Steve Jobs may not be back to work yet, but Fake Steve is.
Fake Steve Jobs (aka Newsweek columnist Dan Lyons) has started blogging again.
Over the weekend, Fake Steve made a series of off-color jokes about Steve Jobs’ recent liver transplant. The posts are classic Fake Steve — sick, tasteless and LOL funny.
Unfortunately, it may not last.
“Customers are voting and the iPhone is winning,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in his first officially quoted statement for the company since taking a medical leave of absence in January.
Jobs’ comment came in the wake of a news release touting one million iPhone 3G S units sold in its first weekend since being released last Friday. “With over 50,000 applications available from Apple’s revolutionary App Store, iPhone momentum is stronger than ever,” continued Jobs in the release, which also noted that six million customers have downloaded the new iPhone 3.0 software since it was released last Wednesday.
The statement did not indicate whether or not Jobs would return to work at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, CA on Monday.
Apple issued $30 iTunes store credits over the weekend to some US customers whose iPhone 3G S models were not able to be activated for service with AT&T when the phones were released on Friday.
In an email sent to customers who had ordered the new smartphone through Apple’s online store prior to the official release, Apple apologized for delays “due to system issues and continued high activation volumes,” which the email said “could take us up to an additional 48 hours to complete.”
Customers were told to expect an email with the iTunes credit authorization on Monday and asked to accept the company’s “sincere apologies for the inconvenience this delay has caused.”
Some customers were particularly miffed last week after having received initial notice from UPS that their phones were scheduled for delivery on Wednesday, but saw deliveries rescheduled to Friday’s official release date, apparently at Apple’s behest.
Jobs has blocked the FAA from officially tracking his jet’s flights (a routine request; some simple paperwork with the National Business Aviation Association). But his 15-seater Gulfstream 5 has a distinctive tail number — N2N — that makes it easy for aviation buffs to track its movements on the Internet.
And while it looks like he flew to Memphis on March 23, possibly for a liver transplant — as CNBC claims to have independently confirmed — his jet made many more flights in April.
Could this 7,500 square foot mansion at 36 Morningside Place in Memphis be Steve Jobs’s new mansion?
Jobs has reportedly bought a large residence in Memphis after receiving a liver transplant in March at one of the city’s hospitals.
Forbes reports that Jobs may have bought a mansion in Memphis close to The Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute, a liver transplant center.
A finance reporter, Alexander Haislip, previously at Red Herring magazine, also says that Jobs has bought a mansion.
UPDATED: The problems are fixed. No more ‘Page Not Found’ errors. CoM is back to normal.
Sorry folks, there’s a database problem with the site, which is causing all news stories to return ‘Page Not Found’ errors.
I just published an in-depth review of the new iPhone 3G S and it’s camera, which I’ve been working on since dawn yesterday, so I’m super delighted by this turn of events. What a wonderful weekend surprise!
The site’s hosting provider is looking into it and promises a fix by the end of the day — kinda, maybe, fingers crossed.
Hopefully, CoM won’t need a liver transplant or anything like that!
Steve Jobs has reportedly bought a mansion in Memphis. It’s not this one, but maybe he’s living near Elvis’ Graceland. CC-licensed picture by Pictophile.
Back in April, rumors swirled that Steve Jobs had bought a mansion in a swanky neighborhood of downtown Memphis while he was receiving medical treatment. The rumors didn’t gain much traction — it was just too weird — but now the WSJ says Jobs received a life-saving liver transplant at one of the city’s hospitals.
The rumor about the mansion started with Alexander Haislip, who runs a private equity site, PEHub Blog, citing a “well-connected business person in Memphis.”
Today, Haislip adds some more interesting details. It’s a 7,500 square-foot mansion located at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in a “swank” part of downtown Memphis, Haislip says. Surrounded by old growth trees, the mansion is painted yellow with white trim and a pool in the back.
The mansion, built in 1914, has undergone substantial renovation since it was purchased last month. “I thought the house had flooded and the roof had caved in or something,” one neighborhood resident says. “There was an inordinate number of workers there. There’s been large crews preparing this house for someone.”
