Sep 19, 2007 Sep 21, 2007 Thursday September 20, 2007
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Overflow 2.5 now with Dock icon hiding, auto pop-up and more
Stunt Software has released Overflow 2.5. The update brings with it the ability to hide Overflow's Dock icon, further clearing your Dock of clutter. Other new features are listed for you below the fold. Overflow is a launcher app designed to help unclutter your Dock but still allow you easy access to frequently needed applications and documents. The 2.5 update is free for all paid Overflow customers. New customers can purchase Overflow for USD$14.95.
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DockStar adds Mac OS X 10.5 compatibility
DockStar is an add-on for Mail.app that I use to add extra "new mail" indicators to Mail.app's Dock icon. I found that if I used rules to organize incoming email into appropriate folders, I often overlooked the new email entirely. I guess I'm just so trained to focus on the InBox that even the numerical indicators on those other folders didn't draw my attention. DockStar solved this problem for me as I was able to assign an addition "new mail" indicator on Mail Dock icon for up to 5 folders. Now the very icon that alerts me to new mail tells me where I need to look for it. Among other fixes and enhancements, version 2.0.3 of DockStar fixes an issue where a sound notification was played more than once and adds compatibility with Mac OS X 10.5. ecamm's DockStar sells for USD$9.95
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Comic Life 1.3.4 plays nice with iPhoto
plasq has posted an update to Comic Life today that allows the user-generated comic book creating application to, once again, interact properly with iPhoto. With the update applied, Comic Life will correctly display iPhoto '08 libraries and you might also see improvements in Comic Life's stability...usually a good thing. The 1.3.4 update is free for registered users. If you'd like to purchase Comic Life, you may do so for USD$24.95 by buying online. Comic Life is also available at various retail outlets.
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Where did the iPod and iTunes come from?
Matt asked a good question a few posts back. I made the comment that the iPod and iTunes were never expected, or designed, to be what they are - a huge success that catapulted Apple to the leader in consumer electronics and music. In fact, the story there is the iPod was "invented" by a new hire from another company first and then shown to senior management. iTunes was actually SoundJam, acquired from Casady & Greene (along with programmer and now iTunes stud Jeffrey Robins). Putting them together was a means to an end: make it doggy ducky simple to get music into your pocket. There was no plan at that time to dominate music or provide online music or video downloads. No concept of Apple TV or video iPods. When you look at it now you must think those were always in the cards. But try to imagine someone drawing that out on a whiteboard in Cupertino in 1998...no way. Funny thing is, the iPod was arguably the first computing device to require another (a Mac with FireWire) to use. Yet in spite of that hurdle, and initially being Mac-only (original intent, and the current intent of all the other iLife apps was sell more Macs), the power of having ALL your music with you ALL the time changed people's habits. This is not marketing driven or market driven innovation. This is what I call Eureka Marketing - once you tried someone else's iPod you knew you wanted one - an "a ha" moment that all at once feels natural and like it was always waiting for you right under the surface. It is like finding gold - one taste and you are hooked. Chapter One in my free eBook says it all. iPod user...imagine going back to a CD player that played only 12 songs and hung on a rope around your neck when you went jogging. Hard, huh?
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Backup.app is for backing up files in your Home folder only
With Leopard's release imminent, and Time Machine coming with it, this AppleCare Support Document titled ".Mac: Backup intended for backing up files in your Home folder, but not your entire startup disk" seems to cast doubt on the abilities of Apple's current backup solution: Backup.app. The document covers activities for which Backup.app is and isn't intended. The "is intended" list includes the stuff in your home folder or some external (non-bootable) drive. In the "not intended" column you'll find your entire Startup Disk and files in someone else's Home folder. Will Time Machine cover more that Backup.app? It is highly unlikely (read "impossible") that Time Machine will create bootable backups. It is also unlikely that Time Machine's backup strategy will extend much further beyond the lines of "your stuff." So what do you do if you do want a bootable backup of your entire startup drive? That's easy... and rather inexpensive too. Check out this article.
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Walt Mossberg’s iPod Touch Review
Complains about battery life — it’s not bad, but it wasn’t as good as what Apple claims — and gets confirmation from Apple that the display problems reported by many Touch owners are, in fact, a hardware problem affecting some units. (Mossberg reports that the displays on his two demo units both look great.) ★
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Intel demos iPhone-like MID of the future
Filed under: Handhelds Intel just keeps banging out the hits from IDF. After the handful of McCaslin "next-quarter" and "coming-soon" UMPCs we saw from the chipmaker (and associates), Intel started busting out prototypes from its forthcoming Menlow chipset, using smaller, 45nm Silverthorne CPUs, and the 2009/2010 offering Moorestown... which is the bad-boy you're looking at in these photos is based on. In a rather obvious homage to the iPhone, the chip-kingpin presented this do-anything, go-anywhere MID (provided you can cram this French-bread-sized device into a pocket). The device will feature a 45nm CPU as well, plus all kinds of goodies like integrated WiFi and WiMAX, and apparently 24 hours of battery life on a single charge. Obviously, this product will probably never see the light of day (at least not in this form factor), but then again -- you never really know. Check a few more photos after the break.Read -- Intel shows concept iPhone running on Moorestown platformRead -- Intel's iPhone clone, we're not jokingRead -- Intel Details Next Generation "Menlow" MID, UMPC PlatformContinue reading Intel demos iPhone-like MID of the future Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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MacJournals: On Ringtones and Copyrights
MDJ’s scrupulously detailed look at the intersection of ringtones and copyright law. Part of the argument here is that making a ringtone necessitates making an additional copy of the song file, whether it’s truncated or not. That’s just a matter of implementation, though — Apple could easily allow the iPhone’s phone app to play the same song files in your regular music library. Also, this is interesting: You can peek behind the curtain just a little bit by looking at the FAQ page from TuneCore, a company that takes a flat fee for putting digital music to which you own the copyright onto online stores such as the iTunes Store, Napster, eMusic, Rhapsody, MusicNet, GroupieTunes, and others, both in the United States and internationally. TuneCore swears up, down, and sideways that it does not keep even the tiniest percentage of the royalties from any online store, instead taking a flat fee per year and per album to get your tunes listed. As part of this, TuneCore discloses the royalty rates paid to artists on the various systems. ★
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Macworld 2008 registration now open
Filed under: MacworldMacworld Conference & Expo is the social event of the Mac season. Once a year Mac geeks gather to bask in the glow of new products, learn some cool stuff, and meet Mac notables and fellow Mac users. I've been to my fair share of Macworlds, and it is always a good time.That's why I am happy to report that registration for Macworld 2008, happening in San Francisco January 14 through the 19th, 2008, is open. If you register before October 5th you can get a free Exhibit pass (using Priority Code: 08-E-VF01) or special rates for the higher end passes (which allow you into the various classes and labs offered at the Conference).TUAW will be on the ground, running around blogging, interviewing folks, and shooting some cool videos (well, at least we hope they will be cool). Hope to see you there.Update: Left off the last digit of the code.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Playlist Reviews the iPod Touch
