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Editorial: Apple's smart Maps maneuver
More Info Nokia stacks up its maps next to Apple's and Google's, politely suggests it comes out on top (update: more detail) Apple says it's 'just getting started' on Maps for iOS 6, are you willing to wait? (poll) MapQuest picks TomTom Maps to power iPhone and Android turn-by-turn navigation apps It might seem as if Apple chose its iOS 6 release last week to practice the biblical directive to love one's enemy. For, by ejecting Google Maps from updated iPads and iPhones, Apple hath caused glorious comparisons to shine upon its foe. If most people were unaware of comparative feature sets and quality aspects that distinguish Google Maps from Apple Maps, every tech-loving person on God's earth is an expert now. The media love a bloodbath, and Joe Nocera led the rhetorical pack by calling Apple Maps an "unmitigated disaster" in a NY Times piece. He wondered whether such calamity would have ensued if Steve Jobs (who called the 1998 "hockey puck" mouse the world's best pointing device) were guiding the company's product evolution. Mr. Nocera argues the Maps replacement as an indicator that Apple has peaked. I argue that replacing Google Maps with Apple Maps was shrewd, inevitable and an indicator that Apple understands the true battle it wages.
Daily Update for September 10, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Steve Jobs photo outtakes, 1984
Norman Seeff, known for his celebrity photography, shared with Retronaut some outtakes from a 1984 photo shoot with Steve Jobs and the Macintosh design team. The photo shoot produced the iconic photo of Steve Jobs holding a Mac on his lap, which landed on the cover of Time Magazine and the book jacket of Walter Isaacson's biography. These newly released shots show a casual Steve Jobs at home and in his office. Seeff describes the events surrounding each photo, and it seems this project was a gathering of good friends, instead of a formal photo shoot. Instead of portraying Jobs as a demanding leader, Seeff's photos present a personable side of the young Steve Jobs. You can view the photo collection at Retronaut's website. If you want to find out more about the 1984 photo shoot, you can also read an earlier interview in which Ray Basile of iPhone Savior talks to Seeff at length about his time photographing Apple.
Editorial: Physics and politics stand in the way of true mobile
Progress is lumpy. The future is attained in a series of epochal strides, each followed by a lot of relatively inconsequential shuffling forward. The invention of the internet (and especially the consumer-friendly web) was a rare giant step that motivated immense adoption of computers and digital lifestyles. A global marketplace of online citizens spawned gadgets, software apps, corporate gold-rushing and other feverish shuffling. Even with the opulent gadgetry we admire and enjoy, the whole expanding tech bubble seems to be reaching for something beyond itself. The incremental improvements of personal technology don't thrust into the future as much as push against constraining walls of the present. Sharper screens and thinner computers are delightful results of corporate development cycles. But we are tethered to the present, which one day will seem primitive in retrospect, by two unglamorous bridles: power and connectivity.
BMW designer: Apple affected the popular color of cars
White is the new black in the automobile world thanks to Steve Jobs, says a report in Motoramic. BMW design works lead designer Sandy McGill told Motoramic that Apple has breathed new life into the color. He said, "Prior to Apple, white was associated with things like refrigerators or the tiles in your bathroom. Apple made white valuable." Usually only found in luxury cars because of its high maintenance, white is now the most popular exterior car color in America. It recently unseated silver, which has held that title for over a decade. [Via Fortune's Apple 2.0]
Former employee suing Apple, says Steve Jobs promised him lifelong employment
There's really no place where you can be guaranteed lifelong employment these days, Apple included. But, it still angered former employee Wayne Goodrich, who had worked for Apple since 1998 and dismissed in December for "business reasons." Goodrich has turned around and sued Apple, Bloomberg News reports, saying that Steve Jobs promised him a job for life during a meeting in 2005 and reaffirmed in 2010. "This express promise by Steve Jobs was consistent with a practice that Steve Jobs had ... of promising job security to certain key employees who worked directly with him for many years," Goodrich said in his complaint. Goodrich was a presentation editor and the architect behind new product releases -- including the iPhone and iPad, he said. He also claimed he was essential in bringing Siri to the company. Goodrich is seeking damages for lost wages, stock, benefits and emotional distress. California is an at-will employment state, meaning employment can be terminated at any time for any reason unless it falls under exceptons defined by court or public policy. One of these exceptions is an implied in-fact contract. Charles J. Muhl, a Chicago attorney, explains that this is where there's an understanding that a contract exists between the employee and the employer, even though a formal contract wasn't signed. The burden of proof falls on Goodrich since Jobs passed away in October 2011. We'll find out more if the case goes to trial.
