Worried that you might be spending a lot of time waiting for that shiny new iPhone 3G to be activated? Well, never fear because the nice people at the Apple Store are there to help you. Bloomberg.com interviewed Apple's retail chief, Ron Johnson, about the iPhone retail activation process.

"Apple stores will handle about 30 customers at a time. While the company will make sure the activation process is quick," said Johnson about the activation time.

Johnson then went on to say that Apple will spend as much time as needed to make sure that the customer is happy with their purchase. You can read the full interview on the Bloomberg website.


[via MacRumors]

BoyGeniusReport (BGR) somehow managed to get their hands on the new iPhone 3G a little earlier than anyone else. They have uploaded several high-quality pictures to show the comparisons between the 1st generation iPhone and the iPhone 3G.

In addition, Paul Thurrott posted some iPhone 2.0 firmware upgrade screenshots to show the upgrade process and some of the new iTunes 7.7 and iPhone 2.0 features.

[via MacRumors]

Damn. iPhone developers have been clamming up over the last few weeks, so we haven't had much to post in the App News Roundup. Now that it's getting closer to i-Day Friday, the tips are starting to pour in.

• Deepak Mantena of Tapeshow told us about Chores, his GTD app for iPhone (see screenshots above). It will be in the App Store, with a Mac companion app coming in August. He'll also have Wordy (for helping you improve your vocabulary), Gratuity (easy tip calculator), and Fright (a good way to scare your friends) in the App Store Friday.
• Another ebook reader app for iPhone has been announced; Lexcycle Stanza will be in the App Store on Friday for free. Stanza uses Project Gutenberg eTexts so you can have a library of classics at your fingertips.
• Developer Pascal Bourque let us know that he's submitted DutchTab to the App Store. You can use this app to split restaurant bills fairly between a group of co-workers or friends. His site isn't up yet, but will be soon at http://www.dutchtab.com.
• 3Monk3ys has three iPhone apps that available on Friday. DoubleDrop (a puzzle game) will be available for $2.99. Attitude is an simulation of an airplane's Attitude Indicator (ADI), and is priced at $2.99 as well. Finally, iSoroban is a Japanese abacus simulator priced at $1.99
• Noah WItherspoon mentioned that his game Tris will be available soon after the App Store launch. Details are on his dev blog at http://twofingerplay.blogspot.com/.
• Are you a pilot? Felix Khazin is releasing AirWX, an iPhone app for grabbing METARs, maps, and more. AirWX uses CoreLocation and pulls up nav charts from skyvector.com.
• Kayakers are going to need a waterproof case for their iPhones! Wayne David Daley has RiverGuide coming out soon. Can you say real-time river flow info?
• Thomas Aylesworth of Bayou Games let us know about Morocco, his Othello game for iPhone.
• Edovia will be selling Steps, pedometer software for iPhone, starting Friday for $1.99. Their Linguo translator software will retail for $2.99 and features 17 languages.
• If you need to lose a few pounds, All of Zero has iScale coming out soon. You can keep track of what you eat, find the nutrional value of various foods, and more.

Be sure to send us your app news via the Tips page.

With all the current hype surrounding the imminent release of both the upgrade to Apple's .Mac service, now to be forever known as MobileMe, and Friday's launch of the new, improved iPhone version 2.0, let's not forget that Apple also makes other types of hardware that seems to be selling pretty well these days. In fact, according to a recent article up over at AppleInsider, Apple is apparently poised to ship 2.5 Million Macs in the Spring -- thanks, in some measure, to the poor reception of Microsoft's Windows Vista.

According to BMO Capital Markets analyst Keith Bachman, Apple's potentially strong quarter, which ends in June, can be attributed to several factors. Among them, user dissatisfaction with Vista. "Thus far, user satisfaction ratings for Vista have been weak, and startup times for Vista have been known to be much slower than the Mac OS X," Bachman said in the article. "Thus, more than 50% of recent customers buying Macs in Apple retail stores are first-time buyers."

In addition, the analyst added that this problem could help Apple's bottom line well into 2009 and could potentially improve the company's current world market share, raising it to 3.9% or higher. This is good news for those of us who remember the time, not so long ago, when most in the press and analysts like Bachman predicted Apple's certain demise. Still, even with this good news, we still need to hope Apple doesn't do something to hurt itself -- like bungle the .Mac to MobileMe transition or run out of shiny new iPhones at 8:30AM on Friday. That would not be a good thing.

Dear Developers,

Until Apple introduces ad-hoc distribution, should you want to have TUAW test your software, start by contacting us at our tips line with general information about your software.

