March 2008 Archives
Apple is expected to launch a high-speed wireless version of the iPhone in the second quarter and produce as many as 8 million of the devices in the third quarter, according to Bank of America.
Click here for the full story at internetnews.com.
"I'm a PC" and "I'm a Mac" commercials aside, the popular view of Apple and Microsoft as archenemies overlooks one of the software giant's significant profit centers -- Microsoft Office for the Mac. Since Apple's release of an iPhone software development kit (SDK) on March 6, Redmond's Mac developers have had the iPhone and iPod Touch on their workbenches and possible applications on their minds.
The Inquirer reports that both Microsoft's Specialized Devices and Applications Group, home of the Mac Business Group, and the voice recognition unit TellMe that Microsoft acquired a year ago are exploring the SDK.
Tom Gibbons, corporate vice president of the Specialized squad, told Fortune, "To the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in [the iPhone] environment, we're actually in the process of trying to understand that now."
Click here for the Fortune story on CNNMoney.com.
The Financial Times reports Apple is in talks with the major music labels to develop a music subscription model for iTunes. Apparently, two pricing schemes are being bandied about.
The Times writes: one model would "give customers free access to the entire iTunes music library in exchange for paying a premium for its iPod and iPhone devices." This would give folks unlimited music access for the lifetime of their device. The other pricing model has people paying monthly (say, $7 to $8) for an unlimited iTunes subscription.
Expanding its pricing model to include all-you-can-eat music plans could help Apple expand its dominance over the mobile audio space, both in terms of downloads and, especially, iPod and iPhohne device sales After all, wasn't the original intention of iTunes to drive iPod sales?
While there will always be people who need to own their music, and this is still the majority, I have a feeling plenty of people would be willing to give an iTunes subscription a shot.
Yes, this model - in terms of a flat monthly fee - hasn't been all that successful with services like Napster, but, let's face it, these other services aren't iTunes and the players they're compatible with aren't iPods or iPhones. Those simple facts could make all the difference for Apple, which - by the way - isn't the only mobile-device giant looking into bundling unlimited music with its devices.
Starting sometime during the second half of this year, Nokia says it would offer free music from Universal, the world's largest music group, on its music phones through a offering called "Comes With Music." The idea behind the agreement is to simulate demand for 'official' music downloads, take a significant swipe at peer-to-peer file sharing networks, and, of course, challenge Apple's digital download hegemony—both on the hardware (iPod) front and software (iTunes) side of the business.
With “Comes With Music” users will be able to download as much music as they like during the free 12 month period, much shorter than Apple's purported device-lifetime of music. When it’s over, they’ll even get to keep all the tracks they’ve downloaded—even though they've paid nothing outside the cost of the mobile handset itself and the usual data charges.
Perhaps Nokia's "Comes With Music" was the kick in the pants Apple needed to start speaking seriously with the major music companies about going the premium unlimited and subscription service route with iTunes?
Personally, I prefer the eMusic method. With eMusic you pay a fixed monthly fee to get a certain number of downloads. The more you pay the more music you get and the better the deal when it’s parsed down to the per-track level.
Will or won't the iPhone get Adobe Flash support? It all depends on who and when you ask.
A couple of weeks ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs indicated the iPhone and iPod touch wouldn't be supporting the most widely used way for delivering animations, videos (YouTube, anybody) and interactive applications on the Web anytime soon.
Job said, “The full version of the Flash player "performs too slow to be useful," and Flash Lite, Adobe's version for mobile phones, "is not capable of being used with the Web." He added, "There's this missing product in the middle," but "it just doesn't exist."
Speaking of the great flash standoff between his company and Apple during an investor call yesterday, however, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said his company is already in the process of developing a version of the Flash media player for the iPhone, without – it appears - the direct input of Apple, the The Wall Street Journal reported today.
Narayen said Adobe's downloaded the software development kit (SDK) for creating third-party applications for the iPhone, made available by Apple earlier this month, and is using it to build a iPhone and iPod touch-friendly Flash client.
"We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone," Narayen said, according to The Journal. "We have evaluated (the software developer tools) and we think we can develop an iPhone Flash player ourselves."
Adobe, like all those developing official iPhone programs, plans to make the player available through iTunes and the iPhone App Store. Since Apple doesn't plan to launch its iPhone and iPod touch software distribution scheme until June, it'll be at least that long before the new Flash player is available, however.
