Iphone Updates

ComputerWorld has created another end of the year list: the 25 most innovative products of 2007. An Apple product isn’t on the top of the list, that place goes to Google Gears, but the iPhone does clock in at the number 2 spot which isn’t too shabby. The biggest innovation, according to CW, is the touch screen display. I’m going to disagree with that, because I’ve used devices before the iPhone that had touch screens and they weren’t as much fun, or as easy to use, as the iPhone. The real innovation of the iPhone is that the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. The software and hardware work together to make using this device a pleasure. Here’s hoping that in a few years other handset makers will figure out what Apple has done with the iPhone and emulate it, of course by then Apple will be on the 3 or 4th revision of the iPhone. The mind boggles as to what that future iPhone will do.

Oh, and ComputerWorld, how about innovating a little bit with your website and not splitting up a relatively short article into 5 separate webpages? That’d be awesome.

Whilst the blogosphere is known for its seemingly endless attempts at Apple rumour one-upping, the New York Times has joined the fray, not only re-iterating the Financial Times’ earlier statement that Twentieth Century Fox will be on-stage for the Stevenote but also adding “more than one studio [will] appear onstage at the company’s Macworld exhibition …. to endorse a new Apple movie rental service.”

When the news broke of Fox being first to sign up to iTunes movie rentals, we’re certain that more than a few folks were surprised at the news: if only because it wasn’t Disney (and of course Pixar) who were leading the Apple movie bandwagon forward again.

Insanely Great Mac has the breakdown on a meeting between O2 (purveyors of the iPhone in Britain) and Mr. Jobs from the UK’s Financial Times, and it seems iPhone users across the pond can’t get enough data. Over 60% of iPhone users use over 25mb/month of data, while only 1.8% of non-iPhone users on O2 go over that mark. That’s a lot of data downloading.

It’s probably not a surprise, then, that about 60% of iPhone buyers are also new to O2, which, in my estimation, means that people who switched for the iPhone also switched from a non-data cellphone, and are making up for the difference. We talked on the Talkcast a little while ago about how the iPhone isn’t necessarily stealing the “business smartphone” audience away from brands like Blackberry– it’s actually attracting new smartphone users completely. And there are a lot of them– O2 is looking to sell 200,000 iPhones in Britain by the end of January, and they say that despite Apple’s cut of the profits, they’re making money on every one.

Finally, we get almost-but-not-quite-final confirmation that the 3G iPhone is due next year, and that O2 will very likely carry it. Which isn’t really a surprise– seems like things are going pretty well for O2 and Apple in GB, and so it’s hard to see either one of them breaking up a good thing.

HandBrake is one of those applications that we adore here at TUAW HQ. It makes converting DVDs into a variety of digital files a snap (though only use it with DVDs you own. Don’t be pirates, kids). Chris Breen, of Macworld fame (and an amateur astronomer it would seem) shows us how to use HandBrake like a pro. Breen goes a step beyond ‘use the presets’ and delves into what many of the options HandBrake offers up actually do, and how they impact your files.

Check out the video, and get to ripping your DVDs!

I like Mac OS X Hints a lot, although I will admit that most of the hints they post just aren’t for me– either they’re for things that I just don’t have a need to do, or they’re for things I already figured out a solution for on my own. But lately, I’ve been trying to figure out if there was a way to start up bittorrent downloads from my iPhone (we’ve already been able to control clients remotely, but getting the torrent file was the hard part). And so I was ecstatic to see this tip from Whosawhatsis– with just a little tweaking, you can install a bookmarklet on the iPhone and a script on a PHP server that will send a URL from the iPhone to the server, and then download that URL directly into a folder that a bittorrent client (Transmission is used in the example) will monitor to download the torrent.

