When can you call the iPhone "a deal," huh? At $199? Considering the current subscription plans available, not quite. What about a $120 cheap iPhone you can use on any network you want, just like the one pictured below? Well, that's one of the (probably) thousands "iPhone inspired" phones and media players that are flooding the market as we speak, and since Apple's original thing is doin' so well, it seems the Cupertino-based company may (finally!) slash the prices once again!



In a investment note from Needham Research made public yesterday, Charlie Wolf reiterates his belief that the doubled revenue Apple had in the past year leaves them ""considerable flexibility" in dropping the prices of the already cheap iPhone(at least to some - if you don't take the subscription plan pricing into account).

Going one step further, Wolf estimates a selling price of $666 in average(ehem...but isn't that a bit strange? exactly "the number of the beast?" come on!), giving about 50 percent more than the current cost of manufacturing and selling one unit. Considering this, if Apple decides to cut the price to only $99, the margin goes down to an extremely comfortable 42.3 percent.

To close this cheap iPhone predictions chapter with the most interesting part, Needham Research went as far as claiming that, if such a price drop happens, "the iPhone... could figuratively take over the smartphone market leaving only niche players like BlackBerry."

If only would AT&T come up with some low-end plans, and those international iPhone carriers who still offer insanely expensive plans would follow their example, then we could really see the cheap iPhone conquering the smartphone market, but until then, the battle is still undecided.

If you never got to that sweet moment in time when you say "At last!!! I am running Windows software on my Mac WITHOUT WINDOWS!," then today I have some really great news for you. No matter how much you love or hate George W. Bush, you should thank him for being able to grab Codeweavers' CrossOver for free, because that's what I am trying to say here - Windows programs on Mac can be easily run with the help of this awesome application, which is usually priced at $40, but today...

...the fruits of the Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge can be enjoyed, because one of those goals set by the challenge has been reached. The goal was to bring down average gasoline prices in the Twin Cities to $2.79 a gallon, and since gas prices in Minneapolis and St. Paul did that on Monday, the 14th of October, CodeWeavers decided to reward Mac users for this achievement of the Bush administration.

Jeremy White, president and CEO of CodeWeavers, said "That morning, I was filling my tank at Big Steve's Gas Palace in St. Paul. I had just finished my morning corn dog and 64-ounce Dr. Pepper when I looked at the pump and noticed gas was at $2.79. I screamed ‘Woohoo,' then I yelled ‘Oh, crap!' as I realized every American can now have my software for free. Kind of upsets my fourth quarter revenue projections..."

The funny part of the whole deal is that the official company website is currently down(if you want to go to www.codeweavers.com, you will end up on http://down.codeweavers.com/), so the entire US was waiting for this opportunity to get Windows programs on Mac for free. Maybe even those guys at the gas station were Mac users, who knows?

"I launched the campaign to inspire President Bush to make the most of his final days in office. Who knew that our Challenge would have this kind of impact on the country? On the other hand, who knew that the economy would implode, causing oil demand to drop into the abyss and gas prices to plummet as well. Clearly, investigating Bear Stearns, AIG and those guys is misplaced – CodeWeavers is responsible for this mess. So it's free software for all!," concluded Mr. White.

While Parallels and BootCamp require you to buy a Windows copy to run Windows programs on Mac, CrossOver doesn't, since it uses Wine to allow you run those Windows programs right on Mac OS X, so if you're looking for such a thing as Windows programs on Mac, don't wait any longer - get your free CrossOver copy now, or pay the price tomorrow. No matter how you do it, it's still much better than those two alternatives I mentioned!

Yearning for some iPhone news? Don't worry, we got plenty! Fortunately, it's not only about those iPhone 3G problems a lot of people seem to be facing these days. In fact, we won't talk about problems now at all, since there's something even better to check out - new and interesting features that should arrive for iPhone 3G users, once the version 2.2 of the software is officially released!

Sooo... without any additional comments, here you have the iPhone news of the day - according to a bunch of new photos, the upcoming software version of the iPhone will bring Street Views to the Maps application, but this is only a large part of the entire pie, since there's much more expected from iPhone 2.2. What else?

