Macenstein

Rumor: iPhone firmware 1.1.4 imminent?

[UPDATE: This apparently was a hoax.] Faithful Macenstein reader max found something interesting on Tiny Code‘s website, namely the first official mention of iPhone firmware 1.1.4: Tiny Code no longer produces fixes or applications for firmware 1.1.3. We can’t say much, but we are working with Apple and with their SDK for the next firmware release and SDK applications and we shouldn’t be missed for long. We will no longer update our Installer.app repo for... Read More

Multi-touch trackpads a simple software update for current Mac laptops?

[UPDATE: T3 seems to have removed their post, for whatever reason (see below in the comments)] T3 is reporting that the multi-touch trackpad featured in the MacBook Air, and presumably one of the new features in the soon-to-be-released MacBook Pros, is not hardware-based, but rather a simple software hack that could in theory be made available to current MacBook and MacBook Pro owners. That is, if Apple allows it. Read More  Read More

AT&T site recommends using iPhone on 3G network

Are you sick of all our iPhone/3G speculation? Well, tough. But this one’s quick. W3Prodigy noticed an interesting paragraph on AT&T’s iPhone site: Data Access In order to use data such as email, Google Maps, YouTube videos and web browsing, AT&T recommends using iPhone in a 3G or EDGE Network, or from a local Wi-Fi connection. I knew there was something fishy about those new iPhones! 🙂  Read More

Has anyone cracked open the “new” iPhone to take a looksee?

Slow news days always tend to set us to speculating and “what if”-ing. So here’s some food for thought… Above: PC World wasted no time cracking open the FIRST iPhones… Back when the first gen iPhone was released, there were no shortages of people willing to crack open their expensive gadget and flood the web with sexy pics of the insides. In part much of this was done to verify that, no, Apple had not somehow included UMTS or HSDPA radio in the iPhone,... Read More

The 3G iPhone: Do we have it all wrong?

Everyone “knows” Apple is making a 3G iPhone, right? I mean, it’s a given, a sure thing, easy money. In fact, many prospective iPhone users are putting off the purchase of the wunder phone until Apple announces the device. But what if there will never be a 3G iPhone? At least in the US. Macworld UK reports on AT&T’s future purchase of 12MHz of wireless spectrum in the 700MHz band that covers 60 per cent of the US. The deal has been approved by the... Read More

Will AT&T jack up the price of 3G iPhone plans?

iPhone users currently enjoy a pretty sweet deal on unlimited data. Just $20 a month gets you all the web pages you can eat, unlimited e-mails and up to 200 Text messages a month. Sure, you’re on the slower Edge network, but you get what you pay for, right? Well, getting what you paid for is exactly what’s gotten me worried. We all “know” Apple will be releasing a 3G iPhone at some point, and for most people considering upgrading, the big question has... Read More

NBC shows on Amazon for $1.89. Was Apple lying?

Above: Where’s the rampant price gouging we thought NBC was insisting on? Remember back during the whole NBC/Universal pulling out of iTunes debacle a few months back, Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes, made this famous quote? “We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase. We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.” Well,... Read More

Newflash: Steve Jobs “brilliant”, “trim”, and “not very nice”

We’ve been on a video kick lately here at Macenstein, and while this video isn’t overly new, (in fact, it dates back to October) I found it somewhat fascinating for couple reasons. (iPhone users click here to watch the video) First, it provides a rare and very candid account of a person’s meeting with Steve Jobs. It seems like for every Violet Blue “Macworld brush-off story” you hear, there’s another Larry Tesler ‘When I wasn’t... Read More

So, why did Apple update the Mac Pro and Xserve the week before Macworld?

Aside from the most faithful of the Mac faithful, this year’s Macworld was met with a resounding “Meh” by the tech community. Personally, we’d give it a 6.5. It wasn’t so much that the announcements were horrible, it was more that everything Jobs showcased was simply “fine”, deserving of polite applause rather than the fanatical hoots we Mac fans so desperately wanted to bestow upon him. There were no real surprises to be had, which was... Read More

Apple caught up in playola “scandal”

Oh man, wait ’till Eliot Spitzer gets a hold of this one! Coincidence? That’s right. Just minutes after the world learned that Randy Newman was still alive, who should show up on iTunes as the “featured artist” of the week than none other than the Singing Bush himself, Randy Newman. Could it be that playing Steve off the stage comes with a bit of “playola” in the form of free advertising on the most popular music download site known to man?... Read More