Care to see your favorite gaming consoles and peripherals with x-ray vision? Your wish has come true. Check the following link for one person’s flickr gallery. Very cool.

X-Ray Funnies – a set on Flickr.

G4 has again been named the official broadcaster of E3 2009, and with only a month to go until keynotes, I’m definitely excited. Let’s just hope I don’t relive the fiasco that was E3 2007 on the same network. See my rant for more information on that.

G4 promises to provide over 22 hours of content, including five keynotes, hands on demos, interviews, and Steve Wiebe with another one of his live Donkey Kong high score attempts. If you’re unfamiliar with Steve, then be sure to check out the documentary: The King of Kong. It’s a great film. Other than that, additional details on the broadcast can be found at the following link.

G4 Named Official Broadcaster Of E3 2009 – G4tv.com.

I’m not sure whether or not I’m surprised about this, but it Apple has officially announced that MMS will be making its way slowly to iPhone software 3.0. All I have to say is that it took them long enough. Why this wasn’t in 1.0, is beyond me, but better late than never right?

MMS finally comes to Apple’s iPhone 3G via OS 3.0.

New dirty details on iPhone 3.0 features are trickling out. Looks like we’re going to be seeing an new homes screen which will be used for searching through contacts, mail, applications, and media. Sounds like a welcome addition.

iPhone 3.0 features new homescreen with Spotlight search.

I take it back. As noted in the open letter to iPhone customers, Steve Jobs has decided to give all customers purchasing iPhones prior to the price drop, a $100.00 gift certificate to the Apple Store for use on any product. Let’s do some quick math shall we? ($600.00 (price of iPhone upon release) – $100.00 (amount of credit towards Apple Store) = $500,00.) Gee. That is a bit more than the $400.00 which ‘late’ adopters are paying, but still, I am satisfied, and my anger has gone away to anger land. Thank you Apple, for making things significantly more right than other companies likely would.

Open Letter:

To all iPhone customers:

I have received hundreds of emails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale. After reading every one of these emails, I have some observations and conclusions.

First, I am sure that we are making the correct decision to lower the price of the 8GB iPhone from $599 to $399, and that now is the right time to do it. iPhone is a breakthrough product, and we have the chance to ‘go for it’ this holiday season. iPhone is so far ahead of the competition, and now it will be affordable by even more customers. It benefits both Apple and every iPhone user to get as many new customers as possible in the iPhone ‘tent’. We strongly believe the $399 price will help us do just that this holiday season.

Second, being in technology for 30+ years I can attest to the fact that the technology road is bumpy. There is always change and improvement, and there is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever. This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you’ll never buy any technology product because there is always something better and less expensive on the horizon. The good news is that if you buy products from companies that support them well, like Apple tries to do, you will receive years of useful and satisfying service from them even as newer models are introduced.

Third, even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.

Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple’s website next week. Stay tuned.

We want to do the right thing for our valued iPhone customers. We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple.

Steve Jobs
Apple CEO

Today Apple released a few new tidbits of news, one which potentially pissed off a lot of customers, the $200 dollar price drop on the new and previously expensive iPhone. You are now able to purchase this wondrous phone for the reduced price of $400. To those of us who already purchased the phone, and paid a whopping $600, this is highway robbery coupled with a slap in the face only one of the largest computer and gadget dealer could afford to commit. Apple, did you think to take a moment to consider just who you were pissing off? I, some dork on the web, am not the only one concerned here. You are screwing your biggest fans and earliest adopters of new technology. We are the ones who hype your products, the ones who show the new products to our friends, the ones who provide the word of mouth needed for products to truly be successful. I truly hope you decide to compensate those who have given you their support with your product thus far. We the customers deserve that much. Until further news, thank you for the screwing, Apple. It hurts so good.

After visiting the Apple store in Salt Lake City to purchase my very awesome iPhone, I was emailed with a request to take a survey to help improve the Apple store, and ultimately Apple as a company. I did, and for the most part, found myself with quite the mundane task of bubbling in my answers. The last question, however, was a different story. They asked for anything I would like to tell Apple, and so I did. Apple Feedback Form

It’s been four days, and I feel that my iPhone and I have really hit it off, so much in fact that I would like to write a part 2 to the impressions article written a little bit ago. One of my major complaints was that the Edge Network, which is used for online access when not near a wireless gateway of some kind, was either a) Completely down, or, b) painfully slow. I am happy to announce that this is no longer the case. Although far from the speeds of my highspeed networks at work and home, surfing the web, checking email through hotmail, and using the MSN Mobile messenger, has become a relatively fast experience, certainly more responsive than the ol’ 56k modem. All I can imagine is that the Edge Network was being a little pissy its first few days of heavy use, and has since, been addressd to keep the users happy. I am happy. I would also like to report that there are still no scratches on my screen, or on the chassis to any degree, nor do I expect this to be an issue. Although the price of this product borders on insane for a phone, I have left it in my pocket as I would a normal phone with no extra protection. This product was obviously made for durability, especially considering the virtually scratch proof glass screen.

One of the major major gripes I neglected to mention in the previous post was the iPhone’s complete lack of instant messaging, despite the excellent texting interface, and fantastic keyboard. Although far from the best solution, I strongly urge those who use MSN religiously, check out http://mobile.live.com/ which can be used for a lite hotmail experience (because the iPhone also does not support this, likely due to the lack of POP support) , as well as a fully functional MSN messenger client, which, believe it or not, works very well.

Considering both gmail and yahoo mail allow POP3 by default, and the lack of this feature with Windows Live, otherwise known as Hotmail, seems to be a concern to the iPhone community, I would surely hope that Microsoft takes a hint, and begin offering this. It would certainly up their brownie points with users of the iPhone, which is always a great idea to do with potential customers.

The good:

• The ease of activation. Thus far there have not been kind words written about this experience. I had my service activated with my T-Mobile phone number transferred in 5 minutes. Incredibly fast.
• Battery life. Happy! Happy! 24 hours of music and 8 of talk time. No problems there.
• The dimensions. I remember seeing the initial photo of the iPhone being help in someone’s hand and thinking it looked like a book. Once I help the product, I realized just how small it is. The screen is just the right size. Perfect.
• Applications. Included programs such as YouTube and Safari work wonderfully.
• Touch screen. Amazing. Works perfectly.
• Keyboard. I can type on this thing much much faster than with any number pad based system. The system intelligently detects typos which actually works very well. The key to being a fast typer on this is certainly getting over your fear of typing poorly. Trust the system.

The bad:

• The ‘Edge’ network is very slow and to this point unreliable. Although this has begun working fairly well, the first 24 hours on the service was laughable. Constant “page cannot be found” errors, and slow. This looks to be improving. I am willing to chalk this down to being a result of a huge launch, with the networks being unprepared for the stress. *crossing fingers*

The frustrating:

• What the hell is going on? Where is the 64-bit support? How could a company releasing a product with this much hype conveniently forget to support any 64 bit version of Windows? Forget the fact that power users (like those you sell your product to) use these operating systems, and that they are becoming increasingly supported, if you want me to like you, then you support everything considered standard. *shakes fist*
• No manual music management through iTunes? That makes sense. How about we remove something that has been standard with the iPod family for some time, and take it out just to mess with people? Get used to making playlists for the time being.
• No custom ring tones? If there is ANY phone on the market that should let you use an MP3, already on your phone, as a ring tone it is the iPhone. Too bad it doesn’t.

It’s official. The birth of the iPhone is here at last, and I want nothing more than to cuddle the warm and gooey package in my small effeminate arms. Here are some of the highlights of this new toy straight from Wikipedia, because as Michael Scott said, “Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information.”

Quote From Wikipedia:

The iPhone is a multimedia and Internet-enabled mobile phone by Apple, announced by company CEO Steve Jobs during the keynote at the Macworld Conference & Expo on 9 January 2007, that was released on 29 June 2007 in the U.S. at 6 pm “local time”, or 6 pm Pacific time for online sales, limit two per person, although some AT&T stores are only allowing one per person for the June 29th launch.

The iPhone’s functions include those of a camera phone, a multimedia player, mobile phone, and Internet services like e-mail, text messaging, web browsing, Visual Voicemail and wireless connectivity. iPhone input is accomplished via touchscreen with virtual keyboard and buttons. The iPhone is a 2G quad-band GSM phone, though Jobs mentioned in his keynote that Apple has a “plan to make 3G phones” in the future.

The iPhone is available from the Apple Store and from AT&T Mobility, formerly Cingular Wireless, with a price of US$499 for the 4 GB model and US$599 for the 8 GB model, based on a two-year service contract. Apple intends to make the phone available in Europe in Q4 2007 and in Mexico and Asia in 2008.