I’m sure there’s a major discovery to be made in the world of science that would explain how my iPod headphones get tangled up so thoroughly and rapidly. It seems that no matter what cunning tricks I employ, nor how tidy I try to be, my headphones always appear in a knotted mess when I want to use them, which tends to make me angry on the scale of ‘want to kick a puppy’. Surprisingly, then, I really like Tangle, which, in a broad sense, is rather like untangling a set of iPod headphones or ten.

It’s safe to say that Tangle is gaming at its purest level. There are no characters or storylines. Instead, there are a bunch of green circles, connected with gray lines, displayed in an aesthetic manner that most 8-bit computers would have little trouble with. The idea is to drag the circles around until no lines are crossed, whereupon you’re provided with a jaunty little jingle, a time, and a means of accessing the next level (which has more lines to uncross).

Tangle isn’t rocket science—it has a kind of mindless quality that’s akin to Tetris. But as most people who’ve sampled Alexey Pajitnov’s classic will testify, it’s often the simplest games that are the most enduring. Although Tangle isn’t on a par with the Russian block-stacking game, and, frankly, is a little overpriced, it’s still a fun title to while away the odd half-hour. And despite the extremely basic visuals, on-screen feedback is clear, and the online leaderboard enables you to pit your capabilities against Tangle ninjas around the world.

If this reminds you of your iPod headphones, I sympathize. I really do.

Further information

Manufacturer: MC Hot Software
Price: $20
URL: mchotsoftware.com/tangle/

Picture: The president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushenko, yakking on his iPhone. The iPhone is hot in the Slavic country. From iPhone Code.

Used iPhones are worth more than $1,000 in Ukraine, according to the Craigslist buyer who just purchased my slightly scratched iPhone for (get this) $350.

The buyer, named Claude, is heading to Ukraine next week on business and everyone he meets will ask him for an iPhone, he says. He’s sold dozens of iPhones, new and used: It doesn’t really matter.

In fact, I sold him two iPhones: a virgin 16-Gbyte model still sealed in its box, and my slightly worn day-to-day iPhone, an original 8-Gbyte model.

I got $850 for both phones — $500 for the new one (it retails for $500 + $40 tax) and $350 for the used iPhone (it sells new for $400 + $34 tax. I paid $600 minus a $100 rebate).

I felt pretty good until Claude told me he’ll be getting at least $1,000 for the used iPhone in Ukraine, and more for the new one. WTF! — thanks for telling me!

Still, it’s not all gravy. Claude says he has to keep the iPhones on his person when passing through customs, or they disappear from his luggage. Likewise the chargers, cords and everything else. Plus, he has to bribe every official he meets.

Claude wasn’t aware there’s a new iPhone model expected next month (which is why I’m selling). Not that it mattered. He says he’ll take all and any iPhones I can send his way.

Anyone want to get rid of their old iPhone?

The lines are 30-people deep for an iPhone in NYC, Gizmodo reports. And that’s for the current generation iPhone — not version 2.0 excepted in a month.

It seems there’s lots of people desperate to get their hands on unopened iPhones — even a couple of weeks before older models are outdated.

A couple of months ago I bought a 16-Gbyte iPhone at the Apple Store, thinking I’d upgrade from my original 8-Gbyte iPhone. But then rumors of the iPhone 2.0 started catching fire, so I didn’t open it. With the release of a 3G iPhone looking likely in early June, I thought it better to wait.

Trouble is, I waited too long to return the unopened iPhone to the Apple Store, which has a two-week return policy. So earlier this week, I put it on Craigslist for $550 ($50 over retail) and crossed my fingers.

Boy, was I surprised. I’ve had several offers, many of them for the inflated price. Most of these buyers asked me if I had more than one phone.

The first offer came in just a few seconds after I posted the ad. The buyer, who I’m meeting this afternoon, wrote: “I will need as many as you have. no receipt needed if you know what I mean.”

The iPhone must be headed overseas. Apple has a policy limiting sales to five iPhones per customer — checked against their credit card.

I’ll be asking the buyer some questions this afternoon about his interest in buying multiple, unopened iPhones.

Link to “iPhone wanted” ads on SF Craigslist.

Macworld has some interesting, contrarian advice about buying a Mac these days.

A couple of years ago, pro users would never consider a low-end iMac or MacBook portable for work: it just wouldn’t be powerful enough.

But because Apple is using powerful dual-core Intel chips across its entire line, the difference between machines is blurring.

After running a battery of tests, MacWorld concludes that for most people, a new iMac or MacBook Pro is good enough — pro, power users included. The savings add up to $1,000 or more.

… for most mainstay applications, the high-end iMac and MacBook Pro models are plenty fast (the 3.06GHz build-to-order iMac even beat the Mac Pro in some of our tests). Even Adobe Photoshop, a heavy-duty program that conventional wisdom has long argued should be run only on a high-end system, works acceptably well on just about any Mac (unless you’re editing gigantic files).

