In our forums, dhp1080 asked an important question: since the iPhone 3G comes out on the 11th and whoever wins is surely going to be the sort to go out and buy one that day, doesn’t it make more sense to hold the drawing for the winner of our iPhone 3G giveaway a bit earlier?

Yes, yes it does.

So we’ll be holding our drawing for the iPhone 3G givewaway the morning of Wednesday, July 9th. Since Apple capitulated to the standard operating procedure for activating phones, we can’t just pick one up and send it to ya. So instead we’re going to do the following: overnight a gift card to an Apple Store (or AT&T store, if necessary) for 400 smackers. That will cover most of the necessary bases: people eligible for upgrade that want the 16gig device, people ineligible for upgrades, etc.

All of which means you have six days left to get yourself up to 20 (non-garbage) posts in our forums in order to qualify for the drawing. Get your full contest details here. Meanwhile, this also means that this week and the next are the last weeks for the iPhone 2.0 Wait-a-Thon giveaways as well.

We will wait-a-thon this post too. We already asked you what your plans were for July 11th. Now we want to know: Are you Exchanged-up at work? If so, will your IT Overlords put your iPhone on the network? If you’re not, will you be going push with Mobile Me? Will you forego push altogether?

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

Our iPhone 3G Giveaway Happens July 9th. Hie Thee to the Forums!

As Rene mentioned over the weekend, the iPhone 2G has just turned one year old, we here at TiPb look to the future, though, and the future looks great. Great enough that we’re still planning on giving away an iPhone 3G to one lucky winner who’s made at least 20 posts in our iPhone Forums. Grab the full contest details here. Even better – when you visit the forums from your iPhone you should see a big ol’ “iPhone Version” that lets you interact with the forums via an iPhone interface. Don’t like it? The option to switch back is on the bottom of the iPhone version. What are you waiting for? Go on and register, post, and possibly win!

Also notable, you can now get your iPhone Blog six ways from Sunday. Ok, just two ways. You can now just punch in http://tipb.com into your browser to be brought to our main page. Easy, no? We’re not bringing out an iPhone version of the blog proper just yet — when we find / develop a verison that’s both fast and usable enough you’ll be the first to know.

Meanwhile, there’s only a couple weeks left now in the iPhone Wait-a-Thon, wherein we give away an iTunes Gift card worth $100 to somebody who’s commented on a Wait-a-Thon-tagged post (like, you know, this one). Details and rules here. Congrats to our latest winners, Tom, Mark, and Rafael. Your Gift Cards forthcoming just as soon as we convince Apple we’re not trying to defraud them by buying too many gift cards.

So with just a couple weeks left, we gotta ask: What’s your game plan for July 11th?. Rumor has it the launch will happen at 8 in the morning, so will you be camping out the night before? Sitting at home and pretending your iPhone 2G hasn’t been replaced with newer, faster, better, more? Answer in the comments for a chance to win!

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

The iPhone 3G Giveaway Continues, As Does the Wait-a-Thon

• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

This week Mike and Dieter review all the BAD news about the iPhone 3G and take a look at the growing community in the iPhone Blog forums!

Also, this is important: the iPhone Blog and (by extension) all y’all iPhone lovers have been called out by CrackBerry.com. Take a listen to this “Hit me on my BlackBerry” song, note the bits 2/3rds of the way through knocking TiPb. Anybody up for mixing down a pro-iPhone song? Let us know the comments (Wait-a-Thon time!) and if there’s enough interest we’ll make a contest out of it.

Alternately, some comments counteracting all our doom and gloom in the podcast would also be appreciated.

News

• To Upgrade or Not To Upgrade?
• Full price may be available in the US, we bet it’ll be hefty given what AT&T shells out to Apple for each activation. All in all, the $199 price is nice, but it is a sign Apple failed to revolutionize the industry
• No Tethering for iPhone 3G
• Canadian Plans bad, well actually not that bad, …except we’re just not sure, oh wait, yes we are
• TomTom is coming, but then again the SDK Agreement prohibits it, so maybe TomTom isn’t coming, except that TomTom could be coming. At any rate, AT&T is apparently making their own GPS app, which could confirm our worst fears.
• RAZR users ditch for iPhone
• iPhone 2G is gone from stores
• Are enough developers getting in on the iPhone action?
• iPhone nano rumors won’t die
• iClone: Instinct panned by Walt, dropped in price, and shockingly well received by Dieter

Community

Micah writes in:

I don’t know if this is the right email address to send this to, but I was wondering if the new IPhone that most people are expecting at WWDC has passed through the FCC? Is it possible for Apple to keep that information confidential? The original IPhone passed the FCC on May 17 of last year, which is more than a month before it was released. If you could answer my question, or pass it along to someone who can, I would Appreciate it.

Threads

• Who has owned both the iPhone and BlackBerry?
• What GPS apps do you want to see?
• cmaier taking app development requests!!

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

Phone different Podcast 21 (Wait-a-Thon)

[Note: This a a Wait-A-Thon post! Comment on this post -- or any post tagged "Wait-a-Thon" -- for your chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card! Note that you must post with a valid and real email address so we can send you your prize -- no switching!]

Back in April, sister site Crackberry.com posted a hypejacking article detailing their “Top 10 Reasons the iPhone was NO Blackberry“. Rather than a purely facetious “And thank Jobs for that!”, TiPb kept tongue firmly in cheek but responded with the “Top 10 Reasons the iPhone is Incomparable” and a more considered (meaning they didn’t let me write it!) 10 Reasons to Ditch Your Blackberry for the iPhone. (Though in my defense, I did think there was something the iPhone could learn from its Blackberry competitor…)

Now, however, as the iPhone 3G and its 2.0 software are poised to take on the enterprise market, where RIM is still clearly the sales (if no longer the mind) share leader, perhaps it is time. So, as Crackberry.com pushes their “Top 10 Reasons the iPhone is STILL NO BlackBerry“, let’s just strap our business plans on and see if there really is any way the Blackberry can compare to the iPhone 3G.

Read on to find out!

