applesinsider

By AppleInsider Staff Published: 04:15 PM EST One iPhone developer looking to expand the capabilities of the iPhone's home screen has demonstrated to AppleInsider a working proof-of-concept that implements the Stacks features of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard into the iPhone's Springboard application. Appropriately dubbed "Stack," the project was conceived back in the early days of iPhone hacks through a basic implementation of Mac OS X Leopard's 'Stacks' feature that allows iPhone users to keep a quick-launch list of their applications in their handset's dock. It was written by Irish developer Steven Troughton-Smith. "The first iPhone OS device released in Ireland was the original iPod touch, which, then, sported a pretty semi-transparent Dock with reflections. I had known that I wanted to develop for the iPhone OS as soon as it was announced, but it was only on reception of my first device that I saw what I wanted to create," he told AppleInsider . "The iPod's Dock was so alike the Leopard Dock that I just had to try to create an implementation of Leopard's 'Stacks' feature for the iPhone. After some work, and learning about CoreAnimation (then LayerKit) on the fly, the app was ready to run. It was a far cry from perfect, but it worked." This was October 2007, and several months later when the iPhone SDK was announced it became clear that 'Stack', as the application was called, would not be acceptable for distribution on the App Store due to its nature. It's been roughly two years since then, and the developer has taken another stab at making his solution more tidy and fluid, and as close to an official Apple implementation as possible. The Stack v3 (demonstrated below) is a ground-up rewrite that turns the plugin into an actual icon on an iPhone's home screen. Users can drag and reorder it anywhere, as they wish, and can also apply a single gesture tap to fan the stack out into a menu of applications that are ready to be launched. To add icons to the Stack, users simply drag and drop them right from the home screen. Stack v3 is now more than just a concept, but only runs on jail-broken iPhones. "Unfortunately, I can never release this officially, but it showcases one of the awesome possibilities one could have on their iPhone if Apple were to enable a safe and sanctioned way of writing plugins to other applications, or to SpringBoard (the home screen) in particular," Troughton-Smith says. "I can't stand having a Jailbroken device, but it's the only way I have of running Stack. I know many people would enjoy an official 'Stack' feature on iPhone OS, as the several hundred thousand downloaders of the previous version prove." As can be seen in the video above, Stack v3 makes it possible to launch an additional 15 applications from the handset's primary...

By Aidan Malley Published: 07:15 PM EST Residents of major US cities that have had near-unusable 3G since the iPhone 3G's launch should finally get relief in the months ahead, AT&T says. Meanwhile, Palm is getting its own relief via breakthrough sales of its Pre smartphone, but Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is getting no break frp, Warren Buffett, who says the executive violated good business principles by keeping his liver transplant a secret. AT&T sees end in sight for worst 3G woes Those who live in at least New York City and San Francisco should expect a major improvement in the quality of AT&T's 3G over the next several months , carrier spokesman Mark Siegel claimed this week. Speaking to Gearlog , he said the congestion problem in these areas is primarily owing to their continuing dependence on AT&T's older 1,900MHz 3G network. Since every iPhone user in these cities has to use this frequency, the network is completely overwhelmed and triggers the by now infamous slow speeds, dropped calls and reversions back to 2G that have affected the areas since the iPhone 3G launched in July of last year. To solve the problem, AT&T is finally adding the 850MHz band to its 3G in these cities and is simultaneously adding 2,100 extra cell stations plus improving the underlying bandwidth for those stations. All three should give iPhones much more headroom. Outside of Spiegel's comments, it's also known that the lower frequency should provide better overall range as well as improved penetration indoors, where 1,900MHz frequencies often break up. Poor 3G speeds have quickly become a central problem for AT&T in the past year and have proven a liability as many other countries have gone without similar slowdowns. Even outside of major hubs, many customers have sued AT&T alleging that it has deliberately misled Americans by making speed claims it could never match. Palm Pre may have topped 150,000 sales, 1,000,000 app downloads Apple wasn't the only company to hear good news on Wednesday as RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky estimated that Palm has had banner sales of its multi-touch Pre phone less than three weeks after it first appeared in stores. In an investor's note, Abramsky observed that most Sprint stores are still selling out of Pres each day even though many of these are restocked daily with new units. That in turn led to the RBC analyst increasing an estimate for sales so far by another 30,000 phones to reach 150,000. He also increased his prediction for the quarter from 470,000 to 550,000 Pres and now sees Palm shipping 4.1 million phones of any type in its fiscal 2010, and 6.5 million by 2011; both are significant leaps up from 3.2 million and 4.6 million each year. While the Pre will shoulder much of the load for early successes, the researcher believes growth will only accelerate as Palm adds more carriers in coming months, such as Bell Canada and, in 2010, Verizon. Abramsky further trusts in rumors that a Centro-sized phone known as the Eos will go on sale...