A 15-year old Belgian by the name of Salvatore is the latest victim in a series of mysterious iPhone explosions that have captured the attention of France’s and the European Commissions’ consumer affair watchdogs. Details are scarce for the moment, but according to local news reports the teenager was holding his iPhone in his hand, about to make a call, when the device suddenly ‘imploded’. The incident didn’t cause any serious injuries but reportedly gave Salvatore a headache for a couple of days. He has been promised a free replacement unit by Apple but hasn’t yet received a new phone.
There have earlier been numerous reports of exploding iPhone devices in the United States, United Kingdom and France, with most recently about ten cases having emerged in France where the official competition, consumer affairs and fraud watchdog DGCCRF has now launched an investigation to find out whether the popular Apple smartphone could pose a threat to consumers. Apple, which has sold 26 million iPhones and 200 million iPods to date, said it had been informed of the French cases, but would not comment until it had closely examined the damaged phones.
Update: Apple has now said iPhones turned in by customers in France and elsewhere in Europe with shattered screens showed external pressure that would have caused the cracking. More on Bloomberg and Techmeme. → Read More
A 15-year old Belgian by the name of Salvatore is the latest victim in a series of mysterious iPhone explosions that have captured the attention of France’s and the European Commissions’ consumer affair watchdogs. Details are scarce for the moment, but according to local news reports the teenager was holding his iPhone in his hand, about to make a call, when the device suddenly ‘imploded’. The incident didn’t cause any serious injuries but reportedly gave Salvatore a headache for a couple of days. He has been promised a free replacement unit by Apple but hasn’t yet received a new phone.
There have earlier been numerous reports of exploding iPhone devices in the United States, United Kingdom and France, with most recently about ten cases having emerged in France where the official competition, consumer affairs and fraud watchdog DGCCRF has now launched an investigation to find out whether the popular Apple smartphone could pose a threat to consumers. Apple, which has sold 26 million iPhones and 200 million iPods to date, said it had been informed of the French cases, but would not comment until it had closely examined the damaged phones. → Read More
If you think the posts about me quitting the iPhone are just a stunt, think again. I’ve been using the TMobile myTouch for a couple of weeks now and haven’t looked back at the iPhone at all (background apps + full Google Voice Integration is awesome). But resident Apple fanboi and general iPhone enthusiast MG Siegler refuses to agree that Android > iPhone. We spend hours debating it internally on Yammer, although mostly we devolve into personal attacks. Comments like the one to the left are about as deep as MG is able to dive.
A thread from earlier today is below. Read from the bottom up – the post I refer to, which basically describes MG perfectly, is here: → Read More
Facebook has submitted v. 3.0 of their iPhone application to Apple, Joe Hewitt says via Twitter: “Just uploaded Facebook for iPhone 3.0 to the App Store for review. ”
Hewitt also says he’ll post screen shots and more detais on this Facebook page for the iPhone app next week, and that he’s looking forward to getting started on v. 3.1 tomorrow.
We’ve been tracking 3.0 since details first became available in July. A list of some of the much needed improvements is here. And as a bonus, Hewitt said he’d be able to include video uploads to Facebook from iPhone 3Gs phones as well. And from our most recent post (yes, Hewitt has been teasing this out for weeks): → Read More
I’ve had a half dozen or so longer posts about Apple brewing in my head the past couple of weeks. There is no shortage of controversy surrounding the company right now thanks largely to the hugely popular and hugely unpopular aspects of the iPhone. But Jason Calacanis’ post yesterday entitled “The Case Against Apple-in Five Parts” serves as a great springboard for bringing up a lot of it.
The Backstory
While my story with computers doesn’t go back quite as far as Calacanis’, our stories are pretty similar. He said that 6 years ago he made the switch to Apple products after a 20-year affair with Microsoft. I made the same switch 5 years ago after a roughly 15-year affair with Microsoft.
Regular readers may have heard this already, so forgive me if I’m repeating myself, but in the 1990s I loved Microsoft products and hated Apple stuff. I grew up on DOS, installed Windows For Workgroups because I thought it was cooler than regular Windows 3.1, bought Windows Bob, made my dad take me to the midnight launch of Windows 95, bought Windows 98 the day it came out, actually bought and used Windows ME, and bought Windows XP the day it came out. I could fill that timeline in with many other pro-Microsoft details, but let’s just say I was hooked. → Read More
At the end of July I declared my intention to quit the iPhone and AT&T, port my mobile phone number to Google Voice and use any mobile device that I pleased (or lots of them at once) in the future. Like others, I will no longer blindly follow all things Apple. Today I’m pleased to report a status update on those efforts: complete. I am no longer a member of the Cult of iPhone.
Porting my phone number to Google Voice was a three day process, which I was pre-warned about. The mobile carriers in the U.S. have made the porting process between them fairly easy, and it occurs over a couple of hours. But they are in no hurry to help customers move their phone numbers to Google Voice, and so it took a few extra days. Also, I’m one of the first people to port their phone number to Google Voice, and there are always a few hiccups when you’re a guinea pig.
A week ago I was an unhappy AT&T iPhone customer. I couldn’t get cell phone reception here at my house and so I was always missing important calls.
Today I’m a happy Google Voice customer. My old mobile number, which all of my contacts already have, now rings simultaneously on my home Vonage phone and the TMobile myTouch 3G Android phone that I’ve started using (and, by the way, TMobile works just fine here at home, too). If I want to start using a new phone, I can make a switch in the settings at Google Voice and calls will ring through to that instead. no carrier will ever have a stranglehold on me again. → Read More
Will Apple release an 8GB iPhone 3GS? If we’re to believe this photo, sent to BGR from an operative deep inside Canada’s Rogers, then yes. Yes it will. → Read More
For several months now, Ustream has had an iPhone app that allows you to view video from the service. But “view” is the keyword there. You could only watch it, you could not record and send your own video back from the iPhone. But starting today, you finally can.
The new Ustream Recorder is a free application available in Apple’s App Store that allows you to send video from your iPhone to the web. Unfortunately, despite long-standing talk that it might be able to send live video from your iPhone to the web, that is not the case. Instead, Ustream appears to be attempting to use some spin by calling it a “live-to-recorded video recorder” — um, okay, isn’t all video at some point technically recorded live? Yes, it is.
Mentioning “live” was not necessary here because this app does not stream video live. Not that it’s Ustream’s fault, it’s Apple that doesn’t currently allow apps that do that in the App Store. So instead, this app records video and then uploads it to the web. The problem is that there are already a number of other apps out there that do this, like Kyte and 12cast. But Ustream wants to challenge them on the iPhone by offering more options. → Read More
“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone,” Elevation Partners (which owns a huge portion of Palm) co-founder Roger McNamee told Bloomberg in March. “Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.”
Yes, that would be today.
So how did McNamee’s claim turn out? Well, let’s put it this way: If there was a foot-in-the-mouth award given every year, no one else would need to apply this year. Hell, it might take the prize for the whole decade. It’s a quote of Ballmer-level proportions. → Read More
“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone,” Elevation Partners (which owns a huge portion of Palm) co-founder Roger McNamee told Bloomberg in March. “Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.”
A week from tomorrow is the big day for McNamee’s prediction. How’s it looking? Not so hot. Okay, awful.
Yes, it’s still early in the Palm Pre’s life. And yes, there is plenty of room in the rapidly expanding mobile universe for more than one device. But it was McNamee who specifically threw down this gauntlet against the iPhone. And that makes charts like the one below, that much more amusing. → Read More
When Apple announced that it would start selling the iPhone 3G for $99 at this year’s WWDC conference, the room buzzed about the possibility. Finally, there would really be an iPhone for under $100. And so not surprisingly, everyone wants to know how it’s selling. But don’t bother asking Apple about it, because you’ll get nothing from them, as we learned on the company’s earnings conference call today.
Multiple questions were asked of Apple COO Tim Cook about how the $99 iPhone, specifically, was selling. His response? The vague note that the entire iPhone line has seen a “big acceleration in total unit sales.” Cook said Apple will not offer a breakdown of how the different versions are selling because it’s competitive data.
But wait, they’ve broken them up in the past. Just three days after the iPhone 3GS launch, Apple announced that iPhone 3GS-specific sales had hit a million. Obviously, there’s a reason to do that; it’s an impressive number. But along those lines, you can’t help but wonder if Apple is being coy simply because the $99 sales aren’t very good? Certainly, it seems like a great deal, but in reality, the monthly bills of the iPhone 3G and 3GS are the same, so it’s basically the difference between $100 to $200 in upfront costs. → Read More
When Om Malik of GigaOM said he was breaking up with his iPhone 5 months ago because of the failures of AT&T, I must admit, I thought he was overreacting. I was wrong.
Since I switched to AT&T from Verizon just over 2 years ago to get the iPhone (which, of course, AT&T has exclusively in the U.S.), there have been no shortage of shortcomings by AT&T. But as of late, I’ve been noticing things getting much, much worse. And I’m hardly the only one. And so it’s time to call out AT&T on those failures. And plead with Apple not to renew its exclusive contract with AT&T when it expires next year.
