Apple Begins Offering iPhone 3G/3GS Without AT&T Contract

In what’s becoming the standard move for Apple as it approaches the launch of a new generation of iPhone hardware, the company has begun to offer the iPhone 3G/3GS for sale without contract at full price on its websites and at its brick-and-mortar retail stores. Without contract, but not unlocked, so don’t get too excited yet Sprint fans.

Of course, there are ways to unlock the iPhones that are simple enough for many computer users, but there lies the tricky mess of possibly voiding your warranty, so tread carefully. It’s likely you’re probably familiar with jailbreaking, risks and all, so I won’t belabor the point.

Buying the iPhone models off-contract won’t be cheap, since you don’t have a carrier helping out via a hefty subsidy, but as any contract-averse individual will tell you, you’ll end up paying far less for the hardware if you can avoid signing your life away for two whole years. Also you might sleep better at night knowing AT&T hasn’t successfully sunk its claws into you.

The now aging 3G 8GB iPhone will cost you $499, while the 16GB 3GS lists at $599 and the 32GB 3GS sells for $699 without subsidy. Those prices start to look a lot less reasonable now that Apple has announced the pricing for the iPad, even though when I bought the iPhone 3GS last year I had to pay full price since I was only a year into my three-year contract, it seemed perfectly fine to drop $700.

As for when you can get these unlocked devices, according to PC World, you might be able to do it right now. PCW writer Sarah Jacobsson called her local store and was told that they were already selling the devices unlocked. Apple hasn’t yet made an official announcement regarding the devices, or updated its web store to reflect the changes, but 9to5 Mac got early wind of the move, and Gizmodo later confirmed via official internal Apple documents.

It’s unclear exactly why Apple seems to do this every time the end of its current iPhone iteration is in sight, but a reasonable guess is that the company would like to sell off as many of the on-hand units it has before it has to deal with an influx of new 4th generation iPhone stock. Even if Apple plans to continue selling the iPhone 3GS alongside the next iPhone, which is likely considering the retention of the 3G last time as a low-priced budget option, Cupertino still probably wants to clean house and bolster sales ahead of the launch.

You’re only allowed to buy one per day, up to a maximum of 1o total phones, so if you’re aiming for an even dozen you’ll have to enlist the help of a friend.

 

http://theappleblog.com/2010/03/23/apple-begins-offering-iphone-3g3gs-without-att-contract/

Make Your iPhone® 4G

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwV4XJJAAas

iPhone 4G Without AT&T?

For those of you who are just unimpressed with sub-4G speeds on your iPhones (or those who do not wish to upgrade to a new device), consider the Sierra Wireless Overdrive 4G WiFi hotspot by Sprint. Though coverage is not the best at the moment, Sprint continues to make inroads in expanding its network and the device is an interesting alternative to those who are frustrated with AT&T’s congested network.

Basically, this is a mobile router that taps into Sprint’s network and creates a local Wi-Fi hotspot for your device, thereby surpassing the technical limitations of the 3G chipset (or lack there of if you happen to have an older iPhone). The tradeoff is that you would still need an AT&T plan for phone features as the Wi-Fi merely supplements the data side. It’s also pricey, weighing in at $99.99 after $250 in discounts and rebates. The monthly plan at $59.99 per month includes unlimited 4G usage (with an ever increasing network) and 3G coverage at 5GB per month.

It’s also interesting to note that Sprint’s iteration of 4G is based on WiMax, which translates to a peak download speed of 10 megabits per second and an average speed of 3-6 megabits per second.

The great news is that this technology is also compatible with the iPad. Though it’s still a $30 premium over AT&T’s unlimited data plan (theirs at $29.99 a month), the speed difference may be of enough value to users. The Overdrive Mobile Hotspot also supports up to five simultaneous users, providing additional benefit and potential cost savings to users with multiple devices.

 

http://theappleblog.com/2010/03/23/iphone-4g-without-att/

Why Apple’s iPad Can’t Succeed in Schools (Yet)

Apple has started making the iPad available on its online education store in packs of 10 with an appallingly–stingy discount of only $20 per iPad. If Apple wants to start a computing revolution with the iPad, it absolutely must get the device into schools. But in order to do that, it’s going to have to try a lot harder, and generous discounts are the easiest problem to solve. There are much bigger hurdles standing in the way.

Let’s start with costs alone. Assume a school wants to buy an iPad for each of its students. Assume the school is small with only 300 children enrolled. Assume also that the school wants to buy the cheapest iPad without AppleCare. At a little more than $450 per iPad, that’s a cost of almost $144,000. I imagine the average state-funded school enjoys less than half that in its annual I.T. budget.

