The Internet |
**FINAL UPDATE**: We're stuck at five registrations and I'm going to call it quits; not one of them has completed a qualifying offer. I think that we've demonstrated here that these sort of offers are a no-go. Sorry, folks, no iPhone. :( **SECOND UPDATE**: We're up to five registrations, but not one of them has completed a qualifying offer. Read the fine print and be careful to follow instructions. We'll never get our phone if this keeps up. **UPDATE**: We've had three brave souls register with the affiliate site already, and it's only been about 24 hours since my first post. However, no one has linked to this post from their own website. Let me reiterate: If you help our investigation out, you will be registered in the drawing for the free iPhone we all work to earn. You can help by either: 1. Registering and completing an offer through our referral link (2 entries in the drawing) The first 14 individuals who complete offers will recieve iTunes Gift Cards as well as their entries. Read on for the details. ---------------------------------- I wavered about posting this, but I think it's a good idea. You've seen the sites before; they've been around for years. They ask you to complete affiliate offers then get other friends of yours to do the same; when you do, the "free stuff" site gets a micro-kickback from the affiliate company. If you manage to complete the offers and get enough others to do so, too, the site gives you a free gift. The coolness of Apple hardware has made for a number of these sites, offering things like iPods, Mac minis and, now, of course, the iPhone. I found one such site and took a look at it - unlike its predecessors, there were no flashing ads, no annoying stuff, just clear instructions and an honest take on the whole affiliate-offer process. So, what the heck? I signed up. I was able, in the span of ten minutes, to sign up, get confimation and complete an affiliate offer. Two days later, when the site showed that they had received notice that I had completed the affiliate's offer, I cancelled my membership and was never charged a dime. I completed the BetZip offer. BetZip is an online gaming site that asked me to join as a $20/month member of their Player's Club. My free trial membership lasted all of three days and both the sign-in and cancellation process were simple. Now, I'm not suggesting that you sign up planing on cancelling (because you may be interested in the BetZip Player's Club or any of the other affiliate offers), but I want to point out that, from where I am sitting, this entire operation seems to be on the up-and-up. Of course, as a journalist, I would like to find out for sure. So, here's what I propose: 1. At the end of this post, there will be a referral link to the Free iPhone site. If you want to play along, click that link. Everyone who has completed an offer through my referral link (up to the first 14 completed offers) will receive a $5 iTunes Gift Card and one entry in the Grand Prize Drawing (see below) Everyone who has commented to this thread with a comment pointing to a post on their own weblog which points back to this post will receive one entry in the Grand Prize Drawing When the offer is complete and I receive the $500 Apple Gift Card, we will hold a random Grand Prize Drawing and award the Gift Card to one lucky MacMove reader. In other words, in the name of Investigative Journalism, **we're going to give away almost $100 in iTunes Gift Cards and at least $500 on an Apple Store Gift Card** (assuming the Free iPhone site is legit). You can receive an iTunes Gift Card by being one of the first MacMove Readers to complete an affiliate offer and you can enter the Grand Prize Drawing by either completing an offer or by linking to this post on your own weblog (and posting the URL of that blog post as a comment to this post), or both. Whew... that's a little confusing. :) So, get cracking. I will post updates here as we go. Here is the [link](http://www.snipurl.com/freefone). I realize that this is all a little convoluted so, once again, just to be clear: **MacMove is *not* going to keep the iPhone and, on top of that, we're going to give away iTunes Gift Cards just for your participation.