By Brendan Loy
Google Street View has come to Knoxville.
For instance, here's the place I just came back from -- the Knoxville Visitor Center on Gay Street, where the WDVX Blue Plate Special takes place every weekday:
And here's a look at the Gay Street Bridge, seen from across the river in South Knoxville, with several downtown buildings, the Sunsphere, and the Henley Street Bridge in the distance:
(Hat tip: Michael Silence.) More after the jump.
By Brendan Loy
Thinking about yesterday's debut of the 3G iPhone, it occurred to me that Steve Jobs is a freakin' genius. Not even a year ago, Apple released the original iPhone with a price tag of $599 for the 8 GB model. Barely two months later, the price was slashed to $399. Now, Apple has unveiled a new & improved iPhone -- with a price tag of $199 for the 8 GB model. That's half the most recent price (as Apple's ads are happily trumpeting), and one-third of the original price.
Why does that make Jobs a genius, you ask? Think about it: if the price had been $199 all along ($299 for the higher-end model), would anybody have considered that cheap? Reasonable, certainly; surprisingly low for such a cool phone, probably. But people wouldn't have been falling all over themselves saying, "WOW! What an amazingly great price!" to anywhere near the extent they're doing now. By jacking up the cost in the first place, Apple made its eventual price point seem incredible, rather than merely good. Heh. Steve Jobs has us eating out of his freakin' hands.
Speaking of Steve Jobs and eating, there is rampant talk on the Internets -- even unto Drudge! -- about Jobs's physical appearance at yesterday's WWDC keynote. Some have described Jobs as looking "sickly skinny" or even "dangerously thin." As one blog notes, many concerned Apple fans are "wondering if the pancreatic cancer has come back. Steve was diagnosed back in 2003 but that info was not released to the public until 2004 when he had surgery."
As I learned yesterday when I saw Drudge's headline and tried Googling around to figure out what he was talking about, this is not the first time a Jobs keynote has caused frenzied Internet speculation about his health. A similar phenomenon occurred in 2006, to the point where Apple had to release a statement assuring everyone that Jobs was a-okay.
Since the CEO's health seems to be of such concern to his adoring minions, perhaps somebody could use the new iPhone Software Development Kit to create an application that monitors and broadcasts his vital signs in real time. ;)
P.S. Meanwhile, at least one blogger is wondering whether Steve Jobs is Gimli.
By David K.
For all the Mac users and now iPhone users out there, Steve Jobs's keynote from the World Wide Developers Conference is underway. So far, iPhone 2.0 features have been discussed, including enterprise support and the SDK. Later today, the next version of OS X will be discussed as well. If you are interested in reading, MacRumors.com is liveblogging here: http://www.macrumorslive.com/
UPDATE: iPhone 3G Announced
UPDATE BY BRENDAN: In light of a) the much faster connection speed, b) the new lower price (just $199 for the 8GB model, literally one-third of what the first iPhones cost last June), c) the various new cool features (particularly GPS), and d) the fact that my Sprint contract recently expired, I would like to offer the following graphical commentary, which roughly sums up my feelings:
P.S. But, I ask again: can you use it as a modem???
By Brendan Loy
Has anyone else noticed Google's new favicon?
(More information here and here.)
Personally, I don't like it.
UPDATE: In other giant-Internet-company news, Amazon is down! (Hat tip: Insty.)
By Brendan Loy
The 3G iPhone will be released on June 9, according to Gizmodo. (This is, like, four-day-old news, but I just saw it on End User, via InstaPundit.)
Analysts believe it will be pretty similar to the current iPhones, with the exception of the faster speed. More dramatic changes to the phone -- multiple models, multiple price points, etc. -- may be coming early next year.
I'm still crossing my fingers for a phone-as-modem feature. (It's possible to hack the current iPhones to have this feature, though of course it's quite slow on the EDGE Network. I wonder if the new iPhones will support it natively, or if not, if the hack will still be possible.)
By Brendan Loy
I don't know if this is actually brand new, or if I just missed it until now, but Google Maps now has a public transit feature. SWEET!
I freaking love Google Maps.
By Brendan Loy
Karl Rove on his iPhone: "I love it. My life has changed. I have a shred of coolness."
Heh. He goes on. ("I mean it is just shocking how much better, how much more productive I am.") He also sings the praises of his aforeblogged MacBook Air.
The big question is, which effect is more pronounced: hip Mac products making Karl Rove cool, or evil Karl Rove making hip Mac products less cool? :)
By Brendan Loy
Can any of my techie readers suggest a bus-powered USB 2.0 external hard drive that will actually work with my PowerBook and its 500 mA bus?
