2007: Yearly Archive

Here comes the synergy. Buying songs off the iTunes WiFi store while you’re at Starbucks is great and all – but it turns out that most people don’t go to Starbucks so they can freely surf iTunes’ selections. Instead, Apple has figured out that people go to Starbucks to buy coffee and coffee-flavored beverages (let’s face it, calling that mocha-double-frappa-whozit “coffee” is an insult to coffee and whozits). To that end, Apple has cagily filed a patent to allow you to order your coffee without having to actually talk to a human. Forbes describes it best:

Customers might tap a button to order their favorite drink, say a double-shot mocha, as they stroll up to the nearest coffee shop. When the drink is ready go to, the device–such as an iPhone–would chime or blink to let the thirsty one know it’s time to scoop up the order at the counter.

…In other news, Forbes is now reporting on Apple patents like a common rumor site. It’s almost like they have a guy on staff who’s obsessed with Apple.

iPhone may soon come to the land of the rising sun. Word on the street is that NTT DoCoMo head honcho, Masao Nakamura, has been seen in public holding hands with a certain American wearing faded denim jeans and black mock turtleneck sweater. He confirms today that his company is actively engaged in talks with Apple, but shrugged off questions concerning terms or product release dates.

I’ll lay you odds that Apple won’t swindle the same lucrative revenue sharing margins out of NTT that they’ve managed to extract from other wireless carriers, like our very own AT&T. And unless this agreement concerns the upcoming 3G model, iPhone has zero chance of success in Japan, which is a much more tech savvy market that doesn’t look kindly on non-HSDPA phones.

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If you bought an iPhone, odds are pretty decent that you replaced another cell phone with it. Odds are also decent that you kept the iPhone over the other cell phone. Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. Well, as it turns out, you can get a real-time price quote for your old cell phone. Just type in whatever cell phone you want to recycle at the website Second Rotation, describe the condition. If they’re interested and you like the price, they’ll send you a prepaid DHL label. Voila!

I have at least two cell phones sitting in a drawer. I don’t use them anymore, they really just take up space. They’re not even smartphones. Amount of money I’m wasting by keeping them: $150. If I sold my wife’s smartphone I could almost buy her an iPhone… and it’s the holiday season… hmmmm. And best of all, that’s just the phones. I could be sitting on a gold mine of old junk. (via)

With the news of free ringtones from GarageBand comes excellent auxiliary news: if you coughed up dough for iToner for macs or iPhoneRingToneMaker for windows, they both have updates available that now work with iPhone v1.1.2, something previously not possible. (via)

The iPhone showed up at #1 on Consumer Reports’ rating of all Smartphones. It’s a slim margin of victory, but it’s a margin nonetheless. They list it as the only chosen phone in the media category, and list the T-Mobile Wing, the Palm Treo 755p, and the Moto Q9m for office-type uses. For compact smartphones, they advise the Pearl and Centro. (via electronista)

W00t, and I’ve got a quote from Dieter of WMExperts to go along with it:

“… the idea that the Wing is more highly rated than the Q9m is proof positive that they don’t get it. The Wing is severely underpowered and suffers from poor build quality.”

The iPhone is on PC World’s “15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007” list. From the brouhaha I’ve been reading, you’d think that they think the iPhone is a piece of junk. Nothing could be farther from the truth — they think it’s “wildly innovative.” What they’re largely griping about is how Apple has handled the iPhone to this point:

“Memo to Apple: It’s time to treat iPhones for what they really are–pocket computers with phone functions built in–and open them up the world. Just a thought.”

They’re also unhappy with the price tag bait and switch. I don’t blame them for that either, I would have rather not spent the extra $100. What else, hmmm… they gripe about AT&T’s network. I can’t stay mad at anyone that doesn’t love their carrier. I agree with their article. The iPhone is a masterwork, but it’s a heavily locked-down device, and I’m not sure yet of the real reason.

Wired has an excellent multimedia interview with Thom Yorke, the singer in Radiohead. They cover a vast array of topics from the changing face of the record industry to Radiohead’s experiment with In Rainbows, their recent album that they released online. It’s a fine interview, well worth your ears and eyeballs.

Jobs and other Cupertino functionaries have apparently been flying to and fro in the hopes of securing a carrier for the iPhone in Japan. It sounds like NTT DoCoMo is their first choice, which is interesting as they don’t really support a 2.5G network — NTT DoCoMo’s network is pretty much all 3G, so for the iPhone to work on their network, it would have to be 3G. Also apparently in the running is Japan’s #3 carrier SoftBank Mobile, who also lacks a 2.5G network.

Wired has a quick look at some iPhone clones. Clones is probably an unfair statement, since some of these phones are given the clone moniker just by the fact that they share a similar form factor. They award black turtlenecks to each of the six phones based on how well they compete with the iPhone as a clone based on a weird array of subjective criteria that shifts with each clone.

It’s true, I did find the linkbait. Whatever the charts mean, the iPhone is selling well in North America. Whether or not it’s beating Windows Mobile (which it appears to be) or behind the BlackBerry (which it appears to be), the relevant bit is this: it’s a close race, it’s anyone’s game, and the iPhone is doing spectacularly given the amount of time it has been available.

If you’d like to talk about the numbers, I’ll recommend this thread over at WMExperts, where the community is actively defending and disputing the numbers. The iPhone is the purple one in the charts. If you’d prefer to comment that this is a nice looking graph or that there is enough purple on the chart to satisfy you or that you just like purple, you can comment here.