Double Fine, the company behind such beloved games as Psychonauts and Brütal Legend, has decided to crowd source their funding of a brand new adventure game through Kickstarter. Of course, if any company can make a fantastic adventure game, it will be Double Fine. Tim Schafer, the founder of Double Fine, is known for heading up production of Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango at Lucas Arts. Working with Tim is Ron Gilbert. Gilbert, as many of you know, pretty much invented the genre of adventure games with Maniac Mansion as well as the Monkey Island series.

In their video, Schafer makes it clear that they need $300,000 USD for game development and $100,000 USD for filming of their documentary series. Within eight hours of going live on Kickstarter, they reached their goal. As of 12:30 PM Eastern today, they are over $700,000 USD with no sign of slowing down. Clearly, there is a substantial market for this type of game, and only Double Fine, headed up by the pioneers of the genre, have the balls to make it happen.

Now comes the most important question for us. Will there be an OS X and iOS version of this game? Well, luckily that is covered in their Q&A.

Being that they are in their first day of a total of thirty-three, and they are on track to double their goal by the end of the day, it is almost guaranteed that we’ll see OS X and iOS versions of this game. Want to make sure that happens? Well, don’t hesitate to chip in by backing their Kickstarter program. Your money will help make this happen.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

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The file, which you can peruse yourself here, contains several uncensored bits of information that I found a bit odd. Steve’s social security number is found all over that file, and while it’d be hard to steal the identity of such a recognized figure, it leads me to wonder why they wouldn’t censor it just to be safe.

Among other interesting findings are details of an FBI investigation regarding a bomb threat made against the Steve, with the crazy man trying to solicit funds from the late Apple founder in 1985. The would-be extortionist made his threats from a phone booth in the parking garage of the San Francisco International Airport and demanded 1 million dollars.

Outside of those couple of things, the file is fairly lackluster. It would have been interesting to read about a “pre-Apple” Jobs and his exploits as seen through the eyes of a government agency. This really got my gears turning, as I hope my FBI file is way more impressive by the time I kick the bucket. Any suggestions?

Source: FBI <–Who’d a thunk?

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There’s doing it, and then there’s doing it right. It’s pretty clear that Dave Morin immediately realized Path’s misstep and took immediate action to clean up the security concerns that its users had with the company storing contacts. Starting today, in version 2.0.6, users are now being asked if they would like to upload contacts to the company’s servers. The process is now opt-in, not automagically uploaded behind your back. It’s a small win, but a win nonetheless for iPhone users.

Yes, it’s a small win. Why? Path is hardly the first, and they certainly won’t be the last service that takes iPhone users’ contact information to provide better friend recommendations within a service. For some reason, Path was the lightning rod for all that pent up security anger that consumers have been harboring for the last couple of years. Facebook’s app currently does it, although they give you a disclaimer. But, God knows what Facebook is doing with that information. In the summer of 2010, Lookout published a study that found that one-third of the apps tested (300,000) on both Android and iPhone not only phoned home, but also transmitted contact lists, or retrieved a user’s location. The App Genome Project (February 2011) has recently found that 11 percent of apps on Apple’s App Store have the ability to access users’ contacts.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s really never a good excuse for accessing personal contacts, or even uploading them without the knowledge of a user. The practice shouldn’t happen, ever. That being said, Path is far from the only big name application that does this to its users.

We didn’t run the article yesterday because Path was just the tip of the iceberg for this problem. We’ve gotten some questions about why we decided not to run it. The short of it was we were giving Path some time to reply. The long of it is that it just didn’t feel right kicking Path underneath the bus that so many other apps ride these days. The whole bus needs to be disassembled instead of one company getting kicked off the ride.

We’re glad Path took the steps necessary to quickly eliminate the problem, but we’re more concerned about all the applications out there that do this that we’re not aware of at this point. If anything, Apple needs to start forcing developers to ask users if they’re comfortable with sending contacts to their servers. Apple requires publishers using Newsstand to have readers opt-in to information sharing, so why isn’t it happening in a market place where anyone can develop and upload an application? We’re skeptical about major publishers having access to contacts, but man, it freaks us out to know that a company like Zynga, or even a random high school kid down the street could  completely misuse our contacts, and gain from it financially in some way.

That’s the problem here, not Path. The problem is that somewhere along the way this practice was not only occurring, but that it’s continually being allowed to happen. That needd to change. Props goes out to Path for changing the practice. We love them for it.

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Netflix is seeing some heavy competition from Amazon. Today, the Seattle-based online retail behemoth announced that they have struck a deal with Viacom for a massive catalog of TV shows for their Prime service.

Netflix, which has long used its contract with Starz for a nontrivial amount of their available streaming content, will be in for a substantial problem when that deal ends at the end of the month. This move from Viacom clearly shows that not only is Amazon very serious about competing with Netflix, but also that Viacom doesn’t want Netflix to get too big. Dominant distribution channels scare content producers like crazy it seems, and this wouldn’t be the first time Amazon steps in to be the shoulder the content producers cry on. Back when music still had DRM, the music companies were very grumpy with Apple, so they took their ball to Amazon’s court. Netflix is clearly in for a bumpy 2012.

So, what happens to Apple fans? Netflix is very popular among us because not only does it work on the Mac, but iOS and Apple TV stream Netflix content beautifully. There isn’t any way to stream Amazon Prime videos on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. Would Amazon be willing to make an iOS streaming app? Is Apple willing to put Amazon Prime on the Apple TV? Let’s hope so, because soon it might be the only way to stream some of our favorite content.

Source: Amazon PR

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Hey Beatlemaniacs! The “Sir” Beatle and Apple are teaming up to stream a live performance directly to iTunes and Apple TV.

