This week saw the release of Apple’s second quarter earnings, which bucked the trend of the current economic recession by posting better than expected results with growth in both the iPhone and iPod spaces but rather understandable decline in the Mac space. Other factoids of interest (culled by World of Apple) include the iPod having a 70 percent market share, 21 million iPhones sold to date, and no CDMA-based iPhone (sorry, Verizon and Sprint). Several blogs reported earlier in the week that Taiwan-based Foxconn was in the running to land orders for the Apple netbook (fanboy rendition to the right), and COO Tim Cook responded to a question about Apple doing a netbook with a pithy response: “When I look at what’s being sold in the netbook space today, I see cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens, and just not a consumer experience and not something that we would put the Mac brand on, quite frankly.” But then he fanned the flames:

(I)f we find a way where we can deliver an innovative product that really makes a contribution, then we’ll do that. We have some interesting ideas in this space.

In other Apple-y goodness from the week that was…

• Should a new iPhone get released this summer (and signs are definitely pointing that way), it’ll run faster on AT&T’s 3G network, with the carrier confirming that it will be doubling its 3G speeds to 7.2 megabits per second (Mb/s) this year (via AppleInsider).
• Rumor Revue: Treehugger reports that sources at LG in Korea say that Apple will be using OLED screens in its next notebooks (perhaps as early as June, in conjunction with WWDC, but I wouldn’t hold your breath). At the very least, we should be seeing some minor bumps in the speeds and feeds for the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines at WWDC. In other rumors, Silicon Alley Insider says that a “badass” Hulu iPhone app is coming soon and Hardmac wonders if Apple might be able to turn on the Bluetooth 3.0 spec early in its iPod Touch and next-generation iPhone
• There’s been much ado about the long-rumored iTablet notebook that Apple may or may not be working on, but Houston Neal writes that such a device would be the perfect tech partner for a new health care system with electronic medical records (EMRs).
• Ars Technica reports that work is continuing at a good pace on both the next version of the Mac OS (10.6 Snow Leopard) as well as the next update to the current 10.5 Leopard OS (which would take us to 10.5.7). AppleInsider reports that Snow Leopard will make it easier for corporate users to securely access email, contact and intranets without having to tunnel through the corporate firewall using VPN.
• Looks like Steve Jobs really is resting and recuperating, based on the dearth of private jet expenses that Apple filed with its SEC statement this week.
• Rich Rosen over at O’Reilly thinks that the New York Times and Wall Street Journal (as well as other old media newspapers) could learn a thing or two from how USA Today has designed its iPhone app (link requires iTunes), which adds a bit more flash to its navigation and information presentation than the more staid NYT and WSJ.
• Apple’s billionth iPhone/iPod touch app was downloaded yesterday, and Apple confirms that 13-year-old Connor Mulcahey of Connecticut was the purchaser with his downloading of the free Bump app (which can send contact information to another Bump user). He wins $10,000 iTunes gift certificate, a MacBook Pro, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule and, as my pal Jeff Carlson put it on Twitter, universal envy. At least he didn’t download the app that’s caused the biggest headache for Apple to date–the now-removed Baby Shaker.
• Speaking of Twitter, the popular Tweetie iPhone app has now been ported over as a Mac client in both a paid version and free ad-supported version. MacUser has a good first look at the software (and Jim Dalrymple at Macworld says he’s switching from Twitterific), which has some interesting twists such as an iChat-like UI, easy viewing of conversations (which pulls together all the tweets associated with an @ reply chain; see image at right for example), support for multiple accounts and lots of keyboard shortcuts. I’ve been a Twitterific user/fan for some time now and I’ve certainly grown accustomed to its rather spare interface. I’m going to play around with Tweetie over the next week or so and see if I’m going to switch, but one thing that I like better in Twitterific is better control over how often the program will appear with updates (Tweetie informs you that new tweets have been posted by changing the color of its menubar icon, whereas you can set Twitterific to appear on top of your desktop at scheduled intervals).
• The iPhone allows you to add bookmarks from the Safari web browser to the home screen for one-click access to favorite sites, but it sure would be handy if there were one-click home screen options for other actions like calling or text messaging someone. Enter the Red Monkey app (covered by TUAW), which does just that and more, including sending an email or looking at an address (or current location) on the Map app. Red Monkey is a free app, and it’s joined by four additional red-tinged apps from e-Lips (Lizard, Bird, Turtle and Buffalo)–each priced at $0.99–so that you can have a total of five one-click icons on your home screen.
• If you’re a vegetarian in an unfamiliar locale and looking for a good and veg-friendly place to eat, be sure to check out the VegOut iPhone app, which identifies and categorizes restaurants as vegetarian, vegan or veg-friendly in your proximity and integrates with Google Maps (via Macworld). And because it uses the HappyCow social network as its database, it should be a good global reference (my wife and I relied on comments from HappyCow for a trip to Paris some years back to find some great hidden veggie spots).
• Trance DJ Paul Van Dyk has an iPhone app created for DJs coming out soon with tools like a BPM counter, a frequency analyzer, and a seismic reader for your turntable to check how much vibration it’s experiencing. That’s a little beyond my DJ needs, but it does have a virtual glowstick. Check out the video of Paul introducing the app over at Gizmodo.
• Road warrior tip of the week: If you carry your Airport Express with you while traveling for Wi-Fi connectivity, you can use the base station’s USB port (designed for connecting a printer) to charge your iPhone or iPod (via Macworld).
• Woz Watch: Check out Lifehacker’s lengthy interview with Steve Wozniak, which covers such topics as what email program he uses (Eudora. Seriously.) and using jailbroken iPhones.
• And finally… the Leon/Voight-Kampff/Holden scene from Blade Runner as performed by the voices of Amazon’s Kindle 2 and Apple’s new third-generation iPod shuffle.

–Agen G.N. Schmitz

Not a whole lot of iPhone hardware rumors this week (though Taiwan’s DigiTimes has released a list of manufacturers who will be supplying components), but the big news of the week is that AT&T is doing what it can to keep exclusive hold of the iPhone for one more year. AT&T’s current deal with Apple runs out in 2010, and Ars Technica reports that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is in talks with Apple to keep the love going until 2011. Verizon’s CEO Ivan Seidenberg stepped into the back-and-forth this week saying that he’d love to have the iPhone running on his network, but that it won’t happen until its 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network is running. As AppleInsider notes, LTE is the direction that CDMA-based Verizon and both GSM-based AT&T and T-Mobile are heading, which would make it easier for Apple to create devices that would run on a single core technology. And as Macworld’s iPhone Central notes, opening up the iPhone to multiple networks would be a boon to consumers who would have a wider choice of plans and pricing as well as introduce more competition between the carriers (which is always a good thing). Now, onto more Apple-y goodness from the week that was…

• Microsoft and Apple continue to sling mud at each other over Microsoft’s recent spate of Laptop Hunters ads (see here, here and here, with Apple finally offering a short comment that “a PC is no bargain when it doesn’t do what you want.” And Macworld’s Jim Dalrymple adds a couple of points that Microsoft doesn’t bring up in the ads (which do a good job at pushing the meme that Macs are just cool, aesthetic paperweights):
  

  Have you noticed that Microsoft never mentions Vista? It’s like the OS doesn’t exist anywhere except on the hard drives of poor, unsuspecting consumers. Apple talks about OS X all the time. Have you ever wondered why? Because it works. It’s that simple. The Mac works for photos, movies, music, DVDs and almost everything else you can throw at it. Windows Vista boots up most of the time–that’s something, I guess.

  What about all those hidden costs that Microsoft doesn’t tell you about in the ads? As soon as you get a Windows PC home–and most definitely before connecting it to the Internet—you will need virus protection.