(Yes, I realize I could get a special cord that would allow me to plug a drive that isn't getting enough power into both USB ports simultaneously. But that's not a good option, because my computer only has two USB ports, so such a setup would make it impossible for me to, say, transfer files between a bus-powered drive and a second external USB drive.)
Alternatively, are there any bus-powered FireWire hard drives out there that aren't obscenely expensive? (To give you an idea of my price and gigabyte range, I bought the Western Digital 250GB Passport for $139.99 at Best Buy tonight, only to discover that it doesn't get enough power from my computer's USB bus.)
By Jay Johnson
On the phone with Apple Care, and got a message that said that an update to Leopard is out, but it's not showing up with Software Update.
Here's a link, though 10.5.2 imminent?
If this works, I also recorded about a minute of the automated call with AppleCare, which seems to confirm the availability of the update:
By Jay Johnson
By Jay Johnson
Trailer for an upcoming film about the Mac community. Looks like fun.
By David K.
Not sure why Brendan didn't mention it, but Macworld Expo 2008 has kicked off with Steve Jobs annual keynote address about 45 minutes ago. The event is not being streamed live but a number of sites including Macworld, Engadget, Gizmodo and MacRumorsLive are live blogging the event.
So far Steve has introduced software upgrades for the iPhone/iPod Touch and an Airport base station that includes a harddrive for wireless use with Leopards Time Machine backup feature.
Now up? The anticipated iTunes movie rentals and an update to the iTV that allows you to purchase songs and movies directly. More to come later, check out the links above for live coverage.
UPDATE: The rumors were true, Apple is releasing a sub-notebook, the 13.3" MacBook Air and DANG that thing is thin. To give you an idea, it easily fits in manila buisness envelope (the type you might use for interoffice mail). At its thickest its .74".
UPDATE 2: How thin is it? See for yourself! Apple has updated their site with the new info from today's keynote.
By Brendan Loy
Wired has a lengthy, fascinating article about the "untold story" of how the iPhone came to be, and how it has already changed the wireless industry. Well worth a read. Excerpt:
For those working on the iPhone, the next three months would be the most stressful of their careers. Screaming matches broke out routinely in the hallways. Engineers, frazzled from all-night coding sessions, quit, only to rejoin days later after catching up on their sleep. A product manager slammed the door to her office so hard that the handle bent and locked her in; it took colleagues more than an hour and some well-placed whacks with an aluminum bat to free her.
But by the end of the push, just weeks before Macworld, Jobs had a prototype to show to the suits at AT&T. In mid-December 2006, he met wireless boss Stan Sigman at a suite in the Four Seasons hotel in Las Vegas. He showed off the iPhone's brilliant screen, its powerful Web browser, its engaging user interface. Sigman, a taciturn Texan steeped in the conservative engineering traditions that permeate America's big phone companies, was uncharacteristically effusive, calling the iPhone "the best device I have ever seen."
But the money quote is the final paragraph:
It may appear that the carriers' nightmares have been realized, that the iPhone has given all the power to consumers, developers, and manufacturers, while turning wireless networks into dumb pipes. But by fostering more innovation, carriers' networks could get more valuable, not less. Consumers will spend more time on devices, and thus on networks, racking up bigger bills and generating more revenue for everyone. According to Paul Roth, AT&T's president of marketing, the carrier is exploring new products and services — like mobile banking — that take advantage of the iPhone's capabilities. "We're thinking about the market differently," Roth says. In other words, the very development that wireless carriers feared for so long may prove to be exactly what they need. It took Steve Jobs to show them that.
Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: David K.)
By Jay Johnson
Dude, seriously. This would be uber-suhweet.
Here's the sketchy drawings. Don't know if it's remotely real, but if it is, it'd be really cool.
By Jay Johnson
Quick question for the Mac folk out there. For those of you who use Safari, are you noticing it crashing a lot recently?
I'm wondering if I've managed to bollocks something up on my own, or if it's just an issue from Apple's side.
By Brendan Loy
The RIAA, apparently determined to make itself into a self-caricature, is now arguing in court that it's illegal to copy CDs you legally bought onto your computer for your own personal use.
P.S. Moe Lane: "I guess that I won't be buying that iPod, then." (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)
By Brendan Loy
Does anyone have any favorite podcasts that they would recommend subscribing to?
Just curious.
P.S. This is actually primarily Becky's question (though I'm certainly interested in hearing people's suggestions, too).
By Jay Johnson
I haven't mentioned this before, but Apple has been very, very kind to me recently. To put it into a brief version, I had an issue where connecting an external monitor to my MacBook Pro caused the system to go into complete deep-freeze mode. At that stage, only a hard restart worked.
Well, I went through several stages of phone support, up to and including reinstalling Tiger. Alas, no great success was found. Finally, I found a workaround that worked on a message board, and pretty much let it go. However, in the interim before this, I actually wrote a letter to Apple, explaining the problem and requesting some assistance in resolving it.
Shortly after sending the letter, I received a nice email and a phone call from a fellow in Cupertino (I assume), who reviewed my case, and explained what was being done from Apple's perspective on evaluating the glitch.
These calls and emails were frequent over the period of a couple of weeks, and I explained the workaround I had found that was a satisfactory interim solution. Finally, when I installed the 10.4.11 final update of Tiger a couple of weeks ago, the problem was gone completely, without the workaround.
Frankly, I hadn't really given it any more thought until I received a call from my guy in Cupertino. He explained that the engineers were still working through the issue, and was just giving me a status update. I explained that the problem seemed to be gone after installing 10.4.11, so it was cool. I thanked him for his help, and thought that was all.
Until a few days later, when he called and said, "By the way, we want to send you Leopard." So, Friday morning, the FedEx guy showed up with my Family Pack box of OS X Leopard. I've now installed it on my MacBook Pro and the missus' MacBook, and it's pretty sweet.
However, now I get to the main point of my post. I'm really looking for some direction from a website about utilizing the cool new features in Leopard. I'm interested in some tips/tricks, etc. for using Spaces, sharing between computers, the new features in Mail, etc.
Anyone with helpful tips would be a tremendous help. Thanks.
By Brendan Loy
I love Google Maps. I swear, whenever I think of something they could do to improve it, they do that very thing within three months. It's like they can read my mind. Latest example: they've changed their "customize your route" feature so that it doesn't create an extra "stop" at the arbitrary point that you drag the cursor to. Instead of a big ugly yellow pause-sign thingy, dragging & dropping now just creates a little white dot, and the driving directions are continuous. You can still manually create an a multiple-stop trip, of course, by using the "Add destination..." link or by typing to:[wherever] as many times as you want in the "End address" box. But you don't have to create faux-stops just to customize your route from Point A to Point B. Brilliant.
By Jay Johnson
For all the Mac folks out there who have already upgraded to Leopard, please note that Apple has just released the 10.5.1 update.
Cheers.
Oh yeah, for those of you like me who are still languishing in Tiger-land, they've also put out 10.4.11, which I have to suspect is the last update for Tiger.
By Brendan Loy
Allan Wood (a baseball megafan who has written a book about Babe Ruth) purchased over $280 worth of digital downloads of baseball games from Major League Baseball, who have just turned off their [Digital Rights Management] server, leaving him with no way to watch his videos. MLB's position is that since these videos were "one time sales," and that means that Wood and everyone else who gave money to MLB is out of luck -- they'll never be able to watch their videos again.
MLB shut down the DRM server because they've changed suppliers, and now they expect suckers to buy downloads of games in the new DRM format. Anyone who does this needs their head examined -- using DRM itself is contemptible enough, but using DRM this way is just plain criminal.
Techdirt says "it's really amazing how far Major League Baseball goes towards pissing off its fans." More broadly, Wired says this is "a perfect example of why DRM is bad. Those who imagined the worse case scenario to be DRM systems failing or disappearing were wrong. The truth is far nastier: DRM will be disabled by content providers any time they please, destroying your media collections whenever the pleasure takes them."
It would be like if Steve Jobs woke up tomorrow and decided that all downloaded music from the iTunes Music Store would no longer work. Which, as a technical matter, he could do, and you wouldn't be able to do anything about it, unless you'd previously burned those songs onto a CD, so that you could rip them back onto your hard drive as DRM-free MP3s -- which would be a "circumvention" and thus a violation of the DMCA, by the way. God bless America.
Of course, as a legal matter, Jobs might be contractually obligated not to do that... and so, IMHO, is MLB contractually obligated not to do what it's doing, unless I'm misreading (or misunderstanding the significance of) this line from the FAQ that was in place at the time of the original downloads, according to the Joy of Sox:
7. Do I have to obtain a license every time I want to watch the downloaded video?
No. When you first try to play the video, a license will be distributed to you and stored by the player. Unless manually deleted, the license will exist forever and will be used when you try to watch the downloaded video on that machine. If you watch the video on a different machine, another license will be required.
I haven't looked this up on Westlaw or Lexis, but I'm pretty sure "forever" means something different from "until we feel like changing our minds."
