Ever wish you could keep prying eyes away from your iPhone? Always paranoid that strangers can read all your sensitive e-mails, bank account information, and stock portfolios? Well here’s the solution: the Case-mate Universal Privacy Screen Pro for iPhone ($19.95). It prevents those snoopy people from peering over your shoulder and keeps your information private by offering a viewing angle of 45 degrees.
Read on for the rest of the review!
Following up on Casey’s story this morning about Apple buying chip designer PA Semi, Valleywag (yeah, I went there…) brings another possible angle to the “yeahbuwhy?” table:
[The PA Semi chip's suitability for the iPhone] may well have nothing to do with why Apple bought the company. PA Semi’s prize is its founder, Dan Dobberpuhl, a famed chip designer, and his 150-person staff. At less than $2 million per engineer, the price Apple paid is in the range Cisco pays to snap up talented engineers. With them working at Apple, Jobs can push established chipmakers to adopt its technical innovations and perhaps swap licenses for intellectual property. That’s far more likely than actually switching away from Intel chips for the Mac; Apple actually explored using PA Semi’s chips before choosing Intel. Even the iPhone, which would benefit more from PA Semi’s low-power chips, is an unlikely candidate for an all-new chip design. Why? Volume economics favor Intel and Samsung so strongly that it’s hard to imagine that a new microprocessor design from the PA Semi team could replace their wares. $278 million doesn’t buy Jobs a rival chip; it buys him a tool to chip away at his suppliers’ prices.
Of course, other angles remain actually using the chip design (though PA Semi does not manufacture their own chips, meaning someone with a fab, like Intel, would still be needed), licensing the technology/technologies to someone like Intel to produce proprietary chips to differentiate Apple offerings (and make life harder for Hackintosh’ers??), or just to beef up the patent portfolio and put a little fear into Intel to, as Valleywag put it, increase their bargaining position.
Personally, getting the engineers and licensing the tech makes the most sense to me at this point, but who knows if come Macworld 2009, El Jobso will pull the back off a 4G iPhone to reveal a brush-metal PA Semi chip glittering inside? What do you think?
Daring Fireball (via Reuters) brings word that Sony has agreed to purchase Gracenote for $260 million plus “considerations”.
Why should iPhone owners care? Gruber sums it up:
Gracenote owns the CDDB database iTunes uses to supply song and album names for CDs you rip. $260 million sounds like a lot to me, but at least now Sony can claim to have something to do, however tangential, with a popular portable digital music player.
So, any time you want to add your own CD music to your iPhone, Gracenote is the place that provides all the metadata you need to properly label them (artist, track, album, etc.)
Sony seems to be keeping the company fairly independent for now, but like the Amazon deal to acquire Audible, it certainly represents another competitor buying a piece of the greater iTunes content pie. Is Apple okay with that, or are they already looking into alternatives (and if not, should they be?) What do you think?
According to Forbes, Apple has acquired the boutique microprocessor design company PA Semi for $287 million. Known for their energy-efficient yet powerful chips, initial reaction points to Apple using the PA Semi-designed microprocessors in the iPhone.
As innovative as Apple is in software, relying on other companies to provide the hardware is allowing the cellphone stragglers ample time to catch up. Currently, the iPhone is using an ARM processor built by Samsung and with so many ‘iPhone Killers’ being brought to the market, it’s safe to say that Apple is trying to stay ahead of the pack by remaining unique in their hardware architecture.
If anybody remembers PA Semi, it’s because Apple initially contacted them about using their chips in Macs after leaving PowerPC and before settling on Intel. Though Forbes reports that it would be at least a year before PA Semi chips start to show up in Apple products, it does set up an interesting dilemma for Apple. Intel has been pushing their ‘Atom’ chip toward Apple, but with this PA Semi deal, it would seem as if Apple is going to pass. Which means the iPhone and Mac line are going to diverge even further. Not even to mention the software nightmare it might create for iPhone developers.
But I think this is a good thing for Apple. They are beginning to round into the Apple, inc. that they had promised and it should mean more products for us. And though Old Faithful Mac Addicts might disagree and think Apple is overextending themselves, I believe this deal allows Apple to continue their uniqueness as a company who provides both the hardware and software in their products.
The United States and England are countries separated by one ocean and two languages, or so they say. Yet Apple Insider reports good tidings for both sides of the pond this week.
First up, the recent price cuts on the 8GB iPhone in the UK seems to have had the desired effect, with both Carphone Warehouse and O2 retail stores experiencing increased demand — and even selling out of Apple’s revolutionary mobile phone.
AT&T, meanwhile, boasted of a 22% increase in profits and the addition of 1.3 million new subscribers.
Boom indeed…
Ever-watchful Apple Insider brings word on yet another Apple patent drop. This one, published in March, sets the stage for the long anticipated — nay, demanded — Mobile iChat application.
