512 Pixels

Ars Technica:

In the LP we dissected, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, the root directory consisted of 12 items. This included seven folders, an .xml and .plist file — which appears to point to full media files inside an iTunes library — an iTunesArtwork file, an .itlp file with a file size of 0KB, and a standard, run-of-the-the mill index.html file. Inside the HTML file, the doctype is HTML 4.01 with meta name properties set to “hdtv-fullscreen” and “hdtv-cursor-off”. This particular one made use of three stylesheets and 34 JavaScript files, which were marked copyright of Apple Computer.

The index file isn’t complicated; it’s largely made up of JavaScript calls and a single “div” tag. Most of the HTML is stored inside the “vues” sub-directory and called from within the JavaScript files. The most interesting part of the file are the comments referencing “TuneKit.” What TuneKit is, exactly, is anyone’s guess, but I’m willing to bet it has something to do with the “resource” Steve Jobs referred to during the September keynote that Apple makes available to artists to create these LPs.

The LP we dissected had a huge number of images. Keep in mind the file is 206.5MB and it doesn’t have any audio or video inside of it, short of a 484KB audio loop. That, of course, means there’s an extraordinary number of images–in fact, the majority of the text is made up of images! Some users have complained that they can’t scrape for the lyrics in each song because they are handled this way.

The last bit of interesting information is the inclusion of a font .svg file. Not every browser supports this feature, and WebKit only added the compatibility recently. SVG is the future — accept it, or be consumed.

My wife bought the new Muse album as an iTunes LP, and the whole experience is really nice. I hope more and more artists go this route.

Electronista:

Apple’s iPhone OS has successfully overtaken Symbian for the lead in all mobile web traffic, according to the latest data from AdMob. The combined iPhone and iPod touch share has jumped from 33 percent in February to 40 percent in August. Symbian, meanwhile, has almost exactly traded positions with Apple and fell from 43 percent near the start of the year to 34 percent in August.

RIM’s BlackBerry OS, Windows Mobile and Palm OS also dropped sharply in the same time frame. The BlackBerry fell more softly, from 10 to 8 percent, but the older platforms have dropped off rapidly; Windows Mobile fell from 7 to 4 percent, and the now-discontinued Palm OS has declined from 3 percent to just 1 percent. The fastest risers outside of Apple were relatively new platforms like Android and Palm’s webOS, which respectively account for 7 percent and 4 percent of the mobile Internet.

For ForkBombr, about 4% of traffic comes from MobileSafari, with all other mobile browsers combined only accounting for .05% of usage.

On the desktop, Safari for Mac weighs in at 57%, Firefox for Mac and PC both accounting for 10%, with Internet Explorer being used for a startling 8% of views.

The Washington Post explains.

Macworld’s Rob Griffiths:

After my time was done with the Genius Bar folks, I kept my eye on some of the other Genius Bar visitors. Of the five folks I watched, four of them had purchases in hand when they left the store. (I imagine that Apple tracks the revenue generated by Genius Bar visitors, and knows exactly how much money the average Genius Bar visit is worth. It won’t ever happen, but I’d love to see those figures!)

It’s no accident that in newly-renovated stores, most of the smaller items (cases, cables, software) line the walls closest to the Bar at the back of the store.

Gizmodo:

Some I’ve talked to believe the initial content will be mere translations of text to tablet form. But while the idea of print on the Tablet is enticing, it’s nothing the Kindle or any E-Ink device couldn’t do. The eventual goal is to have publishers create hybridized content that draws from audio, video, interactive graphics in books, magazines and newspapers, where paper layouts would be static. And with release dates for Microsoft’s Courier set to be quite far away and Kindle stuck with relatively static e-ink, it appears that Apple is moving towards a pole position in distribution of this next-generation print content. First, it’ll get its feet wet with more basic repurposing of the stuff found on dead trees today.

Like iTunes LP, but for textbooks, magazines and newspapers.

The BBC:

Researchers say they have created a special kind of paint which can block out wireless signals.

