Apple

It feels like I have sommething new and I don’t need a new phone yet.  At lease AT&T grabbed some sales that they might not have had otherwise.  They relented and allowed a hardware upgrade price of $199 rather than $399 for a big chunk of users.  That probably didn’t benefit AT&T nearly as much as it benefited Apple.

Thanks for the free 3.0 upgrade Apple.  I’ll get my phone when I get around to it.

Palm Pre - Smart Phone

Apple has always had this mystique and a history of amazing innovation.  If you are an iPhone user, would you switch to a pre? Assuming it is a wonderful device, would you give up your iPhone?  I didn’t think so… I won’t.  App store?  Well, the Pre will have one, but they are still working out the bugs.  How much fun is your iPhone because of some of the great apps on it?  The ones that you selected?  I love mine for that.  I get my news, weather, etc. from my phone.  Pre… you better hope that there are plenty of free apps in the store to draw the users in.  For that matter, you better hope that they don’t crash the phone as they did pre-release. (good idea with the online backup though)

Release date: With the Apple WWDC (worldwide developers conference) coming up 6/8 – 6/12, you can expect some innovate new changes to the iPhone.  The timing of the Palm-Pre’s release is 6/6/2009 was certainly selected to play in advance of the WWDC.  However, that might not be the best move.  An announcement post WWDC, might have been able to redirect the spotlight from Apple.  A release prior to will be washed out with the return of Steve Jobs!  Don’t think Jobs doesn’t know that his appearance at the conference will be the lead story in the mainstream news as well as with the tech press.  Don’t be surprised if he grants a few high profile interviews to reach the mainstream and squelch the talk of this “pre”.

Carrier: The Palm-Pre is being release exclusively with Sprint to start.  Sprint really needs something to put the wind back in their sails.  The really had something back in the day with the PTT (push to talk) but that momentum died.

The next generation of the phone is certain to change a bit and address the few complaints that current users might have.  Battery life is the biggie but, as Google’s gPhone found out, battery life is an issue for any smart phone.  As long as I can get through a whole day, I don’t mind the battery life issue.  Short of that and it would be trouble.

Bottom line, I am keeping my iPhone.  The next generation can’t come soon enough for me (I still have a 1st generation phone on the Edge network).  I would not consider a change to a new phone.  I will simply wait until Apple meets my demands.  It isn’t in price issue, in fact, it will cost you more out of pocket to buy a Palm-Pre.  Your $100 rebate will be in the mail and that will bring the price down to the iPhone level.

Good luck Palm!  It is a tough road.

AOL Daily Finance Application Download

Download it and try it for yourself, but this app is one of thebest finance apps for the iPhone that I have found.  Free, of course.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/02/skype-iphone-app-downloaded-one-million-times-in-first-two-days/

Below is a video from December 2008, in which David Pogue (of the New York Times) discusses cell phones, cell phone services and the convergence between VOIP and the cell networks.  He also discusses GrandCentral which has been relaunched as Google Voice.  You will have one number that you can direct to do many things.  I have heard from some who are in the Beta and they say it is life changing.

Even though it is a few months old, it is worth viewing if you would like to learn a little bit more about what that cell phone in your pocket can do.

Skype has arrived for the iPhone and iPod touch.

• Learn more

I put it through a couple of test calls and it performed well.   My main desire is to utilize the text chat client.  When using Skype on a desktop, that is the function that I utilize most often.

Rumor has it that Ebay is readying Skype for a spin off or sale.  This, along with the support of the SIP protocol announced this week, should be a nice user base generator for the company.  You never know, maybe Ebay is going to recoup some of the $2.6+ billion that they shelled out for the company a few years back.

BTW: Support for the SIP protocol will allow Skype to be used on PBX systems.  This will be a revenue generator for the company.  We procured an additional phone number recently and were disappointed to find that we could not use Skype with the hardware we had in place.  Support for SIP would allow us to do that.