Tuesday Morning News

<a href="http://www.mactalk.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/70610436_pkkyu-l.jpg"><img class="imgright size-full wp-image-241" title="70610436_pkkyu-l" src="http://www.mactalk.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/70610436_pkkyu-l.jpg" alt="70610436_pkkyu-l" width="250" height="225" /></a>iSuppli have once again pulled apart a new Apple product and this time they tackle the new iPod Shuffle and calculate how much each component costs. <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2009/tc20090410_507831.htm">Apparently the the total cost of the Shuffle's components, the headphones and the packaging is US$21.77.</a>

<a href="http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,,25329465-15306,00.html">The iPhone is now the smartphone of choice at the NSW Department of Education and Training</a>, having trumped the Blackberry. The DET has purchased 56 iPhones from Telstra after discovering the Blackberry didn't work with their email system. I don't know what sort of weird email system they have going, that the Blackberry doesn't work with, but godspeed with the iPhone, you made the right choice DET.

<a href="http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=764052">A dude on the Overclockers Australia forum chucked two HDDs into his Alu MacBook</a>, by ditching the optical drive and creating a RAID-0. Good for him.



The classic "point and click/I like puzzles" game, Myst, will be appearing on the iPhone soon. <a href="http://www.appvee.com/t/myst">AppVee have a preview.</a>

For you developer types, <a href="http://cocoawithlove.com/">there is a cool blog called Cocoa With Love</a>, that you may already know about, but I thought I would share anyways, for those that do not know.

So Apple is counting down to 1 billionth app purchased on the App Store - with this, they also released stats of the all time most downloaded apps. Koi Poin was downloaded 900,000 times, netting the developer US$623,000 after Apple's cut. Jesus H. Christ. <a href="http://www.macrumors.com/2009/04/13/all-time-top-iphone-app-sales-figures-and-estimates/">MacRumors has more info on the most popular apps.</a>

Google Chrome is an excellent browser on Windows, but at this stage, lacks an official Mac version. Chrome is open source and in development for OS X, so people have been compiling it themselves and testing it out. <a href="http://www.manu-j.com/blog/google-chrome-on-mac-os-x-first-impressions/226/">TechSutra benchmarks the test version of Google Chrome for OS X </a>and discovers it is stupidly fast, faster than Safari 4.0 even.

Two new music-related iPhone apps hit the scene recently - <a href="http://www.isynapp.com/">iSyn</a>, a pretty detailed synthesizer and virtual drum machine. It looks pretty. I can imagine Daft Punk using this in their tour bus with a gaggle of drunken slutty groupies. <a href="http://amidio.com/starguitar">Star Guitar</a> is the other app, which, like is a guitar emulator. It seems to be the best one out so far. <a href="http://createdigitalmusic.com/2009/04/10/iphone-as-serious-instrument-new-synthable-isyn-strummable-star-guitar/">Create Digital Music has a look-see at these two apps.</a>

<a href="http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/13/1713217&amp;from=rss">Slashdot tells us iPhone jailbreaking is still going strong</a> and iPhone OS 3.0 isn't the panacea to everyone's iPhone problems, so jailbreaking will still happen.

<a href="http://theappleblog.com/2009/04/13/unlocked-apple-iphone-available-from-buycom-in-the-us/">Buy.com is selling the iPhone 3G for US$799, unlocked, brand new, sent direct to your door.</a> If you're in the USA. Argh, why can't Apple just sell them outright here in Australia? 8GB for $799 and 16GB for $899. Is it that much to ask for?