MacBook Nano or iPhone Slate Caught Online, Says NYT [Rumor]

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/429065704/macbook-nano-or-iphone-slate-caught-online-says-nyt

John Markoff at the New York Times has updated his article on a potential Apple netbook—following Steve Jobs' comments—with an interesting piece of news that reminds me of the first days of the JesusPhone, when an unidentified Apple device was detected for the first time in the traffic logs of some web sites. Markoff even provides vague specifics about this potential MacBook nano/MacBook touch/iPhone slate which was spotted in the logs of an unnamed "search engine company":

UPDATED: That would seem to confirm findings that a search engine company shared with me on condition that I not reveal its name: The company spotted Web visits from an unannounced Apple product with a display somewhere between an iPhone and a MacBook. Is it the iPhone 3.0 or the NetMac 1.0?

Like with the original iPhone—which was spotted online in web traffic blogs—I won't be surprised if this was real. Other Apple computers were detected online first as well, although some of them—like multiprocessor Macs running SETI or other distributed computing tasks—were never released. Unlike Markoff, however, I believe that Steve was completely honest when he said "we don't know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk", arguing that the company mission was to give more at the same price points, not less features for less money.

So out of pure instinct, I think we can rule out a MacBook nano netbook. Instead, if this is indeed a new unannounced Apple product, here in Gizmodo we are thinking about an iPhone HD with an updated 800 x 480 pixel display, probably coming in 2009. That resolution is something between the iPhone's 480 x 320 pixels and MacBook's 1280 x 800 p! ixels, w hich is completely reasonable: Other phones—like the HTC Touch HD—already have these ultra-sharp screens.

In addition to that, as Jobs pointed out in their financial conference call yesterday, they already have a strong entry in the small computing market with the iPhone. It is only logical for Apple—and probably less risky and cheaper—to keep the progress of the iPhone, upgrading the screen for one with a higher dot per inch count in the next model (but of course, I will always keep dreaming about the MacBook touch). [NYT]

Update: Some people argue that it may be a hackintoshed netbook, a computer running a modified version of Mac OS X. This may be the case, but I'm sure the "unnamed search company"—which won't say the name of the Apple device—has plenty of hackintosh netbooks in their logs. On top of that, all hackintosh computers identify themselves as a Mac Pro, independently of their hardware.

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Mass Produced Carbon Fiber Cars Down the Road [Automobiles]

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/429274741/mass-produced-carbon-fiber-cars-down-the-road

Japanese textile maker Toray Industries is on the road to mass producing carbon fiber cars, bringing us ever closer to the day when the lightweight automobiles are on the market for more than just really rich racing enthusiasts. The company said it's developed a new carbon fiber processing method that molds auto platforms in 10 minutes. That's two and a half hours shorter than what current methods allow.

Toray's carbon fiber produces a platform that's 50 percent lighter than steel but 1.5 times safer in a collision, and the shorter molding process will allow it to make enough parts for roughly 30,000 vehicles a year. Though the ten minutes is still longer than the five or six needed for regular sheet metal and carbon fiber is still ten times more expensive to buy, Toray says the new method will cut manufacturing costs drastically.

So when can you look forward to buying a carbon fiber car that doesn't cost as much as your house? About four to five years, the company estimated. Well, I guess that gives you some time to save up. [Japan Today]

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Confirmed: Apple Can Enable Dual GPU and On-the-Fly Switching in MacBook Pro [MacBook Pro]

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/429101259/confirmed-apple-can-enable-dual-gpu-and-on+the+fly-switching-in-macbook-pro

Nvidia dropped by today to demo some of the awesome things that the GeForce 9400M in the new MacBooks can do that Intel's integrated graphics just can't touch, and to discuss a few technical points. Besides confirming that you'll see it in other notebooks soon, they definitively answered some lingering questions about the chip's capabilities: It can support up to 8GB of RAM. It can do on-the-fly GPU switching. And it can work together with the MacBook Pro's discrete 9600M GT. But it doesn't do any of those things. Yet.

Since the hardware is capable of all of these things, it means that they can all be enabled by a software/firmware/driver update. Whether or not that happens is entirely up to Apple. While you can argue that Hybrid SLI—using both GPUs at once—has a limited, balls-to-the-wall utility, being able to switch between the integrated 9400M and discrete 9600M GT on the fly without logging out would obviously be enormously easier than the current setup, and allow for some more creative automatic energy preferences—discrete when plugged in, integrated on battery. Hell, you can do it in Windows on some machines.

But since it's Apple it's also entirely possible we'll never see any of this to come to pass—GPU-accelerated video decoding has totally been possible with the 8600M GT in the previous-gen MacBook Pros, and well, you know where that stands. [Apple & Nvidia Coverage@Giz]

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Pithy quotes

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/417536544/pithy-quotes.html

From an interview I just did with Hugh at gapingvoid

Everyone isn't going to be a leader. But everyone isn't going to be successful, either.

Success is now the domain of people who lead. That doesn't mean they're in charge, it doesn't mean they are the CEO, it merely means that for a group, even a small group, they show the way, they spread ideas, they make change. Those people are the only successful people we've got.

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Signaling strategies

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/428454337/signaling-strat.html

It's impossible to see everyone. You can't handle the input of what every consumer is buying or thinking or looking at. So, we resort to signaling strategies.

A few celebrities wearing Uggs in the middle of the summer sends a signal to fashion wannabees everywhere: these are hot. It doesn't matter too much if they actually are hot, all that matters (to these wannabees and the retailers that serve them) is that in the past, when beautiful people in Santa Monica did something, it was an effective signal to the market.

There are all sorts of signaling strategies consumers look for. Political endorsements, end cap displays at stores, large scale ad campaigns, The New York Times bestseller list--each is seen as a bellwether for what our friends and those we admire are about to do.

Marketers may be selfish, but we're not stupid. Once a signaling strategy is seen to be effective, we seek to game it. 25 years ago, driving cross country to go to my first day of work at Spinnaker Software (I was the 30th employee) I drove through Chicago. And I passed a Spinnaker billboard. Wow! This company was going somewhere if they had billboards all over the country. When I got to work in Boston two days later, I discovered that this was the one and only billboard they had in the country, strategically erected on the road to the big CES trade show. They were signaling the buyers of the big stores.

Various bestseller lists, because of their unwillingness to be transparent, is easily and often gamed by publishers and musicians and websites that focus their efforts on the sort of places that report to the list.

There are three reasons you need to care about the increasing amount of effort spent gaming the signals:
1. As a consumer, don't be fooled. The more important a signal is, the more likely it is that marketers are gaming it.
2. As a signaler, be careful. As you sell out and permit yourself to be gamed, you make it more and more likely that consumers won't be influenced by you.
3. As a marketer, beware. The effort you expend gaming one signal or another is almost never worth the distortion that gaming produces. Instead of spending your time delighting authentic voices, you're corrupting a signal. Which means that you end up being really good at signal corrupting but not so good at winning in your market. For every Uggs, there are 100 companies that spent too much money and time influencing a few, only to discover the market didn't care.

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