Apple Improving Secrecy

Tired of having to give away precious details on its forthcoming computer, iPhone and iPod products to companies who can't keep their mouths shut, has started employing the cream of the crop chip designers. Apple is hiring big names from the semiconductor industry to design chips that will not only make iPhones faster but reduce power consumption. Apple owns the start-up company PA Semiconductor and just hired (today) Microsoft's former Xbox director. "Advanced Apple-only" hardware in Apple devices will allow Apple to pull further away from the competition.

iPhone Video Coming

It is all but confirmed by Apple that we are just six weeks away from seeing a new iPhone that will not only shoot high quality video but an iPhone with a mini-iMovie built-in app that will let you quickly save the sections of video you shot and want to keep, edit them, add titles and other effects and either view them right there on the iPhone on a new larger screen HD iPhone screen or upload the video to any website (including a direct link to your YouTube, MobileMe and more account) or send a text message or email and add the video as an attachment.

Rumormill: iPad and iPhone Lite

Rumormill and the iPad

Business week is running with a story leaking out of Verizon and centering on two new rumored Apple products: an iPhone "lite" and a "media pad" dubbed the iPad. The iPad is said to allow users to listen to music, view photos, watch high-deinition videos and ... places calls over a Wi-Fi connection. The call function is already in practical use with the new iTouch using Skype. Apple wisely added a microphone input source and the iPhone's earbuds with builtin microphone works nicely as well as the group of third party earbud and mic options. To give the rumor more credence, Business Week reports that Apple recently snapped up a large quantity of 9- to 10 inche touch sensitive screens and noted the iPad has been under development for the last 18 months. The iPad is expected to be introduced this summer, possibly announced at the WWDC.

As for the iPhone Lite - that isn't likely to be announced soon because of the contractual agreements between Apple and AT&T. That agreement ends in 2010 and Verizon would have to replace their ancient CDMA system which won't work with the iPhone and even less likely to work with any iPhone Lite.

Unless ... Apple already has it (see below).

iTouch Now Makes Calls

I haven't mentioned this but it could evolve into something very big. Skype works on the iTouch and Apple has made sure it does by adding a microphone input source to the new second generation iTouch. For just a few bucks an iTouch owner can purchase an iPhone headset adapter 2.5mm 3.5mm) and it will allow you to use any cellphone headset to run the iTouch into a fully functional mobile phone. No need to jailbreak. Using Skype's service you can make phone calls, receive them, have a "real" telephone number that people can call from regular landline or other cell phones and have the use of a sexy British operator asking your callers if they want to leave a voicemail message.

To convert your iTouch into a WiFi iPhone you download the Skype application from the iTunes store, register for a Skype account and sign up for an unlimited US/Canada $3 a month subscription. You'll have to pay $30 a year for your own telephone number but if you subscribe to the $3 a month service for a year, you get the $30 back.

To make calls to real phone you log into your Skype app and make sure you are connected to a WiFi source. That's it.

And that, dear friends, is the same process that is expected to convert the rumored "iPad" described above into an iPhone iPad.

The full article with more indepth information is here: http://tinyurl.com/clcrtm

The Pirate Bay Verdict Was Stacked!

PB Founders Seek Retrial

The Pirate Bay founders had their lawyers file legal documents for a retrial claiming the judge was biased during the trial and that he "neglected to informt he defendants and their lawyers of the facts that constituted the bias." The judge is a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Swedish Associate for Copyright, both of which are strong opponets of The Pirate Bay. The same board also includes Peter Danowsky and he represents the music and film industries such as Fox, Warner, Sony Columbia, Universal and EMI. Thus, the outcome was predetermined or tainted as they say and the defendents have a right to a retrial.

Snow Leopard and YouTube

Snow Leopard will include built-in support to allow you to upload a video file directly to YouTube. The first time you do this you'll be promoted for your YouTube username and password and the new QuickTime X Player will take care of the rest. The movie will be automatically converted and optimized for YouTube. This same option will be available for those with a MobileMe account into your MobileMe Video Gallery. And the new QuickTime will include the option to export your video(s) in formats for the iPhone, iPod and Apple TV. Those vids will be added to your itunes library and can then be sync to individual devices. Apple has made YouTube (Google) a integral part of the Mac experience and by doing so, ensures an independence from Adobe's Flash.

Microsoft Caught Lying Again

CNBC claims Microsoft's new ads offering $1,500 to the common consumer to buy a laptop who then shuns the MacBook because it "costs too much" takes a closer look at the Microsoft claim and reports "PCs Need $600 Extra to 'Perform As Well As a Mac". The only way Microsoft can con the consumer is to lie. http://tinyurl.com/cktc5t

Snow Leopard To Record Movies

Much like the Snapz Pro X third party application many MacHeads use to create video tutorials, software demos and other movie items, Snow Leopard will offer a screen recording option in the Quick Time Player file menu. When selecting the screen recording option under recent pre-release distributions of Snow Leopard, a recording interface prompts the user to begin a video capture then disappears. A small footprint controller in the upper-right hand side of OS X menubar can be used to end the video capture. QuickTime is optimized in Snow Leopard for modern audio and video formats.

