It didn't take long, but according to The Telegraph, Apple has sicked their lawyers on In Icon, the company behind the life-like Steve Jobs action figure we reported on earlier this week.

But 'their efforts have reportedly met with' a legal challenge with Apple allegedly threatening to sue the toy maker unless they cease trading. The legal wrangle is over the likeness of the doll to the late Apple founder, the rights of which the company claims it owns.

This wouldn't be the first time Apple put a stop to unapproved production of related goods. Late last year, M.I.C Gadget in Hong Kong put out a similar molded figurine of Steve Jobs, which was subsequently halted at the behest of Apple.

If you were planning on getting one of these ultra-realistic action figures from In Icon, you better hurry quick before it's no longer available.

Source: The Telegraph

Forbes reports that a new Steve Jobs action figure from In Icon is so realistic, the photos actually make it look real. The action figure comes with the following details.

• one realistic ‘head sculpt;’
• two pairs of glasses;
• a ‘highly articulated body;’
• three pairs of hands;
• one tiny black turtleneck;
• one tiny pair of blue jeans;

You can purchase the action figure from In Icon's website, however, we're not exactly sure how long Apple's hordes of lawyers will let this one last -- go grab it while it's still up!

(Note: Inicon seems to be down due to the large amount of traffic they've seen)

Source: In Icon via Forbes

Apple has posted a couple of job listings for iOS software engineers, and they describe work needed on UI elements for Siri, along with additional language support and a new API that could indicate Apple may be opening up the feature to 3rd party app developers.

This is a broad-ranging task - we take every application that Siri interacts with, distill it down to fundamentals, and implement that application's UI in a theme fitting with Siri. Consider it an entire miniature OS within the OS, and you get a good idea of the scope!

Siri launched with the iPhone 4S with limited language and region support and beyond built-in apps, currently only interfaces with Apple's own Find my Friends App Store app. Even built-in app support is inconsistent, for example SMS/iMessages can be read via text-to-speech but not email messages.

More engineers might also be necessary if Apple wants to expand the service to other devices, like the iPad or rumored Apple television set.

Source: Apple Insider

According to The Wall Street Journal, the private memorial held for Steve Jobs yesterday included moving words from family, friends and senior executives from the industry.

Steve Jobs’s widow Laurene Powell Jobs, sister Mona Simpson and three of his children spoke at the memorial service held for the Apple co-founder on Sunday, according to two people who attended [...] Both people who attended described the service as incredibly moving and a fitting tribute to Mr. Jobs, who was known as a tech visionary, demanding boss and a fanatic for design. One person mentioned that many speakers cracked jokes about Mr. Jobs, who died on Oct. 5 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Others who were close to Jobs that also spoke during the memorial included Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Apple Senior VP for Industrial Design Jony Ive. Bono from U2 also performed, along with Yo Yo Ma and singer Joan Baez, with Bono reading lyrics from an iPad during the performance.

Apple plans to celebrate the life of Steve Jobs on October 19th on the Infinite Loop campus.



Source: WSJ

The folks at Timeflies have made a unique tribute to the late Steve Jobs for one of their Tuesday songs.

All of this was shot on an iPad 2 and edited using iMovie, recorded, mixed, and mastered on an iMac. The beat was made using samples from OSX and iOS - everything on a Tuesday.

Check it out, below.

Netgear CEO Patrick Lo has spoken out over Apple’s closed ecosystem and the ego of Steve Jobs. Speaking at a lunch in Sydney Australia, Lo questioned the future of Apple’s closed system, in the face of mounting competition from Google’s “Open” Android operating system.

Once Steve Jobs goes away, which is probably not far away, then Apple will have to make a strategic decision on whether to open up the platform. Ultimately a closed system just can't go that far ... If they continue to close it and let Android continue to creep up then it's pretty difficult as I see it.

What's the reason for him to trash Flash? There's no reason other than ego.

Lo did not stop with Apple, he also claimed that Microsoft had fallen too far behind with the Windows Phone 7 platform and that it was now game over.

Strong views, but are they fair? Do Apple need to open up the platform to continue the growth needed to see off Android? Do Apple care about the iPhone being the number one selling smartphone? Let us know what you think in the comments!

[Sydney Morning Herald]

A new and improved version of the Steve Jobs action figure, simply called the “Pineapple CEO”, is now available. This time around M.I.C did their best to avoid any infringing features -- like the Apple logo stand -- while adding Ninja throwing stars.

