The Wall Street Journal is postulating on a behind the scenes Apple – Adobe skirmish about putting Flash in the iPhone.  I think the argument can be summed up with a sentence:

Who will control video on the mobile web?

Need evidence?  If Apple were planning on releasing Flash on the iPhone, why would Youtube be converting their library to H.264?  Yes, the Quicktime quality is better – but not that much better than Flash on a 480×320 inch screen.  What is more important is that every Youtube video put on the web is effectively a interface for a Flash interfaced mobile video platform.

Furthermore, (although likely a red herring) even the lighter versions of Flash tax the processor and by extention the battery life of a device – which provide a convenient excuse for Apple to say it wants to stay off of Flash.

Also, a big part of iTunes movie rentals is moving the data to the iPhone/iPod touch.  At some point in the near future, the Mobile iTunes store will likely have the ability to buy TV shows and movies.  Cool!  But less cool if those things are also availble on the web in Flash players.  For instance, TV shows like Lost.

The Journal speculates that Apple might be working on its own player. 

Frankly, Quicktime is already is the player and playing content from it is already being done.  It can even play flat SWF files.

I think Apple is purposely delaying the release of the Flash in much the same way that they are delaying iChat.  Business reasons rather than technology.

Will Flash ever happen on the iPhone/iPod touch?  Perhaps, and maybe it will happen in the coming weeks…but Apple will certainly be aprehensive about it. 

Mr. Daring Fireball, John Gruber postulates more..

It looks like MySpace owner, News Corp, plans to invade the music download space with a Music download service of its own.  Reuters speculates that it might just be a white box version of Amazon’s DRM-Free MP3 service (smart choice by MySpace).

Reuters points out that the venture may be more about distinguishing MySpace from up and coming rival, Facebook than actually making money.

According to Reuters:

The venture is expected to offer free, advertising supported music streamed over the Internet, as well as a store that will sell songs playable on portable devices, including Apple’s popular iPod. Creating a subscription music service as part of the offerings was another idea floated to potential partners.

The joint venture would likely involve music companies taking an unspecified equity stake in the venture in exchange for the rights for the music, with News Corp owning the biggest chunk, the source said.

Sounds complex, unweildy and ugly – something that won’t add value to Amazon’s streamlined buying experience.  But the music indstry isn’t known for their digital intelligence.

The iPod Shuffle got cut from $79 to $49. Then the Apple Store went down. Will the rest of Apple’s iPod line also recieve some price cuts?  Flash prices are cheaper – so it makes sense.  Stay tuned!

Update: For now, only Shuffles are getting price cuts.  1Gb Shuffle, $49, new 2Gb Shuffle $69.

Digitimes reports today on the state of falling NAND Flash prices.  Specifically, the price of a 16Gbit MLC segment is expected to fall below $5 and continue dropping through the rest of the quarter.

This news has an effect on Apple in a few ways.  First, the MacBook Air has a 64Gbyte NAND Flash hard drive option.  If Digitimes is to be believed, the 64Gbytes of NAND Flash should cost about $200.  Memory controllers and other parts of the drive cost more of course.  Keep in mind that SSD Memory uses a high quality NAND memory with more read/writes than standard Flash Memory so prices may not directly correlate.  If memory prices are falling across the board, Apple will likely be able to drop its (currently $1000) prices and/or order higher capacity drives (128GByte) in the coming months.

More importantly… this news also has a strong effect on the iPod business.  When the latest generation of iPod products were released in September, the price of 16Gbits of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash was around $15 or about 3 times the current prices.   Therefore, Apple could probably lower the prices on its NAND Flash based iPods (Shuffle, Nano, Touch) and iPhone to make up for this discrepancy.

Amazon has built an iPod/iPhone optimized site for the hordes of people who have been buying ipod touches on their site.  It isn’t overly functional but it works nicely.  The product scrolling is very cool as well.

You also have the ability to use the traditional browser experience to do your shopping inside the iPhone/iPod.

