9to5 Staff

http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fthepartim-20%2F8003%2F75af17f1-8ffa-41ca-a495-dcca1c44e5a9&Operation=GetDisplayTemplate Amazon.com Widgets

Apple is dropping its price on non-DRMed music sold through the iTunes Music store. This is likely because of the threat from Amazon who is selling those same EMI tracks for 89 – 99 cents/pop in the MP3 format. Yes, we know that AAC is a better compression/encryption algorithm and is an open standard. However, not all MP3 players play AAC files (for whatever reason) like they play MP3s. Plus at 256K, the Amazon MP3s sound as good as any you will find out there.

The strange part about this is that Apple has had hundreds of price threats before from WalMart (88 cents/song), Napster (unlimited songs for $9.99/month) and many others but never changed its game plan even a little. It was always a better total experience for Apple customers and you paid a premium for that.

So why is Apple bowing to competition from Amazon now?

(to check out the store click on the icon to the right)

Because they recognize that Amazon is the first real threat to the iTunes dominance. 9to5Mac and many others have made note that Amazon’s store offers a compelling value in that the music is portable and free to move with you forever. Meaning that if you want to buy any other type of device (besides the iPod you already own), you will be screwed with AAC files that only work on a handful of MP3 players. Even moving your DRM’d music from device to device is a pain.

Is this bad news for Apple? Not at all. It means they are cognizant of the marketplace and are willing to admit when they can’t get away with the larger margins that hey were charging. Yes, competition is good for you the consumer.

Read NYTIMES

Techmeme has released their latest Leaderboard. It ranks the top 100 most influential technology blogs/websites. Obviously all things of this nature are biased in one way or another but most of our favorites sites are on there – including our VERY favorite coming in at #73.

Check it out. There is a wealth of information even if it is just to pop into your feedreader.

As one of the people who have just updated my hacked iPhone to 1.1.1 (with most of the hacked apps working properly now – we think it is a safe time), I noticed that Apple inexplicably threw us with hacked iPhones/iPods a bone. We no longer need any of the 3rd party launcher applications to get to all of our apps if we’ve exceeded the 20 that fit on the front page. Apple has built in this functionality.

You won’t notice this functionality unless you hack the iPhone and add additional applications. When the number of applications overfills the screen, you are presented with dots above the dock items. If you swipe your finger horizontally like you do when browsing pictures, you will get a new page of desktop items. Very nice Apple.

It is a system wide interface. If you go to the weather application and add more than one city, you will see these dots and be able to switch between the screen in the same way.

The ironic part is, obviously, that you don’t need this functionality unless you hack your device! For those of you who haven’t hacked your iPhone/iPod (what are you waiting for?!) you can feel assured that Apple is going to shortly offer enough applications to fill your screen and take you onto another one.

We’d say you have about 2 weeks to wait ;)

So it looks like just about everybody is able to hack their iPods now. The hackery started last week with some rogue .tif exploit jailbreaks and has progressed from online guides to a full gui crack. Even non-Erica Sadun TUAWers (man we missed stuff like "Wanna set your iPod touch free and install tons of wacky apps on it but don’t want to muck around with the Terminal" from TUAW) are getting in on the act. The application is called iJailbreak and it does all the mukking for you. If you are a Windows user, head over to TouchFree.

So, now that the hack is most definitely mainstream, we want to know what people are putting on their newly cracked iPod touches.

In fact, remember way back when Apple had the "What’s on your Powerbook?" campaign? (refresher) Well now that everybody who is anybody is hacking their iPod Touch, we thought it’d be fun to bring it back.

Flash to the guy with a tie...remember him? He was doing CRAZY stuff with Filemaker. Now fast forward fifteen(!) years. We’ve put together a business focussed iPod and are donning it the “WorkPod” because it only has “Suit and Tie” Applications. We’ve even been good worker bees and deleted YouTube. See the picture?

Here is Suit Guy’s "What’s on Your iPod":

1. MobileNotes.app
2. VNSea.app VNC Virtual Desktop Client
3. Weather.app
4. Maps.app
5. Books.app Ebook Reader
6. weDict – multiple dictionaries lookup
7. MobileMail.app for reading and writing offline email
8. RSS.app for reading offline Feeds
9. Apollo.app IM – for corporate instant messaging
10. Navizon.app -Soft GPS

Not to mention the included Apps:

1. Safari.app -Full Webbrowser
2. Calander.app – (writable hacked)
3. Contacts.app
4. Calculator.app
5. Clock.app – Alarm clock!
6. Photos.app for presenting images
7. Music.app for playing audiobooks

Not too shabby – if you have an iPhone you could certainly add more like the Voicenote.app. With a list like that, maybe we can get finance to buy one of these for the office?

