Bites from the Apple: Another Week, More 3G iPhone Rumors

Waiting for the more-than-likely arrival of the 3G iPhone in June is starting to get like the long lead-up to the Pennsylvania Democratic primary--a wearying slog punctuated by occasional scraps of real intel, but mainly covered over in a fog of inertia. This week's morsel of hope comes from the London Times, which reports that European operators are losing bundles on the current EDGE-y iPhone and the recent spate of price slashing is indeed an effort to clear inventory ahead of the 3G iPhone release. That's been pretty well speculated, but there are a few other eyebrow-raising tidbits:

Times Online understands that Apple has placed an order with its Asian suppliers to produce 200,000 of the new 3G iPhones by the end of May, rising to 2 million - 500,000 per week - in June.
[...]
Industry sources told Times Online that the device will have a "radically different" appearance to the current device, which has a 4.5 inch screen and slick, aluminium backing. Among the possibilities are flip version, which would enable the screen to be larger, and a sliding model with a regular qwerty keyboard - as opposed to a touchscreen one.

• In other speculative news, AppleInsider reports that orders have been placed for aluminum shells for the newly redesigned 13-inch MacBook and that a manufacturer has been selected for the 3G chip that will be powering the new iPhone.

   

• For Jailbreakers Only: If you've used one of the several available methods for unlocking your iPhone (such as Ziphone, as covered at Lifehacker), you can now install a native iPhone app version of Dope Wars, called iDope. This was one of my few gaming addictions on my Palm Treo, and it's certainly tempting me to try jailbreaking my iPhone. In other news, your unlocked iPhone can now do VoIP thanks to the Fring native application, which can do Skype voice calls as well as connect to chats using MSN, GTalk, Twitter, Yahoo!, and AIM.

   

• If you use PayPal in Apple's Safari browser, you might need to switch browsers. Seems the company is planning to lock users out of browsers that don't have filters to stop phishing--including Safari, which does not support Extended Validation SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certificates, issued to Web sites that have been vetted as legitimate. Perhaps you might want to try the new flavor of the Camino browser (which just got bumped up to version 1.6).

   

• Wi-Fi guru Glenn Fleishman over at his new PC World blog suggests using Apple's Airport Express (recently upgraded to 802.11n) as an affordable way to extend your Wi-Fi network at home or in your office. Glenn also covers the Express as well as reviews the Time Capsule base station/backup solution over at the Seattle Times.

   

• If you're interested in modding a Mac mini to become your media center, check out this post at Hickdesign, which goes through some of the software and hardware options to consider (including the Elgato EyeTV tuner)

   

• In other modding tidbits, Lifehacker provides a detailed step-by-step instructional on turning your iPod touch into an iPhone, using a freeware application called SIP-VoIP. Over at MacMod, Richard Hunt shows us how he turned an old PowerBook into a desktop. But the prize of the week goes to Ben Heck, who turned an Apple ][ gs into a laptop (via Wired's Gadget Lab).

  

   

• And one last modding item: O'Reilly is about to release the newest edition of its Hacks series of books--the Big Book of Apple Hacks by Chris Seibold. Ars Technica notes that "all the hacks in the book are self-contained with plenty of background information, so anyone from a power user to a recent switcher should find them doable." I've got mine on pre-order.