Fresh Apple: June 2008

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Reminder, talkcast tonight at 10 pm ET
Filed under: TUAW Business, Podcasts

As Cory just noted, it's the iPhone's first birthday today, and we've got a present for you: the Sunday night talkcast, hosted this week by Christina and featuring our memories and good wishes for the 1-year-old gamechanger, along with our anticipations for the launch of the App Store in two weeks. Also on tap for tonight: our Apple-themed recommendations for celebrating the 4th of July (make your Mac Classic into a barbecue grill!).

You can also catch up on the past few weeks' worth of shows (including our audience-free show last week, where Robert, Cory and I soldiered on while TalkShoe had a hiccup fit) from Talkshoe, play them from the Flash player in the continuation of this post, if you like, or pick them up on iTunes.

Read on for details on how to join in for tonight's call.
Continue reading Reminder, talkcast tonight at 10 pm ET
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Happy Birthday, iPhone
Filed under: Apple, iPhone, Apple History
Yes, it is hard to believe, but our pal the iPhone will be 1 year old at 6 pm EST today. The iPhone has undergone many changes over the past year: from generating all the hype and buzz to being the best way to do everything on-the-go. The original iPhone sold at 6 p.m. (in each time zone across the US) at Apple and AT&T corporate stores for a retail price of $599 for the 8GB model and $499 for the now-discontinued 4GB model.

With Apple set to release the next generation iPhone on July 11th, we can only stop and look back at all the accomplishments Apple has achieved over the past year. The iPhone has definitely changed the way we look at smartphones.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
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ZDNet Mac Pro and Xserve overclocking tool
Filed under: Hacks, Xserve, Mac Pro
One area that the Mac has long lagged behind its PC counterparts is in custom tuning, particularly overclocking. With the Intel Macs this has naturally started to change, though the toolset for overclocking in OS X has been rather barebones. So it's interesting to see that the German division of ZDNet has released the ZDNet Clock tool for OS X.

Using the ZDNet Clock tool Mac Pro and Xserve owners (and those only) can boost the processor, front side bus, and memory frequency resulting in a not insignificant "free" performance gain. It should be noted that overclocking puts a strain on the hardware and should be used with caution as it's certainly possible to damage your Mac. Furthermore, there are several side effects in OS X including distorted system time and problems when waking from sleep (the overclocking is disabled on wake). Nonetheless, for those of you out there lucky enough to have a Mac Pro (or Xserve) and crazy enough to push your hardware to the edge may want to have a look.

The ZDNet Clock tool is a free download from ZDNet (the link is in German, click the Jetzt herunterladen button to start the download) and requires a Mac Pro or Xserve running Leopard.

[via AppleInsider]
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Tevanian: Does Microsoft have the guts to slim down Windows?
Filed under: OS, Odds and ends
For your lazy Sunday afternoon, The New York Times investigates what it would take Microsoft to remove decades of cruft in its Windows operating system, like Apple did in 2000 with Mac OS X.

Avie Tevanian, formerly senior VP of software development at Apple, oversaw the transition to Mac OS X. When asked if Microsoft could pull of a switch to a small microkernel-based implementation of Windows, Tevanian said "perhaps, but I don't know if it has the intestinal fortitude." Oh, snap.

Actually, Avie was referring to an atmosphere of desperation, as the Times calls it, just before Apple started the Mac OS X project. Microsoft, possibly, hasn't hit "rock bottom" yet, and therefore doesn't feel a need to build something from scratch.

Personally, I thought "Windows 7" was going to be a leaner, less-backward-compatible build, but I was wrong (as I frequently am): "Our approach with Windows 7 is to build off the same core architecture as Windows Vista," said Bill Veghte, a Microsoft VP. Hello, Windows Me 2.0.

[Via John Siracusa.]
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News flash: Steve Jobs is aging
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone
In an interview with Financial Times [registration required], Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg shared his company's answer to the iPhone's popularity

"...As handsets become banking tools and games controllers, he argues, mobile operators can up-end other companies' business models. 'It's very cool. And Steve Jobs will eventually get old ... I like our chances.'"

Seidenberg, who is nine years Jobs' senior, has decided to wait for his rival to "age out" of his position. This reminds me of the skinny 7th grader who laments, "Someday my bully will notice girls and lose interest in stealing my lunch money."

Or, perhaps by "old" he meant "out-of-favor" as Daring Fireball suggests. Like Jelly Shoes and Jarts, the appeal of Apple with Jobs at the wheel will eventually fade. All Verizon must do is ride out the trend, like a lobster boat in a Nor'easter.

Forget innovation and hard work. The sit-and-wait method is a good one, too. It worked for Estragon and Vladimir.

[Via Cameron I/O]
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Canadian iPhone: Consumer Revolt against Rogers tariffs
Filed under: iPhone
When Rogers/Fido announced the iPhone voice/data plans a few days ago, the proposed rates were not received warmly. Over ten thousand people are letting their eDispleasure be heard on the "Rogers + iPhone3G == Ruined" protest website.

Canadian petitioners are unhappy with the high plan rates and the lack of affordable data. The site offers a list of Rogers/Fido contacts and suggests consumers take action, sending an email or letter, or calling.

The petition itself is full of impassioned feedback, suggesting that Rogers is killing a potential new market by exploiting demand with subpar overpriced service.

Are you Canadian? Let us know what you think of the the data rates in the comments.

Thanks, heath

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Blizzard announces Diablo III for Mac
Filed under: Gaming
Blizzard has always been a (the?) Mac-friendly game developer and they have now officially announced the forthcoming release of Diablo III. Nearly a decade after the last installment of the popular action-RPG, Blizzard plans a simultaneous release for Mac and PC (just like StarCraft II).

As of yet the details, including release date and system requirements, are sketchy. However, the game will run a custom 3D graphics engine and return players to familiar territory and stories from Diablo II. I really think Blizzard deserves a hand for their commitment to bringing such A-list titles to the Mac day and date with the PC versions.

[via MacNN]
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MobileMe and personal domains
Filed under: Internet, Internet Tools, MobileMe
According to Apple Support documents, personal domains will be kept intact with MobileMe. Blogger Sean Sperte noticed a "personal domain" option while watching the MobileMe quick tour. That prompted some investigation which led to this support document. Sure enough, it confirms that .Mac personal domains will remain untouched by the change:

"...If you have a personal domain setup for your iWeb site, it will continue to work without changing any settings at your registrar."

Thanks, Apple!

[Via Geek&Mild]
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Apple Notebook Shipments Skyrocket 61%
Filed under: Apple, Macbook Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air
This is a good news, bad news story. Let's start with the good news!

DisplaySearch, a market research firm, is reporting that Apple's sales of notebook computers are up 61% from 1st Quarter, 2007 to 1st Quarter, 2008. In that fiscal quarter, Apple shipped over 1.4 million notebooks, compared to almost 900,000 the year before. That puts Apple just behind Asus in terms of growth year-to-year, as the Taiwanese board and component maker saw a 67% growth rate. Most other notebook manufacturers saw growth rates in the 20 - 40% range.

The bad news? Apple's still in seventh place in overall notebook market share at 4.6%, trailing behind leaders HP (20.8%), Dell (15.1%), and Acer (14.7%) but still ahead of Asus (4.3%) and Sony (4.2%).

My personal speculation is that Asus is seeing huge increases due to the Eee PC subnotebook, which has been extremely popular with geeks wanting tiny Linux or Windows computers. If trends continue, Apple's notebook market share numbers should continue to grow into 2008.

[via DisplaySearch]

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Apple lawsuit targets "iPod Mechanic"
Filed under: iPod Family, Apple
'Tis better to give than to receive, so Apple is giving some legal love by filing trademark and fraud suits against Portage, Michigan businessman Nicholas Woodhams.

Woodhams operates an online iPod repair business called iPod Mechanic. Apple claims they asked Woodhams to stop using the iPod trademark back in 2006 and that the parties came to an agreement to have Woodhams stop using the iPod Mechanic name in January, 2007 and park the ipodmechanic.com domain name two months later. Apple says those conditions were never met. A quick browse to ipodmechanic.com shows that it now redirects to imechanic.com. The company name is still iPod Mechanic.

But wait, there's more! Apple accuses Woodhams of defrauding them by convincing the company to send him free repair parts. Woodhams allegedly scammed Apple's iPod shuffle Advance Replacement Program in 2007, filling out online forms for customers using a credit card as insurance that the broken shuffle would be returned. Apple claims that Woodhams would immediately decline charges made by Apple when the broken shuffles didn't show, and then sold the iPods at a heavy discount. Apple claims this scheme cost them over $75,000.

Woodhams is also accused of swapping back plates on out-of-warranty iPods for those still covered by a warranty in order to avoid paying for parts and repair charges. All of the offenses are viewed as deliberate, so Apple is seeking triple damages and the discontinuation of the iPod Mechanic name and website.

[Via Apple Insider]
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Turn that dead HD into something useful
Filed under: Hardware, Humor
As an entertaining Friday afternoon aside to our discussion earlier this week about how to recover data from a dying hard disk, it turns out there's plenty of uses left for the ones that have finally stopped pining for the fjords.
- With this tutorial from HacknMod, you can turn your hard disk into a grinder or sander.
- You can make a windchime and a keychain out of the parts inside the hard disk. Classy!
- You can turn it into a speaker.
- Years ago, my dad used to make clocks out of the huge 14-inch disk platters he used in old HP 3000 minicomputers. Turns out you can do this with the smaller drives of today, too.
- Finally, if you acquire enough expired hard disks, you can make a huge domino set out of them.
Practical? Probably not. But hey, it beats throwing them away.
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