Adobe’s not hurting when it comes to finding smartphone companies who would like to see their customers take able to take Flash on the road with them.
Earlier this week, for example, Adobe announced a deal with Microsoft to make Flash Lite a standard part of the Windows Mobile package delivered to phone manufacturers. This follows a recently announced deal with Nokia to bring Flash to the cell phone giant’s smartphones as well.
According to Adobe, Flash Lite's been downloaded over 500 million times and is available to mobile handsets at all levels—from your basic cell phone to advanced feature phones and smartphones—running on several different mobile platforms. During its fiscal first quarter alone, Adobe saw over 100 million cell phones ship with Flash.
For all its faults—and, yes, it does have a few—the iPhone delivers the best mobile Web experience on the market. So it should come as no surprise that, according to recent research by M:Metrics, iPhoners access the Web through the device's easy-to-use Safari application far more than users of other smartphones do through their browsers.
So while 58 percent of smartphone users connect to the Internet for news and information, a far larger percentage, 85 percent, of iPhone users do the same, M:Metrics reports. Only 13 percent of standard cell phone users access the Web from their mobile handsets.
It's not just the superiority of Safari that's made the iPhone such a much-used conduit to the Web. The mini applications known as Widgets that Apple bundles with the iPhone and AT&T's unlimted plan for data access are important too.
"Our data shows that once the fear of surprise data charges is eliminated, mobile content consumption increases dramatically, regardless of device," said M:Metrics senior analyst Mark Donovan, while the "iPhone's widgets are an effective means to drive mobile content consumption"
"Two featured widgets, YouTube and Google Maps, are extremely popular among iPhone users: 30.4 percent accessed YouTube and 36 percent used Google Maps." By comparison, a mere one percent of all mobile subscribers overall accessed YouTube and only 2.6 percent used Google Maps.
Here are some additional things M:Metrics found out in its latest study:
"The iPhone has certainly delivered on its hype," observed Donovan. "Beyond a doubt, this device is compelling consumers to interact with the mobile Web, delivering off-the-charts usage from everything to text messaging to mobile video."
The iPhone's design is simple, sleek and to the point. It's a candy bar and not a clamshell style smartphone, however. And if the popularity of cell phones like the RAZR's proved in recent years, sometimes people require their ultra-modern mobile handset to be flip phone. Hence, Apple's most-recent iPhone-related filing - called "Dual Sided Trackpad" - with the U.S. Patent office.
Apple's new patent application clearly shows Apple is, at least intellectually, playing with the iPhone's form factor to, no doubt, look into ways to broaden the appeal of the already popular smartphone. Of course, Apple being Apple, the application doesn't describe your average flip-style phone. It goes a lot further.
The iPhone pictured in the filing's diagrams sports a shape and size much closer in style and maybe even size to Apple's latest iPod nano models than today's iPhone. Unlike the current iPhone, it is divided into two part parts, though.
The touch sensor and display have been split up. So the screen is on the top panel and touchpad on the bottom panel of the clamshell.
What's most interesting about this design is that the touchpad is transparent and is sensitive on both sides of the panel. This is called dual-sided capacitance touch technology by Apple. And it opens up a whole slew of possible input combinations, not available in today’s iPhone.
The Photoshop renderings below, put together by Unwired View, offers an excellent view of what Apple is describing in the patent application and what’s possible should it be put into place in a real device.
Looks like Apple's got something in store for those who want an iPhone but will only consider using a flip phone and nothing else. We’ll keep you posted.
Author: Philip L. Graitcer
You're addicted to your iPhone - you have to check the e-mail, see how your stocks are doing, find out if it's raining back home, and of course, read the hometown paper on the web. Naturally, it's going with you on your overseas vacation. But using your iPhone outside can be expensive; there are stories floating around about four figure bills.
AT&T offers domestic phone plans that include both voice and data services. Your plan probably gives you four hundred or more minutes talk time and unlimited data usage, and on the weekends and evenings, calls are virtually free.
But outside the U.S., voice and data are billed separately and charged by the minute or kilobyte. Keeping your phone bill under control involves understanding how the billing works and how to manage your phone's use of data and voice services.
Author: David Needle
When Apple recently unveiled its enterprise strategy for the iPhone, it gave a list of features it said were the most requested by the IT managers it surveyed.
