The iPhone is a powerful tool. As app developers get more creative, it’s slowly displacing all the other stuff we’re used to carrying around. It started with the iPod and PDA, then moved on to our handheld gaming devices and portable DVD players, and now it’s eliminating the store loyalty cards from our wallets and the car keys from our pockets.

Another entirely natural target, even in the days when iPhones and iPod touches held just a few gigabytes, has been the humble flash drive, and File Magic aims to make it obsolete.

SpashData’s $2.99 (at the time of writing) File Magic product consists of an iPhone app which runs on iPhone OS 2.1 and up (including the iPod Touch) and a desktop companion which is supported on Windows XP and Vista and Mac OS X 10.4.11 and up. It’s easy to add, manage, and delete files through the desktop application and I had no connectivity issues during my two-week trial of File Magic.

While the desktop companion does make managing files from your home computer relatively painless, it puts some distance between File Magic and other forms of portable storage. Flash drives, portable hard disk drives, and even floppy disks all work on modern operating systems with no drivers or add-ons. File Magic does not, and if I want to quickly dump a file or two onto a friend’s computer, I do not want to spend time downloading and installing software, and I doubt that my friend (or the local librarian or school administrator) would take kindly to the idea either.

Other iPhone file managers don’t have this limitation and offer FTP, WebDAV, or web browser-based access to files. For me, WebDAV and plain HTTP are the perfect combination: I can mount the phone in the Finder for bulk uploading and file management, or load it in a browser to quickly upload or download a file or two. And, you know what? Aside from being noticeably slower than a flash drive, that model works. But File Magic can’t do it.

File Magic has other quirks. It organizes files into categories: documents, music, video, images, email, others, and folders. I can’t find much of a point to this, as it puts an extra tap between me and my files. I can make my own folders, and if I don’t it probably means that I’m happy with all my files in one big list, just like every other storage medium. File Magic also has a splash screen, which abuses the iPhone OS’s loading image feature intended only to display a minimal rendering of the application while it’s starting up. The interface is confusing, glitchy, and outright broken in places, but does get the job done if you’re willing to look past the bugs.

There are some features that makes this app stand out from others in its domain. In addition to transferring files to and from computers, File Magic can transfer between devices running the app. I wasn’t able to test out this feature. It can email your files too, and while this feature could use a lot of polish (the interface for composing messages is rough and separate emails are sent for every file), it works just fine.

File Magic also includes a couple of features which are entirely unrelated to its main purpose but could be useful. There’s an “Import Address Book” button in the desktop application that dumps the iPhone’s contacts to a CSV file. You can compose emails in a minimal interface and transfer them to the device for later sending. The emails can’t be edited and disappear from File Magic the first time they’re used (even when you don’t send them), so as it stands the drafts folder on an IMAP or Exchange account is far better suited to holding half-finished emails.

In the end, it’s a solid choice for toting your data around. I’ll probably stick with Air Sharing — it’s more polished and doesn’t require (or even have) an application running on my desktop — but File Magic offers many more features, and a lower price. That alone might give it the edge, for some.

Disclaimer: We received a review copy of File Magic which inspired and was used in the writing of this article.

In a somewhat-unexpected-yet-not-entirely-surprising turn of events, Apple announced to developers today that in-app purchases are available to free applications.

At WWDC this year, Scott Forstall defended restricting In App Purchases to paid applications (costing a minimum of 99¢).

…to keep it simple, when a consumer sees a free application, free apps remain free. You won’t be asked ever to buy something inside that free application.

Because of that, developers who wanted to offer free, feature-limited lite versions of their applications had to publish it and the full version as separate apps, and some previously-free apps, including the hugely-successful Tap Tap Revenge, gained 99¢ price tags to support add-ons unlocked through In App Purchase.

All that’s missing now are paid updates.

Take a look after the jump, and get a sneak peek at whats inside.

