According to an email exchange between a customer and Apple CEO Steve Jobs, a software update will be released soon to address the widespread complaints of iPhone 3G slowness running iOS 4.

A frustrated iPhone 3G owner apparently wrote the following email to Steve Jobs complaining about the abysmal performance of iOS 4 on his iPhone 3G:

I’ve waited patiently through 4.0.1 and 4.0.2, looking for a fix that will make my phone work again. I’ve read the forums that advise me to jailbreak my phone or use some other method so I can downgrade back to a version of iPhone 3, however I’m not prepared to use a method that is not supported by Apple.

To which Steve Jobs replies:

Software update coming soon.

Sent from my iPhone

This latest email exchange comes to us from MacRumors. Sending emails to Steve Jobs and publishing responses online is growing in popularity, although the authenticity of many of the email exchanges is questionable. As the owner of an iPhone 3G suffering under iOS 4 I really hope this particular email exchange is real and that we’ll get a software update soon.

The tablet wars are about to heat up. The iPad is currently the only meaningful tablet device around, but that may change as soon as November when Google is rumored to release their Chrome OS Tablet. According to MacRumors, the Google Tablet may be released as soon as November 26 in order to fit into the holiday shopping season.

Running Google’s Chrome OS and attached to data plans through Verizon, the hardware specs of the Google Tablet are anticipated to be impressive so that the device doesn’t “disappoint its early adopters”:

It’ll likely be based on NVidia’s Tegra 2 platform and sport a 1280×720 multitouch display, 2GB of RAM, minimum 32GB SSD, WiFi/Bluetooth/3G connectivity, GPS, webcam, and possibly expandable storage via a multi-card reader. Expect it to be every bit as geek-tastic as the Nexus One

Google will likely aggressively price the Chrome Tablet against the iPad, although the pricing structures for the device and accompanying data services are currently unknown. Data plan contracts are expected to subsidize the consumers cost of the tablet dramatically, similar to the manner of cell phone contracts.

Apple’s iPad is the dominant tablet computer at the moment, and thus far all other attempts at competing in the marketplace have flopped. Microsoft has already floundered, leaving Google to be the only foreseeable threat to the iPads dominance. Google hopes to replicate Androids success against the iPhone with their entry into the tablet market, creating yet another head-to-head battle between Apple and Google.

Not much is known about the touch interface of Chrome OS, or the appearance of the Google Tablet itself, the above image is nothing but a speculative mockup. You can run Chrome OS in Mac OS X, but the current version floating around really isn’t that exciting, it’s basically the Chrome browser running in a virtual machine. It’s highly unlikely the released version of the tablets Chrome OS will be as boring.

The iPhone battery is designed to provide a significant amount of talk time, internet/app use, and data consumption. By using the phone properly and customizing a few settings you can dramatically improve how long your iPhone battery lasts.

Here is a comprehensive list of tips to improve the health and battery life of your iPhone.
Read more »

If you’re looking for a simple stopwatch menubar timer for Mac OS X, look no further than Thyme. No, not the herb, Thyme is a very simple app that sits in your menubar and allows you to quickly start and stop a timer.

Wondering how long it takes you to perform a certain task? No problem, use Thyme and figure it out. You can quickly activate and deactivate Thyme by hitting Control+T, otherwise just access it from the menubar.

Surprisingly useful! If you’re not keen on installing third party apps, you can always create a rudimentary stopwatch from the command line too.

Update 10/2/2010: Apple released a new version of the iPad ad, titled “iPad is electric” and it features the same piano song playing in the commercial. Read on to hear and download the song.

Apple just released a new iPad commercial called “iPad is Delicious” that features the text “iPad is…” followed by images of someone browsing a pictured recipe book, playing games, reading books, writing on a virtual chalkboard, etc, the video is posted above if you haven’t seen it yet.

Playing in the background is a piano song with fingers snapping to a gradually increasing energy level and soon come handclaps, a bass line, and the whole shebang… of course since it’s an Apple commercial this song is about to get very popular and two people have already asked me what the song is.

What’s the name of the song in the new iPad commercial?

The song is ‘Never Stop’ by Chilly Gonzales, from an upcoming album titled “Ivory Tower” that will be available on September 14. There are actually two versions of this song available, a ‘rap mix’ and the ‘original mix’ which is an instrumental version.

Where can I get the song?

You can download the Never Stop EP on iTunes for $3 which has three versions of the song.

You can also order the full album now directly through the record label for $9 and the album comes as an MP3 download.

The record label also offers to download the “Never Stop (Rap Mix)” here for free at their website.

A quick note: If you like the song used in the iPad commercial you should buy the full album, it includes both versions of “Never Stop” and the other songs are just as good, providing a solid mix of funky piano riffs, catchy beats, smooth instrumentals, and electronic goodness.

Can I listen to the full song online?

Yes you can. Here are the full songs in both versions (via YouTube videos)
Read more »

Did you know that you can quickly launch Mac OS X’s built in VNC program called Screen Sharing, just by typing an address into the URL bar of Safari?

In Safari, hit Command+L to go to the URL bar and type: vnc://
Hit Return and Screen Sharing will launch immediately. If you specified an IP address it will open to that host immediately, otherwise a window will pop up asking you for the VNC Host address.

Where is the Mac VNC client located anyway?

You may have noticed that if you try to do a Spotlight search for Screen Sharing it won’t show up, this is because it’s located within the System directory CoreServices:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Screen Sharing.app/
Accessing Screen Sharing can be done either through Safari as mentioned above, or from the Finder by hitting Command+K and typing vnc://

Apple has released a Graphics Update for Snow Leopard, and this is particularly good news to Mac gamers. Remember those pesky Starcraft 2 crashes I wrote about two weeks ago? This update specifically addresses some of the problems with Starcraft 2 for Mac as well as other issues with Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Aperture 3.

If you are a Mac gamer it is highly recommended to install this update. You can download the graphics update through the Software Update control panel, accessed through the Apple menu.

Here are the release notes from Apple:

The Snow Leopard Graphics Update contains stability and performance fixes for graphics applications and games:

Addresses frame rate issues occurring in Portal and Team Fortress 2 by Valve, on iMac (Late 2009 and Mid 2010), Mac mini (Early 2009 and Mid 2010), Mac Pro (Early 2009), MacBook (Early 2009 and Mid 2010) and MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010) or MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010) models.

Resolves an issue that could cause Aperture 3, or StarCraft II by Blizzard, to unexpectedly quit or become unresponsive.

Resolves an image corruption issue that may occur when disconnecting and reconnecting external displays while the system is running.

The hardware and software affected by this performance update are the following: MacBook (13-inch, Early 2009), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010), MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010), iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2009), Mac Pro (Early 2009), Mac mini (Early 2009), Mac OS X 10.6.4, Mac mini (Mid 2010), iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2010), iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010), MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2010), Portal, StarCraft II, Team Fortress 2

I recently encountered a strange bug where iTunes refused to add a song to it’s playlist and wouldn’t play the original source MP3 file either. Interestingly enough, the mp3 file played fine with Quick Look and even was able to play within the Finder preview, but no matter what I did I could not add or import the mp3 file to my iTunes playlist.

Fix for iTunes not playing/adding songs and MP3s

I came up with a fix that involves opening the song with QuickTime Player and then re-saving it as an iTunes compatible format to play as usual, here are the steps:

• Launch QuickTime Player
• Drag or Open the MP3 file into QuickTime Player
• From the File menu select “Save As”
• Select “iPhone” as the Format
• Click “Save” and let the mp3 file convert to an .m4v iPhone movie file

• Locate the newly created .m4v file and rename the .m4v extension to .m4a to ensure iTunes treats it as audio, and drag that file into iTunes
• Play the song in iTunes as usual

If you want, you can take this a step further and then select the song and convert it to AAC or MP3 with iTunes from the “Advanced” menu. Likewise you can use a third party utility like All2Mp3 and convert the song to MP3 that way as well.

If all else fails, you might want to learn to repair MP3 files, it’s not complicated and it will fix most other problems.

Have you ever wondered what an iPad and Kindle screen would look like up close? Not just to the naked eye, but really up close… say at 26x and 400x magnification. Despite the fact they are serving completely different markets, I know people compare the iPad and Kindle frequently so these shots are quite interesting.

These pictures were taken with a Veho USB Powered Microscope, which I had no idea you could even get a 400x USB powered microscope for $65, that’s amazing in and of itself. Anyway, more pictures:

At 400x the iPad looks like any other close up of a LCD display, while the Kindle amazingly enough actually holds detail and, well, resembles ink.

Admittedly this isn’t the most fair comparison considering the current iPad screen is using a traditional LCD display while the Kindle uses the wildly complex MIT creation known as E Ink. Of course, the Kindle also isn’t intended to compete against the iPad and vice versa (try playing games or browsing the web in a meaningful fashion on a Kindle), but it’s neat to see these detailed pictures. I’d really like to see this test done using the 326ppi iPhone 4 retina display, which is rumored to appear on iPod touch and iPad models in the near future.

These images confirm the opinions I’ve long held: if you’re looking to get a handheld device for only reading books, the Kindle takes the cake. If you want to do more like play games, browse the web, email, listen to music, watch movies, etc, the iPad is a no brainer.

The above pictures originated from microscope shots by Keith Peters at his website, Bit-101. There are several more pictures and also comparisons with real printed ink if you’re interested in seeing them.

Did you know you can download a file instead of opening it in Safari, simply by dragging a link to the Downloads window? Just drag or paste a copied link into the Safari Downloads window and you’ll instantly download it rather than launching it into a new page.

You can access the Downloads window from the Window menu, or by hitting Option+Command+L

You can also start the download of a file by holding down the Option key when clicking a URL in Safari.