Pretty slick. Whosa runs this on a separate server, but while I’d have to read up on exactly how to do it (or maybe our commenters could jump in with suggestions), I’m sure that it wouldn’t be too hard to enable a Mac to run a PHP script when asked remotely. Get that running, make the necessary modifications in Who’s script, and bingo, you should be able to click the bookmark and then the link on your iPhone, and have the torrent file show up in your Mac, ready for a bittorrent client to grab it immediately.

Look beyond the badly PhotoShop’d image and the Apple Newton revival gains further momentum with Seeking Alpha’s David Sieger piling together his evidence for an ultraportable device built around a 5.2-inch touchscreen.  Supposedly based on an image of a larger-than-iPhone unit with a “distinguishing button or depression on each side” as seen by “trusted tipster”, the device is intended to be held horizontally rather than vertically and is suggested to be using a MultiTouch-enabled 800 x 480 display provided by Balda and Wintek.

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If you work under Windows and have been waiting for a pre-built compiler chain to debut, your ship just came in. Over at the iPhoneGameOver Wiki, David Supuran has put together a binary installer plus installation instructions.

To make this all happen, you will need a jailbroken iPhone (so you can get at and copy the file system) and a free Apple Online Developer account (so you can download certain sdk files). The development environment appears to run via the Cygwin Bash shell, so some level of Unix experience seems to be a prerequisite as well.

If you’re looking to add one more gift to the switcher-pile for tomorrow, a license for the indispensable browser credentials manager 1Password might be just the thing. MacZot and Agile are offering a 40% off deal on 1Password today ($29.95); along with the license you’ll get access to the prerelease my1Password site, which provides anywhere/anytime access to your 1Password confidential store.

Meanwhile, if you’re already a 1Password owner but you’re bemoaning the lack of a compatible version for the Firefox 3 beta, check out the Agile blog — the 2.5.8 beta of 1Password is available and will work with Firefox 3 today. What could be merrier?

In this round of Ask TUAW we’ll tackle questions on dragging and dropping images from Safari, skipping in Front Row, using an iPod to move files from OS X to Windows, sending SMSs from the Leopard Address Book and more.

As always your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. And now to the questions!

Continue reading Ask TUAW: Drag and drop images, Front Row skipping, Leopard SMS and more

As I mentioned in my Wiretap Studio review, it’s possible to record only one side of a Skype call by mistake — and I did it! Hence, the audio quality on this week’s show is not what it should be; I had to fall back to the Talkshoe recording. You can download the 55 minute, 32 MB show right here directly or stream it direct from Talkshoe.

Since some readers are still having difficulty with the RSS feed in Mail.app when we have a podcast enclosure, I’m leaving this show off the regular feed; however, you can subscribe to the Talkshoe feed in iTunes to keep up with the show. As soon as we have more traction on the Mail vs. enclosures issue, I’ll advise.

Join us again Sunday night at 10 for a casual pre-holiday show, when we’ll ask you what kind of Apple gifts you’re hoping for under the tree. If you want to download some of my other appearances in audio form, the recording of my stint on the Typical Mac User podcast is also online, and if you’re a Coverville listener you might catch a familiar voice introducing song #34 in the annual countdown. See you Sunday night!

Now that many Intel Mac users have a Windows Boot Camp partition on their Macs, backing up or restoring that Boot Camp data becomes a bit challenging, as most backup utilities only copy the Mac partitions; if you want to create a bootable copy of your Windows installation it’s even more difficult. That’s where tools such as Winclone, or Mike Bombich’s NetRestore, come in; they allow you to easily make a disk image of your Boot Camp partition, which you can then restore to a separate volume, save for archival purposes, etc.

Winclone can also be used to quickly deploy a Boot Camp image to a number of machines (e.g. in a lab). Mike reports that he recently used Winclone to successfully reimage the Windows side of 10 iMacs with only a few clicks, sending the image package and the install commands via Apple Remote Desktop. Comparing it to NetRestore, he likes Winclone better: “Using NetRestore requires a separate install of the ntfsprogs toolkit to add the NTFS restore tools. Winclone bundles the ntfsprogs tools and a Perl restore script in with the image, so it’s portable — just copy the image and run the script to restore the Windows boot environment.”

Winclone is a free download from twocanoes software, and donations are requested. Macworld’s Mac Gems blog has a thorough walkthrough of backup and restore of Boot Camp using Winclone.

All phones have their positives, and all phones have their negatives. The iPhone excels in many areas other phones don’t, but other phones have some things the iPhone just couldn’t stand up to. There are things I really dislike about the iPhone, and these dislikes are small compared to everything I do enjoy about owning an iPhone. I may have some issues with my phone that I don’t know about, or it may just be me.

Hit the cut for my dislikes on the iPhone.

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First we had NES, then we had GBA, now we have PS1 emulation on the iPhone and iPod touch. Opening up the iPhone to PS1 really shows the iPhone’s gaming capabilities. While still needed to be optimized to run faster, I guess you could play a game. It’s only about 10-15FPS right now, but as we saw from the other emulators, after time we eventually obtained playable FPS rates on most games.  

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As many Mac users already know, Saft is the “Swiss-Army Knife” of web browser plug-ins. Some of the most loved features in Saft include: full screen browsing, tab thumbnails, and auto-hiding the download window.

Much to the chagrin of fans, Saft was “broken” inadvertently by a recent Apple security update. Thankfully, Saft 10.0.4 was able to regain support for Safari 3.0.4. Saft is a wonderful plug-in for Safari; if you haven’t taken a look lately, try downloading the free trial.

You can download Saft as a trial version or get a full license for $12.

Korea Times writes that KFT,with with help from NTT Docomo (which has recently made iPhone news), is still hopeful it will sell the iPhone in South Korea next year. Executive Vice President Kim Yeon-hak says that Steve Jobs has been playing hardball. The South Korean market is small and without a Japanese partnership, Apple may decline to offer the unit in Korea at all.

An anonymous TUAW reader writes: “How can I email more than one photo at a time from my iPhone?” Unfortunately, the built-in Photos app seems to disallow this. There is a workaround. If you use my SendPics application, you can send many photos at a time. SendPics is a utility I wrote that’s meant to bypass the iPhone’s scale-for-email behavior and send full resolution images.

To make this happen, use SendPics to send an email and then press Home. You’ll leave the email program but it will remember the photo you added. Then re-launch SendPics and add another picture and repeat.

The downside is this: if you have an email signature, it will repeat for every picture you add–so you may want to edit those out once you’ve finished composing the email.

The anonymous reader reports that he was able to send up to 3 pictures at a time. I had no problem going higher than that but I’m running firmware 1.1.2.

Anticipating a wave of happy new iPhone owners, AT&T will extend store hours across the US on Boxing Day[1]. The idea is this: After receiving their sparkly new iPhone under the tree, consumers will head over to the AT&T stores to buy unnecessary and overpriced accessories in a post-Christmas wave of spending.

TUAW recommends that you accessorize your new iPhone in moderation. The dollar store is a great resource to pick up inexpensive soft cases and socks.

[1] December 26.

Update: For the literal minded, this is the kind of sock I am talking about: It is marketed as an iPod sock but fits the iPhone as well. Cost: $1 at my local Dollar Tree. It’s an excellent value works well in pockets and handbags where keys and other such items threaten the integrity of the iPhone’s screen.

Apple has posted sample code demonstrating how to handle iPhone or iPod touch orientation events through JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Whenever an iPhone rotates, it triggers orientation events that you can catch in Mobile Safari. Apple provides a sample iPhoneOrientation.js file that implements a typical handler, window.onorientationchange. CSS attributes can dynamically change how the webpage appears.

I loaded a copy of the sample over at my website. If you’d like to give it a try on your iPhone, navigate here.

