• First, the proportions in the green one are all wrong compared to the orange one. Even counting the perspective, the first unit seems to have a much smaller wheel, with a bigger middle button. It's also farther away from the bottom of the iPod. Finally, the screen doesn't seem so elongated as the green unit.

• The surfaces are also different. The orange nano is clearly curved, while the green one is clearly flat. The button in the orange one follows the curve of the surface, while the button in the green one is clearly receded, like in the old nanos. With that side lighting, a curved surface would be obvious in the image. This one is clearly flat.

• The rounded corners on the orange iPod screen are bigger and more obvious than in the old one.

• Finally, the faker of the green iPod forgot to put a short ended iPod cable in the shot, using the old style one.

Our theory is that:

a) The original MacNN shot, which they obtained, may very well be the real McCoy.
b) The J.R. guy removed the MacNN watermark and reposted it in some forums, looking for some kind attention.
c) The same J.R. guy tried to keep the attention by faking this shot, but failed to realize the obvious physical differences between the two iPods.
d) J.R. is a loser.

Update: This just in. We just got a higher resolution image of the iPod without any water marks:

At the end, however, remember our basic rule about rumors: don't trust any of them. We all will have to wait for September 9 to see what's really rocking in Cupertino. [Engadget]

Tomorrow night at 10PM, Food Network kicks off Alton Brown's latest TV show, Feasting on Waves, where the Mensa-smart kitchen geek and his crew hop into two 50-foot catamarans and sail around 15 different Caribbean islands in search of quality cuisine, shooting and editing the hi-def episodes right there on the boats. It turns out, despite his disdain for specialized kitchen gadgets, Brown depended on regular high-end tech to make a cooking show on a boat happen.

How do you produce a TV show from a sailboat?

One of the things about the Feasting shows in general is that they have a very small crew, and we are moving with very little space. We are extremely packed and technology dense. We had two 50-foot catamarans—it sounds fun but it wasn’t that fun.

So you shoot and edit as you go?

This year we decided to go completely tapeless: Panasonic P2 cards on 200s. We’re downloading them into our portable Avid edit system. We take as much audio equipment as we take video equipment. The funny thing is, professional audio hasn’t gotten a whole lot smaller. Although hi-def cameras have gotten smaller, lenses have gotten better and battery time has gotten better, audio is still the tricky part of the process for field reporting.

I see you were also using a little Panasonic?

I was lucky enough to be one of the first people in the US to get Panasonic’s HDC-HS100 AVCHD camcorder. It’s got a nice little Leica lens on it. We take everything through a DaVinci color correction system. Once we do that, you really can’t tell the difference between my little camera and the big cameras—it’s all 1080i. We have some scenes that were 100% shot with just my camera.

How did you connect to the internet?

It’s kinda funny, the entire time that I was in the islands, I had perfect e-mail with my iPhone. The entire time. I think there was once, during a midnight crossing, the Anegada Passage, where I lost internet for about half an hour. The rest of the time, I was getting e-mail through either EDGE or something else [probably GPRS].

I did not even take a computer with me on that trip. I decided I just didn’t want to see a computer for a while. And at the time, I figured you know, computers, boats, water, scuba diving. I thought about taking the ToughBook along, and then I thought about taking the Asus because that’s a great little box. Then I thought, the hell with it. I took a few pads of paper, some pens and my iPhone.

You also carry GPS everywhere, right?

As a motorcyclist, as a hiker and as a pilot, I’m pretty sold on Garmin. In the first Feasting on Asphalt, I had a touchscreen weatherproof version of the StreetPilot for my motorcycle that even worked with gloves on. I just really love how their interfaces work. You don’t even need manuals for most of their stuff, the stuff is so intuitive.

In New York, I use Google Maps with my iPhone, because I know where I am—I don’t need GPS. If I was going some place where I needed GPS, I’d use my Garmin Colorado [shown in top pic], which I really really like. It’s a really great marine box. It’s splashproof, but it comes loaded with all the marine functions, so it’s really easy to do marine chart info if you get the right cards for it. You can sail the world with one.

So it was your navi on land and sea?

