So Apple has allowed into the Store a third-party video recording application for plain old 2G and 3G iPhones; but honestly, don’t get your hopes up too high.
iVideoCamera by Laan Labs suffers some serious limitations: it only records three frames a second, it can only record for a minute at most, and resolution is just 160×213. It’s little more than a series of stills stitched together into something vaguely resembling moving pictures.
AT&T has dismissed Fake Steve’s Operation Chokehold protest as an attention-getting stunt.
Fake Steve is calling on disgruntled AT&T customers to bring AT&T’s data network “to its knees” at 12 noon PST this Friday, December 18.
The action is in protest of comments made by a company executive that some iPhone users are using too much data. The protest started as a joke, but seems to have taking on a life of its own. Judging by comments on forums, Facebook and Twitter, people are planning to take part.
Contacted by CultofMac.com, an AT&T spokesman said:
We understand that fakesteve.net is primarily a satirical forum, but there is nothing amusing about advocating that customers attempt to deliberately degrade service on a network that provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers. We know that the vast majority of customers will see this action for what it is: an irresponsible and pointless scheme to draw attention to a blog.
The AT&T spokesman doubted the action — if it goes ahead — will have much effect. There’s only about 300 participants committed to take part, according to a Facebook fan page set up for the event. The spokesman also claims that many have criticized the event: several have pointed out that the action may affect emergency calls.
Protesters plan to disrupt AT&T’s data network in several ways:
It’s unclear whether disruption of AT&T’s data network will affect voice calls.
Remember way back in 2007 when Steve Ballmer famously yanked on his oligarch’s suspenders, chomped down on his cigar and told USA Today: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance?” Ballmer then went on to muse that Apple would only ever succeed in getting two or three percent market share, while Windows Mobile would own sixty to seventy percent of the market.
No. Wait. Stop chortling and high fiving each other for a second, I’m trying to make a point here: those are the words of a man who firmly believes his predictions. History has shown otherwise: Microsoft obviously got caught sleeping at the wheel when the iPhone came on the scene and utterly destroyed Windows Mobile’s place in the smartphone arena. Two years later, and Microsoft still hasn’t released a version of Windows Mobile that is even competitive with iPhone OS 1.0, let alone 3.0. But at least Microsoft is no longer feeling complacent about it: speaking to attendees of the Connect! tech summit in London, Microsoft UK’s Phil Moore made a frank appraisal of Windows Mobile when compared to the iPhone.
Every time Toshiba unveils a new NAND module, you should take note: that’s going to be a meaningful storage capacity when it’s time for Apple to refresh it’s line of iPhone OS devices.
Apple’s current line of flash-based devices, the iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touch, use Toshiba’s NAND flash memory modules to achieve their svelteness. The iPhone 3Gs uses a single 16GB or 32GB Toshiba NAND module, while the iPod Touch uses dual Toshiba NAND modules to double the storage.
Flash storage capacity roughly doubles every year, so it’s no surprise that Toshiba has just announced that they have now doubled the maximum capacity of its NAND modules from 32GB to 64GB. That means that next year’s refresh of the iPhone and iPod Touch should see the former packing 64GB of internal flash storage, while the latter will likely max out at 128GB.
128GB of storage is a magic number for the iPod Touch: 128GB means I can finally get rid of my 160GB iPod Classic and cram my iTunes library onto a Touch without worrying about juggling albums around like some sort of Walkman-wielding, early eighties troglodyte. For me, the whole point of living in music’s digital age is that there shouldn’t be a problem walking around with sixty two days worth of music crammed into my front pocket.
My guess is that once the iPod Touch gets to 128GB, you can say goodbye to the iPod Classic once and for all. It just no longer serves a point. Who thought your end-of-line would be written by Toshiba, though?
With all the discussion of the New York Times’s bizarre decision to run a column that states as received wisdom that the iPhone’s poor network performance in the United States is Apple’s fault and not AT&T’s, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the track record of reporter Randall Stross with regard to Steve Jobs.
So I visited his website, and I remembered where I’d seen his name — on the cover of a book I read in high school that made a tech prognosis so spectacularly wrong that it’s occasionally used as a case study against proclaiming whether a particular technology is a winner or loser. That book? Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing. And its central premise was that Steve would never produce another tech industry hit. Seriously.
Operation Chokehold — a flashmob-style protest against AT&T that began as a joke on Fake Steve’s blog — looks like it may actually take place.
The meme is gathering a lot of steam on Twitter and Facebook, with people saying they plan to join the protest.
“We have got to do this!,” says Mashable reader pjserven, who set up a couple of Facbook pages to help mobilize protestors: an event page and a fanpage that makes it easy to invite friends.
The protest began with a Fake Steve post about an internal Apple memo — fake of course — about bringing AT&T’s network to its knees on Friday, December 18 at noon Pacific:
Subject: Operation Chokehold
On Friday, December 18, at noon Pacific time, we will attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees. The goal is to have every iPhone user (or as many as we can) turn on a data intensive app and run that app for one solid hour. Send the message to AT&T that we are sick of their substandard network and sick of their abusive comments. The idea is we’ll create a digital flash mob. We’re calling it in Operation Chokehold. Join us and speak truth to power!
“I made up the note,” said Dan Lyons, aka Fake Steve. “A reader sent in the opposite idea — a boycott of AT&T for one day, everyone stops using their iPhone for a day, and we show them what’s what. I liked the sentiment but who’s going to stop using their iPhone? And for a whole day? I figured no one would go for it. But a one-hour flash mob of overuse? Now that i could see people doing.”
The fake memo follows Fake Steve’s inspired and widely-linked anti-AT&T rant last week. Fake Steve’s diatribe was prompted by comments by A&T CEO Ralph de la Vega’s saying the carrier may “incentivize” iPhone users to cut back on their usage.
Note: Operation Chokehold may adversely affect AT&T’s voice network and block emergency calls.
Although e-readers like the Amazon Kindle and the new (and maligned) Barnes & Noble Nook are certainly tempting additions to a gadget fetishist’s armoire of doodads, I’ve never had much interest in owning one.
My ambivalence isn’t simply due to the fact that I think books conveyed as mere digital information is less sensual and vibrant than books as a medium: there is that, but I have still enjoyed reading e-books (thanks to Gutenberg.org) for most of the last decade. It’s mostly because I only enjoy reading e-books in certain circumstances: for example, when waiting for a subway, or in bed with the lights off. The e-ink panels of the Kindle and the Nook don’t work in the dark, which means my fleeting interest in e-books can only be satisfied with backlit devices. A few years ago, that was through my Pocket PC and the fantastic e-book program, uBook ; these days, it’s through my iPhone and the Stanza e-reader app.
Stanza is fantastic, of course, but with the release of the Kindle for iPhone app earlier this year, I’d been interested in supplementing my iPhone e-reading with Kindle books for awhile, only to be stymied by the fact that Amazon’s app was for US audiences only. But today, that’s changed: Apple has finally introduced its Kindle for iPhone App to international users.
It’s the same app as before, allowing you to purchase, download and read hundreds of thousands of books through the Kindle Store while syncing your notes and bookmarks across devices… the only difference is it now works on iPhones and iPod Touches in over sixty different countries.
I tend to doubt Kindle for iPhone will replace Stanza as my default e-reader on the iPhone — it’s hard to beat Stanza’s vast library of free classics — but I’m at least looking forward to finally being able to supplement it.
A plea for help with existential ramifications found on Yahoo answers:
“How come my iphone never rings?
I had it six month it never ring, y?”
Additional details:
There are four days left to provide the right answer.
Via Faster Times
UK newspaper The Guardian this morning launched its iPhone app.
And wow, it’s pretty damn good.
Apparently, it’s been irrational Apple-Bashing Weekend for the last few days, and no one bothered to alert us here at the Cult. Lest the outlandish claims about the awesomeness of AT&T’s network from the New York Times get all the attention, Danish tech analyst Strand Consult (basically the Rob Enderle of northern Europe) wants to bend your ear with a list of inaccurate or out-dated complaints about the iPhone. Oh, and call iPhone users liars and victims of Stockholm Syndrome, too.
