Category: I-phone

During December and January, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is soliciting your nominations and votes for the best products for Mac, iPhone/iPod touch, and iPad. We’ll start with nominations in a category, and then tally your votes for the top-nominated products a few days later. The winner in each category receives the highly-coveted title of TUAW Best of 2011.

Today’s category for Best of 2011 nominations is Mac photo and video apps. Your Mac can manage thousands of photos and help you to create video masterpieces, so this is a crowded category.

You might be a fan of Apple’s iPhoto (US$14.99) or Aperture ($79.99) apps. Maybe you love to create HDR images with HDR Darkroom (on sale for $7.99) or apply stunning effects with FX Photo Studio ($9.99). The ease of use of Flare ($19.99) might be more your cup of coffee.

Video fans might be excited about Apple’s iMovie ’11 ($14.99) or Final Cut Pro X ($299.99). Perhaps you’re developing screencasts and use either ScreenFlow ($99.99) or Camtasia 2 ($99.99) in your work.

Whatever your favorite Mac photo or video app is, we want to hear about it. Leave your nomination in the comments below. This is the last Mac-specific category for the 2011 awards — tomorrow we’ll begin gathering nominations for iPhone apps and accessories.

Nominations close at 11:59 PM ET on December 15, 2011.

Best of 2011 Nominations: Mac photo / video apps originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Watch out, Dropbox. There’s a new kid in town, and he’s bigger than you are. Microsoft has just released an iPhone app for access to the free Microsoft SkyDrive cloud storage service. SkyDrive for iPhone (free) should make Windows users who have documents stored in the cloud happy.

Videos or photos that are created on the iPhone can also be uploaded to SkyDrive using the app, which takes up about 4.4 MB on the device. SkyDrive users can access all of their content, including files that someone has shared with them. Likewise, any file can be shared by sending a link via email.

The app also provides a way to create and delete folders from the iPhone. Users of Hotmail, Microsoft Messenger, and Xbox LIVE already have SkyDrive accounts. For those who don’t but want to give it a try, you can sign up for a new account at SkyDrive.com.

Microsoft releases SkyDrive for iPhone originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

One of the first things I bought last holiday season after receiving a Kinect as a gift was Kinectimals. My kids loved it, but we found it can get a little tedious after a while. There it sits on the shelf of unplayed games… But perhaps when my kids get little iPod touches this holiday they’ll revisit the game now that it is on iOS.

Yep, Microsoft has released Kinectimals for the iPhone and iPad, or an iPod touch — provided you have a front-facing camera, of course. Actually the app is compatible with the 3GS as well, but that seems like a recipe for frustrating gameplay (considering the point is visual feedback between you and your pet). Perhaps it is a trust exercise on the 3GS.

The app weighs in at 178 MB, and currently costs US$2.99. This isn’t the first app to use the camera as an input device, and no doubt we’ll see more, but it’s cool to see a Kinect game migrate to iOS nonetheless.

Kinectimals for iPhone and iPad available originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Microsoft Studios has just released Kinectimals for iPhone and iPad into the App Store. Kinectimals was one of the few games demoed before the official Kinect launch. This irresistible mobile…

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

I’ve mentioned libraries and tutorials for integrating iOS apps with the Facebook API (most recently this Facebook library with a very clean syntax using blocks), and recently received a question if I Knew of any libraries enabling easy use of the Foursquare API.

Recently a new library for easy integration with the iOS Foursquare library – you may have noticed if you went searching that there are other Foursquare libraries, but I didn’t see any that support their new API.

This new library does, allowing you to implement all the basic functionality of the Foursquare API (such as check ins, venue searching, and adding photos) and provides very clean authentication using Safari and a custom URL scheme so the user goes right back to your app, asynchronous requests all in a small lightweight package.

You can find the Github repository for the library here.

You’ll find full usage instructions on integrating the library with your projects on the Github page, and you’ll find examples for all basic functionality and use in the included demo project.

