Category: I-phone

We’ve seen a few minor outages for Siri since its debut, but those were minor blips compared to what appears to have been a more widespread, longer lasting outage that took place earlier today in the US, Europe and South Korea (according to Electric Pig — we can attest to seeing an error message with the service in the US, and BGR noted it as well). We asked our Twitter followers and some reported brief outages last night, but others said it’s been unavailable for hours and is still down.

Of course, when Siri was announced, Apple noted it was “in beta” but I took this to mean (and Apple seemed to suggest) the “beta” meant they were adding more languages later (like Scottish?). Just like, for example, that “beta” at the top of the TUAW page, meaning “we’ll keep adding features.” The problem with a Siri outage, as opposed to an iCloud one, is that Siri is designed to be used at any time, hands-free, to perform multi-step tasks. When the service is offline, you can certainly do those tasks, but you can’t do them by speaking into your iPhone. You’re not going to see this illustrated in the Siri ads, that’s for sure.

I don’t intend to write up every Siri outage here on TUAW. Like MobileMe status posts (oh, did I mention iCloud IMAP also seems to be down as I write this? Apple still can’t seem to grok simple email, but I digress), it will become a futile task as we chase down the percentages and Apple improves the service. Still, I think it is notable that when a competitor like BlackBerry suffers a global messaging failure (one of their “core strengths,” remember?) we laugh, but when Siri goes missing we tend to shrug it off. Yes, the service is in beta, but here’s hoping Apple can beef it up once more of us become addicted to telling our phones what to do with our minds.

Did you experience a Siri outage? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The iOS 5.1 beta 1 SDK is now available for download by paid devs at the iOS developer site. Sign in with your developer credentials to gain access to the updated SDK. You will need to download and install firmware via iTunes and cannot use over-the-air updating for this initial release.

Because it cannot be said too often, make sure you read any release notes on-site. For everyone intoxicated by new technologies that might allow you to update using other means, I cannot strongly encourage you enough to go to the site and read the release notes. This hint goes out especially to those of you who are not primarily developers but have purchased dev accounts to stay current on the technology.

Installation alerts appear in a big yellow box on the main iOS dev page. The yellow box for 5.1 is larger than ever. Important update notices also appear on the developer forums. If you run into troubles installing updates, please check the dev site and forums first.

If you don’t have access to the dev site and forums, please don’t e-mail us for technical support about the iOS 5.1 beta. You install the beta, of course, at your own risk.

As a final note, don’t forget to register your device at the developer portal and prepare it for development before installing the new beta.

The beta is, as always, released under the terms of Apple’s NDA. For that reason, enhancements, APIs and features are not listed within this post.

Happy developing everyone! Thanks, everyone who tipped us.

iOS 5.1 beta ready for testing originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 19:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, this is awkward. Just over a month after I locked horns with Australia Post and called its restrictions on shipping electronic devices with integrated lithium batteries “arbitrary and idiotic,” because “Millions of travelers fly with iPhones every year. NONE of them explode,” guess what happened? No really, go on, guess.

Yes, an iPhone 4 had its battery spontaneously combust in mid-flight, and if that wasn’t ironic enough by itself, it also happened on a flight over Australia. The device started emitting smoke and a red glow, but quick reactions from flight attendants extinguished the burgeoning bonfire before it could cause any further harm to passengers or the flight itself.

The device has been handed over to Australian Transport Safety Bureau for analysis, but it’s pretty obvious what happened based on the picture alone: the battery got compromised somehow and went foom.

Something like this was bound to happen eventually, with millions of iPhones flying through the air every month, but did it really have to happen on an Australian flight just a month after I publicly chastised AU Post for shipping policies so restrictive it made it all but impossible for me to import an iPhone from there?

Curses! You win this round, Australia Post.

iPhone 4 battery combusts on Aussie flight originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re pretty late in the year, but this might be one of the craziest stories of 2011 — according to sources, Angry Birds developer Rovio turned down a deal with social game company Zynga, to the tune of $2.25 billion. That’s right, billion with a B, and they turned it down. I actually believe this going both ways — Zynga has been buying up iPhone developers, and there aren’t many bigger iPhone developers out there than Rovio, with the company’s huge Angry Birds empire still generating plenty of attention and revenue. Zynga, with its own social network game empire, has this kind of money to spend, and it makes sense that it would want to claim Rovio for itself.

And from the other side, I also believe that Rovio thinks it’s worth more than $2.25 billion (or at least doesn’t necessarily need to sell, even for a pile of money that size). Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka is convinced that Angry Birds, despite its current popularity, still has a long way to go in terms of franchising, marketing, and even more games. Angry Birds is his moneymaker and his passion, and after having seen him earlier this year, I can completely understand why he’s not ready to make a sale.

But man — talk about a huge deal when it comes to the rapidly developing markets of social and mobile gaming. We’ll likely see Zynga spend that money elsewhere, and Rovio continue to do its best to exploit the already ubiquitous Angry Birds brand.

Rovio reportedly turns down $2.25 billion from Zynga originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim isn’t available on the Mac yet, but odds are that if you’re a big fan of gaming, you’re probably already playing it on consoles or the PC. Bethesda’s latest role-playing game is just a massive piece of world-building, with tons of dungeons to crawl through, a huge world full of cities and places to explore, and a collection of a couple hundred actual in-game books that you can pick up and read.

Turns out those books come straight from a plain text file in the game’s documents, so a blogger named Capaneus has kindly assembled them into an actual ebook that you can download and read on your iPad (or any other e-reader or app you happen to use). The book’s got its own cover and table of contents, and since its available in epub format, you can change the text to whatever size you want.

Good deal. Unfortunately, I’m not sure this is legal. Bethesda undoubtedly owns the copyright on these texts, and they likely didn’t authorize them being shared like this. Still, all of this text is just background lore on the game, not spoilery or anything, so maybe they’ll let it fly as a nice promotion for just how densely packed with fun content this game has.

[via Joystiq]

Read all of Skyrim’s literature on your iPad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ever wonder how Apple employees know you need help or are there to pick up an order? Apple employees now have a way to track you in the store. On Black Friday, New York Times reporter Brian X. Chen took a closer look at a customer tracking system Apple has been using “for a few weeks.” It’s an interesting look at how Apple is using its own technology to improve and expedite the retail shopping experience.

The system is powered by an internal application running on an employee’s iPod touch. A customer walking into the store can use the Apple Store app to alert employees they have arrived to pick up their order. The customer’s iOS device uses GPS to locate them and sends the alert when they enter the store. When an employee receives an alert, their iPod touch will display the location of the customer on a map of the store.

A similar system was already being used for customers with product questions. Employees would be alerted when you asked for assistance using the iPad demo machines. The iPod-based system is meant to improve the shopping experience for customers. Says Apple employee Diego Aguirre, “We don’t want to feel like we’re hassling our customers to shop. We want them to feel at home.” It also lets employees quickly help those customers who need assistance.

Apple’s retail tech can notice shoppers when they arrive originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Many new iPad accessories are making the rounds this Christmas, but none are as hot as the new iDrive and updated iArm (both US$8.00, although there’s a Cyber Monday deal today). The iDrive is a mobile device mount that can hold an iPad, Kindle, or other tech device on the steering wheel of your car, while the innovative iArm makes it simple to hold an iPad, a steaming mug of coffee, and your iPhone all at the same time.

I’m personally looking forward to getting an iDrive, not for my car, but for my bike. I’ll run the Navigon app on the iPad and no longer have to squint to see where I am on the map. I can also see where the iDrive is going to be useful on those long car drives from Denver to Santa Fe, NM on I-25, when I can put the car on cruise control and have my iPad right in front of me for entertainment purposes.

The iDrive comes with both a wheel mount and a surface mount. Bus drivers will appreciate how the iDrive clamps securely to a steering wheel, allowing full access to the iPad’s screen while they’re sitting in heavy traffic. The surface mount is more useful for mounting an iPad on snowmobiles, personal watercraft, or church pews, and has a patented tilting head for comfortable viewing at any angle.

The iArm is another product that is flying off of store shelves this holiday season. This innovative product first arrived last year, but has been updated to work with the iPad 2 and new Kindle Fire. It will be my constant companion during those Wednesday live streaming sessions for TUAW TV Live, when I’ll have the iPad strapped to one arm with show notes on it and still have a free hand for drinking beverages or clicking my Magic Trackpad.

In case you’re thinking that these two products are ludicrous … you’re right. They’re actually part of the Prank Pack gift box line from 30 Watt, designed for disguising a more practical gift.

iDrive, iArm among hot holiday gifts for 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As noted by RedmondPie the Chronic Dev Team, the people behind the GreenPois0n jailbreaking tool, have released a beta of a new tool which aims to circumvent iOS crash reports being sent to Apple and instead funnels them to the Chronic Dev Team. The tool, called C-Dev Reporter, aims to notify the Chronic Dev Team instead of Apple, so they can better find exploits in iOS that could allow for easier and faster untethered jailbreaks. As the Chronic Dev blog explains it:

At this point, the program copies all the crash reports off your device (which, under normal circumstances, would be sent right back to Apple), and instead sends this data to a secure, private server hosted by your friendly Chronic Dev team. Next, our program proceeds to neuter your copy of iTunes, simply by changing your settings to prevent your computer from sending any further diagnostic information from your device to Apple.

iOS crash reports are a very important part of what allows Apple to keep making iOS more secure. It allows Apple to identify security and stability issues and fix them before shady developers can exploit your iPhone or iPad for nefarious purposes. C-Dev Reporter isn’t designed with that goal in mind. With possibly hundreds of thousands of iOS error reports being rerouted to the Chronic Dev Team and not Apple, and while Chronic Dev Team’s intentions are well-intended, their C-Dev Reporter tool could at the very least stop Apple from receiving critical error reports that help to make iOS better for people who don’t jailbreak and, at most, be hijacked to flag and use exploits for illicit purposes.

Chronic Dev team releases C-Dev Reporter tool originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Updated to reflect that the iPad version has been out for several months.

Google’s shopping-centric mobile app isn’t particularly new on the iPad — we checked in on it in August — but it’s finally made its way to the Android platform. It’s called Catalogs, and you can find it as a free download on the App Store or in the Android Market.

The big G has used its Google Books technology to scan and set up links on a number of different holiday shopping catalogs, so you can load up the app, flip through the virtual pages to find something you want, and then click away to buy it directly from your mobile tablet.

The links aren’t built in to the app — they more or less just open up an internal app browser that then lets you buy the product online. But the experience is pretty seamless otherwise; there are over 400 catalogs to browse through, and I quickly saw brands like ThinkGeek, Nike, Sonoma Williams, Sharper Image, and Pottery Barn on display.

It’s a pretty specific use of Google’s search and scanning software, but hey — it’s free, and it might help with the holiday shopping this year.

[via Engadget]

Google’s formerly-iPad-only Catalogs app now also on Android originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re keen on owning a piece of Apple history, and have a spare $100,000 lying around, check out the upcoming auction for the three-page founding contract signed by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne that created Apple Computer Co.

Bloomberg reports that the contract is a star attraction of a Sotheby’s book and manuscript auction on Dec. 13. The copy of the contract, signed April 1, 1976, was originally owned by Wayne. His subsequent withdrawal from Apple partnership on April 12, 1976, and the appropriate contract amendment also are part of the auction. The contract was sold to a manuscript dealer in the mid-90s.

Apple contract signed by Jobs in 1976 up for auction originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Did you buy anything good this weekend? It’s now Cyber Monday, and the App Store sales continue. I have to say, these aren’t quite as good as what we saw last week (though some of those are still going on), but there are still a few solid purchases here if you’re looking to load up a new iOS device.

• Halfbrick’s original Age of Zombies dual-stick shooter is down to just 99 cents.
• Double puzzle game Cohabit is on sale for the low price of free.
• Overhead racing game Tiny Cars is free today as well.
• Tom Tom USA is offering its usually very expensive software for a relatively generous price: $31.99.
• Cordy is an “exploratory platformer” that’s free to download, with an in-app price that’s been lowered to 99 cents for iPhone and $2.99 for the iPad.
• As mentioned this morning, Hothead’s Sea Stars is free for the next few days.
• And freemium puzzle title Monster Island is offering a sale on in-app purchases.

Slim pickings on new sales today, but some of those older sales are still on. And don’t worry — the biggest sales of the year on the App Store tend to show up around Christmas, which is when all of those new iPhones and iPads purchased this past weekend actually show up in consumers’ hands, and start filling up with all of these apps. Stay tuned.

