Apple

Skype Joins Google and Apple – Most Influential Brands
According to an online survey conducted by brand-meisters Brandchannel.com, Google has held on to its title as the world’s most influential brand in 2005, pushing Apple out of the numero uno spot for the second time this decade.
In the super-skinny frapuccinno-fuelled world of marketing and advertising, effective branding is the key to global recognition and soaring sales, and Brandchannel’s poll looks to big up the branding big boys.
Global top five brands
Globally, top honours went to Google, who outflanked brand rivals Apple with an avalanche of punter-pleasing freebies like Google Mini, Desktop and Google Earth, described by Brandreport as, “arguably the greatest thing to hit the Internet since porn” (steady on, chaps!).
Hot on their heels was Apple who notched up an impressive 2005, with the iPod shuffle, iPod nano, iPod video, Mac mini, and Tiger operating system rolling out over a busy year.
Joining the two technology heavyweights in the global top five were the newly arrived VoIP hotshots Skype, followed by Starbucks and Ikea.
Europe & Africa
In Europe and Africa, Nordic mobile technology kings Nokia reclaimed their number one slot, while Ikea stayed in second place for the fourth year in a row.
Once again, Skype rung up a new addition to the list, jumping sprightly into third place above Spanish clothing retailers Zara and car manufacturer BMW.
US & Canada
Although Google whipped Apple globally, the company still rules the roost on their home turf, with Steve Jobs’ outfit being declared the leading brand in North America in front of their rivals.
The omnipresent coffee-shifters Starbucks brewed up a third place slot, while national retailer Target boxed up a well earned fourth place.
The cancer defying, uber-athlete Lance Armstrong pedalled his way into an unexpected fifth place, with the growing popularity of the classifieds site craigslist reflected by a sixth place listing above Coca Cola (8th) and Amazon.com (10th).
Asia Pacific
Sony continues to dominate the Asian Pacific market, hogging the number one position for the fourth time in just five years.
Toyota motor up to second place, while the ever ambitious Samsung find themselves slipping down to third place, above electronics giants LG (4th) and the multinational bank HSBC (5th).
Central & Latin America
It’s a story of booze and beer in the central & Latin America segment, with Corona and Bacardi sitting proud in first and second places respectively.
Movistar, the mobile phone operator owned by Telefónica, dials up a third place, with Rubber sandal maker Havaianas treading into fourth place above the Mexican cement manufacturer Cemex.
Over 2,500 people from 99 countries voted in the Brandchannel poll, with the company insisting that voters “should not be dismissed as a bunch of hyper-caffeinated gearheads”, claiming that their polls “identify brands that the mainstream world eventually catches up with.”
Brandchannel.com
23 January, 2006
Intel Apple G5 Bootups Fast – UPDATED
As we know, Apple has been claiming that the new Intel-based processor is 2-3 times faster than their current machines, due in no small part to Intel’s Core Duo processor.
An enterprising clan has shot what they claim is a video of a boot-up shootout between an iMac G5 vs an Intel-based version.
Taken at face value, the new machines do look considerably faster, but many are claiming that the video is a fix. Reading the comments, a number of people felt that the slow booting machine was faulty or had been violently shutdown, leading to the machine having to rebuild itself on startup.
One thing is for sure. The Intel-based version boots faster than any Windows machine I’ve seen.
Join the other nearly 50,000 people who’ve watched the film and judge for yourselves …
For all Mac traditionalists, you’ll be pleased to hear that the new machines use the same boot up sound.
Update: The new Intel-based Macs use Intel’s new boot technology – Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI). This has been designed to make machines startup as quickly as possible – a benefit that the Mac is showing, and so too will Windows Vista. Thanks to Seamus for pointing this out.
iMac G5 vs iMac Intel Boot
18 January, 2006
Apple.com Homepages Collected On Flickr
Friday afternoon distractions.
Kernel Panic has created a photoset on flickr collecting together many of the Apple.com home pages over the years. There’s quite a collection, running at 155 so far.
Clearly with that number it’s not fully comprehensive, so they’re calling for other contribution. If you’ve got any knocking around in your digital attics, best add them in and spread the love.
Assorted gems include just before the bringing together of Next and Apple (1996); just after bringing together of Next and Apple (1996); French launch of Power Mac G3 (1999) ;launch of Airport (2000);death of George Harrison (2001);Mac OSX (2001) and iMac (2004) … you get the idea. Go on, head off there and have a dig around.
