As part of the responses to the FCC’s inquiry into the rejection of Google Voice from the iPhone App Store, AT&T stated the following:

As noted above, AT&T regularly reviews its policies regarding features and capabilities available through the devices we offer in order to provide an attractive range of options for our customers. Consistent with this approach, we plan to take a fresh look at possibly authorizing VoIP capabilities on the iPhone for use on AT&T’s 3G network.

This was couched in some legal arguments stating economists and jurists allow deals where one party’s core business is protected against adverse actions taken by another party — in this case AT&T is saying VoIP would hurt their revenue from voice plans, so it’s okay for Apple to protect AT&T from that hurt.

However, AT&T also says that while Apple agreed not to produce a VoIP app for the iPhone without AT&T’s consent, they had no obligation to “take action against” a third party app.

So, presumably Apple is not allowed to make a VoIP app unless AT&T says okay, but Apple’s just being kind to AT&T by not allowing Skype (for example) to use the 3G network?

And if AT&T is changing their mind and thinking of allowing a VoIP app, and the only VoIP app they say they’re allowed to allow is one by Apple…

Conspiracy theorists, where does that leave us?

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AT&T To Reconsider VoIP Applications Over 3G? Yeahbuwhat Apple VoIP apps?

The WWDC Keynote is tomorrow. Phil Schiller and Apple Execs take the stage as Moscone to update us on iPhone 3.0 and — hopefully! — announce iPhone 2,1 hardware (iPhone video in the latest rumors).

Makes sense that them rumors then would be hitting the high point of crazy today? By way of iSpazio (via Gizmodo), we get the above shot of a supposed iPhone with Mobile iChat video (is that why the ear piece has been raised up, to make room for the camera?), a two-tone iPhone, and the mother load of all whacky leaks:

A supposed Canadian source with inventory listings for — we kid you not — multicolor 64GB iPhones with flowers and bunnies on them. Yeah, somebody is having a little fun there in data entry… But here’s the thing:

Make. It. Stop.

Seriously Phil.

Announce it tomorrow. The insanity must end…

(At least until speculation for 2010 starts!)

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Craziest iPhone Rumors Yet — With Flowers and Fluffy Bunnies!

Apple Insider has unearthed another very cool, who-knows-if-they’ll-ever-deploy-it, Apple patent pertaining to the iPhone. This one, credited to engineer Jeffrey Terlizzi pertains to media file sharing while already on a phone call:

“For example, the user may initiate a telephone call with his friend in order to ask the friend if she is familiar with a particular song,” Apple said. “Once the phone call has been established between the user and his friend, the user may select the song of interest from his communications device, and he may send the song to his friend over the same communication path used by the communications device to establish the communications operation, so that the two may continue their phone conversation while the song plays simultaneously.”

In addition to music, video, photos, voicemail, and podcasts are also mentioned, as are requests in the form of video conferencing (oh, hi, Mobile iChat!), and control over media playback during a call.

Forget 3.0, let the rumors for 3.1 and 4.0 begin! (Joking! A little…)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Patent Watch: Apple Adding “Add Media” to iPhone Phone App?

Italian site iSpazio has posted up a couple images they received from tipster who claimed they’re shots from Apple’s development web server showing off pages that feature the next-generation iPhone (presumably what will go up post-WWDC keynote).

Of note, they highlight the Voice Memos app from iPhone 3.0 and — wait for it — a front facing camera, presumably for the oft-rumored Mobile iChat. As always, there’s no way to tell if these are real or fake.

The second image (after the jump), which features tethering, however, perplexingly shows off the iPhone 2.x, NOT 3.0 home screen layout. Roh-roh Raggy. That one has us immediately calling shenanigans…

All in favor?

[Via CultOfMac, thanks to Jeffdc5!]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Real or Fake? Another Next-Gen iPhone “Leak” Hits the Web!

No, nothing new here. Same story we’ve heard off and on for almost a year now, typically from Kevin Rose. But the internets are all a twitter about it, so for completeness’ sake, here’s the story again from CrunchGear, augmented with the recent iPhone patent grants:

Apparently video recording is mentioned frequently throughout the entire document but a few images and sections explain a video conferencing capable phone.

