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Rogers and its sub-brand Fido today made concessions to potential subscribers worried about low bandwidth by offering a limited-run promotional plan for the iPhone 3G. Customers who sign up for the Apple device before the end of August will have access to a $30 monthly plan that offers 6GB of data per month while purchased with any existing voice plan Rogers or Fido already offers. The pricing effectively gives an iPhone user enough bandwidth to watch nearly 105 hours of YouTube videos per month on the cellular connection, Rogers claims.

Users will also be able to upgrade to the iPhone 3G, according to the company, and should be purchasable online. However, Visual Voicemail is considered separate from the data plan and will cost an additional $8 per month, as will text messages. Subscribers can still order these individually or as part of value packs.

In addition to the last-minute plan addition, certain Rogers and Fido stores will also open at the same 8AM advance date as American Apple and AT&T stores, including Fido’s flagship Montreal shop as well as individual Rogers stores in Calgary, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver. Apple Canada isn’t believed to be selling the iPhone 3G either online or at retail.

Company spokeswoman Elizabeth Hamilton also notes that the 6GB plan isn’t limited to the iPhone 3G and will apply to any 3G-capable smartphone sold by Rogers or Fido during the timespan, including the BlackBerry Bold. The official also doesn’t expect the discount to last past the August 31st cut-off date. Such news points to the $30 deal primarily overcoming concerns over a dampened iPhone 3G launch rather than a long-term solution.

source: electronista.com

Maverick Software on Thursday announced four new native iPhone applications Comet Cowboy, Yulan Mahjong Solitaire, Snowglobe, and Blip Solitaire all of which will be available at the launch of the App Store later this month. Comet Cowboy allows players to explore space in order to mine comets with their virtual lasso. The game boasts sharp graphics, multiple levels, and an automatic quick-save feature for when a call is received or if the user switches apps. Comet Cowboy will sell for $5.

Yulan Mahjong Solitaire ($5) uses the multi-touch screen’s various functions like pinch-and-squeeze so players can zoom in and out from any of eight tile layouts, matching pairs as they go.

Maverick’s Snowglobe ($1) app allows users to put a virtual snowglobe on the screen that uses the iPhone’s accelerometers to determine which side of the device is down, letting the flakes fall into the proper direction. Users can put custom photos into the globe, or a pre-selected image.

Lastly, Blip Solitaire pits players against themselves in a circular-style solo game of Pong. Blip Solitaire is free from the App Store.

source: macnn.com

Canadian cell provider Rogers Wireless and its sub-brand Fido today listed their iPhone 3G plans, revealing the strategy for carrying the device in the country. All plans will need both voice and data and have finite data limits; unlike previous rumors, there will be no option for unlimited access with either service, though all will include Visual Voicemail as well as unlimited weekend and evening calling; incoming SMS messages are also unlimited, as is access to Rogers- and Fido-owned Wi-Fi hotspots.

Both Rogers and Fido plans are identical. A base $60 plan gives callers 150 minutes of air time, 75 outgoing SMS messages, and 400MB of data for use with any app; a $75 plan boosts call time to 300 minutes while almost doubling the transfer limit to 750MB and increasing the number of outbound messages to 100. A $100 monthly plan gives 600 minutes of calls, 1GB of data, and 200 messages, while an ultimate $115 plan supplies 800 minutes, 2GB of data, and 300 messages. Additional data is 50 cents per megabyte through the first 60MB, but drops to three cents per megabyte afterwards.

Unique among most current iPhone plans are the ability to add Value Packs. A $15 pack adds Call Display, WhoCalled, ringback tones, 2,500 minutes of call forwarding time and increases the number of outgoing SMS texts to 2,500. A $20 pack both supplies 10,000 SMS messages and drops the 9PM evening calling threshold to 6PM for very frequent users.

Every iPhone plan requires a three-year contract; the company has already outlined pricing for the phones themselves, which match the US prices of $199 for an 8GB model and $299 for a 16GB version. Both the plans and the phones become available on July 11th.

The caps are already expected to be controversial for offering less to Canadian users than American counterparts but are considered improvements over recently unveiled BlackBerry plans, which offer 300MB of data for $30 on top of a voice plan.

source: electronista.com

Vodafone India has already begun taking contract pre-registrations on the iPhone 3G, according to an announcement. The move is unusual in that the company has yet to disclose a final release date for the device, although rival Bharti Airtel is expected to release it on July 11th along with the initial wave of iPhone 3G deployments. Bharti has not formally announced any iPhone plans, including any registration campaigns.

Problematic for both companies is that the new phone will not have a 3G network to operate on. The Indian government has yet to finalize guidelines on an auction of 3G frequencies and licenses, meaning that iPhone owners will be forced to run on 2 or 2.5G technology for months or years. One major obstacle is said to be whether foreign companies will be eligible for bidding on 3G spectrum.

It is meanwhile rumored that in the UK and Ireland, O2’s pre-registration is set to begin on July 1st. The goal is to alleviate traffic due to Apple’s mandatory in-store activation policy, and as a result people will allegedly be able to visit an O2 store early, run through credit checks, and have a “paused” contract put in place. To get a phone working on launch day, shoppers will simply have to supply a registration code when picking up the device.

source: macnn.com

The iPhone 3G carries a lower price, but it also costs about half as much to make, according to a report in the EETimes. The report says tests by teardown specialist Portelligent put the bill of materials for the new model as low as $100. That should help offset the 3G’s lower $199 price point. Portelligent estimates that based on materials alone, Apple’s gross profit on the iPhone 3G totals about $99, compared to $229 for the previous version. Apparently, Apple is counting on sales volume to make up the difference and Apple may also be receiving a payut for each carrier activation, although the revenue sharing plan with carriers, as with the original device, is no longer in place.

Portelligent says the cost savings comes from a variety of areas, including a touch screen assembly which, at roughly $30, cost half that of the original iPhone. Additional costs associated with the 3G upgrade were more than offset by savings in memory, improvements in engineering and other areas, according to the EETimes.

The report also says the iPhone 3G uses the HSDPA version of W-CDMA, supporting a minimum of 1.5 Mbits per second, up to a maximum of 7.5Mbits/s. Will Strauss, President of Tempe, Az. based Forward Concepts, told the publication he believes Apple is using an infineon baseband and RF transceiver and a Samsung Applications processor, based on sources he would not name. Strauss says the the new iPhone uses a GPS chip from Infineon with technology licensed from the startup Global Locate, now owned by Broadcom.

“Gen2 iPhone pricing is aggressive enough that it made me think Apple’s really taking the gloves off on this one,” said said David Carey, president of Portelligent. “They are probably not as worried about iPhone hardware profits as they are about getting a piece of the action on service revenues and getting more Macs in homes and offices all around the globe,” he told EETimes. The iPhone 3G is scheduled to go on sale July 11th.

source: macnn.com

Apple may replicate the success of the iPod with the iPhone 3G, argues RBC’s Mike Abramsky. The analyst suggests that in the September quarter of 2008 Apple will sell 5.1 million iPhones, 70 percent more than consensus estimates of 3 million. This would make for an increase of 356 percent year-over-year, paralleling Apple’s December 2005 quarter, which saw an approximate threefold growth in iPod numbers. This year’s December-quarter iPhone sales are expected to amount to 6.5 million, but this would only be a jump of 181 percent over 2007.

In total Abramsky expects Apple to sell 14 million iPhones by the end of the year, easily surpassing Steve Jobs’ goal of 10 million. For 2009 though Abramsky is only predicting sales of 24 million, a drastic difference from Piper Jaffray estimates of 45 million. Observes note however that Piper is factoring in unannounced sibling iPhones, which could make the device more affordable for the average person.

In terms of profit Abramsky is predicting a gain of $1.8 to $6.8 billion in incremental revenue in FY09, with $2.50-9.50 of free cash flow, and $0.29-1.09 per share in forward-12-month EPS, factoring in the absence of revenue sharing from cellphone carriers. General revenue is expected to be $42.5 billion, with a $6.50 EPS.

source: ipodnn.com

iPhone 3G for Canada site revealed that the new iPhone 3G will be available for both Fido and its parent company Rogers Wireless in the country. The news expands on the previous Rogers-only announcement and will let users of either service buy the phone when it becomes available in Canada on July 11th. Rogers says it will sell the phone at the same $199 (8GB) and $299 (16GB) prices as in the US, but will require a longer three-year contract common to providers in the territory.
Full plan pricing and costs for the phone with shorter plans or contract-free service are unavailable. Rogers doesn’t currently offer an unlimited smartphone data plan and instead relies on a $7 unlimited web browsing plan for most of its devices, including a handful of smartphone-class devices such as the Nokia N95 8GB. These plans typically charge a per-kilobyte rate for data used outside of the browser itself or through specially-authorized applications, though Rogers hasn’t said whether these rules will apply to Apple’s product.

source: electronista.com

Managers at retail locations of Rogers Wireless, one of Canada’s three major cellular companies, are being told not to take vacations during a specific period beginning later this month, a source from within the company claims. The “blackout” stretch is said to extend from June 23rd through July 16th, although no reason for the dates has been given. Apple is widely expected to announce the 3G iPhone on Monday, however, and Rogers has confirmed that it will carry the iPhone “later this year.”

A similar vacation blockage is alleged to have been imposed on AT&T staff in the US, with a slightly different timeframe falling between June 15th and July 12th. This coincides with an anticipated launch period for the 3G iPhone, and the release date of the original device, which debuted on June 29th of last year. AT&T employees were said to have been barred from vacations then as well.

source: macnn.com

Several Apple patent applications have today been published by the US Patent and Trademark Office, focusing around wireless location technology. The first involves Bluetooth devices, and specifically a means of finding them when they are lost; a master device “pings” the lost slave, which in turn makes audible or visible signals to lure a person towards its hiding place. The master could also be used gauge the distance to the slave, narrowing its location down even further.

The application makes specific reference to a cellphone as the master, and the slave being a headset; in theory this would allow iPhone owners to locate missing earpieces, but the current model does not have such a function. The invention was first submitted to the USPTO in November of 2006.

Another published document describes a technology related to wireless range, in which users of a device would be warned that they are wandering out of range. Apple notes that while many devices will tell people that their signal is low, its invention would deliver an estimated time before signal is lost. The technology would again apply mainly to cellphones, but virtually any kind of wireless could be supported, including WiFi, PCM and even infrared. This patent was also originally filed for in 2006.

source: macnn.com

Apple has posted Mac OS X 10.5.3 to Software Update. This relatively major release addresses a number of issues extant in previous editions of Mac OS X 10.5.x, including problems with AirPort, Time Capsule, Mail, iChat, iCal and more. With regard to general fixes, the update a font issue that could result in Helvetica Narrow being used in applications instead of Helvetica and also addresses an issue with stuttering video and audio playback in certain USB devices. It also fixes an issue in which certain attached hard drives may not show up in the Finder.

AirPort fixes include improvements to 802.1X behavior and reliability and better reliability when using Time Capsule. iChat includes resolution of reliability issues with screen sharing and elimination of an issue in which saved chat transcripts may reported as “still in use” after opening and closing them in iChat. Also resolves is an issue with group chats not being indexed in Spotlight. The new release can also save an unlimited number of lines of active chats, up from 250.

In Mail, an issue was resolved in which the app may prevent idle sleep when set to automatically check for new messages every minute. Also addressed stability issues that may be encountered when dragging large attachments into an email message. 10.5.3 also fixes an issue that could occur if two compose windows are open when dragging a file to the Mail icon in the Dock.

The new edition of Parental Controls addresses reliability issues with application logging and time limits and resolves an issue in which Parental Controls may prevent forced sleep. It also eliminates performance issues with web content filters and fixes an issue with managed accounts in which iChat transcripts may not be created. ‘

Spaces no longer exhibits an issue in which switching to a different space and returning back to the original space may reorder the application windows with a different active window, and resolved is an issue in which activating an application from the Dock switches to a different space, even if there is a window for that application in the current space.

Time Machine has improved compatibility with Time Capsule and resolves certain issues when backing up a portable Mac that is on battery power. The new release also addresses compatibility issues with Aperture 2 and reliability issues when performing a full restore from a Time Machine backup.

The new version of Automator addresses an issue in which some actions may not work with the “Show When Run” option enabled. It also resolves an issue in which the “New iCal Event” action may not work and another issue that prevents workflows from being saved in the Finder’s contextual menu. The new release also includes fixes reliability issues for Automator scripts that search for files by date and an issue that prevents workflows from being saved in the Finder’s contextual menu. Another problem in which Automator workflows as Finder plugins do not work when the workflow begins with the “Get Selected Finder Items” action has been fixed as has an issue in which the “Copy Files” action does not reliably work when added from Automator’s warning dialog.

VoiceOver now includes Braille Update 1.0 which enables GW Micro, HandyTech, HIMS, Nippon, and Papenmeier Refreshable Braille displays. Also, an issue with Braille dot 7 and 8 underlining has been addressed, as has an issue in which HTML page anchors may be ignored by the VoiceOver cursor. The new release also fixes an issue that prevented Hot Spots from being used in text areas and resolves an issue with spell checking in which VoiceOver may only announce the first misspelled word if there are multiple words spelled incorrectly.

source: macnn.com