Category Archives: iPhone

Happy Apple Day!

iPhone

Today is the day! The World Wide Developers Conference @ San Fran! His lordship Steve will be announcing a few new things like… oh… a new iPhone, maybe? Months of speculation, phony photoshopped images and container ships tracked from China will come to fruition in the next hour or so. Will the new iPhone be thicker? Will it have two cameras for iChat? Will it be pretty (RED)esigned? Will the battery last longer? Will it come to Canada (he may announce/confirm it as “coming soon” – Comwave still has “iPhone” as a package deal on it’s site but Comwave’s TV commercials mention no such package anymore)? Will it have games? Will it sync wireless? Will it cure my hangnail?

I’ll be busy from noon to two hitting refresh on my Gizmodo liveblog window.

UPDATE: The Canadian Apple Store is down. Get your credit cards ready! (Actually, Engadget reports the Apple store down “globally” Woot!)

UPDATE: Steve Jobs… someone get him a milkshake. He’s looking thin…

UPDATE: $199 for the second generation 3G iPhone?!? If you buy one, millions of early adopters will be coming to your house to expect $5 from you. Me included.

Still, I like the apps that are coming. WordPress app! Save images! Games that work (No offense iZoo)!

UPDATE: 10 minutes after the end of the presentation, Apple Store Canada has the 3G. Rogers.com is not responding. Hmmmm… when it finally does come up, no mention of the iPhone.

iPretentious

iPhone

Me. Subway. 8:04am. Conversation in my head:

Yeah, I think I’ll just PULL OUT MY iPHONE. That’s right Mr 4-Year-Old-Blackberry. THE iPhone. Accept no substitutes. Just flick it on here. Oh yeah! Music! Rock on! Oh what is this? A game you say? Certainly! Wee! High Score! I love the little hippo faces when I pop three in a row! Weee! Oh I love this song!

What’s that? You put away your Blackberry and took out your iPod (classic… zzz)? Two devices? My my my my my my. How behind you are. I’m just going to open my collection of YouTube videos I have and entertain myself –

Looks up and sees own reflection.

Shit. My fly is down.

50% Less Wallet

iPhone

The Unofficial Apple Weblog has an article of pure genius. We’re talking Wile E Coyote kind of “pure genius”. Albert has created a photo album of all his membership cards and put it on his iPhone and effectively reduced his bulge on his butt. I am so trying this on my Shoppers/Costco/Air Miles cards!

It’s proven that the barcode, if its a clear scan, will read, and if the person scanning it isn’t a luddite who won’t trust your crazy machine as proper identification, you can reduce your wallet considerably.

iPhone Saturdays

iPhone

Articles that made me laugh this week:

• The reason why SharkBoy got me the iPhone. 85% less sedatives? This is probably why I haven’t quit my job lately. (via Gizmodo)

• “The Cow Says Copyright Infringment!” (via Engadget)

• Is this the Second Coming of the Jesus Phone? The back looks like the template leak, but I don’t see a user-side camera… I would say mmmmmaybe. (again from Engadget)

• Erica Sundin, the iPhone goddess, confesses to not using her phone part of her iPhone. GASP! (via TUAW)

• Do you think Rogers will do this when they come to Canada? SNORT! Not on your life. (via ComputerWorld)

• No buttons, No Reception, All Ego. A parody ad easter egg in GTA IV (Via TUAW)

• Still one of my favorite groups on Flickr: iPhone Effects. Raw images out of the camera.

• And finally, R2D2 as video projector, yours for $3K (nothing to do with the iPhone, I know. But it’s FRAKKING COOL!)

OHMYGOLLYGOSH!

iPhone

HOW AND WHEN is NOW!

Of course it was sneaked in (fourth point down) in their quarterly review and actually doesn’t say anything that we’ve already know, but it’s semiformalsomewhat official!

Wireless announced it had reached an agreement with Apple to bring
the iPhone to Canada later this year. Information regarding device
availability and service plans will be announced at a later date.

