Palm has officially announced the Centro. The time was sure to come, and its clear that there are a lot of people who want Palm to do good things. Evidence of this comes in the form of a 6.2% jump in stock on the announcement of the Centro’s launch yesterday at the Digital Life show in NYC. The sweetest aspect of the launch has to be the Centro’s US$99 price tag. There’s even speculation that new Sprint customers may be able to get it free. I won’t go into the specs. Here’s the video:
On Thursday Apple Computers released the much anticipated 1.1.1 firmware update for the iPhone. It is apparent that Apple is firing back at consumers with unlocked iPhones , but the update will also impair the use of third-party applications such as the ‘essential’ AppTapp installer. The 1.1.1 update offers several new features to the iPhone, many of them addressing security within Safari, Mail, and Bluetooth. Read more at ZDNet
I was thrilled beyond belief when contributor ER found the new theme we are now offering. If you look to the right you will see a new item called the Theme Switcher. As you can see, there is our theme, MoboDojo PHM, and there is now the new Retro MacOS. I’ll warn you up front, it doesn’t have the same features as the default theme. Its more like an RSS feed than a website. It is a hoot, though! Many thanks to Stuart Brown, the theme designer!
I doubt any of my readers are under the illusion that I am a fan of Vista, and its becoming clear that a lot of people share my loathing. Vendors like Dell, HP, Lenovo, and many others are offering XP Pro roll-back discs for users who want to get rid of the plagued OS. Depending on the vendor you can either get the disc as an option if you choose to degrade (upgrade?) later or charge a fee of US$15-20 to get one if you already bought your system. In case you have any doubts whatsoever, check out this piece over at PC World.
FlipStart, the makers of the “very long time to go from announcement to shipping product” FlipStart micro PC, has announced they are now shipping the Snap Camera accessory for the FlipStart. The unit snaps (I honestly didn’t get that from the name) onto the lid of the FlipStart and imbues the little PC with a 3.2MP camera.
FlipStart rather flippantly refers to it as a 5MP camera, but admits that it only achieves that via software interpolation. The addition also makes the already chunky device even chunkier, but to get a complete PC in such a small package is pretty darn cool. Its a bonus that it also handles VGA video capture. They round it out rather nicely by pricing it at a very reasonable US$150. Not bad, if you can get over the US$1,500 pricetag for the PC itself.
Engadget has some rather enticing, but ultimately dissatisfying, images of labels on the back of what can really only be a third in the line of internet tablets. There are no additional details, but an FCC filing is certainly enough for me to believe. The listed model number is “NXXX”, suggesting that it will be more of a follow-up to the N800 and not a wholly new design. Hey! Pssst!! Put some PIM functions in this time, eh!!
Apple is finally responding to the groups who are offering ways of bypassing the SIM usage restrictions placed on the popular iPhone. Currently, US-based iPhones are only usable on the AT&T network, but some smart people have figured out a few ways to get the device to work on other GSM networks. Apple, clearly a bit peeved about this behavior, has come out stating that future upgrades would disable cracked iPhones, but some are saying that Apple could be breaking the law by making such a threat.
The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975 states that is it illegal to void a products warranty if changes to it do not damage the product. Opponents of Apple’s response are claiming that the changes do not alter or modify anything in the iPhone but the software, which can easily be reverted back to the original. However, George Hotz’ iPhone hack, the first one to be proven to work, involves hardware modification, as you can clearly see in “Step 3″. This operation unquestionably voids the warranty, and this is very likely what Apple is aiming at. What, do you think Apple’s lawyers are stupid?
Regardless, the outcome of this row should be very interesting, indeed.
In a chat with some folks, Stephen “The Woz” Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Inc., gave Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and the other co-founder, the business for dropping the iPhone price so quickly and steeply. The Woz goes on to say that he loves the iPhone, though it still needs some work. Apparently he’s a really big fan of Bluetooth, and the iPhone doesn’t handle it well. Hmm.
Oh, and if you get the idea that Woz is some kind of idiot from the transcription, don’t. The idiots are the ones who transcribed the conversation. That is some of the worst I have ever seen. The Woz is a very, very bright guy. Ahem! He created the Apple hardware platform, yo!
Wow. I didn’t anticipate this ever happening, especially after Sony can’t seem to keep their pants above their collective waist since the PS2 started to peter out. It looked clearly like Nintendo had finally taken back its mantle, but numbers from Japan this week state otherwise. According to PC World, here are those numbers: 95,487 for the Sony PSP, 79,974 units for the Nintendo DS, 26,181 for the Nintendo Wii, 13,128 for the venerable PlayStation 2, 13,101 for the overpriced PlayStation 3, and the Xbox 360 cleaning up with a mere 1,243.
