Even if you love Apple or hate it, you must think of the revolution this company made on smartphones market. Before the first iPhone was released, the coolest and the top selling phone for the past years was Motorola RAZR. This smartphone is on the first place, it is a leader market, and for sure it is the best selling phone in the last year. There are almost two years since the original iPhone has been released, and only few months ago the 3G version was released. Both phones miss some features, but the current version is much better, it definitely has some cool improvements. I will just briefly analyze in this article the differences between iPhone 2G and the newer version, 3G.

There aren't too many differences in the design matter, but I will point out the existing ones, before getting to the inner parts. The screens are both the same size, 3.5'', and they have the same 480x320 resolution. The original iPhone has a smooth metallic finish on the rear, with a black strip at the bottom. On the front part, it has a shiny metal piece, which is around the side of the phone, and it also goes behind of the screen. 3G has a piano black or white finish and the shiny metal piece is around the screen. iPhone 3G also has buttons made of a metal, excluding the Home button. This makes iPhone 3G look sturdier than the original version. The shape is a big difference between these two models, and I would like to point out that 2G is a little thicker and flat when set down, and that 3G is a little bit more round. Some people say that 3G's screen heats at a warmer temperature than 2G's screen does.

Let's get to the inside part, and we can observe that 3G has outstanding features compared to the original version. iPhone 2G supported WiFi, GSM and Bluetooth, but iPhone 3G supports, as the name suggests, 3G technology next to WiFi, GSM and Bluetooth. This makes surfing, watching videos and downloading better experiences, and the frequencies supported by the first generation didn't include UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz), which are available on iPhone 3G.

A new feature on the latest model is GPS, which is absolutely necessary nowadays. Both smartphones have 2MP cameras, but none has the video recording feature. iPhone 3G weighs 0.1 ounces less than the previous version, which weighted 4.8 ounces. 3G's big disappointment would be that its battery drains fast. iPhone 2G rocks because it has 8 hours of talk-time and 3G offers 5 hours.

Comparing these two great phones is quite hard, but 3G was definitely a good decision of Apple. iPhone 2G remains a market pioneer,it is an impressive product, but 3G's features are somehow common requirements for the modern smartphone user, and this new model fulfills a lot of consumers' needs.

MacBook Air has an interesting multi-touch capable trackpad, which also supports gestures. But there are the other versions of the Mac notebook, like MacBook and MacBook Pro which also support gestures.

The gestures are pretty simple, like pinching, expanding and rotate, but I would like to describe them briefly for those who don't know them.

Screen Zoom: For this, you should hold the CTRL key, place two fingers on the trackpad, and then move your fingers up for zooming in, and if you want to zoom out, you should move the fingers down.

For Scrooling, place two fingers on the trackpad, and then move them up and down or side to side if you want to scroll the active window. This requires scrollbars and you also need a place to scroll too). Leopard supports also a diagonal scroll, if you have activated both "Use two fingers to scroll" and "Allow horizontal scrolling" in the System Preferences edit window, in the section Keyboard and Mouse-> Trackpad.

Tapping on something will be the same as clicking on something if you enable "Clicking" in System Preferences > Keyboard and Mouse > Trackpad

Click and Drag is also possible, and you can do this by double tapping on the trackpad, and then dragging without lifting the finger. These two actions must be also enabled in the Trackpad settings, in System Preferences, tab Keyboard and Mouse.

Drag Lock works with Click and Drag, and it requires to tap once on the trackpad for releasing a dragged item. All these three actions must be all enabled in System Preferences->Keyboard and Mouse->Trackpad.

The Secondary Click gesture does the same thing as the right click of a mouse or CTRL+click does, and you can use it to open a contextual menu. This can be done easily by tapping on an item with two fingers on your notebook's trackpad.

The drivers for these gestures usually come with the installation CD, and they can be re-installed only with a new reinstallation of the OS. Synaptics, which is the driver provider for many of the laptops with trackpads, has released an upgrade which allows two new types of finger gestures and controlling the applications with finger movements. Synaptics has developed this system similarly to the one used by Apple on MacBook, and the most interesting feature in here is "ChiralTouch", which detects circular movement on the trackpad, and it converts it into scrolling or rotation. There are more than 100 applications support these new motions, and wait, there are more to come. You should check your laptop manufacturer's site and see if there is an available updated driver for your model.

