iPhone Hill

The US Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation is studying deals like AT&T’s exclusivity for the iPhone, and how that balances business freedoms, technology innovation, consumer competition, and the effects on smaller, rural carriers.

In response to AT&T retail sales and services president, Paul Roth’s assertion that exclusivity provides more innovation, lower cost, and more choice, PC World quotes Senator John Kerry’s response:

“I accept the benefits you articulated but I’m having a difficult time trying to envision why an innovator, given the size of the market and the number of outlets, is not going to innovate to produce a product that is equally competitive [to an exclusive phone] … because it wants to appeal across different providers,”

This exchange followed on the heels of the committee sending a joint letter to the FCC, which according to InformationWeek asked for a determination as to whether “exclusivity agreements are restricting consumer choice”.

We know a lot of you want your iPhone on Verizon already, but should Apple and AT&T be allowed to come to whatever agreements each sees fit, or is there a roll for government to limit that for the good of consumers who’s interests may diverge at times from corporations?

[Thanks to Icebike for the repeated heads up]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

US Government Looking Into AT&T iPhone Exclusivity

DOOOOOOOOOM! [$9.99 - iTunes link] That’s right, the mother of all Martian first person shooters (FPS) is in the App Store now:

-Advanced graphics engine designed from the ground up to take full advantage of the power found in Apple’s mobile devices
-Wield an arsenal of heavy-hitting weapons to defeat a variety of hideous monsters and bosses
-Innovative controls for fast-paced and accessible first-person action
-An all-new chapter of the DOOM saga that new players and long-time DOOM fans can enjoy

How does a golden oldie translate to the newest, greatest mobile platform? If you try it out, and live to tell the tale, let us know what you think!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Quick App: DOOM Resurrection for iPhone

Birdfeed [$4.99 - iTunes link] bills itself as “A very nice Twitter client for your iPhone”. That’s pretty much spot on. It doesn’t try to razzle-dazzle, or focus exclusively on one element or another, but what it does do is provide a quick, clean, interface to manage your Twitter account (or accounts).

Highlighted features include the simple design, local caching of already-loaded tweets so you can keep reading when/if offline, SMS-style handling of direct messages (DMs) to help keep the conversation flow, unread @mentions (replies) and DM counters, and time stamps to indicate where you last read up to should new tweets have since been loaded.

To answer the immediate question, no support for iPhone 3.0 push notification yet. Birdfeed’s Twitter account says that feature is likely, but there’s no time-frame yet.

TwitPic and yfrong are available for image posting and tr.im for URL shortening. (Where’s the bit.ly love, and tinyurl for retro chic?) Instapaper is supported, though you have to exit the app and go to the iPhone’s Settings app to find and set it up. This makes sense given Apple’s preference for keeping Settings in Settings, and also because it’s unlikely you’ll have to do it more than once.

Great from a user experience perspective, when you get to the end of currently loaded tweets, Birdfeed automatically starts loading older ones. That’s right, no button tap required. (The default is 20 but you can change that in Settings). To get newer tweets, however, there is the perfunctory big honking — yet tastefully rendered — button at the top of the tweet list.

For users who put capital letters in their Twitter account names, there’s currently a bug those accounts to go missing from the app, but it’s known and a fix is on the way.

All in all, Birdfeed is exactly as presented — a clear, consistent, and enjoyable general purpose Twitter client with some great new ideas in a even greater UI.

More screenshots after the break!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Quick App: Birdfeed Twitter Client for iPhone