There’s a nifty iPod teardown at MIT Technology Review showing the internal components of the weeny player. Unfortunately, there’s no direct link — Hit the “Click here” link in the last paragraph.

The latest mockup Mac from amateur Apple designer Isamu Sanada is a reimagining of the Mac mini with iBook styling.

There’s no info on Sanada’s site, but I guess this is how he imagines the anticipated media Mac will look. Maybe we’ll see it at Apple’s “fun products” launch event next Tuesday.

UPDATE: I’m kinda late to clue into this, but as Trent Lapinsky of AppleXnet pointed out in the comments, this looks suspiciously like one of Apple’s Design Award trophies. Thanks Trent!

MacDailyNews has a totally fishy but intriguing picture of what purports to be an Apple-branded media cube.

Supposedly, the blurry picture was snapped with a camera-phone and sent to the site anonymously with the following note:

“I was only able to snap one quick shot of this as I was only in there for about 30 seconds. I sort of stumbled upon it – can’t say more about how or why. I only got about half a sec to look around back – there are a bunch of ports (and maybe a button or two) neatly arranged on the back (?) of the cube in a line along the bottom edge. It’s about 8-inches square and 8-inches tall – a perfect cube. It seems to be made out of a similar material as a Power Mac – aluminum perforated with a round hole pattern, but they’re smaller holes than found on a Power Mac. The top is the same material as the sides with the addition of the Apple logo, even though it doesn’t look like it in the photo – I had to snap it quick, sorry.

I don’t have any real detail on exactly what it’s designed to do, but I know from other things I can’t mention that it’s media-related. Apple “Media Cube,” maybe? Anyway, thought you guys would be interested.

With all the speculation about a tablet Mac from Apple, it may soon be possible to buy one from a small company that plans to convert a batch of iBooks into tablets.

Though it has not yet been built, the iTab is a 12-inch iBook with the screen removed and the keyboard replaced with a touch-sensitive screen. The company plans build 100 iTabs as it sells them on eBay, starting at $1,500.

According to the iTab website:

“The iTab is built one at a time from modified Apple iBooks. It has the same specs and hardware as the originating iBook (except for the touchscreen and the lack of keyboard, trackpad, and one less USB port). Its screen will be fastened to the body of the originating iBook, making it more durable. The width and depth of the iTab is the same as the iBook. Its height should also be the same, but might vary slightly.

As well as missing a bunch of hardware, the iTab will have no warranty (Apple’s not going to fix it) and the touch-screen doesn’t work with Apple’s highly-regarded InkWell handwriting recognition, which seems like a major drawback. Isn’t that one of the key features of a tablet? To enter text, users are recommended to buy the KeyStrokes virtual keyboard.

There is one cool feature though. Thanks to the iBook’s built-in sudden-motion sensors, which are designed to park the hard drive heads in the event of a fall, the iTab will play the Labyrin3D maze game simply by moving it up and down and backwards and forwards in space. (You can also play the same way on any of Apple’s new laptops, but you won’t have to deal with the screen flapping about).

UPDATE: There’s a lot of debate about whether this is a real worm, or merely an elaborate, executable script that the user is tricked into running. It appears to be a worm — it’s self-containing code that replicates itself over the Net (def.). But it also requires the user to agree to accept it as an iChat file transfer, which is a Trojan trait. It does not require the user to enter a password to be installed, like an OS X application. Nor does it warn the user they may be dealing with an executable file, as Safari does when downloading software off the Net. So it’s more than a simple script-kiddie Applescript. Also, it may be mostly harmless now, but will likely lead to much nastier versions in the future, according to this analysis from the programmers at Rixstep: “Future versions of the same worm or spin-offs from it are bound to be destructive and much more intrusive. By exploiting several weaknesses in Apple’s file system, (Leap-A) and its successors will work.”

Oh yeah, the graphic comes from the Symantec website.

The first Mac OS X malware has been spotted in the wild, but it appears to be something of a damp squib.

Called Leap-A by anti-virus companies, the worm appears as a JPEG file that spreads via iChat to contacts on the infected user’s buddy list.