Christopher Breen: “Among my list of concerns only one is a deal-killer—the quality of the video.” ★
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BBC Prints Irresponsible Rubbish on Apple
Daniel Eran Dilger The BBC has joined the London tabloid press in printing a series of articles skewering Apple over invented suppositions based entirely upon misinformed speculation and some outright lies. The worst part is that the BBC is being grossly hypocritical in its misinformation campaign against Apple, because the company is up to its eyeballs in the Microsoft-encrusted scandal surrounding its proprietary, Windows-only iPlayer imbroglio. (more…)
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UK Tabloids Pick Up Zoon Awards for Technical Incompetence
Daniel Eran Dilger It's not just the American media that is desperate to publish misleading or downright false information in attempts to prevent the erosion of existing barriers to innovation. The release of the iPhone in the UK touched off a flurry of snide reporting worthy of being Zooned. (more…)
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Knibble Brings “Casual Games� to the iPhone
For those who have not caught the NES iPhone bug or the various other third-party games that you can download onto your hacked iPhone, there is now a solution: Knibble. “Apple iPhone has seen great success and we are very pleased to…
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Backstage: iHC5 Really, Really Wants to Be Your iPhone's Friend
It is painfully, completely obvious that iHome's new iHC5 ($150) wanted to be your iPhone's best friend. It dresses sort of like the iPhone. It does things that could really help the iPhone. But the iPhone doesn't really want to play with the iHC5, so as a result, this new Bluetooth 1.2 (with A2DP) speaker system is forced to make nice with other, less popular friends. Such is life. For those unfamiliar, iHome makes popular, widely-available…
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iPod touch: state of the jailbreak
Filed under: iPod Family, HacksGallery: GRestore The iPod touch jailbreak attempts continue but there's little progress and less to report. Martyn, one of the hackers, has disassembled his touch and has attempted to read the chips directly. This hasn't been a huge success. I have been using iPhuc's grestore mode and my digital camera's video to try to see if we can learn more about the vocabulary the touch uses to communicate with iTunes. You can view my extremely blurry pictures in the attached gallery. Does the touch indicates the future of the iPhone? The news looks bleaker by the day.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Apple fesses up to iPod touch display problems
Apple has confirmed that problems with dark colors on the iPod touch are related to faulty LCDs that some units shipped with.Read More...
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iTunes: Free Thursday
Filed under: iTS, Features, Deals Here's your Thursday iTunes update. Today brings a bunch of extra free items that weren't available this past Tuesday. You've got some great videos and the Jpaan single of the week.Continue reading iTunes: Free ThursdayRead | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Firefox Fends Off QuickTime Bug Threat
Firefox users had a recent rude awakening about a vulnerability in the way Apple's QuickTime plug-in interacts with their Web browser. Far from grumbling, however, Mozilla supporters say their patch for the vulnerability says more about Mozilla's strengths than its browser's weakness. "It seems that QuickTime media formats can hack into Firefox," wrote security investigator Petko Petkov, a post that sent Mozilla's community developers into action to come up with a solution. The bug presented risks of data theft and malware.
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STriDER: Virginia Tech's creepy, three-legged bot
Filed under: Robots Apparently, robot designers are worried that they're not creating automatons that are creepy enough, because a team of engineers at Virgina Tech have put something together that will give even the toughest of men chills. The robot in question is the three-legged STriDER (Self-excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot, not to be confused with CMU's Strider) which balances itself on two legs and then flips its body 180-degrees, bringing its third leg forward with the motion. According to project leader Dennis Hong, "STriDER's gait is closer to that of a human walking than most bipedal humanoid robots you see today," adding, "This is how we humans walk, we do not actively control our knees, we just let them swing." It does seem to be true, as the robot has an eerily life-like quality to its movements. Don't believe us? Take a look at the video after the break and see the tripod in action.Continue reading STriDER: Virginia Tech's creepy, three-legged bot Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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BBC Prints Irresponsible Rubbish on Apple
Daniel Eran DilgerThe BBC has joined the London tabloid press in printing a series of articles skewering Apple over invented suppositions based entirely upon misinformed speculation and some outright lies. The worst part is that the BBC is being grossly hypocritical in its misinformation campaign against Apple, because the company is up to its eyeballs in the Microsoft-encrusted scandal surrounding its proprietary, Windows-only iPlayer imbroglio.[UK Tabloids Pick Up Zoon Awards for Technical Incompetence]Beyond Spin: Bill Thompson Wades Through BBC Hypocrisy to Spread False Information.It's bad enough that the BBC needs to bend facts to support fear, uncertainty and doubt about the iPhone. Now consider that the BBC--as a public corporation funded by British TV license taxes--is building its web video strategy on failed, proprietary technology propped up by an internationally convicted monopolist. At the same time, its publishing a uninformed rant based on speculation and conjecture that accuses Apple of doing things that approach the gravity of its own activities.This hypocrisy slows from the words of Bill Thompson, who followed the crowd in reporting that Microsoft's failed appeal in its EU monopoly case says less about Microsoft's established, anticompetitive practices spanning the last thirty years than it does about Apple's iPod popularity over the last five. Thompson weeps for Microsoft because "its every move is examined for evidence that it might be making life difficult for its rivals," while noting that "some of its competitors seem to get a very easy ride." One might expect the BBC to make excuses for the crimes of its iPlayer partner as it giggly walks lockstep with Microsoft in using the company’s proprietary and Windows-only DRM for video distribution of its publicly funded content.[BBC's iPlayer's Prospects Looking Bleak - Slashdot]Thompson's Specious Attack on Apple."The best example of this [easy ride] is Apple," Thompson announced, because the company got so much coverage for the iPhone despite it being "closed, locked down and restricted." Actually that's not a good example at all, because Apple doesn't have a market monopoly in mobiles. Apple has also never been convicted of monopolistic behaviors in the UK, the EU, or the US because it doesn't have a monopoly and doesn’t act to stop competition the way Microsoft has. Thompson admits that the iPhone doesn't leverage monopoly control among mobiles, but says "the situation is very different" in the area of music players and music downloads. What is this very different situation?"Apple has spent much time trying to ensure that anyone who buys an iPod is completely locked in to an Apple-centred world," Thompson wrote, "in which they use iTunes, buy from the iTunes Music Store, purchase only Apple-certified iPod accessories and, ideally, abandon their plans to migrate from Windows XP to Vista and instead purchase a shiny new iMac." Yes, Apple does want to sell Macs and serve its customers. However, it's simply a lie to say that iPod users are "locked into" anything, let alone being harmed by not being able to migrate to Vista, which Apple actually supports on the iPod and iTunes.Users are not locked into iTunes Music Store purchases; recall that the wags like to point out that a tiny minority of the music on iPods is purchased from iTunes and the vast majority comes from ripped CDs. Purchased tracks from iTunes can also be effortlessly burned to CD for use other other players, following the most liberal and open fair use rights in the industry. Thompson simply lied.
