If you have a Core 2 Duo Macintosh, the built-in WLAN card is capable of networking using (draft 2) 802.11n. This capability can be unlocked via an update Apple distributes with the new AirPort Extreme Base Station. Or, they will sell it to you for $4.99. Why don't they give it away for free, say with Software Update? Because of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (which was passed in the wake of the Enron scandal). iLounge quotes an Apple representative: "It's about accounting. Because of the Act, the company believes that if it sells a product, then later adds a feature to that product, it can be held liable for improper accounting if it recognizes revenue from the product at the time of sale, given that it hasn't finished delivering the product at that point."

ghostcorps writes "Australian Newspaper 'The Age' reports that developers of iPhone skins (skins for smartphones that resemble the iPhone) have been legally attacked by Apple. Beyond that, bloggers who have reported on the skins have been threatened with legal action as well. From the article: 'Ironically, Apple's attempts to have the files removed from the web have only given the skins greater publicity, and they have already begun spreading to other websites. The issue marks a distinct change in tone for many bloggers and journalists, who just last week praised Apple for its 'revolutionary' and 'game-changing' phone despite being unable to conduct a proper hands-on test of the product.'"

Joe Drago writes "I purchased a Mac Pro within the first week that they were available, and immediately upgraded to 3GB of RAM (knowing that OSX loves memory). When playing 3D games (World of Warcraft mainly), the game would Kernel Panic the machine if I had played it for a few hours, or if I swapped in and out of the game a few times, etc. I eventually found out (from an official Blizzard poster) that NVidia has a bug in their drivers that kernel panics a Mac Pro if any memory past the 2GB boundary is addressed in the driver. After waiting months for a resolution to this, I decided to post on Apple's support site. Here is an image of my post.. Within a few hours, they removed it from the site, placing it under 'Posts Removed by Administration.' What's going on here? Is Apple trying to hide this bug, or is there something more serious going on between Apple and NVidia?"

DECS writes "After heading off the top ten myths of the iPhone, Daniel Eran of RoughlyDrafted has written a series of articles looking 'Inside the iPhone,' exploring (1) why Apple didn't target faster 3G networks, (2) a substantiated look at how the iPhone is indeed running OS X (contrary to reports that it isn't), and (3) what it means to users and developers, and how ARM is involved, in Mac OS X, ARM, and iPod OS X, and why the supposedly 'closed' system Apple describes for the iPhone won't preclude third party development."

Nrbelex writes "Randall Stross makes a fresh and surprisingly accurate review of one of the biggest "features" in the upcoming iPhone and the iPod in general, 'fairplay'. Stross writes, 'If "crippleware" seems an unduly harsh description, it balances the euphemistic names that the industry uses for copy protection. Apple officially calls its own standard "FairPlay," but fair it is not.... You are always going to have to buy Apple stuff. Forever and ever.' Can mainstream media coverage help the battle over DRM or will this warning, like those of the pas, continue to go unnoticed?"

rochlin writes "We know that Steve Jobs has said the iPhone won't accept third-party apps. The iPhone looks to be running on a Samsung provided ARM core processor. That means it's not running on an Intel (or PPC) core. That means it's not running OS X in any meaningful sense (Apple can brand toilet paper as running OS X if they like). Darwin, the BSD based operating system that underlies what Apple has previously been calling OS X, does not run on ARM processors. The Darwin / Apple Public Source licensing agreement says the source would have to be made available if it is modified and sold (paraphrased; read it yourself). A Cingular rep has said the iPhone version of the OS source will not be made available. It will be closed, like the iPod OS and not like Darwin. So if it ain't Darwin, it ain't OS X (in any meaningful way). An InfoWorld article on an FBR Research report breaks down iPhone component providers and lists Samsung as the chip maker for the main application / video cpu. So, that leaves the question... What OS is this phone really running? Not Linux or the source would need to be open."

An anonymous reader writes "An investigation into the ongoing trademark dispute between Cisco and Apple over the name "iPhone" appears to show that Cisco does not own the mark as claimed in their recent lawsuit. This is based on publicly available information from the US Patent and Trademark office, as well as public reviews of Cisco products over the past year. The trademark was apparently abandoned in late 2005/early 2006 because Cisco was not using it."

necro81 writes "David Pauly at Bloomberg has written a piece that asks 'Does Apple Inc. Have a Future Without Steve Jobs?' He writes in the context of Jobs' latest success in launching the iPhone, set against the backdrop of stock backdating troubles. In Pauly's worst-case-scenario, the SEC prosecutes Apple, and the board is forced to oust Jobs.Even without resorting to such scenarios, it's an interesting question to ask the fanboys and detractors out there: could Apple succeed and continue to innovative without Jobs at the helm?"

With everyone talking about Apple's big announcement, it's unsurprising that commentators are discussing the possibilities of gaming on the iPhone. The DS and the PSP are both on N'Gai Croal's list of who is afraid of the iPhone, and with good reason. Touchscreen gaming on a high-resolution screen? Sounds like fun. TIME's lengthy run-down on the iPhone even mentions the possibilities of games on the small screen. Just the same, it's not all roses: Kotaku talks about the developer unfriendly nature of the platform, and how that could throw up barriers to the first game on the handheld.