Apparently we can chalk all of this PS mania up to one source, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII [in Japanese, US version expected in Spring '08]. This isn’t altogether surprising, but I’m a little shocked that it was enough to put the PSP in the lead over the DS, which itself enjoys a considerable lead over its more capable older brother, the Wii. My only question is will it be enough to maintain a lead? I doubt it. Sony has only been able to manage a very poor showing for the PSP, and the only reason CCFF7 is a hot seller is because Final Fantasy VII was the most popular iteration of the long running franchise.
ASUS is apparently about to start shipping their long anticipated (and oddly named) Eee 701 micro lappy. In fact, they are taking US$150 non-refundable deposits on the diminutive device. Let’s hope that, unlike Palm’s now dead Foleo, that will actually ship this little wonder.
If you are unfamiliar with this unit, it is a very compact PC laptop likely designed around a Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) Intel chipset and a solidstate hard drive. It comes with 512MBs of RAM (max of 1GB), 2GB or 4GB storage capacity, and is pre-loaded with an unspecified Linux distribution (likely Ubuntu). The 2GB unit comes only in black while the 4GB models come in black or white.
The only drawback I see to this unit is its very anemic battery life of 3 hours. ASUS even states this. I’m not sure how that’s going to work. Pricing ranges from US$259.99 to US$399.99 and will supposedly be available starting in early October.
Oh, life is sweet when a gadget freak like me finds out about a device as cool as this. Take a look at the video I posted to YouTube and it tells you a lot about Fujitsu’s new super mega ultra proto portable, the U810. Its almost identical to the U1010 with one major exception; Core 2 Duo. Yes. Using an Ultra Low Power version of their new chip, the A110, the new U810 has actual battery life and guts! Prices have also come down. Look to pay US$999-1099 for one. The cost difference can mostly be attributed to OS version.
I strongly suggest getting it with XP and not Vista. STRONGLY.
Okay, so not quite back yet. I have some wrangling to do with the domain, but for all intents and purposes, I’m reopening the venerable mobile gear site. The original site ran from 2000 to 2006 and at its greatest peak drew nearly 250,000 monthly readers from around the world. Right now, MoboDojo yields around 1,100 and my love of mobile technology is so strong I just can’t ignore it. I hope you enjoy, and please feel free to let me know if I’m doing things right.
Though I acquired the 701c before I got the Mac Classic, I had stars in my eyes from the miniscule Macintosh. I’m going to rectify that now via this piece. For those of you who don’t know, the IBM ThinkPad 701c is not a new machine, and, true to my nature, its a laptop. Its a special laptop, though, as it is unique among lappys. What makes it unique is its “Butterfly” keyboard. You see, the keyboard is wider than the laptop is, and thats not magic.
It performs its trick via some very clever mechanical machinations. As you lift the lid of the lappy it actuates a gear which causes the two halves of the keyboard to move outward and join together. It works because the engineers at IBM were very, very cool. To see it in action, check out this YouTube video.
I guess, now that a week has passed, that I should mention something about Apple’s Super Jumbo iPod Show. Sure, they replaced the iPod Nano with a fat baby version of the iPod Video and they bumped the iPod up to 80GB and 160GB versions and renamed it iPod Classic, but is the real news the iPod Touch?
Sure, its an iPhone without the phone or email parts, but all Apple could come up with was an 8GB and 16GB solid state models? They made the ultrathick iPod Classic 160GB! They can’t stick a slim 30-60GB hard drive into an iPod Touch case and make it a little thicker? Maybe its because they’re charging too much. At $300-400 each, its almost as much as an iPhone.
Oh, but wait! At the end of the Greatest Show On Earth, Jobs announced that he was killing the anemic iPhone 4GB model and cutting the 8GB model’s price by $200 to make it $399. So now the choice is either n 8GB iPod Touch or an 8GB iPhone. This certainly pissed off a lot of early adopters, though. Stock prices dropped on the announcement of the price adjustment.
Summer is ending, Fall is starting to get going, and Winter won't be far behind. All that means that we're nearing the holiday season and new gadg' pr0n will be shipping to tempt the hordes. How sweet the sound of digitalism! Better save up your bucks, though. I predict a very small sales season due in no small part to this fantastic economy of ours!
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FlipStart, the makers of the “very long time to go from announcement to shipping product” FlipStart micro PC, has announced they are now 
ASUS is apparently about to start shipping their long anticipated (and oddly named) Eee 701 micro lappy. In fact, 
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