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Top 10 Pervasive Tech Myths That Are Only Wasting Your Time Just as Apple was riding high on the iPhone, Ferris Bueller style in a parade of fans and media alike, Universal Music plans to throw a knee into Jobs and Co.’s collective crotch. Universal Music Group will supposedly tell Apple that they will not be renewing a long term contract for iTunes music, instead going for a short-term sales agreement that will still let Apple keep their artists’s music up for sale.
This shorter contract benefits Universal by letting it have more flexibility in dealings with other music services, presumably ones like Microsoft’s Zune or Rhapsody, or even its own store if it feels up to it. How does this affect you? Our guess is that it won’t. Apple will do a lot to keep Universal at the table, which probably means you won’t be missing your Alizee or your Amy Grant anytime soon. But it may mean lower profits for Apple itself, and could slow down any efforts in motion to get DRM-free (like EMI’s catalog) into iTunes.
Take this with a grain of salt, until more tests come in. WirelessInfo, the site that does 15,000 word mobile phone reviews, just finished testing the iPhone’s battery life while talking and browsing, and it’s not looking even close to the rated specs, or the other phones in that battery life chart that Apple published. 4 hours and 3 minutes of voice, and 3 hours and 11 minutes using the browser and EDGE; if they’d gone for 3G, that would even be shorter.
newVideoPlayer("iphoneringtones_gawker.flv", 475, 376); Not only are we kept from using AAC or even nude MP3 files for ringtones, we’re stuck with a list of mostly bad ringtones. (I did find one I like, and it’s not the one from the Macworld Keynote.) We can’t even buy new ringtones, although iTunes 7.3 seems to have functionality for this hidden away.
It’s not you, it’s me. Okay, I’m not ‘leaving’ leaving, but I am off to Europe for three weeks to cover the eSports World Cup and see how Aussie reps Team Immunity do in the Counter-Strike finals. (I write for papers and mags too, not just Giz – but you guys are my favourites, of course).
I’ll still be working the Giz updates plus bringing you any interesting gadget news I come across on my travels. But as AU is still a one man show, forgive me if I have some connectivity teething problems in coming days. Pretty sure I’ve got solid access while away, but you can never be 100% sure until you jack in.
We do have a guest editor scheduled for one week at the end of July when I take my first week off work (not Giz, obviously) since 2003. Offline and everything! For now, I’ll be back in the seat Wednesday when I hit the ground in Paris. Bon Voyage! -Seamus Byrne
Struggling to spot the gadget coverage from the haystack of iPhone news? This post will run top of the tree all weekend is here to kick off your Monday morning, giving you links back to the general gadget needles lost in the iNoise – there are more in there than you might think! -Seamus Byrne
Holux GR-239, raw GPS data for your car. STITCH glasses, knit some stylish eyewear. Planetary lamps get you high. Just 30% of gamers know their consoles play movies. Sega toys robotic animal extravaganza. Meizu MiniOne coming out next year. Tiny motorcycles made from watches. D-Link goes 802.11n Draft 2.0. Bill Gates’s US$125m house. Fifth Element Blu-Ray disc owners being offered replacements. Laughing bullets? Yep, they tried to make some. O2 XDA Helen Leaked? Lawnchair puts grass on your ass. Beach pillow with shade built-in. The credit card of the future! Girlfriend pillow – for those who need to fake it. iRobot and taser make nasty security bot. Sugary cereal straws mark low point in our culture. IBM mainframe that makes you wanna dance. Bomb piggy bank explodes when you take out money. Digital cowboy HDD media player rounds up FTP, HDMI, and lotsa formats. Embotec creates counterfeit detector and mouse combo. Transparent LCD displays in future? Dento-munch the future of dental research. Air purifier makes world pollen- and pollution-free.
The two-iPhones-per-person rule instituted for people who lined up on launch day? Out the window. You can now buy four iPhones in the SF store, and possibly even more depending on how your local Apple store operates. Go nuts, but don’t expect much for them if you’re eBaying.
Remember way back in 2004, when Verizon Wireless introduced Motorola’s V710 with “crippled” Bluetooth? Headset pairing worked, but there were no file-transfer options and other extended features. People literally sued in protest. Well, as you probably know, the scales of justice never tipped. In the past three years, most Bluetooth phones sold by carriers in the US have been “crippled” in that sense, including the iPhone: • It can’t transfer files to a PC, or appear on a desktop for drag-and-drop file juggling. • It can’t send a photo to a Bluetooth printer. • It can’t stream audio via Bluetooth to a compatible speaker system or headset. (Video is out of the question.) However, it can link with any Bluetooth headset on the market, including the Apple iPhone Bluetooth Headset that will soon be at an Apple Store near you. Now that you’re depressed about its lack of capability, want to hear what’s cool?
It’s official: your older video iPod can duplicate many of the features of Apple TV, but the iPhone specifically cannot. There is no capacity for outputting video, via Apple dock, cable or third-party accessory. This means that the iPhone will not be a direct competitor to the Apple TV (good news for Apple, perhaps). It also means that any videos you may have bought a second time or encoded again at higher resolution may have been in vain. And so are your chances of ever bringing movies to your vacation rental, weekend home or friend’s house to watch via iPhone.
newVideoPlayer("leanderkidphone_gawker.flv", 475, 376); I bumped into Leander from Cult of Mac on Friday’s launch, with the cutest thing ever — his kid dressed up as an iPhone. Some Macheads pointed out the icons were incorrect, missing YouTube. And people think we’re sick. Listen to Leander tell the kid to keep smiling for the cameras, or else there’ll be no iPhone playtime later.
Let’s start with the accidental… ;)
A reader dropped her iPhone (pictured above) shortly after buying it, from a distance of only two feet up, but managed to crack her screen on the thinly-carpeted floor. But with no replacement plan, insurance, or any sort of clumsy-protection, she found herself screwed out of $600. That was, until the Apple store from which she purchased the unit emailed her and replaced it free. Wow. Her quote: “I guess they felt sorry for me.” galleryPost('iPhoneBroke', 3, 'iPhoneBroke');
