After several years of planning and waiting, the Highcross shopping center in Leicester (UK) is finally ready to go and with it the Highcross Apple Store.
Apple Store Highcross will open on Thursday, September 4th at 10:00 AM. The store is located at the Upper Mall. You can get full travel directions here.
As usual, we're asking any TUAW operatives who visit this weekend to send us stories and photos. Good luck, have fun and we're hoping you score a T-shirt!
According to Ars Technica and our own tipster Matt, Apple has sent out invitations to the media confirming the much anticipated September 9th iPod event. The invitation features an iPod screen with the words "Let's Rock" on it. According to the invite, the event will be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (located in San Francisco) at 10 am PT next Tuesday.
We have reason to believe that Apple will only refresh the iPods, instead of introducing new models to the MacBook line -- this is consistent with the invite.
What do you think will be released at this event? Be sure to take part in our poll, and in the comments.
Update: Belkin reps have contacted us to say that the JoyPod, while a fascinating idea, is not a product they have in development. Oh well!
I guessed that we'd see a more official iPhone controller sooner or later, but I didn't think it'd be this much sooner -- Touch Arcade has unearthed this photo of a Belkin-branded game controller/case for the iPhone and iPod touch called the JoyPod. Looks pretty slick, though as Engadget points out, the ratios don't really work out -- odds are that the final product will have to be a little longer to fit the iPhone in there.
Very interesting, though -- now I'm curious to see if Apple really will support stuff like this. Supporting a third-party controller would seem to go against His Jobsness' suggestion that a multitouch screen could be used for anything (even typing on an awkward non-tactile keyboard), but clearly there's a demand, from consumers if not from devs themselves, to move game controls off the screen and onto buttons you can feel while pressing. How else will you be able to "exprimir al maximo tu iPhone o iPod touch"?
A spate of bad news surrounding Mobile Me and iPhone 3Gqualityproblems paired with renewed vigor from competitors Microsoft, Dell, and Nokia has Apple running out of slack from the normally fawning press (TUAW certainly not withstanding).
Consider the parable of the friend. Say you have a good friend, who's trustworthy, reliable and generally happy to be around you. If that friend suddenly isn't glad to see you anymore, swears at the elderly and starts drinking cheap bourbon from a hip flask in meetings, you'd say something, right? At least you'd worry that your friend was on the wrong path.
That's where we find Apple today: A friend on the wrong path. Many have noted that a lack of transparency in admitting its mistakes is hurting its credibility. The fact that it's making mistakes in the first place is generally forgivable, but we've been spoiled by Apple's pristine track record of consistently delivering quality. As consumers, we want the quality back. If anything, our expectations are even higher now to properly correct the various perceived injustices we've suffered.
Taking the long view, Apple will pull out of its funk. Knowing Steve Jobs, it will do so in a spectacular fashion, too, with new products, product improvements, or both. Apple isn't suffering from a lack of talent or innovation. It's suffering from management problems that any company of its size faces on a daily basis: scheduling new products, preventing employee burnout, and managing logistics.
We're nowhere near Apple's nadir under Gil Amelio, over a decade ago. In fact, investors don't seem to be fazed at all, with stock prices rebounding to their levels in May. Apple may already be back.
John Casasanta has written up a pretty damning condemnation of the vulture venture capitalists (VCs) hovering around the iPhone's App Store lately. While many developers are smelling a lot of potential in the iPhone and its SDK, VCs are smelling lots of money, and unfortunately, as was apparently the case between Mike Lee and Tapulous recently, sometimes those smells lead the two in different directions.
It's not that there isn't money to be made in the App Store -- there are somegreatprograms coming out of there, and those programs are certainly worth paying for (even if a lot of them are offered for free anyway). But Casasanta describes a situation where venture capitalists are willing to pay out in spades even for shovelware, and in that kind of environment, no one profits. Not the VCs and developers who lose their money because no one wants their crappy programs, not the consumers who have to sort through a flood of terrible apps, and not the platform -- the Mac, as Casasanta says, is thriving because of the quality of the software, and the iPhone (though it will likely always be a popular phone) will thrive as a platform for the same reasons.
Casasanta's solution is for the developers to do things on their own, and that's a possibility everyone has to consider for themselves. Even well-funded developers can create valuable pieces of software. Whether you receive funding from a VC or from your own bank account, the focus while developing should always be on quality. And any developer pushing out 100 apps by the end of the year (as Casasanta's VC asked) lacks that focus.
Last night, Apple issued an update for the MacBook Air. With the oh-so creative title of "MacBook Air Update," this update is recommended for all users and fixes "issues with video playback and processor core idling."
According to Apple, this update should not be installed until applications that modify processor operating characteristics (i.e. frequency and voltage), like CoolBook, are removed from the system. Apple says that these applications are not supported.
You can download this update by visiting the Apple support download website or by opening Software Update (Apple menu > Software Update). Apple has published a support note with extra information about this update.
Steve "Woz" Wozniak is often considered the "God" of Apple. He was the designer of the first ever Apple computers (Apple / & Apple //). At a recent developer forum at Intel, Woz gave a bit of advice to the engineers. He told them that, "the right way of going through life" is pursuing a vision without compromise.
"If you have technical ideas, if you know what you're good at, and you know what you're doing is right ... you have to shut them out," Woz said, in reference to others telling you how to do something. According to InformationWeek, Woz went on to discuss other topics. He talked about being a successful inventor. While on this topic, he admitted that not having money helps the creativity.
InformationWeek has the full details on the interview.
As if Mac gaming needed more problems getting off the ground. Transgaming has proudly announced that in the future, their games will include Sony's SecuROM digital rights management software. They don't mention which games will be getting the extremely restrictive DRM (that some folks have compared to malware), but we're guessing all of them, which means the Mac version of Spore will be on that list, as well as those upcoming Ubisoft titles, and anything else produced with the Cider technology.
Bummer. Why is it a bummer? Because all the evidence we can see actually shows that DRM hurts sales. While Transgaming is obviously proud of this decision, claiming that SecuROM will help them prevent piracy and unauthorized copying, most of the evidence shows that piracy will happen in spite of, and sometimes even because of restrictive DRM setups like Sony's. Transgaming is making a serious mistake here -- they want to protect their games, which is fine. But choosing DRM, especially SecuROM, as a way to do it is a mistake. It'll cause more problems for the company and their users before it prevents piracy in the way they think it will.
Tonight, Apple released a new "Get a Mac" ad. "Off the Air" shows PC, Mac, and a Mac Genius. Mac tries to win people over on the fact that the Geniuses will transfer your files from your old PC to your new Mac.
A mad PC then announces that his "frustrated" customers don't need to hear about that and that "fear of switching is the foundation of customer loyalty for PCs." PC proceeds to shut off the commercial by pulling a curtain down.
This commercial isn't as funny, in my opinion, as the last set that came out earlier this week. You can watch all of the Get a Mac ads by visiting the Get a Mac website.
Yesterday we posted a tip about using your iPhone on a cruise ship, but what about if you want to use a Mac on a ship or in a hotel and you don't have a MacBook to take along with you?
AppleInsider's Prince McLean is reporting that installations of Macs in hotels and on cruise ships are going strong, with thousands of Apple machines being sold for installation in those locations by Apple's Enterprise Sales Group. Back in June we mentioned the Fontainebleau's plans in Vegas -- they're also installing another 1,400 24" iMacs in rooms at the flagship resort in Miami Beach.
Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines has Mac minis installed on its Freedom Class (3,600 passenger) ships, and is working with Apple on IT infrastructure for its upcoming Oasis Class (5,400 passenger) liners. The deployments planned will have up to 16,150 Ethernet drops per ship, racks full of Xserves, and thousands of client Macs.
Whether it's an in-room email and information kiosk, a public information center, or an intelligent set-top box, the Mac is definitely making inroads into the hospitality and travel industry.
AppleInsider says that Apple has yanked the Push notification framework from the latest version of the iPhone 2.1 firmware beta. Push got a lot of play during WWDC -- it's a service that will send information to the apps on your iPhone as needed (tweets, for example, will just come rather than having to refresh Twitterific all the time), but apparently Apple doesn't think it's ready for the stage yet. They've wiped it from the beta, claiming it needs "further development," and haven't given any indication of when it might return.
Here's hoping it gets back in there before the expected release sometime in September, but then again, it's not like Apple should be taking any new chances with features right now. From Mobile Meh to iPhone activation problems, Apple's got to make sure that any more widescale releases go as swimmingly as they possibly can.
