Being true to this saying the traditional media (CNN, New York Times, etc.) are again reporting the Mac rumors as fact. Even with a recent example of how irresponsible these traditional media were; CNN iReport incident.
You can see from Dow Jones Newswires article Apple Sets Oct 14 Event: “Spotlight On Notebooks” they are referring to all the rumors about what Apple may announce as facts. They even went as far as suggesting that Apple is using this event on October 14, 2008, 09:30 (PST) as a tactic to recover the falling price of Apple’s stock (AAPL).
This Dow Jones Newswires’ Ben Charny has such high regards for Apple, that he is basically suggesting that Apple has such a great foresight, as to predict the collapse of the US economy and the global financial market. So they planned approximately 2 years ahead of time to have an event on exactly October 14, 2008; several days after Apple’s stock price broke its 52-weeks low a few times, to make announcements that will recover the price of their stock. That is utterly ridiculous.
BTW: I am surprised that Walt Mossberg of Dow Jones did not spot this Charny article.
If I was not a passionate follower of technology trends and news, in particular Apple’s, I will have believe Charny’s view points as truth and will be gravely disappointed if come Tuesday (PST) I did not hear all the things that Charny mentioned in his article.
Similarly financial and industry analysts heighten Apple’s upcoming financial results (to be announced on October 21, 2008), then lowers these heightened prediction causing the general investor to panic, and when Apple’s actual financial results are just several percentage over Apple’s previous prediction, these same analysts will be quick to report how Apple has missed the market expectations.
The above page where Charny’s article appeared was in CNNMoney’s web site. I can’t believe that after the recent debacle of CNN iReport, they would be responsible enough to not simply take the Charny’s article from the Dow Jones Newswire and publish it on their web site.
I call for all “traditional media” to be more responsible. Please consider their average audience and their degree of prior knowledge before publishing any information as fact.
Anyone who has followed Apple for as long as I had (24+ years) will know that Apple never pre-announce any news about products. So if you do not read it on Apple.com then it is just a rumor and/or educated analysis of what’s to come. The latter is what I try to do on this site.
For my readers who want to find out more about the rumors that Charny used as fact, please check out the following creditable Macintosh/Apple rumor sites:
Apple HK made the iPhone 3G available to everyone with a HK shipping address via Apple Hong Kong’s online store.
This made Hong Kong the hub (and “source”) of iPhone 3G that are free from the shackle of the money hungry, backward thinking mobile carriers. As of the writing of this post Apple Hong Kong’s online store shows a 24 hours delivery time and free shipping. I am certain when news spread of this availability, the inventory will go quickly.
I was always against the idea of having to commit to Three HK for a 2-year contract just to gain the privilege of purchasing an Apple iPhone 3G. Now I have less of a barrier to bring this great device to the mobile carrier of my choice (”Smartone-Vodafone”).
Ah… my first generation iPhone worth even less now. Them are the breaks, especially with technology devices.
Is this move by Apple a sign of things to come for other (47) iPhone selling countries? Is this Apple’s way of changing their strategy to put as many iPhones in the hands of consumers as possible? This has always been one of the pain points of critics.
In hindsight, did Apple make the right move, by first capitalizing on the revenue gain from the few carriers reselling iPhones, Apple not only stir up the excitements for the device, but was also able to string the carriers along with the privilege of exclusivity.
Steve Jobs always says that Apple is a software company focus on delivering the best, complete user-experience to the end-users. Assuming this action in Hong Kong is indeed a change in Apple’s iPhone strategy, this means they are indeed focusing more on what one can do with the iPhone rather than simply selling iPhones. You can say it is a means to an end.
As a result more focuses will be placed on the AppStore in iTunes Store, and the debacle approval process that Apple had employed thus far for 3rd party applications. If Apple really going to focus on what one can do with the iPhone; aka software, then Apple will need to improve the development process, making it much more seamless and less of a walled garden.
