John Brownlee - page 224

We know that there are already over 600,000 pre-orders for the iPhone 4, but according to Boy Genius Report’s sources, that number doesn’t include iPhone 4’s that have been reserved for pick-up… and if a quick look at numbers from five Apple stores is anything to go by, that 600,000 figure might end up doubled on launch day.

• A “large” New York Apple store had over 2,200 iPhone reservations

• A “medium” sized Boston Apple store had over 800 reservations

• One store in California had over 1,000 reservations, and another in California had over 1,400

• A “small” Texas Apple store had over 900.

With AT&T’s own pre-order system experiencing a meltdown earlier this week, a lot of would-be pre-orderers went for the pick-up option instead. Expect lines at Apple Stores on the 24th to be even more bonkers than usual for a new iPhone launch.

Gaming thin client OnLive — which streams advanced PC games from the cloud to any device with an Internet connection — has just gone live for select guinea pigs, and if you sign up now, you can potentially get a year’s subscription to the service for free thanks to a partnership with AT&T.

That’s not to say the games will be free though: it’s only the $4.95 per month fee that’s being waived if you get in. The games themselves — which include Assassin’s Creed 2, Mass Effect, Bioshock, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Borderlands and Just Cause 2 among others — will still cost money.

If the thought of playing cutting-edge PC shooters on your iPad or MacBook sounds good to you, you might as well sign-up today… although it looks like you’ll need to wait to see if you get in to download the client and start playing.

The only thing that Apple didn’t actually update with the iPhone 4 was the storage, raising the question of whether or not the iPod Touch will get a storage bump come September.

Theoretically, Toshiba’s currently available flash storage modules could give us a 128GB iPod Touch this year… but next year, we could possibly see that number double again to a shocking 256GB, thanks to Toshiba’s latest announcement: they have just announced the first-ever 128GB embedded flash memory chip manufactured with a 32nm process to start shipping this autumn.

Stacking sixteen 8GB NAND layers, the new design is just 0.06″ thick and seems ready made for iDevices. Since Apple employs one NAND flash module in the iPhone 4 and two 32GB NAND flash modules in the 64GB iPod Touch, that means next year, the iPhone 4 could conceivably leap to 128GB of storage to the iPod Touch’s 256GB.

Most of us are familiar with the annoyance of a pair of earbuds squirting out of our ear canals. The best earbuds either use rubber tips to anchor your headphones in place or, better yet, are specifically molded to fit your ears, but even those solutions can be uncomfortable for long listening sessions.

UrbanEars have a different solution with their latest Medi buds: they use an “earclick” solution which secures them in your ears by applying pressure at the catilaginous antiragus and inferior crux. The end result? Even though you can hardly feel them, they stay in your ear.

Each pair of Medis comes with four variably sized swappable pads to guarantee a close fit, and each bud boasts a 15.4mm driver, an inline remote and microphone compatible with the iPhone and a fabric, tangle-free code. They are available now for just $50 in twelve different colors.

[via Gadget Lab]

We’ve heard a bit about OnLive before, a client that promises to interactively stream spec-intensive games in real time to devices that can’t natively run them like the iPhone, iPad or OS X. Touch Arcade just got a chance to try OnLive out at this year’s E3, and the resulting video of the service streaming Borderlands to the iPad is pretty impressive, even if the current control scheme is pretty wonky.

The only problem is that, as usual, OnLive is being demonstrated in ideal conditions involving a local server, an extremely limited pool of players and a great WiFi connection. Latency is going to make or break OnLive, and there’s a lot of skepticism that the technology’s there yet to make this work under non-ideal circumstances, especially for twitch-based games like shooters and RTS titles.

We’re not necessarily optimistic, but we hope for the best: the idea of playing top-of-the-line PC games on our Macs and iPads without having to wait for an official port or upgrade our hardware is just too promising to ignore.

Our favorite unibody vivisectionists over at iFixIt have done their usually thorough job tearing down the new Mac Mini.

A lot of the Mini’s biggest changes are already obvious: the transition to aluminum unibody and the ability to easily access the Mini’s internals with a single counter-clockwise twist, making it very easy to replace RAM. In fact, there aren’t really any big revelations, except one: running at just 10 watts idle, the new Mac Mini is one of the most energy-efficient computers around, and Apple’s most frugally power-sipping desktop yet.

