Opinion

Because we all need another social network in our lives, Apple introduced "Ping" as part of iTunes 10 during its big media event this week. Described by Steve Jobs as "Twitter and Facebook meet iTunes," Ping aims to let the already-existing (and quite massive) audience of iTunes users friend each other, stay up-to-date on their friends' musical tastes, and like/comment on things found around iTunes.

Getting started with Ping is fairly easy, although it takes some time to figure out how to do all the things you would want to do with the service. Ping requires iTunes 10 and is not turned on by default—it looks as if Apple is trying to head off complaints about privacy by making users turn it on themselves. Once you install iTunes 10, you can click on "Ping" in the everything-is-now-gray left-hand sidebar to get started.

I know, I know. You keep hearing the term “net neutrality” and wonder what it really means. I’ve been following the story for five years now, and sometimes I still wonder myself. Is it something that could really end up affecting what I see or can’t see on the Web, or is it just a buzzword that geeks, policy wonks, and politicians like to throw around at parties? Well, it’s really both.

Here I’ve put together a list of basic questions about net neutrality that, if taken as directed, can help you swim through the spin and hype around the topic. It’ll also help you understand in jargon-free terms what’s being debated now, and how the possible outcomes of the debate could change the Web forever.

Choose only ten Mac Gems? Are you kidding?

As Macworld’s resident Gem-meister, I not only test every Mac Gem, but I also end up using many of them regularly, so choosing a list of ten must-haves is an excruciatingly difficult task. (The last time I tried to come up with a list of “Gems I’m thankful for,” I ended up with two articles covering 31 products!) But if I’m forced to choose the First Ten Gems I’d Install On A Desert Island—or however you want to phrase this cruel hypothetical—here’s my current list.

In the past 100 days, Apple's iPad has changed the way I work and live.

Immediately after the iPad came out, I went out and bought four. I have one for myself and three for my senior staff members. They have become part of a living lab within our internal research environment. I use my daily and challenged my staff to do the same. I asked them to give me a weekly update on how they used it, what they like and disliked about it, and how it affected their digital lifestyles.

After 100 days with the iPad, I am convinced that this is a form factor that's not going away any time soon. It represents the next major mobile computing platform, and I think it will evolve into a serious companion to our desktops and laptops.

One of my jobs at Macworld is to help moderate our forums. And part of that job is to keep the forums as free of clutter as possible. Some of that clutter comes in the form of spam—a lot of it from Chinese companies promoting media conversion utilities.

It happens that, at the same time, some of these companies solicit us for reviews of their software. I find it a little nervy that on the one hand, they’re using sleazy marketing tricks to promote their stuff and gain Google hits by the sheer number of Web mentions generated by their spam and, on the other hand, attempting to promote their software as legitimate.

These companies work this way. A Chinese-based company creates these utilities—generally some kind of media converter or ripper. Invariably open-source software like FFmpeg lies underneath this stuff, though it’s not always credited as it’s supposed to be. That company then has several brands. The software’s interface is skinned differently for each brand, but is otherwise the same in terms of functionality. The interfaces are invariably garish and the UI clumsy.

I have no problem naming the companies that have spammed us in the last several months—and yes, this company is among them. If you have an aversion to spammers and the wares they peddle, here’s a handy list of companies to avoid.

MPEG LA, the firm that controls licensing for a number of video and other standards, announced on Thursday that it will never charge any royalties for Internet video encoded using the H.264 standard that Apple favors, as long as that video is free to end-users.

Thursday’s announcement by MPEG LA means that it will never charge any royalties for Internet video encoded using the H.264 standard, when the video is free to consumers. The December 31, 2015 expiration date for royalty-free use of H.264 is now history, and anyone can decode Internet video encoded in the format freely, in perpetuity.

There’s plenty of reason to rejoice at that, not least because oodles of HTML5 Web video is already using H.264. YouTube uses it in its HTML5 player, and any YouTube video you watch on your iPad or iPhone is encoded in the format. The same is true of Vimeo’s HTML5 player, and CNN’s, and ESPN’s, and Major League Baseball’s, and so on. And, of course, if Thursday’s announcement means that the Web will soon get even more H.264 HTML5 video, that’s more video you can consume with your iPhone and iPad, or other Flash-free mobile devices (which, at present, is many of them).

One hopes that with MPEG LA’s announcement, Mozilla and Opera will now feel comfortable supporting the H.264 codec, and HTML5 Web video can standardize on the format.

