Category Archives: Technology

AT&T To Start Unlocking iPhones Today, April 8th

Good news for American iPhone owners. AT&T will start offering unlocks to your devices starting today, if you’re a customer in good standing.

According to MacRumors, they received the following statement:

Beginning Sunday, April 8, we will offer qualifying customers the ability to unlock their AT&T iPhones. The only requirements are that a customer’s account must be in good standing, their device cannot be associated with a current and active term commitment on an AT&T customer account, and they need to have fulfilled their contract term, upgraded under one of our upgrade policies or paid an early termination fee.

This is probably 5 years late on AT&T’s part – iPhones should have been unlocked the moment their contract was up. But for many American customers, this is great news.

I hope they won’t be very strict with the whole “good standing,” “fulfilled term” stuff. My brother will attempt to get his iPhone 4 unlocked soon and I’ll let you know how it goes with him.

For many Lebanese users, this might mean you’ll be able to finally get your AT&T phones unlocked – I’m sure you’re smart enough to find a loophole somewhere you can use.

 

Samsung Street Challenge: Galaxy Note vs iPhone – Big Failure!

It looks like Samsung isn’t bored of taking on Apple’s users with its ads. The latest is a street challenge where they got an iPhone user with a Galaxy Note user and asked them to perform three different tasks with the phone.

Needless to say, the Galaxy Note performed all three. The iPhone? None.

Let’s get a few things straight.

1) There’s a simple app to crop someone’s face on the iPhone.

2) The maps app actually allows you to draw trajectories. It’ even automated. You don’t have to hold a stylus to draw a road.

3) Keynote, anyone?

The only thing this “ad” does is expose the iPhone user as pretty much clueless. Not only does she have absolutely no freaking idea what to do with her phone, I don’t think she should be owning a smartphone in the first place.

Either way, if your idea of an awesome phone is a brick against your ear, then fine by me. But these ads that insult a viewer’s intelligence need to stop. Oh and did Samsung forgot to get the memo that styluses are not “in” anymore with modern day technology?

Apple Unveils Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and Messages App

It looks like OS X Lion will have a short time to stand as the newest update for OS X. Mountain Lion is coming this summer for all Mac users and it’s bringing more iOS features with it to the Mac, including Twitter integration, more iCloud integration, Game Center, Notification Center, Notes, Reminder, etc…

For a full list of what features OS X Mountain Lion is bringing, go to this link. Or you can check out the following:

This is OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

This is notification center

The new Notes app

Game center integration... awesome, no?

This is reminders

Apple has also introduced a new feature called Gatekeeper helping users to specify from which sources apps may be installed on their computers. For a hands-on experience of Mac OS X Mountain Lion, you can check out Engadget or Macworld.

And as promised, Apple has unveiled a new messaging app for the Mac. This new app, called Messages, will replace iChat in function. It will allow unlimited messaging to any iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch running iOS 5.0 or higher. It will also integrate Facetime, whilst supporting normal chatting services such as Gmail, AOL, etc…

This is Messages

The good news? You won’t have to wait long to get Messages. A public beta is already available for you to download (click here). Messages requires OS X 10.7.3.

All in all, a great time to be a Mac user, isn’t it?

The iPhone is Banned in Syria

It looks like one of the new threats to burden the “lovely” Syrian regime is Apple’s iPhone. As if killing 4000 people, torturing countless more and terrorizing their whole country (and a neighboring country too) wasn’t enough.

But yes, according to this memo from the Syrian General Directorate of Customs, the iPhone has been banned because of its many features. I fail to see how a phone can threaten a political regime but I guess when you’re that insecure, anything goes. Or perhaps the iPhone has some hidden: Topple Regime app.

Check out the memo for yourself.

Samsung Shamelessly Ripping Off Apple – Again

Despite being sued by Apple almost everywhere and them resisting, Samsung have apparently not learned from their lawyers who couldn’t differentiate between an iPad and a Galaxy Tab.
This time, for their MP3 player, they didn’t just copy the iPod Touch’s design, they also copied the ad that introduced the iTouch, even the folding of earphones around the iPod.

They say a picture is worth a 1000 words. So here you go:

20111107-225655.jpg

Now Samsung needs to get their engineers & designers to put their their thinking caps on because this is getting ridiculous. While I will never dignify them by buying a product of theirs, they either need to acknowledge the fact that are uninspired and, therefore, stop churning out Galaxy products faster than rabbits breeding or they need to get a grip with their counter-lawsuits.