Why Steve jobs will never go to jail…EVER
Posted by iGor
Yesterday, Apple’s PR machine announced they believe that none of their top execs (including Steve Jobs) will be implicated in the backdating stock scandal making headlines and taking Apple’s stock on a financial roller coaster ride this week.
While this is certainly good news for Apple fans across the globe, the threat of any jail time for Jobs was laughable. Steve Jobs is no sooner going to jail than buying a Zune. While I certainly understand shareholders’ fears of a Jobs-less Apple, it seems many people have forgotten that Steve is not like other CEOs, or people in general for that matter. So for anyone losing sleep over the prospect of seeing Steve behind bars, let me explain why he cannot be found guilty of any crime.
Reason One: Steve Jobs is made of money
I don’t mean the “made-of-money, wow-is-he-RICH!”-type of “made of money”. I mean his body is actually made of money. Down to the cellular level. Because of this, the very idea he would steal money from anyone is ridiculous. It would be like you or I stealing carbon. He just doesn’t value it the way normal humans do. He would have no motive for stealing.
Reason Two: Steve’s “Realty Distortion Field” would eat a jury alive
Steve’s world renowned “Reality Distortion Field” is often joked about both in and out of the Mac community, but all joking aside, the RDF is very much a real threat to any prospective prosecutor. Steve’s ability to turn people’s minds towards his way of thinking is powerful enough to work on an auditorium of over 2,000 people. In fact, starting with advances made in QuickTime 5.1, Jobs’ RDF is actually powerful enough to work via streaming video. On the odd chance a case was brought to trial against him, focusing on the minds of 12 jurors seated less than 20 feet from him would be a walk in the park for Jobs.
Reason Three: The Ghost of Walt Disney
Finally, in the exceedingly unlikely event that Jobs were to be convicted of a crime, it would be overturned in a matter of hours. As we all know, Disney is a member of SN-5, the sinister corporate syndicate also comprised of Microsoft, Halliburton, Kimberly-Clark (makers of Huggies Diapers) and In-N-Out Burger, which controls the majority of the world’s governments. Jobs’ recent “merger” with Disney pretty much assures that Halliburton’s Dick Cheney will arrange a pardon for Jobs should the unthinkable happen (at least for the next two years or so…).
Conclusion
In the interest of full disclosure, I will point out here that I am both an Apple stockholder and addicted to In-N-Out Burgers. However, facts are facts, and I do not feel those constitute a conflict of interest or in any way discredit the arguments outlined above. I sleep soundly knowing that Mr. Jobs and Apple’s financial stability are protected by a rocket-powered guardian angel capable of dishing out a “Double-Double” dose of legal whup-ass should the SEC try anything. So please, fellow Mac Geeks, let this story go, and let’s all get back to what’s really important; namely, posting fake pictures of what the iPhone will look like.
Thank you.
Kick it old school with AppleIIGo Apple II emulator widget
Posted by Dr. Macenstein
Programmer Marc S. Ressl has developed an Apple II emulator called AppleIIGo, available as a Mac OS X widget, a webpage Java applet, and a mobile phone midlet. Using the widget, you can play such Apple II classics as “Lemonade Stand ” (One of Apple’s first games), Arkanoid, Tetris 2, and of course, Oregon Trail.
However, there is one caveat to using AppleIIGo, as the site explains:
“To fully use AppleIIGo you need an Apple ][, Apple ][+ or Apple //e ROM image. This ROM image is copyrighted by Apple, and you must be licensed to use it. If you own an original Apple II you are implicitly licensed to use the software in the ROM of that machine. You do not need to make a copy of your ROM, as ROM files can be found on the Internet."
To that end, Ressl is nice enough to include links to all the various Apple II ROM images and games you might want, but he writes (with a wink, if that’s possible):
“For your convenience you can see below a link to the Asimov FTP archive. Under no circumstance should you use any Apple II ROM image if you are not legally entitled to do so.”
RIGHT.
Well, we certainly doubt Apple is worried about protecting the intellectual rights of the Apple II series of ROM images, but just in case, we recommend if you have any interest in this, download it sooner than later. Just the fact that Tetris is involved could bring down the wrath of law firm Norris McLaughlin & Marcus, PA, who earlier this year attempted to (thanks MariusTh) shut down the makers of Tetris-clone-maker “Quinn”.
Thanks to Macenstein reader Heather S for sending that one in!
Apple expected to post record profits on sales of “Pages 2″
Posted by iGor
Apple is expected to report record profits during its January 17th Earnings Conference Call, and this time it is not its ubiquitous iPod music player that will get the credit. Instead, at least one analyst expects Apple to announce over $900 million in profit from sales of Apple’s “Pages 2” software, nearly doubling last quarter’s $546 million profit.
“Everyone is talking about Pages 2, you really can’t escape the media hype,” says Apple analyst Michael Steveniak. “Pages 2 was the media darling of last year’s Macworld Expo, but it really only caught fire with consumers going into the 2006 holiday shopping season. We’re pretty optimistic we’ll see a Pages 3 in about 11 days at the Moscone Center, and that is why we are setting a target stock price of $740 for Apple, and a “Buy it Now” rating.”
Pages 2 was released as part of the iWork ‘06 bundle last January alongside the “PowerPoint-killer” Keynote 2. Steveniak says this bundling may have hurt Pages 2, and be the reason for the slower than expected gain in mindshare. “It took a little while to build momentum, mainly because it wasn’t being marketed correctly. But all that changed starting around September when all the kids went back to school and started talking about this “new killer app” they found over the summer. Now, Pages 2 is pretty much the application most Mac new users are buying their MacBooks and iMacs for. Everyone wants to run Pages, and you need a Mac to do it. It’s a very sexy application. Keynote 2, however, is kind of like Pages‘ “fat friend” that tags along on your date.
Steveniak suggests if Apple sold Pages on its own it could conceivably create an even larger revenue stream for the company. “I have talked to many people who say they would buy an extra copy of Pages right now if Apple sold it separately from the iWork bundle, just for the box. That’s how into Pages Mac users are.”
Amazon credits MacBook/iPods for its best holiday season ever
Posted by Helper Monkey
Amazon today announced its best holiday season in the company’s history, and among the chief reasons cited were healthy sales of Apple’s iPods (various models) as well as its MacBook line of laptops.
Amazon failed to give specific totals at this time, but said “Top sellers in Consumer Electronics include Apple iPods (various), Canon Powershot Digital Elph Cameras and Garmin GPS Systems.”
As for Computers, “the top sellers were the Apple MacBook 13.3″ Notebook PC in white and black and the Sony VAIO 15.4″ Notebook PC.”
Amazon’s sales figures include www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.ca.
EyeTV gets 2.3.3 update; more iPod/iTunes integration
Posted by Helper Monkey
In our opinion, there wasn’t much room for improvement with Elgato’s EyeTV software, but today the company managed to prove us wrong by releasing version 2.3.3. Despite being a “x.x.x” release, there are actually a couple major improvements packed into this update. Chief among them are improved iPod export compression options, and the ability for EyeTV to include the Metadata received fromt he online program guide into the iPod exports, saving you much time and trouble manually entering the information. Exported shows are also now correctly labeled as TV SHOWS instead of movies when brough into iTunes.
The complete list of updates is as follows:
Hardware Support
EyeTV 2.3.3 supports the following new devices:
Miglia TVDuo, a dual-tuner DVB-T USB device with antenna diversity available in Europe and Australia.
TerraTec Cinergy XS DT, a dual-tuner DVB-T stick with antenna diversity available in Europe and Australia.
iPod
EyeTV 2.3.3 offers three export presets to iPod:
Fastest encoding speed: 320×240, MPEG-4
Smallest file size: 320×240, H.264
Best quality: 640×480, H.264
Before using the “iPod” button at the top of the EyeTV Programs window, please open up the EyeTV Preferences to the General tab, and select which of the three iPod exports you prefer as the default. This choice will also affect any scheduled recording that you set to export to iPod.
You can also choose these three iPod export qualities via the File > Export window.
When exporting to iPod, EyeTV now writes recordings’ metadata (for example, programming guide information) into standard MPEG-4 show, episode id, and description tags. These tags are displayed in iTunes. EyeTV also sets the exported file’s video kind to TV Shows, so iTunes automatically files your iPod exports in the TV Show category.
Bug Fixes
• Problems with digital audio output have been corrected.
• A problem recognizing newer revisions of the Twinhan DTV Alpha Mac has been fixed.
• A problem with Miglia TVMax in Poland has been fixed.
• A problem with EyeTV 250 running in Game Mode for over 13 hours has been eliminated.
• A problem with modem and PPPoE connections and remote scheduling has been fixed.
• EyeTV contains new firmware for EyeTV Diversity that fixes a problem with the EyeTV infrared remote control.
• A problem with EyeTV Diversity when waking from sleep has been fixed.
• Support for dual audio (Zweikanalton) with EyeTV 250 has been fixed.
• EyeTV now supports DivX 6.6.
• A problem where the Mac could go to sleep during an exhaustive Auto-Tune has been fixed.
• A problem with moving the playhead using cursor keys in the EyeTV Editor has been fixed.
Macenstein’s “Mac Chick of the Month” (December 2006): Kandice
Posted by Dr. Macenstein
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About Kandice:
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To see more of Kandice, check out the following links!
www.myspace.com/kandicemusic (MySpace)
www.kandicemusic.com (official website)
www.kandictionary.com (Kandictionary Software)
Do you think you or someone you know would make a great “Mac Chick of the Month”? Send us an e-mail, or check out our application guide here or on our MySpace page for details.
Due to popular demand, we are proud to offer a MCotM desktop wallpaper to enhance the beauty of YOUR Mac.
Click to download.
Why can’t iTunes play the games it sells?
Posted by Dr. Macenstein
Yesterday I purchased my first 2 games for my iPod via the iTunes store, Sudoku, and Tetris. (They’re both great, incidentally. I recommend them highly.) However, upon clicking on the downloaded games in my iTunes library, it suddenly occurred to me that the iPod games sold via the iTunes store are the only media type that iTunes sells that it cannot play.
