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- Weekly App Store Pick: April 25, 2009
What’s that on the horizon? Why it’s none other than the latest picks fresh from the App Store, coming to brighten up your weekend!
Though before I run you through my latest selection of newly released apps, it’s time to indulge in a quick refresher of some of this week’s Apple news.
We started the week not with a bang, but with a tweet. In the early hours of Monday morning, Loren Brichter (otherwise known as iPhone developer Atebits), launched Tweetie for Mac, a desktop version of the immensely popular iPhone Twitter client. Those of you who have taken to summarizing your life as a series of hastily written 140 character messages, should check out my in-depth look at Tweetie.
The iPod touch is apparently growing in popularity with the U.S. Army. It was revealed this week that deployed soldiers are able to use the touch for ballistics calculation and translations, among other things. It’s not clear if voice recognition, a rumored feature of the new iPhone 3.0 update, will also be making it to the iPod touch.
On Thursday, Apple held their second-quarter conference call. In terms of finances, total revenue for the period came to $8.33 billion, up almost $1 billion over the same quarter last year. Aside from the colossal amount of revenue generated, Tim Cook — Apple’s acting CEO while Jobs takes a leave of absence — attempted to quash any rumors of an Apple netbook.
But before the celebratory balloons could be inflated and party poppers popped, Apple was duly taken down a notch with a controversial addition to the App Store. The app in question, imaginatively titled “Baby Shaker,” encouraged the user to shake the iPhone, as if it were a crying baby, until said baby died.
This week I’ve been looking at Knee Cap, Silent Scope, and Assassin’s Creed - Altair’s Chronicles.
Knee Cap (99 cents)
Released back in January, so not strictly the freshest of the picks this week, however, it’s certainly the most useful. Knee Cap is a loan tracker, allowing you to stay on top of cash you owe and — perhaps more importantly — cash owed to you. The app also has the sort of prim ‘n’ proper polished look that you’d expect from a financial tool you’ll be using regularly. Notably, Knee Cap integrates fully with the iPhone’s onboard Address Book, making it a cinch to track loans with your contacts.Silent Scope ($5.99)
A few years back, six bucks would only get you a few minutes of sniper action on Konami’s Silent Scope arcade game. Now for that same six bucks you can dive straight into this intense sniper time-trial whenever you like. The controls have been seriously refined for iPhone, but the game still retains the tension and focus on accuracy of the arcade original. This version also features a tutorial mode, alongside Story, Shooting Range and Time Attack mode. For fans of the original, Silent Scope on iPhone is unmissable.Assassin’s Creed - Altair’s Chronicles ($3.99)
From one successful video game adaptation to an utter atrocity by comparison. Mobile gaming giant Gameloft’s latest release is an adaptation of the Nintendo DS version of Assassin’s Creed, which in itself was an ineffective re-telling of the original and successful console version released back in 2007. To Gameloft’s credit, they have indeed enhanced the DS-version of Assassin’s Creed, however the game still doesn’t capture the spirit of what was an excellent sandbox stealth adventure.That’s all the picks we’ve got time for this week. As ever, I’ll return next week with more news from the week and picks from the App Store.
In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?
Переслать - Tapbots Devs Quit Their Day Jobs Thanks to Apple's iPhone
We know that the App Store is successful (Apple insists that we know, thanks to things like the billionth app downloaded competition that just concluded yesterday), but it’s not too often that we get to put a human face on that success and see what it really means for developers. Apple themselves gave us a look at Trism developer Steve Demeter in a video segment shown during their iPhone OS 3.o event, but how are others doing?
The two developers behind Tapbots are doing very well, apparently. Mark Jardine and Paul Haddad together make up Tapbots, the studio that’s responsible for two very successful apps, Weightbot and Convertbot, both of which I own and love, coincidentally. It’s not so much the function that draws me to Tapbots apps (though they work flawlessly), but the beautiful, unique, robot-themed design.
Jardine and Haddad have, until now, been working on their Tapbots projects on evenings, weekends and basically whenever they have a spare moment. They still both had day jobs to go to, and it would’ve been foolish to throw away a steady income for something as novel as App Store development. We estimate revenue for their apps Weightbot, and the even more popular Convertbot, at between $500,000 and $600,000 to date. Even once you remove Apple’s 30 percent, that still adds up to between $350,000 and $420,000 on $0 initial investment. Not a bad haul for only a 6-month period.
In a post on their blog yesterday, Haddad revealed that in light of their success, both developers are now giving themselves over full-time to iPhone development. The good news is that this means they can devote more time to creating the precious little diamonds in the rough that have made them so successful to date. Not sure if they’re taking suggestions, but I’d really love to see a Calcbot to replace the iPhone’s ho-hum built-in one (yes, I would pay at least a dollar for a purely superficial upgrade).
No word on what the forthcoming apps will be, but they plan on releasing four a year, and will be starting on a new one in May. Meanwhile, 1.3 updates for both Convertbot and Weightbot are almost ready to be submitted to Apple.
While Trism is a terrific example of what a great, innovative idea from an independent developer can achieve on the iPhone platform, the Tapbots story is a little different. It shows that you don’t have to come up with something completely original to be successful. The apps Tapbots creates are performing very basic functions, and ones that other applications often already offer. The difference is Tapbots takes the time to really polish the design and performance of their product, and the quality that results appeals to consumers. It just goes to show that despite the sometimes depressing quality of App Store chart toppers, the good guys do sometimes still win.
Переслать - Thanks to TheAppleBlog Sponsors!
We’d like to say thanks to this month’s sponsor of TheAppleBlog:
- WunderRadio: Wunder Radio provides access to thousands of streaming Internet radio stations and on your iPhone or Windows Mobile Phone.