Amazon detects your browser type and adjusts the browser window accordingly.  They are also offering a generic mobile browser version of their site with considerably less functionality.

To get there, simply point your iPod/iPhone browser to http://www.amazon.com

The idea of a band based on iPhones and Gameboys has probably come up often with all of the latest musical instruments available on hacked iPhones.  We are huge fans of iAno and guitar.app.  Gizmodo found an interesting little "iBand".  While the idea is good, the implementation leaves more than a little bit to be desired.  If you want to see how far this technology can go – check out LEMUR – the League of Musical Urban Robots.  Urban :P

Orange UK is offering a free 8GB iPod to business customers in the UK who sign up for their Orange Solo, Orange Venture or Orange Momentum small business mobile plans.  Orange is competing with iPhone-carrying O2 in the UK small business space and offers the iPhone at its France Telecom division so it is an interesting decision.

Not many people consider the iPod Touch as being a business tool – though some do.

It is also interesting that they are giving out the 8Gb version of the iPod Touch.  Wonder why?  Perhaps they are trying to get rid of some stock?

Robert X. Cringley, seems to have a scoop on the Google gPhone.  He lists the following:

…But Google is not like other companies, which means they are sometimes bolder and sometimes more foolhardy, because a Google-branded gPhone — two of them, actually — is on the way.

Here is what little I know, dropped in my lap this week by a loyal reader (you know who you are). There are two gPhones slated for release with the first coming in September and the second probably not appearing until after Christmas. Given that the first is the high-end model and the second is cheaper, Google will probably expect to make as much money as possible on the higher-margin units at Christmas before revealing the budget model even exists. How Apple-like, eh?

Both will include WiFi, which makes me wonder if a VoIP client will be there, too. The high-end phone will look somewhat like a Blackberry Pearl, but the screen flips up and there is a keyboard for texting. No word on pricing for the high-end phone, but the second model is intended to be less than $100 — AFTER Christmas.

The actual manufacturer of these gPhones will be Samsung (rumors to this point had indicated HTC, so this is a change) and Google is still talking with both T-Mobile and Verizon as potential carriers (rumors also said Verizon had passed — not). That means there are both GSM and W-CDMA versions in the works. Given AT&T’s success with the iPhone I can’t imagine Verizon will let the gPhone pass, but it will be interesting to see if Google will be able go with a nonexclusive deal and get both U.S. carriers.

If you’ve followed Mr. Cringley’s column over they years, you’ll have noticed that his predictions aren’t terribly accurate –  but he does have a good feel of the technology landscape and a well informed audience.  In his piece today he does give a interesting take on the Yahoo-Microsoft merger as well.

As a background, Google had said there was no gPhone when it announced the Android platform last year.

If true, it means that China has almost, if not more, iPhones as Europe – though Europe (present company included) probably has a huge amount of unlocked iPhones as well.  Frankly, we don’t think unlocking is a problem as there is no alternative way to purchase in China.

However, if the market is already saturated when Apple goes into China this year, it might hurt sales.  Our opinion, as always is that Apple needs to go away from the model of limiting the carrier choice and letting as many people as possible use these iPhones.

Update: Yep, turns out they are full of **it.

Tinycode, makers of applications and stability patches for the iPhone is displaying some pretty heady info on their webpage.  Until recently, their fixes have been available via the Installer application.

[UPDATE:
Tiny Code no longer produces fixes or applications for firmware 1.1.3.
We can’t say much, but we are working with Apple and with their SDK for the next firmware release and SDK applications and we shouldn’t be missed for long. We will no longer update our Installer.app repo for legality reasons and you should see us soon on iTunes.

This isn’t Exchange support or EA games but it is the first we’ve heard of an organization working with the SDK, if they are being truthful.  Also their assertion that Applications will be distributed through iTunes confirms earlier reports.

Update: their site has gone down…

via Macenstein

That is the question that is plaguing me.

