iPhone - page 431

Even though it’ll be out in less than five days, iOS 4 just keeps on delivering up new surprises: over at 9to5Mac, some digging into the latest iOS4 SDK reveals that the iPhone 4 may natively support Facebook video uploading.

The evidence comes in the way of some incriminating XML code that strongly hints at Facebook integration. It makes sense: we already know that Apple’s probably working on Palm Pre-style Facebook integration with calendars and contacts.

The big question here is why this isn’t working on the iPhone 3Gs with the latest iOS 4 Gold Master: Facebook’s iPhone app can already do direct video uploads, so certainly the device is capable of it.

Just as Apple’s servers are finally accepting pre-orders of the iPhone 4 after being down most of the day, the device may be selling out.

AT&T sold its stock of the pre-order iPhone 4s this afternoon, and now Apple appears close to running out also. In certain parts of the country, the east coast especially, the online Apple Store has pushed shipping dates for the device back to the July 6-8 timeframe, according to reader reports.

The device appears to also have been sold out in the UK and Germany, according to MacRumors.

Let’s hope you were able to order or reserve one — delivery dates for latecomers have been pushed back to July 4 at the earliest.

Earlier today, AT&T said Tuesday was the busiest online sales day in the company’s history:

“Because of the incredible interest in iPhone 4, today was the busiest online sales day in AT&T history. As of Tuesday afternoon, customers who preorder iPhone 4 moving forward will receive their device on June 25 or later, depending on when the order is placed. We’ll email customers with confirmation once their order is placed, and again when it ships. In addition, we will have devices available on a first-come, first-serve basis in our stores beginning on June 24.”

Engadget: AT&T sold out of iPhone 4 pre-orders for launch day

Even though Apple’s and AT&T’s pre-ordering systems are crashing due to high demand, several people have reported success pre-ordering the iPhone 4 through the new Apple Store iPhone app.

However, that too is over-subscribed. Attempts to pre-order the iPhone through the app are returning the following message:

“Due to high demand, we are not currently accepting iPhone 4 reservations via the Apple Store app. To pre-order or reserve yours, please visit apple.com/iphone/pre-order.

But Apple and AT&T’s systems are still down, with attempts to reserve an iPhone resulting in error messages and timeouts.

Anyone had success using a different method? Radio Shack?

After a morning of spotty service, both Apple’s and AT&T’s iPhone processing systems have crashed, leaving customers unable to order the iPhone 4.

Instead, customers are lining up at retail stores belonging to Apple and AT&T. There are lines in New York, Louisiana and Japan.

We have been unable to preorder an iPhone despite dozens of tries and, and neither is anybody else, according to a surge of #ATTFAIL messages on Twitter.

Above is a line outside a New York AT&T store. “Check out this line of people waiting to pre-order iPhones at our local AT&T store. This isn’t even to take them home or anything — it’s for the right to wait in another line next Friday (to pick up the phone),” Business Insider notes.

Apple and AT&T’s systems have been choking all morning, returning error messages saying orders cannot be processed. This, of course, is good news/bad news for the companies.

The iPhone 4 is on sale at a bunch of places — Apple, AT&T, Best Buy and Wal-Mart — but Radio Shack may be the best place to pick one up, thanks to rebates on older iPhones.

The Shack is offering special trade-in deals for older iPhones that can be applied to the cost of a new iPhone 4. In some cases, a new iPhone may be free.

When you actually click the links, Apple’s bouncing around some bad link error messages, but if you want to preorder your iPhone 4 for pick-up or delivery on June 24th, Apple’s preorder website is now live. You might want to keep refreshing it until the kinks go away. (Update: the preorder forms are now working).

Completed your preorder? We’ll see you for some jubilant crowing in the comments!

Arguably the best soccer game on any console, the much anticipated Pro Evolution Soccer is now available on iPhone and iPod Touch and boasts a unique ‘true flow’ control system, unrivalled realism and official UEFA competitions exclusive to Pro Evolution Soccer 2010. But does it compete with other big soccer games already available in the App Store?

The Icon by essential tpe is a design first in a peripheral line all too dominated by bulky li-ion boxes: it looks good. Actually, it looks great, aping the style of the iOS replenishing battery icon by using electroluminescent lighting film that displays the add-on battery’s power level even when it’s unplugged.

