The iPhone's release has come and gone, and the much anticipated device finally ended up in the hands of excited consumers and web application developers alike. With so many people wanting to create useful widgets for the iPhone, there are now many new web applications to choose from.

Rev2.org has taken it upon themselves to pick what they deem as the Top 25 Web Applications for the iPhone, and we also think that their choices sound good as well. Here are our personal choices among Rev2.org's picks:

• OneTrip Shopping List: This one is definitely useful for those who have a tough time memorizing shopping lists, or just happen to tend to lose the shopping lists they have prepared the day before. OneTrip has a simple, easy-to-use categorization feature that lets users pick and choose grocery items from different categories, like Food, Fruit, Veggies, Household Items, etc.

• Listingly: This one is a simple listing app for the iPhone. Just like the OneTrip Shopping List App, items can be automatically arranged and categorized. Listingly also can memorize certain terms to speed up your typing.

• iTouch: Possible our favorite application game for the iPhone. Dots will randomly appear on the screen which you would have to touch immediately before they disappear. This is a rather fun reflex game that can make for a potentially good drinking game.

• Avalanche: Here is another fun way of passing time with the iPhone. The game is only one simple rule: get rid of all the blocks by picking 3 or more connected blocks with the same color. The faster you move, the more points you get.

• CheapMF: Possibly one of the most useful iPhone applications around. CheapMF will help you in determining whether that cool item you found in the mall is adequately priced. CheapMF can access Amazon.com to provide prices of used and new items to help you determine if the store item is worth buying or not.

Read more about Rev2.org's picks in the Read link!

When the iPhone finally hits streets on June 29, odds are that early adopters will be swarming Apple retail stores to try and get one for themselves. Also, odds are 20 to 1 that someone gets trampled in the process.

That's according to BetUS.com. The betting site has also put out odds on other possible iPhone-related occurrences and incidents like the phone's screen cracks like Apple's first-gen iPod Nano (150 to 1), reports of the battery life turning out to be less than the promised 8 hours (10 to 1) and the iPhone spontaneously combusts (150 to 1).

According to LiveScience, the idea for creating these odds stemmed from past electronic firsts that, while being embraced enthusiastically by consumers, turned out to have a lot of bugs and defects. "This phone has everything but the kitchen sink," said BetUS.com spokesman Reed Richards. "With the seemingly endless options that the phone offers, the chances for a malfunction are likely."

No doubt Apple took over the portable music player (PMP) industry by storm; but can it do the same and take on the mobile phone industry kings such as Nokia and Motorola with iPhone's release? Chicago Tribune says that Nokia and Motorola will have no problems with market shares... for now. These companies' Research and Development teams should be ready though for a lot of headaches to come.

Nokia, one of the dominant mobile phone manufacturers owns about 36 % market share, with Motorola trailing behind with its 17 % share. Indeed, with the iPhone expecting to grab only 1 % of the cell phone market shares by the end of 2008, they don't have to worry about Apple removing them from the top spots.

Roger Entner, senior vice president of IAG Research's communications sector agrees.

It will not be a financial disrupter, but it will be a psychological disrupter, a research and development disrupter. Mobile phone industry competitors will find themselves getting nagged by people to imitate the iPhone.

The iPhone's audience may be limited in its initial launch. Most of the general market may consider the first generation iPhone as too pricey - the exclusive contract with AT&T may mean shelling out around an extra US$ 150 to pay off contract termination fees for Sprint and Verizon customers - which may deter them from getting one. But consumers will eventually be drawn to the iPhone's concept of simplified design and user interface, in effect asking for the same value and features from other phone manufacturers.

Apple may become a considerable threat to mobile phone manufacturers if the company decides to roll out cheaper versions of the iPhone, like what it did with the iPod. Doing so will mean that Apple will eat up most of the mobile phone market shares, and more people besides Apple supporters, tech enthusiasts, and the rich will find themselves running their thumbs across the iPhone's glass screen.

Motorola isn't batting an eyelash for now, though. "Really, the iPhone benefits the entire industry," said Brian Stech, Motorola phone division's global marketing director. He further explains that the iPhone will direct more consumer interest towards multimedia phones, which Motorola is also specializing on.

