It’s remarkable how rapidly Apple is upping the sophistication of its marketing for the iPhone. The initial ads stressed the coolness of multitouch and whipping the phone around, appealing to the slavering Early Adopters who ran out to pay $600 on the first pressing. Now that the iPhone has dropped to $400, though, Apple has created a new ad campaign that focuses on the way people use it in the real world — the crazy interface barely even shows up.

The three new ads were shot against black back-drops in New York. Some enterprising blogs have already tracked down the locations of the shoots, but I’m more fascinated by the overall messages Apple is sending by letting people tell their stories. Take “Mankind,” told by Doug and shown above. In the spot, he talks about Visual Voicemail and nothing else, how it lets you see the length and sender of all messages and ignore the ones you hate. The picture he paints is rich, complaining about the guy who owes you money and leaves a four-minute message — it’s obviously a bunch of excuses, and he’s not going to pay you. Skip it!

Perhaps the most effective piece for me stars Stephano. It’s called “One Thing.” In it, he mentions that he used to carry an iPod, a camera, a regular cell phone and a cell phone for texting and e-mail. Now he has just one thing. Exactly. Apple is showing how this thing fits into people’s lives. It’s really pretty compelling.

What iPhone story would you tell the world?

(Screencap from TUAW)

David Early, a MacRumors member, shot off an e-mail to Apple complaining about a number of limitations on the device, such as its lack of disk mode, incompatibility with older iPod games, and crippled Calendar application that doesn’t allow the creation or editing of new events. And he actually got a reply, signed by Steve Jobs (though possibly composed by an assistant of his) that ignores most of Dave’s questions but speaks directly to the Calendar issue, which he says will be fixed via software update soon. Click on the thumbnail to read the full note.

It’s pretty awesome. Anyone else ever get an actual e-mail back from Steve?

Via Digg.

Remember 1988? Bill McEwen certainly does. And that’s why he’s the CEO of Amiga, Inc., a little company still churning along based on the stellar reputation that Commodore’s Amiga enjoyed back in the late ’80s. For awhile there, some actually thought the Amiga would really duke it out with Apple for supremacy. And Bill McEwen still thinks it can happen, as he lays out in a baffling interview on Amiga Web:

16) You’ve claimed earlier that OS5 will be better than Mac OS X. Can you tell us in what way?

Details for OS 5 will be made public in the 4th quarter of 2007, and then you will have a much clearer understanding and I will let you decide if what I know to be true is accurate.

Also:

28) In the era of the Mac mini, iPhone, $100 laptop, and Efika, what innovative products can Amiga Inc. bring to the information technology market?

Our plans and product strategy take all of the above question items and others into account. Until I am able to show it to you, I will just have to say that there is plenty of places for Amiga to succeed.

You hear that Apple? A company that thinks this weird picture of a woman with a cell phone belongs on the front page of their website is taking the Mac mini and the iPhone into account. So there! Just consider yourself accounted for! I love true believers.

Via Slashdot

Mac game OGs and Halo creators Bungie Studios are about to emerge from their indentured servitude to Microsoft, according to official PR from Redmond. The companies are about to evolve their relationship, which apparently means MS would be an investor in a newly independent Bungie Studios and publish any games they create. No potential for Bungie work that isn’t focused on “Microsoft platforms” is indicated.

I’m not quite sure what to make of the announcement. The timing makes some sense, as Halo 3 is newly out the door and a hit. The guys at Bungie made the best Mac games ever back in the ’90s (particularly Marathon 2 and Myth II), and the tie-up to launch Halo on Xbox brought an end to that. Let’s just hope their new agreement gives them the flexibility to embrace the Mac wholeheartedly again. Seems unlikely, but this is the best it’s been in almost 7 years.

Via Daring Fireball 

There’s nothing worse than randomly turning on Caps Lock in the middle of writTING A DOCUMENT AND SUDDENLY YOU TYPE LIKE THIS.

To combad that problem, it would appear that Apple has made it hard to turn on Caps Lock on its new thinline keyboards that shipped with the iMac. Wolf Rentzsch discovered the change:

I’ve discovered something shocking. An anti-Caps Lock conspiracy silently bubbling up from the darkest trenches inside Apple:

Apple’s Caps Lock key has undocumented anti-jab protection.

Unique among the rest of the keys, Caps Lock doesn’t activate immediately upon strike. There’s a very small time window perhaps a quarter of a second where if you release the key inside the window, the keystroke is ignored.