If you’ve been paying attention over the past few years, you know that in the early autumn Apple holds a music event that invariably introduces new iPods. The idea being that the holiday season is rolling around and Apple wants to release something that people can jam into a festive package and give to their dearest and nearest.

Apple has just announced that this year's event will be held on September 1st. I expect that, as usual, we’ll see that new crop of iPods. But there’s a good chance that we’ll see something more. Rumors are flying of a new Apple TV, a camera or two brought to the iPod touch, and even a smaller iPad.

When Apple Inc.'s first iPhone came out in 2007, many companies told their employees that the device wasn't appropriate for the workplace. The iPad is a different story.

The company's tablet-style device seems to be sidestepping the resistance that the iPhone and other consumer-oriented devices have faced in the corporate environment. Indeed, many businesses have raced to snap up iPads.

One example is the Chicago law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP, which banned the iPhone when it first came out yet preordered 10 iPads in the run up to the tablet's release in April.

"We made sure that we knew as much about these devices as possible," said Michael Barnas, the firm's director of application services. The technology department now offers access to its internal systems for more than 50 iPad-toting attorneys, and anticipates issuing iPads as an alternative to laptops as soon as next year.

Ladies and gentlemen, the fastest Mac we’ve ever seen is currently sitting in the Macworld Lab. It’s the 27-inch 2.93GHz quad core Core i7 iMac, equipped with a solid-state drive (SSD). This built-to-order (BTO) model posted the highest Speedmark 6 score of any iMac we’ve tested—for now.

The 27-inch 2.93GHz quad core Core i7 iMac with SSD isn’t one of the four standard configurations Apple offers, and Macworld doesn't mouse-rate BTO models. To get the Core i7 CPU and SSD, you have to customize a 27-inch 2.8GHz quad core Core i5 iMac () when ordering through the online Apple Store. Upgrading to the 2.93GHz Core i7 adds $200 to the $1999 base price. Substituting a 256GB SSD for the hard drive adds another $600. So the total price of the iMac we tested (with 4GB of RAM) is $2799.

We used our Speedmark 6 test suite to gauge the performance of the 2.93GHz quad core Core i7 iMac and to see how well it performs compared other current iMacs. Overall, the 2.93GHz quad core Core i7 iMac with an SSD is impressive, posting a Speedmark 6 score of 254, currently the highest Speedmark 6 score posted by any Mac. (We just received two of the three new Mac Pro models, and we'll test them and provide results soon. We think that the new Mac Pros will beat the Core i7 iMac, but the story will be the margin of difference.)

Though the SSD-equipped 2.93GHz quad core Core i7 iMac is impressive, we suspect that it won’t hold the title of World’s Fastest Mac for very long.

So these reports of a major security hole in iTunes, one through which people have had their PayPal accounts drained?

Not much to them, I’m told. Or, rather, not much to their assertion that Apple is at fault here. There’s no security hole in iTunes and if you’ve been unfortunate enough to have hundreds of dollars in unauthorized purchases charged to your iTunes acount it’s likely because you’ve fallen victim to a phishing scam — a variation on the one that’s been around for years now.

Sources close to Apple tell me iTunes has not been compromised and the company isn’t aware of any sudden increase in fraudulent transactions.

In an application filed in February, and made public this month, Apple is asking for a patent on that would watch out for “jailbreaking” — hacking an iPhone so unauthorized software can be installed on it — as one of several ways to secure its iPhones.

That aspect of Apple’s patent application is what’s getting headlines. And that’s too bad, because it’s clear what Apple is really doing is scrambling to reassure those running corporate wireless programs — or just paying bills for the household wireless devices — that they’re going to be able to secure all those iPhones, iPads, and other gizmos if they get lost or stolen.

In the filing, United States Patent Application 20100207721, Apple is asking for a patent on several methods for identifying unauthorized users of an electronic device. Some of them are pretty clever. For example, comparing a photograph of a phone’s user with an electronic image of its user. Or comparing the user’s heartbeat or voice patterns to the phone’s owner. Apple will also look for “suspicious behavior,” such as “entering an incorrect password,” jailbreaking the device, or removing the phone’s SIM card.

So does that sound Orwellian to you?

Until a few months ago, I fully expected Apple to announce Mac OS X 10.7 at this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference. But when I saw that there was no Mac-specific track on the conference schedule and that Mac apps would be excluded from the annual Apple Design Awards, I got the message loud and clear: iOS and the products it powers—the iPhone, iPod touch, and now the iPad—are now the stars of Apple’s software show. Mac OS X, last updated a year ago, now plays second fiddle.

