Author: Blancer

Hi all Quick note to let readers know that I am away this week in San Francisco. I’m starting at the new company I have joined www.vindicia.com which I’m really looking forward too. As I’m away and going to be busy I may not be able to respond to support emails as quickly as usual. […]

In my iPhone 4 review, I claimed that the iPhone had finally come of age. While I once touted an expansive list of things wrong with the iPhone, now that Apple’s device has matured, I am satisfied with it overall, despite my decision to jailbreak and add certain features here and there.

Nevertheless, there are still some features left to be desired. So here is a list of the top five features that I would like to see in iPhone 5:

iPhone 5 Features I Want

1. iTunes Streaming. I would like to be able to listen to music without having to use up many of my precious gigabytes for iPod media storage. That’s why I love my Grooveshark app (which was unfortunately removed from the App Store 5 days after it was approved). There have been rumors that Apple will introduce a cloud-based iTunes music streaming service, but nothing has become of those rumors yet. Hopefully iPhone 5 will bring this much-awaited music streaming feature.
2. Touch-Sensitive Bezel. About a year ago, it was discovered that Apple filed a patent for a touch-sensitive bezel. Possibilities include a bezel that senses when you remove the iPhone from your pocket and automatically unlocks, or a bezel that lets you increase or decrease the display brightness with a swipe.
3. FaceTime on 3G. FaceTime is virtually useless to me if I can’t use it on the go. I hope to see Apple enable FaceTime video chatting over 3G, instead of keeping it limited to Wi-Fi.
4. Thinner Hardware. Who wouldn’t want a thinner iPhone? It would look cool and be easier to handle.
5. Dual Core Processor. As fast as the iPhone is already, a dual-core processor like the A5 chip in the iPad 2 could make the iPhone twice as fast.

Do you agree with my most-wanted features for iPhone 5? What would you add to the list of desirable iPhone 5 features?

Five iPhone 5 Features That I’d Like to See is a post from Apple iPhone Review.

Jeff Olsen of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim division did a quick interview with our fellow bloggers at Joystiq, and he says that in addition to the Android launches the company is doing this week, they are expecting to “get to the point where we can release a new mobile game a month.”

That would create quite a library of Adult Swim titles. The company has already seen a fair amount of success with its current setup of iOS titles, including the very popular Robot Unicorn Attack. Olsen says the idea is to keep working on Flash games that are promoted through the TV channel, and then take the best of those to iOS to profit.

There’s no word on how much money these games are making for the channel (it must still pale in comparison to their actual advertising dollars), but if nothing else, they’re likely offering some good brand awareness for their cable programming.

Adult Swim looks to release one mobile game a month originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Apr 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been a busy day for Apple lawsuit news. First word broke that Apple has dropped a massive suit on Samsung for allegedly infringing on the iPhone and iPad’s look and feel, now we get word that Apple has asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit that claims iTunes is a monopoly. The lawsuit stems from Apple’s 2004 blocking of RealNetwork’s Harmony software, which allowed songs purchased from the RealNetworks online store to be transferred to the iPod. Last month, a judge ordered that Steve Jobs must submit to deposition in the lawsuit.

According to Bloomberg, Jobs gave his deposition on April 12, and now Apple is asking that the entire case be thrown out of court. Apple’s attorney told U.S. District Judge James Ware in San Jose, California that any blocking of third-party software was done in the best interests of consumers: “Apple’s view is that iPods work better when consumers use the iTunes jukebox rather than third party software that can cause corruption or other problems.” Whether the case will be dismissed is yet to be decided. Until then you can see original court documents here.

Apple asks judge to dismiss iTunes monopoly lawsuit originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iOS games range from the casual Doodle Jump to the nail-biting action of Dead Space. A new entry into the gaming market, One Single Life, puts you on the edge of your seat by offering players a single chance to beat the game. It’s do or die time on every round in this thriller released by FreshTone Games.

The gameplay is deceivingly simple. All you have to do is jump from building to building without getting killed. One false move, though, and your character plummets to its death and the game is over. Once you are gone, there is no second chance.

To make the game more of a nail-biter, players are subjected to some good ol’ verbal taunting before a jump. The game presents your dire chances of completing that level and questions your ability to beat the task at hand. As you can imagine, One Single Life is less about skill and more about mental toughness as you face this increasing pressure.

