iPhone firware update video here ..It looks legit..see for your self

Review the video. Again, it looks legit but it is still hard to say.

The interface of the update looks like Apple's work but all features that are shown are current hacks in the cracked iPhone.



The items that make me beleive this update is real is the very clean integration of google maps on this video.

It looks legit but I guess we will have to wait and see.

In my opinion, this looks like the real deal. The only problem is I want it NOW!

iPhone 1.1.3 firware update

An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo has gathered conclusive evidence which confirms that the iPhone Firmware 1.1.3 update is 100% real. It installs only from iTunes using the obligatory Apple private encryption key, which nobody has. The list of new features, like GPS-like triangulation positioning in Google Maps, has been confirmed too. Apparently it will be coming out next week, but there's bad news as expected: it breaks the unlocks, patches the previous vulnerabilities used by hackers and takes away all your third-party applications."

iPhone 1.1.3 firware update

An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo has gathered conclusive evidence which confirms that the iPhone Firmware 1.1.3 update is 100% real. It installs only from iTunes using the obligatory Apple private encryption key, which nobody has. The list of new features, like GPS-like triangulation positioning in Google Maps, has been confirmed too. Apparently it will be coming out next week, but there's bad news as expected: it breaks the unlocks, patches the previous vulnerabilities used by hackers and takes away all your third-party applications."

iPhone firmware update 1.1.3 NEWS coming very soon!!!

Looks like the soon-to-be-released iPhone firmware 1.1.3 has quite a few surprises. We were able to get a look at it, and here is what we found:
The ability to send an SMS message to multiple people is now there
Google Maps application can now pinpoint your location using cell tower triangulation
Google Maps can now display the Hybrid map view
You can now drag and drop application icons on your home screen
The home screen supports pagination
You can now add web bookmarks to your home screen
That is all we have found for now. We also know that is you used AnySIM to unlock your phone, you can expect the 1.1.3 update to brick it. Good times. Take a look at our iPhone Firmware 1.1.3 Gallery for a photo tour of the new stuff.

Apple's new price target: $300

Apple's new price target: $300 and I'm not surprised.

I was speaking with my fiance a few days ago reguarding Apple stock. The position the company has went has moved us to investigate purchasing a stock for the first time.

If Apple continues to do the right things, I could see Apple exceeding Googles current price.

Case in point: iPhone
Apple did an excellent job with research and developement of this product. I had said before, for Apple's first try at a cell phone/smart phone, they got it about 90% right. It makes me wonder if Apple has some of the most talented design and engineering teams in the world. If they take the same approach to the rest of their procuct line, we will see their marketshare increase exponentially.

iMac
My father has had constant issues with his Dell notebook which is now over 5 years old. For Christmas, I had the idea of a MAC.
I must admit, I have been doing alot of research on this product and it was clearly the right fit for him. I had stopped by the Apple store and was impressed with the service. I knew what I wanted and and the it was in my hads within 2 minutes. They even rang me out on the spot and e-mailed my my receipt.

I then set up the computer and after no more then 5 minutes it was fully functional.
My father needed no instruction. Everything seemed to be intuitive to him and I.

Now that's impressive.

In the future I would like to explore the .MAC integration with the apple products.

iPhone, iTunes, iRent? Movies for hire via itunes.

According to a report in the Financial Times, Apple has inked a deal with News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox that will bring a new video-on-demand service to iTunes. The companies are expected to announce the deal on January 14 at MacWorld.
The agreement reportedly will allow consumers to rent, for a limited time, just-released Fox movies via digital download from iTunes. Although Apple already peddles newly released movies through a deal with Disney, this is the first time iTunes will be renting rather than selling movies digitally.
MGM, Lionsgate, Viacom, and Paramount restrict their digital libraries to older titles. However, the Fox deal could open the floodgates for new release rentals. Apple is reportedly in talks with Paramount, Warner Bros., and Sony to make their new releases available on iTunes for rent or purchase.
Leveraging Apple Ecosystem
The reports of a movie rental deal with 20th Century Fox, if they are accurate, represent an important shift in Apple's business process, according to Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research.
The deal, Gartenberg said, is Apple's recognition that renting movies is an understood business model that could add profits to Apple's already swelling bottom line.
"The idea of people being able to rent movie content, put it on their iPod, watch it on the go, and then move on to the next thing is definitely a concept that will resonate with consumers," Gartenberg said.
Of course, iTunes won't be the first digital-download store to rent movies. Netflix and other companies offer digital rentals. But Apple's deal with Fox -- and the possible deals with the other studios -- could shake up the decades-old rental business.
"The Fox deal could become a tipping point for digital movie rentals because Apple has already built out this tremendous ecosystem between the computer, the iPhone, and the iPod," Gartenberg said.
Apple TV and FairPlay DRM
Gartenberg also said that adding on-demand movie rentals to iTunes would give Apple the additional service it needs to further cement its position in the digital home.
"Movie rentals would definitely give more legs to Apple TV," Gartenberg said. "People may want to download a movie but not necessarily want to watch it on their computer. They may want to watch it on the big screen in their home, and Apple TV allows them to do that."
To offer the digital rentals -- which would have to expire after a certain preset time in order to be considered rentals -- Apple will be relying on its FairPlay digital rights management system, according to the Financial Times.
New Fox DVD releases reportedly will come with a digital file protected by FairPlay. That file will make it possible for consumers to copy the disc to a computer or a video iPod without the use of special software.

Apple Stock at iAlltimeHigh $200 buck-a-rooskies

He Steve good JOBS, keep it up!

Your job is safe until the next Stock scandal.

