Leander Kahney's Blog, page 1528
October 21, 2011
Odiferous MacBook Air Supplier Spending $3M to Prep MacBook Pro Refresh
A Chinese plant temporarily closed because of noxious odors wafting into nearby communities is spending millions to reopen. The Catcher Technology site, which produces 60 percent of unibody cases for Apple's top-selling MacBook and iMac, hopes to reopen by November.
Catcher will spend $3 million to "modify the plant's equipment and manufacturing processes," according to the Taiwan-based industry publication DigiTimes.
If true, the report is good news for Apple and a rumored refresh of the MacBook Pro. Earlier this month, UBS noted the shutdown could cost the Cupertino, Calif. company by delaying production of the popular MacBook Air, as well as the PC industry's Ultrabook alternative. Both use the Catcher plant and anxiously eying the calendar.
In order to prevent the bottleneck from reoccurring, Catcher reportedly is investing in more production sites, as well as increasing production at another plant in Taiwan.
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First Lady Michelle Obama Sends Her First Tweet From A MacBook Pro [Video]
It's been a heck of a year for first ever tweeting… especially on Apple devices. In July, President Obama sent his first tweet from a MacBook Pro, and in June, the Pope got in on the action by pushing the "Send tweet" button on his trusty iPad.
Now it's the First Lady's turn to get in on the Tweeting action.
Using the White House account @JoiningForces, Mrs. Obama tweeted:
Military families serve our nation too. Let's all show our appreciation by #JoiningForces with them. Get involved: http://JoiningForces.gov –mo
From the video, it's obvious that the White House is part of the Cult of Mac: two Macs and an iPhone pop up in the video, and the MacBook Pro even has a "Property of the White House" sticker on it. Bet you didn't see many Macs there during the Bush administration.
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October 20, 2011
Steve Jobs Had His DNA Sequenced In Bid To Beat Cancer
Steve Jobs was one of only 20 people in the world to have his DNA sequenced as well as the DNA of his tumor, Walter Isaacson's upcoming biography reveals.
After Jobs delayed treatment for cancer for nine months while he tried alternative cures (including eating vegetarian dishes at a San Francisco restaurant with Dr. Dean Ornish), he went all in with the best treatments modern medicine can provide.
Because of the experimental gene therapy, Jobs said he'd either be one of the first to beat cancer, or one of the last to die of it.
The cost of Jobs' DNA sequencing was $100,000, the New York Times reports. (Like the AP, the Times got an early copy of the book).
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When he did take the path of surgery and science, Mr. Jobs did so with passion and curiosity, sparing no expense, pushing the frontiers of new treatments. According to Mr. Isaacson, once Mr. Jobs decided on the surgery and medical science, he became an expert — studying, guiding and deciding on each treatment. Mr. Isaacson said Mr. Jobs made the final decision on each new treatment regimen.
The DNA sequencing that Mr. Jobs ultimately went through was done by a collaboration of teams at Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Harvard and the Broad Institute of MIT. The sequencing, Mr. Isaacson writes, allowed doctors to tailor drugs and target them to the defective molecular pathways.
A doctor told Mr. Jobs that the pioneering treatments of the kind he was undergoing would soon make most types of cancer a manageable chronic disease. Later, Mr. Jobs told Mr. Isaacson that he was either going to be one of the first "to outrun a cancer like this" or be among the last "to die from it."
Steve Jobs Was Designing His Own Super Yacht
Steve Jobs was working with the Dutch ship maker Feadship on a luxury yacht.
Although Steve Jobs is not known for ostentatious displays of his wealth, he was designing his own luxury yacht. And typical of Jobs, he was designing it himself so that he could obsess over every detail.
According to a snippet in the New York Times from Walter Isaacson's new biography of Jobs, due out Monday:
The book also offers some tidbits about Mr. Jobs's legendary attention to detail, which, according to Mr. Isaacson, extended to a luxury yacht that he began designing in 2009. The design is sleek and minimalist, with 40-foot-long glass walls. It is being built in the Netherlands by the custom yacht firm Feadship, the book says.
Here is Feadship's website and below are some of the boats. Many of them look too ugly for Jobs, especially the Predator.
The Predator:
Another Predator:
This is a concept design unveiled at the Monaco Boat Show in 2009. It's pretty minimalist. Perhaps this is what caught Jobs' eye?
Another of Feadship's concept designs,the X Stream, previewed at the 2010 Monaco Boat Show.
One of Feadship's more conventional designs.
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V-Moda Vibrato Remote Earphones: The Rockstar [Review, $100 IEM Week]
I always feel like I should be wearing diamond-studded sunglasses, walking around in a silk bathrobe or drinking Cristal from actual Bohemian crystal whenever I sink a pair of V-Moda's babies into my ears. This doesn't have anything neccessarily to do with how they sound, but rather because V-Moda has a knack for creating earphones with exotic looks and a luxurious feel to them that also appeal to the other senses. And so it goes with the V-Moda Vibrato Remote earphones ($130).
"Whoa there Eli, isn't this $100 IEM week?" Why absolutely, Dear Reader. But we're throwing these guys in, because V-Modas are pretty popular and the company doesn't have anything at $100 (we reviewed the V-Moda Remix Remotes, their next set down at $80, a few weeks back).
