As has been reported widely, Apple’s iPhone Update 1.1.1 makes it again impossible to use an iPhone on any network other than AT&T and eliminates third-party applications installed through the so-called Jailbreak hack. The update, which introduces the WiFi iTunes Store to the iPhone, enables TV-out and some basic usability features, like double-tapping the home button to get to phone-call favorites.

On one level, I’m not that bugged by this behavior. After all, Apple issued a huge warning that installing the update could render unlocked phones inoperable and “might” stop third-party applications from functioning. I’m sure AT&T has been screaming at Apple to close down the unlock loophole since it hit a month ago, and Apple earns part of the revenue from iPhone service plans.

On the other hand, this is incredibly anti-consumer behavior. Most formerly unlocked iPhones now won’t even work on AT&T. They’re useless bricks (only unlocks from iPhoneSimFree can work again with AT&T). Why shouldn’t an iPhone be able to operate like an iPod Touch if, for some reason, the SIM card isn’t functioning? Why should it be a brick. People have paid good money for it. This is Apple bending over backward to please a partner notorious for ignoring consumer interests.

Worse still is the removal (they were scrubbed off of phones) of all third-party software. What possible reason does Apple have for this other than an insistence on total control? That’s as bad or worse than the mobile service carriers themselves.

Obviously, wait to upgrade if you’re unlocked to see if the hackers can stay ahead of Apple in the “cat and mouse” game that Steve Jobs described the other week. Does this bug everyone else as much as me?

Via Compiler 

Last December, we shared with the world the notMac Challenge, a contest to create a complete, free replacement for Apple’s frustratingly over-priced .Mac Internet service. Now, competing for a prize of $8,500, Ben Spink (of CrushFTP fame) has submitted a contender to the challenge, almost 9 months later. CrushFTP actually features prominently in the suite, but with a few UI tweaks to more closely take the place of .Mac. The current beta is available here. The judging of the contest will continue through Sunday, so download now if you want your voice to be heard.

It’s looking good right now. I mainly want this effort to succeed so Apple will just make .Mac free again, as happened once the XPonMac project successfully enabled dual boot on Intel Macs about five seconds before Boot Camp rolled out the door.

Love to hear your thoughts on the beta, folks.

As I noted back in June, NBC’s new series “Chuck,” which premiered last night, features Macs galore, including the above Mac Plus, the thinly disguised most powerful computer in the world.

“Chuck” is a cute little show, but the Macs are mostly more interesting than the action. You can see the show in full online here.

Macs are quite famous for holding their value and lasting longer than Windows PCs. The resale value of an Apple machine is higher both for its style and its durability. This is especially true for Mac product lines that have no true replacements. For a few years after they were discontinued, Power Mac Cubes consistently fetched higher-than-expected prices on Ebay.

What does that mean in light of this week’s renewed rumors of an amazing thin, light, aluminum and tiny Macbook? Take your 12″ Powerbooks and unload them now. I’m an owner of such a machine (and will be selling it as soon as I replace the hard drive), and the market is great right now — $400-plus for four-year-old Powerbooks. The machines have special cachet, because they were significantly lighter than any current Mac portables. I know a lot of people who have been refusing to upgrade because there just isn’t a machine that meets their needs.

But if the rumors popping up all over 9to5Mac are even close to right — especially if there are new MacBooks announced the day of Leopards release — the market for those glorious Baby Powerbooks is going to deflate as soon as the new machines get announced. There’s still plenty of doubt for the time-being — some think the new machines won’t even have DVD drives. What do fear, uncertainty and doubt lead to? Higher resale prices for the existing and reliable. Gentlemen, start your auctions!

Image via LowEndMac.

The biggest concern everyone had when Apple announced it would shift Macs to Intel chips from the PowerPC platform was whether third-party software companies (actually, just Adobe and Microsoft) would make the switch along with the computers. After all, it was Adobe and Microsoft’s unwillingness to develop versions of Photoshop and MS Office for Rhapsody that scuttled Apple’s first attempt to transform NeXT’s OPENStep into a next-generation Mac OS.