Dekortage writes "The day after Apple announced its iPhone, Cisco sued over the name. Mark Chandler, Cisco's SVP and General Counsel, has posted an explanation of the suit on his blog: 'For the last few weeks, we have been in serious discussions with Apple over how the two companies could work together and share the iPhone trademark. ...I was surprised and disappointed when Apple decided to go ahead and announce their new product with our trademarked name without reaching an agreement. It was essentially the equivalent of "we're too busy."' What did Cisco want? '[We] wanted an open approach. We hoped our products could interoperate in the future.'" Another reader wrote to mention that already, Cisco's trademark might be in trouble in Europe.

parvenu74 writes "Arstechnica is running an article pointing out that while some pockets of the entertainment industry are experimenting with DRM-free distribution, Apple Inc, which announced that they have now sold over 2,000,000,000 songs on iTunes, is now the strongest pro-DRM force in digial media. From the article: 'DRM is dying. It's a statement being echoed with increasing frequency around the Web over the last few weeks, and is perhaps best articulated in this Billboard article. But there's a powerful force standing in the way of this DRM-free panacea, and it might not be the one you expect: Apple, Inc.'"

wyldeone writes "In an interview with the New York Times, Steve Jobs confirms reports that the recently-announced iPhone will not allow third party applications to be installed. According to Jobs, 'These are devices that need to work, and you can't do that if you load any software on them.' In a similar vein, Jobs said in a MSNBC article that, 'Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.'"

48 hours have passed since Steve Jobs's MacWorld keynote and the reality distortion field is beginning to wear off. Lists of the drawbacks of the announced iPhone are sprouting all over the Net (and there is the occasional defense by true believers). Now narramissic writes, "The iPhone may be poised to take over the high-end cell phone market, but is it a market worth taking? Not if an InStat survey from July is any indication: Of 1,800 consumers surveyed, just 21 had spent more than $400 for a cell phone. Prices for the iPhone, admittedly more of a handheld computer than a cell phone, start at $499 for the 4G-byte version with a required two-year contract with Cingular. So, is Apple pricing it right? Analysts quoted in this article seem to think Apple's going to have a hard time getting the 1% of market share that Jobs called for."

lucabrasi999 writes "It appears that Apple may be running out of items that they can prefix with the letter "i". Cisco is suing Apple over trademark infringement. Cisco claims to own the rights to the "iPhone" trademark since they purchased Infogear in 2000. Infogear filed for the rights to the trademark in 1996."

eldavojohn writes "The Month of Apple Bugs (MOAB) is well under way with a startling bug released Monday. From the description: 'Application Enhancer (APE) is affected by a local privilege escalation vulnerability which allows local users to gain root privileges.' APE is the same software used to deploy fixes during 'The Month of Apple Fixes' (MOAF). I know it's confusing but MOAB came first and MOAF was a developer's answer to the bugs — after all, the purpose of posting bugs is to have them identified, confirmed and eradicated. The article talks about potential remote root access by an intruder. Note that this is third party software that all of the bugs seem to be stemming from. I guess Apple has made a fairly secure system but they can't expect all third party developers to follow the same rigorous standards."

An anonymous reader writes "Bogus prototypes, bullying the press, stifling pillow talk — all to keep iPhone under wraps. Fortune's Peter Lewis goes inside one of the year's biggest tech launches. One of the most astonishing things about the new Apple iPhone, introduced yesterday by Steve Jobs at the annual Macworld trade show, is how Apple managed to keep it a secret for nearly two-and-a-half years of development while working with partners like Cingular, Yahoo and Google."

Steve Jobs kept his audience rapt at the MacWorld keynote today. He rehashed the announcement of the iTV, now called Apple TV, and announced the iPhone, a revolutionary phone/ipod/wrist-computer that had MacWorld attendees sitting on the edge of their seats. Retailing for $499 (4 gig)/$599 (8 gig), it has to be seen to be believed. It uses a touch screen with a new form of input control, runs OSX and many standard applications, and connects to the internet via WiFi. It has a camera, functions as a movie player, a music player, and can send emails and photos in the middle of a phone call. From the Engadget coverage: "'[OSX] let us create desktop class applications and networking, not the crippled stuff you find on most phones, these are real desktop applications.' He's quoting Alan Kay - 'People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.' 'So we're bringing breakthrough software to a mobile device for the first time.'" Seriously, go check this out. They're going to print money with this thing.

An anonymous reader writes "After much anticipation, some backpedaling, a bite of hope, and a delayed release date, TiVoToGo Mac Edition is here. While there have been some unofficial hacks, those solutions have not been ideal for everyone. With support for transferring shows and burning to DVD/iPod, TiVoToGo is bundled as a part of Roxio's Toast Titanium software that will be announced tomorrow at Macworld."

An anonymous reader writes "With Macworld set to start Jan. 8, InformationWeek has a detailed comparison that pits Mac OS X against Vista. According to reviewer John Welch, OS X wins hands down. The important point: he doesn't say Vista is bad, just that technically speaking, OS X remains way ahead. Do you agree?"

coondoggie writes to mention a Network World article about a focus on corporate users at the upcoming MacWorld Expo. Along with the consumer announcements (iTV, iPod stuff), there will be several elements dedicated to introducing IT pros to Apple hardware. From the article: "The show has really evolved. For a long time it was a consumer-oriented show and those of us who are from the enterprise space - there weren't very many of us - would use it as a place to meet and compare notes ... Now Macintosh in the enterprise is becoming more recognized and there are tracks that are specifically for us enterprise people. We don't have to sneak off anymore."