As iPhone Atlas has it, a user was trying to open up his iPhone in order to unlock it pop in his own SIM card. Just as he was getting the case open, boom.  iPhone flambe.

According to the chef: "we started to open the metal cover (after taking out the 3 screws) and PUFF, up it went in smoke, I think my collegue must have touched something."

Fake Steve Jobs has already claimed responsibility for the act, cautioning "Not going to tell you which units have the bomb in them. But I wouldn't go opening any of these babies up if I were you."

So if the AT&T legal mafia doesn't track you down, the exploding iPhones might.

Good luck, Jim.

Apple and other content vendors have always been the target of the anti-DRM campaigns. It was said that they were the ones who wanted to impose restrictions on the users and limit how content can be viewed.

Now, we see that the software/hardware vendors were doing so mainly at the behest of the record labels and TV studios. Apple had been claiming this for a while, but the company couldn't do much about it until the iTunes store had garnered a large enough audience to give Apple any leverage.

Now that Apple has taken a position against DRM, the studios and labels are getting in a huff and proving Apple's claims.

But let's not go assigning horns and halos just yet. NBC's claims that Apple is artificially keeping prices low in order to sell more iPods. It's an interesting concern, and not something which is completely unplausible.

We also don't know what Apple promised the studios when the deals were first made. Universal passed on Apple and then went on to test its own DRM-free program. Perhaps this has more to do with Apple's negotiating and business practices than its stance on DRM.

Regardless, NBC and Universal are doing this at a time when the iTunes store has a virtual stranglehold on the market.  Turning your back on the top legal content store at a time when the only real comparable alternative is piracy doesn't seem like the best business move.

A simple search for "unlocked iPhone" on eBay brings up some nifty little knockoffs that would make a flea-market vendor blush.

Behold, the CECT IPhone P168 from China:

The interface is actually a fairly passable copy. Perhaps these guys could get jobs in Redmond...

They even got the back....

But it gets better. You see, some enterprising firm from Hong Kong has gone so far as to make a knock-off of the knock-off.  Ladies and gents, I present the Glomarket GTJ T718:

Last fall at the Intel Developer Conference, VW showed off a prototype of a car with an embedded system running Windows Mobile.

Perhaps VW saw the iPhone interface and rang up Intel, who in turn called its new bff Apple and set the wheels in motion for a collaborative project that could become the "one more thing" at Macworld 2008...

According to Apple, the flaw exists in the way the Airport Extreme handles a certain type of routing headers in the IPv6 networking protocol.

If an attacker were to send a specially crafted data packet to base station, the amount of available bandwidth could be reduced and networking speed would be slowed down. Not exactly a doomsday scenario, but if for some reason you had a mischievous associate or neighbor that for some strange reason wanted to slow down your Airport network, this may be of use, I guess.

If you have a gigabit-equipped base station, you can skip this one. That model is not affected.

Initially, 28 different programs will  be included in the offering, though Apple hopes to expand that list as the service begins to pick up steam.

Headlining the list are US mega-hits Lost, Desperate Housewives, and of course Sponge Bob Squarepants.  While those are not the most flattering portraits of American culture (with the exception of Sponge Bob), at least Apple isn't piping over episodes of the REALLY embarrassing stuff, like, say, Flavor of Love or Major League Soccer.

Interesting timing, as this announcement comes just one week before Apple is rumored to be set to launch its new line of iPods. Perhaps Apple wants to give the Brits a bit more incentive to plunk down their scratch for a new video iPod...

Right now, the kid from New Jersey appears to be the only one of the iPhone unlockers to garner any material gain. As Hotz settles into his new ride, Uniquephones is attempting to fend off AT&T's legal crew, while the iPhoneSimFree crew has yet to take their product out of its "bulk-order-only" status.

All the while, AT&T is getting its lawyers all psyched up for a round of lawsuits and Apple is no doubt prepping a new firmware update that will re-establish the locks on the iPhone.

I would have taken the car too.

As we noted earlier, there's a recently added rule that shields the act of unlocking a mobile phone from a DMCA claim. Well, at least, it sort of does.