Though the iPhone already includes a somewhat similar, though carrier-bound, SMS app, the need to move away from device-modal technologies (i.e. phone to phone) to more open protocols (i.e., phone to computer to console, etc.) like Instant Messenger is compelling. In answer, Apple has proposed an interface that builds on the SMS app in significant ways:
[T]he ability to start new messages by searching through the contact list or typing the first few letters of someone’s name. Users can also see a past chat history and remove individual conversations from the list. [...] [A] dedicated text field for entering new messages, another would have typed text appear directly in a new message bubble and would replace the text entry box with a list of suggested words.
While the patent could still, technically, be used for SMS or MMS, Apple Insider maintains the former is not mention, while IM is captioned on the image filings.
Personally, I’d love me some first party (multi-tasking?) IM. But how does this relate to the already demoed AOL app? The two work together on the desktop, does that portent a mobile relationship as well? Or is Apple planning on running over them here?
Of course, this could also join the enormous heap of Apple patents that have yet to find any real world application.
What do you think?
Looking for an alternative search for your iPhone? Though not “built in”, AOL’s mobile search optimized for iPhone is surprisingly good. Let’s take a look at what makes it so good!
When you search in Google, specifically Google Mobile for iPhone, you have a neat feature: it gives you suggestions as you type. After that, I don’t think that Google mobile does anything specifically well, other than meaningful searches. This is what sets AOL search apart from its competition, it displays the results well. Its closest competitor, Yahoo One Search renders poorly on the iPhone in my opinion, the fonts are too large among other issues. The AOL search experience feels right.
Information is broken into sections. Let’s see how a simple search for “movies” is rendered after I have set my default location.
Ars Technica (via Times Online) is joining the ranks of “we don’t believe it and hate all the rumors, but we just gotta report this one…” (Welcome!) with a report citing the ever mysterious “industry insiders” and the equally obtuse “Asian Analysts” as saying:
[T]he next-generation iPhone will come in different form-factors, including possibly a flip-phone, a sliding model with a QWERTY keyboard, or even a model with a larger screen. Can anyone say, “iTablet?”
Ars rightly points out, however, that Apple post-Second Coming of El Jobso has embraced a Zen-like minimalism in their form factors. Indeed, almost everything nowadays is a rounded square box or rectangular slab of some sort. So, while anything’s possible — like the next Jobsnote being conducted in a button-down shirt — I’m filing this one in the “how ’bout nooo!” pile for now. What do you think?
Apple is rumored to be in talks with Orange, France’s exclusive iPhone carrier, to cut pricing on iPhone in hopes of stimulating sales in that country. Since it first marched down the Champs Elysées four months ago, iPhone has been greeted with as much acceptance by French consumers as bad Camembert cheese - selling just over 100,000 units in that period. That’s owing to the fact the French iPhone, much like its fat pasty American counterpart, lacks 3G wireless.
Europe enjoys greater 3G buildout than North America’s wireless infrastructure, so its absence in iPhone makes it even less desirable than leftover onion soup. Naturally the French have thumbed their already erect noses at Apple’s wonder device, and said “Merde!” to iPhone. But with the imminent arrival of a 3G model drawing nigh, this won’t be an issue for much longer.
Engadget, via typically credible Italian newspaper La Repubblica, reports that a 3G iPhone will be coming soon to Telecom Italia, and what’s more: without carrier or contract lock-in.
Ch-ch-ch-che?
First, a quick look at our scoreboard, if this be true:
| Europe | North Am. | South Am | Asia | Africa | Oceania | Antarctica | |
| 2.5G | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 3G | 1? | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Next, Apple Insider brings some details:
[A] formal agreement on the matter was signed last week when Franco Bernabè, chief executive officer of TIM’s parent company Telecom Italia, met with Steve Jobs at Apple’s Cupertino-based headquarters. Under the terms of the deal, TIM will reportedly receive a several month exclusive on sales of a 3G iPhone through its retail shops [...] Apple is also reported to have agreed to terms by which the new iPhone will be sold at a higher price than in other European countries, but without a carrier lock and two-year service agreement.
Apple Insider further notes that, given the high percentage of pay-as-you-go plans in Italy, this unprecedented arrangement would give both the carrier and customers multo-flexibility in selling units and either using them on TIM, or with other providers, with plans or with pre-purchased bundles/minutes.
No comment, of course, from either Cupertino or Roma, but we’ve repeatedly repeated Apple COO Tim Cook’s comments on being open to other business models, and this particular one is very intriguing to say the least.
How does the idea of a contract-free 3G iPhone coming soon (albeit to Italy) grab you?
  
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The iPhone Blog merged with the Phone different site in May of 2008. Both sites were founded on a premise that comes one from one of Apple's old slogans: Think different. The iPhone Blog: for people who dare to phone different.
