Appletell

At the recent Design And Art Direction (D&AD) Awards, Apple picked two of the prestigious Black Pencils.  Apple is now the company with the most Black Pencils in the D&AD’s 45-year history, having won many in the past.  Although Apple has only six Black Pencils (First Place) in past years, they have picked up at least one award since 1999.  The most notable awards this year was a Black Pencil for the aluminum iMac in the Work & Industry category, and another Black Pencil for the iPhone in the Leisure section.  Other awards include the Wireless Aluminum Keyboard which got a Nomination Pencil also in the Work & Industry category.  Apple also cleaned out the Leisure category, with the iPhone at the top, the iPod Touch taking the Yellow Pencil (Second Place) and the iPod Nano receiving the Nomination Pencil.  Chris Foresman for Infinite Loop couldn’t have said it better:

“While many have often scoffed at paying an “Apple Tax” for cool design, Mac users know that the care and attention to detail are more than skin deep. This recognition of Apple’s hard work should further support the fact that design matters, even in a computer.”

This is the first year in which Apple has done so well, and this year brought their win total to six.  One of the main reasons why the Black Pencil is the most coveted award in the event is because in past years, D&AD have actually refused to hand out the Black Pencil due to a lack of a deserving contestant.  These awards are a sure testament to Apple’s superiority in design.

[D&AD] via [9 to 5 Mac]

We all suspected that Mac OS X would one day support a multi-touch interface, similar to the iPhone’s - but not from a third party company. Lux is currently an experimental framework that brings multi-touch in full screen to Mac OS X. Christian Moore has managed to get this entire multi-touch system running on Apple’s low-end MacBook laptop. He claims that his framework can in fact run on any platform. The gesture recognition and animation of the interface are comparable to that of Jeff Han or the Microsoft Surface. Lux is scheduled to go public in June. See the video after the jump.

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After sealing a distribution agreement with Asian telecom company Singtel and Swisscom of Switzerland, Apple has sealed another distribution agreement for the iPhone, this time with Orange, the exclusive provider of the iPhones in France. Interestingly, whereas it was not indicated whether the iPhones to be distributed in the Asian market is the 3G model or the non-3G ones, for Orange it was clearly stated that the 3G iPhones will be the models to be sold in the European countries. The agreement between Orange and Apple will expand to other European countries, the Middle Easy and some parts of Africa.

The two companies have also agreed that Orange shall be the sole distributor of iPhones in Belgium and Romania, while for other European countries including the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland and as well as in some African markets, Orange will either have co-exclusive or non-exclusive deals with other local telecommunications companies. This is in addition to other distribution deals that Apple has agreed upon with America Mobil for the iPhone’s distribution to Latin America and Vodafone for Australia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, India, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey.

Meanwhile in Italy, Telecom Italia mobile has snagged the distribution of the iPhone to the Italian market and Rogers has it in Canada.

Via [Apple Insider]

It looks like the grey market for the iPhone is getting widespread as observed by a study of cellphone advertiser Admob. Admob noticed that the iPhone has managed to move up to the top 20 devices which received quite a number of ad request to Admob. The company has also managed to serve most of these requests coming from Germany and the US, where the iPhone was already released officially. Interestingly though, Admob has noted that many of the requests it received are coming from other countries where the iPhone was not yet officially available. These countries include Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and the Netherlands and especially Hong Kong which ranked high in terms of iPhone advertising.

Hence, it is but logical that the iPhones were indeed being marketed in the gray markets of those countries. And if there’s anything that these data show, is the fact that those iPhone units are being exported by individuals “illegally” from either the U.S. or Germany.

Nonetheless, it is not to say that iPhone is not aware about this. This might even be one of the driving factor as to why Apple has been aggresively coordinating with telcom carriers internationally to distribute the iPhone worldwide. Interestingly again, the two countries which have widespread “unofficial” availability of the iPhone, have not even started negotiating with Apple regarding the official distribution of the iPhone in their respective countries. These are China and Russia, which both have large shares in the gray market for iPhones.

Via [MacNN] Via [AdMob]

The Google Application Engine Team and the Google Mac team have released a new App Engine Launcher made specifically to run on Mac OS X. For those not in the know, Google App Engine is Google’s way of providing users a platform to run their web applications on Google’s infrastructure. Developers don’t have to maintain any servers and are provided with some Google hosted storage and bandwidth for free. Just by uploading their applications to Google’s server, developers can let their users access their applications on the web.

With the new Google App Engine Launcher for Mac OS X, Mac application developers can improve their App Engine development experience by managing their list of applications. Developers can run, browse, deploy and view logs for their applications with few simple clicks. Even better is the the App Engine Launcher’s drag and drop, editor integration and quick links to local developer console features. Developers will also have their own live application dashboard.

The Google App Engine SDK can be freely downloaded from http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.html.