Apple.com home pages over the years
13 January, 2006
Apple Release New Intel Macs And iLife’06
The expected has happened – Apple have unveiled their new Intel-basedMacs.
The first to appear are the iMacs boasting a dual-core Intel CPU,which are actually available to buy now. The long awaited new laptop (now calledthe MacBook Pro) will be available in Feb, but if you’re really chomping at the bit, you can pre-order though AppleStores.
The Intel chip used is the Core Duo (which is an evolution of the Pentium M). The 17″ iMac comes with a 1.87GHz version and the 20″ with a perkier 2.0GHzprocessor, both with Radion X1600 graphics cards.
All bus speeds have been boosted to 667MHz and now use PCI-Express. The rest of the spec is the same as the old iMacs – as are the cases. However the new architecture gives an speed increase (on paper) of 2-3 times the current G5 equivalent.
The MacBook Pro is currently only available in a 15.4″ version, but comes witheither a 1.67GHz or 1.83GHz Core Duo. Both modelsnow have a built-in iSight (video camera) and infra-red port (with an Apple remote) so they can be used as a portable versions of the iMac.
Steve Jobs showed his confidence in the new machines and their stability by running the whole Keynote presentation on the Intel iMac’s using native Intel compiled applications.
It’s all about software
Most of the keynote was about the new version on iLife, which you won’t be surprised to hear is called iLife’06. It continues to contain thestandard iTunes, iMovie HD, iDVD and GarageBand, but they’ve all had somemajor reworking.
With the arrival of the new Intel-chipped machines, they’ve all been changed to “Universal Applications,” so they’ll run on both Power and Intel CPUs.
There’s also a new application – iWeb – designed to make publishing a Websitevery easy. It works with Apple’s .Mac service (which costs money) butit’s sure to attract lots of new users, getting them to create new blogs. It allows integration with iPhoto for publishing photo galleries, maintaining a blog, etc.
iPhoto has had a major upgrade, making it much faster and able to now handle libraries of up to 250,000 photos (up from 25,000). There’s a host of new image manipulation features which work at the click of a button.The main new feature is Photocasting – similar to podcasts – but forphotos (again publishing needs a .Mac subscription). Anyone cansubscribe to a photocast and then have complete use of the images.
As Simon Newsflashed during the event, Garageband now supports making podcasts. It has microphone soundenhancements so the mic on a iMac or Powerbook can be used and it willautomatically reduce the background music while you’re talking. In addition to this you can insert photos to make it more interesting (Mr Jobs demoed this bydoing a Inside Mac – Steve’s rumours blog – which had an amusing twistto it as Apple are paranoid about info leaking out).
iMovie HD can do all sorts of animated titles and effects, exporting straight to a video iPod using the correct codecs, frame sizing, etc.
iDVD supports HD and at last external DVD burners straight from the programitself.
iWork’06 has also been upgraded – but frankly it’s not that interesting.
UK Pricing (inc VAT)
15″ MacBook Pro 1.67GHz £1,429.00
15″ MacBook Pro 1.83GHz £1,779.00
17″ iMac £ 929.00
20″ iMac £1,229.00
iLife’06 – £ 55.00 (included with new Macs)
iWork’06 – £ 55.00
Other mini announcements were a new iPod radio remote, iPod AVconnection kit and iPod nano lanyard in-ear phones.
Mac Book Pro
Watch Steve’s latest show-off
iLife’06
iWork’06
Intel Core Duo
11 January, 2006
Podcasting Studio Built Into New GarageBand
As expected, there’s lots of interesting things being revealed at Steve Jobs keynote at MacExpo, and in parallel at the BBC, where Steve Kennedy is embedded for us.
Among the things that grabbed us is big news for Podcasters. Apple are expanding GarageBand to include a podcast authoring studio.
Included are 200 royalty-free sound effects and 100 jingles. While other audio such as music is playing, the volume will automatically reduce once the host speaks.
Apple are also including a speech enhancer, which, without extra detail, I’d imagine is an audio compressor.
This kind of move by Apple will have a serious impact on companies offering podcasting software like Odeo.
Another great addition, which may hit Skype slightly, is the ability to carry out remote interviews using iChat.
More details soon. We’d imagine, once Steve gets off the stage on the Apple aite.
