posts

Macworld’s Peter Cohen on the EeePC 1000HA:

The Eee 1000HA is no replacement for a full-sized laptop or a desktop computer, but as a means to check e-mail and get some light work done while you’re out and about, it’s fantastic. The Eee 1000HA gets you around town conveniently and economically…

Back to my original thesis: Now, more than ever, after spending some time with an Asus Eee, I remain convinced that Apple is missing an important opportunity by sitting on the bench rather than entering the netbook market, and I hope Steve Jobs and company bring something to market soon (as the rumor mill suggests they might. I’d love to see something in the form-factor of an Eee PC that’s descended from the DNA of the iPhone. That’d be the best of all possible worlds, and it would certainly give Asus, HP and the other companies that have carved out a niche in this market a new target to aim for.

Continue reading ⇢

The Internet (at least the parts that center around the Mac) has exploded over kbase article HT2550, which is about antivirus utilities on the Mac. Here’s the line people are worked up about:

Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.

The issue is the wording. ArsTechnica writer Justin Berka reads it this way:

Continue reading ⇢

I was poking around Apple’s site, and came across their Public Relations page. It’s not that exciting, really. Just info that gets spun into countless blog posts across the Internet. The oldest release I could find was from 2000*, which is surprising, since the “PR Library” only links to releases from 2003 forward. One thing I found interesting was the last paragraph on the releases from 2000. Remember, this is a year before OS X was released:

Continue reading ⇢

Ars, on Welcome to Macintosh:

The documentary, which has already made showings at five film festivals, “mixes history, criticism and an unapologetic revelry of all things Apple.” Though neither Jobs nor Woz make appearances, less-well-known, but no less important, figures in Mac history are in the film, including Mac engineer Andy Hertzfeld, former Apple Evangelist Guy Kawasaki, and Ron Wayne, a short-lived but original co-founder of Apple Computer. If you liked Pirates of Silicon Valley or read Revolution in the Valley, then this film is for you. There is even a new trailer to entice you to check it out.

Continue reading ⇢

Via CNET:

Way back when, the Space Age was essentially a series of sprints in a feverish competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The first satellite in orbit. The first man in space. The first landing on the moon. But starting more than a decade ago, the space race gave way to cooperation between the onetime Cold War foes, along with partners from other nations, in what has become an endurance event: the construction, maintenance, occupation, and operation of the International Space Station.

Continue reading ⇢

Normally, I don’t care about new Apple stores, but my mother’s family is from the next town over from Greensboro, NC, where Apple is set to open one soon. It seems ( according to TUAW) that things haven’t been all smooth sailing for you-know-who:

Apparently Greensboro won’t see the story by December 25th, as there’s apparently some argument with the property’s owners over whether Apple is “just another computer store” or deserves a better place in the location.

Continue reading ⇢

NY Times:

Mr. Shanbhag, who lives in Boston but happened to be in Mumbai when the attacks began on Wednesday, described the gunfire on his Twitter feed — the “thud, thud, thud” of shotguns and the short bursts of automatic weapons — and uploaded photos to his personal blog.

Mr. Shanbhag, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said he had not heard the term citizen journalism until Thursday, but now he knows that is exactly what he was doing. “I felt I had a responsibility to share my view with the outside world,” Mr. Shanbhag said in an e-mail message on Saturday morning.

Continue reading ⇢

I took apart an iBook G4 today. I do that most days, but today I documented it:

Continue reading ⇢

Ars Technica:

To lock users out a missing notebook, the users sends a text message to the notebook with a command reading “lockdown now PC” or “PC Shutoff.” The text message sends a command to the notebook via the cellular broadband modem and, even if the notebook is turned off when the command is received, the next time it starts, the system will be locked down.

An interesting use of the widening-use of 3G in notebooks. (Note: If I was a Window guy, I would own a ThinkPad, without a doubt.)

Continue reading ⇢

From the NY Daily News:

A Wal-Mart worker died early Friday after an “out-of-control” mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through the Long Island store’s front doors and trampled him, police said.

The Black Friday stampede plunged the Valley Stream outlet into chaos, knocking several employees to the ground and sending others scurrying atop vending machines to avoid the horde.

When the madness ended, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was dead and four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured.

Continue reading ⇢

PCWorld chimes in on the Apple netbook:

While other vendors scramble to keep up with the Joneses, Apple is well-known for creating innovative products that shake up staid categories. The prospect of an inexpensive mobile computer that melds the netbook form factor with technologies and concepts from the iPhone is intriguing. Could it really happen?

The netbook market could certainly use some innovation. Asus, the company that defined the category, seems to be heading the opposite direction. First it introduced the Eee PC 1000, which traded the older models’ Lilliputian chassis for a more traditional laptop form factor – and upped the price tag. Now comes news that the cost of the 1000 line will climb again, as the original 1000 series is due to be phased out in favor of the new 1002 model. Rather than innovating, Asus seems determined to back away from its original concept.

Continue reading ⇢

The iPhone Dev Team has made an interesting announcement today:

…the Linux 2.6 kernel has been ported to Apple’s iPhone platform, with support for the first and second generation iPhones as well as the first generation iPod touch. This is a rough first draft of the port, and many drivers are still missing, but it’s enough that a real alternative operating system is running on the iPhone.

This list seems staggering:

What we don’t have (yet!): - Write support for the NAND - Wireless networking - Touchscreen - Sound - Accelerometer - Baseband support

Continue reading ⇢