Adobe Creative Suite 3 brought the essential creative applications to Intel Macs at native speed, and now Microsoft is nearly ready to bring the essential productivity bundle along for the party. Though it won’t ship until January, Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit is currently previewing the software at a Mac Office website — and hey, it looks a lot like the iPhone site!

All in all, it looks most like Microsoft trying to do Pages and Keynote while leaving in all the complexity. The interface still feels off (especially with Leopard coming before this), but you can tell they’re trying. And it’s about time the last excuse to not switch to an Intel Mac got polished off.

From everything I can tell, there’s nothing Mac-specific about the suite other than the interface and a few Automator workflows. It’s basically Office 2007 a year late and Windows-free. The YouTube video above shows the newly integrated SmartArt features that rapidly transform data into graphs.

Office 2008, featuring Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage, is $400 in full or a $280 upgrade.

Office 2008 for the Mac Home and Student Edition, which drops Exchange support in Entourage and Automator workflows, is $150. Seriously. Corporate e-mail support costs $250 a head. Who knew?

Office 2008 Special Media Edition costs $500 or $300 for an upgrade and throws in MS’s Expression Media, a digital asset management tool on top of the standard bundle.

In case we had all lost track of the Macintosh with such fascinating news popping in the world of iTunes, the iPhone and the iPod, ThinkSecret emerges to remind us that Leopard, the next major update to Mac OS X is dropping in less than a month, on Oct. 7. The gallery has some more of the gorgeous icons Apple is unleashing for the OS, as well as screenshots of some details that haven’t previously been available.

Hands up, who’s upgrading on day one?

A couple of things that didn’t quite fit into my analysis of Amazon’s new MP3 service that I find interesting and/or ironic.

• Amazon’s No. 1 download in its first day? Feist’s “1234,” which Apple has made a hit as the theme song for the video iPod nano commercials. The tune ranks third on the iTunes Store.
• Radiohead’s entire catalog is available on AmazonMP3 for $8.99 per album. The band (which is my favorite) pulled out of iTunes because Apple refused to sell the group’s music as entire albums, insisting on track-by-track downloads.
• Number of songs in iTunes Top 10 available on Amazon MP3 on Day One: 7
• Number of those songs available without DRM on iTunes Plus: Zero (0)
• Number of those songs on Amazon available for 89 cents each: 7
• Number of top 10 albums on iTunes available on Amazon: 5
• Number of those albums available DRM-free on iTunes Plus: One.
• Number of songs written and performed by the Beatles available on either service: Zero

If you follow Apple for long enough, you’ll see a million toothless iTunes and iPod killers, overhyped services and products destined for obscurity or the remainder table. But though Amazon’s new mp3 downloading service seems like another in this chain, I firmly believe this time is different. Amazon can actually deliver a superior digital music experience. Apple has its first legitimate challenger since the iTunes Store first launched. To hear why, click through.

NBC has struck the most recent blow in the on-going, extremely catty break-up between the media giant and Apple, announcing it in November it would enable consumers to download “many of its most popular programs” for free. Provided they watch embedded ads that can’t be removed. On their computers. Within seven days of the air-date. When they self-destruct. No, I’m not kidding. As BuzzSugar puts it:

• The video will only work for a week after the episodes are broadcast.
• Only a limited number of shows will be available at the start, but at least they’re generally good ones: “Heroes,” “The Office,” “Life,” “Bionic Woman,” “30 Rock,” “Friday Night Lights,” “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”
• The content won’t be available to Mac users (um, take that, Apple?)

Now that’s got to have Apple quaking in its boots — the return of the original DiVX technology plan! Best of all, it’s Windows-only! So great! NBC does claim that its downloads will soon be compatible with iPods and Macs, and that it will eventually offer ad-free downloads that will be transferrable to other devices, but not until mid-2008.

Still, this is a fascinating twist. I can’t wait to see what comes next. The video download market is nowhere near as locked up as music is.