10. Keyboard Complete

By contrast, iPhone virtualizes whatever keys you need when you need them, and for everyone who complains about typing on it, there’s someone who claims they can type ever-so-much better than they ever could on a cramped little querty (myself included!)

iPhone 2.0 will even let you finger-draw Chinese if you want to, and switch languages on the fly. What if you need to switch from Spanish to Russian on your Blackberry? Get out a tiny screw-driver, pop off the tic-tacs, and try to pop on a different set?

9. Screen Size Matters

3.5 inches of swipe-able, rotate-able, pinch-able, spread-able, goodness would have made his job — or any job — easier by a (next) generation.

It’s not just the media that benefits from the space afforded by the lack of a constant, bolted-on keyboard, its many different kinds of productivity apps.

The iPhone’s screen, combined with multi-touch, GPS, and 3G speed is a game changer. (It’s even forcing RIM to change its game with the Thunder…)

8. Ecosystem

Maybe the iPhone doesn’t (yet, see below) have first-party video recording abilities. But if you want to, you can shoot professional video, capture it to your MacBook Pro, check it into Final Cut Pro Server on you XServe, render it out with Motion, Color, and Compress on your iMac, serve it up to iTunes, download it on a PC, and sync it over to the iPhone (or Apple TV) your friend just bought at the Apple Store.

With iPhone 3G and 2.0, integrating the SDK with GPS-enabled location services and 3G bandwidth, that ecosystem grows exponentially. And the iPhone has it whether you choose to use it — or any part of it — or not. RIM simply doesn’t have it, no matter what you may choose.

7. Open Standards, Open Choices

RIM is still hanging desperately to this model, be it with their proprietary messaging system where a device like Crackberry.com’s pre-release Bold can be rendered useless by a single NOC command, and corporations have to buy into costly additional servers or services ad nauseum infinitum simply to remain functional.

By contrast, Apple has thus far stuck to industry standards like IMAP, HTML, CSS, AJAX, and worked with open companies like Google, Yahoo! and others to ensure that any compliant site, message, or data can move through the iPhone without so much as touching Apple’s servers. They’ve even contributed back to the Open Source community with CalDav and CardDav, not to mention WebKit itself.

Sure, ActiveSync is there in iPhone 2.0 if your business has already fallen into it, but the iPhone clients are agnostic, and if one day your company switches from Microsoft to Google, Yahoo!, a homegrown FOSS solution, or anything else, your experience on the iPhone stays the same.

And maybe there’s no device-dependent MMS, but you can email pictures to any device — handset, laptop, or desktop. That’s platform independence, and where technology is moving. Just like they did by going USB only, Apple is leading the charge for the future. Will people complain? Of course. The same people who complained about the lack of serial and parallel cables. What are those? Exactly.

6. No NOC, No Worries

What good is 3G email and web if some manufacturer’s server going down has you browsing at the speed of a lump of coal?

With the iPhone and its ActiveSync and open, standards-based protocols, if Apple’s servers go down — as long as you don’t work for Apple — you won’t even notice.

(Sure, Apple may have announced a mini-NOC for push 2.0 App Store app notifications, but if that goes down, only third-party apps may be affected (and even that, only when they’re not active), not mission-critical email, web browsing, etc.)

5. Modern Interface

Of course, good interface isn’t about candy, it’s about functionality, and the iPhone feeds off a culture of excellence in interface, from Tog to the Delicious Generation. People may not always notice it, but they notice when it’s missing, and after using even a 1.0 iPhone for a few months, the aged and near-obsolete interface in the Blackberry is slap-in-the-face missing. With 2.0, we get the SDK and…

4. App Store

Momentum is everything, and it’s iPhone Apps that have momentum now, iPhone Apps we see popping up in every developer PR and blog post, iPhone Apps that soon, if they’re under 10mb, every iPhone owner on the planet will be able to download directly to their device no matter where they are. Impulse made easy. What you want, when and where you want it, be it niche business applications, specialized educational tools, hardcore games, everyday utilities.

3. iPod Class Media

That’s the same reason they haven’t tried to hack into someone else’s media experience the way RIM claims it has with iTunes compatibility. When they wanted media, Apple built it themselves, and so with the iPhone, you get a complete, cohesive, massively integrated experience from music to movies, video to TV, audiobooks to podcasts, with the best back-end, desktop, sync, and mobile browser and WiFi store on the market. It just works. (And as noted, it will soon just work with App Store as well…)

iPhone 2.0 will bring video playlists, and perhaps more. Because Apple has a history of…

2. Continuous Feature Improvements

Now we’re on the verge of 2.0 — also free for current iPhone users — with more and more features jam-packed into each beta (now at beta 7 and counting).

Is the iPhone still missing some hotly demanded features like cut-and-paste? Sure, but it’s only ever a firmware update away.

Sadly, the aging Blackberry OS has hardly seen more than a coat of paint by comparison in its much, much, much longer lifetime. Want to add a MobileSafari class internet browser to your old Blackberry? Even if RIM could build one (rather than relying on Opera to fill the gap), more than likely you’d have to buy the iPhone-like Thunder just to get it.

The new mobile world is all about innovation and staying up-to-date, and sadly, post-iPhone, the poor old Blackberry hasn’t shown it can keep up.

1. iPhone is the New Crack

There’ll be an after-school special about it before long. Believe it.

(I don’t even have a data plan and I turn the dang thing on hundreds of times a day — come July 11th I doubt I’ll get anything done, but at least I’ll be super-productive not doing it!)

Conclusion

What do you think? Did I miss anything? Can Blackberry respond (with something besides another iClone?) Will they? Or do you think this list is totally for hosers and the Canadian Crackberry is still number #1? Why? Let us know!

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

Top 10 Reasons Why the Blackberry Compares Worse Than Ever to the iPhone 3G – Wait-a-Thon!

It’s official, folks, the iPhone 3G is replacing the original iPhone, aka the “iPhone 2G” (which makes the iPhone 1G the… Newton?). Company-owned AT&T store managers received the word today:

Stop selling and Pull all 2G 8GB (sku:69001) and 16GB (sku 69010) iPhones from the shelves and immediately return to AT&T Returns Facility in Fort Worth Texas

Have devices ready for pick up June 13th or Monday June 16th.

…Which means this past week wasn’t just a crazy dream after all, the iPhone 3G is really coming. What’s more interesting: we’re going to have a full month of NO iPhone sales. What’s most interesting: What do you suppose AT&T and Apple are going to do with these returned 1st-gen iPhones?