After having the door judo-chopped closed in our face by a crazy-looking Tesla coil operator (ArcAttack‘s Patrick Brown, B.K.A. Parsec), Sidney and I were allowed to enter Gizmodo Gallery. With everything from musical Tesla coils to the worlds biggest Cheeto on display, the gallery is a great experience for all.

Lets start off the tour with our favorite judo-chopping crew working on the Tesla coil music maker thingy. The musical compositions are played by two solid-state Tesla coils playing along with a robotic drummer. To give you some sort of idea about how fast these coils are powered on and off, to make a an A note, they must turn the coil on and off 440 times… each second. The coils are operated by computer through a MIDI control box. In case that’s too easy for you, remember that the team still had to work around the fact that the electromagnetic field from the Tesla coils disrupts signals sent over copper, so they use light pulses over fiber optic cables instead. They also had to figure out how to turn a Tesla coil on and off 440 times a second, hence the solid-state controls.

Where did this idea come from, you ask? The team member we interviewed says they came up with it in a coffee shop. Since Tesla coils have been around since the late 1800′s, it’s mixing old tech (Tesla coil) with new (computers). He put it, “it’s kinda like the first dude that ever put wheels on a cooler.” Not exactly what I would compare musical Tesla coils to, but I’m sure you get what he’s trying to say here.

Next on our list of totally awesome gadgets is the ChefStack automatic pancake maker. The machine that has already been made famous by Gizmodo themselves is on display all week and making free pancakes for all! If you would like, you can buy an automatic pancake maker for your own house and make 200 pancakes an hour! You just have to pay $3500 to get the machine in the first place… but that’s beside the point. The pancake maker is a great innovation that just shows that literally anything will sell to the right person.

New York University also brought over two interesting products that students are working on in the Tisch School. The first is a machine I can only describe as a guitar piano (although they like to call it the Irregular Incurve). A piano keyboard is hooked up to a machine that strums different strings with guitar picks that correspond to the keys on the keyboard. This supposedly makes music, although when I used it it just kinda…failed.

The other project from NYU is the Mud Computer. As the projects website says, “the Mud Tub is an experimental organic interface that lets users control a computer while playing in the mud.” When you first see the “Mud Tub,” you’re gonna think, “Why is there a strange man playing with mud in the middle of a tech gallery?” unless, of course, you’re reading this. After closer examination, we see that the man is actually interacting with a computer by playing with the mud. A projector shines a green ball onto the mud from above that you can move around. It slides down to the lowest parts of the mud, just like a real ball. Cool, isn’t it?

There were obviously many other items at the Gizmodo Gallery, such as the worlds biggest Cheeto, a 103″ plasma TV, the world’s smallest drill (I’m not sure if that’s true but it is pretty small!), and much more. Sidney and I do plan on going back later this week to see if the most fun items, like a huge 3D Etch-A-Sketch and Alpay Kasal’s interactive mirror, are working (they were out of commission today due to power issues). So stay tuned in for more on Gizmodo Gallery 09! If you so happen to be in the New York City area, I truly suggest heading to the gallery and checking it out for yourself.

The Gizmodo Gallery is open all week long (September 23rd-27th, 2009), in New York City. Check Gizmodo’s Website for more details.

The first major question is, who will run Apple once Steve Jobs retires. It would seem that the front-runner for Jobs’ job is Apple’s own Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook. He was in charge of Apple’s day-to-day operations while Jobs was on medical leave for his pancreatic cancer treatment. He has done a fine job I running the company even in the middle of a recession. But is he capable?

As the money shows, yes. On the day Jobs left, Apple stocks closed at $85.33. As of this morning, Apple opened at $132.07. While at the helm, Cook has seen the settlement of a lawsuit from IBM over Mark Papermaster, the release of a new iPod Shuffle, and the one Billionth app-store download. Apple has also reported its best non-holiday quarter bringing in $8.2 Billion in March.

