HP Announces Wireless Printing App for iPhone

Print
It’s not the super portable thin printer we’ve advocated for in the past, but HP’s upcoming app for the iPhone promises to at least save you some time in the tedious printing process.

HP announced its iPrint Photo application today as precursor to its main debut during CES 2009 (only two weeks away now). The free app allows you to print 4 x 6-inch photos from your iPod Touch or iPhone to HP printers connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Since those two gadgets are basically tiny PCs, it was a given that one of the main printing leaders created a way to bypass the transfer-to-the-PC step. Still, it appears that there are a few functions that the company missed out on that could have really added something for portable users.

For example, an app that included mix and matching possibilities into a single printing sheet would have been interesting and could have played upon the creativity of iPhone users (as well as the larger options of its line of printers). For now, you can only print one image at a time.

Also, according to the company’s website, the printing from the Apple portables can’t be interrupted in the middle of the wireless command — otherwise, the job will likely be cancelled

Recently, we noted that several companies were in the process of creating gadgets compatible with small, digital, portable cameras and that have the ability to print pics on the fly. Part of this development is due to the surprising re-emergence and cultural appreciation of instantaneous cameras, like the classic ‘shake-it’ Polaroid. Cameras with embedded printers, like the Tomy Xiao and the Instax 200, produce the pictures immediately.

Gobyicon
The HP app doesn’t solve the paper side of the printing equation, but if you have access to a somewhat small HP printer that can be carried around, it will prove useful and you might even be able to get better prints that with the other cameras. Of course, there is one thing the app can’t do, and that’s improving the camera in the iPhone, which leaves a lot to be desired.

Printers

Printing

Albums





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More Details Surface on Rumored Mac Mini

New_mac_mini520x390
Shortly after an Apple employee told Wired.com that a new Mac Mini is coming January, images and details of the rumored product began appearing on the web.

MacRumors’ Arnold Kim found some very believable information about the Mac Mini. Digging through configuration files in the Mac operating system, Kim discovered evidence that a new Mac Mini as well as a new iMac will ship with NVidia chipsets. Strings of code referring to unreleased models of the two computers gave that information away.

Also, in less believable news, Macenstein over the weekend published an image (above) purporting to
be a spy shot of the new Mac Mini. "Is this the new Mac Mini?" the
publication wonders. Our answer: Probably not. It looks awful; it doesn’t
even display the holy Apple logo. Lame Photoshop job that couldn’t even
pass for a mock-up of Apple’s fine design.

Wired.com last week received a tip from an Apple corporate employee that a new Mac Mini will be announced Jan. 6 at the Macworld Expo trade show in San Francisco. The source declined to comment on specifications of the product.

An upgrade for the Mac Mini is long overdue. Apple has not upgraded the
product since August 2007; the company typically refreshes its
computers every six months.

Photo: Macenstein 





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8 Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special

Applestore

Remember when Apple customers felt hip?

There
was a time when a glowing Apple logo symbolized radical nonconformity.
Being part of a miniature customer base was, to Mac users, like being a
member of a holier-than-thou, secret society — a "Cult of Mac," if you will. But when Apple’s
ecosystem grew beyond notebooks and desktops to phones and internet
services, that era came to an end.

Apple’s ubiquitous presence
in pop culture, news headlines and even politics prove that it’s
no longer special to be a member of the Mac cult.

Here’s a list of
examples showing just how mainstream Apple products have become. As you read
along, take a look to your left and to your right and get the attention
of the Apple customers around you. Now, raise a glass of Steve
Jobs’ favorite nonalcoholic grape juice and drink a toast to being the same as everyone
else. Repeat after me: We are all individuals!

 

Macs are big in Hollywood

Walle_2

It
seems practically every computer used in a movie is a Mac. It’s a
little sickening, but it makes sense: The damn things are just so
pretty, and if Hollywood stars have to be good-looking, their gadgets
should, too. The new Pixar film Wall-E took Mac product placement to
new heights: Whenever the miniature robot booted up, he played the Mac
start-up chime. And his robot lover EVE even had a white, utilitarian design
that epitomizes the Apple aesthetic. (Then again, it’s no coincidence
that Jobs used to be CEO of Pixar.)

