TomTom insists on teasing us all with the above video yet there is still no mention of pricing or availability. As you can see, this car kit brings a lot more to the table than a simple window mount for your iPhone. With the following extras, you can count on this being a pricey addition to your accessory collection.

• Hands-free dialing
• Louder speaker
• Enhances GPS signal
• Charges iPhone

As impressive as the TomTom car kit looks, we are thinking you possibly may have to dish out up to at least $100 for this tricked out window mount. Are you still interested in making this purchase?

Sound off in the comments!

[Via Engadget Mobile]

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

TomTom Promo Video Shows Off Car Kit

Google bought Grand Central and rebranded it Google Voice, now Apple has rejected Google Voice for the iPhone and the FCC is looking into it. Based on the responses Apple had given the FCC, it looks like they might be afraid Google is taking over the iPhone and Google Voice is a big piece of that. So what if Apple had bought Grand Central instead? Or what if that new world-class data center Apple is building will be home to a Google Voice competitor? (Tip of the theoretical hat to Derek in our comments, who delightfully calls such a thing iVoice).

GrandCentral (not to be confused with Apple’s upcoming multicore processor handler, Grand Central Dispatch) was an innovative service that gave users a new phone number that could replace any number of other and assorted numbers (one line to ring them all), along with SMS, transcribed voice mail, conference calling, call switching, call screening, etc. It was purchased by Google in 2007 for $95 million, and relaunched in 2009 as Google Voice.

If Apple had bought it instead, they would of course now be spared the headaches surrounding the above mentioned rejection and investigation. But they’d also have a fairly compelling set of services to roll up into the iPhone…

The original iPhone 2G saw Apple neatly remove carriers from a large portion of the smartphone experience by handling the selling and activation themselves, and not allowing any so-called carrier crapware (or even physical branding) onto the iPhone.

iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.0 saw the removal of carrier application portals with the introduction of an Apple-controlled App Store (though that inarguably has crapware all it’s own, users don’t have to fight with it being pre-installed and/or baked in).

At the same time, the original iPod touch went from being a crippled, no external speaker, no external volume control iPhone, to a fairly good non-phone iPhone. In a couple of weeks, Apple is widely expected to ship an iPod touch with a camera and perhaps microphone as well.

That makes it a potential VoIP monster.

Of course, GrandCentral/Google Voice doesn’t use VoIP (despite Apple’s weak-tea response that they’re still investigating it). That doesn’t mean it couldn’t (as in never will).

An iPhone — or iPod touch — with “iVoice” phone, sms, voice mail, etc. behind it…? That removes the carrier further still (dumb pipe chants, if you will), and the iPod touch as a VoIP monster? Heh. It becomes the Balrog.

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

Apple Kicking Themselves They Didn’t Buy GrandCentral (Google Voice) First?

Techcrunch has an interesting “rebuttal” up regarding Apple’s response to the FCC over the rejection of Google Voice. I use the quotes because I think the rebuttal part itself is off-target, while the conclusion is fairly spot on. Worst things first:

[Apple's response] strongly suggests that the Google Voice app replaces much of the core Apple iPhone OS function. This certainly isn't accurate, and we believe the statement is misleading. More details below, but in general the iPhone app is a very light touch and doesn't interfere with any native iPhone apps at all.

The crux of their argument is that, while Google Voice provides separate voice dialing, voice mail, and SMS functionality outside Apple’s built-in Phone and Messages apps, users are still free to use the built in apps. More specifically, that Google Voice only replaces these things when the Google Voice phone number is used.

Um. Yeah.

Users, at least in part, are going to be replacing the AT&T number with the Google Voice number (likely the reason to get the Google Voice number for a segment of users). Ergo, they’ll be replacing the built in Phone and SMS apps with the Google Voice app.

No big deal, though, right? Why should Apple care if people replace Phone and Messages with Google Voice?