Maybe pancreatic cancer was just a minor flaw in Steve Jobs’ master plan to rule the world and live forever. But incase it wasn’t, we have to look into the future to see what looks best for Apple. Will we see the beginning of a new era in technology CEO’s, or will we see the demise of our beloved computer dynasty? Only time will tell.

This Saturday, Alex Lindsay posted a short video on MacBreak showing what Pixel Corps managed to do with a shiny new iPhone 3GS and the video equipment they had lying around. His rig consisted of:

• A Redrock microShoulderMount
• (What looks like) a Beachtek DXA-4
• A mic (can’t identify)
• A Sima SLB-M
• A Litepanels Micro
• A follow focus (can’t identify)

And the iPhone mount:

• A PED3-Auto

The resulting rig is total overkill, and the mic and follow focus don’t work — the latter because the iPhone isn’t capable of changing its focus while in the middle of a recording, and the former (hopefully) because they don’t have a proper adapter for the Beachtek box.

The resulting video quality? Surprisingly good! A light and some extra support can do wonders.

Needless to say, we’re ridiculously tired. There are still plenty of stories to tell, but this liveblog is officially over. Stay tuned.

There are some awesome people out there.

The rain stopped (finally!) and we’re almost all dried off. It’s now safe to break out the technology. There are ten people in line, but only around five buyers.

We managed to sneak into the Apple Store for a quick top-off of our MBPs, but were just kicked out so the store can be closed down.

Workers have climbed on top of the cube and have begun a cleaning of the whole outside surface.

Barricades have been set up throughout the plaza. It looks like they’re prepared for a huge turnout closer to 7:00.

While we’ve braved the elements, a few people have come up to ask us a few questions, including Engadget, CNN, Reuters, the New York Times, and Bloomberg. I’ll be posting links to their coverage of the iPhone 3GS launch, and well, us!

Engadget: iPhone 3G S line begins in NY, weather be damned

UPDATE: 6:30 PM EDT: Reuters: IPhone to hit stores as Apple awaits Jobs’ return Matt Dodd was quoted on the second page of the article, and our plans for camping out were mentioned.

UPDATE: 7:00 PM EDT: Fortune / CNN Money: Lines form for the new iPhone in New York and Tokyo

Reuters (Again): Braving stormy weather for iPhone: well, sorta

Pocket Lint: iPhone 3G S line starts to form in New York

UPDATE: 7:30 PM EDT: The following is a listing of posts and articals after we got home. Take a look!

Fortune / CNN Money: Live from the (relatively sedate) iPhone 3G S launch

Gizmodo: Why In Hell Are People Camping Out For the iPhone 3GS?

Touch Podium: Line Ups Begin Early June 18th, for iPhone 3G S in New York and Tokyo, Most Likely Other Places Too

UPDATE 6/22/09 7:00 AM: Bloomberg: Apple’s IPhone Draws Crowds as Competition Stiffens Talks about us under ‘Camping Out’

If this is your first time at The iLife, Welcome! Be sure to subscribe to our RSS Feed, so that you always get the latest, in-depth tech news!

Photo from Engadget. Thanks!

I got completely soaked in the half hour I was there, even with all those umbrellas, so, guys, I wish you luck.

We’ll be posting updates throughout the day here and on Twitter (@theilife) and the folks at TheDigitalLifestyle.tv are planning to set us up with live streaming later today, so keep an eye on their feed.

If you’re in the area, stop by. If not, drop us a Tweet or a comment. Happy 3GS day to all!

Galaga Remix was created by Namco, and it is a brilliant remake of the original arcade game. Galaga Remix includes an updated version as well as the original 1981 Galaga. The old version of the game does allow you to reclaim a captured ship so you can have double the firepower with dual ships like in the old arcade game, however this app really shines with the updated version. The new Galaga’s graphics are much easier on the eyes, and includes new boss battles, multiple upgrades for your ship, and plenty of levels.

The rest of the review is after the break.