Apple is skipping Macworld

Apple_630x

Apple
last week said that after 2009, the corporation won’t be attending
Macworld Expo
, the trade show that revolves around all things Apple.
The message was essentially, "We’re so big and popular that we don’t
need a trade show full of Apple-worshiping losers to advertise our products." That comes off as a
little cocky, but hey — it’s true. Apple’s secret product
campaign
generates so much buzz, the corporation might as well slice Macworld
from its budget. Heck, a Harvard professor estimated bloggers drummed up $400 million worth of free advertising on the iPhone. Yeesh.

Tool_3
Some guy with a mullet is Apple’s public face

Steve Jobs won’t be throwing on his artsy turtleneck and delivering his famous Macworld keynote in January. Instead, some guy named Phil Schiller, who looks like the star of King of Queens
with a Swayze-esque mullet, is emceeing Macworld. Sure, mullets were hip — in the 1990s.   

Apple is abandoning FireWire
Mac loyalists are still pissed about Apple’s omission of FireWire on the latest MacBooks. The corporation invented
FireWire; devices were made with FireWire ports just to connect to Mac
machines. How could Apple do such a thing? Answer: Apple is more
interested in appealing to the mainstream than its loyal fan base, and
ditching FireWire in favor of slimmer, sexy aluminum MacBooks (and the more ubiquitous USB standard) seemed
like a good idea. And Apple loves consistency, so don’t be surprised if
future Macs leave out that connection port, too.

Simpsons_3
The Simpsons mocks Apple

Appearing in an episode of The Simpsons is like passing a cultural litmus test that screams, "You’ve broken into the mainstream!" A recent Simpsons episode hurled prickly jokes at the cult of Apple — everything from
iPhones to overpriced Mac computers. Heck, Bart even goes as far as to
tease Steve Jobs, saying he pees on every iPod. How dare he insult our
fearless leader?

Walmart is selling the iPhone
You know the iPhone’s pretty
damn trendy if you can pick one up along with a bag of socks, a box of
rifle bullets and some discounted Halloween candy — at none other than
Walmart, one of the world’s largest retail arms. And Walmart is even selling the iPhone at a special low price of $197 — a whopping $2 less than the normal price tag.

The President-elect uses a Mac

Obamamac

Windows PC owners always pull the
"Macs aren’t compatible with any decent software" card when bashing Apple. But
that insult is clearly outdated if Barack Obama was able to win the U.S.
presidency with a Mac as his computing weapon (while using iChat to stay in touch with his family, no less). And wait — there’s one more thing: Obama has his own official iPhone application! Can we all "think different" if we’re all using the same trendy gadgets?

Digg2
Apple stories = Digg bait
Apple headlines are deeply, thoroughly and affectionately Dugg on
Digg.com, the most popular headline aggregator on the web. Check out
the top technology headlines on Digg, and without a doubt you’ll see at
least one story with the word(s) "Mac," "Apple" or "iPhone." Don’t see
one? Then the world is probably coming to an end. 

Photos: Christopher Chan/Flickr, Pixar, Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com, Apple, Fox, 24gotham/Flickr

 





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iPhone Nano Rumors Continue, Look More Legit

Nano_2
The possibility of Apple releasing an iPhone Nano is becoming more likely, despite earlier reports that were questionable.

XSKN, an iPhone case manufacturer, created a section on its web site
for an "iPhone Nano." Though this wouldn’t be considered a direct leak
from Apple, XSKN cases in the past accurately revealed dimensions of
the fourth-generation iPod Nano as well as the iPhone 3G before Apple announced them.

MacRumors blogger Arnold Kim, who was the first to spot the new category, said
it’s unlikely XSKN has official knowledge of Apple’s plans. But he
notes there is a large financial incentive for a company to learn
Apple’s secret products in advance. (A case manufacturer with a mole
inside Apple? That’s kind of cool.)

False rumors of an iPhone Nano have been floating around for over a year.
However, the XSKN "leak" is the most promising one to date, offering a
sliver of hope that Apple will announce a smaller version of its iPhone
at Macworld 2009.

Iphonenano

Though XSKN shows an iPhone Nano category, the site doesn’t yet display
the cases being sold. However, iDealsChina last week published images (right) purporting to be cases for the iPhone Nano.

