Celebrity Mac Chick sighting: Lindsay Lohan
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Celebrity Mac Chick, iPhone
Hmm… well, they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity… let’s find out!
Here we see the lovely and talented… um, well, lovely, anyway… Lindsay Lohan, proudly displaying her iPhone as she scampers away from the paparazzi and on to her next rehab facility. I suppose given the fact that Read more
Show your iPhone a good time with iNdependence v1.4
Our good friend Will over at IntoMobile has alerted us that iNdependence v1.4 beta 5 has been released.
So what is iNdependence? Well, according to the above picture, it will either Jailbreak your iPhone, or have sex with it.
Actually, iNdependence bills itself as a Mac-only “easy-to-use interface for jailbreak, activation, SSH installation, and ringtone/wallpaper/application installation on your iPhone.” This is the first 1.1.4 firmware hack we’ve seen, and initial reports indicate it seems to work well (for most people).
Will has published a 9 step guide to using iNdependence, but really it is a 3 step guide of 1) download 2) open 3) hit “Jailbreak”. Seems pretty simple. Will tested it on his original v1 iPhone, running the old bootloader with no problem, so if you are brave and into voiding warranties, check out iNdependece, and let us know how it goes.
The real reason to upgrade to Leopard
I’m totally giving Leopard’s iChat the big “Thumbs Up“. Why? Just cause I can. Thank god they kept the always useful “money mouth“.
Hints that the Beatles iTunes launch getting closer? 1 to 2 weeks?
The whole “Beatles on iTunes speculation” thing has pretty much burned me out. I am perhaps one of the few people who doesn’t really care one way or the other about whether or not the Beatles come to iTunes. Sure, it would be a little exciting if the Beatles were an iTunes exclusive artist, but odds are that isn’t going to happen. I own all the Beatles albums on CD already, and while I realize Beatles fanatics rival only the KISS Army in loyalty and their need to re-buy every re-issued track, I think most of them will want a hard copy of the next money-sucking re-mix Yoko and McCartney sanction – a digital download won’t cut it (unless they make it sound like vinyl… some people might actually pay more to get their “hiss” back into Beatles recordings).
But enough opining. That only seems to get me in trouble recently. 
Faithful Macenstein reader Art Vandelay has provided a ray of hope that all the Beatles on iTunes discussion may be finally nearing an end:
“This is on the speculation side, but it has supporting details. I was watching American Idol tonight, and Ryan Seacrest made an announcement that drew a ton of cheers from the audience…
“We are proud to announce that the rights to all of the Lennon/McCartney Tracks have been given to us this year. We have been trying to get them to let us use their songs for years, and starting next week, it will be added to our catalogue.”
Sound familiar? They’ve been trying to get the Beatles for years, and this year we’ve finally gotten the rights? As the editor of an Apple blog, you know what I’m referring to. If that’s not enough, when asked in an interview when to expect the Beatles on iTunes, Steve said the following…
A: We’d love to have the Beatles. It will happen — I hope by the first half of next year. As soon as they’re ready, we’re ready.This interview was in 2007 by USA Today. For the whole interview, read here. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2007-09-05-jobs-qanda_N.htm
Therefore, I am making the guess that Apple will announce that the Beatles are on iTunes at the Media Event, or one of the Tuesdays around that time to coincide with their weekly Tuesday announcements this year.
- Art Vandelay”
Sounds eerily plausible. If Sony/ATV Music Publishing (which owns the rights to the Beatles’ songs in question) is willing to sell out to American Idol, which is one step above (or below) allowing songs to be used in a tampon commercial, then odds are they are getting ready to cash in on the digital downloads scene. And who loves digital downloads? THE KIDS! That’s right. And who watched American Idol? THE KIDS!
And Art Vandelay. It’s all falling into place…
IntelliSchool Free is released – Free open source school database system
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Awesomeness, Free Stuff, Open Source, Software
Macenstein has a huge FileMaker following (well, one reader, I know of anyway), so I thought it only fitting to pass this bit of news along. Faithful UK Macenstein reader Simon Elliott writes:
“I wrote a school pupil data system in FileMaker Pro three years ago and it has been used in a school ever since.
When I wrote the system, the most frustrating thing was being unable to find a good, open FileMaker template for a school data system. Everyone who wrote a good system, naturally, wanted to make money from it.
Three years on, I feel it is time to give it away to the community to help someone else in another school get a head start. The only condition is that any improvements must be given back to the community and no-one may make money from the file or any derivative of it.
I have placed a link on the Free Software page at http://www.thefreemac.com to the Sourceforge site hosting the project. Instructions are there for using the file.”
Thanks Simon! Those sure are some bold colors!