He even shot a video to show how it works. Apple — they think of everything.

Via Daring Fireball

Image from Wikipedia

Let’s face it: There are Mac cultists — folks like you and me — and then there are Mac cult leaders. Take James Savage, a man who has more than 100 Macs in his house. The picture above doesn’t quite do justice. You must read the Gizmodo interview and see the gallery…

Jesus Diaz: The first time I saw your photo I couldn’t believe anyone could have as many Apple computers as you do, at least not outside of a museum. How many do you actually have?
James Savage: About 100 Macs and Apple computers (one NeXT) are in Macca [the spare room], with another 25 or so Macs in our home office and the rest of the Macs are in use throughout the house.

Yikes.

Via Digg.

Members of the Hackin0sh development community report that an old exploit that was used to crack the PlayStation Portable’s firmware almost two years ago could hold the key to re-opening up iPhones loaded with the 1.1.1 firmware that closed them back up.

Notes Hackint0sh reader Locked:

It looks like the dev team is up to something. I have been following them over at IRC and it looks like Mobile Safari on both the touch and the iPhone are suffering from a one year old TIFF exploit.

Basically, opening a carefully crafted TIFF image will crash mobile safari, causing a buffer overflow and allow for arbitrary code execution. This same exploit was used more than 1.5 years ago to crack the PSP firmware.

So, nothing to report, yet, but there might yet be life for third-party applications on the iPhone. As Steve Jobs himself has said, this is a game of cat and mouse, and with application development, at least, I want the mice to win…

Via Winonmac via Digg

The Apple blogosphere hills are alive with the sound of rumors!

So, it’s pretty clear that Apple’s iPod and iPhone product line is locked down for the holiday season following last month’s “Beat Goes On” event, right? Right. What’s that leave for new product updates? Why, the glory of the Mac, of course.

The always-enthusiastic, rarely-on-the-money Mac OS Rumors claims that a bevy of big product announcements are coming from Apple “between now and mid-December.”

These include the MacBook Nano (another spin on the long-rumored MacBook Thin) and a rather oddly muddle rumor about both an AppleTV product line featuring optical disc drives (presumably HD-DVD or BluRay) and also a new, even smaller Mac mini replacement called the Mac nano. Now, I have to say, that sounds like exactly the same rumor to me, unless Apple really wants to position the AppleTV as a DVD-player replacement instead of a new device. Personally, I’d rather see them just install some DVR software. But really, would Apple introduce a new AppleTV with a disc slot and lower the profile of the Mac mini? They would look exactly the same.

What are you expecting for Christmas from Apple this year?

Image via Guardian.

It’s like that dream I’m always having. Only it’s come true…

Photo via GadgetLab via Fark via Newlaunches (let the chain grow!)

As expected, ZuneScene notes that Microsoft took a card from Apple’s playbook and made a big product announcement on a Tuesday. Brace yourselves, people. It’s Zune 2 time! OH, YEAH! Outrageous! Now with the same capacity as the iPod classic, only with a “squircle” interface that sucks way more than a clickwheel! And it costs the same price! BOOYA! And wait for it, homes, there’s now a Zune with flash memory, at the same price and size as an old iPod nano! POW!

In all seriousness, this is seriously underwhelming stuff. Once again, the only feature Microsoft is using to try to stand out from the iPod is WiFi, specifically wireless music, video and photo syncing. Which might be fairly exciting, were it not for the fact that, you know, Apple just rolled out the iPod Touch, which also offers WiFi web browsing. That’s a slightly more appealing WiFi feature for the vast majority of the population.

I am pleasantly surprised to see that Microsoft had the insight to translate Xbox Gamer Cards, which are major points of pride for Xbox Live maniacs, into Zune Cards, which will be embeddable on message boards and websites to show off recent music choices and even let other people listen to top songs. It’s way more compelling than the initial WiFi sharing they dubbed “the Social.” And now, songs transferred that way last forever, not just three days. They can still only get played three times, however.

ZuneScene thinks that the Squircle interface might one day be used as a directional pad for games on the Zune. That would be more interesting if there were complementary buttons on the other side for action and full gaming. I think most people will stick with playing the iPhone NES emulator.

All in all, this is far from a real threat to the iPod’s dominance. It’s profoundly unimaginative and just barely improves on the first Zune and does little more than match the low end of Apple’s line-up. It’s almost sad.

