Can a refreshed Google Wallet finally take off?

A large challenge for Google on mobile payments is still one of availability. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are working on their own mobile payment service, called Isis, and have resisted putting Google Wallet on their handsets.

That may be part of the reason why Google is getting more aggressive in offering Nexus phones that aren't tied to the major carriers. The recently-announced Nexus 4will be sold unlocked and contract-free for $300 and up.

Now, Google reportedly is testing a physical card for Google Wallet, which would work at stores that don't support tap-and-pay from mobile phones.

The Google Wallet card would store payment details from multiple credit and debit cards, Android Police reports, citing an anonymous source. Through the Google Wallet app, users select which of those payment methods to use by default, then swipe and sign the Google Wallet card as they would with a regular credit card.

The idea is that Google Wallet users can leave all their other credit cards at home. All they'd need is their smartphone and the Google Wallet card—and maybe some cash. Because the Wallet app can control which method of payment is associated with the card, it could make sense for users who spread their payments across multiple credit and debit cards.

Also, if the Google Wallet card is lost or stolen, users can cancel it, and won't have to cancel all their other credit and debit cards. In leaked screenshots, Google says it offers fraud monitoring and the ability to remotely disable the card at any time.

Changes for Google Wallet?

As Android Police notes, the physical card may be just a part of some big changes for Google Wallet. Other features may include support for transit cards, money transfers between users, and a “Wallet Balance” from which users can deposit and withdraw. Google has said that it wants to bring discount cards, tickets, and identification into Wallet to compete with the iPhone's Passbook feature.

Google may also be working on a way to bring a version of Wallet to other devices such as the iPhone. A recent sign-up page for news on “the next version of Google Wallet” asked visitors whether they used an Android device, an iPhone or “other.”

The iPhone doesn't support near-field communications, so any service would likely rely on barcode scanning instead.

Even if Google Wallet doesn't take off, the added features and availability should make it more useful. Ultimately, any mobile wallet service needs a clear answer for why people should use it instead of their existing cash and cards. It'll be interesting to see how Google answers that question when it's ready to show off what's next for Google Wallet.

Source: techhive.com

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iPhone users sue Apple for locking them into AT&T

Apple's much-maligned iPhone exclusivity agreement with AT&T Mobility, started in 2007 but now ended, is once again the target of a class-action suit.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks for Apple to be barred from selling "locked" devices, or those that only work on a certain operator's network, and pay monetary damages.

Apple violated the section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 when it agreed to work only with AT&T Mobility for five years since consumers were not aware or asked if the contractual arrangement, where they could not switch providers, was acceptable, the lawsuit said.

The class-action suit, filed by Zack Ward of Los Angeles and Thomas Buchar of Chicago, addresses devices purchased between October 19, 2008, and February 3, 2011. Ward bought his iPhone in October 2009, and Buchar bought one around June 2009.

Some of the circumstances the lawsuit seeks to change are now irrelevant given changes by Apple and AT&T, although Apple could be made to pay damages for previous arrangements.

Apple's first three iPhone models—the iPhone 2G, 3G and 4—could only operate on AT&T's network and required a special code in order to be "unlocked," or capable of operating with SIM card from a different operator.

The company later released a version of the iPhone 4 in February 2011 that worked on Verizon's network, which appeared to mark an early end to the five-year exclusivity contact, according to the lawsuit. In June 2011, Apple for the first time in the U.S. began selling unlocked iPhones interoperable with carriers with GSM networks.

AT&T, however, had refused except in special circumstances to unlock an iPhone even if a user's contract had ended, tying those users to the carrier even after their obligation had been fulfilled. In April, AT&T reversed its position and agreed to unlock out-of-contract iPhones.

Apple's latest iPhone 5 and the iPhone 4S are available through the three main U.S. operators: AT&T, Sprint and Verizon.

Apple was first sued in October 2007 over its exclusivity agreement with AT&T, which eventually became a class-action suit.

Source: macworld.com

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iPhone 5 sliding button problem, and a workaround

When you get a new iPhone there are a lot features to turn on and off as you customize the device to your liking, most all of which are controlled using sliding on/off buttons similar to the iPhone's iconic swipe-to-unlock feature. Problem is, the sliders often don't work on the iPhone 5.

We've tested four devices in the office and everyone of them suffered this glitch. When you go into settings, for example, to specify which notifications you want on or off, you get a list of options for everything from messages to reminder, calendar, weather, mail, etc. If you want to have the phone get your attention when something pops in one of these applications, you slide the button from off to on.

That usually seems to work. But if you change your mind and want to turn it off again, good luck. Many times the slider simply refuses to acknowledge your finger swipe. If you do it two, three, four, five times, you might get lucky and get the device's attention.

At first we assumed this was a problem with one phone, so we went hunting through the office for others, and sure enough the next one displayed the same problem. OK, it could still be a fluke, so we looked for more. After reviewing four phones, each of which displayed the same annoying problem, we concluded this endemic.

But we also discovered a workaround. One user said he hadn't happened upon the problem because he doesn't slide the sliders, he taps on the on or off word. Sure enough, that seems to work.

So, until Apple fixes this glitch, tap instead of slide and you can customize that shiny new device in a heartbeat.

Source: networkworld.com

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iPhone hacker 'Comex' let go from work with Apple

Comex said he forgot to reply to an email from the company, but revealed few other details

The famed iPhone hacker "Comex," who engineered ways to hack Apple's mobile operating system, is no longer doing work for the company, according to Twitter postings.

"So...no point in delaying. As of last week, after about a year, I'm no longer associated with Apple," wrote Comex, who has more than 196,000 followers.

He wrote the reason is that he failed to respond to an email from the company. It's rare but not unprecedented for someone who has a hacked a company's software to end up working there. Comex couldn't be immediately reached for comment.

Later on Thursday he tweeted: "Now I feel like a big damn drama queen."

Comex is widely respected in the iPhone hacker realm for his work with the JailbreakMe applications, which exploited Apple's software to allow the installation of programs not vetted by the company in its App Store, a modification known as "jailbreaking." Apple doesn't like the practice, although it is legal in the U.S. under an exception to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

In July 2011, Comex and his team released JailbreakMe 3.0, which used a pair of vulnerabilities to install unauthorized software on iOS versions 4.3.3 and prior. It worked with the first and second versions of the iPad and the iPhone.

Comex also delivered in July 2010 with JailbreakMe 2.0, which also used two vulnerabilities to exploit iOS. Apple patched the problems shortly after JailbreakMe 2.0 was released.

Elite iOS hackers are still at work to develop a jailbreak for iOS 6, Apple's latest version which was released last month. A "tethered" jailbreak exists, but an iOS 6 device must be connected to a computer when the attack occurs.

The more graceful way is to engineer an untethered jailbreak. iPhone hackerssaid at the Hack in the Box security conference last week that Apple has improved the security of iOS making it more difficult, but not impossible, to eventually perform an untethered jailbreak.

Source: computerworld.com

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How it works: The technology of touch screens

From single-touch to multitouch and why all displays are not equal.

Here's a question: What is a technology that you can't see, but is essential to smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices -- and is estimated to generate $16 billion in revenues this year (according to DisplaySearch)? The answer is multitouch touch screens -- which have sparked the explosive growth of the mobile device market.

It was not so long ago that we would tap away on a PalmPilot with a tiny stylus, or exercise our thumbs on a BlackBerry micro-keyboard. Then, in January 2007, along came the Apple iPhone, and everything changed. Suddenly, people were wiping their fingers across screens, pinching images and performing other maneuvers that had not previously been part of thesmartphone interface.

Now we not only take touch input for granted, we expect to be able to use multitouch (using more than one finger on the screen at a time) and gestures as well. What made this touch screen revolution possible, and where is it likely to take us?

Many paths to touch

To begin with, not all touch is created equal. There are many different touch technologies available to design engineers.

According to touch industry expert Geoff Walker of Walker Mobile, there are 18 distinctly different touch technologies available. Some rely on visible or infrared light; some use sound waves and some use force sensors. They all have individual combinations of advantages and disadvantages, including size, accuracy, reliability, durability, number of touches sensed and -- of course -- cost.

As it turns out, two of these technologies dominate the market for transparent touch technology applied to display screens in mobile devices. And the two approaches have very distinct differences. One requires moving parts, while the other is solid state. One relies on electrical resistance to sense touches, while the other relies on electrical capacitance. One is analog and the other is digital. (Analog approaches measure a change in the value of a signal, such as the voltage, while digital technologies rely on the binary choice between the presence and absence of a signal.) Their respective advantages and disadvantages present clearly different experiences to end users.

Resistive touch

The traditional touch screen technology is analog resistive. Electrical resistance refers to how easily electricity can pass through a material. These panels work by detecting how much the resistance to current changes when a point is touched.

This process is accomplished by having two separate layers. Typically, the bottom layer is made of glass and the top layer is a plastic film. When you push down on the film, it makes contact with the glass and completes a circuit.

The glass and plastic film are each covered with a grid of electrical conductors. These can be fine metal wires, but more often they are made of a thin film of transparent conductor material. In most cases, this material is indium tin oxide (ITO). The electrodes on the two layers run at right angles to each other: parallel conductors run in one direction on the glass sheet and at right angles to those on the plastic film.

When you press down on the touch screen, contact is made between the grid on the glass and the grid on the film. The voltage of the circuit is measured, and the X and Y coordinates of the touch position is calculated based on the amount of resistance at the point of contact.

This analog voltage is processed by analog-to-digital converters (ADC) to create a digital signal that the device's controller can use as an input signal from the user.

Source: computerworld.com

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Consumers dismiss Apple Maps uproar, plan to buy iPhone 5 in record numbers

ChangeWave poll points to continued strong sales, says Maps and Lightning issues barely 'bumps in the road'

The brouhaha over Apple replacing Google Maps in iOS 6 with its own mapping and navigation technology has not changed customers' minds about the iPhone 5, according to a ChangeWave Research survey.

ChangeWave, which polled more than 4,200 consumers in the U.S. and Canada, reported last week that only 10% of those with an iOS 6-powered iPhone said they had experienced a problem with Apple Maps, with the largest chunk of those -- 6% -- acknowledging the issue was "not much of a problem."

Nine out of 10 said they had not experienced any problem.

And while others -- analysts and public relations specialists -- had ranked the Apple Maps issue as a PR mess equal to or even greater than the one in 2010 over "Antennagate," consumers did not.

wo years ago, when ChangeWave polled on Antennagate -- the name Apple's former CEO Steve Jobs gave the uproar when iPhone 4 owners reported that signal strength plummeted and calls were interrupted if they touched the newly-redesigned smartphone in certain ways -- 35% of those surveyed then said the antenna issue was a problem.

In a research note, Paul Carton, director of research at ChangeWave, called the Maps snags "of marginal concern" to iPhone 5 and iOS 6 users.

ChangeWave's data backed that up: When consumers who said they were unlikely to buy an iPhone 5 were asked to provide a reason, none cited the Maps issue.

The other at-launch change that rattled users was Apple's switch to the smaller "Lightning" charging and data port on the iPhone 5, which upset customers who would need to buy adapters to connect their new smartphones to older docking and sound systems.

Many more consumers reported having problems with that move than Apple Maps: Of those who said they were likely to buy an iPhone 5, 68% said the Lightning port was a problem, with a whopping 31% asserting it was "somewhat of a problem," another 31% saying it was "not much of a problem," and 6% calling it a "very big problem."

Only 26% said it was "no problem at all."

Even so, Carton said the two issues "hardly rank as bumps in the road."

Overall, consumers were more likely to purchase the iPhone 5, said Carton, than last year's iPhone 4S at the same time in its release trajectory.

Almost one in five polled -- 19% -- said they were "very likely" to buy an iPhone 5 for themselves or for another person in the next 90 days, while 13% said they were "somewhat likely" to do so, for a combined plan-to-purchase of 32%.

That was significantly higher than the 21.5% who answered the same way in 2011 when asked about the iPhone 4S. The "very likely" difference was even greater: 19% for the iPhone 5 compared to 10% for the iPhone 4S, or nearly double.

The iPhone 5 continues to be in short supply, with shipping delays in the U.S. still at the three-to-four-week range, according to Apple's e-store. That range hasn't budged since shortly after Apple started selling the iPhone 5 on Sept. 21.

