512 Pixels

The new P alm Touchstone Charging Dock:

Simply place your Palm Pre on the Palm Touchstone, and magnets quickly align your phone in the correct position for charging.

Sounds like something Apple would ship.

Apple is bribing users to upgrade to iLife ’09 offering a special deal on iLife ’09 some customers:

If you buy a qualifying Mac between January 6, 2009, and March 28, 2009, and it does not include iLife ’09, you’re eligible to receive iLife ’09 for just $9.95 plus tax.

CNN:

Obama’s press secretary said the presidents had a “very constructive conversation” and Obama appreciated “the spirit of bipartisanship they showed” in wishing him success.

“The president and the former presidents had helpful advice on managing the office, as well as thoughts on the critical issues facing the country right now. The president-elect is anxious to stay in touch with all of them in the coming years,” Robert Gibbs said.

This is a pretty good image of the “peaceful transfer of power” idea that is so dang impressive.

Pandora, (iTunes link) everyone’s favorite musical iPhone app hit 2.0 status this week.

Apple is offering users an easy way to upgrade their music libraries to DRM-free tracks:

It’s also easy to upgrade your iTunes library to iTunes Plus. You don’t have to buy the song or album again. Just pay the 30¢ per song upgrade price. (Music video upgrades are 60¢ and entire albums can be upgraded for 30 percent of the album price.)

I upgraded my tracks tonight when I got home from work for a grand total of $26 (I previously tweeted I spent $12, but forgot to upgrade my other account until afterwards) with no issues. But some users are experiencing issues. Twitter user toddw sent me this:

Not letting me upgrade some songs that can be upgraded even those the songs are available… also giving me the clean version of songs that were explicit when DRM’d. Also Apple, the “report a problem” link in iTunes does not work within iTunes like it says in the web page said link takes me to

Having issues upgrading your music? I’d love to see how many of you are in Todd’s boat. Shoot me an email at [email protected].

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UPDATE: As I was pushing the Publish button, Todd updated again:

4 more albums just popped up on my iTunes Plus “Upgrade my Library.” Also, the 4 albums are in no way related to the ones I was having issues with.

Note: I rearranged the tweets to make sense in sentence form.

Apple updated the 17-inch MacBook Pro today, bringing it in line with the “unibody” notebooks first unveiled in the fall. With one twist:

Apple engineers custom-designed lithium-polymer cells to create the largest possible battery, then they went even further: They built the battery right into the computer, eliminating the space-consuming mechanisms and housings that standard removable batteries require. The result is a battery that’s 40 percent bigger than the previous generation and offers up to 8 hours of wireless productivity on a single charge — all in a notebook that’s less than an inch thin, weighs just 6.6 pounds, and remains the same price as the previous-generation model.

Yup. The biggest MacBook Pro takes a cue from it’s anemic cousin, the MacBook Air: the battery is bolted inside the machine. Apple claims 8 hours of battery life, with a lifespan of 1,000 charge cycles with these new batteries - numbers previously only dreamed about. I guess Apple figures that with that dramatic of an increase, people won’t need to pack a spare battery. Time will tell how well that works out.

At this time, it’s unclear if the hard drive and RAM can be upgraded in the 17-inch MacBook Pro as easily as they can be in the 13-inch and 15-inch models. Eyeing a photo of the bottom of the new machine, I’d say they can be, but Apple hasn’t posted any support documents on the new machines.

If I were a betting man, I’d say the smaller notebooks will get these batteries at some point in the next 18 months, but hopefully not at the expense of losing the easy upgradability currently offered to customers.

The one thing few will argue with - the new beast comes with an optional matte screen. If that ever filters down to the 15-inch models, I’d be thrilled. That would be enough for me to upgrade from my 12-inch PowerBook.

As part of today’s Macworld, Apple announced that DRM is leaving the Apple Store:

Beginning today, all four major music labels—Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI, along with thousands of independent labels, are now offering their music in iTunes Plus, Apple’s DRM-free format with higher-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings.

This kills the one reason I liked Amazon’s MP3 store. Hopefully DRM will soon just be a bad memory.

This morning, Phil Schiller took the stage at what proved to be Apple’s last Macworld keynote. These lines by T.S. Elliot line comes to mind:

This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

Yesterday, I posted my predictions. As usual, I was over-zealous. Most years, most Mac users are disappointed after Macworld because of the hype that is built up in the weeks before the keynote. In fact, historically, Apple’s stock sinks like a rock in the hours after the keynote because the rumors didn’t come true.

