Cult of Mac

Motorola’s Rokr is a stinkr, according to Mobile Tracker.

“One of the first things I noticed about the ROKR E1 was that it is very slow when iTunes is playing music. This holds true if you’re inside iTunes or if it is hidden. For a phone with music features being so central, this is a fatal flaw. My unit couln’t even keep the play time counter working smoothly (see video). When iTunes is playing a song menus are also slow and I easily typed faster than it could keep up with. Navigating through menus is also painful–count on a second or two after you touch a button for it to respond.

… I’m happy to report some good news though, the speakers on the ROKR E1 sound amazing. Great quality and even bass (it has a bit of rumble when you hold it). Everyone I showed the E1 off to was impressed by the built-in speakers. The idea of stereo speakers on a device this small should be ridiculous, but they sound great. Of course you’ll run through the battery faster using the speakers, but this is one thing that even the iPod cannot do.”

Victor Agreda, Jr. , who normally posts over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog, kindly posted some predictions over here about Apple’s announcement in New York Wednesday, saving me the trouble.

Victor writes:

“The PowerBooks will get iSights, as will Apple LCD monitors. We’ll see a sort of iPhoto Pro, but mostly it’ll be a cataloging tool with great RAW support.

Also some other software surprises, and of course, the updates to the G5 towers (dual core dualies, yeah baby!).

You heard it here first for some reason.”

About the anticipated updates, analyst Rob Enderle said: “Apple is very good at getting people revved up into a frenzy to buy something from the company even if they’re not sure what.”

There’s an odd moment in Eminem’s new iPod ad for Apple that seems to illustrate his contempt for either Apple or advertising.

As the ad starts, Eminem’s singing his hit Lose Yourself while a silhouette dancer wearing white earbuds prances about. But suddenly, at the ad’s midpoint, Eminem shouts, “Move it out!” and shoves the iPod dancer aside. The dancer flies out of the frame.

The gesture’s appropriate for a rap video, but not an iPod ad. It’s odd that Eminem got away with such a thing — shoving the figure representing the buyer out of the picture. It undermines the whole ad.

See for yourself. Watch the ad here.

The ad has a history, of course. Eighteen months ago, Eminem sued Apple for allegedly using Lose Yourself without his permission. I seem to remember him making noises about “selling out” at the time. Obviously he changed his mind, but I wonder if the shoving is his way of trying to maintain his dignity?

On Flick: This graduate stuck an Apple logo on top of his graduation cap.

There’s a new fish plaque in town: the Flying Sphagetti Monster.

The big flaw in ThinkSecret’s fun-spoiling story that next week’s special event will about PowerBooks and Power Macs, is that Apple doesn’t hold special media events for these kind of upgrades.

Incremental upgrades of existing products are usually ushered in with a press release, or a Macworld mention at best.

Oh, and now ThinkSecret’s saying it is about the iPod, but not the video iPod. New iPod–but not video–on next week’s itinerary.

Sorry, but I’m not convinced.

There aren’t a lot of protective cases for the iPod nano in stores just yet. So here are some options for building your own. There’s a range of materials to choose from: gum wrappers, pleather or paper — whatever tickles your fancy.

Londoner Graham Bower has some plausible video iPod predictions, as well as nifty Photoshop mockups of the rumored device.

In Bower’s view, Apple needs to differentiate the 60/80 Gbyte iPod from lower-capacity, music-only offerings, and that’s done by adding video.

The video iPod will sync music, photos and home movies (“home movies away from home”), as well as play short music videos and video podcasts downloaded from the iTMS.

Other predictions include an onscreen keyboard, controlled by the click wheel; a return to the original iPod design (polycarbonate front, metal back); video playback in landscape mode; and a revolving click wheel to control playback when the iPod is held horizontally.

Paul Gillibrand’s Apple brunch. It’s the full monty!

Se the full Flickr set, including the interactive plan.

(Via Fscklog)

Apple will introduce a major product on October 12 — and it may be the long-awaited video iPod.

The company on Tuesday sent out invites to an event at the plush California Theater in San Jose, where Steve Jobs and Bono introduced the U2 iPod last year.

“Join Apple for ‘One More Thing…'” the invite says, refering to Steve Jobs’ famous line before he unveils a major product.

The invite gives no clue about the product, but AppleInsider — a somewhat reliable rumor site — says it’s a video-capable iPod.

The new iPod will be 60 Gbytes and sport a large, high-resolution color screen.

“The release of the iPod video is expected to be accompanied by a ‘major update’ to Apple’s iTunes music store that will include a significant number of music videos and other short video content,” AppleInsider says.

The site says a video-cpable Airport Express is also in the works.

Luxpro, the Taiwanese company that knocked off the iPod shuffle, has a new product: the Pico.

