Macgasm

Yup, second class tech citizens we are up here in the great white north. Maybe it’s our lack of technology infrastructure, or maybe it’s our population demographics. Who the heck knows anymore. But, no matter what it might be, Canada’s about to get shafted, as the iPhone 4 release date slips to who knows when.

Remember how everyone would laugh at how backwards and how far behind Australia and the UK were when it came to television shows, and episode air dates? Well guess what Canada, we’re there right beside them, but this time the last laugh is on us. The iPhone 4 is now “Coming Soon,” instead of “Coming in July.” That’s Apple speak for, you’ll get it when everyone in the US, UK, Japan, Germany, and France have satiated their appetite.

We’d be surprised, but it’s becoming way too frequent these days. We didn’t get the iPhone until 3G model was released, the iPad saw its date pushed back a month or two at a time, and now, the iPhone 4 could be here in July, August, September, or December. We know, they’re working on it. Demand’s greater than supply — yadda yadda. But we don’t care. We’re sick and tired of being second class tech-citizens. Anyone willing to trade some maple syrup, a toque, and a hockey stick for an iPhone 4? What if I offered up some ketchup chips?

Marc Pawlinger at the Chromium Blog announced today that the Chrome developer channel now sports the ability to view PDFs inside of Chrome without a third-party addition.

If you’re interested in the details, here is what Marc says the plans are:

• PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML web pages, and basic interactions will be no different than the same interactions with web pages (for example, zooming and searching will work as users expect). PDF rendering quality is still a work in progress, and we will improve it substantially before releasing it to the beta and stable channels.

• To further protect users, PDF functionality will be contained within the security “sandbox” Chrome uses for web page rendering.

• Users will automatically receive the latest version of Chrome’s PDF support; they won’t have to worry about manually updating any plug-ins or programs.

Safari has had built-in PDF support for a while, so it is good to see Chrome adding this feature as well. I know that I like to accomplish as much as possible without switching applications, so this is a welcome update in my eyes.

What do you think, though? Is this a feature you’ve been longing for, or is this a cramping your style? Let us know in the comments, or you can hit me up on Twitter.

Photo Credit: AnyJazz65

There’re some things I’m just not willing to do and taking a $600.00 iPad and tearing it apart to install a MiFi inside of it is right up that alley. Apparently my cojones aren’t as big as this guy’s, because he did exactly that — soldered a MiFi into his iPad and put it all back together again — and it still works!

So now, not only does he have an awesome 3G iPad that doubles as a MiFi, providing him with his own personal wireless LAN network, but he can also use his iPad on the Verizon network while mobile. That’s pretty huge.

If you’ve got the time, you should really check out the entire project.

Quick Gallery of the Project

The comment system debate rages on, and the fallout is scattered all across the internet this week. Some people argue that comments are a waste of bandwidth, and others argue that it provides users a community atmosphere that allows them to participate in the discussion.

Someone taking a philosophical stand against comments has been John Gruber of DaringFireball.net fame. He has no comments. Zip. Zero. Every time we get a comment from a troll, I envy him just a little bit more.

But, it seems like some people want DaringFireball comments, because John Casasanta, co-founder of MacHeist, has put together a Safari Extension that embeds comments directly on DaringFireball. For those of you who missed the first round of this fight, Casasanta created a mirror website of DaringFireball back in February that embedded comments into the famous website. It didn’t last long that time, but this go ’round Casasanta says that he’s gonna keep the extension around forever.

Wanna see why comments are so hotly debated today? Here’s a screen shot of a typical comment thread on daringfireball (to the right).  We tend to agree with Gruber, DaringFireball is way better without the comments.  We see enough “First”, and “ball cupping” comments on the internet already.  When I go to DaringFireball I’m going to read Gruber’s thoughts, not Racist Mike’s, Man’s, or Fucking Tony’s.

Here’s the problem with the extension, and the reason it won’t be around long—someone’s going to have to start curating the comments at some point, and since Gruber has no control over it, that puts the ball squarely in Casasanta’s court. It won’t take long for “DaringFireball With Comments”  to start becoming a center for spam. As it stands now, this plugin is asking for trouble.  But, there might just be a market for this plugin, if it was broadened a little bit to be a commenting system in general, letting you bypass a site’s comments, and instead subscribe to certain individuals, without seeing a public stream, well, there could be a web app somewhere in there.

If you’re willing to sift through a series of “first” comments, and really want this extension, you can get it here.

I was pretty skeptical about installing iOS4 on my 3G phone, but I thought I’d take one for the team, and try to figure out if there was an added value to the update.

I’m as guilty as everyone else when it comes to craving after the latest Apple product, it usually lasts a couple of months, but eventually I get over it. I almost pulled the trigger on a 3GS iPhone, but managed to talk myself out of it at the last second. There just wasn’t enough new there for me to justify a new contract with Rogers. iPhone 4 on the other hand is a huge update, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to forgo an upgrade.

But, before upgrading to the new phone, I figured that I’d spend some time with iOS on an iPhone 3G, just to see if I could do without the upgrade. Turns out, if you’re wanting to run iOS, you’re gonna want to update. We all balked at Steve Jobs’ comments about the 3G iPhone not being able to handle multitasking, but after a week of iOS use, I can see his point. My 3G phone is starting to become pretty useless to me. I fear for the super early adopters who picked up the iPhone 2G model, it really sucks, but your’e gonna have to update your phones.