(Thanks, Kimra and Andrew!)

Wil Shipley, current Chief Monster of Delicious Monster and founder of Omni Group, is not pleased with Apple’s ringtone strategy on the iPhone.

Scratch that. He’s furious:

Not that, uh, we have to pay attention to what the record companies think is Not Allowed, because we have already licensed the song for playback on any device if we bought a CD — we are allowed to play it on our iPhone already. Just not in response to someone calling us. The record companies have MADE UP some new, retroactive copyright and Apple is enforcing it for them. The result is, a million customers don’t get to do something cool with their iPhones.

Because of greed.

Honestly, I can see Apple saying, “Well, you see, the record companies would have been upset with us if we hadn’t charged anything for ringtones.” Yah, well, that’s the price you get for engaging. The price for owning the distribution of the content and the hardware and the software is that you end up making compromises in the hardware and software in order to protect the content.

Yow. There’s a lot more through the link, so read on. This is some harsh language from a NeXT true believer, and it’s essential reading. I’ve been pretty upset about the iPhone ringtone system, but Shipley nails what’s wrong with it. Fantastic stuff.

Woz’s apparent girlfriend, Kathy Griffin, recently went on Larry King Live to talk about controversial remarks she made at the smaller awards ceremony that precede the main Primetime Emmy Awards. In the clip pasted above, she talks about her relationship with Woz, and the couple’s appearance on the red carpet is shown. Check it out.

By Appointment to Her Majesty The Queen, the Carphone Warehouse has a page up about the Royal iPhone.

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Following reports of Apple’s cutthroat tactics with potential UK wireless carriers, Steve Jobs said a great quote about corporate partnerships.

“Partnerships take a lot of work – you want to go out on a few dates before you get married. Yes, we dated a few people but didn’t get married… and so there were a few unhappy girlfriends out there.”

Link.

Photo from John Griffiths

As expected, Steve Jobs at a press conference in London this morning announced the UK iPhone will launch November 9th, use the O2 network, cost £269 and £35 a month for an unlimited data plan. The phone will be available at the Carphone Warehouse, at about 1,300 outlets.

The iPhone will be more expensive, £269= $537, and there’s no 3G — which is common in Europe. Jobs said it’s to save battery power. 3G chips would reduce battery life to just a couple of hours:

According to the Guardian’s liveblog:

“It’s pretty simple, says Jobs. “The chipsets work well apart from power. They’re real power hogs. Most phones now have battery lives of 2-3 hours and that’s due to these very power-hungry 3G chipsets. Our phone has 8 hours of talktime life. That’s really important when you start to use the internet and want to use the phone to listen to music. We’ve got to see the battery lives for 3G get back up into the 5+ hour range. Hopefully we’ll see that late next year. Rather than cut the battery life, we’ve included Wi-Fi and sandwiched 3G between Edge and a more efficient Wi-Fi.”

No announcement about other European countries, though it’s widely rumored it’ll be Orange in France and T-Mobile in Germany. Said Jobs: “We’ll be in a few countries in Europe in the next quarter.”

The European version of the iPhone looks like it’ll be available only in the UK and Germany at first, leaving iPhonophiles in other EU countries looking at unlocked iPhones as their best bet of getting their hands on a multitouch phone.

My friend Roger Aberg, who runs the MacFeber site, already has an unlocked iPhone he uses in Sweden. He has no problems with the device, he says, but he’s hoping the European iPhone will be upgraded to HSPDA — a super fast 3G standard that’s common in Europe.

Writes Roger in email: “People are a bit skeptic about the non-3G-part. I hope for a HSDPA-version (or turbo 3G) that is plenty faster and is pretty common here. Its 3.6 mbit (regular 3G is 0.3 mbit) and would be sweet on the iPhone! That would make me upgrade.”

However, some analysts don’t expect a 3G version of the iPhone until 2008 at the earliest, when Apple will introduce the iPhone to Asia.

