In the continuing saga of the launch that’s more and more like a sputter (though hopefully not a full crash and burn, right Apple?), MobileMe is reporting:
1% of MobileMe members cannot access MobileMe Mail. We apologize for any inconvenience.
TUAW is saying that the problem might be (or getting ready to become), larger?
Personally, I’m having NO PROBLEMS whatsoever. Email, fine. Push, fine. Web access, fine.
How about you?
Is the faulty launch making everyone hyperaware and quick to find (and post) problems? Or is MobileMe really cursed by scaling bugs?
Between the time you click a link and a web page finishes loading on your iPhone, there are many factors that ultimately decide just how fast that process will be, including connection speed (2.5 G EDGE/3G HSDPA/WiFi) CPU speed, and rendering engine. Like desktop Safari, Mobile Safari uses Apple’s open source WebKit rendering engine, and it seems like for 2.0, WebKit has gotten its turbo on, especially in handling Javascript. Says Daring Fireball:
For all the hubbub regarding the new App Store, most “iPhone software” runs in the web browser. But improvements in WebKit performance often help native iPhone app performance, too — a slew of my favorite native iPhone apps have built-in WebKit browsers (e.g., NetNewsWire, Twitterrific, Instapaper, and Cocktails). When WebKit performance improves, any app that uses WebKit improves, and WebKit improved a lot between iPhone 1.1.4 and 2.0.0
The original iPhone on 1.0 was already fast compared to some 3G phones because of the speed of its CPU and the optimization of its WebKit engine. Now it’s getting silly fast. And I don’t think we’ve even gotten the extra nitro from the new Safari 4 and SquirelFish tech yet either?
Check out Daring Fireball for the graphs and stats…
MacRumors is reporting that tonight’s financial results from Apple aren’t going to contain a whole lot of crunchy iPhone goodness. The news is based on a Bloomberg report that points out that Apple’s last quarter ended before the iPhone 2.0 software update was available, Apple doesn’t count those sales towards revenue. Likely if they had, they might have had to go all Sarbanes-Oxley on us and charge for that update. That might be fine for iPod owners, but iPhone owners have had enough of hidden costs lately.
The lack of iPhone info doesn’t look to put much of a damper on the earning call, though, as the high-margin Mac has been selling quite well (especially in laptop form). If you still want to listen in for that, Apple has a webcast set up for 5pm Eastern.
UPDATE: Pawnage has been updated to address some of the problems users faced over the weekend, including better discovery of the boot loaders, creation of the devices folder, etc.
Original post:
Starting with the cryptic announcement “We love Sundays. We think you will too”, the iphone-dev-team followed up quickly with the words many (including all those with unsupported countries and carriers) have been waiting clamoring for:
We’ll be releasing a more official announcement soon, but we wanted to get the tool out there. We sincerely hope you enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed making it 
Of course, the site’s being hit so hard right now the links are down, if pwnage is what you seek, and you want to jailbreak and unlock 2.0 on your original iPhone 2G, or jailbreak your iPhone 3G (I don’t believe unlock is supported yet on the 3G but will be following soon), new mirrors, seeds, rapidshares, etc. should be popping up.
JAR!
Proving once again that nothing enables crooks more than the internet, Gizmodo is warning iPhone app-seekers to steer clear of scams:
If you Google “iPhone apps,” the first thing that comes up is iPhoneApps.org, a site selling a bundle of “top 10″ iPhone applications for $25 using “safe PayPal.” Friends, there’s nothing safe about this site. It’s a scam. The iTunes App Store is the exclusive distributor of official iPhone apps, period. Don’t get your apps anywhere else. Tell your friends and family. If you’re savvy enough to use Installer.app, this PSA is not for you, obviously. [Thanks Blake!]
Remember, if something looks fishy, it probably is; seems too good to be true, is too good to be true; doesn’t come from Apple’s built-in-to-iPhone-and-iTunes App Store, is a big honking SCAM!
MobileMe: We’ve already told you about the less than silky smooth launch, the about-face on “push”, the exorcising of the “Exchange for the Rest of Us” slogan, and the apology letter from Apple that saw everyone — even people on the 2 month free trial — get a FREE month of service tacked on for good measure. What more could go wrong?
