
Great blog post concerning the rather shocking results that a 1986 Mac BEATS a 2007 AMD running Windows XP.
Mac Plus VS AMD: You won't believe who wins!
It is important for the Company to gain new business to sustain growth and development. However, the Company would like to reiterate that as general business conduct, the Company will not comment on specific customer,order or any types of confidential information. All business remains solid and strong as planned.
"Zombies? No Problem
The story is not that a large group of zoobies periodically forms up in downtown San Francisco to wander the streets seeking victims. It’s also not notable that security guards throughout the downtown throw up a cordon to prevent the un-dead from coming into their stores, including the Disney Store, The Gap and the giant Westfield mall. No, the story is really about the Apple store employees’ utter non-chalance, and even amusement, when a group of 30 or so creepies staggered into the San Francisco retail store on Market Street last Friday, swept up the stairs and ended up at the Genius Bar. Staffers took photos, laughed and continued helping customers, while the security staff kept a discrete watch. Within minutes the group was gone, leaving only fingerprints on the glass staircase. After all, it’s more than a store
We definetely agree that the eBay drop-off business is not for the faint-hearted, it requires large scale operations and signifcant investment in software. Read more on our thinking here: http://www.auctioning4u.co.uk/news/iSold_It_UK.
Christian Braun
CEO
Auctioning4u
Ken Sully, CEO of iSold It, has acknowledged publicly that there are serious flaws with the iSold It franchise concept. In an open letter published on Franchise Pick ( An Open Letter to iSold It Franchisees from CEO Ken Sully), Sully admits that 60 stores have closed and many more are struggling to survive. States Sully:
"Tragically, many individuals who believed passionately in the potential for the category have lost sizable investments, including homes and retirement savings….We personally find this unacceptable and, despite continued interest in this category, we do not feel comfortable selling any new franchises until we get the failure rate lower."
The conclusion after a years trading, refining and redefining the business model is that the retail drop-off store as a stand alone concept simply does not work.
I’m getting lots of email from people saying this whole issue of 6-bit notebook displays is [null], because all notebook displays from all vendors are in fact 6-bit, and that they all simulate millions of colors using “temporal dithering”. If so, fine by me, so long as the results look good.
But that’s not what this tech note from Apple says.
For example, regarding the 17-inch iMac, it says:
The graphics card temporally dithers the 6 bits per component to show up to millions of colors.
But regarding the MacBook Pro, it says:
The display supports 3D acceleration and display depths up to 24 bits per pixel at all supported screen resolutions.
The 17-inch MacBook Pro supports an LCD display size of 1680 × 1050 pixels at 116 dpi and shows up to millions of colors.
Emphasis added.
When considering whether Engadget should be "fined" (or otherwise punished), I'm curious as to why they didn't post this part of the bogus email (emphasis added):
"Copyright © Apple Inc. All rights reserved. As a condition of receiving this publication, you agree that you will not unlawfully duplicate, download to a database, transmit electronically, or disseminate by any means whatsoever any portion of this publication, nor will you use any information in this publication in violation of the Copyright Act. If you violate these terms, you will be subject to all penalties provided under United States copyright laws, including penalties of up to $50,000 per incident and all other remedies available to Apple Inc. in equity or at law."
Perhaps they didn't want to identify their obvious culpability.
In the wake of the fake iPhone and Leopard delay rumor that hit the web on May 16th, there's been a number of stories and claims regarding the events.
Engadget posted their sequence of events, which involved the fake email sent through an internal Apple distribution list to employees indicating that the iPhone and Leopard would be delayed. A couple of hours later, Apple sent out a followup memo stating that the previous memo was fake.
From what we've heard, the sequence of events described is accurate. A fake email was indeed sent to an internal email Apple distribution list as described. The source of the fake email is unknown, but an internal investigation has been launched at Apple to seek out this individual. There is speculation that the author of the email was an ex-Apple employee.
Eight strangers wake up in a bizarre 50ftx50ftx50ft cube shaped room with no recollection of how they got there and no idea of how to get out. Each surface - floor, ceilings, and walls have doors that lead semingly endless to other simalarly cube shaped rooms.
"... a San Diego filing by private citizens Fred Greaves and Dave Gatley calls for a class-action lawsuit, accusing [Apple] of deceptive advertising with regard to the displays on its MacBook and MacBook Pro machines -- specifically alleging Apple's screens aren't nearly as good as they were advertised to be. Citing observances that MacBook (Pro) displays are too often "grainy" and "sparkly", that Apple uses dithering to achieve higher color depths than is feasible for the equipment, and that apparently customers seeking repair or replacement were rebuffed, even "chastised" by rogue Geniuses, telling users they are "too picky about... the quality of the display."
To sweeten sodas, and a multitude of other food and beverages, companies typically use the sweetener high fructose corn syrup (or HFCS for short). But here at Jones we’ve decided to do things a little different. Thanks to phone calls from our fans, consumer research, and one passionately loud Jones Soda Receptionist, we are tossing out the HFCS. You may have seen that our 12-ounce cans of soda are now made with pure cane sugar, and by mid-2007 all of your favorite Jones products will be available with real sugar.
But why should you care? Simply put; it tastes better and overall it's better for the environment (No GMO’s). So leave the corn for your cars, and keep the sugar for your soda. Grab a bottle of Jones Pure Cane Soda and lets us know what you think!
The movie is about a hacker named Flynn (played by Jeff Bridges) who is physically transported into a surreal world of computing and gaming by an ego maniacal server called "The Master Control Program". The movie follows Flynn's adventures in this "world" to stop the MCP and reppace him with a safety program called Tron.
Subject: Re: Engadget comments: Apple Story apology
Date: May 17, 2007 7:14:56 PM EDT
To: FIXYOURTHINKING
Expect to see a post regarding this in the immediate future.
Best, Ryan
Regarding yesterday's Apple news
Posted May 17th 2007 7:21PM by Ryan Block
Yesterday Engadget posted an incorrect story about an iPhone delay, and I wanted to go into greater detail about how this happened.
At 9:09am CDT yesterday a number of Apple employees received an email that appeared to be from Apple corporate reporting that the iPhone and the next version of OS X had been delayed. An Apple employee who we trust then forwarded this email to us. Let's be clear that this is someone who we know without any doubt is an employee of Apple, not someone we merely believe to be an employee of Apple. We contacted our source after receiving their email, and they confirmed for us that they had indeed received this email, an email which by all appearances was a legitimate email from Apple corporate. In fact, this Apple employee certainly believed this, especially since the email had also been received by other Apple employees. They gave us absolutely no indication that its origin might be in doubt.
For a reporter, this kind of thing -- an internal memo to a company's employees -- is solid gold. You don't often get inside information more sound than a memo stating plans -- and it is not uncommon to see these sorts of internal emails quoted in mainstream newspapers and magazines -- but we are still aware of precisely how dangerous it would be to leave any story at that. So after verifying that the email was indeed sent to internal Apple email lists -- but before publishing anything -- we immediately contacted Apple PR, trying to reach our contacts on their PR team that handles iPod / iPhone matters. It was before business hours on the West coast, though, so we even called an Apple PR manager via their private cellphone in search of a statement. When no one was immediately available, we left voicemail and email.
The question we faced at that moment was: Do we run with the story without Apple's comment or not? The answer seemed fairly clear there, too, at the time. We possessed what confirmed Apple employees believed was an internal Apple memo that with absolutely no doubt had also been received by any number of other Apple employees. This memo was passed to us in good faith -- our source believed that what they were sending was real because it was exactly like every other email of this type they had received from Apple corporate. And it stood to reason that Apple, which normally holds its cards very close to the chest with this kind of news, would more than likely not comment on these matters. (How many times have you read a news story with "Apple was not available for / declined to comment"?) Even when Leopard was facing multiple accusations of delay from across the media, Apple denied it up and down for weeks right up until the very day it announced the delay.
So we were sitting on news of obvious importance -- the email was circulating, and it was enough to set off the alarms of other sources at Apple who also started forwarding it outbound. (As it happened, we were not the only site that acquired and published that memo, perhaps just the first.) Given the nature of that news, we felt we had an obligation to inform people that Apple had sent out an internal memo in preparation of a delay in the iPhone and Leopard. And so I ran the story; I believe most people in my place would have done the same.
About an hour and 40 minutes after the initial memo went out, a second memo was sent to the same internal Apple lists, dismissing the first. Soon after, our source -- who we'd been in contact with through the morning -- let us know that Apple was dismissing this earlier email; the second memo passed off the first as "fake" and "not from Apple". Fake indeed, but it still came from someone familiar with Apple's internal mail systems, lists, memo composition structure, etc., who found a way to plant a phony memo in the inboxes of who knows how many Apple employees. (Both emails are published in the original post.) Why Apple took nearly two hours to respond to the situation we do not know.
