iOS Devices

Just get it over with already…

Hot Carl iCahn and crew can pretend like they are looking for a leader but all they really want is their money. Can we just put Yahoo behind us now? 

According to BGR’s non-insured Walmart ninjas, the iPhone isn’t just going to Costco after Christmas, it is going to Mr. Walton’s lil’ franchise.  The move is likely to clear out excess holiday inventories and is expected to drop the price to $149, just like at Cosco.

There’s been a lot of noise around the Web on Flash coming to the iPhone.  While some folks are in the "never going to happen" camp, there is some precedent for belief that it will someday be in the iPhone platform.  For instance, take this patent application from Apple (image to the right) that includes both Flash and Windows Media players.

To say that Apple is going  to forgo Flash altogether is probably untrue.  To say that they are taking a wait (and wait, aaaand wait) and see approach is probably closer to accurate.  I’m sure Apple would like to have more control over the Flash player as it currently goes against the App Store’s provisions and would need to be in the more natively "blessed" area of the iPhone development world.  Perhaps a specially "disabled version" of Flash that allows what Apple deems worthy (less CPU, less ad spam, more AIR apps) could satisfy both parties.

Flash may never happen on the iPhone, it is true.  But it isn’t like Apple isn’t hedging its bets.  Much like having an Intel version of OSX going for all of those PowerPC years, there is probably a Flash version of the iPhone running around Cupertino right now.  Apple may one day let it out of prototype and into the real world.  Until then, there is always VNC or Citrix.

If you live in the US or Canada, like it or not, your English pretty much sounds the same to the outside world…and the Google iPhone application.   Those outside this area have been having less success with the Google iPhone voice recognition application it seems … at least that’s what some of our commenters have said. 

Is this your experience out there?  What could Google do to fix this?  Perhaps they could use the location information in the app to determine what accent to use? 

The downside of that is that you’ll have Americans doing their best Monty Python accents when using iPhones in London and you’ll have Brits sounding like surfers in New York…not that we aren’t anyway.

We were actually looking for the clip where Clark was trying to use his pocket translator to decipher what the British hotelier was saying.  If anyone can find this, leave it in the comments and we’ll update :D

What’s the big deal?  Google’s Voice recognition (iTunes link) which is finally live doesn’t understand every word we speak?  Sure it works fairly quicky and acurately for people over the age of five.  I am amazed at how good it works for me and my wife.  But what about the two month old demographic?  When will they be served?  Age discrimination isn’t funny people.

By the way Google came up with "n" which according to Oprah means he’s hungry.  Scary.

According to Digitimes, the iPhone will be in Taiwan for the holidays.

Chunghwa Telecom (CHT), on November 14, announced it has obtained exclusive sales rights for the iPhone 3G in the Taiwan market, with launch tentatively slated for December 2008.

However, CHT did not release any further details about prices and the exact date of launch due to a non-disclosure agreement with Apple.

Gray-market iPhone 3Gs imported privately mainly from New Zealand, Hong Kong and the US have been available for sale in Taiwan for a while, with prices ranging from NT$22,000-24,900 (US$667-755) for an 8GB model and NT$23,680-28,500 for a 16GB one.

When will mainland China and its 1.4 Billion consumers see the iPhone?  It’s a bit ironic that the people who make the iPhone aren’t able to enjoy its shiny goodness.

This weekend, ARM announced that Ubuntu was going to be ported to the Cortex class processors.  Good news for Linux ARM fans but not that special since there have been videos of Ubuntu running on TI OMAP processors for awhile. 

This morning, ARM and Adobe jointly announced that full Flash 10 was ceritfied to run on ARM 11 Chips (like in the iPhone) at over 200Mhz including Windows Mobile devices.  We think someone is trying to tell Apple that Flash could be on the iPhone if they really wanted it there. 

Well that isn’t the only news coming out this week.  I had a chance to speak to Bob Morris at ARM who has much more exciting news for us later this week.  Until then, have a look at a 800MHz ARM Cortex going up against a 800MHz Intel Atom.  When you consider the power usage on ARM Cortex is an order of magnatude less than Intel, you might see where we are going…remember why Apple moved to Intel?

"I can just remove Tony…Boom!"

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlT-ih2g_Mc&w=425&h=344]

Also note that Phil get moved to the top of Stevo’s Favorites list?…hmmm…

via edible Apple

For those of you running small businesses, Egnyte’s cloud file server and backup is a great product.  We use it at work for distributing files to clients and keeping global files easy to access.  We also backup a few OSX servers using the service.  It is great all around.  We haven’t had an outage in the 6 months we’ve been customers.  I could go on and on..