Here, Techcrunch makes the kind of sense that does:

Multiple sources at Google tell us that in informal discussions with Apple over the last few months Apple expressed dismay at the number of core iPhone apps that are powered by Google. Search, maps, YouTube, and other key popular apps are powered by Google. Other than the browser, Apple has little else to call its own other than the core phone, contacts and calendar features. The Google Voice App takes things one step further, by giving users an incentive to abandon their iPhone phone number and use their Google Voice phone number instead (transcription of voicemails is reason enough alone). Apple was afraid, say our sources, that Google was gaining too much power on the iPhone, and that's why they rejected the application.

Taking a look at the iPhone Home Screen, I see: Messages (could be replaced by Google Voice), Calendar (can already be fed by Google Calendar), Photos (no Picasa feed yet), Camera, YouTube (fed by Google), Stocks (Yahoo! ), Maps (fed by Google), Weather (Yahoo!), Voice Memos, Notes, Clock, Calculator, Settings, iTunes, App Store (no fair counting Google WebApps here), Compass, Phone (could be replaced by Google Voice), Mail (Gmail replacement app, MailWrangler, rejected from App Store, but can be fed by Gmail IMAP), iPod.

That’s a fairly hefty Google presence. Previously, TiPb’s mentioned how the iPhone gets the best of both worlds — Apple and Google developing for it, while Android only gets Google. However, part of the thinking behind why Google launched Android (and Chrome, and will launch ChromeOS) is because they see themselves as a threat to traditional OS and software makers, and want to ensure they have their own platforms — and control of those platforms — just incase Microsoft or Apple ever decide to cut them out of those traditional OS and software spaces.

So, while Google has Android to fall back on absent the iPhone, does Apple have their own cloud services to fall back on absent Google’s data pipes? Microsoft is working hard to make sure they do, and — wait for it — isn’t Apple building a new billion-dollar data center for some undisclosed reason?

I made this analogy yesterday and I’m sticking by it — IBM licensing DOS for the PC killed IBM and gave birth to Microsoft. Google has a near-monopoly on search-based advertising, the cash cow of the internet, and they’re moving into all manner of services, now including software and mobile and desktop OS. They’re becoming so directly competitive with Apple that Google CEO Eric Schmidt has left Apple’s board of directors.

Apple worrying that one of their biggest, best funded, best forwardly positioned competitors is taking over the iPhone to a degree that they, rather than Apple, control the device?

Yeah, that’s totally believable.

Do we think for one moment that, if instead of licensing ActiveSync to work in Mail, Calendar, and Contacts, Microsoft had wanted to put a Mobile Outlook app on the iPhone to handle all that separately, Apple still would have gone forward with it?

Would BlockBuster allow Netflix kiosks in their stores without worries? Heck, would you rent a room in your house if more and more people began living there, outnumbering your family, and began replacing your furniture with alternatives, even if better?

If, on the other hand, Google Voice transparently worked through the existing Phone and Messages application, maybe Apple wouldn’t worry at all (though AT&T might at that point). Google Voice would then just be another pipe, and as I’ve discussed before, Apple seems to be a firm believer that the interface is the app. As long as users have a consistent front end, Apple can re-arrange the pipes behind the scenes, add or remove partners, introduce or deprecate technologies even, but the user experience stays the same, and Apple stays independent from service providers.

Google Voice being a separate app means that Google could, however unlikely it seems right now, one day decide to pull Google Voice from the iPhone and make it Android exclusive. Again, swapping pipes is easy, replacing an app part of the user base has become accustomed too, not so much.

Techcrunch believes Apple, given the FCC scrutiny, will now have no choice but to backpedal and allow Google Voice onto the iPhone, the same way a landlord afraid of being publicly called out as rude may allow that tenant to keep taking over the house.

Arguably, of course, Google has Android and can run Google Voice on Android, and if consumers want Google Voice they can simply buy Android-based phones. However, Andy Rubin just admitted Android 1.0 couldn’t even run VoIP, and of those who did indeed loudly leave the iPhone and switch to Android for that very reason, several have been just as loudly unsatisfied with the current polish of Google’s mobile OS. (No doubt that problem will disappear over the coming months/year).

So maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s not just users that get the benefit of Apple and Google on the iPhone, and only Google on Android. Maybe Google gets the benefit of being on everything and Apple (and Microsoft, and RIM, and Palm, etc.) only get what’s left of their own, single platforms — those few icons not powered by Google.

[Thanks striatic for the tip!]

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

Apple Afraid Google is Taking Over the iPhone?

As part of their response to the FCC’s investigation into the rejection of Google Voice, Apple stated that they 1) receive about 8500 apps and app updates to review each week, 2) each app is reviewed by two reviewers, and 3) employ more than 40 full-time, trained reviewers.

Assuming that (3) doesn’t mean there are scads more part-time, untrained reviewers doing grunt work in the dark, sweaty back room (more on that in a moment), some math has been run by Mike Ash:

With 17,000 [8500 x 2] reviews per week and 45 reviewers, that means each reviewer performs 378 reviews per week. At 40 hours per week, this is 9.4 reviews per hour, or one review every 6.4 minutes.

Ash points out how this means months of work by a developer is left to the tender mercies of less than 10 minutes (counting overtime) with someone tasked to look at almost 400 other apps that same week. Can we get a “yikes!”

Back to part-time, untrained reviewers, Marco.org hazards to guess:

There could be 41 full-timers and 40 more part-timers. There's a lot of evidence to indicate that most (if not all) of the front-line reviews are by non-native-English speakers and on schedules that strongly imply that they're offshore. This may be the cause of a lot of the frustrating rejections in which the reviewer didn't understand something about the application or description that seems clear to most Americans.

To recapitulate. Between iPhone users and 8500 weekly app submissions (each reviewed twice), stands possibly an unknown number of outsourced, untrained frontliners, 40 odd trained, full-time second liners, an unquantified star-chamber of executive reviews, and ultimately one Phil Schiller who may or may not email the developer or a blog (or two) about it?

Oh, and Steve Jobs.

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

Apple: 8500 Apps to Review a Week by 40 Odd Reviews

Mike Ash (via Marco.org) makes this point following the FCC responses today:

Ignoring the question of why it's Apple's job to prevent their customers from breaking AT&T's terms of service, it's interesting to note just how much this policy is centered on the United States. The iPhone is sold in dozens of different countries and works with dozens of different cellular carriers all over the world. You can be certain that each one of those carriers has different terms of service. Why is AT&T so privileged that their terms of service, and theirs alone, are the ones that Apple looks at when deciding whether to reject or accept any given app? It's quite likely that people all over the world are missing out on great iPhone apps that their cellular carriers would permit them to use just because AT&T does not permit Americans to use them.

This by way of saying, for example, because AT&T prohibits SlingPlayer from running over 3G, users in Canada (on Rogers), the UK (on 02), Japan (on SoftBank), etc. are also prevented from using SlingPlayer of 3G.

Apple certainly makes only specific mention of AT&T in their consideration process. However, AT&T was the first iPhone carrier signed, so perhaps there’s something in that original deal that makes it so — or is it just that Apple is headquartered in the US?

Now, presuming those other, international carriers aren’t just sighing in relief that AT&T takes the hit on this so they don’t have to (anyone think Rogers, O2, SoftBank, et al. are dying to take the network hit that comes with an uber-popular, functionality surfacing device like the iPhone doing high-bandwidth tasks like streaming TV shows and movies?

There are certainly examples enough of region-specific apps (AT&T’s own apps are just in the US), and apps that are missing from just one regional app store (Skype is not in the Canadian App Store, reportedly due to a patent dispute).

As mentioned previously, Sling has submitted a 3G-enabled version of SlingPlayer for non-US App Stores (Canada, UK, Japan, etc.), so we’ll soon see.

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

Do Other Countries Lose Out on Apps Because of AT&T Policies?

