Dieter briefly interrupted his CTIA coverage to text us pretty much the headline you see above. What combination of Las Vegas and mobile phone pressers zapped iPhone controlled robot dreams into his cerebral cortex we don’t — and don’t want to — know, but the idea itself… Awesome indeed.
With the new iPhone 3.0 SDK, Apple has opened the door to peripheral access via both the 30-pin dock port and Bluetooth with zero-config. The above video is an ingenious work-around for direct control, but with the new functionality promised this summer?
UPDATED: According to the screenshot we just received, looks like Apple has, for the first time, re-jiggered the order of Apps on the Home Screen (previously they just added iTunes and then App Store). Now Voice Memo takes Clocks spot, Notes switches with Calculator, Clock goes where Notes was, and Calculator bumps Settings to the bottom row along with iTunes and App Store, which move left a slot to make room. Not sure about this new arrangement, what do you think?
Also, there’s apparently a new Settings panel for Store, although it sounds like it’s blank right now.
ORIGINAL: Sneaking in just before the end of March, Apple has released iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 2, both SDK and firmware to developers. If you’re spinning apps for this summer’s big release, head on over to developer.apple.com and get your download on.
TiPB has already done a fairly extensive iPhone 3.0 walkthrough of the front-facing elements of Beta 1, but we’ll have to wait for the usual deep-code divers out on the internet to let us know if there’s anything new surfaced in Beta 2.
Gizmodo has been on a next-gen iPhone concept craze as of late, and now they may have just gone too far… er, too thin! A more modest redesign, this one just sharpens the edges off the current model and adds a touch of inset ear-speaker flourish.
It doesn’t thrill my design-sense personally, but what do you think? Should Apple continue minor evolutions given how popular the iconic iPhone remains, or do they need to shake us up with something revolutionary again, already?
Apple has helpfully created a knowledge base article describing the process for creating an App Store account sans credit card.
The process involves making sure you’re not already logged in with another account, then choosing App Store from the menu, downloading a free app, choosing “none” for the payment type, and responding to the confirmation menu.
While this might also work for people stuck in countries where antiquated licensing agreements prevent apps from being available (like Skype in Canada! Ahem!) Apple probably intends it for users in the US without a credit card, not for cross-border hopper-shoppers. Right?
TiPb is just one cog — elegant and perfectly balanced though it may be — of the mighty Smartphone Experts network, which also includes Android Central, CrackBerry.com, PreCentral.net, NokiaExperts, TreoCentral, and WMExperts. Editor-in-Chief Dieter Bohn is now on the ground, live an in-person at CTIA 2009 and will be bringing back all the news, for TiPb and almost all the other sites. Almost, because CrackBerry Kevin seems to have stowed away on the trip as well. We don’t really expect any iPhone news other than the launch of apps like Skype, but if there is any, our daring duo will bring it home for us.
If you want to keep up with their adventures, keep your browsers tuned to the above sites, and follow them on the Twitter via @backlon and @crackberrykevin.
And if there’s anything at the show you want them to check out, let them — and us — know!
Looks like another desktop Safari 4 Beta feature has found its way into the iPhone 3.0 version of the browser. Now, when you go to a site with an enhanced security certificate, the text on top of the browser turns green (like the green bar, we get it!), with little green lock icon beside it, and the name of the certificate’s trusted organization. For example, the above screenshots show how Apple’s order status page looks on iPhone 2.2.1 (top right) and iPhone 3.0.
What does this mean for users? In an age of increased phishing attacks, where bad sites try to trick you into thinking they’re your bank or shop and steak your login or credit card info, this is one more visual cue in your assessment process for determining if you can trust that the website is what it says it is.
Come iPhone 3.0, look for the green text on top of Safari and carefully check to make sure the company it identifies is the one you want to be dealing with.
A few weeks back we reported that MLB At Bat 2009 [iTunes Link] would be available on April 3rd, well it seems it was pushed out a few days early and can now be found in the App Store. Most of it’s features, however, will not be activated until April 6th. The biggest feature being, live Gameday Audio, from either the home or visiting team radio announcers, streamed directly to your iPhone. That feature alone should make this app worth the price of admission for all of you hardcore baseball fans.
So you have to be asking, how much will this cost me? For the entire baseball season including post season play this will run you $9.99. That really is not too bad considering in-game audio for the complete season, directly from the MLB website, costs $14.99.
So how many of you will be picking this one up? Let us know what you think!
While Google’s Gmail is still in “beta”, they done a lot of good stuff for the iPhone including a quirky but usable IMAP implementation so we can keep mail synced on our mobile, desktop, and cloud. But Gmai’s quirkiness isn’t restricted to IMAP, the whole concept of GMail just “thinks different”, from it’s April 1st, everyone-thought-it-was-a-joke launch, to its labels rather than folders, stars rather than flags, and flat search rather than hierarchical sort.
All this leads some to consider a separate GMail client for the iPhone, rather than leaving it bundled into Apple’s own MobileMail app. The Google Android G1 goes this route. You have one app for Gmail and another app for all your other mail. Would we ever see this on the iPhone?
Ars Technica spoke with Gmail Product Manager Todd Jackson, who had this to say (or rather, not say):
he did leave the possibility of a dedicated iPhone client on the table
Citrix, whom internet legend holds helped develop the Windows kernel and knows their way around Microsoft’s OS like Ballmer knows a good monkey dance, have been talking iPhone client for a while, and it appears they’ve now made good on it.
Citrix Receiver [iTunes Link] is a FREE application that hooks into the Citrix XenApp and XenApp Web Services environment to let you access your Windows system remotely from the iPhone. Labeled as a 0.9 release “Technology Preview” it still purports real-time, anywhere (as long as you’re online) access to your apps and docs, and an high def HDX experience, including special mention of piping Flash and Silverlight websites over to your iPhone. And yes, your data is encrypted and stored back on your server-side, not the iPhone client.
So, anyone try this out yet? Is it the great experience Citrix has come to make us expect of them? How’s AutoCAD and IE 6 ActiveX working for you on the iPhone?
Welcome to iPhone Analysts vs. the Magic 8-Ball, where we take the often outlandish, sometime surreal predictions of iPhone analysts and pundits, blogeratti and the ‘net elite, and compare them to the potentially equally precise prognostications of a… magic 8-ball (running on an iPhone, of course!)
Mike Abramsky, seasoned veteran of of RBC weighs in on an iPhone 3G “Pro” with the following specs, and the Magic 8-Ball chimes in with its pedictions in italics:
iPhone 3G “Pro” nickname. As I see it, yes
Retail price to stay the same $199/$299. My reply is no
Wireless UMTS/HSUPA, Wifi, Bluetooth. My reply is no
(Note: our understanding is that HSUPA is to uplink what HSPDA is to downlink, and someone’s mixing up their UMTS technologies there and really means a 3.5G system)
3.2MP camera with flash and video recording. Don’t count on it.
16GB/32GB storage. Most likely
0.1″ thinner. Yes
AT&T to get it before the rest of the world. Most likely.
Growth will not accelerate. Don’t count on it.
Okay, so both of their predictions seem a little hinkey to us, but what do we know? Bring on WWDC 2009, and until then, thanks everyone for playing Analyst vs. Magic 8-Ball and be sure to leave your predictions, and your thoughts on their predictions, in the comments!
