Mac|Life WWDC 09 RSS Feed

Snow Leopard Screenshots

Roberto Baldwin — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:39:29 -0500

If you're half as excited about Snow Leopard as the Mac|Life staff is, it's probably a good idea for you to seek some professional help. Right now we're planning a Snow Leopard party with cake, pizza and an actual snow leopard. You really can order anything from the Internet.

While we wait for our new pet to arrive via FedEx, we have a huge gallery of Snow Leopard screenshots to drool over thanks to developer Michael Flux. The shots are from the latest OS X 10.6 seeded to developers during WWDC known as Build 10A380. Below are just a few of the images available, be sure to visit Michael's site for more Snow Leopard fun.

Airport now shows the strength of available Wi-Fi spots.

Look at all those beautiful 64 bit processes. Brings a tear to our eyes.

While not a fan of Stacks, you can see that drilling down within the feature is pretty slick. Note the Applications item in the top left of the window.

You can select text and send it to iTunes as a Spoken Track. Great for your Doctor Who fan fiction site.

The new QuickTime playing a video without a menu bar or controls visible.

Apple Knows What You Did With Your iPhone

Roberto Baldwin — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:02:49 -0500

A "friend" of the Mac|Life staff decided to bite the bullet and install the iPhone OS 3.0 Monday after a developer uploaded it to a file sharing site. While being reckless with his iPhone, the person is also a bit paranoid, and decided not to partake in the app updates that made themselves available.

The "friend" knows that his iTunes account is used to download updates, and he wasn't too keen on letting Apple know what he did. That lasted a whole 24-hours.

Then yesterday he saw that Find My iPhone was live. Surely he could wait until Wednesday to test the service.

Nope.

Today he set up his iPhone with MobileMe and sent it a message and tracked it using Find My iPhone. Very slick and exciting. He imagined a world where he could toss his iPhone in the back of bad guy's cars and track their movements like Spiderman.

Ten minutes after he sent his iPhone with iPhone OS 3.0 a message via Find My iPhone, our "friend" received the following email from Apple:

Coincidence? Or, friendly reminder to our "friend" that while he is a member of the Developer Connection, he's not a member of the iPhone Developer Program and therefore shouldn't have iPhone OS 3.0 on his iPhone.

Either way, nothing has happened to his account and he still has access to Find My iPhone. He just wanted us to remind everyone that Apple knows what were all up too.

Like we said, it could just be a coincidence and or friend is a bit paranoid. Has anyone else that's updated their iPhone to OS 3.0 and used Find My iPhone experienced a similar email from Apple?

Podcast #93: Post-WWDC Spectacular

Mac|Life Staff — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:31:23 -0500

The iPhone 3G S has been announced and we discuss the missing MMS and tethering features at launch thanks to AT&T failing to deliver on time. Snow Leopard's upgrade cost and features makes us look forward to the Fall, and MacBook Pros drop in price and gain power. POWER!

Got a question, but you're afraid to leave a voice message because of Witness Relocation Dept. rules? Drop us a question via Twitter twitter.com/maclife.

This weeks Battlestar Applactica picks:

Boulder Dash - $4.99

Blowfish - Free

Don't forget, the Mac|Life staff would love to hear your thoughts, comments and ideas for the new podcast. Just leave a message on the Mac|Live question/comment line: (877) 404-1337, extension 622. Please limit the length of your messages to 1 minute max. We'll review these calls each week and feature our favorites, along with responses, on that week's podcast.

To subscribe to the Mac|Live podcast series through an RSS feed, click here; if you want to subscribe through the iTunes Store, click here.

Arr! Ye Pirates Have Gotten Ahold of Snow Leopard

Arvind Srinivasan — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:48:06 -0500

Apparently, the pirates (no, not the ones in Somalia, the ones that are taking over Sweden) are at it again. OS X 10.6, also known as Snow Leopard, was seeded to developers yesterday, and according to CrunchGear, it is already circulating BitTorrent. We don’t advocate piracy, so we haven’t downloaded it and installed it, but some of the images that have leaked feature a new desktop wallpaper, among other things. The download is also approximately 5.8GB in size, which is noticeably smaller than Leopard.

Remember kids, not only is downloading the current release of Snow Leopard illegal, the file you download could be a Trojan horse instead of the new OS.

AT&T WTF?

Roberto Baldwin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:39:46 -0500

Since the introduction of the iPhone there has been rumbling of discontent concerning the Apple/AT&T blood oath. The list of gripes people have with the mobile carrier are too numerous to name here. But, it usually comes down to this, "AT&T sucks, T-Mobile is better, I'm going to wait until I can get an iPhone on T-Mobile."

AT&T doesn't do much to win over disgruntled customers. Recently, the company quietly changed its TOS to disallow apps like SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone from utilizing their network. The Internet noticed and AT&T apologized explaining it was an accident. They "accidently" changed their TOS, right. Of course SlingPlayer Mobile for the iPhone was released and wasn't allowed on AT&T's network.

