New iOS developer betas posted Apple has posted several new betas for members of the paid iOS developer program. Point your browser to the developer site and use your credentials to log in. You'll find new betas for iOS 4.2 as well as several other items that we're not sure we can specifically mention without breaking NDAs.
Just the other day I was talking about larger gaming companies using iPhone games to promote their major titles, and here you go: Microsoft and Lionhead Studios' Peter Molyneaux are set to introduce a "smartphone" game next week (presumably that means iPhone, although given that it's Microsoft, it might not be) that will tie-in to the upcoming Fable 3 release on the Xbox 360. The game will be called "Kingmaker," and it sounds like it'll be an augmented reality title, with UK players able to explore their real-world town, and "plant virtual flags for the Royals or the Rebels." Every flag planted will earn in-game gold, and that gold will transfer over to the full console title when it is released later this year.
Unfortunately, there are still a few questions -- a release about the game only mentions the UK, and of course that "smartphone" label means it might not be coming to the iPhone. But there's not long to wait, at least. The official site for the game says it's coming out on October 1st. We'll keep an eye on both the site and the game -- even if this doesn't end up being an iPhone title, there's no question that other developers will be watching to see how it works, and thinking about how they might use this strategy for their own titles.
The Apple Peel 520, an iPod touch case that effectively turns it into a phone, will be coming to the US and UK soon.
Developed and built in China, the Apple Peel 520 fits onto the iPod touch. It's got a dock connector, battery and slot for a SIM card. Once users have got the thing set up, they can use the iPod touch to make phone calls and send text messages. Go Solar USA will be the American distributor for Chinese developer Yoison Technology.
Go Solar USA claims that customers can expect the Apple Peel's 800mAh battery to deliver nearly five hours of talk time and 120 hours of standby use. Note that this does require a jailbroken iPod.
The Apple Peel has been available in China for a while now, first as a black market item. With official supplies significantly strained, more and more customers are looking for alternate solutions.
Go Solar USA expects to have demo units in the US this week, which they will begin distributing among retailers (which retailers was not revealed). There's no word on the cost, but it currently sells in China for 520 Yuan ($US77).
It's been Apple TV-palooza here at TUAW today. Shortly after discovering the Apple TViOS firmware could be downloaded and unpacked we took our first peek under the hood and saw just how similar the new Apple TV with its Lowtide software was to previous Apple TV releases. Soon after we discovered that the Lowtide application was built with multi-device support, including the iPad in its list of supported hardware.
Now, developer Dustin Howett has managed to port Lowtide to an iPod touch and run it under iOS 4.1. You can see him running the Apple TV Lowtide software in this video. It's really amazing to see just how compatible the diverse systems are.
The ever-growing iTunes basket The Guardian puts to words something I've been thinking for a long time: that iTunes is actually Apple's weakest link. You'd be forgiven for believing the opposite -- iTunes is arguably Apple's strongest brand, given that it encompasses all of the "mobile device company's" products, and remains the springboard for all iPhones, iPods, and iPads, even across into Windows-land. I'm sure there are even non-Apple customers that use iTunes to organize and even share their music. So there's no question that iTunes is a powerful component of Apple's success so far.
But at the same time, it's become a crutch. As John Naughton says, this is "feature creep on an heroic scale." The application was started as SoundJam, meant specifically for music playback, but at this point, iTunes serves as a movie and TV rental service, a music recommendation service, a phone activation service, the largest mobile software platform in the world, a contact sync app, a media sharing app, an e-book marketplace, a podcasting service, backup software, and oh yeah, now it's the home base for what's supposed to be a scalable music-based social network. When you think about it that way, the new logo wasn't nearly different enough.
Apple's walking a tightrope here -- on the one hand, why not put all of your eggs in the basket that's free to download and easy to use? Why not allow the piece of software everyone has to do everything you want everyone to do? It's a trojan horse writ large -- give the software away, and sell the hardware that works with it.
