iOS Devices

Apple has already posted the stream to this morning’s press conference regarding the iPhone 4 antenna issues. Besides posting the stream, Apple added a new page to their official website detailing smartphone antenna performance and how iPhone 4 compares to other phones on the market. You will see images and information used in the keynote on that new webpage. 

Apple also even posted a guided tour of their Antenna testing labs. Pretty interesting stuff that’s definitely worth checking out. 

Here’s the full show.  The Q&A has been edited out for clarity.

Also, Apple has created a special page for showing other manufacturers with a similar ‘death grip’ problems.  That finger spot you can touch on your iPhone 4 also exists on other smarphones including those from Samsung, HTC, and Blackberry.   We suspect those manufacturers will not be too pleased about the publicity.

Another interesting comment from the Q&A.  

Connie at Bloomberg (The very same with the “Bullshit story about the antenna”): “Why Sept. 30 for case limit?” Answer from Jobs: “We just are going to wait and see, maybe we’ll have a better idea. It’s just a chance to say we’ll reevaluate it in September.”

The free bumpers w/ iPhone deal lasts until September 30th.

That sounds like they are going to make an effort to change the design by October to us.  It might be subtle – something as small as a non-conductive acrylic laminant over the ‘spot’ but it seems Apple is working on something and for whatever reason, they’ve given themselves a September 30th deadline.  

Interesting!

During this morning’s iPhone 4 antenna press conference, an answer from Jobs during the Question and Answer sessions struck us hard.  When asked specifically about the death grip on Apple’s iPhones, Jobs responded: “We’ve got a strong signal here.  We have AT&T and Verizon cell sites on campus”.

It isn’t so much that Jobs said that they had a Verizon tower on their campus.  That isn’t surprising.  It is that he said it in respnse to an iPhone death grip reproduction problem.   Was this a intentional or unintentional slip on Jobs’ part?   Dunno.

Developing…

Eight out of ten enterprise technology managers say they are more likely to allow more users to switch to the Mac within their businesses, as Apple’s iPod, iPad and iPhone-driven sales explosion means Macs now account for one-in-ten PC sales in the US.

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This thing starts in an hour. We’ll be watching what happens and reporting what we hear.  We’ll be hitting Twitter for our play by play.  Stay tuned!

Image via everyone’s fav.

Yesterday, Apple announced on its MobileMe news blog that their upcoming MobileMe calendar web application can work with Microsoft’s Outlook. Users will be able to view their MobileMe calendars in Outlook as well as edit them. The process is all synced up, so any calendar changes you make will appear on the web and in Outlook, but not instantly as push updates are not supported at this time. This new feature is not only for standard Outlook users, but works for those connected to exchange server accounts, but you won’t be able to do anything if you’re connected to a proxy server.

To get the process working, you will need to download and install the free MobileMe Control Panel v1.6.1 for Windows. Additionally, Apple has created a support website with in depth instructions on how to set this up. The website also has support for other MobileMe features and is a great bookmark to keep around.  

As we wait to hear what Mr. Jobs conjures up for journalists today, have a look at how one iPhone owner was moved to song.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKIcaejkpD4&w=640&h=385]

These images compare the old and latest version of Apple

I know someone in Cupertino who needs more space!

In about 14 hours, Steve Jobs will presumably reveal what Apple’s plan is for the iPhone 4’s antena issues.  Until now, it has seemed to be a hardware problem that would need some sort of hardware fix.  However, the NYTimes says that there may yet be a software fix.

One person with direct knowledge of the phone

Apple doesn’t plan to recall the phone tomorrow, a person familar with the matter told the Wall St. Journal.  

Snap!

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple did in fact know about the antenna issues in the iPhone 4 prior to release. The issues stem from the new antenna system banded around the device. This piece of stainless steel not only is the main structural element of the phone, but it’s the outer antenna …and it looks pretty good.

This “looks pretty good” element is what kept it on the device even though Apple knew about its repercussions. It is reported that as early as a year ago, Apple engineers knew of the detrimental issues that turned into this PR nightmare. One year seems like enough time for a company like Apple to rethink and redesign something like an antenna. 

It is also stated that Steve Jobs, made the official decision to keep design over function, by keeping the nice antenna even though it would possibly create the havoc seen today. Apple did not even provide the cellular and data carriers with much testing time or many devices prior to the June 24th product launch. 

Bloomberg went on the record to state that a Senior Engineer working on the antenna at Apple made his way to Jobs and informed him of the issue. Apple completely refutes Bloomberg’s claim with the bold statement, “We challenge Bloomberg BusinessWeek to produce anything beyond rumors to back this up. It’s simply not true.

Apple is still sticking to their fences, and hopefully tomorrow we will hear the truth, and nothing but it, from Steve Jobs himself. 

The Apple vs. Google war will never end at this point, and now Google’s Android is doing a great job catching up to iOS in terms of applications. At the time of this writing, the App Store houses just over 233,000 apps. Today, Google has announced that Android has over 70,000 applications as well as over 1 billion app downloads. 

This is a huge growth for Android, as just a year ago, the amount of Android apps, was no where near iOS. Now that the 6-figure mark was crossed by Google’s Android, Apple has some serious competition crawling up their sleeves. Google announced a few weeks ago, that they are activating an average of 160,000 Android phones each day. That’s a new phone every two seconds. Compare that to Apple selling an iPad every three seconds. Apple, you need to watch you back! Especially with all your antenna issues among others. 

The live financial conference call is going on right now and you can listen in here via YouTube.

via Engadget.

Correction: Fortune Google 24/7 corrects the 100k statement by saying it actually is 70,000 apps. This does not really change the gulp of our story as it still shows Android is catching up. Nice catch, Fortune. 

Palm was acquired by HP months ago in a bidding race, but information on contenders has been shaky the last few months. Today, information has come to light that states Apple had placed a bid for Palm before HP acquired them. Apple was obviously after Palm’s intellectual property such as a bevy of patents seen in their WebOS. 

The report also claims that Apple was interested in keeping Palm alive and well by fully subsidizing them. Other details state that Research in Motion, the company behind Blackberry, held the highest bid before HP outbid everybody. 

An even more interesting note is that Google wanted to bid for Palm as they believed Apple was going for them. When no confirmation was present regarding Apple’s potential move Google dropped out of the race. This takes us back to the seemingly never-ending Apple vs. Google war.

Following the release of the 4.01/3.2.1 firmware for iPhone and iPad respectively, Apple has released the SDK to go with it. Although the update seems like nothing, and it really is nothing, developers need to update in order to run their apps on your now 4.01 iPhone or 3.2.1. iPad. So what are you waiting for? Go get it!

Apple has just released iOS 4.01 as a free software update for all iPhone users. The free update promises to fix the antenna “death-grip” issue which is supposedly related to a math formula malfunction regarding the the display of the iPhone’s service signal bars. It’s still propagating in iTunes. You can get the update right now via these links:

iPhone 4 – 4.01

iPhone 3GS – 4.01

iPhone 3G – 4.01

iPad – 3.2.1:

The iOS software update shows slightly changed signal bars with the first three being taller in size. In many places, users have noticed that their service appears to be 1-3 bars lower than before the change.