Heck – let’s have some fun. This is a Wait-a-Thon post. Any comment here gets you entered to win that $100 iTunes gift card. Here’s our guess: those long-lost, landfilled “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial” Atari Games create a sort of blackhole of bad user experiences. Throwing a bunch of iPhones in there would sort of balance that out, no?

What do you think they should do with them?

Thanks to Bla1ze for the tip!

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

Original iPhone 2G Pulled from AT&T Stores

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:

• Darrin
• Bill

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.

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

Win an iPhone 3G, $100 iTunes Card – Wait-a-Thon Continues!

What? Oh, sorry… You though we…? Nope. Dunno. Haven’t the foggiest. Maybe you could tell us? When Steve Jobs pulls out the updated version of his little pocket universe dent’er, what’s he going to call it?

• iPhone 3G
• iPhone Black
• iPhone: The Next Generation
• iPhone Nano
• iPhone Pro
• i2
• iPhone BOLDEST
• iPhone X 2.0 “Lynx”
• iPhone M6524X2519 (oops, Nokia’s already TM’d that…)
• iPhone Me
• iPhone Take 2
• iPhone Release II: Attack of the iClones
• iPhone Air
• iPhone Vista

No? None of the above? Well then, what do you think the next generation iPhone will be called?

And remember, this is a Wait-A-Thon post! Comment on this post — or comment on any post tagged “Wait-a-Thon” — for your chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card! Note that you must post with a valid and real email address so we can send you your prize — no switching!

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

And the Next Generation iPhone Will Be Called… – Wait-a-Thon!

[Note: This a a Wait-A-Thon post! Tell us what you think the iPhone 3G will look like -- or comment on any post tagged "Wait-a-Thon" -- for your chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card! Note that you must post with a valid and real email address so we can send you your prize -- no switching!]

Yesterday we asked you “What’s the iPhone 3G Chip and When Will it Ship?” Today we want to know what YOU think the iPhone 3G is going to look like?

Darth Vader black and Paris Hilton thin? Candy red fatty with Kevin Rose cam up front? High-def white with chrome button trim? What do YOU think?

To give you some help, here’s a HUGE roundup of all the iPhone 3G form factor rumors. Epic-style. Because let’s face it, roughly 0.01 seconds after Steve Jobs pulled the first iPhone from his pocket back at Macworld 2007, and someone, somewhere, put aside their childlike sense of wonder long enough think: “Nice! What’s the next gen going to be like?”

Complementary, contradictory, obvious, confusing, all but confirmed or from left field via outer space, the rumors have flooded the internet ever since. It’s become almost impossible to keep track of them all.

Six days from today Steve Jobs takes Moscone Center stage for the sold-out WWDC keynote, and according to everyone and their newsfeed, announces the iPhone 3G. In eager anticipation, every day this week, TiPb wil be asking you to tell us what you think the next generation iPhone will be, from 3G to GPS, release dates to price points, colors to casings, 2.0 software to .Mac .Me services, and this weekend we’ll wrap it all up with a look into the WWDC/iPhone 3G Crystal Ball, and a roundup of the very best of YOUR predictions.

So come on, let’s get in on!

WWDC -6 and Counting: Form Factor

Right after “OMG 3G!” and “when can I get it?!”, the next most burning question in the heart of the blogsphere is “what will it look like?!”

The current/original iPhone is 4.5″ x 2.4″ x 0.46″ (115mm x 61mm x 11.6mm) and weighs in at 4.8oz (135g) with a glossy black, optical glass facade, silvered trim, aluminum backing, and a black plastic band over the bottom rear to allow the antennae better reception. It boasts a 3.5″ 320×480 display at 163dpi, a rear-facing 2.0 megapixel camera, 3.5mm recessed headphone minijack, 30-pin dock connector, speakers at the top and base, microphone at the base, accelerometer, light sensor, proximity sensor, top-mounted SIM slot, on/off button, mute switch, volume button, and home button. All of this wrapped up in Apple’s trademarked rounded rectangular slab form factor.

It’s an admittedly drool-inducing beauty, having won numerous design awards including the prestigious Black Pencil. What then could they possibly change only a year later?

Let’s start at the beginning and work our way forward. Please note, since it’s ridiculously easy to stuff a current-gen iPhone into a new case and snap a pic, not to mention photoshop an iPhone (or even another phone/device altogether) and claim it’s the iPhone 3G, these should all be taken with the largest grain of salt that can comfortably fit in a C-130 sized transport:

March 7, 2008: Beginning the SDK-related leaks, the iPhone Lounge stumbled over a small image of a “fatty” iPhone on the Education First Educational Tours “private page” on iTunes. Sure, it could have been a next-gen iPod Touch or even iTablet, or just Apple playing with us, but it was enough to get the rumors racing!

March 18, 2008: Apple Insider, ever vigilant over Cupertino-based patent filings, came across something that included references to:

capacitive array element [that] may be a dual-sided panel that is capable of sensing touch from either side and sending signals indicative of the touches to a host device (e.g., a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a digital music player or a mobile telephone unit).

And we said “hello” to iPhone Flip rumors!

April 4, 2008: The iPod Observer ran a picture of a supposed iPhone 3G spy shot, and it was painted black. It later turned out to be just a current gen iPhone in a black case, but the iPhone Black rumors were here to stay.

April 25, 2008: Engadget’s trusted source claimed to have the know on the iPhone 3G. They stated numerous test units were already out and about in “super secret pockets”. And the specs? Same size and shape as the first gen, with glossy black finish like that in the fake “spy shot”, chromed(?!) volume buttons, no removable battery, flush(!) headphone jack, and the same screen size and resolution.

May 1, 2008: iLounge provided a picture of an iPhone 3G spec sheet for accessory makers. Highlights included blond, brunette, and redheaded models. Also featured were a tapered back, and a slight repositioning of the sensors. The conservative changes (color aside) made this one of the first leaks to seem at least part-way reasonable.

May 12, 2008: The Boy Genius Reports captured AT&T’s website suddenly offering the choice for an “iPhone Black”, which added further fuel to the black plastic iPhone fire. A UK accessory store also showed strings for “iPhone Black” accessories (or were they iPhone “Black Accessories”?).

