Apple has shipped iPad pre-orders and regardless of whether you chose expedited or regular old delivery, it should get to your door on Saturday, April 3 (if your area offers weekend deliveries). To make sure it doesn’t get there any earlier, Apple is using every trick in their playbook so don’t be nervous if you see “holds” or “exceptions” on your delivery status. They don’t want any “accidental” pre-releases hitting the streets (and webs).

And if you reserved at your local (or not so local if you’re flying or driving in from abroad), Apple is sending out email confirmations (see above) complete with word that Apple Specialists will help you get set up (or for business customers, Apple Business is offering consultations by appointment at some stores).

Only a few sleeps left before iPad Wi-Fi launch day in the US (and perhaps a few weeks internationally and for 3G). Everyone ready? Anyone who hadn’t wanted one before reconsidering things now (especially after those Guided Tour videos hit)?

There are a lot of rumors floating around that various carriers will get the 3G iPhone. Telefonica is one of the carriers usually named, Vodafone is usually the other. The rumors lately indicate that the next generation of iPhone, the iPhone 3G, will be available in May.

This blog post is basically for the record — I don’t buy it. These posts are all referencing obscure foreign blogs while the more traditional scoop-based mac sites remain silent on the matter (like thinksecret.com, for example). I don’t think Apple will replace the iPhone hardware that soon, either — part of me thinks that Apple will unveil a new iPhone right about the time that original purchasers near the end of their contracts. You know, selling stuff to their already-captive audience. Apple has hinted that maybe we’d maybe see something iPhoney with 3G in late 2008, and that’s probably still true.

Mr. Fired-From-Disney Himself

First on the list is Michael Eisner, who blames Jobs and iTunes for the Writer’s strike, of all things. He claims that Apple has ruined the download model for everybody, and that only Apple makes any money. Everyone else is begging for crackers at lunch. Yeah, right.

The studios make deals with Steve Jobs, who takes them to the cleaners,” Eisner said.

“They make all these kinds of things, and who’s making money? Apple! They should get a piece of Apple. If I was a union, I’d be striking up wherever he is.

Eisner further predicts that online media won’t make any money for another three years. Unless you’re Apple, that is. If you’re Apple, online media is making money now.

LG Introduces the QZ-6%7g#!

I tend to avoid posting news of “iPhone killers” because it’s just not going to be true. There are some companies that have a shot at making an iPhone killer, but they’re years away. I think Palm could do it for example, but we won’t find out for another year or two. Apple probably doesn’t have to worry about that one for a while.

And in the “don’t have to worry about it now” category, LG introduced a phone that looks like an iPhone in Europe. I hate to say it, but no one will be excited about the Prada-esque outer stylings of the LG phones until LG can drink in some user interface design mojo. Can you remember to get excited about something called the LG-KS20? I doubt it, though I bet its existence makes Dieter happy.

A Coalition of the Aimless

I know that Google’s new linux smartphone operating system Android is supposed to be big news, but I can’t help it: I don’t think it is, and I don’t think it will be. There are already a bunch of linux smartphone systems where all the driver work is done and all you have to worry about is the user interface customization. I checked out the websites of the companies that are part of the Android consortium, and I hate to say it but their UI work appears to be featurephone-based and pretty busy. Not that I’m a UI expert, but still, I know that a clean interface is better than a cluttered one.

There’s already a bunch of people doing this, and some of them have a phone out now that does everything already: OpenMoko, QTopia, Access Linux Project, and Palm will probably join this list perhaps a year after Android is actually released. But look at the list of companies in their press release: none of them have shipped their own mainstream user interface before except for Nokia. And I don’t think that it’s in Nokia’s best interests to succeed too much in this venture at the cost of their Symbian S60. I wish them all success, but I think success is a tall order.

No One is Panicking

I’m glad to see that all of the other smartphone makers are all confident that they’ll be able to beat the iPhone, or that they’re at least not panicking about it. If you want a list of how other companies are mimicking the iPhone form factor, the BBC has put together a list of the heavyweights.

A savvy forum user over at MacRumors found some interesting new dialog box messages inside the new version of iTunes. These are probably the highlights:

"4320.082" = "The iPhone “^1” contains new voice memos. Would you like to move these voice memos to your iTunes library?";

"4320.073" = "Enabling the iPhone for disk use requires manually ejecting the iPhone before each disconnect, even when automatically syncing music.";

We’ve reported on the kinds of things that one finds inside of “localizable.strings” inside of new versions of iTunes before. To date, they haven’t predicted any new functionality. And yet, rumors of new features coming to the iPhone based on these strings persist. I want to believe too.

Google has announced Android, an open source Linux operating system designed to be very customizable by programmers. This isn’t the GPhone, the long-rumored Google Phone. Google is not making any of the actual phones, just the software. Android joins the ranks of myriad Linux development attempts: the new pro-sumer Palm OS, Access Linux Platform, Trolltech’s QTopia, OpenMoko, and others in Asia that are unknown to me.

I don’t know if this one will be more successful than the others, and they haven’t announced what it looks like, or what it will do. They just announced the software license and that it exists, or that it should in late 2008… but expect a bunch of publicity all over the place anyway. What I do know is that this effort will have a lot of money behind it.

Apple Legal has been busy in the past few days. Apple has officially begun protecting their iPhone Trademark. MY iTablet — once MYiPhone — changed their name on the advice of Jobs himself. And it appears that some of the other blog sites have now received contact letters from Apple lawyers.