Here’s a quick run down on how I did:

Preview of Snow Leopard: - 90% Chance of Happening - WRONG A Revised Mac mini - 90% Chance of Happening - WRONG A Revised iMac - 75% Chance of Happening - WRONG Unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro - 75% Chance of Happening - CORRECT I said yesterday that I would be okay with an non-removal battery if Apple did something to achieve crazy-good battery life. They did. iWork & iLife 09 - CORRECT iWork now has some elements in the cloud, so correct there, too. But I bombed the release date. iPhone Nano - 40% Chance of Happening - WRONG, THANKFULLY iPhone OS Updates - 40% Chance of Happening - WRONG Mac Pro Refresh - 30% Chance of Happening - WRONG, BUT SOON, CORRECT Mac NetBook - 10% Chance of Happening - STILL NO NETBOOK Mac Tablet - 1% Chance of Happening - I MEAN, COME ON. THIS AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN

Note: You can watch the whole thing via QuickTime here.

Mac Rumors, 2002:

International Herald Tribune has an article with excerpts from an interview with Steve Jobs. Jobs is asked some questions about potential products: Q: Will there be an iPhone? Jobs: “One never knows. We don’t usually discuss products we haven’t announced.” Q: What do you think of the tablet PC? Jobs: “We’re not sure the tablet PC will be successful. It’s turned into a notebook that you can write on. Do you want to handwrite all your e-mail? We have all the technology ourselves to do that - we just don’t know whether it will be successful.

Sadly, their link to the International Herald Tribune is dead- I’m sure it would be a fun read now, seven years later.

The iPhone bit made me chuckle, but the last question is far more interesting than the first.

The fundamental problem of designing a device without a physical keyboard is input. The Newtons used handwriting recognition and a virtual keyboard (both used a stylus). Apple pulled the Newton off the shelf in the late 1990s; they already knew that handwriting, when the primary input device, wasn’t successful. Steve and the Cupertino boys are smart- the iPhone uses only a virtual keyboard- no handwriting recognition. I love how these things evolve over time.

Mac|Life has posted their favorite Macworld moments, along with 5 things they wished they could forget. One of my favorites isn’t listed: when Phil Schiller jumped off a platform to show off iBooks with Airport networking.

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Here we go.

Preview of Snow Leopard - 100% Chance of Happening Since 10.6 is all about “under the hood” work, expect a bunch of graphs showing how awesome it is. Also expect a vague release date of “Summer 2009.” Maybe a refined user interface (more iTunes, less Aqua) will surface.

A Revised Mac mini - 90% Chance of Happening The little guy has been neglected by Apple for the past year, with the last update to the machine made in 2007. Rumors have it that the new Mini will be beefier than it’s predecessors. One can hope.

A Revised iMac - 75% Chance of Happening If it the new round of iMacs are just “speed bump” upgrades, expect a press release, but it the rumors of quad-core, 28-inch iMacs are to be believed, Phil will talk about them.

Unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro - 75% Chance of Happening Just a matter of time till this beast of a notebook gets unleashed. The rumor-mill has the new unit sporting a hidden battery, like the MacBook Air. If Apple can justify it with some crazy-awesome battery life, I’ll be okay with it. At the very least, I won’t be surprised by it. Again, this may be a press release deal, not worthy of the Philnote.

iWork & iLife 09 - Read the Details I’m 75% sure that Phil will demo the new software suites tomorrow. I’m 40% sure they will be released when Snow Leopard is, and 20% sure that they will include some type of online, cloud-based service that is optional. The rumors of iLife/iWorks apps being 100% online is (in my opinion) 0% true.

iPhone Nano - 40% Chance of Happening Yes, Apple did splinter the iPod family into the Classic, Nano, Mini, and Shuffle, but I’m not sure the world is ready for a smaller iPhone. Plus, the 3G models have been out since July. Then again, where can Apple go in the future? AT&T’s 3G is barely tolerable, with 4G nowhere to be seen.

iPhone OS Updates - 40% Chance of Happening How do you spell Apple’s “push notification system?” V-A-P-O-R-W-A-R-E. Maybe Phil will announce it. Maybe not.

Mac Pro Refresh - 30% Chance of Happening The Mac Pro needs an update- badly. Press release only, unless they do something crazy.

Mac NetBook - 10% Chance of Happening Too soon. But if Apple does (ever) produce a netbook, it will blow your socks off.

Mac Tablet - 1% Chance of Happening This rumor just won’t die, but the Mac Tablet just won’t come alive.

My Off-the-Wall, Dreams-Come-True Prediction: Home Media Server - The AppleTV and Mac mini become one, with some Time Capsule there on the side. iTunes and files, across the house or across the Internet.