MacRumors

The first Time Capsules have started arriving, and some Apple Stores already have the new wireless backup solution in stock.

First impressions from Gizmodo and Engadget provide the following observations:

- New AirPort Utility software with easy to use step-by-step
- USB Drives connected to Time Capsule are available for backup
- Initial backup takes a while.
- An Apple Tech note recommends not interrupting your first backup. and notes that you can use an Ethernet connection for your initial backup.
- Can't transfer an existing Time Machine backup to Time Capsule.
- "so far it works as billed, clean and easy."

Apple has posted (PDF) the Time Capsule setup guide which provides detailed instructions on the the product's usage.

Time Capsule is a wireless backup accessory for the Mac that allows you to backup your computer's data. It was announced by Apple at Macworld San Francisco 2008 and is available in 500GB ($299) and 1TB ($499) models.

iLounge cites several sources "familiar with Apples iPhone and iPod touch software development kit (SDK) plans" to reveal some controversial new details:

iTunes Store as hub - as expected, Apple will require future iPhone and iPod Touch applications to be distributed through Apple's iTunes Store.
Apple as Application Gatekeeper - iLounge believes that Apple will act as a gatekeeper for the applications themselves and will formally approve or deny all software releases:

While one source saw this as a positive for major developers, suggesting that Apple will be choked by application submissions and forced to give priority to releases from larger companies, another source disagreed, stating that Apples current approval processes for third-party products have resulted in lengthy, needless delays.

No Accessory Support - no ability to support dock-based accessories (such as a GPS module), though the iPhone's own phone, Wi-Fi, and camera will reportedly be accessible.

iLounge corroborates earlier rumors that the final SDK would not be ready for release at Apple's March 6th event. Instead, they echo that a beta will be available then, with the final release to await WWDC in June. Meanwhile, they do expect Apple to announce Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes support at the March event.

A Youtube video of an upcoming puzzle game for the iPhone demonstrates how developers could use the unique capabilities of the iPhone as part of the gaming experience.

Trism is a puzzle game, requiring the player to align the the triangles together in three or more consecutive triangles of the same color. Rows of triangles may be moved with the use of the touch screen, and grouped triangles will disappear. The remainder of the triangles will fall into the open space left. The direction of the fall depends on the vertical orientation of the iPhone at the time the triangles disappear. The video demonstrates the basic gameplay well.

The game is currently under development as an "unofficial" 3rd party application and requires a jailbroken iPhone. However, the developer is planning to relaunch it once the official Software Development Kit is released. Apple is hosting a media event on March 6th to announce details about the iPhone and iPod Touch SDK.

A demo of the game will be available on demiforce.com.

SetteB.it claims that the announced "Roadmap" event for the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) will be just that... a "Roadmap". The site believes that Apple will be unable to deliver a final version of the SDK at their March 6th event. Instead, a beta version will be released, with a final version not expected until Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC). The dates for this year's WWDC have not yet been announced, but the conference typically falls in June.

SetteB.it is not a typical rumor source, but this information is consistent with earlier Page 2 rumors and direct observations we've heard from individuals who have seen early versions of the SDK, saying that it appeared to offer just the "bare essentials" at that time.

Meanwhile, UBS analysts are continuing to predict that the 3G iPhone will be released "mid-year". They also pinpoint Infineon Technologies AG as the likely supplier for the 3G communications chip.

Underscoring comments by Apple COO Tim Cook that they are working to expand the iPhone into new geographic areas, wireless carrier O2 announced that they would be introducing the iPhone in Ireland on March 14th, 2008.

The iPhone will be made available through both O2 retail stores as well as branches of Carphone Warehouse. The 8GB model will cost 399 euro and the 16GB at 499 euro. Tariffs start at 45 euro per month. Visual voicemail is not yet supported.

45 euro/mo: 175 minutes, 100 texts, 1GB data
65 euro/mo: 350 minutes, 150 texts, 1GB data
100 euro/mo: 700 minutes, 250 texts, 1GB data

More information available at o2online.ie.

Apple's COO, Timothy Cook, delivered a question and answer session at the Goldman Sachs Investment Symposium yesterday, and touched on a number of interesting topics. Differing notes available at MacNN, Appleinsider and iPhoneAtlas.