Prediction: MLB will back down on this, because if they don't, they will face a class-action lawsuit, and they will lose.
(Hat tip: Kat Palmore.)
NOTE: Nothing in this post constitutes legal advice. I am not your lawyer -- I am not anybody's lawyer, yet -- and you are not my client. If you are considering whether to sue MLB, you should get a lawyer, and not rely on anything I've said here. (Thank you, CLE ethics class. Heh.)
UPDATE: As expected, MLB has backed down. But Wood is not satisfied, because they have already reneged on a 20-hour-old promise to be "pro-active" and contact those customers who were screwed over by their actions. Instead, only those customers who discover the problem themselves will be told how to fix it. Wood writes, "This problem was caused solely by MLB, and it's up to MLB to solve it -- by taking the lead and contacting the customers who are currently being defrauded. They should have the decency -- and good business sense -- to publicly announce that a huge problem exists and that they are working to solve it." But they're not doing that. Also:
These new downloads will still have DRM protection, so customers will have to go to MLB.com for a license, as they always have. I asked if, since MLB allows customers to receive a license at only three separate computers, that as people upgrade or replace their machines over time, they eventually could be left with no way to play the files on their fourth computer, the MLB rep said "Yes, that's a problem."
And MLB has no proposed solution to it.
By Brendan Loy
Two questions for y'all. First off, does anybody know of a consumer-level (let's say under $400) digital camera that has a maximum exposure (for low-light, long-exposure still photos) of greater than 15 seconds? Like, 30 seconds, maybe? I love the Canon PowerShot line, but they all seem to max out at 15-second exposures, and for Iridium flare photography, I really wish they could do 30. I'm probably not immediately in the market for a new still camera, but I'm just wondering.
Second, more important question: I need a new video camera. My Sony DCR-TRV140 is out-of-warranty and broken (it gives me the dreaded C31:23 error, and the Internet home remedy of "whacking" the camera doesn't work for me), and I want a functional digital camcorder before the baby arrives. So I'm wondering if y'all have any suggestions.
To be clear, I'm looking for a reasonably inexpensive consumer-level camcorder -- not some sort of super-advanced, super-expensive pro-level monstrosity that has eight thousand features I'll never use. Also, if my new camera were a Digital8, that would be ideal, since that's the format that all my previous tapes are in. However, I realize Digital8 is a proprietary Sony format and thus limits my options considerably, so I'm certainly willing to consider a switch to MiniDV or some other format -- though then I'll have to figure out how to play my old Digital8 tapes (maybe by buying something old and cheap off eBay?).
I don't demand a lot from my camcorders, in terms of bells & whistles. For instance, I don't care at all about digital zoom (only optical zoom matters), and razzle-dazzle digital effects do nothing for me. I just want something relatively cheap that works well. That said, one feature I actually do care about, which most camera manufacturers seem not to care about, is the ease of manually focusing when necessary. I used to have a camcorder where there was a simple, physical button up front, near the lens, that served as both 1) the toggle switch between auto & manual focus and 2) the focus wheel. That was ideal. By contrast, some camcorders these days require you to navigate a lengthy menu and press buttons four or five or six times, just to make the camera focus on something in the foreground instead of the background. That's ridiculous. I want a reasonably intuitive interface for that essential camera function. Other than that... um... I'm not sure what else I really need in a camcorder. It doesn't take a lot a fancy-schmancy digital wizardry to take cute videos of a baby. :) But you tell me. What should I be looking at? I haven't been in the market for a camcorder for like six years, so I don't really know what's out there in any detail or depth. Suggestions? Thoughts?
By dcl
or, I agree with Walt Mossberg. Thank you that is all...
By Jay Johnson
Seems like the rush to judgment against Apple for bricking hacked iPhones with the latest iTunes update may have been premature and, well, completely inaccurate.
Some now disenchanted former members of the iPhone Dev Team (the team that created the hacks that unlocked the iPhone in the first place) are saying:
AnySIM and iUnlock were patched to make a routine exit with 0 (successful) to unlock the phone. Only problem was that that routine is NOT only called by NCK but rather by about six routines total. The other five didn't expect 00 to be there and were therefore spammed across your BB during upgrade. In short, the wrong bytes were patched and now you're all bricked. No, it wasn't Apple's fault. Rather than figure out how to fix this themselves, the iPhone Dev Team would rather work on jailbreaking the new 1.1.1 and keep accepting your donations. We want this fixed -- we want them to take responsibility for their bunk code.
Unfortunately if you want something done you've got to do it yourself. That's why we're here. We've got the 1.1.1 jailbreak and are actively trying to reverse the Dev Team's damage.