The game is available for free so iOS owners can give it a try with no financial risk. The only thing you stand to lose is your pride.

[Via OhGizmo]

One Single Life only gives you one chance to complete the game originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Halfbrick Studios’ iOS game Fruit Ninja continues to grow — the Australian company announced that it has inked a deal to sell Fruit Ninja-flavored apparel in Hot Topic (the clothing store at the mall that’s about as tacky as it gets). The deal was put together with licensing agent HAP Consulting, and there are four shirts available now (featuring slogans like “slicing fruit like a boss!” and “Fruit Ninja addict!”), with more on the way.

It’s cool to see a big iOS property do well, but do they have to be that … obvious? I’d like to see a more subtle kind of t-shirt, maybe just a few splotches in the front, or just a sliced watermelon emblem over the pocket. Maybe I’m just getting old — I don’t really want a t-shirt that’s louder than, you know, my own voice.

If you don’t share my concerns and want to show off a little Fruit Ninja love, the shirts can be picked up in stores, we’re told, or on the website.

Fruit Ninja shirts appearing at Hot Topic originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Apr 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Moleskine has taken its popular journal and updated it for the 21st century with the debut of the Moleskine app for iPhone and iPad. The free app allows you to choose between font size, paper types (ruled, grid, or blank), and text colors. It also comes with some now-standard features that most notes apps have, including Facebook and Twitter sharing. However, one unique feature is the “Map My Thoughts” function, which allows you to geotag a specific journal entry. This provides a way to go back into your journal at a later date and look at all your entries by location.

I’m a fan of the physical Moleskine journals because they’re tough and can take quite a beating while traveling. However, while it’s nice to see Moleskine release an iOS app, I don’t think it has much more to offer than any other note-taking app for iOS. In some ways it feels like it actually has less to offer; the app crashes quite a bit and its settings are all over the place. Also, if any app deserved to have some page-flip eye-candy to resemble a physical journal, it’s this one — but the Moleskine app doesn’t deliver. Not only does it lack any “cool” ways of jumping between journal entries, but it is also missing the basic scrollable text every other iOS app features. If your journal entry is longer than a page, it takes two awkward taps to go between pages in the same document.

The Moleskine app is a good start for a 1.0 release. Besides a few bugs, the thing that keeps this app from really thriving is the lack of a companion Mac desktop app. Despite all the iOS note apps out there, I actually just use Apple’s built-in Notes app on both my iPhone and iPad. While Notes lacks features, it has one advantage over many other iOS notes apps — it has that companion Mac OS X app (in Mail.app). That’s a huge advantage, because most things I take notes about are for writing projects I work on at my computer. It’s very helpful to have my note texts actually available on the machine that I do most of my writing on. Moleskine is available now and requires iOS 4.2 or later.

UPDATE: After a few more crashes, I can finally swipe to turn pages.

Moleskine debuts app for iPad and iPhone originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s funny how times change. In 2008 Microsoft released Photosynth for Windows, an impressive technology that allowed the stitching of several photos into one large panorama. Microsoft said at the time that “they weren’t cool enough to run on Mac OS.” Well, I guess times have changed, and Apple has eaten Microsoft’s lunch in smartphones and tablets, so now Photosynth is available for at least the iPhone.

The app was released today, and it’s free, so I gave it a quick checkout in my neighborhood. You take an image, and then move the camera in any direction. The app continues capturing pictures, and when you are ready it stitches them all together and saves the resulting panorama to your camera roll. It works pretty well, although it got a bit lost doing a 360 degree sweep. Also, Photosynth sometimes wanted to take a picture while I was still moving, and I saw some blurry results.

Still, the app looks promising, and it’s nice to see Microsoft bring it to iOS. I think 360 Panorama from Occipital ($1.99) has a bit higher quality, but Photosynth is worth a look and it provides pretty good results. Images can be saved to your iPhone, Facebook, or Bing Maps. Hopefully Microsoft will stay with it and improve the software. Check the gallery for a couple of quick images I did. They are cropped to remove uneven edges and reduced in resolution and size for quick downloads.

Photosynth now ‘cool enough’ for iOS originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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