I hope you readers aren’t as tired of this topic as Mrs. Grant is. A word to the wise—make sure you are in good stead with your bedfellows before auditioning audio equipment obsessively for a month. Oh, and try not to write on a blog on Valentine’s day unless your partner is really cool about it.

For a refresher course, here are the Battling iPhone’s GSM Buzz articles in order:

• Battling iPhone’s GSM buzz – First impressions of the M-Audio Studio Pro 3 Desktop Audio Monitors
• Battling iPhone’s GSM Buzz 2: Klipsch is a Turkey
• Battling iPhone’s GSM Buzz 3: Behringer MS40 Digital

But there is such exciting news! I received my Sonic Impact 5065 Gen 2 T-Amp with Power Supply today! In this, all the credit goes to "Actual Audio Engineer," whose comments proved to be not only snarkily entertaining reading, but actually useful and informative to boot.

But let’s back up a bit, shall we? About a week ago, my Sonic Impact T-Amp already ordered, who else but our very own Cleve Nettles, sends me an IM with this link:

http://www.dlo.com/Products/PortSpeakers_iPhone_Prod.tpl

Of course, after all this effort, I had to buy them. These, truly, are the holy grail of portable iPhone speakers. At $50, the sound is about what you’d expect, with speaker cones about 2" in diameter. But that is a fine baseline for any Mac user who either (a) doesn’t have the built-in iMac speakers, or (b) likes to play her iPhone out loud on the go (I know you can technically play the iPhone without headphones, but not for any kind of musical enjoyment).

My few beefs were that the audio cord is not very long, and barely reached my G5’s audio port from the top of the desk. Secondly, the sticky rubber casing of the amp tends to pick up dust, so don’t expect the kind of aesthetics you see in the pics. Thirdly, if you want to plug the thing into anything other than an iPhone, you need to use the included adaptor, or it will hum like crazy—that’s more of a warning than a beef, for those of you that don’t happen to notice the rather small adaptor while unpacking.

But (and this is a gigantic BUT) the most precious thing about these DLO speakers is that there is NO TRACE of the dreaded GSM buzz. This is also personally elating for me to report, because they weigh in at HALF the budget I’d originally alotted myself to solve this problem, which they capably do. For 90% of you readers, these will suffice if you are looking for desktop/portable speakers to play nice with iPhone.

And then there’s the other 10%. The insufferably uncompromising audiophiles and those who are too obsessive-compulsive not to listen to them. Oh, yes, I was in deep. Actual Audio Engineer recommended purchasing Paradigm Atom Bookshelf Monitor Speakers on eBay for anything under $200. But lo, I discovered that there was a Paradigm dealer not one block from my workplace, and paid them several visits last week to hear the Atoms. Sure, they’re great. For $270 plus tax, they’d better be. But I was not prepared to shell out that kind of dough without knowing for sure that they would work with the Sonic Impact T-Amp. And by work, I mean produce great sound without getting the migraine-inducing bup-bup-ba-dup-bup-ba-dup-dup interference courtesy of my iPhone connecting with the local cell tower.

Now let’s get this straight. There are probably dozens of choices in the 4/8 ohm bookshelf speaker category that have sufficient sensitivity (around 90dB) to be powered by the Sonic Impact T-Amp. But Actual Audio Engineer’s comment that these and the NHT Super Ones were the best-ever somehow stuck in my craw. So, when the Sonic Impact T-Amp arrived at my desk, I took my lunch break at Sound City. They were good enough to set up my amp with a single Paradigm v5 speaker to test against GSM buzz and give me a little clue as to the sound quality I could expect.

The one speaker had incredible volume and richness connected to the Sonic Impact T-Amp. All from a mere 10 watts at 8 ohms (it’s rated at 15 watts/channel at 4 ohms). I dialed my home number on the iphone and placed it directly in front of both the speaker and on top of the amp. Zero GSM buzz. I know Actual Audio Engineer advocated purchasing these on eBay, but the eBay stuff I found was v3 and v4—the updated v5s were sitting right in front of me and I knew I would simply keep obsessing until I owned them, so why not get it over with?