Yet they, like us, remain cautiously optimistic at best. After all, Apple files tons of patents, is granted quite a few, but only ever ships a very small subset.

Still… I wants it for my iPhone HD. How about you?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Mobile iChat Video for the iPhone Cometh… Again?

In case you haven’t read it already, our editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn, has an outstanding article up at sibling-site WMExperts highlighting his top 5 reasons Twitter is better than SMS (and vice versa).

There’s a lot of intertube fuss about SMS lately, as a recent New York Times article once again shone the spotlight on the disgustingly dirty price gouging (and potential fixing) that goes on when it comes to SMS rates in North America. Basically, SMS (at 160 bytes/characters) is ridiculously cheap for the carriers to transmit, no matter what the scale, and yet the prices have doubled from $0.10 to $0.20 on many networks over the last few years. Voice, by contrast, involves much more data and is much more “expensive” in terms of infrastructure costs. North Americans will pay ludicrous sums of money for “cheap” SMS but not for “expensive” voice, so the carriers take advantage.

Dieter points out that the cost, community, compatibility, control, and context of Twitter give it a clear advantage of SMS, even as the discoverability, dilution of quality, dropping 20 characters, downtime, and potential delays in notification (outside the US) make it still far from perfect.

Flaws and all, Dieter is moving towards Twitter (@backlon) and away from SMS. Am I going to do the same? I already have (@reneritchie) and without really considering it. But here’s the thing — I have considered that not only should I not have to consider it, I don’t think any iPhone user should. (Or any @theiphoneblog follower either!)

I mentioned in my return to the iPhone 3G Round Robin final review that one of the things I’d like to see for the iPhone is a Mobile iChat app, but really taken to the next level. BlackBerry PIN messenger is what puts the “crack” in CrackBerry.com and an always on, multi-tasking Mobile iChat client would go a long way to putting some in the iPhone as well. Beyond that, however, Apple is famous for being the one company that really understands something truly significant for consumer end users:

The interface is the application.

There’s already an SMS client on the iPhone, and guess what? It already kind of looks like iChat. If Apple stuck a Mobile iChat client on as well, it could look functionally identical. So why, then, would Apple need to add that client? Some Twitter clients looks functionally very similar to iChat already as well. Why, then, would we need separate Twitter clients?

From a user-perspective, abstracting an application away from the pipes that feed it is a huge win. Take Mobile Mail for example, you can setup a Gmail, Exchange, MobileMe, or other email account, yet the app itself looks and functions the same regardless. Add one account, take another away, and the user experience doesn’t change. This means that, behind the scenes, you can pretty much muck around with the pipes, improve them, swap an old one out for a new one, drop a troublesome one for a reliable one, all with very low impact on the front end — maybe even no impact at all. It’s transparent to the end user.

Now imagine there was a presence client on the iPhone — I’ll stick with calling it Mobile iChat to keep it simple. You set up your SMS account, your Twitter, your AIM, MobileMe, Jabber, Google Chat… whatever and then you have one consistent UI that elegantly handles and presents your conversations to you. If one pipe disappears, like Pownce, you just delete that account or foward to another. If a new pipe shows up, like BlackBerry announces PIN-like messenger for the iPhone (breathe Kevin, breathe!) you just add it in.

There are, of course, a bunch of reasons why this isn’t likely to happen, and lots of people who prefer to keep their cookies all in separate jars anyway. My personal belief remains, however, that this is the future, and the iPhone is the device that’s going to bring us the closest and the fastest to that future.

Of course, there will always be a place for “better” dedicated client apps that provide unique, rich features focused on a single protocol, but who knows, with push email, maybe all inter-personal text communications could eventually fold into a single unified, consistent, experience. It would, at the very least, be nice to have as a hyper-productivity meets connectivity option. wouldn’t it?

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On Twitter and SMS and Why it Shouldn’t Matter to iPhone Users