Fresh Apple: TheAppleBlog (5 сообщений)

На что подписаться? | Управление подпиской

TheAppleBlog
TheAppleBlog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
http://theappleblog.com
рекомендовать друзьям >>

Rock Band Comes to the App Store
It had to happen sooner or later. EA Mobile's Rock Band is now available in the iTunes App Store.

From the EA Mobile web site:

Take your band on the road with 20 legendary songs from great bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Lynyrd Skynyrd & the Beastie Boys, all delivered with the highest, MP3-quality sound.

Rock out solo on lead bass, drums, guitar & vocals, or start a band with other rockers from around the world! Jump into Quickplay for casual jam sessions, or take it on the road in Tour Mode in EA Mobile’s ROCK BAND!

The big-brother version of Rock Band (for major consoles such as the XBOX 360 and PS3) requires the use of mock instruments, which lends a certain sort of verisimilitude to the gaming experience — that is, so long as you can ignore the Thunderbirds-style avatars and the fact that you're not actually playing an instrument, you're just thumbing buttons on a plastic stick. Oh, and you absolutely must be prepared to ignore how foolish you and your friends look while you're doing it. But that's really all part of the appeal of Rock Band. It's supremely silly and mountains of fun.

Obviously the iPhone's 320×480 pixel capacitive touchscreen is hardly reminiscent of a Stratocaster. Without the faux-instruments, Rock Band for iPhone offers an unavoidably watered-down gameplay experience. In short, it loses the original feel of Rock Band. Instead, it becomes a clone of the hugely popular Tap Tap from Tapulous, which was first released in the App Store way back in September 2007.

Rock Band for iPhone and iPod touch launches with 20 songs (listed below), and it's probably only a matter of time before more tracks are made available via in-app purchasing. If you're a fan of Rock Band and want a complete collection, you're probably already firing up iTunes to get it. Otherwise, take a look at the bundled songs and decide whether there's enough here to warrant hitting that Buy App button and parting with $9.99.
- Attack – 30 Seconds To Mars
- Girls Not Grey – AFI
- Move Along – All American Rejects
- Sabotage – Beastie Boys
- All The Small Things – Blink-182
- Hanging on the Telephone – Blondie
- Learn To Fly – Foo Fighters
- Everlong – Foo Fighters
- Bad to The Bone – George Thorogood & the Destroyers
- Hymn 43 – Jethro Tull
- Bad Reputation – Joan Jett
- Simple Man – Lynard Skynard
- Ace of Spades '08 – Motorhead
- Debaser – Pixies
- Ladybug – Presidents of The United States of America
- Give It All – Rise Against
- Lazy Eye – Silversun Pick Ups
- Cherub Rock – Smashing Pumpkins
- Take The Money and Run – Steve Miller Band
- We Got The Beat – The Go Go's
In Q3, NewNet focus turns to business models and search. Read the, "NewNet Q3 Wrap-up."

Переслать
WolframAlpha iPhone: Why the $50 Asking Price?

WolframAlpha Web App

When it was first released, WolframAlpha generated a lot of buzz surrounding the impressive computational power the new search engine-type service offered. Specifically for mathematical and statistical queries, it goes quite beyond what Google is able to offer. But does all that power justify a $50 price tag on the site’s iPhone app treatment?

Wolfram Alpha LLC seems to think so, since it’s asking $49.99 for the just-released app, the first developed using Wolfram Alpha’s new API. Mashable also seems to agree, but I’m not so sure, and I’ll tell you why.

Mashable’s Christina Warren is quick to point out that the iPhone version “is much more than just a mobile version of the website,” a claim which I definitely agree would justify at least some kind of extra expenditure, but then I compared my results on the web-based version running in Safari to the ones she showed from the app itself. Guess what? The results are identical. In the app, things are slightly more readable and optimized for the iPhone’s screen, but the data is exactly the same, and the web interface is far from clunky itself.

Things like Source Information do seem to work a lot better in the app than in the web interface, because they weren’t specifically designed for mobile touchscreen platforms, but if you’re like me, you don’t go around dropping $50 to resolve every minor inconvenience that comes your way.

The Mashable piece also rolls in the value of the Wolfram app as a graphing calculator, which would be useful for students, it goes on to suggest. Putting aside the fact that you get the same graphs using the web app as you do with the app, students would never be able to use this app in a test situation, when cheating is an issue, and a device that requires network connectivity to work is involved. Professionals that might use it would benefit just as much from using the web app, so I don’t buy this argument either.

So is the price of WolframAlpha for iPhone an example of absurd hubris on the part of its developers? I don’t think so. I think they’ve just made a highly polished, non-browser based version of their awesome computational engine targeted at professionals and businessmen who look at a $50 application as a justifiable expense for something they use many times daily. Don’t, however, try to tell me that the price is justified by added features or functionality, or that anyone other than an elite class of niche users would find enough value to merit the cost. The price will come down if Wolfram decides it wants to sell the app, so my advice is to just be patient if you’re anxious to get your mobile stats analysis on.

What was the big news that happened in your sector in Q3? Catch up with GigaOM Pro's, "Quarterly Wrap-ups."

Переслать
Apple Acknowledges Battery Overheating in First-Generation iPod Nano

If you have a first-generation iPod nano (the one that looks like a slimmed-down version of the iPod video and comes in only black and white), you may be able to get a replacement or a fix from Apple, depending on what kind of symptoms your device is exhibiting.

