Macgasm

If this isn’t the final nail in the white iPhone’s coffin, I’m not exactly sure what would qualify as the last death knell. Apple has white-washed their website, and removed mentions of the white iPhone 4 from their phone pages. It’s gone, and it’s almost like it never existed in the first place.

Clearly the White iPhone 4 was taken out back in the middle of the night, stuffed in the trunk of an old Cadillac Deville, and put out of its misery. For the time being anyway.

Yesterday the iPhone purchase page listed both the white and black iPhones, as well as the expected shipping times. Everyone knew the phone would be delayed again, but why Apple decided to take the phone off the store in the first place is still a bit of a mystery.

It hasn’t been a complete whitewash. The white iPhone still makes appearances on the bumper page, and in the iPhone 4 image gallery.

It might be the case that Apple’s trying to avoid another publicity battle over failed promises, or it could also be that the iPhone 4 is now discontinued indefinitely, or at the very least, until the next iPhone version is announced.

We’re going to reserve judgement for a while. It’s not clear enough to make a call just yet, but at this point, who’s actually still waiting for the white iPhone?

Article Via MacRumors

Any time someone tries to bypass the carriers, we take notice. We hate them that much. While it isn’t easy to do, Apple’s trying its darndest to eliminate the carriers from the activation process for iPhones.

Apple and Gemalto have allegedly created a SIM card that will be integrated into the iPhone, reducing the role of the carrier during the iPhone purchasing process.

It’s been tried before by Google, but they failed. Creating an easy way to buy a handset, without having to do all kinds of crazy setup in store just to get phones to work on a network, would eliminate a huge drain on resources in Apple stores.

GigaOm is reporting that it will be an embedded chip with an upgradeable flash component and ROM. The ROM will contain security information, and the flash would be carrier related data that would have to be  retrieved from the carriers directly through an update. It could theoretically be carried out in an App, or through iTunes during a typical first sync connection.

It looks like Apple’s getting a little sick of the carriers and their draconian policies. Should this rumour turn out to be true, it would make it increasingly easy to switch carriers at any point.

That’s something we would easily support.

Article Via GigaOm

Left 4 Dead 2 has been on the Mac for a while now, but the first instalment has been curiously absent until today. It turns out that Valve was having a difficult time with several compatibility issues with both hardware and software between the Mac and the Left 4 Dead code.

Today that’s all put to rest. Left 4 Dead is now available on the Mac via Steam, just in time for Halloween. At this point, the game has been out on the PC and consoles for a while now, so you’re behind quite a bit when it comes to experiencing the game. That being said, it’s a doozy, and worth the playing time.

Make sure you get your Zombie killing time in this week, and check out Left 4 Dead and the sequel Left 4 Dead 2 on steam. The first version is on sale for $9.99 (50% off).

Article Via Softpedia

Sony stock surged on Tuesday, fuelled by speculation that Apple could buy Sony with its $51 billion reserve. The source of this rumor? During last week’s earnings report, CEO Steve Jobs was asked what the company planned to do with the large amount of cash it had on hand. Steve hinted that there might be an acquisition upcoming: “We would like to continue to keep our powder dry, because we do feel that there are one or more strategic opportunities in the future,” he said. Eric Savitz writing in Barron’s mentioned Adobe, Sony, or possibly Disney as acquisition targets.

Sony and Apple also came up in discussion the week before in Bloomberg’s piece on Apple, when former CEO John Sculley revealed that Steve Jobs wanted Apple to be more like Sony and less like Microsoft.

Analysts were skeptical of the possible deal, saying that any potential acquisition of Sony would be a hostile takeover, and that Sony wouldn’t willingly allow itself to be bought.

What would Apple do with Sony? Recent acquisitions by Apple have been of small companies, and mainly have been for their technology or their ideas. There was LaLa, the digital music service; Intrinsity, the chip manufacturer; remember Siri, the amazing voice recognition search app?; and Quattro Wireless, the mobile ad company.

But Sony? That’s a giant behemoth compared to these companies.

Would Apple retool all of Sony’s manufacturing lines to make MacBook Airs? Start making Apple PlayStations? Kill off the PSP? Apple TV sets, minus the Google TV integration? Revive the Walkman brand?

I’m not sure that Apple wants to be like anybody anymore. They are good at being who they are, and it’s unclear how taking over a company like Sony would help them be better at being Apple.

Article Via AppleInsider

Apple had a little bug that popped up this week. It was big news because the phone rarely has reports of security issues. The bug lets users unlock a locked iPhone with a couple of little screenpokes, but that’s where the craziness ended. Apple’s addressing it, and we’ll move on. With an Android phone, there’s so much more room for absolutely crazy apps, that it makes me really appreciate that Apple’s closed off the App Store from crap like this.

Secret SMS Replicator is an Android application that lets you forward all of someone’s text messages to your phone with a couple of screenpokes. The application’s chief executive, Zak Tangeloff, even commented to the NY Times that “This app is certainly controversial, but can be helpful to people in relationships where this type of monitoring can be useful.” Doesn’t that sound a little bit too much like Eric Schmidt’s infamous quote, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” That’s quite the culture they’re fostering over there at Google HQ. No wonder these things are popping up.

I’ll take a closed App Store over this crap every single time, thank you very much. Flame Apple all you want in the comments, on twitter, or to my face, but I prefer to exist in a world where I know someone’s making sure that I don’t have to worry about an application stealing my secrets. But closed systems are bad for business, right? You can insert your own proverbial eye-roll right next to mine at this point. *Insert Eye-Roll here*

Zak Tangeloff further stated in the New York Times article, ““We can’t build it for the iPhone because it wouldn’t make it past the App Store approval process.” Oh, the horror!

