Lonnie Lazar - page 35

Best Buy is set to announce Wednesday it will become the first retail chain in the US to stock and sell Apple’s iPhone 3G. After a recent upgrade of its mobile departments, Best Buy’s more than 970 outlets in the US will begin selling iPhones September 7th.

Best Buy has a longstanding relationship with Apple and already sells iPod digital music players at all of its stores. The retail giant also recently expanded Mac computer sales to more than 600 of its larger outlets.

Via SF Gate

Yesterday we were all set to post about the MobileMe mail server crash and ask how it is new boss Eddie Cue hasn’t already fixed Apple’s troubled web services division in the week or so he’s been on the job.

Then the servers came back up.

All MobileMe mail users were only affected for a couple of hours, but it appears there were sporadic outages for some customers throughout the evening and continuing into today. Steve Jobs has promised to have the service ship-shape by the end of the year, but that’s four and a half months of potential bumpiness that can’t be good for Apple’s PR.

UPDATE: THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED.

Think you’ve got the chops to be a photo editor?

Cult of Mac, in association with Hulger makers of the retro P*Phone handset adapter for Mac and iPhone, is sponsoring a week-long caption contest, the winner of which will win free-of-charge a spanking new Hulger P*Phone handset adapter, the retro iPhone adapter that reduces your exposure to cell-phone radiation by 95% and may cause people on the street to believe you are the Man from U.N.C.L.E., or Maxwell Smart, or someone with a hot-line to the White House, or – you get the idea.

Just reply in the comment section with your best caption for the photo above before midnight PDT on Sunday, August 17  and we’ll choose the winner on Monday the 18th.

You’ll get to pick your choice of available colors from Hulger and have this groovy, healthy handset delivered absolutely free.

Miss Moneypenny’s cell phone number is not included with this offer.

Image via Flickr

Boosted no doubt by the surge of sales in the iPhone 3G over the past 30 days, Apple’s phone is now the most-used cell phone camera used to shoot pictures posted to the popular photo-sharing site, Flickr.

Via Ars Technica

Steve Jobs told the Wall Street Journal users downloaded over 60 million iPhone applications and rung up sales of close to $30 million in the first month the AppStore was open for business.

While many of the iPhone applications available at the AppStore are free, paid apps such as Sega Corp.’s $9.99 Super Monkeball game helped bring in nearly $9 million to the top ten developers selling apps on the store. In all, Apple will distribute over $21 million in revenues from the 70% cut of sales developers make for software sold through the AppStore.

Jobs said the early results point to the success of Apple’s strategy to invest in the AppStore as a means of differentiating the iPhone among competitors in the smartphone handset market. He speculated on a potential $1 billion marketplace, saying, “I’ve never seen anything like this in my career for software.”

“Phone differentiation used to be about radios and antennas and things like that,” Jobs said. “We think, going forward, the phone of the future will be differentiated by software.”

The Apple CEO also confirmed reports of a “kill switch” in the iPhone’s software that would allow the company to remotely disable software users had previously paid for and installed on their phones. He argued that Apple needs it in case it inadvertently allows a malicious program — one that stole users’ personal data, for example — to be distributed to iPhones through the App Store. “Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull,” he said.

Via The Wall Street Journal

Wouldn’t it be great if mere mortals could make unbelievable presentations like Steve Jobs? It would be huge. It would be pretty cool, huh?

Via TUAW

In the wake of last week’s NetShare takedown, the fizzle this week with Box Office, and the it-might-be-a-crime-if-it-weren’t-so-funny debacle of I Am Rich, third party iPhone developers are starting to clamor for more, well, actually, any transparency from Apple about the process for approving and disapproving listings in the AppStore.

Many really wish the NDA would just go away, or at least apply only to developers whose applications remain unreleased, but that’s not likely to clear Apple legal. We do think it’s not unreasonable, however, to ask the company to be more responsive to requests for information about the approval and rejection process.

A former Apple engineer who worked at the company from 1995 to 2007 has filed suit and is the lead plaintiff in  asked the court to certify a class action seeking restitution from Apple for overtime pay and meal compensation under California labor law.

David Walsh, a former Network Engineer claims he was required to work after hours and weekends without overtime compensation and that Apple “intentionally and deliberately created numerous job levels and a multitude of job titles to create the superficial appearance of hundreds of unique jobs, when in fact, these jobs are substantially similar and can be easily grouped together for the purpose of determining whether they are exempt from overtime wages.”

During his on-call hours, Walsh “was required to remain on stand-by for the entire night, every night of the week, for the entire week without compensation,” contends the suit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for Southern California.

