Fresh Apple: Cult of Mac (5 сообщений)

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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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MacBook Screen Lawsuit is a Tempest in a Teapot
About 95 percent of quality in a computer is subjective When a machine runs well, people aren't likely to become concerned about the specification of its memory controllers or the speed of its hard disk. But when things are bad,...

About 95 percent of quality in a computer is subjective When a machine runs well, people aren't likely to become concerned about the specification of its memory controllers or the speed of its hard disk. But when things are bad, it doesn't matter if the machine is tricked out with the best components in the entire world -- it's a pile of junk.

This is all relevant to the current tempest in a teapot that goes by day as a lawsuit against Apple for "deceptively" using 6-bit LCD screens instead of 8-bit color on its MacBooks and MacBooks Pro. What this essentially means is that Apple advertises its computers as displaying millions of colors (presumably a full 16,777,216) but that they instead show only several hundred thousand (262,244). I am outraged! OUTRAGED!*
Why, just read this shocking quote from the lawsuit!

The reality is that notwithstanding Apple's misrepresentations and suggestions that its MacBook and MacBook Pro display "millions of colors," the displays are only capable of displaying the illusion of millions of colors through the use of a software technique referred to as "dithering," which causes nearby pixels on the display to use slightly varying shades of colors that trick the human eye into perceiving the desired color even though it is not truly that color.

And just imagine, if you sell that same computer to a color-blind person, they see far fewer than even the 262,244 colors you should be seeing! Horrors! And dogs can only see the screens in black and white -- a double-insult!

As several very insightful people have pointed out, virtually no laptop screens capable of displaying millions of colors are on the market. The fact that it's taken people this long to notice really is more indicative of what a non-issue it is. The only people who need such color range are graphics and video professionals, and we can only pray they're not relying on built-in laptop displays for their work!

(In case you're wondering where the figures come from, 6-bit and 8-bit refer to each color channel. That means (2^6)^3 versus (2^8)^3. That's because we're talking about the color-depth for red, green and blue. We're actually talking about 18-bit and 24-bit color. And none of it has anything to do with 64-bit processing)

So, yes, Apple shouldn't lie about it, but neither should other PC makers, and no one should be using laptops exclusively for mission-critical graphic design and color balancing. Can we go home now?

*I am not outraged.

Image and quote via Ars Technica.

Pete Mortensen
Jobs Says Gore Can Be Next President
Never one to pull a punch, Steve Jobs recently told Time Magazine that Al Gore can win the 2008 presidential election if the pro-environmental Apple board member wants to: "If he ran, there's no question in my mind that he...

Never one to pull a punch, Steve Jobs recently told Time Magazine that Al Gore can win the 2008 presidential election if the pro-environmental Apple board member wants to:
"If he ran, there's no question in my mind that he would be elected," said Jobs, referring to Gore. "But I think there's a question in his mind, perhaps because the pain of the last election runs a lot deeper than he lets most of us see."
I have to assume that last sentence is humor. No one has ever seen Al Gore express emotion about the election, ever. Any pain at all would be the first anyone has seen. What do you think -- is the world ready for America's first iPresident?

Via MacNN.

Pete Mortensen
Apple's 5-year Deal With AT&T is Annoying, Strategic
Just in case anyone still had doubts about Apple's commitment to AT&T as the exclusive carrier of the iPhone, wonder no longer: USA Today reported that Apple will be married to AT&T for FIVE YEARS. FIVE YEARS! To put that...

Just in case anyone still had doubts about Apple's commitment to AT&T as the exclusive carrier of the iPhone, wonder no longer: USA Today reported that Apple will be married to AT&T for FIVE YEARS. FIVE YEARS! To put that in perspective, that's the same amount of time between the introduction of the original iPod and the release of the clip-on model of the Shuffle.

And while this announcement is thoroughly irritating to me (I use T-Mobile...grumble, grumble), it might prove strategic for Apple. Click through to read why.
Handset exclusivity is a mixed bag in the U.S. market these days. Almost any phone, bar a tiny handful, will eventually make its way to all four of the major carriers. It's a slow process, but it happens. The carriers play off each other, and the prices of the phones go lower and lower, harming the perceived value of the the actual handsets. Just ask Motorola how this worked with the RAZR.

So by really committing to one carrier, Apple creates tremendous value for AT&T by giving them an unbelievably premium offering that only they may carry, and they also preserve value for Apple by ensuring that the iPhone never becomes a $29 device with a commitment to a two-year plan. This can allow Apple to hold more tightly to their user interface, feature set and design in a way that working with the big four would not.

This deal is an outright declaration of war on the other mobile carriers, nothing less. If you thought Apple only had it in for Palm and RIM, you have another thing coming.

What I still can't tell is how much this deal pertains to the exact phone Apple will roll out at the end of June. The company is prohibited from making a CDMA version of the iPhone during the five-year period, but I still don't see details that speak about exclusivity of future models. I can only assume that AT&T thought of that and we won't see unlocked iPhone nanos on the market in two years, but I guess we can keep hoping.

This does confirm one more thing, to my mind, however: It will be less than an hour after launch that people start selling allegedly unlocked iPhones on eBay at prices well above $1,000. Within a week, someone will have the iPhone running on T-Mobile networks.

Apple drives me nuts sometimes, and rarely so much as with this announcement. But let's face facts: I couldn't afford an iPhone until at least late 2008 regardless (the whole wedding thing), and I can't leave my current carrier until then, either. It was a long shot either way.

Still, it leaves me with a quandary: I'm desperate for a good smart phone, and I absolutely can't stand the user interfaces of Treos, BlackBerrys or Sidekicks. What's a nerd to do? Buy a Nokia N95?

Pete Mortensen
Sculptor Releases Wooden 128k Mac Replica
Artist Lee Stoetzel has a show of unique scale replicas of iconic products. The best, by far, is the Mac shown above. From what I can tell, even though it's non-operable, it's actually more powerful than the original 128k Mac....

Artist Lee Stoetzel has a show of unique scale replicas of iconic products. The best, by far, is the Mac shown above. From what I can tell, even though it's non-operable, it's actually more powerful than the original 128k Mac. Especially is you drop it on your foot.
Wood Mac | The Apple Core
Via Digg.

Technorati Tags: mac, wood

Pete Mortensen
Found Video: Precocious 7-Year-Old Raves About Apple II in 1982
Future Cruxy blogger Nat Freitas has been at this tech thing for a long time. In the above video, he talks about the Apple II in glowing terms on a local cable access show. It rocks. 7 year old kid...

Future Cruxy blogger Nat Freitas has been at this tech thing for a long time. In the above video, he talks about the Apple II in glowing terms on a local cable access show. It rocks. 7 year old kid (me) talking about Apple IIs back in '82 from natdefreitas on Vimeo
Via Digg.

Technorati Tags: retro, Video

Pete Mortensen