Bites from the Apple: Set Phasers on Stun

June 2, 2009 · Posted in Apple

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.