ant

Wow, what an absolute mess up from all the parties involved in the New Zealand iPhone 4 launch today. Thousands are in my position and are extremely frustrated. I’m not going to tell you everything that went wrong yesterday and today due to the fact that most of you knew what went wrong. However if you are interested then have a look at this post by Chris Rawson on TUAW.

Both Apple and Vodafone have been extremely silent and tight lipped about the launch disaster, I doubt we will ever hear the story but something definitely went wrong. Here is my theory.

Apple are famous for their secrecy and like to control the iPhone 4 launch down to the very last detail. Fair enough, it’s their phone and I’m sure they were very limiting on the details with Vodafone New Zealand. I think that Apple said to Vodafone to price the iPhone 4 at the price of X and plan subsidies at price of X on launch day. Vodafone on the other hand must have decided that this price was too low and they wanted to price the iPhone 4 at a higher price of X. Apple said no way, price it at X, we decide and not you. Vodafone again said no, due to them wanting to retain their profit margin. After that Apple must have decided they couldn’t deal with such incompetency and cancelled their shipment of iPhone 4′s to New Zealand because Vodafone the sole dealer of subsidised iPhone’s in New Zealand. Vodafone then freaks out, can’t change Apple’s mind and then removes all mention of iPhone 4 on their website. However later they acquire a very limited set of iPhone 4′s from Vodafone Australia and begin to sell them at midday 30th July on contract only.

Many reports support this theory. First of all, the weeks leading up to 30th July there was no word from Vodafone about any pricing at all. Secondly yesterday they removed all mention of iPhone 4 from their website, thirdly last night Apple Customer Support specifically told me that Vodafone will NOT be selling the iPhone 4 on the 30 of July and lastly there have been numerous reports on such sites like NZHerald and 3News that Vodafone had lost its iPhone 4 direct deal with Apple.

I do realise that there is certain evidence that negates my theory, it is just a theory after all!

Update 1: Theory Mostly Confirmed

In an article on Stuff.co.nz today says that

An eleventh-hour pricing spat between Vodafone and Apple is understood to be behind the iPhone 4′s shambolic New Zealand launch.

The article states that Apple asked Vodafone NZ to change their prices for the iPhone 4 launch, Vodafone said no and said that they will can the entire launch. Finally Vodafone Head Office in UK got involved and made Vodafone NZ sell the iPhone at the price Apple demanded. So what I can see here is that Vodafone wanted to raise the price of the iPhone 4, Apple said no and then everything went into a disaster.

So apart from a few inaccuracies my theory seems correct. There, I called it yet again!

Heard any different stories or theories about the disaster iPhone 4 launch? What do you think happened? Let everyone know in the comments!

Yes it’s true and you better believe it. Let me repeat myself, Vodafone New Zealand will NOT be selling the iPhone 4 tomorrow (30 July) in New Zealand.

My source? Apple. I rang Apple just now and spoke to a CSR, he told me that you can order the iPhone 4 online at the Apple Store tomorrow but Vodafone will NOT be selling it tomorrow in stores or online. He said that other Apple resellers may or may not be selling the iPhone. But he absolutely and undoubtedly guaranteed me that Vodafone New Zealand will NOT sell the iPhone 4. He didn’t give me a reason as to why they weren’t.

Don’t believe me? Call Apple yourself. 0800 MY APPLE. They will tell you.

UPDATE: Apparently 0800 MY APPLE says that Harvey Norman, JBHiFi, Magnum Mac, Apple.co.nz and Vodafone Retail Pending Confirmation will sell iPhone 4 tomorrow. However in another call they say that 30th July iPhone 4 launch isn’t even confirmed for NZ. (Thanks Andrew) Obviously Apple Customer Care is giving mixed reports saying that Vodafone will be selling it on the 30th to no one at all will be selling the iPhone 4 on the 30th. However 0800 MY APPLE has just closed for the night so no answers from them will be given most probably till the morning.

UPDATE 2: I Just called JB Hifi and they said that iPhone 4 will be available on postpaid from midday tomorrow (30th). He said that stock will arrive in the morning and they should be on sale by 12. He also said that Vodafone iPhone plans will NOT be changing.