OS X’s last major release, Snow Leopard, included internal changes, bug fixes, and performance improvements, but very few new features that were visible to users. Could it be that Apple thinks there’s just nothing left to add to Mac OS X? I sure hope not, because I have plenty of ideas. Here are just two of them, one concrete and the other more fanciful.

Some of the world's biggest electronics companies are readying an assault on the tablet market. But before they even begin, they find themselves at an early disadvantage.

Though Samsung, LG Electronics, Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Asus, Research In Motion, and Dell have announced or hinted at touchscreen tablets that will arrive between now and March 2011, they're way late to the party. Since the iPad's debut in April, Apple has built a huge lead in this category--in terms of actual devices sold but also in many consumers' minds.

The entire media tablet market is estimated to generate sales of just more than 12 million units by the end of 2010 and 25 million by the end of 2011, according to analyst firm IDC. Apple had sold more than 3 million by the end of June, and at that pace, Apple has likely sold about 4 million to date. That's almost a third of IDC's forecast for the year, and the all-important holiday shopping season is still ahead.

So where exactly does that leave the latecomers?

The Telegraph has published a lengthy and fascinating interview with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. Most of the interview focuses on Adobe's deteriorated relationship with Apple, particularly Apple's refusal to allow Adobe's Flash Player to run on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Narayen had many things to say during the interview, but here's the bottom line: "They've made their choice. We've made ours and we've moved on."

Narayen continues to characterize Apple's shunning of Flash as a business decision rather than one based on technical considerations: "There are companies that are choosing to provide a complete end-to-end experience and control every aspect of it and want all the business model gains from it," he says. "There are other companies that have chosen to say that the open eco-system is the way to go and that's how you would contrast Apple and Google's business models. We're on the side of the open."

It's interesting that Adobe, purveyor of some of the most ubiquitous proprietary software out there, keeps using that word, "open," without any sense of irony.

A collection of recently published patents and a new hire at Apple suggest that future iPhones may carry built-in features to replace your credit cards.

Apple recently hired Benjamin Vigier as a product manager for mobile commerce. He’s an expert in near field communication (NFC), a technology that enables devices to exchange information wirelessly over very short distances. It’s the kind of technology that credit card companies have been touting (without much success) recently, where instead of swiping a credit card, you just wave a card or key fob in front of a reader. According to his LinkedIn profile, Vigier formerly directed and developed mobile payment solutions for PayPal and Starbucks.

In addition, Apple in recent months published several patent applications that portray NFC-based hardware and software features utilizing mobile payments for concerts, sports venues, airline ticketing and more.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Perhaps $46 billion in walking-around money is too much.

So argued a notable financial analyst on Thursday, saying it's time for Apple to do something with its colossal cash reserve that's better for shareholders. In an open letter to Apple's board of directors, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi urged Apple to either return some cash to shareholders as a dividend or increase the value of Apple stock by repurchasing its own shares.

"In our conversations with shareholders, one common source of frustration--which is now bordering on exasperation--has been Apple's burgeoning cash balance and the company's unwillingness to return it to shareholders or discuss its vision for how the company plans to use it. Apple's cash balance is of mythic proportions--higher than the total market cap of all but 49 of the S&P 500 companies, the highest among all U.S.-listed companies and growing," Sacconaghi wrote. "We implore you to consider returning cash to your shareholders, along with a longer-term road map for how you plan to use your cash balance and why."

Apple's cash has been earning interest at an annual rate of 0.76 percent--a "value-destroying" rate compared to alternatives. Instead, Sacconaghi recommended an immediate $30 billion share repurchase plan and a 4 percent annual dividend.

The first Mac I ever used was a SE/30. It was compact and tidy with an internal hard drive and ethernet port. Definitely an enviable machine in 1990. Connected to it was a forgettable mouse and an Apple Extended Keyboard II. That massive battleship of a keyboard was an homage to beige plastic, and laughably oversized for the Mac.

I loved it. So much so that I still use one today. In fact, it will have a place on my desk for as long as it works (and as long as Mac OS X continues to recognize it). Here’s why.

First is the sound.

When it comes to love-it-or-hate-it products out of Cupertino, few offerings can match the Power Mac G4 Cube for getting people to choose sides. Even a decade after its debut—Steve Jobs unveiled the Cube at the July 2000 Macworld Expo in New York and the desktop shipped a month later—the Cube still stirs passionate debate between its detractors and defenders.

To the anti-Cube crowd, the machine represented the pinnacle of what Apple detractors at the time decried as the company’s greatest fault: putting form over function and style over power. Fans of the Cube were equally as adamant that the machine was brilliant and its design beautiful.

