Trying to distract attention from the iPhone 4 pre-order flustercuck, Apple has just released the Mac OS 10.6.4 update, whoch has been expected for weeks.
Weighing in at 315.5 MB, the update includes a bunch of minor fixes, including stability issues with Adobe’s Creative Suite 3, SMB file servers and DVD Player.
The Mac OS 10.6.4 update can be downloaded via the built-in Software Update application.
Here’s the full details:
Even though Apple’s and AT&T’s pre-ordering systems are crashing due to high demand, several people have reported success pre-ordering the iPhone 4 through the new Apple Store iPhone app.
However, that too is over-subscribed. Attempts to pre-order the iPhone through the app are returning the following message:
“Due to high demand, we are not currently accepting iPhone 4 reservations via the Apple Store app. To pre-order or reserve yours, please visit apple.com/iphone/pre-order.
But Apple and AT&T’s systems are still down, with attempts to reserve an iPhone resulting in error messages and timeouts.
Anyone had success using a different method? Radio Shack?
After a morning of spotty service, both Apple’s and AT&T’s iPhone processing systems have crashed, leaving customers unable to order the iPhone 4.
Instead, customers are lining up at retail stores belonging to Apple and AT&T. There are lines in New York, Louisiana and Japan.
We have been unable to preorder an iPhone despite dozens of tries and, and neither is anybody else, according to a surge of #ATTFAIL messages on Twitter.
Above is a line outside a New York AT&T store. “Check out this line of people waiting to pre-order iPhones at our local AT&T store. This isn’t even to take them home or anything — it’s for the right to wait in another line next Friday (to pick up the phone),” Business Insider notes.
Apple and AT&T’s systems have been choking all morning, returning error messages saying orders cannot be processed. This, of course, is good news/bad news for the companies.
From the way Apple protects its iTunes business to theirefforts to block Google from competing equally on the iOS mobile advertising marketplace, Cupertino’s been provoking a lot of anti-trust talk lately.
Now it looks like the first official investigation into Apple’s business practices is about to be underway, courtesy of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, who has completed negotiations with the Department of Justice to examine whether Apple’s limitations on software that can be submitted to the App Store unfairly harms competition.
The Cult of Mac team had a rollicking good time at BoxTone’s iNSpired party, checking out the machines and chatting to devs.
There were about 20 Apple machines on show, from the Apple I to the iMac. The best part, they were working machines — something the organizers probably regretted with a room full of people intent on playing with them while downing beer and inhaling scrumptious mini-sandwiches.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBQJ7eLx1Jo
We start with Wendell Sander, Apple employee no. 16, who fires up his Apple I for a memory dump using an iPod.
Apple has set up the most astounding wall we’ve ever seen. It is filled with 30 24-inch Apple Cinema displays that are synchronized and powered by 30 Apple Mac Pro workstations is a Matrix movie like waterfall that displays the top 50,000 apps in the iTunes App Store.
Steve Jobs rolled out Apple’s iPhone 4 Monday at the WWDC 2010 Keynote in San Francisco, calling his company’s “new baby” a device that “changes everything. Again.”
But does it?
When Apple introduced the original iPhone in 2007, it altered the entire mobile phone market by emerging into a near vacuum, creating need and desire in millions of consumers who had no idea they needed or desired what the iPhone had to offer.
Today, some believe the iPhone has become passe based solely on its relative ubiquity across the landscape it both created and has managed to dominate for three years.
Others believe competitors such as Google, Palm and Blackberry have in the meantime produced equally effective, if not superior products that will, over time, equalize the distribution of market share among Apple and its rivals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah5S7R-h208
Here’s the promo video Steve Jobs just showed of during his WWDC keynote.
We’re 100% chugging the Kool-Aid on the iPhone 4 upgrade. What an amazing package:
We’ll be upgrading for sure, especially thanks to AT&T’s new upgrade plan.
