BELLAMYBUDIMAN

For celebrities who would like to follow the trails of Indra Bekti and the like, you might want to try the iMirror. Don’t worry, it will sync well with your shiny new iPhone 3G!

Available at your local Apple resellers, iPhone sold separately, brain not required.

Could this mean that the wait is almost over? When I woke up this morning, a lot of things has been going on around. Several things for sure are of the following:

• Telkomsel is now accepting limited pre-orders for the iPhone 3G. Supposedly, you can find more information on it at www.telkomsel.com/iphone/. But the site is experiencing a very slow load since this morning, at least. Everybody’s probably going there right now. I just got the chance to pre-order after five reloads.
• You can also pre-order the phone by dialing 111 from your Telkomsel number. Thanks to Yona for this info.
• Aulia Masna posted on his tech blog that Telkomsel’s External Corporate Communications confirmed that they will be bringing the iPhone 3G here.
• Indonesia is now listed in the country list at www.apple.com/iphone/countries/. This is confusing, since it’s suddenly there. While Thailand, who confirmed the iPhone first for their country is still listed under “Coming Soon”.

However, Telkomsel have not released any word on pricing or availability. Rumors said that it will be released on February 25. So, I guess we’ll just see in a month. But in any case, this is a very good news today, unless, of course, if suddenly they decided the price to be IDR 10.000.000.

Sometime ago, I got a forwarded mail along with some posts on certain mailing lists, stated that by forwarding to 20 people or more, we might get our own iPhone 3G or 120GB iPod Classic. Here’s what the mail said:

Pelanggan yang terhormat,
Kami beritahukan kepada seluruh pelanggan bahwa perusahaan kami, Apple Corporation yang berkantor pusat di Cupertino, California US membuka kantor pemasaran di Jakarta, Indonesia
Produk yang kami pasarkan adalah Hand Phone tipe iPhone3G yang dilengkapi dengan teknologi GPS, Wi-Fi, bluetooth, video-audio, camera-photo, 16GB flash drive capacity, dll.

Details produk kami silakan kunjungi: http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html
Untuk peluncuran perdana di Indonesia, kami akan memberikan secara gratis produk terbaru HP iPhone3G yang dilengkapi features seperti diatas.

Dengan memberikan iPhone3G ini, kami berharap akan mendapatkan umpan balik yang berharga dari para pelanggan dan mendapatkan efek promosi berantai yang besar.
Yang harus anda lakukan adalah:

- Fowardkan pesan ini kepada 20 orang teman. Setelah 2 minggu waktu pengiriman, anda akan menerima sebuah iPhone3G. Sebelumnya kami akan mengontak anda untuk alamat detail pengiriman, atau
- Forwardkan pesan ini kepada 40 orang, anda akan menerima 2 produk: 1 bh iPhone3G + 1 bh iPod classic berkapasitas 120GB. Detail produk iPod classic kunjungi: http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/
Harap dikirimkan sebuah copy / Cc email kepada:jkt.applecorp@asia.com agar kami mengetahui bahwa anda telah memforward pesan ini.

Hormat kami,
Julia Christvanie
Regional Sales Manager
Apple Corporation – Jakarta Office
Sudirman Square Office Tower, Tower B Lt. 23
JI. Jend Sudirman Kav. 45-46 Jakarta Selatan 12930
Email: jkt.applecorp@asia.com

Sounds promising, doesn’t it? Even for us who already owned ourselves a first-generation iPhone, the iPhone 3G is always interesting. But here’s my take. This mail or chain letter or spam or whatever you want to call it, is an idiotic hoax. Why? Here’s why:

• Apple’s official name is Apple Inc. and not Apple Corporation. For your information, the closest we can get to Apple Corporation is Apple Corps Ltd., which is a Beatles-founded multimedia company founded in January 1968.
• Apple never did refer its iPhone with the term “Hand Phone”. No, people, “Hand Phone” is just a term we often use in our community, the official jargon for that device is a cellphone, or a mobile phone. As far as I know, the “Hand Phone” term was probably created by someone in ITC Roxymas who went all the way from selling Ericsson cellphones in the past to dirt cheap Chinese cellphones that breaks apart after 3 months.
• Apple specifically branded their latest iPhone iteration as “iPhone 3G” and not “iPhone3G”, notice that it’s supposed to have a space between “iPhone” and “3G”. I believe Apple is quite a neat-freak in terms like this.
• Apple is a company with billions of cash in hand, do you think they will risk their brand consistency by using an asia.com email address? For the record, Asia.com, is owned by World Media Group. I don’t see any relations to Apple here, and I don’t even know what they’re up to with this. And who the fuck is Julia Christvanie anyway?
• And just like Yona said, I don’t think Apple would use a cheap way to give out iPhone-related promotions like this. They sold more than 10 million units, do you think they even need crappy promotions like this?

So, please, and I mean PLEASE, stop filling out other people’s mailboxes with useless junk like this hoax. I thought we’re all smarter than that? The way I see it, this is just one lame person’s attempt to collect your personal information. So would you care to give that out to a total stranger? Well, I don’t.

But if you still want to forward that mail to 40 or more people, be my guest, knock yourself dead.