Steve Jobs has openly criticized Adobe Flash as being slow, buggy, insecure and crash prone… so it seems strange that the recent 10.6.4 update to Snow Leopard did not bother to include the latest version of Flash that actually addresses many of thoese concerns.

The version of Flash in 10.6.4 is version 10.0.45.2, while the latest version is 10.1.53.64, which not only patches numerous security vulnerabilities but implements support for hardware flash decoding under OS X… commonly cited as the number one reason why Flash works better on Windows than on a Mac. (Edit: As commenters below helpfully inform me, no, it jolly well doesn’t. Hardware decoding is coming in a future version of Flash for Mac.)

A conspiracist might think that Apple doesn’t want Adobe to fix Flash: they just want it to die. My guess, though, is that it takes so long to thoroughly test a software update that last week’s Flash update was simply too late to be bundled in.

If you’re concerned, just download and install the latest version of Flash yourself: it’s quite the improvement.

No one’s disputing that the unprecedented demand for the iPhone 4 would have tested the limits of even the most thoroughly tested and fail-proof preorder system…. but even giving AT&T the most generous benefit of that doubt, yesterday was an utter debacle for them in almost every way: not only did their pre-order system fail in almost every way imaginable, but in the process, they yet again exposed their customers’ private data.

When iPhone 4 pre-orders went live yesterday, a huge volume of customers discovered it was virtually impossible to order one online directly from AT&T, with many realizing the best way to get an iPhone 4 was to order it for in-store pick-up at an Apple store.

According to a source speaking PC World, the demand put on AT&T’s servers had less to do with the sheer volume of demand than the fact that AT&T didn’t even test their ordering system before the launch.

Perhaps that failure to test the system thoroughly explains AT&T’s other major SNAFU yesterday: dozens of AT&T customers reported that logging into pre-order the iPhone 4 would often log them into other people’s accounts, exposing these users’ personal details, including credit card information and personal address.

If you intend on upgrading to iOS 4 on Monday, the first piece of the puzzle has landed on Software Update: iTunes 9.2 is now available for download.

It’s a pretty tiny update, with the only non-iOS 4 specific feature being some new album artwork improvements, including a new transition effect. Apple’s clearly saving all the big new features for iTunes 10, which we can probably expect to land in September with some sort of cloud-storage and streaming functionality.

Here’s the change log:

• Sync with iPhone 4 to enjoy your favorite music, movies, TV shows, books and more on-the-go

• Sync and read books with iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4 and iBooks 1.1

• Organize and sync PDF documents as books. Read PDFs with iBooks 1.1 on iPad and any iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4

• Organize your apps on your iOS 4 home screens into folders using iTunes

• Faster back-ups while syncing an iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4

• Album artwork improvements make artwork appear more quickly when exploring your library

Get it now through Software Update, or download it directly from Apple.

Although it started as a clandestine probe into enemy territory, Apple now pretty much owns the handheld gaming market — game for game, buck for buck — thanks to the App Store. The previous king of handheld gaming, Nintendo, hopes their new console will swing things back in their favor: they think the future of handheld gaming is 3D, and have just announced the console they hope will prove it, the Nintendo 3DS.

Sharing the look of its predecessor, the Nintendo 3DS has two displays: a 3.02-inch touchscreen display running at a 320×240 resolution, and a 3.52-inch 3D widescreen display that works without the need for additional glasses. It also includes three cameras (one front facing, two back facing — to allow 3D photos to be taken) as well as an SD slot, a traditional DS cartridge slot, 802.11n WiFi, a 3D depth slider to reduce or disable 3D effects in games and both a D-Pad and analog stick for controls.

Neither price nor release date have been announced for the 3DS yet, but a $149 – $199 MSRP and a holiday season launch would be my guess.

It looks like a fantastic update to the original DS, and the 3D technology is uniquely amazing, but with the 3DS, it seems like Nintendo’s still locked in to a primarily retail distribution channel for new titles. As long as Apple has the edge of a thriving app ecosystem and a low-barrier to developer entry, Nintendo is only going to continue to fall behind Apple.

One of the members of the Goatse Security group, which recently exposed the AT&T security breach that exposed over 114,000 iPad 3G customers’ personal data, has been arrested for drug possession following the execution of an FBI search warrant on his home.

