News Archive for 07/06/30

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iPhone: Celebrities; skins; 'missing manual'

06/30, 1:30pm

iPhone: Celebrities; skins

In brief: Spike Lee helps auctions an iPhone for charity, the mayor of Philadelphia buys one for himself, iStyles releases its first skins, and David Pogue previews "the missing manual." The charitable foundation Keep A Child Alive has posted an eBay auction for the first iPhone from Apple's SoHo store. Bought by director Spike Lee ("Do the Right Thing," "25th Hour"), the package also includes two Jawbone Bluetooth headsets, and two round-trip tickets for the domestic United States. All of the proceeds will go back to the charity, which pays for the anti-retroviral drugs given to AIDS children in Africa.

Morpheus Photo Animation comes to the Mac

06/30, 12:35pm

Morpheus on the Mac

Smith Micro Software has announced the release of the first Mac version of Morpheus Photo Animation Suite. The program allows users to apply moving effects to still images, such as mixing bodyparts, morphing between one image and another, or warping portions of an image to exaggerate them. The complete results can be exported to Flash, QuickTime and animated GIF videos, or dissected and saved to still formats such as JPEG, PNG and TIFF. The layouts can be exported to XML, and a sample HTML page can be generated for each clip. Photo Animation Suite is a Universal Binary for Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.

iPhone buyers experience activation woes

06/30, 11:55am

iPhone activation woes

Apple's in-home activation strategy failed for many customers (login required), including early customers who tried to activate their account or transfer numbers from another carrier. Before using an iPhone, users are required to download iTunes 7.3 and connect their iPhone to the computer, but in some cases, customers were not able to activate their phones. Customer representatives said that the cause was due to the high number simultaneous activations, but the online activation process -- a first for the industry -- appears to have marred the "I want the smile" experience for which Apple and AT&T were hoping. In many cases, customers were greeted with the message "your activation requires additional time to complete" and were told that AT&T would send an e-mail message when complete, leaving many with a $500-600 "slick" paperweight (at least until activated).

iPhone: first impressions posted

06/30, 12:55am

iPhone: first impressions

In addition to our disassembly photos and our initial unboxing photos, a MacNN forum moderator has posted his first impressions of the iPhone along with his in-line experience, unboxing photos and the activation process.