Apple GarageBand
10 January, 2006
Media Centre in 2005, What’s Apple cooking for 2006: Teenage Tech Roundup
Digital-Lifestyles is pleased to have Lawrence Dudley writing for us. All too often articles about the things teenagers are interested in are written by people old enough to be their parents. What teenagers are thinking isn’t represented. Lawrence will give you a point of view that you won’t find in other publications. You see Lawrence _is_ a teenager.
Happy New Year!!Since the New Year has just begun, a piece focusing on last year, the one that has just begun and the developments suspected to emerge during it seemed justified.
It’s strange in many ways, to look back on a space of time as long as a year in tech history. Technology evolves so rapidly that a time span of even as little as a week can seem like a month.
2005 was hailed by many as ‘The Year Of HD’: More and more High Definition TVs and displays have become available, and the recently launched Xbox 360 supports HD out of the box. HD promises us richer colours, and most importantly a resolution higher than the abysmal 500×300 or so resolution offered by a lot of standard definition televisions.
The price of HD equipment also dropped by a huge amount. A year ago, I remember seeing prices that one just couldn’t justify for a TV, with £3,000 not being an unusual sum of money to see for a HD television.
Walking into UK Electronics retailer, Dixons, the other day, I came across a set that cost a ‘mere’ £1,000. While a thousand pounds is still a lot of money, it’s a much more realistic price for a television than the three grand of a year ago. As far as I am concerned then, the ‘Year of HD’ was certainly a raging success.
I know a lot of people in technology make all sorts of predictions, and a lot of them turn out to be false, but there is one prediction I am fairly confident in making: 2006 will be THE year of the home entertainment computer.
You might wonder why I am so confident in this prediction: Afterall, Microsoft has been pushing out Windows Media Center for a good few years now, and they still haven’t gained dominance. The deciding factor for this year, I believe, will be the fact that Apple is now in the market.
On 12th October last year, Apple unveiled their first media-oriented computer, the iMac G5 which featured a remote control and accompanying software for watching DVDs, slideshows, playing music and movies. While the product’s reception was great, and the media loved it, nothing much has been heard of it since.
A nice gimmick, sure, but nothing more. It wasn’t about to replace the box under the TV, or indeed the TV itself because it missed one important feature: The ability to watch actual live television with it.
There were of course enhancements that could be purchased which made this possible, but they are awkward and use a different remote control. Never mind having different remote controls for different boxes, this was a case of two remote controls for the same one, and I for one know how frustrating it is to lose a remote. Having two of them increases the chance of losing one. Apart from this it wasn’t a polished affair, and the software to facilitate a media centre-like experience wasn’t mature enough.
What makes me think this will change? One word: Macworld in San Francisco next week. Apple are poised to do to video what they did to music, and I am confident they will pull it off with a rush of brushed aluminum and cool white plastic, accompanied with their usual style.
In the past, Apple haven’t briefed journalists in advance. There were of course all the usual rumour sites, and their fan base has always been prominent on the Web.
However, this has always been on quite specific Mac-related Websites, and not in main stream media.
Over the past few days however, the rumours have increased to such a level that popular news site Digg.com had almost one out of every two stories it carried relating to Apple in one way or another. I got a familiar buzz from this – something must be going on. Imagine my surprise then when I opened the newspaper this morning, only to find a nice big picture of Steve Jobs on the front cover of one of the inserts.
One thing’s for sure, San Francisco 2006 is going to be BIG. Along with a slew of expected Intel Apple Macs (yes, Apple are moving to the Intel architecture), a product is expected that, if released, could transform the way we consume media.
Think of it as an iPod for your living room. It downloads music, videos and films, can display and record television, radio and any other input source and can pipe audio to any room in the house, wirelessly, thanks to the existing Airtunes technology. Whether this is a dream that will soon become reality or not, will be revealed in the next few days.
It may of course be that Apple ship this wonder product later than this, but I have a feeling, only a feeling mind, that it will be at Macworld San Francisco.
So what about competitors? What are Microsoft doing about all this? It seems that Windows Vista will ship with a media center module built-in, meaning that it isn’t necessary to buy a separate Windows Media Center machine to run it on. However, not many details exist about this, and the release date isn’t certain yet, although it is scheduled for sometime in 2006.
