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Although Editor Emeritus (and Phone different podcaster) Mike Overbo lost his mind when over the Spore demo during the iPhone SDK Keynote, but yours-truly was much more excited over Super Monkey Ball. Why, well, for many of the same reason that developer Ethan Einhorn gave to GameCyte: you can pick it up and play it without having to think about the interface. I’ve whiled away many an hour directing little crystal balls down checkered ramps towards that little flag. Also: monkeys.

In any case, the above video is a bit of a recap of what we we saw during the keynote. However, there’s one bit that bears repeating:

When we started on that two-week trek to get Super Monkey Ball up and running on the iPhone in demo form, it was incredibly easy to work with the SDK. We were working with the development team that had not worked with Cocoa and OpenGL, and it’s pretty astonishing that they were able to make that level of performance happen that quickly. That bodes really well for what we can do in the future on a device like that.

Developing apps for the iPhone is easy and therefore we can and should expect all sorts of great games popping out. So we won’t be limited to Quake on the iPhone, because porting fun games like Super Monkey Ball is easy enough that a developer would be crazy not to do it.

What casual games are you hoping for on the iPhone? Answer here and be entered for a chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card!

Roughly Drafted, the passionate little partisan site that could, is back with a look at why Apple would choose to license ActiveSync from Microsoft while at the same time championing more open standards like IMAP and CalDAV with Leopard Server.

Having suffered under the anti-trust encrusted fist of Microsoft previously with both Excel (originally launched on Mac) and Internet Explorer (which at one time shipped with OS X) to name but two examples of Redmond’s penchant for partnercide, Roughly Drafted explains how licensing a technology is different than licensing an an application. Namely, if you rely on a partner to deliver an application as your solution, your customers grow accustomed to and invested in that solution, and you become dependent on and, ultimately subject to, that partner (and the brutish manipulations thereof). However, if you license a technology and build your own application, your customers see only your front end and if ever a partner attempts to surreptitiously bury twelve inches of pointy steel between your shoulder blades, you can always license a competing technology — or switch the back-end to your own, already existing, technology.

In fact, as Apple develops its own Mac OS X Server integration with the iPhone, and develops tight integration with its own .Mac services on a subscription basis, it can wean iPhone users from Exchange Server toward its own products using the powerful incentive of much lower infrastructure and per user costs. However, there won’t be any customers to entice if the iPhone doesn’t first ship support for Exchange.

Having lived and worked through the rise of Internet Explorer 6 and the amazing power, convenience, security nightmare, and proprietary market-grab it created, and the even more compelling, insidious sameness of Exchange Server, I both appreciate the concepts Microsoft brought to the business table and detest the method in which they brought them. Why?

Communication needs to be free (as in freedom from single-vendor lockdowns) and small and medium sized businesses need the ability to be able to move to and from whichever service provides the best capability at the best price to suit their needs. IMAP IDLE and CalDAV may not be the solution, but they’re part of getting away from the problems of Exchange, and if the iPhone can sneak them into more IT shops, and into the mindsets of more be-fud’ed IT departments, then sneak away!

What do you think?

AT&T is doing the right thing (never mind that this most was likely something that they were forced into). Namely, they’re going to pro-rate the cancellation fee that you have to pay if you leave your 1 or 2 year plan early:

Starting on May 25, AT&T’s new and renewing wireless customers who enter into one- or two-year service agreements will no longer be required to pay a single, flat early termination fee. Instead, that fee, which is $175, will be progressively lowered by $5 during each month, every month, for the term of the contract – [Mobiledia]

Good news, although it doesn’t apply to those of us who are already on a contract with them — just new contracts. They had announced this back in October, but now we know when it will actually start. Good on you, AT&T.

This here be a Wait-a-Thon post, comment for a chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card! Speaking of Wait-a-Thon, we missed a couple of weeks there because yours-truly was discombobulated by covering the CTIA conference for our sister site, WMExperts. Let me therefore congratulate two winners: nickbw and DaffyHercules!

So we have AT&T promising to be more “open,” we have the iPhone changing how they handle activation and rate plans generally, and now we have them offering a more reasonable cancellation fee if you need to get out. What else would you like to see AT&T change?