What’s on your iPod?

Computerworld picked up this story in all its glory. Actually I did a full rewrite with the editors and using your insightful (and insiteful) comments think we’ve turned out a pretty solid wishlist.

Hit the link for the goods:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9042038&intsrc=hm_ts_head

To all of the people who said Apple is protecting the users by not giving them Mail on the iPod…check out what Engadget has laid on us:

<img src="http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2007/10/mail-3rd-party-apps-ipod-touch.jpg"

That is the best looking iPod I have ever seen!

As the current iPhone 1.1.1 locking proves, there is a VERY dangerous flaw in the current iPhone and iPod touch software. A malformed TIF file can be used to get root access to the device. Obviously that is good if you want to install some useful applications on your iPhone/iPod, however that is extremely bad if you are worried about someone taking over your iPhone. Ironically, this might be a good thing for those who accidentally let Apple Brick their iPhones – try to stay with us here…

Theoretically, the malformed TIF file could be used for more nefarious tasks than updating than installing useful apps or updating the modems firmware…stuff like making a 900-number dialer($$ cha – ching $$), a bot installer (iPhone Spam-bot?), a baseband modem crippler or just good old-fashioned bricking the iPhone….

Hypothetically, one of these malformed tif files could even have the same effect as the “bricker” 1.1.1 update. However, this time Apple’s Safari security will be to blame, not the users who are trying to assert their legal right to move the phone to other carriers. The only recourse Apple will legally have is to unBrick all of the iPhones that their update has caused and reset the baseband modem to factor settings.

One has to wonder if the malformed tif file vulnerability would have been discovered and applied to the iPhone had Apple not closed the Intaller.app development community out of the iPhone originally. Perhaps it is better to have these incredibly intelligent people on your side?

It looks official. From the first intrusion into the 1.1.1 Firmware, we knew this was coming.

Less than a week later, here it is. There are, of course caveats: The hack provides jailbreak, activation, and third party applications but only applies to the iPhone (no iPod Touchy for you!) and is not meant for iPhones with modified basebands. So for those of us with hacked 1.0.2 we have to wait – probably a few more days.

Of course, iPhoneSIMFree is now working as well. It looks like all is happy in iPhone hacking land…for the moment.

In other news, Apple readies version 1.1.3. How many people do you think will update straight away this time after the iBrickieness of the last “update”. Apple will need to add some pretty hefty features to make this a worthwhile update. We are thinking iChat, etc. And make it as good as Apollo.

http://www.apple.com/webapps

Bookmark it now – it doesn’t work yet but it will very soon. Apple will be unleashing this new webpage devoted to Webapps. Apple’s web team is gearing up to put the iPhone applications built with the Web 2.0 “SDK” on their new software page that will function in much the same way as the current software downloads page. In fact, it is likely that the two pages will be integrated.

Thanks to a commenter, we found a few webapps in Apple’s “recent downloads RSS feed”. However, when you click on the link the feed provides to you, you end up at a unused page at Apple…at least unused for the moment – http://www.apple.com/webapps/

This isn’t huge news as we’ve known about Web Applications since the iPhone was announced. However, it is a big deal to have a one stop shop for all of the iPhone/iPod touch applications. We expect it to be like a web 2.0 version of Installer.app on the iPhone. There also may be a full Safari version for use on Laptop/Desktops running full browsers. The functionality would work in the same way that the Quicktime movie trailers pages browser sniff and push a page based on the platform.

As content is currently being pushed into it, look for this page to pop up in the next few days…

To see what we are yapping about, click here. Search within the fields for “iPhone”. You should get a few hits but all of the links are broken. Thanks again to our eagle-eyed readers for the tip!

No, Apple hasn’t finally caved into their high end users’ demands and offered a Blu-Ray option on their portable line. Aftermarket specialist Fastmac has, however, and is offering the 50Gb Optical Disc upgrade on some of Apple’s recent laptops and consumer desktops:

– iBook G4
– iMac G5
– iMac Intel
– MacBook Pro (17-inch)
– Mac mini
– PowerBook G3 Pismo
– PowerBook G4 Titanium (667 Mhz or higher)
– PowerBook G4 Aluminum

The $1000 pricetag is hefty for the average Joe, but if you are in the making-movie biz and need to do work on a laptop, this is almost a no-brainer.