“Aha!” you might argue, “Many schools in underprivileged areas get subsidies from the state and provide laptops for their pupils.”

And, of course, you’d be right. Many schools do provide their students with free or ‘nearly-free’ laptops. But not decent laptops. We’re talking cheap, disposable netbooks that cost far less to insure against loss or damage. (Let’s be realistic – the younger the student, the greater the chance of laptop-death!)

No Competition

I graduated from High School back in the early 90s, and even then my school was considered ahead of the curve when it came to the adoption of computer technology in class. Even so, there were no Macs in my school. They were just too expensive. Here in the UK, the fierce battle in the 1980’s between Acorn, Sinclair, Atari, Amstrad and Commodore meant that there were many perfectly capable, cheap microcomputers available to schools. The Mac was superior to those machines in almost every way, but it couldn’t compete on price.

It has been 16 years since I graduated from high school. And while I’m happy to report that my old school now has iMacs in most classrooms, sadly they only run Windows XP.

The reason for this comes down to two simple factors; Cost, and What’s Best for the Kids. It seems more educational titles are available at lower prices on Windows than on Mac OS X. And, outside school, the kids encounter more Windows PCs than Macs.

So I look at the upcoming iPad and, even though I can see the potential it offers to schoolchildren (and the wider education market), I can’t help but wonder if it has any real chance of making a dent at this time. HP’s upcoming slate PC has more chance of being adopted by my old school simply because it works with all their existing software and runs Windows — the platform the school believes the pupils are better served knowing, rather than Mac OS X, which they have concluded is just too obscure and “specialist.”

And as though these fiduciary and policy-driven decisions aren’t bad enough, there’s another glaring challenge to getting the iPad widely accepted in schools; at the end of the day, it’s just not a book.

Delicate Issues

You see, tablets-as-books is a great idea until the battery dies, and then the student has no textbook and no computer. She will have to plug-in to a power outlet if she wants either of those things back. But consider the delicate health and safety issues associated with cable-safety in a classroom environment. Not to mention the maintenance costs (that’s a lot of power outlets being used more than ever before) and don’t forget the school will suddenly incur higher energy bills. Say what you will about a paper-textbook, at least it doesn’t need plugging-in.

And then there’s the issue of damage. What happens if an iPad screen is cracked? A damaged book cover doesn’t render the book’s contents inaccessible, nor is it likely to slice into fingers. Plus, the cost of a replacement book is trivial. Remind me how much the cheapest iPad is?

Oh, and let’s not forgot that Apple isn’t perfect. Remember when the iPhone OS was updated to 3.1 in September last year? I wrote about it here, and the comments quickly ran to over 100. iPhones everywhere were freezing, crashing, and generally just refusing to work, and all as a result of an official update from Apple itself!

What happens when Apple does the same thing with the iPad? Even the most diligent students who take the greatest of care with their always-charged-in-time-for-class iPads will suffer if an update from Apple proves flaky.

And, finally, there’s the matter of crime. No one ever wanted to rob a kid from my school. The only thing we ever carried in our bags was biology books and the occasional Thundercats pencil case. But what if my school handed-out iPads to its pupils? Overnight, the school uniform would become an advertisement to any would-be criminal; “mug this kid – expensive computer on-board.”

I’d dearly love to see all school kids and college students everywhere take-up iPads as their favorite learning tools. Sadly, I just don’t see how that can happen as long as they remain significantly more expensive than textbooks, more sophisticated than simple e-book readers and less resilient than the existing, proven toolset — traditional, dead-tree textbooks.

 

http://theappleblog.com/2010/03/24/why-apples-ipad-cant-succeed-in-schools-yet/

Instapaper Coming to the iPad

“Read Later – ⌘4”. I live my life by it. I find an interesting article but have no time to read it – ⌘4. A crazy-long message in Gmail that’s just perfect for, um, ‘bathroom reading’ – ⌘4. Pretty much anything that demands attention but can wait until I’m curled up in bed at the end of the day? ⌘4.

What’s all this ⌘4 stuff about? Why, that’s my browser shortcut to Instapaper by Marco Arment. Instapaper strips the text out of almost any browser page and stores it for later reading; for me, that’s usually via the Instapaper Pro app on my iPhone.

And now Arment brings us Instapaper for the iPad. I’ve never been more excited! On the Instapaper blog yesterday, Arment wrote;

I’m probably supposed to keep this secret and build everyone’s anticipation to hype this up. Oh well. Maybe I’ll do that for the Instapaper edition for Apple’s next revolutionary computing platform.

First: Instapaper is definitely coming to iPad.

