Remember we told you how Condé Nast was building its Wired publication into tablet form in anticipation of Apple's upcoming tablet/slate?  Well here's a video of what they've been up to.  Note the interactive graphics at the 30 second mark.

Very good post at Computerworld from Mike Elgan about Apple, though I'd venture that a lot of you already know this:

Tech watchers love the horse race aspect of technology industry competition. Apple competes with Microsoft. Apple competes with Google. Apple competes with companies like HP. But Apple doesn't see it that way.

Industry titans like Microsoft, Google and HP instinctively "fill out" their product lines to dominate huge areas of technology. Microsoft, for example, wants Microsoft software running on wristwatches, supercomputers and everything in between. Google wants to offer every conceivable service that can be squeezed through an internet connection. HP's massive product line runs the gamut from consumer digital cameras sold at Best Buy to entire data centers filled with enterprise systems.

Apple doesn't want to dominate like this. It has no interest in this kind of imperialist expansion. Apple is interested only in surgical strikes into this business or that product category, where they can solve design problems others have failed to solve.

Understanding this about Apple helps explain otherwise inexplicable decisions, such as why Apple got into the mobile phone handset business, and why the company is so ambivalent about business products.

To Apple, the mobile phone industry proved clueless at how to offer a compelling user experience with a phone, with its history of cramped buttons and claustrophobic user interfaces. They believed, correctly it turns out, that their designers could drop a game-changing phone into the market and "change the world" again. But when Apple casts its gaze at the enterprise space, it doesn't see sufficiently compelling design problems that will emotionally affect users. So why bother?

Apple's choices in markets it gets into make no sense, unless you understand that they don't want to dominate industries, or even maximize revenues. They just want to design and sell better products that will affect user experience in markets where that's an achievable goal.

Of course, business success is great. But Apple sees that as only a means to the end of shipping thrilling designs.

Steve Jobs was recently named CEO of the Decade by Fortune Magazine. I'm sure Jobs' ego was pleased by the designation. But ultimately, he doesn't care about this sort of thing as much as you might expect. Jobs doesn't want to be viewed by history as a Lee Iacocca or a Henry Ford. He wants posterity to look at him as a Mozart or a Da Vinci. He wants to be seen as a builder of beautiful things, not a builder of business empires.

Next time Apple does something that infuriates you, or makes you go "huh?" remember that Apple has its own unique world view. And only by understanding that perspective can you understand why Apple does what it does.

From the Toys section:

This one looks like a mistake so you might want to jump on it.  Tiger Direct has the Wireless Internet Camera Server TV-IP100W-N, for $39.99.    Features include 15 fps at 640x480 (30 fps at 320x240), 802.11g wireless streaming, 4x digital zoom, and more.  No one else has it for under $110.

It is also the lowest price camera server we've ever seen.

Woops.  It looks like Apple might have made those new iMacs a little too fast! 

According to Macworld's tests, the Core i7 iMac beat the Octo-core Mac Pro 2.2GHz in a number of Speedmark 6 tests and overall it was 1.5% faster than the fastest base model computer Apple sells.  Sure, you can update that Mac Pro Beast to 2.93GHz Octo, but that is $2600 more, $500 more than the entire Core i7 iMac!  Even the Core i5 iMac did pretty well. Oh, and that iMac has the best display Apple has ever produced.

Our tests of the built-to-order Core i7 iMac (which, other than the processor, has identical specifications as the stock Core i5 iMac) showed even greater performance prowess. With a Speedmark 6 score of 225, the $2199 Core i7 iMac was nearly 8 percent faster than the Core i5 iMac. The Core i7 was nearly 11 percent faster than the $2499 2.66GHz Quad-Core Mac Pro and 9 percent faster than the 2.26GHz 8-Core Mac Pro, which sells for $1100 more. In our tests, there were a few tasks where having eight physical processing cores was beneficial, like our MathematicaMark and Cinebench CPU tests.

Sure, these are just a few specific tests and users real-world milage will vary.  But it does show that the fastest iMac can hang around with the Mac Pros. In fact, unless you need to add internal RAID hard drives and/or extra PCI cards (or hate the hi-shine™ display), it is hard to imagine many cases where the Mac Pro workstation makes more sense than the cheaper, faster iMac Core i7 that also includes the best display that Apple produces.

Computerworld has the story.  A lawsuit that has been dragging on since the iPhone 1.1.1 update that bricked a lot of jailbroken iPhones got an interesting twist this week.  The plaintiffs in the case are requesting that Apple reveal the source code of the iPhone 1.1.1 software so they can ascertain whether or not Apple maliciously bricked jailbroken iPhones or whether is was just a by-product of the new software code.

Good luck with that. 

