New iMacs Next Week?

Apple has sent exclusive invites to select members of the press to a special event next Tuesday August 7 at 10am PDT. New brushed aluminum iMacs have been rumored for weeks so that's anyone's best guess.

3 Billions And Counting

Apple announced today that sales of songs on iTunes has surpassed the 3 billion mark. Kudos. 350 or so songs of which were purchased by yours truly. Wow, that's kinda scary.

iPhone Software Update

VP of iPod Product Marketing Greg Joswiak told analysts this week that an iPhone software update is "coming soon".

A Hint of Things to Come?

Major online retailers have cut the price on the 30 & 80 gig iPods. Amazon has the 30 gig for $10 off and the 80 gig for $27 off. A hint of new iPods on the way? Only time will tell. Otherwise, if you're in the market for a new iPod, now is a good time.

Tones of the Ring

Tired of waiting for official ringtones for your iPhone to be made available via iTunes? Here's a DIY using iTunes' previews. Pretty slick.

Apple Financials

Apple sold 270,000 iPhones in the first 30 hours. AT&T reported a couple days ago that they activated 146,000 phones in the first two days. I may suck at math, but that pretty much means that AT&T screwed up activations on about 124,000 phones. Good job.

Apple posted crazy growth . Sales of Macs and iPods were way up, 1.7 million and 9.8 million, respectively. Profits were 818 million. Sweet.

The Free Mac Classroom

Once upon a time, Macs dominated the classroom. Unfortunately, dumbass school boards think that saving $300 on a PC equates to an actual cost savings. Add in the anti-virus, dedicated IT administrator, maintenance agreements and more, and they've actually spend $600 more than what they would have spent on those "expensive" Macs.

Regardless, there's a site out there dedicated to cataloging the free software that's out there for the Mac, and there's a ton of great software there. Check it out.

Even God Uses A Mac

New MacBook Pro Adapter

Not that this is phenominal news or anything, but Apple has a new power adapter for MacBook Pros. This one is nearly 1/2 the size and closer to the size of the MacBook one (the new adapter s on the left, duh). Notable for those of us that have to lug it around with us from job to job.

I'm a Star!

Well, okay, maybe not. But I did start contributing to MyFirstMac.com with a couple articles....

• What's The Best Way To Print My Photos?


• Backing Up – How to Ensure Your Valuables on Your Mac are Safe

Oh yeah, well my 1 year old can beat your 2 year old.

Not to be outdone by a two year old, this 1 year old has figured out the iPhone:

The Apple dPhone

Apple has toyed with telphone technology in the past. Here's a concept from 1983 of a desktop telephone. In one of the pictures, it shows someone writing a check from their phone. No telling if the phone is networked in any way. I'm guessing that the answer's "no" since we're talking about 1983 here, but still. Interesting.

Mmmmm. Bowling.

Sims Bowling. $4.99 for your 5th generation iPod. Now. Go get it.

So Easy A Two Year Old Can Do It

Which is Cheaper? $600 iPhone or Free Treo?

The answer will surprise you.

The iPhone App I've Been Waiting For

Not really.

Finally - Something To Do With A Zune

This is hilarious. Hide your iPod or iPhone inside a Zune to protect it from thieves. Awesome.

Missing Something?

In case you forgot, you can apply cost of the songs you've purchased from an album to complete the purchase of the full album. Now you can complete that album for $7.99 or less.

OneTrip - iPhone App Review

For some reason this cool little iPhone app seems to be overlooked. OneTrip definitely is the best-looking app yet. It's a nice basic shopping list app. Just click on what you need from various categories. As you place items in your card, just tap the checkbox next to the item. Very slick. The only thing I can think of to make OneTrip better is to be able to add specific quantities of items.

21 iPhone Tips

Some of these are not so "secret", but you may find a gem or three in here.

