We’ve mentioned and reviewed products from OtterBox at MacMost before. I like them, not just because their product protects my iPhone on a daily basis, but also because they are located just north of Denver, the home of MacMost.
You’ve probably heard of the tornadoes we had last week. Nasty. And not too far from OtterBox, as it turns out. They made out OK, but homes in the area were lost. They decided to help out their neighbors. They will donate 10% of online proceeds from sales in June 2008. So if you have been thinking about better protection for your iPhone, June would be a good time to purchase from OtterBox.
After blogging about a music video that used the Mac OS interface, MacMost viewer Ian wrote in about Scientific American’s 60 Second 60 Second Science video podcast which also uses Mac OS in an interesting way.
Most of the news in the Apple world in the last few days has been about the iPhone being out of stock both online and in Apple stores. The general wisdom points to this being an indicator of a new iPhone model coming out soon. For weeks now, there have been rumors that a new iPhone model will be released at the WWDC on June 9.
But there could be other explanations as well. This could simply be a manufacturing oversight on Apple’s part. They simply ran out of iPhones. Or, it could be a planned shortage, designed to boost demand. Sort of like the strategy everyone believes that Nintendo uses, controlling the supply of the Wii.
Or it could be something in the middle. It could be that a new iPhone model is coming out, but that it isn’t a 3G iPhone, but simply one with more memory.
It does seem to be a bit early for Apple to run out of stock if they don’t plan on releasing another iPhone until June 9. Some are speculating that a new iPhone is coming out but that it will actually come out before June 9, perhaps even in the next week or so.
None of this really fits into an obvious pattern that Apple has followed before. So perhaps, later this week, the iPhones will reappear in Apple stores with no explanation. We will never know the cause of the shortage.
But if that were true, why would Apple list the iPhone as being out of stock? Instead they would list the iPhone as simply shipping in 2-3 weeks or something like that. Then they would fill orders as they received more stock.
It does seem a bit early for Apple to come out with a completely new hardware for the iPhone. A release on June 9, would mean a second generation of hardware in less than a year. Plus, the main new feature rumored to be in the second-generation iPhone is the ability to communicate with faster 3G networks. But the reason this wasn’t in the original iPhone was because there was no low-power chip available to communicate with 3G networks. I would have thought that we would have heard rumors of a chip manufacturer delivering a new low powered 3G chip to Apple before this happened.
Adding to all this is the fact that Apple seems ready to roll out iPhones in some new countries. If the original iPhone is truly at the end of its life, then they surely won’t use that in these new markets. Which means a second-generation iPhone must be just around the corner.
I’m going to go out on limb and say that the iPhone shortage is caused by all the factors above. On the one hand, Apple didn’t make enough first-generation iPhones. But, they don’t mind a shortage as it will increase demand. This also prevents people from buying old iPhones just when a new iPhone is about to come out, which could lead to returns and exchanges.
Here’s a fun music video someone made completely using images from the Mac Desktop like Dashboard Widgets, iMovie, iTunes, text windows, and so on. The song is “Again & Again” by The Bird & the Bee. The artist that made the video is Dennis Liu. I particularly like how the video ends.
I was thinking about the new Pystar Apple clone computer. I guess the only advantage I can think of for buying this machine is price. Nothing is offered that you couldn’t get from Apple for a few more bucks. And the price is only marginally better. I think the low-end machine is about $400, but this doesn’t include leopard which will add another $130. And it also doesn’t include iLife which will add another $80. Then the box is about the same price as a Mac mini, though it still has a better video card.
But then there is the issue of support. Just the other day I was working on an iMac G5 trying to make a DVD. I was using iDVD and I kept getting an error message. I figured a way around the issue, but if this had not been an Apple Computer but a Pystar computer than I would never have known if the issue was due to the software or the fact that I was using a non-Apple Computer.
I imagine a lot of things like this will happen to people with clones. An external drive won’t work, or some software won’t launch, or the system will crash, and they won’t know whether this is a problem that can be solved by Apple, Pystar, or neither. It will be frustrating.
I imagine Windows users go through this all the time. When something doesn’t work they don’t know whether it is Microsoft’s fault, the PC manufacturer’s fault, or maybe the company that built that particular piece of software.
Actually, I’ve run across this before with PC games. The computer, the operating system, the game, the video drivers, and perhaps other drivers as well, were all made by different companies. So what do you do when the game suddenly crashes? All you can do is hope that somebody else has had the same problem, has figured it out, and has posted a fix.
I’d imagine the success of the Pystar computer will hinge on good support forums. If Pystar users stick together and help each other, they can make the experience tolerable enough to be worthwhile. That is, of course, if Apple doesn’t step in and stop Pystar before it’s too far off the ground. Either way, I’ll stick with my Apple made Mac.
Sometimes it is useful to know what IP address you appear to have to the outside world. For instance, to use Leopard screen sharing, you usually need to know the IP address of the machine you wish to connect to. Or, someone may restrict access to a Web site or file sharing service to only a small list of IP addresses, and you need to tell them your IP in order from them to add you to the list.
You can sometimes find this by going to your System Preferences, Network settings and looking at your status. But it may show you the IP address on your local network, which may start with a 10.0 or a 192.168. This won’t help a computer from the outside world know where you are.
But when you surf the Web, every Web server and page knows what IP address you have. So all you need to do is go to a Web page like this one, and it will tell you:
Your IP Address is:
You can bookmark this page to use in situations where you need to quickly figure out your IP address.
