macvana

Safari for Windows was just announced a couple of days ago, in what I think is a extremely clever strategic move to get mainstream exposure to the browser. Whats the big deal? I don't use it on my Mac, why would I use it on Windows?

My theory is that Apple doesn't really care if it's takes off on Windows or not, what they do care those is that it takes off on the iPhone, and getting Safari on Windows potentially can get millions of people who otherwise wouldn't give a rats ass about the iPhone take a second look, and maybe see what OS X is all about and ultimately... buy and iPhone and even get the full meal deal switch to OS X altogether.

Oh right, this was supposed to be about the first update to Safari.

Just hours after the initial release of Safari for Windows, several exploits were found and announced, this first update is supposed to address those problems. These types of issues are exactly why this is Beta software and the fact that Apple is addressing the issues so quickly is good to know.

To all the crazy people bashing the iPhone's poor battery life, Apple has just announced that when the unit ships the battery life will in fact be 8 hours as opposed to the originally announced 5 hours.

Chart stolen from the Apple Press Release.

To those who still say that this is still not long enough or say it's just PR marketing lies, WAIT UNTIL IT COMES OUT!

We're less than 2 weeks away from the release, go test it then before you complain about something that you've never touched or tested.

Gasp! An update!

What's included?

The following improvements apply to both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs unless otherwise noted:

Bluetooth

* Addresses an issue in which a Bluetooth headset may show up as an available device for sound output in the Sound preference pane after it had been removed from Bluetooth preferences.

Third-party

* Adds RAW image decoding support for the following cameras: Panasonic DMC-LX1, Panasonic DMC-LX2, Leica M8, Leica D-LUX 2, Leica D-LUX 3, Fuji S5 Pro, Nikon D40x, and Canon EOS 1D Mk III.
* Resolves an issue in which some DNG images may appear tinted or distorted.
* Improves compatibility of Mathematica 6 with 64-bit Macs.

USB

* Improves reliability when using the IR remote control after waking from sleep.
* Improves reliability when mounting external USB hard drives.
* Resolves an issue in which a TomTom GO 910 may not be recognized when connected via USB to an Intel-based Mac.

Other

* Improves responsiveness when using the Control-Eject key combination to display a shutdown dialog.
* Addresses a specific issue in which users importing video from a DV camera may experience dropped frames.
* Includes recent Apple security updates.
* Addresses issues with calendar calculations in certain applications.
* Addresses issues when rounding decimal numbers for display in certain applications.
* For Motion, addresses an issue in which some texture corruption could appear in Motion if VRAM is full.

The stuff above was blantent copied from:

About the Mac OS X 10.4.10 Update (delta)

A week to go and you can see the marketing around the iPhone ramping up more and more, here's the latest iPhone Ad.

I love the fact that Steve Jobs decided to launch the iPhone on Friday at 6pm!

I mean, you see morning store opening launches, midnight launches, but 6pm? Why you might wonder? Well, because he knows that at 6pm every local news station will be doing the evening news and with all the hype around the phone, every news station will be covering wanting to cover the launch. The guy is brilliant.

It looks like the iPhone mobile package plans have been released and they are not as insane as some initially thought. Unfortunately these rates are for the US and I nothing for Canada has appeared yet.

Base plan looks to be $59 for 450 minutes, 5000 weekend/evenings, 200 sms and unlimited data... and a few more things... and the packages go up from there.

You can see the the full chart posted on the apple site.

This is a few days old but needs to mentioned anyway.

Apple has release what is currently considered the iPhone development guidelines document.

The 7 major points are:

First story this Reuters story comes out:

"Chang said a way to follow up the iPhone with a cheaper version would be to convert the Nano into a phone and price it at $300 or lower. The iPhone sells for $500 and $600, depending on storage space.

"We believe that iPod Nano will be converted into a phone because it's probably the only way for Apple to launch a lower end phone without severely cannibalizing iPod Nano," he said noting that the new phone could have "rather limited functionality."

But then shortly after JP Morgan releases several other stories expressing the doubt of this story.

What a load of crap, I wonder how much money this Kevin Chang from JP Morgan and his friends made manipulating the Apple stock price.

This happened when Engadget posted the possibility that the iPhone shipping date was going to be delayed a few weeks back. The stock price went for a roller coast ride until the news was retracted.

Sigh, I can't people can actually do this and get away with it.

Could there be a Mac OS worm in while wild?

There's a tonne people threatening the author here... doing so serves absolutely no purpose. Not cool.

I just hope the person who made the discovery does the responsible thing and not let the code out into the wild before Apple has had a chance to patch the problem.

