The response to our iPhone 3G givaway has been tremendous. We love all the new action in our forums and we fully expect it to continue after this week — which is to say that The iPhone Blog adores you and will continue to treat you right, stay tuned for future contests in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, the time has come to announce the winner of our contest as chosen randomly via random.org. It’s iLoveiPhones! Check your inbox for an email from me and we’ll set you up with the $400 Gift Card we promised so you can be all set for Friday. Happy? Happy! Joy? Joy!
The air of contest finality is thick and we’re going to make it thicker still: this is our final Wait-a-Thon post: comment here for your last chance to win a $100 iTunes gift card. We’ll be sending out the final gift cards tonight (yes, it’s still tough what with Apple’s limit to the # we can buy in a month, but we figured out a workaround).
So congratulate iLoveiPhones (a username so good it’s gotta be kismet) and let us know: once the iPhone 3G is really and truly out, what sort of stuff do you want TiPb to cover in the coming weeks and months? Are apps king? Shall we pit the iPhone 3G against every other darn smartphone out there, one by one? Should we continue to bring you tips and tricks? What’ll it be?
Update: Looks like we made somebody’s day. 
I’m never gonna forget this day. Thanks so much to everyone here at the iPhone forum and the staff at the iPhone Blog. Couldn’t have done it without you guys. Being someone who’s never won anything, this is quite a day!
[Note: This a a Wait-A-Thon post! Comment on this post -- or any post tagged "Wait-a-Thon" -- for your chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card! Note that you must post with a valid and real email address so we can send you your prize -- no switching!]
More and more people are switching to the iPhone. They’re switching from Palm and Windows Mobile and Blackberry smartphones to the iPhone. They’re switching carriers to get the iPhone. And now that the next-gen iPhone 3G is all but upon us, and more and more regions are announcing their plans and pricing, the switching is only going to get faster and more furious.
To celebrate the switchers, those who dare to phone different, the iPhone Blog wants to help you get your content off your old, perhaps restrictive and outdates systems, and onto your shiny, new iPhone.
We’ve already gone over how to move your music, movies, and other media to iTunes, so now it’s time to get with the data: contacts, calendars, and email.
Read on to find out how!
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In our forums, dhp1080 asked an important question: since the iPhone 3G comes out on the 11th and whoever wins is surely going to be the sort to go out and buy one that day, doesn’t it make more sense to hold the drawing for the winner of our iPhone 3G giveaway a bit earlier?
Yes, yes it does.
So we’ll be holding our drawing for the iPhone 3G givewaway the morning of Wednesday, July 9th. Since Apple capitulated to the standard operating procedure for activating phones, we can’t just pick one up and send it to ya. So instead we’re going to do the following: overnight a gift card to an Apple Store (or AT&T store, if necessary) for 400 smackers. That will cover most of the necessary bases: people eligible for upgrade that want the 16gig device, people ineligible for upgrades, etc.
All of which means you have six days left to get yourself up to 20 (non-garbage) posts in our forums in order to qualify for the drawing. Get your full contest details here. Meanwhile, this also means that this week and the next are the last weeks for the iPhone 2.0 Wait-a-Thon giveaways as well.
We will wait-a-thon this post too. We already asked you what your plans were for July 11th. Now we want to know: Are you Exchanged-up at work? If so, will your IT Overlords put your iPhone on the network? If you’re not, will you be going push with Mobile Me? Will you forego push altogether?
AT&T has apparently been watching Roger’s desperate, retreat-action PR spin and thinking, “Yeah, let’s not do that.” So instead they’ve done something typical and something a little surprising. The typical thing: they’ve issued a press release with some crunchy details, including:
- Price for those ineligible to upgrade: $399 for the 8GB and $499 for the 16GB — these still require a 2 year agreement
- (Edit: whoops, misread the press release) — no-contract iPhone 3Gs will eventually be available at $599 and $699
- Minute Plans and FamilyTalk Details
- $18 upgrade fee (?!!?! Is this new?)
- Text options on top of your $30 data plan: $20 for unlimited, $15 for 1500, $5 for 200
- iPhone 2.0 software will be pre-loaded on iPhone 3G
- One more: Confirmed that they’ll start selling at 8am local time.
It’s a far cry from the simplicity of the original iPhone plan, but hey, at least we know now. AT&T apparently anticipated possible outcry, confusion, and panic, too. So here’s the nonstandard part: they’re released a series of videos on YouTube (first one is above) detailing what you need to do to be “iReady.” In addition to the above, there’s details on how to “make your original iPhone a hand-me-down” and how to “switch to AT&T for the iPhone 3G“
Alright, we have to Wait-a-Thon this. What do you think of the un-contracted prices? What do you think of the “upgrade fee?” Plans? Anybody else need a Xanax? Comment for your chance to win one of the last $100 iTunes Gift Cards we’re giving away.
As Rene mentioned over the weekend, the iPhone 2G has just turned one year old, we here at TiPb look to the future, though, and the future looks great. Great enough that we’re still planning on giving away an iPhone 3G to one lucky winner who’s made at least 20 posts in our iPhone Forums. Grab the full contest details here. Even better - when you visit the forums from your iPhone you should see a big ol’ “iPhone Version” that lets you interact with the forums via an iPhone interface. Don’t like it? The option to switch back is on the bottom of the iPhone version. What are you waiting for? Go on and register, post, and possibly win!
