Iphone Updates

Filed under: Tips and tricks, iPhone

I’ll skip the obligatory mini-biography of Guy and cut to the chase: the dude gets a whopping 36 hours of standby time with his iPhone 3G. True, many other phones get better battery life and can go for days without a charge. But anyone banging their iPhone on the wall, wishing the darn thing didn’t suck down the juice like a preschooler in the Sahara will appreciate his detailed account of the settings used to eke out lengthy iPhone standby time. Oh, and those other phones? As Guy says, “…it’s better to have a cool phone that you have to charge everyday than a sucky phone that you can charge once a week.” How do you keep your iPhone alive?

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Filed under: Odds and ends

Last week you may have caught some photos going around of a cute Foxconn factory worker flashing peace signs. The photos were found on a UK man’s brand-new iPhone, and posted at MacRumors.

The mystery girl’s identity is being protected by Foxconn, and a company spokesman said that her job is not in any danger. Taking pictures with the camera is a normal part of the testing procedure done before the phone is shipped out.

As with other Chinese internet celebrities, identities are hard to come by. Second Brother on the Right, who was part of the Olympic torch procession through many countries, is still anonymous.

[Via Reuters.]

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A very nice PSD delivered by the blog: teehanlax.com which give the GUI for the iPhone for all iPhone application developers and website owners who want to deliver a good web interface to iPhone users.

Tags:GUI interface iphone PSDGUI, interface, iphone, PSD

Filed under: Terminal Tips

Don’t you hate it when an application becomes unresponsive and crashes? Are you even more tired of reading annoying application crash dialog boxes? A simple Terminal hack allows you to never see these dialogs again. Just open Terminal (Applications > Utilities) and type:

defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType none

This will disable the “…unexpectedly quit” dialog that normally appears when an application crashes. If you ever want the dialogs to start appearing again, just replace “none” with “prompt”.

Like tips like these? Try out TUAW’s Mac 101 and Terminal Tips sections.

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Filed under: Internet, Internet Tools

Google Gears has been around for Firefox on the Mac for quite a while. However, Safari users have been left in the cold. Google Gears allows you to access certain Google services, most notably Docs and Reader, offline (as well as other offline-enabled web services like Remember The Milk). This week, a beta for Safari has become available.

With Google Gears, for example, you can view all of your Google Docs offline — and even edit them (word processing docs only, spreadsheets and presentations are viewable but not editable). When you connect back to the internet, you will be able to sync the changes back to Google.

We’re glad that Google has finally seen the light and released a version for our Safari-using counterparts. To make Google Gears work with Safari, you will need to download and install the Google Gears package for Mac OS X. Once installed, navigate to a “gears enabled” page, you will be able to use the Google Gears system. Remember, this is a beta and we’ve heard there might be issues if you’ve tweaked Safari in certain ways.

Oh, and there appears to be limited support for Fluid, which is nice.

[via the Apple blog]

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Latest iPhone News: Thursday 28 August 2008

Apple fixing security flaw

Apple is reportedly working on a fix for the firmware version 2.0.2 security flaw that we reported on yesterday:

Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock acknowledged the problem in an e-mail:

“We are aware of this bug and plan to deliver a fix in the next software update,” she said. “For now, users can avoid the problem by changing their setting so that double-clicking the Home Button goes to ‘Home’ or ‘iPod.’”

No timescale has been given for fixing the problem…

UK iPhone Internet access TV ad banned

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has ordered that Apple not show the current iPhone TV ad which claims the handset gives access to “all parts of the Internet”. A whole two people complained that the iPhone’s inability to render Java and Flash in web sites meant that it didn’t give access to the full Internet. Apple’s defence, that the Safari browser could display all open-source content whereas Java and Flash were proprietary technologies, was not enough to convince the ASA to back down. Java World seems not to agree with ASA’s position.

Apple increasing iPhone production

According to a report in Business Week, Apple is to increase production of the iPhone, with the aim of assembling between 40 and 45m handsets in the coming 12 months. If true, this is most likely due to huge popularity of the iPhone 3G in both existing and new markets. Reports suggest that the iPhone 3G has already outsold the first-generation iPhone, with almost six million handsets now sold.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software

Picking just three favorite Mac applications was harder than I thought it would be. I decided to forgo anything that was either built-in or part of a major productivity or creative suite and just focus on applications that make my Mac computing experience unique and complete.