How about botching the credit card authorization process and having to issue a second apology letter and offer an additional FREE month?
Yup. Scaling any business, even one as tightly run and usually incredibly well managed as Apple is a nightmare, and it looks like what with simultaneous iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0, App Store, and MobileMe launches in up to 20+ countries at the same time is causing some cracks in Apple’s traditionally glossy shell.
Temporary bump or signs of things to come on the road to 10 Million iPhones and ever-growing Mac sales?
Full text of Apple’s second apology letter after the break!
Thanks to Ryan for sending it in!
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Confession: I use 1Password on the Mac a lot. I just used it to login so I could write this preview. I use it (synced via keychain) to my desktop at home, and I’ve used the various incarnations of the 1Password javascript bookmarklet on the original iPhone 2G. But now they’ve gone native, baby!
Internet security is a a huge concern, and with mobile internet security we ain’t seen nothing yet. Browsers the caliber of MobileSafari make it possible to do our transactions on the go, be it logging into our favorite social network, or doing some emergency banking on the road. But what if we get out of the cab and leave our iPhone behind? If it gets snatched? What if someone else takes possession of the tiny little device with all our precious logins on it?
Read on to find out!
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Interested in knowing what apps are being bought at the App Store? Well, lucky you, Medialets has estimates for your viewing pleasure. To determine demand, Medialets uses the number of ratings each app has and also takes into account the average rating of an app as well. So though it may not be the most accurate measurement, it’s still a fairly good barometer in determining app popularity.
So what rules the App Store? FREE. According to Medialets, 9 out of the top 10 most rated apps are FREE with the one exception being Super Monkey Ball. The usual suspects populate the top 10 list with the Remote, AIM, Facebook, etc. having the most ratings and more importantly, all entirely free.
Also, it looks like the best-selling apps are games which further proves that there is a market for iPhone gaming. Simple math concludes that Sega has already hit $5 million in sales for the first weekend. Though iPhone users tend to want free apps, it looks like they have no problem laying down the cash for good games.
Feel free to click over to Medialets to see the list for yourself. Do you think it’s accurate? Are apps on the top 10 all on your iPhone? Let us know!
ReadVia
This time last week Dieter was holding the line in Rhode Island, Chad was laying the video smack down in Ohio, Brian was too busy getting him some apps to even say where he was, and Casey was waiting for the lines to die down (good luck with that!)
Now it’s one week later and what’s going on? Well, thanks to Cherryhead25 (via Engadget) we know that the up-again/down-again FREE iPhone 3G AT&T WiFI access is currently up again.
That is, if you can find an iPhone 3G to buy! Seems Apple Insider has found yet another leaked AT&T memo that hints at major supply shortages in the US (welcome to the rest of the world!), leading to back-orders of 10 to 14 days.
Frequent Apple analyst Gene Munster, told Computerworld (via Ars Technica) the shortages might last a month!
“I bet we’ll see these problems for another two to four weeks. Early demand has been more than they expected [because] they knocked it out of the park on the first weekend. “There were outages last year, but not to this extent. This is a more sustained outage [than last year's], and the demand seems to be sustained.”
So the continued line ups would have us believe. And the hardest to find model? Nope, not the white one sported by Dieter or Chad! The 16GB iPhone Black… Wonder who got me one of those?
Surprise, surprise, the Free Software Foundation doesn’t want you to use an iPhone 3G. Less surprisingly, they don’t want to provide anything more than hyper-sensational, factually challenged reasons why you shouldn’t buy it:
Phone completely blocks free software. iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology. iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge. iPhone won’t play patent- and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora. iPhone is not the only option.
Sigh. Why is it those who demand freedom the most are usually the same ones who respect freedom of choice the least?
They go on to call Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, a snake-oil salesman who uses good design to pied-piper the dull mundane consumers into buying his shiny little toy, thus abandoning themselves drone-like to his evil, conspiratorial prison. Patronizing? Hypocritical? Black and white just one option too many for the FSF?
DaringFireball gives it a sentence. Allow me to give it a retort! (After the break)
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