All Articles Tagged rumor

A bit of friendly advice — if you’ve unlocked your iPhone, you should be careful with the next firmware update — don’t apply it immediately. Check with news sites and forums to see if the update works fine with unlocks first. Apple released a press release that noted that the current methods of unlock can cause “irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software.” And as such, they’re going to void the warranty of anyone that unlocks their phone, and they’ll mark your phone as ineligible for warranty service. There are some reports of people that have been “blacklisted.” There’s a full rundown of this story after the cut.

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If it has no Bluetooth, then it stands to reason that it has no stereo bluetooth either.

My guess is no, but there’s a “leaked” T-Mobile Germany document that shows it. And it looks like a bad photoshop to me, as if someone turned the quality knob for jpeg compression all the way down. I’m not going to link the image, as I won’t sully the front page with such a heinous job. If you like, you can see it here, here, here, or here. The best summary I’ve read comes from the last link:

To me this looks like a MS Paint project.

iLounge reports that the video out functionality of the new iPods has been restricted — 4G or 5G iPod video out accessories don’t function with the new iPods. If you want video out with them, you need cables that have a special chip inside, like the $49 Apple cables. I wonder if this is the basis of this dock connector exclusivity lockout rumor I heard about a while back.

Apple is hosting another media event today. iPod Nanos are expected, and they look drastically different than the current nano. Not everyone is happy with the new look, but from what I can see it looks pretty functional. I think I’m withholding judgment until I’ve seen what all of their iPod lineup looks like.

Meanwhile, ThinkSecret basically guarantees touchscreen iPods. They also say the iPod nano, featured in the above Gizmodo link, will pack some seriously updated iPod software, and it will be great; it will be revolutionary. Or evolutionary. One or the other, really.

Please note that the screenshots from ThinkSecret above include albums from the Beatles that aren’t yet available in the iTunes Store.

Microsoft always seems to pop up with a little snippet of news on event days like this. I think they do this so they can play the ’sour grapes’ role of the day, now hints that making a Zune phone is ‘not unreasonable.’ This is more or less the opposite of what CEO Steve Ballmer said at the D5 conference, so I’m glad to see that they’re still talking from both sides of their mouth. They’re champs of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Emphasis on the ‘uncertainty’ part here. And now you know why they play the sour grapes role — it gets them in the news. But everyone knows somebody that can’t tell the difference between negative attention and positive attention, and it’s not like there’s surging demand for a Zune phone, though I’m sure Windows Mobile users would be happy for the extra functionality.

But back in focus, there’s no shortage of hype — read a paragraph and you can see why Apple’s stock is so volatile after announcements. Taken from Jeremy Horwitz of iLounge:

I seriously believe tomorrow is going to be different. I think it’s going to be the day when iPod die-hards, technology geeks, and mainstreamers alike are all going to be genuinely excited by what Apple is going to show. In short, if the release of the iPod mini signaled the start of Apple’s dominance of the digital music player business, and the nano and 5G signaled the end for most of its small competitors and beginning of its video initiative, tomorrow is going to be the final nail in the coffin for Microsoft, Sony, and the bigger players as well. Yes, even with their recent announcements. The only people who will be upset are those who aren’t already on the bandwagon, or the few who (sorry, NBC) jumped off early and got hit by it.

You know though, the scary thing is that he could just as well be right. John Gruber thinks so, so it must be true.

And in other news, T3 reports that a 3G version of the iPhone will be announced today. I think that’s a pipe dream; there’s no way Apple would update a flagship product 2 months after it came out for the first time. That would flat-out anger the almost-1-million purchasers of an iPhone here in the U.S.A.

Of course, any time Apple updates iTunes, it’s always possible that they will also update the iPhone, so I’ll be keeping my ear close to the news to see what they have planned. There’s plenty of speculation for iPhone Games and ringtones. And it’s not just the iPhone Ranch that’s expecting it, it’s also the New York Post.

Looks

like

the

Apple

&

NBC

iTunes

spat

is

heating

up. It was reported that NBC wasn’t going to renew their contract, due to expire in December. I reported this in the rejected story links thread in the forums. NBC released a press statement on Saturday to say that it wasn’t the bad guy to respond to the Apple press statement on Friday that said that NBC was the bad guy. I’m starting to think that this is just business as usual when dealing with the content providers.

Apple is hosting an iTunes event on September 5th, and they’re widely expected to release something neat. But of course, no one knows what they’re releasing, so the rumor mill is exploding.

