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TheAppleBlog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
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iPhone 3GS Bound for Orange on Nov. 10

UK folks interested in the iPhone 3GS only have mere weeks to wait before they can shop around and escape the tyranny of O2, according to a report from The Guardian this past weekend. In fact, in only two short weeks, Orange will begin offering the coveted Apple handheld, on Nov. 10.

That’s the day following the end of O2’s exclusivity contract with Apple, so it literally couldn’t begin offering it any earlier. No word yet on when specifically Vodafone will begin offering the device, though it will eventually join its two rivals in selling the 3GS sometime in the new year.

According to The Guardian, despite the iPhone’s strong performance to date, interest in the device in the UK isn’t showing signs of stopping anytime soon:

Certainly interest in the iPhone among UK consumers shows no signs of abating. Already Orange has had over 200,000 customers register their interest in getting the device, before the company has even said what it will charge for it.

While the timing seems ideal in terms of sparking a holiday price war for Christmas consumer dollars, that scenario is actually fairly unlikely, since Orange UK has made statements to the contrary, claiming that instead of offering a lower price on the device than O2, it will try to attract customers with added value. That might take the form of accessories, temporary contract incentives, or pre-loaded applications, which is the mobile equivalent of bloatware, if you ask me.

It’s a disheartening sign for those who were expecting a more open field with regards to the sale of the iPhone to result in more affordable prices, but remember that this is only the beginning. Vodafone will enter the fray in 2010, as will the smallest UK carrier, 3, according to recent statements by the company’s CEO, Kevin Russell:

I would expect the iPhone to be on the 3 network sometime during 2010. At the moment, we don’t have the iPhone. We don’t really have any smartphones, but if we improve our range of smartphones and introduce the iPhone then our data traffic will grow massively.

If networks want to use the iPhone to do more than just retain existing subscribers, they’ll have to begin offering clearly defined advantages, and nothing attracts attention more than lower prices. Remember that the iPhone is already among the most heavily subsidized devices on the market, though, so it isn’t clear how much further providers can go without seriously affecting profitability.

What was the big news that happened in your sector in Q3? Catch up with GigaOM Pro's, "Quarterly Wrap-ups."

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Cult Hit Settlers of Catan Comes to the iPhone

If you are or ever have been the board gaming type, you may have run across Settlers of Catan, or at least heard of it from a fanatic friend. The game, which is a bit like Risk but without the war (at least in its basic incarnation), is all about resource gathering, trading, and colonization.

Fans of the series (and there are many) will be pleased to know that Settlers is now playable on your iPhone thanks to Catan ($4.99, iTunes link), an app that faithfully recreates the experience on your mobile device. If you aren’t yet a fan, Catan for your iPhone or iPod touch might just be the thing that converts you.

Gameplay

If you’ve played Settlers the board game, or if you’ve played it on your PC or Xbox 360, then you’ll already be familiar with the gameplay in the iPhone version, since it uses the standard rule set. Expansions are available for the board game which add more tiles or new gameplay elements, but for now, Catan on the iPhone doesn’t offer any of these additional modes of play.

The board consists of 19 hexagonal tiles, themselves laid out in a hexagon pattern. Each tile represents one resource, either Sheep, Wheat, Ore, Lumber or Brick. Each player gets to place settlements at the corners of these tiles, and collect resources from them when the number on the tile is rolled. Each tile has a number from 1 to 12, and each player rolls two six-sided die at the beginning of their turn.

Some tiles, like those with a 6 or an 8, come up more frequently, statistically speaking, and are strategically advantageous because of this. The goal in the game is to amass resources, which you can use to buy more settlements, roads, and other things to earn victory points. In traditional play, the first person with 10 victory points is the winner.

Catan on the iPhone lets you play with between three and four players. You can either play against computer opponents, or play hot seat multiplayer mode, in which you pass the iPhone off to other players when it’s their turn. It’s not an ideal multiplayer situation, since you have to trust your partner not to glance at your resource distribution, but without a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth option, it at least works well enough to be playable.

Sights and Sounds

Clearly, Catan wasn’t rushed out to the masses on the iPhone. Developer United Soft Media (USM) took its time in refining the look and feel of this cult sensation before its release, probably predicting correctly that fans of the game would be sticklers when it came this version’s faithfulness to the original.

The board is viewed from a top-down perspective, and you can zoom in or out using touch controls. Your resource count is displayed at the bottom of the screen in a convenient and non-obtrusive status bar. All of your controls are nested in a pop-out tab interface usually hidden at the right side of the screen behind an arrow button.

Sound is great, with a nice, fitting soundtrack running in the background, and appropriate sound effects for things like trades, resources, and standard button presses. In fact, I’d say it compares favorably even to the console version on the Xbox 360.

Conclusion

Whether you’ve heard of Settlers of Catan before or not, the iPhone port is an awesome time-waster. It’s engrossing, rich, and carefully tailored to the handheld touch-controlled platform. I will say that I found the difficulty to be rather on the challenging side, even when playing against a stacked line up of all the weakest computer players. The Xbox version has both a universal difficulty switcher and different AIs, allowing for greater versatility, and I would recommend Catan for iPhone adopt that in future, too. Still, for $4.99, you couldn’t ask for a better or more challenging pocket strategy game.

Growing mobile data use turned up heat on carriers in Q3. Read the, "Mobile Q3 Wrap-up."

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Mac OS X 10.6.2 Update Points to New MacBook Pros

Two Spanish Apple sites are reporting that the latest build of Apple's upcoming update to its Mac OS X Snow Leopard software contains references to as-yet unreleased new models of MacBook Pro.

Build 10C531 lists "MacBook Pro 6,1" and "MacBook Pro 6,2", an indication of major revisions of the MacBook Pro lineup. The current family of MacBook Pro's range from 5,1 to 5,5.

Last week's introduction of refreshed iMacs brought Intel's new Core i5 and i7 (Nehalem) processors to Apple's most popular desktop machines, but the refreshed product lineup didn't include any new MacBook Pros. Applesana suggests that the new MacBook Pro models will likely feature quad core processors based on Intel's Arrandale architecture which brings i5/i7 technology to a more power-efficient mobile chip.

The last time Apple refreshed the MacBook Pro line was in early June at the Worldwide Developers Conference.

Hefty Update

10.6.2 is a significant update to Snow Leopard, bringing a raft of bug fixes and performance improvements to existing functionality. Nothing has been said about new features, however, the user guide for Apple's new Magic Mouse makes the following reference to Mac OS X 10.6.2:

To use your Apple Magic Mouse and its full range of features, update your Mac to Mac OS X version 10.5.8 or later and install the Wireless Mouse Software Update 1.0; or update to Mac OS X version 10.6.2 or later.

Apple's developers have been working hard. For those keeping count, this is 10.6.2's fourth developer build in less than a month. The first, 10C514f, was seeded on Oct. 5. Only four days later, on Oct. 9, Apple produced build 10C519f. Developers were treated to build 10C527f just one week after that. And finally, 10C531 brings us to today.

At nearly 500MB, 10.6.2 is a hefty update, addressing an equally hefty assortment of bugs and issues affecting Snow Leopard. Most notably, this update is expected to fix a serious bug that can result in users losing all their personal data. MacRumor's Doctor Q lists other fixes.

The seed is said to contain dozens of minor bug fixes and performance improvements in these areas: Address Book, AppleScript, AppleScriptObjC, ATS, ColorSync, Component Manager, Core Animation, Core Audio, Core Chinese Engine, Core Data, Core Graphics, Core Text, File Manager, Garbage Collection, Graphic drivers, Help Viewer, ImageKit, IOHIDFamily, Networking, NS Image, OpenCL, OpenGL, OSA, QT Kit, Speech Recognition, Sync Services, and Xtype.

There is no indication yet as to when 10.6.2 will be released, though the speed at which these builds are being developed — and the urgent need for that data-wiping bug fix — mean we probably won't be waiting much longer.

As Q4 begins, online video is now mainstream. Read the, "Connected Consumer Q3 Wrap-up."

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NYT Editor Hints at Upcoming Apple Slate

The new week begins with a new Tablet-related rumor that's bouncing its way cheekily around the tubes. This one comes to us courtesy of New York Times executive editor Bill Keller.

According to Nieman Journalism Lab, "…the digital staff gathered for an 'all hands' meeting at TheTimesCenter to hear updates on various initiatives in advertising, business development, and content." Sounds riveting. Anyway, Keller delivered a lengthy monologue (you can watch the whole thing here) but, around eight minutes in, he says:

“I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate, or whatever comes after that.”

Is that simply speculation on Keller's part, or is he a man in possession of privileged information? As I mentioned last week, Apple is said to have recently been in secret talks with publishers about content delivery via a new platform, and given Apple's long relationship with the New York Times, it's not beyond the realm of possibility Keller would be in on the inside track of those talks.

Lingering a little longer on the "slate" moniker, Edible Apple reminds us of a series of tweets from Kevin Rose a few weeks ago, who, while enjoying a few recreational beverages at a bar, met an inebriated lady claiming to be an Apple employee:

Omg just met a drunk girl from apple “no apple tablet coming… well, we wouldn’t call it a tablet” haha leak!!

So, they wouldn’t call it a Tablet… but perhaps they'd call it a Slate, yes? Kevin Rose has been wrong oh-so-many times before. But sometimes he's right. So these two threads of discourse may be contextually connected in just the right way to lead to conclusions (and the “jumping to” thereof)… or they're really a big fat nothing. Whichever you choose, I still recommend the usual pinch of salt.

The speculation fun doesn't end there. Engadget is reporting the availability (via wholesaler China Ontrade Limited) of the snappily-titled "Apple iTablet iPhone 4 Generation SIM Tray." The product description for the diminutive plastic-and-metal widget reads:

Original Apple iTablet iPhone 4 Generation (Probably iTablet) SIM Tray OEM
This part came from Foxconn to our warehouse at 10.23.2009.

China Ontrade's website provides this visual comparison of the 4G tray with its 3G/3GS predecessor;

So there you have it. A bit unusual to start the week with a Tablet rumor roundup, but hey, it's better than reading another Windows 7 review.

In Q3, Uncle Sam was the green IT king maker. Read the, "Green IT Q3 Wrap-up."

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