Several major news outlets recently picked up on the story that a clever modder had removed the AT&T guts from his iPad 3G and replaced them with a Verizon Wireless MiFi card, which dramatically improved the speed and quality of his iPad's Internet connectivity. The mod itself is well done, even going so far as to adding an on-off toggle switch to enable and disable the iPad's internal MiFi as necessary.

For the latest episode of the MacTech Live podcast, we tracked down the modder, Jordan Bunnell, for an interview. Jordan explains his inspiration for the mod, some of the technical challenges he faced, and why he chose to put the MiFi inside his iPad instead of just using the iPad's built-in Wi-Fi to connect to an external MiFi.

Download or listen to the interview!

Other recent interviews:

• Project Jarvis, the digital life assistant
• Charlie Miller on Mac security
• Snow Leopard on a 1984 Mac (sort of)

Subscribe to the MacTech Live podcast via iTunes or RSS

With the news of a pending anti-trust investigation into Apple's iPad/iPhone/iPod I have to wonder... does the Department of Justice have nothing better to do?

Seriously now.  Think about how many people are effected by this supposed Monopoly of iPods, iPhones & iPads.  Is that worth the effort of the government to investigate Apple? There are far more pressing issues than if Apple will allow programs written in non-compliance to be sold on it's products.  We have a terrible oil spill in the Gulf to begin with, find out why the Halliburton contracts messed that up.  But if you want to investigate monopolies, what about Halliburton and their government contracts?  What about DuPont and their seed laws that require farmers to buy new seeds every year?  Compared to these blatant monopolies of far greater proportions, why is the US Government investigating Apple about the specifics of developing applications for their products and their store?

Seriously now.  Steve Jobs has a point.  Ask any developer if they want bad reviews of their product because someone is running it on a system that it wasn't specked for.  Of course they don't.  And Steve/Apple does not want the iPad / iPhone / iPod to have bad reviews because Adobe Flash sucks the battery life and opens the door to hackers.

FTC,  DoJ.  Don't you have something better to be doing that would benefit the American people?

As I'm sure anyone who follows anything Apple or Adobe has heard, Steve doesn't like Adobe Flash.  I don't blame him, his arguments are solid and the reply from Adobe's CEO was weak.  So with all of this talk about HTML5 and how great it is I figured it was time to try it out.  I decided to enlist in the YouTube HTML5 Beta program and see how YouTube handled in a non-Flash environment.  Put simply, it Rocks.

Seriously, try it out.  It's easy to enroll and easy to un-enroll.  Just go to  http://www.youtube.com/html5.  Make sure you are logged in to YouTube first and then click on "Join the HTML5 Beta".  Now go watch a video.  It's amazing the difference between Flash and HTML5 when viewing videos.  The videos load without glitches, they pause and fast forward with glitches, they load faster.  It's just all around better.  This is a great example of how HTML5 can really just smack down Flash.

I highly suggest that you enroll in the HTML5 Beta.  It's worth it.  If you disagree and you completely hate it, just go back to  http://www.youtube.com/html5 and click on "Leave the HTML5  Beta" and you're back to the Flash videos.  With options this easy, why not give it a try?

Here's a good software mod tip posted to cNet.  Turn your quick view into a superman like x-ray vision.  Run this command in the terminal and your quick view (for folders) now can peak inside the folders.

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1

Tested on 10.6.3 (with incremental update).  Let us know if it works for you on your system.

From cNet

Apple has cleared the way for Adobe to finally make Flash a good plug-in for the Mac.  Apple has released the C-based programming API's that allow for third party developers (you Adobe) to access h.264 accelerated graphics processing.  Granted it is only for the recent models, but hey it's a start.  I've test run the Flash 10.1 and I can say that I don't think they have incorporated the API's into the build yet.  But I'm hopeful.

Adobe, the spotlight's on you.  The complaint that Apple has been hampering Flash is now invalid.  As Tim Gunn would say, "make it work".

Apple's Developer Release Notes about hardware accelerated video

Adobe Lab's 10.1 flash release for the Mac (currently at RC2)

This is pretty cool.  Chad Barraford has developed a personal digital life assistant called JARVIS on a Mac Mini.  Inspired by the Iron Man movie, Project JARVIS is the beginning of a whole house system for the Bostonian.  Currently it can identify the select few who have RFID tags, track packages (like the multiple "Think Different" posters he has), get the weather, dim the lights, read the news, and keep track of his pantry & NetFlix account.

You have to check this one out.  The only thing better would be if Apple released a better voice for it to use.  But then I start laughing.  After you watch the video, imagine if he used the Trinoids or the Deranged voices instead... that would funny.

Featured in the Boston Globe.
Project Jarvis homepage, projectjarvis.com

Also, listen to our own interview of Project Jarvis creator Chad Barraford on MacTech Live!

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal brought the Apple / Adobe Flash controversy up again, this time focused around the soon to be released iPad.  The article brings up the usual points, but also highlights the Apple/Google push for HTML5 over Flash.  Adobe comes out saying they have an iPhone version of Flash that will work with the iPad, but it is Apple that won't let it on the device.  Developers say that HTML5 is to far off, and that the iPad won't be good web experience for the user without flash.  I disagree.  If you haven't seen the Chrome Experiments page, check it out now (chromeexperiments.com).  No Flash required.  No word how well it will work with the iPad, but I have my hopes up and it is a fun example of HTML, Javascript, and SVG.