Second: Instapaper is coming to iPad very soon. Possibly even on day one — yes, I’m going for it — but that’s optimistic.

Third: Instapaper Pro will be a universal iPhone/iPad application. That means that you only have to buy Instapaper Pro once to have it on both devices, and the iPad edition will be available to all Pro purchasers at no additional charge when it’s released.

You know that joy we all felt when Apple announced Snow Leopard would be super-duper-cheap? Remember the way you smiled when you heard the news, and felt a warm glow inside? That’s how I feel about Instapaper Pro on the iPad. I think I even went “Squee!” when I read Arment’s post. (I was alone, so no one knows I made a fool of myself. Oh, wait…)

Arment adds;

It looks like Instapaper Pro, but bigger, and with slight interface tweaks and redesigns where appropriate.

When everyone else was stalling their iPhone development for months in order to redesign entire applications for the iPad, I made the obligatory cardboard prototype and mocked up a bunch of radical interface departures.

Ultimately, none of them were very practical. Some worked well, but only with ideal content (which, in practice, is rarely the case except in the Editor’s Picks folder). And I didn’t want to commit to any huge risks because I don’t have an iPad to test them on.

And that’s the hurdle many iPad developers currently face. Any developer will agree it’s important to be in the iPad app store as close to Day One as possible, but all app development and testing is horribly crippled by the ‘little’ fact that no one has an iPad yet. Emulators and simulations are all very well and good, but nothing beats having the real thing to hold in one’s hands.

Supersize

What might seem like a great design decision or function implementation in a simulator may not work in ‘real’ life, on an actual hold-it-in-your-hands-and-swipe-with-your-fingers iPad. There’s a big difference between how we interact with a computer monitor, and how we interact with a magazine – and the iPad is the mongrel offspring lovechild of the two. (You know what I mean.) Truth is, no amount of cardboard dummy iPads and on-screen simulations will provide the same tactile feedback and degree of first-hand quality control offered by an actual iPad.

Some developers are no doubt hoping that the iPad’s super-size function (by which apps designed for the iPhone are displayed at more than double their original size on the iPad) will keep customers happy until they can get a real iPad and spend time properly (re)developing their apps for it.

So why didn’t Arment just let Instapaper Pro run in that supersize, double-pixel mode? After all, content in Instapaper is mostly text. No worries about pixelated graphics there, right?

Wrong. Arment fired up Instapaper in his iPad simulator. The result?

It sucked, and it was completely unusable by my standards…

While I could have taken the conservative option and waited until a month or two after the iPad’s release before launching Instapaper for it, an iPad without native Instapaper Pro is not a device I want to own.

Me neither. And, if early reports are accurate, neither will a lot of other people for whom the iPad is, for the most part, a reading device. According to a report today on TUAW, a comScore poll of prospective iPad customers revealed that 37 percent said it’s likely they’ll read books on the device; 34 percent were more certain, saying that they would use the iPad for reading magazines and newspapers.

For those of you, like me, who are using Instapaper heavily every day, the iPad is like a dream come true and I can say with certainty that catching up on all those ⌘4’d articles and web pages will be what my iPad is used for most often. And for the 34 percent of iPad customers-in-waiting, Instapaper (and the inevitable copycat apps that follow) will make the iPad just about the only screen from which we’ll want to do any reading, ever again.

 

http://theappleblog.com/2010/03/24/instapaper-coming-to-the-ipad/

Robot Touchscreen Analysis from MOTO Development Group on Vimeo.

Robot Touchscreen Analysis from MOTO Development Group on Vimeo.

 

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/test_shows_iphone_touchscreen_still_the_best.php

Test Shows: iPhone Touchscreen Still the Best

If the future is all about touchscreen interfaces, then performance of the screen in registering where it's been touched is pretty important. International design firm Moto ran a robotic finger test on 6 leading touchscreen smart phones to see how well they registered a robot's loving touch.

Some of the phones did remarkably poorly, like the BlackBerry Storm and the Motorola Droid. The iPhone, Google Nexus One and HTC Droid Eris all did quite well. Check out the video below to see the tests and marvel at the apparent differences between touchscreens and their performances. As Sadat Karim writes on Neowin, "Hope is not lost though, as Moto Labs concludes that they do expect these problems to be remedied in the future as touchscreens mature and gain further traction in the industry. Commitment and competition will ultimately deliver seamless touch experiences for all consumers over time, since phone makers are continuously perfecting their products."

To see touchscreen hardware nerds duke it out over the test, check out the Moto Labs blog. How about you, readers? Have you felt the difference in performance across some of these handsets?

 

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/test_shows_iphone_touchscreen_still_the_best.php