Yellow Submarine iPod

That sexy stud Way2Poppy at TooPoppy reports on the long-rumored Yellow Submarine iPod. Is there nothing that guy doesn't know? I love him.

incase iPhone Case

Gizmodo reviews the incase iPhone cover. And I agree on all points. I bought a black one the night of the iPhone purchase because my good friend Robert said I'd drop it. And he was right.

iPhone Disk Usage

Bummed that you can't use your iPhone as portable storage like your iPod? So are a lot of people. The good folks at Ecamm brings you iPhone disk storage.

iPhone Pet Peeves

TUAW has a list of iPhone gripes. It's been two weeks and the initial euphoria has begun to wear off. I admit to agreeing with some of these, although the 2-3 clicks to get to things i a bit exaggerated I think. Sure, it could be less, but it really doesn't get in the way or really take up that much time. And I'm not sure why people are going into the settings all the time, other than to tinker. Here are my personal pet peeves:

• No multiple delete function within email


• EDGE. It's not as bad as I thought, but the iPhone is so much better on wi-fi.


• Earpiece Sound quality. If the volume is turned up all the way, I get a fair amount of distortion on phone calls. The speakerphone turned up all the way is fine, so I'm guessing the earpiece is just a lower quality component. Not enough to truly impact the experience, but I shouldn't have to hear it for $600.


• Crashes. Safari crashes on a regular basis as does the mail app. The phone does recover gracefully as it tries to leave things where they were when it crashed, but I'm just not used to crashing apps since I use a Mac for everything I do. At least when the iPhone crashes it continues to work. My Blackberry used to crash all the time and I'd have to do a hard reset each and everytime which usually took about 5 minutes.


• Slide To Answer. If the phone is locked, and you get a call, you only have one option on screen - to answer the call. You should also be able to decline the call as well. Sure, you can press the standby button once to ignore, and twice to send the call to voicemail, but the instinct is to use the screen.

I'm sure I'll come across a few more over time. It doesn't make me regret my decision in any way. This is a beautiful and elegant phone; both physically and in the software.

This Is Just Oh So Wrong

iPhone App Review: TIPR

I was taken aback about my post about the new iPhone Apps as someone that I didn't personally know actually made a comment! I thought only like 3 people read this blog. I guess we're up to 4 now! Yay! :-)

The comment asked for some feedback about their iPhone application, TIPR. TIPR is a new iPhone application that does what the name suggests - help you calculate tips at a restaurant. Now I personally love this app because I am severly math-challenged. It should be simple enough to calculate a 20% tip, but I constantly screw it up.

The application is the best kind - it does one thing, and it does one thing well. The user interface is simple and elegant - just like the phone it works on. You simply punch in the amount of the check, dial-in the tip percentage (be gracious people) and click submit. It comes back and gives you the tip along with the bill total. Including the total is a nice touch, especially for math-challenged people like me.

The only issue I found with the app is a calculation error for hefty bills. Punch in something like $987 with a 20% tip and it comes back with a $-986 tip for a total bill of $1. Nice if it were true. This is not likely to come up much with average users, but I have personally put a similar business expense on my corporate credit card in the past.

It would be nice if the keyboard defaulted to the numeric keypad when entering the bill amount, but I'm pretty sure that's not something that could be controlled via the Safari browser. Hear that Apple? We're having to sacrifice a superior experience because you won't give developers a true development kit. I hope Apple rethinks their approach. While developers will indeed come up with some outstanding apps, they'd be even better if they could get to the core of the environment.

The only other enhancements I could think of would be a way to access customary tips when traveling outside the US and a way to "split" the bill amongst X number of people in a party. How many times have you been out to dinner/lunch with a group of people and it takes 45 minutes to figure out what everyone owes. However, this might need to be a separate app (with a simple link from TIPR) or something. I wouldn't want to clutter up the simple TIPR interface with a less-common need.

Great job on TIPR guys! Definitely an early must-have iPhone app.

Roll Out Them Apps

While the developer community is generally unhappy with Apple at the moment with the lack of a true SDK for the iPhone, it hasn't stopped them from developing some great Safari-based apps. Gas.app and TIPR are two I've actually used recently, and others I will be exploring soon.

The No B.S. iPhone Review

Gizmodo has the most realistic review of the iPhone I've read to date. It's harsh where it needs to be and gushing where it should. I personally don't care about a lot of the smaller missing features, but I do agree that the sum is greater than the parts. I'm sure Apple will blow us away with the first iPhone update and address many of these things. Of course a software update won't fix any issues with AT&T. But I've been with them for about 3 years or so now and haven't had any issues. I've actually been pleasantly surprised every time I've had to deal with them on some things.

iPhone Enhancements List

By now you've got some things that you wish the iPhone did. Macenstein is compiling a list - add yours today. I'd agree with most if not all of them so far.