Fortunately, other enterprising companies have stepped up to the plate and given unto us some worthy replacements for the stock headphones: enter Maximo, the makers of the iP-HS1 iMetal Stereo Headset for the iPhone, available at our Phone different store for $69.99. Continue after the break for a full review! Read the rest of this entry »
Remember when AT&T was selling refurbished iPhone 2G’s at (what was then) ridiculously low prices? Remember how it turned out some of those units still contained the personal information of their previous owners? Apple seems to remember, and has reportedly taken steps to prevent it from happening again.
As with a computer, when you simply delete a file, the file typically remains but is marked as deleted by the file system and will eventually be over-written. To delete something and make sure it’s deleted, you need to over-write it, and not just with a single binary bit (zero’ing out). You have to over-write it with (pseudo) random data, and over-write several times.
Apple does something like this on the desktop with “Secure Empty Trash”, and now they’re bringing the same concept to the iPhone. The catch? Time. The new dialog for “Erase iPhone” now warns that “This will take about an hour.”
And let’s face it: what’s a little time if it prevents that eBay buyer from getting all your personal details, right?
Check the read link for the Settings screen shots…
An enterprising fellow has caught the iPhone 3G in the wild! Whilst at dinner in London he ran into a few Apple employees who gushed about the device, talked up the upcoming launch, and generally passed the iPhone 3G around for everybody present to ogle. Basically the Apple folks were so giddy they couldn’t help themselves. See his rundown here.
That’s all very nice, isn’t it? Here’s the best part: The fellow we’re referring to is Derek Snyder, aka Master of Mobility, the Wizard of Wireless, the Warlock of Windows Mobile, aka the Senior Product Manager for Windows Mobile.
When even the folks in charge of Windows Mobile can’t help but try to scoop the iPhone 3G, you know you’re looking at a ‘big deal.’ (We kid Snyder because we love). Still, good and proper to see that Microsoft is keeping an eye on the iPhone front, it’s even better that they’re playing nice with Exchange on the iPhone. Hugs all around!
Apple Insider claims to have gotten their hands on a three page memo from Apple to Apple Store staff containing a form of Frequently Asked Questions. We say “a form” because the officially dictated answers to almost all customer questions are pretty much variations on “we dunno.”
Highlights include:
Should be easy, given that it’s only a few weeks before release, and we still know so very little…
Since Steve Jobs announced it back in March at the iPhone SDK Roadmap Event, the iPhone 2.0 firmware has seen 7 updates, some bringing with them interesting new features for consumers, others giving more tools to developers. Delivery date was said to be “late June” which for Apple typically means June 30th, 11:59pm, but is now expected to be closer to the July 11th iPhone 3G handset rollout.
One sign that they’re nearing the end of the long road to 2.0 comes from Gizmodo, via what they claim are sources inside Apple’s iPhone development group. What sign is it? A rumor that iPhone 2.0 will hit “gold master” this Friday, following the release of build 345.
Ladies and gentlemen, we may just have our FINAL version!
Will there be any more last minute feature enhancements? Daring Fireball says it’s all about Apple making trade offs. While I certainly understand and appreciate the desire to deliver a smaller set of more stable improvements, the desire for video recording, to-do’s, and cut and freaking paste is strong!
This week Mike and Dieter review all the BAD news about the iPhone 3G and take a look at the growing community in the iPhone Blog forums!
Also, this is important: the iPhone Blog and (by extension) all y’all iPhone lovers have been called out by CrackBerry.com. Take a listen to this “Hit me on my BlackBerry” song, note the bits 2/3rds of the way through knocking TiPb. Anybody up for mixing down a pro-iPhone song? Let us know the comments (Wait-a-Thon time!) and if there’s enough interest we’ll make a contest out of it.
Alternately, some comments counteracting all our doom and gloom in the podcast would also be appreciated.
BoomBoom. BoomBoom.
