Seth Weintraub

Hot of the heels of the U.K. getting unlocked iPhones, Engadget notes that Canadians will get to share the same privilege. iPhone 4 in Canada will be available on Rogers, Bell, and Telus and this allows users to choose any carrier they like. The iPhone 4 is an international phone so the no-committment pricing allows you to throw in a SIM anywhere you are in the world as well. Just like in the U.K. and U.S. special carrier pricing with a contract will be made available for those who don’t want to shell out in return the flexibility of an unlocked phone. 

Update: French get open ones too.  Wait a minute.  Are we Yanks the only ones who have locked up iPhones? 

On top of the other “great” news we’ve gotten today: no white iPhone 4, Bumpers and Dock coming a week after launch, oh and — MASSIVE Pre-Order issues, folks in the UK will need to wait until July 2nd to get their hands on the iPhone 4, presumably if they haven’t ordered yet. The ship date was originally June 24th and slipped sometime over the course of the day. The 8 GB iPhone 3GS will still launch June 24th. Apple is yet to issue a statement as to why this is happening, and a screenshot of the store from this morning is after the break. 

Not a big surprise here (Engadget confirms) :

“Because of the incredible interest in iPhone 4, today was the busiest online sales day in AT&T history. As of Tuesday afternoon, customers who preorder iPhone 4 moving forward will receive their device on June 25 or later, depending on when the order is placed. We’ll email customers with confirmation once their order is placed, and again when it ships. In addition, we will have devices available on a first-come, first-serve basis in our stores beginning on June 24.”

Imagine how long that would have taken if the activation servers worked since 1AM?  Outages are also happening in Europe as well. Good thing Apple.com has some saved up.

The New Mac Mini is a revolution in desktops to be sure.   But here are some observations, some good and bad, on today’s new product:

• Its new internal power supply means no more brick to worry about…that’s good.  On the bad side, it means if the Mini gets hit with a surge you need to buy a new Mini, not just a new AC adapter.  Also, for the people who put these in cars, they will beed to buy an inverter to go from DC to AC then back to DC internally unless they want to hack it apart.  Very inefficient.  Also, car people won’t be able to mount these in 7-inch standard enclosures.  MacMini co-location people will also have to redesign their systems.
• The original G4 Mac Mini was $499.  When Apple went to Intel they raised it to $599.  Today, they”ve raised the entry point to $699.  I’m fully aware that they’ve bettered the design and specs in almost every conceivable way, but Apple would absolutely kill if they could get back to their original $499 price point, or go even lower.  This is a reverse of the trend of the entire industry and raises the barrier to entry to the Mac Platform another $100.  In Europe, prices go way higher.
• Apple is positioning this as a MediaCenter with its new look (and HDMI, check out the art on Apple’s website, it is sitting in from of a HDTV). Why can’t Apple bite the bullet and throw in Blu-Ray?  On a $700 device, it seems like a prerequisite at this point, especially when network connected home players BD start at around $100.
• Is this Apple’s answer to GoogleTV?  Hopefully not….unless they have a new mediacenter OS planned for this device at a later point.
• As a desktop computer in idle mode, 10W is unheard of.  Basically six of these would use the power of a 60W light bulb.  Like the Minis before it, the internals are on par with Apple’s MacBooks.
• This thing isn’t going to be ‘mediacenter quiet’ however, look at that fan on the bottom and outlet on the back.  Decoding 1080P videos might be noisy.
• With the addition of the SD card slot all of Apple’s consumer products (not MacBooks) now have the ability to read SD cards.  Is this just for convenience or does Apple have some sort of bigger plans for this interface?
• The new Mac Mini now has an aluminum top with Apple logo – but they don’t use it for Wifi antenna.  The Airport antenna appears to be at the bottom which is a plastic circle.  The back where all of the ports are is also black plastic.  How will this affect Wifi reception?
• The small business server version of this product ships without a optical disk.  Are small businesses swooping these up as File Servers and mail servers?  Or have most businesses moved to the cloud.  As a File Server, $1000 for 1TB is pretty steep when even Airport Extreme’s seem like a better deal.  2TB NAS can be had for around $200).  Perhaps larger businesses who need Open Directory, DNS, print servers and such are a target?  I don’t see where this fits in personally.
• The bottom makes memory access a breeze (especially compared to its predecessor!), but will hard drive replacement be as easy?  Can I fit a 1TB drive in there?  Or give me an SSD option to quiet it down and speed it up?

I’d be interested in hearing everyone else’s reactions as well.

Heh.

If you Google-haters can put down your pitchforks for a few minutes you might get to see something pretty special: a full resolution version of Google Earth on iPad (iTunes Link).  Wow.

