Apple

From How Wired.com Tracked the iPhone Finder: In response to Wired.com’s scoop identifying the finder of the lost iPhone prototype, many have asked me how we did it. The process of uncovering digital footprints to identify Brian Hogan was indeed challenging and enlightening, so I thought I’d tell the story here. Heck, it might even teach police officers a thing or two so they don’t have to kick down doors. Wired certainly deserves some credit for breaking the story. Initiative in this day and age of blogs usually get you the good kind of attention. However, it doesn’t give you free license to be a jackass and make smarmy comments that make no sense. ...

If you were confused about whether Apple was still committed to the Mac, their lack of Apple Design Awards for anything Mac pretty much says it all. The Apple Design Awards 2010 recognize iPhone OS applications that demonstrate technical excellence, innovation, technology adoption, and quality.

Dear Apple, If you’re going to publish calendars for your iCal users and advertise them, keep them up to date. A movie release calendar that ends late October of last year is useless. Your pal, Derik

Back in December, I made some predictions. The quick recap is, I was completely right about the Powerbook (though I didn’t see the moronic name change coming). I didn’t see the iMac coming. The Mac mini rumor was nice, but ultimately, it wasn’t in the cards. My hope clouded my judgment. iLife ‘06 and iWork ‘06: Yawn. Again. I’m surprised at the complete lack of information about Leopard. The prospect of getting surprised is actually exciting. Apple may just sit on the features until after Vista appears. That might slow Microsoft just a bit. ...

Macworld’s lab tests of the new intel iMac confirm what I’ve been telling people since the Intel transition was announced. I can summarize the results pretty quickly. Considering that the Intel processor in the new iMac is a dual core, the speed isn’t really that much better. In fact, taking that into account, it’s slower. Also, Rosetta isn’t the panacea that everyone bought into. I knew it wouldn’t be. It doesn’t work with anything that requires precise timing and it’s slow. Slow. ...

I’m sure you’ve all read about SmashMyiPod.com. I thought it was infantile in concept before I read the website. You can imagine my shock when I read his classy responses over on Cult of Mac. I hear ipod video screens cause impotence and hair loss. Then I made a stupid mistake and went to the site where I got to read the following. I hear iPods cause cancer and genetic mutations in fetuses. ...

We didn’t see Powerbook, Powermac, and Mac mini revisions like most level headed analysts thought. Macrumors’ Buyer’s Guide still has the bright red “Don’t Buy” description next to the Powerbooks. The typical cycle is 185 days, and we’re now 255 in. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them next revised in January as the first Intel Macs (as they stand to benefit the most, being stuck with maxed out G4s). Instead, the long-awaited video iPod arrived, the iMac got revised (in a rather interesting way), and the eMac has returned to its proper status as an education product. ...

According to live news updates out of Apple’s press conference today, iTunes 6 will be introduced today. You didn’t misread that. Barely a month after its introduction, iTunes 5 has been superceded by iTunes 6. A month. Good lord. It’s official: iTunes 5 was most meaningless iTunes update ever. Either that, or we can expect iTunes 7 at Thanksgiving, earning it the name “iTunes Turkey Edition”. That will be followed by a Christmas version 8 with an all red and green interface. ...

Think Secret has retracted its earlier statement that there would be no video iPods tomorrow. They’re now calling for them. To quote them: The rumor business is not always kind. Reliable evidence has corroborated reports of the development of a video iPod, but information until now had pointed to a release date later than October. Recent notes suggest otherwise, however, and tomorrow may in fact see the release of a video iPod, while Mac updates may not be delivered until next week. ...

I regularly have to check my iTunes podcast subscriptions for problems. It’s not necessarily iTunes fault (case in point, Diggnation recently did something to their feed that forced iTunes to download over and over, which I didn’t care about because they can foot the bandwidth bill for their mistake). From time to time, high volume podcasts such as the Daily Source Code will have their feed download fail. When I saw Accident Hash fail, I was a little perplexed. I clicked the little alert icon. ...