We’re still skeptical, however. If Apple were announcing an iPhone Nano at Macworld 2009, wouldn’t Jobs find it worth his time to deliver the keynote?

Photo: iDealsChina





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The Week in iPhone Apps: Apps For Charity

Christmas and Hanukkah will soon be here. Many of you will soon have iTunes gift certificates to blow—why not support a good cause? This week’s apps give some/all of their proceeds to charity.

Songs of Love: The first (and as far as I can tell, only) iPhone app released by a charitable organization, Songs of Love’s mission is to create personalized songs to help cheer up kids who are battling cancer. It’s a free app, but it shows you some of their work and in video and audio form, and has a donations page.

Phospho: Yes, it’s another 99 cent flashlight app. Yes, you could just use a Safari page to find you keys. But if you’re going to buy a flashlight app, make it this one—Phospho donates 100% of your buck to charities that aim to fight blindness in children and adults worldwide.

iZen Garden: Another popular app genre is the Zen Garden. iZen happens to be among the more well reviewed of the bunch and actually looks pretty cool (different colored sands! Lots of rakes to rake it with!), and it gives 5% of the $3 to the Tibet Fund.

Gratitude Journal: Oprah claims to have changed her life with a Gratitude Journal; this app will give you the same chance. The idea is to write down five things you are thankful for each day—not a bad idea this time of year. You can add photos to your entries as well. 10% of the buck it costs is donated to charities, although the developers don’t say which ones.

Qur’an, Bhagavad Gita and Tanakh: The holy books of Islam, Judaism and Hinduism in their complete form, each fully searchable and bookmarkable. The Qur’an even has an audio recording of each Ayah in English and Arabic, and is discounted down to $5 (the others are $10). 100% of all proceeds goes to the Aga Khan development network which helps developing communities in Africa, Central/South Asia and the Middle East.

Now don’t you feel all warm and fuzzy?

We covered a lot of great new apps this week on Giz, here they are. And if you are hitting the slopes this holiday like our favorite snowbunny Blam is, check out his Ski and Snowboard app Battlemodo;

iPhone Geisha Will Dance For You For A Small Fee

I Love Katamari for iPhone/iPod Touch Lightning Review

Apple Warns Developers App Store Approval Process Sucking More Than Usual

Wazabee 3DeeShell Adds 3D Screen to iPhone

Tilt-Shift Photography On the iPhone, Sorry Starving Artists

Television App For iPhone is Not Quite Hulu, But Getting Warmer

Konami Releasing Silent Hill, DDR and Frogger for iPhone, Too (on top of METAL GEAR SOLID)

ReedBox Recreates Eno’s Bloom iPhone App With Magnets

Earth-Shattering Changes in Google iPhone App Update

Agile Lie Detector: Tell Me the Truth, iPhone!

Wazabee 3DeeShell Adds 3D Screen to iPhone

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend and a very happy holidays everybody.

Giz Explains: Everything You Wanted to Know About DRM

Condensed explanation: Digital rights management is a corporate pain in the ass that stops you from doing whatever you want with music and movies in the name of fighting piracy. But there’s more to it.

Straight up, you run into DRM pretty much every day. Bought music from three of the four major labels or any TV show from iTunes? Played a game on Steam? Watched a Blu-ray movie? Hello, DRM. If you wanna get technical about it, digital rights management and copy protection are two different, if similar things. Digital rights management is copy protection’s sniveling, more invasive cousin—it isn’t designed simply to make it harder to steal content like straightforward copy protection—you thieving bastard you—but to control exactly how and when you use media. We’re going to cover both here, since they both refer to technologies that restrict what you do with music, movies and more.

There are, approximately, 10,742,489 kinds of DRM and copy protection. Almost every company or format has its own flavor that works in a slightly different way from everyone else—Apple’s iTunes-smothering FairPlay, Blu-ray’s BD+, the restrictions built into every gaming console. They’ve gotten more complex and nuanced over time, too, as content delivery has evolved. For instance, elementary-school DRM would simply keep you from copying or converting or doing other unseemly things to a file, like playing it on a non-sanctioned device. Or you might remember old-school CD keys, before the days of online activation. Today’s DRM, like for movie rentals, music subscriptions or software, constructs more elaborate obstacle courses, nuking videos 24 hours after you press play, or allowing a certain number of copies.

