John Brownlee - page 223

Line-sitting obssessive Greg Packer is at it again, camping outside of the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City for the iPhone 4. And this time he’s got a sponsor!

The sponsor is Gazelle.com, a site which buys up your used gadgets based upon a cash offer from their dynamic pricing engine. They then either resell your used gadget or recycle it.

Packer himself — more enthusiastic about line-sitting than he is functionally knowledgeable about tech — doesn’t really seem to have a very nuanced understanding of what his sponsor does, describing Gazelle as an “eBay for electronics.” It’s not, really, but either way, it looks like a pretty cool site for individuals who don’t want to go the eBay or Craigslist route for selling their old gadgets… or at the very least, recycle their own tech easily and responsibly. Their sponsorship of Packer has certainly raised my awareness of what they do, so in that, their money seems well spent.

As for Packer and his motivation for sitting in line, “I was the first in the US to have iPhone 1, so why not do it again?”

Shhh! No one tell him that FedEx is already delivering iPhone 4s to customers, no line-sitting required.

Just in case the iPhone 4 thought it was going to steal the iPad’s thunder, Apple has shot out a preemptive press release proudly proclaiming that in just eighty days, they’ve managed to sell three million iPads.

That’s pretty incredible. To put that in perspective, a million iPads were sold within the first four weeks of the iPad’s (demand limited) availability. About thirty days later, that number had creeped to two million. Apple sold the third millionth iPad just three weeks later.

Demand is picking up… which only makes sense, with the device being more widely available in the United States thanks to increased supply, as well as the iPad’s long-awaited international launch finally putting the iPad in the swarthy, wildly gesticulating hands of those weirdo foreigners.

If anyone thought Apple’s “big iPhone” wasn’t going to be a success, these numbers should certainly help to garnish their steaming plate of crow.

While the ability to set a user background wallpaper under iOS 4 is a welcome addition to the operating system, the default wallpaper choices can be pretty, well, garish. Some of them are just too busy, too high contrast, too gross.

The wallpaper above, called Tranquil, is Jason Kottke’s brilliant send-up of the questionable taste Apple employed when picking some the default iOS 4 wallpaper choices.

Just tap and hold on the image until the “Save Image” dialog appears to apply it as the wallpaper of your iPhone.

Point well made, Mr. Kottke.

If your iPhone 4 pre-order was unceremoniously canceled by AT&T this week, you might have some notion in your noggin of pulling a Packer and waiting in line to get one.

Well, don’t wait in front of an AT&T store. The company that has managed to victoriously spike the FUBAR line each and every down of the iPhone 4 launch will not be selling iPhone 4s to walk-ins until June 29th.

Or won’t they? According to a TUAW reader:

I spoke with my local AT&T store this afternoon and they informed me that they had received over 50 calls today on the subject (apparently all since the release went out).

They told me that they WILL have iPhones available for folks who show up without a pre-order on the 24th. And that the 29th is when they will start taking in-store orders for those who do not have pre-orders.

Now, the statement from AT&T seems pretty darned clear on the subject. But the employee I spoke to seemed pretty darned convinced that they would have phones available.

In other words, who knows? It’s yet another example of Ma Bell’s garish ineptitude when it comes to smallest detail of handling the iPhone’s incredible demand.

iPhone 4s dropping on doorsteps around the country means that all bets are off when it comes to embargoes, so no surprise here: iPhone 4 reviews from many of the big boys are starting to go live.

David Pogue of The New York Times writes:

If what you care about, however, is size and shape, beauty and battery life, polish and pleasure, then the iPhone 4 is calling your name.

Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin:

The fourth incarnation of Apple’s iPhone is an incrementally improved, familiar device—not a new kind of device, as was the case with the recent introduction of iPad. Yes, the notable features with iPhone 4—both the device and the iOS4, which came out yesterday in advance of the iPhone itself—are mostly tweaks. But what tweaks they are: Apple’s focus on improvement is as much key to the quality of its products as innovation. Still, there’s one flaw it can’t completely eliminate: the unreliable quality of calls placed over AT&T, which remains the iPhone’s only U.S. carrier.

Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky:

We’re not going to beat around the bush — in our approximation, the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market right now. The combination of gorgeous new hardware, that amazing display, upgraded cameras, and major improvements to the operating system make this an extremely formidable package. Yes, there are still pain points that we want to see Apple fix, and yes, there are some amazing alternatives to the iPhone 4 out there. But when it comes to the total package — fit and finish in both software and hardware, performance, app selection, and all of the little details that make a device like this what it is — we think it’s the cream of the current crop.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNGj9oNWrlw&feature=player_embedded#!