Outside of carrying the new iOS tag, and folders, there’s not much you’re going to be getting on the 3G iPhone, or the 2G version, except a giant headache.

What’s not coming to iOS on the 3G?

iBooks, it’s no where to be seen. Sure, Apple could change their mind, but at the time of writing, 3GS phones have been getting access to the iBooks application in the AppStore. If you’re on a 3G phone, you’re out of luck. No iBooks for you! Next!

Fast App Switching is also missing from the 3G model. We expected that though, since Steve Jobs himself said the device wouldn’t be able to handle the software to run multitasking. I know a lot of jailbreakers who would disagree with that statement, but I digress.

Bluetooth Keyboard Support (White KB + 3G). We’re not 100% sure about this one. We tested with one of those White Keyboard models, and the iPhone wouldn’t find the bluetooth pairing. So, it could be the keyboard, or iOS. If anyone can provide further information, we’d appreciate it.

What you will get on the 3G

Most of the little things coming to iOS will be present on the 3G iPhone. Digital zoom, unified inbox, folders, and the ability to turn on/off cellular data are all present. The game centre application is also on the device, but we’re not sure how that’s going to play out until games start implementing the service.

So, what’s the story, morning glory?

I wish I never upgraded to iOS 4, and I’ll be reverting my phone back as soon as possible. I may upgrade to an iPhone 4, but until then, I’ll be forgoing the software update on my iPhone 3G. The phone has become unresponsive and lags a lot more than 3.1.3 ever did. Something as simple as unlocking the phone from sleep mode now has a couple of second delay attached to the usual timeframe. Something that is just not acceptable when it comes to a phone. Having a lag when answering your phone could be the difference between answering a call in time or having to recall your caller. That can get annoying in a hurry.

I’m grateful that Apple’s giving us the ability to upgrade our “legacy” phones to new versions of the OS, and more importantly, that they’re trying to maintain the software in a way that won’t completely hobble the device, but at some point the cost of progress is going to mean leaving behind a version or two of the device. It seems like that time is now, and the 3G iPhone has officially gone the same route as PowerPC. I hate it as much as you do, but until my iPhone 3G actually dies on me, I’m going to have a hard time justifying an upgrade.

What would be awesome is if companies, including Apple, took a moment and optimized their code to run on some of these legacy devices. If they’re truly embracing a “green” movement, it would certainly mean less iPhones in a landfill, then Apple would make sure that their devices remained functional for their shelf-life.

Valve has released new gameplay footage for their highly anticipated game Portal 2. If you’re not familiar with the franchise, you need to go buy the first installment on Steam right friggin’ now. This series is based off of the same game engine that Half-Life 2 uses, but you are tasked with solving puzzles instead of shooting monsters. The first Portal was fantastic, and Valve has a good track record, so I expect great things from Portal 2.

Valve is really supporting the OS X platform now, and I think it is imperative that we should support them in return. If we want more games on the Mac, we need to let the developers know that it’s worth their time and effort.

Take a look at the video:

What do you think of the footage? Are you excited to get your grubby little paws on Portal 2? Give us your impression of the trailer by commenting on this post, clicking on the e-mail button below, or hitting me up on Twitter at @bassguy.

Article Via MacLife
Photo Credit: lancerenok

We didn’t see this one coming at all, but now that it’s here, it makes a lot of sense, YouTube now has a built in video editor. So, instead of editing your films in iMovie, then uploading them to YouTube, you can now do simple cut edits, add music, and toss up simple titles directly on the web service. All for free.

What’s this got to do with an Apple site? A TON.

The theoretial iPad version of iMovie may have some serious competition, because YouTube’s editor “works” in mobile Safari. That means that you can directly mashup your video directly on YouTube instead of using something like iMovie, assuming, of courses, that Adobe can get all the kinks worked out of an HTML5/Javascript version.

I say “works” because Apple’s iPad and iPhone are not 100% supported, and some of the features have been disabled or are straight up broken.

Somewhere, at this very moment, Flash is in a full on panic attack.

Article Via Ars Technica

In the recent Mac OS X 10.6.4 update, Apple misstepped and provided users with the older 10.0.45.2 version of Flash instead of 10.1.53.64.  We held off on writing about this on Tuesday because we had no way of verifying whether or not 10.6.4 installed an exploitable version of Flash or Adobe’s patched version. We’re running a pre-release version of an upcoming Flash player so that our systems won’t be laggy during YouTube marathons.  

Why’s this a big deal? The later version has security holes patched and would have been “exploit free” according to Adobe’s director of security and privacy Mark Eakin. Flash has recently been taking heat, mostly from Apple, for being a security concern.  Turns out Apple is still shipping an exploitable version of the browser plugin. Pot meet kettle.

Props to Adobe for pointing it out in an official blog post.

This isn’t the first time that this has happened, and Apple’s pretty quick, relatively speaking, with security updates that patch known holes in a system’s security when this type of thing happens. So, you have two options. First, you can wait on a security update from Apple, which we wouldn’t recommend, or  you can just go update Flash yourself.

The good news is that Apple’s 10.6.4 update did not downgrade your version, so if you’ve updated your Flash player yourself already, you’re still good to go.