This should be of great help to anyone looking to integrate Foursquare within their apps.

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

.

I have mentioned some great Cocos2D examples on this site including most recently an example how to create realistic water ripples, and a guide on special effects with CCRenderTexture.

I recently came across a massive set of source code examples mainly using Cocos2D that you can look through and find various open source games along with other examples.

Here’s a few notable things that I found in the list:

– numerous starter Cocos2D-X projects
– games such as Sudoku and Tetris
– examples of how to create various graphical effects
– handy snippets for common features such as voice recording, and sending e-mail.

It is a massive list that you can find on Google Docs here that was started by SuperSuRaccoon.

The list is so big that you likely own’t be able to look at all of them, but if there’s something specific you’re having trouble with – especially with Cocos2D then you may want to check out this list.

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

.

Rejoice, o ye iPhone and iPad-toting coffee addicts with fat wallets! Just when you thought that there was nothing new under the sun to create the perfect cup of joe, Scanomat brings the Top Brewer to the market.

The Top Brewer is a high-end coffee machine that uses an iOS app to control brewing. Most of the hardware for the brewer is hidden under a countertop, meaning that all you see is a spigot, a drain, and a touch panel for those times when your coffee jitters have caused you to drop your iPhone.

The Top Brewer was demonstrated at the recent HOST hospitality show in Milan, Italy, where many top baristas gave the coffee-brewing juggernaut top ratings. Those who own more than one Top Brewer can control multiple machines simultaneously via the app’s favorites screen. It gives you control all of your machines in one view, so you can be churning out a variety of drinks with a few taps, conducting a team of invisible baristas.

This may be the start of something big. Perhaps your local coffee shop will install a team of Top Brewers and let you order your coffee drink just the way you like it from your iPhone or iPad while you stand in line to pay for the beverage. There’s no price tag for the Top Brewer yet, but it’s probably going to be targeted at high-end homes and to the hospitality industry.

[via Gizmodo]

iOS-controlled Top Brewer coffee maker is a thing to behold originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you — the readers — and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We’ll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often!

Today TUAW is asking for your vote for the best Mac utility app of 2011. If the nominations were any indication, the free Alfred app looks like it might take the top honors for this category. It attracted over half of the total nominations for best Mac utility app.

The other apps that qualified for this category include the popular iStumbler, a free wireless discovery app for Mac; perennial favorite Quicksilver; the beautiful and functional DaisyDisk (US$9.99); and shareware favorite Carbon Copy Cloner.

Only one of these items will win TUAW’s top honor for Mac utility app of 2011. Naming the winner is all up to you.

View Poll

TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for the best Mac utility app originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Apple is getting crafty and peppering an iOS 5.1B1 config file with references to fake devices. These bogus devices were discovered in the USBDeviceConfiguration.plist file and first reported by 9to5Mac. The file is reportedly one that many sleuths examine when they’re looking for new device information hidden in iOS.

These bogus references are meant to thwart developers from looking any further, but it will probably have the opposite effect. Most developers will have a good chuckle at these fake devices and turn towards the lower level files where the real information can be found.

Apple references bogus devices in iOS 5.1B1 config file originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

According to Calcalist, Apple may acquire Israeli company Anobit for US$400 to 500 million. Anobit is a fabless semiconductor company that produces flash storage solutions for the enterprise and mobile markets. The Calcalist report claims Apple already uses Anobit’s technology in its iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air and is supposedly interested in the company’s flash controllers. These controllers are known for their low-cost and fast memory performance.

Apple’s past hardware acquisitions include chip maker Intrinsity and microprocessor design firm P.A. Semi. Intrinsity is the brains behind Apple’s A4 chip and likely worked with P.A. Semi to develop the A5, Apple’s latest dual-core mobile processor.

