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The Apple Blog
The Apple Blog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
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Why Google's G1 Entices Me More Than the iPhone

I have a confession to make. The new Google G1 smartphone appeals to me a lot more than the iPhone does. Not in terms of slickness and coolness of course, but actually, even though it’s about 30% thicker and nearly 20% heavier than the iPhone, I kinda’ like the G1’s more understated and utilitarian look.

I don’t own a smartphone. I live at least 30 miles from the nearest GSM coverage and we barely get digital voice service here. But were I in the market, I would be leaning toward the G1 for a variety of reasons - appearance being well-down on the list.

For one thing, I’m not a touchscreen fan and prefer a physical keyboard. The G1 has a retractable one as well as a touchscreen (albeit not MultiTouch). I like easily user-replaceable batteries; G1 has one, iPhone doesn’t. I like lots of manual controls. The G1 has a trackball and arrow keys.
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Steve Jobs' Heart Attack
Nearly a month ago, at Apple’s unveiling of the new iPod lineup for this fall, Steve Jobs quoted Mark Twain’s “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” (By the way, Snopes.com and Wikipedia both say that is even a misquote of Twain’s original comment: “The report of my death is an exaggeration.”)

Even though that remark was funny, and got a rousing round of applause, I do believe that Steve Jobs was serious: he is not as sick as all the pundits proclaim, nor is his health in any great danger. But yesterday, Apple’s stock price plummeted briefly due to reports from CNN’s iReport.com that Jobs had just had a massive heart attack and had been rushed to the hospital. Both claims turned out to be completely untrue. The really interesting part turned out to be how Apple’s shareholders reacted.

In addition to their being a temporary drop in Apple’s stock price there was also an overall drop as the stock closed for the weekend at 97.07…its lowest close in nearly 18 months. The SEC is investigating and ireport.com is cooperating fully by handing over any information they have gathered on Johntw, the poster who put up the “fradulent” story.

I don’t understand why the stock market is so volatile as to let the rumors posted on a site where the claim to fame is “Unfiltered. Unedited.” change how money is invested. Maybe iReport was going to add “Untrue. Unethical.” to the tagline, but they ran out of room, and had to settle on the first two. This could very easily be someone who thought they could make a quick buck by posting the story, buying some Apple stock, and then selling it when everyone found out it was fake. It will be interested to see what the SEC finds.

Here’s to hoping Steve Jobs stays healthy for a long time and that AAPL stock starts the trek back upward before the 21st when the 4th Quarter earnings call is scheduled.

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iPhone Gets VoIP, Thanks to Fring

As of yesterday, the iPhone natively supports VoIP calls without jailbreaking thanks to fring, a multi-client instant messaging application with Skype, Skype-out, fring and other SIP support for voice calling.

Fring has previously been available on Symbian and WinMo phones, and for jailbroken iPhones. It supports IM through fring, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Skype, Twitter, and ICQ over all connections (EDGE, 3G, GPRS and WiFi). In order to use the VoIP functions, however, you must have an active WiFi connection. This limitation is in keeping with Steve Jobs’ earlier statement that “We’ll limit [VOIP applications] over the cellular network”, made when the iPhone SDK was originally announced.

I took fring for a brief test drive shortly after it was announced (although I had a nail-biting wait for it to appear in my iPhone’s App Store since I feared another NetShare type disappearing act). Though it required a fring account sign-up (normally a pet peeve of mine when it comes to iPhone apps), the process was quick and painless and within seconds I was presented with an add-on selection screen with a list of supported IM and VoIP services.
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Apple TV Authorization Server Problem Causes Mass Factory Restores
I was in the process of attempting to install the Apple TV 2.2 update and then rent a movie for the family tonight when my Apple TV began a loop where it would get through the introductory Apple TV movie and then start to load the main screen but end up in a cycle between that and the shiny, silver-grey Apple logo. I attempted a factory restore by holding “Menu” and “-” after a power cycle, but that did not work either, even after multiple reboots.

With all my attempts failing, I made a broad assumption that it was the hard drive (my unit is one of the original) and I was resolved to putting in my own drive and taking the opportunity to hack the base image (why not!?) when I checked out Twitter to find many, many other users in the same situation, all of us quite unhappy.
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