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Tag Archives | Apple
Young Entreperneur’s White iPhone Solution Gets Him in Trouble
If Apple can’t produce the white iPhone, apparently a young entrepreneur from Queens, N.Y. can help you convert your black one. 17-year-old Fei Lam has reportedly struck an agreement with Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer contracted by Apple to produce the iPhone. Under this deal, Foxconn is sending him white iPhone 4 cases for those not willing to wait to see if Apple will ever ship the anticipated model.
We’re not exactly clear on how he accomplished this, but Lam is now selling a conversion kit for $279 which includes the front and back panels along with the home button from his own website, WhiteiPhone4Now. It seems Lam may have had friends in high places, and knew someone within the manufacturer that was willing to wheel and deal with a kid looking to make a quick buck to pay for college.
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Hey, I See What They Mean About Apple Computers Being Pricey
Christie's Apple-1
British auction house Christie’s has a precious heirloom up for bid: an original 1976 Apple-1, the first Apple computer. It says its estimated value is $161,600 -$242,400. That’s nearly ten times higher than the Apple-1 market value of $15,000-$25,000 I came up with when I wrote a story on collectible computers back in 2007. But this sounds like one of the best examples of the machine you’re likely to find, with the original box, cassette interface, documentation, BASIC on cassette, and a letter from Steve Jobs.
Christie’s listing says that the Apple-1 was a landmark personal computer because it was the first sold in assembled form rather than as a kit that required the buyer to solder components onto a motherboard. This seems inaccurate to me. For one thing, as this photo shows, Apple shipped the Apple-1 as a board without a case, keyboard, or video interface; it was still more of a nerdy hobbyist project more than anything else. (1977’s Apple II, Radio Shack’s TRS-80, and Commodore’s PET 2001, were the first major ready-to-use consumer PCs.) And the Apple-1 wasn’t the first non-kit computer, either: 1975’s MITS Altair was best known as a kit, but was also available in pre-assembled form.
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Arrington on Facebook Data Exporting
I still don’t get why I can’t sync e-mail addresses and phone numbers from Facebook onto my iPhone, like I can do with an Android device. Do I blame Apple, Facebook, both, or nobody?
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Living With Apple’s 11.6″ MacBook Air
I like ridiculously small notebooks. There was a time when I used a truly diminutive Fujitsu subnotebook called the Lifebook B112 as my main mobile machine. I also have a soft spot for netbooks. I’m willing to make compromises to shed weight–such as dealing with cramped keyboards, squinting at small screens, and learning to use abnormal pointing devices.
In recent years. though, I’ve tended to use laptops that were reasonably compact–13″ is my favorite–but not ridiculously small. That’s in part because I’ve used Macs as much as I have Windows laptops, and no Mac notebook has been anywhere near midget-sized. The closest Apple has gotten to tiny has been the MacBook Air, and until last week, the MacBook Air (with its 13.3″ screen) hasn’t been so much small as thin and light. All Airs up until the new models have also pretty basic in terms of specs and kind of pricey–which is why they never tempted me.
But a week and a half ago, Apple announced the first all-new Airs since the original version. The prices are lower, the specs are better, and there’s a new model with an 11.6″ display. It weighs 2.3 pounds and is .11″ at its thinnest point, making Apple’s smallest Mac portable ever–much more so than my late, lamented 12″ PowerBook, the smallest Mac I’d used until now. It also starts at a temptingly low $999. I’ve been living with one (loaned to me by Apple) since the press event.
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Resolved: We Need More Realistic Notebook Battery-Life Claims
One of the best features of Apple’s new MacBook Airs hasn’t gotten all that much attention. Here’s Steve Jobs announcing it last week:
That’s the 13.3″ Air Jobs is talking about–later on at the event, he introduced the 11.6″ version and said it got up to five hours, again with the tougher tests.
I’ve been using the 11.6″ MacBook Air over the past week and a half, and judging from my experience, Apple’s estimate of five hours is indeed realistic. It’s about what I’m getting–which is a pleasant surprise considering that I’m used to discounting the battery life claims made by laptop manufacturers (including Apple) by anywhere from thirty to sixty percent. The Air’s five hours remind me more of the ten-hour claim Apple makes for the iPad; it seems fair.
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For Apple, Sticking it to U.S. Carriers Isn’t That Important
Rumor has it that Apple is secretly building a SIM card as a way to handle all European iPhone sales and activations on its own.
According to GigaOM, this would allow Apple to sell smartphones directly in Europe. Customers would be able to activate their phones through the Web or at an Apple Store, with no need to ever visit a wireless carrier.
Naturally, the discussion has shifted to whether Apple will try to use its own SIM cards to weaken wireless carriers in the United States. As MG Siegler at TechCrunch notes, crazy demand for the iPhone gives Apple a lot of leeway to push carriers around. Once LTE networks are up and running, Apple could sell its own SIM cards instead of locking customers into specific carriers.
It’s a nice concept, but in the United States, I don’t think cutting out the wireless carriers is in Apple’s best interests.
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How Long Until Apple Does Away With Disks?
Can we all agree that Apple will be the first major computer manufacturer to stop using hard drives? I assume so, anyhow–although I’m still trying to figure out just when it’ll happen.
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The Appliance Age of Computing
My weekly Technologizer column for TIME.com this up. I wrote about the overarching message of last week’s Apple event–which, between the almost entirely solid-state MacBook Airs, the iPad-like new version of OS X, and the Mac App Store, is that Apple is trying to reinvent the Mac into something that looks a little less like a personal computer and a little more like an appliance.
Is that good news or bad? As with most change, it combines both upside and downside, and it’s Apple’s responsibility to pull it off in a way that works for its customers. (I like the first tangible results, the surprisingly iPad-like new Air, and will be writing more about it.)
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Oh No, Not Those Kinds of Rumors Again
Which big company is Apple going to buy with the billions it has in the bank? None of them!