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Yesterday’s release of Google’s Chrome 5 internet browser made it even more viable a Safari replacement than ever (if you can get over the design niggles, that is), but if a rather sly hint from Daring Fireball’s John Gruber is anything to go by, Apple may attempt to match Chrome and Firefox’s most interesting feature — extensions support — with Safari 5.

Quoth Gruber:

The other big thing that’s missing [in Safari] (compared to both Chrome and Firefox) is a proper extension API. If only Apple had an imminent developer conference where they could unveil such a thing.

This is a big weakness of Safari compared to many other modern browsers , and the ability to easily tweak the Safari experience according to user preference would certainly win Apple’s browser some converts.

The question is: are browser extensions anathema to Apple’s own design ethos, which tries to perfect the user experience through tight-fisted control? As great as Firefox and Chrome extensions are — I simply can’t work with a browser that doesn’t support them anymore — things can get quite ugly and confusing, design-wise, with a lot of extensions installed. Apple can’t be too happy about that prospect.

Still, at the end of the day, the option of extensions coming to Safari is a win for everyone. My only hope is that Apple will crib some other ideas from Chrome while they are at it: Chrome’s effortless merging of the search field and address field is so brilliant that it makes any other interpretation seem amateurish in comparison.

Apple’s upcoming 2010 Worldwide Developer Conference, starting June 7 in San Francisco, is a bit like celebrating Christmas Day after already knowing what will be under the tree. Yes, CEO Steve Jobs will deliver a keynote address, but otherwise, there is “little room for surprise,” a prominent Apple analyst said Wednesday.

With talk of the upcoming next-generation iPhone splashed across blogs and television newscasts like some messy Hollywood divorce, all that’s left for Apple to do is fill in the details. The handset will likely have a front-facing camera useful for video conferencing, longer battery life and thinner design, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster told investors. Munster calls the WWDC a “non-event” for Apple stock.

Former Apple retail employees have filed a class action suit in California over rest breaks and poor treatment.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of all people employed in non-exempt (hourly paid) “Genius” positions in San Francisco County Superior Court on September 15, 2009. A website gives more details on the suit.

“Apple has enjoyed an advantage over its competition and imposes a resultant disadvantage on its “Genius” employees by failing to authorize, permit and provide statutorily mandated rest breaks as required by law.”

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Two of Microsoft’s highest-profile executives are leaving, and Apple’s running rings around the company is partly seen as the reason.

Robbie Bach and James J Allard, leaders of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, are both leaving and will not be replaced. It is Microsoft’s biggest management shakeup in years. The restructuring will put CEO Steve Ballmer in direct charge of Microsoft’s consumer-focused mobile businesses, which are getting a kicking from Google, Nintendo and especially Apple. This transition is reminiscent of when Bill Gates left Microsoft, which signified a turning point for the company’s leadership and direction.

In fact, Venture Beat’s Dean Takahashi, who wrote a pair of books about the Entertainment & Devices Division (Opening the Xbox and The Xbox 360 Uncloaked), says the inability to compete with Apple is behind the shakeup:

Allard’s last project at Microsoft was Courier, which Ballmer canceled earlier this year. It was viewed as an attempt to take on the Apple iPad. While Bach’s division is profitable now, it may be remembered for its inability to take on Apple in the increasingly critical mobile business. And that may explain why, any day now, Apple’s market capitalization is going to become bigger than Microsoft’s.

More here: The rise and fall of Microsoft’s Xbox champions, Robbie Bach and J Allard

UPDATE: Horace Dediu has a good guess why Bach was fired: he lost Hewlett Packard when the company bought Palm. “Bach lost a key account; in fact, he could be responsible for having lost the biggest account that Microsoft ever had. Ballmer is a sales guy and he knows the importance of these relationships. A customer like HP must be managed carefully and their strategy must be steered to fit with yours. If HP felt they needed to go somewhere else for their mobile OS, it’s a slap in the face, but if they buy the asset and IP and internalize a competing platform, then that is a dagger to the heart for Ballmer.”