In the U.S. system of intellectual property law, if you don’t actively protect your copyrights and trademarks, you lose them. Apple has to do this. I’m sure Apple isn’t excited about taking iPhone community sites to court, but they have to do what they have to do.

figure 1: Munir Kotadia of ZDNet Australia.

The good folks of MYiTablet found an article from ZDNet Australia where Munir Kotadia lambasts “greedy Apple users” for trusting anyone.

“There is no evidence to suggest that this particular jailbreak utility is at all malicious but how long will it be before copycat sites appear that have less honourable intentions?”

He then goes on to say that malevolent data thieves and identity swipers could steal passwords, credit card numbers, and entire online identities. They could use the iPhone as a gateway into your home network, they could do any number of things. He even manages to cast their patching of the TIFF vulnerability in a negative light.

But, the one thing that he doesn’t address is this: unless I hack my iPhone, I couldn’t know if malevolent hackers were doing that anyway. You can’t trust the security of a black box. Preaching paranoia doesn’t solve any security problems. Indeed, most security problems are solved by establishing trust. For those of you on Windows machines, you fix (or at least partially alleviate, wink) your virus problems by trusting that Norton AntiVirus will keep you safe from viruses. You trust that Ad-Aware will remove spyware from your computer. You trust that patches from Microsoft are legitimate. You trust that ZoneAlarm is a decent 3rd party firewall. And so on.

For many people, Installer.app is the one tool that they have to actually verify that their iPhone is in decent order. Without it and the access to other apps that it provides, I can’t tell where the iPhone is connecting to when I’m on EDGE networks, I can’t find out what’s sitting there on the iPhone’s filesystem, and more importantly, I can’t find out what shouldn’t be there.

It’s one thing to preach that users shouldn’t trust every website. He’s right in that, but the circle of trust has to start somewhere. It’s security as preached by “Meet the Fockers,” but the circle of trust doesn’t do anybody any good unless someone is in it.

figures 2,3: “Meet the Fockers,” the “Circle of Trust.”

The Apple hacking community has really been excellent so far. For most of the work they’ve done, they’ve aimed for open source so other programmers can view the code and verify that it’s legitimate. This begins the circle of trust between programmers. Once they build a network of trust with each other, it then spreads into the journalism world, via one of the programmer’s blogs. In terms of negative stuff, there’s just been a few tiffs between developers, and one instance of possible intellectual property infringement, and for this I’m very thankful.

Time has declared the iPhone their Invention of the Year.

“Yes, there’s been a lot of hype written about the iPhone, and a lot of guff too. So much so that it seems weird to add more, after Danny Fanboy and Bobby McBlogger have had their day.”

Nice! In one fell swoop, they’ve insulted me and any readers. Not too shabby, and they still get the link. Anyway, they give five reasons and then justify it all in the essence of their article:

1. the iPhone is pretty
2. it’s touchy-feely
3. it will make other phones better
4. it’s not a phone, it’s a platform
5. it is but the ghost of iPhones to come

I’d add a few more reasons the iPhone was tops, but I think I’ll save it for a later article.

I’ll admit that I don’t get the point of this LG design. They basically just dropped an iPhone / LG Prada into a weird keyboard dock. The screen would be tiny, and I’m guessing a lot of folks would miss tactile feedback on a desktop or laptop-sized keyboard much more than they would on a mobile.

The Mashup that I’d want to see of the iPhone and Palm Foleo would be thus:

Flip-open screen, like the Foleo. Standard keyboard but with iPhone as the Mousepad / Trackpad. Just a little slot where it slides in, some sort of dock. That would be awesome, and it raises a lot of interesting UI possibilities.

Apple is reportedly in talks with Telstra about providing the iPhone in Australia. Sol Trujillo, Telstra CEO, confirmed that Apple and Telstra had discussed the move, but that nothing had been confirmed.

“We have been testing the iPhone as we would any device that comes into the country.”

The cost of a show was not enough for NBC Universal. No, NBC Universal wanted a cut of the hardware sales for iPods and iPhones. I really don’t get this. Would they bother Apple for a cut of computer sales? Do they get a cut of television sales? Would they bother TiVo for a cut of hardware sales? No, no, and no. I think they were just looking for publicity for their two new video sharing sites in taking their Apple spat public. I think one of them is called Whatever and maybe the other one is IDon’tCare.

Apple is now refusing cash for the purchase of iPhones. They now require a credit card for purchase, and the limit for the number of iPhones you can purchase is now two. Apple stopped accepting Apple Store gift cards for redemption. The move is legal — they’re not obligated to sell you anything, and they can impose the extra restrictions.

This definitely isn’t the most customer-friendly policy I’ve ever seen; most kids aren’t going to have their own credit card. If Apple wants to obsessively manage their supply of iPhones for the holiday season, no amount of bad press is going to change their mind.

Changewave released information from their latest survey, and the iPhone is tops again. 2% of the 3654 people surveyed have iPhones. Of the people that have iPhones, 82% are “Very Satisfied,” up 5% since the last survey in July and tops in the list. The only company with “Very Satisfied” ratings above 50% is RiM with the Blackberry series. Best yet, the iPhone is set to capture a bit more than 2% — Changewave reports that a full 16% of all people surveyed intend to purchase an iPhone within the next 6 months. Quoth Tobin Smith, founder of Changewave:

There’s no longer any doubt about the staying power of the iPhone. The continuing embrace of the iPhone by the public is a stellar example of how a new product can forever alter its own playing field.”

It’s unfortunately kind of a high and low quote; he’s right about the ‘alter its own playing field’ bit. But show me anyone who thought the iPhone was just going to go away.

Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodaphone, is “absolutely” confident that they’ll get a second chance to distribute the iPhone somewhere in the world. Anywhere, really. He’s still bullish on the 3G iPhone. By the time Apple comes out with one, I’m not sure what major markets will be left for a contract. Asia maybe?

Even though the iPhone just came out in late June, analysts are desperate for a new version. Over at the Street, for example, they expect a 3G iPhone (with GPS!) in 1Q (January, February, or March) 2008.

Many sites had been saying January earlier, but Jobs’ statement about 3G chips not being ready and to expect an iPhone in late 2008 apparently forced some sites to revise their earlier statements. Even after Jobs’ statement, some sites are still reporting on a January 3G iPhone introduction and 1Q release.

Dont’ get me wrong, I’d be really happy to get a new 3G iPhone with GPS and whatnot. But frankly, I’d rather have improvements on the software side. Features like cut&paste, Office-style software, and actual 3rd-party software support would be smart. I already have a GPS puck, all I need is for Apple to release a version of their iPhone Maps.app that is GPS compatible. Full Exchange support would be pretty awesome. Also on my want list is A2DP, or stereo bluetooth. And yet another, the Nike+iPod compatibility. What’s on your want list?

If it has no Bluetooth, then it stands to reason that it has no stereo bluetooth either.

To me this looks like a MS Paint project.

Holy smokes! Apple has put a $200 price cut on the 8 GB iPhone, and dropped the 4GB version altogether. That’s right, the 8GB iPhone is now $399. Where do I line up for my $200 check? I’m equal parts filled with rage for paying a $200 early adopter fee, and equal parts filled with glee for a $200 price cut. I’m glad that it makes the iPhone that much more accessible for everyone else. I just feel a little sore when I sit, that’s all.

I have colleagues that believe the price cut is a portent of a hardware refresh. I have a hard time believing Apple would refresh their iPhone hardware so soon after launch, but I should float the idea out as speculation. I believe a 3G version is possible, perhaps in the 1st or 2nd quarter of 2008. The part of me that hopes I’m wrong is the part of me that wants my iPhone to be new forever. Sigh

There’s an iTunes update tonight that will bring Ringtones support. For a select portion of their music catalog (about 500,000 songs altogether, or 8% of the songs available on iTunes), you can make a ringtone if you’ve already purchased the song. All in all, the song to play on the iPod and the song to play as a ringtone is $1.98. Song portion: $.99, same as always. Ringtone: $.99. I think the extra fee is for the ‘public performance’ licensing aspect of ringtones. It will be interesting to see if the iTunes update breaks iToner, iFuntastic, or the indomitable iPhoneRingtoneMaker. Let’s hope not.

The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store will come to the iPhone in an update later this month. Look for it on a Tuesday afternoon this month, I’d bet. You will be able to purchase any music from the iTunes store and download it via wi-fi. I doubt you will be able to purchase it via EDGE. After all, it’s not the iTunes Wireless Music Store. Why not, though? It’s easier to say, and less cumbersome to type.

The iTunes Wi-Fi Music store will also be available from a bunch of Starbucks in most areas by 2009. The Starbucks in the larger top-ten cities in the US will get the update treatment first, and Starbucks figures they’ll have “most major metro areas” by late 2008. Um, I could rollout a storewide wi-fi network faster than that.

In other iPod news, Steve announced the iPod sister to the iPhone, the iPhone touch (8GB for $299 and 16GB is $399), to be available later this month. It’s slightly smaller, you’ll note from the picture above, and its application functionality has obviously not been totally disclosed. Notably missing from the iPod Touch thus far is a notes app and a maps app…. Hmmm.

The iPod, newly rechristened the iPod Classic, saw updates bringing a new, drastically thinner 80GB version ($249) and a thinner-than-the-previously-thickest 80GB version is the 160 GB version ($349).

The new iPod Nano, regarded by many as an ugly duckling, gets the full iPod treatment. It gains a video-quality screen, and is available in 4GB ($149) and 8GB ($199) versions, and it still works with the Nike+iPod sport kit. As you can see in the picture from Apple’s website above, it’s a little wee thing, absolutely tiny.

Huh. Apple’s iPod lineup looks like a steamroller right now. The Zune, Creative Zen, Sony Walkman line, et al, all look like bumpy roads waiting to be flattened this holiday season.

[via, via, via]

Apple is hosting another media event today. iPod Nanos are expected, and they look drastically different than the current nano. Not everyone is happy with the new look, but from what I can see it looks pretty functional. I think I’m withholding judgment until I’ve seen what all of their iPod lineup looks like.

Meanwhile, ThinkSecret basically guarantees touchscreen iPods. They also say the iPod nano, featured in the above Gizmodo link, will pack some seriously updated iPod software, and it will be great; it will be revolutionary. Or evolutionary. One or the other, really.

Please note that the screenshots from ThinkSecret above include albums from the Beatles that aren’t yet available in the iTunes Store.

