Approximately 36 hours after the release of the iPhone 2.0 firmware, existing iPhone customers still can't download it. iTunes says it's unavailable. Apple should have done better.
We already know that on Friday, there were severe activation problems with the iPhone 3G. This isn't exactly a surprise, perhaps, after the new in-store activation procedures and AT&T's dismal performance last year.
What is surprising is that approximately 36 hours after Apple said the new system software would be available for existing customers to access, it still isn't. At least not for everyone.
I have the first-generation iPhone I bought a year ago--and as of midday Saturday, the new v2.0 firmware was unavailable for download. iTunes tells me, incorrectly, that "this version of the iPhone software (1.1.4) is the current version." See the above screenshot.
This is in addition to what my CNET News colleague Erica Ogg reported on Friday: some existing iPhones have been bricked by software update glitches. At least that didn't happen to me.
I'm not exactly desperate to upgrade to the new system software (I'm at a political conference in Las Vegas and am mostly focused on what's happening here).
But this points to a bad miscalculation on Apple's part. Why didn't it come up with a better estimate of how many people would be connecting to its servers and add sufficient capacity? Apple probably is curbing existing customers' access to software updates to prevent its servers from overheating (this is at least a better failure mode than yesterday morning's odd errors).
This is understandable, perhaps, but it's disappointing--especially because this should have been preventable with even a modicum of advance planning.
Update 1:50 p.m. PDT: iTunes is now showing the update as available. I should have noted that I already upgraded to the latest version of iTunes. That wasn't the problem--Apple's servers were.
(Credit:
Apple)
Update at 10:08 a.m. PDT, with clarification on how users' e-mail will be handled.
Apple's MobileMe service is primed to be relaunched this week, ahead of the Friday launch of the iPhone 3G. That means subscribers to .Mac will find the service taken offline for a six-hour stretch as Apple makes the transition, according to a post in MacRumors.com.
The www.mac.com site will go down on Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. PDT, leaving .Mac subscribers unable to access the site or use .Mac services, except for .MacMail via their desktop applications, iPhone or iPod Touch. In fact, existing .Mac users may have already noticed the ability to receive and send e-mail at an @me.com address if they so request. Other mac.com subscribers will be grandfathered in, allowing them to continue receiving e-mail at their mac.com address, while also receiving a new me.com address.
When the site relaunches as MobileMe, users will find a few changes, according to MacRumors.com:
The revamped .Mac service will offer Web-based e-mail, calendar, address book, photo gallery, and storage capabilities as well as "Push" sync services.
A one-year subscription to MobileMe will cost $99, which is similar to the .Mac price, but purchasers of an iPhone 3G will be able to score a subscription for $69 on Friday, the report notes.
The line for the Apple iPhone 3G began to form Friday--an entire week before the device goes on sale.
Frankly, one shouldn't encourage such behavior by actually covering it. But if I were in Manhattan--instead of Austin, Texas--I, too, would have interviewed them in person by now.
The queue outside of Apple's Fifth Avenue store, covered first by GearDiary and then Engadget, apparently hasn't been formed by iPhone co-dependents, though.
It is instead made up of a group of people who may want to 1) set a world's record for standing in line to buy a product and 2) have a social-agricultural-political message they want the world to hear. However, it was difficult from the video interview on Engadget to determine what the group actually stands for.
On Saturday, the Apple 2.0 blog seemed to get further with the group's agenda. The group, which started off with about 10 on Friday and was slimmed down to 5 by Saturday morning after a night of rainfall, apparently supports organic farming and sustainability for the planet. According to Apple 2.0, they may be interested in turning the White House Lawn into an organic garden and they may be planning to buy iPhones for the presidential nominees.
The seemingly ad hoc group is certainly savvy in deciding to use the iPhone 3G to garner some publicity. However, to be perfectly honest, most mainstream journalists feel more comfortable interviewing gadget nuts rather than alternative souls hoping to use the media to change the world.
Talks about how to bring the iPhone to China have moved from hard-line negotiations to the logistics phase, Reuters is reporting.
During an interview at the Worldwide Developers Conference, Jobs hinted to CNBC that Apple might soon add China to its list of countries where the iPhone will become available. But working out the details of exactly how that will happen hasn't been easy.
Now, talks with Chinese wireless carrier China Mobile have cleared their biggest hurdle, Apple's insistence on setting up a revenue-sharing agreement, according to Reuters. Apple has reportedly given up on that idea in favor of a model by which the carrier will subsidize the phone up-front, like the deal Apple now has with U.S. provider AT&T and the vast majority of its carrier partners around the world. That has allowed the two companies to move forward with plans and move on to working out the logistics. However, there is still no timetable for when the iPhone will be released there, a China Mobile spokeswoman told Reuters.
In Friday's edition of the Daily Debrief, CNET News.com's Tom Krazit and I talk about the July 11 release of the iPhone 3G. Apple has been notoriously tight-lipped about the details, but Tom says there are a few known factors. For one, every customer will have to sign a two-year contract with AT&T and will have to activate the phone upon purchase in the store. Secondly--and this comes as no surprise--the lines are going to be crazy!
That said, there's a lot we still don't know. There has been great speculation over what time the phone will go on sale. Last year, it was a coordinated release at 6 p.m. in each of the United States' time zones. This year, however, given the time needed to activate the phone and the worldwide release, there's speculation they'll go on sale earlier in the day. Also unknown is how many iPhones have been manufactured and how many each customer will be able to purchase. Stay tuned!
Instinctiv de-randomizes the random shuffle function on iPhones, but only if you "jailbreak" them first.
(Credit: Instinctiv)A couple weeks ago, I pondered if early adopters of the iPod and other MP3 players were starting to lose patience with the random shuffle function. Too much black and white, not enough gray.
Almost on cue, start-up Instinctiv came out on Thursday with its first application, an iPhone and iPod Touch application called Instinctiv Shuffle that will derandomize the random iTunes-shuffling feature.
Instinctiv Shuffle uses an algorithm similar to that developed by Pandora and other taste-tracking sites to select the perfect song to play next--like having a professional DJ sift through your collection.
There's a catch: Instinctiv Shuffle works only on so-called "jail-broken" iPhones, which means that you have to download the right firmware (version 1.1.4), then download and run another piece of software called iLiberty (or take matters into your own hands, if you have the technical sophistication to do so).
Doing this has risks: Apple's been known to release software updates that disable third-party applications and prevent unlocked iPhones from using alternate cellular networks. Instinctiv apparently didn't want to be bound to certain limitations in the iPhone SDK.
I wanted a Kindle. I was ready to buy a Kindle. The iPhone spoiled everything.
Amazon's Kindle sells for $365.
(Credit: Amazon)I'm an avid reader of digital books and for months I had my eye on the Kindle, the digital reader from Amazon, with its high-contrast screen and PC-less book downloads. Then Apple announced that the iPhone 3G goes on sale July 11.
I'm now in second-guess hell.
I know Apple has said nothing about offering an e-reading application for the new iPhone. But what happens if Steve Jobs later surprises us or some developer turns the iPhone into a whiz-bang electronic reader? I'll tell you what happens, my Kindle ends up on eBay.
I can imagine a slick iTunes bookstore, stocked full of titles that are easy to buy and download--sort of like Amazon.com. Even if Apple decides against getting into book sales, the upgraded iPhone will be open to developers. I'm betting one has already written an e-reader application.
There's a huge opportunity here for some enterprising developer. The person could write a reader application for the iPhone and then sign licensing deals with top publishers. The developer could sell digital books out of their own Web store. The pitch to the publishers would be: "I have the best way for you to get on the iPhone."
Of course, if Apple, which possesses complete control over the iPhone application development program, is planning something similar down the line, then a third-party e-reader application might not pass. Last January, Jobs voiced skepticism about e-readers, telling The New York Times that people "don't read anymore."
This to some is a good indication that he's interested.
The iPhone offers more value than the Kindle.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Regardless, all of this highlights the main problem with the Kindle: it's too much of a specialty device to appeal to a mass market audience. People want more value than the Kindle offers.
Sure, Amazon's the iPhone when it comes to providing a better reading experience. The Kindle features a 6-inch screen and E Ink technology, which is easier on the eyes than backlit displays. But the iPhone has all it needs to become a great digital-book reader: a 3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen Multi-Touch display and 480-by-320 resolution.