Everywhere. We basically documented the entire Feasting on Waves journey in the Colorado. Every place we went, we popped a waypoint. It’s got so many easy functions for calculating distance it made navigating around the island easier. Even islands that didn’t have roads at all, we could get good topographic information.

Do you adhere to the old sailor’s adage that you should never have just one form of navigation?

Abso-stinking-lutely. When I fly, I may have full GPS on the plane, but I got a full set of charts too, and I keep the charts out while I’m flying to make sure I know where I am. In this day and age, if I have a major power outage, I just whip out my handheld, the 496, a spectacular handheld aviation GPS. But there could be a catastrophic satellite failure, different things could happen that could make GPS unusable—I guess.

I think your unit would fail before the satellite did.

Something could happen to satellites, you never know. So I always want to know where I am on paper, too.

And on the island, what was your backup?

There were a lot of times where I didn’t have a backup. On islands, I sometimes didn’t have anything else, because there aren't reliable paper maps for those places. The only time I wasn’t using Garmin to navigate was when we were underwater—I don’t think they have an underwater unit yet. We did a fair amount of scuba diving, and you’re still on your own under water. You still gotta use a compass.

I think you just invented something.

Underwater GPS would be spectacular. I don’t know how deep you can go with that technology without having serious problems. Even 50 to 70 feet would be useful. I wonder why they haven’t done that yet. I’ll ask Garmin when I can get that. For rec diving, having that kind of application would be fantastic.

Note: I asked Garmin why there wasn't a scuba GPS, and I got a quick reply: "The reason for no scuba GPS is simple... the signal is deflected by water."

So how do you keep everything charged up?

That’s a problem. Especially on the boats, it was really difficult. We got down there and realized that the power systems on the boats which were all 220V—the power wasn’t clean enough for our editing computers. On St. Martin, we had to go buy a Honda generator to run on the back of the boat to give us good steady clean 120V.

The Colorado runs on AAs, so I took a batch of rechargeable AAs. I ran the recharger for that in the cabin where I also charged my iPhone and my little camera batteries. I had to have three chargers. My other camera only runs on regular batteries, not rechargeables.

What kind of camera is it?

It’s an old metal Canon EF—about 30 years old. I also carry a 35mm Leica point-and-shoot with a fixed 40mm lens. I was shooting slide film in the Canon and print film in the Leica.

So you’re not shooting digital?

Not on this. I wanted Ektochrome—nothing looks like Ektochrome. I’m old school that way. I have a pretty decent Canon digital, and a Leica digital as well, but I didn’t want to have to deal with the chargers, and I wanted super robust technology, so I went film. I like film. You can’t beat it. I spent most of my career as a cinematographer before I went to culinary school, so I just got a thing about film emulsions. It’s still the way I think. I just don’t appreciate digital photography as much as I should.

I know, I know—we managed to get through an entire discussion about a food show without talking about the freakin' food. Good thing there are already clips of the show (alas, non-embeddable) up at Food Network's website, so take a look. The awesome photographs of Alton were shot—digitally—by Marion Laney, ForgottenGulf.com.

Sure, they're masterfully painted, but more interestingly come from a time when Apple, a more innocent underdog, could portray their products as fine art without coming off as arrogant. I'm not saying that this campaign wasn't at least partially born of hubris, but the effect - especially this many years later - is more strange and hilarious than anything else. Details and a full gallery are available here. [MyOldMac via Cult of Mac]

As we saw at E3 and WWDC, the iPhone version of Spore is Spore Origins, which is limited to the "primordial ooze" stage you see here, with a limited version of the Creature Creator thrown in for tweaking your bug cosmetically. On the plus side, it's simple and a quick diversion, and it's fun combo-ing your way through 35 increasingly difficult levels of munching little floaties. You can also import photos from your iPhone camera to texture-map on your creatures (Benny's Michigan Fab 5 tee).

But on the downside, the game suffers from the same control awkwardness that all of the accelerometer-only games do—as you can see in our video, the camera had a tough time keeping focus because you're always dramatically moving the phone to try to reign in your creature. A training stage featured a level-like bubble for each axis that showed you when you were at the zero-point, which was incredibly helpful—too bad it disappeared after training.

