9to5 Staff

2007 was a monumental year for iPod hacking and a major milestone looks to be acomplished just before the year ends.  The first SIP compatible VOIP solution for the iPod Touch (and hopefully soon the iPhone) should be coming our way in the next 10 hours (as we write this).

The SIP application actually requires a bit of extra hardware on the iPod touch because of the lack of an audio-in port on the device.  Thankfully they are selling the microphone as well.  The iPhone should eventually support this application without hardware modifications.

Hopefully this will light a fire under the VOIP industry, which hasn’t been quick to port their applications to the iPhone.  As of now – or in 10 hours – only SIP accounts are supported on the Tochmods VOIP client.  Raketu had earlier announced an iPhone application for their VOIP service but as the application was in Flash form, it wasn’t able to work on the iPhone.  It turns out they hadn’t even tested the device on their system.

It is about time that someone did it right!

video after the jump

Valleywag points us to the Financial Times who is outing Apple (try shutting them down!!) and 20th Century Fox’s love affair on the home movie front.  They are the first outted studio to offer movie rentals – most likely to be announced at Macworld.  Sony, Paramount, Warner Bros. and, of course, Disney are expected to be announced at the event but others including internationals should follow.

"Apple has signed News Corp’s 20th Century Fox studio to a new online video-on-demand service in a deal that could change the way people pay for online film content," Matthew Garrahan and Kevin Allison report for The Financial Times.
"The agreement will allow consumers to rent the latest Fox DVD releases by downloading a digital copy from Apple’s iTunes platform for a limited time, according to a person familiar with the situation," Garrahan and Allison report.

"The Apple-Fox deal, likely to be announced at the Macworld show on January 14, has the potential to transform film distribution. Apart from letting people rent online, Apple will also for the first time extend its FairPlay digital rights management system beyond its own products," Garrahan and Allison report. "A digital file protected by FairPlay will be included in new Fox DVD releases, enabling film content to be transferred or ‘ripped’ from the disc to a computer and video iPod."

"Apple, whose shares hit $200 for the first time yesterday in intra-day trade, is understood to have been in talks with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Paramount and Warner Bros about making their new releases available on iTunes to buy and rent," Garrahan and Allison report."

These movies will be available for view on iTunes and through the network on the AppleTV.  This will hopefully be the killer App of the AppleTV which has been lackluster in performance as well as sales up until this point.   Most likely it was the studos who have been dragging their feet up until this point.

Also, according to Paidcontent.org:

One interesting twist that will help, though: Besides the online rental deal, a digital file protected by Apple’s DRM scheme FairPlay will be included in new Fox DVD releases, enabling film content to ripped to a PC and video iPod. DVD content can already be moved to an iPod but this requires a bit of an effort.

To review:  Apple WILL announce movie rentals at Macworld.  Prices will start at about two bucks each.  Expect movies to be viewable for 24-72 hours but perhaps up to a week.  The data will still take a considerable time to download – up to a few hours o the slower broadbands.  But it is what it is. 

It is about time.

Apple, seems to be reeling out of control – or at least its lawyers do. Seemingly oblivious to the horrendous effect that its legal threats have on the blogging community, their lawyers push on suing the very people who bring publicity to their products.

Last week Thinksecret announced that they were going out of business, courtesy of a big payout by Apple. Nick has to be kicking himself a little bit because Apple obviously had budgeted for a bigger payout. They have some bribery money left over for Fake Steve.

Clearly this is coming from the top,

Insiders tell us that Apple expects to announce sales of roughly five million iPhones at Macworld 2008 in January.  Of these, around one million are expected to come from Europe.  Apple is seeing very strong Christmas sales despite AT&T’s announcement that a 3G iPhone will be hitting in 2008 (May-June is our best guess at this point) that could’ve hampered demand.

Apple sold 1 million iPhones in 74 days around the same time it dropped the price to $399 from $599.  Also, Apple opened in Europe’s three biggest markets in November – just in time for the holidays.

Some sources expect Apple to release a 16Gb iPhone upgrade at Macworld in mid January, however, no hard evidence to this effect has hit our ears.

Apple had originally expected to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008 and reaching the halfway point this early is likely to bolster Apple’s stock price.  Apple’s iPhone is a leader in the smartphone charge in the US and has gained marketshare at an unprecedented pace.

UPDATE – Well, it looks like they are still publishing in the secret notes section..We aren’t sure how this is going to shake out?  Was this a publicity stunt?  Was it just Nick who was leaving and Ryan staying?  or maybe it ends Dec 31st?  We’ll see.  The unfortunate part is that haven’t revealed anything significant since WWDC 2007.