Google has graduated its spiffy Chrome browser for Mac from beta to stable release. It’s a major milestone for the browser, and an indication Google is taking the Mac platform seriously. For a while, it looked that Chrome for Mac was an afterthought.

Mike Smith, Product Manager, Google Chrome Team:

Today, I’m happy to announce that Google Chrome for Mac is being promoted out of beta to our stable channel. We believe that it provides not only the stability, performance and polish that every Mac user expects, but also a seamless native Mac application experience that Mac users will feel instantly at home with.

I’m a big fan of Chrome, even though it’s a memory hog with multiple tabs open. It’s fast and there’s a big and growing gallery of more than 4,500 extensions.

We start off with two MacBooks for under $1,000: a 2.26GHz MacBook Core 2 Duo for $799 and a 2.26GHz Unibody MacBook Pro, starting at $929. Also on tap is a price cut on the 16GB iPhone 3Gs from Walmart.

Along the way, we also check out Apple’s back-to-school sale, new software for the iPhone and iPad and other Mac-related items. Details on these and many more bargains are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Another worker at China’s Foxconn Technology Group has died. While few details were released by the state-run Xinhua News Agency, the incident is the 10th death in the past year at the electronics maker. Ironically, the death followed an announcement Monday by Foxconn disputing reports of a sweatshop atmosphere.

“We are certainly not running a sweatshop. We are confident we’ll be able to stabilize the situation soon,” the AP quotes Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou.

Microsoft is expected to overhaul its entertainment and devices group as the desktop software giant finds itself out-muscled in a bruising battle between Apple and Google. The division – responsible for the Windows Phone, Zune and Xbox – will likely lose its chief technology officer, reports say.

Although the division made $1.67 billion in sales for the first quarter of this year, Microsoft is being outmaneuvered as technology increasingly goes mobile. J. Allard, the division’s chief experience officer and chief technology officer, is expected to leave the company in the wake of Microsoft’s decision to kill his dual-screen Courier tablet.

For years, I’ve been resiting the urge to upgrade my deck and instead pumping my iPod or iPhone audios to my antediluvian car stereo with a cheap $2 cassette deck adapter. For guys like me, then — individuals who own cars worth less than their phones, and are proud of the fact — the iDeck iPod Car Cassette Adapter seems ideal: it turns your existing cassette deck into a permanent in-auto iPod dock.

I’d be typing “SOLD” here except for that last remaining sticking point, the price: the iDeck costs $39.99 through Amazon. Heck, for that price, a cheapskate like me might as well buy a new car. One with floorboards!

Outdoor furniture designers must be feeling the fruit this season: here’s another Apple- inspired al fresco lounger.

In darker rattan than yesterday’s version spotted in Norway, this one’s also got a little more abstract shape and looks less cribbed from the Cupertino company logo.

Mac collector Mark Johnson spied this one in a Liverpool Costco where the price tag is about $2,100 (£1,500 circa).

Can the apple fall too far from the tree or would you buy this for your backyard?

Although AT&T leaders have responded with bravado to questions of how Verizon might upset the carrier’s exclusive iPhone apple cart, Wall Street apparently isn’t so care-free. AT&T could lose up to 40 percent of iPhone subscribers when Verizon starts selling the handset, one analyst warned Monday.

Up to 6 million of AT&T’s 15 million iPhone customers could leave for Verizon, Davenport & Co. analyst F. Drake Johnstone told investors. Attempts to bar the door – such as hiking the early termination fee for smart phone owners from $175 to $325 – is the first signal “AT&T is clearly worried that it will lose customers once a competing carrier such as Verizon begins carrying the iPhone,” Johnstone said.

It’s hard to describe Onkyo’s latest PC as anything besides a little bit daft. The E713 is an all-in-one Windows 7 PC (with all the hideous matte gray plastics aesthetics of such) which prominently boasts a slide-out, built-in iPod dock that has been sillily mis-designed so it’s mouth just isn’t quite wide enough to slide an iPhone in. What?

