Satta van Daal is a talented stencil artist from Germany, now living in Australia. His canvas? A vast array of old Macs: from SEs to LCs to PowerBook 100s. He decorates them with everything from vignettes of Steve and Woz to carefully recreating the look of Susan Kare's original one-bit Mac icon set.
If you live in southeast Australia, and have an old Mac you're willing to let go of, he might turn it into his next work of art.
He plans on showing his art in an expo titled iPaint MyMac later this year in Melbourne, and hopefully Sydney soon after. You may like his t-shirts, too.
Artists, photographers, writers, musicians and other creative types use Apple products every day as tools and inspiration to help them fulfill their creative desires and aspirations. So it should come as no surprise when some of those creative aspirations turn out to actually feature one of the tools that helps enable theircreativity.
Case in point: Over at LAist, editor Zach Behrens has posted a piece on artist Nick Rodrigues' mixed-media installation known as the "Porta Party." What exactly is the "Porta-Party" you may wonder? Well, its a giant-sized iPod-like box where you go inside, bring your own iPod or iPhone, and groove to your favorite music.
Or, as the man who created it sums up in his artist's statement about the "Porta-Party": "If you walk around with a party going on inside your head and your just too shy to bust a move in public. Or if you like partying but hate people. Your prayers have been answered."
It's great when Apple can help empower artists and users to reach their full potential -- especially when that full potential involves dancing. And yes, in case you were wondering, the "Porta-Party" is available for your next event.
I'm sure I'm not alone on this one, but I remember when CoverFlow was basically just a tech demo, and not, you know, the centerpiece of OS X's UI. But of course when Apple picked up the little app to use it for everything else, we lost it -- even if you wanted to use the old simple album-browsing app (and now I'm actually regretting deleting it off of my old PowerBook), you're out of luck.
Unless you use Cover Stream, an iTunes helper app that recreates the old CoverFlow interface outside of iTunes. It's even incorporated the "flip-browsing" that you can do on the iPhone, where you just flip the art over to choose a specific track to play. As for how it actually works with iTunes, we can't say, but at least that CoverFlow interface is still available unofficially.
By the way, I'm planning on doing a roundup (similar to the alarm clock one) of iTunes helper apps like this, so if there are any you want to see included, drop a note here in the comments. I have a few in mind already, but suggestions are welcome.
Engadget brings us this exploded iPod (that poor site is getting beat up today), which has been dissembled and placed in a protective block of carbonite translucent resin. Why? Don't ask why-- it's, like, art, man.
Billy Chasen is the artist in question, and here's the best part of the whole story: that iPod you see above? It still works. Apparently he just took it apart-- he didn't actually disconnect anything, and so it can still charge and play as normal. Which makes me wonder-- when the next ice age comes and all of our iPods get frozen in ice, will future generations still be able to come along, warm them back up, and see what we were listening to? Maybe I should get that Tiffany off my Pod just in case.
Quartz Composer was one of the coolest new technologies Apple added in Tiger. It allows designers to create some amazingly complex motion graphics with comparatively little work. (Core Animation is likely an analogous advance in Leopard). The Japanese designer Futurismo Zugakousaku has used Quartz Composer to generate some dazzling motion graphics, which can conveniently be used as screen savers in OS X (place the QTZ files in /Library/Screen Savers/). His Quartz Composer Samples page features 33 QTZ files for download, some of which are simply mesmerizing. The site is feeling the Digg effect right now, but I managed to grab several of them as well as watch his sample movie. I was quite impressed by what I saw, particularly considering the fact that he says he made each of them in less than an hour. Zugakousaku says of himself: "I want to make a work like a new surrealist of the new generation." I think he's already achieved a lot.
This Wired article from a few years ago discusses Yuho Hayashi, a master of kimono design who paints traditional patterns onto iPods and PowerBooks (as well as any other portable devices consumers will pay to customize). Designs start at about $200+.
Today, I visited the website linked by the Wired article and found an entire page devoted to customized Macs as well as several narrative pages like this one showing the customization process. It's pretty neat stuff and well worth a visit. Warning: The pages are not in English, but you can get a good gist just by surfing the site and looking at the pictures.
Remember those crazy DefectiveByDesign kids in hazmat suites trying to give customers the 411 on DRM outside Apple Stores? TDMW (The Digital Music Weblog) snagged an interview with the DbD collective on the state of DRM, what their beef really is and where they believe things are headed. The group has been snagging some major news coverage as of late, and this interview is a really interesting window into their stance on DRM and what it's doing to our culture (example: ooh, sorry - your mom isn't authorized to borrow that CD).
In the interest of avoiding another bloody war over whether we should be shopping at the iTMS, however, I'll just direct your attention to TDMW's interview for your reading enjoyment.
The iPod is the 800-pound gorilla of the DAP industry - there's no doubt about it (well, almost). In its 4+ years of existence, the player has quickly won owner's hearts because of its ease of use and seamless iTunes management experience, amongst other reasons. I personally have owned one of every generation of iPod since the original 5 GB model with the *gasp* mechanical scroll wheel, before all this fancy touch wheel stuff you young whipper-snappers are spoiled with today.
In all this time, however, the iPod's famously simple UI has more or less remained that way - staggeringly basic. While I personally am no fan of devices that add features and options simply for the sake of claiming 'it has more', I'm starting to think that there are a few areas that the iPod's UI and experience are in serious need of an update. Music (and video) collections are getting larger, people are interacting with their devices and the libraries on their computers through increasingly new (and truly useful) ways, and I think the iPod needs to catch up with the times.
Leander Kahney, author of the successful Cult of Mac book, has posted an interesting gallery of Apple fan art at Wired. While I think I recognize some of these
images from browsing the Cult of Mac book at the local bookstore, this gallery is an interesting look into just how far
Apple's loyal following are willing to go to show their love for the Mac.
While I'm glad to see posts like
this, I have to wonder: where are the Cult of Windows books and art galleries?
Who knew iMacs and
Powermacs would come from the same tree? There's no explanation for the photo, so it's pretty much a mystery. If you're
familiar with this display, let us know!
If, for one reason or another, you're interested in stripping all the album art from every track on your iPod, I've
found an applescript over at Doug's Applescripts for iTunes that's right up your alley. While you
might be able to spend a bit more time to complete this same process manually, you'll tie up iTunes and your iPod until
it finishes. The beauty of this script is that it can work in the background, allowing you to still use iTunes.
Now on the other side of the fence, Restore iPod Album Art might just be
for those of you who are suddenly panicking and need all that artwork back on the iPod. This one requires you to select
tracks on the iPod in iTunes, in which case the script will attempt to find the corresponding track in the library to
copy the album art from. I haven't gone through the readme, but Doug's listing says it's a must for using this script.
Satta van Daal is a talented stencil artist from Germany, now living in Australia. His canvas? A vast array of old Macs: from SEs to LCs to PowerBook 100s. He decorates them with everything from vignettes of Steve and Woz to carefully recreating the look of Susan Kare's original one-bit Mac icon set.
Artists, photographers, writers, musicians and other creative types use Apple products every day as tools and inspiration to help them fulfill their creative desires and aspirations. So it should come as no surprise when some of those creative aspirations turn out to actually feature one of the tools that helps enable their creativity. 
Quartz Composer was one of the coolest new technologies Apple added in Tiger. It allows designers to create some amazingly complex motion graphics with comparatively little work. (Core Animation is likely an analogous advance in Leopard). The Japanese designer 
This 
Remember those crazy 
The iPod is the 800-pound gorilla of the DAP industry - there's no doubt about it (well, 
Leander Kahney, author of the successful Cult of Mac book, has posted an interesting 
If, for one reason or another, you're interested in stripping all the album art from every track on your iPod, I've
found 