It has all the hallmarks of just another Yanko Design wishful-thinking concept, but essential tpe swear that this is a real product which they are ready to sell you… an assertion perhaps belied by the lack of pricing details and the rendered appearance of the product shots.

We certainly hope it’s a real product though: the Icon just looks too sexy for us to root against it.

Curious about Apple’s own foray into protective iPhone cases, the bumper? The guys over at AppAdvice have taken some pretty shots of the bumper case ensconcing a new iPhone 4.

It looks surprisingly good, especially wrapped around the white model, and my guess is that by offering some padding around the iPhone 4’s most vulnerable fracture point, the $29 case will be pretty good at keeping your iPhone safe from cracks… but keys shredding your screen will be just as big of a concern as a totally unprotected handset.

Despite Apple’s feelings about them, my guess is you’ll want to invest in a protective film even if you pick up the bumper.

Boy! Come the iPhone 4 launch date of June 24th, which electronics store do you suppose is going to have the biggest line snaking out the door? Microsoft’s new store opening in San Diego’s Fashion Valley Mall selling an exciting array of obsolete Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphones, or the Apple Store selling brand new iPhone 4s just four blocks away?

If you’re a developer itching to deploy any one of iOS 4’s 1500+ new APIs, good news: Apple has started accepting iOS 4 apps for submission.

There’s not much more to say, except for a personal plea to developers to get a move-on, since I want some multitasking apps to test come June 21st. And if you’re the developer of Skype or Reeder, that goes double for you.

A sensationally-titled piece over at Gadget Lab posted on Wednesday asserted that Jobs’ claims about the iPhone 4’s Retina Display being so dense that individual pixels were unobservable to the naked eye was “false marketing.”

Not so, says the Bad Astronomer himself, Phill Platt, who uses what he knows about optics and resolution from his years spent calibrating cameras aboard Hubble to prove that Jobs’ (mostly) told the truth when it comes to how the iPhone 4’s display looks from twelve inches away.

On Monday, Apple made a big deal about exactly how tough the new iPhone 4 glass was, bending it almost thirty degrees on stage without a sliver of a crack webbing across the glass.

Pretty impressive! Too bad you can’t even drop an iPhone 4 from waist height onto the ground without it shattering, finds repair shop iFixYourI (who don’t have an iPhone 4, but do already have replacement parts).

Where’s the blame, according to iFixYourI? The bezel. Previous iPhones had counter-sunk glass flush with the bezel, while the iPhone 4’s glass actually extrudes a little bit, so the bezel can’t protect it.

iFixYourI says design flaw. Possibly, but as a commenter points out below, it’s worth noting that a hollow iPhone 4 (as we have here) is going to have glass more vulnerable to drops than one supported by an interior hardware architecture. Furthermore, Apple seems aware of just this vulnerability: their new cases seem almost sole-mindedly designed around eliminating the exact sort of shock impact being discussed here.

Either way? Whether your fingers exude butter or not, you’ll probably want one of Apple’s new iPhone 4 bumpers. Probably the pink one, too.

As a big fan of the sport, I’ve played a lot of soccer games on the iPad – from full 3D soccer sims like Real Soccer, to little 2D 1-on-1 games. However the most addictive pick-up-and-play soccer game I’ve played so far is easily Deadball Specialist HD by Full Fat Productions Ltd, which pushes your finger flicking skills to the limit!

We’ve known for some time that the iPhone and iPod Touch are not as secure as we would like them to be — and unfortunately the same can be said about the new iPad. The lack of built-in encryption leaves our personal data on any of these devices at risk. Luckily for iPhone and iPod Touch users third party vendors are supplying apps that help fill some of these gaps in security. One such app, which was popular on the Palm OS platform, is SplashID from SplashData, Inc., which stores all your passwords, logins, and banking details.

Cult of Mac reader Till Kresslein alerted us to this DIY paper version of the iPhone 4.
It’s a cute promo for a German Premium Reseller that gives the iPhone 4 desirous something to play with until the latest device is unleashed in Germany on June 24.

Just download, cut and paste.Till has already made one and assures us it looks pretty cool. For sure, it’ll look great beside your Steve Jobs paper doll.

