I might try emailing him within the next few days and see what I can get, because he seems pretty good with answering emails about his iPhone development.
I remember reading that John Carmack was going to have his mobile team work on Quake classic instead of himself (like he did with Wolfenstein and Doom). But, most of the mobile development team was shifted to Rage development. That and focus was put on Rage mobile basically putting Quake classic on the side. Plus I remember reading that Carmack was not impressed with the sales numbers of id classic games on the app store. So Quake classic is probably something that won't resume until Rage is released.
I think right now they are making this racing game in the Rage world with the Rage engine. (There was a front page article with a picture a few weeks back)
the question is whether or not pulling a few people to port Quake over is going to be worth the money. Its got to be relatively simple to do, as we've already seen at least one guy make a dodgy port of it for iPhone. Just keep your fingers crossed that someone somewhere at I.D. hears our cries for Quake and makes it happen.
That wasn't ported by ID though, so that the controlls were bad is no surprise. And that was 2 and a half years ago.
i used to play this game so much! it was the first real internet multiplayer fps and also the first truly 3d fps. i really hope it hasn't been cancelled anyone remember happily playing and then a player with the tag "sbot" joins the server? lol http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO2fx98rGLc
They're probably busy finishing up RAGE. Just give them some time. I'm sure we'll see something by id before the end of the year