Also, long-time Mac commentator, Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times has his own list although number 9, a percentage figure for the battery, cannot be found on the iPhone I have. Maybe that is the 3Gs.

We and a lot of people voiced criticism about AT&T in recent weeks and they must have been listening as several outlets report that they have had second thoughts, particularly about making loyal customers pay full price plus to upgrade from the iPhone 3G to the 3Gs. Jim Dalrymple in CNET News and Rik Myslewski in the Register have reports on this and the way "Big Phone" as Myslewski calls them, claim they have heard what their customers are asking for. I am sure they also had an ear on events in Washington this week as well, when lawmakers are questioning the idea of linking the phone to the carrier: as we mentioned last week, they have gone along with this for years, but Apple's game-changer has made them blink. And if the phone does not come as part of a plan, do they have any idea how much they will be asked to shell out?

Lines were apparently smaller at the AT&T stores at the launch of the iPhone 3Gs, but that was not a surprise. They were not as short as for the Palm Pré last month. In addition, pre-orders (that is before, not the Palm device) were also higher. Nonetheless, there were still delays in activation and on Monday, it was reported by a number of sources that Apple was dishing out $30 iTunes gift certificates. I wonder what they would do here.

Mind you, Apple sent out a bit of information that explains part of that delay and which they are probably proud of: they claim to have sold 1 million 3Gs iPhones between Friday, its release, and Sunday. That is no mean feat. The press release also contains a quote from Steve Jobs, which in the light of other news we have in this podcast, is slightly interesting.

A day or so before the iPhone's release we all had the release of the iPhone 3.0 update and this is making as much a difference to the iPhone and the touch as the advent of apps did last year: Apple has moved the goal posts again.

I will be writing about this for the Post next week, so won't repeat myself here, but one of the features, apart from cut and paste and the other publicised changes, is that one called Find my iPhone, which also works for the touch if you have Mobile Me. Actually, despite its shaky start last year, MM is one of the jewels at the back of Apple's crown -- a shiny one you don't normally see. Apart from its usefulness, which has just been expanded by this feature, it is a service that brings in Apple regular cash. Indeed, each subscription is more than, say, iLife, or iWork, and certainly more than the Snow Leopard upgrade.

Back to Find my iPhone -- sorry to harp on this. Once activated, a user who misplaces a phone or touch can send a signal from a browser -- and that could be on a PC as long as you log in to your account, so you could do this while out shopping if you lose the device. That signal can be a tone: it sounds like a sonar signal; but it can also send a text message; and for those users here, it will display Thai. Hopefully someone at the other end will pick it up and do the honourable thing. A good idea to include a contact number in the message, eh?

I wasn't going to link to any of the multitude of stories on the release of the iPhone 3Gs -- there are just too many -- but Mac User had a gem of a title that I could not miss: Long Night's journey Into Day. (For those unaware, there is a play by Eugene O'Neill called Long Day's journey into Night). It is a time line from 4.26pm Thursday to 10:39am Friday on the wait for activation of an iPhone 3Gs.

One story came a bit late and that concerned the speed of the new device. iLounge did a comparison and posted the videos online. iFixit went one better and travelled all the way to London to get their hands on a new iPhone hours before the US, then pulled it to pieces as they do with new stuff. The link I have on the podcast page takes you to their site where there are photos and descriptions as well as links to videos of the process.

Most annoying last week was the lateness of the iPod touch update. Although the iPhone update was available here on Thursday morning -- Cupertino being the centre of the universe -- the iPod touch was not available here nor in several other countries, despite showing in iTunes when I synced the device, and also showing on the main page of the Thai App Store.

Needless to say there was a lot of frustration and anger from people in Asia, South America and parts of Europe -- a sort of second tier of users. As I write this at the start of the week following, some users in Taiwan are still reporting that it is not yet available and have been advised to send reports to feedback. Apple needed to let people know: they often fail with this and then get upset with the negative feedback.

A story appeared on Tuesday morning (Thai time) from someone who lost his iPhone in Chicago and using Find my iPhone managed to get it back the next day. The way it was tracked down, especially the last few minutes, make for an interesting story. I bet he is not regretting his mobile Me subscription.

An iPhone app costing 99 cents has become the first app to pass 1 million downloads. Apple gets 30% of that of course.