Steve Jobs' stolen iPad used by street performer
To close out the work week, here is a story from the Mercury News about the late Steve Jobs's iPad and how it landed in the hands of a middle-aged performer known as Kenny the Clown. As the story goes, professional clown Kenneth Kahn was given an iPad by his friend Kariem McFarlin. He thought McFarlin had bought a new iPad and was giving him an older device. Like any good clown, Kahn loaded the iPad with some music and used it in his Bay area performances. "I didn't notice anything special or anything like that," said Kahn to the Mercury News. It was only a few days later that McFarlin was arrested for burglarizing Steve Jobs's vacant house. As soon as McFarlin was in custody, police came knocking on Kahn's door to retrieve the stolen iPad and return it to Jobs's family. Kahn had no idea that the device he was holding once belonged to the Apple co-founder. "It would be like getting a football from Joe Montana that was stolen out of his house," Kahn told the Mercury News, "It's bizarre; it's really bizarre." We would have to agree. [Image from Flickr member mark falardeau]
Daily Update for August 14, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Palo Alto home of late Steve Jobs burglarized
The San Jose Mercury News reports that the home of the late Steve Jobs was burglarized July 17, with "computers and personal items" being apparently stolen and possibly sold. No doubt the items stolen would have great value to some people if they knew whose family they were taken from. No word on whether all of the items taken were recovered. This doesn't appear to be a targeted event, however, as the prosecutor says the accused likely didn't realize whose house he was robbing. The Jobs home is currently undergoing renovations.
Early Apple employee Daniel Kottke on the Apple I, more
Apple employee #12, Daniel Kottke, talked to Avi Solomon of Boing Boing about his time working at Apple. The interview has captivating stories about Kottke's life in the early 1970s tech scene. Besides a long discussion of the influence of psychedelics on technology, Kottke also talks about Wozniak's hardware genius and Jobs's flair for design, which was starting to develop when he was working on the Apple I. Kottke says, It was brilliant of Steve to find Rod Holt to make a switching power supply, which was a lightweight power supply with no big heavy transformers, and to put the plastic case on it. So you could actually take the Apple ][ under your arm and carry it somewhere. We never really advertised that but it was part of the appeal. And Steve never forgot that. You can read more about Kottke and his early Apple adventures in the Boing Boing interview.
Steve Jobs and the "rubber band" patent
There's a lot of patent throwdowns going on in the tech industry lately, and it's very easy to see them as just a battle of titans, of huge corporations going up against each other for assets and portfolios of arbitrary "features." But here's a story that reminds you of the human side of all of this, and of what these patent battles are really supposed to be: Protection for those people who have the creativity and courage to put new ideas forward. One of the patents involved in the Apple/Samsung battle right now is the so-called "rubber-band" patent, according to Yoni Heisler at NetworkWorld it was one of Steve Jobs' favorite features. That's the scrolling effect that occurs when you reach the end of a webpage in Mobile Safari. It was later used for a "pull-to-refresh" effect that quite a few companies have copied since. The Next Web recounts that this patent was ascribed to a UI designer named Bas Ording, who Steve Jobs reportedly hired after meeting him in the lobby the afternoon after an unsuccessful job interview. Ording supposedly showed him a demo of a feature that would allow users to see more icons in their OS X Dock by pulling up a magnifying glass whenever they hovered over the icons already there. "I said, 'My God,' and hired him on the spot," says Jobs in Walter Isaacon's biography. Ording later came up with the scrolling feature and, according to testimony from Scott Forstall in the ongoing Samsung/Apple trial, the role it played in creating the iPhone interface made it one of Jobs' favorite patents. Forstall said that "rubber banding is one of the sort of key things for the fluidity of the iPhone and - and all of iOS, and so I know it was one of the ones that Steve really cared about." In initial talks with Samsung, that patent was one of the items that Jobs specifically laid claim to as Apple's. That's one of the main reasons that Apple and Samsung are fighting so vehemently over the patent portfolio. It's easy to see these as patent battles as two companies fighting over millions of dollars, but it's also important to remember that there are human achievements to recognize among these patents as well.
