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.