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Never say never, yes Ian Forrester did buy a iphone…

Yes I did get one, but I never said I wouldn't so there. And just to prove its not fake, thats my SPV M700 in front of the iphone, plus more photos. When do they hit the UK again? I'm expecting comments, so I'll say nothing more.

Sorry guys, its a hoax. I did buy a iphone or more but its not for me. Why would I buy a iphone? Even when faced with one in my hands and a cheap price I still didn't want one. I was actually tempted to get a Microsoft Zune because I saw one for less that 175 dollars. I enjoyed winding you lot up…But yes that wasn't just a box it was the real thing and I did spend about 20mins playing with it in the shop. I'm either going to get a Samsung F700 or that iphone like Nokia. The touch is too much like my current phone and its 2nd gen still sucks.

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iPhone hype is getting tiresome

iPhone

Apple heads! give me a break…

Since Apple and Cingular announced the date of the apple iphone (29th June) and the rumour there will only be 4 million made this year. All I hear about now is the iphone. At the girl geekdinner the women from google who presented made a joke about the iphone which clarified in my mind that the hype is getting stupid.

Slashdot lead today with some good news that the iphone will allow 3rd party developers to build on it.

In an exciting shift from previous statements, Apple CEO Steve Jobs revealed at the D Conference that 3rd-party development will be supported on the iPhone. Questions remain as to whether the opening of the platform, slated for later this year, will be through Dashboard-like widgets or a separate SDK.”

But what gets me is the silly comments afterwards. People were suggesting Skype on a phone would be good, another person a wifi detector and then finally wrote this.

Cellular networks are fragile. Much more fragile than the larger internet. They tend toward monoculture and proprietary systems, and haven’t had the shakedown that standard internet network hardware and protocols have had. So Jobs’ quote about him ‘not wanting third-party apps bringing Cingular’s network down’ actually makes some sense (some mobile phone applications have more-or-less done this in the past). And

Bullshit. Utter crap. Why is there this paranoia about the iPhone, when Symbian, Windows CE/Mobile have allowed this for years? There is no way an application on a device should or could bring down a base station, let alone a cell network.

Oh, and as for this gem:

bringing Cingular’s network down’ actually makes some sense (some mobile phone applications have more-or-less done this in the past)

Cite. Go on. I would so so love to see a citation of any evidence of this. Any, whatsoever.

Thankfully someone with some sense.

What kills me is there are some great phones on the market including the Nokia N95 and of course my phone the SPV M700. Both have GPS, 3G, Wireless b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 and mass storage via flash memory. They both play music and video very well and this is the best part don't cost a bomb to get on contract. We know for a fact this isn't true of the iphone, which looks like the price of a ipod plus a expensive 24month contract.

I could rant on about the iphone all day but I just want to point out that if you avoid the plain old phones and look into the smartphone market you will find phones which can do everything the iphone does. Symbian and now Windows Mobile developers are very good at creating and hacking around with these phones now. Theres huge catalogues of software which have been developed which also makes these phones rich too. I think Apples SDK will be messy and full of holes. I'm not saying the others are any better but there SDKs have been out for a long time and there quite public.

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Meizu M8, the iphone for windows mobile users

The phone could be fake or Apple will sue them out of business at least in North America and Europe. But if its true the Meizu M8 (found on Engadget) and comes out before 2008. I'd certainly be tempted if they create a slightly more european one (3g, wifi, etc). But lets be honest, its got some amazing specs already.

the M8 is now said to measure in at a scant 57x105x11.5-mm and packs both a GSM and Chinese TD-SCDMA 3G radio, a 3.3-inch 720×480 pixel display, Bluetooth, a 3 megapixel camera, and an ARM11 CPU capable of recording video at 30fps at the device's full 720 x 480 resolution. Too good to be true?

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More thoughts about the iPhone ongoing drama

So the truth is starting to trickle out. First a note on openness via Kid666.

In The New York Times, Steve Jobs confirms every developer’s worst fears about the iPhone:

‘These [iPhones] are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them,’ he said. ‘That doesn’t mean there’s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn’t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.’

