Maximum PC iphone RSS Feed

Greenpeace Unimpressed by "World's Greenest Family of Notebooks"

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:32:15 -0600

Apple is finding it extremely difficult to avoid being in Greenpeace’s cross hairs. Nearly a year ago, Greenpeace branded the iPhone as “toxic”. Now, the organization has flayed Apple’s pompous claim that its Macbook line of notebooks are the greenest there are.

The Macbook range of notebooks scored a highly disappointing 4.3 out of a possible 10 points on the organization’s green index. Greenpeace did laud Apple, though very frugally, for doing away with bromide flame-retardants and other toxic plastics. But it clearly believes that Apple should take more steps to substantiate its towering claims.

Greenpeace has put the ball in Apple’s court by asking it “to commit to phasing out additional substances with timelines, improve its policy on chemicals and its reporting on chemicals management.”

Hacked iPhone Runs Linux

Andy Salisbury — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:01:48 -0600

Everyone’s favorite (according to sales numbers, at least) smartphone, the iPhone has finally been hacked to run Linux.

The 2.6 kernel only features a bootloader, so if you decide to rock Linux on your iPhone (there are instructions on the Linux on the iPhone blog) you’ll be met with a console that requires a USB connection to access. They’ve also been unable to use the touchscreen, sound, accelerometer and networking functionality of the iPhone.

While admittedly this isn’t a super impressive showing, it’s a great start for the Linux iPhone community. The building blocks have been placed, folks.

If you’re interested in how the whole process plays out, be sure to peep the video!

Rip DVDs for Playback on Your iPhone, PSP, Xbox 360, PS3, AppleTV, or Any H.264-Enabled Player

Will Smith — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:00:00 -0600

It’s hard to believe in the iTunes era of blink-and-you-miss-them CD rips, but in the mid-90s, ripping a CD was a time-consuming process, fraught with peril. Ripping a single disc to 128kbps MP3 could take 8 hours on a 200MHz Pentium! Fast forward a decade, with faster hardware and better software and CD ripping is so mainstream your mom does it.

Ripping DVDs and transcoding the video stored within into more efficient formats involves an order of magnitude more scary math than ripping audio CDs. A machine that will rip the latest Miley Cyrus CD in moments could take hours to extract and convert your copy of AVP to an iPod-friendly format. However, with the right software, a quad-core equipped PC, and a little know-how, you can cut your disc rip time from hours to 20 or 30 minutes. There are still plenty of tricks and traps for first-time rippers, but we’ll show you the basics, then walk you through the secrets of ripping power users everywhere.

However, the first thing you need to decide is simple: what player are you ripping your discs for? Are you ripping for a portable player, like the PSP or iPhone? Would you rather stream to device in your living room, like the Xbox 360, PS3, or Popcorn Hour? Are you simply interested in making an archival-quality DVD rips, in case you lose your collection? More likely, you’re probably looking for a combination of all three of these things. We’ll show you how to rip your DVD to a file suitable for streaming that consumes a fraction of the disk space of a DVD but maintains full video and audio quality. Then you can take that file, and convert it for whatever other devices you might have, like a PSP or an iPod. For the purposes of this story, we're going to focus on DVD rips. Getting ahold of unencrypted high-defintion video legally is still pretty tricky. We'll update with Blu-ray ripping info as ripping Blu-ray gets easier.

Hit the jump to get started.

Flash Headed to Smartphones; Apple Still Holding Out

Andy Salisbury — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:33:32 -0600

At a series of press events over the past few days Adobe has unveiled a brand new version of flash aimed directly at smartphones. The new version of Flash is optimized to work with ARM processors (like the one used in the iPhone).

So long as your smartphone has a processor clock speed of at least 200MHz and 16MB of RAM, it should be able to run the new Flash. It’s also mentioned that a “completely capable browser” is required, but given the phones that it’s meant for, there shouldn’t be any issues.

Google’s G1 is expected to get the update soon, among others. Whether it’ll be simply downloaded by the phone itself or updated in-store is yet to be revealed.