May be Apple should consider the Mac OS X and Darwin approach, where it takes an open operating system like FreeBSD created Mac OS X and then released a version of it as Opensource called Darwin. Imagine Apple taking something like Google’s Android, transform it into a new version of Mobile Cocoa and then contributing back to the Opensource Android platform.
With this proposed approach Apple will differentiate itself among the handset manufactures in terms of design, which Jonathan Ive consistently delivers. And on the great user experience of the Apple version of the Android compatible mobile phone.
Back when Apple first announced the availability of the iPhone 3G to 73 countries around the world, with many of those having more than one carriers receiving the privilege of selling the phone. I had predicted the plan of Apple is to introduce the iPhone through exclusive carrier to build up the hype. Then it allows certain countries more than one carriers to sell the iPhone so that consumers receive a choice, but when the carriers not able to differentiate themselves among its competitors, Apple steps in and say, “you [the carriers] cannot say we did not let you try.”, they had for a year and a half. Now [the end of 2008] they take over and sell the phone independent of any 3rd parties and no one can complain they did not give them a chance.
If my analysis is correct, you may not want to rush out and get the iPhone 3G from Apple Hong Kong’s online store. That is because the third phase of Apple’s iPhone strategy will happen in Hong Kong when Three (”rumored”) looses its exclusivity late October. Just in time for Apple to lower the price for the Christmas shopping season.
Most people; especially the critics, need to remember that Steve Jobs manages Apple like a chess master, he is always thinking many moves ahead of all of us. So don’t be so quick to criticize his decisions. Over the years [24+], being a user of the Macintosh and making it my computing tool of choice, I have learnt to accept the fact that Apple; particularly Steve Jobs, knows better.
Even though I am not in Hong Kong and on vacation in Beijing I am blogging and keeping an eye on the iPhone hacking community.
In the past 14 months I had unlocked/restored my iPhone over 30+ times, and documented my experience and findings with fellow readers. Much of these repeated unlocking and restoring was because I was testing various “unauthorized” 3rd party applications (”hacks”) for the iPhone, and some of them were not as stable as they should be. Even with authorized 3rd party applications my iPhone was sluggish and crashes when I run some of the applications.
When Apple claims that the iPhone firmware 2.1, released on September 12th, will correct much of the problems I’ve been encountering, I was again excited for the possibilities of returning my iPhone (1st generation) to its efficient spiffy 1.x state. Unfortunately, since my iPhone is unlocked and jailbroken I had to wait for the iPhone Dev team to upgrade their hacking tool, Pwnage Tool.
The iPhone Dev Team released their new version of Pwnage Tool 2.1 (Bittorent download) on Sunday (September 14), but I did not have time; rightfully, to check it out. I was planning to visit the Forbidden City this morning, but it is raining heavily in Beijing, so I decided to upgrade my iPhone (1st generation) instead.
I had wanted to hold myself back for 24 hours to give iPhone web sites: ModMyiFone, Hack the iPhone, MacGeekBlog, etc. time to refine the procedures and all the possible things that may go wrong during the process.
Now I am happy to say that I have now successfully unlocked my iPhone running firmware 2.1. The process went without a hitch.
I did not have to do anything to my already unlocked iPhone running firmware 2.0.2. All I did to prepare myself for the unlocking was the following:
Upgrade my iTunes to 8.0
Download the firmware 2.1 (5F136) (for 1st generation iPhone), placing this firmware (IPSW file) in ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates/ folder on your Mac.
If you had not already done so, you will need to download the 3.9 and 4.6 bootloaders. onto your computer.
The rest is simple. You can choose the well written tutorials from Hack the iPhone.
Enjoy and do share you experience with rest of the readers here. Particularly iPhone users from Hong Kong.
After Apple released the iPhone firmware 2.0.2 over a week ago and the rumored fixes it contains, which suppose to resolve many of the issues introduced by the iPhone firmware 2.0. I was eager to be able to upgrade my iPhone (1st generation). Unfortunately, my iPhone was jailbroken and unlocked, so I had to wait for the hacking community; mainly iPhone Dev Team, to release a tool that will allow me to upgrade my pwned iPhone.