And most disappointingly, Spore for iPhone does not connect with the greater Spore hive in any way, meaning you won't see any procedurally generated creatures made by real other players of the game via Spore's central server. Kind of a weird choice for such a connected phone, and most confusingly, EA says the simpler Java based game for most other cellphones does in fact have connectivity to the greater spore world.

There's still some vagueness with release date (EA's site still only says "sometime in September") but all other Spore platforms launch in the US this Sunday. Look for it then or soon thereafter in the App Store for a price that'll probably be in the $10 and below range.

This week's app coverage on Giz:

• Remember what it was like to buy a CD? Apple's plans to include lyrics and additional album art via an app download for certain albums will help you remember.
• Continunig to carry the torch for political apps is Election '08 - a $1 app that collects poll data, electoral vote projections, and tons of other election data.
• And at CEDIA, all of the home automation systems are racing each other to release remote control applications, turning your iPhone into a capable touchscreen control surface for opening the blinds from across the street or jacking up the AC if your cat gets hot.

For even more apps: see what you missed last week and check our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

• I like the fact that you can see the screen of the player at a glance.
• The controls are located on the handle, so you don't have to fiddle with any remote or touch the device.
• The earphones plug is also conveniently located in a position that won't interfere with your handling and cycling.
• And finally, the integrated locking mechanism is a good addition.

What do you think? Would you buy a bike with an integrated dock? [Tuvie]

If you buy one of four bullshit accessory packages—going for $106 to $234, according to AppleInsider—Geek Squad will set up your phone and email for free. In other words, something they have to do anyway (activate your phone), and another that's complimentary at the Apple Store or easy enough to do yourself. Thanks, Geek Squad. [Apple Insider]

LOS ANGELES, Calif., – September 5, 2008 – EA Mobile™, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS), today announced that Spore™ Origins, an original game for the iPhone™ and iPod® touch, will be available this month. The game takes full advantage of the devices’ built-in accelerometer as players tilt, turn and twist their way through a world made of primordial ooze. In conjunction with the launch of Spore Origins, EA Mobile also announces a list of nine games in development for both the iPhone and iPod Touch platforms.

Eat-or-be-eaten in Spore Origins! Designed specifically for the iPhone and iPod touch, Spore Origins uses the platforms’ motion-sensing technology to let gamers navigate a primordial tidepool on a quest to evolve. Feast on the weak and flee from the strong through two exciting modes and 35 challenging levels. Pinch, pull, and poke your creation in the Creature Editor, customizing the texture, shape and body parts to improve your offense, defense, perception and movement as you evolve over millions of years.

““We’re really excited to bring Spore Origins to the iPhone and iPod touch,” said Travis Boatman, Vice President Worldwide Studios at EA Mobile. “By leveraging the unique capabilities of these devices, players can customize their own creatures and shape their destiny in an exciting evolutionary journey. ”

EA Mobile today also announced nine titles in development for the iPhone and iPod touch, pending regional availability. This list includes YAHTZEE Adventures, EA Mini Golf, Lemonade Tycoon™, Mahjong, MONOPOLY: Here & Now The World Edition, SimCity, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09, Need for Speed™ Undercover, and The Sims™ 3.

Spore Origins will be available globally from the Apple App Store on iPhone and iPod touch, or by simply visiting www.eamobile.com from an iPhone. Additional versions of Spore Origins are also available for the iPod, as well as other mobile devices. All iPod games are available for the third-generation iPod nano, iPod classic and fifth-generation iPod and can be sent as a gift using the iTunes gifting feature (www.itunes.com).

Of the apps by Crestron, Lifeware, Z-Wave and Control4 we've seen here at CEDIA, Crestron's seems to be farthest along (pictured above). It can control multiple rooms in multiple houses all via Wi-Fi or AT&T data, and is a free download and add-on. Z-Wave, probably the most accessible system that you don't have to have a Cribs-worthy home to run, will sadly charge you $10 a month for the privilege of freaking out your pets while you're on vacation or locking your doors from bed. Lifeware's app is still in its nascent stages, but it will pack more Media Center integrations (in case you're running the baddest Media Center in the world).
Control4's app (above) is the least impressive—the first version will only work in your home on the same Wi-Fi network as your system, which is puzzling. And it'll cost you a "license" that will likely be "over $100 and less than $500," to make up for lost touchscreen remote revenue.

