This was another eventful week. Apple and its iPhone developers have been squabbling, Google announced its G1 with comparisons to the iPhone coming fast and furious, and more delicious rumors surfaced on the new Apple notebooks rumored to be announced on October 14.

Have you ever wondered how many apps you can install on an iPhone? The magic answer is 148. You can normally only have 9 page of apps plus the “Fab 4″ and the bottom. Thats 144 + 4. iPhone Matters filled in the details.

I got a kick out of a post at the Innerdaemon that made a strong point, not about Apple’s practices, but where it could all lead: “Apple Rejects Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac.”

On Thursday, Apple Insider published a detailed comparison of the iPhone and Google’s Android G1. (I really don’t want to see any more headlines that say, “Does Google Dream of Electric Sheep?”) The design philosophy of the two phones is clearly described for those who are interested. Of course, the feature war isn’t going to decide market dominance here. Even so, we’ve been waiting to see what Google has been up to, and the differences in the two devices are fascinating.

During the week, I received a copy of the eBook, “Take Control of Buying a Mac” by Adam Engst. This is very much worth the meager asking price of $10 for those who aren’t totally immersed in the Mac Web. Particularly valuable is the table on page 10 and the discussion afterward that shows when Apple has tended to release new products and why. That’s because knowing when to buy is as important for some as what to buy. No one likes “Buyer’s Remorse.”

The eBook also goes into the details of that crucial decision: to buy a desktop or notebook. There’s a whole lot more, almost 100 pages. Adam Engst is a Mac guru, and you won’t find better advice for ten cents a page anywhere.

On Thursday, Farhad Manjoo published an article at Slate on why Steve Jobs may not be a lunatic when it comes to a closed system on the iPhone. For historical reasons in the PC wars, an open system was better, but a mobile phone is different animal. Given the fact that the Android phones haven’t faced the full wrath of the Internet bad guys yet, the author may be right and offers a lot of food for thought, even if you disagree with him.

Also on Thursday, there was a story about improved browsing history in Safari at TG Daily. I use OmniWeb for the thumbnails, a much more visual way for me to set up a queue for my articles. But Apple’s patent appears to focus on a tree view. If Apple can design a browsing history that can build a better article queue for me, I’ll go back to Safari.

On Friday, there was a story about how Webkit has achieved the highest score yet on the Acid3 test. Remember, back in the early days of the Internet everyone complained about how slow browsers were on the Mac? Not any more.

Finally, and this is just a rumor at 9to5Mac. Someone has either photographed or photoshopped an image of what the next MacBook Pro will look like, curvy MacBook Air lines, glass trackpad, and black bezel. (Maybe FW800 only and Wireless USB???) We shall see, but it’s a very cool glimpse of what might be in store for us in October. We can only dream…

Last night, I was experimenting with a new movie on Blu-ray, The Golden Compass. What got my attention was a piece of paper in the plastic case that said, “It is possible that this Blu-ray disc was manufactured after your Blu-ray player. To ensure the best possible viewing experience, our Blu-ray player may need a firmware update…”

Right away, I knew there might be a problem because I had heard about issues with some Blu-ray discs not playing correctly. All along the way, I’ve kept my Samsung BD-P1400 Blu-ray player updated with the latest firmware. Those updates improved the start up times, but the release notes focused more on title compatibility.

Sure enough, as soon as Golden Compass started, there was horrible distortion and I couldn’t hear Daniel Craig speak in the opening scene.

I always let the Denon receiver do the audio decoding, and the Samsung is set to “bitstream” output to allow that. But that clearly wasn’t going to work. I changed the Samsung to PCM mode, a kind of lingua franca for stereo systems and everything was fine.

Ack!

I did some digging.

1. I knew my Samsung’s firmware was up to date from August 8. I had never updated my Denon A/V receiver.

2. A Blu-ray forum discussion suggested that the Onkyo and Yamaha receivers are susceptible to what’s been labeled the “DTS bomb” on some movies if they don’t have the latest firmware upgrade. It only happens for Blu-ray movies mastered in “DTS-HD Master Audio“.

Other forum discussions I looked at suggested that the Denon A/V receivers are immune to the bomb, a sudden loud burst of nose, a popping sound at some point in the movie that is said to be able to “wake the neighbors.”

I bought the Denon 3808 back in October last year and decided that while it may not be susceptible to the so-called bomb, the horrible distortion lead me to look for a possible firmware update. Since the Denon is on the Internet for Internet radio, via a small Linksys Switch in my living room, I drilled down to the menu items and found the Firmware Update option. It takes over an hour, so I started it and went to bed.

This morning, I set the Samsung player back to Bitstream mode, a mode that lets the receiver do the decoding, and fired up Golden Compass, All was well.

Lessons learned:

1. If your Ethernet-enabled Blu-ray player isn’t on the Internet, get it there. At the very least, burn a DVD and do the manual updates the moment they come out.

2. Make sure your A/V receiver also has the latest firmware. Many modern A/V receivers with HDMI also have Ethernet connections.

3. Watch closely for Blu-ray movies like Golden Compass, The Fly, Fantastic Four, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and a few others encoded in DTS-HD Master Audio.

4. If you have a problem you can’t seem to fix right away and just want to watch the movie, temporarily change your Blu-ray player to PCM output mode if available.