24 year old Andrew Auernheimer is now being held in the Washington Country Detention Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas for four felony charges of possession of a controlled substance and one misdemeanor possession charge. The drugs found at his house included cocaine, LSD and ecstasy.

It appears that the search warrant was prompted by complaints made by AT&T, who — in a recent letter to afflicted customers — blamed “hackers” for “maliciously exploit[ing] a function designed to make your iPad log-in process faster by pre-populating an AT&T authorization page with the email address you used to register your iPad for 3G service.”

That’s one way of putting it. Another way of putting it is that AT&T’s security malfeasance exposed the private user details of over a hundred thousand customers, and are now busy hunting down and vilifying the benign group of security activists who alerted them to the problem before less well-meaning hacker groups could exploit the data.

Even though it’ll be out in less than five days, iOS 4 just keeps on delivering up new surprises: over at 9to5Mac, some digging into the latest iOS4 SDK reveals that the iPhone 4 may natively support Facebook video uploading.

The evidence comes in the way of some incriminating XML code that strongly hints at Facebook integration. It makes sense: we already know that Apple’s probably working on Palm Pre-style Facebook integration with calendars and contacts.

The big question here is why this isn’t working on the iPhone 3Gs with the latest iOS 4 Gold Master: Facebook’s iPhone app can already do direct video uploads, so certainly the device is capable of it.

Yeah, okay, this felt and leather iPad case doesn’t just look elegant, it’s functionally neat: the cover rolls back allowing the case to double as an iPad stand. But is it worth 75 Euros?

Not to me: this is a one hour DIY project at best. Buy a flexible leather folder at your local office supply store and some felt and some stretchy loops from a crafting store and then sew it all together at home. It’ll cost you less than ten bucks.

Big thumbs up to Hard Graft for giving me a DIY project for this weekend, though!

Apple’s done a deft job mitigating the disadvantages of true multitasking with iOS 4 by giving devs access to a few intelligently chosen APIs (like background audio) and universal state saving.

That’ll be good enough for most people and most apps without causing a huge drain on battery life or processing power, but unfortunately, the new iOS 4 APIs don’t do anything to address one of the biggest advantages to multitasking: background applications that can update or sync information when they don’t have focus. In other words, when iOS 4 comes around, apps like feed readers, Twitter clients and IM programs will still need to be open the whole time in order to suck in new information from the Internet.

Over at his personal blog, Marco Arment — developer of App Store favorite Instapaper — has posted a great suggestion to Apple on how to allow apps to update themselves in the background efficiently: give iOS the ability to prioritize periodic third-party app network requests.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5iM9YSs0Q8&feature=player_embedded

E3, the year’s biggest video gaming conference, hasn’t revealed too much about Valve’s upcoming Mac-friendly puzzle shooter, Portal 2, except the pre-emptive announcement that it’s been delayed until 2011. On the bright side, though, we have gotten this great new trailer.

Set hundreds of years after the first game, Portal 2 again puts the player in the shoes of the hot hispanic cyborg Chell as she solves numerous physics based puzzles to defeat the schizophrenic, cake-obsessed GlaDOS.

The new trailer makes clear that some of the “jungle” locations seen in earlier preview images are in fact parts of the Aperture Science labs that have been reclaimed by nature over the past few centuries. As usual, Valve is doing a smart job reconciling their timelines: while the first game took place roughly at the same time as the original Half-Life, Portal 2 takes place several hundred years after the end of Half-Life 2. The games share a universe, but they don’t chronologically have to wrestle with each other.

Not enough for you? IGN has just posted ten minutes of Portal 2 gameplay footage! You can find it after the jump.

As it turns out, if you want a white iPhone 4 on June 24th, you’re out of luck: Apple’s iPhone 4 pre-order site is now explicitly saying that the “white iPhone [is] currently unavailable for pre-order or in-store pick-up.”

The omission of the white iPhone 4 seems to be universal: Apple’s domestic wireless partner AT&T has also sent out an internal memo saying that they will only have black handsets in stock on launch day, with the white model promised “later this summer.”

I suppose it’s possible that white iPhone 4s will be available for cold pick-ups on launch day, but everything about this indicates that Apple has had some unexpected last minute delay in producing the white iPhone 4.

It’s disappointing: I think the white iPhone 4 is a significant improvement over the style of the black version, especially with a bumper installed. What about you? Will you wait for the white iPhone 4, or settle for a black version on launch day?