If you want to get your hands on a Ninja Steve it will cost you $89.90 (that includes shipping) and you should probably make the purchase as soon as possible considering Apple's lawyers will be all over this in no time.

More images after the break!

[M.I.C store]

In yet another sign pointing to a Verizon iPhone launch, Apple has posted a job listing on their careers website looking for engineers with knowledge of, among other things, CDMA network.

“Cellular Systems Perf Engineer” familiar with GSM, GPSRS, EDGE, WCDMA, HSDPA, HSUPA, CDMA, etc.”

Current iPhones use GSM, including the slow GPRS, the 2G EDGE, and the 3G HSDPA and HSUPA (high speed download/upload). They don't currently use CDMA, the technology of choice for Verizon and Sprint in the US.

Rumors of Apple letting Verizon join in on the iPhone game have been thrown around the web for as long as we can remember, but much more so recently than ever before. Many industry specialists believe the Verizon iPhone could come in the first quarter of 2011, however neither Apple or Verizon have yet to confirm such rumors.

With Apple continuing to seek professional engineers who know there way around the CDMA network, how close do you think a Verizon iPhone could really be? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

[Forbes]

While it is not anything new to see Apple job postings, TechCrunch spotted a listing for iWork that stood out from the crowd. It was a year ago that Apple opened up iWork.com to beta testing. It allows the sharing of iWork documents, spreadsheets and presentations with anyone with access to a modern web browser, on a Mac or PC. On December 22nd Apple posted that they are seeking an Applications Engineer for the iWork team and they hint that more than just online sharing might be in store for iWork:

The Productivity team (i.e. iWork) is seeking an energetic, highly motivated software engineer in building a scalable rich internet application. The person will be part of the core development team and engage in an area from design to development of the software system.

Besides exceptional programming skills and devotion to creating great software, we look for one or more of the following kinds of expertise or experience:

• JavaScript language and browser technology – understanding from inside-out, or
• Computer graphics – the mathematics, algorithms and programming, or
• Experience developing scalable rich internet application, or
• Experience developing presentation/collaboration or word processing projects

Reading this job listing one would get the impression Apple is looking to start a venture outside of the current iWork team, perhaps iWork in the cloud.

We haven't gotten a native iWork app for the iPhone or iPod touch yet. Would an HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript WebApp be a workable alternative? Would you want?

[Via TechCrunch]

Marc Edwards is one of the well known team behind Mac Dashboard Widget aces iSlayer and iPhone development house bjango, whose apps include Jobs, Cities, Darkness, and Phases, and he was kind enough to sit down and talk App development and ecosystem with TiPb.

TiPb: Your team is famous for their Mac OS X Dashboard widgets, was developing for the iPhone really the easy transition some have suggested?

Marc: For us, yes. Our widgets have used Cocoa plugins for quite some time. A lot of widgets are straight HTML, Javascript and CSS though, which is very different to what's needed for iPhone apps.

Was there anything substantially different about developing for the iPhone? If so, did you learn anything that you will effect your future Mac development?

The biggest lesson seems to be quality. Apple have some great bundled apps, so if you want to fit in, you'd better make sure you spend as much time as they do on the small details. The effective hit area of a human finger also means you have can only have a small number of buttons on screen at once. That keeps you on your toes—almost everything has to be contextual, which is quite different to traditional Mac development.

With some of Apple's built in Apps, like Stocks, Weather, etc. seeming more like OS X widgets than real Apps, there was once speculation that Apple may open up a widget platform for the iPhone as well. With both WebApps and App Store apps, do you think there's still a place for a dedicated iPhone widget development system?

There probably isn't much point in a development platform between web apps and App Store apps... Apple can and will keep on extending WebKit, allowing for better web apps that look and behave more like App Store apps. That's probably enough for anyone who doesn't want to develop using Cocoa.

So the line between the two is close enough to not warrant another choice. But hey, who knows what Apple will do!

There been ongoing controversy about the App Store and how to both get exposure for apps and earn a fair living off their development. Do you think app developers are currently racing to the bottom, and pricing themselves out of business, or do you think volume and building user base will prove a viable model long term?

