The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Put aside, for the moment, the incongruity of non-US stores featuring discounts for the day after a US-only holiday... just roll with it, OK? Apple's online store for Australia -- where, of course, it's already Black Friday -- has got the one-day discount page posted and ready to go.

The pricing drops are in the vicinity of 8-10% on the listed gear, which is certainly nice, and consistent with the second take on the leaked Apple ad posted by Boy Genius Report (the first one posted by the site featured delightful discounts that were much higher -- and unfortunately quite bogus). Look for similar discounts on the US store starting tonight.

Thanks to Victor Cajiao!

Dan Frommer's post this morning over at Silicon Alley Insider suggests that one of the missing pieces from the competitive pie, as far as Google and Palm's mobile OS offerings are concerned, is a 3G-free & contractless device. Something, perhaps, like the iPod touch. Absent a way for consumers and developers to buy into the platform without the burden of a monthly cellphone contract, he argues, the two players are unlikely to build the critical mass of apps and app purchasers that would grant vitality and staying power in the face of the Apple/App Store ecosystem.

It's easy to see that the touch provides a great boost to the App Store juggernaut; about one-third of the 50 million-plus iPhone OS devices are estimated to be iPod touch units, and all those owners are potential app and music customers. Certainly there's an audience for Android (if not WebOS, which is more telephony-centric to my mind) on a disconnected gadget?

Unfortunately, Frommer's analysis is missing two key pieces of market data. Number one, as was adroitly pointed out by Joachim on Sunday's talkcast, there already is a contract-free developer handheld for Android, available for $399 from the Android Market... exactly what he proposes in the last paragraph of his story. There's also the new Archos 5 Internet Tablet, a consumer-grade, contract-free and phoneless Android tablet, ready for the eager Android personal media player buyers to snap up. (The equivalent contract-free Pre is a stark $899, and there is no 3G-less WebOS device that I can find.) Update: A commenter notes the Creative Zii Egg, another impending Android PMP that looks astonishingly like an Apple product.

That's where we come to the second market truth that Frommer missed, and it's a harsh one: Nobody knows, and nobody cares. Even a guy writing about this precise topic had no idea -- and apparently couldn't quickly discover from a casual search -- that these devices were already out in the field, despite frequent coverage of the Archos device on Engadget and elsewhere over the past few months. If there's any starker evidence that the market for non-phone Android and WebOS devices simply doesn't exist yet, I can't imagine what it would be.

Part of the reason for the iPod touch's success is that it clearly combined two already-successful products: the iPhone and the iPod. The 'elevator pitch' for the device ("It's an iPhone but with Wi-Fi instead of the phone") is simple and straightforward. Unfortunately for Android, there really isn't a dynamic personal media player market anymore that supports a phoneless entrant... it got eaten by the iPod.

I do think it would be healthy for the iPhone and for the portable OS market in general if developers and customers had more contract-free options on the other platforms. Still, the retroactive wish-fulfillment of Frommer's post doesn't bode well. "Oh, they already have that? Gosh."

You can catch last week's show, the deep dive on the Psystar summary judgment with Lauren, via iTunes or Talkshoe. Granted, it was a bit single-minded compared to our usual attention deficit-driven topic hop, but I enjoyed it!

Tonight, we're going to cover the week in review as we often do; plus we'll take your calls and suggestions for our holiday gift guide choices. It's a great time to drop hints to family and friends about what you're hoping to get (for the record, the entire TUAW staff looks good in cashmere). Do join us.

To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the "TalkShoe Web" button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (take advantange of your free cellphone weekend minutes if you like): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *-8.

If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk with you then!

Despite some security-conscious enterprise experts pointing accusatory fingers at the rather bleak encryption story and only-recently fixed ActiveSync policy compliance on the iPhone platform, there's no doubt that IT and network professionals are grooving on the iPhone -- there are many apps designed for administrators to take control of their operations with a touch of a finger, and now Cisco has stepped in with an informational and alert resource that fits in your pocket.

The Cisco SIO (Security Intelligence Operations) to Go free app [iTunes link], requiring iPhone OS 3.0 or later, lets the paranoid properly alert and aware security professional keep tabs on the global threat landscape with Cisco's Cyber Risk Reports, Threat Outbreaks and Mitigation Bulletins, along with podcasts, blog posts and a slew of other branded content. There's also an IronPort-driven IP and email domain scanner, which will grab WHOIS data along with a brief reputation score for your hosts.

Having all this Cisco goodness in one place is handy, although the majority of the app's headlines link to pages on the Cisco site that remain largely iPhone-unfriendly -- even the press release announcing the app's launch is hard to zoom properly -- and there's none of the flexibility of a full-featured RSS reader to forward articles, bookmark or set read/unread points.

Still, as a gesture of goodwill towards the intersection of iPhone users and security professionals, it's a reasonable step. Cisco also has the WebEx Meetings app [iTunes link] and the Cisco Mobile telephony tool [iTunes link] in the store, both free.

[via TechCrunch]

At the risk of invoking a round of reader rage, I'll admit that I've never really been that hyped on the idea of MMS on the iPhone (and, by the way, get off my lawn). If I want to send someone a picture, I've got their email address; I'll just send them a picture. No big whoop.

I do have some friends and colleagues who 'came up' on mainline camera phones and they gleefully pop pics back and forth via MMS. I also appreciate the ability to decode the snapshots my wife sends from her Motorola RAZR, but overall I wouldn't rate it among the top iPhone features I was eager to get from AT&T (not like the ongoing lack of tethering, which is making me grind my teeth in my sleep).

That prejudicial attitude may have made me a little skeptical when I met with FunMobility's CEO Adam Lavine this week to get a preview of his company's new free app FunMail [iTunes link], which promises to leverage the Semantic Media Project and add appropriate imagery to your MMS messages, short emails, Facebook wall posts, et cetera. It's available in the US App Store as of last night.

Sure, the app is simple enough to use (once you register and accept the company's TOS, which may subject you to occasional text messages from them if you don't opt out) -- type in your message, and the system gives you the text (up to 140 characters) atop your choice of image from a list of five, sourced from FunMobility's licensed libraries along with Creative Commons remixable content from Flickr and other repositories. If you want to include a hidden search term, putting it at the end of the message with a double-hash (##) will tell FunMail to search those words without including them in the sent message. You can send it to any mobile phone number in your address book, to email recipients, or to your Facebook friends or wall via Facebook Connect. The result is a little bit inspirational office poster, a little bit LOLcat, and in some ways strangely intriguing... but not really, you know, useful.

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We're back tonight after an unexpected week off due to a headcold, and we're diving into the Psystar summary judgment with Lauren to sort out the difference between a copyright, a EULA, and a bright shiny object. We'll be live at 10 pm ET, so call on in.

To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, or you can try out the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the "TalkShoe Web" button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (take advantange of your free cellphone weekend minutes if you like): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *-8.

If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk with you then!

The productivity suites for Mac from Microsoft, past and present, received a patch this week to resolve security issues and improve performance. While the 2004 version only got the security patches, the 2008 update, to version 12.2.3, boasts the following fixes to all apps in the suite:

• Security is improved. This update fixes vulnerabilities in Office 2008 that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code. For more information, see the security bulletin that is listed earlier in this document.
• Stability is improved. This update fixes an issue that causes Office 2008 applications to close unexpectedly when you open or use Office 2008 applications.
• Windows Office documents to which metafiles are attached now contain the correct text spacing when they are opened in Office 2008 for Mac. This update fixes text spacing issues that occur when you use Office 2008 for Mac to open a Windows Office document to which an OLE object or a metafile is attached.

There are also specific tweaks to the individual suite apps, and a passel of bug fixes for the (relatively) new Microsoft Document Connection for Mac utility. The 350MB updater requires Office 12.1.0 or later and Mac OS X 10.4.9.

While my experience is probably idiosyncratic, I did have a rather nasty sequence of events after updating my home machine to the new Office version: my Entourage database went belly-up and had to be rebuilt. Once the rebuild was done and Entourage was relaunched, more badness ensued; due to a yet-to-be-isolated issue, all of the mail, contacts and calendar entries in my connected Exchange 2003 account went poof and had to be restored from a backup. Not my best day ever.

I'm inclined to believe that this snafu was specific to my bloated database file and my Exchange config, and not something likely to hit most users... nevertheless, you might consider backing up your Office 2008 Identities folder (which contains your Entourage mail & PIM data) prior to the update.

It's scheduled to open to the public on Saturday morning, but Apple gave a sneak peek of its newest US retail outlet to press and photographers this morning -- no, I wasn't invited, and yes, I did ask nicely.

Gothamist is there, though, and snapping some snazzy pictures of the grand glass roof and huge sales space. The word that comes to mind is 'dramatic,' and then the next word that comes to mind is 'big.'

How big is this new store? Ron Johnson tells the site that the ground floor could fit eleven of the iconic glass cubes from the 5th Ave store. Yowza. More pictures here from ifoAppleStore cover the store's unveiling.

If you're planning to attend the store opening on Saturday, drop us a line or send in a link to your photos & videos.

It would have been nice for the App Store's public relations team if the biggest news in the past few days was the introduction of a more transparent progress report for applications under review, giving developers some of the feedback they need to see where their apps are in the pathway towards approval and release. Unfortunately, that minor but tangible step toward a more open approval process is overshadowed by a story of frustration and disaffection from one of the platform's rising stars: Joe Hewitt, the man behind Facebook's popular iPhone app, is mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore.

Hewitt's frustration with the app review process isn't new, but in the same August blog post where he called for the elimination of review, he promised "I will not stop developing for Apple's platforms or using Apple's products as long as they continue to produce the best stuff on the market." A few months later, he's announced that he's handing off the Facebook app to another developer, and he's reached the point where his frustration has overcome his willingness to continue working on the iPhone. [Commenter 'Gak' points out that Hewitt's open-sourced Three20 library for iPhone devs has been flagged for use of private frameworks, which may have been one of the final straws.]

Hewitt spoke to TechCrunch earlier today, and his attitude is clear:

"My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple's policies. I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer."

Losing the talent behind the top social networking app in the store is bad for users and bad for the platform, but I don't imagine that Apple is going to give up the lockdown of review anytime soon. Is there a way around this logjam that will let developers innovate at Internet speed while still giving Apple some semblance of control? Here's one idea...

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What is there to say about it, really? The cloud that thinks different appears to be unresponsive on webmail and POP/IMAP connections for some unknown fraction of the userbase, and it's been having issues since the morning hours today. Mel noted a long slow period yesterday, and also spotted some downtime about three weeks ago. As of 2:30 pm ET, it looks like mail is beginning to flow again for POP users, although IMAP and webmail are still shaking off the jitters.

While monitoring services like Netcraft don't help to track MobileMe email uptime (since the website keeps responding even though mail isn't flowing), it's hard to shake the sense that this $99/year service is costing us more in aggravation than is strictly necessary.