Insanely Great Tees, a Mac-oriented t-shirt manufacturer, is running a Macworld predictions contest.
Correctly predict what Steve Jobs will announce at Macworld, and you could win an insanely great t-sirt. Prizes also for the funniest entry and the most creative.
But the site warns: “If your predictions are too accurate, expect to hear from some friendly Californian lawyers.”
Certain rumor-mongers (Boy Genius Report, specifically) today made the prospect of an online-only record label owned by Apple and headed by Jay-Z the hot rumor for this year’s MacWorld. After all, Jay-Z just quit as president of Def Jam — he must be going to work for Apple.
Don’t believe the hype. Jay’s tenure at Def Jam was far from an overwhelming success, and he starred in an HP commercial. That alone would give Apple pause in most cases. Secondly, I don’t see what Apple gains by sharing their venture with Jay as the executive in charge. The company would be much better served following the cue of Starbucks and launching a label with high-profile, established artists making new, high-margin recordings under tight distribution. And, on that level, the source of this rumor becomes a bit more clear. I do believe it’s possible that Apple might launch a record label — they got clearance from the last deal with Apple Corps, if I recall correctly. It might even be iTunes-only. But if Jay-Z’s involved, it’s for a recording contract — not as business leader. Then again, “launching” a label could easily mean putting out the first album…
Via BGR.
Fake Steve points us to a provocative Discover Magazine commentary by technology visionary Jaron Lanier, best known for putting the virtual reality bug in everybody’s ears at TED II way back in the ’80s. Lanier argues emphatically that open-source software doesn’t automatically yield creativity or innovation.
Twenty-five years later, that concern seems to have been justified. Open wisdom-of-crowds software movements have become influential, but they haven’t promoted the kind of radical creativity I love most in computer science. If anything, they’ve been hindrances. Some of the youngest, brightest minds have been trapped in a 1970s intellectual framework because they are hypnotized into accepting old software designs as if they were facts of nature. Linux is a superbly polished copy of an antique, shinier than the original, perhaps, but still defined by it.
I think he’s mostly right, although it’s worth noting that many of the works of art in software that he speaks of were built on the backs of open-source software. For example, the iPhone runs on the Mach Kernel, which is open-source, and then OS X BSD above that, all available in Darwin and featuring contributions from the open-dev community.
What Lanier speaks to instead is that different methods are suited best to different kinds of innovation. Vision-driven projects plotting new directions in interface design, radical improvements and others are best served in proprietary contexts. Under-the-hood improvements and refinement can be driven quite effectively through the work of open communities. This is something that Apple has demonstrated for a long time — it’s very hard to come up with the right questions to ask. It’s relatively easy to answer them once asked. Apple and other proprietary visionaries cited by Lanier are asking the right questions. The open-sourcers answer well-known questions that have bubbled up for years. It’s incremental improvement, but no less critical for the future of software and hardware development.
I love the marriage proposals of Mac geeks. The above video is the latest and greatest, adopting the form of an iPhone demo commercial to find new, sweet ways to propose in virtually every mode of the wunderphone’s operation. I still have a soft spot for James and Uschi. Makes me tear up every time. Video after the jump.
So cool. Ben Fino-Radin is doing some awesome work with retro-tech. In addition to the Hacked Mac shown here, he has made needlepoint 128k Mac replica. He hasn’t done anything new in several months, but I’d say he’s earned a break.
Via Boing Boing‘s Mark Frauenfelder.
Image copyright Andre Gunther
As another year in the Apple-watching game comes to an end, I wanted to take a quick moment to look back on the year that was and search for themes. Given how much Apple got done in 2007, there were a lot to choose from, but one really stands out: Golden Convergence Strikes Back.
For those who weren’t closely watching the moves of Apple closely during the mid-’90s, this might be a new term for you, but it’s a long-time idea in Mac circles. Variously credited to Bahamut of MacEdition and Robert Morgan of Recon for Investors, Golden Convergence speaks to the idea of taking a lot of seemingly divergent technologies and suddenly integrating them into a superior and seamless whole. Originally tagged to the rumored launch of the Apple Media Player in early 1998 (never happened), Golden Convergence has shown up dramatically throughout the second coming of Steve Jobs, from the standardization of USB and FireWire down to the wide use of Mac OS X despite initial resistance by the installed base.