Specifically, Apple acknowledged via a knowledge base article that the early nanos have a tendency to display battery overheating problems, an issue that it seems like every one of its production mobile devices is accused of at one time or another. The article posted by Apple does admit to the problem in the 1G nanos, but it sure goes out of its way to downplay its significance, as is evident from the following passage:

Apple has determined that in very rare cases, batteries in the iPod nano (1st generation) sold between September 2005 and December 2006, may overheat and prevent the iPod nano from working and deform it.

Apple has received very few reports of such incidents (less than 0.001 percent) and the issue has been traced to a single battery supplier. There have been no reports of serious injuries or property damage. Additionally, there have been no reports of such incidents with any other iPod nano model.

Discoloration, overheating, and case deformity near the battery are all symptoms of the problem, so it should be fairly easy to tell if your model is affected. Remember, though, that there’s overheating and then there’s just plain heating, which is something all Apple devices do even when in fine working order.

Interestingly, if you do a quick and dirty Google search for nano overheating woes, you find no shortage of pages like this that seem to indicate that Apple users were well aware of the tendency a full four years before Apple decided to acknowledge them. If you bought your device in 2006 and you paid extra for extended AppleCare service, you may still be covered, but it’s unclear whether devices not under warranty will be eligible for replacement.

If I was the suspicious type, I’d think it highly unusual that Apple would wait this long to acknowledge a problem that seems to be fairly well-documented in the past. Even if it is providing replacements for those without AppleCare, which seems to me unlikely without an official announcement of an extension of eligibility, the timing means that many nano owners will already have ponied up for a newer model, or an iPhone.

If you have an affected model iPod nano, do us a favor and contact AppleCare and let us know how Apple responds.

What was the big news that happened in your sector in Q3? Catch up with GigaOM Pro's, "Quarterly Wrap-ups."

Переслать
Apple Pulls EyeTV App Over 3G Streaming

Although El Gato’s EyeTV app has been able to stream content over AT&T’s seemingly fragile 3G network since last month, it wasn’t until this past weekend that people were talking about it. That talk, at Gizmodo, was followed by swift and decisive action by Apple. EyeTV is no more at the App Store.

For those who don’t know, the EyeTV app accesses content from an EyeTV, the company’s television recording device, attached to a Mac, and sends it to an iPhone. As the pictured warning from the app clearly states, a Wi-Fi connection is required. However, tapping the warning text instead of the “OK” button enables streaming over a cellular connection.

Unfortunately, that’s a violation of AT&T’s terms of service in the U.S. and Apple’s policy everywhere else. Just last month, another video streaming app, SlingPlayer, was released in Europe, still shackled to Wi-Fi only. Sad, but those are the rules, which makes you wonder why El Gato broke them. According to Julio Ojeda-Zapata of Your Tech Blog, El Gato says “test code” was “accidentally left in the EyeTV app.” El Gato has already resubmitted a version of the EyeTV app without the offending code.

Personally, I applaud El Gato for its user-friendly sloppiness. The real error here is allowing telecommunication companies to regulate content on any network.

As Q4 begins, online video is now mainstream. Read the, "Connected Consumer Q3 Wrap-up."

Переслать
Verizon Attacks iPhone With "Droid"
Over the weekend, Verizon launched its second attack against the iPhone, a condescending teaser for an upcoming Android-based phone, Droid. However, unlike the first ad, which rightfully attacked AT&T’s anemic network coverage and dependability, the Droid ad goes after the iPhone.

According to Verizon, the iPhone doesn’t:
- have a real keyboard
- run simultaneous apps
- take 5-megapixel pictures
- customize
- run widgets
- allow open development
- take pictures in the dark
- have interchangeable batteries
That’s it? It’s like this ad is from 2007, what with the keyboard and battery complaints. People don’t care. In fact, touchscreen is now a desired feature on smartphones according to research. Besides those tired bromides, Verizon nitpicks the camera and appeals to nerds over multi-tasking and philosophical differences concerning development.

The latter is especially hilarious, because until the success of Apple’s App Store, Verizon not only told developers what they could sell, but how much they could charge. The company is currently planning a new store that, while not technically excluding competitors, aggregates content under its own store. How open of them, but what about the Droid itself?

Besides the fact that it’s an Android 2.0 phone to be released sometime in November, we don’t know much. The ad cuts from the “iDon’t” list accompanied by cheery background music to static-laden cut scenes possibly suggesting some kind of techno-future in which “droids” rule the iWorld. Beyond that, there are a few vague adjectives like hi-res, hi-speed, video, tunes. As for concrete features, how about speech recognition and 10,000 plus apps. It’s actually kind of sad to see Verizon forced to advertise the comparative dearth of Android apps to the Apple App Store because the latter simply cannot be ignored when advertising smartphones anymore.

In fact, the whole “iDon’t” concept reminds me of an ad from the console wars during the last millennium. Back then, Sega launched a “Nintendon’t!” campaign highlighting the many perceived failures of the Super NES when compared to the Genesis. We all know how that turned out. Whether you call it an iPhone clone or a droid, I don’t expect this war to be any different.
In Q3, NewNet focus turns to business models and search. Read the, "NewNet Q3 Wrap-up."

Переслать