Iphone Updates

When Jonathan Takiff (philly.com) conducted his own touchscreen-to-touchscreen comparison of three new smartphones — iPhone 3G, LG Dare, and Samsung Instinct — the results were crystal clear. “The new iPhone,” he reports, “still reigns supreme in overall performance and enjoyment.”

Did you know that you can tell Spotlight not to index folders you’d prefer to omit from your searches? Or that you can control the order in which search results appear? Find out how by watching the latest Quick Tip of the Week.

RockStar makes it fun to create your own music experience. Connect up to five headphones, and your iPod, to start sharing. Or, add another iPod to mix songs and listen together. Works with all MP3 and DVD players, as well as other portable media devices.

If you’re the active-in-the-Great-Outdoors type and you need to take your phone with you then the odds are seriously stacked against its surviving very long. Unless the phone is already 100% waterproof – is yours?

Filed under: Retail

Apple will open a new store at 9 a.m. this coming Saturday, inside the Liverpool One shopping development. There will be the obligatory opening day fun and games, including T-shirts for the first 1,000 people through the door and sweepstakes prizes (MacBooks, iPods and the like). Liverpool One is still under construction; a full Grand Opening is expected in October.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

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Filed under: Software, Internet Tools

The Iconfactory’s Anthony Piraino has just released the latest version of his domain management tool, DomainBrain. If you aren’t familiar with DomainBrain, it is a really, really slick way to keep track of all of your domain information, like various logins, directories, passwords, in one nice and tidy place.

We’ve covered DomainBrain in the past and although I initially rebuked the idea of a program for domain management, I can honestly say it has turned out to be incredibly useful. Instead of sifting through e-mails or keychain files to find the specific login for something that has a common username, I have a nice looking repository for all my information.

The newest version of the software introduces the ability to make duplicate domains, which is really helpful if you are anything like me and have 12 domains associated with the same account. DomainBrain makes it easier to just change the necessary details and not have to recreate the whole template.

My favorite new feature is the integrated WHOIS information, which will show you what nameservers your domain is on and when the domain expires. This makes it super easy to check when all of your domains are up for renewal, without having to manually do a WHOIS search for each address.

I better make sure my domain is on auto-renew!

DomainBrain is free for up to four domains. If you need to store the information for more than four domains, it’s $14.99. DomainBrain is compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 and up.

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“It’s a candy store, dude,” David Pogue (nytimes.com) exclaims — a “single, centralized, utterly complete source of software” that makes “the iPhone (or the iPod Touch) do absolutely amazing things…stunts a cellphone has no right to perform.” And because the new App Store “is beautifully integrated with the iPhone itself,” it makes “it fast, simple and idiot-proof to download and install new software morsels.”

After taking it on a test drive across Michigan for ten days, Mike Wendland (freep.com) concludes that “the 3G network makes the iPhone about as close to a laptop in convenience and functionality as a mobile phone can be.” Yet “it’s the new iPhone 2.0 software upgrade that is the most impressive — allowing users to connect seamlessly to business e-mail and run hundreds of new games and programs.”

By simply removing the speaker cover, it charges your headset and turns into a flash storage device.

Week after week, season after season, the series captivated the country as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigated the paranormal and bizarre in The X-Files. Now David Duchnovy and Gillian Anderson reprise their roles as Mulder and Scully in The X-Files: I Want to Believe. The film, directed by Chris Carter, who also created the television series, opens in theaters on Friday, July 25.

Two huge markets yet to get hold of the iPhone are Russia and China, and according to a recent news report, the black market for the device is huge. Pay $1,200 for an 8GB iPhone 3G in Russia, or $1,370 for a 16GB one…

OK, strictly this isn’t an iPhone tip, because you’ve already got network access, though I suppose you could use it if you have a Nokia phone on another contract and want to use up some of that provider’s data plan…

Filed under: OS, iPhone

The iPhone’s home screen works just fine with 16 application icons on the main screen and four more on the dock at the bottom. It still works well with another screenful of 16 more apps on the adjacent screen.

But, says Chris Devers, as you start adding more apps, the home screen UI doesn’t scale well to cope with them. Flicking across five screens of apps to find the one you want is time-consuming. And moving an app from screen five to screen three is chaotic, unless you’ve left “gaps” on each screen as you went along – in which case you’d have six to juggle, not five. And even then, it’s still chaotic.

OK, so not everyone is going to be collecting that many third party apps. But for people who do, says Chris, there needs to be a better solution than this. He’s posted a set on Flickr to illustrate his point.

