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Digital Daily brings BOOM!ing word that Apple’s market cap has just exceeded Google’s, at $159.37 vs. $157.56.

Good on Steve Jobs and Apple. And kudos to Valleywag for saying, way back in 2007 that this would happen because “Apple knows how to design not just gadgets, but the businesses that go around them.”

We here at TiPb have been marveling at Apple’s unique 360 degree spherical integration for a while now as well.

We, like pretty much everyone else in the blogosphere, probably can’t help but wonder how Michael “I’d shut down Apple and give the money back to its shareholders” Dell is doing lately? But is all this market cap stuff really anything more than a seriously juicy headline? Any savvy investors reading, please enlighten me on how much more or faster this news, never mind the ever fickle and capricious dice-game that is the current market, will restore our childlike sense of wonder?

The day after I bought my iPhone 3G I went back to the local Rogers store to see how things were going, and a customer was there complaining that he couldn’t get on the 3G network. The customer service rep tried fiddling with his iPhone, but the settings all looked right. Yet there I was, less than 5 feet away, with full, fast 3G speed downloading TiPb’s homepage at that very moment. Later that night, I saw some chatter that others thought Rogers was down because they couldn’t connect either.

Things had quieted down some for a while, but now more and more reports are spreading of transient 3G connection errors. MacRumors quotes Mark Siegel of AT&T as saying there haven’t been an unusual amount of complaints about the iPhone 3G in specific:

How a device performs in individual situations depends on circumstances like where you are in the 3G coverage, how close you are to a cell site. Things like terrain and buildings all come into play. I’m not denying that people are having a less than satisfactory experience, but overall, the phone is doing great.

GigaOm, however, picks up some analyst rumors about potentially flakey 3G chipsets, while iLounge steps it up with T-Mobile and Vodafone laying blame on the same, with the Syndney Morning Herald claiming an unnamed source revealed that Apple only provided 3G test units to carriers the day before launch. Ouch. Any chip experts out there that could help identify what problem would cause reception problems for a fraction of users?

Mine, like I said, is rock-solid so far, only dropping to EDGE in areas where Rogers’ coverage is weak to begin with. How about you? Any 3G connection problems?

Late last night, Casey posted about the the fire Apple’s Cupertino campus. Now, more information is becoming available. According to Apple Insider:

The building [where the fire broke out], also known as Valley Green Six, is one of the most famous buildings on the Apple campus, as it is known to house a number of hardware-based research and development projects that are underway at the company.

Not good news, but now that everyone is out, safely and soundly, perhaps I can overact with: Merciful Buddha, I hope they got the iPhone 4G (and 5G?) out in time!

As to the cause, while MobileMe jokes and quips about someone trying to boot up one of the secret new quad-core MacBook Air’s, turns out:

Hal Rooney, deputy chief for Santa Clara County Fire, said the fire may have started under an air conditioning unit on the second floor. Local television station KNTV reported that maintenance crews had been working on the air conditioning systems in the building earlier in the day.

Again, everyone here wishes well all the Apple employees, their families, and loved ones, and speedy recovery for the Apple R&D team and their continually universe-denting R&D team.

Finally. Finally! You’ll be able to get your giant-sized HDTV $200 HDMI cables, chocolate frosted sugar bombs, and iPhone 3G all under one big, blue roof!

Yup, Apple Insider rumored yesterday, and now Associated Press has confirmed, Best Buy will begin selling 970 full-size stores and 16 smaller, but recently upgraded Best Buy Mobile stores, come September 7.

Says Shawn Score, president of Best Buy Mobile:

We had a lot of work to do, obviously, to get in a position where Apple and AT&T would feel good about Best Buy Mobile carrying it, and that’s what we’ve done in the last 18 months

Back in late June, Dieter posted about this and the much more frightening rumor of Radioshack getting their “laughing stock” hands on it, so it’s not a total shocker… just as long as the Quickymart doesn’t get it next, b’okay?

I mean, El Jobso still personally authorizes each reseller based on some cosmic alignment of Feng Shui and color swatches, right?

Apple’s Headquarters in Cupertino caught fire overnight. A three-alarm fire burned in the building known as Valley Green 6. The Santa Clara Fire Department received reports of smoke at about 10 P.M. Pacific Time. No injuries have been reported and the building was cleared. At about midnight Pacific Time the fire dispatcher was still uncertain on when the fire would be contained.

We’re not exactly sure what goes on in the Valley Green 6 building but the obvious joke would be that it houses MobileMe. On a more serious note, we at TiPb hope that the firefighters are able to contain the fire and get home safe. Hopefully, everything and everybody will be okay.

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Confession 1: Soon as the App Store opened, I started downloading. Free apps mainly, but I bought more than I thought I would as well.

Confession 2: I don’t use most of them regularly. I mean, I use the built-in apps all the time, daily if not near-constantly in the case of Phone, Mail, and Safari. But the App Store stuff? Eh…. A couple have become regulars but most are occasional at best and some I no longer even bother to store on the iPhone (i.e. they’ve been relegated to iTunes purgatory.)