I can't think of anything that Apple would want to give up less than that source code, even if it is two years and iterations old.

Bad news for those Android users who were hoping to get the same level of game access as exists on the iPhone.  It doesn't look like it is happening.  Gameloft and companies like them have started to scale back their Android investments, according to someone who should know, Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefor (Bolds are ours):

"We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like ... many others," Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said at an investor conference. Rochefort said the company has cut back on investment mostly due to weaknesses of Android's application store. "It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue," Rochefort said. Games for iPhone generated 13 percent of Gameloft's revenue in the last quarter. "We are selling 400 times more games on iPhone than on Android," Rochefort said.

400 to one isn't a good ratio for Android no matter how big a lead the iPhone has had. via MR

Update: Amazon has dropped Droid to $150 as well

You might be able to find a refurbished iPhone for $49 off...but only if if it is refurbished.  Even chain discounter Walmart only takes $2 off the price of the iPhone and there are never sales.  Apple simply doesn't discount it, ever (we'll see about Black Friday). 

Verizon/Motorola have taken a different approach with their top handset.  Merely a week after launch, the Droid has already lost $80 in value over at Dell who are selling it for $120 with plan.  This follows news that the Palm Pre is selling for $79.99 at Amazon (Pixie is $24.99 - not even enough to qualify for free shipping - zoikes).

Why are Verizon and Motorola so quick to discount the Droid when apparently it has been flying off of shelves?

Sony plans to launch its own music, movies and gaming service, based on its existing PlayStation Network (PSN), which already has 33 million users.

The new store, which enhances Sony’s competitiveness with Apple’s iTunes service and associated digital media products, is also expected to sell eBooks and mobile apps. The store may be called Sony Online Service (SOS?), but the company isn’t yet prepared to commit to a name or launch date.

In addition to selling digital content, the store will allow consumers to use their online accounts to save, upload and share digital content. “Sony will have a one-to-one relationship with customers to offer subscription services, cloud storage of personal content, as well as unique entertainment,” said Howard Stringer, chairman, CEO and president at an investor meeting in Tokyo.

The company plans to have consumers register for the service the moment they pull a TV or music player out of the box, Sony’s Kazuo Hirai told BusinessWeek.

“It’s not just access content, stream it, and enjoy,” he said. “What are your friends watching right now? There’s a screen that says all the programming that’s available. It highlights all the things that your friends are watching, for example. It’s a community experience.”

PSN offers more than 450 games, 4,000 add-ons, 2,417 movies and 15,042 TV episodes. It is expected to raise up to $500 million this year, MusicAlly reports.

Sony is still figuring out the mechanics of the service - it hasn’t yet decided how many devices will work with media purchased and downloaded by users, for example.

Microsoft executives faced a barrage of Apple-related questions during that company’s annual shareholder’s meeting last night, while disappointed Dell revealed net income decline of 54 percent, year-on-year.

Dell announced $12.9 billion in revenue (down 15 percent y-on-y) for net income of $337 million. The company blamed its results on poor public sector sales and a consumer move to favour cheaper Dell PCs. All told, disappointing results for Dell.

Dell Chairman and CEO, Michael Dell, noted his expectation that his company may profit from the long-awaited PC replacement cycle on the release of Windows 7, saying, “I think there is an aging installed base for sure. You just have an accumulation of new technologies at the hardware, software, virtualized client and these IT managers really know they cannot extend the life of these client assets forever. While I don’t think it is all going to occur at once, I think it will be a rolling refresh that occurs over perhaps 18 months, I can’t remember a time when a very high percentage of them skipped an entire operating system. So what we remind them, and they know this, Windows XP is eight years old.”

But will Windows XP users move to Mac?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer doesn't believe they will, even though he acknowledges Apple’s picked up some market share.

He had little answer to one shareholder who accused Microsoft of having a poor rep in contrast to Apple in the key segments of student and younger computer users. "I'm just wondering why your marketing group can't do something to try to rein in this next generation, because you've got a real bad image out there," the shareholder said.

Ballmer’s answer? "There's certainly always opportunities for improvement," he said.

Microsoft’s boss remains bullish. "You take any country, including this one, and you say, how are we doing?" he continued. "The truth of the matter is, we do quite well. Even among college students, we do quite well. Do we have an opportunity for improvement? We do. Some of that is marketing some of that is phase of life. It is important to remember that 96 times out of 100 worldwide, people choose a PC with Windows, that's a good thing. Even in the toughest market, which would be the high end of the consumer market here in the US, 83 times out of 100 people choose a Windows PC over a Mac."

On Windows 7, Ballmer said, “Windows 7 I think gives us a real opportunity to come back again at some audiences that have been tougher for us. Frankly, the economy is good for us, because people do understand that Macintoshes are quite a bit more expensive for essentially the same computer…but we have opportunities to improve among exactly the constituency that you identify."

