The Audioengine 2 Premium Desktop Multimedia Speaker system (A2) has just been released. The A2 is designed to produce excellent sound quality and is small enough to fit comfortably on your desktop. The hand-made wooden speaker cabinets house Kevlar woofers and silk tweeters, producing a rich range of tones. There are two audio inputs (RCA and 1/8″ mini jack), and a volume control can be found on the back panel. All required cables are included. The A2 is compatible with a wide variety of items, including: iPods and other music players, computers, televisions, cd and dvd players, cell phones, and video game consoles. It also supports with the Apple remote as well as other remotes. Audioengine 2 Speaker systems are available for $199 US and can be bought at any authorized reseller or on the Audioengine website.

Listener Josh was playing with his new cat and look what he noticed:

I am running Leopard and in the Finder sidebar under shared I noticed
there were different pictures for Macs and PCs on the network.
The Macs look like the new imac:

but by the pc it is a crappy looking monitor displaying the blue
screen of death:

Thought I would point this out…

Apple is funny…

Straight from the UK, Geekanoids Shop is now selling black corduroy Geek Pouches for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPod Classic, 3rd gen Nano, and 5th gen iPod Video. Most of the Geek Pouches are black and made of 100% corduroy. There are also limited supplies of tan faux-suede Pouches for the iPod Touch (available while supplies last). Geek Pouches are not padded, but do serve to keep scratches off the iPod’s surface when storing it. It is important to note that the Geek Pouch does come in various sizes, so be sure you order the one that is specified for your model of iPod or iPhone. Prices range from £5.99 to £10.99 when purchased within the UK. More information, including international pricing, return policies, and more photos may be found at the Geekanoids Shop.

Thoughtout, the creator of many unique iPod stands, has released the PED3 Rotating Stand for the iPhone.
The flowing design is very sleek and also functional, with a full 360 degree rotatability. The PED3 is made in the US with an all-steel construction and a baked-on black coating. It’s seven rubber-coated fingers grip the iPhone gently while still allowing easy access to the iPhone’s ports. The PED3 can be purchased at the Thoughtout website for $39.99 US.

It’s finally here and I am downloading it now. For sure I will be covering the new features and updates on the next show. One thing that was made VERY clear from the installer was Apple’s stern warning to iPhone un-lockers that the update would potentially permanently damage their iPhone (see below). So re-lock your iPhone or don’t do the update.

Update: Looks like there are some challenges for iPhone hacks even if they re-lock the iPhone prior to running the update. I just spoke with Shooby and he used the currently published re-locking procedures to relock and restore his iPhone. He reinserted his AT&T SIM and ran the 1.1.1 update. After update his AT&T SIM was invalidated. Now, we are not sure if the error is with the procedure he used to re-lock the phone or if this will be the experience for everyone, but at the very least it should server as a BIG warning. If you have a SIM unlocked iPhone, please wait for the iPhone Dev team to look into this before running the 1.1.1 update. Shooby is working with them now, so stay tuned.

One of my previous posts pre-iPhone, I wrote about how there were ways to work around the iPhone’s limitations, and how you could use email to send your photos to Flickr. Well now, thanks to some hacker/tinkerers, we have a 3rd party native iPhone app that does the job splendidly!

The app is called iFlickr. It can be installed via the Installer.app hack which is really the only (read: easiest) way to install 3rd party apps on your phone. New and improved applications are finding their way to the iPhone every day—from an old-school NES game player to IM applications, a webserver, one-off iPhone-unique games like Lights Off and Tap Tap Revolution, all among many others. No, they’re not all perfect, some in alpha or beta in quality, but these apps are diverse in function and imaginative.

Continue Reading »

Well, Apple did NOT announce the arrival of the Beatles on iTunes today like I thought and I have never been happier to be wrong. As most other rumor sites predicted, Apple did officially announce the date for the UK launch of the iPhone. November 9th the iPhone will go on sale in the UK and as predicted O2 will be the exclusive carrier of the “Jesus” phone.

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with O2 to offer our revolutionary iPhone to UK customers”, said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “US iPhone customer satisfaction is off the charts, and we can’t wait to let UK customers get their hands on it and learn what they think of it”.

Apple held a special event at the Regent Street Apple store Tuesday morning to announce the deal. At the event Apple and O2 also gave details on pricing and service plans. The iPhone will be available in an 8GB model for £269 (inc VAT) (USD ~ $536). For service, customers can pick from three monthly iPhone “tariffs” offered by O2. £35 (USD ~$70) for 200 minutes, £45 (USD ~$90) for 600 minutes, and £55 (USD ~$110) for 1200 minutes. The 200 minute plan includes 200 SMS messages, while the upper two plans come with 500 SMS messages a month. All plans come with unlimited data, visual voicemail, and access to 7,500 wifi hotspots from The Cloud.
Continue Reading »

Well I just checked with the US Apple Store (Thursday September 13th, 2007 @ 9:00 PM PST) and they still claim the iPod Touch has an estimated ship date of September 28th. Now, that would be in line with Steve’s statement made at the special event last week that the new touchable iPods would be available in a couple weeks. So, if we believe Apple, listener Luis should not have been able to walk into a Florida Apple store today and saunter home with the brand spankin’ new iPod you see pictured here. The cool thing is… he DID! Looks like the new iPod Touch has hit the streets (or at least maybe your local Apple Store) a bit early. So what are you waiting for… go on… you know you want to touch it.

Join us for Live Maccast chat starting at 9:00 AM PDT and going through the end of Apple’s live “The Beat Goes On” event today (9/5). Join us on iChat/AIM in the room: maccast.

To access it using iChat:
1) Launch iChat
2) Go to: File–>Go to Chat… and enter ‘maccast’ as the chat name.

or Click this link to join now (AOL Instant Messenger or iChat account required)

Just a few comments about the opening of the Glasgow store in Scotland on Saturday just gone. The store is at 147 Buchanan Street which is the major shopping street in Glasgow, and the store is located slap bang in the centre. I arrived just before 9am on Saturday and was somewhere between 5-600 in the queue. When I was in town about 7.30pm on the Friday evening there were 3 people queuing already so there had been some die hard fans there waiting. In terms of queuing time it took about 50 mins for me to get into the store itself as they fed people in about 20 at a time after the initial 100 or so.

On entering the store the first impression is of the amount of space there is between the door and the glass spiral staircase which is off to the left in the corner of the store. I expect this will be used for the bands that will be performing each Tuesday evening as part of the ‘Live From Glasgow’ special events that are planned. Upstairs next to the 2 Genius bars there are 4 iMacs set up on low tables with ‘ball seats’ specifically for use by kids – whether the location of these kids iMacs is specifically so that parents can be at the Genius bar have a convenient distraction to keep their kids happy, or just a happy coincidence I don’t know.

Whilst the Genius bars were operating the bookings made through the Concierge system weren’t being honored until Monday, but I was still able to get my Macbook reviewed for the discoloration of the bezel and trackpad that became apparent last year, and which I’d been waiting for an Apple Store to open locally for me to get resolved – I was able to leave my Macbook and have it repaired under warranty and available for collection the next day (1 benefit of getting in early ;-) ). The store was full of Apple staff (including quite a few US accents).

One thing I found interesting is that there did NOT seem to be an iPod HiFi on display anywhere, it certainly wasn’t next to all the 3rd party speaker systems, but I didn’t go around every display stand/ table.