Walsh’s attorneys are asking the court to grant class status to all of Apple’s California IT workers, including those who are dispatched to perform support functions at Apple retail stores.

Apple has yet to make a formal response to the suit.

Via TUAW

A mobile applications development author has discovered functionality in iPhone 2.0 software that would allow Apple to blacklist and remotely disable iPhone applications on users’ phones. While the company already retains control over third-party iPhone apps through its certificate signing program, this more targeted system gives Apple the ability to kill specific applications and effectively places all iPhones under potential surveillance as long as they have an active internet connection.

iPhone 2.0 (as well as the updated iPod touch firmware) uses its CoreLocation framework to point to a secure website that appears to contain at least placeholder code for a list of “unauthorized” apps, according to iPhone Open Application Development author Jonathan Zdziarksi.

“This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off,” he says. “At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down.”

Via AppleInsider

In February next year, receiving over-the-air television signals will require either a digital converter for current analog TVs or a digital TV set, creating a huge potential market of people looking to upgrade home viewing technology. Could this be the area for the mysterious “product transition” Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer mentioned last month?

We would like to think so. Of all the products that Apple could do, a smart TV makes the most sense. It would be like the AppleTV, but without a separate box to hook up. All the functions of the AppleTV would be built into the new Apple TV.

Netflix is already getting into this sector by teaming up with hardware makers to stream movies directly to living-room devices — a DVD player from LG, a movie box from Roku and MS’s XBox. Building the AppleTV’s smart functions into a flatscreen LCD TV would differentiate Apple’s offering from competitors like Samsung and Sony, and help the company dominate the emerging market for streaming television programming and movies the way it has come to dominate music distribution through iTunes.

Apple has been selling the same Cinema Displays, with occasional price adjustments and minor spec improvements since 2004.

MacRumors adds today to growing speculation about What’s Next for Apple”, suggesting the Cinema Display line may get a major makeover in time for Macworld 2009, scheduled for January 5th – 9th at San Francisco’s Moscone Center.

The new Cinema Displays are expected to incorporate LED backlights to fulfill Steve Jobs’ promise that Apple would completely eliminate flourescent-backlit displays.

In an increasingly populous iPhone app universe, iUseThis may become a useful method for finding the sturdy trees in a deep dark forest of what some are calling “useless crap.”

Blogger Erica Sadun calls it “basically a Digg for iPhone apps,” but says, “[the] site shows early promise should it manage to attract a large enough user base.”

Via TUAW

More people in the US turned to Apple’s iTunes Store for their music purchases in the first half of 2008 than to any other music retailer, according to a MusicWatch consumer survey released today by NPD Group, a leading market researcher.

Apple’s digital distribution sales outpaced the three leading physical cd distributors, WalMart, Best Buy, and Target. Amazon, which launched a digital distribution service last year, moved from fifth place into fourth based on consumers’ increasing preference for downloading files over owning physical cds.

“We expect Apple will consolidate its lead in the retail music market, as CD sales continue to slow,” said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD. NPD combines digital and physical sales for those outlets who market music in both formats and tracks digital music sold by the song or album, not music purchased under subscription from services like eMusic, or subscription revenues from Rhapsody and Napster.

UPDATE: The MIT design team referred to in this post is basing its design not on the Apple II, but on the Nintendo Entertainment System, which used the same processor chip. We regret our error, which was originally reported by The Boston Herald article to whcih our post was linked. Thanks to David Zeiler at The Baltimore Sun for the clarification.

Derek Lomas, an American graduate student, has recruited Apple II enthusiasts at this month’s MIT International Development Design Summit “to give Third World schools Apple II computer labs like the ones I grew up with.”

Lomas, Jesse Austin-Breneman and other designers want to create a computer that Third World residents can buy for much less than the ones currently being developed by MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte, who has been working since 2005 to provide $100 laptops to Third World kids. “We see this as a model that could increase economic opportunities for people in developing countries,” sas Lomas. “If you just know how to type, that can be the difference between earning $1 an hour instead of $1 a day.”

Lomas discovered kids using a cheap keyboard and Nintendo-like console hooked up to home TVs running simple games during an internship in India last summer and hit on the idea of upgrading the devices’ 1980s-era technology. He and others at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology symposium hope to get buy-in from programmers to help upgrade the systems – which are based on old Apple II computers – with rudimentary Web access and more.

The six member team at MIT is working on writing improved programs and connecting to the Web through cell phones. The group also wants to add memory chips – which the devices currently lack – to allow users to write and store their own programs. “We think we can develop a really good educational tool that could give kids exposure to keyboards, typing and mouse usage at an early age,” said Austin-Breneman, a 25-year-old MIT graduate and a mechanical engineer.

