The fact is that the first release of ANYTHING is going to have problems. If you're buying a Mac, the term "Rev A" can prove to be a sucker deal on par with the extended warranty (anyone remember the issues with first blue & white G3 towers?) Early iPhone owners got to wade through an AT&T activation nightmare, and now Leopard owners will have to deal with these problems. It's just part of being an early adopter.

It's not much different with software. Something gets released, people bang away at it and pull up flaws for a few weeks, and the issues get patched. My guess is that Apple will be issuing the first Leopard update before thanksgiving. If you want a smooth transition, it may be best to wait until after that first patch before dropping the cash for Leopard.

Apparently, sending in unsolicited suggestions is a no-no at Apple, whether you're a budding developer or a fourth-grader doing a school project.

I actually agree with Apple on this one. Can you imagine what would happen if you let a nine year-old girl design a portable media player?

So, what user video will be next to make it into Apple's marketing machine? We sort of hope it's this one...

Yes, FSJ has his share of detractors. Some are folks who feel that his often biting commentary has gone a bit too far, while others simply don't seem to understand the concepts of "satire" "fiction" and "humor."

The Fake Steve haters have come out in full force in recent days, attacking both Lyons fictional and real-life professional personas over a pair of postings made by the pseudo-CEO.

Earlier this week, Fake Steve made a posting about noted blogger Robert Scoble. FSJ claimed that Scoble's  podcasting startup, PodTech, was having financial troubles and would be imminently going out of business. Scoble did what any responsible executive or PR would do, he denied the crap out of the report so that he could later admit to the news with a much softer touch. Indeed, on a Twitter posting, Scoble said that the company would be "restructuring its business and refocusing its resources."

Fake Steve Jobs, of course, noted this and turned into a particularly biting follow-up. Scoble, and his backers, were not amused. Readers peppered the two posts with comments attacking not the Fake Blog and the fictional author persona, but the real-life occupation of its author.

"FSJ, why pick on Scoble?" wrote one commenter, "At least he has the guts to be himself instead of being a 'fake'."

"So fake Steve, so much for journalistic integrity and editorial accuracy! It appears that neither you or anyone from Forbes bothered to contact PodTech or Robert Scoble to confirm your 'story'. Nice job! Why should anyone believe anything you post here in the future?" wrote another.

One can't help but wonder if these people understand that this is a fake blog. Yes, it is sponsored by Forbes, but it is not a news blog by any stretch. All one has to do is look at the archive to see that the blog is intended to be taken as fiction.

The furor eventually died down, until  Fake Steve made another posting in which he said a group of hitmen had been dispatched to deal with a particularly obnoxious tech support operator. The posting rubbed one reader the wrong way, prompting him to write the following:

"It is no joke, not at all, to write stuff like that. In fact, I'm thinking about writing your bosses at Forbes and suggesting that you should be fired for writing stuff like this... If you do it again, I'm going to make trouble for you at Forbes. Don't think that I won't do it. All I have to do is make a few phone calls."

The ultimate irony would be for this man to actually call Forbes, only to spend 45 minutes being transferred from department to department and eventually get cut off. As for the idea that the postings would incite violence, I can say for a fact that my last call to a support hotline got me far closer to wanting to commit murder than any blog posting ever did...

As is to be expected, there is nowhere near the hype that was seen for the iPhone. Still, Apple plans to make it an occasion. In San Francisco, Apple stores will be handing out free t-shirts to those who show up for the launch.

Personally, I won't be shelling out the $130 for Leopard any time soon. None of those 300 features really make it worth the cash. Time machine? Nope. When I do back up documents, stashing files on the iPod or burning a CD does the trick. Aside from that, Time Machine requires an external disk. Sure, re-installing is a pain in the butt, but $200-plus is a pretty high price to pay for convenience when restoring.

Stacks? Putting a plain old folder in the dock works just fine. Spaces? Likewise, the dock does the job for me just fine. I don't have kids, so that leaves out parental controls, and there Fusion and Parallels are far easier to work with than boot camp.

How about you? Did Apple sell you on Leopard's bells and whistles, or will you be hanging on to your cash?

At the risk of sounding like an Apple apologist, this survey just doesn't seem to have been carried out well.

Apparently, the survey asked 1000 people at random if they would buy an iPhone. Of those 1000 people, only 40 or so even knew that Apple made a phone.

These people, of course, are not the ones Apple is going after initially. The first wave of iPhone sales has been targeted at the early adopters, the gadget junkies, and the gainfully employed Apple fanatics.

The average man on the street rarely buys any consumer electronics product initially. By and large consumers will wait for a price drop, a revision, or both. So why try and gauge interest in a product by asking those who likely won't buy it in the first place?

It's a bit like walking up to people in a mall, asking them if they plan on attending a football game, and then using that data to predict season ticket sales for a specific team.

Let us note that a similar survey in February predicted that just one percent of US consumers would want an iPhone, and look how that is turning out.

As of the last couple of days, Apple has officially overtaken IBM in market capitalization, logging a $161.84 billion cap, while IBM weighed in at a paltry $155b. This gives Apple the largest market cap among personal computer vendor, and puts them behind only Microsoft, Google, and Cisco in the tech world.

What's amazing is that nothing has really changed in terms of people's attitude.The news that Apple has a larger market cap than IBM is seen as a surprise to many, if for no other reason than that Apple still has the "feel" of a small company.

Yes, there's the rumbling of "antitrust" amongst the hardcore tech crowd, but the average person still sees Apple as a hip, underdog company whose products are often muscled out by the bigger firms. Mac users still seem to have the notion that they're part of an exclusive community, even as the Mac's market share continues to soar and the iPod becomes ridiculously prevalent.

Perhaps much of this is from Apple spending so much time as a true underdog. For years Apple was on the brink, and there truly were products that, intentionally and otherwise, got muscled out of the spotlight by inferior offerings from bigger brands. Mac users resorted to evangelizing the platform out of fear that, if they didn't, it would go belly-up. Despite the company's phenomenal success, that attitude has prevailed. Mac users are still a close-knit group on the web and, despite the ridiculous amount of praise showered upon Apple in the press, any negative comment about the company is met with  the type of fervent denouncement normally reserved for political parties and religious groups.

Apple's own marketing has played a part in this as well. Since the days of the first iMac, Apple has gone with either slick, simple minimalistic ads, or user "testimonials" on how great the product is. The company has continued to present its products as an "in-crowd" type of thing where you may not know the details, but everyone that has one raves about it. Even at the Apple store, customers get pitched more on the machine's "experience" than on its specs.

Perhaps that's the difference. Whereas IBM has long since sold everyone "tools" Apple has sold an "experience" that seems to be limited to a select few. Even as its grows bigger than IBM, Apple customers still feel that they're not joining a massive throng of customers, just joining a larger community.

What's more, Cook noted that many of those purchases were made after the price cut, suggesting that interest in unlocking the iPhone is getting stronger.

This comes hot on the heels of Orange planning an unlocked iPhone model for November and Steve Jobs announcing an SDK for native iPhone apps early next year.  To top it all off, the iPhone hacking groups learn more about the device each day and, if Apple's "hands off" declaration is to be believed, future updates could be less likely to run into "bricking" issues while patches to fix those issues could come even faster.

It seems that Apple may be finally starting to admit that the genie is out of the bottle.

I'm guessing AT&T and T-Mobile are not too happy right now.

Really, it is a savvy move by Apple. $99 for the complete catalog will appeal not only to the neophytes who don't own the albums, but also to hard-core Zeppelin fans who don't want to go through the trouble of digitizing all of their records or pay roughly the same amount to fill out an incomplete CD collection.

This could be the best thing to happen to pot smokers since the 1995 introduction of Flamin' Hot Cheetos.

Imagine the presentations you can put together to bore the crap out of your friends.  You can finally prove your theory that the fifth song of every Zeppelin album, played sequentially, comprises a perfect soundtrack to "Taxi Driver." Or maybe a custom playlist that switches back and forth between Zeppelin songs and the individual blues artists they ripped off in each instance.

Most recently, we have the case of the man who claims that Apple is lying about its capacity. You see, the company likes to define one megabyte as 1 million bytes, whereas the OS defines it as 1.048.576 bytes. The means that the iPod will display a smaller capacity than the box reads.  As a result, the plaintiff figures that Apple owes him 75 bucks in trimmed storage.

There's also the case that erupted surrounding the bricking of the iPhone. A group is complaining that Apple is breaking the law by not allowing for the device to be unlocked. The group acknowledges that Apple flat out states that unlocking the iPhone violates the warranty and removes them from any responsibility for damages, but they contend that Apple did not even have the slightest consideration for unlocked iPhones when developing the update. Furthermore, they say that the exclusive deal violates antitrust laws.

And then, finally, there's the most recent claim, in which an environmental group is calling Apple out for its use of PVCs. The group claims that the act of merely wrapping the iPhone headphones around your hand multiple times can yield an unhealthy dose of toxic chemicals.

You almost have to wonder if Apple legal is pining for the good old days of SEC investigations.

That's according to the iPhone deathclock, at least. The site asks you for your serial number and usage habits and then estimates how much time your ipod has to live.

Seeing as how my iPod's been running heavy duty for upwards of three years now, taking plenty of beatings along the way, and already required open-case surgery once, it doesn't surprise me much.

Still, it's sad to think that the old girl is due to croak at 7:30 this evening.

In order to justify charging the higher price for DRM-free songs originally, Apple had to provide the songs at a higher bitrate. This allowed them to argue that users were paying more for a higher-quality song, and that the absence of DRM was just an added perk.

A little-noted line in the news is key: the iTunes plus songs will retain their 256kbps bitrate despite the lower price. There is currently no indication that the DRM-encoded songs will have their bitrate increased form the current 128kbps format.

So this means that both the DRM and non-DRM songs will cost 99 cents. The non-DRM music, however, will be a much higher quality than the song with DRM.

Yes, some stores sell songs without DRM, but how many of them have now made a deal that actually rewards customers for choosing not to use it?

Over here in the states Apple couldn't comment on the news, but noted that Orange will be detailing the service plans sometime before the launch date. Back in Europe, however, the International Herald Tribune has a quote from an Orange spokesperson that confirms an unlocked iPhone will be sold

The unlocked iPhones will supposedly be sold at a higher cost than the 399euro locked version, but will be able to run on any network. Whether there will be some measure put in place to limit the unlocked phones to France remains to be seen, but this has to be exciting news for anyone in a country that does not have an iPhone or doesn't subscribe to the exclusive carrier.

The Adobe iPlayer will be based on Flash. Which means no compatibility with the iPhone or iPod Touch, ironically.

There's still plenty of hope, though. First, there seems to be every indication that Flash will run on the iPhone before too long. If that falls through, Adobe's deal is non-exclusive, meaning others can still strike a deal to develop iPlayer software. Maybe Apple/O2 could decide to embed a player in the UK model similar to the YouTube app.

Greenpeace has known for quite sometime that picking on Apple is a great way to get headlines. The company reasons that, as an industry trend-setter in terms of design, Apple should also take the lead in terms of environmental-friendliness.

Certainly Greenpeace's cause is noble. Keeping the planet clean and habitable are near the top of just about everyone's list these days. They also have a point with Apple: the company loves to fancy itself the choice of the young ultra-hip urban progressive crowd. As such, Apple should be compelled to get itself into the thick of the greening craze so popular with the kids these days.

But let's call this latest move as it is: a cheap PR pitch to get some airplay by way of the iPhone's popularity. The last Green Technology rankings were received by the press with a much more tepid response than in the past, and most of the headlines these days seem to be going to the "carbon neutral" programs so popular these days.

So, Greenpeace decided to get some attention by going after the most written about device on the planet.

The report notes that the iPhone contains PVC and Brominated Flame Retardants. While both substances are said to be potentially toxic and are among the top targets on clean-up plans, neither is illegal within a mobile phone and other manufacturers regularly use both.

There's also no element of Apple lying or going back on its word, the company said that it would not be phasing either substance out until 2008.

What's left? Buzz. Greenpeace saw the wave of iPhone press and all of the people riding it and said "us too." As honorable as the cause may be, this was a particularly cheap shot.

A man was arrested in Hawaii earlier this week when he used his iPhone to watch a movie in-flight. One of the flight attendants saw the man pull out and activate his smartphone, and requested that he turn it off.

The man, of course, refused to give up his Jobs-given right to watch movies on his iPod 30,000ft in the air and told the attendant the he would not be cooperating.

Bad idea.

As soon as the plane landed, the iPhone crusader was escorted off the plane and arrested. No charges were filed.

The service may not take off, but the number of content providers leaving could start to pile up for Apple. The alternatives to iPod and the iTunes store may still suck, but if Apple can't keep any content in the store, it may not survive long enough to take advantage when these various solo ventures go down in flames.

Worse yet, what if one of these things actually takes off, and we face a future of second-rate Zune-style music players and crappy subscription music services?

Jobs actions were swift and drastic, ending all third-party licensing deals and striking a big-money deal with Microsoft. It seemed as if Apple was getting desperate. 

On that fateful day in October, Michael Dell was speaking to a group of analysts when he was asked what he would do if he was put in charge of Apple.

"I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders," he quipped.

We all know what happened after that. Apple proceded to kick out two or three of the most iconic devices of the last 20 years (iMac, iPod, iPhone) while cheaper PC makers began to catch up to Dell and HP ultimately overtook it atop the PC heap.

Apple's stock is climbing to record highs, the company's market cap is more than twice that of Dell, which has had to call its founder back to perform its own Apple-esque revival.

Ten years later, Dell's jab at a dying competitor new enter the annals of bonehead comments, joining such memorable lines as Bill Gates "640k ought to be enough for anybody" and the IBM exec who told Xerox that "the market for copying machines is 5000 at most."  

The mother had purchased what she believed to be a video iPod for her daughter's birthday. When they young lady opened the box, however, she found herself with nothing more than a nice geological sample.

It seems as if some enterprising crook had taken out the iPod, replaced it with rocks of a comparable weight, and re-wrapped the package in cellophane.

The disgruntled mom went back to the store with her daughter, only to find that the store was out of the desired model.

In a fit of beurocratic glory that can only be obtained by a multi-billion dollar retail chain (or the DMV), Target concluded that because the woman had paid with a credit card, she could not receive a refund for her $350 rock.

The woman then drove 30 minutes or so to nearby Grand Prairie, which had the iPod in stock. This time, the woman opened the box in front of the clerks, just to be sure. Upon opening the box, the woman found...you guessed it, another rock. The birthday girl had to settle instead for $350 worth of store credit.

Rumor has it that while she was trying to return the rock, a guy offered to trade his Zune for it.

Who dropped the ball on this one? You'd think that at some point when everyone at Orange was getting all giddy about securing the rights to the iPhone somebody on the company might have stood up and noted that there's a law against this exact strategy?

Perhaps its time for Apple to go splitsies with Intel and Google on the upcoming free US wireless spectrum, buy out AT&T, T-Mobile, and O2's contracts, and just make a world-wide unlocked iPhone.

Fortunately, Williams was okay, the fire was put out and the TSA didn't liberate his brain via-handgun. Apple, in its enduring gratitude, plans to send a new iPod to replace the one that burst into flames in his pocket.

Williams' response?  "I'm still kind of freaked out that after only a year and a half my iPod caught fire in my pocket."

The man is not surprised that the iPod suddenly caught fire, per se, but that it did so in just 18 months.

Apparently, you should get at least two or three years before having to worry about your MP3 player randomly starting an electrical fire six inches away from your crotch.

Perhaps rather than spending tens of millions of pounds in an effort to reach the perspective iPhone owners who do not watch television, surf the web, or look at a newspaper, O2 should spend the time and money shore up their network.

People are going to be less than thrilled if O2 runs into the same activation issues that plagued AT&T in the midst of the American launch. There will be plenty of people buying and activating iPhones, and if O2 can't handle the load, particularly while bombarding people with ads, there are going to be a lot of broken iPhones, TV screens, and walls.

Gizmodo has the story of James Savage, a man whose love for Apple is surpassed only by his technology budget.

This fellow has amassed more than 150 Apple computers in his home, including a Lisa, a rainbow of clam-shell iBooks, and even a couple of rare German and Japanese models. He keeps 100 of them in a spare room dubbed "Macca" and the rest are scattered throughout the house.

Perhaps most impressive, he has a wife who continues to be married to him.

Bravo, James.

One report says that even if Bungie splits, Microsoft will maintain rights of first refusal on any game Bungie makes in the future. Even if that is false, and Bungie gets out scott-free, releasing games in parallel is just not something that major studios seem to have much interest in.

Getting games out for different consoles at the same time is hard enough, getting them out for PC is
even harder, and getting them out for Mac... well, you know. As EA showed earlier this year, when it comes crunch time the lowest-seller is going to lose, and that lowest seller is almost always guaranteed to be the Mac.

Not that this should matter much. Pretty much any Mac user who really enjoys these big blockbuster-type games has already either bought a console or installed Boot Camp.

The real Mac gamers, however, don't even bother with such second-rate titles. We know that computer gaming perfection exists in only one place: the Escape Velocity series.

Cap'n Hector pwnz Master Chief.

The Wiki page mentions that the team continues to have issues with the baseband firmware, which is used to control pretty much all of the iPhone's mobile phone functions. Because of this, users of unlock tools that edit the baseband firmware, such as the "free SIM unlock" are still unable to regain phone, EDGE,and SMS capabilities, though the WiFi and iPod features will work.

Because of bandwidth issues, the group has asked not to be linked directly. You can view the instructions, however, by going to the main page and searching for "downgrade from 1.1.1 to 1.0.2".

As the Wall Street Journal tells it, Jerry Yang brought Saint Stevie in for a brief interview in which Jobs recounted his story of bringing Apple back from the dead on a multi-colored all-in-one tidal wave of glory and turning it into one of the industry's leading trend-setter. Jobs assured Yahoo execs that they could likewise rise up from the ashes.

Yang admitted that Steve Jobs was one of his heros. It seems, however, that if Yang wants to really re-create Apple's return to the top at Yahoo, he's bringing in the wrong CEO.

Remember what Jobs did when he got back to Apple? He didn't go for the feel-good motivational guest. Instead, he piped in a live feed of Bill Gates talking about "Mac partnerships" on the biggest screen he could find. How's that for a scare-tactic?

It was as if Jobs was saying "screw up any more, and THIS is what we have to look forward to."

Perhaps Yang would have made a better impression had he gotten a shot of Eric Schmidt standing in front of Google's cafeteria assuring Yahoo execs that they'll always have a place at Google should things not work out...

Has Apple given up on being an enabler of creativity with its iPhone policies? The pitch has long been that you can create more and better things with a Mac than you can with a PC.

If other companies are allowing for more third-party development on their handsets, how much does it hurt Apple's rep to lock down their product so severely?