This seems like a very basic and fundamental flaw in the whole game buying experience. The games Apple sells are unique in that they are the only iTunes media type that requires that the user own an iPod to enjoy. All the songs, movies, TV shows, and audio books sold at the iTunes store play fine in iTunes. iTunes can even display PDFs and QuickTimes. Yet for some reason, iTunes cannot play the iPod games it sells.
Obviously, since the iPod is not a true gaming device, the games currently available for it are all very simple. Most rely on some form of an “Up”, “Down”, “Left”, “Right” and “Select” game pad structure that could easily be coded to a keyboard’s arrow and space bar keys. Yet for some reason, Apple has chosen not to add this functionality to iTunes.
I am firmly under the delusion that all the top execs at Apple from Steve Jobs on down start their mornings by checking out our site, so I will use this opportunity to make a request for iTunes 8. Steve, please ask the boys down in the iTunes lab to add gameplay functionality to iTunes. I think you will find it will probably cost you about $4 to add an iPod emulator to the program, and you will find many people (who don’t even own 5th gen iPods) will buy the games to play on their PCs. After all, now that “The Man” has put the kibosh on Quinn, where else are we Mac users going to find a good Tetris?
More Fun with the “Shift” Key
Posted by Helper Monkey
Many of you have no doubt seen the “tip” about holding down the shift key when minimizing/maximizing a Finder or Application’s window to see the scaling/genie effect in slow motion. (If you haven’t, well, there you go). But something I never realized is this slow motion goodness can be applied elsewhere in the OS as well, for an equally unproductive but entertaining time.
For some reason I had the shift key pressed when I hit the “F12″ key this morning, and low and behold, my widgets crawled onto my screen. So I figured, OK, let’s try dragging the widgets onto the screen from the Dashboard.
First, I held down “Shift”, then hit F12 again to watch my Widgets slowly appear. Then, still holding the “Shift” key, I hit the little “+” sign in the bottom left of the Dashboard, and watched my widgets slowly scroll out and up. Then, still with “Shift” held down, I dragged a widget (“The Delicious Library” one) out to my desktop. Here things got a little weird. The “growing” effect of the Widgets seem to play back in the same slow motion effect as window minimizing, however, when dropped into place on the desktop, the “watery” effect plays back in real-time for some reason.
This got me to thinking, at what level is this “Shift”-slow motion thing tied into the OS?
As another experiment, I held down “Shift” and activated Exposé. Yup, that too will move your windows around in slow motion. OK, what about that clear bubbly thing in the right-hand corner of all Finder windows that toggles on/off the menu bar? Nope. What about choosing System Preference Panes? Those sort of slide the window pane categories around… Nope. What about testing a Mac OSX Quartz Screen Saver, like the “iTunes Artwork” one? Nope. So, pretty much, as far as I can tell, this weird slow motion effect only applies to minimizing windows, Exposé, Dashboard and Widgets.
I can think of no reason for this effect other than to use as proof you know more about your friend’s Mac than they do (odds are 8 out of 10 ( yes, 8 out of 10, not 4 out of 5) of them will not have seen it before). At least with the whole “Command”+”Option”+”Control”+”8″ thing you can screw with a co-worker who’s out of the room. This effect seems really just designed to waste time and hypnotize us. Well, I for one would rather see Apple waste my time by including a nice looking version of Solitaire in the next OS revision. And, yes, make it so the cards flip slowly if I hold down the “Shift” key, please!
The iMac named TIME Magazine’s person of the year
Posted by iGor
OK, not really. But a quick glance at the cover may lead you to think otherwise.
Apparently this year TIME Magazine decided the only sure way to get people to buy this year’s “Person of the Year” issue was to make EVERY person on the planet the Person of the Year. After all, who wouldn’t buy an issue of TIME Magazine with them on the cover?
Actually, the idea here is that via the power of YouTube, MySpace, etc., every internet savvy person is now changing the world. We assume the iMac was chosen to represent the internet in general because even news magazines know sex sells, and there ain’t a sexier computer around than the iMac (plus it’s got that internet-savvy “i” in its name). Sure, TIME removed the Apple logo and Jay-Leno-esque chin the iMac is known for, but it looks like they kept the keyboard and that sexy stand that only the iMac (and a couple of recent PC knock-offs) has.
Well, I for one don’t care that I am sharing this honor with 6.67 billion other people, I am still honored, and bought 6 copies. I’m PERSON OF THE YEAR! Wait ’till I show my mom.
Macenstein hits the big time: featured on CNN.com
Posted by Dr. Macenstein
From the “Hooray for US!” category.
Wow. Recently we went from being the 585,000th most popular site on the internet to the 65,000th. Not bad when you consider how narrow our focus is and how lame our articles are. Of course, now we’re back up to 77,500th or so but we aren’t letting that little slip bring us down. Why? Well, we recently got one of our articles referenced on “real” news site, CNN!
http://money.cnn.com/blogs/browser/index.html
You’ll need to scroll down to the Sunday, December 10, 2006 “Zune finds one way to entertain” article to see it.
Sure, it is in their tech blog section, not exactly front page, but still, to tech geeks like us, it’s pretty cool!