Ladies and gentlemen, we officially have the most ridiculous response to the iPhone price cut that Steve Jobs announced last month: A woman in Queens, New York, Dongmei Li, is suing Apple for $1 million because she can’t make as much money on eBay by selling the two iPhones she owns. No, seriously.

Li’s lawyer, Jean Wang, said her client bought two 4-gigabite (sic*) models for $499 each with the idea of selling them later on eBay.

“Since they’re selling the 8-gigabite phone for $399, there’s really no market for her,” Wang said.

That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? She should totally get $1 million! Ms. Li bought two 4-gig iPhones for $1,000, hoping to sell them on eBay for, let’s say, given market rate, at most $1,500. Now, 4-gig iPhones are worth $300 or less each, or $600 combined. And as we all know, $1,500 – $600 = $1 million in lost revenue.  For shame, Apple! For shame!

I will now launch my own lawsuit. I almost bought an iPhone, but I decided not to, because they’re expensive. Now the price has changed, and I haven’t been able to work ever since because of the trauma. I would like Apple to pay me $8 million for my lost salary owing to disability for the last three weeks.

*Yes, the New York Post spelled gigabyte as “gigabite.” That makes the article even more entertaining.

Image via Massachusetts government

Thanks, Raymond!

There seems to be a memory leak with some iPhones that quickly gobbles up the device’s storage space.
A <a href=”https://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5025646&#5025646″>discussion thread</a> on Apple’s support forums details the iPhone’s “Other” memory category growing to several gigabyte in some cases. (The “Other” category is shown in the iTunes screenshot above)

The source of the memory blob is mysterious, but one sufferer suggests that Google Maps may be causing the problem. The Google widget may be caching every map that’s loaded.

The only way to clear the growing memory blog is to wipe the device and start from scratch. One reader reports that upgrading to 1.1.1 did not free a memory blog that had grown to 1.6GB, but wiping and restoring the phone dropped it to a reasonable 14MB.

Thanks Adrian!

What can send dozens of Mac-heads and Apple Geniuses running faster than a basket full of free iPhones? Why a fire alarm, of course. Sunday morning at the main Apple Store in San Francisco, everybody hit the street after a two-alarm ire cleared the space and firefighters tramped around the space.

Some Life Blog has the complete story, but the video above is worth watching just to see the parade of Apple Store employees returning to work after getting the all-clear sign. I don’t know if I’ve seen that many black T-shirts since I last went to a Raiders game!

Via SFist.

Brilliant iPhone Protest Video Rips Audio from “Think Different” Ad — It almost makes me misty for the time when Apple was actually thinking differently…

Apple Replaces General Counsel After 10 Months — Are Feds sniffing around Apple about options back-dating again?

Downgrading iPhones from 1.1.1 to 1.0.2 Can Re-activate and Re-unlock them — This will make a heck of a lot of people happy.

Genius Bar Does Not, Even a Little Bit, Support Hacked iPhones — Thank heaven for the reverse upgrade, eh?

iPhones with 1.1.1 Update Play Low-Quality Audio Over Bluetooth — Dear Apple: Please, please, please, implement A2DP Bluetooth support in OS X. Love, Pete.

Everyone who loves Apple’s products is fully aware that the company is innovative, always pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, democratizing breakthrough technologies in the process. How Apple does that, of course, is basically a secret these days. At best, we know that Steve Jobs decrees a product get made, and then it materializes.

The NY Times tries to capture this mystical sense in an article about process innovation published in the Sunday Business section. And I have to say, working in and around this dialogue, the article provides one of the more abstract explanations for the value of innovation I’ve ever seen. It talks about how sweet Intel, Apple and Google are but doesn’t say why they are able to innovate, and what that means to the rest of us. Unless innovation is tied to business growth, it’s an academic exercise. I practically expected a reference to Wikinomics here, the argument is so not grounded in concrete terms:

 Yet successful companies realize that maintaining competitive advantage depends heavily on sustaining process innovations. Great process innovators often support basic research in relevant fields, maintain complete control over the creation of every aspect of a product and refuse to rely on outside suppliers for important components. Certainly, there are exceptions to these patterns, but even companies like Apple that buy essential processes on the open market nevertheless invest in gaining a working knowledge of the technologies and an understanding of their future arc.

