Fifteen Things We Still Don’t Know About the Next iPhone

I think we can definitively say that Gizmodo has put a massive crimp in Apple’s existing publicity plans for the next iPhone. When Apple announces the phone, the Reality Distortion Field may be a tad less potent than usual. But even if we assume for the sake of argument that the phone Apple releases will be identical to the one that Gizmodo bought from a barfly, there’s plenty that we may not know until Apple has its say–and , just as important, until reviews and consumers get their hands on real, fully-functioning units.

Such as:

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A Brief History of Past Apple Leaks, and What Apple Did About Them

Is Gizmodo’s “big reveal” of the next-generation iPhone–weeks or months before Apple planned to let Steve Jobs do the job–unprecedented?  Yeah, pretty much. Products from other companies show up prematurely all the time (here’s a look at HP’s slate PC). But I can’t remember a site anyone pays attention to getting extended, unapproved hands-on time with an unreleased Apple product–let alone anything as significant as a new iPhone.

(Gizmodo, incidentally, has now explained how it got the phone and identified the poor Apple employee who left it behind at a Silicon Valley bar. It also says that Apple has asked for the phone back, and that it will comply.)

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No More Xbox 360, PS3 Manuals for Ubisoft

It’s an old joke in video game culture — or perhaps culture in general — that nobody reads the instruction manuals. Realizing this, Ubisoft announced that it will stop including printed manuals with its games for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

The move is ostensibly an attempt to go green while reducing production costs. Along with scrapping the manuals, Ubisoft says it’ll start shipping games in polypropylene cases made only of recycled materials, reports CNet.

I don’t care much about any of that. To me, the move is more of an acknowledgement that the way we learn to play video games has drastically changed since the advent of home gaming consoles.

As a kid, I relished reading those little staple-bound booklets. You never knew what you’d find in there. The Super Mario Bros. manual revealed “secret tricks” — basically, chain-stomping Goombas and using Koopa shells to take out surrounding foes — and the Double Dragon manual had stylized illustrations of all the characters, which somehow made the 8-bit game seem so much cooler. And because old-school games were never very good at exposition, the manuals provided otherwise non-existent plots to Atari classics such as Berzerk.

None of that is necessary anymore. Games are considered a failure if they don’t teach you how to play within the game. If you need help, you’re more likely to consult GameFAQs than the instruction booklet. Fancy illustrations and written plot summaries aren’t necessary when the games themselves are spectacles of light and sound, with professional voice acting.

So, knowing things will never be the same as in childhood, I welcome Ubisoft’s decision. And yeah, I suppose it’s nice that the environment’s getting some love, too.

(By the way, if you’re feeling nostalgic, Vimm.net has a growing archive of old video game instruction manuals, which is where I got the above image.)

Palm’s Bad News Just Keeps Adding Up

Radio Shack is phasing out Palm phones, putting another nail in what seems to be the coffin for the once powerful smart device manufacturer. The confirmation isn’t coming from “The Shack” directly: instead a Sprint representative confirmed to Barron’s that the retailer was phasing out Palm in favor of other devices.

Sprint spokesperson Scott Sloat said that the move was part of Radio Shack’s normal refresh of it’s cellular phone lines to keep things current. The Shack must now feel that Palm is falling behind — or just plain unpopular among consumers — if it is ready to ditch the brand.

But that’s not all: analysts are now increasingly pointing out that Palm will likely not sell at its current share price (around $5 as of April 19th). This can be interpreted to mean that most don’t have the confidence that the company will have any value to investors (and heck, buyers too), and is poised to fall even more.

Indeed, 17 of 19 analysts polled by Bloomberg said the stock is overvalued, with at least one saying the stock has no value at all. And the longer it takes a buyer to emerge, the more the price of the stock will fall, allowing any buyer to pick up the company on the cheap.

With interest from buyers described as “tepid,” it may be a while before any potential suitor emerges. Then again, some may be waiting for Palm to become a bargain before moving to snatch it up.

Either way, the company probably has only a few months to figure out its next moves. It is believed that the company would have burned through at least half of its cash-on-hand by August, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to think without a buyer, it would be all but out of money by the new year.

New Nook Software

The Next iPhone, (Apparently) Revealed

Over the weekend, Engadget published three photos of what what it said would seem to be the next generation iPhone–along with a weird tale of the phone being found hidden inside an iPhone 3G case on the floor of a bar in San Jose. Now Gizmodo has a long post based on extensive hands-on time with the same phone–although they say it’s up highway 101 in Redwood City. Giz has photographed it, and shot video of it, and dismantled it. And while we don’t know for sure whether this is precisely the phone that Apple will presumably release sometime in the next few months, it seems unimaginable that it’s a hoax or a Chinese clone or any of the other things the phone might be other than a real Apple prototype.

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Supreme Court to Hear ‘Sexting’ Case

The Supreme Court today is set to hear arguments surrounding a case involving so-called ‘sexting’ on a company-owned pager, of which the decision they make could have broad implications for employee privacy rights in the workplace.

California SWAT Sergeant Jeff Quon was given a pager by his employer, the Ontario, Calif. police department. While the device was meant for work use, Quon was found to have sent sexually-charged text messages to both his wife and his mistress.

Apparently, Quon sent so many texts that it triggered overage charges and an investigation into excessive texting within the department. While Quon did pay for the overage charges out of his own pocket, he complained that he thought the message content was confidential.

He and his mistress — a dispatcher — sued the department and the paging company over privacy violations, as well as another police officer for an unrelated matter. A lower court decided in favor of the employees in 2008, but the defendants appealed.

Now the Supreme Court will hear the case, which could vastly affect employee rights. As technology becomes more prevalent allowing employees to work from anywhere, work-provided electronics are seeing more and more personal use. While many companies provide clear-cut policies on personal use, some do not.

Some go as far as to use the information they find by peering onto their employee’s devices as grounds for termination. But in recent court cases, the courts have sided with the employees generally, making it hard for employers to use damaging information they find.

Whatever the Supreme Court decides, I believe the responsibility lies on the employee. You should know your company’s policies on proper use of company-provided equipment. If that means no personal use, then for the sake of your job security, you buy your own.

However, if there is no policy — or lax polices as in the case of the Ontario Police Department — use your head. Sending a multitude of sexually explicit text messages is definitely not. Don’t be so damn stupid!

iPad+3G To Begin Shipping May 7th

Apple began informing customers who had preordered its 3G-enabled iPad model that the product would ship in late April as originally announced. In addition, it updated the Apple store page to list the product as shipping “by May 7th.” Customers will be limited to two devices per order.

This doesn’t do anything to help the situation internationally. Pre-orders would still start on May 10, with shipment in late April. Its not immediately clear whether Apple would make both models available for pre-order initially, or follow a similar release schedule as they have here in the US.

The Correspondence of Steve Jobs

I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but an awful lot of people have decided that it’s reasonable to treat Steve Jobs as a one-man Genius Bar–and Jobs seems to be okay with the idea.

In March and April, he he has apparently answered a question about iPhone e-mail plans, said there are no plans to let iPhones tether with iPads, bucked up a worried Mac fan, criticized Google Picasa, talked up YouTube as a Blu-Ray alternative, clarified the iPad’s international shipping schedule (and bristled at a theory that a conspiracy was behind delays), confirmed that the original iPhone was toast, defended changes to iPhone software-development policies, and more–all with messages between one and twenty-four words in length.

Jobs’ correspondence with consumers first made news back in 1998, when he prankishly informed an Apple devotee who’d been waging a quixotic campaign to be named as Apple’s CEO that the fan had gotten the gig. The Apple cofounder, who was still calling himself the company’s interim CEO at that point, came off poorly. Whether intentionally or not, he’s long since paid his penance by engaging in a dialog with Apple customers that seems quite sincere, even though it’s remarkably terse–and occasionally downright irritable. And in recent weeks, either he’s picked up the pace or an unusually high percentage of receipients of Stevemail have gone public.

We don’t know much about these messages. It’s been theorized that assistants are involved–to help identify messages that need responses, at least, if not as ghostwriters–or that some are hoaxes. They certainly read like they’ll all from one particular person, and they’re fun to revisit. So here’s a selection of them. I’ve focused on mail sent prior to 2010 for which the original message as well as Jobs’ response are available. And for each dialog, I look at the aftermath of the subject at hand.

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The Cad With the Pad

(A note from Harry: Here’s a guest poem–actually, the first poetry we’ve ever published, and quite possibly the last–by my clever friend Kip Williams,)

That Apple Steve! That Apple Steve!
I do not like that Apple Steve!
He’s sneaky like you won’t believe
With dirty tricks up in his sleeve!

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Atomic Web: A Better iPad Browser

After reading about Atomic Web for the iPad a few days ago on Gizmodo, I surrendered $1 to the App Store and gave it a try. Now, I’ve happily banished Safari to the farthest reaches of my home screen, as this browser alternative looks and feels like Safari but with better features.

Atomic Web’s main lure is tabbed browsing. On the iPhone, I never had much use for tabs, because I don’t frequently read on the small screen, and therefore don’t get into the routine of opening background windows while scanning for interesting articles. On the iPad’s big screen, bouncing between pages is essential.

Atomic Web handles tabs like a desktop browser, displaying them directly underneath the address bar. When you press and hold on a link, a contextual menu allows you to open the page in a foreground or background tab. Switching between tabs is instantaneous — a huge relief given that Safari sometimes has to reload pages if you stray for too long.