Pretty much nothing has gone right for Apple when it comes to the iPhone 4 launch, so it’s no surprise that the device that was leaked months early to Gizmodo, crept its way into the hands of a random Vietnamese forum and spontaneously materialized in the middle of the Czech countryside is now arriving two days early on people’s doorsteps, courtesy of FedEx.

This isn’t happening just to a few people: Twitter’s literally full of braggy new iPhone 4 owners, and Gizmodo’s got an entire repository of reports. According to one of these guys, activation of the iPhone 4 was initially fairly difficult, but a call to Apple sorted everything out.

Are you one of the lucky SOBs who got his iPhone 4 early? We hate you. Go to blazes. But now that our own seething jealousy is out of the way, seriously, congratulations. Could you hit the comments and tell us what you think of the iPhone 4? Noblesse oblige to all us non-iPhone-4-owning plebs, after all.

This is something fresh in the shelves of black, rectangular iPhone docks: the Altec Lansing Octiv Mini M102, which distinguishes itself from its brethren by imbuing its sleek design with an angular slant in the back and a free app called Alarm Rock which wakes you up to your favorite tunes when your device is docked.

Otherwise, there’s not much to distinguish this $60 compact dock with any other one, but let’s face it: given how indistinguishable other docks are, a neat geometric design is all that’s really needed to set the Octiv Mini apart.

Want a splash of color for your external Mac, iPad or iPhone battery? HyperMac has just updated their line to include an attractive array of new hues, modeled by the strange gang of human peacocks pictured above.

The batteries are available in four different sizes offering between sixty and two hundred and twenty watt hours of juice for your favorite Apple portable: at the higher end, that’s enough to fully juice your iPhone fifty-two times, power your iPad for 100 hours and drive your MacBook from between 20-35 additional hours, but even the $199.95 entry level model will deliver a third of that performance.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueKtv6OITjk&feature=player_embedded

Not sure if you managed to successfully order an iPhone 4 from AT&T after their untested pre-order system collapsed and they started randomly canceling completed pre-orders?

AT&T’s hipster mouthpiece Daniel is here to tell you how you can make sure that Ma Bell didn’t bungle your pre-order and that an iPhone 4 is actually heading out to you, despite the fact that a better spokesperson for the job would be Private Snafu. Don’t mistake him for a corporate suit, though — see, he’s wearing a vintage thrift store shirt, albeit one with stripes exactly corresponding to AT&T’s own corporate colors! But that tossled bed head mop and immaculately groomed beard don’t lie: this is a guy with Williamsburg street cred written all over him.

[via 9to5Mac]

Wondering why your iPhone 3G didn’t get background wallpapers? So was Gizmodo reader Erica, who rattled off an email to Steve Jobs with a request for an explanation.

Jobs’ response? Backgrounds on the 3G just didn’t meet their performance standards. But there’s a little more going on here.

Erica’s email to Jobs read:

Hey Steve! I just upgraded my iPhone 3G to iOS 4 and was really looking forward to setting a background on my home screen. Guess that’s not happening, but I’d like to know why.

See, I get why you don’t include multitasking. My iPhone gets pretty hot when certain apps run, couldn’t imagine how multitasking would fry my phone.

But the background thing, I don’t see how that would be memory intensive and/or battery draining. It doesn’t seem like that feature needs to be exclusive to the 3GS and 4G.

Jobs’ response:

The icon animation with backgrounds didn’t perform well enough.

If you’ve got an iPhone 3GS or third-gen iPod Touch and you’ve upgraded to iOS 4, you’re probably ready to give multitasking a try. Good news, then: Pandora have just updated the iPhone app to version 3.1, which now supports background audio playback under iOS 4.

Because of the same RIAA licensing nonsense that keeps Spotify out of the U.S. App Store, Pandora is only available in the United States right now, but if you’re a yank who wants to experience the same background functionality in Pandora that you get already in the default iPod app, you can download the app for free here.

With yesterday’s major update to iOS comes a major new source of revenue for both Cupertino and app developers: iAd, Apple’s new mobile advertising service.

In a best case scenario, iAd will result in cheaper apps that deliver interesting, interactive advertisements finely targeted enough that you’ll actually want to play around in them. The worst case? Invasive, privacy-invading ads spreading across all ads that are just as annoying and irrelevant as the braying flash banners splashed across a Yugoslavian torrent site… just with no way to install AdBlock.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to get rid of iAd on your device… at least until the jailbreaker community comes up with their own iAdBlock. That said, you can easily prevent Apple from using your personal details to serve you up user-targeted iAds. Just click this link on your iOS 4 capable device, and Apple will no longer use your personal information to serve you up user-targeted ads.