According to a Symantec press release:

The worm makes use of the Spotlight search program, included in OSX, and will run each time the machine boots. It identifies any applications being started, and if iChat begins to run, the worm uses iChat to send the infected file — latestpics.tgz — to all contacts on the infected user’s buddy list. Those on the buddy list will then be asked to accept the file. If they do, the file will subsequently be saved to their hard drive. Files infected by OSX.Leap.A may be corrupted and may not run correctly.

There is some disagreement about what the worm does. Anti-virus firm Sophos says it deletes files and leaves other “non-infected” files on the computer. An email press release from Computer Malware Enumeration says it “prevents Macintosh OS X from working properly and infected applications from launching correctly.”

Nonetheless, Leap-A appears to be the first OS X malware “in the wild.” A previous OS X nasty — a Trojan horse dubed MP3Concept — turned out to be a proof of concept only.

Leap-A first appeared earlier this week as a link on the forums of Mac Rumors that purported to be spy screenshots of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

Symantec classes the worm is a low threat because it doesn’t automatically infect other’s machines. The company says it has infected less than 50 machines.

“… this worm will not automatically infect, but will ask users to accept the file, giving potential victims a heads up and the opportunity to avoid infection,” the company said. “The important piece of advice for any iChat users running OSX 10.4 is not to accept file transfers, even if they come from someone on a buddy list.”

However, as CME notes in its statement, the worm is a wake-up call for OS X users with a false sense of OS X’s invulnerability: “Now that Leap.A has been discovered in the wild, copycat media-craving individuals will likely launch similar attacks in 2006.”

There’s talk over at ThinkSecret that the next video iPod may feature a big screen covering the entire front of the device. The screen will be touch-sensitive, allowing the iPod to be controlled by a virtual click wheel that will appear when a finger brushes the screen.

Apple was recently granted several touch-screen patents. The filings (here, here and here) include illustrations of a hand making circular motions as if it were using an iPod clickwheel.

But the patents may also refer to a tablet PC. They mention rotating and centering pages, zooming in and out of documents — and recognizing complex gestures from multiple touch points on the screen — all of which sounds like a multipoint gesture interface developed at NYU.

In New York, researchers have created a working prototype of an amazing touch-screen interface for a computer that, unlike most touch screens, supports multiple touch points — or multiple people.

Running on OS X, the interface is reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s fictional, gesture-based UI in Minority Report — but much cooler.

In a demonstration video (You Tube link), a user can be seen rearranging digital pictures scattered across a virtual desktop, and resizing them by squeezing their fingers together or splaying them apart. The user also creates some digital art, zooms in on a map and scoots around, and types rapidly on a virtual keyboard.

I’m not a tablet expert, but all the tablet PCs I’ve seen present a standard UI with some gesture controls, substituting the mouse cursor for a greasy finger.

The NYU research seems like a radical rethink — a real haptic interface, appropriate to hand control.

There’s been lots of rumors of an Apple tablet lately. If it has this kind of interface — it’d be a killer.

(Via Robot Wisdom)

Picture courtesy of Geek Culture.

There’s a couple of data points about today’s Cult of Mac column on Wired News that didn’t make the cut because of length, so I’ll post them here.

The column concludes with an anecdote about the opposing design philosophies of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. While Woz advocated open, commodity hardware, Jobs pursued closed, proprietary designs. And this of course, is the story of the PC industry. While Intel-compatible PC makers developed a standard, open hardware platform, Apple plowed a closed, proprietary route.

Apple has always been criticized for this, of course, but Woz eventually came to sympathize with Jobs’ approach. As he told Macworld in an interview:

“… I see two things that make Apple successful now where others aren’t. They are really a tight monopoly. They’re a hardware monopoly, and there’s no hardware monopoly on the other side. So that gives them some advantages in control and in pricing to have profits. A company isn’t going to be a good company and really develop better and better things if it can barely squeak by and doesn’t have good profits. Apple can have the profits that it needs to make these great, exciting products that are steps forward, instead of just kind of sitting in the competitive consumer throwaway product category everyone else is.”