And that has what to do with process innovation? This is the golden goose so far as companies today are concerned. Apple and Procter & Gamble, for example do have very successful innovation strategies. But abstractly talking about an innovation process and actually realizing one are two different things. And this article provides no actions that can be taken to instill such processes back at our own companies. It’s just more fauning over Google, Apple and Intel. What a squandered opportunity.

Via Bruce. 

Check it out, folks. Though it tastes like Steve’s iLeftovers, the rap in the middle of this clip of “Viking Webcam” is oddly addictive.

Britney’s Gut. Britney’s Gut.

Via Fake Steve.

Silicon Valley Socialite Om Malik reports that the good people of Yahoo! were recently inspired by none other than Steve Jobs himself:

He told the gathering of 300-odd Yahoo (YHOO) vice presidents that they can do anything. The company with one of the largest Internet user bases can do and achieve anything, he apparently told them. (I am channeling a handful of VPs.) He talked about how Apple (AAPL) was down on its luck and made a comeback. Yahooligans were pretty inspired! Now if they made more of their products Mac friendly!

Malik promises more detail on Steve’s speech soon, but in the meantime, ponder this: Yahoo has 300 VICE-PRESIDENTS! No wonder they need motivation from Steve. Stay tuned — this is a very interesting development. Yahoo and Apple are much friendlier than they were a year ago… Steve doesn’t do motivational speaking for just anyone. It’s always as a personal favor.

Apple has hit so many home runs in the iPod/iPhone/iTunes universe, that it can be easy to fall under the impression that all its ventures there are destined to succeed. This week brought a wake-up call in that regard, as Amazon launched its totally DRM-free MP3 Store, and the various TV networks made stronger moves into non-iTunes distribution channels. And NBC told Apple to go to hell as many ways as it knew how (though Chuck and Journeyman, produced by Warner and aired on NBC, do appear on the iTunes Store regardless of the current enmity) And, of course, movie studios are still largely avoiding iTunes like the plague.

Wired has a great run-down of what’s been happening with the TV companies lately as they try to figure out the whole digital distribution thing. Largely, they speak to a world without Apple. Which is interesting, if only because it’s pretty clear that video on an iPod or even an iPod is not as compelling as video on your TV or even your laptop. That means the content is much more platform-agnostic, and the iPod installed base is way less relevant. Hugh Hart has the story:

CBS execs nicknamed their team-and-stream syndication model Swing Town. Multiple partners? Absolutely. Downplaying the brand-centric hub site approach, CBS has partnered with sites including AOL, Joost, Sling Media, YouTube, MSNBC and Bebo. Viewership for CBS material subsequently skyrocketed from 24 million in May to 134 million in July, according to Multichannel News.

Patrick Keane, a vice president with CBS Interactive, says, “We syndicate our content to these sites because users are telling us that is where they’re going. We want our content in front of people wherever they are, whether that means Yahoo or AOL or YouTube or Bebo.”

It’s a fascinating landscape out there for InternetTV. Apple doesn’t have this thing nailed down just yet. The next few years are going to be wild.

Remember America Online? Yellow guy, blue triangle? “You’ve Got Mail!” No? Trust me, it was huge once — the dominant way a lot of Internet newbies first reached out across cyberspace. And after five years (yes, five years), AOL has finally rolled out a new beta for its main line AOL Desktop for Mac software.

After all this time, the actual upgrade’s features aren’t terribly thrilling (particularly for anyone who, you know, just uses a web browser for all of this stuff). There’s definitely still a market for an integrated Internet app that gets the basics — mail, chat and browsing — down well, and I’m always fascinated to see if AOL can ever start to gain back the kind of position it once held.

Here’s what’s in store, other than being “Leopard-ready”:

Fast Load Time:  AOL® Desktop for Mac launches within seconds and enables users to begin browsing immediately, without signing in to the software.

 

Tabbed Navigation:  Tabbed browser and AIM® windows offer easy access to content, and an uncluttered, organized view of all open windows.

 

Additional Email Options:  A streamlined AOL Mail experience allows users to send and receive messages using multiple email accounts, including Apple Mac addresses, Gmail, Verizon and more from one Inbox.

 

AIM Integration: AIM is built in to the software, so users can view Buddies online, chat, and more while checking their email or browsing the Web.

Customizable Toolbar:  An easy-to-use customizable toolbar gives users quick access to their favorite sites.

Yep, it’s only several years behind the cutting edge in browsing. Oh, and you can finally use other e-mail protocols. What a time to be alive. Anyone using the beta? What’s that all about?

