2.2 Ghz Core2, 160 Gig drive and super drive.

Quite wonderfully, the entire line standardizes with 1 Gig of Memory on-board, which should make Leopard perform well on these boxes regardless of configuration. Apple also now allows custom builds of MacBook Pros up to 2.6 Ghz Core2 for an extra $250 over its base configurations.

I’ve done some quick research into the performance of the GMA x3100, and this isn’t the consumer mobile gaming chipset we might hope for to make the MacBook a peer to the iMac as a gaming platform. Here’s a very positive review from Tech.co.uk of the GMA x3100 running Windows.

The GMA X3100 also continues the philosophy of Intel’s previous graphics solutions (going back as far as its discrete i740 line), and that is one of compatibility. While there’s rarely been the power available to run games at anything more than PowerPoint slideshow speeds, being able to render those images correctly means that you’ll often put up with poor frame rates as long as everything looks right.

In testing, the improvement this new engine offers over the older solutions isn’t massive – 3DMark06, the industry benchmark for ascertaining the capabilities of graphics engines in general, returned a score of 416. While this result is twice that from the previous generation of integrated graphics, it still proves that integrated graphics aren’t for next-generation titles. Top-end cards score around 8,000, with even cheaper cards managing scores around the 4,000 mark.

In real-world performance terms, the low throughput of this engine shows when trying to play Doom 3 back at the high-quality setting at 800 x 600 – less than 10fps isn’t playable. Half-Life 2 fared a little better at 18fps, but surprisingly this score is bettered by its last-generation graphics, which were 5fps smoother. Despite the presence of hardware T&L, the lack of fill rate is clearly a limiting factor.

Yeeeahh. MacBook Pro is still the only credible gaming portable from Apple. Actual video performance is surprisingly good, but 3D is seriously lagging. Any fence-sitters moved to make a purchase now with this announcement?

Mac Rumors: Apple Updates MacBooks to Santa Rosa, GMA X3100; 2.6GHz MacBook Pro

Tags: macbook, hardware, apple, product, announcement

Illusionist Andrew Mayne is using a special filter in iChat to make it look like he’s bored to death or his soul is being ripped out.

It’s pretty effective.

Check his page for video of the effects in action.

Instructions for using the quartz filter called “HoloGit” is here on MacRumors.

Pic: A lab at the school’s library with a sea of new iMacs. At front is the display of a Mac mini running Windows.

To “diversify” its technology, the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University in Dallas is switching to Macs from PCs.

By switching to Macs, the school can now offer students Mac OS X as well as Windows XP — the machines are all dual boot.

Cox joins several schools switching to the Mac, including Wilkes University Wilkes-Barr in PA, and St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia. A few years ago, it was the opposite story. Schools were abandoning the Mac in droves, including long-time, all-Mac schools like Dartmouth.

At Cox, the school has installed about 100 iMacs in labs, and there’s dual-boot Mac minis (OS X and XP) at the head of about 30 classrooms.
“We’re enhancing and diversifying our computer platforms by keeping Windows XP while adding OS X,” said Allen Gwinn, the school’s technical director, in a statement. “Upgrading to Apple platforms is the only way to do this.”

Update: As noted in the comments, I bungled the headline, transposing PCs and Macs. But there’s no strikethrough in heds, so I just corrected it. Thanks for the heads up.

Updated: Ah, John Siracusa. Is anyone else capable of such sublime operating system reviews? His Leopard manifesto (17 action-packed pages) is sublime:

That’s the Downloads folder on the left, and the disk image file on the right. It’s slightly bigger.

If you are not shaking your head, uttering something profane, or taking some deity’s name in vain right about now, congratulations, Apple may have a position for you in their user interface design group.

He’s complimentary where Apple got it right, mean where it got it wrong, and always insightful and funny.

Attention, media company CEOs: You never come out looking good when you bash Apple for not sharing iPod revenue looking with you. Do makers of CD drives pay you royalties? Does my broken SPORTS Walkman owe you cash because it wouldn’t play music with out your content. The latest victim of this fallacy is NBC President Jeff Zucker, best known for taking the channel from No. 1 to No. 4 while head of programming. Variety reports his absurd comments at Syracuse University yesterday.

“Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content, and made a lot of money,” Zucker said. “They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing.”

