Hello? IPhone? Competition calling.
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Apple Inc. begins its first foray into the wireless telephone business on June 29 with the release of the iPhone. Millions of loyal Apple customer s can hardly wait for the device, which combines a cell phone, music player, and Internet-access device. But Apple's rivals in the cell phone business seem just as enthusiastic.
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The most eagerly awaited cell phone ever is upon us Friday. Should you resist the iPhone's breathless hype, or take the plunge?
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When Steve Jobs hits the keynote stage at the 2008 Macworld Conference and Expo on January 15, he will face a ballroom full of bloodshot eyes, a sea of journalists, analysts, and bloggers knocked loopy by the culture shock of going to sleep in Vegas (where the Consumer Electronics Show was just held) and waking up in San Francisco. Talk about your tough crowd.Fortunately, Jobs doesn?t need to kick into charisma overdrive to capture minds, hearts, and wallets. This year?s conference is already a banner event, a coming-out party of sorts for a Mac platform that has seen its biggest evolutionary kick since the demise of the original Mac OS. The combination of OS X Leopard and new Macs based on Intel?s Penryn CPU will help Mac outsiders remember that Apple sells more computers than phones.iPhone, take 2 What will happen this week? Only Steve Jobs knows for sure, but here?s my best guess.Although Leopard and Penryn have pushed the Mac to dizzying heights and should thus gain some stage time, the Macworld Expo keynote will still go heavy on iPhone and iTunes. And this time, the hype will be justified. eBay will be awash in mint-condition, used iPhones the day that Apple ships the new model that links to AT&amp;T?s fast 3G network (in the U.S.). With the speed of the 3G cellular data network, lots of RAM space for cached maps, and a close partnership with Google, iPhone could blast a tunnel through the in-car navigation market. CES was packed with navigation newcomers, but none has the hook of iPhone?s multi-touch interface, much less the capability to make phone calls and purchase music from iTunes.Another indirect but even farther-reaching benefit derived from the faster cellular network is iTunes Tagging. When listeners with compatible receivers are tuned into terrestrial and satellite radio stations that have licensed iTunes Tagging, they can purchase music that catches their ear with a button press. This will see its greatest uptake among users of Mac and PC iTunes, but iPhone owners could have the song downloaded before the radio is done playing it. No more trying to figure out the title of a song from the words in the chorus.iPhone?s support for native applications will see its official debut in February, but third parties are undoubtedly already on board. If Apple doesn?t take up navigation, the likes of Telenav and TomTom surely will. Voice-over-IP would make a great keynote demo, and with native application support, Apple might not have to write it in-house.Do pre-show announcements clear the stage for new notebooks? Apple always gets what it considers to be its lesser product announcements out of the way just before Macworld Expo so that Steve Jobs can focus on the high-percentage pitches in his keynote.The pre-keynote rollouts for 2008 are Apple?s specialty machines: the Mac Pro desktop/workstation and Xserve rack-mounted server. Both have been reworked for Intel?s quad-core Penryn family Xeon CPUs, nicknamed Harpertown. Mac Pro buyers can now get 8-core systems for about $1,200 less than before, and the Harpertown Xserve is the first 8-core server Apple has ever sold. Both systems also support significantly faster front-side bus and memory speed. This sort of performance kick might go unnoticed by most home and mainstream commercial users, but Mac Pro and Xserve buyers are going to love it.With the power user, workstation and server Mac announcements out of the way, Apple has room on the Macworld Conference and Expo keynote stage for new notebooks. The story there isn?t necessarily limited to Penryn. AMD recently announced its ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series GPU (graphics processing unit) for notebooks. Among the new GPU?s attributes are improved power efficiency, PCI Express 2.0, and direct HDMI output. The new ATI GPU has one other feature: on-chip decoding of HD and Blu-Ray DVD content. It may be a long shot for this Macworld Expo, but there is a high-def DVD-equipped MacBook Pro on the near horizon.What to do after the keynote Those Macworld Conference and Expo Attendees who don?t fly home after the keynote will be treated to a packed schedule of sessions targeting audiences from home users to scientists and IT professionals.Macworld Expo?s organizers -- IDG World Expo, which has the same parent company as InfoWorld -- have also managed to pack the exhibit hall. Attendees will find familiar faces such as FileMaker Pro, REALbasic, and the venerable BBEdit programmer?s editor, but they?ll also see Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Xerox, VMware, Parallels, Iomega and, of course, Microsoft.Next to Leopard, Office 2008 for Mac will be the best-selling software for the Mac this year. It?s not only the first native version of Office for Intel Macs, but Microsoft?s first Office designed from scratch for OS X. The Mac faithful may outwardly jeer Microsoft for taking four years to catch a clue, but they?ll be buying Office along with all other commercial Mac users. Office 2008 will be just one of many new products showing at Macworld Expo that don?t need Steve Jobs to sell them. They?ll sell themselves.
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Wendy Seltzer asks, Which is more open: the Nokia N95 or the iPhone? Regardless of the answer, I'm wondering if there's an objective way to score openness... perhaps a kind of in-the-wild folksonomic list of deal-makers and deal-killers. Rather than bias the list, I thought I'd just put the idea out there to start with, and see what variables ya'll would like to see on the list.
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By Leslie Anne Jones, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska  Jun. 23--On Friday, most of the contiguous states will delight in the debut of the cell phone/music player/multimedia device promised to revolutionize how we dial.
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Investor's Business Daily - Although Apple might well raise the bar in the cell phone market with its iPhone, rival handset makers also are stepping up.
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One per cent is aiming too high Comment Steve Jobs sounds modest with his 2008 sales prediction: "10 million iPhones is one per cent of the mobile phone market". This is indeed true, but it's not a useful benchmark.â¦
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Given the iPhone hype, it's easy to forget other phones can play music and browse the Web. Here are three iPhone competitors that offer a lot of features for less money.
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We asked usability experts to compare the iPhone with two competitors to see if Apple's device matches its hype. They came up with an unequivocal answer.
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CEO Steve Ballmer is speaking at the big mobile phone trade show on Tuesday. It will be interesting to see the tack he takes vis-a-vis Apple.
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A new service promises cheaper mobile calls by exploiting VOIP, but it's not going to be easy. The big carriers must be considered, plus customers will have to punch lots of extra numbers. By Rachel Metz.
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We'll show you how to spruce up your handset so that it rivals an iPhone.
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âAfter all the ink thatâs been spilled describing, previewing and hyping the Apple iPhone, does it deserve the attention? Iâd have to say yes,â reports Ryan Kim (San Francisco Chronicle). âThe lure of the iPhone is that it makes you want to use it. Itâs actually fun. Do we say that about any phones? Hardly. Itâs not really the physical design, which is a marvel of simplicity. Itâs what happens when you pick it up and use it. There is nothing intimidating about it. Rather, itâs inviting.â âThe cell phone, the most personal of technology devices,â Kim concludes, âhas just gotten a whole lot more personal.â
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Coming soon to a phone near you: spam, scams and viruses galore. Your text messages, address book and calls could be up for grabs. By Annalee Newitz from Wired magazine.
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One technology promises to harness the power of the Internet for voice communications. Its competitor has been around for a century, and has an industry shorthand that needs two adjectives -- "plain old telephone service" -- to describe just how boring it is.
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With the impending release of a software development kit for the iPhone, game developers are considering the phone's possibilities as a gaming platform.
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No list of trends would be complete without a mention of Apple's iPhone, a device that many handset manufacturers will be looking to beat in 2008 in order to attract a consumer that is ever more interested in advanced wireless services. Many of those devices will debut at CES next week.