Apple Inc. said Monday that it sold 1 million of its new 3G iPhones over the weekend amid high demand for the device that was greeted with long lines and long activation times around the world. In a statement, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said the new iPhone was “clearly off to a great start,” as it took Apple 74 days to sell 1 million of the first version of the iPhone. …

Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray said Apple’s iPhone sales exceeded his estimates of 425,000 units for the weekend, and that global demand is better than expected. “This trend will likely continue,” Munster said, as Apple plans to roll out the iPhone in 70 countries over the next few months. Munster estimates Apple will sell 4.1 million iPhones in the current quarter, and sales could reach 45 million units in 2009. Full story

As for Apple’s new online AppStore during the same weekend, users downloaded more than 10 million applications! AppStore has more than 800 native applications for iPhone and iPod touch. Of that number, more than 200 are offered for free and more than 90% are priced at less than $10.

Despite an outcry from users who still prefer Windows XP over Vista, Microsoft announced that, as of today, it will no longer sell XP. Rather than allow customers the choice to simply buy and install XP, Microsoft’s strategy is to force them to buy and install Vista before being allowed to “legally downgrade” to XP.

I’ve written before about the sub-market that formed after Vista’s release where some computer stores were doing a brisk business uninstalling Vista and installing XP in its place. In addition, many Windows users decided to upgrade from older versions of Windows to XP instead of Vista.

It would appear that Microsoft’s marketing strategy to improve Vista sales is to “innovate” its foolish customers away from XP and to Vista “for their own good” until Windows 7 can be brought to market sometime in 2009. Of course, if we’ve learned anything from history, it’s that Microsoft never delivers on schedule.

So if you’re one of the folks unhappy with Vista, you might want to grab a copy of XP while they’re still readily available. Or better yet… (Nope, I won’t even say it.)

Here’s an interesting story from Ananova that should come as no surprise to many of you:

“Some computer keyboards carry more harmful bacteria than a toilet seat, according to new research. Consumer group Which? said tests at its London offices found equipment carrying bugs that could cause food poisoning.

Out of 33 keyboards swabbed, four were regarded as a potential health hazard and one harbored five times more germs than one of the office’s toilet seats. A microbiologist ordered the worst keyboards to be so dirty he ordered it to be removed, quarantined and cleaned. It had 150 times the recommended limit for bacteria - five times as filthy as a lavatory seat tested at the same time, the research found.

Dr. Wilson, a consultant microbiologist at University College London Hospital, said sharing a keyboard could be passing on illnesses among office workers. ‘If you look at what grows on computer keyboards, and hospitals are worse, believe it or not, it’s more or less a reflection of what’s in your nose and in your gut,’ he said. ‘Should somebody have a cold in your office, or even have gastroenteritis, you’re very likely to pick it up from a keyboard.’

Which? computing editor Sarah Kidner advised users to give their computer ‘a spring clean’.

‘It’s quite simple to do and could prevent your computer from becoming a health hazard,’ she said.”

I have nothing to add to the story; I just wanted an excuse to use this Melissa McEwan graphic of a keyboard that reads “POOP.” BTW, I swam in Miami canals when I was a kid and played with every stray or wild animal that came near me. Dirty keyboards don’t scare me.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention that, along with April Fools’ Day, yesterday marked the 32nd anniversary of Apple, Inc. In its 80th Anniversary issue, Time Magazine revisits a 2003 story titled, “80 Days that Changed the World” that includes a piece about how Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak ushered in the personal computer with the founding of Apple on April 1, 1976:

They were two guys named Steve, so Steve Jobs was called Steve and Steve Wozniak went by Woz. At 25, Wozniak was the technical brains. Jobs, 21, was the dreamer with a knack for getting others to dream along with him. They had gone to the same high school, and in the hazy years after graduation - both were college dropouts - a shared interest in electronics brought them together. Jobs didn’t yet have his own place, so when their formal partnership began, the decision was made in a bedroom at his parents’ ranch house in Los Altos, Calif.

