57 iPhone Apps -- and Other Apple Links

A bumper crop of iPhone apps, lots of Apple (AAPL) speculation and a Steve Jobs sighting in London.

57 iPhone Apps: The 300 or so software developers who gathered in Adobe's (ADBE) offices for a three-day programmers' boot camp last weekend produced an impressive number of Web-based applications for the iPhone -- even if most of them don't do much more than play food games with the gadget's tilt sensor. See the full list (with links) here.

iPhone Nano: Everybody's talking this morning about JP Morgan analyst Kevin Chang, who discovered the scroll-wheel phone patent AppleInsider wrote about last week, put it together with reports from an unnamed supply-chain source, and came up with a prediction that Apple will release a nano-sized iPhone by Christmas and sell a gazillion of them. [UPDATE: Not surprisingly, JP Morgan's New York office had second thoughts about Chang's report, saying Apple releasing such a device in this time frame would be "unusual and highly risky."]

Sixth Gen iPod:  Not to be outdone, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, drawing on remarks that Steve Jobs made at the Apple town meeting just before the iPhone launch (and reported by Ars Technica), told clients yesterday to expect a 6th generation video iPod with an iPhone-size multitouch screen and a version of OS X to be released by MacWorld 2008.

iMac Overhaul: In the most detailed description yet of the long-rumored overhaul of the iMac line, AppleInsider reports that the new desktop machines will be unbelievably slim, available only in 20- and 24-inch configurations (no 17-inch) and sport a similarly slender MacBook-like keyboard.

Steve Jobs in London: A brief report in ifoApple Store that Steve Jobs was spotted at London's Regent Street store over the weekend led to a flood of speculation that he might be in town to announce winners of the iPhone Eurocarrier bakeoff, perhaps as early as Monday July 16.

iPhone in Canada: It's "beautiful... powerful ... revoluationary (sic)" and coming soon, according to BestBuy Canada, which devotes a badly spelled page to whetting appetites north of the border -- and collecting e-mail addresses for future spamming.

Comments

[Keith]

In the iMac overhaul portion of your article, I think that should say it will be available in a 20" and a 24" not a 27" iMac.

ex ped: Thanks for the catch. Will fix. --Philip Elmer-DeWitt

[Dan]

iPhone apps? You mean web apps.

iPhone doesn't allow native applications - so one really can't write applications for it. To try to claim that a web app is an iphone application is a little misleading...

-Dan

[Jay Smith]

I agree to call these web based "apps" for the iPhone should not be called "apps". They are not, and should be called what they are: iphone optimized web sites.

[Sunil Maulik]

You say: "according to BestBuy Canada, which devotes a badly spelled page..."

err..."sighting" is spelled with a "gh" not "siting" as in your headline about a "Steve Jobs siting in London."

yours anally,
-Sunil

ex ped: Thanks for catch. Fixed. --Philip Elmer-DeWitt

[david]

The so called iPhone Nano patent is based on the original iPhone designs. This is where the jog wheel came from in the first place. I had heard this from insiders 5 years ago. Unsure how Apple could get away with this patent now after B&O had used the same principle on a phone many years ago (scroll wheel on a digital phone).

Curious all the same.

[Al]

As long as we are speculating here, what about the rumored ultra portable with a 12" screen and half the weight of a MacBook?

What about all the revenue from the monthly profit sharing that Apple will be raking in. If Apple sells as many iPhones and iPhone Nanos as Mr. Chen predicts, the royalties could ad up to more than a billion dollars in extra profit for Apple each year. Now that would be news and worthy of speculation.

It appears that they are going to be reaping the benefit of having turned the cell phone industry on it ear. If you don't mind the pun.