Saying that iPod users are locked into Apple-certified iPod accessories is also not true at all. Apple tries to earn licensing revenue from putting a "made for iPod" logo on devices in the same way Nintendo puts its "seal of approval" on its games, but anyone can deliver iPod accessories, and there's no way for Apple to stop headphones and boomboxes from working with the iPod. Thompson lied again.
His first idea was that iPod users are locked into iTunes. Yes, Apple sets up a system that's easy to use out of the box, but users aren't forced to use it. The iPod can be used with a variety of other applications, or even wiped clean and used with completely alternative firmware like RockBox. Again, Thompson just lied.[Time for Apple to face the music? - BBC NEWS]Thompson Lies Some More: Ringtones.In order to jump from lying about the iPod with generalities and get into specifics, Thompson announced, "the recent launch of the new range of iPods, including the video Nano and the iPod Touch, has shown just how far Apple is willing to go to make life difficult for its users in order to shore up its dominant position in the market for music players and downloads." He backed up his claim by browsing for some sensationalist headlines, doing zero fact checking, and then printing his findings with an enraptured spin that is simply shameful hypocrisy coming from anyone working for the BBC.First, Thompson complains, Apple now sells ringtones and doesn't support homebrew attempts to copy ringtones to the iPhone. Yes, this is unfortunate. Users shouldn't face limitations from using their own song clips, and they shouldn't have to pay extra to carve out a ringtone from songs they purchased or already own. However, this isn't entirely Apple's decision because it has to answer to the labels. It's not illegal, and it has nothing to do with anticompetitive monopoly dominance of the music industry. It's really the opposite: an opportunity for rivals to compete against the iPhone by offering a nicer way to play "My Humps" when their phones ring. So far, the US ringtone industry revolves around $2.50 - $3.00 clips that expire after several months. Thompson lied with a half story and a false premise that do nothing to support the idea that Apple has a monopoly.[Apple's iTunes Ringtones and the Complex World of Copyright Law]Thompsons Lies Some More: Video Output.His second proof that Apple is "shoring up its dominant position" is that "it seems that the new generation of iPods will not output video through cables or docks that aren't Apple authorized and have a specific 'authentication' chip." It seems? Why doesn't Thompson point out that he read some high pitched conspiracy theory about why older cables and docks don't work with the new models, and is presenting it as a proof of anticompetitive, monopolist behavior without even checking the claim out?The reality is that all the new iPods continue to support the same docks as they did, but their video output has changed due to using different hardware. The Nano and Classic continue to work with old docks and cables, while the Touch and the iPhone will require a new dock connector cable because they now output both composite and component video. They work differently; no conspiracy, no spy authentication chips. The iPhone and the latest generation of iPods will work via a dock connector cable without a dock unit, so there's no chip involved. Even if there were, it would not be illegal for Apple to sell proprietary cables such as those that come with the Xbox, the Zune, the Palm Pilot, and most every music player and mobile phone on the market. The only difference is that Apple has kept its dock connector the same over the last several years so that iPod customers can reuse their old cables. Even if Thompson doesn't understand the issues and didn't bother to look into it, presenting false information as facts to support an idea that they do not support is still a lie. [An in-depth iPod Touch review: Video output differences - AppleInsider]Thompsons Lies Some More: Linux Music Management."The nastiest little change is to the iTunes library itself," Thompson wrote. Apple made minor changes to the metadata database used on the iPod. When this change broke unauthorized music management software, some Linux advocates announced press releases saying Apple was persecuting them and trampling their rights to use the iPod. It turned out that the outcry was simply overwrought, and that a fix was easy to deliver. What Apple had really done was improve how the iPod stores its data so that it would be less susceptible to file corruption. Apple doesn't officially support the small minority of people who use the iPod with Linux or alternatives to iTunes on other platforms, so it bears no accountability for fixing their homebrew software when it makes changes to its products. It might be valid to complain that Apple should offer such support, but ignoring Linux has no relationship to establishing a monopoly or market dominance. If Apple was offering a locked in, anti-consumer product, it wouldn't have open source users buying its product in the first place. Unlike the Xbox and Zune, Apple doesn't stop users from installing Linux or RockBox on their iPods, a difference Thompson can’t seem to grasp. Thompson admitted that Apple "will not limit copying or restrict attempts to strip digital rights management code from tracks" and "will not stop people adding non-DRM files they have downloaded from the internet to their library," but then jumped at the opportunity to speculate that Apple is shutting out Linux users, as if Apple would prefer Linux users to either install Windows or buy a music player elsewhere. Which scenario helps Apple "maintain music dominance?" It's an inane argument.Irresponsible Open Source Mouths.Remember when the EFF irresponsibly announced its speculation that Apple was stuffing megabytes of personal information into iTunes tracks? It later recanted, but didn't apologize for the false accusation. The fact that open source advocates are quick to fire out accusations but commonly shrug off any accountability for what they say makes their comments very hard to take seriously. Thompson's uncritical, uninformed parroting of such accusations is not only stomach churning, but egregious given the BBC's wholehearted support for a video distribution system that unilaterally forces people to use Windows to access content that is not available elsewhere, as iTunes music is.Thompson keeps going, castigating Apple for stopping Real from selling its own flavor of DRM that promised support for the iPod, and impugning Apple for supposedly having "business practices do not stand up to scrutiny." Thompson added, "when it comes to music downloads it [Apple] is just as bad as Microsoft on servers."Oh really? Do you have to pay Apple client access licenses for the right to connect your iPod to iTunes or to access the Music Store? Does your music die after three plays or three days? Do you have no choice in the market for MP3 players apart from devices that run the iPod firmware or use Apple’s iTunes software? Equating Apple with Microsoft would be foolish for anyone to do, let alone some misinformed, generalizing, sensationalist wag writing for a public corporation that ties its video downloads to Microsoft's Windows-only DRM.Thompson's Faulty Conclusion to a Shoddy Article.The great model of interoperability, Thompson points out, is Microsoft's PowerPoint. That's because Apple was able to deliver Keynote with PowerPoint compatibility. "Apple can sell Keynote because it took PowerPoint apart and figured out how the files work," Thompson explained.Perhaps Thompson doesn't get it: Apple's ability to maintain compatibility with PowerPoint is just as tenuous as Linux users' ability to make iTunes-compatible song management software for the iPod. Microsoft doesn't support standards in PowerPoint. It uses a crufty, weird, undocumented, proprietary format that changes with every release. That's why the industry is aligning behind Open Document as an international standard, and why Microsoft stuffed ballots in Cuba, Azerbaijan, and Sweden to fast track the establishment of its own proprietary formats as a false "standard" without having to answer the concerns of worldwide standards organizations who overwhelmingly determined that Microsoft's OOXML format was problematic and technically inferior.Oblivious to all this, Thompson announced, "had Apple been unable to do so [reverse engineer the proprietary PowerPoint format], or found that every time it figured out what was happening Microsoft changed the format, it would have complained loudly." Apparently Thompson has been paying no attention to technology over the last two decades as the world community has complained about Microsoft's doing just that.[Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly][Office Wars 4 - Microsoft’s Assault on Lotus, IBM][Myth 4: The iTunes Monopoly Myth]The reason Microsoft was on trial in the EU dates back to complaints filed in 1998. The independent US monopoly trial followed up on earlier complaints from the FTC and Department of Justice. Similar complaints haven't ever been filed about Apple's iPod business, but rather only about the arcane, territorial pricing of music established by the big labels, most of whom are owned and managed by European companies.The EU certainly should fix the problems of the music business in its countries, and demand fair use provisions from music and media providers. However, trying to spin the complex situation off as proof that Apple is anything like Microsoft is not only disingenuous, it's an outright lie. Using a bunch of half-baked, ignorant web rumors to support a position that Apple should just allow anything and everything is also dishonest. Doing all of this speciously false complaining while standing on the Microsoft-enamored soapbox of the BBC just makes Thompson look even more incompetent and clueless about the reality around him. What do you think? I really like to hear from readers. Comment in the Forum or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast! Submit to Reddit or Slashdot, or consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!
