The closer we get to June, the more rumors we hear on what will be in the next iPhone. Faster? A compass? Video recording? An OLED display? A glowing Apple logo? We are now getting close enough to the expected announcement date that some of the more respected websites are discussing what might be included in the next iPhone. I still recommend viewing all of this with a high degree of skepticism, but if you want to read the rumors, Engadget rounds up some of them and John Gruber of the website Daring Fireball has made his predictions. Switching from rumors and speculation to “real” news, here are some of the iPhone-related stories that caught my attention this week:
Apple continues to reject apps for baffling reasons. First, Forbes has an interesting story on an app developer who tried to release an app based on the First Family’s new dog, but ran into trouble because Apple wouldn’t allow animations of Barack and Michelle Obama and because Apple didn’t like an advertisement that the app developer was making a charitable contribution. Second, and far worse, Jason Snell notes on Twitter (and John Gruber notes on Daring Fireball) that Apple has rejected Eucalyptus, an app that allows you to find and download classic public domain books from the well-established Project Gutenberg. According to the developer, Apple claimed that the app contained obscene content, but the app itself contained no such content. Instead, Apple was objecting to the possibility that a person could use the app to enter a search on Project Gutenberg for the public domain text of the Kama Sutra. Of course, this is just silly. I can already use Safari on my iPhone to access the Guterberg page and view the exact same content. And as the developer points out, you can use the Kindle app to read the same book on the iPhone. I can use Twitter clients to follow people who say lots of obscene things in their tweets. And I can only imagine what some people are putting on Facebook pages that you can access using the Facebook app. I can understand Apple making mistakes here and there — the company must be overloaded with app submissions — but there have been enough of these stories reported that it does make you wonder what the heck is going on. [UPDATE 5/24/09: The developer reports that Apple realized its mistake and accepted Eucalyptus.]
To shift from rejected apps to the apps that Apple loves, we’ve all seen Apple’s “There’s an app for that” ads which feature varied third party apps for the iPhone. The iPhone Download Blog reports that there is now a section on the iTunes App Store called “iPhone Apps from the TV Ads” that compiles all of the featured apps in one place. - AppleInsider discusses a new report by market research firm Gartner which concludes that Apple’s share of the global smartphone market has doubled since last year to over 10%. This puts Apple in third place; Nokia leads with over 40% of the market, and Blackberry maker RIM has about 20%.
- Harry McCracken reports on his Technologizer site that Amazon has updated its iPhone Kindle app. You can now read a book in landscape mode, change the color scheme, pinch to zoom in on pictures, and tap to advance to the next page (which saves your finger from the stress of swiping though page after page). One new feature of this app that I wish other apps would include is the ability to lock the screen orientation, useful if you are reading with the iPhone tilted and don’t want the image to turn 90 degrees.
Engadget reports that the Palm Pre, which has the potential to be a worthy iPhone competitor, will launch on June 6 for $199. That’s just two days before Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which will kick off at 10am Pacific on June 8 with a keynote address by Apple’s Phil Schiller. We don’t know what Schiller will reveal on June 8, but many speculate that this will be Apple’s announcement of the next generation of the iPhone, although it wouldn’t surprise me if the device is not actually available for sale until July.- In addition to Apple’s new iPhone, we might get cheaper iPhone plans from AT&T according to a Reuters report. Ralph de la Vega, the head of AT&T’s mobility and consumer business, said earlier this week that AT&T is considering offering cheaper data service plans with limited Web surfing. Right now, the cheapest iPhone plan is $70 a month, but you get unlimited data. I personally have no interest in a plan with limited data because I use the data portion of my plan far more than the talk minutes, but a discounted plan could be nice for those who don’t stream video or make other demanding uses of online data with their iPhone.