thomas fitzgerald.net

From Macworld UK:

When Apple ships its iPhone 2.0 update - and the accompanying App Store for distributing third-party software for the phone - you won’t have to wait too long for native iPhone apps built by Google programmers. “We expect to have applications at Day One,” said Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president of engineering.

[Read Google has native iPhone apps ready]

From Macworld:

O2 CEO Matthew Key confirmed that the cellular provider will make an iPhone-related announcement in conjunction with Apple “in the coming weeks.”

File under: “Duh”
[Read O2 confirms new iPhone ‘in weeks’]

From Amazon’s Blog of all places. Interesting list though. I have jailbroken my iPod touch, but I’m reluctant to touch my iPhone what with June just around the corner. Still, there’s some pretty neat stuff out there already, and it’s not clear if some of these things will even be possible with the SDK.

From Ars Technica:

Vodafone announced this morning that it would offer the iPhone in ten markets worldwide—the largest single iPhone rollout yet (well, assuming they all launch at the same time).

What’s interesting about this is that Telecom Italia have also stated that they plan to carry the iPhone adding further weight to the rumors that Apple is abandoning it’s single exclusive carrier model.
[Read Vodafone, Telecom Italia announce massive iPhone rollout]
[Related: What Happens if Apple Sells iPhone Unlocked?]

There has been this rumor floating around for the past couple of months that Apple is planning to sell off its Pro Apps devision, namely Final Cut studio and Aperture. The rumor was dying down but then Robert Cringly over at PBS posted a fanciful story that Apple was planning to sell its pro apps so it could buy Adobe. Of course the idea that they need to ditch their own Applications to make way for Adobe’s is completely ridiculous. It’s doubtful if Apple could afford to buy Adobe even if it wanted to, and Apple’s competing Apps are, for the most part better than the Adobe Counterparts. Having said that I do think here could be benefits for both consumers and Apple if they did buy Adobe (putting an end to Adobe’s insane overseas pricing would be one benefit). I consider it unlikely but not totally beyond the realms of possibility. What is completely beyond the realms of possibility though is the idea that Apple plans to sell off its pro apps.

This all started when Apple announced that they weren’t going to be exhibiting at NAB this year. This sparked immediate and rampant speculation as to their motives. As I work in the Television post production Industry I have first hand experience of it. After the announcement I was having discussions with some of the people I know who work in the industry and the first chicken little reaction was that they must be planning to ditch Final Cut Pro so they can focus on the iPhone. (The iPhone pretty much gets the blame for everything these days) Of course it’s complete nonsense as they are two completely separate and independent devisions within Apple. Anyway, I’m sure discussions like this were being held by post production professionals across the globe. That in itself would have been enough to start the ball rolling, but then take those same professionals, and have them all congregate in Las Vegas under the one roof for a week and rampant speculation quickly becomes a rumor. All it takes is one person in that situation to make the jump from “I wonder are Apple selling off their pro apps” to “I heard that Apple are selling off their Pro Apps” in a hot convention center with several thousand video nerds and you have an instant scandal.

Such was the furor over this that Apple came out and firmly denied that this was to be the case. Mind you that didn’t stop Robert Cringly publishing his piece and multiple sites picking up his speculation and translating it to potential fact. This isn’t the first time this kind of water cooler chatter got out of hand about Apple either. Thanks to a wonderfully bad piece of attempted journalism by the now dead Think Secret, people had pronounced Aperture end of life and there were “rumors” that Apple was going to kill the project. Anyway, you can rest assured that with Final Cut pro’s 44% market share it’s not going to happen.

So why weren’t they at NAB this year and why has there been no major Final Cut updates considering they usually release a relatively big upgrade at NAB every year? I have a pretty good idea as to what’s going on, and the inspiration came, ironically enough from Adobe. When they made their stark warning at Photoshop World recently that they would need to migrate Photoshop’s code from carbon to cocoa in order to take the application to 64bit I realized that Apple was faced with the same dilemma. Final Cut Pro started out as an OS9 Application and has been building on that legacy code ever since. It’s actually pretty inefficient by todays standards too (for example it barely uses multiple processors), and it was only a matter of time before they would have to do a major re-write. Why now though you ask? Well, there is a growing trend in the high end of the industry towards 2K and 4K post production. This is basically even higher resolution than high definition and is used for cinema post production. Cameras like the Red One are pushing this way of working forward into the mainstream and because of the huge file sizes involved I suspect than in order to work efficiently Apple needs to go 64bit with Final Cut Pro.

