For existing AT&T subscribers looking to get a new handset for a few months before they make that inevitable Pre / iPhone 3.0 / Gizmondo decision this summer — or folks who just despise contracts in general — it looks like AT&T will be offering unsubsidized iPhone 3Gs at last.

According to some training slides obtained by The Boy Genius, the “no-commit” price will only be available to existing customers, and will run them $599 for the 8GB model and $699 for the 16GB. Sounds like somebody’s looking to flush a bit of stock, or perhaps they’ve finally decided to almost treat the phone like pretty much every single other device on the market — wild times we’re living in, folks. The no-commit option should be available as of March 26th.

Many of us — okay, a small handful of us — wouldn’t dream of putting beta firmware on our day-to-day devices, so we wanted to treat that very special group of safety-minded individuals to a once-over with iPhone OS 3.0′s finer points on video.

Odds are this is about as close as they’ll get to the goods until Apple blesses the binary a few months from now.

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It seems the success Apple has achieved with gaming on the iPhone might spill over from pockets to living rooms. The makers of the iPhone have filed a set patents for a Wii-style wireless controller that looks to be made for the Apple TV and could be used for a number of applications.

The patent filing, including the image above, clearly shows an icon for Safari, as well as images that appear to be an iPhoto-like app.

The filing, which describes a “remote wand for controlling the operations of a media system,” specifically uses the Apple TV as a reference. Could this mean games on the device?

The Apple TV is a fairly powerful product for what little it currently does. Don’t get me wrong, I love the device. I have one and use it almost every day. It’s the easiest way to get my movie fix on in my living room, and the Flickr and YouTube functionality is amazing, as well as fun at parties.

Right now, though, that’s about all it’s good for. Apple has put together a pretty good method for distributing games (and other apps) via the iTunes App Store. And because the basic operating system on the Apple TV is very similar to the iPhone’s, it wouldn’t be too big of a jump to develop for it.

I’m excited about the prospect. Imagine playing a game like Light Bike on a 720p TV with surround sound. And if Apple TV app development is anything like the iPhone’s, you could see an avalanche of good, inexpensive games.

It wouldn’t aim to compete with the Xbox 360 or the PS3, but the guys at Nintendo might want to keep an eye on what Apple ends up doing with this patent filing, if anything.

No, this isn’t a price cut reflected on the Apple Web site. And it’s not much. But if you’re in the market for a high-end MacBook, every dollar counts. Besides, Apple will probably match the lower price.

At major resellers like Newegg, PC Connection (i.e., Mac Connection), and Buy.com the latest version of the high-end MacBook Air (1.86GHz, 128GB solid-state drive) is now selling for–hold your breath–$2,399 instead of the listed $2,499 on the Apple Web site. Not much. What is best described as a price snip rather than a price cut.

Listing for Apple MacBook Air (1.86GHz, 128GB SSD) on newegg.com

But my question is, did Apple green-light this? Or is this simply resellers adjusting their pricing to market realities. (I would imagine that luxury laptops like the MacBook Air are not jumping off the shelves at resellers these days, considering the state of the economy.)

Whether Apple green-lighted it or not may be immaterial, however, because (some? most? all?) Apple stores have a policy that stipulates: if you find an Apple computer priced lower at a major reseller (like Mac Connection), they will price-match it up to 10 percent of the listed Apple price. (This is the policy at the Apple Store that I frequent.)

Maybe there’s a trend here. Maybe Apple will even make an official price move. Makes sense, right? The economy is in a tailspin and consumers have less disposable income, so Apple caves and officially cuts prices before the scheduled introduction of new MBA models. But then again, this is Apple. It doesn’t have to stoop to unscheduled price cuts–so much for that fond hope.

It is the weirdest thing, NVIDIA can sometimes move in mysterious ways, and well .. in the past has stepped on the toes of many of it’s AIB/AIC partners. A while ago after the demise of BFG there already was a rumor that NVIDIA themselves might be addressing a chunk of the (r)etails market. It seems that this concern now is validated. On Best Buy USA, the GTS 450 as produced and sold by NVIDIA popped up.

In fact best Buy stores started selling nVidia-branded GeForce GTS 450 and GTX 460 boards. Here’s Bryan Del Rizzo, PR manager at nVidia on the products:

“NVIDIA and Best Buy are working together to offer PC customers the opportunity to experience firsthand the latest in PC technologies right inside Best Buy stores. As part of this broad initiative, NVIDIA is supplying to Best Buy specific GeForce models built and supported by NVIDIA. These products will only be available at Best Buy and will complement GeForce products from our partners. We will provide more details on this later.”

By doing this, NVIDIA is bypassing some major board partners like eVGA and many other players in the USA market. And not just that, they will compete with the board partners … and we all know who the winner there will be.