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UK Tabloids Pick Up Zoon Awards for Technical Incompetence
Daniel Eran DilgerIt's not just the American media that is desperate to publish misleading or downright false information in attempts to prevent the erosion of existing barriers to innovation. The release of the iPhone in the UK touched off a flurry of snide reporting worthy of being Zooned. Let Them Eat Zoon.Reader Mike Adams wrote, "Over the past year, the two major free newspapers in the city of London (read by 5 million Londoners every single day), called London Lite and The London Paper have been bashing Apple over and over and over again. Anytime there's any news about iPods or iPhones, they will always twist the story in a way to make it sound bad. "They lied about iPhone sales figures (they said 160.000 on opening weekend), they keep repeating that iPods have battery issues any time they mention iPods, they keep saying that the iPod nano is fat or is called the widepod without even having used one and they often show pictures of the old model when mentioning the new one, they keep mentioning that Apple UK prices are unfairly higher than the US by conveniently forgetting that US prices are given without VAT and that UK prices include 17.5% VAT, they publish retard user comments such as "iPhone... iSchmone, boring, too little too late..." in their printed newspaper and other complete nonsense from bozos, and whenever they talk about the iPhone they pick on the most stupid irrelevant nitty-gritty details to criticize it. Both those publications deserve a big fat Zoon award."In particular, Adams noted an article in the London Lite that cited the iPhone's price with service in its headline, but calculated the figure using the highest service plan available. That outdoes the American press and its desperation to describe the iPhone as costing $2000 versus $99 alternatives. Adams also noted that the London Metro published the same headline, and similarly failed to point out that a variety of phones cost significantly more. For this alone, the London Lite and the London Metro get a Zoon. In guilt by association, The London Paper gets a Zoon too, along with Metro wag Oliver Stallwood and London Paper scribblers Michal Dzierza, Kim Taylor Bennett, John Dunne. Adams also recommended the BBC News Service, a nomination that was also suggested by a number of other readers, including Orlando Smith, Mike Perlman, and Jonathan Tilney. The following article was enough to win a Zoon by itself.BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones Uses Mixed Up Math.A day after Apple announced its UK iPhone deal with O2, BBC writer Rory Cellan-Jones worried out loud, "Will customers really want to pay what Apple and O2 are going to charge the iPhone's early adopters?"In order to present just how much extra will iPhone users pay, Cellan-Jones described the iPhone's minimum plan, but only added up figures for a more expensive tier. He then compared Nokia's N95, first admitting that it commonly sold for the same price and service plan as Apple's iPhone, but then managing to identify a way to compare the iPhone's more expensive contract with the N95's cheapest one. With a more expensive contract on the Nokia, he could even match iPhone's more expensive plan rate and get the N95 for free, although he had to admit that the N95--despite having some nice features--lacks "Apple design flair and sheer usability which made the iPod such a big hit and has created such a buzz around the phone."Thanks for all the fact juggling, false comparisons, and doubt seeding, even if you ended up telling us what we already knew: the iPhone is competitively priced and featured, and will force Nokia and other service providers to make better products at better prices. Next time, stick with the facts and avoid all the fearsome fretting about suppositions you know aren't really scary at all.But the BBC Keeps Going.To really earn its Zoon, the BBC also published a dreadful article by Bill Thompson. Why it was so bad is detailed in the following article, but I'll go ahead and hand Bill Thompson and the BBC a Zoon right now. What do you think? I really like to hear from readers. Comment in the Forum or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast! Submit to Reddit or Slashdot, or consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!
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Construction continues on Boston's future Apple Store
Filed under: RetailWhen Apple opens Boston's flagship Apple Store on Boylston street, it's going to be huge - both literally and figuratively. ifoAppleStore has had a webcam pointed at the construction site for months now, and today's image is impressive.The building looks like it extends from Boylston street to Newbury street behind it, making me wonder if it will have an entrance on either end (check out the overhead photo).This store is scheduled to open in 2008. Oh yes, I'll be there.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Jobs Has Some Explaining to Do in Backdating Case
The issue Apple thought it had put largely behind it may still be haunting the company, with a published report Thursday saying the Securities and Exchange Commission has subpoenaed company CEO Steve Jobs as the agency continues to investigate stock options backdating issues. Apple declined to comment on a Bloomberg News report suggesting that Jobs had been subpoenaed to give a deposition in a lawsuit the SEC has brought against Apple's former general counsel, Nancy Heinen.
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Apple issues iTunes Store credits
Filed under: Apple Corporate, iTunesThe Apple Blog is reporting that Apple has begun issuing Apple Store credit for customers who had trouble getting songs last week.It seems that several customers were unable to download purchased songs, despite having provided a valid credit card number. Specifically, Apple has issued an email that reads, "Please accept the following Five Song Credits as an apology for the delay in receiving your purchase. These credits are good for five songs of your choice from the iTunes Store."Have any of you received this message, or made use of your credits?Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Apple Gazette Daily 122 - Jobs vs. hackers, plus much more!
Jobs vs. hackers, plus much more! You can subscribe via iTunes, or by RSS feed, or… you can directly download the episode right here. In addition to that, you should be able to play every episode of the podcast directly in your browser by using the widget which is now located in the side column of the site. Just click on the headphones to play the podcast inside the widget with full audio controls.
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Woz going green with a modular home
San Francisco--Steve Wozniak will put up a modular home as soon as he can find an ideal piece of real estate. Wozniak, a former Apple employee, is a fan of homes from Enertia, which sells kits for energy efficient homes. The kits range in price from less than $100,000 ...
