January 2008: Monthly Archive

Steve jobs announced several new iPhone features in the keynote at Macword, including:

• Maps with location
• Webclips
• Customize Home screens
• SMS multiple people at once
• Chapters, subtitles, and languages in videos
• display of lyrics

The features fall very much in line with the previously leaked 1.1.3 update.

The new Google maps not only does location, but it also allows you to edit routes and add “pins” to the maps anywhere you like.

The SMS client allows you to send to multiple people, and the “thread” you create allows you to re-send to that same group multiple times.

There is a new “plus button” at the bottom of Mobile safari. Merely by tapping that “plus” button you can add any web shortcut to your home screen. Even better - web clips remember where you’ve zoomed and panned to - to customize the thumbnail on the home screen.

Jobs also confirmed the moving icons around the home screen does indeed use the “jiggly method,” which clearly indicates to the user that you’re in “re-arrange” mode.

The software update is available today and for free!

They’ve sold 4 million iPhones in 200 days - 20,000 iPhones per day on average.

On US Smartphone marketshare, the quarter ending in September, In its first 90 days of shipping it garnered nearly 20% of the smarpthone marketshare. They nearly equaled Palm, Motorola, and Nokia combined. Jobs expects they’ll do even better when the December numbers come out.

At today’s keynote, Steve Jobs announced “Time Capsule.” It’s a full Airport Extreme base station that also includes a “server-grade hard drive.” It is meant for wireless backups for notebooks. Time Capsule runs on 802.11n.

The 500gb drive version is only $299. The 1 terrabye model is $499. It will ship in February. “It’s the perfect companion product to Time Machine.”

We’re here and we’re live! The show got started a little late, but it’s still on, baby!

We won’t be fully liveblogging every moment, but we’ll be doing a big new post for every big new anouncement. Stay tuned! Steve is on stage now! He’s looking back at 2007, talking about the iMac, the iPods, and “of course the revolutionary iPhone.”

4 things to talk about today.

Thing 1: Leopard. They’ve solved over 5 million copies. Steve is talking about Leopard’s capabilities, its accolades over Vista. Microsoft Office is going native on Intel. It was Time Capsule

Thing 2: iPhone!

Google gone and got itself all dolled up for Macworld. I’m a big fan of the new tabs and an even bigger fan of the new http://igoogle.com, which is pretty much the only web portal I’ve ever bothered with (besides, of course, just the plain jane Google page). They take full advantage of Safari’s capabilities with neat AJAXification throughout. If you’re a Google user (and you know you are) and if you’re an iPhone user (and you’re here so that’s likely true too), it’s worth a look-see. There’s other improvements, including:

Customization of tabs
New and improved Gmail
New and improved Calendar
iGoogle for the iPhone - Official Google Mobile Blog: Google on the iPhone: Macworld Makeover

As long as we’re talking Google, check out this Christmas miracle:

The New York Times reports that, based on internal data from Google, more iPhones were connecting during Christmas than any other mobile device, despite the fact that industry figures show only two percent of smartphones worldwide as belonging to Apple. A few days after Christmas, iPhone traffic dropped below that of phones using the Nokia-backed Symbian operating system, but kept a second-place ranking. - Electronista | Google gains iPhone traffic, updates apps

…Looks like more than a few lucky folks received an iPhone for Christmas, no? That’s one benefit of Apple’s non-standard activation agreement - it’s a heck of a lot easier to gift an iPhone than it is any other phone in the US.

Above: a big yawner, courtesy of twob

It happens every year lately - a day or two before the big Keynote, some tiny site¹ claims to have the outline of what Steve Jobs will announce. The supposed goods on the iPhone: 16gb at $499 (really going on a limb there), arrival in Japan in March, and the unveiling of the SDK. A full unveiling, actually, with lots of details.

All of which are pretty safe bets.

After the jump: the full supposed outline. Give it credit for being realistic — heck, give it credit for being boring. But do not, we hope, give it credit for beingreal.

¹ Yes, we are a tiny site as well and we know you thought it earlier. Be Nice.

Read the rest of this entry »

A little non-iPhone news:

A widely read piece at Wired on the origins of the iPhone is pretty much must-read. It would have been nice if the article had more named-sources, but on the other hand the entire thing rings very true. If you’re interested in how Apple negotiated the complicated carrier and technical details of the iPhone, it’s the best article on that in the past few months.

But we’re all about Macworld this weekend, so this tidbit caught our eye:

Jobs had reason to be confident. Apple’s hardware engineers had spent about a year working on touchscreen technology for a tablet PC and had convinced him that they could build a similar interface for a phone.

Oh, so Apple was already working on a tablet concept before the iPhone. If it took some work to re-engineer their tablet technology into the iPhone, methinks it would take less work to re-engineer that technology in to a tablet.

Of course, it would be even easier to integrate that technology into a massive touchpad on a thin MacBook, per MacRumors (who gets the credit for the above image).

Our forum integration is hurting just a bit right now, so comments are temporarily down. Expect ‘em back by the big day!

The internet is all abuzz over the latest Macworld rumor - AppleInsider has spotted Apple banners with the slogan “There’s something in the air.” My guess hope is something rather less revolutionary than WiMAX Apple devices or a 3G iPhone - both of which I consider very unlikely. WiMAX is just not widespread enough yet and too much of it is controlled by Sprint and Clearwire. No way Apple is going to get in bed with Sprint given their relationship with AT&T, and Clearwire is just too small.

Instead, I’m hoping for .Mac services on the iPhone. Radically improved .Mac services have been something I’ve wanted to a long time. What I’d really like: Google services integration, iWeb mobloggling from the iPhone, and access to .Mac’s online storage. Please Please.

Meanwhile, check out what our forum members think is coming at Macworld.

AppleInsider | Archives

iPhone wielding Slingbox owners will soon be able to view their favorite smutty Spice Channel content on iPhone screens, if rumors are true. A site that goes by the charming name Electric Pig (I prefer my swine without rectal power adapters thank you very much) claims to have spoken with one of the higher ups at Sling Media, who went on record as saying that a version of its popular Slingplayer for mobile devices is in development right now.

Sweet. Now I can watch all my favorite episodes of Gilligan’s island while driving down the freeway. Zoom Zoom.

ReadVia MacRumors

The writers strike is really starting to take its toll, and not just on (Benedict Arnold?) Jon Stewart’s conscience. As Infinite Loop notes, Apple has already warned Season Pass customers on iTunes that the strike will delay shows. So we all wait with bated breath for our favorites to come back and give us what we paid for - full seasons.

On a related note - one of my guilty pleasures on TV is Psych on the USA network. It’s coming back January 11th, but apparently it’s not coming to iTunes - likely because USA parent company NBC just refuses to play ball. Sadly, I just got this notice from iTunes:

Future episodes of “Psych” will not be available on the iTunes Store. We realize that you purchased a season pass and regret that we will not be able to deliver these episodes to you. I have issued a pro-rated refund in the amount of $XXX for the remaining episodes. You will see this credit in three to five business days. If Store Credit was used for this purchase, you should see the credit applied to your balance immediately. [...] I have also granted two free video credits to your account which you can use to purchase of any two TV episodes, music videos, or short films on the iTunes Store.

Bummer. Hopefully Apple will be able to score those rumored deals with movie studios and announce them at Macworld - because the paid-video content at the iTunes Store is starting to feel awfully thin.