Macintosh - page 6

For all of its public perception as a great censoring overlord, the Chinese government leaves plenty of wiggle room for computer manufacturers, including Apple, to avoid complying with recently mandated strict Internet filtering requirements.

While foreign and domestic makers of computers running Windows will eventually have to ship their machines with controversial Green Dam Youth Escort software, other machines running Mac OS X or Linux, for example, will be exempt from the mandate, according to a report at Yahoo Tech.

An Apple sales representative in Beijing indicated Green Dam is not being bundled with Macs sold at the Apple Store there because the software, which blocks pornography and “sensitive” political content, is not compatible with the Mac’s operating system.

In addition, a Lenovo spokesperson confirmed its computers running Linux are also being shipped without Green Dam and said the Ministry of Industry and Information and Technology is not requiring non-Windows machines to come with the program.

A source connected with Green Dam developers said they are testing the software on non-Windows platforms but did not indicate when or if an OS X compatible update might be released.

Welcome to Macintosh, the feature length documentary that explores the many ways Apple, Inc. has changed the world, jumped from the international, independent film festival circuit to pay-per-view cable TV Wednesday.

The film, which relies on notable personalities associated in one way or another with Apple, such as Andy Hertzfeld, co-creator of the original Macintosh, and long-time Mac evangelist Guy Kawasaki, tells the inside story of what makes Apple different and will now be available to over 20 million subscribers to the Comcast cable network in both the Pay-Per-View section and the “Movie” section of Comcast’s On Demand service.

“The goal was to make a film that you can show to anyone, even someone that has never used a computer, and have them understand why so many people love Macintosh,” says Josh Rizzo, Co-Director. “Availability to all US Comcast customers goes a long way toward completing that goal.”

If you’ve seen it, you know Welcome to Macintosh is really a love song to Apple and though the film is in no way authorized, sponsored or otherwise approved by the company, it’s a good bet there will be cheering in Cupertino once the ancillary sales begin to roll in from people who come to Apple through having seen the film.

Queensland University of Technology, one of the largest universities in Australia, has published health and safety concerns about Apple Macintosh glass or high gloss monitor screens, and recommends students and school employees “consider the purchase of other types of monitors which are not high gloss.”

Because reflections on the screens “could cause the operator to adopt awkward postures when viewing the monitor screen and using related equipment,” which awkward poatures “may in turn lead to an injury,” health and safety officials at the university have come out against the controversial Apple products and published detailed computer safety guidelines for members of the university community.

Howls of protest among many users accompanied Apple’s decision to discontinue matte screen options for its monitor products in 2007, largely from professional photographers and other users who process graphic images in their work, despite some who believe the glossy surface produces more saturated colours, deeper contrast, and sharper images than traditional matte displays.

Asked what might have spurred the university to publish an official position in the matter, Cult of Mac contacts in Australia pointed out that Australian employers must provide workers’ compensation for injuries sustained in the workplace under strict government regulations, and speculated that “the university is playing it safe, so that it can never be said that it did not advise against the use of gloss screens.”

Gives a whole new meaning to “protect and defend,” doesn’t it?

[MacMatte]

The “sealed” battery in Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Pro is easily replaced with standard screwdrivers, a teardown by iFixit shows.

The MacBook battery is not supposed to be changed by the user. Sealed inside the case, Apple encourages customers to pay Apple $130 to change the battery and dispose of the old one.

However, the battery is easily accessed with a standard Phillips screwdriver, and the battery removed with a tri-wing screwdriver, iFixit found when dissassmbling the device on Tuesday.

In addition, iFixit notes that the single audio jack (see post below) is innapropriate for a “Pro” machine. The jack supports analog and digital audio-out, and analog audio-in, but not digital audio-in.

“If you need digital audio-in, this is not the machine for you.” said iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens in an email.

Wiens also said the MBP’s new SD card slot is “rather unimaginative.”

“Half the card hangs outside the computer,” said Wiens. “Apparently, Apple couldn’t free up enough space for a slot that would make the card completely captive.”

Wiens notes the battery is beefier (360 grams, about 60 grams heavier than the old one), but is rated 60 Watt-hours, compared to the older battery’s 45 W-h. Apple claims the battery will last for 7 hours. The previous MacBook’s battery was rated 5 hours (yeah, right!)

More details and pictures from iFixit after the jump.

UPDATE: The security lock on this device does not block the SuperDrive. See our review

Eagle-eyed reader Ronald Kang thinks the new 13-inch MacBook Pro may have some design problems.

Poring over pictures of the machine on Apple’s website, Kang is worried about two things: the Kensington Security Slot blocking the Superdrive; and the single audio I/O jack, which makes the machine unsuitable for “Pro” audio recording.

The latest developer build of Snow Leopard and the iPhone 3.0 OS software (which aqllows tethering) are available on the Bittorrent file-sharing network.

Programmers at WWDC got the latest version of Snow Leopard on a DVD, but now the same build (10a380) is available on Bittorrent. The build is 5.84GB and will require a dual layer DVD burner to install. Apple said on Monday the developer build of Snow Leopard is “near complete,” but will likely see extensive changes between now and September, when it will be officially released.

Likewise, the final version of the iPhone 3.0 OS — which will be available officially next week on June 17 — can be downloaded from the file-sharing networks. And for some inexplicable reason, the software supports tethering.

The 3.0 software can be easily installed via iTunes onto an iPhone or iPod touch. However, users have to download the correct version of the software for their device. That is, the firmware for the original iPhone will not work on the iPhone 3G. The 9to5 website says the software may make it harder to unlock the phone’s SIM. In the comments, the site’s readers report no major problems installing or running the software.

“It works fine,” said one commenter. “You can upgrade your current 2.0 firmware in iTunes and not lose any data – all my apps still work perfectly and the phone has been running fine all day (installed last night), snappier than before even. seem to be losing the cool ‘fade’ action you get when quitting an app a lot of the time though.”

Previous developer builds of the 3.0 software have been available on Bittorrent for some time, but installing it required registering the device’s ID through a developer’s account. The latest OS build however does not require device registration, and is said to the same software that will be officially available next week.

NOTE: Only a desperate freak installs dodgy software off the internet onto their cell phone just a week before getting it officially, and for free. Proceed at your own risk.

CrossLoop, the Monterey, CA-based developer of a popular screen-sharing application for PCs announced this month a version compatible with Intel Macs, extending the company’s innovative on-line technical support model to the Apple community.

Having racked up over 100 million minutes of tech-support served by nearly 5 million downloads of its PC client since 2006, CrossLoop is now seriously targeting the universe of Mac users and even pitching the product as a perfect vehicle for helping PC users switch to Mac.

While a great percentage of the peer-to-peer help sessions done with CrossLoop are free (downloading the software is free and there is no charge for users to share their computer screen with other CrossLoop members), the company’s platform supports a community of nearly 15,000 registered “helpers” whose freelance technical support can be had using the service for between $50 – $60 per hour.

CrossLoop competes in a field with larger (Citrix) and better known (Geek Squad) names, but is currently logging a quarter million screen-sharing minutes a day and looks to be in the game for the long haul. If you are looking to help a friend remotely with a software install or considering freelancing your tech support skills on the side, CrossLoop could be well worth a look.

Photo: Alf Ove Hansen/Dagbladet.no

Nerdy Norwegian Petter Roisland helped police find a fugitive drug dealer, thanks to his stolen MacBook.

Roisland, a 23-year-old who lives near the southern Norwegian town of Stavanger, lost a computer in a burglary last year.

Determined not to get ripped off twice, Roisland installed Orbicle’s Undercover recovery software on two MacBooks he bought as replacement machines. And then in February, they too were stolen.

Chart: Silicon Alley Insider.

UPDATED: YouGov sent a little more info about the survey’s other metrics — posted after the jump. Basically, Apple still leads on quality and reputation, but MS has caught on value, satisfaction and willingness to recommend.

Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunters” ad campaign is hurting Apple, according to a new consmer survey by YouGov BrandIndex.

Redmond’s new ads portray consumers rejecting Apple’s laptops as too expensive. Though clearly a defensive reaction to Apple’s successful “Get a Mac” ads, they are nonetheless reinforcing the stereotype of the “Apple tax,” says YouGov.

“With the Laptop Hunters campaign, Microsoft is making an impact on the perceived value score in the mind of consumers, particularly young consumers,”  Ted Marzilli, global managing director of BrandIndex, said on Tuesday afternoon when I phoned him up.

YouGov is an international market research firm based out of London. Its BrandIndex survey queried about 5,000 people online from a pool of about 1.5 million, Marzilli said. It claims to be representative of the U.S. adult population.

Its latest survey shows a clear uptick in Microsoft’s “value,” and a clear downtick in Apple’s. The change coincides with Microsoft’s high-profile campaign.

Image from GameSpot.

This isn’t official yet, but look out — sales of Apple’s iPod business might have dropped in April compared to last year. If true and an indication of performance for May and June, that’s the first time that’s ever happened — iPod revenue has gone up year over year every single quarter since Apple launched the 1G in October 2001. According to the NPD Group, Apple will sell between 9.5 and 10.5 million iPods this year, between 5 and 14 percent of last year’s mark.

Now, this doesn’t include iPhone revenue, which is almost guaranteed to keep delivering huge profits and revenue growth for years to come (dividing the money from each iPhone sold across 24 months will tend to yield more reliable numbers than lump sum payments). But it does show that even Apple isn’t immune to the current downturn — and the iPod business might be in for somewhat lean times until we get to back-to-school promotions and the holiday season. When money’s short, the urge to upgrade fades away, especially when the new killer features of the last year are Shake-to-Shuffle, built-in NikePlus support, and a buttonless shuffle. Still, who knows — people constantly expect iPod sales to collapse, and it’s never happened yet.

In better news, Mac sales are solid and down less than most consensus estimates. In spite of Microsoft’s best efforts. People are loving the Mac. Using a late 2008 MacBook, I’m not surprised. This is the best line-up of computers that Apple has ever had. Not a weak spot in the family.

Via BusinessWeek

YouTube user LeopardOctober has posted videos, screenshots and information about Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on YouTube since mid-March or so, and in the last few days has put up some interesting clips of a few things we can expect to see when the new OS debuts June 8 at WWDC.

The first video above shows that users will be able to set the default behavior of Spotlight so that performing a search can ‘search this Mac’, search the current folder or use the previous search scope.

In the video below, we see users can assign an application to a space or all spaces, quickly from within the Dock.

LeopardOctober has several additional clips on the YouTube channel with embedding disabled, so you’ll need to head over there to check ’em out.

The videos posted are from fairly late builds of the Beta (10A261 and 10A286), which has reportedly been ‘frozen’ at 10A354 for the final release software.

[Thanks Rafael!]

The Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update is one of the biggest Apple has ever released — but there appears to be no major new features, just a bunch of bug and security fixes.

It looks like Apple is putting the finishing touches to OS 10.5 before releasing Snow Leopard in the fall, which will have major code changes under the hood.

The Mac OS X 10.5.7 delta update, which updates 10.5.6 to 10.5.7, weighs in at 442MB; while the combo update, which transforms any version of 10.5 into 10.5.7, is a whopping 729MB.

According to an Apple support document, the update fixes bugs and security issues in the core OS, iCal, Mail and printer controls. Possibly the biggest change is adding RAW support for several new cameras, and improved video playback on recent Macs with Nvidia graphics cards.

But according to Macworld Rob Griffiths, who examined installer log files, the update tweaks a long list of applications, from Address Book to Terminal.

“What’s most surprising about the number of modified applications is that very few of those are mentioned on Apple’s 10.5.7 notes page–only Dashboard, Time Machine, iCal and Mail are directly called out, but none of the rest,” writes Griffiths. “(The log) reveals a total of 16,915 changed files on my MacBook Pro. Despite that, things seem to be running very smoothly here after the update.”

Kyle Buckner is a very talented fellow and his primary muse is Apple.

We’ve featured some of Buckner’s work before and he’s also got a spread in the June issue of Mac|Life magazine. He may well be one of the hottest Apple-inspired artists in the US right now.

Buckner sent us photos of his most recent school project, in which he was tasked to create a “Bookart”. Apple obsessed as he is, he was inspired to create a scale model of a MacBook.

Buckner constructed the casing out of wood, routering all the corners and then priming, sanding and painting the pieces white. The hinge system replicates the real Mac’s and is fully constructed out of hand cut MDF wood.

After he painted the pieces, he used a pencil to add the fine details. He drew the screen and full keyboard and penciled in every tiny phillips head screw at its location.

His piece is 3/4 the size of an original MacBook.

We apologize to anyone who got too excited by our earlier post teasing that this might be Apple’s new netbook. It’s a Monday night. It’s not football season.

Does anybody remember laughter?

What do you get when you combine the Cult of Mac with the Cult of LEGO?

You could do worse than Bjarne Tveskov, who took the happenstance of a 7″ photoframe that looks quite like the screen from his favorite iMac G4 and decided to create a mini-version of it using LEGO elements.

The model lacks actual computer hardware but the screen can display videos, images and TV (there’s a digital TV tuner built in to the photoframe).

More images at Tveskov’s blog.

[Boing Boing]

Wasn’t it great to see Apple roll out a huge number and variety of new Macs and accessories on Tuesday without the benefit of Steve Jobs? The company’s culture and talent run deep, and Apple is in very capable hands with Tim Cook in charge. The new line-up is quite nice.

On the other hand, Tuesday’s announcements summed up and put the spotlight on the single-greatest opportunity that Apple isn’t capitalizing on right now: making the Mac mini the must-have living room computer of the century. WIth just a few small tweaks, the Mac mini would become the killer digital entertainment product the AppleTV aspires to be. No BluRay. No HDMI. Under-sized hard drive. No plans to offer monthly subscriptions for access to the video library. If the company took care of this stuff, hardware makers and content providers alike would be quaking in their boots at the thought of the Mac mini. But Apple left it out yesterday. Again.

To see why the company can’t see an opportunity that’s right in front of its face, click through.

Apple made a huge detail about the non-removable battery it created for the 17″ Unibody MacBook Pro. By going with a sealed design, the company argued, it would be possible to make a much-higher capacity battery. Well, the guys over at iFixit have had their way with one of the new models, and it’s pretty clear the battery isn’t THAT hard to remove. It actually surprises me how much it looks like the interior of my existing MacBook, giant fans excepted.

Definitely check out the full slideshow — it’s good stuff. Anyone picked up a 17-incher yet? What do you think?Check out a couple more shots from iFixit’s meticulous disassembly operation after the jump.

Here’s an iPhone concept sent in by an anonymous Cult reader overnight. Looks pretty fly to me, but then I’m still on a PowerBook G4 and an original iPhone.

What say you, dear reader?

Ecamm’s Call Recorder plug-in for Skype is an easy-to-install, easy-to-use solution for enabling voice and video call recording in Skype, well worth the $15 cost – a highly recommended plug-in for anyone with a Mac who wants to keep records of their Skype voice and video calling history.

I ran into a situation over the weekend where I had scheduled what I knew would be a long interview, something I wanted to be able to refer to later this week when I’m writing up a profile of my subject for a project I’m working on.

The thought of once again trying to cobble something together using a cassette recorder with my iPhone on speaker had finally become too much to bear: how many times in the past had a conversation been too garbled to interpret, or had I forgot to press the record button until several minutes into the conversation? Once I even did an entire interview having forgotten to put batteries in the cassette recorder, and had to face the ignominy of asking my interview subject to let me re-conduct our whole conversation the next day.

Of course, the simplest thing might be for Apple to enable (or at least approve) a comprehensive recording mechanism for iPhone calls, but since that’s not the case at present – and may or may not be grist for another post – I decided to use Skype for our call once I found Call Recorder and installed it.

Ecamm’s Call Recorder has been around for a while, but gets it right with this lightweight (2.3 MB) plug-in that installs in minutes and runs automatically within Skype – with the advantage of being highly configurable and supporting fully manual operation as well. The current version 2.3.4 also handles recording and archiving of video calls, though I’ve not yet personally done one of those.

Both sides of a voice call are recorded to separate tracks in a QuickTime movie, which can be easily converted to MP3 format and then emailed or posted to a website. Call Recorder can handle completely uncompressed recording for highest fidelity, or compress recordings at a 2:1 ratio or using AAC encoding. Video encoding can be done as JPEG, MPEG-4 or H.264.

For any journalist, podcaster, online instructor, even for business people looking to ensure accountability and corporate audit trails, Call Recorder adds easy, indispensable value to Skype on the Mac.

Independent Mac repair shops all over the world are rejoicing this week, after Apple’s announcment the company will phase out repair support for certain G4 machines, xserve products and other “vintage” and “obsolete” gear.

After March 17th, Apple will no longer provide service parts or documentation for the products listed after the jump, and the items will not be accepted as Mail-In Repairs to AppleCare Repair Centers.

It’s mighty kind of Apple to support the Apple repair ecosystem this way, and yet gives incentive to the consumer to buy new gear at the same time.

Sheer brilliance.

Via AppleInsider, via MacMerc

Cult reader James moves to the head of the pack in the incredible contest to see how many apps can be running on your Mac and displayed on your desktop in all their juicy, chaotic goodness by Exposé.

James’ machine is Mac Pro 8 core, with 10GB RAM, 30″ NEC 3090 monitor, and 2 1TB Samsung drives raided together. He has a lot of high end apps running, including all of Final Cut Studio, all of Adobe Creative Suite CS 3 Design Premium, all of Office 2008, all of iWork 08, Google Earth, Windows XP and Crunch Bang Linux in virtual box , Sling Player, Filemaker xcode and mmaannyyy more.

“I got to the point where it started giving an error code and would not launch any more apps,” he told us. “When I tried to screen shot it refused, so I had to quit an app before I could make a screen shot.”

Click on the image to see the original size and find he’s also got Open Office, Think Free Office, Eclipse IDE, a 22 mega pixel image from a Canon 5K Mark II (the ship), Proxi, Sketch Up, Sketch Book education, Skype, Gizmo, Gridiron Flow beta, eBay desktop, Acquisition, Adium, Firefox, Safari, iPhone Simulator…

He thinks there are about 240 apps running in all, but says, “I reckon the Pro could take another 100 if the OS would allow it — maybe snow leopard.”

Follow afer the jump for screen shots of James’ Activity Monitor.

This is why we use Macs. Well, it’s one reason, anyway.

There’s always a lot of talk in the blogosphere how one day Macs will no longer be impervious to computer viruses and malware, but every time there’s a real-world example of a computer network going down due to some kind of security issue or DOS attack, it seems PCs are the machines that get hit and Macs are the machines that keep going and going.

A computer virus hit the Vancouver school district on January 7, forcing 10,000 PCs off-line so district IT staff could wipe them clean, an arduous undertaking that, three weeks later, remains unfinished.

An online student forum by Point Grey secondary students identified the virus as Win32.Krap.b trojan, a bug that affects mostly Windows operating systems, shutting down computers as soon as users try to start them. Vancouver School Board spokesman David Weir said each of the district’s Windows machines were shut down, taken off the network and are being individually scanned and repaired as necessary. The project has caused major disruption throughout the school system, and frustration among teachers and students alike.

The report in the Vancouver Sun describing the situation noted that a Macintosh computer lab funded by the Parents Advisory Group at one school in the district was unaffected by the problem. Smart parents of the kids at that school.

Via Edible Apple

In the last of our stories from owners of original and classic era Macs, we talk to Nigel Curson. His Mac Plus has seen action as a desktop publishing workhorse, early internet client, and now toy for kids. And it’s still going strong.

The BBC’s coverage of the Mac’s 25th has in some cases left something to be desired, the nadir being a bizarre video showing a Microsoft employee battling with an original Mac and comparing it against her Windows laptop. Ex-Macworld UK head honcho Simon Jary rightly pulled said video apart on his PC Advisor blog, although he didn’t note how, amusingly, the Mac boots much faster than the PC, despite MSN tech editor Jane Douglas cunningly refraining from giving the Mac its system disk until the PC’s been whirring away for a good few seconds.

Presumably wanting to avoid the same level of oddness, BBC Radio Five Live’s Pods and Blogs scoured the internet, looking for a Mac expert to chat to. Failing that, they ended up with me (Oho! You self-deprecating Brit, you!–Ed.), and I spent a happy 20 minutes talking to the extremely personable Jamillah Knowles about all things Mac.

As is always the case, the interview itself was knifed somewhat (due to it being nearly as long as the entire podcast was supposed to be), but there’s still a reasonable chunk left. Importantly, the Mac doesn’t come off looking too bad, although I do wonder what Jamillah’s co-presenter is going on about regarding how rubbish Macs used to be for getting online. (I’ve never had such a problem.)

Anyway, the podcast is at https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/pods/, and the Mac bit’s at the 14-minute mark.

Bruce Fox has been a Mac user since 1988. He got in touch with the Cult to tell the story behind his beloved Mac Classic.

Japanese photographer Isamu Sanada is no stranger to the enticing realm of Apple mockups, and the whole netbook idea just refuses to die, so it should come as no suprise to see this one, a kind of interesting tri-fold take on the idea.

What do you think? Should Apple spend bandwidth going in such a direction, or is the iPhone/iPod Touch really the end of the story when it comes to an Apple netbook?

Given a recent assessment by pro photographer Rob Galbraith that puts Apple’s MacBook Pro display behind the Lenovo Think Pad and the Dell Mini 9 in color accuracy, Apple may want to take a closer look at what’s already in the line-up before going for new product dollars.

Formerly very appreciative of Apple’s display properties from the perspective of a demanding visual artist, Galbraith says of the new high-end Apple laptop, “in ambient light environments which induce screen reflections, the late-2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch’s glossy screen moves deep into the not acceptable category.”

Via DVICE