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Now don’t get me wrong Michael Jackson is the King of Pop and will always be one of the greatest musical artists who ever lived, but I don’t understand how some of these people are going so crazy over his death. Sure it’s always sad when someone dies and he’s obviously inspired and touched millions of people around the world, but 99% of these people have never met the guy and probably never even gotten within 5 feet of him and honestly he hasn’t really been relevant for 20 or so years. He’s been messed up for years now and everyone knew that he wasn’t doing well health wise for years, just look at the guy. If it hadn’t been for the bad publicity over since 1993, I would have thought he died in 1991 after putting out “Dangerous”.

I’m not trying to bash Michael or anything, but when you look at the last 20 years what do you remember about him? In 1991 he put out his album “Dangerous” which is probably his last big hit record. It had singles like “Jam”, “Dangerous”, “Remember The Time”, and “Black or White”, pretty good songs, but nothing like his previous albums. So that was 1991, what did he put out after that, “HIStory”, which came out in 1995 and the only song I remember off of that album is “Scream” on which he teamed up with Janet Jackson and filmed one of the most expensive music videos ever (at the time). The album was a 2 disc set, but the 1st disc was basically a greatest hits album and the 2nd disc didn’t have any real notable tracks on it (that I can remember at least). Then in 2001 he put out “Invincible” which I don’t even think I could name one song off of.  So since the “Dangerous” album in 1991 there hasn’t been a hugely popular, hugely significant album/song released by Michael that I can recall, but of course he was still relevant in pop culture and it’s not because of those couple albums.

In 1993 Jackson was accused of child sexual abuse. I would argue that this was the turning point for Michael and that his life would never be the same after this. “Dangerous” was a very successful album in 1991 and to follow up with being accused of sexually abusing a child is a great way to kill anyone’s success. After that Michael married Lisa Marie Presley which was just weird, especially that kiss on the MTV Music Awards. The marriage didn’t last that long and was just another strange moment in the quirky artists life. 1995 rolled around and Michael released “HIStory” which wasn’t anything spectacular and then nothing until 2001’s “Invincible” which was also nothing special. Then in 2005 Jackson was on trial for yet another case of child sexual abuse, this time he was found innocent but I don’t think he’d ever be able to shake his reputation.

Since the early 90’s Jackson just became a very creepy guy. Despite the child sexual abuse charges, his own kids were subjected to some weird behavior. Everyone remembers the incident where he dangled one of his kids off of a balcony, I mean who does that? And who makes their kids wear blankets over their heads when they go out in public… let the kids be kids! As mean as it sounds I’m kinda glad the kids can now hopefully grow up in a better environment than they had with Michael, granted I hope Joe Jackson doesn’t get a hold of them, but the way Michael treated them was just strange. There’s no doubt that he loved his kids and treated them well, but some of his decisions regarding them just didn’t seem right. I’m sure the kids will be just fine.

We all know that Michael Jackson was a strange guy for most of his later life and it’s pretty obvious that he hasn’t made any significant contribution to the music industry since 1991, so why are seemingly normal people taking days off work to mourn the loss of this guy? I was a huge fan of Michael Jackson in the 80’s/early 90’s growing up and can still appreciate his older music today, but that was 20 years ago. Honestly if he had died after the “Dangerous” album was released in 1991 it may have been better for him. Again I don’t mean to sound like an ass, but as I mentioned above there hasn’t been anything significant since then, just a lot of strangeness. Most of you out there that are mourning the loss of Michael have never met the guy, never been near the guy and probably only know him from pictures, video and music, and guess what, you’ll always have the pictures, videos and music. Just pretend he’s still alive hanging out at neverland ranch not doing anything like he has been for years now, listen to his old music and enjoy it, I’d rather remember the guy I knew from the 80’s rather than the guy that emerged in the mid 90’s, that guy was just creepy. RIP Michael Jackson 1958-1991/2009

Fathers Day 2009, me and my brothers wanted to do something different with our dad this year to celebrate the day. For years past we have always woken up early, thrown on collared shirts and plaid pants and hit the links. Personally I don’t really care for golf, it’s too slow paced and I get very antsy. So this year we planned to get a bunch of friends, family, dads… whoever, together to go paintballing instead. We head down about an hour away from our quiet Chicago suburbs to a more rural area just outside of Joliet. CPX Sports is located out that way and is an amazing place to play paintball. There are 20+ courses spread out all over the place with loads of different games to play, this would be perfect. We got our stuff together in the parking lot and walked towards the entrance. Big John was there waiting for our private party as we entered the facilities to begin our day of bruises, welts and fun.