Apple has successfully shut down news and rumors site, Thinksecret.

Think about that for a minute.  A company just shut down a news website.

Best wishes on whatever is next to Nick and Ryan from everyone at 9to5Mac.  You guys were great and an inspiration to us ;)

 You will be missed.

Engadget points us at an Apple ad listing detailing the need for Touch interface QA personnel.  The interesting part is that the job states that it is for iPod and Mac Touch interfaces.

This jibes with Steve Jobs’ earlier hints that Touch was coming to Macs. 

And soon. 

It really feels like everything is coming together for a Macworld launch though we’ve had no definitive proof that Apple is ready to go.  But with this job opening news, it is no longer an if, but a when.  Obviously, keep an eye on this space.

We know this is supposed to be funny but it rings so true.  For the record, we have Vista running on Parallels – which runs good- not great.  I am also personally writing this from a Sharepoint 2007 deployment certification class that Microsoft teaches in XP, not Vista :'(

Review: Windows XP

I have finally decided to take the plunge. Last night I upgraded my Vista desktop machine to Windows XP, and this afternoon I will be doing the same to my laptop.

Look & Feel

Windows XP has quite a cartoony look and feel compared to the slick look of Aero Glass; this is mostly offset by the lack of strange screen artifacts caused by malfunctioning graphics code. You know, almost like static on the screen. This was a once or twice monthly occurrence on my laptop, and happened on my desktop whenever I logged in, and also whenever I played a 3D game after leaving Vista running for a couple of hours. I also miss the "orphaned windows" I got on Vista, dialog boxes that would not go away, in a sense they became part of the desktop, since you could drag a selection from within them, despite the fact that the Glass would render the selection below them. Such crazy graphics bugs appear to be a thing of the past.

Performance

Well, here there appears to be no contest. Windows XP is both faster and far more responsive. I no longer have the obligatory 1-minute system lock that happens whenever I log onto Vista, instead I can run applications as soon as I can click their icons. Not only that, but the applications start snappily too, rather than all waiting in some "I’m still starting up the OS" queue for 30 seconds or so before all starting at once. In addition, I have noticed that when performing complex tasks such as viewing large images, or updating large spreadsheets, instead of the whole operating system locking down for several seconds, it now just locks down the application I am working on, allowing me to <gasp> Alt-Tab to another application and work on that. I am thrilled that Microsoft decided to add preemptive multitasking to their operating system, and for this reason alone I would strongly urge you to upgrade to XP. With the amount of multi-core processors around today using a multitasking operating system like XP makes a world of difference.

In addition, numerous tasks that take a long time on Vista have been greatly speeded up. File copies are snappy and responsive, and pressing the Cancel button halfway through actually cancels the copy almost immediately, as opposed to having it lock up, and sometimes lock up the PC. In addition, a lot of work has gone into making deletes far more efficient, it appears that no more does the operating system scan every file to be deleted prior to wiping it, and instead just wipes out the NTFS trees involved, a far quicker operation. On my Vista machine I would often see a dialog box from some of my video codec’s pop up when deleting, moving or copying videos. No more, now all that is involved is a byte transfer or NTFS operation.

read more

http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/452319854

You have to admire Walt Mossberg for taking his position as grand exalted leader amongst technology journalists directly to the US telecoms.  He is single handedly trying to break the hold on consumers that the Sprint/Tmobile/AT&T/Verizon Cartel has on the US Mobile industry.  To his credit, he has gotten Verizon to promise that in Q3 2008, that it will accept any device on its platform – as long as it meets a very simple set of requirements (like no VoIP?).  If he were running for Office, we’d vote for him. 

Of course, we’ll believe it when we see it.  Surely there will be a price to pay for being open.  But at least there is some movement.

In the video above, Walt also make it clear that the iPhone is the device that illuminates this anomaly.  It is a computer, not a phone.  It is much more powerful than any of the computers behind him (including – is that- a TI-99? – to the right of the Etch-a-Sketch).  Yet, you can’t change your ISP.

It is more than a bit surprising that there isn’t more flack about how the French can buy an iPhone without ties to a carrier, but Americans can’t.  French consumers clearly have it better than US Consumers.  The French laws are better than American ones.

Don’t get angry, call your congressman/woman. Ask them why the French have it better?

A few weeks ago, Net Applications showed that iPhone was much stronger than anyone could have expected in terms of browsing market share.   This week, Canalys showed that iPhone sales have surpassed Windows Mobile in North America.  RoughlyDrafted did a lot of legwork on the numbers but the short of it is that iPhone is working Windows Mobile.

Can these numbers actually be right?  Is iPhone really outselling Windows Mobile phones?

Just as a comparison, Windows Mobile was selling well over 3 million devices/quarter globally at the begining of 2007.  If all these numbers are right, Apple is not going to have any problem reaching 10 million iPhones.

We brought you early coverage and the first news of Leopard’s Screen Sharing capabilities back in August but Apple legal made us take it down.

Today, Macworld’s Rob Grifiths shows us how to turn Leopard’s built-in Screen Sharing into a full-fledged screen sharing application – with a lot of he features that are sold in Apple Remote Desktop.  It only takes a few lines of code in the terminal.

1. Find the screen sharing application and put it in the dock.  It is at /System/Library/CoreServices/Screen Sharing.app

2. Run this in terminal:

defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing ShowBonjourBrowser_Debug 1

You will now be able to open Screen Sharing and see local computers on your network that can be controlled.  Close it again so you can add some more functionality…

3.  Now, to add a bunch of buttons that are also found in Apple Remote Desktop, type in this command (it is one line):

defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing \
'NSToolbar Configuration ControlToolbar' -dict-add 'TB Item Identifiers' \
'(Scale,Control,Share,Curtain,Capture,FullScreen,GetClipboard,SendClipboard,Quality)'

Now restart Screen Sharing.  You should see all of the goodies that you also see in Apple Remote desktop.  Macworld runs down the list:

So what do these new buttons do? Here’s a quick rundown on each.

Switch between controlling the remote Mac (the default) and simply observing the other machine.

Switch between allowing the remote Mac’s keyboard and mouse to be used (the default) and locking them out.

This button will lock the other Mac’s screen, displaying an all-black background, a huge lock icon, and the text you enter after clicking this button. Note that there’s a minor bug here; you’ll actually see the name of a variable that Apple left in the text field, too—so if you type “Using remotely,” the displayed message will be “Using remotelylockedByString.” This button is off by default, meaning the other Mac’s screen displays what you’re doing.

Click this button to capture the remote Mac’s screen to a local file. You’ll capture the full screen, and the system will ask you to pick a name and save location for the file.

Toggle between windowed (the default) and full screen modes. In full screen mode, the toolbar floats in the top left of the screen. To exit full screen mode, click the “X” button on the toolbar.

Not really a button at all, this is the quality slider. If you’re finding that screen updates are going slowly, for instance, you can reduce the quality—all the way down to a badly dithered black-and-white representation—to speed things up.

When doing some holiday shopping this weekend, we happened upon some more deals from Amazon.

You’ve seen the fake, now take a look at the real GPS on iPhone

If you ask us, we’ll take Navizon which takes ten seconds compared with a minute for a more accurate GPS.

Some mysteries are hard to solve.  Some are easy.  The "will Rakatu VoIP service work on iPhone as the company states?" falls into the "easy" category.  The answer for the moment is NO.

How did we come to this conclusion so fast?  BECAUSE THEIR IPHONE PAGE IS IN FLASH.  We shit you not.  Take a look.

http://iphone.raketu.com

Someone didn’t do their homework – even a little bit – like testing it once.  Hope this doesn’t sour anyone to the VOIP thing.  It should be be done – it has to be done!! – and hopefully soon.

As for Raketu, Suggestion: go buy yourself an iPhone and give it a whirl before you release it on your site stating that it works.

UPDATE: We’ve gotten an email from the company pasted below.  They realized the error of their ways.  Still doesn’t work on iPhone however…

So we saw this yesterday on mac4ever.com, a solid French(1) Apple site.  It looked so  fake, we glossed over it – and they did too. 

Why?

We noticed that the picture wasn’t at native resolution(2).  We also saw that they put it on top of a TomTom Card instead of plugging it into the port (3).  Wait, TomTom doesn’t make a GPS card(4) do they?  Also, if it was real, do you think they would have it on a wood table while going 14.2 Km/hr on a curvey road as the iPhone Tom Tom is showing(5)?  Maybe in a super gadget testing RV right?  – maybe that is why it is so blurry?  Also, maybe TomTom would make the adapter flush with the iPhone or at least even side to side and not skewed toward the right(6).

Plus we all know blurry images = fakes, right?

Edit: Engadget has seen the error of their ways and listed another flaw in the story – that barcode is from another fake image (7) and the image was sent from a notorious image faker(8).