iPhone could be similar to iTablet

Some have been working on gathering more information about a new Apple (AAPL) portable device from several different sources during the past 6 months. I have pieced together the puzzle which portrays a picture of what can be perhaps best described as Apple’s rival product to the Intel Ultra Mobile PC [UMPC] initiative which has unsuccessfully tried to marry Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows OS to a highly portable computing platform.
My strongest piece of evidence came from a trusted tipster about 4 months ago who described an image s(he) had seen of a mysterious touch screen device larger than the iPhone featuring one distinguishing button or depression on each side. At the time, unsure about the actual size of this new device, I reasoned that it could be a new generation of iPhone/iPod Touch or the much rumored Apple tablet. However, the device was later described to have been oriented horizontally on its long end, indicating that it was meant to be gripped with one hand on each side similar to a Sony (SNE) PSP. This ruled out the Apple tablet which is, more than likely, a significantly larger device. It also ruled out iPod Touch since I have been previously tipped on the forward path of the iPod lineup by different sources, essentially confirming that touch screen iPods will not grow much in screen size.
Then about a month ago, another source revealed that Apple has shown significant interest in a 5.2″ 800 x 480 pixel touch screen design by Balda, a German company and the current iPhone screen supplier, and Wintek, an Asian component supplier. This second piece of evidence reveals the real purpose of this new device, an ultra mobile device occupying a position between the 3.5″ iPhone and the much rumored 7-10 inch Apple tablet. There was also a previous article I wrote which highlighted Apple’s sudden concern for flash memory supplies in 2008, despite industry predictions for next year which emphasize greater production and softer demand. This further confirms that Apple is working on a new device due sometime in 2008 that will put strains on the flash memory supply chain.
One thing not seen by any of my sources is a keyboard: it’s clear Apple will not be using a physical QWERT keyboard for this device, instead relying on its patented multi-touch screen as the sole interface for user input. This may be the reason why some have speculated that Apple may be on the verge of introducing a new generation of its famed Newton PDA. However, I firmly believe that the shrinking market for dedicated PDAs puts those speculations to rest, although various PDA functionalities may in fact be included in the final version of the device.
This new Apple device, which could be an Ultra Mobile Computer, has not been sighted out and about the Apple campus or even in the area normally designated for testing new Apple products, suggesting that it’s still in the software and hardware design period. Once it’s physically spotted outside Apple’s secretive labs, we may see an actual product release of 6-8 months, closely following other new Apple product introductions.
Above is a rendition of this new device based on what we know so far

iPhone might have a big brother, iTablet rumors around town.

During the past 6 months... I have pieced together the puzzle which portrays a picture of what can be perhaps best described as Apple’s rival product to the Intel Ultra Mobile PC [UMPC] initiative which has unsuccessfully tried to marry Microsoft’s Windows OS to a highly portable computing platform," David Sieger reports for Seeking Alpha."My strongest piece of evidence came from a trusted tipster about 4 months ago who described an image s(he) had seen of a mysterious touch screen device larger than the iPhone featuring one distinguishing button or depression on each side," Sieger reports."Then about a month ago, another source revealed that Apple has shown significant interest in a 5.2″ 800 x 480 pixel touch screen design by Balda, a German company and the current iPhone screen supplier," Sieger reports."This second piece of evidence reveals the real purpose of this new device, an ultra mobile device occupying a position between the 3.5″ iPhone and the much rumored 7-10 inch Apple tablet," Sieger reports."This new Apple device, which could be an Ultra Mobile Computer, has not been sighted out and about the Apple campus or even in the area normally designated for testing new Apple products, suggesting that it’s still in the software and hardware design period," Sieger reports. "Once it’s physically spotted outside Apple’s secretive labs, we may see an actual product release of 6-8 months..."

iPhone news Macworld Jan 15th

I wanted to get the date out there incase Apple fans were not aware. The rumors will start flying and get crazy as we approach the date. I will assume a few things to be announced.

-Subcompact notebook with solidstate hard drive

-3G iPhone

-Large iPhone memory, 16GB +

-Huge integration of .MAC accounts with the iPhone and Macs.

-Apple TV revamp

-Apple Tablet

-Steve Jobs wearing black turtleneck jeans and sneakers.

iPhone rumor site shut down ...there is hope for you bloggers out there to make $$$$$

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple on Thursday put to rest the last of a series of lawsuits it brought in a losing and costly effort to put a stop to Web leaks about its product plans.
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RelatedBits: Who Is Really Hurt by Apple Rumor Site’s Closure?
The suits raised questions about whether independent Web publishers should be accorded the same legal protections as traditional journalists. They were aimed at the gaggle of Apple enthusiasts who have made both a sport and a business out of pre-empting Steven P. Jobs’s big product announcements.
Nicholas M. Ciarelli, who operated a Web site for Apple rumors called Think Secret, was sued by Apple for publishing trade secrets in January 2005. In a brief statement Thursday on his site, Mr. Ciarelli said that he had reached a settlement with Apple and that he would stop publishing Think Secret.
Mr. Ciarelli, a senior at Harvard, would not comment on whether Apple had given him money to persuade him to cease publishing. But he said he was pleased with the outcome of the negotiations.
“We’ve been able to reach a positive solution,” he said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Ciarelli filed a countermotion against Apple in March 2005 under a California provision that makes litigants vulnerable to financial damages if they sue over what is determined to be constitutionally protected speech. Mr. Ciarelli’s lawyer, Terry Gross, who represented him pro bono, said the motion could have resulted in a financially damaging and embarrassing ruling against Apple, a risk that he said led to this week’s settlement.
Mr. Ciarelli, a social studies major, also writes and edits for The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper. He was a freshman when Apple sued him and the publishers of two other sites over leaks about unreleased products.
Apple lost the two other suits on appeal after a higher court ruled that the Web site operators were journalists and entitled to First Amendment protections. The court forced Apple to pay $700,000 in legal fees to the sites.
Mr. Ciarelli said his agreement with Apple constituted a clear statement about the rights of online journalists: “Speaking more broadly, I think online journalists can feel confident that they can assert their First Amendment rights, even when they run up against large corporations.”
However, some free speech advocates warned that the site’s closing could be viewed as a partial victory for a large company that tried to squelch an independent voice.
“It’s great for the individual critic to be paid to be quiet, but the public is worse off if we lose the ability to get more information in the marketplace of ideas,” said Paul Alan Levy, a lawyer with the Public Citizen Litigation Group in Washington.
Despite Apple’s attempts to use the courts to silence the ecosystem of sites that try to ferret out information about its products before Mr. Jobs unveils them on stage, the Apple rumor mill has continued to thrive.
None of Mr. Ciarelli’s sources were revealed as part of the settlement, said Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman. He called the settlement “amicable” but noted that the details of the agreement were confidential.

iPhone maker Fake Steve Jobs could get a payday.

An anonymous reader sends us to The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs for a developing situation. Daniel Lyons, a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs, made a post earlier today revealing that Apple was offering him some money (in the wake of the ThinkSecret shutdown) to close down his blog. He said he was interested in taking it. A few hours later, Lyons posted again revealing that Apple's lawyers had contacted him angrily, saying the details of the deal were supposed to remain private. Fake Steve replied 'we either deal out in the open, completely transparently, or we don't deal.' A third post gives details of Apple's lawyers' next response, going totally medieval on him. Since then the situation has calmed down a bit.

iphone firmware update 1.1.3

I am still waiting for the firmware update 1.1.3 and looking for any sign of updated rumors.