Coda

Even before this week’s 1.5 update, Coda had a permanent spot on my “favorite app” list. For me, when it comes to developing or maintaining a web project, Coda is just the best. Sure, TextMate (which I’m using to type this post) might be superior if you’re looking for just a source-code editor. CSSEdit might be a better CSS editor, Panic’s own Transmit is a more robust FTP client. Coda is still the best all-around web development app for my workflow. It lets me access all the files for a project, locally or on a server, make the changes or additions I want to make, preview how it will look in Safari (or with one click, open it in Firefox, Opera, Camino or OmniWeb) and immediately execute any changes. And now I can use it as a Subversion client too. Even better, it is a distinctly “Mac” application. Every UI detail reminds me why I love the Mac and why OS X is the best platform for software around.

Aperture 2

While Lightroom 2 is really, really nice (and I prefer it for some types of retouches), Aperture 2 is simply my favorite photo editing and photo management tool. I’m not a professional photographer, I don’t even have a high-end DSLR — just a tiny 8 megapixel Nikon that fits in my purse or the back-pocket of my jeans — but I still want my photographs to look their best. iPhoto is great, but I need more precision. Aperture 2 lets me fine-tune my images, whether from my digital camera or scanned in from some of my older SLRs, crop them, adjust noise levels and color and just generally make everything prettier. The Photo Book I made for my mom for Mother’s Day this year, using Aperture 2, was amazing and brought tears and smiles to both of my parents’ faces. Their reaction was worth far more than the price of the software.

MarsEdit

Although I can’t really use it for most of my WIN blogging, MarsEdit is the tool I use to publish to any of my other sites. My personal site runs on WordPress, and while I love the software, I detest its write interface. I know plenty of people like it, I just don’t like composing everything in a web form. MarsEdit’s Preview mode is a great way to see how something will look before it’s published, whether I use HTML or Markdown or Textile. If I need to edit an old entry, I don’t have to worry about sifting through the “visual” or “code” view, inadvertently breaking something if I change a URL. Integrating media from Flickr or uploading new images is seamless. MarsEdit just makes my life easier.

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Filed under: Software

In case you’re wondering why I’ve been writing about exercise and food applications lately, it’s because I’m trying to lose a few pounds, OK? When I saw the press release for BeFit from Jon Brown Designs today, I jumped (well, would you believe moved slowly?) at the chance to post about this app.

BeFit works like most food tracking applications in that it lets you count exactly how many calories you’re taking in. If you take in fewer calories than you expend, then you’ll lose weight over time. BeFit includes over 7,000 foods from the FDA/USDA food database. Spotlight search is built into the application to make it easy to search for foods, and when you find them they’re displayed with a full Nutrition Facts panel like those on food packages.

You can create a huge number of individual tracking lists, rename them, and sort them. If you’re just looking for certain nutrients to track (e.g., carbs or saturated fats), you can hide other nutrients, then get a running total for those items you’re interested in.

BeFit 1.0 is US$15.95 and existing customers of Jon Brown Designs get a 50% discount. All purchasers of BeFit 1.0 receive free upgrades through version 3.0. There’s a demo available from the BeFit website.

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Golden Skull

Following GTS World Racing, Astraware has announced that it will be distributing Deluxeware’s “Golden Skull” puzzle game from tomorrow, available via the App Store for US$2.99. It’s a simple “blocks” puzzle game dressed up in a story:

Touch groups of sparkling gems to make them disappear and earn the 5 gold coins you’ll need to progress on your search for the Golden Skull. Remove larger groups to earn your coins more quickly but don’t run out of moves or your journey will end.

Golden Skull is a simple but highly addictive puzzle game, perfect for a quick game when you’re waiting in line. Can you progress through all 10 levels, reach the pyramid at Chichen Itza and retrieve the magical Golden Skull?

Golden Skull has 4 levels of difficulty, automatically saves your progress on exiting the game, and allows you to listen to your own music while you play.