The person or persons behind the phony email had apparently put one over on Apple employees to the extent that those employees who received that memo and passed it along to us and others took it as truth -- as did we. Although we made sure to confirm and reconfirm with our source that this email was legit at the time it was sent out, unfortunately no amount of vetting and confirming sources can account for what happens when a corporate memo turns out to be fraudulently produced and distributed in this way.
So who sent the memo, and why? We don't know, and we're not sure we ever will. Again, it was not a public memo, and it was not distributed outside Apple's internal Bullet News list to employees. Ultimately we did the only thing we felt right in doing after the initial post: leave it up unedited (but struck through), making sure the developing situation was made as lucid as possible for anyone involved in order to minimize the damages the leaked email caused.
Credibility and trust is the currency of our realm, and it's clear we lost some of that. (And to be 100% clear, no one at Engadget is allowed to own stock in any of the companies we write about.) We take what we do very seriously and would never knowingly pass along information that we believed could be false or inaccurate; in this case, as stated above, we had confirmation from within Apple that this was in fact information that been distributed via Apple's internal corporate email system. If we had had any inkling that ANYONE could have exploited that system that would have greatly affected how we proceeded.
Could things have be done differently? Definitely. We might have waited until the press release the memo mentioned hit the wires. That could have been any time, though, an hour, three hours; we were obviously sitting on a pretty major story, and we believed that would have been a disservice to our readers. We might also have presented it as rumor or whim, although given the information we had at the time, there was truly no reason to believe it was anything but totally legit, and would have been a misrepresentation of the situation.
We also might have waited to hear what Apple had to say, however long it would take for them to get back to us. While we did indeed do our best to get in touch, but we were unable to immediately produce a result, so I chose to run the without comment, as is standard practice for a reporter working on a big, urgent story. (As it happened, we only heard back from Apple after we got the second internal memo.) Of course, had I waited long enough, that second memo would have made its way to me through the pipeline, and the story would have died on the vine, never to be published. (Well, maybe we would have done a story about a planted internal memo at Apple.)
We have learned a very serious lesson yesterday. We will work very hard to earn back the trust we have lost and to do our best to be what we have always strived to be: a trustworthy source for the latest on gadgets, consumer electronics, and personal technology.
And so I ran the story; I believe most people in my place would have done the same.
Jackasses of the Week: Engadget
The stock sell-off after Engadget’s report on the bogus announcement of iPhone and Leopard delays knocked $4 billion off Apple’s market cap.
There is some intrigue, though: the bogus email was sent through Apple’s internal email-to-every-employee system. Just a prank, or part of a scheme to profit from the false news?
This one doesn't bode well for Mac fans and the iPhone-hopeful: we have it on authority that as of today, the iPhone launch is being pushed back from June to... October (!), and Leopard is again seeing a delay, this time being pushed all the way back to January. Of 2008. The latest WWDC Leopard beta will still be handed out, but it looks like Apple-quality takes time, and we're sure Jobs would remind everyone that it's not always about "writing a check", but just how much time are these two products really going to take?
Update:
Here's the story. A trustworthy source supplied us with an actual internal Apple email that went out to thousands of Apple employees earlier today (published after the break). The fact that this was an email sent within Apple's internal email system to its employees is not in question. Let us reiterate: this was an ACTUAL email distributed within Apple's internal email system to Apple employees.
As it turns out, the internal memo Apple employees received was actually retracted by Apple shortly after it was sent out. (Also published after the break.) We received confirmation from Apple PR that this initial email sent out to Apple employees was incorrect, and they let us know that the iPhone and Leopard are both still on track, and should meet their expected launch timeframes.
Presumably, Apple is now on the hunt for whomever was able to spoof its internal email system.
In the volatile 23 minutes of turmoil between the minute the disinformation hit the stock market at 8:55 PST and Apple’s announcement that the initial email “is fake and did not come from Apple,” nearly 15 million shares changed hands. That’s 60% of Apple’s normal volume in well under a half hour. That’s also an awful lot money lost for some investors - and gained for others - all of it because of a lie.
iPhone and Leopard Delayed? [Update: False]
Posted by arn
I'm cautious to post this, as there has been no other verification, but Engadget claims that both the iPhone and Leopard have been delayed.
According to the gadget site:
This one doesn't bode well for Mac fans and the iPhone-hopeful: we have it on authority that as of today, the iPhone launch is being pushed back from June to... October (!), and Leopard is again seeing a delay, this time being pushed all the way back to January. Of 2008.
Engadget only states "we have it on authority" and no other source is given.
In the past, Engadget has been very liberal about linking almost any Apple rumor found on the internet, but they rarely post Apple rumors based on their own sources. That being said, the last time they did (October 2006), they were wrong. However, due to Engadget's popularity and confidence in this report, this has been posted on Page 1 rather than Page 2.
Apple has repeatedly stated that the iPhone is on track for a late June release.
Update: Engadget has retracted the story, saying they received "further correspondence stating that this isn't accurate" and that Apple PR let them know that the iPhone and Leopard are still on track.
To Whom It May Concern,
I would like a better apology than a strike through to Apple Shareholders and to fellow bloggers concerning yesterday's irresponsible posting of an Apple iPhone Delay.
I understand the desire blogs have to get scoops and the rush to press without verification. It's always a temptation, but incidents like this really weaken blog credibility. Engadget has one of the highest hit totals on the internet though - they don't NEED to do this.
Kevin Kelleher at Gigaom made an interesting observation:
In the volatile 23 minutes of turmoil between the minute the disinformation hit the stock market at 8:55 PST and Apple’s announcement that the initial email “is fake and did not come from Apple,” nearly 15 million shares changed hands. That’s 60% of Apple’s normal volume in well under a half hour. That’s also an awful lot money lost for some investors - and gained for others - all of it because of a lie.
I chose not to report on "An iPhone delay" yesterday because I knew without any doubt that it wasn't true - as I am involved closer than most with the project. I also have a local source that can verify any information about the iPhone.
Everyone who writes and reports makes errors ... we are only human. But ... this wasn't a factual error - this was "a non factual unverified rush to judgement".
Engadget deserves something other than a smirk for their sloppy reporting without double verification of the facts ... especially without apology.
You are one of my favorites sites on the internet - please suck this up and apologize to bloggers, readers, and Apple shareholders.
Philip Smith
www.fixyourthinking.com
The Rev. Jerry Falwell has died, a Liberty University executive said Tuesday. He was 73. Earlier today, Ron Godwin, the executive vice president of Falwell's Liberty University, had said Falwell was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but said Falwell had "a history of heart challenges.
"Faced with a duly unimpressed USPTO examiner who rejected its new 1-Click patent claims as 'obvious' and 'old and well known,' Amazon has taken the unusual step of requesting an Oral Appeal to plead its case. And in what might be interpreted by some as an old-fashioned stalling tactic, the e-tailer has also canceled and refiled its 1-Click claims in a continuation application. As it touted the novelty of 1-Click to Congress last spring, Amazon kept the examiner's rejection under its hat, insisting that 'still no [1-Click] prior art has surfaced.' The Judiciary Committee hearing this testimony included Rick Boucher (VA) and Howard Berman (CA), both recipients of campaign contributions from a PAC funded by 1-Click inventor Jeff Bezos, other Amazon execs, and their families."
They will most likely tell you to try resetting the device. You can knock this step out before calling by turning the unit off with the right side power button. Then holding the power button down for 15 seconds (keep holding down even if the unit turns on). If that solved your problem ... great. If it did not ... call the RCA customer service number.* With the unit on, place it close to your ear, if you can hear a clicking noise or like a "tiny gear grinding" noise - your hard drive is bad. You have two options:
Media Rights Technologies and BlueBeat.com Issue Cease and Desist to Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and Real Networks
"Media Rights Technologies (MRT) and BlueBeat.com have issued cease and desist letters to Microsoft, Adobe, Real Networks and Apple with respect to the production or sale of such products as the Vista OS, Adobe Flash Player, Real Player, Apple iTunes and iPod. MRT asserts Apple, Microsoft, Real and Adobe have produced billions of these products without regard for the DMCA or the rights of American Intellectual Property owners, actively avoiding the use of MRT's technologies. Failure to comply with this demand could result in a federal court injunction to any of the above named parties to cease production or sale of their products and/or the imposition of statutory damages of at least $200 to $2500 for each product distributed or sold."
Cingular.com coupon: $25 off cell phones and accessories orders of $25 or more with activation of service, Cingular.com takes $25 off most Cell Phones and accessories orders of $25 or more via coupon code "WLS25". It's the only dollar-off coupon we've seen from Cingular.com. Deal ends July 15.
... that's like making me choose between Kirsten Dunst and Sarah Jessica Parker in a Weird Face / Hot Bod Contest.