When you actually click the links, Apple’s bouncing around some bad link error messages, but if you want to preorder your iPhone 4 for pick-up or delivery on June 24th, Apple’s preorder website is now live. You might want to keep refreshing it until the kinks go away. (Update: the preorder forms are now working).

Completed your preorder? We’ll see you for some jubilant crowing in the comments!

Well, it’s about time: yesterday, Starbucks announced that they would be activating free, one-click WiFi access across all of their United States locations, starting on July 1st.

For iPhone owners, this isn’t a big deal: they’ve long enjoyed free AT&T WiFi at Starbucks with their Frappucinos.

By opening up WiFi to everyone, though, Starbucks has finally allowed iPod Touch and iPad owners free access to the Internet… not to mention MacBook owners and the rest of those Android and PC toting plebes.

Over at Gizmodo, they’re making a big stink about Apple’s decision to ban two graphic novel adaptations of famous literary works from the App Store for obscenity— namely, James Joyce’s Ulysses and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

Now Apple’s reversed the ban on these two graphic novels… but in the process of doing so, have ironically made themselves look far more hypocritical in their App Store censorship policies than if they’d stuck to their original decision.

As seen at last week’s WWDC, iMovie for iOS looks like nothing else out there when it comes to mobile video editing. The Tidbits blog has posted some more details about what you can expect, and unfortunately, there’s some limitations on what you can do with iMovie.

The bad news is that for right now, it’s iPhone 4 only, with iPhone 3GSs needing not apply because of the lack of A4 processor. Don’t expect it on the iPad until Apple’s tablet gets a camera, though.

There’s more bad news: right now, you can’t export projects to iMovie on the Mac for giving your edits some more advanced finesse. iMovie for iPhone exists in its own little vacuum for people who want to quickly edit a movie on the go. If you want to edit your iPhone 4 footage on your Mac, you’ll need to start from scratch, at least for now.

While iMovie for iPhone is likely to be locked to next-gen iOS devices, I imagine Apple will eventually integrate the software with the desktop suite and bring it to the next-gen iPad and iPod Touch. Either way, at $4.99, iMovie for iPhone looks like a steal of an app.

This is a heartwarming story: a developer of China’s most popular instant messaging client, TenCent, was invited by Apple to come to WWDC, only to be mugged upon arrival in San Francisco for his iPad. He managed to escape with just a few bruises, but his iPad was shattered. Luckily, a local Apple Genius took sympathy on him and offered to replace the iPad… and to end things on the perfect note, when the developer wrote Steve Jobs to praise the Apple Store’s great customer service, he got a nice note back wishing him a safe voyage home.

The Icon by essential tpe is a design first in a peripheral line all too dominated by bulky li-ion boxes: it looks good. Actually, it looks great, aping the style of the iOS replenishing battery icon by using electroluminescent lighting film that displays the add-on battery’s power level even when it’s unplugged.

It has all the hallmarks of just another Yanko Design wishful-thinking concept, but essential tpe swear that this is a real product which they are ready to sell you… an assertion perhaps belied by the lack of pricing details and the rendered appearance of the product shots.

We certainly hope it’s a real product though: the Icon just looks too sexy for us to root against it.

Curious about Apple’s own foray into protective iPhone cases, the bumper? The guys over at AppAdvice have taken some pretty shots of the bumper case ensconcing a new iPhone 4.

It looks surprisingly good, especially wrapped around the white model, and my guess is that by offering some padding around the iPhone 4’s most vulnerable fracture point, the $29 case will be pretty good at keeping your iPhone safe from cracks… but keys shredding your screen will be just as big of a concern as a totally unprotected handset.

Despite Apple’s feelings about them, my guess is you’ll want to invest in a protective film even if you pick up the bumper.

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.

Like a Norman Rockwell painting trying to hit you with a bazooka, Valve’s fantastic team-based multiplayer game Team Fortress 2 is now available on Steam for Mac. Even better? It’s free to play this weekend for everyone with a Steam for Mac account, and if you want to play after, Valve has discounted the game by 50%.

I’m away from home right now, but my Steam name is “DrCrypt” if anyone wants to add me (be gentle… I suck). Also, when I get back, I’ll look to set up a Steam “Cult of Mac” group.