October 2007: Monthly Archive

Changewave released information from their latest survey, and the iPhone is tops again. 2% of the 3654 people surveyed have iPhones. Of the people that have iPhones, 82% are “Very Satisfied,” up 5% since the last survey in July and tops in the list. The only company with “Very Satisfied” ratings above 50% is RiM with the Blackberry series. Best yet, the iPhone is set to capture a bit more than 2% — Changewave reports that a full 16% of all people surveyed intend to purchase an iPhone within the next 6 months. Quoth Tobin Smith, founder of Changewave:

There’s no longer any doubt about the staying power of the iPhone. The continuing embrace of the iPhone by the public is a stellar example of how a new product can forever alter its own playing field.”

It’s unfortunately kind of a high and low quote; he’s right about the ‘alter its own playing field’ bit. But show me anyone who thought the iPhone was just going to go away.

A major storm system is blowing through my area right now, complete with damaging winds, lightening, hail, tornadoes, brimstone… all the splendor and pageantry that accompany the wrath of God. So, in the event of my untimely demise, or a house landing upon me, I present you with this week’s installment of Free Wallpaper Friday.

Don’t ask me why but a friend asked me to create a Star Trek background that emulated the look and feel of ship computer consoles, which I did. He needs to get a life. I’ll share it with you guys since you’re always complaining that my wallpapers are too gay. The black cat image is a teaser of things to come for next week’s All Hallows’ Eve edition. Can you taste it?

If you want to save your SMS messages from your iPhone, there’s now a free way to do it. If you’re on a Mac, that is; I’m not aware of any ways to do it on a PC. But, Syphone by Micromat will backup, import and export any SMS threaded conversations that you want. And it will display conversations in threaded glory as well. It’s a teensy download, under 1 MB, but it’s available here.

We are one step closer to editing word documents on our iPhones today. Google is now offering a mobile format of Google docs, viewable on mobile devices. The bad news – it’s Read-only mode, so no editing capabilities are available… yet. But at least you can access important docs while on the go, right from your iPhone, and that’s something to cheer about. Right?

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Ambrosia Software released a new version of iToner that returns ringtone functionality to iPhones running firmware version 1.1.1. Previously, iToner owners were only able to sync their non-Apple-sanctioned ringtones with iPhones that were using one of the 1.0 firmware versions. iToner costs $15 and doesn’t involve any hacks to your iPhone.

What do an Airline pilot, Ballet dancer, and Broadway Theater producer all have in common? They all use iPhones and appear in Apple latest iPhone whoring ad campaign. But the tables are turned as the subjects plug their own ventures rather than focus soley on iPhone and how it impacst their lives. A commercial within a commercial?

Kristin Sloan, the sole female user in this trio, is the editor and founder of TheWinger.com – a site devoted to ballet dancing. Several seconds into the commercial she drops off the subject of iPhone and immediately draws attention to her site. Nice touch, very subtle. I thought this was a commercial promoting iPhone, not ballet dancing?

The third spot features Broadway producer Ken Davenport, who pimps his new play “My First Time”, and mentions a fansite which we’re obviously meant to visit. Out of the three the Airline pilot came off most convincing, with his casual flair and real-world usage scenario.

See the ads and judge for yourself.

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figure 1: Derek, Kristin, and Ken

Apple has posted three new “street” ads. The ads feature Bryce in “Delay”, an airline pilot who used the iPhone to shorten a 3 hour delay into a 30 minute delay (and apparently also flies RC jets competitively); Kristin in “The Winger”, a ballet dancer that uses her iPhone to keep connected to her ballet blog at thewinger.com, and Ken in “My Show”, where Ken uses his iPhone to keep connected to the theatre community via his website at broadwayspace.com.

Ambrosia Software has released an update to its popular custom ringtone software, iToner, now supporing iPhone firmware 1.1.1. If you’re already a user, download the update now. If you’re not, well… download it anyway.

ReadSource

Oh Greenpeace, can’t you idiots just stick to rescuing dolphins or saving single-cell organisms? Today the colorful activist organization made good on its promise to sue Apple over toxic materials found in iPhone, and further seeks an injunction blocking the arrival of iPhone in Europe. If Greenpeace is successful, you boys and girls in Europe won’t be getting an iPhone come November 9. One more at a time.

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Steve Jobs has confirmed the rumor. It looks like this won’t be just widgets — it will be full, system-level native apps. It will be interesting to see how they perform this — as the iPhone stands, everything is running in ‘ring 0′. My guess is that they’re going to have to redesign the iPhone to run in multi-user mode. That is, some things will be running as root, other things will be running as ‘radio’, and some things will be running as ‘Mike Overbo’, for example. From http://www.apple.com/hotnews/:

Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]