Thanks, syd

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Dr. John Zoidberg is my TV Boyfriend. My husband knows, accepts, and understands. So imagine my surprise when TV Squad’s Richard Keller posted about how Futurama’s Zoidberg got his name. Sure, yadi yadi background stuff and then…Apple II assembly language? Wow cool!

Futurama creator David X Cohen wrote Zoid back in the rocking ’80s, when Brøderbund was a gaming force to be reckoned with–although it never actually was released to market. Instead they passed on the software and Cohen was forced to entertain us with cryogenics and one-eyed mutants and, well, you know the rest of the story. “Zoid” inspired the name for my darling Zoidberg, the Dr. McCoy with a mail order medical degree.

Now here’s where it gets interesting and TUAW-ish. Cohen still actually has his original Zoid game on a 5.25-inch floppy disk and, according to TV Squad, wants to find someone capable of ripping it for use on an Apple II emulator. Any volunteers? We at TUAW have no idea how to get in touch with Cohen but, hey, we thought we’d throw this one out there and see if we can make Internet magic happen!

Now open your mouth, and lets have a look at that brain!

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Following a three year lawsuit in which Apple attempted to force Mac fan-site Think Secret to reveal the names of industry sources leaking privileged information, a settlement has been made that will see the site take its tipsters identity to the grave. 

“Apple and Think Secret have settled their lawsuit, reaching an agreement that results in a positive solution for both sides. As part of the confidential settlement, no sources were revealed and Think Secret will no longer be published. Nick Ciarelli, Think Secret’s publisher, said ‘I’m pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits’” Think Secret Official Statement

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Aftermarket earphones for the iPhone often call for a decision between either high-quality music or having a microphone for hands-free use; of course, there are choices which have the functionality of both, but they’re usually expensive.  Ultimate Ears, who already have a strong reputation for audiophile-pleasing headphones, have announced their latest addition to the Super.fi range: the 4vi designed especially for the iPhone.

 

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Sony has taken Apple’s two-fingered MultiTouch and raised them to five, meaning that we could soon see devices from the Japanese giant that recognise all the digits of a user’s hand.  Unlike the Apple system, as featured on the iPhone and the iPod Touch, which can track either one finger for selection or dragging, or two fingers for zooming control, the Sony LCD panel is an identical size (3.5-inches) but is able to differentiate between up to five different points of contact or, alternatively, a stylus.

 

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Just got a new iPod? Then visit iTunes Tutorials. It provides a fast and easy way to learn how to get the most out of iTunes. Short videos show you how to Sync Your iPod, Import Music from CDs, Create Playlists, Get Free Podcasts, Shop the iTunes Store, and more. Of course, if you’re giving a friend a new iPod this holiday season, be sure to send your lucky recipient to iTunes Tutorials website. It’s the perfect place to help them get started with iTunes.

In this round of Ask TUAW we’ll tackle questions on games for kids, Pref Panes in the Dock, expanding RAR files, accessing Access databases on the Mac, controlling Front Row with an iPhone and more.

As always your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. And now to the questions!

Continue reading Ask TUAW: Kids’ games, Pref Panes in the Dock, Access on Mac, and more

Always provocative, sometimes right, often wrong, Think Secret was our scandalous favorite rumors site and now it is gone. According to the Settlement page listed at their site, Apple and Think Secret have ended their lawsuit and Nick Ciarelli has shut down the site.

Goodbye Think Secret, we’ll miss you.

Thanks everyone who sent this in.

What might Apple’s surging sales of Macs have to do with the security of your computer? Possibly, a lot. In a recent CIO interview (conducted by our very own Lisa Hoover), Ollie Whitehouse, an architect for Symantec’s Advanced Threat Research Team said that as the Mac keeps growing in popularity, so will the exploits.

This theory has been around for as long as OS X, if not longer but lately it seems to be gaining some credibility. There was the Mac “virus” last year, though it actually managed to infect less than 50 Macs in the wild. There was the report of a “dramatic increase” in OS X malware recently. And just yesterday ZDNet posted an article on vulnerabilities found in three operating systems: Leopard, Windows Vista, and Windows XP. They said that Mac OS X had the most vulnerabilities of the three (though it is worth noting that they are “vulnerabilities,” not actual exploits. Windows still reigns supreme on that front).

