It seems like Palm’s new webOS PDK (plug-in development kit) can be used to port over iPhone games in a matter of days — or even hours. Given how fast some iPhone games have turned up on the Palm Pre we’ve kind of suspect there was a little something something going on.

Windows Phone 7 Series looks to be packing Xbox Live gaming muscle, so they likely won’t go the same route as Palm… but could Android and BlackBerry? And if developers can keep making great iPhone games and get webOS (and maybe others) as a bonus, is that ultimately better for iPhone gamers, or does it weaken the uniqueness of the platform? If it does, will there eventually be “exclusives” like there are on Xbox and Playstation?

Give us your views in the comments

The question was a good one, and one we’ve had on our minds as well, It came from a swede called Jezper:

I’ll keep it short.

I’m Jezper from Sweden, a long time Apple fan, currently about to replace the very last computer at home with a brand spanking new iMac i7. I’m also awaiting the release of the iPad. However, I have one question:

Will the wifi-only version somehow support tethering thru my iPhone?

Two devices, based on the same OS, with already built-in technology to share one data plan suggests a secondary contract could possibly be redundant.

From the look of your keynote, where the iPad sits well between my MacBook Pro and my iPhone, I was hoping the three of them could interact as seamless as possible.

All the best,
Jezper Söderlund

And Jobs’ answer?

No.

Sent from my iPhone

It’s hard to imagine that interest in the iPad could be even bigger, but that’s what ChangeWave’s survey just may be telling us.

Gizmodo notices something interesting as well:

The lowest end and the highest end [iPad] win, with 19% each. With the 64GB Wi-Fi getting only 8% and the 16GB Wi-Fi and 3G version getting 9% of the interest. 68% of the people interested in it want to surf the internet, 44% for email, 37% for eBooks, 28% for the reading magazines and other periodicals, and only 24% for watching video.

Is 2007, a lot of people wanted something new from a smartphone and the iPhone was the first thing in a long time to really offer that “something new”. Now in 2010, there are 75 million iPhone-platform devices on the market, so is there simply more awareness? Most people need a phone, we can’t see most people needing a tablet… or is this measuring more want than need anyway?

9to5mac continues to rip through the iPhone 3.2 SDK for iPad and has now come across the images above, which show icons for accepting a declining video chat, as well as strings referencing the same.

Video iChat on the iPhone in 4.0 would be insane, but how likely do you think it is?

People at 9to5mac have posted a way for iPhone and iPod touch users to switch away from the retro 4 number pin passcodes that Apple implements, and into a secure alpha-numeric key:

We’ve built a profile from Apple’s corporate developement kit that allows alphanumeric passcodes. All you have to do is open this link (On your iDevice only!) and you will be prompted to pick a new passcode. You will be required to make a passcode with a mix of letters and numbers and you cannot put numbers in a consecutive order. For example you cannot choose “max1234? you would have to do something such as “max2746.” If you ever want to remove this feature simply go to Settings/General/Profiles/9to5mac/ then click remove and confirm. Then change your code back to something numeric.

You can grab the link from their site (above), and they remind you they’re not responsible for you putting a hyper-secure passcode in place… then forgetting it. If you do give it a try, let us know how it works for you!

Even though it’s almost 6 months newer, Google’s Android Nexus One isn’t producing the same frame-rate as Apple’s iPhone 3GS according to a Distinctive Developments test. In fact, it’s lagging behind. The reason? iPhone 3GS is using Neon floating-point optimization and the Nexus One isn’t.

Add this to the capacitive screen performance, multitouch keyboard, and It’s interesting to see what Apple got right months or years ago, that others haven’t finished or polished even today.

According to a source, that Google pays Apple $100 million dollars a year to be the default search engine for the iPhone. Frenemies indeed:

For Apple, that’s not a lot of money. But, it’s enough that it doesn’t make sense for Apple to put considerable resources towards building its own Internet search engine. And, if Apple wanted more money or options, there’s Microsoft — with Bing and a big checkbook.

With Apple building a $2 billion dollar data center in North Carolina, and those rumors/manipulations about talks with Microsoft’s Bing, it might be less about the money (which Apple has in ginormous, Scrooge McDuck-sized piles) and about, well, what these things are usually about for Apple — control.

The iPhone’s share of mobile search is likely something Google wants to maintain and Microsoft more than likely would love to take over via default status. The oncoming iPad, depending on its level of mainstream adoption, could be a significant presence as well. And users who valued design and experience enough to get a premium device like the iPhone (or iPad in the future) could be lucrative targets for advertisers once they figure out their segmentation models.

Opera, makers of mobile web browsers popular on those platforms that don’t yet have a WebKit browser (ouch, but yeah) has announced that they’re going to show off a version of their Opera Mini proxy browser at Mobile World Congress (MWC) to partners and press.
I’m not a huge fan of proxy browsers in general — where web data is rendered on Opera’s servers, compressed, and then sent down to your phone. They remind me of those old “dial-up internet accelerators” that just cached everything locally. As broadband grew, the need for them evaporated. They also break secure connections, since they’re doing the actual web calls on their server, so things like online banking become an issue for the paranoid.
Opera makes a good point, however — for people in countries where data isn’t “unlimited” but paid-per-megabyte, or for people roaming in other countries, proxy and compression can be a big money saver.

According to Game Developers Research, their new study shows the iPhone platform is more popular with game developers than either the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP. Electronista sums up:
Demand for the iPhone has surged to where about 19 percent of all game developers are writing for the iPhone and iPod touch. The figure is more than twice as high as for the DS and PSP and results in three quarters of all mobile game developers writing for Apple’s handhelds.
While no reasons were cited for the level of developer interest in the iPhone and iPod touch, they figure the high visibility of the Apple brand combined with robust developer tools and centralized App Store model makes for a compelling package. 75 million devices on the market probably doesn’t hurt either…
Good news for iPhone, iPod touch, and eventually iPad gamers — with developers come great games.