Results tagged “iphone”

When we heard that the Eaton Centre had launched their own iPhone app in time for the start of the holiday shopping season [iTunes link], it seemed like a good, ol'-fashioned trashing would be in order. Why, we wondered, would you need an Eaton Centre app on your handheld if you were already in the mall? And if you weren't in the mall, how much use could it be?

Sure, Torontonians are notorious for bitching about our city, but we bitch because we love! Complaining about garbage pickup or graffiti is a whole process, however, and sometimes it's just not worth the time to bother hunting down the appropriate department by email or navigating a phone tree.

While we think it's really sleazy to force customers to pay extra for a connection they're already paying for, we have to admit that Rogers surprised us when they enabled the tethering option of the iPhone at no extra charge this month (tethering allows you to basically use your mobile device as a modem when not connected to your usual service). Could this be a sign of a kinder, gentler Rogers-slash-Fido?

Here's another sweet reason to get an iPhone (aside from it soon being able to copy and paste!): easy panoramas. Photojunkie, née Rannie Turingan, has spent the past week and a half gallivanting around the city, shooting streetscapes, subwayscapes, and skylines with the sadly-$9.99 Panorama application for Apple's phone. You can see plenty more photos (and all of those above way, way larger) in Turingan's Panoramas set on Flickr.

For a guy whose self-given nickname has the word "lover" right in it, Pavel the Lover is a pretty piss-poor courter.

        

It's only been a few days since it launched, but Red Rocket has already proven itself an essential app for any iPhone and iPod touch owners who call Toronto home and call the TTC their ride.

The announcement is a few days old, but you can blame the Labour Day weekend. The CBC is reporting that Rogers has unveiled new data plans for all smartphones (including the iPhone) and is extending the $30 6 GB data deal till the end of September. Under Rogers' new plans, 500 MB of data will go for $25 a month and 1 GB for $30—so long as you plop them on top of a voice plan, as usual. Also surprisingly well thought out: "The company is also rolling out a 'peace of mind protection plan' on Oct. 1....Customers will get periodic free incoming text messages warning them when they cross certain usage thresholds, such as when they have downloaded 80 per cent of their monthly data allotment." And: "excess usage charges...will be capped at $100." Rogers may have actually gotten this whole iPhone thing mostly right, and what, only five months or so late?

While Second Cup and Starbucks have offered Wi-Fi service for years, the cost model has always leaned towards laptop users: customers can choose to purchase internet for an hour, a day, or a month. However, the explosion of Wi-Fi enabled smartphones changes the use of Wi-Fi: checking an email, using GPS, or finding a telephone listing takes minutes. Here's a catch: in the States, the internet period is limited to a single session. Once you log off, you're done for the day. We wonder if Bell will make the session cumulative or if the telco will follow suit. (Doesn't it appears that telcos plan to take advantage of the changing market to manipulate Wi-Fi at the major coffee chains to become marketing tools for products like the iPhone or WiMax?)

In yet another significant change of policy following customer outrage, Rogers appears to have changed the rule that prevented existing customers who had changed their phones over the past year from upgrading to an iPhone. According to a forum thread on ehMac.ca (sent to us and confirmed by reader K. Robson), existing Rogers wireless customers can now get iPhones so long as their wireless account has been active for at least three months. Hey, maybe Rogers doesn't have contempt for their customers after all—maybe they're just totally inept.

As we've pointed out many times before, Rogers boasts an exceptional brand of contempt for its non-business wireless customers, but the launch of Apple's desperately anticipated iPhone has exposed a whole set of new lows for the Toronto-based company. Due to a breathtakingly boneheaded policy in place by the company's National Planning Department, existing customers currently under a Rogers contract and who have upgraded their handset within the year are prohibited from purchasing an iPhone. At all.

Every weekday morning, bright and early, we feature a photo (or two) from a photographer in the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It's our way of giving the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention that they deserve.

Rogers has just announced that they will sell a $30 6 GB data plan for the iPhone that can be added to any voice plan, so long as customers sign up on or before August 31. The Rogers Plus store at 112 Dundas Street East will be open early at 8 a.m. on Friday to sell the phones; they will be sold at other Rogers stores during regular business hours, but will not be sold at Apple stores. (The rumour is that Apple was "disgusted" with Rogers' plans. Rogers declined comment.) The new offer on the table isn't perfect, but it's something.

