Rene Ritchie has been covering personal technology for a decade. Former editor-in-chief of iMore and Editorial Director for Mobile Nations, he specializes in Apple and related technologies, news analysis and insight. Follow him @reneritchie on Twitter, Instagram, watch his videos on YouTube, and visit him on the web at reneritchie.net.
Welcome one and all to the iPhone Blog's Live Meta-Blog for Tuesday, September 9th Apple pre-Holiday Event: Let's Rock. Well, are you ready to rock, TiPb style? The event is now over, but if you want the full play-by-play coverage of the coverage, along with the unique analysis, color, and insight only the TiPb writing team can provide, check it out in reverse chronological order,...
We repeat, this is not a drill! The Apple Store is Down! Reports are flooding in from all over the intertubes... Details are sketchy but authorities urge everyone to stay calm and proceed to TiPb where Live Meta-Blog coverage of Apple's Let's Rock Event will begin soon! Now find your loved ones. Cling to them. And hold to hope. The Apple Store WILL be back. And it will once again...
Today brings Let's Rock. You know, Apple's yearly pre-holiday event. The one that the entire tech-verse has been chomping at the bit for since roughly 0.001 seconds after Steve Jobs left the stage at WWDC 08. The one that will answer: "What's next?" But that’s all we know: Let's Rock, September 9. We don’t know what, exactly, Apple will announce, or even if Steve Jobs himself will be...
Kevin Rose, bound by vengeance to clear his name of false rumors past, has been laying the veritable smack down on Apple's "Let's Rock" Event. It's like he's got Phil Schiller on the Bat-iPhone or something. The latest? The above mock up of what iTunes 8.0's interface will look like, along with a roundup of rumors thus far. Maybe he'll digg his way out of this yet! (Har!) Meanwhile,...
Phone Saber was one of the most popular and talked about apps pretty much since the day Apple's on-board store launched. Hey, turn your iPhone into a sound-a-like Star Wars lightsaber? What's not to love? Well, for THQ -- exclusive Lucas licensor of all things Star Wars for all things Mobile -- infringement for one. Too their credit, however, rather than just getting Apple to yank the...
Got an iPhone or iPod Touch? Then you've already got a PowerVR graphics core crunching your eye candy. This week, however, Imagination Technologies revealed that an "unnamed company" has acquired a new mega-license for their current and future tech. While this could be Apple and could just mean incremental adaption of new graphics cores going forward, tie it together with some other...
Engadget has scored a couple of sneaky first looks at both Apple's upcoming "Let's Rock" event (above) scheduled for Tuesday, and the new 4th Generation iPod Nano (below) that's all but certain to be released there. Once Kremlin-eque in their secrecy and security, Apple's iPod division has either grown leakier as of last year's 3G "fatty" Nano, or Apple itself is doing a little...
Kevin Rose rumored a newer, trip'ier, more galactic iTunes visualizer, and now according to MacRumors, he's confirmed where it comes from: Magnetosphere had been available as a free download from the developer's site until a few months ago. The author has since responded to an inquiry by Allan White that the plug-in had been "sold to a third party". Since CoverFlow was acquired by...
Could we not only be seeing iPhone 2.1 this Tuesday, but a 2.1 with secret features deliberately kept from the 4 developer beta's just so Steve Jobs can see our stunned rapture when he pronounces BOOM! Ars Technica thinks so: We were told that, aside from what we already know about iPhone 2.1 from leaked info on the web, there are other parts to 2.1 that were specifically removed from...
Okay, so we pretty much all now know what the iPod Nano 4G will look like, but what about the iPod Touch 2G? If iLounge's sources are right -- surprise, surprise -- the upcoming refresh will see it slightly thicker but more tapered, just like what happened to the iPhone back in June. What else? What appears to be an antenna enclosure is shown on its rear top left, with the same...
Following on yesterday's Net Applications MobileSafari metrics, which showed ever increasing iPhone browser share, TUAW now tells us Investor Village has found yet another obscure path to sales deviation. This method involves tracking the IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) code on each individual iPhone sold, and using it: researchers have figured out that Apple has...
Last week the UK ruled that Apple was misrepresenting the iPhone's provisioning of "just the internet" due to the lack of support for two ubiquitously popular 3rd party plugins: Flash and Java. We've previously covered the will they/won't they drama surrounding development and deployment of Flash and Java pretty much ad nauseum infinitum, as well as some seldom discussed yet...
One of the last "advantages" CDs had over music downloads (like iTunes or Amazon MP3) is the printed extras they could include in booklets, like photos, art, lyrics, and other assorted bonus material. Well, get ready to kiss that goodbye. According to TechCrunch, who bills the story as "Apple Puts One More Nail Into the CD Coffin": Apple will make [an App Store application] available...
Was Kevin Rose right? Is the Analyst-busting 8-Ball now batting 500? Could there be any more speculation about something that's close-to, but not quite an iPhone?? Engadget Spanish (via MacRumors) has seen the usual pre-Special Event hype, and raised the first "in the wild" case leaks: The case is by Hama and is a Sport Case specifically labeled "for iPod nano 4G". While notoriously...
Confession: We don't have any idea where Net Applications really gets their numbers from either. Ars Technica says they: Collect [web metrics] data from an "exclusive on-demand network of live stats customers" compiled from some "160 million visitors per month" But they could just as soon be reading runes or casting the bones. However they get them, if we can assume it's a consistent...
Casey's shown us the iControlPad already, but it looks like accessory heavyweight Belkin may be getting ready to throw a gaming controller of their own at the iPhone. According to TouchArcade, JoyPod would be a heck of a lot smaller than iControlPad (by covering the top and bottom, non-screen areas of the iPhone), and feature 6 front buttons (8 total), audio out, and a dock pass-through...
In the wake of Bloomberg's faux-pas to end all faux-pas' last week, Forbes gives their list of the top 5 things they'd still like to see from a Steve Jobs run Apple. Sure, they tack on an unnecessarily morbid title, but at its core it's an intriguing question: Macworld 2009 or 2010, what shiny new toys do we most want to see on the receiving end of a Jobsian "Boom!"? Forbes includes,...
Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger...
The trouble with Steve Jobs (or an anonymous iMinion thereof) sometimes mailing off blunt-force rejoinders to disgruntled Apple customers? The intertubes suddenly become awash in Jobsmail, making it impossible to sort the real from the decidedly not so. Case in point: a Gizmodo reader claims to have emailed Jobs about the possibility of maybe potentially one day considering tethering (...
Oh, Apple, you tease! It's not enough we've all heard the iPhone began life as the Safari Pad tablet? That Intel has leaked Atom-powered portable hints? That the rumors start up again every time the blogsphere even thinks you have a "Special Event" coming our way? Do you really have to go and show us your patents? Apple Insider says: Much of the 52-page filing describes methods for...