As rumored, Apple updated the MacBook Pro line this morning to use the latest screaming processors up to 2.4 Ghz from Intel and a more powerful GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor. The 15.4-inch machines also use mercury-free LED backlit displays, delivering on the announcement that Steve Jobs made in the company’s environmental roadmap. Disappointing that the 17″ machine is still on LCD, according to the release, but this is a new technology. I can’t wait to see how gorgeous the screens look up close. I might make it to an Apple Store this afternoon, so I’ll keep you posted. Full details after the jump. They are immediately available.

Technorati Tags: apple, intel, macbook pro

BBC News: “A video has appeared on the internet showing the first pictures of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston since his abduction in Gaza on 12 March.
It is said to have been posted by the Army of Islam, the group that says it is holding the reporter.
In the video, Mr Johnston says he is in good health and that his captors have treated him well.”
This is great news. I hope to God he’s released without harm.

Apple dropped a few lovely and unexpected tidbits in addition to the already anticipated iTunes Plus DRM-free music downloads. Specifically, Apple’s new “hobby,” the AppleTV, will soon have direct YouTube support, and an build-to-order option to quadruple the device’s capacity to 160GB will roll out soon, for $100 extra. It’s still not a DVR out of the box, but this thing is getting very capable very fast…
iTunes Plus, meanwhile, includes the ability to buy-upgrade (“bupgrade?”) any iTunes Store song you already own without copy-protection and a higher bit-rate for 30 cents per song. I must admit, I’d be moving what few iTS songs I have to the superior format, but none of the songs I have are in the first bunch of iT+ selections. Anyone making the move?

Technorati Tags: appleTV, itunes, itunes plus, youtube

Today’s D: All Things Digital conference has been quite interesting, from the introduction of Palm’s ludicrous Foleo device to Microsoft’s over-the-top (literally) Surface computing initiative and Apple’s more modest but interesting announcements of YouTube for AppleTV, iTunes Plus and the Big AppleTV upgrade.
Nothing, however, compares to the currently rolling Steve Jobs and Bill Gates chat on stage together. They’re mostly looking back with humor on their linked history. It’s hilarious stuff, from Engadget’s liveblog of it:

Steve: Gil (Amelio) had a saying, “Apple is like a ship with holes in the bottom leaking water. My job is to get that ship pointed in the right direction.”

No, no. I’m not crying. It’s just been raining…on my face!

Technorati Tags: bill gates, Steve Jobs

At the D Conference today, Steve Jobs admitted he likes the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.

Walt Mossberg asked: Do you read the Fake Steve Jobs blog?

Jobs: I have read a few of the FSJ things recently, but I thought it was pretty funny!

Steve Jobs is a reverse switcher! He’s switched back to New Balance sneakers after a couple of token months wearing Nike. Could his Nike + iPod deal be in trouble?

Via Engadget.

After midnight Eastern tonight, Apple let its own cat out of the bag to go along with Microsoft’s announcement of Surface. The Mac OS X Software update brings iTunes 7.2, featuring support for DRM-free downloads off of the iTunes Store, what Apple is calling “iTunes Plus.” The update notice mentions this support from “participating labels” (does EMI have friends in its DRM-free world?), and then the help file goes further, as noted by MacRumors:

The iTunes Store also offers songs without DRM protection, from participating record labels. These DRM-free songs, called “iTunes Plus,” have no usage restrictions and feature higher-quality encoding.

The first time you buy an iTunes Plus song, you specify whether to make all future purchases iTunes Plus versions (when available). You can change this setting by accessing your account information on the iTunes Store.

If you already have iTunes Store purchases that are now available as iTunes Plus downloads, you may upgrade your existing purchases. To do so, visit the iTunes Store and follow the onscreen instructions.

