Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 8:03AM Well, if you missed last night's TDL Live, here's your chance to take some of the workday and enjoy it. You've been way too productive today anyhow. Plus you'll get to see some juggling, and more movie references than any other episode. Oh, and you'll get our look at the Apple news of the week as well.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 at 6:33PM Here's this week's TDL Live. Originally airing before our "Welcome to Macintosh" documentary event, there's a live skype interview with the filmmakers in the second half of the show. We also cover the post-Macworld news. Enjoy, and don't forget, you can subscribe to the show as well:
Monday, January 5, 2009 at 11:37PM Our last-minute look at all the pre-Macworld news. And, one more time, join us for live video starting at 11:30 AM ET Tuesday!
Monday, December 29, 2008 at 11:39PM It's the final look at Apple news and rumors in 2008. iPhones at Wal Mart, Apple Media servers? iPhone Nanos? We cover it all this week. Show notes/credits are below. Enjoy!
Apple Rejects iPhone Application That Lets Users Jiggle Breasts
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,471564,00.html
Apple's online App Store has decided it'd rather not be stacked with an iPhone application that lets users jiggle a pair of breasts.
The "iBoobs" application was rejected because Apple deemed it "objectionable content," the U.K.'s Register tech blog reported.
"If you believe that you can make the necessary changes so that iBoobs does not violate the iPhone SDK Agreement we encourage you to do so," Apple reportedly told the creator, Mystic Game Development of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
The iBoobs application is a computer animation of a large pair of breasts in a bikini top. Shaking the iPhone makes them wobble from side to side, or up and down, depending on the movement.
--------------
Amazon Touts Best Holiday Sales Ever; Acer, Apple Win
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2008/12/26/amazon-touts-best-holiday-sales-ever-acer-apple-win/
Amazon.com (AMZN) this morning announced the holiday season was its best ever, with 72.9 items going out the door per second on the peak day, December 15, for a haul that day of 6.3 million items. The company lists in its press release a number of humorous stats regarding holiday purchases — enough coffee sold to give every citizen of Seattle a cup a day for two months — and lists best sellers, which include, in electronics, the Samsung (SSNLF.PK) 52-inch hi-def TV, the Apple (AAPL) iPod touch 8-gigabyte, and the Acer (2353.TW) Aspire One 8.9-inch Netbook.
--------------
$99 iPhone Arrives, But Not at Walmart
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/12/99-iphone-arriv.html
----------------
Apple’s App Store sees big iPod Touch downloads this Christmas
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/12/29/apples-app-store-sees-big-ipod-touch-downloads-this-christmas/
by Doug Aamoth on December 29, 2008
Looks like the iPod Touch had a good Christmas, as App Store downloads on December 25th increased three-fold or more for most titles.
The boost in sales "appears to be from a large influx of iPod Touch users," according to MacRumors.com, who noted that it would have been much easier to give an iPod Touch as a Christmas gift versus an iPhone, which would have to be activated and whatnot.
--------------
Google, Microsoft, Apple sued over preview icons
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10129022-92.html
A Michigan-based networking company on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Google, Microsoft, and Apple, alleging that all three tech giants violated a patent it owns on the use of document-preview icons--or thumbnails--in operating systems.
In the suit (PDF), Cygnus Systems targets Google's Chrome, Microsoft's Vista and Internet Explorer 8, and Apple's iPhone, Safari, and Mac OS X as patent infringers. Apple uses the patent-protected technology in its Finder and Cover Flow Mac OS X features, the lawsuit claims.
Cygnus describes the technology covered by the patent as "methods and systems for accessing one or more computer files via a graphical icon, wherein the graphical icon includes an image of a selected portion or portions of one or more computer files."
-----------------
Wal-Mart Has Started Selling the iPhone
http://www.mercurynews.com/businessheadlines/ci_11313954
Wal-Mart on Friday confirmed one of the worst-kept secrets in technology: It will begin selling Apple's iPhone on Sunday.
But the retail giant officially knocked down one other rumor that had been making the rounds: It won't be selling a special 4-gigabyte version of the iconic phone for $99.
Instead, the retail giant will offer the same two standard iPhone models that are already sold at Apple, AT&T and Best Buy stores. Wal-Mart customers will be able to buy the phones at a discount, but not much of one.
The retailer's stores will sell the 8-gigabyte model for $197 and the 16-gigabyte for $297. Both of those prices are $2 less than they can be found at other outlets.
