Update: here’s another one from reader Chris (pictured).

So that report last night of AirPrint being pulled from 10.6.5.  Yeah, it might not be true.

A MacForums member posted this purported email exchange with the Apple CEO:

Good Morning, Mr. Jobs:

As a release-day purchaser of an iPad, I was elated when you revealed iOS 4.2 would support AirPrint. Now comes reports AirPrint support has been pulled from 4.2. Between announcements/assurances of the white iPhone, and now the pulling of AirPrint, is Apple going to lose credibility and become known for announcing “vaporware”?

Respectfully,

<redacted>

El Jobs:

AirPrint has not been pulled. Don’t believe everything you read.

Of course there is significant room for interpretation there.  Being pulled and being able to only use certain HP printers are two separate things which Jobs doesn’t delineate.  We should know more by Friday, right?
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Entertaining review of the “first iPad competitor” from Matt Buchanon:

This thing is just a mess. It’s like a tablet drunkenly hooked up with a phone, and then took the fetus swimming in a Superfund cleanup site. The browser is miserable, at least when Flash is enabled. It goes catatonic, scrolling is laggy, and it can get laughably bad. When better browsing is half the reason to go for a larger screen, that’s insanity. Not only does it use a stupid proprietary charging/syncing cable, it won’t charge when you plug it into a laptop. Neither of the cameras are anything to write home about. Costing $699 off-contract is embarrassing when the iPad is $499.

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Some pretty impressive displays were shown at FPD 2010 today in Japan.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY_ADCTBKVE&w=640&h=390]

Some of this technology will no doubt find it way into Apple’s future products.  Samsung, although they make competing phones and tablets, produce a lot of the internals of Apple’s iOS devices.
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According to Hardware Upgrade.it, AMD let a slide (or two) slip during their recent Fusion processor presentation which revealed Apple as a future hardware partner.

But are they talking about CPUs or GPUs?  All of the machines above currently use AMD’s ATI GPUs.  Perhaps AMD sees some value in Apple’s brand and is using that as leverage.

iMacs use AMD/ATI GPUs

Using the context of the Video (see here) it isn’t clear if AMD means GPUs or CPUs.  The Fusion chip is something that would seem to be a better fit for ultra-portable netbooks, something like the new MacBook Air which was Intel chips.

Another Apple slide below:
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The Washingon Post’s iPad ad.  I like it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCUFxFoaloE&w=100&h=100]

These kids think tweets twit themselves.

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CultofMac reports that Apple is suspending the sales of slide-on cases for iPhone 4 in its retail stores due to particles becoming stuck in the cases and causing scratches (OK) and breakage (wha?!).  The issue was first reported by Ryan Block of GDGT a few months ago which was self-dubbed ‘Glassgate.’

The idea is that repeated scratchings could weaken the glass to the point where the glass shatters when even a small amount of pressure is exerted.

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For a cool $70, you can now connect your iOS device directly to your HDMI TV via the USB Fever HDMI dongle.  Sounds nice, but for an extra $27 you can stream HD content to your HDMI TV with AirPlay (released soon) and AppleTV.  That sounds nicer.

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Not only does Steve Jobs compare iOS devices to cars (and PCs to trucks), so does Jailbreaker extrodinaire and Cydia developer Jay Freeman (Saurik) in his Ted Talk:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReKCp9K_Jqw&w=640&h=390]

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Update: Barron’s is reporting that CEO Mark Pundsack says the assets of the company are still up for sale and Apple did not in fact purchase the company.

“The rumor is false,” Wi-Gear CEO Mark Pundsack said via e-mail in response to an inquiry from Tech Trader Daily. “Wi-Gear and its IP are still available for sale.”

Macworld also spoke to the CEO who said “I wish”

We’re reaching out to our source for clarification and will report back shortly.  The confusion could have come from one of the co-founders of Wi-Gear joining up with Apple.

Update 2: Our source assumed that the movement of Wi-Gear co-founder Michael Kim to Apple was an indication of a purchase.  We unknowingly used this same event to “verify” his story.  We tried to get ahold of Pundsack but were unable to.  We’re sorry, we were wrong.

A source tells 9to5Mac that Apple scooped up a small Bluetooth wireless headphone designer in San Francisco two months ago.  The company, called Wi-Gear, made three generations of A2DP stereo headphones called iMuffs as well as a Bluetooth 2.0 adapter for older iPhones and iPods that don’t support Bluetooth 2.0. Wi-Gear’s products were specifically geared to be used with Apple iOS devices.

The company is now closed…

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Adobe’s Kevin Lynch on Apple’s stance with Flash:

“I just think there’s this negative campaigning going on, and, for whatever reason, Apple is really choosing to incite it, and condone it.”

I wish he said “fanning the flamewar” so I could have joked about how Flash is keeping my MacBook fans on putting out my CPU fire.

Seriously though.  It almost seems like he is unaware how bad Flash is on the CPU.  Comparing performance favorably with HTML5 is borderline nutty.

Fast Company via the Loop
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Free (ad supported) until February 15th, the Washington Post, one of America’s best Papers now is on the iPad.

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Currently, the only thing limiting OSX Server running virtualized on generic hardware is Apple’s insistance that it only run on Apple hardware.  VMWare, VirtualBox and Parallels have complied and made it impossible for OSX to run on anything but Xserves and Mac Pros.

Apple has allowed the virtualization of OSX on Apple’s own hardware since a change of EULA in Leopard.

But perhaps Apple is loosening its hold on the OSX Server?  An interesting tidbit from Virtualization.info shows there is some code which could indicate that Apple OSX Server might be made to run as a VM on its vSphere Cloud infrastructure software.
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According to French Website MacGeneration, Steve Jobs replied to a reader sympathetic to the plight of the XServes with the short explanation that they simply weren’t selling.

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An interesting little exchange of words went down at the XSanity forums this weekend. After Friday’s news of the death of the Xserve, Eric Zelenka, Apple Senior Worldwide Product Marketing Manager for server, storage, and management products, chimed in with something to rest everyone’s beating hearts.

Apple remains committed to the development of server products, technologies and services. Today’s announcement does not impact the future of Xsan or server software on Mac OS X.

A little over nine hours later, he deleted the message.  Why?

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Apple adapter foreground, Kanex in the back.

If you are an Apple customer who’ve had a 30-inch display since the time Apple announced they’d be going from DVI adapters to Mini DisplayPort, you’ve probably gone through the wringer like me.

Display flicker Issues with Apple’s adapter

That link is to the timeline up until last year.  I’m not alone, here are two Apple Discussions threads with thousands of people with similar problems:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8680802
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8674416
Amazon too

Now Apple’s product, after three firmware updates over two years and significant user outrage, mostly works, but I still have a problem pictured above often when I return to my Dell and HP monitors after sleep.  By clicking input on my monitor and shutting it off and on a few times, it snaps back into shape.  But that is a pain especially since I can hook up my DVI MacBook Pro without issue (and it works fine on my Unibody running Windows in Bootcamp!)  What to do?  Kanex to the rescue…
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Tarek Mansour writes in to tell us that he’s been able to activate Facetime on his iPhone 3GS with Jailbroken 4.1 OS using FaceIt-3GS. It should be in Cydia shortly. One major caveat: The camera doesn’t work yet but they are working on it (you’ll also probably want to get a mirror). For the time being it is just for audio transmissions.

Update: It is now working with video

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI6FfHmtJ88&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3]
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It looks like there might have been some last minute issues with 10H568.

Although we didn’t learn as much as we’d like, we hear that Apple was filming ads for its upcoming iPad 2 late last month at New York’s Pier 59 by British photographer David Sims.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV4HoH5EYsc&w=640&h=385]
Commercial shot by David Sims

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Giz likes these iPod Nano watches and we’d have to agree.  They are plastic-silicon and you just pop your Nano in and out for charging and what not.  $25 is a little bit of gouging but Apple does sell its bumpers for $30 so it is hard to talk.
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An interesting story coming from Cult of Mac today.  Leander Kahny talks about his shared plane ride with PrimeSense CEO Inon Beracha in 2008.

You see, even though Microosft spends oodles of money in-house, it actually bought the Kinect technology from an Israeli company made of of former army engineers.  This was in 2008 and Beracha was shopping the tech to everyone in the Valley.  Apple being one of many who were interested.

Kinect is Microsoft’s new XBox full body scanning Gaming technology (if you hadn’t heard) with the New York Times‘ David Pogue saying,”It’s a “crazy, magical, omigosh rush.”

So how did it go with Apple?
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When Steve Jobs was asked about watching TV on iPad in the future, he said he was doing that right now.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to do the same thing?

According to Peter Kafka at Media Memo you can (at least at the moment) right now…if you don’t mind Los Angeles affiliates.   A company called FilmOn is re-broadcasting TV from LA in iPad format. The quality is really good and the servers seem to be able to handle a load.

If you want Seattle affiliates, check ivi.TV.

Both companies are being sued by the broadcasters who don’t want their advertisements to reach all of those people on mobile devices so this might not be a permanent thing.  I’m looking forward to USC Football on Saturday so don’t crash it until then at least.  kthx
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