It’s that season again. No, not football — Apple iPhone rumor release season. The fans smell 3G. The pundits smell 3G. The press smells 3G. And boy do the analysts smell them some Apple cooked 3G.

Risking feet to fall firmly in mouth, the bold, brash predictions are now coming hot and heavy. The rumors are flying faster than Vista downgrades. Everyone knows its coming. (It’s gotta be coming!) And while no one outside the Jobspod knows precisely when, the interweb pools are filling up fast and furious.

Starting now and working back, Macrumors does some myth-on-math and determines that “Apple will announce before the FCC leaks” amounts to a 6 week shipping window. So if Apple announces today, and the iPhone 3G shows up in the FCC database tomorrow, it could be shipping as soon as late May. If it announces in June, then it could clear FCC by July/August.

Uncle Walt, the Wall Street Journal’s own Mac Daddy, went and brought’nd’it saying we’ll see the iPhone 3G within 60 days. That’s early June.

iPod Observer brings us a pic of what may be the 3G iPhone in the wild, all dressed up in glossy Vader black. The iPod Nano fatty pics leaked online immediately prior to launch, could this be another breach of the nigh-impenetrable Apple vault? If so, a special Jobsnote would have to be around the corner… Like WWDC?

Every Apple-site and their feed server have been reporting wide spread shortages of the current iPhone at Apple Stores, and a longer-than-usual wait of 5-7 days for shipping online. A sign of inventory clearing ahead of a new release? Despite denials, Apple’s done that before. But Roughly Drafted disagrees, believing its simply an incredible increase in gray market demand around the globe.

AT&T Mobility’s CEO may or may not be part of the Jobsian inner-circle, but he’s saying their integrated product line will be 3G in a matter of months, and when pressed on the iPhone, he repeated his repetition repeatedly. A matter of months. June is certainly a month that matters. Unfortunately, so are July through December.

Shaw Wu of American Technology Research claims some inside checks on supply chains show an iPhone 3G heading our way in June or July, a quarter earlier than he believes was/is to be expected.

Macrumors also lays out their evidence and makes their case for a June release. And Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray agrees, and tosses in a lower-price iPhone, and a mind-boggling 45 million units prediction to boot.

Some EGDE 2.75 technology promises notwithstanding (now with half the slow!), Gartner’s Kim Dulany thinks Apple has already ordered 10 million OLED equipped iPhone 3Gs from their suppliers. Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek believes there’s 3G fire in the current out-of-stock Apple Store smoke signs.

Batting next-to-zero on current generation iPhone speculation also hasn’t stopped Digg’s Kevin Rose from stepping up to the plate and swinging for the sky with predictions for a June launch with built in GPS and iChat.

Whew! If that’s not enough 3G goodness for you, be sure to check out the Phone Different archives for more rumors, analyst expulsiveness, and general OMG 3G!!11 merriment.

Personally, I’ve taken WWDC as my pick for the iPhone 3G announcement pool. What’s your pick?

Pop quiz, hotshot:

You’re the top dog in smart phones with “push” email technology so killer people have likened it to crack. But last year a new kid showed up with a glitzy multi-touch interface and media to die for, and sucked all the buzz out of your room. What do you do? What. Do. You. Do?

If you answered, out innovate them, come up with next year’s “it” device, you’re correct. You’re also clearly (and unfortunately) not the brain-trust at RIM.

We’ve already talked about Apple licensing Microsoft’s ActiveSync, looking to eat into RIM’s Blackberry business dominance. We’ve even made fun of the new old-look Blackberry 9000 (yep, that’s the new BB pictures above. What, you thought it was the Meizu?). But this cuts deeper into the industry.

For years Palm pushed out tepid evolutionary designs. RIM, while having copied a little Palm look-and-feel at times, has made tentative flirtations, for good or for ill, with innovation in devices like the Pearl. For the most part, however, everyone has been content to regurgitate and duplicate. Everyone but the iPhone.

When Steve Jobs pulled the iPhone from his pocket at Macworld 2007 it was unlike anything we’d seen in smart phones before, but also instantly Apple. It was a revolution.

Palm needs to do this so badly the company hinges on it.

RIM does as well. Sure, they’re in great shape. They move tons of units to an enormous, addicted user base. They own the market. But they no longer lead it.

