Friar Pro Font

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 21 May 2009 08:55:00 PM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

In brief: A new iTunes visualizer, TRAKART has been released as a public alpha. The visualizer build...

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Apple rejects ebook reader

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 21 May 2009 08:35:00 PM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

Apple has rejected yet another iPhone app, Eucalyptus, over offensive content, according to Wired. T...

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Best Buy to get 4 Pres

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 21 May 2009 07:25:00 PM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

Best Buy stores are allegedly restricted to an initial distribution of 4,250 Palm Pres for the June ...

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Supplier Wintek Lands Apple in Labor Dispute

post from TheAppleBlog on 21 May 2009 07:00:00 PM. © TheAppleBlog

taipei_protest

Photo Credit: Jonathan Adams/GlobalPost

This morning, Apple had a little more to worry about than the usual leaks, rumors and lawsuits. Protesters in Taipei, Taiwan, gathered outside of the company’s corporate office in the region to express their displeasure in Apple’s choice of suppliers. Wintek, which makes flat-panel displays for Apple’s line of computers, is being targeted by the group for its alleged exploitation (PDF) of workers at its factories in Taiwan and China.

After allegedly failing to get Wintek to comply through direct action, labor groups, including Taipei-based National Federation of Independent Trade Unions, decided to put pressure on Apple instead, in the hopes that it would attract more media attention to their cause and convince Apple to push its supplier to act. According to GlobalPost, protest organizer Chu Wei-li said, “We want to go through Apple to put pressure on Wintek.”

Labor groups behind the protest claim that Wintek summarily dismissed 600 employees in December of last year, then cut salaries across the board and forced remaining workers to work unpaid overtime to cope with the change in available manpower. A Wintek subsidiary is also under fire from workers’ rights activists for allegedly maintaining unacceptable working conditions, lowering salaries without negotiation, and illegal firings following strike action.

Wintek, for its part, says it has done nothing wrong and that all layoffs and pay policies were completely aboveboard and in line with local regulations. Apple’s Asia representative responded to GlobalPost via email, saying:

Apple is committed to ensuring the highest standards of social responsibility wherever our products are [made], and we require corrective actions when we find violations.

Apple’s own high standards are exactly what protesters and labor groups are asking the company to enforce in the case of Wintek. Pressure from Apple could have significant influence over Wintek’s actions going forward, especially if recent rumors about a 2010 tablet from Cupertino prove true, because Wintek would likely supply displays for the device. If its track record is any indicator, Apple will likely move swiftly to resolve this matter to avoid legal or government intervention, which could theoretically result in its future hardware plans coming under unwanted scrutiny.

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Zune Mobile job posting

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 21 May 2009 06:50:00 PM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

A Microsoft job listing indicates the company is working on a "Zune Mobile" project, according to Ar...

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Digital Directions Conference from the Northeast
Document Conservation Center

post from Manage This on 21 May 2009 06:09:00 PM. © Manage This

Need to learn about how to digitize, preserve and manage your documents? The Digital Directions conference could provide a good start for you.This three-day conference presents the essentials of digitization. From file formats to fundraising, from[...]

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Syntext free XML editor

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 21 May 2009 05:50:00 PM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

Syntext has released a free edition of its Serna XML editor. The application allows users to work wi...

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The Next iPhone

post from Daring Fireball on 21 May 2009 05:34:00 PM. © Daring Fireball

In the summer of 1994, I landed a college internship as a programmer at a DOS/Windows development shop. There were maybe 20 full-time programmers on the team, and, when I joined, they were nearing the end of a two-year-long project to port their flagship DOS app to Windows. Several of the programmers were quite good, but one guy in particular had a genuine superpower: he could fix five times more bugs per day than anyone else. At the end of a major development project, pretty much all that’s left to do is fix bugs.

So, that guy was the first one on the team to get a Pentium-based machine, running at, if I recall correctly, 90 MHz. (The rest of us all had 486-based machines.) A few hours after he’d started using the new machine, word started to spread about just how fast it was. “You should see him do a build.” Soon there were a dozen of us crowded into his office, marveling, maybe even slobbering, at the speed of his C compiler’s progress bar.

A new computer almost always feels faster than the one it replaces. In the old days, though, every few years you’d get a computer with not just a faster processor but a next-generation processor, and the resulting performance increase was dramatic. For the Mac, those were bumps like the first 68030s and 68040s, or the first batch of PowerPCs. For the PC, the 386, 486, and Pentium.

Based on information from informed sources, I believe the processor in the next-generation iPhone is going to be that kind of upgrade.

The original EDGE iPhone and iPhone 3G use the same 400 MHz processor. Let’s say the rumors are right — and I believe they are — that the next-generation iPhone’s CPU will be running at 600 MHz. In the same way that, say, a 90 MHz Pentium was more than 1.5 times as fast as a 60 MHz 486, the 600 MHz CPU in the next iPhone will be more than 1.5 times as fast as the current 400 MHz iPhone CPU.

