The Mac Professional's Resource
Last month we mentioned that we were not too concerned about the 1.4 million “missing” iPhones. One analyst, who we dubbed Toni Sacc went so far as to say that Apple might have stuffed the channel with phones to pump up its sales numbers, much like console makers do. The press, who apparently couldn’t sit back and think about this issue for more than 30 seconds, picked up on this, and suddenly the iPhone was a big disappointment. We have always maintained that there are areas where the iPhone can improve, but we still believe it is a very strong product overall.
Over the last few weeks, news outlets have changed memes. No longer is Apple stuffing some Area 51 warehouse with half a million iPhones. Instead, people talk about the iPhone black market. BusinessWeek interviewed the creator of TurboSIM and even the New York Times wrote an article about it.
Suddenly, 1.4 million bootleg iPhones is not really a stretch of the imagination. Of course, the story doesn’t stop there. Over at Seeking Alpha, Todd Sullivan describes the “real” problem with unlocked iPhones, namely that Apple is not receiving any revenue from AT&T or other official carriers when they are purchased to be unlocked. We have no real problem with Todd. It is troubling that he mentions that Apple cut component orders, not because it is a sign of slowed growth, but because the article he links to states Apple’s reduction in component is largely expected because they don’t expect to sell as many products after the holiday quarter.
While Apple’s loss of AT&T revenue might hurt the bottom line initially, the success of the iPhone is partly based on how large of an ecosystem Apple can form around the product. Apple really only loses when nobody is buying iPhones at all.
— Joe Fahs
Mac OS X 10.5.2 is shaping up to be one of the most highly anticipated dot releases of Mac OS X in the last few years. 10.5.1 was rushed out quickly in order to take care of some nasty bugs, and it seems that Apple is taking its time with 10.5.2 as it looks refine a number of features within the operating system including Time Machine and Stacks.
In the last few weeks, a number of news outlets have said we can expect to see a significant speed boost in Safari. Recent nightly builds of WebKit, which anybody can download here, show dramatic improvements to javascript execution, in large thanks to some some tweaks in the javascript libraries among other things. If you can’t wait for 10.5.2, try downloading webkit and sampling things out yourself.
— Joe Fahs
We’ve just become a B&H Photo Video Affiliate , so if you buy anything from them, be sure to click through from one of these links, or from the prominent banner ad above. B&H is an authorized Apple dealer , so when you’re ready to buy that new MacBook Air , help us out at the same time by heading there via our link! Heck, if you’re in the market for a 1200mm Canon telephoto lens , you could buy that through our affiliate link and we could stop begging for at least a week!
— Tom Ierna
As the news media focuses in on Super Tuesday and what all of those in-play delegates mean for the fortunes of the free world, Apple decided to sneak in a few updates to their lineup, adding a 16GB iPhone and 32GB iPod Touch. These updates are nice and show that Apple probably bought a generous portion of flash memory, but I think people would rather see the price come down than the storage going up.
— Joe Fahs
I am not one of the people who thinks that Mac OS X is so inherently secure that people using Macs will never have to worry about a virus. Apple, like every other computer manufacturer, has security issues, but I do think Apple does as good a job as any at identifying these vulnerabilities and taking care of them. However, it is annoying to read about how every new malware threat demonstrates how you have to be careful even if you are running Mac OS X. And more importantly, how you should think about buying some security software to make sure you are safe.
The latest report comes from Sophos, which takes things up a notch by stating that cybercriminals are finally starting to target Mac OS X. And we all know that one a cybercriminal gets involved, things are 10.736 times as dangerous because they are looking to steal your money, not just make life annoying for you. And it’s not just your Mac that could be vulnerable, but your iPhone and iPod Touch! And if you think Linux makes you safe, think again! The criminals are catching on!
Like we’ve stated before, you should take computer security seriously, especially with identify theft becoming such a huge problem. However, the same rules apply to most any computer user out there. Be careful with your names, passwords, credit card information, and anything you download from the internet. We do want to thank Sophos for being so concerned, but the next time they want to warn people about cybercriminals, they should quote some people besides their own software engineers.
— Joe Fahs