Could these analysts be right? Should we be worried about the continued security of our chosen platform? Should Apple start focusing on OS X’s security rather than simply adding more features?

Only time will tell, but one thing is certain: it is a scary world out there.

If there is one thing geeks like to do it is benchmark things. From how fast their code runs, to how quickly their Mac renders video, the geek has an insatiable need for metrics. The geeks behind the WebKit project (that’s the open source HTML rendering engine that powers Safari) wanted to measure how fast Safari’s JavaScript Engine really was. They looked at the existing JavaScript benchmarks and decided none of them did what they needed, so they built SunSpider. At the moment SunSpider is at 0.9 but it has been released so people can fiddle with it and give feedback. Test it out with your favorite browser and see how it stacks up.

I don’t know how many iPods I’ve ruined by accidentally showering with them. Picture it, there I am grooving to my jams (usually something by Paul Anka or They Might Be Giants) and I work up a healthy sweat. I immediately hop into the shower and before you can say, ‘Goodnight, nurse,’ my iPod shorts out.

I thought I was doomed to lead an iPodless shower existence, but then I found the TearDrop iPod Water Resistant Bathroom Speaker. These droplet shaped speakers are the perfect accompaniment to any shower, and they only cost $58. When you add in the lovely colors and the fact that they are ‘big in Japan,’ I think you have a real winner here.

The iPhone continues its trek across the world– the next country to have a rumored release is Japan, and sources there say that DoCoMo will likely be the company to release the Gadget of the Year there. But both NTT DoCoMo and Softbank Mobile have spoken with Apple, and DoCoMo, says a local news agency, might not want to be as generous with sharing the subscriber revenue as some other companies Apple has worked with before.

Then again, is Japan really that excited about the iPhone anyway? They’ve had some pretty awesome personal communication devices for years, and while the iPhone is definitely a quality device, my suspicion is that it won’t stick out nearly as high above the rest of the options over there. Of course, on the third hand, Apple may consider the Eastern market all bonus cash anyway, and may take a dive on the subscription rates just to get what they can.

All speculation at this point, of course– it’s up to DoCoMo and Apple to decide what they want to do and how they want to do it.

Newsflash: Microsoft messed up. Yes, I know, that doesn’t come as news to most of you (that’s why you’re here), but Joe Wilcox over at eWeek was surprised by the fact that while Apple’s Leopard Family Pack pricing lead to some nice sales numbers, Microsoft instead decided to discontinue their family pack prices. Basically, you could buy OS X 10.5 as a single copy for $129, or a “family pack” (installations for 5 Macs) for $199. And a whopping 33% of Leopard sales were of the family pack version, even though OS X doesn’t require any validation at all– users could just have bought the $129 version and installed it five times.

What’s the difference? Wilcox says that Apple trusts their customers, and as a result, users who feel the family pack is worth it are willing to pay. Microsoft, on the other hand, demands validation from their users. Wilcox also quotes an analyst (which in this case is Latin for “he who states the obvious”) saying that Leopard had a blowout launch, much better than Vista. But that’s a big duh, so I won’t even bother comparing OS X to Vista– I’ll leave that to the Mac commercials.

What else do you need to know? Clearly, Microsoft is just plain doing it wrong.

Boy, it seems like everyone was waiting for me to write up my gift guide before releasing some interesting Mac games this year. First Horde of Orcs comes out, then Sonic of all things appears on the iPod, and now here’s two more fun gaming experiences appearing on the Mac.