Why entrepreneurs look to Steve Jobs for guidance (and why they shouldn't)
There's something about the juxtaposition of Apple stories and religious imagery that hits Wired magazine's design team right where they live. In 1997, the magazine's notorious 101 Ways to Save Apple story was represented on the cover by an Apple logo circled in a martyr's crown of thorns; this month, cover subject Steve Jobs is graced with both an angel's halo and a pair of devil's horns. (If we get to a cover of Tim Cook, Jony Ive and Scott Forstall dressed as a minister, a rabbi and an imam, I'm canceling my subscription.) Ben Austen's story, about the impact Steve's legacy has on today's entrepreneurs, is worth a read. Whether they take the Jobs story as a model for business behavior -- don't accept anything but the best, push people as hard as you have to, rules are for the other guy -- or as a cautionary tale, there's no figure in business as compelling or polarizing as Apple's co-founder. Austen got takes on Jobs from Square engineer Tristan O'Tierney, Box founder Aaron Levie, StackExchange's Jeff Atwood and Metafilter's Matt Haughey, among others. Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson told Austen he thinks many of his readers are drawing the wrong lessons by focusing on the abrasive nature of Steve's personality, rather than the true keys to his success. Isaacson published a corrective essay in the Harvard Business Review (paywall) covering 14 core characteristics that helped make Steve (and Apple, and Pixar) successful. For company founders, managers and leaders who take Steve Jobs as their model, my observation is this: Yes, Steve Jobs maintained the loyalty of his closest colleagues and got incredible work out of a vast enterprise while, it is generally believed, treating people like shit. You may think that this is an approach worth emulating, but you should also remember that you're not Steve Jobs, and you may not get away with it the way he did.
Judge: Walter Isaacson doesn't have to hand over biography notes
It's beginning to look like we'll need to change our name to "The Unofficial Apple Legal Weblog," since we have a story of one more case involving Apple. This story is in reference to a class action suit regarding alleged price fixing on ebooks by Apple. Lawyers for the plaintiffs have requested access to Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson's private notes from his interviews with Jobs, but the judge in the case has ruled that Isaacson doesn't need to comply. Isaacson invoked reporter's privilege and refused to hand over source material and a list of documents and recordings involving his time with Jobs. U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote agreed on July 20 that Isaacson didn't need to comply with the request, but gave the class-action lawyers an out -- they can try again to force Isaacson to comply provided that they pass a legal test that sometimes allows disclosure of journalists' non-confidential material. One lawyer for the plaintiff, Steven Berman, argues that the reporter's privilege is moot, since Jobs never asked Isaacson for confidentiality. Berman also says that he has another source for Jobs' comments about ebooks. The Department of Justice is trying hard to knock down the time-honored reporter's privilege in a case where they're attempting to get a Wall Street Journal reporter to testify in a case against a former CIA officer. Fortunately, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals is friendly towards a free press, commenting in another case that "wholesale exposure of press files ... would burden the press with heavy costs of subpoena compliance, and could otherwise impair its ability to perform its duties ... [it] would risk "the symbolic harm of making journalists appear to be an investigative arm of the judicial system, the government, or private parties." [via paidContent]
Daily Update for July 30, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Samsung objects to "gratuitous images" of Steve Jobs in Apple's slides
If you haven't had enough of the Apple vs. Samsung battle royale, in addition to Judge Lucy Koh's ruling about iPhone prototypes yesterday, she also decreed that showing Steve Jobs in Apple's opening statement slides are "relevant to Apple's iPhone design patent and trade dress claims and is not unduly prejudicial." The five slides in question involve the announcement of the iPhone in 2007, the iPad in 2010 and Steve Jobs' patents. Samsung argued that if the court allowed Apple to use these slides that Samsung be allowed use quotes from Jobs in its arguments. Koh ruled against Samsung using the Jobs quotes against Android on July 18, saying at the time, "I really don't think this is a trial about Steve Jobs." [via FOSS Patents]
Jony Ive: Apple's goal isn't to make money
Speaking at the British Business conference running in London during the 2012 Olympics, Sir Jonathan Ive -- Apple's Senior Vice President of Industrial Design -- told attendees that Apple's "goal isn't to make money." Instead, per the Daily Telegraph, he told attendees that the company's primary goal is to make great products. Ive started with Apple in 1992 and attributes Apple's success to its "near-death" experiences in the mid-1990s. "Apple was very close to bankruptcy and to irrelevance [but] you learn a lot about life through death, and I learnt a lot about vital corporations by experiencing a non-vital corporation," said Ive. Talking about late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Ive noted that "His observation was that the products weren't good enough and his resolve was we need to make better products. That stood in stark contrast to the previous attempts to turn the company around". Apparently the fixation on making great products nearly resulted in the iPhone never making it to market. According to Ive, "There were multiple times when we nearly shelved the phone because there were multiple problems. I hold the phone to my ear and my ear dials a number. The challenge is that you have to develop all sorts of ear shapes, chin shapes, skin colour, hairdo... it seemed insurmountable". Fortunately for the world and for Apple, the iPhone went on to be an amazing success, with 26 million of the devices selling in the last quarter alone. [via The Loop]