The other thing I’d like to have included in the column is the delightful story Gary Wolf tells at the end of his insightful Wired magazine profile of Woz from 1998. The tale is the most appropriate I’ve read about the man:

“Among his other activities, Woz collects phone numbers, and his longtime goal has been to acquire a number with seven matching digits… after more months of scheming and waiting, he had it: 888-8888. This was his new cell-phone number, and his greatest philonumerical triumph.

The number proved unusable. It received more than a hundred wrong numbers a day. Given that the number is virtually impossible to misdial, this traffic was baffling. More strange still, there was never anybody talking on the other end of the line. Just silence. Or, not silence really, but dead air, sometimes with the sound of a television in the background, or somebody talking softly in English or Spanish, or bizarre gurgling noises. Woz listened intently.

Then, one day, with the phone pressed to his ear, Woz heard a woman say, at a distance, “Hey, what are you doing with that?” The receiver was snatched up and slammed down.

Suddenly, it all made sense: the hundreds of calls, the dead air, the gurgling sounds. Babies. They were picking up the receiver and pressing a button at the bottom of the handset. Again and again. It made a noise: “Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep.”

The children of America were making their first prank call.

And the person who answered the phone was Woz.”

An interview I did with the charming Dr. Moira Gunn of Tech Nation about iPod mania, iPod culture, and my Cult of iPod book is currently airing on various NPR stations. Dr. Gunn is such a skilled interviewer, she even makes a stuttering idiot like me sound reasonable.

The interview is also available as an MP3 download from the IT Conversations website.

The Blueye is a clever iPod/PSP accessory that turns your earbuds into a cell phone headset.

Pair the Bluetooth device with your cell phone and plug it in between your iPod and your earbuds.

When a call comes in, the Blueye mutes the music, and a built-in microphone transmits your voice. The Blueye has voice recognition — answer a call with a voice command.
When the call’s done, the music resumes.

It has standard 3.5mm audio jacks and is compatible with most music players, the company says. It’s available from the UK for about $60 ($100) — the company says it ships overseas.

The iPod nano is now shipping in a smaller, cheaper version. Available immediately is a 1 Gigabyte model for $150, Apple said in a release.

This is a great deal. The nano is a fully functional iPod and a gorgeous piece of electronic jewelery. With a fabulous little color screen, the 1 gigabyte nano holds up to 240 songs or 15,000 photographs.

Apple also cut the price of the screen-less iPod shuffle: the 512 megabyte version now costs $70 and the 1 gigabyte model costs $100.

Worth noting quickly: The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” video is number one on the iTunes Music Store.

Says Bryan Chaffin at MacObserver:

Postal Service may be unhappy with Apple about the shot-for-shot creation of their video made for Apple’s Intel Mac commercial, but the resulting attention has led to that video, originally released in 2003, being the #1 download on Apple’s iTunes Music Store.

Image by Alan Rhodes via Mike Davidson’s Design a Steve Jobs Movie Poster

I’ve started writing a biweekly column for Wired News and calculatingly chose a controversial subject that’s been on my mind for a while: whether Steve Jobs is worthy of our slavish devotion?

The column was tricky to write and looking at it now, I don’t think I quite pulled it off. Based on the feedback, there seems to be some confusion about what I was trying to say.

The column was not a critique of Jobs’ achievements, which are monumental and undeniable — he’s been a driving force of the PC industry for 30 years — but with the way the press and public project a progressive image onto him, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary.

I was also questioning my own reverence for the man. He’s quite magnetic, but should I really admire him that much? My heroes — most of them British punk singers from the seventies — hated capitalists like Jobs. And in public at least, there’s no sign he’s anything but a captain of industry.

The same could be said for Bill Gates, of course. I used to revile Gates, but his philanthropy, which seems earnest, is beginning to redeem him. Even though he earned his fortune in reprehensible ways, there’s salvation in the ambition to give it all away before he dies.

What do you think? Wired News’ comment system is temporarily down, so please contribute your thoughts here.