May 13, 2008: But as AT&T leaketh, they also taketh back, and an AT&T spokesperson claimed the iPhone Black listing was a system glitch caused by some placeholder text for the different 8GB and 16GB models. The explanation made no sense to anyone familiar with website wiring, but other reports surfaced saying “Tilt Black”, for example, had also shown up, suggesting the excuse did cover a glitch, only a sillier one than claimed.

May 15, 2008: Fed up with AT&T hogging all the leaky glory, Intel Germany Geschäftsführer Hannes Schwaderer let slip that:

There is an iPhone with Intel’s new Atom chip. The device is slightly larger than the current version. That is not, however, because of the Intel chip, but because of the larger display used in the new iPhone.

Intel tried to claim it never happened, but others in attendance’s take on the comment was:

The Intel CEO mentioned furthermore, that the display on iPhone 2 would be bigger than on iPhone 1 (although it is already quite big). iPhone 2 is also thinner than iPhone 1.

May 19, 2008: Perhaps riffing on the aforementioned (rumored) specs, accessory maker EXO posted a mock up of what one of their cases would look like on such an iPhone 3G, potentially confirming both the specs, and the Nano-like fatness.

May 27, 2008: iPhoneClub.nl posted some images of an iPhone White that looked eerily like the fake spy shots of the current gen iPhone-in-a-case we saw previously. If by some means legit, they confirmed both the increase in width, and plastic and more rounded back.

May 28, 2008: The spy shots got kinda hectic when IdealsChina showed off a supposed mold for well known accessory maker, Griffin’s iPhone 3G case, as well as a mock up that matched previous rumors rather closely. (meaning they were real, or the rumor people had resorted to copying each other).

The same day, MacRumors Forums lit up with what was claimed to be a new iPhone icon file inside the just-released iPhone 2.0 SDK Beta 6. The icon, if legit, hinted at a less-rounded rectangular shape, thinner silver bezel, wider body, and slight rearrangement of the buttons (or that someone was good at photoshopping iPod Touch icons…)

June 1, 2008: Reports had previously surfaced that Apple was filming an iPhone 3G commercial at the Flagship Apple Store in NYC, so it came as little surprise when a “spy shot” surfaced that claimed to be connected to the TV shoot. What was a surprise was that rather than the glossy black that consumed most previous rumors, this one went with a more understated matte blackish-charcoal finish. (Or at least the casing did…)

June 2, 2008: “Inside Steve’s Brain” author Leander Kahney of Wired magazine claimed a programmer source inside a major software house revealed that the next generation iPhone 3G would be a whopping 22% thinner, even with better battery life, and twice the storage (for an uber-cheap $200 to boot!).

UPDATED!

June 5, 2008: iDealsChina (via Apple Insider), who previously leaked the Griffin “iPhone 3G” molds, now claimed that Apple had made some last minute case changes resulting in a next generation device 2mm (0.08 inches) shorter and 0.5mm (0.02 inches) thinner than the previous leaks showed.

At the same time, iLounge doubled up on the rumors and claimed that Apple may be releasing not one but TWO new iPhones with 3.2″ and 2.8″ screens respectively. Dubious, and they could just as easily be for a next gen iClone as iPhone, but iPhone Nano rumors are hard little things to squash…

Your Turn!

So there you go, now it’s your turn. Tell us what YOU think the iPhone 3G is going to look like. Blond, brunette, or redhead? Thinny or fatty? Shiny or matty? More buttons or less? Toned down or pimped to the max?

And after you’re done telling us, don’t forget to head over to our iPhone Blog’s super Wait-a-Thon spectacular where you could win an iPhone 3G of your very own, whatever it looks like, on the very day it’s released!

Go back and read Part 1: What’s the iPhone’s 3G Chip and When Will it Ship?
Continue reading Part 3: What Surprises Will Be in iPhone 2.0 Software & Services?
Continue reading Part 4: What 3rd Party iPhone SDK Apps Will Be Available Launch Day?
Continue reading Part 5: What Will the iPhone 3G’s Hardware Features Be?

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

What’s the iPhone 3G Going to Look Like?! Countdown to WWDC – Wait-a-Thon

No need for double-takes. You didn’t click the wrong link. Just breath, dig deeply, and stick with me for a moment. Yes, you really are still reading the iPhone blog.

For a 1.0 device, the iPhone knocked the ball — if not out of the park — soundly into the fence, and sent a complacent industry fumbling and flurrying to catch it. But no device, not even from Apple, could get everything perfect the first time at bat. Now, I’ve pretty much staked my turf here by playfully poking a little bit of fun at the competition but, truth be known, when they’re not wasting their time on iClones every platform and handset has some great — even killer — features to recommend it. In that spirit, here’s my top 5 list of what Apple should seriously consider stealing… er… learning from the competition if they want to hit a home run with 2.0 and beyond…

5. Blackberry’s Email Management

RIM is the undeniably #1 in smartphone market share, but they come in at #5 on my list for the simple reason that, while what they do well they do phenomenally well, as a platform I think that very maturity has led to little innovation, and hence little (and narrow) potential to mine for iPhone improvements.

That said, they are the email monster for a reason. With one major caveat, nobody does email bigger or better than Blackberry and while Twitter, IM, VoIP, video chat, and other technologies old and new battle it out for communication domination, email remains the mainstay of the mainstream, business and consumer alike, and in that regard Apple has something important to learn from Blackberry.

What Blackberry Does Right

Blackberry does email to the point where the two are almost synonymous. Push notwithstanding, when it comes to managing email, the Blackberry is a beast. It’s simply the best there is at what it does.

What Apple Could Do Better

RIM uses a centralized Network Operations Center (NOC) to handle all Blackberry messaging everywhere, providing true, near-instantaneous “push” to thousands and thousands of Crackberrians each and every moment. But here’s that major caveat: it’s a single point of failure. Outages, from carrier to regional to network-wide have increasingly plagued the service, as have privacy and security concerns.

