macFAQ.info – News about Apple

Apple forfeits ‘iPhone premium’ as concerns mount over device – MarketWatch

I think this is a very ill thought out piece by MarketWatch. Let me explain. First they admit that the iPhone margins could be as high as 60%, which is a very good thing. If 60% isn’t a “premium” I don’t know what is. Now, let’s talk about this on a deeper level. I want to discuss this in three parts. 1. AT&T exclusivity 2. Limited market access 3. It is all about the upgrade

The exclusive contract with AT&T is great for Apple. It is great for AT&T. It is great for Apple in the short term because it creates this allure for the iPhone. Most people, like me, are locked into a contract, and regardless of how cool the iPhone is, it is not cool enough for me to pay $250 to get out of my contract. Add the $399/$499 for the iPhone, and that is one hell of a dent in the purse for a cell phone. So it is there, in the back of my mind, and everytime I see someone with an iPhone, it might reinforce to me, that hey, when my contract is over, I  might pick up an iPhone.  It is also great for the customer due to the nature of Apple’s relationship with AT&T. Visual voicemail is great, and worth every penny just to avoid “You have…….3…..new messages. TO listen to your messages press 1…… You get the message. This likely can only happen for carrier exclusivity. Read the rest of this entry »

Byte of the Apple The iPhone SDK Will Be Late – BusinessWeek

Hmm. I am not quite sure what to make of this. I have heard no word one way or the other about the SDK. I can speculate , perhaps, that Apple may he holding back on the SDK to allow those who are rumored  to have early access to polish their apps. (I am looking at you Adobe)

Otherwise, it could be that the logistics of setting up the iTMS for distribution of, presumably lots of shareware/freeware.  Oh yeah, there was that little incident of a certain little key being released on the net, could that have caused Apple to rethink the way they handle the signing of their/third party applications?

Read the rest of this entry »

Orange, the mobile unit of France Telecom, announced on Wednesday that it sold approximately 30,000 Apple iPhones in the first five days the device was available for customers in France.

The iPhone launched in France on November 29th with Orange projecting to sell 100,000 units by the end of 2007.

This certainly would fly in the face of the story we have heard trotted about recently that “European buyers are more phone saavy” or “The iPhone is an average phone in Europe” of “European buyers would eschew non-3G phones”

In fact, 6,000 $400 Euro (or more) phones per day seems pretty good to me.

The iPhone Conundrum: Why Cingular? – SeekingAlpha

“Why is everyone missing the fact that this phone/device will seamlessly switch between Edge and Wi-Fi saving big $$$ on data rates?”

That is the reason why I passed on the Palm Treo, they refuse to add wifi to it (the Palm OS version) and I refuse to pay $149 for that terrible “add-on”. Since I am in an environment that I always have access to wi-fi, why should I pay a mobile carrier for a data plan?
What do you think?

Macworld: News: Hackers can’t wait for iPhone

“If it’s really going to run OS X, [the iPhone] will bring certain security implications, such as potential misuses of wireless connectivity facilities, [and] deployment of malware in a larger scale,” the hacker known as LMH wrote in an e-mail. He declined to provide his real name.

In typical Apple fashion, the tech pundits are pronouncing the iPod dead for its lack of features that no one wants, or cares about. Here is one take, by the in>famous John C. Dvorak:

the iPhone which doesn’t look, I mean to me, I’m looking at this thing and I think it’s kind of trending against, you know, what’s really going, what people are really liking on, in these phones nowadays, which are those little keypads. I mean, the Blackjack from Samsung, the Blackberry, obviously, you know kind of pushes this thing, the Palm, all these… And I guess some of these stocks went down on the Apple announcement, thinking that Apple could do no wrong, but I think Apple can do wrong and I think this is it.

They were wrong before, especially him, about the iPod, about the iMac, and pretty much about Apple in general. So that is boring. The interesting part of this is the hacking aspect.

• What is the CPU (edit:John Gruber thinks it is an ARM processor
• What is the OS (how much can be taken out before you can’t really call it OS X)
• …and all teh little things that go along with it…will it do 802.1x security
• java (seems reasonable)
• flash (that may be impossible for now unless we get a flash lite (no pun)
• battery life with wi-fi, without wi-fi?
• What API’s?
• are widgets applications?
• Bootloader? Firmware?
• SIM access?
• Is it unlockable?
• battery access/life?

There are many, many more questions that will go unanswered for months to come, unless more information is gleaned from the FCC website. In the meantime, I guess we will have to wait it out, and of course speculate some more.