We are not sure we’d want to drop a G on Blu-Ray for an iBook but we can’t wait to see the 17 inch HD screen enabled playback version of the device!

From the company’s press release:

http://fastmac.com/press/pr_42.php

Fastmac Announces 2X Blu-Ray Optical Drive Upgrade for Laptops; Low Profile Slot Loading Drive Provides 50 GB of Storage on 1 Disk for Apple PowerBook, iBook, MacBook Pro, iMac & Mac mini; New Drive Cuts Burn Times in Half

October 05, 2007
Salinas, CA – Fastmac today announced the first & only 2X Blu-Ray optical drive upgrade for Apple’s PowerBook, iBook & MacBook Pro computers. The new slimline, slot loading drive uses the fastest & most compatible Blu-ray mechanism available to provide up to 50 GB of storage on 1 disk, without sacrificing compatibility with standard DVD & CD recordable media. Fastmac’s Blu-Ray optical drive upgrade is scheduled to ship within 30 days and is available for pre-order from www.fastmac.com for a special introductory price of $999.95. Each drive carries a 1 year warranty and a 30 day money back guarantee .

Fastmac’s new Blu-ray slot loading drive gives photographers, videographers & musicians the ability to save anything, anywhere- now twice as fast. System and database administrators can archive and retrieve large amounts of data on 1 convenient disk. And consumers can now watch today’s latest HD content in true high definition with surround sound anytime & anywhere they happen to be. Blu-ray is the next generation of storage technology & entertainment and it’s available today, only from Fastmac.

Fastmac’s new Blu-Ray slot loading drive has been tested and certified compatible with Adobe’s Premiere Pro CS3 video production software that includes Adobe Encore CS3 and is part of the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium Collection. Adobe Encore CS3 integrates with Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Premiere to provide a rich set of creative tools for the production and output of full-featured, menu-driven DVD and Blu-Ray Discs. It is the only video production and editing software available for the Mac OS that supports built-in Blu-Ray Disc authoring for playback on stand-alone Blu-Ray DVD players & the Sony PlayStation 3.
About Blu-ray
Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disk (BD), is the name of a next generation optical disk format developed by a consortium of electronics and computer manufacturers including Apple, Dell, HP, JVC, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony & TDK. The format was designed to enable the recording and playback of High Definition (HD) content and to allow storage of large amounts (up to 200 Gb) of data. While current optical drive technologies rely on a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue-violet laser (hence the name, Blu-ray). The blue-violet laser has a 38% shorter wavelength (405nm) than a red laser (650nm), allowing the drive’s optical pickup unit to focus more precisely than ever before. Data can then be packed more densely on standard sized disks. Despite using a new type of laser, Blu-ray drives are compatible with standard DVD and CD media through the use of a combined red, blue & violet optical reader and writer.

In addition to broad support from the electronics, music, computer & video game industry, 6 out of 8 of the major Hollywood film studios support Blu-ray media and 5 out of those 6 (Disney, Fox, Lionsgate, MGM & Sony) have decided to release their movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format. With its forward and backward integration with new and old media, Blu-ray is destined to become the successor to today’s DVD format.
Specifications
Fastmac’s slimline Blu-ray slot loading optical drive supports reading, writing and re-writing to single and dual layer Blu-ray media at up to 2x speeds. The drive is also compatible with standard DVD and CD media and can write to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 8x speed in single layer and up to 2.4x speed in dual/ double layer mode. It can rewrite to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 4x speeds. The drive also supports DVD-RAM reading and writing at up to 5x speeds and standard CD-R and CD-RW burning at 8x speeds.
Compatibility
Fastmac’s slimline Blu-ray slot loading optical drive upgrade requires Mac OS X 10.2.8 or higher and is compatible with the following Apple computers:

iBook G4
iMac G5
iMac Intel
MacBook Pro (17-inch)
Mac mini
PowerBook G3 Pismo
PowerBook G4 Titanium (667 Mhz or higher)
PowerBook G4 Aluminum

Blu-ray burning requires 3rd-party software such as Adobe Premiere CS3 or Roxio’s Toast 8 Titanium, which enables Blu-ray disk support in the Mac OS Finder. Native support for Blu-ray burning within iLife & iTunes is expected in the future via Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, but cannot be guaranteed at this time.
About Fastmac
Fastmac is an OEM designer and manufacturer of innovative upgrade products that add value and extend usability of Apple computers & iPods. Fastmac’s award-winning product line-up includes drive, CPU, LCD and battery upgrades, including the world’s longest lasting PowerBook & iPod batteries & the only replacement batteries for Apple’s latest MacBook portables. More information about Fastmac is available via http://www.fastmac.com/company
Press Contact
Michael Lowdermilk (Mlowdermilk at Fastmac dot com)
Business Development Manager
Fastmac Performance Upgrades
1172 S Main St., Suite 243
Salinas, CA 93901-2204
Tel: 408-850-6233

Billed as he “World’s Largest Index of Playable Internet Music”, seeqpod has just unveiled an extremely user friendly interface for iPodTouch/iPhone users. The application will make Apple happy that it is using its “Web 2.0 SDK” but upset that it is using it for (what could be easily considered) piracy. Another negative for Cupertino is that it will also be competition for the iTunes Music Store in that when used from a desktop, users can download mp3s directly to your computer. The iTunes mobile store could also lose some impulse buyers..

The application goes out and searches the Internet for mp3s and then indexes them using the metadata in the files. A quick check of our favorite artists netted a wealth of good content. Video searches are also in the wings for seeqpod.

Some screenshots and additional info after the jump.

Obviously, there are some significant legal issues at play here. Seeqpod doesn’t host any of these files so they are probably in the clear for now. However, content companies that wish to find locations of their content pirated on the net can also use seeqpod’s interface to find people illegally sharing their wares. Only time will tell how long this service will last. Sometimes popularity can be a double-edged sword.

More on Seeqpod:

About Us

Now, more than ever, it is important to be able to find, discover, and manage the wealth of information available on the Internet.

SeeqPod is a totally different breed of search and discovery technology provider, because we believe that one day, everything will be ‘playable’. Hence we have embraced the term ‘Playable Search’.

The team at SeeqPod is passionate about technology as well as music. So first we decided to apply some pretty sophisticated technology to music and video search so that anyone, anywhere can mine the deepest crevices and corners of the Web for media that is publicly available, yet not always easy to find.

Currently in Beta, SeeqPod’s first consumer site empowers users by allowing them to search and discover music and video all over the Web. Our intelligent software robots work with targeted crawling systems to auto-submit content to the site. This, combined with user submissions, results in a large and rich search and discovery index. This process can be viewed in real-time via the PodCrawler.

Born out of UC’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), ‘Playable Search’ is made possible through biometric search & discovery technology, a method that mimics the way the human mind might use context to make and recall associations, an approach which relies on context by finding the hidden relationships in digital content and data.

SeeqPod has provided public access to its technologies through SeeqPod Media Search, Recommendation and Discovery Services (SMSRDS), a REST-based API. SMSRDS enables third-party developers to easily integrate SeeqPod technologies into social networks, ad networks, and other consumer applications, and improve their user’s experience in new and novel ways.

http://www.tuaw.com/2007/10/05/liveblogging-the-big-iphone-1-1-1-hack/

How has Apple turned a substandard ecommerce outage into an organic marketing blitz?

So the Apple Store went down again briefly last night. It goes down all of the time. Probably about once or twice a week. Sometimes for as much as a few hours. Much more than the Dell site or HP’s site. Or at least it certainly seems that way because just about every Mac and gadget blog announces each outage.

When Dell’s online store goes down even for ten minutes, the losses to the company are counted in the millions of dollars. Sure, most of those customers will come back when the store comes back online. However, more than just a few go somewhere else. For this reason big ecommerce companies strive to never have even a second of outage. They rightfully spend hundreds of thousands of dollars squeezing every bitof uptime out of their ecommerce system.

Not Apple. The outtages continue unabated. The Apple store is famously built on Apple’s WebObjects Server platform so the outtages should certainly be a huge embarrassment to the company. Modern ecommerce systems are able to update products and inventory on the fly. Price changes across the board? Easy. There should be no downtime for any of these activities. Redesigns? Push out some new CSS files – transparent. Why can’t Apple get their systems working properly?

Because its all part of the plan?!

Leave it to Apple to turn an embarrassment into a positive for the company. Remember those hundreds of blogs that were announcing "the store is down, are upgrades are on the way?!" That is a lot of free advertising. This is obviously spurred on because at every big Apple announcement, the store goes down. The bloggers are right, usually when the store goes out, there is something new – whether it be a price change, a new configuration or some totally new product or service.

So was it the chicken or the egg?