If Microsoft said that, everyone would jump and down (like they are about Vista) but Apple says it and the follows shake there heads like zombies. As Kidd666 says, nooooooo!

3G also looks like it won't happen says Engadget

It's not unheard of for a firmware upgrade to unlock new features or functionality in a device, but the sources we've spoken to have made it pretty clear that Apple hasn't wedged a UMTS or HSDPA radio into this thing.

A couple of other things. Did Apple steal Visual Voicemail? on top of stealing the maybe dropped trademarked name of iPhone by Cisco. I kinda of agree with Nokia no usable 3G and europe (which is a bigger market and us europeans are use to something small and powerful in our hands? DLTV) will have to wait comments. It is also worth checking out what DL.TV make of us Europeans.

And I'm also pretty much done talking about it now. Still very worried about the closed nature of the device but then again the iPod is also a closed type device and you can even run linux on it now. Its also worth pointing out that the Candy Bar touchscreen devices are very much the way forward now.

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AppleTV and iPhone

I couldn't go to sleep without saying something about the Apple announcements today.

So first up the Apple TV. This for me was disappointing, I was hoping to have something which maybe I could upgrade to. But for now my XBox running XBMC will still have a spot under my TV. I had expected something a little cheaper and cleverer. Its a worthy device which I would recommend to others but the software on it is underwelming. For example no 1080p support, yes its a very high standard but with shows going out on the net in
1080p (macbreak for one) and with the xbox 360 and PS3 supporting it. You would have thought Apple would get on board too. Anyway hopefully its a software upgrade. I'm also hoping someone ports XBMC or something better to it. Frontrow doesn't seem to have been upgraded that much and looks simply boring compared to the open source efforts of XBMC. Final thought for now, great hardware underwhelming software.

And now the iPhone or Apple phone. I do like what Apple's done. It seems like they've taken a HTC Windows mobile device and built a much better interface for it (multitouch). Finger based instead of Stylus, ok cool but not revolutionary. The features of the phone are good, I'd expect they will have 3G for the European (Q4 2007) and Asia models (2008), and it has most of the stuff you see in current phones – EDGE, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc. These
may sound amazing to the usual phone buying people but nothing special to a Windows Mobile owner. For example the fact the music pauses when a call comes in is nothing new. My Ericsson T28 use to that with the MP3 attachment, most phones do that. Matt at work didn't believe me and Ii showed him and earned myself a pound in the process. People wondered how Googlemaps could pin point your location without GPS, well Wifi and GSM can be used to pin point location. Oh one more thing the Proximity sensor isn't a new
thing either. My old gold bar Ericsson had that feature, so you could answer the phone by waving your hands over it and it wouldn't do anything to the buttons while its next to your ear.Widgets on your phone, been done by Opera already. Multi-session text? Sounds like IM to me. High DPI screen is nice but the Nokia's also have high DPI screens. 8 or 4gig, well teh Nokia N91 had 4 gig over 12months ago and Samsung already have a 8gig phone. Suprised Apple didn't go with just Yahoo or Google instead of both. Also
very surprised Google didn't offer Push email. There was no mention of Java support, or its poor 2 mega pixal camera. Lessig talked about read/write ability a while ago, well this is certainly a read device, it certainly doesn't feel like an empowering device for writers.

Don't get me wrong, all the tweaks to software and hardware to add up to a great phone which I would buy if it came out sooner that Q4 of 2007. The price point is not too high, but I expect it to be at least 250 pounds on Orange with a 18 month contract. Would I say Apple will put some more spice back into the mobile market and force mobile and software makers (Microsoft pay attention) to spend more time looking at the functionality of simple things like text, email and voicemail. For example Microsoft don't
actually provide a MMS or voicetag client for Windows Mobile 5, so you get some 3rd party solution which usual suck and is totally inconsistent with the rest of the phone. Visual voicemail makes sense and is one of those tweaks which I can imagine not living without once you have it.

So overall, yes I wouldn't mind one but I'm not holding my breath or rather next upgrade decision for it. I'll get one in Q2 of 2008 when its been tried and tested and Apple have upgraded some of the lows like Battery life.

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Apple iTV video streaming box

The most interesting which came out of the Apple announcements today was the Apple iTV device which fits right into the area currently occupied by Divx DVD players, Media wireless adapters and of course my favorate the xbox. Taken from engadget…

In an unusual turn of events, Apple has pre-announced a wireless video streaming set-top box to be released in Q1 2007 with the tag line “you can take content to your computer or iPod, but now… TV.” Going by the codeword of iTV, the box looks like a flattened Mac mini — apparently it's around half the height — and features a built-in power supply, USB 2.0, Ethernet, 802.11 “wireless component video”, optical audio and HDMI ports, plus regular ol' RCA stereo audio ports. Controllable by the standard Apple remote, the iTV will come with an updated version of the Front Row interface that shares Front Row's smooth 3D graphics, but differs in that it has a menu on the right side of the screen. Apparently it'll work with both iTunes on both PCs and Macs, and will sell for $299.

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Apple keynote covered

Once again, those guys over at Engadget have the Apple Keynote covered.

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Switching to Linux again…

Tim O'Reilly is on the money, there's trouble in Apple land. Jason Kottke and Cory Doctorow have made the switch to the Linux flavor Ubuntu for there operating system. This follows Mark Pilgrim and there seems to be more leading lights switching too.

Sarah really hates it when I say about switching to Linux, because she knows how outraged I get about some of the most simple things. But this really makes me want to switch even quicker. I've almost pledged never to run Windows Vista on my desktop or laptop machine. I'm not going to switch to OSX because I simply love the PC architecture and freedom it brings (Although I was tempted with the dodgy copies of running OSX on a AMD PC). So I'm going to move to Linux again. This time, I'm going to take it seriously and give it time. I already had OpenSuse 10.1 with XGL running on a spare machine. But now I'm talking about slowly switching everything including my Laptop.

I have already got a small list of some problems I'll have, such as my mobile phone which runnings on Windows Mobile 2005. My PIM syncing using Plaxo, and Hardware support such as my new Camcorder and weird motherboard. But with a year to get it all going, I'm sure to come up with the answers or another way to the same thing.

Ubuntu looks the way to go, specially if I can get xgl running too.

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Macmini, the perfect media centre for my living room?

It was odd, I usually find my views are usually much closer aligned with Doc Searls than Steve Gillmor. But during a short time period while this weeks Gillmor Gang, Dan Farber, Doc Searls, Mike Arrington and Dana Gardner start chatting about the Apple Minimac announcment earlier in the week. Well Doc and others were saying it was no good as a home entertainment box because it had no Tuner input, while Steve was saying screw that its got a network port what more do you need?

And you know what Steve is right on this one. IP delivery is where its at. Yes it nice to have a digital TV tuner card but that whole PVR time shifting thing is over rated in my view. (Saying that, if Bit torrent was to go away tomorrow I would run out and buy a Twin Tuner Freeview PVR straight away). I keep hearing about the huge leap from scheduled programming to time shifted, and it is. But its also equally a huge jump from time shifted to on demand. This is not new ground, many people are exploring the world of on demand already. For example I was out at Wiki Wednesday today and missed the UK Apprentice, but it does not matter because by the time I wake up tomorrow, it will be downloading without using any of my attention. And even if i wait a week or even a month I could still get that same episode somehow without too much searching. Thats on demand. No actually that's the 3rd era of so called broadcasting.

Anyhow back to the Mac, Front row's new features are no match for Xbox media centre but I'm sure they will get better over time. If not there always other options like the Xbox 360 (if you can get your hands one), Playstation 3 (if it comes out before 2007) or even a nice shuttle PC.

Lets have deeper look at what makes the Macmini a nice machine for my living room. Well first its now got a Intel Core Duo which means it should handle 1080i HDTV with AC3 surround sound without too much problem. Like I said although Front row is no Xbox Media Centre and a long way off Windows Media Centre. Its looks pretty good for that living room remote control domain. I really need to go into a Apple store and try it out sometime soon as its kind of hard to tell just from pictures. Optical out should mean 5.1 surround sound isn't that far off. Its got a DVI output and does not seem to contain that DRM standard HCDP which means we won't get that scary Windows Vista thing where it will switch off the video unless you have the licence. I don't believe the Xbox 360 has this, but its hard to tell till its been hacked.