Microsoft always seems to pop up with a little snippet of news on event days like this. I think they do this so they can play the ‘sour grapes’ role of the day, now hints that making a Zune phone is ‘not unreasonable.’ This is more or less the opposite of what CEO Steve Ballmer said at the D5 conference, so I’m glad to see that they’re still talking from both sides of their mouth. They’re champs of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Emphasis on the ‘uncertainty’ part here. And now you know why they play the sour grapes role — it gets them in the news. But everyone knows somebody that can’t tell the difference between negative attention and positive attention, and it’s not like there’s surging demand for a Zune phone, though I’m sure Windows Mobile users would be happy for the extra functionality.

But back in focus, there’s no shortage of hype — read a paragraph and you can see why Apple’s stock is so volatile after announcements. Taken from Jeremy Horwitz of iLounge:

I seriously believe tomorrow is going to be different. I think it’s going to be the day when iPod die-hards, technology geeks, and mainstreamers alike are all going to be genuinely excited by what Apple is going to show. In short, if the release of the iPod mini signaled the start of Apple’s dominance of the digital music player business, and the nano and 5G signaled the end for most of its small competitors and beginning of its video initiative, tomorrow is going to be the final nail in the coffin for Microsoft, Sony, and the bigger players as well. Yes, even with their recent announcements. The only people who will be upset are those who aren’t already on the bandwagon, or the few who (sorry, NBC) jumped off early and got hit by it.

You know though, the scary thing is that he could just as well be right. John Gruber thinks so, so it must be true.

And in other news, T3 reports that a 3G version of the iPhone will be announced today. I think that’s a pipe dream; there’s no way Apple would update a flagship product 2 months after it came out for the first time. That would flat-out anger the almost-1-million purchasers of an iPhone here in the U.S.A.

Of course, any time Apple updates iTunes, it’s always possible that they will also update the iPhone, so I’ll be keeping my ear close to the news to see what they have planned. There’s plenty of speculation for iPhone Games and ringtones. And it’s not just the iPhone Ranch that’s expecting it, it’s also the New York Post.

The number one thing for Komiyama’s to-do list will be to make a Walkman branded phone to compete with the iPhone. The number one thing on Flint’s to-do list will be to not worry about it.

Apple is hosting an iTunes event on September 5th, and they’re widely expected to release something neat. But of course, no one knows what they’re releasing, so the rumor mill is exploding.

Engadget reports a wireless iTunes store, where you can buy tracks and download them directly from the device you want to play them from. You know, your iPod or your iPhone. This of course requires that wireless iPods be available. The supposed wireless iPods would be like the iPhone: run OSX, be like an iPhone but without the phone part, big touch screen, etc. The iPhone is, of course, already wireless, and would just need one of those little wee updates.

Mobility Site reports that there will be no Beatles added to iTMS, but adds this gem:

“A new feature for iPhone users that will allow them to make ringtones out of songs they’ve already purchased from iTunes. This is a long-overdue step for the digital music business, which has found itself in the weird position of selling complete digital songs for a dollar but 15-second ringtone snippets of the same songs for $2.50.”

A wireless iPod would be awesome, but I think it’s dubious that Apple would let us remove too much hub from the digital hub. If Apple let you convert ringtones from iTMS purchases, that would be awesome. A question remains though, what about ringtones from albums you ripped?

So Nokia demonstrated a proof-of-concept video a Nokia media gala called “Go:Play.” I watched the video yesterday, but did not report on it; it’s not a surprise that other mobile companies would brazenly copy the Apple interface. When something good happens, everyone copies it. That’s why Apple out-innovates itself; they want to ensure that they are their own best competition. And, I have to say that I’m glad I didn’t report on it yesterday: it turns out that Nokia’s concept is far from delivery. Quoth Gizmodo:

“Nokia has confirmed that this demo is strictly for the UI, not the device: the hardware is not real and the LCD’s images are overlaid. Yes, it’s not even a working prototype”

The end of the ad mentions that elegance and simplicity is what Nokia has, and always will, deliver. You can either believe the words or believe the faked picture. It sounds like vaporware to me; it will probably take Nokia a lot of time to copy the iPhone interface well.

At any rate, Ars Technica has probably the best writeup on it that I’ve read this morning.

They link to Ed Felten’s blog, where he states that AT&T is screwed, and that we’ll have an unlock one of these days. Ed Felten is kind of famous in some circles for work with the Govt. in the Microsoft Antitrust trial, his defeat of the SDMI audio watermarking (and the RIAA’s bizarre lawsuit that followed), and his utter defeat of Diebold / Premier Election Solutions e-voting machines on TV. He’s had some experience here, and knows what he’s talking about.

iPod Observer has a good writeup on an article at BusinessWeek that also explores the issue in depth, and BusinessWeek has a bit of their own insightful commentary as well:

“Indeed, this time, hackers may have the law on their side. Remember, decades ago, automakers built their instrument panels so that only authorized radios of their own manufacture would fit in. Eventually, U.S. courts ended that practice.”

And no one ever had trouble installing a car stereo again.

There’s another writeup on the two currently-poised-to-release-unlocking-software-but-not-really-willing-to-until-the-lawyers-say-it’s-ok groups, iPhone Unlocking / John McLaughlin, and iPhoneSimFree. It gives a good view from above if you’ve not heard about it.