It’s stupid things like this that drove me to Apple in the first place back in 2007, and it’s the same thing that’s kept me there. I don’t have to deal with script kiddies trying to h4x0rz my devices at every turn. Who’s drinking the Cool-Aid now?

Video of the App

Article Via New York Times

We’re all aware that the Dashboard hasn’t gotten much love since it was released. It was hyped up by Steve as well as the community, but we’ve seen that the Dashboard is just spinning its wheels. Well, with 10.7 Lion, Exposé, Spaces, and the Dashboard will all be merged together into a management area call Mission Control.

Here is how Apple describes it:

Mission Control is a powerful and handy new feature that provides you with a comprehensive view of what’s running on your Mac. It gives you a bird’s-eye view of everything — including Exposé, Spaces, Dashboard, and full-screen apps— all in one place. With a simple swipe gesture, your desktop zooms out to Mission Control. There you can see your open windows grouped by app, thumbnails of your full-screen apps, Dashboard, and even other Spaces, arranged in a unified view. And you can get to anything you see on Mission Control with just one click. Making you the master of all you survey. —Apple

With Dashboard in a more prominent light, and the potential of a dedicated distribution channel through the Mac App Store, it is possible that 10.7 Lion might just be the return of the Dashboard. If Apple lets developers distribute and sell their Dashboard widgets next to other apps, there is a lot of potential for really great work. I would welcome innovation in the space, and I’m sure most Mac enthusiasts would too.

What do you think about the future of the Dashboard? Will it be reinvigorated in 10.7, or will it die out? I want to hear what yo have to say, so leave a comment on this post.

I’ve been thinking more and more about the forthcoming Mac App Store, and there are a few things that I am curious about. Despite everything I discussed in the first article, I have come up with a few things that do not add up.

I spent 4 1/2 hours the other day upgrading my Mom’s computer from Windows XP to Windows 7. This requires what effectively becomes a new installation. As most new computer users know, regardless of the platform, a new installation of an Operating System means that you have a list of things to accomplish. Set-up user account(s), re-install applications, copy over all of your data, do updates, set-up preferences the way you would like and then some more minutia with each application.

For apps from the App Store, the question of how we will copy over our data after a re-install is not so easily answered. One of the aspects of the iOS store is that any applications, and in-app purchases, are required to work across all of your iOS devices. But, I know this has not been the case across all applications, because I have an application that does not transfer the in-app purchases should I re-download the application and install it on a freshly wiped iOS device. I would have to go and re-purchase the in-app purchase in order to actually get this functionality back.

So this leads me to wondering something: how does the application’s data get backed up? Right now within the iOS App Store, your data is backed up when you sync your iOS device and this information is then backed up again when you backup your computer (you do backup your computer, right?). But if your application data is just stored locally and you do have to do a re-install of your computer, even though you are able to download the software itself again, your data may not be easily placed in the correct location, even with backups.

Apple is supposed to be opening a new data center this year, and I would love to see that all application data is automatically backed up on a schedule and stays with your iTunes account, so when you do re-download your application, the last copy of your backed up data is also re-downloaded and placed in the proper location.

To take this one step further, it would be great if MobileMe members (which is overpriced, but that’s another story entirely) could view their data within their iDisk, but not use any of their storage space. The user would also be able to download this data at any time.

Which brings me to my next thought. Syncing is going to be key to apps within the Mac App Store. In order to facilitate the ability for a user to download their data upon a complete re-install, it is going to be necessary to include sync within the applications. This would allow a user to quickly upgrade their Mac by re-downloading all of their applications again from the Mac App Store and then launching the program. Upon launch, the initial download would request credentials for accessing their account and then the automatic download would occur, thereby allowing the user to quickly get back to their last synchronized state.

I do not necessarily think that true cloud access will be required for all applications, although it will likely make sense for the majority of applications. However, in terms of data backup, it may need to be included in all applications. This can be done by using any one of numerous cloud-based storage mechanisms, like DropBox or Amazon S3, or even done via custom back-end servers.

Granted, we’re still about 80 days or so away from the opening of the store and we may hear additional details along the way, so some of these may get answered before then. But these are just some additional concerns regarding the Mac App Store.

Photo Credit: Apple

It’s not every day we have an opportunity to giveaway a movie on iTunes, so we thought we’d jump at the chance, given that Halloween is right around the corner.

So, this week we’re giving away The Exorcist: Director’s Extended Cut. If you’re not aware of what an iTunes Extra includes, you’re in luck. An iTunes Extra film includes a lot of bonus footage, much like the extras found on DVD and Blu-Ray discs these days. So in addition to The Exorcist film, you’ll also get three featurettes, as well as interviews with William Friedkin, Linda Blair, and author William Peter Blatty. Also included is a tour of the set, a tour of the iconic locations where the film with shot, and much more.

The Film is viewable on your Mac, Apple TV, iPod, or iPad, and it comes in HD, with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound.

If you’re the type of person who doesn’t like to find out if you can win a copy of the film, you can purchase it on the iTunes Store for $9.99.

The Giveaway

Leave a comment, letting us know what you’re dressing up as for Halloween. We’ll select someone at random on Friday, around Noon EST.  You also must have a US iTunes account.

Comments have been closed.

Congrats to Ben Rudolph.  Random.org picked your number!