One feature from the old Galaga was to save a ship if it got captured, which then would give you a dual fighter, the updated Galaga takes that idea and runs with it. If your ship is captured by one of 3 different types of enemies, once you free your ship, it will give you a new ability, a different one based on which enemy captured you. You can upgrade in three different ways, a more powerful attack, a spread shot, or faster shooting. Each one of these can stack twice, or with one other ability. So, you can get yourself a fast shooting spread attack, or stack two power attacks to make a devastating super cannon. This allows you to create a total of 9 ships (3 basic upgraded ships, and 6 stacked upgraded ships).

The game gives you several different methods in order to control your ship, either with arrow buttons, a slider, or you can use the built-in accelerometers. However, due to the portrait setup of the classic Galaga, the controls are a bit harder to use due to their small size. For the updated version, since it is in landscape, the controls are much easier to use.

The only thing I could complain about is that it never is quite clear which monsters will kamikaze into you, or if they will change direction at the last moment and avoid a collision. This does keep it more true to the original, but Namco has shown they can take an old concept and make it much better, so it would be nice if they would give you a warning when you are about to get rammed by one of those buggers. Other than that, it would be nice to have some more levels, the game comes with a little over 30, but the more the merrier.

Great visuals, a good variety of gameplay, and 30+ stages, Galaga Remix is available at $5.99, so go grab it from the App Store here.

Palm and Sprint have finally announced the official release date and pricing for the upcoming Palm Pre. The Pre will be release on June 6th (2 weeks!) for $199 with a two-year service agreement and after a $100mail-in rebate. It will also require a Everything Data plan, which will run at $69.99 a month with450 minutes. This is on par with the cheapest iPhone plan, but it comes with a big advantage, namely unlimited texting. You can also get Sprint’s Simply Everything plan for $99.99 a month, which includes unlimited voice, text, and data.

So, overall the Pre is going to be running on par with the iPhone in terms of pricing, but it will be interesting how the release will pay out with it’s release being so close to Apple’s WWDC (Which is June 8-12), where Apple is expected to release iPhone 3.0, and possibly a new iPhone.

Say tuned during the next two weeks, this is going to be interesting.

UPDATE: Forgot to include this earlier, The Pre will be available at Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, select Wal-Mart stores and online at Sprint.com.  You can also read the full Sprint Press Release here.

Also, it was posted at Endgadget that the Pre will be $549 with out a contract acording to Sprint customer service.

In the United States over the last half century a large amount of consumer goods were originally government sponsored military devices that trickled down to the consumer market. Think GPS, handheld radios, Toughbooks, Nextel cellphones, Roomba, the internet, and modern computers started originally as a military project. All of these things started out in the hands of Uncle Sam, and then went on to the consumer market to become what we know today.

However, now the military has started to look at consumer goods and apply them for military usage. The iPod Touch is starting to become integrated into the US military. They can be used (soon) to help soldiers communicate with the local population. Snipers use a calculator on the iPod to make better precision shots. The reason they are looking into consumer products is because consumer products are made to be cheap. To have a military standard device capable of less than what a $230 iPod can do can be twice or more the price purely because less of them are made. Because iPods are made to be mass produced, they end up being cheaper to configure the iPods (like add a screen protector or case) then it would be to have a military specific device.

This of course benefits us as consumers because if the government starts buying something on the cheap, it requires less of our national budget to buy military goods, which in turn means either less taxes, or more welfare for the needy.

The US military has always had a problem with their development cycles for new products they need. If the military wanted a iPod touch like device for soldiers to use in order to communicate with locals, they would put out a contract to engineering firms around the country to design something. The thing would end up being bulky and durable, but would most likely be limited to just communication features. And on top of that, it would take 5-10 years until the device was finalized and accepted by the branches in order to start deploying them. This is on top of what I said earlier, compared to the consumer market there would be a very limited number of these things made, meaning their price would be through the roof. And if they ever wanted to upgrade or modify it, that would be another 5-10 years cycle of intense research and development with a large amount of expenditure.