Most computers in 1976 were room-size machines with Defense Department size price tags, but Wozniak had been tinkering with a new design, and his computer was different. It wasn’t much to look at—just a bunch of chips screwed to a piece of plywood—but it was small, cheap and easy to use, and Jobs had noticed the stir it caused when they took it to a local computer club. “He said, ‘We’ll make it for 20 bucks, sell it for 40 bucks!’” Wozniak remembers. “I kind of didn’t think we’d do it.” Jobs came up with the name, inspired by an orchard in Oregon where he had worked with some friends: Apple Computer. “When we started the little partnership, it was just like, Oh, this will be fun,” Wozniak says. “We won’t make any money, but it’ll be fun.”

They didn’t go out and celebrate that day. Woz wouldn’t even quit his day job designing chips for calculators at Hewlett-Packard until months later, after Jobs had sold his Volkswagen bus for seed money. Nobody, not even Jobs, saw what was coming next: that Apple would create the look and feel of every desktop in the world and start our love affair with the personal computer.

I didn’t become an Apple fan (I prefer “user” or “evangelist”) until the introduction of the horribly overpriced ($10,000) Lisa, the first personal computer to feature a visual desktop (GUI) and a mouse. And when Apple later introduced the Macintosh, well, I was hooked. Happy birthday, Apple!

Here are a few of the things that slipped through the proverbial cracks this week but are still worth mentioning:

TechCrunch has two separate reader reports of a phishing scam targeting Facebook users. The scam involves a notice appearing on the wall of user profiles as a message from a friend saying, “Hey, I got a new facebook account. I’m going to delete this one, so add my new profile…” with a link that appears to direct to the new profile but actually directs to a URL on view-facebookprofiles.com, a domain registered (and whois protected) on Namecheap and hosted at Softlayer that looks identical to the Facebook login page. Users fooled into resubmitting their Facebook details on this page then have their Facebook accounts hijacked and all of their contacts receive a similar message, propagating the phishing scam. It’s not yet clear what the phishing scammers are planning on using the compromised accounts for or how far it has spread, but beware…

Adobe has launched a basic version of Adobe Photoshop available for free online. Photoshop Express will be completely Web-based so consumers can use it with any type of computer, operating system and browser. According to Yahoo! News, Adobe says providing Photoshop Express for free is part marketing and part a strategy to create up-sell opportunities. It hopes some customers will move from it to boxed software like its $99 Photoshop Elements or to a subscription-based version of Express that’s in the works. More…

Remember Apple’s Newton? It brought handwriting recognition to hand held computing years ago but never quite found its niche market. Well, Apple’s kept its patents viable and now seems poised to reintroduce it for Mac OSX, other applications and the iPhone according to a report by Arnold Kim for Mac Rumors. “Apple has started hiring for a new Handwriting Recognition Engineer. The job description specifically seeks someone who would be responsible for ‘advancing Apple’s handwriting recognition technology for Mac OS X’ and ‘to other applications and the iPhone.’”…

There you have it. I’ve cleared my desk and I’m taking the rest of the week off.

Use Windows long enough and you’ll recognize that bloated, sinking feeling creeping in. Spyware and viruses pile up, registries get corrupted, drivers stop working or cause conflicts — eventually reaching that point where you want to just erase everything and re-install the entire system. After swearing to pay more attention to the links you follow and the software you install, you find yourself staring at a brand-new-all-over-again Windows desktop.

Your system is fresh and untarnished. Now what? Time to tweak it to your satisfaction! Continue reading…

Just a few instances where having the “World’s Thinnest Notebook” could save the day…

In a word…

Dubbed “The World’s Thinnest Notebook,” the MacBook Air fills a gap between the existing MacBook and MacBook Pro, but introduces a new way of looking at how a laptop fits your mobile lifestyle.

First, the thing is thin: .76 to .16 inches thick, back to front, with a magnetic latch. It sports a full size backlit keyboard, a full size 13.3” LED backlit widescreen, built in iSight camera, a large trackpad that recognizes several new multi-touch gestures (owing to the iPhone’s touchscreen technology), 1.8” hard drives, (80 GB standard, 64 GB SSD optional), 2 gig of memory, 1.6 GHz or 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processors (but in a 60% smaller package!) - a complete Mac on a board the size of a pencil, an amazing feat of engineering.

