The financial crisis may be spurring a few Apple collectors to clean the computer room — after a couple of Apple Is we found on eBay, reader David Fulero tipped us off about this Lisa model up on the block.
She’s up for sale for just $999, a relative bargain if you consider the 26-year-old machine’s original sticker price was about $10,000 — something like $20,000 today.
If you like to game on your Mac, you’ve probably played something released by Aspyr Media. After all, what choice did you have? Aspyr has long been one of the pillars of the wobbly Mac gaming scene, porting over seventy games to OS X, including The Sims, Call of Duty 4, Civilization 4 and Quake 4. Short of restarting into Boot Camp, Aspyr has been the only way for Apple gamers to actually play most of the AAA game releases on their machines.
Sad news for Mac gamers, then. According to gaming site Big Download, Aspyr Media has laid off over fifty percent of its staff, with only a handful of team members now remaining in the office. The layoffs apparently happened weeks ago, but the news has only just gotten out.
Aspyr Media’s business is more than just Mac porting of course: they also port games from consoles to the PC, and recently ported the original Call of Duty to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Unfortunately, it looks unlikely that their core Mac team members got away unscathed. The Mac gaming scene just got even sparser.
As we approach the two weeks to Christmas mark, yet more deals are on tap. For the budget-conscious, there is a bevy of new MacBooks, starting at $860 for a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo with 13-inch screen. For those preparing to put an iPod under the tree (or in your pocket), there is a 50 percent off sale on iPod nano accessories. To put a bow on all these bargains is a Mac Pro workstation powered by an 8 core 2.26 GHz Xeon processor and 10GB of RAM for $3,577.
For details on these and many more Apple-related items, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.
Google Chrome for Mac arrived yesterday in beta form. The browser is lacking important features, including bookmarks and cookie management, and the useful app mode available in the Windows version. Also, benchmarks show it’s marginally slower than Safari. But in use I’ve found it good enough to set as my default, and Chrome’s superior to Apple’s browser in important ways: it launches more quickly, and is far less taxing on my Mac regarding RAM and processor usage, even with many tabs open.
However, one thing I’m finding irritating is Chrome’s tabs. Google’s efforts elsewhere in making Chrome a Mac-like experience should be applauded—the browser supports Keychain and the Mac OS X dictionary, and there are subtle animations peppered about—but the main toolbar and tabs area is problematic. I spent a short while making a mock-up (see the full-size version on my Flickr page), which offers ideas for a more Mac-like Chrome interface.
Whatever reality-bending substances are being imbibed, chewed or smoked at UPS, sign me up: they tagged Adam Jackson’s iMac Core i7 as a fruit.
And now his work tool is awaiting inspection by the FDA, after UPS did the smart thing by “submitting proper documentation” for what it believed was a 40-pound shipment of possibly forbidden fruit from China.
Sounds like a funny fluke, but there’s more than one burnt bulb at UPS processing centers — MG Siegler at Techcrunch had the same problem just last week.
Note to UPS: the words “apple” “mac” and “core” do NOT necessarily mean foodstuffs.
Or are they just PC people messing with us?
UPDATE: After viewing your comments about other incidents, we asked for a comment. Here’s what UPS had to say about it.
With Time Capsules epidemically failing after an average of 18 months and 22 days, it might be time to start thinking about an alternative use for your pristinely albino, Apple-branded router once its body squirts out its last breath of 802.11-n ectoplasm.
Why not turn it into a lovely gift box? Over at Instructables, there’s a handy little tutorial on how to convert a Time Capsule into an ornamental box worthy of display, simply by prying it open, gutting it, then adding hinges and a silk cushion.
Not the most revolutionary use for an old Time Capsule’s casing, certainly, but this would be great presentation for, say, an iPod Touch gifted to a loved one later this month, and it can even be reused as a jewelry box or even a humidor (for cigars or the disembodied fingers of people who owed you money, you decide).
Let’s start off with a pair of dueling deals on Apple hardware. Whether you are looking for a basic MacBook or one with all the frills, this may be your day. PC Connection is offering MacBooks starting at $850. The basic computer includes a 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 13-inch screen. At the other end of the spectrum, Expercom is hawking a 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook with 4GB of RAM. Also part of the package: three years of AppleCare for $1,248.
If you are more in the mood for an iMac, the Apple Store has five desktop machines, including a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo desktop with a 20-inch screen for $849. Expercom has a beefier iMac running a 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo with 22-inch screen, 8GB of RAM and AppleCare for $1,403.
Also on tap is a 50-percent discount on iPod touch accessories, plus various hardware and software deals. As always, for details on these and many other bargains, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.
Apple has just unveiled iTunes Rewind 2009, a feature on the iTunes Store that lists all of the year’s best selling content, across music, video and apps. For some, the feature will be confirmation of the intractable cretinism of that mouth-breathing biomass, mankind. For others, it will be a handy primer on popular media they might have missed this year. Let’s dive in!
It’s a small update, but it’s an important one: Apple has just quietly upgraded iTunes to allow buyers the ability to preview whole albums at a time.
iTunes has always allowed buyers to preview tracks before they buy: thirty second snippets that allow users to confirm that the 99 cents they are about to pluck down for “You Shook Me All Night Long” is, in fact, the AC/DC version, and not the migraine-inducing caterwaul of Miss Celine Dion dueting with Anastasia.
If you wanted to buy an entire album, though, you had to click the preview button in iTunes for every single song. No longer: now, a handy “Preview All” button is available on each album page in the iTunes Store.
Some nice functionality, to be sure, but long, long overdue. Amazon’s MP3 store has allowed users to preview full albums for over two years, and it’s hardly difficult functionality to ape. But better late than never.
[via TUAW]
AT&T have released a free tool to the App Store to allow iPhone users experiencing sub-standard service to help AT&T’s technicians improve the network.
By downloading the free Marks the Spot App to your iPhone, you can easily report any service failures you might experience. Dropped a call? No coverage? Data failure? Poor voice quality? Simply load up the app, allow it to pinpoint your position using GPS, select how often the problem happens to you in that area, then fire off your complaint to AT&T’s crackerjack network engineers, who will presumably slap up a new carrier tower in the blink of an eye. Or, at least, roll their eyes, theatrically yawn and go back to sleep.
Right now, of course, it’s impossible to know if the Mark the Spot app is just a placebo public relations tool to mollify their customers, or if AT&T will actually prioritize improving their network by identifying the holes in their cell tower web and patching them up.
Either way, though, it’s a fantastic idea: so fantastic, I wonder how long it is before tools like the Mark the Spot app ship on all smartphones across all networks. In fact, given the fact that the iPhone can already detect when a phone experiences network service problems like dropped calls, I wonder why the iPhone OS doesn’t automatically cough up a tool just like Mark the Spot when it detects an outage.
[via 9to5Mac]