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Переслать - App Review: Fist of Fury — As Much Fun As a Punch in the Face
App Quick Stats
Don’t let life get you down, put your punchin’ gloves on and show the world you’re a champion in this retro boxing game.
In these economically egregious times, we all need a little release from the fiscal pressures dumped upon on our already strained shoulders. Even I need some respite from the current monetary melee, having just conducted a thoroughly British argument with my thoroughly British bank manager, both of us politely snarling, in a disturbingly reserved manner, down the phone line.
Allowing you to take your troubles to the ring, Fist of Fury is a retro-style boxing game for the iPhone. The game features five muscle-bound walking clichés for you to attempt to beat the pulp out of.
Round One
Before you’ve even set fist to face, or foot in ring, however, you’ll be struck down by the inordinately long load time. For a game that has the technical depth of a caveman dressed as a robot, it’s surprising that Fist of Fury takes so long to load.
Once past the loading screen comes the disappointment of seeing what took so long to load. The graphics on the title screen, like those in the rest of the game, look unfinished, more akin to placeholder graphics in a beta version. Only moments into the game, it’s apparent that very little effort has been spent on its visual design.
In the ring and on level one, my opponent was a beefy, retro-styled juggernaut. And yet this juggernaut, the boxing ring, and even my own character reminded me of something. A quick Google search later and it’s clear that Fist of Fury bares a striking resemblance to Nintendo’s NES classic Punch Out.
The audio in Fist of Fury, however, doesn’t bare any resemblance to Punch Out’s glorious blippy bloppy sound effects, nor is it reminiscent of the NES classic’s oddly jaunty music. Fist of Fury features no musical accompaniment and the sound effects, while satisfyingly 8-bit and tinny, are few and far between.
A Hollow Victory
Fists of Fury pits your character, the imaginatively titled John Doe, against five gargantuan opponents. John stands square in the center of the screen, riveted to the spot, perhaps through sheer fear. The only option open to the player is to keeping throwing punches while attempting to dodge your opponents’ onslaught of fists.
Tapping the left and right punch buttons cause John to flail the appropriate fist in the general direction of his enemy. It feels ineffective and devoid of any strategy. For your defense, by leaning the iPhone left or right, you’re able to dodge your opponents advances.
As there’s no tell, or indication of any sort, for when your opponent may punch, nor is there any strategically effective method to dodging and attacking beyond that of randomly leaning left and right, while bashing each punch button alternately. With the gameplay being so lacking in depth, each win in Fist of Fury feels frustratingly futile.
Note that I’ve not mentioned options or settings because there are none. There’s no way to change the game’s difficulty, no tutorial or control overview (understandable, given Fist of Fury’s strategic simplicity), nor is there the opportunity to change your character’s name or add a profile picture.
Summing Up
While the sound and graphics aren’t necessarily awful, they don’t bring anything new to retro-style gaming and are more of a rushed rip than an outright homage. The control mechanism and general game mechanic — no efficient strategy beyond whacking the punch buttons — is a disgustingly poor attempt at mimicking the depth and effectiveness of 8-bit boxing games.
At this point, my only hope is that this review shames the developers of Fist of Fury into either taking app development and their customers seriously, or throwing the towel in and leaving the industry. To summarize, I’ll be blunt as a punch square in the face: Avoid this awful game.
Переслать - Mac Botnet: How To Ensure You're Not Part of the Problem
As reported recently all over the blogosphere, the world’s first Mac-based botnet is active after infiltrating people’s systems in January by way of a trojan hidden inside pirated iWork’09 installers. If you downloaded and installed iWork’09 from a torrent, binary newsgroup, or any other source not from Apple’s trial download links or official DVDs, you have a high likelihood of infection and need to do something about it.
We’re not here to judge — we are here to help. So if you know you’re possibly at risk, you should immediately determine if you are infected or not, and if you are rid yourself of infection.
Manually Determining Infection
To manually determine if you are infected or not, fire up a terminal (run Terminal.app). There are three ways to detect infection and all three should be used for thoroughness. The Trojan masquerades by the name iWorkServices and this is the key to determine infection.
1. Check for the process running
sudo ps aux |grep -i iworkserv |grep -v "grep"
This checks that no process is running containing the name iworkserv on your system. If this returns anything at all, you are most likely infected.2. Checking for opened file
sudo lsof -i -P|grep -i iworkserv
This checks that no process with the name containing iworkserv has any open files on your system, and no files containing iworkserv are opened by anything else. If this returns anything at all, you are most likely infected.3. Checking for the files on your hard drive
sudo find / -iname "iworkserv*" -print
This searches your hard drive from top to bottom, inside and out, looking for a file starting with iworkserv. If this returns anything at all, you are most likely infected.Quick Detection and Removal
The people over at SecureMac have posted a simple (and free) tool that will detect and rid you of infection. If you even think there’s a slight chance of infection, you should run this. This will scan your system and inform you if you need to clean the infection. If so, it will offer to clean it for you. For peace of mind, you can test manually with the steps above before and after cleaning, to ensure removal is complete.
Prevention
There is a strong debate relating to how necessary virus checking is for Macs. The situation is clearly becoming more risky, so I take the middle ground by running the full MacScan software as a scheduled process once a week. This gives me peace of mind that I will identify anything within a week, without slowing down my system with a constantly running process checking every file I open.
But crucially (and I cannot stress this enough), the most effective prevention is to be careful what you download and install — and especially be careful what you enter your admin password for. I’ve never had an infection on Windows or Mac in my life and they’re not hard to avoid if you keep your systems updated with security patches and don’t download and install without prejudice. Just as you look left and right before you cross the road, look before you install.