But 2007 was when it really blossomed. We saw Apple take dozens technologies and roll them out to multiple platforms. OS X mutated and got optimized for the AppleTV, iPhone and, later, the iPod Touch. CoverFlow, initially created for iTunes 7, showed up first on the AppleTV, then the iPhone, then the iPod Classic, Nano and Touch before becoming the centerpiece of the Leopard UI. Front Row moved from the AppleTV to virtually every Mac on the market. Flexibility bred new uses, new interactions, new consistency. Everything Apple worked on had a tighter link than ever to another Apple product.
And nowhere is this more evident than the iPhone, the most flexible platform Apple has created since the original Mac. For now, it’s officially impossible to install third-party software on it, but that will change in early 2008 with the release of the iPhone and iPod touch Software Developer’s Kit. The reason that the iPhone is great is that nothing about it makes it a phone only. Its form is built for maximum flexibility. Few hardware buttons. Multi-touch creating hardware controls where and as they are needed. It can be an Internet browsing tablet, an iPod and an e-mail reader. Nothing about its hardware design precludes any future uses. If you build it, this thing will come along.
And that right there is the essence of Apple’s new spin on Golden Convergence. Don’t design anything in hardware that locks you into a current use or goal. Instead, build an interface flexible enough to accommodate all kinds of future uses or even new businesses. The iPhone could become a very powerful gaming platform is Apple decided to steer it in that direction. It could be slightly modified into a point of purchase device. The next version, upgraded with 3G and a GPS chip, could easily become a navigation device to challenge Garmin’s product line. Get a decent CCD into it with a better lens and a flash, and it’s a decent consumer digital camera.
It’s brilliant design, and it flips on its head the way that Apple approached new technologies in the 1990s. Back then, Apple wanted to make everything: printers, digital cameras, scanners, PDAs, stereos, game consoles — everything. Now, Apple still wants to play in all kinds of product categories, but they’re setting themselves up to do that with a single device. Don’t sell everything. Sell everyone iPhones. You’ll reduce your number of SKUs while also locking people into a product that generates monthly revenue long after its purchase price has been swallowed. Every year, build in faster chips and add a few features that are locked into hardware. Do everything else via software.
Apple already started this process in 2007, and I expect to see it increase dramatically over the next five years. After all, would you rather by an Apple TV or just get a high-capacity next-gen iPhone that can wirelessly stream video to your TV? It’s the safest way to innovate, and Apple nailed it. Happy New Year, everyone!
UPDATE: I just got off the phone with Nick Ciarelli, Think Secret’s publisher, and wrote it up for my day job over at Wired: Apple Kills Think Secret: Publisher Nick Ciarelli Talks
Apple rumor reporter extraordinaire Nick Ciarelli is shuttering his Think Secret website after settling a trade secrets lawsuit with Apple, Ciarelli writes on his website.
Apple had sued Ciarelli, who is studying at Harvard, after he published details of an unreleased music breakout box codenamed “Asteroid.” Apple sought the identity of whoever leaked the product details.
The settlement of the suit is confidential Ciarelli says, but doesn’t involve the identity of the leaker. But it does include closing his site.
“I’m pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits,” Ciarelli said in a statement.
I’ve already sent Nick an email asking if he’ll contribute to Wired News.
Apple’s support of Java in Mac OS X continues to be totally pathetic, as Alex Popescu points out.
I’m usually calm and trying to understand the decisions some are making. But this is f%^$% unbelievable: Apple has released a developer preview of Java6, but it is meant only for 10.5.1 or later. Are they kidding me? A guy has been able to build Java6 for Mac by his own, has packaged it for both Tiger and Leopard, and Apple comes out 1 month later with a 10.5.1 only? That’s incredible arrogant.