MYiTablet found an interesting article at C|Net that postulates that Jobs wants the iPhone hacked and unlocked; that Apple lawyers doesn’t care — Apple’s stake after the sale is tiny:

“Isn’t it ironic that AT&T lawyers went knocking on the doors of the hackers while Apple lawyers sipped tea at home?”

I suppose that’s a rhetorical question, but NO — it’s not irony. It is insightful and interesting, though. What does Apple get for iPhone service plan revenue sharing, $12 the 1st month and $3/month per subscriber thereafter? He’s got a good point, and it’s a good article. As a side note, Don Reisinger has some crazy red lips.

figure 1: Seriously, check out the crazy red lips Don Reisinger’s got.

And finally, there’s a Slashdot discussion about it all too. I don’t have anything stupid to say that I want broadcast to the internet today, so I’ll skip it. But that option is always there.

So a bunch of display iPhones were stolen. Not really news; they took the Treos too (good call on that). The AT&T store guy is unconcerned that the iPhones were stolen, since Apple can brick (deactivate, render useless, turn into a heavy shiny thing, etc) the phones remotely by their serials.

Wait, what?! I can’t decide if I should be discomfited by this or not. I wonder if he’s posturing for AT&T’s sake, or if this is something that Apple can really do.

But for real, if Apple can do this to stolen phones, they can do it to hacked or unlocked phones. Again, that’s if they can do this at all. Or should I perhaps say, if they’re willing to do this at all. Bricking phones willy-nilly across the internet would burn through a lot of the goodwill that they currently enjoy, so I doubt it would happen. Maybe the remote bricking process requires AT&T to ask Apple to destroy the phones really nice. So yeah. No discomfiture.

figure 1: Another iPhone Commercial Spoof. Are you sick of that music yet?

The AT&T stories, they just keep on coming. I’m starting to feel like I’m the only person that doesn’t have a 50 page bill or a $2000+ phone bill from flouncing off to Europe or some other similarly nice jaunt. First, there’s a person with a 50 page bill, and it shows up in a big envelope. Then, there’s the person with the box and the 300 page bill. The next “big bill” story will be that some dude has a 1200 page bill and AT&T will have shipped it C.O.D. in a metal fire-proof lead-lined safe.

But before we get to that point, we have to cross this point. The current bill-record-holding iPhone-commercial-spoofing guyflounced off to Europe and his bill was only $4,000. Nothing serious, you know. Pocket change. There’s a happy ending; the guy was able to talk them down to $900. I mean happy in the figurative sense, here. Also, he was able to funnel his despair into an iPhone commercial spoof, so I guess that’s a plus.

So, this link is for that guy the next time he flounces off anywhere for a jaunt, or anyone who doesn’t want to be like that guy: iPhoneAtlas has a step-by-step guide for guiding AT&T into disabling GPRS for your plan. Best of luck to you, you may want to buy an AT&T store employee a drink or soda or something to get them to do it for you. Oh, and you may want to test it while you’re still in the States.

Their likes:

Their dislikes:

I can’t help but notice that the dislike includes that it doesn’t support 3rd party software, and that it doesn’t support Java apps. The only Java apps I ever cared about were games, incidentally. Not that I was surveyed. ‘Cause I wasn’t. But I shoulda been.

Figure 1: A family-oriented Disney-themed multiplayer iPhone Game where you use laser-shooting iPhones to burn forests and kill Bambi.

I’ll admit, it’s a wholly speculative article. There really isn’t much in terms of content. It should probably be on Page 2 of Macrumors, the place where speculative rumors go. But it’s not there. It pits Apple against Nintendo, when there could just as easily be a partnership.

I’m not sure I even believe the New York Post article that says Nintendo is going to use a new accelerometer DS as a controller for a Wii.

But I’d love to be wrong. I’d love to be wrong by January. [another great Jesus Diaz photoshop]

Several sites have been reporting

the presence of strings about gaming (perhaps slightly less exciting are the strings about voice memos and Nike+iPod, no one is reporting about those) in a localizable.strings file found by download squad. But what do those localizable strings really mean?

Well, as Engadget notes, strings like that are all over the place. A lot of it is just copy-and-pasted code from other devices, as noted by Arn of MacRumors. Arn checked his history, and noted that the same text appears in the Apple TV localized strings, from iTunes 7.1, way back in March, and you know what? Still no games there either.

The following is taken from a June 29th post on Apple Insider:

/* ===== Mobile Phone Strings ===== /
...
"4301.136" = "Sending workout data to nikeplus.com…";
"4301.137" = "Downloading Nike+iPod voice kit…";
"4301.138" = "Installing Nike+*iPod voice kit…";
"4301.079" = "The mobile phone “^1” contains new voice memos.
Would you like to move these voice memos to your
iTunes library?";
"4320.300" = "iTunes has detected a Macintosh-formatted iPhone.
You must restore this iPhone before you can use it
on Windows.";

/* ===== iPhone Game Item Strings ===== */ "4329.001" = "Are you sure you want to remove the selected game from your iPhone?"; "4329.002" = "Are you sure you want to remove the selected games from your iPhone?";

This isn’t to say that I hope games don’t arrive on the iPhone. Au contraire, mes freres et mes soeurs, I dearly hope they arrive. But I don’t expect their arrival based from programmer strings in a localised file. I’ll wait for them, and hope for high-profile leaks and actual product announcements instead.