The Cooper-Hewitt National People’s Design Award will soon be d0led out to what the Internet-using public determines to be the best-designed new product or service. Interestingly, two of the top competitors at the moment are Apple’s incredibly high-tech iPhone and on the other side of it…TOMS Shoes, a company that created a philanthropic business model. They took a traditional South American shoe design, marketed it in the U.S. for a low price and gives a free pair of shoes to a needy child in South America for each pair sold.

Two radically different models of innovation through design. What’s your vote? Head here to be heard!

Target is exclusively offering this pink iPod shuffle, benefiting the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, in its physical stores now. As you can see, it includes a $15 iTunes card. And it only costs $79, like a normal iPod shuffle but with more. What’s not to love? Unless you hate pink, I mean.

Via AppleInsider

As has been reported widely, Apple’s iPhone Update 1.1.1 makes it again impossible to use an iPhone on any network other than AT&T and eliminates third-party applications installed through the so-called Jailbreak hack. The update, which introduces the WiFi iTunes Store to the iPhone, enables TV-out and some basic usability features, like double-tapping the home button to get to phone-call favorites.

On one level, I’m not that bugged by this behavior. After all, Apple issued a huge warning that installing the update could render unlocked phones inoperable and “might” stop third-party applications from functioning. I’m sure AT&T has been screaming at Apple to close down the unlock loophole since it hit a month ago, and Apple earns part of the revenue from iPhone service plans.

On the other hand, this is incredibly anti-consumer behavior. Most formerly unlocked iPhones now won’t even work on AT&T. They’re useless bricks (only unlocks from iPhoneSimFree can work again with AT&T). Why shouldn’t an iPhone be able to operate like an iPod Touch if, for some reason, the SIM card isn’t functioning? Why should it be a brick. People have paid good money for it. This is Apple bending over backward to please a partner notorious for ignoring consumer interests.

Worse still is the removal (they were scrubbed off of phones) of all third-party software. What possible reason does Apple have for this other than an insistence on total control? That’s as bad or worse than the mobile service carriers themselves.

Obviously, wait to upgrade if you’re unlocked to see if the hackers can stay ahead of Apple in the “cat and mouse” game that Steve Jobs described the other week. Does this bug everyone else as much as me?

Via Compiler 

Last December, we shared with the world the notMac Challenge, a contest to create a complete, free replacement for Apple’s frustratingly over-priced .Mac Internet service. Now, competing for a prize of $8,500, Ben Spink (of CrushFTP fame) has submitted a contender to the challenge, almost 9 months later. CrushFTP actually features prominently in the suite, but with a few UI tweaks to more closely take the place of .Mac. The current beta is available here. The judging of the contest will continue through Sunday, so download now if you want your voice to be heard.

It’s looking good right now. I mainly want this effort to succeed so Apple will just make .Mac free again, as happened once the XPonMac project successfully enabled dual boot on Intel Macs about five seconds before Boot Camp rolled out the door.

Love to hear your thoughts on the beta, folks.

As I noted back in June, NBC’s new series “Chuck,” which premiered last night, features Macs galore, including the above Mac Plus, the thinly disguised most powerful computer in the world.

“Chuck” is a cute little show, but the Macs are mostly more interesting than the action. You can see the show in full online here.

Macs are quite famous for holding their value and lasting longer than Windows PCs. The resale value of an Apple machine is higher both for its style and its durability. This is especially true for Mac product lines that have no true replacements. For a few years after they were discontinued, Power Mac Cubes consistently fetched higher-than-expected prices on Ebay.

What does that mean in light of this week’s renewed rumors of an amazing thin, light, aluminum and tiny Macbook? Take your 12″ Powerbooks and unload them now. I’m an owner of such a machine (and will be selling it as soon as I replace the hard drive), and the market is great right now — $400-plus for four-year-old Powerbooks. The machines have special cachet, because they were significantly lighter than any current Mac portables. I know a lot of people who have been refusing to upgrade because there just isn’t a machine that meets their needs.

But if the rumors popping up all over 9to5Mac are even close to right — especially if there are new MacBooks announced the day of Leopards release — the market for those glorious Baby Powerbooks is going to deflate as soon as the new machines get announced. There’s still plenty of doubt for the time-being — some think the new machines won’t even have DVD drives. What do fear, uncertainty and doubt lead to? Higher resale prices for the existing and reliable. Gentlemen, start your auctions!

Image via LowEndMac.