Perhaps there’s hope for converting my library of FairPlay-encoded files to come back to life. We can only hope. Tomorrow’s going to be exciting. Stay tuned…

Technorati Tags: drm, itunes

Remember that totally awesome touchscreen demo at huge scale that had broad applications such as natural photo sorting and editing and fingerpaints? Well, in advance of the D Conference today, Microsoft decided it would be a good idea to launch a product line that is…exactly that demo. They call it Surface, and if it lives up to the demo videos on the official site, it will be spectacular in use.
T-Mobile, Harrah’s Entertainment and others plan to roll them out very quickly. You might be playing with one in a few days. So what’s the problem? Why isn’t Apple panicking? Because this is as far from a consumer application as you can get. A 30″ touchscreen display built on a coffee table in the living room is years away from being something people will buy.
Granted, Apple’s multi-touch product, the iPhone, is also very high-end, but a $600 phone is closer to reality than the Future Table 6000. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure that Microsoft will make money from this selling to stores and casinos. There are many people looking for an interactive table for what I would assume is at least $10,000, if not more. But this is like a new pinball machine, not a technology that will make an impact at home for years to come.
It is an amazing demo, but it’s far from ready for prime-time. This is for an exciting display in a store. The fact that MS isn’t talking about rolling this technology to other platforms yet indicates that they’re not playing for those markets. And I will pit the iPhone or a touch-enabled iPod against a to-be-announced Surface Zune any day. If anything, launching this way is a sign that Microsoft knows it doesn’t have a product to compete with the iPhone ready to go. So they brought out the circus edition of the technology.
I’m sure the clowns and the elephants are psyched.
Microsoft Surface: multi-user touch table [MacNN]

Technorati Tags: iphone, microsoft, surface

Ever wondered what we’ve gained in 20 years of computing advancement? Other than better graphics, the answer is…not much, at least for basic office productivity tasks. Hal Licino at HubPages runs a vintage MacPlus from 1986 against a brand-new PC running on AMD dual-core hardware, and finds that the MacPlus is faster for virtually all comparable tasks, including booting and several ordinary MS Office tasks.
Just goes to show you — computing peaked in 1988 (the Mac SE/30 dominates the Plus still).
86 Mac Plus Vs. 07 AMD DualCore. You Won’t Believe Who Wins

Technorati Tags: macplus, quicktime vr

It’s giant friendly green blob Haro from Gundam! And his back ate a Mac mini! Good thing he can dance or something. A very, very odd Japanese import. Check Ubergizmo for more.
Via GeekSugar.

Technorati Tags: accessory, gundam, mac mini, mod

Each Apple Store is intimate, friendly, educational and filled with new technologies to discover. They’re warm places, filled with helpful “geniuses,” great gift ideas and room to learn, fail and succeed. Each interaction is an opportunity for Apple to directly connect in an emotional way with its customers — a pure brand expression.
But as Apple’s influence and power as a company has grown, another electronics powerhouse, Sony, has headed straight downhill, with a mediocre retail presence reflecting its overall woes. The NY Times’s Randall Stross does an excellent job of chronicling the features that make Apple stand out and the symptoms of Sony’s disease in this feature from the Sunday Times. He does not, however, truly diagnose the patient or recommend a cure that people can actually use.
I’ll take that chance. Click through to hear what Apple is doing right, and why Sony Style stores feel so cold.

Technorati Tags: apple, retail, sony

Ever since Apple and EMI shocked the world in April by announcing that they would sell music through the iTunes Store free from copy-protection constraints, the world has been waiting for the company’s to actually make that announcement a reality.

This might be the week, if the rumor mill has it pegged correctly. MacNN claims we’ve been going through a delay of these products, which I can’t say I noticed:

The seeming delay for introducing the new tier of content has been primarily attributed to a desire to offer the entire catalog at once in the unprotected format rather than a gradual rollout. The companies’ technicians are simply in the later stages of encoding and hosting the files before they go live, the contact says.

Not too surprising, here. After all, Apple said they would launch an offering in May — that means they’ll launch it on the last Tuesday of the month, right? Wake me up when Apple actually misses launching during the month.

DRM-free iTunes set this week? [MacNN]

Technorati Tags: itunes, drm

The next four weeks are going to be crazy. Maybe, once the iPhone is truly released into the wild, hysteria over sightings will recede until that day, however, the Internet is wild with any news of an iPhone in public. I won’t even cover one of the big iPhone stories of the weekend here (a photo of a man who is either holding an iPhone or possibly any other object that fits in the hand is not news), but I am intrigued by this video find.

It purports to be an Apple Store employee sneaking an iPhone onto the floor of the shop, then shooting video of himself being shown on a store iMac’s iSight. It looks pretty real. It could be faked pretty easily, though it would basically have to b e done with another camera phone or pocket video recorder dressed in an iPhone costume. What do you think?

iPhone Camera Video Mirror [YouTube]
Via TUAW

Technorati Tags: iphone, rumor

Fimoculous brought Microsoft’s iPod Amnesty Bin at the Zune Headquarters recently. Looks pretty empty to me — think team members are taking the discards home to use instead of their Zunes? Or is it a place for iPods to escape from Microsoft’s labs where they were getting dissected and copied?
iPod Amnesty Bin on Flickr
Via TUAW.

