Weird LG iPhone Clone Design

The Mashup that I'd want to see of the iPhone and Palm Foleo would be thus:

Flip-open screen, like the Foleo. Standard keyboard but with iPhone as the Mousepad / Trackpad. Just a little slot where it slides in, some sort of dock. That would be awesome, and it raises a lot of interesting UI possibilities.

iPhone Australia: Telstra Talks

"We have been testing the iPhone as we would any device that comes into the country."

iPhone First Looks at TreoCentral

I just wanted to highlight Jennifer Chappell's excellent article at TreoCentral. Jennifer is the editor at TreoCentral, and usually uses a Treo 680, much like I once did. She's been taking the iPhone through its paces, and her excellent first look article is now up.

This review is more relevant than most out there, as iPhone owners were 10 times more likely to have used a Treo prior to the iPhone. I got bitten by the iPhone bug, and bitten hard. Using a Treo in the next week or so is going to be interesting.

Round Robin: BlackBerry Curve

The BlackBerry Curve (8310)

For the first week of Smartphone Experts' Smartphone Round Robin, I was assigned the BlackBerry Curve 8310. As I've indicated in the Crackberry forums, I've said some nasty things about BB in the past. Some of that is going to have to be put behind me this week; this BlackBerry 8810 isn't going to use itself.

And don't forget - a comment on this post counts as an entry in the Round Robin Contest!

iPhone App-A-Day

T-Mobile Germany iPhone Data Rates

NBC Universal Wanted iPod & iPhone Take

Smartphone Round Robin

For me, this week, it means using a BlackBerry 8310. For Dieter of WMExperts, it means using a Treo 680. for Jennifer of TreoCentral, it means using her iPhone. And for Kevin of CrackBerry.com, it means using the AT&T Tilt. There are rules that we've all got to follow -- we all have to give the device a full shakedown. I'll be posting an article later today about my first few days with the Curve, and then a full article on Friday.

This week, I'll be posting a few articles about the strengths and weaknesses of using a BlackBerry. I've already got a few posts in at CrackBerry.com.

So what's in it for you? Well, there's a chance to win a prize: a smartphone of your choice and plenty of coupons to spend at the store associated with it. Just leave a comment in any Round Robin thread in the forums. Four sites, four chances to win per day. Just head on over to the Smartphone Round Robin update page for the deets.

Instant 3rd Party Apps for iPhone 1.1.1

There's now an instant method to get third party apps on your iPhone (firmware 1.1.1 only). The same methond works on iPod Touch. I have to say, this is by far the easiest method of hacking the iPhone that I've ever seen. This method, which relies on the iPhone TIFF vulnerability, is also incredibly simple to use; much more so than the previous AppTapp installer method for iPhone 1.0. Since it relies on a buffer overflow, I expect this method to stop working as soon as Firmware 1.1.2 is released, which could be any day now.

All you have to do is point your iPhone browser at jailbreakme.com, confirm the wish to jailbreak, read some stuff, scroll down, select 'Install AppSnapp', wait for Safari to quit, and wait. Your iPhone or iPod Touch should restart automatically, and when it's all done, you'll have Installer.app ready and willing for you to install 3rd party apps!

This method of installing 3rd party apps doesn't require any computer software, you just have to go to the website on your iPhone browser and follow the instructions. Again, the site makes efficacious use of the TIFF exploit that's been talked about before, so if using a security vulnerability to install software freaks you out, don't go to the site I've posted after the cut.

Conversely, f you think that using a buffer overflow to install software is awesome, 31337, or k-rad, there's a link for you and your iPhone after the break.

Apple Refuses Legal Tender for iPhone

Apple is now refusing cash for the purchase of iPhones. They now require a credit card for purchase, and the limit for the number of iPhones you can purchase is now two. Apple stopped accepting Apple Store gift cards for redemption. The move is legal -- they're not obligated to sell you anything, and they can impose the extra restrictions.

This definitely isn't the most customer-friendly policy I've ever seen; most kids aren't going to have their own credit card. If Apple wants to obsessively manage their supply of iPhones for the holiday season, no amount of bad press is going to change their mind.

iPhone Notes Syncing

I spent a bunch of time getting Leopard installed and set up on my mac to find out what goodies it would bring to the iPhone. It looks like syncing notes from the iPhone to Mail might have been pulled just before it was ready, or that it's going to come in a future iPhone update. When I tried to change the default font in an edited note from Marker Felt to anything else, I'm given this warning message:

"Convert this note to rich text format?
Changing the style or formatting requires that this note be converted to rich text format. Rich text notes may not be editable on iPhone and other devices."

