Euro iPhone news abounds

Low sales. A Businessweek report sites data from Strategy Analytics that suggest the big three Euro iPhone sellers (O2 in UK, Orange in France, and T-Mobile in Germany) sold just 350,000 iPhones combined in the 4th quarter of last year.

UK on November 6th, Germany on November 9th, and France November 28th

Slashed prices driving sell outs

T-Mobile, 8GB for T-Mobile at €99 with Complete XL plan that for €89 per month. Can also get if for €249 with a €29 monthly plan

O2 lowered the 8GB iPhone’s price by £100 with any O2 tariff

Orange may be next. According to iLounge Apple is encouraging them to adopt the subsidized model.

Lower prices seem to be working as 8GB have become scarce throughout Germany and UK.

At least rumor suggest 8GB iPhone stock may not be replenished and O2 has sent out a Memo calming the 8GB iPhone was "end-of-life"

Repubblica.it reports that Telecom Italia will be launching the iPhone (3G) in Italy in the next few weeks for sale by the summer.

Similar rumors cropping up for unlocked 3G iPhones in India, Australia and Belgium

Apple has best 2nd quarter ever

The Company posted revenue of $7.51 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.05 billion, or $1.16 per diluted share.

International sales accounted for 44 percent of the quarter’s revenue. Interesting since Apple has typically struggled internationally.

Macs sales saw huge growth with 2,289,000 Macs sold. A 51% increase in unit sales and 54% in revenue over a year ago.

1.43 million portables shipped during the quarter, an increase of 61 percent over 2007

iPods were not as strong with 10,644,000 units sold. A 1% growth over a year ago and a 9% increase in revenue.

Quarterly iPhone sales were 1,703,000 bringing the total to 5.7 million since the iPhone launched last June.

Apple’s CFO Peter Oppenheimer said, “We’re thrilled to have generated $4 billion in cash flow from operations in the first half of fiscal 2008, yielding an ending cash balance of $19.4 billion".

Apple acquires chip designing prowess

According to Gizmodo, Apple has purchased P.A. Semi, a chip maker, for $278 million.

Info on the company's website says they are, "headed by Dan Dobberpuhl, the acclaimed lead designer of the DEC Alpha series of microprocessors, the ultra-power-efficient StrongARM microprocessors, and the first multicore systems on chip with the SiByte 1250".

PA Semi designs energy efficient processors based on the Power architecture

Jobs said Apple acquired P.A. Semi mainly for its chip designers and suggested it will rely on P.A. Semi’s expertise primarily for portable electronics devices like the iPod and iPhone for which Intel doesn’t currently supply chips.

Changes made to Apple Software update for Windows

After complains of the latest version of Safari 3.1 being pushed to Windows users via Software update even when it wasn't installed

Apple changes to UI to separate new applications from updates.

Still defaults all updates and new apps to install.

iPhone SDK Beta 4 Released

Beta build 5A258f

Adds OpenGL ES Support to iPhone simulator

Enforces code signing

Some indications that background apps or at least some functionality might be opening up.

Engadget suggests that Apple may be licensing haptic (or force-feedback) technology for the iPhone from a company called Immersion.

Clent Richardson, a former Apple exec, recently became president and CEO at Immersion.

Bootcamp update adds SP3 support

Bootcamp for Leopard was updated to 2.1

Actually three updaters - one for Windows XP, one for 32-bit Vista operating systems and one for 64-bit Vista operating systems.

“Addresses issues and improves compatibility” and is required before installing Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 3 update.

AT&T wi-fi making it's Starbuck appearance

Lot of confusion about free wi-fi access

Interface is the same as what you see at any AT&T hot spot, McDonalds, Barnes&Noble, etc.

2 hours of free access for anyone? With Starbucks card? What's the deal?

AT&T broadband customers get access starting at $5/mo. Anyone can buy AT&T Wi-Fi Hotspot service for $19.95/mo.

My thoughts on OS X Security

Listener Andrew wanted to know about my thoughts on Anti-virus, anti-spyware, and general security practices on OS X

He uses Intego products, which I have heard are OK

Did notice port scans and port flood attacks when using p2p.

That's like going to the bad part of town wearing a $500 suit and a Rolex and then being surprised when you get mugged.

I believe security through common sense for moderate to advanced users.

Pay attention to URLs. Turn on the status bars an look at tool tip roll overs.

Don't open unknown file attachments or run installers from untrusted sources.

Use NAT and firewalls and be aware of what ports you open.

If you are concerned about Spyware use a tool like Little Snitch

Little Snitch

What's the deal with "Open with..."

Play question from Eric

In the Finder in Leopard, it places the default and suggested apps at the top and then other apps that may support that file format below alphabetically.

I have no idea what it is doing in Mail, which is completely jumbled.

In the Finder it is controlled by the Launch Services database which can be rebuilt with a tool like Onyx or Cocktail.

Also cleans up duplicates which you will see especially if you do cloned backups to external drives.

Roll your own Intel Mac Mini Upgrades

Tired of waiting on Apple to upgrade the Mini. Stephen points out an awesome Arizona Mac User Group (AMUG) article that discusses upgrade options.

Upgrade your Mini

Tool to open up a Mini, Putty Knife, OWC has a nice video of the procedure.

OWC Memory Replacement.

RAM, up to 2 GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM. Remove the 2x512s.

Processor

upgraded with a Core 2 Duo processor using the Intel Mobile Processor mPGA479M socket. "M" socket.

Prices for processor range from about USD$200 to $650

Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 Merom 1.66GHz 2M shared L2 cache
Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 Merom 1.83GHz 2M shared L2 cache
Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 Merom 2.0GHz 4M shared L2 cache
Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 Merom 2.16GHz 4M shared L2 cache
Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 Merom 2.33GHz 4M shared L2 cache

Heat and cooling is a concern

Hard Drive

2.5" SATA Drive

Now with sizes up to 250GB and speeds from 4,200 to 7,200 RPM.

External HD options. MiniStacks, from NewerTech, LaCie and others.

Can upgrade the GMA 950 integrated graphics.

Speech to text from audio file

Play question from Jason

Can't really do it very well from an audio file, because accuracy is way down do to know punctuation.

Possibly use an app like Mac Speech Dictate

www.macspeech.com

Play Macworld MacSpeech interview.

Exploring the mysteries of MAMP

Chris wanted to know about getting a local MAMP (Mac OS X, Apache, MySQL, PHP) environment up and running on a Mac

Read up

For Tiger and earlier PHP4 and MySQl 4 stuff checkout Entropy.ch

www.entropy.ch

O'Reilly's Mac Devcenter and OnLAMP sites

www.macdevcenter.com
www.onlamp.com

Turning on Apache in Leopard

/HD/Library/Documents/WebServer and ~/Sites

Use Virtual Hosts to change or add additional sites

Installing MySQL and starting + Stopping

I built myself using the instructions on HiveLogic, including setting up auto-satrt launch daemon

Build MySQL

Can now get a Leopard binary from MySQL, includes Control Panel to stop and start MySQL.

MySQL Binary Install

Enabling PHP

Need to edit the Apache 2 config files. /etc/apache2/httpd.conf, also in the extras and users directories.

Setting up Virtual Host

/etc/apache2/extras/httpd-vhosts.conf

Editing your hosts file for local browsing

/etc/hosts

Useful apps:

Textmate

MAMP

NaviCat

Cocoa MySQL

Mac fans blazing with high CPU? Blame Windows.

Todd from Simplistik Software says he has seen lot of reports of people with high fan speeds and CPU usage and often the culprit is Windows under Parallels

In Windows, hit the CTRL+Shift+ESC combo to bring up Task Manager and look for CPU hoggin' apps to force quit.

WinWord.exe (Microsoft Word) and Spoolsv.exe (print spooler-Check your printers you have a document that didn't print, delete it) are the most common windows failures to cause this.

Get rid of Nagging System Updates

Play comment from Gregg

With Firmware updates you need to restart the Mac and follow the instructions

Can find the installer at /Applications/Utilities/MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update.app if you need to re-run.

If you have verified and you are sure you updated you can turn off the Software Update notification by selecting the item in the list and choosing Update-->Ignore Update (Delete) from the menubar.