Cult of Mac

Vance Carruth , a third grade teacher from Huntington Beach, California, is retiring — and his clutch of twenty Apple IIe systems will be going with him, the Mac Mothership website reports.

Even though the technology is almost thirty (30) years old, Vance’s third graders fight over the chance to get use of one of these puppies.
… the school system purchased Apple IIe’s for each classroom back in the 80’s. In the early 90’s they were replaced by IBM compatibles and most recently by Dell’s. Each of the teachers were told they could take their Apple IIe home or move them to a designated storage room. Most elected to not take them home. The storage room later became Mr. Vance’s classroom and he inherited the equipment. Mr. Vance decided to setup and network the desktops and has been supporting this effort with other machines that he has salvaged parts from for the last fifteen (15) years.

Now the real bad news. Mr. Carruth, (AKA Mr. Vance – Student’s nickname for him) will be retiring this coming June. This comes only after 39 years of service at the same school. Once Mr. Vance has gone, there will be no other teacher to take on this support effort and the Apple IIe legacy along with Mr. Vance will vanish from Smith School.

The old missus and I went to see Elvis Costello at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall a couple of nights ago. It was an odd performance.

In the first half, the Symphony performed Costello’s first full-length orchestral work, Il Sogno, while Costello sat listening in the audience.

In the second half, Costello took the stage to sing a selection of downbeat, brainy tunes, mixing classical with jazz and not much pop. Backed by the San Francisco symphony, Costello’s loungey songs were dour, yet he was very droll between. He’s obviously a musical genius, but it’s like reading late Anthony Burgess — a lot of work and not much fun.

I’ve never been a Costello fan, and towards the end I was willing it to be over, but his last piece came so close to being one of the greatest concert moments I’ve ever experienced, it nearly salvaged what came before. But the audience ruined it.

For the last song, Costello dispensed with his microphone, and the effect of his unamplified voice in that large auditorium was astonishing and magical. Everyone craned forward to hear, and the hushed atmosphere raised the hairs on my neck. As the song reached its climax, Costello tried to get the audience to join him singing the last bars, a “hum, de hum” refrain repeated three or four times.

The first time the audience hesitated, and the second time it almost caught. It was a fantastic moment — hundreds of people so nearly raising the roof with a lovely vocal. But unfortunately it faltered, and after a third failed attempt Costello gave up, turning instead to the orchestra to raise a rumpus.

It was a great shame, and a little depressing. He came so close, but the stuffy old octogenarians wrecked it. I wonder if he had better luck at other venues?

Costello’s orchestral tour continues. See his website for details:

Honolulu, Hawaii, March 31 and April 01; Austin, Texas, April 11; Houston, Texas, April 13; Chicago, April 18; North Bethesda, April 20; Baltimore, April 21 and 22; Boston, May 10; Brooklyn, May 12; Atlanta, May 13; Tokyo, June 02; Manchester, TN, June 16; Los Angeles, June 18, 2006.

There’s no explanation what this Apple tree is about, except it’s described as “bad art,” and I must say I agree.

Oddly, there’s some pretty good hardware hanging from the branches. Must be a college or something… The old multicolored iMacs sure are fruity.

(Via My Apple Menu)

Joy of Tech has another great cartoon about Mac fans and Apple’s upcoming 30th anniversary on April 1. This one made me laugh out loud. Click the pic for the punchline:

Gratis Internet, the company behind FreeiPods.com that’s being sued by the NY attorney general for what’s been described as the biggest internet privacy abuse ever, denies the charges.

In a statement published on Friday, Gratis says:

At all times, Gratis has maintained control and ownership of its user information and never, not once, profited from any sale of data…

Gratis at no time in its history ever sold its list to anyone or allowed a company to purchase consumer data, nor has it ever considered doing so, nor will it ever in the future. Email marketing represented a small fraction (less than 1.5%) of its 2004 and 2005 revenues, and the company earned less than $32,000 from users in the state of New York from its practice of sending promotional emails.

Establishing and maintaining a bond of trust between Gratis and consumers is a cornerstone of its business. Gratis believes that its impressive growth in recent years is a direct reflection of the fact
that, in all its dealings with consumers, the company has behaved in a trustworthy and responsible manner at all times and in all ways.

Yesterday BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow rightly called out Apple’s hypocritical “state-sponsored piracy” response to France’s new law against vendor lock-in.

