Disappointing. Disgusting. Shocked. Offended. You pick the negative emotion and we’re pretty much feeling it right now. I mean, how could they, right? How could Virgin Mobile Canada stoop so low…
…As to carry the Crackberry?
What? Oh, you thought we meant the blatantly misogynistic, awkwardly pandering, positively Neaderthal-eque pseudo-sexual advertising that rankles the puritanical roots of Americans but barely raises an eyebrow across the pond in Europe?
Yeah, if Fake Steve were still around, he’d be all over this. Might even suggest who to call for a little competitive escalation.
All we can say is for shame Virgin Mobile Canada. For. Shame…
We had originally reported that the iPhone was the most popular camera phone on Flickr, the popular photo sharing website, way back in May, pre-3G. Well, it lost that title for a brief moment and only re-gained it recently. I’m only guessing but it probably had to do with the 3 million iPhone 3Gs that took the market by storm. Either way, the iPhone being the King of Flickr should force Apple to take notice and improve the camera already.
Where’s my auto-focus, zoom, better resolution, better lens, video, etc. !? I think Apple is severely underestimating the appeal of a great camera. Hopefully, they’ll recognize the iPhone Camera’s limitation and create an industry-leading device. We here at TiPb like to dream big.
What do you think?
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Update: Both MobileMe and Gmail seem to be back up and running. (I had to force quit Mail.app and restart it to get it functional again). Was this a DDoS attack? Brown-out in San Fran? Downtime while some changes to prevent DNS cache injection were made? The intertubes are on fire with rumors. Feel free to make up your own!
Yup, Apple’s on-again, off-again MobileMe service is currently off-again, at least as far as email is concerned. Poorly planned? Ill-conceived? Just plain cursed? Probably none of the above, but it sure can’t catch a break from the breakdowns, now can it?
Your MobileMe Mail is currently unavailable.
We apologize for this service interruption and are working hard to resolve the problem.
For more information, please refer to System Status on the MobileMe Support Page.
Et tu, blogger David G? Still MIA? (Or when you said later in the week you just didn’t mean that particular week? Le sigh.)
Meanwhile, Daring Fireball presents a very interesting comparison between the recently leaked memoranda of the two Steves, Jobs on MobileMe and Ballmer on Microsoft’s future. As a footnote, Gruber reveals the following:
Those Apple employees who are fortunate enough to work on the MobileMe team were treated to something extra: a 40-minute lecture from Jobs in Apple’s Town Hall theater, which lecture was, shall we say, slightly more profane. E.g. where the memo says “we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year”, in Jobs’s Town Hall address to the MobileMe team, it came out more like “You better [redacted] fix it by the end of the year”. Paraphrasing, but you get the picture.
I do! Let’s hope they did, can, and will.
(Though in all fairness, I should reveal that my primary account, Gmail IMAP has been positively frustrating for me for the last few weeks — far more than MobileMe (since I was not a 1%). Multiple certificate errors, time-outs, etc. to the point where “unable to contact imap.gmail.com” is becoming my “you’ve got mail!” — is IMAP really that hard, or are the megacorps taking us out for a little messaging ride?)
Human on iPhone crime is out of control. First they were shooting iPhones. Now what? Beating them to death? Once again, I have to believe these iPhones were drugged first, otherwise I’m certain the beatings would have decidedly gone the other way. BAM! Mike Tyson overhand right. POW! Georges St-Pierre tackle. BOOM! Steve Jobs MobileMe-drop for the kill!
Check out Gizmodo for the whole mellow-harshening gallery… if you can stand it.
Apple (along with Palm, RIM, and the usual suspects) are all being sued by litigation happy patent-portfolio’er, WiAV Solutions, about whom Engadget Mobile says:
The company that doesn’t make anything or even have a web site, but files so many patent lawsuits that some companies have taken to pre-emptively filing suits for declaratory judgment against it.
Must be something super-non-obvious, remarkably novel, spankingly applicable, and about which there couldn’t possibly be any prior “art”, right? Turns out not so much:
Detecting the difference between silence and voices, mobile device power management, and altering music to accommodate voices.
Congratulations on officially joining my all-time favorite patent suits like “tabs in a GUI”, “display of a URL adjacent to window displaying contents of URL”, and “transfer of file over network”. But wait, could it get any more ludicrous? You betcha! Not only is WiAV suing, but it sounds like its forcibly asking the court to join its licensor, Mindspeed, into the suit as well.
