Friday at The iPhone Blog means two things – free wallpaper and Kent isn’t wearing pants. Fortunately you only have to see the wallpaper. Behold and download after the break.

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Free Wallpaper Friday: Post Chromatic Stress Syndrome Edition

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.

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French iPhone May Receive Price Cut. Jealous Rage Builds in Montreal

The folks at Mozilla are still fuming mad over Safari-gate. The developers behind the popular open source browser Firefox stated flatly that no efforts will be made to port Firefox to iPhone, blaming Apple’s Gestapo-like restrictive software license.

So this means I can’t look forward to a browser that consumes half my memory and grinds to a halt on AJAX-heavy websites? Tragic.

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404: Firefox NOT Coming to iPhone, Sorry Kiddies

Blimey! Hey, Bert – you see this news on the telly today? Yeah, tarts. It says ere that iPhone is kicking Nokia’s bum something awful in the browser business – a real flogging as it were. Some blokes at a firm called StatCounter is sayin it’ll overtake Nokia soon in mobile web share, and you know how the Finns are about losing.

Remember what they did when they lost the world cup soccer championship? Helsinki burned to the ground, it did. Bloody business that was. God save Safari.

ReadVia TUAW

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British Invasion: iPhone to Surpass Nokia as Dominant Mobile Browser in UK

Fortune is quoting Microsoft VP of Specialized Devices and Applications Group (whatever the hell that is), who indicates the software giant may be open to developing applications for iPhone.

“It’s really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone, to the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in that environment, we’re actually in the process of trying to understand that now.”

The thought of Microsoft software running on iPhone is sobering enough, but even more so when you consider the company’s own mobile platform, Windows Mobile, competes directly with iPhone. Fear the fruit.

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Snowballs in Hell: Microsoft May Develop Software for iPhone

iPhone users can now more easily access and update their Twitter feeds thanks to Twitter’s efforts to improve support for mobile browsers, including Safari. Now when you access Twitter.com from your iPhone, you are greeted with a mobile friendly version of the service instead of the standard “pinch me please” desktop version.

Finally I can inform my followers of important moments in day. “I’m eating a ham sandwich, sitting on the john.”

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That’s What She Twittered: New Twitter Mobile Shows iPhone LUV

Analysts are like Tarot card readers with MBAs, making speculative predictions based on little more than the direction of the wind and bird migration patterns. They follow a similar marketing practice too – the first reading is free, but the second will cost you, and cost you.

The brain trust at Gartner Research, a firm whose name is legendary in “We predicted this all along” market research, has arrived at the astounding postulation that Apple’s plans to incorporate enterprise-class features into iPhone will make the device a viable corporate tool.

Principal analyst Ken Dulaney gave his best Jean Dixon sound bite, stating that enterprise features “will open a huge volume of business users” for Apple. The man is a genius.

Of course, this is the same firm who said just last year that iPhone wasn’t ready for business, so take their conclusions as I always do – with a grain of salt and a shot of whiskey.

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Gartner Declares iPhone Ready for Business, Promises More Obvious Predictions

The Flash drama continues, with more twists and turns than a California highway. It looks as though iPhone may be getting native Flash support after all, if dragged kicking and screaming. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen spoke to reporters during a conference call…

“Well, you really believe that Flash is synonymous with the Internet, and frankly, anybody who wants to browse the Web and experience the Web’s glory really needs Flash support. We were very excited about the announcement from Windows Mobile–adoption of Flash on their devices–and the fact that we’ve shipped 0.5 billion devices now, non-PC devices. So we are also committed to bringing the Flash experience to the iPhone, and we will work with Apple. We’ve evaluated the SDK. We can now start to develop the Flash player ourselves, and we think it benefits our joint customers. So we want to work with Apple to bring that capability to the device.”

Do let’s pretend that Steve Jobs earlier comments were some kind of smokescreen intended to mask Apple’s true motives, while backdoor negotiations with Adobe unfolded. That makes sense, doesn’t it? No, I didn’t think so either.

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Blocked Calls: Adobe Building Flash Support for iPhone? For Real this Time. Honest. We Swear. Cross Our Hearts

Steve Jobs might want to look in his rearview mirror, because there’s a hulking eighteen-wheeler barreling down the highway, belching thick black smoke, and crushing every vehicle in its path.

The software giant is working with long time rival Adobe to bring Flash player Lite (yes, THAT Flash player) to Windows Mobile devices, while simultaneously incorporating support for its own SilverLight technology. The move will give Microsoft a leg up over Apple, making its mobile platform more web 2.0 friendly in supporting these ubiquitous web animation and runtime environments.

Apple has valid reasons for eschewing Flash lite, so it claims, like poor performance and a not-so-much like a desktop experience. Even if valid, it’s never a checkmark in your favor when competing products support features yours does not.

Wake up, Apple. You’re in Micrsoft’s crosshairs now.

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Microsoft Puts the Squeeze on Apple with Flash, Silverlight Support for Windows Mobile

Avi Greengart, Research Director for market research firm Current Analysis, says Adobe’s Flash player performs poorly on iPhone, in its current incarnation, proving more trouble than it’s worth.

“There is no question the iPhone delivers a compelling Web experience and there are good reasons to want Flash in there, but Flash Lite wouldn’t give you the Web experience you’re looking for.”

The jixt of this statement, as we’ve known for some time, is that Adobe’s Flash Lite player comes with a high resource overhead, taxing the processor as well as battery life. Or so Apple claims. Forces are at work behind the scenes to develop a more optimized solution to bring native Flash content to iPhone users.

Much as I sometimes lament the absence of Flash, I don’t see it as a crucial feature. So long as some method exists for scraping content from YouTube, as it does now. That said, having no Flash support is yet one more missing feature that Apple haters will use as fodder for flinging rotten fruit at the device.

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Flash Player Too Slow for iPhone, Says Some Guy