60 million downloads, 30 million in sales, and Steve Jobs thinks it could be a billion dollar business. So somebody must be using them, right?

Om Malik consulted Greg Yardley of Pinch Media (which tracks user behavior and provides statics based on that behavior for iPhone Apps) who says that, based on their sampling (which they themselves say currently consists of only a few developers), less than 20% of users return to an App at least once a day, and of them, the average time spent on an App is 5 minutes.

By way of contrast, however, Casey already posted some pretty staggering numbers from the big players like Facebook and Loopt who are seeing tons of usage.

UPDATE: Greg Yardley, in the comments below, points out that Facebook numbers are not necessarily inconsistent with Pinch Media’s.

Hmmm… Could it be that the App Store is still in its honeymoon, right smack in the middle of a little developer gold rush, where for every Apple Remote there’s a dozen (okay, 3 dozen) “I am Rich” / Flashlight applications? Since there’s no demo or beta, its easy to download free apps and moderately easy to take risks on under $10 apps, and come up less than thrilled.

All usage numbers tell us for now is that there aren’t — yet — enough really killer apps, but at the same time so many developers and companies are becoming involved, the odds of another — and another — killer app coming are getting better and better.

So, no I’m not using my iPhone Apps a lot, but I expect better apps to come along that demand I use them a lot more.

If you’re interested in following the Olympics on your iPhone, you could do worse than the free Lenovo Summer Olympics 2008 (App store link) application.

A classy Olympics app is postworthy, sure, but what makes this app very interesting is that it’s been developed by Zumobi — note the tell-tale ‘Z’ in the screenshot, note also that, ah, Zumobi is the developer. Why is this significant? Zumobi is a company that specializes in creating a neat ’tiled content’ app for Windows Mobile. Ok, so?

Zumobi is an independent software shop whose core technology was created at Microsoft and subsequently spun-off. The company is still pretty much backed by Microsoft and there are plans to include there app ‘on deck’ for Windows Mobile someday. So while it’s not technically accurate to say we’re looking at our first Microsoft-developed application for the iPhone, it’s not crazy to point out the connection either. Add in the Lenovo and Intel sponsorship of the app and we have a very interesting 5-way relationship going on here: Apple, Zumobi, Microsoft, Lenovo, and Intel.

…And you thought the Olympics were about sports. For shame.

via tuaw

Phishing attacks, where a bad guy tries to fool you into giving them personal information such as financial account logins, are nothing new on the ‘net. Fake emails leading you to a fake bank site to enter your information so that they (increasingly organized crime, often in Russia or China) can log into your real site and transfer out all your money, then steal your identity and sell it off to second and third tier hackers for other nefarious uses.

This specific attack pretends to come from Apple regarding a MobileMe billing problem, and asks the user to click a link to update their credit card information (which will be promptly stolen). What makes this recent attack particularly dangerous is that MobileMe HAS had billing problems in the recent past, and what with all the other problems associated with the launch, users may be unfortunately prone to believe the phishing attack.

REMEMBER: Don’t EVER believe email requests for secure data. Go to the site yourself (not through their link — type it in) and log in and see if there really is a problem. Check domain names carefully. App1e.com isn’t the same as Apple.com, they’re just hoping you don’t notice. Worried about the recent DNS poisoning attacks? Use HTTPS/SSL or use a direct IP address. If in any doubt, pick up a phone and call Apple (or your credit card company) directly.

Yes, the bad guys are bombing the internet back to the stone age. It’s not a safe browsing world. Be careful and protect your data with the same care you protect real-world valuables.

(via Ars Technica)

David Friedman writes in to let us know he’s thrown his hat into the ‘This is how I think Apple should implement cut-and-paste’ ring. His idea is simple, intuitive, and doesn’t look to interfere with the current magnifying glass insertion point UI.

Here it is in a nutshell — when you have the magifying glass up, there’s a button you can press to toggle the various things you need for cut and paste — select, cut, copy, and paste. David recommends that the options shown would be contextual based on whether or not you have anything in your clipboard. When you’re in a text-entry field, that toggle button would appear in place of the space bar area at the bottom, while areas with text that lack text entry (like Safari) would need an unobtrusive button to appear when in the text-selection mode.

All in all, we like it.

• No convoluted finger gymnastics
• No trying to remember how many fingers you need to use for a given action
• Compatible with the current UI. In fact, it’s consistent and keeps the current text-selection metaphor of the UI intact. It just adds to it.
• Easily discoverable by all users

What do y’all think? Feasible?

Point your iPhone to http://translate.google.com to check out the new, iPhone-optimized version of the translation service from Google. Pretty slick, eh? It’s the full Google-translate, including all of the languages you’d find there.

Nice stuff, but there’s one issue: Roaming charges while abroad are steeper than the west face of K2. Google’s not fixing this by saving all of your translation searches right there on the page. Theoretically, you could punch in all your important phrases from your hotel’s WiFi (or from the comforts of home) and then as you travel about just be sure, double sure, that you don’t close that tab. Or visit any sites that might crash Safari.

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