Leander Kahney's Blog, page 2287

Why the iPhone 4.0 Update Is a Very Big Deal (Hint: Apple v. Google)

OPINION: Steve Jobs saved the most important part of his iPhone 4.0 announcement today till last — the new in-app advertising system, called iAds.
The iAds system is important because it allows the App Store to create a completely self-sustaining app economy that is sealed off from the wider Web.
Tech guru Tim O'Reilly says the App Store is already [...:]

T-Mobile Offering $350 Bounty for iPhones

Carrier T-Mobile has announced a bounty of sorts for iPhone switchers. The carrier will pay up to $350 when you trade in your iPhone for a HD2 from HTC. If your turn in a working iPhone, you could get $100 credit toward the Windows Mobile handset, according to a report Thursday.
To obtain the bounty, iPhones [...:]

Steve Jobs: We Rested On The Seventh Day

Right after the announcement of the many new and exciting features going into iPhone OS 4.0, Steve Jobs walked into a Q&A and, asked about widgets on the iPad, casually made this Old Testament reference:
Q: Why have you veered away from widgets on the iPad?
A: We just shipped it on Saturday. And then we [...:]

iPhone OS 4.0: Multitasking, Folders, iBooks, iAds and More Coming This Summer

I think I speak for everyone at Cult of Mac when I say that the last hour has been incredibly exciting. I didn't expect much from a small, post-iPad event about iPhone OS 4.0: multitasking and iAds, sure, but I still expected it to be something of a snoozer.
Instead, Apple blew my socks off. iPhone [...:]

Apple Announces iAds: Now There's No Reason For Your Apps To Cost Money

Well, looks like that purchase of Quattro really paid off. Steve Jobs just announced iAd, Apple's own mobile advertising network for app developers.
According to Jobs, an average person spends 30 minutes in an app each day. If an ad is served every 3 minutes, it's ten ads a day. Multiply that by 100 million [...:]

Move Over Xbox Live! iPhone OS 4.0 Gets A Social Gaming Service

Boy, this one's a mixed bag for guys like me with rather prodigious OpenFeint achievement scores: Apple's just announced their own social network for gamers.
Think of it like Xbox Live for your iPhone (or a native OpenFeint, for that matter). You can use the app to make friends, earn achievements, compare scores and even invite [...:]

iBooks Comes To iPhone With Kindle-Like Syncing

If you haven't got an iPad, you've probably been depressed that iBooks isn't available on your iPhone.
As if that was going to last for long.
Steve Jobs just announced iBooks support in iPhone OS 4.0. It works very similarly to the way it does on the iPad: in fact, it's almost a one-to-one translation.
The real improvement [...:]

iPhone OS 4.0 Gets Folders

Sick of all your iPhone apps being arranged higgledly-piggledly across multiple screens? iPhone OS 4.0 takes care of that. Now you get folders.
The way it works is you just drag an icon from one app onto another app to create a folder containing both. For example, drag Plants vs. Zombies onto Sword of Fargoal and [...:]

iPhone OS 4.0 Gets Persistent Location

The third tentpole feature of iPhone OS 4.0 Apple just announced isn't as big as the last two, but is still quite nice: persistent location.
Basically, it's just a setting you select under Location Services. When persistent location is on, a special icon shows up on the status bar.
The big deal here is the [...:]

iPhone OS 4.0 Gets Background VOIP

This iPhone OS event is turning out to be a lot less boring than expected. Apple has just announced the next major new API for the iPhone, and it's a doozy: VOIP.
Skype demoed the concept. Essentially, now, if you want to run a VOIP program on your iPhone, it doesn't have to be open: it [...:]