Among the renovations? Upgraded security. “Whoever “bought” the house installed video cameras in the trees and there is a security guard in a white jeep,” says another neighborhood resident. “It’s been very secretive.”
Haislip dug into property records hoping to find Steve Jobs on the title, but the new owner is listed as a mysterious LLC, which he says traces back to a Memphis law firm. The lawyer in charge gave him a no comment and the realtor who sold the mansion said she didn’t know who the client was, she dealt only with the lawyers. Haislip spoke to residents and no one has actually seen Jobs, but one claims to have seen his wife, Laurene Powell.
Haislip didn’t name the street, but it may be Morningside Drive, according to a comment in a related Barron’s blog post.
The commenter also says the mansion was bought by LGHC LLC — the name of the mysterious LLC — which he says shares an address with Memphis law firm Burch,Porter & Johnson.
I did some digging myself. The law firm appears to be real, but a search for Morningside Drive in Memphis turns up only Morningside Street, which is definitely NOT a Steve Jobs kind of neighborhood judging by the Street View pictures.
I also searched local tax and property records for Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell and LGHC LLC, as well as several real estate sites and Zillow — turning up nothing.
Meanwhile, CNBC is reporting that it confirmed Jobs’ private Gulstream jet flew from San Jose to Memphis in late March, which fits the WSJ’s transplant timeframe.
Steve Jobs had a liver transplant about two months ago but is making a speedy recovery and will return to Apple in June, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Steve continues to look forward to returning at the end of June, and there’s nothing further to say,” Apple spokeswoman Katie Cotton told the Journal.
Jobs had the transplant in Tennessee and may return to work part time, the Journal said.
In January, Bloomberg News reported that Jobs was considering a liver transplant.
Jobs took six months medical leave in January, promising to return to work in June, but many have been pessimistic about his prospects.Jobs lost weight rapidly in 2008.
The Journal said Jobs had the surgery in Tennessee because of the state’s short waiting list — 48 days compared to 306 nationally. A cancer expert told the Journal that Jobs’ pancreatic cancer may have metastasized and spread to his liver, requiring a transplant.
Five-year survival rates for liver-transplants is about 75 percent, the Journal said. The survival rate of slow-growing tumors like Jobs’ — with or without liver surgery — is usually longer than a decade, the expert said.
The Journal said Jobs has been spotted at Apple’s HQ during his leave.
Apple may have contributed to iPhone 3G S activation delays Friday that have many device users hopping mad and may leave some customers without telephone service through the weekend.
An AppleInsider report during the day Friday indicated that Apple’s activation servers were under strain even greater than those Wednesday that made it difficult for some users to download and install the new 3.0 version of iPhone’s operating software.
Cult of Mac has learned that at least one customer, who pre-ordered a 3G S from the Apple website shortly after the device was announced on June 8, received a message from UPS on Monday this week saying that his order for the 3G S would be delivered on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, Apple sent him a message saying the courier had made a mistake. The UPS site Wednesday showed the delivery was delayed by request of the recipient, which, of course had not been the case. On Thursday, The ‘recipient request’ notice had been removed, though there was still no word on expected delivery.
It would appear from this user’s experience that Apple told UPS to delay iPhone 3G S shipments until Friday, the official release date.
Of course, it’s unclear whether early delivery of some customers’ phones would have affected the activation delays other users experienced Friday. iTunes gave many trying to activate their devices a message reading “Your activation requires additional time to complete. Due to the current activation volumes, it may take up to 48 hours to resolve your issue,” and many were quick to blame AT&T for the delay.
However it appears clear that Apple may have played a significant role — aside from being unprepared to meet activation demand through iTunes servers — in spoiling the launch of yet another of the company’s groundbreaking products.
A 14-year-old British girl owes her life to her iPod earbuds, which took a 300,000-volt surge when lightning struck.
Sophie Frost and her boyfriend huddled together under a tree near Essex during a storm when a bolt of lightning hit. Doctors say that Frost and her beau were saved because the massive surge took the shortest route to the ground — through her earbuds.
