TiPb’s iTablet hopes and dreams are fairly simple — Apple, please make us a device we can give to our moms and never get another tech support call back from them in our lives.

Okay, maybe never is dreaming in AMOLED color, but we’d settle for seldom at this point. And we don’t mean to pick on mom — feel free to substitute or add dad, siblings, neighbors, and everyone else to the list.

Now, almost no one outside of Steve Jobs knows exactly what Apple will be releasing at “Come see our latest creation“, yet everyone and their blog is speculating, including TiPb. Doing for print media what they did for music? Sure. Great. Nice. Text books, subscription TV, iWork touch? Fine. Fine. Fine. Content and apps you will bring we have no doubt. We expect no less. But we want that one more thing, and we want it pretty much to be what Daring Fireball, Ars, and Marco Armant suggested almost a month ago — a modern, highly abstracted re-conception of the personal computer meant for mainstream users.

Apple helped bring the CLI (command line interface) to the masses with the Apple II, the GUI (graphical user interface) with the Mac, and the multitouch interface with the iPhone and iPod touch. Each has been easier for more people to use than the one before, but the iPhone and iPod touch traded mobility for functionality to the extent that while great devices, they can’t fully replace netbooks or laptops, which is the sweet spot for consumers.

An iTablet could. An iTablet that removes any care or concern about right vs. left mouse clicking, saving files within hierarchical directories, icons disappearing from docks, files littered across the desktop, disk and other maintenance, complex software installations, windows getting lost, drivers causing disasters, and all the headaches that come with a regular person trying to manage a monstrous modern computer system like Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux.

Google is trying to do a lot of that with Chrome OS, but that will still be a WIMP (windows, interface, mouse, pointer) GUI that’s basically a browser and subject to the greatest terrors WebApp interfaces can bring.

If Apple can bring an iPhone level of usability to a tablet sized device and give it just enough productivity to let regular people edit what documents they need to while enjoying incredibly easy access to their magazines, newspapers, books, videos, music, games, and apps… If Apple can make a device that “just works” for 80% of mainstream users… If Apple can make a computing product that I can give to my mom and not have to worry about getting a call saying “where did my internet go?” or “I swear it’s clicking on things by itself”…

If Apple can do for the personal computer once again what they did with the Apple II and Mac — make it more usable for more users — then that’s all TiPb really wants.

Will we get it? Shrug. Apple’s track record is fairly good, and a lot of people smarter than we are seem to think it’s the next logical step, so all that’s left is to cross our fingers, throw away our tech support hotlines, and wait for Wednesday’s “Come see our latest creation”.

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

What TiPb Really Wants from the iTablet — No More Tech Support Calls from Mom

AdMob [Via Electronista] released its latest report and it states the iPhone is the leading smartphone not only in the Americas, but in Europe as well. This news should really come to no surprise to any of our readers, and it’s not the first signs of Apple’s dominance in the smartphone world as we’ve reported its U.S. success of mobile web traffic previously. As you can see, the iPhone is annihilating the competition regarding mobile traffic in some major markets.

“Alongside the iPhone growing to 54 percent of all smartphone Internet traffic in North America, it now makes up more than half of all handheld traffic in Latin America (56 percent) as well as Western and Eastern Europe (78 percent and 51 percent). Apple’s lead is especially high in Oceania, which centers on Australia and New Zealand, as it represents 92 percent of all mobile data.”

Following behind Apple’s footsteps here in the U.S., we have the Motorola Droid coming in 2rd in overall smartphones. Sadly for our good friends over at PreCentral.net, their beloved device only took a lonely 2% of the pie.

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

Apple’s iPhone Ranked #1 in Mobile Web in Americas and Europe

The iPhone Dev-Team is back, this time with the first beta of RedSn0w 0.9 for Mac and Windows. Version 0.9 will allow for jailbreaking, unlocking, and customizing of the iPhone OS 3.0/3.1.2 software. It is important to note that this beta supports every iPhone and iPod touch with the exception of the iPod touch G3. (That will be supported after the beta period is over.)

For quite some time now blackra1n has been the most-used tool to get your jailbreak on but the way this new version of redsn0w works, could that change? You see this software uses the original Pwnage bootrom exploit from iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, and iPod 1G. What this means is the only way for Apple to combat it is via a hardware change. However, for the iPhone 3GS and iPod 2G running 3.1.2, things are a little different as they still use the USB exploit that is said to be going away with the iPhone 4.0.

Due to some last minute forum software changes, the Dev Team isn’t promoting the release yet, but if you’d like to check it out for yourself, the Mac version can be downloaded here while you can grab the Windows version here. (We’ll update with a link to the Dev Team post when it goes live).

[Via iClarified]

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

RedSn0w 0.9 Beta for Mac and Windows is Released by iPhone Dev-Team

Phil Gyford decided to take an old fashioned pen and paper, a MacBook laptop computer, an Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 with handwriting recognition, a Palm Vx with Graffiti input, a Palm 650 with a physical keyboard, and an Apple iPhone 3G with virtual multitouch keyboard and see how long it took him to enter a well-memorized 221 word passage.

The MacBook keyboard won, of course, with the iPhone second and the Treo and pen and paper a close third and fourth. Newton and Graffiti handwriting recognition didn’t fair nearly so well.

It’s not scientific and not presented as such, it’s just one individual’s test to see how well he did with his devices.

For me, my handwriting is near-illegible, I type fairly well on a MacBook (but am not a touch-typist), I never liked Graffiti, and avoided typing on my old Treo 600 and 680 like the plague. The iPhone can’t compete with my MacBook for text entry, but then I can’t easily carry my MacBook in a pocket the way I can my iPhone. Trade offs.

If you have a collection of different devices around as well, and are willing to invest the time, let us know what your results are like.

[Gyford via Gizmodo]

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

iPhone Keyboard vs. Pen, Laptop, Newton, Palm Graffiti, Treo

Fox News is once again weighing in on the iTablet — and the iPhone — claiming sources within AT&T and Verizon are telling them negotiations to carry the device(s) are getting hot and heavy:

According to the story, there would be two versions of the iTablet/iSlate/iPad, one supporting AT&T’s fast GSM/HSPA network and the other supporting Verizon’s reliable CDMA/EVDO network. Both would likely have WiFi and access to associated WiFi hotspots. Verizon’s version might also be subject to tiered pricing.

Additionally:

According to a source at Verizon, Apple has been in talks with ‘the big red map’ to offer the tablet on its robust CDMA network. Additionally Verizon is in talks with Apple to bring the iPhone to its network by late spring or early summer, but specifics haven’t yet been finalized.

An iPhone on Verizon makes increasing sense for Apple. At a certain point, everyone who prefers AT&T as a carrier, or is willing to live with AT&T as a carrier just to have an iPhone, will have an iPhone. For Apple to grow their customer base, they’ll need to expand to a network that supports those who want an iPhone but aren’t willing to go to AT&T just to get it. The king of that hill is Verizon. Apple has broken exclusivity almost everywhere else. It will have to do it in the US, and LTE is too far out to be a logical change-point.

The rest of the article contains an amusing amount of bickering between the carrier rivals, with AT&T implying any network would have problems with the 7000% data spike that comes with the iPhone.

No matter what happens, we’re hoping for multiple carriers, as that would be a multiple win for US consumers.

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

Fox News: Apple in Talks With AT&T for iTablet, Verizon for iTablet and iPhone

Trapster 4.0 [Free - iTunes link] adds new features to the ticket-avoiding app:

• Patrol, which highlights recently driven roads so you know the data is fresh.
• New trap types like road kill, children at play, recent accidents, brush fires, ice, or floods, construction, etc.
• Caravan, a real-time, location based, social network for and between Trapster users.

All this in addition to it’s primary function — alerting you, including via push notification, of radar speeding traps, traffic light cameras, and police check points.

If you give it a try, let us know how it works for you. Especially if it involves a great story about you narrowly avoiding a massive speeding ticket learning an important lesson about responsible driving.

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

Trapster Hits 4.0, Adds Patrol, New Trap Types, Caravan