• While I’ve been trying to get her on the bandwagon for the last year or so, my wife still says that she won’t acquiesce to an iPhone until it comes in a clamshell form. Don’t hold your breath, I tell her, but perhaps this Chinese iPhone Nano knock-off would satisfy her (though it has none of the Apple-y goodness of the iPhone operating system).
• Dave Zatz at his Zatz Not Funny blog is certainly not laughing about his HP MediaSmart EX485 home server. While the new incarnation of the MediaSmarts are compatible with Apple’s Time Machine backup software, it turns out that “the ‘Restore System from Backup’ feature of Time Machine is not implemented”–something Zatz discovered after digging around the MediaSmart support minutiae on the HP site while trying to do just that, restore his system from Time Machine stored on his MediaSmart.

  To break this down a bit more granularly, this means is you can recapture individual files easily from Time Machine, but you can’t restore your entire system from the Time Machine database stored on a MediaSmart. I’ve always read that Time Machine is not the best option for a whole system restore due to how long it takes (and, as Duncan Davidson points out in detailed coverage of his own system restore, application caches and indexes need to be recreated). And that’s why I have two different backups on two different hard drives–a Time Machine backup on a portable Seagate FreeAgent Go for grabbing files that have gone on walkabout and a full bootable copy of my system (created using SuperDuper!) on a desktop Seagate FreeAgent (with the new model looking quite sexy). A dual hard drive investment might seem a bit overboard, but with hard drive prices hitting the basement (a 1 TB drive for around $125), it’s an investment worth making that won’t kill your budget.

• Speaking of which, if you’re Time Machine backups are feeling a little slower than they ought to be, check out some tips at diagnosing and fixing the problem over at O’Grady’s Powerpage.
• One last note about backups… Joe Kissel (the zen master of backing up data) reports at TidBITS that Backblaze, a new online backup service, has opened up its service to Mac users (previously it had been in invite-only beta form) for a monthly fee of $5 a month for unlimited data storage (or a $50 annual subscription). In addition to restoring data over the interwebs, you can also choose to have the company send you your data overnight on DVD or hard drive (for an added cost). The Apple Blog also notes that Backblaze allows you to “filter out specific files and folders, and clip out media types and file sizes that you want Backblaze to ignore.” I’ve been excited about this since its announcement at Macworld, and I’ll be trying out this service in the coming days and will provide an update as to how it’s going in a few weeks.
• On this date in 1977, the Apple II was introduce with an 8-bit processor running at 1 MHz, 4K of RAM, and a not so speedy audio cassette interface (via Apple Matters).
• AppleInsider reports some new discoveries within the beta-basting iPhone 3.0 software, including easier clearing of windows in the Safari web browser, the ability to show battery power percentage, and adding Data Detectors to new applications (which can sniff out, say, a string of 10 numbers and then making it clickable as a phone number).
• Survey Says: Macsimum News reports that the MetaFacts research group recently looked into the differences between Mac and Windows users, and that found Mac owners use their computers for a wider range of activities as well as spend more time on their computers than watching TV. And the NYTimes’ Bits blog reports that Apple garnered the only “good”rating in a survey of PC customers’ experience by Forrester Research. Finally, IntoMobile has a poll running, asking whether or not you use your smartphone to check mail and such while on the porcelain throne.
• Uh oh… looks like AT&T may have had a hand in denying approval of the SlingPlayer app for Apple’s App Store (via Electronista).

• And finally… get ready for the new Star Trek reboot (opening in just a few weeks; I’m very curious to see why Kirk is always looking beaten up in the trailers) with the new Star Trek Phaser iPhone game (link opens iTunes). It’s a freebie, which is probably a good thing as I’m certainly at a loss to explain how to play this game other than haphazardly tap the screen to make phaser noises.

–Agen G.N. Schmitz

The closer we get to June, the louder the buzz is becoming about the likelihood that we’ll be seeing new iPhone hardware to go along with the iPhone 3.0 software. The IntoMobile blog (among others) has been speculating that there will be two iPhones, and this week a Kaufman Bros. analyst increased that speculation based on reports from supply chain and industry sources. Fortune’s Apple 2.0 blog covers his findings, which include one iPhone with a more powerful processor and longer battery life as well as the possibility that AT&T will offer more price-flexible data plans. In regards to the process/battery angle, Cult of Mac reports that code for the iPhone 3.0 software indicates support for the 802.11n wireless standard, which could improve battery life. (My pal Glenn Fleishman considered this possibility back in late March, and came to the conclusion that the iPhone would benefit from 802.11n Wi-Fi, but the processor would also need to be improved. Also check out some more technical details about the advantages of 802.11n from Roughly Drafted.)

Additionally, it’s looking like the new iPhone will have video capture capabilities (and a battery percentage in the menubar) according to a screenshot from The Boy Genius Report. And Gizmodo reports that video editing tools have been spotted within the code of the iPhone 3.0 firmware.

• Rumor Revue Leftovers: According to a patent discovered this week, the MacBook unibody construction design might make its way to a future iteration of the iPod. And Apple has reportedly ordered 100 million 8 Gb (gigabit) NAND flash chips for delivery later this year, which AppleInsider considers suspicious as these 8 Gb chips represent only 1 GB (gigabyte) of storage and wonders whether these are finalized chip packages or bare chips that will be stacked to create a higher density memory chip.
• Microsoft is in all-out competition with Apple these days, releasing another of its Laptop Hunters ads (this time with a Mom and son shopping for a gaming laptop, and getting excited when they find one with Blu-ray) and continuing its Apple Tax meme to show that Mac hardware is far too expensive compared with PCs. Microsoft posted a tax return mock up that shows the savings you’ll get when purchasing two Windows systems compared to two Mac systems, based on an analyst white paper that was sponsored by Microsoft. Not surprisingly, many have found the white paper heavily padded in favor of Microsoft
• And in other polling data, Piper Jaffray reports that 100 percent of surveyed teens want to buy an Apple iPod at some point in the next 12 months–leaving the Zune at 0 percent (down from 15 percent from the same survey back in the fall of 2008) (via Podcasting News). This morning my 2-year-old vigorously and repeatedly stated “I… need… iPod…” during our drive to drop me at my office, so it looks like Apple’s got firm grip on the toddler market as well.
• I’m not really one to clutter up the spare aluminum look of my MacBook Pro, but this take on Magritte’s “The Son of Man” in the form of a vinyl sticker from Etsy for Apple laptops is tempting–it comes in gray, black and white (via Cult of Mac).
• Apple’s App Store is approaching 1 billion downloaded iPhone/iPod touch apps, and it’s celebrating with an online countdown and contest that could win you a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro. It looks like I’ve helped the cause with 66 apps (though not all–including some election ‘08 trackers and various kid-friendly apps for travel) are being used currently on my iPhone. The most popular iPhone app is Tap Tap Revenge, which Pocket-Lint reports has a 32 percent install base across all Apple app users.
• For my iPhone dictionary, I’ve been using a web app version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary (i.word.com), which I saved as an icon to my iPhone’s home screen. But the nature of the web app is that you have to be connected to the internet to use it (or have a good connection to get a decently quick return from your search, which isn’t always the case with my OG iPhone). This week Dictionary.com released its free iPhone/iPod touch app (based on the Random House unabridged dictionary), and it kicks butt. The 36 MB app not only provides dictionary definitions and thesaurus, but also features auto-completion of words and audio pronunciations of words. Additionally, you can view dictionary/thesaurus look-ups offline, though you’ll need an Internet connection for word pronunciations (hat tip to TUAW).
• Another discovery I made this week is iStat menus from iSlayer (hat tip to Cult of Mac). I already use and am a big fan of their iStat pro dashboard widget, which provides an easy-to-read overview of what’s happening with your Mac system (from memory and CPU usage to network I/O and fan RPM). The iStat menus application (installed as a preference pane) duplicates that info, but places it in the Finder’s menubar and allows you to pick and choose what you see. Additionally, it’s got a Date and Time menu item that I like better than the standard Apple version. (Additionally here’s a lil’ menubar tip: to move items, first select the menubar icon with the Cmd key, then hold down and drag to where you want it placed; note however that not all menubar items may be movable.)
• iPhone tip of the week: I can’t believe I never figured this out on my own, but Ars Technica discovered that you can turn on Wi-Fi connectivity even when you turn on Airplane Mode (which, by default, turns off the cellular and Bluetooth radios as well as Wi-Fi). However, this can’t be replicated for turning Bluetooth on while leaving cellular connectivity off.
• iLounge reports that first- and second-generation iPod shuffle units are experiencing syncing issues when used with iTunes 8.1.

