AT&T is threatening to terminate the accounts of a pair of iPhone users because they’re costing the company too much money.

“AT&T is firing us as iPhone users,” says Penny Alexander, who lives in Dadeville, Alabama, with her husband John.

In late November the Alexanders received a letter from AT&T saying that because they didn’t live in an area directly serviced by AT&T’s network, more than half their calls were being routed through another company’s network. Thanks to roaming charges, the pair are costing AT&T too much money.

“This situation is rare,” the letter said, “but when it happens, our operating costs increase significantly which makes it difficult for us to keep our rates affordable for all other customers.”

So Apple has allowed into the Store a third-party video recording application for plain old 2G and 3G iPhones; but honestly, don’t get your hopes up too high.

iVideoCamera by Laan Labs suffers some serious limitations: it only records three frames a second, it can only record for a minute at most, and resolution is just 160×213. It’s little more than a series of stills stitched together into something vaguely resembling moving pictures.

AT&T has dismissed Fake Steve’s Operation Chokehold protest as an attention-getting stunt.

Fake Steve is calling on disgruntled AT&T customers to bring AT&T’s data network “to its knees” at 12 noon PST this Friday, December 18.

The action is in protest of comments made by a company executive that some iPhone users are using too much data. The protest started as a joke, but seems to have taking on a life of its own. Judging by comments on forums, Facebook and Twitter, people are planning to take part.

Contacted by CultofMac.com, an AT&T spokesman said:

We understand that fakesteve.net is primarily a satirical forum, but there is nothing amusing about advocating that customers attempt to deliberately degrade service on a network that provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers. We know that the vast majority of customers will see this action for what it is: an irresponsible and pointless scheme to draw attention to a blog.

The AT&T spokesman doubted the action — if it goes ahead — will have much effect. There’s only about 300 participants committed to take part, according to a Facebook fan page set up for the event. The spokesman also claims that many have criticized the event: several have pointed out that the action may affect emergency calls.

Protesters plan to disrupt AT&T’s data network in several ways:

• Turning off WiFi
• Streaming YouTube videos
• Streaming live video with the new UStream Live Broadcaster app (iTunes link)
• Streaming high-bandwidth video from Akamai’s iPhone Showcase site

It’s unclear whether disruption of AT&T’s data network will affect voice calls.

With 10 shopping days left before Christmas, we have a bonanza of Apple hardware bargains, ranging from MacBook Pros to iPod nanos. We start off with the Apple Store, offering more than a dozen refurbished MacBook Pro laptops, including a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo machine with 13.3-inch display for $1,299. A slightly slower (2.26GHz) C2D MacBook Pro from Expercom is bundled with 4GB of RAM and iWork ’09 for $1,317.

If iMacs are more your style, Apple has a number of the popular desktop computers, starting at $849 for a 20-inch 2.66GHz version. A faster (3.06GHz) iMac with bigger display (27-inch) from Expercom also includes 8GB of RAM and 3 years of Apple Care for $1,897.

For iPod lovers on your list, there are deals on 8GB and 16GB iPod nanos, as well as 160GB iPod classic. Along the way, we also check out the latest App Store price drops and software for your iPhone or iPod touch.

For details, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Our own illustrious Craig Grannell might have had issues with Chrome for its willful transgression of Mac interface design principles, but he still liked it enough to make it his new default browser at the end of the day. Looks like Craig wasn’t alone: after last week’s release of the Chrome for Mac beta, Google’s Chrome browser deftly shoved Safari aside in its ascent to the third place slot in the web browser charts.

According to web analytics company Net Applications, Chrome marketshare leaped to 4.4 percent last week, based on the analysis of 160 million unique visitors to 40,000 sites. Meanwhile, Safari only held 4.37 percent of the market. A narrow victory? Sure. But a victory the nonce.

At the end of the day, though, I doubt this means much: at least on the OS X platform, Safari still reigns supreme, with Chrome only accounting for 1.3 percent of all browsers used on OS X last week. Chrome only beats Safari when you take PCs and Linux into account.

I imagine the gains Chrome for Mac has made against Safari in the last week largely come from curiosity. The question is whether or not Mac users will stick with Chrome once that curiosity fades… and once Google polishes off the last of Chrome for Mac’s missing features, they just might. Safari’s just not as good a browser as Chrome for Mac has the potential to be.