Considering all of the tension between the two Apples, Paul sure does like to pimp his new work through Apple Inc.’s marketing channels. It’s an interesting way of promoting your album, but sadly, only a member of the most successful band of all time gets to take advantage. Think of a world where buying an album on iTunes was your ticket to see a band streaming live. It would make music less of a commodity and more of an event. We’re hoping that Apple does more events like this in the future with lesser known artists.

Are you planning on attending virtually? What if you had to buy the album first? Would you put up the $10 USD album cost to see the walrus live on the Internet? We’re curious if eConcerts could work, and if Apple would be willing to do them. Sound off in the comment section and hit us up on Twitter. Our handle is @macgasm. We want to hear what you think, so don’t hesitate.

Hat tip to MacRumors
Image Credit: Mike Krzeszak

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The speaker lasts between 5 – 10 hours depending on how you’re using it. The speaker will set you back $55.00 and you can buy it on the Austrailian website ModLifeOnline.

To be honest, this probably won’t last too long on the market once Apple’s lawyers find it, so make sure you pick it up as fast as possible if you want it.

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From The Globe and Mail:

That’s really the only new information in the entire article, which eventually goes on to rehash all the rumors we’ve heard around the Internet the last couple of months.

Curious about the veracity of the claims? We are too. If Apple is trying to get companies like Rogers and Bell to partner with the company to bring content to its new-age television viewing device, they would at some point have to get their hands on it. That being said, hands-on would be extremely limited, and only occur at the highests levels, making it unlikely that information would leak from Rogers or Bell. Apple sends out iPhone models to carriers before the phones are released on networks, but they’re extremely locked down, and provide very little detail about what the phones look like. The same would happen with these televisions, if they actually exist.

Rogers and Bell aren’t the first companies to be approached either. It was reported earlier this year that CBS’s CEO let it slip that Apple was approaching networks to get content locked up for the Apple Television. With all the chatter, it certainly sounds like Apple’s out there trying to make deals before an Apple Television gets released. It could be a while though; there’s no timeline or indication of when a product could ship.

Read Rogers, BCE vying for a bite of Apple’s iTV on The Globe and Mail

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The quote has got me thinking a little bit about search engines and where that kind of technology is heading in the future. Aggregating results from the Internet and providing results to the webizens isn’t something that’s going to disappear any time soon, but the way we interact with a search engine is changing dramatically. With spam results both from SEO spammers and Google prioritizing its own results within a search, honest, unbiased, and valuable results are rarely being prioritized on the native Google search results page these days. Siri, and by extension, any application, can reach out and take advantage of multiple search databases, and provide users with relevant results, without ever having to visit the Wolfram Alpha website, or Google.

The steps taken by Apple to get Siri access to important information is pretty genius, and it’s undoubtably redefining the way we use search engines and get results. Instead of relying on one source, like Google, for all of your results, Siri could reach out to different services to gain access to search results. For instance, looking for a new music album? Siri could reach out to iTunes or Spotify, or any other service of your choice. Looking to rent a new movie? Siri could return results from Netflix. Want to read some new Apple news? Hell, Siri could reach out to Macgasm and search our database for results. In every one of these cases it would be almost impossible for SEO spammers to game the system for better search results, and in every one of these cases, Siri would get more accurate results directly from a service that specializes in the information Siri is looking for instead of relying on generalized services like Google. Siri is already reaching out to Yelp for its restaurant location-based recommendations, what’s to stop it from doing something similar for other popular requests in music, film, or news?

Apple is actually directly competing with Google doing what it does best, piecing together existing technologies into a more intuitive and usable service. Search just got a whole lot more interesting, if you ask us.

Read Wolfram, a Search Engine, Finds Answers Within Itself on The New York Times

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Have a grandfathered unlimited data plan on AT&T with that shiny iPhone of yours? Well, you’re in for some bad news. Reports are coming in that users who consume over 2 GB of data in a month using their unlimited data plan are now being throttled to the point of near-uselessness.

Of course, if you switch to their newer tiered-style plans, you won’t be throttled any more. You’ll just be paying an arm and a leg. “You wouldn’t want something bad to happen to your data, Mr. Johnson, would you? For a small fee every month, we can… protect you.”

That said, this is only a problem for legacy customers. You can’t even buy an unlimited data plan from Verizon or AT&T anymore. The only company that offers unlimited plans (for the time being) is Sprint. Who knows how long that will last? We’re living in a data-hostile environment at a time where everything under the sun wants to use data. Somethings gotta give, and we don’t think it is going to be pretty.

Source: Cult of Mac

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According to a press release filed by Honeywell, seven patents are being infringed upon:

• U.S. Patent No. 7,634,504 – “Natural Language Installer Set Up for Controller”
• U.S. Patent No. 7,142,948 – “Controller Interface with Dynamic Schedule Display”
• U.S. Patent No. 7,584,899 – “HVAC Controller”
• U.S. Patent No. 7,159,789 – “Thermostat with Mechanical User Interface”
• U.S. Patent No. 7,159,790 – “Thermostat with Offset Drive”
• U.S. Patent No. 7,476,988 – “Power Stealing Control Devices”
• U.S. Patent No. 6,975,958 – “Profile Based Method for Deriving a Temperature Setpoint Using a ‘Delta’ Based On Cross-Indexing a Received Price-Point Level Signal.”

Beth Wozniak, president of Honeywell, has gone on the record stating: “Competition is good and we welcome it, but we will not stand by while competitors, large or small, offer products that infringe on our intellectual property … From our iconic ’round thermostat’ to the first programmable and simple-to-use touch screen thermostats, Honeywell is known for setting the standard in home comfort and energy efficiency.”