Hat tip: Finis Price, who summarizes the jargon thusly: "it means the original team's poor programming created the broken iPhones when Apple's 1.1.1 upgrade was installed and not Apple's upgrade itself. It also means there is hope for any[one] out there who unlocked his iPhone and cannot use it. ... So all of those 3rd party applications you previously had on your hacked iPhone are about to come back."
While I certainly understand that folks may want to use an iPhone on some other non-AT&T network, I don't have a lot of sympathy for folks who hacked their iPhones who might have bricks now. The iPhone End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) seems to pretty clearly prohibit that kind of activity. And, you signed on for it, so suck it up.
[NOTE: Second-to-last paragraph added by Brendan.]
By Jay Johnson
Looks like Apple is bumping the minimum system requirements for the new OS.
"Leopard will now require Macs with "an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 (867 MHz or faster) or G5 processor." Other system requirements include a DVD drive, built-in FireWire, at least 512MB of RAM (additional recommended), and at least 9GB of hard disk space."
Now, how long do I wait before hopping on the Leopard train?
By Jay Johnson
For those of you who've already seen the Britney breakdown of Chris Crocker on YouTube, here's one for the straight male Mac enthusiast.
Heh.
By dcl
So I'll link to iLounge's article on the subject customers ask is Apple going rotten and encourage people to continue to call Apple out for being @$$#*([$ in all four categories listed.
By Jay Johnson
Is, well, the MacBook Pro.
But really, why would one want to run Windows on it? I tried XP with Parallels for a little while. Then I deleted it.
[Hat tip: Insty]
By Jay Johnson
As most of you should know by now, Steve Jobs announced the price reduction of the iPhone down to $399 earlier this week, and the elimination of the 4GB model.
Well, if you're a cheapy-cheap, and want the tech but don't need the storage, the Apple Store (at least the online variety) is offering the 4GB iPhone for $299.
By Brendan Loy
Apple's announcement yesterday that it would slash the price of iPhones from $599 to $399 less than ten weeks after the gadget's much-hyped debut stirred angry cries of protest from early adopters who shelled out the extra $200 to buy the "Jesus phone" when it first hit store shelves in July. Many of them felt used, disrespected and ripped off. That's not a surprise. This is:
[W]e have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store.
Kudos to Apple for doing right by its most loyal customers. It's certainly true, as Steve Jobs says, that "there is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever" (having bought my current PowerBook just before the MacBook Pro's debut, I know all about that), but this was a rather extreme case of that phenomenon, and a case in which there were an awful lot of "someones," many of them fanatical Apple fans... precisely the people the company doesn't want to piss off too badly. I think this offer of $100 -- even though it's only half the price difference, and even though it's store credit, not a cash rebate -- will go a long way toward softening the blow. If the comments on Macworld are any indication, it looks like most people are pretty happy.
By David K.
I think its safe to say that this guy's computer problems trump the ones Brendan was having.
By Jay Johnson
Or at least according to Steve Jobs.
Seems like a large revamping of the iPod line from Jobs today, with the Nano getting a serious overhaul that makes it look completely different, but handle video and also uses cover flow. The traditional iPod has a new name "iPod Classic" and seems like top capacity has been bumped to 160 GB.
Of course, the one that everyone's been jonesing for is the iPod Touch, which looks exactly like the iPhone, but without the phone portion. It'll sell in 8GB and 16GB models for $299 and $399.
Seems like the iPhone has an improvement, as the 4GB model is a thing of the past, and the price on the 8GB model (now the only model available) has been SLASHED from $599 to $399. Of course, no word as far as I can tell on a 3G model.
Also, a new Wi-Fi iTunes store as well.
By David K.
Researchers at USC have developed a method for displaying 3-D holograms using a high speed rotating mirror that is simply incredible. Take a look for yourself in the video below:
Hat tip: Engadget
By Jay Johnson
Well, I'm the lone Mac in my office, and everything else hanging around is a Dell product with Windows XP SP2.
Today, my secretary was working when her Dell spontaneously shut off. Not shut down, not blue screen of death, no "Windows needs to shut down," just a stone cold, power off.
Hmm. That's weird, so restart, which it does back to the main Windows screen, same thing in just a few seconds.
Any of you PC types have any idea what could be going on here? I'm thinking it's likely a hardware failure of some sort, possibly a power supply. But, then again, I know just enough to be dangerous around children and animals.
BTW, I told the attorney I work with that he should replace it with a Mac and he looked at me like I was crazy. Oh well. Live and learn. Die and forget it all.
My other sites