Anyone have any news out there on this. Diskmode and voicenotes would be a welcomed edition to my phone.

iphone x 5,000,000

Since its eagerly anticipated launch on June 29 of this year, the diminutive iPhone handset has caused quite a stir across North America, and has emerged as possibly the year’s most notable hardware launch in the consumer electronics field.
Adding the touch-screen iPhone to its trendy portfolio of desirable products (which includes the all-conquering iPod music and media player) California-based Apple Inc. could be well on its way to reaching the initial sales goal outlined by CEO Steve Jobs prior to the iPhone’s summer unveiling.
According to a report published by tech-watchers at 9to5Mac, Apple could well use the upcoming Macworld Expo in San Francisco to announce that it has already sold some 5 million units of the iPhone – which would put it exactly halfway to hitting the target of 10 million by the close of 2008.
If that announcement does indeed come to pass, then it will give Apple a further 11 months to achieve its target of 10 million, bolstered by the fact that the first 5 million was amassed in a mere 7 months, reports Wired News. The Macworld Expo will take place between January 14 – 18, 2008.
The opening iPhone launch built impressive sales in the United States, with Apple revealing it had surpassed the first million marker in a mere 74 days. The iconic smartphone then shifted over to the UK, Germany, and France in the final quarter of 2007, which, while not as immediately receptive as the US, have contributed solidly to continuing iPhone performance with around 1 million in total sales.
Other regions likely to increase global sales during 2008 include the likes of China, Japan, and Spain.

Apple year in review

In a Stevenote sent to Apple employees at mid-year, Jobs awkwardly described the company as a chair with the three legs—wouldn't that be a stool?—: the Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. As 2007 winds down, it's seems only appropriate to consider the year for Apple from that ternary perspective.



Intel CPUs, iPod Halo, Mac OS X, Windows Fatigue, whatever the cause, the effect is that 2007 will be remembered as a Mac Renaissance not seen since the early 90s. In 2006, 5,655,000 Macs were sold. 2007 will see sales between 7.7 million and 8 million—a 36 to 40 percent increase—and two to three times the projected growth of industry average. Since only the iMac saw significant revision this year, this is especially positive news. Of course, that hardware "leg" of Apple—someone find a new metaphor for Jobs—benefited from new software. Besides iLife '08 and iWork '08, including the spreadsheet Numbers, the tri-named Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard was released in October. During its first weekend alone, Leopard sold 2 million copies, something that took the previous iteration of OS X over a month to do. Mac sales in 2007 were great, a trend that will likely continue in 2008.



While new Macs were scarce in 2007, the iPod line launched two new models, as well as repackaging an old one and adding color to the last. While the Shuffle got color cases, the iPod Classic was kept around to keep the Zune in its place: last. The iPod Nano introduced a wide-screen display to the most popular iPod, and the iPod Touch introduced the touch screen display to people who don't want a phone. In 2006, Apple sold 46,366,000 iPods and is expected to sell approximately 55 million in 2007, an increase of somewhere around 17 percent. While the growth rate for sales may be leveling off, that's still a hell of a lot of media players. In contrast, music sales at the iTunes Store continue to accelerate, with Apple passing the two-billion song mark in January, followed by three billion songs in July, with four, or even five billion, likely to be announced at Macworld Expo in January. The iPod, and the iTunes Store, continued their respective market dominance, and will likely continue to do so in 2008.

Finally, that leaves the third leg of Apple, an appendage whose sales continues to elongate. Introduced at Macworld Expo 2007, the iPhone went on sale six months later, selling 270,000 units in its first two days. Seventy-two days after that, Apple sold its millionth iPhone. Now, rumor has it that the iPhone will have sold 5 million units in 2007, putting it on track to meet projections of 10 million sold in 2008. Clearly, Apple has another hit product in the iPhone.

While this has been a great year for Apple, there have been problems. Lackluster sales of the "sort of a new DVD player for the Internet age," as Steve Jobs awkwardly described the Apple TV, has ensured the furniture metaphor will not become a table anytime soon. However, worse than the failure of the Apple TV in 2007, was the inability of Apple to bring video content to the iTunes Store. The impasse with the movies studios and NBC abandoning the iTunes Store means 2007 saw a decrease in the number of video titles available. Still, even this problem is small when considered against the spectacularly successful transition of Apple Computer.

In 1992, market share for the Macintosh peaked at just over 12 percent, an all-time high. By 1997, Apple Computer's percentage of the PC market had plummeted to less than four percent, and that's about where it stands now. It was only fitting then that 2007 began with a symbolic statement of the obvious, and so should we ring out the end of the year in the same way.

Apple Computer is dead, long live Apple, Inc.!

iPhone could have a new brain.

Apple is forming closer ties with Intel and will begin to roll out a variety of devices based on an upcoming Intel processor that has been designed to work with mobile devices, according to reports.

According to Apple Insider, Apple is planning to use the processor, code-named Silverthorne, in multiple products "currently situated on its 2008 calendar year product roadmap". Silverthorne is central to Intel's efforts to capture a greater share of the mobile-device market.

Apple Insider claims that the most likely candidates for Silverthorne are a 3G iPhone and any new tablet computer.

The inclusion of an Intel processor in the much-hyped iPhone would in some ways mark a change of heart for Apple.

Last year, Intel's director of Team Apple, Deborah Conrad, ruled out putting an Intel processor inside Apple's iPod. "I don't think you're going to see anything soon," Conrad told reporters. But when it came to future devices, Conrad added: "That's where we get very, very excited."

Intel plans to release more details of Silverthorne at the Intenational Solid State Circuits Conference in February.

Apple could offer no comment on the reports at the time of writing.

iTablet on the way?

Bill Gates has long championed the notion of Tablet PCs - portable computers that let users scribble in digital ink on the screen as an alternative to a keyboard.

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So far, most computer users haven't shared his enthusiasm. But some analysts say the rising acceptance of touch-screen interfaces - exemplified by Apple's iPhone - could put a new spotlight on the concept.

The question is whether Microsoft or Apple will be better positioned to capitalize on it.

There has long been speculation about the possibility of Apple introducing a tablet-style Mac, fueled in part by the Cupertino, Calif., company's patent filings on tablet-computing technology. As in the past, the possibility is likely to be the subject of rumors leading up to the Macworld convention in January, where Apple chief executive Steve Jobs traditionally unveils products.

Microsoft's original Tablet PC software, introduced in 2002, was based on digital-pen technology. Microsoft added touch-screen capabilities a year ago. The iPhone, meanwhile, has captured attention for its use of "multi-touch," the ability to use multiple fingers at once, for more complex navigation.

Upon the launch of the Tablet PC, some analysts projected annual sales as high as 10 million units by 2007. In reality, they've been a fraction of that - expected to come in around 1.7 million in 2007.

"I think [Microsoft] succeeded in the sense that there are still vendors introducing Tablets," said analyst Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research. "I don't think they succeeded in the way that they'd hoped it would become a standard paradigm for mobile computing."

Predictions for 2008

PEERING into Tech.view’s crystal ball, the one thing we can predict with at least some certainty is that 2008 will be the year we stop taking access to the internet for granted. The internet is not about to grind to a halt, but as more and more users clamber aboard to download music, video clips and games while communicating incessantly by e-mail, chat and instant messaging, the information superhighway sometimes crawls with bumper-to-bumper traffic.
The biggest road-hog remains spam (unsolicited e-mail), which accounts for 90% of traffic on the internet. Phone companies and other large ISPs (internet service providers) have tolerated it for years because it would cost too much to fix. Besides, eliminating spam would only benefit their customers, not themselves.
How so? Because the big fat pipes used by ISPs operate symmetrically, with equal bandwidth for upstream and downstream traffic. But end-users have traditionally downloaded megabytes of information from the web, while uploading only kilobytes of key strokes and mouse clicks. So, when spammers dump billions of pieces of e-mail onto the internet, it travels over the phone companies’ relatively empty upstream segments.
That can’t last. For a start, millions of gadgets are joining the human hordes. Any gizmo worth its silicon these days has its own internet connection—so it can update itself automatically, communicate autonomously with other digital species, and anticipate its user’s every whim.
AFPPart of the solution?
Soon, portable media-players, personal navigators, digital cameras, DVD players, flat-panel TV sets, and even mobile phones won’t be able to function properly without access to the internet. Expect even digital picture frames to have a WiFi connection so they can grab the latest photos from Flickr.
Meanwhile, users are changing the way they use the internet: they are now uploading, as well as downloading, gigabytes galore—thanks to the popularity of social networks like Facebook, YouTube and MySpace.
Hailed by the industry as the wave of the future, “user-generated content” is proving to be a tsunami of unprecedented proportions. Everyone, it seems, is suddenly a budding Martin Scorsese, bent on sharing his or her home-made videos with fellow YouTubers.
Once the biggest files being shared via Napster and other P2P (peer-to-peer) networks were MP3 music tracks occupying a few modest megabytes. Today, music videos and TV episodes of hundreds of megabytes are being swapped over the internet by BitTorrent, Gnutella and other file-sharing networks.
And it’s all two-way traffic. The whole point of P2P is that everyone who is downloading is simultaneously uploading to others.
That’s just the beginning. Legal or otherwise, swapping multi-gigabyte high-definition video and movie files is becoming increasingly common.
In fact, it will soon be the norm. Television networks have found they can make more money from advertising while giving their show away for free over the internet than they can from broadcasting them. Now the movie studios are learning to do much the same.
The result is a gridlock. That the telephone companies are running out of bandwidth can be seen from their equipment orders.
Cisco, the leading supplier of core routers used to direct traffic over the internet’s backbone, has just had another bumper quarter, with net income up 37% over the same period a year ago. Juniper Networks, another information-technology firm, did even better. Both companies credit the proliferation of social networks, the craze for internet searching, multimedia downloading, and the widespread adoption of P2P sharing for the surge in new business.
While major internet service providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast all plan to upgrade their backbones, it will be a year or two before improvements begin to show. By then, internet television will be in full bloom, spammers will have multiplied ten-fold, WiFi will be embedded in every moving object, and users will be screaming for yet more capacity.
In the meantime, accept that surfing the web is going to be more like travelling the highways at holiday time. You’ll get there, eventually, but the going won’t be great.
2. Surfing will detach
Earlier this month, Google bid for the most desirable chunk (known as C-block) of the 700-megahertz wireless spectrum being auctioned off by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in late January 2008. The 700-megahertz frequencies used by channels 52 to 69 of analog television are being freed up by the switch to all-digital broadcasting in February 2009.
The frequencies concerned are among the world’s most valuable. They were used for broadcasting UHF television because they suffered little atmospheric absorption, could be beamed for miles, and could then penetrate all the nooks and crannies in buildings. Their relatively short wavelength makes the transmission equipment compact and the antennas small.
Mobile phone companies lust after the 700 megahertz frequencies because of their long range and broadband capabilities. They see lots of lucrative things like mobile television and other broadband services to offer customers.
But the 700 megahertz band is also the last great hope for a “third pipe” for internet access in America. Such a wireless network would offer consumers a serious alternative to the pricey and poor DSL (digital subscriber line) services they get from the likes of AT&T and Verizon, and to the marginally better cable broadband Comcast provides.
Over the past couple of months, techdom has been abuzz with rumours about Google getting into the mobile phone business—with a G-Phone to trump Apple’s iPhone. That’s highly unlikely.
The speculation was triggered by the company’s recent unveiling of its Android operating-system for mobile phones. But the whole point of Android is not to allow Google to make fancy handsets, but to make it easier for others to do so.
The aim, of course, is to flood the market with “open access” phones that have none of the restrictions that big carriers impose—like not being able to download software and games from other makers, or search the internet freely, or make free VoIP (voice of internet protocol) calls from within a WiFi hotspot.
Android has been made available to a group of manufacturers orchestrated by Google and known as the Open Handset Alliance. One of the nimblest of the group, HTC of Taiwan, has already started showing a BlackBerry-like prototype based on the Android operating system. Expect to see a raft of Android phones from other manufacturers over the coming months.
Nor is Google in the business of building a network of cellular antennas and fat communications pipes. Should it win the bidding for C-block, it would presumably team up with Frontline Wireless, a startup with serious expertise and money behind it.
That’s because Google’s core business is organising knowledge and giving users access to it. Google makes its money—and lots of it—from matching advertisers to consumers who use its search engine to look up things, not from tinkering with slim-margin ventures like wireless networks.
But despite owning the world’s largest knowledge base—with over 60% of the online search market—Google is at the mercy of others who control the on-ramps to the internet. That rankles.



