While computer chips are known for doubling in capacity every two years or so, battery improvement is at a measly 10% a year. And experts in the field seem to have even more bad news: (a) things are unlikely to change, and (b) the situation may get worse before it gets better. Since computer chips are shrinking so rapidly, the consumer electronics industry is able to include more bells and whistles as part of your gadget. But those extra features tend to drain batteries faster than ever before.
Category: Apple
How to Punk an Apple Fanboy the Week of the iPhone Release
*Update* We’ve updated the fake articles with today’s date and have made it easy for anyone to use this as a prank on office workers. “How to” at the end of the article.
__________________
I work in Indianapolis and have a coworker who is obsessed with all things Apple, especially the iPhone. He’s ready. He’s got Indy Apple stores and AT&T locations on speed dial and is set for the biggest release since the iPod itself. This Friday at 6:00 p.m. was to be the beginning of his best weekend ever…. until…
A group of us at work decided to spoof an article in Indy’s most prominent local paper: the Indianapolis Star. What we did was scrape the website, pasted some of our own content into it, and changed DNS settings such that any browsing on our local network at work would reroute IndyStar.com to our fake site that was made to look exactly like the real thing. We even did the same thing for Apple.com so that we could mock up Apple’s site “crashing” due to heavy traffic in response to the unfortunate news of the iPhone being delayed.
Click on the images below to see how it looked. The first is the actual fake article that was displayed when the front page story was clicked on, and the second is the homepage with the title story about the iPhone delay. We could only let the joke run for so long (a couple hours). This guy was/is determined to get an iPhone and was considering purchasing a ticket to New York to avoid the supposed disaster of the iPhone being delayed for Indianapolis. And we’re not that mean.
See below for the text of our fake press release:
Read More “How to Punk an Apple Fanboy the Week of the iPhone Release” »
Amazon One Ups Apple: All Music Not Only DRM-Free But Also MP3
Looks like the rumors are true, Amazon has officially announced its plans to start an online music store later this year with “millions of songs” and the same major label offering (EMI) as Apple. The news comes only a month and a half after Apple announced its DRM-free agreement with EMI. The biggest difference being that Amazon appears to be sticking with the all or nothing mentality rumored earlier: all songs will be DRM-free and MP3.
Read More “Amazon One Ups Apple: All Music Not Only DRM-Free But Also MP3” »
Can iTunes & Musicmatch Work Together on the Same Computer?
One of the first articles I ever wrote for Computers.net was back in 2005, and it was called Music Downloads Explained: Musicmatch, iTunes, or Napster? Since then, it’s been getting hits every day from Google and other search engines. The most popular queries are different takes on the same problem: “musicmatch will not open itunes problem” or “other MP3 won’t work on computer after iPOD software downloaded.” I figure it’s time to bring the issue out in the open again.
Read More “Can iTunes & Musicmatch Work Together on the Same Computer?” »
The Upstaged and Outdated iPhone
At a recent show in Florida (CTIA Wireless 2007), a newcomer cellphone called the “Ocean” by Helio apparently stole the show. So much so that The Economist explains how, “the $500 iPhone is as mouth-watering today as yesterday’s cold pizza… In many ways Helio has out-Appled Apple.”
Here’s why:
Computers Coming Preloaded with More Crapware Than Ever Before
Walt Mossberg of Wall Street Journal fame has an article out (subscription required) explaining just how much crap his brand new Sony laptop came with. And we’re not talking full programs either; these are trial versions which force you to pay later if you’re really interested. Walt counted about two dozen “craplets” pre-installed, which likely are part of the reason for the over two minutes of time it takes the computer to start up (compared to 30 seconds for a comparable Apple MacBook, ouch!). Sony’s response:
Read More “Computers Coming Preloaded with More Crapware Than Ever Before” »
Why I Switched to iTunes from Musicmatch 5 Years & 5,000 Songs Later
I’ve always been one to root for the underdog. In this case, I picked Musicmatch five years ago and even skipped out on the iPod craze by using another brand of digital music player. But for all my time spent with Musicmatch, I was somewhat disconnected from that group of friends big into using iTunes. So I decided to give iTunes a test run, and now I don’t think I can go back. Here’s why:
Read More “Why I Switched to iTunes from Musicmatch 5 Years & 5,000 Songs Later” »
DRM-Free Is Here: iTunes Now Sells EMI Non-DRM Music for $1.29 per Song
Apple’s Steve Jobs joined EMI Group CEO Eric Nicoli in London to host a press conference at EMI’s headquarters. The press had already taken rumors and run with them. But now it’s confirmed. The big announcement: EMI Music is launching DRM-free downloads and Apple’s iTunes Store will be the first online music store to sell the new format. Details below along with some slides from the press conference:
Read More “DRM-Free Is Here: iTunes Now Sells EMI Non-DRM Music for $1.29 per Song” »