Recent Comments:
News apps! Get your News apps! {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Jun 29th 2009 11:41AM I can't believe you skipped the Wall Street Journal News app!
I used to use teh USA Today app, but switched when WSJ's came out.
It's cleaner than USA Todays, and has more real news. 1/2 of what's in USA Today is sports and Hollywood 'news', and the News and Money tabs have only a few more categories.
WSJ has FAR more news from every possible category in Business, Politics, Economy, Technology, World news, and everything in between. they don't have the cool slider bar, but you can customize your favorite categopries as tabs at the bottom, so you can actually access them in 1 tap, not 2 like USA Today's. And if you want to jump to a section you do not have set up in your tabs, you just tap 'More' and then the category. Still only 2 taps, just like USA Today's.
USA Today has all the color coordinated sections just like their newspaper does, and the WSJ app is all black. So if you're more into looks than content, the USA Today app might be your thing. But if you want the best access to News, it's hard to beat the WSJ app.
Apple updates Time Capsule and AirPort Base Station firmware {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Jun 24th 2009 10:16AM Huh? MacBook works with my Maxtor external USB drive just fine.
Ultrasn0w for 3G, OS 3.0 is out -- 3GS not yet {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Jun 23rd 2009 12:41PM This is useless in the US, in my opinion.
For all the reasons you mention... it can't run on Verizon or Sprint anyway, so unlocking only gives you access to Tmobile here in the US. But the iphone has no 1700 mhz radio, which is what Tmobile uses in the US for 3G. So it will max out at Edge speeds on Tmobile. Who wants that?
Unfortunately, we are stuck with AT&T for any 3G use in the US unless Apple comes out with a iphone that has a 1700 mhz radio or an LTE iphone that will run on Verizon's 4G network. But neither will happen until 2010 at the earliest.
So unlocking your iphone is really only useful if you travel to Europe or Asia and want to use a pre-paid SIM instead of pay AT&T's international roaming rates.
However, the jailbreaking part is still very useful. I love my Itelliscreen app!
Notes in iPhone OS 3.0: getting rid of that syncing feeling {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Jun 22nd 2009 7:23PM Hmm, that's strange. I use a Windows PC and Outlook notes, and it syncs through iTunes to my iphone just fine.
All I did was click the checkbox and click Apply, and everything loaded. So if yours is greyed out, something is wrong. I'd call Apple support.
Notes in iPhone OS 3.0: getting rid of that syncing feeling {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Jun 22nd 2009 7:18PM You can do this directly in iTunes as well. You don't have to go to iSync.
So for Windows users without iSync, it can still be edited.
Shazam updated to 1.7, adds location awareness {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Jun 19th 2009 10:40AM I still prefer Midomi.
It's also been updated a bunch, and also includes GPS and Twitter features, as well as Facebook.
But even better, it also let's you search for songs in other ways than just listening to it.
Midomi amazingly let's you hum or sing a song yourself, and it will almost always still find it! It also let's you type in a keyword, artist, lyric, etc and will do a search. All of these are great when you are trying to think 'who sings that song that goes like this...' ?
Much more flexible that limiting you to only find the song while it's playing over some speakers.
Plus, Midomi has been doing a ton of search optimizations. So the app runs about 4 times faster than it use to in finding songs, and runs much faster than Shazam now. In fact, it's so much faster and offers so many features, I finally stopped using Shazam at all and deleted it from my iPhone.
If you haven't given Midomi a try, you should.
AT&T revises 3G S iPhone upgrade policy {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Jun 17th 2009 2:33PM This does not help 3G owners at all.
I bought my 3G the very first day it went on sale, and AT&T just told
me that I'm still not eligible until March 2010. So apparrently the
only people elibigle are ones that bought an original iphone before
spring 2008, and did not extend their contract to get a 3G.
Sounds nice for PR purposes, but a useless gesture for most of us.
AT&T relents a little, lets iPhone 3G customers with upcoming upgrade dates buy 3G S at full subsidy {Engadget Mobile}
Jun 17th 2009 2:25PM This does not help 3G owners at all.
I bought my 3G the very first day it went on sale, and AT&T just told me that I'm still not eligible until March 2010. So apparrently the only people elibigle are ones that bought an original iphone before spring 2008, and did not extend their contract to get a 3G.
Sounds nice for PR purposes, but a useless gesture for most of us.
Nokia's E72 and 5530 XpressMusic in the S60-powered flesh {Engadget Mobile}
Jun 15th 2009 2:52AM This is the best Nokia has to offer? Really? Boring.
The only phone in their lineup that even raises an eyebrow right now is the N97, and from the early reviews, it's not great.
It seems like Nokis is just re-wrapping the same crap in nicer packages every couple of months. There is not much innovation in a long time.
Same thing with RIM and WM. RIM tried to revamp it's OS with a new look on the Bold and Storm, but it's basically the same stuff over and over with a new wrapper. Even WM7 looks like it's just a new home screen and menu Laos over the same OS.
The only companies doing anything truely cutting edge in the mobile space right now is Palm, Apple, and Google.
I think Nokia, Microsoft, and RIM are all suffering the path Palm did a few years ago. They got so big that they didn't want to change. New companies came along and passed them by, and they almost collapsed.
Palm barely dug out of it with a lot of cash and hiring a lot of talent from Apple. Nokia, MS, and RIM have more money than God, so the only question is, how long is it going to take them to realize they need to shit or get off the pot?
The dying goodwill toward AT&T {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Jun 9th 2009 3:07AM Could not agree more.
However, you will not see a CDMA iPhone ever. As Tim Cook himself said, Apple feels it would not me cost effective to manufacturer a whole new version of the iPhone that will only run on 2 or 3 carriers in North America only.
They couldn't justify the same volume of chipsets that they do with GSM, which would drive their cost up. Plus, Verizon already announced they are moving to LTE for 4G by the end of 2010 anyway, as are CDMA carriers in Canada. So a CDMA iPhone would only be sold on Sprint after that, and they are using WiMax for 4G anyway.
Why bother with all that when it will me obsolete in a year anyway? So I doubt you'll ever see the iPhone on Sprint.
You will see the iPhone on Verizon, but probably not until they light up LTE, which means 2011 most likely. Plus, Verizon really pissed off Steve Jobs during the initial iPhone negotiations. Apple tried to negotiate with Verizon first, but they laughed at the terms and control Apple wanted. So they walked away. AT&T gave Apple what they asked for. So Verizon can only blame themselves for their short sightedness.
Tmobile is really the only possibility of another US carrier other than ATT before 2011, but it won't work with the iPhone 3Gs, because tmobile uSA uses 1700 mhz for it's 3G services, and the iPhone only supports 850, 1900, & 2100 MHz bands right now.
So even if Apple said that the iPhone exclusivity with ATT ends today, they'd have to come out with a updated hardware version for tmobile, or else you'd be capped out at Edge speeds. This is the biggest reason so many people have not bothered unlocking their iPhones to use tmobile sims. It can't use their 3G network. (But even if it could, I wouldn't use tmobile because their coverage is so bad where I live.)
So maybe you'll see a tmobile iPhone next year, but not likely before then.
Like it or not, we're stuck with ATT in the US for at least 1 more year at a minimum. If Verizon had jumped on the GSM bandwagon earlier, or Tmobile used the 850 MHz band for 3G, I think we would have alredy seen the iPhone on multiple US carriers by now. So they have nobody to blame but themselves. AT&T benefited because they had the biggest GSM (ie, globally compatible) network in America, and none of the others recognized that advantage soon enough.
