The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Just wanted to let everyone know that I’ve officially bowed out of my position as “blogger” here at The Unnofficial Apple Weblog. Between my real job and my growing side project I don’t have the time that I once did to keep these pages full of new and exciting news so rather than drag the blog down I’m walking away and making room for some new blood. I’ll be trying to make a few posts here in the next week or so while the WIN team works on a replacement so this isn’t so long forever. Of course I’ll still be blogging on my personal site, SBDC, I just can’t promise an endless supply Macintosh-related content. Anyway, it’s been fun. Keep making fun of Window’s users for me.

It’s on the way for sure, just maybe not as soon as we’d hoped. And with video! AppleInsider points us to a job listing for an iPod engineer with a list of skills that will certainly pay the bills:

Further down in the listing, Apple says, “Experience in the following areas is important: system integration, digital logic, SDRAM, Flash, ASIC’s, processor selection, ATAPI, various communication protocols (ie: GSM, Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11, Firewire, and USB), display types and video and analog integration.”

While the job listing does not explicitly imply that the next-generation iPod will be capable of displaying video and connecting to WiFi networks, it does indicate that the company is at least experimenting with the technologies inside its iPod division.

So it might not be here in time for Christmas as we’d hoped, but at least we know people inside Apple are thinking along the same lines we are. Wireless is super-cool.

It looks like a bunch of batteries for 15” Al PowerBooks are causing problems and are being recalled. Is yours one of them?

The recalled batteries have the Model Number: A1045 and serial numbers that begin with: HQ404, HQ405, HQ406, HQ407, or HQ408. Batteries with the affected serial numbers contain cells that were manufactured by LG Chem, Ltd. of South Korea during the last week of December 2003 only. 

The model and serial numbers are located on the label on the bottom of the battery, and can be viewed by removing the battery from the computer.

Well, if you are a toy nerd like me anyway. Engadget points out the iKub available from HMV in Japan. This looks like a 400% Kubrick that has been tweeked a bit to hold your favorite MP3 player. Which is great news for me since I’ve sworn off buying anything smaller than 400%. Now if they can just make a 1000% version that will hold my old PowerBook I’ll be set.

Just when all the talk of an Apple Table Computer started to quiet down we hear otherwise. The Register is running a story today about a European design trademark by Apple for a tablet computer.

The filing, made in May this year but only published this week, covers a “handheld computer” and contains sketches of what look like an iBook screen minus the body of the computer.

I heard some rumblings about this yesterday but Mike Davidson did some reasearch on his own and found out that if you want to do any of that crazy “math” stuff, Apple Calculator is probably not your best bet.

And so there you have it… what was once simple is now apparently difficult again, thanks to the otherwise brilliant piece of engineering that is OS X Panther. I’m sure the explanation has something to do with floating-point calculations, whatever the hell those are, but that doesn’t make this bug the least bit more acceptable. My worst nightmare is that the repeating decimal answer actually is the correct answer from a computing standpoint but most computers are smart enough to round it for us, knowing what we really want. That would really alter my perceptions of low-level computing quite a bit.

On the bright side, we finally found something PCs are better than Macs at.

Subtraction.

When OS X updates are announced some people rush out and install it that very second, other people (maybe because they have been burned before) wait a few days to hear the reports from the front lines. If you are the later, MaxFixIt is your favorite site today. They just posted a very in depth breakdown of reports from people who have been using 10.3.5 and what’s working and what isn’t.

At long last, MacSlash has decided to stop annoying the crap out of it’s RSS subscribers by providing  full post feeds (previously they only offered headlines). As of today new complete feeds are available for all articles, as well as just the Ask MacSlash section.

OK, so Apple and Motorola have teamed up to bring iTunes to some Next-Gen Motorola phones, and with todays release of iSync 1.5 they are yapping on about how this version works with a whole bunch of motorola phones that it didn’t before. The catch? USB only. No bluetooth. Clearly the two companies are working together. Clearly they know that their customers want their products to work together. Mac has been pushing bluetooth. Many of the new Motorola phones on the list have bluetooth. WHY is this USB only? Not technically why, but why isn’t there a single person at Motorola or Apple who can look at this situation and say “damn, we should do whatever we need to to make these phones work via bluetooth for iSync.”

Anyone who has used Salling Clicker knows how cool it is to be able to control iTunes and other Mac functions over Buetooth from your phone. So cool in fact that Mac included the feature in it’s new OS version 10.3.5. MobileWhack has the details ( I still haven’t had a spare minute to install it myself):

If you only need a remote control, however, this appears to be built-in now in Mac OS X 10.3.5, as evident when I pair a Sony Ericsson K700i to my PowerBook. Not only does OS X know the K700i has a built-in remote control feature, but it even offers to set it up for me. The first time you do so, the K700i will go to the “remote control” panel and allow you to give it a whirl. Rather neat, but still haven’t played with the Media Player remote yet, and I think that is probably one of the cooler ideas. Moving my mouse across a 20” Cinema display with a mobile phone takes a little while… to have such problems, I know.