New Mac-o-Lantern

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that it is that time of year again, time for a new pumpkin computer. This time it can see via webcam eyes (thanks logitech), breathe through its nose using a case fan, and talk out its mouth with a speaker system. The insides are made of a custom power supply and mac-mini Core Duo system. The lighting is made of neon wiring thanks to Startech.com mutant mods. Check out the last page with a video of the pumpkin in action."

Smashing Pumpkins

Are they going to leave it out on the porch over Halloween night so the neighborhood kids can smash it?

Re:

You're so old fashion. Why smash it when you can hack it?

Mac-mini?

I thought one couldn't tinker with MACS?

Re:

There are a few people who mod their macs, it's just not nearly as easy as making PC mods.

Re:

Why, exactly, isn't it as easy? A macbook looks like any other laptop on the inside, and even a G5 tower looks pretty much like a PC. The new intel towers pretty much ARE the same thing as a PC, so what is "harder" about modding a mac?

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You obviously let the smoke out. Any piece of electronics will stop working when you let the smoke out...

Uhh, wow..

So, uh.. Does it actually do anything interesting besides rot?

Case mods are cool and all, but I'd want something with a little more "cool" factor with an organic (and potentially hardware-damaging) case. Maybe put it on a controlled rotating platform so

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Or at the very least, it would be nice of them to use iCarve to design a hip looking face. That was very utilitarian for an Apple... er.. Pumpkin.

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Hitting on the Organic comment: Thats the only thing I could think about when looking over this. While neat, the thing is going to rot at an accelerated pace due to the heat inside of it.

Voice Synthesis

What strikes me is that 20 years later, voice synthesis still sounds like a Commodore 64:
"Hello, I am Dr. Sbaitso. How can I help you?"

Otherwise, this pumpkin is pretty cool. Hopefully they take the parts out pretty quickly, it could get pretty mess

Better.

I think this [evilmadscientist.com] would be a better pumpkin to have voice synth honestly... What the heck is scary about a Apple computer pumpkin? It went sour on you?

Here's another one.

Another interesting one was shown on today's Rocketboom [rocketboom.com]. Direct link to the pumpkin PC page is here [shivaranjan.com].

Vista Licensing?

I wonder if Microsoft would force you to buy a new copy of Vista if this was done to a PC running Vista? Somehow turning your case into a pumpkin seems like a "major upgrade" to me.

Season for Pumpkins ...

I just saw a pumpkin camera [flickr.com] - which is probably a bit more cool (IMHO) than the other mechanical monstrosity. After all, cool electronics and a mac mini is no match for a cheap roll of film, a small hole and a good hour of taping ? :)

Don't forget the Mac apps getting into the spirit

Mac devs getting into the fun with some Halloween themes [tuaw.com] in their latest builds.

Don't forget the Jobs-o-Lantern

By Joy of Tech, don't forget about your Jobs-o-Lantern:

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/8 83.html [geekculture.com]

Scary! Wooo!!

I wouldn't leave this out.

As cool as it is, I certainly wouldn't leave it out on my porch... someone's gonna steal that motha'.

The new, and improved

Mac-o-Lantern! The new Mac-o-Lantern with unique turbo rotting action and redundant web cam RAID array!

It's the BEST computer in the WORLD!

Priceless quote

"A nice picture of the beautiful and clean Mac logo. I dream about this logo at night sometimes. It adorns my life."

Aaw!

commodity dual core

So they need a "1.83GHz Intel Core Duo" to light a pumpkin?

Tradition

At my office, the pumpkin carving contest has become a tradition. Almost always they turn into mini-ITX computers running Linux (because we can't afford all those WinXP Professional licenses for trash boxes).

I keep the same mobo for it year after year, sometimes buying a new one (the nano-ITX from VIA works good).

Every year the cron job the pumpkin executes gets more complex.

This time in addition to catting out spooky wav files to /dev/dsp at random times, randomly during working hours we had the pumpkin switch on a USB turntable and start playing funky disco music (George Clinton, Avg White Band, etc).

I think next year we might actually slip in a small LCD screen if there's budget money. The pumpkin went 802.11g last year,

hmmm

the coolest thing about this project is the fact that such an extraordinary amount of precious time was squandered on a fruitless(!) pursuit

Does that mean they used the pumpkin computer to play WoW?

Re:

Ever since IBM decided to stop making PPC chips for Apple for Jobs to turn to Intel

Woah... nice revisionism there... IBM didn't decide to stop making PPC chips for Apple... Apple pulled the plug on IBM because IBM wasn't going on a route that Apple wanted

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You're pretty much right on the ball. Intel chips WERE for pussies. IBM DID have powerful, efficient chips. When they no longer did (pretty much about the time the Powerbook G4 was becoming outdated and the G5 just couldn't be made efficient enough for

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Core 2 Duo is more efficient in a laptop than AMD's nearest offering. Ergo, Intel get the contract.