Japan’s iPad 3G is in Fact Unlocked

Tokyonian Doug Lerner was incredibly concerned about the state of the Japanese iPad 3G Micro SIMs being locked down in the land of the rising sun. So what better way to vent and express one’s frustration than emailing Steve Jobs himself. Doug wrote,

“But in Japan we won’t have the option to buy an internationally usable iPad 3G. SoftBank has been given exclusive rights to sell the iPhone 3G, and the unlimited data option at about $35/month requires committing to a 2-year contract. There aren’t any no-commitment unlimited contracts like the $30 AT&T plan.”

And Steve Replied.

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Tripmix, Music Blocks made Easy

In North Carolina, my respective radio station is 106.5 The End (link might contain NSFW content). And while I don’t know too many people who still listen to their local radio stations, I’m a huge fan, thus the shameless plug (and the window sticker). Occasionally they’ll have a block party weekend, where they’ll play two or three songs by the same artist in a row, and it’s a format I really love. But now when I travel, I can have a block party weekend wherever I go with Tripmix.

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Sorted, Beautiful To-do App for iPad

So I decided to stick with Things from Cultured Code as my GTD iPad app of choice. In the long run, I think Things is going to be the best I can have on all the devices I’m running it on (iPad, Mac, iPhone) and as soon as Cultured Code will introduce support for OTA sync, it will be just perfect. Read my review of Things for iPad here.

But what about those of you who bought an iPad, want to be productive on it but can’t really stand the whole GTD method? Well I’m afraid to tell you that there aren’t many alternatives right now into the App Store. Whether you want a simple checklist app or just another note taking software that you can use as todo solution, really - the choice is limited. You have to give a spin to this app though: Sorted by Savage Interactive.

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Things Winners Announced

Thanks everyone for entering our huge giveaway of Things for Mac, iPad and iPhone. A big special thanks goes also to Cultured Code, who offered these tree licenses of Things to MacStories readers.

Here are the lucky winners:

Mac: Zac Harmany

iPad: Abraham Vegh

iPhone: Dan Palmer

Congratulations folks, you’ll receive your copy of Things soon. Until the next giveaway, take care!

Cappuccino gets NativeHost Component, Brings Web Applications to Desktop

Exciting times are ahead for Cappuccino, so I’m sure you already know about NativeHost. Wait, you don’t? Oh good, I have a story then. If you’ve never heard of Cappuccino, it’s an open-source application framework that utilizes web technologies, and is flavored with things like Apple’s Cocoa framework for example. But instead of specifically targeting the web, the folks working on Atlas (which itself is a Cappuccino application) found a way to distribute to the desktop environment with minimal work. NativeHost allows Cappuccino applications to, ya know, run natively as a desktop application. Cooked right in to both the Cappuccino build tools and the Atlas IDE, you’re welcomed to give it a try and read through all the “whys” and “hows” over at Cappaccino’s blog.

Historic Apple Prototypes

People love when a big company such as Apple lose something as important as a next generation iPhone prototype. It’s the feeling of taking a look at something that shouldn’t be seen yet that make people love this stuff, and that’s the same reason why Gizmodo had millions of hits back in those Redwood days. People love to take a look at leaked products.

It’s not like Apple hadn’t lost anything before they lost the 4G prototype. Call them “controlled leaks” or just “leaks”, Apple’s labs are always working on new “gadgets” - 80% of which we’ll never see as actual consumer products. Macrumors has put together a brief gallery of “historic prototypes”, stuff that never officially left Cupertino’s secret caveau’s and that some brave people dared to post on Flickr. You can find the original post here.

Take a look at the pictures after the break. And the Mac tablet was so awesome.

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