Also notable, you can now get your iPhone Blog six ways from Sunday. Ok, just two ways. You can now just punch in http://tipb.com into your browser to be brought to our main page. Easy, no? We’re not bringing out an iPhone version of the blog proper just yet — when we find / develop a verison that’s both fast and usable enough you’ll be the first to know.
Meanwhile, there’s only a couple weeks left now in the iPhone Wait-a-Thon, wherein we give away an iTunes Gift card worth $100 to somebody who’s commented on a Wait-a-Thon-tagged post (like, you know, this one). Details and rules here. Congrats to our latest winners, Tom, Mark, and Rafael. Your Gift Cards forthcoming just as soon as we convince Apple we’re not trying to defraud them by buying too many gift cards.
So with just a couple weeks left, we gotta ask: What’s your game plan for July 11th?. Rumor has it the launch will happen at 8 in the morning, so will you be camping out the night before? Sitting at home and pretending your iPhone 2G hasn’t been replaced with newer, faster, better, more? Answer in the comments for a chance to win!
So you might have heard that the iPhone 3G was going to retail for $199 from AT&T. I’ve already covered how it isn’t technically $199 for current iPhone users. And you heard Rene tell you that $199 is less than the notorious price DROP of the iPhone. Well TiPb has been wondering how Apple settled on dropping the price so dramatically.
And we settled on a story, kind of—more like a collection of reasons. We’ve analyzed the outcome back and forth, from reverse and from the beginning. And we think we have come to a conclusion (or at the very least, a conspiracy theory). In a purely speculative story, I’ll give you my opinion on how we reached $199.
Read on for Apple’s Path to $199
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[Note: This a a Wait-A-Thon post! Comment on this post -- or any post tagged "Wait-a-Thon" -- for your chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card! Note that you must post with a valid and real email address so we can send you your prize -- no switching!]
Back in April, sister site Crackberry.com posted a hypejacking article detailing their “Top 10 Reasons the iPhone was NO Blackberry“. Rather than a purely facetious “And thank Jobs for that!”, TiPb kept tongue firmly in cheek but responded with the “Top 10 Reasons the iPhone is Incomparable” and a more considered (meaning they didn’t let me write it!) 10 Reasons to Ditch Your Blackberry for the iPhone. (Though in my defense, I did think there was something the iPhone could learn from its Blackberry competitor…)
Now, however, as the iPhone 3G and its 2.0 software are poised to take on the enterprise market, where RIM is still clearly the sales (if no longer the mind) share leader, perhaps it is time. So, as Crackberry.com pushes their “Top 10 Reasons the iPhone is STILL NO BlackBerry“, let’s just strap our business plans on and see if there really is any way the Blackberry can compare to the iPhone 3G.
Read on to find out!
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Here at TiPb we’ve covered 10 things we thought Apple needed to fix in the next iPhone. With the anticipation of the iPhone 3G, the rumor mill went crazy with things like video conferencing, different models, etc. all but confirmed at one point in time. We even ran a bunch of our own predictions.
And well the Jobsnote was yesterday, and though we got the biggies: 3G, GPS, flush headphone jack, and a $199 price point, but we also missed out on a lot of stuff we thought we would be getting already.
Read on to see what we didn’t get in the iPhone 3G!
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If you haven’t heard, we’re planning on giving away an iPhone 3G as soon as it’s available. You can find the full details of the contest here, but the short version is this: if you made more than 20 posts1 in our iPhone Forums before July 22nd, we’ll enter you in the random drawing. Of course, Apple decided to throw us a curveball by requiring in-store activation — so we’ll either try to buy it the old fashioned way for ya or if push comes to shove we’ll get a way for you to get it on your own on our dime. Shame on your Apple.
The other thing that didn’t get released yesterday? The iPhone 2.0 software update. That means that the iPhone App Wait-a-Thon continues! Anytime you see a post tagged “Wait-a-Thon,” comment on it for that week’s drawing for a $100 iTunes gift card. Full deets on that contest are here. Plus we have new winners2:
You may have noticed this is a Wait-a-Thon post. So it is and here’s what we need to know: The new activation requirement isn’t all that great? What else isn’t all that great? Curved back got ya down? Does the lack of Cut and Paste cut you to the bone? Let us know to enter for the $100 gift card and go register and start chatting in the forums for a chance at the iPhone 3G!
1 Posts most not be spammy and worthless — at our discretion. This isn’t a democracy!
2 For those of you still waiting on your cards, we’ll get them out today (we hope). Turns out iTunes limits the number of Gift Cards you can buy in a day month!. Who Knew? Time to open up another account, we suppose.
Looks like we’re having load issues from all the traffic. We’re working it, bear with us! A reminder - no need to refresh this page, the widget updates automatically.
As promised, we’ll be starting up our MetaLiveBlog in just over an hour. We’ll be tracking all them other live blogs and posting updates and our thoughts and commentary real time. A few seconds behind, but way ahead in pithy commentary, eh? We should have one or two quick posts up before the excitement begins, but we’ll move this post back up to the top when it all gets going. Keep an eye out (like you needed us to tell you that).
We’re using the fancy widget above, so no need to refresh the page to get the updates. You can also submit your own comments and thoughts with the widget above and we can publish them as things get going.
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