I don't think pricing is as much of an issue as others seem to. We're talking about a platform with millions of users (don't forget iPod touch users when adding up the total). A huge portion of those users seem to buy apps.

If anything, I think we will see some more expensive apps appear, as all the small ideas get done well enough that each app type has a clear winner. Once the low hanging fruit is gone, developers will probably head towards bigger projects.

Either way, I'm not sure less than $5 is a bad pricepoint for an app. Just make sure you have a very good, very small team developing it and you'll be fine.

Now that the numbers are approaching 10,000, what could Apple do to make iPhone apps more discoverable by end users?

Search results ordered by rankings. A "newly popular" section might work too. I think it's going to be fairly difficult to keep iTunes as it is for music while making it work for the App Store too. I'm sure they'll figure it out though. These kinds of things have been working well on web 2.0 sites for years.

What are your thoughts on the new "rate upon deletion" feature of iPhone OS 2.2? Is this unfair to developers who may get more negative reviews now? (fair disclosure, I've only give 4 and 5 star reviews to Apps I've deleted).

For Apple to build better search and ranking tools, they need all the good data they can get. Right now there's a lot of fairly average apps on the store, so I don't see how rate upon deletion should be something any decent developer should worry about.

I've also rated some apps well on deletion. Maybe a rate after 20th launch would be good too, although you don't want it to get in the way too much.

Thanks Marc, we really appreciate your taking the time!

bjango is the website, and the apps are all available via the iPhone App Store (iTunes Link)

Though somewhat morbid, if only in a stock manipulation market sense, due to both Apple's phenomenal -- and resurgent -- success under the leadership of Steve Jobs, and the health issues faced by Jobs in the past, every time the man behind the Apple steps up on stage looking... well... whatever the vegan opposite is to Steve Ballmer's manbull big, rumors and speculation they begin to fly.

But how do you choose Steve Jobs' successor? What if you miss? Fortune shows us, joining the fray this time with a "Usual Suspects" type list, complete with PR pics and wikipedia hits, but wrapped together well and each given a somewhat considered ranking in the Jobs pool. (And for those of us who don't park outside Cupertino with a surveillance van, a few surprises might lurk in the sequence as well).

Of course, if they'd combined the crazy rumors of Ballmer getting the heave-ho from Microsoft following the PR disaster of Vista and stalled Micro-Hoo! negotiations, and pegged him as Jobs' obvious, if in first name only, successor... well that would have at least been ballsy and quite a bit more entertaining.

In the end, however, while Jobs is no doubt worth billions in ever-fickle market cap to increasingly capricious investors -- perhaps more than any other CEO active today -- the whole topic still comes off as a little on the gossipy side of TMZ.

Besides, we all know Kaiser Jobso will just whip up a clone eventually anyway, and show these would be successors what succession really is... And like that -- boom! -- they'd be gone.

Read

Details of the iPhone's launch in the UK is spilling out rapidly, and O2 are making some last changes in preparation for iPhone's arrival. Their CEO granted an interview that gives a peek into Apple's carrier selection process. O2 has changed the way that they deal with limited "unlimited" plans -- they still limit them, but at least they will give users a warning before they punt people away. And lastly, UK gadget magazine tried out the iPhone for a while, and they have information about the 1.1.2, the upcoming firmware update and iTunes 7.5.

O2 CEO Interview

O2 CEO Matthew Key granted an interview to the Telegraph in which he doles out information and money quotes like candy at a parade. He recounts his journey to Apple's HQ in Cupertino to offer O2 as the UK carrier for the iPhone.

"[Jobs] clearly knows his stuff in a level of detail that for someone at that level is mindblowing, and he has a great incisiveness in terms of what the customer wants and needs in products"

"I played with it for two minutes and just thought, 'oh my God, this is leagues above anything I've ever seen before'"

This is pretty straight talk coming from a CEO. One could say it's PR from someone who's shilling the iPhone... but one would have to concede that he's saying everything else that he sells is left in the dust.

There have been a few folks around that claim that partnering with Apple on the iPhone is like a deal with the devil, that the carriers don't make any money selling it. Key, formerly the CFO of O2, has a few choice words to say about that:

"When we left two hours later, I said to Cesar, 'that's a device I've got to offer. In the UK market, where the top four networks have pretty much equal shares, it offers a great way for me to get a hell of a lot of high-value customers on to O2 and drive up data usage"

"For me to sign a – whatever it is –'madly money-losing deal', well, it's almost a slight on my professional integrity, isn't it? Why would I do that?"

