Well last Thursday computer giant Apple released their long awaited tablet computer the iPad. This release kind of got me thinking a little, we are getting closer and closer to April where Apple, given their previous release times for the iPhone, will be looking to release their next version of the phone and most possibly an update to the iPhone operating system.

It will be the third anniversary of the iPhone since the 1st Gen (America Only) was released in 2007, and two years since the worldwide release of the 3G iPhone. To me this means one thing! All of the customers – worldwide – who purchased the 3G and in doing so signed up for a 24 month contract, are coming up to the expiry of their contract. What this means is that Apple will need to have something on offer to all of these customers with expiring contracts otherwise they will see people jumping ship to other recently released iPhone competitors.

Hardware wants…

I would love to see a front facing camera in the iPhone. I think that this is something that has been lacking since the introduction of the device. Just look at that awesome large screen, this is a perfect device for video calling either over a cellular network call or via a VOIP service like Skype.

A revised design. While the style of the iPhone is now almost iconic. The look of the phone itself has almost (in my opinion) started to date a little in comparison to some of the other smart-phones that have been released lately. I know that they have already done the phone with the metal back on it. But wouldn’t it be really nice to see an iPhone that utilised the unibody aluminium design like in the Macbook Pro’s – even though I know they ditched the old aluminium design for signal quality issues, but I can still want it right??

I would expect to see a newer, higher resolution screen on the device also. Technology has come a long way since the phone was originally released, and I can only imagine it would be inevitable for a new version of the phone to possess a better screen.

It would also be nice to see a refinement in the quality of the few buttons that they use on the device. To me the side buttons feel a little cheap, and not only that, I know of cases where both the flip switch between normal and silent modes has gone bung as well as where the ‘home’ key gets used so much that it also goes into a state of non-responsivness.

Software wants…

As far as software goes, the first thing on my list here is a big cry out to Apple. Please, please, please fix the damn Mail app. This program is so clunky and painful to use if you have any more than one email account. The way it expects you to have a separate inbox for each and every mail account is certainly not elegant, nor is the four of five finger taps it takes to get between two accounts. They need to simplify this and give you the ability to have one main inbox like they do in the Mail app for the Mac.

Ringtones are no problem on the iPhone, its simply a matter of either forking over a dollar or two and buying the ability to make one through the iTunes store. Or if you have a few more moments spare you can make you own either through Garageband for Macs, or through iTunes for PC. However I really think that it is time they opened up the ability to either buy additional SMS & Alarm alerts, or to give the ability to make them like it is done with ringtones.

One of the last things that I would love to see added to the software capabilities of the iPhone is the ability to have badges for apps like Mail, Messages, Phone appear on the ‘unlock’ screen after you have just woken your phone up so you don’t have to physically unlock you’re phone just to see whether you have new mail or have missed a call.

These are just a few of the things that I would love to see in the next revision of the phone and its software. Its a matter of a few months yet before we will even know. I’m just wishing and hoping *fingers crossed*

It’s here, Dropbox have released an app for the iPhone & iPod Touch. I have written several posts about dropbox now, and the more I use it the more and more I find it useful and this just adds to the argument. The beauty of Dropbox is that it creates a folder on all of you’re linked computers and anything that you keep in this folder will automatically be updated on you’re web account and any other computers that you have installed and authorised Dropbox to work on.

So back to the iPhone app! When you launch the application for the first time, you get a little intoductory PDF to look at which runs you through the ‘good to know’s’ of the application. After this you are prompted to input you’re dropbox log-in details then you’re phone will automatically reach out to the dropbox servers and bring back down icons for all of the files and folders that are currently in you’re dropbox folder.

For files like presentations, word documents, photos, PDF’s and so on, you simply tap on the representative icon and viola the file loads and you have a full screen and very legible copy of the document to read. Very handy for viewing files that you need on the spur of the moment or when you have left your laptop behind.

One of the other things that I find great about the dropbox app for the iPhone is the ability to shoot/choose existing photos & videos (for those of you with a 3GS) and upload these to you’re dropbox folder. This of course sync’s back down to any of the other computers you have linked. This is a god send for getting photos back to the computer rather than dealing with the time taken up to connect you’re phone and wait for it to sync etc etc etc all just to get a photo.

The other beauty of this app is the ease in sharing files in you’re dropbox. When you are in one of the selected files and in viewing mode, simply tap on the envelope in the lower left corner and enter the email of the person you would like to share the folder with. This sends the person an email containing a link which is valid for 30 days from time of sending. When the link is clicked the recipient is taken to a browser link to view the file.