Переслать - Apple Passes Billion Milestone, Prize Wasted on Kid
[UPDATE: Seems we need to start adding a graphic of a cheek with a tongue planted firmly in it for articles like this. Lighten up folks.]My opinion might be slightly skewed, thanks to jealous rage, but I can’t help but think that Apple’s big billion-app prize could’ve gone to someone more deserving than the 13-year-old who finally took it home. Like me, for instance.
Connor Mulcahey of Connecticut is the official grand prize winner, though, like it or not, confirmed by Apple this Friday. He’ll be taking home a $10,000 iTunes gift certificate. The app he downloaded to win was Bump, which allows you to share contact information wirelessly between iPhones or iPod touches.
First of all, why does a 13-year-old even need a contact sharing application? Is he networking? Does he have that many friends with iPhones? Actually, why does he even have an iPhone or an iPod touch in the first place? One thing’s for sure, the kind of 13-year-old kid who has an iPhone probably isn’t so hard up for cash that he needs Apple to give him a bunch a free stuff. And what’s he going to do with a MacBook Pro and a Time Capsule? Edit and back-up skateboarding vids? OK, I’m done venting.
In all seriousness, Apple probably couldn’t have asked for a better winner. The teen market is one area where they still have lots of room to grow, as a recent survey indicates. Which is partially why I’m so baffled that one could actually win, since the odds seem stacked against it, percentage-wise. Also, it shows that kids like using Apple products, too, even if Microsoft stuff does appeal more to the highly lucrative 4-year-old girl demographic.
Besides the prize-giving, Apple also introduced a new online video advertisement trumpeting their own achievement. The ad, which appears on the New York Times web site, among others, is basically an extended, animated version of the “Thanks a billion” graphic that they’re using on the Apple homepage. It dominates the header and sidebar of the Times’ site, and Apple probably wishes the news would also blot out the nasty black mark their reputation has suffered at the hands of the now notorious Baby Shaker app.
I wonder what effect the promotion and giveaway had on download numbers. Only Apple will probably ever know for sure, but if we see more sweepstakes and similar sales tactics in the future, that’s a pretty good indication that the campaign was successful. Here’s hoping it was, because Daddy still needs a new Macbook Pro. Maybe I can catch a late flight to Connecticut and intercept a delivery from Apple en route to a certain 13-year old’s house…
Переслать - ExpanDrive 2.0 Enhances GUI, Speed, and Connectivity Options
Building on the success of their initial offering, ExpanDrive has released version 2.0 of their Mac client for accessing a wide array of online storage systems.
ExpanDrive is built on MacFUSE, an open-source project that provides the base functionality and SDK for connecting to remote and alternative filesystems. The ExpanDrive developer-alchemists have mixed in a bit of their own Python and Objective-C components to significantly enhance the potency of these MacFUSE-managed filesystems and definitely improved the formula for this major update. Read on to see what’s new in 2.0.
SFTP Overhaul
Not fully satisfied with the status quo, the developers brought the SFTP engine back to the lab and have completely re-engineered it. My tests confirmed that large file copies now transfer in approximately half the time. Traipsing through my cluttered web directories in the Finder is also a less painful experience due to a fully re-worked caching system.
An even more pleasant surprise is how quickly remote edits are detected. The video below shows a text file being edited in both
vion my very remote Linux box and also open locally in TextWrangler. Edits made on the server side show up almost instantaneously now.FTP/FTPS Support
ExpanDrive has had experimental support for FTP/FTPS filesystems for quite a while and has now made it a first class filesystem in version 2.0. As a daily user of the product, I regularly peruse both their Twitter activity and Get Satisfaction support forums and can attest that they really do listen to users. It’s very obvious that they wanted to make sure that FTP/FTPS support worked under as many conditions as possible before bringing it to their entire user base. If you must use FTP, you should definitely take advantage of the enhanced security in the FTPS protocol if at all possible. Standard FTP transmits both your credentials and all data completely in the clear, making it very easy for malicious users to eavesdrop on your sessions.
GUI Enhancements
Continuing the theme of listening to their users, ExpanDrive has tweaked their GUI to provide more information about the types of drives available and provides the ability to eject volumes from their Drive Manager as well as open volumes in the Finder.
You can now also change the drive icon and use your own icons for ExpanDrive volumes by clicking on the drive icon in the edit dialog:
Live! New! Filesystem! (S3 Support)
Perhaps the most significant enhancement is the inclusion of support for Amazon S3. While inherently not as robust as SFTP volumes, S3-mounted volumes let you use the Finder to manage your buckets (i.e. copy/move/delete files), including setting object permissions via contextual menu. I created a test bucket via S3Fox, used ExpanDrive to move files into it and verified the results back in S3Fox.
Should You Buy/Upgrade?
If you’ve never used ExpanDrive and regularly have to FTP/SFTP files or work with content in S3 buckets, then you really should consider giving ExpanDrive a try (list price is $39.95 for new users). Existing users should also consider upgrading just for the speed and integrity enhancements alone. Couple that with good S3 support and it’s well worth the $19.95 upgrade price (free if you’ve purchased the previous version within 60 days of release).
Переслать - PowerPC to Core 2 Duo Migration Has Big Payoff for Dictation Software
For the most part, I remain very satisfied with the performance of most tasks I perform on my middle-aged 1.33 GHz 17-inch PowerBook G4, which I bought back in 2006. But not when it comes to dictation. Interestingly, the most dramatic performance boost I’ve realized transitioning from PowerPC to Intel Core 2 Duo is with dictation software.
I’ve been partially dependent on speech recognition since the late 1990s, when chronic polyneuritis flare-ups began to make typing more than a paragraph or two painful to the point of inhibition. Not that the first speech recognition software products for the Mac didn’t inflict their own sort of pain. Articulate Systems’ Power Secretary and its successor Voice Power Pro were based on discrete speech recognition engines requiring you to pause…between…each…word, an unnatural mode of articulation that tended to put a damper on the creative flow.
