Technology Topic

Originally posted by drewhigginsJust not "standard" wireless yet. The n standard is still being drafted 18 months on!,


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Not bad and looks the part, but the one USB port is probably a little bit of a drawback as well as no user-replaceable parts; the hard drive, memory and battery are sealed inside and external drives, Ethernet adapter, TV tuner (you've gotta get one for digital and HDTV) and expansion battery packs can be attached to the USB port only. So not one for upgrade enthusiasts.

Customizable home screen

While Apple still doesn't give you the ability to completely delete unnecessary built-in icons (like You Tube) from the iPhone Home screen, 1.1.3 does at least allow you to move them to sub-screens and arrange them as you like. Now, you can have up to 9 iPhone Home screens. You can even change which icons appear in the iPhone Home screen's Dock, that area at the bottom of the Home screen that contains links to Phone, Mail, Safari, and iPod by default.

The customizable home screen is actually advertised the first time you turn on the iPhone after installing the 1.1.3 update. You'll see a dialog with the following text:

Edit Home Screen. To rearrange icons, touch and hold any icon until it starts to wiggle, then drag icons to desired locations. Drag an icon to the far right to create additional Home screens. Press the Home button when done.

It works as advertised. (The wiggle effect is ridiculous, but whatever.) You can drag icons around the current screen, off of either edge to other screens, or into the Dock (which is consistent across all screens). While there are a number of iPhone apps I'd love to just remove, this is better than nothing: I've moved You Tube, Text, Stocks, Calculator, and Notes off the main page as I never use them. I've also added Calendar to the Dock and moved iPod into the regular Home screen area. And I've added some much-used Web applications (see below) to the primary Home screen as well. Now the iPhone works the way I want it to. Nice.

Apple has also provided a way to add special Web shortcuts, called Web Clips, to the newly customizable Home screen. Web Clips aren't just bookmarks, however: They also save whatever zoom and page location data that exists when you create the Clip. So if you're zoomed into, say, the forecast section of the weather.com page for your location, you can save a Web Clip of that. Or just save the whole page like a regular bookmark.

Web Clips are created via a new plus sign ("+") button on the bottom toolbar in Safari, the iPhone's Web browser. This button opens a pop-up menu with Add Bookmark, Add to Home Screen, and Mail Link to this Page buttons; the middle option creates a Web Clip. Tap Add to Home Screen, and you can name the Clip (don't use too many characters as it gets truncated) and click Add to add it to the Home Screen. Web Clips appear as small thumbnails of the selected page, which is kind of nice.

To create a more specialized Web Clip--one that includes the page location and zoom--navigate to the page you want to save, navigate and zoom in on the page as needed, and then follow the same steps: Each Web Clip remembers the page location and zoom level that was used when the "+" button was pressed.

Unlike built-in apps, you can actually delete Web Clips from the Home screen: Just touch and hold the icon and once it stars wiggling you'll see a little "x" box above it and to the left. Click that box and the icon will be deleted.

Web Clips are a neat idea. Obviously, had Apple not decided to open up the iPhone with a real SDK, they'd be an even bigger deal. But in these months before legitimate iPhone applications appear, saving links to Web apps in this fashion will be highly desirable. And if you spend a lot of time in particular Web apps as I do, this will be a nice option going forward regardless.
Maps improvements

While the iPhone does not include dedicated GPS hardware or even offer a way (at least yet) to add that capability via a plug-in device, Apple has improved the (Google) Maps application in the iPhone to add a GPS-like location capability. This feature uses cell phone tower triangulation to locate you. The result is not as precise as GPS, of course, but it's much better than nothing. (The iPhone can also use a connected wireless access point to locate you via Wi-Fi, though this is even less reliable in my experience so far, often resulting in a "your location could not be determined" error.)

The new location feature is exposed by a small round button in the lower left of the Maps application, in the toolbar to the left of the Search and Directions buttons. When you click it, Maps will try to triangulate your location. It's not accurate enough for a military bombing campaign, but it's OK for casual consumer use. At my home, Maps tells me I'm about one exit down the nearby highway, but it's in the ballpark. Assuming a pretty big ballpark, that is.

