Its taken them a while to wake up from the unrelenting blows from Apple but finally it appears that the geeks at Microsoft have created a rival to the iPhone.

A little late in the game and so far pummelled with sceptism even before its official release -

"Microsoft needs to kill Windows Phone 7 and avoid further embarrassing itself by shipping this throwback," Gruman wrote in a July 15 posting on InfoWorld's Mobile Edge blog. "It's not a question of whether Windows Phone 7 will fail--it will--but how long it will take Microsoft to admit the failure. For the company's sake, the earlier it fesses up, the better."

According to Gruman, Windows Phone 7's sins include an "awkward and unsophisticated" UI that "recalls Microsoft's history of clunky design" and use of "inexcusably old technology" such as Internet Explorer 7. Microsoft, he says, has come up with "an imperfect copy of an old iPhone."

Nuff said, read Galen Gruman's (InfoWorld) review here.

If you're still keen after reading that, then you can check out the Windows Phone 7 homepage here.

If you own a Jailbroken and unlocked iPhone 2G whilst being subscribed to Maxis, its most likely that you're deprived of your EDGE or GPRS service. This is even more likely the case if your iPhone 2G is currently running iPhone firmware 3.1.2 which has been reported to have a knack of hiding the carrier APN settings.

This tutorial requires advanced IT familiarity and knowledge to perform. If you get honest with yourself and realise you may not be this individual then its our strong recommendation that you do not embark on this mission.

After successfully, installing the carrier bundle you should see your carrier logo on the top left corner of your iPhone's screen as well as be able to access your carrier APN settings screen again.

Here's a quick tutorial for those with Jailbroken and unlocked iPhone 2G to get your MMS running in seconds...

Although, there was an earlier patch, ActivateMMS2G by iSpazio that attempted to perform the similar action, there have been many reports that nothing changed after installing it. In fact ActivateMMS2G has been reported to be visibly missing from the iSpazio source list altogether.

Sorry Steve but Western Digital appears to have a creditable candidate to put a serious dent in the AppleTV's value proposition. Check out the latest offering from Western Digital, the WD TV!

A while back a mate of ours from Indonesia enquired how to switch off the iPhone predictive text input. Reason being although he resides in Australia most of his family and friends keep in touch through SMS and when they do, he texts them in Bahasa Indonesia. Where the iPhone's predictive text input falls down completely. What used to be a helpful tool quickly became an annoyance whenever it attempted to suggest an English word closest matching to whatever Bahasa Indonesian word that was entered.

Strangely the ability to disable the predictive text input already exists in the iPhone operating system platform. The only thing that Apple Inc didn't do is provide a GUI for users to switch it off.

This translates to a very simple mod whereby users need only change the Keyboard preference(plist) file in their iPhone operating system.

Details inside!

At time of writing, we don't recommend attempting to upgrade your hacked iPhone to the latest firmware 2.0, even though the iPhone Dev Team have released their new hacking tool, Pwnage Tool, version 2.0.

In a nutshell, its not yet stable and you may face difficulty downgrading from firmware 2.0 back to 1.1.4 again.

For those of you who have already, like us, 'unwisely', attempted to upgrade to firmware 2.0, here's a quick note on how to restore your iPhone back into working order again.

This tutorial is based on a hacked classic iPhone model and not the iPhone 3G.

This tutorial assumes that you have at least intermediate computing skills (if not we don't recommend you attempt this at all). MacRiot, excludes all liabilities and damages flowing from any attempt at following our tutorial. Perform at your own risk...

Its all really quite funny. At least it was to us here at MacRiot. There are probably several quite irate individuals reeking in remorse for not purchasing AppleCare for their MacBook Pro's because 'suddenly' there's no sound and the warranty's out.

Well, this article brings good tidings, that with minimal investment and a gentle hand, you can have your sound back on your MacBook Pro. Apparently the fuss about whether its hardware or software was unwarranted and in most cases the 'loss' of audio is due to a micro switch getting stuck.

Time Machine was introduced with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and since its inception has proven to be 'the' backup utility for Mac. Once you've gotten over the initial setup the rest is pretty much automated.

The only problem is, setting it up tends to be confusing for some and its difficult to get a great guide on how-to. So, for the benefit of those still a little in the dark over this absolutely fabulous built-in feature in Leopard, we've decided to provide you with a pictorial guide.

Until recently iPhone users were quite happy with the native Apollo IM application. Apollo was a great application for iPhone users to connect to AIM, ICQ, MSN and .Mac. However, of late Apollo has been riddled with authentication errors and instability woes and iPhone users once again have had to resort to Googling the next best thing.

Fortunately, there is an answer. Several actually... but unlike Apollo, these solutions come in the form of real-time online IM's built specifically to fit the iPhone screen. You simply launch Safari on your iPhone and enter the URL of the various providers, key in your IM details and you'll find yourself chatting to your mates on your favourite IMs again. No fuss.

Here's a list of URLs to get you started on your iPhone's Safari, listed in descending order of our preference:

• www.meebo.com
• http://m.ebuddy.com or;
• take a look at the Beejive instant messenger on the go beta

Diagram 1.0, Meebo IM on iPhone

Google has released its so-called 'instant messenger' (IM) for the iPhone. Unlike the popular native iPhone IM, Apollo, GoogleTalk for iPhone runs off the Safari browser on your iPhone.

Closing the browser in the middle of a chat sets your GoogleTalk mode to "unavailable". Its a first step for Google which is after the advertising potential but what we're wondering is when Apple's going to take a stab at porting the ever popular iChat onto the iPhone platform.

To use GoogleTalk on your iPhone, launch your Safari browser and go to http://www.google.com/talk.

Related Articles:

• iPhone | Multi-Client IM on iPhone

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

When Apple made the transition from PPC to Intel processors, along with it came several 'enabling technologies', or at least that's what we like to call it.

One of which was the introduction of the GUID partition on hard drives which were used on Intel Macs. GUID partitions allowed Intel Macs to read/write on Mac OS X but unfortunately, a Mac OS X sitting on a GUID partitioned hard drive cannot be booted from a PPC Mac.

In this article, we attempt to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding the various hard drive partition mappings since Intel Macs came on the scene and provide a detailed guide on how to partition your hard drives into these various partitions.

Choosing the correct partition in most cases determines whether your Mac OS X is usable on Intel or PPC systems.