5. The Internet is your friend. Check out the Blu-ray and AVS Forums.

With the Christmas buying season on the horizon, there will be lots of good looking deals on Blu-ray players and Audio/Video amplifiers. However, a badly selected pairing of equipment or limitations in fire-sale priced equipment can lead to issues, so it it’ll pay to watch for problems like this and make sure your equipment is Ethernet enabled for firmware updates. It’s just a fact of life on the Blu-ray edge.

In the coming months, the iPod Observer will be publishing articles that will help you through the buying process for A/V equipment for HDTV systems. Stay tuned.

Early in the week, we started out with the Podcaster kerfuffle when Apple rejected an iPhone app for the App Store because it competed with Apple. The consensus was that Apple is treading on thin ice with that idea. Apple always protects its own interests, but when the excesses of power reach a certain limit, then the company is not only damaged but opens itself up to legal scrutiny. Apple crossed the line in the opinion of most, including me.

Here is an amusing look at the secret, decision tree that Apple uses to determine whether an app will be rejected or accepted at the App Store.

On another subject of law, if you thought being tossed out of a Yankee baseball game by the police for having to use the bathroom during the singing of “God Bless America” is bad, just wait until the RIAA and MPAA get their way in Congress.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act. Apparently, it’s no longer sufficient for the Copyright holder to take you to court for a violation. The act would get the government into the business of filing a civil lawsuit against “any person” who commits a copyright violation.

The American Library Association, Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are fighting this law because 1) the government shouldn’t be involved in this litigation and 2) if someone is accused of copyright violation, the government can impound the computer which is forfeited.

Later in the week, we learned that Microsoft’s US$300M ad campaign to fight Apple and spruce up the tarnish image of Windows had run into problems with the first two Seinfeld/Gates ads. The company that has been accused of being out of touch with customers created to ads that were, well, out of touch with customers.

In the third ad, which aired Thursday night, Microsoft got it all wrong again by trying to un-stereotype the PC user. The problem is, we already know that a wide range of smart, diverse people use PCs. Ninety percent of Americans. What Microsoft seemed to be saying is that, shucks, not all PC users are doofuses like John Hodgman. But wait, Hodgman has been saying, all this time, “I’m a PC.” Apple’s attack was aimed the issues with Windows, not with PC users.

Microsoft’s response was another misfire because it did nothing to address the digs that Apple has made against the deficiencies in Vista. Instead, the ad went into defensive mode. “Hey, I’m an astronaut! I use Windows.”

By choice, I’m sure, given the history of NASA Houston trying to eradicate Macs.

While Microsoft eats cake, Hewlett Packard is tending to their bread and butter computer business. Backtracking to the previous week, when I had to skip my blog, I noted that HP has quietly assembled a group of engineers to completely improve the Windows experience. The efforts go all the way from adding software conveniences to the PCs that assist Vista to bypassing Vista altogether with Linux.

Why? Apple is seizing market share and Hewlett Packard is smart enough and technical enough to start doing something about it.

Apple’s ‘Get a Mac” ads have had a measurable Return on Investment (ROI). HP is taking concrete, technical steps to stop it. I wonder what Microsoft’s analysis of ROI will be for US$300 spent on the new ad campaign.

Microsoft gets no soup, no respect, and an ad about nothing in their new advertising campaign which launched during Thursday Night Football. I formed a theory a while back that the ad would mirror Microsoft’s corporate culture, and I think my prediction was fulfilled. The ad was overweight, self conscious, and unfocused, just like Vista.

It’s getting so bad that BusinessWeek wrote about, “HP’s End Run Around Windows” on Friday. BW wrote about how Hewlett-packard, which is feeling technical and frisky once again, formed a group of engineers to develop software that would make the PC and Windows easier to use — or bypass. The skunkworks is pushing to even replace Vista with an H-P devised OS, possibly based on Linux and adding a touchscreen technology. Sounds like Mac envy to me.

This week I learned about a couple of new applications that intrigued me. AppleJack is a script which can be accessed after a sick Mac is launched in Single User Mode. (CMD-S at startup.)

Single user mode is a root level account that has no other users enabled and is used for diagnosing and repairing a Mac. I would recommend AppleJack for users who are fairly familiar with UNIX but don’t use the UNIX repair functions often enough to jump right in with confidence like a daily sysadmin would.

I also learned about the iSquint (free) and VisualHub (commercial) partner apps for converting video files between various formats. These could come in very handy for converting between formats like .flv, ,3gp, DivX and H.264. I don’t think it works with the Elgato turbo.264 however. I aim to find out.

For those who have been lusting after the flip video, there might be a better alternative. On Wednesday, I read about the new Kodak Zi6 which is much more integrated with the Mac: it saves its video natively in H.264 format and has a removable flash memory module. Better, it records in 30 or 60 fps, 16:9 and 720p. The original press release was July 10 and reviews are just now starting to appear, like Mac360. So much for Flip Video in my book. Now, I wonder, will Nikon and Canon jump into this game too?

After the holiday break, I came back to find a Don Reisinger piece published over the holiday about how Apple can gain a lot of market share. It has some food for thought, but is missing some essential elements which I’ll get to in my next Hidden Dimensions. Meanwhile, an acquaintance of mine — we were contemporaries at Apple — Chuq Von Rospach had some sharp and accurate comments to make about the Reisinger editorial. Both are linked above for your reading pleasure.