But on the other hand, the name "iTunes" doesn't stand for half of what that app does these days, and anyone who's ever tried to organize or update a couple hundred apps from within iTunes itself knows that there must be a better way.
Xmarks calls it quits I've been a big fan of Xmarks for a while now -- I work on a few Macs and PCs regularly, and while MobileMe is nice, I've always appreciated Xmarks' ease of use (after a one-time setup, it basically worked automatically) and compatibility across whatever browsers I happened to use. That's why I was disappointed to hear yesterday that they're calling it quits. In around 90 days from now, the servers will shut down and Xmarks will be no more.
Co-founder Todd Agulnick goes through the story of the service on that blog post -- it was originally developed as Foxmarks, and designed to work directly with the Firefox browser to sync bookmarks there. Eventually, they brought in large numbers of users with tons of bookmarks in their browsers, but the company struggled to try and find a way to make money off of those numbers. Search became a main target, and if you're an Xmarks user, you'll know the 'tags" that would appear on Google Search pages in the browsers.
But despite initial interest, that never took off, and after unsuccessfully finding a buyer for the company this past spring, Agulnick says the end has come. Fortunately, there are bookmark syncing alternatives, and most of the browsers these days have options built-in (which is why Xmarks won't move to a subscription service -- hard to sell something most browsers are offering for free). But I'll pour some out for Xmarks -- excellent service, sorry it couldn't find a profitable place to settle down.
Archeologists brave flinging bits of rock with the iPad You hear about interesting uses for the iPad all the time, and many times those uses are merely theoretical. Sure, using an iPad at an archeological dig sounds cool and practical and all, but does anybody really do it? As it turns out, the answer to that question is "yes."
in some of Apple's online promotional galleries, the company highlights a team of archeologists making use of the iPad for tasks such as text and graphical data entry. One of those in charge of the dig says using the iPad for this work has saved countless hours of data entry that would have otherwise been done back at the field office.
Sure, the iPad needs to be sufficiently protected from the elements (such as, y'know, flying hunks of rock), but that's likely a small price to pay vs. paper notebooks with one's chicken scratch someone needs to translate. I bet these archeologists were wishing there was an on-board camera for the iPad right about now.
That's right -- Office for Mac 2011 now has an on-sale date; it's October 26th, just about a month away. The suite will be the first Mac OS X version that offers Outlook rather than Entourage, and will come in a few different flavors. Home and Student 2011 will be available for $119 (or $149 for a three-copy family pack), and will come with Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Messenger. Home and Business 2011 will have the whole enchilada and will sell for $199 (or $279 for a two-install pack).
The announcement came with the cheery video above, which runs through a few new features of the software, and shows you a few of the kind folks running the Mac Business Unit. A couple of us have been using Office for Mac 2011, and we'll have some impressions for you later on. Stay tuned -- if you've been waiting for a brand new Office for Mac, the wait is almost over.
As we reported earlier, Apple has updated the free Remote app for iPhone and iPad. It's about time. The new version looks fine on the iPad since it is not up-scaled. To pair the Remote software to your iTunes library, you must enter a 4-digit code into iTunes on your Mac. From there, you are on the way. You only need to pair once.
Control over WiFi is fast and responsive. The iPad makes a really nice remote for controlling media. Sonos will also soon offer an iPad remote for its whole house music system to join its popular iPhone app, and there are a few more solutions out there.
On the iPhone or iPod touch the app looks quite nice, and supports the Retina display if you have appropriate hardware. The new version supports the new Apple TV, but one doesn't adorn my media room so I can't comment on how well it works.
While testing the app, the only thing that I felt is missing is the ability to stream from your iTunes library back to your iPhone or iPad. Plug in some headphones or powered speakers, and you have a really nice, well-stocked music system. Sure, there are other solutions to this problem, but it would be nice if Apple offered a direct one and not just AirPlay. Criticisms aside, it's nice to see this app updated after all these months.
