The secret of Apple design
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To whatever degree Apple can be said to make products with a distinctive genetic code, they can also be said to have inherited most of their traits from a single parent: founder Steve Jobs. Jobs left the company in 1985 and didn't return until 1997. Nonetheless, according to many who have worked at Apple, sometimes in close proximity to Jobs, it was largely he who established the company's emphasis on industrial design. Indeed, some would say that he made design a higher priority than technology.
Every day, the roughly one million people who visit the iTunes Store home page are presented with several dozen albums, TV shows and movie downloads to consider buying. This prime promotion is analogous to a CD being displayed at the checkout stands of all 940 Best Buy stores or featured on the front page of Target's ad circular. How do bands get these boosts? Who decides whether Arcade Fire is plugged at the top of the iTunes site - or whether Nickelback gets no mention?
There are many cat lovers among the Mac community and here are some very cool photos of their pets in love with Apple hardware :)
A judge ordered Apple last January to pay the $700,000 legal fees of two websites that reported on an unreleased product code-named "Asteroid." Apple had sued the sites seeking the identities of leakers within its ranks, but lost the case. Does Apple sow disinformation among its workers to sniff out leakers?
Red Sweater Software acquired MarsEdit, the popular weblog publishing software, from NewsGator Technologies, Inc. The acquisition promises an exciting future for the application, which provides an intuitive, email-like interface to the web's most popular publishing systems.
A little more than a year ago, after Apple launched its first Intel-based Mac, some Apple users were hopeful that adopting the same processors as the Windows crowd would let Mac users quickly get their hands on the best games. Now Apple's entire lineup has moved over to Intel, and Mac users are still forced to wait for the best games. Some decide to buy a Windows machine just to play.
It’s not often you’ll find a large collection of high-quality fonts, also available free of charge. But that’s what you’ll get with today’s tip: free fonts. From where, you might ask? No less a source than Apple themselves. Just point your browser to Apple’s Scriptable Applications - iTunes page, then click the Download the iTunes for Mac OS X script collection link.
The iPhone may be Apple's future. But investors will listen attentively to its past today as Chief Executive Steve Jobs reveals how well the company's existing products, notably its iPod and MacBook laptops, have been doing. Apple will report first-quarter earnings, which include holiday sales, after the market closes. Analysts expect the company to report earnings of 78 cents per share on $6.42 billion of sales, representing a 20% year-over-year earnings increase and 12% year-over-year revenue jump. In October, Apple said it expected to post first-quarter earnings of 70 cents to 73 cents per share on sales between $6 billion and $6.2 billion.
When Steve Jobs took the stage to present one of the most important products in his company's history, he 
Apple is defending CEO Steve Jobs as the company is under investigation by the feds. To some, he is Apple. But could the company make do without its very public leader? 
Apple restated past earnings Friday and acknowledged the backdating of thousands of stock option grants. But the company cleared current management and Steve Jobs of misconduct, saying it has "complete confidence" in the executive team. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission detailing its probe of stock-options practices, Apple said Jobs was aware of the selection of some favorable grant dates but did not benefit financially from them.
Rumor: Adobe chief executive Bruce Chizen will formally announce plans for the beta release during the company's fiscal fourth quarter conference call with analysts and members of the media on Thursday. On the other hand, those same people say that Adobe does not plan to release or discuss details of other Creative Suite 3.0 applications, such as Illustrator, Dreamweaver and InDesign.
At least five employees of Apple's retail stores have been fired after downloading copies of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard from the Internet that were distributed to developers at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference two weeks ago.
In the digital age, outages are just a part of life. While occasionally, they leave you in the position of having to hastily scarf all the ice cream in the office before it melts, more typically, they leave you guzzling your pain-killer of choice in a futile attempt to quell a massive headache brought on by frustration. And while we all know not to believe advertisers, .Mac subscribers this past week got an extra heaping of frustration as a long outage made a mockery of Apple's "It just works." campaign.
We look at them every day, our eyes are drawn to them almost every time we interact with the computer - icons for apps and files are a very important part of the interface. But what attributes make a good icon?
Foxconn Electronics has sternly denied a report insinuating that the company was making iPods for Apple Computer in sweatshops. Edmund Ding, spokesman for Foxconn - a chief maker of iPods - said there were huge discrepancies between the truth and the claims in the report, which he said seems like a vicious attack on the company. He added that the company reserves the right to take legal actions over the report.
This is certainly one of the weirdest things I've seen. Imagine waking your Mac from sleep, starting up Safari and noticing a bug on your screen. You gently wipe the precious screen to get it off. It doesn't budge. Soon you realize that the bug is inside your screen. Dang! :)
John Gruber writes: "I’m never quite sure what to make of Rob Glaser, CEO of Real Networks. As his company’s digital media technologies fall further behind Apple’s and Microsoft’s (at least in terms of popularity), he frequently pipes up in the press with ridiculous statements about Apple and its products — statements so patently false that I’m always left with the impression that he’s either a moron or a liar. (My money is on liar.)"
Daniel Jalkut writes: "I recently wrote about Easy Programming, my pseudo-methodology for “keeping going†in the face of difficult or tedious tasks. Since then, I’ve observed an aspect of my workflow that, while seemingly among the easiest of tasks, can be the most limiting to my productivity. What is this devastating conundrum? The challenge of naming code."
With Apple's Macintosh market share creeping up slowly and the iPod being an astounding consumer success, you would think U.S.-based Macintosh magazines like Macworld and MacAddict would be popular coffee table additions. Not so.
iPods, Power Mac quads, the venerable Newton, and the list goes on. This excerpt from Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World’s Most Colorful Company reflects on Apple’s origins and the chain of events that helped launch today’s cutting-edge computer and media company.