Continuous speech dictation came along for the Mac with IBM’s ViaVoice Millennium Edition in 1999, and since then speech dictation software has had many incarnations with many speed, stability and accuracy improvements. But even on a fairly powerful G4, like my PowerBook with its 1.5GB of RAM, it still always felt like the computer was working hard to keep up. And that’s because it was. Speech recognition software used for dictation is more complex and demanding of hardware power than most categories of consumer software, excluding perhaps sophisticated gaming and high-end video editing, and the G4 processor was never fully up to the job.
Core 2 Duo in Its Element
However, the potent processing muscle of the Core 2 Duo, which is frankly overkill for most of my computing needs, is right in its element dealing with the processing demands of dictation running MacSpeech’s latest Dictate 1.3 software. Dictate is an Intel-only application based on the superb Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech engine and, even on my modestly powered 2.0GHz unibody MacBook and its standard 2GB of RAM, it feels like it’s keeping pace without breaking a proverbial sweat.
Effortless, Enjoyable, and Even Fun
Dictation has always been a useful and helpful tool, especially for those of us with physical disabilities, but the combination of Core 2 Duo power and MacSpeech Dictate (which is the only dictation application still available for the Mac, IBM having bailed out of the category in 2003), makes it effortless, enjoyable, and even fun — worth considering even if you can type for hours without a twinge of pain. And while dictation is Dictate’s main raison d’être, it also supports computer navigation and control by voice, which can be vitally helpful for folks with severe typing disabilities, and potentially handy for any user.
Dictate requires “training” to create a user recognition profile, but that process has been streamlined and shortened to the point where I’m finding after an initial 5-10 minute training session, I’m getting better accuracy than I ever achieved with the old iListen program. I intend to do more training using the program’s built-in voice training tools, and to upgrade the RAM on my computer as well, both of which should polish and improve Dictate’s performance even more. But in the meantime, the program is giving me amazingly good accuracy and speed virtually out of the box and on standard spec hardware.
Leap of Faith
Purchasing a dictation application requires more of a leap of faith, so to speak, than with most software categories, because free demos aren’t really practical and a high-quality microphone is a must for achieving acceptable performance. Dictate isn’t cheap, selling for $199 (that includes a high-quality Plantronics headset microphone), but I don’t anticipate that many purchasers will experience buyer’s remorse, and if you use your Mac for serious production work involving a lot of text entry, the program should pay for itself fairly quickly in terms of increased productivity. Once they get used to it, most people can enter text much quicker via voice than with a keyboard, and it’s less fatiguing.
If you’ve perhaps experimented with voice recognition software in the past and been underwhelmed, you’re in for a pleasant surprise.
Переслать - Apple Says "No" to Netbook, Quietly Nods "Yes" to Tablet?
As I mentioned in my post about Apple’s second-quarter conference call, COO Tim Cook pretty stridently denied that the company had plans to produce any kind of netbook device. Instead, he pointed customers toward the iPhone and iPod touch, saying those devices provided most of what consumers are looking for from a netbook anyway. It seemed like an outright rejection, but could it possibly have been a coy admission that some kind of tablet-type device was in the works?
Charlie Sorrel of Wired’s GadgetLab thinks so. He interprets Cook’s words during the teleconference differently, suggesting that they could leave the door open for a new entry in the iPhone/iPod touch category, with a larger screen and more similarities to a tablet computer.
It’s true that this kind of device makes more sense from the standpoint of Apple’s objections to netbooks in general. There’s no keyboard to be concerned about, battery life would be more in line with the iPhone than a notebook computer, and you have a built-in library of applications that are better suited to mobile usage than traditional PC or Mac apps.
As Sorrel points out, John Gruber of Daring Fireball also noticed that the software keyboard in iPhone OS 3.0 appears to be dynamically rescaled, or rendered independent of resolution. The iPhone and iPod touch currently only support one resolution, so the need for this must come from some other hardware source.
Taken individually, these pieces of information wouldn’t really be cause for much excitement, but taken together, they do suggest an interesting possibility. And just recently, a photo came to light that seems to strengthen the tablet-device argument even further. MacFormat.co.uk just posted this picture today, which was sent in by an anonymous tipster. It definitely looks like a mock-up, and could easily be a fan’s Photoshop attempt, but it resonates quite significantly with both Sorrel’s conference call takeaway and Gruber’s software keyboard discovery.
(Photo courtesy Andy on Flickr)
Переслать - Video On the iPhone: A Few Theories
It seems all but confirmed by Apple that video capabilities will be present with the next-generation iPhone. It may be in a few months. It may be next year. But what I’m really curious to know is what will video recording on the iPhone look like? There are a wide range of possibilities and I have a few theories, so let’s take a look.
Record now, upload later
This is the most boring of the possibilities. iPhone users will record videos, watch them on the iPhone, and eventually sync with a computer to upload them. In this case they will probably appear in the Movies section of iTunes on your computer where they can be exported to iMovie or uploaded to YouTube directly. I’m limiting this scenario to YouTube because that functionality already exists in iMovie.
This will be a closed system. Third-party applications on the iPhone will not have access to videos. The only way to upload the videos to the Internet is through syncing with a computer.
Record now, upload through the camera app
This is another closed system. The difference is iPhone users will be able to record videos and immediately upload them to the Internet through the camera app. Possible services include:
- YouTube — Likely because it’s an established feature in iMovie.
- Flickr (with a maximum length of 90 seconds) — The latest version of iPhoto allows Flickr photo uploads, so this may be an expansion of that relationship.
- Facebook — Likely because it’s another new photo upload service in iPhoto. A video agreement between Facebook and Apple could significantly increase the number of video uploads to Facebook.
