Issues

Will BMW Feature iPhone Integration?

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BMW iPhone

Autospies reported Tuesday that BMW may be the first auto manufacturer to make its cars iPhone-friendly. “A reliable source” told Autospies that iPhone compatibility – beyond “just Bluetooth” – might be built into the next BMW 7-series (out in 2009).

There’s not much evidence to back this rumor up, but it’s worth mentioning that BMW was the first auto manufacturer to team with Apple on integrating the iPod into its cars via a glove compartment iPod hookup controlled by buttons on the steering wheel.

Meizu “miniOne” Trademark Already Taken

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Venzero MiniONE

Apparently Meizu looks up to Apple like a big brother, because just as Apple used the iPhone name despite Cisco owning the iPhone trademark, Meizu’s iPhone clone, miniOne, also happens to share its name with a Venzero portable media player that has been out since last June.

Is Meizu being so aggressive in the hopes of attracting loads of attention via all the negative publicity? It’s working, I’m sure.

I can’t wait to see what happens when Meizu gets pounded left and right with lawsuits.

Meizu CEO Talks About Meizu M8

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So I was only half-right about the Meizu M8. It is in fact not real… but only because the real Meizu iPhone-knockoff is named miniOne.

According to Engadget, Meizu’s CEO said on the Chinese Meizu forum that the Meizu miniOne debuted four days before Macworld, after which it underwent a name change and some design tweaks (to make it more like iPhone, duh!).

The Meizu miniOne “upgrades” so far:

Meizu miniOne

Engadget appropriately compared Meizu’s miniOne tweaks to “double-checking your answers with your neighbors’ before turning in your test.”

4 more Meizu miniOne photos after the jump…

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iPhone to Block Non-iTunes Music/Video Downloads

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Money

“The iPhone will be prevented from directly downloading music or video itself, even though it is a wireless broadband-capable device,” according to Fortune’s Brent Schlender.

This really puts a damper on iPhone’s irresistibility element. If you’re paying $500-$600 up-front for the iPhone plus a monthly cell phone service fee, you should be permitted to download whatever the hell you want, I think.

“To get songs or shows into the iPhone, you still have to tether it, via a docking cradle, to a Mac or a PC, even though it easily should be able to handle this task all by itself,” said Schlender.

Schlender thinks Steve Jobs’ pro-consumer, anti-DRM rant might have been just “a gambit to force Apple’s content suppliers to renegotiate their deals and make it possible to download music and video directly onto the iPhone.”

What You Can Do

  • Not buy an iPhone
  • Call Apple’s Public Relations office @ (408) 974-2042 and tell them how much this sucks
  • Deal with it 🙁

Steve Jobs Turns Against DRM; iPhone Ploy?

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Steve Jobs

“A world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats � is clearly the best alternative for consumers,” Steve Jobs said earlier this week in an open letter he posted on the Apple website titled “Thoughts on Music.”

Jobs said he wants to get rid of FairPlay, the Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology that prevents songs downloaded on iTunes from being loaded onto MP3 players other than Apple’s iPod.

While it may be that Apple is simply adapting to consumer demand for DRM-free music, it’s also possible (not unlikely, I think) that Steve Jobs’ new stance on DRM is intended to sway software companies and other online music and video vendors into selling DRM-free music so that it may be uploaded onto Apple’s upcoming iPhone.

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Meizu M8 vs. iPhone: Are the Phones Clones?

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Here are some photo renderings of the supposed Meizu M8 phone, a nearly identical iPhone clone said to have:

  • WinCE 6.0
  • 3-megapixel camera
  • 3.3-inch VGA+ screen
  • GSM support
  • TV-out, and more.

No one is sure whether these Meizu M8 concepts are real or fake, because Meizu has “borrowed features” from other products in the past.

My guess is that the concepts are fake. Meizu would have had to work their butts off to engineer an iPhone look-alike so quickly. Plus, if you look closely, you’ll notice on the photo below the Meizu logo on the M8 is of lower quality than the rest of the image:

Meizu M8

Check out 3 more M8 images after the jump.

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