The folks at iPhoneDevWiki continue to amaze. You of course remember hello world a few days ago. They’ve apparently moved on from there and have built full apache & python installations on the iPhone, all from that toolchain we reported on. They also continue to make noise on the unlocking front.
July 2007: Monthly Archive
Windows users, rejoice: if you wanted to make ringtones out of your MP3, WAV, or OGG collection, there’s a $19.95 $9.95 software package that will do it for you. It’s called iPhoneRingToneMaker, and it turns the process from a long and laborious one to a ridiculously simple one, much easier than the mac apps I reported about yesterday. If you’d rather try before you buy, there is a demo available. [via engadget mobile]
If you’re like me and wanted to be able to tether the iPhone to your laptop and use the iPhone’s EDGE network in the event that no wi-fi is available, you’re in luck. The creativity of the various iPhone hackers doesn’t cease to amaze me: they figured out how to set the iPhone up as a SOCKS proxy. It’s still in the proof-of-concept phase, you can expect it to get easier over time.
A service called iPodJuice claims to offer a full iPhone battery replacement and installation process for just $25. Sound to good to be true? Yeah, I think so too. I’m charging my iPhone 400 times today just so I can try out this service.
It was bound to happen eventually. Now the long lines of techno fetishists waiting in front of Apple Stores to buy a phone have been replaced by lines of creepy 40 year olds dressed as wizards, standing in front of bookstores to buy a children’s book.
AT&T doused analyst’s wild expectations yesterday by announcing that on the weekend of launch, AT&T saw just 146,000 iPhone activations, well short of expectations. That’s activation, not actual sales. Analysts had projected that during the same period more than 500,000 iPhones had sold through. Needless to say these two numbers don’t jive, leading many firms like Piper Jafrey to question how successful iPhone sales really are.
I had the same reaction when taking my dog to go potty this morning. After feeding him an entire bag of Puppy Chow, I expected far more substantial return. Instead the results were weak and disappointing. As a result, I am placing both my dog and iPhone on eBay.
Ars Technica reports that NewsGator, owners of the popular Mac RSS client NetNewsWire, announced a web version of their service optimized for iPhone today. Whether you should be using the standard mobile site or optimized iPhone site is auto-detected when you sign on. If you read news on the iPhone, it will be synced back via the NewsGator service and you won’t have to read that article on the desktop client.
AT&T posted their 3rd quarter earnings this morning, and there’s some good news in it for everyone. There’s only 2 days worth of iPhone coverage in that quarter, but it’s interesting that they activated 146,000 people in those two days.
Sales of the Apple iPhone have been robust. The June 29 launch allowed for less than two days of sales and activations before the end of the quarter. In that time, AT&T activated 146,000 iPhone subscribers, more than 40 percent of them new subscribers. Sales of the iPhone continue to be strong in July with store traffic above historical levels.The 40% new subscribers is a higher number than I’d seen; I believe the estimates I was seeing were more around 25%. It will be interesting to see what kind of churn the other carriers experience; granted, 146,000 customers might just be a dip of a percentage point, if that.
It looks like an enterprising member of Howard Forums found references in code to widgets and applications that don’t yet exist on the iPhone; that is to say, they’re not public yet: Translator, Unit Converter, Business Phonebook, and Radio.
There are new easy GUI interface applications for stuff that was once hard. Isn’t that the story of the Mac’s life, though? Activating, formerly a $2000 and 500,000 step process, has now been reduced to just $0 and 9 steps or so. Brilliant! And installing ringtones, previously a journey fraught with peril, with despair at every step, had now just requires you to kill the iTunes helper process and maybe force-quit the app here and there to unfreeze. Um, sorry. Great news for Mac users. iActivator, the front end for iPhone activation, is Mac only at this point. It’s the same story with custom ringtones, Mac-only. Hopefully the .NET GUI interfaces for Windows are on the way soon.