While some contend that the problem is greater-than-expected demand and others argue that Apple's production has not kept pace, the iPhone 5's current shipping delay is at least double that of the iPhone 4S at the same point in its timeline.

About three weeks after the iPhone 4S's debut, Apple was telling customers at its online store that orders would ship in one to two weeks.

Survey shows consumers are much less concerned about Apple Maps kerfuffle than 2010's 'Antennagate.' (Image: ChangeWave Research.)

Source: computerworld.com/

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Reports: Foxconn denies workers went on strike

The company said iPhone 5 production wasn't interrupted, according to media reports

Electronics manufacturer Foxconn maintains that workers making iPhones at a Chinese factory did not strike on Friday and that production wasn't affected, according to published reports.

Foxconn's statement contradicts a labor rights group, which said that between 3,000 and 4,000 workers at Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory went on strike on Friday afternoon. According to China Labor Watch, based in New York, the workers' actions brought some iPhone production lines to a halt.

However, Foxconn on Saturday said that no such thing happened, and that instead there were two "isolated" disputes between workers and supervisors earlier in the week that didn't affect production, according to reports.

In an update to its Friday statement, China Labor Watch reiterated that the workers in question did go on strike, but that they returned to work on Saturday. The group said that China celebrates a national holiday between October 1 and October 8, and that Foxconn required that workers in the Zhengzhou factory work during this period to meet iPhone 5 production goals, but that workers from the quality control line walked off the job on Friday.

On Friday, China Labor Watch had said that the workers were also angry over stricter quality control requirements for the manufacturing of the iPhone 5.

A plant worker told IDG News Service on Friday that heightened quality controls are resulting in an increased number of intercepted products, leading to missed volume targets and increased workplace tension.

"As a result, there was conflict and they beat our people," said the worker, who declined to give her name but said she works in the "quality department."

She claimed workers at the plant were beaten twice last week for similar reasons. "Our long-suppressed anger erupted and we went on strike," she said, communicating via Tencent Weibo, a Chinese Twitter-like service.

Her account is consistent with China Labor Watch's report that a fight broke out between workers and quality-control inspectors on Friday, resulting in some injuries and hospitalizations.

Source: computerworld.com

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Rumor: Microsoft's building its own Windows 8 smartphone

Called Microsoft Surface, it's due out next year, stories say

In a move that would help it compete against the iPhone, Microsoft is rumored to be making its own smartphone that will run on Windows Phone 8, which would again put the company in competition with its hardware partners.

The rumor first popped from the China Times followed closely by a similar story in Boy Genius Report.

The China Times story, translated into rough English, seems to say Microsoft has contracted smartphone developers and assemblers in China to build a Microsoft-branded Windows Phone 8 phone for sale sometime next year.

Boy Genius Report quotes two unnamed sources saying Microsoft plans to release the Surface smartphone in the coming months to compete against iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S III and other high-end phones.

Surface is the name of Microsoft's tablet/laptop that is scheduled to launch Oct. 26 along with the Windows 8 operating system.

A second BGR source says the timing of the smartphone release is up in the air, but will likely be after this year's holiday shopping season.

If true, the rumors will mean two things: Microsoft is further risking the ire of its hardware partners by competing against them, and it is adopting the same model that Apple has used in making and selling iPads and iPhones by controlling both the hardware and software associated with the devices.

The company already caused a flap with its plans to sell Surface tablets and laptops. Acer and Lenovo responded that Microsoft ought to think twice about competing against established tablet makers and Lenovo said Surface would have a negative effect on the PC market.

Nokia, Samsung and HTC have all agreed to produce Windows Phone 8 devices in the coming months.

While licensing its software to partners who sell it on their own hardware has been Microsoft's PC model for years, things are different with tablets and phones. Whereas Microsoft dominates PCs, that is not the case with tablets and smartphones, where Apple throws its weight around with iPhones and iPads.

Apple's model is to control the software, hardware and applications, which is where Microsoft seems to be going with Surface tablet/laptops and where it would be with smartphone if the rumors are true.

