Category: I-phone

The iPhone 4S is rolling out globally and its next stop may be Taiwan. A Digitimes report suggests the iPhone 4S will go on sale in the Pacific Rim country starting next month. Apple has not confirmed the release, but industry sources in Taiwan claim the handset will hit Taiwan’s three largest carriers sometime between December 14-16.

Chunghwa Telecom (CHT), Taiwan Mobile (TWM) and Far EasTone Telecommunications (FET) are supposedly working with Apple to lower the price of the 4S. The carriers want the iPhone 4S to debut at a price point that’s only NT$1,000 (US$33) above the iPhone 4. Presumably, this lower price will entice current iPhone owners to buy the 4S instead of waiting for the iPhone 5 which could launch sometime in mid-2012.

Sales in the territory are expected to be moderate and Apple may supply carriers with only 30,000 total units. The bulk (50 percent) of these handsets will go to Chunghwa Telecom. Taiwan Mobile and Far EasTone will split the remaining shipment and get 25 percent each. Most of the iPhone 4S units will be 16 GB and 32 GB models. Less than 1500 units will be the 64 GB model.

iPhone 4S reportedly to launch in Taiwan December 14-16 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’m seeing a lot of excellent photo books for the iPad, which is logical given the great image quality and portability that the iPad provides. These apps are, I suppose, the evolution of the coffee table books of the past with the bonus of interactivity and updated content that no static book can provide.

I’ve recently looked at a new offering from Fotopedia called Fotopedia Japan. Unlike some of the previous Fotopedia offerings, this book is free because it is sponsored by Narita Airport in Tokyo. There are no annoying popup ads, just a credit page.

The app requires an Internet connection and includes beautiful photography, wallpapers and the ability to help you create a list of destinations if you decide to visit Japan. The photos include information about what is depicted, and maps to help you locate where each picture was taken.

Images can be shared via Twitter, Facebook or email. Photos are also grouped by subjects like castles and fall colors. The images are free of screen controls unless you tap on the screen to display them. That’s the way photos should be displayed, and too many apps clutter the screen with buttons and icons.

For some reason the app kept telling me to connect to the Internet despite my having a strong connection, so there is a bug the developers need to squash. Restarting the app didn’t help. Some other users have reported this same bug.

The only think that is missing from the app is audio. That’s something a printed book can’t do, but the iPad can do easily. Some Japanese music or sounds of the cities would be welcome, as long as I can turn it off if it becomes a distraction.

If you’ve been to Japan, this app will rekindle pleasant memories. If you haven’t been, it should get you interested.

You can see some samples of the app in the gallery below. This app is universal and requires iOS 4 or greater.

Daily iPad App: Fotopedia Japan originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When it comes to discussing the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today’s topic is Siri.

A push back against Siri seems to be growing. Is talking to your cell phone in public the new faux pas du jour? Or is the problem with those people who haven’t mastered the raise-to-ear-and-talk-quietly maneuvers that brings discretion to the Siri table? Maybe it’s just a problem for the “talks into the phone like a Nextel walkie talkie phone” crowd.

Is it polite to chat with Siri in public? Is this even a real problem? You tell us. Place your vote in this poll and then join in the comments with all your predictions.

View Poll

You’re the Pundit: Is talking to Siri the next social sin? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iBooks publishers looking to send ebooks to reviewers, or who want to stir up interest in a new title through a giveaway contest, are out of luck. Unlike the App Store, publishers cannot create promo codes for the iBookstore.

For iOS developers marketing their latest products, promo codes provide a critical tool. Generated by iTunes Connect, the developer’s portal to the App Store, promo codes allow developers to give courtesy copies of apps to reviewers or use them for promotional giveaways.

That can be a bit of an issue for publishers. The Amazon Kindle Bookstore, which also lacks a way to generate promo codes, at least makes it possible to buy Amazon gift cards in any denomination. This allows publishers to offset ebook costs for their recipients.

With the iBookstore, the story is quite different. Erica Sadun and I recently ran a Twitter contest for our new Siri book. We were dismayed to discover that to give away our iBook priced at $4.99, we had one choice — purchase a $15 (the minimum) iTunes card and gift it to the recipient.

That’s not bad for a few copies here and there. But it could be disastrous to any small, first-time publisher trying to get a book noticed by reviewers.

