News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
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Owing to a total lack of vocal chords on my part, this week's podcast is not going to happen. The good news is, this spares you the agony of trying to understand the husky remains of my voice (I hate Spring colds). The bad news is, this week's podcast was when we were going to announce the winners of our iPone 3G competition. Instead, you get to read about them here.
The 15 entries we posted to our YouTube channel constitute the "shortlist" of best entries we received, although some of them didn't quite meet the rules (you had to remove the battery, for example, and several of those phones clearly have batteries still in at the time of their destruction; plus, the opinion of our local police was that the PVC Cannon was indeed a prohibited weapon -- entertaining nonetheless). The "short shortlist" of the five best entries were:
"Phonesmash" by Jacko (you're forgiven for the 69 e-mails);
"Destroy Your Phone" by CyberGeorge;
"Nokia Execution" by MacGyver;
"iPhone Envy" by Lorenzo;
"Cooking A iPie" by MissionMan;
All of these were frankly brilliant, and I truly wish we had five iPhones to give away. Unfortunately, we don't. We have two, plus a way cool speaker system from Altec Lansing. And the winners are:
Second prize of a 16GB 3G iPhone goes to "Cooking A iPie". Interestingly there were several cooking-related entries, but this was the clear favourite -- the pie at the end looks delicious, phone and all.
First prize of the 3G iPhone plus the Altec Lansing T612 speaker system goes to "Nokia Execution".
Congratulations to our winners, and many thanks to all who entered.
wrote on August 22, 2008 7:46 PM
I don't know how you judged them, because my movie was better than all of those but nokia execution and phonesmash. I had a plot, a story and some stop motion as well but I didn't even make it into the top fifteen. I can't believe that a short, steppy stop motion like iPhone envy would beat my, stop motion and footage, exciting video.
wrote on August 23, 2008 5:50 PM
Hi Thomas, it appears that your video wasn't uploaded to YouTube as a matter of oversight rather than selection -- it had the same filename as another one of the entries so I thought it had been uploaded. My apologies for that -- I genuinely enjoyed it and I'm sure other readers would be interested to know about the methods you employed in making it. It will be uploaded on Monday. Please be assured that not being uploaded to YouTube did not put you out of the running for the prizes though -- the top five and the winners would have been unchanged. Nonetheless, your entry should certainly be counted amongst the best ones we received. — M.JC.P.
wrote on August 24, 2008 9:41 AM
I thought that iPhone was by far the best of the lot but I suppose the good people of at MacWorld cannot get it right all the time. Good one Lorenzo!
wrote on August 25, 2008 10:28 AM
If 'winning criteria' was creativity and excellence in production, it would seem that one winner found another way to the ed's heart...eat that!
"Don't forget to get there very, very early", was the advice given to me by practically everyone prior to this morning's Macworld Conference Keynote. "Things get pretty hairy", they claimed -- and they weren't referencing Australian Macworld's fine editor. So at 5am, having been woken by the loud gentleman speaking German VERY LOUDLY, I prepared towander down the chilly streets of San Francisco and wait. And wait, and wait, and wait. Annoyance doesn't quite cover my mood when another Australian journalist makes an appearance two hours later, right behind me.
Alex Kidman | Jan 17, 2008
Late last week Palm Inc announced the closure of 30 retail stores -- its entire bricks and mortar presence in the United States -- ending one of Palm's worst years, in my view. One way to measure the depths that Palm has plumbed is to compare it with two other companies. Let's start with Taiwan's High Tech Computer Corporation, better know as HTC. Over the last couple of years HTC has moved from little-known manufacturer to market leader. 2007 saw sales accelerate and the release of a number of different devices. The smartphones it has released have come in a range of form factors and cater for the needs of an increasingly diverse range of users. In my view, HTC has been the most important hardware innovator of the last year or so. Apple has plans in place to open a number of new stores in the coming year -- not only in the United States but in territories where Apple has thus far been absent. The iPhone has achieved for Apple what the original Palm Pilot did for its maker -- putting Apple into the consciousness of all shoppers.
Anthony Caruana | Jan 28, 2008
Former Apple CEO Gilbert Amelio once famously remarked that "I thought I was leading a company; I didn't realise I was leading a cult". If he thought that job was difficult, imagine what it must be like for Steve Jobs. Where Amelio was leader of the cult, Jobs is the object of its worship. Think of it as the difference between being the Pope and being the Messiah — I know which I'd take. Name another CEO, company founder or Chairman who is expected — indeed, required — to change the world on at minimum an annual basis. Michael Dell? Bill Gates? Steve Ballmer? Rupert Murdoch? Robert Iger? Samuel Palmisano? Does anyone even know who he is? All of these people have great responsibilities and a duty to shareholders to drive their companies. Jobs's burden is different. He is expected somehow to be a few steps ahead of the world, living in the no-too-distant future, bringing tomorrow to us today. Which is not to suggest he is the only person in the computer industry expected to innovate. Google, Amazon, eBay ... any number of companies innovate and do so successfully, What's different for Apple and its CEO is the expectation that it can happen on demand. If anyone but Apple had released a product as successful and groundbreaking as the iPhone last year they'd still be dining out on it. Apple is already copping criticism for not having a 3G version out yet. Compare it to, for instance, Paul McCartney. Some decades ago McCartney wrote some pretty darned good music. Now he's in his 60s and puts out the occasional listenable bit of work. It's not amazing, but it's pretty good and leaves most contemporary "music" for dead. But because it isn't as good as the Beatles it may as well be rubbish. No-one else has to be compared with the Beatles.
Matthew JC. Powell | Feb 13, 2008
One of the challenges Mac users face is trying to sync their mobile devices with their Mac. In a recent forum post, I asked readers for some input to an upcoming column on smartphones. Due to the space constraints of the print version of Australian Macworld I won't be able to cover sync solutions in that feature so I thought I'd pull them together in this post. I'll take a browse through the world of sync solutions for the Mac and cover Mobile Phones, Windows Mobile, Palm, BlackBerry and the rest.
Anthony Caruana | Feb 24, 2008
