9to5 Staff

You think the car companies want in on the Apple identity? We counted no less than 3 car makes at the show.  Here’s the Mini display

You know the drill (jump)….

Audi was there in full force as well.

Apple today released an ominous statement that the iPhone updates “might” brick SIM unlocked phones.  This wasn’t wholey unexpected but now there are a few clearer roads down which unlocked iPhone users are going to have to navigate.  There are different hacks to the iPhone, but we’ll assume that Apple is addressing not just the SIM unlockers but the jailbreakers as well.

First of all, we have to consider the seriousness of this threat by Apple. The company conspicuously didn’t release the threat on their own PR webpage but through other media outlets – if that is any indication.  They also didn’t promise one way or the other if it would break the software.  Apple, of course, knows if the firmware update will brick the phone.   The various SIM unlocks are out there and you can bet Apple engineers are testing the firmware update against them right now.  If Apple wants to try to brick their customers’ iPhones, they surely can.  If they want to leave them alone, they can also do that. There is no doubt Apple is in control.  This is software, not hardware we are talking about – so it has to be Apple posturing.  The company will be able to claim that this is because there are various unlocked states of which they are unaware and they aren’t ready for the support cost involved with people in flux between locked and unlocked.

So it appears Apple has a real problem here that they most likely didn’t properly anticipate (if they did, they also expected their “experience” brand to take a hit – which would be surprising).  

If they keep the SIM unlocks open, they are likely infuriating their business partner, AT&T (welcome, AT&T, to the Apple partner infuriation club).  They are also cutting into their own slice of the carrier action which is anywhere from 10-30% of the AT&T customer plan revenues depending on who you ask.  Is this loss worth getting the extra iPhone customers that don’t want to sign up for a two year AT&T plan?  There is an army of MBA’s at Apple trying to figure this equation out as we speak, guaranteed.

If they choose to go down the road of disabling the SIM unlock, they are going to leave the hacked iPhone community in a rough place.  Assuming they don’t want to brick their iPhones, they will either come clean and pay Apple/AT&T or (and this is the big deal) continue along happily with their 1.0.2 software – which, frankly, isn’t that bad an option.  This is especially true if you treasure control of the device that you’ve shelled out your hard-earned cash for.  

digg_url = ‘http://9to5mac.com/is-apple-planning-to-fork-the-iphone-26343456’;

That’s right, forget Apple and their iPhone-locking shenanigans.  The hacked 1.0.2 iPhone likely has all of the software that Apple plans on releasing and much more.  iChat.app?  Ha, try Apollo which let’s you ALSO have access to MSN and by extension YahooIM (they are working on Jabber/GoogleTalk).  Mobile iTunes?  We are talking HACKERS here.  They already pwn the record companies and have access to any music or videos they want.  Finally, I don’t think Apple will be releasing a verison of NES, Mame, free Ringtones or Navizon any time soon.

If I am a hacker, I see no reason to come clean.  As a matter of fact, I think this move by Apple will entrench the hackers even more.  Perhaps even to the point where you may see full iPhone updates coming directly from the hackers.  iPhone 1.0.3 HAXOR version, anyone?  This one lets you play full music and videos from your home webshare, play any Mame or SuperNES games you want, has a VNC client for controlling your home computers and has software GPS.  Suddenly an international keyboard and a new way to pay Apple or record labels for ringtones doesn’t seem so compelling.

So it seems that this was a carefully-planned attack to strike fear, not into the hacker community, who knows they will have options when the firmware is released, but into the people on the fence who can’t decide if they want to go pirate or not.  

However, Apple is playing a dangerous game here which might result in a the forking of the iPhone OS.  At some point this could even be made legal by supplanting the kernel with an embedded Linux and all of the other apps with more functionality.  I don’t think Apple can take that risk.

Add this to the 99% speculative category…

Starbucks has a nice little thing going.  And it isn’t just caffeine addiction or 50 Million songs to give away.   They have over 10,000 locations in the US alone and are filling each one with Wifi access from Tmobile.  That is a lot of coverage…and in very important, high trafficked areas like malls, city streets, and college campuses.  You could almost call them a “wifi telecom”

Starbucks also have a new partner in Apple to help promote their new record label on the iPhone.  What do Apple and its customers get from this deal?  Some new music choices and some free old ones.  Not terribly compelling.  However, there might be more to the deal than what has been released.

In the recent deals with Tmobile in Germany (and O2 in the UK), Apple has bundled the iPhone with wifi access in the carrier’s locations throughout the country.  No such arrangement exists in the US.  So why should Europeans be the only ones who get bundled Wifi with their plans?

Add to that Starbucks/Tmobiles free Wifi Access to Vista customers for a month promotion with Microsoft.  They obviously have the capability to do a wide rollout like this.

“But iPhones have EDGE?!” you say?  True, but it is SLOW and web browsing and video watching are much more fun on a good Wifi network.  The iPods touch are also left out in the cold for web browsing.

How will it go down?  Most likely, the login credentials for the Wifi will be the same as the iTunes music store.  This will allow easy billing should make for a pretty seamless experience.  We expect to see this kind of functionality in the next major iPhone and iPod updates – especially since the capability to do this has already been announced for Europe on their 1.1.1 firmware iPhones.  It will probably be relatively inexpensive and might even be on a per use basis.  

This also fits right in with Apple’s new “everything is subscription” ideas lately.  It also adds another revenue stream to the iPhone and iPod which could be shared with Tmobile (this could also be done on the Laptops too).  99 cents for a day of surfing.  $9.99/month.  Makes sense right?

Every once in awhile we like to go through our logs here and see where our traffic is coming from.  Ususally it is the same sites but sometimes we stumble upon something interesting.

