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Help File: Prospects for a New iPhone; Downloading Adobe Reader

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By Rob Pegoraro

Sunday, April 12, 2009

QWhen might Apple ship the next iPhone, and what new features might it include?

AIf I had a dime for every time I got this question, I could buy quite a few iPhones with the proceeds.

But the only honest answer is, "I don't know." The first iPhone and last year's iPhone 3G arrived in July, but Apple doesn't have to stick to that pattern this year.

We can also only guess about the design of a new iPhone. More memory and a video-capable camera would be logical upgrades, but Apple has a history of surprises. (The company also plans to ship a free 3.0 software upgrade for existing iPhones this summer; the original iPhone, however, won't be able to use all of this upgrade's features, and iPod touch users will need to pay $9.95 for it.)

The odds of a just-purchased iPhone being made obsolete by a successor's arrival probably increase as you get closer to summer, so waiting might avoid that -- and keep some money in your bank account in the meantime. But there's little point in freaking yourself out about those chances; if you need a new phone, you need a new phone.

When I tried to download Adobe Reader 9, Internet Explorer displayed a box that said "Can't retrieve essential parameter (15235.301.265)" before closing on me.

This problem may be the fault of Adobe's too-cute presentation of its Portable Document Format reader. The "Download" link at its site (http://adobe.com/reader) does not start a download but instead takes you to a second page that initiates the file transfer on its own. Internet Explorer, in turn, warns you that the site wants to send a file you didn't explicitly request -- but here, something else went wrong.

You can avoid that by clicking that second page's "click here to download" link or by using a different browser for this task.

Rob Pegoraro attempts to untangle computing conundrums and errant electronics each week. Send questions to The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071 or robp@washpost.com.