A new limited-edition, Europe-only R2-D2 DVD Projector now has an integrated iPod dock for projecting the Star Wars saga onto your living room wall. Earlier versions of the Artoo didn’t have an iPod dock. The projector is limited to 4,000 units, and costs € 2799 — about $4,300.The dock is compatible with the 1G and 2G iPod nano,* and 5G iPod with video.*(Facts corrected, thanks to reader Mario Panighetti)Link.

Open and Save dialogs are as unsexy as things come on the Mac, but every Mac user has to deal with them daily. Despite Mac OS X being in its fifth major incarnation, these dialogs are still limited, but with Default Folder X, everything changes, and even a little sleekness is thrown into the mix.Once Default Folder X is installed, a black HUD-style overlay surrounds Open and Save dialog boxes, its toolbar providing access to user-definable favorites, recent folders, and a slew of handy options (such as rename, reveal and move) that puts Apple’s own dialogs to shame. Usefully, favorites can have hot-keys assigned via Default Folder’s preferences pane, which also provides the means to create a default Open/Save folder for each installed application.

Other included niceties are the menu/Dock item, providing a system-wide means of rapidly navigating mounted volumes and defined favorites, and a superior preview within Open dialogs, which automatically stretches to fill available vertical space. Spotlight comments and file properties are also possible to manipulate from Open and Save dialogs when Default Folder X is installed.

Although at the pricier end of the shareware spectrum—especially for a one-shot utility—Default Folder X is nonetheless an essential purchase. The seconds it saves every time you open or save a file soon add up, and after a few months’ use, you’ll find Macs lacking the application feel naked by comparison.

Default Folder X continues to excel in its fourth major revision, making it much easier for Mac users to open and save files.

Further information

Manufacturer: St. Clair Software
Price: $34.95 (upgrades from $14.95)
URL: www.stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolderX/

Isamu Sanada, the Japanese photographer who makes Mac mockups, has created a new design for a tablet Mac that blends the iPhone with the MacBook Air subnotebook. He calls it the Mac Air.

According to a rough translation of his site, the Mac Air also doubles as a desktop.

It hooks to a wireless keyboard and uses a wireless Time Capsule-like docking station as a hard drive. The dock includes a SuperDrive for playing and burning Cds/DVDs.

It boots into the iPhone operating system when a tablet, and OS X when used as a desktop.

It’s a great idea, but will Apple  ever make such a device? Maybe. Sanada has once or twice correctly predicted Apple’s products in the past. As previously reported:

Isamu Sanada is a photographer by trade, but an Apple designer by calling.

Sanada is an amateur designer of fantasy Macintoshes. His Applele website is a popular showcase for dozens of speculative designs for future Apple machines.

In fact, Sanada is so adept at mimicking Apple’s look, he created a design for a new laptop that predicted Apple’s distinctive Titanium PowerBook G4 months before it came out.

Link to Sanada’s Mac Air mockup.

Sanada hasn’t made a new design for many months. No word why he’s returned to making fantasy Macs. His email simply said:

“I made a new image. Please enjoy it.”

VMWare, the virtualization powerhouse that brought its Fusion software to Mac in late 2006, is now just about ready to roll its second major version of the program for OS X. Late this afternoon, VMWare sent over info and download links for a public beta of Fusion 2.0, and, I have to say, it’s looking hawt. More comprehensive DirectX 9 support for seamless PC gaming, insane levels of multimonitor support (ten screens!) and easy importing of Parallels, Virtual PC and even Boot Camp partitions.

Better yet, VMWare has announced that Fusion 2.0 will be free to all existing Mac customers once the final version ships. Of the three big updates, the monitor support is the big one. Parallels doesn’t support multiple displays for Windows, and the Fusion implementation looks nicer than multiple displays for most native PCs. Parallels can do Mac in one screen, Windows in another, but not Windows on two displays for the same virtual machine. Granted, this is a fairly niche feature, but its really well put together, as you can see in the video I’ve thrown up at the top.

The beta is wide open, so if you want in on the action and can live with a few beta quirks, hit the link.

Pete’s post below got me thinking. Apple’s star is rising, and they absolutely are eroding the market-share of Windows. Every quarter this thing of ours becomes more and more mainstream, and it’s not impossible to imagine a time when the Mac will at least have a significant degree of parity with Windows. This raises a bigger question: would we ever want Apple to eclipse Microsoft?

The first thing they teach you in strategic planning is to perform the following assessment:

“What are the benefits of a course of action, versus, what are the negatives of following the same. What are the possible unintended consequences”.

Now certainly we are all excited about Apple’s continued rise, but there may also be come cause for concern. In the rest of this article we’re going to play the “Unintended Consequences Game”.

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