Tag: iPhone (Page 14 of 19)

      No Word From The FCC’s Wireless Exclusivity Investigations

      June 18, 2009 /

      John Kerry on his cell.On Monday, senators implored the chairman of the FCC, Michael Copps, to take a closer look at exclusivity contracts between wireless carriers and phone manufacturers. The senators are concerned about the effect those contracts have on competition and innovation in the market place.

      “We ask that you examine this issue carefully and act expeditiously should you find that exclusivity agreements unfairly restrict consumer choice or adversely impact competition in the commercial wireless marketplace,” said the letter, which was signed by former presidential candidate John Kerry, among others. I’d say it’s highly improbable that our good senators are concerned about anything other than the AT&T/Apple relationship. Several news sources have cited the LG/Verizon relationship where the Voyager is concerned, but that hardly seems as volatile to the market.

      It’s fairly clear that exclusivity, at least in the case of the iPhone, limits consumer choice in a big way. Plenty of people don’t want to be on AT&T, but Apple has said several times that Verizon’s network won’t perform at standards required for millions of iPhones. As far as competition goes, it’s probably safe to say that the iPhone has discouraged innovation and encouraged emulation. The Palm Pre may be the sole example of a phone that took the touchscreen concept and improved on it, allowing multitasking, gesture controls, and adding a physical keyboard.

      The senators agreed to meet Wednesday to discuss their concerns and determine whether legislative action was necessary. As of yet, there’s no word from Washington.

      Apple, iPhone, Mobile, News

      iPhone OS 3.0 Has Tethering, It’s Just Hidden

      June 17, 2009 /

      iPhone tethering in action.Most of the bad news coming with the iPhone OS 3.0 release is from AT&T, the iPhone’s sole US carrier. Despite most every other iPhone carrier in the world enabling tethering and MMS today, AT&T did not, much to her users’ chagrin.

      The software is there, though, and it’s taken less than a day for someone to figure out a hack (for tethering that is – MMS has been around since the first jailbreak). The guys at MacMegasite have a quick and dirty tutorial to get the thing running. In short, all it requires is that you download a carrier settings file and perform a defaults write command in a Mac terminal. Restore your phone while holding option down and you can add the carrier settings update without messing with the rest of your phone. Head to “Network” under your general settings and you should see tethering, with options for USB and Bluetooth functionality.

      Early reports suggest things are a little slow, and I have yet to read of a successful PC mod for this. Still, good work from everyone involved with this (seems like MacMegasite, Gizmodo, and AppleNova for some quick credits). Have you tried this yet? Did it work for you?

      Full tutorial here.

      Apple, iPhone, Mobile

      iPhone OS 3.0 Available For Download

      June 17, 2009 /

      iPhone with OS 3.0.As good as their word, Apple released OS 3.0 for the iPhone today. You’ll need to have iTunes 8.2 installed for the update, which is free for iPhone owners, $10 for the iPod Touch.

      In case you’ve forgotten, the OS update brings long-awaited features to the iPhone, like copy and paste, push notification, and universal search, among other things. Finally applications will be able to alert you when you receive new messages, and copy and paste, well I think the benefits there are obvious.

      Don’t forget to check back on Friday for an unboxing/review of the iPhone 3GS.

      Apple, iPhone

      Getting Your Hands On A 3GS

      June 12, 2009 /

      We’re just a week from launch day of the newest version of the iPhone, the iPhone 3GS, which brings a whole host of new features and some notable new graphical capabilities. If you want to have a 3GS in your pretty paws on launch day you’re going to need a chair and a decent water supply or a prepaid order.

      iPhone launch day crowds.

      Apple and AT&T have publicly announced plans for early store opening, though few of the representatives (in the Cleveland area at least) seem to know what’s going on.

      I visited two Apple stores in the past week to talk about launch plans. For the most part, the employees didn’t know what was going on, as in, “I don’t know when we’ll open,” or, “I don’t know what the inventory will be like.” Most of them cited a lack of training on the new phone, which seems unrelated to their store scheduling, but who am I to judge. After talking through four different people at the last store (and hearing about one of their new exercise plans – I didn’t ask, she just felt the need to share) I found out they would indeed open at 8am, allowing lines to form at 5am. No one, from the store manager down, seems to know about inventory. It’s not just that they don’t want to say, but rather they get that glazed look whereby you know there is no information they can access on the subject at hand.

      A trip to my local AT&T store was worlds more helpful, and they offer the surest route to locking up the phone at launch. I was able to preorder a phone on the spot, which means the phone will ship to the store reserved in my name, available for pickup seven days from the time of arrival. While no one was willing to guarantee I would have the phone (and smartly so), they did say the word from Apple was not to expect inventory problems. For all of their helpful info concerning launch, though, the AT&T folks also could not dig up details on store hours for the day, or whether they would be honoring the 7am preorder line, 8am point-of-purchase line.

      If you’re one for lines, Apple stores and AT&T stores will both have that option. If you’re more interested in having the phone in hand, get to an AT&T store and preorder. It’s only so long before you’ll be waitlisted behind droves of preorders from, say, June 8th.

      Uncategorized

      3GS GPU Is All Out of Gum

      June 12, 2009 /

      Doom on the iPhone.Hailed (by Apple) as the fastest iPhone ever made, a lot of attention has been paid to the new processor and RAM specs in the iPhone 3GS. Those new specs will certainly translate to a faster phone, but most likely marginally so, noticeable only within apps that do a lot of algorithm munching. What’s likely to be truly impressive on the 3GS is the new graphical capabilities that come from the Power-VR SGX GPU inside the phone.

      Hubert at Ubergizmo, who used to program for Nvidia, gave a quick breakdown of the improvements we could see in iPhone gaming, and they’re pretty damn impressive. As the article notes, the new GPU offers improvements in two traditional aspects of development. First, it allows more triangle processing per second, and second, it gives a serious boost to the number of pixels that can be modified per second.

      More than the hardware, though, is the options the new GPU will offer developers. The new chip gives coders access to some of the same principles used when developing games for the Xbox 360 or the PS3. Haven’t seen many shadows on the iPhone? They’re coming. So is bump mapping, normal mapping, light mapping, and multi-textures, making it possible to render complex 3D environments with an unprecedented sense of realism.

      While people complained that this iPhone release was an evolution rather than a revolution, the changes to the GPU will be revolutionary for the hand-held device, making gaming the real breakout feature of the 3GS. I was unimpressed by the game demos at WWDC. Hopefully that wil change when developers have had their new kit for a few months.

      Source: Ubergizmo

      Apple, Gaming, iPhone

      « Older posts Newer posts »

      © 2026 Gadget Teaser

      Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