Hasta La Gadget!

Apple has started to refund buyers of the $30 rubber-band it calls the Bumper Case. The refund was promised to buyers after Apple offered free bumper cases to iPhone 4 owners to fix the signal-dropping death-grip.

With little fuss, Apple has been refunding customers’ credit-cards for the $30 purchase price plus any tax or shipping. If you paid cash, lord knows how you’ll get your money back. A postal-order or a check, probably. Why not fax Apple to find out?

Some have looked at the bumper cases, which perfectly cover the troublesome exposed external antenna-band on the iPhone 4 and nothing else, and seen conspiracy. “Apple knew about the problem all along,” they cry, “the Bumper proves it!”

That Apple would realize the problem and, instead of fixing it just try to sell a case seems unlikely. I’m with Daring Fireball’s John Gruber on this one: I think that Apple just wanted a slice of the lucrative iPhone case market. After all, at Apple’s entry-level $30 accessory price-point, a rubber-strip costing a few cents will certainly generate a profit.

For those of you who sensibly held-off buying a $30 piece of stationery, you can now get one free. Apple has also launched its iPhone 4 Case Program. This is an actual application, available from the App Store. Download it, log in and order. The Bumper is in there but, as Steve Jobs promised at last Friday’s press event, there are a number of third-party cases too. These actually look pretty good, and come from respected manufacturers like Speck, Belkin and Griffin. All of the cases, from Apple or anyone else, will take 3-5 weeks to ship.

iPhone 4 Case Program [Apple]

Apple Automatically Refunding iPhone 4 Bumper Purchases [Mashable]

Photo: By Mr. T in DC/Flickr

See Also:

• Fix iPhone 4 Reception Troubles for $1
• Can Black Tape Double the Speed of Your iPhone 4?
• Apple's Answer to Antennagate: Free iPhone 4 Cases

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Well, there’s nothing like masking bad news with good news, right Apple? Just moments after quietly announcing that the white iPhone 4 is now scheduled to ship sometime between tomorrow and your New Year’s Eve party, the company has also fired up its iPhone 4 Case Program. Just as Jobs promised last week at an emergency press event, this program will ensure that anyone who purchases an iPhone 4 prior to September 30th will be able to receive an iPhone 4 Bumper or select third-party case from the company at no charge. ‘Course, you need to be located in a country or territory that Apple actually ships to, but if that’s all squared away, feel free to hit up the App Store to download the iPhone 4 Case Program app. Once there, you’ll need to sign into your iTunes Store account, select your Bumper or case and wait oh-so-patiently (read: “3 to 5 weeks”). Better hurry — wouldn’t want the servers to get overloaded, now would we?

Oh, and if you happened to have already purchased a Bumper, the company should be hitting your credit card with a full refund (including any applicable taxes and shipping) momentarily. As for the case / Bumper choices? Every single option is available in any color you like… so long as it’s black, of course. There’s a black Apple Bumper option, an Incase Snap Case, Belkin Shield Micra, Griffin Motif, Griffin Reveal, Speck Fitted and Speck PixelSkin HD, but again, don’t go in hoping to select your favorite hue. Yeah, you’re free to bicker about free things — we won’t judge.

Update: If you’re one of those wise guys who purchased an iPhone 4 right away just to sell it, you can forget about getting a free case for the handset you no longer own. Apple has arranged this so that only one case can be ordered per iPhone 4, so even if you ordered two under your account name, you’ll need two phones to place both of those orders. Check out the error message below if you still don’t believe us.

Apple begins iPhone 4 Case Program: apply for your free case or Bumper now originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Camera+ for the iPhone is another case of a third-party app doing things better than Apple itself. It’s an all-in-one photo-taking and editing application that improves on almost every aspect of the built-in camera app, and it has just gotten a slew of new features with a v1.2 update.

While the post-processing tricks are nice (cropping and special effects) it’s the shooting tools which impress. New in this version is flash control, which lets you switch on the iPhone 4’s LED lamp, either as a quick flash or as a continuous light (useful to get an idea of where the shadows will fall). Also very useful is the separation of exposure and focus. In Apple’s app, you tap the screen and the iPhone sets both exposure and focus on that spot. With Camera+, you can set these independently, still by tapping, for finer control.

The focus also goes from “tap” to “touch”. This subtle difference lets you smoosh your finger around the screen and the focus point will follow. This lets you follow things without constantly tap-tap-tapping.

There also bug fixes and tweaks fixes, most notably a speed increase when shooting, uploading of proper metadata to Flickr and better image stabilization. Best of all, the app is just $2. Available now.

Camera+ [iTunes]

See Also:

• Why the iPhone 4 Camera Is So Promising
• Breaking: iPhone 3GS Camera Doesn't Suck
• Hipstamatic Gentrifies iPhone Camera
• Pro-Camera Adds Image Stabilization to iPhone
• Camera-Triggering iPhone App Allows Remote Viewing

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Automatic refunds, or so the email says. We’ve been on the receiving end of a deluge of tips this morning pointing out that Apple has begun funneling cash back into its users’ pockets — a most unusual event, to be sure — to live up to its retroactive promise of free Bumpers for all (who buy their iPhone 4 before September 30). If the particular wording is to be trusted, that should mean that even those who haven’t yet bothered to put in a claim, but did purchase a Bumper, will find themselves enriched in due course. Apple estimates this bandaid solution to its antenna problems will cost $175 million in real cash money, but we suspect the biggest price to pay will be in the form of pride and reputation.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Apple starts refunding Bumper purchases automagically originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Jul 2010 01:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The San Francisco Chronicle calls him the city’s “unluckiest thief,” and frankly, that’s hard to dispute.

Earlier this week, Horatio Toure rode up to a woman on his bike, grabbing her iPhone right out of her hands. The story would likely have had a more depressing, less hilarious ending had the woman not been holding a handset sporting a prototype GPS tracking program. It took only ten minutes to track down and catch Toure, according to the San Francisco police.

The phone belonged to Covia Labs CEO David Kahn, who had given it to his assistant, Jordan Sturm to test the tracking in a real-world setting. The theft occurred moments after she left the building.