Via The Boston Herald

Adding to recent criticism charging Apple with inadequate attention to security concerns, Consumer Reports takes the company to task for the lack of phishing protection in Safari. Among seven common online blunders that can “ruin your computer or invite identity theft,” thinking your Mac shields you from all risks comes in at #5, according to the report.

Citing a State of the Net survey that says Mac users fall prey to phishing scams at about the same rate as Windows users, CR recommends Mac users ditch Safari for Firefox or Opera until Apple builds phishing protection into its flagship browser.

AppleOwner.com, a Taiwanese Apple-oriented website, has leaked what are purported to be pictures of the new MacBook, a highly anticipated revision to Apple’s line of increasingly popular notebook computers expected to be available within the next six weeks.

The photographs are long on suggestion, but short on detail, and may well be noting more than placeholders on the AppleOwner website. Make of them what you will.

Via Gizmodo.

The mophie juice pack 3g, coming in September from mStation, promises to more than double the useful life of Apple’s iPhone 3G battery. Despite Steve Jobs’ insistence that iPhone 3G batteries would be an improvement over the those in the original model, many users have found surfing the web on AT&T’s 3G network, running Bluetooth and using the many applications they have downloaded from the AppStore actually leaves them wanting much more out of an iPhone battery charge.

The juice pack 3g is a rechargeable lithium polymer battery that will come ‘pre-charged’ and ready to go straight out of the package. The battery is housed in an ergonomic, comfort-grip case with a soft-touch, non-slip finish. The added “juice” will give users up to an additional 350 hours of standby time, 6 hours of talk time on 3G, 12 hours of talk time on 2G, 6 hours of Internet use on 3G, 8 hours of video playback, or 28 hours of audio playback, according to a company statement. The battery’s proprietary design provides short circuit, over-charge and temperature protection as well as smart power management. It features a 4 LED ‘charge status’ indicator letting you know how much juice is left, and connects to your computer via USB passthrough – making it easy to simultaneously charge and sync your iPhone 3G.

“iPhone 3G users have demanded a product that will boost battery life for extended on-the-go use” says Ross Howe, Sales and Product Development Director for mStation/mophie. “juice pack 3G delivers this exceptional battery enhancement while keeping the unique style and feel of the iPhone intact.”

Mophie is currently taking entries to raffle off 10 free juice pack 3Gs when they ship this fall.

Fans of Box Office, an iPhone lifestyle app that lets users leverage the GPS functionality of the iPhone to list theaters and movies playing within a user-definable radius (e.g. 10 miles) will be disappointed to find the application no longer available on Apple’s AppStore.

Metasyntactic, the developer responsible for the application, claims to have gotten no notification from Apple that the application had been pulled and has been unsuccessful in reaching anyone who could explain why it was taken down. “I’m in regular contact with all my data providers, and none of them have had an issue with my app,” he explained in a post on the MacRumors forum. “I’ve tried to contact [Apple] about the issue, but it’s been a complete dead end.”

The Box Office takedown comes on the heels of NullRiver’s NetShare roller-coaster ride on Friday, in which the app was mysteriously gone from the AppStore, then available again, and finally gone again, all with apparently no communication between Apple and the developer.

Via The iPhone Blog

Amid growing criticism of a lassiez-faire approach to security issues, Apple has canceled participation in a public discussion of its security practices at the Black Hat security conference scheduled this week in Las Vegas. Black Hat Director Jeff Moss told reporters in an interview Friday that unnamed members of Apple’s engineering team had agreed in early July to participate in a panel discussion on computer security issues, which would have been a first for the notoriously secretive company. “It was [going to be] them talking about security engineering and how they take security seriously,” Moss said, but “marketing got wind of it, and nobody at Apple is ever allowed to speak publicly about anything without marketing approval.”

In a separate security-related development, reports indicate the DNS security patch released by Apple on Friday may fail to fix the exploit flaw it was intended to repair.

Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security Inc. and Swa Frantzen of the SANS Institute’s Internet Storm Center both detailed research indicating systems running the client version of Mac OS X were still incrementing ports, not randomizing them, as should have been the case if the fix had addressed the flaw. “Apple might have fixed some of the more important parts for servers, but is far from done yet, as all the clients linked against a DNS client library still need to get the work-around for the protocol weakness,” Frantzen said.

While Dan Kaminsky, the researcher who uncovered the DNS flaw in February and helped coordinate a multivendor patch effort indicated “if there was a huge population of people behind DNS servers running OS X, I’d be more worried,” Rich Mogull, an independent security consultant and former Gartner Inc. analyst said, “It may be a low priority in the scheme of the DNS vulnerability, but if all my servers are OS X, it matters. Within the Mac audience, it matters.”

