iPhone Journal

Speculation is starting to rear it’s ugly ahead again, this time about 3g iPhones shipping in June.

All three Apple stores in New York: Soho, 59th street and West 14th street were all sold out of iPhones this week. Now as well all know this is a very popular phone and it could mean absolutely nothing that they are sold out, or it could mean we are in store for something new.

To add some fuel to the rumor Keven Rose from Digg had this to say on twitter…

Another person confirming iphone rumors w/me (high lvl VP at a big company that works w/Apple) - “it will ship in June w/3G and GPS.”

Until June…

Earlier this year I posted a list of web apps that had a webclip icon.

http://www.iphone-journal.com/iphone-news/list-of-websites-with-webclip-icons

Today I will reveal my own personal list of web apps that I have contained on three full screens on my iPhone.

1. Google
2. Picasa
3. Apple Web App Page
4. Netflix
5. iRadio
6. SeeqPod
7. Fandango
8. Apple Movie Trailers
9. Amazon
10. iLounge
11. Pricecheckah
12. Digg
13. Fluther
14. iCafe
15. CNet
16. Facebook
17. MySpace
18. Linkedin
19. Wikapedia
20. Craigslist
21. Dictionary
22. Break (video site, some NSFW material)
23. Textonphone (great ebook reading site, lots of free books)
24. Free Stuff Times (just like it says, links to free stuff)
25. Slickdeals (coupon site)
26. Expedia (rarely used need to get ride of it)
27. WeightDate (Weight Tracking App, trying to lose a few pounds)
28. Video Poker
29. Bonus Solitaire
30. Frozen Lexicon
31. Kenny Rogers BlackJack
32. Kenny Rogers Roulette
33. Kenny Rogers Wild West Slots

Now it’s your turn. Leave comments with the web apps you have on your iphone.

This weeks iPhone Wallpaper Wednesday is all about spring. The first day of spring is tomorrow, March 20th, and I for one welcome spring with open arms. As much as I enjoy all the seasons here in Pennsylavania I must admit I love spring and summer.

Enjoy these nice landscape wallpapers

During a conference call Adobe’s CEO, Shantanu Narayen announced that they will work with Apple to make sure flash applications run on the iPhone.

Whether and how Flash applications would run on Apple’s iPhone has been an open question since the device’s launch. Narayen’s comments indicate that Adobe will be able to create a version of Flash Lite for the iPhone by using the iPhone software developers kit (SDK) which was released earlier this month.

via news.com

Apple CEO has made it clear on several occasions that flash applications are simply too slow for the iPhone.  The don’t desire to have the iPhone become a bogged down brick much like some windows based phones.

Adobe’s comments seem confident and maybe there will be a resolution in the near future.

As the iPhone SDK gets into more and more hands we have come to find it’s limits.

One of these limitations being that third party applications won’t be allowed to run in the background. Now in terms of games and other such applications this poses only little issues. In fact I’m all for protecting my ram and not having a slow brick in my pocket. However apps like the much awaited for AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) that will now need to be turned off before doing anything else on the phone.

This poses many questions, is the SDK the same for everyone? Do some apps get a pass while other don’t? What will happen if I’m in the middle of a game and the phone rings, do I lose all progress and need to start over?

These questions will all hopefully be answered in a short 3 months (and counting)…

The amount of developers jumping on the SDK increases daily.  With this hot new developer tool we are in line to get lots of new applications and games on the iPhone.

Several major game developers have announced they will be releasing games for the iPhone.

Namco Networks will be releasing Galaga and Pac-man on the iPhone and iPod Touch.  Both games will be redeveloped  for the touch screen interface.  Popcap Games is coming in with new versions of Bejeweled, Peggle and Zuma.   This is just the beginning we’re sure.  Over the next few weeks - months we’ll be hearing lots of new developers releasing old and new games for this new platform.

You read that title correctly, the iphone firmware 2.0 (which hasn’t been released to the public yet) is hacked.