It turns out that an unlocked mobile phone in the US is a bit like hashish in Amsterdam: You can have it, but you can't sell it to the guy next door.

The short of it is, the act of unlocking a phone in and of itself is not illegal, but if you try and distribute the tools or even the code...well...expect to be served a little mail from Jobs and Co.

Of course, it's far more complex than that. As Lexmark found out a couple of years ago, the copy protections being defeated have to actually be a copyrightable work. Then, the code used by the unlocking tool has to be found to be actively circumventing the protections. In other words, heavy analysis needed on both sides.

Unless the unlock-tool distributors back down, it seems that we can expect this saga to take a while.

No word yet on what the "one more thing" will be, or whether it will top last year's AppleTV unveiling, but ArsTechnica muses that Apple may be planning to show off a new low-end iPhone model.

A provision added into the Digital Millenium Copyright Act last November states that copyright holders cannot file a claim against: Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network.

Of course, what Apple can do is simply provide another update which prevents the sim hack from working. At least, until a new version of the hack is written...

Never mind that Apple is one of the few companies to never have used wafer-thin models in its commercials to lure the young male geek audience. (By the way, has anyone ever met an anorexic computer geek?)

Heck, never mind that it's an ad for a freaking computer.

The really ridiculous part about all this is that they making this claim that images in advertising could have an effect one eating disorders against a company that, for the last thirty years, has used a piece of food for its logo.

Oh, the irony...

EA should have realized in the first place that selling Mac games would be an uphill battle. Mac users are either completely uninterested in games or have long since purchased a console system. Lame, half-baked ports that turn up months after the PC release have become a fact of life.

The company raised a few eyebrows at WWDC when it promised to have four new games out in July followed by simultaneous releases of other games. Finally, a major game developer was going to give the Mac equal footing with the PC. Mac users could finally dump their consoles and erase their Boot Camp partitions, big-name titles were at last coming to OS X.

Unfortunately, EA's actions since then might have cost the company any good will or credibility it had with Mac users, and may have even cost the company its shot at building any sort of significant Macintosh gaming market.

It's not just the delay that did it, it's the handling of the situation.  Mac  gaming blogs and news sites had been asking about the status of the new games for weeks and getting the cold shoulder from the company. It wasn't until Madden was delayed and the likes of vnunet and news.com started to take notice that EA even acknowledged the shipping status of ANY of the games.

Then, without making any sort of attempt to apologize or even explain why the company's co-founder came on stage with Steve Jobs and made a declaration in front of a global audience that was now being tossed out the window, EA triumphantly announced that the four games slated for July were now shipping. One has to wonder if, had the company not taken a minor beating from the tech press, a release would have even been issued at all.

In the long run, EA won't be losing much sleep over the incident. Mac games are obviously the smallest of EA's gaming markets, making up what is surely a nearly insignificant portion of total sales. Still, the company can't feel good knowing that its own arrogance may have cost it a prime spot in what could have been a loyal and growing new market for its games.

The silver rankings are the second of the EPEAT's three tier system for ranking computers.  All of Apple's laptops, desktops, and monitors scored in the "silver" range, between 14 and 19 points.  No Apple product was able to crack the EPEAT's "gold" ranking. Dell scored four products in the top tier, while Toshiba had five of its notebooks achieve the ranking.

To put things in perspective, however, Apple met each and every required criteria in the report. The company lost most of its points by not meeting optional criteria for such things as auditing its recycling program and listing the amount of recycled content in each machine. So, while Apple is the lumbering, polluting giant that Greenpeace would have you believe, the company is also not the clear-cut leader it claims to be.

Greenpeace has admitted that they give Apple extra attention because of the company's influential position within the market. They argue that if Apple were to step up its environmental campaigns so would everyone else.

Judging by Apple's own words, it appears as if they share Greenpeace's position and do indeed consider themselves a trend-setter both in design and corporate policy. In that regard, it seems that there's still work to be done in Cupertino.

The massive "I told you so" OS X attack that the Windows crowd so desperately craves may never come, but it's looking increasingly likely that eventually someone could look to target a portion of the Mac community.

