iOS Devices

Leaks isn’t the proper word at this point…Torrents!  Guangdong, China-based Luna Commerce is selling the back of the iPhone 3rd Gen.  If you order now, you can probably get it before the front arrives.

Oh, and if that Apple logo is supposed to light up, it’s going to have to go through some pretty heavy black plastic.

The Financial Times today said that Apple would be dropping the price of its entry level iPhone.

Apple plans to introduce a cheaper version of its popular iPhone as soon as Monday, in a move that could dramatically increase the company’s share of the market for web-surfing devices, people familiar with the initiative said on Thursday.

This is is probably an expansion of the 4GB iPhone rumor we heard last week. 

Morgan Stanley analyst Kathryn Huberty said that a $100 cut could double demand for the iPhone.

We just got this TXT from Ma Bell.  WTH?

It looks like AT&T is getting a little jealous of  Carphone Warehouse’s new iPhone inventory leakage.  TUAW is reporting that a user caught a glimpse of a new iPhone name in their support website, since updated.  The screenshot is below.

TUAW has a rocky record on this stuff and it could very easily be faked, but they’ve got their Digg button on so they’re taking it to the bank.

It looks like Palm is laying up a nice juicy volley for Apple to spike should it desire to.  The iTunesSync they use to sync a Pre to a user’s iPhone library could easily be blocked by Apple in a software update. You see, while the Palm identifies itself as an Apple iPod in Media Sync mode, it is only through one interface. 

The root USB node (IOUSBDevice) still identifies the device as a Palm Pre.  It wouldn’t be hard for Apple to simply look for this in iTunes and disable syncing in a device with this footprint.  Then again, it wouldn’t be hard for Palm to update the root USB node information negating such a hack block.  Cat and mouse as they say.

What will Apple’s next move be?   

Mossberg is at it again…Not only does he review the Pre – which he likes – he seems to confirm a few iPhone rumors. 

"Whether the Pre is better than the iPhone depends on your personal preferences, though I’d note that the new iPhone to be unveiled next week will have lots of added features that could alter those calculations."

He also mentions that it is "likely available within a month" and  "likely" lack a physical keyboard.

http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/atd/microPlayer.swf

Mossberg usually has a couple Apple iPhone review units before anyone else and has very good relations with Apple so his words are often looked at as "scripture".

Engadget does a great review of the Pre and didn’t seem to have the same keyboard gripes as BGR. In fact, they thought it was pretty revolutionary.

There’s no question that Palm has built this phone on the foundations laid by numerous devices before it — most obviously the iPhone — but the Pre clearly carves out its own path as well. Some of the ideas and concepts at play in webOS are truly revolutionary for the mobile space, breaking down lots of the walls that separate the experience of using a dedicated PC versus using a handheld device. One feeling that we were constantly stuck by while testing the phone was a kind of revelatory, ‘Hey, this actually feels how a computer feels.’ It was an experience not completely unlike our first encounter with the iPhone — that little light that goes on that tells you that things can really be different than how they’ve been before. We also felt that same thing the first time we picked up a Treo, so it’s fitting that the Pre should inspire a similar response.

Where the Pre really shined was processor intensive tasks like video, browser rendering and doing background apps. The Pre has a significantly faster ARM Cortex Processor than the current iPhone’s ARM 11 based system.

http://www.viddler.com/simple/8d7d4979/

It looks like this might just be the best phone on the market…at least for 2 days.

Apple dropping $1 Billion over 10 years on the Tar Heel State…

The rumors have been swirling for weeks, but as per the Governor’s words, it is official.  Gov. Beverly Perdue signed the incentives bill targeting Apple into law today.

"North Carolina continues to be a prime location for growing and expanding global technology companies," Perdue said in a news release. "We welcome Apple to North Carolina and look forward to working with the company as it begins providing a significant economic boost to local communities and the state."

The data center will only employ 50+ people full-time as the billion-dollar investment is made over nine years and includes mostly non-wage costs.

The tax break could be worth about $46 million in the next decade, according to a memo by legislative fiscal staffers. Apple could, however, save more than $300 million on its corporate taxes if the server farm is in place for 30 years, based on the memo.

Google Inc. opened a similar data center last year near Lenoir in the western North Carolina foothills. In 2007, state and local governments offered Google an incentives package worth up to $260 million over 30 years, one of the largest in state history, to land the $600 million data complex.

While some of this stuff was outlined at the release of iPhone OS 3, Businessweek conjures up some other possibilities for App sharing:

One example of P2P connectivity will be available in the new iPhone 3.0 software, due this summer. Users will be able to play multiplayer games with one another using Bluetooth connectivity, rather than needing to be on a carrier’s network. A player’s phone will automatically detect nearby iPhones and iPod touches that run the same app and send them an invitation to join the game. Initially, the feature will work only when both parties already have a particular app. "Now you can sell copies of your app to two players instead of one," says Dave Howell, a former Apple engineer who now runs peer-to-peer file-sharing apps maker Avatron Software. In the future, a player may be able to invite another to a game when the second person does not yet own a particular app. Such invitations could trigger additional purchases.