First, our sister gaming blog Joystiq reports that PopCap’s crack casual game Peggle has appeared for OS X, and just like most of PopCap’s games, it’s so addictive it should probably be regulated by pharmacologists. It’s a universal binary, too, and right now it’s only $10 (50% off from a sale on PopCap’s site). Be prepared to disappear from your relatives for long stretches of time over the holidays, though– anyone who can only play one round of this at a time is either not human or just in serious trouble with their spouse.

And MacNN reports that Bomberman has now appeared on iTunes as well. Hudson Software has produced an official port that features an “intuitive control scheme” (that I’d be interested to see), an exclusive boss stage for the iPod, and the option to play the game’s music or your own during gameplay. Wild. That game is $5 and available as a download from iTunes.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas for Mac gamers– turns out there may be more underneath the tree than we hoped earlier in the year.

Like it or not, lots of us who own Intel-based Macs have to run Windows from time to time. Although Boot Camp is pretty fantastic if you need to run a processor intensive application (or you want to play games), virtualization is the more attractive solution for users who need to access productivity applications, like Microsoft Office 2007, but don’t want to have to live in the Windows environment. The two big players in the virtualization field are VMWare’s Fusion and Parallels’ Parallels. Both applications let you install a Windows XP or Vista virtual machine on your Intel Mac without having to leave OS X, both offer a level of integration between the two operating systems and both retai for $79.99 (USD). So, which virtualization program is the fastest? Well, that’s what MacTech attempted to find out in their exhaustive benchmarking trials, comparing Fusion 1.0 (build 51348), Parallels 3.0 (build 5160) and Boot Camp head-to-head-to-head in a variety of different computing tasks.

So what’s the bottom line? Because of how the software if designed to integrate between the two platforms, Parallels came out ahead in many of MacTech’s tests. For certain more processor heavy uses, VMWare, thanks to its ability to take advantage of both cores, came out the best. For networking performance, Boot Camp was king.

While I found the benchmarking tests very interesting – and useful – prospective buyers should be aware that in the middle of MacTech’s testing procedure, all three Windows options for OS X were upgraded. With the release of Leopard, Boot Camp came out of beta and VMWare is now at version 1.1 and Parallels was updated on December 5 to build 5582. I know just from my own unscientific experience, Fusion 1.1 improved significantly in speed and overall performance from version 1.0 and while I was a big fan of Parallels under Tiger, I have “switched” to Fusion for Leopard.

Trial-versions are available for both programs. Remember that in order to use Windows XP or Vista, you need a valid user license.

Thanks, Rich.

Dealmac reports this morning that the Mac Pro towers have returned to Apple’s refurb clearance stock, with the Octocore model available for $3399, a full $600 below new retail. The rest of the line shows up as well (scroll down through the refurb page for all the choices); shipping is also free, which is a big help for those heavy, heavy machines.

It may be a smidge late to pick up a tower for Christmas, but the good news is that if you were planning to pick up a hefty Mac before Macworld Expo in January — since laptops are more likely to see revisions than the big iron — you can now pick up a pre-owned model for less.

Update: Despite the presence of the iToner 1.0.5 press release on Ambrosia’s news page, the download page is currently offering up 1.0.4. Ambrosia’s press rep has contacted us and says, “Sorry for the confusion and also the inconvenience. We are aware of an issue with iToner 1.0.5 and are currently working on it. For now, please revert back to using 1.0.4 — we’ll release another update in the near future. Thanks for your understanding and support.”

The busy bees at Ambrosia Software have cranked out several updates this week, including the $15 iPhone ringtone tool iToner 1.0.5. (improved support for iPhone OS 1.1.1 + bug fixes); the free envelope printing utility EasyEnvelopes 1.0.6 (unspecified fixes and enhancements); the $15 menubar search enhancement iSeek (Leopard compatibility); and the $19 file transfer streamliner Dragster 1.0.5 (Leopard fixes). All can be demoloaded from Ambrosia directly.

Now that there’s a blessed method for using GarageBand (not free, but bundled with new Macs) to create custom ringtones, it will be interesting to see how iToner continues to evolve and extend.