How the iPhone surprise was almost given away by Steve Jobs
Apple's curtain of secrecy surrounding new products is almost legendary, but a former Apple employee passed along a story to Business Insider's Seth Fiegerman about how the secret of the iPhone was almost revealed to the world -- by Steve Jobs. The setting for the story was at the house of Steve Jobs in early 2007, described by the employee as "a no man's land for WiFi, with thick walls." The iPhone team was trying to debug issues with Wi-Fi on an early build of the device, and finally went to Jobs' house to figure out what was happening. As the team began to debug the issue, "this crazy ass medieval buzzer starts going off and startles us, and even startles Steve. He quickly figured out it was coming from the pedestrian gate on the other side of his house." The story continues -- "Up walks the happiest FedEx guy you have ever seen, coming up to the door. It's not Steve's normal guy, which is why he was surprised. So Steve goes out to meet him because he has to sign for this package, but he's got the iPhone in one of his hands. Steve just walks out casually, drops the phone behind his back, signs the package, and the FedEx dude marches off." The Apple employee explains that "when we carried the phones to his house, we carried them in these Pelican lock boxes. These phones were never to leave Apple's campus, and Steve just casually throws it behind his back. That was the first time I saw someone casually come close to seeing the iPhone before it was announced, and he didn't even know it. If the FedEx guy had just tilted his head, he would have seen it." It's not quite as good a story as leaving an iPhone prototype in a bar, but almost. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Report: Ashton Kutcher is going method as Steve Jobs
Ashton Kutcher is currently shooting the first of two Steve Jobs biographical movies coming out soon, and the reports from the set via RadarOnline are that he's taking the role very seriously indeed. Crew members claim that Kutcher is trying to stay in the role of Jobs around the clock, demanding perfection and work from crew members even when it's not really appropriate. "He was preparing for a scene the other day where he had to fire a bunch of people and he got himself really worked up," says a source from the set. "We were taking a break between filming and sitting around relaxing when Ashton walked past and screamed at us, 'If you are just gonna sit in these fu**king cubicles like you're at home you might as well stay at home.'" Does that sound like Jobs? "Everyone thought he was actually yelling at us to leave," the report goes on, "we didn't realize first of all that he was just 'being in character.'" During the actual filming of the scene, Kutcher's Jobs was asked if he was going to fire everyone, and the crew member says the character just serenely responded, "Probably." We'll have to wait and see if the method acting works, I guess. Kutcher's film is called "Jobs: Get Inspired." James Woods, Dermot Mulroney and JK Simmons are also cast in the film, and it's set to come out next year. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Mac App Store easter egg: subtle but fun
Are you familiar with easter eggs? Not the type that you dye in pastel colors and hide in the back yard, only to find them a year later in a disgusting mess; no, these are fun little software "signatures" that developers put into apps. Well, although many Apple devices used to contain easter eggs, Steve Jobs put the kibosh on them after he returned to Apple. Now Jesus Diaz at Gizmodo has found an easter egg built into the Mac App Store in OS X Mountain Lion -- could this be a sign of more easter eggs hiding in the new operating system? It's a really subtle easter egg. If you download an app from the Mac App Store and go into your applications folder during the download, you'll notice that the timestamp on the downloading application is set for January 24, 1984. For those of you who are new to the Apple world, that's the day the first Macintosh was unveiled to the world by none other than Steve Jobs. If any other easter eggs show up in OS X Mountain Lion, let us know. And while you're at it, be sure to watch the late Apple CEO performing his amazing magic at the Mac introduction.
Pixar Image Computer: Yours on eBay for a cool $25K
So, you purchased a mint condition Apple I at an auction, have every model of Mac Quadra and Performa ever made, use your NeXT cube every day, love your working Newton MessagePad and QuickTake 100, and you're looking for something Apple-related that will finish off the collection. How about an ultra-rare Pixar Image Computer? There's one selling on eBay with a starting bid price of US$15,000 and a BuyItNow price of $25,000, and at the time of publication there were still no bids. This is a very unique piece of equipment tied to Steve Jobs and Apple. The Pixar Image Computer was originally developed by the Computer Division of Lucasfilm. When Steve Jobs purchased that division in 1986, the Pixar Image Computer was made commercially available. At the time, you would have paid $135,000 for the privilege of owning this piece of gear. It was aimed the medical, geophysical, and meteorological visualization markets, and was never meant to be a consumer device. The seller says that he's unsure if it's in working condition as he doesn't have a power cord with which to power it up, but he was able to turn on the monitor. Get your bid in now, as the auction ends on July 26 at 4:42 PM PDT. [via Cult Of Mac] #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