At this point, hardware isn’t the issue, software is all the military really needs to worry about. There are plenty of things we at home already use day-to-day that can be retrofitted to survive in harsh environments and that only really need new software to do what they need.

FireWire was developed by Apple in the 80′s, with contributions from Texas Instruments, IBM, Sony and a few other companies. FireWire’s first release was in 1995, and its major contender is Universal Serial Bus (USB), which was released in 1996. USB was a collaboration between Microsoft, IBM, Intel, and several other companies.

As shown, FireWire came out earlier (albeit by a year) and was vastly superior to USB. Not only that, but it took USB until 2000 to beat FireWire’s theoretical max. However, what is rarely stated is that even though USB’s theoretical max is higher, this is the THEORETICAL speed, meaning the actually speed is typically slower. In the case of USB 2.0, normal sustained transfer speeds max out around 240 Mb/s, half of its advertised 480 MB/s. Typically speeds are even slower than that, sub 200 (my external hard drives running USB 2.0 usually sit around 200 Mb/s). Of course the same applies to FireWire, however sustain speeds for FireWire are much closer to their theoretical, with their read speeds being 70% faster read and 50% faster write speeds over USB (for Firewire, we see ours sit around 325 Mb/s). Even though USB is slower, USB is on every computer you can buy on the market. FireWire on the other hand has been dwindling.

But USB isn’t Firewire’s only competitor. External SATA has been becoming increasingly more common with external hard drives, boasting speeds of nearly 1 Gigabit/s. And eSATA has plans to start marketing to film cameras soon, which is one of the few markets FireWire has a good hold on.

HDMI is another competitor after FireWire territory. FireWire can be used for TV, but HDMI is gaining a larger market penetration than FireWire has.

FireWire’s major holds in industry are film, automobiles, and military aircraft. These are industries that use FireWire as a standard. But with new standards rising, FireWire may lose its hold. Faster components are coming around every day. FireWire is starting to show its age, and support seems to be dwindling every day.

I wouldn’t say FireWire is going to die anytime soon. FireWire has shown itself to be versatile and fast. It does has a certain niche of the market. However, it seems to be lacking support, especially in the consumer market. USB already has 100% market penetration, and is held as a standard by the entire industry. eSATA is displacing FireWire for transfers to and from external drives, due to its higher transfer speeds. Soon, unless FireWire makes a big jump quickly, FireWire may be lost as a IEEE standard.

Flight Control, created by Firemint, is an addictive little game where you draw the flight paths of different aircraft to their landing strips, basically you are an air traffic controller. There are 4 different types of aircraft, a blue helicopter, a yellow Cessna type plane, and two different kinds of red jets, one being faster than the other.

The graphics are simple but clean. There isn’t any in-game music while you are directing things, and you can’t listen to music and the game sounds at the same time. The game sounds are helpful, they warn you when aircraft get close to each other, and ding whenever you land one, but if you are playing a long time it is better to listen to music. Otherwise, the game keeps track of your statistics (most likely aircraft to crash, most planes landed, last game’s planes landed) so you can see how you’ve improved.

This game could use some improvements, like a fast-forward, especially at the beginning. Every time you restart, you have to wait a long time for airplanes to show up, which makes the start of each run very slow. Otherwise, the graphics are a bit simple, a plane or helicopter landing just shows them fade away as opposed to actually landing. When there is a mid-air collision, they just blink to show they have hit each other. It would be more interesting (and a better finale to each game) if they exploded. Lastly, a few more gameplay elements would be good, like if they had clouds float over the airport to make it harder to see what is going on. However, all of these minor faults don’t hurt the game enough to avoid buying it.

Flight Control is addictive and entertaining, and it only costs $0.99, which is a great price for this game! You can pick it up from the App Store here.

