Articles by Dieter Bohn

You already know that the iPhone offers up the real internet, not the “Watered-down, Mobile Version, kinda sorta looks like the internet, internet.” What you may not have realized is that the “real internet” basically consists of 3 parts:

1. iPhone news (we got ya covered)
2. Porn
3. Pictures of cats with amusing captions (in Kitty Pidgin)

Well, folks, the third part of the real internet is now optimized for your iPhone, in the form of i can has cheezburger, iPhone edition. What better way to show off your new toy to your friends than with cute asplosions? (via TUAW)

My favorite innovation on the Treo 700w was touchscreen photo speed dial. Instead of a list of names, you have a grid of faces you can tap to call. The iPhone, mysteriously, doesn’t take advantage of its gigantic and gorgeous screen to do the same. That’s a pity, too, because I can recognize the face of the person I want to call much more quickly than I can their name.

No More!

Step 1: Make a bunch of thumbnails of the faces of your favorite contacts. Upload them to a server (or Flickr, or wherever) and copy their image addresses.

Step 2: Go grab use the little hack here to add speed dial links to your home screen, but as the “Advanced” instructions suggest, paste the URL of your favorites’ face thumbnails (from step one) onto the end. (No Jailbreak required)

Step 3: Move all your cute photo speed dial faces onto their very own Home Screen page. Voila, you can now hit the home button, swipe over to your speed dial screen, and there are up to 16 faces per page you can dial by tapping.

(Thanks to rener for the inspiration!)

There’s a lot of talk today (here and here for starters) about the iPhone’s sales numbers from Apple’s quarterly conference call and how they didn’t match up with AT&T’s numbers from their conference call. The gist is that Apple sold 3.7 million iPhones and AT&T had about 2 million iPhone subscribers. So where are the rest?

Of course, many were sold overseas, but most people very much doubt that Apple sold 1.7 million of them. Which has led to speculation that as many as a third of all iPhones have been purchased and unlocked. That’s a lot, and it strikes me as an unrealistically high number. Naturally, we’d like Apple to help us understand this riddle. Naturally, we are sure they won’t. Fake Steve Jobs agrees:

Why not just break out the numbers and share more information and tell Toni Sacconaghi and his pals on Wall Street exactly where all the iPhones are? Well, we’re not going to do that. We’re not going to break out any numbers or share any more information on this topic or try to explain how we arrived at the 4 million figure. We’re just not going to do it, so stop asking.

It could be that Apple’s number includes those shipped out to AT&T (and international carriers) for them to sell but haven’t actually sold yet. It could be that hundreds of thousands of people bought iPhones just because they’re really shiny. Whatever it is, it’s clear that a significant number of these un-accounted for iPhones have been unlocked.

Looks like our set of Native iPhone Apps articles are relevant again for a whole swath of people, as it looks like version 1.1.3 has not only been Jailbroken, but that Jailbreak is now live for both Windows and Mac. This comes after some drama yesterday regarding whether or not the impending Jailbreak release was some sort of prank. The Unofficial Apple Weblog, as is often does, had the last word and said they knew it was coming, and come it did.

So, 1.1.3′ers, will you be (re)Jailbreaking your iPhone?

We’re all familiar with the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution, right? The one that states that you’re secure from “unreasonable searches and seizures?” Right, well, we all know from our TV-watching that the key word there is “unreasonable.” Turns out that the most-common of police encounters, the traffic stop, could potentially open you up to having your smartphone searched.

Basically, if the police officer arrests you for real, he or she can then search your person — including your iPhone — without a warrant:

Adam Gershowitz, an assistant professor at the South Texas College of Law, raises an interesting point about the iPhone and similarly tricked-out mobile devices: If the police stop you and find some legal cause to arrest you, they are probably free, under judicial interpretations of the Fourth Amendment, to search the device. – Machinist

That’s a scary thought, actually, because it’s one thing to search a car, but to search an iPhone is tantamount to searching your entire life. Think about it: email, browsing history, received phone calls, all of it.

Of course, there’s always the chance that when this gets tested for real in court, that court will set a precedent that will overturn this. As of right now, though, the ability to do that search is the best interpretation of current law.

What do to? Apparently if you just set a screen-lock password, a warrant is required. I’m not just saying this as a PSA to criminals, either — setting the screen lock is a good idea all around. If your iPhone gets stolen, welcome to the special circle of hell reserved for those whose identity has been stolen. Not. Fun. (and no, I’m not just talking about iPhones, either.)

So that screen lock is a hassle, but it might just be worth it, no?

Music by Pete Miser. Video put together by Meritt Duff. Found by TUAW and Merlyn. Desire to write songs and videos about a cell phone by Apple, of course.

