Don't let WWDC fool you into thinking all of the fun is in San Francisco this week. New Yorkers are enjoying Internet Week. There are fun and interesting events and exhibits throughout the city from June 7th - 14th. Highlights include panel discussion, demos and interviews.

With so much going on, it's easy to miss out on something great. Stay informed with the Internet Week 2010 iPhone app (free). It puts all of the week's activities in your pocket, so you know where and when to find the events you're interested in. Additionally, you can share the fun by posting photos and even checking in with Foursquare from right within the app.

The app is definitely handy for anyone attending the events, from New Yorkers to out-of-towners. Grab yours and have fun.

Apple today released iTunes Connect Mobile, an iPhone (and iPod touch) app for allowing developers to view statistics about their products on the App Store. There are over 250,000 apps on the App Store and with the release of iTunes Connect Mobile, Apple has made it easier for developers to track sales statistics for each product they have on the store.

The app allows a break-out of sales by day, week, month (5w) and 6 months (26w). There are colorful graphs for displaying unit sales and updates. Additionally, developers can see information about the different markets where their app is sold.

Apple's iTunes Connect Mobile is a free download from the App Store. Note that it does not seem to have propagated throughout the entire store. If you don't see it yet, try again in a little while.

The iPhone 4 debuts on the 24th of June. I am one of the many users whose upgrade date falls after 1/1/11. Looking at the difference between no-commitment pricing and upgrade-date-after pricing, I've been considering the no-commitment option and coming up without many answers.

The math is not particularly compelling. AT&T's new smartphone early termination fee (ETF) is now running at $325, reducing at $10 per month. If I re-up with AT&T, the math becomes a wash after just over 12 months of use. The ETF goes down to $200, the actual price difference between the after-1/1/11 versus the no-commitment. Either way, I'm still under contract for the next 12 months regardless, unless I pay my current $120 ETF -- and I don't particularly want to give up my $30 unlimited data.

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There's an active thread on Apple's support boards about current-model MacBook Pro machines, running current builds of Leopard and Snow Leopard. These MBPs are refusing to wake from sleep. Specifically, users find a black screen when trying to rouse their machines, despite hearing the disk spinning up and (in some cases) seeing the screen contents displayed without a backlight.

Only a hard restart (holding the power button until the machine shuts off) can revive it. The issue seems to be more prevalent on machines running Mac OS X 10.6.3, but some 10.5 users have spotted it as well.

In long-running thread (12 pages worth), the affected users have identified a few potential triggers: The Sudden Motion Sensor, overloaded virtual memory swap files, and an excess of remembered Wi-Fi networks. After disabling the motion sensor (how-to here), several users reported that the issue all but disappeared. It wasn't eliminated entirely for everyone that tried it, but it seemed to occur much less frequently.

Another group reported a sharp decline in the issue after cleaning out the machine's list of remembered networks. To do this, launch System Preferences and click Network. Select Airport in the left hand column and then click Advanced.

A new slip appears with a list of your "Preferred networks." This is a listing of all of the Wi-Fi networks you've ever successfully connected to. If you're the type who hops from coffee shop to library to bookstore, it could be quite long. Simply select any you'd like to eliminate and click the "-" beneath the list. Just remember that, should you encounter those networks again, you may have to re-enter your access info.

My MBP is an ancient artifact, and so far free of this issue. Now, the inevitable question: Has this trouble plagued your machine, and if so, have you found a fix?

I spoke to Kristin Suppelsa (Vice President and Manager of Communications Support for Liberty Mutual) yesterday about the company's upcoming ad that will be popping up on your free apps starting July 1. As we were discussing the awesome power of advertising, it occurred to me that Apple will have to involve an entirely new but parallel vetting process for iAds.

For example: you wouldn't want an app that had a guy getting thrown off a roof (as a game!) to show an ad about personal safety, would you? While Kristin assured me "it's similar to a media buy" it was evident this hadn't been a major point of discussion between Liberty Mutual, their ad agency Hill Holliday and Apple. Will Apple be able to scale the iAds vetting process as elegantly as they did the app approval process? Only Captain Sarcastic knows for sure.

Meanwhile, Liberty Mutual sees iAds as the wave of the future. Or, the virtual hawker of the future. They created an iAd around personal safety complete with "video and quizzes" and lots of user engagement that could be fun. Or it could be like punching a monkey to win a gift card. Amusing for about 10 seconds, then annoying as hell.

Ars managed to pin down SVP of Communications Paul Alexander, who revealed that they were contacted about a month ago when they advertised in the Time iPad app; they are paying per click (no details on cost, of course) and they aren't really too concerned about iAds being limited iOS 4. That last one is no surprise. As Alexander states (and I concur), "Apple's past growth with iOS devices and adoption rates made it a nonfactor."