If Apple delays the 3G iPhone, Europeans outside the UK or Germany looking for an unlocked iPhone might be best off shopping for one in the U.S. Thanks to the weakness of the dollar, and local European sales tax (or VAT, which can run to 25 percent in some European countries), Yankee iPhones will likely be cheaper — about $35 according to Roger.

O iPhoneless brethren, I feel your pain. None of us can afford the glorious device, despite our love for Apple. Fortunately, Paul Waite has created an amazing DIY music-playing PDA for the rest of us. All you need is a stack of index cards and an iPod shuffle. He calls it the Hipster PDA Shuffle, and the video introducing it is amazing. AMAZING.

(If you never saw the original, hysterical Hipster PDA article, get thee to 43 Folders!)

Interesting Apple analysis in the Sunday Times this week from the always-provocative Randall Stross. His thesis: That Apple has an unprecedented opportunity to gain on Windows while Vista is stinking up the joint — and they’re blowing it.

If you’re the owner of a Windows PC who is looking for a replacement computer, the choices are grim. You can step into the world of hurt that is Vista, the latest version of Microsoft Windows that was released in January. Or you can seek out a new machine that still comes loaded with the comparatively ancient Windows XP.

Maybe, you might say, the moment has arrived to take a look at the Mac. You can easily order one online, of course. But if you’d like to take a test-drive before you commit, odds are that you’ll have to look far and wide for a store that sells it. The Mac’s presence in the retail world remains limited, a shame given the rare opportunity for Apple to gain market share that opened up when Vista arrived.

In a lot of ways, this is a golden era to be a Mac owner and for Apple. With 185 fantastic retail stores worldwide, we can just walk in the door and see every product and service for Mac, iPod and iPhone in one place. But on the other hand, if you walk into any computer store in America, you’re way more likely to see HP, Sony, Toshiba, Lenovo and Acer machines on displays than anything from Apple other than the iPod. Mac sales are up right now — considerably so — but Macs are still niche and seem poised to remain there. It’s a terribly tricky problem, though. Part of Apple’s problems in the mid-’90s happened because of the company’s prominent place in mainstream stores — and thoroughly mediocre product and sales methods to match.

Is there an answer here that makes the Mac mainstream? I can’t see it. What say you?

Now that YouTube has set the tone for how short video clips should operate on the Internet, the race is on to define what the future of broadcasting might look like. The makers of Miro, a free, open-source Mac video player that’s near release-candidate readiness, suggest that it looks a lot like podcasting in iTunes.

The application, which is in universal binary, essentially aggregates channels of free TV that are open to the Internet, including public TV from all over the world. It can play virtually any video format, and it can also be fed BitTorrents and RSS feeds of TV shows from tvRSS. Basically, you can see anything ever when you want to, and download multiple streams from thousands of channels in the background. And it’s free. Some of it’s illegal, but a lot of it’s legit. In other words, it hints at what Internet-enabled TV should be like in the future. Any other Miro fans out there?

There’s a video that shows how it all works — it’s pretty incredible.

Thanks, Andrew!

Though no photos have surfaced yet, Entertainment Weekly reports that Emmys host Ryan Seacrest interviewed Kathy Griffin on the red carpet tonight, and a certain burly, bearded founder of Apple named Woz a few minutes ago. This is contrary to several denials of the relationship between Woz and Griffin.

Apparently, Seacrest had no idea who Woz was and suddenly opened his eyes after being informed through his ear piece. The clip should air on the west coast around 7 p.m., so keep your eyes peeled for it. I’ll post the red carpet clip as soon as it makes it to the Internet. In the mean time, enjoy a video of Woz explaining Griffin to a fan.

Other than Steve Jobs himself, now single figure has defined Apple’s resurgence since 1997 more than Jonathan Ive, the company’s senior vice-president of industrial design.

It’s a constant worry among watchers of Apple (especially those who own stock) that the company won’t be able to sustain its growth if Steve Jobs retires, quits, or gets hit by a bus on his way to work some time.