Here’s some proof of the cards in stores from a guy named zshift, which posted these photo’s taken using his Apple iPhone.

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Owners of iPhones and other smartphones are one step closer towards taking complete control of their gadgets, thanks to a new government ruling Monday on the practice of “jailbreaking.” as Yahoo news reports.

This weekend has seen a flurry of activity about digital rights, but the biggest news dropped Monday morning, when the FCC announced that it had made the controversial practice of “jailbreaking” your iPhone — or any other cell phone — legal.

Jailbreaking — the practice of unlocking a phone (and particularly an iPhone) so it can be used on another network and/or run other applications than those approved by Apple — has technically been illegal for years. Most jailbroken phones are used on the U.S. T-Mobile network or on overseas carriers, or are used to run applications that Apple refuses to sell, such as Safari ad-blocking apps, alternate keyboard layouts, or programs that change the interface to the iPhone’s SMS system and the way its icons are laid out.

While technically illegal, no one has been sued or prosecuted for the practice. (Apple does seriously frown on the practice, and jailbreaking your phone will still void your warranty.) It’s estimated that more than a million iPhone owners have jailbroken their handsets.

Apple fought hard against the legalization, arguing that jailbreaking was a form of copyright violation. The FCC disagreed, saying that jailbreaking merely enhanced the inter-operability of the phone, and was thus legitimate under fair-use rules.

Further details on Intel’s upcoming hexacore Xeon processors have surfaced, suggesting that the chips will form their own flagship line rather than replacing the existing quadcore processors. Word out on the web is that the hexacore chips will initially be in short supply – kicking off with the 3.33GHz Core i7-980X in March 2010 – and will be expensive, too; $999 for the i7-980X.

Meanwhile as well as the second hexacore, the 3.2GHz Core i7-970, which is expected to arrive in Q3 2010, there’s a little news on the third model in the series. That won’t arrive until 2011, when it replaces the Core i7-980X with the same clock speed but a lower price, and with a new “flagship” CPU above it. Apple are expected to launch a new Mac Pro desktop with the i7-980X on March 16th.

Way back in the day I had a set of JBL Creature II speakers. The things always reminded me of the ghosts from the Pac Man cartoon my brother and I watched as kids. The newest version of the speakers is the JBL Creature III and they have a very similar design to those Creature II speakers.

The new speakers are available in black or white colors and have a 3.5mm input for connecting to Mac or PCs. The drivers in the satellites are 40mm units and the subwoofer is a 3-inch unit. The dimensions of the satellite speakers are 3″ x 3″ x 2-3/4″ and the sub measures 9″ x 9″ x 9″.

The speakers still look a lot like the Pac Man ghosts to me. JBL uses its latest Odyssey transducer technology in the speakers and the Creature II speakers are available exclusively at the Apple Store and on Apple.com. The MSRP for the speakers is $129.99.

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There are renewed rumors about Apple working on a small ultra portable notebook. Despite Steve Jobs’ comment that he did not know a way of making a computer for $800 that was not a hunk of junk these rumors have persisted.

The latest rumors seem to have some traction though. According to China Times three players in system manufacture have received direct orders from Apple. Dynapack, Wintek, and Foxconn.

The new book should be about 9.7-inches (just to be different) will be a touch screen (ok Multi-Touch) and should be in the $800 range. It is interesting that Foxconn will be making the new book as Quanta has taken over much of the manufacturing for MacBooks.

Of course this is all rumor and might not be a netbook, ultrathin or anything at all resembling one. Apple has a history of doing their own thing and I cannot see them trying to enter and really compete in the netbook market. This is especially considering the “cheap” label that netbooks have in the market.

It has been about a month since Apple announced its new line of Mac Book Pros. This new line was supposed to dove-tail in nicely with the release of Snow Leopard and usher in a new era of Mac Book dominance.

Well there is trouble in Mac land. It seems that some of the trouble that existed with the last line of Macbooks is following the new ones too.

This trouble is all about the colors man. You see Apple says that its new MacBooks have support for “Millions of Colors” this is great right? Well you see it is not all good. Apple uses 6-bit panels as such they are really only capable of supporting 262 thousand colors.

The way they can get away with saying support for Millions of Colors is through the use of a couple of tricks. One is dithering; this is where you combine adjacent pixels to create a different shade. This usually has the effect of reducing the sharpness of the image. You can also use Frame Rate Control or FRC this rapidly cycles through the color pallet to simulate the same range from an 8-bit display.

Now neither of these is true million color support, yes it is a trick to allow for a wider gamut but this comes at a cost in detail and sharpness. It is often seen as an indistinct “fuzziness” or even as a faded look to the image. There are many techniques to correct for this like putting a glass like coating over the screen, speeding up the response time of the display and over saturating the image to prevent the faded look.

But in the end you simply cannot say it has support for millions of colors.