The four-day-old iPod (a gift from her grandmother), may have saved her life, but she still suffered severe burns that left tie-dye like patterns down her torso and legs and a perforated eardrum.
The teens were knocked unconscious by the jolt and hospitalized for burns but doctors believe they may heal without permanent scars.
Dr. Ian Cotton, a reader in electrical engineering at Manchester University, told the Daily Mail Sophie could have been saved by her iPod:
“If lightning hits a person it can do one of two things. It can go down the outside of the skin, which is more likely if someone is caught in a storm and their body is wet. Or it can puncture the skin and go into the body. Potentially a metal wire, which is highly conductive could divert the electricity away from the heart and save someone’s life.”
There have been some reports of iPods directing currents and harming wearers in storms, this seems to be the first time it saved someone’s life during a blitz.
Via Daily Mail, BBC
AT&T used its Facebook page to quash rumors about an iPhone tethering plan Friday.
Apple fan site Appmodo quoted “a source with AT&T” Friday, saying iPhone tethering would cost users an $55 a month and be available sometime in July.
UPDATE: MMS and tethering are now scheduled for September, according to a report at Appmodo, and tethering will cost an additional $55 per month on top of iPhone data plans.
At this writing AT&T has not issued a statement confirming or denying the report and a call to ATT media relations was not returned. (Thanks, Jason)
An admin for the Facebook account made a status update saying, “There are a lot of reports out there, but wanted you guys to know that rumors of $55 tethering plan on top of an unlimited data plan are false,” says the AT&T statement. “We’ll have more news to share when the iPhone tethering option is closer to launch.”
Calls to AT&T were unreturned Friday afternoon, but Mark Siegel, AT&T executive director for media relations told Cult of Mac on Thursday the company would offer a tethering plan “in the future,” without giving details of pricing or a date certain.
iFixit CEO Kyle Weins flew to London Thursday to be one of the first people in line at Apple’s Regent Street store and picked up a spankin’ new iPhone 3G S for the sole purpose of tearing the mother down.
Once again, using only a heat gun or hair dryer, a Phillips #00 screwdriver, a small suction cup and a spudger, you too, could get into Apple’s latest smartphone/mobile computing device — if such was your idea of entertainment.
iFixit is widely regarded as the best teardown artists in the biz and this item certainly burnishes that reputation, with detailed notes and photos showing the engineering minutiae of what may become Apple’s most popular product ever.
Apple promises faster speed and longer battery life with the 3G S iPhone, but early notes on the teardown indicate a battery with only 6% more ‘oomph’ than the one in the 3G, using a battery with 1219mAh as opposed to 1150mAh in the 3G. The main Samsung CPU is capable of 833MHz, which appears to confirm Apple’s marketing that says the ‘S’ in the 3G S stands for ‘speed’.
See another excellent teardown and parts analysis from the fearless tech wizards at Rapid Repair, but remember the old adage: ‘don’t try this at home’ — unless you don’t care about voiding your warranty.
Not content to sit back and enjoy the many feature upgrades of iPhone 3.0’s official release, iPhone users worldwide exchanged various methods for enabling tethering on their phones Thursday, pulling an end-around on carriers who failed to have tethering plans in place for Wednesday’s release of the new firmware.
Even prior to the official release of the new operating software for Apple’s popular mobile devices Wednesday, 9 to 5 Mac had published detailed instructions for enabling tethering, which AT&T – iPhone’s exclusive carrier in the US – does not at present officially support.
In response to questions about tethering with iPhone 3.0, Mark Siegel, AT&T’s Executive Director of Media Relations told Cult of Mac Thursday “anything to do with the software and what it can or can’t do is an area that Apple needs to comment on.” He had no further comment from AT&T regarding tethering on the iPhone, other than to reiterate that “We will offer a tethering plan in the future but have not set a date at this time.”
Tethering is a process that allows two devices to share an internet connection over a carrier’s data network, seen in many cases as preferable to using insecure public WiFi connections. Carriers typically offer tethering plans that increase a customer’s monthly spend from between $15 and $30 per month for the access to extra data, which can be limited to 500MB on the low end of the price range, up to unlimited extra data at the high end.