Many of these work in similar ways—files are encrypted with the DRM flavor of the day, and they’re unlocked or decrypted for your use by authorized programs and devices. Think of it like a secret handshake that only certain programs or pieces of hardware know. Often, they’re tied to an account like on Steam or iTunes. This makes it easy for the Man to keep track of and manage what you’re doing with stuff—how many copies you’ve made, how many machines you’ve authorized to play your content, whether your monthly all-you-can-eat music subscription is still active, that kind of thing. DRM-busting cracks look for ways to strip that encryption out to allow free usage, copying or modification of the file.

So, aside from the fact that DRM keeps you copying or modifying content, and playing it on whatever damn player you wanna play it on, and maybe limits your time with a movie to a fleeting window, it doesn’t sound so bad. Okay, it does. But it can get worse—like when DRM breaks. For instance, Valve’s Steam network had a hiccup in 2004 that meant people were locked out of the game they paid to play. Or when Windows cocks up and tells users their OS isn’t genuine. Or Sony’s infamous rootkit CDs. Or when DRM servers are shut down, rendering music useless. The list goes on.

But wait, haven’t you heard that DRM’s dead? Or has a cold? Weeellll, yes and no. Sure, some music stores sell DRM-free MP3s—Amazon is unrivaled in that has ’em from every major label, and iTunes sells DRM-free music from EMI. And CDs have never had ’em, except for that aforementioned BS copy protection from Sony and a few other short-lived misguided attempts. So, it’s sort of going away for pay-to-own music, but it’s still fairly ubiquitous, in all-you-can-eat subscription music, in movies and in software, and it’s not going away anytime soon. The emergence of streaming serious video content, like with Hulu in particular, sort of challenges this on the video front—there’s no DRM, but then again, it’s not as easy to rip a stream for Joe Blow as it is to share a file over Limewire. Harder questions, though, like whether DRM means you ever really own anything anymore, we’ll leave to the lawyers.

Here’s a list an quick blurb on every major kind of DRM you’re likely to run into, and why it sucks (beyond the whole keeping-you-from-sharing-it-with-all-your-friends business):

Audio
FairPlay is Apple’s flavor of DRM that’s baked right into iTunes, iPods, QuickTime and iEverything else—most music from the iTunes store is lojacked with it, with exceptions from EMI and some indie labels. It allows for unlimited copies of music files, but only five computers at a time can be authorized. FairPlay files only play on Apple’s own iThings. Like every other DRM scheme, it’s been cracked.

PlaysForSure (now simply “Certified for Vista,” which is confusing since not all “Certified for Vista” stuff will play PlaysForSure, like Microsoft’s own Zune) was Microsoft’s attempt to get everyone in the portable player industry on the same Windows Media DRM. Even though Microsoft has basically ditched it, it’s successful in that a bunch of services, like Rhapsody and Napster, and players—essentially everyone Apple, from Sony to Toshiba to SanDisk—have used or supported it. It’s fairly generic copy protection that keeps you from sending it to all of your friends, though it works with and enforces subscriptions, with the biggest bitch being that it restricts you to Windows and to PlaysForSure devices. (Read: Not iPods.)

Zune uses a totally different DRM tech than PlaysForSure and is incompatible with it. It allows you to share DRM’d subscription content with up to three other Zunes, though it won’t let you burn songs unless you buy ’em. And if subscriptions die, it nukes your songs. It also manages the Zune’s “squirt” feature, making sure you don’t play beamed songs more than a few times and other annoying restrictions.

PlayReady: Hey lookie, another Microsoft DRM scheme. This one’s different from the similar-sounding PlaysForSure in that while it’s backward compatible with Windows Media DRM, it works with more than just Windows Media audio or video files, like AAC and MPEG, and is meant to cover a broader range of devices, like mobile phones.

Video
FairPlay for video is a lot like the audio version, but adds a couple tricks like nuking rental videos 24 hours after pressing play and presenting a slightly more complicated obstacle course to sync them to portable iThings.

High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection prevents video from being copied as it moves across certain digital video interfaces like HDMI, DisplayPort and DVI, which sounds innocent enough, until you try to watch something on a non-HDCP compliant display—and you can’t.

