All Articles Tagged international

I watched the recent Apple iPhone commercial, the one featuring Loopt that promised to keep me in stronger, better, faster contact with all my similarly teched-out friends, and immediately fired my iPhone to download it.

But guess what? It didn’t show up in the App Store. Dieter was kind enough to send me a direct link, so I clicked on that, and know what happened? I got a pop-up telling me Loopt wasn’t available in the Canadian App Store.

So, either we Canucks have no friends to stay in contact with, Loopt has yet to expand their offering to our frozen shores, or Apple didn’t bother to make a commercial with wider appeal than AT&T’s network coverage (or all of the above?)

In a global village, is it odd that an App isn’t just an App, and often medieval licensing rights prevent real parity in services?

For our international readers, any other Apps you’ve been unable to get due simply to where you live? Any Americans ever come across an App you couldn’t get?

Have you ever traveled out of the country just to come back home and get smacked upside the head by your AT&T cellular bill? Well one of our faithful readers, Mike, has a very unusual situation… he asked us to share his story with you in hopes of preventing this happening to any other readers.

Mike recently added a International Data Roaming Plan before a trip out of the country. It seemed like all was covered… until he got home and received his latest bill. Here is Mike’s story, in his own words:

I was informed by an AT&T service rep that AT&T had charged me the exorbitant per KB rate for international data useage because I had cancelled my International Data Roaming plan after I returned to the United States. The plan is available on a month-to-month basis, so cancelling it when I got home seemed like an obvious thing for me to have done, since I have no plans to go overseas again in the foreseeable future. But the service rep said that AT&T’s policy (unwritten, so far as I can tell) is that one needs to leave the roaming plan in place for 90 extra days, so that it is still in place when the foreign carrier finally reports the subscriber’s roaming back to AT&T. If the plan is not in place when the foreign data useage gets reported to AT&T, then AT&T’s billing system is incapable of recognizing that I had an international data roaming plan in place on the dates that the foreign carrier says I used its data connection.

Ouch, I could imagine this bill would have really hurt. Luckily for Mike, he spoke with a “very nice” AT&T rep and she credited his account for the appropriate amount. Mike is not alone either, for similar stories be sure to check out this thread in AT&T’s official forums.

And for more information regarding International plans be sure to check out the plans available here. Mike and all of us here at TiPb really want you to be aware of AT&T’s policy. So before you leave the country, if you have any questions be sure to call and ask a service rep! It may just save you a pretty penny… or two…

Thanks for the tip Mike!

Back on July 11, the iPhone 3G launched in 22 countries. Along with much fanfare, hippie attention seekers, lines that would stretch out for weeks on end, and constantly crashing servers. But since Apple sold about a million of the hot new handsets that weekend, you just knew they were going to do it again.

“Today” brings phase 2, where 21 more countries are supposed to come online with the iPhone 3G. (Officially Aug. 22nd, which may or may not be “today” to you depending on your timezone). How are things going so far? Reader Anton was gracious enough to send in this report (thanks Anton!):

Now it’s midnight in Estonia and I’m at the iphone launch event. No special frenzy, about 1000 people in one supermarket, a couple of DJs and a lot of light. There’s just two plans offered: us$55 and $89. First one includes 100 minutes, 100 SMS and 100 Mb; the other one - 250 of each. Every extra megabyte will cost $.25 and $.21 respectively. The phone itself is $267/8Gb and $396/16Gb with $55 plan and $149/8Gb and $278/16Gb with $89 plan.

Ouch! When will telcos worldwide realize what Henry Ford did almost 100 years ago. Mass pricing leads to mass adoption which leads to mass profits. Sheesh!

So are you standing in line right this very minute, ready to get your shiny new iPhone today? Is your carrier up? Is iTunes activating? Let us know how things are going!

And if your market still doesn’t have the iPhone 3G, just remember that Apple promised another 30+ countries — a grand total of 70+ — for 2008, which is now set to include Russia via MTS. That pretty much leaves China standing alone as the last major market sans carrier deal… for now.

20 countries launched the iPhone 3G back on July 11 (okay, zut, France straggled a bit), and Apple hopes to launch some 21 more just 6 short weeks later — only minus some iTunes authentication failures and supply shortages, no doubt.

From iLounge, we learn who’s next:

Romania, India, the Philippines, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, four additional countries will see launches. Latvia and Lithuania will see the device launched on TeliaSonera’s LMT and Omnitel services, respectively, while T-Mobile and Orange will launch the iPhone in Slovakia, and SingTel will begin offering the device in Singapore.

This will bring the grand total to some 43, with almost 30 more still slated by close of year, 2008. Looks like Apple may need those 40 million units after all, doesn’t it?

During Apple’s Q3 conference call Monday, along with App Store updates, Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, Tim Cook, announced that the iPhone 3G would launch in 20 more countries/regions on August 22nd, some six weeks after the initial 22 country launch back on July 11th.

While we’ve previously known that some 70+ countries would launch during 2008, we still don’t know which of the remaining 50 will be included in the second wave (or whether carrier and iTunes servers will remain up and running this time!).

Guesses anyone?

The iPhone OS, like its big Mac brother, has a lot of little tools, preferences, and settings, some explicitly surfaced, others hidden away. The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) brings us one of each this week!

First up, by way of RipDev’s molecular decomposition of the code (either that or a well-placed source…) is a way to enable screen capture on your jailbroken iPhone:

After setting the preference in /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/com.apple.springboard.plist, just restart Springboard and use the following super-secret key combination: Hold down the Home key and toggle the mute switch. Your screen flashes white, a screen shot appears on your camera roll. [...] If you’d rather not edit your property lists directly, add http://repository.ripdev.com as an Installer repository and install Apple Screenshot Enabler. Warning: trying to remove the mod via Installer.app caused my phone to reboot. It just would not uninstall properly.

Next, for our international readers who may want to use their own TLD (top level domain such as .ca, .uk, .de, etc.) rather than the standard .com, here’s a way to internationalize your Safari Touch keyboard:

In settings, choose General > Keyboards and enable some of those international keyboards. Next go to Safari and start to enter a new URL. Tap the globe to switch the active keyboard from US English to some other nationality. [...] Finally, tap and hold the .com button. After a second, a regionalized version of .com appears just to the left of the default.

Hit the links for more and If anyone gives them a try, let us know how they work (or don’t) for you!