iPhone

Vodafone chief Arun Sarin called the iPhone "a pretty poor experience" in a recent interview. And while I have to do everything I can not to laugh, I can't help but think this comment is the byproduct of one thing -- jealousy.

If you've been following overseas iPhone carrier news, you probably know that Vodafone wanted to be the exclusive iPhone carrier in the UK and its German unit is currently in a courtroom battle with rival T-Mobile and has actually convinced a judge to ban the sale of iPhones because it's 'unfair.'

What a clown. Sarin wants us to actually believe that the iPhone is a "poor experience" just because his company isn't carrying it. Is it just me or does this sound like a fifth-grade recess discussion between two children who are debating whether or not lunch was really that good.

Nice one, Sarin. Not only do you sound petty, you make your company look even worse.

Let's look at the facts before we called the iPhone "a pretty poor experience". Shall we?… Read more

Earlier this year, I expressed skepticism that the iPhone would be able to break the convergence rule: historically, consumers have preferred devices that do one thing well over devices that combine multiple equally important functions. (The big exception being the personal computer.)

Some figures released today by retail researcher NPD suggest I may be wrong. Of the 38 million phones shipped to U.S. consumers last quarter, 50% of them were able to play music. That's up from 25% in the previous year.

Doing some quick math, it appears that the iPhone made up about 6% of all music-capable … Read more

Conspiracy theories sure are fun.

A forum post Friday about a curious line of code in Apple's iPhone quickly grew into suspicions that the company was tracking all kinds of data after a blogger picked up the tin foil and ran Sunday night. Apparently when you check stocks or weather on the iPhone, the application sends a string of code back to an Apple Web server that appears to send the device's IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number along with the query.

This line of code: dgw?imei=%@≈ptype=finance, was apparently enough to suggest to many people … Read more

It's a good time for talented developers. Architects of Web and client-side apps have their choice of dazzling users on not one, but three cutting-edge mobile platforms. There's no shortage of opportunities to create custom Safari apps for the iPhone, and add them to our growing collection of iPhone apps, of course. Developers can also now download the Android SDK (for Mac or Windows) to start measuring and mixing an app for Google's new mobile platform. Inspired developers have a chance to earn a share of the $10 million in prizes offered in the Android Developer Challenge.… Read more

The thing about open source is that if you give it an inch, it will take a mile. Take Java, for instance. Apple has not stepped up to enable its iPhone to run Java, but that's OK. The community appears to have plans to do Apple's work for it:

Apple has not made Java capable of running on the [iPhone]. But Sun's Terrence Barr, technical evangelist for Java ME (Micro Edition), believes Apple's plans to release a software developer's kit for iPhone in early 2008 may result in the open-source phoneME version of Java ME … Read more

Why couldn't Apple have done this here in the US? As the Wall Street Journal reports today, Apple responded to criticism that slow phone networks would dull the luster of its iPhone roll-out by signing a slew of WiFi/hotspot agreements throughout Europe:

After Apple Inc. said it would sell the iPhone in Europe, critics contended the device's Internet connection would be too slow for Europeans used to speedier cell networks.

So Apple did something about it. It now has agreements in place with hot-spot providers in the United Kingdom and Germany so iPhone owners can use their speedy wireless Internet networks free of charge.

How hard would it have been to do this in the US, as well, especially given the fact that every review of the iPhone castigated its dependence on a slow AT&T network. But this isn't the only change Apple has made for Europe.… Read more

There's always potential for massive dorkiness when parents venture into a new pop culture arena like customized ringtones. I had stayed away from this trend, due to a general state of information overload as well as concerns about deceptive ringtone services that promise a free ringtone and then surreptitiously subscribe you to ongoing charges.

But this week I have been getting to know my iPhone better and the new version of iTunes has a ringtone function, so I decided to check it out.

The new iTunes feature is easy to use. You buy a ringtone-designated song from iTunes for 99 cents, select the snippet you want to use, and then pay another 99 cents to make it into a ringtone that you can upload to iPhone. Now there is theoretically a workaround that you can use to create free ringtone, but I can't vouch for it. For me, I wasn't going to sweat the $1.98, for which you do get the actual song added to your iTunes library.

Okay, getting the ringtone is easy, but who is there to solve the existential angst of deciding which song to use to announce the incoming call of that special someone? My husband Michael is a musician, so I didn't want any old piece of pop dreck to signal his calls. Given my taste, it was at least going to be a very special piece of pop dreck.

… Read more

You would think the iPhone's touch screen--the hallmark of the whole dang thing--would last for more than five months. Well, think again.

After a particularly wet bike ride on Saturday here in the Bay Area, my iPhone got somewhat damp. (You know, the type of rain that soaks through a coat but doesn't ruin anything.) After the ride, I wanted to text people and noticed the top row of the text keyboard was not responding. I had to press, no squish, down to get a letter. And the cursor would flip out. And the screen looked bad when … Read more

My iPhone and I got off to a rough start. I rushed in to buying one and initially felt that the actual device did not live up to the hype. It's clear that only a miracle could have met everyone's expectations after all the buildup, but part of my lukewarm response was due to the fact that the other gadgets I relied on, my Blackberry Pearl and first generation iPod Nano worked just fine. It took a lot to convince me that merging these devices was worth the hassle of carrying around the iPhone, which neither fits snugly in a small pocket nor hangs from a neck lanyard.

But there is good news. Now that I have used it for four months, I may finally be ready to swap my Blackberry Pearl for the iPhone, at least some of the time. I appreciate the fact that I can do just about everything but blog on the iPhone. Emails, messaging work well. The calendar application on the iPhone motivated me to finally get into using synchronized iCal on my Mac in addition to a paper calendar. The visual appeal of iPhone's interface finally got through to me. While my Blackberry can do email, messaging, internet browsing, and calendars, it all looks better on the iPhone.… Read more