We’re all for companies and lawyers protecting intellectual property, but at some point we all need to sit down and figure out whether or not this patent system is doing more damage to innovation than it’s worth. We’re pumped about the Nest. Heck, we’ve even done a review on it. Sadly, I can’t say the same for Honeywell.

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This is unfortunately where Final Cut Pro X finds itself today. Here’s another great simile from cinematographer Chris Marino: ”…with CS6 on the horizon and MC6 making strides, fcpx is like the ex girlfriend trying to get back together with a new haircut.”

The FCPX disconnect

It’s interesting to me, because parts of the whole FCPX saga are so un-Apple. Now, don’t get me wrong — the part where they completely revamp a program, stripping it of essential features, then roll those features back in? Very Apple.

But historically, Apple is not about specs, but rather the sense, the feel of the device/OS/app. And normally, this works out great for them — iPod, OS X, iPhone, iOS, iWork, iCloud, etc.

But with FCPX, it has completely backfired, which I think gets to the heart of the argument from professionals that Apple “doesn’t care bout them”.

The specifics about the specs

Pros do care about specs — not in the way mobile phone nerds enthusiasts care about specs, but because a small difference in specs can mean the difference in hours or days when you’re dealing with pro media, especially high-definition video.

And not just hardware specs. Software features matter. Multi-cam? XML? Going from machine to machine, app to app, being able to find what I need? I bought THIS monitor for THESE reasons (read: THESE specs); will my editing software work with it? Other companies who have constantly tried (and frequently succeeded) to out-spec Apple know and understand this and, in the wake of Apple’s bumbling of FCPX, are doing everything they can to win back formerly loyal customers.

Specs for the pro user are about two things (other than the obvious quality): flexibility and time.

At the release of FCPX, there were workarounds for many of these issues, plugins for others. Some of us were just SOL with some of the things we needed. Overall, inflexible and time consuming.

FCPX 10.0.3 or FCP7?

But a lot of that is moot now. FCPX 10.0.3 has the specs, which get at most of the core of the flexibility issues. And most workarounds have been scrapped for actual, built-in features (great concept, Apple!).

That, and a lot of third party companies are meeting the needs of professionals that were left in the wake of FCPX’s new “strengths”. The new 7toX tool lets you finally import your FCP7 projects into FCPX (get it now for $9.99 on the Mac App Store with the link below). And the Blackmagic Design kit allows broadcast monitoring. The X2Pro utility will send your edit to ProTools, bringing FCPX back into the professional post pipeline. These concerns were certainly among the biggest.

FCPX now has everything necessary in an editing application for me — not for everybody, probably, but for me.

Yet, tomorrow, when that client calls needing something edited by early next week, I’ll reach for my iMac and pull up FCP7.Why? Time. The UI and approach are so drastically different in FCPX, I just haven’t had time to get it under my fingers yet.

So much in FCP7 is second-nature to me. During long editing sessions, I often find myself tapping out Shift-Command-A, Command-S while eating lunch to make sure my food doesn’t suddenly disappear from my table. It’s muscle memory. We’re talking about literal biological neuropathways wired into my brain after regularly using an application that’s barely changed in ten years. My brain physically cannot understand the new program. It’s going to take some re-wiring. Possible, but surpassingly inconvenient at best.

The “new haircut”

FCP desperately needed a facelift — more than a facelift: an overhaul. But as I mentioned in my first thoughts on this subject:

So I was wrong about it not being like iMovie, but dead on about the consequences of doing so.

Apple and the OS success

I think Apple’s mistake was in approaching this as an app redesign (like the new iMovie) without realizing that for professionals, FCP is as crucial to their Mac as OS X or QuickTime. If any piece is out of order, the whole system is useless, and a crisis is on our hands. Many of us have more than one machine for precicely that reason. We keep one machine with the oldest, most solid setup in case the new shiny takes a big dump on our workload.

Not that anyone’s asking me, but I think Apple would have been much wiser to have approached FCP like an operating system. There were no doubt a lot of frustrated people with every iteration of OS X as different features and specs were end-of-life’d. But it seems that in most instances, Apple left some options open for people to give them (users, developers) time to adapt — Classic and Rosetta being examples.

OS X has been (and continues to be) wildly successful — so successful, in fact, that the OS X strategy is perhaps the most vital “spec” of the iPhone and iPad, even more so than the OS X kernel itself.

I’ve suggested here and there that Apple should approach the cloud from an operating system standpoint, rather than an app standpoint. They seem to kinda be doing that, and it seems to kinda be working.

By not sticking with what they know best, Apple released an amazing editing application redesigned from the ground up — with no bridges back to the existing (not past… present) version, existing projects, existing workflows. This has alienated a lot of users — users like me that see Final Cut as the operating system for their business.

And even with the updates — calling it 10.0.3 and not 10.3 — it’s as if Apple is saying, “Yeah, these things aren’t really important to us.”

The future

I might as well cut and paste from previous articles for this part.

FCPX is the best editing application I’ve ever used, and with major updates released on a faster schedule than promised, the glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel is starting to look less and less like an oncoming locomotive.

Just over six months out from the intial release, many users have not transitioned to anything new yet. I think anyone that has waited was wise to do so, as it is my opinion that, if you have to learn something new anyway, learning FCPX is much less time-consuming (and less expensive) than completely overhauling your post machines.

The naked truth

Which brings me back to the nudity. Will FCPX ever shake the “naked lunatic,” desperate ex-girlfriend vibe? Well, many ex-girlfriends find new mates (believe me), and many naked lunatics move on to new towns (believe m– i mean, look, a deer!).

