Apple has stealthily updated their premium in-ear headset with remote and mic. What exactly did they update? Well nothing major but it’s an update regardless - they replaced the soft rubber 3.5 mm headphone plug casing with a hard plastic one. So now instead of the soft rubber falling off we will now start to see the hard plastic replacement crack.

All joking aside, Apple really got these headphones almost perfect. And as a bonus they are now fully compatible with iPhone 3GS. Sorry first generation and 3G owners, you are still missing out on the control features.

Be sure to check out Rene’s full review from this past January.

[Via AppleInsider]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple Stealth-Updates Premium In-Ear Headset for iPhone 3GS

The BlackBerry Tour 9630 has landed, and our sibling site, CrackBerry.com has been all over it like, well, Kevin on a new BlackBerry. Check out their full BlackBerry Tour review and new BlackBerry Tour Forums for all the details.

It’s not a touchscreen like the BlackBerry Storm (or Storm 2 will be), and it’s not on GSM networks like the Bold or Curve, but it sounds like it mixes elements of all those devices to maybe help the big CDMA carriers keep the BlackBerry faithful happy and their eyes away from the iPhone and AT&T for a few more months at least.

If you’re on Verizon and love hardware keyboards, it’s likely a no-brainer upgrade. If you’re on Sprint, you could always get both the latest Palm and BlackBerry and go on a Pre-Tour — last smartphone standing!

Update: Commenters remind us that the BlackBerry Tour doesn’t have Wi-Fi (jeers, Verizon!) and, as we mentioned a couple posts ago, Verizon is continuing their faux-openness by putting their own app stores on their devices, rather than the BlackBerry App World (torches and pitchforks, Verizon!)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

The Competition: BlackBerry Tour has Landed

In Stock: BlackBerry VM-605 Bluetooth Premium Visor Handsfree for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, iPhone

The BlackBerry Visor Mount Speakerphone VM-605 is a hands free Bluetooth speakerphone from RIM. Enjoy your calls and your favorite music from your BlackBerry smartphone with the convenience and sound quality of your car’s FM stereo system. It’s easy to use. Just clip it to your car’s visor, turn it on, and you’re ready to start making and taking hands free calls on the go. And because it supports voice activated dialing, caller ID, and verbal notifications to let you know who’s calling, you can stay in touch while keeping your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.

Wireless transmission via Bluetooth connection, driver-friendly, Simple operation Slim, ultra-light design, up to 13hrs talk time, noise reduction and echo cancellation technology, works with GPS Mapping Applications, compatible with other Bluetooth enabled devices

The BlackBerry VM-605 Bluetooth Premium Visor Handsfree for iPhone is available now from the TiPb iPhone Accessory Store…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

In Stock: BlackBerry VM-605 Bluetooth Premium Visor Handsfree for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, iPhone

Apple has just released yet another new pricing model onto the iTunes Music Store: D45s [iTunes link]– two songs for one lower price ($1.49 to $1.99).

Confession: I’m old enough to remember the original 45s, those lovable little vinyl (Google it!) records with a hit song on one side, and something ranging from awesome to ridiculous on the other.

Those days are gone, as are the days of $0.99 fixed pricing (though admittedly albums were alway a volume discounted exception), but Apple’s hoping the Digital 45s prove to be as popular as the record companies no doubt hope they’ll help move more music through the age old bundling scheme.

Apple Insider reports that D45s will be exclusive to iTunes only through July 27, at which point other digital music retailers will be able to offer them as well (which, until Amazon MP3 bothers to roll out internationally, means they’ll likely stay exclusive to iTunes in most countries outside the US and UK…)

So, if you’ve been dying to get your jukebox fix, 2009 style, head on over and drop the needle hit the buy now button…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iTunes Goes Back to the Future with D45s - 2 Songs, 1 Lower Price

Boxcar [$1.99 - iTunes link] is almost more enabler than app. It only does one thing, but thus far it does it very, very well — it sends Push Notifications for Twitter @mentions and Direct Messages (DMs) that then open in either Tweetie or Twitterrific.

Setup is straight forward; you log into your account through an in-app view of Twitter’s website, and authorize Boxcar. You can select whether you want Push Notification for either @mentions, DMs, or both, and which of the aforementioned apps you want to open them in (hopefully support for more options will be forthcoming, such as Tweetdeck, Birdfeed, Twittelator Pro, etc.). You can also choose to automatically tweet them a shout out.

Like all Push-enabled apps, you can exit to the iPhone Settings to turn on or off Sounds, Alert (text boxes), and/or Badges.

That’s it. Sit back and enjoy Push Notifications so you can immediately know when anyone talks to or about you on Twitter. Even when you’re watching a movie on your iPhone. Or playing a game. Or writing an SMS. Or even taking a phone call — if anyone still does that…

In other words, it works so well, you may have to learn to better manage your Twitter interruptions.

Now the crux: is a couple of bucks a lot to pay for an app that arguably only extends the usefulness of other apps that you already paid a few bucks (or more) for? Depends on how badly you want Push Notification for Twitter, whether you’re willing to wait for full-on Twitter clients to add it themselves (however long that takes), and if you realize a couple of bucks is very little, and partly going to support the developers servers that are handling the Twitter calls and passing them on to Apple’s notification servers.

I bought it without a second thought. You’ll have to weigh the value (which is more important than cost) yourselves, and let me know what you think in the comments — or @reneritchie and I’ll get it right away via push

More pics after the break!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Quick App: Boxcar Push Notification for Tweetie and Twitterrific iPhone Twitter Clients

As part of their ongoing Office 2010 ramp up, Fortune reports:

Microsoft – the king of paid software – will announce today that it is going to give a version of Office away for free online. Both the online and desktop versions are scheduled to arrive in the first half of next year. Yes, you read that right. The latest version of its ubiquitous productivity software, dubbed Office 2010, will come as both a piece of software you can buy for your computer, and as a service you can access in your browser. [UPDATE: Microsoft says it will support the Firefox and Safari browsers as well as IE.]

Which immediately makes us ask — how about Mobile Safari?

While native Office-supporting apps are obviously the way to go for many people, Google Docs has proven a place and usage case for WebApps, and having Microsoft Office 2010, of all things, as a WebApp on the iPhone would no doubt appeal to many, many users as well.

(Not to mention WebKit, the engine behind Mobile Safari, is also used by Android, Palm, and some Nokia devices, which would certainly be additional eyeballs for Microsoft’s ad sponsorships.)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Microsoft Office 2010 Online to Work on Safari… How About Mobile Safari for iPhone?

Was Apple’s just released App Store announcement — and Steve Jobs’ remark about how difficult it will be for others to catch up — conveniently timed to preempt Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference where, according to our sibling site WMExperts, details of Windows Marketplace for Mobiles are emerging?

1.5 billion downloads, 100,000 developers, and 65,000 apps is a good old Jobsian gut punch to knock the wind of out any Microsoft news about WinMo 6.0 support, Windows Marketplace Business Center, and whatever else comes out from the folks up in Redmond.

It also combines in a very tidy roshambo to Verizon’s recent revelation that, according to Engadget Mobile, BlackBerry App World or Windows Marketplace won’t be built into devices on that carrier(?!)… and we won’t go much further on that bone-headed, short-sighted, anti-openness news since our cursing would get Parental Control level 17+ slapped on this post…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple Trumpeting iPhone App Store a Gut Punch to Microsoft and Verizon?

Apple announced today that the iTunes App Store, one year post-launch, has served up over 1.5 billion downloads of more than 65,000 apps created by over 100,000 registered developers.

Says Apple CEO, Steve Jobs:

"The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality. With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up."

Strange as it is to see Jobs mention “the competition” there’s no denying the App Store is run-away success beyond even Apple’s lofty expectations.

Congrats! And let’s hope the next year is even better!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App Store One Year Later: 65,000 Apps, 100,000 Developers, 1.5 Billion Downloads

George Hotz has taken it upon himself to create a new iPhone 3GS unlocking solution which he calls purplesn0w. It seems the original iPhone hacker and creator of the jailbreak software purplera1n, was once again not happy with the Dev Teams software, this time it was their unlocking tool, ultrasn0w.

First off, what is purplesn0w? It’s a soft unlock for your 3GS that I’d actually use day to day. It’s not a daemon that takes any resources, and it doesn’t add a task to your baseband. It’s very close to a true unlock. All it does is patch three files, CommCenter, lockdownd, and your wildcard activation plist (which you need, activate w at&t sim first, no hacktivation support yet). That’s it, no other files are installed.

So as you can see Hotz needs to do some more tweaking to get purplesn0w in pristine full working condition. If you do choose to use this software now be prepared to jump thru a few hoops such as having a legitimately activated AT&T sim card. On the bright side - Hotz claims that all of the issues people have had with ultrasn0w, such as Wi-Fi loss, battery fails, unlock fails, etc… are now gone if you use his unlock. If you can hold off for a day or two, do so as Hotz will release an update according to his twitter account.

For the full details on purplesn0w be sure to check out his blog. In the meantime, the competition is heating up between the Dev Team and Mr. Hotz. It’s time to sit back with some popcorn and enjoy the show!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

New iPhone 3GS Unlock - Purplesn0w

I forget if this brings us 4 minutes to midnight or only 5 on the official app-ocalypse clock, but duck and cover because Windows 95 has been ported to run on an iPhone.

Ish. Gizmodo, via GoodiPhone, has the deets:

The hack makes use of a standard Windows 95 image and the Bochs emulator, though as you can expect, the performance is thoroughly crummy. They’re working on getting Windows XP to work too. An abomination, I say.

So say we all.

But hey, at least it wasn’t Windows ME…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Tuesday Fright Video: Windows 95 Ported to iPhone