Apple announced yesterday that it was disabling installation a
nd withdrawing support and updating for the Windows-enabling feature in Tiger called Boot Camp effective December 31, 2007.
Boot Camp allows Mac users to install and double-boot to Windows from their Intel Macs. But before you Tige
r users panic, don't worry, your Windows partitions will be fine and usable pas
t the 31st, just don't count on Apple updating it or supporting your use any mo
re past the deadline, and you won't also be able to install it again anytime in
2008 or beyond.
At least in Tiger, anyway. This is because in Mac OS 10.4, Boo
t Camp was just in beta, and the beta period is expiring at the end of the year
. Of course, in 10.5, or Leopard, Boot Camp is a full-fledged, fully enabled fe
ature that is part of the OS, so if you want to continue your travails with Microsoft Windows on a Mac, now would be a great time to upgrade.
Apple says
With the introduction of Leopard, the Boot Camp Beta program has en ded. The Boot Camp Beta software will expire on December 31, and Apple wonât of fer further updates of Boot Camp Beta for Mac OS X Tiger."Just a heads-up.
Full text of Steve Jobs' No. 1 entry by Fortune Magazi
ne's Brent Schlender:
Charlie Sheen and Jenny McCarthy in last week
's episode of Two & A Half Men.
Some guys unearthed an interesting six-year-old article from BusinessWe
ek Online by Cliff Edwards, entitled "Commentary:
Sorry, Steve: Here's Why Apple Stores Won't Work", which goes to show tha
t Michael Dell apparently is not alone.
In the article, Edwards says that Steve Jobs is putting his fo
ot in it by setting up Apple Stores. The article says
Found this on the net, and am impressed with the coolness of the idea. Wish I c
ould do something like this, but in my neighborhood, junk collectors would have
ripped this off the post and run off with it within a minute of my closing our
gate.
(I feel a little bad for myself though. I have a similar model - souped up, to
be sure - that I still spend a lot of time on, and the thought that my treasure
is someone else's junk is kind of depressing.)
NSW police arrest armed bank robbers Friday at The Ban
k of Queensland in Rhodes, NSW, Australia.
[Via 
...well, at least they boost your grades.
An Australian study has confirmed what we all already know: that iPods<
/strong> (and other tech stuff) boosts your grades and helps you to learn more.
The Victorian Department of Education in Australia conducted a
half-year of studies at Heathmont College using Apple
solutions and found that using iPods and other technologies as study
aids help both students and teachers to be active learners, and has improved te
st scores and pupil performance. They also had a more pronounced effect on kids
who were socially isolated and/or had literacy problems. According to math tea
cher Sally Bodo at Heathmont, the studies led to "Improvements in all curriculu
m areas and also in behaviour, motivation and responsibility by the end of the
project.â
So now you can tell your parents, in all honesty, to get you that iPod
Classic because "it's for school, Dad!".
(Via 
That report about Apple
secretly mining iPhone users for all sorts of data by phoning
home personal information about users and their preferences whenever they use
the Weather and Stock widgets has been defini
tively disproven - although it was also found out that generic, innocuous infor
mation is still sent out nevertheless, particularly application identifiers whi
ch tell Apple what apps are being used.
Reports are surfacing that a number of Intel-processor Macs, m
ainly MacBooks and MacBook Pros, are experien
cing inoperable keyboards when using the new version of Mac OS X, Leopa
rd.
Apple's posted a new advertisement for iPod+iTunes up on the Apple site's 
Stocks too, actually.
It's been found that Apple has been spying on iPhone users by sending back info on your IMEI and iPhone usa
ge by secretly phoning home the information everytime an iPhone user uses the <
strong>Weather and Stock widgets built into the phone
s.
Say what?
Website 
Just a heads-up.
This post may not be too much use to our overseas readers, but here in the Phil
ippines, Mac users here who have Metrobank ac
counts who have been chomping at the bit to do online banking will find this go
od news.
The Metrobank system has been uncooperative with Macs ever since, forcing Mac u
sers to turn to the dark side for their online banking needs. Well, as of yeste
rday, all seems to be fine with Macs and MetrobankDirect. I ha
ve it on good authority that the bank has been working hard all this time and t
hey've finally licked it.
For Metrobank money matters via Macs go 
One of the consistent weaknesses of the entire iPod/iPhone
line for its entire six year life is the iconic white earphone set that comes
in the box.
They're not absolute dreck, but neither are they up to the hardware they come w
ith. Merely adequate, there hasn't been much improvement since 2001, save for t
he inline remote/mic built into the cord with the ones that come with iPhones.
And hey, what about those foam things, huh? They don't last long - if you can k
eep them at all, that is; I wonder what Apple was thinking including them in th
e box. Using them's a clear mark of an iPod newbie.