Yeah, and it’s only for 64-bit Macs, so first-gen Intel iMacs, MacBook Pros and MacBooks are out of look. BOO. When a hobbyist can put together more useful and broad implementations of a freaking API than you can, it’s time to wonder why you even bother. Come on, Apple. What’s the deal?
Unbelievable: Apple releases Java6, but”¦ « mindstorms
Via Digg. Image from the Apple Collection
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Tags: apple, java, developers, pathetic
How could this have failed? The Apple Lisa is the computer for Type A personalities who go to work at dawn with their dogs via bike and then continually stare at the same spreadsheet for a half-hour. Sign me up!
YouTube – Kevin Costner in Apple ad
Via SFist
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Apple’s entry into the mobile phone market has been a pretty spectacular success in its first six months on the market, according to research house Canalys. As Roughly Drafted notes, in North America, the iPhone is the No. 2 smartphone platform, not just model. It trails only the full BlackBerry market at this point, but is ahead of all combined Windows Mobile devices. This confirms an earlier NPD report that Apple was commanding about 27 percent of the smartphone market. In honor of this moment, let’s look back at some memorable quotes of the last year:
“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”
— Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO
“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
— Ed Colligan, Palm CEO
“They would have been stepping in between us and our customers to the point where we would have almost had to take a back seat “¦ on hardware and service support.”
— Jim Gerace, Verizon Wireless VP
“What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.”
— John Dvorak, International Tool
Ah, memories.
Via Daring Fireball
I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of stupid crap vaguely inspired by the iPod. The best of these in recent memory is the iPond, an Australian product that crams a really tiny fish tank — and a Siamese fighting fish — into a weird package that looks sort of like an iPod (and more like a 1G Zune). Oh, and it plays music through a really crummy speaker.
The best part of all of this? The iPond is virtually guaranteed to kill any fish unfortunate enough to get put into the iPond. Fighting fish need 10 liters to live, and the iPond is .65 liters. Oops. The Sydney Morning Herald has the story:
Studies proved fish had memories well beyond a few seconds and were social creatures that experienced pain and boredom, he said.
“The fish in this thing does not look like it has very long to live and it can barely move,” he said.
“Even if it does live it’s not [a] life worth living … it’s really just a torture box.”
Even better? The sound from the speaker leaks inside the tank. So it’s a really loud torture box. I know it’s a little late, but how do I get this on my wishlist?
Via Gizmodo.
Once Apple began to work with Intel, it got a lot easier to begin predicting the future development of Mac hardware. When IBM and Motorola provided the horsepower (or lack thereof, as the case may be) for the Mac platform, it was anybody’s guess when Apple might ship new machines — or what would cause the shipping delay this time. Intel, however, is an open book. They show off their processor roadmap up to a year in advance.
RIght now, everyone is waiting for Apple to unveil new portable Macs using the Penryn chip, the world’s first consumer 45nm CPU. They should drop at MacWorld. But Intel’s way out in front. According to BusinessWeek’s Reena Jana, the future will be ultra-efficient chips powering greener laptops with longer battery life. She writes about her exclusive preview on the Next blog.
Yet Intel seems to really be walking the walk on these two matters. Chip-wise, the company will be rolling out a platform code-named “Menlow,” in Q2 or Q3 of 2008. It’s the first-generation of low-power platforms, which promises to run on 10 times less CPU power and is 5 times smaller than previous chips.
Sounds like the ideal way to make a tiny MacBook with extremely efficient battery life that won’t burn your knees. I’m just waiting for the first Mac portable that can operate for 9 hours without a charge.
Image: Linksys
Remember a year ago, when the iPhone was announced? No, not Apple’s iPhone, the VoIP product line from Cisco’s Linksys product line! Though Cisco enjoyed a lot of press after Steve Jobs gave Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch wonderphone the same name, but then the other iPhone sort of vanished. What’s happened since?
Not much, actually. As our colleague Rob Beschizza reports for Wired News, the Linksys iPhone is selling OK, and the company plans to roll out new models under the name. But the name iPhone is Apple’s. No one, not even the most contrarian anti-Apple antagonists, thinks of seamless VoIP calls when they hear the name.
