After all the persistent questions about whether or not the BlackBerry Bold’s improved browser could compete with the iPhone, our friend CrackBerry Kevin decided to try to provide the definitive, final smackdown.
Go on and read the entire saga, but take heed, it’s not a pretty sight. Under ideal conditions, the Bold comes this close to competing with the iPhone on speed. Those idea conditions: 3G, Javascript off, strong signal, fresh reset, and WiFi off. Wait — WiFi off? That’s right, Kevin has two BlackBerry Bolds and both of them are five different kinds of screwed up — they fail with Javascript off, they fail with WiFi entirely. Now — not everybody is reporting the same hassles, but it’s starting to look like it’s a pretty serious problem.
The Javascript issue is very interesting, by the by. The iPhone defaults to leaving it on. One could argue that Javascript support helps make the iPhone able to browse the “Real Internet,” but one would be wrong about what makes up the “Real Internet”. The Bold, however, defaults to leaving Javascript off, and given Kevin’s results, it looks like a good thing they did.
What does this mean for iPhone users — besides bragging rights? Well, actually, bragging rights are enough for us. But there’s another tip you’re definitely going to be interested in, iPhone faithful. Can you guess it? Rene will let you know what it is very shortly.
People that use RSS often use web-based readers such as Google Reader, Bloglines or NewsGator to view their news feeds. The first two choices are great, but NewsGator has something special on the iPhone; a native app. That’s right, no more web apps for RSS, the “news” has gone native baby!
What is NewsGator Online?
NewsGator is a service for personal and professional social networking. They have different applications on many platforms that bring information together. Google has probably coined it best, “RSS is the inbox for the Web”. Our focus in this review is with NewsGator’s free, personal services for RSS on the iPhone.
NewsGator’s web app for the iPhone is called… NewsGator, I know, original. This web app allows for users of the free NewsGator service to view their RSS feeds in an optimized format on the iPhone. Let’s take a look at how it works.
Read the rest of this entry »
Dieter’s already brought us up to speed on the nasty security bug Gizmodo found in the iPhone’s current 2.0.2 firmware (which John Gruber points out Apple already fixed once for firmware 1.1 way back last year — yikes!). Now Macworld (via MacRumors) reports that Apple has taken the unusual step (for Apple) of confirming the upcoming fix:
“The minor iPhone security issue which surfaced this week is fixed in a software update which will be released in September,” Apple representative, Jennifer Bowcock, said in an email to Macworld.
So add security to the list of what Apple’s now promising, along with 3G connectivity and App stability, for the next update.
Will that update be the already in beta 4 iPhone firmware 2.1? Kevin Rose has rumored it for September 6th, but we’ve already seen push notification fall off the feature list. With more bugs to fix, will Apple pull a Vista, or settle for a less ambitious, more urgent 2.0.3 in the interim?
I’m favoring the 2.0.3 at the moment. I’d rather stability over features at this point. Nail 2.0.x, then move on. What’s you preference?
You are traveling and have a long flight ahead of you. You aren’t feeling very social and the last thing you want is to get into a conversation with the person next to you who just happens to have a great multi-level marketing opportunity for you.
It’s late at night and you can’t sleep. Your significant other has already called it a night and you’re bored out of your mind.
In both scenarios above, you desperately want to catch up on your DVD backlog, but who has the time? Well, read on for this week’s Tip on how to turn your iPhone into your very own silver screen!
My fellow Canadians, if you’re already enjoying the virtually “unlimited” goodness and peace of mind that comes with Rogers reluctant, 11th hour $30/6GB promotional plan, then there’s nothing to see here. Your rate is good for the length of your contract.
If you haven’t jumped on the “deal” yet, however, remember that the plan is set to expire Aug. 31. Or it was… Rogers seems to have extended it — slightly — to Sept. 30.
A monthly fee of $30 will buy 1 GB of data instead of 6GB. A cheaper package of $25 will give 500 megabytes, filling the needs of most customers based on early consumption trends, [Rogers spokeswoman Liz Hamilton] said. Other plans include $50 for 2GB, $60 for 3GB and $80 for 8GB.
To mitigate the disaster of these new plans, Rogers will provide unlimited data for 3 months to all new customers on the plans, and customers can change between plans (up or down) without penalty. They’ll also receive a text message when they’re getting close to their hard limit, and another when they hit it. An overall cap will also be placed at $100 a month, usage be rogered.
While Rogers claims neither you nor I may really be able to chew through 6GB a month, they’re contention about not wanting to over-charge us is clearly disingenuous, or else they would be offering lower bandwidth plans at LOWER rates, not higher. (i.e., they would keep the 6GB at $30 and add a 2GB at $20, 1GB at $15, and 500MB at $10).
The protests are likely over — which we’re sure they’re counting on — but way to show your regressive spots there, Rogers.
People are remarkable. We can spend time figuring out precisely what we’re not allowed to do. Spend even more time doing it. Then spend triple that complaining when we suffer the foreseeable and reasonable consequences of our informed and deliberate actions. Heck, Dr. Phil has amassed a money-bin throwing us up on TV for just such spectacle.
Witness all the PR flackery and blog blustering (present posting included!) going on about the strategic geniuses who decided to go ahead and make an iPhone App Store-optimized engine for navigating and displaying specially formatted comic books.
Was their debut feature a family friendly installment of the Tremendous Super-Spider? Nope. It was “Murderdrome” and it was rejected. Find out why after the jump!
