rare
Latest
Apple WALT prototype hits eBay, reminds us of a life with landlines
As it turns out, Apple too used to announce products at trade shows... only to never actually ship them. Back in the halcyon days of the early '90s, Apple revealed the WALT (Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone) at Macworld Boston, touting a fairly amazing feature set. Things like a touchscreen, handwriting recognition, fax support, an address book, caller ID, online banking and a speakerphone set it apart from the landline devices of its day, and being that it was co-developed with Bell South, it's pretty clear that your pops had his eye one at some point. Those looking to relive the corporate boom of one-nine-nine-to-the-tres can plunk down $8,000 of 2012's dollars at the eBay link below; just don't expect it to work out of the box, okay?[Thanks, TS]
Bell & Howell Apple II Plus appears on eBay, like a foundling carved out of onyx
You wouldn't know it by the never ending barrage of black PowerBook's throughout the '90s, or even the onyx MacBooks in the mid-00s, but dark-clad casings from Apple were pretty much non-existent until Cupertino got serious about laptops, excluding of course the ill-fated Macintosh TV. Exempt from the prevailing 'Snow White' design ethos however, were clones machines sold by other companies, like the Bell & Howell's variant of the Apple ][ Plus above. Per Wikipedia, the machine in question was only available through educational channels, notable for its A/V outputs (which you can espy after the break) especially for that purpose. Typical eBay caveats apply, with the buyer selling the machine "as is" -- read sans power supply -- but we can't imagine it'll be long before an Apple collector swoops in and steals the pooch. More pics and your chance to bid on a piece of history await at the source below.
Kinect Sports: Season 2 'Maple Lakes' DLC tees off on December 20
Usually, it's pretty expensive to get in nine holes at the local country club, let alone the cost of clubs and those mandatory plaid pants. But thanks to video games, no longer must we tempt fate by braving the deadly fauna and flora of the outside world. If you're fine with miming golf in your domicile, the Maple Lakes DLC for Kinect Sports: Season 2 may interest you. It adds nine new holes on December 20, for 400 MS Points ($5). %Gallery-141780%
Are common quality items rare to find?
Common may not be quite so common anymore. While working on an article about a legendary quest chain, I recalled the days of class quests -- specifically, the days of Molten Core and The Eye of Divinity, along with the Ancient Petrified Leaf that started the class quests for epic weapons. Epic anything was rare to see in the early days of vanilla, and even when Molten Core first came out, it was rare to see people decked out in purple gear. But these days, it seems everyone is wearing epics, as it's dropping from dungeons with alarming frequency. When you look at gear labels, each color of gear is assigned a different label. Common quality items are white, uncommon are green, rare are blue, and purple of course are epic. But as the game has evolved over time, each expansion offered more raids and more epic gear, which led me to the question -- just how common is common gear? How rare is rare? Is uncommon gear really that uncommon? I hit Wowhead just for a quick look at these items to compare numbers, and the results were actually pretty surprising.
Gold Capped: This is the wrong way to do epic gems
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Epic gems are here, and they're designed differently than we're used to. To be specific, they're designed without fairness baked in, which is somewhat of a new feeling for people who weren't around buying epic gems in The Burning Crusade. Fairness is actually the wrong word for this. Life isn't fair, and neither is WoW. Instead, I'll talk about balance. Blizzard has gone to great lengths to ensure that the game remains fun for as many people as possible by trying to avoid changes that suddenly disadvantage an arbitrary subset of players or shift the desirability of choices made a long time ago. Balanced changes don't force competitive PvP and raiding group to play the gold-making game to be on a level footing with the competition. They also don't provide a tangible itemization difference between the profession perks of different crafting professions.
White Nokia N9 descends from Lintukoto, goes on sale in Finland
Espoo isn't making it any easier to say goodbye to MeeGo's last dance with polycarbonate. Nokia's alluring and elusive N9 in-snow-white-dress appears to now be on sale... in Finland. Web retailer Verkkokauppa has the handset listed on its site for 630€ -- that's $840 for you import types. Memento hunters throughout Europe can buy what this Finnish site's selling or just sit tight and wait for the color variant to hit their respective markets this December. But if patience isn't at the top of your priority list, we'd suggest you hit up the source below with some plastic in hand.
That rarest of creatures, the white Nokia N9, should appear before Christmas
A poet would say it's like a piece of ivory: both beautiful and sad. Meanwhile, Nokia's official blog says the white N9 is coming to the UK before the end of the year with a rarefied 64GB of on-board storage. We have no idea as to the price, but we suspect dedicated MeeGo memento hunters will hardly care. Update: Oh hell, sorry Britannia. We actually meant to say it's coming to all those (not very many) countries where the N9 is already available. Nokia confirmed to us today that it's on target to supply white N9s to those markets in December. Everyone else will have to get it via a price-inflated import. Apologies for the bad geography.