There are many reviews at Amazon of the Sonic Impact T-Amp and you can find much more capable reviews of the Paradigm Atom V.5 Bookshelf Monitors online than what I can render here. For the purposes of this piece, the point is that if you are desperate to get rid of GSM buzz from your iPhone, it’s all about a properly-shielded amplifier. My Paradigm Atoms are connected to my amp with regular 16-gague speaker wire, so I can attest that there’s no need to spend a bunch of cash on Monster Cables. I also want to point out that I purchased the non-shielded versions of the Paradigm Atoms (magnetic shielding is a $20 upgrade). I learned at Sound City that the shielding in speakers is only to curb interference with glass-tube televisions. Since my display is an LCD, there is no need to magnetically shield the speakers, and there are no repurcussions on the GSM buzz front. I’m sure there are other amps that are properly-shielded, and there will probably be a slew of comments about people’s favorite speakers. That’s fine. I just
know that this particular combo works for me. Your mileage may vary.

Seriously, though, if all you need is a better set of 2.0 speakers than your Mac tower can provide, go with the DLOs for $50. I think I’ll keep mine in the basement for when I’m lifting weights or doing laundry. I just sort of made this issue my personal mission (much to my wife’s chagrin) and I needed to go all the way. If you are afflicted with the same kind of personality, I hope this series of articles has saved you some time.

Yes, BoyGenius jumped the gun a little bit by saying that AT&T-Apple was endorsing USB modem tethering of the iPhone – they aren’t and won’t. 

That doesn’t mean you have to give up the dream, however.  Bluetooth DUN Modem tethering has been available on the iPhone since July of last year – it was acually one of Nate True’s first hacks.  Check the video for more…

Also, for step by step instructions (from September) on using WiFi (tiny proxy) as a modem on the iPhone, check here.

If you haven’t jailbroken your iPhone, what are you waiting for?  It really has never been safer/easier.

Remember, though, all you are going to get is EDGE Speed – which is a whole lot better than nothing.

This is even easier than jailbreakme.com on 1.02 – 1.1.1.  Basically follow these instructions:

1. If you don’t have a 1.1.3 iPhone, upgrade to 1.1.3 using iTunes.  If you do, skip to step 2
2. Download and unzip the new iJailbreak
3. Quit iTunes and run iJailbreak with your iPhone plugged in (in normal, not recovery mode)
4. Choose Jailbreak, then choose to either jailbreak it alone or also unlock for other sim cards.
5. Wait 2 minutes – grab a coffee, use the bathroom etc.  Done!

If there are any issues, re-restore to 1.1.3 using iTunes.  This has happened 1 out of 10 times we’ve tried, the others were successful.  It’s so easy, a thirteen year old can do it – actually – two thirteen year olds built the application!

Edit: for all of the people who say they have a 1.x.x iPhone that is jailbroke/not jailbroke with xxx firmware and XXX Baseband…IT WORKS FOR EVERY IPHONE EVER MADE! Yours isn’t special unless you’ve done hardware mods – which is like 4 people.  If you are on Tiger however, wait a few hours/days until the Tiger version of this application comes out.

Posted on Zibri’s blog.  Seems easy enough right?

We know the SDK is coming soon, wa wa wa..

We know it is early and the software is pre-Alpha but it is hard to see this thing catching up to even  last year’s iPhone very soon.  Don’t get us wrong, we would really like to see some legitimate competition in the consumer smartphone space, but the Android is still a long long way from being refined into something that can compete with the iPhone.  Perhaps we’re spoiled – even buttons seem draconian.

With Microsoft buying Danger and Sony going to WM6 and other Symbian and WM6 players considering Android the cell phone market seems to be in disarray…the iPhone (which is the likely cause of the industry fire drill) just keeps looking more solid.

