It's been an interesting week for the iPhone. Apple has now sold over a billion apps on the iTunes store and posted record earnings in the last quarter thanks in large part to the iPhone. Moreover, the excitement continues to build towards this summer with the new iPhone 3.0 software and whatever Apple is preparing for the next version of the iPhone. Here are some of the iPhone-related stories that caught my attention this week.
- Macworld provides a review of Thesaurus apps for the iPhone. Or should I say an analysis, an assessment, a survey, an overview, a recapitulation, a report, a ....
- What's on iPhone reviews an app called WBCapture, an app dedicated to the task of taking a picture of a whiteboard. I have used whiteboards in the past during brainstorming sessions, and I found it useful to just use the built-in camera app to take a picture. I suppose this app brings that to the next level.
- Ben Part writes in Mashable about 11 essential iPhone apps for when you are taking a road trip.
- Looking for news on your iPhone? Rich Rosen compares the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today apps on the O'Reilly Media blog.
So let's say that you're going to be away from the office all day long, and you want to both protect your iPhone in a case and give it the extra power to go all day long. The $80 Mophie Juice Pack Air might be just what you need. Reviews are posted on iLounge, Engadget and CrunchGear, and MacNN says that it will be shipping in about a week.
- Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the iPhone and its smartphone competitors. (I missed that article when it first ran, but thanks to A.J. Levy for bringing it to my attention.)
- Macworld has reviewed a heck of a lot of iPhone apps, and they are now collecting all of their reviews (over 500 so far) on this page.
- Telephony Online reports that AT&T is about to double the speed of its 3G networks from 3.6 Mbps to 7.2 Mbps. In the real world, I typically see 3G download speeds of almost 1 Mbps and Wi-Fi speeds of around 3 Mbps or more. It would be great for 3G speeds to get even closer to Wi-Fi speeds. Will current iPhone 3G owners see these new speeds? I'm not sure. This article in AppleInsider says no, so perhaps one of the selling points for the for iPhone to be released this summer will be that it is twice as fast as the prior iPhone 3G.
- Congratulations to thirteen year-old Connor Mulcahey of Weston, Conn. for downloading the 1 billionth app from iTunes. The app was Bump, a contact manager app. With his $10,000 iTunes gift card prize, at least we know there is one teenager who won't be downloading pirated songs.
- And finally, and I don't know how long this will stay up, the New York Times currently has a great iPhone ad on its homepage celebrating Apple passing the 1 billion app download mark.
