Multiple Apple updates

It’s Tuesday, and that means Apple have some product updates for us. It’s been getting to be a bit of a ritual since Macworld Expo, and this has to be the busiest Tuesday so far. First off is the Macbook update, which seems to have been overlooked on the rumour front, with the focus on the Macbook Pro getting a multi touch mouse pad. So the new models are:

• White 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo, 1GB ram, 120GB hard drive and Combo drive for £699
• White 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB ram, 160GB hard drive and DL SuperDrive for £829
• Black 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB ram, 250GB hard drive and DL SuperDrive for £949

Nothing different on the design front, just updated processors, memory and hard drives for the same price. The Macbook Pro gets a more substantial update, with the arrival of the much discussed multi touch trackpad and LED backlights. Also new is the Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT with 256Mb or a rather stingy 128Mb. The full updates spec and prices are:

• 15 inch with 1440 x 900 resolution, 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB memory, 200GB hard drive, 8x double-layer SuperDrive, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 128MB SDRAM for £1,299
• 15 inch with 1440 x 900 resolution, 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB memory, 250GB hard drive, 8x double-layer SuperDrive, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 256MB SDRAM for £1,599
• 17 inch with 1680 x 1050 resolution, 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB memory, 250GB hard drive, 8x double-layer SuperDrive, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 256MB SDRAM for £1,799

Today’s final update is the iPhone/iPod Touch 1.1.4 firmware. Reports so far suggest very little new has been added over the recent 1.1.3 firmware, with just a few bugs being fixed. As usual, wait a few days for the jailbreaks to be tested and released before upgrading.

What’s new with iPhone?

Things have moved on a bit since I jailbroke my 1.1.1 iPod touch using the iJailbrake V0.4.1 method to upgrade it to 1.1.3. iJailbreak is now up to V0.5.3 and can jailbreak a new 1.1.3 iPhone, with iPod touch support on the way. TUAW has a nice article summing up the last few days progress, but it looks like there are now several methods of jailbreaking your iPhone and unlocking it to work on any cellphone network.
With the recent speculation that there are as many as one million unlocked iPhones in use it’s starting to look like Apple isn’t trying too hard to stop the practice. The hacking effort certainly seems to be gaining momentum. This may change with the next update which is rumoured to be hitting soon with flash support in safari. We should know by the end of February, the original target for the software developer kit’s release.

16Gb iPhone and 32Gb iPod Touch Announced

Apple has today announced memory upgraded versions of the iPhone and iPod Touch in the US. These do not appear to be available in the UK yet, and no details yet on when they will be. The 16Gb iPhone and 32Gb iPod Touch both cost $499, so following Apple’s recent conversion rate this should mean a UK pricing of around £349.

Free iPhone/iPod Wallpapers

I have been looking for some simple and bright wallpapers for my iPod touch and not finding what I wanted, so I decided to have a go myself. And it’s all about sharing, right?
Right click the images below to save, images will save at full size. Drop them into iTunes (I recommend into a new album), sync to device and select as wallpaper.

Leave a comment if you want any other colours.

Apple Keynote 2008 opinions

Lets get the big rant out of the way first.

20 DOLLARS TO UPGRADE THE IPOD TOUCH WITH FIVE APPS ALREADY AVAILABLE ON THE IPHONE AND EVERY JAILBROKEN TOUCH IS A JOKE.

Normal non-shouty blog resumes. I can understand the Mail, Maps, Stocks, Notes and Weather apps not being on the original iPod touch. It was an iPod, so did what the previous iPod did when it came to PIM. Not being able to add calendar events was a mistake that was rectified. But this is just taking the piss. All the early adopters that helped make the Christmas quarter such a huge success get shafted. Buy an iPod touch today and get the software for free. How can the company which styles itself as the cool guy fighting Microsoft’s corporation crap on its users like this? Leaves an unpleasant taste after all the other good things that were announced.