Indeed, Apple was credited with reaching out to sometime rival Microsoft to offer native support for Exchange and ActiveSync technology to better secure and integrate with corporate e-mail systems. Push e-mail and the ability to remotely "wipe" the iPhone clean if lost or stolen were also high on the list.
But Apple didn't address the millions of users of the Lotus Domino e-mail server or extend device management very far beyond the ability to remotely wipe the device.
Enter Sybase, which today extended its iAnywhere Suite to support the iPhone. The initial offering, available now, doesn't address the iPhone natively using Apple's software development kit (SDK), though a later version will.
The SDK was only recently announced in beta test format. For now, Sybase is offering wireless e-mail services for Exchange and Domino via Apple's Safari browser.
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Two major mobile-friendly conferences, one from Apple and the other Google, will take place in May and June. Apple's annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco will now include a track for iPhone developers. WWDC is June 9-13. Google's two-day Google I/O "Web Forward" conference is a new event slated for this May 28-29 in San Francisco. Five tracks are planned, including one with a focus on Google's new Android mobile phone platform.
When Apple said in a press release last week that only “a limited number of developers will be accepted into Apple’s new iPhone Developer Program,” it wasn't kidding. Apple today sent out a mass e-mail to reject - at least for now - the majority of those who applied to take part in the beta of the iPhone Developer Program.
Over 100,000 have downloaded the iPhone software developer kit (SDK) since its introduction last week, Apple reported a couple of days ago.
The rejection e-mail from Apple reads:
Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.
Just because you've been rejected from the iPhone Developer Program, it doesn't mean you can't still mess around with the SDK and create iPhone software. You just might not want to devote too much time to it until you’ve (hopefully) eventually been accepted.
As the letter says, the rejection means you're not entitled to shell out the $99 ($299 for enterprises) to take part in the iPhone Developer Program yet. Those accepted into the iPhone Developer Program receive much more in the way of development resources and support from Apple than they get through SDK itself and, perhaps more importantly, reserves them a place in the iPhone App Store—with direct access to millions of iPhone and iPod touch users.
Accepted developers also receive a signing certificate to enable them to run and test their applications on an actual iPhone with the beta of the iPhone 2.0 software update installed and not just through the SDK's Aspen iPhone simulator. Another electronic certificate enables Apple to track an application back to a particular developer should a bad or malicious iPhone program surface.
Developer of all stripes, individual and corporate, have been rejected, according to tuaw. Those who applied from outside the US received the following message from Apple:
At this time, the iPhone Developer Program is only available in the US, and will expand to other countries during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.
Tuaw accurately calls the mass rejection e-mailing more of "limbogram," as it is "less about 'rejection' than it is about developers being unable to commit resources when Apple won't give a firm go-ahead." You'd think Apple would eventually accept most of the developers who want to enhance the iPhone platform by developing software for it and, possibly, earning some money in the process.
However you look at Apple's e-mail, whether it places a developer in limbo or rejects them outright, it is yet another reason to bet the unofficial third-party market for iPhone software will continue to thrive for the foreseeable future, even after the iPhone App Store opens for business this June.
We now know what MixMeister Technology, a company that creates software tools for playing, producing and performing music mixes, plans to do with Apple's new iPhone SDK. It plans to develop an application to turn any iPhone or iPod touch user into a DJ. Called MixMiester Scratch, the software will let you perform a scratch at any time—even right on top of a song currently playing on your iPod touch or iPhone. Simply pick the sound you like from MixMiester Scratch's preset vinyl scratch sounds and start scratching. It'll also allows you to adjust the volume of the music in real-time using the iPhone's touch interface. MixMiester Scratch will be a free download when it becomes available sometime during the second quarter. You can fill out a form here to be notified when it's ready. MixMiester Scratch will be compatible with all iPhone firmware versions.
We've got two important iPhone software-related milestones to report to you today. Combined, they set the stage for a battle between Apple's official take on iPhone software and the jailbreaked, unofficial type of native programs many iPhone users have become used to over the last several months.
The first confirms, as expected, that there will be plenty of applications headed to Apple's upcoming iPhone and iPod touch App store. The software development kit (SDK) for creating applications for the iPhone, launched to much fanfare only a week ago, has already been downloaded over 100,000 times, according to Apple. Actually, that number was reached only four days after the launch event.