On one side, Apple’s magsafe power connector. On the other side, a door for one USB port, a micro DVI and a headphone jack. 802.11n networking, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Weighs 3 pounds with claimed battery life of 5 hours!

Built to be a wireless machine, the Air has no internal optical drive (a $99 accessory optical Superdrive is offered for those who feel they need one.) Instead, a new feature — “remote disc” - shows you Macs or PCs in your vicinity, allowing you to choose one of those machines and “borrow” it’s optical drive. It appears on your desktop just like a local optical drive and works the same way.

Ships in two weeks @ $1799. Watch the new ad and take a guided tour to check out how it looks and works.

There were, of course, more announcements in Steve’s keynote address. I’ll try to touch on them over the lunch hour or this afternoon.

The tech world has been speculating, and prognosticators have been prognosticating, about what new wizardry Steve Jobs will announce in his keynote address tomorrow morning at the 24th annual Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

Most expect a new ultra-light sub-notebook with some innovative bells and whistles that will likely spread to the rest of the MacBook and line which is due for an update. Many have speculated that a new devise along the lines of the old Newton tablet but sized more like a slightly enlarged iPhone would be introduced, but that seems premature given the current state of Apple’s touchscreen technology. Maybe next year.

Of course, it’s almost a forgone conclusion that Jobs will announce Apple’s new iTunes movie rental program and formally adopt the Blu-ray hi-def video standard which may drive the final nail into Toshiba’s HD-DVD format. Sorry Microsoft. Some predict something new to add sizzle to the iTV. And the new chipsets for the Mac Pro were announced last week at CES…

But the real buzz is emanating from the banners draping the halls on Mosconi Center that say, quite simply, “There’s something in the Air.” WiMax Mobile? Predictors are guessing wildly about what Jobs has behind the curtain but, if the past is any indication, he won’t let the cat out of the bag until tomorrow.

I always enjoy Apple’s “Get a Mac” advertising campaign and look forward to each new release. Today Apple posted their newest installment touting Leopard’s “Time Machine”, its automatic back-up and file retrieval system that can easily locate and retrieve even long ago deleted files.

The ad features the “Mac” and “PC” guys (Justin Long and John Hodgman) explaining, in simple but entertaining ways, how it works. You can watch the ad below or in various sizes/resolutions on Apple’s site.

And here’s one they used for the 2007 WWDC to introduce Apple’s Phil Schiller. You have to admit, these guys have a great sense of humor!

You may already be aware that the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been running in Las Vegas this week (ending today). It’s a gigantic annual event for companies that want to introduce their latest consumer gadgetry and for consumers who love to drool over it. I keep saying I’m going to go one year, but the thing is so big, I know I’d have to fight huge crowds for four long days and that just isn’t in my genes.

But I’ve been following the “goings on” at technology sites like engadget, Gizmodo, TechCrunch and Wired (more on their respective sites), enough so that I thought I’d link, in no particular order, to a few of the things I thought looked and sounded pretty cool. See what you think:

• Optimus Maximus Keyboard - The oh-so captivating, completely configurable keyboard everyone’s been talking about. Watch the video hands-on…

• Panasonic’s 150-Inch Plasma TV - Movie theaters should start to worry! (Crap, I’m going to need a bigger house!)

• Panasonic’s 1-inch Thin Plasmas - Check out the photos! Thin is in!

• SHOGO - the World’s First WiFi-enabled, Touchscreen Digital Photo Frame.

• FlyTunes - Brings Internet Radio to Your iPhone.

• Avis’ Upgraded Where2 GPS - A customized Garmin Nuvi 780 that will replace the StreetPilot-based units currently in Avis’ arsenal…

• Pioneer Kuro Concept Plasma - Video Shows How Thin This Thing Really Is!

• Canon’s Flash Camcorders - New Vixia line of nine-ounce HD flash-based camcorders.