Limited Unlimited Plans

There's always some hubbub about the limited "unlimited" plans that carriers are so fond of implementing. O2's "unlimited" data program topped out at 200MB, and sometimes half that. If an ordinary person, aka "punter," was to download more data than that in a month on their UK iPhone, O2 would punt the punter -- they'd cancel his or her service. That language has been removed, and they now promise to send a stern letter warning of cancellation, allowing the punter to change habits and preserving the contract.

"Customers find 'unlimited with limits' confusing, plus most people don't speak in megabits or understand what they equate to."

UK iPhone Review

And meanwhile, pre-eminent gadget trade rag T3 got some hands on with iPhone firmware 1.1.2, a long expected sequel to the 1.1.1 firmware we currently enjoy. The new firmware closes the TIFF exploit, so if you were planning on jailbreaking your iPhone the easy way (jailbreakme.com), you'll probably want to hold off on applying this update. Also present in the 1.1.2 firmware is vastly upgraded language support for dozens of languages. There's all sorts of detail available in their official review. There are some gobsmacker quotes in their review too:

"Twelve months of tick-inducing anticipation had, in an ephemeral moment, just been exchanged for internal squeals and loud snorts."

"Oh, how we wanted to post picture proof last week but would have run the risk of Steve Jobs personally removing our knackers."

"Finally, a gizmo to properly rival the well-heeled crackberry."

"new version of iTunes (we were given 7.5 d15) supports Ringtones as well as iCal and the Address Book."

Theirs is a very good review, and not far from what you may have read elsewhere: mostly ahead of all of the competition everywhere, except for where it isn't, and it drives them mad. They warn users that it may not replace their "existing pocket rocket" even though they say "it's the best piece of kit we've seen all year."

Apple Dealing with Film-Makers Directly for iTunes
Apple has sidestepped some of the major studios for some films, opting instead to deal directly with film-makers. This could be a sign of things to come -- it would be great to not have to report every major film-studio or TV channel contract tiff.

Apple iPhone Dev Center
Apple has created a web site devoted to developers that are interested in putting their programs on the iPhone. Apple is calling it the iPhone Dev Center, and it's a repository of tips, tricks, and guidelines to follow should anyone want to make an iPhone web app. It's also probably a list of instructions that one would have to follow to get listed as a featured application on Apple's web app listing.

Molson Reveals iPhone on Rogers in January?
For any Canadian readers, Molson ran a contest that had an iPhone as the prize. They had a disclaimer on the iPhone prize, stating that it couldn't be activated on the Rogers network until January. So, odds are pretty good that the iPhone will be out in Canada in January. Molson has since pulled the language for the contest, saying they have no idea when anything is coming out ever. And they never had any idea. (images below via Electronista)

Is the iPhone Running Leopard?
There's an article at Wired that delves deeper into Jobs' open letter about 3rd party applications on the iPhone and the connection to Leopard. One of the tidbits that Jobs talks about briefly is signing applications, and Wired has a good look into what that would mean for 3rd party iPhone apps. And, there's some discussion whether the iPhone is based off of Leopard or not: "It's not known for sure at this point, but all indications are that the iPhone is a Leopard-based device," as stated by Carl Howe, analyst at Blackfriars. It clearly is. Witness the uname -a of my laptop on 10.4 vs. the uname -a of my iphone:

The important bit there is the kernel version. Apple releases the OSX frameworks to correspond with kernel versions of darwin for every version of OSX. The iPhone has been running Leopard (9.0) since it came out in June. My 10.4 laptop is running darwin 8.10.0, which corresponds to 10.4.10.

iPhone Security Faults
Meanwhile, there's been a rash of complaints about the iPhone's security. You may have seen headlines that compare the iPhone to Windows 95, for example. It's of course, a loaded comparison, made for sensationalism. You could just as well compare the iPhone's security to Windows 98, Windows ME, or Windows XP if you're logged in as an administrator (which is everybody -- you can barely run Office as a limited user). But, Windows 95 gets the headline. Since the iPhone is made of UNIX, user separation is built-in, expect apps to run as something other than administrator/root/super-user when the SDK update comes out. Perhaps earlier; we can't know as Apple isn't commenting. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that 'run as root' is a good security model. It's so bad, it's not even a security model.

iPhone de-bricking: re-virginizer tool available
The Elite team posted a re-virginizer tool that people can use to restore the ability to upgrade. This tool locks the iPhone with the proper bits in place on the iPhone radio; some of the free iPhone unlock tools wrote stuff to the iPhone baseband radio that was invalid; this led to bricked phones when it came time to update the firmware to 1.1.1.