Good luck with that.
The iPhone already supports standards-based POP and IMAP email accounts, and as of 2.0 supports the big-in-business Exchange format accessed via ActiveSync. But much as Microsoft would like to completely own everythat space, there are several competing corporate communication soluting out there, including RIM/Blackberry’s North American powerhouse, Novell’s Groupwise (which I’m still not convinced Chad didn’t just make up…), and of course, good old Lotus Notes.
Well, if you’re in the latter camp, then IBM has some great news for you:
Bring IBM® Lotus® Domino® email, calendar, and contacts to your Apple iPhone. Planned for delivery in 2008 as IBM Lotus iNotes™ software, Lotus Notes data will combine with the flexibility and connectivity of the Apple iPhone. To be built on the time tested IBM Lotus Domino Web Access infrastructure, users will be able to quickly access email, calendars, and contacts through the rich Apple iPhone user experience.
(For some interesting background on this, check out Apple Insider)
Hey, maybe this news, along with some more accurate analysis, will get Gartner to approve the iPhone for slightly less limited enterprise use! Granted, it’s not the “first class experience” Windows Mobile offers, but it does provide significant — and differentiating — value in its own right (wide screen, multi-touch, media, easy to use, easy to develop for, etc.) which may just suit people in some types of businesses just a wee bit better.
But I digress. Anyone out there using Lotus Notes right now? Eager to try it on your iPhone? If so, how does the functionality look to you? Anything killer? Anything a deal breaker? Let us know!
So you’ve been running on iPhone 2.0 (hopefully, 2.0.1) for a while now. And you’ve all enjoyed the plethora of quality apps at the App Store, but did you know how well the App Store was actually doing? Well, according to one of those old reputable printing press companies, pretty darn well.
The App Store holds a current pace of earning a revenue of over a million dollars a day, which roughly translates to $360 million a year. Steve Jobs issued some resounding statements about the App Store saying,
“This thing’s going to crest a half a billion, soon,” he added. “Who knows, maybe it will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time.” and also said, “I’ve never seen anything like this in my career for software”
Though the WSJ doesn’t believe Apple will be able to derive much profit in this current 70/30 split since they only make enough money to cover credit card transactions and maintaining the App Store itself, Jobs believes that having such a direct pipeline of apps will be able to sell more iPhones much like how iTunes enabled more sales of iPods.
So yeah, that App Store is doing great. Who would have thought an easy-to-use, iTunes-like interface would revolutionize the mobile software industry? Best of luck catching up RIM, WinMob, Android..
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It’s time for iPhone App Avalanche 4 and the avalanches are increasing in size and intensity as the App Store grows! There’s more new apps to showcase and plenty of free stuff as well. Pull up a chair, hook up your iPhone, and start downloading! Read on for App Avalanche 4!
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Peeved that your iPhone 3G didn’t come with a dock? Annoyed that the dock is just too, plain? Well, if you want to add some color, creativity, and character, there probably isn’t anything better than a Steve Jobs Dock! The detail is amazing, the color is accurate, and the Steve Jobs Keynote pose is downright hilarious. Not to mention, it’s a bobblehead that works with both original iPhone and the iPhone 3G.
What would be even cooler is if you could rig Steve Jobs the Bobblehead to say “Boom” every time you insert your iPhone into the dock.
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Have you checked out our forums lately? The community is growing and the commentary is getting better and better each day. Unconvinced? I’ll bring out a thread, a post, a topic, or a comment directly from the forums and post it on TiPb’s front page every week to prove it to you. We here at TiPb love the interplay, quid pro quo, repartee with our readers, so step up your creativity and tighten up your diction, you could be next!
This week we have a question raised by Wegmans wondering if we love our iPhone’s soft keyboard. Answers range from resounding yes’s to an almost as good as my old phone. Surprisingly, many of the folks who came from Blackberry and Treo have little complaints about the iPhone’s keyboard and have actually gotten quite attached to it.
AutoCorrect? Best thing ever. No physical buttons? Saves ourselves from the Blackberry thumbs! However, the forums are still looking for a universal landscape keyboard.
Either way, the iPhone’s keyboard is a great implementation of a soft keyboard. For those who haven’t tried it, try it out! And for those who have, do you like the iPhone’s keyboard?
Go check out Wegmans’ thread on if you like the iPhone’s keyboard!