It means security-conscious wireless users could block their neighbours from being able to access their home network - without having to set up encryption.

The paint contains an aluminium-iron oxide which resonates at the same frequency as wi-fi — or other radio waves — meaning the airborne data is absorbed and blocked.

By coating an entire room, signals can’t get in and, crucially, can’t get out.

Gizmodo:

Giz reader Manoj took his iPhone to the Genius Bar to have it looked at because it was dropping calls left and right, and AT&T swore stuff was totally kosher on their end, so he thought something was wrong with his phone. After doing a stat dump, the Genius showed Manoj that his iPhone had actually dropped 22 percent of calls.

The jawdropper: The Genius told Manoj that’s actually excellent compared to most people in the New York area, where a 30 percent dropped call rate is the average. There was nothing Apple could do for Manoj. His phone was totally fine. Which means there’s nothing Apple can do for rest of us.

Damn.

I like the idea of Apple’s iDisk service, but I hate how slow it is. So I, like millions of others, have turned to Dropbox to sync files and folders across multiple computers.

The one thing iDisk held over Dropbox’s head was it’s iPhone app. Today, that changed.

The Dropbox app (iTunes link) is out and here’s how they’re touting it:

• Access your Dropbox on the go

• Download files for offline viewing

• Sync photos and videos to your Dropobx

• Share links to files in your Dropbox

After playing with the app for several minutes, I’m pretty impressed. The “upload exsisting photo or video” feature is really nice — with this, I can upload photos to my Dropbox from anywhere. The whole thing feels like something Apple should have made.*

They even included a PDF showing off how to use it. Well done, Dropbox team.

*Which raises the question — why does iDisk suck so bad?

Lileks.com:

If Microsoft had been put in charge of marketing sex, the human race would have ended long ago, because no one would be caught dead doing something that uncool.

Techcrunch:

The main takeaway is that if you’re addicted to Tweetie 1, there isn’t anything in Tweetie 2 that you won’t like, and several things that are greatly improved. It’s simply a must-download.

Hit that link for lots of details, plus some screenshots. Looks like a solid update to an already great app.

Wired:

It doesn’t exactly rival Moore’s Law, but Apple has doubled the number of iPhone app downloads in about half the time it took to reach 1 billion. But unlike the fanfare which attended the 1 billion mark, we don’t know who downloaded the 2 billionth app or what it was — and this time nobody wins anything.

Apple announced Monday in a brief press release that it the 2 billionth iPhone app had been downloaded. It didn’t say when, exactly, but it’s a little more than five months since the 1 billionth was retrieved from the iTunes Store cloud. And that was nine months after what is now the largest application store in the world first opened its virtual doors.

On that occasion, April 24, we learned that 13-year-old Connor Mulcahey of Weston, Connecticut, had downloaded the billionth application, earning him tens of thousands of dollars in Apple hardware and software and the developer of the app, Bump Technology, a guaranteed spot in the next edition of Trivial Pursuit.

We asked Apple about the who’s and what’s of the 2 billionth transaction, but they replied that they were not going beyond the release. So all we know is that they’ve reached another milestone, and that download activity continues to grow. A lot. “The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate with users downloading a staggering 2 billion apps in just over a year, including more than half a billion apps this quarter alone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in the four-paragraph statement.

BusinessWeek:

But now, Jobs thinks the time is right to report on what Apple has accomplished. The company has finished a multiyear data-mining project to fully understand its environmental impact on the planet and has published data that may stir up controversy. Apple takes issue with studies that hand accolades to rivals such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard for cutting emissions at their facilities. Apple’s research suggests that those emissions make up only a small slice of a company’s larger environmental impact—a mere 3% in Apple’s case. Far more of the carbon footprint, he says—53%—is generated by Apple’s products. “Everyone focuses on whether you have motion detectors in the conference room” so the lights will go off when it’s unattended, says Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook. “But making products cleaner involves real engineering. It’s about innovating, and it’s hard work.”

I think it’s a great approach.