What might work? A Quicksilver- or Spotlight-style app, where you type some characters from the name of the app you want and it gets launched? Or a gesture launcher, where you “draw” what you’re looking for?

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Filed under: iPod Family, Software, iPhone, App Store

I recently wrote a post about Ilium Software, developer of longtime mobile apps eWallet and ListPro, and Apple’s delays in getting their applications into the App Store.

I don’t take any credit (it was pure coincidence), but about 8 hours after my post eWallet showed up in the App Store. I purchased it immediately, since I used the Windows Mobile and Palm OS versions for years and have been hoping for an iPhone version.

In short, eWallet is both attractive and functional. It stores your passwords, credit card numbers, and other personal information securely with 256-bit AES encryption, and it does it with iPhone style. At $9.99, eWallet for iPhone is priced at half of the price of its $19.95 siblings for Palm OS and Windows Mobile.

Read after the break for the rest of my review of Ilium Software’s eWallet for iPhone (link opens iTunes Store), and check the gallery below for screenshots of eWallet in action.

Continue reading TUAW Review: eWallet for iPhone

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“We’ve got some incredible products,” says John Burke, president of Trek Bicycle. “But if you don’t tell people about them, it doesn’t really matter.” Not about to let that happen, Trek uses their Macs to create videos as marketing and training tools. “We’re using podcasting to talk” directly to consumers about Trek bicycles. As a result, “they’re walking right into the retailers asking for the product.”

With Exposure, you can take Flickr on the road, browsing and enjoying the billions of photos on Flickr on your iPhone or iPod touch. Both Exposure (free) and the ad-free Exposure Premium ($9.99) let you browse your own library, flip though a contact’s recent uploads, create favorites, add comments, even search through Flickr’s vast library of images.

It’s been nearly a year since we last took a look at iPhone videos on YouTube (how time flies) but this video has to resurrect the form. Awesome Phone: “iPhone is an Awesome Phone” by the Wicked Celtics is a must watch video because — well, it’s brilliant.

In its special report on the IDEA 2008 winners, BusinessWeek reports that the iPhone, MacBook Air, and the Apple Wireless Keyboard won Gold awards and iMac won a Silver award in the prestigious annual competition sponsored by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA).

In financial results for its fiscal 2008 third quarter, Apple reported its best June quarter for both revenue and earnings in Apple’s history, posting revenue of $7.46 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.07 billion, or $1.19 per diluted share. It also set a new record for Mac sales, shipping 2,496,000 Macs during the quarter, representing 41 percent unit growth and 43 percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter.

From the new App Store to easier mail management to support for Microsoft Exchange and MobileMe, PC Advisor steps you through the major and minor additions and improvements offered by iPhone 2.0 software. Awarding it five stars for its value for the money, PC Advisor concludes that iPhone 2.0 offers “a welcome step-up for what was already arguably the best mobile platform on the market.”

Anyone wanting to stick their iPhone 3G in their car windscreen so that it can act as a dedicated GPS unit will probably be more disappointed with the software’s current lack of ability rather than this windscreen mount from USBFever…

According to the president of Sega US, Simon Jeffery, the iPhone is as powerful as their Dreamcast system. Though that isn’t saying much for modern dedicated gaming consoles, it’s not a bad accolade for a mobile phone…

So far as Ed Baig (usatoday.com) is concerned, “the App Store for iPhone and iPod touch” is “the killer app many of us expected,” an application that “turns the iPhone into an important new computing platform.” In his review, Baig takes a look at some of the apps — Pandora, AOL Radio, Super Monkey Ball, MooCowMusic: Band, Etch A Sketch, and five others — that can make “you feel like a kid in a toy store.”

“If you have an iPhone,” cautions Rik Fairlie (NYTimes.com), “you just might forget that the device is capable of making phone calls,” considering all of the diverting applications available on the new iPhone App Store. “Simple to use, thanks to its elegant and intuitive interface,” the App Store offers “an object lesson for other cellphone makers and carriers on how to make your customers’ phones indispensable.”

Tomorrow, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight opens in theaters across the country. The eagerly anticipated film — with Christian Bale reprising his Batman role and Heath Ledger starring as the Joker — has already received rave reviews. Before you head to the theater, watch the trailers on the Movie Trailer site. You can even download them to take with you on your iPod.

Filed under: Features, TUAW Business, Weekend Review

Welcome to the latest installment of TUAW’s best of the week, where we gather up our favorite posts for your easy clicking enjoyment.

