iPhone 5 Reservations Go Live at Deutsche Telekom

Deutsche Telekom-owned wireless operator T-Mobile has announced reservations for Apple’s as-of-yet unreleased iPhone 5. The carrier is issuing support tickets to those who are putting off their purchase of an iPhone 4, or iPhone 3GS, reports say.

Deutsche Telekom AG is a telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn, Germany.

As the largest company of its kind in Europe, Deutsche Telekom was formed in 1996 when the former state-owned monopoly Deutsche Bundespost was privatized.

The German government holds a 15% stake in company stock directly as of June 2008. Another 17% is owned through the government's bank, KfW.

Deutsche Telekom has various subsidiaries, including T-Mobile.

The coupons the carrier is now distributing will ensure customer eligibility for claiming Apple’s next-gen smartphone when it’s made physically available.

It will be done on a first-come-first-served basis. Clients must contact sales representatives in a brick-and-mortar store owned by Deutsche Telekom in order to reserve a ticket.

Alternately, they can call up customer support, according to reports.

Following such rumors, a Deutsche Telekom AG spokesperson talked to the press and confirmed their initiative.

Reportedly, the German wireless operator is expecting supply bottlenecks for the fifth-generation iPhone.

Spokesman Alexander von Schmettow also said they will give coupons to those who expressly request the successor the current-generation hardware (iPhone 4).

It is unclear whether Apple plans to launch a single new iPhone model this year, or two (including a cheaper one), as many analysts have speculated.

An iPhone 4S acting as an incremental upgrade of the current hardware is widely expected to arrive alongside the more beefed-up, fully fledged fifth-generation iPhone this fall.

Some, however, believe Apple only plans to launch an iPhone 4S, not an iPhone 5 as well.

Read more »

Nearly 6 Million People Viewed the Windows 8 Metro Video Demo

The number of views for the first Windows 8 preview video which showcased the new Metro look and feel of the operating system has grown to almost 6 million, Microsoft revealed. 

At the time of this article, Building "Windows 8" - Video #1 on YouTube has been viewed by at least 5,531,944 people. 

The 6 million figure shared by Steven Sinofsky, President, Windows and Windows Live Division must take into account additional views, especially considering that the video is available from additional sources. 

According to the Windows boss, users should not rush to make up their mind about Metro in Windows 8 until they actually get to play with the operating system. 

“We also know that even with that much background, until you can touch the software it is going to be difficult to develop a complete picture. Many products look better or worse until you can use them. I’m fairly certain that in this case we have a lot of upside,” he stated. 

Sinofsky has already promised that the Windows 8 testing program will be expanded soon, and that in the coming months more and more users will get to take a pre-release Build of the OS out for a spin. 

Users that watched the Windows 8 metro video, as well devoured the information shared via the ‘Building Windows 8’ blog, have already started providing feedback to Microsoft. 

“In many of the comments, people primarily focused on Metro as what I would say are the graphical elements of the user interface—it was Metro v. Aero. We’ve seen a clear turn where Aero is the past and Metro is the future. And with that a strong desire for the existing Windows experience to take on a new look or a Metro redesign,” Sinofsky said. 

“These comments are usually focused on style and looking "old" or "new." Generally, those details of the visual styling come later in the engineering process, but we wrongly assumed that this was known. Stating that, we could have short-circuited this concern.”

Read more »