Edit: For those of you who’ve asked, we would also like to show you this movie – which makes the Android look much more compelling…They even got Seregey Brin to talk like an Android for added effect.

OK, truth be told, we hacked our 1.1.3 iPhone a few weeks ago – but it was a pain in the a$$.  Took a few hours and we had to upgrade, downgrade, sidegrade etc.  A lot of people who aren’t as stupid/bored/daring have taken a pass on the 1.1.3 jailbreak until something easier came along.  That something might be:

Zibri’s ZiPhone

It is a one step jailbreaker…we are trying it now – more to come shortly…

Update – it went pretty smoothy.  Remember to quit iTunes helper application, do the reset while you are putting it into the cradle and that it takes a little while.  Have fun!

We’ve got conflicting reports on this one so we’ll just lay it all out on the table.  One of our sources who apparantly gets to play with upcoming iPhone builds says there is no Flash on the upcoming builds.  However, Gearlive, who outted the iPhone/iPod 1.1.3 software about three weeks before it went live, says they have seen it.

As Gearlive says, if it is coming a great time to announce it would be at the SDK event.

Personally, Flash is nice but we’d rather see Apple focus on things like an iChat client or full stereo Bluetooth capability – but we’ll take what we can get.

UPDATE: Nice work Linotype – a fix has been posted

The discussion boards lit up almost immediately this evening with word that 10.5.2 and Linotype Font Explorer (which has quickly become a challenger for the industry standard font-management app) do not play nice together. It appears that FX makes other apps and the dock hang until you force-quit the font manager.

Discussions:

http://www.fontexplorerx-board.com/viewtopic.php?p=1364

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6573040

So if, like me, you use Font Explorer every day, and are in the middle of some mission-critical projects, now would not be the time to update Leopard.

We’ll keep you posted. We got nothing else to do…

Microsoft should really be scaring its shareholders and partners these days.  First it throws almost $50 Billion at Yahoo! for a portfolio that largely mirrors the functionality (or supposed fuctionality) of its MSN properties and an advertising division that has the same issues that it does.  That and everyone in the Tech world is wondering what value Yahoo could offer Microsoft?

Today it puts its Windows Mobile line in question by acquiring Danger.  Danger built the Sidekick device platform that is very popular with the consumer smartfphone public, but has faltered recently because of the superior Symbian and iPhone operating systems and the Sidekick’s tier 2 hardware made by Sharp and Motorola.  The Sideckick OS has very little in the way of multimedia to offer consumers.

One thing that sticks out like a really sore thumb is that the Sidekick platform has absolutley nothing to do with Windows Mobile.  It is built on Mobile Java and exists entirely outside the Windows ecosystem.  Does Microsoft plan on using Java and the basis for its consumer mobile platform?  Or will it kill just about everything that Danger has built and try to jimmy Windows Mobile-like OS on those popular Sidekicks?

Apple certainly stands to benefit from all of this shakeup and uncertainty in the market.

If I am HTC, Samsung, or any of Microsoft’s other WM6 partners who make consumer phones, I am on the phone with the Google Android people, stat.  (Oh wait HTC already is)

Seriously, we don’t get it.  Can anyone help us out?  Are they that desperate to battle the iPhone, Symbian and Android in the consumer space?

(Microsoft Stock Owners? Selllll! Winthorp, Sellllll!)

UPDATE: Woops, Apple is hiring game developers.

Maybe that third Touch OSX device that was spied wasn’t a 3G iPhone or a Tablet…maybe it was a gaming machine?  Apple, last week, filed a trademark in relation to:

“hand-held units for playing electronic games; hand-held units for playing video games; stand alone video game machines; electronic games other than those adapted for use with television receivers only; LCD game machines; electronic educational game machines; toys, namely battery-powered computer games”

Hints of an Apple gaming device have been around for awhile, but for Apple protect their name in relation to games means it is more a "when" rather than an "if".  Could when be February 26th?

Via Trademonk