There are some pretty amazing things going on with the new 3-megapixel camera in the latest generation iPhone. With images this good, it’s only the lack of a flash that will keep me from leaving my pocket Canon camera at home. We are perilously close to the all-in-one cell-phone/pocket camera that really serves all needs.
Check out the rest of mezzoblue’s iPhone 3G S field test.
Isn’t this a few years too late? I haven’t heard great things about the movie, but I suppose the X-Files fan base is strong enough to lap up a few of these puppies. Unfortunately the markup is about $100 just for the branding.
Via MacRumors:
The heavily rumored 3G iPhone was announced today during Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference Keynote.
Features
- 3G-capable. 2.8 times faster than EDGE.
- GPS built-in
- Thinner
- Better battery life – 300 hours of standby, 2G talk-time 10 hours (as opposed to 5), 5 hours of 3G talk-time (competition is 3 hour 3G talk time), 5 to 6 hours of high-speed browsing, 7 hours of video, 24 hours of audio.
- flush headphone jack
Pricing and Availability
The iPhone 3G will be available July 11th in 22 countries for $199 for 8 GB and $299 for 16 GB. The 16 GB model also comes in white.
Apple also announced “Mobile Me,” which they’re billing as “[Microsoft] Exchange for the rest of us.” Basically, it’s real-time sync of your personal data (contacts, calendar entries, etc) across your phone, laptop, etc.
With a price point of just $200, the only real stumbling block to getting an iPhone (other than the goofy “I like hard buttons” complaint) would be that you don’t want to be beholden to AT&T.;
See more at Apple’s web site.
You hear that distant rumbling?
That’s the sound of the internet going insane as another Apple product announcement keynote speech approaches. The 2008 Apple World Wide Developer’s Conference starts tomorrow and rumors of next-generation iPhones with video chat and faster data connections are flying furiously. Personally I’m just looking forward to the new applications that will be available now that Apple has opened the iPhone to 3rd-party software development.
Can’t be in San Francisco with the other Mac faithful for the speech? Now there’s an official podcast from Apple that will automatically download the keynote videos for you after the fact.
The iPhone now comes in two flavors: 16 gigabytes for $499, 8GB for $399, and the iPod Touch now has a 16GB model for $399 and 8GB for $299.
(Via Daring Fireball.)
In today’s Austin Statesman, a story about Warner’s announcement that it will sell unprotected MP3s of its entire catalog, at first only through Amazon.com.
In February, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs penned an essay calling on record labels to drop Digital Rights Management from tracks sold on the company’s iTunes Store, (Warner chair Edgar) Bronfman shot back during a conference call with Wall Street analysts: “We will not abandon DRM nor services that are successfully implementing DRM for both content and consumers.”
CandyBar and Pixadex have long been the icon customization tools of choice for users of the Mac. The latest version of CandyBar combines the two tools into one application, which is supercool to say the least. It also integrates support for OS X 10.5′s new 512×512 icons (can they really be called icons with that many pixels?) and allows customization of the much-maligned Dock as well. I’ll be happy to see my active applications once more indicated with the familiar little triangles instead of glowing spots of light.
Gedeon Mayheux of the Iconfactory (the company behind Pixadex) supplies a video demo of the new application below. Doctor Who fans will want to stick around until the end.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFE0ZSJ4kQg]
If Palm had introduced this little smartphone a year ago, I would probably have been over the moon — actual advances on their Treo technology (instant messaging software with support for MSN, Yahoo, and AIM?!) in a sporty new shell, and all for a hundred bucks. It’s aimed squarely at the mass market, those folks who live on SMS and AIM but have never owned anything remotely approaching a Blackberry. I have a feeling, however, that it’s all going to amount to a hill o’beans.
Yes, because of the iPhone. The iPhone lured me away from Palm (I’ve been a loyal Treo user for five years or more) and didn’t even have to try to lure me away from Sprint. Hell, Sprint practically pushed me away by “upgrading” my broken phone to a different model which required a new, more expensive data plan. Paying the early termination fees to break my contract seemed like a bargain just to be shut of the nation’s most arrogant cell phone carrier. Sprint’s customer service was so deplorable I practically kicked my heels together upon crossing the threshold of the Apple Store.
But Sprint’s crappy service isn’t the reason that I think the Centro comes too late to the party. I just can’t imagine that anyone, having seen the future of honest-to-god, uncrippled email and web surfing on a cell phone, would be satisfied with the half-assed experience that the Palm operating system provides in comparison. No, you can’t install your own programs on the iPhone (yet). But the myriad of web sites I can get to from anywhere I’m likely to be are more than replacement for the tip calculator and password storage program I lost when I made the leap.
There are a million little niggly points you could bring up when comparing the two phones, but let’s try to stick to the big picture: technology choices are about user experience and utility, and the iPhone has it all over the Treo/Centro phones when it comes to that. Yeah, it’s $300 more, but I think you get your money’s worth. I hope for Palm’s sake that the Centro is a success and that somehow they rededicate themselves to advancing the state of portable computing, instead of rehashing a decades-old operating system. But even if they do have something interesting to say in the future, they’ll have to fight pretty hard to get me to listen.
Oh, by the way, David Pogue has a review of the Centro on the New York Times.
Someone has turned the iPhone into a really expensive handheld video poker machine. My only complaint: no sound.
About three weeks ago we just had to talk about the new iPod announcements and so we recorded it. If you’re not a fan of listening to us go fanboy all over the iPhone and such, this would probably be a good episode to skip. That’s why we called it a bonus episode; it doesn’t really have anything to do with cult movies and we’d hate for you to go in thinking we were going to talk about anything but technology in this ep. Stay tuned for a real episode about the new genre TV in the Fall season really really soon. Promise.
If, on the other hand, you dig the idea of an iPod with all the schmancy touch features and want to hear us talk about the ins and outs of the annoucement earlier this month, please! Click away and listen to Bonus Episode #2 now — no iPod required.
Uncategorized | chris | 
June 22, 2009 5:18 am | 
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