Of interest, Cook answers why Apple hasn't offered an unlocked version of the iPhone. He states that multi-carrier offerings were impractical at launch. For the U.S. market, this would require a CDMA and GSM version of the iPhone. In the end, they felt it was impractical to try to satisfy every carrier and every user. Still, he states that Apple is "not married to any business model" and instead, they're "married to ... shipping the best phones in the world."

When asked about the possibility of Apple expanding into even more areas with new product lines, Cook feels anything is possible, but that each product choice is made carefully since "for everything we do, we know me make a choice not to do something else. We may or may not add some over time, we'll see."

Regarding iPod reaching a saturation point, Cook points out that 40% of iPods are still being sold to those who don't already own an iPod and suggests that slower iPod sales are a reflection of the economy than necessarily sales saturation.

He again describes the iPod Touch as the "first mainstream WiFi portable platform" and also describes the iPhone as a "platform not a product", and states that the upcoming SDK will "broaden the platform more, to the point where the only limit will be peoples imagination." Cook stopped short when asked about when the first 3rd party apps would appear, not wanting to take away any element of surprise from next week's event.

Finally on iPhone Unlocking, Cook acknowledges the problem but states he "look[s] at this 'problem' with a little bit of a smile. Having people stepping over each other for the phone isnt a bad thing. He goes on to state that the best way for Apple to fight back is to offer the iPhone in more countries.

A Quicktime stream of the talk is available from Apple.

Apple broadcast a new iPod touch advertisement during American Idol last night. The new advertisement features a table full of iPod touches showing off various features including Photos, Cover Flow, Weather, Notes, Web Browsing, Mail and Video playback.

Brendan Benson is the latest artist to benefit from exposure in an Apple television commercial with their song, What I'm Looking For (iTunes link). Compete reports that almost 1 million searches for iPod commercials and their songs were conducted from August 2007 to January 2008. Though briefly, Apple actually shows the artist name and song being played in this commercial on one of the iPod Touch's screens.

Apple has posted the new ad in Quicktime format and is also available on YouTube.

Crave and Reuters reports that Apple has sent out invitations for an event on Thursday morning detailing the iPhone Software Developement Kit (SDK):

"Please join us to learn about the iPhone software roadmap, including the iPhone SDK and some exciting new enterprise features," Apple said in an invitation sent to reporters.

Steve Jobs had originally announced that the iPhone and iPod Touch Software Development Kit (SDK) would be released in February 2008. Last week rumors pointed to a brief delay in the launch of the SDK. The SDK will allow developers to release their own software applications for both the iPod Touch and iPhone.

Few details have been made available, but the SDK has reportedly been seeded to select developers in the months ahead of its release. The event will take places at 10am Pacific time at Apple's Cupertino campus.

DailyTech reports that Intel is planning to replace the Santa Rosa mobile platform with Montevina this June. More specifically, they claim that Apple will be revising their notebooks again this June to incorporate newest chipsets:

Apple insiders confirmed the company will refresh its notebook lineups in June, which comes as no surprise since all Centrino partners indicated they will announce notebooks based on the new Montevina Centrino 2.

Alongside the platform refresh will be new Penryn processors with faster front-side buses (1066MHz) than the current revisions (800MHz). Apple just updated their MacBook Pro with the latest Penryn processors,

Menawhile, Digitimes details Intel's aggressive timetable with plans for Santa Rosa (Merom) to drop from 60% of shipments in the 1st quarter to 35% of shipments in 2nd quarter. Even the just released Santa Rosa (Penryn) is expected to be phased out by year's end to make room for Montevina.

Indeed, we had heard that Apple's introduction of Penryn-based MacBooks ahead of their usual product cycle was due to Intel's planned phase out of the older chips.

Abilene Christian University (ACU) announced yesterday that they would be issuing iPhones or iPod Touches to incoming freshman for use in their college courses and day to day lives.

At ACU - the first university in the nation to provide these cutting-edge media devices to its incoming class - freshmen will use the iPhones or iPod Touches to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors' offices, and check their meal and account balances - among more than 15 other useful web applications already developed, said ACU Chief Information Officer Kevin Roberts.

They specifically mention the use of web applications that they've developed, but extend this concept in a demonstration movie (Youtube link) called Connected. The movie shows how a fully deployed mobile learning environment might look, with mocked up examples of true iPhone applications:

The movie details a fully integrated iPhone and college experience, with integration into coursework, class participation, payment system, directory and 3d mapping. They caution that the movie is entirely speculative, of course. Some demos of their iPhone web apps are available at http://acu.mobi/.

