Mexican mobile provider, Telcel, announces that the iPhone 4 is now available for purchase for our (US) neighbors of the South. Apple stores and Sansborns shops are the retailers that will carry the device.
Both the 16 and 32 GB have been released and are powered by a 3.5G HDSPA internet connection. 3 different plans have been released by Telcel for those wishing to own a piece of smartphone history...
If you check out the Apple iPhone Dev Center you will see an encouraging vow to developers stating that they can expect to see quicker, more consistent payments in the future.
As it reads on the website there is a new payment and financial report module in place. Here is an excerpt from the site:
One of my pet peeves is the current state of how apps in the App Store get their review grades. As you probably know the system as it stands is simply set up to allow anyone to write about and rank an application as many times as they like. Nothing had been done to prevent fraud in the sense of app developers writing multiple high ball reviews, until now, kind of.
The Federal Trade Commissions office has satisfied a complaint against a California based PR group called Reverb Communications. It turns out that the company who have worked with several developers were having their employees posing as actual users, and having them write up glorified reviews of different applications...
There is a new jailbreak app available called Volume Booster 4.0 that supposedly boosts up the volume of your iPhone. I say "supposedly" because it didn't work for me, although I tried on 2 different iPhones. Maybe you'll be more successful than I was...
After downloading Volume Booster from Cydia, you have to go an activate it in WinterBoard, just like you would activate a theme. You won't see any icon or options in the settings.app.
I think this is a must-watch video of Steve Jobs talking about branding and where Apple should stand. I'm not sure when this video was recorded, but I'm glad Steve didn't do about speech about clothing. I mean look at these shorts, man, that's wild! At any rates, this is the essence of Apple.
I might be late on that one but I just learned from my friend Guy about a website called Veetle.com that brings live broadcast to the iPhone via Safari. There isn't much to watch yet, but South Park and Family Guy episodes are available, which really is all I need from my mobile video needs...
This is the second Apple Store to be robbed in just 2 weeks. This time, it's my local Apple Store at UTC Mall in San Diego that got robbed, as reported by 9 to 5 Mac. Two guys dressed in jeans and hoodies showed up at the front of the store and smashed the glass doors. They grabbed 12 iPhones and left...
It hasn't been long since we speculated that releasing the iPhone 4 so soon to the iPhone 3GS might not be the best business move for Chinese provider China Unicom. According to The Inquirer we were right on the money with our predictions and that China Unicom has reported an astounding 54% profit drop for the 2nd quarter.
It's appropriate to be clear about how Unicom ended up carrying Apple's iPhone in the first place. China Mobile is the top dog in chinese cell service with over 500 million customers. Consequently they weren't about to acquiesce to Steve Jobs and his stern business model, so they told Apple to take their iPhone and have a nice life...
Thank Buddha it's Friday! With the weekend approaching it's also that special day of the week where yours truly vents about a recent story that rubbed me the wrong way. This weeks session is dedicated to a story we reported on regarding Apple's new patent that would enable them to remotely wipe your iPhone. You may be rolling your eyes but hear me out because I think a lot of you will be even more irritated by the spin I apply here...
SwitcherPlus is a new jailbreak application that brings your iPhone app switcher to the lockscreen. I have been trying it, and while it's still in beta, I find it very stable. As a matter of fact, I haven't had any issue at all with SwitcherPlus since I installed it.
When on your lockscreen, simply double tap the home button and the switcher will show up. You can choose to add some favorites to the switcher. These favorites will always be the first 4 apps that will appear in your switcher no matter what.
Those of you who purchased an iPhone 4 and are using it on an unofficial carrier were not able to activate FaceTime. There is now a fix for this. It's called MiTime and from what I read, it's working well.
MiTime is an app/service for activating FaceTime on phones that are operating on unofficial carriers. It should work worldwide and will use two text messages to activate. You must be able to receive an international SMS message to get activated (see here if you can receive international SMS).
Please meet the KeyCase iPad Folio, an interesting iPad case that integrates a Bluetooth keyboard to the casing. It seems that the iPad really wants to be a netbook killer and it's getting closer to it. Or is it?
I love the concept, but personally, if I had to carry that stuff around, I'd rather just buy a netbook, which let me remind you, can be a much better business companion than the iPad if you need to do some real work while on the road.
At about $95, the KeyCase iPad Folio is not a bad deal though, if that's what you're looking for. It's currently out of stock but I'm sure it will be available again soon on the company's website.
[Simon Blog]