Filed under: Features

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:

Earlier this month, concerns among Apple fans and glasses among Apple-haters were alike raised as word came from Cupertino castle that it would miss its self-imposed deadline for Leopard by four months. Rather than deliver Leopard (perhaps code-naming it Cheetah would have sped up development?) at its Worldwide Developer Conference in June as originally planned, the next major version of Mac OS would ship in October. The culprit was pegged as the iPhone, Apple’s self-described revolutionary handset that has already changed some of the rules of the wireless business even as it has yet to change any customers’ experiences.

Apple pointed to the sophistication of the iPhone’s software, a mobile version of Mac OS X, dismissing any concerns that the phone’s operating system is an expedient port. Mac fans should take heart, though. The iPhone’s short-term ill effect on the Mac could translate into long-term benefit as Apple’s developers may pick up optimization techniques working with the handset’s small memory and storage footprint, perhaps fueling its long-speculated ultraportable PC.

Indeed, a four-month delay is not serious in the lifecycle of a modern desktop operating system and seems like an extra weekend in the context of the multi-year delay from the original launch timeframe of Windows Vista. And while Vista may have been more of an overhaul than any of Apple’s recent dot-upgrade operating systems, we don’t yet know what may be some of Leopard’s most compelling features. What we do know is that Time Machine is not yet at the point where Apple could have used it to go back before the iPhone project got started and start working on Leopard four months earlier.

Continue reading Switched On: Spreadable fruit

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV

Taking a page out of Samsung’s book of naming conventions (see Bordeaux and Cannes), LG has introduced the Quidam series of flat-panels: six LCDs based on a show by world-famous performers Cirque du Soleil, which follows a little girl’s desire to escape from sadness and alienation into an imaginary world — fitting for a screen you use to forget about your dreary life. With a semicircular stand and automatic brightness adjustment sensors, the sets will be available as a 32-incher for $1,614 or 42-incher for $3,336.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

The U.S. Navy certainly doesn’t seem to have any shortage of unconventional weapons in development, but it looks like it still has plenty more ideas on its plate, with a recent patent revealing yet another new weapon that takes a slightly different path towards its target. While this one is unconventional, it certainly doesn’t appear to be non-lethal, employing sonar to generate what the Navy describes as “acoustic remote cavitation,” which can supposedly destroy torpedoes, mines, and any other “undesirable objects” in its path. What’s more, the Navy says that can be done from a distance of up to one kilometer away, which is apparently far greater than other similar examples of the technology. Less clear, however, is how the Navy plans to deal with the seemingly inevitable swarms of irate dolphins set on enacting some revenge.

[Via Danger Room]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Looking for an exciting new way to earn money flexing that 20th century brain of yours? Try inventing gadgets! Americans spend more the $100 million a year on these useless, dangerous or just plain idiotic devices, which can often be found in 5 and 10 cent stores. Or something like that. The folks at Modern Mechanix unearthed this interesting advertorial from 1935, which hopes to inspire folks to design and patent their own “gadgets,” little widgets that the magazine defines as “something that we would like to own, if it doesn’t cost too much, yet something that we can do without if we absolutely must.” We’ve been trying to look around the Engadget HQ and decide what we could live without, but decided that was just silly — next thing you know it, stupid magazines from the past will be trying to tell us we don’t need our Nabaztag reading us news in the morning, or LED umbrellas to know what the weather’s like outside. Clearly preposterous.

[Thanks, Charles S]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Desktops

Can’t help but chuckle at Dell’s semi-admirable attempts at “community involvement” in product design decisions. To its credit, Dell does seem to be listening up on the Linux issue — though we have to wait and see how well the execution goes — but this latest “You Choose” question posed to the Dell IdeaStorm community isn’t exactly going to change the world. Dell wants your vote on two different clear sidepanel designs for its XPS 710 H2C desktop which was unveiled at CES. Sounds like a good idea, unfortunately, the options are laughable: you can vote for a decent but perhaps over the top “X” design, or a square window that was clearly drummed up after the marketing team decided it’d be a good thing to “ask the community” in an attempt to generate interest. In the end, it’s all pretty silly — don’t they know that what the people really want is to pay double the price for a gaming desktop with pretty pictures on it?

[Via Geekzone]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Laptops, Peripherals, Tablet PCs

As if the influx of products like the Wiimote, SIXAXIS controller, and DoCoMo D904i series of handsets hadn’t yet convinced you that motion control is the future of PC input (well, either that or knuckle rapping), BT is currently field testing a USB dongle that promises to bring the excitement of gaming to boring computing tasks. Like other implementations before it, the so-called Balance technology uses a small accelerometer to translate various tilts and movements of a connected laptop or UMPC into certain commands, letting you violently shake your expensive gear to do something as simple as empty the trash. Actually, the current trials aren’t meant to enable an even lazier lifestyle for your average geek — at least in the short term — but rather to give disabled individuals a way to hop on the mobile computing bandwagon without having to deal with finicky trackpads, control nubbins, or onscreen thumbboards. While no specific plans for a commercial launch have been made, BT anticipates that a product stemming from this research will hit the market in two to three years, just in time to be replaced by the thought-controlled input devices that are once again being trailblazed by the cutting-edge gaming community.

[Via Reg Hardware]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Laptops

This swollen, bloated MacBook Pro battery comes to us courtesy of Engadget reader Brade, whose ridiculously broken cell continued expanding even days after it was pulled from his system. Silver-lining: Apple was cool about replacing the thing. So let it be known: battery safety comes before productivity, so make sure your unit isn’t one of the recalled batteries, and for God’s sake, if you’re seeing the swell, take it out and quarantine that thing immediately. (See also part 3, part 2, the original, and the recall.)

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!