AT&T Upgrading Core Network
Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, was interviewed recently and he talked about many things concerning the iPhone and AT&T's network. Their core should make for faster downloads for anything that uses AT&T's networks, wired or wireless. That means us: anyone using an iPhone should see a smidgen of a benefit, but the real help comes when we're using 3G fast internet iPhones.

There's a big article in the New York Times that includes an interview with Steve Jobs about the excellent shape that Apple's in nowadays. Apple is 3rd in computer shipments overall. They might slip to 4th when Acer buys Gateway after Gateway buys Packard Bell, but Apple will still have more growth than the resulting top three. The Times did an interview with Jobs, and he of course has some choice things to say about everything -- Leopard vs. Vista, Ultimate Editions, the iPhone's multitouch interface, the delays of Leopard, and the Newton.

'Mr. Jobs said that multitouch drastically simplified the process of controlling a computer.

There are no “verbs” in the iPhone interface, he said, alluding to the way a standard mouse or stylus system works. In those systems, users select an object, like a photo, and then separately select an action, or “verb,” to do something to it.'

I've written about what Ars Technica called the 'New Frontier' of the SDK, and I agreed with Ars that it was coming. Anyone that gripes about the availability of the development kit for making apps on the iPhone doesn't give enough credit for what Apple has created with multitouch.

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

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]

The New York Times has a neat article on third party applications and how the iPhone is currently the only device on AT&T's network that doesn't support them. The article has some good things to say about Palm too, which I always welcome. The big gist of it is how Jobs' quote from a January Newsweek interview doesn't jive with reality:

"You don’t want your phone to be an open platform... You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up."

Whereas the reality of the situation is that Cingular/ATT welcomed development on every single other phone they had on their network, whether it be Java/J2ME, PalmOS development, Windows Development, or Flash Lite / whatever. This is backed up by Mark Bercow, Senior VP of Development at Palm. Talk about your David vs. Goliath situations here; I feel like Steve Jobs' famous reality distortion field just failed for a second or something. But, there's another quote that the Times dug up that I'd forgotten about from his video conversation with Walt Mossberg at the All Things D conference in July:

"This is a very important trade-off between security and openness. We want both. We’ve got good ideas, and sometime later this year, we can open it up to third-party apps, and keep security."

The more I think about this quote, the more I think he's talking about widgets here. You only really have to worry about a widget's security if there's a browser bug or exploit, and HTML/CSS/AJAX is definitely open. He probably doesn't want to open up a full native SDK until the software and hardware platforms are stable and proven, much like he did with the original Mac series. That is, if he wants a full native SDK available to the public at all.

There are a few other interesting tidbits from the article that I can't help but mention:

1. Two-thirds of Treo owners have purchased 3rd party apps
2. Ten percent of Treo owners have purchased 10 or more 3rd party apps
3. AT&T has a website to get developers on all of their development platforms except the iPhone.

figure 1: dirty hippie 3rd-party-developing AppTapp Installer.app-installing AnySIM-unlockers Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak

Though Jobs' Apple Support crew would void your warranty for installing them, Steve went as far to say that some of the 3rd party apps were being looked at very closely by Apple:

"Meanwhile, Jobs acknowledged that third-party developers have started to produce several intriguing, yet unofficial iPhone applications. He said Apple is looking at some of them closely, especially those that don't require a connection to the Internet. It's likely that those applications would be the first of any to receive an official endorsement from Apple, according to Jobs' comments, as those that require Internet access could threaten the 'high standard' of experience customers have come to expect with the iPhone."

Steve Jobs was asked at "Mum is no longer the word" press event why there was no 3G on the iPhone. His response was telling; it's important enough that I transcribed the money quote of his response:

"We've got to see the battery life for 3G get back up into the five-plus hour range, before it's really suitable for [the iPhone]. I think we'll see that hopefully late next year. But right now, you make a really big tradeoff to go to 3G, and that's really bad battery life."