A little more surprising is the fact that Liberty Mutual will be allowed to advertise on any other mobile platform while working with iAds. Of course, Apple could change its mind any time it pleases, so we'll have to wait and see what develops. Either way I'm sure both parties will wind up pleased as punch with the performance of iAds.

Chris Rawson and I like to tag-team, and this time I pulled the counterpoint to his "Mac ain't dead" point. I'm going to enter into this conversation delicately because, like Dan Lyons, I don't think the Mac is dead. Yes, you read that correctly, I agree with Lyons when he writes, "To be sure, Apple won't kill off the Mac."^[1] And that's because both Lyons and I recognize that the Mac has an important role both internal and external to Apple.

You need a Mac to compile (unless you're into serious jailbreak mojo -- which Apple is not) with Apple's internal IDE and tool creation suite. You need a Mac to create professional graphics and video suites. You need a Mac for high-end publishing and so forth. So all of us agree: The Mac lives and OS X for the desktop is not imperiled.

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As we reported last night, a technology tabloid has published a sensationalist article blaming Apple for AT&T's security problems. Email addresses and the "ICC-ID" of 3G iPad users were compromised due to a flaw in AT&T's servers. Some prominent people in business and government had their email addresses exposed. These email addresses were stored on AT&T's computers.

So why is this Apple's fault? Because Apple has teamed up with AT&T, and therefore -- through the transitive power of magical thinking coupled with a deep desire for web traffic and Digg hits -- Apple is responsilbe for ensuring that AT&T doesn't make any mistakes. Apple is supposed to "patrol" AT&T's network.

Did you follow that logic?

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While American iPhone users are limited to a single carrier, the UK offers plenty of choice to customers. Three has announced that they will carry iPhone 4, with pre-orders beginning on June 15th. O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone were all confirmed on the 7th.

Even poor math students will notice that UK iPhone customers now have five carriers to choose from. Of course, all of the UK's carriers are GSM. We only have two of those here in the States (AT&T and T-Mobile).

Three is the first to announce a pre-order date (the same as in the US) and, as Engadget notes, typically undercut the competition when it comes to price. It all adds up to a bevy of choice -- and a potential price war -- for UK customers.

In another adjustment, O2 just announced a new pricing model, citing "clarity" and "sustainability" as key advantages. It's caught the attention of our UK readers (thanks everyone!) as it removes the unlimited option for data usage, much as AT&T did last week. The top plan now maxes out at 1GB of data, with buy-up options for 500MB or 1 GB coming in the fall.

Of course, like AT&T, O2 is framing these changes as optimizations to the real data needs of its customers. As of now, the lowest O2 bundle (500MB) provides at least 2.5 times what the 'average O2 smartphone customer' uses. In fact, O2 claims 97% of their smartphone customers won't need to buy additional data allowances under the new arrangement.

"With the wide range of Internet based services now available on mobile devices we're providing customers with generous clear data bundles that give customers freedom," said O2's CEO Ronan Dunne in the company's press release. We're not sure what was so opaque and ungenerous about "unlimited data."
In June, O2 will introduce three inclusive data bundles for new and upgrading smartphone customers. You'll find their latest information here.

Have fun on release day, folks, and may the best provider (for you) win your business.

An enterprising Japanese iPad owner, who blogs under the name Dark General, decided to take matters into his own hands when he couldn't find an iPad stand that he liked. He took an old iBook G3 clamshell case and gutted it, replacing the LCD screen with the iPad and the iBook's keyboard with Apple's most recent USB keyboard. The result is the aptly-named "iPad in iBook" stand.

It's a pretty cool setup, and it shows you just how far Apple has come in design -- and tech in general -- since the iBook G3 premiered eleven years ago. In 1999, "iBooks" were the latest and greatest in laptop hardware; in 2010, "iBooks" is a Multi-Touch software application that lets you carry tens of thousands of books around with you in a device that's thinner than the iBook G3's lid. Want to make an iPad in iBook stand yourself? Dark General has a walk through on his blog (Google Translation).

via MacStories

Thunder Game Works kindly came by to meet up with us this week at WWDC, and Michael Taylor and Kris Jones of the company behind the popular Trenches iPhone game. They shared some insight about what they saw this week, offered us a chance to see concepts of the iPad version and check out a brand new title they're working on. What we saw was pretty impressive -- Trenches is a well-polished take on the castle assault genre, combining fun WWII-style troops and weapons with real-time line-drawing strategy. And Thunder is not only learning as they go, but seems very committed to taking their successful title and turning it into a full-fledged franchise on Apple's iDevices.

The main game is on sale right now for 99 cents, and there's a free version (with some "training" features) also available. Between the two versions, the company has seen over 1.5 million installs of the game. Still, when the iPad came along, they had to think hard about whether or not they wanted to bring the game over. "We were very cagey about whether or not we wanted to go to the iPad," Taylor told me.

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