How awful for you! I’m so sad that Apple didn’t want to provide you with revenue that you didn’t earn! Not to mention which, there is no one on the planet who bought an iPod just to watch videos on it, let alone just to watch NBC TV shows. And the vast majority of music gets sold through non-iTunes channels. The iTunes Store has contributed to iPod growth, but then again, “The Office” found an audience largely because of iTunes. Good luck with Hulu, Jeff.

Does anyone have sympathy for comments like these?

Zucker says Apple deal rotten – Entertainment News, Technology News, Media – Variety
Thanks, Buzz!

Tags: nbc, itunes, lame

Now that the iPhone and iPod Touch have been cracked wide-open again, my friend and colleague at Wired, Michael Calore asks the most important question: Is there a killer app on either device?

Thanks to new breakthroughs made this past weekend by a disparate team of hackers, Jailbreaking your iPhone or iPod Touch is easier than ever. But just because you have the freedom to hack the phone’s software and run your own third-party applications, should you? And should you do it now, rather than waiting until February? Is there already an application available which makes the risk of bricking your device worthwhile?

Head over to vote. It’s a fun little poll, and the it’s anybody’s game right now.

Things really couldn’t be better for Apple right now. Its phone and music businesses are soaring, Mac market share is growing at a voracious rate, and Leopard is another critical and commercial success in the midst of Vista’s flop. Oh, and the stock is so high that a share from 19967 that cost $8 then is now worth more than $43,000 A lot of money (misremembered the number of AAPL splits. The stock did drop down to $8 in 1997, though).

But things were not always so rosy. Travel back to the spring of 1997, a land of rap-rock and bridges to the 21st century. A time before Lewinski. Apple was a shambles. Gil Amelio ruled as CEO. Steve Jobs was half-in, half-out of the fold. Apple owned NeXT, but the company was three years from a shipping version of Mac OS X. The iMac hadn’t even been announced, for crying out loud.

Ever-vigilant, Wired put out 101 theories for how Apple could be saved in the June 1997 issue. Looking back, some of them are eerily prescient (15. Dump or outsource the Newton and other sidelights, 34. Port the OS to Intel) and some are hilariously off the mark (1. Get out of the hardware game, 35. Clone the Powerbook).

As a nostalgia-fest, I’ve decided to highlight the ten best and ten worst of the list. That all follows after the jump, as is a link to the full story.

PC World: In Pictures: The Most Notable Notebooks of 2007

The fastest Windows Vista notebook we’ve tested this year is a Mac. Try that again: The fastest Windows Vista notebook we’ve tested this year–or for that matter, ever–is a Mac. Not a Dell, not a Toshiba, not even an Alienware. The $2419 (plus the price of a copy of Windows Vista, of course) MacBook Pro’s PC WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 88 beats Gateway’s E-265M by a single point, but the MacBook’s score is far more impressive simply because Apple couldn’t care less whether you run Windows.

Via Daring Fireball

Remember when Mac OS X only ran on Macs? That era is a thing of the past, as a group of hackers have already managed to install Leopard on vanilla PCs, with only a modicum of effort required. As DailyApps reports:

Well its been only a day since the Mac OSX Leopard was released officially by Apple and the hackers have managed to create a patched DVD that everyone like you and me can use to install Leopard on PC’s without having to buy a Mac. Please note the tutorial that I am going to post is still experimental and things might not work the right way simply because it is still early days in hacking Leopard to work on PC’s. Well if you don’t mind your PC getting screwed then go ahead and try out this tutorial.

I always expected that this was a possible consequence of Apple’s shift to Intel processors, but this still boggles the mind. Has anyone else tried to non-suckify their Wintel box yet? And does the vibrant iPhone hacker community have anything to do with this change?

Hack Attack : Install Leopard on your PC in 3 easy steps! | dailyApps
Via Laughing Squid

Tags: leopard, hacks

Do you Hulu? Well, you might just be the only one. Hulu is the new, still closed-to-the-public video service from NBC and the Fox network’s parent company. Originally mooted as a corporate-friendly alternative to Youtube’s freewheeling territory, recent events have helped position the site as a competitor to the iTunes Store, Cable On-Demand Service, and even a floorwax/dessert topping. Though the parent companies involved clai that their service will immediately start to steal eyeballs from its more seasoned competition, it remains to be seen what they have to offer that, you know, everyone else doesn’t already deliver.

