Appletell

I was awoken this morning by a text message from o2, which read, “iPhone 3G is here. The iPhone you have been waiting to early upgrade to. Order from 8am today.“

Yup! If you’re an o2 customer/wannabe customer, you can now pre-order the iPhone 3G at o2’s website! o2 say that pre-orders are on a first-come, first-served basis, and if you order sooner, there’s a bigger chance it will arrive on July the 11th via courier!

If you’re going through the upgrade route, you will need to visit the o2 iPhone upgrade page where you will be asked to type in your iPhone mobile number. You will then receive a text message with an upgrade code, which you must then enter before the upgrade process can continue.

The website is acting extremely erratically (at time of writing), whether this is due to traffic or o2 not getting their web page up in time is unknown. The upgrade site currently throws me between being able to order the phone and a maintenance page (8 a.m., ey’ o2?).

No word on how new customers are getting on, but I have a feeling they might not be having as much trouble. I haven’t as yet been able to pre-order my 3G iPhone. Come on o2, fix your website!

Happy iPhone 3G pre-ordering UK o2 customers.

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If you haven’t come across Growl yet, you need to go and get it now. Growl has become a part of my daily usage on my Mac, seamlessly integrating with dozens of shareware applications. For those that don’t know, Growl is a notifications system for Mac OS X - hundreds, maybe even thousands, of Mac developers have integrated the system into their apps, to bring the ultimate notifications system. For example, Skype notifications of incoming calls and IM messages.

This weekend, Growl’s website received a brand new design. The new site is much easier to navigate and looks much nicer. Unfortunately, the appear to be using the same web hosting as before - which means right now their site is very slow, if up at all.

Via [TUAW]

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The MacBook Air news has been fairly quiet recently, apart from the fact that some MBAs are shipping already. Now, the MacBook Air has its own home on the Apple Support web site. If you’re a soon-to-be MacBook Air owner, you should definitely take a look at the User’s Guide (PDF), chime in on the forums, and figure out how to setup your MacBook Air. Or if you’re just curious about Apple’s latest notebook, you can take a read on how it works and chat in jealousy with the people that have ordered them.

There’s a lot really interesting information about the MacBook Air in the support section. I learned how to share DVDs and CDs via remote disc, even though I’m not going to buy a MacBook Air, it’s useful to know. And if you’ve got nothing to do, just waiting for that order status on the Apple Online Store to change - then this will give you something to do while you wait.

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Unless you have been living under a rock the last few weeks, you should have noticed that the American Apple Website saw an update after WWDC ‘07. This left all 30 other stores looking out dated, and bland. Today though, Apple has updated most international websites to match the newly designed American Website.

Each website sports the floating navigation bar and updated support page. If it weren’t for the fact that the “iPhone“ tab is missing from the navigation bar, all of the other sites match the US site perfectly. This update is welcome, as the old white store was getting stale and congested.

Apple didn’t spread the design love to all countries though, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Spain and Taiwan still haven’t gotten an updated website yet. Just check any of the other International websites, and you will find that they have been polished up. Now you can tell all your friends you can say “The new iMac. You can’t be too thin. Or too powerful.“ in German.

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Apple has posted a list of steps on how to get your very own iPhone from the Apple Store. We recently told you how Apple sold out of all the iPhones at it’s retail stores, and this page gives you the info on how to get yours.

To check if your local Apple Store has availability, go online and check after 9:00 p.m. as the stores usually update their stock availability nightly. The iPhone sales start at 9:00 a.m. so make sure you get in line early for yours. The phones will be sold on a first come, first serve basis. So start lining up early and don’t forget your coffee as you may be in for a wait.

Read [Apple.com]

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Rejoice! Something that you can read that isn’t iPhone related! As you all must know by now, Apple released a re-design of their site shortly after Steve Jobs’ Keynote, June 11th. This design is a welcome change from the previous 7-year-old-design. Teddy Hwang takes an interesting look at Apple’s current design, and the designs they have had over the years.

Apple’s website has a strong history of being a source of inspiration for other web designers. The site has been able to keep up with the latest design trends while maintaining a similar look for years. [...] Since 1998, the front page of Apple has focused on showcasing their latest product with one large image complemented with a short, often witty, blurb. Little has changed since then and Apple’s latest product, the iPhone, is well presented on the current frontpage. Previous announced products and headlines are still shown in smaller boxes below the main image.

The post highlights some of the history behind Apple’s website, and provides great insight into the design that Apple is currently using. If you are interested in web design, or are an Apple fan, I recommend reading the full article.

He also provides links so you can look back over every design change apple.com has undergone. Looking at the Internet Archives apple.com page is also cool, as you can look back on Apple’s website and see it in times like when it was the Safari beta v2.0 that graced the front page.

Read [Teddy Hwang]

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Aside from the major redesign on Apple.com, several minor updates were also launched on Apple’s website throughout the week. The search bar is the latest item to receive the same treatment; it now has the dynamic look and feel of Spotlight on Mac OS X.

Possible results start to appear as you enter your query, just like Google Suggest. Search results are categorized into groups which can then be expanded or contracted, depending on what you wish to look at. It also stores your recent searches in the sidebar, making it convenient to search for stuff you need the most.

Unfortunately, this search doesn’t seem to work with Apple’s discussion forums, although it must be said that the forums already has some powerful search features.

Read [TUAW]

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As many of you are probably aware by now, Apple has launched their new site re-design. Almost all of their major pages saw an update, including their iPhone page. With the new look, also came more content.

Each video on the iPod, Phone and Internet pages can now be viewed from a side angle, instead of the traditional front view. Next, under the High Technology pages, 3 videos titled “Multi-touch,“ “OS X” and “Sensors” have been added. Basically each video just quickly goes over the under-lying technologies used in each feature.

Another sub-page that Apple added to the iPhone is titled “Get ready for iPhone.” This page states that to set up the iPhone, you’ll need an account with the iTunes Store. This makes sense as most of the features of the iPhone rely on transferring information through iTunes (Music/Movies, Contacts, Calendars etc.). The rest of the page outlines all of the services that are synced through iTunes, and gives a few tips on getting ready to add content to your iPhone.

If you are planning on buying an iPhone, or planning to load up your cardboard cut-out iPhone soon, these tips are worth taking a look at.

Read [Apple.com]

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