AT&T on Thin Ice

This is what I'm thinking when I see their new navigator app selling for a whopping $10 a month. This is a little outrageous and further encourages people to jailbreak their phones to access great free tools like xGPS. The amount of money and development might not be the same for both but need I repeat myself, xGPS is free. I have seen xGPS in use and it does a great job utilizing voice prompted guidance and Google Maps to get you where you need to go. It's a great setup if you're looking for an alternative to paying AT&T for something that you can have for free. Take a page from Verizon. They already include a preloaded software bundle which includes VZ Navigator.

New Horizons - Apple Releases Barrage

June 2009 marks a big month for Apple as they release the new iPhone 3GS. Powered by the new OS version 3 the new iPhone is primed to take over the smartphone market. With its amped up speed, a larger available hard drive , and a blazing new processor the iPhone 3GS is going to be the phone to have. It has already made all of us 3G owners a bit covetous.

I got my 3G back in February and I knew then stopping the speed of technology is about as useless as blocking a freight train so with that said I still jumped in and bought my 3G. Now comes the insane part. Do I try and sell it or pony up the heavy costs of upgrading to the new phone? Or just be happy with what I have until my contract is up? I think the latter is the smartest choice. Boy, I feel better having worked out my issues without therapy.

The new iPhones are set to hit the AT&T and Apple stores June 19th. I assume Walmart is included in there too. Heaven forbid Walmart not have a piece of the pie. You can bet there will be lineups too. This is a significant upgrade to the iPhone for sure. The new OS3 is also a very big update set for wide release on June 17. I can't wait.

AT&T App Comes to the IPhone

Could this have not honestly come any sooner? This was one of those issues I had since having the iPhone. I always liked the idea of paying your bill online and I did it once using Safari to connect to my account. But having to zoom in closer, move around the screen, and fiddle with all that I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a slick iPhone interface to use. Well AT&T has just launched the myWireless app for the iPhone and it is slicker than snot. I really like the simple features and abilities to add or remove features from my plan. It's real easy to pay the bill and now I only log into my online account to print off a copy of my bill. That's it. I rate this app an "A" for sure.

iPhone OS 3.0

First off, I want to appologize for not keeping up with this blog. Shame on me. I have had some busy times of late keeping me from much of any free time. I wanted to blog on the subject of this new iPhone operating system that is coming out for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Apple has finally figured out that they needed to include some very standard utilities that should have been there from the beginning. Cut, Copy, & Paste. It's about time! How often have you wanted to copy something as simple as a web link and paste it directly into an email? Now we can. That's a beautiful thing.

The new features are really too many to discuss here, but notable mentiones go to voice memo, the new Spotlight app which allows you to search for something across the entire phone. New enhancements to landscape mode keyboard, stereo blutooth, and finally MMS. It was unbelievable to me that this is was not something included in the first iPhone but they finally bring it to the new OS. One gripe I still have that I wished could be resolved soon is enabling Flash player for the iPhone. We are missing out on a lot of rich web content because of this shortcoming by the Apple developers. C'mon, this is not rocket science, it's just a flash player. Get over yourselves, figure out the logistics of it and bring it to the iPhone.

Google App

This is one of those rare apps that is densely packed with incredible features that makes itself worth it's weight in gold. And it's free! Everything from the news feeds to the RSS feeder which has just about every topic under the sun. I grabbed the iPhone article feed and just about every day I have a couple hundred articles from various sources to read. I love this app. I am also able to read quickly through news headlines (as I am quite the news junkie) and can afterwords custom search various news topics like US, World, Health, etc. I spend a lot of time commuting and I am never wondering what I want to do on the iPhone. This makes the trip go a whole lot quicker.

Voice-Prompted GPS Navigation

Yes it's finally available for the iPhone. Well, kind of. It was just announced yesterday that xWaves, the company that brought xGPS to the jailbroken iPhone, will be releasing an update that includes voice guided turn-by-turn directions. This will ultimately turn the iPhone into a full fledged GPS navigation device. I have read the articles and seen the videos for this app and it looks pretty dang cool. It will most definitly not make it into the app store and most likely will only stay available for jailbroken iPhones. This should light a fire under the rear ends of companies like Garman and Tom Tom to hurry up with apps of their own. Apple needs to cash in on this somehow.

I am hoping the copyright office will allow people to continue the practice of jailbreaking phones because I agree in principle why it should be allowed. With that said, I will wait to see the outcome of that exemption request and wait to jailbreak my phone. In the meantime I suppose I will just have to use Google Maps like everyone else who has decided to keep their phones all locked up tight until there is a decision made. Hopefully that is not long!

iPhone News

For those that it may interest, the EFF ( Electronic Frontier Foundation) has made an exemption request to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of the Copyright Office suggesting that jailbreaking an iPhone should be legal. In its request, the EFF has asked that an explicit exemption for the jailbreaking of cellular phone handsets in order to remove any threat of jailbreaking possibly becoming a copyright crime. The EFF cited the iPhone as an example. Apple countered with the argument that jailbreaking the iPhone is an infringement of their copyright and should be illegal.

My opinion is that jailbreaking a phone is not illegal. It simply allows its users more control of what they can have on their iPhone. It's kind of like buying a car. GM is not going to tell you that you can't replace a part that is made generically and not still warrant the car. Obviously GM will not warrant a generic part but that is not the issue here. GM still warrants the car against defects etc. against any of its own manufactured parts. The rest of the car is still under warranty.

Much like my car example, Apple should look at this logically and see that this is not a copyright issue, it's a usability issue. The user ought to have the right to choose what they want to have on their phones. If not then perhaps they should look at loosening up the restrictions on what makes it into the app store.