Recent Articles

SDK news, Wait-a-Thon $100 iTunes Gift Cards, sparkling personalities... can life here at Phonedifferent get any better?? YES!!!

How 'bout some FREE music, compliments of NIN (Nine Inch Nails)?

Following up on Radiohead's release last year, NIN is offering FREE music for download. Titled "Ghosts I - IV", Ghosts I are the first 9 tracks available for free download as high-quality, DRM-free MP3s, including the complete PDF. All you need is a valid email address and presto, you got some free music to carry around with you on your iPhone.

That's not the best part, though, read on...

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.

Sun, the company that loves Java so much they made it their stock symbol, has announced that they've looked at the new Apple SDK and believe they can use it to bring Java VM (virtual machine) ME (micro addition) to the iPhone:

Bonus Podcast!

We couldn't wait until our regularly scheduled podcast to talk about the iPhone Software Roadmap. Mike and I were also lucky to be joined by Phone different writers Chad Garrett and Rene Ritchie! Listen in as we chat up all the new announcements about the new Enterprise features and the SDK.

This post is also a Wait-a-Thon post! Your comment posted here enters you for a a chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card! Also note that starting today, you can use your User Referral Link (found here when you log in) to get two entries in this week's drawing.

Apple's Thursday press release (via Ars Technica), while big on Enterprise and chock-full of SDK goodness, also snuck in some new, long sought-after features for one of the built-in apps: MobileMail (Mail Touch?).

I love the fact that Apple gives us their events on iTunes! Believe it or not, I still watch the MacWorld 2007 video. I enjoying watching the part where Steve says:

An iPod, Phone and an Internet communicator. iPod, Phone, and an Internet communicator. Are you getting it? These aren't three separate devices...

hmmm, perhaps I have watched that one too many times.

I do wonder why it is a Podcast though and not a "movie". I say this because the Podcasts do not refresh... we just get a new one every time.

You can find the link here to the Apple store for download, enjoy.

We've mentioned John Carmack at least a couple of times before. The ID founder and famed developer of Doom and Quake seems to have a special place in his heart for Apple and Apple gaming (even if Sir Steve doesn't return that love).

Craig Hockenberry, the widely acclaimed Mac developer of Twitterific, has had extensive experience developing for jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches. So, when he weighs in on the iPhone SDK, it's definitely worth a read.

iLounge is reporting the possible leak, via iTunes, of what can only be termed an iPhone/iPod Touch "Fatty". Turns out that the newfangled SDK led a curious developer to Education First Educational Tours "private page" (the tool that would, for example, allow an enterprise to make and release apps accessible only within their own company and not for sale to the general public). Revealed on this "private page" was the tantalizing/horrifying image of the "fatty" (or perhaps the long fabled iTablet Safari Pad?).

Resistance is futile. Balmer himself has said so. Yet today's shiny, happy Microsoft is all about openness and cooperation (you paying attention, EU Anti-Trust Commission?) Merging these twin paradoxes, at the very moment Steve Jobs took the stage at the SDK Roadmap event, Microsoft dropped their own announcement with all the charisma of a Gates CES-note, and followed it up with a Q&A showing the degree of partner-love that's made them famous in the industry.