Apple iPhone news

[jlb1705]

The iPhone is always announced at WWDC, which is next week (June 6-10)

No one knows what it will be named, iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, etc.

Most don't expect 4G service on this upcoming phone, which throws a wrench into naming conventions.

Usually the iphone is available a few weeks after the convention.

Many of the rumors have had the next iPhone being delayed a few months and the release cycle adjusted. It's plausible that Apple has done an exceptional job of thwarting rumors and leaks after the whole "prototype lost in a bar" kerfuffle.

As somebody who might upgrade to the new model, I'm perfectly fine with no 4G. I've read that the current generation of 4G chips/radios are battery killers, plus the networks aren't mature yet. Implementing a 4G iPhone this year would defy Apple's M.O.

I'm more anxious about iOS 5. I read a rumor the other day that support for the 3GS might be dropped. The last couple years they've dropped support for the oldest model, which would indicate that the 3G won't see an iOS update. That part at least makes sense, sense it seems that the 3G ran like a dog with iOS 4. As a 3GS owner, I'd be disappointed if they dropped support for two models at once. I know Apple is all about planned obsolesence, but this would be ridiculous even for them. The 3GS is still a strong phone.

 

[jwinslow]

The 3GS is still a strong phone.

It's the phone that changed everything *must keep from throwing remote through TV*

 

[jwinslow]

We probably should move the ipad / android tablet content to the two Apple & Android threads at this point, as many of these updates apply to the iOS based iPad as well.

 

[jwinslow]

Apple announces iTunes in the Cloud, iTunes Match

Apple has just announced its long-awaited cloud-based music service: iTunes in the Cloud. It will let you download any music you've purchased to all of your devices at no additional charge, which Steve Jobs notes is a first for the music industry. It also includes an Automatic Downloads feature that will automatically pull down all new purchases made on other devices. The music files themselves are 256kbps and can be pushed to up to ten devices -- and, like the other nine apps that make up iCloud, it's completely free.

What's more, Apple has also announced its new iTunes Match service that will let you put your existing collection of ripped CDs in the cloud. That's done by scanning your library and matching songs to the versions Apple already has, rather than uploading everything -- a process Apple notes takes "minutes," not "weeks" -- although songs will be uploaded in the cases where there is no match.

Well that's a pretty big surprise, given their M.O. about DRM and copyrights.

It will run you $24.99 a year, and promises to give you all of the "same benefits as music purchased from iTunes."

Ah, so that's why.

iCloud unveiled at WWDC, free for all 9 cloud apps, MobileMe RIP

Apple tipped its hat early, but now we have the details from the man himself. "iCloud stores your content in the cloud and wirelessly pushes it to all your device. It automatically uploads it, stores it, and pushes it to all your devices." And by "automatically," he means it: in addition to every day content, such as purchased music, books, photos and videos, device settings, and app data that will be automatically backed up over WiFi, Documents in the Cloud will effortlessly sync Pages, Numbers, and Keynote data between all of your iOS devices. There will be no advertising (contrary to previous rumors), and calendar, mail, and contact sync is free (for up to five gigs of mail). Also in store is the new PhotoStream cloud feature, which is essentially a gallery in Photos that exists on all of your iOS devices, Apple TV, your OS X and even your Windows PCs, and syncs through the cloud. Take a picture on your iPhone and it appears on your laptop and your iPad, and it's stored in the cloud for thirty days. iCloud will be released concurrent with iOS 5 this fall.

 

[jwinslow]

Apple is adding some nice features. Too bad basically every one was copied or stolen from other phones & designers :p

Apple's iOS 5: all the details

Firstly, stats. Scott notes that Apple has so far sold 200 million iOS devices, with more than 25 million of those being iPads. There have been 14 billion downloads from the App Store, tallying over $2.5 billion paid out in revenue to app developers. The iTunes Store isn't doing badly, either, with 15 billion songs sold.

