Apple offers iPhone 3G purchase online

Filed under: Retail, iPhone

For new customers wanting an iPhone 3G, you now have another way to buy it - ordering straight from Apple, an option that hasn't existed since the original iPhone was sold. Online purchasing was taken away with the introduction of the 3G. AT&T brought it back in December, and only now has Apple caught up.

New subscribers can activate their service online, then have their new iPhones shipped straight to their door. Current AT&T customers will need to reserve their iPhones online, then go pick them up at the Apple Store.

As I found out last month, having existing subscribers go in to pick up their iPhone can be a very good move, because things can certainly go wrong. When I went to the Apple Store to pick up my new iPhone 3G, it turns out that when I purchased my original iPhone in November 2007 that they didn't enter it into the system properly. I was nearly charged the full price of the iPhone rather than the subsidized price offered to those who wanted to upgrade from EDGE to 3G. A trip to the nearby AT&T store took care of that, but it was the sort of thing that was far easier to handle in person than over the phone. They were able to pull up my original receipt and override the system so I was recognized as a previous adopter rather than someone just trying to break my original contract.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Apple offers iPhone 3G purchase online originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 14 May 2009 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple offers iPhone 3G purchase online originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 14 May 2009 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone Dev-Team: Mac OS X 10.5.7 Safe for Jailbreak, Fixes DFU Bug

Good news for Mac OS X-based Jailbreakers! After having to resort to using powered USB hubs or patching in older versions of files to work around a bug in 10.5.6 that prevented DFU mode from being recognized, the iPhone Dev-Team dropped a note a Twitter to give 10.5.7 the all-clear:

The new 10.5.7 Leopard update is safe. In fact it’s more jailbreak-friendly than 10.5.6, since the DFU-mode bug is gone.

So no nasty cat-and-mouse-game shenanigans this time around, and even a slight improvement over the previous — unintentional — round.

Only one thing left — figure out what to do with all those now-redundant USB hubs…

(Via Jamesus)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone Dev-Team: Mac OS X 10.5.7 Safe for Jailbreak, Fixes DFU Bug

UPDATED: SlingPlayer 3G Access Blocked by AT&T Due to Competing i-Verse App?

UPDATE: As of right now, SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone is ranked #9 on the Top Paid Apps list on iTunes. A $29.99 app. Imagine if it had 3G?

ORIGINAL: Gizmodo has a source claiming that while AT&T may have legitimate concerns about their networks ability to handle millions of iPhone users trying to stream long-form video over 3G, they also may have far more self-serving, and perhaps anti-competitive reasons to block SlingPlayer’s access:

AT&T’s working on their OWN application code-named i-Verse, one that performs a similar task as SlingPlayer Mobile. AT&T’s “i-Verse” app works with their U-Verse TV solution that can either load DVR’ed shows from your U-Verse recorder into your iPhone at home, or stream shows across the net over their 3G network.

Which makes little sense to us as not everyone has or wants, or even lives in an area where they can get U-verse. Never mind people in countries where AT&T doesn’t exist. (Though, again, we suspect international carriers are in agreement with this type of arrangement, may have their own services in the pipe, and are gleeful that AT&T takes the heat).

As opposed to SlingBox, of course, which anyone can buy and drop into their setup regardless of service.

The whole situation make us think that maybe Jeremy was on to something when he wondered out loud about AT&T exerting too much control over the App Store…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

UPDATED: SlingPlayer 3G Access Blocked by AT&T Due to Competing i-Verse App?

Amazon launches optimized Kindle for iPhone app

Amazon today launched a Kindle Store optimized for the Safari Web browser on iPhone, enabling users to get a quick access to the Kindle Store’s 280,000 books, including 106 of 112 New York Times Best Sellers and most New Releases that are available for $9.99 or less. According to Ian Freed, ...

Finally, Mxit iPhone app released

The mobile instant messaging app for iPhone called MXit [iTunes link] was recently released and became the top free app on the South African iPhone store, the Startup Africa writes. Launched in 2003 and works on a stripped down version of the Jabber protocol, Mxit was one of the world's first ...

Enjoy full NBC videos on your iPhone

While waiting for Hulu is effectively landing to iPhone, fans of 30 Rock, The Office, and other NBC shows can catch them full-screen on their iPhone or iPod touch. Unfortunately,  for the time being, just American audiences could enjoy the show. The episodes look pretty crisp on the iPhone/touch, and while ...

Luck, Quality, and Marketing: Tweetie’s Loren Brichter Talks Development and Success on iTunes U

A short time ago we mentioned that Standford’s iPhone Application Programming course was being made available as a video podcast via iTunes U. In addition to two lectures a week, the course offers special Friday sessions, one of which recently featured Atebits‘ Loren Brichter (iTunes link), the developer behind popular iPhone (and now Mac) Twitter client, Tweetie (see our review).

Brichter, though he worked for Apple on the first generation iPhone, had no actual app development experience when he set out to make Tweetie, yet the app has become the most successful iPhone — and mobile — paid Twitter client in terms of both revenue and user base, hitting the #6 position in the App Store at one point. How’d that happen?

At the beginning of the lecture, Brichter shares his App Store daily revenue graph (sans actual dollar amounts) for Tweetie, which he says he made simply because he wasn’t satisfied with any of the existing clients. Focusing on a mix of functionality and simplicity, and an Apple-like experience, Brichter credits luck, quality, and marketing for Tweetie’s success. Part of that marketing, after a small initial sales spike due to friends and family, was the semi-facetious introduction of PEE (”popularity enhancers” like a flashlight and fart sounds) that garnered a lot of media attention and quintupled growth for a while.

Other growth occurred when Apple featured Tweetie on their main page, but the biggest growth-booster — also thanks to Apple — was when Tweetie 1.3 was rejected by the App Store due to the term f**kitlist just happening to be a trend on Twitter’s search results that day. Press jumped on it and users bought it up. (Apple reversed their decision later that same day).

The final two growth spikes occurred after Twitter itself began highlighting Tweetie as part of their sidebar factoid promotion, and after the press surrounding the recent introduction of Tweetie for Mac.

Being part of the Application Development course, Brichter also touches on some of the things he did from a programming standpoint to boost Tweetie’s performance.

Looks behind the app development curtain, especially in academic settings with some back-and-forth questions and answers, are rare enough in the iPhone world that anyone interested should definitely consider checking out the whole session.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Luck, Quality, and Marketing: Tweetie’s Loren Brichter Talks Development and Success on iTunes U

Review: Ego for iPhone

If you manage a Web site or blog, this basic stat tracker is a must-have.