Several people sent me email that made good points I’d like to share. Here’s a couple:

Andrew Mayne said:

“You also make the classic mistake of equating net worth with liquidity. The vast majority of Jobs wealth is in stock. His salary from Pixar is $52 a year and $1 from Apple. His billions are in Pixar stock and options in Apple (to a much lesser degree). So far he has liquidated very little of his stock from either. He lives far from an ostentatious lifestyle compared to others of his own net worth.”

And John Kwo wrote:

“… while I certainly agree that Elvis Presley was never the outspoken activist that John Lennon was, Presley was incredibly generous in private. The following is from the official Elvis Presley website: … ‘Most of Elvis’ philanthropic endeavors received no publicity at all. Throughout his adult life, for friends, for family, and for total strangers, he quietly paid hospital bills, bought homes, supported families, paid off debts, and much more.’

Uh oh. Looks like there may be trouble brewing in the spat between Apple and The Postal Service.

In “a note from Ben” on the The Postal Service’s website, singer Ben Gibbard chastises Apple for the shot-for shot remake of the band’s cleanroom music video.

It has recently come to our attention that Apple Computers’ new television commercial for the Intel chip features a shot-for-shot recreation of our video for ‘Such Great Heights’ made by the same filmmakers responsible for the original. We did not approve this commercialization and are extremely disappointed with both parties that this was executed without our consultation or consent.

– Ben Gibbard, The Postal Service

John Venzon, the former-curator of Newton Museum who recently sold his collection of every Newton made on eBay, writes:

“I can now let you know that the winner of the Newton Museum was none other than Walter Smith, one of the creators of the Newton. He was responsible for, among other things, the unified data model which ties the Newton software together, the compiler, interpreter, and runtime library for NewtonScript, the language used to write Newton applications and the Newton object store, where all the persistent data in a Newton resides.

I have transfered the www.newtonmuseum.com domain to him as well, so the Newton Museum lives on, and in GREAT hands.”

Wow. What a knockout quarter Apple had — posting income of $5.75 billion, it’s best ever. Most of the cash came from 14 million iPod sales — three times what it sold this time last year. But the company also saw 20 percent growth in Mac sales, shifting 1.25 million Macs. What surprises me is these were lame duck machines — soon to be made obsolete by new Intel boxes.

Wall Street’s a little bit worried though about the current quarter, which Apple said will be lower than projections due to “a pause” in Mac sales as the product lineup switches to Intel, according to the Wall Street Journal.

There was also “a pause” in sales the previous quarter, Reuters reports. If that’s true, what will sales of Intel Macs be like when the lineup is filled out this year? A quick skim of the earnings call reports doesn’t mention any guidance about supplies — but my gut is it’ll go gangbusters, but supplies will be constrained and Apple won’t be able to keep up. I think Apple’s going to have an unbelievable year, and this is just the beginning.

I must admit, I’ve got the hots for first lady Laura Bush. And now I find she uses an iPod, just like her evil nincompoop husband. She’s got abysmal taste in music though.

Reports the Washington Times:

Mrs. Bush also revealed that her IPod listening includes songs by Tina Turner and Dolly Parton. She said her musical tastes are somewhat different from those of her husband.
“He likes country music a little bit more than I do, although I actually really am very fond of country music, as well,” she said. “One of the songs on my IPod that I love is Dolly Parton singing ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ So that’s sort of a combination, country and pop.”

Image by Ben McLeod on Flickr.

(Via iLounge)

There’s a simple explantion why Apple’s new cleanroom ad looks just like a music video for The Postal Service: they were both made by the same people.

Sarah Moody of Sub Pop Records, The Postal Service’s Seattle record company, writes:

“… the Apple commercial is indeed very similar, it wasn’t licensed in any form, and was made by the same directors as the Postal Service video. We weren’t alerted to the fact that it existed until the day it came out.”

Moody didn’t say, but The PS’s Such Great Heights video was made by directing duo Josh Melnick and Xander Charity, whose working name is Josh & Xander.

