Is this false advertising from Apple?

When the new iPhone and iPods were released a few weeks back I checked the Apple store like a lot of people I guess. But on there front page and in their store they have info that’s a bit deceptive I think.

I know they still sell the old models and that’s why they have “from A$219” under the iPod Touch but they show it under a photos of the new model iPod Touch that actually start at A$329. They should not have a photo of the new model and suggest it starts from a lower price than it really is.

As you can see they do exactly the same thing for the iPhone as well.

Other companies can’t advertise their top model and put prices down for a completely different, lesser model can they? For example Panasonic don’t advertise their 55inch TV and have from $xxx and quote a price for their 20inch model, not do Holden Vehicles advertise their Commodore but quote prices for their Barina. Or if you want to compare similar items – Sony store doesn’t do the same for their mobile phones, neither does Samsung or HTC. Only Apple can get away with it I guess.

Remember Napster

I remember this old program, everyone was using it.
It was the easiest and quickest way for free music. Of course it was illegal but no-one really thought of that back then – it was just some new way of free music. Remember the only other option was CDs back when it started,

iPad has failed

The iPad had completely failed, no idea why it actually needed to have a sign though, maybe they always fail.

Jobs to leave Apple immediately – must be very sick.

So today Steve Jobs has resigned from Apple immediately – this only means that he is critically sick I would think – poor bugger, cancer is a mongrel disease isn’t it?

His place at the top running the company will be filled by Tim Cook, who was Apple’s chief operating officer.

Steve Jobs has had a lot of health problems over the last few years that made him to take leave from the company. As recent as January he was taking an indefinite medical leave from Apple , that was the third time in recent years.

In August 2004, Jobs underwent surgery to treat a rare form of pancreatic cancer, in January 2009, Jobs said that he was suffering from a hormone imbalance that was stopping his body’s to be able to absorb certain proteins and in April 2009 he had liver transplant surgery.

It seems that maybe he isn’t well enough to stay on the job at Apple, he did look very, very frail and weak when he was doing the announcement of the new Apple headquarters.

Here is a little time line of Steve Jobs work-

• 1976 Co-founds Apple with Steve Wozniak.
• 1984 Apple introduces the MacIntosh computer.
• 1985 Jobs’ leaves Apple (pushed byCEO John Sculley.
• 1985 Founds Next Computer / Next Software.
• 1986 Buys computer graphics division of LucasFilm, and renamed Pixar.
• 1996 Returns to Apple as adviser when Apple buys Next Software.
• 1997 Named interim CEO of Apple.
• 2001 Apple introduces iTunes software and the iPod; the iTunes store follows in 2003.
  

Apple PDF Exploit in iPhone, Ipad, iPod Patched

At the moment there is a bug in the Apple iOS that is when you go to a web page and load a PDF file a hacker can get full control of your iPAD, iPOD Touch or the iPHONE. Basically that means all you have to do is visit a web site using the built in Safari browser, the baddy website will load a PDF document which contains a font that hides a hacker program. When your iPAD/iPHONE tries to display the PDF fileit run that program and the hacker gains complete control of your device. And I mean complete control – delete files, transmit files, install programs that can monitor things like online banking…

Well, Apple has finally got around to an update that fixes this exploit. iOS 4.0.2 for the iPHONE and iPOD Touch and iOS 3.2.2 for the iPAD. It patches the PDF exploit but, of course, if you have a jailbreak device, clears that as well. The patch doesn’t fix anything else except the PDF problem so if you don’t care about being susceptible or you want to keep the iPHONE jailbroken you could skip it until the jailbreak is updated.

Safari and Youtube missing on my iPod Touch

My 11 year old son told me that on his iPod Touch he has lost the icons for the Apps Safari, Youtube and some others. I knew he was moving the icons around and putting them on other screens so thought that is what he had done. No, they were missing!

Ok, next we will try a reset by holding the the home and power button for 5 seconds, no that did not work either.
I even paid for the iPod touch 2 software upgrade to get it to version 3.something, nope that did not work

But I did fix it and it was very simple. It was actually the iPod setting my son had! Here is how to fix the problem of not having Safari, Youtube, Appstore icons on your iPod touch.

