32 Years Later...

Happy Birthday Apple.

Apple (Computer) Inc. was born on this date, 1976. Now if I could finally get a new computer. Eight and a half years on this iMac is enough.

The First iPhone Virus... Not!!

When will these attention whores (the "virus" writers and Mac "news"/rumor sites) stop!?

The First iPhone Virus Arrives

We were all waiting for it and it's finally happened. The first iPhone trojan has been discovered.

Targeting only "jailbroken" iPhones (which have been modified to allow the installation of third-party applications), this trojan masquerades as an update Erica's Utilities and is named "113 prep." Simply running the application causes no harm - it simply prints the word "shoes" to the screen. Uninstalling the application, however, removes certain files from the iPhone's /bin directory, making it impossible for various applications to function correctly.

I'm not going to provide a direct link to the screaming banshees that wrote the above (especially since it's actually a rather harmless trojan). Nor will I quote the niggardly "security" firm meatheads because they're trying to scare up potential customers. Like several posters have written on various Mac-centric websites about anyone that was foolish enough to jailbrake their iPhones: The chickens are coming home to roost!

RIP Or Good Riddance?!

Think Secret will no longer be published.

I was never conflicted: Think Secret never suffered due to it's journalistic zeal, but rather, because of its immoral actions. Encouraging the stealing and dissemination of trade secrets had nothing to do with journalism. Apple screwed up by being too harsh in the beginning of its lawsuit. But they had a right and obligation to pursue the leaker and those that encouraged them and profited from them. End of story.

I'm Still Waiting For iPhone V2

This is another remarkable success from Jobs & Co.

FORTUNE: Apple 2.0 iPhone's Q3 sales second only to Blackberry in U.S.

...[T]he iPhone's debut at second place is particularly noteworthy because:

...The iPhone was only being sold in the US, and is only available through AT&T; all of the other mobile platforms are available to Sprint, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile as well as AT&T. The iPhone wasn't available in the significant markets of Canada and Mexico, along with parts of the US that AT&T does not service, including much of Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Alaska.

An Inside Look At Terry Gou's Factory City

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating and insightful look at Terry Gou (founder) and Hon Hai, the iPod, Wii and PC maker:

The Forbidden City of Terry Gou

Past a guarded gate on the outskirts of this city sits one of the world's largest factories. In dozens of squat buildings, it churns out gadgets bearing technology's household names -- Apple Inc.'s iPods and iPhones, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s personal computers, Motorola Inc. mobile phones and Nintendo Co. Wii videogame consoles.

On Apple's August 7th Event

It's kinda late, I had a lousy day. So I'm jacking a big update post straight from Mac Rumors:

August 7th Updates: iMacs, iLife '08, iWork '08, Mac Mini (Keynote Video), Posted by arn

Mac News
Apple introduced quite a few updates today, so we summarized them here to make sure you didn't miss any of them:

~ iMacs - brushed metal, with thin keyboard, up to 2.8GHz Core 2 Extreme Processor. (unboxing)
~ iLife '08 - completely new iMovie and updated iApps (video tour)
~ iWork '08 - updated Keynote, Pages and new spreadsheet called Numbers. Downloadable demo available.
~ .Mac - personal domains, increased storage (10GB) and transfer limit (100GB), Web Gallery (example)
~ Mac mini - Core 2 Duo processors at 1.83GHz/2.0GHz.
~ Airport Extreme - now with Gigabit ethernet.
~ Mac Pro RAID - build-to-order RAID card for $999,..

Individual stories are linked above. {ed. only if you follow the link I stole.}

Apple has posted a quicktime video of today's event.

So, what do I think?

A Mini Event?

Keep your eyes on Apple as they make announcements today — 10am to 1pm PST. You can reread my updated predictions below, but I think the Mac Mini may be the biggest surprised. Either it gets updated instead of killed, or it morphs into a better system with peripherals. It'll still be somewhat expensive though.