Category: Apple

iPhone Watch

~ rbonini

Lets see what iPhone news I can find this morning.

Although Jobs announced that no SDK would be release for the iPhone, thee are a number of web applications that have been announced.

Don Farber points out that Etelos has made sure that its CRM App runs on the iPhone.

Don says:

the ideal use for the iPhone and Etelos is “listening to iTunes while sending out a group message to your prospects while riding a ferry across Puget Sound.”

Ajaxian points us to a list of iPhone Apps that is already exhaustive.

Mary  Jo Foley has the scoop that Exchange and the iPhone will play nicely. This is an obvious move for Microsoft as it wants to ensure the widest  possible distribution of Exchange ( Even if Mitch Kapor doesn’t like it and is building a replacement 🙂 , but I digress)

Continuing the speculation over iPhone licensing, Don MacAskill complains loudly that there are no corporate licensing terms for the iPhone.

He says:

I’m so bummed. We’ve got our sleeping bags ready to go so we can get iPhones for the SmugMuggers. We even have SmugMuggers who flew in from out of town so they could join the party on University Avenue (click that link, it’s worth it). Like most companies, we have a corporate plan with AT&T so we can share minutes, save money, etc etc.

They won’t sell us iPhones. Not one phone, not twenty phones. For any price. At all. Neither will Apple.

 

Which is really strange. Apple and AT&T should be trying to get as many people as possible to get an iPhone. On the other hand, as one of Don’s commenters points out,  AT&T could be waiting for the semi-religious demand to die down before coming out with a business offering. It make sense to get the phone out to the masses.

Talking of an iPhone SDK, Simon Brocklehurst says :

As I’ve said before,  iPhone will be an incredible device to develop applications for; and, Apple simply won’t be able to develop all the great new applications themsleves.  Neither will Apple have the bandwidth to build one-to-one relationships with many software development companies in ways that make the economics work.   So, Apple will need to come up with ways of helping any developer to build great native applications for iPhone.

Scoble comments in Don’s post and asks if anyone is brings a generator to charge everyone’s devices  while they wait in line 🙂

This is the smallest subset of iPhone news available. Just a few things I found interesting. More as the news comes in.

iPhone Addiction Help

~ rbonini

Steve Rubel passes on this hilarious collection of advice for people with iPhone-on-the-brain .

Get a black light poster of Mr. Jobs. Put it up in your bedroom. Close your eyes and chant softly: “Oh Steve, all-powerful maker of the most beautiful iPhone, please send me my wonderful gadget. Please send it, Steve. Please send it now.”

If the poster actually responds, you’re in deep trouble. If your room remains silent, you know you have the mental health to wait at least one more day.

Since I’m in the UK, I’ve given up all hope of even seeing the iPhone until late next year.

Life as a Beta

~ rbonini

Steve Rubel  is right on ( for the philosophically inclined):

From adolescence onwards, you’re in a perpetual beta mode. As an adult you’re constantly learning new skills and capabilities, even as you age. The best and brightest among us are constantly growing. As a human being, you really don’t “ship” (as the technology parlance goes) until you’re dead.

For the geeks among us :

This week Apple, a company that certainly strives for perfection, launched a new beta version of its Safari Web browser. It’s buggy on both the Mac and Windows and lots of people are grumpy. It even broke several of my Dashboard widgets.

Yet, Apple, as a technology company, seems to be allowed to make such mistakes. They are permitted to learn and grow out in the open by slapping the “beta” label on products and services. Everyone else, however, is expected to be perfect. That’s like asking Curt Schilling to pitch a perfect game every outing. It’s ludicrous.

 

And so, in a eureka moment, I figured out why  Google has  two thirds (maybe more) of its software with a Beta tag, even though the software works perfectly well.

Seriously, people ( or should we say beta testers??) are more forgiving with Beta software. I mean, that’s why we’re testing the software in the first place.

This’ll keep me warm  in the long hours ahead as I prepare my Windows Home Server for an upgrade to Release Candidate 1.

Safari for Windows Beta 3

~ rbonini

I must say I’m impressed with this addition to the browsers I have installed.  Along with Firefox and IE7, Safari rounds everything off in minimalist style. It invokes the Apple user in be to start clamoring for a Mac (or a Microsoft version of Boot Camp).

Its a Beta and an Apple App running on Windows, so crashes are de rigueur for this kind of thing ( forgive my french) .  And, yes, its crashed more than a few times since I switched to it full time last night (read: 24 hours ago).

As luck would have it, Safari crashed as I was reading this TUAW post. Specifically, it crashed as I read the line:

It has tons of new great features as well as the cursed instability issues…

The Unofficial Apple Weblog post has a nice rundown of the features, some of which I’ve never heard of.

In using any Apple app, you can expect the design ethic of His Steveness to permeate every aspect of the UI. Any Windows app feels like a chain saw in comparison ( that’s right, that goes for those toolbars).

I had one problem with regard to actually surfing. The booking process at easyjet.com broke down in Safari round about Step 4. The Safari team might want to look at their asp page support.

In the final analysis, Safari for Windows lives up to all the hype and is all that we’ve come to expect from Apple

Datacentre v. Earthquake

~ rbonini

(via Johnathan Schwartz’s Blog)

Sun Engineers decided to put Project Blackbox on a shaketable ( that’s shaketable as in “simulate an earthquake”).

See for yourself what happened (notice how Greg P’s laptop is running Windows???):

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HNGM-rje7U]

According to Schwartz, there’s another project in the works.

Sneak peek here. Select Chapter 3. According to Schwartz, its behind the big, black drape. I’m still waiting for the video to load – WiFi problems.

After this test I can see geologists the world over adding this to their wishlists.