Big John leads us over towards the picnic area where we are to get our rental equipment; masks and guns. As we are walking through the grass and dirt towards the picnic area I step on something that feels strange in my shoe, almost like a large jagged stone somehow made it’s way up the side of my shoe and under my heel without me noticing until I stepped down. Not thinking anything of it I stepped down again and this is when I realized it was definitely not just a rock. I stopped and pulled the sole of my shoe up to further examine what was causing this uncomfortable pain in my heel. I was not expecting what I saw starring back at me. A 4″ rusty wood nail was sticking out of my shoe and stuck into my heel. I immediately reached down and pulled it out, setting on the picnic table in front of Big John, who said nothing. I sat down and took off my shoe to see the damage. I had never stepped on a nail before but had always imagined it to be a terribly painful so I expected the worst when I removed my shoe and sock.

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I finally got a chance to check out this movie, The Thirteenth Floor, after it’s been sitting on my table for the past week, I hate leaving netflix movies sitting for too long I feel like I’m not getting my money’s worth.

So I sat down and watched this flick last night not expecting too much. I couldn’t recall hearing of any of the main actors before although I did recognize a few faces when it started. The movie is about a team of computer software engineers that create this simulation sort of like The Matrix, where you lay down and your brain is transfered into the computer and you take over the body of another person inside the simulation. The simulation was programmed to represent Los Angeles in 1937 and there were certain characters that were modeled after the main characters and other people they knew in real life. So the old guy that leads the team of engineers/programmers has been moonlighting inside the simulation and banging young women. It’s obviously just a simulation and not real life so as long as the timer is set to pull him out automatically, there really aren’t any consequences to getting his rocks off with young showgirls.

While on one of these sex journeys to the past he leaves a note with a bartender telling him to give it to Douglas, then he comes back to the real world and is carved up like a turkey (killed). Before he’s killed he calls Douglas and tells him that he left a message for him in the system. So of course Douglas has to go into the simulation and try to retrieve this message from the bartender who took it upon himself to read the letter and turn him into a hostile asshole. So the rest of the movie is about Douglas trying to figure out who killed the old man and why.

Ok, now there are going to be some spoilers that will seriously ruin the end of the movie. So if you plan on watching the movie anytime soon and don’t want the entire plot ruined for you I would stop reading now.

The big twist in the movie is the fact that what Douglas and his team think is the real world is actually another simulation. There are, in a sense, three different worlds here. The real world, which has created a simulation, Douglas’ real world, which as subsequently created another simulation, the 1937 world. Douglas’ world is a simulation and it’s also the first simulation to ever create a simulation within a simulation. Apparently the actual real world has a bunch of these simulations that residents can hang out in and tool around with to get away from the actual real world. And this is exactly what the old man found out, he discovered that what they thought was the real world was actually a simulation.

Apparently these simulations only cover a certain area of the world, a city, and once you venture out to the end of the world all you see is green grid lines indicating that you have reached the limits of the simulation. This is what the old man wrote in his letter which then caused the bartender to drive his car to the limits and realize that his world is a sham. So then he goes rogue and tries to kill Douglas when he’s in their world romping around.

Ok so that’s basically the movie, but I do have a couple questions that didn’t really make sense to me. At one point in Douglas’ world, his assistant guy plugs into the simulation to check it out and since his alter-ego in the simulation is that bartender he takes over his body. So he’s driving around the simulation looking like the bartender, but then he gets hit by a car and killed. When he’s killed he wakes up in his world (Douglas’ world), but he’s not himself, the bartenders personality and mind has now jumped from the simulation to the “real world”.

So if you die in the simulation, since your brain was transfered into the computer, you die, I get that. It’s just like The Matrix, but in this case apparently whoever’s body you took over in the simulation now jumps out to your world and takes over your body. I don’t understand how this would work since when you go into the simulation only your brain is copied into the simulation, the other person that you’re taking over’s brain is not copied back to yours. So how does the simulation brain jump out into the world above it?