To me this is just one more reason to use Dropbox on my computers at home, and for anybody who does use Dropbox – if you own an iPhone or iPod Touch, you should definitely give this app a go!!! To get the application on you’re phone or get extra information about Dropbox you can visit their site here: getdropbox.com

For a while now us iPhone users and users of phones on platforms like Windows Mobile have had the ability to have their Google contacts and calendars pushed to their mobile devices. However, up until now Gmail has been missing this feature. But not any more!

Google, through their Sync feature have enabled essentially an Exchange service for Gmail. This means that if set up properly on your iPhone you can get your email pushed to and from your phone just as if it was a mobile me account! Great news. I set this up today and gave it a bit of a test. To test this I would essentially send myself an email (lame I know) but within minutes my phone would buzz and a badge would show up on my mail icon to say that I had new mail!

For me this is just one more reason to set up a gmail account as an alternative to paying for a service like mobile me or dealing with ISP’s to set up your email. It really is a pretty easy set up process and the google website gives nice easy and clear directions. If you wan’t to set this up on your phone check out the Google Sync page here.

I think that the concept of Apple’s Mobile Me is just genius, allowing you to automatically sync all of your emails, contacts, calendar and numerous other settings and preferences with very little work from yourself. However as I already have my email address set up – everyone knows it – I’m not really keen on changing that, nor am I very keen on spending the $120 a year for this subscription when I can get by with my own solutions to the problem for free. In this post I’m going to look at a few things that I have done to create my own ‘kind-of’ mobile me solution.

Email

First and easiest is syncing your email. To do this you’re email provider needs to support what is called IMAP, generally they will tell you to set up your email programs with POP3. The difference here is that POP3 is a system which downloads what is on your email server and stores a copy on your local system – this is excellent if you only use one computer. But throw in your mobile phone and your laptop on top of your desktop computer and you will be getting the same email showing as unread multiple times, and if you delete it on one computer it will still be on the other devices same with your sent emails – frustrating!!.

The beauty of using IMAP based email is that every-time your computer or mobile phone is told to check your mail it will only show you what is currently on the email systems server, so think of it this way: somebody sends you an email > it goes to your email providers central computer > your computer or phone checks to see if there is any mail > it pulls down a copy of this and shows you your mail > all the time keeping a message on the emails providers computers. If you make a change such as delete or move it to another folder the action is mimicked on the email systems server. Therefore the next time one of your other devices checks for new mail it will see exactly what is on the email server and refresh all of your devices.

Setting up an IMAP email is hard to document because every internet/email service provider is set up a different way therefore there isn’t one set way to do this, generally speaking by navigating through your suppliers support pages and by using google to search you will generally be able to find a way to set this up. If your primary email is done through a service like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc this makes it easier because by nature these are already an IMAP way of managing your email just navigate to their websites and they will give you details on how to set this up for your email program.

Files

Mobile Me provides a service called iDisk, which is like your own portion of disk space on Apples servers. This means it appears as a local disk on your computers however it can be accessed by any computer you give access to or via the web. The nice thing about this is that if you work between multiple computers you know just what it is like to go out one day and have forgotten to copy the file across. My solution to this was to use a service called Dropbox. I have blogged about this previously so won’t go into too much depth, but for free with this service you get 2GB worth of space which I find is adequate for files and some pictures. You can pay for a larger disk space if you want to. This service provides the same function that I mentioned earlier about providing an online central place to store files, but the beauty of dropbox is that whatever you put in your dropbox folder on one computer is automatically synced up to the dropbox server and back down to any other computer that you have installed dropbox on!

Calendar

Another great feature of Mobile Me is the ability to synchronize your calendars across different machines and you’re iPhones, Mobile Me does a really great job of this by pushing any changes made up to their servers and back down to your other devices to be updated. There is one great way to achieve this for free and this is with Google Calendar.

Once you have a google account you have full access to this feature for free, the process is fairly simple however I won’t discuss it here for the fact that it is so in-depth, however if this interests you check out the links posted below to find out how to set this up. Below are the links to platforms and programs it is available with:

• Click here for links to set up Calendar
• Works with Mozilla Sunbird
• Apple iCal & iPhone
• Microsoft Outlook
• Windows Mobile
• Blackberry

Contacts

Google really provides so many great services at no charge and due to the nature of how your contacts with Google are managed – that is in the ‘cloud’, it allows them to offer this free synchronizing services for contacts as well. So like with the Calendar when you add or update a contact on your computer or phone, it will update this on every device enabled to do so. Again the explanation of how to do this is to in depth for me to cover here but if you would like to enable this as well check out the link here > Google Sync Services

Macworld.com.au today reported that an update to the Facbook app for the iPhone has been submitted to Apple. I was wondering how much longer it would be until an update was to be done as there have been quite a number of changes and upgrades to facebook since the last update to the iPhone app.