Apple’s ad agency, TBWA\Chiat\Day, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

After my story last week about pilgrimages to Apple’s HQ, Mac loyalist Jonas Hallen wrote to tell of his all-too-common experience of visiting the mothership.

He writes:

“In March 2002 Alexander Ruas (Sweden), Jesse McBride (U.S) and I (Sweden) did our Haij to Infinite Loop 1. We took our picture and seconds later a security guard sent us off the premises. We didn’t feel too bad about it, though. Apple has never been ‘service-minded’ in the common sense, and a part of being a Mac Geek is living through the company’s lack of commitment, disinterest and sheer abuse of it’s most loyal fan base.”

He added:

If Apple decided to open Infinite Loop to visitors or even arrange for a museum, it would be a flagrant breach of tradition and I would then feel obliged to follow the wise words of Groucho Marx:

‘I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.'”

Tomi from PodBrix writes:

“We are releasing a new apparel product tomorrow (1/17) at 9:00pm EST and I wanted to give you some information about it.

The product is called the Wozwear 6502 and is a custom made shirt featuring an image of our previous Woz minifig holding a 6502 processor chip. The interesting aspect is that we use an actual 6502 processor chip and attach it to the shirt with a magnetic clasp. See the attached image to get a better idea of the product. As I’m sure you will recall this is the chip used in the classic Apple II line of computers. With Apple’s recent switch to Intel processors I thought it would be interesting to offer a product capturing the nostalgia of the old Apple II processor.

The 6502 chip attached to the Wozwear is purely cosmetic, but it is in working condition and if plugged into an old Apple machine it would function properly. You can easily remove the chip from the Wozwear shirt to launder it.

As is standard for PodBrix products, the Wozwear 6502 is a signed limited edition of 300 units. The Wozwear shirt is available in five sizes (S, M, L, XL, XXL) and is individually screen printed to order to ensure everyone can receive the desired size without exceeding the 300 unit limited edition.

The Wozwear 6502 is available for $34.99 each and will go on sale tomorrow night (01/17/06) at 9:00pm EST. International orders are welcome.”

Programmer Paul Guyot has demonstrated his “Einstein” Newton emulator running on a Sharp Zaurus — and a beta of the software is available as a free download.

“… We’re one step closer to having a Newton running on non-Apple hardware,” wrote long-time Newton devotee Adam Tow, who reported the news.

Guyot demonstrated the emulator at the Worldwide Newton Conference this weekend in San Francisco, held on the tail of Macworld. The emulator runs on any Linux-based PDA with X11 support.

Here’s some background on Guyot and his project.

I know I’m harping on about this, but there’s been a lot of debate about whether or not Apple remade — or was even infuenced by — The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” video for its new 30-second TV ad for Intel-based Macs.

In comments here and at my other blog, some people insist the two videos simply use the same setting, a cleanroom, and that’s where the similarities end.

But now ChrisJM at Elite Productions has taken the Apple ad and spliced it with corresponding shots from the Postal Service video to make a side-by-side comparison.

I say it nails it (not that there was any doubt in my mind). The Apple ad is more or less a shot-for-shot remake.

It’s not that Apple’s ad is not artful. I actually think the ad works better than the video, which I found over long and boring. I just find it mystifying there’s any doubt about the source material.

I’ve made enquiries with both Sub Pop Records and Apple’s ad agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day, and will report any findings here next week.

“Being a guy and having a wedding is easy,” Internet radio host Shawn King told AppleXnet after his wedding here at Macworld. “I just have to show up wearing pants and say, ‘I do.'”

Shawn and Lesa Snider tied the knot on Thursday night in a wedding planned around Macworld (see below).

The ceremony was perfomed onstage at the Great American Music Hall. Mac author Andy Ihnatko officiated, and New York Times columnist David Pogue gave away the bride. Here’s Pogue toasting the happy couple.

Combining matrimony with marketing, the ceremony was followed by a party to promote Shawn’s Your Mac Life Internet radio show, paid for by long-time sponsor Griffin Technology and others.

The Music Hall — a grand Victorian pile — was really filling up as we left at about 10PM. As we departed, we were given a party favor — a plastic travel mug festooned with the sponsors’ logos.

Photo courtesy of Trent Lapinski at AppleXNet, who has more.

Update. YML cohost Jay Curtis has more pix and a video of the ceremony, which Curtis says includes “the uber-techie closing speech by Andy Inhatko.”

Shawn King, host of the Your Mac Life internet radio show, is getting married on Thursday evening in a totally Macworld wedding.

Shawn met his bride, Lesa Snider, three years ago at Macworld. He proposed to her last year — at Macworld.

And when the couple were trying to decide the most convenient place in the country for all their friends to meet, they realized it had to be — Macworld.

The couple are getting married after the show closes at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall.

Mac author Andy Ihnatko is performing the ceremony. David Pogue, former Macworld columnist now with the New York Times, is giving away the bride. And Chris Breen, also a Mac writer, is playing the piano.

Lesa is chief evangelist at iStockphoto.com. The couple live in Nashville, but Shawn’s family is in Canada and Lesa’s in Texas.

“Every place we mentioned, we thought it would be tough to get them there, and then we realized, ‘Wait a minute, they’ll all be Expo,'” said King, laughing.

“We met here at Macworld Expo three years ago,” he said. “We had a long distance relationship. I asked her to marry me here at the show.”

The civil ceremony will be performed by Ihnatko, who earlier in the week went to San Francisco City Hall to became a deputy marriage commissioner in the State of California, which allows him to perform only one wedding, King said.

After the ceremony, Shawn is throwing a shindig at the Great American Music Hall to promote his radio show.

The party is underwritten by Griffin Technology, Shawn’s long-time sponsor, and when company founder Paul Griffin found out about the civil ceremony beforehand, he jokingly asked Shawn: “Am I paying for your reception?”

Yeah, those “exploited children” over at Gizmodo are my progeny. My wife took them down to Macworld to promote my Cult of iPod book.

She dressed our three boys in cardboard iPod costumes, and our daughter as a silhouette iPod dancer.

I wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea, but it achieved its objective. They got their pictures in the paper, which absolutely thrilled them (Exploited kid one; exploited kid two), and she handed a flyer to the scores of people who snapped their picture.

Plus, the kids had a blast. Look at all the free crap they got. This is just a portion of it. My daughter separated hers out and stashed it away.

They got eight pairs of gloves, a ton of flashing Belkin necklaces, half-a-ton of stickers and pins, Postit pads, spring-loaded jumping frogs, badge holders, a gazillion pens, rubber wristbands, iPod covers, some cellphone cleaner thingies, etc., etc.

What was the best stuff they got?

Lyle (the youngest): “Candy.”

Olin: “Candy.”

Milo: “The wristbands, and candy.”

Nadine (the oldest): “The Yoyo, a mini Sharpie, a fish screensaver, a helicopter spinner and a squeezy stress ball. And candy.”

Here’s more of the little angels.

There was something strange about Steve Jobs’ Macworld keynote on Tuesday. The pacing was off.

It started off high energy with reports of unbelievable iPod sales and record revenues, which got the crowd whooping. Then it went into a doldrums with an interminable demo of new features in iLife, which had everyone dying for the One More Thing… “Come on Steve,” we’re all thinking. “Cut the crap and get to the good stuff.”

So tonight I’m sitting in a bar when I run into an old friend, who is very highly placed in the Apple world. I hate to cite an anonymous source, but trust me, he knows.

And he tells me the keynote that Jobs gave was not the keynote he had planned. Some of the speech had been cut out. Key products were missing.

My source said there was some stuff, “some very, very cool stuff,” that Jobs couldn’t unveil because of “supply issues.”

“They can’t get enough Core Duo (chips),” said my source.

He also said that if he were me, he probably wouldn’t order one of the new MacBook Pros.

I asked if there would be MacBook replacements for the 17-inch and 12-inch PowerBooks, but he said, “Oh, it’s much cooler than that. Much cooler.”

Photo credit: Engadget.