Filed under: Products and services, Consumer experience, Apple Inc (AAPL), Marketing and advertising, AT and T (T), iPhone

The new Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone is even a bigger hit than analysts had expected. During its debut weekend, about a million units of the phone that can do everything but your taxes were sold. This number is already higher than earlier estimates from today Doug McIntyre has posted. Even Apple’s prickly Chief Executive Steve Jobs was impressed.

“iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend,” he stated in a press release issued this morning. ”

It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world.”

Indeed, diehard geeks camped out and around Apple and AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) stores to be among the first to get their hands on the sleek new phone. A 22-year-old college student from New Zealand named Jonny Gladwell was the first to purchase the mother of all gadgets. He waited outside his Vodafone store for 60 hours, according to Vnunet.com. His parents must be proud (or horrified).

What makes this even more incredible is that many Apple fans are fuming over technical glitches and shortages of the phone their lives won’t be complete without. Gizmodo dubbed this the iPocalypse. Mitch Wagner of Information Week argues that Apple has got some fence-mending to do with customers who clearly expected superior.

“Some kind of apology would be nice, along with a bit of cash to compensate customers who had problems with activation, similar to the gift certificates Apple gave out last year when they cut iPhone prices too much too fast and left customers feeling ripped off,” he writes. “But more importantly, Apple needs to sit down and figure out what went wrong on Friday, and make sure it never happens again.”

Gene Munster of Pipper Jaffray & Co. figures AT&T sold a combined 225,000 devices in the U.S. although a personal snafu in Apple’s system meant that some buyers had to activate their iPhones at home, according to Bloomberg News.

Sounds like people are so enthused about the iPhone 3G that they are willing to put up with some major hassles to get it. Heck, I am going to purchase an iPhone for my wife once the hoopla dies down, which I figure may happen sometime before the presidential election.

Steve Jobs apologizing twice in the same decade? I’ll believe it when I see it.

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Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity, Browsers

When it comes to download management, it seems like Windows has always been ahead of OS X. That might still be true, but it’s definitely up for debate, thanks to a very smart app called Leech. It’s got the basic features that all good download managers provide: you can use it from within the browser, and it grants you to pause downloads, or resume them after a crash. Good start, but Leech really shines when it comes to defining rules for different file types and hosts.

Let’s state you want all .mp3 files to download to your iTunes library, all .jpg files in Photos, and all DMGs on the desktop. Yeah, Leech will do that, no problem. It also handles post-processing, so you can expand those DMGs automatically, or play those Mp3s as they finish downloading. You can drag or copy-paste a URL into Leech to begin downloading immediately, or shift-drag to choose a different location. And if you don’t want Leech in your browser, you can use it on its own, too.

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Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity, Browsers

When it comes to download management, it seems like Windows has always been ahead of OS X. That might still be true, but it’s definitely up for debate, thanks to a very smart app called Leech. It’s got the basic features that all good download managers provide: you can use it from within the browser, and it allows you to pause downloads, or resume them after a crash. Good begin, but Leech really shines when it comes to defining rules for different file types and hosts.

Let’s state you want all .mp3 files to download to your iTunes library, all .jpg files in Pictures, and all DMGs on the desktop. Yeah, Leech will do that, no problem. It also handles post-processing, so you can expand those DMGs automatically, or play those Mp3s as they finish downloading. You can drag or copy-paste a URL into Leech to start downloading immediately, or shift-drag to select a different location. And if you don’t want Leech in your browser, you can use it on its own, too.

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Filed under: Design, Productivity, Web services

If you ever wanted to make a tiled background pattern for your desktop or website but lacked the design expertise to create one, bgpatterns has you covered.

The site is very straight forward and simple to use. Start off by selecting the foreground and background color for your design, followed by the texture of your canvas. Once you have that dialed in you’re ready for the next step which is selecting the image you want tiled.

After you’ve selected your image click the “apply background” link and the site’s background will change so you can see if you like your design. If you’re satisfied with the results you’re free to download it or save it to your “My patterns” account.

While bgpatterns offers a number of stock images, it does lacks the option to upload your own custom image. Hopefully the developers will add this option in the future as the selection of images are rather “clip artish”.

So if you’ve been looking at making a skull themed background for your MySpace page bgpatterns is ready for you!

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