All Articles Tagged roundup

Before we hit the sure-to-be-craziness of WWDC, TiPb has some definite house cleaning to do. Meaning lucky for you readers, more roundups! With Rene handling every roundup possible for the iPhone 3G and beyond I thought it’d be a great time to focus on the device we’ve all been unconsciously neglecting: the iPhone!

Every few weeks, I’ll present you with a quick list of web apps, native apps, and games that should tie up any loose ends that we might have missed. Click on each link to learn more about the program and be sure to mention your experience in the comments or forums. Before we start, with the iPhone 3G just mere days away, make sure you participate in TiPb’s Wait-A-Thon-Tastic and give yourself a chance to win a FREE iPhone 3G!

Read on for the Rest of the Software Roundup!

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in April, we lamented that the month ended pretty much exactly where it started, 6 iPhone’s launched, 1 announced for Canada, 7 rumored around the rest of the globe, and not much else on the horizon.

Wow. What a difference a month makes!

Here we are at the end of May, and we have the same 6 launched, but an unbelievable 45+ countries/territories announced, presumably for the iPhone 3G, presumably in June following Apple’s WWDC and Steve Jobs’ scheduled Keynote.

What’s left for June? China? Japan? Russia? A roof-blowing “one more thing” announcement of the iPhone 3G being sold unlocked?

What do you think?

Unofficial end of May scorecard:

Launched: Austria (T-Mobile), France (Orange), Germany (T-Mobile), Ireland (O2), UK (O2), USA (AT&T)

Announced: Africa (Orange), Argentina (America Movil), Australia (Vodafone / SingTel), Austria (Orange), Belgium (Orange), Brazil (America Movil), Canada (Rogers), Chile (America Movil), Columbia (America Movil), the Czech Republic (Vodafone), Denmark (TeliaSonera), Dominican Republic (America Movil/ Orange), Ecuador (America Movil), Egypt (Vodafone / Orange), El Salvador (America Movil), Estonia (TeliaSonera), Finland (TeliaSonera), Greece (Vodafone), Guatamala (America Movil), Honduras (America Movil), Hong Kong SAR (Hutchison) India (Vodafone / SingTel), Italy (Vodafone / Telecom Italia), Jamaica (America Movil), Jordan (Orange), Latvia (TeliaSonera), Lithuania (TeliaSonera), Macao (Hutchison), Mexico (America Movil), New Zealand (Vodafone), Nicaragua (America Movil), Norway (TeliaSonera), Paraguay (America Movil), Peru (America Movil), Philippines (SingTel), Poland (Orange), Portugal (Vodafone / Orange), Puerto Rico (America Movil), Romania (Orange), Singapore (SingTel), Slovakia (Orange), South Africa (Vodafone), Switzerland (Swisscom / Orange), Turkey (Vodafone), Uruguay (America Movil)

Rumored: Netherlands (?),

Note: Extent of America Movil and Orange Africa deployment not yet fully detailed.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, here were are at the end of April pretty much exactly where we were at the beginning: 6 iPhone launches on the board representing the US, UK, Germany, France, Ireland, and Austria.

But wait, who’s that on deck now, eh? That’s right, Canada’s Rogers Wireless has officially announced that they’re #7, bringing Poppa Jobs’ pocket universe dent’er to the Great White North circa “sometime later this year”.

Of course, announced and launched are two different things, and no less than 7 other countries, including Singapore, Mexico, the Netherlands, Australia, India, Italy, and Belgium are rumored to be hot on Canada’s heels for launching, and bragging, rights.

Quick check of the PhoneDifferent.com scorecard:

	Europe	North Am.	South Am	Asia	Africa	Oceania	Antarctica
Launched	5	1	0	0	0	0	0
Announced	0	1	0	0	0	0	0
Rumored	3	1	0	2	0	1	0

Still some slim pickings, but May leads right into WWDC which should kick June, and our little game of iPhone Risk, into high gear. If iPhone 3G drops (especially 25 million of them!), all bets are off and we’ll be in for one Jobs of a ride!

So who’s next? Canada? One of the rumored other 7? Someone out of the blue? What do you think?

So, iTunes 7.5 is out, along with iPhone firmware version 1.1.2. The new iTunes has been out almost a week, and the iPhone software has been available since Friday. How far along have hackers come?