Mac Mix Promo gives you deals on Mac apps, starts today
The software bundle biz has a new player! Mac Mix Promo allows you to make your own software bundle and receive a discount based on how many applications you choose, the more you add, the bigger the discount!

Mystery Apple box
This week wasn’t just about reviewing iPhone software, we also did some detective work to figure out the origins of a mysterious Apple box. The consensus in the comments is that it’s a wine box given to Apple resellers in the 1980s.

Thoughts on iPhone Apps Management
Erica takes a look at what you can do to shorten the sync times on your iPhone or iPod touch.

Turn your iPhone into a wireless drive with DataCase
The ultimate phone, iPod, application, and development platform is also a cool way to carry around your files? When Apple squeezes a 200 GB drive in there, I’m totally ditching my notebook!

Resurrecting Apple I BASIC
Ever wondered what Apple I BASIC sounded like? Sure you did! … no? The BASIC cassette for the Apple I has been digitized and made available on MP3. Even better, that audio has been converted to 1s and 0s so you can examine the 6502 assembly language for yourself!

iPod touch 1.1.5 software also available
For users uninterested in the 2.0 firmware (or paying for it, anyway), Apple has released a 1.1.5 update to keep you secure. See, Apple still loves you!

Apple prepping iPhone 2.1 software
BGR reports that Apple is prepping iPhone 2.1 software. Let’s hope this includes the laundry list of features that everyone wants … salt and pepper shaker anyone?

Apple sues Psystar for license violations, copyright infringement
First Apple sues Psystar for license violations and copyright infringemen, now Apple wants Psystar to recall all of its Mac clones from users. Good luck guys, good luck!

iTunes: Free Tuesday
Get some free tunes.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store

So the first generation of games and apps is in the iPhone’s App Store, and as predicted, we’ve got more than our share of accelerometer races and the usual gaming standbys — Tetris, poker, and even some nice tech demos like Andy Qua’s Cube Runner. But now it’s time to iterate and see if we can’t start filling some of the promises a great would-be gaming platform like the iPhone offers. How about an in-depth RPG that uses the clock or camera, or a full-length platformer, or a social game that takes advantage of things like location awareness?

Italian company KikiTechonlogy dropped us a note to say they’re doing their part — they’re working on a full-length, console-style RPG for the iPhone called PanfobiA. Unfortunately, we hope the game’s translation is better than their blog post — they’re working towards “performing not less than 100 hours in single player,” and “Online Gameing Modality,” which is supposed to be some type of online gameplay after the singleplayer experience. The pictures provide a little more hope — they show a nice sense of art direction and some old-school style RPG characters.

But even if PanfobiA is nothing but vaporware, they’ve got the right idea. For years, PDAs and mobile phones have had games, but they’ve all boiled down to poker, puzzles, and putrid junk. Now that the App Store is up and running, we can’t wait for a developer to step up and provide a really deep and satisfying gaming experience on the platform.

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In the ongoing battle between Canadian iPhone users and Rogers, the only carrier in Canada to sell the handset, CEO Nadir Mohamed has suggested that one gigabyte per month of data transfer is more than enough for most iPhone users. “Clearly, we were thinking mobile Internet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Internet is not only about browsing but about e-mail and connection. After that, we launched the iPhone bundles and our thinking at the time was: “All right, the most subsidized product we have in the market will be the iPhone. … We provide a discount over what we thought was at least the right kind of data pricing.” It was a reasonable proposition,” he opened…

The iPhone 3G’s phenomenal first weekend of sales may have caught Apple a little short on stocks. An analyst from Piper Jaffray & Co reckons that the iPhone 3G could be in very short supply for at least the next two to four weeks, citing Apple’s underestimation of demand, and the international roll out to 21 countries, as the reason…

The iPhone 3G earns a four (out of five) mouse rating from Jason Snell (macworld.com), who reports that the new iPhone “improves on the original iPhone’s audio quality, offers access to a faster data network, and sports built-in GPS functionality.“ It also provides access to “the exciting new world of third-party software” and to “new Exchange syncing features.”

Carrying a piano around town has never been easier — now that MooCowMusic: Pianist lets you tickle the virtual ivories on your iPhone or iPod touch. Pianist offers a complete 88-key piano keyboard, each note sampled from a real piano. And Pianist, one of the more than 800 applications now available on the new App Store, offers multi-track recording, so you can even play a duet with yourself.

We’re all creatures of habit, even online. So if your web browsing routine has you visiting the same websites every day, you can use Safari in Mac OS X Leopard to open all of those sites at the same time — each in a separate tab, with just a single click. You’ll learn how by watching the latest Quick Tip of the Week.

