AT&T

AT&T & Apple In Talks to Extend iPhone Deal

It is no secret that AT&T has the iPhone locked up through the year 2010. Today the Wall Street Journal is reporting that AT&T is in talks to add yet another year to the current deal. Of course neither side is commenting about the matter at this point, and when contacted, an Apple representative said:

“We have a great relationship with AT&T.”

While we here at TiPb are well aware of how many of you truly despise AT&T, is this where we give them another chance? It has been rumored they are still beefing up their network for the next iPhone launch.

Personally for me here in the Chicago area, I’ve never had such great service. No other cellular service performs as well for me and I’ve tried tried them all. Yes, I said it, go easy on me.

So what do you say? Is another year of AT&T iPhone lock-in a good or bad thing?

[Via WSJ Thanks also to Tyler for the tip!]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

AT&T & Apple In Talks to Extend iPhone Deal

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Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 iPhone Hacks, Tips and Tricks Comments Off

Turn-About is Fair Pay: Forrester Gives 4 Reasons Enterprise IT Should Support iPhone

iPhone Business Model

Fortune has covered Forrester Research’s latest report “Making iPhone Work In The Enterprise: Early Lessons Learned”. Whiplash-much? After all, it does come on the heels of previous reports including “The iPhone Is Not Meant For Enterprises”, “The Top 10 Reasons Why We Recommend That IT Not Support It”, and “Harold and Kumar Don’t Want an iPhone at White Castle”. Okay, we made that last one up. Barely.

This time the people who were crafting link-bait before there were any links to bait have seemingly decided the best bang for their buck is to pull a 180 and, instead of trouncing the iPhone in enterprise, actually support it. Sure, Apple’s increasing development of the OS, including iPhone 2.x and the upcoming iPhone 3.0 could have something to do with it, but even in IT it’s generally more about the artist than the tools. So to speak.

What does Forrester claim makes the iPhone so suddenly worthy?

  • Employees like them. “In this era of Technology Populism, where consumer IT is often better than enterprise IT, it sometimes just makes sense to give employees the freedom to choose the tools they want.”
  • They make mobile collaboration easier. “As anybody with experience on both iPhones and BlackBerry will tell you, the Internet feels natural on an iPhone and a like a chore on a BlackBerry.”
  • iPhone users need less hand-holding. “All three firms have set up wikis so that employees can support each other. ‘Our early adopters sometimes teach things we’d rather our iPhone users not know, but overall they provide better support than we can,’ said one person we interviewed.”
  • They can be cheaper in the long run. “In at least one case, an iPhone adopter found that the data plans for previous mobile devices were more expensive than the consumer plans AT&T is offering for iPhones. This company was able to reset its baseline plan pricing 30% lower for all phones because it supported iPhone.”

For an actual iPhone endorsement, some remaining corporate gotchas, and 3.0 redemptioms, check out Fortune’s coverage or throw $749 at Forrester (if you didn’t just blow that cash on an unlocked iPhone…)

[Thanks to The Reptile for the tip!]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Turn-About is Fair Pay: Forrester Gives 4 Reasons Enterprise IT Should Support iPhone

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Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 iPhone Hacks, Tips and Tricks Comments Off

Coulda Been Syndrome

Ever watched a movie which you are thoroughly enjoying … completely enthralled with the plot and characters … just absolutely loving the story line … then as you anticipate the climatic conclusion … BOOM … the ending totally sucks. You’re thinking – man, was that a waste of time and money. And if you’re one of those total anal individuals, you thoughts go even further … questioning the writer’s lack of effort to finish the story which had so much promise. It’s called the Coulda Been Syndrome … something or someone that coulda been awesome, but failed due to a lack of effort from start to finish.

Take for example the hysterical commercial parody from Saturday Night Live below …

LOL … classic stuff from SNL … and given to the right developer, it could be turned into an awesome iPhone application. Well the folks at Macsolving gave it their best shot and released the Ooops I Crapped My Pants app.

ooops

Heck, the “Ooops I Crapped My Pants” title alone should already be making Macsolving millions of dollars. And judging my their tagline “Custom Applications For Apple Platforms For Over 10 Years” … these guys clearly have the experience to knock one out of the park.

Macsolving

But as the Coulda Been Syndrome goes … the app falls very short and very hard to anything remotely close to the comedic value of the original. We won’t waste your time with an in-depth analysis, but simply leave you with two pictures from the Ooops I Crapped My Pant app (which we can only assume is the total extent of the app since Macsolving gives no other information to its functionality) and the following sentiment … coulda been awesome!!

crappants1 crappants2

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Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 iPhone Hacks, Tips and Tricks Comments Off

Who’s Using Their iPhone 3G over EDGE/2G?

Right after the iPhone 3G came out, we posted a tip on how to turn off 3G and run on the older, slower EDGE standard to save battery life. Some people, who live in areas still lacking 3G coverage have no choice but to run on EDGE. Still others suffer so many dropped calls and other network problems they’ve downgraded to EDGE out of sheer frustration.

Based on the comments we received on the rumors of Apple re-releasing a new, low-end, iPhone 2G, there may be more iPhone 3G owners running on EDGE than we imagined.

So we’re asking you. Who here is running his or her iPhone 3G on EDGE and why?

Let us know in the comments below or head on over to our forum poll and make it all scientific-ish.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Who’s Using Their iPhone 3G over EDGE/2G?

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Monday, April 13th, 2009 iPhone Hacks, Tips and Tricks Comments Off

Rumor: 3 New 3rd Generation iPhones Coming This Summer

Commercial Times is raising the bar on crazy rumors by claiming Apple will release not just one, not even two, but a whopping three new iPhones this summer.

  • First would be the next-generation iPhone previous rumors have pointed to, with beefed up processors and features like the camera.
  • Second would be a throwback of sorts to the original iPhone, dropping HSPA 3G in favor of EDGE 2.75G to lower costs and smash what little umbrella was left competitors.
  • Third would be a special version to support a CDMA carrier in China, allowing Apple to penetrate that last, largest of markets. (And with the mere mention of CDMA, cue baseless Verizon rumors in 3… 2… ) [Note: Chinese CDMA bands won't work on Verizon -- hence baseless]

While TiPb has been on the next-gen bandwagon as a long as anyone, I have to admit the other two I’m not as sure about. Even though I mentioned the possibility of an EDGE-again iPhone on Twitter this weekend, Sacha Segan from PCMag was quick to point out a problem: AT&T is cutting EDGE capacity in favor of 3G. And like Giz says in the link below, Apple’s never been a retro-embracing company…

Would anyone be interested in an uber-cheap (free on contract, low EDGE data plan) version of the iPhone? Or is it Next Gen or nothing? And could we see a world where people are smuggling CDMA iPhones out of China?!

[via Gizmodo via Slashphone]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Rumor: 3 New 3rd Generation iPhones Coming This Summer

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Monday, April 13th, 2009 iPhone Hacks, Tips and Tricks Comments Off
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