AT&T at present already charges iPhone customers $30 per month over and above the cost of a calling plan for “unlimited data,” which many believe is exorbitant in the light of how much data a user typically accesses with normal browsing and emailing on the phone.
Be sure to let us know in comments below if you’ve downloaded the config files necessary to enable tethering on your phone, whether tethering is an important option for you to have, and what you’d be willing to pay to have it legitimately.
Art students at Catholic Memorial High School in Waukesha, Wisconsin have hung out their works as iPhone wallpaper to help fund arts education.
The student art gallery, at the moment a little sparse with just 10 works, is available as wallpaper for $0.99 on iTunes. The CMHS app was created by Start Mobile, the folks behind many wallpaper apps from Shepard Fairey to Drop Dead Sexy Devils, who agreed to donate the proceeds.
“Raising the money to fully fund our school’s budgets is increasingly difficult in this challenging economy,” said Kathleen Hanlon Sampon, an art teacher at CMHS. “The added income from this innovative opportunity will help to ensure the ongoing strength of our department.”
The school’s 770 students are currently able to choose from 15 art courses per year ranging from studio arts to digital imagery.
AT&T announced limited changes to its general upgrade policy Wednesday, extending ‘eligibility’ for subsidized pricing on the new iPhone 3G S to some current customers who signed service contracts on the 3G model less than one year ago.
The changes come in response to the great number of complaints that arose after the company announced subsidized pricing on the new iPhone ($199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB) would only be extended to new customers signing a two year service commitment and to current customers who are ‘eligible’ for a hardware upgrade when they want to purchase a new 3G S model.
The standard upgrade policy has always been vague, with AT&T allowing only that “In general, the more a customer spends with us, the quicker they become eligible for a price break on a new device.”
The announcement released Wednesday stated “iPhone customers who spend more than $99 a month per line with us generally are eligible for an upgrade between 12 and 18 months into their contract,” which is vague enough, but the company will offer, beginning Thursday June 18, subsidized pricing on new iPhone 3G S phones to “customers who are upgrade eligible in July, August or September 2009.”
Further confusing the issue, AT&T offers “early” upgrade pricing of $299 (16GB) and $399 (32GB) for the 3G S model to customers who qualify. The company has an upgrade eligibility wizard on its site that tells current customers when they are eligible to different hardware options based on its secret algorithm weighing length of AT&T contract, how much money a customer spends per month, possibly one’s credit score, etc.
Always on the lookout for cheap, do-it-yourself iPhone crafts, this combo stand/charger dock from a stack of old CDs is one more way to prop up your device without depleting your wallet.
Jules made it from CDs (you’ll need about 15 total), he notes that you can use DVDs, too and that the dock will work for iPods as well.
The iPhone stands tall over the shiny stack of CDs while plugged into the charging cord.
The CD stand is bit more challenging to make than the rubber band and pencil version we wrote about awhile back — you’ll need a small rotary tool to cut the CDs so you can anchor the charging cord properly — but a nice way to do something with those old CDs.
Full how-to at Geeky Gadgets
Queensland University of Technology, one of the largest universities in Australia, has published health and safety concerns about Apple Macintosh glass or high gloss monitor screens, and recommends students and school employees “consider the purchase of other types of monitors which are not high gloss.”
Because reflections on the screens “could cause the operator to adopt awkward postures when viewing the monitor screen and using related equipment,” which awkward poatures “may in turn lead to an injury,” health and safety officials at the university have come out against the controversial Apple products and published detailed computer safety guidelines for members of the university community.
Howls of protest among many users accompanied Apple’s decision to discontinue matte screen options for its monitor products in 2007, largely from professional photographers and other users who process graphic images in their work, despite some who believe the glossy surface produces more saturated colours, deeper contrast, and sharper images than traditional matte displays.
Asked what might have spurred the university to publish an official position in the matter, Cult of Mac contacts in Australia pointed out that Australian employers must provide workers’ compensation for injuries sustained in the workplace under strict government regulations, and speculated that “the university is playing it safe, so that it can never be said that it did not advise against the use of gloss screens.”
