Tech Industry

AT&T has confirmed a 3G iPhone will be made available within months. (Yes, Steve Jobs and AT&T’s CEO have already mentioned this a few times but one more can’t hurt..)

AT&T Mobility president and CEO Ralph de la Vega let slip the plan in talks this week at the CTIO Wireless conference.

De la Vega said that the much-anticipated 3G iPhone will become available in the next few months. "AT&T’s entire line of smartphones will be available in 3G models within that time frame," he said, as summarised by IDG News Service.

That a 3G iPhone is on the cards is moving rapidly away from rumour into a speculation of when the product will be announced, with analysts speculating a May/June release for the product, which chimes in well with the AT&T executives suggestion.

The AT&T chief also confirmed Apple’s US network partner will offer mobiles based on Google’s Android platform, the report explains.

In a move that puts Apple’s original iTunes Plus partner at the forefront of the convergence between digital and conventional entertainment technologies, EMI Music has hired Google’s chief information officer Douglas Merrill, to lead its growing digital music business. 

As President, Digital Business, EMI Music, Merrill will head an all new international project with responsibility for all of the company’s digital strategy, innovation, business development, supply chain and global technology activities.

Guy Hands, CEO of Terra Firma and chairman of EMI Group, said: "Douglas is a proven agent of change who combines broad business intellect with a deep engineering background. He has been a key member of the management team at Google which has created more value than any other consumer internet company by focusing relentlessly on tools that enable consumers to do things more effectively.  His experience, talents and his ability to drive innovation will be enormously valuable to EMI and to its artists.“

Merrill said: "I have two passions. One is creating platforms and tools that make it easier for consumers to achieve their goals.  The other is music.  This exciting new role at EMI is a unique opportunity for me to be able to put those two passions to work together and help deliver EMI’s objective of providing the best services in the world to consumers and musicians.”

Merrill starts work at EMI on 28 April and will be based at EMI Music’s LA HQ in the Capitol Tower.  He will report to Guy Hands. 

iPhone is plat du jour in the Mac world lately, and the second beta of the iPhone 2.0 SDK continues to generate news nuggets for industry watchers.
Latest news in shows that the second build of the SDK includes built-in support for managed Exchange Server settings, while that could be predicted on the basis of Apple’s deal with Microsoft to license Exchange support, that the company has also chosen to build administrator support into the software is bound to generate excitement among infrastructure boffins.  There are lots of other clues in the ManagedConfiguration.bundle and ManagedConfigurationUI.bundle files.
The support consists of a couple of lines of code in the software that support Exchange Policies natively on the device, and also support Exchange Active Sync account handling.
These nuggets confirm the strength of Apple’s push at the enterprise market in its iPhone, as loud speculation continues to predict a new 3G-capable model of the device seems set to ship in May/June.(Image courtesy GadgetVenue).

(Screencaptures of the SDK files below)

 The smartphone sector is gripped by a struggle for dominance that’s emerging as between Apple’s iPhone and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, according to the latest consumer survey from ChangeWave.

The survey asked 3,597 consumers to share their views on smartphones, and while the research confirms RIM continues to dominate the existing consumer smartphone market, Apple’s iPhone has "huge momentum" for future growth.

In terms of current market share, BlackBerry deployment has slipped one percentage point to 42 per cent. Apple has quickly shot to third place in the market occupying 9 per cent share, just a few percentage points behind second place manufacturer, Palm, with 16 per cent.

Palm’s 16 per cent is significant because it reflects a continuous two-year decline in Palm’s marketshare, ChangeWave claims.

Despite its continued struggle to turn itself around with a raft of recent high profile hirings of former senior Apple managers, Palm appears a victim in what is becoming a two horse race, researchers said.

Customer satisfaction is key to Apple’s iPhone success. The product received what ChangeWave called an "astonishing" 79 per cent Very Satisfied rating from consumers in the survey. 

That’s far ahead of RIM’s 54 per cent and Palm’s 22 per cent, meaning both competing companies will need to make a major move to deliver more compelling customer experience.

iPhone’s future growth opportunity also appears secure, with one-in-three (35 per cent) of respondents who already plan to buy a smartphone within the next 90 days saying they intend purchasing an iPhone. And that figure is up from the 23 per cent preference revealed in the last ChangeWave smartphone industry survey held in January 2008.