One of the nicer, and free word processors, Bean, has been updated this week to version 2.3.1 and when I checked, I had version 1.0.0.0 so it was overdue for me. This 6.2 MB installation is a good argument against Word for most users. I also say that Apple's textEdit is good enough for most purposes but no one believes me: "I must have Word" I am told, when all we do is print a basically unformatted text page. I reviewed a load of these alternatives some while back; but still they put on that monstrosity from Redmond with all its resource hogging and poor handling of fonts. I reviewed that too.

A lot was made of Steve Jobs' non-appearance at WWDC, despite the fact that he told everyone the END of June: such distractions. This weekend, several sites had the news that he had had a liver transplant in Tennessee about 2 months ago. Of course there was no denial not confirmation on this story which seems to have originated from Wall Street Journal. I am not going to put that as the link, as it needs a subscription to read any more than the first paragraph, so I am using an analysis by John Gruber of Daring Fireball who looks at several aspects of the release of information.

Everywhere I looked on Saturday afternoon had coverage of this. I expect he did have such surgery and is now recovered (remember he was seen at Cupertino last month). There were also several reports that he was seen at work on Monday of this week: move along please, nothing to see.

I took one of my rare trips down to the Emporium on Saturday to meet a friend for lunch. I hate the place which is supposed to be hi-so but always looks scruffy and dated as well as being cramped. The organisation of escalators alone makes it difficult to go up to the top, and coming down in an emergency would not be easy. At least with Siam Paragon there is space to move and plenty of exits. On the way up I passed the iBeat stall that sells Mac stuff there.

Up on floor 3 of the Emporium, is Kinokunia Books and nearby there used to be an excellent CD shop. Now, however, with the worldwide decline in sales of records, this has closed, but there is a shop selling Apple wares instead. It was not marked as iStudio or iBeat, so is not part of the franchise here; but the opening of another Mac shop strikes me as healthy. The new Siam is almost finished, so there will be one more fairly soon too.

Several months ago I subscribed to Stephen Fry's blog and then he sort of disappeared into the world of Twittering where he is a sort of high priest. Occasionally he does seem to take time off and last week I saw a fine example of what he can do from the UK Guardian where he writes about the new iPhone 3Gs taking justifiable space in the article to talk about the apps phenomenon and compare the iPhone with some of the competition which he claims come up short.

There was a release of a Firmware update for those with the new MacBookPro this week. Something to do with improving data transfer rates. There was also a firmware update for some iMacs.

I have been in some communication with Skyhook in an attempt to interest them in taking more data so that the location services may improve here for users of the iPhone and iPod touch. As I have said before, GPS does not work everywhere, particularly inside, like a mall, and in the absence of 3G there is the third strong to the bow by way of triangulation from wifi antennas that have been entered into the Skyhook database. The problem is that here, so few HAVE been entered that getting an accurate location in some parts of Bangkok is almost impossible (I haven't even begun to think about the rest of Thailand).

If you have a wifi antenna in your home or office, get in touch with Skyhook by linking to the page on their website and enter the information they need: coordinates, which can be found using the google map interface they have; MAC number of the device; and your email address, which should be easy enough. The more who do this, the better it is for all users.

On that MAC address I just looked at the Skyhook site and there are several methods for finding this: turn the wifi router over as it may be shown underneath; use a utility like iStumbler; and the easiest if you have a Mac, Option click the wifi icon in the menubar and the number is shown.

I see from a couple of non-Apple sources that there have been updates this week to Time Capsule and the Airport Base Station firmware. There is also reported to be an update to Final Cut Pro.

There was confirmation on Wednesday from the Methodist University Hospital, Memphis that they carried out the liver transplant on Steve Jobs. Because he needed it. Can we now move on?

Keith Olbermann has a Best Persons feature in his Countdown program and I thought of this on Friday when I read a story about Pixar who took -- took, not sent -- a DVD of the movie, UP, to grant the dying wish of a ten-year old girl. She died a few hours after the movie was shown. That Pixar made the effort when they did not have to makes them MY best persons of the week, perhaps the year.

This week's Worst Persons, and winners of the hubris award, are Dell who complained to the advertising bureau about Apple's claims to greenness. I am copying from Robert Palmer's article in TUAW here as he has it in a nutshell. Dell's complaint centres on the words, the "world's greenest family of notebooks" which they claim refers to all notebooks past and present. Talk about splitting hairs: perhaps Dell can finally answer that age old philosophical question on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

If you have ever had to deal with a teenager who is obsessed with games, have a look at the YouTube video on the podcast page of a young man whose parents cancelled his World of Warcraft account. I shall never look at a TV remote in the same light again.

Too Good to Miss?

Enter your search terms Submit search form