There’s not much else to say until it becomes apparent what is released during the year, but I shall be doing a special piece covering the developments from Mac World San Francisco on or around the 12th of January. Here’s to a good year in media and technology!
6 January, 2006
Motorola Ditches iTunes With ROKR E2 Release
Motorola says adieu to Apple and bonjour to Linux as it unveiled its shiny new ROKR E2 phone at the Consumer Electronics Show today.
Adding unlimited song support, a VGA camera and a web browser, the new phone fixes many of the well documented problems of the ROKR E1, the first iTunes phone, jettisoning Apple in the process.
The new phone looks pretty similar to the original E1 phone, but offers several notable improvements including nippy USB 2.0 song transfer rates compared to the sluggish USB 1.1 of its predecessor and the removal of the artificial 100-song limit, with the Secure Digital slot supporting memory cards up to 2 GB.
Running on a new Linux-based operating system, the Motorola ROKR E2 also includes a high-res 320×240 screen, a 1.3 megapixel camera with video recording, a built-in FM radio, Opera Web browser Bluetooth (supporting wireless music streaming to stereo Bluetooth headphones), and joy-of-joys – a standard 3.5mm stereo headphone jack and not one of those ruddy annoying mini sockets that are incompatible with normal headphones.
Competing directly with the likes of the Sony Ericsson W600i and Samsung MM-A900, the new E2 lets users create and manage playlists on the device itself and offers dedicated music control keys placed on the front and side of the handset.
The phone can play “a variety” of music formats (no more info yet), with drag and drop song transfer from PCs.
Motorola’s decision to shun iTunes certainly represents a gamble. The tight integration with Apple’s jukebox service gave the phone a huge lead over its rivals, but Motorola’s well documented tiffs with Apple look to have permanently soured the relationship.
In the absence of iTunes, Motorola intends to push their iRadio Music Service, a subscription music service that uses mobile handsets as the base platform.
The company announced the music service at CES yesterday, with an offering of 435 commercial-free radio channels, which Motorola claims is one of the widest selections of subscription music entertainment available.
Available in black or white, the Motorola ROKR E2 is expected to emerge in mid-2006 with “mid-tier” pricing.
kodakgallery.com/photovoice.
4 January, 2006
MP3 players: Our Festive Selection
Creative Zen Vision:M
Although looking like a near-exact copy of the video iPod, the 30 gig Zen Vision is a fine player in its own right, sporting persuasive features not found on its rival.
Sharing near-identical physical dimensions as the iPod, the Zen manages to add a composite video out connector for playing video content on TVs, an integrated FM radio with 32 presets, voice recording, alarm clock, groovy customisable themes and the ability to synchronise Microsoft Outlook data, such as contacts, calendar and tasks.
The player’s a versatile chap too, with the Vision:M outgunning the iPod by supporting a wider range of formats, like MP3, WMA and PlaysForSure audio formats and MPEG1/2/4, DivX and XviD, Motion JPEG and WMV for video.
Battery life is claimed at four hours in video-playback mode (twice as long as the iPod) and fourteen hours for audio.
Expected on the streets now, the Creative Zen Vision:M will sell for around $350 (~£197, ~€291).
Creative Zen Vision:M
Sony NW-A1000
It’s taken Sony a long time to come up with a serious challenge to iPod’s dominance, but the new NW-A1000 could be the one to unseat the Nano.
Resplendent in an unusual organic form factor, the player sports a translucent acrylic clad exterior that reveals a large, bright display lurking below. It looks fantastic, and it’s refreshing to see a radical new design coming through in a market dominated by iPod-alikes.
The palm sized player (88 x 55 x 19 mm) comes with a built in 6GB hard drive and supports MP3 files as well as Sony’s ATRAC3 and ATRAC3+ audio formats. Battery life is claimed at 20 hours (although several reviews have found that figure to be wildly optimistic).
Thankfully, Sony have finally ditched the awful Sonic Stage software needed to transfer files over the USB 2.0 connection, but the new Connect Player software still has some way to go to match the simplicity and ease of use of iTunes.
The player’s already available in Europe and North America, priced around €250 and $250.
Sony
Apple iPod Nano
Introduced in September, Apple’s fabulously designed iPod Nano has already proved an enormous hit, with its teensy-weensy dimensions and stunning looks crushing every flash-based player in sight.
Sure, it’s not perfect – there’s no video support and the thing scratches easier than a Shakin’ Stevens 45 – but it features Apple’s superb Click Wheel user interface and offers a crisp 1.5″ colour screen for viewing photos.
Coming in 2GB and 4GB flavours, the diminutive player (3.3 x 0.98 x 0.33 inches) supports MP3, AAC and Audible 2, 3 and 4 formats and is compatible with the iTunes online store.
Microsoft Outlook calendar and contacts info can be synchronised via iTunes 5, and with the player sporting the same 30-pin dock connector as the iPod and iPod mini, there should be no shortage of accessories.
There’s a nippy USB 2.0 port onboard and battery life is claimed at a healthy 14 hours.
Starting at €200 (~$240 ~£135), the Nano is available in just black or white for now.
iPod Nano
19 December, 2005
Mac OS X Tiger for Unix Geeks: Book Review (72%)
Summary
If your hardcore linix/unix and want to know the Mac – 72%.
Non-unix heads need not apply.
UK List Price £24.95
UK Amazon Price £17.46
US Amazon Price $23.07
Review
This book covers the Mac OS X 10.4 (aka Tiger) for geeks who have come from a Unix/Linux environment and are happiest using the command line, not sexy GUIs (graphical user environments).
If you didn’t know, we’ll let you into a little secret – Mac OS is really Unix underneath. This book exposes the basic programs and utilities that are normally hidden behind shiny Aqua interface that is the Mac OS GUI front-end.
As an example – want to burn a CD? Of course you can do it using the GUI, but it’s also possible to use the “hdiutil”program on the command-line interface (CLI). Truth be told, that’s all that’s really happens when Mac OS is using all along.
One of the advatnages of using CLI approach is that when used in the shell, scripts of commands can be used to chain together a string of them, enabling automation.
Be aware, it’s not a book for the casual Mac user, but if you get excited about the insides of an OS (which some of us at Digital-Lifestyles do admit to), you’ll find plenty of material.
By way of examples of how detailed it can get – please peruse the following –
Setting up printers through CUPS (a modern printer interface for Unix printers, which comes with Mac OS)
How to compile 64bit code using (GNU Compiler Collection) (GCC);
Using Spotlight’s metdata;
Library linking and porting Unix software;
Using the X Windows System on top of Mac OS X;Installing Fink and DarwinPorts to download and install common Unix and X11 software;
Even using PearPC to run Mac OS X on an x86-based PC.
Bits like the section of PearPC might be a bit over the top for even a normal Unix user, but it does work. If you just want to develop Mac OS programs, this could be a way to do it – although it will be slowly as the emulator isn’t very fastest.
Only recommended if you’re an old hand at Unix/Linux and want the same experience on a Mac.
Summary
If your hardcore linix/unix and want to know the Mac – 72%.
Non-unix heads need not apply.
UK List Price £24.95
UK Amazon Price £17.46
US Amazon Price $23.07
ISBN 0-596-00912-7
O’Reilly
Brian Jepson & Ernest E. Rothman
15 December, 2005
iTunes Video: NBC Universal Deal Struck
NBC Universal and Apple have struck a deal to make NBC-owned television shows, such as “The Office” and “Law & Order,” available on the iTunes music store.
The shows, trawled from NBC, the USA Network and the SciFi Channel, will include new and old programming, including “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and “Surface.”
There’ll also be some cable shows such as “Monk” and “Battlestar Galactica” on offer, along with golden oldies like “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Dragnet” and “Knight Rider” dredged up for sale.
The announcement of this deal brings into focus the story we covered over a week ago, NBC Take First Pop At TivoToGo Enhancement, where NBC clearly saw TiVo plans to make these programmes available for zero cost not in their commercial interest.
The shows will be available from next week, downloadable from the iTunes Music Store the day after they air for $1.99 (£1.15, €1.70) per episode
The deal reflects the growing interest from TV networks in opening up lucrative additional revenue streams outside the traditional TV market.
Spurred on by the release of Apple’s first video-capable iPod in October last year, industry bods are predicting fat profits from video downloads.
The success of the iTunes store – shifting more than 3 million videos since launching two months ago – has got media moguls clamouring to catch a slice of the downloading action.
Disney-owned ESPN announced that they are looking into distributing some of its TV programming on the iTunes service, as have News Corp’s Fox Filmed Entertainment network.
iTunes
7 December, 2005

UK List Price	£24.95
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