Now that Apple has started to make more headway into the Microsoft dominated market, the flamewars have become more intense. As we know Apple has already made several distasteful commercials attacking Microsoft and Vista, now Microsoft is stepping up to the plate, and hitting where it hurts: the Price.

Microsoft was quite respectable for not degrading themselves to mudslinging until this point, but they undeniably know that attacking the price of Mac products is the most effective way to boost sales. The Apple Tax has become notorious, especially for PC users who try to stop others from switching to Mac. In almost any situation, if you compare Mac and PC hardware, there always seems to be a gap in pricing even when they are almost identical computers.

Continued after the break…

Lets look at the MacBook Pro and the HP HDX16t series:

MacBook Pro 15″ screen $2074.00

HP HDX16t 16″ screen $1677.99

That is a $396 difference in price. Both computers have the an internal webcam, 64-bit operating systems, the same 512mb 9600M graphics card, and their batteries last about the same amount of time. The MBP has 2GBs of DDR3 ram, which has a similar price to 4GBs of DDR2 ram that the HP has. Admittedly the MacBook Pro does have a second graphics card which the HP doesn’t, but the HP comes with a slightly faster processor, larger screen and a Blu-ray disc drive. The Blu-ray drive alone would be a couple hundred dollar difference if it was even offered on the MBP.

There are tons of different excuses for why Macs cost more. Many would argue that Apple has a better interface and operating system, or the Mac design is better, but these are subjective ideas. These aren’t the reasons that Apple has offered as to way their products cost more. Apple could easily design a cheap computer based on the same principals that Dell, Hewlett Packard, and ASUS use, and have computers for a closer price, but they choose not to. There are a ton of different things you can point out about either computer, but no matter how you argue this, it ends up that there is a price gap (no matter how big or small) between the Mac and PC.

As it stands, as long as a person can look at the technical specifications between a Mac and PC, and see that for comparable hardware the PC costs a lot less, people will be scared away from buying Apple. It convinces people that when you buy a Mac product, you are paying a tax for the logo. Apple needs more consumers to survive in the Microsoft-saturated market if they want to stay alive. To do that, Apple needs to drop their prices on their computers, or else they may be brought back to near-extinction again.

The front of Moscone West, WWDC 2008

Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, often abbreviated as WWDC, is an annual conference held in San Francisco for Apple Developers. In recent years, thousands of developers have gathered at the Moscone Center and notably in 2008, Apple sold out of tickets- which can be attributed to the success of the iPhone SDK. This year shouldn’t be very different, as the recent iPhone OS 3.0 preview and SDK update will keep new developers attracted to the already huge platform. Along with the iPhone OS 3.0, Mac OS X Snow Leopard which was announced at WWDC 2008, is expected to be near or ready release.

WWDC typically kicks off with a Keynote from CEO Steve Jobs, who is currently on a medical leave until June. It is still unclear whether Steve Jobs will present at this years keynote, which usually kicks off the conference. Usually WWDC is held in the second week of May or June, but was rescheduled to August in 2006. Curiously the Moscone Center schedule shows only one week long date reserved with the title of “Corporate Meeting” in between events such as Sun’s Java One, Cisco Live!, Linux World, Oracle OpenWorld- June 6-12. In past years, Apple has used the “Corporate Meeting” as a mask for their own events, keeping the dates secret until an official announcement is made. Interestingly however, there is another event from May 27th to 28th with the same “Corporate Meeting” title.

The June 6th to 12th dates fall on the same week as WWDC 2008. Above, a chart of WWDC dates going back until 2004.

Aside from the Snow Leopard and iPhone OS 3.0 releases, Apple is also expected to release the iPhone 2,1 that has been spotted in sever logs. If Apple intends on holding the conference in early June this year, we should hear of an announcement sometime very soon. Stay tuned to The iLife for the latest news!

Time-lapse photography is a technique in which each film frame is captured at a variable rate much slower than it will be played back. When these clips are replayed at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing. Time-lapse photography is the opposite of high speed photography, where a higher number of frames are captured than is typical.

