PLANET iPhone News

Here we go with the MacBook rumor-mill again! The latest in a series of speculation and hype is this rumor that nVidia are currently showing the brand new aluminium-enclosed MacBook to staff around their camp. TUAW have also stated that nVidia will be playing a large part in the manufacturing process, which is interesting to say the least.

In just slightly over a year, Apple’s iPhone has grown to become the second best-selling cellphone in the United States of all time, according to NPD.

Popular App Store title De Blob, a game created by THQ Wireless, will be featured accross thousands of Apple retail stores worldwide.

We have lift-off! 

Howdy folks; we’re here to give you the latest & greatest news and reviews in the whole Apple space: iPod, iPhone, and Mac. Nice.

Stuff is coming!

Want to write an App Store review on that shiny new game? Well now Apple is making it so that you have to actually purchase the damn thing first. What are they thinking!? Nah, I’m kidding, we don’t see why this wasn’t included from day one; it’s pretty strange, actually.

To be honest, we were getting pretty damn tired of seeing the same reviews from people that disagreed with an app’s functionality just based on its description or what they’d heard, or even worse, some people were reviewing just to “balance out” other reviews they deemed unfair. And that was not good. Nope.

But now all of this has changed. For the good. Thank you, Steve.

Well, better late than never, right?

Stevie-boy has made his position known: raise the royalty fees he (or well, they) pays and iTunes will no longer be profitable. Jobs wants to make money. If he does not make money, he’ll shut iTunes down.

The Copyright Royalty Board, which will be voting this week to determine the issue put forth by the National Music Publishers’ Association to raise fees from 9 cents a track to 15, has a pretty large amount to consider.

In response to the request for iTunes to raise royalties, the VP of iTunes Eddy Cue wrote in with this statement:

Apple has just announced on their developer connection page that they have made the tough decision to drop the iPhone’s non-disclosure agreement (NDA):

An anonymous tipster has leaked what appears to be instructions for the Canadian iPhone launch on Rogers; including the link to a special version of iTunes which allows stores to ‘unlock’ their iPhone so that they can use them as a display unit in store.

The leaked document reads:

After yesterdays rumours of a very highly priced 3G iPhone in the UK, O2 have today revealed the much speculated pricing - and we’re pretty damn happy!

Let’s get straight in to it… The 8gb 3G iPhone will cost £299 (pretty close to our prediction of £279!) The 16gb will cost £359.99. And guess what? All users get 6 months FREE unlimited 3G and WiFi access. That is pretty fucking awesome. Sign me up for the 16gb model.

You can get more information directly from O2 by clicking here.

Gadget magazine Stuff is reporting that they have confirmation on the price of the 3G iPhone over here in the UK - and if it’s true, there are going to be a lot of pissed off people.

According to Stuff, the 8gb model will come clocking in at a massive £370 (~$750) while the 16gb will be a hefty £470 (~$950) - ouch. This is by no means officially confirmed, though Stuff have had a decent track record when it comes to rumours. Of course, this means our own predictions were way off. Maybe we were just dreaming.

So yeah - there may be some truth in these numbers; but really, £470? Ouch. That’s more expensive than a PlayStation 3.

We had seen this coming for quite a while, but the very popular online video streaming service Qik has just announced it’s plans to bring the service to the 1 million+ iPhone users around the world.

Currently the application is only available on jailbroken devices, but we may have a chance of seeing this thing on the App Store; only time will tell.

Here’s a quick video demo…

TechCrunh UK have apparantly had a source from O2 confirm that the 3G iPhone will be free on an 18 month contract to new O2 customers, but £100 for existing customers. This is not confirmed, so take it with a pinch of salt - it sounds pretty realistic, though.

Finally - the second generation iPhone has been announced and people can finally stop spreading rumours!

Features:

• 3G

• Full Plastic Back (with thinner edges)

• Improved Camera

• Cheaper

• Flush Headphone Jack

• Improved speakers/audio

• GPS w/ Google Maps integration

• Better battery - two hours extra talk time, seven hours of video, 24 hours of audio.

Yep, Mobile Me was real after all! It’s basically Microsoft Exchange, but for normal people; all of the features are here… Push email, contacts and calanders, as well as a ton of other little things. For example, say you have a date in your calander on your Mac… If you change it on the Mac, it’ll automatically update on your iPhone. That’s basically how the whole thing works - pretty cool!

Live streaming TV is something almost every iPhone owner would love to have - it probably would even be the killer feature for a lot of people. Well, it looks like streaming TV on the iPhone will soon become a reality thanks to non other than Sling Media.