- MobileMe — Perhaps Apple will introduce a basic video upload service for MobileMe subscribers. Anyone can view the videos, but only subscribers can upload to the service.
This will most likely require a Wi-Fi connection since AT&T’s 3G bandwidth is so limited.
Record now, upload from any application
Videos will be able to upload through any third-party application on the iPhone. For example, Facebook’s iPhone application will have a new button for recording video. Flickr apps, like Mobile Fotos, will also have this new button. Now imagine your favorite Twitter app (Tweetie!) adding a video record button. The recorded video will automatically upload to a video service, and a tweet will be generated with a link to the video. Cool!
Sadly, this will still require a Wi-Fi connection.
Record now, upload any way you want
Upload from any application. Upload with any connection speed…except Edge. This is obviously the most “open” format, but it seems it would fight against Apple’s desire to control the details.
What do you think? If and when video comes to the iPhone, what do you think the functionality will be like?
Переслать - Baby Shaker App Fiasco Underscores Need for Change from Apple
Only a little while ago, we published a story about Apple’s inconsistent review process for the App Store. In that case, the question was one of imagery, and focused on some icons that Apple seemed to be of two minds about. Well, inconsistency is one thing, but their latest gaffe represents an entirely different kind of failing. In a move that garnered worldwide attention, Apple yesterday approved and then later removed an app called “Baby Shaker.”
If you aren’t already aware of the details of the app, it basically allowed users to simulate shaking a baby to death on their iPhone or iPod touch. On screen, you saw a pencil-drawn animation of a baby that would progressively move less and less as you shook your phone, until big red X’s would appear over its eyes and it would stop moving altogether, at which point the baby is presumably dead. Even just describing what the app does is horrific, let alone actually playing it.
It’s surprising, then, that such an app would sneak by Apple’s generally very conservative App Store review process. The very same process which, until recently, wouldn’t allow fart noises or overtly sexually suggestive material within their hallowed walls. Infanticide, though? No problem.
The quick removal of the app seems to suggest that its approval in the first place was a mistake or an oversight, and that in general, Apple is definitely not in favor of depicting this sort of thing on their platform. Nonetheless, it was there, it was live, and at least some people downloaded it before its removal. Advocacy and awareness groups are up in arms, and they’re looking for an explanation from Apple for why this could be allowed to happen.
I’d like an explanation, too. How about we celebrate the billionth app downloaded (imagine if it actually was Baby Shaker?) with some transparency regarding your review process? Because as of right now, considering this screw-up, the Instapaper/Pocket God issue, and the Tweetie misunderstanding regarding foul language, it seems like there are 10 guys at the office who draw straws to see who’s in charge of policy for the day.
On a slow news day like yesterday, something like Baby Shaker can quickly obscure any other message you might be trying to get across, like how much money you’re raking in, for instance. Apple would be wise to put a cap on this sort of thing before it starts interfering with bigger, more important messages, like new product announcements, for instance. Establish a clear and straightforward review process, with redundancies and checks and balances, and let developers know what the pipleline looks like. Do it now, before it taints people’s anticipation of your 3.0 release.
Переслать - Apple's Q2 Conference Call: Yes, We Made Lots of Money
Yesterday, Apple held its quarterly conference call to discuss Q2 financial performance. Expectations were mixed heading into the call, with many saying that this would reveal the true effect of the recession on Apple’s business, and that we would finally see that the Cupertino company is not immune to the same challenges facing other consumer electronics and computer companies. Well, maybe the other shoe has yet to drop, but Apple’s performance yesterday exceeded analyst expectations
Analysts were expecting a slight drop in earnings for the second quarter, based on the performance of other, similarly positioned companies, and the economic climate in general. Instead, Apple had a record quarter yet again, with a net income of $1.2 billion, or $1.33 per share. Total revenue came in at an astounding $8.33 billion, compared to $7.51 billion during the same quarter last year. Last year’s income was only $1.05 billion, or $1.16 per share. The strong numbers gave Apple stocks a big boost in aftermarket trading.
If you break down the revenue numbers, you start to see the effect of the recession on sales. Specifically, Mac sales fell 3 percent over the same period last year, while iPod sales went up 3 percent and iPhone sales rose 123 percent. In other words, big ticket items are not as appealing to buyers, while cheaper consumer electronics are still performing well. It might indicate that a netbook would market well to cash-strapped consumers.
But Tim Cook is having none of it. The CFO took the call yesterday as an opportunity to reiterate and expand upon Jobs’ stance regarding netbook devices:
When I’m looking at what’s sold in the Netbook market, I see cramped keyboards, junky hardware, very small screens, bad software. Not a consumer experience that we would put the Mac brand on. As it exists today, we’re not interested in it nor would it be something customers would be interested in the long term. We are looking at the space. For those who want a small computer that does browsing/email, they might want an iPhone or iPod touch. If we find a way to deliver an innovative product that really makes a contribution, we’ll do that.
Cook taking the hard line and shooting down the netbook concept is only to be expected when the still-absent Jobs is already on the books as having done so, regardless of whether or not rumors since about such a device have spread like wildfire. Cook also briefly discussed the Pre, though his comments didn’t really say anything beyond those already made at past calls regarding the device. You can check out a recording of the conference call at Apple’s website, if you want to listen to the whole thing yourself.
Переслать - LG Staffer Says Apple OLED Notebooks Forthcoming
If this is true, then LG takes the cake when it comes to leaking. No subtle hints, vague rumors, or supply chain speculation here. Instead, an actual LG employee has come out and baldly stated that the South Korea-based company will be responsible for producing a brand new upcoming notebook from Apple. And no, this isn’t yet another installment of “Apple Netbook Whisperings,” in case you were wondering.