Does that mean you should run out and buy an AV suite and perform a total lockdown? Probably not. It seems that common sense, not following unsolicited links or opening strange files would be protection enough. Just keep in mind that a day will come when simply being on a Mac will not exempt you from the consequences of reckless behavior.

Tapping into all of the genetics knowledge that comes with a California public school education, Mac Inspector was able to create this cutting-edge projection of the Woz-Griffin offspring:

Poor kid. Looks kind of like Larry Ellison in a Cher wig.

It wouldn't be beyond Apple to do an ultra-mobile notebook. The iBook was among the first notebooks designed to appeal strictly to consumer markets, so light, low-cost notebooks are the norm. Unfortunately, this is also the best argument against an Apple UMPC. If the MacBook is currently serving as the consumer model, where would an ultra-mobile fit in?

What seems more likely is that, if this patent gets used, it will be on a tapered-edge MacBook, and not on a UMPC

The guys at Ars Technica document their mammoth bills, weighing in at 52 and 34 pages respectfully, the bills contain line after line of data transfer charges totaling $0.00 in charges.

Then, Gizmodo tells the tale of a young lady who managed to get herself a 300 page bill.

No word yet on when the postal worker's union plans to file suit.

You see, this service was already out for other smartphones as a Flash-based mobile service. Of course, the iPhone does not support Flash or Java. So, you take out the Flash functionality, replace it with Ajax, and presto, you have a "new" service for the iPhone.

So, now we get to look forward to months and months of every company, news outlet and web site with any sort of mobile service creating an Ajax-based version, slapping the "iPhone App" label to it, and trumpeting out a new product to users.

After the two Apples settled their court case in February, buzz began to circulate that a deal to bring the Beatles to iTunes would be in the works.

It would appear that this latest development would bode well for a possible deal. Apple now has solo deals worked out with Lennon's estate and Paul McCartney, two of the controlling parties of Apple Corporation, which controls the Beatles' catalogue.

Back in May, McCartney said that a deal between Apple and the Beatles was in its final stages. Unfortunately, that has yet to materialize.

Perhaps the Lennon deal will bring the two sides closer, or perhaps it signals an upcoming deal, or perhaps its merely the consolation prize in a deal that fell through.

Heck, Beatles fans have been waiting four years for a deal. What's another month or twelve?

EA and Apple seem to have forgotten about that whole "games" thing on MacOS.  We asked Apple for comment, they pointed to EA. We asked EA for an explanation, but they never bothered to give one.

In the meantime, Madden Day arrives to great fanfare on just about every other electronic device known to man. What's more, other Mac games from EA, such as Battefield 2142 and Harry Potter and the Order of the phoenix, which were supposed to arrive in July remain delayed.

If you're a Mac user eager to play EA's games, I'd suggest you seriously consider spending a few bucks for a console. It may be a while...

Regardless of what you think their motives were, the perpetrators of this hoax had in interesting point.

Why, in the era of botox and butt implants, do we find it so outrageous that someone would have elective surgery to be more efficient at work? If professional athletes routinely pump any manor or substances into their bloodstream to get a leg up, why not your average IT worker?

In the grand scheme of things, I think I'd elect to have my thumbs whittled down long before I let someone inject nerve toxins into my face or shoot synthetic testosterone in my arm.

You see, the calls don't actually use the  smartphone's broadband connection for VoIP calls, it redirects the calls through SkypeOut back to your mobile in order to establish the call.

In other words, you need a working voice plan on the iPhone in order to use this.

You can get a free 7-day trial of the software, but after that you'll have to pay $11.95 to use it. Shape Services also offers versions of IM+ Skype for Blackberry, Palm, and Symbian.

The widgets track such things as recent purchases, top-rated songs, and most-downloaded artists. To use them, you will need a copy of iTunes and a store account.

Careful though, you may not want the other guys in your hardcore band to know that you still love "who let the dogs out"...

This month's patch Tuesday release also contains a fix that affects certain versions of Windows, Visual Basic, and Office 2004 for the Mac.

The bulletin is rated as "critical," meaning that it could possibly allow an attacker to remotely install and execute code.