Mr. iPhone demo used to creep me out, but now I think I have a crush on him.

Thanks to this excellent how-to and a surprisingly little time with Photoshop, we now have our very own custom Home Screen Icon for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. If you’re here with your version 1.1.3 iPhone (or iPod Touch with the $20 upgrade), just click that “plus button” at the bottom and add us to your Home Screen. The iPhone’s bookmark tool is even smart enough to grab the first two words from our title – “iPhone News,” which seems like a pretty good indication of what you’ll find when you tappy tappy that little icon.

The only bummer that I can see is the iPhone is a little overly-aggressive in adding the “glass gradient” curve on the top of the icon, but we dealt with it as best we could.

Be a cool kid and add us to your Home Screen!

Two fun little hacks for your iPhone this morning. The first comes from Nate True (aka iPhone genius), it’s a neat little way to get speed dial icons on your Home Screen. The trick? 1.1.3 allows you to add web shortcuts to the home screen and Safari allows web pages to initiate calls (with your permisison). Two great tastes that taste great together. True tells you how:

So the new iPhone 1.1.3 firmware allows you to put icons on your home screen for websites, but I know many of us want to put phone numbers on there for a Speed Dial screen.

I’ve put a little hack together that lets you have a (somewhat) speedy speed dial icon. There’s no jailbreaking required for this one – it can all be done using Apple-approved Web Clip creation. –

The next dialing hack is for those of you with jailbroken iPhones. This is actually one of the better apps I’ve seen for this gray market – real Voice Dialing on your iPhone. It’s done up by Makayama and it’s $27.95. You’ll need to add them as a source yourself:

To get a free tryout, start Installer on your iPhone, press Sources, then Edit, then Add. Next, type http://tinyurl.com/2t8cax

…It might seem a little crazy to be paying for an iPhone app when the SDK is just around the corner, though. Nate True himself makes it clear that 1.1.3 takes more steps toward safely-installed apps by reducing the number of programs that run as “root.” But if you’re jonesing for voice dial and have money to burn, you have that option now.

If you hadn’t heard, Apple was the lone bright point in a sea of bad financial news yesterday¹. Their last quarter was stupendous. revenue grew 35% year over year, total profit grew about the same amount. Apple’s profit margin even grew by a couple of ticks. They’re earning more revenue than ever and they’re making more profit off of that revenue than ever:

The Company posted revenue of $9.6 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.58 billion, or $1.76 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $7.1 billion and net quarterly profit of $1 billion, or $1.14 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 34.7 percent, up from 31.2 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 45 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

What spurred this growth? Why, selling more gadetry, of course. Macs were way up, but check out these iPhone sales numbers:

Apple shipped 2,319,000 Macintosh® computers, representing 44 percent unit growth and 47 percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 22,121,000 iPods during the quarter, representing five percent unit growth and 17 percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone™ sales were 2,315,000. –

…For those of you keeping score, that means Apple sold only 4,000 more Macs than they did iPhones. That will change this quarter, I’m sure.

When I think about it, the most surprising thing about Apple’s turnaround since the return of Steve Jobs is how long it took them to get into making things like the iPod and the iPhone. Apple’s strength has always been making hardware and software seamless work together in a way that creates just a little joy for the user. Limiting that skill to just computers (well, and the Newton) as Apple basically used to do seems just plain crazy now.

Seems like every time I wrestle with a gadget lately – from a Cable Box to a Camcorder, somewhere in the back of my mind I’m thinking “Apple could so this better.” Not “I could do this better,” mind you. Apple could. I’m willing to bet that there are millions like me right now.

…And that’s as good an explanation as any for why they just had their best quarter ever.

¹ – No, I’m not a financial analyst, but even that rate cut seems to have been taken as a sign that things are bad — a desperate measure.

I spend a healthy portion of my time at Macworld doing the following:

1. Thinking about Google’s fixation on the iPhone and
2. Looking for a really good iPhone dock / Alarm clock.

…Keeping the iPhone in a dock by your bed seems like a no-brainer – charges it up, lets you play a song from your library to wake you up, maybe even lets you catch a quick movie before you fall asleep. Right? Apparently it does all of those things except the last part – the falling asleep part:

A study in Sweden and the United States finds that using a cell phone just before bedtime interferes with sleep patterns. – study

The deal is that the radiation from cell phone radios gets into your head and prevents you from getting into a deep sleep pattern. If it ain’t deep sleep, it don’t count. So maybe leaving that dock on the desk, next to your computer, and far from your sensitive squishy brain is the right idea after all.