It's as if the earbuds were mere afterthoughts they threw in the box with the i
Pods and the iPhone; maybe they assumed it was an unnecessary effort and expens
e to give nice ones we could actually appreciate, spending all the R&D budg
et just on the hardware. But if they assumed that we'd dump them eventually in
favor of better third party buds, it doesn't make sense that they made it exasp
eratingly difficult for iPhone users to swap out the buds for better ones with
the repressively off-sized audio port they built into the phone. I mean, WTH?
There are very few third-party buds with plugs that fit, and even rar
er third-party iPhone-specific buds that have the same remote control/mic built
into them (one of the better ones is the 
In the plain-
jane category is 
Fitz costs US$7.99, but in my country it's hard to come by unless you order onl
ine. The one local store that has lots of it, a shop called iStudio, shamelessly sells it for PHP900, or nearly 200% over SRP. Still, people
are snapping them up. I was fortunate to source it cheaper at another shop at P
HP500, but if you value the iPod side of your iPhone, it's worth the added cost
. At least until Apple wises up and finally releases a kick-as
s Apple-branded pair.
Now that'd be something, wouldn't it?
Received a ton of cases in the office for review in my magazine from Di
gital Walker. Here are some on my desk. Heck of a lot to go through, r
eally. One a day?
Catch the reviews in the next issue of Mobile Philippines.
Was able to get a full body kit from 
The package includes the skins, a spray bottle, a squeegee, a warranty card and
instruction sheet.
The new version has nine separate pieces you need to put on for the full effect
. I just put on the front and back and the round one for the Home button. The s
mall ones are tougher to put on - two strips that fit the top and bottom chrome
bezel, and four little teardrop shapes to cover the corners. I'm still undecid
ed if I'll use the others or not. Frankly, just the front skin does it for me.
I'm glad that there is a liquid spray you use to apply the skin - just spray th
e sticky side, slide it around while it's wet until it's in the right positio
n, and then squeegee out the bubbles with the excellent rubber squeegee that co
mes with the package. The front was a no-brainer, but the back was a bit of a c
hallenge to position perfectly, since the iPhone has rounded corners and the ba
ck has cutouts for the switches and buttons that have to be spot-on.
Couple of tips: spray your fingers before you peel off any backing paper from t
he skin and spray even the non-sticky side (this tip is in the instruction shee
t) so you avoid the material sticking to you, and minimize fingerprints. The ot
her tip, for the corners which don't readily stick, is you'd need to do them on
e by one, and hold down the surface for a couple of minutes - if they are reall
y uncooperative, use rubbing alcohol (sparingly) as your liquid.
Despite my care, I got me a few tiny bubbles on the back, but the instructions
said they disappear after a couple of days, which was true enough. I overlooked
one noticeable bubble that didn't go away, and I couldn't squeegee it off. I f
igured I'd prick it and squeeze the air out to make it smaller, but a pin or ev
en the tip of a fresh No. 11 Exacto blade couldn't puncture the darned thing to
let the air out. Tough is right. It's ok, I guess I can live with it.
It's true, it takes a bit of work to put on (took me nearly an hour before I wa
s happy) but once it's on and dried up after a day, it's wonderful. Hard to tel
l it's there, and it's real tough - even deliberate and vigorous key-scratching
won't damage your screen. Since the material is supposedly meant for protectin
g helicopter blades, it had better not. (I'm impressed by the lifetime warranty
and free replacement policy if it ever rips or peels off - now that's standing
by your product!). It adds a little grip, and even improves your use of the mu
lti touch screen, although people used to the slip-and-slide of a bare iPhone m
ight find it a bit sticky at first; pinching pictures takes a little getting us
ed to with an invisibleShield on.
If you hate the bulk that a case adds, stick with just this, and at least you d
on't have to be afraid of nicks and scratches anymore.
So it was the graphics card after all!
Apple's released iMac Graphics Firmware Update 1.0, which specifically fixes the freezing issue of the new iMacs, which it turns out is directly related to firmware issues with the 
Get a batch of two
dozen new effects for iChat4 and Photobooth
for free by going to the Apple Download page.
More iChat Effects 1.0.1 includes the hologram effect and the
ability to turn yourself into all sorts of flora and fauna, and more. It's a 10
.6MB download and requires Leopard and an Intel Mac.
Just head on to this 
Remembe
r when I told you guys of my experience at Apple Store Ginza i
n Tokyo a few weeks back? I was thinking during that rainy Friday afternoon for
the Leopard launch that it was a bit disconcerting in that I
was expecting the line I was in to be long , but not that long (almos
t 5 blocks!).
Wandering around Tokyo days before, I was already a bit surprised at the ubiqui
ty of Macs, which was more than I was accustomed to in my home base of
Manila. They were nearly everywhere I happened to be, and in the big p
ress rooms of the Tokyo Motorshow I attended, nearly half of t
he journalists were tapping away at Powerbooks, Macbooks and <
strong>Macbook Pros and iMacs in there.
Well, it seems to not just be a prevalent trend or fad.
Reports have it that Leopard is now the leading OS in Japan wi
th the release of OS X 10.5. The amazing statistic is that Mac OS purchases wen
t up over 60% for October, from 15% percent, which is nothing short of phenomen
al. This figure topples Microsoft from the top spot for the fi
rst time.
In fact, Microsoft is on the opposite side of the slope, with sales plunging fr
om 75.3% to 28.8% Phenomenal too - in the worst way.
In the six days following the Oct.26 release of Leopard, the new Apple OS now h
olds the lion's share (so to speak) with 53.9% of the entire OS-only market. Ho
o! Go Japan!
Arigato gozaimasu!
(If you didn't catch it, read my story of Leopard Day in Japan 
Apple's released the first update for the newest version of 
Tiger users who haven't yet gone L
eopard can take heart; you're not that obsolete yet.
Apple has just updated (for one last time?) Mac OS 10.
4.10, better known as Tiger (the last version before
the release of Leopard 10.5 last month) to 10.4.11. We've abou
t accepted that Tiger had effectively dead-ended, but it seems we were a bit wr
ong. Versions of 10.4.11 exist for both PPC and Intel<
/strong> Macs. Just run Software Update to get it. What does i
t do? In brief:
I've only been excited by two Microsoft-made things lately. On
e is the Zune 80, and the other is Office 2008 (yeah, yeah, I hear ya - but I live on the darned thing, you know).
Our friends at MacNN have an extensive preview of the new prod
uctivity suite on their site. Much as I don't have an evaluation copy yet and c
annot give you a personal review, may I just point you to their wonderful previ
ew?
Click 
Upgrader Beware: The new update to the 5th generation
video iPod, 1.2.2, has been available for a couple of days now via 
Apple is apparen
tly losing ground to Microsoft in the digital media player dep
artment - well, at least in one category. According to the latest reviews from
reputable sources like PC World, PC Mag, CNet, Wired and 
If you're anything like me,
you'd likely have a number of old portable/handheld game consoles molding in so
me drawer somewhere, along with stacks of game cartridges and cards. I have sev
eral Game&Watch antiques somewhere, along with a couple of 
Mac-A-Doodle would like to greet the online Apple Store a Happy 10th
Birthday this month. It opened November 1997, and was selling Mac OS 8,
G3 Macs, Newtons and eMates. It was followed by the
UK store five months later, then in rapid succession Sweden, Belgium, Holland,
Spain, and Italy. In 1999 the Japanese, Austrian and Swiss stores came out, and
the rest is history.
Aside from spectacular worldwide sales, it holds the distinction of being the o
nly online store that creates instant, planet-wide speculative frenzy whenever
it goes offline.
Thanks for the purchases!
1997:
2007:
The "bug" that disables editing and adding events to the Calendar app on an iPod Touch as been fixed with the release of Fir
mware 1.1.2 for the player, fulfilling Steve Jobs' promise tha
t it would be enabled in a future software update.
Was riding around the Ginza District in Tokyo one morning the
other week, looking for the Apple Store there when I came acro
ss this one at the end of the main Ginza thoroughfare. (This was before I found
the real thing.)
Wonder if there are any geniuses in this Apple store. Didn't have time to get o
ff and check.
iTunes isn't
telling you yet, but Firmware 1.1.2, which is coming out in t
he new iPhones in Europe and new iPod Touches
, is now downloadable from the mothership, and yes, it locks and jails your pho
ne.
Aside from putting on new international keyboards (and the locking and jailing)
nothing else seems to be different. 
Hack into
the future!
Great Scott! 
Upgrader Beware: Be extra careful when moving folders from one physical volume to another
when using Leopard. If for some reason the destination volume
disappears (like its an external USB drive, and your klutzy brother trips over
the cord and disconnects it while the folder is being moved), you're going to
lose data in a big way. Leopard's Finder has carried over this
major bug, which apparently harks back from Panther, accordin
g to blogger 
No, it isn't really anything new. It's the old 
I let my iPhone run down, and then attached it. The usual warning appears that
says the accessory isn't meant to work with iPhones popped up, but I ignore it
and tap no. Then the red battery indicator changes to plugged-in statu
s (not necessarily charging) and pretty soon it's fine again. (Like it does for
iPods, it powers the iPhone but doesn't charge it.)
