The Apple Core

October 10th, 2008

Apple agrees to repair MacBook Pros with bad NVIDIA GPUs

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 4:17 pm

Categories: Video, MacBook Pro, NVIDIA

Tags: NVidia Corp., Apple MacBook, Apple Inc., Apple MacBook Pro, GPU, GeForce 8600M GT, Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Jason D. O'Grady

Months after Dell and other notebook manufacturers came clean, Apple has admitted some culpability for failing Nvidia GPUs.

The GeForce 8600M GT has been failing recently in MacBook Pros and Apple has agrred t0 will pay for the repairs.Read more about it at setteb.it (english translation).

October 9th, 2008

New MacBooks and MacBook Pros: $800 and Mini-DVI (updated)

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 10:28 am

Categories: Rumor, MacBook Pro, MacBook

Tags: Apple MacBook, Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Jason D. O'Grady

More details are emerging on the new MacBooks, due to be announced on Tuesday.

Inquisitr received word that price lists provided to some Apple retailers in the United States include an SKU for an $800 notebook computer – a first for the Cupertino company.

Apple retail stores have been given price sheets that list 12 price points for the new range, with prices between $800-$3100. Current lines only have 8 price points, 3 Macbooks starting at $1099, 3 Macbook Pros and 2 Macbook Airs.

Engadget posted the above spy shot which appears to be a close-up shot (albeit a blurry one) of the left side of a MacBook or MacBook Pro shell.

In it a seam is visible separating the side plane from the top bezel indicating that this comp/mockup/spy shot wasn’t fabricated from a single slab of aluminum. Rumors have been circulating that Apple has developed a new fabrication technique that uses lasers and wet jets to carve MacBooks out of a solid aluminum block (a “brick”).

The picture (first posted on a MacRumors forum from a Chinese forum) appears to shows a brand-spanking-new Mini-DVI (video out) port located between the USB and microphone ports. This would be a change for the MBP and would most likely mean the end of the full-size DVI port in favor of the MacBook’s Mini-DVI (third from the left below).

It would definitely be a bummer to lose native DVI output on the MacBook Pro. It means that you’ll have to remember to bring a dongle with you to get video out. I have a habit of forgetting dongles at the most inopportune time. The upside is that a single Mini-DVI port can be adapted to four devices: DVI, VGA, composite, or S-video. You can see why Apple would want to consolidate ports.

Three tiny spy shots (below), apparently of the new consumer-level MacBook, cropped up on Apple.Pro.

Picture 1 shows an almost identical keyboard layout and larger trackpad from the MacBook Air. It also lacks speaker grills on either side of the keyboard found on the larger MBP so it’s clearly a 12 or 13-inch model. Is the a woman’s hand?

The ports in picture 2 above appear to be (L to R):

1. MagSafe
2. Ethernet
3. (2) USB
4. Mini-DVI
5. Audio line in/optical digital audio in
6. Headphone/optical digital audio out
7. Security slot

Picture 3 shows a pretty standard issue slot-loading optical drive and an interesting pack of smokes and lighter. (I’ll send a PowerPage t-shirt to the first reader that can identify the brand of cigarettes pictured). Any chance that it’ll be a Blu-Ray reader? Maybe in the MBP, but I doubt if they’d put Blu-Ray into the consumer notebook.

What else have you heard? Do the new pictures swing you one way or another?

October 9th, 2008

Apple invites press to 14 October notebook event

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 9:26 am

Categories: Hardware, MacBook Pro, MacBook

Tags: Apple Inc., Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Jason D. O'Grady

Engadget posted the invitation to a widely-anticipated town hall event in San Francisco next Tuesday, October 14th at 10AM PST. The invite simply reads:

The spotlight turns to notebooks.

October 8th, 2008

Apple pulls Shaker from App Store

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 9:55 am

Categories: iPhone, App Store

Tags: Apple Inc., Games, Personal Technology, Jason D. O'Grady

Apple late last night pulled Shaker (iTunes link, now throws an error) from the App Store. The game, a free Tetris clone with a twist, was released by Phunkware on 9 September 2008. Tetris LLC contacted Apple claiming the game was too close to Tetris for comfort. Having played it, I agree with the LLC in this case.