With the upcoming 2.0 update, the iPhone will support the ActiveSync “push” technology Apple licensed from Microsoft. ActiveSync eschews the “one NOC to manage it all” and instead simulates “push” between local Exchange Server and mobile client — in this case, the iPhone. If someone else’s Exchange Server — even Microsoft’s in Redmond — goes down, it effects your iPhone service not one bit.

That just leaves the iPhone MobileMail app itself. Fairly easy to set up and use, it still remains a challenge to manage multiple accounts and messages. Better mass-mail handling, especially for important functions like delete, is imperative (and is rumored to be coming with 2.0 as well).

Beyond that, however, better organization is needed. A single, unified inbox, like the one on the desktop Mail.app would be a great first step, followed by the ability to hide selected, seldom-used IMAP folders to clear up some clutter.

Speaking of IMAP, since MobileMail can “see” IMAP folders for Calendar, Apple Mail To Do, etc. better integration with the iPhone Calendar and Notes application (and dare we dream — Task app?), seems natural given what’s been done in OS X 10.5 Leopard’s Mail.app.

And since the spammers seem intent on mail-bombing the internet back to the stone age, some client-side anti-spam filters would also be most welcome.

Taken together, these improvements would go a long way to making the iPhone king of the next email generation.

4. Palm’s Click Counting

We want powerful, we want beautiful, and — dangit! — we want drop dead easy to use. Great design is functional design, great user experience is intuitive, almost transparent experience. Apple nails this to a large degree. I’ve said it before, but my two-and-a-half year old godson can pretty much navigate his way around the iPhone, from pictures to camera to notes (his ABCs) to calculator (his 123s) which unbelievable ease and accomplishment. But there remain a few problem areas.

Palm OS, dinosaur that it is, has legendary ease of use. Rumor has it that early Palm developers, like co-founder Jeff Hawkins, literally counted each and every “click” it took for a user to accomplish a task, and did everything possible to optimize and minimize that number. It has failed miserably to keep up with the times, but in a few key ways (no pun intended!) it’s still timeless.

What Palm Does Right

Palm understands moving around a mobile device like nobody else. Almost every task can be accomplished with just a few touches, clicks, or key presses. Brian has already covered the ease of entering appointment/calendar data on in the constantly-saved model of the Palm OS, and I’d add past innovations like photo speed dialing (which seems a natural for the iPhone, and ironically was a Palm innovation for their first Windows Mobile device, and requires a 3rd party add on for Palm’s own OS!). TreoCentral.com no doubt has many more examples. Though perhaps not as practical on an all-touch device, even little things like typing to begin a contact search or call are all time-saving techniques mastered by the Zen of Palm, and a spirit the iPhone could easily learn.

What Apple Could do Better

In addition to being so old its joints creak and crack every time it turns around, the Palm OS lacks the power to deliver a modern user experience, and bizarrely lacks standardization even across its own device platform (besides the aforementioned lack of photo dialing on the Palm side, GSM and CDMA phones have sported different dialing apps, some modernized while others are left to languish in whatever layer of hell 1990 monochrome aliased bitmaps are condemned).

Adding photo dialing to the iPhone would be trivial. All the Quartz and Core Graphics/Animation services are there, just begging for an Apple take.

Likewise improved calendar entry: tapping on an empty slot should bring up a New Event editor the same way tapping on a filled one brings up a viewer. And data should be saved automatically unless specifically cancelled. The mobile world is both more prone to interruptions and less forgiving of them, after all.

The sideways flick currently used to move between photos, Weather app cities, and other information surfaces could be leveraged more widely as well to speed up functionality. Let me flick between album lists while a song is playing, or email folders from one account to the next.

Digging down into, and backing up out of stacked screens is so iPod Classic.

3. Windows Mobile/HTC Speeds, Feeds, and Divergent Needs

As any WMExpert would tell you, Windows Mobile — in Microsoft’s most favoritist model — is not a product but a platform. So, I’m adding in stalwart hardware manufacturer HTC to round out the reference. Before we get too deeply into that, however, it’s worth remembering that the Microsoft model makes for an almost diametrically opposed situation to Apple’s. At the time of this writing, there is only 1 iPhone model, from 1 manufacturer, on 1 US-based carrier. Last count, there were 3.2 gazillion Windows Mobile phones across a plethora of OS variations (standard, smartphone… er… purple?) and innumerable manufacturing SKU’s not only from HTC, but Palm, Motorola, and even Symbian co-founder Sony Ericsson, among others, which run on every carrier and it’s multitude of resellers.

But Apple’s end-to-end control of the device, while giving it an undeniable edge in stability and user experience, comes at the cost of variety and individual configurability.

Back in the dark days of tech support we used to joke that if you were in Mac support, every question had a simple “yes, here’s how…” or “no, sorry” answer, while if you were in Windows support, every question inevitably started with “maybe” and led to hours and hours of digging, tweaking, and testing. And in many ways, the same holds true with the iPhone today: One feature set and a limited range of settings. And in very narrow ways, that leaves room for Apple to learn something from Windows Mobile.

What Windows Mobile Does Right

Again, I’m including HTC in this equation, and from that standpoint, they deserve credit for upping the game with a VGA quality screen and a release schedule that allows them to continuously field the latest and greatest mobile processors.

On the Windows Mobile side proper, the beast is so infinitely tweak-able it might as well be a hobbyist kit. Dig deep enough, and you can find settings for how you’d like your settings, and settings for those settings as well.

What Apple Could Do Better

While my heart remains set on a Nano-esque 202dpi screen (the current iPhone is 160dpi) bringing 720p to the mobile world, I would realistically expect VGA’s 640×480 in the next revision. The iPhone, with the video-out cables, is already capable of pumping 640×480 to your TV, why not to the iPhone screen? And while a yearly, single product release cycle doesn’t give much room for proc bumps, going beefy from the start, and getting the new chips early like Apple does with their laptops and desktops, would keep up the cutting-edge tradition and reputation, and help see devices healthily though their annual life cycles. (This might even be something proprietary chips via the recent PA Semi purchase could help with…)

On the configuration side, while Windows Mobile has ‘em, they’ve also left them pretty much scattered every which where but under under a unified Settings area, which is precisely where the iPhone sorts them. However, though its certainly understandable that Apple is focusing on the casual user, surfacing some lower-level options a la Windows Mobile, organized and implemented with Apple’s fit and finish, would go a long way to appeasing power users who currently turn to jailbreaking in a desperate attempts to get closer to the metal. On the Mac side, there are 3rd party apps that create GUIs for otherwise Terminal-only settings, and while I’m not suggesting (though maybe pipe dreaming a little…) that Apple should provide an official way to get Terminal up on the iPhone, an Advanced button that allowed for more options and deeper tweaking would be a happy medium for many users.

