9to5 Staff

We’re guessing that to a good portion of our readers, the iPhone 3.0 software release isn’t a big deal.  We showed you how to go to 3.0 last week.  It appears that Apple is delaying the release a day.  "Why?" is the question – especially since the GM was released last week.  If the answer is to kill our precious tethering, we think we’ll pass.

 

From the Toys Section:

Who bought you your first Apple product?  For a lot of us it was dear ol’ dad.  This year, give the fathers in your life what they really want….some great new gadgets.  We’ll be updating this section as the week goes on but you can always check the latest toys here. 

iPhone:
The iPhone launch is so close to Father’s day, you’d think Apple was trying to tell us something.  Get dad an iPhone from Best buy for as low as $79 (don’t worry, he’s old enough to pay the monthly charges).  That price is for the refurbished 3G 8GB.  Best Buy will be selling the full range of iPhones including the new iPhone 3G S. Also, don’t forget a case.

 

iPhone in the car:

Amazon.com offers three Kensington iPhone and iPod car mounts for $14.99 each. This $10 mail-in rebate drops them to $4.99. With $5.58 for shipping, or free shipping on orders over $25, all are at least $5 less than the best total price we could find elsewhere. Rebate ends June 20. The deals, after rebate:

• Kensington Dash Car Mount (pictured), model no. K33446US, for $4.99
• Kensington Windshield Car Mount, model no. K33412US, for $4.99
• Kensington Power Port Car Mount, model no. K33447US, for $4.99

 

Unibody MacBook (with full speed SATA 2 connector!):

The Apple Store has stock of two factory-refurbished unibody MacBook notebooks in its Special Deals section. (Click on MacBook in the left sidebar to find them.) Each is at least $150 off and the lowest total price we’ve seen for these models. Each comes with a 1-year Apple warranty, the same as new Macs. Sales tax is added where applicable. Items are removed from Apple’s site when they sell out. The systems, each with free shipping:

• Apple MacBook Core 2 Duo 2GHz 13.3" Laptop for $949
• Apple MacBook Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz 13.3" Laptop with 128GB SSD for $1,449
• Or grab the new Pros for a few bucks off at Amazon.

Amazon Kindle
If your dad is a big reader, introduce him to the world of eBooks and eMagazines on the Kindle.  The newer 6 inch size is $359 while the bigger 10-inch display Kindle DX is $489.  Don’t forget the accessories like leather cover or travel package.

 

The Flip camcoder

Flip Video Ultra Series Camcorder is only $55 (wow!)

• Simple to use, pocket-sized camcorder with one-touch recording and digital zoom
• Holds 30 minutes of full VGA-quality video on 1GB of built-in memory; no tapes or additional memory cards required
• Convenient USB arm plugs directly into your computer for easy viewing and sharing
• Built-in software lets you easily e-mail videos, upload to YouTube and AOL, and capture still photos from video
• Watch videos instantly on TV with included cable

 

Samsung LN40B630 40-Inch 1080p 120Hz Touch of Color HDTV ($400 off $999!)

• 40-inch LCD HDTV with full HD 1080p resolution for the sharpest picture possible and red Touch of Color design
• Auto Motion Plus 120Hz for amazingly fluid motion, 80,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 4ms response time, Wide Color Enhancer 3 for more vivid colors
• InfoLink RSS feeds of news, weather and sports via Ethernet; ; side-mounted USB port for displaying JPEG/MPEG files and listening to MP3 audio
• Inputs: 4 HDMI-CEC, 2 component, 2 composite, 1 PC, 2 USB, 1 Ethernet, 1 optical digital audio output
• Includes removable stand; measures 39.2 x 27.8 x 10.3 inches with stand

 

Polk Audio Atrium 45 All-Weather Speakers (Pair, 57% off – – $104)

• Pair of all weather speakers with mounting brackets
• 4.5-inch long-throw polymer cone driver with butyl rubber suspension
• Built-in bracket allows multiple mounting options and full 90-degree rotation
• Handles up to 80 watts per channel
• Gold plated 5-way binding post speaker-level inputs

 

Speakers from Cambridge SoundWorks:

 

 

 

Father’s day is Sunday, you have 5 days left!