Did Apple plan this? We can’t remember that far back! At some point in the store’s infancy they probably did need to take it down to do upgrades. As bloggers caught on to this, Apple probably realized they were recieving the attention of a huge press blitz every time they took down the site – an advantage that far outweighed the loss in sales. To reinforce this behavior, they probably take the store down on small updates, even if their ecommerce engine allows them to do this on the fly. Where else are Mac shoppers going to go?

Of course, we could be giving Apple too much credit. The iTunes store is known throughout the music industry to have a severely archaic backend system that needs huge amounts of human intervention to operate seamlessly the way it does on the customer side. Perhaps Apple’s backend is really just that bad. Also don’t forget Apple’s customer experience priorities. After every upgrade there is probably hours of Quality Assurance going on to make sure things like references to iPhone Extremes aren’t left anywhere or Bluetooth icons aren’t left in the iPod screenshots.

Somehow I don’t think so.

digg_url = ‘http://9to5mac.com/apple-store-outages-all-part-of-the-plan-2345345’;

While Apple’s official line is that the only 3rd party iPhone development will be on the EDGE-crippled Web 2.0 "SDK", behind the scenes, there is much more going on. Apple has been furiously working with their partners on games and applications for the iPhone/iPod and the standardized Human-Interface Controls that will go along with them. For instance, EA is currently porting their iPod lineup to the OSX iPod/iPhone platform to be sold along side the classic iPod OS versions. Other big developers with strict confidentiality agreements are also on board.

Apple is specifically looking to replicate the model of TMobile’s successful SideKick application development and distribution platform (although obviously not in the Sidekick’s Java). Apple has even brought in some of Danger’s (SidekickOS creators) application development team to help with the architecture. A public SDK announcement will likely be made in the coming months which could possibly be included with Xcode. More likely, the SDK will be given only to high level developers with established close ties to Apple.

In the Tmobile model, developers (who can prove they are developers by submitting a working application) get a key that opens their Sidekicks for further testing. Once they feel they have a stable working application, they submit it to the Danger/Tmobile team for compatibility testing. If Tmobile/Danger feel the application is stable, won’t interfere with other applications and would be of interest to their customers, they make it available for download and install through an integrated payment system. The cost of application is added to the customer’s monthly bill. The Danger team actively works with the developers to insure compatibility and stability in applications through SidekickOS updates.

Whether Apple would make the applications available on Mobile iTunes via an over the air upgrade compared to their current model of installing from a host computer’s iTunes is uncertain. The direction they are heading is certainly towards making the iPhone a solitary device so one would expect mobile iTunes to bear some of this load. Also, the applications would be billed through the user’s iTunes account rather than the phone bill in the Tmobile model.

The rationale for Apple’s recent complete and total lockdown of the iPhone is that these games would be easy to port to the unlocked versions of the iPhone. Developers could easily sell the applications on their own without Apple taking its cut (which is guesstimated to be about 2/3rds of the take). These pirated applications could also be distributed via torrent sites like music and movies are currently.

Apple, learning about the devastating effects of pirating from its first hand experience in the music and film industry and their own OS/applications, does not want this to happen. Therefore, one shouldn’t expect Apple to release a way for non-developers to freely install applications on their iPods and iPhones.

These moves will likely further sever the iPhone OS fork and subsequently make the unlocked iPhones more valuable than ever as a hacker device.

We’ve loved The Onion since well, forever…however now they are treading on our turf. It is good to see that fanboyism and the hilarity that befits it has hit the mainstream. Go Onion, forbearer to all which is to become popular culture.

Oh they are also cool because they started at UWM and they use Drupal :D

Nobody sent us a flyer and we aren’t getting paid to post this (though we’ve provided an easy link to our Amazon Store), but we just got ourselves a crush on the Mitsubishi PK20 LED DLP Pocket Projector. Why? Several reasons:

1. It is LED powered so very low power consumption compared to bulbs
2. Power Consumption is so low that it includes a laptop-sized battery that lasts for up to 2 hours. – a normal projector would require 2 car batteries for that
3. LEDs are cool – temperature cool – so they don’t heat up your space
4. SD card slot reader
5. SO SO Small and getting smaller. The design of the device fitting on the palm of a woman’s hand below says it all. As the Tech gets better we could see much smaller devices and even *gasp* built into laptops
6. A nice, simple remote for easy access

All of this efficiency of course comes at a price. The device can be found under $500 at certain shops which is a bit higher than the equivelent powered bulb projectors. Of course with LED projectors, the projection isn’t nearly as bright – so you will need to dim the lights. Also, this device being ultra basic, it doesn’t have the finer controls that you need for focus and resizing. Also it is native 800×600 with the ability to do an interpolated 1024×768.

Still though, with Component AV in and a tripod adapter and at such a low price, we can’t help but think this would be a great addition to our gadget gear.

-Even with an iPhone component cable (yeah we tried! We can’t stop talking about it)

From an Owner/Amazon Reviewer:

Pros:

• -no need to replace lamp (ever)…this feature is worth the price of the projector alone
• amazingly small
  – 7’x5′ (or smaller) image
  – simple menus
• tripod mountable makes it very portable & easy to adjust size & position
• excellent for DVD movies
  – project image on walls (don’t need the hassle of having a screen)
• very silent
• auto shut-off if no signal detected

Cons:

• can’t adjust size of the picture to fit screen, except by moving unit
• Lights overwhelm the picture
  – no standby mode…will not turn on automatically if signal detected
• pain to fit to a screen

Wishlist:

• more powerful/multiple LED
• more adjustments

It looks like Tom at iPhoneBugList.com has unearthed a little nugget of gold. It could be a HTML programming error but we, of course, like to speculate that there is more. If you look at the source code of Apple’s iPhone Feedback Page, you’ll notice the term iPhone Extreme.

While "Extreme" is a tired name in the tech marketing world, Apple still has an affinity for it. You have to look no further than Apple’s Airport line to find the name denoting the latest and greatest iteration of the product.

It is probably just a coding error but at some point in the near future, there will be an upgraded iPhone.

So what would this iPhone have? Yep 16Gb Ram, 3G and maybe GPS?  Finally. All signs point to late-February to early May. Kinda early to be telling the HTML coders if you ask us.

This is the indie HD video camera to have and they are finally getting into hands of the customers. The native resolution on these things is also sick. Check it:
http://download.camalot.org/RED.mov

for more HD camera porn, head over to http://www.red.com/

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a40BQ8ThsTc]

– No comment via

OK, we’ve been pretty hard on the 1.1.1 iPhone upgrade, the people who’ve happily upgraded, and Apple for having done it. For people not interested in the additional applications and who bought into a two year AT&T contract, it probably makes perfect sense. We even recommend the upgrade to a colleague that would never find any use in the additional apps – they actually didn’t even use email application either. That is cool. To each their own.

If you are an American who was done with their contract or willing to go to AT&T for a 2 year commitment, then the iPhone lockage doesn’t really affect you and you probably don’t see the situation the same as the rest of the world. For you, the decision is easy. You don’t need to put it on another carrier and you don’t need any additional functionality than what Apple says you need. What is all of the whining about?!?!

The reason we are making such a stink is that the iPhone is such a cool phone, such an amazing piece of technology that it deserves to be set free. We are not saying that we don’t accept the consequences for the actions of taking to another carrier that won’t charge us $1000/month to use it overseas. Or what about the people who live outside of AT&T’s coverage area? We are simply saying that Apple is making some seriously questionable moves here. Is this a sign of things to come?

We know that Apple is really not pulling all of the strings. They’ve made some unholy alliances, however, that keep punishing their customers more and more. Is Apple really trying to smooth the experience of owning a mobile phone by choosing only AT&T? No. They chose Tmobile in Germany – why not in the US? The experience really wasn’t that great getting a phone through iTunes anyway – it was nice to not have to deal witha human. The reason they chose AT&T was because they are getting a royalty on the iPhone for exclusivity. Is this deserved? That is a debate to have at some other point – it certainly wasn’t just for the visual voicemail.

It isn’t just the telecoms with Apple recently. Apple seems to be playing more and more the role of RIAA enforcement agent than ever before. Rather than build a feature into iTunes that takes any of your music and makes a free ringtone out of it, they force their customers to pay AGAIN to shorten the music and make it a ring tone. As many people have said, this is absurd and is clearly putting the record labels interests over their customers.

We aren’t privy to behind the scenes negotiations. Perhaps Apple is getting bullied into these deals by the record companies and telecoms. Or maybe the bean counters are beating the consumer advocates in Cupertino. No one knows for sure.

Movies and videos on iTunes have been stalled for awhile. Perhaps the digital content providers are really playing hardball with Apple. Maybe as part of that deal, Apple will scour your hard drive and look for what the movie companies consider illegal content and delete it off of your Mac when you enable the movie rental service on iTunes. Is this any worse than totally destroying an iPhone that has a legal SIM card in it from another carrier? No.

We just don’t want to see that day.