512 Pixels

Well, well, look at this from Engadget:

The original plan was to offer mildly subsidized prices of $399 and $499 for the 16GB and 32GB versions of the iPhone 3G S to AT&T customers who weren’t currently “upgrade eligible,” but the carrier’s having a change of heart, ostensibly in response to… you know, people wanting to pay less. The new plan is to let anyone with an upgrade date in the months of June, July, August, or September get in on the fully discounted $199 / $299 price points, which should cover a good number of existing 3G owners.

Including this 3G owner, I hope.

For the many users who pre-ordered their iPhone 3G S, it looked like they would be getting their new phones a day before Apple’s public launch data of June 19. When I first read this, I thought “How very un-Apple to have a messy release.”

It seems I was right in my thinking. Engadget:

We’re getting a bunch of tips rolling in with updated tracking information for shipped 3G S orders folks have placed through the online Apple Store, confirming that Apple has actively coordinated with its shipper to hold on to the packages until “a future delivery date” that isn’t specified. We can only assume that’d be the 19th, but our question is this: can you just march down to your local UPS branch and try to pick it up yourself in the meantime?

That probably stings for almost-owners.

TUAW:

One of the most awaited features, push notifications, requires a constant data connection. While the iPhone 3G can handle data and voice simultaneously when using a 3G/HSDPA connection, on EDGE (the cellular data service that the original iPhone uses) you are unable to take calls and maintain a persistent data connection. As a result, if you turn on the push notification service, you may be unable to receive voice calls.

John Gruber:

This is utter nonsense. If push required a “constant data connection” your battery would run down like water through a sieve. The whole point of creating this system is so iPhones won’t need a constant data connection. There is no reason why original iPhone users should expect voice calling to be affected by push notifications.

TUAW’s response:

We have received multiple reports from 3.0 firmware users on original iPhones who are NOT experiencing the problems described, and who do receive calls without difficulty with the push notification service turned on. Cory’s original post is left as-is below; however, we no longer believe the issue is widespread or will affect most original iPhone users. Our apologies for any undue anxiety or confusion.

Someone tell me why I keep reading TUAW after stuff like this and the Newton thing.

I love when Apple goes all passive-aggressive, like in support article HT3642:

Apple designs the hardware and software to provide seamless integration of the iPhone and iPod with iTunes, the iTunes Store, and tens of thousands of apps on the App Store. Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.

Someone had a photo of the Palm Pre taped to their screen when they wrote this.

Gizmodo has posted 94 ideas for iPhone apps - designed in Microsoft’s Paint application.

Jason Snell, on AT&T’s lack of support for iPhone OS 3.0’s keystone features:

From the outside, there’s just no way to know why AT&T does the things that it does. But given Apple’s attitude, the reaction from the crowd at WWDC, and the anger out on the Internet, something is obviously wrong. It makes me wonder if AT&T, as a company, is simply incapable of changing the way it does business, even if the changes might end up benefiting it in the end.

Back in the Cingular days, the company took a chance on Apple and the iPhone, and it paid off. It’s time for the company to keep taking chances and being aggressive in supporting (and, yes, marketing to) iPhone users. Because the way things are looking right now, AT&T Wireless’s single greatest asset is poised to walk out the door and — as soon as the contracts lapse — take millions of its customers with it.

From Open Press Wire:

Are you tired of hearing it yet? I sure am. It seems Twitter has fostered an extreme steroid fed bacterial growth of social media experts, social media gurus and super follower magnates. Unfortunately there isn’t much of an antibiotic floating around to separate the experts from the idiots. If you weren’t aware already, most of these experts are just idiots that have found a stool to stand on and shout their garbled rehashed crap they read from TwiTips.com and rewrote it on their own “pretty” blog.

I believe there are five different types of what is perceived to be social media experts. Please note: I’m excluding the idiots above because they’re not experts and they don’t need to be discussed, just ignored.

The list of different types of “experts” is brilliant.

Ironically, I found this via a tweet by someone who probably considers himself a “social media expert.” I just love these guys and their self-depreciating ways.

The Newton is back in the spotlight, and once again, is creating waves in the Apple community.

The Newton 2010 bug has made news before, but just re-surfaced on a prominent Apple blog. Here’s TUAW:

Apple’s ill-fated and technologically advanced personal digital assistant was hot stuff in the 1990s until it was axed in February of 1998. There are still a good number of Newton MessagePad fans who not only use their devices every day, but are also working together on hardware and software updates to their units to bring them into the 21st Century.

