The day after Apple's 2009 fiscal fourth quarter conference call, Apple announced a number of updated products including new iMacs and Macbooks. For the most part, those product announcements had nothing to do with the iPhone, but those two days of Apple announcements did result in some follow up news that I wanted to mention today.
- First, one of the new products announced by Apple this week does have some connection to the iPhone. Apple sells the Airport Extreme base station, a Wi-Fi router that you attach to your broadband cable or
DSL modem to create a wireless network throughout your home or office. I last discussed
the Airport Extreme this past March, and this week Apple improved the
Airport Extreme to provide better performance and range. AppleInsider
provides more details on the update. I use an older version of the Airport Extreme to provide Wi-Fi in my house that I use with my iPhone.
- And speaking of Apple's fiscal fourth quarter conference call, one issue that I did
not discuss in my post earlier this week was the talk on the call about
the way that Apple handles accounting for iPhone revenue and how that
may change in the future. I'm glad that I didn't try to tackle this
complicated subject because Daniel Eran Dilger does a better job than I could have done
explaining all of this in this post on his RouglyDrafted Magazine website.
Apple wasn't the only one to announce quarterly results this week. Yesterday, AT&T provided its quarterly report and, according to Electronista,
revealed that it activated 3.2 million iPhones during that same
quarter, a new record for AT&T. We know from Apple's announcement that it sold 7.4 million iPhones this past quarter, so that tells us that Apple
sells more iPhones outside of the U.S. (4.2 million) than in the U.S.
(3.2 million). Or to look at these numbers another way, as Macworld's Dan Moren did,
AT&T is "the largest single carrier of iPhones in the world." It
was also announced during the AT&T call that 40% of AT&T's
iPhone activations were for customers new to
AT&T, so the iPhone remains a powerful incentive for people to
switch to AT&T.- Attorney Jonathan Frieden describes a dozen useful iPhone apps for lawyers on his blog E-Commerce Law.
- Law firm PR specialist Rich Klein suggests 10 iPhone apps that lawyers might like.
- If you don't already receive the useful TechnoLawyer newsletters, you should sign up today. I particularly like the Monday BlawgWorld
newsletter which identifies the most interesting blawg posts from
the last week, especially now that the newsletter features a "Legal
Technology on the Go..." section that always has links to useful
iPhone-related posts, such as the last two items that I just described. Adriana Linares (who runs the great site I Heart Tech) and Liz Kurtz do a fabulous job editing the BlawgWorld newsletter every week.
There are several options for using your iPhone to provide turn-by-turn
GPS directions. TomTom sells a $99 iPhone app that provides this
service, and you can now supplement that app with the $120 TomTom Car Kit.
The kit gives you a place to mount your iPhone in your car, charges the
iPhone, improves the GPS signal (by using its own internal GPS) and
adds other enhancements. Click here for the TomTom app ($99.00): 
- TechCrunch selects some interesting slides
from a presentation by Morgan Stanley Internet analyst Mary Meeker
showing that (1) Internet adoption on the iPhone has been faster than
any other device and (2) the iPhone (and iPod touch) is the
fastest-growing consumer electronics product of all time.
- MobileCrunch reports
that the U.S. Postal Service now has a mobile version of its website
that is tailored for the iPhone. The USPS website has always been a
useful way to find zip codes and track packages, and now it works even
better on the iPhone. To access it, go to m.usps.com.
And finally, according to an article in Advertising Age, magazine publisher Condé Nast plans to start selling iPhone apps for $2.99, each of which contains a full issue of magazine such as GQ. The articles notes: "Users will be able to see every page as it appears in print as well as
renderings of all the content tailored for display on the small screen.
They will also be able to watch related videos, hear audio and visit
advertisers' sites without leaving the app." The goal is for the app to become available for sale the same day that each new issue hits the newsstands. I haven't seen a full list of which magazines will be included, but in addition to GQ, Condé Nast's portfolio includes Vogue, Details, Architectural Digest, Golf Digest, Vanity Fair, Bon Appétit, Wired and the New Yorker among many others. It will be interesting to see how these magazines translate to the iPhone's small screen and how eager customers are to read magazines this way. Getting a digital copy is a way to save some trees, but reading a magazine on an iPhone will be a very different experience. Whether it works out or not, I'd like to thank Condé Nast for giving me an excuse to publish a picture of the beautiful and talented January Jones from the cover of the current issue of GQ. I love the character she plays on Mad Men, and based on her interview in GQ, she sounds like quite a character in real life.
