Feature: June 2008 Archives
Author: Mike Elgan
Every week, it seems, the press labels some new phone the latest "iPhone Killer."
This week, of course, the first-ever true "iPhone Killer" -- the new iPhone -- was announced. The "3Gesus Phone" adds me-too, "catch-up" features that competitive phones have offered for quite a while, such as 3G and GPS.
I’m pretty sure that Steve Jobs could pull a napkin out of his pocket with the word “Apple” written on it, and people would want to know when it went on sale.
Author: Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
As I listened to, and then later watched, Steve Jobs’ keynote speech at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2008, I must have been caught up in the reality distortion field that Jobs is so expert at projecting. Within a matter of minutes, I went from feeling somewhat ambivalent about the iPhone 3G, Apple’s next-generation iPhone, to feeling as if this must be the apotheosis of handsets and I just had to have one.
So, am I going to be queuing up to buy an iPhone 3G on the day of the launch? No. So what was it that made me change my mind a second time? Simple, I extracted my head out of the distortion field and started to think clearly once again.
See, the thing about Steve Jobs is that he is different from most tech geeks, in that the guy oozes style, charisma and charm. And nowhere is Jobs more effective than onstage in front of thousands of hardcore Mac fans. I’m pretty sure that Steve could pull a napkin out of his pocket with the word “Apple” written on it, and people would want to know when it went on sale. What’s it down to? Hypnosis? New-age techno-religious fervor? Charm? I don’t know, all I know is that it works.
So, when I look at the iPhone 3G from outside of the reality distortion field, what do I see?
Author: Damon Brown
I joined a few thousand developers in San Francisco for Steve Jobs highly-anticipated keynote at Apple's World Wide Developer Conference today. From the new iPhone to new software, it was well worth the trip.
The iPhone 3G hits stores on July 11: an ultra-cheap $199 for 8 GB and $299 for 16 GB. The new model is slightly thicker with smaller, more ergonomic buttons and a flush headphone jack hole. Scrapping the silver metal, the basic model has a black plastic casing (the 16 GB is also available in the traditional Mac white).
The two big internal changes are built-in GPS and 3G. Jobs demonstrated its "live tracking," which follows your location with a live blue visual beep. He said Apple was encouraging developers to take advantage of contextual searching based on location. For the 3G, an Apple video showed difference between AT&T's spotty EDGE network and the new 3G network, and on average it was three times as fast - and only slightly slower than iPhone Wi-Fi. Ditto for an e-mail download, which, in the Apple demo, 3G was about four times slower.
The iPhone 3G will have decent battery life. It has 300 hours of standby time, five hours of 3G talk time, up to six hours of browsing, seven hours of video and 24 hours of music. Jobs also cryptically noted that the iPhone 3G will have "improved sound," which probably means an upgrade to the iPhone's tiny, low-grade speakers.
Regular as well as new iPhones will be getting a 2.0 software upgrade. The bevy of new accoutrements include full iWork and MS Office support - for readable PowerPoint presentation and such - bulk delete and move, and parental controls. It also has an automatic fill-in for searching phone/email contacts and a full scientific calculator whenever you turn the calculator horizontal.