And in other news, it looks like Apple hasn't made up their mind whether or not we'll be able to edit rich-text notes in the future. The fact that there's a warning at all indicates that we should be able to edit notes on the computer and have them sync to the iPhone.

iPhone on Rogers Dec 7?

According to a leaked blurb spotted on the Boy Genius Report, Apple will be launching iPhone on Rogers on December 7th. It's a leaked ad, and they note that the trademark dispute could prevent this from being the final image, not to mention the final date. On behalf of our northern neighbors, I hope that Apple is able to wrest as much change as they can out of Rogers for the sake of our northern neighbors, I keep reading that the data rates are exorbitant.

Documents to Go for iPhone

The Week In Links

While I was gone at CTIA, there's been a bunch of things that have happened that I didn't get time to properly write about. So today, we'll have a bit of an iPhone news smörgåsbord. There's been a fair amount of news, a fair amount of not-news, and some of the things that I've been reading are just plain wrong.

Apple Dealing with Film-Makers Directly for iTunes
Apple has sidestepped some of the major studios for some films, opting instead to deal directly with film-makers. This could be a sign of things to come -- it would be great to not have to report every major film-studio or TV channel contract tiff.

Apple iPhone Dev Center
Apple has created a web site devoted to developers that are interested in putting their programs on the iPhone. Apple is calling it the iPhone Dev Center, and it's a repository of tips, tricks, and guidelines to follow should anyone want to make an iPhone web app. It's also probably a list of instructions that one would have to follow to get listed as a featured application on Apple's web app listing.

Molson Reveals iPhone on Rogers in January?
For any Canadian readers, Molson ran a contest that had an iPhone as the prize. They had a disclaimer on the iPhone prize, stating that it couldn't be activated on the Rogers network until January. So, odds are pretty good that the iPhone will be out in Canada in January. Molson has since pulled the language for the contest, saying they have no idea when anything is coming out ever. And they never had any idea. (images below via Electronista)

Is the iPhone Running Leopard?
There's an article at Wired that delves deeper into Jobs' open letter about 3rd party applications on the iPhone and the connection to Leopard. One of the tidbits that Jobs talks about briefly is signing applications, and Wired has a good look into what that would mean for 3rd party iPhone apps. And, there's some discussion whether the iPhone is based off of Leopard or not: "It's not known for sure at this point, but all indications are that the iPhone is a Leopard-based device," as stated by Carl Howe, analyst at Blackfriars. It clearly is. Witness the uname -a of my laptop on 10.4 vs. the uname -a of my iphone:

The important bit there is the kernel version. Apple releases the OSX frameworks to correspond with kernel versions of darwin for every version of OSX. The iPhone has been running Leopard (9.0) since it came out in June. My 10.4 laptop is running darwin 8.10.0, which corresponds to 10.4.10.

iPhone Security Faults
Meanwhile, there's been a rash of complaints about the iPhone's security. You may have seen headlines that compare the iPhone to Windows 95, for example. It's of course, a loaded comparison, made for sensationalism. You could just as well compare the iPhone's security to Windows 98, Windows ME, or Windows XP if you're logged in as an administrator (which is everybody -- you can barely run Office as a limited user). But, Windows 95 gets the headline. Since the iPhone is made of UNIX, user separation is built-in, expect apps to run as something other than administrator/root/super-user when the SDK update comes out. Perhaps earlier; we can't know as Apple isn't commenting. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that 'run as root' is a good security model. It's so bad, it's not even a security model.

iPhone de-bricking: re-virginizer tool available
The Elite team posted a re-virginizer tool that people can use to restore the ability to upgrade. This tool locks the iPhone with the proper bits in place on the iPhone radio; some of the free iPhone unlock tools wrote stuff to the iPhone baseband radio that was invalid; this led to bricked phones when it came time to update the firmware to 1.1.1.

AT&T Upgrading Core Network
Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, was interviewed recently and he talked about many things concerning the iPhone and AT&T's network. Their core should make for faster downloads for anything that uses AT&T's networks, wired or wireless. That means us: anyone using an iPhone should see a smidgen of a benefit, but the real help comes when we're using 3G fast internet iPhones.

