From TUAW
One of our readers sent us in some screenshots of his iPhone showing what appears to be the anticipated iTunes AppStore. Could these pictures be the AppStore, or could it be some type of hack? It definitely looks legit to us! He says that after opening and closing the AppStore a couple of times and getting an “iTunes connection” error, it finally loaded some random AppStore pages.
From iPhoneworld
A pretty nifty new service is now available for those iPhone owners that are concerned about their mobile communications’ security, called VPN Mobile.
Since Apple iPhone and other smart phones have the capability to join countless networks and are always mobile, they are constantly in search of different wireless connections, leaving the door open for data intrusion. Wireless devices like the iPhone have limited in-transit data security options and can lack the ability to secure information sent wirelessly from one machine to another. VPN Mobile provides the additional level of security needed for protected information transmission.
Read more here
From iPhoneFAQ
Bay Partners turned many a head in the financial and software development worlds when it drummed up $10 million dollars last year to fund application development for Facebook. On Friday, San Francisco venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers trumped that offer ten times over, by establishing a $100 million dollar fund to back software development for the Apple iPhone.
Apple, recently released their official iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit), to much anticipation and fanfare. Though software development for the iPhone has been underway in an unofficial form via an unofficial SDK for months now, this move by Apple opens up “legitimate” development to any and all.
The grandeur of the iFund, as it is being called, may drive heavy development of applications geared specifically for the Apple iPhone. The result, in turn, could be delivery of customers to Apple. As the availability of software products for the iPhone increases relative to other devices, customers may be likely to opt for a device with more possibilities. At least, so hopes Kleiner Perkins.
Read more at iPhoneFAQ
From Macworld
Apple said Thursday that it will control the sale and distribution of all iPhone software created by independent developers. The software will be distributed via a new program on the iPhone called App Store, as well as on Macs and PCs via a new section of the iTunes Store.
Unveiling App Store during Thursday’s iPhone briefing at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters, CEO Steve Jobs described App Store as “an application we’ve written to deliver apps to the iPhone. And we’re going to put it on every single iPhone with the next release of the software.”
That software—the iPhone 2.0 release—is slated for June and will also include the Software Development Kit announced Thursday. A beta of the SDK is available now from Apple.
The iPhone 2.0 release will be a free update for iPhone users. Jobs said the same software update will also be available to iPod touch owners, though they’ll be charged a fee, just as they were in January when Apple charged $19.95 for the 1.1.3 software update.
“The way we account for the iPhone is with subscription accounting, so we take the revenue over two years,” Jobs explained at Thursday’s briefing. “The way that we account for iPods is more normal accounting. And so, because of that, we have to charge a nominal fee… But we don’t look at this as a profit opportunity.”
The App StoreWhen it debuts, the App Store will borrow its look-and-feel from the iTunes Wi-Fi Store, the online retail outlet that allows iPhone and iPod touch users to buy music directly from their handheld devices. The App Store will break out items, categories, and top downloads into lists. A search function will help iPhone users find the applications they want.
Users tap the price of an application to download the software. A second tap will install it on the iPhone, either over a cell network or via Wi-Fi. Alternately, users can buy iPhone applications through iTunes running on a computer, installing them by synchronizing the iPhone.
Read the rest of the store at Macworld
From Forbes.com
Steve Jobs just couldn’t resist. The secretive Apple chief executive, who is known to have spent some of his early days hacking the phone system, took a jab at rival smart-phone maker Research In Motion as Apple unveiled new business-friendly features for the iPhone on Thursday. The biggest news: Apple has licensed Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync for the iPhone, allowing iPhone users to pour e-mail and calendar information living on their company’s Microsoft Exchange systems directly into the iPhone.
By contrast, Jobs said, BlackBerry users rely on servers run by Research In Motion (nasdaq: RIMM - news - people ) to shuttle information between corporate servers and BlackBerry users. “Every e-mail goes through a NOC [Network Operations Center] up in Canada,” Jobs said during a question and answer session with reporters. “That provides a single point of failure, but it also provides a very interesting security situation, where someone working up at that NOC could be potentially having a little look at your e-mail. Nobody seems to be focused on that. We certainly are. We think that a direct connection could be a little more secure.”
The jab comes as Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) announced it will build a slew of business-friendly features for the iPhone and iPod Touch, including support for push e-mail, push calendaring, push contacts, virtual private networks and support for certificates and identities into the next version of its iPhone operating system. The neatest trick, however, could be the ability to get e-mail and calendar information directly from Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Exchange servers. And Jobs had no complaints about Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync, which Apple has licensed, to provide these functions for the iPhone.
Read the rest of the story at Forbes.com
From Infoworld
Apple’s iPhone SDK offers far more than many developers expected, according to developers that InfoWorld spoke with after the long-awaited SDK unveiled today. “It looks like this is what everybody wanted,” said Tony Meadow, principal at Bear River Associates, a mobile application development vendor. “Apple is doing it the right way.”
Forrester Research analyst Simon Yates, concurred, saying that the Apple SDK should please three core constituencies: Developers, enterprise IT and consumers.
“This is direct competition for RIM BlackBerry, and it gives Apple access to millions of Exchange and Outlook users, said Yates.
“This is a giant step toward the business market,” concurred Rado Kotorov, technical director of strategic product management at business intelligence vendor Information Builders.
Developers get a solid database and a familiar API tool set
What pleased Meadow and other developers was a set of functionality that will let them write native iPhone applications through access to the iPhone APIs.In addition, Meadow thought Apple hit the right note by offering SQL Lite as the built-in database layer. SQL Lite, an open-source database, is widely used by the mobile developer community and runs well on small devices. “It will make it easy to store data,” he said.
Cocoa Touch, the built-in set of APIs that re-creates the Cocoa tool set used to handle the user-interface-generated events in Mac OS X is targeted at the iPhone’s and iPod Touch’s unique touchscreen as well as their gesture-based UI. “It’s an elegant way to deal with the interface paradigm,” said Meadow.
Read the rest of the article here
There is a really cool new application that allows you to use your iPhone as a remote for your iTunes library (Mac) or iTunes, Winamp, or Windows Media Player on your PC. It is very simple, follow the steps below.
This is just a rumor found over at computerworld, but it does sound exciting and very fitting for the announcement by Apple last week saying there were some exciting new enterprise features coming our way. What could be bigger for the corporate world that having Exchange on their iPhones? I think this would increase the adoption of the iPhone by big business.
According to gizmodo a new iPhone application is being developed (already working) to enable P2P on the iPhone. This is exciting news for many but it is still in early stages of development. A few things to note about this application as of right now.
