Companies supporting Apple’s iPhone continue to announce unique products and services around Macworld and the Consumer Electronics Show this week, but exclusive U.S. service provider AT&T stole the spotlight with another data outage.
Widespread reports, including on Apple’s community forum, indicated a network glitch affecting customers from Maine to Maryland. An AT&T spokesman said the outage was resolved but did not provide details.
Yet the new iPhone technology keeps rolling in. Apple itself announced that iPhone 3G users can now download content directly from iTunes; previously a computer was required as the middleman. Also, the majority of iTunes music is now available without digital rights restrictions, the company said.Songs already purchased can be made DRM-free for an additional 30 cents, which equals the higher price of $1.29 for fresher music in the iTunes catalog.
Rumors of new ways to use the iPhone as a tethered laptop modem, along with buzz about possible new models of the phone itself, also continue to circulate.
Meanwhile, third-party announcements this week include Cisco Systems creating an iPhone version of its popular WebEx software; an application called Craigsphone to natively support the ubiquitous classifieds site; Truphone brings support for Skype, Twitter and various instant-messaging programs; Internet filtering software from InternetSafety.com; an AdMob download tracking program; and the announcement of a new conference called iGames Summit scheduled for March 19 in San Francisco.
