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.

The future of FireWire is terminally unknown. IEEE 1394 has always been strong, however in today’s market it may not survive.

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.

I know this is a bit late for a review but better late then never!

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.

It’s a major topic PC users use to bash Macs, and comparing Macs to PCs it seems to be true.

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…
Read more…

With the end of March rapidly approaching, speculation is beginning to build up for WWDC 2009. Mark your calendars- June 6th to 12th Apple will be occupying Moscone West.

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!

You’ve seen them before. The sunrises over the desert in less than 5 seconds. Someone takes apart a computer and puts it back together in 10 seconds. Time-lapse, or stop motion photography.

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.

With the entire Mac line finally brought up to date, the iPhone 3G begins to show age in the Apple lineup.

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

It’s finally here! Today, Apple released in specific detail the new iPhone 3.0 firmware and new iPhone SDK! Rumors have been flying for weeks about what is to be released this morning and we have all the answers.

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.

After the 3.0 preview Tuesday, Apple has updated the iPhone Developer Connection website to let developers get their hands on the 3.0 SDK and firmware.

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.

In an unusual move late Monday evening, The iLife has received a number of exclusive looks into the latest Snow Leopard build.

These screenshots shown in the gallery below detail some small subtitle changes in the latest non internal build of Mac OS X 10.6. The build, titled 10A286 was seeded to Apple Developers earlier this month.

Of the notable changes, is the Cocoa Finder. The source indicates the font is different and there are small animations when selecting a file or renaming a folder or file. There is also a new right click (or control click) menu that includes “Make New Sticky Note”, “Show Address in Google Maps” and “Send Selection” (to Mail) among other additions. The new trash “Put Back” menu option is indeed present and our source says you can even launch trashed items while they are still in the trash. Our source noted everything from web browsing to opening programs ran considerably faster on his MacBook Pro (4,1). This is not surprising considering the new 64 bit Kernel as seen in the Activity Monitor shot.

The new QuickTime X interface is demonstrated in two screenshots below, which is the only instance of the “black glass” interface being used throughout the build, which breaks the Leopard ‘unified interface’. Also the Exchange support implemented within iCal, Mail and Address Book is a new addition. The Calculator application now features a “Convert” menu. The Image Capture, Font Book and Bluetooth Setup Assistant have seen small interface changes, bringing them up to speed with the latest Apple looks. The Trackpad and Energy Saver icons in System Preferences have changed to reflect that of the new unibody MacBooks and more interestingly, the four finger gestures have also been implemented to non unibody MacBooks supporting multi-touch. Finally, when taking screenshots instead of being labeled with “Picture X” (going in sequential numerical order), the screenshots are now titled by default with the date and time.

Happy 300th post and thanks to our anonymous source for the tips!