Something unusual in the online Apple store

In lighter news, I was on the Apple store main page page today, and saw something I never thought I'd see from Apple. Ever. Right there at the top of the page is the iPhone "From $0." Sure, in last week's iPhone 4S event, it was briefly mentioned that AT&T would have the iPhone 3GS for "free" (with two-year contract) but I never thought we'd see the day where the $0 price point would appear on Apple's site.

Get a New iPhone Without the Antenna Issue

You say you want a new iPhone, and you don't want to worry about the whole antenna fiasco. Well, have I got a deal for you! What if I said you could get a new (as in not used) iPhone, and rest assured that you wouldn't see signal issues when you hold the phone, and you wouldn't have to put a bumper on the phone. AND you would save $100 at the same time.

If you've never owned an iPhone, or you're looking to upgrade from the original model, there's a solution: buy the new iPhone 3GS 16GB phone for $99. Trust me, it is fast enough and feature-packed enough for most users. If you can live without FaceTime, and the higher resolution camera isn't that important, it's an interesting option. After all, there are already thousands of accessories, many of which will probably go on sale as the iPhone 4 continues to ship in greater and greater numbers.

While the iPhone 3GS did exhibit the same antenna meter reporting issue, with the recent software update, that's a thing of the past.

Get last month's cutting edge phone, save a $100 up front, and by Apple's own admissions, have fewer dropped calls with AT&T than the iPhone 4. 

The Re-birth of Home Movies, Or Why YouTube Is About To Get Worse

from DealExtreme.comAfter playing with the iPhone 3GS for a few days, it's clear that the video function is the killer feature. Yes, video has been available on cell phones for years, and yes you've even been able to upload directly to YouTube with some, but putting it on the iPhone is a game changer, for better or worse.

As we mentioned here recently, there's been a mysterious disappearance of the once omni-present parents with video cameras at kids' events. Well, the iPhone might resurrect the family video market with parents able to quickly and easily shoot and share clips. Only instead of just having distant relatives subjected to video viewing during the family reunion, now we'll all be exposed to them through YouTube.

This really could go one of two ways, and will most likely go both simultaneously: Having millions of decent cameras out there with quick and easy posting capability could lead to an increase in compelling video, capturing moments that would otherwise be lost forever. Or we could get more of the inane video that a majority of people seem to dislike, and yet someone is still making it, and even more people are watching it.

Either way, in six to eight months, we predict an incredible surge in video flooding YouTube from the iPhone. Whether it'll be anything we want to watch is another story.

iPhone 3G S Video Test Footage

It's a grey/gray day here in the Northeast, but that didn't stop us from venturing outside the TDL confines to take some quick video with the iPhone 3G S in varying lighting, focus ranges etc.

Our quick impressions: It looks good, but it looks far better on the iPhone screen while you're shooting it. You will still occasionally see the "wavy" pattern to the video that gives it away as an iPhone. Still, the portability and ease of shooting make up for those shortfalls, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a little disappointing to see the difference once it was on the computer. (the movies show up in iPhoto by the way, just like photos.)

Also bear in mind, there might be additional compression/encoding in getting this online, but that's how most people will see it anyhow:

Adventures in Tap To Focus

This picture illustrates two things: First, the focal length on the new camera in the iPhone 3Gs looks great. There's maybe six inches of separation between these objects in the picture. And secondly, which you can't tell from looking at it, is the touch-to-focus is distance-dependent, not object dependent.

When this picture was taken, the wind was moving the spores/flower back and forth. I tapped to focus on it when it was in the bottom of the screen, as the wind moved it, rather than maintain that focus, the iPhone used the ground-the new thing in that part of the frame. Not sure if that's a good or bad behavior, but I thought it was worth pointing out.