AlexLee.eu

With the arrival of the UK iPhone only a week away I was expecting to be a little more excited than I currently find myself. When the iPhone first came out in the US I would have given my right arm to have one so what has changed?

Well a lot, firstly the carrier O2! I’ve never been a fan of their work and vowed never to be a customer of theirs again after my last run in with them and so that is a pretty big blocker. I understand from Engadget that we will be getting jailbreak for the iPhone pretty much as the iPhone lands but I also understand the implications of what jailbreaking means and that isn’t necessarily a route I want to go down.

Then you have all the reviews from America or even more so now the secondary reviews, the comments being made after the dust has settle and people have had a chance to use it a little bit more. The iPhone is still a great device but I don’t think it is quite living up to all the hype it got.

Then there is the iPod touch, this is everything the iPhone is without the phone. Great! So I get a great device to play my music on or my films, I can surf the web and I don’t have the hassle of having to jailbreak it or switch the devil that is O2.

Yeah ok so I have to carry two devices around with me but to be honest I do that now and I don’t complain, in fact I often carry a lot more than that.

I wonder how many other people are in the same position as me and will be making the same decision come 9th of November…

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Unfortunately it looks like O2 might have pipped the others to the post in obtaining the contract to offer the iPhone to the UK. I say unfortunately, as based on my past experiences with O2 they are one of the last companies I would be wanting to sign up with.

Orange seem to have the best price/ customer experience/ coverage split of any of the operators in the UK however it looks likely that they will get the contract for France, with T-Mobile getting Germany, leaving poor Vodafone as the last big European company without a home… I’m sure they will get a look in somewhere.

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With the launch of the iPhone in the US only moments away another rumour has come about from none other than Newswireless Guy Kewney.

A new 3G (European) version of the iPhone will be launched Monday in the UK by Apple – in a join promotion with Vodafone, T-Mobile of Germany, and Carphone Warehouse. It should answer the disappointment with the US version of the iPhone which has been widely slammed for its poor performance as a phone.

If this rumour is to be believed it will be the first time the UK gets a product before the US although most think that a US version would be release at the same time.

You can read the full article here.

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Apple PR? & Cisco PR

Cisco® and Apple® today announced that they have resolved their dispute involving the “iPhone” trademark. Under the agreement, both companies are free to use the “iPhone” trademark on their products throughout the world. Both companies acknowledge the trademark ownership rights that have been granted, and each side will dismiss any pending actions regarding the trademark. In addition, Cisco and Apple will explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security, and consumer and enterprise communications. Other terms of the agreement are confidential.

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Or so say some…

A senior executive for the Aussie telco Telstra says that Apple’s iPhone is pretty much doomed.

Operations chief Greg Winn said that Apple was not a mobile phone manufacturer and should have “stuck to its knitting”.

and…

“You can pretty much be assured that Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and ZTE and others will be coming out with devices that have similar functionality.”

He also went on to say that he didn’t think the touch screen revolutionised the device, that the Cingular network would not help a global roll out, and the non-replaceable battery would also be a “sticking point”.

He did admit that he was absolutely sure it would be an initial success but still this is pretty damning.

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The Apple v Cisco battle isn’t over yet.

Both companies have agreed to extend talks aimed at “reaching agreement on trademark rights and interoperability”.

Apple launched it’s iPhone last month in San Francisco and immediately Cisco sued Apple for trademark infringement of its own line of internet-enabled iPhones.

Cisco makes much of the hardware that underpins the internet, and has owned the trademark on the iPhone name since 2000 after it acquired another company Infogear.

However some believe their hold on it isn’t that strong due to the amount of time they held the trademark and how they only used it moments before Apple launched its version of an existing line products.

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I read this late last night on theregister.co.uk

Apple appears unable to “think different” on the cell phone front. First the computer maker nicked the iPhone name for the actual device from Cisco, and now we find it’s grabbed an application name from poor old Citrix.

Earlier this week, Apple bragged about teaming with Cingular on its Visual Voicemail software that runs on the iPhone. The voicemail application displays caller information and allows users to pick the order in which messages are played back instead of forcing you to hear messages in a sequential order.

Such features won’t impress Citrix, which has been selling Visual Voicemail software since it acquired Net6 in 2004. [Thanks, Jason.]

“Visual Voicemail enables Call Pilot voicemail users to have a visual indication of the number of voice mail messages in the mailbox, the senders of these voice mail messages, the time of the voice mail message, and the length of the voice mails,” Citrix notes on its website. “Visual Voicemail enables users to take a quick glance at their list of voice mail messages to check for important ones – without having to listen to all their messages.”

Apple have taken 2 years to come up with a lot of stuff done by others and just pulled it all together – hardly something worth shouting about as much as Jobs has been doing.

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Well we all thought this had been settled but it appears not? -

From the BBC

Cisco Systems is suing Apple Computer for trademark infringement in a US federal court, for using the iPhone name. …

Apple responded by saying the lawsuit was “silly” and that Cisco’s trademark registration was “tenuous at best”.

“We think Cisco’s trademark lawsuit is silly,” Apple spokesman Alan Hely said. “There are already several companies using the name iPhone for Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) products.”

I have an inkling as to who will win this one, but as great as the Apple phone is, part of me doesn’t like the way they seem to railroad people, throwing money and lawyers at things to make them disappear or get what they want. But then if they have the money why not?

I guess we see Cisco as the underdogs and that would help them gain support, which always makes for a good fight, but looking at the details Cisco do seem to have a strong case. It has owned? the? registered name? since 2000 when it bought Infogear Technology who had the name previously for several years.

I’d like to see Apple wriggle their way out of this one.

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Well love them or loathe them, it seems Apple have done it again at this year’s Macworld with the announcement of the long awaited and much anticipated iPhone.

And it looks excellent, combining all we have come to expect from an iPod, an internet connectivity device and a mobile phone.

The iPhone – well you can phone, text and check your voicemail (wow? )? and like any phone these days, comes with a 2 megapixel camera but that isn’t all. It’s sleek, slim and sexy. It features a revolutionary user interface which centres around a wide multi-touch screen which allows you to control everything on the phone with only your fingertips. Gliding through albums or flipping through photos and emails is a breeze. Zooming in on photos is done? in a very ‘Minority Report’ way, where you move your fingers out to the edges to zoom in or drag from the edges in to zoom out. When typing SMS messages or email, a full ‘qwerty’ keyboard appears on the screen and because it is predictive, it will even correct any mistakes.

continue reading…

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