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O2 to Launch iPhone 3G in the UK on July 11 O2 today announced that the innovative iPhone 3G will be available in the UK on July 11 for free on selected O2 consumer and business tariffs and that it will also be available for Pay & Go customers.

Existing iPhone customers will be able to upgrade to the new iPhone 3G, taking advantage of the same great offers as new customers. iPhone 3G combines all the revolutionary features of iPhone with 3G networking that is twice as fast* as the first generation iPhone, built-in GPS for expanded location based mobile services, and iPhone 2.0 software which includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and runs the hundreds of third party applications already built with the recently released iPhone SDK.

”The iPhone is already a phenomenal success in the UK and now we’re making this revolutionary product more affordable for even more customers,” said Ronan Dunne, CEO of O2 in the UK. “iPhone quickly became our fastest selling device ever and with this new pricing, iPhone 3G is an unbeatable proposition.”iPhone 3G will be available in the UK through O2, Carphone Warehouse and Apple sales channels with the early upgrade offer for existing customers only available through www.o2.co.uk/iPhone where anyone can also register their interest in iPhone 3G for regular news and updates.

The 8GB model will cost just £99 on a new £30 per month tariff and the existing £35 per month tariff. Consumers choosing either the £45 or £75 per month tariffs will get the 8GB iPhone 3G for free. The 16GB iPhone 3G will cost £159 on the £30 and £35 tariffs, £59 on the £45 tariff and it will be free on the £75 tariff.

All customers will continue to receive unlimited data browsing over O2’s HSDPA network and unlimited access to 9,500 Wi-Fi hotspots through both The Cloud and now BT Openzone.

Both the 8GB and 16GB iPhone 3G will also be available for O2 Pay & Go customers with pricing to be confirmed in the coming weeks. Fit for Business iPhone 3G will also be available on current O2 business tariffs as a monthly bolt on, with the device available for free on the majority of business tariffs on a 24 or 36 month contract.

iPhone 3G business customers can also receive many of the same benefits as existing O2 business customers including unlimited calls between O2 customers, unlimited calls to ten landlines, shareable minutes and texts between users plus multi-user billing and activation and free, 24×7 access to business customer care specialists.

Adobe says next Photoshop will be 64-bit native on Windows only

Adobe’s John Nack has an interesting post on Photoshop, Lightroom, and Adobe’s 64-bit roadmap. His purpose is to break a bit of news as gently as possible: that the next edition of Photoshop will have a 64-bit-native version for Windows 64-bit operating systems, but not for the Mac.

The problem is that Mac OS X has two different programming interfaces, known as Carbon and Cocoa. Nack explains:

As we wrapped up Photoshop CS3, our plan was to ship 64-bit versions of the next version of Photoshop for both Mac and Windows. On the Mac Photoshop (like the rest of the Creative Suite, not to mention applications like Apple’s Final Cut Pro and iTunes) relies on Apple’s Carbon technology. Apple’s OS team was busy enabling a 64-bit version of Carbon, a prerequisite for letting Carbon-based apps run 64-bit-native.

At the WWDC show last June, however, Adobe & other developers learned that Apple had decided to stop their Carbon 64 efforts. This means that 64-bit Mac apps need to be written to use Cocoa (as Lightroom is) instead of Carbon. This means that we’ll need to rewrite large parts of Photoshop and its plug-ins (potentially affecting over a million lines of code) to move it from Carbon to Cocoa.

Naturally the news has brought a small number of less charitable Mac users out from under their rickety old bridges, but as John Gruber says on Daring Fireball: “I think it’s hard to argue that Adobe should have somehow known the end was near for Carbon when even Apple didn’t know.”

Currently, Windows XP and Vista come in two versions: one runs 16-bit and 32-bit programs, while the other runs 32-bit and 64-bit programs. Today, Photoshop runs happily on both the 16/32-bit and 32/64-bit versions. However, the 64-bit version of Photoshop will only run on the 32/64-bit versions of Windows. Both versions are included when you buy Vista, though Microsoft only ships the code in the box with Vista Ultimate.

The Mac users who plan to run Windows versions of Photoshop (as they did before the so-called “universal binary” version of Adobe’s Creative Suite came out) will be happy to know that Apple’s BootCamp software already supports 64-bit Vista.

OK, now I really don’t know why or how I found this. Actually, I was searching for hotels in Paris and this image came up. This really IS the treehouse we all wanted when we were kids. This is either someone with far too much time on their hands, someone protesting about the building of a new road bypass or the set of a new Ewok movie.

Wherever it’s from it’s seriously cool!

It’s a sad day. Neil Aspinall, once roadie to The Beatles and head-honcho of Apple Corps has died aged 66.

I’d like to send me thoughts out to everyone over at Apple and Neil’s family.

I still remember nervously sitting in on my first ever ‘real’ interview to come face-to-face with this older Liverpudlian chap. Had I known at the time that he was Neil Aspinall I’m sure I’d have shown a bit more respect and not have spoken quite so much! Saying that, I still got the job and had the pleasure of working alongisde him for 3 1/2 years until late 2006.

He was one of the old school and a genuinely nice guy. He’s going to be missed. Definitely taken too early.

RIP.