Rene Ritchie and Brian Hart join us as we run down all the big news from WWDC. Surprisingly, the iPhone 3G seems to have been shown up by the iPhone 2.0 software update for many of us!
All Articles Tagged iPhone 3G
Now that the iPhone 3G has been officially announced and the details have been released, we are holding the first ever: TiPb vs TiPb. In the two articles we will detail reasons why we SHOULD upgrade and why we SHOULDN’T upgrade to the iPhone 3G. No hard feelings, No blood spilled, just good old fashioned point-by-point debate.
More so than any other Apple release, the iPhone 3G was probably the worst kept secret in the history of Apple. There was plenty of speculation, some wild (video conferencing) and some tame (black casing). Some were right, some were wrong.
I flagrantly participated in the rumorpalooza. I was excited for every nugget of news even though it didn’t contain a kernel of truth. So maybe I hyped myself into thinking the iPhone 3G was going to be the be all, end all device that the iPhone was. After my initial excitement subsided, I realized, hey, the iPhone 3G isn’t a necessary upgrade! I could wait a little until all the kinks are worked out, so these are the 5 Reasons Why I’m NOT Upgrading to the iPhone 3G.
Read on for the 5 Reasons to NOT upgrade!
Warning: We may get medium-geeky here for moment. Adjust your pocket-protectors accordingly.
Apple is using the iPhone to crack their way into the enterprise. No big surprise there. What is surprising, however, is just how Sun Tzu their being about it. How so?
Bottom line, for an end-user, the interface is the app. Sure, we recognize names like Exchange, ActiveSync, even BES, but for most typical users, firing up Outlook or switching on their Blackberry IS their email. They don’t see what’s going on programmatically behind the scenes, don’t care what protocol is hand-shaking and packetizing their data as it zips from server to server in its chaotic relay from sender to receiver. They just see their email, and they just know that it was there when they needed it.
Given that, Apple licensing Exchange ActiveSync becomes more than just interesting. Why? Because they didn’t buy Outlook. They’re making their own MobileMail app which will seamlessly handle Exchange, but, oh by the way, will also handle MobileMe (the new .Mac refresh already billed as Exchange for the rest of us), as well as the usual Gmail, Yahoo!, etc.
So, for the end user, ActiveSync disappears behind the MobileMail iPhone interface. And if they have a home account, be it MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo!, or whatever, the differences become less and less apparent (especially as push-like technologies propagate the different services), and in the end, ActiveSync disappears and people just think of their MobileMail app.
Meanwhile, the technologies behind MobileMail, with the advent of Snow Leopard Server, get more interesting, especially with Apple offering open, standards-based protocols like IMAP IDLE, and developing and releasing to the Open Source community similar code like CalDAV for push calendar and now, CardDAV for push contacts.
All of a sudden, a business could run an Exchange-like server without any Microsoft like licensing fees (which anyone who has dealt with them can tell you are money trap unto themselves).
Most interesting of all, if a business had deployed iPhones and they decided to switch from Exchange to Snow Leopard (or any *nix server using the FOSS implementations on their own), their end users may not even notice.
Roughly Drafted has more on Snow Leopard and its possible implications for Exchange/SharePoint users.
Current iPhone user on UK’s O2 network eager to get your hands on the hot new iPhone 3G, yeah? Ready to act fast, are you? Willing to sign up for O2’s premium £45 or £75 per month plans, eh? If so — and for a limited time only — you could qualify for a free iPhone 3G 8GB or 16GB respectively. Cracking deal, innit?
Bargain hunters looking for the £35 plan will have to fork over £99 or £159 for their handsets, as will any newcomers to the platform. Doesn’t seem cricket, does it?
Chins up, though, unlike AT&T in the States, O2 will be offering Pay & Go options, though no details have been provided yet.
Take a right little look at the read link for more on O2’s iPhone 3G rates and plans…
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!
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.