Last month, however, Egnyte got really Apple friendly by releasing an iPhone web client.  We can now browse our file servers while on the road with an iPhone.  This is actually a great feature if you just need a quick look at a document or image.  The iPhone thinks Egnyte’s servers are web servers and if you download a .doc file, it uses the iPhone’s Quicklook to look at the file.  This works with all of the iPhone’s Quicklook abilities including PDFs, XLS and PPTs.

But this is where it gets interesting… 

Our Egnyte file server also house MP4 movies for clients.    Some almost a gig in size.  Also, we have more than a few audio files saved as MP3s.  Surely these won’t play on the iPhone over an AT&T 3G connection?

Actually for once, I have to give it to AT&T.  I was able to stream a client presentation that was saved in MP4 format while on the road.  It of course looked and sounded great on the iPhone and it is available whenever I want.  It is an amazing feeling to have secure access to all of your company’s files from the palm of your hand – at all times.  

If you haven’t checked out Egnyte yet, do yourself the favor.  They have a free 15 day trial of use and if you are a small company or individual considering buying or upgrading a file server, you will be hard pressed to find a better solution.  Oh, and did we tell you they are extremely Mac and iPhone friendly?

Seems to be some confusion on the ol’ Apple discussion forums:

Please help! I took my husband’s i-phone and found a raunchy picture of him attached to an e-mail to a woman in his sent e-mail file (a Yahoo account). When I approached him about this (I think that he is cheating on me) he admitted that he took the picture but says that he never sent it to anyone. He claims that he went to the Genius Bar at the local Apple store and they told him that it is an i-phone glitch: that photos sometimes automatically attach themselves to an e-mail address and appear in the sent folder, even though no e-mail was ever sent. Has anyone ever heard of this happening? The future of my marriage depends on this answer!

Best Answer so far from Cutthru:

Its a glitch, but only happens if the pic is sufficiently raunchy.

Can anyone else help her out?

Thanks MRod

Google is really stepping up to the plate with their iPhone apps lately.  The New York Times is reporting that Google’s updated search app will allow voice-search with results based on location.  So things like "where is the nearest Starbucks" can be asked and answers will be given via the Maps application.  Amazingly cool if it works as promised.  It is hard not to be impressed by Google sometimes. 

From the Times:

The service can be used to get restaurant recommendations and driving directions, look up contacts in the iPhone’s address book or just settle arguments in bars. The query “What is the best pizza restaurant in Noe Valley?” returns a list of three restaurants in that San Francisco neighborhood, each with starred reviews from Google users and links to click for phone numbers and directions.

Raj Reddy, an artificial intelligence researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who has done pioneering work in voice recognition, said Google’s advantage in this field was the ability to store and analyze vast amounts of data. “Whatever they introduce now, it will greatly increase in accuracy in three or six months,” he said.

Google has obviously spent some time and put some polish on this:

An intriguing part of the overall design of the service was contributed by a Google researcher in London, who found a way to use the iPhone accelerometer — the device that senses how the phone is held — to set the software to “listen” mode when the phone is raised to the user’s ear.

We are hitting refresh on the App store every few seconds and will update when this goes live…

For more analysis, check distorted loop

Kinda off topic here but (so bad it’s) good that we figured we’d pass it along. Ladies, thanks for passing over the iPhone.

via Giz

According to TechCrunch and their multiple sources, Apple is building a search engine to take on Google and Yahoo.  While it seems far fetched at first. (little expertise, no advertising model, etc.) Tech Crunch does raise a good point that Apple may be trying to enhance the experience for their users and could just be putting some Apple window dressing on another serch engine’s backend.

But one important fact that isn’t checking out – if Apple were building a search engine, they’d be hiring search experts and engineers. We’ve talked to a ton of them at all the big companies, and while some of them heard the same rumors, none have lost search employees to Apple, or heard of any specific hirings.

That alone almost certainly rules out a full on search competitor. You can’t do it without people who know what they’re doing.

Apple also loves the fees they receive regularly from Google for search marketing dollars earned from Safari. They obviously aren’t in the advertising business today, so even if they did launch a search engine they’d still heavily rely on Google or its competitors for the advertising piece. So why invest all that capital into search?

The answer is they’re not. But the rumors persist, and we believe they have a nugget of truth. Here’s what we think is really going on: Apple doesn’t like the search experience on its mobile devices, and may be building a radically different user experience which is much more visual than exists today. It will likely still be powered by Google results, but Apple may present it in a very different way that suits mobile users much better.

