Iron Ink Media: Inked Up

Apple has announced today what everyone has been drooling over for months. That’s right, here comes the new iPhone 4, which will be available on June 24th (they most likely mean 2010).

Steve Jobs was the keynote speaker at the Worldwide Developers Conference, where he introduced the new iPhone 4. Before highlighting the new phone’s features, he said that it is “beyond a doubt, the most precise thing and one of the most beautiful things we’ve ever made.”

Here are some of the new features.

-24% thinner than previous iPhones.
-Five megapixel camera with LED flash
-Front-facing camera for conferencing
-720p HD video capabilities
-Available in black and white, at $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB
-Same great f’ing two-year AT&T contract (seriously, when does this madness end?)
-Gyroscope for six-axis motion sensing
-Talk time is up from 5 hours to 7 hours; 6 hours of 3G browsing; 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing; 10 hours of video; 40 hours of music; and 300 hours of standby.

So there you have it. The new iPhone 4 is on its way. We’re sure it’s a very nice device and we’ll probably be upgrading to one in the next six months.

So this one is getting ugly, huh? Local Bay Area police have raided the home of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen, allegedly in connection with the iPhone 4G story where the website allegedly paid $5,000 for a lost iPhone 4G prototype.

According to the warrant, police seized several digital cameras, external hard drives, flash drives, a credit card and credit card bills from Chen’s home. It is a felony in California to pay for lost merchandise. I guess it’s the “lost” part that got a bit hairy so they just made a law out of it.

Gawker Media, Gizmodo’s parent network, thinks this is an outrage.

“It is abundantly clear that under the law a search warrant to remove these items was invalid,” Gawker Media Chief Operating Officer Gaby Darbyshire said in the letter. “In the circumstances, we expect the immediate return of materials that you confiscated from Mr. Chen.”

This should get pretty good.

According to CNET.com, the police are investigating Gizmodo after the tech blogging giant paid $5,000 to a guy who found an iPhone 4G in a Redwood City, CA bar. Apparently, it’s against the law to buy found property in California.

Apple has spoken to police about the incident and according to CNET.com’s source, the investigation is being spearheaded by a computer crime task force led by the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office.

According to the editor’s at Gizmodo, they explained that they paid $5,000 to someone who claimed to have found a new iPhone 4G. Yeah, we get that. That’s why you are being investigated. That’s exactly what the complaint is about.

The investigation is to determine whether or not sufficient evidence exists to file criminal charges. Gawker, Gizmodo’s parent company, said that no one had spoken to them about this yet.

Apple doesn’t let stuff like this go, so if it’s possible to pursue charges, we’re sure they’ll stay on it. Apparently, they have no interest in getting any positive stories out of Gizmodo ever again.

Isn’t this cute. An app from the web browser company Opera was approved by the Apple app store today and should be available for download later today or tomorrow. That’s right, a new web browser will be available for surfing on the iPhone. Don’t like Safari? No worries, help is on the way.

Opera claims that this web-browsing application will let you surf the web six times faster than with the standard Safari browser that is available on all iPhone and iTouche devices.

“We are delighted to offer iPhone and iPod Touch users a great browsing experience with the Opera Mini app,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO of Opera Software. “This app is another step toward Opera’s goal of bringing the Web to more people in more places.”

It comes as a bit of a surprise to us because Apple can be a bunch of Nazi’s when it comes to letting apps in that compete with Apple stuff. In this case, the Apple stuff is Safari. Maybe Apple is softening up a bit and willing to let competitors throw their hats in the ring. And…..maybe not. We have a feeling that they only reason they let this in is because either they don’t see it as a threat or they see some way to make money on it.

Well isn’t this cute. Apple has decided to remove the word “Google” from the search bar in the iPhone’s Safari browser. You know how when you put your search terms in you have to then hit the “Google” button to execute your search? Well, they are getting rid of that.

