News - page 2368

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.

Link: Daily Telegraph.

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.

Apple has cut the price on previous-generation notebook computers buy hundreds of dollars, looking to get rid of end-of-life stock before the arrival of new machines for retail distribution later this month.

13-inch MacBook prices have been slashed by $100 to $300, previous-generation MacBook Airs by $400 to $800, and previous-generation MacBook Pros by $400 to $500, though not all Apple Stores may have all models in stock at the discounted prices.

In all, nine previous Mac notebook configurations are being offered with end-of-life pricing.

If you don’t happen to live near an Apple retail store, see this handy online price guide (scroll down to see end-of-life pricing on discontinued models).

Reports indicate that even the new notebooks may be had at significant discounts to Apple’s announced pricing at resellers such as ClubMac, which is offering online retailer’s rebates with special coupons that knock an additional 3% off the cost of the just-announced machines.

[AppleInsider]

My real life, I’m a Mac moment.

So I’m siting on an airplane trying to leave DC yesterday, after three hours on the tarmac, and the flight attendants bringing us “Apple Juice” (really just Jack Daniels), even the most stone-faced folks with their noses in books will get chatty. He tells me where he works, they’re a client, I tell him where I work, and so on.

After take off, he sees me trying to watch Lonesome Dove on my ipod and mentions he has a splitter and did I want to watch a movie on his computer. Sure I say.

Well that’s when the fun starts, his computer takes like 10 minutes to boot, Windows had a hard-crash he says. then when the movie starts, it’s all stuttery and such,we try to watch for like 10 minutes, and finally I mention, hey, you wanna try mine? He says, sure, may as well…

I pull out the 17inch Macbook Pro, like it was the gold artifact in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, his eyes go wide, I open the lid, it’s on instantly, I’ve got like half a dozen spreadsheets and documents open, it doesn’t matter, I pop the movie in, it starts right up, as a final floursih I produce my remote control, and set it next to him, “You Drive,” I said.

The punchline: My new friend, is a senior executive at Dell.

The Movie, Lakeview Terrace, not so awesome.

My I’m a Mac Moment, Priceless.

Sound off and share your “I’m a Mac Moments” in the comments, I’ll pull them together into a best of post later in the week!

Sebastiaan de With, a Dutch artist from Groningen, The Netherlands goes by the username Icon Designer on Flickr. He’s in San Francisco this week for WWDC and has promised to do a give away on his blog while he’s in town for Apple’s hit developer’s conference.

Definitely a distinctive entry in the ever-popular ‘exploded’ graphic design style.

The latest developer build of Snow Leopard and the iPhone 3.0 OS software (which aqllows tethering) are available on the Bittorrent file-sharing network.

Programmers at WWDC got the latest version of Snow Leopard on a DVD, but now the same build (10a380) is available on Bittorrent. The build is 5.84GB and will require a dual layer DVD burner to install. Apple said on Monday the developer build of Snow Leopard is “near complete,” but will likely see extensive changes between now and September, when it will be officially released.

Likewise, the final version of the iPhone 3.0 OS — which will be available officially next week on June 17 — can be downloaded from the file-sharing networks. And for some inexplicable reason, the software supports tethering.

The 3.0 software can be easily installed via iTunes onto an iPhone or iPod touch. However, users have to download the correct version of the software for their device. That is, the firmware for the original iPhone will not work on the iPhone 3G. The 9to5 website says the software may make it harder to unlock the phone’s SIM. In the comments, the site’s readers report no major problems installing or running the software.

“It works fine,” said one commenter. “You can upgrade your current 2.0 firmware in iTunes and not lose any data – all my apps still work perfectly and the phone has been running fine all day (installed last night), snappier than before even. seem to be losing the cool ‘fade’ action you get when quitting an app a lot of the time though.”

Previous developer builds of the 3.0 software have been available on Bittorrent for some time, but installing it required registering the device’s ID through a developer’s account. The latest OS build however does not require device registration, and is said to the same software that will be officially available next week.

NOTE: Only a desperate freak installs dodgy software off the internet onto their cell phone just a week before getting it officially, and for free. Proceed at your own risk.

One day after Apple’s triumphant WWDC, angry iPhone users are burning up Twitter with invective aimed at AT&T.