I've been thinking about getting an iPad, and the lack of Flash on it has turned from a slight annoyance to something I look forward to.  With No-Script & Flash Blocker as standard on all my Macs, I like the lack of Flash on sites.  When I surf on a different browser and the pages come up with moving, flashing, bouncing flash ads I think ... on the iPad, this won't happen.  The flip side of the benefit is that some videos won't show, some pages won't load, and some things just won't work.  But as a former web designer I gotta say this.  BUILD A BETTER WEB PAGE!  If you entire website relies on Flash and you don't have an alternative site for non-Flash users, expect me to skip your site and go to a better designed site.

To me this is a no brainer.  The iPad and the iPhone should never get Flash, at least until Adobe takes Mac development seriously.  As a geek I watch my CPU constantly, and have seen the CPU sky rocket anytime something flash is loaded on a browser.  I have even seen some computers come to a grinding halt due to a web page with multiple flash advertisements, only to return to normal after force quitting the browser.  So why on Earth would Apple want something that kills battery life and causes crashes on their premiere product?  If Adobe were to take CPU utilization seriously in Flash, then my opinion might change.  But the road to the iPad Flash is through the Mac.  If Adobe can get Flash working properly on the Mac, then I might see a use for it on the iPad.

The age old question, which platform is more secure ... Mac or Windows.  We all have some input into this, but The Plain Truth decided to go a bit further and get some professional input on the subject, 32 security professional's opinions.  The hands down answer, the Mac ... for now.  Almost everyone took the lower market share answer, an answer that is legitimate but gets around the real guts of the matter.

The Plain Truth uses Macs, and a few of the respondents claimed they used Macs at home as well.  There were of course the Windows lovers that claimed Macs were horrible at security.  While I'm not trying to say they are lying, I keep on thinking back to the Microsoft Evangelicals (article here) and how they were told to beat the Microsoft war drums, and better yet, let the third parties beat the drums even louder.  The person that gets me the most in the article is Eric Johanson, a security researcher.  His point is this ...

"If you look at the number of published vulnerabilities in software and the number of users and compare Windows versus Mac OS you will discover that Mac OS has far more published vulnerabilities per user than Windows does so I think the data pretty much speaks for itself."

You're right Eric, it does speak for itself.  This is classic re-direct that Microsoft Technical Evangelicals push.  While these magic "numbers" aren't given in the article, I find it highly unlikely that the Mac has 9x the published vulnerabilities that Windows does.  So Eric spins it around and says the high number of vulnerabilities on Windows is okay because it is offset by the high number of users ... huh? That just doesn't make sense to me.

Anyways, there are some good quotes.  The basic answers come down to this ... it's about the user & market share.  The Mac's low market share makes it a less likely attack for cybercrimes.  But no matter what computer or OS you use, if you just click on anything you see in cyberville, you will probably end up someplace you don't want to be.

Read more at The Plain Truth


A slightly off-topic side note.

While researching this article I was looking up Eric Johanson via Google.  Nothing to interesting, doing the usual checks.  Clicked on a link to the MSMVPS.com blog (MicroSoft Most Valued Professionals), as it had a hit on Eric's statement.  But it had already passed by the front page.  However, the new front page did have an interesting post.  I'll post it again here, due to the irony.

Confirmed.  MS10-015 blue screens caused by computers already being compromised or backdoored with rootkit.
If MS10-015 causes you a bluescreen - its time to check to see if data about your or your organization has been stolen.  Best to rebuild teh machine from scratch instead of try to repair it.
Published Fri, Feb 12, 2010 5:39 PM by Rod Trent at myITforum.com
Filed under: Security.
(link here)


Now if that doesn't make you laugh, I don't know what will.

File this one under crazy Chinese companies.

Shenzhen Dragon Brother Industrial  (SDBI) is talking about suing Apple for copying their P88 design for the iPad.  The P88 is a great example of how Apple can take something and make it better.  The P88 runs on an Intel chip and gets about 1.5 hours of life running Windows XP.  The design looks awfully similar to another device I've seen around, the iPod.  Yes the P88 is like a big iPod, which is what the iPad essentially is.

The P88 does have some advantages.  It runs a full OS (granted it is Windows) and has a VGA out and USB ports, and a slightly lager screen.  However, if you only get a 1.5 hours out of it, I don't know how useful it can be.  Really now.  1.5 hours of life on a computer means that it is 1.5 hours of word processing or other low-CPU processes.  If you actually started doing something on the P88, don't you think the battery life would just plummet?

I digress.  SDBI is considering a lawsuit against Apple for patent infringement.  This is the comical part to me.  You have a company that blatently rips off the iPod/iPhone style, and then claims Apple took their desgin.  If you ask me, I see a resemblance ... but I think that it might be Apple wanting to talk to THEIR lawyers.

More info on the P88 available at hkjulong.com



Pictures from hkjulong.com & Apple.com.  NOT to scale.

Apple has announced the iPad, in case you hadn't noticed.  The biggest "WHAT" I had was the announcing of the A4 chip.  Apple has most likely taken the technology they acquired in their purchase of PA Semiconductors and produced their own chips.   Does this mean that the future of the iPhone may be Power-PC as well?

While it's likely that the computers (desktop/laptops) will remain on Intel chips, as running Windows on a Mac is partially what has driven the Mac sales, what about other projects?  Is Apple completing the circle and moving back to Power PC chips for non-computer devices?  Has the student become the master and soon Apple's chips will be competing against IBM's?  Most likely not.  But with Apple building their own chips, it could mean we start seeing other devices that can do things that used to be impossible.