News - page 2129

Surely by now you’ve heard, the iPhone 4 is coming to Verizon. Now, I’m not planning on leaving AT&T, but I was still very happy to hear that bit of news. Why? Because sending millions of iPhone users to Verizon may be the only way to get the AT&T network working better.

AT&T has had over 3 years to fix their network problems, but for whatever reason, they’re still having major issues. If fact in seems things have gotten so bad, anytime a lot of iPhone users gather in one place, the network starts to buckle (were you able to use 3G at CES for anything this year?).

But now, my hope is renewed. Instead of one over-burdened network dropping carrying all the iPhone data, we have two. The iPhone will now have access to twice the towers, twice the switches, twice the trucks—twice the everything that makes the data flow. Users will now have a choice to test the Verizon waters, and I hope they go in masses.

Here’s what I’m thinking: if enough users (millions?) head to Verizon, maybe the reduction in traffic will ease the strain on AT&T’s network. Maybe then, those of us who stay behind will be able to use our iPhones the way Steve Jobs probably always imagined—with nary a dropped call or lost byte. Hey, it could happen.

So tell your friends. Tell them all the great things you’ve ever heard about Verizon. Make a few things up if you have to. And make a lot of eye contact, it’ll make you more believable. It’ll all be worth it. If enough people defect to Verizon, AT&T could become the always-ready always-reliable network we’ve been waiting for.

Details may remain sketchy on the special event T-Mobile has scheduled for sometime in the coming weeks but the #4 carrier in the US wasted no time cranking up a new ad that riffs on the old “upstarts are cool – Big Guys are stodgy” meme that Apple has used for years to poke fun at Microsoft.

The ad should start running on US television networks next week, according to a report at TechCrunch.

Apple made big gains in Q4 2010, increasing Mac shipments by a whopping 23.7 percent — the highest gains of any PC maker in the U.S.

And if you factor in the iPad, the gains would have been even bigger.

Meanwhile, the overall PC industry grew only 3.1 percent during the holiday quarter, according to the latest estimated numbers from the market research firm Gartner.

High-end a/v makers Denon and Marantz have just issued a firmware update providing AirPlay music streaming capability to nine of their network capable decks.

For Denon, that includes the the AVR-4311CI ($1,999), AVR-3311CI ($1,199) AVR-991 ($999), and the AVR-A100 ($2,499), as well as the RCD-N7 Networked CD Receiver ($599). On the Marantz side of things, there’s the SR7005 A/V Receiver ($1,599), AV7005 A/V Preamplifier ($1,499), NA7004 Network Audio Player ($799) and M-CR603 Networked CD Receiver ($699)

Amazingly, though, the firmware updates are $50 apiece. Ballsy! If that’s worth it to you, though, you can grab the firmware upgrades at both the Denon and Marantz websites.

Got a PlayStation 3? Sony has just released their official PlayStation app for the whole world — or, at least, America, France, UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands — to download.

Don’t expect to use your iPhone as a thin client to play some PlayStation 3 games, though. Instead, the app lets you log into the PlayStation Network, follow your friends, check out the games they own, read their status updates, monitor trophies you’ve earned and check out the official PlayStation blog.

The PlayStation app is a free download. You can get it here

Feeling pinched for space in your new MacBook Air? I know I certainly am, even (or, perhaps, especially) with a 500GB USB hard drive perpetually tethered to my 11-incher.

I’m interested, then, in OWC’s recently unveiled Mercury Auro Pro Express Kits, which are compatible with both the late 2010 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Pros. They are available in three sizes: a $499.99 180GB dSSD, a $579.99 240GB SSD, and a $1,179.99 360GB SSD… all of which are not only bigger than Apple’s in-house drives, but faster as well.

Much as I’d like a bigger SSD in my MacBook Air, at those prices, I’m tempted to wait until they come down a bit… but that might not be an option. Apple has already shut down one company selling MacBook Air SSD upgrade kits, and it’s likely they’ll do the same here, so if you’re going to get one, better scrape that $500 together fast.

