The technology sector of the Web has been rampant with 3G iPhone rumors lately, with many analysts predicting a 3G iPhone in the May-June time frame, and others calling for a late summer, September-ish release. Today the debate got even hotter, with AT&T Mobility’s CEO Ralph de la Vega saying that he expected all of their smart integrated devices to be 3G within the next few months.

Naturally, someone (Sascha Segan from PC Mag) asked Mr. Vega if this included the uber-popular iPhone. Vega’s response:

“Let me repeat what I said: I think that you’re going to see our integrated devices be 3G devices in the not-too-distant future, and I mean months. That should be clear enough.”

You can take that for what it’s worth, but it should be clearly evident that those calling for the May-June time frame are pretty much on the mark. One expects — and has expected — Steve Jobs to announce a 3G iPhone at Apple’s annual WWDC in June, and Vega’s projected time frame would coincide nicely with that.

So we still sit and wait, but now a bit more optimistically…

A few weeks ago I finally started getting back into the gym on a regular basis. Of course, a necessity for any trip to the gym is an iPod, or iPhone in my situation. To make a long story shorter, after about 18-20 minutes on the treadmill my iPhone would start to act up, randomly skipping around tracks, pausing and playing at will. At first I attributed this to either continued bouncing up and down in my pocket (to preempt what some of my friends may comment that is NOT what she said), however today at work something very strange happened.

As soon as I started listening to music on my iPhone today at work the same type of activity occurred, even when the iPhone was laying still and flat on my desk. Tracks were jumping around spontaneously and pausing and playing at will. I swapped out the headphones in favor of a brand new pair and as Steve would say, boom! Everything worked like a charm.

To be fair, my old set of headphones had been slowly falling apart and I’d ordered a new pair for when they finally gave out. I just didn’t expect the headphones to cause the iPhone music player to act so erractically.

Here is a pic of my old iPhone headphones (notice the jack falling apart):

And here are the new iPhone headphones:

Update 3/19/2008: While running today at the gym the track skipping and play/pausing occurred again, despite me using the brand new iPhone headphones. Will have to bring this up with the geniuses at the Apple store next time I visit…

Today was a wonderful day to be an iPhone owner. At a special press event today on their Cupertino campus, Apple announced some new features to be available as part of an upcoming firmware version 2.0. Additionally, Apple execs discussed some of new enterprise features (FINALLY), and a beta version of the SDK was finally released.

Let’s start with the iPhone enterprise features because I’ve been eagerly awaiting these since last June. The new enterprise features include the following:

• Push email
• Push calendar
• Push contacts
• Global address list
• Cisco IPsec VPN
• Certificates and Identities
• Support for WPA2 / 802.1x
• Enforced security policies
• Device configuration
• Remote wipe
• Active Sync and Microsoft Exchange Support

Can we pause briefly to say: YES! Since June I’ve been carrying around two phones, one for personal use (iPhone), and one for business (Windows Mobile), and it will be awesome to be able to consolidate down to a single device. Additionally, the iPhone will support multiple calendaring systems so those of you like me who sync to a Mac but will use corporate email will be to sync both iCal and Outlook. Nifty.

The bad news, unfortunately, is that this functionality is currently limited to a beta program of five users per company, and full roll-out won’t be coming until some time in June (why must Jobs continue to torture us?).

As mentioned above, Apple also released a beta version of the much anticipated SDK (software development kit). The iPhone SDK is essentially a comprehensive set of developer tools based on existing Mac OS X technologies that will allow for development of native iPhone applications. The SDK is broken down as follows:

Cocoa Touch - Multi-touch events, Multi-touch controls, Acceleromter, View Hierarchy, Localization, Alerts, Web View, People Picker, Image Picker, Camera
Media - Core Audio, OpenAL, Audio Mixing, Audio Recording, Video Playback, JPG, PNG, TIFF, PDS Quartz, Core Animation, Embedded OpenGL
Core Services - Collections, Address Book, Networking, File access, SQLite, Core Location, Net Services Threading, Preferences, URL utilities
Core OS - OS X Kernel, BSD TCP/IP, Sockets, Power Management, Keychain, Certificates, File System, Lib System, Security, Bonjour

Additionally, there is an iPhone emulator for Leopard 10.5.2+ to assist with development.

At the press event today Apple demoed a few native iPhone applications built by companies that received an early copy of the SDK. The following apps got demoed:

• Epocrates
• Salesforce.com
• AIM
• Super Monkey Ball (game from SEGA)

iPhone apps — as speculated — will be distributed through iTunes, however they can also be downloaded wirelessly (EDGE or WiFi) directly from the iPhone. The App Store will feature both paid and free software, depending on the wishes of the developer. For paid software, there will be a one-time $99 digital certificate fee to get your software listed in the iTunes App Store, but again this is a one-time fee and does not apply to each submission to the store.

The beta version of the SDK can be downloaded here.

Now for some screen shots.

Enterprise features:

SDK:

AIM:

Again, as I alluded to earlier, don’t get your hopes up, because these features aren’t going to be fully rolled-out until some time in June. In the meantime, however, developers are free to start working on some apps. I fully intend to download the SDK and play around a bit, so expect some more posts on this if anything comes to fruition.

A final note, Apple said today that it will NOT restrict VoIP applications that utilize WiFi, so there’s some serious promise in that space. Also, iPod Touch users will have access to these same new additions, however they — unlike iPhone owners — will be forced to pay a “nominal” fee.

Any questions feel free to hit me up in the comments. (A big thank you to Engadget for the pics)

Another day, another round of Apple speculation. Investment bank UBS said in a research note to clients today that Apple will launch a next-generation 3G iPhone sometime during mid-year 2008. The new 3G iPhone HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) platform will include a “new systems solution” from German chipmaker Infineon, including a digital baseband controller, power management unit (PMU), and radio frequency (RF) module.

Hopefully we’ll get some more information about this next week at the iPhone SDK event on March 6th, but it’s likely we might not hear anything until Apple’s annual WWDC (Worldwide Developer’s Conference) in early June. One thing’s for sure, the hype around an upcoming 3G iPhone is likely to fire up excitement around the iPhone as much as the initial launch did last summer.

It looks as though Mr. Jobs is seeking to give Apple’s shareholders a much needed boost in their stock valuation, because Apple has certainly been on a roll this week. Yesterday Apple released iPhone/iPod Touch firmware version 1.1.4, and today Apple has announced a special “iPhone software roadmap” event for next Thursday March 6th. Which means that we will FINALLY have some details available regarding the SDK.

Also, and this excites me about as much as the SDK, Apple is expected to announce “some exciting new enterprise features,” which to me means corporate e-mail support via Microsoft Exchange syncing — the one feature I’ve been longing for since June.

Apple today released the latest firmware update for the iPhone and iPod Touch, version 1.1.4. The released is slated as a bug fix and there aren’t any new features included. One might speculate, though, that included in this update is the necessary architecture for the upcoming SDK — which is supposed to come some time this week but is likely delayed well into March. Of course, Apple has released yet another update while I’m away on business, so I won’t be able to update until I get home Thursday night.

One of the biggest fixes for me personally is the SMS ordering. Since the 1.1.3 firmware update in January there has been an annoying issue regarding the order in which text messages are displayed in a conversation. Another fix that makes life easier involves Safari tabs. When browsing multiple sites your other tabs would go blank to white screens and when attempting to go back to that tab the page would require a re-load. Word is this has been fixed as well. Other fixes being reported are improved Bluetooth connectivity and a better functioning camera.

Now if we could just get that SDK…

Don’t starting putting money away just yet, but Engadget is reporting a Dutch rumor that TomTom is working on a GPS module for the iPhone. No further details are available at this time, but from the picture it seems as though it would be an add-on device that plugs into the docking port on the bottom of the iPhone — the same place you plug in the charger.

Although there’s no hard evidence, Engadget does point out that the highway depicted on the photo is a favorite for internal TomTom test studies. Also, we know that Apple is opening up the iPhone to third party development in February, and we know that some companies have received an early copy of the SDK in order to get a jump start on development. Certainly TomTom, as one of the leading GPS companies, would have received a copy. So although there isn’t any indisputable evidence, this one is certainly a possibility.

No need for any lead into this post, just go to www.google.com on your iPhone and check it out. The interface has the “slick look and feel” like many other iPhone apps such as Facebook, and also incorporates heavy use of Ajax across all of the features.

For those without an iPhone, sorry, you won’t be able to see it, but here are some details. The menu across the top includes: Home, Gmail, Calendar, Reader and More. Clicking on “More” will provide you with links to Docs, GOOG-411, SMS, News, Photos, Blogger and Notebook.

In my limited use so far it seems like a very useful iPhone app for someone that uses Google extensively. If you use Gmail in the iPhone native mail app and use iCal/Outlook for your calendar needs then you might not get THAT much use out of it, but nevertheless it’s fun to play with and can be useful in certain situations like search and GOOG-411.

Here are some screen shots (courtesy of TechCrunch):

The Net Applications quarterly browser market share report came out this past weekend, and the results are pretty staggering as far as the mobile space is concerned. The iPhone, which has only been on sale for a mere five months, represents 0.9% of the total browser market share. While at first glance this number may seem rather low, this figure represents all browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc.

To put a little perspective on this, consider the Windows CE platform, which comprises all of the Windows Mobile platform devices. Windows CE garnered 0.6%, giving it 2/3 of iPhone’s reach in the mobile browser market. Still need more? Well, Windows Mobile devices have been for sale since 1996, and Microsoft shipped over three million of them in Q1 2007 alone. Apple, on the other hand, as mentioned earlier only released the iPhone about five months ago and has sold somewhere around 1.5 million to date.

In simple terms, the iPhone is responsible for almost one out of every 1,000 page views, and this figure will only go higher. I currently use both an iPhone and a Windows Mobile 6 device, the T-Mobile Dash, and without question the Internet experience on the iPhone is light years ahead.

Get your act together Microsoft. Make a mobile browser that actually shows Web pages how they’re supposed to look.

You can file this one as “well, duh,” but Bloomberg is reporting that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said that Apple will release a 3G version of its uber-popular iPhone mobile device in 2008. There was no additional information given as far as a release date, price or any new features, so it looks as though the first shot we have at getting any real details about this won’t be until MacWorld in January of next year.

Having a 3G (third generation) network to support the iPhone will be truly wonderful and MUCH needed. To describe it without using any tech jargon, think of it as several times faster than your current EDGE experience and closer to that of what you experience when connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot. Verizon and Sprint customers (and some AT&T) know full well the joys of wireless communications with 3G.

However, only adding a 3G radio to the iPhone won’t be enough to satisfy the fanboys like myself, and if Steve Jobs wants to knock everyone’s socks off again he’s going to have to build some new capabilities into an ‘08 iPhone model. Notably, MMS, GPS, an IM application (iChat would do just fine please), true bluetooth support, a file system browser, the ability to cut and paste (still not sure how they’re gonna accomplish that one though) and most importantly, corporate email support with Microsoft Exchange!