Rogers moving to 21Mbps HSPA+ network, at&t still at 3.6Mbps

Oh Canada, wasn’t your health care system enough to rub in our face down here in the US? Just when you thought you were out of fresh reason to hate at&t, Rogers has become the first North American carrier to offer the 21Mbps HSPA+ network, with an expected completion date by mid 2010.  At&t isn’t planning to being it’s move to 7.2Mbps, which Rogers is currently transitioning from, until later this year with a completion date in 2011! Although, according to Engadget at&t will also begin testing their new blazing fast next gen LTE network sometime next year with a completion date also in 2011.

(via iPhoneinCanada)

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at&t, iPhone

Why is Apple blocking Google Voice apps?

The hot news today is a high profile app store rejection…this time for the official Google Voice app. In addition to rejecting Google they have now removed the third party apps GV Mobile (now available for jailbreakers through Cydia) and VoiceCentral that have been listed in the app store for months. It was just about two weeks ago when I wrote about the release of official Google Voice apps for Android and Blackberry.  I wondered why they would release one for Blackberry before the iPhone, but turns out the app was done and submitted about 6 weeks ago!

TechCrunch spoke with a Google representative that said:

We work hard to bring Google applications to a number of mobile platforms, including the iPhone. Apple did not approve the Google Voice application we submitted six weeks ago to the Apple App Store. We will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users — for example, by taking advantage of advances in mobile browsers.

So now the question on everyone’s mind is why?
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Apple vs ?, at&t, iPhone, iPhone apps, Speculation

iPhone 3.1 beta 3 released to devs, beta 2 expires tonight

3.1 beta 3 is now available to developers, one day earlier than I was guessing. Most of the betas released this year have come out on a Tuesday and pretty much followed a 2 week release cycle…this was no different with the the 3.1 betas until today.

Apple also included a note that the current 3.1 beta 2 will be expiring July 28 at 12:00am which is less than 12 hours away for us on the east coast…unless of course they mean tomorrow night which would technically be July 29 at midnight. Maybe this Monday release was becuase they made a mistake with the expiration date and needed to get something out before they bricked a bunch of dev devices? Maybe they were expecting to have a GM out last week? Who knows, but if you are on 3.1 beta 2 you better get this installed ASAP.

Take your best guess when 3.1 will be released to the public in our when will iPhone 3.1 firmware be released for a chance to win a $50 iTunes gift card!

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iPhone, Software

You sure you want flash on your iPhone?

Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky reviewed the HTC Hero, the latest Android phone and the first to support flash. After hearing what Joshua had to say about the flash performance (and seeing it for yourself) I would like to tell the iPhone community that is demanding flash, think twice! It’s really really bad. The video is incredibly choppy which makes watching a flash video 100% useless. I’m sure the quality would be a bit better on safari and on the new iPhone 3GS, but certainly it would not be a good experience and this is why Apple has yet to include it.

I’d like to quote the same section from the video below that John Gruber of Daring Fireball did, I believe it sums up the experience nicely:

As you can see, it’s loading a video page, not super content-heavy. We’re on a wifi network. It’s not really… that snappy. It’s actually… it’s actually kind of maddening waiting for pages to load.

(via Daring Fireball)

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Apple vs ?, iPhone, Speculation

The Daily Show: iFart Mobile vs PullMyFinger aired

I posted about this interview airing a few days ago, but it was bumped. I’ve been waiting for it since then and last night the wait was over. In classic Daily Show interview style they made the interviewee look ridiculous while still appearing to take them seriously, but hey any press is good press right?

YouTube version if you can’t watch the above:

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Humor, iPhone apps

Want to leave the iPod-iTunes family to try something new? …better think twice

After Christopher Null’s (of the Yahoo! Tech blogs)  5 year old 20GB iPod finally died, he thought why not see what else is out there in the MP3 world. I haven’t had the urge to stray from my iPod since I got my first one a few years ago, but I guess as a tech writer it was worth his effort…right?

All of the nitpicking began to weigh me down. I couldn’t find my music. I couldn’t sync it easily. I couldn’t just start typing a song or band name into WMP to have the display jump to that part of the library like you can with iTunes; I had to use the search system or scroll — agonizingly slowly — to where I wanted to be. And, if I changed anything about an item midway down the library listing (say, to upload new album artwork), WMP would then reset itself and jump back to the top of the library, forcing me to start all over.

When I was an Apple outsider I thought using iTunes would be a pain because it tries to sync everything and what if I had too much music or didn’t want to put everything on there? I know now that was just ignorance on my part as you can drag songs to a playlist and then sync just that playlist, as I do with my iPhone 3GS today. The funniest part of my unfounded concern was the fact that with an 80GB iPod I just did a full sync of my library anyway. I have become so used to Apple’s intuitive design I don’t think I could go back either and I have a feeling I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Christopher sums up his experience perfectly and demonstrates why iPod is and will continue to be the Kleenex of the MP3 world:

So I gave up. I bought an iPhone, moved everything back to iTunes, and haven’t looked back. Works great.

(via @counternotions)

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Apple vs ?, Humor, iPhone, iPod, iTunes