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ReplayTV Launches Personal HD Tuner Kit
I am quite content with Windows Media Center, but I have heard great things about ReplayTV. With ReplayTV, you are able to rewind, fast-forward, record, and watch live TV. Of course your computer must be fitted with a TV tuner. …
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Shipley confronts Apple on "contain and engage"
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Steve Jobs, Apple, DeveloperWil Shipley (he of Delicious Monster) has a big piece up about Apple, the iPhone, and the iPod that's making the rounds of online Mac onlookers. He calls out Apple (as they've been called out before) for leaving the iPhone a closed platform, and he answers a lot of questions that were asked by Erica's article the other day.Shipley says that Jobs made a number of mistakes, the first of which was combining forces with other companies, including the record companies and AT&T. In the early days of all this, Jobs was seen as a hero, convincing the record companies to change their minds, and bringing AT&T into the realm of a really great phone. But, Shipley says, Apple plus another company doesn't equal Apple anymore. As much as Apple seemed to have brought record companies around to its point of view, it turns out that the record companies have brought Apple over to their side as well.Case in point: ringtones, in which Apple is asking us to pay three times for the same song just so we can play it when people call us. And then combine that with Jobs' harsh requirements for locking down the Apple aesthetic, and suddenly, instead of finding ourselves locked inside a closed system we like (iPod + iTunes), we're trapped inside a closed system that charges us for no reason (iPhone + ringTones).How to fix things? Shipley says an SDK for iPods and iPhones, which is a big duh. Apple should have done that long ago, and developers have been saying so ever since. They've trusted developers to make beautiful programs for the Mac, and they should trust them on the iPhone as well. And he says Apple needs to open up-- either let their music out, or let others' in. Clearly, people prefer having control over their content rather than, say, what NBC is planning, so if Apple makes a serious effort to free their content (music, movies, and ringtones alike), they won't need the companies-- they'll have all the audience.Thanks to everyone who sent this in!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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News: ezGear announces ezWake WK7 Alarm Clock for iPod
ezGear has introduced its new ezWake WK7 Alarm Clock for iPod, the successor to the company's original WK100 ezWake. The ezWake WK7 features dual alarms, a LED display with dimmer, backlit buttons, a 24-function remote control, the ability to charge the iPod while docked, and the ability to run off AC power or eight D-cell batteries. The ezGear ezWake WK7 Alarm Clock for iPod is available now in black or white and sells for $100. In addition,…
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Danish consumer group rules against Apple, again
Danish Mac users who bought faulty iBook G4s may eventually have refunds coming to them... but that's assuming that Apple actually listens to the Denmark Consumer Complaints Board after it has ruled against Apple for the second time.Read More...
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Orange gets French iPhone in November
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple, iPhoneIt's official: Orange has the iPhone in France.France Telecom, Orange's parent company, says they won't subsidize the iPhone, but also didn't say anything about price, according to CNN Money. They also didn't give a release date other than November-- the UK and Germany are getting it on 9th November, so it should be close to that point.Reader Samuel, who sent us this French article (all I know is "sacrebleu," sorry), also notes that Apple seems to be signing with the national operators in each country, so the prediction for Italy is TIM, Belgium is predicted Belgacom (although reader Jelle says he saw the iPhone on Base's website, so who knows), KPN in the Netherlands, and so on.I'm clueless about French wireless providers-- is Orange good? Does this deal have you Francophiles saying oui or no?Thanks to everyone who sent this in!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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First Looks: SwitchEasy Biscuits for G3 Nano
Available in two versions -- standard Biscuits ($20) and Black Biscuit ($22) -- SwitchEasy's new hard plastic case for the third-generation iPod nano is available in six total colors, each packed with a surprising collection of frills. You get a Universal Dock Adapter, a lanyard necklace, separate protectors for the Dock Connector port, Click Wheel, and back of the nano, plus a headphone port extender. Each of the cases has a clear screen protector…
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Blaupunkt rolls out SD card-based car stereo
Filed under: Portable Audio, Transportation It's not the first such unit we've' seen, but car stereos with SD card slots instead of CD players are still rare enough to get our attention, which is exactly what Blaupunkt has managed to do with its new Melbourne SD27 system. If that's a bit too limiting for you, you can also make use of Blaupunkt's optional iPod and USB/Bluetooth adapters, which will let you grab music off any suitably equipped MP3 player or cellphone. You'll also, of course, get an AM/FM radio with 25 preset station options, and a plain old 3.5 mm auxiliary input to plug in the audio device of your choice. If that's not too much change for you to handle, you should be able to pick up a Melbourne SD27 now for a suggest retail price of $160. Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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Steve Jobs gets served
The subpoena in the lawsuit against former Apple counsel Nancy Heinen is not about Jobs... at least not yet.Read More...
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Mossberg reviews the iPod touch (he likes it)
Filed under: iPod Family If there was a grand poobah of tech journalists it would Walt Mossberg, the tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal. His opinion can make, or break, a product. Luckily for Apple Walt tends to love their stuff, and the iPod touch is no exception.The iPod touch gets high praise for its iPod functionality, and the mobileSafari addition is welcome. Walt also enjoyed the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store (which I am anxiously awaiting on my iPhone). There are some things he didn't like, though. The battery life fell short of Apple's specs, and the lack of physical controls (the iPhone has physical volume controls) makes it tough to use the iPod touch when it isn't in your hand. The lack of a mail program also gets Walt's goat, but he chalks it up to Apple not wanting to compete too much with the more expensive iPhone (which has a mail program built in).TUAW readers, are you enjoying your iPod touch as much as Walt?Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Mac Office 2008 "user experience"
Elements Gallery and the user experience are the latest topics of discussion for the Mac BU and Mac Office 2008.Read More...
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Apple's Jobs reportedly subpoenaed in SEC options case
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The stock-options backdating probe involving a former executive at Apple Inc. may show some signs of life over the next several weeks as the Securities and Exchange Commission looks to subpoena witnesses, possibly including CEO Steve Jobs.