The iPhone Dev Team did introduce such a tool (Pwnage Tool 2.0.3) several days ago, but quickly pulled it off its server after several hours. Dispointed but happy that iPhone Dev Team reacted quickly on a bug that they found to be serious.
Yesterday, they finally released a new version of the Pwnage Tool 2.0.3.1 that resolved all know issues. I quickly downloaded it and after giving it 24 hours began to upgrade my iPhone.
I was happy to report that my iPhone upgraded successfully and all the issues I’ve had in the past with my iPhone running pre-2.0.2 firmware had all disappeared. Particularly the slowness when typing a message.
Today I ready the following report from iPhone Hacks…
Some analysts have reported that the problem is with the Infineon chip that Apple has used in iPhone 3G, while there are others who believe that the issue is with the carriers such as AT&T who has a relatively young 3G network…
… They concluded that the results were completely normal…
… A difference of 4 to 6 dB could have indicated that there is a something wrong.
I think the critics need to be a little bit less harsh on Apple on this whole iPhone 3G reception thing.
Yes, the reported iPhone 3G reception issue is not restricted to the USA, iPhone 3G users in Australia also have similar issues.
The thing is that both these countries do not have mature 3G cellular network cities, let alone national coverage.
Here in Hong Kong, all 5 cellular carriers: CSL, PCCW, Three, Smartone-Vodafone, People, have 3G network coverage for over 5 years.
You should see the number of cellular antennas here in the city, much smaller than most Australian and American cities.
It is expected to receive perfect cellular coverage within office buildings, malls and subway trains.
I personally have not use the iPhone 3G, because I am very happy with my “2G” iPhone (unlocked and jailbroken). I also had not heard of anyone I know who owns an iPhone 3G in Hong Kong complains about receptions either.
It is good that Apple tries to take responsibilities on the ultimate user experience of iPhone 3G owners, but the carriers (especially the less mature 3G operators) need too also.
PS: carriers in India is selling the iPhone 3G at very high prices even when compared to the rest of Asia, and they don’t even have a functional 3G network.
A student developer, Zac White, released a software framework to the Opensource community, in hopes to finally enable cross-application Copy & Paste on the iPhone/iPod Touch. He calls this framework OpenClip.
Zac claims that his framework does not violate Apple’s SDK rules. The following is a demonstration of the framework on some yet to release versions of iPhone applications.
With the OpenClip framework solving the cross-application implementation of Copy & Paste, we now have to solve the User Interface (UI) of implementing Copy & Paste within an application. Fortunately, the folks at Proximi had already gave it a good start. You can see their “Candidate UI for Copy & Paste on the iPhone” in the video below.
They have even created the iPhone application MagicPad to demonstrate the Copy & Paste UI.
Although, at the moment Apple has said that the Copy & Paste feature is not high on their list of new features for the iPhone. Copy & Paste on a computer was made popular and important part of a GUI operating system’s interface by Apple. The reluctant of Apple to implement this feature on the iPhone, is not because they do not know users want this feature. It is because Apple wants to make sure every features implement on the iPhone are full-proof and usable by the wide range of iPhone users that exist.
In the past when 3rd party developers released solutions that is highly desirable, Apple had went in and purchased the feature/implementation directly from the 3rd party developer.
Case in point is HWPen which brought Traditional and Simplified Chinese handwriting input to the iPhone. Apple purchased the software and implementation from the developer, applied the Apple touch and then released it in iPhone firmware 2.0.
If adoption of the OpenClip framework and Promixi’s Cut, Copy & Paste UI become prevalent, may be Apple will participate in the OpenClip Opensource project by adopting its technology and acquiring the work from Promixi.
I am talking about this to help spread the adoption of OpenClip.
It is confirmed that there will indeed be an Apple event at Apple’s Cupertino HQ, 1 Infinite Loop, titled “The Spotlight Turns to Notebooks“.
Apple HK made the 
Even though I am not in Hong Kong and on vacation in Beijing I am blogging and keeping an eye on the iPhone hacking community.
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