I guess we saw it coming. Google and Apple have been in a pissing match for some time now. Apple rejected Google’s Google Voice app. Google’s Android is supposed to compete with the iPhone’s OS. Google CEO Eric Schmidt stepped down off of Apple’s board of directors. You get the idea.

But now, Apple is apparently tweaking Google’s nips again by getting rid of the Google brand from Safari in the new iPhone OS 4.0. It could possibly be that Apple is actually considering a deal with Microsoft to make Bing the default search engine. We hope not, we aren’t huge on Bing.

Our bigger concern is that this spat between the two tech giants hinders the amount of cool stuff that we the consumer get. Please, Apple and Google, just play nice.

A recent market research study showed that smartphones that are based on Google Android have gained market share. In the months from December to February, Android phones have gained 5.2% during that time period while Palm and Microsoft platforms have seen their biggest losses.

Apple probably won’t flip out over this, but their market share dipped a tenth of a percentage point to 25.4% Then again, maybe that will totally set some Apple execs off, who knows? We would have to think that too much of a slip will be the final dagger that leads Apple to open up the iPhone to other service providers besides AT&T. As it is they are working on doing that.

Palm’s decline is a bit odd since their WebOS has gotten tremendous reviews. But when it comes to technology, we would have to think that Apple and Google are two of the top names in forward-thinking cool stuff.

Overall, 45.4 million people own smartphones now, which is up 21% from the previous three months. So, it would seem that the overall pie is growing and that should be a help to all involved.

On Monday, Apple announced that it would be holding a special, invite-only event to show off the latest version of the new iPhone OS. Leave it to Apple to pull this off right after the launch of the iPad.

The event on April 8th will allow everyone to “peek into the future of iPhone OS.” Hooray?

You can count on Macworld to provide you a blow-by-blow update of the event, which starts at 10 a.m. Pacific time. What new features will iPhone’s 4.0 OS have? Oh do tell!

Well isn’t this something? The new iPhone that is supposed to be released June has very few details. We’ve heard about it being the iPhone HD and having a forward-facing camera for teleconferencing, but information has been scarce.

Now, we hear that it’s been leaked that this new iPhone will be running a new build of Google Android. Wow. Didn’t see that coming.

With Apple’s exclusivity agreement with AT&T coming to a close, the company can start shopping their phone around to other carriers. We are expecting a Verizon version soon, and that should help the iPhone really pound the rest of the mobile market.

Neither Apple nor Google has been able to confirm the Android rumor. But, neither company is stupid and this could be huge for both of them.

Accompanying reports that Apple is working on a new iPhone for Verizon Wireless, is a rumor that the company is also working on a new handset known as the iPhone HD. The new phone would run on the iPad’s A4 processor and sport a forward-facing camera for teleconferencing.

That’s a lot of detail for something that’s supposedly just a rumor.

Photo Caption: That doesn’t look like a forward-facing camera to us.

Another rumor from Engadget suggests that this iPhone HD could debut on Tuesday, June 22, ahead of the WWDC 2010. Again, that’s pretty specific information and we doubt that Engadget plucked that out of thin air.

The new iPhone HD is expected to take several large steps towards the iPad and distance itself from previous versions of the iPhone. Would that be just another reason to just wait and not get an iPad?

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Apple is working on an iPhone for Verizon Wireless. Made exclusively for AT&T sine 2007, this would be music to many a consumer’s ear who have long wanted an iPhone, but can’t stand AT&T.

Verizon Wireless declined to comment, while Mark Siegel, spokesperson for AT&T, said that “great relationship with Apple.”

Whatever that means. The bottom line is that this could put a dent into AT&T. We’ve talked to people who absolutely hate their service and pricing, and who would probably sell their existing iPhone to get a new Verizon version if that meant never having to deal with AT&T again.

But is this true? What does Apple have to say? “Apple doesn’t comment on rumor and speculation,’’ said Natalie Kerris, a spokeswoman for Apple said.