MMS for iPhone 2G and tethering on OS 3.1.2 explained, not for the faint of heart

Let's be clear upfront that this isn't for the casual iPhone jailbreaker, but if you feeling like living on the edge, you can give your original model an added boost of MMS capability, or any device with OS 3.1.2 the power to tether. Highlighted in a series of tweets today by iPhone dev team lead MuscleNerd, whiterat (for MMS) and two-bit (for tethering) will get the job done, but both require tinkering with the baseband, which is exponentially more advanced and brick-inducing than, say, installing Cydia. Venture forth with the instructions beyond the read links below.

[Via 9 to 5 Mac]

Read - iPhone 2G MMS
Read - OS 3.1.2 tethering

Filed under: Cellphones

MMS for iPhone 2G and tethering on OS 3.1.2 explained, not for the faint of heart originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rock Band out for $9.99 on the iPhone… but fails to thrill

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, Music

The good news is that EA has released Rock Band for the iPhone and iPod touch, and you can pick it up from the App Store right now. The bad news is that it seems like a pretty tough sell -- despite the relatively high price tag (Tap Tap Revenge 3, a similar music game, is currently 99 cents and headed for free), there's not much new here.

Sure, there is four-device Bluetooth multiplayer, and that's something that Tapulous' game has never had. But other than that, it seems like this is basically EA's cash in on the tapping concept -- the draw of Rock Band has been getting together with your friends and jamming out the hits on those fake instruments, and touching a button-less screen by yourself doesn't have the same effect. Singing is included, but you're still just tapping out notes for that -- it seems like they missed a lot of potential fun there. And even some of the fun things from the console version like the drum fills for overdrive and the character avatars are missing here.

If you don't like the 20 songs included with the game, you can download others at 50 cents (in two-song packs for a buck each), but most people probably shouldn't even bother at that price -- just stick with Tapulous' game unless you really love Rock Band and its aesthetics (even then, I haven't seen my much-beloved Harmonix mentioned anywhere with this port, so I doubt they're even involved. Update: They are listed on the game's splash screen, however, according to our readers).

Even if you want to try this one, wait for the inevitable price drop -- if the game really lived up to its name as the premiere music experience you'll find on the consoles, it might be worth it, but all indications are, unfortunately, that it doesn't.

Rock Band out for $9.99 on the iPhone... but fails to thrill originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Rock Band out for $9.99 on the iPhone... but fails to thrill originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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COOh-Snap: Apple Competitors Still Trying to Catchup to Original 2007 iPhone 2G

During Apple’s Q4 2009 financial results conference call today, when asked about competitive smartphone platforms and devices, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook responded:

Frankly, they are really just trying to catch up with the 1st iPhone that was announced 2 years ago

While many will no doubt argue — perhaps laugh outright — at that, it’s harder to laugh at Apple’s results to date: 7.2 million more iPhones sold in the last 3 months, and half-a-billion more App Store downloads during the same period.

So was Cook just showing his swagger, setting himself up for a big takedown, or comfortably settling into a combined iPhone/iTunes/App Store offering his thinks will be tough to beat in the consumer market?

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

COOh-Snap: Apple Competitors Still Trying to Catchup to Original 2007 iPhone 2G

New Apple Products, Including Magic Mice and Desktop Multi-touch Tomorrow?

According to Daring Fireball, Apple is set to introduce new products tomorrow morning, including:

Redesigned Plastic MacBooks, Redesigned (‘Impressive’) iMacs, Updated Minis (Including One That Ships With Mac OS X Server), the Multi-Touch Magic Mouse, and, as the Wildcard I’m-Not-Sure-I-Really-Believe-It-Myself Out-There Rumor, Maybe Even Some Sort of Mentioned-Nowhere-Else-But-in-This-Very-Headline Multi-Touch Trackpad Gadget for Desktop Macs

Last year, Apple held a special event, Spotlight Turns to Notebooks, to debut their last before-the-holidays offerings. Would they just dump so much new, and frankly interesting, products tomorrow morning without benefit of stage or keynote? Sure, but we’d be lying if we said we wouldn’t prefer the song and dance to go with them.

TiPb will cover whatever does get released, however it gets released, mainly as it pertains to anything that looks to have cross-over with iPhone technology like the “multi-touch trackpad” (why not just make an official Apple Mac trackpad app for the iPhone and iPod touch?)

Keep your eyes peeled for the Apple Online Store going down…

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

New Apple Products, Including Magic Mice and Desktop Multi-touch Tomorrow?

Rumors of New Apple Hardware Tomorrow Swirling

With numerous reports in recent weeks of new hardware releases from Apple and low stocks of a number of current-generation models, Apple watchers have been waiting on edge for new products to make their appearance. Attention has naturally focused on...

Apple Reports Most Profitable Quarter Ever; Sells Record Number of Macs and iPhones; Launching iPhone in China on October 30

Apple reports fiscal Q4 earnings: $1.67b profit, Mac sales way up, iPod sales down, ‘great new products’ for 2010

Apple's fiscal Q4 2009 conference call is just about to begin, but the press release is already out and about. Wondering how Jobs and Company did? Precisely like you thought they would: they're making out like gangbusters over there. While the rest of the world slowly sees profits inching back up, Apple's relishing in $1.67 billion worth of net profit it pulled in from $9.87 billion in revenue. A year ago, the outfit managed to post a quarterly profit of "just" $1.14 billion, and we're also told that gross margin was up 36.6 percent. It should be noted that international sales accounted for a whopping 46 percent of this quarter's revenue, and Mac computer sales managed to shoot up some 17 percent compared to the year-ago quarter. In keeping with Apple's own acknowledgment that the standalone iPod is dying, sales of the iconic media player dipped 8 percent year-over-year (10.2 million units were sold), while 7.4 million iPhones were moved representing a 7 percent uptick from this period a year ago.

Stevie J himself is quoted as saying that Apple is "thrilled to have sold more Macs and iPhones than in any previous quarter," and in case you haven't noticed, the holiday quarter hasn't even been completed yet. Oh, and if you were looking for bread crumbs as for what's on deck, chew on this: "We've got a very strong lineup for the holiday season and some really great new products in the pipeline for 2010." Great new products, you say? Would one of them happen to include some sort of, say, tablet PC?

Catch our updates after the break...

Continue reading Apple reports fiscal Q4 earnings: $1.67b profit, Mac sales way up, iPod sales down, 'great new products' for 2010

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Laptops

Apple reports fiscal Q4 earnings: $1.67b profit, Mac sales way up, iPod sales down, 'great new products' for 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wolfram Alpha Releases iPhone App for $49.99

If AT&T loses iPhone exclusivity, Apple will gain

Filed under: Apple, iPhone

Is AT&T holding back the iPhone's sales potential? That's the conclusion of analysts at Piper Jaffray. In a report issued today, the firm says Apple is likely to go with multiple carriers, as the company is already doing in other world markets like France and the U.K.

To make the point, the report cites iPhone sales in France, where Apple's share of the smartphone market zoomed to 40% from 15% since Orange lost the exclusive there.

What does that mean for AT&T? If Apple finds additional partners, AT&T could lose a hefty chunk of customers who haven't been too thrilled with the way the communications giant has performed with the iPhone. There is still no tethering, MMS took a long time to roll out, and there is a continuing complaint of dropped calls from every corner of the country.

One wonders what is going on inside Verizon. The best-regarded US cell carrier for coverage & network quality is the subject of many rumors about the iPhone being offered, and others rumors of the mythical Apple tablet coming to Verizon. It's all especially interesting as Verizon has been bashing the iPhone in a series of TV ads hyping the upcoming Droid from Motorola and Google. Doesn't seem like Verizon is warming up the relationship.

It will be an interesting next few months as competition increases; partners may or may nor change, and Apple will be looking to increase market share for one of the hottest phones on the market.

[via Business Week]

If AT&T loses iPhone exclusivity, Apple will gain originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If AT&T loses iPhone exclusivity, Apple will gain originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple Reports $1.67 Billion Profit for Q4 2009, Most Profitable Quarter Ever

Apple today announced financial results for the fourth fiscal quarter (third calendar quarter) of 2009. Apple posted revenue of $9.87 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.67 billion, or $1.82 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $7.9 billion a...

MobileMe media sync detailed in Apple patent application

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Laptops, Portable Audio, Portable Video

MobileMe media sync detailed in Apple patent application originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New App Store rules good news for iPhone users

Apple's decision to let developers build in-app purchasing into free iPhone apps means the end of lite versions -- and that's good for consumers, CIO's Tom Kaneshige argues.

