Friday at The iPhone Blog means two things – free wallpaper and Kent isn’t wearing pants. Fortunately you only have to see the wallpaper. Behold and download after the break.

Apple is rumored to be in talks with Orange, France’s exclusive iPhone carrier, to cut pricing on iPhone in hopes of stimulating sales in that country. Since it first marched down the Champs Elysées four months ago, iPhone has been greeted with as much acceptance by French consumers as bad Camembert cheese – selling just over 100,000 units in that period. That’s owing to the fact the French iPhone, much like its fat pasty American counterpart, lacks 3G wireless.

Europe enjoys greater 3G buildout than North America’s wireless infrastructure, so its absence in iPhone makes it even less desirable than leftover onion soup. Naturally the French have thumbed their already erect noses at Apple’s wonder device, and said “Merde!” to iPhone. But with the imminent arrival of a 3G model drawing nigh, this won’t be an issue for much longer.

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The folks at Mozilla are still fuming mad over Safari-gate. The developers behind the popular open source browser Firefox stated flatly that no efforts will be made to port Firefox to iPhone, blaming Apple’s Gestapo-like restrictive software license.

So this means I can’t look forward to a browser that consumes half my memory and grinds to a halt on AJAX-heavy websites? Tragic.

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Blimey! Hey, Bert – you see this news on the telly today? Yeah, tarts. It says ere that iPhone is kicking Nokia’s bum something awful in the browser business – a real flogging as it were. Some blokes at a firm called StatCounter is sayin it’ll overtake Nokia soon in mobile web share, and you know how the Finns are about losing.

Remember what they did when they lost the world cup soccer championship? Helsinki burned to the ground, it did. Bloody business that was. God save Safari.

ReadVia TUAW

Fortune is quoting Microsoft VP of Specialized Devices and Applications Group (whatever the hell that is), who indicates the software giant may be open to developing applications for iPhone.

“It’s really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone, to the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in that environment, we’re actually in the process of trying to understand that now.”

The thought of Microsoft software running on iPhone is sobering enough, but even more so when you consider the company’s own mobile platform, Windows Mobile, competes directly with iPhone. Fear the fruit.

ReadVia CrunchGear

iPhone users can now more easily access and update their Twitter feeds thanks to Twitter’s efforts to improve support for mobile browsers, including Safari. Now when you access Twitter.com from your iPhone, you are greeted with a mobile friendly version of the service instead of the standard “pinch me please” desktop version.

Finally I can inform my followers of important moments in day. “I’m eating a ham sandwich, sitting on the john.”

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Analysts are like Tarot card readers with MBAs, making speculative predictions based on little more than the direction of the wind and bird migration patterns. They follow a similar marketing practice too – the first reading is free, but the second will cost you, and cost you.

The brain trust at Gartner Research, a firm whose name is legendary in “We predicted this all along” market research, has arrived at the astounding postulation that Apple’s plans to incorporate enterprise-class features into iPhone will make the device a viable corporate tool.

Principal analyst Ken Dulaney gave his best Jean Dixon sound bite, stating that enterprise features “will open a huge volume of business users” for Apple. The man is a genius.

Of course, this is the same firm who said just last year that iPhone wasn’t ready for business, so take their conclusions as I always do – with a grain of salt and a shot of whiskey.

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The Flash drama continues, with more twists and turns than a California highway. It looks as though iPhone may be getting native Flash support after all, if dragged kicking and screaming. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen spoke to reporters during a conference call…

“Well, you really believe that Flash is synonymous with the Internet, and frankly, anybody who wants to browse the Web and experience the Web’s glory really needs Flash support. We were very excited about the announcement from Windows Mobile–adoption of Flash on their devices–and the fact that we’ve shipped 0.5 billion devices now, non-PC devices. So we are also committed to bringing the Flash experience to the iPhone, and we will work with Apple. We’ve evaluated the SDK. We can now start to develop the Flash player ourselves, and we think it benefits our joint customers. So we want to work with Apple to bring that capability to the device.”

Do let’s pretend that Steve Jobs earlier comments were some kind of smokescreen intended to mask Apple’s true motives, while backdoor negotiations with Adobe unfolded. That makes sense, doesn’t it? No, I didn’t think so either.

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Steve Jobs might want to look in his rearview mirror, because there’s a hulking eighteen-wheeler barreling down the highway, belching thick black smoke, and crushing every vehicle in its path.

The software giant is working with long time rival Adobe to bring Flash player Lite (yes, THAT Flash player) to Windows Mobile devices, while simultaneously incorporating support for its own SilverLight technology. The move will give Microsoft a leg up over Apple, making its mobile platform more web 2.0 friendly in supporting these ubiquitous web animation and runtime environments.

Apple has valid reasons for eschewing Flash lite, so it claims, like poor performance and a not-so-much like a desktop experience. Even if valid, it’s never a checkmark in your favor when competing products support features yours does not.

Wake up, Apple. You’re in Micrsoft’s crosshairs now.

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Avi Greengart, Research Director for market research firm Current Analysis, says Adobe’s Flash player performs poorly on iPhone, in its current incarnation, proving more trouble than it’s worth.

“There is no question the iPhone delivers a compelling Web experience and there are good reasons to want Flash in there, but Flash Lite wouldn’t give you the Web experience you’re looking for.”

The jixt of this statement, as we’ve known for some time, is that Adobe’s Flash Lite player comes with a high resource overhead, taxing the processor as well as battery life. Or so Apple claims. Forces are at work behind the scenes to develop a more optimized solution to bring native Flash content to iPhone users.

Much as I sometimes lament the absence of Flash, I don’t see it as a crucial feature. So long as some method exists for scraping content from YouTube, as it does now. That said, having no Flash support is yet one more missing feature that Apple haters will use as fodder for flinging rotten fruit at the device.

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It seems like only yesterday Apple’s servers were overwhelmed by the unbridled lust of developers, feverishly downloading the newly released iPhone SDK, going offline and back again like cheap Christmas tree lights. Today Apple is reporting that over 100,000 SDK downloads have been made in a span of just four days. That’s amazing considering that traffic bottleneck prevented downloading to occur for hours at a time, and Apple’s iPhone developer page was broken for nearly two days.

Makes you wonder how much higher that figure would be if everything had gone smoothly out of the gate. 500,000 perhaps?

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Apple and RIM are on a collision course as the two companies go toe to toe vying for enterprise messaging market share. RIM has long held the corporate high ground with its dominant BlackBerry Enterprise Server technology and ubiquitous handsets. But Apple is sending iPhone to business school, adopting Microsoft Exchange support that is certain to give Apple the competitive advantage it needs to challenge RIM’s BlackBerry industrial complex.

This puts Apple in a unique position. Until now the company has narrowly focused its product strategy at consumers, not business. Apple and enterprise go together like Dairy Queen and Lactose intolerance, but iPhone has achieved the kind of sweeping success and brand awareness that makes it marketable to business customers, given the right pedigree of tools.

The combination of iPhone’s consumer appeal and business smarts could produce a perfect storm for Apple. Will it be enough to topple RIM?

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Unlimited calling plans seem to be all the rage these days, with every carrier provision subscribers with “all you can speak” plans. Now even iPhone users will soon be able to gab all they want, and not pay dearly for it in the next billing cycle. According to Engadget, AT&T will be soon offer a special iPhone bundled unlimited calling plan for the low price of just $119.99 a month. Not a bad deal I suppose, if you spend ever waking hour of your day with a cell phone symbiotically attached to your face.

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Careful observation of one of Apple’s presentation slides taken during last week’s iPhone SDK event reveals a possible firmware 2.0 feature; SPOTLIGHT!In one slide depicting the Contacts list, a small search icon appears at the very top of the screen. Could this be Spotlight for iPhone? We’ll see. It so, I know of many iPhone users who will dance through lawn sprinklers with glee, myself included.

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No term strikes more fear and fluster in a coder than the word “Java”, and I’m not talking about the scalding hot cup of Starbucks dark roast you spilled in your lap on the way to work this morning. No, I’m talking about Sun Microsystems’s long touted (and lamented) portable programming environment designed to run small applications through virtual runtimes. Java is best known for its ever-reaching marketing slogan “Write once, run anywhere”, though veteran developers will tell you the only thing Java truly excels at is crashing.

Now, for better or worse (I’m leaning towards the latter), Java support is coming to iPhone. For end users its arrival will go largely unnoticed and have little impact, save for its manifestation in mobiles gaming. For corporate users, however, it heralds the iPhone’s arrival in the enterprise where custom Java applications are lingua franca. This is indeed important news. Just not to me. Next!

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Response to Apple’s release of an iPhone SDK has been overwhelming; literally. Since it became publicly available yesterday, Apple’s developer website has been swamped with user registrations and download requests. I personally have made numerous attempts to download the SDK, all unsuccessfully. If that’s any indication of the frenzied bustle of app development we might expect, I’d say we can expect a torrent of iPhone applications in the coming months. Bring your umbrella.

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Apple has posted the video from its March 6 iPhone Software Roadmap event, available for viewing. Go here.

Months ago Apple made a promise to developers, committing to one day release an SDK and open the iPhone for platform development. Today it made good on its promise, and reaffirmed that old adage “good things come to those who wait”.

Steve Jobs, along with corporate cohorts Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall, presented a public unveiling of the company’s product roadmap for iPhone at its Cupertino headquarters. What Jobs paraded to his audience was so spectacular it puts Apple at least a decade ahead of any competing mobile platform. For starters, the company is making a major play for the enterprise with a slew of corporate messaging tools and technologies that will put iPhone on par (and beyond) with other business-savvy devices like the Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices.

iPhone will offer full support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, and with it comes the same Push email, contacts, and calendar that Windows Mobile users have come to enjoy. About the only thing that Windows Mobile users enjoy, come to think of it. In addition to smarter messaging acumen, support of advanced wireless security protocols and remote data implosion will be integrated into OSX, making iPhone one of the most secure mobile devices in the industry. If someone steal’s your company issued iPhone, one quick line of code gives it a long distance lobotomy. Gone forever. There are other impressively boring features for the cubicle world, but I won’t delve into that since it is of little interest to you folks, unless you work in IT.

