iPhone 3G Speed debate

Much brew-ha-ha has been raised over a little bit of text on Apple's web site and in AT&T PR that listed iPhone 3G's network data speeds at 1.4Mbps.

Speeds touted by most other 3G phones, even ones on the same AT&T network are 3.6Mbps with some HSDPA cards claiming speeds as high as 7.2Mbps.

So is the iPhone crippled? A report in MacNN says likely not. It's just "the observed speed over AT&T's 3G network" in theory speeds of up to 3.6Mbs are possible, but Apple and AT&T are just being conservative using "real world" speeds in marketing the device.

It's mostly about the iPhone, well the news any way

Just when we thought it was over

To settle a patent lawsuit over Visual Voicemail, Apple and AT&T have agreed to pay licensing to Klausner Technologies. Kalusner, which hold several voicemail related patents, has already successfully sued Vonage over VoIP voicemail and now plans to go after Comcast and Cablevision for similar alleged violations.

Even licensed, not all countries (or carriers) will be created equal when it comes to the Visual Voicemail feature. iLounge did some digging and discovered that Visual Voicemail seems to be up in air on carries like TeliaSonera (Denmark, Finland, Norway, & Sweden), Globe Telecom (Philippines), and Vodafone (Australia, Italy, New Zealand, & Portugal) among others.

That new $199 iPhone price tag keeps becoming less and less of a bargain, at least in the US. Several sites reported last week that the AT&T's plans for the 3G Superphone may not include the 200 free SMS messages enjoyed by current iPhone 1.0 customers. That may mean 3G owners will have to pony up another $5/mo to get SMS back on their plans. If true, that will raise iPhone 3G TCO over the life of a 2 year contract to $160 more than with the current generation 8GB model.

If you are an existing non-iPhone AT&T customer you may need to pay even more to upgrade. iLounge reports that while new customers and 1st gen iPhone owners on AT&T who cancel and re-sign a new 2 year deal get the $199 price, not all non-iPhone AT&T customers get the deal.

Only AT&T customers who have had their current phones and plans for at least two years, customers who have had a plan costing between $68.99 and $98.99 for at least 21 months, and customers who have had a plan costing over $99 for at least 12 months are all eligible. If you don't fall in that category, prepare to wait or pony up early termination fees to make the switch.

Seems like the iPhone may turn out to be the first Apple device not to suffer from the International Apple tax.

O2 announced they will have some "free" iPhone 3G plans and this week expanded Wi-fi hotspots to include ones provided by BT OpenZone. Brings the total number of iPhone accessible free Wifi hotspots on the UK to 9,500 locations. Not too shabby.

The iPhone 3G will be a little higher in Germany. An 8GB iPhone 3G with a 69 euro, 2-year contract from T-Mobile will cost just 1 euro. 19.95 euros for 16GB model with an 89 euro/mo.plan.

Looks like the iPhone may also be cheaper for Apple to make. EETimes reports that Portelligent estimates the component costs of the new iPhone 3G to be about $100 bucks. Now as Chris Foresman of Ars Technica points out components don't a whole iPhone 3g make. Design costs, assembly labor, logistics, distribution, marketing, and service all factor in total costs of the device.

All that said, the iPhone 3G is gonna be huge. Analyst Mike Abramsky of RBC Capital Market is going so far as to predict Apple may sell as many as 14 million iPhones this year.

Looks like not everyone is clamoring for the iPhone 3G. Tech site TechOn reports on a iShare Web survey with 402 Japanese respondents 91% of whom said they don't plan to purchase an iPhone in July. The number one reason for the low demand, seems to be unwillingness to switch carriers (NTT DoCoMo is the largest carrier in Japan). At the moment SoftBank is the sole carrier announced in Japan. 77% of respondents also said that a replaceable batter was important to them when selecting a phone. That may also be hindering the iPhones Japanese appeal.

So are you getting one? New user or upgrading? What will happen to your old iPhone?

Macs sales also doing well

A piece on Ars Technica cites reports from NPD group that say Mac sales were up 50% year over year in May.

Apple sold 2.289 million Macs last quarter and could be on track this quarter to break their 2.319 million sales record from the Holiday 2007 quarter and this year mac sales could top 10 million.

Add those 14 million iPhones, plus who knows how many iPods and Apple will be sitting pretty as it move into Macworld mode.

In a separate piece data from Display Search ranks Mac notebook sales in 7th place for Q1 2008 unit sales with 1.43 million units sold a 61% year over year increase. in 7th Apple garners a 4.6% share of the notebook market.

Snow Leopard to be Intel only?

Well at least the Developer seeds appear to be.

Details were leaked with the current system requirements for the next big cat calling for 9GB of disk space – 12GB for developer tools – 512MB of RAM, and an internal, external, or shared DVD drive.

They also state the need for an internal display or one connected to an "Apple supplied" video card? Bu-by clones or just an Open-Cl support thing?

The current specs also state Intel processor required. Not surprising considering the focus is on multi-core and performance tweaks.

Mobile Me's secret sauce revealed

Apple Insider has a great piece on Apple's new tools for building web based apps.

SproutCore is an open source, platform-independent, Cocoa-inspired JavaScript framework for creating web applications that look and feel like Desktop applications.

www.sproutcore.com

Like Ruby on Rails or Zend Framework

.Mac Web Gallery was built using SproutCore and was developed by Charles Jolley of SproutIt

Uses classic MVC methodology on top of Javascript to build "thick client" apps. Most work is done on the browser with AJAX calls back to server to store an retrieve data.

Apple has contributed to SproutCore

WebKit's new SquirrelFish JavaScript interpreter shows Apple is putting it's weight behind Javascript. Could be the end run around some Flash/Air Apps.

Is it Apple's answer to Flash and Silverlight? Adobe said this week it has made significant progress getting Flash to run in the iPhone simulator, question is will Apple let them play on the real thing?

If you have Developer Tools installed here is how to build your first Sprout Core "Hello World" app

Launch Terminal and type, 'sudo gem install sproutcore' and enter your admin password. Wait while it installs.

Next type, 'sproutcore hello_world'

Type 'cd hello_world' and then 'sc-server' to start the web server.

Now point Safari at, http://localhost:4020/hello_world

If all has gone well you should see a "Hello World" page that looks a lot like Apple's post-it note style "Apple Store is down" page.

Type Control+C in the Terminal to stop the web server and return to the Terminal prompt.

Return of the iSight in HD?

A piece on Mac rumors points to an entry in the QuickTime Localizable strings file that clearly says

/* Next Generation USB iSight */
"iSight HD" = "iSight HD";

You can see for your self by opening up the file at /System/Library/QuickTime/QuickTimeUSBVDCDigitizer.component/Contents/Resources/English.lproj in your text editor of choice.

Apple thunder down under

Apple is set to launch their Sydney Australia store this Thursday, June 19th, 2008 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

They took the blue wrapper off the storefront at 77 King Street earlier this week and it is gorgeous in it's 3-story glass enclosed glory.

With an estimated 1335 square meters of floor space it will be Apple's 2nd largest store. The layout looks like other 3-story designs with the top floor devoted to Apple Genius Bar and to professional services like workshops.

Corrections on GPS

Many people have pointed out you only need one receiver, but links with at least 3 satellites.

Can take some time to acquire signal.

Push vs. IMAP vs. POP

Conner wanted to know how push is different than IMAP

In traditional email (POP) systems the Mail User Agent (e-mail reader) polls the Mail Delivery Agent (server) to see if there are new messages and then retrieves them, often removing the messages from the server, although it can leave them.

IMAP works off the server. Messages can be requested from the server and retrieved, but are left on and managed on the server until you implicitly remove them.

IMAP also supports polling and notifications. Small message to say you have email, but then you initiate the connection to retrieve messages.

With Push messages are automatically transfered from the Mail Delivery Agent (server) to the client as they arrive. The reason this is possible with the phone is you have an always on connection and the network always knows how to find you. Contact's and calendars work the same way.

With MobileMe you .Mac devices are all registered with the central Mobile Me (.Mac) server which will track devices (computer, iPhone, etc.) so it can push out updates.

How to get started Podcasting on the Mac

I typically don't cover this, but have had several emails.

Getting started... Have a concept and a simple plan. Why are you doing a podcast?

Equipment. Start small. You don't need much to begin and you can always add (and you will). Good mic and good place to record.

Phone interviews. Skype + Audio HiJack or Call Recorder. Also Levelator.

Skype

www.skype.com

Audio Hijack Pro

rogueamoeba.com

Call Recorder

ecamm.com/callrecorder

Levelator

Mixing and editing. Garageband, Audacity, UberCaster.

Wiretap Studio

ambrosiasw.com/wiretap

Audacity

audacity.sourceforge.net

Ubercaster

ubercaster.com

Hosting and publishing

iWeb and .Mac, good to start or for "family & friends", but will likely outgrow

Libsyn

libsyn.com

Wordpress with Podpress

mightyseek.com/podpress

Add to iTunes, apple.com/itunes/store/podcasts.html

www.apple.com/podcasts

Feeder

reinventedsoftware.com

Additional resources

Books: Podcast Solutions

podcastsolutions.com

Online?

Community. Join a Podcasting Meet-up

www.meetup.com

Scripting in iTunes is a good thing

Matt had a bunch of tracks with "01" at the beginning of their names he wanted to remove . Play comment.

iTunes is scriptable and Doug's Applescripts for iTunes is the key

Remove Characters from front or back 3.0

dougscripts.com

History of Themes on the Mac

Arron was wondering about how to add new "appearances" in OS X.

In the System Preferences-->Appearance you see 2, "Blue" and "Graphite". Not very exciting.

Apple first introduced appearance themes in Mac OS 8.5, but never supported their use. The OS shipped with the "Platinum" theme, but 3 others existed and slipped out (Hi-Tech, Gizmo, and Drawing Board)

3rd party developers also stepped up. Kalediscope.

In OS X there have been few tools.

Shapeshifter (not Leopard compatible). Haxie that requires APE.

unsanity.com/shapeshifter

CandyBar, change icons and dock.

www.panic.com/candybar

Small terminal hacks and tool to tweak some UI.

Attach a PDF to an email from any app

Dean wanted to know why iWork apps don't have a menu or toolbar item to email the documents like Word or Acrobat have.

You can email a PDF of a Document from any OS X Cocoa app by using the File-->Print options and then choosing 'Mail PDF...' from the PDF menu in the print dialog box.