There's another new icon in the Maps toolbar, which looks like an eye and is found to the right of Search and Directions: This button visually curls up the current map view to expose options such as Drop Pin, Hide/Show Traffic, and Map, Satellite, Hybrid, and List. Hybrid view is new: As with its Web-based cousin, you can now overlay the Map and Satellite views on top of each other. The Drop Pin is also new to Maps, though again you are likely familiar with it from the Web-based Google Maps: You can drop a pin at your current location (or at least nearby, based on the accuracy of the location triangulation), save pins like bookmarks, and use pins as the start and end points of directions. Again, all very familiar to anyone that's used a Web-based mapping service before.

Multi-recipient SMS

Being an adult and an iPhone user, I don't have much use for SMS, but I know a lot of other people do, so I won't completely ridicule this feature, at least not while you're watching anyway. With iPhone 1.1.3, you can now send the same SMS message to multiple recipients. Just add more recipients via the handy new plus ("+") button that now appears in the To field in the New Message portion of the Text application.

Sadly, Text still uses horrible iChat-style text balloons and sound effects. You can edit the sounds in the Sounds Settings, but hopefully, we'll be able to customize the balloon silliness in a future iPhone update. (As, incidentally, you can do in iChat.)
iTunes movie rentals

In tandem with the release of iTunes 7.6, Apple now supports the same kind of movie rentals that Windows Media-based services have employed for about a decade now, with similar functionality and pricing. But there's one huge and important difference with Apple's system: Because it works with all modern iPods and the iPhone, movie rentals from the iTunes Store are far more interesting.

Of course, you can't download rented or purchased movies from the iPhone itself. Instead, you must rent movies from your PC-based version of iTunes and transfer them to the iPhone as you would with any other iTunes-based content. Rented movies are reasonably priced ($3 to $4 for standard definition movies and $4 to $5 for HD movies) and come with industry-standard usage terms: Once you rent a movie, you have 30 days to begin watching it. And once you begin watching that movie, you have 24 hours to finish watching it; you can watch the rented movie as often as you'd like during that 24 hour period.

As of this writing, rented movies have yet to appear in the iTunes Store, but if Apple's promotional materials are accurate, this service should work as well or better than similar services from Amazon.com Unbox, CinemaNow and Movielink. (Yeah, we have it good on the PC side.) On the iPhone, rented movies show up in the Videos section of the iPod application, under a new heading, "Rented Movies." Because rented movies expire, information about the time out period appears on this screen as well.
Other iPhone 1.1.3 changes

In addition to these big changes, iPhone 1.1.3 adds a number of smaller new features.

Gmail IMAP support added to Mail
While Google added IMAP support to its popular Gmail Web-based email service back in early December, iPhone users (like myself) who wished to access Gmail in this fashion from the iPhone were forced to manually configure the server information. Now, the iPhone's Mail application automatically configures Gmail as IMAP, removing this time consuming and error-prone process. Bravo: Gmail support on the iPhone is now truly a first class experience.

Movie chapters support
While rented, purchased, and even ripped movies can support DVD-like chapters that make navigating through a movie easy, this support was never been formally supported on the iPhone. Now it is. Supported movies will feature a new Chapters button on the iPod playback overlay, to the right of Back, Play/Pause, and Forward, that brings up a DVD Player-like list of the available movie chapters, similar to the display you see in iTunes. Just tap a chapter to navigate to that part of the movie.

Song lyric support
If you add lyrics to music files via iTunes (found in the Lyrics tab of the Get Info window in iTunes), the iPhone will now display them. Song lyrics appear over album art during song playback.

Use Gift Cards in the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store
Apple now lets you redeem iTunes Gift Cards in the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, so you won't have to use your PC to take advantage of such a gift. Gift Card redemption occurs via a handy Redeem button, found in the top toolbar of the Downloads section of the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store application.

Tthe world's thinnest notebook at 0.16" to 0.76" - thinner than the the thinnest part of a Sony TZ series laptop. Screen size is an LED backlit 13.3" widescreen with a magnetic latch. The MacBook Air keyboard is MacBook-like, but with an ambient light sensor. The new machines feature a multi-touch trackpad, allowing the user to double-tap and move. Rotate a photo by pivoting your index finger around your thumb, as well as pinch & zoom.