Beginning with 10.0.3, Apple will start building a whole new user base of Final Cut Pro users. If the user base even has to rebuilt from the students up, it will survive. I suspect it will continue to grow and reclaim its prominence as the industry-standard editing app. It’s just a shame FCPX set back Apple’s lead, undoing ten years of steady growth.

Guess I better break out those training videos if I want to keep up with the kiddos…

PS – Don’t forget that Apple has a 30-day free trial available at http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/trial.

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All Things D is reporting that Path has managed to grow to 2 million users in just the two months since its relaunch. The path to one million took a full year, but growing from one million to two million took all of two months. Clearly Path is doing something right.

From All Things D:

As time goes on, I find myself wanting less of what Twitter and Facebook are offering, and more of what Path offers in a social network. Twitter is undoubtably great at reaching out and finding interesting new people to follow and interact with, but it doesn’t do a very good job of connecting me with people I know, and allowing me to interact with them in a personal, face-to-face social setting. Path limits you to only 200 followers, and forces you to really question whether or not people are worth following before you hit the follow button. Personally, if I’ve met you in real life, there’s a good chance I’ll follow you on Path. I use it in a different, more personal way than I do networks like Twitter and Facebook.

For some reason I have no problem sharing photos of my newborn daughter on Path, but avoid it at all costs with Twitter and Facebook, and that speaks volumes about the interactions I have with the people on Path versus other networks.

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As of this week, T-Mobile is now selling Square credit card readers at select retail locations in the United States. This isn’t their first retail pretense, though. In April of last year, Apple started selling Square readers in their retail locations. Of course, anyone or any business can go to Square’s website and get a card reader and account for free. That said, it is pretty hard to stock a free item in a retail store. Also, you do get the convenience of having the card reader available immediately instead of waiting for USPS to get around to delivering your package. It makes sense.

At this point, it is hard to understand why everyone everywhere in the US doesn’t accept credit cards. When I worked as a community evangelist for a genealogy company, I was in charge of selling accounts to our service at our booths at conventions. I used Square on the company’s iPod touch, and it was a wonderful experience. In fact, most people were pleasantly surprised that we could just swipe their card instead of only accepting cash or doing a manual credit card transaction.

From personal experience, I only have positive things to say about Square. Any opportunity for more people to get access to this great service is a good thing. Let’s hope this is the start of a world-wide trend.

Source: BGR

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While the list of icons is limited — it comes with an Android logo but no Apple logo — it certainly lets you customize your status bar a little bit more than you could otherwise. The logos are high quality, so it will look pretty good once you relaunch your springboard.

What would make this even more awesome is having the ability to upload or add your own logos, not just select from the included alternatives. I’d like to be able to add a Macgasm logo to my status bar.

Via: iDownloadblog, iPhone Hacks

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The iPod nano is a fantastic device — I own one. But a camera it will never need, unless it’s front-facing, and the OS provides FaceTime support for all of us iWatch aficionados, which is pretty unlikely at this point. Apple’s put a camera in the iPod nano before, like the 5th generation device, but it’s important to note that it didn’t make it into the 6th generation device. Why? Our money is on the fact that no one actually used it. But that’s just a hunch, with no real basis, or confirmation from Apple. According to Engadget’s first-look at the fifth generation nano when it was released, it was really hard to tell how good a video was while reviewing it directly on the nano. Since then, the iPod nano has lost half of its screen real-estate, so it’s unlikely that video playback of any kind on the nano will yield any decent results. We guess the nano could theoretically get a “Retina” display, but even then, a camera seems pointless.  The current nano does have a photos app however, so multimedia creation on the nano may not be completely out of the question for Apple.

There are a number of things we would like to see in an iPod nano, like bluetooth support for my headphones, FaceTime support with a front-facing camera (a pipe dream), and the ability to get iOS notifications directly to my nano. Most of these wish list items have everything to do with the nano being used as a watch, and little to do with the needs of the majority of nano users, which is why they remain pipe dreams at this point. If anything, Bluetooth support is the one thing we can see the next nano getting over anything else.

Have a nano? Ask yourself this: would you take the nano out of your pocket to snap a picture or record some video? Have an answer? Good, check out the poll below. Inquiring minds want to know what you think about a camera in the nano.

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Simple. Elegant. Genius.

The MacHook is a Baltic Birch hook that adheres to the top of your iMac, and we’re guessing a Cinema Display as well, using “microscopic craters” instead of an adhesive to bond to your display, resulting in no sticky residue left behind if you decide to move the hook at a later date.

The MacHook comes in at $15.00, and you can pick it up on the Workerman website.

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Young’s proposed solution to the problem? New hardware devices which will allow users to experience audio files that preserve more of the musical data present in original recordings.

Interestingly enough, he noted he’s quite sure that Steve Jobs would have been ready to fight the same war himself:

Although I’ve always been a pretty huge fan of Neil Young, I’ve always sort of thought of him as the grumpy man of rock’n'roll, and this seems like just the type of thing that he’d be grumpy about.

Source: AllThingsD.com
Photo:CDandLP.com

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The case is 100 percent solid Bamboo, and also has a hand-crafted leather strap, wool felt lined interior, and a sexy hand rugged, glass-like finish.

Sadly, the cases only fit the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros, but we’re not giving up hope for a MacBook Air edition. It also has a hefty price tag of $179.99.

I think we’ll take three. What say you Silva LTD?

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This incredibly fun video pays homage to the visual and auditory symphony that iOS and Mac users experience on a daily basis. We think you’ll appreciate it.

Also worth noting is that Chris Crutchfield, the director, editor, and composer, composed the music in Logic and Reason while editing the video in Final Cut Pro X.

