Macenstein

Win an iPhone in the Great Mac Chick Casting Call!

Posted by Dr. Macenstein Do you think you or someone you know should be our next Mac Chick of the Month? Macenstein, in association with Incipio Technologies, Inc., makers of Incipio Cases and Accessories for iPhone, have teamed up to bring you The Great Mac Chick Casting Call! Between now and October 31st, 2007, all entries received for Macenstein’s Mac Chick of the Month will be automatically entered into our grand prize drawing. One lucky winner will receive their choice... Read More

iTunes Store Tops Three Billion Songs

Posted by Dr. Macenstein Apple today announced that more than three billion songs have been purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store, presumably 2 billion of which are from Fergie. “We’d like to thank all of our customers who have contributed to this incredible milestone,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. iTunes features a catalog of more than five million songs, 550 TV shows, and 500 movies, and it recently surpassed both Amazon... Read More

Samba bug in OS X allows hackers root access

Posted by Lab Rat According to PC World, Symantec has upped the warning level to Mac users this week on a Samba exploit first discovered in May of this year after discovering the exploit has been uploaded to the Metasploit hacking framework. Despite Samba’s developers having released a fix a day after the discovery, Apple has yet to patch the hole. The exploit can allegedly allow a hacker to gain root access to a Mac which is running Samba. Samba is turned on in Macs when... Read More

Review: NewerTech miniStack V2 and V3

Posted by Dr. Macenstein Above: The miniStack V2 (left) and V3 (right) I bought our Mac mini last year to serve as our kids’ computer, and at the time, it seemed the mini’s specs would suit their needs fine. They had no need for peripherals outside of a keyboard, and how were they going to fill up a 80GB hard drive, I thought? Well, they didn’t. But I did. In attempting to be a responsible parent, I placed the Mac mini in the living room so we could easily... Read More

Apple TV “Holy Grail” discovered – You can now use an external USB drive

Posted by Dr. Macenstein Tom Anthony, one of the daring tech-”crusaders” over at Apple TV Hacks apparently remembered that in the Latin alphabet, Jehovah starts with an ‘I’, and has now discovered the Holy Grail of Apple TV Geeks – namely, the ability to not only use an external USB hard drive as the primary storage for Apple TV media, but also the ability to retain full syncing capabilities as well. That’s right, you can now have terabytes... Read More

No iPhone AppleCare for AL, CT, NV, or WY residents

Posted by Dr. Macenstein You better not drop your iPhone if you are a Connecticut resident. Or Nevada. Or Alabama or Wyoming for that matter. Faithful Macenstein reader hmmm alerts us that those 4 states have apparently joined together to form the new “AppleCare Axis of Evil“, refusing to allow Apple to offer the new iPhone AppleCare plan to their residents. From the iPhone AppleCare disclaimer: Apple is not authorized to sell the AppleCare Protection Plan for... Read More

ShieldZone changes name, goes public

Posted by Helper Monkey Fans of the protective iPod sticker the invisibleSHIELD may be interested to know they now have an opportunity to own a piece of the company. ZAGG Inc., owners of ShieldZone Coporation, announced yesterday that its common shares have been approved for trading in the Over-The-Counter Bulletin Board Market, which is sponsored by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD). Shares of the company’s common stock began trading yesteray, July... Read More

Why iPhone users should WANT the iPhone to tank

Posted by Dr. Macenstein During today’s Q3 financial conference call, Jobs and Co. painted a slightly more optimistic picture of iPhone sales than AT&T had alluded to yesterday. While still shy of the 700,000 some demented analysts had predicted, 275,000 was a far cry better then the 146,000 figure AT&T had thrown about and which had sent Apple’s stock tumbling in after hours trading. And while as an Apple stockholder I was happy to see this news (coupled... Read More

Looks like Apple may have backed the right HD format after all

Posted by Dr. Macenstein Despite recent reports that HD DVD sales are growing at a rate almost as fast as the Apple-backed Blu-Ray format’s are shrinking, it seems the criminal underworld may be providing a ray of hope for Blu-ray fans. According to the DVD Dossier, 3 days ago thieves broke into Silver Platters, a Seattle-based chain of video stores, and stole their entire selection of Blu-ray DVDs (about $7000 worth). Why is this telling? Well, apparently the thieves... Read More

iPhone Street Magic

Posted by Dr. Macenstein Faithful Macenstein reader Mark sent us a link to this awesome clip showing “virtual magician” Marco Tempest demonstrating some amazing iPhone features we were unaware of. I’ll have to try some of these out when I get my iPhone back from ColorWare. (Oh, did I mention I am getting my iPhone painted by ColorWare?) Perhaps the most impressive thing about this video is it was apparently shot just 30 minutes after Marco bought the iPhone.... Read More