One of the big reasons the iPod took off is because of Napster and other file-sharing services. People suddenly had huge collections of digital music on their computers, but no easy way to take it with them when they left the house.

Now it appears Steve Jobs himself once agreed with the thinking behind the French law, which is to protecting consumers’ right to move content they buy from one device to another.

In a 2002 interview with the Wall Street Journal, reprinted in part at Macworld, Jobs said:

“If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own.”

Compare that to what French lawmakers had to say this week:

“The consumer must be able to listen to the music they have bought on no matter what platform,” Martin Rogard, an adviser at the French Culture Ministry, told the Financial Times.

Image courtesy of wpc-fr.net.

(Via SiliconBeat)

Talking of Apple billboards, MacBillboard.com is a site devoted to — Mac billboards.

The site, based in Holland, has six pages of billboard photos submitted by snappers from all over the world, like the one above of a billboard in Los Angeles by Mark Adamson.

Better, the site also has a series of ebOY-style pixelart desktop pictures, showing incredibly detailed Amsterdam street scenes full of iPod billboards and office workers sitting at Macs. Here’s the index page with each image at several different resolutions.

There’s an Apple garage sale, an iPod factory, and an Apple retail store with a line of little pixely Macheads waiting to get in. Here’s a detail:

You can also get an Apple mini store desktop — modelled after Apple’s container-sized mini shops — which has lots of space around the edges designed to be populated with the site’s custom icons, like these I-heart-iPod icons.

It’s all free, so have at it.

It’s hard to believe, but there’s a graffiti artist in San Francisco who objects to the iPod.

This giant billboard on the southbound 101 freeway was recently scrawled with the message: “Unplug!”

It didn’t last long. Apple had the billboard replaced within a couple of days. It’s now been swapped for an entirely new iPod ad. (The picture is a couple of months old. I’ve been meaning to post it for a while.)

Gratis Internet, the company behind FreeiPods.com, was sued by New York’s attorney general on Thursday for selling e-mail addresses in what’s been described as “the biggest deliberate breach of Internet privacy ever.”

The AP reports:

“Attorney General Eliot Spitzer accused Gratis Internet of selling personal information obtained from millions of consumers despite a promise of confidentiality.

The consumers thought they were simply registering to see a Web site offering free iPod music players or DVD movies and video games, Spitzer spokesman Brad Maione said. On sign-up pages, Gratis promised it “does not … sell/rent e-mails.”

Instead of confidentiality, Spitzer said, Gratis sold access to their e-mail information to three independent e-mail marketers, and hundreds of millions of e-mail solicitations followed.

Designer Derek Yee won a prestigious honor for his fantastic work on my Cult of iPod book.

Derek’s work was selected as one of the best design pieces last year by Step Inside Design magazine, a leading journal that every year runs a competition to find the 100 top designs.

Derek, who runs Octopod Studios, was honored in the Editorial category. Derek also designed my Cult of Mac book.

Step Inside says:

The front cover, which met initial opposition from Yee’s colleagues, successfully avoids generic iPod imagery, while referencing its predecessor, The Cult of Mac. Yee, founder of Octopod Studios, reflects, “I really wanted to stay away from anything that showed an actual iPod, that was silhouetted, or had white ear buds and wires. I didn’t want to sell the iPod. I wanted to sell the people that love their iPods. And I wanted to do it in a way that was pure.”

I’m in the process of updating my Cult of Mac book for a paperback edition, to be published in the fall.

Some of the graphics are looking a bit dated, epecially the mockups of future Apple products, like those submitted to Engadget’s recent WWJD competition.

Trouble is, I’m having a hard time tracking down mockup makers. So I’m putting out the call.

If anyone has high-resolution, print-ready mockups, and they’d like them included in a new edition of the book , please contact me at mockups -AT- cultofmac -DOT- com.

Photo courtesy of Engadget.

The first public screening of Pixar’s Cars was at the ShoWest conference in Las Vegas this week. Directed by Toy Story genius John Lasseter, the film is due this summer.

Writer Joseph L. Kleiman has the first review. He writes:

“Equal parts humor – there’s references to everything from the anti-establishment disobedience of the 1960’s to newer pop culture standards like “The Fast and the Furious” – and tenderness, the packed house openly combined laughter with tears. During a very touching scene about how the Interstate Highway system decimated towns along Route 66, there was barely a dry eye in the house. You heard me right. Looking around, I could see grown men sobbing (though I’m a bit modest to admit to anything myself). The scene was reminiscent and on a par with the scene where Jessie is thrown away in “Toy Story 2.”

