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New iPhone to feature video chat?
The next incarnation of the iPhone will feature not only a 3G wireless broadband connection, but will also feature not one but two video-equipped cameras.
At least, that's what Kevin Rose says. The Digg founder is citing sources connected to the manufacturing process in Asia as providing the latest dirt on the specs of the 3G iPhone expected to be released some time this year.
Keep in mind, however, the Rose's track record on the iPhone is a bit spotty. Before the initial announcement of the iPhone at Macworld, he reported that the first iPhone would feature two batteries and work with just about every major mobile carrier.
Macintosh, Apple Macintosh
Did you dream of one day becoming a super-secret agent? Ever picture yourself in a suave tuxedo, killer gadgets in one hand, a buxom blonde in the other? I'm sure it was crushing then, when you realized that your severe asthma, morbid obesity, and tendency to spend most every free minute parked in front of your Performa 6100 would prevent you from ever joining Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Well, dry those tears, Mr Bond. The buzz around the blogosphere is that MI6 is looking for a few good Maccies.
The organization is looking for a Mac-minded type with skills in Quark XPress and Adobe Creative suite. There's no mention of being able to score with hotties and foil supervillians, but there will apparently be a bit of customer service work required, maybe they'll give you a bionic tux for that.
There's also this cool tidbit that sets the job apart from your average design house gig:
We're sure you'll understand that as an organisation that collects secret
intelligence, we can't tell you a great deal about what you'll be doing.
Beats the heck out of large windows and free donuts on Fridays.
John Lilly blasts Apple over update
The CEO of Mozilla made a blog posting which takes Apple to task for its decision to include Safari on its Software Update application.
If you have a Mac, this doesn't apply, as Safari is already installed. If you have a PC and run iTunes, this means that Software Update offers to install the latest version browser on your machine, even if you don't currently have Safari installed.
Mozilla head honcho John Lilly doesn't much like the idea, and his company agrees. Mozilla is providing the press with links to the post, which says Apple's move violates user trust and undermines security.
Here are a few quotes from Lilly: It’s wrong because it undermines the trust that we’re all trying to build with users. Because it means that an update isn’t just an update, but is maybe something more. Because it ultimately undermines the safety of users on the web by eroding that relationship. It’s a bad practice and should stop.
On the subject of user trust, Lilly writes... There’s an implicit trust relationship between software makers and customers in this regard: as a software maker we promise to do our very best to keep users safe and will provide the quickest updates possible, with absolutely no other agenda. And when the user trusts the software maker, they’ll generally go ahead and install the patch, keeping themselves and everyone else safe.
Lilly may have a point here, though nowhere near as dire as what he makes it out to be. Apple is doing what essentially amounts to an unsolicited installation, a major no-no in security circles, as the more sinister forms of it are a favorite in the adware and fake security fields.
It also touches on a soft spot for Mozilla. In its previous life as Netscape, the company was all but wiped out by a bundled browser known as Internet Explorer, an incident that eventually lead to Microsoft's famous antitrust hearings.
Don't be fooled, however. Apple's latest move isn't even in the neighborhood of what landed Microsoft in hot water. Apple is offering users the option of not installing Safari and only offering it with other Apple software. Microsoft allegedly told PC manufacturers that they would essentially put them out of business by pulling their Windows distribution rights unless they included IE on every machine they shipped.
Apple has pulled a rather shady move with its inclusion of Safari in Software update, but it's nowhere near the worst tactic ever employed in the browser wars. Perhaps Lilly's posting has as much to do with Safari's market share as it does with the browser's installation practices.
Apple to fuel your misguided dreams
Steve Jobs must owe Simon Cowell a favor. Either that, or he sees dollar signs in the current fervor over American Idol.
Those are the only explanations for why Apple would launch a new iLife songwriting program with American Idol.
The company is offering would-be balladeers a tutorial on how to use GarageBand to cover up for your utter lack of musical talent. Apple store reps will be offering tutorials on how to use the application and enter into the American Idol songwriting competition.
No word on rather you'll be allowed to take your MacBook with you when facing Simon, Randy, and Paula, so you would-be William Hungs out there shouldn't quit the voice lessons just yet.
Charlie Rose is an example for us all
Imagine you're a professional news anchor. A good part of your occupation centers on your physical appearance while on the air. Now, while walking down the street with your brand new MacBook Air, you suddenly trip in a pothole.
You're on your way down. Your choices: drop your new toy and protect yourself, or throw your well being to the wind and take a facefull of New York sidewalk while saving your new Mac.
If you chose saving yourself, then you're obviously not half the Mac fan that Charlie Rose is. The venerable talk show host went mug-first into the pavement and sustained a black eye in order to save his new Mac from a hard landing.
Bravo, Charlie. Fanboys everywhere salute you.
Airport Express gets "n" upgrade
If you ever found yourself sitting around the house, jamming out to the latest tunes from your iPod traveling through the air courtesy of your Airport Express, thinking "man, this song is great and all, but it just doesn't have the bandwidth behind it to REALLY sound good," then today is your lucky day.
Apple has equipped the Airport Express with 802.11n hardware, thus allowing it to connect to the newest Mac models at optimum speed, streaming those tunes faster than you can say "overkill."
Okay, so the new hardware is designed more to speed up the other activities of the hub, such as wireless internet and printer connections, than it is to make iTunes music streaming any quicker.
Still, in this day and age, iTunes always gets top billing, right?
The new Airport Express will cost $99.
This is why Steve Jobs only gets paid a dollar
I would imagine that it's pretty cool when the multi-billion dollar company you not only founded but also hold a large stake in makes hundreds of millions of dollars each quarter.
But what's even cooler is when, in the process, you also make $123mil for the OTHER Fortune 500 company you own a huge stake in.
Such may be the case for one Steven P Jobs.
According to Silicon Alley Insider, Saint Steve not only guided Apple to some decent profits last quarter, but he also made $123 million for Disney by way of iTunes. In case you've forgotten, Jobs became a major Disney shareholder and took a seat on the company's board of directors following the sale of Pixar.
Who needs a salary?
No Beatles on iTunes just yet
Just when we thought that the two Apples would settle this iTunes deal and finally put this rumor out of its misery, everything falls apart.
Virtually all parties involved and vehemently denying that there is a deal in place to bring the Beatles onto iTunes. Both Apples and Sony say there's nothing doing, thus prolonging a stretch of speculation now going on close to two years.
Sweet Rocky Raccoon. This whole thing is getting old, so much so that we've actually run out of Beatles puns to use as headlines.
Yesterday, puns were such an easy game to play. Now, we can spend eight days a week trying to think of new headlines for the latest rumors about getting Lucy on the net with iTunes. In the end, we're hoping that Apple will strike a deal so that we can finally let it be.
Blu-ray on a Mac? Well duh.
And the next candidate for least surprising rumor of 2008: word that Sony is in talks with Apple to supply Blu-ray discs for future Mac systems.
According to the Financial Times, Microsoft is also amongst the latest targets to put Blu-ray drives in its hardware in the coming months and years. If proven to be true, the deals would serve as major victories for Sony in a war it has already won.
Not really sure what Apple's alternative would be at this point. Unless they want to skip a generation and wait for a better technology to come along, Apple is pretty much stuck with using Blu-ray for its next generation of optical drives.
That is,of course, if Apple decides to keep optical drives around for that long.
iPhone 2.0: the security angle
With the iPhone 2.0 update now public information, pretty much everyone has covered the new features. But what about the possible security implications?
Like it or not, the iPhone is a very high-profile mobile phone, and mobile devices are a fast-growing target for malware authors.
With that in mind, the guys over at F-Secure put together a preliminary look at the security features on the new iPhone software update.
One of the key points that they point out is the inclusion of a security certificate. This will allow Apple to effectively shut down any malicious application.
They also note that the new software market could have an adverse effect on the market for jailbreak apps, something that may only be marginally true. While jailbreaks have been used to put third-party apps on the iPhone, there is still a rather formidable market for iPhones running outside of the pre-set carrier market, particularly in the US. This latest rollout is the strongest argument yet to get a "legitimate" iPhone, but I don't see the iPhone hacking scene suffering too badly from it.
Is Steve's cancer any of your business?
News has surfaced about Steve Jobs' recent bout with cancer that has some miffed.
In 2004, Saint Steve was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer. For a period of nine months, the Apple CEO withheld information about his condition before finally undergoing surgery to remove the tumor and successfully eliminating the cancer from his body.
Given the influence Jobs has on Apple's direction and its ultimate value, an interesting question is raised. Where does the CEO's power end and the shareholder's right to know begin?
On one hand, it seems a bit cruel to force a man to share his health problems with the world. If you're going through a life or death battle, do you really want an army of news sites and blogs chronicling your treatment day in and day out? Surely, the man deserves his privacy.
On the other hand, what happens if Jobs dies? Surely, Apple's stock would take a formidable hit , and had the company willfully refused to disclose a condition that would have affected shareholders, there could be some legal issues.
It leaves an interesting question. In this era where there is increasing scrutiny on the behavior of executives, where does the individual's right to privacy end and the shareholder's right to know begin?
Apple swipes Redmond crisis manager
Normally, Apple hiring a new talking head isn't really the sort of thing that would make much news.
When it's the guy who was charged with getting Microsoft through its great big dustup with the EU, however, that's a different story.
Apple has reportedly convinced Tom Brookes, the spokesperson in charge of handling the EU case, to leave his current position and come over to the Mac side.
It's unclear what it is that Brookes would actually do at Apple, but after years of trying to convince Europe that Microsoft isn't hell-bent on wiping out its competitors and pushing inferior products on them, just about any new assignment would be a walk in the park.
Shareholders take charge of pay
One of the more interesting outcomes of the Apple shareholder meeting today was a new clause in executive pay.
The shareholders decided that they would now have a say in what executives will make. The proposal stems not from any sort of suspicion about overpaying the highers-up, but from the stock options scandals. Investors remain a bit jittery about executive compensation, so they added this new rule.
Don't expect this to have much impact on Mr Jobs, however. Due to his mega-money stock options in the company, Saint Steve requires just $1 a year in salary.
The Apple of the business world's eye
Those of you who find Apple Inc., its executives, and its fan base to be smug and arrogant may want to sit this one out.
The company was just named by Fortune as the single most admired company in the world today. Of course, much of this is credited to Steve Jobs, who took over a company that seemed to be in the short road to oblivion and turned it around into a multimedia powerhouse and the perennial Silicon Valley Trend setter.
Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway came in second, followed by General Electric. The next-closest tech firm on the list was Google, at #4. Microsoft came in at #16, sandwiched in between discount supermarket chain Costco and the United Parcel Service.