October 8th, 2008

Vodafone posts Blackberry Storm with iPhone screen shots

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 8:50 am

Categories: iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Vodafone Group Plc., RIM BlackBerry, Handhelds, Hardware, Jason D. O'Grady

Check out the promotional photos that Vodafone posted of the new Blackberry 9530 - a.k.a Storm.

Someone in the art department (accidentally?) mocked it up with iPhone screen shots and posted it in official RIM marketing material – most likely because the actual screens were still under pre-launch embargo when the ad was created.

Oops.

Engadget has tracked down the source of the original images.

October 7th, 2008

Apple begins shipping replacement iPhone chargers

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 9:56 am

Categories: Recall, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Recall, Apple Inc., Strategy, Management, Jason D. O'Grady

Apple announced a recall of all of its ultracompact USB power adapter for iPhone (pictured) on 21 September 2008 because its metal prongs can break off and remain in a power outlet, creating a risk of electric shock. iPhone Alley received word that a reader has received the replacement he ordered online. More information on the recall is available from Apple.

October 7th, 2008

Apple notebooks to be fabricated from a solid “brick” of aluminum

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 9:49 am

Categories: Rumor, MacBook Pro, MacBook

Tags: Brick, Apple Inc., BW, Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Jason D. O'Grady

The term “brick” was mentioned in a 9-to-5 Mac rumor piece on 10 September 2008 when their source said that the MacBook update is “all about the Brick.” 9-to-5 Mac now claims that the “brick” isn’t a specific Apple product but rather a manufacturing process that uses lasers and jets of water to carve MacBooks out of a solid mass of aluminum (a.k.a. a “brick”).

Jon Gruber previously noted that a new lineup of MacBooks will be released on 14 October 2008, one week from today. BusinessWeek today throws some fuel on the fire by speculating that Apple’s radical new laptop will be announced in a week, and that 9-to-5 Mac’s brick thoery is supported by Apple’s patent filings:

Apple declined to comment on its plans, but the company has made patent filings related to the design of notebook enclosures. In May 2007, it filed for a patent on a design for “enclosure parts that are structurally bonded together to form a singular composite structure.… That is particularly useful in portable computing devices such as laptop computers.”

An entirely new manufacturing process could be what Apple’s Peter Oppenheimer (CFO) referred to as a “product transition” will cut profit margins to help shut out rivals during his Apple’s Q3 2008 earnings conference call with analysts. BW adds that the transition is among the reasons Apple said it expects to make lower gross profit margins.

If this is the case, Apple probably isn’t building the new “brick” machines here in the U.S. Although Apple announced plans for a new campus in Cupertino, CA two years ago to support its growing workforce, it’s two years behind schedule. Kevin Keller, an analyst at market research firm iSuppli adds “If they’re doing this at all, there is no doubt in my mind that it would have to happen in Asia,” Keller says.

Related:

• Rumor Mill: Some juice on the new MBP
• Apple notebook refresh rumored to arrive October 14

October 7th, 2008

New book details how to break iPhone passcodes and recover data

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 9:08 am

Categories: General

Tags: Apple iPhone, 3G, E-mail, Cellular Phones, Wireless, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Online Communications, Jason D. O'Grady

O’Reilly just released a new book, iPhone Forensics, Recovering Evidence, Personal Data, and Corporate Assets (US$39.99) by Jonathan Zdziarski.

Any given iPhone is likely to contain sensitive information belonging to its owner, and some types of information that may belong to others: corporate email, documents, and photos, to name a few. As the dark side of such a versatile device becomes more evident, so does the need to recover personal information from it.