One of us will write back to you with a test unit device identifier. You will need to provision that device for Development and then send us a copy of the mobile provision and a zipped Release version of your iPhone application (not a Distribution version).

Other welcome items include:

• Pricing information and system requirements
• Website URL for the software
• A basic press pack
• Corporate/PR contact information for TUAW
• General contact information for our readers

We love you all,

Auntie TUAW

Rise and shine, shoppers. According to AppleInsider, Apple retail stores will open at 8:00 AM this Friday, July 11th to begin selling the iPhone 3G. AT&T stores will also open at 8:00AM.

The longer work day will create time for the in-store activations, credit checks, etc. that the new iPhone will require. For me, this is a real bummer. Activating my original iPhone via iTunes in the quiet comfort of my own home was a pleasure; a typically "Apple" experience. Now, I've got to stand around like every other shmoe and wait for the workers to click this, type that, sign here and blah, blah. Oh, well.

How did we ever get buy without tabbed browsing? Think back to the days of OS 9 and IE 4. Ugh.

JimD at creativebits has shared a cool trick (Firefox and Safari) for quickly returning to a previously visited website in a new tab, thus preserving the site you're currently browsing.

This got us thinking of some of our favorite browser tricks, like this one. If you've got several tabs open, you can move from one to the other with keyboard shortcuts. In Firefox, it's Command-Option plus the arrow keys. In Safari, it's Command-Shift plus the arrow keys.

Quickly jump to the address field with Command-L (both Firefox and Safari). It selects the full text, so you can either just start typing or hit Command-C to copy the url. Of course, Safari 3 lets you grab Web Clips and turn them into Dashboard widgets.

Have you got a favorite browser trick to share with newcomers to the Mac?

Once again, TUAW is pleased to present you with a selection of free songs and videos from around the world. Many of these iTMS items won't be free for long, so grab your copies before the week is up. And don't forget: If you want to buy these on your iPhone or iPod touch, make sure to sign into your account in iTunes before you sync.

Follow the jump for this week's free iTunes offerings.

The MacRumors Forums are abuzz with discussion about the opening of the first Apple Store in Kansas. Not to be confused with Apple Store Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Mo., this store is in Leawood, Kansas.

Specifically, the store is located in the new shopping center being built in the Crate & Barrel area on the south east corner of 119th & Roe. While there's no listing on Apple's retail page, they do have a map page partially complete.

Several forum users state that the store will open on July 11, just in time for the 3G iPhone launch. If you visit this store over the weekend, please let us know! Welcome to the club, Kansas!

Thanks, Darrell!

AppleInsider is reporting that Apple won't be selling the iPhone 3G in its 6 Canadian retail stores this Friday. This seems to be confirmed by Apple Canada's 'Where to buy an iPhone' webpage which lists Rogers and Fido stores as the only locations to buy an iPhone (the same page in the States lists both Apple stores and AT&T stores) in Canada.

Is this a reaction to Rogers less than stellar iPhone rate plans? That doesn't seem to ring true to me, since it strikes me as unlikley that Apple was surprised by what Rogers planned to charge for iPhone plans. I'm sure it is only a matter of time before you'll be able to stroll into a Canadian Apple Store and plunk down your money for an iPhone 3G.

Update: I miscounted, there are 6 Apple stores in Canada.

Update 2: Looks like this is just a tempest in a teapot. After looking at the iPhone pages for countries where Apple has retails stores (UK, Japan, Italy, and Australia) it looks like you won't be able to buy an iPhone in any non-US Apple Stores. Everyone can stop freaking out now.

My Portuguese isn't very good... alright fine I can't speak a word of Portuguese, but they say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so you should really check out these iPhone 3G unboxing pictures that were posted at iPhonePortugal. I have no idea how this lucky person got their hands on an iPhone 3G so early (they might work at a phone store, since the Swiss seem to have setup their displays), but they took some pictures and posted them on the internet, as the law requires.

[via Engadget]

Time is a funny thing. A few weeks ago, eBay and Google were flooded with pricy first-gen iPhones starting at about $400 and people were snapping them up like crazy. Now, the same auction sites are showing dozens of listings from just $200 for 8GB iPhones.

The iPhone, as you will remember, debuted last year at $499 for a 4GB model and $599 for 8GB. Then there was the price drop, the $100 store credit and the introduction of the iPod touch. Soon after, the refurb units appeared at a slight discount, and then a bigger discount and then by March they were retailing $250 for the refurb 8GB model. Late adopters got great bargains by any stretch of the imagination, particularly those who mixed unlocking with creative data plan purchases.

Now it's time for the iPhone 3G to appear and by every stretch of the imagination, it's horribly priced--as is every other subsidized smart-phone out there. Unless you live in the Netherlands, the rate plans range from bad to unspeakable. If you're in Scandinavia or New Zealand, our hearts go out to you.

From a price perspective, the cheapest way to use the phone is to buy it outright, unlock it and use it with inexpensive calling plans. Data plans, particularly, work best when you don't have to mortgage your children to afford to visit a few websites.

Using the iPhone outside the sanctioned plans involves giving up visual voice mail but otherwise it works pretty smoothly. It also involves running unfamiliar possibly scary software and taking risks with your unit that many iPhone users would prefer to avoid. Thus there exists the always growing market of third party unlocking and resales.

The iPhone dev team hints that they're ready to deliver unlocking and jailbreak tools as soon as Apple releases 2.0. Theoretically, you'll be able to use your current iPhone SIM and data plan (whether licit or less licit) with the new iPhone 3G. Obviously no one has been able to test or confirm this yet outside the dev team, which remains tightlipped.

In the US, AT&T is offering a "commitment-free" 3G iPhone for just $599. It's still locked to the network, and we're told you still need to activate it with AT&T before it can be used. Similar overpriced "commitment free" units will go on sale in Italy and a few other countries as well. You should be able to activate and then tell your carrier goodbye if I'm reading the terms correctly. I am not a lawyer.

So here's the question: do you want to pay the early adopter tax in order to play with shiny new iPhone? For US customers, the question reverts to bandwidth. If you can afford it, the new iPhone delivers 3G speeds. You won't have to call out for pizza as you wait for a website to load. But if you have the flexibility to wait, you can buy a better cheaper unit soon.

Other than 3G speeds and GPS, the new iPhone does not bring a lot to the table. It still has the same crappy 2 MegaPixel camera. It appears to have the same sized screen, the same speakers, the same microphone with a few cosmetic re-designs. If the speed issue isn't do-or-die for you, this is the upgrade to skip. You'll pay a lot of money for little more than a design bump.

Frankly, Apple would be foolish if they didn't have a better iPhone already in the works--one with a decent camera and other upgraded features. The 3G iPhone that goes on sale Friday, represents nothing more than last year's iPhone--that finally got delivered a year late.

Sometimes Command-C and Command-V just aren't enough. You're working on a project and want to capture a bunch of text, pictures, or code, and then paste it into the project you're working on. Using the Mac clipboard, you're toggling between open applications, cutting and pasting like there's no tomorrow. Wouldn't it be nice to capture all of that information into one place, then pull it out when you're ready to use it?

Corkboard (from Ayluro) does exactly this -- you press a hot key or click a menu bar icon, and a transparent "corkboard" appears. You can either paste or drag-and-drop items onto the corkboard, then hide it. If your machine crashes, or if you need to restart it, no problem -- the items that you've pinned to the corkboard are there. When you're ready to use those items (text, sound, pictures, etc..), just open Corkboard and drag them into the receiving app.

Corkboard accepts many types of media, and Ayluro has created a framework so other applications can work seamlessly with Corkboard. It's currently a time-limited beta (download here) with an introductory price of $12.99. Developer Jonathan Grynspan expects the app to leave beta in early 2009. Give it a try!

While it's not a replacement for the Amazon Kindle, ZappTek today announced Legends, an ebook service for iPhone and iPod touch. The Legends service will be available in the App Store on July 11th, with pricing of $1.99 for short stories and $4.99 for novels.

ZappTek plans on partnering with "today's hottest writers" to distribute new fiction using Legends to bring the reading experience to iPhone / iPod Touch 2.0. Each book appears as an icon on the Home screen, and the books automatically re-open to the last page you were reading. You can also bookmark or annotate any page.

Both landscape and portrait reading modes are available by rotating the iPhone, and you can invert the display (white characters on black background) by triple-tapping. Double-tapping zooms in on text.

To start off, ZappTek is making a number of short stories and novels by New York Times bestselling author Michael A. Stackpole available. Many other authors will be joining Legends soon.

If you're a voracious reader, be sure to try out Legends this Friday!

Apple has posted some information regarding where to buy the iPhone 3G and what to bring to the store so you can get up and running. According to Apple, in-store activations will occur at Apple's retail stores.

"Let a Specialist help you choose your iPhone, check the network coverage where you live, select a rate plan, review the contract terms, and - best of all - activate your new iPhone in just a few minutes," the Apple page explains.

Apple suggests having the following information handy to make the activation process speedy:

• Credit card
• Social security number
• Valid government-issued photo ID
• Current wireless account number and password or PIN (if you're new to AT&T)

Apple also provides information for new iPhone owners on how to organize their data to make it ready for the iPhone. All of this information can be found on Apple's Where to Buy website.