What do you guys think?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmZkrdhOjeQ
It’s hard to remember when one of Steve Jobs keynote speeches WWDC had a glitch, but the Demo Gods weren’t smiling on Jobs today. Thanks to network problems, Jobs had to ditch on a demo because of Wi-Fi trouble. But maybe it’s not some luckless Apple engineer’s fault: The same thing happened to Google during its developers conference last month at the same venue.
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As many of you know, the Steve Jobs keynote speech at the WWDC is going on right now. If you’re following along with our updates and updates from other sites, go join us on our Facebook page in the discussion section and post your thoughts, reactions, and comments about what he reveals today.
First, become a fan of the page, then join the discussion!
Here’s the link directly to our discussion forum on our Facebook page: Steve Jobs at the WWDC
On the eve of WWDC, a speculative story on mp3newswire.net suggests some interesting possibilities for Apple in the video and media space given the explosive adoption of iDevices:
In 1959 5,749,000 television sets were sold in the US, bringing the cumulative total of sets sold since 1950 to 63,542,128 units. This number supported, through advertising, three national television networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS (a fourth, Dumont, folded in 1956) and numerous local independent stations. Television was big business by the start of the 1960’s.
Now here are another set of numbers. As of April this year Apple sold 75 million iPhone and iPod touch units, devices capable of delivering video via Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. Add to that figure 2 million iPads and counting. By the end of the year Apple should have about 90 million smart mobile devices in the wild.
As an indirect response to Adobe’s own We campaign, Apple has unveiled a wonderful new sandbox playground advocating HTML5, which allows users to play around and do a number of things in their browsers that they might not even know HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript can do.
It’s a lot of fun as a playground, and certainly shows what HTML5 can do. The only problem? It’s only viewable on Safari: try to run it on any other HTML5-capable browser and you get a message prompting you to download Apple’s own browser.
Children are excellent arbiters of the truth, their reactions are honest and straightforward. In the case of the iPad, those reactions include excitement and awe.
Apple has noticed. After a group of students from Wesley Chapel, Florida was photographed trying out some iPads at their local Apple store, the images made their way to Apple. The company just sent 13 free iPads to some very lucky students, and may use the pictures in an upcoming ad campaign.
Kudos all around – a win for everybody here! Thanks to AppleInsider for the tip.
Despite offering tethering for laptops, AT&T will not allow you to tether your iPad to your iPhone.
An AT&T spokesperson told TechFlash “it won’t be possible to tether the iPhone to the iPad to share Internet access.”
Tethering your laptop to your iPhone — an option built into the upcoming iPhone 4.0 OS — will be possible via USB or Bluetooth. But the iPad’s Bluetooth profile for tethering is not enabled.
TechFlash: AT&T: No iPhone-iPad tethering
According to Apple Insider, Apple has started to cull programs on the App Store that offer Dashboard-like widgets to the user.
The most tangible evidence of the purge comes from Developer Russell Ivanovic, whose MyFrame app was removed by Apple for including widget support.
Going straight to Steve Jobs, Ivanovic received this reply: “”We are not allowing apps that create their own desktops. Sorry.”
Apple Insider speculates that this might be preparation work for Apple to introduce their own widgets in iPhone OS 4.0, although surely we’d have seen some evidence of that in beta form by now.
An equally valid reason Apple may be shutting dashboard apps down is because of their strict ban against interpretive code, which is essentially what a widget is.
This is a guest commentary by Shawn Ahmed, a anti-poverty campaigner. It was originally published here.
Last week, Apple surpassed Microsoft to become the world’s biggest tech company. As someone who used to spell Microsoft with a dollar sign, I can’t believe what I’m about to say: this is a bad thing for the world.
The iPhonePortugal website has posted two videos taking a closer look at the chassis of the new 4G iPhone. There are no surprises, but it is interesting to see how closely the industrial design of the iPhone 4G matches the iPad and new MacBook Pros.
