Mac News & Rumours from Singapore

It seems that good old’ China Unicom has let the cat out of the bag on their website, of some upcoming iPhone 3.0 features.

Whilst most probably wont be able to take advantage of “Wave To Pay” technology, iPhone tethering and 3G Video calls are some (standard?) features we’ve been waiting for. Let the rumours begin about a front facing camera on the next iPhone hardware.

This (in our humble opinion) now declares the iPhone as a “sensible” buy, bringing it feature set up to what Nokia / Sony Ericsson have been offering for the last few years!

OS X Trojan

Security Vendor Intego, which just so happens to also make Virus Removal software for the Mac, has posted a Security Alert today regarding a new Trojan for OS X injected into the installer of iWorks ‘09 floating around on Torrent Sites.

Recent discoveries have been “proof of concept” attempts, without any seeable malicious intent - but this bad boy is different.

It connects to a remote server over the Internet, and is able to remotely download additional “payloads” to your machine. Currently infected machines have downloaded new code, and are being used to carry out DOS (denial of service) attacks on websites.

To see if you are infected, run the following code in Terminal:

•  (open Terminal.app)
• sudo su (enter password)
• rm -r /System/Library/StartupItems/iWorkServices
• rm /private/tmp/.iWorkServices
• rm /usr/bin/iWorkServices
• rm -r /Library/Receipts/iWorkServices.pkg
• killall -9 iWorkServices

Apple has opened up operator discounts on the iPhone, and stated that it should be no more than US$199 for the 8GB model, and US$299 for the 16GB model.

So these are the MAXIMUM prices we should be paying. Of course the operators are welcome to try and “seduce us” with a more tempting price by locking us in to a contract until our unborn child reaches the age of 21 etc.

The iPhone will launch in an additional 22 Countries on July 11th - unfortunately Singapore is *NOT* one of them. It’s expected as earlier stated that it won’t get to Singapore (officially) until September.

So, … who’s gonna wait till then..?? ….. Not us!!

A recent hiring by Apple for “Handwriting Recognition Engineers” seems to have paid dividends in the latest iPhone SDK, which shows some sort of handwriting recognition software running.

According to the post on the Chinese website, this is how Apple plans to integrate Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) input on the iPhone.

As you “write” with your finger, you are offered a selection of possible characters on the right hand side of the input pane.

Hopefully they’ll be working on this for us English users also, …. surely it has to be a lot quicker than tapping on the glass once you get the hang of it!

A Chinese website is showing off these pics. Not sure if these are real, or just mock-ups built using the latest information Apple has sent out to case manufacturers etc.

Still, they look a damn site nicer than the last lot of supposed iPhone pics…

Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney claims to have heard “from sources in Asia” that Apple has placed a 10 million unit order for 3G iPhones, according to an interview by the iPod Observer.

This order for 10 million 3G iPhones would reportedly be above and beyond the original 10 million Apple had planned to sell of the initial version of the iPhone in 2008.
Continue reading ‘3G iPhones on order..? 10 Million of them!’

An Industry source has let slip that Apple’s iPhone will be coming to Singapore in September, under a deal with SingTel.

Its widely expected that by the time it gets out here, the iPhone will be a revised version, presumably utilising the new 3G chipset to keep up with the competition and local network speeds here in Asia.

Its estimated that approx. 10,000 iPhone have been imported into Singapore and unlocked to run on local networks - so this news (although not confirmed - or declined - by SinTel) should help ease the pain of those who have been waiting for an official iPhone Singapore release date to be revealed.

Hopefully, the revised iPhone will have its features seriously upgraded before it comes out here. Despite all the hype, and our love affair with Macs, … the N95 (feature wise) is a far better phone.

(Just not water proof, …. we accidentally jumped into Cafe Del Mar pool with it in our pocket… *sob*)

Next time, we’ll organise a proper Twitter feed… Much easier

It’s on like Donkey Kong! We’ll update tomorrow with the facts…

24 years ago, you could have gotten your hands on this sexy little number for a measly $2,500. If you (or you Dad?) have on of these ‘bad boys’ in your basement, … now might be a good time to dust it off, and slap in on eBay!

In case you’ve been in a coma for the last few weeks, 1am local time kicks of the infamous Steve Jobs keynote speech. One of the most interesting rumors doing the rounds is of a tiny Mac portable, called the Macbook Air.Other things of interest should hopefully include:

Want to know more..? Take 12 cups of coffee and stay awake with us till it ends around 2am local time. Or alternatively you can check back here tomorrow morning for all the updates!