Kinect Sports: Season Two Challenge Pack DLC crosses the goal line
Microsoft has issued the first round of DLC for Kinect Sports: Season Two. The Challenge Pack #1 adds a new mini-game activity for each of the game's six sports. Most of them boil down to practice drills, like returning an infinite stream of tennis shots or landing a forty yard field goal in football. There's also the more quizzical addition to darts, which requires players to solve math problems with accurate throws (which is sure to be a challenge, given our experience with the game). The add-on is free, and marks the first in a series of free monthly downloadable content. Microsoft plans to expand the game every month through "spring 2012" with new activities and, at some point, a new sport. There's no telling what the new sport might be, though we can only hope it doesn't involve any more running in place.%Gallery-138664%
Kinect Sports: Season Two review: Sports, kind of
Kinect Sports may have been little more than a tech demo for the fledgling Kinect hardware, but I'll be damned if it wasn't an enjoyable tech demo. It was the stuff of family gathering legends: A game which allowed you to interact with sporting events in a somewhat limited way, using rudimentary, instantly familiar gestures. It wasn't the most intricate or intellectual use of the device's motion-tracking capabilities, but for a launch title, it worked. If anything, Kinect Sports: Season Two is an exquisite example of how far the Kinect's software has come over the past year -- only, not in a good way. After a few hours of mock-football, mock-baseball or, perplexingly, mock-darts, I was left with the overwhelming feeling that the Kinect can be (and has been) used for so much more. %Gallery-126229%
Fusion: Genesis is an XBLA twin-stick MMO from ex-Rare devs
Starfire Studios is a new outfit made up of four ex-Rare staffers, who will launch their first title, Fusion: Genesis, on XBLA this year. Gamasutra notes that the team had all previously worked at the Viva Pinata developer for over 10 years. The Fusion: Genesis website is actually quite robust, with lots of details on the twin-stick space shooter with MMORPG elements. The game features single-player, co-op missions and PVP. The title popped up in May as part of random trademark documents, which also included Fusion: Sentient, a Windows Phone 7 version of the game that will link with Genesis, but is being developed at a different studio.
Breakfast Topic: What's the longest you've ever farmed for something?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. I used to farm Attumen in Karazhan every week for the Fiery Warhorse mount. I used to farm Anzu in Sethekk Halls every day for the Raven Lord mount. I used to farm the quest in Brunnhildar Village every day for the White Polar Bear mount. I used to farm a lot of things ... One of my longest-running farming attempts was for the elusive Time-Lost Proto-Drake. I would fly around The Storm Peaks for hours while working on homework, watching shows on Netflix Instant, waiting for random heroic queues, etc. After a few months of diligent hunting, my determination to find, kill, and loot the reins of the Time-Lost Proto-Drake was incited all the more when a friend just happened to fly past the dragon on his way from Ulduar to Dalaran. At first, I was upset that the mount I sought so dearly had fallen haphazardly into his hands. Soon, though, I realized that if someone could get the mount by sheer dumb luck, it would be much more likely that I find it through persistence. After I spent several more months farming, however, this same friend just happened to see the shadow of the Time-Lost Proto-Drake flash by while he was questing in The Storm Peaks on the new Worgen mage he created when Cataclysm dropped. When I saw him flying around on his second TLPD mount, that was the last straw for me. I gave up the hunt. What items, mounts or achievements bring out the farmer in you? How long have you been farming for that seemingly unobtainable something?
Rare studio tour shows that Kinect is the centerpiece these days
Here's the thing: The stuff you loved when you were a kid changes as you grow up. Mr. Rogers passed away after a long and full life. The Smurfs got turned into a terrible movie starring Katy Perry. And Rare, the creators of all those games you loved way back when, are really, really into Kinect Sports. That's the lesson from this quick tour of the company's studios, where you can see lots and lots of wall-sized displays of Kinect avatars, but only two mentions of the company's storied and prosperous history with Nintendo. Goldeneye 007 and Banjo and Kazooie may sit front and center in many gamers' hearts, but at Rare HQ these days, they mostly just sit as unmarked cartridges inside a glass history case. That's fine -- Rare is doing quite well under Microsoft's leadership, and as the article says, the company is very proud of what it's done with Kinect and Xbox Live. But that won't keep us from remembering the good old times, and all of the fun we had together way back when.
3G MacBook Pro auction pulled, MagSafe antenna detailed
Remember the prototype MacBook Pro on eBay that included a SIM card slot and retractable antenna? Bids for the laptop had reached an eye-watering $70,000 before, inevitably, Apple blocked the auction. Now the seller has posted more images of the device, revealing the antenna was held in place with two magnets -- a MagSafe-like connection that would come away if it was knocked or caught. No news as to what the seller intends to do with the machine now, maybe clutch it to their chest and cry themselves to sleep having missed out on a small fortune. Past the break you can stare mournfully at another new image of the prototype - free of charge.