Like the white iPhone case showcased by PowerBook Medic, these seem to be spare parts, purchased in China. iPhonePortugal is at pains to point out the parts were obtained legally:
These parts were purchased in China by one of our readers (weren’t stolen or found) then delivered to us. We will not reveal the price.
Are those parts genuine? We can not know but we can tell for sure those parts are perfect, have no defects, not faulty at all, there is not even one single difference between the 2 copies we have.
Rumors of a white 4G iPhone are long in the tooth, but here’s what appears to be proof that Apple will offer a white version of the next iPhone — photos of a white case that were sent to PowerbookMedic.
These are pictures of what appear to be spare parts –PowerbookMedic is a repair shop — but don’t appear to be the final versions. The text on the back is placeholder text. As well as the back case, PowerbookMedic also has images of a white front panel and some chassis parts.
The 4G iPhone is likely to be introduced at next week’s WWDC.
Anyone think white is becoming passé?
Although Steve Jobs seems to think the Foxconn suicides are being overblown, Apple’s “all over” the problem, a new email exchange reveals.
Responding to an Apple fan who forwarded Jobs an e-mail campaign protesting the way Foxconn workers are being treated in China, Steve responded:
“Although every suicide is tragic, Foxconn’s suicide rate is well below the China average. We are all over this.”
Whether in line with the national average or not, the recent slate of suicides at Foxconn has been a public relations nightmare not just for the Chinese electronics manufacturer, but for their partners as well.
Now, a report from Chinese site Zol.com.cn suggests that Cupertino might be taking the well-being of their subcontracted workers into their own hands: they claim that Apple will subsidize the wages of Foxconn employees working on their products with a profit-sharing scheme.
According to the article, Apple believes the main reason for the suicide jumps is low wages, and so they are prepared to offer roughly 1 to 2% of the profits of Foxconn-produced Apple products to the employees who have worked on them.
Uh oh. The Department of Justice just keeps on moving their anti-trust magnifying glass farther and farther away from Apple’s competition with Amazon, blowing up the pores on the whole iTunes apple skin. The DoJ is now reaching out to Hollywood as they investigate their anti-trust case against Cupertino.
According to the New York Post:
“The [Justice Dept.] is doing outreach,” said one Hollywood industry source. “You can’t dictate terms to the industry. The Adobe thing is just inviting the wrath of everybody.”
Added a senior source at a media company: “If Apple thinks it’s going to increase its monopoly with the iPad, it should look at the history of other walled gardens.”
While the DoJ is just “investigating” right now, an anti-trust case — scurrilous or not — is pretty much inevitable at this point: Apple is now the biggest tech company in the world, and since so many big, powerful companies are now smaller than them, they’re going to lobby to knock Apple down a few notches in whatever way they can.
The rash of suicides at Foxconn are not due to harsh working conditions but the plight of China’s migrant workforce, says an open letter signed by a dozen Chinese sociologists.
The letter blames the string of Foxconn suicides on the social problems faced by China’s vast class of migrant workers.
Originating from poor rural areas, Chinese migrant workers are often rootless and isolated, cut off from friends and family. Instead of finding good jobs in urban factories, they are often too poorly paid to settle in their new cities, and have limited access to education and healthcare. With no prospects at home, they are stuck. The sociologists call it the “path of no return.”
We have made them live a migrancy life that is rootless and helpless, where families are separated, parents have no one to support them, and children are not taken care of. In short, this is a life without dignity.
The sociologists note that at the end of 2008, the population of Shenzhen exceeded 12 million, but only 2.28 million were registered as permanent residents. The giant Foxconn plant, which employs upwards of 600,000 workers, is located in Shenzhen.
The sociologists call on Foxconn and the Chinese central government to boost wages, and improve access to housing, eduction and healthcare. They also say demand workers be given a “voice,” which presumably means unions.
We call on every enterprise, to make a conscientious effort to increase migrant workers‘ pay and rights, and allow migrant workers to become true “citizens of the enterprise”.
Here’s the full text of the open letter: