Category: I-phone

A report from Karthikk.net alleges that Apple has begun shutting down the accounts of iOS developers who have sold “slots” on their accounts to users wanting to run iOS 5 betas on their devices without paying the US$99 yearly development fee.

For a while now, developers have been offering to attach device UDIDs to their accounts for a fee; iOS dev accounts allow for a hundred devices to be associated with one account. Some unscrupulous developers have turned a modest-to-hefty profit by selling those slots off. (Incidentally, if you’re one of those devs and try to drum up sales in our comments, the banhammer will fall upon you without mercy.)

Although the shutdown has been reported in a couple of places already, we’ve been unable to verify these reports. Normally if such a thing happened, our tip line would be flooded with emails from users who had illicitly gained access to the beta and subsequently had their devices remotely disabled, but so far we haven’t heard credible reports from even one user or developer that’s been affected by this alleged crackdown.

Karthikk claims that “many developers” have received a letter from Apple saying their accounts have been identified as a UDID clearinghouse and are subject to shutdown, but the site offers no direct evidence that such letters exist. We’ve reached out to the developer community to find out if any developers have been affected by the supposed crackdown. Not one has replied so far. We’ve also reached out to Apple for comment, but we’ve received no response yet.

Crucially, the first two iOS 5 developer betas expired recently. Reading through forum comments on various sites shows that only those running the now-expired iOS 5b1 or 5b2 have had their devices shut down on them. Those running the current iOS 5 beta (5b4) do not appear to have been affected.

We never heard of Karthikk.net before today. The scant evidence they offer for the “crackdown” isn’t compelling enough for us to take it at face value. At this point, with various developer and jailbreaking communities saying they’ve heard nothing else on the matter other than the echo chamber effect of various sites reporting on it, we’re inclined to believe that Karthikk’s report is an erroneous interpretation of the first two iOS 5 betas expiring.

If you do have your iOS device or developer account disabled as a result of this supposed crackdown, please send us feedback.

Reports of iOS developer account shutdowns may be erroneous originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 05 Aug 2011 16:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The founder of Taiwan-based PC manufacturing firm Acer, Stan Shih, seems to be doing some wishful thinking out loud these days. He recently commented that the “fads” for ultrabooks and tablets are “short-term phenomena,” urging notebook component suppliers to innovate and make more value-added products.

That isn’t keeping Acer from coming out with their own competitors to the iPad and MacBook Air. Acer is mounting a competitor to the iPad in the form of a 7-inch Iconia tablet that should be hitting the market soon at a US$345 price point. A look at the company’s product lineup for the U.S. shows an Aspire TimelineX notebook with a 1-inch “ultra-slender” design.

Shih did tip his hat to Apple, noting that Apple has been successful with the iPad through outside-the-box thinking that other notebook manufacturers should emulate.

Shih also commented that consumers want “products with low price and convenience,” seemingly ignoring the fact that current competitors to the iPad such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab, HP TouchPad, and BlackBerry PlayBook all seem to be having problems gaining a footing in the tablet market.

Acer’s creator Stan Shih calls iPad, MacBook Air “short-term phenomena” originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 05 Aug 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re into word games, today’s Daily Mac App will be right up your street. Bookworm, from PopCap, is a word game that combines Boggle-style word making with Bejeweled-style tile removal.

You’re presented with a board of tiles filled from the top that’s seven columns wide and seven to eight tiles high. You link adjacent tiles to make words with a minimum length of three letters and for each word you make you get points based on its length and letter types. Each word removes those used tiles from the board.

The “Classic game” is simple enough, but as you progress you must deal with “burning tiles” that burn through letters, dropping down one tile per turn. If they reach the bottom of the board it’s game over, so you have to use them in a word pretty fast. Other special tiles come into play as rewards. Green tiles appear randomly and will increase your word score if you include them. Gold tiles are earned by creating words with five letters or more, and are worth even more. Diamond and sapphire tiles are also available for massive scores. You can boost your score by creating the suggested bonus words that pop up too.

There’s also an “Action game” that drops many more burning tiles requiring you to match words as quick as you can to survive. It’s a great game for word game fans and can get pretty addictive as you level up at the end of each round.

Bookworm is available for US$6.99 from the Mac App Store, directly from PopCap if you’re not on Snow Leopard or Lion and is available in the browser for free too.

TUAW’s Daily Mac App: Bookworm originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 05 Aug 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been having a big difference of opinion here at TUAW central over this question: will Apple produce iBooks/Newsstand for OS X? I represent the “yay” side of the argument. I believe that not only will Apple produce iBooks for Mac, I think it will do so in a way that is well integrated with Newsstand, the new publishing push for iOS for magazine and newspaper app subscriptions.

The naysayer argument against OS X iBooks boils down to this: “People don’t take their MacBooks into the bathroom.” When you want to read, you want to curl up with a book: on the sofa, in bed, in the loo. Desktops aren’t cuddly, and people don’t want to read from a vertical screen.

I disagree and I’m not alone. Monster Costume‘s CEO Kyle Kinkade, a company dedicated to building rich interactive media, explained it this way. He told TUAW, “We are targeting OS X and Windows because we believe that content should be owned by the users and not by their platforms.”

Many people do much more daily reading on their computers then they recognize. From web surfing to e-mail, computer-based reading is a fundamental part of the way we get through our day. And reading isn’t just about fiction. Reference books have a place in our lives and on our screens.

Why not have a reference open on one monitor as we do related work on the other? Why not offer access to our favorite magazines and newspapers in a more readable and usable form than simple web sites? Why not provide all this with that special Apple experience?

“Remember this: rich applications are consumed more than their website counterparts,” Kinkade told TUAW. “Consider Amazon.com. They have experienced a huge shift in usage from their website to the iPad client. Consider Twitter on the desktop. Most people consume it from rich desktop applications, not from the Twitter website. There’s a hunger from consumers for better user experiences than just the web. Consumer digital media wants to be interactive. It doesn’t want to be static on a page.”

Desktop reading is a scenario that Amazon has long supported. It understands the difference between buying platform and buying content. To accomplish this, Amazon offers Web-based readers and desktop clients for its Kindle store. Amazon has simplified access to purchased material across all kinds of destination platforms. Amazon recognizes that desktop platforms are as valid as mobile ones.

So where’s Apple? I personally believe that Apple is likely to launch a desktop solution this Fall, in synchrony with the Newsstand launch and will do so with a suite of tools to better create content beyond what we see today. Think iMovie for books.

Sure you can create a basic ePub from Pages, but Pages is not meant to build interactive experiences. It’s a text-and-graphics layout program. iBooks and Newsstand have the potential to be, well, magical. They can expand beyond simple reading to build media experiences that go further than words on a page. Apple, the pioneer of new interactive experiences, is poised to take us there.

Industry is responding to this potential. We’re never going to see what Push Pop Press was building, but I’m guessing it was something awesome. Meanwhile there’s Monster Costume, which is building interactive media creation tools to design and deploy graphic-heavy content to App Store, and to their own proprietary book store. They plan to target iOS, OS X, Windows, and Android, and are exploring additional platforms.

Kinkade agreed. “It’s no coincidence that the two fastest selling devices for Apple are the MacBook Air and the iPad. They are philosophical cousins to each other. They represent the ultraportable experience.”

As for me, I rather like reading novels at the desktop. It’s not for everyone, but when I own a book, I’d like it to be me who decides how and where I read it, not Apple.

Agree? Disagree? Join in the discussion in the comments.

Why Apple will produce iBooks/Newsstand for Mac originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 05 Aug 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the ever-increasing trend of iPads in aviation, whether that be in the cockpit or the cabin, iOS games or the next long-haul flight halfway around the world, iPads are becoming synonymous with flying. And Aspen Avionics is the latest to follow that trend, integrating the iPad even further into the avionics field with Connected Panel.

By installing the CG100 box, a wireless transmitter that connects with the plane’s electronic avionics behind the cockpit panel, pilots will have control over flight communications, navigation and more, all from their iPad. And at just US$2500 for the CG100 box, it’s touted as being the cheaper alternative to traditional wireless avionics systems.

Better still, this is the first of many more Connected Panel enabled apps on the way, partnering with other aviation companies as well as opening the Connected Panel technology to third party developers.

Check out the Connected Panel promo video below, and click here for further information.

[Via Macworld]

Connected Panel connects iPad and cockpit originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 05 Aug 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s nice to revisit an app that was updated and check out some of the new features. We first looked at Diptic about a year ago and liked it quite a bit. The app takes your photos and lets you arrange them in pre-selected frames. You can chose from different layouts including a top and bottom split, a three-way split and more.

While the basic controls for image and layout editing have stayed the same, Diptic has added support for the import of photos from Facebook or Flickr and the export of your work to the same online services. It also supports exporting to Posterous so you can share your creations on your blog.

The import from Flickr and Facebook is easy. You login to the service and authorize Diptic to connect to your account. After you authorize the app once, you can add and remove images without logging in again. The same applies to the export option. One or two clicks to export and your framed photos are sent to Facebook or Flickr, your choice. You can also add in a title, caption and/or tags before you upload.

When you upload to Posterous, Diptic lets you add a title, body and tags. You can also toggle auto post on/off so you can decide to post right away or save the post in drafts for review later. The export feature works great. In a click or two, my framed photo was on my blog. If you have Posterous connected to Twitter or Facebook, your photo will be shared with those beyond your blog.

Diptic is available for US$1.99 from iTunes. A 99-cent in-app purchase can be used to buy more layouts. It’s a universal app that works on the iPhone and the iPad.

TUAW’s Daily iPad App: Diptic originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The stock market has been tanking all week, but that’s not keeping financial firm Needham & Co. from being bullish on Apple. The company raised its price target for AAPL from US$450 to $540.

So why the big jump? Needham’s Charlie Wolf notes that the firm adjusted how it values Apple’s different businesses and product lines. The iPad, for example, is now estimated to contribute about 12.2 percent to the value of Apple stock. That’s up from the previous estimate, based on a new assumption that the iPad will continue to capture a larger share of the tablet market that Needham initially thought.

The Mac is also adding to the party, thanks in part to a halo effect from the iPad. As more buyers become entranced with the iPad, they’re more likely to purchase Macs in the future. The Mac product line is now valued at about 11.8 percent of AAPL’s value. Likewise, iTunes has been bumped in importance as a contributing factor to the stock price (now 5.1 percent) thanks to the growth of the App Store.

The biggest contributor? The iPhone, which provides almost 49.2 percent of the value of each share of Apple stock or about $266. That’s also seen as a risk factor, since even a small decrease in growth of iPhone sales could have a huge impact on Apple stock price.

Last but not least, Apple’s cash hoard adds to the stock price value, contributing about 14.8 percent of the value. However you look at Apple, the company’s performance in troubled financial times has so far been nothing less than stellar.

Needham & Co. raises price target for AAPL originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 05 Aug 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kanex has a new switch, the SnapX, that lets you connect two Macs with one Apple Cinema Display. The SnapX is an all-in-one unit that ships with two mini DisplayPort cables, two USB connectors and one button to switch between the two machines.

Besides a video signal, the SnapX uses the USB cables to pass through data, audio and the images from your Mac’s webcam. Tidy and neat looking, the SnapX has a clip to attach it to your Cinema display. The switch will ship in September for a reasonable US$69.

[Via Engadget]

Kanex offers switch for 2 Macs, 1 Cinema Display with SnapX originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 05 Aug 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Dev Juice,

What’s the deal with the k in #define kFilename. Is it German? Does it stand for konstant? What gives?

Pure Fusion

Dear Pure Fusion,

The k prefix seems to originate in a naming system called Hungarian Notation, developed by Charles Simonyi at Xerox PARC. The idea behind this system is that the name of a variable should reflect its semantics.

Wikipedia offers a sense of these naming conventions, such as arru8NumberList, meaning the variable is an array of unsigned 8-bit integers.

Apple follows a similar but more practical convention. Like the original Hungarian Notation, it encodes opaque types, but it does so with a distinctly Apple spin and without all the silly made up non-obvious naming bits like “arru8”.

As you’ve already noted, Apple’s “k” prefix indicates constants. Typically, the k prefix is followed by type, followed by a more general indication of the item’s use. A typical Apple symbol, such as kCFCharacterSetWhitespace can easily be broken down as k (constant) + CFCharacterSet (opaque type) + Whitespace (unique role).

Hungarian Notation’s goal of encoding semantics into symbols has gone in and out of fashion over time. Some devs love it, others hate it. Most fall in the middle, as does Apple’s usage.

Being able to instantly identify the role of a symbol as a constant is a win, but a mindless adherence to pedantry in unnatural naming can become a stumbling block. Fortunately, Apple seems to have chosen its path well and its naming schemes are easy to follow while remaining semantically rich.

Happy developing!

Dev Juice: What’s the deal with k for constants? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 05 Aug 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Syncomatic is a pretty cool solution for updating your iPhoto or Aperture library with the latest images and movies from your iPhone.

The US$2.00 app is not the only app that syncs photos but it does do this in the background. To get things started, download a small companion app to your Mac. When launched, it puts an icon in your menubar. Click it to choose a destination for your photos (iPhoto, Aperture, or just a folder).

Once that’s done, each photo added to your iPhone’s camera roll will be instantly recognized by the Mac app. You can see what is synced and what syncs are in progress.

The sync works over Wi-Fi, not the 3G network. iOS5 will have something similar wireless photo sync via iCloud, and I really like the whole hands-off approach. Imagine returning from a vacation or a day out, and the app goes to work silently and without any intervention from you.

One nit to pick. There isn’t any documentation to speak of. When I ran the app on my Mac, I had no idea to look for the new menubar icon. An official FAQ is being done today, but it should have been there when the app was offered for sale. The menubar icon is easy to miss.

I like Syncomatic. It does what it is designed to do, all without my even having to think about it. I’ve added it to my photo app folder, and expect to use it quite a bit.

Syncomatic effortlessly gets your iPhone photos to your Mac originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 05 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today we presents collection of best 3DS Max tutorials of July 2011.

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The much anticipated Final Fantasy Tactics has finally hit the App Store. Retailing at a somewhat steep US$15.99, Square Enix brings The War of the Lions to the iPhone. An iPad version is due for release this Fall. I haven’t had as much time to spend playing this as I might like, so this write-up represents only first impressions.

Compared to App Store norms, Tactics may seem pricey. But when you look at some of the prices Final Fantasy cartridges go for on Amazon and eBay, $16 isn’t entirely out of the ballpark. We’ve been buying FF on Gameboy Advance, and the demand remains high for these games.

The game is a huge download — nearly half a gigabyte — and like other members of the Final Fantasy family, Tactics is primarily a port rather than a re-envisioning. There’s no Retina Display support, although visuals have been “adapted for optimal performance on iPhone/iPod touch screens.”

For the most part, you’re buying into nostalgia. It’s a way to return to one of your favorite games, bringing it to a more convenient platform. If you’re already familiar with the gameplay, well, you’re already familiar with the app. If you’re not, expect extensive how-to tutorials and hours and hours of playtime once you’ve mastered the basics. And, as my daughter points out, it totally beats the graphics on the GBA.

The menu system was a bit disappointing. I found that once you leave the tutorial session, it lost track of which items were complete. That’s a pain since you can’t tell at a glance which tutorials were finished and which were not.

I also found glitches in menu interaction, where my daughter occasionally could not select items at all. I found some of the menu interaction confusing, as if menus were designed for button-based systems rather than touch. This was despite the supposedly “intuitive” touch screen controls, but I’m probably being overly fussy here.

Early reviews on the App Store complain about a few other flaws, although the overall response to the new app is far more favorable than negative. Expect some updates soon from Square Enix to iron out the rough edges. But all in all, it seems to be a hit.

Unlike the other Final Fantasy titles on App Store, Tactics is a more strategy-based game than a simple RPG. Compared to those, I found the overall GUI easier to use than the FF I and II offerings. The overwhelming number of tutorials (23 by my daughter’s count) can be a bit daunting for new players, but they won’t be an issue for those familiar with game play.

Although it’s just been released and I haven’t finished playing through it yet, I feel comfortable giving it a modest thumbs up. If you loved the old game, this will be like coming home. If you haven’t played before, it’s a very well-loved tactical battle game.

Final Fantasy Tactics: First look originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’ve been a fan of Photojojo for a while. The site sells all sorts of fun and useful camera gear and gifts, things like an SLR Bokeh kit or a inexpensive point-and-shoot tilt-shift digital camera. When they offered to let TUAW try out a set of three phone lenses that give iPhone shooters a choice of different widths of field, I jumped on the chance. Here’s how Photojojo’s little lenses work on your iPhone for fun photography.

There are three lenses available — one is a 2X telephoto, one is a 180° field-of-view fisheye lens, and the last is a wide angle/macro lens that helps to take those group photos and close-ups of bugs. The fisheye sells for US$25, the two other lenses for $20 each, or you can get the entire set for just $49.