Twitter users are complaining in their thousands about the ways AT&T has dropped the ball: no iPhone 3G S subsidy for current iPhone customers; and no support for important new features like MMS and tethering when the new iPhone launches on June 19.

The #attfail hashtag is attracting many of the complaints about missing features and upgrades, as is the #iphone3gs hashtag, and AT&T’s official corporate account. Hundreds of complaints are being sent directly to the account, and there appears to be no messages at all defending the company.

Meanwile, a pair of Twitter petitions, or “twititions,” are hoping to pressure AT&T and 02, the UK iPhone carrier, to offer “reasonable upgrade prices” for current iPhone 3G customers.

The O2 twitition has attracted about 2,500 signatures by Tuesday afternoon (PST), and the AT&T twitition about 1,500. The AT&T twitition was started later in the day, but both are spreading fast through retweets.

An Arizona man with a video business wonders whether  indiscreet Tweets cost him a Mac Book Pro,  plus monitors and printer while on vacation.

“My wife thinks it could be a random thing, but I just have my suspicions,” Israel Hyman told the AP. “They didn’t take any of our normal consumer electronics.”

While he and his wife were on a trip to Kansas City, Hyman sent updates to around 2,000 followers on Twitter.

The timely thieves left behind an Xbox 360, a Wii and, fortunately, the Drobo where his Time Machine backup was housed. His later tweets note that they also left  a “too old” Macbook Pro behind — well, at least he has something to work on while police search for the criminals.

It’s hard to know police will be able to pin the crime to Twitter but keeping schtum about going on vacation — whether digitally or verbally — is kind of common sense.

What’s your social media vacation policy?

Stood in line last year to buy an iPhone 3G, and count yourself a loyal Apple customer? Well, we’re all idiots, because Apple and AT&T just fucked us royally.

The iPhone 3G S is not going to be subsidized for current iPhone 3G customers. If you bought an iPhone 3G last year, the new iPhone is going to cost you $499 for the entry-level 8GB model, $599 for the 16GB version, and $699  for the 32GB.

Don’t believe me? Here it is in black and white on Apple’s website, literally buried in the fine print:

“For non-qualified customers, including existing AT&T customers who want to upgrade from another phone or replace an iPhone 3G, the price with a new two-year agreement is $499 (8GB), $599 (16GB), or $699 (32GB).”

Whether this applies to iPhone 3G customers after July 11, 2009 — the one year anniversary of the iPhone 3G launch — is unclear. Last year when the iPhone 3G went on sale, Apple and AT&T offered subsidized pricing to owners of the original iPhone (and had owned it for a year).

The prices advertised during today’s WWDC keynote — $199 (16GB) and $299 (32GB) — applies to “new and qualifying customers,” which apparently doesn’t include current iPhone 3G customers. I’ve put in a call to AT&T for an explanation.

UPDATE: AppleInsider suggests that AT&T will offer subsidized pricing for iPhone 3G customer after a year of ownership — I think. It is not 100% clear to me that this is what AT&T is saying.

UPDATE 2: I just checked Apple’s online eligibility tool, and it says I must currently pay the full retail price, but on July 30, I “may qualify for a standard iPhone upgrade.” What this means is also unclear. Is it the full $200 subsidy? I bought my iPhone 3G in late July, a couple of weeks after its debut. See the screenshot below.

UPDATE 3: iPhone 3G customers are eligible for the full upgrade price after about 18 months, reports Ars Technica, which spoke to an AT&T spokesman. Depends on the account. For those of us who bought the iPhone 3G in July, we likely won’t qualify for the full discount until December. Arse. It’s actually cheaper to cancel your current plan, pay the ~$175 penalty, and sign up as a brand new customer. That’s not how to treat early adopters. Where’s the nearest Sprint store?

As well as faster hardware and a better camera, the new iPhone 3GS has a surprise feature that totally sells it for me: an oleophobic coating that makes the screen resistant to face oil and fingerprints.

“The display also features an oil-resistant coating that keeps the iPhone screen clean,” says Apple on a new iPhone 3GS technology webpage.

Oleophobic coatings are used in some sunglasses, making them resistant to greasy fingers, oily faces and dust.

A Japanese iPhone accessory maker, New Sharp Image, offers an oil-reistant screen protector for the iPhone and other devices.

Apple fans are generally pleased with Snow Leopard and the new iPhone 3GS but are disappointed Steve Jobs didn’t make a surprise appearance at WWDC.

“Despite Snow Leopard, OS 3.0 and the new iPhone 3GS, what i really wanted to see was Steve Jobs healthy and onstage,” tweeted AppsAddicts.

“Dammmn, We miss Steve Jobs. This keynote sucked,” said mumph.

Steve Jobs’ absence prompted many to wonder about his health, and whether he would return to Apple at the end of the month as the comapny has indicated. One Apple fan compared Jobs to the elusive Osama Bin Laden.

“Where’s Steve Jobs? Keeping his death a secret like bin Laden?” tweeted brokenalice.

Fans also complained about the lack of a forward-facing camera on the new iPhone, which had been widely rumored, and no iTablet.

It may not be everything many people were hoping for, but Apple announced a new iPhone Monday at WWDC, the iPhone 3GS.

“The S stands for speed,” said Phil Schiller, Apple CIO, telling the keynote crowd, “It’s the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet. What’s inside is entirely new. It’s a REALLY fast iPhone. Everything you do will have incredible speedups.”

The new hardware looks very similar to the current 3G model, but sports a 3 megapixel autofocus camera with video capability.

The new camera is not forward-facing as many hoped it might be, but its autofocus features a cool tap-to-focus functionality. Tap on the part of the photo you want to focus on, and it automatically focuses to that point of the image. It also automatically handles exposure and white balance. It’s got better low-light sensitivity and an auto-macro feature, with the ability to focus on things as close as 10cm away.

The phone’s camera application has a switch that swaps between still photo and video mode, supporting 30FPS, VGA with audio, auto-focus, auto-white balance and auto-exposure.

Other performance upgrades include:

• voice control: “Call Scott Forstall” — if there is more than one entry, it will ask which one you want (i.e. home, office, etc) — or for the iPod function: “play The Killers”
• digital compass: the compass app shows your orientation, has integration with Maps — if you double click, the map will reorientate itself
• new accessibility options — VoiceOver for content and controls, zooming, color inversion, mono audio, etc.
• instant remote wipe
• encrypted iTunes backups
• business friendly data encryption
• promised improved battery life. The iPhone will now get up to 9 hours of internet surfing, 10 hours of video, 30 hours of audio, 12 hours of 2g talk-time, 5 hours of 3g talk-time, which, if true, is a major upgrade.

The iPhone 3GS will be available June 19th in two models: $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB. The existing 8GB 3G model will remain available and sell for $99 beginning today.

No company does product release hype and tease like Apple.

First Scott Forstall, Apple’s iPhone VP ran through the numbers: 1,000,000 SDK downloads, 50,000 Apps on the App Store, 40M iPhones/iPod Touches sold, 1B+ apps downloaded.

Cue to the inspirational video of iPhone developers telling their stories. Not a dry eye in the house. Finish with quick cuts of customers naming their favorite apps…

All of setting the stage for announcement of the update to iPhone’s operating system, 3.0. It’s got 100 new features including the long-awaited cut, copy and paste functionality, which works across applications, landscape mode for Mail, Notes and Messages, and shake to undo.

Another much anticipated feature, MMS, will be supported in 76 countries by 29 cellular service providers at launch, though iPhone’s US carrier, AT&T won’t be quite ready for it until ‘the end of summer.’ It’s a really sad thing how US technology behemoths can’t seem to get in step, isn’t it?

Further adding to AT&T’s impression as an albatross around Apple’s neck, Forstall had to admit the US carrier is not among the 22 worldwide that will support tethering in iPhone 3.0, which will allow users to share a network connection with Macs and PCs, wired over USB, or wireless with Bluetooth. It’s a seamless experience, with no need to run any software once it’s turned on. And it won’t be available to customers in Apple’s largest market.

Snow Leopard — Apple’s next major operating system update, which looks friggin’ awesome — will cost just $29 for current Leopard users.