Seeing as how Microsoft will be delaying any new version of Mac Office until next year, it's a good idea to keep your copy of 2004 patched and up to date.

First we called 1394 Trade Association to see if this might have just been a typo. Nope. They verified the figure, claiming that in the same study HP had logged 37 per cent market share and Dell just 11 percent. 1394 Trade Association noted that the study only looked at consumer retail sales, though that would not account for Dell, which still does nearly all of its sales directly, showing up in the ranking.

If this is true, it would be huge news. Not only has Apple pumped its market share to epic proportions, but the company also moved ahead of Dell, the one time consumer kingpin.

Unfortunately, those figures just don't seem to hold up.

The 1394 Trade Association told vnunet.com that the figures were from a CNBC report citing major analyst firms. A search of the CNBC web site, however revealed no such report. We called CNBC to verify the information, but have yet to receive a response.

Data from two major analyst firms also contradicts the figures. IDC told us that Apple's 2006 retail market share stood at 6.3 per cent, with HP at 27.5 per cent and Dell at 25.5. In the first quarter of 2007, Apple's market share rose to 7.6 per cent and HP's to 32 per cent. A nice gain, but nothing to indicate a shift on the scale suggested in the report. IDC Expects to have the Q2 07 figures within the next couple of weeks, but analyst Doug Bell cautioned that quarterly figures were a less reliable indication than yearly totals.

Gartner did not have specific data on retail sales for Q2 07, but the company's overall figures also cast doubt on the possibility of a huge market share gain from Apple. Overall, HP claims 18.2 per cent and Dell 15 per cent of the market.  Apple still does not crack the top five in the overall market.

More on this as it develops.

Garage Band- The music recordig app got a completely new mode known as "Magic Garage Band" in which you use a stage interface to arrange instruments in a pre-fabricated "template" type of song. Want to add a trumpet solo? Click on the horn section. Want to take out the drums? Click on the picture to remove them from the stage. Pretty cool way to bring in kids and people who get intimidate by huge pallets of waveforms. Advanced users also got a couple new features, including support for 24 bit recording.

"Skimming" in iPhoto and web galleries- Think "cover flow" within a much smaller space.  The new feature lets you browse the contents of a photo album just by mousing over it. In iPhoto, you can also use this to pull up photos rather than having to open up the album.

Mac Mini upgrade- At first glance, it appeared as if the iMac was the only Apple computer that got an upgrade yesterday. But as COO Tim Cook noted in a Q&A after the event, the Mini got a new Core 2 Duo processor.

Keynote- The presentation program got tons of new templates and effects, as well as a couple of new features. "Instant Alpha" makes it easier to pull a single piece of an image out from a background and place it on a slide. There's also a "smart builds" feature that the comapny claims will simplify the creation of custom animations in Keynote.

iDVD- Coding and overall application performance have been improved, the company claims.

Growth rate- Jobs claims that in each of the last four quarters, the Mac has grown by roughly thirty per cent over the previous year. That's about three times faster than the rest of the PC industry.

On the "Intel inside" program- One reporter asked why Apple hasn't shown Intel any love by placing the famous "Intel Inside" sticker on its computers. Jobs simply replied "because we like our own stickers better." Phil Schiller, VP of product marketing, later explained that the company wanted to avoid covering the machines with various stickers in logos, as some PC vendors do.

No "true" HD in iLife- While the resolutions in iMovie and iDVD are higher than regular DVDs, they are not quite at the resolution of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. The company said that this was mainly because current consumer DV cameras are not yet capable of recording at those revolutions. Jobs claims, however, that the resolutions are "close but not quite" HD DVD quality.

The iMac's RAM door- In many previous iMac models, installing RAM upgrades was a daunting task beyond many users' comfort level. On the new iMac, you take out one screw, pop the memory in, and you're done.

A few things to note before installing the update.

The update requires a Macintosh formatted drive to install. Apple recommends that users on RAID arrays attach an Apple formatted drive before installing.

The update may take issue to certain third-party USB or Firewire peripherals. If you have issues, disconnect non-Apple devices.

You paid thousands of dollars for this baby, might as well keep it fully updated.