To be fair, all this is likely to do is make iAds more irrelevant and annoying than they would be otherwise, but if you’re worried about privacy — or just don’t want to help Apple along as they try to build a Google-challenging advertisement empire — it’s good to know Cupertino’s made it easy to tell them to shove off.

iPhone 3G owners trying to upgrade to iOS 4 are reporting numerous issues with the update process, including updates that take hours and failed updates resulting in the sinister error 3002. Fortunately, though, there are ways to get around both by restoring your iPhone 3G instead of updating it.

If you are having problems with an iOS 4 update that is taking upwards of two hours to complete, the good news here is that the longest part of the update is actually backing up the existing media… a strange problem, given that you should automatically be backing up your iPhone 3G in iterative updates every time you sync. If you have a recent backup (and you should), a full restore to factory settings will eliminate the need to backup your iPhone 3G first, and should allow iTunes to update your handset to iOS 4.0 speedily.

The same is true if you’re getting error code 3002. Just click on your iPhone 3G under iTunes and click the “Restore” button. After the restore, you may have to reinstall some of your apps, but it should allow you to run iOS 4 on your iPhone 3G without any other problems or lost data.

Basically? If you’re having problems updating your iPhone or iPod Touch to iOS 4, do a “Restore” instead of an “Update.” If that doesn’t help, hit the comments, and maybe someone can help you.

The iOS 4 update is probably the most radical overhaul to Apple’s mobile operating system to date, so it was probably inevitable that it would also prove to be Apple’s most hiccup-prone update as well.

Even so, the bug complaints currently floating around the internet seem pretty severe for an Apple product and include:

• The update to iOS 4 never installs and simply reboots your device endlessly.

• Update deletes all contacts, which are not restored in backups.

• Photos that you have synced to your device with iPhoto are extremely blurry.

• Broken MMS and Push Notifications.

• Auto-lock set to one minute with no option to change it.

Those first two bugs fall under the category of “whoa nellies,” and that iPhoto bug has got to be an annoyance for people (like me) who use their devices to keep their photo albums always on hand.

Don’t get too comfortable with iOS 4… 4.1 might be just a few days around the corner if these bugs don’t iron themselves out soon.

iOS 4 is now available for download through iTunes, adding over a hundred new features to the iPhone and iPod Touch, including multitasking. If you’ve got an iPhone 3G, 3GS or iPod Touch (second gen or above), plug your iDevice into your USB port and hit the “Update” button in iTunes now.

Busy updating? You can also now officially grab iBooks for iPhone through the App Store as well.

What do you think of the new OS? Let us know in the comments.

For many of you, it’s probably a bit too late, but if you’re a Mac gamer who uses Valve’s Steam for Mac games delivery client, you might want to hold off updating to 10.6.4: according to Valve, 10.6.4 introduces some major performance issues to owners running Macs with NVIDIA GPUs.

The following message warend Steam users who logged in over the weekend about the upgrade:

The recent 10.6.4 update from Apple has noticeable performance issues for NVidia graphic chip owners running high performance games. If you wish to avoid this, you should consider waiting to install the 10.6.4 update until Apple has had the opportunity to address this issue. Full details of what is contained in the 10.6.4 update can be found here: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4150. If you have already installed this update and believe your graphic performance is affected, please contact Apple support (https://www.apple.com/support/) for details on what to do.

I haven’t noticed anything on my 27-inch Core 2 Duo iMac, but your mileage may well vary. If you haven’t updated to 10.6.4 yet, and if your Team Fortress 2 performance is more important to you than your Snow Leopard importance, it can’t hurt to hold off for now.

For many of you, it’s probably a bit too late, but if you’re a Mac gamer who uses Valve’s Steam for Mac games delivery client, you might want to hold off updating to 10.6.4: according to Valve, 10.6.4 introduces some major performance issues to owners running Macs with NVIDIA GPUs.

The following message warend Steam users who logged in over the weekend about the upgrade:

The recent 10.6.4 update from Apple has noticeable performance issues for NVidia graphic chip owners running high performance games. If you wish to avoid this, you should consider waiting to install the 10.6.4 update until Apple has had the opportunity to address this issue. Full details of what is contained in the 10.6.4 update can be found here: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4150. If you have already installed this update and believe your graphic performance is affected, please contact Apple support (https://www.apple.com/support/) for details on what to do.

I haven’t noticed anything on my 27-inch Core 2 Duo iMac, but your mileage may well vary. If you haven’t updated to 10.6.4 yet, and if your Team Fortress 2 performance is more important to you than your Snow Leopard importance, it can’t hurt to hold off for now.

