There’s really nothing like Christmas for a Mac cultist (except for Halloween, that is). This delectable Old School Mac is the awesome work from Flickr user MinorBug. Click through to see the full collection of pictures.
Via Engadget
A promise to “unleash the true power of your iPhone” might not be the best marketing slogan for Snapture Flash, a xenon flash accessory with red-eye reduction for Apple’s mobile device. As snappy as it sounds, the slogan also calls attention to what is roundly regarded as the iPhone’s weakest attribute, its 2.1 megapixel, fixed focal length still camera.
The flash’s sleeve-like case is powered by the phone itself, which SnaptureLabs estimates will give you 1000 flashes on a single charge. As a bonus, the sleeve also provides amplification for the iPhone’s on-board speaker.
The downside here is that the flash is only a prototype and the accompanying Snapture camera software (which itself provides some interesting creative mods and controls for the iPhone’s camera), requires a jailbroken phone to avail yourself of its charms.
It will be interesting to see whether Snapture Labs can strike a deal to get it’s patent-pending flash technology to market before Apple comes out with a new version of the iPhone with some sort of flash built-in.
“Steampunk lies at the intersection of science and romance,” says one of its foremost practitioners, Jake Von Slatt. “It embraces technology but demands technology return the favor.”
We came across Von Slatt while checking in with our friend Bob Eckstein, whose recently completed project, The History of the Snowman is now out in the world after six years of grueling research.
One of Eckstein’s next projects is producing a graphic novel out of a nautical explorer’s diary from 1850. A full-immersion writer, Eckstein has gotten himself in the mood for the work by transforming his office space into a 19th century Captain’s Quarters. He refitted his computers and office equipment into old ship instruments to lend verité to his efforts, and secured vintage trappings to serve up authenticity to his muse.
Hence, my introduction to Steampunk.
Click on pics in the gallery below and follow after the jump for more of the story.
If you’ve got an old 1940s style rotary phone lying around and about 7 hours you’re not sure what to do with, you can contact Michael at fonejackerhacker in the UK and find out how he made this iPhone docking station. It’s powered by a 16W amp with one speaker behind the dial (10w) on the front of the phone and two speakers in the handset (2x 3w).
The IR sensor and controls are fitted to the side of the phone and the docking port is hidden under the receiver when the hand set is off. Because the speaker is an official ‘works with iPhone’ product all of the normal charging and iPhone features are uncompromised.
Michael is working on a version with a microphone on the handset and, with the use of an iPhone app that he is developing, you’d be able to use this as a handset for the iPhone, or as a headset.
Via SlipperyBrick
Low End Mac figures their time is now.
With the economy exuding the stench of death and government busy creating trillions of dollars worth of fictional capital to “bail out” some of the nation’s brand-name institutions, Low End Mac believes their philosophy of “use it up, wear it out, and then recycle it” could not be more timely.
“We are the kings of making our computers last, last, and last some more,” writes blogger John Hatchett in a great piece describing how he turned his old iMac into a digital jukebox. With a little bit of drive cloning and hooking the iMac up to his home stereo, he now listens to his iTunes library all over his house.
Via Low End Mac
The busiest shopping day of the year is traditionally the day after Thanksgiving, known in the Retail Trade as Black Friday. And this year, anticipation appears to be building for some of the best Black Friday deals to be had for netbooks, the super-cheap small laptops from many manufacturers that may get even cheaper for a retail minute.
Here’s a custom Google search for Black Friday deals, and you’d be well advised too, to be on the look out at local hardware retailers for returned notebooks pre-installed with Linux.
We’ve seen rumors of deals to be had on a Dell mini-laptop, and powerful arguments for why netbooks may just dominate the holiday shopping season.
When you get your hands on your mini-deal, see the references below for tips on how to get ’em to run OS X:
Install OS X on an Acer Aspire One – courtesy of reader Javier Canadillas; thanks, Javier!
Guide to installing OS X on Lenovo IdeaPad S10
If you come across ways to get OS X on other netbooks, be sure to let us know about it in comments.
On a day when HP beat Apple to the punch with the idea of a multi-touch notebook, Apple fan and Flickr user nthnschrdr‘s design for a multi-touch Mac Pad is something worth dreaming about…
Be sure to go to the Flickr page and check out the photo’s embedded notes.
A California judge Tuesday preliminarily dismissed Psystar’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple. Judge William Alsup rejected the Mac clone-maker’s counterclaim, writing Apple’s computers and Mac OS X software “are not wholly lacking in competition.”
Alsup gave Psystar until Dec. 8 to amend its countersuit to bolster its argument that Apple was preventing third parties from selling computers based on its Mac OS X operating system.
In a 19-page opinion siding with Apple’s motion to dismiss Pystar’s August countersuit, the judge ruled that Pystar’s legal team failed to support the “counterintuitive claim that Apple’s operating system is so unique that it suffers no actual or potential competitors,” according to AppleInsider, which first reported the decision.
In August, Psystar filed the countersuit following Apple’s July lawsuit alleging the Florida company infringed its copyrights and patents by selling computers with a modified version of the Mac OS capable of running on PCs.
This is the sound of slork, the Stanford Laptop Orchestra.
All instrumentalists are equipped with a black MacBook and a hemispherical speaker pod made out of Ikea tableware.
The brain behind the orchestra is Ge Wang, and if his name sounds familiar that’s because you might have seen it mentioned recently in connection with the superb app Ocarina.
Recently highlighted at apple.com, slork makes use of custom software written by Ge Wang:
“I wanted to focus on the intersection of music and computer science. So I authored a language with my advisor, Perry Cook, and researchers at Princeton and beyond. We called it ChucK. It’s a programming language completely tailored for sound. It let us quickly synthesize sound and use various controllers in our performances.”
If you’re looking to pick up an iPhone cheap, you may want to avoid any opportunities that arise for you in Russia. It seems there’s an increasingly popular scam there where people want to quickly unload their iPhone with a nearly discharged battery in order to quickly raise funds for a train or plane ticket. They show you the phone with an Apple logo that lights up momentarily when the power button is pressed and say, “just charge it and you have an iPhone!”
Not surprisingly, the insides look something like what you see in the gallery below, complete with a steel plate to give the fake phone some heft, and batteries to produce the lit-up logo. At least the fake Rolex watches tell time, don’t they?
So this has popped up in the feeds this afternoon, and after my initial excited clicking all I can say is “Oh.”
Because it really isn’t a proper keyboard, it’s a tiny clip on thing that does little more than recreate the built-in software keyboard in plastic. The typing’s slow, and all thumbs anyhow.
I know I’ve been banging on about iPhones and keyboards recently, but this? This is not what I was banging on about.
Wait, what? Barack who?
(Via CrunchGear)
Other World Computing, an Illinois-based technology company, announced today the availability of a new service that converts your existing Intel Core 2 Duo based MacBook into a tablet computer that lets you draw and write directly on the screen.
Called Modservice, for prices starting at $1300, OWC will convert your Apple machine into an Axiotron Modbook.
MacBook owners who want to convert their computer into a Modbook can also have OWC upgrade the base features of the MacBook for additonal performance and capabilities. Available services include memory upgrades up to 4.0GB; higher capacity and/or faster internal hard drives up to 500GB; and faster DVD and CD burning with a new SuperDrive. They offer a Hard Drive Data Transfer option so your data can be backed-up and reloaded after the Modbook conversion is completed.
The Modbook has the same input/output features of the MacBook, retaining the full range of MacBook connectivity options via 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 (two ports), FireWire® 400 (one port), Bluetooth 2.0 and AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi 802.11n.
Intended for artists, mobile users, students and professionals, the Modbook uses integrated Wacom pen-enabled digitizer technology to offer users unique flexibility and control over the creative process.
It should be noted pre-modded Modbooks are also available from Axiotron, starting at $2200.
Interested in trying out a cool media center for use with your Apple TV? Cult of Mac readers are invited to receive expedited applications for testing the alpha release of Boxee, a music, video and picture management solution to let your Apple TV play practically any DRM-free multimedia file. Follow this link to receive your alpha testing invitation.
Boxee for (Intel based) Mac works on OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.5 (Leopard). Boxee for Linux is supported on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) or 8.04 (Hardy Heron) x86 (not x86_64) operating systems. The Boxee patch works with the 2.2 update to Apple TV, but remember to install the update before you install the Boxee patch.
Detailed instructions for installing the Boxee patch after the jump.
Everybody say: “Ohhhhh.”
It’s tiny. It runs Leopard 10.5.2. 80GB. 1GB. 1.6GHz Atom. Niiiiice.
This little MacBook Mini is just what many, many people have been hoping for (myself included).
Shame it’s not real.
This guy was photographed by Flickr user Rodrigo Galindez in a Berlin coffee shop.
On close inspection, it looks like he’s glued some kind of laminate on to the lid of his MacBook Pro, and made a good job of neatening the edges and the corners. He gets extra points for marrying the wood effect with the sleek metal of the computer and the horizontal stripes of the classic Apple logo, and with a purple jacket. Fantastic.
Mysterious Berlin Mac user: who are you? Do you have any other decorated computers?
(Photo used under Creative Commons license. Thanks to Rodrigo.)
Apple has filed a patent application detailing a method of “pairing a sensor and an authorised garment”, such as “running shoes, shirts or slacks” in hopes of deterring what the company has determined is a disturbing trend toward people “[taking] it upon themselves to remove the sensor from the special pocket of the [iPod-linked] Nike+ shoe and place it at inappropriate locations (shoelaces, for example) or place it on non-Nike+ model shoes.”
Apple sells the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit as a tool for storing data about your workout on your iPod, allowing you to track and analyze your progress toward fitness perfection. As one commenter on Slashdot said about the $30 sensor, “you can also share your workout stats with others, help build community, etc – sort of the antithesis of the “isolated runner with headphones on” kind of thing. Very Web 2.0.”
Under the patent Apple has applied for, companies like Nike could authorise their garments by burying an RFID chip inside it, requiring that chip to activate the sensor. No longer would you be able to use the sensor you paid for with any shoe of your choosing.
Via Slashdot
Writer Scott Gilbertson has a very cool Mac netbook that cost him only $550.
It’s got a slick black case, weighs nothing, gets hours of battery life and runs Leopard, the latest version of Mac OS X. It’s not a MacBook Air.
It’s a hacked EeePC — a tiny liliputer , as they’re now called, fresh from Asus, a Tawainese manufacturer best known for PC motherboards.
Gilbertson’s netbook is the device Mac fans have wanted for years: A low-cost cousin to the beautiful but pricey MacBook Air.
It runs like a champ but has a couple of quirks (one big one) and may not be strictly legal, though Apple’s never going to prosecute unless these machines are sold commercially. Hit the jump for details.
Via Flickr
Flickr user Danial Forsythe has taken matters into his own hands and found a way to manually refocus the iPhone’s camera. Long derided as a deficient feature of Apple’s popular handset, the iPhone camera’s default focal length is set to infinity, which makes for less-than-stellar close up shots. Forsythe has posted instructions detailing a way to open up the case, get the screen out of the way, flip the camera up, break the glue, adjust the lens, and plug the screen back in to check the focus.
If that sounds like more getting “under the hood” than you might be comfortable with, third party lenses and filters do exist to help you try and get more out of your iPhone’s camera.
Via Ars Technica
In what can only be considered a turn of logic from an alternative “evil twin” universe, Hackintosh maker Psystar answered Apple’s cease and desist lawsuit of July 3th with their own alleging restraint of trade and antitrust violations.
via Computerworld
// Opinion Follows //
It’s been long anticipated that Psystar would play the “Antitrust Card” in defense of its illegal activities. The only thing is, it’s not illegal to have a monopoly. The key predicate to an antitrust suit is that the consumer must in some way be harmed by the monopolistic behavior of the defendant. Rudy Pedraza, Psystar’s president summed up their consumer harm argument by saying: “It’s not that people don’t want to use Mac OS X, but they’re not open spending an exorbitant amount of money for something that’s essentially generic hardware.”
So that’s it, ‘the Apple’s hardware is too expensive’ argument we’ve heard time and time again, and have time and time again refuted. On a direct feature for feature comparison with Sony, HP or IBM, Apple hardware is no more expensive than the competition.
Our industry is FULL of monopolies that no one seems to disagree with, examples follow:
While I can understand that free spirited hackers take unbrage at being locked out, there is nothing inherently wrong or illegal with Apple’s strategy of controlling the whole widget. Monopoly “sounds” bad on it’s own, but in Apple’s case they’re not abusing their power.
Apple makes products people just can’t keep from trying to make better. Whether these “mods” actually improve the inventions coming out of Cupertino is a matter of some debate, but the latest one for iPhone makes the Apple logo on the back glow like it does on a Macbook. If you speak or read Russian you can learn more at gPda.ru.
Via Sizlopedia
Photo via iFixit
The iFixit guys did what they said they would do and are up with first-look photos and analysis of their dissection of the iPhone they bought this morning in Auckland, NZ. They report the only other American outfit there with them was a team from Engadget.
The photos posted on the iFixit page link to hi-res images for a better look inside the new phone. Some good news is the iPhone battery, while secreted away beneath a sealed case, is not soldered-on inside, which should reduce the cost of replacing one after it withers from surfing the web at 3G speeds.
Update: reader Michael Pantoja shares his experience with aTV Flash in the comments, worth a read.
The AppleTV is great for playing video from iTunes, but can’t play video from alternative sources like file-sharing networks. Now, a software update from Apple Core, called aTV Flash promises to unlock tons of great functionality for the Apple TV.
aTV Flash is essentially a bundling of open source hacks for AppleTV originally published at awkwardtv.org into a convenient flash based package that promises to take the guesswork out of applying the updates. aTV ships as a flash drive, that automatically updates your AppleTV as soon as it’s plugged in. The package claims a plug-n-play installation with 1 year of free updates.
Features include:
– Play most video formats (DivX, Xvid, AVI, WMV, RMVB + more)
– Play DVD files WITHOUT converting them
– Sync, organize and watch non-iTunes video files
– Browse the web with a Safari based web browser
– Rent & watch Hi-Def movies from Jaman.com
– Stream media from UPnP(v1) media servers
– View local weather forecasts
– View RSS Feeds
– Enable SSH access
As well as supporting just about all popular CODECs, the $60.00 flash update could greatly enhance your AppleTV experience.
Caveat
Applecore’s website asserts that when applying these patches you’re not voiding your warranty, that said you are hacking the OS of your AppleTV, and preventing it from updating itself in the future. While we researched the manual patching process at awkwardtv.org and it does seem to be reversible we do believe that one should enter into such endeavors eye’s wide open.
Filed under pure, wild speculation”¦
Many Mac Pro’s since Leopard are experiencing interment signal drops with their Airport Extreme wireless cards. This issue was first brought to my attention only after I lugged my seventy-pound monster three blocks and hoisted it up on the counter of the Genius Bar.
“It’s a known issue with Leopard,” I was apprised and sent on my way, boat anchor in tow.
Not being content with a computer that’s price compatible with a mid-tier Hyundai, and similarly incapable of navigating the Internet with any reliability, I decided to dig into this a little bit deeper, what follows are my observations only.
#1. The problem seems to be especially active when Bittorrent clients are running.
With a BT client running I’m experiencing a drop at least every 15 minutes or so. I have segregated networks (a G only network, and a N only (5mhz) network) both are Airport networks. My Mac Pro and Macbook pro are the only two computers on the N network. When the Mac Pro drops connection the Macbook Pro does not.
The engineering answer to the problem of signal drop with a BT client active is that we’re pushing bits so hard and fast the silicon might be over heating, which causes signal loss on at the computer. I could believe this except:
#2. The problem doesn’t seem as active (with a BT client running) when the Network Preferences dialog is open.
Now this I discovered purely by accident. But If I leave my network preferences pane open (not minimized) on my second monitor, my signal doesn’t drop hardly at all. I have noticed a signal drop, but it is VERY infrequent. This suggests the problem lay in code, not in hardware.
Evil Speculation: Is there some connection intentional or otherwise between dropping wireless connections and the use of BT clients? Correlation does not equal causation but I have to wonder particularly in light of:
#3 I don’t seem to loose signal when we’re not running a Bittorrent Client.
I can’t go so far as to say that the signal drop problem doesn’t occur at all when my bittorrent client isn’t running, but after several days not running a BT client, I’ve yet to observe a signal drop. I also took steps to push bits as hard and fast as I could, downloading Linux distributions over HTTP, uploading thousands of photos over FTP. The signal seemed to stay rock solid.
So I’m back to Evil Speculation again: Is there something in code that is causing these drops to happen (at all or at least more frequently) when running Bittorrent clients?
I’d like to ask our fellow Cultists to run their own experiments. If you’re not having dropping problems fire up a bittorrent client (the problem happens with either BitRocket or Transmission) and download and seed a legal torrent (can I suggest Leander’s book?) and see if it starts happening. If you are experiencing the dropping problem: are you running a BT client in the background, does it go away when you stop?
If there are any bit-jockeys out there who can trace the actual code in memory, can we find a real connection, or is this just paranoid speculation?
As if we needed another piece of evidence that the MacBook Air is the ultimate lust object of the style-conscious intelligentsia, consider this: Charlie Rose, the PBS talk show host known for his deep, probing and often ponderous conversations with celebrities and authors, appeared on his show the other night with a bandage on his eye that he earned diving to the pavement headfirst to protect his Air. Sooner his face – a TV host’s most important asset – than his computer.
I stand corrected. Without any question, Apple has completely reframed the value of a computer. It’s worth more than a career on PBS.
Via GadgetLab
You want to know what’s 800 times as expensive as a 1GB iPod shuffle and twice as ugly? That would be the iDiamond shuffle, an absurdly encrusted former Apple product coated in white and pink gold and dozens of diamonds. See that ear bud? It still doesn’t sound any good. But hey, only $40,000!