So who is to blame? Apple? Vodafone Group? Vodafone New Zealand? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

The Internet was recently shocked with the news that Apple approved Opera Mini for the iPhone. Previously only Mobile Safari and other  browsers that used the WebKit engine were allowed to run on the iPhone OS. There was much speculation as to whether it would be approved by Apple due to past restrictions placed on third-party browsers and other applications which duplicated existing iPhone functionality or executed third-party code on the device.

The browser is free and is available for download [iTunes Link] but really is it that great? Here are my five reasons why Opera Mini sucks:

Clunky User Interface

This is probably the biggest pitfall for me in this app. The look of the app, while very ‘Opera’ doesn’t really fit into the iPhone UI. Maybe it is because I’m extremely used to Safari but the excessive red and black does nothing for ones visual appeal. No UI element looks or is positioned like the familiar CocoaTouch UI. Buttons are different, menus are different, switches are different. Lets face it, it doesn’t look like an iPhone app.

The buttons are also massive and take up a large proportion of the screen real estate. With only a 3.5″ screen, the UI controls take up about a 1/3 of the screen.

However there are some great UI features such as SpeedDial which make up for the clunky UI.

Security Risk

Basically when visiting encrypted pages, you have to allow Opera to get in the middle to decrypt and re-encrypt (via Opera Software), breaking what’s meant to be an end-to-end security chain. Due to the data being transferred between your phone and Opera servers your details could potentially be compromised to hackers, thieves etc. I’m actually surprised that Apple didn’t reject the app solely because of this flaw. Just imagine if your email, Facebook and even PayPal or bank details were obtained by hackers, major damage could be done.

If you don’t believe me, look here. Opera expressly states this problem in their FAQ.

“Is there any end-to-end security between my handset and — for example — paypal.com or my bank?

No. If you need full end-to-end encryption, you should use a full Web browser such as Opera Mobile.

Opera Mini uses a transcoder server to translate HTML/CSS/JavaScript into a more compact format. It will also shrink any images to fit the screen of your handset. This translation step makes Opera Mini fast, small, and also very cheap to use. To be able to do this translation, the Opera Mini server needs to have access to the unencrypted version of the Web page. Therefore no end-to-end encryption between the client and the remote Web server is possible.”

Have a look at this video for more information on the security concerns.

Page Rendering

Opera says that

“Streamlined rendering engine and server-side compression allows Opera to load Web pages much more quickly than other mobile phone browsers.”

While Opera Mini is very fast, the page rendering suffers with jagged fonts, small text is hardly legible and is more often than not reduced to thick and plain lines.

Here are some examples:

Here is Stuff.co.nz viewed in landscape, notice how Opera zooms right in to the page and it doesn’t seem like there is a way to zoom out.

No Multi Touch Support

Safari makes excellent use of the iPhone’s sensitive multi-touch, you are able to easily pinch, zoom, scroll and much more. However as mentioned, Opera Mini lacks an Apple like UI and the browser does not include such fundamental UI conventions such as pinch-zoom. With 100 million iPhone users  familiar with Apple’s multi-touch gestures it is crucial to have this supported.

Opera Mini offers only two zoom levels, one in which the text is either too big or too small, there is no in between. As well as this scrolling just doesn’t work as well with Opera Mini as it does in Safari. Sliding down a long row of text on Opera jitters while Safari scrolls smoothly.

It’s Just a Proxy Server

Unlike Safari, Opera Mini fetches all content through a proxy server that reformats web pages into a format more suitable for the iPhone’s screen. This presents many problems such as rendering, formatting and much more.

As well as this, the web page is compressed in Opera’s Binary Markup Language which often distorts the page. Being a proxy server many functions such as signing into WiFi hotspots do not work. If you’re looking for a fully fledged mobile web browser, Opera Mini shouldn’t be your choice.

However I have only discussed the problems here and there are many great features of Opera Mini such as great speeds. After all it’s free so I still encourage you to try it out!

Have you had a chance to test Opera Mini out? How does it live up to Safari? Which will you be using on a regular basis?

With the release of the iPad, the iPhone OS is gaining huge momentum. With OS 4 on the horizon, Apple is working non stop to make this a great release. However Apple has a huge line of consumer electronics, why are they putting all this energy into the iPhone OS? Because of Revenue.