Via [The Apple Blog]

If that brief news tidbits coming from Commercial Times of Taiwan is any indication of what may come for the MacBooks, we may well be looking at a new MacBook model soon. According to the report, AU Optronics (AUO) and Chi Mei Optoeletronics are splitting up their orders of LCD panels from Apple. Those LCD panels are apparently for Apple’s “new MacBook consumer notebook PCs.”

The report also mentioned that the said new MacBooks are slated for release in the third quarter of 2008 and are expected to shoot up MacBook shipments this year by around 3 million units.

I know this may not be enough reason to get excited about a new MacBook, especially since we haven’t heard any slight hint coming from Apple about this the past few days. Aside from the fact that Apple has been busy prepping up the rumored release of a 3G iPhone. But if ever a new MacBook will come out later this year, I wonder how Apple will brand it this time? MacWind?

Via [Digitimes]

A new patent from Apple this week could greatly help in expanding what an iPhone can do for you.  This patent expounds upon the service that allows Starbucks customers to purchase coffees from their phone and is extremely interesting.  Basically, this patent implies that Apple would have services like this in businesses and various locations all over the world.  For example, an airport could show flight schedules right on your phone or you could save your dining preferences and wirelessly order with a digital menu at any restaurant involved with it.  Even better yet, if a concert used this you could be able to buy the bands tracks wirelessly right then and there.  It would work by connecting to a local wifi network that contained specific instructions on how to handle wireless devices that connect and are made by Apple.

This whole idea is actually pretty fascinating and I can see it becoming popular sometime in the future.  People carry their wireless devices everywhere and if Apple manages to get more of a market share or this extends to all wireless devices someday, it could become extremely handy.  Imagine simply walking into a restaurant and pulling out your phone to check the menu or being greeted with a tourist map when arriving in a new city.  If Apple ever does put this into effect some way or another, I can really see it taking off.

According to AppleInsider, build 9D32, which will become Mac OS X 10.5.3, is on track to be ready for release at this years WWDC.  With over 220 bug fixes and various updates, this download is going to be a pretty large file, 416MB to be exact.  However, this isn’t the only rather large update expected.  There is also an update anticipated for the iPhone that will bring the App Store to the device as well as the normal bug fixes.  I presume that this file will be relatively large itself, at least for an iPhone update.  With all this updating going on who knows, there may even be some sort of update for other iPods also.  We will have to wait and see, but I’m excited either way.

With all these software updates expected from the conference, I’m sure there is going to be a lot of traffic in the bandwidth from people downloading the new products.  I got to say, I sort of feel bad for my ISP when it comes to events like this.  I usually do the normal web surfing, podcast downloading, bandwidth non-intensive sort of downloading that probably makes my ISP happy with me.  However, when updates like this come around me, along with many others, head over to Software Update as quick as we can click to get the new software, potentially causing a major plug in the pipes.  I look forward to seeing what happens.  Let’s hope you don’t get throttled!

Apple isn’t the only one preparing for the launch of the 3G iPhone, AT&T is also undertaking some steps of it’s own.  The first of these actions came from a memo that AppleInsider got a hold of.  According to the memo, starting on May 14th AT&T customers will only be able to purchase one iPhone at a time which is down from the limit of three that was originally in place.  Furthermore, there will have to purchase the device with a credit or debit card, ruling out cash or checks.  This is most likely to assure that they have some stock left until the 3G version is launched.

The second step is probably the bigger of the two.  On Wednesday, AT&T said it plans on having its 3G wireless network up to speeds of 20 megabits per second by 2009.  AT&T’s mobility leader, Ralph de la Vega, says, “It’s clear to us that we are in the very early stages of what I would call a wireless data revolution.” Better yet, he adds that this upgrade will hopefully not require as many hardware modifications as usual in these sorts of updates.

Its clear that AT&T realizes they really need to improve their network in preparation for the iPhone and other new devices such as the Blackberry 9000.  If they want to stop people from jailbreaking their iPhones and simply using another carrier, they need to give them a reason to stay.  This would be the first step in that direction.

We interrupt our regular blog programming for a little bit of an important news. Apple was rated as the second most gay-friendly company based on the result of a study conducted by Prime Access and PlanetOut. The survey was polled to 2,259 people with age range of 18 to 62, 1,502 of them belongs to the general public, while 757 belonging to the gay and lesbian communities, Apple got a 23% approval from the general public and 39% approval from the gay communities.

Perhaps one of the reasons why Apple got into the 2nd rank is the fact that it is one of the first company to give out benefits to their gay and lesbian couple employees. And since the perception on being gay-friendly relies mostly on advertising and the influence of friends and the media, it is but understandable that Apple tops the survey.

Incidentally, taking the top spot of the most gay-friendly company is Bravo Network which runs gay-friendly shows such as Project Runaway, Workout and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Following Bravo Network are Showtime, HBO, Absolut and Levi’s.

While taking the lowest seal of approval from respondents of the survey are Samsung, Wal-Mart, Dunkin Donuts and Cracker Barrel.

Via [Macnn]