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.

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!

Over the years, there have been a plethora of Bit Torrent applications floating on the World Wide Web for the Mac OS but after reviewing most of them, Transmission is kickass!

Without going into specifics, lets just say, not only is Transmission a breeze to setup, it also seems to do its job faster than the rest with a smaller footprint on your hard drive and consumes far less system resources to boot!

If you care to try; other Bit Torrent clients for Mac, in no particular order, the honour roll includes:

• Azureus (now re-badged as "Vuze")
• XTorrent
• BitTorrent
• Limewire

Its been a long time coming but finally, somebody has made a USB WiFi adapter that works with Mac and that's affordable to the masses!

The Planex GW-US54Mini2W is an ace product for those of us with Macs that have Airport or Airport Extreme which no longer function. With the increasing difficulty in sourcing affordable Airport or Airport Extreme replacements, this product is a lifesaver.

What's more it comes ready to support almost any platform, other than the Mac OS X, it also touts support for Windows XP/Vista and even Linux. A good USB device to have in the arsenal. The best part??... It costs under USD$30.00.

Simply use the Install CD that comes with it, restart your Mac after installing it, plug the Planex USB WiFi adapter in, launch the Planex application and you're good to go... wirelessly.

Details inside!

When Apple Inc launched the latest firmware, version 1.1.3 on the iPhone, they introduced multi-party SMS for the first time to the iPhone's native SMS application.

The expectant Mac crowd cheered with jubilation at this year's MacWorld at the sound of this news. But,... and yes, once again there's always a 'but'.

With Mr Jobs, its always, "...one more thing" but here at MacRiot; whilst we appreciate what Mr Jobs and the innovative beings at Cupertino are constantly doing to push the frontiers of human-computer interaction, we hope to represent the desires of the users.

In this article, we highlight the subtle difference between what has been introduced in the form of Apple Inc's multi-party SMS versus what has been practised as the norm over the years since cellphones first appeared in our lives to change the way we communicate forever.

Transit is another pragmatic offering from www.peeinmypantz.com. A slighty heavier application compared to its sister MRTSchedule application, Transit purports to provide a detailed directory of the public bus system in Singapore.

At time of writing, Transit is yet another free offering, necessitating only a one time online registration by the user which can be carried out directly from the iPhone. An alternative, is to choose to try it without activation whereby Transit will allow a user up to 8 sessions before demanding registration.

Screenshots inside!

There's good news for public transport commuting iPhone owners in Singapore. Now thanks to the owner of www.peeinmypants.com, the commuting public can add the MRTSchedule application to their Jailbroken iPhones and have the Mass Rapid Transport (MRT) directory in their pocket.

This application not only provides a quick map reference for all the existing MRT lines in Singapore but also an extensive guide which details the MRT schedule for all the lines.

MRTSchedule is a fast, quick reference application and recommended for the MRT commuting public. To include this application on your iPhone, simply launch the Installer app and add http://potty.peeinmypants.com as a new source. Once the Installer app has refreshed the source list, scroll to the newly added "Singapore Transport" category and install the MRTSchedule application.

At time of writing MRTSchedule is donationware and can be used without limitations other than the donate prompt whenever the application is launched.

Screenshots inside!

After a few days of running with the 1.1.3 firmware and finally getting over the shivering icons, we've decided to revert back to 1.1.1. Why?

Well for one thing, after performing the CallerID bug fix hack the native SMS application appeared to run very slowly. Although Apple Inc has added multi-party SMS to the SMS application, it still lacks the ability to forward SMS'. To exacerbate this issue users can no longer install the SMSD application that, at time of writing, does not support version 1.1.3 firmware.

But,... here's the really bad news for the folks who have rushed to upgrade to 1.1.3 and synced their iPhones with itunes.

Even if you manage to downgrade your iPhone back to either 1.1.1 or 1.1.2; you might find that its no longer possible to re-sync your back ups from your iPhone back into the downgraded iPhone!

So in summary, if you haven't gone 1.1.3 yet but intend to, be sure to make a back-up of your iPhone's contents whilst its still pre-1.1.3 and keep it safe. In the event you ever consider downgrading again.

For your reference your iPhone back up files are actually stored in your Home/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ folder. These files are not readable in their native form because iTunes backs up these files in some sort of compressed SQLite3 files.

To keep things simple, before you upgrade your iPhone to 1.1.3, make sure you only retain a single iPhone back up in your iTunes application. That way you will know for sure that the file contained in the Mobilesync/Backup/ folder is the latest back up from your iPhone. Copy it to a safe location and keep it, in the event you need to restore your iPhone after downgrading back to 1.1.1 or 1.1.2.

As for us, we're back and happy iPhoners again at 1.1.1... until Apple Inc comes up with a better solution to the SMS issues and value adds that really justify upgrading.

We've taken Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard out on a spin and overall its fancy. Its intuitive like everyone says, but for the unsuspecting user, we would have to say, "stick to Tiger" for the time being. If you're still on Tiger.

Despite all the bells and whistles, we've had numerous issues since upgrading to Leopard from Tiger. Other than taking a very long time to perform the upgrade (almost 4 hours!), our iPhones were no longer detected by the system. Even after we performed the required software updates to bring it up to Mac OS X 10.5.1.

A quick surf around the World Wide Web, provides us the consolation that we are not alone. There are a myriad of others who have reported external hard drive connectivity, printer driver and iPhone issues.

Alas this is the birth pains of any new operating system and its come to a point, for the sake of productivity, we are considering downgrading back to Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger. At least for the time being. Its just unfortunate that the downgrade path is not as simple as the upgrade. So, our advice, is install with caution and expect some anomalies until Apple Inc sorts things out as they always do.

Since Steve Jobs revealed Apple's latest offering, "the world's thinnest notebook", the media has been a buzz with reviews and comments on this new addition to the MacBook product line.

For hardcore Macheads who live, breathe Macs and refer to the WinTel world as the "dark side", this member has been a long time coming. Although, we haven't carried out an extensive survey, when it comes to the response to the MacBook Air we believe that the camp is divided.

From the get-go, the MacBook Air impresses us all with its miniscule footprint but once we get over all the oooh and ahhs of it being so tiny, realworld application and benchmarks come into play. Its not that we're responding negatively to the new boy on the block but everyone's writing rave reviews on what's so wonderful about it, instead we decided to highlight the notso desirable aspects of the new MacBook Air. If nothing else, just to bring some objectivity when it comes to making purchasing decisions. So, here's our two cents on the subject...