IPREDator
"IPREDator is a network service that makes people online anonymous. A Virtual Private Network is used and a company based in The Netherlands is about to unleash it. No traffic data is stored. Everything you up or download is unequivocally anonymous." An announcement is expected any day now. The cost is a very cheap $80 a year. You can run up a bill that high in just one week if you had to pay for all the movies, TVShows, applications, and music. I'll keep you posted when it arrives.


Skype Bans Jailbroken iPhones
"Skype calls over 3G networks are currently not allowed due to contractual restrictions." That's the announcement you get when you try to use Skype on a jailbroken iPhone. Gotta really piss off those who refuse to play AT&T's contract game.

Steve Seeks To Tear Down Old Home

Steve Jobs is trying a second time to get permission to tear down an old 14-bledroom mansion he bought back in the '80's and replace it with a smaller, modern home for about $5 million. Steve says the old home will cost 13.3 million to renovate and it will be cheaper to just rebuild and more modern home at a modest $5 million. (Yes, I guess to Steve "modest" would mean a mere $5 million...)

iPhone 3.0 Will Sync iCal Automatically

You'll be able to subscribe to iCal. Now you have to connect your iPhone to iTunes to sync your calendar events but with v3.0 you won't have to. Make a date and it will appear on ALL your Mac iCalendars within minutes without requiring extra software. You'll find the "turn it on" switch in the Settings menu.

Apps Store Hits 1 Billion Downloads

Apple is now the hands down King of SmartPhone apps having reached the 1 billionth download app last night. No other SmarPhone with downloadable apps comes anywhere near 1 million much less 1 billion. The iPhone is a true success.

Selma Hayek's MobileMe Hacked

Login details to Selma'a personal MobileMe were posted on Anonymous imageboard 4chan.org and it was quickly hacked. Her email address is shayek@mac.com and her birthday is September 2. We won't publish her account password. Some things are sacred, after all.

New Free Gay Dating iPhone App

It's called Grindr. It uses GPS technology in your iPhone and WiFi to locate guys in your own vicinity looking for a date. Launch Grindr to see local guys, the closest guy to you appears first - view their picture, stats and map their location. It is totally discreet, doesn't require an email address or account registration. Anonymous dating at its best - ONLY in the Gay community!

Jobs Will Return For WWDC

It's Official - Jobs To Return for WWDC

It is being reported on the French website, iPodTutoFast (http://www.ipodtutofast.com/) that Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO, confirmed during a presentation in France yesterday that Steve Jobs would return to Apple in June. His first appearance will be at the WWDC which begins June 9 in San Francisco (Moscone Center).

Last Beta Build of Leopard?

A bit of a surprise today - we had expected Apple to release an updated version of OS X (10.5.7) but instead, Apple has released another build (9J56) that corrects problems reported with Bluetooth, AFP volumes and a few other bugs. The AFP volume bugs are the real holdup because they can bring a halt to the system. Meanwhile, Bluetooth compatibility and stability have been enhanced and bugs in Time Mahcine have also been removed. Safari 4 still cannot be installed on this build but that problem should be resolved with a new Safari beta expected soon after the release of 10.5.7.

iPhone Beta 3 Released

Another surprise today - Apple released Beta 3 for the iPhone v3.0 to developers and registered members. This beta offers speed increases' Spotlight Search saving and some minor changes for MMS (on German networks.). The last iPhone beta was released two weeks ago. This beta also reveals in its system files more Jibbler information. Jibbler is the source code for voice-enabled navigation of the iPhone operating system. It appears Jibbler could launch an app in the iPhone, perform a search using the new Spotlight. Thus, Voice Control is looking more likely.

Safari To Gain Audio Controls?

A new filing introduced last week shows Apple is exploring the possibility of adding special audio preferences in the way of mute and volume controls designed for sounds coming from websites.

Lisa Simpson is an iMac User

FireFox 3.0.9 Updated

Mozilla has released and update to Firefox v3.0.9. It is primarily a patch that fixes several security and stability problems and a problem with database corruption. The latter would prevent Firefox from accessing your stored cookies. Mozilla also fixed a problem with large online forms taking too long to submit themselves. The update is a free download.

Apple Says No to Netbook?

And that statement, issued by Tim Cook to a question posed during the company's Q2 conference call, doesn't jive with the reports coming out of the manufacturing industry which points to the fact that Apple is developing a netook. Quanta, Foxconn and other sources claim Apple is working on it. Is Tim Cook just being cool or what?