Hat tip to MG Siegler

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Included in this update are a few interesting things. The forward button no longer appears until the back button is clicked. A new API is included to help developers make full-screen web apps. More importantly, two substantial crashes, one OS X only, are now fixed.

That said, Firefox 10 is still jacked up on the Mac. Listed in the known issues of the release notes are Growl 1.3 issues and problems playing Silverlight video on some OS X machines. The old-style scroll-bars are still the only option in this latest version, and they are just as ugly as they were in 9.0. While Firefox does now support gesture-based navigation, it doesn’t bother to give you a visual cue as to what is happening. If you accidentally swipe, good luck knowing if you went forward or backward. Lastly, the fullscreen mechanism isn’t even the standard Lion kind. It is their own special sauce that acts differently than how Mac users expect.

Sigh.

Despite the increase in releases, it doesn’t look like Firefox is getting much better at all for us Mac users. Thankfully, Safari and Chrome work incredibly well. We’ll just continue shaking our heads at Mozilla.

Source: Mozilla

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Apple’s WebKit is the backbone to many things these days. From iPhone to Android and from your favorite browser to your favorite gaming console, chances are that some of the content you see is rendered by WebKit. In this video, one of NetFlix’s user interface engineers takes the stage at HTML5 Dev Conf to discuss the pros, cons, tips, and tricks of running a WebKit-based application on devices like the PS3 and low-end smartphones.

If you’re curious about why your Netflix client doesn’t update the information immediately if you start scrolling quickly, this is a good explanation. If you’re a developer, he gives some decent tips about how to make your app run decently on low-end equipment. Good advice, and I’ll bet there are very few companies with more experience in this realm than Netflix.

Would you like to see more nerdy videos like this? Go ahead and subscribe to our video feed on Frequency. On the web or on your iPad, you can watch them in a beautiful, easy to use interface.

Hat tip to WebKitBits

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Now that the CES foofaraw is well over, a few interesting tidbits are starting to come to the surface. Specifically, this interesting bit of news about Sony supporting AirPlay made us raise an eyebrow.

Joseph Palenchar, TWICE:

That’s great news. When you’re an iTunes or iOS user, AirPlay is wonderful. Be it through an Airport Express or an AppleTV, AirPlay makes watching and hearing your favorite content anywhere in your house as easy as a tap or two. More companies supporting Apple’s AirPlay standard is fantastic.

As it stands, playing audio and video from iTunes on your consoles requires a lot of tomfoolery and use of apps like MediaLink and Connect360. Those solutions don’t even support the iTunes DRM scheme. While music no longer has the chains of DRM, the movies and TV shows still do. Let’s hope that this is a good sign, and we’ll see more AirPlay-compatible devices in the near future. Maybe Sony will take the hint, and add it to the PS4? That would certainly be a nice development, but we won’t be holding our breath.

Source: TWICE

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Anyone else get the feeling that this man could easily be the CEO of Apple at some point in the future? This guy embodies the Apple spirit, “An indicator has value when it’s indicating something, but if it’s not indicating something it shouldn’t be there.”

Sounds a little familiar, doesn’t it?

Update: Maxim Harper has pointed out that this clip is from a larger documentary called Objectified. He recommends it. We’re gonna check it out.

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After Léo Apotheker, ex-CEO of HP, essentially killed WebOS, I can imagine Jon wasn’t very happy. While HP’s current CEO, Meg Whitman, is open sourcing WebOS, the project he spent so much time developing isn’t on firm legs.

Of course, Jon is well known for working with Apple and helping to develop the iPod. It’s a shame that such a smart guy and his passion project got wiped out because of terrible management at the top of HP. That said, we’ll probably see something great in the not-too-distant future from Jon. He’s a brilliant guy, and it seems like he has many more years of innovation left in him.

What do you think about his departure? Is WebOS completely dead now? Sound off by leaving a comment below this post. We’re curious about what you think.

Source: All Things D

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From The Tim Cook letter, according to 9to5Mac:

Apple has been increasingly open about their program implementations in China to help alleviate some of these problems. The company has even partnered with the Fair Labor Association to ensure transparency with their reports on the situation. Sadly, it seems that until journalists are actually on the ground and in these factories themselves, this human rights question is going to keep popping up.

Surely, for some, Tim Cook’s letter to his employees will just be lip service. But, it’s important to realize that Apple is taking large steps towards changing and rectifying the problems at Foxconn for an entire industry, not just themselves. That’s not something that will be fixed overnight. Hopefully Apple’s commitment to eliminating the poor working conditions at Foxconn will rub off on some of its competitors who also use Foxconn for their products. I don’t know about you, but it’s mighty curious that Microsoft, Sony, and Amazon are all extremely quite about the situation, despite having products made in Foxconn factories.

It sure sounds like a plan is in place to rectify the problem. Hopefully we’ll hear more about the results in the days ahead. I’d be lying if I said that the This American Life episode didn’t affect me. It certainly had me questioning whether or not the toll some people pay to bring us flashy new phones is worth it in the end.

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In a new interview with Yahoo! and ABC News, Bill Gates took time to discuss his thoughts on Jobs’ death and what it has meant to him. In the interview, Gates recalls his unannounced visit to Jobs’ house just weeks before his death:

More interesting than the interactions between the two, however, is what Gates has taken from Jobs’ passing:

You can watch the interview here.

Source: ABC

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After Meg Whitman took charge of HP after the disastrous rule of King Léo, she announced that HP would be open sourcing WebOS. Today, we’re seeing the first step in that process happen with the release of “Enyo,” HP’s JavaScript application framework.

