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This is really non-news. Consumer watchdogs are doing their job to stop ads that two users (perhaps Nokia and Microsoft? : P ) complained about. So Apple will run its shit-ton of iPhone ads without that one in the UK. No lawsuits involved, absolutely no impact on anything.

What will happen however, and is already underway, is that the iPhone is cracking open the prospect for real mobile websites that don't require Flash or Java. Previously, everything on the web was moving toward WAP-type mobile junksites, where you could barely do anything on the site, or alternatively Flash-heavy rubbish sites designed for users on a 10-megabit cable Internet feed.

Apple has upgraded "mobile web" to mean modern web standards-compliant sites that load fast. It has shared its own advances with Nokia (in both directions, as Nokia contributed to WebKit before the iPhone was even released), and has pushed hardware that is having a real effect on the market. That in turn will help FOSS devices, including Google's WebKit-using Android platform. It has also allowed Firefox to get a foot in the door with a mobile version based on the same standards but a unique implementation.

Apple redefined mobile web and the consumer web itself. It has already forced Adobe to support H.264 rather than its proprietary Flash video codec, opening the market for, among others, Linux users who can write their own H.264 based on the standards but can't as easily implement the undocumented, moving target of the Flash specification. Of course, Apple is doing it for the Mac; Linux just benefits from it.

Mobile web now means "fast loading pages," and that fact that Apple has absorbed nearly instant dominance over the mobile web means Apple is choosing to lead in an open market where competition and interoperability work to create better products. Apple could have developed a proprietary "Cocoa Web" that forced all of the iPhone's market power into a monopolized model that only benefitted Apple (in the model of IE), but did not.

Incidentally, Engadget recently reported that 95% of its mobile traffic was from the iPhone. Engadget is frequently critical of the iPhone and its readers and comments are not predominantly Apple-lovers by any means. That's market power, and Apple is using it "righteously."

This also benefits desktop users, particularly those with less than a fat pipes. It also puts a bullet phone in the forehead of Flash, Silverlight and other attempts to convert the web from open HTML to some closed, proprietary binary that requires a license from Adobe/Microsoft to use. Apple is using its market power with the iPod/iPhone to open standards; Microsoft used its PC market power to shut down competition and take over markets that it then either threw away as not profitable enough or sat on without adding any further innovation (such as the web browser, which flatlined for years from IE 5 to IE 7 because there was no competition).

That's why I laugh in the face of morons who try to say Apple = Microsoft.

In case you don't remember, the first multi-touch product was a keyboard. Apple bought FingerWorks and began incorporating its technology into their projects.

But as I wrote previously, the lack of tactile feedback is a deal-killer for anybody who types in their profession. It just makes typing too slow (55 wpm vs. 120 wpm).

Fortunately, the clever folks at FingerWorks (now Apple) have realized that, and they've been busily working on ways to reconfigure the tactile surface dynamically. I hope they work out -- it was very nice not having to move my hands to mouse.

Actually it appears as of tuesday, Apple may have acknowledged the issue finally. We'll see. But it has been HELL.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/08/19/steve_jobs_vows_iphone_app_crash_fix_for_september.html

The crap linked article doesn't even get the version number right - I recommend reading ars techinca's take (the amusingly named Hope you didn't plan to actually make calls on iPhone 2.0.2) or even Apple insider.

I for one welcome our new haha overlords.

How would the iPhone materially benefit from using IPv6 in the near term? There currently isn't much you can do beyond searching Google and looking at some "IPv6 only!!" content.

Being able to BTMM and share files and VNC and stream iTunes might be cool at some point.

Apple's secret "Back to My Mac" push behind IPv6

Here is a totally premature review and the video inline: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/08/15/first_google_android_phone_sighting_reveals_awkward_iphone_rival.html

I may be horribly naive, but I was under the impression that the FCC checked things like output of devices as part of the approval process, which the iPhone passed. I'm not saying it's better than any other device, but it seems to have met some standard level of safe output. (Conspiracy theorists need not reply.)

back? not back? idunno... old age is getting to me and i can't hit the refresh button as fast as i used to...

here are two links of interest though:
- http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/08/01/new_app_lets_your_mac_share_your_iphones_internet_connection.html
- http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/08/01/ten_step_guide_to_sharing_your_iphones_connection_with_netshare.html

my money says it'll be back in some form at some point for some reason.

back? not back? idunno... old age is getting to me and i can't hit the refresh button as fast as i used to...

here are two links of interest though:
- http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/08/01/new_app_lets_your_mac_share_your_iphones_internet_connection.html
- http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/08/01/ten_step_guide_to_sharing_your_iphones_connection_with_netshare.html

my money says it'll be back in some form at some point for some reason.