(What, you thought I’d beat the dead horse of cut and paste?)

2. Nokia’s Mobile Video Creation

“I’m streaming live right now, come chat!” is pure Twitter bacon (like spam, but you opted in to it). Many tech pundits, who are also iPhone users, love the Web 2.1 ability to stream video from anywhere and everywhere, whether it’s Robert Scoble shoving a camera in front of economic powerhouses, or the infinitely better looking Cali Lewis demoing Wii fit for the good of the masses, or the first lady of Apple (and self-confessed Jobstalker) iJustine zooming down the highway, live streaming video, especially live streaming mobile video, is the latest IT thing.

Many (most?) of these bleeding edge technojournalists are also Apple fans and devoted iPhone users. So, the fact that they’re all using N95’s to stream their mobile videos shows that Apple could learn something from Nokia.

What Nokia Does Right

Say what you want about Nokia’s Soviet-military design aesthetic and their rather pathetic North American release schedules, they know how to throw a camera at a smart phone. The N95 sports a massive 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens and DVD(ish) caliber video capture. This compares to the rapidly obsoleting 2 megapixel cam on the iPhone, which also fails to enjoy any Apple-provided video capture (which means jailbreaking and loading unsupported third party apps are your only current option).

So, while Apple and the iPhone’s built-in iPod rules the roost when it comes to consuming mobile media, the N95 can’t be touched when it comes to creating that media on the go. This is why all those aforementioned iPhone toting blogerati, when they clog my Twitter feed with their live streaming announcements, are streaming live via the N95.

What Apple Could Do Better

There have been rumors of an upcoming iChat Mobile application, and even video conferencing, and that’s a start. Apple, however, stands alone in 360 degree spherical integration, and while they don’t have as massive a footprint in most of them the way Microsoft might, they at least have a toe in all of them, from hardware, to software, to services, from production, to processing, to deployment, to consumption. You can fire up Final Cut Pro on your iMac, create a movie, upload it to .Mac and sync a copy to your iPhone. Imagine that power harnessed around mobile media creation?

Right now, QIK and Nokia need each other to produce streaming video (while the N95’s battery lasts, that is). Imagine an iPhone with a decent camera and video capture that could stream live via, or send recorded clips to, .Mac gallery. And imagine if Apple took the much-needed step of enabling support for UstreamTV, stickam, Flickr, and YouTube.

Coupled with seamless integration with the Mac, iMovie 08, and higher end apps, and — BOOM — the king of mobile media consumption becomes the king of mobile media creation as well.

Everyone could be a life-caster.

1. Android’s Cloud and Location Based Services

I know. Android is still somewhere between vaporware and the eternal beta tag that hounds so many of Google’s initiatives. How could they be my #1? Here’s the thing: with a few notable exceptions (we’ll get to those in a paragraph or two), they’re batting nearly 1000 on all “cloud services” right now. And the cloud is the future.

What are cloud services? Most of us run applications locally on our computers. We buy software, install it, and use it to save files on our hard drive. Cloud services change that game entirely. They run applications on servers (often huge data centers) that we access via our browser (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox), or through a dedicated client (iTunes, Sidebar Objects, Dashboard Widgets, etc.). Instead of buying them, we get them for free, sponsored by advertising, or via paid subscription. And instead of saving files locally, we have the option of saving them on the same servers (and data centers) the services themselves run on. We may lose some potential privacy and control, but we gain the advantage of multiple backups scattered over many geographies to preserve our data. If you think this doesn’t sound too different than the old server-client model, or the Sun and Oracle predictions of the network being the computer, you’re right. Just on a far greater scale.

What are location-based services? According to Google, the next gold rush. It’s tying the cloud in to your current location, based on WiFi, and better yet — GPS coordinates.

Apple provides some of these services already, with .Mac mail, iDisk storage, .Mac galleries, Back-to-my-Mac, and Sync, and rumors indicate they may be amping it up with IMAP IDLE-style “push” email and PIM sync, and maybe even a complete revamp with the next release, but they still could learn a lot from Google.

What Google Does Right

Confession: I’m a .Mac subscriber. Yes, it’s buggy and overpriced, but Back-to-my-Mac and the Sync features alone were enough to lure me in. Nevertheless, Google owns this space. They’re predicted to earn more than Microsoft’s Windows + Office monopoly soon, and some say that’s only the beginning. Indeed, the entire raison-d’être for Android is to give away an OS in hopes of getting Google’s services onto more phones and thus, into more hands.

They want you to meet an old friend over one of their Open Social powered networks, use their email to contact the old friend, their search to find a great diner near the both of you, their calendar to schedule a lunch, their Docs suite to get some work done while you’re waiting, their Blogger to write up the event, and their Picasa gallery to store pictures of your reunion. (All with tasteful text and banner ads, tuned per your interests and location, served up along with your results and data)

What’s more, many of their cloud services allow for easy collaboration. You can share your calendar, work on your spreadsheet along with some colleagues logged in back at the office, and publish everything online for the world to see.

And the most important piece — indeed the missing link up until recently — Google Gears allows for offline persistence; you can keep using many of your cloud apps and cloud-stored data even when you don’t have a WiFi or cell connection. If you have to get on a plane to see your old friend, you can keep typing away, and when you land everything will sync back up.

What Apple Could Do Better

Where Google strikes out is integration. Their offerings are a disjointed and sometimes disoriented mishmash of homebrews and buyouts, with nowhere near the cohesive user experience or inter-offering leverage Apple could provide. Until recently, some services didn’t even work under a single login. There are also huge holes in their offerings, like Amazon S3- or Microsoft Skydrive-like storage (yes, you can rig up gDrive, but I’m talking official offerings here).

