Free episodes of Office, 30 Rock for iPhone users

NBC may not need no steenkin’ iTunes, but that doesn’t mean they’re prepared to ignore the legion of iPhone/iPod touch users out there. Hence, they’ve decided to make two of their most popular shows, The Office and 30 Rock, available to those on Apple’s mobile platform. In order to watch the free episodes, you just need to go to NBC’s site on your device, hit Video, and then Full Episodes.

All NBC has really done here is format their shows as iPhone-compatible QuickTime files. However, since they’re using the 3GPP codec to make the shows load faster (and they still, over Wi-Fi, do not load very fast), the quality is not very high. Also, this is downloading, not streaming, so while you can play the video before the entire file is downloaded, if you want to pause in the middle and go do something else, you’ll have to start the whole process over again. Also, the episodes are divided up into smaller segments, meaning you’ll need to load up multiple files. All of which makes it impractical to use this as a solution for downloading files to watch while offline. On the flipside, well, you get what you pay for.

Should you wish, you can access the files from your Mac via the same User Agent spoofing trick we discussed on MacUser for getting onto AT&T’s Wi-Fi hot spots, but you’ll need to poke around a bit to find the file name for the videos. though, given how poor the resolution is, you’re way better off just streaming them for free from NBC’s site or from Hulu.

AT&T says Wi-Fi hotspots “included” in iPhone plan

Geez, AT&T, make up your mind already. First you’re giving free Wi-Fi access to iPhone users. Then you take it away again. Now you’re saying that it’s included in the calling plans?

An eagle-eyed reader over at MacRumors.com pointed out that if you go to AT&T’s iPhone page and hit the “Plans” section, you can read in the teeny-tiny print below the table of different plans the following:

“Included Features: Nationwide Long Distance and Roaming, Access to AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots, Voicemail, Call Forwarding, 3-way Calling and Caller ID. [emphasis added]”

So, if nothing else, that would seem to confirm the idea that the AT&T hotspots that were offering free access merely jumped the gun on a more formal announcement. Perhaps just like the guy in charge of updating AT&T’s website.

Update 4:52PM ET: Surprise, surprise! The page has been updated, and the access to AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots feature has been removed. And the cycle begins anew.

[via Engadget]

Swisscom, France Telecom, T-Mobile all talk up 3G iPhone

iPhone carrier fun continues apace. In addition to yesterday’s news that Latin America would be picking up the handset later this year, we have a handful of additional news from the past week about other European countries. First up, France Telecom says that they’re currently in negotiations with Apple to distribute the iPhone in Spain and Portgual, and that they probably won’t consider price drops until the 3G version arrives.

Then, a source at Switzerland’s largest mobile phone operator, Swisscom, told Swiss paper Le Matin that they’d scored a deal for the forthcoming 3G version of the iPhone this summer, seemingly making Swiss cheese—ha ha!—out of Apple’s usual secrecy.

That gibes with a report from earlier in the week in which a T-Mobile spokesperson claimed that the company would be selling the 3G version of the iPhone in Austria “soon.”

At this point, it’s going to be far more of a surprise if Apple doesn’t release a 3G iPhone in the next couple of months.

iPhone bound for Latin America

Yesterday we got Vodafone (and Telecom Italia, don’t forget Telecom Italia!) announcing that they’d be bringing the iPhone to ten countries later this year. Today, it’s América Móvil, the largest mobile operator in Latin America, dropping their own iPhone news (PDF link) by announcing that it’s signed a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to “its Latin American operations.”

The Mexico-based provider, which serves 17 countries and has 159 million subscribers, did not elect to give specifics about which countries would be included in the deal, or whether or not it was an exclusive arrangement. Besides Mexico (and the United States), América Móvil does business in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico and Uruguay.

It looks like 2008 is shaping up to be a very international year for the iPhone, and that estimate of 10 million is looking more and more conservative to me as these announcements keep cropping up.

[via Macworld]

Juice Packs no longer just for kids

If you’re a road warrior who relies on having a phone/email device on you at all times, then you know there’s nothing worse than a dead battery, especially on the iPhone, where you can’t swap it out for a fresh one. There have been plenty of top-up solutions that use the 30-pin dock-connector port on the the iPhone, but many of those were originally designed for use with the iPod, and they offer only limited charging capability.

Mophie has released the first battery extender to garner “Works with iPhone” certification from Apple. The Juice Pack contains a rechargeable lithium polymer battery that will boost your iPhone’s battery life by up to 250 hours of standby, 8 hours of talk, 6 hours of Internet access, 7 hours of video playback, or 24 hours of audio playback. Or some really obscure number of hours of those features combined. Also keep in mind that it will add some extra bulk and heft to your slim iPhone, and you won’t be able to use it with most cases.

The device also has four LEDs on the back that tell you how much of the Juice Pack’s capacity is left, and a 30-pin dock-connector port on the bottom that lets you still sync the iPhone without having to take it out of the sled. It’ll cost you about $100 from Mophie’s online store or at retail locations.

iPhone SDK beta five is alive

Another week, another beta version of the iPhone SDK. We know—you can hardly contain your excitement. We were all aflutter over here, so we eagerly tore open the release notes to find out what we can expect in this latest and greatest iteration.

The fifth beta fixes bugs and adds support for the latest iPhone OS.

Woo. Oo. Well, that’s fair, I guess. They can’t all be blockbusters. But we demand beta 6 bring us support for the rainbow-powered and unicorn-sparkle-dust features that we know are buried deep inside the iPhone’s OS. We will accept no substitutes!

Apple’s affair with Telecom Italia ends marriage

Remember those hints Apple COO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer dropped about the company not being “married” to exclusive carrier deals? Here’s what Cook said back in February at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium.

We went into Europe and we picked the top carrier in each of those three countries…Now, are we married to this model? Will we do that everywhere? We’re not married to any business model. What we’re married to is shipping the best phone in the world […] You might find [a country] where being exclusive might not be in our best interests…we’re going to intelligently think about each one and decide what’s best for the company to do.

Indeed, it seems that Apple’s succumbed to the Mediterranean charms of Italy, entering into an bigamous relationship with both Vodafone, as noted earlier this morning, and mobile provider Telecom Italia.

That’s not stopping silly analysts from reading into this development. One went so far as to tell the London Times that this was a sign of Apple “capitulating.” Pshaw, says I. As Cook and Oppenheimer have said, I think this is just a matter of picking the right distribution method for the country in question. The same analyst suggests that Apple’s existing partners may take umbrage:

Apple now faces the prospect that operators in other countries may revolt against its onerous terms, which are understood to involve the network sharing 10 per cent of revenues in return for the right distribute the iPhone exclusively for a two-year period.

Yeah, if it’s a choice between kicking back a percentage to Apple vs. losing exclusive rights to distribute the iPhone, I’ve got a bet on which side they’re likely to come down on. Sure, sales in Europe haven’t been as big as in the US, but exclusivity is still a big market advantage for those that have it. However, as Apple expands, I would expect to see more non-exclusive deals like this in the future.

Vodafone can count to ten

Whoa there, Vodafone. You’re just going to come out and say, apropos of nothing, that you’ll be offering the iPhone in ten different countries later this year? Nuts! We know that Apple’s planning on expanding into more European and Asian countries in 2008 on the way to hitting their goal of 10 million iPhones, but many of these are elsewhere in the world.

So, if you’ve been waiting for a chance to snag an iPhone in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa or Turkey, then it sounds like your opportunity is well on its way. In addition to the existing options of the US, UK, France, Germany, Ireland, and Austria, plus the recently announced Canada, that’ll give Apple seventeen countries by the end of the year. Only 178 to go!

[via Macworld]