Now we all know that our iPhones don’t have a little bayonet mount for lenses, so how do these lenses actually mount on your iPhone? Easy — there’s a minuscule metal ring with sticky backing that you put around the rear camera lens on the iPhone (or iPad). Here’s where a problem arises. If you have an iPhone 4, the ring gets glued right over the flash! That’s not an issue for me since I rarely take flash photos, but for many people that could be a deal killer. On the plus side, the ring is thin enough that I was able to continue using my Mophie Juice Pack Air case, although I have to remove the top of the case to take photos. There are two of those magnetic rings included with each lens, as well as a pair of tiny lens caps to keep both ends of the lenses clean when not in use.

Now the moment of truth! Braving an oncoming storm, I grabbed the iPhone 4 and lenses for a photo session. These photos aren’t great, as the rain started coming down the moment I stepped out the door, but they’ll give you an idea of what each of the lenses accomplishes. First, let’s look at a picture of my boring back yard with the standard iPhone 4 camera:

Next, I grabbed the fisheye lens. As you can see, there’s a very wide field of view (180°) but a lot of distortion. I think this would be incredibly fun when shooting video with the iPhone 4:

Stepping back a bit from the distortion of the fisheye lens, I put the wide angle lens onto the iPhone 4 mount:

You can see that the wooden post on the left side of the photo above is distorted a bit, but that you can see a lot more of the back yard than is visible in the “normal” photo. There’s also a small amount of vignetting visible in the corners of the image, which of course could be cropped out using one of the many photo editing apps for iOS. Finally, I put the 2X telephoto lens onto the iPhone 4:

Notice that the field of view is smaller, and that the cottonwood tree at the left appears to be much larger than it is in the other images.

If you screw off the top of the wide angle lens, it becomes a macro lens that lets you focus quite closely:

When viewed at the full resolution of the iPhone 4 image, this picture was incredible, with every tiny scratch on Jefferson’s face clearly visible.

As you can see, these inexpensive lenses don’t rival the picture clarity that you’d get with a true DSLR lens, but you’re paying less for all of them than a DSLR lens cap would probably cost you. And your iPhone 4 is not a single-lens reflex camera; it’s a point and shoot with a fixed focus and rolling shutter. A $49 set of lenses is not going to turn your iPhone into a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III DSLR. But if you want to do more than take snaps with your iPhone 4, the Photojojo lenses are a fun way to experiment without spending too much money.

Photojojo phone lenses give your iPhone a new set of eyes originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cardiograph is a universal app that purports to measure your heart rate via the cameras built into the iPhone or iPad 2. The app has a very slick-looking user interface reminiscent of a real-world electrocardiogram, complete with authentic (and irritating) sound effects, including the always-unnerving sound of a flatline.

The app functions similarly to a pulse oximeter, measuring blood flow through a finger placed over the camera and converting that into a pulse rate. Cardiograph has support for multiple profiles and can keep track of multiple users’ heart rates over time — if you can get it to work, that is.

Unfortunately, I found Cardiograph was very twitchy about properly measuring my heart rate on the iPhone 4, and it didn’t work at all on my iPad 2. On the iPhone, the pulse rate seemed to jump wildly between 100 and 0 beats per minute — my actual resting heart rate is usually between 45-50 BPM — while on the iPad 2 Cardiograph insisted it was too dark to obtain a good reading even though I was in a well-lit room and holding my finger right in front of a light.

Given Cardiograph’s visual polish, it’s unfortunate that the basic function the app is supposed to fulfill works so poorly. It’s not as though it’s impossible for an app like this to work well; I’ve been successfully using Instant Heart Rate for months. While that app is still less reliable than a chest strap sensor (or even just taking your pulse the old-fashioned way with a finger and a stopwatch), Instant Heart Rate still manages to get an accurate reading much faster and more reliably than Cardiograph.

Actual heart rate at time of reading: 50 BPM

Cardiograph was just released and has a lot of potential, so hopefully developer MacroPinch can fine-tune the measuring capabilities of Cardiograph and get it to the point where the app is more usable. As it stands now, the 1.0 release of Cardiograph doesn’t function well enough for me to recommend it.

Cardiograph flatlines on the iPhone and iPad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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