Technorati Tags: ipod, zune

I’m genuinely puzzled by AppleInsider’s melodramatic post pronouncing the death of the Mac mini. The article recounts Apple’s many slights of its lowest-end platform and then proceeds to show know evidence that the line will soon be killed off.

It has seen just four updates since inception, one of which was so insignificant in Apple’s own eyes that the company didn’t even bother to draft a press release. Even now, the current minis’ 1.66GHz and 1.83GHz Core Duo processors are a far cry from the silicon offered in the rest of Apple’s PC offerings.

Well, that’s actually to be expected. And I would say that hardware is significantly better than a lot of low-end PCs from other manufacturers. But that’s neither here nor there. Apple needs the Mac mini just to get people looking for a cheap Mac in the door. The AppleTV might be incredibly popular as a hackable Mac substitute, but that’s not what it is out of the box. Apple still needs a low-end entry, and the Mac mini costs very little to develop and revise. I don’t see Apple just walking away.

And this quote says it all:

Whether Apple will squeeze another revision from the mini, and how long it plans to allow existing models to linger, are both unclear.

Oh, so at some point in the future, possibly after Apple releases new Mac minis, Apple will stop selling the Mac mini. Yep, dead as a doornail. What?

AppleInsider | Closing the book on Apple’s Mac mini

Technorati Tags: mac mini, puppy, puppy

Well, that’s the missing link resolved. The above video depicts an AppleTV running MythTV, an open-source PVR program. If the AppleTV hard drive were a little bit bigger, it would officially be a real TiVo challenger. Will Apple ever release official PVR support?

YouTube – MythTV On AppleTV
Via Digg.

Technorati Tags: appleTV, mythtv

Remember that video years ago of the “transparent” Powerbook screen? Someone has compiled a gallery of photos demonstrating the same principle. There’s an odd beauty here. Check it out.
Fun 4 Amdavadi Gujarati

Via Digg.

Technorati Tags: powerbook

I think we have a nominee for ugliest — or prettiest? — iPod ever, courtesy of a bizarre promotion that Procter & Gamble is running to benefit the people of New Orleans. If you buy an ugly Tide t-shirt for $10, you can win an iTunes gift certificate or a bright orange, Tide-branded iPod. A nano, from the looks of it. No word on whether they’ll also brand you forehead with Tide.
Vintage T-shirts from Tide.com
Via Digg.

Technorati Tags: ipod, tide

MacRumors founder Arnold Kim makes a very interesting point regarding the rumored new MacBook Pros and iMacs that Piper Jaffrey analyst Gene Munster unleashed on an unwitting public yesterday. Like many others, I was fairly impressed that Munster took the trouble to determine the average life cycle of both iMac and MacBook Pro generations.

Well, as it turns out, Munster might not have calculated the numbers himself:

These numbers correlate exactly to the [MacRumors] Buyer’s Guide averages. Some have asked couldn’t he have come up with these numbers on his own? It’s possible, but exceedingly unlikely as he would have had to choose the same releases (2002 PowerBook, 2003 iMac) to start counting in order to achieve the exact same averages.

Kim also implies that Munster’s assumption that Apple will release new Macs at WWDC might be directly drawn from an earlier ThinkSecret report, which makes the reliability of tech analysts’ reports about Macs questionable. Which they absolutely are.

Apple is the rare computer company that won’t play nice and let analysts see their stuff earlier than the general public. There’s no question that most reports or based on assumptions and reading rumor sites. I do question a commenter’s conclusion that any of this is new. From what I can tell, the Mac rumor sites have been ahead of the analysts since the day Steve came back.

Technorati Tags: analysts, rumor

Analyst Gene Munster (not to be confused with Herman) today predicted that Apple will roll out new MacBook Pros and iMacs at the Worldwide Developer Conference in June. That’s not the world’s edgiest guess, given that it’s been almost nine months since either product line was updated. What is rather shocking is Munster’s baffling logic for the update:

Munster added that he “expects” new MacBook Pros (1, 2) to make a
showing at the developer conference and that it’s “also possible” that
Apple will introduce a redesigned iMac. He notes that on average, the
Cupertino-based company has updated its professional notebooks every
182 days, with the most recent generation having launched 209 days ago
(data presumably gathered via help from the MacRumors buyer’s guide).
Similarly, he said, iMacs have traditionally seen updates every 168
days but the current generation is now a whopping 257 days old.

