But I don't get the rectangular boxes on the GUI for the phone.
Rocky- The ipad and iphone ( I believe) uses Safari for iOS in a very similar fashion. On the ipad it is 9 "boxes" Instead of tabs look like we have on our Firefox browser, they fill a desktop with 6 or 9 boxes, with an image of the web page. You touch that box and it expands to full screen. There is a small picon at the top to touch and it shrinks that page back to the matrix of 6 or 9 boxes. The little x is to delete the page from active.
I am not even sure why they need it.
Just business! In the beginning Apple needed a carrier to offer their newest device and wanted a good fiscal arrangement, in exchange for exclusivity. AT&T won the bid for this, ie. were willing to pay the price. By having only one carrier, the sales were limited at first as necessary because it is well known Apple had early production volume problems. As time passes, and the iphone proved itself, Apple has been able to resolve many ( not all) it's supply issues and AT&T got caught demonstrating an inadequate network to handle the iphone load. Because of these two reasons
it is unlikely that the exclusive agreement will be renewed, but as in business, we never know for sure until it is a done deal.
Rocky- All over the tech Blogs? Heck do you even read the blogs on this? It IS all over the blogs for the past 2 years, and most of that talk is just speculation based on little actual evidence. It's not the question of IF but rather when. All contracts have a term, you know.
I believe that it won't just be Verizon but considering it is the largest carrier in the US, it is the likely choice and making a CDMA version of the iphone has an obvious outlet, Verizon and Sprint. But when I spoke to guys at Sprint, it seemed unlikely Apple would make a third device for Sprint's different 4G service which Sprint would like to have. Verizon is the bigger market and LTE is what iphone will eventually have because it is also compatible with AT&T. The real question is whether T-Mobile will pick up the GSM version? To date everything is rumor. Likely there will still be people who will deny this even after an announcement is officially made. I stopped beliving the rumors earlier this year when I examined the terms of the AT&T exclusive deal that gave the end as 2011. But considering that iphone's new releases are calendar specific, my guess is that the CDMA won't be available until June of 2011. Most of the people I spoke with at Verizon seem to think they will have it in January. I believe they will make an official announcement at MacWorld or an Apple announcement in February along with new ipad announcements but the actual phone won't be available until June.
OK I answered these OT questions, to continue this line. maybe we should resurrect an old thread for this iphone on AT&T forever belief.