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News: Tunewear opens web store, offers 20% discount
Tunewear has announced the opening of the its new web site and company store. The company says the new web site will allow it to better support its customers by opening a direct channel of communication. Intended as a supplement to retail channels, the web store gives Tunewear a place to introduce new products as quickly as possible, and at the same time keep available accessories for legacy iPods, a market that grows with each new generation of iPod.…
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Steve Jobs subpoenaed by SEC
Filed under: Apple Corporate, Apple Financial, Steve Jobs, Bad Apple, AppleRemember that whole stock backdating scandal that was threatening to throw a wrench into the unstoppable train that is Apple? Yeah, Apple would prefer you forget about it too, but the SEC (that's the Securities and Exchange Commission) hasn't. They have subpoenaed Steve Jobs to testify in relation to a trail involving Nancy Heinan, Apple's former General Counsel (we covered her involvement here).Keep in mind that no charges are being brought up against Steve, but whenever the CEO of a publicly traded company is brought in front of the SEC it is big news.[via Macuser]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Apple fesses up to faulty iPod touch screens
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video It looks like those complaining of problems with the iPod touch's screen weren't seeing things, as Apple has now reportedly confirmed that at least some early units did indeed ship with defective screens. That bit of news comes at the tail end of a review of the player by none other than Walt Mossberg, who reports that Apple says the problem affected a "small number of units" and that it is "being remedied." Exactly what that remedy entails, however, is unclear, as is the exact number of units affected. In related news, there's also been a few unconfirmed reports cropping up of similarly dim screens on newer iPhones, with the problem seemingly traced to units released after the now infamous price cut. No word from Apple on that, but if your new iPhone's display looks a little off, feel free to let us know.Read - Walt Mossberg's reviewRead - Apple forum discussion of iPod touch / iPhone screens[Via AppleInsider] Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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Secure your Mac: Do as the Federales do
Filed under: SecurityMore security notes from the underground TUAW vault. Up until Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, you could see your tax dollars at work very readily, as the National Security Agency published OS-specific guidelines for hardening your OS X installation -- mostly commonsense items like "use strong passwords" and "turn off unneeded services," but it was nice to have a document with the imprimatur of the US Government's most professional paranoids that you could show to your spouse/boss/Russian friends and say "See, it's secured!"As of Tiger, however, the NSA has handed over the security stick to Apple and endorsed the vendor guides to securing both OS X and OS X Server as "[tracking] closely with the security level historically represented in the NSA guidelines." You can download the Server version of the PDF from the NSA's website, but oddly the client version seems to hang on download (spies! saboteurs!), so you can grab that one directly from the mothership. Between the two guides you have over 500 pages of security reading, so save the whole weekend.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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NBC Downloads Aim to Reunite Viewers With Commercials
NBC became the latest television network to plant a stake in its own piece of Internet video turf, saying it would make free downloads of first-run television shows available directly to viewers through its Web site. Known as NBC Direct, the offering has implications affecting various players in the Web video realm, including Apple, whose iTunes Music Store had been selling episodes of popular shows such as "The Office," and "30 Rock," shows NBC now plans to make available for free.
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Will Apple miss the virtualization boom?
Virtualization is the hot tech topic right now. However, some enterprise Mac watchers are worried that Apple’s policy of keeping Mac OS X tied to Apple hardware is keeping OS X not just in left field but totally out of the game. With the recent VMworld 2007 conference and expo now fading into memory, author John [...]
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Undercover: stolen Mac recovery tool
Filed under: Portables, Software, SecurityThinking about recovering your laptop in case of theft? Undercover from Orbicule (we've mentioned it before once or twice) sports a nice additional "feature" in terms of a money-back guarantee. If your Mac is reported stolen Undercover will monitor and report IP addresses that should narrow down the search, as well as take both screenshots and iSight snapshots at regular intervals and send them back. Finally, it will mimic a hardware problem presumably prompting the thief to take it in for repair or sell it, in which case it will display a message indicating that the computer has been stolen, etc. Orbicule is apparently so confident that Undercover will allow you to recover your machine that they're offering a money-back guarantee for the cost of the software if you do not. They have an interesting account of the recovery process in an actual case.Undercover is $49 ($39 for students; education site licenses are available).[via Daring Fireball]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Intel salivates over virtual-world processing demands
Intel CTO Justin Rattner on Thursday showed off this 3D input device that includes 'haptic' force-feedback technology.(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks) SAN FRANCISCO--Most folks who try the Second Life virtual world grimace as the primitive 3D imagery drags its way onto their screens. Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner, ...
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News: ZAGG unveils invisibleSHIELD for iPod classic, touch, 3G nano
ZAGG has introduced its latest invisibleSHIELD products for the iPod classic, iPod touch, and iPod nano (with video). invisibleSHIELDs for all three models are available as screen or front shields, which cover the screen on the iPod classic and iPod nano, and the entire glass surface of the iPod touch, as well as full body shields, which include specially-cut film that covers not just the front but the side and back of the iPods as well. All invisibleSHIELDs…
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Gold-Plated Macbook Pro joins the Luxury Apple Ranks
These insanely expensive “gold” versions of Apple products seem to be coming out of the wood work lately. This one, which comes to us via Crunchgear, is a Gold-Plated Macbook Pro. This one is actually much cheaper than the iPod Shuffle that we saw not too long ago. It only costs $1,500 over the price of the Macbook Pro (or $2,400 over the Pro if you're going to have the diamond filled Apple logo on the back). While, of course, that's ludicrous, it's much cheaper than the $19,000 shuffle…isn't it? And let's not forget the $40,000 Diamond Shuffle…yeah, you read that right.
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Can I exchange the official album art in iTunes for something of my own design?
It's your music, so why not add your own cover art?
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Report: Apple's Steve Jobs subpoenaed in options case
The SEC isn't investigating Jobs--at least this time around--but they will depose him in their lawsuit against former Apple general counsel Nancy Heinen, according to Bloomberg.
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Steve Jobs Gets Served, France Invaded by iPhone, NBC's Lame TV Downloads
The SEC wants to talk to Jobs about the recent stock option scandal. Plus, Intel says 2008 is the year for WiMAX, the iPhone arrives in France, and NBC thinks it can compete with iTunes (OK, OK, you can stop giggling).
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Who Says Your iPhone Can’t Have GPS?
So many people (including myself) have complained about the lack of GPS in the iPhone. As Hadley Stern mentioned in an earlier post, “The iPhone has an accelerometer, something or other that detects when you move the iPhone…
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Rapidweaver 3.6.3 hits the tubes
Filed under: Software, Internet Tools A quiet morning at TUAW Headquarters (located in scenic Wellsboro, PA, home of the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon); we're all pooped from yesterday's Talk Like a Pirate festivities. Time for a quick update on one of our favorite web authoring apps, RapidWeaver: version 3.6.3 is out, featuring Greatly improved memory usage when exporting websites Fixed issues with bold/color attributes and the main view displaying incorrectly Option-Double Clicking on photos now opens the files in a Photo Album Plus more (including all the changes from the 3.6.3 public beta). You can now share your love for RapidWeaver at the new iloverapidweaver.com site, a mini-testimonial page for rabid enthusiastic RW fans. 3.6.3 is a free upgrade from 3.6, $25 from prior versions.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Put Your Content in my Pocket, Part II
Second part of Craig Hockenberry outstanding guide to MobileSafari-optimized web development for A List Apart. ★
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10 Worst Apple Commercials
Apple commercials that should have been left on the cutting room floor.
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Article: Customers Ask: Is Apple Going Rotten?
