The time for Best Buy to begin selling iPhone 3G's in their stores is drawing near - you now have only a couple of days to wait before you can saunter into your local Best Buy to be misinformed by salespeople who rarely know much about Apple products. Be sure to do your research ahead of time - both Apple's and AT&T's sites have lots of good information on how to get ready for your iPhone 3G purchase. Beware of one thing at Best Buy -
Gizmodo talks about some extra services offered by the Geek Squad when you purchase some accessory packages. These extra services include setting up your new iPhone 3G and getting your email up and running. I wouldn't recommend you take advantage of these services either - doing both is incredibly easy and already well-documented by Apple
here and
here .
Yesterday, I mentioned that TUAW had the scoop on Spore for the iPhone, but EA has officially confirmed that they are working on 9 more games in addition to Spore for the iPhone.
According to Macworld , those other 9 games are Yahtzee Adventures, EA Mini Golf, Lemonade Tycoon, Mahjong, Monopoly: Here & Now The World Edition, SimCity, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09, Need for Speed Undercover and The Sims 3. That's a lot heading our way - start saving your pennies now to indulge in some game purchases from the App Store!
Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, has been the source for most of the Apple product rumors surrounding the September 9 event. He's elaborated a bit more on the rumored iTunes enhancements
in his blog . While we don't see a reference to faster iPhone syncing to cure those back-ups that can take up to several hours for some users, it does sound like more HD content will be coming and available to all of us without an Apple TV at home. I often use my iPhone as a media source to watch movies rented from iTunes through our home entertainment system and I'd love to watch them in full HD glory. I hope Kevin's right on this one (and that the iPhone will be capable of putting out that HD video)! [Via
TUAW ]
Snow Patrol is expected to release the first ever interactive iPhone album application for the iPhone and iPod touch. The application will be available through iTunes and allow fans album artwork, lyrics, behind the scenes images and more. Snow Patrol's fifth album "A Hundred Million Suns" will release next month.
MusicWeek via IntoMobile
Ever since I saw the demo of Spore on the iPhone on the web a few months ago, I've been looking forward to its release.
TUAW reports that it's due out later this week from a conversation with Will Wright, the creator of Spore. It doesn't sound like it will have the same type of gameplay as the full PC version, unfortunately.
Apple seems to be taking a harder look at the Apps it approves for the App store these days. Over at MacRumors, a rejection email a developer received from Apple for his "Pull My Finger" app is
posted , where his app is described as having "limited utility to the broad iPhone and iPod Touch user community." My guess is that this is a direct result of the issues with the infamous "I Am Rich" app that was available for a short time on the App Store with a $999 price tag that had no real use other than providing bragging rights. If Apple is indeed vetting apps against some utility standards, they have a lot of work ahead of them to go back through the App Store to review apps that they approved prior to the implementation of these standards.
iLounge claims to have the dimensions of the second-generation iPod Touch. We don't know if these drawings are the real deal, but if so, the next iPod Touch will bear more resemblance to the iPhone 3G with tapered edges and a thicker middle. The supposed 4th generation iPod Nano dimensions show a taller and thinner form factor similar to that of the 2nd generation Nano. Of course, new iPod product announcements are expected at Apple's September 9 event, so we'll all know soon enough!
iSkin today announced solo, a new bodyguard for the iPhone 3G. The new protector features a high gloss finish, subtle curves and will protect your iPhone 3G against dust, scratches, dirt and other everyday hazards.
iSkin's solo is offered in four high-gloss finishes: Puma (opaque black), Baron (translucent red), NightCrawler (translucent blue) and Angel (opaque white). iSkin solo retails for $29.99.
AT&T's data network appears to be down this morning along the east coast and fairly far inland as well. Users on Macrumors.com are describing various reasons behind the outage from calls with AT&T, with the most interesting one given as "Apple's Safari servers are down." Come again? Oh, yeah - all the data on every iPhone in the U.S. runs through Safari servers managed by Apple first. How could I forget about that? Right. Engadget has reported on this outage as well.