However there are lots of disadvantages to using a Mac. The DVD drives tend to be region locked which will make my old DVD's from America a pain to play on this machine. The remote is simple but thats the problem, its too simplic. I'm use to doing things like queuing up a selection of podcasts and videos then let it run through-out the day, it doesn't seem like you can do that from that remote? On the sound front, the Mac does not have a dolby digital chip like the xboxes, so I'll have to say goodbye to the upscaling of Dolby Surround to Dolby Digital.

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Live blogging the mac world announcements

So i'm on the phone with a friend of mine whos sitting at the BBC White City Press launch. I'm able to live blog what I hear. If my blog gets traffic swamped go check out Engadget. Halfway through his phoned died, but I was able to switch to another firend using Skype.

Steve jobs is on about the Apple store and how many people are going in to the stores
Now the ipod sells. 14million ipods sold last year. 42million ipods sold in total. 850million songs sold in total.
TV shows. 8million sold since launch.
New ipod accessory, FM Tuner with remote control for 49dollars
Yuk! Dodge Jeep integration of the ipod
New ipod adverts, something to do with Jazz?

On to the mac, some info about Aperture
Demo of Aperture
Oh Widgets and Dashboard now – 1500 widgets to date
New Apple widgets (like yahoo i guess) for mac OS X 10.4.4.
Google widget, calendars, etc
iLife 2006 now
Music, movies, blogs, podcasts, photos all part of ilife now
Things are much tighter now, so you can make birthday cards, calendars, podcasts and share it all with the net (.mac account)
People can now subscribe to your password protected .mac feed which contains images, podcasts, blog entries
Demo of iPhoto, lots of photoshop recipes type one clicks
Apple invents photocasting? Sounds like a Flickr photostream but using the .mac account (just a RSS feed with photos attached)
iMovieHD demo
New things Themes, real time effects and more audio editing tools
iDVD now takes advantage of Widescreen now
It also supports 3rd party DVD burners which gets a cheer
Garageband. Complete podcasting studio built in now
You can use iChatAV for remote interviews like how podcasts use Skype right now
Demo of Garageband with podcast studio
Steve cracking some jokes while recording his own podcast
Demo finish and Steve plays the funny podcast
Steve jobs changes his tone a little, so he can launch iweb which is a way to share photos, music, movies, blogs and media in one place easily.
Some kind of media browser which allows you to share all the above and view all the above? All done with RSS. (I wonder if were going to get the messy itunes type extensions problem again)
Demo of iWeb, which any browser can view
Lots of Ajax magic
Back to ilife 2006 now, cost the same 79 dollars but now with more apps
Moving on to the .mac account, 1million subscribers
New product iWork, which is like the office suite
Ah at long last, he's talking about Mac computers
Asks how were doing with the new Intel chips, someone walks on (from Intel I guess)
Jobs says Apple are ready. Intel say there ready
Huge cheer
… Yep its here, iMac with iSight and Front row software all running on a Intel chip
Same price too, comes in 17inch and 20inch versions
The chip is a Dual core Intel Pentium
All ilife 2006 and iWork packages running natively on the Intel chips and were demoed on the same machine
Final cut pro, etc will be launched in intel native this march, theres some talk about trading it in too
Quark Express has a native beta available to download
Jobs talks to someone at Microsoft about Office running on Rosetta and how they will develop native versions for the mac
All updates will be available online in March, there is also a commitment to the office mac for at least 5 years
Demo of Office on Rosetta now
Now Photoshop on Rosetta
Talking about Safari now
Other products will change through out the year
Showing a new intel chip advert
Intel pentium in a Powerbook! called a Macbook pro?
Uses the same dual core chips, meant to be 4-5x faster than current powerbooks.
Comes with 15.4inch LCD, iSight and quite thin size
Demo of the Macbook pro
Comes with a IR remote, some magnetic power supply (sounds like a gimick)
Ok price is 1999 dollars for a 1.67gz dual core with iSight and Front row.
Theres a 1.8gz at 2499 dollars too
Intel advert again
Tons of cheers and clapping
Some thanking, Intel, Woz, Jobs and people behind the webcast

All the details are now on the Apple website

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Video ipod is official, but is this it?

I'm following the coverage from Engadget, Gizmodo and believe it or not Stuffmag

The new iPod, as speculated, features video capabilities and the wider display, but it�s still a music-first device.

The device will feature a 2.5-inch display, QVGA resolution (320 x 240), and will MPEG-4 h.264 (natch), and presumably Quicktime.

The new iPod will be 30% thinner than the current 20GB iPod (making it 0.44-inches thick�say wha?), and will feature a 60GB version and editions of both in black. The 20GB should go for $299, and the 60GB for $399. They�ll be shipping next week.

I'm not sure this is the actual video ipod, more a inbetween ipod.

New news just coming in…

You'll be able to buy TV shows from the iTunes Music Store – Desperate Housewives, Lost and more shows from ABC and Disney. Five shows will be available to watch on iPod or computer: Lost, Desperate Housewives, Nightstalker, The Suite Life and some other Disney thang. $1.99 an episode.

So its over, the apple index page has been updated and world now has a Video ipod to play with, we already knew about iTunes 6 before.

Here's the complete list

iMac: faster, larger disk, built in iSight. Includes FrontRow (app)
iPod: 30GB/60GB with Video – realtime decoding of MPEG4 and H.264. 260,000 colors. Video out, perfect for the car?
FrontRow and PhotoBooth Apps.
30GB iPod: $299 – 31% thinner than current 20GB; – 60GB iPod: $399.
New video iPods avail next week.
New TV adverts for video ipods
iMac: $1299 for 17″ model with 1.5GHz, $1799 for 20″ model with 2.1GHz
iTunes 6 to be released with video support, You will be able to buy TV shows from iTunes Music Store. $1.99 per episode. ABC on board esperate Housewives, Lost)
Front Row – comes with new iMacs. Lets you enjoy video/music/pictures from sofa. Everything still displayed on iMac screen. iPod-like remote. 6 button remote.
Photobooth – appears to be slide show application.
Music Videos. 2000 available to buy. $1.99 each.
Can “gift” music to other people. Peer reviews and recommendation service.
Videos have Digital Rights Management built in. Can play on up to 5 computers.

Ok wheres the HD laptops and Video enabled airport express? (airport express video anyone?). Engadget has the first lot of real screen shots of the new vido ipod including the black version. Also wheres the UK video store? I'm sure the BBC could have a role to play in that, its fits with our licencing and its a little more flexable than the imp right now.

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BBC accidentally reveals video iPod?

Photoshopped made up version of the video ipod

Steve Jobs is not going to be happy with us at the BBC. See there's a big date of the 12th October crossed in Apples diary and there were rumours of some Apple run BBC broadcast at TVC (BBC Telelvision centre) on the same day. Then there was other clues.

http://www.apple.com/movies – Forbidden, usually Apple has a nice redirect like this http://www.apple.com/geekdinner. The hidden video buttons in iTunes. Plus you've got the Nano disappointment (yes you heard me correctly) and the PSP's mass takeup and adoption across the world.
The evidance is growing everyday
Google Cache of iTunes + ipod video page

So we were all scratching our heads till BBC 6 accidentally let slip yesterday.

Apple is set to unveil a new video iPod at the BBC Television Centre in London on October the 12th

Ahh ha, so its a dead set now then. The specs may still be up for debate but I'm wondering if the iMP trial will extend to the video ipod and give the worldwide audience the ability to pay for BBC programming? Its all very fitting when you listen to Paula Le Dieu's talk at Emerging Massive media.

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Apple nano, phone and itunes5? What a disappointment

So after all the usual marketing hype, Kevin was right. Cingular will sell the iTunes shuffle Motorola phone. Theres a replacement to the ipod mini called the ipod “Nano” which has a colour screen and is very light and very thin. Oh an theres iTunes5 which syncs with outlook and has a few extra features. Yeah big deal… If your interested, Engadget had a live blog for the event, which included a ichatAV call to some stars and lots of Steve Jobs type charisma.

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