(Via Kottke’s Remaindered links)

Slashdot commentator on Windows on a Mac:

“We’ve figured out how to put an inferior OS on more expensive hardware! That way, we can have both the frustrations of Windows and pay out of the ass for Mac. Everybody wins!”

And here’s Joy of Tech’s take. Click the pic for the entire cartoon.

It reminds me of my experience of installing Linux on a Mac a few years ago — which was, “great, now what?”

Another Slashdot poster has a good point about Windows-running Macs being attractive to businesses — they won’t:

“First, dual boot is a myth, it is damn annoying and so counterproductive. Most people dont realise that until they actually experiment it, it’s hype now, but all Linux users know it’s a pain, and I know from experience that a dual boot Windows/Linux means one thing… Windows 90% of the time. Vmware and others solutions are the way to go for people who need Windows professionaly for a given application, I can’t wait for a Mac OS X version. Second, some people try to makes us believe that companies will buy Apple PC to their employees now that they can run Windows, yeah right, serious manager will buy more expensive hardware, plus a Windows licence, so that their employees can have an Apple design and the joy of using Mac OS X out of the office… “

An experiment by CNet to see whether copy-protected music files sucked the life out of player’s batteries is interesting but flawed.

According to CNet, DRM copy-protected music can decrease battery life by up to 25 percent thanks to the processing overhead necessary to play them.

But as one commentator on the story points out, the test compared protected WMA files with unprotected MP3 files. It should have compared protected-WMA to unprotected WMA, or Apple’s FairPlay AAC versus unprotected AAC.

The Dutch MacNed website has copies of the controversial pictures of a magsafe power connector that were removed from Flickr on Thursday at the request of Apple.

The magnetic MagSafe power connector allegedly burned up. Its owner, Rogier Mulder, posted some pictures to Flickr, which immediately caught the attention of Apple. He was asked to remove the pictures while the company investigates. He writes on Flickr:

“Apple support responded very well (thanks Klaas) and fast. Before I called our local Apple support line, the dutch engineers were already contacted by their US collegues (who saw the pics) to inquire if I already called in. I’m getting a new Macbook asap and I will return my current one.”

FreeiPods.com, the wildly popular marketing scheme that offers free iPods for trying out various subscription offers, sold the data it gathered on 7.2 million Americans to an email advertising firm, according to a story at Wired News by my colleague Ryan Singel.

(New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer) announced Monday that e-mail marketing giant Datran Media had agreed to a $1.1 million fine for knowingly buying marketing lists from companies with privacy policies that promised not to sell or transfer the lists to a third party.

… Datran’s biggest purchase, according to the text of the settlement (.pdf), was a list of 7.2 million Americans’ names, e-mail addresses, home phone numbers and street addresses from Gratis Internet, a company best known for promising free iPods, televisions and DVDs to users willing to sign up for promotions offered by partners such as Citibank, Blockbuster and BMG’s music club.

The sites inspired dozens of “Is there really such a thing as a free iPod?” stories in the press (including one by Wired News), and internet forums were packed with pleas for information on how to acquire a free version of Apple Computer’s signature fetish item. The freebie required a registrant to sign up five others into the program, and eventually the legalized pyramid scheme reached its inevitable saturation point.

While many did indeed get a free iPod, all ended up with inboxes full of marketing pitches, which began showing up within hours of registering.

Gratis lied to me for the story I wrote originally about the company (also linked above), which did wonders for their early credibility, and then lied again for a follow-up story I wrote about it’s privacy practices that was prompted by the avalanche of spam its customers mysteriously received.

In addition, Gratis Internet was a member of Truste, which provides a “privacy seal” to companies it says have a trusted privacy policy.

When asked by Wired News in 2004 how third-party spammers got hold of Gratis members’ e-mail addresses, Truste said it could not find a problem with Gratis’ practices.

“The results of our investigation indicate that Gratis Internet did not violate their privacy policy,” Truste investigator Alexander Yap wrote in an October 2004 e-mail. “Truste did, however, work with them to strengthen and clarify their privacy statement.”

Several months later, Truste revoked Gratis’ seal of approval, then quickly reinstated it, then pulled it again, but declined to state publicly its reasons.

In the wake of this week’s settlement, Truste’s spokeswoman did not return repeated phone calls, and executive director Fran Maier did not respond to e-mailed questions about why Truste never discovered the alleged sale or informed the public that Gratis was not adhering to its privacy policy.

As a million posts of New York Craiglist attest, there’s a lot of people on public transit wondering about the hottie across the way with the iPod on. What are they listening to? Will they go out with me?

The latter question is what “Missed Connections” is for, while the former may one day be answered by a device like the iPod Status.

Created by designer David Lu, the iPod Status is a “wearable information display” — a small screen attached to a shoulder strap that displays the song and artist information for a currently-playing tune.

“Many of us have taken rides on public transportation and wondered what the interesting-looking person beside us is listening to,” says a description. “IPod Status is intended to encourage social connectedness by making this hidden information visible.”

The device — presumably a prototype — was shown at the Seamless Fashion Show in Boston last month. More photos from the show on Flickr.

Take a craft knife, an iPod nano, some iPod Linux and a copy of MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) and what do you get?

Pacman on an iPod in its own 6-inch tall arcade cabinet!

Now you can create your very own Steve Jobs keynote, thanks to a soundboard with 50 of the great man’s utterings.

Made by a Japanese website, the soundboard includes gems like:

“But there is one more thing.”

“We think video is the wrong place.”

“Do you have an iPod?”

“It scrolls like butter.”

“We have this rotating Apple sign on the top, which is popular in Tokyo.”

Unfortunately, the site is slow and may be having server problems. It doesn’t appear to be loading the entire soundboard. I get only 6 phrases, including a very tinny and disappointing, “Hi, I’m Steve.”

Later tonight I’ll be moving the Cult of Mac blog to WordPress, which means there’ll be less outages, less spam and less squinting at the teeny weeny type.

The blog is currently run on b2evolution, which has some nice features and has been pretty straightforward to use, but unfortunately has a serious spam problem. B2evolution is not much good managing comments and attracts a ton of spam. It’s the number one problem b2evo users complain about, and maddeningly, there’s no easy fix.

In addition, the b2evo developer community is small and there’s not many plugins and extras keeping it current. It’s also a hackers’ system. If you’re happy tinkering with code, this system’s for you. But I’m not, and it isn’t.

WordPress, on the other hand, seems to be a very slick. It’s mature and flexible and it’s going places. It’s 20-times more popular than b2evo, and already I’ve benefetted from a fantastic B2evo-to-WP import script, and a lot of easy-to-follow setup tutorials — the kind of stuff that popularity brings.

The big problem is the old RSS feed, which will no longer work.

The new RSS WordPress feed can be found here, though it may be an hour or two before it’s working:

https://cultofmac.com/?feed=rss2

It is possible to get audiophile quality sound out of an iPod, but probably not from Apple’s iPod Hi-Fi boombox, says technologist Tim Bray.

“I gather that on stage today, Mr. Jobs freely flung about the word ‘audiophile’ while pitching the new iPod Hi-Fi. Well, I’m one of those: wrote for the mags, have gear from obscure British manufacturers, turn off a fridge thirty feet away to listen. I’ll look forward to giving the Hi-Fi a listen. It seems fantastically dubious that something 43 cm wide, with a listed bass floor of 53Hz (the bottom string on a bass is 42Hz), weighing 6.6kg, and costing $349, could actually produce ‘audiophile’ sound.”

Bray, Sun’s Director of Web Technologies, suggests instead plugging in a good pair of in-ear canalphones. Bray recommends Etymotics or Shure. I have a pair of Xtrememac FS1, which have heartier bass than the Shure or Etymotic. But Bray says most important of all…

… get your music off CDs and use lossless compression. The D/A in an iPod is really not bad at all; if you send all of the music through it and play it through first-class transducers, you’ll be happy.

Anna of iPorn Directory (definitely not safe for work) writes via email:

“I wanted to let you know that I’ve started a new site (totally free) that indexes all of the web’s free iPod porn — https://www.iporndirectory.com.

There are videos and links to podcasts, etc. as well as reviews and ratings of each site.

I started this site for fun, after getting my video iPod and finding out how difficult it was to find porn in mp4 format!”

The Joy of Tech on Steve Jobs’ unfun products event yesterday in a cartoon entitled, “Post Traumatic Apple Event Disorder.”

Stevesoutfit is a website where you can buy a wardrobe just like Steve’s — all three items of it.

The site is an Amazon affiliate with links to a black St. Croix shirt, a pair of Levi 501s, and New Balance 991 sneakers.

The best part? The email link at bottom right that says, “Click here to sue.”