iPhone 3G is cheaper, has complaints, and is in short supply

iPhone 3G continues to be scarce. Best bet in the states is you check the availability of your local Apple store at apple.com/retail after 9:00 PM the night before and then get there early. Things are reportedly even worse internationally.

According to Electronista AT&T claims to have sold almost twice as many iPhone 3Gs in the first 12 days as it did in the same period with the 1st gen iPhone.

AT&T Stores are claiming delivery times of anywhere from 48 hours to 21 days to 14 days.

Battery life, report are that it meets Apple's 5 hours of 3G talk time, but ends up at 3 to 4.5 hours of Internet use (not 5 as Apple claims).

Can improve things by not enabling push, auto email checking, bluetooth, wi-fi, etc.

Interface lag, Location Services will stop working, i get that I am in Oakland.

iPhone tear-down shows $174.33 component cost according to iSuppli. About $53 cheaper then the 8GB 1st gen.

Using Apple's own 1st weekend 1 million sold numbers and the tear-down, plus guesstimates Fortune magazine estimates Apple netted approx. $330 million in the opening weekend.

Of course all these numbers don't account for all costs, like marketing, packaging, logistics, etc.

iPhone 2.0 feeling a little more like public beta for some

Reports of instability have Developers and Apple pointing fingers (well Apple is keeping quiet really).

Rumors that an iPhone 2.0.1 update may already be in the works.

Also Beta seems to be AT&T free iPhone Wi-fi access which appeared on again until it was pulled from the companies site (again). Spokesman, Seth Bloom, said the webpage was posted in error

Gear live is saying Apple is seeding 2.1 builds to developers with additional directional and speed data for the GPS added to Core Location services. Turn by Tune may be possible. Apple's Greg Joswiak disputed claims that the iPhone 3G's GPS antenna wasn't powerful enough to handle navigation. The new beta also includes an early version of push notification support.

Update for older iPod Touches

Last Tuesday Apple released an iPod Touch 1.1.5 Update

The update is amazingly a 165.5 megabyte download which Apple says simply offers generic bug fixes. There are also reports that it may make the Touches a little zippier.

To get the update connect to iTunes and decline the paid 2.0 update

iPhone 3G unlocks and Jailbreaks

Earlier in the week there were reports of a Brazilian iPhone 3G user who used SIM card adapter to SIM unlock the phone

This week the iPhone Dev team released it's Pownage 2.0 tool

Tool lets you create and restore the iPhone using a patched IPSW file.

The unlock currently only works on 1st Gen iPhone with 2.0 software.

Jailbreak community is still pretty vibrant as that is the only place where you can still develop non-apple sanctioned apps, like Qik.

Apple apologizes for Mobile Me, offers penance

Apple sent out an email to .Me subscribers acknowledging that the .Mac to .Me transition was, "rockier" than they had hoped.

They claim Core services like Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac and Gallery went smoothly (anyone care to disagree), but confessed to issues with the new .Me web apps.

They also explained the lack of Computer to cloud "push" by claiming they should have not used that term so loosely, saying it can take up to 15 minutes for data from the Mac or PC to sync to the cloud.

As a gesture of good faith they are giving all .Me subscribers an extra 30-days on their existing agreements for free.

UK customers using a trial 30 day Mobile Me account received a 30 day extension also. This time Apple accidentally place an authorization hold of £121 instead of £1.

An Apple Insider piece says there was "an inadvertent fiber-optic cable cut" that caused an outage. Also in the past few days a Mail outage effecting 1% of Mobile Me customer has been reported by Apple on their support site. As far as I know this is still out for some customers almost 6 days later.

This is a mess, David Pouge describes on reader who lost all her Email. Apple technicians recovered 34, but the rest gone.

The worst part is Apple's non-information. They are also doing their typical behavior of removing discussion board posts.

Apple's second quarter growth takes it to #3 in the US

According to a Gartner Research report, Apple is now the #3 computer maker in the US by sales, grabbing the #3 position with approx. 8.5% market share just behind Dell and HP.

Apple experienced 38.1% growth year-over-year blowing away the industry rate of just 4.2%.

Apple 3rd Quarter earnings call

Apple posted revenue of $7.46 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.07 billion for it's 3rd fiscal quarter of 2008

There was a 41% increase in Macs sales from a year ago with 2.5 million Macs sold. Apple sold 11 million iPods in the quarter and just over 700,000 iPhones.

42% of revenue came from International sales.

COO Tim Cook also said that he felt Apple could deliver iPhone' into 20 more countries by August 22nd. Surprising given the current iPhone shortages.

Gross margins were down almost 2% dropping from 36.9% to 34.8% compared to last year.

During the call Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said they will be, “delivering state-of-the-art new products at prices our competitors can’t match.” Which kicked off rumors for price cuts, new Macbooks and Macbook Pros, and speculation of a Macbook Touch (tablet).

The lower pricing was further supported by Oppenheimer's statement that, "We've got a future product transition that I can't discuss with you today,". He gave no details on the "transition" but early speculation is a move to new Intel architectures and chip designs with a some rumors predicting Apple adding new AMD chips to the Mac mix.

New Macbooks soon?

A couple reports are citing a Commercial Times report out of Taiwan that says Apple has increased orders for notebook components.

The piece claims Apple has increased orders for "notebook-use printed circuit boards" by 20% this quarter as well as increased orders for Macbook displays.

There has been talk for some time now in the rumor community of a Macbook pro rev and of a possible Aluminum update to the Macbooks. Possibly using the new Intel Montevina platform. Will we be seeing a new model making it's way back to school in the fall?

Quad core iLife updates

iPhoto 7.1.4, This update contains new holiday greeting card and postcard themes for use with Apple print products. It also addresses general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues.

iLife Support 8.3, iLife Support provides system software components shared by all iLife ’08 applications. This update improves overall stability and addresses a number of other minor issues. It is recommended for all users for iLife ’08.

iWeb 2.0.4, This update addresses general compatibility issues.

iMovie 7.1.4, This update addresses general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues.

3 New iPhone Ads posted

Apple has added 3 new iPhone 3G ads to it's US web site.

Titled Everyone, Unslow, and Work Friendly. The first 2 focus on the faster 3G networking and the second on the enterprise work features (Mail, Calendar, and contact sync).

Interesting that in the US they say it downloads "twice as fast", but in Austrailian versions of the same ads they say "really fast". I prefer the latter.

Microsoft and Ubuntu look for more Mac like experiences

In an Electronistia piece they say Ubuntu chief architect Mark Shuttleworth called on developers at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention to push Linux "beyond the Mac'. Saying that the open source operating system should be at least as "crisp and clean" as Mac OS X while still offering the community benefits that come with fully opened code.

Kara Swisher of All Things Digital acquired an internal Microsoft memo from Steve Ballmer. In it he note Microsoft's goal to focus on fixing Vista reputation, but also says:

"In the competition between PCs and Macs, we outsell Apple 30-to-1," he says. "But there is no doubt that Apple is thriving. Why? Because they are good at providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience. Today, we’re changing the way we work with hardware vendors to ensure that we can provide complete experiences with absolutely no compromises. We’ll do the same with phones—providing choice as we work to create great end-to-end experiences."

Why isn't TimeMachine talked about more?

Byron wants to know why SuperDuper and other apps get the backup spotlight and what's the difference vs. TimeMachine?

Cloned vs. snapshot+incremental backup.

Time Machine backs up the changes from the last 24 hours, 30/31 days, weeks

Also, is it safe to swap out an internal drive for a newer one and restore back from Time Machine?

The restore needs to be done by booting off your system CD

Caches, the Spotlight index, Mail accounts, etc. will be rebuilt after you are running the restored system. iTunes will also need to re-authorize, so de-auth before starting.

Fixing Time Capsule Backup Kernel Panics

Steven alerted me to an issue that can occur with Time Capsule backups where the host Machine Kernel panics when initiating backups

The trouble seems to be corruption in the sparseimagebundle for the host machine

Deleting that sparseimage bundle seems to resolve the crashing.

iPhone 3G Calendar Color fix

Play tip from Jan

Auto open disk images on mount

Simone use encrypted disk images to store private and sensitive data and often

Wanted a way to auto open the image in the Finder when it mounts. Like many CDs/DVDs do.

Turns out there is a preference in the Disk Utility for 'Automatically open read-only images" and 'Automatically open read-write images".

Dusting off your Mac

My iMac G5 started acting up going to sleep and shutting down.

A look at the logs in Console showed it was overheating.

Opened it up and vacuumed out the dust and it has been working fine since.

Hack your way to .Me almost Push

Listener Doug discovered a hack to adjust the .Me Sync setting to run more often then every 15 minutes.

In System Preferences--> Mobile Me, click the sync tab and make sure it is set to "Automatically"

In the Finder go to ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/ and look for the file com.apple.DotMacSync.<your MAC Address>.plist

Make a backup of this file, I make a copy to my Desktop.

If you have Developer tools installed open the file using Property List Editor or open it in a plain text editor. Be careful that it is in pure text only mode.

Find the "AutoSyncInterval" parameter and change it's value from 15 to 1 (or whatever interval in minutes you want).

Save the file, quit and your done. Now changes will be "pushed" out every minute or so.

Should we give our Mac preventative medicine?

Brad makes a good point in wondering if by not using anti-virus and anti-spyware apps are we setting ourselves up for disaster

Why having anti-virus won't protect you from impending doom

What can we do?

Don't panic. Have a plan. Backups.

Stay up to date with news and information. Read blogs, listen to podcasts, talk to friends, etc.

Don't click on links, open email, or download apps from sources we don't trust.

Pay attention

Be careful with App Store purchases

Share story about syncing purchased content to non-sync Mac

Control + Click or right+ Click the iPhone or iPOd icon from the devices list and choose transfer purchases.

Can re-download app store apps for free

Make sure you are logged into the account you made the original purchase with. Go to the App Store and click the buy button again. It will begin the download and then a dialog will ask, "You have already purchased this item. To download it again for free select OK".

If you have an issue or are double billed you can report the problem from your iPod/iPhone

1. Tap Review on the application's information page to open the Reviews section.

2. Tap on the composition button in the upper right to load the composition choices.

3. Tap "Report a Problem" to load the "Report a problem" screen.

5. Select the appropriate symptom.

4. Tap the "Comments?" box to add comments after you choose your issue.

6. Tap the Report button in the upper right corner to submit your issue.

7. A confirmation screen appears. Tap Cancel to cancel the report and return to Reviews screen, or tap OK to submit the report to the application developer.

iPhone 2.0 Screenshots

Feature built in to the 2.0 software, but not highly advertised

Hold the home button and press the reset/power button.

Images are saved to the Camera app and can be synced back to your Mac/PC or emailed from the iPhone.

Bonus tip: Using the new Remote app with the iPhone and your Apple TV. When accessing search in YouTube, iTunes and the like the iPhone keyboard will appear and you can use it to type. Credit to John Gruber.