A few months ago, we noticed we were getting a lot of traffic from “santamonica.corp.apple.com”.  At the time, I did a Google search and noticed nothing came up.  Strange.   One would think it would come up in someone’s logs out there somewhere or some webmaster would come across it somehow.   Recently it has come up again a few times.

We then checked DNS and found that there was no name resolution for this particular site from Apple’s domain servers.  Specifically We got this error:

[ERROR: The parent servers say that the domain santamonica.corp.apple.com does not have any NS records (although they may have some other information on that zone). We can not do a DNS report on a hostname (such as mail.example.com) or a domain name that does not have its own zone.]

We get a lot of hits from the 17.x.x.x namespace (Apple’s Own Class A Subnet) and we pay particular attention to where they go on the site – especially how they vote on the polls ;-)

So the question begs to be asked: What is santamonica.corp.apple.com?  Our guess is that it is some sort of internal Intranet that get’s loaded with Apple news around the web.  It could also be an internal webmail system where people get emails to sites and click directly from their browser.  It might also be a web based news reader in beta?

Anyone have any ideas?

Edit: One of our sources thinks that it is an internal Apple Press Intranet site that pulls the digg.com/apple RSS feeds (amongst many others).  Still…interesting. Why “santamonica”? Apple doesn’t have any big offices there?  And if they did do they have a webserver that links to us?

Also a commenter points out that santamonica.corp.yahoo.com DOES get a lot of hits on Google….perhaps Yahoo has built this Intranet?

So when we got the news from Cleve and his source about the new laptops, the first thing we asked ourselves was how is Apple going to  squeeze all of the laptop internals into such a thin Package?  Battery optimization?  Couldn’t hurt.  Making the boot drive into NAND RAM?  Possible but still very expensive.  Motherboard optimization?  Yeah sure but you can only save so much space doing that.  Then it hit us: was the MacBook DVD going the way of the dodo?

When you consider the facts, it is a no-brainer.  What is the largest  part of the internals of a laptop and at the same time (as trends go) is used less and less – not to mention its status as a powerhog.  What could the average laptop certainly do without on a daily basis?  Without a doubt, it is the DVD player.  Why? 

• Optical disks are used infrequently for software installs because of speedy (and frequently updated) Internet software downloads  
• Huge USB sticks replace the need for offline storage
• Online backup systems replace needs for DVD-R backups
• Music and video are downloaded far more over the Internet than put on DVD and CD anymore (you think Apple and any interest in this?!)

If Apple takes this route, likely expect the laptops to be bundled with external bus-powered Firewire or USB DVD drives to compliment the package and do software reinstalls.  Either that or huge thumb drives!

Edit: We are getting a lot of comments with people screaming “what about huge software installs!” or “What about ripping music/Movies” or “I am a photographer and I need it to burn DVDs for my clients!!”
Read the post. The scenario we’ve put forth calls for an EXTERNAL DVD drive. IF you need it, take it with you!
Plus Apple will probably do it up in a fresh, unique way like magnetized to the back of your screen or a lanyard around your neck.

Take that Flavor Flav!!

We have received some information about the upcoming Apple laptops – we think they are MacBooks but aren’t 100 percent sure they aren’t the fabled Pro slim line.  
What we know:

• Black aluminum and silver aluminum (like MacBook Pros) have been seen
• They are considerably slimmer than current MacBook and even a bit more than MacBook Pros
• The screen reaches much closer to the edges than current MacBooks but is the same size as current MacBooks – indicating a somewhat smaller footprint
• The keyboards resemble Apple’s new Bluetooth Keyboard
• There is something strange about the touchpad (more on this to come)
• While they are dense, overall they are lighter than the current MacBooks

What we are wondering:

• Will there be colors like the Nanos? (Red) would be hott.
• Will the SSD and memory be easily upgraded?
• Will they be in the Pro or Consumer or totally new lineup?
• Will they be released with the Leopard announcement?  Before Christmas?  Macworld?
• Is Apple over White?
• Touch interface?

Expect to hear more on this in the coming weeks and maybe even see a few spyshots around the web (Apple Lawyers: not here!).  Oh, and that keyboard picture?  We lifted that from Apple.com, it’s not from a MacBook.

I feel like it is Christmas every time I open my iPhone installer.app lately.  Along with VNSea, NES and MobileChat, here comes another AMAZING developer-hacker application.   I don’t see Apple having 1/2 of this stuff by the time the next release is out. AS a matter of fact, I don’t see a lot of hacked iPhones going legit any time soon.

Back to Navizon:  Using both cellular triangulation and a DB of Wifi hotspots and ISP IP addresses, Navizon is able to provide a semi-accurate view of where you are at a much faster rate than most GPS systems.  Granted the accuracy of the device depends on a lot of factors, and your results may, of course vary. 

The Navizon.app also just throws your coordinates into the Maps application and puts a little pin where it thinks you are.  So, so clever.  In my informal tests, it was about 500 Meters off at my home and about 200 meters off at work.  Each of these results used cellular data and got the information in just seconds.

The number of applications to deliver content using geograhic location on the iPhone are virtually limitless.  I am sure developers are hard at work on more applications that take advantage of this knowledge.  If Google Adsense isn’t all over this then someone needs to get fired, yesterday.

I can’t wait to see where this application goes, how exciting!  Get hacking!

OH, btw, it DOES work in Europe – at least France.

Apple today announced their alliance with German (former) state telco Tmobile for the German market. Tmobile will have EDGE on 100% of its network by the end of 2007 (oh and probably some 3G too?) and of course it has a bazillion Wifi hotspots around the World.  No mention of whether or not the iPhone plan with Tmobile will include access at any of them like the UK’s O2’s offering.  

The price is a respectable