June 2008: Monthly Archive

First came the iPod, then came the iPod Nano. Well, okay, there was the intermediary Mini, but that’s neither here nor there. Eventually — and currently — there was — and is — the Nano. So it should come as no surprise that ever since Steve Jobs dropped the iPhone bomb back at Macworld 2007, people (and analysts, who may still technically be people?) have been predicting an iPhone Nano.

And now some Apple patents have been revealed which may just bring it a few technical hurdles closer to being!

In a nutshell, it covers a method for making an iPhone-style touchscreen out of “sensor panel substrate called polyethylene terephthalate (PET)”. It’s directed towards an iPod Classic style device, although an example phone is also detailed, but in our iPhone world, we’re imagining it might also one day find its way into an iPhone Nano as well…

Check the read link for a much more in depth rundown…

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Is there an iPhone on Mars?  No, not exactly.  Nor have we found little green men on Mars, either.  Although if we did, would they be toting iPhone 3Gs?  If it were up to Jobs they would (how ’bout a game of Interstellar Risk, Rene?).  Unless you’ve been living in a cave (a la Bin Laden), you’ve likely heard of NASA’s recent success landing the Phoenix Mars lander.  The lander is equipped with shovel and soil analysis equipment to seek out ice, water, life, etc.

Even though iPhones aren’t on Mars (yet!), you can use your iPhone to get the latest news and mission status of the Phoenix Mars lander.  Toughturtle.com,  a developer of several other iPhone web apps, has given to us the Phoenix Mars Mission web app for the iPhone.  Keep reading to learn more about this week’s Tip! Read the rest of this entry »

The status of the TomTom GPS app may still be up in the air, but we’ll still have Google Maps for turn-by-turn directions (albeit not in 3D and without voice prompts). Looks like we may to have another option, too, an AT&T-Branded “gps enabled application.” So says an AT&T insider who adds that in addition to the GPS app, AT&T is also developing a “yellowpages.com mobile” app as well.

Good news? We hope so — because our fear is that the Apple SDK user agreement prohibiting developers from creating turn-by-turn apps means that this AT&T GPS app will be our only option, an option that could potentially include a monthly fee — our worst fear.

As though the increased monthly fees on the iPhone 3G weren’t bad enough already. Say it ain’t so, AT&T!

This morning I mentioned the so-called “leaked” Rogers memo, which outlined almost find-and-replace identical data plans to those AT&T is offering for the iPhone was too good to be true, and now Kevin from our sister-site Crackberry.com brings us a Rogers presentation which puts another nail in the “we hope for fair data rates” coffin:

Non-flex plan: $15 for 2MB (hitting the YouTube button once?), $25 for 4MB, $30 for 300MB, $60 for 1GB, $80 for 3GB, and $100 for 6GB?!

Flex plan: $50 for 500MB, $65 for 1GB, $85 for 3GB, and $100 for 5GB?!

(Remembering the US in $30 for UNLIMITED!)

A 5GB cap, similar to caps some European countries have put in place for the iPhone 2G is annoying enough, but charging 3.33x more money along with the cap? Outrageous.

Kevin points out that Rogers currently charges $60 for 25MB, and this is better. But being slightly less @#$%-up is not really better. Sadly, unlike Vader or the Hulk, my hatred renders me no more powerful.

I hope these aren’t the iPhone rates. I hope we get something better. But this stinks to high heaven of Rogers historical behavior, and there’s no better indicator of future behavior than that.

UPDATE:

Engadget Mobile is saying there will be exclusive plans for the iPhone on Rogers.

X1Zero over on the iPhone in Canada forum has posted the following under “tasty” news, based on what he claims is new Rogers training material:

Here were the prices listed for [iPhone] plans [including voice and data]: “$60, $65, $70, $75, $80, $85″. What I gather from this is as long as you have at least a $30 voiceplan, you then pick your poison of either $30 or $45 iphone data, and youre golden.

Gander at the original Rogers slide in question (after the break)…

Read the rest of this entry »

Long and loud have been the voices berating, bemoaning… begging even for some little extra bit of camera love from the iPhone. We’re not even talking video here (though conflicting rumors coming out of WWDC, via TWiM, suggested Apple either thinks no one wants video, or were working on it for a future release…). We’re talking about plain old, plainly old, still photography.

Nokia N95 has a Karl Zeiss 5.0 megapixel auto-focusing lens, right? Sure, it’s built like a Soviet tank, but Apple could at least bump the pixel count on the measly iPhone camera, right?

Wrong!

At least according to an interesting new article from Ars Technica, which provocatively suggests more iPhone camera megapixels would be worse, not better.

Their arguments make the kind of sense that does, at least to a certain extent. Carving up the same sensor into more megapixels just results in less surface area per pixel, and given the fixed-focus lens necessary in a uber-thin device like the iPhone, it’s possible Apple’s really looked into this and come up with the best engineering compromise they could.

Or they might just be saving a 3 or 4 megapixel auto-focus bump, along with video, to get people to upgrade to the iPhone 3.5G this holiday season. @#$%^&!

Even odds, really…

There’s a memo being circulated everywhere from TiPb’s comments to some of the biggest sites on the blogsphere, that purports to contain leaked information on Rogers — the GSM monopoly with de-facto exclusive iPhone 3G rights in Canada — rate plans, including data rates, which have historically been a HUGE issue for Canadians.

The information in this memo gives the impression that Canadians, at long last, might just get the same data rates as AT&T. In fact, the memo seems nearly identical in almost every find-and-replace way to the AT&T memo that leaked a while back. This has led many, myself included, to believe it’s just another hoax, another way to toy with the battered-consumer syndrome sufferers north of the border.

(Of course, none of this would be possible if Rogers would just release their own plan info — like almost every real carrier has already done!)

UPDATE: There’s a second theory circulating which suggests that the memo may be both legit, and also an almost find-and-replace match for the AT&T memo, reason given Apple influence/wording or just similar contract terms agreed to with Apple.

I’m still not sure. This would be such a radically good departure towards fairness and competitiveness that I just can’t bring myself to believe Rogers would do it. Please, PLEASE, prove me wrong! $30 unlimited for data, even given the more-evil 3 year term, would be industry-shifting good.

We’ve already told you that the Instinct is a sad, pale, wannabe version of the iPhone. That’s not just because we’re fanboys (we are), even old Walt Mossberg agrees. Sprint apparently saw the writing on the wall too after Uncle Walt’s “review” of their device, so they’ve decided to drop the price down to $129. Actually, it might be cheaper overall, too, given that Sprint will give you that price after a contract of around $70 total per month for unlimited data and 450 minutes. Oh, yeah, and the Instinct will go on sale tomorrow, giving it a huge jump on the iPhone. Or Not.

Honestly - is anybody out there seriously considering an Instinct over an iPhone? We’ll grant that there are some people who prefer to pick their carrier first, phone second — but still, is it possible to even pick up the clean end of a piece of …Instinct?

Windows users love them their XP. No matter how prettier, more secure, and better architected — though admittedly heavier — Vista may be, the PR problems round Microsoft way have made it seem like every user is desperate to keep XP running on everything from their server farm to UMPC.

And now thanks to the folks at Citrix — who rumor has it know Windows at the they-contributed-towards-the-kernel level — could the iPhone be next?

Well, technically no. They’re not really getting XP to run on Apple’s handset, but they are enabling the same kind of remote wizardry they’ve been doing on the Windows side for years.

Using XenDesktop over WiFi, they accessed the aged OS via Citrix Server at the Application Delivery Conference in Melbourne as part of the Keynote.

Pundits and plain folk have been saying for a while now that the iPhone gives you a UNIX box in your pocket, and its nice to see some of that power being harnessed.

Could Go to Meeting be far behind?

Sure, those on the twisty-turny AT&T train have looked on at free iPhones in the UK and €1 iPhones in Germany with some lust in their wallets. We get that. But those of us in Canada gaze longingly at all of your clear plans and reasonable data rates with something akin to battered-consumer syndrome.

Rogers, the GSM monopoly in Canada, until recently charged $100 a month for 200MB of data, making us the disgrace not only of the industrialized world, but of pretty much the whole world. They’ve changed slightly over the last few months, but in only the most confusing, impenetrable, and still ridiculously over-priced manner possible. So, with the iPhone 3G coming, many of us Canadians have been stuck in a Schrödinger-esque quantum state somewhere between thrilled at finally getting the device, and terrified at what it might cost.

As always, Rogers provides nothing in the way of lifting the box:

[Rogers Wireless president Nadir] Mohamed explains that the plans will be “easy to understand” as well as more adaptable and encouraging for users who want mobile data. [... He] adds that he expects the average revenue per use to go up with the launch of the iPhone 3G. A typical Rogers customer pays approximately $63 per month for a combination of voice, messaging, and data features, but an average iPhone subscriber should boost that figure to approximately $90 per month, Mohamed says. Most of the increase should come from increased data use.

Here’s an idea: Why not just post the Rogers iPhone 3G data plans, the way AT&T, O2, T-Mobile, and real telcos the world over have begun to? And please, pretty please with a cherry on top, make the data rates on par with the rest of the world?

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While confusion still looms over who is eligible and at what price for iPhone 3G upgrades, never mind how high the unsubsidized price will eventually soar, AT&T may have clarified what families have to look forward to:

Family Talk plans ARE available. Voice plans start at $39.99 a month (same as the regular one-line starting plan) and additional lines will be $9.99 a month. AT&T’s expecting lots of Family Talk Plans this time around because of the $199 price point.

Makes sense. But howsabouta family data? $30 a pop still per phone?

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