[via iSource]

iOS 4.3 Beta Build 8F5148B has just been seeded to developers, and there’s some big changes across all devices to get your head around:

• iOS 4.3 officially drops support for the iPhone 3G and second-generation iPod Touch. iOS 4 never ran particularly well on these devices anyway, and it looks like Apple knows it: they’ve now left all support for less-than-third-gen devices at iOS 4.2.1.

• As predicted, iOS 4.3 brings the Verizon iPhone’s “Personal Hotspot” feature allowing WiFi tethering for up to five devices to all iPhones… or, at least, all iPhones that are blessed with their carrier’s approval.

• A new software option to choose what your iPad’s side switch does: lock rotation or mute. This is a pretty big change: Steve Jobs himself basically said the change in iOS 4.2 from a lock switch to mute was permanent, but it seems user complaints eventually made Apple see sense. Mute just doesn’t make any sense on a non-phone device.

• A new FaceTime icon and full-screen iAds.

• New multitouch gestures for iPad users. You can use four or five fingers to pinch to the Home Screen; swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar; and swipe left or right between apps.

Anything we missed? Let us know in the comments.

Sprint and T-Mobile each announced Wednesday special media events set to take place in New York in coming weeks. Neither carrier is expected to announce anything related to Apple or its mobile devices, though the Sprint invitation sent to some tech industry journalists did allude to an “industry first” up its sleeve.

Sprint’s event is scheduled for February 7, while details on the T-Mobile announcement were unavailable at press time.

With the same uncanny knack for odd timing that led to the launch of the much-ballyhooed “iPhone killer” Palm Pre being completely overshadowed by Apple’s release of iPhone 3G in June 2009, Sprint’s event comes both well in the wake of Tuesday’s big Verizon iPhone announcement and just days before its widely-anticipated launch on the #1 carrier in the US.

Speculation as to which bright and shiny things Sprint might use to draw attention away from iPhone and its two largest competitors seems centered on potential new webOS devices such as the Pixi 2 or Topaz tablet, but which “industry first” either of those devices would bring to the table is anyone’s guess.

Perhaps the star of Sprint’s show, illusionist David Blaine will transform the company’s stock chart into something that hasn’t flat-lined after doing a Dive of Death.

It’s not the first of its kind, but LCARS Reader could be the iPad app of every Star Trek fan’s dreams.

We’ll all be videoconferencing like crazy in 2012, predicts Barclay’s analyst Ben Reitzes.

By the end of 2012, Apple’s installed base of FaceTime devices will exceed 200 million, Reitzes predicts.

That’s based on more than 85 million FaceTime-enabled devices by the end of 2011:

• 50 million FaceTime iPhones
• 15 million FaceTime iPods
• 12 million FaceTime Macs
• 10 million FaceTime iPads

In 2012, Apple’s video conferencing platform will only gather momentum, driven by what he’s calling the “FaceTime networking effect.”

“While Android and competitive devices either have or are working toward incorporating a similar feature, we believe this particular feature benefits from Apple’s vertically integrated model,” Reitzes said. “Experiences across disparate hardware platforms tend to vary–with Apple’s one of the most reliable in our trials. Also, this feature allows Apple to mine the millions of iTunes users who have Apple ID’s–and provide an attractive feature across devices that can be put into use immediately. We believe the ‘FaceTime networking effect’ could enhance a halo effect on Macs and iPads as the feature becomes available.”

AllThingsD: 200 Million FaceTime-Enabled Devices in 2012?

Even if you haven’t heard of Michael Göbel before, perhaps you’ve encountered his software. A prolific worker, Michael’s been building an impressive portfolio of applications over the last few years.

Like all developers, he now faces the new challenges of selling via the Mac App Store, and today sent out an email to customers explaining his plans for the future.

Play around with this cool online iPad simulator, courtesy of developer Alex Wolkov.

Not everything works, but it’s made with JS & CSS3. Impressive!

Via MacStories.

The 5th Avenue Apple Store is already one of New York’s most iconic locations, but now Apple wants to bring some of their keen architectural sense to Brooklyn… specifically, by putting their sixth NYC store near the new Atlantic Yards arena, which will be the future Prospect Heights’ based home of the New Jersey Nets.

According to the New York Observer, Apple’s been in discussions with developer Forest City Ratner about moving into a retail slot.