Content Scrambling System (CSS) was DVD’s piddly encryption scheme, long ago busted open like a rotten watermelon.

AACS (Advanced Access Content System) is one layer of copy protection that’s part of the spec of both HD DVD and Blu-ray. It’s way stronger than DVD’s CSS setup with several components involved in the encryption/decryption process, and allows for blocking specific players that have their keys compromised. Plus it can allow specific numbers of DRM’d copies of content, like for portable players. Also cracked, rather explosively.

BD+ is Blu-ray’s secret sauce DRM that’s actually a virtual machine, allowing it to do stuff like make sure the hardware and keys are kosher, and execute code. It’s been cracked, twice actually, but part of the appeal is that it can be updated—the last version is at least three months away from being cracked again, though it totally will be. BD+ was the main reason some studios supported Blu-ray over the AACS-only HD DVD, and you can see why.

Macrovision VHS, yep, that old chestnut: copy protection on VHS tapes that made everything squiggly when you tried to run two VCRs together. Why include it in a digital roundup? Well, besides nostalgia, if you want to convert your original 1986 Star Wars VHS tape to digital, this will make your life difficult—fortunately, a quick Google search turns up ways around it.

TV and cable—there’s a lot going on there to keep you from stealing cable’s goods, so you need a box or a CableCard to take the encrypted feed and make it watchable. The industry didn’t even really get behind the plug-n-play CableCard, either—it was more or less forced on them. There’s also this thing called a broadcast flag that stations like ABC or NBC or HBO can embed in shows at will so you can’t record them.

• Tivo uses DRM from Macrovision that can slap you with all kinds of restrictions, ranging from no copying at all to automatic expiration, limiting copies or managed transfers to PCs, or even not allowing you to view certain football games outside of a designated region. Its TivoToGo, for porting stuff to portable devices, actually uses Windows Media DRM though.

Windows Media DRM, speaking of it, is one of the more popular off-the-shelf DRM kits, used by everyone from Netflix for its streaming service to Amazon’s defunct Unbox downloads (now Video on Demand downloads) to Walmart’s old video store, that’s somewhat flexible it what it allows or doesn’t, depending on the service’s wants—from no copying to nothing but Windows Media compatible devices (i.e., no iPods). It only runs on Windows, naturally.

• Even Adobe Flash has DRM now. If you’ve used the streaming part of Amazon’s Video on Demand service, you’ve run into Flash DRM (which had a lovely Antarctica-sized hole allowing you to rip movie streams until a couple months ago). Two bad things about this DRM, notes the EFF: First, with an unencrypted stream it’s “unlikely that tools to download, edit, or remix them are illegal.” That changes if it’s locked up with DRM. Also, it means you’ll have to use Adobe’s own Flash player to video Flash videos. Lame.

PlayReady is another Microsoft DRM flavor, aimed mostly at portable devices, but it also powers the DRM in Microsoft’s Silverlight, which is what just brought Netflix streaming to Macs.

Software
Windows Genuine Advantage is what makes sure you’re not using a pirated copy of Windows. It phones home occasionally, which can cause bad things if the servers go down. If your copy is legit and it says you’re a pirate, you’re not the first person it’s falsely accused.

Valve’s Steam is one of the most elegant, integrated DRM solutions we’ve seen in a physical-media-be-damned world (except for its two infamous outages). Unlimited copies of games on unlimited computers, but only one can play on an account at a time. It’s fairly seamless, like good DRM should be.

EA’s copy protection system got real famous, real fast thanks to Spore, and nefariously restricts game installations to three computers—in its lifetime, not just at one time like some media DRMs.

• Pretty much every console has varying levels of DRM and copy protection (duh, it’s a closed system), but DRM issues are coming more brightly into focus as we download games from stores, like on the Xbox 360 and Wii, where games are tied to your original system, so you’re screwed if you get a replacement—it’ll take some decent footwork to get your games back, at the very least.

• Not software DRM per se, but Windows Vista has a ton of DRM technologies baked right into it.

Any DRM schemes we missed, feel free to complain about how they make your life more miserable in the comments.

Something you still wanna know? Send any questions about DRM, rights, McDonald’s managers or Taiko Drum Master to tips@gizmodo.com, with “Giz Explains” in the subject line.