I've read close to 20 books on my Palm Pilot TX and its 3.8-inch screen is plenty big enough.
Certainly, the Kindle's advantages as an e-reader aren't enough to trump the host of iPhone features: a phone on a new faster network, camera, video player, it holds photos, contacts, you can play games and there's the apps we don't know about yet. With the Kindle I get Web browsing and e-mail.
When you size up bang for the buck, it's all iPhone. The 16GB iPhone 3G costs $299. Of course that doesn't include network charges. The Kindle sells for $365 and that includes free wireless.
Brett Arends at The Wall Street Journal argues that if you read a lot, the Kindle can help you save money because e-books are cheaper than the paper kind. But he acknowledges that you have to buy 61 books before the device pays for itself.
Pacific Crest analyst Steve Weinstein predicts that global e-book sales at Amazon could reach $2.5 billion by 2012. If he's right, I'm thinking many of those sales won't be for the Kindle.
CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh and Tom Krazit contributed to this report.
T-Mobile is gearing up to offer a 3G iPhone in Germany for only 1 euro, provided users sign up for its monthly 69-euro service plan, according to a Reuters report on Monday.
That translates into an iPhone purchase of roughly $1.55, and a monthly service plan of $107.
Under T-Mobile's offering, the telecom provider will sell the phones with 8GB of memory, while a 16GB phone will go for 19.95 euros, or nearly $31.
T-Mobile's announcement of its 3G iPhone offering comes a week after Apple rolled out the latest version of its popular cell phone.
T-Mobile in Germany is underwriting the deeply discounted phone with the help of a renegotiated contract with Apple, which no longer requires the carrier to share some of the revenues generated via iPhone calls with Apple, according to the report.
This move has yet to be seen in the U.S., where AT&T is the exclusive carrier of the iPhone. However, AT&T no longer has to share its revenue with Apple.
Whether AT&T will eventually drop the current 8GB iPhone price of $199 and 16GB iPhone price of $299 to just a couple bucks has yet to be seen.
CrunchGear has a spread on what appears to be the new 3G iPhone. Matt Hickey wrote in CrunchGear:
It's thinner than the current model, for sure, with a more MacBook Air-like bezeling. It's got stereo speakers on the back and what appears to be the same screen as the current generation. But the real news here isn't the Exchange support, but the front facing camera for iChat AV.
According to CrunchGear the new iPhone will come in red, supporting the Product Red campaign.
Stay tuned for CNET News.com's Tom Krazit's live coverage from Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference and CEO Steve Jobs' unveiling of the iPhone that will be coveted by every current iPhone user.
Update 11:10 a.m. PDT: Thanks to News.com readers for pointing out the origins of two of the three icons I pointed out in this blog. Turns out this little game is only fun for those of us who don't use Leopard and aren't developers. I will now return to speculating about the upcoming features based on other, more telling factors, such as local temperature and humidity readings.
In the runup to any major Apple event, there's no end to the amount of guesswork about what Steve Jobs will pull out of his pocket (or manila envelope, as the case may be).
With the company's Worldwide Developers Conference around the corner, our intrepid photographer, James Martin, took a stroll past Moscone West and managed to snap these photos of banners hanging inside before the convention hall heavies came and shooed him away.
They depict lots of icons, which would fit with the expectation that at least one announcement will be the launch of the App Store, an online store through which people can buy and download approved third-party application for the iPhone.
Some of these icons are familiar, and some are new. Of the new ones, what new features do you suppose they might represent? Check the pictures out below and let us know what you think in the comments area below. We've uploaded them at the best resolution we can. Just click through each one to see a larger version and scan the icons for clues about what's around the corner.
Photo No. 1
This has two intriguing icons: the green X and the purple sphere. The green X is obviously the iPhone's new flux capacitor. That, or maybe it's just there to represent new games taking advantage of the device's existing accelerometer.
Click the image above to get a closer look.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)Photo No. 2
In this photo, the small purple icon seems to be a pen and ink well--an indication of handwriting recognition perhaps?
Click the image above to get a closer look.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)Photo No. 3
The mosaic eye, made up of dozens of miniature photos, caught our eye in this photo. Could it indicate a new Flickr-style app?
Click the image above to get a closer look.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)What do you think? Do the icons on these signs give us an idea of what's to come?
