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.

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Random iPhone 3G Rumors

Mr. Fired-From-Disney Himself

First on the list is Michael Eisner, who blames Jobs and iTunes for the Writer’s strike, of all things. He claims that Apple has ruined the download model for everybody, and that only Apple makes any money. Everyone else is begging for crackers at lunch. Yeah, right.

The studios make deals with Steve Jobs, who takes them to the cleaners,” Eisner said.

“They make all these kinds of things, and who’s making money? Apple! They should get a piece of Apple. If I was a union, I’d be striking up wherever he is.

Eisner further predicts that online media won’t make any money for another three years. Unless you’re Apple, that is. If you’re Apple, online media is making money now.

LG Introduces the QZ-6%7g#!

I tend to avoid posting news of “iPhone killers” because it’s just not going to be true. There are some companies that have a shot at making an iPhone killer, but they’re years away. I think Palm could do it for example, but we won’t find out for another year or two. Apple probably doesn’t have to worry about that one for a while.

And in the “don’t have to worry about it now” category, LG introduced a phone that looks like an iPhone in Europe. I hate to say it, but no one will be excited about the Prada-esque outer stylings of the LG phones until LG can drink in some user interface design mojo. Can you remember to get excited about something called the LG-KS20? I doubt it, though I bet its existence makes Dieter happy.

A Coalition of the Aimless

I know that Google’s new linux smartphone operating system Android is supposed to be big news, but I can’t help it: I don’t think it is, and I don’t think it will be. There are already a bunch of linux smartphone systems where all the driver work is done and all you have to worry about is the user interface customization. I checked out the websites of the companies that are part of the Android consortium, and I hate to say it but their UI work appears to be featurephone-based and pretty busy. Not that I’m a UI expert, but still, I know that a clean interface is better than a cluttered one.

There’s already a bunch of people doing this, and some of them have a phone out now that does everything already: OpenMoko, QTopia, Access Linux Project, and Palm will probably join this list perhaps a year after Android is actually released. But look at the list of companies in their press release: none of them have shipped their own mainstream user interface before except for Nokia. And I don’t think that it’s in Nokia’s best interests to succeed too much in this venture at the cost of their Symbian S60. I wish them all success, but I think success is a tall order.

No One is Panicking

I’m glad to see that all of the other smartphone makers are all confident that they’ll be able to beat the iPhone, or that they’re at least not panicking about it. If you want a list of how other companies are mimicking the iPhone form factor, the BBC has put together a list of the heavyweights.

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CEOs Fiddle

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.

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Voice Memos?

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.

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Google Phone: Android

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.

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Apple Protecting iPhone Trademark

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?”

He then goes on to say that malevolent data thieves and identity swipers could steal passwords, credit card numbers, and entire online identities. They could use the iPhone as a gateway into your home network, they could do any number of things. He even manages to cast their patching of the TIFF vulnerability in a negative light.

But, the one thing that he doesn’t address is this: unless I hack my iPhone, I couldn’t know if malevolent hackers were doing that anyway. You can’t trust the security of a black box. Preaching paranoia doesn’t solve any security problems. Indeed, most security problems are solved by establishing trust. For those of you on Windows machines, you fix (or at least partially alleviate, wink) your virus problems by trusting that Norton AntiVirus will keep you safe from viruses. You trust that Ad-Aware will remove spyware from your computer. You trust that patches from Microsoft are legitimate. You trust that ZoneAlarm is a decent 3rd party firewall. And so on.

For many people, Installer.app is the one tool that they have to actually verify that their iPhone is in decent order. Without it and the access to other apps that it provides, I can’t tell where the iPhone is connecting to when I’m on EDGE networks, I can’t find out what’s sitting there on the iPhone’s filesystem, and more importantly, I can’t find out what shouldn’t be there.

It’s one thing to preach that users shouldn’t trust every website. He’s right in that, but the circle of trust has to start somewhere. It’s security as preached by “Meet the Fockers,” but the circle of trust doesn’t do anybody any good unless someone is in it.

figures 2,3: “Meet the Fockers,” the “Circle of Trust.”

The Apple hacking community has really been excellent so far. For most of the work they’ve done, they’ve aimed for open source so other programmers can view the code and verify that it’s legitimate. This begins the circle of trust between programmers. Once they build a network of trust with each other, it then spreads into the journalism world, via one of the programmer’s blogs. In terms of negative stuff, there’s just been a few tiffs between developers, and one instance of possible intellectual property infringement, and for this I’m very thankful.

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iPhone Security Whinging

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:

1. the iPhone is pretty
2. it’s touchy-feely
3. it will make other phones better
4. it’s not a phone, it’s a platform
5. 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.

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iPhone: Time Invention of the Year

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.

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Weird LG iPhone Clone Design

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.”

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iPhone Australia: Telstra Talks

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.

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NBC Universal Wanted iPod & iPhone Take