A private beta of the service launched this morning, though they haven’t sent me an invite yet (I registered in August). But check out this screenshot from the home page, I mean where else are you going to go to check out reruns of “Pretender” or “Rob & Amber.” Steve Jobs must be quaking in his boots right now.

Anyone gotten in the door yet? Is it corporate-tacular?

Hulu, NBC-News Corp Online Service Launches GigaOM

Tags: tv, hulu, itunes

The MacBook is just about the only Mac to not received a major upgrade in the last four months. According to MacRumors, that could change tomorrow, as they predict Apple will launch new MacBooks featuring an improved graphics chipset from Intel. Speaking as someone in the market for a new machine, a hotter MacBook would certainly spur me to action, and tomorrow is about as late as Apple can go and still generate significant sales in the holiday season. This rumor is also quite credible, as a driver for the graphics chipset in question is present in Leopard, which would ship natively on any new Mac:

Apple’s Leopard update, however, has revealed drivers for the newer Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics chip. This is the successor to the Intel GMA 950 which currently resides in the existing MacBooks. This would suggest that the next MacBook will see an upgrade to the Santa Rosa chipset.

While we’re at it, Apple, do you think it would be possible to soften the edge of the MacBook wrist-rest? That think really chafes…

Mac Rumors: New Apple MacBook on Tuesday? GMA X3100?

Tags: macbook, rumors, Apple

Watch this video interview with MS CEO Steve Ballmer and see if you don’t conclude he’s a coke head.
Ballmer sniffs and snorts throughout and he’s constantly rubbing his nose as if he’s dying to take giant snot snorts.
If you were sitting in a bar with him, there’d be no doubt he just did a couple of fat rails.

Buzz on Leopard is mostly quite positive as we roll into the first full week of its availability on the market. That’s mostly, mind. R.L. Pryor, owner of ThinkMac Software and creator of such shareware gems as NewsLife and InstantGallery, has a few complaints about the UI in Leopard. I’ll share just one, then you must click through for more. Absolutely hysterical.

Stars in their eyes: Where do the stars end and the status lights begin? I suppose it could be worse, no one buy Steve Jobs one of those infinity mirrors OK?

ThinkMac Software – Blog

Thanks, Andrew!

Tags: leopard, ui, software

As promised in Friday’s NY Times, Apple aired an updated and official version of Nick Haley’s brilliant homemade iPod Touch commercial. I caught it during the pre-game for the World Series. Apple calls the spot “Nylon,” which is a search term during the Safari demo they show. The commercial is very faithful to Haley’s ad, but with a few additions. From what I can tell, the new stuff includes showing a Foo Fighters video, lingering a bit longer on a web page, and then really emphasizing iTunes online. Other than that, it’s the same.

Watch Apple’s official version here, and then click through to watch Nick’s ad for comparison.

But can Spotlight guess my age and weight or prospects for love? The least I expect from an oracle in this day and age…

More Goodies in Apple’s New Operating System – New York Times

The Internet is a weird place. According to the New York Times, the above fake iPod Touch commercial put together by 18-year-old Mac fan Nick Haley will be remade and launched as the first actual ad for the flagship iPod on Sunday. The incredibly well-made commercial uses shots of the Touch in use timed to “Music is my Hot, Hot Sex” by CSS, which used the line “My music is where I’d like you to touch.”

Oh, Apple. You shouldn’t have. It’s far too accurate (discovered by David R. Perek)

Via Digg.

Having spent a lot of time on Twitter (You can follow my goings-on there for up-to-the-second mac thoughts) now, I’m starting to get a sense of the community. As I poked around, I found that the micro-blogging community (or “Presence” app, to be buzz-wordy) is full of people posing as Steve Jobs — 7 in all. Consider this post the official guide to the Many Steves of Twitter.

1. Fake “Fake Steve Jobs”
Seen above, an earlier Twitterer claimed the territory of the web’s most famous fake CEO in micro form — only he’s obviously not the real Fake Steve Jobs — he isn’t half the writer of the genuine artificial article: ” Backstage – having some probs with the Powerpoint to Keynote file convertor. I wonder if they notice if we used Powerpoint (on Vista…hmmm)” Pathetic.