This may be Apple's first foray into the mobile phone business, but analysts are already convinced that the iPhone will most certainly change the cellphone industry landscape.

According to numbers released by the NPD Group, the worldwide market of laptop notebooks saw a 14% rise in Apple shipments since last month. And better yet for the Cupertino-based company, 14% of all notebook computers sold last month were also Apple-branded.

Analysts believe that this may be an indication that the laptop community is embracing more and more of Apple, despite being only fourth place in the current generation laptop race in the U.S. Hewlett-Packard, Gateway, and Toshiba sit at spots above Steve Jobs' company, as reported.

Further consideration of Apple's year-on-year growth, however, may drive the company to steal the third spot. The May figures actually represent a 65% jump from Apple's figure last year, and if Apple can keep that year-on-year rate up for the next month, the numbers would spring the modest 14% to a proud 20% in just thirty days.

The iPhone has really been catching a lot of consumer attention and appears prime to take top dog status in the mobile phone industry. However, if these researchers are to be believed, it seems iPhone needs more than hype to scale to the top.

IDC and Market Insight Corp conducted a survey among 456 individuals and a whopping 60% have expressed their interest in the product. However, the price of the unit along with the cost of switching carriers is a major deterrent to those who wish to pick up the gadget.

The survey showed that only 10% of respondents were interested in paying full price and signing a two-year contract with AT&T, the only carrier currently slated to offer the device. With AT&T not offering a subsidy for the iPhone, the product is said to retail for US$ 499 (4GB model) or US$ 599 (8 GB model). The number jumped to 18% if the iPhone were priced under US$ 299.

As most would know, the carriers in the U.S. normally lock their subscribers into a two year contract with huge financial penalties for early termination. The survey showed that 17% of the respondents have declared their intent to pick up an iPhone if it were offered by their current mobile carrier. The director of mobility research at IDC Shiv K. Bakhshi, Ph.D. spoke about the findings and the common stand of the market regarding it.

While the allure of owning the next 'cool' device will undoubtedly have early adopters Â? and die-hard Apple fans Â? queuing up to get the iPhone regardless of the price, the associated costs of ownership will persuade many others into a 'wait and see' position. Despite all the hype, there is little clarity on Apple's (and AT&T's) service plans for the device. This lack of clarity could adversely impact consumers' purchase decisions.

So what does this say about the iPhone? Will it be relegated to hardcore Apple fans only or will it actually live up to the hype it has generated? Be sure to keep checking back here for the latest updates on the iPhone.

If you ask most people if it is necessary to defrag your PC, they will have an immediate answer. However, if you go up to most techies and ask them if it's necessary to defrag your Mac, you'll get a plethora of answers. That puts most mac owners at an impasse: to defrag or not to defrag, that is the question.

FreeFrag on MacTalk took up the burden to answer this question that has been plaguing a lot of the Mac users who want to get more from their machine. After intensive testing, the verdict is in, and the results may surprise you. After installing iDefrag 1.6.1 on the test system (20" iMac with Core Duo 2.0Ghz, 1.5Gb RAM, 232Gb HD with 102Gb Free), multiple programs were tested for loading times via pre and post boot.

After averaging the time for both tests, it looks like the system was even faster before the defrag than after. However, the stats of the post defragmentation were really dragged down by the long start-up boot time the system went through. All the applications tested with the exception of XP did get a relatively good boost from the defragmentation. So is it worth it?

It looks like a trade-off between initial boot and program speed. If you keep your system on most of the time, then perhaps defragging you system may be a good move. But if you just power-up the system every so often to run a few programs, then defragging may slow you down.

That brings us back to the first question, to defrag or not to defrag. Well, it depends on what you're going to be doing and on your computing habits.

"We've never ever at Mozilla said that we care about Firefox market share at the expense of our more important goal: to keep the web open and a public resource. The web belongs to people, not companies." These were the words of Mozilla's COO John Lilly in a recent blog post of his. What prompted this statement though, is the real story.

For those who have been keeping up with the WWDC, Steve Jobs delivered his keynote speech and unveiled Safari for Windows. Now, this is a big thing because the Apple iPhone will be running web applications, and this is the manner that it will be interfacing with the PC. The simple fact that PC users will be getting another browser option for their systems is really great. So what's the problem?
 
Steve Jobs presented the way he wanted the market to look eventually and it showed a view that's, as Lilly put it, "out-of-date, corporate-controlled, duopoly-oriented, not-the-web thinking." A duopoly (a market controlled by two organizations) cuts out everyone else and leaves everyone at the mercy of the companies running it. Everyone saw the ruckus that was caused with the Microsoft anti-trust issue, adding in another big company to control the rest of the market may not be in the public's interest.

Lilly may have a point with this although there is no arguing Apple's success. It may precisely be that outlook that's driving them to the top. Still, we have to consider the consequences of a possible duopoly on the net and how it will affect the internet community as a whole. If you want to read the entire blog post, be sure to click on our read link. Keep checking back here for more updates on this issue.

"No software developer kit (SDK) is required for the iPhone." That statement may prove to be the death knoll for those who hoped to run cutting-edge third party applications on the iPhone.

As pointed out by Jesus Diaz in his Gizmodo post, third party software developers are now only limited to using AJAX, an internet standard that spawned applications such as Gmail, Facebook, and Google Maps. While AJAX has proven to be indispensable, it still gives developers little freedom when it comes to creating applications.

Apple's press release has this to say about the iPhone not having SDK:

Developers can create Web 2.0 applications which look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone, and which can seamlessly access iPhone's services, including making a phone call, sending an email and displaying a location in Google Maps.

However, this is hardly new, since the Safari is already included in the iPhone, which can auto-detect phone numbers and addresses embedded in webpages effortlessly.

Needless to say, a lack of SDK means lack of innovative third party programs that may improve the experience of using the iPhone. More importantly, there will be a severe lack of great games that could possibly be played on the iPhone. Apple may have ties with Electronic Arts (EA) and id software - both game geniuses in their own right - but how about other game developers who know their stuff as well?

Simply put, not giving software developers enough freedom to create applications may very well hurt possible iPhone users hoping to get cutting edge technology.

Well, there's still widgets to work with, anyway.

 

Gizmodo techies report that Solutions Research Group did a little number among the US populace, tracking down the general profile of the kind of person who would most likely want to pick up Apple's new hobby, the iPhone. And true, they didn't include ol' Stevie in the mix.

So who's going to line up when the phone-meets-PDA-meets-media gizmo struts it stuff on June 29? Gizmodo pegs that perfect specimen right on the dot: the guy to most likely pick up an iPhone at the end of the month is "a rich, college-educated guy with an iPod, probably living in New York or California, [who will] be ditching [his] cellphone carrier sometime soon."

Wonder how they got to that conclusion? Just check out the top 8 InfoModo numbers from Gizmodo, provided below. Remember to click the picture to view a larger version of the image. (Don't worry, it won't blow up as much, we promise!)

   
   

Although it may not be apparent, Apple isn't reeling in major profits on any of the Apple TV units they sell. Literally. According to Business Week, research firm iSuppli purchased a unit for US$ 299 and took it apart piece by piece. What they found was that the seemingly pricey Apple TV tag wasn't a Benjamin apart from the total of its parts.

An Apple TV's parts, when broken down and arranged quite neatly, has been found to cost no more than US$ 237 all in all. That's just US$ 62 from the retail price tag (a 20% gross profit margin), although it doesn't include administrative, marketing and production costs.

That's a big leap from most of Apple's 50% gross profit margins for products not related to its consumer computer solutions. Analyst Andrew Rassweiler of iSuppli remarked, "This is certainly a departure for Apple, or at least it's approaching a departure."

"We made some very aggressive assumptions with this device, and by that I mean we assumed low prices on the components," added Rassweiler. When Apple's Steve Jobs said that the Apple TV is a hobby, he probably wasn't joking at all. It may have been more convincing, though, if there were tears.