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Apple prototyping "iPhone lite" and MacBook Mini / media pad for Verizon?


Hot on the heels of yesterday's reports of Apple and Verizon dealings comes some tantalizing, but still unconfirmed, new details from BusinessWeek. According to the publication, the gang in Cupertino has prototyped two devices for the carrier. The first one is a smaller, less expensive device that's been dubbed as "iPhone lite" by someone who's apparently seen it in person. The other is called a "media pad" (Joggler, anyone?) for music, photos, HD video, and placing calls over WiFi. Details are scant beyond that, and while that pad sounds a lot like an iPod touch to us, we can't help but wonder if it has something to do with those 10-inch displays that Quanta's rumored to be manufacturing. Don't put too much stock into this, as the reports could end up being all for naught, but one thing's for sure: you can bet the suits at AT&T are keeping a very, very close eye on this. In other, even sketchier and likely unrelated rumors, a listing for "MacBookMini" has popped up in Adium's statistics. While we wouldn't normally think anything of this -- as TUAW correctly notes, anyone can edit their computer IDs -- it was from these pages that we first heard the name MacBook Air. Chances are this is nothing, but with all this talk of 10-inch screens and media pads, it kind of makes you wonder.

[Via TUAW; image courtesy of Frunny]

Read - BusinessWeek
Read - Adium stats

Bounty makes Mac-BlackBerry tethering a reality

It seems almost criminal that Mac users have been thus far denied the basic human right to tether the immensely popular BlackBerry 8700 series devices to their Macbooks, but thanks to a little elbow grease, determination, and nearly $700 in cold, hard cash, the world's wrongs have been righted. An intrepid character by the name of Daniel Pasco has claimed the bounty offered by Alex King, challenging folks to come up with a solution for using an 8700 as a Mac OS X compatible modem. So far, Mr. Pasco's solution has apparently been verified with the 8700g on T-Mobile and the 8703e on Verizon and Sprint, though we imagine Cingular's would work just the same. In the short term, it looks like the rough cut of the software will be available only to people that had contributed to the reward, but the solution will hopefully find its way into the public domain down the road.

[Via TUAW]

Vodafone brings 3G to MacBooks via USB

Some people call it compatibility; we call it cheating. Yeah, Vodafone's freshly-announced Mobile Connect USB Modem fits into your MacBook Pro a little better than their PC Card does, but we'd sure like to see a real, honest-to-goodness ExpressCard operating on Vodafone's UMTS and HSDPA networks, and we're guessing we can find a few Pro owners to agree with us. Granted, non-Pros will need to kick it with the USB model either way, but at least Vodafone's glossy white capsule matches the MacBook a little better than its metal-clad sibling. The device hits the streets this fall, but Bluetooth dial-up should hold folks over in the meanwhile -- and if the thought of a white tumor on the side of your 'Book pains you, ya might be looking at Bluetooth as your permanent solution, too.

[Via Reg Hardware]

Novatel EV-DO ExpressCard next month?

We've still yet to hear of any solid 3G ExpressCard device releases as yet (we were kind of hoping CTIA would have yielded at least one or two), but Om seems to have the scoop on a Novatel EV-DO ExpressCard 34 launch for May -- whose most obvious application right now is, of course in Apple MacBook Pros. Granted, we wouldn't be in this predicament if Apple had just followed through with internal integrated 3G like so many other laptop manufacturers, but hey, you've got what we've got, and we'll takes what we can gets. There's no way of knowing, however, when the cards will hit the market with Sprint or Verizon even if Novatel launches their card in May, so stay tuned.

[Via TUAW, image via EVDOinfo]




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