Far from being a netbook, the rumored device will sport a 15-inch screen, and will appear within months, if the source is to be believed. A 15-inch OLED screen is an expensive piece of equipment, as you know if you’ve been following the emerging tech’s development. For reference, consider that Sony’s 11-inch XEL-1 OLED TV is a staggering $2,499, and it doesn’t have a computer built-in to it. No doubt manufacturing costs have come down since the XEL-1 was created in 2007, but prices still haven’t come down to the point where Apple would be able to offer a 15-inch OLED notebook for anything less than $2,000.
I understand not compromising your high standards of quality just because the economy’s not doing so hot, but introducing a premium notebook amid financial uncertainty? Probably not the best move, unless you’re counting on the few remaining wealthy souls wanting to show off even more now that their prosperity is so very conspicuous.
No other details about the notebook were forthcoming from the source, which actually makes sense if he’s just seen what’s being made on LG’s side of things and for who. Who knows, maybe it has the sort of specs a Macbook Air Pro would have. For now though, file this as either unlikely or a misunderstanding of the ultimate destination of LG’s screens. Considering Apple’s current lineup and cost structure, I just don’t see a device like this attracting that many additional consumers without stealing from the crowd of potential Macbook Pro or Air buyers.
Переслать - Apple iPhone vs. Palm Pre: AT&T Employee Talking Points Leaked
In case you want a preview of the mud-slinging that’s about to begin between AT&T and Sprint over the imminent iPhone/Pre smackdown, PreCentral.net has the goods. They’ve gotten their hands on an internal AT&T document circulated to employees detailing talking points that emphasize the advantages of the iPhone over Palm’s new yet-to-be-released wunderkind. I have to admit, I’ve already bought into a lot of the buzz surrounding the Pre, so I welcomed some reasons my iPhone might actually be better, no matter how biased the source.
First of all, the iPhone is thinner, lighter, has a bigger screen, and is sexier than the Pre. And it comes in two colors. These are all things we know, though. AT&T. Some people will still opt for the Pre because they think it’s “different.” There must be other, more tangible, functional differences between the two phones.
Actually, pretty much every point beyond superficial concerns does seem to make a strong case in the iPhone’s favor. It is true, after all, that the App Store has already proven its value, while Pre’s offerings have yet to be tested. And apparently the Pre’s interface, while multitouch, is not nearly as intuitive as the iPhone’s. While I’m taking AT&T’s word for that, it is true that I couldn’t imagine a more intuitive interface than the one the iPhone currently boasts. Also listed on the iPhone’s side in the UI category is “fast and responsive navigation,” which would seem to infer that the Pre is slow and sluggish by comparison, though again, this is unsubstantiated.
Another very crucial difference has to do with the limits the Pre suffers from by not being a GSM phone. Obviously, this means it can’t be used anywhere in the world as easily as the iPhone can, which is a huge point of contention for business travelers and other globe-trotting individuals. Also, the lack of GSM means that the Pre can’t take advantage of location and GPS functions in most locations around the world. Apparently the iPhone’s GPS is just better thanks to aGPS, too. I will say that it’s worked flawlessly since updating to the 3.0 Beta.
Some of the other differences are more ridiculous, and clearly skewed by AT&T’s not-so-secret preference. The iPhone, for example, is touted for featuring a built-in iPod. C’mon Pre, where’s your built-in iPod? I’m sure if you just asked Apple nicely, they’d totally let you do that. Also “Limited free Wi-Fi access” for the Pre as opposed to what, unlimited free Wi-Fi access for the iPhone? Last time I checked, I couldn’t get a Wi-Fi connection wherever I wanted whenever I wanted, which, technically, means it has “limits.”
Whether or not you believe AT&T’s propaganda, we’ll find out how they really stack up soon enough, since this document all but confirms that the Pre’s release is imminent.
Переслать - Apple Finally Making the iPhone a Good Listener
Some might see it as allowing room for third-party developers to take over and implement some clever solutions of their own, but I think Apple left some features off of the iPhone either out of laziness, time constraints, or because they were saving punches for later rounds (i.e. iPhone 3.0). One of those features, which almost every other phone has, dumb and smart alike, is voice recognition and control. Without a third-party solution like Say Who? installed, my iPhone is deaf to my pleas to “Call Parents,” for instance.
According to recent findings reported by Ars Technica, upcoming iPhone software will likely support voice recognition and feedback. So not only will you be able to talk to your phone, but it will talk back to you, probably via something along the same lines as the new iPod Shuffle’s VoiceOver features. The new voice software goes by the codename “Jibbler.”
What is clear is that the Jibbler tech is tied to the springboard, and appears to involve a call-and-response set of functions that will let you issue short commands to the iPhone that produce feedback in return. I can’t imagine doing so in anything other than my terrific Patrick Stewart impression voice.
Expect voice features with the iPhone to go above and beyond the function we’ve seen from other phones, or from third-party apps so far. Hopefully we’ll at least see Maps and Address Book integration, though with the introduction of Spotlight in iPhone OS 3.0, we might also see the entire phone become voice-searchable.
I’m just hoping these features aren’t limited to the new version of the iPhone coming in June, even though I’ll probably cave and upgrade the week after its release anyway.
Переслать - Jailbreak: What iPhone OS 3.0 Means for Jailbreaking
iPhone OS, from its very first version to the current 2.2.1, lacks certain features that many users typically expect in a smartphone. Jailbreaking arose largely to address those shortcomings. With iPhone OS 3.0, Apple has made the first of what will surely be many waves to come that will rock the jailbreak boat.
Having used beta developer builds of iPhone OS 3.0 for a few weeks now, I believe that the release of iPhone OS 3.0 will eliminate a large number of reasons for which users have jailbroken their iPhones.