Stay tuned for more. There are pieces of this we are still putting together.

Now that those in ear headphones are actually coming out, Apple is updating their iPods to get ready for it.  First up, the iPod Nano 1.03 Patch.  Hit that software update for all of the goodness…and buckle your seatbelts, the new in-ear headphones are coming in 3…2….1…

Update includes:

• Support for Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic including In-Ear Headphones
• Fixed instability issues when using Nike + iPod Sport Kit
• Adds a setting to turn off Cover Flow when rotating iPod nano and a Cover Flow menu item under the Music menu
• When Shuffle setting is set to Songs, pressing play on a song in a saved Genius playlist will now follow the Shuffle setting
• After playing a slideshow with TV out, Cover Flow album art is no longer distorted
• Waking iPod nano after hibernating no longer distorts photos
• Other minor bug fixes

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=aapl

‘Nother one of those hunches.  Citrix, maker of…wait, it is already online.  Well, it will be official and in the App store very, very soon…are you ready to run Windows on your iPhone?  We can’t hardly wait!

[blip.tv http://blip.tv/play/gcFOzPEni4Bk]

According to MacBlogz, AT&T is going to roll out a similar tethering plan for iPhone as it does with its Blackberry customers.  Frankly, we don’t like tethering.  Jailbreak and PDANet says us!  Details from MacBlogz:

The reason we haven’t heard or seen anything about it, is because AT&T is being extremely paranoid of how the service will run on their network. “Since I’ve worked here, I’ve never seen them be so worried about legalities,” my colleague explained. Regarding the service being available to Blackberry users, he says that it’s a different situation. Blackberry users haven’t slammed AT&T’s network by the millions in one quarter, in such large rushes. “Regardless of how many billions of dollars AT&T pours into their 3G network, it hasn’t been stable enough to handle all you iPhone users,” he explained.

• 5GB Data Cap (just like Blackberry users) – AT&T will automatically turn off your tethering connection if you use too much bandwidth. Of note, the 5GB cap might get sliced for all users, not just iPhone users, in order to accommodate all new tethering plan customers (bandwidth demand).
• Initial connection through iTunes? (not sure if this is every time you connect, or just for initial setup)
• Expected speeds: GPRS: 30k – dialup speeds / EDGE: 110k – ISDN speeds / 3G: 1000k – slow broadband.
• You’ll want to disable auto-updates for everything, so as to not go over usage limitations.
• Will be +$30/month, new iPhone plans may be rolled out with tethering rolled in.
• Do not pro-rate tethering/bandwidth, it can become a nightmare, instead wait until new billing cycle.
• For unlimited bandwidth, AT&T will tell you to get a wireless PC card.
• No idea on a launch date.

You wouldn’t know it from looking out on the net today, but Parallels has introduced version 4.0 of their already solid software. Updates include speed and security and the ability to run OSX Leopard Server virtualized.

Yep, we have an affiliate link too (no rebate hassles!)—>

Or get $20 off at Amazon ($59.99 after rebate)

Video tour from Parallels

RENTON, Wash. – (Business Wire) Parallels today announced the availability of version 4.0 of Parallels Desktop for Mac, its market-leading product that currently enables more than 1.5 million users to run Windows, Linux and other operating systems side-by-side with Mac OS X. This new version of the award-winning Parallels Desktop for Mac improves OS integration, performs up to 50% faster and incorporates a range of security, backup and power saving features to give Mac users a truly easy, fast and powerful desktop computing solution.

  "We run a high volume of Macs and it’s absolutely vital that they deliver on fast performance and ease of use. Parallels has met this need well with features like Coherence and SmartSelect in creating a seamless Windows-on-Mac experience," said John Hermes, Chief Technology Officer at Oklahoma Christian University. "Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac builds on this, providing blazing speed and all-round performance through innovations such as the Adaptive Hypervisor, which gives our users the resources they need on the fly; and advanced graphics support, which provides a very smooth experience."

Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac introduces support for DirectX 9, DirectX Pixel Shader 2.0 and OpenGL 2.0, providing fast video performance, while the Adaptive Hypervisor dynamically allocates resources to meet user needs. The responsiveness to all applications is further enhanced as the virtualization engine has been optimized to consume 15-30% less resources than previous versions.

“Parallels is committed to continuing the innovation that has resulted in Parallels Desktop for Mac winning more than 30 major awards and being a premier Windows-on-Mac virtualization product,” said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels. “With version 4.0, we are delivering an advanced solution that is easy, fast and powerful – with industry-leading tools and utilities included at no extra cost.”

Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac addresses two other primary user concerns: security and backup. The software offers users peace of mind through Parallels Internet Security powered by Kaspersky for anti-virus, firewall, scanner, recovery, filtering and identity protection as well as Acronis True Image Home backup and restore and Acronis Disk Director Suite. These three additions to Parallels Desktop represent $175 in extra value along with a more complete user experience.

"Mac OS X is the world’s most advanced operating system and its ability to run Windows on a Mac is yet another reason users are switching to the Mac at a rapid rate," said Ron Okamoto, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. "This rapid adoption is supported by applications like Parallels Desktop for Mac, which enables users to get the most from their hardware."

Parallels Desktop 4.0 offers a computing experience that is:

• Easy – Get easy access to all your applications and data while enjoying the full Mac experience with Improved Windows and Mac integration, True Drag & Drop and Copy & Paste, SmartX Technologies and Built-in Installation and Migration Tools.
• Fast – Experience the fastest speed for all applications with Adaptive Hypervisor, FastLane Architecture, up to 8 way SMP and 8 GB RAM plus 64-bit support for each VM, HyperBus and support for DirectX 9.0, DirectX Pixel Shader 2.0, and OpenGL 2.0.
• Powerful – Get a complete suite of essentials for Internet security, data protection and disk management with Parallels Internet Security powered by Kaspersky, Acronis True Image Home backup and restore, SmartGuard, PowerSaver, Full-hardware ACPI support and Acronis Disk Director Suite disk management.
• Developer and Enterprise Ready – Additional features specifically for Developers and IT administrators include Mac OS X Leopard Server and Windows Server OS support, VM Directory, CLI and Scripting support, SDK and API, remote control from iPhone, PXE Boot, improved networking and VM Templates.

With more than 50 new features, additional highlights include a redesigned user interface with quick access to all VMs, additional Screenview modes, Clips for screenshots, Speech Recognition, Security Manager, Safe Mode, Shut Down Mode and Over 45 Supported Guest OSs.

“The growth, in both performance and ease of use, of desktop virtualization software is making it easier for Windows users to adopt Macintosh computers. The availability of this technology is one of many factors driving growth in the adoption of Mac desktops and notebooks, for which shipments have grown 46.6% between the first half of 2007 and the first half of 2008, according to our data,” said Michael Rose, Industry Analyst at the research firm, IDC. “Those users leveraging virtualization software on their Macintosh hardware will find that many of the new capabilities in Parallels Desktop 4.0 represent another step forward."

Availability and Pricing

Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac is available in English and localized versions will soon be available in Chinese, Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Polish and Russian.

The standard retail price (SRP) of Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac is $79.99. New users can test a free, fully-functional copy for 15 days. Current Parallels Desktop users can upgrade their existing software for only $39.99 – a 50% off promotional price available until November 30, 2008. Users that purchased version 3.0 on or after September 1, 2008, qualify for a free upgrade to version 4.0.

Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac is available at Amazon.com, Apple Store, Best Buy, Fry’s Electronics, MicroCenter, Office Depot, Staples and hundreds of other retailers nationwide.

Volume pricing and site-license opportunities are also available for new customers by contacting the Parallels Sales Team at sales@parallels.com or 425-282-6400.

In-depth information on Parallels Desktop 4.0’s new features and major improvements, as well as videos and screenshots of key features in action, are available at www.parallels.com/products/desktop.

About Parallels – Optimized Computing

Parallels is a worldwide leader in virtualization and automation software that optimizes computing for consumers, businesses, and service providers across all major hardware, operating systems, and virtualization platforms. Founded in 1999, Parallels is a fast-growing company with 800 employees in North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, please visit www.parallels.com.

Parallels
Jenny Ellis, +1 425-306-4633
Director of Worldwide Communications
jen@parallels.com
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For local PR contacts:
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Barron’s today has analyst Trip Chowdhry (sounds like a 9to5mac writer or Sarah Palin child!) giving credence to the fact that Apple will indeed be slashing iPhone prices in 2009 and slumming out its retail sales points.  And why not?  Put that thing in as many hands as possible we say!  Got to compete with the incumbents.  Will we see T-Mobile (or CDMA Verizon/Sprint) anytime soon?

According to Trip:

Apple, he says, is going to start selling iPhones via Costco at $149 starting in January.

The Wheat Chex is pure, educated speculation.

via MDN