Worse, it has no way of getting at the other billion users who rely more on mobile phones than personal computers to organise their lives. Clearly, the time has come to muscle into the moribund mobile-phone business.
Bidding $5 billion or more (the reserve is $4.6 billion) to beat out wireless heavyweights like AT&T and Verizon could give Google the option to become a cell-phone operator in partnership with Frontline, with a ready supply of handsets from its alliance partners and none of the hassles of running a network. Alternatively, it could become an internet service provider with a long-range wireless network to rival the WiMAX networks being built by Sprint and others.
But Google may want to do neither. Sceptics note that Google single-handedly persuaded the FCC to attach all manner of “open access” provisions to the C-block of frequencies—something that was anathema to the mobile-phone companies. Verizon even sued the FCC in a bid to block its move to open access.
Having failed to do so, Verizon now says it will open its network to third-party devices sometime in the future—and presumably for an additional charge. But the FCC is not just taking Verizon’s word for it.
The winner of the C-block of frequencies, whoever that may be (and Verizon is the odds-on favourite), will have to open the network to any device that meets the basic specification. And the devices themselves will have to be open to other suppliers’ software and services.
In short, win or lose, Google has already achieved its objective. Internet searches will doubtless as popular among mobile-internet surfers as among their sedentary cousins. Owning at least 60% of the mobile search market is the prize Google has been after all along.
3. Surfing—and everything else computer-related—will open
Rejoice: the embrace of “openness” by firms that have grown fat on closed, proprietary technology is something we’ll see more of in 2008. Verizon is not the only one to cry uncle and reluctantly accept the inevitable.
Even Apple, long a bastion of closed systems, is coming round to the open idea. Its heavily protected iPhone was hacked within days of being launched by owners determined to run third-party software like Skype on it.
Apple’s initial response was to attempt a heavy-handed crackdown. But then a court decision in Germany forced its local carrier to unlock all iPhones sold there. Good news for iPhone owners everywhere: a flood of third-party applications is now underway.
The trend toward openness has been given added impetus by the recent collapse of the legal battles brought by SCO, a software developer. Formerly known as Santa Cruz Operations, the firm bought the Unix operating system and core technology in 1995 from Novell (which, in turn, had bought it from its original developer, AT&T).
Short of cash, SCO initiated a series of lawsuits against companies developing Linux software, claiming it contained chunks of copyrighted Unix code. Pressured by worried customers fearing prosecution, a handful of Linux distributors settled with SCO just to stay in business.
But IBM, which uses Linux, was having none of it, and fought the firm through the courts until it won. SCO is now operating under Chapter 11 of the American bankruptcy code.
The verdict removed, once and for all, the burden that had been inhibiting Linux’s broader acceptance. Linux is now accepted as being Unix-like, but not a Unix-derivative.
Bulletproof distributions of Linux from Red Hat and Novell have long been used on back-office servers. Since the verdict against SCO, Linux has swiftly become popular in small businesses and the home.
That’s largely the doing of Gutsy Gibbon, the code-name for the Ubuntu 7.10 from Canonical. Along with distributions such as Linspire, Mint, Xandros, OpenSUSE and gOS, Ubuntu (and its siblings Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu) has smoothed most of Linux’s geeky edges while polishing it for the desktop.
No question, Gutsy Gibbon is the sleekest, best integrated and most user-friendly Linux distribution yet. It’s now simpler to set up and configure than Windows. A great deal of work has gone into making the graphics, and especially the fonts, as intuitive and attractive as the Mac’s.
Like other Linux desktop editions, Ubuntu works perfectly well on lowly machines that couldn’t hope to run Windows XP, let alone Vista Home Edition or Apple’s OS-X.
Your correspondent has been happily using Gutsy Gibbon on a ten-year-old desktop with only 128 megabytes of RAM and a tiny 10 gigabyte hard-drive. When Michael Dell, the boss of Dell Computers, runs Ubuntu on one of his home systems, Linux is clearly doing many things right.
And because it is free, Linux become the operating system of choice for low-end PCs. It started with Nicholas Negroponte, the brains behind the One Laptop Per Child project that aims to deliver computerised education to children in the developing world. His clever XO laptop, costing less than $200, would never have seen the light of day without its clever (and free) Linux operating system.
But Mr Negroponte has done more than create one of the world’s most ingenious computers. With a potential market measured in the hundreds of millions, he has frightened a lot of big-time computer makers into seeing how good a laptop they can build for less than $500.
All start with a desktop version of Linux. Recent arrivals include the Asus Eee from Taiwan, which lists for $400. The company expects to sell close on four million Eees this financial year. Another Taiwanese maker, Everex, is selling its gPC desktop through Walmart for $199.
When firms are used to buying $1,000 office PCs running Vista Business Edition and loading each with a $200 copy of Microsoft Office, the attractions of a sub-$500 computer using a free operating system like Linux and a free productivity suite like OpenOffice suddenly become very compelling.
And that’s not counting the $20,000 or more needed for Microsoft’s Exchange and SharePoint server software. Again, Linux provides such server software for free.
Pundits agree: neither Microsoft nor Apple can compete at the new price points being plumbed by companies looking to cut costs. With open-source software maturing fast, Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, MySQL, Evolution, Pidgin and some 23,000 other Linux applications available for free seem more than ready to fill that gap. By some reckonings, Linux fans will soon outnumber Macintosh addicts. Linus Torvalds should be rightly proud.

iPhone news ringtones for all

Efiko Software has just announced version 2.0 of their very popular iPhone ringtone creation and installation software, called iPhoneRingToneMaker. Though there are several methods and software packages iPhone owners can use to get free ringtones on their Apple iPhones, iPhoneRingToneMaker (along with iToner) is on a short list of these solutions which will allow users to make a ringtone from existing music on their computers, are easy to use, and are well supported by their creators.
Of course, all of this easy-to-use goodness comes at a price, albeit an extremely modest one. Purchasing ringtones through iTunes costs basically $0.99, should you buy yourself just over a dozen of them, you've already spent the cost of iPhoneRingToneMaker ($14.99). Considering that iPhoneRingToneMaker allows you to create and transfer an unlimited number of ringtones to your iPhone, it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out the the software is a bargain.
So what's new in version iPhoneRingToneMaker 2.0? Well, a few preat handy and helpful features:
ringtone shufling
volume boosting
Ringtone shuffling let's you randomly switch up your ringtones on your iPhone. According to Efiko, this works by the software shuffling your ringtones everytime you sync your iPhone with your PC (optional). What sounds more useful is the volume boosting feature. Often, ringtones made from MP3s simply don't sound loud enough. The new volume boosting feature uses digital amplification to make your created ringtones play louder on the iPhone.
iPhoneRingToneMaker is a best seller in the iPhoneFAQ Store and got a 4.75 (out of 5) rating from the folks at ThinkMac.net. The only bad thing is that iPhoneRingToneMaker is only for Windows PCs. No Mac support yet. Mac users should look into purchasing iToner.
If you already purchased iPhoneRingToneMaker, version 2.0 is a free upgrade for all existing owners.

iPhone remote control

We’ve seen plenty of applications where the iPhone is used as a remote controller, of sorts. From sound engineering to your music collection, the iPhone’s capacitance-based multi-touch display is ideal for remote-control-use.
Cinemar has announced that they’ll be brining iPhone and iPod Touch support for their Cinemar Mainlobby home-automation. Using an AJAX web-app, Mainlobby’s integrated web-server gives the iPhone complete control over everything in the home - lighting, security, home theater, thermostats, and movie/music collection. You’ll even be able to browse all the movies on your 400-disc DVD player or on an external hard-drive and check whether conditions. And, by the time Mainlobby goes commercial for the iPhone, we’re sure the guys at Cinemar will have built in even cooler features.
iPhone support is still in its infancy, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on Cinemar’s development progress.
Click on for a few more screenshots of Mainlobby on the iPhone.

iNeed this help..if your at work, skip this post!!!!!