Tabbed browsing isn’t Atomic Web’s only advantage. There’s also full screen browsing, find in page, multi-touch shortcuts (two-finger swipes with customizable actions), support for a couple dozen search tools, private mode, an ad blocker and customizable colors. It also comes with some cool bookmarklets — special functions that masquerade as bookmarks — including quick access to Google Translate.

I only have one complaint with Atomic Web: When you quit the browser, it has to reload all your pages again next time you start up, even if you set the browser to preserve all open tabs after quitting.

My other gripe with the browser isn’t Atomic Web’s fault, and speaks to a larger issue with the iPad: You can’t set Atomic Web or any other alternative browser as your default. Safari is part of the OS’s core, so you can’t make Web apps open in Atomic Web from the home screen, and other programs, such as TweetDeck, automatically launch Safari when you want to view something in a proper browser. The best you can do is install a bookmarklet in Safari that jumps to Atomic Web with your current Web page, but it’s one extra step.

That those drawbacks haven’t deterred me from forgetting Safari exists is a testament to how much Atomic Web deserves its $1 asking price.

Running a Country…on Your iPad

What happens when you’re head of state and you’re stranded in a foreign land, and there’s pressing national business to attend to? Simple, pull out your iPad. That’s exactly what Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg did in New York, CNN reports. With ash from and erupting Icelandic volcano grounding flights to Europe, the Prime Minister was able to stay on top of business back home.

Government officials posted a picture of Stoltenberg hovering over his iPad on the government website, saying “the prime minister is working at the airport.” Along with the iPad, Stoltenberg is using a mobile phone and the Internet to stay abreast of the situation back home. Apple couldn’t get any better PR for its highly popular device than this…

Five Ways to Get More Out of Internet TV

(Here’s another story I wrote for FoxNews.com.)

TV or PC? That’s the question I find myself asking these days when I’m in the mood to watch the tube. There are still plenty of reasons to opt for the HDTV in my living room: It’s got the biggest and best picture, the most theater-like audio, and — overall — the best selection of stuff to watch. But so many popular programs are now available online that I’m just as likely to catch them on my PC.

TV on a TV may still be the most immersive experience, but TV on a PC feels far more personal. For one thing, most of it is available on demand, on your own schedule. For another, there’s an ever-expanding universe of sites, services, and software designed to make it a cinch to find both shows you know you love and ones you haven’t discovered yet, and then watch them your way. Such as these five winners, all of which work on both Windows PCs and Macs and are absolutely free.

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Office 2010 on Its Way

Microsoft says it’s finished work on Office 2010. Business customers will get their hands on it as early as later this month in some cases; the shrinkwrapped retail version arrives in June.

Droid vs. iPhone 3GS: An Update

As I wrote a few weeks ago, frustration with AT&T coverage in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood led me to put my iPhone 3GS aside and switch to a Verizon Wireless Droid. I found that I liked the reliability of Verizon’s  service, and loved certain things about Android–but that the overall experience was way less polished and predictable than the iPhone.

Here’s an update: Over the last week or so, I’ve been using the iPhone most of the time. It still has severe issues in SOMA (or at least a bunch of places in SOMA where I hang out–it claims perfect signal strength, but the most reliable thing it does is to drop my calls). Otherwise, though, I’ve spent far less time futzing than I do when I’m in Androidland. I’m coming to the uneasy realization that I may want to use both phones, depending on what sort of limitations I can deal with at any given time.

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Games Bounce Back, and Sony Gets a Killer App

A couple significant things happened with last month’s North American video game sales figures from NPD: The industry as a whole improved over March 2009, and software sales for Sony’s Playstation 3 dominated the charts.

The overall industry gains aren’t a huge deal to me. Console and software makers will boast to their investors that March 2010 was a year-over-year improvement, but that’s only because sales tanked in 2009. Compared to March 2008, overall video game sales are still in the red, at $1.53 billion this year compared to $1.7 billion two years ago.

More interesting is how Sony took more games in the top 20 than any other console, and led the charts with the blockbuster God of War III. That game sold 1.1 million copies. Looking back at the debuts of other notable PS3 exclusives — Uncharted 2, Killzone 2, Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet — no other game came close. Another Sony exclusive, MLB 10: The Show, also got into the charts last month.

Non-exclusives are a wash: Final Fantasy XIII for PS3 outsold the Xbox 360 version, probably because the series is a Playstation mainstay, but Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was most popular on the Xbox 360, perhaps because Xbox Live provides a better multiplayer experience, and because there weren’t many other hit action games out for the Xbox 360 last month.

Still, Sony’s got to be thrilled that its heavyweight games are finally going toe-to-toe with the Xbox 360. For game developers, it signals that the console’s ripe for development (see: Activision’s once-harsh words for Sony), and that’s always good for PS3 owners.

Meanwhile, I’m just loving that the PS3-exclusive Heavy Rain stuck around in the top 20 for its second month. Maybe there’s a market for experimental interactive drama after all.