The update is set to give a number of new features unique to the 3.0 software update, the most notable is the capability for 3GS users to shoot and upload videos directly to your facebook account. There’s added functionality giving you the ability to create photo albums, it will save text that you are typing incase you’re interrupted by a text or phone call. The update also refreshes the design of the app to better reflect the recent changes in facebook’s overall design. It would also seem that there have been upgrades to the overall stability of the app, the developer was quoted to say “Everything that used to scroll slowly now scrolls like butter.”

Overall even though it’s just an update I’m looking forward to the update as it is one of my most frequently used apps on my iPhone.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25927464-5014239,00.html

I was reading the news story from the link above and it got me thinking. The article basically refers back to a case where a teenager had his girlfriends iPhone, it apprantly started hissing and then shattered, flying shards of glass around with one getting into his eye. The Child is said to be taking action against apple for this ‘faulty’ product.

In Apple’s usual manner when there is a story on exploding or overheating iPods, they have refused to comment or take any action on the issue. In my opinion I know that if there was a problem with the product Apple would probably be quick to replace all affected models, they have done his in the past with other products like laptops and iPods. Although from a public relations and reputation management point of view I believe that by Apple refusing to make any statements they are treading a very thin line which could impact on customers trust in the company and it’s products.

Rather than taking the path that Apple’s lawyers dictate each and every time I feel it would benefit the company in the long run to actually come out and say something in situations like these, something to reassure every iPod, iPhone and Mac owner out there that the products they are using on a day to day basis have been tested thoroughly, and that the situations where something is happening, are an anomaly and a small percentage of all items out there on the market. By taking this path rather than the path determined by the lawyers it would put them in a better position to recover if there ever was a situation where a batch of iPhones were faulty.

Apple you need to understand that while you may be sitting pretty now – if you continue down a path where you fail to recognize and rectify issues, these issues will one day snowball into a crisis and one that could impact how you proceed in the marketplace.

But then again, Apple never have been the conventional thinking computer company, have they?

The Palm Pre has recently been released in America, and while I doubt we will see it here in Australia for quite some time due to the fact that it’s currently only a CDMA handset (no longer supported on Aussie networks) it has got an accessory that I would’ve loved to see on the newest model of Apple’s iPhone. The accessory that I’m referring to is Inductive Charging.

Inductive charging is a pretty neat technology that allows you to charge devices without physically plugging them to a power cable. There are currently charging mats out there that are square little rubbery looking mats that you can sit several devices on and charge them.

The pictures above are of the Palm Touchstone, the idea here is that the round base is connected to a power source, and you replace the standard back cover of the device with the touchstone back cover – pictured on the left. You can then simply sit your phone on top of the touchstone base and it charges your phone for you.

I think this is a great idea and can’t believe that it hasn’t been implemented on more devices. It may be a little gimmicky as it is just another way of achieving the same result that you can get when plugging in a power cable but it is something I would love to have! With the current iPhone 3GS coming out last month, it didn’t really have any compelling features that have prompted me to break my current contract and upgrade to the new model, this inductive charging, if offered on the iPhone 3GS would’ve given me a good reason to upgrade!!

This seems to be a long time coming for Three, I used the Three network for a number of years before I switched to Optus in August last year. Why did I switch, well because Three didn’t have the iPhone of course.

I have found up untill now Optus to have the best plans for the iPhone, Telstra are just plain expensive and you get hardly any included calls for what you pay, not to mention data – you have to pay extra for that. As for Vodafone well their plans are good but theres nothing in the ‘consumer’ price range it all seems to be up in the $70+ price range. This is why I went with Optus their plans seem to offer the best value for money and coverage.

I have always wanted an iphone ever since the original was released in America, and when it came to Oz in the form of the 3G I was ecstatic, we knew Optus and Vodafone were getting straight away and then came Telstra, but no not three. Three even launched a petition website to try and show Apple how much their consumers wanted the iPhone but for some reason they just couldn’t get it. At the end of the day though this caused at least myself and Melissah – two very happy Three customers to leave the network. From a marketing point of view this must have been a nightmare for them, to me I feel like we were the picture of a perfect customer to them even to the point where we were referring friends to the network because their cap plans were the best on the market.