Steve Wozniak takes reader questions put to him by tech reporter Arik Hesseldahl for BusinessWeek.

The interview lasts just under 10 minutes (embedding wasn’t agreeing with our powerful wordpress system, so click on the above image to watch) the questions:

What is Fusion-IO and what does it do?

You once said “never trust a computer you can’t throw out the window,” can we trust cloud computing?

What would your life have been like if you grew up outside the Bay Area with access to the Homebrew Computer Club?

Which Sci-Fi futuristic technologies will come to fruition next?

What’s beyond solid state storage?

And a throwaway question with a cagey answer about the presumed Mac Tablet…

Haven’t happened to see Woz on TV since Dancing with the Stars, he is on much more solid ground talking tech than dancing the tango, but is still pretty entertaining.

Via BusinessWeek

Just a week after Apple quietly upgraded their Mac Pro line to use 3.33Ghz quad-core Xeon CPUs comes our first good look at the processor that will likely drive the next significant refresh of the Mac Pro: the Intel Core i7-980x Processor. Naturally, the ‘x’ stands for ‘eXtreme.’

Hot off the 32nm production lines of Intel’s manufacturing factories, the Intel Core i7-980x shifts away from merely improving frequency towards more tangible performance gains. Although the new chips max out at 3.33GHz, each packs in an astonishing six cores and twelve threads per chip, meaning that a dual processor Mac Pro might boast twelve physical and twenty four logical cores, which would represent a huge performance bump to the video professionals who are Apple’s most expensive desktop’s primary customers.

Additionally, each Core i7-980x CPU boasts a 12MB Intel Smart Cache, hyperthreading support and an integrated memory controller, while supporting DDR1066MHz memory and sucking up 130 watts of power.

In short, despite Apple’s last stealthy refresh of the Mac Pro, you should hold off on buying a Mac Pro if you can until the Core i7-980x is released commercially in February or March. Final Cut Pro will thank you.

Apple was named one of the top 10 U.S. Internet brands for November, according to ratings analysis firm Nielsen. The umbrella of Apple sites or applications attracted 62.1 million people, placing it in tenth place. People spent one hour and 18 minutes on average using Apple sites, according to the research.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo were ranked in the top 3, pulling 155.5 million, 137.2 million and 131.4 million Internet viewers, respectively. At more than six hours on average, fourth place Facebook had the longest-lingering audience.

Remember way back in 2007 when Steve Ballmer famously yanked on his oligarch’s suspenders, chomped down on his cigar and told USA Today: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance?” Ballmer then went on to muse that Apple would only ever succeed in getting two or three percent market share, while Windows Mobile would own sixty to seventy percent of the market.

No. Wait. Stop chortling and high fiving each other for a second, I’m trying to make a point here: those are the words of a man who firmly believes his predictions. History has shown otherwise: Microsoft obviously got caught sleeping at the wheel when the iPhone came on the scene and utterly destroyed Windows Mobile’s place in the smartphone arena. Two years later, and Microsoft still hasn’t released a version of Windows Mobile that is even competitive with iPhone OS 1.0, let alone 3.0. But at least Microsoft is no longer feeling complacent about it: speaking to attendees of the Connect! tech summit in London, Microsoft UK’s Phil Moore made a frank appraisal of Windows Mobile when compared to the iPhone.

In a burst of spontaneous Yuletide cheer not informed at all by an interest in showcasing their new iTunes LP format, Apple has knocked up a compilation of holiday tracks called the iTunes Holiday Sampler for free download… although if you live outside the United States, there’ll be no free iTunes Christmas for you.

What sort of songs will you get for your zero dollars and zero cents? Eh: mostly the typical, marginally inoffensive pablum-like tracks favored by American Apparel speaker systems all through December (*cough* Wynonna *cough* *hack* Sarah McLachlan *sputter* *gag*) although there are some decent groups on display here, including the Vince Guaraldi Trio, Barry Mannilow, Aretha Franklin, Weezer and Stephen Colbert.

In short, there should be something here for everyone. Still, I ask you: what kind of holiday mix doesn’t include MXPX’s “Christmas Night of the Living Dead?” Or at least the Kinks’ “Father Christmas?”

