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The iMac iPhone
This absolutely unofficial case is still officially awesome. Now all I can think about is an iPhone with a translucent plastic body, offered in a variety of colors. I want one. [Photo credit: Whity]
Dog Days of Summer: Look at me! I'm a YouTube star!
While some dogs like last week's Dog Days subject Zandra work hard every day, others are busy checking themselves out on YouTube. TUAW reader Kim Frandsen sent us a photo of standard poodle Louie doing just that. Kim says that Louie's "a big fan of YouTube videos ... especially ones starring him." It looks to me like Louie is just about to go for the trackpad on that classic white MacBook to click the play button! If you have a Dog Days nominee to share, let us know via our feedback page (and please remember that the photo has to have some sort of connection to Apple and its products -- don't just send us a photo of your canine buddy). For security reasons we can't accept inbound attachments, so you should host the photo (Dropbox, Flickr, iPhoto Journals, etc.) and send us the link.
The one iMac feature cat lovers really want
A kitten-creating iMac. Want now, please.
Keyboard overkill
I won't lie: I've used a full-sized Bluetooth keyboard with my iPhone before. And yes, it feels just as ridiculous as it looks. [Photo credit: Miki Yoshihito]
Be the hippest hipster at your local Starbucks with a NeXT sticker for your MacBook
Want to show all the other MacBook-toting latte drinkers at your local coffee shop that you liked Apple before it was cool? There's no better way than boldly displaying your affection for the company that, by being acquired, brought co-founder Steve Jobs back into the Apple fold. For US$24.50, you can do just that. Say goodbye to that flashy, iconic glowing Apple on the lid of your MacBook and bury it under the goofy 3D cube and gaudy pastel colors of the NeXT logo. Only the coolest of the cool will get the reference, and the rest will just have to look it up on Wikipedia like the plebes they are. Ok, in all seriousness, I know that slapping one of these on my MacBook Air would be the most obnoxious thing in the world... but I can't shake the itch to do it. Maybe I'll just get a NeXT coffee mug instead. That's probably the less cringe-worthy option, right?
About those iWatch sales projections
While Apple by most accounts is working on a wearable device of some sort (unofficially and already dubbed the iWatch), the number of conflicting reports about what the device will be able to do and how it will look is astounding. One day, the iWatch is coming with a 2.5-inch display. A few weeks later comes a report that Apple is planning to release three iWatch models, with the largest display size being 1.8-inches. According to some, every iWatch model will feature a sapphire display. Others, meanwhile, claim that only the top of the line model will feature sapphire. Mass production will begin this month. Oh wait! There are technical hurdles so production is delayed. In short, we know very little as to what this mythical iWatch will do and how it might look. And sure, theorizing about Apple's supposed next big thing can be entertaining, but some analysts have taken things a bit further and, rather bizarrely, have released sales projections for a device that doesn't even officially exist. Katy Huberty of Morgan Stanley, for example, is already projecting Apple might sell upwards of 60 million iWatch units next year. But Huberty is not alone; other analysts have raised their price target for Apple shares based on iWatch sales projections. It's pure madness, I tell you! Having a bit of fun with this nonsense, John Moltz recently put together a comical guide detailing how one should go about projecting iWatch sales figures. You see, it's all about the cosine. Now, it might seem ridiculous to try to predict how many of a thing we know nothing about will sell, but it's simple, really. You just take the total number of watches ever sold ever, take the cosine (always take the cosine... take it AND RUN AND NEVER STOP RUNNING), adjust for inflation, apply the least squares method (because only squares wear smartwatches) and then - and this is the part people always forget - take back one kadam to honor the Hebrew God, whose iWatch this is. Makes sense.
Accepting the inevitable
Sometimes you just have to admit that you're not longer the best tool for your job. You can download the full, wallpaper-worthy version of this photo here. [Photo credit: Dnilo]
Ask Massively: Seven seriously spectacular reasons to hate clickbait
Oh hi! Welcome to our clickbait article, and thanks for clicking! No really, let's talk about clickbait. Massively reader Avaera recently posed to me a question that dovetailed nicely with a few complaints I've seen in our comments. He wrote, Does Massively make a deliberate effort to minimize the number of perceived "clickbait" opinion pieces? That is, to make sure that any controversial topics or unpopular opinions are discussed only sparingly, so that the perception and reputation of the site is kept relatively neutral? I can completely understand trying to manage a certain tone for the community; I'm just curious if that is an explicit factor in some editorial decisions. I'll tell you, but first you have to click to find out!
Browsing Flickr on a 1989 Mac
According to the owner of the Macintosh SE/30 used to capture this image, it took approximately five minutes to load a single Flickr web page. That's actually not that bad, considering the late-80s power of the computer. [Photo credit: Jeff Jackson]
Air to the Iron Throne
What do you do with dozens and dozens of brand new iPads? Turn them into a throne fit for the king of Westeros, of course. [via Nerd Approved]
iCringe
This might be the most cringe-worthy "adoption" of one of Apple's advertising aesthetics that I've ever seen, and a pretty poor effort all around. [Photo credit: Gary Stevens]
YouTube Find: Group help session for selfie-addicted Instagrammers goes awry
Comedians Tripp and Tyler take on the selfie phenomena in this poignant and amusing video profiling a group of Instagram-addicted people seeking relief from their compulsion to post pictures of themselves online.
"When Apple was doomed"
This photo is funny for two reasons: first, if you listen to Wall Street analysts, Apple has been doomed for many years, and still is. And second, that obnoxious PowerCD system was indeed born at a time when Apple's then-current path was leading them dangerously close to permanent irrelevance. Apple wasn't an easy company to love back then, but thankfully things have changed. [Photo credit: Matthew Pearce]
Oklahoma farmer loses iPhone in grain pit, finds it in Japan 9 months later
When you lose your iPhone, you usually have no clue where it could be. A farmer in Oklahoma named Kevin Whitney knew exactly where his lost iPhone was, he just couldn't get to it. You see, in October of last year the unfortunate phone took a dive from Whitney's shirt pocket, made a trip up a grain elevator, and was tossed into a pit along with 280,000 pounds of grain. In short, the iPhone was doomed. "I thought I'll never see that phone again," Whitney told a local TV station, but he was wrong. Now, nine months after losing the pricey gadget to the piles of grain, he has the phone back thanks to a grain mill worker in Japan. After falling into the pit at the facility in Oklahoma, the phone made a trip that is normally reserved for bushels of grain sorghum. It made the trip along the Arkansas River to the Mississippi, and then to Louisiana. From there, it made the long journey to Japan where it was discovered by a mill worker. Not surprisingly -- it's an Apple product after all -- the iPhone powered up just fine and the Japanese mill employee who discovered it placed a call to Whitney and eventually sent the phone back to him. [Photo credit: Ellenm1]
Hello, Newton. Hello, iPhone.
It's kind of amazing how much things can change, and yet not really be all that different. [Photo credit: Blake Patterson]
Bottom's Up for the continued tale of the Mists cinematic
Blizzard decided to post the above video, titled Bottom's Up, to their official Youtube account yesterday, stating that they found some extra footage shot just moments after the Mists of Pandaria cinematic had come to an end. The video features the return of the human and orc featured duking it out in the original cinematic -- only slightly less keen on tearing out each other's throats. Personally, I could watch these two all day. I kind of want to see a series of cinematic shorts about their adventures, now. My only minor complaint is that they didn't use the kazoo music from Pandaria's inns for the backing track. I mean, I understand why, it would have been far too distracting, but man I love that music, and I'm going to miss it when we leave Pandaria's shores for good.
Warlords of Draenor: Mount Tab description updates
The latest Warlords of Draenor beta build expanded the descriptions listed in the re-designed mount tab. Nearly every mount in the game now has an entry with a little piece of trivia. There are actually some interesting little flavor bits of lore contained in the new entries, including slightly more in-depth information as to the mount's origins, interesting quotes or beliefs about the creatures, and of course where it can be built or obtained. At the moment, not every mount has a listing for where you can find it -- but given that there are already entries that do mention things in detail, it seems like we'll see that added in a later beta build. Of course, it's the humorous entries that really stick out in the new listing. How can you seriously describe a giant rooster? You can't. Check out the gallery below for some of the best selections from the newly added flavor text.
Perfect Ten: Annoying things you hear in general chat
General chat, sometimes called "Barrens chat" or "zone chat" or "the party line," is both the bane and the secret fixation of my existence. It's like a text-based reality show that plays out in real-time whenever I log into an MMO. If -- for some rare reason -- I'm bored of playing the game or talking with friends, at least I have the jibber-jabber of screeching opinions to fill my eye sockets. It's safe to say that general chat earns its bad reputation, but have you ever stopped to analyze exactly why that is? I have. I have traveled that long, terrible path, and at the end I peered over the edge into the abyss, and the abyss told me that I was a carebear who needed to L2P. Here are my findings.
Not the iMac store you were looking for
I'm not sure what this IMAC building in Denver, CO actually makes, but that doesn't really matter. I'm much happier just imagining that it's a strange Apple computer knockoff manufacturer. [Photo credit: Paul Sableman]
Ask Massively: Misconceptions about game criticism, free-to-play, and lazy scrubs
In previous editions of Ask Massively, we've covered misconceptions about new, old, and sunsetted MMOs as well as misconceptions about jerk players, Kickstarters, and untrustworthy studios. Let's tackle a few more this week: who gets to dish out criticism, what F2P portends for a game, and which MMO generation really has the most lazy scrubs (answer: all of them).