Has your iPhone camera taken odd pictures showing mis-placed pieces of the scene you want to capture like a live puzzle? If so, you're not alone - TUAW reports on a number of these distorted pictures posted to Flickr by various people, and the phenomenon is being called "iPhone Cubism." Who knew that you could create post-modern art with your iPhone without even trying? This looks like a software bug that will hopefully be addressed in a future update.
Griffin has announced some new iPhone 3G accessories at the IFA Consumer Elecrtronics show in Berlin. The new products are a suction cup window mount, the Reflect hardshell case, and the Streamline sport armband.
Remember that goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of the year that Apple has set? Well, it sounds like they are well on their way. Some dedicated fans have gathered data from the general public and extrapolated from it that about 8 million iPhones have been sold so far. Apple stockholders rejoice! -Via TUAW .
There have been widespread reports of data outages affecting AT&T's network in the northeast. Reports vary on exactly what states have been affected. AT&T is aware of the issue and working on resolving the problem. Let us know how you're faring in our iPhone forums or leave a comment.
via Gizmodo
A second lawsuit has been filed against Apple and AT&T over 3G network performance issues related to the iPhone 3G. The plaintiff, William Gillis, complains that the companies "recklessly oversold the iPhone 3G" while knowing that both the device and AT&T's network could not support fast access for the influx of new users. Gillis claims that speeds do not reach advertised levels and that many people are bumped to EDGE while in areas that should support 3G.
The 18 page complaint reportedly relies primarily on Internet reports of problems as the foundation of its argument.
Gillis is seeking class action status, so that others can earn compensation for sub-par 3G performance. Alabama resident Jessica Alena Smith filed a similar lawsuit last month over what is being termed as a "defective iPhone 3G". Both arguments center around the iPhone 3G's performance on AT&T's 3G network.
via AppleInsider and MacNN
Apple has scheduled a special event for Tuesday, September 9th. It's expected the company will debut new iPods. There has been speculation that a new iPod Nano and possibly a major revision to iTunes. Let's rock!
via Engadget
Pangea Software is offering a limited time back to school offer on the best-selling iPhone game Enigmo . Enigmo was voted "Best iPhone Game" at Apple's WWDC 08' and has also drawn rave reviews from our readers. Enigmo is billed as a 3D puzzle game where you direct animated streams of flowing liquid so that the droplets get to their destination.
You can purchase Enigmo for $5.99, 40% off it's original price, from now until September 2nd.
Thanks JJ
If you owned a smartphone before the iPhone, you probably used it for tethering to get online with your computer in a place where wifi was not available or too expensive. With the iPhone, tethering hasn't been possible unless you've jailbroken your iPhone or were lucky enough to buy NullRiver's NetShare app while it was briefly available in the App Store. In the U.S., you'll notice that other smartphones offered by AT&T can make use of data plans that allow tethering, and the iPhone is one of the few smartphones, if not the only one, that they offer that cannot make use of one of these plans, nor is there currently a native app or Settings option on the iPhone that enables this.
Well, today there's a
rumor that indicates that AT&T and Apple are looking into this! The rumor revolves around an email supposedly sent by Steve Jobs in response to someone who complained about AT&T's lack of tethering options for the iPhone. The purported reply from Steve says "We agree, and are discussing it with ATT [sic]".
Every year, there is always at least one rumor supported by an alleged email from Steve Jobs, and we've already had one or two of these this year, but this could prove to be one of the more exciting ones so far for iPhone users who really want to be able to use their iPhone 3G's high-speed network connection to be able to do even more on the go without worrying about doing something unauthorized on AT&T's network and/or voiding the warranty on their iPhone to enable this capability.
So, as always, we'll wait and see if this turns out to be true. My trusty Magic 8 ball says the possibility of this rumor coming true is "Most Likely" and it's never lied to me yet.
Via
MacRumors
