Here are some of the iPhone-related stories that I ran across this week that I thought might be of interest to readers of iPhone J.D.
- John Gruber wrote an excellent article for Macworld about how Apple starts out with modest products and then slowly but steadily builds upon them over the years to turn them into outstanding products. I certainly feel that way about the iPhone. The first generation was a cool gadget but not quite ready for business professionals, but the iPhone 3G fixed that, the 3GS improved upon that, and I cannot wait to see what the next version is this Summer. I don’t have an iPad yet even though it is unquestionably an amazingly cool gadget, but over time as iPad-specific apps are released and Apple improves the product through software and hardware updates, I can’t even imagine how amazing the iPad will be years from now.
- I know that a lot of lawyers still use a BlackBerry instead of an iPhone, but Tom Kaneshige writes for CIO.com that BlackBerry’s days are numbered and that the iPhone is the future.
- The saga of the “lost” iPhone continues. MacNN reports that today, a judge will hear a request from media outlets such as CNET, Bloomberg and the Associated Press to unseal the records related to the police raid on the house of Jason Chen of Gizmodo. [UPDATE: The court granted the media’s request to unseal the records. Unless reversed on appeal, I’m sure that this means that we will soon see news stories with more names, dates and information gained during the police investigation.]
- People oftern ask me whether the iPhone will come to Verizon, and just the other day I was talking with a Verizon employee convinced that it was happening in just a few months. Attorney and Engadget editor Nilay Patel discovered from court documents that Apple’s initial deal with AT&T in 2007 was for five years. Of course, that doesn’t tell us if or when we will see a Verizon iPhone. Apple and AT&T could have changed the contract several times since that initial deal.
- Dan Moren of Macworld reviews the iHome iA5, a $100 bedside alarm clock and speaker system for your iPhone.
- Can you leave your laptop at home and use an iPad instead? Michael Gartenberg did just that for two weeks of travel, and he lives to tell the tale. (Spoiler alert: the iPad does a good job, but we really need apps like Quickoffice or Documents to Go.)
- Harry McCracken reports on President Obama’s recent mention of the iPad.
- And finally, a few weeks ago in my Friday post I described a fun product called iRetrophone Base being sold on Etsy
for $195.00 that combines your iPhone with a retro phone handset. For more information on this cool design, check out this interview with the creator by the folks at iPhone Savior.
