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Stories by Tom Yager

  • Your next iPhone: iPhone 3.0 update or iPhone 3G S?

    Over the course of two weeks in June, Apple will deliver more new phones than any mobile handset manufacturer in history. On June 8, paid members of Apple's iPhone Developer Program were given access to the GM (gold master) of iPhone 3.0 firmware, along with a matching version of the iPhone SDK. On June 17, owners of all models of iPhone and iPod Touch will be able to download the iPhone 3.0 update through iTunes. And on June 19, Apple will start selling the iPhone 3G S, a faster iPhone 3G with longer battery life, an autofocus camcorder, a compass, and other goodies. Meanwhile, the original 8GB iPhone 3G will continue to be sold for the giveaway price of $US99.

  • Nokia challenges developers to think outside the phone

    You don't have to be a programmer to be a mobile innovator. All you need to do is open your eyes to the fact that a smart phone or QWERTY handset is a personal computer, sans legacy baggage. In the future, user-facing computers will have more in common with the high-end mobile devices of today than with the eight-core desktops and quad-core notebooks of 2009.

  • AMD spins Moore's Law in IT's favour

    In 64-bit servers, AMD and Intel will soon be on the same page, architecturally speaking. But these similar ends were reached by very different means.

  • BlackBerry phone hits the hotspot with VoIP

    RIM has developed a knack for pulling customers into new BlackBerry devices. That's no mean feat. BlackBerry is the most mature, most imitated, and most-targeted brand in the mobile industry. RIM keeps new handsets rolling out, and it keeps racking up new exclusives with wireless operators by finding gaps in its own product line and filling them better than its competitors can. By teaming up with T-Mobile, RIM's latest product helps to fill your budget gaps by providing flat-rate unlimited IP telephony from your home, office, airport, or any locale that hosts a T-Mobile Hotspot.

  • AMD bails out IT

    There's a good deal that's special about AMD's new Shanghai server CPU. It's fabulous science, fun for those of us who get dewy-eyed over the prospect of a 25 percent faster world switch time and immersion lithography. It makes the x86 battle interesting again because it carries AMD into territory that it must fight hard to win--the two-socket (2P) server space--and where innovation is sorely needed. AMD beat Intel's next-generation server architecture to market while closing performance, price, and power efficiency gaps between Core 2 and Shanghai. Just as it did in the old days, AMD now claims that its best outruns Intel's best despite having a lower clock speed.

  • MacBook Pro is built to last

    Apple has done a complete and meaningful redesign of its top-selling commercial notebook, the MacBook Pro, for durability, serviceability, energy efficiency, and eco-consciousness. A one-piece, rigid, machined aluminum frame ("unibody") forms the MacBook Pro's internal structure, a design feature it shares with the new aluminum MacBook and MacBook Air. As with the MacBook Air, the clamshell laptop that upended the thin-and-light PC notebook market, Apple made some marvelously unorthodox design decisions for the MacBook Pro.

  • First look at the T-Mobile G1

    On October 22, T-Mobile will reap the benefits of its founding membership in the Open Handset Alliance. Through an exclusive partnership with Google and Asian handset manufacturer HTC, the T-Mobile G1 will become the first shipping mobile device based on the Android platform.

  • The Nehalem CPU's secret weapon

    Intel Developer Forum has wrapped up, and there's no question that Nehalem owned the show. Intel's engineering crew was practically beside itself; finally, it had something new to say to software and hardware developers. It was hard to tell whether the phrase "most significant update to Intel's x86 in ten years," uttered often by Intel staff, carried a tinge of frustration, but Nehalem's specs elevate that mantra from marketing to reality.

  • Parallels Server for Mac underwhelms

    No 1U, two-socket rack server bests Apple's Xserve in its price range. No two-socket Intel desktop can touch the MacBook Pro for its combination of durability, efficiency, expandability, and quiet operation.

  • Your server is wasting your CPU

    While using an AMD Barcelona (quad-core Opteron) server to create a portable benchmarking kit for InfoWorld's Test Center, I discovered something unexpected: I could incur variances in some benchmark tests ranging from 10 to 60 per cent through combined manipulation of the server's BIOS settings, BIOS version, compiler flags, and OS release.

  • Apple gets iPhone 3G right for business

    With the iPhone 3G's banner opening weekend and newsstands looking like a rack of brochures for the device, a review of the iPhone 3G at this point might be pro forma, except for one thing: Much of the iPhone 3G and the new iPhone 2.0 software remains an enigma to professionals and enterprises, users set apart by, among other things, their tendency to use punctuation in their e-mail. These users demand more from a handset than a cellular browser and YouTube.

  • WWDC & iPhone: A deep dive into Apple's mobile empire

    On the keynote stage at Apple's 2008 Worldwide Developer Conference, Steve Jobs looked like a man who could use a Gatesian escape from the glass house to a quieter life spent in pursuit of passions that a CEO hasn't time to explore. The difference between Steve and Bill is that Steve's passion is already in his grasp. iPhone can be seen as a culmination point for much of what Steve has set his mind, hand, and brain trust to in the past decade.