[Via TechCrunch]

Apple reportedly buying flash memory company originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Boinx Software is one of my favorite Apple development companies. I use their Boinx TV app to produce TUAW TV Live every week, and all of our onsite video from Macworld Expo 2011 went through Boinx TV. Their Fotomagico software has been a slideshow favorite for years, and their You Gotta See This! iOS app does a cool job of creating photo collages on the iPhone. Now the company is moving the powerful iStopMotion Mac app to the iPad, and has created a new iPhone app (iStopCamera) to act as a remote camera for iStopMotion for iPad.

iStopMotion for iPad (US$4.99) is an app that is designed to get younger iPad users into the thrill of making animated movies through the magic of stop motion animation. When the app is launched, a pair of clay figures are animated to show you how to use iStopMotion. The “star” of the tutorial, a little yellow figure with spiky hair, will be named in a user contest coming up shortly. The app itself is available on Thursday, December 15 — TUAW was given a preview of both iStopMotion for iPad and the companion iStopCamera app.

You can either use the front or back camera on an iPad 2, or use a free companion app — iStopCamera — on another iOS device to send frame photos to the iPad on which you’re creating your masterpiece. I found it ridiculously easy to link my iPhone 4S camera to the iStopMotion app via Wi-Fi and then use the app to snap each frame by tapping a button on the iPad app screen.

The app defaults to a frame rate of 12 frames per second. For a 16-second animation like the one I produced, that means you’re looking at 192 frames. In between each frame, I moved one of the objects just a little bit. iStopMotion shows you the location of the objects in the last frame, and then you can see where the new locations are going to be. There’s a setting to add a grid to the screen for more accurate movement.

If you’d rather make a time-lapse movie by shooting frames at regular intervals, there’s a mode for that as well. You can have the app take a picture at any interval between 1 second and one hour.

How easy is iStopMotion for iPad to use? The 16-second animation was made after just watching the intro video with the “claymation” figures, and I think it went pretty well. At any point, you can tap a play button to view your animation up to the last frame, and when you’re done, you flip back to the gallery to name your animation and share it.

Sharing can be done via email, the Photo library on your iPad, or YouTube, and in a number of resolutions. I chose to keep mine at 1280 x720 pixels. iStopMotion for iPad doesn’t offer any way to add audio to your animation, so I chose to export it to the Photo library, import it onto my Mac through iPhoto, then export the file to my Mac desktop. Next, I imported the movie into Garage Band and added an audio stinger from the standard Garage Band set. The result isn’t perfect, but considering it’s a first attempt, I think it’s pretty darned good!

Once again, Boinx has done an excellent job of taking something that could be rather difficult to accomplish and making it easy to do. iStopMotion for iPad isn’t just good for kids — I can think of situations where I’d like to put together fun little stop motion animations for TUAW or special occasions, and with this app it’s a piece of cake.

Is anything missing from this first version of iStopMotion for iPad? Yeah, I’d like to see a simple way of adding titles and credits to an animation (sure, I can export the video and then bring it into iMovie for iPad, but wouldn’t it be cool to do it in one app?), and it would also be nice to have a way of adding a soundtrack and effects to an animation. But heck, this is version 1.0, so I’m sure we’re going to see some additions in a future update.

All in all, iStopMotion for iPad is a lot of fun for $4.99. If you’ve ever had the desire to make stop motion animations and you own an iPad, be sure to buy the app when it arrives on the App Store on December 15. In the meantime, you can watch my little animation to see how well the app works and look at the screenshots of the app in action.

Daily iPad App: Boinx iStopMotion brings stop motion animation to iOS originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I want to set Siri geofenced reminders for my kids’ bus stop and a few other locations. The problem is that I live in a rural area, and these places don’t have street addresses. What can I do? I want to be able to remind my wife to pick up milk and butter after she’s done picking up the kids. Can you help?