Gives a whole new meaning to “protect and defend,” doesn’t it?
[MacMatte]
Before you rush out and buy that brand new iPhone 3G S, consider the suggestions here. For some iPhone 3G owners, the 3G S may be unnecessary. For those who simply cannot wait read on, because there are ways to minimize the overall cost of the upgrade. In fact, you may even turn a profit.
The iPhone 3G S will be subsidized by AT&T for qualified customers ($199 for the 16 GB model and $299 for the 32 GB model). Unfortunately, if you currently own an iPhone 3G you are not a qualified customer because you entered into a two-year contract with AT&T last year. Unsubsidized, the iPhone 3G S is priced at an exorbitant $599 and $699 (plus the $18 setup fee).
AT&T is probably not going to alter its stance on the matter because, like it or not, offering subsidized phones only to new customers is standard industry practice. If you are an existing iPhone 3G owner, and do not have money to burn, consider all your options after the jump.
A new Mac Trojan has been spotted “in the wild” on a porno website, prompting a wave of misleading and inaccurate Mac malware stories.
A Trojan named OSX/Jahlav-C has been spotted on a porno website (xhottube.net), the British security group Sophos said on Friday.
In a blog post about the virus, Sophos also mentioned an update to an email worm called OSX/Tored-A, which has prompted news organizations to warn of renewed malware attacks against Macs.
But only the OSX/Jahlav-C is in the wild, and even Sophos described the OSX/Tored-A as “lame.”
The new OSX/Jahlav-C Trojan infects Macs when visitors to the “hardcore” porno website try to watch the site’s main video. They are prompted to download a “missing Video ActiveX Object” but are infected with the OSX/Jahlav-C Trojan instead, says Sophos.
The social engineering here isn’t very sophisticated — ActiveX is associated with Windows. In addition, it’s unclear what the OSX/Jahlav-C Trojan actually does. Sophos says “it will eventually run a Perl script that uses http to communicate with a remote website and download code supplied by the attacker.”
What that code does, Sophos doesn’t say. Apparently, it hasn’t executed the Perl script yet. Sophos rates the Trojan as low to medium risk.
“Although there is only a tiny amount of Mac malware compared to Windows viruses, that’s going to be little consolation if your gorgeous new MacBook gets infected,” said a sarcastic post on the company blog. “And sadly we know that many Mac users still believe they are somehow magically immune from attacks.”
The company made a condescending video demonstrating the attack (posted after the jump) — “Is it safe to surf for porn on an Apple Mac?”
UPDATE: ParetoLogic, a Canadian anti-virus company, is also warning about OSX/Jahlav-C. The Trojan is associated with PornTube, says MacNN.
UPDATE 2: Reader Scam Finder says the Trojan doesn’t exist on the xhottube site. Scam Finder tried to purposely infect his Mac but failed. See the comment below.
Safari 4 has been downloaded 11 million times is the first three days of release, Apple said in a press release on Friday — and 6 million of those were on Windows. There’s more Windows users running Apple’s browser than Mac users.
Eleven million downloads in three days is quite impressive, but not a record. In June last year, Mozilla set a Guinness World Record with 8 million downloads of Firefox 3 in one day — the most downloaded software in 24 hours.
Apple claims Safari 4 is the fastest, most innovative browser available (It executes JavaScript nearly 8x faster than IE 8 and loads HTML web pages more than 3x faster than IE 8, Apple claims).
The browser will get better with the release of Snow Leopard in September. Says Apple:
“In Mac OS X Snow Leopard, available later this year, Safari runs as a 64-bit application, boosting the performance of the Nitro JavaScript engine by up to 50 percent. Snow Leopard makes Safari more resistant to crashes by running plug-ins in a separate process, so even if a plug-in crashes, Safari continues to run and the user simply has to reload the affected page. Safari running on Snow Leopard also delivers HTTP streaming, making it easy to deliver high-quality audio and video in industry standard formats from any web server without the need for browser plug-ins.”
Safari 4 was officially launched on Monday at WWDC, but had been widely available for months as a beta.