This is Apple’s fastest growing area and they are working on it non stop to make it the very best of the best. We now have three distinctly different yet similar devices that run this OS; iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

iPhone

Apple’s first device that runs this OS. This device created a revoloution in the smartphone market and now leads the way in usability and innovation. The release of the App Store in 2008 was one of the best decisions Apple ever made. Not only did this pave the way for awesome and amazing apps but propelled Apple’s revenue to sweltering amounts.

Think about it, 3 billion apps have been downloaded on the App Store since day 1 with 74% being sold. That’s in just 18 months.  These apps are all created by third party developers and are totally awesome. Of every single app that is sold Apple gets a whopping 30% of each sale. That’s huge. With the average price of a paid app being $3.63, that is billions of dollars in Apple’s pockets. Apple had never expected that and it is growing by a rapid amount.

iPod Touch

Apple soon realised the huge potential of the App Store and wanted to bring it into the hands of millions users, not just the elite who have an iPhone. They looked at their product line and found their most popular product; the iPod.

Now the iPod Touch was born, the iPod has been an amazing success and has sold over 250 million units since 2001. By bringing the App Store to the iPod, not only do the sales of units grow but the revenue Apple gains from apps sold increases. What’s best is Apple does not have to do anything (create, manage or update the apps) and they still get this huge amount of revenue.

iPad

Apple’s latest device which entered the market with a WiFi only version, only in the US on April 3 has sold more than 500,000 units in just under two weeks. That is massive and Apple still hasn’t released the 3G version yet or released it internationally. Analysts estimate the iPad will sell over 7 million units in the first year.

What’s best is this device runs iPhone OS. Not only will Apple make a killing out of the units sold but the huge amounts of apps that are bought. iPad specific apps are much pricier than their iPhone counterparts. Again this means more revenue for Apple from the App Store. No wonder Apple decided to make the iPad run the iPhone OS.

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Now with the beta release of iPhone 4 for the iPhone, Apple have released iAd. This will bring intuitive ads to all devices running the iPhone OS. Again, Apple will take a 40% cut of all sales without having to do anything except manage the system. The number of apps is growing by an insane amount and iAd will take advantage of all these apps and this will put a lot of money into both the developers and Apple’s pockets.

The developers only get 70% / 60% of the cut of the sales but they still love it. Why? Because there is such a large userbase (iPhone, iPod Touch and now iPad) that they will continue to develop and make great apps which will in turn lead to a greater revenue gain.

The best thing about the iPhone OS is its potential, the App Store was only released in mid 08 and now look at these enormous numbers, this was one of Apple’s best moves ever. Apple have realised this and therefore introduced the iPad and then iAd. The potential exists and the iPhone OS will bring Apple to great heights.

Where do you think Apple is going from here? Should they stay and work on the iPhone OS line or move back and try sell even more Macs? Will the Apple line now be dominated by the iPhone OS?

I’m totally convinced that the iPhone prototype Gizmodo is in possession of is Apple’s. It has been reported that an Apple Software Engineer, Gray Powell, left this behind at a bar by mistake. Later it was rumoured that Gizmodo bought the prototype for 10 grand. They have had 2.5 million page views and have easily made that money back from ad revenue.

These points back up the fact that the iPhone prototype was purposefully leaked by Apple:

MobileMe and GPS Functionality

This is pretty obvious, the iPhone prototype was working and in use at the time it was ‘found’. MobileMe has a ‘Find My iPhone’ feature in which the iPhone can be tracked by GPS and a message can be displayed on the screen. The person who found this prototype reports that they called several Apple numbers to return the phone but no one took him seriously.

If Apple really did want the iPhone back immediately then they could have easily within a few hours located the iPhone or sent a message to it saying they wanted it back. But instead they decided to remotely brick it. If they could do that (this is one of MobileMe’s functionalities) why couldn’t they have done the other options which would have most likely resulted in it being returned?

Also, Apple has the highest level of secrecy and surely they would have the advanced system in place to get the GPS co-ordinates of a lost iPhone prototype?

Apple’s Secrecy Involving its Products

Apple is well known for their intense secrecy around product’s before release. One person even committed suicide due to them losing a previous iPhone prototype. I’m sure Apple will go to any lengthy including interrogation to prevent its trade secrets from being released. Normally devices are chained and bolted to desks in a room with no windows. Why did a common Apple employee have possession of such a secret device?

Maybe Apple’s executive team might have such a device but it confuses me as to why Apple would let one of their software engineers take this device into the wild when they are generally chained to desks deep inside Apple’s HQ.

The Person who Lost It

The 27 year old Gray Powell was at a German beer garden in Redwood City, California on the night he lost the iPhone prototype. Firstly, he was drinking. Who would drink knowing they might make some stupid choices when in the possession of a secret Apple device? While drinking the possibility of your iPhone disappearing is huge. No one would ever like to lose a device like this.

Secondly, why on earth would this guy not even bother to check he still had the device on him before he left that bar? If you were in possession of this kind of device, one would be keeping an eye on it every second of the day and make sure to check they still had it when leaving somewhere.

So Why Would Apple Leak an iPhone Prototype?

Apple is hugely secretive about their products however they do gain benefits in this device purposefully being leaked.

Hype is the key here, Gizmodo have received millions of page views and the features are being reported by all the major tech blogs and the huge news networks such as CNN, WSJ and NY Times. Twitter with 100 million users is buzzing right now with this news. Millions of people are talking about this device and the features it has, Apple likes that.

People have said that they will be buying the device and some have gone as far as saying that they are beginning to draw up apps that involve the new features that this iPhone has. Apple is going to gain huge benefits from this leak which is why I think they were the ones who leaked it on purpose.

Think different or agree? Do you think Apple really is gritting its teeth right now or enjoying the spotlight? Let your thoughts out in the comments!

Just a few days ago Twitter announced its acquisition of Tweetie, a popular Twitter iPhone app. Ev at Twitter says that Tweetie will be renamed Twitter for iPhone and made free (currently $2.99) in the iTunes App Store. I’m sure all of us are pleased that Twitter picked such a great iPhone app to have as the basis of their official app. When I reviewed Tweetie 2 a while back it was evident that atebits had displayed great innovations such as ‘pull to refresh’, ‘swipe’ and more. These features of Tweetie 2 have been adopted by many other iPhone apps which is increasingly testament to the innovation that Tweetie has shown.

Ev said that

“People are looking for an app from Twitter, and they’re not finding one. So, they get confused and give up.”

This seems to be the underlying motive on Twitters side in the acquisition of Tweetie and the possibility of many negative consequences arise:

The Death of Other Twitter Apps

This is probably the most likely effect of Twitter’s official iPhone app. Look at Facebook, one rarely sees another Facebook app for the iPhone that has enough users to compete with the official app. The likes of Echofon, Tweetsville, Twittelator, Twinkle, TweetDeck, Twitterific and many more are at risk of death. While I think Tweetie is the best app out there, these other apps boast many great features.

However this point can be refuted by the example of Flickr. They have a free and official app on the App Store however there are many great competing apps such as Flickit Pro, MobileFotos and Mobile Flickr that exist. Time will tell if these other apps die or not.

‘Walled Garden’ Effect

As demonstrated by Apple, it is highly unlikely but Twitter may start to impose a ‘walled garden’ on the third party Twitter apps due to their increasing range of ‘official’ apps. While this may seem like an extremely stupid approach, many others such as Facebook and TradeMe have done it to limit the use of external apps. Third party apps are what built Twitter and if they would make this move it could essentially kill it.

This would lead to a decrease in innovation as what essentially drives quality is competition.

Complete Lack of Innovation

This could be one of the worst consequences from this news. As the official Twitter iPhone app would be released, for Twitter there is little incentive such as revenue or user base to add more features and propel innovation in this niche. For atebits the prospect of many more sales and a greater user base drove him into making a greater Tweetie.

Another simmilar issue that presents itself is due to Twitter giving this iPhone app away for free, developers would have to decrease the price of their Twitter apps and even give them away for free in order to compete with the official iPhone app. Thus there will be little incentive for other developers to continue to innovate.

However while Loren Brichter is on the Twitter mobile dev team is is safe to say that we do have many great things to see.

What do you think is in store for the future of Twitter iPhone apps? Let everyone know in the comments!

With the release of Tweetie 2.1 today, Tweetie is and has been for a long time the best Twitter app for your iPhone. It’s phenomenal and combines two fundamental elements together, function and style. This is why I love it.

So you’re probably thinking why pay the extra $4.20 NZD for an app with a bit more functionality, after all all I want to do is tweet. I’ll tell you why. Instead of writing about all the awesome features of Tweetie, I’ll list my five favourite features. If you want the full list check it out.

Swipe

I absolutely love this feature. Simply swipe either  in the right or left direction over a tweet and a bunch of options will appear.
As shown to the left heaps of options appear that lets you do just about anything you want to with a tweet. You can first click to reply to the tweet, the most common option. If the tweet includes a link you can press the paperclip icon and you will be given secondary options to open, mail, repost or Instapaper the link. The multitude of options avalible allows you to do just about anything you want with the link. Thirdly and fourthy options are given to either view the persons profile or favourite the tweet. The last option allows you retweet, mail and translate the tweet.

Being given all these options from the Tweetie home screen is truly revolutional and adds a totally new dimension and ease of use to Twitter clients for the iPhone.

Composing a Tweet

So this must appear fairly basic right? All you need is some blank space and a keyboard? Wrong. Tweetie adds in all the great features you’ve always wanted.

If you’re out and want to take a snap or video it’s easy as clicking the camera button then pressing capture or record. You can also add a photo from your photo libary, geotag your tweet, find usernames, hashtags and even shrink urls. With all these features literally at your fingertips you can achieve so much without having to leave the composition screen.

This functionality and much more is shown and displayed in Tweetie 2.

Massive Third Party Support

Tweetie 2 provides a huge variety of third party clients that you can use within the app, some of which include Twitpic, yFrog, Mobypicture, Tweetphoto, Twitgoo, img.ly, Twitvid, Posterous, Vid.ly, Twitlonger, Follow Cost, Tweet Blocker, Favstar.fm, TextExpander, Read it Later, Instapaper, What The Trend, Birdhouse, bit.ly, TinyURL, is.gd, I.pr, u.nu, Linkyy, Overlapr, Favrd, Tweeteorites and much more!

That’s an insane amount of third party clients to add to an iPhone Twitter app and pretty much all the added extras you will ever need!

Refresh

This is a small but totally awesome feature.  Instead of looking for that small icon to refresh your Twitter stream or shake to refresh therby damaging your iPhone, Tweetie provides and easy and intuitive way to refresh your tweets.

Simply drag your finger vertically down and release to refresh. It’s that simple! Your stream is automatically reloaded with the newest tweets you want and it is extremely easy to refresh.

Trends

This feature does what its title says it does. It shows the most popular trends on Twiter right now. This is very useful to know what is going on right at any moment by what people are tweeting about.

Sure, any other iPhone Twitter app includes this feature but not to the extent that Tweetie does. You can save the trend, search throughout it and what I find awesome is definitions of the trend are automatically source from What The Trend, therefore if you don’t exactly know why a topic is trending you can tap one button and find out!

So while I love Tweetie 2, push and chat bubbles back would be an even better improvement!

You should download Tweetie 2 right now! It costs less than a cup of coffee.

Follow me on Twitter at @antbs and share your thoughts about Tweetie 2 for iPhone in the comments.

World Wide Developers Conference is coming this Monday the 9 of June and the long anticipated arrival of the 3G iPhone has circled around with many rumours. Firstly Vodafone announced a month ago that they would sell the iPhone in ten different countries this year including New Zealand. This is very exciting, we havn’t ever seen the light of the iPhone if it isn’t hacked. Everyone is hoping that his will be the 3G iPhone. Why would’nt it be? After all is Vodafone so backward that they wouldnt give us the new version? I hope not?

As you may know any first Generation product isnt going to be perfect and this was the case with the iPhone. The iPhone only had a 2 Megapixel camera with no flash or video recording qualities, no GPS, no 3G etc.

The features I would like to see with the new iPhone would be:

• At least a 4 Megapixel Camera with flash
• Video recording qualities
• Flash built in with Safari
• Third Generation technology (3G)
• GPS functionality
• Radio

What would you like to see in the next iPhone?