Founder, Publisher and Editorial Director of the 9to5/Electrek/DroneDJ sites.
Seth Weintraub is an award-winning journalist and blogger who won back to back Neal Awards during his three plus years covering Apple and Google at IDG’s Computerworld from 2007–2010. Weintraub next covered all things Google for Fortune Magazine from 2010-2011 amassing a thick rolodex of Google contacts and love for Silicon Valley tech culture.
It turns out that his hobby 9to5Mac blog was always his favorite and in 2011 he went full time adding his Fortune Google followers to 9to5Google and adding the style and commerce component 9to5Toys gear and deals site. In 2013, Weintraub bought one of the Tesla’s first Model S EVs off the assembly line and so began his love affair with the Electric Vehicle and green energy which in 2014 turned into electrek.
In 2018, DroneDJ was born to cover the burgeoning world of drones and UAV’s led by China’s DJI.
From 1997-2007, Weintraub was a Global IT director and Web Developer for a number of companies with stints at multimedia and branding agencies in Paris, Los Angeles, New York, Sydney, Hong Kong, Madrid and London before becoming a publisher/blogger.
Seth received a bachelors degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California with a minor in Multimedia and Creative Technology in 1997. In 2004, he received a Masters from NYU’s Tisch School of the Art’s ITP program.
Hobbies: Weintraub is a licensed single engine private pilot, certified open water scuba diver and spent over a year traveling to 60 cities in 23 countries. Whatever free time exists is now guaranteed to his lovely wife and two amazing sons.
More at About.me. BI 2014 profile.
Tips: seth@9to5mac.com, or llsethj on Wickr/Skype or link at top of page.
We were happy to skip over these images that landed in our mailbox last night but they are starting to pop up all over the web so we’re posting for discussion. Notice the capacitative button and the remarkable 128GB of space available in these images.
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A judge in patent holder-friendly East Texas overturned a jury’s verdict today which granted Mirror Worlds LLC a $208 million-each settlement for infringements in Spotlight, CoverFlow and TimeMachine.
“Mirror Worlds may have painted an appealing picture for the jury, but it failed to lay a solid foundation sufficient to support important elements it was required to establish under the law,” U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis wrote.
The $625 million payout was pretty huge. Mirror Worlds probably should have settled.
Facebook for iPhone (iTunes, free) just got a nice little update with the following new features:
– Added Map View for Places
– Added the ability to Check in to Events that you’re attending
– Added the ability to unfriend from the phone
– Improved News Feed
– Improved notifications UI
Screenies below:
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Apple has dropped delivery times for the Apple iPad 2 down to 2-3 weeks around the world as distribution starts to catch up with demand. We’ve been hearing from readers that shipping times are often much quicker than stated (Apple likes to exceed expectations) with some readers reporting getting delivery of their iPads within a week of order.
Brick an mortar distribution has been hit or miss with some readers reporting no wait for their iPad 2s while others report month long lead times.
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From the Toys Section:
mwave.com offers the Avexir 4GB Mini USB 2.0 Flash Drive, model no. AVND010304G-XMAS, for $4.99. With free shipping, that’s $1.25/GB, tied with our February mention, and the lowest total price we could find for a 4GB USB drive. This tiny drive measures 20mm x 15mm and features a plug cap.
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AndroidCentral reports that the above screenshot is from AT&T’s database and reflects the prices customers pay when in mid-contract for phones. For instance, if you have more than a year left on your contract and want to upgrade to an iPhone, this is the price you pay. AT&T just raised that $50 for iPhone owners.
If you think AT&T is screwing you over, they are raising the price $150 for Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Android, if the screenshot is to be believed.
Just think how they’ll behave once the only other GSM player in the US is digested.
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From the Toys section:
MacMall via eBay Daily Deal has the Mac Mini 2.4GHz/2GB RAM/320GB HDD for $599. That’s $100.99 off retail and $60 less than we’ve seen it new (Apple has refurbs for same price). This is the Mac Mini Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, 2GB DDR3 memory, 320GB SATA hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics, 8X SuperDrive, AirPort Extreme 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, SD card slot.
To counter the recent efforts of Time Warner and Comcast who have offered streaming content through the iPad, Optimum online today announced that it would also offer an iPad service. (iTunes link)
The good news is that you can use every channel you get at home, up to 300 channels.
The bad news is that the system is little more than a home Sling box that broadcasts the channels you get in your house over your Wifi. You can’t sign in from outside your house (without setting up a VPN;).
While this is nice for watching TV in and around your own home, it doesn’t compare to the streaming model that the other two cable producers are putting out.
Full press release below:
I’m here watching Walt Mossberg talk to Sony’s CEO, Sir Howard Stringer. Stringer just said that their camera image sensor facility in Sendai was affected by the recent tsunami/quake. In the next breath, he said something to the effect of getting image sensors to companies like Apple will be delayed.
Paraphrased: “Our best sensor technology is built in one of the (tsunami) affected factories. Those go to Apple for their iPhones…or iPads. Isn’t that something? They buy our best sensors from us?”
Update: Interestingly, Sony doesn’t currently make any sensors for Apple, though there are rumors that the company was dumping OmniVision for the iPhone 5. Perhaps this delay is a factor in the delay of the iPhone 5.
Apple might have been eying Sony’s new Exmor R camera sensors, as found in the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc (you can read our preview and check some camera samples here), and the recently announced Xperia neo. The 8MP camera sensor there is backlit, which helps it cope with low light situations, similar to what the current 5MP OmniVision sensor in the iPhone 4 does. Watch a video demo of what backlighting does with the Exmor R sensor a Sony Ericsson rep gave us at the MWC Expo last week after the source link.