There’s some posts at hackint0sh that indicate the iPhone might have a hardware unlock code, and some entries at iPhone JTAG that might corroborate that. Might, you have to take this with a big grain of salt. A BIG grain; iPhoneDevWiki lists nothing new. Except for their new jailbreak app. Oooh, new jailbreak app! [via]

If all of these were made into news slices, we’d have to reconfigure the page to fit everything in. So, it’s going to have to go into a roundup article instead. We’ll start with the above cartoon from Gizmodo, who apply the curious moniker of “Jesusphone” to the iPhone. I’m more prone to calling it the Mosesphone, as it’s leading me to the promised land of smartphones. If it really was the Jesusphone, all of my other smartphones would suddenly stop sucking, right?

Activation and Deactivation? Inactivation?

Should you wish to avoid these problems, perhaps try this advice, or just trust in the fact that AT&T has fixed the server bug and you had a 98% chance of going through anyway. I’ve only seen one gripe of a defective iPhone, and the article about it is here.

iPhone Firmware Hacking

The next big story is disassembly and hacking. In addition to our takeapart coverage, there’s more at Wired and All Things D.

Wired launched a call to hack the iPhone, as did iPhoneTunes. It was not long before their call was answered, and the iPhone firmware was found [via] They found out what kind of processor the iPhone uses, it’s a beefy Samsung processor.

Around the World in 80k

There are still places in the world the iPhone isn’t available. If you live in Alaska or the Midwest, this may interest you: AT&T is buying Dobson [via], who owns cell phone companies in Alaska and the midwest. If you’re in Europe, this rumor was posted, claiming Vodaphone and T-Mobile both as the iPhone vendor. We’ll find out tomorrow if it was true, eh? Also, still no official word on Canada, besides that the AT&T iPhone doesn’t work on any network besides AT&T, as it’s not available unlocked. A somewhat clueless U.K. company claimed Java is surely the route for games on the iPhone, when Steve Jobs confirmed otherwise.

Activation Hacking

Fear not, though; the race is also on to unlock the iPhone. It’s been claimed to be done already, but I think they may have confused activation with unlocking. Speaking of activation, if you want prepaid, there’s an easy way to ensure prepaid is offered to you.

Huh, the i-What?

Competitors are unafraid, naturally. In the off chance that they admit they’ve heard of it, they thump their chest. RIM, makers of popular Blackberries, saw their stock surge up, and by quite a bit. Verizon stayed open late for iDay, but for no apparent reason.

Apple News

Then, there’s some Apple news. Apple sold anywhere from 300,000 to 700,000 iPhones. This kind of component speculation is always anyone’s guess, but current groupthink puts the actual component cost (that’s minus R&D) to be about 200 bucks (more or less what iSuppli predicted), which is a tidy sum of profit for Apple and Foxconn. Also, User guides have been posted online. Secret workings of iTunes 7.3 have been discovered. Apple has posted official store accessories for the iPhone. Universal, clamoring for attention, wants more money and is “threatening” to pull out of #3 music retailer iTunes. $ure, they are.

Other Reviews and Roundups

In addition to ours, there are some full reviews and first impressions at some well respected sites. If this is not enough, there are other roundups out there.

Upsides:

• Safari: The web browser is great. I haven’t missed flash yet, and the fact that YouTube is built-in more or less means that I’m not too broken-hearted about Flash. Maybe we’ll see it in an update, maybe we won’t. If we don’t, I hope they give me the ability to turn it off.

Downsides

• Web Applications and built-in apps in general: Most applications that Apple has included are great: Text, Calendar (mostly, see below), Photos, Camera, YouTube, Maps, Weather, Clock. I found Notes and Stocks to be underwhelming (and as of this writing, undeserving of the front screen), plus there’s an entire empty row sitting there waiting eagerly to have application buttons stuffed in. You can’t replace this kind of immediacy with web services — I don’t want to open Safari, create a new window, or find it with a bunch of button presses in my bookmarks. I want it there, on the main screen.
• To Do: Implement To Do: The sync doesn’t bring over to-dos from iCal, which is going to be a big hullaballoo. On the flip side of events, it doesn’t sync notes from the notes app back to the computer, so there’s no way to back them up either. I’m guessing something will happen here once Leopard comes out, or that we’ll see some updates here, but this aspect is very disappointing; the omission of this is actually downright weird. Any fans of GTD will have to use a web app for To-Dos as of this writing.
• Activation: When I first installed the iPhone to my computer, it took a while to activate. The system failed on me. I was nervous of a double-billing situation, but I resubmitted my information anyway. The activation system found my info and to my relief I had already been accepted. Other folks in our organization were not so lucky; Chris Kingree at our warehouse had to wait 60 hours (!) for his activation to go through.
• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR: So what? there are *no* supported profiles for interfacing with a computer. None! That includes DUN, AVRCP, OBEX, the whole shebang. This means you can’t use the unlimited internet on your computer; nor can you sync your iPhone via Bluetooth. A2DP seems to be unimplemented as well. This one is downright weird to me; if I was assigning a score to this review, they’d lose some serious points here.
• Preferences: They don’t allow you to set too many preferences. Granted, this keeps things simple to support and you’re never in a situation where you’re not sure where the preferences are (they’re right there in the Settings app). But if you don’t like the default SMS message alert, tough! You can’t change it. You can disable it, but not change it.
• Ringtones: Apple has included ringtones on the iPhone, and some of them are pretty good. Thank you for the effort, Apple, but I would prefer to be able to use my own. I’d love to be able to blare video game sounds from Galaga or the theremin-like intro from Dr. Who whenever someone calls me, but that functionality is not with us. I’m guessing they just haven’t finished it yet, or don’t have legal agreements with labels yet in place.
• AT&T / EDGE: If you’re a technophile, you expected this here, and I am not willing to disappoint. EDGE brings me back to dialup days. AT&T’s coverage in my area is adequate, but it’s nothing to praise. I dropped two calls on the first day of use. AT&T’s commercials about dropped calls are like salt to my wounds now.
• Filesystem and Mass Storage: The iPhone doesn’t show up as a mass storage device when you plug it in to a computer, nor is its filesystem browseable. I can’t peer around on the inside, much with things, see how it works, and the like. It’s essentially a black box, which is annoying. This doesn’t bother me too much, but nor does it make a lot of sense. I didn’t think I’d still have a use for memory cards once the iPhone came out. This one doesn’t bother me too much.

