Late this evening, visitors to the Apple Online Store were met with the typical “We’ll Be Back Soon” message.

Additionally this evening, Apple has posted a message on the dotMac service section for current dotMac subscribers reading:

“MobileMe Launch
7/9/2008, 6pm-12am PT

MobileMe will be available as soon as possible during this maintenance window.”

It is unknown if these two events have anything in common, as the online Apple Store always goes down prior to new product announcements but does periodically go down for maintenance. Finally, Apple today has confirmed an 8AM launch time for the iPhone 3G in its own retail stores. On the apple.com/retail page, “iPhone 3G July 11th” graphics have been updated to “iPhone 3G July 11 at 8AM”. The 8AM launch time reflects the AT&T store official launch time which was revealed earlier last week. Stay tuned to theiLife for continuing coverage of MobileMe and the iPhone 3G launch later this week.

Guest poster Dave Merten from Macsimum News gives us a tutorial of migrating from the current iPhone to the new iPhone 3G. You can read his original post here on Macsiumum News!

Getting ready to replace your iPhone this Friday with a new 3G model? Well, this article explains how to replace an original iPhone with an iPhone 3G using the same carrier. If you follow these steps to backup your original iPhone first, and then restore the backup to your iPhone 3G, your saved SMS messages, email accounts, photos, notes, and other personal settings will be present on your iPhone 3G.

To replace an original iPhone with an iPhone 3G, follow these steps:

1. Purchase iPhone 3G from an Apple Store or from a carrier. In the US, iPhone 3G includes a SIM and your original iPhone’s SIM is not needed. Your original iPhone account information will be transferred to iPhone 3G’s included SIM when you purchase iPhone 3G. To dispose of your original iPhone SIM, contact your carrier. In other countries where the original iPhone was sold, you can use your original iPhone’s SIM with iPhone 3G. Contact your carrier for additional information.

6. Verify that your saved SMS messages, email accounts and passwords, photos, notes, and other personal settings are present on your iPhone 3G.

If saved SMS messages, email accounts and passwords, photos, notes, or other personal settings are not present on your new iPhone 3G, the restore from backup may not have been successful. In that case, verify your original iPhone is properly backed up (see step 3), then use iTunes to restore iPhone OS on iPhone 3G and continue following these instructions at step 4.
To erase your original iPhone so someone else can use it, tap Settings > General > Reset > Erase all contents and settings on your original iPhone.

The site has been in a dormant state for the past couple of weeks. This is about to change. Behold July 11th!

Its been almost a month since WWDC 2008 and it is finally come time for Apple to deliver its goodies. All three major announcements from WWDC- Mobile Me, the iPhone 3G and the iPhone OS 2.0 firmware update are expected to be delivered this coming Friday. You can rest assured theiLife will have continuing coverage of all three events. We be in line at the 5th Avenue Apple Store in New York City later this week and will bring you the latest coverage (live, of course) of not only the iPhone 3G launch but MobileMe and the new iPhone OS firmware 2.0. Keep posted for more details coming soon!

Last night, I saw Wall E in theaters with a couple of friends. After reading the great reviews I decided that Wall E might be worth my trip to the theater- and my $10! Indeed it was.

For someone who goes to the movies maybe once a year, going out to see Wall E was definitely worth it. Wall E tells the story of a robot who has survived for over 700 years cleaning up garbage on the Earth but has developed a personality. Wall E is an acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class. Once joined with a large fleet, the protagonist Wall E is the last robot surviving from the failed cleanup efforts.

Like other Pixar movies, Wall E is very light on the surface, but touches many larger issues about humanity all while appealing to virtually every demographic. The movie deeply roots itself with issues of consumerism. All the humans have been controlled by a huge corporation named Big N’ Large and have since trashed the Earth. The humans have since evolved to become large, lazy, materialistic creatures that do nothing but watch video screens.

Wall E proves how far Pixar has come with animation- you know this when you see an ‘animated’ movie and it never once occurs to you that it is animated. Everything in Wall E, from Space scenes to the apocalyptic Earth look incredible, and aren’t devoid of other unique Pixar characters. In short, Wall E is a typical Pixar production taken to the next level. If you can, go see it right now- you will enjoy Wall E. Bonus points for anyone who can catch all the Apple references!!

Today, Friday June 27th, there is less than two weeks until the launch of Apple’s new 3G iPhone.

Things have been quiet here at theiLife.com for the past week- we have to apologize for that! Our writers have been busy doing various other things, from graduating to parties and vacations, the number of articles published this past week has been limited. Have no fear, things are returning to normal very soon. Particularly leading up to the launch of the 3G iPhone, where we will be teaming up with theDigitalLifestyle.tv to provide live video coverage and a liveblog from the line at the 5th Avenue Apple Store in New York City. We are still formulating our exact plans at this time, but when we have finalized them we will certainly let you know.

With over half of the time between the iPhone 3G product announcement and for sale date of July 11 behind us, I have made up my mind on whether I’ll be upgrading my original iPhone to an iPhone 3G. I actually made my decision almost immediately, then I changed it, then changed it again, and probably a few more times.

As usual, Steve Jobs and Apple made me want the latest and greatest, in this case the iPhone 3G. The product was long rumored, and it was practically a forgone conclusion that the announcement would come at WWDC. In typical fashion, Jobs introduced the product touting all of the great improvements and neglecting to mention any possible downsides.

There were a number of factors I considered:

• The brand new factor: Since I have had my iPhone in September, I have never felt that there was another device out there that I would prefer to have. What a great feeling! Once the iPhone 3G is on the market, that may not be the case. But since it’s still an iPhone, it won’t be so bad.
• 3G: One of most anticipated features of the iPhone 3G was of course the 3G capability. Sure that will make data transfer, downloading, using certain applications, and other functionalities faster, but at what sacrifice? Battery life? Apple says no, but that is yet to be seen for sure. Price? Yes, the data plan will cost $10 more per month. That’s easily covered by skipping other things if it is that important.

  The speed difference is not important to me. Sure, some things take longer to do than I’d like, but as more and more Web sites are optimized for mobile devices, and specifically the iPhone, that speed won’t be as important. I’m not a heavy mobile surfer, and I use the data more for e-mail than anything else.

• GPS: GPS is very cool, I have to admit. Every time I use a unit, it boggles my mind that it knows exactly where I am. That accuracy is great, but it is also a little bit weird. GPS on the iPhone makes little sense for me since the times I find myself in unfamiliar surroundings, I already have a GPS unit in the (rental) car. No way am I going to substitute the handheld iPhone for a GPS unit and try to drive simultaneously.

  The buzz surrounding the built in GPS sure are the location aware features. Twitter can know exactly where I am, Facebook can know exactly where I am, the photos I take can be tagged with location, I can find people near me using my phone… who even knows what else will come out of this? There’s a cool factor there. There’s also a scary factor there. I don’t think I want or need the world to know exactly where I am at any or every moment. For those times I do want that added information transmitted, the original iPhone’s location finding will work just fine.

• Price and capacity: It is inevitable that the price will go down and the capacity will go up on a device like this. I didn’t expect, however, that the price would go down to the level it has! That’s still at least $199 plus a new contract plus a higher monthly rate that I would be paying. Sure I could sell my current iPhone, but it’s not in perfect condition. I could work the warranty to get a new one, but I’m still at the mercy of what the market will offer for it.

  It’s pretty easy to predict, given Apple’s history and the history already of the iPhone, that there will be a higher capacity model within the next year and probably an even further updated phone in that time frame or one not too much longer than that.

• Software: Software is the key piece. The iPhone 2.0 software is on its way, and its new features are going to be great for me. Specifically, the Exchange support will be awesome. The app store will be great too. Since the 2.0 software will be available to all iPhone owners, I’ll get it on my original iPhone. If Apple had limited 2.0 to the iPhone 3G, that would have been a big factor.

So, if you haven’t already figured it out, I am not going to upgrade. At least not yet. By all means, if you are not already an iPhone owner, you should get the iPhone 3G! If you are an iPhone owner, weigh your options, but keep in mind that there will be something bigger and better right around the corner and you aren’t lagging too far behind as it is.

iPhone owners: are you planning to upgrade?

Since I missed my opportunity with the 100th post, I will take this occasion to reflect upon the development of theiLife.com.

I started theiLife.com on a whim back in October 2007. I was meaning to start a blog for some time, and during my senior year I finally had enough time to dedicate to the site. I always thought theiLife was going to be a more of a casual blog, where I would post maybe three or four times a week.

This changed one weekend when I called Sidney and asked if he would be interested in helping me code a dynamic video page for theiLife. Of course, he was willing to help out, so we created the videos section; where I uploaded my extensive collection of Apple Commercials. Suddenly I found myself on theiLife blogging more often.

In early December, when I first heard news that Apple was opening its latest flagship store in New York City, I invited Sidney to join me and help report for our theiLife. That weekend, after we posted all our content from the opening, the website got picked up by larger news sources. Finally we started driving real traffic, and from there things have been growing ever since.

It is amazing looking back over the past few months, on how much this website has changed my life, and what we have accomplished in such a little amount of time. I hope as the 200th post that we can all look forward to 200 in the near future. To all the readers and supporters, thank you! Remember, if you would like to contact myself or anyone on theiLife.com staff, check out our contact page.

Since the release of the 3G iPhone at WWDC last week, there are still many questions unanswered and speculation regarding the new iPhone.

This years WWDC keynote brought us the hotly anticipated 3G iPhone. Aggressively priced at $199, it is clear that Apple wants to take on the smartphone market and get iPhones in more hands this year. True to some rumors, the new iPhone is launching for $199 in 22 countries later next month. Thanks to subsidization by AT&T and the other official iPhone carriers in other countries, Apple was able to cut the price of the iPhone in half.

While this is ultimately a win-win situation for both AT&T and Apple, it could cause some consumers headaches. One of the greatest parts of the iPhone started with the privilege to activate at home through iTunes. This slick implementation of Apple’s existing software allowed for consumers to avoid the hassle of activating your phone in the store- and for Apple employees to quickly sell more iPhones, Macs or iPods.

Although it is still preliminary speculation at this point, it seems that because of the subsidization, In-Store activation is going to be required. This means that if you want to buy an iPhone, you must purchase the phone and activate in the store regardless if you’re in an AT&T store or an Apple Store. During busy times, such as the holiday season or during launch day, July 11th, this could mean many Apple Store employees being tied up with activating iPhones instead of helping other customers with Mac or iPod sales- which just leaves both sides aggravated.

It also means that the unlocked market is going to suffer. Because Apple gave consumers the liberty to purchase the hardware without any binding contract, many people took their iPhones onto other GSM networks such as T-Mobile. It is believed that over 500,000 iPhones have been unlocked and brought onto other networks around the world. This time around, because AT&T is paying for a portion of the iPhone hardware, requiring immediate, ins-store activation would make sense to further deter these people from bringing the iPhone to other networks.

However, some theorize that since Apple already requires a credit card for an iPhone purchase, they could charge AT&T’s subsidization amount back to their card if the phone wasn’t activated within a certain period of time. This could allow Apple to continue to activate phones through iTunes, but keep AT&T from loosing money.

Because there hasn’t been any official announcement, theoretically, we won’t know for certain until there is. The iPhone 3G is set to launch on July 11th. If you can’t wait, check out our new dashboard widget. Stay tuned for more information regarding the launch and launch coverage of the new 3G iPhone here at theiLife.com.

Guest poster Dan Foy from Macsimum News gives us an overview of Growl. You can read his original post here on Macsiumum News!

You’re working on a project at work, and you hear the “bing” of Mail, telling you there’s a new e-mail. You are confronted with the question, “Do I stop what I’m doing and see if the e-mail is important, or do I take a chance and keep working on my project?”

What if you didn’t have to? What if a little box popped up on the side of your screen with a summary of the e-mail, giving you a short-term look at the e-mail so you can decide if it’s important or not?
Believe it or not, the software that does that is already here. And it’s free (donations are accepted).
It’s called Growl. Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X: it allows applications that support Growl to send you notifications (took the description right off their web site because I couldn’t have said it better myself).

I had heard of Growl, but didn’t see much use for it until I accidentally installed it. Yes, I accidentally installed Growl. I don’t even know what program installed it for me (which I don’t like, but I seem to recall an installer asking me if I wanted to install Growl, so I must have said “yes.”)
Anyway, all of a sudden, I started seeing notifications when my RSS reader, the open-source Vienna, downloaded new articles. Thought that was pretty handy. I could tell when there were new articles without bumping down to the bottom of the screen and making the dock appear (Vienna has a number notifier in its dock icon and I keep my dock hidden). Saves time.
So I started investigating and found Growl in my System Preferences (in the Other category at the bottom). After some exploration, I found that there is a plugin for Apple’s Mail program that allows Growl to notify you of new e-mail.

And there are a whole bunch of other programs that are either written to work with Growl, and for some others there are plugins.

But the one that really helps me is the Mail plugin. My day job is at a newspaper. I do page design for my home paper and tech support for several other papers. As part of that, I get an enormous amount of e-mail from the Associated Press. Most of if deals with their web-based video network, and for some reason, they can’t just send me the important stuff, they send me an email every time they post a new video.

I have them whisked off to a folder in Mail, but it “bing”s every time one of those e-mails come in and I don’t always have time to see whether or not it’s important. But I want to know immediately if someone is having a problem related to their deadlines.
Growl shows me who the email is from and allows me to more-easily ignore the AP stuff.
And that’s just one example. I also use Semulov, which unmounts volumes. Now when a volume unmounts, I see it in a Growl notification.
I’m sure you can come up with many other uses, but I just wanted to introduce you to this cool little program.

For those of us who are counting down every last second until the 3G iPhone launch, we have got a new Dashboard widget for you! This widget is styled after the new iPhone 3G, and comes in two colors- Black and White. More details of the coverage from the iPhone 3G launch coming soon, but for now- get yours today!

Download iPhone 3G Countdown Widget (Black) [332KB]
Download iPhone 3G Countdown Widget (White) [332KB]