And the first new feature: an overhaul of notifications. At last! A new Notification Center aggregates all your, well, notifications into one and is accessible by swiping down a menu from the top of the screen. Yes, just like Android. Small X buttons alongside each note allow you to dismiss it, though there's no "clear all" option for the more decisive among us. Notifications are also making their way onto the lockscreen, where swiping across a text message takes you right into it. A little something like Samsung's TouchWiz implementation.

After half a decade of using their own hilariously bad notification system, apple decided to hire the solo programmer that embarrassed them with an iphone notification system for jailbroken phones. Three months later they have a competent notification system announced to the world.

Notification Center for iOS 5 announced

It looks like iOS 5 has a new approach to notifications -- and we like what we see so far. Notification Center aggregates your various app alerts and eschews the pop-ups for a decidedly Android-esque list that appears at the top of our your screen when you you get a Facebook message, or a tweet, or when you miss a call. Swiping down brings you to the list, and swiping across any instance takes you to the corresponding app. Feast your eyes on the gallery below for a closer look.

How's Apple gonna sue Samsung for copying the iPhone, and then go ahead to copy Android's notification system?!?!

Especially with the blatant ripoff of TouchWhiz. Maybe Apple will try to patent it too

• Newsstand is a new place to house all your magazine and newspaper subscriptions.
• Twitter integration

Safari Reader is a new browser feature that will strip out distractions and present the text of a webpage with no other excess content.

Reminders is another self-descriptive feature. This one's intelligent enough to remind you to do things based on your location

Yay, there's now a camera button right on your lockscreen! The volume-up button is also doubling up as a physical shutter release key when you're in the camera app.

Headline feature: PC Free! No more cables required for syncing. Now we're talking.

• iOS 5 will ship in the fall to the following devices: iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, iPad 1 and 2, and iPod touch 3rd and 4th generation.

BBM ripoff coming in the next post...

 

[jwinslow]

Apple unveils iMessage, its BBM [strike]ripoff[/strike] competitor, at WWDC

​

It's here, the moment BlackBerry owners been waiting for since the original iPhone launched: iMessage. Apple has just announced its new data-based push messaging service at WWDC, which looks to be a full-on competitor to the venerable BBM. This service works on an iOS device of any flavor, and lets you send text messages, photos, videos, and contacts to anyone else with one too. It also supports group chats and integrates with the new Notification Center in iOS 5. According to Tim Cook, it "works over WiFi or 3G, in case you were wondering," which is yet another blow for RIM. The final nail in the coffin for those of you who simply 'can't live without BBM:' delivery and read confirmations. Boom.

Apple adds camera shortcut to lock screen, volume up shutter key, and other enhancements to iOS 5

By Dana Wollman posted Jun 6th 2011 at 2:12PM
Breaking News

​

Apple's just announced that iOS 5-enabled iPhones (and likely iPads and iPods, too) are getting a camera shortcut on the lock screen, the ability to snap pics by pressing the volume up button, AE / AF lock (hold touch-to-focus to lock), and a photo editor with crop, rotate, red-eye reduction and auto-enhance features.

That's a nice touch. Taking photos with a touchscreen is really painful and the opposite of progress.


For a company famous for its innovation, there is a notable lack of ingenuity in these additions. That said, as a consumer, we all win if both sides have each other's features, forcing them to actually push the envelope with new hardware and features instead of resting on their exclusive advantages.

 

[jlb1705]

Apple announces iTunes in the Cloud, iTunes Match

Well that's a pretty big surprise, given their M.O. about DRM and copyrights. Ah, so that's why.

iCloud unveiled at WWDC, free for all 9 cloud apps, MobileMe RIP

I'm still not on board with music in the cloud, but iCloud looks like the only thing close to a tenable solution at this point. It's the only one so far that will support a medium-to-large collection at a reasonable price.

Apple is adding some nice features. Too bad basically every one was copied or stolen from other phones & designers :p

Apple's iOS 5: all the details
After half a decade of using their own hilariously bad notification system, apple decided to hire the solo programmer that embarrassed them with an iphone notification system for jailbroken phones. Three months later they have a competent notification system announced to the world.

Notification Center for iOS 5 announced
Especially with the blatant ripoff of TouchWhiz. Maybe Apple will try to patent it too

BBM ripoff coming in the next post...