“The biggest reasons for the surge are the recent Apple announcements on the iPhone Software Development Kit and the new 2.0 OS,” said Tobin Smith, founder of ChangeWave Research and editor of ChangeWave Investing.  “One-in-ten respondents now say they’re more likely to purchase an iPhone in the future because of the new smart phone software.”

The ChangeWave survey also asked respondents which mobile operating system they’d like to have on the smart phone they plan on buying.  Once again, the consumer market is dominated by the RIM and Apple operating systems.

The number of respondents saying they’re Very Likely to use Google’s Android OS was just 2 per cent, though another 15 per cent did say they’re Somewhat Likely to use the new OS. 

“These numbers do show some consumer interest in the Android Operating System,” said Smith, “but based on the ultra-competitive battle between RIM and Apple, there’s little likelihood of the Android gaining traction on either one’s OS. They’re sucking up all the oxygen in this market.”

OK, now it is just getting old...

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We know Rogers in Canada is a bit of a slacker on the iPhone front from our reader comments.  However, they are the only GSM/EDGE provider in Canada and if you have a hacked iPhone they are your only choice.  If Apple, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to deal with Rogers, they may have one of two already-established partners in Canada soon.  AT&T and Tmobile are both rumored to be partners with Niagara Networks Inc. who are currently bidding on Canadian spectrum.

Either firm may be backing an auction application lodged earlier this month by unknown entity Niagara Networks Inc., which has no current operations in Canada. The company surprised industry observers two weeks ago when it appeared on an Industry Canada list of applicants for the spectrum auction beginning on May 27. Niagara Networks has applied to bid on all the spectrum being auctioned, requiring a letter of credit for $881 million.

Douglas Evashkow, president of Niagara Networks, told CBCNews.ca at the time that he was unable to disclose who was funding his company because of confidentiality agreements.

Obviously with a name like "Niagra" (as in "Falls" – which have both US and Canadian varieties), AT&T would be the easy guess of wireless partner.

No strangers to Canada

San Antonio, Texas-based AT&T, the largest multinational telecommunications service provider in the world, is no stranger to the Canadian cellphone market. AT&T owned 34 per cent of Rogers Wireless before selling it back to the company in 2004 for $1.35 billion US in order to "monetize its stake" and concentrate on its U.S. operations.

In recent years AT&T has reversed course and expanded its international operations. In one of its latest big moves, AT&T in October applied to enter India’s upcoming spectrum auction in partnership with a local company, Mahindra Telecommunications Pvt. Ltd.

AT&T also announced earlier this month that it will invest $1 billion US in 2008 in its international businesses, 33 per cent more than it spent last year and double its expenditure in 2006.

In a recent interview with CBCNews.ca, AT&T Canada executives declined to say how much of the investment would go to Canada but said the country was a key priority. The company provides telecommunications services — minus cellphones — to multinational corporations operating here.

Maura Lendon, chief counsel for AT&T Canada, praised recent moves by the government to boost telecommunications competition, including the favouring of new entrants in the spectrum auction.

The government in November ruled that 40 per cent of the airwaves up for auction would be reserved for new entrants, meaning that existing players Rogers, Bell Canada Inc. and Telus Corp. are restricted to bid on the other 60 per cent.

"We do see more positive trends in the Canada market, which I think are opening opportunities. It trends towards more open competition," Lendon said.

How long will it take before the partner sets up shop and can start slanging iPhones?  We have no clue…all we know is Canadians want iPhones and are pretty upset that they don’t have an Apple-blessed way of getting them.

Thanks Noob

Oh dear, it had to happen: security experts and hackers at the CanSecWest security conference are talking about just one event – that a MacBook Air was the first of three platforms successfully hacked in the PWN 2 OWN hacking contest.

The contest saw former National Security Agency employee and researcher Charlie Miller saunter across to the Mac to run his exploit, which possibly took advantage of a security flaw in Safari.  Show organizers offered a Sony Vaio, Fujitsu U810 and the MacBook as prizes, each running a different operating system (Mac OS X, Windows Vista and Linux). Was it fair?

The deal is that the first researcher to successfully hack each computer walks home with the laptop and some prize money. While the Mac was the first system to fall to the hacker attacks, it’s expected the other two systems will be PWNed later today. The company behind the competition, Tipping Point, quickly moved to notify Apple of the vulnerability, with Apple’s Mac OS X team now scrambling to close the gap, reports claim. 

Also, note that CanSecWest’s sponsors include Microsoft but no Linux Companies or Apple.

