Apple Archive

"To me, a personal computer should be small, reliable, convenient to use and inexpensive." You'll want to read this: Steve Wozniak's original description of the Apple ][, published in May 1977 in Byte Magazine.

"Production is set to begin next month for the screens, which measure at least 4 inches diagonally compared with 3.5 inches on the iPhone 4S, the latest phone from Apple, the people said." Cue the usual suspects twisting and turning to change the very fabric of space-time so that instead of 3.5" being the optimal size, 4.0" will be the optimal size. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

"Between 2009 and 2011, Apple acquired three mapping companies in quick succession: Placebase, in 2009; 3-D mapping outfit Poly9 in 2010; and in 2011, C3 Technologies, a second 3-D mapping company. Three mapping-company acquisitions in as many years. But for good reason: Apple has been hard at work developing its own in-house mapping solution for iOS, and now it's finally ready to debut it." I'm probably crazy, but I've never used the map applications on my mobile phones, so it's difficult for me to get excited about this.

The next frontier for Apple - and other technology companies - to conquer: the television market. Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn, has confirmed his company will be building a television for Apple in conjunction with Sharp. Since I bought a brand-new top-of-the-line TV late last year, I've been thinking a lot about what could be improved about the state of TV today, and as crazy as it seems, I'm actually not that dissatisfied.

Daniel Hooper has come up with a number of tweaks to the iPad keyboard to make text entry better. Various websites are in awe, but the basic gist is something I've mentioned before: just implement a few arrow keys - default on many Android keyboards - and be done with it. Hooper uses gestures to perform the functions of the arrow keys, but they are non-discoverable and most likely error-prone (you'll hit the keys) - and thus more complex. Arrow keys. All I ask for.

"In 2007, software developer Laurent Sansonetti launched an open source software project called MacRuby. It aimed to build a Ruby interpreter on top of the Objective-C runtime, providing a seamless bridge between Ruby and OS X "Cocoa" ecosystem—and it succeeded. Now Sansonetti hopes to do something similar for iOS."

"I've been developing a new tweak for iPads called Quasar. Quasar is a tweak that allows you to run your apps in windows in your iPad. Just like in a window-based operating system, you can resize, move, close or full-screen windows." This is really, really cool - and quite useful, too, especially for iPhone-only applications. It's in the Cydia Store for $9.99.

"Apple, the world's most profitable technology company, doesn't design iPhones here. It doesn't run AppleCare customer service from this city. And it doesn't manufacture MacBooks or iPads anywhere nearby. Yet, with a handful of employees in a small office here in Reno, Apple has done something central to its corporate strategy: it has avoided millions of dollars in taxes in California and 20 other states." Sure, this is all legal for companies to do (and Apple obviously isn't alone) but it does show you how much sense of morality companies have. Answer: none. But hey, it's legal, and the law is never wrong, right?

Another solid quarter for Apple. "The Company sold 35.1 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 88 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 11.8 million iPads during the quarter, a 151 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4 million Macs during the quarter, a 7 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.7 million iPods, a 15 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter." The official Apple Money Pile: $110 billion. That's where those 47% profit margins you pay go to!

Dude buys $4000 MacBook Pro. GPU make/model in this laptop is proven to be defective. Apple launches repair program that covers the machine. Apple refuses to fix or replace the dude's $4000 laptop. Dude tries several different ways of getting Apple to admit fault. Apple doesn't budge. Case goes to court, in front of a judge. Apple sends two (2) (twee) (deux) (zwei) (dos) (dva) (dau) lawyers to handle the case. Dude takes care of his own defense, obliterates Apple. Judge summons Apple to pay for the laptop and court costs. During the court case, the Apple lawyers admit openly that replacing the logic board would have cost Apple nothing, since Nvidia foots the bill. Apple paid for two, most likely quite expensive lawyers, to prevent having to pay nothing to replace a laptop. This is pure insanity.

"Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, and Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO, will host a conference call to announce the outcome of the company's discussions concerning its cash balance." Interesting. They have $100 billion on the bank - any guesses? Dividend payout? A large acquisition?

"Yesterday Apple launched iPhoto, its photo management app, for the iPad and iPhone... And we're rather pleased to find they're the latest to switch to OpenStreetMap. The OSM data that Apple is using is rather old (start of April 2010) so don't expect to see your latest and greatest updates on there. It's also missing the necessary credit to OpenStreetMap's contributors; we look forward to working with Apple to get that on there." Pretty ironic coming from a company suing the living daylights out of everyone over rounded corners and bouncy-scroll effects, but alas, I'm sure there's some construed justification coming up from the usual suspects.

"Apple's iOS is starting to get a little long in the tooth. There, I said it. The overall look and feel of the operating system has not changed since its 2007 debut. Sure, Apple has piled in plenty of new features, but the core of the operating system is the same as it was five years ago. It needs a refresh. I'm not saying iOS is ugly or anything, but it's starting to look a little old."

Today MacMan updated Chimera to version 1.8. For Mac OS X developers, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion support has been added. This version will be included in the next MultiBeast release.