Much of what the iPhone does now is constrained by its CPU. App launching speed, for one thing — faster app launching should make it feel more like switching between apps and less like quitting/relaunching them. Web page rendering is also significantly constrained by the CPU. When I first used NetShare I was amazed at how fast Safari on my MacBook Pro could render web pages using the iPhone’s cell network connection. Web page rendering on current iPhones is hindered at least as much, if not more, by the CPU than by the speed of the 3G network.

More RAM will significantly help performance, too, and I believe the new iPhones will sport 256 MB of memory, up from the 128 MB in all current models. Prices will stay the same — $199 and $299 — but storage will increase to 16 and 32 GB. The improved performance will be one of the major new features that Apple will tout, but the only tech specs Apple will publish will be the storage capacities — just as with previous iPhones and iPod Touches Apple won’t publish any specific technical information regarding RAM or the CPU. (The CPU in particular, I believe, is something Apple regards as secret sauce.)

Industrial design changes will be subtle, perhaps very subtle. I expect that cases designed for the iPhone 3G will continue to fit the new iPhone, and that the only colors will remain black and white.

Two other significant internal additions frequently mentioned in rumors are indeed accurate: a magnetometer (a.k.a. a compass) and an improved camera that will shoot video (and improved still images, thanks to an auto-focus lens; the existing iPhone camera lens is fixed-focus). Video, in fact, will be one of the major features Apple plans to tout regarding the new model.

Last week when I linked to Cabel Sasser’s review of the Canon SD960, I wrote this regarding his praise for the camera’s HD video capability:

I like my Flip, but I think the whole Flip class of pocket video cameras is ultimately doomed ? the distinction between ?still? and ?video? cameras is quickly disappearing. Soon they?ll just be ?cameras? that do both.

It occurs to me now that Flip-style dedicated video cameras are in fact getting pinched on two sides: on the high end by video-capable “still” cameras, and on the low end by video-capable mobile phones. The next generation iPhone is going make this trend clear. What the new iPhone’s video capabilities might lack in terms of image and sound quality will be made up for by two things: convenience and software. Convenience in that the best camera is the one you have with you, and if you’ve always got your iPhone, you’ve always got a camera; software in that iPhone OS 3.0 is set to include basic video editing (think: selecting just the good parts) and uploading features that regular cameras, which aren’t computers and which aren’t networked, just can’t match. For many casual use cases, being able to upload short clips to the web directly from your iPhone immediately after shooting the footage trumps whatever image quality advantages a camera like a Flip might hold.

So if I were a betting man, here’s how I’d handicap expectations for the WWDC keynote:

Would Wager Heavily Upon: A next-generation iPhone to be released in July, with roughly double the CPU horsepower and an improved video-capable camera, with 16 and 32 GB storage capacities.

Would Wager a Small Amount Upon: New iPhone prices at $199/299 for 16/32 GB; 256 MB RAM on new iPhones; existing stock of current iPhone 3Gs sold at a discount through Apple’s web site. (Also, in Mac news, I’d bet a small amount on a refresh to Apple’s notebook lineup, with a branding change where the “MacBook Pro” designation is used for all aluminum models,¹ and just plain non-Pro “MacBook” is used for plastic models.)

Would Wager a Sandwich Upon: Improved battery life for the new iPhone, despite the beefier CPU.

Would Wager Heavily Against: Anything at all related to the in-the-works tablet thingmajig. Not going to happen at WWDC.

Would Not Wager Upon, But, Well, I’ve Heard Things: An “iPhone Mini”, with hardware roughly three-fourths the height and width of existing iPhones. I expect to see something along these lines sooner than later, but I do not believe it’s going to debut this July alongside the new flagship iPhones.

Except for the MacBook Air. ↩

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Apple in Taiwan labor row

Apple has become the focus of a conflict over worker rights in Taiwan, local reporters say. Labor g...

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Its the Little Things: Command Line Improvements
to Mac OS X

Terminal

Recently, two articles appeared on TechRadar documenting various command line tweaks for various apps and functions of Mac OS X. While I didn?t find anything new there, it?s nice to have two articles that summarize a bunch instead of tracking them down one by one across countless bookmarks.

To be honest, most command line tweaks don?t appeal to me. For example, I?d sooner go back to running DOS than go back to using Safari?s ?standard? tabs; I love the tabs on top. Still, it’s nice to know I could make the change if I felt so inclined.

What?s surprising to me is that some of the tweaks I do like are incredibly simple — for example, the command that turns on stack highlighting even when using the mouse (No. eight in the first article above). Obviously, having the cursor over an item tells me which one will be activated if I click, and yet I like the highlight as a further indicator.

Stack_Hilights
I also like the one to remove the arrows from iTunes? interface (No. seven in the second article). Again, this is a little thing, yet I value it in a manner that?s completely out of proportion to the actual change it makes. Put simply, I hate those arrows.

Meanwhile, there?s a tweak for Safari I really like that’s not in either article. It’s one that forces a click to open in a new tab (instead of a window). You can find that one here. Though documented for Safari 3.1, I use it for the Safari 4 beta with no issues.

I’m curious what you think. Which tweaks do you really like? Do you have any to add, and do they seem like major or minor changes to you?