Rogers has unveiled its iPhone 3G plans, and, as anticipated, they're really not that great. No unlimited data plan, mandatory three-year contract, no pie, and the best plan—2 GB data allowance with 800 minutes of talk time and unlimited evenings and weekends—will cost ya a cool $115 a month, not including those nice extra charges Rogers always slaps on. [via Dead Robot.]

Journalists are no strangers to being sent odd things in the mail to get them excited about new products. For the most part, writers are paid such a pitifully small amount that we’ll take whatever freebies come our way. Free CD? Awesome! Free food? Hells yeah, we’ll go to your restaurant.

The second-generation iPhone was unveiled today, and it is (officially, legally, and dear God finally) coming to Canada on July 11 this year. Just over a month ago, with rumours abounding about the new release, Rogers announced that they would be the phone's exclusive carrier here, but provided no further details as to how they would figure out a way to suck all the awesome out of it.

Like it or not, big bad Rogers will be the exclusive provider of Apple's beautiful and magnificent and world-changing iPhone, and as each week goes by it's getting harder and harder to mitigate disgust for the former with adoration for the latter.

Photo by Denmar from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Bell is launching a preemptive strike before the much-drooled-over iPhone lands in Canada. The Star reports that Bell customers with the new HTC Touch phone (pictured right) could get unlimited wireless data for just $7 a month. (Data transferring is necessary to get music, games, television and the web onto your phone.) The Touch is similar to the iPhone in that both substitute a keypad for a touch screen and can run applications, but the...

Police had to quell trouble at the One Bloor condo site yesterday, as queue-jumpers moved in on agents and spotholders who had been standing in line for as long as a week. Although the interlopers were ultimately forced to the back of the line, many of those waiting were still too late to buy a unit in the development. One dissatisfied linestander said, "When do I get my iPhone?"

Torontoist is one of fourteen cities in the worldwide Gothamist network. Once a week, the editors of each site—from LAist to Londonist—compile some of their most interesting posts into a brief blurb. It's Elsewhere In The Ist-A-Verse, and it appears, across the network, every Sunday.

Few companies inspire the kind of product lust that Apple does, and it's no secret that Mac users can be somewhat evangelical about the company from Cupertino. To many Apple fans in Canada, it's sheer torture that TV shows and movies aren't yet available in the Canadian iTunes Music Store, or that the iPhone is taking so damn long to cross the border. In the United States, the iPhone has been the must-have tech...

So, Molson Canada decided to do a "Twist and Score" promotion and offer the winner an iPhone. Cool, right? There's only one little problem. They said the phone would be available in January on the Rogers Wireless network, which Rogers is denying—they claim there was never a deal with Molson and they refuse to comment on whether Rogers will be the official carrier whenever the iPhone finally comes to Canada. Rogers spokeswoman Odette Coleman basically says that Molson is full of it; her actual words were, "We heard the news this morning and said 'What?'" Molson Canada spokeswoman Marie-Helene Lagace explains the fumble: "There seems to have been a misunderstanding with our agency."

Tony Blair resigns as British Prime Minister, and Gordon Brown takes over. For those not familiar with British politics, an analogy: remember when Jean Chretien stepped down and Paul Martin took over as Prime Minister, and everybody agreed that although it was clearly time to go, wow, was Paul Martin boring or what? It's like that, except pretend that Paul Martin was even more boring.

Austinist was in a musical frame of mind as they listened to the new Shins album, updated the SXSW band listings and got called "punk rock" for their efforts by MTV. And an ice storm swept through the area.

Drake, you ho, this is all your fault. The Ontario Municipal Board has approved a high-rise residential project on Queen Street West at 48 Abell Street, just steps from the Gladstone and everything hipsters cherish about Toronto's arts scene. Developers intend to build 7 condos in total with affordable housing, and the ratio of "normal people" to "artists with cool hair" will be thrown into upheaval. Unfortunately, there's not much that we or neighbourhood-preservation groups like Active 18 can do. The condo developers officially have the green light.

Apple unveils the iPhone. Entire bunches of interwebs go nuts over possibilities created by what is, when you get right down to it, just another fancy cellphone. Seriously, this isn't the iPod. This isn't a new class of product. This is at best a slight improvement on existing things to which we already had access. The iPhone will not do your hair, manage your diet or make you generally sexier. (Okay, it might make you sexier to technology fetishists.)