---------------
The Dream iPhone Pro
http://gizmodo.com/5119445/the-dream-iphone-pro
--The photo is the story--
That's good, but we thought it could be a bit better. We fixed the keyboard to make it more rational and compact, losing some unneeded keys. With the space, we added what it's really needed to make the iPhone a true Nintendo DS competitor: A direction pad and two buttons. For the D-Pad, we didn't want to reinvent the wheel and just copied Nintendo's tried-and-proved design.
----------------
Apple wants to swipe your iPhone
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/29/swipe_patent/
Apple has applied for a patent to replace some tap-based gestures on the multi-touch displays of a variety of computing devices, phones, and media players with "swipe gestures" - that is, making a device's display responsive to a finger being drawn across it rather than simply tapping it.
Swipe gestures, of course, currently exist on the iPhone and iPod touch for rudimentary tasks such as moving from one home screen to another or pinching images, but this new patent would extend that capability to enhancing what's now keyboard-based input.
------------------
Rumors abound, Apple working on media server?
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/29/rumors-abound-apple-working-on-media-server/
According to 9to5, the new product will include a Dynamic DNS system to tie in with MobileMe; this will provide username.me.com domains for easier access across the Internet. In addition, the device will include AFP filesharing and Time Machine backup stores. The device will not run off of Mac OS X Server, as you might suspect; rather, it would run the same system and processor that the Time Capsule does.
-------------------
Tuesday, December 9, 2008 at 8:57AM In case you missed it live, here's a look at our weekly roundup of Apple news, presented, as always, in a serious fashion:
Apple deletes Mac antivirus suggestion
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10111958-83.html?tag=mncol;txt
Apple removed an old item from its support site late Tuesday that urged Mac customers to use multiple antivirus utilities and now says the Mac is safe "out of the box."
"We have removed the KnowledgeBase article because it was old and inaccurate," Apple spokesperson Bill Evans said.
"The Mac is designed with built-in technologies that provide protection against malicious software and security threats right out of the box," he said. "However, since no system can be 100 percent immune from every threat, running antivirus software may offer additional protection."
Apple's previous security message in its KnowledgeBase, which serves as a tutorial for Mac users, was: "Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult."
------------
Confirmed: iPhone Coming to Walmart By the End of December, Regularly Priced
http://gizmodo.com/5103986/confirmed-iphone-coming-to-walmart-by-the-end-of-december-regularly-priced
Store representatives at multiple locations confirmed to the publication that employees are training to sell the handset, which will hit shelves by the end of the month. This will make Walmart the second non-mothership retail chain to sell the iPhone, and by far the largest. But what about all the $99 4GB model nonsense? It hasn't been confirmed, and still doesn't sound that likely.
Some analysts still say that the $99 iPhone will probably happen eventually, but others are specific enough to claim that a Bentonville, Arkansas location will sell the discontinued 4GB model in addition to the 8GB and 16GB versions, which have been confirmed at their normal $199 and $299 prices.
-----------
Google Earth Browser Plugin for Mac OS X
http://db.tidbits.com/article/9918?rss
Mac users now have access to the Google Earth Browser Plugin. Some Mac users have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the plug-in since it was introduced for Windows in May 2008 and for the iPhone in October 2008. The plug-in is compatible with both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs, and works in both Safari 3.1 and later and Firefox 3.0 and later.
-----------------
Microsoft to release 'Softwear' retro clothing line
http://www.macworld.com/article/137391/2008/12/microsoft_softwear.html?lsrc=rss_main
Microsoft says it’s a “clothing line that taps the nostalgia of when PCs were just starting to change our lives,” and that it aims to “showcase the DOS days of the software company that now connects over a billion people.”
----------------------
Argentina-based OpeniMac now selling Mac clones
http://www.macworld.com/article/137388/2008/12/openimac.html?lsrc=rss_weblogs_macuser
Mmeet Argentina-based OpeniMacwho, besides clearly angling for a trademark lawsuit, is also going ahead and selling Mac OS X-based computers at prices that undercut Apple's own offerings.
Well, in Argentina, anyway, as the country doesn't have its own Apple Store, online or brick-and-mortar. But if you live in the U.S., the prices aren't really cheaper than buying a comparable Mac.
The company bills its product line with the tag “Benefits of a Mac. Price of a PC.” Two models are available: the "OpeniMac" is a $990 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo machine that also sports 2GB of memory, a 320GB SATA drive, SuperDrive, ATI Radeon HD PRO, and even a 6-in-1 memory card reader.
--------------
Apple was 5th busiest retail site on Cyber Monday
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/12/07/apple-was-5th-busiest-retail-site-on-cyber-monday/
While its competitors were offering deep discounts to pull in recession-battered customers, Apple (AAPL) had already ended its Black Friday sale and by Monday was back to charging its usual premium prices for laptops, desktops and MP3 players.
