News - page 2239

Another piece of the iPhonegate puzzle has fallen into place. It’s been officially revealed for the first time that Apple reported it’s iPhone 4G protoype as “stolen,” not lost, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Stephen Wagstaffe, the chief deputy district attorney for San Mateo County, said Apple contacted authorities and “advised us there had been a theft,” which led to the search warrant and an investigation.

Until now, it’s been rumored that Apple considered the iPhone stolen — but hasn’t been officially confirmed. The distinction, of course, is crucial. If authorities conclude the iPhone was stolen, Gizmodo may be on the hook for buying stolen property. If the iPhone was lost, Gizmodo may be in the clear. However, under California law, a lost item that isn’t properly returned to its owner may also sometimes be considered stolen.

The authorities themselves don’t seem to have reached a conclusion yet. It is still unclear if they are investigating Gizmodo or the person who sold Gizmodo the phone. CNet spoke to the San Mateo District Attorney , reporting that it “has not been able to confirm whether the felony investigation is targeting Gizmodo staff, the iPhone seller, or someone else.”

If the authorities conclude that Gizmodo bought stolen property, staff may face up to a year in prison. But if police and the District Attorney are pursuing the seller, the raid on Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s home may not have been warranted. Gizmodo may be protected under California shield laws, which prohibit judges from issuing search warrants against editorial publications, including online news sites. Techcrunch reports that the investigation has been “paused” while authorities decide whether Gizmodo is shielded or not.

Great News! You don’t have to wait to use your iPad as a MIDI device.

Jameson Proctor, fellow Brooklyn resident and newly established app developer, has brought us a fantastic iPad Midi Controller for $4.99.

MxNM LE, which stands for Mix N Match MIDI Limited Edition, offers 135 virtual buttons sliders and knobs for your programming pleasure and you’ll need to use the MxNM WiFi Server to connect your iPad to your sequencing software of choice. The next update will allow the user to add labels to each control. I can’t wait for an OSC release to give me my monome fix.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z00VCzoIVc

The Horizontal 51 sound board from Finite Elemente isn’t just a shelf, it’s an iPod docking solution with integrated Surround Sound speakers with a 25WPC amplifier and a frequency range of 50 to 25,000Hz, as well as other available connections for TV, PCs and MP3 players. The shelf itself can support up to 25KG of weight, so if you don’t want to put plants or books on it, it can probably support the weight of a light HDTV. It’s an attractive solution, but $664 is a lot of money to spend on a shelf, no matter how many devices it can integrate with.

Unless you have a Mac Mini or Mac Pro, there’s not a lot of reason to buy a third-party webcam if you’re on a modern Apple machine, but Telcast’s latest webcam, the W900, does one thing your built-in iSight won’t: it’s a wireless web cam that can transmit 5 megapixel video and images at distances up to 200 meters.

A welcome advance in webcam technology that should prevent at least a few MacBooks from vibrating off the lubricated bedside table top on anniversary night. The Telcast W900 costs $117.

I’ve been eagerly anticipating the release of Steam for Mac since it was first announced back in early March, but Valve has continued to be mum about their games delivery platform’s Mac-specific details. An informative thread on the official Steam forums, though, has a lot of information about what Mac gamers can expect when Steam for Mac lands in May.

Google’s Android Marketplace, a rival to Apple’s iPhone App Store, reached the 50,000 mark over the weekend, according to one company tracking cell phone application sites. Although a far cry from Apple’s nearly 200,000 apps, Android may be on pace to hit the 100,000 milestone by September, according to reports.

About a month ago, the Android Market, the nearest competitor to the App Store, reached the 40,000 mark. The 50,000 figure comes from AndroLib, which tracks 10 smartphone marketplaces.

Gizmodo’s unofficial unveiling of Apple’s iPhone 4G may force the Cupertino, Calif. company to launch its next handset sooner than planned, a Wall Street analyst tells Cult of Mac. The leak could erode sales of current iPhones as consumers hold off until the new smartphone is available.

“This leads us to believe they [Apple] may come out with a new [iPhone] sooner versus later,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster writes in a Tuesday email.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs isn’t exactly known to mince words with his customers or employees, and his characteristic bluntness even extends as far as his conversations with other CEOs.

Take this conversation he had with eerie William Macy lookalike and Nike CEO Mark Parker upon the introduction of the Nike+ product line. Asking Parker for advice on how to run his company, Jobs bluntly replied: “Get rid of the crappy stuff.”

“I expected a little laugh,” Parker said. “But there was a pause and no laugh at the end.”

No, Mark, Jobs is dead serious about excising the crap. Well, except for the Apple TV.

Apple’s own iPad dock gives an easy and handy way to use a physical keyboard with your tablet, but one annoyance is the official dock’s inability to allow you to type when the device is in a landscape position.

It’s slightly irritating, but the Book of Joe has an easy-to-follow instruction manual on how to dock your iPad in a landscape position.

Essentially, you prop up your iPad (in Joe’s case, with the official iPad case) and use an iPod cable extender to connect the iPad to the dock connector. It’s a lot more of a kludge than it has to be, and I imagine a bluetooth keyboard and a sixty-nine cent business card holder would be a better solution for the price. Still, if you’ve got this stuff lying around already, it’s not a bad hack… at least until a third-party accessory maker comes out with a dock that allows typing in both landscape and vertical orientations.

Surprise surprise. There’s a new morsel of PC malware out there plaguing Windows machines. Nothing to write about there: it’s non-news, the equivalent of Paris Hilton getting a polite note from the Center of Disease Control.

What makes this bit of malware interesting to Apple heads, though, is the way it’s propagated: through an e-mail urging victims to download a new version of iTunes that has been upgraded for “best iPad performance, newer features and security.” Download the infected executable and the code, called Backdoor.Bifrose.AADY, then tries to slurps up the victim’s software serial numbers, IM, e-mail and protect storage login details.

Needless to say, even if you’re on a PC, you’re better off going directly to Apple.com or allowing iTunes to alert you to a new update than downloading a strange executable from even the most earnest of Russian malware mafioso.

Tumblr’s Topher Chris uses the possibly illegal seizure of editor Jason Chen’s computers on Friday night to effortlessly skewer Gizmodo’s own next generation iPhone teardown.

“You are looking at Jason Chen’s computers. They were found lost at the San Mateo Country Police Headqaurters. We got them. We disassembled them. They’re the real thing, and here are all the details.”

A Dell XPS!? An Acer tower?!? Oh, Jason… a gadget blogger should know better.

We’ve shown you a first generation iPhone dual-booting into Android OS, but want to do it yourself? You’re in luck! Here’s an easy to follow seventy step guide, simple enough for that even a drunk, googly-eyed neonate could figure it out.

We’re slightly kidding: a lot of this instruction list is devoted to things like setting up virtualized Ubuntu installs, so it’s really only fifty steps. Still, that’s an order of magnitude too many steps for a guy whose technical sophistication tops out at dragging the install icon to his Applications folder.

Are you Cylon enough to attempt it though? God speed, and let us know how you get along in the comments.

In a move to boost iPhone sales, carrier China Unicom may reduce the price of Apple’s handset by $150, or 1,000 yuan. Apple executives recently announced iPhone sales increased 200 percent in the first half of 2009, earning the Cupertino, Calif. company $1.3 billion.

When the iPhone first entered the Chinese market in 2009, it carried a hefty price tag of 6,999 yuan. Although initially slow to compete against a strong black market and inexpensive pre-paid handsets, more than 100,000 iPhones were sold by late last year, reports said.

Man, I want one of these. It would look so good next to my pack of Pall Malls and Royal Portable Typewriter. Freeland Studio sure knows how to cast resin around my heart’s desires. Too bad it’s on back order for 3 weeks, priced at $195 and doesn’t let me talk on my iPhone with that gorgeous handset.

But it would be fun to Bluetooth it up and just pace back and forth holding that thing in a heated conversation about one of the Apollo missions.

The iRetrofone Base is available in clear, black, and pink. I wonder when this will come out in Commissioner Gordon Red?

Via iPhone Savior

In part 7 of Macworld‘s founder David Bunnell’s memoirs of the Mac, it’s clear that the machine isn’t ready for prime-time. Macworld‘s editor Andrew Fluegalman tells this to Steve Jobs, who reacts in a surprising way.

Apple sits on the steering committee of the special police task force investigating iPhonegate, Yahoo News reports, raising the possibility that the company may have had a hand in the raid of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s house.

Friday’s police raid on Chen’s apartment was ordered by Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT) task force, which is commissioned to investigate high-tech crimes. Apple is a member of the task force’s steering committee.

Apple is one of the 25 companies that sit on REACT’s “steering committee.” Which raises the question as to whether Apple, which was outraged enough about Gizmodo’s $5,000 purchase of the lost iPhone for CEO Steve Jobs to reportedly call Gawker Media owner Nick Denton to demand its return, sicked its high-tech cops on Chen.

The San Mateo District Attorney’s office said the task force is investigating a “possible theft,” but wouldn’t say whether the target is Gizmodo or the person who found the iPhone in a bar and sold it to the site.

Yahoo News notes that the task force has investigated other cases in response to requests by committee members, including Symantec, Microsoft and Adobe.

“In either case, it’s hard to imagine — even if you grant that a theft may have occurred under California law, which requires people who come across lost items to make a good-faith effort to return them to their owner — how the loss of a single phone in a bar merits the involvement of an elite task force of local, state, and federal authorities devoted to “reducing the incidence of high technology crime through the apprehension of the professional organizers of large-scale criminal activities,” as the REACT website motto characterizes its mission.

Yahoo News: What is Apple Inc.’s role in task force investigating iPhone case?

Gizmodo’s publisher Nick Denton is not likely to back down to Apple or the police, says a publishing industry executive who has followed Gawker closely for years.

Denton, who owns Gizmodo’s parent company, Gawker Media, relishes a fight in the courts, says the executive, who asked not be named.

The seizure of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s computers is illegal, says Gawker Media, the parent company of the blog.

As a journalist, Chen is legally protected from divulging his sources of a story: in this case, details of Apple’s 4G iPhone, which Gizmodo purchased after an Apple engineer left a prototype in a bar. Gawker says the authorities are not allowed to search his computers in pursuit of a suspect, presumably the person who sold Gizmodo the iPhone.

Gawker cites section 1524(g) of the California Penal Code protecting journalists’ sources. It further cites O’Grady v. Superior Court, which extends the protections to online journalists. The O’Grady case is another Apple case, but one that the company lost. Apple tried to force Jason O’Grady to divulge his sources after his PowerPage website published details of another product Apple was working on.

Wow. Silicon Valley police have seized several computers belonging to Jason Chen, the Gizmodo editor who detailed Apple’s iPhone 4G prototype for the site.

California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team entered editor Jason Chen’s home without him present, seizing four computers and two servers. They did so using a warrant by Judge of Superior Court of San Mateo. According to Gaby Darbyshire, COO of Gawker Media LLC, the search warrant to remove these computers was invalid under section 1524(g) of the California Penal Code.

The technology site has just posted some of the details and paperwork, including Gawker Media’s response.

Gawker says the seizure of Chen’s computers is illegal. As a journalist, he is legally protected from divulging his sources, and authorities are not allowed to search his computers in pursuit of a suspect (presumably they’re after the identity of the person who sold Gizmodo the iPhone).

Scott Adams, the evil henchman behind the Dilbert Comic Strip, posted two comics about the drunken misplacement of the iPhone Prototype today on his blog. What’s cool is that these strips will never reach the funny pages and are exclusive to Adams’ blog. Thanks for sharing, Scott.

I’m never one to lol when reading print material, but the third frame of the top comic is priceless. Definitely loled.

A couple of Reuters reporters scoured electronics shops in Shanghai for an iPad clone until someone led them to a dark backroom on a fifth floor of one of the city’s many clone marts.

You can’t see a whole lot from the blurry pic, but they report that the counterfeit iPad sports three USB ports in what looks like a heavy-set, pumped-up iPhone. This isn’t the first iPad copycat to come out of the area, but this one looks more like the Apple device.

The price for the faux iPad is just slightly lower than the real deal 2,800 yuan ($410), compared to the iPad’s $499-$699 price. It runs a Windows OS.

Denver police arrested a 20-year-old man in connection with an iPad theft that also cost the victim part of his pinky.

20-year-old Brandon Darnell Smith was arrested early Saturday at a traffic stop.

“It’s bittersweet,” the victim, 59-year-old Bill Jordan, told local ABC affiliate 7NEWS. “The bitter part of it is there is nothing anybody can do to replace this. It is what it is.”

Rhapsody has released an update to its iPhone/iPod Touch music app that does what Spotify in Europe has done for ever: you can download any song you want to your iPhone for a flat $10 monthly fee.

Rhapsody’s music subscription offers virtually limitless musical selections from a library of about 9 millions songs available. And you don’t have to be online to use it. You can create downloadable playlists that play whether you have an Internet connection or not.

“This is the first time Apple has approved this capability for a music app — at least in the U.S.” said Rhapsody spokesman Matt Graves. “While Apple has previously approved apps from many streaming music services, including Rhapsody’s, until now it has never okayed downloading subscription music to its devices.”

Graves noted that Steve Jobs was famously dismissive of the music subscription model, calling these services “bankrupt” in a 2003 interview with Rolling Stone. Of course, subscription models compete with the per-song download model of iTunes.

You don’t even need to pay their reasonable $10-a-month fee to try it out. Rhapsody offers a free trial of their service.

I recommend signing up with your computer: it seems that if you register using a non-mobile device, you get a 14-day free trial. I signed up on my iPhone and only got a 7-day trial period free. Weird.

Jon Maples, Rhapsody Product Lead, brags about his experience using Rhapsody’s Downloadable Playlist feature on the Rhapsody blog and it makes for an interesting read.

My main beef with Rhapsody is the audio quality. I wasn’t able to use Google to divine a solid source for audio quality, but I can tell you it’s not 192-256 kbps which is what it should be.

One could be forgiven for assuming there were only two contestants in the e-reading race: Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle. However, new research appears to boost the visibility of a lesser-known entry: Barnes & Noble’s Nook. Sales of the Nook comprised more than half of e-readers shipped in the U.S. in March, according to DigiTimes.

Citing “upstream suppliers,” DigiTimes researcher Mingchi Kuo writes “the Nook accounted for 53 percent of e-book readers shipped to US vendors last month.”

Nokia’s forthcoming N8 smartphone has been touted as the beleagured Finnish handset maker’s long-coming answer to the iPhone… but judging from Mobile Review’s preview of a leaked N8 handset, Nokia’s dropped the ball yet again.

The N8 looks great on paper — it has a 12-megapixel camera, HDMI output and a huyge touchscreen with multitouch support, as well as Nokia’s new Symbian³ operating system — but in practice it’s nothing special. The camera takes decent pictures, but the 720p HD video isn’t particularly special compared to other handsets, and the HDMI port uses a non-standard connector, making it unlikely to ever be used.

Worse, the much ballyhooed Symbian³ update is apparently just a cosmetic upgrade that isn’t even fit to lick the shoes of the features that both the iPhone OS and Android OS are boasting.

It’s strange to think that a mere three years ago, Nokia was pretty much the most popular handset maker in the world, but they have failed time and time again to be competitive with the likes of Apple and Google. With the N8’s failure, it may now be too late.