Writing about mobile for a living, it can be hard to keep the names of all of the competing App Stores straight. Apple has the App Store, Google has the Android Marketplace, HP has the Palm App Catalog and Microsoft has the most unwieldy name yet in the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Microsoft seems to be as embarrassed by their app market’s name as we are, because they’re now trying to take Apple to court over Cupertino’s 2008 trademark on the the “App Store,” arguing that the term is too generic to be exclusively used by Apple.

Much of the talk surrounding the impact of Verizon gaining the iPhone has centered on a potential loss by AT&T. However, a new theory is gaining a foothold that a Verizon iPhone could instead hurt Apple’s rival Google. Indeed, one analyst Wednesday goes so far as to predict Tuesday’s announcement will “suck the wind out of Android’s growth on Verizon.”

Here’s how the theory goes: although smartphones comprise a small segment of the overall cell phone market, they are a growing portion. Until now, feature phone owners looking to move to smartphones could either switch from Verizon to AT&T and get an iPhone, or stick with their carrier and buy one of the many Android phones flooding the airwaves. Now, yesterday’s announcement means Verizon customers can have their cake and eat it too – they can stay with their network and have an iPhone.

During yesterday’s Verizon iPhone event, one journalist asked Apple COO Tim Cook whether or not Verizon had an “exclusive” on the CDMA iPhone.

Although the Verizon iPhone seems like a huge deal over in the States, in the grand scheme of things, one carrier’s not particularly important… but there are an additional hundreds of millions of CDMA-subscribers in other countries like China and India who Apple would also like to sell an iPhone.

Needless to say, then, Tim Cook said that Verizon’s deal was a multi-year contract, but not exclusive, meaning that the so-called Verizon iPhone is really the CDMA iPhone, and will creep out to other CDMA networks in the coming months.

Sure enough, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty told investors on Thursday that Apple was likely to strike deals for the CDMA iPhone with China Telecom and Reliance in India in the next few months. Those are the two fastest growing mobile markets on Earth: CDMA subscribers in India account for 20% of the country’s 670 million subscribers as it is.

The CDMA iPhone may be a big deal for Verizon subscribers, and people who want more competition and choice in the American mobile landscape, but let’s not forget the international importance here, which is arguably much, much bigger.

Although there’s still many things we don’t know about about the Verizon iPhone — namely, in the details of their pricing and the generosity of their data plans — one immediate advantage Verizon has over AT&T is that you can tether up to five different devices to the handset’s 3G connection over WiFi, when AT&T only offers one.

For road warriors, that’s a big perk to the Verizon iPhone compared to the AT&T one: you can drive an entire mobile office with just one Verizon device. Another benefit is that AT&T tethering service only works via Bluetooth or USB.

So will AT&T cave and match Verizon’s offer? AppleInsider asked the question, and was told by an AT&T representative that they would not “speculate” on their own plans.

Following Tuesday’s long-predicted announcement of a Verizon CDMA iPhone, one analyst sees Apple stock rising to $450 per share, up from a previous target price of $365. Peter Misek of Jeffreries & Co. seems to base his Wednesday note to investors on a belief the Cupertino, Calif. is not done surprising consumers.

Misek predicts Apple will unveil an iPhone for Long Term Evolution networks (sometimes known as 4G) by October, a GSM-based iPhone 5 in June and a 4G-based iPad in late 2011. Also, the analyst describes “multiple products to assault the living room” and cloud-based services also appearing this year.

If you saw our previous posts about light painting using an iPhone or iPad, you’ll enjoy this brief video demonstration of how to make a very cool New Year greeting.

The lightpainting was done using Penki, an app developed by the people who sparked off this idea in the first place, Dentsu London/BERG.

All that’s needed in addition is a ruler, a camera with a flash (for the portraits), and a shiny table. And perhaps a few rehearsals to get the timing right. There’s a pile more lightpainting images in the Penki Flickr pool, if you feel the need for some further inspiration.

EDIT: Video embedding didn’t work – go here to see the video in full.

Steve Jobs didn’t make an appearance at the Verizon iPhone launch, instead delegating an official Cupertino presence to his number one, Tim Cook… but according to Yahoo, Jobs won’t miss the January 19th launch of Rupert Murdoch’s new iPad-Only newspaper, The Daily.

The news comes apparently from Murdoch himself, who apparently briefed some reporters on the Daily at CES, although that information is still under embargo. The Daily’s team of reporters and staffers have apparently been engaged in full-scale dry runs for weeks in preparation for launch.

Come launch day on February 10, Verizon’s iPhone customers needn’t worry about the 3rd party accessory market being ready to wrest a few dollars more from them in the name of style and security.

iLuv a premier provider of accessories for the Apple smartphone, is all set to launch a new line of stylish cases and protective films for the CDMA iPhone 4, the dearest of which will set consumers back almost $50. Nine cases and two kinds of protective films should be available at leading retailers and iLuv’s online store by late January.

And if you can’t wait that long, be sure to check out the Impactband from BaseOneLabs. They were prescient enough to design their case with 3mm of extra room above and below the volume and rocker switch, which allows plenty of room for access to the CDMA version’s moved left-side buttons.

Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart devoted seven minutes of his show Tuesday night to putting his team’s indelible spin on the Verizon iPhone announcement. The second half is actually pretty funny.

It remains to be seen whether 1/11/11 will heretofore be known as VZ Day, but it’s a thought.

Steve Jobs introduced iTunes ten years ago this week, on January 10, 2001 at the MacWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco, where he proclaimed a belief in the “revolution” of “digital music on computers.”

At the time, Macs still ran on OS 9 and iTunes was all about “ripping audio CDs onto your computer disk;” tens of billions of dollars in digital music sales were yet a glimmer in Jobs’ eye.

At the time, iTunes launched as a competitor to existing products from companies such as Real Networks and Microsoft, and Jobs admitted at MacWorld that his company was “late to the game.”

iTunes, of course, quickly became the only game in town, as Apple soon launched OS X and seamlessly integrated its music software with iPod, the line of portable music players that “changed everything” and helped Apple become the tech industry powerhouse it is today.

While many tech pundits equivocate over the Verizon iPhone now that it’s finally almost here, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has no qualms about plunking down for another device on a new network.

“I’m definitely going to get one,” Wozniak said. “I always have at least one Verizon phone on me at all times, just in case I’m in one of those bad areas. You can find those areas where Veriozn doesn’t work and AT&T does, but in truth, it’s usually the opposite.”

“And I also love the mobile hotspot,” Wozniak added. “I hope it’s the standard $30 a month. I wish it was free like the Palm Pre, because that made the Pre a cheaper Mi-Fi. Anyway so I’m expecting that it’s no big new iPhone, not even a new color. It’s just going to be on the Verizon network.”

Wozniak is not your average cell phone user, however. Aside from being far more fabulously wealthy than 99% of the people in the US, his Verizon iPhone will bring the number in his phone holster up to four.

“I’ll have three activated AT&T iPhones, so if the battery runs down I have a spare,” Wozniak said. “And I’m in Europe a lot of times, so maybe one of them will be Verizon, one of them will be AT&T. So I’ll have two AT&T, one AT&T with the international plan, and one Verizon if I need it. Although the tethering’s only to a computer. Although maybe I can give one number up and give it to Verizon. And I’ll keep the Droid X. And I’ll probably give up the Palm Pre, because I now have another Mi-Fi.”

It’s nice to be a man with options, eh?

[PC Magazine]

The day millions have waited for finally arrived Tuesday when Verizon announced it would begin offering customers Apple’s iPhone.

Well, perhaps more accurately, the day millions have waited for will finally arrive on February 10, when Apple iPhone users in the US get their first opportunity to sample the services of a network other than at&t, which has enjoyed the longest reign of exclusivity on the planet as the sole US carrier for iPhone since its launch in the summer of 2007.

Some say pent-up demand for iPhone on Verizon could “demolish” at&t’s business.

“I can tell you that the number one question I’ve gotten is ‘when will the iPhone work on Verizon’,” Apple COO Tim Cook said Tuesday at the launch announcement in New York — and some have predicted the boon to Verizon’s bottom line from iPhone sales will be massive.