High-tech devices meet low-tech smuggling methods in China, consumers won’t be replaying iTunes movies anytime soon, and how do Apple’s computers boot up? Not so fast, says one company. The remainders for Monday, August 8, 2011 don’t drop their cargo at the first sign of an Imperial starship.
Smuggling of any sort can be dangerous business, what with customs agents and lengthy prison terms, but some folks in China have come up with a creative new solution: a very long zipline. Because prices are often lower in Hong Kong than in mainland China, these enterprising folks shot a zipline across the river separating the former British colony from the city of Shenzhen, then sent iPads and iPhones across in bags during the night. However, law enforcement personnel cracked the scheme, as it turns out that they too had attended summer camp.
New Mac-compatible printers hit the market Monday—one aimed at institutional users, the other two intended for home office photo printing.
Samsung's CLP-775ND
Samsung’s new CLP-775ND color laser printer is being pitched for use in business, government, and education settings. The CLP-775ND is powered by a 600 MHz Dual Core processor and sports 384 MB of memory; it includes a 500-page cassette, a 100-sheet multi-purpose tray, and a 350-sheet output tray to enable 35-page-per-minute printing. The printer can handle a variety of paper stocks, ranging in size from 3-by-5 inches to 8.5-by-14 inches.
If pixelated video just isn’t your style, you’ll welcome Skype 5.3’s HD video calling, which provides high-definition video, as long as you’re using a supported webcam (the company mentions the Logitech C910). Skype also says that you can use your Mac’s built-in camera, though in order to take advantage of the 1280-by-720 resolution you’ll need a Mac equipped with a FaceTime HD camera.
Apple on Monday unveiled a new, $999 “education only” 21.5-inch iMac. The new iMac—which is available only to authorized education purchasers, not educational customers buying through Apple's public-facing education store, is cheaper but less powerful than the $1200 base 21.5-inch iMac offered to all consumers.
Unlike that $1200 iMac, which sports a 2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor, the education-only iMac relies on a 3.1GHz Intel Core i3 dual-core processor. The education-only iMac also sports a 250GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM, and 256MB for the graphics card, all of which come in at about half of the respective specs of the base iMac. The education-only iMac also lacks one of Apple’s fancy new high-speed Thunderbolt peripheral ports; it does, however, have all the other features of the basic iMac, including one FireWire 800 port, four USB 2 ports, and a Mini DisplayPort. It also sports a FaceTime HD camera.
Have you heard that Android is positively trouncing the iPhone in market share?! Yes, someone wrote that this week. Again. For all its weight, however, if you prick Google—by acquiring some patents it wanted to have all on its own—does it not bleed? Finally, the Macalope again wonders, what does Google really get out of Android?
Can a domain name shed light on a forthcoming Apple product? Ehhh, probably not. Meanwhile, Acer thinks it has the 411 on what consumers really want and Apple files suit against knockoff retail stores closer to home. The remainders for Friday, August 5, 2011 have a license to thrill.
Surfing WHOIS records to find new domain registrations—it’s the tea-leaf reading of the 21st century. MacRumors uncovered a listing for applepico.com, which was apparently registered by Apple back in 2005, not long after the company unveiled the iPod nano. (Pico, of course, is the metric system prefix right below nano.) Personally, I’d like to see the company skip right to unveiling an iPod zepto—that’s the metric system prefix named after the fourth Marx brother.
Aquafadas has unveiled a new Mac application that lets developers more easily create website animations that can run simultaneously on both Flash-oriented desktop browsers and iOS devices that run HTML5.
MotionComposer, launched Wednesday, can be used to create animated slideshows and banners for both Flash and HTML5 formats in a single step. Users can create their animations within the program, which comes with a variety of text and video effects and features a user interface that Aquafadas says should feel intuitive to users of Microsoft’s PowerPoint and Apple’s Keynote presentation programs.