Despite the great hue and cry that arose Monday in the wake of the news that AT&T will not be among the 22 worldwide carriers to support tethering when iPhone 3.0 debuts, a wonderfully snarky how-to from 9to5 Mac spells out step-by-step instructions for getting your tether on today, for free, regardless of whether AT&T wants you to, without jailbreaking your iPhone.
In fact, the process only works with un-jailbroken iPhones legitimately registered for service with AT&T in the US.
Two important things you need to be aware of before you consider sticking it to the AT&T man:
1. You have to be running iPhone OS 3.0, which, obviously, has not been released officially but which is widely available if you know where to look. A very good place to start would be right here.
2. You have to be running the very first pre-release version of iTunes 8.2, which is more difficult to get ahold of but, depending on just how deep your enmity for AT&T runs, is also out there hiding in plain view.
Beyond that, it’s just a matter of refusing to accept the proposition that you can’t do anything you want to do with something you’ve bought and paid for just because a couple major corporations don’t want you to feel so empowered.
As with anything satisfying in Life, there are risks, but to those who are willing to bear them go the richest rewards.
See 9to5 Mac for further details.
It looks like somebody may have purposely arranged these two magazines in a retail rack to make a point, but credit Flickr user Nep Smith for ferreting out an interesting symbiosis between issues of PC World and Macworld back in October of 2006.
Given the growth Apple has seen since then, it would appear plenty of others may have noticed the writing on the wall as well.
The “sealed” battery in Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Pro is easily replaced with standard screwdrivers, a teardown by iFixit shows.
The MacBook battery is not supposed to be changed by the user. Sealed inside the case, Apple encourages customers to pay Apple $130 to change the battery and dispose of the old one.
However, the battery is easily accessed with a standard Phillips screwdriver, and the battery removed with a tri-wing screwdriver, iFixit found when dissassmbling the device on Tuesday.
In addition, iFixit notes that the single audio jack (see post below) is innapropriate for a “Pro” machine. The jack supports analog and digital audio-out, and analog audio-in, but not digital audio-in.
“If you need digital audio-in, this is not the machine for you.” said iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens in an email.
Wiens also said the MBP’s new SD card slot is “rather unimaginative.”
“Half the card hangs outside the computer,” said Wiens. “Apparently, Apple couldn’t free up enough space for a slot that would make the card completely captive.”
Wiens notes the battery is beefier (360 grams, about 60 grams heavier than the old one), but is rated 60 Watt-hours, compared to the older battery’s 45 W-h. Apple claims the battery will last for 7 hours. The previous MacBook’s battery was rated 5 hours (yeah, right!)
More details and pictures from iFixit after the jump.
It’s official — Steve Jobs will be back to work as planned at the end of June.
Speaking at WWDC, Apple’s top marketing executive, Phil Schiller, reiterated the company’s line that Jobs will be returning to Apple at the end of this month after six month’s medical leave.
“That’s still our statement,” said Schiller, who is Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing.
As one of Apple’s top executives, Schiller’s word is as good as gospel.
It’s not the first time the company has said Jobs will returning to work in June. At Apple’s annual shareholders’ meeting in late February, the company said he planned to return to work this month.
Meanwhile, Jobs has been deeply involved in the company even while on leave.
“These products have been in development for a while, so of course Steve has been very involved in them all along,” said Schiller. “You could say that Steve has stayed on top of some of the key strategic things at Apple throughout [his leave].”
Jobs unexpectedly took medical leave in January, saying his declining health was “more complex” that previously believed. He said at the time he would be returning in June, but his rapid weight loss in 2008 and various conflicting statements about his health has led many to be pessimistic about his prospects of returning to work.
UPDATE: The security lock on this device does not block the SuperDrive. See our review
Eagle-eyed reader Ronald Kang thinks the new 13-inch MacBook Pro may have some design problems.
Poring over pictures of the machine on Apple’s website, Kang is worried about two things: the Kensington Security Slot blocking the Superdrive; and the single audio I/O jack, which makes the machine unsuitable for “Pro” audio recording.