Another problem I have with this is how do they control this? In Douglas’ world it’s not really an issue because the simulation is a very secret project and only 3 people total in the movie have ever gone into it, thus negating something like this happening frequently. However, since Douglas’ world is a simulation itself there is a world on top of it and this world has personal simulators that people wear at home just laying around the house. They are like futuristic looking headphones that you wear and they plug you in to the simulation. Now if everyone has access to technology like this in the future world, you would think that this situation of someone dying in the matrix would happen fairly often, thus bringing simulated personalities out of the simulation on a regular basis. I know if I had access to a simulation like this I would be doing all sorts of death defying things and probably killing myself on a regular basis. It is just a simulation, I know it’s a simulation whether the other people in the simulated world know it or not… so why should dying there harm me at all?

So while the movie was good it did leave me with a few questions that just don’t seem to make sense to me. If anyone else has seen the movie can you offer an explanation? Maybe I missed something, maybe the brains were copied back and forth, I don’t know, I just don’t understand. Oh, but props to that old dude for using the simulation has his personal whore house…. I bet he had a blast.

When it comes to video game consoles the Xbox 360 has always been my first choice. If a game comes out for both the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 I’ll immediately pick up the 360 version without thinking twice. My main reasoning for this is the controller, I can’t stand the PS3 controller. The analog sticks are way too loose and almost too sensitive, the trigger buttons are a little awkward to me, and the feel of the controller itself in my hand just feels off compared to the 360 controller. So based on that, I haven’t really purchased any games for the PS3, I use it mainly for a Blu-Ray player and a way for me to stream media from my computer to my TV. Prior to inFAMOUS, the only game I have for the PS3 is Little Big Planet, and that one hasn’t even been opened yet. So when I heard that there was this really cool game coming out and it was exclusive to PS3 I kind of had my reservations, but after a month or so in the stores I decided I could throw down the $40 to pick up a used copy on eBay.

I can’t remember character names or anything like that, but the main premise behind inFAMOUS is that you’re this dude that has survived a massive “terrorist” attack of some sort that has leveled the city you live in and turned you into a walking lightning bolt. What that means is you can harness electricity and use it to your advantage whether it’s as a weapon or just sliding along power lines. You are now trying to find the people responsible for turning the city into ruins. The town is overrun with goons in hoodies, some of which have some electrical powers as well, but mostly just guns.

To start off the game reminds me a lot of Crackdown, which I’m a huge fan of. You can climb pretty much anything in the city, you can jump off the buildings, slide along power lines with your electrical powers, and do all sorts of crazy stuff. I found myself perfectly happy just running around the tops of buildings collecting “shards” which help power you up, rather than completing the actual story of the game. I did the same thing in Crackdown collecting orbs. There’s just something about an open world environment where you can climb on everything that makes a game that much more fun. So I spent a good deal of time just jumping around from building to building, but that’s not all there is to do.

There is a main story line that gets you closer and closer to finding out who’s responsible for the destruction of the city, but there are also side story lines that help clean up the city, section by section. Some of these story lines even give you the option of being good or evil. I personally chose the good side so I’m not sure if the game itself is that much different if you choose evil, but from what I understand people in the city will treat you differently if you turn to the dark side. Personally I didn’t want a bunch of pissed off city folk throwing shit at me while the reapers are also trying to shoot me so I chose the good side. Some of the side stories start to become a little repetitive and there were a few times where I thought I played the same thing twice, but it turns out it was just a different part of town.

The main story line is cool, you’re basically just running around town trying to piece together this mystery of who blew up the city and why. Your powers increase along the way as well as developing new powers to help you move around faster and kill enemies more efficiently. I don’t find that these missions are repetitive in the way that Grand Theft Auto’s missions were. I still find myself wanting to figure out the next piece of the puzzle and I still enjoy zapping the hell out of those damn reapers.

Overall I’m very happy with my purchase of inFAMOUS and it definitely did not stay in the packaging like Little Big Planet did (yeah yeah I bought it used, there was no packaging). I highly recommend this game for the PS3 if you’re looking for something new to play. I needed something to hold myself over with until Modern Warfare 2 and Crackdown 2 come out this fall and this was a perfect fit. This may be the first game that I play through to 100%, it’s that much fun. My only complaint is that I wish it had some sort of multiplayer aspect to it, at least a co-op mode so that me and a friend could blow shit up together, but it’s a small complaint since it’s an amazing single player game.

