Category: I-phone

Samsung’s not letting its minor victory over Apple in Australia go unnoticed. The handset manufacturer mentions the Apple lawsuit in a recent advertisement promoting its Galaxy Tab tablet. In the headline, Samsung says the Galaxy Tab is “The Tablet Apple Tried to Stop”. It’s a bold move by Samsung, espcecially since the ad appeared in the Sun-Herald, an Australian newspaper.

This ad appeared around the same time Samsung Australia’s vice president telecommunications, Tyler McGee, was gloating about the lawsuit and all the attention it has brought to the Galaxy Tab. He credited Apple for making the tablet a “household name” and hinted the tablet got more press from the trial than from its own marketing.

Samsung Galaxy Tab ad credits Apple for its popularity originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Most Apple stores are spacious, but there are some older locations that are teeny, tiny mini-stores. Many of these smaller stores were opened in 2004 and need a facelift. According to ifoAppleStore, one mini-store in Santa Rosa is moving to a new location that’ll give it six times more space than it currently has.

The Santa Rosa Plaza store is 450-square feet and badly needs this extra space. Photos of the location show employees helping customers on the mall benches and customers lined up in the mall hallway, waiting for service. The increase in sales and support requests for Apple products makes it difficult to keep these smaller stores. Four of the original nine mini-stores have expanded into larger locations, and it’s only a matter of time before the remaining stores move to a bigger and probably better place.

Apple planning replacement for California “mini” Apple Store originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We have another winner! Or should I say we have two winners?

Other World Computing, familiar to Mac users worldwide as OWC, has two products that won the coveted title of Best Mac Peripheral or Accessory of the Year in TUAW’s Best of 2011 voting. Tied with precisely 24.2 percent of the votes each were the OWC Data Doubler drive brackets and the speedy OWC Mercury 6G Solid State Drives.

The Data Doubler drive brackets provide a way to replace an optical drive in a MacBook, Mac mini, or iMac with another hard drive or a solid state drive. OWC is anticipating Apple’s trend towards removing optical drives from its computers by making it possible to increase onboard drive capacity or add a speedy solid state drive to an existing machine.

Speaking of speedy SSDs, OWC’s Mercury 6G solid state drives were the other winner. These quiet, cool, and rugged drives start as low as $119 in price and provide performance that no hard disk drive can match.

Our thanks to the TUAW readers who nominated their favorite Mac peripherals and accessories, and then voted in the competition. Congratulations to OWC on being the winner twice-over of this category in the TUAW Best of 2011.

Two OWC products win TUAW Best of 2011 voting for Best Mac Peripheral or Accessory originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Despite the tendency for Apple’s retail employees to gripe about working conditions, the company took the number 10 spot in Glassdoor.com’s list of the 10 best companies to work for.

Glassdoor ranks 65,000 firms annually based on anonymous ratings from employees. This year, Apple went from 20th place to the 10th place spot, joining Facebook, Google, and Careerbuilder.com in the top 10. The top-rated company in the world to work for is management consulting firm Bain & Company.

According to a writeup on MacNN, Apple employees are enthusiastic about the work environment at their company, love making great products that people have a strong emotional attachment to, and gave CEO Tim Cook a 96 percent approval rating. On the negative side, employees are not happy with having to “pay their dues” for a long time before getting promoted, and find the intense workload to be a black mark.

As alluded to in the first paragraph of this post, Apple’s retail workers are less satisfied — specifically with their promotion opportunities — than corporate workers.

Apple wasn’t that far away from number five Google on the ranking in terms of total score. Google scored a 4.0 (out of 5), while Apple was just one-tenth of a point away at 3.9. Bain & Company finished with a stellar score of 4.7.

Apple among 10 best companies to work for originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome to TUAW’s 2011 Holiday Gift Guide! We’re here to help you choose the best gifts this holiday season, and once you’ve received your gifts we’ll tell you what apps and accessories we think are best for your new Apple gear. Stay tuned every weekday from now until the end of the year for our picks and helpful guides and check our Gift Guide hub to see our guides as they become available. For even more holiday fun, check out sister site Engadget’s gift guide.