There are many similarities to the Stockholm Syndrome and from an outside perspective there is little doubt that many mobile phone manufacturers are most probably envious of the users on Apple’s platform. In reality the iPhone is surrounded by a multitude of people, media and companies that are happy to bend the truth to defend the product they have purchased from Apple.
The alleged analysis attacks the iPhone for 20 “problems” that its users allegedly defend, many of which are strictly matters of taste or downright false. This includes the usual suspects, like having to use Apple’s designated carriers (an obnoxious reality) and poor network performance (likely tied to the previous) and things that most iPhone users don’t mind at all, like the lack of a hardware keyboard, SD card slot, FM radio, and removable battery cover.
The article, however, also attacks the iPhone for its lack of a 3G radio, MMS, SMS forwarding, poor camera, and tethering, issues that, at least outside the United States, have been resolved for a minimum of six months and up to 18 months. Even more comically, it tilts against abstractions as the iPhone is a “low-technology phone wrapped in a sleek design.” Yes, the low-technology that powers the Palm Pre and Motorola Droid. Such a laggard, the iPhone.
Also, horror of horrors, the iPhone doesn’t allow users to install their Web browser of choice! Worse, Strand alleges, the iPhone won’t run random Java games written for LG flip phones circa 2003. Both of these issues have been keeping me awake late at night, I must say.
Honestly, the few credible points the article makes (too much crapware in the App Store, inconsistent App approval process, no third-party multitasking) are well-covered everywhere in the entire world and consistently irritate every iPhone user I know, and the rest of it is irrelevant or delusional.
I mean, if you’re going to allege that I’m sympathizing with my abuser, at least say something original, OK? It’s pathetic that so many tech journalists are willing to print as gospel the words of the clearly biased.
Strand Consult via CNet via TUAW
Everyone knows that the one thing holding the iPhone back in the U.S. is AT&T’s poor 3G coverage, right? With a dropped signal, it can transform from one of the world’s most capable mobile computers to a video iPod that plays a pretty mean version of Doom. Everyone knows the problem lies with the network’s inability to handle iPhone data traffic, as iPhones have no such problems in the European market, Japan, and other regions where it has a major foothold — places where the network load is so much not a problem that they enable data tethering from laptops.
Well, everyone knows but the New York Times and the mobile industry analysts — some of whom work for AT&T — they interviewed about the matter. In a dreadful column titled “AT&T Takes the Blame, Even for iPhone’s Faults“, one of the paper’s correspondents in Silicon Valley, Randall Stross, goes so far as to definitively declare that the iPhone’s design “is contributing to performance problems” and that with regard to Verizon, “AT&T has the superior network nationwide.” Oh, for crying out loud.
Despite the fact that the iPod Touch is increasingly being branded as a gamer’s device, Apple’s never had much truck with gaming… at least in-house. But new calls for a video game artist for the iPhone Gaming Group imply that Apple might be preparing to make a serious push into the gaming market, perhaps to better compete with other handhelds like the Nintendo DS.
A quality infographic is worth a thousand words; by that logic, since GigaOm’s latest infographic breaking down exactly who is getting rich off the iPhone (and by how much) contains roughly exactly that amount of words, it’s actually worth about a million.
Although there’s a lot of fantastic data in the GigaOm infographic, the thing that it makes most explicit is exactly how much money AT&T is making off the iPhone… and exactly how much it has to lose if their exclusivity deal lapses in 2010. According to GigaOm, AT&T actually makes $369 dollars off of the sale of every iPhone. That might not seem like a lot, but it will earn AT&T almost $2 billion dollars over the next two years in monthly data charges on the iPhones sold in the third quarter of 2009 alone.
That’s food for thought. AT&T hasn’t exactly been acting lately like a company about to lose the vaster part of its ill-begotten lucre over the next few years, which is exactly what will happen if its iPhone exclusivity lapses. With the iPhone worth, let’s say, $4 billion a year to AT&T, one wonders exactly how much they’d be willing to pay Apple just to keep control of their bread winner.