Review: Speck Products ToughSkin

by Doug Morse

In the Beginning

Well, I thought I sit down this morning with my cup of tea and tell you about the Speck ToughSkin (store link, $29.95). Due to errands and just plain procrastination, the tea is cold. Anyhow, that’s enough about the start to my day and on to the review because things are certainly looking up. The Spec ToughSkin is a two part solution. The first is a ‘ruggedized’ silicon layer that fits snuggly around your iPhone. Then there is a plastic holster attached to a belt clip. The entire iPhone case can be plunked into the holster clip on your belt. This is, in theory, a best of both worlds scenario, or as Speck puts it ‘best case’ scenario. So I’ll start with the silicon case itself.

Review: Mobi Products Protector Case for iPhone

by Doug Morse

Well, the bad news is that I just got a letter from Sprint. Suffice to say that I’m still going to be out three hundred bucks to cancel my contract. A wrong decision a year ago is going to cost me an additional couple hundred that I didn’t need to lose. I thought about calling them to try to sort it all out, but I realized I’d waste a couple hours on the phone with their customer service when instead I could be writing this fine review and getting paid a little something for it. Then I could call it all a wash. Just a bit of warning: Sprint offered me an additional 10% discount to up my contract for two years more a while back (this was before the iPhone was on the horizon). Unfortunately, it knocked out a 5% discount I already had. Net gain 5%. I may dash off a quick letter, but I think even that may be a waste of time.

So instead of wasting my time with Sprint, let’s move on to Apple and AT&T’s wonderful iPhone and Mobi Products Protector Case (store link, $19.95). Important things first: this comes in Smoke, Clear, Red and Pink, though studying all of the pictures, all of the cases are translucent. I received the Smoke version, which to my taste is neither here nor there. That said, it does seem to be the best of the options.

Gmail is Enabling IMAP

Google has been enabling IMAP access for everyone that has been using GMail. IMAP, like POP, is a method of downloading mail from a mail service. POP works really well if you just use one computer, but it's a nightmare if you use more than one. And you know, the iPhone is a lot like a computer, enough that using POP on it has kind of been a nightmare in terms of checking my work email. The option for IMAP hasn't showed up on my account yet, but it's showed up for Dieter, and he has a good account of how it works up at WMExperts. If you prefer, there's also an official Google video available at YouTube, catered specifically for iPhone users. If you want article help on how to install everything on your desktop email, GMail has posted a help file on their site.

And now, that video for any iPhone users out there:

CTIA: Facebook Talk

Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook, gave a great talk today. His talk actually dovetails perfectly with what I wrote last night, that all of these "walled garden" methodologies have got to go. My notes from the talk have been posted up; you'll see them refined into a story at BerryShack and Crackberry soon enough, I'm sure.

I'll dig a bit deeper into his talk later today, but the highlight for me is that Moskovitz knows that as computers get smaller, they'll eat into mobiles. Mobiles will have to become open like computers, or people will start using computers instead of mobiles. As computers miniaturize, that's just going to be a fact of life.

figure 1: this image from Moskovitz's talk shows the nature of the computer world versus the nature of the mobile world. In the mobile world, everything is locked. Carriers try to monetize various kinds of data over their own network, the OS is locked to everyone, and the hardware is similarly locked, which isn't what people really want (witness the energy put into hacking openness into the iPhone). The locked-in aspect of the mobile world is also what leads to people thinking of their mobile phone as jsut a landline that they can take with them wherever they go, instead of a mobile computing device. This is a barrier to smartphone adoption.

figure 2: this is Moskovitz's picture that depicts the collision that's going to occur in the mobile world as the computer world miniaturizes to the point where the computer hardware makers can put their software and services onto mobile-sized devices that have full computer power.

The other great part is that Moskovitz gave a warning to everyone attending: open up your platform or become obsolete, either by Apple's hand or Google's hand. Pick your poison, really. Both of them are looking to either destroy or warp the industry, and to do it from within.

CTIA: Lipstick on a Pig

figure 1: various logos of CTIA. It's probably supposed to show multi-facetedness and diversity, but it's a lot more like untreated schizophrenia.

CTIA: Bleh

Well, we've been walking the floor for about an hour, and... nothing. For an entertainment conference, there isn't much entertainment to be had. There will be more on that in a bit; I'm typing on my iPhone and I'm not about to tap out some gigantic Tolstoy-esque missive. The biggest news for iPhone users is probably weatherbug for the iPhone and iPod Touch. That news is almost a week old; that should give you an idea of the bleak nature of this conference.

