Apple

Probably one of the most shocking stories is that there is a possibility that Walmart may start selling the iPhone 3G - next month.

BestBuy started carrying the iPhone not too long ago, and I assumed RadioShack would be next, however, BGR claims that WalMart will in fact be the next third-party retailer to carry the device.

They claim that one of their sources got inside info from a good source saying that they will be offering the iPhone 3G on November 15. That makes since, seeing as how the huge Black Friday is two weeks away.

Walmart already sells the iPod and iPod Touch, however, the iPhone requires a service in which they do not currently offer so I am not sure how this will work out.

It is a little unusual given that Apple requires the device be activated before it leaves the store…

Via: BGR

You know the iPhone is insecure, thats why you lock the car doors when you leave in the car.  You also know about that the iPhone is watching you.

Now there’s two new tricks to watch out for. One involves links in mail messages. The idea is that you can disguise a link to look like http://www.foodfororphans.com when it really is http://www.foodfororphans/feed/forcedpornodownload.com. See since the mail program truncates the link even when you hold your finger on it for a few seconds you can’t tell that you are about to download really bad porn.

The second flaw concerns mail as well. Mail with images can be used by spammers to make sure that your e-mail account is active and thus know to target you with more spam. This seems like a big deal, who wants to be targeted with more spam? But the majority of spammers don’t seem to be worried about hitting live mails or not. They seem more interested in just sending spam to anything that might possibly be an address.

Well, there are the two new iPhone worries for you today via:more...

The good news (as pointed out by seeking alpha) is that Apple is going to blow up even the more optimistic analysts predictions for units sold. If they blow those numbers away then, predictably, Apple is blowing away the company’s goal of 10 million phones in 2008. How does Seeking Alpha know all this? Turns out a lot of people have been putting work in tracking the IMEI numbers of newly sold iphones on this google spreadsheet. Scroll through that brightly colored sheet and you’ll discovery that ~ 9 million seem to have been sold. Add in the iPhones sold before the 3G and you get (insert drumroll) 11.5 million iPhones sold in 2008. With time left to go.

Good news for people who want Apple to sell a lot of iPhones (stock holders, Apple employees, Steve Jobs) but also great news for AT&T. Why is such great news for AT&T? Because for every four people with an iPhone three of them switched from another carrier according to CNET. That gives AT&T a net gain of 8.4 million subscribers. T/hat beats the hell out of the numbers dredged… more...

Chris Howard has a well written, thoughtful piece up on our sister site Apple Matters explaining why Apple rejects the apps it does. Apple gets a free pass on Pull My Finger and I am Rich but Chris susses out why Apple won’t let Podcaster or Mailwrangler through. Spoiler alert: It is about the cash.

“We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before,”

That is a statement off of the iPhone developer website. Apple has received a lot of criticism for a while now about this policy and Apple has agreed to do away with this for released software.

However, they aren’t completely getting rid of it of course. They are due to send out a revised agreement covering just released software.

Apple went on to acknowledge that the iPhone NDA “has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software.”

Apple should have a new agreement by the end of the month that developers will need to sign again.

3G I can do without, seeing as how it is not yet offered in my area. However, I am not so sure I could stand the iPhone without WiFi. That is what China is doing.

Customers looking to purchase a iPhone 3G in China will soon be able to do so - Just a little catch though, minus the 3G and WiFi.

China Mobile does not have a 3G network so I understand them asking Apple to disable 3G but going a step further asking to disabling WiFi as well? That perplexes me.

That leaves all of the owners of the iPhone 3G with just a 2G data connection. Not cool.

Then I did some more thinking, how could they exclude these features from the iPhone? Then I realized through software, so there is still hope for hackers to unlock WiFi, which I am pretty sure will be done.

Does anyone know why China would disable WiFi?

Via: Gizmodo

You remember the Blackberry Storm right? Verizon’s answer to the iPhone. Coming this fall. Fisrt touch screen Blackberry. For all the blah, blah, blah on the storm check out the video in this post. The Storm seems pretty cool to those stuck on Verizon but AT&T doesn’t sell it so the company has come up with a flier explaining why the iPhone is better (see the flier at BoyBeniusReport).
What are some of the advantages of the iPhone over the Storm (update: THe Storm actually has these things but looking at the flier you’d never know)?
No multitouch!
No 3G!
No Wi-Fi!
Good lord, is the storm a phone or a brick painted to look shiny? Geeze what a piece. You know what else the Storm doesn’t have? GPS. That’s right, you get lost in a canyon and you won’t know where you are with a Storm. You’ll wander for days and finally starve to death. Can you believe it, Verizon is selling a phone that could kill you!

Well, it isn’t that serious. The Storm actually… more...

When people argue iPhone against the G1 they argue about closed platform versus open platform. Apple’s missteps with the App store have been well documented but does that mean that a closed platform is necessarily worse than an open platform? Farhad Manjoo argues that open is not necessarily better than closed. From the article:

Well, maybe he has—and maybe he’s betting that these days, “openness” is overrated. For one thing, an open platform is much more technically complex than a closed one.

Read the entire article (worth your time) at Slate.