More interesting, we’re promised that HP’s implementation of WebKit as well as their own Linux distribution will be made available in the coming months. It’s nice to see that WebOS isn’t dead, but it certainly isn’t thriving. This truly is a Hail Mary in hopes of salvaging the rubble that HP’s previous leadership created. Let’s hope that this at least leads to other platforms implementing some of the nicest aspects of WebOS. Even if it doesn’t take off, it might be useful for future products à la NeXTSTEP.

What do you think of this news? Will WebOS be able to survive as an open source project, or will it be broken down and used for parts? Sound off by leaving a comment below this post.

Source: HP webOS Dev Blog
Image Credit: dground

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According to The Wall Street Journal, Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, will attend tonight’s State of the Union address as a special guest of Michelle Obama in the First Lady’s Box.

While Laurene Jobs is well-known for her non-profit work, there is speculation that her attendance hints at underlying themes of entrepreneurship and technology in tonight’s address. Also attending as guests of the First Lady are Instagram founder Mike Krieger and Warren Buffet’s secretary Debbie Bosanek.

If you’re into these things, you can watch tonight’s State of the Union address online.

Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle
Source: AllThingsD.com

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The top two spenders on the list? Amazon at a whopping $55.2 million, and Lowe’s (yeah, the hardware store) at $59.1 million. There’s a nice infographic put together on the WordStream website. We recommend heading over there and checking it out in its entirety.

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Ian Austen, NY Times:

It’s been clear for quite some time that Research in Motion has lacked the leadership that it needs to compete in a post-iPhone world. Apple transformed the meaning of “smartphone” when it launched the iPhone in 2007, and RIM’s BlackBerry devices and software just couldn’t keep up the pace. They’re still stuck in the mind frame of Treos and Windows Mobile.

Hopefully, this shuffle of leadership marks a turning point for the Canadian company we’ve grown to dislike so much. If the company takes a mulligan this year, and starts making best-of-class hardware and/or software, RIM might still be salvageable. The iPhone and Android could certainly use some competition to drive innovation, and Windows Phone 7 and the ghost of WebOS aren’t really providing that.

Source: NY Times

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By swiping and holding, readers can flip through a book quickly and accurately to find key information buried deep in a book or magazine’s pages. If you thought iBooks was revolutionary, you need to check out the KAIST ITC implementation; it’s outright mind-blowing.

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From the article:

Think about that for a second. Would you or your neighbour wake up in the wee hours of the morning just to appease some foreign company’s last second whims? Heck, in some cases there may even be laws against that kind of request in the westernized world. We’re not trying to say it’s the right approach, not even close, but we are trying to say that there’s a lot more to the equation than we often think about when it comes to these sorts of things.

The article over at The New York Times is a long one, but we recommend reading it. It’s pretty interesting.

Read How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work over at The New York Times

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A number of vendors have outlet systems that bring this kind of functionality directly to your wall, but who has the time and electrical skills to actually upgrade electrical outlets around the house? The RCA WP2UWR USB Wall Plate just plugs directly into the wall. No need to electrocute yourself just to charge your iPhone.

This RCA plug is available on Amazon for $19.99

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Today, Apple has published some guides to help assist professors and faculty in getting their iTunes U information created and implemented. Included on the webpage is step-by-step information on how to access the iTunes U Course Manager, iTunes U course creation guidelines, information on creating an instructor profile, course, and podcast with Garageband, amongst other things.

If you’re in the education sector, you my want to poke around a bit. There’s a wealth of information.

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In a blog post on the Summify website, the Summify team posted the following:

New account registration is closed, and some features will be disappearing. Eventually the app will be closed entirely. The Summify team will be moving to San Francisco to work with the Twitter team directly.

What is Summify? From Summify on Vimeo.

Who wants to take bets on how long Summify lasts at Twitter until the Twitter team completely butchers it like they did Tweetie? Yes, I’m still bitter about that and more particularly, how Twitter just annihilated its native iPhone app.

Anyway, kudos to Summify on a job well done. It looks like Twitter may have some Flipboard envy.

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You can get this jailbreak goodness on the Greenpois0n website. Gett’r done.

Update: The website is down currently, but you can get the download directly here.

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On Thursday afternoon, Shaun Inman, author of the 8-bit iOS game The Last Rocket, published a Safari extension that enables the browser to unwrap shortened t.co links so that the URL of the site the user is visiting shows up in the browsing history, making it available in the autocomplete suggestions.

The automatic expansion of Twitter’s short links works when using the Twitter web app and native desktop Twitter clients.

If you rely on the browsing history and URL auto completion and use Twitter, you might find this Safari extension very useful.

You can grab it here.

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Don’t get too excited though, you little political idealist, you. If you wanted to buy one, it would cost 9,999 yuan or roughly $1,584 USD. If you wanted some of the premium communist services it offered, you would need to drop another 3,800 yuan or roughly $600 USD. That’s pretty expensive. Well, even if you wanted one, it looks like the Chinese Government is doing its damnedest to erase knowledge that this has ever existed after it received substantially negative reviews. I just want to pinch your oh-so-predictable cheeks, Chinese government.

Don’t fret, freshman political theory majors, if you really want to red-up your iPad, the WSJ points out that you can buy Mao’s little red book for the iPad for only $2.99 USD. Phew!

Source: WSJ

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The 4-inch screen rumors have been around since before the iPhone 4S, and alongside those rumors came speculation that the glass of the phone would be slightly curved, amongst other things. Introducing a 4-inch screen could be another step towards fragmenting the platform, with developers having to work with potentially three resolutions for their applications on the iPhone. This is just a guess, but if Apple does release a phone with a bigger screen and slightly different resolution when they announce the iPhone 5, there’s a very high likelihood that the 480 by 320 resolution of the iPhone 3G and 3GS takes the hit. The iPhone 3GS is coming up on its 3rd birthday in June.

That being said, Apple could choose to keep the 960 by 640 resolution (Retina), while upgrading the display size to four inches. That would be a solution, and would not force developers to re-code their applications for a new resolution. I guess what we’re getting at is that an increase in screen size doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in resolution. Should the phone get the bump, the two facets do not have to be married.

However, we’re not sold on a 4-inch screen being in the next iPhone. The 3.5-inch screen currently provides a comfortable experience. When holding your phone, can you comfortably touch the opposite, top corner of your device with your thumb? Could you if it was 4-inches? I think I would have to strain to get up into that top corner, which is not something I want to do, especially considering the amount of time that my iPhone is in my hands throughout the day.

Note: We’re not sure where the concept photo came from. We tried tracking it down, but hit a wall. If you know, send us the info so we can link it up!

Woot, success!

Concept Image by ADR-Studio

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You see, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that there are actually two school systems in the Westernized world. First, there are the rich white kid schools where textbooks and other learning resources aren’t a problem. These schools are usually private and carry huge tuition costs. Then, there are the rest of the schools, the schools where most of us got our educations, the public school system. One can afford iPads for all of its students; the other cannot.

There’s no doubt that modern textbooks can be a huge educational step forward for most kids these days, but what happens at the schools where there isn’t enough budget space for print textbooks, let alone an iPad for every student? And, like many before me have asked, are schools going to be forced to have students pay for textbooks every single year, along with an iPad, just to get a basic non-private, public education? It kind of looks like it. That model may work in colleges and universities the world over, but it’s a new approach for primary grade schools.

How is Apple going to address that? How are schools going to turn to parents and ask them to buy each of their kids an iPad? How many students in impoverished schools just saw the gap between their education and middle American students’ education widen with one announcement from Apple?

We’re obviously being a little melodramatic here — there’s no doubt about it — but these are certainly major questions that need answering. Up until this point a textbook was both the tool for learning and the curriculum, and now the iPad is the tool for learning and the textbook is the curriculum. The cost of a public school education just got more expensive. Given the twelve years most of us attend primary schools, are we actually going to have to buy an iPad every two to three years just to keep up with the advancements in textbook technology? A book, if treated properly, can service students year after year after year. Right now, an iPad has a shelf life of about 3 to 4 years. Are digital textbooks providing enough utility to warrant the cost of a new iPad three times throughout early education years? I’m not certain.

We need to know how Apple, the publishers, and the schools will be working together to really change the education system, and we didn’t get even a hint of an explanation during the keynote today.

We don’t expect Apple to lay out that kind of information in a product announcement keynote, but we’re going to be listening intently over the next couple of weeks to see if anything changes on that front. We’re really hoping something does break, because these digital textbooks are a huge step forward. But this whole thing is going to be for naught if we don’t get iPads into students’ hands.

Apple’s excellent at having long term plans that don’t seem to make sense to the general public until all parts are revealed. This could be one of those situations. Maybe cheaper iPads are coming. Maybe a new iPad educational program is moments from being announced. Who knows really. But what I do know is that as it stands right now, something doesn’t add up. Right now it’s just a bunch of maybes, and maybes aren’t good enough when it comes to the future of our education system.

Update: Since most people seem to be missing the point (increasing the divide between the haves and have-nots in education), and focusing on the headline, I thought I’d add a link here to help illustrate the point. This post wasn’t about race, but since a few people tried to make it about that, here’s a quote for you that illustrates how race is also part of the equation:

From Unequal Opportunity: Race an Education:

Image Credit: CGS Schools

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• 300MB data for $20/month (each additional 300MB for another $20)
• 3GB data for $30/month (each additional 1GB for $10)
• 5GB data with tethering for $50/month (each additional 1GB for $10)

Compared to the current plans (200 MB for $15, 2 GB for $25 and 4 GB for $45) and similarly priced plans from Verizon (2 GB for $30, 5 GB for $50, or 4 GB with tethering for $50) the new plans are a lot more competitive.
They also give users some breathing room data-wise, which makes sense given that smartphone data usage is slowly but steadily increasing according to a report from Nielsen.

Source: The Verge

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Horace Dediu, founder and author of Asymco.com, an independent industry analysis site, is starting his own conference, promising an “engaging, participatory experience” for attendees.

Mr. Dediu has been observing the PC and mobile phone business for years now and has made himself a name with sane, insightful and fact-based analysis regarding Apple and its competitors.

The conference will take place on April 13th, 2012, in Amsterdam. The topics that will be covered are the following:

1. What is disruption and how can it be harnessed? The case of mobile computing.
2. What are the jobs that the entertainment industry is hired to do? The case of Hollywood.
3. Is Wall Street more than good enough? The case of financial over-service.
4. What are the limits of education? The case of learning and the theater.

Head over to asymconf.com for more information and the sign-up form.

Most of Wall Street’s PC industry analysts need to be shipped to the conference, tied to chairs and forced to listen to what Mr. Dediu has to say. Maybe their understanding of Apple’s strategy and the predictions of its quarterly earnings will improve.

Image Credit: Adapted from XKCD

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In addition to drastically increasing the speed of your now legacy device, the modified operating system also brings multitasking, folders, reminders, iCloud, video recording, Newsstand, and other enhancements that Apple abandoned for your phone, given its age, specification, and general sluggishness.

The operating system is free, and the Whited00r website has detailed instructions on how to install the alternative OS. Whited00r also supports iPhone 2G-3G, iPod touch 1G-2G.

