Apple computers is planning on expanding the market of iPhone sales to college campuses across the United States. The Cupertino based company plans to open Apple retail stores on campuses and selling through education supply resellers. Of course don’t expect your local Community College to start selling the new iPhone 3G. Apple will start testing at colleges that mainly use Mac products and purchase many Apple products through them. Before any plans are set in stone, Apple wants to make sure that their new in-store activation policy works first.

Top schools such as Harvard and MIT have tried to integrate the iPhone technology into the everyday life of their students. Code named “iPhone University”, the program uses the iTunes University to find students using an iPhone to allow for anything from taking a quiz to downloading the latest class notes to even checking on the status of their meal plan.

One of Apple’s most recent goals is to try and regain leadership in the college community. Today Dell is the most widely purchased laptop for new students. But don’t think Apple isn’t trying. Their current ‘Back-to-School’ special gives an iPod Touch or iPod Nano to all students that purchase a new Macbook, Macbook Air, Mackbook Pro, or iMac. There may be a small catch, but this is one of the best deals they have provided.

Apple Insider reports “the company is particularly proud of a sharp rise in its retail Apple Care attach rates to student Mac purchases, which in some regions have approached 95%.” Following the figure, it is rumored that Apple is thinking considerably on a new care plan that will cover accidental damage. So when you are using your Macbook to blast tunes while playing beer pong and your buddy spills beer on the keyboard, you’re covered!

Whatever Apple is up to I feel this can be a potential money tree for the company. If marketed correctly, Apple could re-affirm its status as the number one provider to college students.

written by Councillor Wes \\ tags: Apple Care, College

If you watched the Keynote Address, for WWDC 2008, you may have noticed something a little different about the Apple founder. Jobs appeared to look as though he lost quite a bit of weight since his keynote at Macworld 2007.  Big news sites such as Drudge Report and The Wall Street Journal reported the story which gained the notice of Apple.

A spokesperson for the company, based in Cupertino, California, noted that Jobs had been affected by a ‘common bug’ which caused his big loss in weight.  If you remember, Jobs suffered from a very rare form of pancreatic cancer, which he had removed in a successful surgery.  You may also remember that Apple didn’t disclose this information about Jobs’ health issues until after the surgery was deemed as effective.

I feel that without Jobs Apple will become a company that would focus more on making money and less on providing the world with innovative products.  All of our thoughts and prayers go out to Jobs and we hope that he is doing well!

written by Councillor Wes \\ tags: Steve Jobs

Looks like there are more 3G iPhone rumors floating around. Lets have some fun with them. While there are no pictures of the device, the sources are MacRumors, and The Cult of Mac, 2 well known and trusted sources… But as always, these are rumors so I’ll believe them when I see them.

The first rumor is that the new iPhone will be lighter than the current model. No details on how much lighter. Probably a few grams here and there will be shaved off. The new model is apparently 22% thinner than the original… Can’t wait to see what that looks and feels like in my hand.

Second, the 3G iPhone will be available in many colors. This one has been going around for a bit now, so I’m not too surprised to hear this re-hashed again.

Also worthy of note are new rumors that the 3G iPhone will have a focus on Multimedia, with video recording and video conferencing capabilities. Perhaps iChat will debut on the device this time around? Mobile video conferencing… interesting…

GPS will of course be built-in, as that has been a long-awaited and wanted feature since the original iPhone launch.

As far as pricing is concerned look for a 16GB version to be priced at $499 and a 32GB to come in at $699.

As usual, I post these rumors for interest and discussion only. Don’t read them as the gospel, as they could very well be wrong… But I would certainly expect most of these rumors to be on the money. Look for the details to be spilled at the WWDC keynote next week by his Steve-ness.

What do you think?

[via MacRumors]

written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: 3G iPhone, iPhone Rumors

Happy June everyone! We took a well deserved day off around here at Mactropolis. Thankfully the weather co-operated… just popped back into the office to see what was up and this story caught my eye.

Rumors have been going back and forth this past week about upcoming changes to the .Mac service. One rumor in particular is the potential renaming of the service. It seems that the leading candidate for the .Mac rename is now ‘MobileMe’, with Me.com being the home domain for the service.

Why? Well it seems that the domain name has been registered to the MarkMonitor domain service. MarkMonitor is a leader in enterprise brand protection. Apple and a whole bunch of other Fortune 100 companies have leaned on this service for brand protection in the past. So, with that said, it could be Apple is now sitting on the domain, getting ready for the rename… Or this is just complete hogwash, and some other company has registered the domain and is going to use it for something else.

Interestingly enough, MarkMonitor purchased MacBookAir.net, MacBookAir.org, MacBookAir.us, MacBookAir.info and MacBookAir.biz earlier this year on behalf of Apple.

If you try and hit up www.me.com, you’ll notice a redirect page that guides you to www.snappville.com, a social networking website that used to be called me.com until it changed its name in December of last year. Could it be Apple bought out the domain name and asked them to relocate to a new domain name? And with a ‘grace’ period since last December, a redirect page was put up at Me.com for the time being? Could be. Really hard to know the real answer.

Even more interesting are these 2 points:

1. Apple filed a patent for the MobileMe name back in 2006.
2. The term ‘MobileMe’ has been found in numerious iPhoneSDK files.

Who knows the truth. Lets just wait till the WWDC as I’m sure news on this, the new iPhone and a whole lot more will come to light. Sometimes it’s just fun to speculate isn’t it!?

[via MacRumors]

written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: .Mac, .Me, MobileMe, WWDC 08

More 3G iPhone pics are surfacing, and this time it is of a so-called white 3G iPhone. Judge for yourself from the pictures below, but they aren’t very convincing for me…Especially the last one. I’ve simply posted this for your review, as it makes a great talking point.

Each and every time ‘leaked’ photos hit the web I have less and less faith in them. Remember the original 3G iPhone photos that surfaced? Yeah, well that just turned out to be an iPhone case off the streets in Hong Kong.

This time the photos originated at iPhoneClub.nl. If nothing else, their site will be getting a whack-load of traffic.

One thing is almost for sure though in my opinion. Look for the new iPhone to come in a few different colors… White, Black… and Red.

{via iPhoneClub.nl]

written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: White 3G iPhone

In France, Orange is apparently giving iPhone customers hefty incentives to trade up to the new model when it arrives. Orange has been calling their customers to offer a deal on upgrading to the new 3G iPhone.

One offer would allow the user to trade in their old 2G iPhone for the new 3G version, as well as paying €50.

A second offer would let the user keep the older 2G model, but they would have the option to buy the new 3G iPhone with a ‘generous’ subsidy from the carrier.

The rumors started when quite a few readers of PCInpact reported the claims.

Orange hasn’t responded to any requests for confirmation… so file it under rumor for now. I would expect this to be somewhat true, although the finer details are probably a bit different.

Should also be interesting to see if the older 2G models will indeed be discontinued… or if they will still be offered by certain carriers. There are going to be so many countries, and so many carriers on board here, it’s really hard to tell.

Site Note: What about the millions around the world with jailbreaked and unlocked 2G iPhones? Can we trade those in to the respective carriers!?

[via electronista]

written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: 2G iPhone, 3G iPhone, Orange