Yet its online store still managed to grab the No. 5 spot in comScore’s ranking of the top 20 most visited retail sites on Monday Dec. 1, handily beating not only Dell (DELL) and Hewlett Packard (HPQ), but such full-fledged retail outlets as Best Buy (BBY), Toys “R” Us and Circuit City .
-------------
LEARN SPANISH IN ITUNES U
From Portales: beginner’s Spanish to the advanced A Buen Puerto: Fast Forward in Spanish, you’ll find a variety of Spanish course material from the Open University on iTunes U. And once you’re conversant in Spanish, you could sample the German and French language courses, as well.
--------------
Grey Lines Mar MacBook Air Displays
http://db.tidbits.com/article/9910?rss
Some MacBook Air users have been reporting the appearance of grey horizontal lines across the screens of their late 2008 models. Discussion threads on the issue began in early November 2008 on both Apple's discussion forums and the MacRumors forums. There have been slight variations in the description of the issue, but most accounts agree the lines are grey or white, horizontal or slightly angled, granulated or pixelated in appearance, and are very subtle. Overall the lines are said to give the screen the appearance of a piece of parchment or recycled paper. Also, the lines are said to appear at the initial boot; they do not develop over time.
-----------------
Rosetta Becomes Optional in Snow Leopard?
http://www.macrumors.com/2008/12/08/latest-mac-os-x-10-5-6-seed;-rosetta-becomes-optional-in-snow-leopard/
Separately, we've heard that the newest version of Snow Leopard makes Rosetta an optional installation. Rosetta is Apple's PowerPC emulator for their Intel Macs, allowing Intel Mac owners to run legacy software that has not been upgraded for the Intel platform. This news comes shortly after an announcement that IBM had purchased Transitive, the company behind Rosetta's technology. The final release of Snow Leopard is also rumored to require an Intel Mac, thereby being the first version of Mac OS X to drop PowerPC support.
----------------
Three Apps Define Apple's Mobile Platform
http://blogs.eweek.com/applewatch/content/app_store/three_apps_define_apples_mobile_platform.html
News Commentary. Last week, Apple announced that the App Store had 300 million downloads and 10,000 applications. Three apps matter more.
It's not so much what they do but what they mean. These three applications define App Store, supported by _oc="null">iPhone and iPod Touch, as an emerging mobile platform. Right now, Apple has created the leading contender to replace the PC as the platform people use most.
The apps:
Amazon Mobile
Google Mobile App
Obama `08
Number of applications does not a successful platform make. Volume is important, but the sticky quality of applications/services and the ability to make real money matter more.
All successful platforms share a few common traits:
They have at least one killer application people really want
They make available a breadth of useful applications
Development tools and APIs make it easy to create good applications
Third parties make lots of money
There is a fifth attribute not common to all successful platforms, but unique to some: They make customer engagement easier, a quality that some connected gaming devices/software and some Web 2.0 platforms imbue.
------------
Steve Jobs participating in ad song selection
http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/12/08/jobs.picking.ad.songs/
Apple CEO Steve Jobs is himself involved in picking the songs used incompanyadvertising, a musician claims. Lars Iversen, a member of The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, notes that when "Around the Bend" was chosen for an iPod touch TV ad, a company representing the band -- Synch -- first got in touch with Apple, and then participated in a direct meeting with Jobs. The executive is said to have picked the song to use at this meeting, expressing particular enthusiasm for the music.
-----------
HERE WE GO AGAIN... APPLE TABLET IN 2009?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10118470-37.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=News-Apple
Earlier this year CEO Steve Jobs implied Apple was watching small-device categories like tablets and Netbooks to see if they actually take off as a mega-trend, but in the meantime the company had other priorities. Mac tablet rumors stretch back for years, and in the past Jobs has quickly shot down talk of an Apple-produced competitor to Amazon's Kindle, which has been interpreted as a sign Apple was doing just that.
-----------
Adobe and Belkin back out of Macworld, IDG not concerned
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/12/08/adobe-and-belkin-back-out-macworld-idg-not-concerned
IDG World Expo isn't too concerned, or so it claims. A spokesperson issued this statement:
While Adobe has decided to shift its focus at for Macworld this year, the company will still be actively participating in the event -- several members of the company's product team will be involved in Macworld tracks, including a full day of CS4 demo sessions with Adobe evangelists on Wednesday, January 7.
Every year we see a certain percentage of exhibitors pull out of the event for their own business reasons. In this economic climate, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see this. The important thing to understand is that Macworld Conference & Expo 2009 will be similar in size to last year’s event and attendees will continue to visit nearly 500 great Mac product vendors on our exhibit floors.