Not bad press, and the quality was decent, too!

News segment filmed with iPhone 3GS

(Thanks Andy)

You can find the firmware here

Likely, this issue won’t affect you unless you have one of the very expensive, fast solid state drives (SSDs). Most of you don’t.

This story rocks and you know someone on the Find my iPhone team at Apple is very proud today.

Great job everyone!

The WSJ is reporting that Steve Jobs received a new liver several months ago, likely as a side effect of his pancreatic cancer of several years ago.

This just in: rumors say that Jobs might be receiving a new heart as well, and due to having a change in heart, he will allow Apple to start shipping two button mice.

How popular is the iPhone one might ask? Well the iPhone (at least up until the 3Gs) has had a fairly cruddy camera. It does ok, but even now, no flash, low megapixels, which to be fair, compares to other phones, but still, not great.

Check out the Flickr charts on camera usage. The first one is all cameras, then the third chart are phone cameras.

That will tell you how popular the iPhone really is:

Flickr Camera Usage Charts

This is a very cool idea to replace our normal two outlet fixtures.

Now all we need are plugs that have 90 degree rotated prongs.

I picked up my iPhone 3Gs this morning. Because this is the third iPhone model, the lines were much shorter than two years ago. Only 40 or so people ahead of me, and it took an hour in line to pick up the phone and head out the door.

So, how does it compare to my generation 1 phone?

1. Lighter. This could be said of the 3G as well, but it is a nice change
2. The oil resistant screen kinda works, but it is still fairly oily. My old phone wasn’t hard to clean, either
3. The video works, and isn’t bad
4. The camera’s auto focus/auto exposure is nice. I took a photo of Elizabeth, with a window behind her. She was totally dark, and tapping on her face didn’t help, but tapping on the pink shirt she was wearing did bring it into proper exposure. Said photo is not available due to a take-down notice by the copyright holder. (Apparently 8am photos are a no-no)
5. Application launching is much, much faster, easily twice as fast if not more
6. The voice dialing works. The first number I tried was “goog 411.” Then I tried Elizabeth, but I didn’t wait for the menu of phone choices to finish before speaking, and it gave up. You can’t interrupt it like you can with the goog 411 voice menu. Once I waited, it was happy.
7. 32gb > 8gb. Finally, my full music library back, and videos
8. Setup was easy. In the store, I entered my mobileme info and before I got out of the mall, the phone had all of my contacts. That makes mobileme so worthwhile. Once I got home, I restored from backup.
9. Standing in line at 6:10am paid off with an activated phone. I know two people who have been waiting for awhile now, and this story claims it could take up to two days. Ouch.
10. The compass is cool. I guess it needs calibration by moving the phone in a figure 8. The Apple Store employee must have done it for me.
11. The water and pastry the Apple Store supplied were much appreciated.
12. The GPS initially put me in my neighbor’s house, the it stuck me in my garage. I think the mapping data for our neighborhood is off.
13. Signal coverage for 3g seems better; Usually 4-5 bars. I saw it dip to 1 bar once, then back up to 5. I have not made any real calls on it yet.
14. Compass + GPS kicks ass. Can spin around and always know which way I am facing on the map
15. My gmail password didn’t sync, nor did my app profiles, not sure why. For a friend, they all did.

Sync Issues

After syncing with my laptop for apps, and then syncing with the desktop for videos, I have 5.3gb of videos in 81 items I cannot get off the phone, according to itunes. No idea where this media is.

Well, it was all in older podcasts, and iTunes refused to unsync them, so I had to delete every podcast episode, then and only then did itunes delete the content from the iPhone

You can barely see my bald head, John is in the middle and this great guy we met, Carlos, is on the left, while the author is checking out something on his iPhone.

How I spent my WWDC

Even though the name is lousy, the new Microsoft search engine “Bing” has some nice maps.

Go to Bing Maps and enter an address, then click the “Bird’s eye” button on the top of the map. You can even rotate the bird’s eye.

Bing maps, however, place the marker for our house two doors south, whereas google maps gets it right. I cannot move the bing maps marker yet, either.

Panic is having a sale on Transmit, Coda, Candybar and Unison, all 50% off for 3 days only.

If you need an excellent FTP program, check out Transmit. If you need a newsreader, Unison is good. I don’t use Coda nor Candybar, but I hear good things about them.

This showed up on my 23″ Apple Cinema Display today.

At first I thought it was a stuck-off pixel, but I made a image with a black and red pixel in it, and those are much smaller than this, and I can kinda see the red pixel through the spot.

So maybe it is some dust, or condensation between the LCD and the matte?

The pixels in the image are the blurry spots to the left and right of the anomaly.

The Mobile Wiki Server is now available on iTunes.

If you’d like to carry a wiki around with you and share the contents over WiFi, this might be the product for you!

According to this report by Landon Fuller, the Java that ships with Mac OS X contains a vulnerability that allows any website to excecute code on your Macintosh via Java.

This is a fairly serious issue and so I am recommending you disable Java.

For Safari users:

1. Open Preferences under the Safari menu
2. Click the Security settings icon
3. Uncheck “Enable Java”

If you need Java for a particular site that you trust, you can enable it, use the site, then disable it again.

This will affect those who use Yahoo! Games, etc, but it is a very serious security issue.

Apple’s response to those awful Microsoft “I’m a PC” ads like “Lauren” is out. Watch it here before the spoilers below:

The ad starts off by implying some PCs are slow. Some Macs are slower than other Macs, but ok, the MS ads did say that some of them wanted performance for cheap.

Then the ad talks about wanting a computer with a large screen. Most macs have largish screens, but I don’t know if 13″ is considered large. However, not everyone who buys a MacBook buys it because it is a cheaper Mac, some buy them because they are a small, fast Mac.