All in all, what Apple has completed is mighty. That’s not to say that there aren’t missing pieces; there are serious missing pieces from the iPhone. Still, for an entry to the smartphone market, or mobile phone market in general, it’s a very impressive device. I’m glad I bought it; I’d recommend it to anyone while making note of the above caveats, it’s the most fun I’ve had with a phone in a long time, and I haven’t even installed any games on it yet. Oh wait, that’s still a sore spot.

[via]

It’s seriously a smorgasbord of hype out there. I read more daily than I can shake a stick at. If hype was gold I’d be a leprechaun.

The always entertaining Fake Steve Jobs posts a hype article that includes articles that this article doesn’t include. The hype articles listed therein are good, and I’d list them if they weren’t already listed there. Plus that turns this meta-hype article a epistemological study of meta-hype articles, which is so Web 2.0. Highlights:

• “This is the most anticipated phone since Alexander Graham Bell did his.”
• Robert X Cringely of PBS with an Apple-Google conspiracy
• Sagacious Daniel Eran of Roughly Drafted, with a meta-hype article himself.
• and more

There’s a syndicated cartoon by Nick Anderson that shows Jobs as Moses. The guy at the Raw Feed thinks it mocks the iPhone “Fanboy iPhone Histeria [sic].” Now, I’m not a theologian or anything, but I’m pretty sure Moses led his people out of slavery and into the promised land, and I’m reasonably positive if you follow the analogy, that makes Jobs some sort of biblically revered hero to Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Not too shabby, he’s not the #1 top-paid CEO for nothing.

Apple iPhone displays are going up left and right, and so are articles describing them, but I liked iLounges’s best.

There’s a very excellent article at Forbes that reports on poll results of 680 people that were considering purchasing an iPhone. Coming in last place is that it’s an Apple product (that is, it only mattered to around 30% of those polled). That is to say that “all the anticipation is about the actual, physical product and its features” [Thank You iPod Observer]

And lastly, the CEO of ARM is excited about what the iPhone will do to the smartphone market: he believes that it’s going to have a sort of halo effect on all smartphones. I know he’s not alone, there are plenty of smart folks that agree with him.

I’m curious to see what happens with the “rising tide” theory. There wasn’t much of a rising tide with mp3 players; Apple is pretty much the only one you hear about unless you have gadget sites in your RSS reader or your buddies like poking fun of the Zune. On the other hand, the carrier exclusivity is a major, major variable, but still: 40% of the folks on AT&T’s iPhone email list are from other networks. Those are real smartphone customers. It will be interesting to see what happens when the dust settles a bit.

There has been an iPhone sighting on the Caltrain in San Francisco.

[via the Boy Genius report and Flickr ]

Web app functionality is something you talk about if either

1. you’re not ready to talk about the external SDK. We already knew it would do web apps — reference the “kinda sorta internet” commercial. We knew it would do the full internet, javascript, the whole shebang — last January.
2. There is no SDK, Web 2.0 / AJAX all the way.

• Jobs said at D5 that if folks are willing to hold on for a while, he’ll have an answer for that. I have said that I didn’t think we’d have an SDK at launch, and it looks like at least that much is true. I still think we’ll get one later.
• though I’m not excited about Web applications, they are powerful. Case in point: Google Documents. There’s an interesting wee tidbit from that website: “Safari support for Google Docs is coming soon!” I don’t see Opera, Minimo or Pocket IE on their list of compatible browsers.
• Web 2.0 / AJAX devleopment is going to be a boon for web developers, and it’s simultaneously a shot in the arm for Safari. It’s quite possible that Safari as a targeted web platform is more important to Jobs right now than an SDK (it does burn me to say that). Conversely, web apps significantly lower the bar of entry for application development, and opens up subscription and service-based application licensing models.
• I’m still convinced the market potential is large for iTunes as a signed app delivery vehicle. I think I’ll stick to my guns on this one; we’ll see what other announcements Jobs makes in the next year or so, maybe as early as January at MWSF.

That said, there are still some vexing questions:

• Whither YouTube?
• is Adobe’s flash supported? If so, expect it to basically become the default application language. This would be a huge boon for Flash Lite apps.
• Can you store web apps on the iPhone directly, i.e., run them from flash storage? If you can run apps without incurring bandwidth, that’s great. If not, this could be a huge issue.

It’s very clear to me that we still don’t have all of the SDK answers yet; I don’t think this issue will be resolved yet on launch day.