Apple Q4 Conference Call — Updating Live Starting 2pm PT

Apple Q4 2009 Conference Call

Apple Inc. is set to announce their Q4 2009 financial results today, and host their usual après-PR conference call at 5pm ET/2pm PT. Analysts are anticipating good news overall, though rumor once again has it demand for the iPhone 3GS is still outstripping supply.

Either way, we should find out how many iPhones have been sold to date, and how large Apple’s multitouch mobile platform has grown over the last three months. (We’re guessing more than a bit).

TiPb will be providing live coverage of the call, so join us back here at start time.

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

Apple Q4 Conference Call — Updating Live Starting 2pm PT

Review: MyPhone+ for iPhone

This souped-up iPhone dialer app synchronizes with your Facebook account, pulling in photos and other information from the social networking service and linking them with your Contacts. MyPhone+'s easy synchronization with Facebook makes it a highly useful utility for the social networker on the go.

Mozilla Labs CEO Reveals Plans to Launch Browser App for iPhone

Mozilla Working on iPhone App. Don’t Hold Your Breath for Firefox

This weekend GigaOm brought word that Mozilla was working on an iPhone app. Of course, thoughts turn immediately towards their most famous product — Firefox. However, Apple doesn’t allow 3rd party code interpreters and that means no Gecko HTML renderer and no TraceMonkey Javascript engine. And again, I don’t think there’s any need for Mozilla to make a WebView wrapper…

So what else is there? Browser link sync? The iPhone will sync Safari links, or Internet explorer on Windows, but syncing links for Firefox users is thus far unsupported, and no doubt many would love to have that functionality:

Later, I sat around gabbing with Lilly and Jay Sullivan, Mozilla’s VP of Mobile, talking about Weave and the Awesome Bar, which is a way to get access to all your browsing history and bookmarks by just typing them in the URL bar on your browser. And while we were talking about Weave, I asked them if it was going to be part of this new, mysterious iPhone app. Lilly and Sullivan smiled and remained silent. Interestingly, they didn’t correct me.

Malik notes that Weave might be too competitive with MobileMe for Apple’s tastes, but that of course will depend on the exact implementation offered on the iPhone, and how flexible Apple is feeling (more so than ever, it seems of late). And if ever a Weave there was, bringing it to the iPhone certainly makes sense.

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

Mozilla Working on iPhone App. Don’t Hold Your Breath for Firefox

Monday Fun Video: Before Verizon’s iPhone iDoesn’t, There Was Sega’s Nintendon’t

20 years before there was Verizon’s iPhone iDoesn’t… and Droid does campaign, there was Sega Does and Nintendon’t.

Be interesting to see if it works out better for Droid than it did for Sega…

[via Daring Fireball]

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

Monday Fun Video: Before Verizon’s iPhone iDoesn’t, There Was Sega’s Nintendon’t

Rock Band rocks out on iPhone and iPod touch

EA Mobile has officially released the iPhone and iPod touch version of Rock Band, its popular console music title.

Wolfram Alpha launches $50 iPhone app

Wolfram Alpha, the "computational knowledge engine" that graphs and charts results for all kinds of plaintext queries, unveils a fancy, pricey app.

What do you do after you start Twitter? Invent a credit card reader.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Retail, Odds and ends, iPhone, iPod touch

If you were Jack Dorsey, one of the co-founders and current chairman of Twitter, you'd want to think about something else big to follow up on your huge success.

While it doesn't sound like anything groundbreaking, Dorsey's new company Square is developing a tiny white cube (see photo above) that plugs into the headphone jack on either an iPhone or iPod touch. The cube is a credit card reader, something missing from all of those credit card apps currently in the iTunes App Store.

The Square iPhone Payment System consists of the reader and an app. After a card swipe, the customer uses a finger to sign the iPod touch or iPhone, one of the participants in the transaction enters the customer's email address, and a receipt with the location of the transaction, the signature, and other standard information is emailed to the customer.

While most online journalists are anticipating that this device and software are going to be used in retail (can you say Apple Store?), I think Dorsey has bigger ideas - let's face it, the guy doesn't think small. So why not make it possible for anyone with an iPhone or iPod touch to be able to accept credit cards for payments? Word has it that the card reader's manufacturing price will be as low as US$0.40, which means that Square could give away the readers and still make money on the transaction fees.

[via Engadget]

What do you do after you start Twitter? Invent a credit card reader. originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

What do you do after you start Twitter? Invent a credit card reader. originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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