Mac Trojan of No Alarm

Some major media outlets are running with a story about the iBotnet, a "Trojan hourse" program that has appeared in copies of Apple's iWork '09 program that was distributed over P2P networks. This is old old news, and even Apple released a security update to address the possible claim. Mac owners are still immune to Virus, Worms and Trojans and should not be alarmed by these reports. Remember that Microsoft controls much of the computer industry media who are heavily dependent on ad revenue from Microsoft. Microsoft lusers are the computer users who have to worry - not the cool MacHeads. Bottom line here, if the Mac can be invaded then all of the Internet can be invaded too and that hasn't happened yet. Both run under Unix - not DOS or Microsoft.

Mac News Roundup

Snow Leopard Tidbits

Concensus is, Snow Leopard will be released sometime between August and September and will be announced as completed and displayed at WWDC (second week in June). This is based on the most recent beta release date which did follow a 4 to 6 week pattern but has been revved up to new betas every three weeks. The next beta (10A335) is expected to introduce a major revision to the look of Mac OS X - a new color scheme, probably dark chrome. This change was decided upon back when Snow Leopard was started. I say "expected" because Apple is getting close to wrapping up the beta process and may hold off revealing the new look to the very last second to ensure a great debut at WWDC. Even then, there will be a two-month lag time before 10.6 is shipped.

We now know that QuickTime has been updated to the full Pro version and is included as part of the new operating system, that Quicktime will have a minimalist design and will gain extra location and multi-touch capabilities. Snow Leopard will be entirely Intel-only and will offer support for the ZFs filesystem.

Purchase price. Will there be one? Hotly debated right now. It would NOT be to Apple's advantage to sell Snow Leopard at the standard $129 price because Snow Leopard will only install on newer Macs. A high price would alientate older Mac users and if offered for free or as little as $29.99 the low cost would be an incentive for older Mac users to pack in those old machines and move to the newer line of Macs. Many think Apple would be making a mistake selling Snow Leopard and should give it away for free just as they did with every iPhone and iPod (similar but smaller optimized OS X operating systems).

What else do we know? The majority of OS X application footprints have been greatly reduced and that users still have the choice to run their applications in 32-bit mode (if need be). Apple will probably include Remote Desktop 3.3 which is currently being tested for compatibility. There will be an updated edition of Xcode.

Other Tidbits:

9to5's reporting minor updates to the MacBook and MBPro lines will be offered at WWDC. Speed bumps and "3G hardware built-in".

Apple is on the verge of selling its billionth downloaded iPhone app.

Apple released update v1.0.2 for the iPod Shuffle today. Users will get a faster response from the Play button, individual button presses offer better volume controls and many "secondary" problems were fixed. The update is automatic through iTunes.

AT&T added 1.6 million new iPhone accounts during the first quarter of 2009.

It is a "given" that the next iPhone, slated for June release at WWDC, will offer new voice control features including voice dialing, song, TV and Movie title announcements, recording capabilities, 32Gig of space, 3.2 Megapixel camera, better battery, speech to text for SMS, higher screen resolutions, 802.11n, and FM radio capabilities.

Apple's new Netbook will be a big iPhone. It will read portable e-books (ala Kindle) and do all the other Mac things. It will be, in size, between the iPhone and the MacBook with a virtual standard Mac keyboard and trackpad area. It will be the next "big thing" and a major seller for Apple.

Gay Storm Coming! LOL!

This is just too funny ...

A Gaythering Storm from Jane Lynch

Apple Releases Four New Mac Ads

T-Mobile Blocking Skype

Skype allows people to make P2P free calls to other Skype users over the iPhone. European and American telecom companies fear loss of profits and are turning off all VOIP traffic, including WiFi. You can expect this to turn into an antitrust case. Think of it as power company deciding to pull the plug on all Whirlpool washers. (Click Skype logo for full story)

Defense of Marriage Not For Pelosi

House Speaker Pelosi told the Bay Area Reporter that the federal Defense of Marriage Act is not on her top priority list. (Editor's note: Make sure it DOESN'T Pass Pelosi! It denies same sex marriage, preserves man/woman as only marriage allowable! Bullshit to that noise!)

Scoop! Luke of Amazing Race is Gay!

Gay Mel White of Amazing Race is America's most well-known gay Christian activist (he wrote speeches for Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Billy Graham) and has a husband, Gary Nixon.

'Can't Sleep' - new Swedish music video from La Vida Locash offers a two man love story to accompany their new song starring Adrian Lux (an up and rising straight male actor). Very hot.

Susan Boyle Singing Cry Me A River - an amazing voice.