Apple already has some of these holes filled (iDisk), but are missing many more pieces themselves. There are suggestions Apple doesn’t “get” social networking (or doesn’t want to get it). But an easy to use blogging service built into .Mac and the iPhone would be an excellent start. And given Apple’s existing “Cult of Mac”, a social network tied into that admittedly snobbish demographic would be an easy sell as well. Tie it into the location-based services (opt-in, of course) and suddenly the cloud network takes on physicality as well. Instead of “Steve’s Twittering: Meet up at the Mothership after Keynote”, Steve can see how many of his friends and contacts are already at Keynote, and tying into search, calendar, IM, and other services could make for a very easy workflow to set up the meet.

This brings me back to the integration. The way Contacts flows into the Apple client for Google Maps gives a hint at how it should “just work”. The iPhone Maps app in general shows that Apple can make hybrid client/cloud software better than anyone on the planet. Imagine that leveraged across the device?

Get an email with a spreadsheet, and instead of just a preview, you could launch iWork Online, make your edits, and have them available to all team (or family — Apple’s consumer focus!) members instantly. Still working when you get on that plane? Newer versions of WebKit promise offline modes with database support for just such an eventuality, and WebKit is the foundation of the iPhone’s MobileSafari browser, and much of its data rendering in general).

And once the iPhone scales, and iPhone data starts to get aggregated and leveraged (with firm privacy and security policies!) for the benefit of other iPhone users, watch out. Today’s social networks and sharing proof-of-concepts will looks positively anemic.

Apple (or an Apple/Google alliance even?) could get an immediate edge going into the next great paradigm shift in computer technology.

Conclusion

So there you have them: better Blackberry-style email management, Treo-centric focus on click counting, Windows Mobile-ish configurability, Nokia inspired mobile video production, and Google Android beating cloud services are my top 5 things the iPhone could learn from the competition.

Is Apple already thinking along these lines? We’ll have to wait for WWDC — and likely Macworld 2009 — to know for sure. How about you? If Apple could take 5 things from the competition to improve YOUR iPhone, what would they be?

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

Top 5 Things the iPhone Could Learn from the Competition – Wait-a-Thon!

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More and more people are switching to the iPhone. They’re switching from Palm and Windows Mobile and even Blackberry (looking at you, Barack Obama!) smartphones to the iPhone. They’re switching carriers to get the iPhone. They’re switching off the carrier-locks just to be able to switch to the iPhone in their own, currently unsupported countries. And now that the next-gen iPhone 3G is all but upon us, and more and more regions are announcing deals to offer it, the switching is only going to get faster and more furious.

To celebrate the switchers, those who dare to phone different, the iPhone Blog wants to help you get your content off your old, perhaps restrictive and outdates systems, and onto iTunes, ready to sync to your new iPhone.

Read on to find out how!

This article assumes you’re switching from another smartphone, like Blackberry, Windows Mobile, or Palm, and are new to the iTunes + iPod (and iPhone!) ecosystem. It also assumes you’re a dedicated Windows user or someone who just recently switched from Windows to the Mac and needs to transfer content to iTunes.

Since longtime iPod (and Mac) aficionados will almost certainly already be using iTunes, your iPhone will sync your existing iTunes content the same as it would any other iPod. And, hey, if you’re a Linux (or any other *nix) user, I figure you’ve kept your content open from the get-go, and already know 18 different ways to get it onto your unlocked, jailbroken iPhone…

Getting iTunes

iTunes is a free download from apple.com and required before you can activate your retail iPhone. (And if your iPhone is unlocked, required before you can easily manage and sync content). If you don’t already have it, go get it now. I’ll wait. Honest.

Making the Most of Your Music

When you’re moving to the iPhone and iTunes ecosystem, the first and easiest content to move over is your digital music (stuff you’ve already bought, ripped from CD, or created yourself).

Moving MP3s and WMAs

First, we have to address the monster in the room — DRM, which technically stands for Digital (Copy) Rights Management, though Draconian Restrictive Measures may be more accurate. It’s a way of locking down content ostensibly to prevent piracy but often to frustrate legitimate users. For now, if you bought music from an online store like MSN Music, Yahoo Music, Zune Marketplace, etc. it’s almost certainly got DRM that will prevent you from easily moving it to iTunes. Don’t worry, I’ll cover ways to work around it (for legitimate purposes only!) at the end of the article.

If your music is already DRM-free you’re good to go and in an iTunes/iPhone supported format like MP3, just drag it over and drop it in (or choose File – Add to Library for you old school menu-lovers). For DRM-free/unprotected WMA (Windows Media Audio, the native format of Windows Media Player) music, while iTunes won’t play it, it will automatically convert it to an iTunes-friendly format for you. (See Ripping CDs, below, for details on how to chose iTunes conversion formats).

I recommend letting iTunes manage your library via Edit – Preferences – Advanced – General – Keep iTunes Music Organized and Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library.

This puts your content into a logical file structure so you can more easily find individual files later with Windows Explorer, avoids wasting space with duplicate content, and prevents iTunes from losing track of something you added (for example off a USB drive) but forgot to copy locally.

Ripping CDs

If your music is on CD, iTunes will rip it straight to either MP3 or AAC (the successor to MP3 which has less support but arguably greater potential quality). Unless you’re tone deaf, I recommend ripping to at least 256 bit. You can set this via Edit – Preferences – Advanced – Importing – Import Using and Setting (Custom).

Buying Music Online

Want to buy music for you iPhone? iTunes is the #1 retailer now and provides nearly effortless browsing and purchasing options. Just hit the iTunes Store link in the sidebar and find what you like. For reason’s we’ll get into in a moment, I heavily recommend buying only iTunes Plus music, which is the higher, 256 bit quality and DRM-free.

Though Apple CEO Steve Jobs has famously said iTunes would rather sell only DRM-free music, currently, EMI and independent labels are the only source of iTunes plus music. Sadly, to try and manipulate and fragment the market, Universal, Sony BMG, and Warner Music will only provide higher-quality, DRM-free music to iTunes competitors like Amazon MP3. But if you live in the US — or when/if they expand the service internationally — Amazon MP3 provides an iTunes friendly, if slightly more challenging to navigate, source for legit iPhone-compatible music.