“Developer reaction to the iPhone SDK has been incredible,” said Apple senior VP Philip Schiller in a statement. Meanwhile, the video of last week's event to introduce the SDK has been viewed over a million times, "further demonstrating the incredible interest developers have in creating applications for the iPhone,” Schiller added.
While the numbers cited by Apple today are impressive, hackers have already achieved something equally, if not more, notable. They've reportedly already hacked or jailbreaked the beta of iPhone firmware 2.0, which is included in the iPhone SDK. Apple will spread to the iPhone 2.0 software update to every iPhone user this June.
This news much guarantees the cat and mouse game between Apple and hackers will continue to be played for the foreseeable future, as it means iPhone users will continue to be able to run unofficial native iPhone software from third parties; of which there is a lot and, almost certainly, will be much more of in the coming months.
Of course, Apple will likely plug the hole before the iPhone 2.0 ships. If they do, hackers will just open it up again. They've done it many times before and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
So, the much-hyped battle between Apple and RIM for the enterprise may not be the most interesting iPhone-related topic of discussion on everyone's lips in the coming weeks. Folks may be speaking more about Apple’s clash with a good-sized portion of the group of people trying to make the iPhone better.
That war's been intensifying ever since the first hacker opened up the iPhone to unofficial third-party software months and months ago, giving developers - ironically - more access to the iPhone's resources (allowing for multitasking) than Apple does itself.
Then again, there doesn't have to be a war at all. Perhaps, it'll turn out that the official and unofficial iPhone software markets will compliment each other in the end.
It all depends on how agressive Apple is at going after the unofficial side of the equation and how happy official developers are with the system Apple setup. It could get ugly if Apple sees its bottom line or, in its opinion, the quality of the experience of iPhone users becoming negatively effected.
Or, if the rigid control Apple demands as the central gateway of all things iPhone starts to drive developers and users away. It's happened before to Apple. The iPhone may be a the hottest thing in smartphones now and, in many ways, a technological marvel, but that may not always be the case.
Apple is taking a play out of the Palm OS playbook for the iPhone. Unfortunately, it isn't one that'll benefit developers or end users. If a program is out of sight, to the iPhone it is out of mind.
Like with the Palm OS, Apple isn't going to allow developers to create applications that can multitask or run in the background when not directly being used. This means only when a program is on the screen will it be allowed to access the iPhone's memory and processing resources.
So if you go to answer a phone call or check your e-mail, the application you're currently running will shut down.
According to the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines (available to those who sign up for a free account):
Only one iPhone application can run at a time, and third-party applications never run in the background. This means that when users switch to another application, answer the phone, or check their email, the application they were using quits.
If you are running an application such as AOL Instant Messenger on your iPhone, every time you receive a call or browse away from the application you would be signed out, you would lose any unread messages, and your conversations would end.
Certain applications, like instant messaging software, cannot work optimally or even correctly without multitasking. No matter how vigilant developers are in having their applications save all relevant data before the iPhone shuts them down. Take AOL Instant Messenger, for instance, since it can't run in the background, it won't be able to receive instant messages, just like any desktop IM application would.
The lack of multitasking support is a strange decision on Apple's part, considering one of the many knocks against the ancient - in mobile years - Palm OS is that it can't handle more than one application running at a time. In addition, multitasking long ago became a standard feature in most major smartphone platforms, including with direct iPhone competitors like Windows Mobile and Symbian.
To allow the iPhone to be limited in the same manner as a mobile OS that hasn't been updated in five years isn't the smartest move. After all, isn't Apple always touting the iPhone's version of the Mac OS as the most advanced mobile platform ever created?
Of course, Apple's own iPhone programs can multitask; quite well in fact, as anyone who's used an iPhone can attest to. Much of the "unofficial" iPhone software developed since hackers jailbreaked the iPhone to run third-party software, can too.
With the decision not to allow developers the ability to create official multitasking applications, Apple has inadvertently given the unofficial native iPhone software market thumbs up to keep on going.
As of now, it seems you'll be able to get one type of software, be it apple approved, from the new iPhone App store and another type of application, one that may offer more functionality from those who choose - no thanks to Apple - to go the unofficial route.
[via Brighthand]
Author: Andy Patrizio
A developer of enterprise mobility software has expressed doubts that Apple's iPhone can cut it in the enterprise due to a number of issues, all of which Apple can change, but in doing so are anathema to how the company operates.
