iPhone News Updated

Can you hear me now? Verizon rumored to have CDMA iPhone next year

It appears as if USA Today is now in the iPhone rumor business, alleging that Verizon will be carrying the iPhone as soon as 2010. Unfortunately, neither evidence nor common sense support its claim that Verizon will be selling a CDMA-based iPhone next year, or ever.

A new rumor suggests that largest US mobile carrier, Verizon, is in “high-level” talks with Apple to produce a CDMA-compatible iPhone for its network. However, this rumor flies in the face of recent comments from both Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg and Apple COO Tim Cook to the contrary.

USA Today cites “people familiar with the situation” that say the goal is to have the Verizon iPhone model ready to launch next year. As best as anyone outside of Apple and AT&T know, the exclusive contract that AT&T has with Apple does expire some time next year, though some believe that AT&T is looking to extend that deal to 2011.

However, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg told the Wall Street Journal this month that it was more likely that Verizon and Apple would work out a deal when the company moves its network over to the LTE 4G standard, which is based on the GSM standard used by current iPhone models. While Verizon plans to have at least two cities with LTE coverage by the end of this year, its rollout won’t even begin in earnest until 2010.

Not only that, but COO Tim Cook said during Apple’s recent quarterly earnings call that the company is “very happy” with its relationship with AT&T and doesn’t have immediate plans to change that. Further, he also dismissed the idea of making a CDMA-capable iPhone. “From a technology point of view, Verizon is on CDMA, and we chose from the beginning of the iPhone to focus on one phone for the whole world,” Cook said. “When you do that, you really go down the GSM route because CDMA really doesn’t have a life to it after a certain point in time.”

AT&T plans to begin rolling out its own LTE deployment in 2011, though European carriers plan to push back deployments to 2012. While LTE is certainly the future, and you can bet the iPhone will eventually have LTE compatibility, that time is neither now nor next year.

Is Verizon interested in garnering the sort of high-ARPU customers that the iPhone would attract to its network? You bet. Does Apple want a slice of Verizon’s 86 million or so subscribers? Absolutely. Would customers like a choice in carrier when using an iPhone. No question. Is Apple making a CDMA-based iPhone? Magic 8-ball says “Unlikely.”

[Thanks: http://arstechnica.com]

Turn Your iPhone Into a Remote Mouse and Keyboard

When I give presentations, watch movies from the sofa in my office, or need to start a task away from my desk, I don’t want to be within arm’s length of my mouse. So I appreciate the freedom offered by Air Mouse Pro (US$6, buy-only), a full-featured remote control from R.P.A. Tech. The top half of the Air Mouse Pro Screen features a two-button trackpad, while the bottom half gives you a keyboard, along with controls for browsing the Web and playing movies and music.

When I give presentations, watch movies from the sofa in my office, or need to start a task away from my desk, I don’t want to be within arm’s length of my mouse. So I appreciate the freedom offered by Air Mouse Pro (US$6, buy-only), a full-featured remote control from R.P.A. Tech. The top half of the Air Mouse Pro Screen features a two-button trackpad, while the bottom half gives you a keyboard, along with controls for browsing the Web and playing movies and music.

Using the accelerometer and touchscreen of either an iPhone or iPod touch, Air Mouse works over a local Wi-Fi network to control you computer’s mouse and keyboard. Before using the app, you do need to install a small application on your computer-there’s a version for both Mac OS X and Windows users-which manages the connection and controls many of the mouse and keyboard settings.

The Air Mouse Pro screen features a two-button trackpad on the top half of the screen, while the bottom half switches between media control buttons and a keyboard. I found Air Mouse Pro to be as responsive and stable as my current wireless mouse, with touchscreen mousing no different using a computer trackpad.

Using the accelerometer to control mouse gestures is comparable to using a the controls for a Nintendo Wii-fun, though not always practical. You won’t write novels with the app’s keyboard, for example. But when combined with customizable keyboard shortcuts, Air Mouse Pro can be handy for conducting fast searches, launching applications, or, as Macworld editors have noted elsewhere, running a Mac-based media center. That said, the set of buttons for controlling iTunes and Web browsing, while useful, make the omission of presentation controls all the more glaring.

Still, Mobile Air Mouse is a genuinely fun and practical application for anyone who needs to break free of the desk.

[Thanks: http://webwereld.nl]