Apple is in great shape and wants its consumers to be too.  AppleInsider today is reporting on patent applications filed by Apple employees in regard to adding a regiment application to the iPod.  That news is excellent.  However a few other things may make this more interesting…

• What if Apple used its iPod touch and iPhone as heart monitors?  Pehaps a device that plugs into the iPod that sells with the software system?  You could map your heart rate as part of the fitness regimine.
• The GPS system could be used to gage your running and speed.  IF Apple adds GPS in June like Kevin Rose thinks, this would be cool both for running and biking
• Bike users could also use the iPod/iPhone as a bike computer.  An adapter could come with the system that connects and calibrates to bike wheels
• For gyms, Apple could sell a connector to gym equipment and marry exercise with gaming.  The Wii has started this off but imagine biking against your friends or against people you don’t know – like playing scrabble online.  Apple could then find the healthiest people in the world and have gaming contests.

All of this seems really plausible for us, how about you?

OK, perhaps that is a bit of an overstatement.  But it is really cool.  I briefly reviewed Photoshop Express for Computerworld and came away reeling at the possibilities.  While we all knew this application was coming down the pipe, Adobe made great use of Flash and delivered a very polished product. 

Facebook(!!), Picasa and Photobucket direct access shows the amazing possibilities this web application has.  No doubt, more services will be coming soon.   If you can give Photoshop Express access to your blog images directory, you could do all of your image editing inline – without having to upload or download between edits.  How about Google documents or presentations?  Editing photos inside the web browser would make those services all the more valuable.  Oh, and move to another computer and your 2 GB library goes with you.

The downside?  Adobe and Apple aren’t getting along too well these days.  Normally, Apple and Adobe products play very well together.  However, since this is a Flash-based Web application it won’t work on the iPod Touch or iPhone.  Also, your iPhoto library isn’t browsable since Apple, for whatever reason, decided to put all of the original photos in a Package which isn’t accessible by the browser (needed for Photoshop Express).  If you want to access your iPhotos, you need to export them from iPhoto.  :( Lame

Hopefully someone is working on an iPhoto plugin at this very moment that allows uploading of photos to the Photoshop Express storage.  The other work round would be to upload your photos to Facebook, Picasa, or Photobucket using the current plugins and editing in Photoshop Express from there.

Have fun!

The furor surrounding Apple’s move to license Microsoft’s ActiveSync services to enable Exchange support on the iPhone may one day be seen as a tiny move, as the company plans to introduce wider support for the device through services supplied by Mac OS X Server.

Apple has already confirmed plans to introduce the final version of the iPhone Software Development kit in June, but whispers now claim the company may have a couple more surprises up its sleeve for WWDC 2008.

If these quietly whispered rumours are true, Apple plans to leverage its expertise in managing aspects of  both the software and hardware on its platforms to deliver new generations of tools that will let users integrate iPhone with Mac OS X Server-side services and tools. 

It’s likely these will include new tools to help system administrators easily deploy iPhones within all-Mac environments. These tools will potentially include company-wide support for currently supported server-based solutions, such as group iCal and Address Book support, iChat, and more.

The move would – for the first time – mean Apple could soon be offering a complete environment designed to support an extensive ecosystem of tools. These would include mobile solutions, collaborative workgroups, remote and networked desktop environments and more. And all based on the standards supported by its Unix-based OS, delivering a compelling alternative to Windows-based enterprise systems.

Such implementations will likely generate interest in the enterprise sectors Apple has traditionally been denied a foothold in, if only for the fact that Mac OS X Server doesn’t demand its users pay a per-user license fee.

9 to 5 Mac has been unable to fully corroborate these whispers at this time, but they suggest some hot news to come from WWDC in June, when most agree the second generation 3G-savvy iPhone is set to first appear.

Digitimes says that in the second-quarter 2008 (within weeks to months) ASUS will be releasing EeePCs with resistive touch panels.  This contrasts with the more acurate capacitive touch screen technology that is employed in the iPod Touch and iPhone.   The difference to the user is that resistive touch works with styli while capacitive touch uses the natural capasitance of the finger to pinpoint location.  Because the resistive touch screen is a more mature technology, the prices in bulk for the addition of this technology will approach only $10 per device.  I wrote on why I think that the EeePC is the biggest competitor to the iPhone and iPod here.  This only makes that competition more significant. 

 UK intelligence service, MI6 (home of James Bond) is searching for a Mac using forger to join the Queen’s Secret Service. The intelligence service needs someone with QuarkXPress and Adobe CS skills to create forged documents, currency and other publications for its secret agents.