Additionally there's a 45 Watt MagSafe power adapter, a Micro-DVI out as well as Audio Out, 802.11n + Bluetooth 2.1/EDR. There's a 1.8" hard drive for storage - either 80GB standard, or a 64GB SSD as an option. Intel shrunk the size of the Core 2 Duo chip by 60% to fit in the new machine.

Battery life is approximately 5 hours. No optical drive is on the MacBook Air, but a SuperDrive accessory is available for $99. There's also new software being released that allows the portable to "borrow" a Mac or PC's optical drive. All models feature 2GB of memory standard.

The case is fully aluminum (good for recycling), the first fully mercury and lead free display, circuit boards are BFR free, and retail packaging are 56% less volume than a MacBook.

Starting at just $2,999, the new Xserve has up to two Quad-Core 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon processors for 8-core performance, a new server architecture, faster front side buses, faster memory, up to 3TB of internal storage and two PCI Express 2.0 expansion slots for greater performance and flexibility. “With the latest Intel processors and no client access licenses, Xserve offers unbeatable server performance and value for under $3,000,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.

Major software upgrade available for iPod touch

With the installation of this major software upgrade, the best iPod becomes even more: the world’s best Wi-Fi mobile device. The upgrade—available from iTunes for just $19.99—adds five more great mobile applications to iPod touch: Mail, Maps, Stocks, Weather, and Notes. It also includes such new features as Web Clips, a customizable home screen, and the ability to watch iTunes Movie Rentals on iPod touch.

Mac OS X 10.5.2 was one of the possible updates surrounding Macworld, but has yet to show up in our software update. The previous seed of Mac OS X 10.5.2 re-introduced a list view to the Stacks.

No announcements about Mac OS X 10.5.2 were made at Macworld, but one submitter noted that the requirements for Time Capsule had stated originally stated a minimum of Mac OS X 10.5.2, though this has since been changed.

Apparently, Apple hasn't quite finished working on Mac OS X 10.5.2 and issued a new seed just yesterday, addressing a number of issues. The latest build is 9C16.

Originally posted by drewhigginsFor all those iPod classic owners on here, there's a new firmware available.


Go iTunes > iPod > Check For Update. It's version 1.1 in case you don't know.


And make sure you read this: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1343689

Originally posted by IStartedSomethingNick White at the official Windows Vista blog has confirmed CNET’s report Microsoft and Dell will be jumping on the red bandwagon this Friday with three (RED) branded computer system as part of the initiative to increase awareness and support The Global Fund to help people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Adding to the current (PRODUCT)RED range of specially marked consumer products will be a red all-in-one XPS One desktop, and two XPS M1330 and 1530 laptops. However the (RED) branding won’t just stop at the hardware.

Microsoft’s also stepping out of its way to ship a customized version of Windows Vista Ultimate on these PCs featuring an exclusive and presumably red wallpaper, Sidebar gadget, screensaver and Dreamscene video. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but credit to them for putting in the effort for a special touch. Unfortunately it looks like these won’t be available for download, which is a shame since I’d love to help promote the cause even if I’m not buying a PC.

The innovative and rewarding factor about (RED) products is that it doesn’t cost any different - a RED XPS One will cost the same as a black one, but you’re literally saving lives. Dell and Microsoft will send a $80 contribution for every (RED) XPS One sold and $50 for every (RED) XPS laptop. In return, $80 could buy 6 months of antiretroviral treatment for 1 person. $50 could buy 416 single-dose treatments that help prevent transmission of HIV from mother to baby.

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Originally posted by drewhigginsHere's a good one.

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The link click here goes to http://www.poemdb.com/modules/poemdb/cache/em/

That's a good one.

Originally posted by easports43[..]

Wow.

Originally posted by drewhiggins
Surely they can spell. Geez, there's a Delete button on the keyboard - surely that's a guide.

Originally posted by easports43
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You would hope that they could spell. They are storing your personal info.

Originally posted by drewhiggins[..]

Apparently not.

Found a cool RED wallpaper - at a resolution of 1920x1200 for my new widescreen monitor.