Tonight, Apple posted three new "Get a Mac" ads: Pizza Box, Throne and Calming Teas. In the Pizza Box ad, PC tries to lure college students into buying a PC by advertising as free pizza. PC notes that Mac is the number one selling computer on college campuses.
In Throne, PC notes that he is "still the king" of the OS world and then goes on to banish Mac. In Calming Teas, PC markets a new tea that calms Vista users instead of fixing the many problems with Windows. These Get a Mac ads seem to be geared towards back to school buyers and are amusing to watch (especially the Pizza Box ad).
Join TUAW as we go on a weekend road trip to Apple's campus at 1 Infinite Loop. No, not really, but we can always take a virtual visit to Apple HQ thanks to Google Maps Street View, now that Google has finally completed their street level photography of Infinite Loop.
This allows you to see the buildings in their full grandeur. Unfortunately, you cannot visit the legendary Apple Company Store. To start your virtual road trip, click here.
Yes, it's time once again to say "Happy Birthday" to our old friend, iMac. Hard to believe the iMac has been around for 10 years today. Apple transitioned the "consumer device," as Steve called it at its introduction, into something more of an icon of computer design. Above is a commercial for the iMac G3 which shipped in Lime, Grape, Blueberry, Tangerine, and Strawberry and featured the song "She's a Rainbow" by the Rolling Stones.
The specs for the original iMac were nothing to laugh about then, but it's certainly laughable now. The G3 iMac sported a 15" CRT monitor (resolution of 1024x768), 4 GB hard drive, 233 MHz PPC G3 (750), 32 MB of RAM (expandable up to 128, whoa!), 56 Kbps modem, 24x tray-loading CD-ROM drive, Mac OS 8.1 (or 8.5 on later models). This monster weighed in at 40 pounds!
The original design followed the iMac until 2003, when Apple retired the design for the "goose-neck" iMac G4 (although as Evan reminds us in the comments, the 'gumdrop' form factor lived on in the education-market model eMac). In 2004, Apple created the iconic design of the iMac G5, which is the same major design style they use for the iMac today.
Investigators suggested that an air conditioning unit could have been the culprit. Fortunately, all employees escaped unharmed. No word on how much damage was done to the building, although some reports say the smoke damage was substantial.
We're very glad that no one was hurt, and hope the damage isn't too bad. Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
After several years of planning and waiting, the Highcross shopping center in Leicester (UK) is finally ready to go and with it the Highcross Apple Store. 
A spate of bad news surrounding Mobile Me and iPhone 3G quality problems paired with renewed vigor from competitors Microsoft, Dell, and Nokia has Apple running out of slack from the normally fawning press (TUAW certainly not withstanding). 
John Casasanta has written up a pretty damning condemnation of the 
Steve "Woz" Wozniak is often considered the "God" of Apple. He was the designer of the first ever Apple computers (Apple / & Apple //). At a recent developer forum at Intel, Woz gave a bit of advice to the engineers. He told them that, "the right way of going through life" is pursuing a vision without compromise. 
As if Mac gaming needed more problems getting off the ground. Transgaming has proudly announced that in the future, their games will include Sony's SecuROM digital rights management software. They don't mention which games will be getting the extremely restrictive DRM (that some folks have compared to malware), but we're guessing all of them, which means the Mac version of Spore will be on that list, as well as those upcoming Ubisoft titles, and anything else produced with the Cider technology.
Tonight, Apple released a new "Get a Mac" ad. "Off the Air" shows PC, Mac, and a Mac Genius. Mac tries to win people over on the fact that the Geniuses will transfer your files from your old PC to your new Mac. 
Yesterday we posted a tip about using your iPhone on a cruise ship, but what about if you want to use a Mac on a ship or in a hotel and you don't have a MacBook to take along with you?
AppleInsider says that Apple has yanked the Push notification framework from the latest version of the iPhone 2.1 firmware beta. Push got a lot of play during WWDC -- it's a service that will send information to the apps on your iPhone as needed (tweets, for example, will just come rather than having to refresh Twitterific all the time), but apparently Apple doesn't think it's ready for the stage yet. They've wiped it from the beta, claiming it needs "further development," and haven't given any indication of when it might return.
A three-alarm blaze drew 60 firefighters to Apple's Cupertino campus on Tuesday night. Specifically, it was in building Valley Green Six at 20705 Valley Green Drive. San Francisco's ABC 7 television news has some video.
