Did we say there are already 4 million iPhones sold? Oh, wait. Steve Jobs said that… at MacWorld. Not as good as the 5 million predicted and it gets worse. Enter Toni Sacconaghi, who says there are 670,000 iPhone unaccounted. This is bad with two bad possibilities: there are less iPhones sold than what is expressed in Apple’s sales figures or that the rest is inventory.

AT&T announces that they have activated below 2 million iPhones. After subtracting the 350,000 sold in Europe and the 750,000 that was unlocked, that leaves us with Toni Sacconaghi’s big number. Apple may yet meet their target of 10 illion iPhones before 2008 has ended, but what about AT&T and those European providers. After almost selling out their souls to Apple with Apple’s demand for a huge chunk of revenues from iPhone contracts, they’re now probably feeling a tad neglected. AT&T , O2, T-Mobile, etc. as doormat?

Source

The scuttlebutt is that Apple is going to release 100 code fixes in the new update to Mac OS X 10.5.2. This is a lot of bug fixes. Among the fixes concerns Time Machine and PDF viewing, nothing to pooh-pooh about. This is the biggest update of Mac OS X yet at about 450MB. Along with this update are two important bug fixes: an revision of Stacks and support for Time Capsule.

[via appleinsider]

Even though Apple charges a $19.99 fee for the newest iPod Touch firmware upgrade, there are a lot of takers. Having Mail, Maps and other goodies like Stocks, Weather and, at last, Notes on an MP3 player, but around the world people have been complaining that they cannot upgrade their iPod Touches. They have the money, it’s just that the Apple iTunes Store is not available in their area. Let’s see. The iTunes Store is available in the following territories:

• U.S., Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Republic of the Philippines, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom

If you do not have a billing address in any of these countries, Apple will not let you purchase anything from the iTunes Store. Amazingly, all of Latin America is out. That means, even if you live in Puerto Rico, which is just a boat ride away from the U.S. and even Mexico (just across the border of the Apple base country), you cannot get have an iPod Touch with Maps and Mail. In Asia, though the iTunes Store is available in Japan and the Philippines, it is not available in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia nor Mainland China. Now, I can understand Apple’s reluctance to sell to China, but Taiwan and Singapore?

Looks like it’s time for Apple should check their own Maps application.

Check out Hong Kong’s Victor Heung’s complain about iTunes Store non-availability in his home.

Some describe it as ethereal, so thin it fits in a Manila envelope. Encased in aluminum, Apple’s MacBook Air has been struggling keeping Apple fans from considering other light-weight notebooks. Is buying an ultraportable laptop from a different manufacturer to avoid the crippled hardware of MBA really worth abandoning OS X? This isn’t an easy question to answer.

Realistically, I see only two competitions for Apple’s sub-notebook from those already mentioned by other sites (Gizmodo’s MBA killers are here). The Portege R500 is, strictly, for business users only, boasting a low 1.2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor and only 1GB of RAM, which should be enough for the monster that is Vista (though Toshiba also ships them with Windows XP Pro or Business). The Sony Vaio TZ150N is even more underpowered with 1.06GHz Core 2 Duo. The Fujitsu LifeBook S2210 has a laughable Turion processor. That leaves us with the Dell XPS M1330 and the new kid on the block, Lenovo’s X300.

First comes the laptop I almost bought for myself a few months ago. Dell XPS M1330. If you’re not so averse towards Vista, the XPS M1330 offers a 13.3-inch LED screen, similar form factor as the MBA (thicker) but a higher processing power and dedicated NVIDIA graphics. Fr the price, this is the best light-weight laptop out there. Battery will only give you three hours but you have the option of bringing along a secondary battery. It’s crazily cheap with the specs that it has, especially when compared with MBA.

Even lighter and with even more impressive specs, The Lenovo X300 doesn’t look all that different from other Lenovo laptops. The X300, though, is extremely lightweight. It’s a little different from the other ultraportables in that it uses a standard screen (13-inch LED with 1440 x 900-pixel resolution) not a widescreen. It weights all of two-and-a-half pounds. Most interesting is the 2.0 GHz Intel Merom Santa Rosa Dual Core Hybrid LV. Wow! I only understood two words there, “Santa Rosa” but I’m already very impressed. The X300 also has an ultra-thin DVD burner (an optical drive!), which is just great to hear after MacWorld 2008. There is a 3 USBs, VGA out and PCexpress Card 34 slot and room for 4GB of RAM. Cellular 3G and HSDPA are also optional.

Need I say more? I’m not sure the X300 will come cheap, since it’s going to have a standard 64GB SSD, but even with Vista inside I’m not sure I’m going to look at the MacBook Air with anything but pity.

Is it just me or is Steve Jobs getting too old for this? He keeps repeating himself, as if his memory is giving him problems. My prediction: In the next couple of MacWorlds that black turtle neck sweater will go with a hat.[tuaw]

The OS X software (Tiger) runs fine. I’ve found it is more reliable than Windows XP. It experiences a few hiccups, like when you’ve just downloaded new software, for example, it doesn’t quite boot in the same perky manner that a Core 2 Duo computer should. Well, OS X works as advertised, more or less.

But the MacBook screen is one of the real heartaches I’ve experienced after buying a Mac. I know the MacBook is cheaper now at $1099 being the base price for a white MacBook, but does Apple really have to cut corners in such a meaningful way?

I made this short video to get my message across to Apple, consumers who are thinking of buying an Apple product and the Apple fans who I believe are in denial about their MacBook. I’m afraid I don’t have topnotch video equipment, I just used my phone camera.

- Aries C. G.

Remember Michael Keaton’s movie about a family who was forced to split himself into clones to fulfill all his obligations? Well, Apple ripped off that movie’s main idea for their new Get a Mac ad. In other words, Apple cloned “Multiplicity,” a movie about cloning.

The new Apple TV spot itself is a little baffling. Time Machine copies your hard drive every hour, but everyone who uses Leopard knows you’ll need an external backup for Time Machine.

It will come as no surprise after Steve Jobs poor showing at MacWorld that people will turn to his arch-rival Bill Gates as their new role model. An entity called the GBC Document Finishing Group of ACCO Brands commissioned Deep Blue Insight Group to survey consumers on who they admired most among celebrities. Now, I’m not particularly keen on the money (jam money, as in blueberry jam) behind the study, but the result leaves little room for doubt who U.S. citizens like better, Steve or Bill.

No contest.

Bill Gates had the vote of 47% of all the respondents. Steve Jobs wasn’t even on the running. Oprah was number two with 25%. Cleaning up the bottom are the beautiful people like Gisele Bundchen, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Too bad Steve can’t even compete compete on the looks department.

Press release via Engadget

I quote the New York Times quoting Steven Paul Jobs in an interview:

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Say, what? People don’t read? Never mind his swipe at Google’s Android, saying Android will hurt Google more than it will help them, which is a fair statement in my own humble opinion. I like that he pointed out the division Android will cause between Google’s partners. It tells me Stevo is paying attention at his other competitors besides Microsoft.

But when it comes to reading and the constant and insistent pressure of technology on man who would’ve benefited greatly from having more “alone time” with only a good book in hand and his thoughts.

So why was the Apple Inc CEO so mean on Kindle? And why give such a general judgment on the public practically saying that we are all illiterate techies and geeks? Is this a case of one successful man’s ego getting the better of his sense of judgment, not to mention his perspective? Or is Apple interested in the e-Book reader market as well?

NYT article

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