Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.4.9 8P2132/8P132 Apple has seeded yet another build of 10.4.9. There are (again) no known issues. Insiders expect 10.4.9 to be released at the end of this week or early next week. Whether or not 10.4.9 will be the last update to Tiger remains to be seen. Historically, Apple has not continued creating such updates after the initial release of the next big cat. Only security updates for the last main version are continued.

Labels: Mac OS X, Seed, Tiger, Update

- posted by Patrick Armbruster @ 23:57 [article link]  0 comments

Now that Cisco and Apple made peace... Both companies are now allowed to use the iPhone name worldwide. And they're looking into "interoperability and compatibility". (That's the thing Cisco wanted.) I guess Cisco knew from the beginning that they would let Apple use the name as well. They just wanted to somehow profit from Apple's halo, and now they probably can. Somehow. We'll have to see how that plays out. The good thing for Apple: They don't have to somehow divert all the huge buzz they've generated in January with the announcement of their iPhone towards 'some other name' like "iPod phone".

Labels: Apple, Cisco, iPhone

- posted by Patrick Armbruster @ 09:53 [article link]  0 comments

Even more iPhone thoughts... Certainly, the iPhone (Apple's, of course) has long been anticipated, and like _any_ person interested in everything Apple, I'm glad Apple's finally come out with the news of it. There's some criticism, as I've said before, about the iPhone not being a platform, i.e. there won't be 3rd party apps. (Which really _is_ a pity if you think about the really great freeware and shareware we're enjoying on the Mac.) Also: It's a simple GSM phone - no UMTS (although there's still hope that the European version will have support for UMTS networks, because the iPhone would seem even older technology over here than it does in the US) at all.
I'm pretty sure that Apple has done a _lot_ for the interface, and I'm a big critic of many phones' UI myself. I'm looking forward to using the iPhone, actually. But there _are_ phones coming out that interest me even more...



One of them is the next Nokia Communicator, the first to use the S60 platform instead of the Series 80 platform. Nokia has only just unveiled it, but there's already a great review out about the Nokia Communicator E90 here at my-symbian.com. This _is_ a smartphone and it _does_ come as a platform. It can use any S60v3 applications out there (there are many) and it comes with a full version of QuickOffice already installed (among a lot of other things). It also _does_ have UMTS support (an American version with US 3G support will probably follow) on top of GSM with EDGE support. Not to forget: GPS is on-board as well. Plus a 3.2 MP autofocus digital camera. And one on the inside for videoconferencing. Apropos the inside of the phone: It has a 240*320px screen. Oh wait, no, that's only the outer support display. The inside is a widescreen (_really_ wide) 800*352px beast. More screen real estate than the original Macintosh, that is. Its browser, of course, is "Safari" as well. It uses the Nokia-Apple coproduction WebKit browser. There's no multitouch-screen, in fact no touchscreen at all, but then again you're not using a highly resolution-challenged display like the iPhone's for browsing the web: 800 pixel width is very good for mobile browsing _without_ any zooming tricks - but of course the software _does_ have its tricks up its sleeve for that as well. WiFi's on-board, of course, as well. And yeah, it's pricey. But then again, it's a pretty darn smart phone. The iPhone, in comparison, looks old. Give the iPhone a higher-res screen, UMTS technology, video-conferencing (after all, Apple _did_ push iChat quite a bit in the past) and we might talk again. For now, the Nokia E90 is the device that tops them all, and the iPhone's just a competitor among many. One which still needs to learn that while "look&feel" _is_ a handicap for most mobile phones out there, technology and buzzwords _do_ count in this market.

Labels: Communicator, E90, GPS, iPhone, Nokia, UMTS

- posted by Patrick Armbruster @ 17:29 [article link]  4 comments

Steve Jobs: Let's sell DRM-free music! In an open letter, today Steve Jobs published his thoughts on DRM at apple.com. While also talking about other options (and putting them down), he seems to favour the thought that online music stores would be allowed to sell music DRM-free. Whether that's really what Apple would want (losing market share, quite probably), I don't know. But don't we know that the "big four" seem to favour DRM, currently...

Labels: DRM, ipod, iTunes, Steve Jobs

- posted by Patrick Armbruster @ 21:43 [article link]  0 comments