 

Hardmac follows up on the issues surrounding the 1.5/3.0 Gbs SATA interface on new MacBook Pros. As you’ll recall, for some reason Apple’s new high-end laptops can’t go to SATA II 3.0 Gbs speeds but instead are relegated to 1.5Gbs.  

Hardmac ran a test with two high end SSDs to see if there would be a speed increase on the top end 15-inch MacBook Pro.  The results were the same: SSDs were faster on older, slower Mac hardware.  They also tried installing diffrent versions of the MacOS on the MBP without getting a different result.  This would seem to indicate that the issue is not software related.

• WE have removed the SuperDrive and installed two SSDs. Despite that both SSDs are in SATA II format, there are limited to 1.5 Gbits/s as highlighted. We have carried out some performance tests with the Falcon SSD: 130 MB/s reading and 110 MB/s writing. This is in average 100 MB/s less that what we recorded when performing the same experiment with the previous MacBook Pro Unibody Rev 1 (MBPUR1).
• In order to eliminate a potential link to a Mac OS X version, we cloned the special build (9J3050) shipped with the new MBP 15" 3.06 GHz, and installed it on the MBP Unibody Rev1: SATA port was then identified as 3 Gbits/s.

Apple so far has refused to comment despite many attempts to find out what is going on.  We’re still hopeful this can be fixed with a firmware update, as the NVIDIA MCP79 Mobos support 3.0Gbs transfer rates.

 

SAI is reporting that MLB’s At Bat application ($9.99 iTunes Link) will start streaming full live baseball games to iPhones.   The service is set to go live this week, possibly in conjunction with the iPhone 3G S launch.  You’ll need to update your copy of MLB’s application, and of course to do that, you’ll need to be running the 3.0 software.  They also note that the service will work over 3G, though this hasn’t been verified.  This would be a pretty big blow to apps like Sling who have been relegated to working over Wifi only.  If it does stream over 3G, we’d expect the quality to degrade, much like Youtube.

MLB also sells a separate app for baseball gameplay (thanks commenters).

 

As promised yesterday, MuscleNerd and the rest of the iPhone dev team have Jailbroken the iPhone 3.0 OS.  You might want to fast forward half-way through the video before you see anything good.  The short answer, however: iPhone 3.0 is jailbreakable and will be shortly after launch.

http://qik.com/swfs/qikPlayer4.swf

Try to be patient.  Do as we say, not as we do.

Remember way back on September 24th 2007, Apple released a notice that hacking the iPhone could cause irreparable damage?:

Three days later they released an iPhone 1.1.1 update that temporarily bricked many iPhones.  Fast forward to today, they’ve put out the following statement as a KB article:

Apple designs the hardware and software to provide seamless integration of the iPhone and iPod with iTunes, the iTunes Store, and tens of thousands of apps on the App Store. Apple is aware that some third-parties[Palm Pre] claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.

We expect to see an iTunes update shortly that isn’t going to be a pleasant one for 3rd party device owners who sync to iTunes.. If we were Palm Pre owners in particular, we’d try as hard as we could to avoid hitting that next iTunes update button, until some other suckers watch it kill their iTunes-Pre sync…and then Palm figures out away around it.

Us?  We’re still on iTunes 8.2 pre-release 1!  (via everybody)

Update: Palm responds:

Palm seems unfazed by Apple’s implied threat. Reached for comment, the company said Cupertino will only harm consumers if it disables iTunes integration with the Pre. “Palm’s media sync works with the current version of iTunes,” Palm spokesperson Lynn Fox told me. “If Apple chooses to disable media sync in a future version of iTunes, it will be a direct blow to their users who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience. However, people will have options. They can stay with the iTunes version that works to sync their music on their Pre, they can transfer the music via USB, and there are other third-party applications we could consider.”

Somehow, we don’t think Apple gives a f….