There are a lot of iPhone users, which hearing all the fuss around jailbreaking and unlocking the device, want the same thing, but most of the time they don't actually know what it exactly means.

Briefly, jailbreaking the iPhone means that you are allowed to install on it more than Apple applications, and these would be third party apps. This applies to all firmware versions, and it is different of unlocking the phone, which means to accept all carriers. An unlocked iPhone will accept all SIM cards from all carriers. You won't be anymore tied to one carrier, which must be approved by Apple. With the introduction of Apple store, a question appears:"Why do we still need to jailbreak the iPhone?". There are som reasons for which users want to jailbreak the smartphone, and I tried to summarize them here in this article.

Even if Apple introduced the App Store in iPhone 2.0, and even if this is the best feature for that firmware update, there are some applications developed by other companies which would be great for iPhone too. Some interesting utilities, like Netshare, NemusSync ( sync the iPhone calendar with your Google Calendar), iAccess(allows you to use all the Chinese Input Methods), or Mame4iPhone which allows you to play arcade games on iPhone, are developed by other companies and they have been banned to hit the AppStore for some reasons. The applications mentioned here were released by Cydia, and they seem quite useful, but they are not available in the Apple App Store.

There is one aspect in which iPhone has only to loose, and this is video recording. This feature is not available on iPhone, unless you jailbreak it and install proper software. For this you can use utilities like Cycorder or iPhone Video Recorder. Another interesting aspect which can be achieved by jailbreaking the iPhone is that you can change the look, the theme, and you can feel more comfortable with your iPhone's new face. Winterboard is one application which can help you improve your smartphone's look, and here are some images with pimped iPhones.



This may not be the real reason for non-tech-geeks users of iPhone, but for the really interested persons in tweaking and improving iPhone might me interesting.

The inner part of the iPhone is a trim version of the well known Mac OS X, which is basically an Unix core. Are there available Unix applications which can be installed on the iPhone? The answer is yes, but only after jailbreaking it. After this, you can easily install applications such as Apache Web Server or any other Unix utilities. One server that most jail-broken iPhone users use is a SSH daemon. This SSH helps you to connect remotely to the iPhone and then transfer any files from/to it.

The last and the most common reason for  jailbreaking the iPhone is unlocking it. To be able to unlock it, you have to pass through this stage of jailbreaking, so you can go further with the installations.

In the smartphone market, two stars have a lot of fans and get constant publicity: iPhone and Blackberry. Of course there are on market also HTC and Palm, but Apple and RIM have quite large market shares, and the big battle on this market is for sure between these two companies, and especially between these two products. Q3 2008 was the historical moment when iPhone went ahead of BlackBerry, and this was because Apple sold 6.9 million phones, and RIM only 6.1. iPhone or BlackBerry is a pretty tough question for geeks, and it would be interesting to compare these two products and see what are differences, and find out which are the aspects that make one phone or another better.

I think it's fair to compare the higher end BlackBerry phones (Bold, Curve, Storm) with the 3G iPhone. It would be silly to compare iPhone 3G with BlackBerry Pearl, which doesn't cost more than $50. Basically this is just an overall comparison, between more aspects of these smartphones.

A very important thing is that iPhone and BlackBerry markets are starting to overlap. If the iPhone is the media consumer's dream, with a lot of possibilities to play movies and music easily, it might not be the perfect product for a corporate user. A lot of companies have resisted the temptation of allowing the employees to use iPhone in the corporate network. Analysts speculate that currently, Apple is working on a corporate friendly product which will integrate a third party to handle the e-mail issue.

BlackBerry has been for a long time, the staple of corporate users who needed e-mail and calendar features, but RIM, recently has changed a little bit this strategy and added to the newer versions of BlackBerry some cool entertainment features. Now, RIM products have cameras which shoot both still and video images, they play music, and some voices say that RIM is working on BlackBerry 9000, which should have touchscreen and it might be very similar to Apple's iPhone.