Copying Apple’s design is superficial but it’s a sign that RIM is following. They are going where Apple has been. They are surrendering mindshare and, in doing so, surrendering leadership of the market.

Sure, Apple competes with Apple. They cancelled the mega-popular iPod Mini only to release the super-mega-popular Nano. And they’ll push themselves on smart phones all alone if they have to. But every industry needs competition.

WinMob 7 is still vaporware and is also targeting where the iPhone was. That’s Microsoft’s MO. Palm’s Nova needed to be out 2 years ago, if not earlier. They’ve long ago lost the drive that made them the original innovator. That leaves RIM (and perhaps Nokia).

Hotshots, you need to do better.

[Jobs help us, we're making this an official Wait-a-Thon post! Leave a comment here for you chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card! In the meantime, congrats to last week's winner, Dyvim!]

Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

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Rumor gets reported there will be Flash on the iPhone. Rumor gets smashed. Rumor gets reported there will be unlimited music on the iPhone. Rumor gets smashed. Rinse and repeat.

What’s going on? Why aren’t we getting these stories straight?

Turns out maybe these stories weren’t meant to be gotten. Turns out maybe these stories were meant to get us.

There was a time when media really was the fourth estate, when it reported the news. In something akin to the scientific method, media observed what was going on in the grand experiment that is society, looked for pattern and flaw, then contextualized it, gave it form and flavor, and broadcast it by mule and truck and cable and fiber to those who wanted or needed to know.

Now media is entertainment and is competing with itself and other forms of entertainment for your attention and your dollar. One of the ways to compete is to get mysterious “un-named sources” to give you the highly prized “sensational headline”. And instead of digging for these sources and convincing them to come forward, the anonymous sources now trip and push past each other to get to the reporters first. Why? Because controlling the story is important. Information is power and spin is leverage.

Okay, soap-box, what does this have to do with the iPhone? Two interesting and very similar blog posts emerged recently shedding new light on both the Flash and unlimited music stories that have been all over the web lately. Let’s take a look:

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Do you use Apple’s .Mac Services? I do. I like the synchronization between my Macs; it really makes life easy. With the iPhone, I really get a lot of benefit. I can add a website, Calendar appointments, Address Book entry, etc on my iPhone and it gets synced across multiple machines.

So why can’t I access my iDisk on my iPhone? I realize actually creating documents might be a stretch, but at least an adherence to Apple’s own Human Interface Guidelines for iDisk on the iPhone via Safari should not be too hard. But why stop there. Why not an optimized view of my web-based .Mac Mail? Or Address Book?

I think it would be an awesome value for .Mac subscribers to get an optimized array of Apple’s services to the iPhone. They could start with their own Web App Gallery. What do you think? Would a tighter integration of Apple’s services with the iPhone make it that much more desirable?

It doesn’t have 3G. It doesn’t have true GPS. It doesn’t have instant messaging or 3rd party apps or even cut and paste. With all it’s current shortcomings, the iPhone is still a worthy “Swiss Army Knife” of smartphones that you can confidently take with you through airport security, on a plane, and throughout your trip as an excellent traveling companion. In fact, I’ll boldly exclaim that the iPhone is all that I could ask for in my travels and I really put it through it’s paces on a recent trip.

Read on about my trippin’ with my iPhone!

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Dual-sided, transparent, flip-capable iPhone Nano?

El Jobso and Co. might just be exploring the possibility according to a recent patent filing unearthed, as usual, by the folks at Apple Insider.

Some of the juicy details include:

“capacitive array element [that] may be a dual-sided panel that is capable of sensing touch from either side and sending signals indicative of the touches to a host device (e.g., a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a digital music player or a mobile telephone unit).”

Of course, many Apple patent filing simply disappear into the dim, dank vaults of 1 Infinite Loop while others show up in ways or products we never could have guessed — but that certainly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try!

I’ll admit, the idea doesn’t hold much appeal to me, or to those still waiting for their big-apps iTablet Safari Pad, but I’ve learned never to underestimate Johnny Ive and Cupertino’s finest. If anyone could make this little miracle as functional as it is “lick-able”, it’s them.

What do you think? Does this give us any hard insight into a next-gen iPhone? How does the idea of a translucent touch screen grab you? Is a flip phone a great idea or just another point of failure in the waiting?