Edit: The number 14.2 does not indicate speed, it shows that after 14.2km you should be staying on the right side of the road. So, that rules our fact number five (5) out…

Hey everyone – we are continuing to try to bring you some great Mac related deals at our Amazon Store. Hope you find these items relevant and useful. We’ll keep these going periodically until Christmas.  BTW, we make a few percentage points off of a sale if you buy – we haven’t tested nor do we endorse these products)

Amazon.com offers the Sony HandyCam HDR-SR5 40GB HD DV Camcorder (pictured) for $699.99. With free shipping, it’s the lowest total price we’ve ever seen by $28. Features include a 40GB hard drive, Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* lens with 10x optical zoom, 1080i recording, 2.7" widescreen LCD, 2.1-megapixel still images, Memory Stick PRO Duo slot, USB connectivity, and more.  It lists for $1000.

If you want to take the next step up from Sony and get 1080P recording, hit the Sony HDR-SR7 AVCHD 6.1MP 60GB High Definition Hard Disk Drive Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom which is  $999.  It is $400 off of list.

So it came out last week that Apple had been saving a bit of money.  They are likely going to buy something and the internet blew up with ideas on what that should be.  Ars came up with Adobe, Tivo, Nintendo.  We aren’t feeling any of those – here’s why:

• Adobe – there is too much overlap in products.  Final Cut/Premiere.  Aperture/Lightroom, etc, etc.  Adobe has a great portfolio of applications but overall the line isn’t close enough to Apple’s core competency.  Plus the two companies aren’t getting along that well anymore.  Adobe is also pricey.
• Tivo – It is a great technology for the next 3-5 years.  Soon though, networks will be broadcasting their content over the net by themselves.  The technology to leverage advertising will make them more than the currently falling costs of broadcasting over the net – so it won’t matter.  As someone who has to watch college football on a slingbox, I say hurry the fsck up.
• Nintendo – great idea, but they are too expensive.  Any buyout of Nintendo would have to be more like a merger.  Can you see Steve Jobs agreeing to a merger and taking in top management?  Us neither.

So, we’ve come up with three companies that Apple should buy – and which they actually have a shot at.  Yep, telecoms:

• Clearwire.  Fresh off their split from Sprint talks, Clearwire is looking for some more dough.  Apple has 15 billion reasons why they should come into the Apple fold.  Oh, btw, WiMAX is great match for Apple’s new mobile platform.
• Skype – Recently devalued and a bargain.  Ebay is looking for a buyer.   Over 100 million users.  VOIP.  Phone Numbers.  iPod, iPhone, tablets…it all makes much more sense.
• 700MHz spectrum.  Not a company per se – but a huge amount of power in the telecommunications industry for the next 20+ years.  Apple would likely partner with Google and a few other technology giants (MS?) on snapping this up.  It goes without saying that tech companies are sick of letting the telecoms tell them how they can use and sell their products.  This will be an interesting auction.  NFL draft, eat your heart out.
• EDIT – didn’t think of it but makes perfect sense.  a Studio!  Maybe they even roll their own.  With the other studios starting to give up on Apple and in some cases giving preferential treatment to other online distributors (see Amazon’s DRM free music from Universal), it might be time for Apple to move down the value chain a little.  Apple has one of the biggest distribution channels on Earth in iTunes and can offer new artists a really big, hip audience in a tenth of the time it takes traditional studios to get content out.  Oh.  And why just music?  El Jobso knows a few things about running a movie studio (Pixar). – thanks D-Jents

Will Apple put its feet into the telecom world?  $15 billion is a whole lot more fun to spend than distribute to shareholders.  Maybe we’ll get some news at Macworld on January 14-18. OH btw- the telecom auction is on Jan 17. ;)

Frankly, I don’t understand why there isn’t more hype about this.  As an expat living far away from friends and family, I rely on Skype at home to make and recieve calls.  Local calls.  Cheap local calls.  Lots of them.  When I spend two hours talking to American Airlines, trying to get my Christmas return tickets sorted, it saves me hundreds of dollars.

I use a Belkin Skype phone (which is awesome in every way except battery life).  I use Skype over Fring on my Nokia N95 which is simply amazing – especially over 3G. I use the MacOSX Skype client both at home and while at work.  But I’d sure love to use an iPod or iPhone for this.  It is just the perfectly natural fit.  The hardware can handle this.  As of today we have proof.