Pity the editors of Fortune’s 101 Dumbest Moments in Business list, who thought to include an item at #51 on this year’s countdown calling out Apple’s dumb move. The rainbow fruit was taken to task for a cease-and-desist letter sent to nine-year-old Shea O’Gorman, who was told in no uncertain terms to stop sending suggestions for improvements to the iPod Nano via a letter from Apple’s legal team.

Was this a dumb business moment? Undoubtedly. Did it take place in 2007? Uh, nope — 2006. Fake Steve calls Fortune on the carpet (link headline NSFW) for the mixup, which is a little disingenuous considering who pays for the gas in his Gulfstream… but it’s all in fun.

Merry Christmas Java developers – from Santa Steve! Java SE 6 Developer Preview 8 is now available for Leopard via the Apple Developer Connection. You need to be an ADC member to access this download, but registration for the basic online membership is free and provides access for the Java SE 6 preview.

As some of you may recall, in the immediate aftermath of Leopard’s release, Java developers were a little upset about the exclusion of Java 6 from the shipping release of Apple’s latest operating system. Until now, there has been little to no information about the Java 6 time line for Leopard, aside from some independent community-driven open-source projects.

This version Java SE 6 Developer Preview requires a 64-bit capable Intel-based Mac (a Core 2 Duo or Xeon) and Mac OS X v 10.5.1 or later. See the release notes (linked from the ADC download page – it requires a login so I’m not hotlinking from here) for more details.

Thanks Will!

If you happen to live in a very cold area within the United States, don’t bother using the weather application on your iPhone. The weather application does not display negative Fahrenheit temperatures and just replaces them with 0F. If you’re using Celsius, the application for some reason displays negative temperatures. This was pointed out by a person in Alaska who posted on the Apple discussion boards.

I live in Alaska. The temps here have all been below zero F or more than -18C but the weather reported on the iPhone never goes below zero F. right now it is -13F and going to Yahoo says this but the iPhone shows 0F.

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Over at the Hackint0sh forums, a couple of people decided to unlock their iPhone, little did they know, opening their phone after completing the software, was not such a great idea. At least they now have a door stop, brick, frisbee, and tons of other useful tasks.

We were so happy, all the software part was done, so we started opening the iphone. The antenna cover was a bit tricky but eventually it came off. Then we started to open the metal cover (after taking out the 3 screws) and PUFF, up it went in smoke, I think my collegue must have touched something. It literally went up in black smoke. I was so hot that when I tried to pick it up I burnt my fingers. So, this is for sure the most difficult part of the whole process. I don’t know what he did, as I had just stepped out of the room to fetch something when I heard a scream…they got such a fright.

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Bearing in mind how tricky it can be to speculate hardware direction from both job adverts and patents, all signs continue to point toward a MultiTouch Apple tablet; most recently, Apple have advertised a new position with the Mac and iPod hardware groups for MultiTouch panel development, working on testing the hardware’s reliability and comparing products from different suppliers.

 

Read the full advert after the cut

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If you’ve been following the verbal sparring between Apple and China Mobile’s vocal CEO Wang Jianzhou, PhoneMag has an incredibly detailed analysis of the current battle for what could potentially be the iPhone’s biggest market. 

“There is more than $115 million US Dollars at stake for Apple in China.  [T]he competitors at the table are deadly serious.  And they should be.  They have turf to protect.  Nokia, for one, sold more than 50 million mobile handsets in China during the first 3 quarters of 2007.  Research in Motion (RIM) is another key player.  RIM recently signed a deal with China Mobile to distribute their Blackberry 8700 smart-phone.  RIM has bet big on the China market” Dan Butterfield, PhoneMag

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Even though most say the iPhone is a failure of a device and quit possibly a runner up for worst product of the year, it still continues to get noticed by top media as quite possibly the best. Consumer Reports January 2008 edition points out that the iPhone has outperformed it’s smartphone competitors in many different aspects. 