• And finally… NBC has been playing around with the cult of Steve Jobs this week on both 30 Rock and Chuck, and TUAW compiles the Hulu-fed video clips for your enjoyment.

–Agen G.N. Schmitz

As cute as we may think our little Netbooks are, we can’t expect them to be powerhouses when it comes to storage capacity. Sure you can add storage via an external drive, but that will impact the cuteness factor you’ve paid all of $399.99 or less for, right? Not necessarily. Expanding their line of 500GB (single 2.5-inch drive) CH91 external hard drives to include sapphire blue, sweet pink and purple/white models, Taiwan-based memory and storage manufacturer A-DATA is here to save the day. All kidding aside, they do actually seem pretty nice; Windows/Mac/Linux compatible USB powered, small and stylish. You can check out their specs below, but unfortunately you won’t see a price, which is also nowhere to be found on A-DATA’s site. Kind of weird since consumers, most of which have paid a low dollar mark for their Netbook will want to know that they are not doubling their investment by adding a peripheral, no matter how cute. Oh well. It may end up being affordable yet. You can also read the press release here.

Specs

• OS Compatibility: Windows 2000/XP/Vista; Mac OS X 10.4; Linux Kernal 2.4
• Model Name: CH91
• Device Interface: USB 2.0
• HDD Interface: 2.5″ SATA
• Interface Transfer Rate: USB 2.0: 480Mb/s
• Data Transfer Rate: USB 2.0: 30MB/s
• Plug & Play: Yes
• LED Indication LED – Power on
• LED Blinking – Access
• Power: USB bus power
• Dimension: 134×82x15.7mm (LxWxH)
• Accessory USB: Y cable, Suede Pouch
• Software: HDD to go     

–Tom Milnes

Although at 25,000 and counting, it is hard to believe that anyone could come to the conclusion that there are not enough apps available at the iPhone App store, as to whether there are enough quality apps available, well now that is another question now isn’t it. And that may be just what is behind Apple’s recently announced partnership with Stanford University to offer free online instruction in iPhone application development.

Distributed through iTunes U educational channel, instruction will consist of videos and course materials from Stanford’s 10-week undergraduate computer science class in iPhone app development, and will be taught by two Apple employees. According to Wired’s blog, the course’s syllabus and
slides will be freely available on iTunes as well. It has been noted in many areas that this new display of transparency by Apple, who has historically been understandably, but ultra protective of its technology, is a major change. According to Brett Izutsu,
product manager of Stanford’s iTunes U program,

“Stanford is very interested in not just creating knowledge but in
sharing that knowledge with anyone who seeks it,” continuing to say, “I think there
definitely is a little modification at Apple, at least within the
education realm, to open up a little bit.”

The reasoning is irrelevant. The result should be a little something good for everyone involved I’d say. Obviously the iPhone is the hottest new platform around for a wide variety of applications and with the device’s software distribution model appearing to be aped to various degrees by the likes of Blackberry, the Nintendo DSi Shop and possibly others, it would be wise to ensure that there are not only plenty of quality and evolving apps available, but developers who have the skill to keep them coming. The first video of this quarter’s iPhone development course is also available now at itunes.stanford.edu.

–Tom Milnes