My iPad spends most of its time at home. I don’t travel very often, and the 9.7-inch tablet is too large to throw in my bag while I run a quick errand. That’s OK; the iPad may not trip the light fantastic, but it is my faithful companion at home. I, like many others, use the iPad while I’m cooking, watching television, or sitting on the couch. If you are gifting an iPad or want one for your coffee table, then you should check out my list of favorite iPad apps for the home.

GoodPlayer (US$2.99)

Good Player is a jack of all trades when it comes to video. It’s a movie player, downloader and streaming media player which supports AVI, Xvid, Divx, DAT, VOB, FLV, WMV, MKV, MP4, RM, RMVB, AC3, HTTP, FTP, RTSP, MMS, SMB, MMSH, MMST, RTP, UPnP and UDP. I use it to stream media from my ReadyNAS, and it works exceptionally well.

IMDB (Free)

IMDB, the Internet Movie Database, is an excellent app for movie buffs. I use it all the time to look up actor information, cast lists, plot information and more. It covers old movies, current flicks and upcoming films.

iBooks (Free)

iBooks is an app from Apple that’ll let you download and read eBooks from the iBookstore. It’s perfect for reading on multiple devices as your bookmarks, notes, and last read page are synced wirelessly between all your iOS devices.

Netflix (Free; service costs $8 per month)

The Netflix app will let you stream movies and TV shows from Netflix’s vast catalog. The UI was just redone, and the updated app looks even better than before. The app also tracks what you have watched and syncs this information between devices. I have an Otterbox case with a built-in stand and use Netflix all the time.

Flipboard (Free)

Flipboard is a magazine-style reader app that pulls content from your social networks and RSS feeds. It has a beautiful interface and is terrific for catching up on the news while sitting on the couch.

Epicurious (Free)

Epicurious is a cooking app that pulls its recipes from professional chefs and well-known cookbooks. The app has 30,000 recipes from Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Self, and other professional chefs and cookbooks. The app lets you save recipes to a favorites list and then add the ingredients to a shopping list when you’re ready to get cooking. The app also has social media support so you can share your favorite recipes with Facebook friends and Twitter followers.

Allrecipes (Free; $4.99 for the Pro version)

Allrecipes is an online website that’s filled with user-submitted and user-reviewed recipes. The iPad app taps into those recipes by letting you search for recipes by course, cooking method, or prep time. You can then filter the results by rating. If you’re an Allrecipes member, you can buy the $5 pro version and sync your online recipes box to the iPad. It’s an excellent, all-around app for finding new recipes.

The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America ($49.99)

The Professional Chef is a reference guide for anyone with a passion for cooking. The app provides information on ingredients and how to buy the best quality when shopping. There’s also cooking guides and video tutorials that’ll show the best way to prepare and cook your ingredients. The photographs are stunning and the videos are professionally made, which makes its high price justifiable.

Bento ($4.99)

Bento is a free-form database app that’ll help you keep track of anything and everything. You can use Bento to create a home inventory, keep a list of books, track the progress of home improvement projects and more. The possibilities are endless.

Shopping apps (Free)

Many people use the iPad to shop from the comfort of their couch and retailers are noticing. Major retailers like Walmart and Target have iPad apps; even smaller online shops like Newegg have joined the iPad revolution.

Houzz Interior Design Ideas (Free)

Houzz is an Interior Design app that’ll help you remodel your house. It has over 200,000 high resolution photos that are organized by style, room and location. You browser the photos and choose the styles that you like. When you’re done, you can show your ideas to an interior designer and bring them to life.

Zillow (Free)

Zillow’s for the homeowner who’s looking to buy or sell a house. The iPad app lets you search for a region and browse all the houses and land that are on sale. You can view the listing details including the price, taxes, number of bedrooms, number of baths and so on. It’s an excellent resource for anyone in the market for a new home.

Landscaper’s Companion for iPad – Gardening Reference Guide ($4.99)

The Landscaper’s Companion for iPad – Gardening Reference Guide is the definitive guide to plants, tress, shrubs and bushes. The plant guide contains sun requirements, water usage, and growth characteristics for over 8500 plants. There’s also 9,000 pictures, so you can see what the plant will look like when it’s fully grown.