But a year on, Apple has its iPhone and Cisco has its iPhone, and no one confuses one with the other. And everybody’s happy with that, as Cisco spokesperson Karen Sohl says:
Relations with Apple, Sohl said, are good. “There’s no bad blood,” she said. “We enjoy working with Apple.”
Whatever Happened to the Other iPhone? [Wired News]
I just spilled coffee all over my computer keyboard. While horrified at the damage, I was fascinated to see how the coffee pooled in the middle of the keys.
I’ve never seen the like before.
It’s an Apple keyboard. The keys have a glossy finish and are slightly depressed in the center. Of course, most of the coffee drained off the keys and collected in the keyboard’s base, which is made of transparent plastic. I wish i’d got a picture of that. It looked like one of those paperweights filled with oil and water, but in this case, it was a muddy brown liquid. But the coffee drained out when I turned it over.
I shall run the keyboard through the dishwasher to see if that myth works.
Leander’s got the full story over at the Mothership. Anyone else have some gorgeous laser-etched Apple stuff they’d like to share?
Image via Flickr
At this point, it’s pretty clear that everyone loves the iPhone. Celebrities, executives, Time Magazine, even my Uncle Jim. It’s Apple’s biggest sensation since the original launch of the iPod, and a break-out success all around.
Unfortunately, the June arrival of the iPhone came at a cost. Apple had to delay the launch of its Leopard operating system by months in order to pull software developers off the Leopard team and onto the iPhone team. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. If anything, I presumed only good could come of mingling iPhone DNA with Leopard DNA.
But it’s mainly been frustrating. The delays were bad enough, but it really does appear that the switch-up had an impact on the overall quality of the shipping version of Leopard. I can’t think of an operating system from Apple since OS X 10.0 so filled with bugs and questionable design decisions. There are whole communities devoted solely to the documentation of Leopard bugs.
Worse, some of the intentional choices with Leopard aren’t up to Apple’s standards.There are many wonderful features like QuickLook and Time Machine, but a lot of the new interface elements are just flashy for the sake of flashiness. CoverFlow is goofy for browsing through anything other than photos in the Finder, and I will never understand the logic of a translucent menu bar as long as I live.
I’m never going to join the throng calling Leopard the new Vista, but I do have to wonder: How much did the stress put on the Leopard team to finish the iPhone disrupt the shipping version of the OS? This is a team that definitely put in 80, 90 hour weeks if not longer to finish the iPhone and then had to go straight back onto Leopard to meet an ambitious ship date. Whose quality wouldn’t take a hit under such circumstances?
What do you think? This is the first time in memory when I can recall a core Mac product being impeded or hampered by a more pressing new market product for Apple. What does that mean for the six-color bleeding Mac faithful? Are you bugged, or just delighted you got your iPhone on time?
Well, it’s command-line for now, but the iPod touch has been hacked to enable VoIP calling by a modder going by Eok.
The hack uses the utility SvSIP, which was originally created to enable the same capability on the Nintendo DS. It’s pretty far from usable by mere mortals for the time being — typing can be enough of a pain on the virtual keyboard, let alone doing any mucking around in a shell script — but this is fun. The touch is an iPhone in all but communication connectivity only anyway, why not make it a true little brother to the iPhone?
Also, can I get a German layout for my iPhone? I love the look of “QWERTZUIOP”.
Via iPodNN
Foto: Markus Aarstad/www.ps.no
Heres’ the first picture of Steve Jobs in a suit and tie for at least a decade, maybe longer. Jobs wore the monkey suit to the Nobel Prize ceremony, in support of Al Gore, environmental activist and Apple board member.
Link.
The revamped Spaceship Earth ride at Disney’s Epcot Center has a special “Steve Jobs section,” according to the lifthill blog, which tracks news about rides and roller coasters, and was invited to a special preview.
But once at the Steve Jobs area, which is supposed to depict the birth of Apple computer in a garage, the lifthill blogger noticed that the lone figure in the garage looked a lot more like Wozniak than Jobs.
The figure is facing the wrong way, so it’s hard to tell, but it’s wearing the same shirt as Wozniak in a famous early photograph copied below, and has similar hair and beard. Conspriacy theorists note that Jobs is the single largest shareholder in Disney– but I can’t believe he cares that a section of Epcot bears his name or likeness (or not).
Anyway, there’s no second figure in sight, so one of them is slighted. And so too is the third Apple-founder, Ron Wayne, but no one cares about that.
But what is that thing the dummy Woz/Jobs is sitting in front of? It ain’t no Apple I or II — the first and only machines Woz created more or less single-handed. It looks like a big wooden Mac, but none of the Mac prototypes looked like that — they were much more finished.
Higher-res pictures at lifthill.
We have three of Energizer’s new Energi To Go iPod battery extenders to give away.
To win one, simply decorate your Mac, iPod, or iPhone for the holidays and email the picture to [email protected].
We’ll post the pictures here next week. The three best will get an Energi To Go battery extender. The Energi To Go is a $20 battery-powered iPod charger that juices all iPods equipped with a dock connector. It runs on two AA batteries (Energizer recommends lithium AA batteries for better performance). It will charge an iPod nano for up to 46 hours; and an iPod video for up to 32 hours, Energizer claims.
Steve Jobs was inducted in California’s Hall of Fame in a swank ceremony in Sacramento last night hosted by Gov. Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver. Jobs was among 13 visionaries and trailblazers honored, including Ansel Adams, John Steinbeck, Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne and Tiger Woods.
Apparently Jobs wasn’t thrilled about attending, but Shriver made the honor contingent on attending the induction ceremony. She told local affiliate KNBC that she had a hard time convincing Jobs to attend. “He’s trying to balance children, family, business, he doesn’t like to be singled out,” she said. “He believes that Apple is the star of the Silicon Valley, not him.”
There’s streaming video of the riveting ceremony here.
Gary Allen has some great pictures of the winding glass staircase at the new Apple Store in Manhattan’s Meatpacking district.
Allen, who lives in Berkeley, flew out for the grand opening of the 14th Street store on Friday the 7th at 6 p.m. He’ll no doubt be waiting in line soon to be first inside the store. Allen is a dedicated grand opening camper, and will likely be blogging at IFOAppleStore.
The store will be giving out commemorative t-shirts to the first several hundred inside, and some unspecified “special surprises,” according to the 14th Street Store’s webpage.
The store is one of Apple’s biggest. It’s three stories tall, and one whole floor is given over to service. Unlike its sister store on Fifth Avenue, it will be open 9 a.m. to midnight, not 24 hours.
I just stumbled across Mister BG’s all-too-real parody of Apple’s Product Lifecycle. This is my favorite paragraph:
The haters offer their assessment. The forums are ablaze with vitriolic rage. Haters pan the device for being less powerful than a Cray X1 while zealots counter that it is both smaller and lighter than a Buick Regal. The virtual slap-fight goes on and on, until obscure technical nuances like, “Will it play multiplexed Ogg Vorbis streams?” become matters of life and death.
It’s funny because it’s true. Well done, sir.
Via Digg.
In the rush to create high-markup accessories for the iPhone, one company is hawking the Pogo Stylus: a pointing device for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch — two products expressly designed to be used without a stylus.
Is there really a market for this? I imagine the pudgy fingered might take a look, as might people who have become accustomed to poking around their smartphone with a little pen. But the whole point of Apple’s multitouch is doing away with pointing devices. But the market for iPod accessories is worth more than $1 billion annually, so companies are taking a throw-it-out-and-fingers-crossed approach.
Available now from the company’s website for $25.
One good opening deserves another, so Apple is just about ready to match its new San Francisco store in the Marina with a new shop in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village big props to Apple’s creatives for a logo that’s so darn Big Apple. Beautiful work, guys.
David Sebastian Buus took the photo while on a bike ride.
doctormac: New Apple Store in NYC / Dec. 7.
Via Digg.
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