Will Apple change this in the future? Chances are good that eventually there will be promo codes for the iBookstore. At the present time, the lack of promo codes could be yet another reason why the iBookstore is lagging behind the Amazon Kindle Bookstore both in terms of numbers of titles and in sales.

iBookstore promo codes a no-show for e-publishers originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The iPhone 4 sits at the top of Flickr’s most popular camera phone list, but its days in the #1 slot may be numbered. Sneaking into the second place, a mere month after its launch, is the iPhone 4S. As pointed out by Macrumors, The iPhone 4S has climbed past the iPhone 3G, the 3GS, and the HTC EVO 4G, which is only Android phone to make it into Flickr’s top five list.

Though the iPhone 4S has skyrocketed into second place, the iPhone 4 has an impressive lead and will keep its #1 position for a while. It’s a numbers game and the iPhone 4 has a huge user base the iPhone 4S won’t rival for at least another quarter or two. With its improved 8-megapixel lens system and wider aperture, the iPhone 4S is the superior shooter. It’s only a matter of time before Flickr shutterbugs make the transition to Apple’s latest handset and push the 4S to the top.

iPhone 4S now second most popular camera phone on Flickr originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Skype Beta 5.4 was made available last week with more Facebook integration. For the most part, TUAW isn’t comprised of big Skype users. Skype came under fire with a redesign in version 5. Our beloved leader, Victor, is still on version 2.8 — or as he puts it, “2.8 FOR LIFE.”

As the Mac beta page notes, “Exclusive to Skype – make video and voice calls, as well as send instant messages, to all your Facebook friends direct from Skype.”

Personally, I only use Skype whenever I need to place overseas calls or participate on non-TUAW talkcasts. I just want to be able to connect, set up my headphone and mic prefs, and participate. So long as Skype does that, I’m happy.

I’m pleased to report that the new beta does that. The continuing Facebook integration is simply a shortcut for those who only contact certain people through Facebook.

As for the rest of the features? You can check them out on the beta home page.

Skype 5.4 beta available originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 11:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s an easy way in OS X Lion to convert media from one format to another using preset conversion settings. One method uses Automator and can be launched from the Finder. The other uses terminal and either afconvert or the new avconvert command.

The Automator method is the easiest and requires you to go to Finder, select the video file you want to convert and choose “Encode Selected Video Files” from the context menu. This will launch a dialog box in which you can select your video conversion settings and the destination. You can process one file at a time or multiples files in a batch conversion. Automator also works with audio files and the conversion process is the same as described above for video.

OS X owners comfortable with the command line can use afconvert to convert an audio file from one format to another or avconvert to do the same with video. Type “afconvert -h” in terminal to get a list of all the options you can use in the audio conversion. The command avconvert is a new command added in OS X Lion. Besides format conversion, it also lets you extract the audio or video track from a clip, change frame rates, add closed captioning and more.

You read more about Automator video conversion and audio conversion at the Mac OS X Automation website. Additional information on the terminal commands can be found in Apple’s Mac OS X Developer Library.

Lion: Encode media from Automator or the command line originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Are you fed up with uncomfortable and stiff cases that are designed to let you hold your iPad with one hand while you do work? Would you like to have a way to hold that iPad securely but still use your Smart Cover? How about being able to hang your iPad from the back of a car seat, or use it as a kneeboard? Normally you’d buy a number of iPad cases to do all of these things, but the Grablet (US$39.99) can do just about everything on its own.

Design

You’ll notice that in the headline for this post, I didn’t call the Grablet an iPad case. That’s because it’s really not a case; instead, it’s an accessory for holding the iPad in a number of ways.

If you’re looking for a protective case, then this is not the product for you. If, on the other hand, you want a versatile way to hold, strap, or hang your iPad to something, you’re going to love the Grablet.

The Grablet securely snaps onto your iPad, but is easy to take off as well. It comes in a dozen colors, so regardless of what your personal favorite hue is, you’re probably going to find something that’s close to what you want.

I won’t go into all of the details of how to the Grablet can be used, as there’s a video at the end of this post that does a much better job of that. Let it suffice to say that it is as versatile and easy to set up as the video indicates.

[We’ve covered one-handed cases from TKO and Sleeve360 before, for comparison’s sake.]

Functionality

For $40, this is probably one of the most functional iPad accessories I’ve tested to date. Want to hang your iPad on the wall? Don’t spend a hundred bucks or more on one of the mounting kits out there. Just put a hook on the wall, slap the Grablet on the back of your iPad, add the hand wrap with the metal ring, and slip it onto the hook. Done.

Likewise, you could spend a lot more for an in-car mount that has a single use. Here, you just loosen the straps a bit, slip the Grablet and iPad over your car headrest, and then cinch the straps again.

The Grablet is also the most comfortable way I’ve found to hold an iPad with one hand. As I mentioned in the intro to this review, I’ve had it with full cases that put stiff plastic and Velcro together to make a really uncomfortable hand strap. The Grablet, at least for me, was adjustable enough to let me

Conclusion

I’m giving the Grablet a double thumbs-up! This is a great idea for a holiday gift as well, so if you know an iPad owner who has whined about not being able to comfortably hold onto their tablet, you’ve got the perfect answer.

Update: The wonderful folks at Grablet have offered TUAW readers a 10% discount on the accessory. Use coupon code GRABLET14 at checkout to get your discount.

The Grablet: A comfortable and versatile iPad accessory (Updated) originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pizza. It’s pretty popular for the most part, so really it was just a question of time before it came to the iPad. While Pizza Hut was first with an iPad app, Domino’s is the first with a game. Domino’s Pizza Hero is that game, and like most rhythm type games, it’s quite a bit of fun.

This app has some bonuses though: You can progress through levels and learn the magic of pizza creation, and when you have it all figured out, you can walk through the process of building the pizza of your dreams, and then place an order through the app for that very pizza. It’s a lot of fun, and the ordering process looks pretty straightforward.

My only real complaint is that the feedback in the app as you complete levels is sometimes contradictory. “Great job with the sauce!” “Your sauce skills need work.” Who do I believe? Other than that I really enjoyed the app, and since it’s all Game Center integrated, you can even throw down with the usual game playing suspects. Perhaps the loser of the competition has to foot the bill for the winner’s custom pizzas?

I enjoyed it and while there is very clear branding, it wasn’t really overwhelming while playing the games themselves. Turns out with my index finger I’m a pizza slicing machine! Who knew? It’s a free app, so check it out, especially this coming weekend when you’ve reached your limit of turkey leftovers.

Pizza app wars heat up as Domino’s brings game to iOS originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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See those nice art prints on the wall in the image above? They were all taken using Instagram on an iPhone, and then printed on canvas by CanvasPop. The canvas prints are a wonderful personalized gift idea, and come ready for hanging on your wall.

The introductory pricing for the Instagram prints is pretty nice, too — a 12″ x 12″ print sells for US$29.95, while the 20″ x 20″ is a big bargain at $59.95. If you have an Instagram photo or three that you’re particularly proud of, then CanvasPop turns them into works of art that are the ultimate in personalized gift-giving.

I have one of their prints, which is an Instagram photo of the Blue Yeti microphone that I use for TUAW TV Live and the Daily Update. As you can see from the photos in the gallery, these prints are high quality, featuring a canvas wrap over a wood frame. There’s a braided hanging wire on the back, and it works well for hanging the print over a few nails or a picture hook. Canvaspop even puts little clear silicone bumpers on the bottom back of the print to complete the professional touches.

By the way, if you don’t use Instagram, the folks at CanvasPop can take any of your other digital photos — iPhone or not — and do the same nice treatment for your other images.

If your budget (or your display space) isn’t right-sized for large prints, on the other hand, you can get a lovely micro-magnetic version of your Instagram photos via Stickygram. $14.99 gets you a pack of nine magnets for your fridge or other metal surface. The company is running a ‘Print My Feed‘ contest this month, where one winner will get his or her entire Instagram feed made into magnets. Time to get a bigger refrigerator!

CanvasPop’s Instagram prints: Art from your iPhone originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Days of Wonder’s Ticket to Ride is one of the most acclaimed board game titles around, and the iPad version has done very well on the platform so far, bringing the “collect cards to build railroad routes” action of the board game to Apple’s tablet. But the game didn’t arrive on the iPhone until just recently — last week, Days of Wonder finally released a smaller version that the first tutorial video calls “the simplest adaptation yet.” And I’m happy to report that not only is that adaptation done as well as possible on the small screen, but it’s also one of the best (and easiest, not to mention cheapest) ways to play yet.

