The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

No one expects the iPhone 3G S lines to stretch on as the 3G lines did, but that doesn't mean there isn't some anticipation. In fact, in several places where lines will allow (as in, not in my mall) there are queues forming already for the fastest iPhone yet.

How many of you are willing to wait in line? Several of us are getting shiny new S-for-speed-emblazoned iPhones tomorrow. Steve had his shipped, Tim is going to the AT&T store, Chris ordered online but might check out the madness anyway, and I've set up an account already and will hopefully see a concierge at the local Apple Store in the morning. Stay tuned for our coverage of standing in line, swiping a credit card and dialing a phone -- with pictures.

In the meanwhile, you can see what current lineholders are seeing and posting. Here's a sample (post more in the comments if you find other liveblogs or tweets).

FIRST! The iLife blog guys managed to line up at the big glass cube store in NYC. Stay dry, guys!
There's a Ustream channel, of course.
Richard Lai is liveblogging from London... which should be opening pretty soon as I type this.

Sang shares some pics from the Apple Store in San Diego's University Towne Center from about 1:30am ET, below.

In the ecosystem of the App Store, the postcard-sending app occupies a healthy niche; about two pagefuls -- 60 apps -- show up in the store, for a category weighting of 0.125 flatulans. The flatulan, of course, is the unit of measurement of App Store penetration, equaling the 480 individual apps that include the word 'fart' somewhere in their description.

Among those postcard apps, there are several standouts for virtual cards (ADA winner Postage, for example) and even a few that let you send physical postcards for a small fee (TapTapCards, goPostal and Postino).

With Postman (iTunes link/website), released today by Freeverse and Taptivate for $0.99 for iPhone OS 3.0 devices, the postcard-sending app category gets a social media boost. Postman lets you deliver your two-sided ecards (yes, the app gives you the option of simulating the back of a traditional postcard, complete with stamp graphic) via Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, email, or simple upload to the postmanapp.com website for public review. You can already track several tweeted postcards (some which probably should never have been sent.) You can also simply save your postcards to the photo roll on the device.

Creating postcards with Postman is fast and easy; all the controls are persistent in a small icon bar at the top of the screen and large front/back and 'share' buttons at the bottom.

Postman has style and several handy features. In addition to using your own camera images/photo library or the included stock images for postcard sources, you can locate yourself on a Google map and use that graphic instead (this leverages the Map API in iPhone 3.0). Once you pick a graphic, you've got a choice of one-click filters to apply that spice up the look of your card. You can easily switch fonts and colors for your text input on the card front or back, and then send with a couple of taps.

There are a few rough edges with the first release. I found the lack of a portrait mode frustrating, as I'm actually a faster typist on the vertical keyboard; not that you'll be keying in a chapter of War and Peace, but there's quite a bit of room for copy on the postcard back and I'd like to be able to rotate on that screen. The selection widgets seem cramped a bit, particularly the one for the stock templates. It would be nice to save postcards in progress and switch back to them, but for now there's only one card and no way to revert to earlier versions.

If you want to have super-slick, email-only postcards from your iPhone, and are willing to spend a couple of dollars more for some added flexibility, you may be better off with Postage or the still-awesome Comic Touch. For $0.99, however, the first pass of Postman delivers ease of use and some very handy delivery mechanisms on the back end.

With the release of iPhone OS 3.0, I was wondering if emoji icons still worked (they do), and then it finally dawned on me: why not iChat? A quick search turned up exactly what I was looking for: Emoji for iChat. This free downloadable icon pack basically adds the iPhone Emoji icons to iChat, accessible from the standard smiley-face dropdown menu. For it to work, however, both sides have to have it installed; if your recipient does not use the tool, all they'll see is gibberish.

Emoji for iChat is a free download from Einar Andersson & Tor Rauden Källstigen. The download includes an installer which will require you to restart iChat.

Despite all of the hoopla the last few days about TweetDeck becoming available for iPhone, I decided to stick with a tried and true friend -- Twittelator Pro. My loyalty was rewarded with a new version of the iPhone Twitter client that takes advantage of many of the features of iPhone OS 3.0.