PB Flips Finger To Hollywood

The Pirate Bay foundation has flipped the bird at Corporate America's digital music, movie and game industries by moving their servers to the Netherlands, a change that will keep the site running even if The Pirate Bay loses its upcoming appeal, which isn't likely because Sweden does not acknowledge American copyright. As you read this the Pirate Bay founders, with the help of heaps of money and volunteerism, are setting up servers in every country that dismisses American copyright. If one PB site is shut down a switch will be turned and PB will continue to live on somewhere else. Corporate America will never end piracy because digital data takes up no space and no one really owns it.

How To: P2P Anonymously

One Swarm will encrypt your IP address when uploading or downloading torrents. It's new and the bane of the music and movie industry. They can't fight back if the torrent customer utilizes One Swarm. It is free, open source and will become the 'next big thing'. Download and install it for self-protection. Click on the graphic to download.



Boycotting The Music/Movie Industries

It was all over Twitter yesterday and picked up much steam - the call for a boycott against the Music and Movie industries. 'Net users are being encouraged to cease all purchases of music and movie products and instead, download them directly from one of the thousands of P2P sites offering them. We encourage all readers to embrace the boycott and end Media's stranglehold on music and other digital media.

Torrent Users Vent

"What the industry and legislature fails to realize with these legal attacks on file sharing systems is that it's a war that will never be won. The coders and programmers behind these systems will always be five steps in front of the industry as far as creation and implementation of technologies is concerned."

"You can search for a torrent in Google, is anyone filing a lawsuit on Google?"

"Ordinary people have figured out they can go to a free website and read all the news they want as opposed to buying a newspaper. The Newspaper industry realizes their way of news distribution is dead yet they aren't suing the free news websites."

"The way a torrent works is simple: It's essentially a formula for putting the tiny "bits" of data together that make a much larger file.

Therefore, is it anymore illegal than sheet music, which tells me note for note how to play a song.? Or a recipe that tells me exactly what ratios of food items to put together to make a meal. Or a scientific formula that tells me how to construct a molecule. It's the same principle."

"Copyrights are inherently a limit on everyone's First Amendment freedoms based on a false analogy presented as if it were fact: "intellectual property rights." Modern de facto never-ending copyright laws are just flatly corporate welfare."

And finally, a great quote:

"Time is priceless yet it costs us nothing.
You can do anything you want with it but you can't own it.
You can spend it but you can't keep it and once you've lost it there's no getting it back.

It's just gone..." (Anonymous)

Pirate Bay Founders Guilty!

10.5.7 Soon To Be Released!

Are you ready? Apple released build 9J47 of 10.5.7 on Friday, only four days after 9J44. You can expect build 9J50 to be released this coming Tuesday.

The 9J47 distribution fixed three problems: the handling of login item preferences; Ethernet performance on Mac Pros; and this coming Tuesday's 9J50 should address a difficulty with Bluetooth networking. In all, there have been a total of 108 problems originally submitted and all will have been fixed with v10.5.7. If you have 10.5.6 already installed then you should see an update around 443MB in size, and if not, a 730MB file for all other Leopard owners.

And then, of course, we're going to see Snow Leopard in June. Oh Happy Day!

Too Too Much!

Gays Hit Back At Religious Right

New iPhone Secrets Revealed!

New features found in the source code of Firmware 3.0 for the iPhone are being reported by iPhone developers. The latest info found is a video editing application which probably means the new iPhone (Pro?) will come with video capturing capability along with a built-in video editing application. This would mean an iPhone owner could shoot a video using the iPhone's new 5.0 pixel camera, edit it, and probably upload it directly to YouTube or any other place (as well as attach it to an email).

And you heard about 802.11n Wi-Fi, right? More source code is revealing support for a new Broadcome chip BCM4329 and that chip will bring support for 802.11n Wi-Fi. Currently the iPhone supports 802.11b/g and by adding this new chip, iPhone owners will see an increase of Wi-Fi speed five times greater and be able to join AT&T's new 5GHz networks.

USPS Should Honor Harvey Milk

"Daniel Drent, an openly gay man who lives in Cincinnati, is coordinating the effort to convince the U.S. Postal Service's Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee to issue a Milk stamp. He would like to have approval of the stamp to coincide with what would have been Milk's 80th birthday on May 22 in 2010. Should the committee select the Milk stamp next year, it would not be released until 2012 at the earliest. 'I think this proposed version of the stamp is a wonderful representation of Harvey. It shows his charm and personality in his face, and the rainbow colors for the USA, signify the LGBT movement,' wrote Drent in an e-mail after being shown Leff's artwork. 'I would be thrilled to submit this design to the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee when I submit the letter to request this long deserved honor for Harvey Milk.' ...This is the second time a push has been made to see a Milk stamp be issued. In 2005 San Francisco's 11-member Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution calling on the postmaster general to issue a Milk stamp."