More details on Apple’s long-coming obliteration of Mac cloners Psystar: Not only have they hit them with eight claims of copyright infringement, breach of contract, trademark and trade infringement, and unfair competition, they’re asking that every Psystar Mac clone sold be recalled. That would obviously bankrupt them, and then Apple wants whatever’s left, asking for all profits made in addition to both actual and statutory damages. Here’s what we expect the proceedings to look like:
Apple’s MobileMe service hit so many snags during its launch period that Apple have just issued an email apology to members. Saying “The transition from .Mac to MobileMe was a lot rockier than we had hoped,” Apple’s apologising with a 30-day membership extension for free to anyone who was a .Mac member with an active account as of July 9, 2008 and new MobileMe members who created accounts on or before July 15, 7:00 PM PDT. Details can be found on the Apple support page here. The email also apologises for the controversy over the speediness of “push” services, and says that Apple’s not using the term until it really is “near-instant on PCs and Macs, too.”
See that battered old Hermes Standard 8 typewriter there, in a fetching shade of institutional brown? I’d practically saw my own leg off to own it. Why? Because I’m a huge Douglas Adams fan, and that battered old thing is the very typewriter DNA used to bring The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to the world. A surprisingly analogue gadget, for such a self-avowed technology fan as he. And get this: it’s actually on sale by a British bookseller, as part of a package with a “fine” condition first-edition copy of Hitchhiker’s. The package, complete with autograph on the typewriter lid, will set you back over US$25,000. A vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big sum. But, boy… wouldn’t it be worth it? [Abe Books via BBG]
The Wii’s US$249 base price always allowed it to be known as both the cheapest console and the best deal in town for next-gen gaming. Even at a price of US$60 a pop for the WiiMote and Nunchuk, the cumulative price of the system and four controllers would still be under the cumulative price for the Xbox 360 and PS3. This all changes with the Wii MotionPlus.
The Nintendo Wii broke my heart. It wooed me with cute, clever marketing and the promise of unbelievable technology. But it was a scam, a hoax, a hoodwink. The Wii’s main revolutionary component, the Wiimote, did not work nearly as well as a many of us expected (like when swinging a golf club in WiiSports or a sword in Red Steel). And that was a real blow, because there was no one more excited about the system than me.
Jesus has already declared BlackBerry dead in the wake of iPhone 2.0. “Dead dead dead.” Apparently, he’s not the only one to think so. Joy of Tech does RIM the favour of waving the white flag for them. What do you think? Is it the push email or the keyboard that really matters? Here’s some Mossberg Solution tips to juice a BlackBerry up if you’re feeling left behind by the hype.
This Millennium Falcon was never going to do the Kessel Run… but it might just qualify as the most awesome birthday cake ever made. I mean, look at the detail! Made by Charm City Cakes in Baltimore, one lucky guy received it this weekend… and can you guess his generous brother’s profession? Yup, you were close: it’s as a sysadmin. I just hope he appreciated it, since I know an armload of people who’d weep with joy if this arrived on their birthday. Particularly if it were cunningly combined with LED birthday candles for special lighting effects. There’s another pic below, if you haven’t seen enough.
Kids nowadays are so showered with electronic goodies that I suspect a traditionally-lit birthday cake just wouldn’t cut the mustard for some of them. Luckily, over at Instructables they’ve got a recipe for DIY electronic “candles” that actually lets you blow them out. Its flickering LEDs are accompanied by a thermistor warmed above room-temp by a nearby resistor, and accompanied by a microcontroller. When you puff hard on the thermistor, the circuit senses the temperature drop and switches off some LEDs. Brilliant, but sadly it seems you can’t get extra wishes by blowing them all out at once. The demo video is undeniably funny though: a fake birthday part thrown by the builders.
Toshiba’s just added a 400GB model to its range of 2.5-inch drives destined for notebook use. Not content with upping the capacity, the 9.5mm deep MK4058GSX is also designed for low noise emissions, and somehow squeezes those extra gigs onto only two platters. And it consumes 20% less power than its predecessor 320GB version, which sounds like good news for laptop battery life. It even earns green credentials as it’s low enough in chlorine and bromine to be recognised as Toshiba’s first 2.5-inch HDD “environmentally conscious product.” It goes into mass production in September. Another five 7,200rpm HDDs also released at the same time are documented in the (enormously long) press release.
There are plenty of iPod cradles that let you remote control the device, some built-in to cars, but Direct Voxx has come up with the Muso that lets you do it by voice. It’s an interesting bit of kit that doesn’t require training to understand you, and lets you demand particular tracks, scan through playlists, pause and resume playing music just by speaking in natural language like “play California Dreaming by the Mamas and the Papas.” Check out the video to see it in action.