There’s a new webapp for the iPhone that everyone can get into. It shows you how to stimulate a woman properly so that she can achieve what guys can get by accidentally bumping into a hottie. (Ok, so, it wasn’t an accident. Tell it to the judge.)If you have an iPhone you can go to rubmyclit in your Safari browser and with a two finger motion, rub, rub, rub to your heart’s content. Sounds great, right? We tried it out with our own fingers and here’s a friendly warning from TheFeed; It’s just as laborious and anticlimactic as you would expect. There’s no audio and it’s awkward and a little gross, just like in real life.
THIS JUST IN: It doesn’t work for any other body parts.

iPhone could be your computer

If iPhone is an electronic Pinocchio desiring above all to be a legitimate mobile computer, the Blue Fairy just granted its wish. Steve Jobs announced iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit) would land in third party developers' hands by Feb. 2008. We're only a month away.
Apple's forthcoming SDK will apply to both iPhone and iPod Touch. The announcement has coders everywhere texting their relief: "OMG, ABFT." [http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2007/10/iphone_sdk]
But what does the announcement really mean? For starters, third party companies will be able to make software to run on your iPhone. Even though Apple will probably require certification and the apps will most likely only be available from Apple. iPhone will soon enter the arena of serious mobile computers like those manufactured by brands like RIM, Palm and Motorola.
Until the SDK announcement it wasn't clear if Apple would ever invite third party software on iPhone. Apple took on uncharacteristic, militant tones with the development community when it warned hackers that new firmware updates are liable to brick iPhones containing third party software. Apple seemed to be turning into the man.
But we all knew iPhone needed a SDK to be a real mobile computer. Despite amazing media capabilities, innovative touch interface and elegant Apple design. Without third party applications like AIM, Skype and even Microsoft Exchange synchronization - iPhone is just a wooden toy-puppet

iPhone thinks positive when it comes to the TEMP.

It appears that the Weather application on the iPhone (powered by Yahoo! Weather) can’t display temperatures below zero degrees fahrenheit. As reported by one user on the Apple Discussions board:
“I live in Alaska. The temps here have all been below zero F or more than -18C but the weather reported on the iphone never goes below zero F. right now it is -13F and going to Yahoo says this but the iphone shows 0F. ”
While the Weather application will display temperatures lower than zero degress fahrenheit in the extended forecast and the high/low temperature for the day, the current temperature reading cannot step below this threshold. Yahoo’s Web-accessible weather data will show temperature data below zero degrees, so this appears to be an easily fixable bug in the iPhone app.

Blackberry going to bat against the iPhone

Boy Genius Report may have gotten their hands on early specs of the upcoming touch-interface Blackberry 9000. And according to their sources, the (iPhonesque?) 9000 has two hardware advantages over the iPhone. First, it features a 624MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor that just edges out the iPhone's 620MHz ARM 1173 processor (on paper). Second, the 9000 will introduce speedy HSDPA to the line (a welcomed 3G first for the Blackberrys). Here are the rest of the specs:
- 480 x 320 resolution screen - 1GB onboard memory - GPS, WiFi, HSDPA - Maybe a 3.2MP camera - Maybe dropping in Q1 or Q2 of 2008Looking good, but can anyone get over a loss of button-driven QWERTY

iMap iSucks iPhone needs EXCHANGE

Even if iPhones are further into the enterprise market than some might think (or desire), the lack of native non-IMAP support for Exchange accounts on the device has given some users and their IT departments pause. While there are some solid third-party options coming along (Visto and SyncML among others), only an Apple-blessed solution is going to satisfy in the end. Is there progress on the home front? Chadwick sent along a link via ModMyiPhone.com to an Apple job posting for a QA engineer:
The iPhone Quality team is looking for a motivated, highly-technical Exchange test/sync engineer with excellent problem solving and communication skills. You will join a dynamic team responsible for qualifying the latest iPhone products. Your focus will be testing Exchange and Outlook functionality with Apple's innovative new phone. The successful candidate will complete both documented and adhoc testing to ensure high quality releases.
Hiring a QA engineer implies that the Exchange connector code under development is getting ready for testing and release. Could an Exchange hookup for the iPhone be coming in time for Macworld Expo? Dee-lightful.

iPhone designed for 75 degrees and Sunny. Cold weather calling tips, use your nose!

The problem with designing the iPhone in sunny Cupertino, California? Apple's engineers missed something: it's tricky using the touchscreen when it's cold outside! The folks in the NY Tech Meetup email listserv have recently been swapping winter-iPhone-dialing tips -- see the gloves section below -- and our iPhone-loving hedge fund correspondent says she has stooped to answering her phone with her nose. "Better that than get caught licking my phone," she says. "Not that I didn’t consider that option!"Some last-minute gift ideas for your favorite cold-weather iPhone lover:Convertible gloves. Online camping and gear retailers offer a jumble of different styles, designs, and fabrics. Erehwon sells these classic (pictured) ragg wool flip-up mittens in three sizes for $20, or a black, all-fleece edition for men and women for $19.95. Cabela's offers a weirder-looking set of fleece-lined, neoprene gloves designed for ice fishing for $40.Hand warmers. Don't want funky gloves but need to keep your fingers ice-free for iPhone dialing? Pick up a disposable hand warmer for $1.25, or a rechargeable one from Zippo (right) for $29.95.Stylus/pen. Someone on eBay named "suemusik" has been ripping people off selling a cheap pen as an iPhone stylus for $10. Assuming this pen cap actually works as an iPhone stylus, you'd be best off skipping the middle man. Head to your local stationery/art supplies store with an iPhone in hand, and try out a couple dozen pens. One of them might do a decent job dialing the phone.Phone fingers? We won't pretend to know if these €6.90 latex finger-sleeves work for dialing or not, but they'd make a good gag gift either way.