In it Zdziarsk details how to perform a forensic analysis of the iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPod Touch. The book promises to help you:

• Determine what type of data is stored on the device
• Break v1.x and v2.x passcode-protected iPhones to gain access to the device
• Build a custom recovery toolkit for the iPhone
• Interrupt iPhone 3G’s “secure wipe” process
• Conduct data recovery of a v1.x and v2.x iPhone user disk partition, and preserve and recover the entire raw user disk partition
• Recover deleted voicemail, images, email, and other personal data, using data carving techniques
• Recover geotagged metadata from camera photos
• Discover Google map lookups, typing cache, and other data stored on the live file system
• Extract contact information from the iPhone’s database
• Use different recovery strategies based on case needs, and more

While the books is intended for “lawful forensic examination” by corporate security officers, law enforcement personnel, and private forensic examiners, it will undoubtedly be popular with the hacker set.

Let’s hope that Apple also orders a copy and fixes some of the exploits.

October 7th, 2008

Backgrounder extension for jailbroken iPhones

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 8:51 am

Categories: iPhone, Jailbreak

Tags: Apple iPhone, Application, Backgrounder Extension, Wiki, Text Messaging/SMS/MMS, Digital Music, Digital Media, Telecom & Utilities, Online Communications, Cellular Phones

In a recent piece for Daring Fireball Jon Gruber writes:

background processing is the one factor that unites the four dock apps. Phone, Mail, Safari, and iPod all continue running in the background; no other apps, including those from Apple, do…

But what’s misleading is that several other of Apple’s built-in iPhone apps seems to run in the background. Calendar event reminders and incoming SMS messages display pop-up alerts system-wide. And the Clock app’s timers and alarms continue running even after you’ve closed the Clock app.

While the above is true, you can run applications in the background on jailbroken devices via the Backgrounder extension. According to the Google Code page for the project Backgrounder is a Mobile Substrate-based extension to iPhone/iPod Touch’s SpringBoard application launcher that allows applications to run in the background (applications are normally terminated upon suspension).

Backgrounder can be run per-instance for the currently-running instance of an application, by pressing and holding the menu/home button until a message pops-up stating “Backgrounding Enabled.” It can also be turned on by default by creating a preference file via instructions on the project wiki.

The developer cautions:

Also note that applications may use the suspend/resume methods to perform important tasks, such as saving preferences. If the application is not properly terminated, these tasks may never be run. For such applications, if your phone crashes or if you force power-off (by holding the power and menu/home buttons), your settings/information for that application will not be saved. Always make sure to properly shutdown such applications (by disabling backgrounding when the application is no longer needed).

Backgrounder extension is available on jailbroken devices via Cydia.

October 7th, 2008

From the vault: Lisa demo

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 7:48 am

Categories: Video, Apple

Tags: Apple Inc., Xerox PARC, Lisa, Productivity, Podcasts, Digital Music, Digital Media, Internet, Personal Technology, Consumer Electronics

From my forthcoming book, Corporations that Changed the World: Apple Inc.

After a tour of the Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) laboratories in December 1979 and a demonstration of their Alto computer, Steve Jobs decided that the Graphical User Interface (GUI) was the future of computing. Apple traded $1 million dollars in pre-IPO Apple stock for three days at PARC to study its machines. Apple engineers came away from the experience with the foundation of their first computer based on a GUI, called Lisa. According to legend the project was named Lisa after Jobs’ first daughter, but Apple claims that the name is an acronym for Locally Integrated Software Architecture. Lisa was launched in 1983 at the sky-high price of $9,995, which is what most likely doomed it to failure. Success notwithstanding, Lisa was a forbearer to a much more successful Apple project – Macintosh.

I used the original Lisa in 1983 and had a blast from the past when a colleague emailed me this demo of Lisa from YouTube. (Let it buffer and jump to around the 6 minute mark).

“I can run the clock at the same time as the other applications”
“I can have 16 programs running at once”
“This is a pull down menu”
“This is a font change… That’s Amazing”

Good stuff.

The Lisa demo is also available on iTunes as a podcast (iTunes link) without the lengthy intro.

(Tip: Stuart Pomerantz)