McGraw-Hill’s CEO has outed the iTablet before Apple’s “Come see our latest creation” event, scheduled for tomorrow, revealed it runs the iPhone OS, and undoubtedly has just earned himself a “bag of hurt” at the hands of one Steve Jobs. At 2:50 seconds in, Terry McGraw tells CNBC:

“Yeah, Very exciting. Yes, they’ll make their announcement tomorrow on this one. We have worked with Apple for quite a while. And the Tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system and so it will be transferable. So what you are going to be able to do now — we have a consortium of e-books. And we have 95% of all our materials that are in e-book format on that one. So now with the tablet you’re going to open up the higher education market, the professional market. The tablet is going to be just really terrific.”

Yeah. Oops! (But at least we appreciate the news!)

[via McRumors]

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McGraw-Hill CEO Outs iTablet Before Apple — Runs iPhone OS!

During Apple’s Q1 2010 conference call yesterday, Chief Operating Officer, Tim Cook came to AT&T’s defense when questioned about whether or not poor public perception of the exclusive iPhone carrier was hurting Apple’s brand.

Despite increasing iTablet and iPhone on Verizon rumors, Cook said that AT&T has to deal with higher broadband (3G) usage than any other carrier, and still provides a “great experience” for many of their customers. Furthermore, Cook said AT&T had admitted to problems in certain areas (such as New York City), had come up with plans on fixing those problems, and had shared those plans with Apple.

This is in contrast to Apple Senior Vice-President of iPhone Software, Scott Forstall sounded last year at WWDC 2009 when he introduced MMS and tethering features as part of iPhone 3.0, and clarified that AT&T would not be supporting either initially (and still doesn’t support tethering at all).

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Apple Defends AT&T: Highest in Broadband Usage, Working on Fixing Problem Cities

Could Apple’s iPhone have moved over 40 million units, and the iPod touch almost 30 million yet, for a combined platform total hurtling towards 70 million?

We don’t know, but we’re opening the iPhone calculator app in an effort to find out.

Let’s start with the last “official” tally. At the Apple “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it” Music Event in Sept. 2009, Steve Jobs reported 30 million iPhones sold, and 20 million iPod touches for a platform total of 50 million.

A month later, during the Q4 2009 conference call, Apple reported 7.4 million iPhones sold, with iPod touch sales not broken out but said to be up 100% year-to-year.

Skip ahead to yesterday’s Q1 2010 conference call, and Apple reported 8.7 million iPhones sold, and iPod touch up 55%.

Adding up the iPhone totals starts off easily enough: 30 + Q1 8.7 = 38.7 million. However, we don’t know how many of the 7.4 million sold in Q4 were included in the September event numbers. (The quarter ended in September, but likely not the reporting). A quarter being 3 months, we’ll make the colossally inaccurate leap of assuming 2/3 were counted, leaving 2.5 million to be added to the pot. So that makes 41.1 million iPhones on the market. (If Gene Munster’s figures about 40% of those being on AT&T, then that makes 16.5 million in the US).

iPod touch is harder math, given the lack of breakdown. We could play it safe and keep the 3:2 ratio from October going, which would mean 27.4 million iPod touches, for a platform total of 68.5 million, but again, that’s just a crazy bag of maybe.

Anyone have any better figures (or just better at math?)

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

Could Apple’s iPhone/iPod touch Platform be Nearing 70 Million? TiPb Calculates!

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

In Stock: PowerMat Portable Mat for iPhone

Google has released the long-awaited Google Voice WebApp for iPhone (and Palm webOS), something they said they’d be doing in the wake of their exclusion from the iTunes App Store.

Similar to Google’s other, marvelous WebApps like Gmail, it leverages the advanced web technologies built into iPhone Safari to provide an optimized UI through which make calls from your Google Voice number and send SMS. Or so we hear… TiPb HQ has been trying to try it, but it’s been “fail city” according to Dieter, with lots of network request errors. (At least on the iPhone, his Palm Pre is doing better).

“It’s a very pretty “Network Request Failed” pop up dialog box. Quite impressive,” he says. (See it after the jump.)

According to TechCrunch, however:

It is built on HTML5 with most of the functionality of the original iPhone app, except that it cannot access the local contact list in your iPhone's address book. It lets you manage a separate Google Voice contact list which is kept in the cloud instead. Google Voice voice routes your calls through its servers and acts as a new hub through which you can manage calls and forward them to various phones. You can also manage your settings and various phone numbers. The HTML5 makes it very fast, allows for local caching of data, and supports the voice tags necessary to play the audio voicemails through the browser.

You can access it via http://m.google.com/voice. If you’re a Google Voice user, let us know how it works for you, and how it compares to a native app like GV Mobile for Jailbreak.

Video after the break!

And Dieter’s error screen:

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

Google Unleashes Google Voice WebApp for iPhone

The New York Times says the iTablet/iSlate/iPad (latest probably-fake pic above) will have 3G, iPhone apps, and help protect democracy!

It will run all the applications of the iPhone and iPod Touch, have a persistent wireless connection over 3G cellphone networks and Wi-Fi, and will be built with a 10-inch color display, allowing newspapers, magazines and book publishers to deliver their products with an eye to the design that had grabbed readers in print.

How does this factor into protecting democracy? Because of Steve Jobs, and perhaps because of why Jobs considers it his most important thing he’s ever done:

"Steve believes in old media companies and wants them to do well," said a person who has seen the device and is familiar with Apple's marketing plan for it, but who did not want to be named because talking about it might alienate him from the company. "He believes democracy is hinged on a free press and that depends on there being a professional press."

Free as in speech, not as in beer, because the viability of this media is prefaced on it being financial sound, which means — paid content. No one buys the media cow if they get free milk from the web (or something like that):

The December issue of GQ was downloaded from the [iTunes] app store almost 7,000 times, and twice as many times for its January issue. Last week, The New York Times announced plans to begin charging, by next year, frequent Web site visitors who are not also newspaper subscribers to read the online version.

Yet some of the people already charging for content aren’t yet on board. Who? You guessed it — TV networks:

But perhaps smarting from their experiences with Apple, many of the old-line media companies — NBC Universal, Viacom and Discovery among them — shrugged at (or totally dismissed) Apple's plans for a TV subscription package, according to executives briefed on the talks. A person briefed on Apple's plans confirmed that such a subscription video option was not part of any immediate offering.

If their experience is getting people to pay $2 for stuff that’s given away “for free” (from the consumer’s perspective) via broadcast channels every night is “smarting”, does this mean their alternative of choice is “dumbing”?

If so, print media is going all in, with TechCrunch reporting the tablet may come with a Barnes & Nobles book store, either as an App Store app like the iPhone, or even built in via partnership with Apple.

The two companies are thought to be working closely together, increasing the likelihood that Barnes & Noble will be part of the announcement on Wednesday. While Apple can run around cutting deals with the larger publishers, a built-in Barnes & Noble bookstore could include up to a million titles in one fell swoop, just like on B&N's own Nook reader.

Only 1 day to go until Apple’s “Come see our latest creation” event, and then the crazy rumors will finally stop — and the crazy stories about people lining up outside the Apple Store in Times Square will start!

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

NYT: iTablet to Use 3G, Run iPhone Apps, Protect Democracy

It currently costs $1.99 for a standard definition TV on iTunes, and rumor has it Apple is pushing the networks to halve that price, making it just $1.

Apple’s belief, media executives said, is that drastically cutting prices could spur sales of TV shows on the iTunes digital entertainment storefront, which have so far frustrated Apple executives.

Apple does not disclose video sales data, but analysts have said they were a small contributor to the store’s estimated $2bn sales in 2009.

It would also halve the price of “season passes” which currently cost far more than buying the DVD season set of the same show. Whether this would be in addition to, or instead of, the rumored subscription TV service is unknown.

Unlike music which was devastated by piracy and print media which is facing soaring costs and declining revenue, TV and movies still make some money, which means their executives are less inclined to evolve beyond old-world thinking (we’d even go so far as to say consumer-hostile thinking at times).

Apple has always believed their competition was “free as in piracy” and wants to price their media low enough that convenience and conscience win out — it’s easier and you feel better about just buying it via iTunes.

Is Apple right about TV? Is $1 that magic price?

[Financial Times via Business Insider via Gizmodo]

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Apple Pushing for $1 iTunes TV Shows?

What’s a ton of hype without a bit of fun being poked at it, and after prying the mythical iTablet away from a plushy Steve Jobs, Walt Mosspuppet gives the full on, fake on, review.

Fire. The wheel. Barbers. The moveable printing press. Whiskey. The automobile. The personal computer. Walt Mossberg.

The iPhone. And now, finally, the iSlate.

Video, after the break!

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

Monday Fun Video: Mosspuppet Review iTablet