Lloyd Miller is no typical fan boy. If there’s one thing to know about him, it’s that he doesn’t like mainstream music, likely most of the stuff on your iPod. Groupie he is not, calling most of today’s new hits “jumpy ugly obnoxious rock junk that has permeated the whole world like leprosy destroying everyone’s musical tastes and minds.” You could write him off as an aging music snob, but then you’d be missing out on one of the edgiest pioneers in building the musical bridge between East and West.

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Jazz Mirrors Iran, Part IV: An American in Tehran

Apple’s difficulty in meeting demand for a product like the iPad 2 may get worse in the months to come, some analysts say, as critical components are delayed.

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Some Worry That Success of Apple Is Tied to Japan

Over the winter break from school, 8-year-old Madison worked to dress up her simple mushroom home on the iPhone game Smurfs’ Village. In doing so, she also amassed a $1,400 bill from Apple.

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In-app purchases in iPad, iPhone, iPod kids’ games touch off parental firestorm

Soften up hard music with a hand-knit iPod case by Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi Love having all your Townes Van Zandt tracks at your fingertips but can’t stand the iPod’s shiny exterior? Enter Granny Tunes , a hand-knit case that covers the musical device with lacy looks. Seizing on fashion’s enduring neo-boho obsession, the macram

Last April, when the iPad was released, I placed it on my dresser next to the iPod, Kindle, and BlackBerry Bold 9000, across the room from my desktop computer. My unexpected thought was whether I really needed all this stuff, especially since, only five years ago, I made it through the day with a Treo (e-mail, but few other frills), a laptop for travel, piles of books I intended to read, and a large stack of CDs, plus a radio, which is still the first thing that gets turned on in the early morning for NPR. It wasn’t long before the iPad found its place. I became a huge fan of Pandora, Internet radio that is like having a second iPod, and was a regular visitor to iBooks. I now have nineteen apps, many of which are merely duplicates of print subscriptions I already had, including the Wall Street Journal and the Economist. “It’s mind frying to contemplate the millions of dollars and person years that were spent on products and services that now fill the Great Tech Graveyard” Like so many millions of us, I have succumbed to the gadgetry that, on reflection, really are just add-ons to what I have had for years: a television loaded with cable channels, a half-dozen telephones scattered around the house, bookshelves and magazine racks, and the computer, which is a gateway to infinite communication and information. Lately, as I prepared each week to write about the media issues that are the mainstay of these pieces, I realized that I had become vaguely uncomfortable managing all this accumulated equipment and simultaneously had fallen out of phase with the most popular of the social networking breakthroughs — Facebook and Twitter, in particular. Of course, much of this is generational. Stories about teenagers sending thousands of text messages a month are merely the descendents of complaints about time their parents spent chattering on the telephone. All of the hottest business uses of social networks and the Internet have, we are reminded constantly, co-opted the print and television advertising that had supported the mightiest of enterprises for decades, all of which are now scrambling to stay in the fray. So I was enormously pleased and relieved to read David Pogue in the New York Times marking the tenth anniversary of his influential “State of the Art” column reflecting my own sense of unease: We have been engulfed with devices, which convey contents and communication channels that we are persuaded are breakthroughs to connections without which we are missing what is now said to be indispensable. Pogue writes: Nobody can keep up. Everywhere I go I meet people who express the same reaction to consumer tech today: there’s too much stuff coming too fast. It’s impossible to keep up with trends, to know what to buy, to avoid being left behind. They’re right. There’s never been a period of greater technological change. You couldn’t keep up with all of it if you tried. Well, here’s a dirty little secret: It’s almost too much for me. Heck, it’s my job to stay on top of this stuff — and even for me it’s like drinking from a fire hose. Thank goodness this leading arbiter of the tech revolution (whose column, admittedly, I read in a newspaper feature in an easy chair) has asserted that we can only absorb so much before it begins to become a jumble. Clearly, we enjoy the ability to expand the horizons and the means of what we use, but as the New Year approaches, it may be time to declare that every heralded advance is not necessarily an improvement or even necessary. Among the recent Web-based search and message functions that I’ve taken a pass on are Microsoft’s Bing, Google’s Chrome, Facebook’s e-mail, and incessant texting across a variety of platforms. I’m not ready yet to adopt streaming as an essential way to view movies or television programming. Netflix recently announced that its mail-order DVD rental service would soon be surpassed by delivering video online. The Wall Street Journal said this development “poses a threat to the traditional way consumers watch movies and TV: cable, phone and satellite systems.” Actually, we gave up Netflix a couple of years ago when we realized how many options we had to watch movies on demand, including the neighborhood theaters, the DVR (once we figured it out), and rental services on iTunes and Amazon, which we’ve never used. Obviously, it is pointless to suggest that we call a time-out in the unveiling of new technologies and related content (apps as games, enhanced books, and literally thousands of other uses are still in the earliest stages of sorting out economic models). Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and the host of other major smartphone manufacturers all have successfully marketed their increasingly sophisticated products and output to us, all in the first decade of the 21st century. Just thinking about what may happen in the coming years makes me dizzy. The winners are few. The unsuccessful contenders are many. As Pogue observed: “It’s mind frying to contemplate the millions of dollars and person years that were spent on products and services that now fill the Great Tech Graveyard: Olympus M-Robe, Pocket PC, Smart Display, MSN Explorer … Palm organizers” and so on. Facebook and the iPad were this year’s champions of brilliant marketing, with Mark Zuckerberg as Time ‘s Person of the Year — both icon and demon at 26 — and Steve Jobs’ ascendance into a stratosphere of unmatched technical celebrity. They deserve the recognition, but as we confront the inevitable next wave of what engineers and salesmen conjure, there is a case to be made for placing our digital exploration and consumption on pause; in the meantime, happy holidays.