Otherwise, it’s not a bad looking machine, featuring a Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, a digital TV tuner, Blu-Ray drive, 1TB hard drive and a 23-inch 1920 x 1080 LCD for just $1100… but the obvious bone-headedness of designing a computer with a built-in iPod dock that can’t dock with Apple’s most popular product is just the sort of casual ineptitude that keeps us all on Macs to begin with.

Capcom’s fantastic series of lawyerly anime adventure titles, the Ace Attorney series, have been delighting gamers on Nintendo’s handhelds since 2001… and now the first game, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is available to download through iTunes.

The iPhone version of Phoenix Wright is basically a direct port of the Nintendo DS version, with the lower half of the iPhone screen standing in for the DS’ lower display. Otherwise, though, the two games are identical, and as a long-time fan of the series, this is an easy game to recommend if you like quirk, tongue-in-cheek gravitas and cheeky mysteries to solve.

You can buy Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney on the App Store now for just $4.99.

Apple apparently has gotten the message over repeated reports of iPad shortages. The Cupertino, Calif. company may double production for its tablet device to 2.5 million units per month by September, up from 1 million to 1.5 million expected for next month, one analyst said Tuesday.

In a note to investors, Sterne Agee analyst Vija Rakesh writes checks with memory suppliers indicates Apple is preparing for a wider international launch and the upcoming back-to-school markets.

Panic, the company that makes awesome applications like Coda and Unison, got a little surprise in the mail yesterday – a Faux Apple Design Award, sent in by an extremely appreciative user of their best-known product, Transmit.

It’s that time of year again! Apple’s throwing a bone (or, alternatively, trying to lock-in) green undergrads heading to college for the first time with their annual “Back to School” program, which nets eligible students a free 8GB iPod Touch (or $199 off any other iPod).

If you want to qualify, you have to buy a new Mac and iPod simultaneously at the Apple Education Store, an Apple retail store or authorized campus store. The discount is in the form of a rebate, so you’ll need to wait ninety days to get your $199 back.

As usual, it’s a pretty sweet deal that is available to any educator, students of higher-education or parents shopping for their college-bound sproglings. If you think you’re eligible and are looking to buy a new Mac, this is a great time to pick it up and get yourself a free iPod in the process.

With every new Apple product comes a new advertising campaign, so it’s no surprise that Cupertino’s already casting for a new campaign centered on the next iPhone. Now Engadget has confirmed it with their sources.

According to Engadget, the next iPhone commercial will be directed by American Beauty director (and mawkish paper bag enthusiast) Sam Mendes will be helming the commercials for the next iPhone, which is being referred to as Mammoth / N90 internally… presumably to keep the actual name of the next iPhone (the only aspect of the device not yet revealed by leaks) underwraps until WWDC.

The spots will apparently heavily promote the next iPhone’s videoconferencing abilities, and one will featureg a mother and daughter having a video iChat call with one another.

Engadget also spotted some Twitter status updates from young actors bragging about their forthcoming auditions…. although I’m guessing after their indiscretion has been picked up by the newsfeeds, their chances of actually landing the roles are pretty slim.

Forget the escalating Apple – Google rivalry for a moment, the latest chapter in the war against Apple unfolds in New York:
Yankee Stadium has banned iPads.
Apparently their existing security restrictions prohibiting laptop computers extend to the new Handheld Wonder, leaving multitasking attendees all atwitter.

Good opportunity here for my hometown team (and legendary Yankee rival) Boston Red Sox to encourage iPads at Fenway Park, and create a custom app for enhancing the game day experience. With the Express Written Permission of Major League Baseball, of course…

What would you want to have on your iPad while watching the game?

Thanks to Mashable for the tip.

In the ramp up to the official unveiling of the next-generation iPhone next month, megalithic big box retailer Wal-Mart is planning on slashing the price of Apple’s 16GB iPhone 3Gs to just $97.

That’s a $102 savings over the current price, and strongly implies that, next month, the 16GB iPhone 3GS will be AT&T’s new entry-level iPhone and cost $99 in locations across the country (Wal-Mart tends to undercut AT&T’s own prices by a couple of bucks).