CUPERTINO, California—July 25, 2007—Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2007 third quarter ended June 30, 2007. The Company posted revenue of $5.41 billion and net quarterly profit of $818 million, or $.92 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $4.37 billion and net quarterly profit of $472 million, or $.54 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 36.9 percent, up from 30.3 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 40 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple's Press Release announcing this quarters's earnings

Holy camoly.

818 million in profit, with a revenue of 5.41 billion. Those are some BIG numbers.

And if I read the statements correctly, only 5 million of that is attributed to the iPhone, it looks like the release the iPhone was timed quite well, to coincide with the timing of the next quarter... to maximize sales figures for the next report. =)

Leopart gets UNIX 03 cert, what does this certification mean?

Basically OS X now meets the specifications that are required to be a "Unix" operating system. No flavor of Linux has yet met these specifications.

To the end user it probably doesn't really mean much, but in the corporate world, it means OS X is now considered to be peers with AIX 5L 5.3 , HP-UX 11i V3 Release B.11.31 and Solaris 10. A nice boost for OS X server and feather in Apple's cap.

Slow but surely 3rd party native apps are showing up on the iPhone.

A NES emulator now runs on the hardware natively, albeit slow... I'd say it's still at a "Look what we can do now!" stage at the moment but it's great to see things progressing in the open-up-the-iphone world.

UPDATE: Just a day later... updates came flying in, now there is a very functional totally rewritten and fast version of the emulator... so much for just proof of concept.

"What about the inside? Up to 2.4GHz Core 2 Extreme processor, up to 4GB of memory. ATI Radeon HD graphics card, up to 1TB of hard drive storage. 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.0 built-in. What models will we have? Up until now, 17-inch, 20-inch, and 24-inch. Well, today we're replacing the 24-inch, lowering price by $200, 20-inch at same $1499. replacing 17-inch with $1199 model."

Quoted Mr Jobs from the press release. =)

Photo stolen from Engadget.

It looks like the initial price for guide info from ShedulesDirect.org will be $15 / 3 months non-recurring... with a goal to eventually have enough users to make $20/year a feasible price.

I can live with this... just hope the transition will be smooth and easy.

A bunch of Ubuntu servers compromised because some updates were not installed because of hardware compatibility issues.

It will be interesting to see how they respond to this, I think most people won't be affected as their packages are signed and you *should* get a big warning if you tried to install something that was tampered.

iPhone for $100 at Apple refurb store!

What a deal! And as most people will tell you, Apple refurb products are awesome! About the only catch is that you don't get the nice packaging.

It looks like the folks at iPhoneSimFree have been able to unlock the iPhone.... with engadget confirming it and any publication can get a free unlock in the next 48 hours... and commercial release soon!

This is very interesting, and maybe a way to get an iPhone in Canada soon!

*Photo stolen from engadget

NeoOffice 2.2.1 has been released, this is based on OpenOffice 2.2.1 code and as well sports much better OS X support... the biggest I consider being the lack of dependency on X11.

A complete list can be found on their website as well.

This could be fake, it could be real.

Capital Magazine (Google translated link) in Germany is reporting that VW and Apple recently have had talks in California about working together to build a "heavily incorporating Apple products in Volkswagen's compact cars" [quoted from macrumors article].

Very interesting, especially for me as VW owner.

I'm so getting one.

http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/guidedtour/

Engadget seems to be all over iPhone unlock stories.

This one appears to be an open source method, currently not super easy to do but apparently it will be soon.

Wow... with the latest price drop, this is gettting more and more tempting. I just gotta wait a little longer to see what happens in the next round of software updates from Apple before deciding what to do.

The Montreal Gazette has a story about how the city of Montreal won't remove some parking stalls in front an Apple store, even if the Apple store pays for the costs and the lost revenue.

Apparently the reason is "because we've never done it".

Wow... this just means the city will never ever do anything they haven't done before? Such is so typical of the mentality at all levels in the Canadian government.

Sigh...

So it looks like the rest of the world is starting to get the iPhone. Apple announces that O2 will be the official way to get an iPhone in the UK... starting Nov 9, 2007.

/twiddle thumbs

Still waiting in Canada...

A story on Slashdot reports of a ton of users complaining about problematic bluetooth radios on various models of Macs... quite possibly due to faulty hardware.

Quite hard to say, I don't really use any bluetooth on a regular basis, but my sister's Macbook is full of bluetoothness and whenever i'm there using it, I seem to have to always fiddle with it get it working.... shrug, it's very anecdotal but I figure worth mentioning.

It looks like Trillian is being release for the Mac.

If gaim/adium wasn't working so great, this would be pretty exciting. Competition is good though, hopefully it'll make all IM clients better.

The folks at Slashphone are reporting that 800 employees at Apple have been fired because they claimed the $100 rebate that was offered by Apple as good will to early adopting customers.... on their free phones. What I can't believe is there were that many employees (800) that actually thought they could get away with this.... (assuming this is real).

