Category: General Tech

Earlier today, I linked to an article outlining how to stream audio from a Mac to an iPad. This method used jailbreaking to trick Apple’s AirPlay service into doing things the boys and girls in Cupertino don’t allow for yet.

Turns out, there’s a legit way of doing this. ForkBombr reader Paul S. sent me an email, pointing me toward a free iPhone app named Airfoil Speakers by Rogue Ameoba.¹ When coupled with their Mac software Airfoil, audio from iTunes can play on any iOS device. It’s pretty damn magical.

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May the Force be with you, Irvin Kershner.

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About two years ago, my uncle called me up, offering to give me his old computer desk. It was a 1990 Steelcase — a monster of a desk. It had a filing cabinet on the right side, and was made of steel. It weighed a ton, it was huge and I loved it. It even had AT&T inventory tags on the underside of the work surface. Whoops.

Notice that’s all in past tense. Because this morning, my desk died.

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Ben Brooks:

The iPad is a companion device, but a companion device that is both large enough and powerful enough to serve as a primary computer for many people. Just take a look around the web and you will see a good number of Geeks like myself who have left behind their laptops on recent travels, preferring instead to take along their iPad only.

The Tab is not that type of device, it is not able to span the category of both companion and possibly a primary computer. As I see it the Tab isn’t even a secondary computer. That does not make it a bad device, I actually rather like it under the right circumstances.

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Federico Viticci:

You remember T.J. Maxx and their brief iPad adventure, right? The popular apparel retail chain started selling iPads last week, at the curious price of $399 — which was $100 off Apple’s suggested price.

[…]

They bought the iPads from retail (perhaps an Apple Store, who knows) at $40.000, they sold them at $32.000 generating a loss of $8.000 but they ended up on all major blogs and thousands of people visited their stores hoping to find a discounted iPad. With just $8.000, they gained a huge visibility that would have costed way more with standard advertising methods. Very clever.

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Dave Caolo, on using an iMac G4 as his primary system:

As my MacBook Pro slowly dies, I’ve called my old G4 iMac back into service. Years ago, that machine was wiped clean and given an install of Mac OS X 10.5 before being boxed in the basement. On Friday I will wrap up one week of using it as my primary work machine. In that time I’ve found that it’s slow, beautiful and perfect.

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Ian Paul at PCWorld:

Now that the John, Paul, George and Ringo have joined the iTunes revolution, what about the rest of the iTunes holdouts? Believe it or not there are still many famous bands and solo acts that refuse to put their music on Apple’s iTunes store. Most believe Apple’s policy of refusing to sell whole albums instead of single song downloads is the problem, while others object to how Apple pays artists.

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Chris Nuttall over at the Financial Times:

Mr Wilson, author of the popular A VC blog and a managing partner at Union Square Ventures, said Google had not come up with anything truly transformative that was a home-grown product since Gmail, introduced in 2004. It had relied on acquisitions instead to develop new services.

Wow. Once I stopped and actually thought about it, Wilson is right. Innovation is key in this industry, and eventually, growth via acquisitions can’t keep up.

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Asylum has a great public service announcement about how to talk to your kids about Star Wars:

Here are some sobering facts about the world today: Every day, millions of kids go to sleep having never been introduced to Chewbacca, and, worse, countless more think Greedo shot first.

We here at Asylum want to make sure you and your child have an open and healthy conversation about Jar Jar and the differences between a “good trilogy” and an “uh-oh trilogy.”

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Kit Paul:

Nice and sunny in Aldera today, on beautiful Alderaan. Some showers are expected tomorrow. Unfortunately there seems to be a glitch about Tuesday’s high temperature and no readings from Wednesday on for some reason—we apologize for the technical difficulty. On the bright side, we have a new artificial moon called The Death Star and it’s crescent is clearly visible and awesome. Enjoy.

[ via Kottke]

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Ben Brooks, in a discussion about iPad news apps:

Again I ask, would it not be more helpful to have a summary of the story on the front page, instead of the industry standard ‘we put as much of the stories text that we can fit even though it provides no value’?

Without a doubt, most iPad news (and magazine) apps are crappy. Without a doubt, the news industry really doesn’t get the Internet, let alone mobile devices.

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John C Abell at Wired:

But this very new dilemma begs the question: Are we at the dawn of an age in which tablets will become the jewel in your gadget crown, eclipsing the mighty smartphone only a few years into its reign?

I know it did for me.

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