There is no question about the biggest iPhone story of the week — it’s the iPhone on Verizon. I know many lawyers who have told me that they have been waiting a long time to get a Verizon iPhone and now are excited to finally be able to do so. I am sure that we will soon see reports of phenomenal sales. Here are the iPhone stories of note from this past week:
- As I thought might be the case, pre-ordering an iPhone from Verizon wasn’t easy and its website got overloaded, as reported by Jenna Wortham of the New York Times.
- Nevertheless, Josh Ong of AppleInsider reports that both Verizon and Apple ran out of their pre-sale stock last night. Verizon confirms this on its website.
- For those lucky enough to make a pre-order yesterday, David Quilty of TUAW reports that the Verizon iPhone are apparently already shipping with delivery expected later today.
- Apple better make some more of the Verizon iPhones fast. Josh Ong of AppleInsider reports that according to one study, over half of Verizon’s current Android and Blackberry users are likely to switch to the Verizon iPhone.
- Apple gave a number of tech journalists a Verizon iPhone to try out last week, and the early reviews are coming in. They are pretty consistent. The Verizon iPhone 4 is essentially identical an AT&T iPhone 4. The main improvement is that, in most areas, there are fewer dead spots on Verizon so it is easier to make and receive calls and not have them drop, plus the calls often sound better, although of course this varies from location to location and there are still some spots with better AT&T coverage than Verizon coverage. On the other hand, the data on the Verizon iPhone is slower, and in some cases much slower, than data on the AT&T iPhone. The other difference is that you cannot use data while you are making a phone call on Verizon, so you can’t send an e-mail or check a website while you are on the phone. If you want to read some of the notable reviews, I recommend…
- David Pogue’s review for the New York Times
- John Gruber’s review on Daring Fireball
- MG Siegler’s review for TechCrunch
- Josh Topolsky’s review for Engadget
- Jason Snell’s review for Macworld
- For now, only the Verizon iPhone has the Mobile Hotspot feature, but according to Dan Moren of Macworld, this feature is coming to AT&T on Feburary 13. You have to be using AT&T’s $25/month 2GB plan (which means giving up, potentially forever, your $30/month unlimited plan if you have one), and for an extra $20/month you get the Mobile Hospot feature plus an additional 2GB (4GB total).
- Lonely Planet makes travel guides for the iPhone that normally cost about $5.99 per city. But to give travel inspiration to those trapped inside with the winter weather right now, a number of the guides are now free. However, this deal ends at 9pm Eastern tonight, so act quickly. You can currently get free apps for my home town of New Orleans or other great cities including Boston, Chicago, Fort Myers, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, New York, San Fancisco, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington, D.C. (Those are all App Store links.) I’ve gone through the New Orleans guide, and it is quite good; hopefully the other city guides are just as helpful. (Thanks to Jason Bergmann for the tip.)
- Joe Wilcox of Beta News points out that ten years ago in 2001, Apple made some investments and decisions that had major importance for the company: (1) Apple launched iTunes in January, (2) Apple launched Mac OS X in March (which of course is the basis for the iOS), (3) Apple opened the first two Apple Stores in May, and (4) the first iPod debuted in October. All four of those events ten years ago played a critical role in the iPhone being what it is today.
- The top two operating systems on the global Internet are of course Windows and Mac, but iOS is now #3. According to Vlad Savov of Engadget, iOS’s 2.05% share ie enough to put it ahead of Linux, Java, Android, etc.
- Alan Cohen wrote a great article for Law Technology News about how lawyers are demanding devices like the iPhone and iPad and this is causing law firms to find a way to support these devices.
- Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is apparently a big fan of the iPad, and shortly before she was shot in Tucson, she talked to Elizabeth Saab of the new iPad-centric newspaper The Daily about how she uses the iPad. You can see the video report here, and this is a link on the web so you don’t need to use the iPad app to read the story and watch the video. It’s worth watching.
- As we prepare for the Super Bowl, it is a good time to remember the famous 1984 Apple commercial. Steve Hayden of AdWeek wrote a good article on the commercial.
- Ben Brooks of The Brooks Reviews explains why the iPad is a great tool to take to meetings. He makes some good points.
- Chad Garrett of TiPb compares iWork and Documents to Go on the iPad.
- Ted Brooks reviews Jury Duty, a $39.99 iPad app that can be used to assist with jury selection.
- And finally, if you are looking to do something unique with your iPhone while it sits on your desk, a company called Apps-and-More has designed a cardboard cuckoo clock and other faceplates that work with an iPhone app to display the time. The cost is $13.20, and you can see everything about how the app works in three YouTube videos. The first and second ones provide the setup info, and here is the third one that shows the final product in use. Silly, tacky, but sort of fun: