iPhone

Being an attorney with an iPhone, I've wondered about the privacy of my SMS-text messages and whether they can be withheld from prying eyes. I don't mean that dinner date across from you, but in a larger sense. Think about what we've all begun to say via text messages: Carrie Underwood got dumped this way and Detroit's mayor was brought down by his text messages, for example. Like it or not, texting has become a communication medium that is here to stay, meaning that the contents of those messages are also susceptible to legal discovery, i.… Read more

The Macalope has been putting this off for days but, as he's often said, this is the beat he chose and there's no use crying about it now.

After last week's announcement that the iPhone 3G would sell for $199 in the U.S., the pointy one realized there'd be one silly pundit who would be crowing over this as some kind of victory for his steel trap of a mind. Apple had dropped the price, as was long foretold in his dire prophecies!

Well, you can see why the brown and furry one put off … Read more

Apple has settled a patent-infringement lawsuit over the visual voice mail system used in the iPhone by signing a license for the technology in question.

Klausner Technologies sued Apple and AT&T last December over the visual voice mail feature inside the iPhone, which lets you select and listen to voice mail from a list of messages, just like an e-mail in-box. Reuters reports that Apple, AT&T, and eBay are all now licensees to Klausner's technology, although financial terms of the deal were undisclosed.

AOL and Vonage had already signed deals with Klausner before it came … Read more

Apple may be looking at an open-source solution as a way to get around Adobe Systems' Flash technology.

Roughly Drafted was able to find a developer willing to talk about last week's Worldwide Developers Conference sessions, which are supposed to be confidential. But these things have a way of coming to light, and one session on Friday apparently covered a technology called SproutCore that could give Apple a way to get its Cocoa development frameworks into the hearts and minds of Web developers.

Web applications are big these days, and developers are continuously looking for ways to improve the … Read more

The Macalope is certain that you're sitting at home asking yourself, "I wonder if the Macalope's going to buy an iPhone 3G?"

Don't be embarrassed. It's OK. It's not unusual to wonder what a mythical creature who's part man, part antelope and part Mac would want in a phone.

Well, OK, maybe it is. But the horny one much prefers this kind of question to when you've called him late at night and asked what he's wearing.

Which is pretty stupid, really. What's he wearing? Come on. Fur. He'… Read more

With iPhone 2.0 coming soon, a question I've heard many a current iPhone owner wanting to get the next iPhone ask: what do I do with my old one? This emerging question highlights the early-adopter's plight against the law of diminishing returns. It's doubtful that a current iPhone will fetch more than $100 on eBay. But you never know. This presupposes that people will dump their old iPhones for a new one, but the incentives are there this time around especially with the lowered price, and given our disposable cell phone culture, it's more than … Read more

Apple has moved to squash rumors that the iPhone's App Store could be coming sooner rather than later.

Earlier Wednesday, Apple's Australian Web site had a little note at the bottom of its page about the iPod Touch that said "Shop for hundreds of applications made for iPod Touch. Available June 27." On Monday, Apple announced that the App Store, which is part of the iPhone 2.0 software release, would arrive on July 11.

An Apple representative confirmed that July is still the plan, and the Aussies have since updated their page to point to … Read more

UPDATE: This requirement is only for those who purchased after 5/27/2008 and are turning their old iPhones in to get a new "free" (now with more expensive data!) iPhone 3G. AT&T employees may now uncross their legs.

Um, fellas?

This better not be true.

I just finished an e-mail exchange with an AT&T spokesperson who told me that if you upgrade from your current iPhone to iPhone 3G at an AT&T store, you need to turn in your first iPhone to qualify.

It seems wrong, so the Macalope advises a … Read more

Apple may have taken a look at the future of mobile chip development and decided to forge its own path.

The New York Times scored an interview with Apple CEO Steve Jobs following Monday's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, and buried inside a rambling exchange about parallel processing and Mac OS X Snow Leopard was this little nugget about PA Semi, the chip company Apple acquired in April. "PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods," Jobs told the Times.

System-on-chips, or SOCs, are pretty much what they sound like: complete computer systems on a … Read more