All the apps are currently getting finishing touches, but each will be available before year-end. For now, check out iViewer.

For one, if iTunes 8 indeed goes HD, the iPhone is more than ready to run its content natively—especially considering that iTunes HD clips would probably be the same as Apple TV's (which is just 720P). That means no needing to convert HD clips for the iPhone/iPod touch (or maybe even the next generation of iPod?), which would seem more like Apple's style.

And while running videos at a higher resolution than needed isn't ideal for processing or syncing times, who knows, with the right adapters, maybe the iPhone could even put this video on your HDTV.

It's tough to tell exactly how Apple would handle iTunes in HD since clips would still presumably have to work on hardware like the iPod Classic and iPod nano—both of which lack the umpf of the iPhone's 620Mhz processor (though, yes, h.264 decoders in all current iPods/the iPhone handle decoding). But if the iPhone handles HD clips, that certainly buys Apple some flexibility.

This will require two cameras, one for video chat and the other for the "hand reading," but it opens a lot of possibilities. To start with, the entire keyboard can become a gesture control pad without even having to touch the surface. In addition to that, it can be combined with actual touch technology to identify single fingers on the surface, with the possibility of assigning specific functions to them.

The system even contemplates combining all this with accelerometers and force sensors, so the touch action can generate secondary data. One example of this may be applying a deformation effect to an image or a sound effect to a music track, giving it more or less strength depending on the force you use in your action. [USPTO via Unwired View]

Other Kevin Rose predictions such as a "trippy" visualization with "planet like objects" and downloadable TV shows in HD haven't been confirmed, nor have previous rumors of an iTunes subscription service. But that differently-shaped iPod nano seems to be a lock. [MacRumors]

I'm hoping they stick with a metal backing (but less scratchy and smudgy) instead of switching to plastic like the iPhone, since cell reception isn't really an issue. [iLounge]

While Foxconn gave her the day off to rest, it looks like previous suggestions that she become a face for the factory or come pre-loaded on every iPhone might not be on her agenda. Or, this could all be an elaborate ruse for them to replace her with an even cuter girl. Don't worry, we won't ever forget you, real iPhone girl, the internet never forgets. [VNU Net]

In his 18-page filing, Gillis points out the 3G tower power issue that recently leaked to the public in which an AT&T worker disclosed that current sub-par connections are caused by iPhones sucking too much power for AT&T transmitters to maintain proper 3G signals. Given this knowledge, Gillis feels the iPhone was clearly sold past network capacity creating problems that cascaded to every AT&T 3G users.

The suit seeks class action status so that every California AT&T subscriber could receive compensation if they've experienced poor 3G performance. And in light of such 3G failures, Gillis points out that Apple's packaging should have a disclaimer to manage consumer's expectations. [AppleInsider]

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• As you can see in the invitation they sent, it is worth noting that the aspect ratio is not widescreen, but the usual 4:3 screen common on all current iPods. Maybe they are trying to put our hopes for a widescreen iPod down?

• The iPod in the song cover seems elongated, although it may be an effect of the perspective.

• Still the same classic theme, so I'm not holding my breath for a massive HD-based iPod touch (damn you, Apple).

• Someone in Cupertino is watching too much Miami Vice and A Night at the Roxbury every night, because the color schemes and graphics are still from the '80s.

• That guy is wearing huge sport shoes. Maybe huge feet are required. Maybe the new iPods will have 7-plate 20GB Winchester drives and you will be able to sue them to work out your biceps at the gym.

• If you cross your eyes at some distance, you will see a secret message floating. It says: "Hey, John Mayer here. I will be at the Apple event, so please come to listen to my latest song called Let's Rock San Francisco. Thanks, John."

Knowing that Apple usually teases a bit when something really exciting is coming up, I have the sinking feeling that this is going to be a very boring event.