Or wrap it around something, leave it in a bar, watch hilarity ensue.

With Motorola behind one of the main challengers to the iPhone (at least, the current ones, anyway — the emerging iPhone 4, for now, seems fairly peerless), one doesn’t get much chance to observe the iPhone and the Motorola M in close proximity outside, perhaps, some smartphone cage match, or on the bedside table of two star-crossed lovers.

Apple has set up the most astounding wall we’ve ever seen. It is filled with 30 24-inch Apple Cinema displays that are synchronized and powered by 30 Apple Mac Pro workstations is a Matrix movie like waterfall that displays the top 50,000 apps in the iTunes App Store.

Providing you’ve got the wherewithal to jailbreak your iPad, Apple’s tablet makes a fine SNES emulator, thanks to SNED HD for iPad, which looks absolutely amazing at the iPad’s 768p resolution. Even better, you can pair it with the ControlPad app for iPhone for more convenient controlling with your iPad docked or balanced on your knees.

Psst. We’re not going to tell you where to get it, but if you happen to have some seedier connections, we can tell you that yesterday’s Gold Master Build of iOS 4 works on any iPhone or iPod Touch, whether or not its UDID has already been reported to the dev center. That means, if you know where you’re looking, you can install iOS 4 on your device right now… provided your device is a 3G, 3GS or second or third gen iPod Touch. Make sure to grab the right IPSW for your device.

Better? If you’ve got a 3Gs, you can already jailbreak it, although we recommend being cautious and if you don’t know what you’re doing, wait until the Dev Team releases the new 4.0 compatible PwnageTool… which they swear should be available within the month.

Rhythm-based gaming isn’t new to the App Store – for a while now, there have been several games that offer players the ability to play along and ‘jam out’ to their favorite music. However the largest, most successful game in the genre is Guitar Hero. With huge success on pretty much every console available, the biggest music video-game franchise has finally found its way on to the iPhone and iPod Touch, and my God does it rock!

Steve Jobs rolled out Apple’s iPhone 4 Monday at the WWDC 2010 Keynote in San Francisco, calling his company’s “new baby” a device that “changes everything. Again.”

But does it?

When Apple introduced the original iPhone in 2007, it altered the entire mobile phone market by emerging into a near vacuum, creating need and desire in millions of consumers who had no idea they needed or desired what the iPhone had to offer.

Today, some believe the iPhone has become passe based solely on its relative ubiquity across the landscape it both created and has managed to dominate for three years.

Others believe competitors such as Google, Palm and Blackberry have in the meantime produced equally effective, if not superior products that will, over time, equalize the distribution of market share among Apple and its rivals.

We mentioned earlier today that the secret behind the iPhone 4’s Retina Display isn’t just the quadruple pixel density over the iPhone 3Gs, but Apple’s amazing new process that completely eliminates empty space between the LCD and touchscreen, resulting in a display that looks like the pixels have been painted directly on the glass.

Want to see what we’re talking about? The above comparison shot comes from Engadget and compares the iPhone 4’s Retina Display with one of the previously cited industry bests, the HTC Evo 4G’s display.

Granted, the HTC Evo 4G is throwing 38% less pixels at the display than Apple, but even so: look at how those app icons are basically throbbing through the iPhone’s glass, while the Evo 4G’s display looks like it has been submerged in a thin layer of dirty water.

Steve Jobs himself described AT&T’s early update pricing for the iPhone 4 as “generous,” and generous it is — suspiciously so. How generous?

Well, if you qualify for an upgrade before December 31st, the 16GB iPhone 4 will cost you just $199 while the 32GB model will cost you $299. Things get a lot steeper if your upgrade is after the start of 2011, though, with prices jumping to $399 and $499, respectively. Don’t want to sign a new contract, but still want an iPhone 4? Prepare to pay $599 to $699.

Those who have had the luck to play with an iPhone 4 before it’s official June 24th launch have all confirmed that the new handset’s quadruple-density Pixel Display is just as gorgeous as Apple is boasting.

But over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber points out another reason the iPhone 4’s display is so bright, crisp and lurid: a new production process that eliminates the space between the LCD and the touchscreen.