Ready for developers to take advantage of the new features in the iPhone 3G, namely GPS? Well don’t worry, TomTom, makers of popular GPS units and GPS software, has already developed navigation software for the iPhone 3G. A TomTom spokesperson was quoted as saying,
“Navigation System runs on the iPhone already”There is no official release date or press release but be prepared for an onslaught of GPS software to take advantage of the GPS in the iPhone 3G and not just from TomTom. Who knows which will be best? Will it be TomTom, Garmin, or a totally unknown company? This should be fun.
Both Engadget and Gizmodo, those lucky [redacteds], got some hands on time with the new iPhone 3G. Ushered into a secret, dimly lit back room and likely surrounded by storm troopers, they came back with the following:
The Good
- 3G is faassst! 2X EDGE on quicky test, and can be Settings disabled (for those who won’t spring for the extra $10?).
- Better phone quality.
- Flush headphone jack for realz!
- Camera software improved, same megapixels, better images.
- Build quality, even on the all new, all plastic back, felt okay. Lighter, better fit, and design-wizardly thin. Bonus points for Jony Ive!
- Oh, cut and paste, where art thou? C’mon Apple! You nailed this with Mac 1.0!
- Chrome buttons are for realz as well!
- No WiFi 802.11n! This, the iPod Touch, and the MacMini are still the only Apple devices to bring down your network speed.
- No sign of video iChat, or video recording.
- No sign of A2DP stereo Bluetooth, and no comment on whether its in or coming.
- Dock now sold separately. Guess that $199 price point gotta hit us somewhere?!)
- The predicted after-market for your old iPhone 1.0 (though if you manage to catch some people stuck on non-Apple signed carriers who want a jailbroken iPhone, given the new activation policies, there could just be a resurgence…)
Read that title again, and realize that the iPhone 3G will sell for LESS than the infamous price drop given the original iPhone before the holidays. (Recap: it’s started at $599 and was dropped to $399 with early adapters getting an equally infamous $100 Apple Store gift certificate Jobs-a-culpa).
And while the price drop was big news then, the retail price of $199 should be HUGE news today.
At $199, that’s HALF the price of the original iPhone at its lowest. It’s the SAME price as an 8GB iPod Nano. It’s LESS than an iPod Classic, and MUCH LESS than an iPod Touch!
When we consider the possibility of carrier subsidies on top of that (Europe has been heavily rumored, with Orange at the extreme gossipy end of giving them away free to current iPhone owners), the iPhone may just be cheaper than “competing” Blackberries, Windows Mobile, and Treo smart phones.
Profit margins (averaging 30%) on hardware have historically been Apple’s bread and butter, but this isn’t the personal computer market (where they’re a founding name) or the MP3 player market (where they have a dominant market share already), this is a much bigger, much less saturated market for Apple. Consumers will buy for a variety of reasons. Features often tops the list. Fashion certainly plays its part. But price can be the difference between dream and reality for a lot of shoppers.
Apple knows this, and they’ve developed an unparalleled 360 degree, spherically integrated business model to support it. A share of App Store sales and MobileMe subscriptions are just two examples surfaced today. Apple Retail Store profits, accessories, Mac hardware, licensing fees, iTunes sales, and a host of other factors let them maintain profitability while minimizing sticker shot for their users.
Steve Jobs once said that the mistake made by the management prior to his return was to go for money rather than market share. By keeping high prices in the present, they all but killed the platform’s future.
Judging by today’s WWDC 2008 Keynote, Jobs learned that lesson well.
8GB iPhone 3G for $199. Perfect price-point storm?
What do you think?
Miss the iPhone 3G Launch? Want to see Steve Jobs work the crowd? Trying to test out how the RDF works on you? Well, Apple has posted the WWDC 08 Keynote for your viewing pleasure. It’s time to catch up on the biggest Apple-related news since the SDK event.
In the keynote, you’ll be able to see details of the 2.0 firmware, MobileMe in action, app and game demos aplenty, and the unveiling of the iPhone 3G. Not to mention, it’s always good fun to see Apple’s CEO at his finest and re-live the excitement in a Quicktime video.
Click the Read Link to watch the keynote
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