The show stopper for today’s event was the final unveiling of the iPhone SDK. Apple must be given the highest praise for going above and beyond expectations in both opening its platform, and exposing iPhones underlying plumbing to developers. There had been much concern that Apple would hide a great deal of OSX’s inner workings, and keep many doors locked to developers; not so. Nope, Apple has gone full monty and provided code monkeys the world over with powerful tools to build applications that take full advantage of iPhone’s core technologies.

Scott Forstall demoed the SDK and exhibited the iPhone’s core architecture, which until now have remained somewhat shrouded in mystery. One fascinating facet to OSX is a technology Apple calls Core Touch, an environment native to iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s a sophisticated interactive overlay that integrates with other organs within the OS like Core Image and OpenGL, allowing for innovative and weird application concepts. Scott demonstrated a breathtaking space shooter game developed in-house for demonstration. Using the built-in accelerometer and touch screen, the iPhone’s orientation is used to control pitch and yaw, in place of traditional button controls. The graphics were stunning, and comparable to a console. The iPhone is about to become a revolutionary gaming platform. Apple just gave Nintendo and Sony the business.

The possibilities are endless for rich applications. I expect lots of innovation from developers on a scale unprecedented in mobile platforms. And speaking of innovation, the best was yet to come. Forstall introduced a number of well known developers and publishers on stage, partnering with Apple, to bring first string applications to iPhone. First on deck was Electronic Arts with a dome of Spore, yes that Spore. Again, the graphics were simply stunning and touch screen capabilities enable even more imaginative possibilities in game design.

Salesforce.com gave a first look of its upcoming iPhone native app to empower sales agents. Great stuff, if you enjoy watching damp smudges solidify on your iPhone’s screen. Next!

AOL showed off its new AIM client for iPhone. This one had me puzzled because I half expected Apple to be first out of the gate with a native instant messaging client, in the form of iChat. Still, AIM for iPhone looks fantastic and offers everything you’d expect in a chat client. Be prepared to receive lots of messages from your friends once this app goes live… “OMG I’M TXTING FRM MY IPHONE! LOL!” Can’t wait for that.

Last but not least, medical reference giant Epocrates demoed its mobile prescription database app, which unfortunately didn’t include a prescription for drowsiness to overcome the effects of boredom form their presentation. What a snoozer. Still, it’s yet another great app coming down the pike, so that something to get excited about I guess.

After the dog and pony show concluded, Steve returned on stage to outline Apple’s model for application distribution, and drop the other shoe on our toes.

The bad news: As expected, iTunes will be the orifice for iPhone apps, exclusively. Apple will provide a special tool for enterprise customers, enabling custom corporate apps to be directly loaded onto iPhone, orphaned from iTunes. For the masses (meaning you moi), however, it’s going to be iTunes or nothing. Like it or lump it.

The good news: That’s actually not a big deal. In fact it may be a good deal better. Apple will include an app on the iPhone called App Store built in the same vein as its mobile iTunes WiFi store. You tap the icon and presented with an interface similar to the music store that shows featured apps as well as listed categories. You pick what you want… tap on a button called buy or free (if you’re lucky), the app downloads wirelessly to your phone, and voila! Better still, the App Store notifies you when applications you’ve purchased or downloaded have been updated. Very slick.

Best of all, Apple isn’t screwing developers in the way so many other mobile software stores have with nefarious contracts that favor the distributor or the developer. The terms laid out by Apple are fairly competitive, giving a 70/30 split in revenues, with the former going straight to developers. The remaining 30% lines Apple’s pockets to cover its overhead as well as net some profit. It’s not a perfect arrangement, but I call it fair.

Now for the badder bad news. The truly terrible “go sit in a chair and cry in your hanky. Mother will bring you a nice hot bowl of soup” kind of terrible. Apple will be releasing a major firmware update, now elevated to version 2.0, that delivers everything I’ve just covered, including Exchange messaging support and third party applications… but it won’t be arriving until late June. Yeah, I know. J-U-FREAKING-N-E. The agony. The torment. The inhumanity of it all.

But hey, it wasn’t so long ago that very same month drew us together, as we waited for the arrival of iPhone. Consider this an anniversary present from Apple. Many happy returns.

For those of you looking for forward to building apps for iPhone, don’t plan on writing that code on Windows. According to story posted on iPodNN, Apple will be making its upcoming iPhone SDK available for Mac only, with Leopard as required OS. That?s not surprising given that iPhone runs on an embedded flavor of OSX, and it?s not as though Mac software can be written in Microsoft Visual Studio. Apparently Apple will be releasing an enhanced version of Xcode, with built-in tools for iPhone application development.

So there you have it. Buy a Mac mini, fire up Xcode, and start compiling.

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Today is the big day for soon-to-be iPhone developers, anxiously awaiting for an SDK to drop from the mothership. Before that happens, I’d like to clear up some comflicting reports that are spreading through the ether. As you might have guessed, Apple’s distribution portal for native iPhone applications will be iTunes, just as it now for iPod media and games. However, according to my sources that will only apply to commercial (as in BUY NOW) software.

Free and or open source applications won’t by tied to the great orifice that is iTunes. Those applications will have a method for loading on iPhone, provided they adhere to Apple’s development guidelines and are signed with a special digital signature, ala Symbian, for security purposes.

Now, that is what I’ve been told by reliable sources. We’ll find out in just a few hours whether this is fact or fiction. I’m banking on the former.

China’s largest wireless carrier wants to bring iPhone to its customers. According to sources within China Mobile, the company is deeply interested in negotiating a deal with Apple, though no formal talks have yet taken place. I guess the Chinese have given up on trying to clone the iPhone after recent failed attempts.

China represents one of the worlds largest and fastest growing wireless markets. One that could prove very lucrative for Apple, and fill its coffers with lots of Yuan.

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So much for native Flash support in iPhone. In an interview yesterday, Steve Jobs told reporters that Adobe’s mobile Flash player “isn’t good enough” for iPhone, shunning its possible inclusion in the product. He went on to make an oddly elusive and interesting comment, saying “There’s this missing product in the middle,”, hinting that Apple may have said “missing” product in development. What could it be? It won’t be Silverlight, that much is certain.

You may be asking yourself why Adobe Flash support is important? Because nearly all forms of web based video from YouTube, Vimeo, Qik, and Brightcove, to name a few, are delivered or streamed in this format. Without it, such video content cannot be viewed directly. Apple developed a workaround for its YouTube anemic iPhone in the form of a homescreen client app that effectivetly siphons and converts Flash content into a digestible format, but users want a full on web video experience.

Will we ever see true native Flash support brought to iPhone, even if kicking and screaming? Read it and weep.

Free Wallpaper Friday is back with an odd assortment of motifs to satisfy your color craving. Taste the rainbow.

Put down your pint of Guinness and drop your Blarney stone. Apple struck a deal with O2 Ireland to bring iPhone to the land of shamrocks and bar fights. That confirmation comes straight from the horses mouth, depending on which end is speaking, in the form of an official announcement on O2′s website which lists iPhone’s availability on March 14. So there you have it.

Now how about making a nice pot of corned beef and cabbage for wee little Kent?

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Mark your calendars for March 6, 10:00 am PST. Apple will be holding a special event for members of the media, outlining the company’s iPhone development roadmap, as well a possible SDK release for developers. Apple began sending out invitations to the press early this morning, except for me of course. Steve Jobs has never forgiven me for photoshopping his head on Napoleon’s bust. And I was so looking forward to the free crab cake.

Stay tuned.

Angry verbs and adjectives are flying from iRate iPhone users brewing over the revelation that a site claiming to have a leaked SDK and working in partnership with Apple, was in fact a hoax intended to generate traffic and a some laughs. It’s getting lots of the former, but very little of the latter. The person behind the hoax site, Tiny Code, perpetrated this caper by posting what he alleged to be “leaked” information, then later pulled down the information, at the request (so he claimed) of Apple’s attorneys, and even redirected the site domain to point to Apple’s server.

In a forum post on MacRumors he confesses to his crime and then blames the blogosphere for picking up the story in the first place…

Overall I just apologize. I do not expect forgiveness and I definitely understand the posts following this to be nothing more than bashing. Just know than when I posted that information I had no intention for attention or otherwise, it was simply an excuse to stop publishing to the repo; seemed like a good one at the time.

Yeah, and I thought about faking my own death to get out of paying taxes. Seemed like a good idea the time. Well I forgive you, Kelly. But you’re still a tool.

For everyone else, look on the bright side; the SDK is coming despite this juvenile hoax, so keep the candles burning. It will get here when it gets here.

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Remember those long hot summer days, back in your childhood, when the musical sounds of an ice cream truck pulling into your neighborhood sent you bolting out the door and running into the street, painting the sidewalk with your saliva along the way? Well prepare to feed your inner child another tasty treat. Tiny Code, the site behind Installer.app repositories (yes, THAT installer.app) has apparently leaked information regarding Apple’s upcoming iPhone SDK, claiming that it was working with Apple to develop said SDK, no less.

The site, which went down soon after exposing its alliance with Apple, now redirects to Apple’s developer website. Huh, you say? Yeah, that was my reaction as well. But let’s be honest here; the iPhone jailbreaking /hacking community has been so creative in implementing application development and integration, is it any wonder Apple may have to chosen to use this as a base for its own framework? Makes sense to me. As the saying goes… “Always dance with the one who brung you.”

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Psst! Hey, buddy. Yeah, you! Over here. You want hot merchandise? These here iPhones just ahem fell off the truck today. Oh these are real beauties too. Fresh from from the factory, as they say. Get’em while you can because my supplies are rather limited, if you catch my meaning, and the Chinese Police are very interested in my wares. Meet me tonight behind the workers dormitory and we can discuss this further.

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Yes, it seems The Boy Genius Report jumped the shark by misinterpreting some cryptically worded internal memo from AT&T as proof positive the company would soon be rolling out a tethering feature (and plan) for iPhone. Sadly, or not, it is not to be. Nope turns out that memo described nothing more the process of tethering iPhone to iTunes. Ironically that document was intended to clear up customer confusion and had precisely opposite effect. AT&T – Raising the bar.

