OK, forget about what I said before. Screw the storage and the 5MP camera. I’ve been reviewing the iPhone 3G specs, and it’s finally coming with exactly what I wanted: a genuine iPhone SIM Ejector Tool.
We just talked to AT&T’s President of National Distribution Glenn Lurie, who gave us all the new pricing and activation details for the iPhone 3G, which won’t be getting special treatment anymore. It will be using all AT&T”s standard voice and data plans, which means US$30 for unlimited 3G data for consumers, US$45 for business users. Also, no in-home activation for iPhone 3G–it will have to be activated in store (at AT&T or Apple Store), which takes 10-12 minutes, meaning that first day line is going to SUCK. And you will have to camp out, since there won’t be any online ordering at launch–and Glenn was mum on how many phones there’d be to go around.
In a conversation with Ars Technica, AT&T has revealed that it will remain the sole carrier of the iPhone in the US and that their new agreement will eliminate the revenue-sharing model that gave Apple a portion of AT&T’s monthly service revenue. Not all that surprising when you consider the hit AT&T is taking with the significant drop in iPhone prices this time around.
Furthermore, it seems that current iPhone owners will be locked into a new 2 year contract if they decide to upgrade to 3G—butif you purchased your iPhone on or before May 27th, you will not have to pay an additional handset charge. [Ars Technia]
MobileMe, Apple’s replacement for .Mac, was announced at WWDC today. Feature-wise, it actually sounds pretty decent, and appears to be a graceful and highly usable evolution of its aging predecessor. Something struck me (and some others)as as a little odd about the name they chose. Not only is MobileMe an awkward name, its logo is remarkable similar to notorious software disaster from nearly a decade ago.When rumours of the MobileMe broke a while ago, the most compelling reason to disregard them was the fact that the name sort of sucked. Would a company so famous, especially in recent years, for extremely shrewd marketing and the creation of household brand names really release this product as MobileMe, and make it look like this? Yes. Yes they would.
Giz camp is divided. Some here are going to get the new iPhone 3G because of the new speed, the GPS, and, hummm… ahh… new design? Whatever. Others will not get it. I belong to the latter camp. I was really expecting more storage, at least 32GB. Or 64GB. I would have been happy to pay for it. And what about a new camera? Anyway, since I can live a little longer without 3G, I’ll wait for that. But what about you? Are you going to get the new iPhone 3G? Tell us in the comments.
So finally, at long last, the iPhone 3G has been announced. It has 3G (obviously) and GPS! Great news! But what about the other stuff we were expecting to get upgraded as well? Was anything updated other than those two features?
newVideoPlayer("new_iphone_AD.flv", 506, 423,""); Did anyone else let out a Darth Vader scream when Steve said July 11? Sorry to mix movie metaphors here, but the new commercial makes me want to go all Mission: Impossible Tom Cruise and break into Apple’s high security bunker, dangling from a rope above a grid of lasers to snatch it early, because July 11 is soooo far away. [Apple]
The 3G iPhone‘s second most persistently rumoured and desired feature (or not), GPS is built in for location service hotness, which Steve says “gonna explode.” Location data comes from a combo of cell towers, Wi-Fi and GPS, with live tracking. Looks like Google Maps is still the default interface. Two unspokens: What’s it do to that otherwise nice battery life? And where’s a carmount? I wonder if those GPS makers are in fact shitting themselves right now.
[Giz@WWDC]
Apple has just unveiled mobileme, “Exchange for the rest of us.” It gives push email to regular users and syncs all of your data from Mail, iCal, iDisk and Address book to all your devices at once. It works via a new site, me.com (which isn’t up as of now). Me.com replaces .Mac and it’ll be an automatic update for current .Mac customers.
