Fresh Apple: TheAppleBlog (5 сообщений)

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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.
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Gas Cubby by FRAM: A Mutually Beneficial Partnership

Over a year ago I had the pleasure of profiling David Barnard’s App Cubby and their growing selection of iPhone applications. David’s attention to detail and the feedback of his many customers has allowed him to grow Gas Cubby into a great app for tracking your automobile’s maintenance, costs, and data. When it was selling for $10 I thought it was worth it, but now with Gas Cubby by FRAM, you can pick it up for free.

While the iPhone gains momentum like the juggernaut it appears to be, the App Store has continued to draw criticism, and yet, developers are still flocking to the platform. The result is that fart apps aren’t cutting it anymore, and every developer must bring their ‘A’ game if they want to have a chance at making it in this business. As with the rest of the business world in this economy, making it as an iPhone App Developer also means being able to evolve.

Gas Cubby evolved as many others have done, and began offering a Lite version that allowed the user to judge for themselves, while logging up to 5 records. But now they’ve taken it to the next level with the free version supported through targeted ads by FRAM (a division of Honeywell). Gas Cubby represents a solid and proven automobile maintenance tracking application for the iPhone platform — something that likely would’ve taken a company like Honeywell a significant amount of time to bring to market and cultivate to Gas Cubby’s level of accomplishment.

What makes this partnership interesting is that it’s one-to-one. The ads within the application aren’t coming from some ad service that rotates several ‘targeted’ graphics, but rather represent a unique collaboration of developer and product manufacturer. The graphics and landing page are all customized to coordinate with Gas Cubby, rather than trying to fit a square peg into a round hole with a link out to a general product page. Tapping one of the ‘Tough Guard’ ads for instance, loads an in-app browser page for FRAM oil filters with information on how to buy. It’s all very well integrated and doesn’t distract from the task at hand.

For Honeywell, they can now target users who care enough about their vehicles that they track all of its data. And thanks to the partnership with App Cubby, they’ve got an insider’s knowledge of the iPhone platform and the landscape of the App Store. The combination sure appears to be a solid match-up that will likely benefit both parties.

If you have yet to pull the trigger on Gas Cubby, you no longer have an excuse not to with Gas Cubby by FRAM. It’s a terrific way to track the health and maintenance of your vehicle, without missing anything important that could lead to more costly expenses. Of course the non ad-supported full version is still available for $6.99.

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Rumor Has It: 4th-Gen iPhone to Have 5-Megapixel Camera

Evidence has emerged to back up the theory that Apple’s next iPhone iteration will have a 5-megapixel camera. It comes by way of DigiTimes, which reports that supplier OmniVision has received a sizable order for the parts necessary for the improvement.

The current model only sports a 3-megapixel sensor, which is on par with a lot of devices, but many direct iPhone competitors have begun offering better resolution hardware. Five megapixels isn’t a lot compared to most point-and-shoot cameras on the market right now, but it’s likely enough for most people’s standard usage, and should help the iPhone become even more popular than it already is on sites like Flickr.

DigiTimes is quoting unnamed sources as saying that OmniVision, the company which currently supplies the CMOS sensor for the iPhone 3GS, has received a large order for 5-megapixel versions of the core camera component, which should help it increase its output to between 40-45 million units in 2010, up from 20-21 million in 2009.

The order is set to start being manufactured sometime in the first quarter of 2010, which is in keeping with the expected June/July launch of the next-gen iPhone at WWDC.

Expect video quality to improve as a result. A move to HD video in the iPhone would definitely help the device’s chances in the mobile video market, and could even spell the end for standalone low-cost devices like the Flip HD and Sony’s recently launched competitor, the Webbie HD.

Here’s hoping the next iteration of the iPhone’s camera also handles things like night and low-light shooting better, too. Many competitors now have built-in flashes, but I don’t see Apple marring its minimalist industrial design with an additional break in the back casing of the iPhone.

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Apple iPhone Tops Mobile Phone Industry in the U.S.

If you live in the U.S. and own a mobile phone, it’s most likely an iPhone, according to a new study conducted by Nielsen. From January through October of this year, Apple’s little wonder device was the most popular phone in the country.

It beat the BlackBerry 8300 (Curve), which came in at No. 2. BlackBerry’s cumulative share still exceeds the iPhone’s, however, as the touchscreen Storm and entry-level Pearl also placed quite high on the list. Coming in at No. 3 was Motorola’s RAZR V3, despite its considerable age and lack of smartphone features.

By the numbers, the iPhone 3G took 4 percent of cell-phone ownership in the U.S. (it’s unclear how previous models and the 3GS fit into this breakdown), while the Curve had 3.7 percent. The gap was wider between the second- and third-place finishers, with the RAZR taking only 2.3 percent. Meanwhile LG had a strong showing, with four handsets appearing in the top 10, and a cumulative market share of 6.4 percent.

As to web activity on cell phones, Google topped the list of sites accessed via a mobile device, and competitor Yahoo came in second with its Yahoo Mail site. Gmail came in third, and YouTube won out in terms of destinations for mobile video, making it a very solid year for Google in terms of the mobile web.

Notably, no Android devices made the top 10 list of popular devices, but Motorola’s Droid arrived late to the game. Expect to see it, or possibly the Nexus One, somewhere on this list in 2010.

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Rumour Has It: Tablet Announcement as Early as January

Source: Piper Jaffray

Whaddya mean, you’re skeptical about reports regarding an upcoming Tablet announcement? When did you last hear a major publisher report exciting Tablet news from unnamed sources? Oh, wait.

Earlier in the week the Wall Street Journal reported on the rumors of Apple’s forays into television content subscription. It also made a passing reference to the tablet coming “by the end of March.” And we’d have left it at that, except that yesterday the Financial Times also chimed in with a little more on the same theme:

Apple is preparing an announcement next month that many anticipate will be the official unveiling of its tablet, but the company has so far declined to confirm the existence of the device. Wall Street analysts expect mass production of an Apple tablet to begin as early as February.

Of course, when it comes to reporting about Apple’s fabled Tablet device, no one ever properly cites their sources. Instead, we get fleeting, nebulous references to shady characters and nameless insiders: “Sources close to Apple told us…” or “An executive familiar with the matter revealed…” Occasionally, some enterprising analyst stares at a spreadsheet for a while and makes up some bold predictions — and then they get named as sources, their prophecies presented almost as iron-clad statements of previously super-occluded fact.

Even worse, it’s not hard to imagine that sometimes ( just occasionally) those same analysts become the mysterious, unidentified sources of privileged insider information, referred to almost casually as “sources with intimate knowledge of Apple.” While that’s not technically incorrect, it’s still wildly misleading. And unethical, too.

Of course, I’m not suggesting venerable publishers such as the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times get up to these shenanigans. However, it’s at least interesting to note that earlier this month, and reported by AppleInsider, Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner offered much the same predictions for a first-quarter 2010 Tablet launch;

Reiner…revealed his latest tablet news in a note to investors issued Wednesday morning.

“Our checks into Apple’s supply chain indicate the manufacturing cogs for the tablet are creaking into action and should begin to hit a mass market stride in February,” the note said.

Reiner said Apple would likely need at least five or six weeks of inventory built up before it can release the product, positioning a likely launch in March or April.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I read that an analyst has revealed his “latest” news about Apple’s super-duper-secret-history-making-miracle-tablet, I gotta assume that doesn’t mean his latest morsels of juicy, hitherto-unknown insider information, but rather, his “latest roundup of most reasonable rumors and assumptions gathered from around the Internet.” I guess it depends on your level of cynicism, how badly you want the Tablet, and how you choose to read between the lines.

Either way, the WSJ and the FT are in competition with one another. One mustn’t be outdone by the other — even if that means reporting “old” news that isn’t really news at all. It’s conjecture from a man who doesn’t claim to have inside knowledge, but just looked into Apple’s “supply chain” and offered some best guesses. That is, after all, what analysts do. You can do the same thing, by the way, just by gathering together a half dozen industry trade-press magazines.

Mind you, that line which begins “Apple is preparing an announcement next month…” is pretty specific, isn’t it? Specific without actually telling us anything, but then, that’s what the rumor mill is all about these days, right?

Frankly, I’m growing tired of all these rumors — Apple can’t release this thing soon enough, as far as I’m concerned, if only so we can finally put all this frothy prognostication behind us!

UPDATE: Boy Genius Report is now reporting that its own inside source is reporting a 7-inch Apple tablet launch in January is a 100 percent certainty. Looks like we may not have to wait much longer to put the rumors to rest.

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Ford Wants its Cars to Talk With Your iPhone

Autoblog picked up on an interesting story about Ford Motor Company’s efforts to create middleware that will let future cars interact with mobile devices, including iPhones. Sync, developed in conjunction with Microsoft, aims to not only give you access to your phone book and playlists, but also wants to allow you to use all those third-party apps you’ve downloaded.

Think about it: hands-free access to iPhone Apps as you drive. Sign us up.

One of the biggest hurdles creating an interface like this is getting developers to start working on apps that mobile device owners would want to use in their vehicles. “So Ford has to reach out to people eager to develop apps for cars, and make the process fun for the developers. Long approval periods and heavy layers of corporate interference will just turn would-be Sync app writers off,” says Autoblog’s Jonny Lieberman.

Sync’s open API allows developers to create apps for virtually any type of phone, but Ford selected iPhones as its research model because of its popularity. Sync developers met with a group of computer science students from the University of Michigan and asked them to build a couple of iPhone Apps so researchers could test their viability as a truly mobile app.

The first, FollowMe, lets users track each other’s locations so no one gets lost traveling caravan-style from place to place. SyncCast, the other app the students came up with, allows users to play any radio station in the U.S through the car stereo via their iPhone. It only took the students three months to develop the apps and, by all accounts, working with the Sync API was a piece of cake. Ironically, it was the iPhone’s Apple-specific toolkit that gave developers the most grief.

There’s no word when this technology will be ready for the open market but when it is, will you want it on it? Would the ability to interact hands free with your iPhone influence your car-buying decisions? Let us know in the comments.

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