Speaking of the free software, you may remember a million years ago we told you about Read more
Stuff White People Like #40: Apple Computers
I wish I could argue with this, but I can’t. It’s quite brilliant. Thanks to faithful Macenstein reader TheWarpedOne for the link.
“Plain and simple, white people don’t just like Apple, they love and need Apple to operate… Apple products tell the world you are creative and unique. They are an exclusive product line only used by every white college student, designer, writer, English teacher, and hipster on the planet.
It is also important that white people are reminded of their creativity, and remember you need a Mac to creatively check email, creatively check websites, and creatively watch DVDs on planes.”
Apple says new OS X security exploit not a big deal: discoverers decide to make it a big deal
In, Security glitch exposes OS X account passwords, News.com reports on a newly discovered vulnerability in the way OS 
X stores username and password info during the login process. The exploit was discovered by the appropriately named Jacob Appelbaum, a San Francisco-area programmer who dropped this “bomb” on Apple February 5th:
“This is a real problem and it needs to be fixed,” said … Appelbaum. He said he disagreed with the company’s [Apple's] response: “They won’t put it in the latest security update or release a security update just for this issue.”
But like most Mac OS X security “threats” discovered in the past 6 or so years, this one is more or less benign. First, an attacker needs physical access to your computer. That pretty much takes the “scary” factor out of the equation here for me. Second, the person doing this exploit would need to know how to get your data by doing one of the following: Read more
Publicity stunt, gimmick, or ploy? You Decide!
Abilene Christian University first university in nation to provide iPhone or iPod touch to all incoming freshmen. And there’s probably a reason for that.
I’m sorry… I am all for schools adopting the latest and greatest technology (especially Apple’s) 
but this has the words “publicity stunt” written all over it. I’m not sure giving away a $400 gadget these days is enough to boost enrollment numbers, and odds are you either want to go to Abilene Christian University or you don’t, but when looking at the iPhone/iPod touch program, you cant help but question its usefulness. Duke University did a similar thing with iPods in 2004, pre-loading “school calendars and other information” on 4th gen iPods in a fairly transparent attempt to grab headlines, but it looks like ACU is trying hard to pretend their program will be useful.
“Freshmen will use an iPhone or iPod touch to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors’ offices, and check their meal and account balances – among more than 15 other useful web applications already developed“, said ACU Chief Information Officer Kevin Roberts.
Ok, let’s take a look at those important features. First, getting homework alerts. Frankly, I’m not sure what those are. The term “homework alerts” sounds very urgent, and like something designed to convince parents that today’s education system moves fast, and if your child is not equipped, he will be left behind. You simply gotta have instant access to those homework alerts! Right? Read more
Apple announces it might announce the iPhone SDK soon… or not
For those of you waiting to get your hands on the iPhone SDK, the wait is almost over. Or maybe not.
Apple has sent the following invite out to select members of the press (ours should be arriving any second now….)
“Please join us to learn about the iPhone software roadmap, including the iPhone SDK and some exciting new enterprise features.”
Hey, that sounds great, and only a week late! However, if you re-read that, Apple doesn’t actually say you’ll be getting the SDK on the 6th, just that you will be learning about it. Well, at least the “Enterprise features” line sounds promising, and if done right will likely sell another million or two iPhones.
[source Reuters]
The reason you should never buy anything
Filed under: Cynicism, Hardware, Rampant Speculation, Rumors, Updates
Just a day after the new MacBook Pro/Macbooks were announced, MacRumors is reporting that new versions of both portables will be released this June. The updates are expected to incorporate Intel’s Montevina Centrino 2 chips, as the company begins to phase out the current Santa Rosa chips that were the bee’s knees just a few months ago.
Predicting new Apple product releases has gotten a whole lot easier since Apple switched to Intel processors, as Intel makes its product roadmaps/timetables readily available. Now that Apple uses the same processors as Dell, HP, Sony and others, the company more or less has to release new products within a couple weeks of each new Intel update. This is not so much because of the need to keep up with the Joneses, but rather because once Intel has decided on the “next big thing”, they slow down production of the older chips, forcing Apple to adopt the newest offerings, or risk not having enough inventory to meet demand. This is widely believed to be the reason that the MacBook got an update yesterday in addition to the Macbook Pro when Apple had updated them only a few months prior.
Playing the technology waiting game for the “next big thing” with Apple is never fun, and you could end up waiting indefinitely to buy anything if you constantly listen to rumors. That being said, for those of us who really wanted to buy a new MacBook Pro yesterday, but would have found it a little “fiscally challenging”, this is great news, and gives us an actual goal and timeframe to save for.
Plus, you know that thing is gonna have Blu-Ray, you can just FEEL it! (kind of like the way you could feel this last one was gonna have it, only STRONGER!).