Wow. Anyone remember what Steve Jobs did to the New York Times when they merely inquired about his health? Imagine what he’ll do to those poor fools at Bloomberg’s who just accidentally published — and then rapidly retracted — his obituary. (Our guess? 9-finger Wu-Shi death touch, minimum).
…contains nothing to indicate Bloomberg has new information on Jobs’s health, at least in our quick skim.
Real Dan (the artist formerly known as Fake Steve), offers perhaps a more appropriate take on both the incident and its reporting:
Luckily, Gawker decided to humiliate Bloomberg by publishing the entire obit, including the list of people that Bloombots should call if/when Dear Leader actually does die, which I’m still not sure he ever will, because as far as I can recall from all that Greek and Latin I took in high school a man-god born of Zeus and mortal woman should be an immortal being, and furthermore, how would Apple PR handle it? I suppose for a while they could just stonewall by saying they weren’t here today to talk about Steve, they were here to talk about how excited everyone is about [FILL IN NAME OF NEW PRODUCT HERE] and maybe they could buy themselves a year or two during which the Apple faithful would continue to believe Steve was really alive despite having seen reports to the contrary on the news.
Strangely, we can’t seem to determine whose filthy hackery is the most fake these days…
While the holy grail for grabbing files on the iPhone would probably still be Apple-made iDisk support (as rumored), there are other options out there. Microsoft’s Live Mesh is supposedly going to be the very definition of cross-platform once they mange to get all of their clients done — but file access for the iPhone is pretty much limited to the browser right now.
Add one more “Securely sync your files to a 3rd party server and then get them on your iPhone” option to the mix: Sugarsync. They have clients for Mac, PC, Windows Mobile (though that one isn’t great), Symbian, and now: a Sugarsync client for the iPhone (App store link).
Although Sugarsync would like to say that their iPhone client supports pushing files to the iPhone, that’s not quite the case. Your files are pushed from sync’ed folders to Sugarsync’s cloud, waiting for you when you want to access them from your iPhone. Good enough, we say, since local file system access on the iPhone is still not really available.
Basically the only limitation here is the iPhone: it can view but not edit and it can only view a relatively small set of files, but that whole local file system bit. One nice bit: you can share any file on your Sugarsync cloud.
The service is $25 a year for 10 gigs, so it might be a viable option for those of you rocking a few computers and an iPhone yet hate MobileMe. For those of us who are shelling out for MobileMe already, it would be nice to think iPhone iDisk access won’t be too long in coming.
Roughly Drafted is claiming a source close to AT&T has spilled the beans on what’s really going on with the iPhone and its 3G connection problems, and what 2.0.2 did to fix it.
In a nutshell? An iPhone 3G running 2.0 or 2.0.1 tries to pull too much power from the network, so when multiple iPhones connect, a tower can actually run out of juice and start dropping calls and losing data.
Why hasn’t upgrading to 2.0.2 already fixed the problem? Simple: some people haven’t yet upgraded, so their 2.0 and 2.0.1 iPhones keep pulling too much power, causing the same problem even for people who have upgraded but are stuck on the same tower (or same high-density city like San Fran or NY). Only when most users have patched to 2.0.2 will people stuck on high-demand towers see improvements.
Earlier reports and theories have lain blame on everything from the 3G radio and antenna, to the Infineon chipset and Apple firmware, to the carriers themselves. We here at TiPb have long been saying the problems were likely a combination of factors, and firmware that pulls too hard on networks that aren’t that hardy seems a far better explanation than any one previously offered. It also goes a long way to explaining why Bluetest didn’t find any hardware issues, and why both Apple (via their website) and AT&T (via SMS) have really stepped up the push for this update.
So, do we finally have our answer, or is this just the next “shot in the dark”? Are you still having 3G problems? Is your neighbor still on 2.0 or 2.0.1? Tell them to upgrade now and then let us know if it helps!
When the Swedish engineers over at Bluetest revealed that, when measured at their facilities, the iPhone 3G radio performed roughly the same as 3G handsets made by Sony Ericsson and Nokia, some (including a few of TiPb’s own, very astute, commenters!) cried foul. Not ones to be dissuaded by a little doubt, however, the Swedes brought in some of the people who complained about 3G reception problems, and put their iPhones to the test.
The results? According to Apple Insider, pretty much the same as before:
Wieselgren reported that the lab found that all these iPhones to “have no problems with the 3G communication in the test chamber. They send and receive signals in a fully normal manner. They do not disconnect earlier than the others we have tested when the signal becomes weaker.” The iPhone using updated 2.0.2 software reported slightly better numbers, but Bluetest indicated there was no statistical significance, as a difference of up to 1dB in the results “can occur due to measurement uncertainty and random fluctuations.”
Does this mean all the problems we keep having and hearing about are the exclusive fault of the carriers and their networks?
Well, no. We go back to our original theory that it’s a confluence of conditions at work (which is why Apple says they can address some of the problems via another firmware update). Even if the antenna is fine, combine some dodgy networks with software that may be a little too sensitive to fluctuation, or too conservative in its reporting, and there are all many of problems that can arise.
2.1 may fix things on Apple’s end, while public outcry (especially in France, where Orange has just been caught… er… red handed throttling down 3G traffic) could speed up the notoriously slow and stingy carriers to invest in their networks, and our future.
Make any sense? (Provided you can connect to the network long enough to read it…)