Karma. Doing the "right thing." Thinking different. Apple's enlightened approach to building customer loyalty is now famous, generating big headlines every time CEO Steve Jobs takes on Hollywood or the music industry. Attempts to raise iTunes prices? "Greedy." A fight with NBC over revenues? "Give peace a chance." That's Apple, your socially-conscious corporate friend, who does right by you while standing up to big bullies -- sort of like a character…
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Quick Tip: Watch Google Video on your iPhone
At first you might think Google Video is impossible to watch on your iPhone, since the iPhone doesn't support Flash - but, surprisingly, it's not hard at all. With this simple “trick” (is it even a trick?) you can watch any Google Video you want (that allows downloading) directly on your iPhone. Simply go to your video of choice, and in the right hand column you'll see the DOWNLOAD button for the video. Click it, and where it says “If the download does not start automatically, right-click this link and choose “Save As”.” Click the “this link” link and your video will load right up in the iPhone browser. For example, here's 3 minutes of your life that you'll never get back. Ah the Interwebs - how did we ever express ourselves without you?
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Apple Picks Orange for iPhone en France
France Telecom will start marketing Apple's million-selling iPhone in France through its wireless arm Orange. Thursday's announcement came days after Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs visited Britain and Germany to unveil similar deals with mobile operator O2 and Deutsche Telekom. The iPhone, a combined cell phone-iPod media player that also can wirelessly access the Internet, will go on sale in all three countries in November -- in time for the holiday season. The latest deal was announced by France Telecom CEO Didier Lombard during a conference in Hanoi.
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This Day: September 17, 1992: First Mac with a Built-In CD Drive Debuts
The first Mac to feature a built-in CD ROM drive wasn’t a top of the line Mac IIfx or even a top of the line Performa (if such a thing existed). It was a middle of the road machine. Although middle of the road in pricing, in performance the…
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iPhones and Useful Places
I was in an elevator yesterday afternoon. It almost got stuck. You know what I mean? It stopped for a split second in between floors, shuddered, and then resumed its upward journey. But it got me to thinking (always a dangerous development). How the iPhone…
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iPhone and iPod: Contain or Disengage?
Terrific essay from Wil Shipley on Apple’s growing hubris: Apple’s emulating the most pernicious qualities of Nintendo and the Microsoft XBox — you pay us a tax or you don’t work with our systems. But Apple’s “approval” just comes from Apple getting a cut. It’s a measure of greed, not quality. We’re not talking about THX-certification here, we’re talking about extortion. This kind of lock-in seems very appealing for the company doing the locking early on, but it always, ALWAYS ends up biting the company in the butt. Ask IBM with their ubiquitous 970 servers and their extortionist service contracts. Oh, wait, those don’t exist any more. The best thing that could happen to Apple this year would be for Microsoft’s Zune 2.0 to be a kick-ass product, both technologically and in terms of being designed to make customers happy, not entertainment conglomerates. Apple needs competition. ★
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OpenOffice Aqua still a year away
According to a timeline presented at the OpenOffice.org developers conference, the Aqua version of the software won't be ready until September 2008.Read More...
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Steve Jobs subpoenaed over stock option backdating
Filed under: Misc. GadgetsIt's not easy being Steve Jobs. When you're not jet-setting around the world, introducing your disappointing EDGE-only iPhone to the European market, you're getting subpoenaed by US securities regulators over a lawsuit concerning stock option backdating. According to reports, El-Jobso has been called in for the US Securities and Exchange's case against former Apple general counsel Nancy Heinen over backdating option grants to Jobs and other executives. Apparently, Heinen is looking for 45 depositions for the case, though the SEC is hoping to limit that to 12 (per party). SEC lawyers are claiming that Heinen and former Apple Chief Financial Officer Fred Anderson (of Elevation Partners fame) backdated more than $20 million in stock options in 2001 for Jobsy, themselves, and other executives. Anderson -- who's already paid $3.5 million in fines -- claims he was given permission by Jobs himself to backdate the options. An internal Apple review claims it found two questionable stock options awarded to Jobs, but found no wrongdoing on his part. For Jobs' sake, let's hope he stays out of the slammer -- a pretty face like that won't last long on the inside.[Thanks, Randall] Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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The gutsy marketing and strategy behind Apple's iPhone price cut
The iPhone price cut appears to be the story that will never die. Leander Kahney at Wired News and I had a great discussion yesterday about the what and why behind the iPhone price cut. Some of what we discussed ended up in the Wired article here, titled, The Perils of Taking the IPhone Mainstream. But there was actually some background and analysis that Leander didn't use, so I thought I would fill in that back story here.First, here's one of my quotes from the article:According to Howe, Apple initially priced the 8-GB iPhone at $600 not to milk early adopters, but to purposely constrain demand. While production ramped up at its Asian factories, Apple wanted to restrict buyers to the relative few happy to pay $600 for the phone. Nonetheless, Apple went on to sell a million iPhones in the first two months –- a clear indication of the device's popularity.Then, as it became clear there was enough factory capacity to produce millions of them in time for the crucial holiday season – when sales explode -- Apple dropped the price to take the gadget mainstream.With Tuesday's launch of the iPhone in Europe, it's clear that Apple is confident it can satisfy demand in multiple countries."(Apple) said they'd like more time before dropping the price," says Howe, "but you can't move the holidays. Clearly, Apple's gearing up for a big holiday season."Apple has good reason to be gearing up for this holiday season based upon its experience with the iPod. Steve Jobs made an incredibly gutsy call last year in the spring when he told manufacturing to gear up to make more than 20 million iPods to sell over the holidays. Why was it gutsy? Because Apple had never sold more than 14 million iPods in a quarter before. Yet the decision had to be made, and Jobs and his team made it. And it is sounding like Jobs has recently made that same decision with the iPhone by doubling iPhone production for this holiday season too.But back to the price cut. One London analyst firm has asserted that next year's average selling price for the iPhone will be $200:"In our projection, we believe there will be about 18 million iPhones sold next year at an average selling price of about $200, and that means a very sizable portion of total handset revenues will move from other manufacturers to Apple. (It) will be in the vicinity of 5 percent that Apple will steal from incumbents."Not to be outdone, the New York Times asserts that the price might go to zero:"The iPhone could have an overall impact on the economics of the phone industry. It has put a hardware manufacturer in a highly unusual position of strength relative to the carriers (Verizon, AT&T, etc.). They’re accustomed to calling the shots about what devices get access to their network; not so with the iPhone. It carries its own weight with consumers.Mr. Saccanaghi, after discussing the issue with various players in the mobile phone ecosystem, estimates that AT&T could afford to pay Apple $15 a month over the lifetime of a two-year contract. That adds up to $360 in payments. And that’s considerably more than the $200 to $350 that AT&T pays other retailers (like Best Buy, Radio Shack) for customer sign ups, Saccanaghi writes.What does it mean?Apple could conceivably sell the iPhone hardware at a substantial loss while still generating greater profit per iPhone than it does from the highest-end iPod.Sounds like a good deal for Apple, with a caveat. If Jobs decides to drop the price of the iPhone, he might consider offering a