One of the bigger stories today was that some guy who didn't read Apple's iPhone 4.0 preview page (or 9to5mac) asked Steve Jobs a week later if Apple would support the original iPhone.  Jobs, as per usual, was short and sweet. 

"Sorry, no". 

Of course, the blogbots all lined up and posted the news as if it were new information. (OK we've posted plenty of the Jobs emails but we like to think some of them reveal new information when we do.)

But why doesn't Apple support the original iPhone (and iPod touch)? 

We know that the differences between the iPhone and the iPhone 3G aren't really significant to to the OS update.  The 3G has a different Bluetooth chip, GPS and obviously 3G.  The processor, storage and memory are the same, with the exception of the 4GB original model.  

So why wouldn't it be able to handle iPhone OS 4?  I'm not saying Apple should support original iPhones as in AppleCare, I just wonder what is preventing the OS from being installed on the original iPhone.

...and the iPod touch, which has an slightly faster processor clocking in gen 2 -- that could be equalized with a firmware update -- is also left out of iPhone OS4.  (From Wikipedia)

The second generation iProducts won't do multi-tasking in OS 4 but it can be updated.  Generation 1 devices won't update.  Why?

Patently Apple today shows that Apple is thinking about putting covers over their products that might give the feeling of actual keyboards and/or gamepads.  This product category isn't an entirely new idea.  4iThumbs has a similar $20 product which is has been on the market for a few months.  While we've tried 4iThumbs and liked the feeling, the idea of carrying cover around seems kind of unwieldy, at least on portable electronics.

as in (Fu) 'kin 'ell.  "The kids will 'kin love 'em."

The only question now:  Who is going to buy them?  I think they might be piecemealled off.

Palm Inc., creator of the Pre smartphone, put itself up for sale and is seeking bids for the company as early as this week, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Just guesses here: HTC (for the patents).  HTC already has made a lot of Palm Phones.  Motorola (for the OS) - they are getting screwed by HTC and Android.  

Nokia already has Symbian and Maemo OSes.   Microsoft got burned too badly with Danger.  Blackberry just bought an OS company.  Google has Android (but wouldn't hurt to have some more patents)….anyone else?  Apple?

via Bloomberg

(Sorry about the Flash Video - the WSJ was supposed to update to HTML5, weren't they?)

Kara Swisher interviews Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch.  I'm wondering at what point Adobe says feckit and builds Flash for Jailbroken iPhones.  That's about the only way their apps are going to get on Apple's mobile devices.  By the way, here's an interesting take on the situation called "Sorry Adobe, you screwed yourself." 

Is Blackberry going to produce a tablet?  They did just buy QNX which does (see video below) that type of stuff.

Crackberry via Slashphone

We've found references to moderators, chat rooms, encrypted video conferences and other features which could be even be used by developers in the future to add video chat to gaming applications, perhaps with ties to Gamecenter.  

First, we have the conference.framework folder which shows the sounds that will be used to alert an iPhone 4.0 user about an incoming Video Chat Request. We've played them and they are the same sounds as the iChat Mac application. 

In the CoreLocalizable.strings below you can see  Video/Chat Room/Moderator/Encryption strings:

This Property List within an Apple Private Framework displays the default calls the iChat App will need to make. There are some strings within this Plist which are unique to the iPhone OS and aren't found in iChat for Mac. Most notably, Chat Rooms and Moderation.  Our Speculation? Think the upcoming Game Center. Imagine being able to video/audio chat with the people you are playing the game with. How cool would that be?

If Apple is going to be hosting Chat Rooms, they'll need to be some moderation to fit the needs of Apple and its wholesome brand. Apple would never tolerate a ChatRoulette type of experience their network.

At the moment, this is a private framework. This is something that Apple is using themselves in their native applications, and is something developers won't be able to access.

However, this chat framework could very well become public in the future of iPhone OS. For Example, In-App SMS is a framework Apple has been privately using since 1.0, now in 4.0 developers can publicly use it. If/When this Chat Framework goes public, there could be an influx of Chat-related apps in the App Store (probably including thousands of Chatroulette clones).

The above strings indicate what video conferencing on an iPhone will include: One-on-One video chats and video conference calling (multiple people).

Apple is also testing Apple iPhone video conferencing services and already has an external server which is open for external testing. 

Since the 4.0 firmware only somewhat supports it, we don't know how to operate it or the syntax, but one module that is up and running on the server is what kicks off the process, the VCInit module, here: https://17.254.3.138/WebObjects/VCInit.woa/wa/  (expect it to be taken down shortly after this goes public)

Apple is also testing the Video Chat on three different servers on their private intranet, but that is obviously not accessible from the outside world.

Finally, we've heard separately that the iPad and likely the iPod touch will receive video camera updates in the Fall when the 4.x OS goes Universal.  The timing would make sense for the normal iPod touch yearly updates.  The iPad, until then won't have access to these camera strings, so it won't have much use for a camera.  Apple's secrecy in building the iPad likely kept the iChat group out of the loop.  Without them, there was no need for a camera on the first iPad.

Thanks for the help Will!

We're thrilled to announce that we've entered into an agreement with Atebits (aka Loren Brichter) to acquire Tweetie, a leading iPhone Twitter client. Tweetie will be renamed Twitter for iPhone and made free (currently $2.99) in the iTunes AppStore in the coming weeks. Loren will become a key member of our mobile team that is already having huge impact with device makers and service providers around the world. Loren's work won the 2009 Apple Design Award and we will eventually launch Twitter for iPad with his help.

Nice work by both, we're sure Twitter knows how popular Tweetie is and that its reach to the desktop and the iPhone will be broad.

via TechCrunch.

Geohot has the iPad booting in verbose mode, it would seem from this tweet.  

For those of you following along at home...

Keys for the 3.2 iPad firmware

iBoot.k48ap.RELEASE.img3
KEY: 1E3A1CA2F45D15452B16B9FE0A2C214A0AF897F09EE269F8E5967FC74B1022AC
IV: 36E1BCD042AC193F7305C8E6077D3DF7

018-7226-009.dmg
KEY: 31E7ECD9C364414205A8FA0092CC80C0D67EAE40E75FFA27B37048C42335A106
IV: 9C051576DDD94F48C324CF7AC3197FE1

And of course, the bootrom:
SecureROM for s5l8930xsi, Copyright 2009, Apple Inc.
03203A4EBC24BD2488EFDAAA19F0C9589496011F

We're not exactly sure where The Flash Blog stands as a mouthpiece of Adobe corporate (official vs. unofficial), but they've certainly let their feelings be known without any sugar coating or corporate speak.  Lee Brimelow, the author is a Platform Evangelist at Adobe focusing on the Flash, Flex, and AIR developer communities.

What is clear is that Apple has timed this purposely to hurt sales of CS5. This has nothing to do whatsoever with bringing the Flash player to Apple’s devices. That is a separate discussion entirely. What they are saying is that they won’t allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them. This is a frightening move that has no rational defense other than wanting tyrannical control over developers and more importantly, wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe. This does not just affect Adobe but also other technologies like Unity3D. [...] Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment as I would look to make it clear what is going through my mind at the moment. Go screw yourself Apple.

Via TiPB

Update: Adobe has censored the first sentence of the above comment - so it looks like there is some corporate connection.  Interestingly, they left the "screw yourself Apple" part.

Update 2X: It appears that a disclaimer has now been added to the blog stating: "This is my personal blog. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer." Thanks Dan.

Adobe is warning investors that it may take a hit on its profitability because customers are moving away from Flash.  That trend is almost entirely due to Apple's crusade to avoid Flash in its iProducts.  Yesterday's announcement that Apple would no longer accepting iPhone applications generated from 3rd party development products (Flash) made the situation all that more dire for Adobe.

But why does Adobe have to build exclusively for Flash/Air?  They already have a product, Dreamweaver, that spits out HTML.  They have products that export to open standard image, sound and video as well.

Adobe doesn't make a penny on its Flash or Air players.  They make all of their money in the authoring tools.  If they could make a Flash->iPhoneOS conversion tool (no small feat), would it be that much harder to make a basic Flash5->HTML5 tool?  Sure, they'd likely start with a small subset of Flash capabilities, but this is a young standard and one they could take the lead in building.  

Video would be the obvious first step.

They could start with a video embedding application that encodes both Ogg (Firefox, Opera, Chrome) and H.264 (Safari, Chrome) videos.  If the user is using something like IE6, it could also embed a legacy Flash version as well.  Based on the browser detection, the web page could output the code for the best video format.  There would be no shortage of corporate need for this.  Automate (batch processing) it and it becomes all that more valuable.

Or, if you want to be a real pioneering money maker: Make iAds tools!

From that success they can start working on interactivity and server side capabilities of Flash.  With HTML5's Database capabilities, they could even build offline applications that they currently run with Air.  It would take a lot of work, but it'd be worth it for all parties involved.

Perhaps Adobe is working on these types of tools behind closed doors, I don't know.  It would be a significant risk, as they stated in their 10K, not to.

But, Skype might not giving us the whole VoIP on iPhone experience.  Wired talked to Skype who've indicated that it still won't be activated on 3G — even though AT&T has been OK to VoIP on its network for six months.

It was really simple to implement — “just a dozen lines of code,” said Skype’s David Ponsford, head of product development, during the iPhone OS 4 press conference in Cupertino, California.

Ultimately though, without being able to use AT&T’s 3G connection, which AT&T told the FCC and Apple was fine six months ago, Skype calls are still limited to Wi-Fi. And that’s a big limitation. On Tuesday, Skype released a new version of its iPhone app that many suspected would add 3G calling (because AT&T approved the idea six months ago and Skype said in February that 3G calling would be added “real soon now”).

The delay is mysterious, and could speak to something deeper at work here. Adding to the intrigue is a post on Skype’s forum by Dragev, who claimed on March 22 that he’d run into “Peter” (likely Parkes, Skype’s blogger and Twitterer in chief) who said Skype has scrapped 3G on the iPhone because it signed an exclusive deal to offer 3G service on Verizon or because AT&T’s network can’t handle it.

Skype released the following video in February saying that 3G calls would be coming soon.  Nothing has happened since —except Verizon's big deal with Skype.

We're hoping that this is just a mixup and we'll be able to have non-crippled Skype calling on our iPhones (and iPads!).

Whatever.  This is all just taking money and focus away from building a better network, frankly….except one little thing. Adage says we might be saying goodbye to rollover minutes:

AT&T standbys such as rollover-minutes spots might disappear if they don't fit under the new framework. 

Excellent.  A rethink to customer perks was definitely in order.

Also, interesting to note: Apple, up until now, is one of few companies in the world without the brand's name in the logo.  AT&T is going to emulate this by pulling the 'AT&T' from the Death Star.

The AT&T globe will also now appear alone without the copy "AT&T" beside it.

We got word last night that the iPhone OS 4 had been jailbroken and this morning we have the video from MuscleNerd.  Jailbreakers are likely keeping their methods secret until this summer when the the 4.0 final hits the streets.