Would, for Kiefer’s sake, that it was an episode of 24 and he could just ask the writers to script him in a tasty new iPhone 3G (or just work out a product placement with Apple). Sadly, in the real world, no matter who you might think you are, how entitled a cele-bratty you may have become, and how much fiction has become substantially linked with fact in your braid, no one — and we mean no one — plays the snob card better than Apple.
So, if you walk into a New York Apple Store and demand the manager give you a pre-lease iPhone 3G, even if you’re the star of a decreasingly popular, increasingly formulaic serial drama, don’t expect to leave with anything more than a perfectly balance, elegantly finished, state-of-the-art DENIED for your trouble.
(Most likely, the manager, like 99% of other Apple employees, hasn’t even held the iPhone 3G yet, much less been given a secret stash to pass on to celebrity walk ins. Either that or the manager must have feared Kiefer would try to unlock the iPhone right there in the store. He is, after all, a well known pirate… Video proof after the break…)
Update: Or maybe not: Jules lets us know in the comments that it was all just a fun game by The Defamer. Still any chance to watch Kiefer take down a Christmas tree is one worth taking. - Dieter
Though somewhat morbid, if only in a stock manipulation market sense, due to both Apple’s phenomenal — and resurgent — success under the leadership of Steve Jobs, and the health issues faced by Jobs in the past, every time the man behind the Apple steps up on stage looking… well… whatever the vegan opposite is to Steve Ballmer’s manbull big, rumors and speculation they begin to fly.
But how do you choose Steve Jobs’ successor? What if you miss? Fortune shows us, joining the fray this time with a “Usual Suspects” type list, complete with PR pics and wikipedia hits, but wrapped together well and each given a somewhat considered ranking in the Jobs pool. (And for those of us who don’t park outside Cupertino with a surveillance van, a few surprises might lurk in the sequence as well).
Of course, if they’d combined the crazy rumors of Ballmer getting the heave-ho from Microsoft following the PR disaster of Vista and stalled Micro-Hoo! negotiations, and pegged him as Jobs’ obvious, if in first name only, successor… well that would have at least been ballsy and quite a bit more entertaining.
In the end, however, while Jobs is no doubt worth billions in ever-fickle market cap to increasingly capricious investors — perhaps more than any other CEO active today — the whole topic still comes off as a little on the gossipy side of TMZ.
Besides, we all know Kaiser Jobso will just whip up a clone eventually anyway, and show these would be successors what succession really is… And like that — boom! — they’d be gone.
Last year Apple Stores and AT&T owned retail outlets closed early, handed out water to the throngs of people lined up around their blocks, and then re-opened at 6pm local time to dispense the first generation iPhone to screams, cheers, and web-wide coverage.
This year, it looks like we’ll all have to come just a little bit earlier:
We just got a tip that AT&T store managers received emails stating that the iPhone launch would be at 8:00 AM
More, as they say, as this develops…
Quel surprise: Google’s Android will be delayed. It looks like Google and their hefty consortium of partners are struggling a little with getting a new mobile OS deployed across a wide array of hardware connected to all sorts of different networks. Who coulda predicted it? (Yeah, okay, basic high school chaos theory, given complexity growth and propensity for system break down and all, but other than that…)
Originally slated for second half 2008, its now looking more like fourth quarter, if not 2009. Seems like the T-Mobile launch is so Google-tention intensive, it’s pushing Sprint’s launch further back. Also — wait for it — Sprint doesn’t want to just deploy a clean Android build, they want to wall it off brand it up all personal like (couldn’t see that one coming?). Meanwhile, mega-carrier China Mobile is “running into issues” pushing its launch back as well.
To top it off, Android is more challenging to develop for, which is also a startling revelation, given the alpha/beta status of the SDK. Hitting deadlines is one thing. Hitting them through an asteroid storm of OS changes is another entirely.
Not to beat a dead horse, but all these problems were wicked obvious going back to launch day. In fact, Fake Steve satire’d it up brilliantly from the get go, and Daring Fireball sums it up nicely now.
Keep reading after the break to find out how this effects the iPhone…
  
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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.