HP's server sales might be far higher, but HP's laptop sales are only 3x those of Apple

Remember those are worldwide numbers, Apple fares much better if you consider only the U.S.

And Apple's sales are accelerating across the board.

I'd never heard of him, but I followed your link and thought it was hilarious.

I looked Jonathan Lee Riches up on Wikipedia, and while the entry is woefully inadequate for someone who has given so much to our judicial system, it did lead me to his suit claiming that O.J. is a hitman for Steve Jobs (amongst other things), which I found amusing.

I'm tempted to set up the JonathanLeeRiches.com website and link all of his suits, but I'm pretty sure he would sue me.

I downloaded an earlier version of the iPhone 2.0 software and installed it on my iPhone yesterday. Works great and I've spent a lot of time in the app store. Here are my observations:

1. AolRadio is an amazing offering. Within wifi zones, it offers a ton of digital radio stations that blow my Sirius satellite subscription out of the water- better music offerings and for free. It supposedly works to some extent over 3g, while not offering ALL stations. So it makes the iPhone a cool portable internet radio player.

2. eReader is an ebook reader that's free, but it only allows you to install books purchased from their website. For $9.99 you can purchase an app called 'bookshelf' that lets you install your own ebooks, and supports multiple formats. It doesn't currently support PDF, but I assume it will.

3. Most of the good games are not free or cheap. Super Monkey Ball is $9.99.

4. Weatherbug is an app similar to the original weather APP, but it offers radar views and current condition photos. The radar would be excellent, but it doesn't automatically zoom in to the city you are interested in. At least one other feature on it seems incomplete.

Seth

I'm tempted but hmmm... this article claims the GM build number is 5A345. I know it's akamai, but look at that url, who knows what that file is. if someone can post some MD5 checksums that prove it's legit, I'm all in.

Comix:
Ctrl-Alt-Del http://www.cad-comic.com/
Diesel Sweeties http://dieselsweeties.com/
Questionable Content http://www.questionablecontent.net/
Penny Arcade http://www.penny-arcade.com/
xkcd http://xkcd.com/

Blogs:
Warren Ellis http://www.warrenellis.com/
Thighs Wide Shut http://thighswideshut.org/
Kids with Guns http://patrickben.livejournal.com/

Geeky Blogs/Mags:
Boing Boing http://www.boingboing.net/
Cool Hunting
365 Tomorrows
Grinding.be http://grinding.be/
io9 http://io9.com/
Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/
Slashdot
Wired http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
AppleInsider http://www.appleinsider.com/
Macenstein http://macenstein.com/default
The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/
Macworld http://www.macworld.com/

Dirty Stuff:
Fleshbot http://fleshbot.com/tag/straight
FlickrBabes http://flickrbabes.com/
UseMyComputer http://usemycomputer.com/
Homocidal Insomniac http://homicidalinsomniac.blogspot.com/

News:
Salon http://www.salon.com/

Windows 7 is "scheduled" for maybe something like sometime in 2010, but they're not making any promises. And if you look at the slated "features" It also looks like they're not sure what they have going on there. Updated versions of Paint and WordPad? Is that really what they're going for?

Instead of "Windows 7" the real code name is "Maybe we can come up with something you will want to buy, unlike Vista...?" However, unfortunately, they really have no idea how to accomplish that.

Oh, and just to be a snob... by comparison, OS X 10.5 looks like it will be adding real features and actually be released in about one year from now.

(I know, -3 Troll/Flamebait... But it was too fun not to post.)

did you get linked to the same links that the post linked me to!?...

Just to make sure, here's all the links that the post refers to:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/06/16/apples_open_secret_sproutcore_is_cocoa_for_the_web.html
http://www.sproutit.com/
http://www.sproutcore.com/
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080530/0022021266.shtml


...I read the article as linked, and just to make sure, I ran some text searches across them, and neither "ruby" or "rails" came up in the article content. From a goodly amount of reading, I didn't come across Rails being put forward as the big platform choice to warrant the tagging. So once again... the ruby/rails crowd seem to be shills, or at least certainly eager to grass-roots their little world into existence; because a packaging system isn't enough to be tagging the article as if it's the main technology.