Photo Measures ($4.99)

Photo Measures is an app that’ll help you keep track of measurements around the house. It lets you take a picture of your house and mark it up with measurements. If you need a new curtain, just snap a photo of the window, write in the measurements and save the doc for future use. It’s perfect for your own work around the house, and is handy for creating plans to bring to a contractor.

Best Baby Monitor ($3.99)

Best Baby Monitor lets you use two iOS devices as a video baby monitor. You can connect the two devices using WiFi or Bluetooth. One device stays in the room with the baby, and the other (most likely the iPad) is with you. You can listen to audio and watch full screen video of your child’s room. If it’s night, you can turn on the flash to get a better view of your child.

Photo by flickr user bfishadow (cc)

Holiday Gift Guide: iPad apps for the home originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Agile Partners (who’ve come up at TUAW a few times) have released GuitarToolkit 2.0, a major upgrade to the original app which adds extensive features and an iPad version. GuitarToolkit boasts a range of tools geared at guitar and bass players, but now includes enough flexibility to work with any fretted instrument you can imagine. This is a free update for existing customers, and additional functionality is available as a one-time, US $4.99 in-app upgrade.

In addition to being redesigned to take advantage of the iPad’s size, the new release expands from 500,000 chords to over 2,000,000 chords and scales–and now–arpeggios. There’s full capo support, too: slide to any fret and scales and arpeggios automatically adjust. All of GuitarToolkit’s features support six, seven, and twelve string guitars, as well as four, five and six string bass, banjo, mandolin and ukulele.

The GuitarToolkit+ upgrade activates interactive Chord Sheets (a great tool for composition and building chord progressions), an Advanced Metronome (with visible flash option), a drum machine and Custom Instruments. Drum patterns can contain as many as 32 tracks, and you control time signature, number of bars and have access to 75 sounds in nine different categories. The Advanced Metronome is available immediately on the iPad, and coming shortly to the iPhone/iPod touch.

The Custom Instruments capability is pretty cool, especially if you’re playing something that doesn’t necessarily fit into the standard guitar mold. Choose an instrument type, string and pickup type, assign a tuning, even add a capo if you like. GuitarToolkit+ includes great-sounding samples for every combination, as well as over 60 amp/effects presets powered by AmpKit.

The tuner in GuitarToolkit is highly accurate and supports just about any tuning you can imagine (including custom tunings). More than I’ll ever use, I’m sure. There’s also a high-contrast mode to make sure you can use it in any lighting situation.

All told, if you play a fretted instrument of any kind, the US $9.99 app (and the US $4.99 in-app upgrade) will probably pay off pretty quickly. This is the only app I’ve seen that offers this kind of flexibility and provides as many composition tools. Check it out in the App Store.

Agile Partners rock GuitarToolkit 2.0 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Though it was available on the App Store for two years, once the free “License” app came to the attention of a US Senator, it was doomed. Apple expunged the app from the store with little fanfare over complaints that License could be used “in a way that allows criminals to create a new identity, steal someone else’s identity, or permit underage youth to purchase alcohol or tobacco illegally,” according to Senator Bob Casey.

DriversEd.com, developer of License, has issued a press release specifically addressing this concern. “DriversEd.com specifically and deliberately designed the app to prevent the creation of counterfeit identification,” the release states. “By design, it would take more effort and expertise to modify the product of the DriversEd.com ‘Driver License’ app than to construct a counterfeit from scratch.”

In fact, with a low resolution of 72 DPI and “design elements [that] deliberately do not correspond to government issued ID,” such as “‘MOCK by DriversEd.com’ in proximity to the word ‘license,’ ” it seems highly unlikely that even the most cursory glance at fake licenses generated by the program would pass scrutiny. Comparing their screenshots against my old Ohio driver’s license I can tell you that a bouncer, liquor store owner, or TSA agent would pretty much have to be legally blind to confuse a printed copy of a License-generated fake with the real deal.

Not only are the colors, layout, and font all wrong on these License-generated fakes, but modern licenses are laminated, contain embedded holograms, and have many other security features designed to defeat counterfeiters. DriversEd.com believes Apple “pulled the app prematurely,” and it’s hard to argue with them.