Apple’s delays shipping its newest iMacs increasingly point to the Cupertino, Calif. company having trouble pushing the desktop machines out the door fast enough to meet demand. “I can’t imagine in their wildest dreams they would have thought they would sell like this,” one report quoted NPD analyst Stephen Baker.

Debate over why Apple called Monday for a two-week waiting period centered on a rash of reports of buyers experiencing defective iMac displays, ranging from yellow-tinged screens to cracked hardware. In a statement, the Cupertino, Calif. firm apologized for delays due to the iMac being “a huge hit.” The company’s announcement was devoid of any specifics, however.

The avatar of personal computing: a stodgy and cherubic businessman, played by that ineffably awesome hobo-lover, John Hodgman. The avatar of the Apple experience: insufferable smugness and a warrantless sense of privilege as coalesced together in the immensely punchable mug of Justin Long.

The endless gladiatorial battle between Mac and PC in the abstract, white-space limbo of Platonic ideals has entertained Mac fans since 2006…. a Spy vs. Spy for our times. No wonder, then, that AdWeek just named the “Get a Mac” series of ads the Campaign of the Decade as part of their Best of the 2000’s awards. And the “Get a Mac” ads weren’t the only Apple campaigns to be recognized: those trippy, psychedelic iPod Silhouette ads won AdWeek’s award for “Out of Home Ad of the Decade” (re: Billboard Award).

Every time Toshiba unveils a new NAND module, you should take note: that’s going to be a meaningful storage capacity when it’s time for Apple to refresh it’s line of iPhone OS devices.

Apple’s current line of flash-based devices, the iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touch, use Toshiba’s NAND flash memory modules to achieve their svelteness. The iPhone 3Gs uses a single 16GB or 32GB Toshiba NAND module, while the iPod Touch uses dual Toshiba NAND modules to double the storage.

Flash storage capacity roughly doubles every year, so it’s no surprise that Toshiba has just announced that they have now doubled the maximum capacity of its NAND modules from 32GB to 64GB. That means that next year’s refresh of the iPhone and iPod Touch should see the former packing 64GB of internal flash storage, while the latter will likely max out at 128GB.

128GB of storage is a magic number for the iPod Touch: 128GB means I can finally get rid of my 160GB iPod Classic and cram my iTunes library onto a Touch without worrying about juggling albums around like some sort of Walkman-wielding, early eighties troglodyte. For me, the whole point of living in music’s digital age is that there shouldn’t be a problem walking around with sixty two days worth of music crammed into my front pocket.

My guess is that once the iPod Touch gets to 128GB, you can say goodbye to the iPod Classic once and for all. It just no longer serves a point. Who thought your end-of-line would be written by Toshiba, though?

With all the discussion of the New York Times’s bizarre decision to run a column that states as received wisdom that the iPhone’s poor network performance in the United States is Apple’s fault and not AT&T’s, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the track record of reporter Randall Stross with regard to Steve Jobs.

So I visited his website, and I remembered where I’d seen his name — on the cover of a book I read in high school that made a tech prognosis so spectacularly wrong that it’s occasionally used as a case study against proclaiming whether a particular technology is a winner or loser. That book? Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing. And its central premise was that Steve would never produce another tech industry hit. Seriously.

A woman traveling to Israel is questioned by security officers who are suspicious of her bag. So they take it out the back and shoot it, killing her MacBook. Amazingly, the hard drive survived.

“The Israeli security’s decision to shoot my laptop was nonsensical on multiple levels – unprovoked, unduly aggressive, a waste of government funds, etc.” the woman, Lilly Sussman, wrote on her blog.

Someone in the comments added: “These guys shoot every day at unarmed people, even children. Why so much surprise about a simple laptop?”

Link.

Let’s get a little Facebook groupthink going to help you with forming and fulfilling those pesky holiday wish lists.

First, become a fan of Cult of Mac on Facebook. Then, post a status update with your top techie geek gizmo to Facebook and tag the Cult of Mac Fan Page.  We’ll pick 3 random winners to receive a personalized signed copy of  Inside Steve’s Brain Expanded Edition, The Cult of Mac, or The Cult of iPod.

To tag our page use the “@” and start typing Cult of Mac in your profile status update window. You’ll see the page pop up in the selection window. Hit enter to tag our page.

