iOS Devices

BGR has the details.  As of yesterday, May 27th, AT&T is rolling out a new insurance plan for iPhones called Mobile Protect. You must enroll in the plan within 30-days of upgrading/purchasing a new iPhone. AT&T is launching this service as:

I’m not sure why we’re even mentioning this, the Street’s record is pretty poor on Apple rumors.  But, for the sake of Argument, they are saying that the Verizon iPhone is heading out of Pegatron ‘as early as November’.  

Remember, 17% of Verizon customers are supposed to move to the iPhone when it becomes available so hopefully Pegatron can be counted on to produce a good supply of the devices.

Engadget got the goods (and it sounds exactly right to us) on AppleTV, Take 3:

..the device will be based directly on the iPhone 4, meaning it will get the same internals, down to that A4 CPU and a limited amount of flash storage — 16GB to be exact — though it will be capable of full 1080p HD (!). The device is said to be quite small with a scarce amount of ports (only the power socket and video out), and has been described to some as “an iPhone without a screen.” Are you ready for the real shocker? According to our sources, the price-point for the device will be $99.

Apple is moving away from the model of local storage, and will be focusing the new ATV on cloud-based storage (not unlike Amazon’s streaming scheme). For those still interested in keeping their content close, there will be an option to utilize a Time Capsule as an external storage component, but the main course will be all about streaming

Google’s TV is thankfully forcing Apple hand here and man are we glad to hear about some movement in this category.  Engadget wasn’t sure if the 200,000 apps would be ‘coming along for the ride’ but with the GoogleTV pulling in 50,000 Android apps, it would seem pretty tempting even if the touch interface made a lot of these apps cludgy.

We’re really loving this new Apple-Google competition.  The obvious winners are consumers.

Shaw Wu is telling clients that he expects to see iTunes going to the cloud as well as Mac Pro and MacBook Air updates at WWDC next month.  We are 100% behind his iTunes going to the cloud – iTunes.com service.  In a lot of ways it is already heading there with the iTunes Store having its own web pages that auto open iTunes.app.  Seems like an unfinished migration to us.  

As far as New Mac hardware?  You know us…we are always up for some new Mac hardware…and Mac Pros and MacBook Airs are definitely due.  We just wonder if there will even be time to talk about the Macs at this year’s WWDC as even the Apple design awards are excluding Macintosh applications.

Shaw Wu isn’t terribly accurate in his predictions historically so grain-salt…also consistency is…lacking:

Knocking did knock down some doors at the App Store for apps like Fring/Ustream/Qik, etc.  But, who wants to be the one to tell him that iChat on the iPhone 4/HD is going to make his app and others obsolete?  

There is always cross platform/Android I guess.  

Via Scobelizer

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YKBStJayYc&w=700&h=550]

We know we’ve reported some of this, but the level of manic iPad excitement captured in this video filmed outside Apple’s Munich retail store has to be seen to be believed. iPad mania truly has hit the planet. More video here (and just one more from Spain after the jump).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNusM-yVpm4&w=640&h=505]

There’s a few days to go until Apple’s annual WWDC event in San Francisco, and it looks more likely than ever the company will use the event to introduce the iPhone 4HD and to reveal more of its wider product strategy — as this morning we learn that Spanish mobile network, Telefonica, has removed both the iPhone 3G and 3GS from its catalog of available models. Read on.

An update on yesterday

Something we’ve suspected all along:  It isn’t that Foxconn has an abnormally high suicide rate.  The suicides are actually, per capita, less than the average in China.

The issue here is that Foxconn is mind-bendingly big.  It has 500,000-800,000 employees overall and 300,000 alone in that plant in Shenzen that makes all of those iPads that we love so much.  

We can’t possibly imagine how many people that is.  

To put it in perspective, Foxconn is 1/5th the size of New Zealand.  The country.  

Four US states, Alaska, Wyoming, Vermont, and North Dakota are smaller than Foxconn.  That means that there are more people going to work at Foxconn than every man, woman, child and elderly person in four US states.

If you’ve ever seen a Michigan-Ohio State game, Foxconn employees could fill one of those stadiums eight times over!

OK, you get the point.  They have a lot of employees.  And the suicide rate is high in China in general. So these suicides aren’t abnormal.  In fact, they are below average.  However, since they are high profile, they are followed closely.  

Any suicide is incredibly tragic and it seems China’s rate could certainly be improved.  It’s only slightly less tragic from an American point of view that people sign up by the thousand to work 80/hours a week doing mundane jobs that often involve hazardous conditions for $130/month.  

You have to wonder how bad their alternatives are.

via DF.

In a number that seems artificially high, AT&T exec Ron Spears said that 4 out of every 10 of their iPhone purchases were coming from business users.  

Four out of 10 sales of the iPhone are made to enterprise users. When the iPhone came out, what most people heard in the first year from

Microsoft’s official twitter feed.

Apple continues to face challenges getting European publishers to reach a deal for the iBookstore here.

As it is today, the only titles available to Europe

iPads have begun arriving with customers in the UK and Europe while in Australia queues are already beginning to form outside Apple

Yesterday’s ‘Microsoft is going to be showing off Visual Studio for iPhone‘ news was taken seriously by some so I wanted to share why I think that it is absolutely impossible. 

Not even a month ago, in his anti-Flash Manifesto, Steve Jobs said:

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcopjOuwogM&w=700&h=400]

Yeah, it is most likely just the parts from this but we guess it is a good way to envision it in your hand? via mac.com.hk (what? you didn’t see the watermark?!)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbCmnRztK1Y&w=700&h=400]

I think this would fall far far outside of the “You won’t be disappointed” boundaries.  But, man it would be entertaining.

Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with tiny Global Equities Research, contends that 7 minutes of the June 7 keynote by Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been blocked off for a presentation by Microsoft to talk about Visual Studio 2010, the company

Admob published its latest device analytics today on the eve (x2) of the International iPad rollout. Something interesting is that in April, the second month of iPad usage, International usage was already at around 25%.   

Wow.  Congratulations are in order for eBay.We also know that Apple has sold nearly 100,000,000 iProducts in total, so specific numbers may be off but ratios should be more accurate.

Digitimes has a monster of a story looking at the iPhone today, including a series of tasty nuggets, at least one factual inaccuracy and some pure speculation, for example:

The story reveals Apple to have two iPhones in development, one the Gizmodo phone, the other a less updated device in case the more compelling product hit production snags.

Apple

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/1813626064?isVid=1

Not only is Valve pulling their game files out of your Documents folder, we’ve been hearing that Half Life 2 is coming tomorrow. Time to call in sick to work.   Also, while we are on Steam, here’s 75% off LucasArts adventure Pack.

Thanks JR!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN6eFGGHrXs&w=700&h=400]