DriversEd app developer responds to Apple over pulled ‘fake license’ app originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EA has been on the App Store for a long time. Say what you want about subscription minigames and in-app purchases, but recent release of Tetris and Bejeweled demonstrate that EA has a good play. Activision, on the other hand, still doesn’t quite get the App Store, and the result is games like Call of Duty Black Ops: Zombies.

Not that this latest version of this game is bad. In fact, it’s a pretty faithful recreation of the popular variant of the console military shooter. You shoot zombies, earn money to buy weapons and upgrade your map, and then shoot more zombies to earn more money. The graphics are fairly high level (though don’t compare to games made specifically for iOS like Infinity Blade), the virtual controls work just fine, and the experience is more or less equivalent to the real thing. There’s even a dual-stick shooter called Dead Ops Arcade hidden in here (originally an easter egg in the console title) to make that US$6.99 purchase price a little more palatable.

But this is really just one mode of a console game ported over to iOS, and a year-old console game at that. Hopefully Activision will step it up in the future, because EA’s developers (among others) know the’ve got to do better than this to compete on the App Store. If you’re a fan of this one, you can grab it (though I’d say wait until it goes on sale), but everybody else can pass for better titles.

Daily iPhone App: Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you are looking for a gift for an iPhone-owning friend this Christmas or just want a useful iPhone accessory for yourself, I highly recommend the Mujjo Touchscreen Gloves. There are plenty of capacitive touchscreen gloves on the market, but Mujjo’s gloves are the first I’ve tried that have never missed a tap of my fingers.

I’ve been using Mujjo’s M/L glove for a few days and couldn’t be happier with them. As for the fit and feel, they are comfortable and snug on my hands. But the beauty of these gloves is that you don’t have to remove them to use your touchscreen device. That means no more freezing your hands off while you walk down the street trying to text your friend in 10 degree weather.

Mujjo’s gloves can be used with touchscreens because high-quality silver-coated nylon fibers are knitted right into the fabric of the glove. Those nylon fibers carry the conductive properties of your skin through the glove and onto your touchscreen. You’d think that the gloves would make the touch surface larger on your device, but I haven’t had a single problem touching individual keys on the iPhone keyboard (in portrait mode, no less), composing entire emails, playing games like Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift, and scrolling through my music.

Right now you can only order the Mujjo gloves from the company’s website. They come in two sizes: S/M or M/L. They ship from Germany and cost €24.95 (about US$32.40). Though I only tried the gloves on my iPhone 4S and briefly on my iPad 2, the gloves should work just fine on any touchscreen device.

Mujjo Touchscreen Gloves keep your fingers warm, useful this winter originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A Hungarian software company named Graphisoft has decided to erect a bronze bust of Steve Jobs in the country’s capital of Budapest to celebrate the life and times of Apple’s founder. Graphisoft’s founder first met Jobs back in 1984, and Jobs has since offered lots of advice, insight, and even financial help to Graphisoft, even while Hungary was under communist rule. The statue will depict Jobs standing and making a presentation, with one arm stretched out and some sort of iPhone-like remote in his other hand.

The statue, which will stand 7 feet tall and have a plaque in the shape of an iPad on it, will be placed in an area called Graphisoft Park, where a number of other commercial technical firms are also located. The plaque will also bear a quote from Jobs himself: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

Touching. We didn’t really expect to ever see a Jobs statue in Budapest, but clearly Jobs touched quite a few lives all over the world.

Hungarian software company casts Jobs in bronze to remember him originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Every month, the NPD analyzes the mobile market and tracks the performance of smartphone platforms and manufacturers. Now that the year is almost over, the metrics company released a comprehensive report that summarizes January to October 2011. Not surprising, the results show that Android is in the lead, iOS is in second, and the rest are fighting for what’s left over.

Android and iOS combine to secure a whopping 82 percent of the smartphone market. Apple has 29 percent of the market, while Android has the lion’s share with 53 percent. These two platforms were the only ones to record growth in 2011. RIM’s BlackBerry OS, which has struggled this year, declined to a meager 8 percent of the market share. Newcomer Windows Phone 7 didn’t plummet like RIM, but it didn’t climb either. Throughout 2011, the platform never went above 2 percent.