UPDATE: I figured out how to get the EDGE network back up and running on my unlocked 1st Gen unlocked iPhone running 3.0 os using a AT&T Wireless aka Cingular Blue Sim. I was able to update a carrier file that was supposed to unlock tethering on the 3G iPhone and change the apn settings to the cingular blue settings I used on a plist file before, then just emailed myself the file, clicked it on the iPhone (using wifi of course) and then installed it, and BAM! EDGE network works perfectly again. Still doesn’t fix youtube though, that’s another issue.

I’m probably one of very few people that still have an old AT&T Wireless aka Cingular Blue plan these days and because of this I now have to use unlocked phones. I won’t have to do this much longer as my iPhone 3G S should be here tomorrow if the Apple website ever tells me the damn thing shipped (as I was typing this I got the confirmation email)…. Anyways, when the original iPhone came out 2 years ago I bought an 8gb version once the price dropped and the iPhone Dev Team figured out a way to unlock it.

So I’ve been using an unlocked iPhone 2G (as people like to call them) for a couple years now and with each firmware release I have to wait until the dev team figures out if the update is going to break the unlock and/or the jailbreak. So the iPhone 3.0 OS was released yesterday (or last week if you grabbed the Gold Master release of it off a torrent site) and with it came the waiting game. I decided to hold off with the GM (gold master) release and just wait for the official version only because I had no idea if I could update and keep my unlock or if there was going to be anything different between the two versions and I really only wanted to update once. I was at work yesterday when the official version was released so I obviously couldn’t update right away so I turned to the forums to see if anyone with a 2G unlocked iPhone had updated there phone and what their results were, which actually confused me more.

Some people were reporting that when they updated their phones to 3.0 it retained the unlock but the phone was stuck at the “Emergency calls only” screen. However they could still make calls to any number and receive calls, they just couldn’t get past that activation screen. Then there were other people that updated and everything was fine, it retained the unlock and the activation. So I was a little worried that the phone would be stuck at the activation screen, but I decided to do it anyways and eventually people figured out what they were doing differently to get different results.

Apparently if you unlocked/jailbroken the phone with the pwnage software for the Mac you would retain the unlock and the activation, the only thing that supposedly wouldn’t work was YouTube and everyone was having a problem with this. If you unlocked/jailbroken with quickpwn or winpwn then your phone would remain unlocked but not activated. To get arround the 2nd scenario you needed to find a 2.2 or 2.2.1 firmware that was created with pwnage, reflash your phone using iTunes 8.1 then update iTunes to 8.2 and reflash with 3.0.

My phone was original unlocked/jailbroken using pwnage on my mac so I figured I was good and went ahead with the update. I used Mac OSX Leopard, iTunes 8.2, and did the option + update method which is where you download the update separately from iTunes and then when you option click the update button in iTunes it asks you where the firmware file is and you find it manually, instead of having it download and install right from Apple and iTunes. I’ve read that it doesn’t matter though if you do this method or the iTunes method to update if you used pwnage, it will still remain unlocked and jailbroken. I also disconnected the computer from the internet just in case it tried to access the activation servers or something that people had talked about.

The update went smoothly, took about 15 minutes to go all the way through and restart. When the phone fired back up it remained unlocked and activated so I could still make phone calls and receive text messages, however the EDGE network would not work. Now I know exactly why this is, but since the phone is no longer jailbroken I cannot access the file system in order to edit the plist file I need to in order to set the network settings to the mMode servers. So that’s kind of a bummer. The internet and everything still works over Wi-Fi, but nothing over EDGE.

The other thing I’ve noticed today is that the battery is being drained ridiculously fast. I don’t know if it was because the push notifications were turned on or if it’s because the phone keeps trying to access the EDGE network and can’t or if it’s something else entirely. The phone has been off the charger since 6 am this morning, it’s now almost noon and I’m at less than half battery. I have gone in, turned off Push, turned off mail checking, and anything else that I can think of that would try to ping a server while on EDGE so hopefully the battery lasts me until 4pm when I get home today.

So that was my experience with updating my unlocked 1st Generation iPhone 2G to the iPhone 3.0 OS. Honestly I wish I hadn’t updated at this point, but there’s no reason to go through the hassle of downgrading it back to 2.2 or 2.2.1 since my iPhone 3G S will be here tomorrow and activated legitimately on AT&T. I did record the whole process with my VadoHD, but it’s pretty straight forward and I don’t think anyone needs video proof that this method works perfectly fine, but if you really want the video let me know and I can edit it down and upload it.

It came out yesterday that Sammy Sosa tested positive for performance enhancing drugs back in 2003 when he was with the Cubs. It’s the same report that outed Alex Rodriguez earlier in the year. Because of this it seems that he will not a get a bid into the baseball hall of fame, and rightfully so if you ask me, using steroids is flat out cheating.

On my way into work this morning I happened to turn on Drex in the Morning, ugh. If you live near Chicago then you probably know the radio show. It’s comprised of Drex and 2 chicks, Angie and Mel T. Out of all 3 of them I think Angie is probably the only one I can stand to listen to, yet I can’t stand the show anyways, but when Q101 is on commercial I’d rather listen to them than B96. So this was the topic this morning and Drex kept saying that he could care less if the players use steroids, ok that’s fine that’s your opinion, but then he goes on to say that it makes for a better game, really?!!? He says that he goes to a baseball game to see people hit homeruns, run fast, and be amazing ball players, he goes to hockey games just for the fights and is disappointed if there isn’t one, and he goes to football games to see Urlacher run someone over… Obviously he just like’s seeing dude on dude action. Yeah, there are homeruns in baseball, but that’s not all the game is about. I would get bored out of my mind if every ball that every player hit was a homerun, there’s not added skill in hitting a homerun, you just need the power to do so. If you were a good player before taking steroids you’re going to be a good player after them, just now you will have more power to hit the ball further. They took a call on this and some guy said that steroids also improve your eye sight and reaction time thus making it easier for you to hit the ball. Ok, maybe they do, but if you were able to hit the ball before you’re still going to be able to hit the ball so I don’t think your eye sight and reaction time are going to be that big of a factor, it’s the power aspect of it.

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I have yet to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but I already have to question the premise of the movie. I understand that it’s a fictional movie and that something like this reverse aging,  can’t happen, but my questions come from the way the “aging” is portrayed in the movie. Now even though I have not seen the movie myself, a couple of my co-workers have and we have discussed this many times so I know that it doesn’t happen at any point in the movie.

The idea behind the movie is that Benjamin Button is an old man when he is born. He’s obviously young in years, but his body is like that of an old man, yet he’s small in size. This is where my first complaint comes from, if it was truly reverse aging wouldn’t he be born a full size man? I would think if he’s starting out as an old man, body wise, he should have the full body of an old man. So while old men aren’t necessarily the tallest people (as people usually shrink as they get older) he would still be of average height which would have made for a terribly painful birth and chances are his mother would have never survived to see her freak man-child grow up to be an elderly baby. But of course this isn’t how the movie works, he’s born at about the same size as a normal baby but he has old wrinkly skin, frail bones, poor eye sight, and other features that an old man would have.

As he goes through life trying to show up Forrest Gump, he begins to get younger, stronger, more Brad Pitt-like in appearance and basically ages in reverse. So when he’s middle aged, he’s pretty much peaked, and then starts to grow younger in appearance, but older in age. Now, as I am told by my co-workers, he gets back to being a baby and just falls asleep and dies or something, as a small baby-man-child thing. At first I was a little disappointed in this because I thought for sure we would get to see him go all the way down to the fetus level and just disappear. Maybe once he gets down to a fertilized egg state they could have artificially placed the egg back inside his mother and had him reborn, possibly as a normal child this time or maybe even more freakish than he was the first time. That would be a sweet way to do a sequel, the mother kept the body as it got smaller and smaller then just jammed the egg up in her and had herself the same son again, but he still had all the memories from the first time he was born so instead of having the brain capacity and knowledge of a 2 year old and looking like he’s 100, he would have a lifetime of knowledge and be a baby. It might get a little weird when the baby comes out and instead of crying he asks for a beer, but I think the shock would wear off pretty quickly once the mother realized how she could exploit him and make millions, but that’s not really the point I’m trying to make here, although I would be up for writing a script for the sequel if there are any producers out there.

