You remember the exploded iPhone t-shirt from earlier this month, surely. Well, artist Kevin Tong has gone it one better, with a schematic design inspired by Leonardo DaVinci – the iSteamPhone t-shirt.
$20 at the linked website, with US and International checkout options.
Via Daring Fireball
Apple was granted a key patent covering many aspects of the iPhone interface as well as potentially other “multi-touch” handsets. CEO Steve Jobs was listed among the inventors in a 358-page filing awarded last week.
The patent covers the iPhone, gestures and the handset’s OS X operating software.
U.S. Patent No. 7479949 comes saber-rattling between Apple and other touch-screen handset makers. Last week, interim Apple CEO Tim Cook warned unnamed competitors that the Cupertino, Calif.-based company would protect its intellectual property.
This Apple keyboard concept has an induction charge and sync on the right hand side for an iPhone or iPod and six programable OLED keys much like the Optimus Maximus Aux keyboard.
The mock-ad lists the price as $79. Worth the price for going wireless?
Via Textually
An analyst Wednesday told clients he expects a new 4GB iPhone during the first quarter, pushing sales of the popular handset to 7 million units beyond the 6.9 million iPhone 3Gs sold in 2008.
“Checks indicate a new 4GB iPhone which may be helping to increase build rates,” UBS analyst Maynard Um advised. Taiwan-based chipmakers may be preparing parts for a new iPhone, a newspaper reported Tuesday.
Unconfirmed speculation of an iPhone nano priced below the $199 8GB iPhone has swirled for some time.
Apple could control up to 40 percent of the smartphone market by 2013, UK-based Generator Research announced Tuesday. The company predicted the iPhone would grab marketshare at a time when Nokia and other cell phone players are battered by poor economic conditions.
Nokia, the current cell phone leader, could shrink to just 20 percent of the market, contends the research firm. The prediction is counter to Nokia’s own outlook. Earlier this month, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told the Financial Times the economic mess could hurt rivals and help the Finnish company known for low-cost phones.
Not to be deterred, the British researchers said Apple could parlay the combination iPhone and App Store into another iPod-iTunes success.
iPhones sold on the black market in Bangkok cost about $800, about eight times the U.S. retail price and over twice the average Thai’s monthly salary, a price people are willing to pay to carry around what one local tech reporter calls the Louis Vuitton of status phones.
Thailand is on Apple’s “coming soon” list for legit iPhones but correspondent Patrick Winn, who poked around the stalls at a Thai tech market for Global Post, says that in a country where about 70% of people have cell phones, not everyone is willing to wait.
Legit iPhones will contend with an existing iPhone black market, which for years has thrived in the vacuum and given rise to a network of smugglers and code breakers.
“The iPhones move fast, ” a vendor told Winn. “It’s hip. It’s sharp.”
Though the underground phones are exorbitantly priced the profit margin isn’t what attracts underground vendors. It’s the turnover that makes them worth smuggling and worth selling.
Image courtesy Global Post, full story here.
Apple’s move to CES from Macworld Expo “is a done deal,” AppleInsider reported Monday, confirming last week’s Cult of Mac story breaking the news.
AI cited unnamed “sources close to” Apple.
The move is designed to provide a greater contrast between Apple and its rivals, including Microsoft and Palm. Leaving Macworld also marks Apple’s departure as only a computer company and positioning itself as a larger consumer electronics player involved in cell phones, gaming and software.
Among the more interesting things I’ve come across so far at Macworld is an innovative calling application from Freedom Voice, called Newber. Somewhat similar, but with a couple of key differences to Grand Central, Newber lets you route every phone call made to you though a single number and, using GPS location awareness, lets you take the call on any phone that happens to be nearby.
If you’re in the office at your desk, Newber will send calls to your work phone. At home it can ring the house phone. On the road Newber will ring your iPhone, the phone extension in your hotel room, even the payphone at the gas station in the middle of nowhere where you’re getting a flat fixed – if that’s where you want it to ring. Your callers have one number for you and you can receive their calls anywhere.
I saw the app in a demo at a press event on Monday night and spoke further yesterday with David Gerzof, president of Bigfish Communications, the PR firm representing Newber, about the difficulty Freedom Voice has had getting the Newber app approved for distribution in the AppStore. “Newber was submitted in October and Apple authorized the product manager to contact them by phone, which he does every day,” Gerzof told me. “They haven’t said it will be approved or that it won’t be approved, in fact we can’t see from our activity logs where they have even begun testing it. It’s very frustrating.”
As a result, despite having already put several hundred thousand dollars into developing the platform for iPhone, Gerzof and Newber aren’t putting all their eggs in Apple’s basket. A Demo application for Blackberry is already operating and the company is also working on one for Android. “We love Apple and began work first with the iPhone SDK because we wanted it to be the launch platform, but if they aren’t interested, we have to move forward with the others,” Gerzof says.
Although news satirists The Onion target Apple with a certain frequency, pull back the curtain and staffers are Apple users.
When asked by the Guardian to name their favorite piece of technology, both Onion staffers Will Graham (executive producer/director) and Julie Smith (general manager) said the iPhone.
The rest of the tech Q&A reads like a love letter to Apple, a few excerpts:
Mac or PC?
Will: our whole Onion organization is very fervently pro Mac, despite doing jokes about them. For creative people there is no comparison.
Do you think the iPhone will be obsolete in 10 years’ time?
Julie: Yes, I do. They’ll probably have the iPhone 36G by then.
What’s the most expensive piece of technology you’ve ever owned?
Julie: My Macbook Pro.
Will: I remember there was a thing my dad gave me as a Christmas gift that I thought was really cool, about eight or nine years ago –œ the Mac Talk…
What piece of technology would you most like to own?
Julie: I guess a robot. Or another iPhone.
Apple must end its exclusive iPhone sales agreement with France Telecom, a government agency ruled Wednesday. The 2007 deal created a “serious and immediate” threat to broader competition, according to France’s competition regulator.
The order could allow the No. 3 French carrier Bouygues Telecom SA to begin selling iPhones soon. For its part, Orange announced it would appeal the measure. The carrier said the decision puts France in a “radically different situation” than Germany, the U.S., Britain and Spain, where Apple has exclusive distribution deals.
The French Competition Council, which took up the Bouygues claim in September, said Apple’s five-year agreement with Orange was “clearly excessive.”