In my mind, the most recent AT&T failure is completely inexcusable. Its visual voicemail system — which is the only way to be notified of voicemails on the iPhone — has been down for many users for days, if not weeks. And AT&T apparently didn’t bother to tell anyone. What does this mean? Thousands, or hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of missed connections, that could be vital for personal lives, business and a host of other things. I’m simply dumbfounded by the failure. → Read More
Google’s updates surrounding location are now coming fast and furious. Just a few days ago it added location to Google Maps for the Chrome and Firefox browsers. Today, it brings location to the mobile web on the iPhone.
If you have the new iPhone 3.0 software and go to Google’s homepage in Safari, you’ll notice a new message below the search box that reads, “New! Try My Location to find restaurants, shops and bars near you!” If you click on the My Location link, the iPhone will pop open a dialogue asking if it’s okay for Safari to use the device’s location services to locate you. If you opt-in, you’ll see a new blue dot below the search box with your location next to it. Do a search, and it will return local results. → Read More
12seconds has had an iPhone app for a while now. Unfortunately, it was fairly crippled because iPhones couldn’t shoot video, so you had to take still pictures and make 12 second collages. Now, with the iPhone 3GS you can shoot video. And so 12seconds is making its app a whole lot better.
Unveiled today at our Real-Time Stream CrunchUp event, the “12seconds Video Messenger for Twitter”, is an app that’s all about sending short video messages to your friends. And while 12seconds already has a social graph of its own from its website, it understands that Twitter’s social graph is much larger — and so it’s laying this new app on top of that. → Read More
eBuddy, the Dutch startup behind the eponymous mobile communication tool I dubbed the swiss army knife for instant messaging when it debuted an application for the Android platform last May, is announcing one hell of an iPhone application today. For context: eBuddy is a free mobile app that enables users to communicate with others using AIM, Facebook Chat, ICQ, Gtalk, Windows Live Messenger etc. in one, aggregated interface.
The application for the iPhone and iPod Touch the company is announcing today has quietly gone live in the App Store last week, but hasn’t been promoted in any way since until today. It brings a very strong competitor to the likes of Nimbuzz and fring, both of which have had native iPhone applications for a while now. Where eBuddy differentiates is in its support for Apple’s Push Notification Service, which allows a third-party server to ping the service in order to push out notifications to your device over a persistent IP connection. → Read More
eBuddy, the Dutch startup behind the eponymous mobile communication tool I dubbed the swiss army knife for instant messaging when it debuted an application for the Android platform last May, is announcing one hell of an iPhone application today. For context: eBuddy is a free mobile app that enables users to communicate with others using AIM, Facebook Chat, ICQ, Gtalk, Windows Live Messenger etc. in one, aggregated interface.
The application for the iPhone and iPod Touch the company is announcing today has quietly gone live in the App Store last week (iTunes link), but hasn’t been promoted in any way since until today. It brings a very strong competitor to the likes of Nimbuzz and fring, both of which have had native iPhone applications for a while now. Where eBuddy differentiates is in its support for Apple’s Push Notification Service, which allows a third-party server to ping the service in order to push out notifications to your device over a persistent IP connection. → Read More
Ryan wanted to add a flash to his iPhone so he cut open a Mophie JuicePack and connected a bright white LED and tiny switch. Boom: instant flash. → Read More
We’ve made no secret of our admiration of the iPhone 3GS’s video capabilities — Apple has managed to integrate a video camera that’s both easy to use and surprisingly high quality into an already-stellar device. But for all its merits, the iPhone 3GS suffers from being, well, a phone. No matter how good the phone’s video quality is, it’s still prone to shakiness as its director moves around. And while the microphone may be high quality, its position at the bottom of the phone definitely isn’t ideal recording whatever you’re pointing the camera lens at.
Fortunately, an answer is on the way for all you mobile videographers. A new startup called OWLE (Optical Widgets For Life Enhancement), is currently working on a mount that should resolve most of these issues. The mount, which you can see in the images and videos below, gives you a much more stable way to hold the phone, making it much less prone to bumps and shakes. The mount also improves your recording quality by including a 37mm camcorder lense and a front facing microphone, which plugs into the phone’s headphone/mic jack. There’s also planned support for external lighting and power. All in a package that could slip easily into a backpack or laptop case. In short, this is exactly what you need if you frequently use the iPhone for video. → Read More
There’s a bit of a kerfluffle arising from the discolored iPhone 3GSes out there. Some users insist that the new phone is to fast for its britches and is cooking the case, but one Apple technician seems to think it could be the result of faulty cases.
Really, sir. I find your ideas fascinating and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. → Read More
Only a couple of days after George Hotz became the first hacker to release a jailbreak app for the iPhone 3GS on Windows, there’s a Mac-compatible version out too. This time, Hotz got some help from two fellow coders to be able to please the Mac folks, but he also made some improvements to the Windows version.
Happy jailbreaking, and in case you didn’t know yet: happy unlocking too. → Read More
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