It was a big disappointment to many when it became apparent that the white iPhone 4 would not be available at launch, forcing many to choose between waiting to upgrade their handset or getting a different color.

According to iClarified, though, there may be one big box retailer with some white iPhone 4s on hand come June 24th: Best Buy.

According to their intel, there are between 10 to 20 white iPhone 4s ordered by each Best Buy location. It’s unclear if Best Buy will actually get these white iPhone 4s, but it appears they at least expect to receive a limited number of them.

Who knows? If you’ve got your heart set on a white iPhone 4, you might want to try your luck at Best Buy later this week.

It’s not out quite yet, and there’s no official word on exactly it will be pumped through the iTunes download chute, but just to remind everyone: iOS 4 will be available today as a free download to all eligible third-gen iDevices (the iPhone 3Gs and third-gen iPod Touch), as well as as a limited update without multitasking for the iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 2G.

As a further reminder, if you’ve jailbroken your iPhone or iPod Touch, you’re going to want to hold off installing the update until the Dev Team tells you it is okay, although take heart: they anticipate the relase of a fully working jailbreak for iOS 4 this month.

The clusterflug continues. If you were one of the few prospective buyers who managed to successfully order an iPhone 4 from AT&T last week before their whole untested system crashed, you may well have gotten an email from AT&T over the weekend, claiming your order had been canceled for no particular reason.

Meet 24 year old Yuan Yandong, one of almost 500,000 workers employed by Foxconn. From 7:30 pm to 5:30 am, Yandong works the night shift, monotonously putting together over 1,600 hard drives a shift.

His task is to help complete 1,600 hard drives – his workshop’s daily quota – and to make sure every one is perfect. Seated in the middle of the assembly line in his black Foxconn sports shirt, cotton slacks and company-mandated white plastic slippers, he waits for the conveyor belt to deliver a partly assembled rectangular hard drive to his station. He places two plastic chips inside the drive’s casing, inserts a device that redirects light in the drive and then fastens four screws with an electric screwdriver before sending the drive down the line. He has exactly one minute to complete the multistep task.

Although Yandon describes the work as numbing, this New York Times profile piece does not make Yandong’s work seem particularly hellish. Perhaps the most disturbing detail in the entire piece is that Yandong is unaware that he is only legally allowed to work a maximimum of 36 overtime hours a month, saying that he more commonly works twice as much overtime, especially when big orders come in.

Working at Foxconn looks tedious make no mistake, but it doesn’t look obviously hellish: the psychological factors at play that are driving Foxconn’s workers are a lot more subtle than whip-lashing taskmasters.

This Penny Arcade strip on the WWDC WiFi Problems may not be timely, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to thinking this was exactly what happened to some poor grunt the second Jobs stepped off stage.

Steam for Mac is already pretty great and getting better, but Valve Software’s Rob Barris says that we can expect performance improvements in the near future thanks to driver updates from ATI, NVIDIA and Apple themselves.

“Performance is going to improve as drivers are updated,” Barris said “I would expect modest improvements in short term and larger ones in longer term. No, I can’t put dates on them.”

“We are making a lot of progress is identifying specific issues that need work inside the game and inside OpenGL and drivers. Apple, ATI and NVIDIA are all involved.”

Although most of the games that have been released on Steam for far have run just fine on the Mac, they don’t yet boast Windows 7’s speed of performance. Not a big deal now, but as newer and more sophisticated games are brought over to Steam for Mac, the gulf between Windows 7 and Mac performance is only going to get greater. It’s great to see improvements are on the horizon.

[via Crunchgear]

Over at the EE Times, they have posted an interesting comparison between Apple’s A4 CPU and the Samsung S5PC10.

The end results are that they find that the CPUs are similar in design, Apple has taken a chip originally engineered to meet the demands of a broad range of OEMs and reduced the complexity and footprint to suit Apple products, thanks to their partnership with Intrinsity.

[via Engadget]

The JooJoo Tablet has had a long and troubled history. Originally a project by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington to build a $200 tablet and called the CrunchPad, the JooJoo came into being when its outsourced Singaporean developers violated their contract and decided to cut Arrington out and sell the tablet themselves… a mere month before Apple unveiled the iPad at a similar price point.

By March 30th, only 90 JooJoo tablets had been sold. But if you happen to have one of those 90 JooJoos, good news: you can now install OS X on it. None too surprising — the JooJoo boasts an Atom processor, which is compatible with Snow Leopard — but why would you even want to? OS X is an even worse tablet operating system than Windows 7, let alone the finger-based custom Linux distro the JooJoo ships with.

But hey, if you’re the kind of person who was willing to drop $500 on the JooJoo when you could have bought an iPad, you’re probably already prone to some truly questionable decision making,