Update 2: The Street reported in April 2010 that the fifth generation iPhone would pack an 8 megapixel camera from Sony. The same report correctly predicted a 5 megapixel sensor for the iPhone 4. Perhaps Stringer’s comment is evidence that the next-generation iPhone will have an 8 megapixel camera. Boom.
iFixit is celebrating today with what they call an ‘iPhone oppression kit” which allows you to replace the normal phillips screws in your iPhone with the pentalobular ones that Apple puts in your iPhone if you take it in for repair. The kit comes with 2 pentolobular screws and two screw drivers.
iFixit has railled on Apple in the past for this.
Though this is an April Fools day gag, I’m pretty sure they are sending them out for $10.
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We told you this was coming…Some of our Time Warner readers have just informed us that the company has posted a public acknowledgment of the removal of some channels from Discovery, Fox and Viacom on their iPad App. For the 300,000 people who downloaded the app, the following channels are being removed:
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As our friend Steve Hackett at MacGasm points out, Apple’s Clearance and Refurbished pages are running right out of the low priced iPad 1’s. At this writing, there are no more new Wifis in Clearance and only 32GB and 64GB Wifis in Refurbished. There is a more selection for those who want the 3Gs, but those are bound to run down at some point as Apple makes its way through its channel inventory.
Best Bets if you still want to get in there on refurbs:
AT&T stores have been offering 3G iPad ones for an incredibly low $529 (search to find) and Verizon is reportedly offering iPad 16GB Wifis for $300 but those were in short supply and for pickup only)
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A few 9to5mac (non-developer) readers have been getting invitations to try out Lion via Apple’s AppleSeed Program. The invitation asks users to agree to confidentiality just like developers and then log into the http://appleseed.apple.com with their Apple login and password. An additional password is supplied in the email.
Who’s getting Lion today?
Invitation below:
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We’re getting our first views of Lion Preview 2 and contrary to earlier reports, this certainly doesn’t feel like a Gold Master. In fact, it doesn’t improve much from the previous preview in terms of stability –which is fine if we are a few months away.
As you can see above, iCal has a new leather bound header (OMG) with faux stitching and interestingly, iChat’s main window houses AIM, Bonjour and Jabber contacts together like Adium.
Also, the Chrome browser crashes pretty frequently for our review copy anyway.
Developers, please post any additional changes you find in the comments.
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Good ol’ AT&T has got their PR machine in high gear today. CEO Randall Stephenson told Businessweek that the T-Mobile deal would instantly bring more bandwidth to users in constrained cities:
“This transaction is very instrumental” in improving network service, said Stephenson at the event. “Virtually on the day you close the deal, getting a 30 percent lift in capacity in New York City: that’s a significant improvement in call quality and data throughput.”
Other things that would have helped: Adding capacity at the same rate you were adding customers.
(Update: 24 hours left on this one. They’ve added QuickPick and Secrets of Monkey Island and a chance to win a MacBook Pro)
Affiliate partner MacUpdate is doing another impressive bundle which readers can save 87% 11 applications including Parallels 6, Civilization IV, TechTool Pro 5.0.7, 1Password3, MacUpdate Desktop 5, MacDVDRipper Pro 2, DVD Remaster Pro, Hands Off!, A Better Finder Rename 8, App Tamer…and Divvy to the first 10,000 buyers.
$49.99. Not bad.
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We’ll be on hand to capture any good information as it becomes available.
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As Amazon rolls out its Cloud Service, Lala founder Bill Nguyen told Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky that the purchase was strictly for the people.
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Amazon announced its Cloud Player today.
Here are the details: you get 5GB free and if you buy some music on Amazon, you get another 15GB free for a total of 20GB. You can upload your music to the Cloud right now. The service doesn’t work on iOS but does work on Mac.
This might carry us over until iOS5 is announced, anyway. Interestingly, Amazon is also offering to store Documents, Pictures and Videos in that 20GB as well.
Amazon has had their S3 Cloud infrastructure going for awhile, now we’ll get to see how strong it really is with the influx of music users.
Full version below:
http://www.viddler.com/simple/b990cbc0/
It doesn’t looks like Apple’s iOS gaming ecosystem is in any immediate danger. Engadget just reviewed the Sony Ericsson Play (6/10)and came away with a “hold out hope for the PlayStation Phone 2.0.” There is exactly 1 title available exclusively for the Play (more are general Android games). More are on the way for launch. Also the screen “isn’t usable outside.”
Perhaps those cheeky commercials were premature.
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As Apple transitions its line from NVIDIA graphics cards to AMD (and opens up the OS to much more variety), we’re noting some strong words coming out of each camp on who makes the fastest graphics card in the world. On the 8th of this month, AMD announced it had released the fastest Graphics card on the market, the AMD Radeon HD 6990.
NVIDIA fired back this week and said they had the fastest Graphics card. Now it is getting real.
Dave Erskine, Senior Public Relations Manager for Graphics Desktop at AMD just fired this off:
We combed through their announcement to understand how it was that such a claim could be made and why there was no substantiation based on industry-standard benchmarks, similar to what AMD did with industry benchmark 3DMark 11, the latest DirectX® 11 benchmark from FutureMark.
So now I issue a challenge to our competitor: prove it, don’t just say it. Show us the substantiation. Because as it stands today, leading reviewers agree with us here, here, here, and here that the AMD Radeon HD 6990 sits on the top as the world’s fastest graphics card.
Songs for Japan is a 38 song, iTunes special collection of tracks from the world’s top recording artists for $10. All proceeds go to the Red Cross in Japan. Again, you can also donate directly to the Red Cross using iTunes as well.