To get the deal, customers will need to sign up for a two-year contract from AT&T. However, with talks of a Verizon iPhone hitting at the end of the summer gaining traction, it seems like a short-sighted move to sign up with AT&T before seeing what deals might result from an iPhone price war between two competing national carriers.

This is unlikely to gobsmack anyone, but with a new iPhone right around the corner, the days of the $99 iPhone 3G are likely numbered.

According to Boy Genius Report: ” We’ve heard that Apple has stopped shipping iPhone 3G 8GB units to AT&T stores and orders are not being placed for the device.”

The most obvious interpretation of this is that the iPhone 3GS will plug the place previously filled by the 3G as the entry-level AT&T iPhone… a guess that seems to be strongly evidenced by Wal-Mart’s recent decision to slash the price of the 16GB 3GS to a mere $97.

The Elgato EyeTV HD DVR is easy to recommend to Apple fans who are serious about video: it’s whole raison d’etre is to make it as easy as possible to transcode your high-defenition television content to watch on your MacBook, iPhone or iPad.

As a DVR, the EyeTV allows you to plug it into your satellite or cable box and record shows in high-definition H.264 video, which can easily be converted to iPad or iPhone optimized files when you plug it into your Mac’s USB port. If that’s too much work for you and you expect to watch a show on your iPad over your HDTV, you can opt to record in iPad or iPhone mode.

Even better? If you don’t want to physically sync your EyeTV media to your iPhone or iPad, you can just stream it over 3G or WiFi with the EyeTV app.

The Elgato EyeTV HD is available now at your local Apple Store for just $199.

The MacBook Air is likely to get a speed boost soon, thanks to freshly shrinked versions of Intel’s Core processors.

Today, Intel announced the expansion of their processor family with six new chips designed for ultraportable notebooks, promising to make MacBook Air sized notebooks thinner and lighter while yielding a 32% performance bump over the last generation of ultrathin Intel chips.

These new mobile Core processors are based on the same 32nm chip design as the standard Core i5 and Core i7, but offer 15% power efficiency and the ability to be packed into machines with a 30% thinner form factor, without giving up features like Hyper Threading or Turbo Boost.

Right now, over 40 OEMs are promising to release new ultrathins using Intel’s mobile Core CPUs. Apple’s not listed among them, but Cupertino’s not going to let Intel spill details of a new MacBook Air for them. Expect a hardware refresh sometime in the coming months.

When people first started playing with the iPad, a common comparison was to the interactive, tablet-like book (, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer: a Propædeutic Enchiridion) featured in best-selling author Neal Stephenson’s steampunk sci-fi novel A Diamond Age, so it seems like a natural fit that Stephenson will soon be coming to iPad with an app of his own.

The project’s called The Mongoliad, a wonderfully stupid title that sounds like a gag from the lost sequel to John Barth’s Sotweed Factor. But the idea is sound: Stephenson and a few fellow authors including Greg Bear and Nicole Galland will be releasing a set of serialized stories to the App Store, presenting “an ongoing stream of nontextual, para-narrative and extra-narrative stuff” that will allow readers to interact and create their own stories in the Mongoliad universe with some “pretty cool tech.”

Though details are scarce and while Stephenson’s product could be nothing more than some fancy e-books, this is worth being excited about. Stephenson’s fiction has long luxuriated in the magical possibilities of technology, and I’m eager to see if what he comes up with in code is just as future-thinking as what he creates in prose.

Along with speculation that Verizon may sell the new iPhone expected to be announced at next month’s WWDC, comes rumors of the most tenuous nature that Sprint might also be part of Apple’s widening use of American carriers. Adding the iPhone to its stable of cell phones would certainly boost Sprint’s stature, but is it more than just chatter? Now comes “rumblings” that Sprint may have an iPhone ready later this year.

This is where readers should put their trays in the upright position and obey the flashing “rumor alert” signs.

Not sure you’d have to be an Apple fan to buy this rattan love seat for your summer lollygagging, but it probably helps.

Spotted by Eirik Nilsen, it retails for about $1,500 (9,900 Norwegian Kroner) at Coop Obs Bygg in Stavanger, Norway.