Which brings us to yesterday. When it was announced that iPhone OS 3.0 would be available on June 17 the crowd cheered. When it was announced that while many carriers would have MMS ready to go on that date, AT&T's MMS support would be ready "later this summer" the crowd let known its displeasure. When tethering was announced, once again, cheers. When AT&T didn't appear on the list of carriers supporting tethering, more booing.

AT&T told Wired that they planned on supporting MMS and tethering in late summer.

“We plan to offer a tethering plan, but don’t have an announcement to make at this time,” the spokesman said. “We absolutely will offer MMS on iPhone 3G S and iPhone 3G with 3.0 upgrades in late summer once we complete some system upgrades that will ensure our customers have the best experience with MMS. These upgrades are unrelated to our 3G network.”

Maybe AT&T didn't hear about the iPhone OS 3.0 event in March. You know the one where Apple announced MMS. Other carriers heard about the event and they seem ready to rock the MMS starting next week. Tethering wasn't announced at the iPhone OS 3.0 event in March (although it did come up in the Q&A after the event, and Scott Forstall admitted it was ready on the device side but needed support from the carriers as well) so we'll just believe that it was as big a surprise to AT&T as it was to us. Sure, why not?

The lack of MMS and tethering support out of the gate are valid reasons to be upset with AT&T. Are they upsetting enough to give up your iPhone? As far as I'm concerned, no. For a majority of users, tethering isn't really that important. The MMS fiasco could be reason enough for Apple to look to other carriers in the future after their contract with AT&T expires. Apple has dropped partners that failed to deliver the goods before. It's the reason we're using Intel Macs instead of IBM's PowerPC.

And that brings us to the outrage that cropped up later in the day: upgrading the iPhone 3G. After the keynote, everyone -- including myself -- attempted to reserve an iPhone 3G S on the Apple site. It would be delivered to our homes! No more standing in line getting sunburned in the summer heat. We're nerds, we burn easily.

But wait, those prices that flashed on the screen at Moscone don't match what AT&T and Apple are offering. This must be a mistake. A horrible, horrible mistake. These prices are $200 more than advertised. OUTRAGE!

Before you strip naked and run into the nearest AT&T store to file an angry grievance, remember that the iPhone 3G was subsidized when you purchased it. You got your shiny iPhone 3G for far less than the OG iPhone because AT&T got you to sign a contract that said that you promised to stay with them for two years. After 18 months of those two years, AT&T gives you the option to upgrade your phone to another one at the fully subsidized price. Before that, you have to pay an Early Upgrade price. Hence the extra $200.

"But I'm an early adopter, I purchased both iPhones, they owe me!" Yeah, not so much. Yes, as an iPhone owner you are special, you're just not special enough to get out of their service contracts. It's the same contract for Blackberry and Treo owners.

There's a lot to be upset with AT&T about, but the contract you agreed to in order to get 3G speeds isn't one of them. Think about it this way. The 32GB iPhone 3G S costs $699 without a commitment. That means you're not locked into a two-year contract because the phone's price isn't being subsidized by your monthly bill. The fully subsidized version of the 32GB iPhone 3G S is $299. Let's do some math, shall w?.

$699
-$299
----------
$400

You're saving $400 by committing to AT&T. But, AT&T has to get recoup that $400 so they figure they'll break even hardware wise locking you into a two-year contract and allowing you to only purchase another fully subsidized device after 18 months. We divide the remaining $400 by 18 months, and $22.22 of your monthly bill for the first 18 months of our contract goes towards the purchase of your 32GB iPhone 3G S. Viola! You get your new iPhone, AT&T gets paid.

Yes, it sucks that you have to pay $200 more to get the shiny new iPhone 3G S because the iPhone 3G was released only a year ago. But it's what we agreed to. As for the other AT&T issues, the Internet has been very vocal about its displeasure with the carrier and hopefully AT&T will get its act together or Apple will say adios to the carrier.

Apple Posts WWDC 09 Keynote Video

Roberto Baldwin — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:26:32 -0500

Today's keynote was long, really long. In fact our MacBooks were on one minute of battery life when it ended. Whew!

Anywho, in order to get the full effect of today's event, check out the video posted by Apple. We've decided that Scott Forstall should always dress like a mad scientist.

iPhone 3G S - A Guided Tour of Magic

Roberto Baldwin — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:26:22 -0500

Apple loves it's guided tours. This time, Nelson will be sharing with you all the magic of iPhone 3G S.

It's 13 minutes, 45 seconds of longing for next Friday.

New iPhone 3G S Commercial

Roberto Baldwin — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:18:52 -0500

It's only been a few hours, and already someone has posted the new iPhone commercial to YouTube.

Check it out.

Via 9to5Mac