Review to follow. Screenshots after the jump…

Latest iPhone News: Monday 26 August 2008

3G Issues

There have been some interesting developments regarding the performance of the 3G iPhone over the weekend. Tests on the handset suggest that it is “completely normal”, in comparison with a Nokia N73 and Sony Ericsson P1. There’s a strong possibility that the mobile network is playing a part in 3G performance. In anecdotal testing, Rogers had the fastest connection for iPhone users, while Orange has admitted speed capping French iPhone users to a fraction of optimum 3G speeds. Apparently, though, this affects all French 3G phones, not just the iPhone…

Here’s a contest you’ll want to enter. Submit one of your best photographs to win a chance to shoot side-by-side with a pro photographer in Olympic, Grand Tetons, Yosemite, or Yellowstone National Park. And learn from Apple-certified trainers how to use Aperture 2.1 to process, perfect, and promote all the great images you capture It’s all part of the Aperture Nature Photography Workshops.

Written and directed by Darren Grodsky and Danny Jacobs, Humboldt County tells the story of disillusioned medical student Peter Hadley (Jeremy Strong) who finds himself in California’s picturesque but remote “Lost Coast” among an eccentric family of marijuana farmers. Humboldt County opens in theaters on September 26.

Thanks to iTunes U and the University of Utah, you can put your feet up and enjoy a classical guitar recital or two this Labor Day weekend. Choosing among audio and video podcasts, you can listen to student musicians and Tully Cathey perform works by Tárrega, Torroba, Berkeley, as well as original compositions by Cathey, a classical and jazz guitarist who teaches at the College of Fine Arts.

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Vicinity

Lonely Planet

Cromag

Hallway

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I hope it will fix all my bugs… Especially with the games and applications that crashes after a while and the only way to fix it for me is to delete and reinstall them ;-(

Tags:2.0.1 firmware iphone2.0.1, firmware, iphone

Filed under: Software

In case you’re wondering why I’ve been writing about exercise and food applications lately, it’s because I’m trying to lose a few pounds, OK? When I saw the press release for BeFit from Jon Brown Designs today, I jumped (well, would you believe moved slowly?) at the chance to post about this app.

BeFit works like most food tracking applications in that it lets you count exactly how many calories you’re taking in. If you take in fewer calories than you expend, then you’ll lose weight over time. BeFit includes over 7,000 foods from the FDA/USDA food database. Spotlight search is built into the application to make it easy to search for foods, and when you find them they’re displayed with a full Nutrition Facts panel like those on food packages.

You can create a huge number of individual tracking lists, rename them, and sort them. If you’re just looking for certain nutrients to track (e.g., carbs or saturated fats), you can hide other nutrients, then get a running total for those items you’re interested in.

BeFit 1.0 is US$15.95 and existing customers of Jon Brown Designs get a 50% discount. All purchasers of BeFit 1.0 receive free upgrades through version 3.0. There’s a demo available from the BeFit website.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone, App Store

We’re all taking turns at this. My turn:

• SMS – the built-in SMS app has changed the way I use text messaging, and for the better. My contract with O2 includes 600 text messages per month, and in the UK where everyone texts everyone about everything all the time (and no-one gets charged for incoming messages), that’s extremely useful. On old phones, even using predictive text software, I found composing messages too long-winded and dull, and consequently didn’t text much. Now I can compose as fast as I can tap-type, and my friends are all wondering why I’ve suddenly become so flippin’ chatty.
• Cube Runner – Andy Qua’s super-simple game is the only one I keep returning to time and time again. Nothing beats it for speed, simplicity, and fun. When I say simple, I mean simple: you pilot your triangle between the cubes. Hit cube, game over. That’s it. There’s not much that can improve it, except perhaps handlebars.
• Face Melter – A cheesy bit of fun, but everyone deserves cheesy fun every now and then. Face Melter just lets you mess about with images, pulling and dragging facial features into amusing shapes. Hardly a new idea, but it’s great fun to have in your pocket. Good for amusing kids while waiting in restaurants, and for amusing fellow geeks in the pub. I’ve also been exploring its potential for experimental photography.
• Weather – I’m English. Need I say more?

I should stress — and I suspect I speak for all my TUAW colleagues in this respect — that this list of faves is merely a snapshot. These faves might change within days, even hours. The App Store is still only an infant, and holds many surprises for us in the future. I’m looking forward to discovering new faves as time goes on.

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AdMob offers $1,000,000 in total to the best iPhone developers, check out here:

Tags:$1000000 admob best developer iphone$1000000, admob, best, developer, iphone

A great new application for your iPhone is coming in the next days or weeks. It will turn your iPhone into a wireless drive for file storage.

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Tags:data drive iphone storage wirelessdata, drive, iphone, storage, wireless

Available for rental ($3.99) or purchase ($14.99), “21” tells the story of card-counting MIT students who turned the tables on Las Vegas casinos. Directed by Robert Luketic, the movie stars Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, and Laurence Fishburne. Got an Apple TV? You can enjoy 21 in HD.

Unslow

Everyone

Work Friendly

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Unslow

Everyone

Work Friendly

Tags:ad advert apple iphone3G tvad, advert, apple, iphone3G, tv

The Pwnage Tool is ready for Mac Users and new iPhone 3G happy users…

Blog of the Dev Team.

Tags:2.0 firmware iphone iphone 3G jailbreak mac pwnage tool2.0, firmware, iphone, iphone 3G, jailbreak, mac, pwnage, tool

You probably know that many Mac applications underline misspelled words as you type, calling attention to the presumed error with a broken red line. But did you also know that you could check for the correct spelling of the word with a simple right-click of your Mighty Mouse? You’ll find out how when you read the latest Mac OS X Leopard Pro Tip.

iTunes may have let him enjoy his music all over the house and even on his patio, but Nick Wingfield (wsj.com) has been waiting for “someone to come up with a good, affordable remote control that lets me change tunes no matter where I am in the house.” Then he realized that he “already owned that device. It’s an iPod touch,” with the free Remote application installed.

Can’t get to Fashion Week in New York this year? Not to worry, it’s coming to you. On iPhone. As Eric Wilson (nytimes.com) explains “STYLE.COM, the online home of Vogue, is introducing an iPhone application this week designed to enable dedicated followers of fashion to watch runway shows during New York Fashion Week next month on their phones, within hours of the last model’s exit from the catwalk.”

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With the first ones: Tetris, Scrabble and Sudoku.

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And 10 Million applications downloaded. So now we know why the activation servers were down. And we know what is the new business model for Apple, making a lot of money out of App Exchange, it’s the new iTunes cash machine but for iPhone…

Tags:3G app App Store applications iphone iphone 3G itunes million store3G, app, App Store, applications, iphone, iphone 3G, itunes, million, store

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

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Tags:ad everyone iphone tv ukad, everyone, iphone, tv, uk

Tags:ad everyone iphone tv ukad, everyone, iphone, tv, uk

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

About a week or so ago, I spent $0.99 at iTunes to pick up a copy of Koi Pond. With all the software that constantly moves onto and off of my iPhone, it should say something that over a week later, Koi Pond is still installed. It’s a little treasure.

Koi Pond provides exactly the experience its title suggests: it puts a virtual Koi Pond onto your iPhone, allowing you to place plants and feed the fish. The fish in question swim around the screen and run away from the rippled waves you create when messing with the water. If you leave your finger still enough, eventually a koi or two will investigate and nibble on your finger before darting off on its pre-existing fishy business.

In theory, there is no point to Koi Pond. It’s there to experience and enjoy. In practice, my elder children issue each other challenges: “Make the worst pond” (no fish, no plants, no sunlight, brown rocks, rotting food) or “Make the most psychotic koi” (one fish, sunlight, lots of splashing), etc.

For $0.99, it’s a great deal on a little toy. Turn off autolock and cheerfully burn out your screen by sitting it on a stand on your desk. The fish will swim and burble ad infinitum. (It helps to have the iPhone docked while doing this.)

Koi Pond is available for iPhone and iPod touch. It costs $0.99 at the iPhone App Store.

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Filed under: Software, Internet Tools

Panic has released Coda 1.5, a free update to my favorite all-in-one web development application.

Coda 1.5 adds several major new features, including find-and-replace across multiple files and a fully-integrated Subversion client.

Also included in the update is a user-customizable bookshelf, which allows you to specify any given website as a “book.” You can also enter a sample search URL with a wildcard character, and command-click on terms to look for them in the book you created. Syntax highlighting has also been improved, as well as performance running under Leopard. Full release notes are available, too.

The update is free for all registered Coda users, and $99 for new users. Discounts are available for registered Transmit owners, too.