The Newtapocalypse occurs next year at 6:48:31 PM on January 5th, 2010. While a majority of the functions of the MessagePad are not affected by the impending doom, calendar functions are.

It seems that TUAW didn’t do all the required fact-checking. Here’s a response posted on the Newton Poetry blog:

It’s too bad TUAW’s Steven Sande jumped the gun, because - as of a few weeks ago - Eckhart Köppen released a patch fixing the Y2010 bug. A quick browse through the Newtontalk list or, shucks, even this modest blog, would’ve brought Köppen’s patch to light.

Sande later fixed his oversight, but attempted to cover his tracks by making fun of Newton users.

“Frankly, considering the caveats listed on the update page, I think it would be a much better idea just to get an iPhone, guys!” he wrote.

Frankly, Steve, we’re doing just fine, thankyouverymuch - even if we don’t qualify as “mainstream consumers.”

Ouch.

Documents To Go - the premiere mobile app for editing Office documents - has been released for the iPhone. This makes the iPhone even more attractive to businesses.

From Apple’s PR group:

“Safari 4 is an incredible success on Mac and Windows with more than 11 million downloads in the first three days,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari users love the incredible speed and innovative features like Top Sites, Full History Search and Cover Flow.”

11 million downloads sounds real, real impressive. And without a doubt, Safari 4 is one of - if not the best - browser out there, for either platform. But is the download count misleading? MacWorld’s Robert Strohmeyer thinks it may be:

Now, I’m not doubting Apple’s numbers. Why would I? But as someone with three Macs at home, I couldn’t help but notice that Apple pushed Safari 4 out as an automatic update to all of its users this week. Yesterday, all three of the Macs in my household received the update, and we don’t even use Safari. (We prefer Firefox.)

An informal poll of my friends and colleagues reveals a whole lot of the same. Got the update dialog, downloaded and installed it, don’t intend to use it.

It may well be that Safari 4 is a fantastic browser, and that’s not what’s at issue here. What is at issue is the ridiculously thin claim that the latest Safari is a wild success on the basis that Apple basically pushed it out to everyone it possibly could, whether they wanted it or not. This very clearly echoes the last big Safari update, which Apple also pushed to unsuspecting users through its update tool.

I think he nails it.

What would be more telling is if Apple broke up their numbers into copies of the application downloaded from Apple’s Software Update vs. Apple’s website.

From the MacRumors forums:

1.) It appears nearly certain that the new 13“ and 15” MacBook Pros are all reporting a SATA interface running at 1.5Gb and not the faster 3.0Gb rate that has been in pretty common use for the last few years. These new models have the Secure Digital (SD) slot and also appear to have redesigned motherboards.

2.) Those who are using standard hard disk drives will probably see no difference in performance. If that is you, you can stop reading now.

3.) Benchmarks on FAST solid-state drives (SSDs) are showing a decrease in RAW disk i/o transfer rates on these same systems (in comparison to the previous generation MacBook Pros and MacBooks).

4.) The largest differences in the benchmark results seem to be in large, sequential disk READS (one of the traditional strengths with SSDs).

5.) To the best of my knowledge, no one has done any test with REAL-WORLD operations to show that the user experience (i.e. “performance”) will be decreased with the 1.5Gb SATA interface. That is to say that thus far we’ve only seen benchmarks done with RAW disk i/o benchmarking tools.

6.) No one really knows why this has been done and no one knows whether it can be fixed with a software/firmware update (it may or may not be able to be fixed).

In my opinion, this is a non-issue. As the forum member states, standard hard drives can’t keep up with the slower rate anyways. I think this is just one more thing reserved for the 17-inch users to help justify upgrading to the bigger notebook.

The New York Times has posted a lengthy piece on data centers - the buildings that power web services, store our data, and more. They interviewed Michael Manos, a former Microsoft employee:

At Tukwila — as at any big data center — the computing machinery is supported by what Manos calls the “back-of-the-house stuff”: the chiller towers, the miles of battery springs, the intricate networks of piping. There’s also what Manos calls “the big iron,” the 2.5-megawatt, diesel-powered Caterpillar generators clustered at one end of a cavernous space known as the wind tunnel, through which air rushes to cool the generators. “In reality, the cloud is giant buildings full of computers and diesel generators,” Manos says. “There’s not really anything white or fluffy about it.”

It is a long - but fascinating - read about what makes the Internet tick.