Your loving nephew,

Kaelin

Dear Kaelin,

Auntie has some bad news for you. As far as the TUAW team can reckon, the Contacts app doesn’t support GPS locations. That means that you can’t use geofenced reminders for arbitrary locations beyond “when I leave this location.”

If you try to drop a pin in Maps, you’ll quickly discover that rural locations plus the GPS coordinates plus the address book don’t add up to a coherent location solution. Maps tries to find a street address to match the coordinates, and that address may be miles away, especially if you try to mark a camp site in a large state park.

Since Contacts is built on street addresses, not coordinates, your locations will be off — sometimes way off.

For now, Auntie recommends the “when I leave this location” workaround if it’s you doing the errands, and encourages all her nieces and nephews to file a feature request with Apple.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me create GPS address book locations originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

I don’t travel a lot, but I do have a MiFi which I use during the frequent power outages that seem to plague the area where I live. To help monitor my connection and the battery life of my MiFi, I use a Mac utility called Mi-Fi Monitor. It resides in the menu bar and displays both a battery level and a signal strength indicator pulled from your MiFi hotspot. All it takes is a quick glance to make sure your MiFi is charged and connected to your mobile broadband connection.

You can click on the Mi-Fi Monitor app if you need more information about your connection. The app will tell you the amount of data you’ve used in this current session, the network to which you’re connected and the connection type. As you can see from my screenshot above, I have a stable, but slow Verizon Wireless connection where I live.

The app works with the Novatel MiFi hotspots including the MiFi 2200 which is what I use, the LTE 4510, and the WiMAX 2082. It’ll also work with the MiFi 2352/2372 for AT&T. If your device isn’t listed or you’re not sure it will work, you can contact the developer and he will help you run a 30 second test that’ll check to see if your MiFi is compatible this software.

Mi-Fi Monitor is available for US$0.99 from the Mac App Store. If you own a supported device, it’s well worth the buck to be able to monitor your MiFi from your Mac.

Daily Mac App: Mi-Fi Monitor originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Every time you walk into an Apple store and are greeted by one of those friendly badged employees you might see someone who wants to help you with your question or grab you the latest Apple product, but when Apple looks at that same employee they see 320,000 George Washingtons.

That’s right, each Apple retail employee is worth an average of US$320,000 in revenue per year to Apple. That’s according to Horace Dediu from Asymco who got that number from combining information from ifoAppleStore and Apple’s quarterly reports.

If you look more closely at his report you’ll note that the $320,000 figure is for 2011 and that its much lower than the $481,000 per employee Apple brought in in 2010. However, Dediu only calculated the first three calendar quarters in 2011, so by the end of this month after holiday sales are done, each Apple retail employee is now probably worth more than half a million dollars to Apple. And with 30,000 retail employees across the globe, that’s a lot of cheddar.

What’s a retail employee worth to Apple? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

I was pretty excited to see the New York Times offer Election 2012, a compendium of news, polling results, candidate bios and a primary calendar.

The app was listed as free, but when you actually get it up and running you’ll find it is severely limited. If you want all the content, you’re going to have to pony up for either a $14.99 Smartphone subscription, or have an All Digital Access subscription for $34.99 a month. If you don’t you’ll have access to exactly 6 stories per day, and the rest of the content is locked.

There are other ways to get your fill of political news. Politico has iOS apps that are politically impartial and free. The Hill is another source of good political news and opinion. PoliticFact.com also offers a non-partisan fact checking iPhone app, and if you want your news with a Democratic, Republican, or Libertarian slant there are plenty of apps to serve you.

The Election 2012 app costs money and has ads as well, so I found it the worst of both worlds. If you are already a Times subscriber it’s certainly worth a free download with lots of worthwhile content. I couldn’t help but feel the app is simply bait to get you to subscribe to the Times. They have every right to ask for subscriptions for any product, but to advertise an app that is free but has very little content is something else again. If you don’t want to pay for information that is mostly available elsewhere you have many other options.

New York Times offers political news iPhone app with a catch originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments