Have you ever asked yourself how did Apple (formerly Apple Inc.) chose its name? It was all decided on the 1st of March, 1976. Since Steve Wozniak and Steve Job needed a name for their company, the brilliant idea came up as they were driving along Highway 85.
Steve was still half involved with a group of friends who ran the commune-type All-One Farm in Oregon. And he would go up and work there for a few months before returning to the Bay Area. He had just come back from one of his trips and we were driving along and he said ‘I’ve got a great name: Apple Computer.’ Maybe he worked in apple trees. I didn’t even ask. Maybe it had some other meaning to him. Maybe the idea just occurred based upon Apple Records. He had been a musical person, like many technical people are. It might have sounded good partly because of that connotation. I thought instantly, ‘We’re going to have a lot of copyright problems.’ But we didn’t. Both of us tried to think of technical-sounding mixtures of words, like Executek and Matrix Electronics, but after 10 minutes of trying, we both realized we weren’t going to beat Apple Computer.
74 days ago, Apple released iPhone, a revolutionary little gadget-like device that was to keep the front page of tech blogs for days to follow. Today, the very same Apple sold the 1,000,000th phone. Therefore, the predictions turned out to be true, as they passed the milestone before the end of September as presumed.
In the end, I congratulate Apple for the accomplishment and for those interested, here’s a small quote from the press conference. Fear the fruit, Gates!
Apple(R) today announced it sold its one millionth iPhone(TM) yesterday, just 74 days after its introduction on June 29. iPhone combines three devices into one-a mobile phone, a widescreen iPod(R), and the best mobile Internet device ever-all based on Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface and pioneering software that allows users to control iPhone with just a tap, flick or pinch of their fingers.
“One million iPhones in 74 days-it took almost two years to achieve this milestone with iPod,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We can’t wait to get this revolutionary product into the hands of even more customers this holiday season.”
Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market this year with its revolutionary iPhone.
New iMacs were expected for a while now. That’s why Apple’s morning release was not such a shock to the tech passionates out there. To skip straight to the point, Apple released new iMacs. Built from aluminum and strong glass the prototypes “suffered” a complete redesign. These now come in two basic sizes. A 20-inch and a 24-inch.
Here are the main features, for those interested:
* USB 2.0, Firewire 400/800 ports
* SuperDrive
* iSight camera
* Glossy display
* New keyboard (mini wireless or extended wired / Bluetooth 2.0 included)
* Core 2 Extreme 2.8GhZ processor
* ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro graphic card
* 1TB storage space
* Wireless and Bluetooth 2.0
* 1GB of standard RAM
The price for these fancy iMacs? $1,799 for the 24-inch one and $2,299 for the Core 2 Extreme. They might seem a bit expensive in the beginning, but trust me, they truly are worth it.
Heads up, Europeans. The iPhone has been hacked for real now. Senad, a 28 year old hacker originating from Macedonia, along with a team from hackint0sh.org cracked the iPhone, enabling full functionality and support for European SIM cards.
Senad’s nickname is Deepdark, and he was previously involved in various projects of Digiturk Cryptoworks as well as the Digital Satellite scene. He said the hack is very real and was accomplished by using a simple SIM card reader/writer unit and some sophisticated software.
They simply enabled the iPhone in Europe, allowing people to take advantage of all of its features (incoming/outgoing calls, SMS, GPRS/EDGE).
“It was just a matter of time…”
Senad (Deepdark)
VideoGamer.com had a short little chat with Senad, and I strongly encourage you to read it.
With such a big launch and so much media attention it’s only natural that the iPhone has drawn the eye of hackers of all sorts. And it didn’t took long until the first hacks were revealed for the iPhone.
For example if you remove the SIM preloaded in to the iPhone and replace it with an older, disabled SIM, you can use the iPhone as a WiFi device, without any need of being connected to a telephone network. Or even better take a look at this video that shows an iPhone that can make phone calls using a Australian Telstra SIM.
A bit over a week ago, the new Energy Star specifications went into effect. These specifications are expected to save 1.8 billion dollars in energy costs within the next 5 years.
* Use of energy efficient power supply. Desktops must use power supplies that are 80% efficient
* Operate efficiently in Standby/Off, Sleep, and Idle modes. Desktops must use less than 2 W in standby mode
* Include and enable power management features of the system and provide user education about these feature
The big surprise? Only ~125 desktops and laptops meet the new requirements as I’m writing this. To those interested in the actual list, it can be found here. You will be surprised to see that Apple does not have a single computer that matches the requirements. Furthermore, Dell is in with only three computers.
It seems that the new specifications have been available to them for months now, and it’s a big surprise that they didn’t take any measures to stay updated.
Ever since the iPhone was launched, scripters are building more and more applications for the little gadget. MediaTemple has launched an iPhone-only administration interface for their customers.
Jason McVearry, Partner Director notes:
This is the first fully functional web hosting account manager designed specifically for the iphone…meaning you can manage your domains, email, account settings and even reboot your server via your iphone
I’m not sure they have enough customers that need iPhone based management to justify the development of such an application, but I applaud them for building one anyway
It was only yesterday when I was talking about Apple releasing a smaller version of the iPhone. And now JP Morgan, the company Kevin Chang (the one who presumably started the rumor) works for, retracts the insinuations of an iPhone Nano.
Amongst others they say that there is no immediate need of a downgraded version for the iPhone, and furthermore such an initiative would be risky. They bring as a argument the fact that an iPod nano was only released two years after the initial iPod release. Also they were talking about the idea mentioned by Chang, that a Nano version of the iPhone would replace iPods, they called this unlikely also.
“a lower-end iPhone appearing in the near-term would be unusual and highly risky.”
Besides denying rumors about the Nano iPhone, JP Morgan mentioned that a more likely development would be 3G capabilities. If we are to believe their predictions, a 3G iPhone could be released in the first quarter of 2008.
I must say, although I am somewhat skeptic about a 3G iPhone, but it sounds much more likely that we’ll see one of those in the near future than to see the Nano iPhone.
This one of those rumors you really hope isn’t true. Although Apple said nothing about it, some say a ‘nano’ version of the popular iPhone might be underway. Of course don’t expect it to look similar to the Nano iPod, but a slimmer/smaller version of the iPhone might really be released.
Although Apple recorded huge sales in the first week after the release they’ll have to take in consideration the relatively high prices one has to pay for an iPhone. Just as it happened with the iPod, users will be demanding a cheaper version. And in providing a more frugal, albeit scaled down iPhone, Apple could hope to maintain steady sales and make customers happy.
Even if the release of a scaled down version of the iPhone might be an option at some point, I think it’s way too early to think about something like this. The way I see it it’s more likely that it’s just a rumor meant to keep people talking about the iPhone.