Steve Jobs Skipping Final Macworld Apple Keynote

Steve Jobs is not going to deliver this year’s Macworld keynote. We suspected this was coming. But there’s more: Apple has confirmed that this is their last Macworld ever.

Instead of Jobs, delivering this year’s supposedly final Macworld keynote is Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior VP of worldwide product marketing.

While we have confirmed this information with Apple, what this means for WWDC or town halls is unknown. We had predicted that Steve Jobs was preparing his farewell following his highly de-centered introduction of the new MacBooks. At the very, very best, this is another step in that direction, preparing the world for an Apple without Steve. We don’t really want to think about the worst.

But we have to. This sudden, dramatic announcement says to some, loudly and unfortunately clearly, that Jobs’ health has taken a significant dive since his appearance introducing the new MacBooks. One theory might be that Jobs had to step down one day, and while we noticed a transition towards other execs at Apple events, starting this fall, a true control freak would want to step down on his own terms before something like health required them to do it without any say in the matter. That’s one theory. But there are far better ways to do this. The best way being Jobs finishing his long career of on stage presentations by giving the last and final Macworld Keynote presentation in person. There’s not really any reason why they wouldn’t have planned it this way. At least a brief, headlining appearance Jobs, followed by a team effort announcing new products—if for no other reason than to dispel the alarm that’s already shaking the internet, but also to make the transition even smoother.

What’s Wrong With Macworld?
There are other possibilities besides illness, we suppose. Is it a decline in the confidence and importance of Macworld? Also possible, but let’s remember this is where Apple launched the iPhone, its most important product since the iPod, and this past year, the MacBook Air, which set the tone for its notebooks for the rest of the year. True, this year’s rumored products—an updated Mac mini (plausible), iPhone nano (stupid) and tablet/netbook (dream on) aren’t mind-blowing, but still. What we have seen happen in the last few years is Apple use the internet and their marketing dollars to reach the mainstream without the mainstream press. They probably don’t need Macworld or that major expense, even if Apple can afford it. Apple’s launched plenty of product at Cupertino HQ recently and they’ve all done well, and on Apple’s own timetable. (Macworld is in January, at the slump of the retail world’s cycle.)

Money, Money, Money
So why not announce a full retirement, if he is too ill to continue—a possibility if he’s too ill to show up on stage? This opaque announcement is more mysterious, and uncertainties tend to be more troubling than truths, even hard ones. Apple stock hasn’t quite felt the impact, only down 5 points in after hours trading, but if Steve really is worth $20 billion to Apple’s market cap, once the news spreads, expect it to plummet further, faster. An iPhone delay rumor might knock off a few billion, but the suddenly realer than ever possibility Apple’s wizard-in-chief really is about to fade into the night—something that spooked traders even when Jobs actually did make an appearance—is an even more drastic event. In the long run, Jobs handing over the reigns is a GOOD thing to start doing now, to reduce dependence of the stock price on one man alone. If Steve leaves the day to day entirely, the only way any one is going to have confidence in the company is if they see and feel other executives have been in place for awhile. Like Ballmer taking over for Gates, a transition that took years upon years, Apple would be dumb to start this process late. And incredibly dumb to do so on the leader’s deathbed, as the world is now speculating.

Who’s Next?
And why Phil Schiller? Why not the man most likely to wear the crown, Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, who resembles Jobs more than anyone else at Apple? If Steve Jobs was retiring, why wouldn’t he announce his retirement himself? Or have his immediate successor do it? All questions we’ll have to wait until Macworld to get answers to, unless Apple’s iron secrecy dissolves in this apparent crisis moment. Another one: If a transition isn’t what’s happening here, but Steve is too ill to appear in public, how is he possibly well enough run Apple from behind the scenes? Why wouldn’t he make the transition more smooth if at all possible, gradually transferring power to his chosen successor. An opaque announcement—that Apple had to have known would spark this speculative frenzy is NOT the optimal way to do this.

Timing
The timing of this whole thing is really off, too, in more ways than one. News that you want buried, you drop on Friday, not Tuesday, which is actually the optimal day for the MOST coverage. Also, if Steve Jobs is in fact retiring, the best, most controlling way to do announce this would be at Macworld, Apple’s final Macworld, without this back-handed press release sending the press (us) into a frenzy before the fact. This seems like the worst way, but there are other paths that even crappier, which is likely why they’re doing it this way: him appearing seriously ill on stage, or worst of worsts, dying before Macworld. Which if the latter were the tragic case, it’s unlikely, given how (very rightly) guarded he is about his health, that Steve would announce its imminence. Maybe burying news would have seemed weak, and so Apple launched this on Tuesday in an unflinching message of bravado. Crazy, but this is a cult we’re talking about.

The Next iThingies?
Even supposing the worst of all possible scenarios, we don’t think this will change Apple’s roadmap, at least not for the immediate future—products have to be designed and engineered way in advance, so 2009’s slate is likely already completely mapped out, so even if Jobs does leave Apple soon, his direct hand will be felt in Apple products for at least the next year, if not longer. (That’s even assuming too much; just because he’s not presenting doesn’t mean he’s actually stepping down day to day.) And undoubtedly, his impact and legacy will endure far beyond that. Lack of product is a possible but unlikely thing to happen in the near future, specifically Macworld. Maybe the fact they have an uberproduct in the wings is a good counterbalance to losing Steve’s presentation skills? But then again, one way to look at it is that the Macworld cycle is, again, broken, and Apple has nothing to present this year and Jobs won’t get on stage for that. So, just as likely, if not more so than health issues, is that Apple simply has no amazing product to present at Macworld, so they’re sending the B-team to present it, conveniently broadcasting the irrelevance of Macworld at the same time. The possibilities are endless.

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling reiterates the irrelevance of Macworld as the rationale for their pullout, saying that “”It doesn’t make sense for us to make a major investment in a trade show we will no longer be attending.” But it still doesn’t address why Steve won’t speak at the final big show.

The End of an Era
So maybe this is the real announcement at this year’s Macworld, the one everyone knew would come one day, though it doesn’t make any less shocking.

More on this very topic:

Steve Jobs Skipping Final Macworld Apple Keynote
How the News of a Job-less Keynote Was Forced Out
Valleywag: Control freak Steve Jobs’s chaotic Macworld no-show news
Will Trade Shows Survive?
On Steve Jobs-less Keynote: Sometimes I Hate It When I’m Right
Do You Think Steve Jobs Is Retiring Very Soon?
Is Steve Jobs Preparing His Farewell?
The Quiet Man Who May Become Apple King

Apple Announces Its Last Year at Macworld

CUPERTINO, Calif., Dec. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple(R) today announced that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.
Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.
Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its
award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

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MacBook Air 2nd Gen Review

Externally, the new MacBook Air hasn’t changed at all since launch. Internally, however, it’s significantly more powerful. This latest update shows the difference between being thin by starvation and being thin through exercise.

To recap: the latest MacBook Air has the same display as before (one step up from the standard MacBook displays since the Air is somewhat of a “Pro” machine), the same form factor and the same exact feel as the one released in early 2008. On the inside, however, Apple increased both the solid state hard drive and the standard SATA hard drive storage to 128GB and 120GB, respectively. There’s also a Mini DisplayPort port connection for the revamped 24-inch Cinema Display, a faster CPU and faster front side bus, plus that Nvidia 9400 graphics chipset that’s in the MacBook and MacBook Pros. Here’s how the machine stacks up.

Benchmark: The most important thing to measure in this incremental upgrade is the performance comparison vs. other MacBooks. I’ve updated the chart from the MacBook and MacBook Pro graphics deathmatch (performed with 3DMark 06 under Windows XP) to include the MacBook Air, and it performs about as well as you’d expect in most departments. Since the MacBook Air and the Macbook now have the same GeForce 9400M integrated graphics chip, it makes sense that they’re fairly close in score, with the Air falling behind due to the wimpier processor. It is quite a surprise that the CPU test has the Air so far below the MacBook, scoring at only 56% of its cheaper, but fatter, brother. It’s still the slowest MacBook you can currently buy.

Battery: In regular blogging use (Wi-Fi on, screen 3/4 brightness, music on, lots of web browsing and webapps), we got a respectable 2.5 hours with the Air. That’s about what we got with the MacBook and MacBook Pro when they were playing back movies, something that’s more taxing on the system. But on the other hand, when you compare this version to the original MBA when rendering movies, the updated 9400M GeForce graphics actually lowers CPU usage, which helps to extend battery a bit.