Back to the story of Benjamin Button: Man Baby. So he gets older in years, but younger in appearance and yet when he’s born he’s not born a full grown old man like he should be. Ok, so if he wasn’t born big he should still die big right? He should technically  have the body of an old man yet the features of a baby if the story was to truly follow the same path. So why at the end of the movie is he a baby?!?!?! This makes no sense to me. At the end of the movie we should be left with a full grown man (full grown as in like an 80 year old man) with the features of a baby, big googly eyes, possibly a full head of lush hair, always a big smile on his face, huge head and a terrible sense of balance. These are the things we should have ended up with at the end, but he should still have a lifetime of knowledge, so despite the fact that he has a hard time wiping his own ass (which isn’t necessarily specific to a baby) he should still be able to tell you about his time in the war or about all those chicks he banged when he looked like Brad Pitt. I don’t know if I’d still have him bang his girl at that point though, I think it would be weird for both the audience to watch as well as his woman to endure. Plus if we’re following this new path of aging he shouldn’t be able to get a hard on since his body would have gone through reverse puberty. He could probably be the only guy that could go to a rated R movie with his 17 year old son and get denied.

As much as the movie stretches the imagination, and steals the plot line from Forrest Gump, as it is, I think the writer should have really though things through and realized that shrinking down into a baby would not really be possible and that the story should have gone the way I mentioned above. Hopefully my idea for a sequel will be taken seriously and put into production, I really think it could be an Oscar contender in the near future.

I’m sure most of you have heard about the new iPhone that was announced yesterday, the iPhone 3GS. If you want to know what the differences are between the iPhone 3G and the new iPhone 3GS check out the post after this one on the site, this post is for something a little different.

I frequent a few Mac forums just to read up on the latest happenings with the company whether they are rumors or just about new products or whatever and all I’ve been reading today are complaints about the pricing model for the new iPhone 3GS. The most common complaint comes from people that bought the iPhone 3G when it first came out last July. These people are being told that they cannot get the advertised price of $199/299 for the 16/32 gb models of the iPhone 3GS and they will need to pay anywhere from $399 to $699 to get the new phone. Obviously a few people are upset by this (and when I say a few, I mean tons). I’ve read complaints saying everything from “well they let us upgrade from the first iPhone to the 3G model for the advertised price” to “how can Apple sell this phone for $700″ (there are more complaints of course).

Ok first of all lets talk about that $700 price tag for the unsubsidized phone, which will lead into the first point from above. A lot of people on the forums were complaining that this is a ridiculous price to charge for the phone and phones these days don’t cost that much, blah blah blah. Apparently they don’t understand the idea of a cell phone company subsidizing the price of a phone in order to get you in a contract for 1-2+ years. Cell phone companies will often give you a phone for a cheaper price if you are a new customer (or currently out of contract) and are willing to sign a 1-2 year contract. The cell phone company knows that over the course of the years in your contract they will make back the money that they took off of the phone price, thus making it worth it to them to give you a cheaper phone. This is how it is with all phones! Some people don’t understand this. Try walking into the Verizon or Sprint store in the middle of your contract and try to buy a new phone, they are going to make you pay the FULL PRICE for the phone. The full price is usually listed on the price tags under the display phones in very small print, that’s what you’re going to pay if you’re not eligible for an upgrade or your not out of contract. Some cellular companies will give you a little money off a new phone if you’re still under contract and want to upgrade and are eligible, but that little money off is coming off the retail price of the phone, not the $99 subsidized pricing of that Blackberry you got when you signed the contract. 

This is how the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS work, they are subsidized phones, which leads me into the first argument about the upgrade process from the first iPhone to the iPhone 3G. When Apple first announced the iPhone it was priced at something like $399 and $499. These prices were unsubsidized, you could walk into any Apple or AT&T store and buy one without doing anything in the store, just pay and leave. You didn’t sign a contract right there, you didn’t activate it in the store, it never even came out of the box until you got home with it. All the activation was done through iTunes at home, which is then where you agreed to the 2 year contract. AT&T did not give you a better price on the phone, you paid that retail price for the phone, which would be the same as you paying the $499-699 for the iPhone 3GS (numbers are a little weird cause people keep reporting different prices on the website). 

Now when the iPhone 3G came out and was priced at $199-299 (I believe), this was a subsidized price, so like I said above, AT&T was eating part of the retail cost of the phone in order to get you to sign up for a contract. Now here’s where some of the confusion comes in. AT&T and Apple allowed people to upgrade from the first iPhone to the iPhone 3G at the subsidized pricing, but only because people that purchased the original iPhone paid the full price and AT&T did not need to recoup any costs from those phones as all the cost was on the consumer. Now with the new iPhone 3GS the subsidized prices are $199/299, but people that bought the iPhone 3G at the subsidized rate and are locked into a 2 year contract are not eligible for that pricing point which is where the $499-699 prices are coming from and is why some people are getting pissed. They don’t understand why they could upgrade from the original iPhone to the 3G for the cheap price, but they can’t upgrade from the 3G to the 3GS for the cheap price. Obviously AT&T covered part of the price of their 3G iPhone and hasn’t recouped the cost of that yet so why would they front you another ~$400 for the iPhone 3GS? That makes absolutely no sense from a business aspect and not to mention it’s how all cell phone companies have always worked, this is nothing new. Nokia releases new cell phones all the time and you can’t go in and upgrade to the latest one for the subsidized price while you’re still under contract, it just doesn’t work that way. 

People have tried to come up with work around to be able to get the new phone when it comes out on June 19th, for example some people are saying they will just pay the ETF (early termination fee) of $175 to cancel their current AT&T contract and then sign up for a new one, which will allow them to buy the iPhone 3GS at the $199/299 price points thus making the iPhone 3GS cost them $374/474 respectively. While that method does put the phone cheaper than it would be if you had to pay the retail price for it, it does seem like a lot of work and chances are you are going to lose your original phone number in the process. 

Now there are people that have been offered the $199/299 prices after they reach the 1 year mark of the contract on the 3G which puts them around mid-July. A lot of these people say they can wait until then without a problem if it means saving a couple hundred bucks, but of course there are those people that can’t wait. Now I may have an idea for those people that can’t wait the month, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the hassle either. Apple has a 30 day return period for the iPhone so technically you could pay full price for the iPhone 3GS when it comes out on the 19th then when you’re eligible for the lower price point in mid-July, return the phone, get your money back and then re-purchase the phone at the lower price. I’m not 100% sure this would work, but it’s possible. But you’re still going to be paying the full retail price up front. 

So seriously people, you act like you’ve never bought a cell phone before. It’s not like subsidized pricing just came out of nowhere with these new phones. Even the Palm Pre (that a lot of people are threatening to switch to over their stupid arguments on the iPhone pricing policy) has a retail price of over $800. So those people that are still locked into a Sprint contract and want the Pre probably won’t be able to get it for the $199 that it’s advertised for (I’m sure they won’t be paying the $800 that Best Buy is selling for though).

So Apple announced the new iPhone today at WWDC 09, the iPhone 3GS. It’s got more computing power, faster 3G capabilities, 3megapixel camera with video recording, digital compass stuff, nike+ built in, voice control, video editing capabilities, auto focus, auto white balance, better low light pictures, and a new battery that lasts longer than the old one.

The things you’re not going to get, that were rumored for the last couple weeks, are a front facing video camera for video chatting, the black bezel instead of silver, and the flat black matte back for the phone. Yeah I’m a little disappointed that there’s no front camera and the back isn’t the flat black, but I think it’s a good upgrade from my original iPhone (EDGE), but it may not be worth it to a lot of people that have the iPhone 3G. 

So the new 16gb model of the iPhone 3GS will run you $199 and the 32gb version is $299, and they’ve lowered the price of the iPhone 3G to $99. So I think no matter what Apple is going to get a lot of people buying iPhones in the next couple weeks. $99 for an iPhone is pretty ridiculous.

They also showed off a bunch of new apps and integration for the iPhone 3.0 OS which comes out next wednesday June 17th. I may be a little more excited for that than anything just because they are opening up so much more of the phone to developers, I think there’s going to be some really cool things that come out of it. 

So what did you guys think of the new iPhone 3GS announcement today? Will you be upgrading or buying an iPhone next friday?

WWDC 09 is set to start tomorrow morning, Monday June 8th, and there have been tons of rumors of a new iPhone being announced. Apple first announced the iPhone at WWDC in 07 followed by the 3G version being announced there last year so naturally people assume that this year we will get another new version of the Jesus phone.

If you’ve ever read sites like Mac Rumors, Tuaw or Apple Insider, you know that Mac fanboys can get a little ridiculous when it comes to their beloved Apple products and rumors. Over the past few weeks the rumors have started flying about what to expect from Apple in regards to a new iPhone and I decided to put together this post today to outline some of those rumors along with “leaked” (most likely fake) images, and see which ones actually come true tomorrow and which ones surprise everyone. I think the biggest surprise would be if Apple didn’t even announce a new iPhone tomorrow and all they did was talk about Snow Leopard, but we’ll see… let’s get to the rumors and pictures (after the jump cause there’s a lot of them).

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