It’s been nearly a year since I bought my iPhone. At first it was all just a novelty, and it was never actually used as anything more than a music playing phone. I never even used Safari thanks to lack of a decent connection at home. But then along came 2.0. And… Well, nothing really… It was still the same deal, just more novelties, which were quickly tossed to the end screen. But recently I’ve finally started using it to it’s proper potential. I use Tweetie to keep up with Twitter, hopping to the Facebook app to check out any activity there, use the WordPress app to start some posts, or just use Safari to look up some information. And that’s just the beginning.

But now my attention is drawn to developing iPhone apps. So, the first thing I did was look into installing Mac on my PC. No go, neither graphics card or wireless would work right. So then I decided I would take the step over to “the dark side”. I stuck some ads on my Bebo apps a while back and they’re slowly but surely building up money. So the plan is simple, sell my laptop, combine that money with my ads money, maybe chip in some cash from my pocket, and buy a MacBook. I’m a gamer, so I shall be using Boot Camp, and sticking Windows on there.

The amazing thing about it though, is that the iPhone alone has influenced me to get a MacBook. I had no intention of switching before now. And now that I’ve read the spec and properly looked at the thing, I’m won over. All that’s left is to choose between the white one, or the lowest end aluminium one. My heart is set on the aluminium one, due frankly to it’s appearance.

Also, anyone interested in buying an Acer laptop, Core 2 Duo 1.66GHz, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 120GB HDD, nVidia Geforce Go 7300, Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g, with Vista Premium (I’ll toss in a bluetooth adapter too ), drop me a line (preferably by email). Contact details here.

That’s my blog post done for the month now! But seriously, gotta get back into this.

Freeman launched the new store with an app of his own, Cyntact. This simple app displays contacts’ pictures in any contact listing, somewhat similar to the Facebook app’s friend listing. He has listed the app at $1, but plans to continue developing free apps for the iPhone, and this app is more to demonstrate the Cydia Store.

The actually process was, lets say, far from painless. You must first log into either Facebook or Google, and link your account to Cydia, then payment through Amazon Payments isn’t ideal. I went through several screens to purchase just one app. Granted some of those steps, like linking my Facebook account won’t have to be done again, but it’s a far cry from Apple’s App Store, but the important thing is, it works! I then got confirmation on my screen saying my purchase had been approved and I could proceed to download Cyntact, which works very well, and is certainly worth $1.

I do however have concerns. I’ve bought jailbreak apps before, MySMS, SwirllyMMS and iRealSMS to name a few, and the experience hasn’t been great. I haven’t had a single problem with SwirllyMMS, and it was well worth the money, however I feel completely ripped off by iRealSMS, which wouldn’t even work at first, and now just runs appallingly slow, and freezes randomly. MySMS falls somewhere in between, crashing sometime in low signal. Another worry is that Cydia will become full of $1 farting apps or such. Hopefully, the jailbreak community will have a bit more cop on than official developers, and make good use of this payment system.

All in all, it needs a little bit of work, but at the moment it just works, which is all you really need. I hope to see some good unapproved apps in the future.

It works in any app that uses text input, and yes, you can copy from one app to another.

You can get in Cydia now. It’s called Clippy.

When you press a blog, you get a list of your posts (you can choose to show 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 posts), along with buttons to refresh, write new post, and go back to the blog list.

Push the bottom right button to bring up the new post screen, which is pretty self explanatory. Add in title, tags, categories and the post body. What I love about this app is that you don’t need to have an internet connection to use it. You can store drafts locally until you have a connection. You also have the standard statuses from WordPress

Adding pictures from your library is pretty simple, just hit the photos button at the bottom, browse and add.

There are a few problems though. It’s not perfectly stable. My iPhone crashed when I first opened it to write this review. WordPress realise this and are going to make version 1.1 more reliable. Another problem is, you cant view your online drafts, except those created with the app. There is no support for pages, landscape mode or comments (except in the preview, which utilizes Safari to show the full webpage), but WordPress are promising these features in 1.2, but the stability is their number 1 priority at the moment.

EDIT: Just noticed two more problems

1. Picture quality when uploading isn’t great (as you can see above)
2. When editing posts, the app only displays the text from before the more tag, not after.

Hopefully 1.1 will fix these and be released soon.

Check out the official Worpress for iPhone blog here

1. Apple are taking actions to stop the reselling of 3G iPhones on the likes of ebay.
   They are changing the way iPhones will be activated, requiring you to sign a contract with your network before you can get your hands on it. All iPhones will have to be activated in store before being handed over to the customer. That means no buying online.
2. The iPhone 3G will come with a SIM tray remover tool, no more paperclips!
3. The iPhone 2.0 firmware will be available “early July”, probably coinciding with the iPhone 3G release, and the App Store will launch on release day.

However, clicking on the “Buy now” button brings you to to the bill pay page.

Could be a mistake, or could be a sign of things to come. Only time will tell!

Yup! Those are the lucky 22 countries that will be getting the 3G iPhone on July 11th

That list in case you can’t see the image is:

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the US.

[via Engadget]

Steve jobs has finally confirmed details about the 3G iPhone, the new iPhone firmware, and official third party apps.

The 3G iPhone will have 3G (obviously) but there was no mention about whether it’s HSDPA or not, although judging by their speed comparisons, it is HSDPA. It will also have a built in GPS, which apparently is very fast to react. It will also feature improved battery time. There was no mention of cameras, however there doesn’t appear to be a front facing camera, and I would assume Apple would shout about a 3.2 or 5 MP camera.

The 8GB model will be all black, and retail at a maximum of $199, while the 16GB will be white and retail at $299 max.

Both models go on sale on 11th July across the 22 biggest markets, eventually reaching 70 countries.

Apple also invited app developers to demo their apps. Among those demoing were SEGA, ebay, TypePad and MLB.com.

There were a few impressive demos of games, including Super Monkey Ball from SEGA which rivals the graphics of the Nintendo DS. Ebay showed off an app that just makes it easy to browse, keep track of, and bid on auctions.

Apple also showed off some new stuff that is part of the 2.0 firmware upgrade. Upgrading adds many features such as push email, calender and contacts, that can all be synced over the air with their new MobileMe service. This is an online web app for desktops that lets you manage your email, contacts, calendar, photos etc., and push them to your iPhone. Screenshots of this service show a very nice looking interface that would rival many fully featured desktop programs.

A push service will also be freely available to developers, so that notifications appear on the users iPhone while the app isn’t even running. Interestingly, there was no official iChat app announced to use this feature, but IM was mentioned as something that could utilize this.

Any app that is less than 10MB in size can be downloaded over 3G, while anything bigger must be done over Wi-fi, or through iTunes. However Wi-fi does not limit you to downloading off the internet. There is also Enterprise App distribution, allowing businesses to distribute apps wirelessly to employees, while ad-hoc is intended for college use, allowing the same thing.

Handwriting recognition is there for Chinese and Japanese for easier input. Sadly there was no mention of an English version. And the calculator now has a scientific mode. Powerpoint is now supported, but no mention of an app to view transfered files.

That’s all from Steve Jobs keynote speech at WWDC. I’ll add any other details as they surface.

[via Engadget]

EDIT:

The iPhone 3G Apple store page clears up some of the unknown spec.

The camera is only 2MP. It is tri-band UMTS/HSDPA, and quad-band GSM/EDGE. It will also come with a sim tray remover tool. No more paper clips!

It all seems pretty obvious, but who knows, perhaps it’s routine maintenance, or a marketing ploy by Apple. Just be ready for the possibility of buying the new iPhone today.

[via Engadget]

EDIT: All online Apple stores are now down