The reason the weren’t at NAB was simply that they didn’t have anything to show this year. Their main competitor, Avid, was not there and it costs a lot of money to have a space as large as Apple’s usual booth so why waste the money when you’ve got nothing to show. From what I’ve heard from people at the show they might as well have been there anyway considering the amount of other booths showing Final Cut or using Apple technology.

So the upshot of all this is that there is no great conspiracy in action here. Apple is not selling their Pro Applications. Final Cut is not going away. the sky is not falling and the iPhone is not the root of all evil. Rest assured that if they are re-writing Final Cut the end result will be even better than ever. And still way better than Premiere.

[update: Added link to Apple’s denial of the rumors]

[UPDATE: Fixed Broken Links]

Amazing the difference £110 can make.

According to Macworld UK….

Carphone Warehouse is now out of stock of 16GB iPhones, following the fast sell-out of 8GB models of the device last week.

Both Carphone Warehouse and O2 have also sold out of the 8GB iPhone, following their application of a £100 discount on the device last month.

Also interesting is the fact that Neither Carphone Warehouse or O2 Plan on re-stocking ahead of the “rumored” launch of the 3G iPhone

Interesting story from iLounge:

Speaking during an investor conference call, Jeff Bewkes, Time Warner’s CEO, said the company’s Warner Bros. studio will now release movies to the Apple TV and other video-on-demand systems on the same day they are released on DVD.

[Read News: Warner Bros. rentals coming to Apple TV same day as DVD]

From Macworld:

Apple’s attitude about unlocked iPhones hints that the company will abandon its business model of grabbing a piece of mobile carriers’ revenues in order to make its goal of selling 10 million smart phones this year, an analyst said Thursday.

[Read Analyst: Apple coming to terms with iPhone ‘unlocking’]

From the Mac Observer:

Apple’s FY08 Q2 earnings report on Wednesday showed that deferred revenue, the so-called subscription accounting, for Apple TV and iPhone is rising dramatically.

[Read Deferred Revenue for Apple TV and iPhone Climbs Dramatically || The Mac Observer]

When the iPhone launched in Ireland a few weeks ago it launched with some of the most limited options available to iPhone customers anywhere, with allocated minutes a fraction of what’s available in the UK for example. Perhaps the most obvious limitations though are the lack of visual voice mail and the 1 gig data limit. It is the later that has become a cause for concern.

Unlike the UK, the US, Germany and France, the iPhone tariffs offered by O2 do not come with an unlimited data plan. Instead customers get 1GB of data per month and are charged by the megabyte once they go over that limit. On a traditional mobile device 1GB may sound enormous, and the company claimed that 1GB of data was far more than most people would ever need. This may be true, but unlike traditional data capable cellphones, the iPhone has a full browser, and downloads full websites. In addition, Google Maps, YouTube and widgets all consume data. Having said that, you are probably unlikely to go over the limit unless you are a heavy surfer and not using wifi. Still, it is undoubtedly prudent to keep an eye on your data usage so you don’t get caught with a huge bill. And this is where the problem lies.

The iPhone keeps a track of the data sent over Edge. The function is in the settings panel under “usage”. I have had my iPhone now for about three weeks. The Edge usage stats on the iPhone are telling me that I have downloaded 26.3MB and I have uploaded 4.9MB. Obviously no where near the limit. However, if I check my bill online, where I can see how much data I have left it is telling me that I have used 58MB. That’s a pretty big discrepancy. As it is my first month you would expect the iPhone’s stats to mach my providers, but they are claiming that I used almost twice as much data as my phone is telling me that I used.

I could understand if they were a meg or two out but not that much. What’s more, because the online bill is itemized and lists individual data sessions, I have noticed some peculiar entries. On one such session, the online bill claims I downloaded 20MB. However I know what I was doing at the time and I was only browsing a mostly text based site. There is certainly no way I downloaded 20MB, unless my phone was doing something in the background, but I doubt it because that is the only single entry on the bill that large. Everything else is around the 1 MB mark. I don’t know just what is going on here but either way let me make this absolutely clear, you can not trust the usage counter on the iPhone. While this doesn’t matter to iPhone users in other countries where the iPhone is available, because of the limit it could affect you here. Regardless of what is causing the discrepancy, whether the network is measuring the data incorrectly or the iPhone is doing something strage, check your bills, don’t trust the phone, because it’s what O2 has recorded for data usage that they are going to bill you on.