** You stand to win an iPhone here, along with the ability to get your own friends to complete offers to help you get another one. |
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In a whiny piece originally published in Computerworld, Mike Elgan writes on [Macworld's website](http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/01/18/blewit/index.php?lsrc=mwrss):>Steve Jobs’ blockbuster keynote at last week’s Macworld was brilliantly and powerfully delivered — one of his best ever. It was also a colossal mistake.Basically, Elgan feels that, for several reasons, Apple should not have pre-released the iPhone at MWSF, instead waiting until June when the unit actually ships. He goes on to quote Current Analysis's Avi Greengart (a friend of ours here at MacMove), who predicted a "backlash of sorts as people figure out how much this thing [the iPhone] doesn’t do."Elgan and Greengart are, of course, right. The five reasons Elgan gives for thinking that MWSF was too early to demo the new phone are all on-target and make sense. However, when he gets to the important part, attempting to understand *why* Apple and Jobs might have decided to unveil the iPhone last week instead of waiting, he overlooks the obvious reason.Elgan says:>It’s possible Apple announced iPhone so Apple wouldn’t follow the LG KE850 [a similar looking phone] to the market and look like a copycat.>Maybe Jobs wanted to divert attention away from the backdating scandal. Maybe Jobs decided that Apple TV was too weak of a product to carry a keynote. Maybe the motive was good old-fashioned FUD.Umm... what about the other reason? You know, the one that Jobs *actually explained during the Keynote?*According to the [Engadget transcript](http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live-from-macworld-2007-steve-jobs-keynote/) of the Keynote, Jobs said:>When's it going to be available? We're shipping them in June -- we're announcing it today because we have to go get FCC approval... we thought it'd be better to introduce this today rather than let the FCC introduce this.Everyone who builds phones has to let the FCC examine them in a process similar to a patent application. Once the FCC has the phone in its hands, the design becomes public; that's how sites like Engadget get information about upcoming phone releases before they're announced.So, since the iCat would have been let out of the iBag by the FCC soon anyway, Jobs and Apple decided to take the stage at MWSF and announce it themselves, upstaging CES, Microsoft's agonizing Vista launch and most non-technology news in the process.Lessee: keep the phone a secret and let it leak when the FCC gets it, or take the stage in front of the largest pro-Apple audience of the year and, just when everyone is expecting something cool, give them exactly what they want. Hmm... which should Jobs and Apple have chosen?Elgan concludes his piece:>Whatever the reason, I think Apple’s CEO made a big mistake. A June unveiling that coincided with the actual product launch would have... been the traditional Apple home run.Yes, it would have. Of course, in this place we call the Real World™, responsible adults recognize that, sometimes, you can't hit the ball out of the park, so they settle for a stand-up double that puts two runners in scoring position. For the next six months, every one of Apple's competitors will be reacting to the iPhone and the tv, while Microsoft is busy gloating about Vista, The OS That Almost Catches Up To Tiger™.Then, in June, when Apple announces that they've sold a bazillion tvs and pre-sold every iPhone they can make, they will announce the immediate shipment of Leopard, once again catching Microsoft flat-footed and distracted.Could things have worked out better for the iPhone announcement? Maybe (although, really, probably not, considering FCC policy). Given the real-world situation, Apple made the best of the opportunity MWSF presented and is poised to have (another) great year, with innovative products and excited users.Here's hoping that Computerworld, Macworld and Mike Elgan will see the whole picture. |
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Apple's Legal Department must be distracted by Macworld Expo or something, because I can't believe that they've missed this. Over at [LifeHacker](http://www.lifehacker.com), a site about personal productivity, they've [written](http://www.lifehacker.com/software/design/create-newsletters-online-with-letterpop-226881.php) about [LetterPop](http://www.letterpop.com/), a website that allows you to use online tools to create html-based email newsletters to send to your friends. The site has nice templates and easy-to-use tools which allow users to use drag-and-drop to create snazzy looking documents which are then emailed via the site.