The biggest drawback of playing the game on a small screen is obviously its scale — on a game board, you’re building out trains across the country, and connecting your pieces, which is almost as fun as playing itself. On the iPad’s larger screen, that physical scale holds up well, but on the iPhone’s screen, Ticket to Ride feels much more like a video game than the original board game — the main indication of the routes you’re trying to build is just the green indicators on screen, not the tickets themselves.

But Days of Wonder makes up for that with some really excellent music and sound effects that keep the game moving. The great tutorial system from the iPad version has been recreated here, so even if you don’t know how to play, the game will do an excellent job of teaching you the rules. And once you know what you’re doing, there’s just as much depth and fun here as the board game itself offers (for a really small percentage of the board game price).

Unfortunately, the iPad version is the only one that has online multiplayer, but the iPhone version offers up local multiplayer as well as a well-done pass-and-play mode for one device (that of course depends on your honor to keep players from sneaking a peek at their opponents’ cards). Days of Wonder says that it’s “unwilling to compromise” the online multiplayer experience with the various issues of cell tower Internet, but that’s kind of a weak argument — it hasn’t stopped other turn-based titles from providing rock-solid multiplayer that works just fine. The other omission is expansions — Days of Wonder says the smaller screen doesn’t fit the Europe and Switzerland expansions already available via in-app purchase on the iPad, but those aren’t really needed to enjoy the core game.

Given the price of the game, however, you can’t really argue that there’s not enough to do here, even with online multiplayer missing. There’s lots of AIs to play against of varying difficulties, as well as Game Center achievements and leaderboards to chase. And the game itself is only 99 cents, which is an outright steal compared to the board game’s $50 price and even the iPad version’s $6.99 tag. Ticket to Ride Pocket is a great title for fans of the board game, and even those who haven’t checked this one out should invest the buck and see what they think.

Daily iPhone App: Ticket to Ride Pocket originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Need to anonymously purchase and scramble a bunch of iPhones as quickly as possible after they go on sale in China? There’s an app for that, but it’s not what you think. MicGadget has a quick walkthrough of a Windows app in Chinese that iPhone scalpers in that country apparently use to purchase and obtain iPhones for the grey and black markets.

The way it works is that a scalper sets up a series of users with this Windows app (which is mostly in Chinese as you can see above) that is preloaded with credit card and booking information, and alerts the user when iPhone sales go live, so they can snap an iPhone up as quickly as possible.

I presume this is all legal in some technical fashion, or at least, even if Apple did want to prevent sales like this, it would have a hard time telling which online purchases were coming from legitimate buyers and which were from this software. There must be a fair amount of money in this as well — the person who posted pictures of this software apparently wanted to hire more workers to buy these iPhones for him or her. And this is exactly the kind of tool that caused such a frenzy at the recent Hong Kong iPhone 4S sale.

Apple is continuing to try to meet demand in Asia, but software like this shows the company has a little way to go. This seems like a pretty simple tool, but the fact that scalpers have operations this complex at all means that there’s a lot more room for Apple’s official sales to grow overseas.

Chinese scalpers use app for bulk iPhone purchases originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The App Store Top 10 list…. that is one list you might sell your first-born child to be on, right?

But those guys that made it to the list do not have special powers. Not at all. One of the secret weapons used by Top App Developers is…. Design.

Why Developers Do not Make Use Of Not So Secret Weapon

This widely known secret weapon is not widely used. Why? Here are a couple of reasons why

Not Enough Cash to Hire A designer

You will have to pay upwards of $2000 to hire a designer to design an app and it’s icon. You will agree that it is a brave thing to do since you are not sure we will get a return on that investment when the App hits the store.

You can also try hosting a 99-designs contest. Sometimes you may be successful, sometimes not. To get great designs, you will have to guarantee the contest and offer a minimum of $500 as a prize.

Spending hours trying to go DIY

You can also try the DIY route and fire up Photoshop. The problem with this is you end up spending hours and hours and then end up with a design your 3-year old niece can come up with. Ugh, painful.

How to get Great Design for Your App Without Spending $2000+ 

Well, have no fear, there is a Vault located 5km under a bank in Switzerland packed full App templates.

Tope, call him the Vault Overseer, has released a bundle of iOS App Design themes worth its weight in gold. All specially for the Mobile Orchard audience.