Analyst Charles Wolf in September noted that Apple’s share of the home computer market had more than tripled in the past five years.

Illustration: This image is of a closed invite-only meeting hosted by Microsoft at its campus every year. Spot the PC versus Mac laptop mix. Via: WindowsPhoneThoughts and Daring Fireball.

Always nice to welcome a new high-end application to Apple's computing platforms, and this one’s going to be highly useful to video and broadcast pros - Autodesk is bringing its high-end finishing product, Smoke 2010, to the Mac for the first time.

Autodesk is this week previewed the Mac OS X version its Smoke finishing and editing system (c.$15,000) to professionals in film and video attending Japan’s InterBEE exhibition this week. It is understood that beta testers had been aware of the newly-revealed Mac support for some time, but had been sworn to secrecy under non-disclosure agreements.

Smoke finishing effects software is a comprehensive creative editorial system. It delivers the visual effects capabilities and high performance.

Additional key features include:

A powerful 64-bit architecture
Superior tools for conforming, editing, audio, paint, character generation, graphic design, and visual effects creation
Leverages Autodesk Modular Keyer, Master Keyer, and Colour Warper technologies
Batch procedural compositing environment enables logical, more efficient workflows (available in Smoke Advanced)

Available below is a video clip detailing some of the features of the new software, unfortunately it is in Japanese.

SEGA has announced Super Monkey Ball 2 for the iPhone (video above), with the games development company stressing it has many more games in development for the Apple mobile platform, a platform expected to account for 24 percent of portable game sales by 2014. Read on...

That’s serendipitous to an extent, as a recent Research and Markets survey suggests the iPhone will drive future growth in the mobile gaming market. Analyst, David Cole, says. “Dedicated portable game systems from companies like Nintendo and Sony are still expected to lead the market, but it appears growth for these devices has peaked. The platforms from Apple are expected to be responsible for the bulk of market growth over the next few years.”

Oceanhouse Media Development Director Greg Uhler said: “With the iPhone and iPod touch, Apple has finally delivered mobile developers a platform with an attractive business model and a rapidly growing installed base of active consumers.”

By 2014, sales for games on the iPhone/iPod Touch are expected to account for about 24 percent of total portable game software sales, Research and Markets say.

SEGA exec Ethan Einhorn told IGN that the iPhone has, “reached out to a huge cross section of the community that is not buying a device just for games. So when you have something that's this powerful - that's easily competitive with the other handsets that are on the market - and you can put games on it that have full 3D graphics, you're able to satisfy the gamer audience that we know is there but also reach out to a totally new audience."

The company intends following up Super Monkey Ball 2 with a number of other games for Apple’s platform, most of which have not yet been announced. “SEGA is very seriously committed to making great iPhone games.”

The executive also promised more titles developed specifically for the iPhone, developed to fully exploit the platform’s potential.

In related news, Apple is expected to see iPhone sales gains in Europe as it moves to abandon exclusive deals, with analysts predicting UK sales could grow as much as 40 percent now the device is available through multiple operators.

MobileMe keeps your mail, contacts, and calendar information in the "cloud" and uses push technology to keep everything in sync across your iPhone, Mac, PC, and the web automatically.

Amazon is offering family and individual MobileMe subscriptions at less than you’ll pay at Apple - you can pick up an individual sub now for $72.99, rather than the $99.99 normal price.

The discount on family memberships is $45.05 - you can pick one of these up for $103.95 from the giant retailer. A Family Pack subscription includes one Individual account with 20GB of combined email and file storage, plus four Family Member accounts, each with its own email address and 5GB of storage.

If you own an iPhone, MobileMe’s pretty useful, not least for its ability to find your iPhone if you lose it, with a feature that lets you remotely wipe data held on the device to protect your privacy.

Amazon is also currently offering Final Cut Express 4 at a 20 percent discount on normal price - $159.99, rather than $199.

Many more attractive deals in 9to5Mac's Toys section.

Apple has updated its Boot Camp drivers, software which enables Intel Macs to boot up into Windows XP and Vista.

Boot Camp users must source their own copy of Microsoft Windows to employ within Boot Camp.

The 23.87MB update doesn’t introduce support for Windows 7, which Apple has promised will be made available to users in a future release. Instead, according to tech notes accompanying the release:

“This update addresses issues with the Apple trackpad and turns off the red digital audio port LED on laptop computers when it is not being used. It also includes support for the Apple Magic mouse and wireless keyboard. It is intended only for use with Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Windows Vista running on a Mac computer using Boot Camp.”

Requirements

• Boot Camp 2.1 must be installed prior to running this update.
• For Windows Vista, Windows Vista Service Pack 2 must be installed before running this update.

In related news, Apple has also introduced updated Server Admin Tools (10.6.2). This update is recommended for the remote administration of Snow Leopard Server. It includes the latest versions of iCal Server Utility, Podcast Composer, Server Admin, Server Monitor, Server Preferences, System Image Utility, Workgroup Manager, and Xgrid Admin.

From the Toys section:

Today only, Tanga.com offers a MacLife 1-Year Subscription for $34.99. Add coupon code "0761" to your cart to slice it to $4.99. That's a buck under our September mention and the lowest total price we could find by $4.

For our international readers: Sorry, this is only for the Yanks.

From they Toys section:

Amazon.com offers the Sennheiser HD-201 Circumaural Closed Back Headphones for $17.39. Pad your order to $25 for free shipping. Plus, you'll get a free $5 credit valid for MP3 downloads from Amazon MP3 Store when your order ships. These headphones feature circumaural earpads, 3.5mm and 6.3mm connectors, and 21Hz to 18kHz frequency response.

Short Version: Apple's lawyers contacted the little App factory to change the name of its iPodRip product that pulls music and video off of CDs and DVDS.  Because it has 'iPod' in its name, it is a violation of an Apple trademark.  iPodRip's developer wrote a diatribe to Steve Jobs on why this was unfair. 

Jobs used his iPhone to respond:

Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal.

Steve

Sent from my iPhone

The little App factory changed the name to 'iRip'.  Apple could save some time and lawyer bills using this tactic in the future.

Yep, we knew this would happen.  Apple, for whatever reason (they didn't test it and don't care or they are trying to prevent Hackintosh) killed support for Atom in their latest 10.6.2 build.  

All of you cheap bastard Hackintoshers can rest easy though.  A Russian hacker was able to slap an old Atom-supporting OSX Kernel on the newer Mac OS 10.6.2 build and get it running on his little Atom netbook.  Depending on how much Apple cares, we'll probably see this shut down in 10.6.3.  Rinse. Repeat.

A video demo of Google's Chrome OS from TechChrunch. 

Google today released information on its ChromeOS.  Some fun facts:

• Released 2H2010 (Just like Apple's tablet?)
• Will boot only from SSD, in 7 seconds
• Runs on ARM or x86
• Will only work on new Netbooks, not your current POS Netbook
• Is basically just an Internet Thin client -Just a HTML 5 Browser - Chrome
• Open Source so other browser makers could use it as well, and Microsoft already has an online version of Excel ready for it.

This is so slimmed down that it will run on extremely small laptops.  That might give Apple's tablet some competition.  Feel free to comment below.

Fresh from MacRumors comes news of Apple’s latest patent filing - a system which will allow (third-party?) remote controls to offer users the same graphical user interface (GUI) as they expect to find on an iPod, iPhone or other Apple device.

The patent was filed in May 2008 and published today. The inventors include William Bull, former iPod User Interface manager at Apple and currently Senior Director of Mobile User Experience at Yahoo as well as former Apple executive Tony Fadell, known as the "father of the iPod".

The patent explains that while various accessories do exist for Apple devices, they tend to be controlled by remotes with different interfaces and features than those offered by Cupertino. This means some features just don’t work.

Under the invention, the GUI will be pushed out from the device to supporting remotes. “The portable media device can provide the accessory with an image to be displayed on the video screen; the image can include various user interface elements that can resemble or replicate a "native" GUI provided directly on the portable media device.”

Additional Apple patents published today include those for:

USER INTERFACES FOR EDITING VIDEO CLIPS
INTEGRATED SENSORS FOR TRACKING PERFORMANCE METRICS
Location Determination
INTERLEAVING CHARGE PUMPS FOR PROGRAMMABLE MEMORIES
THERMAL MANAGEMENT OF GRAPHICS PROCESSING UNITS
CURSOR MOTION BLURRING
Flex Circuit with Single Sided Routing and Double Sided Attach

More at MacRumors.

This looks like a nice avant-garde backyard for an Apple exec. Fortunately, that's just what it is - it belongs to Apple executive (Mobile Mac Systems), art collector Jeff Dauber, and was built for him by Berkeley-based architect Thom Faulders. By the way, despite what your eyes are telling you, the backyard is actually flat. It doesn’t stop there - Faulders designed the exec’s whole house. We think it looks pretty cool.

(Dauber, incidentally, is not your “standard-issue Silicon Valley techie; he’s covered in tattoos and owns an impressive, challenging collection of contemporary art (including a mosque made out of gun parts, by the sculptor Al Farrow),” so says Metropolis.

Take a look at this rather amazing motion portrait of the art-collecting Apple exec here, it is interesting.

Via: Fast Company