Wow, and I thought it was just that Intel had new processors on the market and Apple’s just about last to roll out hardware sporting the chips. I am mildly interested in the rumor that the iMac would actually be redesigned and not just refreshed. Looking back at it, the timing might be right. The iMac G4 was on the market for about 30 months, and we’re now at 33 months for the iMac G5 enclosure. I think Apple is more than due for a real new design statement on its computers, so this will be one to watch.

Image via Wikipedia
Via Engadget

Interesting article in the New York Times today about the resurgence of the world “Hello” as an ad tagline. Apple has a long tradition of using the word dating to the original Mac, so it’s only fitting that they’ve revived it for the iPhone, but this is a bigger trend, as reflected in the creepy “Hello, Delicious” ads for Level Vodka:

“Advertising being an annoying, interruptive medium, ‘Hello’ is kind of
a nice salutation, a friendly way of introducing yourself,” said Lee
Clow, chairman and chief creative officer at the TBWA Worldwide unit of
the Omnicom Group who has long worked for Apple.

That’s one way to view it. You know what I think it is? It’s Thursday, that’s what it is.

Silicon Valley raconteur Om Malik is always keeping his eyes peeled for something to surpass Apple’s killer iPod+iTunes combo, and after endorsing Real Rhapsody the other day, he’s now generally supporting the idea that a new generation of DRM-free music will fuel a surge in digital music sales.

While online music downloads have grown rapidly, DRM (regardless of the
flavor) has added more friction than security to the process, often
slowing total sales, especially amongst the non-techie music fans.

I still don’t buy it. Most people are willing to put up with minor DRM headaches for convenience. Most other people that really want to own their music are using services like eMusic or buying CDs. I don’t think we’re at a point where a lack of DRM-free Greatest Hits of the Eagles downloads is the bottleneck. Granted, Om thinks Apple stands to benefit here, but he also implies that the Sonos hardware that connects to Pandora could be the wave of the future. Which it isn’t. I’m sorry, but radio, however evolved, doesn’t hold the same long-term value as buying what you want. Pandora’s a fun trick right now, but it’s a long way from the music-brain I never realized I needed.

If you’ve ever wondered exactly what I mean when I talk about innovation, feel free to take a gander at my other two blogs, both of which pertain to the subject. This stuff has a huge influence on my thinking about Apple, so it might help you understand where I’m coming from a bit more.

The first blog, Better than New, is one I run with a friend. It’s basically like what we do here, but as it pertains to design, innovation, cultural needs, stuff like that. It’s newer but way more frequently updated.

The second, Pattern Linguist, is a misguided attempt to blog the complete history of the field of innovation as we know it today. It takes a long time to research, and I tend to be thoughtful instead of snarky here. Still, there’s ample fodder at both. Check ’em out!

About 95 percent of quality in a computer is subjective When a machine runs well, people aren’t likely to become concerned about the specification of its memory controllers or the speed of its hard disk. But when things are bad, it doesn’t matter if the machine is tricked out with the best components in the entire world — it’s a pile of junk.

This is all relevant to the current tempest in a teapot that goes by day as a lawsuit against Apple for “deceptively” using 6-bit LCD screens instead of 8-bit color on its MacBooks and MacBooks Pro. What this essentially means is that Apple advertises its computers as displaying millions of colors (presumably a full 16,777,216) but that they instead show only several hundred thousand (262,244). I am outraged! OUTRAGED!*

Never one to pull a punch, Steve Jobs recently told Time Magazine that Al Gore can win the 2008 presidential election if the pro-environmental Apple board member wants to:

“If he ran, there’s no question in my mind
that he would be elected,” said Jobs, referring to Gore. “But I think
there’s a question in his mind, perhaps because the pain of the last
election runs a lot deeper than he lets most of us see.”

I have to assume that last sentence is humor. No one has ever seen Al Gore express emotion about the election, ever. Any pain at all would be the first anyone has seen. What do you think — is the world ready for America’s first iPresident?

Via MacNN.