Thursday, April 26, 2007

Cult of Mac (5 сообщений)

  RSS  Cult of Mac
Read Leander Kahney's latest commentary about Apple and Mac News in Wired.com's Cult of Mac Blog, including Mac, Mac Pro, MacBook, iMac, iBook, Mac mini, iPod video, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iTunes, iPhoto, iPhone, Apple TV, OSX, Steve Jobs, and Macworld.
http://blog.wired.com/cultofmac/
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  • Cult of Mac Invades BusinessWeek Innovation Blog
    Apple owns the discourse around design and innovation these days. Everyone wants to be like Steve Jobs, and everyone wants to invent the new iPod. People also want to be Google, but being Google seems to be a lot harder,...

    Apple owns the discourse around design and innovation these days. Everyone wants to be like Steve Jobs, and everyone wants to invent the new iPod. People also want to be Google, but being Google seems to be a lot harder, and the founders aren't terribly charismatic, so Apple gets a lot more attention regardless.

    As a result, and because of the world I live in at my day job, I get into a lot of discussions about the role of design strategy and the value of innovation. Specifically, that understanding what people really need is the best way to create new products, services and businesses that will really connect with people.

    All of which is a preface to encourage you to check out a comment of mine that BusinessWeek Innovation honcho Bruce Nussbaum highlighted into a blog post over there. It was at the end of a business day, so I think I might sound a little more snarky than I meant to:

    YouTube's actual future is far from certain, and Second Life will surely be passed by another player, as it superceded The Sims, which superceded a lot of MUDDs and the like. Bill Moggridge even asked, "What is the YouTube of design?"

    And I have to say, I don't particularly care. YouTube, Second Life, Flickr, Vlogs, blogs, they're all different solutions trying to meet some very core needs of people, whether they know it or not. And needs outlast solutions. I won't perform a straight-up needs analysis on these sites, but they definitely come from wanting to express oneself creatively, connect with other people, feel famous or even lead a different life, as in the case of Lonely Girl 15 and some others.

    By the time we start analyzing a solution, the next way to meet the needs it addresses is already underway. We're going to miss the most important opportunities unless we see beyond the fun and exciting solution we hold in our hands.

    Check it out.



    Pete Mortensen


  • Speaking about Nike + iPod at Stanford This Afternoon
    I know this is late notice, but I wanted everyone to know that I'll be speaking about the Nike + iPod at the Second International Conference on Persuasive Technology this afternoon with my colleague Conrad Wai. Persuasive tech, if you're...

    Nike_ipod

    I know this is late notice, but I wanted everyone to know that I'll be speaking about the Nike + iPod at the Second International Conference on Persuasive Technology this afternoon with my colleague Conrad Wai. Persuasive tech, if you're scratching your head right now, is any technology that attempts to persuade its user to do something differently. This includes smoking cessation aids, political attitude adjusters, fitness motivators, with the Nike + iPod Sport Kit obviously being the latter.

    Conrad and I are putting a stake in the ground: Persuasive Technologies Should Be Boring.

    Anyway, I thought you might want to know. We'll be posting our paper on the subject to the Web in the next few days, so I'll hook you up when the time comes. If you are hanging around Stanford's Tressider Hall around 3 p.m. this afternoon, duck into our little enclave, and we'll be happy to share our thoughts around why the Nike+ has been adopted so quickly when other fitness devices tend to take longer to break through. Say hi if you see me.



    Pete Mortensen


  • Jobs: People STILL Don't Want to Rent Music
    Just in case you're wondering if Steve Jobs has changed his mind about offering music on the iTunes Store in any form other than purchased downloads, here's a reality check, courtesy of Reuters: Not gonna happen.Never say never, but customers...

    JobsbuysmusicJust in case you're wondering if Steve Jobs has changed his mind about offering music on the iTunes Store in any form other than purchased downloads, here's a reality check, courtesy of Reuters:

    Not gonna happen.

    "Never say never, but customers don't seem to be interested in it," Jobs told Reuters in an interview after Apple reported blow-out quarterly results. "The subscription model has failed so far."

    Are you sure Steve? I mean, mayb...

    "People want to own their music," he said.

    Cool. We hear you. I do think Steve is basically right, of course, as I'll explain after the jump. 

    People do have an interest in sampling a wide variety of music, but mostly they can tell what they like from 30-second samples. If anything, renting music is a rip-off unless you're a high-volume user. It's much like Netflix. If you're receiving, viewing and returning your DVDs the day they come in the mail, it's one of the best deals in all of entertainment.

    If, on the other hand (and on my hand, unfortunately), you take weeks to watch the DVDs currently on hand, it's a dramatic waste of money. There might be a place for subscription models of music downloading, but I think unless you can keep a certain number of sampled songs once you kill your subscription, it's largely empty. Maybe it's just time for companies to create a music subscription service that costs $15 a month for unlimited access. The only way I'm interested in this service is if I get to keep my favorite 10 songs from all the ones I downloaded at the end of the month -- otherwise, it's not really my music.

    Thanks, Evan!
    Image via Yahoo.



    Pete Mortensen


  • New For Summer: iPod-Compatible George Foreman Grill
    I'm somewhat speechless. They call it the GIPod200. I think we're running out of product categories that aren't directly compatible with the iPod. GEORGE FOREMAN Via Sensory Metrics. Technorati Tags: foreman, grill, ipod...

    George Ipod

    I'm somewhat speechless. They call it the GIPod200. I think we're running out of product categories that aren't directly compatible with the iPod. GEORGE FOREMAN

    Via Sensory Metrics.

    Technorati Tags: , ,



    Pete Mortensen


  • Building the Two Tone MacBook
    What should you do if your white MacBook takes a tumble in the road, destroying its display? If you're Cooper vanRossum, you buy a black screen on eBay for 300 bucks and trick out your MacBook in two-tone splendor. We...

    Picture_4

    What should you do if your white MacBook takes a tumble in the road, destroying its display? If you're Cooper vanRossum, you buy a black screen on eBay for 300 bucks and trick out your MacBook in two-tone splendor. We caught up with vanRossum online, and got the deets on his mod.

    It wasn't too difficult, just time consuming. The only problems were in reconstruction and stuff not fitting back but I chalk that up to the fact that the thing was ran over by at least one car. Everything slipped out relatively easily (esp. the hard drive, that thing just slides right out) but I bypassed some steps I felt were unecessary, like keeping track of screws and such. Proper screw drivers are a must as well, I stripped approx. 4 screws throughout the ordeal.Here's the website.


    In hindsight I probably shoulda sprang for the applecare insurance (although they woulda given me a white top, and I kinda like being the only two-toned owner I know of) but no one expects to leave their laptop on their car like a 1200 dollar coffee mug, right?

    Well, I might, actually. Isn't that what the motion sensor is for?

    Photo by Cooper vanRossum



    Mat Honan





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