Articles by Mike Overbo
According to the answers to questions posed of 1175 people surveyed by Peanut Labs, a bunch of ‘Generation Y’ kids are hot to trot for the iPhone action. The most popular mobile on the holiday present list is the iPhone, and Apple is on the list of top brands (which were Apple, HP, Nintendo, and Amazon). Another interesting nugget is that those kids figured to spend $300 on gadgets this holiday season.
Here’s a quick N95 vs. iPhone video feature showdown. As you can see above, Dieter of WMExperts confirms he’s begun using the Nokia N95 as the little mini-extension to the Smartphone Round Robin. There were a lot of calls for us to try something with Symbian. I hope we give it a full turn the next time around.
figure 1: what it is now and what they claim it will be
With the recent fake stirring up GPS news, who would have thought that real GPS news would be such a short hop away. It turns out that engineering design firm Partfoundry is working on making real GPS for the iPhone, and they figure that it will be available sometime in February, right about when the SDK comes out. As it stands, they say that you’ll need a jailbroken iPhone, but who really knows what will happen once that SDK comes out, right? It’s altogether possible that they’ll be able to certify the GPS serial device if they decide to go the extra mile. Extra bonus: no jpeg compression artifacts and a reasonable-proof-that-it-actually-isn’t-a-hoax video.
Fortune Magazine’s Top Ten Reasons That IT Departments Won’t Support The iPhone. In other news, Wall Street Journal’s Ten Point Rebuttal To That Stupid Fortune Article.
Some of the best news that I’ll hear all day. If you’re using the latest version of iLife and apply the GarageBand update (version 4.1.1), you get the ability to create and edit custom ringtones. They’ve posted up a set of instructions over at apple.com for anyone to peruse. The blurb you see in Software Update is terse but to the point:
“This update improves overall stability and addresses issues with file export to iPhone.”
One has to presume that the issue with regards to file export to iPhone was that you couldn’t do it beforehand.
This may well be the finest news that I read all morning. It forces me to spend a few hours playing around with GarageBand today, I want to wake up to something new tomorrow. (via iLounge)
With the original iPod, sales didn’t take off until the iPod was made compatible with Windows. If you believe the stats from the polls from AppleInsider, sales for the iPhone won’t take off until it’s compatible with Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft’s popular groupware server for small and medium businesses. And lo! Apple has posted a job listing for someone capable of adding Outlook and Exchange functionality to the iPhone.
There are a bunch of nice 3rd party apps cropping up for hacked iPhones. I haven’t been posting them individually since I’m not sure who out here really has use for a SCUMM or AGI interpreter, but I can hide morsels like that inside of bigger articles. I love seeing hacked apps come through that really deliver on the gaming promise of the iPhone.
App number one is by Drunknbass: it’s a video capture app. Their proof-of-concept demo records 5 seconds of video at 10fps, but they expect the final version to record unlimited-except-for-free-storage-remaining video at 30fps. All that remains is for them to optimize their code. If they can hit 30fps, that will be a very nice capability added to the iPhone.
App number two is more for the proof of concept. It’s hard enough to control directions without tactile feedback on the NES emulator with just a directional pad and four buttons. I can’t imagine how tough it would be to try and do controls with double directional pads, 4 triggers, and 6 buttons. But, it can be done, and it is therefore awesome. The PS1 emulator will last as a timeless paean to developer ZodTTD’s awesomeness. That and the GameBoy Advance emulator he wrote.
App number three is scummVM, which one can use to play a bevy of old Sierra LucasArts games of years past. Some of these games were the most highly acclaimed games of their time. They actually wear well with time, I’d say. If I ever get the hacking iPhone back from a certain Canadian editor, this one will actually be one of the first hacks installed. (image credit: Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo).
I saw this blurb on Daring Fireball, and I thought it was kind of funny.
“I will say that if you are impressed by the “touch features” in the iPhone, you’ll be blown away by what’s coming in Windows 7.”
He puts “touch features” in quotes of course to drive the point home, a useful trick of rhetoric I suppose. The only time I ever read “blown away” is when it’s being used as PR. I no longer trust the phrase, since no one says it organically. This has all the makings of a PR plant if you ask me.
The funny thing is, for all I know, the blurb is true. Maybe Windows 7 is awesome and stuff. Gruber of Daring Fireball notes that they’re comparing their desktop OS to a phone, point for Gruber. PR deflated. The second bit that he doesn’t address is this: Windows 7 is going to be released in the distant future. The iPhone is available now. It had damn well better be more impressive than what we see in the iPhone. If they couldn’t beat the touch technology in half a decade, why would it be compelling for anyone to use it, right?
So David Bailey of Goldman Sachs, they do a report that says Apple will be making two iPhones next year. One of the iPhones will just be a storage bump, and it will be available in the first half of the year. The other iPhone supposedly will be a newer design, with maybe a new form factor and look and maybe not. He says the new iPhone design…
“have a similar form factor as the current version although it could have a different look and will probably include 3G capability.”
An iPhone with a storage bump, that’s some news. The fact that there’s an iPhone 3G coming next year… not news. Not news at all, really. Both Steve Jobs and Randall Stephenson have confirmed it. Rumors of the 3G iPhone have been around since a few days after it was announced almost a year ago. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. rolls dice. 32.
UPDATE: this rumor has been proven false by iLounge as of 12/14/2007.
So yeah, there’s some crud news. I wonder if we’ll ever be able to safely unlock the device. I’d like to be able to give this iPhone to my wife someday, but she’s not with AT&T.