CTIA Ballmer Keynote

We just finished watching the day 1 keynote by Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO), and Dieter has posted the details up on WMExperts.com. It was a fair keynote; Ballmer was better in person than I thought he would be. His stage voice and personality are both ridiculously brash.

He had a lot to say about Windows Mobile, this of course being a mobile conference. He didn't have a lot to say in regards to competition with the iPhone. Windows Live Search, Microsoft's one-stop app for personal searches, crashed on stage. The presenter handled it quite well, there will be no horror stories of 5 minute waits for devices to reboot, etc.

The biggest news of his keynote is that Microsoft is bringing all of the parts of Windows Mobile phones further into their domain network structure. Windows Mobile devices will be further managed by the network administrators. They can push applications out, settings, practically the entire phone experience. It looks like it will be quite popular with the enterprise; but not by any means at the cost of the iPhone. No, this isn't a shot across the iPhone's bow. It's a direct hit on Blackberry. I've said over and over in our Treocast podcasts that RiM plays a very dangerous game in the mobile space -- they compete directly with Microsoft, and their job just got a lot harder.

It's curious to me that Ballmer never really even mentions Google. Thinly-veiled insults are hurled their way a fair amount by both Ballmer and former Seahawks player / former U.S. Representative / current CTIA president Steve Largent, but Microsoft curiously has the decency to mention Yahoo!. Anyway, we're off to the show floor. I'll be posting more later.

Apple Posts More Record Growth

Apple just posted their quarterly results, and the results are great. Apple sold a staggering amount of Macs this quarter. iPod sales are still growing. They sold 400,000 more Macs than they've ever sold, 2.1 million altogether. They're selling their stuff like gangbusters in Europe. They earned a dollar per share over the last quarter. Apple has sold about 1.4 million iPhones, and the small-to-medium business segment loves the iPhone. Oh, and perhaps 250,000 of those iPhones were sold to unlockers. So yeah, business as usual. Look for more of the same next quarter, I'll predict -- once Leopard is out, there's going to be a stronger-than-usual rush to get new machines as people upgrade.

Jobs on the iPhone User Interface

There's a big article in the New York Times that includes an interview with Steve Jobs about the excellent shape that Apple's in nowadays. Apple is 3rd in computer shipments overall. They might slip to 4th when Acer buys Gateway after Gateway buys Packard Bell, but Apple will still have more growth than the resulting top three. The Times did an interview with Jobs, and he of course has some choice things to say about everything -- Leopard vs. Vista, Ultimate Editions, the iPhone's multitouch interface, the delays of Leopard, and the Newton.

'Mr. Jobs said that multitouch drastically simplified the process of controlling a computer.

There are no “verbs” in the iPhone interface, he said, alluding to the way a standard mouse or stylus system works. In those systems, users select an object, like a photo, and then separately select an action, or “verb,” to do something to it.'

Fantastic Walt Mossberg Rant: Carriers & iPhone

Update: Of course, it goes without saying that Walt steals his best content from us. Case in point, Dieter ranted about this way back in February. Really, though, we're just glad that Walt (or at least Katie) is reading us on a regular basis.

Pre-eminent technology writer Walt Mossberg excoriates the mobile carriers in a recent article he posted to the Wall Street Journal and his personal site, All Things D. In terms of rants, his cup runneth over. Ranging from comparing the mobile carriers of the U.S. to communist-era "Soviet Ministries" to acknowledging the iPhone as the first U.S. cellphone to break the current mold, he throws many darts and hits the bulls-eye every time. Well, almost every time. He does gripe about the lack of official third party applications on the iPhone, which strikes me as impatient. Walt knows as well as anyone that third party apps should be available in February, so the ding against the iPhone there seems a bit disingenuous. It takes time to put an application developer's toolkit together; especially when the device itself breaks so many new grounds. I'd be surprised if Apple was even done with the SDK they used internally; it's likely still a work in progress. But, I digress. It's a fantastic piece of work, and if regulation (or the threat of regulation) is what it takes to get mobile carriers to clean up their collective acts, then I welcome it. The money quote, or perhaps his thesis statement:

"A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by a handful of big wireless phone operators for decades now. And the result has been a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model. It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the cellphone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer."

Phone Different at CTIA

Chemical Association Sides with Apple

"The Greenpeace report does not say which brominated flame retardants are present in the iPhone because it does not know. Therefore, the report speculates about what substances might be present, and raises an alarm without any basis for doing so."