According to AppleInsider, it's no longer a rumor. http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/06/11/official_mac_os_x_snow_leopard_doesnt_support_powerpc_macs.html

Heh heh heh

The market potential for proprietary mobile processor designs from chip makers like Samsung Electronics and Intel Corp. were dealt a considerable blow earlier this week when Apple chief executive Steve Jobs revealed that his company will start designing its own breed of chips to power the next-generation of Multi-Touch devices that won't be available to rivals.

South Korea-based Samsung has long been central to Apple's handheld efforts (1, 2, 3), supplying the primary SoCs -- or system-on-chips -- for everything from the iPod nano to the iPhone. Meanwhile, Intel has been in the running to assert its Atom processors at heart of a larger iPhone-like Multi-Touch internet tablet that's also under development at the Cupertino-based electronics maker, and was at one time believed to have sealed the deal.

Unfortunately for the two industry heavyweights, Apple appears to have other plans to further innovation around its Multi-Touch platform that will reduce its reliance on chip designs conceived largely by third parties. In an interview following his keynote address at the Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Jobs told the New York Times' John Markoff that his firm's recent $278 million acquisition of a small fabless semiconductor company called P.A. Semi was an investment in the future of its handheld products.

"PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods," he said, ending speculation as to the precise motives behind the April buyout. The initial uncertainty stemmed from the fact that PA Semi was best know for chips based on IBM's Power technology, an architecture that Apple abandoned two years ago when it moved its Mac line of personal computers to Intel's architecture.

But as Jobs explained to the Wall Street Journal two months ago, Apple has always been integral in the design of chips used in iPhones and iPods even though they were developed by third parties like Samsung. It was to this end that the value in PA Semi emerged, not for its existing technologies but for its expertise in designing embedded processors to do almost anything the iPhone maker wants them to do.

For Apple, the advantages of bringing PA Semi in-house are many. In particular, it will afford the company to innovate in a way going forward that will differentiate its handheld products from a growing array of competitive devices that will be left to rely on technologies available to the broader industry. It will also allow the company, which is synonymous with secrecy, to keep a tighter lid on its intellectual property and future product plans.

Still, there's hope for chip makers like Samsung and Intel in that that Apple will still need to rely on a third party to manufacture the chips it develops on its own, given that PA Semi doesn't own a fabrication facility. It's also possible that the PA Semi team could build onto chip designs initially conceived by one of the semiconductor giants. That's of course assuming Jobs and Co. don't have an even bigger plan brewing to somehow serve as its own SoC manufacturer.

From this article about leaked firmware and the announcement the iPhone will combine GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell tower location technology, I conclude the new iPhone will use Assisted GPS, explained here.

This should improve the speed and ability to lock to satellites. It can even provide (less accurate) location data without a GPS signal, using WiFi and cell tower info (the iPhone 1.0 and iPod Touch already use this).

I doubt that's the plan either. I heard PA Semi was stopping development of its PPC series: "Apple, however, is said by PA Semi to be uninterested in continuing development of those chips" from http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/04/23/apples_pa_semi_buyout_motivated_by_assets_not_products.html. BTW, OSX worked on x86 for as long as five years a before the MacIntel announcement ("every version of OS X had in fact been compiled for Intel processors as well as PowerPC -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Intel_transition). It can be made to work on a number of different platforms if Apple is interested.

It's too soon to drop PPC and way to soon to drop 32 bit x86 macs as well.

May then can keep G5 ppc.

There are still a lot of PPC uses out there some of them can't do want want to pay $2200 to replace there PPC towers that costed $1200 to $2100+.

Schools are a other place that uses alot of PPC as well and they also have g4 and g5 severs as well.

If apple does this then they will need to have a $700 - $2100 single cpu x86 mid-tower. The $600 to $800 mini is way to weak for it's cost and the imacs have poor build in screen and only has 1gb of ram + 128 video card in the $1200 system wtf?

Also may big apps are still 32 bit like CS3 and CS4 + M$ office.

There is lot of talk about this on appleinsider.com

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=87548

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/06/04/apples_mac_os_x_10_6_code_named_snow_leopard_report.html

It's too soon to drop PPC and way to soon to drop 32 bit x86 macs as well.

May then can keep G5 ppc.

There are still a lot of PPC uses out there some of them can't do want want to pay $2200 to replace there PPC towers that costed $1200 to $2100+.

Schools are a other place that uses alot of PPC as well and they also have g4 and g5 severs as well.

If apple does this then they will need to have a $700 - $2100 single cpu x86 mid-tower. The $600 to $800 mini is way to weak for it's cost and the imacs have poor build in screen and only has 1gb of ram + 128 video card in the $1200 system wtf?

Also may big apps are still 32 bit like CS3 and CS4 + M$ office.

There is lot of talk about this on appleinsider.com

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=87548

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/06/04/apples_mac_os_x_10_6_code_named_snow_leopard_report.html

iPhone 3.0. Actually the current iPhone uses Power VR MBX and the new one is rumored to be using the Power VR SGX graphics. The Power VR VXD video IP core can supposedly "supports 1080p H.264 Main/High Profile decoding, as well as VC-1 and a variety of other standards" http://www.beyond3d.com/content/news/638 http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/04/30/apples_bionic_arm_to_muscle_advanced_gaming_graphics_into_iphones.html

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/05/22/apple_seeks_expert_in_wimax_impromptu_5th_ave_lineup_more.html The answer to something seeming perplexing is usually something simple, if the observer has any common sense at all.

The OLPC laptop hasn't been selling in anything like the numbers the idealists expected.

The price just keeps edging skyward.

Meanwhile, the designer of OLPC's display has moved on to greener pastures. In a year or two, perhaps three, the XO's hardware will be out-gunned by every budget laptop on the planet.

The Intel Classmate is already in its second generation.

If you are shopping for a dynamo and solar powered radio, your choices now extend far beyond the Freeplay.

Given enough time, the precision manufacturer in Asia will beat you on tech and beat you on price

- even with an OEM Windows install.

It is very, very, hard to stay ahead in this game.

The OEM doesn't have to design for the fantasy of local production and service. The manual assembly and repair of an out-sized clockwork mechanism. That sort of thing.

He can sell his product in any market he chooses to enter. The case doesn't have to lime green.

[and given the trendy designer colors of the latest mass-market Dell laptops, that should stand as the most naive and short-lived anti-theft device ever conceived by the mind of man.]

Most importantly, he doesn't have to conform to a constructivist philosophy of education or the geek's ideology of free and open source.

What place these have in the primary grades, how well they serve the student in the higher grades and in vocational training, are decisions he can leave to the education minister.

Which, from the minister's point of view, is where they belong.

If he wants Squeak, he can have Squeak. If he wants Coding4Fun he can have Coding4Fun. If he has doubts about Sugar, if he thinks that understanding the Windows GUI and MS Office are marketable skills, he has an alternative.

The geek forgets that arguments about lock-in can cut both ways.

Apple's worldwide share of the PC market was 3% in late 2007 - and probably closer to 2% when OSX was being offered to OLPC for free. In the third world the visibility of the Mac can be as close to zero as makes no difference.

The pragmatic choice, if you went for the proprietary OS, was always Windows.

I wouldn't worry about the battery so much. This person clearly has the chops for opening up the case and replacing the battery, a task that only takes a screwdriver and a few minutes' time, since the battery isn't soldered in. Even if it was soldered, I doubt that'd be a problem for this guy. When he needs a replacement battery, he'll have no trouble getting an after-market one.

I wouldn't worry about the battery so much. This person clearly has the chops for opening up the case and replacing the battery, a task that only takes a screwdriver and a few minutes' time, since the battery isn't soldered in. Even if it was soldered, I doubt that'd be a problem for this guy. When he needs a replacement battery, he'll have no trouble getting an after-market one.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/02/07/macbook_air_hdd_and_ssd_battery_benchmarks.html indicates that the battery usage (at least compared to the HDD shipped with the Macbook Air) is negligible. No moving parts is nice, though manufacturers have addressed some of the ruggedness issues by including drop sensors. Actual, real world wear hasn't had a chance to surface yet--I'll definitely be curious to find out if SSDs live up to the speculation.

The annoying thing is that I have to admit MS have occasionally made some decent products in the last decade

The only decent thing I can credit Microsoft with is Windows NT4, and I admit I loved it.

now I'm amused and delighted that they've managed to screw up Vista, but I'm also really pissed about it because it means that if the Apple/Linux crowd don't capitalise on this mistake

The Mac's market share is growing quite a bit. Morgan Stanley expects 40% of college students plan to buy Macs". From "Fortune" "Analyst: Apple's U.S. consumer market share now 21 percent". While the industry's sales growth was 15% Apple's growth was 37%, more than twice the industry's growth.

You'll have to ask Apple

Diagrams

"The people that are interested in [the MacBook Air] are not interested in buying it," said one reseller. "MacBook Air is too expensive; it's kind of a niche market product," said another. Still others characterized the notebook as a travelers companion for "high income people," or a tool for "executives."

http://images.appleinsider.com/leopard-9A283-anti-phish.jpg

I believe you are correct...iPhone SDK beta 3 has just been released(scroll down a bit to see it).

Three months later, she gets back a letter from Mark Aaker, Senior Council of Apple's Law Department, telling the third-grader that Apple doesn;t accept unsolicited ideas, so she should not send them her suggestions and if she wants to know why, she could read their legal policy posted on the Internet.

The girl's mother said, "She was very upset, and kinda threw the letter up in the air and ran in her room and slammed her door."

• FORTUNE - 101 Dumbest Moments in Business - 51. Apple - One, two, three, four, we'll sue you if you send us more

• AppleInsider - Apple calls meeting after making little girl cry

I'm surprised people don't include these details when they mention "14% market share."

Have a look at:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/12/apple_sued_over_foundation_to_ipod_itunes_franchise.html

ZapMedia claims in its suit that after filing for the patent, they went around to various tech companies - Apple included - and pitched the idea in great detail. This was before the launch of the iPod or iTunes.

I still think this shouldn't be a patentable thing, but the suit is less wildly without merit than the article linked in this story would suggest.

1. Adobe owns Flash, not Sun.
    
2. There are very good reasons why Flash is not on the iPhone.
   

Developers set the price of the app, and a 0$ price is allowed. Q&A answers are available from Apple Insider's notes page, including more information about developer registration, VoIP limitations and so on.

What happened to the anti-phising measures that were planned for Safari 3? I can't find any reference to this functionality in the Windows version. :-/

So, the MacBook Air won't be a hit, the 3G iPhone is on its way, and he bitches about 24 hours not being enough time to watch a movie that you rented?

Seriously, not sure why people still listen to him...

Well, I cannot say that I'm deeply involved with the numbers game
but these figures from AppleInsider seem to suggest
that Apple's share, while significant, is not even in the same ballpark as Dell or HP.

Even if only 25% of the Dell's are shipped with AMD CPUs that would still be more
than all of Apple. As said, I have no idea about the actual figures (maybe Dell sells
only 1% AMD?) but I can hardly imagine that an Apple-commitment would bring AMD to it's knees.

Maybe we mortals would have a hard time buying our single chips off the shelf for a while,
but a true contention? Hm.

I agree that the IPhone is not the dominate cell phone in the over all cell phone market, but when it comes to cell phones that utilize the internet, the IPhone is by far the market leader.

This past Thursday an Apple Insider reports that "Google on Wednesday said it has seen 50 times more search requests coming from Apple iPhones than any other mobile handset -- a revelation so astonishing that the company originally suspected it had made an error culling its own data."

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/02/14/google_iphone_usage_shocks_search_giant.html/

These are huge numbers.

You have to be under NDA to read a public website? Read this link -- it was on Apple's own website!

AppleInsider | Apple yanks wireless backup from Leopard last minute

I guess now you'll want to scream "illegal" when people pass along something they read on the front page of the paper.

Appleinsider indicates that's not the case: For some reason, Apple doesn't support the new SuperDrive on anything other than the Air. There's no obvious physical reason for this; our previous observation that Apple was using a higher powered bus to drive the SuperDrive turned out to be wrong. It uses the standard 500mA USB power, and when plugged into other Macs, it shows up as a recognized USB device (below, plugged into a MacBook Pro). Though their methodology for determining this is unclear.

Apparently, it isn't that hard to change a battery on the MacBook Air.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/01/18/sources_macbook_air_battery_replacements_take_only_minutes.html

It does however involve unscrewing the MBA's bottom, so it's not like you'll exchange batteries mid-flight. (However, this isn't allowed anymore anyways, so kind of a moot point.)

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/01/18/sources_macbook_air_battery_replacements_take_only_minutes.html For all of those that were upset about the integrated battery.