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InfoWorld’s Peter Bruzzese is the kind of IT guy who’s old enough to have lived through every major paradigm shift in technology. When not plodding along at his Windows workstation, surrounded by a sea of blade servers, he’s regaling colleagues and friends with his adventures back in the heady days of DOS computers and UNIX mainframes. The very mention of OS/2 gets him misty eyed, and if you see him hunched over a book about Fortran, well… just leave him be.

So when the old Windows warhorse suddenly took a shine to iPhone, people began wondering… and worrying. Somehow this grizzled old Windows veteran became an iPhone lover, wildly exploring its features like a five year-old in a McDonald’s playland, without the greasy fingerprints and spilled drinks.

But old habbits are hard to break. Peter is still heavily rooted in his Windows world, and continues using a Windows Mobile 6 device for its Exchange DirectPush support. So he wanders through the hallowed halls of InfoWorld wearing a Batman utility belt and pouched vest to carry his iPhone, Windows Mobile phone, Pager, GPS receiver, tape recorder, and PalmPilot. He’s old school, but all class.

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Alright, you Aussies. Drop your didgeridoos and Kangaroos and get down from your gum trees, because iPhone is coming to your bush. What’s that you ask? Is Kent a few Kangaroos loose in the top paddock? Nope, and I haven’t been smoking any strange Aboriginal tobacco either.

T-Mobile says it will begin rolling out iPhones to customers sometime in the first half of this year, give or take. Abso-bloody-lutely they will, so start saving your zacks now. Now stop questioning my sanity unless you want to start a barney. Got it? Ta!

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First let me say that I am not one to laugh at someone else’s misfortune. Wait, who am I kidding? Of course I am. So it comes with certain self indulgence that I take this opportunity to point to a study that ranks Palm dead last in customer satisfaction among handset makers. So sad. But sadder still that a Palm employee posted a rebuttal in the comments of that story and cited a different study, commissioned by Palm no less, to dispute these negative results. Which is the equivalent of saying “No, really I am wonderful, just ask my Mom, she’ll tell you.”

Cheer up, Palm. When it comes to product stagnation and obsolete technology, you’re still number one in my book.

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What feature request has been on the lips of every iPhone user since the idolized gadget first came galloping out the gate? I’ll give you a hint, it starts with the letter “F”, and is the same thing your inebriated Uncle Frank does at family get togethers after knocking back one too many martinis. Of course, I’m talking about Flash.

GearLive claims that Apple will be announcing Adobe Flash for WebKit (aka mobile Safari). There have been rumors to this effect for some time, but with the blessed arrival of the much anticipated SDK now only days away, this seems plausible. Still, I wouldn’t start bookmarking YouTube.com on your iPhone just yet. Let’s wait for Apple make this rumor a reality.

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As expected, Apple has finally rolled out its long rumored 16GB iPhone, doubling the memory found in the present 8GB model, and bringing feature parity between iPhone and its carrier castrated cousin the iPod Touch. Aside from the much needed memory boost no additional features have been integrated, such as 3G wireless, which is rather disappointing given the new product’s higher price tag.

The new iPhone goes on sale today and will retail for $499. The 16GB model takes its place alongside the 8GB model (which remains at $399), and will not replace it, according to Apple. You can found out more after the jump.

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As expected, Jobsy took center stage at San Francisco’s Mascone Center, pouring glasses of Kool-Aid to a thirsty yet doe eyed audience. MacWorld, for those of you unfamiliar, is Apple’s annual conference and keynote that is part State of the Union address, part infomercial, and part Renaissance Festival (minus the period costumes and jousting) all rolled into one. Jobs gave his usual PT Barnum performance with product announcements and demos to wow the crowd. This is MacWorld after all, so iPhone took a backseat to a major new product added the portable line, MacBook Air. More on that later.

What came from today’s big event was the vacuous sound of what didn’t. For starters, no SDK was announced, nor any update given on its inevitable release. What we got instead was a firmware update that offers a few really nice features, but barely chips the surface on what is by now a mountain of feature requests from users. No copy/paste. No Exchange support (not that Exchange IMAP fiddly bits we get now). No Flash support for Safari. I keep hearing that song from OneRepublic playing in my head… “Stop and stare. I think I’m moving but I go nowhere.”

But all is not for naught. Firmware 1.1.3 gives us a few decent featureware additions sure to pacify even the most puerile cynic, like myself. To begin with, control of icon placement in the dock is finally wrestled from Apple’s totalitarian grasp. The phone app, Mail, Safari, iPod, can all be relocated to the homescreen, repopulating the dock with any app you choose, though I strongly advise leaving the phone app where it is, unless you enjoy making calls from the homescreen. In fact, all homescreen icons can now be rearranged around as you please simply with one finger by tapping and holding on any icon, at which point all the icons begin to dance and gyrate like Brittany Spears staggering to her car after a night of bingeing.

And when you run out of screen real estate for all those icons, the homescreen paginates, represented by a series of small white dots depicting the number of viewable “pages” that scroll from left to right. If that sounds suspiciously similar to the multi-page implementation found on SummerBoard, you’re correct. A little too similar. So much so in fact that I can’t shake the feeling Apple is using the very community of iPhone hackers it shuns as free outsourced R&D. When what appeared yesterday as a hack from community sources now appears today from Apple, your mind begins to ponder where the real magic of software design is happening; Cupertino or somewhere in the cloud. All I can say is, if Apple is going to ahem “barrow” innovations from hackers it damn well better open the door good and wide for developers in the coming (presumably) SDK, offering unfettered API support. That’s all I will say on that subject. Now back to the firmware review.

Meanwhile, Apple puts the fun back in function with Safari in the form of a handy new feature allowing users to pin webpage shortcuts, called Web clips, to the homescreen. This is where the new homescreen paginate feature comes into play. After launching Safari, post-update, you’ll notice a new “+” sign at the bottom of your screen display. Tapping this brings up a dialog panel offering a choice of bookmark options. Tap on the middle selection; “send to home screen” and whoosh! Well actually there is no whoosh, per se. Another prompt screen appears allowing you to name your soon-to-be icon, at which point you get dumped back to the homescreen to admire your lovely new icon. If you want to delete a user-generated icon, just tap and hold, wait for the gyrations to begin, and now a delete emblem appears in the upper left corner of the icon in the same way that Dashboard widgets are handheld in OSX. It’s that simple.

By now you’re asking yourself… damn, why doesn’t Kent post screenshots of all this so we can see what it looks like? Ah, well that’s where we go back to that whole “dude! where the hell is my SDK you lying bastards?!” thing. With this latest firmware update, as with all others before, iPhone gets sent back to prison, behind barred doors and razor wire fences to keep out unwanted developers hackers. And with that goes the breadth of applications and useful utilities developed by creative and telented people. One tool in particular I use for taking screen captures for posting. So goes that. Now it’s back to blurry photos of my left hand holding iPhone for image capture. If you sense that I’m growing tired of this game, you’re right. Apple, it seems, devotes more effort taking features away from me than it does providing them, and that just kills my inner child. Ok, so I lied about dropping the whole Apple vs. Developers thing. This time I will, I swear.

Beyond the dancing icons ala Brittany, and Safari bookmarking, there are two other notable additions sure to leave you leaning forward in your chair and reciting biblical proverbs. From the book of Jobs, Verse 21: And Steve said…“Let there be group SMS messaging.” And behold, from the towers of Cupertino poured forth multi-party SMS and it was good. Well it’s not a burning bush, but having the ability to send one SMS to several friends or group members is a much needed feature. The tendons in my thumb splintering to shreds from having to peck out the same message for different recipients. Thankfully that ends now.

Those above features, while tasty, are mere potatoes compared to the real meat of the update. The signature feature to this firmware update has to the revamped Google Maps application which now integrates some rudimentary location aware functionality that enables iPhone to perform some form of GPS mimicry. By using crude cell tower triangulation, the new and improved mapping app is now able to locate your current location on a map, in proximity to the nearest tower. It works well and might even help you find the nearest town or borough, but I wouldn’t trust this app to help medical personnel locate me should I fall into a deep crevasse while hiking through Middle-of-Nowhere Montana. When I tested this feature out twice today it did find my location, but was off about… oh… one square mile. That’s one hell of a margin of error.

Beyond that astonishing feature introduction, the mapping app still works and looks largely the same. Apple did clean up the UI quite a bit, and concealed function buttons that were previously at the forefront behind a page layer that displays interesting page curl effect when activated. Again, nothing overwhelming here, just nice touches to fit and finish. A disturbing revelation came during today’s keynote when Steve Jobs announced that users of iPod Touch, iPhone’s cellular-castrated cousin, have to pay Apple a tax of $20 to download the firmware update. That doesn’t bode well for iPhone users as this is no doubt a harbinger of things to come. We can now look forward to the prospect of one day paying for software updates as well. Sucketh!

And that ladies and gentlemen pretty much wraps up this otherwise underwhelming update. In the long history of firmware updates, this one won’t receive any special honors. No statues will be erected in its honor. But 1.1.3 still stands head and shoulders above 1.1.2, which I best described as the DDS release for “Doesn’t Do Shit”. And that’s the kindest compliment I can pay today’s firmware update, believe me. Yet this release offers so little and I find myself, as always, wanting so much more. Like someone who has crawled through a hot arid desert, with Apple offering me only a thimble of water to assuage my parching thirst. Just one more layer of the onion peeled back, so many more to go.

Keep updating your software Apple, you’re getting closer.

iPhone wielding Slingbox owners will soon be able to view their favorite smutty Spice Channel content on iPhone screens, if rumors are true. A site that goes by the charming name Electric Pig (I prefer my swine without rectal power adapters thank you very much) claims to have spoken with one of the higher ups at Sling Media, who went on record as saying that a version of its popular Slingplayer for mobile devices is in development right now.

Sweet. Now I can watch all my favorite episodes of Gilligan’s island while driving down the freeway. Zoom Zoom.

ReadVia MacRumors

iPhone may soon come to the land of the rising sun. Word on the street is that NTT DoCoMo head honcho, Masao Nakamura, has been seen in public holding hands with a certain American wearing faded denim jeans and black mock turtleneck sweater. He confirms today that his company is actively engaged in talks with Apple, but shrugged off questions concerning terms or product release dates.

I’ll lay you odds that Apple won’t swindle the same lucrative revenue sharing margins out of NTT that they’ve managed to extract from other wireless carriers, like our very own AT&T. And unless this agreement concerns the upcoming 3G model, iPhone has zero chance of success in Japan, which is a much more tech savvy market that doesn’t look kindly on non-HSDPA phones.

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Holiday wallpapers to deck your iPhone. Download them after the jump. And…you’re welcome.

C|Net’s French website is reporting that an upcoming Firmware update, to be released by Apple as early as Saturday, will include two added features that enable the iPhone to act as a USB Flash Drive when docked with a PC or Mac, and includes Voice recorder capability. Which means you’ll be able to throw out all those thumb drives littering you desk, as well as that ridiculously obsolete handheld voice recorder.

Aside: I’d like to know how C|Net France came by this seemingly “insider” information. The whole things seems very dubious, but we’ll see what happens tomorrow.

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CNBC reporter Jim Goldman claims that a source close to Apple’s Asian contract manufacturer knows precisely when Apple will launch the long desired 3G iPhone. Clear your calendars for the month of June ’08, the date of iPhone 3G’s arrival. This news, if you can call it that, comes as little surprise since the existence of a 3G iPhone was confirmed by none other than Apple itself. But this source, if accurate, dashes any hopes such a product will reveal itself at MacWorld in January. Was anyone really expecting Apple to obsolete the current model in under 6 months? Apple churns out new iPhone models like Mocha Lattes at Starbucks, but in a new iPhone release in such a short period isn’t realistic, especially given that iPhone hasn’t fully propagated among international carriers.

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Agonizing abdominal pains are being felt across the globe today as the world laughs hysterically at Windows Mobile. According to a report posted by Net Applications, iPhone accounts for .09% of the overall browser market, leaving Windows Mobile choking on Apple’s dust with .06%. Not a bad record for a device that’s only been on the market for less than two consecutive sales quarters, and Windows Mobile is how many years old now? Oh the humiliation.

Cheer up, Windows fanboys. At least you beat out the T-Mobile Sidekick. And that’s something to be proud of, right? Bwahahaha!

ReadVia CrunchGear

Now see here, you Yanks. This whole iPhone concept…it’s just not cricket. You plebes may fall victim to the seductive powers of Sir Steven Jobs, with his shiny expensive bobs and brickabrack, but we Brits are made of tougher stuff. You won’t find it so easy fobbing off your gadgety thingies on us, by Jove. Just look at the pittance of iPhone activations made since launching here in the UK, something like 26,500? Mere truffles, I tell you. The queen has more diamond studs in her dinner gown. Knickers!

Now do go on and take your toys elsewhere, or Parliament will have to reassess the terms its peace treaty with you and reclaim lost territory. We wouldn’t want to start an “incident” now would we? There’s a good chaps.

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Rakesh Agrawal’s 3 year old daughter devised a clever means for watching instructional videos on her father’s iPhone using common refrigerator magnets to mount the device on the fridge. Positioned for just her height, the industrious little scamp uses her iPhone to learn Yo-yo techniques by watching How-to videos from Veronica Belmont of Mahalo Daily. I’m betting Mom and Dad won’t be so proud once the 3 year old realizes her invention is patentable and a lucrative product market, enjoying fabulous wealth while her parents are left staring at a empty refrigerator.

She’s not the only one learning lessons from Veronica. I kid…Veronica is awesome, and wonderfully entertaining. I’ve always enjoyed her ebullient personality since her days at C|net, co-hosting Buzz Out Loud and Crave. She’s in my Facebook and Pownce friends lists for a reason.

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Germans. You think you’re all so smart with your pickled cabbage, exotic sausages, fine Pilsners and now UNLOCKED iPhones? For just a few hundred Euros, you can waltz over to a computer, dock your iPhone, pay an unlocked premium fee through iTunes, and enjoy the privilege of using your iPhone on any wireless carrier you choose.

Well that’s all well and good, but just remember we Americans still poses the worlds most egomaniacal corporate CEO, Steve Jobs. Top that!

Readvia Boy Genius

God hates me. Nothing else can explain my recent steady string of bad luck. My plans to devote free time to writing, and my entire holiday, were derailed by a bout with food poisoning…or stomach flu (it’s not clear which is the culprit). While most of you were enjoying vast portions of poultry, piled on plates, and devouring drumsticks, I was in bed convalescing. I was struck down Wednesday evening and didn’t fully recover until late Saturday, and by that time my only goal was to salvage what was left of Thanksgiving. On the bright side, illness provided a way of avoiding family. Hallelujah!

So that was my week. Enough ruminating. Now for some good news – I freed up this whole bloody week to devote to blogging…and I am raring to go. Today will be a little spotty due to a couple meetings with clients (you know, that whole job thing), but from then on it’s off to the blogosphere. Provided of course God ceases his campaign to punish me. Was I Hitler in a past life? I thought having Vista running on my PC was punishment enough. sigh

Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I have to see a man about some wallpaper.

In observance of the Thanksgiving holiday here the US, I will be posting content tomorrow and throughout the remainder of this week. How’s that, you ask? Yes…well it seems the only free time I have for writing these days is when not working at my real job. The holiday provides the perfect opportunity to publish a backlog of content and reviews I’ve been hammering out. Plus it gives me something to do while digesting an explosive combination of Turkey and Aunt Clara’s lethally over sweetened cranberry stuffing – killing two birds with one stone, if you’ll excuse pun. So now you have something to cure both boredom and Turkey toxemia while visiting family and friends this week.

I’m still contemplating future plans for this site and whether or not to open it to volunteer contributions. Based on the email responses I’ve gotten most of you favor maintaining the status quo, but with me posting more content. I think you’re all just trying to drive me insane…it’s what I’ve suspected all along. To that end I plan on devoting more time to writing, and less time to work. Homelessness can’t be that bad…can it? We’ll see how this goes. Until then, have a wonderful holiday and be sure to check back here, in between second helpings of Mashed potatoes.

Welcome, dear readers, to another exciting installment of Free Wallpaper Friday, where I pass out free images like candy from a parade float. And this week I’m loading you up with a double does of sugary sweet wallpapers with a Holiday theme. Enough to kill a diabetic.

If you were expecting turkeys and cornucopias, you’re in for disappointment. I prefer more of a Christmas theme because frankly Thanksgiving is rather boring, and I’m sure that, like me, you’d rather stare a colorful Christmas tree on your iPhone screen rather than a Butterball Turkey? Am I right or am I right? Right then.

These aren’t my best submissions, but there are a few good ones to choose from. I’m partial to the snowmen image myself. But I will be rolling out some really magnificent Holiday walls in weeks leading to up Christmas

Download them after the jump. Oh, and…you’re welcome.

I post a story about iPhone coming to Commiland, and now Reuters steps in with news that iPhone’s arrival in China may be delayed by technical (read: Political) and fee (read: money under the table) issues. The gist of this delay centers around iPhone being locked, as apposed to Chinese phones which are unlocked and portable to any GMS carrier. Does anyone else besides me feel utterly ashamed and embarrased that communist mobile phones enjoy more freedom and liberty than our capitalist phones?

Maybe this Communism thing isn’t so bad after all… Capitalist pig!

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Unlike most professional bloggers, I have a real job (snap!). I work as a self-employed freelance web designer and creative professional. A job that consumes most of my available time that would otherwise be devoted to writing. Since this site was incepted I have run it, literally, with one hand and four fingers tied behind my back. Each post I write is done with one remaining pinky finger, in the span of whatever free minutes I can spare each hour or afternoon. Even as time deprived as I am, I still managed to make this blog one of the most popular iPhone enthusiast destinations on the internets. Not a bad achievement for one person, but still woefully inadequate.

My schedule is becoming increasingly burdened with work, and writing time seems to be lessening. The latter part of last week I spent on the road meeting with new clients and collaborating on projects. My “free” time was so sparse I not only hadn’t posted news, I completely missed Free Wallpaper Friday…an inexcusable atrocity akin to drowning kittens. Ironically it seems that the very thing that has made this blog what it is (me) is also holding it back (me again). And that’s not good. So the time has come to make some hard decisions here at the old iPhone blog. My options are…

1. Give up my job and work as a full time professional writer? I would love the opportunity to do just that, but this crazy capitalist system we live under requires currency for the acquisition of goods and services. My income would disappear in the blink of an eye. Unless some larger publication acquires this blog and hires me in, this isn’t an option, sadly.
2. Throw in the towel and shut down the site. Again, not an option. That kitten drowning analogy comes to mind.
3. Open the site to volunteers and user generated content.

The last option seems most rational, and interesting. So here’s the deal – I want your feedback. How does this idea sound to you? Would you like to see user generated news and reviews? Or would you rather this site remains as it exists now…a walled garden with me as its despite ruler? Better still, what would you, dear readers, like to see added to improve this site? Any and all options are on the table. Speak your mind and I’ll listen. Post your comments below, or use the contact form to shoot me an email…or engage in character assassination.

Lastly, thank you all for your loyal support. You folks are what makes all this worth the effort. Cheers!

China Mobile Ltd., the country’s largest state run cell phone carrier, claims that it is in talks with Apple to bring iPhone to the land of cheap labor and censorship sometime next year. No agreement has yet been reached…so why bother making the announcement?

It’s only fitting. American jobs are being exported to China, so why not Steve Jobs? Get it…Steve Jobs, American Jobs? Heh? Oh never mind.

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Google rolls out a new iPhone friendly revamp to its popular web based RSS reader. Users are now greeted with a cleaner, more logically designed interface that places key navigation icons on top, for greater accessibility. It still doesn’t provide the collapsible tree view that I long for, but it does go a step further towards a better RSS experience. I approve.

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The undaunted hacker community has once again foiled Apple’s attempts to lock down its platform. Conceited Software (charming name) has released yet another Jailbreak script to free iPhone’s latest and rather hidden firmware update; 1.1.2…which can best be described as a DDS upgrade, or Doesn’t Do Shit. If you installed this firmware update, which I rarely advise these days, Apple being what it is…then reclaim your unauthorized apps.

Or Apple could simply stop breaking community software, right? Hello?

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Can’t bear the thought of missing out on the latest score or match results while away from the telly? MOLISC gives you live up to the nano-second results from every game. Simply point your iPhone’s browser to http://www.mobilelivescore.com and get full on updates as they happen.

GOOOOOAAAAALLLLL!

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Unless you’ve been pinned under a bus for the past 24 hours, you’ve no doubt witnessed the unfolding drama from yesterday’s announcement by Google about its upcoming open mobile platform, dubbed Android. Opinions range from Android’s arrival heralding the end of the wireless world as we know it, to “Oh my God…targeted ads on a mobile phone!” This story isn’t particularly relevant to iPhone enthusiasts, but its impact will affect the handset industry as a whole. And being the smarty pants, know-it-all, Smartphone expert, tech talkin guy that I am, I couldn’t let this topic pass by without weighing in.

Let’s start off by cutting through marketing speak and deciphering what Android is and isn’t. What it is, according to Google, is a software stack and not the packaged operating system we came to expect from rumors preceding the announcement. What does that mean? In plain English it means Google’s OS is a bag of parts, unassembled and customizable for any application, like a pile of Lego building blocks. More on that later. As part of this venture, Google has lined up an impressive group of A-list industry partners to back its platform… all part of a larger open source initiative called the Open Handset Alliance. The group includes companies ranging from handset makers, software developers, and carriers alike. Each one lends a hand in developing Android’s software stack, and each has own interests and agenda…each using the other to get what it wants. Here is where Android begins falling apart like a house of cards on a wobbly table.

Speaking as someone who has covered the mobile industry for many years, I can tell you from experience that such conglomerations almost universally end in failure. The reason is simple; no one entity controls platform development guidelines or sets roadmap. With proprietary operating systems like Windows Mobile, or OSX, one company or development teams controls the entire development process and most importantly… user experience. Google is being less than transparent with Andriod’s UI experience and application framework, but if my hunch is correct (and it usually is on matters of mobile tech) Android will end up being a mélange of disparate and disjointed software environments with different interfaces running on different hardware, all with different application layers. Apps that run on one device may not run on another (think Symbian).

Usability is another problem. Software is nothing unless it offers a compelling user experience. An operating system must be aesthetically pleasing, reliable, and brain-dead simple to operate. iPhone delivers all of these qualities in world class fashion, which is largely reason for its success. Looking through the list of Open Handset Alliance partners reads like a who’s who in the FBI’s ten most wanted list. None of the companies involved, including Google, are known for building pretty and usable interfaces. Google’s web based properties are minimalist at best and ugly at worst. Google search does what it does. Google Doc’s gets the job done, but certainly is no replacement for Office 2007 in either. HTC isn’t exactly a hotbed of innovation when it comes to handset design. The company has done well in the Windows Mobile camp, but that’s not saying very much given the lackluster success Microsoft has had outside of the enterprise, where looks and brains don’t count. Motorola, couldn’t design a proper GUI to save its own…business. Needless to say I have very low expectations from the first round of Android-based devices to hit the market later next year.

Then we have Google’s disturbing revenue model behind Android’s distribution…one that is ad-based. The plan, as disclosed by Eric Schmidt, is to license Android freely (under the Apache GPL) in return for targeted ad revenues with carrier partners. This is worrisome to me for two reasons. 1) Handset displays are simply too small to allocate already taxed space to text-based ads. 2) I don’t fancy the thought of Google aggregating my data and bombarding me with targeted ads. Imagine this scenario – your car needs repaired…you call your nearest garage for an estimate…suddenly a text message pops up on your screen soliciting a car insurance ad from Geico. Not the kind of mobile experience I want on my phone.

So what good is Android anyway? For starters, it could do a world of good for mobile platform development by bringing an end to the confused noise of different languages that exist today. As it stands now the wireless industry is a virtual alphabet soup of different proprietary operating systems, some closed – some open, all sporting different APIs and different incompatible software stacks. Other mobile Linux efforts abound, but having Google’s name attached to this venture provides a unifying label to get behind. My bet is that over the next few years, proprietary platform vendors, particularly Nokia and RIM, will layer their own software on top of Google’s Linux foundation. Consolidation is badly needed in this industry, and Google’s platform may offer that hope.

The big losers in this endeavor will be Access, the company that acquired PalmSource, the former software division of Palm Inc. Access has been working on a project similar to Google’s for some time, named ALP (Access Linux Platform). After yesterday’s announcement that project is as good as dead. Palm is another company to be placed on death watch, where they’ve been for some time now. Palm is locked in a desperate struggle to remain viable and get its long delayed Linux operating system out the gate. Android will ship months before Palm’s, making former handheld leader and its yet-to-be-released OS as irrelevant as Britney Spears music career. Microsoft’s executive team, too, will have reason to drink Pepto-Bismol in boardroom meetings, though I doubt Android will put them out of the mobile business anytime soon. Windows Mobile is well established with legions of backers and garners a handsome chunk in market share.

How does this play out for Apple? Android and its Open Handset Alliance will have little impact on iPhone or Apple’s handset business. iPhone, much like all products that wear the Apple logo, is a lifestyle device, not a commodity product like the PC. Mobile technology is a delicate interplay between hardware and software. If either one component is deficient or lacking in any way, the total product fails. That kind of synergy is only achieved when the software and hardware are made by the same creative team, with a cohesive strategy and vision. Google will quickly discover that merely getting the software equation right will be challenging enough. Getting device makers to build compelling hardware to wrap around its OS will be even harder.

Android could (emphasis) prove to be a turning point in mobile platform development, approaching a single but open environment for all to build upon, bringing an end to the Pan’s Labyrinth of platforms we know today. But the cynic in me feels this is just a lot of hot air. I’m anxious to see what this platform will offer, and rest assured I’ll be right there on day one standing first in line with other Smartphone aficionados waiting to get an Android phone. But given what I know from past efforts, my expectations are low.

Dave Merten from MacOSG informs me that he has created a new web app for iPhone that provides instant access to support guides right from your iPhone. It’s called Mac611 (shouldn’t that be 911?). Check it out for yourself, or better still… break your Mac and try to fix it using this service. I’m going to the tool shed now to get my sledgehammer.

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Friday is finally here, which means you get to download free wallpaper and complain about how gay they look. Just kidding. You go right on and criticize – I love your feedback.

Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to put on my red dress and carry a purse. Enjoy the goods.

Time Magazine has named iPhone “Invention of the Year”, a title shared with… well I don’t recall Time ever bestowing that award on any product, but this is after all the same publication that once named Adolf Hitler Man of the year, and me (or rather everyone) Person of the year.

Invention of the year is an overstated understatement. Any product that has educated adults behaving like pre-teens camped outside retails stores for days on end, and turns slobs into celebrities, is an achievement unrivaled by any other medium. Invention of the Century would be more fitting.

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The iPhone is a stunning piece of industrial design that screams taste and style. So what better way to modify a beautiful product than ugly it up with black spray paint and faux classic rainbow Apple logo, in a style reminiscent of the Newton. At least this guy won’t have to worry about someone stealing his iPhone. Unless he lives in the UK, of course.

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The arrival of iPhone in the UK next week may cause more than just nerdgasm among Guinness-drinking geeks. According to one industry expert, the iconic gadget may set off a “crime wave” of mobile phone thefts, as criminals go searching for the elusive new smartphone in the pockets and purses of unsuspecting toffs. Each year more than 800,000 mobile phones end up in the hands of crooks, accounting for 52% of all thefts in the UK. Nickers!

Best guard your purse strings, gov.

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Yellowpages, the Google of the analog age, is jumping on board the iPhone bandwagon. The old offline search directory has rolled out a very slick looking mobile web interface designed for Safari, offering the usual “Find me” search service for businesses, as well as maps – powered by Microsoft MapPoint (bleh).

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Leopard sales are off to a honking strart. According to Apple the company sold a prodigious 2 million copies of the new OS in the first weekend since its official launch at 6:00pm on Friday. Several thousand Mac fanboys (and girls) stood in long lines, similar to those witnessed during iPhone’s launch, eagerly waiting to grope Apple’s new kitty-clad OS. How many copies were sold to Microsoft’s Research lab? Oh, we’ll have to wait for the next version of Windows to see what features Microsoft’s bovine borrows from Apple’s feline.

Astonishingly l was not among the rabble. I’m saving my spare change for the purchase of a MacBook Pro, which will come with Leopard pre-installed. As General Patton once said… “I never pay for the same real estate twice.”

Read the press release after the break.

Apple Sells Two Million Copies of Mac OS X Leopard in First Weekend

CUPERTINO, California—October 30, 2007—Apple® today announced that it sold (or delivered in the case of maintenance agreements) over two million copies of Mac OS® X Leopard since its release on Friday, far outpacing the first-weekend sales of Mac OS X Tiger, which was previously the most successful OS release in Apple’s history. Sales included copies sold at Apple’s retail stores, Apple Authorized Resellers, the online Apple Store®, under maintenance agreements and bundled with new Mac® computers. Leopard is the sixth major release of Mac OS X and is packed with more than 300 new features.

“Early indications are that Leopard will be a huge hit with customers,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Leopard’s innovative features are getting great reviews and making more people than ever think about switching to the Mac.”

Leopard introduces Time Machine, an effortless way to automatically back up everything on a Mac; a redesigned Finder that lets users quickly browse and share files between multiple Macs*; Quick Look, a new way to instantly see files without opening an application; Spaces, an intuitive new feature used to create groups of applications and instantly switch between them; a brand new desktop with Stacks, a new way to easily access files from the Dock; and major enhancements to Mail and iChat®.

Pricing & Availability Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard is available through the Apple Store (www.apple.com), at Apple’s retail stores and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $129 (US) for a single user license. The Mac OS X Leopard Family Pack is a single-household, five-user license for a suggested retail price of $199 (US). Volume and maintenance pricing is available from Apple. Leopard requires a minimum of 512MB of RAM and is designed to run on any Macintosh® computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5 or G4 (867 MHz or faster) processor. Full system requirements can be found at www.apple.com/macosx/techspecs.

iNdependence 1.2.5 (Mac only, sorry Winlosers) is out and ready to liberate iPhones running firmware 1.1.1. This release comes complete with full SSH support, as well as anySIM 1.1 pre-installed… for those of you crazy brave enough to brick unlock your iPhone.

Now before you go trotting off to download this app on your Mac, like the slutty iCrack whore that you are, a word of warning: Unlocking, be it through anySIM or other hackery, can be a risky endeavor that may result in damaging your iPhone. The process used by such apps involves monkeying with iPhone’s baseband settings, the all important and tightly guarded driver software that controls phone connectivity, or lack thereof. If something should go wrong during the unlock execution, your iPhone becomes an expensive paperweight. At least until such time as the hacking community can create a fix to reverse the damage. So I do advise caution, and common sense… two qualities that are sorely lacking in me.

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Trick or Treat, smell my feet, give me some wallpaper for my iPhone or I’ll Toilet Paper your house.

As a peace offering for being absent for nearly a week due to illness, I’m giving you boys and girls a truckload of Halloween themed wallpaper. Tripling the usual dose of eight. It’s my way of saying I’m sorry, and deterring any of you from leaving burning bags of doo doo on my virtual doorstep. So here you go. Enjoy them, but do be sure to wash your sticky candy-stained fingers before touching my wallpapers. I won’t have it.

Download them after the break.

You wouldn’t think of Paul Otellini as someone who uses “hip” consumer products, given his stodgy corporate background and boardroom persona. But beneath his mild professional demeanor lies a Mac fanboy and iPhone lover. Yes, his secret is out: Intel’s number one man uses a MacBook Pro, and both he and his spouse carry iPhones.

In a recent interview with BusinessWeek, Otellini admits to using Apple products for personal use, though he does preface his confession by saying that he still carries a ThinkPad for work, in the event Steve Ballmer should happen to stop by and catch him with a MacBook sitting in his lap.

By the way, am I the only one who is utterly dumbfounded by the continued success of the antiquated ThinkPad series? The damn things still look the same after nearly a decade… and they were ugly to begin with. If forced to carry a corporate portable (mind you, you’d have to hold a gun to my head) Dell’s Latitude line would be my first choice. Not that I’m enamored with Dell products, but their business portables are well designed, highly configurable, and decently priced.

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But the show, or blog as it were, must go on. And on it goes. It is the Captain’s duty to go down with his ship, but the ship should not go down with it’s Captain. I will resume normal posting starting today, which won’t be easy for me since I have a backlog of “my real job” work piled high on my desk. But enough of my whining.

Don’t ask me why but a friend asked me to create a Star Trek background that emulated the look and feel of ship computer consoles, which I did. He needs to get a life. I’ll share it with you guys since you’re always complaining that my wallpapers are too gay. The black cat image is a teaser of things to come for next week’s All Hallows’ Eve edition. Can you taste it?

We are one step closer to editing word documents on our iPhones today. Google is now offering a mobile format of Google docs, viewable on mobile devices. The bad news – it’s Read-only mode, so no editing capabilities are available… yet. But at least you can access important docs while on the go, right from your iPhone, and that’s something to cheer about. Right?

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What do an Airline pilot, Ballet dancer, and Broadway Theater producer all have in common? They all use iPhones and appear in Apple latest iPhone whoring ad campaign. But the tables are turned as the subjects plug their own ventures rather than focus soley on iPhone and how it impacst their lives. A commercial within a commercial?

Kristin Sloan, the sole female user in this trio, is the editor and founder of TheWinger.com – a site devoted to ballet dancing. Several seconds into the commercial she drops off the subject of iPhone and immediately draws attention to her site. Nice touch, very subtle. I thought this was a commercial promoting iPhone, not ballet dancing?

The third spot features Broadway producer Ken Davenport, who pimps his new play “My First Time”, and mentions a fansite which we’re obviously meant to visit. Out of the three the Airline pilot came off most convincing, with his casual flair and real-world usage scenario.

See the ads and judge for yourself.

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Ambrosia Software has released an update to its popular custom ringtone software, iToner, now supporing iPhone firmware 1.1.1. If you’re already a user, download the update now. If you’re not, well… download it anyway.

ReadSource

Oh Greenpeace, can’t you idiots just stick to rescuing dolphins or saving single-cell organisms? Today the colorful activist organization made good on its promise to sue Apple over toxic materials found in iPhone, and further seeks an injunction blocking the arrival of iPhone in Europe. If Greenpeace is successful, you boys and girls in Europe won’t be getting an iPhone come November 9. One more at a time.

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Charge the defibrillators, my heart just stopped. None other than Steve Jobs himself has officially announced that Apple will indeed open iPhone to native software development, and provide an SDK next February. Apparently plans were in the works to open the platform to developers all along (told you so) but Apple still hasn’t figured a non-invasive procedure for allowing applications to run in OSX.

So, the good news is there is a God. The bad news is it’s Steve Jobs.

Read his excellency’s blessed scrawl after the break. Or go here to see the official announcement on Apple.com

Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

One of my readers sent me the following story. You be the judge as to the true guilty party.

AT&T billed me $667.91 with no explanation of the charges on the phone bill. When I called them they said that it was a charge for my phone because the credit card charges had been disputed by the person that purchased the phone. I told them that I had purchased the phone legally from a co-worker they did not care. They have refused to give me any details on the charges. They even refused to do any investigation into their facts to make sure that I do owe the money. They finally, after several hours agreed to investigate it but still will not tell me much. What I have been told as of now is; the phone was charged with an American Express card, the phone was shipped but not to the address the credit card was registered to. They also tell me that no receipt was requested for the phone upon delivery. (I find this very strange. You would not send out a phone worth more than $600 and not ask for a signature of the recipient). They cannot explain how I ended up with the phone. They said that they are not concerned with that. They have also told me that the charge was put on my account by an AT&T store but when asked which one they refused to tell me. I also know that several employees at the Burbank store, including the one that sold the phone to my co-worker, have been fired for “questionable actions”. I said to them “If this phone is stolen than call the police and I can take care of it from there.” (Another strange action, if it was stolen the first thing you do is get a police report). I guess they don’t want anyone looking too deep into their actions. They said they would not make any call but if I do not pay it they would take me to court for it. It seems strange that they seem to only go after me when they even talked to the person that sold it to me who told them that he was the one that bought it from the Burbank store. If it was really stolen as they claim than why did not try to get my co-worker to pay for it. This whole thing stinks of a scam by AT&T to make up money that a dishonest employee took.

Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter ended in September, and the bean counters in every investment firm are hard at work following the money trail, speculating on Apple’s quarterly results. Bear Stearn analyst Andrew Neff, the man most well known for his crazy but prophetic predictions about the implosion and consolidation of the PC industry, believes that iPhone could be the start of something big. He tells investors that while deferred profit sharing with AT&T won’t have an immediate impact on Apple’s bottom line, he sees iPhone being a money machine, driving profits. Doesn’t it warm your heart to read those words?

Of course, what really drove profits this quarter were the purchase of two iPhones by one Kent Pribbernow. Yeah, don’t think I won’t be wanting stock options in return Apple. It’s time I start seeing some greenbacks. Capiche?

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iPhone users may experience sudden loss of bladder control in early January. According to sources quoted by BusinessWeek, who are close to the companies plans – sorry BW, the janitorial staff do not count as sources – Apple plans to deliver an SDK at MacWorld, finally opening the platform to software developers. No more of that freakshow hackware stuff, alright?

The sources go on to say that Apple’s timing has to do with the release of Leopard, the next version of OSX, coming next Friday. Apparently this upcoming iPhone SDK will somehow be tied directly to Leopard itself, through Xcode, though I’m still questioning how that is possible. I assume there are major changes to Cocoa, native to Leopard. Or it could simply be a technical way of luring developers to Leopard in the same way that Microsoft soldered DirectX 10 on to Vista, hoping to sucker attract game developers.

Anyway, pour a pint of ale. Three cheers for it. See you in January, and all that rot.

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Bonjour! My name is Jacques. On behalf of the people of France I would just like to say Merci to you Americans for exporting the Suprême iPhone. We French are quite accustomed to pinching and making gestures with our fingers, so the iPhone will be as second nature to us, oui? However, our country already has too many elitist assholes, so you may keep Steve Jobs. Just give us the iPhone and we can forget the unpaid loans you still owe us from the American Revolution. Did you swine think we had forgotten that our King Louis financed your war of independence, and allowed your con man, Benjamin Franklin, to rob our national treasury! Give us iPhone, and we give your freedom… and I don’t mean fries, mon ami.

Read les press release after les break.

Apple Chooses Orange as Exclusive Carrier for iPhone in France

PARIS—October 16, 2007—Apple® and Orange today announced that Orange, the leading wireless carrier in France, will be the exclusive French carrier partner for the revolutionary iPhone™ when it makes its debut in France on Thursday, November 29. iPhone combines three devices into one—a mobile phone, a widescreen iPod®, and the best mobile Internet device ever—all based on Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface and pioneering software that allows users to control iPhone with just a tap, flick or pinch of their fingers. Apple sold its one millionth iPhone just 74 days after it went on sale in the US on June 29.

“We are excited to partner with Orange and bring iPhone to France in time for the holidays,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iPhone is an amazing product and we hope mobile users in France will love it as much as we do.”

“The iPhone is a marvelous product and will change how people think about mobile. I’m delighted that it is launching in France through Orange, and I’m sure that our customers share my excitement. Our partnership with Apple is a natural fit because we are two global brands who share the same values of simplicity and innovation. It’s going to be a very merry Christmas for Orange customers all over the country!” said Didier Lombard, CEO, France Telecom.

In addition to all the revolutionary features that made iPhone so popular in the US, iPhone users in France will have access to Apple’s latest music offerings on iPhone including the iTunes® Wi-Fi Music Store. The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store offers customers the ability to browse, search, preview, purchase and download songs and albums from iTunes over the built-in Wi-Fi on their iPhone. Music fans can start enjoying their music purchases immediately on their iPhone with no computer required. Once they connect their iPhone back to their PC or Mac®, downloaded music will automatically sync back into their iTunes library.

