Recently in iPhone Category

Reports have been swirling around the Web in the past few days about a problem with poor chip design that makes the iPhone 3G sluggish when connected to the very 3G data network for which it's being so highly touted.

Rather than a recall (you try replacing a chip in a portable device; it pretty much can't be done; and replacing the many thousand already sold is ... not an option), Apple thinks it can fix the problem with a software update. The company reportedly will try to do so by the end of the month.

Meanwhile ... people with iPhone lust are still waiting in lines at Apple Store locations around the country. Now Best Buy has been christened as an official iPhone sales outlet, bringing the technological-lust-object-of-the-fortnight-and-then-some to bergs, hamlets and other non-Apple Store gifted areas.

What's wrong with:

a) Apple
b) you people?

The iPhone 3G made its much-heralded debut weeks ago, and today I walk by the Apple Store in Santa Monica and y'all are still waiting in line for a shot at securing your coveted iPhone. Are you all high?

And Apple: You stoke demand for a product with such messianic ferver and then can't deliver said wonder-product?

If I had any stomach for paying $70+ per month for iPhone voice and data service, I just might understand. But I don't, and I don't.

Is a Blackberry that awful?

Ryan Block at Engadget breaks it down:

There are always things that could be improved, features to be added, fixes that should be applied -- but from first to second gen, from year one to year two, Apple has proven itself a relentless upstart in the mobile space, and is showing no signs of slowing down. All those new features give the iPhone even more appeal than ever, but the price is what really seals the deal.

Read the entire review. It's long but all good.

Thanks, Garrett Rodgers, the Googling Google blogger, who points to the Official Google Mobile Blog's announcement that Google has released a new version of Google Talk that works on the iPhone and iPod Touch:

We've just released in the US a new version of Google Talk designed specifically for the iPhone and iPod Touch browsers. In addition to sending your friends Gmail messages from your iPhone, you can now chat with them while you're on the move, too! In your iPhone browser, just go to www.google.com/talk, sign in and start chatting. That's it. Google Talk runs entirely in the browser so there's no need to download or install anything.

File this under "holy crap."

Matthew Miller of ZDNet elaborates:

AT&T is subsidizing the iPhone this time, much like the other mobile phone purchases made in the United States and may be paying Apple as much as US$325 for each iPhone 3G that is purchased.

...

Don't worry about AT&T though, since they will make up this $325 and a bit more with the increased data and text message rates. Plus, with the new lower initial out-of-the pocket price for new subscribers we may see a lot more iPhones flying off the shelves next month than when the first generation iPhone started off at $599 last year.

For the record, I wasn't worried.

In other iPhone news: AT&T wants 3G users to pay more for data and text messages.

An observation from one poor SOB: That's me, in case you hadn't figured it out. I've found a lot more people out there with cell-phone data plans than I expected. Many people are happy to pay $70 a month to talk/text/browse/e-mail from their mobile handset, be it a Blackberry, iPhone or other such keyboard-equipped device.

Not being a user of either the iPhone, Blackberry or ... anything beyond my now-ancient Motorola phone, if e-mail is really important, a Blackberry or Palm Treo with a full QWERTY button keyboard seems to be a better choice than the iPhone's touchscreen. I say seems because I really don't know, but I'd like for anybody out there who has experience with such devices to tell me.

Send me an e-mail at steven.rosenberg@dailynews.com.

I'm a huge fan of Google Docs, and a huge critic of the iPhone's lack of ability to create or edit documents by its expensive lonesome.

So it's great news that Google Docs works on the iPhone. Read this blog post, click here for a Google search on this very topic, or watch the extremely geeky video:

Google Docs might not change your life, but it certainly has the potential to do so, and I continue to think that it's the application of the year.

• You can watch YouTube videos on the iPhone, but you don't have Flash in the Web browser, but it's coming
• There's no Java in iPhone-ville, but Sun sure wants to put it there
• You can't create or edit documents (say what?) on the iPhone. You can't even cut and paste (what the f---?). Every other smartphone has the excellent DocumentsToGo, which reads, writes and even creates docments and spreadsheets in a plethora of MS Office formats. Even the Blackberry is getting DocumentsToGo.
• According to the iPhone Blog, things that still stink in the iPhone 3G include: crappy camera, no video recording, not enough storage.

So if you want to really use your iPhone as a substitute for a laptop computer, even in small doses, you'll have a hell of a time working with actual files. But there is a way, which I will reveal in the next Click post, a mere five hours from now.

Even though this Wired article is six months old, it sheds a lot of insight on the initial development of the iPhone, including all the problems leading up to its release, plus a lot of detail on how the financial arrangement works between Apple and AT&T:

The demo was not going well.

Again.

It was a late morning in the fall of 2006. Almost a year earlier, Steve Jobs had tasked about 200 of Apple's top engineers with creating the iPhone. Yet here, in Apple's boardroom, it was clear that the prototype was still a disaster. It wasn't just buggy, it flat-out didn't work. The phone dropped calls constantly, the battery stopped charging before it was full, data and applications routinely became corrupted and unusable. The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, "We don't have a product yet."

...

And what would AT&T think? After a year and a half of secret meetings, Jobs had finally negotiated terms with the wireless division of the telecom giant (Cingular at the time) to be the iPhone's carrier. In return for five years of exclusivity, roughly 10 percent of iPhone sales in AT&T stores, and a thin slice of Apple's iTunes revenue, AT&T had granted Jobs unprecedented power. He had cajoled AT&T into spending millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours to create a new feature, so-called visual voicemail, and to reinvent the time-consuming in-store sign-up process. He'd also wrangled a unique revenue-sharing arrangement, garnering roughly $10 a month from every iPhone customer's AT&T bill. On top of all that, Apple retained complete control over the design, manufacturing, and marketing of the iPhone. Jobs had done the unthinkable: squeezed a good deal out of one of the largest players in the entrenched wireless industry. Now, the least he could do was meet his deadlines.

There's a lot more than this in the four-screen article.

That's my analysis of the iPhone situation.

A dramatic price drop for what is admittedly the coolest gadget out there is a significant breakthrough.

But paying AT&T $60 per month or more, even with the promise of unlimited 3G Web access, is just too much — for the likes of me, anyway.

For those willing to pony up the $720/year (plus whatever fees and taxes can be sneaked in), 3G represents a significant performance boost for iPhone users.

And it's still the coolest device out there.

Drop the monthly fee to $30, and I'll be a whole lot more interested.

Lower the price of the iPod Touch (like an iPhone without the phone) to $199, or even better, $99, and me and my money will soon be parted.

My predictions:

• The iPhone 3G will kill off what little is left of the Palm platform, and every other handset maker is going to be in a whole new world of hurt.


• Expect cell carriers that are not AT&T to be clamoring for the opportunity to offer the iPhone. Hopefully a price war of sorts will ensue.


• Look for Google to either put a full-court press on its Android platform or begin offering a Google-branded handset.

Read Engadget for all the Steve Jobs WWDC keynote minutia, but take this away:

The new, better-than-ever iPhone retails for $199.

And is it just me, or does Steve Jobs look a little on the thin side?

Update: More on the iPhone 3G from Engadget.
More on the keynote from Ars Technica's Jacqui Cheng

(Photos from Engadget).