It’s a pretty nifty project, and we recommend checking them out, especially if you’re tired of lagging around iOS on your older device.

Via: Cult of Mac

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The Check Point Software study indicates:

We’d be lying if we said we weren’t surprised that Apple has managed to completely pass RIM in the corporate world so quickly. Obviously the reasons for that are open to debate. We’ll leave you to reach your own conclusions.

What’s even more surprising from the study is that Check Point Software found that Android is the most risky platform on corporate networks:

What’s not surprising is that the study also found that uniformed and under-trained users were the biggest threats to the corporate network. That’s nothing new. It’s been like this since the beginning of corporate networks.

It was about this time last year when every single know-it-all pundit, wannabe pundit, and IT professional on the planet was pumping their collective fists in the air because RIM was about to release a tablet that would absolutely annihilate the iPad. Today’s probably a good day to think about that for a second, and reiterate that the majority of those stodgy baby boomer IT-types really have no clue what they’re talking about these days. Now, more than ever, employees are driving the decisions in IT departments. I think these findings really hammer that point home. Today’s IT department is a bottom up working group, not a top down approach where IT managers call the shots.

Source: Check Point Software

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The upcoming Apple press event scheduled for this Thursday is rumored to bring a new way to author, distribute and read textbooks. Picking up on a ZDNet article, Dave Caolo reiterated an argument he made regarding the benefits of digital textbooks for publishers:

Should Apple manage to deliver an appealing solution for the digital distribution of textbooks, there might be even bigger implications for publishers and students than many of us are considering at this point. With a resale market effectively gone, educational publishers could lower the prices of books, as the need to cover costs and make a profit during the first year of sales wouldn’t be as great. Books, especially in higher education, tend to be very expensive, making it costly for students to easily obtain up-to-date information on certain subjects.

Furthermore, the licensing model might be very important: Textbooks probably won’t be offered as a standard ePub, but be subjected to some kind of DRM. This would bar customers from moving purchased content to a platform other than Apple’s. Especially in higher education this could prove to be a strong deterrent, if students and scientists find the possibilities of consumption too limiting.

Finally, Customers’ expectations regarding the price of corrected and new editions of a book they’ve purchased might shift. People have gotten used to getting an almost infinite number of free updates for apps bought in the App Store; trying to sell customers a nigh unchanged book for the same price might not be easy in a digital distribution.

These are only three issues that will sooner or later have to be addressed, should a digital distribution solution for textbooks see the light of day on Thursday. Trust us, there’s probably a myriad of other concerns and problems a revamped textbook publishing platform could have on the industry. Just ask The Financial Times how they felt about having to pay Apple a stipend for their subscriptions. Short version, they decided to leave the App Store and create an HTML 5 application instead. No one saw that one coming when Apple extended a helping hand to magazine and news publishers.

Via: 52tiger

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Truth be told, incorporating Blackberry branding and services into Android-based phones would be an interesting move from a company like Samsung. Instead of being hamstrung by Blackberry OS, just glue their (in)famous email backend and messaging service to stock Android. Bam! Now you have a phone that isn’t just a direct photocopy of an Apple phone. That would certainly be a step up for Samsung.

Is RIM doomed? Is their sinking ship going to take down the entire Blackberry brand? Take a minute to drop us your thoughts on Twitter. Our account is @macgasm. We want to hear what you think about this giant mess at RIM.

Source: BGR

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It may be time to consider your alternatives. You can get your hands on an iWatch band just like everyone else, or you can pick up a Nanolet, which is just a fancy way to say iPod nano-bracelet.

Curvecreative has put together a sleek and stylish bracelet for you iPod nano that’s also capable of withstanding your workouts. Available in a variety of colours (black, white, red, indigo, grey), this Nanolet will set you back $21.52.

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From Fortune:

Go figure, a business executive looking to move up a corporate ladder. While all we have from the book is the excerpts from Fortune, it’s kind of hard to put any stock in what’s being reported around the Internet today. Cook is the go-to man, considering Steve Jobs’ recommendation, and that’s unlikely to be changing any time soon. It could be years, or even decades, before Cook moves on. How we’re already talking about CEO succession plans for Cook is beyond me at this point. It hasn’t even been six months since Cook was appointed CEO. Let’s see how the next year plays out before we all start wondering what the next move at Apple may be heading forward. We haven’t even finished the first inning yet. Why are we getting ready for a seventh inning stretch already?

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Mike Godwin, writer for Reason.com, has published an article in their print magazine, which also happens to be online, titled Steve Jobs, the Inhumane Humanist.. The article walks the fine line of trying to figure out just who Jobs was based on the evidence found in the biography. His findings? Jobs was inhumane at times, but more often than not he could iterate products from defunct-piece-of-garbage to an impressing, liberating piece of techno-art.

From the Article:

It’s a refreshing take on the Jobs documentary, and we highly suggest giving it a read. Godwin does a great job of peeling away the layers of commentary from Walter Issacson’s work and accurately depicts Jobs in the way that most of us have come to understand him, as an Inhumane Humanist.

Read Steve Jobs, Inhumane Humanist on Reason.com

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This isn’t particularly surprising. With little exception, every tablet and phone you see today is running on ARM chips. Despite Intel’s push for low powered processors, they just aren’t getting a foothold in the ARM dominated market. As tablet and smartphone sales continue to climb rapidly, it isn’t looking promising for Intel’s future.

What do you think? Is Intel doomed as mobile platforms take over the world? Let us know what you think of this report by messaging us on Twitter. Our username is @macgasm. We want to know if you think Windows 8 Intel tablets are really going to leapfrog the iPad in price.

Source: DigiTimes

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