Check out out the full infographic at the link below. A lot of sites are just snapping up the entire image and regurgitating it back up locally; that’s not quite fair to the GigaOm guys, so we’re just including a snip of it: you should definitely click through to see the entire thing.
Who Is Getting Rich Off The iPhone [GigaOm]
Forehead arteries pulsing dangerously beneath purpling and apocalyptic skin stretched taut, a Microsoft manager recently told journalists not to use or even mention Apple products at a Windows Mobile event in Germany.
Eyeballs bulging out of his skull like the enraged ocular twins of his every spitted umlaut, the manager rebuked a journalist who had dared to opine over dinner that there has never been an easier-to-use smartphone than the iPhone.
“This is a Microsoft event,” the manager shouted. “Apple products have no business being here!”
Once again, AT&T shook their corporate fist menacingly at the bandwidth hogging iPhone kiddies scampering about their 3G lawn, threatening to charge users more if they keep on taking watching streaming video and availing themselves of other high-bandwidth services on their iPhones.
Speaking to attendees at a USB investor conference in New York, AT&T Wirelss CEO Ralph de la Vega said that AT&T was working on improving service in New York and San Francisco, possibly by introducing pricing tiers that would penalize high-bandwidth users.
Needless to say, if you’re under an existing contract, AT&T can’t just move you over to a tiered data contract… but once your existing contract is up, it’s open season.
UK supermarket giant Tesco has just announced tariffs for iPhone, which will go on sale from the company next Monday (December 14th).
The headline they’ll be using in adverts is that this iPhone is available for as little as £20 per month. Whether you go for a contract or decide to pay-as-you-go, this gets you £60 worth of calls and SMS messages (assuming PAYG customers top up at least £20 per month, which qualifies them for extras – and obviously encourages them to switch to a contract). Also consider that the free credit is applied once a month and only lasts for one month, then automatically expires.
Today, Apple launched a new RSS feed for iPhone Developers, promising updates, tips and how-to information on a range of relevant topics — from development to distribution.
The idea is to keep iPhone devs on top of the ever-shifting highways and byways of getting an app on iTunes, including:
— Tips for submitting apps to the App Store
— Current turnaround time for app reviews
— Program updates
— Development and testing techniques
With complaint sites over rejections and possible scams growing along with the astronomical app sales, something needed to be done to get better info in a timely fashion to devs.
The first few headlines look promising (see below) it remains to be seen whether the RSS will be another reality distortion field emanator…
iTunes Connect Unavailable Dec 23 – Dec 28
Adding iPhone OS 3.x Features to Your iPhone OS 2.x-compatible Apps
You Can Now Choose the Currency For Your App Store Payments
Updated iTunes Connect Developer Guide Now Posted
Via Network World
First Boston launched its CitizensConnect app in June, giving its citizens the ability use the iPhone to tag locations and upload photos of potholes and other urban hazards; now San Francisco is using the iPhone to build a better city too — through tracking cyclists with its CycleTracks app.
Dragon Dictation is a cool, free little app that allows you to write emails or text messages just by talking into your iPhone, because it transmogrifies your speech into text. In fact, I’m using it to write this.
Well, sorta. As documented by the above-left screenshot, even with the most pristine elocution I could muster, the results provided by Dragon Dictation still left me with errors to clean up. The above-right shot is what happened when I spoke with my everyday, habitually clipped delivery.
So, perhaps not the best solution for popping out a quick text on the road, but a good option to quickly get text down in words that you can straighten out later. Because Dragon Dictation is service-based, connection via wifi or 3G (i wasn’t able to test it using EDGE) is required. And right now Dragon Dictation is free, making it easy to take out for a test spin.
PC users (yes, PC users read Cult of Mac) might correctly identify Dragon as the same engine that powers Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the impressive speech-to-text PC app (and MacSpeech Dictate, a similar app for the rest of us).
Meet the iVictrola, the weirdest and possibly the coolest iPhone dock you’re likely to see this Christmastime.
