Looks like 3G iPhone Rumor Number 314 - the one where the WSJ’s Walt Mossberg pronounced the new model would arrive in 60 days, which we shared last Saturday - has been shot down by the man himself. I just read a report on this over at Gear Diary, and much as a lot of us expected, Mossberg has clarified things as follows:
Just today the Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that Walt was “bemused” that sites reported his comments as an announcement. He follows up with “If I knew when this date was, why would I announce it in the middle of a sentence at the Finnish embassy, rather than report it in the Wall Street Journal?”.
So much for that one. Not to worry though, I’m sure there’ll be a few more coming along shortly …
This has already been a stronger than average week for 3G iPhone rumors - but here’s a late entry that is getting lots of play. Walt Mossberg - the Wall Street Journal tech columnist - has mentioned (in passing while discussing a different subject, but quite confidently) that the iPhone will be 3G in 60 days.
As 9to5Mac says …
As someone who regularly gets to test Apple products way ahead of the public, he would know!
If that old theory about smoke and fire holds any weight, you’ve gotta start thinking lately there’s an awful lot of smoke in this direction …
Check out the 9to5Mac post HERE for a video clip of Mossberg’s quote. It’s a bit of a long video - so look for the 3G comment at around the 6:55 mark of it.
iPhone Atlas is reporting that the iPhone’s current 2.0 beta firmware includes a live location tracking feature in the Maps application - that tracks your your current location on a ‘persistently updating basis’.
So, for instance, driving down Broadway in New York with an iPhone would result in a constantly moving blue, pulsing ball indicating your current location.
The feature is said to be flaky and slow on the current beta firmware - but hey, I figure they’ve got a few months to get that all sorted out, and lots of us will be *very* happy to see this feature come along.
Another week, another set of rumors about the iPhone V2 and when we may be seeing it. In the last few days, at least a couple of heavyweight financial analyst types have had a good bit to say about the reasons for the recent shortage of iPhones in the US:
The low supply, verified across 20 stores in a separate check from AppleInsider’s, gave an 80 percent chance that an update was coming "earlier than anticipated," according to Munster …
Instead, Apple is more likely to have simply underestimated demand. Investigations suggest that the iPhone maker dropped its build rate by as much as 50 percent in the first quarter of 2008, assuming that demand would drop sharply after the holiday; that sales rate remained steady, Abramsky says. He also notes that Apple has had a recurring difficulty in estimating iPhone demand, including sales of unlocked devices.
Apple has not had a whole lot to say on this subject. Infinite Loop has a quote from an Apple spokesperson in response to the NYT asking them about the shortfall:
We are working to replenish iPhone supplies as quickly as we can. Our stores continue to receive shipments almost every day.
And of course, as Brandon posted on yesterday, AT&T is saying a 3G model will be out ‘in months’.
I think that’s it - so far - for this week. I’d say that leaves us … back where we started
Gizmodo is reporting today that the iPhone Dev Team have already managed to open up - or ‘own’ - the latest iPhone update to the iPhone 1.2 / 2.0 firmware, in less than 24 hours.
The Dev Team has also apparently told Gizmodo that "Apple will not really be able to patch it this time". That’s a big claim, but one that will be music to the ears of lots of people who hope that the whole iPhone jailbreak community will kep going strong even after Apple opens up its App Store in the summer and Apple-approved apps start appearing.
Seems like the cat and mouse game between Apple and the iPhone hacking community isn;t much of a game anymore. Check out the Gizmodo post HERE for more details and some more pics of that horrifically smudged iPhone …
Well, not a lot really … is what they reveal. Screencaps of the upcoming iPhone App Store have been popping up at lots of sites over the weekend and today. As you can see, the one used above is from The Boy Genius Report. Some sites seem to think they’re faked, others say there is growing evidence that they’re legit.
Either way, these don’t seem far-fetched in terms of what an App Store page might look like. As many have noted, the pages look a lot like Installer app right now, except the Uninstall button on the bottom row is clearly missing. This sort of layout makes sense, and certinly works well on Installer If Apple just throw in a few prettier icons and product screencaps amongst these pages, I’ll part with my money even quicker I’m sure
What do you all think? Will the App Store look wildly different to the screencaps we’ve seen? Do you care much, or do we just want the damn store to open for business???
Kevin Rose (the founder of Digg) has a lot to say about the iPhone lately. After his recent comments on how big the SDK is going to be, he now also has some predictions (based on un-named sources) about the next iPhone model.
In a Diggnation broadcast, Rose first talks about a 3G iPhone coming ‘in a few months’ - not a big reach there, since we all know a 3G model is coming sometime this year (at least according to AT&T). Rose’s big prediction is that the iPhone V2 will have a front -facing camera to allow video chat.
That one seems unlikely to me, as that would seem to go dead against any push into the enterprise market. We’re continually told - at least in the US - that AT&T and others remove front-facing cameras due to corporate pressure to do so - although it’s possible there would be two models available, with the extra camera removed / disabled on the corporate version.
Just to keep Rose’s future iPhone projections in context, 9to5Mac has a brief rundown of his less-than-successful efforts up to now - check that out HERE and let us know what you reckon of this latest bold prediction. Oh, and check out how bitter his colleague sounds about not getting 3G on his original ‘early adopter’ iPhone
Lots of very good news yesterday, and a ton of great things to look forward to in that 2.0 software update. But … here’s a potentially very bad thing spotted by John Gruber in the SDK:
Only one iPhone application can run at a time, and third-party applications never run in the background. This means that when users switch to another application, answer the phone, or check their email, the application they were using quits. It’s important to make sure that users do not experience any negative effects because of this reality. In other words, users should not feel that leaving your iPhone application and returning to it later is any more difficult than switching among applications on a computer.
If 3rd party apps are able to ‘remember’ their state, and return to where you were when you switch away from them, not a very big deal. If they don’t then OUCH and double-ouch. We’d be right on par with the glorious no-mulitasking Palm OS. Please no.
TechCrunch has a good rundown of how this would severely cripple a lot of location-based and other popular types of app as well - IM clients being just one good example.
With less than a week to go before the Apple SDK & Software Roadmap event (next Thursday) the rumors are really starting to fly as to what we can expect to hear and how things will pan out post-SDK release.
Naturally, some of the whisperings and predictions sound very good, from a user’s point of view, and some don’t. It seems like a lot of folks are beginning to feel pretty negative and pessimistic about things overall in the last few days - I’ve already seen some folks in forums and on web-sites sounding very glum about what we’ll hear and what we’ll see afterwards - sounding like Apple’s really going to keep developers down, and keep the iPhone platform very tightly guarded.
I don’t feel that way - still feel quite optimistic in fact. Read on for a brief rundown of some of the latest rumors and some quick reactions to them …
There’s a week to go before Apple’s commitment to release the iPhone Software Developers Kit in February runs out of room. I’m hearing from one source that its going to be late. I’m not yet hearing any reasons why, and it’s sounding like the official release date could slide by anywhere from one to three weeks.
That’s the latest word from Arik Hesseldahl at Business Week, who also reminds us that they were the ones who first broke the news back in October that Apple would be releasing an SDK, a day before it was announced.
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spotted by John Gruber