Well, apart from Street Views, you will also be able to get bus, train and walking directions right from your phone. That should be the end of "Excuse me, could you tell me where is..." - at least for iPhone users, of course. If this is a good thing or a bad thing, that depends on who you're asking this. After all, the more smart our gadgets become, the less frequently appears the need to ask for help from other people.

From here to becoming a world full of people walking on the street without saying a word to each other may not be such a short path, but I think that's where we're headed. Anyway, don't worry - there's going to be a "location sharing" feature, too, so you can easily bring all your contacts to your location, if they have the iPhone to guide them, of course!

These being said, I conclude the iPhone news of the day here, but be sure we'll get back to the Street View and the other goodies as soon as version 2.2 of the software will be officially available.

When it comes to cheap MP3 players, Apple and Microsoft are both out of the question. When talking about cheap computers, Microsoft is clearly leading the way, since Windows-based computers are always cheaper than the Macs, but we should also keep in mind Microsoft is not manufacturing any computers by itself. Anyway, I am sure that driver certifications and others similar things bring a lot of money for the Redmond giant, but today we're going to talk about a more interesting part of the Apple vs Microsoft battle...

In most cases, when you hear about Apple vs Microsoft, you think about computers or media players, especially since the popular belief is that Apple is much smaller than Microsoft. No, it's not the truth, although Microsoft's big ones like to talk about the Cupertino-based company vs themselves like General Motors would compare itself to a small grocery. Unfortunately for them, things look quite different, as we're going to see next.

Before moving on, just a reminder - if you think the new Apple ads are not telling the truth, then you'd better stop reading this. I am not against Microsoft, and I always said Apple has its good parts, as well as bad ones, and no matter how much I like(or not) the way this battle is being fought, I must confess I admire Apple, and here's why:

- Microsoft claims Apple has less than 5% of the worldwide computer market, but...

- Apple now has more cash than Microsoft

- Apple earns half of Microsoft's profits, and 3/4 of its revenues!

- Apple also reported a cash position of $24.5 billion!

In the last quarter, Microsoft released revenues of $15.06 billion, net profits of $4.37 billion, and a reserve of cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments that added up to $20.7 billion, while Apple reported $7.9 billion in revenues and $1.14 billion in net profit, but this leaves most of the iPhone business out of the equation, since that is hidden away in subscription accounting under GAAP rules. Once the iPhone numbers are added, the previous reported sums go up to $11.68 billion in revenue, and $2.44 billion in net profits.

At last, it should be noted that, when it comes to growth rates, the Apple vs Microsoft fight has a clear winner, since Apple's non-GAAP revenue increase of 75.1% year over year, while Microsoft only had a quarterly revenues growth of 9%.

I don't know what's going to happen in the long run, but if things continue to move in this direction, Microsoft may become a memory sooner than expected...

Remember the greatest problem of the new MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks from Apple? If you don't, then let me give you just these two words to think about: NO FIREWIRE! The good part is that Steve Jobs himself answered a user enquiry about this move, but now I just read a very interesting report of a fact that's not so easy to justify, since we're talking by a serious quality drop, and not just dumping a certain feature...

In this TechSpot posting, Julio Franco brought into light a matter only some of those seeing the new MacBook managed to notice before buying the thing. The problem is we're talking about a problem that's going to make you curse the day when you spent over $1000 for a new MacBook that proves to have an issue only low-end Windows notebooks have, and not even all of those, if I think well about it. But...what kind of problem?

I know you're not crazy about clicking links and reading looong articles - I am not that way, either, so let's make this story short - the MacBook problems now include the screen, the smaller 13.3-inch screen that is also LED illuminated, just like the one of the MacBook Pro. OK, so it's smaller, but I guess it should have the same image quality, right?

If you look at the images above, you'll surely notice the huge difference - the new MacBook Pro is to the left, and the MacBook is the one to the right. Need I say anything else?

The conclusion is this - just as I expected, Apple sacrificed some things to lower the price of its notebooks. Unfortunately, with a price tag over $1000, the new MacBook can't be considered a "budget" notebook, but it surely comes with some "budget features."

As usual, your comments are expected to drop below, especially since I would really want to hear what's the opinion of someone who managed to see the new MacBook in action. Anyone here?