Pricing & Availability iPhone is scheduled to go on sale on November 29 and will be sold in France through Orange’s online and direct retail stores. iPhone will be available in an 8GB model for €399 including V.A.T. for any subscription to one of the dedicated rate plans and will work with either a PC or Mac.

iPhone activation will require an Internet connection; an iTunes Store account; the latest version of iTunes available at www.itunes.fr and a PC or Mac with a USB 2.0 port and one of the following operating systems: Mac OS® X v10.4.10 or later; Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later; or Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Enterprise or Ultimate Edition.

Orange is the key brand of France Telecom, one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators. France Telecom serves more than 163 million customers in five continents as of June 30, 2007, of which two thirds are Orange customers. The Group had consolidated sales of 51.7 billion euros in 2006 and 25.9 billion euros for the 1st semester of 2007. At June 30, 2007 the group had 102.5 million mobile customers and 10.5 million broadband internet (ADSL) customers. Launched in June 2005, the NExT program (New Experience in Telecommunications) will enable the Group to pursue its transformation as an integrated operator and make France Telecom the benchmark for new telecommunications services in Europe. In 2006, Orange became the Group’s single brand for Internet, television and mobile services in the majority of countries where the company operates, and Orange Business Services the banner for services offered to businesses worldwide. France Telecom is the number three mobile operator and the number one provider of broadband internet services in Europe and one of the world leaders in providing telecommunication services to multinational companies. France Telecom (NYSE:FTE) is listed on Euronext Paris and on the New York Stock Exchange. For more information: www.orange.com, www.francetelecom.com, www.orange-business.com.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market this year with its revolutionary iPhone.

Alas, poor Palm. You just can’t seem to get a break these days, can you? First came that whole embarrassing Foleo fiasco (or Foolio as I like to call it), an ordeal not to be repeated. Then your long overdue Palm OS replacement gets pushed back, twice, not to appear for another 18 months. Now comes this latest report, certain to deliver yet another vigorous blow to the nuts.

The bean counters at NPD Group, who watch consumer buying habits like the Chinese Secret Police, have determined that a very large percentage of early iPhone owners migrated from Smartphones, particularly the Palm Treo and T-Mobile Sidekick. In fact, the study shows that consumers were ten times more likely to have abandoned a Treo in favor of iPhone. Which totally has me laughing my ass off at the numbskulls who so adamantly asserted that iPhone will NEVER attract Smartphone users, in a vein effort to write off any threat. Fear the fruit, boys. Fear the fruit.

Four years ago the Treo represented the pinnacle of mobile computing design and innovation. Today, it’s the Amish horse and buggy of Smartphones. Carriers may just as well give them away as Christmas ornaments for subscribers to hang on their trees. Nobody wants one.

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INdependance, the highly popular jailbreak utility for iPhone, has been updated to include support for the firmware release whose name we dare not speak (1.1.1, there I said it).

Note Jailbreaking involves bypassing the iPhone’s locked software, enabling installation of third party software, and should not be confused with the process of SIM unlocking. These are two different animals entirely.

Download it now, if you dare. Be afraid.

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iPhone users rocking out to their favorite tunes may damage more than their hearing, if new research published by Greenpeace has any basis in fact. The report claims that iPhone’s included headphones contain dangerous levels of toxic chemicals that may be harmful to reproductive organs, or “happy zone” for you boys and girls under the age of twelve.

Senior Scientist at Greenpeace Research Laboratories, Dr. David Santillo, says… “Two of the phthalate plasticisers found at high levels in the headphone cable are classified in Europe as ‘toxic to reproduction, category 2′ because of their long-recognised ability to interfere with sexual development in mammals. While they are not prohibited in mobile phones, these phthalates are banned from use in all toys or childcare articles sold in Europe. Apple should eliminate the use of these chemicals from its products range.”.

Well, I’m convinced. If a left-wing extremist group conducted this research, it MUST be true. Just kidding, Greenpeace, I love you nutjobs. Read the rest of the report and scare the hell out of yourself. Oh, and if you’re married and trying to start a family, I’d start shopping for a pair of headphones. Uh huh.

First lead painted children’s toys, now this. Could this be part of a Chinese Communist plot to destroy western civilization by stifling our ability to reproduce? I think so.

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Free at last, Free at last… praise god almighty, my bricked iPhone is free at last! Well, not quite… I haven’t actully applied this method yet.

Here’s the deal – Civil war has broken out among iPhone Dev Team, leaving the group broken into several splinter factions, each with its own banner and coat of arms. The disunited groups plan to settle their differences on World of Warcraft, in a blood orgy of axe wielding carnage. One faction, modestly named “iPhone Elite”, has released a method for downgrading the all important baseband settings that turned anySIM unlocked iPhones into bricks upon updating to firmware 1.1.1. What makes this significant is that even downgrading from 1.1.1, back to 1.0.2 won’t restore a bricked iPhone due to changes made by anySIM to the iPhone’s baseband settings. This solution provides a way of undoing those changes, restoring baseband to its original state… resulting in unbricking.

And wouldn’t you know… this release comes just as I am headed out the door to meet with a client. But rest assured my comatose bricked iPhone, affectionately known ever more as Frankenphone, will be brought back to life shortly. The Doctor is in.

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Micromat is a name well known in the Mac software community, best known for its popular TechTool Pro; a utility for fixing troubled Macs and impatient IT managers. The company has now put its coding skills to work on iPhone. Their new application, Syphone, lets you archive and view all threaded text conversations, sent from your iPhone, right on your Mac. Never fear losing that important message from your boss, or sultry conversation with your mistress. It’s all saved right there on your Mac.

Syphone is currently in beta, and is available for download free of charge. If public response is positive Micromat plans to offer a premium priced professional version with more functionality. Good on them. Download Syphone here.

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Another Friday, and you know what that means. Wallpaper is like crack for your eyes, and I am your dealer. Get ‘em after the break.

[Update] Amazingly this directory isn’t formatted for iPhone. Strange that Apple would build a web app directory for iPhone, designed to be accessed from a desktop.

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Rumors are like falling apples in an orchard – some are perfectly edible, while most are wormy and end up on the ground rotting away, eaten by insects. The Apple rumor mill yields bushel baskets full of both kinds. Today’s rumor comes courtesy of Glenn Fleishman of TidBits, who claims to have heard from “sources” (mwaha) that Apple is very close to making a public announcement regarding native application development on iPhone. Naturally his “source” is vague and void of details, which makes it totally credible!

Not that I wouldn’t love to sit here all day playing this game of he said, she said, but like I’ve said so many times before… we KNOW application support is coming. I have my own “sources” as well. It isn’t a question of if, but what and when. Will Apple open its kimono, releasing a full blown SDK with no handrails and locked doors? Or will this be a token sandbox environment with kiddie pool and happy meals? Wait. Just wait, all will be revealed soon.

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Hey, want to void your warranty and turn your iPhone into an expensive paperweight with future firmware updates? If so, iPhone Dev Team has a hack for you. They’ve successfully managed to jailbreak factory fresh iPhones running firmware 1.1.1, enabling support for black market third party applications, and utilize non-AT&T SIM cards to roll your own network. However, no workaround solution has been found for previously unlocked, now bricked, iPhones updated to 1.1.1.

Yes, yes, it all sounds well and good, but given the fact iPhone Dev Team has yet to undo the catastrophic damage created by anySIM with Apple’s new firmware, why would anyone place their trust in this process again? Trust me folks, if you value your iPhone, stay far away from Jailbreak or unlock software, in any form. You are playing with fire. These half-assed hacks are little more than Molotov cocktails ready to blow up in your face and brick your iPhone. But don’t take my word for it. Just ask my previous iPhone, now serving as doorstop and makeshift kitchen utensil.

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Someone has devised a clever yet altogether impractical way of getting 3G speeds on iPhone by pairing it with a Windows Mobile Smartphone equipped with HSDPA. Now, rather than go into details I’ll simply refer you to the the website to see and judge for yourself. And I won’t be putting this process to the test because my sole Windows Mobile device, a newly purchased AT&T Tilt, is being returned due to the fact it is an utter piece of bovine anal excrement.

For those who crave adventure and just love cramming radioactive gadgets in your pants, go for it. I won’t stop you.

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Ah, the joys of public transportation. Nothing else quite compares to the stimulating experience of standing in the company of drunks and derelicts at a bus stop late in waining hours of Saturday night, waiting for a fuming smoke filled bus to arrive, concluded with sharing a body fluid-stained seat with the unwashed, unwashed masses. But enough about my college days.

If you happen to live San Francisco, a new service called MoMuni provides instant real-time access to bus or train routes and waypoints, right on your iPhone. Users can select the route and stop of the bus or train they’re waiting for and then determine how far away the next 3 are. What’s more, you can bookmark stops most often used, like commuting from home or work, for example, and access them from a tabbed interface. Nice.

Of course, once you board the bus… you’re on your own. One word: deodorant.

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With the release of firmware update 1.1.1 came something new to iPhone that I think may prove to be its most insidious feature yet; iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. Now I know that many of you don’t purchase music via iTunes, preferring instead to utilize certain ahem free source, but you may sing a different tune once you start rummaging through genres and newly released content on the screen of your iPhone. For me it’s becoming an addiction. I have to force myself not to tap on the lovely purple store icon that beckons me to enter and pay pay pay. iPhone has now become a gateway drug to iTunes.

As you would expect, Apple has made the experience brain dead simple and beautifully designed. You can almost feel Steve Jobs standing beside you, holding your hand and guiding you along the walkways of his walled garden. Drinking from the Chalice of Kool-Aid.To start your journey to DRM’d happiness, simply tap the iTunes Store icon and you’re instantly greeted with a lovely graphical, but pint sized, version of iTunes formatted for iPhone’s HVGA screen. A row of buttons along the bottom take you to Featured Artists and albums, Top tens, Search, and Downloads. Search for you favorite artist and tap to select your choice of available albums. To hear a preview, tap on any available track, and a tiny album thumbnail image with visually rotate, revealing a player icon that rotates clockwise, representing 30-second playback countdown. If you wish to buy that track, tap on the $.99 priced icon, which then transforms into another button innocently labeled “Buy Now”.