But how do you start making your own time-lapse? Even if you don’t own a Mac with a built in webcam, you can start by making your own time-lapses from your built-in screen. There are a number of great pieces of software available- so lets look at the required setup before we explore the software options.

You must have this basic hardware setup:

*A static camera: preferably a mounted camera or camcorder via steady tripod or otherwise rested on a non-moving object- but can just be your built in iSight.
*Power supply: both the camera and computer will need a consistent power source, especially over a long period of time.
*Good lighting: especially if you are shooting inside, it is important that the lighting stay consistent throughout the time-lapse- otherwise it may end up looking like a rave party with constantly changing lighting.

Once that is ready to go, explore some software options for capturing your time-lapse:

Gawker- Gawker is a free, open source alternative to iMovie or iStopMotion developed by Phil Piwonka. Not only can it take a time-lapse from your iSight or other attached camera, but also from your built in display. That isn’t where Gawkers features end, either. Utilizing Bonjour, you can share your camera and let others to record from your video stream. Multiple steams can even be created from up to four locations side by side. Get Gawker here!

iStopMotion-While a little pricey at $49, iStopMotion, developed by Boinx is a wonderful piece of software that will let you do more than just create a time-lapse and offers a great deal of control of your time-lapses. Download it here.

iMovie 6- In iMovie 6, which was available for free until iLife ’09 was released, offers a basic Time-Lapse function. You can start recording if you click on the Camera icon and choose Time-Lapse from the sub menu. In the box that appears, simply enable the time-lapse feature, and enter the rate at which you want iMovie to capture video frames- which will require a bit of forethought. If you want one frame per second you would enter 30 (since there are approximately 30 frames per second) and from there you can do the math. Note: if you do not have iMovie ’06 installed already, you are out of luck unless you happen to have an old CD laying around- Apple has discontinued software and both iMovie ’08 and ’09 do not have time-lapse capturing support.

Make your own Time-Lapse- By taking a steady clip that was shot in real time and speeding it up significantly, you can essentially create a time-lapse similar to the ones using specialized software.

Once you have setup your hardware and made your software choice, you can start creating time-lapses like these! Also worth noting, an awesome screensaver titled TimeLapse Screen Saver can continuously create a time-lapse from a camera, developed by Oriol Ferrer Mesià. Download the screensaver here.

Otherwise, have fun creating your own time-lapses, and feel free to share them with fellow readers of The iLife.

On the first Tuesday of this month, Apple updated the Mac Pro, Mac mini and iMac desktop models, outfitting them with the latest Intel processors and NVIDIA graphics. Finally killing off Firewire 400, including mini Display Port connectors; the changes finally unified Apple’s desktop offerings with the unibody MacBook family, unveiled in October 2008. Since that “Spotlight on Notebooks” event, every Mac has seen an update. The iPod line was updated in September 2008, including the third generation iPod shuffle introduction last week. Even the Airport Extreme and Time Capsule Wi-Fi router and NAS devices saw updates recently. This leaves the iPhone 3G as one of the oldest major offering of Apple hardware on the market- if you can even believe that.

Announced at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2008, the iPhone 3G replaced the original iPhone with a lower price tag (subsidized by the carriers), 3G and 2.5G cellular capability, built in GPS functionality and a refined case and audio components. Since the July 11th launch, over 15 million units have been shipped worldwide giving Apple a surge in marketshare to 8 percent of all smartphones, using the latest numbers from Gartner.

Apple has indicated in the past that early summer is the iPhone refresh period alike early fall for iPods. While the original iPhone was introduced at Macworld 2007, it launched June 29th that year. The iPhone 3G was announced at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9th 2008 but didn’t launch until July 11th later that year.