We know a lot of the ‘boys aren’t going to like this notion one little bit.  But, let’s all try to approach this idea with an open mind.  Over on ModMyI, an intrepid iPhone skinner has built a Pre theme for your iPhone.  Screengrabs galore below.  Blasphemy?  (via Engadget.)

DOWNLOAD HERE

Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) wrote to FCC acting Chairman Michael Copps June 15th to voice their concern about wireless dualopolies.  They contend that exclusive deals between cell phone makers and wireless carriers are unfairly impacting competition and restricting consumer choice in the commercial wireless marketplace.  Alliances like Apple’s iPhone with AT&T and Palm Pre with Sprint are blocking compitition in the mobile space according to the complaint.  They wrote:

"Based on this record, we ask that you examine this issue carefully and act expeditiously should you find that exclusivity agreements unfairly restrict consumer choice or adversely impact competition in the commercial wireless marketplace.

Kerry, who is chairman of the Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, is also holding a hearing June 17 over the exclusive deals.

The subject of exclusivity agreements between wireless carriers and handset manufacturers will be a focal point of this hearing, and the record will help to determine whether legislative action is also necessary,"

One comparison made was to fixed line lines in the 70’s.  Until the government stepped in AT&T wouldn’t allow other companies to build or sell phones that would work on its lines. 

 If you’ve been here a few times, you know that we are certainly pro-Kerry on this one.

OK, this is a first. We’re kind of in love with this application from Layar, but it is only available on the Android platform.  We’d love to see someone do something like this for our beloved iPhones.

You might have missed this (we did): If you buy/bought a Mac between June 8th and and September when Snow Leopard is released, Apple will hook you up with a Snow Leopard update for $9.95.  Otherwise Snow Leopard will cost $29. 

That is all.

The Dev team seem to think that they’ll have the 3.0 OS jailbroken before Friday.  Judging by their track record (and the screenshot on the right), we tend to believe they’ll be able to do it.  Cycorder and Qik might be a nice consolation prize for those who can’t afford to upgrade to the 3G S’s video capabilities.  As for the compass…well…  

From the Dev Team:

As anyone reading this blog must already know, this is the big week where Apple releases their official 3.0 FW to the public (Wednesday), and then the new iPhone2,1 hardware, aka the iPhone 3GS (Friday).

On Tuesday evening (just before the big Apple release) we’ll do a live demo of the yellowsn0w carrier unlock working on official 3.0 firmware.   The actual link for the feed will be twittered by @MuscleNerd and also placed here when the feed starts.  The demo should answer everything you need to know about the new yellowsn0w.  But it’s good news for iPhone 3G unlockers everywhere.

Meanwhile, we’re in the middle of testing our PwnageTool and QuickPwn tools, which will work with iTunes 8.2. The jailbreak of course continues to work on 3.0 for all devices it ever worked on, thanks due the Pwnage 2.0 technique released last summer.   Our tools will be released no sooner than the Apple release (just in case!).

P.S. For the new iPhone 3GS, please don’t expect periodic updates about any progress we have or don’t have.  Nothing gives Apple the upper hand like someone tweeting or blogging partial hack results.  That’s not how cat & mouse is played :)  That’s how the cat gets fed.

According to popular Israeli website nana10 (via MacBlogz), Israel will be getting the iPhone in short order.  The tiny nation is chock full of technology companies and jailbroken iPhones are a dime a dozen there. 

But until now, Apple hasn’t officially partnered with any of the telecoms.  Strangely, Orange who has iPhone contracts in many other surrounding countries and all over the world, isn’t going to be the carrier of choice.  Apple has gone with Pelephone, a smaller local carrier.

Update: Orange also will be carrying the iPhone in Israel it appears … which makes sense. 

You’ll recall that Scott Forstall announced during WWDC ’09 that Hebrew, Arabic and other right to left languages would be officially supported in iPhone 3.0 – so this news timing makes sense.

Update: This might be a beta for Perian for Quictime X as our developer friends are saying nay on FLV support in Quicktime X.