In the matter of applications, I saw a very interesting utility created for BlackBerry. A smart guy wrote an application for his BlackBerry which would allow him to ignore some calls automatically, if they were from a particular number. The application allowed a good command on the smartphone, and even if the call still rang, it was immediatly ignored. Actually, BlackBerry doesn't have very interesting applications. There are some free applications, but they seem to be second rate at best, and the prices are quite strange for the paid apps. On the other hand, iPhone is an application heaven. Developers are encouraged to create, design and sell their applications, and iPhone App Store has a lot of interesting apps; you can find a quite wide range of utilities for iPhone there. Many of them make life easier, and they allow you to do this in the palm of your hand. There is Urbanspoon, which randomly selects the nearest restaurants for you with the shake of the iPhone. I heard voices saying that iPhone applications can be easily compared to wives, because they tell you everything, from where to eat, to what to wear and how should you combine your blue T-shirt with that brand new pair of jeans. Due to the overhelming availability of applications and all the encouragement by Apple for developers to design their own applications, iPhone is pretty cool on this aspect.

In the physical attributes arena, I would say that iPhone has a minus, because it might seem quite fragile. Many tests proved that the iPhone is actually durable, and there are also a lot of protection products specially designed for iPhone, from cases to rubber sleeves. The touchscreen and the motion sensibility are pretty cool, and you can play games by tilting the phone or zoom with a finger slide. BlackBerry Storm doesn't even come close to this, but the durability is the strongest factor of this smartphone. The worst problem with a BlackBerry I've heard until now was it got scratches on the back after it was turned on the table too many times. Maybe it was just a boring meeting, right? Even if it is run over by a truck, this little miracle smartphone holds its form, and avoids cracks. More than this, it doesn't lose a key. This smartphone was designed for business and travel, and I tend to believe that the key factor is its durability. For sure, this section is won by BlackBerry.

I don't think I have to explain more about gaming, because we all know the huge variety of games created for iPhone, and all the opportunities and manners we could play them, and we all know that BlackBerry has Brickbreaker. Well I think it's clear. In this section, the prize goes to iPhone and its thousands of games in the App Store.

BlackBerry is far superior to iPhone, concerning the ease of mobile e-mail and the connectivity to Microsoft Exchange SErver. BlackBerry may have a slower CPU, but it is ok for the office applications installed on it. If this smartphone it's secure enough for President Obama to use, I think it's clear that in this aspect BlackBerry has a plus point. iPhone has larger storage capacity, a faster CPU and much more RAM. iPhone is the best anti-productivity phone. Lately, iPhone became compatible too with Exchange Server, and this is a huge step in integrating this product with the business. Each of these phones has its advantages and disadvantages on these sectors,so BlackBerry wins for security and business use, and iPhone is the best for personal use.

The bottom line is 3-3, and this means that they are both great products, but he we have seen a lot of people who own a BlackBerry for business stuff, and in the other pocket they carry an iPod Touch, for all the entertainment offered and for portable gaming needs. From its gaming to its thousands of unique applications, iPhone is the device everybody wants to carry even if they have a Blackberry.

If you like a large workspace when working on your computer, and I mean, a large screen space, you can never go overboard, because it has been proved that larger monitors and multiscreen setups boost productivity and make it easier to multitask. apple didn't built video input jacks into its product, iMac (they have only the built-in monitor), but you can use it as an external monitor for another computer. This is useful for laptop users, when they aren't travelling, because they can expand screen space.

Even if the iMacs don't have an input jack, you can use them as external monitors for other laptops and desktop computers. For this, you need a software application, which uses VNC (Virtual Network Computing) protocol. VNC is used basically to allow one computer for remote access and to gain control on another computer, but Screen Recycler uses it to make the second monitor an adjunct one. While the second screen can be one from any kind of computer, the one you are working on and installing Screen Recycler has to be an Apple product, an iMac.



If you have two computers and of course two monitors you can use Screen Recycler, and this is very useful because you can use even the laptop display as a second screen for the main machine. It is great also because you can work with multiple documents and applications, and this is how you get rid of hidden windows and lack of space on your screen.

Screen Recycler has an automatic function for disconnecting on sleep, and you can activate it by typing "com.screenrecycler keepconnectiononsleep Yes". The reverse function is automatic wakeup for the remote computer, after sleep. This can be activated like this: type"com.screenrecycler disablewakeonlan Yes". It also has Added Driver/Reinstall and Driver/Uninstall menus, which can be used when you want to reinstall or update the driver, and you can do this directly within the program.

This is the easiest method to enlarge the screen space, and you can do this by adding a second screen to your iMac.