Apple, Psystar Present Oral Arguments for Mac Clone Injunction

Apple filed its motion for a permanent injunction after Judge Alsup ruled in a summary judgement that Psystar infringed on Apple’s copyrights by selling PCs with Mac OS X installed, and it violated the DMCA by circumventing the code that binds Mac OS X to Apple hardware.Apple filed a lawsuit against Psystar in Northern California…

NY Times Columnist Blames AT&T Issues on iPhone Glitches

The premise of the article is that AT&T gets a bad rap for its network, but that the facts don’t back that up. “When I set about looking for independent data to confirm the superior performance of Verizon’s network” Mr. Stross wrote. “I was astonished to discover that I had managed to get things exactly…

Surviving High School

NOTE: While the Mac Observer content management system says that I wrote this review, it was mostly written by my 17-year old son Jacob. As a junior in high school I think he has a much better handle on what high school is like, how well this simulation/game emulates the real deal, and how much…

Pocket Girlfriend

This week (12/11/09), however, Pocket Girlfriend appeared as #4 on the top ten paid apps list at the App Store. Now, that got me really curious. What could possibly be so great about an app that purports to be a virtual girlfriend. Apple’s app reviewers would not let an app through that displayed anything racier…

WSJ: Apple to Use Lala to "Reboot" iTunes Into Web-Based Service

Apple would, according to the report, leverage Lala’s existing technologies and engineering talent to move iTunes to a browser-based online store and service, though the article did not address whether this would be in addition to or instead of the standalone software we know today as “iTunes.” As Apple relies on iTunes to manage iPods…

Apple Features TMO's Mac Geek Gab in iTunes Rewind 2009

The Mac Geek Gab was listed in the “Classic Audio” category, which includes such podcasts as This American Life, Onion Radio News, Twit, Grammar Girl, 60 Minutes, NPR’s Planet Money, and several more — and we humbly note that’s not bad company to keep. Congrats to Dave Hamilton and John F. Braun for a job…

Predicting the Future

I was reminded of this recently when, via some chatter on Twitter, I was alerted to aaplinvestors.net’s iPhone Death Watch. The page consists simply of a collection of quotes — from a variety of journalists, analysts and corporate executives — all predicting bad things for the iPhone’s future. The most fun quotes to read are the ones…

Analyst: iPod Touch Session Usage Growing Faster Than iPhone

Flurry also said that Android user sessions grew from 10% to 14% during the same time. While still dwarfed by Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch usage, Android’s user session usage is growing the fastest of the three platforms. The company also postulated that iPod touch represents a more important piece of Apple’s future revenue growth…

Analyst: Lala Buyout Builds on Apple's Goal of Media Anywhere

Mr. Um also tied the purchase into Apple’s data center development in North Carolina, writing, “We believe the Lala acquisition fits into our view that Apple is building a data center for a service to provide seamless access and mobility of digital content across all its products including media-focused content of iTunes and user-generated content…

MovieWedge

MovieWedge is one of the most ingenious gadgets I’ve ever seen and the most flexible stand I’ve ever seen for an iPhone. It looks like a tiny beanbag chair with a little lip across the lower front edge to secure your iPhone (or other device). It’s so flexible, in fact, that it also works great…

What Does Lala Buy Mean For Apple?

On Monday, Ars Technica weighed in with some thoughts on why Apple made the purchase and what it will do with the company: “Apple has also been rumored to be testing a streaming service for video content; adding music to the menu seems like an obvious choice,” it said.Looking closer at the situation reveals some…

HDNet Fights, Elsie's Yoga Class, Cows in Space, and Mooo-re

You can’t touch stress, but sometimes touching can make you stressful. You can’t see stress, but you can see its results. About the only thing you can do is feel stressful, but in reality what you feel is likely the result of one of our most basic animal instincts and quandary; to run away or…

Apple Reportedly in Talks to Buy Online Music Service Lala

Lala is, in some respects, a would-be competitor to iTunes. The service offers some eight million songs from major labels, indie labels, and from services like TuneCore that represent the growing ranks of unsigned bands self releasing music. For instance, and for full disclosure’s sake, this reporter’s band, The Atomic Love Bombs, are on Lala.…

AViiQ Portable Laptop Stand

AViiQ has developed a laptop stand that weighs 5.5 ounces, folds into something that is only 0.25 inches thick and holds up to a 17-inch laptop. If you, or someone you know, frequently trudges through airports, computer bag in hand (or on shoulders) you should take a good look that this new product. The Basics…

Apple Wins Rezoning Approval for Second Cupertino Campus

Once completed, the campus will cover about 50 acres, and will include a one acre area zoned as a public park.There aren’t any plans yet to build a second campus yet, but the rezoning opens the door for Apple to start working on ideas. “Right now, what we are trying to do is figure out…

USB Feature Returns to FileApp

FileApp 1.6 (not yet available in the App Store as I write this) restores the removed USB feature! However, there’s a catch. It only restores the option for people who owned and used FileAid (the older version of the app that includes the USB support). If you never had FileAid on your iPhone, the new…

Let's Design a Next Generation Desktop E-mail App, Part I

I’m going to start with the assumption that the developer is agenda-free and doesn’t feel a need to entice the user into the Internet data cloud. E-mails sitting on a server in another state, accessed with a Web interface and browser, may be okay for the enterprise, but generally not for individuals who want instant…

The Game of Life: A Faithful Recreation

No one ever accused Hasbro’s Game of Life board game of being an accurate representation of the real thing, but when I was a kid, it was sort of a low-tech version of The Sims: a sketched-out simulation with simple choices that leave out a lot of the messy details all of us face on…

Touch DJ

David Gallant set aside his turn tables to try out Amido’s Touch DJ app for the iPhone. The app doesn’t have him ready to throw out his regular gear, but it does offer some nice features for on-the-go mixing. Check out his TMO Video Review for more. Touch DJ is a DJ music application that…

De Blob: Unique Concept, Repetitive Execution

It may be an early App Store entry, but there’s no harm in revisiting a title from a major publisher. Control schemes using the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer may seem quaint now, but they were an intriguing idea during the summer of 2008, and THQ’s De Blob was one of the best in that department. The…

The State of Personal E-mail: Frakked

The state of e-mail is not good. When e-mail was the killer app in the 1990s, there were many fine e-mail apps for the Mac. They cost real money and were supported. While fairly simple and limited, they got the job done in an era of dial-up connections. Then, when Panther (Mac OS X 10.3)…

Judge Approves Settlement, Psystar Stops Selling Mac Clones

Psystar’s Web site, however, still shows its Rebel EFI product as available. Rebel EFI lets users install Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, in effect letting the company sell Mac clones but leaving end users to install Mac OS X themselves.”Now Psystar simply sells grey boxes and offers Rebel EFI so that one can infringe…

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