Via Computerworld

The NullRiver tethering application we blogged earlier today is apparently still available on the AppStore through a direct link according to Cult of Mac sources.

No indication how long this may be the case, so if you are interested in the technology…

A select group of some 5000 beta customers in North America can now make and receive international VoIP calls through Skype, GoogleTalk, SIP, and many VoIP services for the cost of a local cell phone call with the RF Dialer from Ring Free Mobility, Inc.

Ask the developers behind RF.com, makers of the multi-platform calling service designed to enhance the phone capabilities of the iPhone, and they will tell you reports of the death of the web app are greatly exaggerated.

The SanFrancisco-based company’s application allows users to make Internet calls over their cell phone’s GSM network. RF Dialer is the first iPhone application that allows SIP URI calls, integrating with thousands of SIP-based VoIP telephone providers and IP-based PBXes (such as the popular open=source Asterisk PBX and Communigate Pro.), allowing business users to utilize their iPhone as a direct PBX extension.

Here’s how it works (after registering with RF, providing your email address, country of service, mobile carrier and Caller ID):

1. You dial a number, or enter a user name, SIP URI, etc., on the RF Dialer, and click “Call”;
2. Using any kind of data connection (Edge, 3G or WiFi — it doesn’t matter as it’s only a small bit of data being sent) and encrypted HTTP, the RF Media Server is sent a call request: your cell phone number, RF password, call destination, and calling service used (i.e.: Skype, GoogleTalk, your own VoIP provider, straight SIP calling, etc.);
3. Once it verifies your credentials, the RF Media Server now refreshes the web page on your iPhone and sends a JavaScript message that includes a link to directly call the RF Media Server (a cell phone call to your local RF number, now either in the US or Canada, depending on where you are);
4. The RF Media Server answers the call knowing it’s you through caller-ID; and immediately makes the connection to the desired call destination stored in its queue.

RF is currently in beta with customers in the US and Canada and plans to go live in Europe sometime in August.

“We use the right technology for the task at hand,” according to RF founder Marcelo Rodriguez. “The calls we facilitate are transmitted via the carriers’ voice network. Our users have mobile access to Skype, GoogleTalk, MSN, Yahoo, etc., and the carrier is reimbursed for that access. It’s a perfect partnership.”

Apple began providing registered software developers daily download statistics this week that point to the “game changing” success of the AppStore distribution model.

Eliza Block, the part-time developer behind a popular iPhone crossword application shared a few days worth of her statistics with 9to5Mac that highlight the revenue opportunity for iPhone application developers.

Block’s 2Across app, which sells for $5.99 and has lately been listed as an Apple “Staff Favorite” on the iTunes AppStore, earned her nearly $2000 a day in the last week of July.

While there’s no way to predict whether hers or any other application can sustain that kind of momentum, the news should be enough to send many a coder scurrying to get up-to-speed with Objective C.

Apple released Security Update 2008-005 yesterday, fixing a DNS exploit others began work on nearly a month ago. With an increase in reported instances of malware and trojan horses targeting OS X systems, Apple has lately been widely criticized for being slow to move on security vulnerabilities, especially with respect to the iPhone.

The DNS fix is among 13 items updated in yesterday’s security release, which is available through Software Update and at Apple’s web site.

Via MacWorld.

Apple abruptly disabled NullRiver‘s NetShare in iTunes yesterday without explanation to the developer or its customers. The application, developed by the team behind Installer.app, allowed iPhone users to share their phone’s EDGE or 3G connection with a computer, a process called “tethering,” for which AT&T typically charges other smartphone customers an extra $30 per month. NetShare was briefly available in Apple’s AppStore for $10 but a current search for it returns a “no longer available” message and the developer’s website posts a message saying “We’re updating our site…”

Via MacRumors

Click the image to view VMware’s Fusion demo on YouTube.

The good folks at VMware have IT Pros all over excited about the new Beta 2 release for its Fusion 2.0 virtualization software. According to our very own Leigh McMullen, this release is important “because it is the dominant virtualization technology in IT Shops, allowing us to create VM’s on our Macs as a “Lab” machine, that we can later run in production, (or take a production image, and run it on our Macs for experimentation).”

Additional goodies in the new release (which is a free upgrade for users of Fusion 1.x) include Leopard Server Virtualization – Yes, Parallels could already do that, but they charge over a thousand bucks for the version that can – and support for Ubuntu Unity mode – which is a FIRST as far as we know.

Check out our gallery of screenshots below: