According to the Q3 financial results conference call, Apple’s next fiscal quarter (Q04) will experience a secret “product transition” that will drop the company’s overall margins from just under 35% to just over 30%. It would seem that Apple is concerned that their high margins make it easy for competitors to release similar but cheaper products…
According to Apple’s CFO, Peter Oppenheimer “these state-of-the-art products will have technologies and features that others can’t match”, but he refused to reveal anything beyond that.
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MESSAGE: Got an iPhone? Then please take part in our iPhone browsing speed test!
Annoyingly the 3G iPhone doesn’t come with a dock, but no matter, those of us who bought the Apple Bluetooth headset have a dock anyway. Except the 3G iPhone doesn’t fit a dock that was designed for the 2G iPhone…
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In the early hours of this morning the iPhone Dev team released the latest version of their “Pwnage Tool”. This software modifies the iPhone firmware to unlock and jailbreak the phone.
To the uninitiated, unlocking the iPhone lets you use the phone on other networks than was originally intended. For example, in the UK if you want an iPhone you have to sign up to an 18 month contract with O2. If you’re getting a better deal with a different network you can’t just put that sim card in an iPhone, it won’t accept it as it’s locked to O2.
So if that’s unlocking what’s “jailbreaking”? Well, prior to July the 11th you couldn’t install any new applications on your iPhone, you were stuck with what came with it. On July the 11th Apple launched the App Store in iTunes which lets you download free (or low cost) applications and install them on your iPhone. The only catch is that Apple decides which applications go in the store. Jailbreaking your iPhone lets you download any iPhone applications off the internet and install them.
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With sales of 1 million handsets in the first 3 days alone, the latest 3G iPhone stands a good chance of becoming the most popular way for people to browse websites with a handheld device.
With just a few limitations (lack of flash compatibility for example) an iPhone can happily browse most standard, well written web sites. So why bother going to the trouble of making a specific version of your site for the iPhone? There are several reasons:
- Make the experience a lot more pleasant for the user by helping them avoid zooming and scrolling around
- Pull out the iPhone incompatible bits so their experience is flawless, while maintaining eye candy for regular users
- Make the experience quicker (and thus bearable) for the users who are browsing over a (relatively) low bandwidth connection.
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Just last week we launched our new laptop etching/engraving service for owners of anodised metal notebook computers such as the MacBook Pro and also for gadgets such as iPods and the metal backed 2G iPhone. But what to do for the owners of plastic products such as the MacBook and the new 3G iPhone?
The solution is one of our full colour wraps! These are self-adhesive, fully custom printed and custom sized skins. They peel off if you fancy a change and while in situ offer great scratch protection for your precious laptop or phone.
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If you upgraded to the iPhone 3G via Carphone Warehouse (or possibly an O2 store I suppose) check your O2 online billing to see what tariff they put you on.
I upgraded from the £35 iPhone tariff to the £45 tariff at the same time as buying the iPhone 3G, and the numpty at Carphone Warehouse moved me to a £45 tariff indeed giving the correct number of free minutes (1200), but it was not an iPhone tariff. I only noticed when I tried to access my Visual Voicemail today at it refused to work, instead insisting on calling 901 the old fashioned way. When I couldn’t get it to work I figured something was up and checked my tariff via the O2 website and noticed it said “Online 45″, not “iPhone 45″.
A quick call to O2 confirmed it. I was on the wrong tariff which meant I was only getting 500 texts instead of 1000 txts but more importantly, no inclusive data. O2 tell me that the excess data charges will automatically be credited off my bill but I’ve heard that line before! I’ll have to check it carefully next month.
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The WiFi which was working fine yesterday refuses to find any access points today. Tried switching it off and on, resetting network settings, restoring the whole phone, everything. Won’t find a thing.
So I booked it into the Genius Bar at the Apple Store in Regent Street, London and jumped on the tube.
I then noticed that the phone would not find a 3G signal, that seemed to have packed up in sympathy (at this rate I’m going to end up with an expensive contract iPod Touch!).
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Up to and including your old iSight webcam…
Basically it ended up as 1-0 to the iSight camera. It was a foregone conclusion I suppose what with it being made from metal and the keyboard being plastic…
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My MacBook Pro is a great machine, it’s the best notebook computer I’ve ever owned. In fact it’s the best computer I’ve ever owned. Period.
But since the day I bought it, in February 2007, it’s had an appetite for batteries. The battery life is very short. And by that I don’t mean the time between charges, I mean the battery has a short lifespan.
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As I already have a 16GB 2G iPhone I’m eligible for an upgrade to the 3G model for £59 (on the £45 per month tariff) so I decided to take advantage.
I popped to Lakeside mall in Essex at 9:30AM and was told by both O2 stores that there were no 16GB models left. So I headed over to a branch of Carphone Warehouse and grabbed one of their last ones.
I was told the wait would be considerable as the O2 servers were struggling to cope with the demand so they took my number, reserved me phone and told me they’d call me when it went through.
I nipped over to Starbucks and an hour later I had my 3G iPhone.
Not a bad experience.
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