Seth Weintraub

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByvqdZRZujw] As if it would

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7GVHj4c2iE] You don’t need Siri in the car to be an idiot.

If you travel frequently for work, you’ve probably seen one of a number of 30-pin alarm clocks that have almost become standard at business hotels. That was great while we had 30-pin iOS devices, but now that we’ve mostly moved to Lightning, it is mostly just lip service – about as convenient and up to date as that wired room line phone installed next to the toilet.

Philips hopes to remedy the transition to Lightning with their new-ish AJ7260D/37 Dual Dock Triple Charging Clock Radio which retails for around $130. I’ve been using the alarm/clock radio for about a month now and here are my observations:

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That image above was generated from Apple’s 30th anniversary Mac Font on this excellent page by Jonathan Bobrow.

https://twitter.com/jonshanny/status/431611601259868161

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcBNbRSdyI] The original shoot was in September in front of poaching their CEO Angela Ahrendts to run the Apple Retail Stores…

It is sure funny to see the reactions of the Twitter earnings call. It BEAT! Up 10%! Twitter was down…

We’ve heard lots of sizes for the camera in the iPhone 6.  I’m wondering how much it matters at this…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmlsePKH6AY]

If you are wondering how the new Mac Pro does in gaming, here’s a little taste of Crysis running in 4800×1800 mode in Boot Camp. Thanks

I’d probably opt for a single big 4K display myself but if you have 6 27-inch displays laying around…

We discussed all of the information we had on Apple and Solar products last week, noticing a lot of jobs, patents, and other clues that could indicate the company is readying solar powered products, perhaps even in the iPhone 6 due later this year.

There have been Mobile-Solar Apple Jobs that have vanished after discovery, tons of patents, trial rumors and of course the Solar effort/expertise on Apple’s Data Centers and new Campus 2 building. This week, Seeking Alpha has a highly speculative piece by Matt Margolis suggesting that the evidence may be mounting for the iPhone 6 being the product Apple uses to bring the Solar idea to market.

Before we get too far into the speculation, it is worthwhile to note that the surface area of an iPhone would hardly be enough to keep a charge let alone recharge a phone even with the most efficient solar technology in labs today. However, all of the evidence weighed together might make you forget all of that ‘science’

The iWatch would have even less surface area than an iPhone 6 (especially one nearly 5-inches big) so it is hard to imagine getting any usable power out of such a small watch face…

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(Head to 37:40 in the video to see the telphone comparison)

Harry McCracken tracked down this video from the launch of the Macintosh that hasn’t been seen since 1984. It turns out there was a second ‘launch demo’ a week after the original launch at the shareholder meeting and the videographer forgot he had the video of that (woops!) in his garage. The audience this time wasn’t wasn’t Apple shareholders but actually members of the  Boston Computer Society and the general public, which made for a different type of presentation. The quality and tone of the video is often much different than the one given a week earlier at the Flint Center on the De Anza College campus near Apple’s then HQ.

Over at YouTube, you can watch the Cupertino presentation, along with a sort of a rough draft held as part of an Apple sales meeting in Hawaii in the fall of 1983. As for the BCS version, all 90 minutes of it are there in the video at the top of this post, available for the first time in their entirety since they were shot on January 30, 1984.

The Cupertino and Boston demos may have been based in part on the same script, but the audience, atmosphere and bonus materials were different. In Cupertino, Jobs spoke before investors, towards the end of a meeting which also included dreary matters such as an analysis of Apple’s cash flow.

What’s particularly interesting to me and not part of any other videos I’ve seen was Jobs’ comparison of the Mac (and eventually by extension GUI interfaces) to the invention of the telephone. Fast forward the video above to about 37:40 to see it. As McCracken puts it, the Mac wasn’t necessarily competing with IBM machines but competing with no computer at all.  This metaphor is striking in hindsight.

The video also has a Q&A with the original Mac team which is also pretty interesting if you are into that kind of thing.

McCracken has much more on the video here which is definitely worth a read.

The transcript of the Telephone/Telegraph bit pasted below:

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Bloomberg sat down with Tony Fadell at Davos this week to talk about Nest getting picked up by Google.  The former iPod lead at Apple had a lot to say but one area of interest was the relationship with Apple, past, present and future (5:45):

“I have lots of friends, I have gotten great thank you and support. Today we are in the Apple retail stores. We have iOS support and that has not changed…[staying in the Apple stores] is their decision. You should ask them. They have been a valued partner. We have a lot of iOS device owners that use our products, and we want to offer them our products and it is for Apple to decide if they want to continue.”

He also seemed to hint about home security there didn’t he? Perhaps that’s Nest’s #3 product.
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The Wall St. Journal today covers two different physical keyboard attachments for iPhone, the $100 (aptly-named?) ‘Typo’ and the Solomatrix Spike. The TL;DR is that both of these keyboards are OK (Joanna Stern seems to prefer the Typo) but have fatal flaws that push them towards edge cases – people who’ve recently just shifted away from a Blackberry, have sausage fingers, or suffer from some other problem with getting data into their phone via a screen.

Their real problem is that iOS on the iPhone isn’t designed for a physical keyboard. It is designed to flip back and forth, from landscape to portrait depending on the use and the app. It was designed from the very beginning to be agile and portable and with that portability, the ultimate sacrifice was made to the smartphone physical keyboard.

To this day, I don’t think I am faster at typing and multitasking  on an iPhone as I was on the physical keyboard of the 2007 Danger Sidekick that it replaced. But the wealth of other keyboard options and the ability to be both portrait and landscape more than make up for the speed.

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Update: Check out the Harman Kardon Esquire which we reviewed in December 2014

As we begin to rely on our mobile devices for more and more of our business needs, I found myself needing a “portable Polycom” which would allow me to make quality speakerphone calls from my Mac or iPhone. Sure, the built-in speaker and mic are top notch on Apple products for their size, but I’d often have a hard time hearing what was on the other end of the line. Even more importantly, people couldn’t understand what I was saying, especially as I moved around.

I’ve decided to take a look at two similar solutions:  Philips WeCall ($150) vs. Logitech P710e ($140) pictured above…
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK7X8rDHU58]

We’ve already seen a lot of the Mac Pro including the review roundup, iFixit teardown, Environmental Improvements, manufacturing woes, pricing and even black Thunderbolt cables and stickers. But, we’re big fans of Michael Kukielka’s videos and the Mac Pro does not disappoint.

Looking for even more? AnandTech published his very detailed and positive review earlier and grab buying advice in our Products section.

There have been a lot of important apps released for iOS (and Mac) this year. As you can imagine, we’ve covered many of the big ones.  But for me, nothing has been a bigger game changer than Tesla’s Model S App. I’m sure many folks will pooh-pooh the idea that an app that is for 30,000 or so households should even get mainstream coverage. But bear with me here. The company has revolutionized the ways in which cars interact with smartphones and these advancements will trickle into more car/apps over the coming years..

For those out of the loop, the Tesla Model S is a fully electric car that can seat up to 7 people, propel them from 0-60 in about 4 seconds and has a battery range of about 250-300 miles fully decked out. It has the lowest coefficient of drag of any mass produced car, has gained the best safety rating ever from the NHTSA and has more interior storage space than many minivans and SUVs.

Many have compared its disruptive nature and its charismatic CEO Elon Musk to Apple and Steve Jobs.
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Just in time for Christmas, the Evasi0n team has released an iOS 7 compatible Jailbreak. I’ve just jailbroken my wife’s iOS iPhone 5s (long story) so I’m pretty sure it is legit.

Compatible with all iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and iPad mini models running iOS 7.0 through 7.0.4

The process is extremely straightforward and took about 5 minutes to complete on an iPhone 5s.

Update: Cydia creator @Saurik/Jay Freeman has chimed in on the Jailbreak noting there might be some rough waters ahead. In particular he wasn’t made aware of the jailbreak and that the Cydia build isn’t official nor updated. More updates will be needed as things fall into place.

[tweet https://twitter.com/saurik/status/414746896809201664]

The delivery of the Jailbreak in its current form may be attributable to @evad3rs team members that were spooked that their jailbreak was sold to a private buyer.

[tweet https://twitter.com/i0n1c/status/414742434573467648]
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You don’t have a lot of time to get your shopping done.  What should you do to tie up those loose ends? Yes, of course you should go buy every Apple product. It is all top notch stuff and as readers of 9to5mac, you like this stuff. We all know that. But you want some specifics for that hard-to-shop-for technologist? Go to 9to5Toys.com. Still didn’t find anything good?

OK, here we go…

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You’ve probably heard about the benefits of a standing desk. According to some studies, sitting on your rump for even 3 hours a day is incredibly unhealthy. Some even call it slow suicide. While the jury is still out on how bad it really is, let’s just agree to agree that standing for at least part of your desk work day is beneficial to your health.

But are you going to scrap your old desk assuming that you can just immediately stand for your whole 8-hour work day? That probably feels like a big step and somewhat risky (and sitting down sometimes isn’t going to kill anyone). It did to me.

So that’s why I was excited to try out the ErgoTron WorkFit-P standing desk.  It isn’t a special desk but instead an attachment for your current desk that allows to raise your MacBook Pro/Air when you want and then lower it again when you want to sit. If your monitor is adjustable like mine, you can also just put your keyboard and mouse on it and work standing up or better yet, put your monitor on an ErgoTron too.

Need to go back to a traditional desk? It also gets out of the way when you don’t need it.  Here’s how it works…
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