The winning recruit will be given full spy training and an inflation-proof pension.

MI6 is hosting a recruitment ad on its website, promising a fascinating work environment at the organisation’s London headquarters.

“We’re sure you’ll understand that as an organisation that collects secret intelligence, we can’t tell you a great deal about what you’ll be doing,” the ad states. “You’ll also benefit from very high-quality training in your specialist skills.”

The winning recruit will work within the Design and Print team of the organisation. And will be licensed to Mac, on the Queen’s business.

Remember those super-fast WebKit specs we told you about a few weeks ago?  Remember how it was going to help Safari 3.1 become a much faster browser?  What about all of the other goodies?   Now you can get them in a final version of Safari.  Apple today unleashed Safari 3.1 using much more recent version of the WebKit engine.  Preliminary results (meaning going to all of our favorite sites) are quite good. 

It remains to be seen if speed increases like this (and iPhone/iPod touch) help Apple’s browser gain marketshare. 

Review from Computerworld:

Apple released Safari 3.1

on March 18 with an updated rendering engine that makes the fastest Internet browser even faster.

On top of that, Apple’s new browser includes some features that reflect the future of the HTML 5 specification: offline storage, media support, and CSS animations and Web fonts. It also adds some needed compatibility and bug fixes, as well as some other new features that really make it a great everyday browser.

For the uninitiated, Apple provides a great PDF overview of Safari. You can get the upgrade/installer from apple.com/safari/download/ (it’s about a 16MB download for both Mac and PC) or simply update from Software Update. The installation is easy but strangely requires a restart on Macs but not on Windows. By the way, Safari 3.1 is the first Windows version not to carry the "beta" tag.

The interface and the user experience are largely unchanged from those in Safari 3.0. Under the hood, however, Apple has

made some significant changes

that it has pulled from the latest builds of the open-source

WebKit

engine.

WebKit is the framework version of the engine that’s used by Safari. It is also the basis of the Web browsing engine in iPhone’s Mobile Safari, Symbian’s browser, the Google Android platform and Adobe’s new AIR platform.

Testing

To check out how well Safari 3.1 handles Web sites, I ran it through some popular standards testing — and found that it leads the pack. In the Acid3 Tests, which were created by the Web Standards Project to test dynamic browser capabilities, Safari 3.1 scored 75 out of 100, significantly higher than the previous version of Safari and other shipping browsers (Firefox 3 Beta 4 scored 68, while the most recent WebKit scored 92).

However, the big news is how fast the new version of Safari is. How fast? I tested Safari 3.1 on my first-generation 2-GHz MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM. In MooTools’ SlickSpeed speed/validity test, Safari came out on top in almost every category on both Mac and PC.

It also did significantly better than any shipping browser on the SunSpider JavaScript speed tests (although since these tests are hosted at WebKit.org, they are perhaps biased). For example, on the Mac, Safari scored 4430ms, compared with 5048ms for Firefox 3 Beta 4.

While I spend 90% of my time on a Macintosh, I also installed Safari on my Windows XP box to see how it stacked up against Internet Explorer, Opera and Firefox. In short, it worked extremely well for everyday browsing, offering speed and efficiency, especially on a four- or five-year-old machine. It also performed really well with lots of tabs open.

Although Safari 3.1 does perform much better than the shipping version of Firefox, the speed improvements in Firefox 3 Beta 4 are catching up with Safari 3.1 — though Firefox 3 did consume more CPU cycles during my tests.

One of the drawbacks of Safari has been the perceived "over-smoothing" or softening of fonts on the PC. While this hasn’t been completely fixed, Apple’s Safari 3.1 allows Web sites to specify fonts outside the seven Web-safe font families; these new fonts can be downloaded by the browser as needed.

Unfortunately, there are still prominent features that are part of rival browsers that Safari simply can’t match. For example, Safari doesn’t have all of the add-ons that Firefox enjoys, such as the Google toolbar.

Furthermore, if you need to use a site that employs Microsoft‘s proprietary DirectX technology — like Microsoft Exchange’s Outlook Web Access, for example — you’ll find that the experience on Safari leaves much to be desired. In this case, you’re better off using Internet Explorer.

Finally, Opera offers features, such as direct BitTorrent downloads, that aren’t offered in Safari.

