$99 iPhone 3G? It exists. Video

$99 iPhone 3G? It exists. Video Transcript

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>> What's cracking? I'm Brian Tong, and welcome to the Apple Byte. It's all the good, and the bad inside the world of Apple, so let's get to the news. The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which is the world's largest convention for the mobile industry recently wrapped up, and even though Apple wasn't there, they were on everyone's mind. CNET's Margaret Reardon covered a panel featuring the CEOs from Microsoft, Nokia, and AT and T, discussing how Apple's closed ecosystem of hardware and software fragments the industry, and openness that helped the [inaudible] be more successful. They argued if there were fewer operating systems available on more phones, developers can create apps that run on more devices, therefore giving you the people more choice overall. Now sure that makes sense in their perfect mobile world, and I'm more than willing to get a phone that does what I want, even better than the iPhone. So make it for me Microsoft, you too Nokia. Until then, I think I'm gonna be sticking with this guy. Now in more Mobile World Congress news, it's all about the apps. Taking a hint from Apple, Nokia, Windows Mobile, and Symbian all announced their own versions of mobile app stores in the near future. Google's Android and Palm already have stores up and running, and Rim's Blackberry app store is coming soon. Now I'm guessing over twenty thousand iPhone apps, and over five hundred million downloads might have tipped them off, you think? Now turn by turn GPS on an iPhone was finally shown off at the convention by a company called Sygig [assumed spelling]. You might recall Tom Tom and Tel Nav both said they had stuff in the works, but this is the first proof of concept we've seen. The problem? Well the chances we'll make it to your phone without violating the iPhone SDK are pretty slim right now. It's actually believed that the current SDK prohibits GPS driving apps. You know, maybe they should have checked that out before going through all that trouble and releasing some to the public. Geez, okay. We're going to transition now from GPS to dashboards, well the Mac OSX dashboard that is, and I know it's real corny, but if you want to set your dashboard widgets to live on your desktop, we'll show you how.

>> The dashboard is a convenient tool when you want to access information in a hurry. But it can take a second or two to launch, and it eats up precious memory. I'm Wilson Tang, and here are some tips and tricks that you can do with a dashboard. ^M00:02:23 [ music ] ^M00:02:29 When launching the dashboard, especially when you have a lot of widgets, it can take a minute for all the widgets to load up. Well we all want to know the weather outside right now, or you might just want to keep track of a flight without having to launch the dashboard in the first place. Here's a trick to keep a dashboard widget active all the time on your desktop. First launch the terminal. It's in the utilities folders in the applications folder. Keep in mind, anything you do with a terminal can screw up your Mac, so be extra careful, and back up all your data. In the terminal type in the following in all lower caps, default space right space come dot apple dot dashboard space devmode space and in upper caps YES. You may have to restart, or log off for this to take effect. But you should be able to drag widgets onto your desktop. You can do this by entering the dashboard with a keyboard command, clicking and holding the widget you want to keep on your desktop, and then pressing the keyboard command again. Now this widget will live on your desktop. But if you just hate the dashboard or the memory it consumes, you can stop the dashboard from ever launching in the first place. In the terminal type in default space right space com dot apple dot dashboard space mcx dash disabled space dash bullion space and then all caps YES. This will stop the dashboard from launching with the finder in the dock when you restart the computer. To undo any of these actions, just replace YES with NO in the terminal control. I'm Wilson Tang, and these are a few tips and tricks that you can use on your dashboard. [ music ]

>> All right, thanks for that good stuff Wilson. So I know you guys have heard the constant rumors, and I don't even bring them up on the show if I think they're total crap. But I can now finally confirm the existence of a ninety nine dollar iPhone 3G. It's true. AT and T is once again selling refurbished iPhone 3Gs. So you can get an eight gig model for ninety nine bucks, and the sixteen gig version for one ninety nine. They do warn there might be some scratches on the surface of the phone, so beware. Now we showed you this photo of the WAS [assumed spelling] last week, and we asked for your help, and we wanted to read off a few of the captions we got. So here we go. Fleishman says whoo, this is almost as hard as working with Steve Jobs. Liz wrote in from the window to the walk, to the sweat drip down my, okay, all right, I'm not gonna finish that caption, if you know the song, you know the magic word. But here's one that's my personal favorite, from Ely in Illinois, when the WAS in the house man drop it like it's hot, drop it likes it's hot, drop it like it's hot. Come on, how could you not love an Apple Byte with a Snoop Dog reference in there? So thanks for all your entries everyone, and remember to send your emails to the Apple Byte at CNET.com. We'll get to as many as we can. I'm Brian Tong, thanks for watching. And come back next time for another byte of the Apple. [ music ]