Next comes the punch line is Apple’s shot across Windows’s bow in the area of security, viruses and ease of use, which is common in the Apple “I’m a Mac” ad campaign.

But the coup de grâce is when the “Lauren” of Apple’s ad replies with “I’m a Megan” to Mac’s “Hi, I’m a Mac”

Yep. People are not Macs nor PCs. They’re people trying to get stuff done – Quickly, simply and move on with their lives with as few headaches as possible.

Microsoft, in copying Apple’s campaign with their own “I’m a PC” campaign (really, there is no creativity left at that company), could not even get that right. They have PCified people. They have reminded people that they are the same virus ridden, slowing over time, filled with bloated malware, defective units that eventually die, with the exception that people are not able to reboot, unless they go on Biggest Loser or something.

I don’t want a machine that is as defective as I am. I’ve got my own issues to deal with. I want something that improves my quality of life.

I’m not a PC. Nor am I a Mac. I’m a Mac user. And that makes me happy.

Diagnosed Machine: MacBook Pro unibody 15″ 10.5.7
Diagnosed Drive: Internal 7200rpm
Diagnosing Machine: Mac Pro via target disk mode Firewire 800

Tools: DiskWarrior 4.1.1 directory repair

Results:

• Some files had bad icons
• Some files had bad creation dates
• Some volume information was incorrect

I replaced the directory to no immediate ill effects

Diagnosed Machine: MacPro 10.5.6
Diagnosed Drive: 500gb time machine volume
Diagnosing Machine: Same
Tools: DiskWarrior 4.1.1 directory repair

• Repaired available space
• Repaired text encodings bitmap
• custom icon flags repaired
• text encodings repaired

I replaced this directory with no immediate ill effects. I ran time machine and a 32mb backup ran.

Diagnosed Machine: MacPro 10.5.6
Diagnosed Drive: 1.5tb Seagate
Diagnosing Machine: Same
Tools: DiskWarrior 4.1.1 directory repair

• No issues found

Diagnosed Machine: MacPro 10.5.6
Diagnosed Drive: 320gb boot drive
Diagnosing Machine: MacBook Pro via target disk mode
Tools: DiskWarrior 4.1.1 directory repair

• Repaired available space
• Repaired text encodings bitmap
• custom icon flags repaired
• text encodings repaired

Drive seems fine

I’ve opened up a new category here at Geeks R Us for Macintosh maintenance.

At PMUG we often give people tips on how to maintain their Mac. I thought it might be good to jot some of those ideas down.

I’ve also added a sub-category called “log” which I will use to log any and all maintenance I do to my machines and what the outcome was.

This is for my benefit as much as yours, but I felt it would be good to know just how often, or how infrequently, I maintain my machines. This data will help me give better advice to others!

This is a first! Software Update failed to download 10.5.7 due to an invalid digital signature. Oops. Someone at Apple made a boo boo.

I guess we wait for a fixed updated!

Apple has released 10.5.7 of Mac OS X Leopard.

Details can be found here but include:

Additional Information

What’s included?

General

• Includes latest security fixes.
• Includes additional RAW image support for several third-party cameras.
• Improves performance of video playback and cursor movements for recent Macs with NVIDIA graphics.
  
• Resolves an issue with Dvorak keyboard layout in Mac OS X 10.5.6.
• Improves the reliability and accuracy of Unit Converter, Stocks, Weather and Movies Dashboard widgets.
• Addresses a situation that may cause issues when logging into Gmail.
• Improves reliability when syncing contacts with Yahoo!.
• Expansion Slot Utility for Mac Pro now reports the correct PCIe slot configuration.
• Improves network performance when connected to certain Ethernet switches that have Flow Control enabled.
• Improves stability for network home directories hosted by Mac OS X Server v10.4.
• Improves Finder search results for network volumes that may not support Spotlight searching, such as Mac OS X Server v10.4, Time Capsule, and third-party AFP servers.
• Includes several improvements to Directory Service and Client Management.

iCal

• Improves overall reliability with CalDav.
• Improves reliability when automatically syncing with MobileMe.

Mail

• Addresses reliability and sync issues with Notes.
• Addresses an issue that may cause the BCC field to populate incorrectly when redirecting a message from the Sent mailbox.
  

Parental Controls

• Improves consistency with Parental Controls and application restrictions.
• Addresses an issue in which time limits may not work properly with full-screen games and Fast User Switching.

Printing

• Resolves an issue that may cause certain third-party printers to print to the incorrect paper tray.
• Non-admin user accounts can now be allowed to add and remove printers by enabling Parental Controls and selecting "Can administer printers".
• Includes other printing reliability and stability improvements.

Some friends and I were discussing about the inability to open the Downloads folder from the Stack on the dock, when the stack is fanned.

I don’t like the grid view (I have one, it is called the Finder) so I use fanned, sorted with newest at the bottom.

You can open the Downloads folder’s parent by command-clicking on the fanned Downloads stack, but not the folder itself.

Well, yes you can. You command-click on an item in the fanned Downloads stack. The Finder will then open the Downloads folder and select that item.

P.S. Or click the “n more in Finder” at the very top of the stack, but it is so far away, it is quicker to just command-click the bottom item.

Google Cache of a story linked by Daring Fireball of an initial experience with a Microsoft Surface,

After reading that article, and thinking about how easy my iPhone was to use on day one, hell, sitting on the floor in the mall no less, I thought about something I hadn’t thought of in two years:

The iPhone needed no calibration. The touch screen just worked. No touch this cross hair, touch that cross hair.

Those little technological improvements really go a long way in initial user experience. Clearly something Microsoft doesn’t pay much attention to. Yeah, plug this keyboard and mouse in so you can click the EULA on your new $17,000 touch screen computer.

Go Microsoft.