Apple usually charges $130 for major operating system upgrades, but Apple says it wants to encourage everyone to upgrade. Snow Leopard will be available in Septmeber (developers at WWDC get a near-finished version today.)

Snow Leopeard will run on all Intel hardware, even the older stuff, and includes a ton of under-the-hood tweaks and improvements. At WWDC, Apple’s top software honcho, Bertrand Serlet, demonstrated a ton of cool speed enhancements and nice interface tweaks, including a sleek update of QuickTime. Serlet showed how Snow Leopard will double the speed of some tasks while trimming about 6GBytes of disk space.

A family pack will cost $49.

Apple’s first big product announcement at Monday’s WWDC Keynote was an all-new 15″ MacBook with an all-new display and built-in battery.

Starting at $1699, the new notebook computer is the fastest notebook Apple has ever made. With up to 3.06 Dual Core CPU, up to 8GB of RAM, and up to 500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive, the device also comes with an optional 256GB Solid State Drive.

The audience at WWDC could hardly contain itself as Apple CIO Phil Schiller continued to detail upgrades to the company’s entire notebook line: The 17″ MacBook Pro has also been updated — 2.8GHz CPU, 500GB HD; it retains the ExpressCard Slot.

The biggest news, however could be the new 13″ notebook. The 13″ MacBook is now called a MacBook Pro. It starts at $1,199. Cheaper than the MacBook it replaces, it gets the new display specs, an SD card slot and Firewire is back! Ranges from $1,199 to $1,499 in standard configurations.

All products are shipping today.

The number of Mac users has tripled in the last two years, Phil Schiller just said at WWDC.

There were 25 million active OS X users in first 5 years of OS X, up until 2007, Schiller said. But in the last two years, however, it has grown to 75 million.

“We’ve TRIPLED the number of users,” he said to big applause. “It’s astounding.”

Sprint and the Palm Pre got all the ink and media attention, but a far more dazzling technological breakthrough also made its debut this past Saturday: the world’s first ‘Digital Superbike,’ the MotoCzysz E1pc.

Among the astonishing things about Michael Czysz’s invention — it’s a zero emissions racing bike with no gas, no oil, no clutch, no need to even warm up the engine (there is none) — it uses an Apple iPhone for its in-dash instrumentation.

MotoCzysz has made public no details exactly how the iPhone operates with the bike, but it is set to race in the world’s oldest motorcycle race, the Isle of Man TT, on June 12, after which we’ll hopefully learn more about it.

For now, we can just gaze in wonder at this American-made beauty and simply guess at the reasons why it doesn’t sport a Blackberry Storm or an Android G1.

[Via Engadget]

The line for this morning’s Schillernote at WWDC was already several blocks long before the first light of dawn. See the pictures on Flickr and reports on Twitter. Compare to this unintentionally hilarious collection of pre-dawn Palm Pre lineup photos.

Talking of Twitter, there’s been several tweets saying Steve Jobs has been spotted at WWDC.

However, it looks like a false rumor that’s spreading fast. Most of the Twitter sightings seem to be a retweet of a tweet by Michael Fey, known as MrRooni, who said: “Holy damn I just saw Steve Jobs walk through Moscone! #wwdc.”

‘I’m guessing, but MrRooni’s tweet looks like a joke to me. But now the joke is spreading, and others are treating it as real.

Spatial View, the company that launched the Wazabee 3Dee shell, a cool protective case with removable lens for viewing 3D content on Apple’s iPhone, has announced the release of an SDK and interlacing software to enable third party developers to create and view applications for Apple’s mobile devices in vivid 3D.

The Wazabee 3DeeInterlacing SDK contains tools for developers to create 3D content for the iPhone, including a runtime component that allows games and applications to run in 3D when using the 3DeeShell. The 3DeeInterlacer enables content creators, licensees and production houses to interlace existing content and distribute it for display on 3DeeShell-enabled iPhones. Both run on Mac OS X and are available to download for free at the Wazabee site.

Many are predicting that 3D, long a source of curiosity but plagued by the need for special glasses to view it, will be the next big thing in multimedia. With more and more applications and hardware being developed to support 3D viewing, it should be interesting to see the mobile games and content developers will produce with the Spatial View SDK.

[IntoMobile]