The album will drop via plastic disc on October 27, but Music Week implies it might hit iTunes a bit earlier. iTunes obviously already offers digital booklets for some albums, so it's possible the app will simply optimize them for the iPhone with lyrics and extra photos. But, if Apple's actually creating a whole separate app, the implementation is probably more awesome—like the Remote app doesn't exactly seem thrilling if describe it, but it's actually marvelous when you use it, especially if you're anal about your cover art.

For some, this might bring digital music another step closer to completely replacing CDs, but really, there's no substitute for that new plastic smell and cursing when you try to frantically peel the sticker off the top in pieces so you can slide it into your car's CD player for the first time. Music Week is promising more details in the dead-tree edition this week. [Music Week - Thanks Jimbo!]

Like someone pointed out before, the life of a fridge is very long, so the iPod dock would probably become obsolete down the line. I also don't see the point of having your fridge acting as your amplifier: as you can see in the video, you can connect extra speakers to it. The Wi-Fi connection and iGorenje program makes a lot more sense, as it can be expanded in the future to accommodate new appliances and functionality. Plus, it is device independent. Although you can use any device, however, the interface has clearly been optimized for the iPod touch and the iPhone, which is the handheld they were using for their demos. According to them, they have some kind of collaboration contract with Apple, so Steve or someone else in Cupertino must be a fan of the brand.

The iGorenje system works quite well. It uses the Wi-Fi network in your home to connect your web-browsing device to your oven and washing machine, and when it's released later this year you will be able to control all Gorenje appliances.

iGorenje's interface is very easy to work out. Just touch the function, select the options you want and click Start. The appliance will get the parameters, start working and give you feedback in realtime, back to your iPod. For the oven, you can start from a recipe, a wizard that allows you to set the oven according to the kind of food and weight, and a custom program, which can be easily created in iGorenje and then stored. The process is fully automatic, so if you have something that needs to be cooked first slowly, then a really high heat in the last minutes, it will handle it for you.

For the washing machine, it's exactly the same thing. This time you have different programs according to the clothes you put in, making it very easy to operate. At last, because washing machine user interface seem to be developed by sadists.

But while the whole thing seems polished and works well, do we really need this kind of sophistication in our kitchens? I may be too old school, but I like too cook in the kitchen, not by remote control. I like the idea of programming the oven in an easy way, although I will still be controlling it myself. What do you think? Is this the kind of evolution everyday home tasks need? [More IFA 2008 Coverage]

The application is not built for iPhone/iPod touch, however, but is served from a home server that controls the appliances directly. This allows you to not only use the iPod touch, but also any other web device in your home Wi-Fi network. The program allows you to program the devices using a very easy to use graphical user interface.

For example, you can set your oven to cook a type of cake by just visually selecting a recipe and clicking start. In fact, you can even get recipes straight from the server itself. The only bad thing: the iPod dock thingie is taking the place of the built-in draught beer system, which in my book is quite -20 points. [More IFA 2008 Coverage]

The political applications, sadly, tend to swing pretty far to the side of app absurdity:

Obama/McCain Inauguration Countdown: Tick down the days to January 20 for the candidate of your choice, complete with rotating quotations and photos. Also useful for reminding yourself that the one and a half years of inane campaign coverage on TV will soon be over. Sadly, they're a buck.

BAC Calc: Ahh, but here's some utility for the weekend. A blood-alcohol-level calculator to quantify exactly how hammered you've gotten while getting riled up by McCain and Obama quotes with your buddies. Just enter your consumption, alochol volume of your booze, your weight and your gender. But remember kids, the law won't care if your iPhone says you're under the limit once you find yourself in the drunk tank. Free

Beer Bounce: And once all your friends go home on Monday night, there's no sense in stopping the party when you've got Beer Bounce, the first virtual quarters game for the iPhone. As you progress through the rounds, difficulty is increased by adding blurriness and staggering to the game. Nice touch! $3

Blofeld: While it has nothing to do with anything, really, Bond fans will have to love the concept behind Blofeld. It places an image of a feline pelt on your phone, and purrs when you stroke it, evil genius style. I can't believe this costs a dollar, but again, hats off to the concept, especially the icon.