Let the games begin!

It looks like the iPhone is possibly making it's way to China (finally!). The CEO of China Mobile seems to not like this new revenue sharing model Apple is convincing carriers to go with.

"But in a speech at the conference, Wang said he doesn't like some of the new business models emerging in the mobile phone industry, including handset makers wanting to share revenue with mobile operators." - From the Yahoo Article

If Apple can get into this market, it would be huge. China Mobile currently has the world's largest gsm subscriber base.

[Arstechnica]

About time. We've been getting the short end of the stick for so long.... too bad NBC won't be on the list.

... we're almost there, just need the iPhone here.

The new MacHeist bundle was announced earlier tonight. The titles include:

1password
CoverSutra
Cha-Ching
iStopMotion
Awaken
TaskPaper
AppZapper
CSSEdit
Snapz Pro X
Pixelmator

All for $49! Note though, the last 3 need to be unlocked and are only available if they exceed the designated number of packages sold... and 25% of the proceeds go to a charity of your choice.

I like it.

iPod shuffle, now $49!

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/06/live-from-apples-iphone-press-conference/

Lots of great news from yesterday's Apple SDK shin-dig, including an unexpected announcement of some fairly extensive enterprise support (finally going after RIM!).... hardware accelerated gaming (going after PSP/DS?)...

Of course thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley, iPod Touch owners will need to pay for the updates.

I've started putting up RELEASE binaries and FIXES binaries as a part of the collection of nightly svn TRUNK builds that I've been supplying....

And just in time too, as this weekend 0.21 was released:

• MythTV 0.21 Release Frontend for OS X (intel only)
  
• MythTV 0.21 Release Frontend for OS X (universal) - built in conjunction with David Snider
  
• MythTV 0.21 Release Full Package (includes Backend) for OS X with all tools including Firewire support (intel only)
  

Adobe has launched a flash based version of Photoshop called Photoshop Express. It feature set looks very simliar to the Picnik - which is available through Flickr.

Competition is good, it will be interesting to see how each of these products improve with the other pushing back. Personally, I like my Pixelmator the best.

Ooooh.... Quake 3 Arena on iPod Touches for network play

This could be the birth of a whole new type of LAN party... I still remember lugging my old beige box over to my friends house for Doom 2 and eventually Duke 3D LAN parties.

Looks like Engadget got to play with one

I wonder if this is just a one off unit that was sent to Engadet on purpose so it could be sent around the blogosphere.

Shrug.

In it's current state, I wouldn't buy one. There are few reasons you get a Mac, one of which is you get beautiful hardware... this is far from it.

Finally! We've always been slower to get stuff than the US, in this case waiting might have been better...

Price is $4.99 a movie... a little more than the US iTunes store, but you get 48 hours to watch it, as opposed to 24 hours for the them.... starting from the time you click Play.

And if you get your iTunes credits from Costco you save a bit more too. =)

Hmm, it looks like both Rogers and Fido will be getting the iPhone in Canada?

Fido may be owned by Rogers, but the past has shown that their products were often marketed separately and very differently.... now some overlap is starting to show?!?

This sounds rather nice for Fido users, hopefully not having to deal with the hassle of "switching".

Newswire has the press release

It looks like voice and data will be combined into a $60 "for the cheapest" plan. As many predicted, it would be a cold day in hell before there would be "unlimited" data from Rogers.

I was really excited about Rogers/Fido getting the iPhone as a currently Fido subscriber... up until today.

The problem is that there are a lot of existing subscribers who already are very happy with the voice portion of their plan AND are willing to pay for a little more for a modest amount of data. For example something like: $10 for 150 to 200MB... charge more for unlimited.... These are the people you've eliminated as potential customers for the iPhone.

If they provide a reasonably priced add-on data option and allow users have it added to existing voice plans, they would not be able to keep the iPhone on the shelves...

Earlier this year, the maintainer of the DD-WRT project made some licensing changes.

As a result, DD-WRT has been removed off my Linksys WRT54GL and replace with a truly open source software Tomato.

So far I'm liking it, some nice bandwidth graphs that weren't in DD-WRT, eliminates my use of mrtg as well as a pretty clean interface.

From original posting:

We have been working hard on a few other things. The main one being the 3G unlock codenamed "yellowsn0w". This is now completed and is currently being packaged into a user-friendly application with the simplicity that you see in QuickPwn or BootNeuter.

* The target release date for the unlock is New Year's Eve 2008.
* This unlock method is available to iPhone 3Gs that have 2.11.07 baseband or earlier, we did warn you.
* The unlock requires a jailbroken 3G iPhone.

Read Original Article