The Good:
The Vibrato's styling may not sit well with everyone, but they're absolutely not boring. All those and fins and flashy chrome remind me of a '50s Caddy, and they'll at least get you noticed. The earpieces are all metal, which feels pretty good, even if it doesn't actually have any real benefit.
Thanks in part to the ridges, the earpieces are reasonably easy to insert and remove. The eight — eight! Four black, four clear —eartips are a pretty standard affair, except for one thing: V-Moda has reinforced the sleeve that slides over the earpiece nozzle and the immediately surrounding area, making it noticeably stiffer over their older sets or that of the Remix — the result is that it's easier to get a good seal with these over most other IEMs with the same common silicone tips.
Just like the Remix, the Vibratos feel solid and sturdy — the cord, jack, earpieces and inline remote are, piece-for-piece, the most robust feeling components of any in this week's lineup. Whether of not they'll stand up to abuse in the long run is unknown — but they sure feel like they could tow a truck. Plus, the Vibrato's cable is blessedly tangle-free.
Performance was good, but not great. The Vibratos take a more mature, less drastic approach to sound reproduction than the very bass-heavy Remix. There wasn't as much boomy low-end, and the highs and mids came through more clearly — it's not a huge improvement, and most music still didn't sound as well spaced out as it should; but the better balance was enough to make the Vibratos pleasant to listen to louder music like hip-hop, rock and pop.
The Bad:
Those flashy metal earpieces (and the splitter where the cords split for the earpieces) are made from, you guessed it, metal, and metal is heavy. Add to that eartips that, despite locking in a good seal, ended up being a little uncomfy at times and the result was a bumpy ride, especially when wearing them during more frenetic activities.
Tangle-free is great, but why did they have to coat the cable in fabric? An annoying zipper-like sound inserted itself into my music whenever the cable rubbed against my clothes. Sure, I could have used the provided clip — if it hadn't broken on the third day of testing.free
These aren't the best 'phones for music that's a little less thrashy; there's just not quite enough definition or separation.
Verdict:
Think of the Vibratos as an Italian sports car for your ears: They're a little pricy, sometimes difficult to live with and performance may not quite match aesthetics. But they're still a thrilling, sexy ride — and hey, maybe they'll get you laid.
Rating: ★★★½☆
[image error]Case, color-coded eartips and earhooks for bronco-riding.
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Check Out Apple's Cool TV Ad For iPhone 4S and Siri
Apple's first ad for Siri and the iPhone 4S that started airing on TV tonight. Makes it look very attractive and cool. It's going to be a monster smash.
BTW: The ad hasn't yet been added to Apple's official YouTube account.
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Managing iCloud Backups And Wi-Fi Syncing In iOS 5 [Video How-To]
iCloud is Apple's biggest new service to roll out in a long time, and with it comes a huge feature set. There's quite a few settings and toggles, and it can be rather easy to get lost in. In this video, I'll show you how to sort out backing up to iCloud, as well as iOS 5′s Wi-Fi sync feature.
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Steve Jobs Finally Reveals Where The Name "Apple" Came From
Although everyone knows that Apple Computer was named after the namesake fruit, Steve Jobs has never talked about where the name came from — until now (AFAIK).
It was named during one of his fruitarian diets, Walter Isaacson's new biography of Jobs reveals.
On the naming of Apple, he said he was "on one of my fruitarian diets." He said he had just come back from an apple farm, and thought the name sounded "fun, spirited and not intimidating."
AP: Jobs questioned authority all his life, book says
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Steve Jobs Was a Closet Republican?
In a conversation with President Obama last year, Steve Jobs sounded like an out-and-out Republican, according to another excerpt from the upcoming official biography.
During President Obama's trip to Silicon Valley in the fall 2010, where he met several business leaders, Jobs complained about regulations, taxes and the teachers unions. I always thought Jobs had a liberal bent, but he sounds like a member of the Tea Party.
He told Obama he would be a "one-term Presidency" unless he became more friendly to corporations.
"You're headed for a one-term presidency," he told Obama at the start of their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly.
As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where "regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for them. Jobs also criticized America's education system, saying it was "crippled by union work rules," noted Isaacson. "Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform."
Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year.
Huffington Post: Steve Jobs Biography Reveals He Told Obama, 'You're Headed For A One-Term Presidency'
However, even though Jobs focused on the typical buiness-leader talking points, he offered to make political adverts for Obama, and to inject them with some of his marketing magic:
Jobs even offered to help create Obama's political ads for the 2012 campaign. "He had made the same offer in 2008, but he'd become annoyed when Obama's strategist David Axelrod wasn't totally deferential," writes Isaacson. Jobs later told the author that he wanted to do for Obama what the legendary "morning in America" ads did for Ronald Reagan.
So maybe he was a liberal after all?
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Steve Jobs Thought Microsoft's Bill Gates "Shamelessly Ripped Off Other People's Ideas"
The weird revelations coming from the AP's bizarrely "purchased" early copy of Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs bio continue. Here's another one: he hates Bill Gates!
According to a direct quote from Isaacson in his upcoming Steve Jobs bio, Microsoft's Bill Gates is "basically unimaginative and has never invented anything… he just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas."
Yowch. But it gets worse. He also said that "He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."
Walter Isaacson's bio of Steve Jobs will be on sale Monday.
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