Earthscape: And just when you thought the App Store was only filled with meaningless pap, there's Earthscape, which brings a great-looking Google Earth-style satellite image browser to your phone. It's a little laggy at times, and the image quality isn't as high as GMaps, but a great way to kill a few minutes if you're stuck in line somewhere. $5

This week's app coverage on Giz:

• Tris, the free Tetris game, was pulled from the store (voluntarily) for copyright violations. Infinite sadness.
• Our Question of the Day found that a typical Giz reader has spent between $1 and $10 on apps, but with many bigger spenders also responding. Go vote if you haven't yet.
• A fairly harmless comic app Murderdrome was rejected from the store, and its creators want a rating system for apps to avoid censorship, which is a great idea.
• A quasi-hologram app looked awesome, but later turned out to be just a proof-of-concept simulation, although its creator wants to make it into reality.
• And the Android Market, Google's answer to the App Store, was officially announced and does not require an approval process to get listed.

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see what you missed last week and check our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good long weekend everybody.

You can download the new WinPwn at this direct link, and pick up a torrent for QuicPwn Tool for Mac here.
[WinPwn and Dev Team - Thanks, Estevan and Jason]

To troubleshoot the problem, he restored his phone from scratch, but even after reinstalling 7.7.1 iTunes and 2.0.2 firmware in his never-jailbreaked iPhone 3G, the sync is unbearably long. We even tried syncing on an Air and an iMac and used another cable. The only outstanding set of data Brandon had is that he loads 74 apps to his phone. And he says that by adding apps one at a time, his sync/backup time slowly goes up—so it's not a single buggy app ruining the process.

Now, I'm sure Brandon's case is an exceptionally complicated problem. He still has an iTunes error message pop up when he syncs, for example. And even when we both load up 50 apps on our phones, his sync is much longer at 4 hours. This is clearly not a normal example, but that doesn't mean it's not real, and it doesn't mean it isn't related to the big problem many have been suffering from since firmware 2.00 hit. Maybe Brandon can be our poster boy for the eternal sync/backup problem. Or, until Apple fixes it, we can watch this video every time we complain about the iPhone's sync times and we can feel like it could have been worse. Like 8 hours' worth of worse. But damn if that video doesn't make you happy when it's finally done with the transfer. [Brandon's Blog]

The song in the video is Foreplay/Long Time, by Boston, FWIW. [Brandon's blog, Foreplay/Long Time Amazon, iTunes]

His setup:

Both machines running 10.5.4 and iTunes 7.7.1 (but again, this started on 7.7)
Air is a day 1 1.6GHZ, 80GB and the iMac is a 2.8GHZ 4GB RAM 320GB HDD

When I started, I had

997.1 MB of music (163 songs, all .m4a files, except 27 .m4p)
5 playlists
93.6 MB of photos
27 ringtones
No movies or TV shows
47 MB video (all video podcasts)
Contacts, calendar synced to MobileMe
3 other IMAP email accounts
74 apps (a lot, I know, but certainly not as many as you could possibly have)

The sync added

No music
No playlists
No photos
No ringtones
No movies or TV shows
3.5 GB of video (99 podcasts, and this part only took about 10 minutes, as you can see in the video)
6 app updates (2 of which were not installed because of an error)
No new apps

The backup folder produced this time weighs in at 9,771 items and 848.1 MB [corrected from GB]

My observations:
It doesn't matter if the app updates error or not, my last sync was 6:49 with 4 app updates, all of which were successful.
Since 2.0, backup and sync has been very long, but not to this extent. Usually 1.5 - 2 hours.
It started getting this bad about a month ago, right before iTunes 7.7.1 came out, an app crashed mid install via Wi-Fi app store, crashing the phone to the Apple logo but not booting all the way.
When it crashed like that, I put it in DFU mode and restored from backup, immediately had the same problem.
Back to DFU mode and restored with fresh firmware—instead of crashing daily, it did it every few days, requiring DFU mode and fresh download of firmware.
Did a complete wipe from within the phone, installed fresh firmware again, and started from scratch. New iTunes installation (removing support files first, empty trash, reboot, then reinstall) new firmware download.
Since then, no more Apple logo of death, and very few app crashes in general, but still excruciating backup/sync times.
If I skip the backup (I'm inclined to do that these days, since they are usually corrupted, even with a fresh copy on the desktop) it still takes at least 2-3 hours to sync.

