I think it's very interesting to see that the 3G iPhone is on its way to a lot of countries, but Apple doesn't say anything about it, don't you agree? Today, we have a new country added to the list, and apart from that, we also have an unofficial rumor regarding the iPhone SDK, which seems to go global...


<-125x125 Button - left->First on the list - the 3G iPhone and Austria. As you probably figured out, T-Mobile Austria, whose logo is pictured above, is Apple's chosen carrier for the 3G iPhone in that country. The best part is that we're not talking about rumors here - on Monday, T-Mobile Austria confirmed during a press conference that the 3G iPhone is going to arrive "shortly."

Even more, according to T-Mobile, Austria is going to be one of the few countries to serve as a testing ground for the upcoming mobile from Apple, and I think this is pretty interesting, because the device may arrive sooner than expected...

At last, we should note that the iPhone SDK is now available for everyone. How's that? Well, since now, the official iPhone developers site stated that "the iPhone Developer Program will initially be available to a limited number of developers in the U.S. and will expand to other countries in the coming months," and now that text was changed to "will initially be available to a limited number of developers during the beta period."

Quietly, it seems we're getting closer and closer to a new wave of major events from Apple. Can you feel it? There's something new and near in the air!

Did you ever simply drop your iPod? Without any evil intention, of course. I am talking about those times when something simply slips out of your hand, and it's always something pretty expensive, like an iPhone or the iPod Touch. I hope you didn't get through such a situation, but if you want to stay on the safe side, today I have two items from Griffin for you: the FlexGrip and the FlexScreen.


First of all, the Griffin FlexGrip is a dual-color case for the iPod touch and 3rd generation nano, which "wraps your iPod in durable, non-scratching two-tone silicone, textured to make it easy to hold onto." This case protects your iPod's front and back from scratches, dents and dust, while allowing full access to screen, jacks, and controls.

The FlexScreen isn't much different from the FlexGrip, only that this case is made of crystal clear polycarbonate, and it only fits 3rd generation iPod nanos. The textured silicone allows sure grip, while the face shield protects your beloved iPod from scratches. Obviously, you still have full access to screen, jacks, and controls!

The FlexGrip is priced at $14.99, and the FlexScreen can be purchased for the same price. Happy shopping!

I know it may sound incredible, but it seems that currently, iTunes eats a lot, and produces less. Well, this may not be the truth when looking at it as a whole, but last reports claim that with each movie sold through the iTunes Store, Apple is losing money! How is this possible? Well, that's what we should try to find out next...


According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple's decision to make movies available through the iTunes Store the same day as their DVD editions may be a good one for the buyers, but not for the seller. Why? It's very simple - a new release bought for $15 by an iTunes user costs Apple roughly $16, according to an anonymous source, quoted by the newspaper.

In the end, this is not such a big loss, especially if we think about the success of Apple's music sales. After all, they are trying to get the same level of acceptance when it comes to movies, and losing some money to do that may seem right, from their point of view.

Since we talked about movies, here's another one, somehow related to that subject - MacBook Pro owners have problems with the backlighting of their devices, which fail to activate after waking from sleep. The result is a "stripe effect," bringing together light and dark stripes on the screen. No movies for them, huh?

DellX4 is not a new computer from Dell, because if that would be true, such an article wouldn't fit here at all. You can simply consider this an equation, and the answer lies at your feet - Apple=DellX4!


If I remember well, we talked about this subject some time ago, but things were a bit different. How? Well, Apple was only 2 times as big as Dell, and now...

...we already know what's the status, but let's see where it all started, shall we?

Back in 1997, when asked what he would do if he was in charge of Apple Computer, Michael Dell answered, in front of several thousand IT executives "What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."

A month later, Steve Jobs already had an ambitious goal set, and was saying that "We're coming after you, you're in our sights."

Time passed, and it seems Apple and Steve Jobs managed to make things right, because on the 13th of January, 2006, Apple surpassed Dell's market value, with $72.13 billion vs. $71.97 billion at market close...

Then, it all started to move faster, so on the 27th of July, 2007, Apple was valued at $127.81 billion, while Dell was only worth $63.65 billion.

While Dell was going down, Apple continued to climb, so in the same year, on the 6th of December, the equation was Apple=3XDell($165.66 billion vs. $54.42 billion).

Finally, in yesterday's NASDAQ trading, Apple got up with $6.05, or 3.48 percent, and closed at $180.00, while the company's market value passed 4 times that of Dell's, $158.66 billion vs. $38.97 billion.

Well, since Dell seems to go down all the time, from now on, this should be a battle against itself for Apple, because it is also worth being mentioned that its value was a bit lower than in December 2007, when the Cupertino-based company was only "DellX3..."

Safari is a good browser, without any doubt. I didn't say "perfect," I didn't say "great." For now, "good" is enough, but things are getting better with each version. I just hope they won't drop this browser's tremendous speed along the way, and exchange it for more features. Anyway, it's interesting to see what's the current status of the Windows version of Safari on the market, so let's check it out, shall we?


In the image above, the green graph belongs to Safari 3.0, and the blue one, to the 3.1 version. Of course, we're talking about the Windows versions. Despite the fact we're talking about a very small market share, way below 1 percent, I think it is important to notice that Apple's decision to add Safari install as an option to the Apple Software Update application had such an impact.

Apple's move to add Safari already checked into the "updates" section of the Software Update tool, although this was a new program to install, made a lot of people to speak against them. In the end, they slightly changed the Software Update program, but Safari is still available there for those that don't have it yet.

Was this a smart move? After all, Safari 3.1 jumped from 0.07 percent to 0.21 percent in 6 weeks, which is still way below Firefox, IE, and even Opera. Yes, it was, and I don't think Firefox or IE were saints with their ways chosen to promote their browsers. Obviously, Mozilla was very smart in promoting their product, while Microsoft has chosen the brute force path.

At last, I want to ask you one question... Looking at Opera, which is a great browser, but didn't use any smart method to promote itself, I see a barrier. As long as Safari for Windows doesn't get more "aggressive," do you think Apple will succeed in pushing its browser above the 3 percent mark?