Screen: Since it has the same screen as the old MacBook Air, it’s going to be just as good—which is to say, better than the MacBook’s screen. You get clearer blacks and no color distortion with wider viewing angles off to the side. It’s LED-backed and glossy, so those of you who work outside (a light laptop would mean more of you do) may have difficulty finding a good angle to sit at to not get an annoying glare.

Monitor: One very interesting use case with the MacBook Air is to drive the newly released 24-inch Cinema Display. Apple’s 24-inch monitor is very much made with the Air in mind, with its USB, Mini DisplayPort and MacBook Air-style slim MagSafe adapter. The good news is that the Air drives this display very well in either mirror mode (lid closed is optional) or as a separate display, proving that the GeForce 9400M is more than enough to run 1920×1200 sans slowdowns. The bad news is that the the laptop’s USB and Mini DisplayPort is on the right, but the power is on the left, meaning that the three built-in connectors from the monitor are able to connect, but you get a weird forking thing going on behind the display. Not as elegant as when you plug in the display to a MacBook or a MacBook Pro where all the ports are on one side. But, it’s a minor quibble.

General Usage: It’s essentially the same laptop but improved, so all of our caveats from our first review apply now. You still need to either use the external USB optical drive or “borrow” one from another machine. It’s not a fast laptop when compared to its bigger brothers, but it’s not a slug either. People who just want a thin, portable and light machine—mainstream folks—are the primary target. But, at $1799 and $2499 for the 1.6GHz and 1.86GHz versions, the Air still lands somewhere, in both price and features, between the pro user and the casual user, meaning that you should think twice and see if either the MacBook or the Pro would be better suited for you. [Apple]

iPhone 3G Unlocked, Free Software Coming On New Years Eve

They did it again: iPhone Dev Team has unlocked the iPhone 3G. They are now packaging the user-friendly software for a December 31 release.

While it took a little longer than the free iPhone EDGE unlock, it does sound like this is the real deal. The team is claiming a successful unlock—now the next step is to package it up in a user-friendly GUI app like Pwnage Tool.

The only catch is that it will work only with iPhone 3Gs with baseband version 2.11.07 or earlier, and it must be jailbroken. To ensure you preserve an unlockable version of the baseband, the Dev Team has warned against the usage of the QuickPwn jailbreaking tool and against updating via official firmwares without first waiting for Pwnage Tool to work with it. More guidelines for that are here.

Phew, after all this l33t my head is starting to spin, but the good news remains—iPhone 3G unlock is on the way! [Dev Team]

Hold the Phone, iPhone


As you may have heard, the Google Open Handset Alliance just got bigger, gaining 14 new members. We’re not talking little guys, either. Vodaphone, Garmin International, Sony Ericsson, ARM and others are joining the revolution quiet movement to upend the iPhone from its current position at number one. At the very least, the alliance has the growing potential to open up the touchscreen market and offer a viable alternative to Apple’s sole mobile offering, which is arguably the best phone on the market. (Now if they would just open it up to other carriers…)

At the moment, it appears that Google Android mobile operating system holds the second-place position, a statistic based solely on what I’ve been scanning in the news, though the actual numbers may dictate otherwise. Research in Motion (RIM) touted the new Blackberry Storm as if it were the iPhone’s messiah, but RIM fell flat on its face, making life miserable for thousands of Verizon employees who had to handle the complaints. I commend RIM on trying, but really, you can’t take on the iPhone with a slick marketing campaign. You need a near-flawless product to even come close.

But enough speculation, let’s get down to the nuts and bolts of what this blog is about. I’m talking photos and thanks to Live Crunch, I’ve got some great pics from an Android-powered, HTC G1 for your viewing pleasure. From what I see, the 3.2 mega-pixel camera can take a good photo in the right conditions. I’ve posted three photos from the G1 below that I think are a great representation of the camera quality. And with the G2 coming next year, who knows, maybe they will get even better.

Close up with the G1:
G1_raindrops.jpg
Full-resolution sample of the above photo:
G1_raindrops_large.jpg
Another close shot:
G1_fortune.jpg
Keep the home fires burning!
G1_fireplace.jpg
G1 photos courtesy Live Crunch.

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