I think it's safe to say that by "late next year," he doesn't mean January or something. Some analysts were predicting a 3G iPhone would be announced at today's UK media event. I bet those same analysts are thinking "Perhaps he'll announce some new hardware at Apple Expo Paris next week...."

Apple unveiled a new press release, they've just sold their one millionth phone. It's worthwhile to note that Jobs tends to set easily achievable goals so that they can be demolished. He wouldn't want to eke by on the "million phones by the end of September" thing on Sept. 28th, that's not news. If he's sold one million phones by the 10th instead of the 30th, then he's 20 days ahead of schedule. And then you think, "Oh, the iPhone must be selling really well." And that's just one aspect of his Reality Distortion Field. At any rate, the press release is after the break.

Apple Sells One Millionth iPhone
CUPERTINO, Calif., Sept. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Apple(R) today announced it sold its one millionth iPhone(TM) yesterday, just 74 days after its introduction on June 29. iPhone combines three devices into one-a mobile phone, a widescreen iPod(R), 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.

"One million iPhones in 74 days-it took almost two years to achieve this milestone with iPod," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We can't wait to get this revolutionary product into the hands of even more customers this holiday season."

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.

Steve Jobs will issue $100 worth of Apple Store Credit to early adopters, and they'll post the details on their website next week. Funny how my arse suddenly stopped hurting just now.

"Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these."

Now I want to see what FSJ reads like when he eats his own words.

"That's technology. If they bought it this morning, they should go back to where they bought it and talk to them. If they bought it a month ago, well, that's what happens in technology."

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]

Haha, just kidding. It looks to be another busy day here at phone different.

He's not saying the PC is dead, dying, or even getting old; he's saying that the big emerging market opportunity is in those post-PC devices (you or I would likely call them gadgets). The overwhelming sense I got from his fireside chat with Bill is that he's got a bunch more gadgets coming out, you'll happily get rid of the other stuff they replace, if you ever had anything like it anyway, and you can bet real money on tighter integration between all of them and the PC.

Jobs consistently focused on the two newest Apple post-PC era gadgets, the Apple iTV and the upcoming iPhone experience. Mossberg seemed to want to talk about convergence, asking if all of these things aren't just computers in a different form factor. Mossberg also wanted comments regarding the constant predictions by some of "the death of the PC." Jobs' responses are of course illuminating here, I'll condense his quotes while quoting liberally to give a more concise idea of what he was talking about:

but then, there's an explosion that's starting to happen in these, what you'd call post-PC devices. You could call the iPod one of them. There are these things that are not... as general purpose, they're really more focused on more specific functions... that category of devices is going to continue to be very innovative, and you'll see more of them.

"We're getting to the point where everything's a computer in a different form factor. So what? So what if it's built with a computer inside? It doesn't matter. It's 'what is it, how do you use it, how does the consumer approach it.' It doesn't matter anymore, so who cares what's inside it anymore?"

What's really interesting is, and we talked about this earlier today, if you look at the reason that the iPod exists and that Apple's in that marketplace, it's because these really great Japanese consumer electronics companies who kind of owned the portable electronics market, invented it, couldn't conceive of the appropriate software... it's in a beautiful box, but it's software.... what an iPhone hopefully will be, it's software. Apple views itself as a software company.

how much of the really revolutionary things that people are going to do in the next 5 years are done on the PCs, or how much of it is really focused on the post-PC devices. There's a real temptation to focus it on the post-PC devices, because it's a clean slate, and because they're more focused devices, they don't have the legacy of zillions of apps in these zillions of markets. I think there's going to be a tremendous revolution in the experience of the post-PC devices. I think the question is, how much to do in the PCs... some of it has to be tempered a little bit....

[Users] don't want to drive with a joystick, they like the steering wheel. Radical rethinking of things is going to happen in these post-PC devices.

When asked by Mossberg why .Mac had been stagnant lately:

"I couldn't agree with you more, and we'll make up for lost time in the near future."

These are telling statements about product plans from Jobs. Apple is in the business of releasing solutions for interface problems created by other companies in software, and they're going to release a bunch of gadgets to fix them, instead of just trying to cram it all into the PC. For example, When my wife tivos something on our DVR, I don't want it recorded to my phone. I don't want it recorded on my laptop either; a convergent solution isn't really the right thing for this situation. And I'm saying that as a big fan of convergence.

I'm not ashamed to admit it, but my wife has an easier time with the TV remote than I do. She is basically unofficially in charge of the TV remote. It's not that I don't understand it -- I set it all up, she pesters me when the satellite signal doesn't work or inputs aren't aligned, she couldn't tell you the difference between BNC and RCA. It's that I can't stand using the thing -- the interface sucks, and I don't like having to use multiple remotes, and I don't feel like rolling my own. There's 40 odd buttons on the remote because the manufacturer have no idea how to fix the interface problem in software. Apple knows how to fix the interface problem in software and match it with corresponding hardware; the resulting TV product has a four-way nav pad and two buttons. The marriage of hardware and software is, as Jobs called it, "a powerful marriage."

This coupling is the raison d'etre of their post-PC devices. The iPod aimed to replace confusing or non-consumer-friendly mp3 players from Japan, and well, you know the story there so far. The Apple iTV and Front Row -- they aim to fix the previously mentioned TV problem, as well as bring the computer and the internet to the ailing interface problem in your living room, aka your TV and its remote. In an earlier talk, Jobs demoed iTV's ability to play YouTube videos. With that product, I don't need to look in the dark for what button does what, I can just look at the screen; that's where I'm generally looking while watching TV anyway. If I wanted to show my wife something I saw on YouTube, we'd instead watch it in the living room instead of crouching over my laptop.

Regarding what he says about .Mac, I'll put money down that we'll see .Mac improvements come with Leopard that require an update to the iPhone. Of course, I could be wrong. We could see those improvements when the iPhone comes out. But, I'm glad to hear that Apple has short-term plans to improve its internet services division.

At any rate, Apple is constantly looking for those interface problems because those problems market opportunities. Jobs of course wouldn't talk about those market opportunities in detail; he instead passed on what other Apple employees said of him in the early years:

"Isn't it funny, a ship that leaks from the top."

And with that, I end today's column. I know, it's not fair. I haven't really delved into what the post-PC era means for a smartphone here, I've mostly just explained it regarding the iTV. That's neither a product I own, nor is it the likely subject matter of this website. I'll move on to what it should mean for phones tomorrow.

One of the best parts, for me, is that Jobs confirmed they're still working on 3rd party applications for the iPhone, how to do it right; how to do it without making the device crash twice a day. A more in-depth article should follow this afternoon or evening.

In any regard, D5 has posted a highlight reel, but I'd personally recommend just watching the individual flash videos. Read on for the links.

• Prologue
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7

So, there's a lot of press out there that says there's likely to be a smackdown between the two; I don't think that's too likely, but it will give some valuable insight to how the two of them operate and where they think the industry will go. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have the smackdown, which is why this makes me laugh.

Technorati Tags: Gates, Jobs, haha

Apple without design focus:

And, Norman adds, the consultative process could take a toll on the product line as a whole. Look, he says, at the 70-odd Performa models Apple churned out between 1992 and 1997--models that varied only in hard-drive size, in whether they had modems, or in whether they were sold directly or through a retailer.

And Apple with design focus:

One direct result of that sharpened focus is Apple's unique ability to create simple products. Though the idea of a simple high-tech device seems counterintuitive (why not offer more functionality if you can?), it's worked for Apple.

"The hardest part of design, especially consumer electronics," says Norman, "is keeping features out." Simplicity, he says, is in itself a product differentiator, and pursuing it can lead to innovation.

Rolston agrees. "The most fundamental thing about Apple that's interesting to me," he says, "is that they're just as smart about what they don't do. Great products can be made more beautiful by omitting things."

I'm a big believer in the idea that simplicity is a part of good design. My understanding of design isn't vaunted or anything, but I know what I like. I don't want a phone that looks like my remote.

Odds are very good that he'll remind everyone about the iPhone too. I suspect he'll probably put some of the lingering questions to rest about the iPhone. Hopefully he'll tell us what day we have to get in line to purchase one. Since it's WWDC, I'm guessing that he'll announce some sort of SDK and official capacity for third party apps. Otherwise it would be like rubbing developer faces into mud: "Here's a groundbreaking platform that changes everything that you can't be part of! Besides buying one! And switching to Cingular!" Not likely; or at least, not for long. Personally I think we'll see 3rd party applications in iTunes the day the phone is out.

via Wired