Prototype MacBook Pro with SIM slot surfaces on eBay, unicorns actually exist
Always dreamt of a Apple notebook with built-in WWAN? Looks like today's your lucky day: a prototype MacBook Pro just surfaced on eBay, replete with a SIM card slot and retractable antenna in tow. Expecting a nonfunctional parts machine off Craigslist, its newfound owner managed to resuscitate the 2007-esque gizmo into booting, but was unfortunately unable to coax any GSM goodness from the thing. According to the seller, regular MacBook Pros from the era contain the same (but unused) solder points for the SIM card as the proto, lending credence to the notion that Cupertino might have seriously considered a 3G variant. Either way, if you've got a knack for rare Apple collectibles, or feel the need to ogle and some red-colored innards, hit the source below.
'Kraftwerk Who?' Pioneering '50s Synthesizer unearthed in French Barn
So there Dr. Mick Grierson was, wandering around a French barn, minding his own business when all of a sudden he happened upon an antique: one of the earliest modern synthesizers. Grierson, a professor at Goldsmiths University in London did what any expert in the field of electronic music would do, and whisked it back to the motherland for restoration. The Oram "Oramics" Synthesiser (sic) was built by Daphne Oram in 1957, a year before she co-founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to research and develop electronic music. Political wrangling within the corporation forced her to leave in 1959, and she retreated to a farm in nearby Kent to tinker with her invention. After her departure, the Workshop shot to fame for creating the original electronic theme to Doctor Who. In order to create music on the Oram, a composer painted waveforms directly onto 35mm film strips which were fed into the machine. Inside, photo-electronic cells read the light pattern and interpreted it as sound. Check out the video to see the arrival of the machinery back into England where it'll be on display all the way through December 2012. If you're really interested you can tap Dr Grierson's homebrewed Oramics iPhone app (linked below for your downloading pleasure) to create your own futuristic theme songs, '57-style.
Nintendo 3DS Panda dev model hits Canadian eBay, reminds US how little the dollar is worth
Have $1,929 Canadian dollars to spare? You can swap those loonies for 2,000 all-American greenbacks, or the current bid on a Nintendo 3DS Panda development model, rounding out its final 24 hours on eBay's Canadian auction site. This "like new" device won't be playing retail 3DS or DS cartridges, but it will grant you access to a variety of development functions. The $2,000 current bid is more than a hair higher than the dev hardware's unconfirmed original price of $324, but if you're desperate to rank among the few gamers that rock 3DS dev hardware, logic probably won't reign supreme when it comes time to hit that bid now button. [Thanks, Julien]
iPhone 4 prototype surfaces on eBay: A+++ condition, would buy again
And with that, the tradition continues. Every year or so, it seems that an iPhone prototype of some description manages to find its way onto eBay, and just over a year after the first iPhone 4 prototype made its way into public view, the precious item you see above is now available on a public auction site. To our knowledge, this is the first iPhone 4 prototype to be offered for sale on eBay -- at least from someone who actually appears to be legitimate and in possession of the device he / she claims to own -- boasting an etched 'DF1692' label in the lower right, omitted volume button markers and a mysterious 'XXGB' label around back. Unfortunately, we're told that it can't be activated through iTunes, and popping in an AT&T SIM did the seller little good. 'Course, at $810 and rising, we highly doubt such trivial matters will deter collectors from ponying up. Hit the source link to get your bid in -- you know, before Apple's henchmen convince Mr. Donahoe to pull the plug. Update: As of 12:58am ET on July 4, 2011, this phone now sits at $70,100. Let freedom ring. Update 2: As of 1:11am ET on July 4, 2011, this phone now sits at over $100,000. We highly doubt the buyer's coming through on this one. Update 3: As of 8:44am ET on July 4, 2011, this phone now sits at just over $2,000. The seller has apparently cancelled numerous false bids.
Kinect Sports: Season 2 preview: Swing and a pass
Microsoft announced the inevitable sequel to Kinect Sports during its press event at E3 this year. Kinect Sports: Season 2 features a slate of new sports, including tennis, darts, skiing and, American football and golf. I was able to try out the latter two games. One of the two didn't seem to have much substance, and the other one was golf. %Gallery-126229%
Kinect Sports comes back for Season 2
Surprise! There's a Kinect Sports: Season 2. This one features new voice controls and new gestures -- and also some new sports, like skiing and tennis. There's also some team football, which looks incredibly awkward if you're the guys Microsoft got on stage to play it. But you're not those guys, right?
Free Xbox Live Gold this weekend, help out with a Guinness world record attempt
Even if you've never joined the prodigious ranks of the Xbox Live Gold subscribers, or whether you've simply allowed your honorable title to fall by the wayside, you can get a temporary pass to the Gold Zone this weekend. From today through Monday, free users will find their status upgraded, giving them access to the online multiplayer functionality usually reserved for their premium counterparts. Of course, there's no such thing as a free lunch -- Microsoft is asking that folks participating in the freekend help break an extremely specific Guinness world record using Kinect Sports: "The most people running a virtual 100m dash at one time." That ... that can't be a very large number to beat, can it? Regardless, if you'd like to participate (and grab a free Avatar shirt at the same time), check out the details on Rare's blog.