So my friend Jess McMullin postulates over at bplusd, why not line up the designer-in-chief as Apple’s next CEO? Ive makes beautiful, functional, intuitive objects, and is better than anyone in the business at getting others to do the same.

He’s a designer who taps into the wells of unmet consumer need that fuel Apple’s ongoing growth. With the exception of Steve himself, he’s tuned to the zeitgeist that determines winners more than anyone else at Apple. Moreover, he’s able to articulate that vision with consistent grace and precise execution. He’s got a track record of hitting home runs. If you want to keep the innovation leadership that makes Apple, well, Apple, then you’ve got to have the driver’s seat firmly bolted to the flow of trend, meaning, and consequence. That’s the domain of Design, and Jonathan Ive is your Designer.

Now, I don’t entirely agree with Jess on this one. Jony Ive is a brilliant designer. That doesn’t mean he would be a great CEO — he certainly doesn’t have the sales flair that defines an Apple product introduction. Still, an interesting and provocative reminder of the need to figure out what comes after Steve. What say you, Mac-heads?

True to its word, Apple has now opened the door for people who bought iPhones at full price prior to August 22 to received a $100 store credit for use at the online Apple Store or in the company’s physical retail facilities.

All you have to do is go to this web site, enter your phone number and serial number (on the back of the iPhone), and submit. A text message from Apple with an access code pops back, and you’re good to go — $100 for anything carried by Apple, including third-party products.

Steve Jobs shocked many by dropping the 8 gigabyte iPhone’s price from $600 to $400 at a media event last week, just 66 days after the product was first introduced. He shocked still more by offering the $100 credit for those who would be ineligible for fair price-matching, which Apple only offers within two weeks of purchase.

The same day that a friendly Mac-head uploaded some unboxing pictures of his new iPod Touch, he also got the notion to shoot video of the iPhone-without-a-phone. It’s kind of what you would expect: A lot of swooping icons, scrolling on touch, video playing, the accelerometer not detecting an orientation shift…

It’s absolutely beautiful, though. If someone figures out Skype for this thing, it could be the greatest telecom network-free communication device ever built. It’s interesting to note that the iTunes Store Mobile didn’t finish loading in the video. Since this is over WiFi, I can only cringe to imagine an iPhone trying to download a song over EDGE…

Anybody out there already got a Touch? Do you ever leave the house now?

Via Engadget

It’s still arcane and command-line driven, but the hackers at iPhone Dev Team have created an unlock application that’s free to the world. The iPhone can head to T-Mobile, Europe and the rest of the world…now.

All the details are here, but the rest of us might still want to wait for the GUI version. This is not simple stuff, and many report that YouTube gets broken. Still, I’d love to see this become so prevalent that Apple starts selling the iPhone unlocked out of the box. And while I’m at it, I would like American cell carriers not to suck, so I guess I can dream on…

Via Engadget.

Earlier this year, a bunch of people wrote automatic scripts that video-recorded people using Macs they weren’t supposed to. A commercial version of such programs (combined with network logging and screenshots), Undercover, was recently used to bust a crook who took 4 brand new MacBooks from an elementary school in April. At least according to software-maker Orbicule:

Fortunately, it did not take the thief long to come online as he had no idea that the computers he stole were running Undercover. Within 9 hours of the computers being stolen, our recovery center was sending Mr. Kenneth Burman the screen shots of the web sites and programmes a totally clueless thief was going through as well as the snapshots of the thief himself. Later, Mr. Kenneth Burman delivered this information to the local police office. Real samples of the screenshots and iSight pictures taken by Undercover can be seen below. Some details are blurred in order to protect everyone’s privacy.

Although we have all been exposed to the MacBook thief’s moustache, which is almost too perfect to believe.

More than 25 years later, Steve Wozniak has returned to the scene of his greatest triumph, re-making his enthusiastic endorsement of the Nissan (and then-Datsun) Z car. The new version promotes the 350Z, which he was selling off for charity to benefit his alma mater, UC Berkeley. And it. is. AWESOME.

Via Macenstein