It seems like an incongruous pairing, but Radio Shack (aka The Shack) is set to carry the iPhone 3G and 3GS in Dallas and New York City by Thanksgiving, and then nationwide in 2010.
Of course, if you can’t wait, you can still get an iPhone at Wal-Mart or Best Buy OR you could get yourself an Android handset instead.
One of the new, notable items that Apple released this week is the Magic Mouse, the first multi-touch mouse. The Magic Mouse will come standard with new iMacs, but you can get one for your existing Mac for $69.
The multi-touch surface covers the whole Magic Mouse, just one smooth surface that can sense things like swipes, scrolls, etc from your fingers. The entire mouse is a button. It can also tell when your hand is just resting on the mouse.
The included software lets you re-assign gestures, and assign handedness. Magic Mouse is wireless Bluetooth and has a 33ft range.
You can see a video of the Magic Mouse in action at Apple’s website.
Well, well, well. AT&T has just decided to reverse their prior stance and allow iPhone users to use Skype and other VoIP apps on the cellular networks. VoIP apps would work when the iPhone was on a WiFi network, but not when connected to the AT&T network.
Certainly, this is good news for consumers, but you do have to wonder why they decided to change their position. It’s quite likely that given the FCC’s current investigation into the competitiveness of wireless services, that AT&T decided to jump the gun on them being branded anti-competitive.
One of the new products announced at Apple’s event yesterday was the new iPod nano, now with a video camera and pausable FM radio. The new iPod nanos now have a polished anodized aluminum finish and comes in 9 different colors. But the most notable feature has to be the video camera that is paired with the larger 2.2″ screen (240-by-376-pixel resolution). Sync up the nano to your computer and it’s just one more step to sharing your video on YouTube, Facebook, et al.
The FM Tuner not only lets you listen to live FM radio, but to pause it for up to 15 minutes. You can rewind as well. Also included is the ability to tag songs that you like, so that you can look them up later on in iTunes.
The VoiceOver feature speaks the artist and song title to you, and the Genius feature in iTunes can help you put together cohesive playlists.
The new iPod nano comes in 8GB and 16GB sizes.
Buy now!
More info from the manufacturer
Price: 8GB: $149, 16GB: $179
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
Apple’s latest revision of the Mac OS operating system, version 10.6 (codenamed “Snow Leopard”) drops tomorrow (Fri) for an upgrade price of $29. Yes, $29. Why? Because Snow Leopard is meant to be more of a performance and efficiency improvement, not a version replete with new features.
Not only is the memory footprint smaller, but the disk space taken up by the core OS is smaller (by ~7GBs). However, this version drops support for the PowerPC architecture and now only supports the Intel CPUs that power today’s line of Macs.
The improvements and bug fixes, not to mention the price, so far have been hailed positively.
Rumours from Apple are common, but a few of them do seem to come true – perhaps this is one of them! I am a bit skeptical about Apple releasing the ‘iCar’ that I heard about last year though! However, the latest offering in the rumor scene is some sort of Apple Tablet (could it be called the iTablet?) to compete within the ultra-portable computing market to provide something a little bigger and more powerful than an iPhone, yet not as big as their MacBooks.
There have been reports of the tablet featuring a 9.7inch screen and costing around $800. With the netbook and tablet market growing at such a fast rate at the moment I personally think that this device will be made, as Apple will want a piece of this market. As for the picture, I hope this is just a satirical piece of Photoshopping.
Jay Freeman founded the Cydia app store for iPhones and iPod Touches about 5 months ago, specifically for all those applications that Apple has decided not to accept into their app store. Just one caveat, you need to jailbreak your iPhone/Touch.
One estimate says that 4 million iPhone users have jailbroken their phones so that it works with more than just the Apple App Store (among other things). Now, you know what to do if you want that Google Voice application!
I just wonder when Apple is going to bring the collective legal hammer to bear…
Wow, c’mon Apple – are you really hurting for more $ that you needed to block the relatively small number of Palm Pre users from getting to iTunes?! Of course, this isn’t really targeted at just Palm Pres, but other non-iPod/iPhone devices, but still.
I personally don’t use either iTunes, the desktop software (even when I had an iPod) or the online store, but now I have another reason not to. This is the type of behavior that Microsoft engaged in that alienated a lot of people and helped to give them a bad name. Don’t make the same mistake Apple.
Have Zune begun to copy Apple’s stylish music players with the upcoming Zune HD? We’ve got your weekly fill of format wars – this time focused on home automation and could we really be that much closer to wearable remote controls?
Father’s days coming up and, being such a caring bunch, we came up with a a really great idea! Another idea may be to get him an analog to digital converter so that he can preserve those old video and music sitting in the attic.
Are you aniPhone/iPod Touch user and also a networking maniac? Take a look at Zensify.
The week was capped off by the ever-so-geeky Mac vs. PC poster and a look at the current progress of holographic optics – manufacturer SBG has a very cool prototype of a full-color, heads-up wearable display.
First up in the ‘what the … ?!’ category from the ever-inventive Japaneses were the Fuwarinka Candy, which changes your body odor by eating a piece of candy or chewing a piece of gum. Apple had their WWDC conference and rolled out new MacBooks and a new iPhone.
Internet traffic could reach 2/3 of a Zettabyte by 2013 and speaking of the Net, you better grab your Facebook username before it gets snapped up by someone else.
More gadgets: The Lacie d2 Network File Server can store tons of photos and videos on your home network. Amazon released its latest Kindle, the DX, while Microsoft is close to beta testings its new free anti-virus software.
Wrapping things up, we compared some wireless 802.11 USB adapters so you could retro-fit that old laptop or desktop cheapily and easily.