What isn’t a matter of a debate is the Cube’s commercial success—or more accurately, its lack thereof. The G4 Cube was a flop at the cash register. Why didn’t people buy the G4 Cube?

In areas ranging from sci-fi to sports, from documentaries to kids’ movies, 3D is going to be the next big thing for the world of home theater. HDTV may make your image look awesome, but only 3D promises explosions that make you flinch and landscapes that seem to be rolling out of your TV.

If you are a hardcore home-theater enthusiasts, you probably remember the sting of having nothing to watch on your cutting-edge HDTV—and you may have had the sinking realization that your $300 HD-DVD player was on the verge of becoming obsolete. Don’t make those mistakes with 3D TV; just read through this 3D TV FAQ, and you’ll have all the details you need before you start your holiday shopping early (or decide to wait).

Microsoft has launched a new Windows 7 campaign to take on Mac OS X. A new tab on the Windows 7 sites compares Windows 7 to Mac OS X in a number of areas--listing out the reasons that Windows 7 is the superior choice. Most of the points made by Microsoft are valid, but the campaign itself is a waste of resources that could be better used battling Apple where it counts.

Apple is a threat to Microsoft, but Mac isn't much of a threat to Windows.

The problem Microsoft faces is that it is the king of yesterday's hill, and Apple has already staked its flag on the hill of the future. Microsoft does need to recognize the Apple threat, but it needs to realize that the threat is on a different battlefront than PC vs. Mac and dedicate its resources to making the culture shift from desktop to mobility.

Microsoft should let Apple tilt at windmills if it chooses--pitting its Mac OS X "David" against the Windows 7 "Goliath"--and not let pride distract it from more urgent matters. Microsoft should ignore Mac OS X and worry about the iPhone and iPad.

Apple sold 3.3 million iPads in Q2, the product’s first quarter on the market. That was more than the number of MacBook laptops (2.5 million) that the company sold in Q2. Plus, the two products combined catapulted Apple from No. 7 in the global notebook market to No. 3.

Meanwhile, all of the other top five notebook vendors saw their growth slow during the same period, suggesting that the iPad cut into their sales. Will these iPad numbers be a short-term bump based on the unparalleled hype and anticipation for the product, or will it be amplified even further during the back-to-school and holiday seasons? That will be one of the most interesting trends to watch during the second half of 2010.

Nevertheless, the iPad has already sold enough units to alarm laptop makers and make them contemplate how to react. But, laptop makers should also look at the factors that are triggering the iPad’s popularity and consider how some of those factors could be co-opted into notebooks. Here are the top six.

Now that AT&T and Verizon have decided to turn smartphones into credit cards, you may be asking yourself, “Is this really a good idea?”

After all, it’s not hard to imagine some wily thief picking up the BlackBerry you left at a restaurant and going on a major shopping spree. How, exactly, do the carriers and device manufacturers plan to make smartphones safe to be used on a mass-market level for financial transactions?

The answer is that consumers will have to start adopting practices and applications that have traditionally been used by corporate users.

It's certainly possible for competitors to match the iPad from a hardware perspective. There are many options at the CPU level that could equal the company's own proprietary processor. Take Nvidia's Tegra or some of Intel's new Atom chips, along with new low voltage chips from Qualcomm and Marvell. All are destined to be in plenty of tablets very soon.

Matching Apple's screen technology is also pretty straight forward. The company used a custom 9.7 inch screen on the iPad. Similar screens are available from many suppliers in Asia right now. There are even some solid alternatives to Apple's iOS. There's Android, of course, and also MeeGO, mobile Linux, and RIM's BlackBerry OS, which might evolve for use in an upcoming tablet.

But even Apple's dectractors have to admit that the company's forward thinking with things like iTunes and the App Store have given it quite an edge over potential competitors. And if Apple keeps tweaking and adding more products to its ecosystem, it will be hard for future tablet vendors to catch up.

Looking to power up your iPhone with the best free and cheap apps out there? Our first edition of the Lifehacker Pack for iPhone rounds up our favorites must-have iPhone applications.

Whether you just bought a new iPhone or you're simply looking for some of the best basic apps for your device, the list below should be plenty to get you started. The majority of the apps are free unless otherwise noted, and where they're not free, we aimed for cheap. And when a default application is incredibly useful and blows all its competition out of the water—we included it, too.

