iOS Devices

Multiple sources have provided MacDailyNews with an internal AT&T memo that highlights the company‘s recent milestones and successes:

On this year’s launch day, iPhone sales exceeded sales recorded on 2008’s iPhone launch day, Black Friday 2008 and Dec. 26, 2008 — all heavy-volume sales days. In fact, this year we surpassed 2008’s launch day sales at about noon Central time, and sustained our previous peak hour record, also set in 2008, for 11 straight hours.

9to5mac’s Take: Awesome

Full story

Nice work by Crispen Porter Bogusky Bradley and Montgomery. They are in full backtracking mode now so this might dissapear from Youtube.

Perhaps she isn’t a fan of the font rendering on IE?  Or maybe standards compliance?

Also when trying to find this youtube (they’ve been pulling them), we found this gem:

Stranger things have happened.  Have a gander at this somewhat hilarious patent illustration filed by Apple:

Abstract: Systems and methods for providing real-time feedback to karaoke users are provided. The systems and methods for providing users with real-time feedback while they are singing karaoke generally relate to receiving the user’s vocals, determining whether the user is singing on key/pitch and providing real-time feedback to the user while the karaoke song is being sung. The feedback will be positive feedback if user is on key/pitch and it will be negative feedback if user is off key/pitch. For example, the feedback signal if the user is singing too low can be an exaggerated low signal of the user’s own voice. This will encourage the user to sing at a higher pitch.

We actually really like this idea, even if it has little chance of making it to a final product.  It might be better on the AppleTV platform if Apple is still interested in that hobby.

Holy Star Trek!…this Arabic<–>English translator app seems to work eerily well. Will it soon be the universal language translator we’ve all only seen being wielded by the Captain Kirks of the world?  We’re not sure, but this type of technology certainly could help us out on out our next trip to France.  When can we have?

There is plenty of upside to Apple’s choice not to change the design of the iPhone3GS from the iPhone 3G.  All docks and accessories work between models, you know exactly where all of the buttons are on the device and "it ain’t broke", right? 

Well, there is also a downside.  Those knockoff-makers have lots of time to perfect your look and feel.  Cult of Mac looked at popular Chinese iClones like the A88 or SciPhone i68 and found them amazingly similar…on the outside.

Voice Control and Copy/Paste(below) debuted today.

Thanks Luke

Skype 1.1 for iPhone was released (iTunes link) today.  New features include: 

– Send text (SMS) messages using Skype credit.
– Voicemail support.
– Support for the following languages:
English, German, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Portuguese, Spanish, Norwegian, Russian, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Italian, French, Polish and Japanese.
– Improved dialing help when calling phones.

Skype has taken the iPhone platform by storm.  Skype had passed the million mark within a few days of its launch on March 31st.  Then on April 8th, it passed 2 million.  In May it passed 4 million and is believed to be on at least one out of every 10 iPhones and iPod touches.

This is the first feature update since launch, though push notifications is what we were really hoping for. 

No word yet on what build 7C97D fixes (or breaks). We’re hoping not to lose our tether.

Update: Baseband update to 05.08.01 (so if you want to do a SIM unlock in the future, you might want to wait).  Also tether and MMS working (mms enabled by default but still issues with AT&T).  Startup/Shutdown times dramatically improved, though some people are reporting issues with iTunes playback.  Some screenshots also posted to the comments below.

iPhone SDK 3.1 beta

This is a pre-release version of iPhone SDK 3.1 beta to support development of applications for iPhone OS 3.1 beta. Please review the Read Me before installing this beta software release.

Following up on their report from last week that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was seen returning to work at Apple, CNBC is reporting that this week Steve Jobs is returning to work at Apple.  Bloomberg was the original source of the officiality.

http://plus.cnbc.com/rssvideosearch/action/player/id/1167464255/code/cnbcplayershare

This would certainly be big news for Canadians if someone isn’t getting their lines crossed. The Toronto Star Business Section is reporting that Bell and Telus, the "other two" national carriers are building out HSDPA networks so that they can carry GSM-class devices like the iPhone.  Rogers, the sole Canadian iPhone carrier and GSM provider currently enjoys a monopoly on the device in Canada.

Sources say the two former phone monopolies are set to roll out a joint $1 billion upgrade of their wireless networks as early as this fall, months ahead of schedule, that will allow them to support a range of GSM-based devices including Apple Inc.’s iconic iPhone, which so far is only available in Canada through rival Rogers Communications Inc.

Details are scarce, but the buzz among industry insiders is that both Bell and Telus have negotiated deals with Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple, although one source suggested the price being paid "is going to hurt".

The networks have already planned a GSM push for the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010 and had originally expected to have rollouts going by then.  Moving the rollout dates up by a year would be a significant achievement.

In the US, Verizon has no announced plans to do any kind of HSPA rollout, instead opting to wait until LTE equipment is available in 2011.  Sprint is currently rolling out 4G WiMAX networks in various US cities, but nothing compatible with current iPhone equipment.

According to Reuters, Apple and many other phone companies have agreed to use the micro-USB standard for phone chargers in the EU.  

Top mobile telephone suppliers have agreed to back an EU-wide harmonization of phone chargers, the European Commission said on Monday, hailing the pact as good news for consumers and the environment.

"People will not have to throw away their charger whenever they buy a new phone," said EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, estimating that unwanted phone accessories accounted for thousands of tons of waste in Europe each year.

The other companies named by Reuters include:

Motorola, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG, NEC, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, Samsung and Texas Instruments.

Technically, the iPhone is currently (har!) charged and synced by USB so making an adapter that works for micro USB is just the changing the shape of the connector.  A free adapter could also be included with the iPhone to clear the requirements.

Reuters (via MacRumors) re-ignites the old PSPhone rumors today with a report that indeed Sony is looking into building an iPhone competitor.

Sony Corp is considering developing a cellphone-game gear hybrid in a bid to better compete with Apple Inc’s highly popular iPod and iPhone, the Nikkei business daily said on Saturday.  Sony plans to set up a project team as early as July to develop a new product that combines functions of its portable game player and Sony Ericsson’s mobile phones, the Nikkei said.

Sony has been rumored to be developing an iPhone competitor for years and frankly, if they don’t have something already in development, they’ve really really missed the boat. 

They already have Skype running on the PSP.  All they really need is a 3G radio built into the PSP and they are done.  Are they smart enough to know this?

 These guys came out pretty hard in favor of the Pre…what gives?

http://www.hulu.com/embed/S1RQlR3E3nxuAbUcVwq_lw/151/203

via Giz.

Sorry for those outside the US, Hulu is only US for now. Out-of-towners can watch here.  And jeez guys, it’s the weekend, let’s not let a little joke get out of hand.

This is pretty incredible…IF true.

iPhone 3GS user KhenaKara accidentally dropped his iPhone 3GS into a pool while video recording and amazingly it kept recording.

Since he was recording you can watch the whole experience in the video below. Days after the event the phone still works fine.

It seems Apple may have taken some steps to make the device more watertight. A friend dropped my iPhone 2G in a puddle and it stopped functioning immediately.

Also, the mic kept working as well.  Even the autofocus and the light adjustments were working at the bottom of the pool.  You know what they say…"Don’t try this at home".  Drop happens about half way through the clip….

iClarified via Mike Elgan

Snow Leopard Beta Testers were greeted with a surprise Friday night.  Instead of having to burn a dual layer DVD and install the newest Snow Leopard build manually, Apple delivered the newest release via a 700MB Software Update. 

We got to playing around with Dock Exposé and found it to be pretty much as advertised (below).

• Activate Dock Exposé by clicking and holding on a running application’s Dock icon
• Click any other running application to switch to that application’s Exposé.
• Preview the window in Exposé by selecting it with the mouse or hitting spacebar.  There is a nice blow up transition between windows.
• When you go into Exposé mode you can click on the different apps to see the windows of that app

Dock Exposé isn’t a going to change the world, but it is certainly a nice addition that can speed up worflows.

As for other stuff, Safari and other GUI elements feel … snappier™.

According to French blog Nowhere Else, a white iPhone 3GS, while under a lot of CPU load, left faded brown streaks on the back plastic cover.  According to the site, the user said:

I did the test several apps warning radars in the car when I was a passenger, the apps using the GPS chip as well as 3G, after a while my iPhone was very hot but not burning hot.

more picts below

The user apparently called Apple customer service who wanted the iPhone to do some "analysis".

Via Engadget

Did Apple used the feared "kill switch" for the first time on the "Hottest Girls" application?  We have it on authority (we didn’t download the app ourselves – swear!) that when you try to open the app, it now says:

It just shows black screen saying: "This version no longer works. You should delete this version." I downloaded it just to see if it’s true they added nudity and now I got an app doing nothing. Does Apple do refunds??

Apple hasn’t actually killed an app before as far as we recall.  Even the Netshare.app that allows you to tether to AT&T works long after it was removed from the App Store.

Steve Jobs told the Wall St. Journal:

Mr. Jobs confirmed such a capability exists, but argued that Apple needs it in case it inadvertently allows a malicious program — one that stole users’ personal data, for example — to be distributed to iPhones through the App Store. "Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull," he says.

Not sure what to say to this one … because yes AT&T is the worst carrier on earth.  This post would have been up 5 hours ago if that weren’t true.  Sprint is hitting Facebook Social advertising network. Via

Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr told Macworld:

Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content. The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.

Oh well, as Macenstein said: Now you’ll only be able to go to the 10 billion different porn "web apps".

The iPhone Dev team today released the news that the new iPhone 3GS hardware would be jailbroken and SIM-unlockable at some point in the future.  It seems that the 3GS uses a lot of the same locking technologies that previous iPhones used.  The cat and mouse game continues.

While the "official" jailbreak for the 3GS is’t quite ready, here’s a little something to whet your whistle. Game emulators for GBA and PSX are running as close to native as you’ve ever seen on a Phone…(via)

Final Fantasy VII for the Playstation runs perfectly -Giz