Engadget reports a wireless iTunes store, where you can buy tracks and download them directly from the device you want to play them from. You know, your iPod or your iPhone. This of course requires that wireless iPods be available. The supposed wireless iPods would be like the iPhone: run OSX, be like an iPhone but without the phone part, big touch screen, etc. The iPhone is, of course, already wireless, and would just need one of those little wee updates.

Mobility Site reports that there will be no Beatles added to iTMS, but adds this gem:

“A new feature for iPhone users that will allow them to make ringtones out of songs they’ve already purchased from iTunes. This is a long-overdue step for the digital music business, which has found itself in the weird position of selling complete digital songs for a dollar but 15-second ringtone snippets of the same songs for $2.50.”

A wireless iPod would be awesome, but I think it’s dubious that Apple would let us remove too much hub from the digital hub. If Apple let you convert ringtones from iTMS purchases, that would be awesome. A question remains though, what about ringtones from albums you ripped?

If you like rumors, we have two. Well, one, really. I think the speculation stems from the patents recently granted to Apple, but I think it’s fun to see the two different views that stem from it.

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Mobility Today has posted a list of features rumored to be coming in future software revisions of the iPhone. It’s a good list, and it includes several morsels that would be great to have. I’ll spoil the surprise to mention that Exchange support is not listed. Two key omissions are supposedly coming to the iPhone “very soon” or “before Leopard,” which is slated for October:

• Ringtone support
• iChat IM

And also in the works but with unknown timelines:

• File Browsing
• Something like USB Mass Storage / Disk Use
• Spotlight Searches
• iTunes Drag-and-Drop
• Cut and Paste
• landscape keyboard for every app
• Camera software update
• Mail app update
• iWork ported to iPhone, with Keynote presentation support

It doesn’t look like an official list, not by a long shot, but if it’s true I will be a very happy camper. Their list is much more exhaustive, it’s well worth checking the article out.
Update 11.07.07 11:37a: Regarding this rumor, Gizmodo isn’t exactly what you’d call convinced.

And, while we’re talking about rumors, there’s a persistent one that’s starting to seem very plausible to me. I don’t think that Apple is going to re-engineer a 3G phone just for Europe and the rest of the world, leaving Americans fresh from a $500 or $600 purchase in the lurch. Nor would Apple release a 2.5G EDGE phone over there either; Europeans have become attached to their fast internet data.

So I was perusing Ars Technica’s iPhone review but mostly just wanted their chip analysis. Ars says it best:

“The IC in the lower-left is purported to be a Multimedia Engine by Infineon by several sources. However, the markings on this device do not match up with any Infineon devices as far as we could tell. This particular part is a jack-of-all trades that can decode/encode audio formats, decode H.264 video, perform EDGE modem capabilities, and interface with Bluetooth, FM radio, and other systems, as well as drive the camera and the high-resolution display. Interestingly enough, the data sheet for this device claims that it is 3G upgradable and contains a WCDMA coprocessor.” [emphasis added]

But wait, there’s more! Ars Technica isn’t the only one talking about a software update to the iPhone that turns it into a 3G phone, so is notable online analyst Robert X. Cringely:

“I think so. The question here is whether 3G is already built into the iPhones shipping now or whether it will require a new model? Given that it is coming so soon after the iPhone introduction, I can’t believe that even Steve would make us buy new phones. It is very likely that a firmware upgrade will awaken the 3G within all you iPhone owners.” [emphasis added]

Some people think that Cringely is in the same league as online writers such as Dvorak and Enderle, and they don’t mean that in a respectful way. And admittedly, Cringely does seem to delve into the improbable every so often. At the same time though, his articles build on a kernel of truth. Cringely reports that a firmware update has to be out by Christmas, and I think he’s absolutely right. Apple is going to have to do something to turn those 8/10 scores into 9/10 scores or 10/10 scores. Also, when fantastic Cringely and dependable Ars Technica both agree on something, it’s probably worth reporting.

It has to be said that if Apple were to upgrade the radio to include 3G HSDPA for fast browsing, they’d have to re-certify the iPhone with the FCC. I don’t know if we’d get a 6 month lead time on the news like with the iPhone, but we’ll be keeping an eye on those FCC tests to see if faster 3G certification is on the way.

If all of these were made into news slices, we’d have to reconfigure the page to fit everything in. So, it’s going to have to go into a roundup article instead. We’ll start with the above cartoon from Gizmodo, who apply the curious moniker of “Jesusphone” to the iPhone. I’m more prone to calling it the Mosesphone, as it’s leading me to the promised land of smartphones. If it really was the Jesusphone, all of my other smartphones would suddenly stop sucking, right?

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