• Alienware’s Monster Wraparound Monitor - Humungous wraparound DLP rear-projection monitors aimed at gamers.

• New Apple Mac Pro - Eight Cores and support for eight 30-inch Cinema Displays. Not sure why they announced this a week or so before Macworld; I assume it’s because Intel announced the new chips…

• Control4 Home Automation - Centralized command over your media, home theater, lights, security system and temperature…

• New Apple Xserve - Most Powerful Ever…

• LG.Philips 52-inch multi-touch display - Watch the video and view the images. Very cool!

• Heineken/Krups BeerTender - This looks cool! Built to hold a 5-liter Heineken keg and keep it tasting fresh and cold for about 30 days. The LCD indicates temperature and lets you know when beer is running low…

• Panasonic/T-Mobile Wireless Lumix Camera - Integrated access to T-Mobile HotSpot and will give owners the ability to beam images directly to Picasa Web Albums…

• Linksys Wireless-G Internet Home Monitoring Camera - Pretty straightforward home monitoring camera system…

• iRobot Looj - A robot that treats gutters like an olympic event. Watch the video…

• iRobi Helper Robot - Another domestic robot designed to help around the house…

CES, as you’ve probably surmised, includes thousands of products. I grabbed just a handful that caught my fancy while perusing the technology sites that had reps attending the four-day show and reporting what they saw. It’s an amazing event, at least for those of us who really love gadgets.

Darnel sent this graphic in response to this morning’s PCWorld “100 Best Products” post. I’d seen it around; in fact, you can Google the phrase and find countless related discussion threads. I’m not sure where the graphic originated or why there are so many threads on the subject, but my guess is that it’s self-explanatory.

Anyway, here’s the graphic. Draw your own conclusions as to what it means.

The editors of PCWorld have ranked the best PCs, HDTVs, components, sites, and services of 2007 and listed the products they’re looking forward to in ‘08. Here are the top 10:

1. Google Apps Premier Edition. I wasn’t surprised - hosting core applications on Google’s servers rather than on users’ makes sense, and the number of initial clients shows that it’s likely to enjoy continued acceptance.

2. Intel Core 2 Duo. Again, no surprise here. Intel is producing some great “new generation” chip sets these days and the things lined up for introduction are amazing.

3. Nintendo Wii. I haven’t used one of these but the ads make it look fun!

4. Verizon FiOS.

5. RIM Blackberry 8800. Great smartphone with peripherals.

6. Parallels Desktop. Allows Mac users to run - not emulate - Windows. Works better than on PCs in some cases!

7. Pioneer Elite 1080p PRO-FHD1.

8. Infrant Technologies ReadyNAS NV.

9. Apple Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”. A great operating system made even better with the latest release.

10. Adobe Premiere Elements 3. Long missing from the landscape, Premiere has reestablished itself as a player in video production.

Two things I found particularly telling after reading the list: First, no where is there any mention of Microsoft’s premiere operating system, Windows Vista! Apple’s OSX Tiger and the Canonical Ubuntu 7.04 operating systems came in at numbers 9 and 16 respectively, but Vista failed to make the cut! I’m sure Vista fans will cry foul, but PCWorld is highly respected in the industry…

And second, that Google Apps Premier Edition won the “Product of the Year” crown. Microsoft may still be the ten-ton hippo of office applications, but for the majority of us that rarely require such a bloated, albeit feature rich, office suite, Google Apps is looking like a no-brainer.

I enjoy the “I’m a Mac” and “PC Guy” ad series from Apple, Inc. I use both platforms (although not with Vista) and generally prefer Macs, but I think the ad series is pure genius. C’mon, admit it. Regardless of your platform preference, the ads and the two characters are endearing.

Here’s another.

Or week? We’ve all had them, some worse than others. But it’s how we handle them that separates the ass-kissers from the “I’m not going to take it anymore” ass-kickers who would apparently prefer unemployment and maybe a little hard time to putting up with… Well, give this compilation a watch. You’ve probably seen some of the clips, but together, they’re a work of art.

There. Feel better?