A half decade or hilariously bad notifications? Does anybody remember what notifications looked like on their phone before they got their first iPhone or Android phone? They were fine at the time on the original iPhone, they just didn't evolve until now.

Apple unveils iMessage, its BBM [strike]ripoff[/strike] competitor, at WWDC
Apple adds camera shortcut to lock screen, volume up shutter key, and other enhancements to iOS 5
That's a nice touch. Taking photos with a touchscreen is really painful and the opposite of progress.


For a company famous for its innovation, there is a notable lack of ingenuity in these additions. That said, as a consumer, we all win if both sides have each other's features, forcing them to actually push the envelope with new hardware and features instead of resting on their exclusive advantages.

This was the most startling thing to me. I really don't give a shit about the iMessage app/BBM ripoff. I do see that a lot of other new functions directly rip off and/or snuff out the work of legitimate developers in their own ecosystem. Safari reader is going to compete with ReadItLater/Instapaper. There are a billion to-do list apps out there are going to go the way of the dodo.

Here are the things I'm most excited about:

• Tabbed browsing in mobile Safari
• Ability to flag emails
• Newsstand
• Reminders - regardless of the fact that it steps on the toes of other apps, the fact that is syncs across devices is huge since very few of these other apps do that and have a polished UI.
• Volume up shutter button & lock screen shortcut. The iPhone is my primary camera. This makes it better.
• Split keyboard for iPad.
• iOS delta updates

 

[jlb1705]

We probably should move the ipad / android tablet content to the two Apple & Android threads at this point, as many of these updates apply to the iOS based iPad as well.

I agree that some housekeeping is in order, though I think that there's some benefit to having separate threads for phones and tablets at this point. I do think that this thread is pretty much all about the iPhone and very little about AT&T. Plus, with the phone now on another carrier it's probably better to make it more universal. I think this should be an iPhone thread and and discussion of carriers go in their own threads.

The tablet thread is pretty much all iPad stuff. I don't know if there's enough competition at this point so support an Android tablet thread. :tongue2:

 

[jlb1705]

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/06/06/automatic-downloads-now-live-for-ios-devices/

Automatic Downloads now live for iOS devices

by Samuel Gibbs
Jun 6th 2011 at 6:00PM



WWDC has just kicked off for 2011, but you can get a little bit of the Apple iCloud newness right now in the form of automatic Application, Music and Book downloads.

Launch Settings on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, scroll down to Store and wait for the new options to load (you'll need to be connected to the Internet to see them). Once you've checked them, the next time you purchase or download an app, a music track or a book, it'll automatically be pushed out to any device you've activated Automatic Downloads on. Brilliant.

Be warned though, if you activate Automatic Downloads for one Apple ID on a device and then attempt to activate another Apple ID on the same device (US and UK iTunes accounts for instance), you'll get a pop-up notification saying:

This Device Is Already Associated With an Apple ID.

If you turn on Automatic Downloads with your Apple ID, you cannot auto-download or download past purchases with a different Apple ID for 90 days.

A screenshot of said warning is past the break. You have been warned.

 

[jwinslow]

For anyone with an iPhone 2G lying around:

Like new is for $171

Good for $137.00

Acceptable for $36.00 (hehe)

So depending on your phone's condition this may or may not be a good deal for you.


If you take advantage of this, be sure to check the box that tells them to return it if it is found to be in a lesser condition than the one you choose to trade it in as. They'll return ship it for free and it'll keep you from getting downgraded to the $36 acceptable condition if it isn't up to their good requirement.


Shipping to Amazon is free with their printable shipping label. So worse case, if your iPhone is denied the trade in, your phone is out of possession for 2 weeks at no out of pocket expense for you.

 

[AuTX Buckeye]

I'm sure none of yall were paying attention to what happens outside of BP :) so ... I thought I would break the news.... the AT&T&T-Mobile deal is now off
AT&T Withdraws Bid to buy T-Mobile.

DT wants out ... BADLY... I'm kinda afraid whats gonna come next.