Hacking iPhones: Big Update to Installer.app

If you've been hacking your iPhone to get 3rd party apps with firmware 1.1.1, there's now a big reward. Installer.app has been updated, and some long-needed changes have been made. First, instead of browsing the entire collection in one huge list, you now select a category, and then browse a smaller list. Under the previous system, as the list of 3rd party apps got longer and longer, the interface for finding and installing a program became more cumbersome. With the new system, the category splitting should make finding and installing apps a lot simpler to use. Also, it should do a great job of hiding dictionaries, theme packs, etc. into their own subcategories. If you've hacked your iPhone, this should appear as an update.

If you haven't hacked your 1.1.1 iPhone, there's still no easy way to do it on a mac. There are, however, rumors of an AppTapp-type installer to make everything nice and simple coming very shortly. If you're using windows, there's a program called iDemocracy that promises to make everything fairly simple.

iPhone Developer Documentation

Erica Sadun, iPhone hacker extraordinaire and writer at The Unofficial Apple Weblog, has documented the entire set of Cocoa function calls required to program for the iPhone. These header files are used for programmers to properly create user interfaces, network code, and, well, pretty much everything. And the documentation effort is a massive job, usually not something to be done by just one person. I know that this site can get kind of wonky here and there, so I'll do my best to explain why this is important, but for everybody.

All of the applications available from Installer.app have been written without any formal set of documentation. So, there may be some bugs, since there's no single place to go for programming information. Usually, Apple would provide the documentation for programming on the iPhone. But, as they've recently announced, they're not going to be doing that until February. So, now anyone that is planning or writing a native Cocoa app for the iPhone or iPod touch now has the means to research how to do it.

That includes both the folks that are hacking iPhones to install and write 3rd party apps, and any larger software companies that want to get a leg up on their software development. With this set of header files, it should be perfectly possible for any large development group to prototype their program well in advance of the official Apple release.

Of course, these header files may yet change. There's no guarantee that Apple's set of documentation will stay the same; Apple will definitely be adding to this, and they may not allow some of the function calls documented by Sadun to be accessible for other programmers. No one can tell. But, it's a huge step for programming native applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch

Phone Different Podcast #7

Shocking you with a day early this time instead of a day late. For podcast 7 we talk about CTIAthe iPhone on Orange, possible unlock rumors, a product red version possibly coming, an SDK in february plus some widget speculation, some leopard speculation, webapps, and a brief hacking segment. And then, a bit on the iTunes plus price cut, Greenpeace, new Apple ads, and att.com making changes. And of course the usual chat about the community.

No less chock full of stuff than last week, but I managed to shave off a few minutes and keep us under 50 minutes. How did I do it? By shaving off the talks about Apple vs. gateway / acer / packard bell. Sharp listeners, look for the "I'm going to cut this" and Dieter being sad. I'll post it up later today.

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Easy Tool to Hack iPod Touch

There's an easy new program you can use to jailbreak the iPod Touch, called iJailBreak. You can download the installer (which now includes both PowerPC and Intel mac support) at code.google.com. Sorry, no Windows love yet. iJailbreak makes "heavy use" of the iPod Touch / iPhone TIFF vulnerability, and its use requires that you only restart your iPod Touch. Simple enough, right? Way simpler than this, anyway. iJailbreak is programmed by a 13-year-old, and judging from the broken tabs at the top right of their website, they have an unbricker application planned.

iPhone is AT&T's Top Earner

Highlights from a report from a report by Strategy Analytics:

• iPhone tops AT&T sales chart at 13% of AT&T's device sales
• 4th best-selling phone in U.S., selling 1.1 million units. Total # of iPhones sold: maybe 1.325 million
• based on current trajectory, iPhone will be #1 best-selling phone in the next quarter or two
• current #1 is still the RAZR V3
• two age segments standing out that are purchasing iPhone in droves: 20-30 and 50-60.

Excellent Discussions on SDK

figure 1: John Gruber

John Gruber of Daring Fireball has posted an excellent discussion on the various subtleties of the language used in Steve Jobs' iPhone SDK letter. He talks of HTML widgets vs. the stripped-down Cocoa API, the security of the current iPhone, the hidden compliment-slash-dig on Nokia and their recent "open to anything" marketing slogan, signed apps, the iTunes App store, and with his usual attention to detail and insight. Well worth the read there, like any long Gruber post.