iGoogle? iPhone platform by Google? iDon't know

It seems that lots of Googlers are really into the iPhone, including Googler-in-Chief Eric Schmidt. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has been launching new mobile applications specifically for the iPhone, just as the company also prepares its own Android platform. Is there a hidden connection between the iPhone and Google Android?
Blogger Jon Bradford thinks Google is using the iPhone to beta test (or in Google's case, is that pre-beta?) new applications for its Android system. But what do the iPhone and Google Android have in common?
According to Bradford, it's WebKit, the open source browser platform. You see WebKit is the framework for, of all things, Apple's Safari browser. It also happens to be the framework for the browser in Google's Android platform.
Hence, what we may be actually looking at is Google’s mobile services which will be available on Android from its launch, effectively putting iPhone users through the pain of finding the flaws.
Could this be right? Is Google using the iPhone to test Android?
So for those who have looked jealously on the new interfaces being developed for iPhone, have a little patience, because I think what you are looking at is Google’s services for Android.
This is interesting, especially given the revelation earlier this week that Android doesn't work. Here is what my colleague Eric Zeman had to say:
This is an early stumble for Google. Google needs the developers to be happy with the SDK if it expects the platform to gain any legs in the market. If they can't get applications to work because the coding is all messed up, Android might be a very short-lived experiment or fail to have the impact Google hopes for. The developers who WSJ spoke with also said Google has not been very responsive to their complaints.
Many of our readers chimed in, claiming that early SDKs often don't work. As one reader, Roq, wrote:
Android is due a year from now. I wouldn't be too worried about early bugs if I were you. It's par for the course.
Maybe we shouldn't be worried that Android isn't yet up to par. Maybe Google is working on it right now -- and all those iPhone fans out there are also working on it too (without even knowing it).
What do you think? Are all those new Google applications for the iPhone really just Android apps in disguise?
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Vista on the iPhone?

If we had to find one way for the iPhone and Windows Vista to interact, it probably would have been via SideShow, Vista's secondary-display technology that gives you a small portable control board that you can tote around. The people at Ikanos Consulting have been fooling around with a SideShow webserver and are creating an iPhone-compatible version (along with DS, Wii, PSP, PS3) to control your PC wherever you have access. It's not available for download yet, but a beta should be coming soon.

iPhone iSee your future...more iPhone news and rumors to gobble up.

After holding off on the release of a faster iPhone because of concerns about battery life, is Apple really prepared to take a step backward with Intel's Silverthorne chip?
AppleInsider reported Friday that Apple has decided to use Intel's upcoming low-power Silverthorne chip in "not one but multiple products currently situated on its 2008 calendar year product roadmap." Silverthorne is Intel's latest push to capture the handheld/mobile phone market as part of a product concept called the Mobile Internet Device.

It's probably a little too soon for an iPhone based on Intel's chips, but maybe not another kind of handheld.(Credit: CNET Networks)
The report goes on to say that the most likely candidates for Silverthorne are a 3G iPhone and the Newton-like tablet computer that AppleInsider reported on earlier in the year. Based on what we know about Silverthorne, I think the subtablet rumor might make sense, but a Silverthorne iPhone is unlikely.
Intel plans to release more details about Silverthorne at the Intenational Solid State Circuits Conference in February, but we already know from the advance program, and from what Intel said about the chip last year, that we can expect Silverthorne to behave like a much smaller 2004-era Pentium M processor that consumes just a watt or two of power, compared with the 35 watts consumed by Intel's Core 2 Duo notebook processors of today.
But that's still not enough for a phone. According to several iPhone teardowns, Apple is likely using the Samsung S3C6400, or some special equivalent built just for them, in the iPhone. That chip is based on the ARM1176 core, which at 620MHz consumes just 279 milliwatts. That's running all-out, whereas most of the time you're actually going to be drawing much less power than that. Silverthorne, by contrast, will consume 500 milliwatts of power at minimum, and probably only when it's doing nothing in idle mode.
Those numbers just aren't going to work in a phone, especially an Apple phone, if the company really is so concerned about power consumption that it has held off on releasing a 3G iPhone until the power consumption of that modem improves. Those numbers could work, however, in something more along the lines of a powerful handheld such as the rumored "Return of the Newton" that was discussed earlier this year. Based on the concept designs shown by Intel last year for Silverthorne-era devices, however, this would be something much larger than a phone, more along the lines of a UMPC or a handheld gaming device like Sony's PSP.

This is what Intel has in mind for its 2009 Moorestown chip, not its 2008 Silverthorne chip.(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)
Given the close relationship between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Intel CEO Paul Otellini, as well as Otellini's commitment to low-power designs, I would not at all be surprised to see Apple and Intel hook up on a future mobile phone or sleek mobile computer. But I wouldn't expect to see it until at least 2009, when Intel releases a chip called Moorestown that is expected to reach the milliwatt operating power of current ARM designs. Some of the concept devices that Intel showed off as Moorestown-era projects looked an awful lot like the iPhone.
Apple had to design the OS X operating system inside the iPhone and the iPod Touch around the ARM instruction set, because there's really no other realistic option right now for smart phones. But it might be looking at the development resources needed to port all of its software (iLife, iWork, GarageBand, etc.) over to ARM, and balking at the amount of time and energy that would require. If Intel can deliver an x86 chip with similar/better power and performance characteristics to the chips built by ARM's partners, it could be a very attractive product, and that's the meat of Intel's sales pitch to the phone makers.
Of course, ARM's partners will be out with dual-core chips by then that could tilt the performance equation solidly in its favor, while staying within the same power envelope. We've got a long time to muse about that.

iWish the iPhone had some of these features.

The Apple iPhone seems to have taken the international cell phone market by storm, wowing people with its slick appearance and multi-touch display. When you look at actual sales figures, however, this resounding success is largely restricted to the United States. According to recent estimates, there have been approximately 310,000 LG Viewty phones sold in its first five weeks in Europe, outselling the iPhone.The report by Dial-a-Phone of the UK doesn't provide any firm numbers regarding the number of iPhones sold during the same period, but they have official reports from O2 saying that "tens of thousands" of units have been sold. Tens of thousands is quite a bit smaller than 310,000.In terms of figuring out why the LG Viewty is outperforming the Apple iPhone in Europe, the blog comes up with this four-pronged response: The Viewty is better phone (5MP cam, HSDPA, Xenon flash, etc.); Viewty is available on all major networks; Viewty is available on a shorter contract; Viewty is a lot cheaper (free with 12 month O2 contract).

iPhone becoming e-shopping mall. iBuy stuff

Bloomberg today reports that Americans are splurging on mobile smart phones like they never have before and are catching up to their European and Asian counterparts in handset spending.
Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Gartner said:
"The iPhone has made the U.S. consumer appreciate the value of the mobile phone. North America is the only region where the average phone price will increase this year. Last year, mobile handsets sold in Japan cost 74 percent more than in North America. In Europe, they were 10 percent pricier.''

Apple has been on a tear of late leaping Windows Mobile devices in US Sales and browser market share. Waterloo, Ontario-based Research in Motion, makers of the recently tricked out Blackberry models of smartphones, is expected to reveal strong earnings this week as well. Both Apple and RIM stocks have doubled this year.
Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericcson and Samsung expect to capitalize on this new American willingness to spend on status symbol-type phones. It will be hard to unseat the market leaders who also have updates coming in 2008.