In this bundle, you will get four iPhone App themes. Each theme comes with

• Over 20 design elements per theme. Sliced .PNG ready to go into you new app design.
• Sample Xcode project that will show you how to use the theme. You can be up and running in literally seconds.
• .PSD Photoshop files. Especially if you are up to the task of tweaking the theme

Here are some more details on what you get with the themes in the bundle

Social Boo – Facebook, Twitter, Fourquare is within reach

You can use this to design your Facebook and Twitter apps and make it look amazing.

The theme has 4 screens. A list of social updates. Another screen for the user profile, a splash screen and an icon. Included in the theme are also design elements like Buttons, Progress bars etc.

PodRadio – Multimedia design on Steroids

PodRadio is a Multimedia App Theme. Do you need designs for an App that plays audio or video? PodRadio has you sorted. There is a screen with a list of Album titles, a detail screen with red glowing player controls. Fast forward, Rewind, Play, Pause, the works.

The app has a nice leather navigation bar that makes your app look classy. You can also use this navigation bar in any other apps you have.

Foody – Classy Recipe design

Recipe apps sell well on the App store. That is why Top Chefs like Jamie Oliver are coming out with their own apps too. Foody has a brown leather feel to it. It takes its inspiration from the the Find My Friends app from Apple.

This goes to prove that you can take these design concepts and use them for any kind of app.

Foody has a screen with a list of dishes, a detail screen with a list of ingredients and a framed image for the dishes.

PhotoPad – iPad PhotoBooks with a Twitter Interface.

Do you like the cool interface on the Twitter iPad App? Well, it so happens that you can use the interface for almost any kind of iPad app.

PhotoPad is the proof. It can be used to design a Photo-book app for weddings, baby photos and holidays. You get Photoshop files and the Xcode project included in the bundle.

Get the Special Deal Bundle – Only for a limited time

Each theme in the bundle is sold for $70 separately, which amounts to $280 in total. As a special discount for Mobile Orchard reader , you can get all themes in the bundle for $70.

The bundle is only available until the 5th of December, 2011.

If you think it is for you, go ahead and download it now.

App Design Vault offers a lifetime money back guarantee on this deal. That’s right! If you buy it and don’t like it, you can come back to App Design Vault in 4 years and still get your money back.

One of the issues that you may run into when updating your apps to utilize the iOS 5 SDK is storing user settings in iCloud.  To do this requires usage of the NSUbiquitousKeyValueStore which allows you to store a small amount of config data to iCloud.

Fortunately, Mugunth Kumar has released an open source library that makes synchronized your app’s NSUserDefaults to iCloud dead simple.

You simply import the library, and add one line of code, and the rest of your code does not need to be modified.

You can find the library on Mugunth’s site with a short usage guide here.

Definitely a very useful library if your app requires any user configuration.

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

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In this example we will see how to display DatePicker view after pressing button. So let see how it will worked.

Step 1: Open the Xcode, Create a new project using View Base application. Give the application “Button_Fun”.

Step 2: Xcode automatically creates the directory structure and adds essential frameworks to it. You can explore the
directory structure to check out the content of the directory.

Step 3: Expand classes and notice Interface Builder created the ViewController class for you. Expand Resources and notice
the template generated a separate nib, Button_FunViewController.xib for the Button_Fun.

Step 4: We need to add one UIViewController class in the application. So select New File -> Cocoa Touch ->
UIViewController subclass, and give the class name “Date Picker”.

Step 5: Open the Button_FunViewController.h file and make the following changes in the file:

Step 6: Double click the Button_FunViewController.xib file and open it to the Interface Builder. Drag the Round Rect
button from the library and place it to the view window. Select the button and bring up Connection Inspector connect Touch Up Inside to the File’s owner icon and select nextview: method. Now save the .xib file , close it and go back to the Xcode.

Step 7: Open the Button_FunViewController.m file and make the following changes in the file:

Step 8: Open the DatePicker.h file and make the following change:

Step 9: Double click the DatePicker.xib file and open it to the Interface Builder. First drag the date picker from library and
place it to the view window. Connect File’s Owner icon to the DatePicker and select datePicker. Now drag the Round Rect
Button and place it to the view window. Select the button and bring up connection inspector and connect Touch Up Inside to the File’s owner icon and select previousview: method. Now save the .xib file, close it and go back to the Xcode.

Step 10: Open the DatePicker.m file and make the following changes:

Step 11: Now Compile and Run the application on the Simulator.

You can Download SourceCode from Button_Fun