There are a lot of rumors floating around that various carriers will get the 3G iPhone. Telefonica is one of the carriers usually named, Vodafone is usually the other. The rumors lately indicate that the next generation of iPhone, the iPhone 3G, will be available in May.
This blog post is basically for the record — I don’t buy it. These posts are all referencing obscure foreign blogs while the more traditional scoop-based mac sites remain silent on the matter (like thinksecret.com, for example). I don’t think Apple will replace the iPhone hardware that soon, either — part of me thinks that Apple will unveil a new iPhone right about the time that original purchasers near the end of their contracts. You know, selling stuff to their already-captive audience. Apple has hinted that maybe we’d maybe see something iPhoney with 3G in late 2008, and that’s probably still true.
There have been a lot of snarky comments about Apple in the press lately, usually from big media companies or other smartphone competitors. There are so many CEOs fiddling while Apple burns down their little walled cities, there’s enough of them for an orchestra. Or at least a hoedown.
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A savvy forum user over at MacRumors found some interesting new dialog box messages inside the new version of iTunes. These are probably the highlights:
"4320.082" = "The iPhone “^1” contains new voice memos. Would you like to move these voice memos to your iTunes library?";
"4320.073" = "Enabling the iPhone for disk use requires manually ejecting the iPhone before each disconnect, even when automatically syncing music.";
We’ve reported on the kinds of things that one finds inside of “localizable.strings” inside of new versions of iTunes before. To date, they haven’t predicted any new functionality. And yet, rumors of new features coming to the iPhone based on these strings persist. I want to believe too.
Google has announced Android, an open source Linux operating system designed to be very customizable by programmers. This isn’t the GPhone, the long-rumored Google Phone. Google is not making any of the actual phones, just the software. Android joins the ranks of myriad Linux development attempts: the new pro-sumer Palm OS, Access Linux Platform, Trolltech’s QTopia, OpenMoko, and others in Asia that are unknown to me.
I don’t know if this one will be more successful than the others, and they haven’t announced what it looks like, or what it will do. They just announced the software license and that it exists, or that it should in late 2008… but expect a bunch of publicity all over the place anyway. What I do know is that this effort will have a lot of money behind it.
Apple Legal has been busy in the past few days. Apple has officially begun protecting their iPhone Trademark. MY iTablet — once MYiPhone — changed their name on the advice of Jobs himself. And it appears that some of the other blog sites have now received contact letters from Apple lawyers.
In the U.S. system of intellectual property law, if you don’t actively protect your copyrights and trademarks, you lose them. Apple has to do this. I’m sure Apple isn’t excited about taking iPhone community sites to court, but they have to do what they have to do.
figure 1: Munir Kotadia of ZDNet Australia.
The good folks of MYiTablet found an article from ZDNet Australia where Munir Kotadia lambasts “greedy Apple users” for trusting anyone.
“There is no evidence to suggest that this particular jailbreak utility is at all malicious but how long will it be before copycat sites appear that have less honourable intentions?”
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Time has declared the iPhone their Invention of the Year.
“Yes, there’s been a lot of hype written about the iPhone, and a lot of guff too. So much so that it seems weird to add more, after Danny Fanboy and Bobby McBlogger have had their day.”
Nice! In one fell swoop, they’ve insulted me and any readers. Not too shabby, and they still get the link. Anyway, they give five reasons and then justify it all in the essence of their article:
- the iPhone is pretty
- it’s touchy-feely
- it will make other phones better
- it’s not a phone, it’s a platform
- it is but the ghost of iPhones to come
I’d add a few more reasons the iPhone was tops, but I think I’ll save it for a later article.
I’ll admit that I don’t get the point of this LG design. They basically just dropped an iPhone / LG Prada into a weird keyboard dock. The screen would be tiny, and I’m guessing a lot of folks would miss tactile feedback on a desktop or laptop-sized keyboard much more than they would on a mobile.
The Mashup that I’d want to see of the iPhone and Palm Foleo would be thus:
Flip-open screen, like the Foleo. Standard keyboard but with iPhone as the Mousepad / Trackpad. Just a little slot where it slides in, some sort of dock. That would be awesome, and it raises a lot of interesting UI possibilities.
Apple is reportedly in talks with Telstra about providing the iPhone in Australia. Sol Trujillo, Telstra CEO, confirmed that Apple and Telstra had discussed the move, but that nothing had been confirmed.
“We have been testing the iPhone as we would any device that comes into the country.”
Marketwatch claims that Apple would have to make a special 850MHz version to work on the Telstra “Next G” Network, but I’m going to call B.S. on it: the Next G network is an HSDPA network; I think it’s more likely that Apple would provide their standard EDGE iPhone before they developed a 3G iPhone specifically for Australia. And I’m guessing that any HSDPA towers that Telstra puts up will include the slower varied 2G data networks: GPRS and EDGE.
The cost of a show was not enough for NBC Universal. No, NBC Universal wanted a cut of the hardware sales for iPods and iPhones. I really don’t get this. Would they bother Apple for a cut of computer sales? Do they get a cut of television sales? Would they bother TiVo for a cut of hardware sales? No, no, and no. I think they were just looking for publicity for their two new video sharing sites in taking their Apple spat public. I think one of them is called Whatever and maybe the other one is IDon’tCare.