Apple picks up the tab for giving an iPhone a good home.

Perhaps it‘s a need for one more five-star review or another ‘Gadget of the Year’ award, but no matter what reasons exists for putting off the purchase of an iPhone, time is running out, fast.
For delivery by Christmas, online orders for iPhone and other Apple Inc. products must be placed by noon today. To push consumers along, Apple is picking up the upgrade to express shipping. That’s about as big a bargain as one encounters when it comes to buying the $399 device.
To say the iPhone is this year’s most innovative and exciting mainstream technology is to repeat countless other publications, most recently Time magazine. In this case, those reviewers are right.
In the six months since iPhone made its much-hyped debut, it’s become easy to forget what the cellular telephone landscape was before it. With more ease than consumers had a right to expect – even from an Apple product --the iPhone allows owners do it all. Browsing the internet, watching iTunes movies, listening to music, reading emails, taking photos and, yes, placing telephone calls, are all elegant tasks on this stunningly attractive gadget.
Sure I have a wish list of improvements that would make the iPhone experience even better, not the least of which is an upgrade to AT&T’s cruelly slow network speeds for browsing via the cellular connection. I’d also be a big fan of a Bluetooth-enabled portable keypad to help do away with my iTypos. Touchscreen typing is not the easiest skill to master, even with the ‘smart’ help built in that offers possible corrections to my errors.

These complaints are minor, however, when you consider what Apple Inc. accomplished with this debut. While the company did not invent the touchscreen, it did establish a new way to interact with a gadget. Tapping, pinching, pulling, sliding – manipulating this phone is fun and unlike anything consumers have encountered.
Apple also loaded the iPhone. Instead of giving it some scaled-down, OSX-mini operating system, it crammed the entire computer system inside. The iPhone is also an iPod and a 2 megapixel camera.
It rare when an over-hyped piece of hardware lives up to the dreams and desires of fans that waited patiently for its arrival. The iPhone is the biggest news that hit the world of technology in 2007. Somehow, I’m thinking it will stay in the spotlight in the upcoming year as well.

My iPhone as 5 million brothers and sisters.

Could Steve Jobs already be halfway to meeting his iPhone sales goal? According to 9to5Mac, Apple is expected to announce it has moved nearly five million iPhones as soon as next month's Macworld Expo.
If that number is accurate, it will mean the company is exactly halfway to hitting its target of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008 -- not a bad position to be in considering Apple has another 11 months and presumably some big launches in countries like Japan, China, Spain and others.Of those five million, sources tell the site that Europe contributed one million in sales, while the U.S. accounted for the remaining four.
Apple, of course, announced it had sold 1 million iPhones on Sept. 10, only 74 days after the phone went on sale. After the notorious 33 percent price cut, sales of the phone nearly tripled according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. And while sales in Europe haven't come close to matching that pace yet, they are undoubtedly a key part of getting to 10 million.

iphone/iTABLET news ..Could this be the future of the iPhone?

Here's the rumor that won't go away. Unites States Patent Application #20060026536 (which features the signature of Jonathan Ive) concerns "...Methods and systems for processing touch inputs are disclosed. The invention in one respect includes reading data from a multipoint sensing device such as a multipoint touch screen..." Is an Apple tablet in the works (yes, I'm bringing that up again)? Hrmph! even has a very nice round-up of images related to using "gestures" with a touchscreen-based user interface. Note the iPod-like scroll wheel in Fig. 27D.Seriously, though, who would you trust to deliver a tablet PC that's both beautiful and useful? Mr. Ive and Apple, that's who. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this one.

Make purchases using your iPhone at Stores ....Future is near!

Apple has filed a new patent for a wireless transaction system that looks like it will be used in the iPhone and allow users to order products and pay for them instantly. Apple's patent details their merchant-client wireless system which will work with cellular, WiFi, WiMAX or Bluetooth networks. Among the areas covered by the patent are the ability to access restaurant menus on the go. The system would allow merchants to be able to push their new ads to devices that are tuned into this new web service, and hence would require local merchants to be on board with the initiative.
The system also includes a mechanism for for merchants to report a stolen iPod/iPhone if the owner has properly reported that information to Apple in a timely manner. Apple states that in some cases "whenever a wireless media player comes within range of the wireless data network, the wireless media player can be (unbeknownst to the user) directed to send a wireless media player identifier that uniquely identifies the particular wireless media player to the wireless data network. The wireless media player identifier can be used to track lost or stolen media players when the rightful owner has placed the wireless media player identifier in a central database of lost or stolen media players. In this way, if a lost or stolen media player is tracked, any number of subsequent actions can be taken such as notifying the authorities, disabling the wireless media player, displaying a notice to return the wireless media player, etc. thereby providing a strong disincentive for stealing the player."In one example a user instruction directs the wireless media player to open a graphical user interface (GUI) on a display that includes a list of items previously purchased from the merchant stored in the memory. However, in some cases it may be desirable to store customer information (such as the list of previously purchased items) on either or both the local server or the central server. In this way, even in those cases where a user purchases a new item or is using a different media player than would otherwise be used that does not have a current, or accurate, customer preference file for that particular user, the local server or remote server can be used to update, or synchronize, the local memory.

Snapshot in time..past iPhone rumors...READ and ENJOY!

(Remember when Apple Stock was under $100. Read and Enjoy.)

Is Apple working on a music player cell phone? Apple's CFO, Peter Oppenheimer, might have let the 'cat out of the bag' on an Apple analyst Q3 conference call.When Merrill Lynch analyst Richard Farmer mentioned the success of the Sony Walkman Phone, Oppenheimer responded by saying: "As regards cell phones, we don't think that the phones that are available today make the best music players. We think the iPod is. But over time, that is likely to change. And [Apple is] not sitting around doing nothing."

In addition to Oppenheimer's slip of the tongue on the conference call, VL-Tone, a member of the Apple Insider forums found some interesting code in the last iPod software update. When using a hex editor he found several phone related commands/variables in the update including: t_feature_app_PHONE_APP, kPhoneSignalStrength, clPhoneMocksApplication, clPhoneCallModel.As a result of all this iPhone hype and rumors, Merrill Lynch has upgraded Apple stock (AAPL) to a 'buy' and raised the target price to $72.So when it comes to cell phones, just remember that Apple is "not sitting around doing nothing." Our sister blog e-Fuze thinks that "This should serve as a clear indication that Apple is indeed working on the iPhone. It is now a matter of when Apple will officially confirm the project and even release a timeframe for the device."