Ahmed Datoo, vice president of marketing of Zenprise, a developer of software for enterprise BlackBerry users, said he would welcome the opportunity to support the iPhone in the enterprise but has his doubts it will make much headway.
"The question that needs to be asked is, is the 2.0 software going to be good enough to take on RIM at the enterprise level?" he told InternetNews.com. "It doesn't look it. Is it good enough to get at the small and medium-sized business market? Probably. They have different requirements."
Look like Apple will finally add the ability to search contacts in the iPhone's address book when firmware upgrade 2.0 is released this June. This became apparent during Apple's presentation introducing new enterprise features for the iPhone at the SDK launch event last week.
You see, some sharp eyes detected a spotlight search icon just above the letter A in a picture of an iPhone running the iPhone 2.0 software.
Today, the iPhone is just about the only smartphone, perhaps even cell phone, to not allow you to search your address book for a contact. With the iPhone, you have to flick the screen with your finger until you find the one your want.
That's not very convenient for anyone, especially for people like sales folk, who often have thousands and thousands of contacts to sift through. Thankfully, this will apparently soon change.
[read]
Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) has declared it can use the SDK to get its Java Virtual Machine (JVM) ported over to Apple's phone, as well as the iPod Touch, since the two are virtually the same technology. Sun's JVM is already on the Mac OS, which is used in the iPhone and iPod Touch. Sun won't be able to ship a final JVM until Apple releases the final version of the SDK, which is expected to be around June.
Gameloft, the leading developer of games for mobile phones, plans to bring 15 titles to market for the iPhone before the close of 2008. It already develops games for Apple's iPod. the mostly widely used portable music player in the world.
The copmany follows competitors THQ, EA and Sega in chiming it with a commitment to developing titles for the iPhone.
According to Gameloft, its developers have already started working with the software development kit (SDK) Apple released last week to create its iPhone game lineup. And it expects to start delivering these games when Apple's App Store for the iPhone opens for business this June.
The iPhone's large 3.5-inch wide touch screen, 3D processor, and accelerometer, which allows you navigate by moving the iPhone - up, down, left and right - instead of using a more standard type of controller (buttons or joystick, for instance), are features Gameloft cites as making Apple's smartphone a compelling platform for gaming.
"The iPhone gaming environment opens a new era in mobile gaming and is exactly what we've been waiting for," said Gameloft president Michel Guillemot in a statement. It "has changed the way consumers perceive and interact with their mobile phones..." 
Reggie Bush Pro Football 2008:
Gameloft's Current Bestseller
Gamelft sells about 200,000 mobile phone games per day throughout 80 countries. It currently supports over 200 titles, 40 of which are million sellers.
Most of the major and minor wireless carriers in the U.S. started offering flat rate voice and data plans to customers a few weeks ago—Alltel finally climbed on board the all-you-can-eat buffet today, actually. Unfortunately, AT&T's unlimited offerings left iPhone users outside in the cold.
Well, the country's largest mobile operator rectified this today...sort of.
Individuals can now choose to pay $119.99 per month to use the iPhone as much as you like as a voice phone. The problem is that's just about the only difference between the new plan and $99.99 one just below it. You still get all the data (Email/Web) and Visual Voicemail you want, of course, and - unfortunately - a mere 200 Text Messages with the $119.99 plan. 
So while you'll no longer have to worry about paying up the nose for going over on your minutes with the $199.99 iPhone plan, it'll still be a concern when it comes to SMSing your friends and family. Just ask the parent of any teenager, the charges add up quickly when you over on your texting allotment.
[Via ars technica]
All those companies betting their business models on a surge in mobile advertising can take heart in research released today by The Nielsen Company. Some 23 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers say they've been exposed to advertising on their phones in the past 30 days. Even better, about half (28 million) of all data users who recall seeing mobile ads in the past month say they responded in some way.
Author: David Needle
Apple mapped out ambitious plans for the iPhone at an event here focused on the company's enterprise plans and support for independent developers via a software development kit (SDK).
Heading the list of enterprise-friendly features is support for Microsoft's Exchange server. Apple announced it is working with Microsoft to build support for Exchange directly into the iPhone to satisfy the needs of business users, who want to be able to receive their corporate e-mail, contacts and calendar information from company servers, and IT departments who want to be able to manage it.