With the 3.1 release, Safari has become the fastest browser you can use. If that isn’t enough reason to make a switch, its strong adherence to Web standards and rapid adoption of new technologies might make you think again.

The Financial Times is reporting that Apple is in negotiations with the big record companies to offer an unlimited subscription model.   The deal would give customers access to the entire iTunes music Library in exchang efor a premium price put on Apple devices (iPod, iPhone, etc).

Nokia currently has this model and offers the music companies $80 per handset for the priveledge – to be split up based on the downloading habits of its users.  Apple, on the otherhand, is only offering $20/device.

According to FT:

One executive said the research had shown that consumers would pay a premium of up to $100 for unlimited access to music for the lifetime of the device, or a monthly fee of $7-$8 for a subscription model.

Apple, which is thought to make relatively little money from the iTunes store compared with its hardware sales, is also understood to be examining a subscription model.

Subscriptions would work only for its iPhone devices, where it has a monthly billing relationship with customers through the mobile phone operators offering the device, while the “comes with music” model would work with iPhones and with iPods.

The subscription models under discussion in the music industry include the provision for customers to keep up to 40 or 50 tracks a year, which they would retain even if they changed their device or their subscription lapses.
Other music groups are understood to be in talks with Nokia, which is keen to sign up as many of the major labels as possible before launching its first “comes with music” devices in the second half of this year.

At $20/device, it doesn’t seem likely that the record companies will bite – but there might be a sweet spot – perhaps based on storage space that both parties can agree on.  Also, Apple could offer the deal as an "option" for some customers only.  Apple is thought to make little on the sales of iTunes music and Amazon, lately, is offering music from all four big lables in DRM-free format at a cheaper price than Apple – who offers DRM free music only from EMI

digg_url = ‘http://9to5mac.com/iTunes-subscription-coming-34255342’;

 Microsoft has gone public on plans to compete with Apple’s iPod and iPhone – but we’ll be waiting until 2009 until the company gets it together.

 Microsoft France’s Francois Ruault has confirmed the company plan to ship Zune in Europe in 2009. The third generation of the device hasn’t yet been announced, but will be the model that ships in Europe, a report claims.

In a familiar note, the company also intends introducing a WiFi music store and (potentially) a Zune-cum-mobile phone iPhone competitor.

Apple’s Swiss store updated their specs (translated to English) on the Apple Airport Express to include 802.11N Wireless hardware over the weekend, according to MacGeneration.  Current Airport Express hardware uses 802.11G Wireless and hasn’t changed physically since its introduction in 2004. 

Other than the wireless, the images on the updated site have the hardware looking the same.  The Swiss Store page makes no mention of whether the new revs of the Airport Express will support USB hard drives for Time Machine backup or otherwise.  We’d guess not as it would pull people from Time Capsule purchases and isn’t really what the small portable device was made for.

In any case, if you are thinking of getting an Airport Express, you might want to wait until you see one with 802.11N on the package – which should be any minute now….

Apple may introduce a quad-core MacBook Pro this year, as Intel has confirmed plans to ship Core 2 Duo-based quad-core processors later in the year.

Intel has developed these processors for use in high-performance laptops, which it sees as portable replacements for powerful desktop systems.

We know Apple won’t comment on future products or speculation, but the new processors are expected to appear in the third quarter. The processor is manufactured using the 45-nanometer process. It’s likely the chips will feature on-board support for WiFi and WiMAX.

The new processors demand significantly more power than those used in current Apple laptops. This suggests Apple may delay the launch of the new products until battery life has been optimised.

Apple TV won’t be a hobby for much longer should Apple move to introduce support for digital video recording and a TV tuner, at least according to one analyst.

"While near-term trends look difficult with a looming recession and a slow-down in consumer spending, we continue to believe Apple is well-positioned to weather the storm better than most with its strong fundamentals," the analyst concludes. 

So you were wondering if Apple was going to spread an extra thick layer of security over the new version 2.0 of the iPhone software?  You know – to keep the 1,000,000 unlocked versions from being updated and from being customers at the App Store?

Yeah, we didn’t think so.  iPhone 2.0 is already hacked.  Version 3 and 4, though just twinkles in Apple’s eye?  Cracked too.

The whole "security" thing?  Kinda a joke at this point.  Apple must really need those unlocked iPhone sales to hit its goals.

The real issue for Apple is that they are getting a bad rep from a security standpoint – which will seriously hurt them in the enterprise.

Seriously, Apple.  Just open up the iPhone to all carriers already.