Source : networkworld.com

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Samsung Galaxy S III display outdoes iPhone 5's, teardown reveals

HS iSuppli analyst says differences likely not enough to affect buying decisions.

Samsung Galaxy S III's display is thinner and has a greater range of colors than that of the Apple iPhone 5, an IHS iSuppli teardown analysis revealed Tuesday.

But IHS iSuppli analyst Vinita Jakhanwal noted that the differences between the displys are fairly subtle and likely don't matter to users.

Jakhanwal said Apple chooses features in products like the iPhone 5 that are designed to yield profits and "deliver a superior customer experience, rather than to provide technology for technology's sake."

The iSuppli teardown revealed that the iPhone 5 display has a 1.5 mm thickness, while the Galaxy S III is only 1.1 mm. Also, the iPhone 5 displays 72% of the colors in the NTSC (National Television System Committee) standard, while the Galaxy S III reaches 100% of those colors.

Overall, the iPhone 5 is 1 millimeter thinner than the Galaxy S III, which IHS said was most likely due to a fatter Galaxy S III battery.

Apple used in-cell technology in the iPhone 5 LCD display.

The in-cell technology eliminates the standalone touch panel layers used in the iPhone 4S, making the iPhone 5 18% thinner than its predecessor.

The in-cell technology's elimination of the separate touch overlay layer allows more light to emit from the display without added refraction and glare from added touch layers, IHS said. As a result the iPhone 5's display provides a "more vibrant and crisper image with improved color saturation than the iPhone 4S."

"The lower color gamut measurement (72% of the NTSC standard compared to the Galaxy S III's fully meeting the standard) may not necessarily make the iPhone 5 display look worse than the Galaxy S III," IHS noted.

The iPhone 5 provides more accurate and realistic colors and contrasts as a result of better calibration, higher brightness and superior power efficiency of the display, it said.

Jakhanwal noted that some reviewers of the Galaxy S III have found that its colors look "oversaturated and unrealistic."

IHS said that the Galaxy S III uses an active-matrix organize light emitting diode (AMOLED) display in contrast to the low temperature polysilicon (LTPS) liquid crystal display (LCD) of the iPhone 5.

AMOLEDs don't use a backlight and potentially have better power efficiency than LCDs, IHS said.

Still IHS said a smartphone's battery life is dependent on many factors other than the display's power consumption, and didn't draw any conclusions about power consumption in either of the smartphone displays studied.

Source: computerworld.com

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Update fixes Verizon iPhone 5 data glitch; customers won't be charged for overages

Verizon iPhone 5 customers may have noticed an issue wherein their phones gobbled up extra cellular data when they were theoretically connected to Wi-Fi networks. Those customers now have two bits of good news: There’s a special software update that fixes the problem, and they won’t be responsible for unexpected charges related to unintended network overages related to the issue that spurred the carrier update in the first place.

Apple late Sunday released Carrier Settings Update 13.1, which the company says fixes a problem where the Verizon iPhone 5 could “use Verizon cellular data while the phone is connected to a Wi-Fi network.”

To install the update, launch Settings, tap on General, and then choose About. Wait for an alert box like the one pictured at right to appear, and then follow its instructions: First, tap OK; then hold down the Sleep/Wake button and slide to power off when prompted. Finally, after your iPhone turns off completely, power it back up again.

You can verify that you’ve successfully installed the Verizon carrier update by going back into Settings -> General -> About and confirming that the Carrier item lists “Verizon 13.1.”

Torod Neptune, Verizon’s vice president of corporate communications, told Macworldvia email that “Verizon Wireless customers will not be charged for any unwarranted cellular data usage.” It’s unclear whether the original issue for Verizon customers was the fault of Apple or Verizon, but customers needn’t be too concerned either way, given the existence of the update, and the indication that they won’t be financially responsible for any overages.

Source : macworld.com

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Upgrading to the iPhone 5? Eight Simple Steps to Make the Upgrade Easier

A little planning can save time - and voice messages - when you upgrade to the new iPhone 5

I was one of the "lucky" people to score a new iPhone 5 on the first day  but if you weren't, then you might actually be even more lucky - because it took me more than four hours to activate my phone due to the millions of other people trying to do it at the same time. The upgrade process was more or less seamless once I could activate the phone with Apple, but I learned a few lessons that might be helpful to others - especially if you have any old voice mail messages that you want to preserve before you upgrade to your new phone.

