Tag Archives | iPhone

AppleInsider is reporting that AT&T is rushing to get a “massive” upgrade to its wireless network to get ready for an iPhone upgrade in June that’s expected to result in a tenfold increase in traffic. The site says it’s installing powerful new Juniper routers and that their performance looks promising. Sounds good, if it’s true.

Oddly enough, AppleInsider doesn’t speculate on why new iPhones might lead to such a gigantic leap in traffic. It does say that the Junuper routers are optimized for streaming video, and it’s true that the recent Apple press event about the upcoming iPhone 3.0 software included the news that it offers new features to help apps deliver pleasing streaming video experiences. Current iPhones do some video streaming over AT&T’s network already–via the built-in YouTube app and the TV.com one, for instance–but maybe Apple and AT&T expect more compelling video content in higher quantities come summer. (What if Hulu was available on the iPhone? Or the rumors of Apple letting you stream video you’ve bought from the iTunes Store are true, and include the ability to do so to an iPhone?)

One other scenario that might lead to gigantic increases in iPhone data usage would be the arrival of a cheaper iPhone. Apple wouldn’t be selling iPhones in anywhere near the quantities it is if the phone still sold for its original starting price of $499–and if there were a true $99 iPhone in the wings,  you gotta think that iPhone sales would explode again. (Better still if AT&T were to cut the price of unlimited data below the current thirty bucks a month.)

Rumors about new cheapo iPhones are, appropriately, a dime a dozen, and most don’t sound very convincing. Working on nothing other then intuition, I still think the most likely upcoming cheap iPhone would be…the current iPhone 3G. Apple could bring cool new iPhones to market at the current $199 and $299 contract prices, then keep this existing models on the market at new low prices. There’s almost certainly enough profit margin built into iPhone 3G pricing to let the company sell an 8GB model for $99 without going broke. And that would be a heck of a lot more appealing than an undersized model that wasn’t capable of running iPhone apps.

Any other theories? Of course, as a selfish current iPhone owner, I’m less interested in AT&T building out its infrastructure to accommodate more iPhone users, and more interested in it doing so to provide better service to those of us who already have iPhones…

Last week, right before Apple’s iPhone 3.0 unveiling, I compiled a wish list of things I hoped the company would make possible in the new software. One of my items was the ability to connect external hardware accessories to the iPhone–and, specifically, to enable the use of Think Outside-style folding keyboards.

When I attended the event, I got all excited: One of the first new features Apple disclosed was the ability for software to interface with external devices via the phone’s dock connector or Bluetooth. But none of the examples it gave involved keyboards. And then, during the Q&A session at the end, somebody asked about keyboards and whether iPhone 3.0 would support the Human Interface Design standard that would let keyboards talk to iPhone apps that involve alphanumeric input. The answer: No, no plans for that. I slumped in my seat a little bit.

And today, I perked up: Some clever hackers have modded an infrared keyboard to work with the iPhone. They’re really clever hackers–their mod works with the current version of the iPhone software, and doesn’t require it to be jailbroken. Here’s a demo:

For a number of reasons, I have to temper my excitement. Their mod is a technology demo, not a product you can buy. And if it did become a product you could buy, it would only work with applications designed to support it, if I understand correctly. You couldn’t use it in Apple’s own browser, e-mail, calendar, note-taker, and other apps. In a way, external keyboards are like cut and paste: It may be possible to get them working, kind of, without Apple’s support. But Apple is the only company with the power to make them work the way you really want them to work.

Guessing Apple’s priorities is always a bit risky, but I suspect that external keyboards are way, way down on its to-do list, if they’re not officially banned from it. It surely wouldn’t build an external keyboard itself–it must see the market as limited, and the idea as clunky. And it might see enabling external keyboards as an admission that the iPhone’s keyboardless design has its downsides.

Thinking about external keyboards again has me questioning my hankering for them. If I had one that worked with the iPhone, would I really use it? I’ve owned several in the past, and used them with various PDAs and phones, and while I got good use out of them in some situations (meetings, long plane trips), they didn’t change my life. And the iPhone’s synching capabilities are good enough to eliminate the need for some types of data entry that would otherwise make an external keyboard appealing: There’s no need to enter dozens of contacts into the phone itself when you can wirelessly sync them over from a PC or Mac.

Here’s the thing that leaves me still thinking external keyboards make sense: long weekends. And other short trips. I still don’t want to do anything on an iPhone that involves typing more than about fifteen words at a time, so it’s not a true notebook replacement. But if I had a folding keyboard that worked in every iPhone app, I could leave home for brief, low-pressure excursions and do everything I needed to on my phone. (Um, assuming that wherever I was going had decent 3G coverage, that is–but that’s another blog post.)

Part of me wants to see an iPhone keyboard simply as a matter of principle: As remarkable as the iPhone is, I don’t want it to be limited by Apple’s take on what’s important. External keyboards are kind of ungainly, aren’t as useful as they once were, and probably won’t sell in the millions? Fine–there are still some folks who really, really want them. As today’s keyboard mod shows.