Look at this: This is the demo newsletter which greets you when you first visit the site. Does it look familiar? Look closely. Notice the blue header bar, the font selected for the banner and headlines, the single-color sidebar, the titled, square graphic at the top of the column and the large, round graphic callout in the bottom corner. Notice also the white image borders and the background color of the bottom panel Now check this out:
They're really different, right? Of course! In Apple's newsletter, the sidebar and graphic are way over on the other side of the page! And that's not a ribbon, it's a *cookie!* Just to be clear, Apple is way, way out ahead on this; Pages has been available, with this template baked in, for years. I simply can't believe LetterPop has tried to get away with this. Sheesh. |
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Seth has said before, many times, that MacMove is not a news site. There are plenty of sites online which cover Apple news, Mac news, iPod news, etc., *ad naseum*, so we here at MacMove try to avoid that arena, focusing instead on information that will help you use your Mac more effectively. That being said, I'm going to write something news-related and hope that Seth doesn't mind. [Ed. note: So far so good. -Seth] Right now, as I write this, the MacWeb is beside itself in frenzy, because of Apple's special Media Event scheduled for today. Apple has announced that, "It's Showtime!" and, despite the facts that 1) nobody really knows what that means and 2) Apple will tell us all in due time, later today, everyone is still running around in circles, trying to interpret which of the [rumors](http://www.tuaw.com/2006/09/11/tuaw-its-showtime-predictions/) (iTunes movie store! "Real" video iPod! Flying MacBooks! Steve Jobs is a Broadway producer!) is most likely to be true. I don't care about any of that. [Ed. note: Me neither! -Seth] As I've said, in due time, the news will be announced. What I do care about, though, is a serious news story that's been lost in the shuffle because, unfortunately, it's complex. I'm referring to the recent uproar over a supposed demonstration of a hack that makes Macs vulnerable to attack via wireless networks. I don't want to take the time rehash the whole thing, because John Gruber, who has been investigating this story for some time, has posted an excellent series of pieces on his weblog. You should head over to his site, [Daring Fireball](http://www.daringfireball.net), to read his [most recent essay](http://daringfireball.net/2006/09/lies_damned_lies_and_macbook_wifi_hacks) on the subject, then click through his links to read the background. For those of you too lazy to do so, here's a brief synopsis: 1. A couple of guys demonstrated the ability to log in to a MacBook wirelessly, from another computer. However, the MacBook they targeted was using a third-party wireless card and not the internal Airport card. 2. They then demonstrated that they could create, rename and delete files on that MacBook via their wireless, remote connection. 3. There exists some controversy on the web as to whether or not they actually did what they demonstrated, though Gruber believes that they did. However, the question which bothers Gruber (and me, and others) is this: Can they reproduce the attack on a MacBook using the stock, internal Airport card? 4. Gruber issued a [challenge](http://daringfireball.net/2006/09/open_challenge) to the would-be hackers, betting them a MacBook (US $1,099) that they couldn't hack their way into an fresh-from-the-box MacBook that they had not prepared in some way. The news that people seem to have missed is that Gruber's challenge has gone unanswered. Now, thankfully, the original "demonstration" didn't get much play in the general media. That is, CNN didn't run any top-of-the-hour headlines that Macs are vulnerable to attack. However, among the geek community online (of which I am a proud member), that is exactly what many people think. Now, Gruber admits that the fact... But, from where I sit, it's looking like the hacker's inability to "put their MacBook where their mouth is" is to be interpreted as an admission of defeat. I really hope I'm not wrong about this. But, for the time being, I think we can all assume that Macs are safe from this threat that most people never heard of to begin with. Tell your friends. |
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A piece ran recently in the NJ Star-Ledger about .Mac. Allan Hoffman, that paper's Tech columnist, [writes](http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/hoffman/index.ssf?/base/columns-0/114637133850760.xml&coll=1) that: > Technology gurus have hyped the idea of seamless integration between personal computers and the online world for years, but we still remain far from a simple, one-stop collection of services. >Unless, that is, you use a service from Apple Computer called .Mac. Hoffman's thesis is simply that, while computers are supposed to make it easy to manage information, many of the info-storage and syncing sites online, like Yahoo!, Gmail, Snapfish and others, are difficult to learn and almost impossible to use together. He likes the all-in-one simplicity and usability of .Mac. Now, I'm a .Mac user and love it, but I'd like to know how many of you use .Mac and what features *you* use. For review, here is the feature list, according to Apple's [website](http://www.apple.com/dotmac/features.html): * Publishing with iWeb - The ability to publish a website straight out of iWeb Now, I use most (if not all) of those features, but I am, as they say, a little bit of a geek. What about the rest of you? Do you .Mac? |
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