The real reason I was lucky was that I happened to be having dinner with a friend on Thursday night and she asked me whether it was possible to preserve voice mail messages before upgrading to a new phone. It didn't occur to me that I might lose my saved voice messages when I activated my new iPhone 5 and her question saved me from losing a wonderful birthday message sent to me by a favorite aunt and uncle who died within two months of sending me this precious greeting. Here are my simple recommended steps for making a happy transition to your new shiny iPhone 5, including an approach for making sure you don't lose any important voice messages.

1. Copy any voice messages that you want to save to your computer. I know for sure that neither Verizon nor AT&T has the capability to transfer the saved messages to your new phone - at least that's what they told me - so if it matters, do it yourself. You can really do this any time - even after you upgrade because the voice messages should still be on your old phone. But, if, like me, these are voices that you won't ever be able to get back, you might not want to take the chance that they might not be there after you upgrade. Transferring the messages is pretty easy with a simple cable that you probably already have and some free software called Audacity. The complete instructions are available in a short video on CNET.
2. Back up your old phone to iTunes. This happens automatically when you sync your phone to your computer. I do this pretty regularly, but my kids don't. You can upgrade without doing this, but if you sync the new phone from a backup (either on your computer or in the cloud), virtually everything about your old phone will be preserved, including your settings, all your apps, and even your camera roll - so it's totally worth it even if you've never done it before.
3. While you are backing up your old phone, gather up all the user IDs and passwords for all the sites you access on your iPhone - Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Groupon, Starbucks, etc. You will need to sign on to all of your apps again once you activate your new phone so you will need to know your user IDs and passwords. I use the CardStar app to store all my loyalty cards. All of the loyalty card information transferred flawlessly so that's one set of information you won't have to worry about.
4. Follow the instructions provided by your carrier to transfer your phone number. My carrier is AT&T. Since the SIM card for the iPhone 5 is much smaller than the SIM card for the iPhone 4, I didn't need to try to transfer the SIM card; I just had to make a phone call to AT&T to activate the phone service on my new iPhone.
5. Once you are active with your carrier, you then have to activate your phone with Apple by following the prompts on the phone. This is where you will get a prompt asking if you want to restore from a backup.
6. When the restore process is completed, you may want to move some apps around to take advantage of the extra row you get on each screen in the new iPhone. I had a few glitches trying to move a few apps around and getting my phone to re-sync because iTunes kept freezing during the sync process. If this happens, the trick is to close all open applications and try again. To do this, double click on the home button until you see the row of open apps displayed. Click and hold on any of the app icons until the red minus sign appears and then close each open app. Once I closed the open apps, the sync process flew by without fail each time. I had been having freezing problems ever since the last iOS update and this trick has now made syncing to my computer a breeze for both my iPad and my iPhone.
7. Most of my apps transferred perfectly. The one exception was Navigon, which gave me an error in the Map Manager section. After trying multiple times to access the Map Manager, I was able to solve the problem by deleting Navigon from my phone and restoring the app from iTunes. Once I did that, I had to re-download all the maps that I had on my old phone, but that didn't take too long.
8. Once you have the phone working and the apps organized, you will need the list of user IDs and passwords that you gathered earlier because you will need to open each of the apps that require authentication and re-enter your user ID and password. This process took me a while so if you use a lot of apps that require a user ID and password, make sure you allocate some time for this task. I was surprised at how many apps have become integrated into my daily life so spending some time re-authenticating was well worth it.

Source : Networkworld.com

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AT&T exec says CDMA iPhone users won't like 'life in the slow lane'

AT&T's top PR exec decided to stir the pot on the eve of an expected announcement that Apple's popular iPhone would finally be available on Verizon Wireless' CDMA-based network.

Verizon is widely expected tomorrow to announce it will be the second U.S. carrier to offer the iPhone, and the first to do on a CDMA network.

GET THE SCOOP: Will a Verizon iPhone be announced next Tuesday?