Then finish your update with your top tech holiday wish. Here’s mine as an example:

We’ll pick 3 winners at 2:00pm PST tomorrow and announce them on Facebook.

Operation Chokehold — a flashmob-style protest against AT&T that began as a joke on Fake Steve’s blog — looks like it may actually take place.

The meme is gathering a lot of steam on Twitter and Facebook, with people saying they plan to join the protest.

“We have got to do this!,” says Mashable reader pjserven, who set up a couple of Facbook pages to help mobilize protestors: an event page and a fanpage that makes it easy to invite friends.

The protest began with a Fake Steve post about an internal Apple memo — fake of course — about bringing AT&T’s network to its knees on Friday, December 18 at noon Pacific:

Subject: Operation Chokehold
On Friday, December 18, at noon Pacific time, we will attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees. The goal is to have every iPhone user (or as many as we can) turn on a data intensive app and run that app for one solid hour. Send the message to AT&T that we are sick of their substandard network and sick of their abusive comments. The idea is we’ll create a digital flash mob. We’re calling it in Operation Chokehold. Join us and speak truth to power!

“I made up the note,” said Dan Lyons, aka Fake Steve. “A reader sent in the opposite idea — a boycott of AT&T for one day, everyone stops using their iPhone for a day, and we show them what’s what. I liked the sentiment but who’s going to stop using their iPhone? And for a whole day? I figured no one would go for it. But a one-hour flash mob of overuse? Now that i could see people doing.”

The fake memo follows Fake Steve’s inspired and widely-linked anti-AT&T rant last week. Fake Steve’s diatribe was prompted by comments by A&T CEO Ralph de la Vega’s saying the carrier may “incentivize” iPhone users to cut back on their usage.

Note: Operation Chokehold may adversely affect AT&T’s voice network and block emergency calls.

As we come down to crunch time to find the perfect presents, here are a few deals that would make perfect stocking stuffers. Along with being cool, they’ll save you some hard-earned cash along the way. If you haven’t nailed down that hardware purchase, we have a $1,750 MacBook Pro featuring a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo and 17-inch screen. Every indication points to the iPod touch being another popular gift this year. To protect that investment, we have a crystal hardcase (for 2nd gen touches) for just 39 cents. After all that clicking and wrapping, how about a present that costs zilch? Apple has unveiled their latest batch of App Store freebies, including JingleToe, a Mistletoe simulator.

For details on all these gift suggestions and even more deals, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Yes, settle down, we realize you’re just dying to dive into this one — so we’ve compiled a hot, attractive little FAQ about Playboy magazine’s new iPhone app:

Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs is a finalist for Time Magazine‘s Person of the Year. Jobs, who returned to lead Apple after a liver transplant, is in third place, just two votes behind U.S. President Barack Obama (2008 Person of the Year) and trails Iran protesters.

If he won, the title would follow Jobs’ win in November as Fortune‘s CEO of the Decade. Jobs is the single business person on the annual list for Time’s year-end cover.

Apple may have back-to-back record sales for its iconic iPhone. The company is on track to sell 10 million handsets for the quarter ending late December, according to a Monday report. If correct, the sales would top the record 7.4 million iPhone Apple sold during the previous quarter.

Some attribute the rise to the iPhone becoming available in more countries and the handset being sold by multiple carriers.

“Sales of the Apple iPhone 3GS far exceeded expectations, and sales are expected to reach 10 million in the fourth quarter of 2009,” writes the Taiwan-based Digitimes. The comments are based on a 32 percent jump in orders for smartphone components.

Although traditionally cell phone makers increase their supply orders to meet holiday sales demands, those suppliers linked to Apple were singled-out as benefitting from the double-digit increases. Samsung, which makes the application processors, Infineon, maker of the iPhone’s baseband and radio frequency transceivers, and TriQuint, which manufactures power amplifiers were noted in the report.

While several rivals – most recently Verizon’s Droid – have attempted to wrest the iPhone’s buzz, so far “no one develops user-friendly software like Apple does,” analyst Charlie Wolf Monday told investment customers of Needham & Co. In his “Wolf Bytes” report, the analyst described the iPhone as the “gold standard” for smartphones.

[Via AppleInsider and 9to5Mac]

Although e-readers like the Amazon Kindle and the new (and maligned) Barnes & Noble Nook are certainly tempting additions to a gadget fetishist’s armoire of doodads, I’ve never had much interest in owning one.

My ambivalence isn’t simply due to the fact that I think books conveyed as mere digital information is less sensual and vibrant than books as a medium: there is that, but I have still enjoyed reading e-books (thanks to Gutenberg.org) for most of the last decade. It’s mostly because I only enjoy reading e-books in certain circumstances: for example, when waiting for a subway, or in bed with the lights off. The e-ink panels of the Kindle and the Nook don’t work in the dark, which means my fleeting interest in e-books can only be satisfied with backlit devices. A few years ago, that was through my Pocket PC and the fantastic e-book program, uBook ; these days, it’s through my iPhone and the Stanza e-reader app.

Stanza is fantastic, of course, but with the release of the Kindle for iPhone app earlier this year, I’d been interested in supplementing my iPhone e-reading with Kindle books for awhile, only to be stymied by the fact that Amazon’s app was for US audiences only. But today, that’s changed: Apple has finally introduced its Kindle for iPhone App to international users.

It’s the same app as before, allowing you to purchase, download and read hundreds of thousands of books through the Kindle Store while syncing your notes and bookmarks across devices… the only difference is it now works on iPhones and iPod Touches in over sixty different countries.

I tend to doubt Kindle for iPhone will replace Stanza as my default e-reader on the iPhone — it’s hard to beat Stanza’s vast library of free classics — but I’m at least looking forward to finally being able to supplement it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YwC3PXB_Ns

Choosing a Twitter iPhone app seems to go something like this for me: I play around with one, mess around with another, poke at a third, go back to the first…and because they all largely have the same features, the decision becomes acutely personal — I’ve picked one that just feels right to me (which happens to be TweetDeck).

Then HootSuite came along on Thursday and messed up my whole process — it contains two new features not yet seen on a Twitter app: the ability to fire off tweets at a predetermined time; and a screen that tracks Twitter statistics.

Of course, it also features integration with the HootSuite web app, photo sharing and all the other requisite stuff that any Twitter app worth its salt should boast.

HootSuite isn’t free, but it’s on sale at the App Store for two bucks (a dollar off) till December 17th. Stay tuned for a head-to-head comparo later this week.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHRSDWZC_m4

Is this the fabled Apple Tablet so spoken about on the collected gadget rumor sites of the Internet in that hushed whisper usually reserved for mythological artifacts of the gods like Achilles’ Spear or Hercules\ Cod Piece?

Originally posted by French site Nowhereelse.fr, the video purports to show a prototype of the Apple Tablet browsing through an Ikea catalog through a touchscreen interface effortlessly infused with the usual Apple flourishes: multitouch, cover flow and shake to shuffle.

It’s a gorgeous looking interface… but note the bluish tinges around the operator’s swiping, pinching and swishing digits: that’s blue screen technology, my friends.

In other words, to the question “Is this the Apple Tablet?” we must sadly answer: “No, it’s jolly well not.” Still, I have to say, it gives me hope: I’ve long thought of the Apple Tablet in terms of a colossal, book-sized iPhone, which is not a product I’ve ever particularly wanted. If this counterfeit video shows anything, it’s that the potential of the Apple Tablet is far, far greater than the name might first imply.

[via TUAW]

Could coal in Apple’s stocking turning into diamonds for the Cupertino, Calif. company? While reports suggest Apple is delaying shipping its popular 27-inch iMacs due to display issues, some see it as a potential bonanza. Already one of the most popular consumer items for the holiday season, the iMac could join the iPhone in record sales.

“The company may be headed for another blow-out quarter”, writes AllThingsDigital. That’s if Apple’s weekend explanation holds true.

Will an apology be enough to satisfy frustrated buyers of the new 27-inch iMacs? Over the weekend, the Cupertino, Calif. company said delivery of its popular but ill-fated large screen desktop computers may be delayed. However, missing from the statement was any mention of the iMac’s much-publicized display issues.

“The new iMac has been a huge hit and we are working hard to fulfill orders as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience or delay this may cause our customers,” Apple said in an announcement. Although Apple is delaying shipments for two weeks, some resellers are encountering ones up to two-months, according to Monday reports.