Gruber also points to a blog post for OSX developers that intend to write applications for the iPhone, which led to a comment-discussion by several mac developers, and where they intend to aim their development efforts -- both in functionality of their applications, and price thereof. It looks like there's plenty of hope for the $5 app, if they can be guaranteed to be paid. There's still the lingering question of how available the SDK will be -- and that's excellently addressed by Frasier Spiers on a blog post at his site.

Another Changewave Survey

There’s no longer any doubt about the staying power of the iPhone. The continuing embrace of the iPhone by the public is a stellar example of how a new product can forever alter its own playing field."

SMS Message Archive Utility

If you want to save your SMS messages from your iPhone, there's now a free way to do it. If you're on a Mac, that is; I'm not aware of any ways to do it on a PC. But, Syphone by Micromat will backup, import and export any SMS threaded conversations that you want. And it will display conversations in threaded glory as well. It's a teensy download, under 1 MB, but it's available here.

Ambrosia Software Updates iToner

Ambrosia Software released a new version of iToner that returns ringtone functionality to iPhones running firmware version 1.1.1. Previously, iToner owners were only able to sync their non-Apple-sanctioned ringtones with iPhones that were using one of the 1.0 firmware versions. iToner costs $15 and doesn't involve any hacks to your iPhone.

Apple Posts 3 New Ads

figure 1: Derek, Kristin, and Ken

Apple has posted three new "street" ads. The ads feature Bryce in "Delay", an airline pilot who used the iPhone to shorten a 3 hour delay into a 30 minute delay (and apparently also flies RC jets competitively); Kristin in "The Winger", a ballet dancer that uses her iPhone to keep connected to her ballet blog at thewinger.com, and Ken in "My Show", where Ken uses his iPhone to keep connected to the theatre community via his website at broadwayspace.com.

Jobs Announces SDK

Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]

AT&T Will Pro-Rate Termination Fee

figure 1: AT&T has made some changes to benefit customers out of enlightened self-interest.

In news that should please anyone on AT&T, and if you have an iPhone, odds are good that this is you, AT&T is making consumer-friendly changes to how they do things. First, AT&T announced that they will begin pro-rating termination fees. The longer you stay on in your contract, the less of a fee you'll have to pay. They also announced that they will not require a new contract for a simple change of service. Both are welcome changes.

Odds are good that this change of heart is due to the Senate commerce committee holding those hearings, and T-Mobile's lawsuit problems -- AT&T probably doesn't want to get into the same legal hot water that T-Mobile is currently in.

More Rumors of a SDK

The Leopard-January-SDK rumor is floating around again, this time at Businessweek (we reported on it here, and there's another rumor concerning development here. With it comes talk of a system development kit, or a way to get applications on an iPhone that doesn't require hacking. There's no indication as to whether it's a real SDK or whether it's a way to sync HTML widgets. My gut hunch is widgets, but it's also possible that the iPhone requires the same version of XCode that Leopard uses. [via

Apple's Response to Eco Claims

Apple's response to Greenpeace's report of PVC, phthalates, and BFRs in the iPhone is short and sweet. Witness the words of the Apple spokesperson as told to MacWorld:

"Like all Apple products worldwide, iPhone complies with RoHS [Restriction of Hazardous Substances], the world's toughest restrictions on toxic substances in electronics. As we have said, Apple will voluntarily eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs by the end of 2008."

There's another key quote from the Center for Environmental Health, the California-based organization that filed the 60-day notice of a suit yesterday. They aim to

"encourage the manufacturers through a negotiated settlement to reduce the use of these chemicals."

AnySIM Updated to Work with 1.1.1

AnySIM, the free software unlock by the iPhone Dev Wiki crowd, now works with iPhones that are running firmware version 1.1.1. The first version of AnySIM, released for 1.0 versions of the iPhone firmware, didn't unlock the iPhone correctly. So, when folks that unlocked their iPhones with AnySIM updated to 1.1.1, it bricked their iPhones. This version of AnySIM doesn't fix that issue. They claim that this version won't cause the same problems as the earlier versions, but it might be a good idea to hold off on unlocking with AnySIM for a while anyway, caveat emptor. You have been warned. Speaking personally, I went crawling back to iPhoneSimFree to fix the broken AnySIM unlock. But, if all of those warnings are of no use to you, you can get the new version of Anysim here.