People are remarkable. We can spend time figuring out precisely what we're not allowed to do. Spend even more time doing it. Then spend triple that complaining when we suffer the foreseeable and reasonable consequences of our informed and deliberate actions. Heck, Dr. Phil has amassed a money-bin throwing us up on TV for just such spectacle.
Witness all the PR flackery and blog blustering (present posting included!) going on about the strategic geniuses who decided to go ahead and make an iPhone App Store-optimized engine for navigating and displaying specially formatted comic books.
Was their debut feature a family friendly installment of the Tremendous Super-Spider? Nope. It was "Murderdrome" and it was rejected. Find out why after the jump!
Wow. Anyone remember what Steve Jobs did to the New York Times when they merely inquired about his health? Imagine what he'll do to those poor fools at Bloomberg's who just accidentally published -- and then rapidly retracted -- his obituary. (Our guess? 9-finger Wu-Shi death touch, minimum).
While the holy grail for grabbing files on the iPhone would probably still be Apple-made iDisk support (as rumored), there are other options out there. Microsoft's Live Mesh is supposedly going to be the very definition of cross-platform once they mange to get all of their clients done -- but file access for the iPhone is pretty much limited to the browser right now.
Roughly Drafted is claiming a source close to AT&T has spilled the beans on what's really going on with the iPhone and its 3G connection problems, and what 2.0.2 did to fix it.
In a nutshell? An iPhone 3G running 2.0 or 2.0.1 tries to pull too much power from the network, so when multiple iPhones connect, a tower can actually run out of juice and start dropping calls and losing data.
When the Swedish engineers over at Bluetest revealed that, when measured at their facilities, the iPhone 3G radio performed roughly the same as 3G handsets made by Sony Ericsson and Nokia, some (including a few of TiPb's own, very astute, commenters!) cried foul. Not ones to be dissuaded by a little doubt, however, the Swedes brought in some of the people who complained about 3G reception problems, and put their iPhones to the test.
The results? According to Apple Insider, pretty much the same as before:
Casey already told us about how an iPhone ad was banned in the UK for "misleading consumers" about providing "just the internet", and based on how many ZOMG! No Flash Vidz! comments we get, I'm going to go out on a limb and say most people probably share the belief that MobileSafari - ( Flash + Java) != the internet.
Fine.
But allow me to retort. As a long time web (and Flash) developer, however, I'm calling shenanigans on that, and on the UK Advertising Standards Authority. Flash and Java are factually and empirically NOT part of the open, standards based Internet (i.e. HTML, CSS, Javascript/AJAX). Flash and Java, along with things like SilverLight, Real, ActiveX, and a host of other proprietary add-ons are plugins, extensions, and otherwise additions to the Internet -- with all the benefits and drawbacks that go along with that.
Welcome to the first in a new series from TiPb, where we take the often outlandish, sometime surreal predictions of iPhone analysts and pundits, blogeratti and the 'net elite, and compare them to the potentially equally precise prognostications of a... magic 8-ball (running on an iPhone, of course!)
This edition kicks off with Gene Munster, who boldly states Apple will sell 13 million iPhone 3Gs this year, and 45 million next.
Gizmodo has uncovered what can only be described as a gigantic, huge, and completely embarrassing security flaw on the iPhone.
If you have your iPhone 'locked,' it can be circumvented very easily with very little trickery aside. On the 'lock' screen, you can still make an emergency call. When you tap that, you can then double-tap the home button to bring up your favorites (assuming you have that set).
The issue is that your favorites are basically the keys to the kingdom. You can tap the blue arrow next to a favorite to gain access to a contact's information. From there, you can further tap email, a url, or sms to gain access to email, Safari and your bookmarks, or all of your SMSes, respectively.
Have an iPhone on AT&T and want to travel internationally without re-mortgaging your house to pay for the data roaming? You're in luck... mostly. Engadget says the USA's exclusive iPhone carrier has just released two new plans to help mitigate your risk: $119.99 for 100MB and $199.99 for 200MB.
The Advertising Standards Authority, which we at TiPb are going to (foolishly) assume is the executive power of advertisements across the pond, has deemed an iPhone Advertisement as misleading in the UK. The sticking point? When Apple said: