Worth Your Consideration 009 - A GF5 Linkdump

I know it may not seem like it to those of you who are not Apple people, but I’ve actually been holding back on the number of Apple-related stories I’ve been publishing in the lead-up to the release of Apple’s iPhone 3G. There’s a ton of quasi-news coming out of the Apple sites every day now, but I’ve been trying to limit my coverage here to stories that I actually have a little something to say about.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, on with the linkdump.

• Apple will open its U.S. retail stores at 8 a.m. on Friday to launch the iPhone 3G. This is exciting sure, but the main reason they’re doing a morning launch instead of their typical evening launch is because the process for purchasing an iPhone will be infinitely more complicated than it was the last time. Customers are being asked to bring a credit card, a valid, government-issued ID, their social security number, a copy of their current wireless statement, and the naming rights to their first-born child.
• If you can’t wait until Friday to experience the sheer awesomeness of unboxing a new iPhone of your very own, then Engadget has you covered.
• Or, if you’re like me, and won’t be able to get your iPhone on Friday (I’ll be working and then camping) and are therefore thirsting for some Apple-related goodness to call your very own, check out this news about Apple’s MobileMe service. It will apparently be launching on Wednesday night. If a free trial is available at some point on Thursday, you can be damn sure I’ll be signing up for that. It should make the pain of not being able to be an opening-weekend adopter of iPhone 3G a little easier to bear.
• Or, if you hate Apple and loves yourself some Microsoft, check out this news from InformationWeek. It turns out that Redmond will soon be responding to Apple’s ubiquitous Get a Mac attack ads. The campaign will apparently operate under the umbrella tagline “Free the People.” How long until Apple responds with a “Yeah, free the people from Vista” ad?

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Worth Your Consideration 008 - A GF5 Linkdump

• We’re just about ten days away from the official launch of the iPhone 3G and Apple has thrown the hype machine into full gear. This morning, they brought back Bob the iPhone guy for another boner-inducing guided tour. Thanks to TUAW for the initial tip.
• Not to be outdone, AT&T has rolled out their own series of iReady video clips, including this one, for new customers like me. Seriously, I don’t know how I could possibly be ready to buy a cellphone without watching all of these preparatory videos.
• Mac Rumors was the first of the Apple-specific Websites to deliver the news to me that AT&T had announced their rate plans for iPhone, so they get the shoutout. It wasn’t immediately clear to me what an AT&T family plan with only one iPhone would cost (the price for a two-iPhone family plan starts at $129 a month), but this AT&T page made it clearer.  As had long been rumored, people like me can “[a]dd a Consumer Data Plan for iPhone 3G to a qualified voice plan for $30 per month.”
• I also learned today that, when I buy my iPhone 3G, it will come packaged in a potato. Or, well, it will come packaged in potato-based material, that is. There is a joke waiting to be made about whether or not I would like fries with my phone, but I’m too lazy to make it.
• And, lastly, after reading this article on Colin Devroe’s site, I will make damn sure that I don’t spill anything on my new iPhone, when I finally get it. It turns out that even a small amount of moisture (from, say, sweat) may have been the cause of the iPhone deadspots problem that Colin was having.

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iPhone Porn in 3G

Time magazine’s Jeremy Caplan is reporting that the iPhone’s next frontier will be pornography.

To date, mobile porn has consisted largely of still images, racy text services and “moan tones,"… But now, thanks in large part to the iPhone’s video dexterity, short clips are becoming a staple of the mobile porn business. The speed promised by the iPhone 2.0 is much anticipated… “It’s by far the porn-friendliest phone,” says Devan Cypher, representative for San Francisco–based Sin City Entertainment.

Apple restricts adult content in the podcast section of their iTunes Music Store, and they will apparently do the same for the upcoming iPhone/iPod Touch Application Store. But they can’t stop adult entertainment providers from supplying Websites tailored for their devices. Their main challenge in all of this is to ensure that parental controls are easy to use and very secure. As the Time article wisely points out, the last thing Apple or AT&T need here is to have a Janet Jackson Boobgate-type controversy on their hands. I’m sure the FCC will be watching very, very closely.

[Source: MacNN ]

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Worth Your Consideration 004 - A GF5 Linkdump

• Viddler Technology Evangelist Colin Devroe started using Spaces in Mac OS X Leopard shortly after the release of the 10.5.3 update, and he’s reporting today on how it’s been going. He certainly seems to be making better use of the program/feature than I am, and I can’t wait to get home and give some of his suggestions a try.
• AppleInsider is offering a ray of hope for those iPhone enthusiasts who are hoping to get in and out of the Apple/AT&T store of their choice in a timely fashion on release day. They report that iPhone 3G buyers may be able to complete activation at home, after all.

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Merlin Mann’s Take on Mobile Me

43 Folders has an article by Merlin Mann on MobileMe that I found quite good. Mann describes himself as “someone who’s had strong feelings, high hopes, and occasional disappointmens with .Mac” and his thoughts on the service that Apple is launching to replace it are pretty comprehensive. My favorite observation:

Hiya, Windows hold-outs - I don’t know enough about “Enterprise” buying decisions to speak intelligently about business adoption, but I will say that MobileMe seems like a smart way reach out to individual Windows users and say, “See? Look how easy this all is!” Similarly, a lot of people I talk to these days are down to a single Windows device, and that’s the one they have to use at work. MobileMe potentially keeps them connected to their Apple world, even when they’re on a PC.

That’s the single most important benefit of MobileMe over .Mac for me: the inclusion of Windows computers in the mix.

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