It is because Apple, to a much greater extent than most companies, does not need the press. Steve jobs noted this in his presentation yesterday when he declared that the company's legion of zealous user evangelists were "the best sales and marketing force we could ask for."

Steve knows that the media is, much of the time, a hinderance to the Cupertino hype machine, what with all of their subjective questioning and willingness to point out fault.

Why spend time and money trying to tout the virtues of a product with pre-briefings and executive interviews when you can simply put out a one page release and trust your army of college film students and freelance designers to spew its benefits and attack its critics as if they were stumping for a presidential candidate?

It's brilliant marketing, perhaps the best in the IT industry. And as Jobs revealed yesterday, it's no accident.

And you thought they were only good at making electronics.

First, what we DID see.

New iMac- As expected, Apple gave its consumer desktop a make-over in the style of the iPhone, Mac Pro, and iPhone. The iMac also got a nice speed boost and a few new abilities, such as firewire 800 and a higher RAM capacity.

iLife updates- Aside from interface updates to iPhoto and iMovie, there were several new web features. Particularly cool was the photo-sharing feature that lets .mac users instantly upload photos into interactive web pages. There's also a new feature that allows the iPhone to upload photos straight to .mac galleries and a new iMovie option to upload straight to YouTube.

iWork/Numbers- Apple finally introduced a spreadsheet application, and it looks sleek and intuitive. Couple that with Microsoft's announced delay of Mac Office 2008, and iWork may be take off. Analysts are already predicting that iWork could convert a fair amount of users while Microsoft is dragging its feet with Office.

Now, for a look at what DIDN'T materialize on Tuesday..

No news on Leopard- Still set for release sometime before Halloween, still only available as a closed beta to developers. Two months late and counting, and Apple has nothing to report?

No other Mac hardware- It appears as if the Mac Mini and Mac Pro will remain as they are right now. No new CPUs, graphics cards, or connection upgrades.

No "one more thing"- Apple has spoiled consumers recently by tagging a groundbreaking "one more thing" product announcement to the end of every Steve Jobs presentation. Not this time. No touchscreen iPod, no iPhone mini. Instead, the CEO granted a rare Q&A session with reporters. Interesting for the press, not so much for gadget-hungry Mac geeks.

All in all, not a bad event, though it wasn't Macworld 07 either... iMacs roll. Gratuitous tiny keyboard. Four stars. Mac Inspector says check it out.

The 20" iMac showing off the new iPhoto "events" interface.

And from the side. On the right we see the back of the 24" model with its nine ports, including three USB2 ports and a FireWire 800 port, the first on an iMac.

Behold the 24-inch iMac in all of its gigantic, glossy-screened glory.

The rumours were true. The iMacs come with this tiny aluminum slab of a keyboard, though it is a bit more comfortable than it looks. The wireless version here has no numeric keypad, but the corded version does.

Miller is not the only person to lob this sort of charge at Apple. Last year Brian Krebs of the Washington Post noted that it took Apple 91 days on average to patch a vulnerability. Miller claims that some freeware components will sit for years without getting an update from Apple.

Though OS X doesn't require the monthly updates of Windows, Apple routinely waits until the fixes soar into the 30s and 40's before dumping updates on its users. This is something that Microsoft noted when it made the "Vista is more secure than OS X" claim.

Miller, Krebs, and yes...even Microsoft...all have good points.

Apple needs to pay more attention to getting software regularly patched and updated. Malware or not. The lack of a threat should not be an excuse for sloppiness, particularly at a time when targeted attacks are becoming more popular.

The revelation brings up just as many questions as it does answers. How did he manage to stay anonymous for so long? Lyons said that he will continue to write as FSJ, but how willing will he be to slam those within the valley now that his real name and job are public?

And, most importantly, how much free time does Forbes magazine give its senior editors? Some of us tech reporters can't so much as watch an episode of "Will it Blend?" without getting the "could you remind me again why we're paying you?" look from  the editor and a fresh story assignment. This guy, however, manages to conduct extensive background research on a major CEO, spends nearly every day for fourteen months writing a blog in character while simultaneously writing a novel, all while working as a senior editor for one of the most respected business magazines on the planet.

Ahh, to be an editor with your own office...

Namaste, Daniel Lyons. You are an inspiration to filthy hacks-turned part-time bloggers everywhere.

While this is a pretty cool development, don't go expecting to be able to run any old app on your iPhone in the  near future. The process remains in its infancy, and even being able to install third-party applications requires a bit of programming knowledge and assumes that the user knows his or her way around a command-line terminal.

First, you need to go through the process of "jailbreaking" your iPhone so that you can control it via a PC or Mac-based shell program. Then, you need to download and run a series of toolchains which you will then use to compile the app code.

It doesn't appear that botching this process can seriously damage the iPhone (you can always re-install the software), but unless you're either a programmer or the type of person that likes to do things like take apart the lawnmower for thrills, it makes sense just to stick with the web apps for now.

Best Buy doesn't exactly have the best reputation when it comes to customer service.  Though after some of the iPhone activation horror stories  associated with AT&T, it's hard to imagine Best Buy being far worse. And if something does go wrong and you're faced with a clueless Best Buy techie, you can always take it to the nearest Apple Store and try your luck there.

If true, however, it would show that Apple is indeed interested in expanding its retail reach by contracting with other retailers. After years of simply building more Apple stores rather than partner up, perhaps the company is going to try and play well with others. 

Only activate 140,000 iPhones in the first weekend, that's one thing. But use Windows to run the demo kiosks?

You can't help but wonder if Apple might be re-thinking this whole AT&T iPhone deal...

Image via Gizmodo.

Because Microsoft owns the rights to such common fonts as Times New Roman and Arial, Apple has to license the rights to use those fonts in OS X.

This seems to hardly be worth noting at first glance, but had OS X not been able to use these fonts it could have been a real issue, particularly when browsing the web. Many sites are designed to look good with MS default fonts, and not having them enabled out of the box has been a common gripe amongst Linux users for years.

Now, before we go crying foul, remember that they did the exact same thing with Windows Vista, pushing the consumer release date back from late 2006 to early 2007.

If you look at it that way, this isn't so much a setback as it is a landmark event. The Mac community is making progress: After years of living as second-class citizens in the eyes of Microsoft, the folks up in Redmond are finally treating the Mac faithful just like they treat Windows users.

Aint progress great?

There is good news for hack-happy iPhone users, however. The group also claims that several of the more popular methods for activating the iPhone without signing up for AT&T service still work.

According to Apple, the iPhone update will attempt to install when the device is docked, but users have the option to decline the update. Of course, the device will attempt to install the update every single time it is docked, so you may eventually get tired of clicking "cancel" and just decide to actually use your $600 phone to make phone calls...

All three of the flaws contain a fix for WebKit, a component used to render HTML and Jacascript in Safari and OS X.  According to Apple's description, the fonts used by webkit lend themselves particularly well to "look-alike" URLs that at first glance appear to be addresses for legitimate web sites.

There are also numerous flaws in the OS X WebCore component that can allow for such nasty things as cross-site scripting and information disclosure.

The automatic update software should be able download all three updates, though the OS X and Safari updates are also available through Apple's website.

Seems worth a download and a restart to me.

Oh, and there's also that OS update we've been waiting for since June...

It was around this same time last year that the company hosted an event in which Steve Jobs announced half a dozen new products, including new iPods, the iTunes Movie Store and AppleTV.

Hopefully this even will yield a similar crop of goodies.

According to a Detroit newspaper, Eight Mile Style and Martin Affiliated filed suit because the iTunes music store has allegedly been selling Eminem's music without the permission of either Eminem or Eight Mile Style/Martin Affiliated.

The Detroit News reports that not only is Apple running the songs without permission, but the company was contacted and asked to remove the music and refused. Apple has a deal with Eminem's distributor, Universal Music, that allows it to sell the label's music on the iTunes Music Store.

It would seem that Eminem's beef here would be with Universal and not with Apple, and that's where this could be an interesting case. Does the artist/publisher have a right to demand the removal of their material from a certain retailer, or is it exclusively the call of the distributor?