rebate to existing customers beforehand."So with production ramped up for the holidays, is Apple going to follow Motorola into the downward price spiral of death?Oh sure. And it will happen right after Steve Jobs attends an ice skating party in hell with bad Musak.What people don't get is that Apple is waging a marketing war to reshape the value chain for the mobile phone industry. Everyone is trying to figure out which trench Apple is occupying, when Jobs is flying in jet fighters for surgical strikes.Consumers value what they pay for. They don't value things the perceive as free. And that's the marketing blunder the US mobile phone market has bought into over the last 10 to 15 years. By bundling "free" and generic phones with cell phone service, mobile carriers have devalued both the brand values of the handset makers and their own services. The handset makers are hurt because the low values that carriers will pay for free phones eliminates the incentive for those manufacturers to do anything but cut costs. The carriers are hurt because they have to pay subsidy fees to the handset makers of anywhere between $150 and $250 over a two-year contract to actually buy those free handsets. You've heard of a win-win deal? This is a lose-lose deal.What Apple has done is inverted the value proposition. It has created a phone that consumers see as sexy and desirable, so desirable in fact that they will actually pay $400 to $600 for one (depending on geography). And because the device is desirable, Apple can demand exclusive deals with carriers, which creates valuable differentiation for those carriers that have iPhones and disadvantages for those that don't (yes, I'm talking about you, Verizon and Vodaphone). Because Apple is providing valuable carrier differentiation, Apple can then capture the subsidy revenue stream that the carrier would have normally paid to the handset manufacturers anyway for "free" (and undesirable) phones.Now, if Apple were to cut the iPhone price to zero, would any of this be happening? Not a chance. So Apple is going to use its iPod playbook all over again. The original 5 gigabyte iPod went on sale for $399 in 2001. Today, a 16 gigabyte iPod touch sells for -- you guessed it -- $399. Apple chose the price points based on consumer demand and interest. A constant set of features will move down the price scale to more value-oriented price points, but Apple will introduce new and even more desirable products at the old price points. And so long as it can keep that engine going, it will make money hand over fist. And the rest of the handset makers will bang their heads against the wall trying to figure out how they do it.Don Reisinger at CNET's Crave recently recently asked the question, "Is Steve Jobs really smarter than anyone else?" in this way:"In the United States, GSM carriers are not the only option, and more often than not, people are willing to go with Verizon Wireless or Sprint Nextel, regardless of the inability to easily switch between the aforementioned companies.But in the U.K., the economical landscape is much different. In fact, most Britons are more than happy to change carriers and are keenly aware of the terms 'unlocking' and 'SIM cards.' In fact, many people in the U.K. have already purchased an iPhone in the States, brought it home, unlocked it and added it to their own carrier.Steve Jobs knew that the U.K. is rife with unlocked phones and exclusively GSM coverage. And by looking like the best friend to O2, he's effectively pulling the same trick out of his bag: tell everyone they can only have an iPhone on one carrier, ignore unlocking, take the revenue from O2, and enjoy higher hardware sales due to simple unlocking procedures. Once completed, head to France and Germany, rinse and repeat.It's amazing to me just how much control one device wields all over the world. Can you think of any other product that could command such respect from a massive cell phone carrier and create a whole new way of doing business in the cell phone industry? I certainly can't.I can't either. That's because Apple combines award-winning designs with some of the best strategy and marketing in the world. And as long as the press and Apple's competitors keep focusing on the price cuts instead of the strategy and consumer desires, it will continue to reshape the mobile phone industry to its own advantage -- and in the process make its investors a lot more money than anyone wedded to the old mobile phone business expects.Full disclosure: the author owns Apple stock.Technorati Tags:Apple, ATT, Brand, Customer experience, iPhone, iPod, iPod touch, Marketing, New York Times, Price cut
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EA releases Madden '08, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR '08 for Mac... for preorder
EA has finally made the last two games that it promised to Mac users at WWDC available for preorder. While EA is indeed still late on its original schedule, timing is getting better.Read More...
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Jobs gets subpoena in backdating case
Reuters reports that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been subpoenaed to give a deposition in a stock options backdating lawsuit against the company's former general counsel Nancy Heinen. The subpoena is, apparently, not part of an SEC investigation. I'm sure Jobs is ready for this whole stock options back dating issue to be laid to rest, but it looks like we'll be hearing about it in a news for a while yet to come.
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News: Mix: NBC, iPhone GPS, Unlocking, Korea
NBC has announced the launch of its new video service NBC Direct, which allows users to download and watch the network's primetime and late-night programming for up to one week after broadcast. The service is currently Windows-only; future versions are to support Macs and “portable devices.” A new version of Navizon Virtual GPS has been released for iPhone, which triangulates a user's position from Wi-Fi access points and cellular…
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Why PhotoBooth on the iPhone Could Broaden Its Appeal
It’s amazing how certain applications may seem really cool when you first use it but they quickly lose their fun factor with time. Yet, other applications are enjoyable seemingly forever. The first scenario may not be because it is a shallow product. It…
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A Round-Up of Native iPhone Apps
One of the first things I did to my iPhone was install Installer.app. This allows me to install all kinds of third-party applications on the iPhone. Here are some that I have found interesting: ApolloIM ApolloIM is on the verge of becoming as much…
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Airport Extreme gigabit ports help wireless, too
The gigabit-enabled version of the Airport Extreme Base Station with 802.11n* improves wireless performance by a factor 1.5 over its 100Mbps predecessor.Read More...
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Avoid an Acrobat organizer database initialization error
This has been driving me nuts since Acrobat 7. Whilst working in my networked user account (home directory on the server), Acrobat behaved strangely whenever I tried to close a document for the first time. I changed settings, but nothing helped. I finally found a solution That had been posted by Adri Oosterwijk on adobeforums.com.Apparently Acrobat 7 has trouble reading its caches when they reside on a networked home directory. This results in a message about a failure to initialize the Organizer Database when opening a PDF file in Acrobat right after it has been launched. The solution is to create a new folder named Acrobat in /Users/Shared, set its permissions to 777 so that all users can access it, and then create a symbolic link in each user's ~/Library » Caches folder that points to the /Users » Shared » Acrobat folder. The following terminal commands will accomplish the task, and are computer-specific: ...
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Convert Panasonic SDR-S10 MOD movies
Problem: Connecting the Panasonic SDR-S10 camcorder via USB works fine on the Mac, but you can't use the MOD files in QuickTime Player or in iMovie HD by default.Solution: Using ffmpeg (part of the MacPorts project) enables you to convert those MOD files into DV files without quality loss. Use this Terminal command:ffmpeg -i MOV001.MOD -target ntsc-dv video.dvThe resulting file (in this example, video.dv) can then be used in iMovie HD. You can also create result files with a special aspect ratio setting or in PAL format:mpeg -i video.avi -target pal-dv -aspect 16:9 video.dv[robg adds: While I haven't tested this hint, note that you can install ffmpeg without using MacPorts; this hint explains the process.]