Based on guesstimates of how popular iPhone applications in the official iTunes App Store are, the mobile ad group Medialets has suggested that a number of developers have raised significant revenue from sales of their software. Of course, it isn’t at all surprising that users have downloaded a lot of free applications. There’s nothing to lose apart from a few minutes installing the application and trying it out. In fact, Super Monkey Ball (which the analysis suggests may have netted Sega $4.9m in its first weekend alone) was the only pay-for application in the top ten highest rated applications. That doesn’t mean people aren’t paying for software, though revenue may be declining somewhat per head…

On Sunday, Apple sold its one millionth iPhone 3G, the company announced today.
“iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world.”

During its first weekend, iPhone and iPod touch customers downloaded more than 10 million applications from the new App Store. The groundbreaking App Store now has more than 800 native applications, including over 200 offered for free and more than 90 percent available for less than $10.

Need to write a research paper for a summer course? Then you’ll want to pay a visit to the Florida Community College at Jacksonville and sign up for English Composition II. The 24-unit video course provides a comprehensive resource for writing academic essays. And you can also learn about technical writing, writing for business, and literary analysis, as well. It’s another fine course available on iTunes U.

Durable polycarbonate wraps your iPhone 3G for maximum protection and minimal bulk.

When the going gets tough, all your iPhone 3G needs is a little FlexGrip.

Dark Horse Comics has published comics and graphic novels for more than 20 years. And for most of its superpowered history, the Mac has played a key role. Thanks to a network of nearly 150 Macs, Dark Horse publishes 30 or more comics and graphic novels a month. And the Mac has helped Dark Horse expand into film and television, producing blockbusters from 1994’s The Mask to this summer’s Hellboy II.

Opening August 27, Traitor stars Academy Award nominee Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda, Crash) and Guy Pearce (Memento, L.A. Confidential) in a “taut international thriller set against a jigsaw puzzle of covert counter-espionage operations.” You can catch the exclusive HD trailer for Traitor, written and directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff, on the Movie Trailers site.

About Griffin has released a range of new protective cases for the iPhone 3G, including the Elan Form collection which is available in pink or black. The case, which comes in two sections and slides together, locking at the back, features a hard, polycarbonate inner shell covered with top-grain leather, and comes with a clear plastic screen protector and a premium cleaning cloth. Any case is going to add some size and weight to the iPhone, but if you need serious protection, then a hard case will arguably offer better protection if the phone is dropped or items scratch against it.

Filed under: Humor, App Store

Christopher Walken’s ‘More Cowbell’ skit for SNL holds a special place in my heart. So I literally squealed out loud when I saw More Cowbell in the App Store.

Certainly not filed under Productivity, the application presents you with a large cowbell, while the voice of Bruce Dickinson — yes, the Bruce Dickinson — lets you know that he’s gotta have more cowbell. Outstanding.

So tap away, Gene, tap away — preferably to the tune of (Don’t Fear) the Reaper. Don’t do yourself a disservice.

Remember, everyone: I put my pants on, just like the rest of you, one leg at a time. Except, once my pants are on, I make gold records.

[Via Macenstein.]

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Filed under: Gaming, iPhone, App Store

One game that jumped out at me while I was pawing through the virtual game racks at the App Store was Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D from Vivendi Games Mobile.

A racing game featuring Playstation perennial Crash Bandicoot, Nitro Kart 3D is sure to wear out your iPhone batteries quickly. This app uses the accelerometers in the iPhone for control; turn the iPhone left or right like a steering wheel to turn, and tilt the phone up or down to accelerate or brake.

The entire time you’re racing against the other characters, including the nefarious Brio, you need to avoid oil slicks and weapons used by your opponents, try to pick up a little time by hitting rainbow-colored “hyperdrive spots” on the track, and hit boxes containing weapons (like surface-to-surface missiles, my personal favorite) so you can slow down the other racers.

The game is localized for English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish, and you can adjust the sensitivity of the accelerometer to keep you from over-controlling your kart. With smooth 3D graphics, fun sound effects, and the enjoyment of waving your iPhone around to steer, Nitro Kart is well worth the $9.99 price in the App Store.

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Filed under: Gaming, iPhone, App Store

One game that jumped out at me while I was pawing through the virtual game racks at the App Store was Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D from Vivendi Games Mobile.