Canada Doesn’t Deserve the iPhone

iPhone, Tech

What? I hear you say.

I’m dead serious. If the two main sites that report on iPhone news, applications and gadgets are to be the harbinger of the coming of the iPhone in the Great White North, then we can expect the news to be mis-informed and at least 24 hours too late.

Lets start with iPhoneworld.ca: other than the debilitating ads that clog it’s loading, or the mystery meat navigation, it’s fairly good. But slow on the reporting. Hackint0sh, TUAW and Gizmodo trump this site by hours (in some cases days). Let’s face it, the only thing this site will be good for is when Rogers announces the arrival of the phone and then it will wonder what to talk about next. But what made me cancel my RSS feed to it was their utterly lame attempt to get Rogers and Apple to shake hands: The “Great” Canadian iPhone Petition (quotes mine).

Very noble! That will make Rogers stand up and say “Hey! There are some disgruntle customers out there! We should do something about it!” I’ll stop with the sarcasm from here on in, you get my drift. But here’s the thing that made me pass morning tea through my nose:

We, the undersigned, pledge our support to Rogers Communications Inc., that we would support the launch of the iPhone in Canada.

Whiskey? Tango? Foxtrot? They want us to support a company that is going to monopolize this product with high connection costs? Uh… for how long? Forever? I’ll be honest, when (if?) Rogers brings the iPhone to Canada I’ll buy into their plan only because it’s the only kid on the block. As soon as someone else comes along: Sayonara! Pledging support to a company blindly is a bit too creepy for me. Sign me out. Expected signatures: 100,000. Since inception (March 28th): 790. Good luck with that.

And then there’s iPhoneinCanada.ca. Arguably a better site with product/accessory reviews but with the same amount of slow loading ads. Again, nothing really new here that hasn’t been scooped from the other Apple/iPhone sites, other than cases you can’t get in Canada unless you order them online. Worrisome were the reviews and links to “All-you-can-eat” download sites that I am pretty sure are hosting unlicensed media. Regardless, I hung out on the forums for a couple weeks and was really starting to get a sense of community until one of the moderators started to wildly recommend Ziphone blindly to all who would ask what was the best way to jailbreak, unlock, activate your phone.

Obviously he wasn’t doing his homework.

I mean, sure it works. But what is it doing to your iPhone?

When I asked if he had researched what exactly Ziphone does, he accused me of being biased towards a particular software. His final word on the matter was that the forum was there to offer many different solutions to unlocking your phone and that readers would have to make their own decisions.

So I decided that I wanted to be a part of something more informed and based on solid opinion, and I deleted that RSS feed too.

So I’m hoping that any Canadian who has an iPhone or is going to purchase one, has a little more sense to blindly trust these sites. My advice: Google deeper.

A New Day For This Poor Sap

iPhone, Work

This morning I rushed an email ad out the door without amending the subject line. Our clients were treated to a “Fantastic Africa!” tag but opening the email they found Asia destinations. Owch! I blame Monday.

Having done this, I certainly can feel the pain of the graphic designer who inserted an image of a jailbroken iPod Touch into a national ad campaign for Radio Shack (via Engadget). You can tell it’s hacked – it has the Installer app and Mobile Chat icons on the Springboard. I have a sinking feeling that the poor sap behind the Mac had to get this flyer out the door with minimal assistance from the art director and was forced to take a picture of his own iPod to cut corners. I’m also assuming that he was low man on the totem pole and nobody checked his work that hard.

I’m also assuming he’s at home right now assessing his portfolio.

Happy B-day Apple!

iPhone

June 1997, you were pretty close to losing it all. Wired Magazine published this cover (considered #33 of the top 100 covers) and it pretty much said it all:
Wired June 1997 cover

But then you came back (with a little help from Bill Gates, ironically) and you managed to create a brand that is synonymous with “design”. Although not always the best design.

Wired Mag revisited their cover this month with this beauty, nailing what Apple has become, Evil Genius:
Wired Mag cover April 2008