While many other smartphone vendors are prominent when it comes to excitement about the possibility of Flash on their phones, Apple isn’t. Steve Jobs has mentioned that Flash “performs too slow to be useful” on the extremely popular iPhone. To many this seems like a match made in heaven, but Apple has politely snubbed that notion.

Apple Cuts iPhone Production by 40 Percent

Andy Salisbury — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:12:54 -0600

Apple has cut their Q4 iPhone production proposal drastically from what they had originally planned, according to a report by Freidman Billings Ramsey analyst Craig Berger. Having originally set out for a 10 percent drop, recent data suggests that production could drop more than 40 percent.

This data however, doesn’t necessarily reflect a significantly slowing iPhone demand. While the production is slowing down, iPhone shipments won’t be 40 percent lower.

Lowered production numbers could have a lot to do with the hurting economy, and the fact that Apple deliberately produced an excess of iPhones in Q3 to help provide some excess supply.

According to Berger, “…iPhone production plans are being revised lower suggests that the global [macroeconomic] weakness is impacting even high-end consumers, those that are more likely to buy Apple's expensive gadgets, and that no market segment will be spared in this global downturn. This is a negative signal for global demand, in our view.”

Google Earth Flies Into iPhone’s Orbit and is Pretty Damn Cool

Alex Castle — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:55:07 -0500

Even as Google pushes its own SmartPhone platform, it continues to release some pretty rad apps for the competitor. Google Earth for the iPhone has hit the App Store’s virtual shelves as a free download, and it’s definitely worth a look.

The pint-sized Google Earth looks to have all the same functionality as the computer version, including integration with Wikipedia and Google’s Panoramio library of pictures from around the world. Of course, navigation is a little different on the iPhone, with zooming controlled by pinching your fingers on the screen, and scrolling handled by sweeping a digit across the display. In a nice touch, the viewing angle can be controlled by actually changing the angle of your iPhone.

The apps also integrates Google’s “My Location” feature, which uses cellular tower triangulation to identify your approximate location on the map.

They’ve also posted a video showing off the new app. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Like the iPhone, Google’s Android Has a Kill Switch for Applications

Alex Castle — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:52:38 -0500

Back in August there was quite a commotion over the discovery that Apple had included a “kill switch” in the iPhone, functionality that allowed them to remotely remove applications from the device without the user’s consent. Now, in the Android Market terms of service, Google has revealed that Android has its own kill switch.

To Google’s credit, they’re not attempting to hide the kill switch. They say, in the terms of service “Google may discover a product that violates the developer distribution agreement … in such an instance, Google retains the right to remotely remove those applications from your device at its sole discretion.” Apple, on the other hand, didn’t say a word about their remote removal function until a developer called them out on it.

Further, Android’s kill switch only applies to programs downloaded through the Android Market, meaning that if users really want some verboten app, they still have the option of getting it from the developer, or through other channels, unlike the iPhone. Also, Google says that it will try to refund the purchase price of any app bought through the Market that it has to disable.

What do you think of the kill switch? Will it help keep malware off your G1, or should that be left up to the user? Tell us after the jump.

1.5 Million Apple Haters Have Preordered the T-Mobile G1 Android Phone

Paul Lilly — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:31:55 -0500

It doesn't matter that the first-generation iPhone lacked 3G functionality or that early adopters were slapped in the face so quickly after its release. Even intentional bricking through a firmware update hasn't been enough to knock Apple's iPhone off its pedestal as the must-have cellular phone for geeks and hipsters alike. Can T-Mobile's HTC G1 Android phone deliver the right hook and make this a fight?

It's far too early to tell, but early indications look promising. According to the Motley Fool, T-Mobile subscribers have already gobbled up all of the available preorders for initial shipments of the G1, prompting T-Mobile to triple its order with handset maker HTC. Those have sold out too. All tallied, roughly 1.5 million G1s are already accounted for, with another couple million reserved for retail sales.

That still puts the G1 far behind the 10 million iPhones Apple said it would like to sell this year, but it's a good start for a phone that hasn't even been released yet and still won't be for another couple of weeks. And if the G1 is going to have any chance at taking a bite out of Apple, it's going to need to come out strong and convince buyers there's more to the Android platform than hype.

Anyone plan on picking one up or already placed a preorder? Hit the jump and sound off.