But, I can always hope that I’m wrong and the rumor is true. I’ve got to get one, it may as well be on launch day. I’d like to think that an electronics company doesn’t need artificial shortages to build hype, for once. That’s the reason that there’s so much hype around the iPhone, anyway: so far, it looks like the iPhone is worth the hype on its own.

The article even goes into detail concerning Jobs’ worry that an application could bring down a network, which has been pooh-poohed by various technical people:

I happen to know of one actual incident in which a bug in a certain first-party smart-phone application caused, essentially, a denial-of-service attack on an important data service—one that happened the same time every day for weeks before it was tracked down.

If you’re tweaked out about the iPhone SDK issue, go read it. Some programming knowledge might help.

The iPhone is not just a new platform, it’s an entirely new set of rules for interface design. That is what struck me the most once the actual iPhone demos started. There are no windows, no close/minimize/zoom widgets, no checkboxes, no radio buttons, no scroll bars, no nothing.

Seriously, I could quote this article all day. I wish it went into why an SDK is so important, but it doesn’t, so I’ll follow up where it left off.

There’s never been any question in my mind that Apple would have an SDK for the device. Sooner or later, I wouldn’t know when, if it would be at launch, or what have you. Apple doesn’t want to have to write all of the applications for it themselves; they’d rather let other people do some of the work, so they can catch some of the fringe uses of the device.

Let’s look at games on the iPod, as an example. Steve Jobs has never been focused on games, but he needs them on the iPod platform, so he outsources that development. So, game developers like EA or Gameloft probably grab some Pixo SDK from Apple, and port their game code over using that SDK — it affords the developers use of the scroll wheel, the center button, etc. Without that SDK, there’s no simple access to the iPod click / scroll wheel interface.

But if this SDK is so much trouble to do right, why release one at all? That’s really the golden question: it’s important because of the money.

You have to ensure that there’s a rich ecosystem for developers, as the developers are the people that ensure that a platform (platform meaning smartphones, computers, video game consoles, etc) has applications available on it. Applications are the lifeblood of any platform, and Apple knows it. Think of how important Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop has historically been to Mac OSX. Think of how important computer games have historically been to Microsoft Windows. Think of how important Grand Theft Auto III or Final Fantasy was to the PS2. Think of how important Oracle was to UNIX vendors.

Developers have to be able to write software for a platform to ensure its survival, to keep it alongside (or ahead of) its competitors in the marketplace. So that’s part of the money.

The other part of the money is this: Steve Jobs has the perfect avenue to sell 3rd party applications in the iTunes store, a potential gold mine. Rumor has it that the iPhone will only run signed applications — that is, applications without Apple’s signature of approval won’t run. It would not be too hard for Apple to sign apps; they sign AAC files every time someone purchases music or iPod games or whatever from the iTunes store.

So, Apple can use their huge content delivery system to store applications, sign them to individual users, and ensure that developers get paid when someone buys an application. Apple can take a cut for housing the applications, just like they do for the record labels. The astute will note that this method ensures that developers get paid for their software products (if they like, I’m sure there will be some free or possibly open apps on the platform), which is of course a major concern for independent developers.

The only niggle I see is if Apple decides they want to test the applications for security, malware, and the like before they certify them. To that, I have no idea; they may just be selective about who they release the SDK to.

But rest assured that they’ll release an SDK, because it’s about the money, and Apple likes to make money: it’s their singular purpose as a corporation.

Gruber wrote in a previous article discussing the third iPhone ad:

“The Maps app somehow knows where we are: my guess is that it’s like the Mac OS X Weather widget, with a preference setting for a default zip code. (Keep dreaming if you think Apple has secretly added GPS behind the FCC’s back.)”

He’s absolutely right about GPS and the FCC — Apple would have to re-certify the device via the FCC if they wanted to add GPS functionality to the iPhone, and we would find out about that when the FCC published their results.

My hope is that Apple made the Google Maps app GPS-capable, so I could use my bluetooth GPS device for mapping when I traveled. I don’t have it with me unless I’m in the car, though. So if the GSM localization rumor is true, well that’s just an added bonus.

The interview is a bit short — Brian Lurie is obviously keeping mum about his favorite features, though he absolutely gushes about widgets and the browser, and has some good things to say about the price point and convergence devices. It doesn’t read too much like a marketing interview, so I’d say it’s definitely worth it. [via]

So, the carriers need the shiniest shiny toys to drag you away. The article also covers the old news that Verizon passed on the iPhone, unwilling to cave in to Apple’s demands. I’m glad to hear that deal didn’t go through — I’ve not been fond of Verizon in the past, and they have this nasty habit of locking up abilities on their phones that other carriers leave open. [via TreoCentral forums]

“What will change? Pretty much everything. And funnily enough, most of it is not actually caused by the iPhone, they only happen to occur so closely to the iPhone, that the iPhone will be given much of the credit.”

Tomi Ahonen (with a name like that he can only be Finnish) goes on to state what the iPhone will do to mobile handset design, mobile internet, mobile advertising, mobile media, Silicon Valley, the blogging communities, mobile messaging, and the inevitable roar of media come June when the device is actually available.

“But the level of the noise around mobile will double in June. Very many big guns will join the game. That is good. And it will be a change from an old Era, where handset makers like Nokia and Motorola ran the show with the major mobile operators (carriers). Now media giants will join in, as will major IT players and internet companies.”

[via Slashphone]

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