This news, by itself, would only so interesting if the university was acting on its own, but MacRumors has heard that Apple is taking an active role in deploying the iPhone in university settings to try to regain some of their historic educational marketshare. Besides ACU, pilot projects are expected at universities such as Harvard, MIT and Stanford in the near future. The new iPhone SDK is expected to also play a role in future iPhone/University integration, though it appears that ACU does not yet have access to it.

In 2004, Duke University had a program in which they issued iPods to incoming Freshman to allow them to listen to lecture materials. Similarly, the iPhone will have tight audio/video integration with each school's iTunes University content.

Apple released new MacBooks and MacBook Pros today which incorporate the new 45nm Penryn processors, an upgrade from the older 65nm Merom processors. The jump from Merom to Penryn is not a dramatic one as previous benchmarks demonstrate.

Penryn Advantages

Overall, the high end Penryn's may have marginal improvements in performance due to higher L2 cache (6MB vs 4MB), though the low-end Penryns (2.1GHz and 2.4GHz) actually have less L2 cache (3MB vs 4MB) than their Merom counterparts. Whether this results in any real world difference is unclear. Early benchmarks of the new Penryn 2.4GHz MacBook Pro reveals a comparable GeekBench score (3086) to the older Merom 2.4GHz MacBook Pro (3094) despite this L2 cache difference.

One new feature all Penryn processors share is the SSE4 instruction set. Similar to the PowerPC's Altivec instruction set, SSE4 can provide dramatic speed increases (40% faster) for applications specifically written for it.

Battery Life

There's been some discussion about the fact that Apple's battery ratings for the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros are significantly less than previously published ratings. The new ratings are listed below with old ratings in parenthesis:

MacBook: 4.5hrs (6hrs)
15" MacBook Pro: 5hrs (5hrs)
17" MacBook Pro 4.5hrs (5.75hrs)

Apple PR clarified to Arstechnica today, however, that this is simply due to a difference in reporting the numbers, and the new Penryn-based MacBooks and MacBook Pros' battery life has actually improved -- which would be expected with the more power efficient processors:

Anuj went on to explain that Apple has always done three separate battery tests when coming up with this metrica DVD playback test, a wireless productivity test, and a "highway test," which got the best battery life and Apple used to advertise. However, the highway test is "hard to reproduce, and people got confused" he said, which is why Apple ditched it and started going with wireless productivity instead. "The wireless productivity test is the closest to normal usage, right in the middle of the road with WiFi, text editing, sending e-mail, etc." Anuj said.

Other Notes

- The new MacBook Pros have a Multitouch trackpad, but the MacBook does not.
- The Apple Remote control is no longer included, and must be purchased separately ($19).
- Teardown photos of the new MacBook Pro.
- BestBuy's inventory system incorrectly reported the MacBook part numbers as MacBook Pros, leading to some confusion about the planned updates. For future reference, BestBuy may be fed part numbers ahead of time, but has no actual knowledge of specs or price points, and clearly used placeholder information in this instance.
- Unboxing of new MacBook Pro

Why Now?

The biggest question is why Apple bothered speed bumping the MacBooks which were not yet due for revision. According to our sources, Apple was forced by Intel into upgrading the MacBooks at this time. Intel is aggressively phasing out the older generation 65nm Merom chips over the coming months. As a result, Apple needed to upgrade the MacBooks in the interim to maintain a proper supply. One could speculate that, consequently, the next MacBook refreshes may occur mid-year, ahead of their expected product cycle.

Apple has released the 1.1.4 Firmware update for iPhone and iPod Touch. No details yet on what new features (if any) have been included.

Apple released the 1.1.3 firmware at Macworld San Francisco and added a number of new features including Google Maps Location, Webclips, and Multiple-Contact SMS.

Early reports indicate that there are no obvious new features, but it does "break" unofficial apps (jailbreak). Apple was to announce the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) this month, so the release may add official support for 3rd party applications written with the SDK. The 1.1.4 firmware update is presently available through iTunes for your iPhone and iPod Touch.

Notes:
- No Flash support
- iToner 1.0.6 still works
- ZiPhone may work, but the developer warns not to upgrade as it hasn't been tested.
- Text message ordering fixed, according to one report
- Camera works better for some
- Fixes Bluetooth connectivity