PipeRush is a fun little title that we haven't the likes of, as far as I know, yet on the iPhone. I remember this kind of game as Pipe Dream, though you may know it by a number of different names. But the idea is that you're given a queue of pieces, and then your job is to assemble them in such a way that they all match up and allow water to flow within a certain time period. PipeRush doesn't add too much to this formula (though there are some powerups to play with as you go through the levels), but what it does bring is a nice bit of polish -- there's a cute lead character in Pippa, the pipe-laying plumber, and the graphics are simple and sparkly as you go along. Achievements and scoreboards are handled by Crystal, but with star ratings to chase across the game's 15 or so levels, I found plenty to do.
PipeRush is only US 99 cents on the App Store right now, and if this kind of gameplay appeals to you at all, I highly recommend you pick it up.
LightSpeed Mobile is designed to extend LightSpeed away from a traditional cash register, by using an iPod touch and Linea Pro "sled" to scan bar codes and swipe credit cards from anywhere in the store. If this sounds familiar, it's because the hardware is the same that is currently used in Apple retail stores, although they use a proprietary app.
For existing LightSpeed customers, LightSpeed Mobile is an additional US$1,299 (iPod touch not included). Complete turnkey retail solutions that include the necessary software, the Linea Pro scanner, and a full POS hardware kit (receipt printer, cash drawer, and bar code scanner) start at $3,649. If you already have the necessary hardware and software, you can purchase LightSpeed Mobile in the App Store for just $19.99.
A couple of fun videos showing LightSpeed Mobile in action follow on the next page.
In human terms those numbers refer to both Apple TV (the 3 device family) and the iPad (the 2 device family). As you might guess, the 1 device family includes the iPhone and iPod touch. These device families generally group related physical form factors. All iPods and iPhones use a similar 320x480 base geometry, even though units with new Retina displays physically enhance the addressability of that screen size with more pixels per point.
Click the Read More link to see more about what we've found in the disk image.
Google Voice due in the App Store soon TechCrunch has reported this morning that the Google Voice iOS app has been approved and should be in the App Store soon. They quote "sources" who claim that the app simply needs some tweaks for iOS 4 multitasking, and should be out within "the next few weeks." This is potentially huge news for Google Voice customers.
Since then a mobile web version of the service has been released, and it's quite clever, but not a native app. Several native apps, GV Mobile + ($2.99) and GV Connect ($2.99) have made it to the App Store and are filling the niche until the official Google Voice app appears.
Apple TV under the hood: first look As TUAW posted earlier, the iOS 4.1 firmware distribution for Apple TV has just gone live on Apple's Phobos webserver. TUAW downloaded a copy and used the dev-team's decrypt keys to peek under the hood. Here's what we found about the "Mojave" Apple TV distribution.
First, as expected, there's no SpringBoard.app in Core Services. SpringBoard is the application that runs your iPhone's home screen, letting you launch applications by touching them. Instead, Apple TV seems to run Lowtide, an application responsible for all user interactions, which is derived from the previous FrontRow application. Lowtide handles media playback, rentals, DRM management (Fair Play, of course) and other basic services.
Apple has released an all-new version of their long-untouched Remote app for iOS devices, which has been well overdue an update for some time now. It has a number of significant new features, including Retina Display support, an all-new iPad UI, gesture-based remote control support for the new Apple TV, and (perhaps most significantly for some people) the ability to use use Home Streaming to stream content from an iTunes library on your local network to your iOS device (UPDATE- please see note below). This last addition will be really useful for people with music libraries too large to fit on their device.
UPDATE: numerous commenters are pointing out that the Home Sharing feature does not allow you to stream from iTunes to the iOS device, although that would sound like a logical thing for it to do. Instead it merely allows an easier way to "pair" your iOS device and iTunes without entering the four-digit codes required by the previous version. The over-enthusiastic writer of the original story conveyed his deep regret about this error as he was taken out and shot.
The iPad, and the wonderful iPad music app called Seline HD (US$9.99), are making a splash in the music world. Last month, Alex Shpil showed us The iPad Orchestra, which was a quartet using the same software to make beautiful music. This month, he shows us a street musician playing sitar-like music on the iPad.
Enjoy the music, which Alex captured in full stereo.
Team Member MuscleNerd also warned potential jailbreakers via Twitter: "Those interested in *potential* AppleTV JBs, better buy early! Remember iPhone 3GS hardware was updated to fix JB hole." Indeed, Apple has already released a firmware update for the Apple TV, though we don't know if it addresses this exploit.
Are you using Apple's Ping? Ping is Apple's first earnest foray into the social network game. Introduced with iTunes 10, Ping lets users see the music their friends are buying from the iTunes Store, leave comments and point out what they like.
There are also several musicians participating. The more active among them post photos and videos, stories and so on. It's a young network with lots of potential, but for now some folks are less than impressed. A recent update to iTunes put Ping in your music library (it used to be limited to the iTunes Store) and added a big 'ol sidebar.
Our question to you is: Are you using it? I'll admit that my interest has waned, and that's because nearly all of the updates I see are of the "[Person X] is now following [Person Y]" variety, which isn't very interesting. Perhaps if the artists I followed were a bit more active.
Am I the only one? Complete our short poll below and let us know if you're using Ping. We'll post the results at a later time.
It's wild -- those are pickles and carrots along the bottom, whole grain Eggo waffles in the middle, halved hard boiled eggs for the birds, and I'm not quite sure what the pigs are; they're probably some kind of veggies. But he even got the eyes and the eyebrows just right. Very impressive! Parenting magazine says she's due in December, and we definitely hope that everything works out all right.
Just slightly ahead of the new Apple TV's arrival at purchasers' doorsteps, Apple has posted the restore firmware for the new device (download link). The firmware's filename and .ipsw extension both confirm what practically everyone already knew: the new Apple TV runs on a flavor of iOS, the same operating system running on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. That, combined with the Micro-USB "service port" on the Apple TV's backside, means it's only a matter of time until it gets jailbroken.
Apple TV running iOS also means it would be relatively trivial for Apple to introduce an App Store for the device. In fact, with a more general-purpose version of something like Apple's Remote app, Apple could very easily allow existing iOS devices to act as a universal remote for virtually any existing app, thereby giving the Apple TV access to the more than 250,000 apps already available on the App Store. This would also be consistent with the "ship first, add features later" paradigm Apple's followed so far with devices running iOS; remember, the first iPhone and iPod touch both shipped before there was such a thing as an App Store, and look where we are now.
Tagalicious is a $20 Mac application from the The Little App Factory (best known for their excellent DVD ripper RipIt), which will clean up your iTunes library metadata, fetch artwork, and even find lyrics. So far, it's been extremely impressive both in accuracy and price.
I had a Guns N' Roses song "1-01 Sweet Child O' Mine.mp3" with existing metadata saying it was the song "Sweet Child O' Mine" from their Greatest Hits album. Tagalicious said it was "Welcome to the Jungle." I played the file in iTunes, and sure enough, my metadata was wrong. It was "Welcome to the Jungle." I have no idea how Tagalicious figured that out, but I suspect it is guilty of practicing witchcraft.
The current version 1.0.1 shows a great deal of promise, although it lacks some more advanced features. Then again, that is what version 1.x releases are all about: get a solid foundation started, and then see where you need to grow.
CineTap for Netflix (US $0.99) is the newest and nicest Netflix management app that I've seen so far. It won't replace the Netflix app, since you still need to have that installed in order to instantly watch movies. But CineTap adds some great features to the experience that the Netflix app doesn't include. The app is amazingly fast and absolutely gorgeous, taking full advantage of the iPad's screen real estate. Instead of lists, it uses posters to represent movies that can be scrolled left or right, or if you tap the Show All button, the line expands to fill the screen with posters that can then be scrolled up or down. In Show All mode, you'll see 20 posters plus a navigation bar in landscape mode, or 25 posters in portrait mode with an optional navigation bar that covers up some of the posters, which is no big deal since it's easily dismissed.
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Apple has posted several new betas for members of the paid iOS developer program. Point your browser to the developer site and use your credentials to log in. You'll find new betas for iOS 4.2 as well as several other items that we're not sure we can specifically mention without breaking NDAs. 
The Guardian puts to words something I've been thinking for a long time: that iTunes is actually Apple's weakest link. You'd be forgiven for believing the opposite -- iTunes is arguably Apple's strongest brand, given that it encompasses all of the "mobile device company's" products, and remains the springboard for all iPhones, iPods, and iPads, even across into Windows-land. I'm sure there are even non-Apple customers that use iTunes to organize and even share their music. So there's no question that iTunes is a powerful component of Apple's success so far.
I've been a big fan of Xmarks for a while now -- I work on a few Macs and PCs regularly, and while MobileMe is nice, I've always appreciated Xmarks' ease of use (after a one-time setup, it basically worked automatically) and compatibility across whatever browsers I happened to use. That's why I was disappointed to hear yesterday that they're calling it quits. In around 90 days from now, the servers will shut down and Xmarks will be no more.
You hear about interesting uses for the iPad all the time, and many times those uses are merely theoretical. Sure, using an iPad at an archeological dig sounds cool and practical and all, but does anybody really do it? As it turns out, the answer to that question is "yes."
As we reported earlier, Apple has updated the free Remote app for iPhone and iPad. It's about time. The new version looks fine on the iPad since it is not up-scaled. To pair the Remote software to your iTunes library, you must enter a 4-digit code into iTunes on your Mac. From there, you are on the way. You only need to pair once.
Xsilva Systems has been at the forefront of Mac Point-Of-Sale systems for a while with their LightSpeed software. Now they're bringing another member of the Apple hardware family into the Lightspeed fold. 
Could Lowtide be targeted towards playback on the iPad? That's what indications in the application's Info.plist property list seem to hint at. As TUAW continues to explore the new Apple TV iOS disk image, all kinds of interesting hints keep bubbling out. The property list in question lists two entries for its UIDeviceFamily property.
TechCrunch has reported this morning that the Google Voice iOS app has been approved and should be in the App Store soon. They quote "sources" who claim that the app simply needs some tweaks for iOS 4 multitasking, and should be out within "the next few weeks." This is potentially huge news for Google Voice customers.
Apple has released an all-new version of their long-untouched Remote app for iOS devices, which has been well overdue an update for some time now. It has a number of significant new features, including Retina Display support, an all-new iPad UI, gesture-based remote control support for the new Apple TV, and (perhaps most significantly for some people) the ability to use use Home Streaming to stream content from an iTunes library on your local network to your iOS device (UPDATE- please see note below). This last addition will be really useful for people with music libraries too large to fit on their device.
Members of the iPhone Dev Team have dropped hints on Twitter that it will be possible to jailbreak the new Apple TV. Team members pod2g and iphone_dev have both mentioned that the SHAtter exploit has been able to decrypt the Apple TV's firmware's keys. While Apple TVs are not yet in people's hands, the firmware is available from Apple's public distribution servers.
Ping is Apple's first earnest foray into the social network game. Introduced with iTunes 10, Ping lets users see the music their friends are buying from the iTunes Store, leave comments and point out what they like.
Just slightly ahead of the new Apple TV's arrival at purchasers' doorsteps, Apple has posted the restore firmware for the new device (download link). The firmware's filename and .ipsw extension both confirm what practically everyone already knew: the new Apple TV runs on a flavor of iOS, the same operating system running on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. That, combined with the Micro-USB "service port" on the Apple TV's backside, means it's only a matter of time until it gets jailbroken. 
Tagalicious is a $20 Mac application from the The Little App Factory (best known for their excellent DVD ripper RipIt), which will clean up your iTunes library metadata, fetch artwork, and even find lyrics. So far, it's been extremely impressive both in accuracy and price.