Well, in iTunes 7.5, free ringtones are back. It turns out that you can do the old trick of renaming an AAC music file to turn it into a ringtone. To get it to work, take any 30 second m4a file in finder, rename the extension to be m4r, and drag it in to iTunes. Voila!

For the iPhone, folks figured out how to downgrade the iPhone firmware to the older 1.1.1 firmware to get all the fun goodies if you decide that 1.1.2 isn’t all that great, or you miss the ease of the jailbreakme.com installer.

It seems that the iPhone modem firmware has been unlocked as well, meaning that they’ve figured out how to unlock 1.1.2 iPhones once the jailbreak is easy enough. A simpler GUI app will probably show up in the next few days.

Hackers have figured out how to re-flash the radio in 1.1.2 so it is now safe to unlock the iPhone, as you can “revirginize” the iPhone after unlocking it to avoid any bricking with the next update.

The 1.1.2 iPhone software has already been jailbroken. The software isn’t quite out of beta yet, it works only with Intel machines, and you’ll have to read a readme.txt file to figure it out, but it’s available for download if you need it. If you want to jailbreak 1.1.2, you’ll have to do most of the work from 1.1.1, so keep that downgrade link handy.

And for the last little tidbits, if you have an iPhone with 1.1.2 firmware connected to iTunes 7.5, it gives you the battery status in a little icon next to the eject button in iTunes. And, if you put your computer with iTunes 7.5 to sleep, it will still charge the iPhone. Oh, and you can sync entire events from iPhoto ‘07 to the iPhone instead of just photo albums.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s podcast is a big one. We cover all of the new news with the upcoming O2 and T-Mobile launches, the Smartphone Round Robin sides of things, Google’s Android and whether it competes with Apple, plenty of iTunes news, and the final words from the community..



• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes









Read the rest of this entry »

The fourth annual iLounge 2008 Buyers Guide works for the iPhone and iPod, and is viewable online for smaller screens like the iPhone, iPod Touch, or laptops. If you prefer, for desktop viewing.

Verizon is lowering their data rates for feature phones in preparation for competition with the iPhone. Expect a snarky comment from Dieter on this one. Unfortunately, their smartphone data rates are still sky-high. And, you can add a Canadian roaming plan for just $20. The Phone they’re thinking about using to “compete” with the iPhone is the Samsung F700, though they might re-brand it as the U940. That’s some “brilliant marketing.” I don’t usually report on “iPhone killers,” but I’m glad to see the iPhone forcing prices down for everybody.

Rumors from AppleInsider indicate that iTunes 7.5 will be coming out in the next couple of weeks. This probably means that any iPhone updates with post-Leopard goodness require an iTunes update. This iTunes update will also bring support for the UK, German, and likely French iPhones. Oh, and it will include better duplicate song management. w00t!

Mark/Space, makers of many popular “Missing Sync” smartphone sync softwares, have announced their intent to release “Missing Sync for the iPhone” later this year. Their software will include Notes.app syncing, SMS backups, better call log management, and a migration tool to copy data from a BlackBerry, Palm OS, or Windows Mobile smartphone.

Shocking you with a day early this time instead of a day late. For podcast 7 we talk about CTIAthe iPhone on Orange, possible unlock rumors, a product red version possibly coming, an SDK in february plus some widget speculation, some leopard speculation, webapps, and a brief hacking segment. And then, a bit on the iTunes plus price cut, Greenpeace, new Apple ads, and att.com making changes. And of course the usual chat about the community.

No less chock full of stuff than last week, but I managed to shave off a few minutes and keep us under 50 minutes. How did I do it? By shaving off the talks about Apple vs. gateway / acer / packard bell. Sharp listeners, look for the “I’m going to cut this” and Dieter being sad. I’ll post it up later today.

• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s an even bigger podcast than last week, coming in at almost an hour. We talk about some of the ins and outs of the new firmware, the danger to unlockers, rumors of iPhones abroad in Canada and France, the recent rumors of 2nd party apps, widgets and human interface guidelines, and of course the hacked apps. Then, we talk about Jobs and his reality distortion field, and some of the Apple lawsuits out there. And of course, the community gets the final words.

• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

Read the rest of this entry »

In podcast number five, we discuss the crazy amount of news from the previous two weeks. The main topics are sales volume, iPhone in Europe, ringtones, iTunes and firmware updates, GUI unlocking and the risk it brings, and 3G iPhone rumors. And, as always, we discuss some of the best bits from the community.

• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

Read the rest of this entry »