Apple said it will be supporting Microsoft's ActiveSync protocol so the iPhone will work directly with corporate Exchange servers rather than what it said is the more complicated extra layer of communicating with a remote network operation centers (NOC)s (define), which devices like RIM's BlackBerry rely upon. "That's a more complex scenario that takes money and support and adds risk and reliability from time to time as we know," said Apple's vice president of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller, in an apparent reference to a recent RIM outage that lasted three hours.
Gartner analyst Van Baker said the support for ActiveSync and Exchange, the SDK and tools Apple is planning to make available to IT managers to help them better manage iPhones on the network, sets up Apple for more corporate sales. "And let's face it, the code base coming from the Mac is pretty impressive. It's a robust developer platform," Baker told InternetNews.com.
"I don't think anyone has fundamentally redefined the UI on mobile devices more than Apple," he added. "A lot of the other phone manufacturers know how to tie features to buttons, but Apple's redefined development from hardware to software. That's disruptive."
Jobs ceded most of the speaking time here at the company's headquarters to other Apple executives and independent software developers, including Salesforce.com, which showed versions of their applications tailored to run on the iPhone.
See the full story after the break
Apple's special event to launch the iPhone software development kit (SDK) and reveal its enterprise and security strategy for the iPhone—including, among other things, support for Microsoft Exchange and the Cisco IPsec VPN, two factor authentication and enterprise-class Wi-Fi using WPA2/802.1x—took place today. Update: For those who couldn't be there, Apple has just posted a video stream of the whole event.
It has licensed Exchange ActiveSync from Microsoft, which will soon become a default feature of the iPhone. This will enable the iPhone to support push mob-e-mail, calendaring, and contacts, as well as global address lists and remote wipe in an enterprise environment. Apple is clearly targeting RIM's BlackBerry hegemony in the enterprise here. But what about Lotus Notes?
As for the SDK section of the event, Apple outlined the technical details, which include a very real-looking iPhone simulator for the desktop. Programmers from a number of large application developers, including EA with Spore, Sega with the game Super Monkeyball, salesforce.com, AOL with AIM support, Epocrates, showed everyone some things they've done with the SDK.
The SDK works with both the iPhone and iPod touch. Developers can start building applications now, but consumers won't see them until June. Downloading the SDK is free.
It costs $99 to join the Apple's developer program, however, see here. This is the program that enables you to get your apps to iPhone and iPod touch users.
The $99 gets you an electronic certificate, which will tell Apple if you write and distribute a bad or malicious application, so they can stop folks from accessing it should the need arise. An 'Enterprise Programme,' will be available to those wishing to develop in-house iPhone apps for their company.
Developers can download the SDK here. You must use an Intel-based Mac to use the SDK. No PowerPCs or Windows machines allowed.
So how will consumers will be able to obtain these iPhone applications? Why through an new App Store that'll sits right on the iPhone, of course.
They'll be able to wirelessly download any of the apps available for the iPhone there. The store, which will be accessible both over Wi-Fi and a cellular connections (unlike with the iPhone iTunes store), is going to be included with the next iPhone software update. Programs can also be loaded through iTunes and the following category of software won't be offered: porn, privacy, bandwidth hog, illegal, malicious, and 'unforeseen.'
Developers get to pick the price they want to charge for their program and receive 70 percent of revenues, paid to them on a monthly basis, to Apple's 30 percent cut. All credit card, hosting and marketing services are included in this percentage and Apple won't charge developers a dime for free applications. You must still pay the $99 fee to get the electronic certificate to be able to access consumers though.
One question: What about shareware? These applications fall somewhere between free and bought and don't seem to be covered by the distribution model described by Apple today.
Apple is going to ship the software update (called iPhone firmware 2.0) to every iPhone customer with all the new software and enterprise capabilities in June for free. iPod touch users will be able to get the upgrade for a "nominal" charge.
A $100 million fund, called the iFund, is being setup by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. With it, they'll invest in companies they feel are developing innovative iPhone and iPod touch software.
If you can't wait until the software update to leverage all of the iPhone's new enterprise features, you may want to consider applying to take part in Apple's iPhone Enterprise Beta. It is not known how Apple will choose those who will take part from all those who apply.
Links to live blogging of the event:
During a shareholders meeting yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs strongly implied support for Adobe's Flash format in the iPhone and iPod touch is still, unfo