He activated the restriction feature on the iPod and turned off Safari and Youtube etc, so all I needed to do was turn the restrictions off and they all came back again on my home screen. One happy boy now.

safari youtube missing on ipod touch

Dell Adamo Notebook Out Now For Australia

I am not sure how many people have heard of Dell computers amazing looking Adamo notebook PC, I only heard of it the other day. Dells release date is today and you can have a look at it on their Adamo website. I think it is pronounced Ah Dah Mo.

The notebook looks amazing, made of milled aluminium like some of the Apple notebooks and super thin – thinner than Apples Air PC !wow! A 13.4 inch HD screen that is flat glass to the edge, a fair number of ports and includes adaptors to use them (no extra cost I think) – eSata is great, my Toshiba has it and I connect my External HDD to it (and it can be used as a normal USB if needed) and the whole thing only .6inches thin (the air was a fat .76 🙂 ) .

The packaging is very iPod like and a first I would think for notebook marketing, I am betting others start doing it soon. The outer faces of the aluminium are an etched finish and look superb. A backlit keyboard with nice scalloped keys, I wish my current notebook had backlit keys, including my Netbook. Dell say the Adamo will get about 5 hours on the battery, not bad if true.

There are a few photos around but not many, I have taken stills from the Adamo video and it’s in black and white. Actually the computer will be available in two colours as well, Onyx and Pearl (black and white really).

The price will be around $1,999 US, not sure about Australian prices for the Adamo, hope it is not too bad as I would like to buy one if it is cheap enough with the Australian dollar as it is.

Telstra to offer iPhone – Australian plan prices revealed?

I am thinking that for sure Telstra is going to have the iPhone now. I have read news reports that Telstra were struggling with Apple about wanting their own applications on the iPhone and not the standard ones that all iPhones have.

And costs for the Australian iPhone , no one is saying but…. I have a little information by way of a survey emailed to me. I have screenshots of the survey, not all questions but the most revealing ones. At first I didn’t know it was Telstra in the survey but guessed by the questions (asking about Yellow pages on the iPhone…) – and the last screen said the survey was for Telstra.

Notice the price mentioned – $220 plus $80 per month, no mention of data included and no questions about data at all so who knows what you get for $80 per month. It did also ask what the maximum I would expect to pay.

Anyway this looks like the first hint at plan prices from an Australian carrier for the iPhone.

 

 

Charge your iPod with an Onion

I was just surfing around trying to find some little science project for my young son to do at school and came across this youtube vid on how to charge your Apple  iPod with just an onion and some gatorade, of all things.

Amazing! I’ll have to try this myself now.

FairUse4WM replacement FreeMe2

I have posted plenty of times about FairUse4WM, the tool to take protection off Windows Media files – both video and audio files. Well, I have been slacking off and there seems to be a newer version of this tool – I guess not a new version but a completely different tool .. and it is open source so updates should flow through more often.

The tools name is FreeMe2 and it seems to do the same job as FairUse4WM plus it has the ability to unprotect streaming media as well (I didn’t know there was protected streaming media!).

From the author – After many hours of fighting with WM-DRM protection I decided to create new tool that would allow people to remove it from from files and streams. Of course FairUse4WM is great tool and it works nice but there are few reasons why have decided to create a new one:
1) FairUse4WM is closed source. Everytime MS releases new version of IBX people have to make binary patches or start from scratch.
2) FairUse4WM doesn’t work with video streams since it wasn’t intended to. Of course it is possible to record video stream and then undrm it but this is pointless when we are talking about tv channels.
3) There is no platform independent tool for ms wm-drm. There is no point of running windows every time you want to undrm some file or stream.

Freeme2 is a program based on famous freeme app created by Beale Screamer and based on viodentias (FairUse4WM) findings. It strips wm-drm protection from wmv/asf/wma files as well as video/audio streams. 

Download and info at SourceForge 
More Instructions and information at Stream-Recorder.com