UK iPhone

As promised, Apple is now offering a free iPhone 4 case to every iPhone 4 owner. The process is being managed through a free app, which you can download through the App Store.

There is a choice of cases, from Apple’s own bumper case through to a range of third-party cases, so you should be able to find the case you want.

UPDATE: Turns out that link is for the US store: looks like Apple haven’t launched the free case programme in the UK yet. Will update with news on this. The programme has launched, and the link is now fixed.

After Apple’s blowout best-ever quarter on Tuesday there was some speculation that Microsoft would not beat its forecast earnings for the quarter, and thus Apple would have higher revenue for the first time. Well, Microsoft did announce record revenue for its fourth quarter yesterday, and thus stays ahead of Apple for now.

Apple has already beaten Microsoft on market capitalisation (total value of all shares outstanding) and so the revenue benchmark is the next battleground between the two companies. But even when Apple wins that one, next quarter most likely, Microsoft will still remain ahead of Apple on one measure: net income. As Apple sells hardware as well as software, its margins are not as stellar as Microsoft’s: it will take a lot more revenue for Apple to surpass Microsoft at the net income game. But if Microsoft continues to flounder under Ballmer’s unsteady hand, and Apple continues with new products and stellar sales, it seems in time that hurdle will fall too.

So Apple have done it again, blowing past analysts’ estimates to post its all-time record quarterly revenue of $15.7 billion and a profit of $3.25 billion. Earnings per share (EPS) increased by a mind-blowing 78% over the same quarter last year, finishing up at $3.51 per share.

Apple, which trades under the stock ticker AAPL, sold 8.4 million iPhones in the quarter, and 3.27 million iPads, which is close to the number of Macs sold (3.47 million). This is a stunning start for the iPad. According to Apple, they can’t make iPhones and iPads fast enough to keep up with the demand; they’re selling them as fast as they can make them.

Most of the professional Wall Street analysts got the revenue way too low, but Daniel Tello, an amateur blogger, was spot-on. Daniel was also the closest on EPS at $3.57. The blogger consensus was much closer than that of the pros. Remember that the next time someone tries to sell you a managed fund!

Disclosure: author is long AAPL shares.

Like Plants v Zombies? Love football and the World Cup? Then the makers of this new game think that you’ll go crazy for Vuvuzelas v Zombies. After choosing your team, you get to face hordes of zombies from the opposing team, red-card-bearing refs, and even undead dogs. Use your vuvuzela to literally blow their heads off!

With an average rating of three stars (at time of writing), this free app is well worth a look. OpenFeint integration means you can compete with your friends and rate yourself against the rest of the world with the online leaderboards.

The updated version of the iPhone’s operating system, IOS 4.0.1, has been released, and it fixes the problematic signal strength display in all iPhones. Anand Lal Shimpi of Anandtech was the first to spot the fact that the old software showed a full signal even when the actual signal strength had dropped by half, and he now confirms that the new software has a much more evenly spaced indication.

I’ve always felt that there was something a bit odd about the iPhone’s signal strength indicator: it always seemed an “all-or-nothing” thing, either full-strength or minimum, very few indications inbetween. And unfortunately I think that this has been convincing people that the “iPhone 4 antenna bug” is a bigger problem than it really is. When you touch the new phone’s metal case, especially at the critical bottom-left corner area, it does reduce the phone’s signal a bit. But because the phone had such a drastic response to signal changes, it made it look as if you were going from 5 bars to nothing.

Anandtech reports that under the new software, the drop is only two bars, so it won’t look as if the phone’s reception is completely compromised. And if you look at all the reports by people with the “problem”, they mostly talk about the signal indicator dropping. Very few people are talking about actual dropped calls (and it would be hard to know that the call was dropped specifically for that reason anyway). I know from my own experience that the antenna is so much BETTER than the old iPhone that holding it “wrong” does not reduce the performance much, and Anandtech confirms that the new iPhone holds onto a weak signal much better than any other phone.

I feel that a lot of commentators are indulging in the usual Apple-bashing, or are jumping on the bandwagon to get publicity for themselves (why else is Consumer Reports constantly changing their story?) The truth is that the iPhone 4 has an amazingly good antenna; the (small) price for that is that it doesn’t perform at 100% in certain circumstances. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with the phone; it certainly performs better as a phone than any previous iPhone. The whole thing reminds me of the “non-replaceable battery” nonsense that attended the iPod’s launch. Some people will find fault no matter what you do. “Haters gonna hate!”

So Apple have called a press conference for tomorrow, Friday 16th of July 2010. They will only say that it is about the iPhone. Wild speculation has ensued. Most seem to think it will be about the iPhone 4’s supposed antenna issues. (I say “supposed” because my iPhone has much BETTER reception than my old iPhone.)

Some expect Apple to announce a recall of the iPhone 4. This seems completely ridiculous to me. If there really was a major problem with the phone, people would be returning them in droves: don’t forget you have 14 days to do so. Yet iPhones remain difficult to get. I very, very much doubt there will be any recall.

In fact I wonder whether the conference is about the antenna issue at all. Apple usually only call press conferences to announce something. It could be IOS 4.1 (the next update to the operating system that runs on iPhones, iPod touches and iPads). It could be the long-awaited announcement that AT&T’s monopoly on the iPhone in the US is over, and that Verizon is the new carrier.

But if it is anything to do with the reception issues, I have a feeling it will be nothing more than a voucher for a free bumper (the £25 rubber strip that fits around your iPhone 4, protecting it, and in the experience of some, further improving the iPhone’s antenna performance).

UPDATE: Seems I was wrong, the conference was all about the antenna issue. Steve had some interesting facts: all phones have this to some extent (tested this on a BlackBerry today, he’s right!), a vanishingly small percentage of iPhone buyers have issues with the reception (there have been far fewer returns of the iPhone 4 than the 3GS, for example), but because Apple want everyone to be happy, you can return your phone for a full refund, no restocking fee, and everyone who has bought an iPhone can get a free bumper, or free case (if Apple run out of bumpers). If you already bought a bumper, you’ll get a refund.

I think that Steve showed that Apple do care deeply about their customers, and that the issue has been blown out of all proportion by the media, with even a US senator climbing on the bandwagon yesterday. I’ve never had a problem with my iPhone 4, but if I did, I think I would feel pretty reassured by Apple’s actions today.

So I’ve had my iPhone 4 for a couple of weeks now. I waited in the queue outside the Regent Street Apple store for about 4 hours, having reserved one for pickup (those who didn’t had waits in excess of 8 hours). There were a couple of snags:

• I switched to Vodafone as my O2 contract was up a while ago. It took Vodafone from Thursday, launch day, until the following Monday, to port my number. Annoying!
• Even more annoying: when my number finally ported, at 4pm on Monday afternoon, I discovered that Vodafone do not support Visual Voicemail!

It had never even crossed my mind that Visual Voicemail would not be available on other networks. Having used an iPhone for nearly three years, I took it completely for granted, simply part of the iPhone experience. I suppose I assumed Apple would enforce it on all the carriers. But this is not the case.

I immediately phoned Vodafone to cancel the contract and get my number back to O2. Vodafone, however, said that this was all up to Apple, and said that Apple would have to take the phone back. They also said Apple probably wouldn’t do this.

I went back to the Apple store on Regent Street on Tuesday morning, and spoke to their Vodafone specialist. He said there was no problem taking the phone back and cancelling the contract; Apple give you 14 days to return any item for a refund. He also said that if I had bought the phone at a Vodafone store, I would not be able to do this, and that Apple enforce their policy onto Vodafone. So basically they would force Vodafone to cancel my contract.

But there was a problem. When I activated the phone on Voda, it became sim-locked. So Apple would not be able to turn around and give me the phone on O2, they would need to give me a new phone. And they didn’t have any. Best estimate was two to three weeks.

I said I would think about it (I still had 9 days or so to return it), but I sort of knew I wouldn’t be giving the phone back. I decided to give HulloMail a try. It’s an app that was said to duplicate Visual Voicemail functionality.

Apart from a pretty crap logo and some mediocre graphics, it actually works very well. It’s a completely free app, and after diverting your voicemail to their servers, you get a push notification when someone leaves you voicemail. Clicking on the notification launches the app, which then downloads the voicemail and shows it to you in the familiar list. It’s even a bit better than Visual Voicemail because it includes the picture from your contact list, if there is one for that person.

Sometimes the voicemail is a bit slow to play, and obviously it depends on the data network, not the voice network. But I can’t pretend that Visual Voicemail always worked flawlessly, so it’s certainly no worse.

So if you’ve moved from O2 and miss Visual Voicemail, or if you’ve never been on O2 and wonder what the fuss is about, it’s definitely worth a try. It costs nothing, and setup is really simple and well-thought-out: the app adds two contacts for activation and deactivation, all you do is call the number, and it’s done!

UPDATE: The new version of Hullomail is out. It’s an incremental improvement rather than a drastic overhaul: there are some tweaks (like hints and tips on how to use the app) but nothing major. The user interface is still a bit “cartoony” for my taste, if I were the developer, I would get the interface tweaked by an iPhone design expert like the guy who did WeightBot. But as Hullomail is multi-platform, I suppose they would rather have a design that works reasonably well on all platforms, rather than tweaking the iPhone app to take advantage of the iPhone’s unique benefits.

According to CNET Apple has ordered 24 million units of the new 4G iPhone, to be delivered by the end of the year, which seems a little hard to credit, given that they have only sold about 50 million iPhones to date. But Apple did sell nearly 9 million iPhones in its most recent reported quarter. By the time of the expected next-gen iPhone launch in June there will be only about six selling months left in the year. If Apple expects to grow sales by a modest amount in those two remaining quarters, it could be looking at 10 million per quarter, or a total of 20 million.

But the last quarter, of course, includes Christmas, so you’d expect a few more sales for that. Therefore 24 million does not seem as unreasonable as it might at first glance.

One of the most popular games of recent times has been updated again, with more new levels! If you already have Angry Birds, go now and download the free update. If not, go and get it!

Seriously, Angry Birds is one of the most addictive and rewarding games available on the iPhone. It’s a physics puzzler, somewhat like RagDoll Blaster, but instead of ragdolls you use birds fired from a catapult to demolish structures (buildings, forts etc) and squash pigs. (Really!) The graphics and sound design are brilliant, and as you progress, you get Angry Birds with extra abilities.

The structures that the Angry Birds must demolish are made of wood, glass and stone, and each different element reacts the way you would expect it to: glass breaks the most easily, stone is very difficult to break and to move, etc. If you manage to squash the pigs without using all the Angry Birds, you get extra points, so you can go back to a level after you complete it to try to get a 3-star high score.

There are loads and loads of levels, enough for many hours of play, and as we’ve just seen, ClickGamer and Rovio have just released new levels (this is the second time they’ve done so). So chances are by the time you get to the end, there’ll be even more to go on with!

It’s an amazing amount of fun. So feel the anger: get Angry Birds!

Angry Birds is available on the App Store here.

In what may be the first of many such moves, Standard Chartered has announced that it will offer its workers iPhones instead of BlackBerries. The latter are currently the corporate gold standard for work mobile email, but Apple has been making the iPhone steadily more attractive to corporate users, and the strategy seems to be bearing fruit.

Of course it’s good news for everyone if there is more than one player in a market: even die-hard BlackBerry fans can look forward to further improvements in BlackBerry’s offering in response to this challenge: improving the usability of the menu maze would be pretty high up on my priority list!