Now I am not saying it is Skype or bust.  I am perfectly happy to switch to any SIP or Vonage phone or whatever.  Just give me a US number and a reasonable price.  Better yet, give me a few choices, make some competition.  Turn this into a positive for consumers.  Apple, so far, has not made any movements at all on this, either on the desktop or on the portables.  A few possible scenarios exist:

• Apple could be building its own VOIP network and planning to integrate it into iChat both on the desktop and on the iPhone.  Hopefully, they use the open SIP platform that allows it to communicate with many of the other phone systems in the world. Perhaps it partners with Cisco on this – part of the "iPhone" naming deal.
• Apple could be partnering with Google and using its GoogleTalk/Jabber platform and plan integration across its line of products.  Google is likely looking to expand its Google Talk service so users can receive incoming calls.  This, in turn, could be connected with other google account services like email, calendar, contact list, etc.
• Same thing as above but instead with Yahoo!.
• Apple opens up iPod/iPhone for applications.  Vonage, Skype, Fring. SIP, etc. jump on board.
• Apple buys Skype from Ebay and turns it into a defacto communications platform.  While it has the legacy phone number/SMS system, it also includes chatting and claims over 100 million users currently.  Skype is undervalued and not being developed properly by Ebay.  Apple has $15 billion in the bank.  Oh and *cough* 700Mhz Spectrum is also for sale. *cough*
• Apple does nothing.  Waits for phones to die and instant messaging to take over in a few years.  Puts $15 billion in pork bellies and frozen concentrated orange juice.

Will we see a VOIP service at Macworld?  I certainly hope so – but if I had to bet on it, I’d say no.  Apple has kinda missed the whole VOIP boat so far.  I hope I am wrong and we see some big announcements – just about any of the above scenarios would be really exciting.  But, until Apple opens their eyes / rolls out their VOIP application, go hackers!

Man, when you wear a black mock turtleneck in every public appearance for like 20 years, you start to look out of place in a normal suit.

You know he has a turtleneck under that shirt right?

By the way, big congrats to Al Gore for all of the hard work he’s done. 

Steve Jobs and Apple are known for their riveting Macworld keynotes that have the technology world on edge.  They are usually pretty sharp on delivery and obviously well rehearsed.  However, not so long ago some of these keynotes went a bit wrong.  A funny and sometimes a bit embarrassing look at some Macworlds gone bad:

(BTW- check out Steve’s threads in OSLO – looks very strange with a tie!)

Thanks to JG2

digg_url = ‘http://9to5mac.com/macworld-bloopers-0230959534’;

You guessed it, Apple is poised to make large market share gains.  So says Investor’s Business Daily and their measurement of a recent ChangeWave survey. How much remains to be seen.  The numbers IBD picked up were very promising:

ChangeWave recently conducted two surveys that gauged PC-buying plans over the next 90 days — a period running from the holiday shopping season into first-quarter 2008. It polled members of its alliance, which includes technology and business executives with leading companies in select industries. Its members tend to be more tech-savvy and have higher disposable incomes than the general public.

The Rockville, Md.-based firm’s poll results have proved prescient, predicting the rise in PC sales for Apple and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and the downturn for Dell (DELL) in recent years.

The latest ChangeWave consumer poll found that 29% of likely notebook and desktop PC buyers in the next 90 days are planning to get a Mac. That’s higher than consumer purchase intent for HP laptops (21%), HP desktops (24%) and Dell laptops (28%). But Dell had higher demand for its desktops (31%).

The trend line is clearly up for Apple. Two years ago, 16% of likely notebook PC buyers and 11% of desktop PC buyers planned to buy Macs. Demand for Macs has risen steadily ever since. Analysts credit the "halo effect" from the company’s popular iPod portable music players and iPhone smart phones. People that buy and like iPods and iPhones are inclined to try Macs.

Why the big change?

More consumers are buying Macs because they’re turned off by PCs using Windows operating system, Smith says. Complaints about the latest version of Windows, called Vista, and positive reviews for the new Apple Mac OS, called Leopard, have fueled Mac sales, he says.

Nearly one-in-four respondents (24%) of the most recent poll, completed in early November, say that the release of the Leopard operating system makes them more likely to buy a Mac in the future.

What about in the business?  Apple is improving but didn’t fare nearly as well.

A separate ChangeWave poll of corporate PC buyers found increasing demand for Apple as well. For companies planning to buy computers next quarter, 7% of laptop buyers and 6% of desktop buyers plan to get Macs. That’s up from 4% of laptop buyers and 3% of desktop buyers two years ago. Windows PCs, led by those from HP and Dell, have a much stronger hold over the commercial market than the consumer market.

Apple still has a long way to go to get any significant market share.  They are starting from such a small percentage that it even significat gains still put it at a small percentage of the overall market.  For more numbers, head over to the article.

Or take our survey.