This is where the experience becomes a mechanism for costly music addiction. Having instant access to music download via iPhone somehow dramatically changes the paradigm. The required footwork imposed by bolting the music store onto a PC or Mac (running iTunes) acted a natural barrier to entry. If I wanted to buy a particular song or album, I have to go trotting off to my Mac, launch iTunes, find the song or artist, purchase, download, then sync my iPod or iPhone in order to access my purchase. Too much work. Apple just turned that five step process into one, opening a new venue for window shopping audiophiles. Before I knew it, on the first day of use, I had downloaded ten tracks without giving a second thought. Then I realized… my God, I could do this for hours!

Could this euphoric instant gratification be iPhone’s killer app? It could be. But I do know that my credit card company will be very happy as I rack up interest charges. What’s in your wallet?

Amidst yesterday’s news of iPhone Dev Team’s successful jailbreak into firmware 1.1.1, came evidence that Apple and Nike are working to bring iPod Nike+ Sport Kit to iPhone. A text string located deep in the bowels of the firmware’s .plist file mentions Nike+ as a supported accessory.

Soon joggers will be running along sidewalks with iPhones on armbands. And I’ll be ready and waiting to trip them as they pass me by. Damn joggers!.

Timothy Smith of California once loved his iPhone. You could see him wandering the streets of San Jose with his face glued to the phone’s shiny black screen, tapping and pinching away, oblivious to everything around him like people crying out for help, oncoming traffic, lamp posts, etc. But that love affair ended over a week ago when Smith updated his unlocked iPhone to the infamous firmware update 1.1.1, rendering it iBricked. Since Apple refuses to support iPhones which have been “tampered with”, Smith did what any self righteous American consumer would do… he called his attorney and filed a class action suit.

What makes this case even more interesting, and utterly hilarious, is that it seeks not only to collect damages from Apple for the bricking of iPhones, but also demands an end to the practice of carrier locking phones entirely. Nothing short of lightening bolts from the sky reigning down on AT&T will bring an end to that; it’s part of life. Death – Taxes – and Carrier exclusive contracts.

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Boys and girls, let me tell you it ain’t easy living without your iPhone for more than a week. The phrase Testicular impact comes to mind. It feels like eternity has passed since that dreaded day my inquisitive mind and impatient nature claimed the life of my iPhone. Rather than wait around for iPhone Dev Team to create a resuscitative baseband update, I applied my $100 Apple Store coupon towards the puchase of a second iPhone and succumbed to the siren call of Marimba ringtones.

So here I am, back in business. Never again shall I tamper with iPhone’s inner plumbing or perform half-assed hacks – at least not on THIS unit. The bricked unit will become my official Frankenphone for testing purposes. Let’s just hope that I can tell these two apart and not accidently monkey with the wrong phone. I’ve already walked out the door with the wrong iPhone in my hand, twice! Fun times.

In case you were living under a Palm tree today, AT&T is airing three new ads on the tubes (TV tubes, not internet tubes). The ads depict three common plebes burbling on about how iPhone impacts their life, in various real-life situations. Perhaps the meaning of these spots are lost upon me, or maybe I’m still hungover from that bottle of Cotes du Rhone I downed Saturday night, but I’m not moved or engaged by what I see. iPhone is only vaguely referenced, and done so in a very casual way. The characters lack depth, and serve as typical uninspiring stereotypes aimed at demographics; a businessman, an average “young guy” (or wuss if you will), and a rough cut tattooed mechanic designed to appeal to car thieves working in a chop shops. Yeah, they’re going to move truckloads of iPhones with these ads. I can feel it.

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This is the first weekly wallpaper installment I’ve publishing without having first tested them on my own iPhone, because I seem to be ahem iPhoneless at the moment. So this week’s gallery is a “What you get” release. I hope they look good. If you don’t like them, keep your receipt and I will refund your… wait, what the hell am I saying? They’re free!

Folks, I have some news that will come as terrible blow to everyone. Verizon has just introduced what it claims to be a true no shit honest to goodness iPhone killer. Yes, I know… I’m in shock myself. Now, this is no ordinary iPhone killer. No siree, Bob. Nope, this revolutionary new phone from LG, dubbed Voyager, offers a set of features not found on anything else on the market; it has an HTML web browser (yes, real HTML, not that fake HTML found on other fones phones). It plays MP3 and WMA audio. It takes photos. And steal yourselves… it even has a MicroSD slot.

But pick yourselves off the floor for just a minute, because the news gets worse. In light of today’s news, Apple released a statement announcing plans to exit the handset business and shut down iPhone production, conceding the market to Verizon’s amazing new Voyager phone. Here’s the press release…

Team, It is with great sadness that I must inform you that Verizon has upstaged us with the release of a new clone which completely and utterly mops the floor with iPhone. Rather than suffer the humiliation of trying to compete against such a product, I believe it is in the best interest for the company to abandon the phone market, and focus all our efforts on iPods and Mac sales. We had a great run while it lasted, but LG and Verizon have simply kicked our ass. Hope to see you all at the company Christmas party. BYOB. Best, Steve

As a result of today’s announcement I will be shutting this site down and starting a new blog; The Verizon iPhone Wannabe Blog. Please visit me there, and thanks for your loyal support.

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Speaking of rumors, here’s another bit of tittle-tattle to roll your eyes at. A site called 9to5Mac – apparently the site shuts down after 5 and heads to the nearest bar – claims that Apple is currently working with developers to bring application support to iPhone, available through iTunes. Sound plausible? Yes, it does. But then again, that was almost a given from the beginning, so it takes little creative imagination to fabricate such rumors.

Application support is coming, folks. We know that. Apple is presenting the evidence at our very feet with the release of firmware update 1.1.1, which now employs digital signature encryption for any executing code. A security measure that lays the groundwork for application deployment. The only question is how liberal and open Apple will be with platform development. It’s a given that iTunes will be the distribution channel for iPhone software, just as it is now for iPod games. But will Apple allow anyone to write code for iPhone? Or will it be an exclusive members only club? We’ll have to wait and see.

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Mark your calendars, Apple fanboys. A certain feline themed operating system is ready to pounce on Macs everywhere, as its appointed date with destiny draws nigh. Sources have pinned October 26 as the date Apple will officially launch OSX (10.5) Leopard. Every Mac rumor site from here to Nepal is claiming confirmation by “sources.” Yeah, sources. I have mine too and they prove every bit as reliable as a magic 8 ball. The thing I love about Mac rumor sites is that when one reports a rumor, it sets off a chain reaction of counter-confirmations; as if they can somehow collectively will the rumor into fact by supporting one another’s claim. You’d be better off consulting the giant clown head at McDonald’s; it won’t give you an answer but it will take your order.

I have to say, so far Leopard hasn’t knocked my socks off. I look forward to its arrival but I won’t be standing in line outside of an Apple store on the day of its arrival, as I did for iPhone. Still, I saved Leopard a seat on my hard drive partition should it come round. Hey it can’t be any worse than Vista, right? Ah, Vista. Leopard may purr, but Vista is the real pussy.

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The honeymoon is over between AT&T and Apple, or at least the romance has gone. Today the wireless carrier takes the wraps off its new flagship smartphone product for business and pro customers; the AT&T Tilt . Better known to the world as the HTC TyTn II. Now granted, carrier branded Windows Mobile smartphones are nothing new, and AT&T has offered these johnny come lately devices since before the name changed from Cingular. What makes this product unique is the promotion and positioning it’s receiving. Noticeably absent from AT&T’s website is any reference to iPhone. I searched high and low and uncovered only one mention of iPhone, obscurely located in a section called “Learn.” Perhaps the partnership between the two companies isn’t as strong as we might think, eh?

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Store.apple.com is down right now, which usually means one of tow things. Either Apple’s IT staff is performing maintenance on their servers, or new products are about to be posted. Nope, neither is the case. The real reason; I bought a second iPhone today, and that brought the online store to its knees. Yes, that’s it. Take that, Apple. Fortunately the store went down after my iPhone shipped.

Now to track my package and bring Fedex down as well.

[update:] It’s back up and it appears to be nothing more than a maintenance update. I noticed the site was having issues throughout the day, shortly after I placed my order.

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Apple’s closest rivals in the wireless handset business are taking full advantage of the company’s platform dictatorship, extolling the openness of their own software to application development. Highlighting a strategy of use me, abuse me, do what you want to me approach to software design, Microsoft and Symbian are quick to point out that their platforms aren’t surrounded by high voltage fences and men in guard towers with sniper rifles.

Earlier this week Nokia updated its homepage with a new message taunting Apple… “We believe the best devices have no limits. That’s why we’ve left the Nokia NSeries open. Open to applications. Open to Widgets. Open to anything.”. Yeah, open to anything except touchscreens and intuitively designed software, right Nokia? Guess you forgot to include that part.

Microsoft, for its part, had no shortage of words on the matter. Windows Mobile group leader Scott Rockfeld told reporters… “We think the best approach is to create a sound platform and allow partners to extend that platform.” Great philosophy, Scott. It’s a pity your company can’t design a decent mobile platform to empower those partners, instead of the death march of Windows Mobile mediocrity.

The really scrotum injuring aspect is the poignancy of these comments. Apple’s platform strategy, or lack thereof, is doing far more harm to itself than its competitors. The fun is done. iPhone is losing its sheen. The time has come for Apple to open the kimono to application development now!

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Who can put a price on pain and suffering? Your attorney can, of course… to the total sum of a cool 1 Million dollars. Dongmei Li of Queens, New York (I didn’t know people living in Queens could afford iPhones) claims that Apple’s dramatic iPhone price cut is a flagrant violation of consumer price discrimination laws. Her suit alleges that the price cut hurts early adopters by deflating the iPhone’s resale value. I call that the price of early adoption, but apparently it is grounds for litigation. Who knew?

So let me get this straight… if I walk into Wal-Mart and buy a head of lettuce, which then subsequently drops in price by 20 cents after I leave the store, I can then sue Wal-Mart for damages? Hot damn! I’m going to start watching for those falling prices and little yellow smiley faces.

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Tech curmudgeon John C. Dvorak (the C stands for cranky) points the spotlight of criticism on Apple for its blatant act of bricking unlocked iPhones. He points out that in many overseas markets unlocked phones are common place, and a lucrative business. Hey, John… I agree with you, but trying to get Apple to change its policies is like trying to wrestle a half ton alligator. It’s a futile effort and just makes the gator angry.

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