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Are We Reaching Techno-Digital Overload?

Happy with your iPod? Let’s hope so, because Sony has officially announced that it will no longer produce the Walkman, a once revolutionary technology that has since become overwhelmed by the advent of digital music. The Walkman was first produced in…

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Sony Ends Production on Walkman

Long before the iPhone, the iPod was the device that helped transform Apple from computer company into a consumer electronics company.

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Does anybody still need an iPod?

This article titled “Ramadan goes hi-tech with phone apps to help Muslims fast and pray” was written by Haroon Siddique, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 11th August 2010 13.24 UTC

As millions of Muslims around the world began observing the holy month of Ramadan today, modern technology has stepped in to help them through the 30 days of fasting.

Perhaps inevitably, applications for the iPhone and iPad are now available to provide inspiration, support and practical information during Ramadan, the dates of which are determined by the lunar calendar.

The Ramadan Daily Dua, available for the iPhone and iPad, offers a prayer of supplication specific to each day during the holy month, while Ramadan Booster Pro offers “tips and recommended good deeds to help organise your Ramadan”. Nokia has its own updated, free Ramadan application suite, which allows users to browse the Qur’an, get prayer times and find their nearest mosque, among other things.

Unusually for a non-Islamic country, the German television channel RTL2 has said it will do its bit by flashing up a message at sunrise and sunset to indicate the start and end of the daily fast, during which Muslims are required to consume no food or drink.

The mobile phone applications follow in the footsteps of other Islamic-themed apps such as iPray and iQuran, which offer a beeping reminder of prayer times, and Find Mecca, which helps Muslims meet the requirement that they are facing Mecca when they are praying. The programme has an electronic indicator that changes from red to green when you reach the correct prayer angle of 58 degrees north-east, wherever you are.

James Otun, a 35-year-old technology aficionado in the US, said the apps he uses on his iPhone and iPad made him a more observant Muslim. From the beeping reminder to stop and pray during his busy schedule running a limo service, to an app that tells him which nearby restaurants serve food prepared within Islamic guidelines, he said there was no longer an excuse to live an unobservant life.

“If you forgot to pray, you might not be responsible, because you’re human; you forget and you can make it up later,” he said. “But not now that you have those apps, that might change things in God’s level.”

“Islam is not against technology. Now you can do it easier, faster,” said Zinnur Tabakci, who runs an Islamic religious book and gift shop in Paterson, New Jersey. He now stocks mobile phone accessories alongside strings of traditional prayer beads and religious texts. “Islam started 1,400 years ago, and at that time, they didn’t have that much technology, but they knew everything,” he said.

But the applications, at least those which are not offered for free, may provoke concerns about the commercialisation of the Muslim holy month. Just as Christians have for years expressed fears that the religious aspects of Christmas have been diluted, some Muslims believe Ramadan is being exploited as a brand. In June, the consumers’ association of Penang declared it was outraged by the Malaysian tourism minister’s announcement that the country was to host “the first ever Ramadan summer festival featuring food, shopping and other fun-filled activities” to attract Middle Eastern tourists.

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This article titled “Apple posts highest ever quarterly earnings after success for Mac and iPad” was written by Graeme Wearden, for The Guardian on Tuesday 20th July 2010 23.09 UTC

Record sales of Mac computers and strong demand for the iPad has helped Apple post its highest ever quarterly earnings.

Steve Jobs declared last night that Apple had enjoyed a “phenomenal quarter”, after it smashed analyst forecasts. Revenues rose 88% to .7bn (£10.2bn) in the three months to 26 June, with net quarterly profit up 78% at .25bn.

Jobs also insisted that the iPhone 4 was the most successful launch in the company’s history despite the well-documented problems with the handset’s antenna.

Shaw Wu, analyst at Kaufman Bros, said the results were “spectacular”.

The company sold 3.47 million Macs worldwide, and 3.27 million iPads. “iPad is off to a terrific start, more people are buying Macs than ever before, and we have amazing new products still to come this year,” said Jobs.

Apple’s results were released after the close of trading on Wall Street, and its shares jumped by more than 2.5% in after-hours trading. Apple’s Mac computers have taken something of a back seat in recent months, with attention being mainly devoted to the iPad tablet computer and the new iPhone.

Last night’s results suggest a growing trend. “There is a virtuous circle going on with Apple, as customers who are exposed to the iPhone and iPad also want a Mac,” said Colin Gillis of BGC Partners in a research note.

Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, said that around half the Macs sold during the quarter went to new users. He also revealed that 50% of Fortune 100 companies in America are either testing or deploying the iPad.

Apple has deferred revenue of 5m to cover the cost of providing cases to address antenna problems with the iPhone 4, but denied that the issue had hit sales.

“Let me be clear about this — we are selling every unit we can make currently,” said Cook. “My phone is ringing off the hook with people who want more supply.”

Sales of the iPhone fell slightly quarter-on-quarter, to 8.4 million from 8.75 million, as customers waited for the launch of the iPhone 4 in late June. The figures also suggested that the iPod’s best days are well behind it. Apple sold just over 9.4 million units, the lowest figure since the summer of 2006.

Apple predicted that revenues in the current quarter would hit bn, which is higher than analyst forecasts.

Some critics have claimed Apple has been deliberately restricting the availability of the iPad and iPhone 4 to push up demand, a charge Cook robustly denied: “We are selling both products as fast as we can make them, so we are quoting longer lead times than we’d like, and we’re working round the clock to alleviate this.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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