These trends for Android and iOS will likely continue into 2012. Android is available from different manufacturers and will continue to flood the market with handsets. Apple sells, at most, three models and will continue to trail Android. It’s a volume number, and Apple’s three models can’t keep pace with Android’s 100+ models. The other platforms, Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry, may change depending on the success of their 2012 handset and tablet lineups. Nokia will introduce its Lumia line of Window Phone handsets in the US, and RIM is prepping phones with the QNX-based BlackBerry 10 OS.

[Via Electronista]

Apple and Google mobile grew in 2011, all others shrank originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Weather Underground was the first online weather service, but until now it didn’t have an iPhone-specific app. That will all change soon when the Weather Underground app arrives on the App Store.

The developers of the app provided TUAW with a pre-release version of the software, which is expected to be approved by Apple shortly. We’ll update this post with links to the application on the App Store as soon as it’s available.

The free app takes advantage of official weather stations as well as the huge network of over 23,000 personal weather stations around the world. What this means is that users have the ability to get current weather readings for much closer locations. For example, there are four National Weather Service stations in the Denver area, none of which are closer than about 8 miles from my office. The Weather Underground app provides a list of stations that are closer — two of them are about a mile away.

The Weather Underground’s website displays weather information on an interactive weather map called WunderMap(R). The iPhone app includes WunderMap and a number of overlays that can be toggled on or off, including animated radar, satellite, webcams, and severe weather updates.

Unlike a lot of the weather apps that I have installed on my iPhone, the Weather Underground app is very stable and didn’t crash at all during my testing. It’s also relatively fast compared to other weather apps. According to Weather Underground, the feature set of the app also includes:

• 7-day forecasts including text summary
• Hourly forecasts including sunrise and sunset
• Saved favorite locations and recent searches
• Twitter integration – share your weather with Twitter friends and follow the latest weather trends on the wunderground.com Twitter feed
• Snow and winter sports reports
• Leading weather commentary from Dr. Jeff Masters
• Tropical Weather and Hurricane Coverage
• National Weather Service radio

Expect to see the app on the App Store in the next day or so.

Weather Underground releases iPhone app originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 14 Dec 2011 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rockstar Games has released Grand Theft Auto 3 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch which is now available for download in the AppStore. Grand Theft Auto 3: 10 Year Anniversary Edition is a universal app…

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There used to be a time where Windows Mobile and RIM’s BlackBerry dominated the smartphone market, fast forward to 2011 however and Windows Mobile’s share has dropped to a mere 3% and RIM currently only hold 10% of the market share, so what happened?

Simple, throughout the past few years Android and iOS handsets have taken over the market, currently the who giants hold a combined 82% of the market.

According to data released on Tuesday by market research firm The NPD Group, “The competitive landscape for smartphones, which has been reshaped by Apple and Google, has ultimately forced every major handset provider through a major transition,” Furthermore more Ross Rubin, executive director adds “For many of them, 2012 will be a critical year in assessing how effective their responses have been.”

BlackBerry devices comprised half of all smartphone sales in Q2 2006, but have since seen a steep decline, ending the third quarter of 2011 with just 8 percent market share.

While Nokia remains the top handset vendor in the world, it has suffered a major blow in smartphone sales during the transition from Symbian to Windows Phone, seeing a decline from a 33 percent share in 2010 to 14 percent in 2011.

During the three months ending in September, Apple held its title as America’s top smartphone maker with a 28.3 percent share followed by HTC and RIM with 20.3 percent and 17.8 percent, respectively, according to Nielsen. Android phones as a whole dominated the market, however, garnering a 42.8 percent share.

If you would like to read the whole press release it can be found here.

What do you think, will Nokia and RIM be able to regain their market share?

You may have heard about Face.com, and how they are trying to built a massive face recognition database, along with extremely fast searching – and extremely fast and accurate in picture face recognition.

They have also created a developer API (that is currently free – and apparentlywill remain so) so that you can use Face.com technology within your apps.

I came across an excellent Face.Com API wrapper library for iOS with detailed instructions on Github from here.

You can sign up for the Face.Com developer API here.  You can see some of their demo apps here.

Looks like a great library/service for adding face tagging to a photo app – or if you just want to play around with this cool tech.

©2011 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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