The iPhone Dev Team confirmed that using the iPhone SDK they were able to hack the included version of firmware 2.0. This means that as soon as it’s released in June people can still jailbreak it and use it as they wish. This is not to say that Apple won’t try it’s best to lock it down even more, but let’s face it, it’s only a matter of time before the dev team beats it again.

This is really a never ending battle (a cat and mouse game as Steve Jobs stated) that Apple simply can’t win.

Seriously, Steve Jobs. You are never going to maintain control of the iPhone. Ever. You lost control of it on June 29, 2007. It belongs to the public now. As the continued ingenuity of the iPhone Dev Team has shown time and again, no matter how you attempt to lock down the iPhone, it is going to crack it back open. So why bother?

via Information Week

On another note the SDK has been downloaded a staggering 100,000 times already. This is just in the first couple of days. I expect we will see some really cool apps in the near future.

Gameloft, the self proclaimed #1 mobile games publisher, has recently announced they will produce 15 games for the iPhone.  Michael Guillemot, CEO of Gameloft provided these details during his keynote of their Game Developer Conference.

This news joins that of Sega, Freeverse and EA who also announced they too will be releasing games for the iPhone and iPod Touch during this year.

Gameloft hopes to have a few games ready to be released by June (when the SDK plans to be released to the public).

Apple’s iPhone SDK and Enterprise roadmap press conference just wrapped up.  There are TONs of cool things in store here and we’ll get right to it.

Enterprise Class Features:

• Push Email
• Push Contacts
• Push Calendar
• Global Address List
• Cisco IPsec VPN
• Authentication and Certificates
• Enterprise Class WIFI (WPA2 / 802.1x)
• Enforced Security Policies
• Enterprise Configuration Tools
• Remote Wipe

All the above was asked for and it granted.  wOOt.

Want more… ok..

MS Exchange right into the iPhone — they have licensed ActiveSync for the iPhone.

“Microsoft has come up with a much more advanced architecture, where the iPhone can work directly with the Exchange server in a more reliable and affordable way. We’re building Exchange support so you get push email, push calendaring, push contacts, global address lists, and the ability to remote wipe it.”

Now, what we’ve all been waiting for… The SDK:

They started off with a lot of technical talk about how the back end works.  They developed talked about development tools, API and interface development.

Next they brought on stage some developers who showed us what was possible with the SDK.

First: Travis Boatman from EA

Showed a stripped down version of “Spore”.  A very simple game that uses the accelermeter to move the spore so it can eat things.  Pretty neat.

Second:  Chuck Dietrich from Salesforce.com

Showed off an app that helps sales people integrate their tools on the iPhone.

Third: AOL

Yep, it’s an instant messenger client for the iPhone - SWEET

Forth: Ethan Einhorn from Sega

They showed off yet another game called “Super Monkey Ball”

Ok, next up how do we get the apps on our phones…

Much like the iTunes button we got a few months ago, now we’re getting an App Store Button.  Honestly it seems to work a lot like the installer.app program for jailbreaked phones.  Different sections automatic update notices for apps you have installed etc…

Developers get to pick their own price for the app.  They receive 70% and apple gets 30%.  However if the app is free then it’s free across the board.  Seems fare I guess.

Everything above and more will be available in June…

According to Steve Jobs the iPhone doesn’t support Flash because it runs to slow to be useful. This statement comes from a shareholder meeting were jobs defended it’s reasoning behind not providing Flash support on the iPhone

Users have complained that the iPhone’s lack of Flash support makes the browsing experience less rich than it should be. According to Jobs, Flash Lite doesn’t go far enough, but the full-fledged Flash Player, which is designed to run on laptops, performs sluggishly on the iPhone. He said, “There’s this missing product in the middle.” He didn’t go so far as to say that Adobe was working on such a product for the iPhone or any other product, and neither did Adobe.

via Information Week

At this same meeting Jobs also eluded to the fact that third party apps won’t be available until this summer. So this brings the rumor that the SDK is not ready for production yet to light.

Tomorrow is the big day so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.