Sell your old iPhone 15 Pro to Cult of Mac. We buy back iPhone 15 Pro. Get immediate cash. Save your old iPhone 15 Pro from landfill.

via GIPHY

https://giphy.com/gifs/AppleTV-apple-tv-app-3WCNY2RhcmnwGbKbCi

Uncyclopedia shows how to upgrade the nano to 200 Gbytes! But be warned: “We found in our benchmarking results that the addition of the ATA hard drive adversely affected battery life.”

The quExp widget is handy for keeping track of the enourmous amounts dropped at the Apple Store, as Macfeber’s Roger ?erg notes.

To match his car stereo, iLounge forum member ryno3xx inverted his iPod’s screen. It took “Much Patience,” he writes.

“The hardest part was separating the existing polarizing filter from the LCD, as it is hard and the LCD brittle, but when all is said and done it’s a pretty sweet looking mod.”

Here’s how he did it:

I got my filter at polarization.com

The mod is quite simple. After first realizing that anything you do to your iPod with a razor blade can cause you great sadness and monetary loss, consider the following:

1) disassemble iPod (see other posts for photo how-to, warnings, etc.)
2) remove screen
3) take Xacto knife, razor blade ( shaped like /___\ is best), etc. to remove black foam border. do not discard or damage. you’ll use it later.
4) use blade at as small an angle as possible to surface (near parallel) to remove top film. It is ~1mm thick. There are two surfaces, The outer one is the polarization filter, the inner is simply a clear film, likely an adhesion layer. Remove both. Be patient. The Filter is a rather tough material, the LCD is brittle. Too much pressure will break the LCD.

***never pull filter away from LCD. doing so will create a vacuum, bring all liquid***
***crystal to the middle, and ruin your LCD indefinitely****

5) use *mild* solvent to remove any adhesive glue left behind
6) reassemble iPod, not into its case, but just enough that it works.
7) take new polarizer filter and place over display
8) rotate to get desired effect.
9) cut out and place on screen
10) place black foam removed earlier back in place (failing to do so will let the backlight escape thru the casing.)
reassemble iPod

Who says the iPod nano is all delicate and wimpy?

Over at MacMerc, a fellow called jonknee describes how he put his new nano through the wash.

At first, the nano appeared dead, but it slowly revived and is now mostly back to normal.

“After waiting another day, the nano dried completely and at this time you can’t even tell it ever got wet (and soaped up, spun etc). The screen now looks perfect. Very impressive!” he writes.

Girl hacker Neisha Erin Stadelhofer managed to get Mac OS 7.5 running on her PSP. She loaded a 680×0 emulator on top of an x86 emulator. It’s not exactly snappy: it takes four hours to boot up.

Artist David Ellis specializes in installing turntables in unlikely places, like tree trunks.

Ellis’ Drum Painting Project mixes analog record players with speakers made of cow, deer, and sheep hide.

Here’s a surprisingly affective music video for a song called Jed’s Other Poem (Beautiful Ground) by the band Granddaddy.

Made on an Apple II, it consists only of the lyrics scrolling across the screen in ways that illustrate the song.

Finally, a free demo version of DOOM 3 is available from Aspyr. Weighing 463-MBytes, the demo allows a single-player to move through three levels of the first chapter.

A bittorrent version is also available.

Here’s the best teardown pictures of the nano so far, courtesy of Japan’s PC Watch.

The iPod nano is flying off store shelves, says Wall Street bank Piper Jaffray.

As reported in Forbes:

Available for six days, the music player is seeing high demand, based on a survey of 20 Apple retail stores, Piper Jaffray said. “No store that we checked with had black 4-gigabyte nanos in stock.”

In the New York Times, Dacid Pogue says the nano will effect Apple’s market share of MP3 players. Writes Pogue:

Apple’s market share won’t stay at 80 percent. It’s about to go up.

If you doubt it, then you haven’t yet handled the iPod Nano: a tiny, flat, shiny wafer of powerful sound that Apple unveiled last week. Beware, however: to see one is to want one. If you hope to resist, lash your credit card to your wallet like Odysseus to the mast.

SafariStand is a free plug-in for Safari that adds a tabs sidebar for displaying thumbnails of open tabs in a left-hand sidebar.

Developed in Japan, the programmer says:

“English documentation is not available yet. But User Interface is almost English.”

Spotted on Flickr, a homemade iPod speaker system from someone called ianbrown42 (surely not the great Ian Brown):

“These are remote iPod speakers I scratch-built for my wife’s iPod shuffle. It’s all scientific glass and aluminium construction. The sub-woofer is an inverted glass dome, and a fresnel lens from a rail-car. The guts of the thing is borrowed from a stock computer amp, whilst the speakers themselves are Apple Pro’s.”

“You can see from this alternate view that the tripod legs are made from aluminium garden trowles, polished up.

You can see the CD player I used to test it in the bottom right corner – this thing is huge, and weighs a ton (15 kilos).

The sound is pretty good, as you would expect of apple speakers, but the sub-woofer thumps a bit. Overall a fun project!”

From Pixel y Dixel in Madrid, a striking image of a lamppost and flags.

3000 x 2000 version here.

A picture at Mac Essentials shows the perils of children and markers.