Incidentally I did contact O2 customer support about this and they pretty much fobbed me off with a blanket statement claiming that the phone may not be accurate and reminding me that mail, maps and widgets all use data. Thanks for stating the obvious. They did not explain the mysterious 20MB of data. I’ve also had reports that similar problems have occurred using unlocked phones on other networks. If you are living in Ireland and have an iPhone or know someone who has an iPhone please check your bill and do not assume the phone is telling you how much data is being used. If you see anything suspicious on your bill, pursue it with customer service. Even if you are no where near your limit, you could be some day and if they are going to charge you for excess data by the MB then you need to be able to accurately measure the data usage.

One of the persistent rumors about the next generation iPhone, apart from it having 3G is that it will adopt a different selling model, more akin to the iPod, in that it will be available without contract and without being locked by revenue sharing deals to a single carrier. In other words you’ll just be able to go into a shop and buy one. Engadget is reporting this morning that sources have “confirmed”t hat Italian telecoms provider Telecom Italia plan to offer the 3g iPhone under such a model.

This offers Apple something of a conundrum if it does switch to an unlocked phone model. On the one hand, it will solve the unlocked iPhone grey market problem, but on the other hand most people with legit iPhones will be only at best half way through their long contracts which then wont apply to newer iPhone customers. Now, for most people this won’t be too big a deal, but you just know that a large, vocal proportion of a certain segment of the internet will cry blue murder over this. For Apple it would seem to make business sense though. Clearly there is a high demand for non carrier locked iPhones. Im sure they have weighed the potential sales against the revenue they are getting from the revenue sharing sales model. And yet rightly or wrongly there will be a backlash

People will argue that Apple is finally “doing the right thing” but will decry the existing users left tied with a locked phone, but in fairness it will be less Apple’s problem and more one for the service providers. The issue will likely come down to how the carriers will handle it. I am on O2 here in Ireland. I have a fully legit iPhone contract and my phone isn’t so much as jailbroken. If Apple launches the iPhone 3G in June as some predict, the iPhone will have only been available here for a little over three months, and will promptly become obsolete. I have always been an early adopter, so Im not that cut up, but if O2 decide to prevent people from buying upgrades because of their 18 month contract, even though the phone was not subsidized in the first place, there will be a lot of unhappy people out there, and I suspect the same goes for the UK, France and Germany. At least in the US it will have been out for almost a year at that stage, but then the AT&T contract is a two year contract too. If it is truly unlocked then there should be nothing to stop you just transferring your sim to a new phone, but some carriers have different sims for 3G and 2G devices so it may not work without changing sims, which they may be unwilling to provide because of contracts. After all, why would they want to keep paying revenue sharing on your phone if you’re no longer using it.

People have been pretty emotional about the iPhone since it was first announced and reaction has tended to be extreme. I have no doubt that whatever Apple does, the launch of the much rumored 3G version of the Apple handset will attract as much extreme opinion. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

From RTÉ News:

Mobile company O2 says it has no plans to reduce the price consumers pay to buy an Apple iPhone here.

The UK arm of the company has announced that it is reducing the price of the 8gb model of the phone by £100 until 1 June.

The reduction means that, with current exchange rates, the phone now costs €209 in Northern Ireland and €399 in the Republic

[Read RTÉ News: O2 Ireland not planning iPhone price cut]

This really shouldn’t come as a shock to people. Mobile networks in Ireland have been fleecing people for years, why people are expecting it to be ay different with the iPhone is beyond me, although it does bring the issue of said fleecing into the wider public consciousness. Actually, the iPhone pricing in Ireland may be the least of the problems with the way O2 is dealing with the apple handset in this country. The tariffs and paltry 1Gig data limit are far more annoying than the price of the phone.

From AppleInsider:

Apple and wireless partner O2 this week will slash the price of its iPhone handset in the UK to £169 from £269 as part of a limited promotion, according to a new report.

Before anyone here gets their hopes up, don’t expect this to happen in Ireland any time soon. Apart from the fact that most networks (and pretty much retailers/service providers/telecom companies in general) here are greedy bastards there’s no way they’re going to do this so soon after launch. I hope.
[Read AppleInsider | Apple, O2 to slash 8GB iPhone price in the UK - report]

MacRumors has posted a rumor from TGDaily, that the next iPhone will remain at the current prices and will launch at WWDC. However credibility goes out the window with this little ditty:

The 3G iPhone is expected to be housed in a slightly thinner enclosure, less “plasticky” design, with some accelerometer tweaks. The operating system and user interface will remain unchanged.

“Plasticky” ? Really? A device made primarily from metal and glass needs to be made less plasticky? Perhaps they are actually confused with some other device because the iPhone is the least “plasticky” device I have ever used.
Muppits.
[Read 3G iPhone Pricing to Remain at $399, $499? Launch At WWDC? - Mac Rumors]