Of the hundreds of enhancements jailbreaking can bring, the popular ones are, arguably, unlocking the iPhone to accept SIM cards worldwide, SMS management, MMS, Internet tethering, the built-in camera, the Lock Screen, UI theming, and cut, copy and paste. So how do the new features in iPhone OS 3.0 stack up against their jailbreak counterparts? Let’s take a look.
Unlocking the iPhone
For those of you whose iPhones are locked to your respective carrier, sorry, you’ll still have to jailbreak 3.0 in order to unlock your device.
SMS
With iPhone OS 3.0, you can finally forward text messages, delete individual text messages, and read and compose text messages in landscape mode, functionality that would otherwise require third-party apps such as BiteSMS, iRealSMS or MySMS. But there is one feature, available in both BiteSMS and MySMS, that I miss in 3.0: Quick Reply.
When a text message comes in, BiteSMS pops up a floating alert dialog box that lets you send a reply to that message without quitting whichever application is currently running. It’s a huge convenience, and elegant, to boot.
MMS
Some swear by it, while others think its absence is a non-issue. Personally, I stand somewhere in the middle. If I am on a shoot somewhere out on location, and I need to get a photo across to someone quickly, MMS can be really useful. While some might argue that emailing would serve the same purpose, many recipients would much prefer receiving an MMS for the simple fact that not all cell phones have e-mail clients as capable as that of the iPhone. And you’d be surprised at how many cell phone users still do not have a data plan for push e-email and the such.
Internet Tethering
Remember the days when you would tether your cell phone to your laptop via a data cable, Bluetooth, or, horror of horrors, infrared? My old 2G Nokia cell phone did it, even if it was a measly 14.4K connection, so it was quite an inconvenience not being able to use my iPhone as a modem.
Internet tethering via USB or Bluetooth is built into 3.0. I’m happy to report that it just works (for now). I no longer require apps such as PdaNet or iPhoneModem, some of which cost quite a fair bit to purchase. But, as built-in HSPDA connectivity becomes increasingly ubiquitous in laptops, Internet tethering in the iPhone will eventually become irrelevant.
Camera
This is the one area that has not been improved upon in 3.0. The native Camera app still does not offer manual controls such as burst mode, slow shutter, or EV override, things that I, as a photographer, would like to have. On the hardware side, I would love to have auto-focus, something my other cell phone, an old Sony Ericsson, does very well. A full-featured camera app such as Snapture is, hence, still a very attractive incentive for jailbreaking.
Then, there is video recording. Cycorder is what I miss in my now-stock iPhone 3G. I do believe it is inevitable that video recording will make its way into the iPhone. Rumors floating around the Internet seem to strongly indicate that it could be as soon as the next hardware revision of the iPhone we’ll see this June. When that happens, the last of what I feel are the three key ‘jailbreak-worthy’ aspects of iPhone OS — video, Bluetooth file transfers, and cut/copy/paste — will be solved, as far as I’m concerned.
Lock Screen
All that screen real estate and nothing to show for it. Being a convert from Windows Mobile, which has a Today Screen that displays upcoming appointments and system notifications, the Lock Screen of iPhone OS is one area I really wish Apple would devote some attention to next. Of all the goodness I can get with jailbreaking, apps that enhance the Lock Screen are what I treasure most.
When I take a quick glance at the Lock Screen, I want to see information and not just album cover artwork or wallpaper. There is so much potential in what can go onto the Lock Screen. Calendar events, quick-dial for favorite contacts, detailed notifications for missed calls or incoming text messages, or even a preview of new mail — all of these are possible today on the jailbroken iPhone, courtesy of apps such as IntelliScreen and LockCalendar.
And, speaking of what I should see on the Lock Screen at a glance, I sorely miss Notifier, a Mobile Substrate hack that displays in the Date Bar notification icons for new mail, new messages, new IM messages, missed calls, and, especially useful, one for ringer mute.
UI Theming
The user interface plays such an important role in user experience that it is an area Apple will never relinquish control of. This is not a big deal for me, especially more so if it is at the expense of system responsiveness. But the sheer number of ugly themes created by users for WinterBoard, let alone those for other mobile platforms that freely allow theming, should be proof enough that it matters to some. On the iPhone, though, changing the wallpaper is still about as far as it goes…or Snow Leopard’s rumored ‘Marble’ interface at some point in 3.x. But full theming? Don’t hold your breath.
Cut, Copy and Paste
This is a big one. I still do not understand how some users can claim that the lack of cut, copy and paste is not a big deal to them. As someone who likes to write while commuting, the anemic ways in which iPhone OS 2.x lets me move bits of text around drove me to near insanity. Move a paragraph? Sorry, can’t do that. OK, how about something really simple, such as copying the name of a location from one Calendar event to another? Nope, no dice.
As I had stated in a previous post, cut, copy and paste in iPhone OS 3.0 addresses one of the biggest reasons I jailbroke my iPhone (and later, my iPod touch). Despite the best intentions behind jailbreak solutions such as hClipboard and Clippy, cut, copy and paste is really a low-level problem that only Apple can address satisfactorily, which it has in iPhone OS 3.0.
Conclusion
Going forward, I would love to see even more of what can be achieved only by jailbreaking in future versions of iPhone OS, namely enhancements to the Camera app and the Lockscreen. Even if there are no unannounced features hidden up Apple’s sleeve, and what we are seeing in the beta builds now is all there is, 3.x is clearly shaping up to be the first version of iPhone OS feature-rich enough that many users may no longer have a reason to continue jailbreaking their devices.
Will I jailbreak 3.0? I’m still on the fence. But, in using iPhone OS 3.0, the thought of sticking with a stock iPhone crossed my mind for the very first time, a thought that was simply unfathomable in the days of 2.x.
