512 Pixels

Wikipedia, on “ Stevenotes.” No article at this time for “ Philnotes.”

AppleInsider:

AppleInsider can also confirm that a similarly-timed makeover to the Mac mini will see the diminutive desktop adopt chipsets from NVIDIA’s MCP79 platform, as was previously implied by discoveries within the resource files a Mac OS X build train that shipped on the latest MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

In addition to sporting both a Mini DisplayPort and a Mini DVI connector, it’s now also rumored that the new Mac mini will see the addition of a FireWire 800 port and a fifth USB port, with the legacy FireWire 400 port going away. The Mini DVI connector will allow the mini to continue to cater to users who already own a display, while the Mini DisplayPort will offer support for customers of Apple’s latest LED-backlit Cinema Display.

I do think that the Mac mini will get an update, but I’m not sure I buy the bit about Apple catering “to users who already own a display.” The Mac mini itself is a compromise designed to draw Windows users to OS X. When it comes to new standards, Apple blazes forward without concern for past standards. The most recent (and the standard in question) example is the Mini DisplayPort Apple unveiled on the side of the new notebooks. While backwards-compatible with the use of adaptors, Apple limited their new shiny 24-inch display in that they can only be used with the new MacBook family. If they are marching forward with Mini DisplayPort, why the Mini DVI port on the back of the new Mini? Just toss some adaptors in the box, or have them hanging at Apple Stores and Best Buys for purchase.

Then there’s the question of how effective the Mac mini is as switching users. In my years of working with Macs, I have seen Minis used in conjunction with PCs- usually sitting atop a tower, used with a KVM switch. But far more often, I’ve seen Minis used as servers, media centers, and in computer labs- uses that Apple may not have foreseen.

The biggest draw back to the current Mini is power. The dated Intel chipset in the Mini holds it back from being a useful machines in some situations. This problem isn’t new. When the Mini was announced, it came with a low-end G4 and 256 MB of RAM. Which was really sad, even then.

Will Apple continue to market the Mac mini to people wanting to try a Mac without spending more than $1,000? Or is the Mini finally going to be the replacement for the G4 Cube- a powerful machine that will find uses all over the place and that can fit on a desk? We’ll find out Tuesday, I suppose.

CNN:

They had returned 250,000 images, covered more than 21 kilometers (13 miles), climbed a mountain, descended into craters, struggled with sand traps and ageing hardware and survived dust storms, NASA said.

“These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the hardware experiences every day,” said John Callas, Jet Propulsion Laboratory project manager for Spirit and Opportunity.

“We realize that a major rover component on either vehicle could fail at any time and end a mission with no advance notice, but on the other hand, we could accomplish the equivalent duration of four more prime missions on each rover in the year ahead.”

Simply amazing that those little guys are still rolling around collecting information. Probably the most impressive hardware out of NASA in 20 years.

Twitter:

Twitter Engineering and Operations are on the case but if you receive a Direct Message with a blogspot.com link in it that redirects to what seems like Twitter.com do not enter your Twitter credentials. If you look at the URL, you’ll notice that it is not really Twitter but twitter.access-logins.com—a sketchy phishing site.

TUAW:

I think we will see an updated Mac Mini in form factor and capability, an update to the iLife suite, more features and refinements to MobileMe and updates to iWork. In fact, the entire iWork suite may end up on the web much like Google Docs. I also think there’s a good possibility we’ll see updated iMacs and a preview of the next version of OS X (aka Snow Leopard) running on them.

Nothing terribly ground-breaking.

The My Apple Newton blog:

The real-time clock that runs the Newton runs from 1993 through 2010. This is due to the fact that NewtonScript integers are 30 bits, and signed. 229 seconds after 1993 is 2010–the end of the Seconds world. The time system, however, is based on minutes from 1904. That won’t run out until 2920. Then we’ll really be screwed.

That means that the clock has a 17-year life. After that, the clock will have to be made to repeat some Seconds values.

Jon Glass reported that he set his Newton to 2010 to see what happened.  He had to perform a hard reset or “brainwipe” to bring his Newton back into operation.

The Newton community is working on a fix, but it seems to be a ways off yet; the current build made it impossible for Newton to roll over to 2009. If they don’t figure it out, the little green machines may be like the brown ones- but permanently.

TrendsSpotting:

Hence on an estimated ballpark - Facebook daily consumes 924,000 KiloWatt-Hours with per capita of 3.08 KWh . Annually the per capita figure would be 1124 KWh /year or equivalent to emission of 0.75 ton of green house CO2 (Carbon footprint) which is half of NY city’s carbon footprint. Sadly with Facebook adding more ‘horses’ (50K more servers) to cater to our photo addiction - this number would increase to 1 ton of CO2 .

Holy moly.

Computerworld’s Seth Weintraub:

I’ve heard that iMovie will largely (if not entirely) be a Web Application and Apple would offer its users to “upload your movies to us and edit them there.”

I’m gonna go ahead and call bullshit.

Apparently Engadget readers really like Apple news.

Last year, I played with the idea of posting my photos here each day (as well as my Flickr page) but never came to a conclusion. Now I have.

Today is the start of a new year. 2009 will be difficult, without a doubt. A new President will take office. The economic collapse will continue to effect people across the world. Our son will have his first birthday in November. Personally, I have several goals for 2009, which I’m sure will filter into Project 365: 2009. [001/365; 01/01/2009]

Last night, I took the last daily photo for 2008. The project was harder than I thought it would be, but very rewarding. Here’s a slideshow of 2008:

Dev-Team:

- The unlock works exclusively with baseband 02.28.00. This baseband is provided by the latest firmware update (2.2) from Apple.  - You’ll need to upgrade to this release using iTunes and then use QuickPwn to activate etc. There are plenty of tutorials about this on iclarified, bigboss, and other established tutorial sites.  Because it works on 02.28.00, it is available to everyone on the planet.  This means we don’t need to unnecessarily expose holes in earlier basebands, which is an important concern. - The application is a small daemon that is launched on boot.  It injects the payload at boot and also whenever there is a baseband reset.  You won’t notice anything about it other than that your third-party sim now works.  It’s a small program and unobtrusive.  There is no GUI (this is by design). - yellowsn0w is completely removable through Cydia, the command line, and iTunes.

Interesting developments (mainly) because the unlock doesn’t seem permanent. I have a feeling the eBay-value of 1st gen iPhones is about to crash, now that the 3G models can be unlocked for other networks.