apple

It's been 19 days since I tried and failed to get a new iPhone 3G, but today I became eligible for the discounted price, and at 7:50am I was in line at the Apple Store at the Westfield Valley Fair mall in San Jose.

As you can read in my previous post, I couldn't get the usual low price for my new iPhone because I had 19 days left on my current 2-year AT&T service contract. Apple was willing to sell me the phone for an extra $200, but I decided I'd rather wait until today.

I was the sixth person in line, and by 8:00am when the store opened, there were five more iPhone buyers in line behind me.

As we lined up, we received cards from an Apple employee reserving the particular model we wanted. I'd estimate the fellow had about 40 cards. I asked if the number of cards corresponded with the number of iPhones in stock, but he wouldn't say. Another Apple guy followed behind, checking our AT&T upgrade eligibility. I did this myself last night, so I was sure it would be okay this time, and indeed it was.

The doors opened right at 8:00am and… Read more

Almost three weeks after it launched, Apple is finally able to tell MobileMe customers that everything is working as it should.

The latest update to its MobileMe status blog posted by the mysterious David G. says that all is well with MobileMe, Apple's replacement for .Mac that offers subscribers e-mail and access to Web-based contacts and calendars for $99 a year. "We have completed restoring Mail service, including historical messages, to all of the 1% of affected members. Thank you all for your extreme patience during this trying time."

Almost right from the launch hour, MobileMe was … Read more

I use Apple's Safari browser on my iPhone but don't have much use for it on my Windows PCs. I do run iTunes and QuickTime on the Windows systems, so every time there's an update for one of those apps, I'm prompted to download Safari.

A quick tweak of the Apple Software Update utility makes the Safari prompts history.

Open the Apple Software Update application via its shortcut on the Start menu. To set the updater to stop nagging you about Safari, check the browser's option in the main window, and click Tools > Ignore … Read more

I waited in line for the iPhone 3G. I had actually bought an iPhone just a few months ago, but wanted to upgrade.

I didn't really know why: I just figured the next version of what Apple was doing could only be cool. I'm a Mac fan.

As I wrote here, however, Apple and AT&T completely botched the activation process, leaving me without the iPhone 3G and, frankly, without much desire to undergo the ordeal again. Apple continues to ration the iPhone 3G for AT&T stores (the one place where you're pretty much guaranteed to have the phone activated), while its Apple retail stores are awash in the iPhones (but also awash in activation problems).

Meanwhile, I've yet to talk to anyone that can point to a clear, compelling differentiator between the new iPhone and the original iPhone. Yes, it's faster, but I spend most of my time around Wi-Fi and not enough time around a power outlet to care as much about 3G as I thought I would.… Read more

Updated 2:50 p.m. PDT with comments from security researcher Rich Mogull.

Three weeks after the disclosure of a serious flaw within the Domain Name System (DNS), Apple has yet to patch its MAC OS X operating system, but the company may be able to look to a third party in defense.

In a posting to an Internet newsgroup on Monday, Paul Vixie of the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) acknowledged that the Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) DNS Server's recent -P1 releases may be unstable for some users. The BIND DNS Server is used on the vast majority … Read more

With the increased capacity of today's computer hard drives and MP3 players, ripping your CDs to a large, lossless audio format such as FLAC or Apple Lossless isn't such a crazy idea. In fact, some folks are convinced that lossless audio is the wave of the future.

While I personally have a handful of my favorite albums ripped to lossless files on my computer, I'm a little skeptical of the idea of a lossless revolution taking root. For better or worse, the MP3's popularity will likely remain unshaken for many years to come, for a variety of reasons. … Read more

With Adobe Systems' release of version 2 of its Photoshop Lightroom on Monday night, the company no doubt hopes customers will be drawn by a number of new features in the software for sorting, cataloging, and editing photos.

But the company believes an external factor will also help the software: the booming sales of high-end SLR cameras. These high-end models are helping usher in many of digital photography's biggest changes, and Adobe is trying to intercept the trend with Lightroom.

From 2007 to 2008, digital SLR shipments increased a dramatic 41 percent to 7.5 million units, according to market researcher IDC. And though plenty of those cameras went to gadget-happy doctors or to snapshooters who won't exploit the cameras' full features, plenty of others went to the photography enthusiasts at whom Lightroom is aimed.

"Prices are coming down, so more people with entry-level SLRs are experimenting," said Tom Hogarty, the Adobe senior product manager in charge of Lightroom. "If you pick up the camera for the sake of creating an artistic thing and not just recording a family event, you've really taken the plunge into serious photography. Anyone at that level is an ideal Lightroom customer."

One significant feature common to SLRs is the ability to shoot "raw" photos--the images taken directly from the image sensors without the camera baking in its own assumptions about what's right.… Read more

Apple might have decided its partnership with Intel doesn't mean it has to use all of Intel's products.

AppleInsider reports that Apple could be using a chipset from a different company--or even an internally developed one--in the next iteration of the MacBook, expected to arrive in the next six or eight weeks. Like other notebook vendors, Apple had been using Intel's mobile Centrino chipsets in its MacBook line ever since 2006 but it's going to pass on the Montevina version of those chipsets this time around, according to the report.

Intel has done an excellent job … Read more

CNET News' Greg Sandoval analyzes Yahoo's attempts at damage control to mollify customers upset over its digital music policy. Apple has begun issuing regular status reports for its recently introduced e-mail and cloud-computing service. The good news: The situation is improving. But the company still isn't out of the woods. And Webware's Rafe Needleman assesses the odds for a technology start-up with an impressive pedigree to carve out a place in the increasingly hardscrabble market for Internet search.

Today's stories:

MSN to follow Yahoo in issuing music refunds?

New search engine takes aim at Google … Read more