Twittelator Pro 3.0 [App Store] is priced at US$4.99 for new users, and the upgrade is free for owners of previous versions. The app is from Andrew Stone's BigStonePhone, and builds upon capabilities of the new iPhone OS. Along with the existing features such as offline tweeting, a built-in browser, and being able to handle multiple Twitter accounts, Twittelator Pro 3.0 now adds the following goodies to 3.0 iPhones:

• Record, edit, and tweet video with the 3G S
• Record and tweet audio
• Copy, paste, select, select all, and undo text (shake to undo)
• Paste photos into tweets
• Compose and send email from within the app
• Get a zoomable map of a tweeter's location

My personal favorite feature is the built-in browser in Twittelator Pro, which keeps me in the app while I'm tapping on links. I've also been able to delete one other Twitter/geolocation app off of my iPhone thanks to the tweeter location maps.

Be sure to check out the gallery below for a plethora of pithy pictures of this great app.

Everyone's favorite Apple analyst, Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray, is positively bullish on Apple and the iPhone.

In a forecast released today and reported in AppleInsider, Munster says he expects Apple to sell a half-million units of the iPhone 3G S this weekend. This is much more than the 270,000 first-generation iPhones sold in the first weekend in 2007, but pales in comparison to the 1 million mark set last year with the release of the iPhone 3G.

The difference this year? When the iPhone 3G was released in 2008, the new equipment was also accompanied by a drop in price and availability in 21 countries. For new users, the 3G S is the same price as the 3G, and the release of the 3G S tomorrow will only happen in 8 key market countries.

Munster's other prognostications include a total of 3 million iPhones sold in June for a quarterly total of 5 million, and an estimate of 7 million sold in the upcoming September quarter. He continues to rate AAPL as a buy, and has a $180 target share price for Apple.

iPod touch users are finally getting a taste of what iPhone users have had since iPhone OS 2.2: Google Street View. iPhone 3.0 Software Update for iPod touch includes an update to the Maps application that enables Google Street View, and it works just like it does on the iPhone.

Additionally, the "Find my iPhone" feature is implemented as "Find my iPod touch" for iPod touch users. It works exactly like Megan described yesterday, but is perhaps less accurate than using the iPhone's built-in GPS. It'll at least get you close, so long as it's connected to a Wi-Fi network. If it is, you can send messages to the iPod touch and wipe its memory.

If you do send a message to an iPod touch that's turned off or not connected to a Wi-Fi network, the message is queued until it's on and connected.

Both features appear to work on both first- and second-generation iPod touch devices. As Megan mentioned, since the first-generation iPod touch lacks a speaker, it won't make the "ping" noise associated with Find my iPhone unless you have speakers plugged in. Perhaps less useful for finding it in the house, but still helpful if you left it on a table at the park.

Have you found an undocumented feature that the iPhone 3.0 Software Update for iPod touch provides? Let us know by tipping us, or leaving a comment.

Thanks, Harold, Ben, Rocky, and everyone who sent this in!

As we reported last night, it's out, and the Howard Stern fans aren't happy that this app eliminates the two channels Stern appears on.

There are still 120 channels that do work, so I thought I'd give it a try. The app is called Sirius XM Premium Online [App Store] and it's free but requires a paid subscription if you don't already have one.

You log in (one time) with your user name and password. After a few seconds, you are authenticated and ready to explore the radio offerings.

The app allows you to browse by category, channels, or by favorites you provide. There is a shopping cart if you want to tag something for purchase at the iTunes store. (Ah, that's why Apple liked this app.)

I found the performance of the player pretty good. On a WiFi network I was able to acquire a signal or switch channels in 3 seconds. On the 3G network with moderate signal strength, it took about 7 seconds. You can get a display that tells you what is playing, or just see a list of stations.

I found the interface slow to respond at times. I often had to tap a few times to change stations. Audio quality was not ultra high fidelity, but about what you'd expect from streaming radio. I listened on Sennheiser headphones.

Howard Stern fans are very upset about not having their hero on this app. Sirius certainly could have told customers well in advance that he wouldn't be available and saved some of this pain. They handled the merger of XM with Sirius the same way. XM customers didn't know what was happening until the morning it happened. For a struggling company, it seems suicidal to constantly mislead and disappoint paying customers.

I asked Patrick Reilly, Senior VP of Communications for Sirius what happened to Stern. His response: "We aren't commenting beyond what was in the press release: Some select programming, including MLB Play-by-Play, NFL Play-by-Play, SIRIUS NASCAR Radio, and Howard Stern, will not be available on the iPhone and iPod touch. Listeners will continue to be able to access that programming through the platforms they are currently offered on."

Not a very satisfying answer. There may be very good contractual reasons why Stern and the other channels aren't offered, and Sirius XM customers deserve a better explanation. It doesn't look like one is forthcoming.

At any rate, the app works, and works well for the channels that it does have. You'll have to decide if it is worth the money versus free music apps like Pandora, Last.fm, AOL Radio and others. By the way, Dave Thomas of the Cars.com blog alerts us to their comparison of alternatives to the Sirius XM app.

See, now this is the kind of game I want from my iPhone -- the accelerometer isn't just a gimmick thrown in with the gameplay, it's the actual premise of the game. Diorama is a weird little Marble Madness-style maze game, but the catch here is that instead of just tilting the accelerometer to move the ball (which you do), the level of the game actually moves with you, so that you get a stereoscopic kind of effect, as if the stage is real inside your iPhone's screen. Tough to explain, but as soon as you see it above, you'll know what it's like. We've seen this kind of effect before in apps like MotionX's Dice roller, but in this case, it's actually part of the game -- you can only find the paths to take around the stages by actually tilting the device. And for extra 3D viewing, there's an actual 3D mode, so if you happen to have red and cyan glasses around, you can switch on the mode for anaglyphic 3D.

The app is the first iPhone release from a company called Drömsynt, and though the initial reports on iTunes say the game is pretty tough (it is a pain navigating the quickly-moving ball around those pathways), for just 99 cents, it's definitely worth downloading, if only to see how it works. So many apps just throw in a few iPhone-specific features as afterthoughts, but it's refreshing to see a game like this (or like Zen Bound, which really depends on the multitouch screen) rely on the originality of the hardware itself.

With iPhone OS 3.0 only having been released yesterday, two big companies are already angling to be developers' go-to for setting up push notifications and other online services for the new apps. OpenFeint was the first service we've heard about -- they have been offering social networking connections to developers for a while, but with the new firmware release, they tell us that they're also hosting options for both push notifications and microtransactions to their stable of app developers.

That stable includes apps like Pocket God and Aurora Feint (Danielle Cassley of both Aurora Feint and OpenFeint told us a while back that she was very excited at the prospect of microtransactions with 3.0), and both of those games, as well as others on the service, are planning to include push notifications with "social challenges" -- you'll challenge a friend to complete a certain goal in game, and then get notified when they meet that goal. Look for those new features in an OpenFeint app near you.

And OpenFeint isn't the only service jockeying for developers' attention -- Urban Airship is also making a bid to host push notifications for iPhone game developers. They've landed one of the first push-enabled games, Tap Tap Revenge, and are looking to offer push to more devs, along with in-app purchase support as well. They don't quite have the library together that OpenFeint already does, but their service integrates, they say, in just a matter of hours, and their aim is to make it "brain dead easy" for developers.

The floodgates are open, and we're sure to see more and more companies jump in on hosting plans like this in the future. Prepare to be pushed.

Citing an exclusive source from within AT&T, appmodo reports that "tethering support is coming later this summer" is AT&T-speak for "tethering support is coming at the end of July."

It won't be coming cheaply, however; appmodo's source says a tethering option will cost AT&T customers a whopping $55 a month.

While this is cheaper than the $70 rumor that's been making the rounds, it still strikes me as ridiculous that AT&T is charging additional money for this option in the first place. Considering their "unlimited" data plan is reportedly only unlimited until you reach 5 GB or so in any given month, it seems preposterous for AT&T to charge their customers an extra fee to use the iPhone to access the internet via tethering. But, since AT&T's wrangling caused Skype to be restricted to WiFi only and SlingPlayer Mobile to be almost totally crippled compared to the same software on different models of smartphones running on AT&T's network, perhaps this shouldn't come as a surprise.

With all the negative press AT&T has been getting over the past week, I have to wonder: what do they have against the iPhone?

Editor's Note: As many of our commenters have pointed out, several other sites have posted instructions and a hacked carrier file to allow tethering on AT&T-activated iPhones immediately; some have linked to an application that allows one-click tethering. We encourage anyone who is trying one of these procedures to be cautious in your network usage, as you may rapidly run afoul of your contract terms with your carrier.