Doing Your Best With Video

Unlike music, where MP3 is a pseudo-standard, CD ripping is mostly legal, and DRM is increasingly on the way out, video formats are far more fragmented, DVD ripping is mostly verboten, and DRM shows no signs of going anywhere anytime soon.

Moving MP4s, AVIs, WMVs, FLVs, Etc.

If you’ve shot your own videos, DVR’d, or otherwise created or acquired DRM-free video content, it’s only slightly more difficult to move them to iTunes than it is music. The “slightly” part being format. With a wide variety of containers, codecs, and the need to get both audio and video into exactly the right zen-like balance, using something like the free Videora iPhone converter for Windows or iSquint for Mac (or similar application) is almost a must. Open your existing video file, choose the iPhone setting, and let it convert.

Unless you have a fast machine, get a tasty beverage because it will take a while. And make sure you test a sample first, to prevent wasting a lot of time if your settings are off.

Already have, or already converted video content? Drag it into iTunes same as you did your music.

(Note: since iTunes doesn’t store video-type meta data in the video file itself, but rather in the iTunes database, if you want to have movies, TV shows, and music videos all filed in the right place, you’ll have to individually set them in each file’s properties under the Video tab.)

Ripping DVDs

Unlike music, where various “fair use” provisions exist that allow, in many jurisdictions, for you to rip your CDs to your computer, the DVD lobby has succeeded in making DVD ripping illegal in many parts — the reason iTunes doesn’t provide that type of functionality itself.

If, however, you live in a place (or mindset?) that says when you legally buy a movie or TV show on DVD, you should be able to watch it regardless of whether its stays on a disk or moves to your hard drive, then open source software like Handbrake is your best friend. Handbrake will rip most DVDs straight to iPhone format, and add them to iTunes, in just a couple easy steps (navigate to your DVDs video directory, select the iPhone default, and let it rip!).

Bonus tip: make sure, especially when dealing with older movies, full screen movies, or TV shows, that you preview the video and choose de-interlace when necessary to prevent nasty scan-lines from showing up on your digitized video.

Buying Videos

Depending on what country you live in, iTunes provides movie rentals and downloadable movies, music videos, and TV shows. These are DRM-locked (see below) but perfectly compatible with the iPhone. Selection varies greatly from region to region, and some networks — most famously NBC — don’t see eye to eye with Apple’s less anti-consumer model, but until Apple unleashes its own DVR, this is the easiest way to get legit video on your iPhone.

Other Content

Big audio book fan? If you got them from Audible, simply go to Advanced – Authorize Audible Account, input your details, and drag-and-drop your audio books straight into iTunes.

Love podcasts, like our very own Phone Different podcast? Subscribe directly from the iTunes Store (or from the Subscribe via iTunes link from your favorite podcast’s homepage). They’re free, come in audio and video (even HD!) and download straight into iTunes. While you’re there, be sure to check out iTunes University (also under the iTunes Store) for loads of free, and highly educational audio and video, from lectures to speeches to commencement addresses.

Dealing with DRM-Hell

Now for the hard part. If you previously bought music locked down with DRM, especially the more onerous DRM systems like PlaysForSure (or in MSN Music’s case, PlaysNoMore!), there’s a little more work involved.

The Problem With DRM

What’s wrong with DRM? It does nothing to prevent real pirates (many of whom mass-produce content on boats in international waters or distribute online via massive criminal networks) and everything to frustrate regular, legitimate users who just want to upgrade their computers or move their content from one device or room to another.

We’ve all read the stories, from Google Video to Major League Baseball, to MSN Music. People, in good faith, spend their hard-earned money to buy the content they love, only to later get notification that the service they chose, from the vendors they trusted, will no longer “authorize” them to play back that content.

Imagine Tower Records going out of business and some men in black showing up to re-possess all the CDs and LPs (yes, we’re old enough to remember LPs, thank you!) that you ever bought from that store.

Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? But with digital content it’s happened before and will happen again. Windows Media Player has also been known to automatically DRM music you rip from your own CDs if you’re not paying attention to the preference settings. So, if you’re stuck with previously bought or ripped DRM music, what can you do?

The Analog Hole

While from time to time DRM-stripping applications show up on the web, most DRM services are bound by their contracts with the big media companies to update the DRM as quickly as possible to render any circumvention obsolete. This makes DRM-stripping unreliable.

A more dependable, although technically “lossy” solution (i.e. some loss of quality will occur, though it will likely be negligible to all but audiophiles), is the infamous “analog hole”.

For music, simply use your old software (e.g. Window Media Player) to burn your DRM-locked WMA (or other format) music to playable CDs, and then use iTunes to rip those CDs back into digital format (preferably MP3).

Voila, the music you paid for, now ready for the device you chose to use it on.

Video is more of a challenge. If you’re an advanced user and have a Media Center PC (or two PCs, depending), with analog output and input, you can try routing your DRM-locked video out and back in, re-recording it like you would a VHS tape or analog cable TV signal. Provided you could then navigate the “black art” of video and audio containers and codecs, using something like the aforementioned Videora, for example, you could convert the captured video into iTunes/iPhone friendly MP4 H.264 format.

Advanced Capture

Even more advanced users willing to brave challenges like hardware acceleration and video layers? Capture software like CamStudio might let you avoid the digital-analog-digital loop. Your mileage, however — and frustration level — will vary.

An Ounce of Prevention

While Apple has among the most progressive DRM systems on the market, with the ability to sync any number of iPods to your iTunes, and authorize up to 5 computers to play your DRM-locked content (and the ability to call Apple for one-time re-downloads and re-authorizations should something go wrong), it’s vital to remember to BACK UP you iTunes content. USB hard drives are now ridiculously cheap and ridiculously big, so get one and copy everything to it, and update the copy regularly.

Also, burn playable CDs of all DRM-locked music and rip them back into iTunes so that, in case of system loss, re-install, or other catastrophic problems, you don’t have to worry about getting locked out of your own music.

Conclusion

Well, there they are, my tips and tricks for getting your content off the old and outdated and onto iTunes just in time for your brand new iPhone. But try as I might, I know our readers — the real content ninjas — have a whole host of sneaky black magic all their own.

What are your best tips and tricks? Drop a comment and let us know!

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

Switching to iPhone: How To Get Your Content Into iTunes – Wait-a-Thon!