What’s that you say? You’ve already got a coffee table full of iPhone coasters, and you’re seeking a few Apple-inspired accessories to match? Perhaps it’s time to deck out your sofa with Apple’s trademark Dock.
Enter Throwboy’s Icon Pillow Collection, which brings you familiar OS X icons in fleece-and-polyfill form. Available in Finder, iChat, iTunes, iPhoto, Dashboard Widgets, and Photo Booth designs, the pillows cost $29 each or $150 for all six at throwboy.com.
How, er, iconic.
From London’s Mail Online comes word “Microsoft boss Bill Gates bans his children from using Apple products… but his wife admits she’d like an iPhone.” Let’s take this with a grain of salt. The Mail’s stock in trade is celebs and speculation. However, as a Windows Mobile 6 user, Melinda I feel your pain.
The original source for the Mail’s rant is a longer, mainly glowing, article about Ms Gates by Michael Specter in Vogue.com. Buried in the eleventh densely packaged paragraph is the money shot.
“[B]eing a Microsoft child does carry unusual burdens. “There are very few things that are on the banned list in our household,” Gates tells me. “But iPods and iPhones are two things we don’t get for our kids.”
Yeah, being Bill’s kids carries a heavy burden– No Playstation, iPod, or iPhone plus an insatiable desire to DRM the world. Beyond that, if they change too many articles of clothing at the same time they must be re-authorized.
It’s hard to call two incidents of some occurrence around the world a trend, but, when those incidents both involve an electrical device catching fire spontaneously, it creates a situation that’s hard to ignore — especially when that device is the iPhone. On Saturday, Italian blogger Tim Colbourne was charging his 3G handset and, after three hours, it sparked and caught fire at the base. Tim did a little investigation and found a case of a Swedish handset doing the same thing back in 2008, making us a little concerned that there could be more melted chargers out there. Apple replaced that earlier phone after something of a fight, and while we’re hoping they’ll be a little friendlier here, we’re also hoping this gives Cupertino another bit of incentive to go ahead and switch over to micro-USB already. All the cool kids are doing it, and you don’t see their cables catching fire — usually.
[Via Cult of Mac]
Filed under: Cellphones
Is the iPhone hotter than we think? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Want no-fuss wireless printing from your iPhone or iPod touch? HP’s new (free) iPrint Photo app may be just what the doctor ordered. Once installed on your device, the app searches for any wireless HP printer on your home network. Then, from the app interface, you can select any photo on your iPhone, click print, and the printer will automatically adjust its settings and produce a standard 4-by-6-inch photo.
Check out the demo video after the jump to see it in action.
I’m not in love with
the iLuv alarm clock, but
having two docks rocks.
—Tim Gideon
For for the full-length, free-verse iLuv iMM173 review check out PCMag.com.
Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
Barring any disruptive portfolio shifts prior to its introduction, the Palm Pre will complete a new competitive handset dynamic that began with the introduction of the iPhone. Each of the four major U.S. mobile operators will be emphasizing a capacitive touchscreen smartphone. Curiously, none come from any of the top five global phone manufacturers. And even more curiously, each will be powered by a different operating system as the Pre at Sprint jockeys with the iPhone at AT&T, the BlackBerry Storm at Verizon Wireless, and the T-Mobile G1.
These signature handsets go beyond exclusives or even strong identification with the service provider. They bear the burden of attracting consumers looking for the coolest phone experience or at least minimizing the impact of the other signature handsets. In return, carriers lavish marketing dollars on them. Their role exemplifies a transformation of the market from the days when the RAZR was every carrier’s “it” phone and operators competed on their particular shade of pink .
The carriers’ selection of their signature handsets must be disappointing to Microsoft, which cannot claim a Windows Mobile device among them. Indeed, the single mobile operator Microsoft highlighted at Mobile World Congress as being an exceptional partner was France’s Orange. It’s not as if an operating system must be exclusive to the device as there are other BlackBerrys out there (although, as Verizon Wireless tirelessly notes, the Storm is the first touchscreen BlackBerry). And it is only an accident in time that has made the G1 the exclusive Android handset. It certainly isn’t about application support as incredibly all of the current signature handsets will have debuted without extensive third-party programs available.
Regardless, though, and despite efforts by HTC, Sony Ericsson and Samsung to skin Windows Mobile as well as Microsoft’s own improvements in Windows Mobile 6.1, there is a perceived cachet to these four signature phones that the best Windows Mobile devices are not yet delivering.
Continue reading Switched On: The “phonetastic four” versus Windows Mobile
Filed under: Cellphones
Switched On: The “phonetastic four” versus Windows Mobile originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Word on the street was, when Apple was working to release the iPhone, the company approached Verizon with the possibility of carrying the handset exclusively. Of course, that didn’t happen–and considering how well the phone has sold over the past two years, it’s hard not to imagine some Verizon exec kicking him- or herself behind boardroom doors.
According to a new rumor, though, Apple is ready to try the wireless carrier once again, having overestimated AT&T’s coverage of the national wireless market. Without expanding to another carrier, the iPhone doesn’t have much hope of competing with the likes of BlackBerry.
Inside sources have apparently been tipping off a number of blogs, including 9 to 5 Mac, about the move. It’s certainly in line with the company’s recent attempts to hire on EVDO and CDMA experts.
Would you like to save $100 on a new iPhone? Sure, we all would, and Best Buy giving its Premier Silver Reward Zone members the chance to do just that; to knock a full Benjamin off the price of any 8GB or 16GB model. Meanwhile other, non-premier members (anyone who didn’t drop $2,500 at Best Buy last year) will have to make do with $50 off. This is in addition to the other discounts you’ll get when signing up for a new plan, and is a nice bonus either way — assuming you’re already a Rewards Zone member. If you’re not and still want to get in on the action, tough cookies. You should have joined prior to the 21st, when the retailer opened the window on this deal. It closes again on the 28th.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Best Buy shows membership has its benefits, offers up to $100 off new iPhones originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Even as other tech companies have begun preaching the gospel of openness, Apple has continued to maintain a stance of complete control over its hardware and software properties–a position that has naturally carried over into its hottest property, the iPhone. But while the company has long expressed a dissatisfaction with the concept of jailbreaking, Apple hasn’t really gone so far as to suggest that the activity was illegal until now.
Apple filed comments with the U.S. Copyright Office claiming that the process constitutes copyright infringement, seeing as how it uses modified versions of Apple’s software. The company is also arguing that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act entitles it to restrict device interoperability with anything Apple hasn’t pre-approved–a similar argument, incidentally, used by manufacturers of garage door openers.
Video chat and recording? On the iPhone? Maaaaaybe. In our occupational obligation to bring you the dirty details on every last Apple patent comes this latest gem. Thanks again to the devoted digging of one blogger, a recent 355-page filing by the company has shed some light on the possibility of video recording and conferencing for the popular handset.
Says the patent of the device’s built-in video camera,
In some embodiments, the functions may include telephoning, video conferencing, e-mailing, instant messaging, blogging, digital photographing, digital videoing, Web browsing, digital music playing, and/or digital video playing. Instructions for performing these functions may be included in a computer-readable storage medium or other computer program product configured for execution by one or more processors.
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