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While he knew that iPhone generated a significant amount of Internet traffic to popular websites, even Peter Burrows (businessweek.com) was surprised when he perused the analysis Engadget recently posted. With iPhone ringing up nearly 80% of the traffic to engadget.com and iPod touch holding on to 16%, that meant that all other mobile devices combined accounted for the remaining 4%.

Road warriors take note. With iSpend installed on your iPhone, you can track expenses like never before. Easily enter expenses into iPhone as you incur them; quickly assign categories to separate lodging from travel from dining expenses. iSpend lets you generate reports and email comma-separated files for import into Numbers or Excel. iSpend travels well, too, letting you set the default currency for each expense log.

Filed under: Software, Open Source

Multi-service, open source and free chat client Adium received a new point release tonight, with new features and a redesigned interface for viewing contact information.

Adium 1.3 features the following goodies:

• Get Info Window is now called the “Contact Inspector”
• The aforementioned Contact Inspector has a newly redesigned interface that allows for faster retrieval of contact information
• Facebook chat is now integrated into Adium 1.3
• Standard contact window list now features a search box (found by pressing command + F)
• Improved MSN support with personal messages
• Speed improvements
• Multiple bug fixes

To download this new revision of Adium, just visit the Adium website and click the download link. If you would like a complete list of all the changes in Adium 1.3, just visit the Version History page.

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Filed under: OS, Internet Tools, Developer

Apple has started seeding developers with Safari 4.0 preview 2. You may recall that the last developer preview was issued in June after the WWDC.

Safari 4.0 DP2 has a build number of 40A12. Just like the last build, this edition scored a perfect 100/100 on the Acid3 test. Developers with access to the Apple Connect website can download Safari 4.0 preview 2 for Mac OS X Leopard, Tiger, and for Windows.

The new version gives users the option to save web pages as an application that can be launched independently of Safari (similar in concept to the SSBs Prism and Fluid). There is no word on when Safari 4.0 might be released to the public.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

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The Print dialog offers numerous options (e.g., black and white/color, letter/legal, single or double-sided) for controlling how your documents print. If you find yourself returning to the same set of options frequently, you can save your custom print settings as a preset and save yourself some time the next time you print a similar document. Find out how by watching the most recent Quick Tip of the Week.

“House hunting? Forget the listing agents and classified ads. Now you can find homes for sale with a few taps on a smartphone,” reports Prashant Gopal (businessweek.com). Those taps can launch the Trulia Real Estate Search, “one of the Web’s most visited home listing sites” and a recent App Store addition, StreetEasy Real Estate, Home Finder, or FrontDoor.com, which Gopal says, will be on the App Store market soon.

“I’m still impressed,” writes Mark Kellner (washingtontimes.com). He finds iPhone 3G “a powerful little device, capable of doing a heck of a lot of things, and it does this in a small, sleek package that’s easy to operate.” Particularly impressed by the App Store, which he calls “quite smart,” he notes that the “ability to load third-party applications…makes the iPhone more like a miniature computer than just a phone.”

Filed under: Apple Corporate, iPhone

A Birmingham, Alabama, woman has sued Apple, claiming its television advertisements about the iPhone 3G being twice as fast as its predecessor are false. She also claims her handset is defective.

The woman, Jessica Smith, is seeking class-action status for her suit.

According to The Birmingham News, Smith’s iPhone connects most often to the slower, older EDGE network, and not the 3G network that the advertisements claim.

Apple has a policy of not commenting on pending litigation, but Apple is, as Macworld puts it, “repeatedly sued” over a variety of complaints.

[Via Macworld.]

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone

Here’s an odd story. When the iPhone launches in Poland today (8/22), there will be long lines at Orange retail stores. In fact, it’s guaranteed.

Reuters is reporting that Orange has hired actors to queue up at “…twenty stores” on Friday to spark in interest. Before you say, “That’s crazy,” consider that many Americans were willing to sit in line for a week. For free.

Perhaps Orange is trying to pad a potentially lukewarm reception to high-priced plans. For example, the base iPhone plan will cost 195PLN ($45) per month and will offer users 150 minutes of talk time plus 500MB of data.

Clever marketing or dirty pool? And what happens when the next actor in line reaches the counter and doesn’t buy anything?

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Vicinity

Lonely Planet

Cromag

Hallway

Tags:3G ads cromag hallway iphone lonely planet vicinity3G, ads, cromag, hallway, iphone, lonely, planet, vicinity