Or should I say not likely to see, as it appears that the limited stock at Design Within Reach has already sold out. Oh well.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgJqXqZUZtU
Without dedicated analog controls, playing emulated console games on an iPhone or iPod Touch is always going to be a maddeningly imprecise experience, but even so, it’s can be nice to see the graphic capabilities of Apple’s touchscreen line explored.
The latest emulator to hit the iPhone is the 3G4, a Nintendo 64 emulator developed by fourteen year old programmer, “Doogie.” That’s a regrettable internet handle for a precocious teenager smack dab in the voice cracking throes of pubertal hormone imbalance, but it is apropos: the 3G4 is an impressive display, not only of the iPhone’s capabilities, but the programmer’s as well.
It’s not perfect by any means. The graphics have had to be heavily rendered down to work smoothly on the iPhone, and Doogie is still struggling with some elements of the interface: namely duplicate button registers, delayed button presses and a few mysterious crashes. He’s also yet to implement the L, R, and Z keys… and, in truth, it’s hard to see just where he’d cram them on 3G4’s already cramped display. But Doogie’s working on it, and anticipates a release sometime next year… although obviously not through the App Store.
AT&T have released a free tool to the App Store to allow iPhone users experiencing sub-standard service to help AT&T’s technicians improve the network.
By downloading the free Marks the Spot App to your iPhone, you can easily report any service failures you might experience. Dropped a call? No coverage? Data failure? Poor voice quality? Simply load up the app, allow it to pinpoint your position using GPS, select how often the problem happens to you in that area, then fire off your complaint to AT&T’s crackerjack network engineers, who will presumably slap up a new carrier tower in the blink of an eye. Or, at least, roll their eyes, theatrically yawn and go back to sleep.
Right now, of course, it’s impossible to know if the Mark the Spot app is just a placebo public relations tool to mollify their customers, or if AT&T will actually prioritize improving their network by identifying the holes in their cell tower web and patching them up.
Either way, though, it’s a fantastic idea: so fantastic, I wonder how long it is before tools like the Mark the Spot app ship on all smartphones across all networks. In fact, given the fact that the iPhone can already detect when a phone experiences network service problems like dropped calls, I wonder why the iPhone OS doesn’t automatically cough up a tool just like Mark the Spot when it detects an outage.
[via 9to5Mac]
Now, if you’re in the middle of a pub crawl, your reality is already pretty augmented. But if you’re just starting out, or aren’t yet wasted to the point where dropping the iPhone down a street grating is a real possibility, then finding the closest watering hole has never been easier — thanks to Belgian beer-maker Stella Artois’ just-released, free, augmented-reality bar-finder app.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDXnYMoQB_c
If you’re inclined to use your iPhone or iPod Touch for hauling around non-natively supported files like Word documents and Powerpoint presentations, there are apps that will allow you to copy over your files… but those only work once you are out of your house. The awkwardly named Here, File File! aims to change that, offering easy access to the contents of any of your Macs, from anywhere.
Although Here, File File! hasn’t hit the App Store quite yet, the teaser video compelling demonstrates how the app works. After installing the contents of a small DMG on your Macs, Here, File File! allows you to browse, search, slurp and stream any file on your machine or its connected folders to your iPhone or iPod Touch, keeping things secure through user authentication and SSL encryption.
The stand-out functionalities of Here, File File! seem to be its effortless Spotlight integration, the ability to send emails with files attached from your host machine, and functionality for streaming movies or music from your Mac to your iPhone from anywhere, and over any connection (although, presumably, the streaming media feature only works with natively supported formats like MP4 and MP3.)
The developers claim that Here, File File! should be available on the App Store in January, although the price has yet to be announced. In the meantime, you can sign up to be notified when the app is released.
[via TUAW]
In America, filing for a patent is simple, and a patent is often approved by clerks with no actual knowledge of the technology in question. That makes it all too easy to file for frivolous, overly broad patents… then sue other companies for massive pay outs when they unknowingly infringe.
You don’t need any more information to recognize that the entire patent system is completely broken than to just mull over the fact that Apple is being sued over the iPhone’s camera by a small company made up of exactly two lawyers and six staff members whose entire business is patent infringement. And Apple is likely to pay.