 

[jwinslow]

http://m.gizmodo.com/5869507/htc-android-phones-are-being-banned-from-the-us-next-year

Whoa. Apple just won a big court victory against HTC that could force HTC to stop selling its Android phones in the United States. The United States International Trade Commission ruled that HTC was infringing on an Apple patent that effects HTC Android devices running Android 1.6 to 2.2.

The devices that may be banned from being sold in the US is basically a who's who list of Android phones: Droid Incredible, Evo 4G, T-Mobile G2, Nexus One and a bunch of older Android devices. The patent that the courts ruled HTC was infringing on (#5,946,647) is potentially a big one. According to Fortune, who took a deep look at the specific patent, it works like this:

When an iPhone receives a message that contains a phone number or an address ? e-mail, Web or street ? those bits of data are automatically highlighted, underlined and turned into clickable links.

Click on the phone number, and the iPhone asks if you want to dial it. Click on the Web address, and it opens in Safari. Click on the street address, and Maps will display it.

That's huge, not only because it's an important feature in smartphones but because it could mean Apple could go on to attack other Android phone makers because it's the OS that's infringing the patent, not the hardware. However, if HTC Android phones removed that feature (unlikely) or implement it in a different way (which we expect HTC to do), they could keep on selling.

http://m.engadget.com/default/artic...s/&category=classic&subCategory=top&icid=(1:5)

The International Trade Commission did not find that HTC violated two other patents in question, which related to realtime signal processing and would have been much more difficult for HTC to circumvent. Of course, this saga is far from over and we expect these two (along with practically every other mobile manufacturer on the planet) to continue to duke it out in the courts as opposed to in our stores

This decision is a win for HTC and we are gratified that the commission affirmed the judge's determination on the '721 and '983 patents, and reversed its decision on the '263 patent and partially on the '647 patent. We are very pleased with the determination and we respect it. The '647 patent is a small UI experience and HTC will completely remove it from all of our phones soon.

 

[jwinslow]

Apple is such a Patent troll.. Opening a link from a text message has been there since Nokia came up with their Symbian devices before Apple even released their first iPhone.. What kind of shitty patent is this? If there is anything Nokia deserves credit for the idea and not Apple..

So out of 10 patents, the ITC sided with Apple over 1 and rejected 9. And the one patent that HTC infriged upon is limited to Android 1.6 (Donut) and 2.2 (Froyo), which are no longer shipped on new devices. By the looks of it, I think HTC got away pretty easy on this one.

RTFA. This "technology" is in use.

The problem is that it's not an actual invention; it's software. Software is not supposed to be patentable, because algorithms are not supposed to be patentable. At what point can math teachers no longer teach math, or programmers no longer write code? There are good reason that this very kind of thing is not supposed to be patentable, but somebody's corrupt (at, at the very least, hopelessly inept) patent system has been allowing it.

Another glorious example of a screwed up patent that should not have been awarded. All patents should be for something notable. If you can't prove that your widget is unique and notable, it should not be patented PERIOD. Anybody could have (and has multiple times) come up with the idea of clicking a phone number in "unformatted" text and having it do some action. I had a word processor at one time that would allow you to click on phone numbers to add them to an internal contact list. This was in the early 90s.

I could click on a phone number in a message to dail it on my 1995 nokia phone.... so how the would this be a valid apple patent?

 

[jlb1705]

The wife and I finally got our 4S's tonight. 64GB white for me. After checking our upgrade eligibility every couple weeks I guess AT&T relented and let us just get our damn phones already, even though the date they had been quoting for my wife's line was not for another three weeks. I'm eager to try out Siri in the wild and play with the camera. Was able to add a ton more music, but not quite all of it even after I got rid of some albums that I couldn't see myself listening to again. Still my phone gets docked while I'm at work and serves as my main iPod there, so being able to have more of my favorite stuff at hand will be nice.

 

[Mac]

Got a text message last week saying I've gone over 3gb of data (I have unlimited). And starting next month, I'm assuming June, after 3gb of data, speeds are going to slow dowwwwwwn.

What a rip off