Experts and analysts of all stripes are trying to explain what's wrong with the iPhone 3G, but their answers are frequently supported by bad science, outlandish claims, and pure speculation. Here's what's wrong in the reports, and why a simple firmware update is likely to solve the current issues.
MobileMe isn't just for iPhone users. It also expands upon the simple web apps delivered as part of .Mac using a cohesive Mac OS X inspired interface that behaves more like a desktop app than a web page, providing easy access to data from anywhere you have Internet access. Here's a look at how web apps have developed, how Apple's new online apps work, and the future potential of MobileMe's tightly integrated mobile, web, and desktop apps.
MobileMe's Exchange Server-style push updates for contacts and calendar events on the iPhone is entirely new from the previous .Mac. Here's how MobileMe relates to Exchange, how contacts and calendars work, and what's still missing in Apple's service related to calendar and contact management.
MobileMe upgrades .Mac email on the iPhone to use rapid push updating. Here's how it works, and what's new and different in MobileMe mobile mail, how to configure junk mail and security, and what's still missing.
Apple's MobileMe provides mobile device push and an innovative Wide-Area Bonjour push sync mechanism for securely updating desktop clients over the Internet. There's currently nothing identical to the service on other platforms, but there is some feature overlap with Microsoft's Exchange Server in corporate settings, RIM's BlackBerry mobile push messaging, and web-based service offerings from Google and others. Here's a look at how MobileMe compares in price and features.
Mobile providers in Japan are crediting the launch of Apple's iPhone 3G with dramatically shifting large numbers of subscribers between providers. The impact of the new phone is also answering critics who insisted the iPhone would find only limited interest in Japan.
MobileMe is advertised as push messaging service, so some users were disappointed to find that some desktop updates may take as long as fifteen minutes to find their way up to the cloud. However, the service does also support push IMAP email as well as full desktop push updates from the cloud, at least on Mac OS X. Here's how Apple's service works with the client software on desktop Macs and PCs and on the iPhone.
While Apple's previous .Mac service left many unclear as to what it offered beyond email and web hosting, its value under the new identity of MobileMe is far easier to communicate. MobileMe is all about push messaging, delivering immediate updates to mobile iPhone users over the air for their mailbox, calendars, and contacts as well as web bookmarks. This segment in the Inside MobileMe series looks at how the various components of the MobileMe service work together.
IBM has unveiled a sneak peek of its new Lotus iNotes, a web app client for its Lotus Domino messaging server to bring email, calendar, and contacts to iPhone. The move fulfills rumors of customized iPhone support for Lotus Notes and demonstrates IBM's evolving interest in Apple within the enterprise.
Here's a look at how Apple transformed its .Mac service into MobileMe and why the launch failed so spectacularly. In a followup segment, we'll dive deeper into how MobileMe works, how it compares to competing services, how the service delivers push messaging to the iPhone 2.0 software, and whether it's worth the annual subscription price.
Market research firm Gartner said this week that Apple's iPhone Firmware 2.0 update meets its criteria for 'appliance-level support status' for big businesses, but warned enterprises to approach expanded use of the handset slowly and with close examination.
The long wait for official third party apps on the iPhone is over. From the moment the original iPhone was released, critics complained about Apple's closed platform and insisted that it could not meet their definition of "smartphone" because it couldn't run software created by other companies. In this segment, we'll take a look at the Apple's iPhone software development kit, the App Store, and iPhone 2.0's third party apps themselves.
As described in the previous segment introducing iPhone 2.0 software, Apple's latest mobile operating system reference release delivered a range of major and minor new features, but not without failing to address some long standing issues. Even worse, the initial version of the new iPhone 2.0 has eroded away the facade of near flawlessness Apple rolled out with the original iPhone last year, resulting in a product that is simply harder to be unreservedly enthusiastic about. This segment will compare the features exposed and architecturally available in the iPhone OS, and how it stacks up against other smartphone platforms.
With the iPhone 3G hardware, Apple significantly improved upon last year's original iPhone. It also extended many of the benefits of its newest model to existing users in the form of the iPhone 2.0 software update (which is also available to current iPod touch users for a nominal $10 fee). This segment presents what's new in the 2.0 software, what hasn't changed, what's missing, what's wrong, and how it compares to other smartphone software platforms on the market.
Apple's iPhone 3G is exciting more than just tech-savvy consumers wanting to play with the latest gadget. Worldwide, mobile service providers are fighting tooth and nail for the right to sell the new iPhone because of its ability to attract new customers and sell them on data service plans, which providers have previously found to be a difficult sell.
As detailed in the previous segment introducing its hardware features, the second generation iPhone 3G catches up with two of the largest competitive features offered by other higher-end smartphones: faster 3G network access and GPS. Here's a look at how Apple's smartphone compares in other areas, as well as how it stacks up against the original iPhone. (Comparison chart on page 3).
Apple has significantly improved upon last year's original iPhone while extending many of the benefits of its newest model to existing users in the form of the iPhone 2.0 software update. AppleInsider's week-long "Inside iPhone 2.0" series will present a detailed analysis and review of the iPhone 3G, the 2.0 software, the App Store, and push messaging. This first segment looks at the iPhone 3G hardware itself, what's new and different, what's bad, and what's missing. A followup segment on hardware will look how the new iPhone 3G compares to other smartphones, and whether it's worth the upgrade for existing iPhone users.
Apple's clear interest in securing the rights to develop custom mobile processors based on the ARM platform appear to sync with comments made in financial reports published earlier today.
Two weeks after it launched on July 11, the iPhone 3G is still hard to find in the US. Many Apple retail stores have no supplies at all, leaving buyers to track down the stores that do have remaining stock and wait in slow moving lines that stretched out for five hours.
European retailers were sold out of the new iPhone 3G before stores in the US even opened on Friday, thanks in part to strong marketing from Apple's mobile partners.
Across Europe, Apple's mobile service partners and mobile phone retail outlets have begun prominent marketing efforts for the new iPhone 3G. Here in Switzerland, mobile phone stores and electronics stores have been selling iPhone accessories for months, despite the fact that nobody has been selling the iPhone itself.
In response to a report earlier this week pointing out that many of the applications in early builds of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard are dramatically smaller in size, a number of developers have weighed in to explain where all those missing megabytes went.
Steve Jobs announced at WWDC that the new iPhone 3G would launch simultaneously in 22 countries on July 11 and expand to at least 70 countries by the end of 2008. What wasn't revealed was the unit and service pricing details for mobile carriers outside of AT&T in the US. Jobs also didn't brag up the hardball plan deals he forced upon carriers or his efforts to recreate a spectacular launch event internationally.
SproutCore, profiled earlier this week, isn't the only big news spill out from the top secret WWDC conference due to Apple's embrace of open source sharing. Another future technology featured by the Mac maker last week was LLVM, the Low Level Virtual Machine compiler infrastructure project.
One of the biggest revelations at WWDC was quietly unveiled in a session on Friday morning entitled "Building Native Look-and-Feel Web Applications Using SproutCore." While Apple maintained high security during the entire NDA-sealed WWDC session, the secret of SproutCore is out because it is an open source project and people can't stop talking about it.
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