Recommending apps to friends and getting the 5%-ish cut sounds like a great idea to us.  There is nothing technically blocking something like this, and throwing a little change in my iTunes account for a recommendation sale sounds good all the way around.

Sony yesterday released its answer to the iPod touch, the much-anticipated PSP Go.  It differs from the original PSP because it has a slide out controller and instead of needing cartridges, you can now download content and games over the Internet. While the "content+games over the Internet" isn’t such a new thing, they do have some impressive titles and it looks like the video hardware has been amped up a bit. We’ll likely see the future of the iPod/iPhone platform next week. It appears that Apple is focusing on apps for this years WWDC.

http://www.cnet.com/av/video/flv/universalPlayer/universalSmall.swf

You know the drill: Blurry, shady, doubtful.  (closeups below) via Gizmodo.

Apple has concluded its large-scale push notification developer testing. In a final notification sent to testers (below), Apple let AP News users know that they’d no longer be receiving notifications…until 3.0 was official at least.

Forbes doesn’t think we’ll see an Apple-branded processor in the upcoming iPhone.  It is just "too soon" according to a variety of analysts they spoke with on the matter.

..turning that design into a custom design typically takes hundreds of millions of dollars and two years worth of work, says Forward Concepts President Will Strauss. Other analysts figure it could take another five to nine months for any product developed by Apple’s team to be ready.

What’s Apple’s next move?  We’re in full agreement with…

Instead, mobile industry analysts say Apple will most likely turn to a faster version of the application processor it now buys from Samsung if it opts for a speedier processor for the iPhone.

Such a shift could speed up the thousands of third-party applications already distributed for the iPhone via Apple’s App Store, some of which tax the iPhone’s current processor. It would also better position the iPhone to compete against the Palm Pre, which will go on sale June 6 and boasts Texas Instrument’s OMAP3430 mobile processor.

We’ve detailed, on a number of occasions, the ARM Cortex A8-based Samsung S5PC100 which is Samsung’s answer to the TI OMAP3430 Processor, the brains of the Palm Pre.  This would enable the iPhone to leapfrog the Pre’s computing power.

From the Toys section:

Amazon.com offers the Pure Digital Flip Video Ultra F230w Camcorder in White for $49.99. With free shipping, that’s $10 under our last mention and the lowest total price we’ve seen. (Our last mention included a free $20 Shutterfly reward card.) This VGA-quality camcorder holds up to 30 minutes of video on its 1GB of onboard memory. It offers USB connectivity and direct uploading to YouTube and AOL via the included software.

T-Bone, wherever you are...we want to believe.  We really would love to see a prosumer lense on an iPhone…even though we wouldn’t even consider betting on it.  Another big-lensed iPhone below.  Another one we’d snap up in a heartbeat.

We’re starting to think there might be someone out there who wants us to believe that there is a pretty cheap iPhone in the pipe.  BGR says a 4GB iPhone (which we first heard about not 30 minutes ago) will run Canadian customers CA$99 plus some outrageous Fido-Rogers plan for like 3 years.  All kidding aside – they still want you to sign up for a 3 year plan?!?!

Notice also that the Video Calling service is called iChat and, at least the 4GB model, is only a 2 megapixel camera.  If there is video chat, that means it must have a front mounted camera or some weird miror thing.  That is if BGR’s source is to be believed.

Engadget’s sources say that new iPhones will come in just about every size imaginable.

…we’re hearing from a trusted source that new iPhones in 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB capacities just garnered approval by the PCS Type Review Certification Board, the standards body responsible for certificating handsets for use with some carriers (AT&T, for instance)

Wow.  If so, that 4GB model is going to have a low starting price point.  That might make the Androids and Pres a harder sell.

We’ve known about iTunes 8.2 (actually if you had the 8.2 pre-release, you aren’t even prompted for an update) for some time.  Quicktime 7.6.2 rounds out the update. yada..

From the Toys Section:

The iTunes App Store offers Lonely Planet’s San Francisco City Guide for free. Particularly handy if you’re going to be attending the upcoming WWDC, this app is $16 off and the best deal we’ve seen for a guide to San Francisco.

Who’s got your back?

As reported around the web today, Best Buy is quickly running out of iPhones.  This is the time of year when you really don’t want to break/lose your iPhone.  From now until iPhone 2009’s release, you could be SOL.  At the moment AT&T and Apple still have them in stock…but for how long?