As part of the responses to the FCC’s inquiry into the rejection of Google Voice from the iPhone App Store, AT&T stated the following:

As noted above, AT&T regularly reviews its policies regarding features and capabilities available through the devices we offer in order to provide an attractive range of options for our customers. Consistent with this approach, we plan to take a fresh look at possibly authorizing VoIP capabilities on the iPhone for use on AT&T’s 3G network.

This was couched in some legal arguments stating economists and jurists allow deals where one party’s core business is protected against adverse actions taken by another party — in this case AT&T is saying VoIP would hurt their revenue from voice plans, so it’s okay for Apple to protect AT&T from that hurt.

However, AT&T also says that while Apple agreed not to produce a VoIP app for the iPhone without AT&T’s consent, they had no obligation to “take action against” a third party app.

So, presumably Apple is not allowed to make a VoIP app unless AT&T says okay, but Apple’s just being kind to AT&T by not allowing Skype (for example) to use the 3G network?

And if AT&T is changing their mind and thinking of allowing a VoIP app, and the only VoIP app they say they’re allowed to allow is one by Apple…

Conspiracy theorists, where does that leave us?

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

AT&T To Reconsider VoIP Applications Over 3G? Yeahbuwhat Apple VoIP apps?

In light of today’s response by Apple to the FCC about the Google Voice rejection, and anticipating the likely, negative reaction it will engender, I’m again left thinking that Apple and their iPhone are closer akin to a restaurant, not a super market.

Steve Jobs is like one of those screaming, perfectionistic executive chefs concerned more with his haut cuisine than his customers, whose palettes he believes tempered by years of McRosoft (or whatever). He — and they — will serve you a beautiful, delicious, premium plate but will also decide every single ingredient that goes on it, if not tell you exactly how they want you to eat it. If you go to a restaurant, you know what you’re in for. You don’t go to Nobu and throw a fit because they refuse to serve you spaghetti, or let you run into the kitchen and whip up your own meal.

Other companies might be more like super markets, where you can indeed assemble your own meal from whatever they sell — though they’ll still stock the shelves with what they want, and not what they don’t want. More freedom, more work for the customer, and some will gladly take control over ease of use.

Typically, most of us go to restaurants AND shop at super markets, depending on what we feel like at the time. Likewise, some of us want that Apple-polished experience, others want more ability to roll their own.

With Google Voice specifically, Apple’s not letting that hot new sous-chef in the door, perhaps because they suspect he’s going to alter the menu in a profound way, then open up down the street and take all their customers. IBM learned that very painfully when they licensed DOS from Microsoft for the PC — sometimes you create your own killer.

Ultimately, the iPhone is Apple’s restaurant and Steve Jobs is the executive chef, and whether the lease with the booze supplier (AT&T) prohibits certain other cocktails (Skype, SlingPlayer), or Apple refused to let certain food in the place, it’s still their restaurant, and they control the menu.

Apple should just be honest about it and tell users and developers like it is — an iPhone is an appliance, no different than a Nintendo Wii or any other closed box. Right now, they’re feigning greater openness than they’re actually providing, causing prolonged confusion and ill-will. Say it straight, it’s our iPhone point finale, take the hit from users and developers who’ll leave, and then everyone else knows what it is when they pick it up and sign the contract, and it’s their responsibility.

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

Apple iPhone is a Restaurant, Not a Super Market, and They Should Say So on the Sign

Wolfenstein RPG [$2.99 - iTunes link] brings the classic mobile game to the iPhone (and iPod touch) platform with all its spiked brass knuckled, sub machine gunning, dynamite exploding glory.

And the folks behind it want to give you a chance to not only get the App Store version, but the Xbox 360 game as well!

How can you get the give-away? Just head on over to the TiPb iPhone Forums and tell us your favorite Wolfenstein moment (and if by some crazy chance you don’t have one — make one up!)

Ready, set… schnell!

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

TiPb Give-Away: Wolfenstein RPG for iPhone — and Xbox 360!