According to a blog called Cateto, Apple’s Quicktime X in Snow Leopard will play Flash FLV movies…again.  Quicktime supported FLV movies up until 2007.  After that, you needed Perian to play FLVs and SWFs in Quicktime. 

No longer.

Some have insinuated that this might lead to Flash support on iPhone.  We’d be hopeful, but that is a big stretch.  FLV support only means that Quicktime will play H.264 video in a .FLV wrapper, not that all of the complex Flash interactivity will be built in as well.

Baby steps.

 

Go-iPhone users: Unless you are an "original iPhone with a Pick Your Plan" Customer with the required unlimited Data Plan for iPhone, you might want to give AT&T a call.  Otherwise, expect to see a service interruption.  Erica Sadun found out the hard way (via SMS of course) that her Go-iPhone is no longer approved to run on AT&T’s network.   What?! You wanted more than 4 days notice?  Welcome to the new AT&T. 

Oh, btw, we’re pretty sure Erica knows a few ways to get around AT&T :D

Nothing like a little negative publicity to light a fire under Apple Security’s backside.  Today, Apple released a security patch for Java.  No restart required but you have to *gasp* shut down those browsers.

 

BGR got the as yet unannounced no-plan price of the 32GB iPhone 3G S in Canada.  While those 800 Loonies will get you an iPhone, you’ll need a few more to find a carrier besides Rogers to use it on.  Good luck with that.

Sure, we’ve all heard of the iPhone App Store approval process issues.  But overall, how happy are developers with Apple and its developer tools?  According to a recent LinkedIn survey (PDF-last page), pretty happy:

 …and no one had to act like a monkey either (NSFW):

 

CNET, on the fourth anniversary of the switch from PowerPC to Intel, interviewed an ex-IBMer who had been familiar with the IBM PowerPC-Apple relations at the time.  He/She(/Papermaster?) had some interesting insights into the situation at the time. 

The generally accepted reason for the big switch was that Intel’s Power/Watt ratio with the Core Duo crushed anything that IBM/Motorola could come up with (plus it ran Windows).  This person offers some different scenarios:

Apple wanted better pricing, according to this person. Apple was paying a premium for IBM silicon, he said, creating a Catch-22. IBM had to charge more because it didn’t have the economies of scale of Intel, but Apple didn’t want to pay more, even though it supposedly derived more from an inherently superior RISC design as manifested in the PowerPC architecture.

 For IBM, the business with Apple was a financial sinkhole because the company had to invest a lot of money in chipsets, compilers, and other supporting technologies but could only take about 5 percent of the overall PC processor market, he said. So, in the end, it was impossible to make money. 

Why 5 percent? Apple insisted on double sourcing (IBM and Motorola). So, from the start, this left IBM with about half the market it could have had. This, he said, was an enormous financial burden. Paraphrasing the ex-IBMer: Intel was a single company with the lion’s share of the market. While two companies–IBM and Motorola–had to divvy up a much smaller share of the market, while still investing, individually, tremendous amounts of money. And Apple played one against the other, according to this person.

Perhaps most interestingly, IBM planned to migrate Apple to the Cell processor, where the economics of scale could then be utilized.  The Cell platform is shared with Sony Playstation and others.  With the release of Snow Leopard, which is not PowerPC compatible, that hope is all but dead.

IBM had hoped to amortize the cost of PowerPC on Cell, the PowerPC-based chip design now used in the Sony PlayStation, some IBM severs, and IBM Roadrunner supercomputers. Big Blue was hoping to move Apple to Cell and then get the economies of scale there, according to this person.

According to AT&T’s latest PDF FAQ, they’ll offer MMS messages free with a texting plan.  There had been concern that AT&T would charge exorbitant rates for the (antiquated?) service.  Most MMS functionality can be replicated with Email more effectively, however those without so-called smartphones are relegated to MMS for sending pictures and videos from phone to phone. 

Although the iPhone 3.0 Software hasn’t gone live yet (but you can get it now), apps are starting to populate the store with Push Notifications.  Tap Tap Revenge 2, as you can (blurrily) see below, now supports Push.  Get TapTap 2 (iTunes store link).