Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Incoming freshmen at Abilene Christian University next year will be greeted by more than new roommates, cafeteria food, and all nighters. Members of the class of 2012 will be equipped with an iPhone or iPod Touch, the school announced Monday.

The giveaway is a means for students to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors’ offices, and check their meal and account balances, according to ACU Chief Information Officer Kevin Roberts.

You need a $400 phone to check you meal balance?

ACU didn’t provide details on what size iPhone/iPod Touch students would be receiving, but I’m guessing the school is not going to pay for more than the 8GB, $399 iPhone and the 8GB, $299 iPod Touch.

ACU has 1,059 enrolled undergraduates in fall 2007, so it will presumably be purchasing about 300 of the Apple devices for its lucky freshmen. Are they going to engrave peoples’ names on them to avoid mix ups? And how many of these devices are going to end up smashed on the quad after a few wild nights? Luckily ACU is not listed among the top party schools.

ACU has actually been studying mobile convergence on campus since the spring of 2007, and even produced a movie about its efforts. The school also has an indirect presence on iTunes, where students that visit www.acu.edu/itunes can download ACU lectures and interviews, school-related podcasts, and academic information to their iPods.

Original post by Chloe Albanesius

It seems like hardly a week goes by that we don’t see some brand new Apple rumor. For the most part, they end up being just that, panning out to little more than sheer fanboy speculation (I mean, come on guys, an iPhone? That’ll be the day). On occasion, however, they actually turn out to be, you know, true.

This week’s rumored Macbook and Macbook Pro refreshes fit squarely in the latter. Apple updated its online store with the new models, early this morning.

Both lines will be equipped with the latest Intel Core 2 Duo chips, hard drive capacity bumps, and a standard 2GB of RAM. The Macbook Pro is also getting the new Multi-Touch trackpad that debuted on the Macbook Air, earlier in the year.

The Macbook’s new Core 2 Duo processor offers up to 2.6 GHz with 6MB of shared ˺ cache. The professionally-minded model also tops out with a 300GB hard drive and up to 4GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM and NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with up to 512MB of video memory. The new Multi-Touch trackpad gives users more direct control over apps like iPhoto, Aperture, and Safari. The notebook comes in two 15-inch configurations, for $1,999 and $2,499, and a $2,799 17-inch model.

The more consumer-minded 13-inch Macbook gets processor and hard drive bumps across the line, maxing out with a 2.4 GHz black model with 250GB 5,400 RPM hard drive. All models also come with a standard 2GB of memory, upgradeable to 4GB. The new Macbooks run from $1,099 to $1,4999.

Both models are available through Apple’s store.

Original post by Brian Heater

Whether it’s coming this week or next, the iPhone SDK is almost here. This “software developer’s kit” has the potential to turn the iPhone into a major mobile computing platform, by allowing a broad range of third party applications.

It could also be a damp squib. Apple is famous for demanding total control over the user experience on almost all of their devices, the Mac being the major and most prominent exception. Apple could lock the SDK down so tight, only a tiny number of restricted applications would be available. Or they could make it freely available so the iPhone would flourish as a platform.

I like to think of Apple’s choices in terms of the cell phone world, as the “Java vs. BREW” question.

On most of their consumer phones, Verizon Wireless uses a software system called BREW. If you want to write a BREW app that runs on Verizon phones, you have to sell it through Verizon. You have to pay to get it approved, and you have to give Verizon a cutof your profits. There are no open source BREW apps and very few free BREW apps. No BREW apps are written by “communities.”

Verizon prohibits BREW apps that do things they don’t want - you can’t install a BREW Web browser on Verizon phones without built-in browsers, and you definitely aren’t allowed to install a BREW voice-over-IP program.

Now before you say, “that’s an Orwellian nightmare,” that’s exactly how Apple’s system works for games on the iPod.

Sprint and AT&T use Java on their phones, and they have a much freer attitude. Anyone can write Java programs. Anyone can install Java programs. There are thousands of Java programs out there. If you want to buy something that’s approved and guaranteed to work on your phone, you can. If you want to install something wacky that you found on the Web, feel free. This openness has not destroyed AT&T or Sprint’s networks or phones.

Steve Jobs and Apple’s product marketing guru Greg Joswiak have both raised the specter of malware, of programs that could crash the iPhone or bring AT&T’s network down. Considering AT&T already has millions of phones that run whatever Java, Windows Mobile, or Symbian program anyone wants, that argument should be seen as the total nonsense it is. None of AT&T’s other millions of open phones have had or caused major problems thanks to third-party applications.

No, the malware argument exists so Apple can keep the option open to lock down development, demand a cut of sales, kill free software and prevent programs from getting out that they don’t like. That’s not consumer friendly.

I’m hoping that whenever the SDK comes out, it will turn the iPhone into the next Mac: open to the thousands of developers who have great ideas, and are ready to sell their software through many channels or give it away for free. That would truly be a mobile revolution. We’ll see when the SDK arrives.

Original post by Sascha Segan

We just got Lenovo’s ultraportable X300 in at the PC Mag labs. Seen by many as a more sensible, business-oriented alternative to Apple’s 1.6-inch thick Macbook Air, the X300 is a bit thicker than Apple’s ultraportable–that’s what you get for insisting on an internal optical drive.

In honor of the infamous trick performed by Steve Jobs at the last Apple keynote, we attempt to squeeze both the Air, the 𕣬, and Toshiba’s ultraportable Portege R500 into a Ziff-Davis inter-office envelope. Enjoy.

Original post by Brian Heater

We’ve learned to take manufacturer battery claims with a grain of salt–not least with Apple’s claims. When Steve Jobs announced that the new Macbook Air featured a decent 5-hour battery life, most users no doubt expected to shave at least 20 to 30 minutes off of that number in real-world usage.

However, as a reader named Charles tipped us off to today, in many cases that number is closer to 2 hours, coupled with a staggering 8-to-10-hour charge time. The problems he noted are reflected on Apple.com’s discussion boards, where users are complaining about various battery-life issues with their new notebooks.

Is anyone else having similar problems? Is your Air’s battery working fine? Let us know in Comments.

Original post by Brian Heater

Looking for a reason to go screenless? Apple ended the long weekend with a price-cut to its low-end iPod Shuffle player, pricing the 1GB model at $49. The company has also rolled out 2GB model priced at $69.

“At just $49, the iPod shuffle is the most affordable iPod ever,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide iPod Product Marketing, in a release issued this morning. “The new 2GB model lets music lovers bring even more songs everywhere they go in the impossibly small iPod shuffle.”

The newly priced 1GB model is available immediately via Apple’s site. The 2GB model will debut later this month.

Original post by Brian Heater

Filed under: CES, Features, Gaming

We checked out a working demo version of Skype on the PSP at Sony’s booth and are pleased to report that audio quality was pretty decent — certainly comparable to what we experience when using Skype either on a PC or on the receiving end of one. The only caveat is a bit of lag time in the audio transmission, less than a second but enough to be noticeable. The interface is super simple — just select the Skype icon and you can see your buddy list of who’s online; select someone to ring them up. At the demo station the headset in use was just a regular PSP headset jury-rigged up to the video out jack via the remote control cable — not something we’ll see in production. Since third-party manufacturers will be free to make their own PSP Skype headsets, there should sooner or later be some range of options available for headsets to use according to taste.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Barb Dybwad