Last week, the U.S. Librarian of Congress ruled that those who defeat the digital protections of today’s smart-phones for non-infringing purposes can not be threatened by the anti-circumvention portion of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

In short, regardless of how little Apple and other companies may like it, you’re welcome to jailbreak your phone to install third-party apps not offered by the Apple Store. You’re just as free to then unlock your phone for use with another carrier. (Jailbreaking and unlocking are not the same thing. Jailbreaking opens the phone so that you can access and modify portions of the phone that are normally off-limits. Unlocking is a step further that allows you to use it with a different carrier.)

But the question remains: Although you can jailbreak your iPhone with a clear conscience, is it a good idea? Consider these pros and cons.

Despite some peoples’ firmly held belief that one must own music rather than rent it, subscription music services such as Rhapsody and Napster continue to exist. We can now add one more—San Francisco-based Rdio (pronounced ar-dee-o).

Rdio—currently available in only the U.S. and Canada—comes in two flavors; the $5-a-month Rdio Web and $10-a-month Rdio Unlimited. The first lets you stream unlimited on-demand music via your computer’s Web browser from Rdio’s library of seven million some-odd tracks. The second offers this same Web service as well as access to the service via your supported mobile phone (all iOS devices running iOS 3.1.3 or later and Android devices work, as well as some BlackBerry models). Additionally, with the Rdio app you can download music from the service as part of the subscription and play it even when you’re not connected to the Internet. You can also purchase and download unprotected MP3 tracks encoded at bit rates from 192kbps to 256kbps.

I participated in the beta and have since taken a second look now that the service has officially opened. Here’s what I found:

The short history of the computer industry is dominated by two well-known stories of business triumph and defeat. The first is the story of how mainframe makers failed to take the personal computer seriously until it was too late. Most of them faded away, and those that didn't still failed to dominate the PC industry.

The second is the story of how Apple Computer, Inc. refused to license its innovative new operating system to other hardware makers in the early days of the PC revolution and ended up ceding the market to Microsoft, which licensed its operating system far and wide. The temptation to fit every new computer industry business conflict into one of these two molds is strong, and frequently surrendered to.

Maybe you've heard this sentiment expressed before, and maybe you've read the inevitable reactions to it from ardent Apple supporters explaining why the current situation is very different and how Apple will succeed this time around—or perhaps how it has already succeeded. I'm on board with the first part; I think the mobile market is very different from the PC market of old. On the second part, Apple's prospects for success, I'm less sure.

But first things first.

A few weeks ago I decided to mosey over to a local Manhattan coffee shop for an afternoon cappuccino. After placing my order I sat down at a table and pulled out my Amazon Kindle.

I barely made it a sentence into the e-book I was reading before an employee of the coffee shop came by, stood over me and said, “Excuse me sir, but we don’t allow computers in the coffee shop.”

I looked up at him with an incredulous look and replied, “This isn’t a computer, it’s an e-book reader.” He then told me that the “device” in my hand had a screen and required batteries, so it was obviously “some variation of a computer.” The coffee shop, I was told, did not allow the use of computers.

Annoyed with this distinction, I peppered the employee with questions on why reading on paper was more acceptable than reading on a screen. Flustered and confused by the existential debate he had been dragged into, the employee resolutely said, “Look, no computers in the coffee shop.”

Jailbreaking your iPhone has never been simpler with the latest release of JailbreakMe. Instead of the previous method of hacking into the iPhone through your PC, JailbreakMe.com exploits a flaw in the Safari Web browser's PDF viewer that grants instantaneous freedom from Apple's notoriously locked-down policies. Even before jailbreakme, jailbreaking iPhones was a popular practice with many benefits -- and many downsides.

Here's are 5 reasons why you should consider jailbreaking your iPhone with jailbreakme -- and 5 reasons to avoid it.

Aside from telling you when the bus will arrive, keeping tabs on your location, and maintaining an always-on connection to your various social networks, your phone takes decent pictures. It’s always in your pocket, too. If your phone offers that much functionality in addition to snapping serviceable photos, is there any reason to carry a dedicated camera with you?

Well, yeah. There are plenty, actually. Superior image quality, manual controls, and high-zoom optics are the obvious ones. Oh, and we’ve yet to see a smartphone camera that accepts interchangeable lenses, has optical image stabilization, provides good high-ISO performance, or supports high-speed burst shooting. In short, DSLR owners should stick with a DSLR.

But beyond that, it’s getting harder to make the case that a stand-alone camera is a must-have device for casual snapshooters. In fact, there are several ways in which a puny-lensed, small-sensored camera phone offers a better overall photography experience than a dedicated snapshot camera.

Point-and-shoot cameras, are you taking notes? Here are four ways that smartphone cameras are beating you at your own game.