Apple iPhone (news, info, general chat)

Apple Computer Inc. has filed for a patent that suggests plans for a wireless phone that combines the company's hugely successful iPod MP3 music player and a cellular telephone may be in the works, according to an application with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

December 01, 2006 (Macworld UK) -- Apple may secure more than 8% of the global PC market by 2016, according to the analysts at Needham & Co.
Analyst Charles Wolf has upped his target price on the company's stock from $90 to $115 per share, citing "stronger than anticipated growth in Mac shipments" in recent quarters.
Wolf added that the new valuation actually excludes any extra revenue and income that could be generated by "yet-to-be-announced products, such as an iPhone" -- suggesting Apple's fortunes next year could be even better than now seems likely.
The new valuation does take into account two successive quarters of strong Mac sales and tremendous sales of the iPod shuffle.

Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service - MacCentral Mon Dec 18, 11:55 AM ET

The iPhone has arrived, but not from Apple.

Linksys, a division of Cisco Systems, introduced two VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) handsets adding to five others the company already offers. The group of phones is now part of a Linksys family of products called iPhone.

The Linksys iPhones aren’t quite what some people may have been expecting. Apple is rumored to be working on a combined cell phone and digital music player and the mythical device has been dubbed the iPhone, after the popular iPod digital music player, by Apple enthusiasts.

You can take a movie, download it to a computer, put it on your iPod. But what about that big flat screen TV you just bought last weekend? You need a box to drive that big screen TV. How's the box going to talk to the computer? Do I want to string cables throughout my house? So I'm going to talk to it using wireless network, to get the content from the computer to the box, from the box to the TV.[1]

"This is a day I've been looking forward to for two and a half years," said Jobs. "Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything."

In 1984, said Jobs, Apple introduced the Macintosh, and changed the computer industry. In 2001, Apple introduced the iPod, and changed the entire music industry.

"Well, today, we're introducing three revolutionary products of this class," said Jobs. "The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. The third is a breakthrough Internet communications device."

By PC Magazine Staff
Apple finally took the wraps off its long-awaited iPhone on Tuesday, sharing a brand name with a competing Cisco product.
The iPhone -- called the iPhone, and not any derivative, as had been speculated -- will serve both as an iPod as well as 3G phone, somehow cramming a "3G" radio, iPod functionality, and even a version of OS X into the phone-size package.
The phone itself is dominated by a giant touchscreen, the patent Apple applied for in February.
No word yet on pricing or carriers, but PC Magazine will have more as details roll in.
Apple also confirmed its iTV product will be called Apple TV. Priced at $299, the box won't contain a DVD player, but will somehow output 720p HDMI output from only a 40 Gbyte hard drive. Wireless connections will include 802.11b/g/"draft" n, according to PC Magazine reporters.