For the rest of the list, read on…

Ladies and gentlemen, Flock, the Mozilla-based open-source Web browser trying to make the social aspects of the Internet central, is finally useful. And oh, is it, useful. First introduced in the fall of 2005, the program, which integrates Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us and blogging software was for years a slower, more crashable alternative to Firefox. I never used it for more than about 10 minutes before. Suddenly, as of last week, it has vaulted over Firefox, Camino and Omniweb. It’s by far the best web browser for anyone with friends online that I have ever used. You should all download Flock 1.0 Public Beta at your nearest convenience. It even takes Firefox add-ons.

The marquee feature of the new version is the People Sidebar, a screen real estate gulping interface for a few key social media services. Essentially, once you register, you get a constant stream of new status and upload updates from all of your contacts of Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Youtube. It just moves along. You can send messages, Poke people, send photos, or what have you, all without heading over to the hosting web page. The other key feature is the Media Bar, which allows subscriptions to the media streams from Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook or others. There’s drag and drop image, video and text support, as well as an incredible clipboard that goes far beyond the typical features to optimize for reuse.

Then, in addition to all of that, there’s a built-in blog editor that’s widely compatible and nearly as capable as ecto, my dedicated blog app of choice. Its only limitation right now is that it requires the use of one of its supported hosting services for images, not native image hosting.

Other than that, it’s revolutionizing the way I consume information and connect with the people around me. And it’s made blogging almost preposterously easy.

Thanks, Stuart — for showing the way!

Test-Drive Flock 1.0 | Flock

Blogged with Flock

Tags: flock, software, social, awesome

Apple has confirmed the inevitable: Classic is officially no longer part of Mac OS X. Leopard cut the threads on PowerPC, even though Intel Macs have been unable to run, say, StuntCopter (and even then, they should just get the OS X version), since their introduction. THe note about it is comically concise:

Do Classic applications work with Mac OS X 10.5 or Intel-based Macs? Classic applications do not work on Intel processor-based Macs or with Mac OS X 10.5.

That’s sorted, then. Ow. Who’s still using Classic on a daily basis and will miss it?
Do Classic applications work with Mac OS X 10.5 or Intel-based Macs?
Image via Trans-USA

Blogged with Flock

Tags: sadmac, Classic

Leopard has been with journalists for awhile. Uncle Walt thinks it’s not a huge improvement, but it’s much better than Vista.

Leopard: Faster, Easier Than Vista
Upgrade of Apple’s OS Isn’t Revolutionary, But It Beats Microsoft’s
The Mac is on a roll. Apple Inc.’s perennially praised but slow-selling Macintosh computers have surged in popularity in the past few years, with sales growing much faster than the overall PC market, especially in the U.S. By some measures, Mac laptops are now approaching a 20% share of U.S. noncorporate sales, up from the low single digits where they once seemed stuck.

Personal Technology – WSJ.com

Blogged with Flock

Tags: leopard, mac os x, review

“Speaking at the CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment show in San Francisco, David Ulmer, senior director of entertainment products at Motorola, says he’s convinced Apple won’t open up the iPhone anytime soon:”

Motorola: Apple won’t open the iPhone [Via WordPress]

Tags: iphonecultofmac open motorola

Parallels, Inc., those bright kids in Renton, Washington who are so good at making Windows run nicely inside of Mac OS X, have just launched a new marketing campaign, “Why Choose?” for their Parallels Desktop product. The video, viewable above, depicts a rather satisfied fellow who refuses to compromise: He eats pizza while getting marked up for plastic surgery, he smokes while jogging, and he tries to have two women in his life (guess which one doesn’t work out? Hint: It’s not the jogging).

It’s a cute video, as well as the launching point for a pretty rad crowdsourcing video contest. The company is soliciting promo videos of three minutes or less along the “Why Choose?” theme. Other than that, the boundaries are pretty wide open. Official rules are at the company’s website, and the winner will receive a 17″ MacBook Pro, a Sony HD HandyCam and a trip for two to MacWorld. Runners-up can pick up a MacBook or an iPhone, too. Entries are due by Dec. 9, but you can get, um…a t-shirt…if you’re among the first 100 entrants. Who’s in? Everyone knows Mac users are the most creative folks in the world, so flex your power!