While their plans are still great, and in the past year they have greatly expanded their 3G network to be somewhat comparable in coverage to Optus and Telstra (still charged at higher rates when you are outside 3’s own data area) I’m sorry Three but even though it’s great news that your finally getting the iPhone, its too late to get us back at least in the immediate future anyway.

Well the day has come! I know I have been waiting for quite some time now. The iPhone 3.0 Software is finally out. Do yourself a favor so you can take advantage of the great new features we have all been waiting for:

• MMS – picture and audio
• Cut, Copy & Paste
• Tethering to your laptop – yes your phone is now able to be a mobile broadband dongle
• Landscape keyboard in Apps like Mail, Safari, Notes, SMS
• Spotlight Search
• Faster web browsing in Safari
• Shake to Shuffle
• Voice Memo’s

To get all these great updates and turn your phone into the phone it ought to be, Connect it to your computer with the USB cable. If it doesn’t prompt you with an update message, in iTunes click on your phone in the devices list, and select the option to check for updates. This will download the latest software and install it on your phone. You’re now set to go. Enjoy!!

Yesterday Apple presented their Keynote at the annual World Wide Developers Conference or WWDC for short. With much anticipation leading up to the event, Apple generally pleased by announcing the new iPhone software which will be available June 17, a little more about that in a bit.

A breif overview of how the Keynote went down: First Apple announces that their new operating system ‘Snow Leopard’ will be available in September this year, the best part of their announcement here is that this new release will be priced at an amazing $29 US which is about $36 Aussie dollars for a single installation, or $49 US or about $60 Aussie dollars for a Family pack (up to 5 computers) More info here TechCrunch: Snow Leopard Should Purr Along With a Smaller Footprint. There are a whole host of other things but overall we should see a vast improvement in speed with this installed and the other exciting news is that the installation itself takes up half the space of Leopard so you should find yourself with about 6GB of space that you didn’t have before.

They also announced a refreshed notebook lineup, the basic gist here is that the only model in the Macbook family is the white polycarbonate Macbook, they have promoted the Aluminum Macbook, bumped up a few specs and renamed it a Macbook Pro. So there is now the ability to get a 13, 15, 17″ screens in the power of a Macbook Pro. For full specs visit http://www.apple.com/au/macbookpro/.

And now onto the fun stuff! The new iPhone software. As I mentioned in my video post previously a few things that I was hoping for in the next software update included:

1. Better Battery life
2. Tethering
3. Video & Video Editing

Now as far as the software update increasing battery life…there was no mention…but I am hopeful that it is something that will just come with the update as in the previous ones. Tethering however is now supported!!! Provided that your mobile carrier will support it (Optus in Australia will be supporting from the get go) you will now be able to tether your iPhone to your computer be it Mac or PC, it can be tethered either with the standard USB cable or by bluetooth and no extra software is required. This will be great for people on the go who don’t want the extra expense of a USB wireless broadband modem (myself included here).

A few other features that they mentioned are things that we have known about since the 3.0 software was announced earlier this year. That includes MMS, revised App store and iTunes store, Spotlight search function across the whole phone as well as a whole host of other things.

The one that I was hoping would come via a software update – Video – unfortunately did not arise….however….Apple did release a new iPhone!!! This will be badged the iPhone 3G S, S for speed. With faster internal chips for better graphics and just a faster phone in general. It looks exactly the same and will be available in Black or White like before. The biggest improvement is a 3.0 megapixel camera with Autofocus, designed for better low light performance and the ability to tap to focus on a specific item in the frame. This new camera also supports video, with the function of trimming and editing the footage as well as being able to easily share via Mobile Me, YouTube etc. The iPhone 3g S will be available in either 16GB or 32GB versions which is just huge.

So while I didn’t get all my wishes with the upgraded software, there is a new phone coming out. And the great news is that they are still keeping the 8gb 3g that is available now, but reducing the price! So if your in the market for a new phone or have been hanging out for the price to drop now is your time to buy. The new models remain at the prices that the 3G has been at for the last 12 months. If you would like a good wrap up of what happened at the WWDC keynote yesterday check out this video from Cali Lewis of Geekbrief TV

I don’t know about you, but I would love one of the new handsets. But given that I’m locked into a two year contract on my current iPhone, the new features just aren’t a compelling enough reason to break contract for a new phone? How about you, what are your thoughts about the new phone and software and will you be buying one? Leave a comment below!!