Geek In Me

by Dan Reilly via switched.com

Have no fear, Apple fans. According to Valleywag tipsters, Steve Jobs remains among the living, albeit still skinny. He’s also taken to parking in handicap spaces, although it’s unknown if he has a proper sticker or not.

Jobs’s health has been a topic of concern this summer since a public appearance where he appeared thin, leading many to speculate that it’s another bout of the pancreatic cancer he had in 2003. One Valleywag tipster ran into him on the sidewalk near his Palo Alto home, calling him “healthy” but “very thin.” So, be our guest and have at this story with wild speculation and irresponsible rumor mongering.





via ubergizmo.com
While we are in the earning season, it’s worth noting that Apple is now valuated at $158.8B, making it just a little bigger than Google’s $157.3B. Obviously both companies are running completely different business, but both have an equally high-profile. Thomas Claburn from Informationweek was saying that “if Google wants to remain relevant in the post-PC era, it needs to get serious about hardware. Google needs a phone, and possibly a PC”. I can’t say that it would not be nice for Google to have all of this, but frankly I don’t see it happening in the short-term: Google has a lot of money and smart people, but I doubt that they can enter in a new industry and overtake Apple or Microsoft, let alone both. Do you think that Google could enter in the PC and the mobile space… and win?





by Robert Palmer via tuaw.com

Silicon Alley Insider is offering “pure speculation” based on a tip that Apple’s Fall future product transition is a video upgrade to Apple products that includes a QuickTime encoder/decoder on a chip.

As cool as this would be, I don’t personally think it’s a significant-enough development to warn investors about. Unless, of course, it’s part and parcel of more substantial changes to Apple’s product lines.

Having video playback functions handled by a separate microprocessor capable of dealing with the variety of media formats that QuickTime handles could yield performance increases for lower-end Macs (with less-powerful video cards) and battery life savings for handheld devices.

Also, depending on what codecs are included on-board, it could mean an end to countless hours converting video specifically for your iPhone, iPod touch, or Apple TV. Additionally, MacRumors’ Arnold Kim notes that it could be of some use for encoding Blu-Ray video.

All I want is DivX AVI playback on my iPod touch. Pretty please?

by Cory Bohon via tuaw.com

TechCrunch is reporting that Foxconn (the Taiwanese Apple manufacturing plant) is building over 800,000 iPhones per week in order to meet demand. They are also reporting that this means the plant is working “above current full capacity” and notes that the quality control might not be the best at this time.

Apple has moved more than 6 million iPhone units in just the first year. According to TechCrunch, Apple’s run rate for the iPhone 3G is over 40 million units per year.

by Donald Melanson via engadget.com

We already knew that Id Software co-founder John Carmack was on board with the iPhone to some extent, but at the now-happening QuakeCon 2008 in Dallas he’s revealed just how impressed with the device he really is. According to Apple Insider, while Carmack admits that graphics memory could be a limiting factor, he describes the phone’s hardware as equivalent to a Dreamcast and almost on par with a PlayStation 2 and the original Xbox. He also sees it as far superior, at least in terms of raw specs, than the two big dedicated handheld consoles out there, saying that is “more powerful than a Nintendo DS and PSP combined.” Unfortunately, he didn’t have any actual games to show off, but he did at least confirm that Id has two “tentative titles” in the works, including a “conventional mobile game,” and one that pushes the iPhone’s graphics capabilities.

by Thomas Ricker via engadget.com

In what appears to be an increasingly common problem, hairline cracks are beginning to form on Apple’s new iPhone 3G. While most of the cracks are reportedly affecting the white model, this is likely due to the increased visibility of the dark fracture on the white case as opposed to any differences in materials between the white and black units. At the moment, the issue seems largely cosmetic and doesn’t appear to interfere with the operation of the phone. Now bust out the magnifying glass and let us know if you’re seeing the same.