Переслать - A Beautiful Machine: Two Months On the Unibody MacBook
After two months of getting configured and acquainted, I’m pretty much comfortably settled in with my first Intel Mac — a little jewel of a 13″ unibody MacBook — and thus far it’s pretty much all good.
It’s been an adjustment going down from the 17″ display on my previous workhorse system, a 1.33 GHz PowerBook, to the MacBook’s 13″ screen, but I’m used to getting along with limited display real estate as I still use an old Pismo PowerBook as a utility and road work computer.
Rock-Solid Stable
What I’m most impressed with is the MacBook’s stability, and thus far I’ve experienced zero flakiness or reliability issues. It seems rock-solid, and while with the congery of applications I keep open for production work, I found that on the 17″ PowerBook, with its 1.5 GB of RAM, I had to restart roughly once a week as swapfiles built up and performance degraded, I’m able to go twice that long with the MacBook, even though the Intel version of OS X is more RAM-hungry than the PowerPC variant. The Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics chipset annexes a fair chunk of system memory, and I still haven’t upgraded from the standard 2GB memory configuration. I deduce that Intel Macs must do a better job of memory management than PPCs.
Cool Running a Pleasant Surprise
Another pleasant surprise has been how cool the MacBook runs. Ever since the Intel shift, I’ve heard horror stories about hot-running MacIntel laptops, but this machine hasn’t demonstrated anything like that. In the more than two months since it arrived, the MacBook’s internal cooling fans have yet to cut in, even when doing heavy multitasking like running Time Machine backups in the background while dialed up to the Internet and engaging other tasks in the foreground. Temperature Monitor tells me that the 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo processor typically runs about 5°-7° hotter than the G4 in the 17-incher does (although it has occasionally spiked higher under heavy processor activity), but for some reason that doesn’t manifest in heat buildup at the palm rests or case bottom, or the frequent fan activity that was my main complaint with the big PowerBook, especially running later builds of OS X 10.4 Tiger and with OS 10.5 Leopard.
Actually, I had expected a more dramatic sense of increased speed with the Core 2 Duo compared with the G4. It’s definitely faster, quite significantly so, which means doing things like booting up and graphic editing (the latter presumably boosted by the efficient Nividia graphics as well as the faster processor), but not as different for Finder navigation and application startups as I had been led to expect. On the other hand, voice recognition performance with MacSpeech’s Dictate software is in a whole different dimension from that developer’s older iListen application that I use on the PowerBook, although that may be attributable to Dictate’s more efficient speech engine as well as the Core 2 Duo’s processing muscle. Whatever it is, it’s a delight.
I’m also quite happy with the glossy display, and am not sure I would opt for matte even if it were available.
Some Aggravations Experienced
There are some aggravations, but so far only ones I had anticipated. The lack of FireWire is frustrating at times, especially when doing large data transfers such as cloning the hard drive to external media. USB 2.0 is much slower than FireWire in real-world terms, and not really an adequate substitute. I also miss FireWire Target Disk Mode. Being obliged to connect to the web via dialup, I also miss the convenience of an internal modem, but that’s in common with all post-PPC Mac laptops. I’ve had to add a second four-port USB hub to my office workstation setup to compensate for the Apple USB modem clogging up one of the MacBook’s measly two USB ports. A minor niggle is that I’m not enchanted with the machine’s “helpful” attempts to adjust screen brightness to ambient light, which I find doesn’t work very well and obligates frequent manual adjustment.
I also didn’t expect to like the “chiclet” style keyboard much, and I don’t, although the multitouch trackpad, with its integrated “button” function, turned out to be more agreeable than I had anticipated and I find it quite satisfactory. However, neither of the built-in input devices are getting very heavy use anyway, because the MacBook’s production workhorse role keeps it perched on a stand and hooked up to an external keyboard and mouse and a bunch of other peripherals most of the time.
A Beautiful Piece of Work
Aspects that I like even better than I thought I would (and my expectations were high) are the look and feel of this MacBook. It really is a beautiful piece of work, and the precision machining, component and panel fits, and tactile pleasure of handling it really have to be experienced over a period of time to be fully appreciated.
It’s still early days, of course, but thus far the MacBook is on track to become one of my all-time favorite Macs I’ve owned and that bar has already been set pretty high by my experience with the 17″ PowerBook G4 and three Pismos.
Переслать - Workout Recession Tactics
My friends over at Crossfit Virtuosity recently posted a 100-day six-pack challenge. After I committed to the program, it only took me a few minutes to set up a way to track my progress and have a new workout sent to me everyday. Oh, and it only cost me 99 cents and can all be managed from my iPhone…awesome.
Tumblr
First, as suggested, I went over to Tumblr and set up a blog to monitor my progress. After I had my Tumblr rocking a theme I liked, I clicked on the “Goodies” tab to retrieve my Tumblr blog’s email address (you can email posts directly onto the blog). I took this email address and entered it into a new contact on my iPhone called “Tumblr.”
iPhone
I’m using three iPhone apps to help me make/track progress:
- The Tumblr Application — Cost: Free. Used to post pictures of the foods I eat and make general comments.
- Workout of the Day application — Cost: 99 Cents. Sends a new workout to my phone everyday and no equipment is needed for any of the workouts, so they can be done literally anywhere…again, awesome. Also, when you’re done with the workout, click the “Send to a Friend” button, and send it the Tumblr contact we created earlier. This will post the workout to your log. I change the subject of the email to “Workout (Date).”
- Lose it — Cost: Free. Used to track weight loss and look up foods.
I know that there are tons of fitness iPhone apps out there, but I like the simplicity of my setup. If you’re joining the challenge, post your setup in the comments!
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