Hit the cut for details on how the iPhone trumps the Blackberry.

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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple is making plans for a meeting amongst DoCoMo and Softbank Corp. to discuss rights to which mobile phone service can carry the iPhone in Japan. The iPhone only has EDGE and DoCoMo doesn’t have EDGE available, so the iPhone released in Japan would definitely have to be 3G.

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Google lined up another iPhone service last Wednesday after realizing there was a programming ‘language’ called AJAX. Google’s new web application allows individuals to view their Picasa albums on their iPhone. You log in to Picasa on your iPhone, the interface comes up and allows you to scroll through pictures landscape or portrait.

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Navizon had a great idea providing jailbroken iPhones with an ability to emulate GPS through tower triangulation, but it only gave somewhat accurate information. Partfoundry has developed a working prototype dongle for the jailbroken iPhone that provides real time GPS locationing with an accuracy of 16ft-32ft using the SiRF Star III chip. It’s sleek look definitely goes well with the iPhone. Though the dongle makes the iPhone a bit bigger, it can always be removed and used when needed. The dongle will be available from February 2008 at a respectable $89. Be sure to check the working prototype video after the cut.

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Run completely on Macs, Charity Checks is a giving program that lets you make contributions to any charity while your gift recipient chooses the cause. With Charity Checks everyone comes out a winner.

Their clients have exciting new products we’ll want to use; cutting-edge stories we need to hear. Who better to spread the word than LaunchSquad. One of the world’s fastest growing PR firms, LaunchSquad wants to excite people about the new ideas and technologies offered by the companies they represent. And they depend on their Macs to get the story out, supplementing traditional PR tools with audio, video and other Web 2.0 techniques. We’re “building stories about our clients using new communications channels such as blogs and podcasts,” says founding member Jason Throckmorton. “And we couldn’t do it without our Macs.”

You get an email confirming your registration for a Final Cut Studio seminar. Next step: adding the event to your iCal schedule. Since you’re using Mac OS X Leopard, you don’t even have to leave Mail or open iCal. That’s because Leopard introduces a new technology called Data Detectors that lets your Mac recognize dates, email addresses, physical addresses, and other similar data. In this case, Mail can take advantage of Data Detectors to create a new iCal event for you. Find out how by reading the Pro Tip of the Week.

Bearing in mind how tricky it can be to speculate hardware direction from both job adverts and patents, all signs continue to point toward a MultiTouch Apple tablet; most recently, Apple have advertised a new position with the Mac and iPod hardware groups for MultiTouch panel development, working on testing the hardware’s reliability and comparing products from different suppliers.

 

Read the full advert after the cut

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It should be clear by now that I love Leopard’s Quick Look, particularly because of the modular way that Apple designed it so that it can be expanded and extended by third parties. And those third parties are responding! To keep track of all these plugins two interesting new sites have sprung up, QuickLook Plugins List and QLPlugins.

Each site has some good stuff not on the other so it’s worth keeping an eye on both. Highlights include a neat trick for expanding video format support to mkv (Matroska video) files (and in principle others) and a plugin for Flash FLV files. (Both of these require Perian.)

In the years to come I suspect we’re going to look back and wonder how we ever got along without Quick Look.

Thanks to everyone who sent these in!

If you’ve been following the verbal sparring between Apple and China Mobile’s vocal CEO Wang Jianzhou, PhoneMag has an incredibly detailed analysis of the current battle for what could potentially be the iPhone’s biggest market. 

“There is more than $115 million US Dollars at stake for Apple in China.  [T]he competitors at the table are deadly serious.  And they should be.  They have turf to protect.  Nokia, for one, sold more than 50 million mobile handsets in China during the first 3 quarters of 2007.  Research in Motion (RIM) is another key player.  RIM recently signed a deal with China Mobile to distribute their Blackberry 8700 smart-phone.  RIM has bet big on the China market” Dan Butterfield, PhoneMag

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