It's been such a long time
I think I should be goin', yeah
And time doesn't wait for me, it keeps on rollin'
Sail on, on a distant highway
I've got to keep on chasin' a dream
I've gotta be on my way
Wish there was something I could say.

Well I'm takin' my time, I'm just movin' along
You'll forget about me after I've been gone
And I take what I find, I don't want no more
It's just outside of your front door.

It's been such a long time. It's been such a long time.

Well I get so lonely when I am without you
But in my mind, deep in my mind,
I can't forget about you
Good times, and faces that remind me
I'm tryin' to forget your name and leave it all behind me
You're comin' back to find me.

It can't run Mac OS X. And to me, that's the killer. For Windows users, however, the Samsung X360 looks like the best machine of both. Granted, Apple fanboys will argue that a revision of the MacBook Air is just around the corner, but at this point and on the surface—and without knowing the final US price, which we guess will be comparable to the MacBook Air as well—, the winner is the Samsung X360.

The Good: Ultra-thin, ultra-light, great quality, and good number of features, including expandability via Express Card and direct access to HDMI and flash cards (I can kill for this one). No compromises except the optical unit, which I can live without, like many other people, I suspect. The keyboard was comfortable, chiclet-style.

The Bad: The damn piano black finish. As a personal note, the fact that it can't run Mac OS X (without modification) is the main drawback for me, as I think it's what makes the MacBook the best notebooks in the market. However, this last "bad" won't be bad at all for the largest part of the market, though.

Bottom line: If Samsung can nail the price of this unit at the $1,800 mark, they definitely have a best seller in their hands. However, we will have to wait and see Apple's new MacBook Air, who obviously has a long lead in this category at this point. [More IFA 2008 Coverage]

The minor iPhone security issue, which surfaced this week, is fixed in a software update which will be released in September.

That jewel comes from an Apple spokeswoman, deciding to ignore what ourselves, Wired or the San Francisco Chronicle have classified as a massive security problem. Ms. PR rep: could you please send us your me.com and apple.com passwords so we can demonstrate how easily accessing your mail by clicking a button is not, and will never be, a "minor security issue"?

In the meantime, she points out to the user-driven fix, as if that would help the millions who have iPhones and don't read Gizmodo, Wired, SFC, Reuters, or any of the outlets around the web that echoed the news. Not good enough, I'm afraid. [Reuters]

Essentially, the 2.0.2 updated the iPhone to ask for less power from AT&T's towers for UMTS voice and data transmission. Apparently iPhones were simply asking for too much power—more than the handsets actually required—and when many iPhone users were stacked on one base transceiver station tower, the tower simply ran out of power.

No/low tower power equals dropped calls and poor 3G connections.

It's sort of like splitting a chicken for dinner. If everyone grabs just one piece, it can feed a family. But if Dad goes back for seconds before Mom sits down to the table, someone is going hungry.

The problem will not fix itself until the firmware update is distributed to more handsets. So update your phones and bring me another piece of chicken. [DailyTech via CrunchGear]

The full QWERTY keyboard above has provisions not just for multiple finger keystrokes, but for accepting inputs from all fingers of both hands for touch typing, including multiple key combinations like ctrl-alt-delete and shift/option commands.

As for solving the problem of the many places in OS X where tiny buttons may be difficult to tap (window control buttons, for instance), it looks like we'll see the same pop-up monocle zoom as the iPhone for getting a clearer view of what needs to get tapped.

And a virtual scroll wheel design element can pop up when needed, and be manipulated with single finger swipes, or moved around the desktop with a double-finger drag.

This seems like the most fleshed-out set of multitouch tablet tech we've seen from Apple. It's just a patent filing (dated April 15, 2008), but it seems like things are getting a bit more serious on the Mac Tablet front. And I maintain, being a patent filing illustrator has got to be one of the weirdest, if not best, jobs for someone handy with drawing.
More at: [Appleinsider]