There's even a power level indicator so you know how the AAs are holding up. Th
e thing attaches to the iPhone by two suction cups on the back, and it fits per
fectly. The iPhone's svelte no more, of course, and weighs three times as much,
but it works. But all you'll ever need are four AAs, and you'll never be low b
att ever again. Simple, easy to replace, relatively cheap and available everywh
ere. I will start bringing the device in my bag regularly, along with a coupla
sets of penlights, and will be most excellent when I travel.
So you can provisionally add the Belkin Backup Battery Pack for iPod w/
Dock Connector to your short list of old iPod accessories compatible
with the iPhone.
Will text it for longevity when I get a chance and report back to you. In the m
eantime if you see this in a sale bin somewhere, it's going to be a good idea t
o pick it up.
It's ok. I tried it already last night. No problem with unlocks and jailbreaks.
Everything's the way it was.
Not to worry.
Just wanted to say.
(If someone knows otherwise, please holler.)
Whaddaya know? Looks like I must be doing something right. (Either that, or it'
s really a slow news day.)
Was trolling the net tonight for news and info on the new iTunes 7.5 and if it would affect unlocked or jailbroken iPhones,
so I googled the relevant keywords.
Surprised that I got back my own blog as the very first entry out of nearly a m
illion other results. That must be worth something somewhere, somehow.
Cool, if I do say so myself.
Heh. Now back to regular programming.
Knew it would be soon, but a
m still caught by surprise.
Apple's released iTunes 7.5 and Quick
time 7.3, which are mainly for minor fixes, and addresses security iss
ues, as well as introduces better iPhone support, and is good
for Mac and Windows. (Although only the speci
fic Tiger version of the new Quicktime has been available so f
ar, according to some 
Valleywag has posted a 
The rumor mill (the m
ore reliable one) is abuzz with talk about iTunes 7.5 coming o
ut anytime within November; it could be out as soon as this week, 
The battle resumes...
Capped from my iPhone using iFuntastic. From
TUAW's Erica Sadun, an iPhone app called "Vis
ta" Version 0.2. (The update from 0.1 came in just this morning, and you can't
see it here, but the cursor that comes right after "Press any key to continue"
actually blinks, whereas in the previous version it was static.)
Vista is one of those totally useless but enormously fun "apps" she sometimes m
akes in-between her usuallly wonderful hacks and utilities. I love this girl. <
strong>Vista for the iPhone is available free through NullRiver's 
Apple's released a couple of updates:
Honestly, I would have been shocked it if wasn't.
Time Magazine has declared the iPhone the '
Via 
One of the Holy Grails of
home computing is achieving a natural sounding, conversant computer voice, like
the LCARS voice of the Starship Enterprise, or 
Wouldn't it be great to walk into someone's house or office and get his Mac to play the songs on your iPhone or iPod
Touch remotely on his big speakers?
Canadian MAD Reader 
One of t
hings that bother me about iChat is the profusion of windows that pop up when d
oing simultaneous chats, and the juggling one needs to do to keep on top of thi
ngs. The new iChat now lets you do tabbed browsing (and improves the look by sp
aring the window from the Brushed Aluminum theme we've all come to hate). And i
f you're afraid of missing out on other chat replies while concentrating on one
, little thought balloons pop up when someone says something from other simulch
ats.
You can now also have multiple log-ins if you have different AOL/dotMac account
s with separate buddy lists. How you keep from getting confused will be the tri
ck.
Visually, there are a
bunch of new goodies: you can do the Photobooth trick during
a video chat and make yourself look like an idiot from across the miles; you ca
n do the bluescreen trick and change your backdrop as well - pretend you're cha
tting from poolside, when in reality you're in the dark basement of your parent
s' house; and you can use plug-in filters that change your look even further -
one of the most popular ones (that didn't make it into Leopard but is being cir
culated on the net) is the shimmery hologram look that makes you look like Prin
cess Leia saying "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope."
You can even record video and audio chats now, which are saved in MPEG-
4 and AAC respectively. Just hit the red button. You
can even do rudimentary audio and video podcasts using this. Apple's made it so
that you can't hide your recording though - everyone involved will know the ch
at's being recorded and needs to give their consent.
A couple of the most
useful additions is based on sharing. You can now share any document or file th
at can be viewed using Quick Look with your chatmate - picture
s, video, presentations and the like. More exciting is Screen Sharing, which is
essentially VNC without the hassles. You can remotely access
and control each other's screens. This is perfect for teaching or troubleshooti
ng - or snooping, if that's your thing.
There are other improvements in iChat, and as soon as I get facetime with it, I
'll come back with a more comprehensive report on the new version. Maybe I'll e
ven chat with you guys.
Apple has just released, quietly and without much fanfare, new
MacBook models featuring the faster frontside bus chipset 