Cyber Monday app sales: Tom Tom USA, Age of Zombies, a few more originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Copying and pasting text is something everyone does. In OS X you have two choices by default — copy and paste, which retains formatting; or paste and match style, which strips out the source formatting.

If you’re like me, you almost never want the source formatting. Cmd+V is the shortcut for regular pasting and Cmd+Shift+V is usually for paste and match style. However, depending on the program, the latter’s shortcut is sometimes Cmd+Shift+Opt+V, which is a bit of a stretch for my poor fingers.

You can streamline this process using FormatMatch to paste plain text at all times. When enabled, the menu bar utility makes pasting plain text the primary function for Cmd+V. A keyboard shortcut will disable FormatMatch when you want to retain styling. While it solves one of my pet hates, I wish you could disable the menu bar icon.

If you’re like me and almost never want the formatting to come with the text and can’t remember the right shortcut key combo for paste and match style depending on the program, then check out the free FormatMatch from the Mac App Store.

Alternatively, if you don’t like the switchable app approach, you can swap the shortcuts for paste and paste and match style as this tip suggests.

Daily Mac App: FormatMatch originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’ll admit that I’m not the best person to be writing about a do-it-yourself project involving electricity. After all, I’ve zapped myself more than once while replacing wall switches and installing light dimmers, and I once had smoke pouring from my kitchen ceiling after installing a new light fixture. But I’m going to get out my insulated gloves and screwdriver to install a Newer Technology Power2U AC/USB Wall Outlet (US$39.95) to replace a standard AC outlet in my home.

The Power2U is an innovative AC wall outlet that adds two USB 3.0/2.0 ports to the standard three-prong grounded outlets. Installable on any standard 15A electrical circuit, the outlet is fully listed and approved by Underwriters Laboratory (UL). You can plug standard home fixtures such as lamps and clocks into the two AC outlets and still have two fully-powered (10 Watt) USB ports perfect for charging up your iPad, iPhone, or other favorite electronic toy. What’s also nice is that you can dispense with the “wall warts” — the power bricks that you need for every device.

The Power2U has a Smart Power feature that outputs just enough power to match whatever the device being charged requires, and the USB ports have Safety Shutters that close and turn off the ports when the cable is removed. For do-it-yourselfers who are less likely to electrocute themselves than I am, the Power2U comes with a complete step-by-step manual for installation.

Before you try to install the Power2U, you might want to check the size of your receptacle box. The outlet requires a 16 cubic inch or larger receptacle — Newer Technology notes that you should power off the existing outlet, remove the faceplate cover, and then measure the height, width, and depth of the box to get an idea of the volume of the current box. If it’s too small, or if you have a fear of being zapped, contacting a licensed electrician to put in a new receptacle box and install the Power2U is a good idea.

If I was building a new home, you can be sure that I’d ask the homebuilder to install at least one of the Power2U outlets in every room. The Power2U wall outlet is a new take on an old standard, and a great way to bring order to the proliferation of USB power cables in your home.

Newer Technology Power2U AC/USB Wall Outlet: More power to your USB devices originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You’ll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what’s happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today’s Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

No Flash? Click here to listen.

Daily Update for November 28, 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today’s edition of “1,001 amazing things you can do with Siri” comes courtesy of our sister blog TechCrunch. In a post this morning, TechCruncher Chris Velazco tells the story of hacker Brandon Fiquett, who has figured out a way to use Siri to control a Viper SmartStart system and start up his Acura TL.

Remember the story about “@plamoni’s” Siri proxy server that allowed him to control a thermostat with Siri? Brandon used the same proxy server, then whipped up a delicious plugin to interact with a PHP script running on his own web server. The script can send commands to any registered car with a Viper SmartStart system. The nice thing? You can leave the clunky blue Viper control dongle at home.

Not only can Brandon start his Acura, but he has the system set to lock and unlock doors, pop the trunk, and enable or disable the security system. If you have a Viper SmartStart system or have plans on buying one this Cyber Monday, Brandon has made his Siri proxy plugin and the PHP script available on GitHub.

Check out the video below to see the system in action, or visit Brandon’s site to see more cool demos.

A Siri hack to start your car originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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