We have been testing the iPhone for two weeks, in multiple usage scenarios, in cities across the country. Our verdict is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer. Its software, especially, sets a new bar for the smart-phone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface, which dispenses with a stylus and most buttons, works well, though it sometimes adds steps to common functions.

David Pogue of the New York Times writes:

Talk about hype. In the last six months, Apple’s iPhone has been the subject of 11,000 print articles, and it turns up about 69 million hits on Google. Cultists are camping out in front of Apple stores; bloggers call it the “Jesus phone.” All of this before a single consumer has even touched the thing.

So how is it?

As it turns out, much of the hype and some of the criticisms are justified. The iPhone is revolutionary; it’s flawed. It’s substance; it’s style. It does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones.

The security fixes, issued on Wednesday, repair a series of flaws through which an attacker could fool a person into taking actions that would let someone hijack, crash or obtain access rights to a computer.

The vulnerabilities exist in the Finder disk-handling software, iChat messaging and conferencing program, and user notification system.

Internet and computer security company Secunia rated the patch as highly critical, the fourth-most urgent rating on its five-point scale.

Mac OS users who have the automatic software update option enabled will receive the security fixes automatically.

The patches are also available at Apple’s downloads page

Amid iPhone madness, many may have missed the invention that could kill cable. Last week, Apple released AppleTV, a tiny white box that connects the shows and movies you’ve downloaded from the computer, and wirelessly transmits them to your TV screen.

No longer will you have to pay a monthly fee to your cable company to watch your favourite show. Apple’s iTunes has made it possible to download an episode of a TV show for about $2, keep it stored on your computer and watch it whenever you want. It’s a blow to the cable networks, which offer services that are often expensive and bloated – hundreds of channels, thousands of shows and nothing to watch.

Source:  TheStar.com

AT&T took full control of  Cingular with its $86 billion purchase of BellSouth last month.  In the marketing campaigns first stage, which launches on this Monday, Cingular’s orange logo of a bouncing jack will co-exist with the AT&T globe logo on everything from television ads to sales uniforms and monthly bills.

“We did not enter that decision lightly,” Wendy Clark, vice president of advertising at AT&T, said in an interview. “We came to understand that consumer customers and business customers alike are looking for a single provider. We heard it so consistently across the marketplace.”

AT&T ’s name and logo will eventually completely replace Cingular in a process expected to take several months  The exact timing will be determined as more customer feedback comes in, Clark said.  Cingular built up a reputation among younger customers who may not easily associate with the AT&T brand. 

Although, AT&T had indicated that the re-branding was a part of its strategy, as reported by Adweek, the announcement still appears strange given the recent announcement of Apple’s iPhone device which is exclusively linked to Cingular through a multi-year exclusive deal.

Source: CNET

“It is quite an interesting product but it is lacking a few essential features, such as 3G, which would enable fast data connections,” Vanjoki, whose multimedia unit is a direct rival to Apple, was quoted as saying by Finnish business daily Taloussanomat.

Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs indicated that the company’s goal was 1% of the mobile phone market by 2008, or approximately 10 million iPhonesout of a market total of close to 1 billions sold in 2008.

Mr. Vanjoki was quoted as saying that “Apple’s objective is not at a very high level,” but that the iPhone’s entry would give an additional boost to the multimedia phone market, proving Nokia’s multimedia strategy was correct.

“This is another piece of evidence that we have been on the right track from the beginning,” he said.

Nokia indicated that it has sold close to 70 million phones with integrated MP3 players in 2006.

Source:  Reuters.com

Cisco is asking the court to forbid Apple from using the name “iPhone,” which Cisco has held a trademark on since 2000 and used to brand a line of its own Internet-enabled phones that began shipping last spring and officially launched three weeks ago.

Cisco indicated that Apple approached the company several years ago in an attempt to negotiate a license agreement to use the name.  Talks evidently broke down mere hours before Steve Job’s MacWorld Keynote address announcing the new device.

Source:  Yahoo! News

“From this day forward we’re going to be known as Apple, Inc. We’ve dropped the computer from our name.” And then he quoted ice skating legend Wayne Gretzky. “‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it’s been.’ That’s what we try to do at Apple.”

Could the corporate name change reflect a belief that the PC centric era has passed?  Om Malik speculates that Apple’s rebranding as consumer electronics company reflects a future where WIFI enabled devices can exist without any dependence on a PC desktop. 

“While I am not suggesting that this replaces our notebooks or desktops
for crucial productivity tasks, the iPhone (if it lives up to its hype)
is at least going to decrease our dependence on it.”

Devices may benefit from a link to the desktop, but Apple’s iPhone does everything a computer can do: email, chat, surf the internet, consume multimedia, while running Mac OS X. 

The question remains whether Apple’s multiyear exclusive deal with Cingular may hobble the device and limit consumer choice.  In my opinion, Apple would have done better if they would have launched the device in two forms:  1) unlocked, non-subsidized, free to use on any GSM network; 2) subsidized and locked to a specific provider.

But what do we still not know about the iPhone? Even though Jobs spent the good part of two hours going over it’s every feature in loving detail, a few questions still remain.

1. Will you be able to buy and download songs and movies over the air, or do you need to download them to your computer first and then sync them to your iPhone like with any iPod? If you will be able to, will songs cost the same or will Cingular insist that people pay for the convenience of wireless delivery over its network? (After all, a ringtone can easily cost $3).

2. The iPhone has WiFi and Bluetooth, but will it be possible to beam songs between iPhones like you can with the Zune?

3. Will the device drain power from one single battery or two? (Earlier rumors had suggested there would be a separate battery for the phone and one for the iPod, but Jobs didn’t say anything about that, only that there would be 5 hours of talk time/video ipod use, and 16 hours of music-listening capability).

4. What about an iPhone with a hard drive to carry all your music? (What Jobs really announced was an iPhone Nano, which will come with either 4 GB or 8 GB of flash memory. How many movies will that hold?)

5. Exactly how long will Cingular have exclusivity in the U.S.? (All we know is that it is a “multiyear” deal). And what happens when spotty network coverage mars the experience?

6. How long will the touch-screen last? (Even in Jobs’ keynote, you could see the smudges on the screen).

Source: The Next Net: Business 2.0

For more information, visit Apple’s iPhone site.