Report: iPhone OS 3.0 may include voice control

Last month, after the new iPod shuffle came out, I wrote a column about how Apple might be considering a shift to a voice interface for iPods and iPhones.

Well, now Ars Technica is reporting that there's "evidence of new voice control features coming to iPhone OS 3.0", which will be released some time this summer.

Ars Technica's sources are of the anonymous variety, but they claim that these new voice features are code-named "Jibbler" and will not only provide voice synthesis but voice recognition.

Ars says Jibbler appears be an enhancement to the iPhone's Finder-like SpringBoard program, which you see whenever the iPhone's Home button is pressed. It serves as an application launcher and will support the newly announced 3.0 Spotlight search.
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China Mobile plans its own app store

China Mobile is staking out its own ground in the mobile application marketplace.

According to IDG News Service, the world's largest wireless carrier plans to introduce its own mobile application store later this year, calling it "Mobile Market". The report says the store will be open to both independent developers and companies, though it's not clear what operating system or platform technologies will be used by the phones running on China Mobile's network when the store is ready to go.

China Mobile's plans for Mobile Market illustrate the difficulties that it and Apple faced in trying to reach an agreement to sell the iPhone through China Mobile. The two companies have flirted for quite some time, but Apple's insistence on being the sole gatekeeper and distributor for iPhone applications would have been at odds with China Mobile's desire to offer its own service, which is why Apple is believed to be negotiating with China Unicom instead.
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iPhone OS 3.0 beta 3 jailbroken

If you blinked again, you might have missed it: Several days after Apple released an update to the iPhone OS 3 beta, hackers have already jailbroken the OS 3 beta 3 release.

A new version of QuickPWN for Windows only (direct download link) has been released. This version should work with all versions of the iPhone or the iPod touch. We have not yet tried the jailbreak, but our sources have not reported any trouble with the hack. (As usual, however, download and use QuickPWN at your own risk.)

Jailbreaking is competitive in the hacking community. The Dev Team, the favored jailbreak provider, has an opinion and some words of warning about hacks like this.

Via CNET

Apple's 1 billionth app download predicted for April 23

We could stare at the countdown tickers on Worldometers all day. Wow, 10.3 billion toilets have been flushed so far today! So it's no wonder we love the Apple App store contest with its mesmerizing flipping numbers counting us down to the 1 billionth app download, when some lucky punter will win shedloads of Mac stuff and a US$10,000 iTunes gift card.

As the hour approaches--we're topping 988 million and change at the time of this writing--Mobile Squared, a UK research company, is helping us game the system by figuring out when the crucial moment will occur. According to its totally unchecked calculations, D-Day is this Thursday morning, April 23, US time--so that's two days for another 13 million downloads, app fans.

Mobile Squared notes that it took almost six months to reach its 500 million app downloads on January 19, and the following 500 million downloads have taken just 94 days, so the rate is picking up.

If you want to get in on the action, you don't even need an iPhone or iPod touch: Just enter online at the Apple Web site. We'd love the irony if an Apple hater won, so get involved.

Via Crave UK

iPhone Quickoffice features cut-and-paste

Quickoffice, the maker of office productivity software for Symbian and BlackBerry handsets, has released its first suite for the iPhone.

Quickoffice for iPhone, which was released Monday, allows full editing of Microsoft Office documents and spreadsheets, and incorporates cut-and-paste functionality--a feature that will not be natively supported by the iPhone until the summer.

File-sharing and content-management capabilities are also built into Quickoffice for iPhone. Aside from allowing editing of Office documents, the suite also supports the viewing of iWorks and PDF format files. The new suite also incorporates access to MobileMe iDisk accounts. However, that functionality was already enabled in Quickoffice's free MobileFiles application, which was released in November. Quickoffice for iPhone can be downloaded from iTunes for US$19.99.

Via ZDNet UK

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