AT&T Executive Vice President Larry Solomon today reacted to a Wall Street Journal story which reported that Verizon is confident enough of its beefed up network to offer iPhone subscribers unlimited data plans for $30 a month. AT&T currently charges them $25 a month, with a data limit of 2 Gigabytes.
Solomon sent out the following statement, according to Business Insider: "The iPhone is built for speed, but that's not what you get with a CDMA phone. I'm not sure iPhone users are ready for life in the slow lane." Solomon noted that AT&T's GSM network is faster than Verizon's CDMA network.

That's already sparking a wave of commentary.

"Theoretically, Solomon is correct, as AT&T's 3G network offers higher peak speeds than Verizon's," writes MobileBeat's Devindra Hardawar.

"But that doesn't mean much when you can't get a network connection at all — something the 140,000-plus attendees of the Consumer Electronics Show saw last week, and something that residents of big cities like New York and San Francisco deal with every day."

AT&T has been the exclusive U.S. carrier for iPhone since the wildly popular handset was released in mid-2007. But the carrier has been plagued with complaints about missing or dropped or slow connections and poor customer service almost from the start. The company has said it under-estimated the data traffic impact of iPhone users, and has spent a lot of money to bolster its cellular infrastructure.

Late last week, in what was widely interpreted as a pre-emptive move, AT&T announced it was cutting the price of the iPhone 3Gs in half, to $49 from $99.

The big question, assuming Verizon Wireless does indeed announce a CDMA iPhone, is how many units it will sell. Several analysts have forecast that Verizon, with a current subscriber base of about 93 million, will sell 9 million to 12 million iPhones in the first 12 months. The Wall Street Journal reported that AT&T sold 11.1 million iPhones in the first nine months of 2010, and one analyst estimates the 2010 total will be about 14.5 million.

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Adobe vs. Apple is going to get uglier

You think things are bad now between Apple and Adobe? Just wait until the lawsuit.
Usually I write about security here, but Apple's iron-bound determination to keep Adobe Flash out of any iWhatever device is about to blow up in Apple's face. Sources close to Adobe tell me that Adobe will be suing Apple within a few weeks.

It was bad enough when Apple said, in effect, that Adobe Flash wasn't good enough to be allowed on the iPad. But the final straw was when Apple changed its iPhone SDK (software development kit) license so that developers may not submit programs to Apple that use cross-platform compilers.

Officially, Adobe's not talking about such actions, but there's no question that Adobe is ticked off big time at Apple. I mean how often in print does one company representative say about a former partner, "Go screw yourself Apple," as Lee Brimelow, an Adobe platform evangelist, did on his personal Web site, The Flash Blog. While Adobe had him retract some of his words, and the blog now has a big disclaimer, "[Adobe would like me to make it clear that the opinions below are not the official views of the company and are entirely my own.]" we can be sure that within Adobe's offices far stronger words were used to describe Apple's attitude towards Flash.

For now, Adobe spokesperson Wiebke Lips maintains that "We are aware of the new SDK language and are looking into it. We continue to develop our Packager for iPhone OS technology, which we plan to debut in Flash CS5." Flash CS5, which is part of Adobe Creative Suite 5, arrived on April 12th, but, at this point, it can't be used to create i-device applications.

Indeed, the net effect of Apple's licensing change, according to John Gruber of Daring Fireball, is to make it impossible to use cross-compilers, such as the Flash-to-iPhone compiler in Adobe's upcoming Flash Professional CS5 release. This also bans apps compiled using MonoTouch -- a tool that compiles C# and .NET apps to the iPhone." In other words, Adobe, Microsoft, not only can you not have Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight running natively on an iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad, you can also forget about creating an iWhatever program that can get around that requirement.

Adobe, the king of Internet video with 95% Web browser market penetration, is not one bit happy about being locked out of Apple's lucrative mobile device market. Novell's MonoTouch group is "reaching out to Apple for clarification on their intention, and believe there is plenty of room for course-correction prior to the final release of the 4.0 SDK." Adobe, which doesn't want to let go of its hold on Internet-based video, isn't anything like as optimistic.

So, unless things change drastically between Apple and Adobe in the next few weeks, from what I'm hearing you can expect to see Adobe taking Apple to court over the issue. It's not going to be pretty.

source : ITworld.com

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