Say you are one of the few who live in an AT&T dead zone…should you be denied the all-in-one iPad experience?  Never! Says a DIYer who was able to transplant the Mifi of Verizon into a Wifi iPad.  Bonus! This one doubles as a hotspot for other devices…but sadly doesn’t have GPS.

Perhaps you up for the task? It looks like an easy 25-step process involving taking apart an iPad and a Verizon Mifi down to the circuit boards and doing a fair bit of soldering .

via Engadget.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZlT0RcDSTI&w=640&h=385]

Microsoft launched Project Natal as ‘Kinect’ today.  You’ve probably seen it previewed a hundred times around the web.  

OK, I’ll admit it, the technology looks pretty cool. I’ve been following Natal since it was previewed last year and thought that if they could get it to work, it’d be worth putting it in the family room.  But does it actually work as good as it looks like it works?

Dunno.  Bad signs: Microsoft just re-orged its entire entertainment division and kicked out two top execs J Allerd and Robbie Bach.  That isn’t a good sign.  You usually don’t fire people for doing a kick ass job.

Also, giving it the name of the Kin, which the market isn’t falling in love with…or even like with (despite the Microsoft marketing buzz) probably isn’t a good way to start it off.

Otherwise, I’m interested.  Interestingly, you can pre-order the new XBOX 360 with Kinect on Amazon already?  For a November/Holidays shipment?

Our favorite AppleXsider today caught a new addition to the now famous section 3.3.2 of the Apple Developer agreement.   According to the new verbiage, any interpreter can be used so long as the company that makes it isn’t also a term for mud-built houses:

Heh.  Seriously, this is to allow game interpreters like Lua to be used in iOS gaming, amongst other things.

It isn’t like Apple to keep us in the dark about something like this until the day before pre-orders start but according to ModMyi (and some pretty convincing graphics from AT&T?), those who prefer their iPhones in white will have to wait until “later this summer”.  

Maybe white is an Apple exclusive?  What say you Apple/AT&T?!

UPDATE: DeutscheTelekom has confirmed this for their stock in Germany on their Twitter page. 

No issues with this one, but includes:

– Resolve an issue that causes the keyboard or trackpad to become unresponsive

– Resolve an issue that may prevent some Adobe Creative Suite 3 applications from opening

– Address issues copying, renaming, or deleting files on SMB file servers

– Improve reliability of VPN connections

– Resolve a playback issue in DVD Player when using Good Quality deinterlacing 

– Resolve an issue editing photos with iPhoto or Aperture in full screen view

– Improve compatibility with some braille displays

Thanks Tim!

Did he get preview access to an iPhone 4, or did he actually buy an already outdated 3GS? 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wBktYBXMK0&w=700&h=450] 

The fine folks who developed the Spirit jailbreak are at it again and have successfully been able to run flash content on the iPhone.  Will an acceptable Flash player arrive via jalbreak?

Just in case you were wondering about this, you

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UER_yQGXyV8&w=700&h=415]

Apple faces stiff competition from Android in the smartphone market, so no surprise it took the heat onto its competitor in this video distributed during WWDC.

The five minute sequence features an assembly of well-known developers, including Callaway’s Nicholas Callaway, Bottle Rocket’s Calvin Carter, Pandora’s Tom Conrad, ABC TV’s Skarpi Hedinsson, Illusion Lab’s Carl Loodberg and Wolfram Research’s Theodore Gray.

They

Softbank has revealed Japanese prices for the iPhone 4. Prices are “technically” unsubsidized — but the carrier has introduced different data deals designed to ease the pain (a little).

We

love mark left on forehead

You are a developer from TenCent, China’s most popular instant messaging client.  Apple invites you to come to WWDC all the way from China…only you get mugged in San Francisco for your iPad.  You escape with a few significant injuries but your iPad is smashed…

Well it sort of does.  But you don’t want to get any more injuries using this thing.

Luckily, when you go to the Apple Store, an awesome Genius feels your pain and hooks you up with a new iPad.  Someone passes your plight up the chain…

And, then the big boss man sends you off with a short email.

In case you hadn’t already heard…

Via BGR

When magnified by a professional DSLR, the pixels look absolutely microscopic.  How many pixels can fit across one of the lines of a fingerprint?  Check the full version here to measure.  via @Scoblizer 

And here’s new vs. old.  What a difference some extra pixels make.

It isn’t available yet, but it is coming down the pike.  Here are your current options:

Here’s the FaceBook bit in the iOS 4 code which shows the above export plus one additional:

480 pixels looks to be the max height or width with a max 30FPS framerate.  Remember, Facebook started using Apple compatible video formats a few months ago.