A racing game featuring Playstation perennial Crash Bandicoot, Nitro Kart 3D is sure to wear out your iPhone batteries quickly. This app uses the accelerometers in the iPhone for control; turn the iPhone left or right like a steering wheel to turn, and tilt the phone up or down to accelerate or brake.

The entire time you’re racing against the other characters, including the nefarious Brio, you need to avoid oil slicks and weapons used by your opponents, try to pick up a little time by hitting rainbow-colored “hyperdrive spots” on the track, and hit boxes containing weapons (like surface-to-surface missiles, my personal favorite) so you can slow down the other racers.

The game is localized for English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish, and you can adjust the sensitivity of the accelerometer to keep you from over-controlling your kart. With smooth 3D graphics, fun sound effects, and the enjoyment of waving your iPhone around to steer, Nitro Kart is well worth the $9.99 price in the App Store.

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Filed under: iPhone

After teasing us about it back in May it looks like AT&T has finally come through. They have announced that they “are proud to offer iPhone customers free access to the nation’s largest Wi-Fi hotspot network with more than 17,000 hotspots, including Starbucks”. Unfortunately, the details are a little sketchy; it’s unclear exactly what you have to do to access the network with your iPhone.

In any case, you can look up an AT&T hotspot near you or search for a Starbucks. Let us know if you’ve been able to take AT&T up on their offer.

[via iPhone Alley]

Update: It looks like AT&T has once again mistakenly posted this information. That’s right, at the moment AT&T is not offering free wifi to iPhone users, but it is in the works. Look for an announcement, and a quick retraction, sometime next week (and then the week after that, and once again…).

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I really wish I’d seen this tip before I started taking photos of my iPhone for reviews. To get a capture of whatever is currently on the iPhone’s screen, press and hold the “Home” button and then tap the “Lock” (power) button (top right corner of the iPhone) The screen will flash and the grabbed image will appear in the Camera Roll photo album.

Now that I’ve started adding applications to the iPhone in earnest, I’d quite like a way to secure them, plus core phone functionality, to stop malicious or unintentional misuse. Of course, it’s possible to lock the whole iPhone with a password, but suppose I want to allow a friend to play Bejeweled 2 or listen to some music, but don’t want them to access my contacts book, call them up, add or remove notes, Twitter for me, delete or mess up an ongoing game of Aurora Feint, or a myriad of other things? As far as I can tell, once you’re in to the iPhone interface, you can pretty much do anything you like, unless an application has password or other security functionality built in…

The iPhone Dev Team has made a download available allowing anyone to jailbreak an iPhone or iPod Touch running version 2.0 of the firmware. Currently, it will also network unlock the first generation iPhone, but not the iPhone 3G. It’s available to download via their blog post — presumably most people wanting to crack open their iPhones have done it before and already know what they’re doing, because the instructions aren’t exactly in plain English…

Apart from 3G, one thing that many people wanted to see in the next iPhone was genuine GPS. Apple delivered, but what’s it like? Weekend 1: Surbiton to Twickenham Don’t worry if you don’t know where these places are. Suffice it to say that I successfully tracked Google Maps’ provided route between a church in Surbiton and a venue in Twickenham using GPS…

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, iPhone, App Store, SDK

I’m here at E3 in Los Angeles all this week (come say hi at the Joystiq meetup tonight if you’re in town!). Yesterday, I got to sit down with Brad Pitser, the Director of Global Production for THQ Wireless, a company that makes games for mobile platforms like the iPhone. Pitser has helped oversee two iPhone games so far: De Blob (now on the App Store) and Star Wars’ Force Unleashed (coming out later this year — Joystiq has my impressions of both). He said that developing for the iPhone so far has been “a dream.” They’ve partnered with Apple to publish on the iPhone and iPod touch as much as they can. “Apple was interested in our brands,” Pitser said, “and we were interested in their platform.”

One concern he does have about the App Store so far is the pricing — “everyone thinks $9.99 is too much,” he told me. THQ released De Blob at the $6.99 price point. He says THQ has a lot of licensing fees and costs to pay for every game they make, and when those games compete with software that sells for 99 cents, they don’t necessarily have a money-making proposition. But at the same time, he’d rather let the market figure things out — the App Store has a lot of settling down to do, and Pitser is sure that companies will find their place in the price plan soon enough.

I asked him what he thought of what he’d seen in the software that wasn’t his, and he said he really enjoyed the iPint visual gag, the UrbanSpoon restaurant finder, and Aurora Feint (all very nice choices). It’s great to have a bigger company like THQ interested in getting some good licenses on the iPhone, and hopefully we’ll see more come out of Pitser and the division he oversees.

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