In April of 2008, iPodObserver leaked an image of the back of what turned out to be the iPhone 3G. Again in February 2009, iPodObserver published the image (shown, above and a closer up, below) of an iPhone with a curved matte finish back. While leaked images rarely turn out to be accurate, the images do look legitimate and sport a unseen iPhone model number, “A1303″.

Additionally in late January, MacRumors reported seeing server logs populated with a mysterious iPhone device labeled iPhone 2,1. Apple uses these hardware identity strings to distinguish different hardware models- the original iPhone is designated hardware string iPhone 1,1 while the iPhone 3G was labeled iPhone 1,2. Interestingly, the first generation iPod Touch was introduced with the iPod 1,1 and the second generation iPod 2,1. The second generation iPod Touch added a internal speaker, hardware volume controls, microphone support and a updated processor.

Thus, the 2 in the iPhone 2,1 might reveal that there will most likely be more significant changes in the hardware of the new iPhone than seen with the first generation iPhone and second generation iPhone (iPhone 3G). While it remains unclear at this point what the changes will be, there have been a number of rumors about updated, multi-core processors manufactured by Imagination Technologies. The company is known as the firm behind the PowerVR graphics core used in the iPhone today.

Just yesterday, the company announced new highly efficient PowerVR multi-processor chips that might find their way into the next generation iPhone. Other rumors, left over from the buildup to the iPhone 3G announcement have pointed towards the addition of a second forward facing camera and or video capabilities.

Whatever the new iPhone will bring us, both from the growing number of rumors and 3.0 firmware and SDK preview, it appears we are all in for a significant revision. As we get closer to WWDC 2009, we will most likely know more about the upcoming iPhone. Stick with The iLife for continuing development and analysis of rumors. But for now check out the following links if you want to learn more about upcoming the iPhone.

PinchMedia iPhone 2,1
New Imagination Technologies chip analysis
Major architectural changes suggested by iPhone 2,1

The waiting is finally over! After weeks of anticipation, apple has previewed the iPhone 3.0 firmware to the public. The new 3.0 firmware has many features that we have been dreaming about since January 9, 2007. They include:

• Copy and Paste
• Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS)
• Landscape view in SMS, Mail and Notes (was already in Safari)
• In-application  purchasing, like extra content
• Access iPod library from your application
• Spotlight to search your iPhone
• A2DP (Stereo Bluetooth) Capability
• And more

The Firmware will be free to all iPhone users but will cost $9.95 for iPod touch users.

The new iPhone SDK has many exciting features that Apple Developers are excited about. The most notable of these is the ability to test your developed apps before releasing them into the open market of iTunes. It also includes over 1,000 new API’s!

All in all, today we witnessed the next generation in mobile devices. Many people were worried that the new Palm Pre would contain many apps that the iPhone did not and become the leader in the smartphone market, but Apple took care of these worries. The new SDK is currently available to registered Apple developers and the 3.0 firmware will be available to the public sometime in June.

The site which normally hosts the latest firmwares and SDK releases and notes is temporarily down and displays the famous sticky note reading “We’ll Be Back Soon” from the online Apple Store. In the 3.0 event, over 1000 new API’s have been opened up to developers including the Push Notification Service, which is finally making light since the WWDC 2008 preview (and promised September 2008 availability date). Apple promised all current and future iPhone developers will have access to the new firmwares and SDK builds- but is unclear at this time if that extends to non-paid iPhone developers.

Update: [3:22 PM EST] The Apple Developer homepage (developer.apple.com) and other pages (here) has been updated with new iPhone SDK information but the iPhone Developer Center is still down.

Update: [3:37 PM EST] The iPhone Developer Center is back up, fresh with new content for 3.0. We are combing through it now and will post up interesting finds soon. Note: the site is being very unresponsive.

Update: [5:02 PM EST] The iPhone Developer Center, while up, has not let us log in yet.

Update: [5:42 PM EST] The iPhone Developer Center, is still being very temperamental, but we have managed to get a look and begin downloads of 3.0 software!

More information will be coming as soon as we can get it.