It’s Friday at last, and what a grueling week it has been. Many of you are probably groggy from staying up late (or getting up early) to preorder a new iPhone 4S, hung over from the “Let’s talk iPhone” event or just plain bummed out about the loss of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. But don’t despair -- let’s recap the events for Friday, October 7 before we embrace the weekend.
The big story for today actually kicked off at 12:01am PST -- or rather, it was supposed to. Excited early adopters planning to preorder the new iPhone 4S were greeted by Apple’s familiar yellow sticky instead, and even when the online store finally returned nearly 30 minutes later, error messages went off like fireworks. Meanwhile, those ordering on Verizon and new third carrier Sprint seemed to go off without a hitch and even direct orders via AT&T’s website fared better.
By the time dawn broke on the East Coast, Apple’s servers were spinning like a top and ordering was a breeze. Hope everyone got theirs in -- some international locales are already showing a delay of a week or two, and the U.S. is likely to follow soon.
Third-place carrier Sprint held a big shindig today as they basked in the glow of finally getting Apple’s iconic handset, and according to Reuters, the company plans to spend “more money than it brings in” over the next few years to make the costly switch to 4G LTE. The plan would have Sprint forking out $7 billion for the extensive network upgrade, which is planned to begin in mid-2012, with the carrier essentially abandoning its already substantial investment in partner Clearwire. Something tells us Sprint knows Apple’s 2012 handset will be a true 4G LTE device and they sure won’t want to be left on the sidelines when that time comes.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was laid to rest today in “a small private gathering,” just two days after his passing on Wednesday. There are no public services planned, but CEO Tim Cook did note the company would be holding “a celebration of Steve’s extraordinary life” for Apple staff sometime soon.
SHAPE Services may be best known for its popular IM+ app, but they’ve also pioneered the art of capturing business cards on your iPhone with Business Card Reader. The $4.99 app just got a bump to version 2.1 which adds native LinkedIn integration, including search, contact creation, contact information and picture import as well as improvements to the user interface and those always welcome bug fixes. Existing users can upgrade for free by downloading the 18MB app from the App Store.
The Android world has been all pumped up about a joint Google and Samsung event planned for October 11, which is widely rumored to launch version 4.0 of the operating system, code-named Ice Cream Sandwich. According to AllThingsD, the companies have decided to postpone the Samsung Mobile Unpacked event which was to be held in San Diego during the CTIA trade show out of respect for Steve Jobs. “We believe this is not the right time to announce a new product as the world expresses tribute to Steve Jobs’s passing,” the companies said in a joint announcement on Friday. A classy move, especially considering the current bad blood between Apple and Samsung over patents right now.
zuuka, the publishers of the popular iStoryTime line of mobile children’s book apps, launched a new app for the iPhone and iPod touch called iTalk Smurf. Available now in the App Store for only 99 cents, the app features Clumsy Smurf, who is able to repeat exactly what the user says with a funny and cute smurfy voice -- as well as save the results to an animated 3D-like video to your device’s Camera Roll. The 17.3MB download requires iOS 4.1 or higher and is compatible with the iPhone, iPod touch or iPad -- but sadly no universal support for the latter.
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