Category: I-phone

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While geared toward kids, National Geographic’s Weird but True! is a treat for anyone with an iPad who enjoys perusing random trivia. Shake or swipe the iPad within the app to get a random interesting fact, then rate it based on how weird you think the fact is. You can bookmark facts you like, email them to someone or use a fact finder to look for something specific. You also can see weekly top weird facts as rated by users.

Weird but True! has 300 facts, and I can see future updates adding more. The type is large and easy to read, and the graphics are catchy and have the same professional quality as National Geographic magazine. If you want an educational trivia app for the iPad, Weird but True! is a good deal for US$1.99.

Daily iPad App: Weird but True! originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This might be a late contender for weirdest “mobile usage” news item of the year: A new study, put together by an online resource called BabyCenter, claims that there’s a tie between women becoming mothers and women buying smartphones. 53% of moms surveyed by the site reported that they bought smartphones (including the iPhone) as a direct result of becoming a mother. Moms are 18% more likely to have a smartphone than “the general population.”

Why is that? Mothers apparently change their app habits when they have kids as well: Before having kids, women report that their most-used apps are contacts, text messaging, and email services. After having kids? It’s the camera for photos and videos, and apps for storing and tracking information.

Definitely include a grain of salt with this one — 53% is a majority, but it isn’t a huge margin, and it’s unlikely that an online site called BabyCenter really reaches a representative sample of mothers everywhere. Still, there’s something here, I think, even if it’s only that smartphones and the iPhone are finding new audiences everywhere, far away from the traditional boardroom and male-oriented golf course.

[via TheMarySue]

Does motherhood sell smartphones? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Despite its superficial similarity to the iPhone 4, three landmark features set the iPhone 4S apart from its predecessor: Siri, the new 8 megapixel camera, and the much more powerful A5 processor. The iPhone 4S also comes with a few more subtle design tweaks that differentiate it from the iPhone 4, and you might miss some of those changes if you didn’t have an iPhone 4 and 4S sitting side-by-side for a comparison.

Antenna Improvements

Phil Schiller actually did talk about the new antenna in the iPhone 4S during the most recent Apple event, but the changes to the iPhone’s antenna aren’t really obvious until you have the handset in your hands. One of those changes literally requires you to hold the device in your hand before you’ll see it: the dreaded “death grip” of the iPhone 4 is gone in the iPhone 4S.

A well-known and widely (over)publicized shortcoming of the iPhone 4’s antenna design caused it to attenuate wireless signals when held a certain way. Bridging the black gap on the lower left side of the iPhone’s antenna band would cause signal strength to drop for some users. This so-called “Antennagate” dominated headlines about the iPhone 4 for months, and Apple eventually addressed the issue by providing free bumper cases to affected users.

Since I use my iPhone left-handed and without a case, with the iPhone 4 I always had to be mindful of how I held it. 3G signal strength at my home wasn’t the best with my old wireless provider — I’d get one or two bars if I was lucky — so accidentally bridging that gap would cause my signal strength to drop to zero within a minute or less.

That’s no longer an issue with the iPhone 4S. In fact, to get the signal strength to drop at all I have to hold the phone in a very unnatural two-fisted grip that requires bridging all four of the black antenna gaps at once. The “death grip” is a thing of the past.

The improved antenna design also equates to much faster 3G speeds, improved call quality, and lightning-fast Wi-Fi signal acquisition. 3G download speeds on my iPhone 4S are anywhere from two to four times faster than my iPhone 4 on the same network, and the murky “bottom of the ocean” call quality I got on the iPhone 4 was replaced with crystal-clear voice quality on the iPhone 4S. The newest iPhone also latches onto a Wi-Fi signal much faster than my iPhone 4 ever did, with essentially zero delay in connecting to networks it’s connected to before.

Many critics lambasted the iPhone 4’s antenna design in the wake of “Antennagate,” but the iterative update of the iPhone 4S antenna shows that Apple has shaken out any deficiencies in the design.

Shifted Controls

One consequence of the antenna re-design is those antenna gaps have been shifted around. Rather than the asymmetrical three-gap design of the GSM iPhone 4, the iPhone 4S has four gaps arranged with bilateral symmetry, essentially identical to the gaps on the CDMA version of the iPhone 4. As a result, the mute switch and volume controls for the iPhone 4S have been shifted downward toward the dock connector by about a millimeter compared to the iPhone 4, similarly to how the CDMA iPhone 4’s controls were altered.

As a result, many (if not most) cases designed for the GSM model iPhone 4 won’t fit the iPhone 4S, including Apple’s own bumper cases. Cases designed for the CDMA iPhone 4 should fit the iPhone 4S just fine. So should “universal” cases designed for both the GSM and CDMA versions of the iPhone 4; these cases feature slightly larger cutouts for the mute switch and volume buttons, so they should fit the iPhone 4S without issue.

Quieter Vibration Motor

Apple has swapped out the old vibration motor in the GSM model iPhone 4 with one that’s either similar or identical to the one in the CDMA iPhone 4. The new motor features a smoother vibration which doesn’t rattle the phone itself quite so much. The result is a much quieter vibration, one that you might not even hear from more than a few feet away if your iPhone’s lying on a table; if you’re holding the phone in your hand, you might barely hear the vibration at all.

Depending on your needs, that might not necessarily count as an improvement. If you loathe ringtones and instead listen for your iPhone rattling across a table or other flat surface for your notifications, this change may disappoint you. Personally, I appreciate the new vibration, because the old one always sounded as though it was trying to shake the phone to shreds.

The quieter motor in the iPhone 4S doesn’t mean the phone’s vibrations are weaker than those of the iPhone 4. I held the 4S in one hand and the 4 in my other; the strength of vibrations felt essentially the same, with the only difference being a distinctively loud BZZZZT coming from the iPhone 4.

Audio Improvements

The speaker on the iPhone 4S is NOTICEABLY LOUDER compared to the one in the iPhone 4. In some cases it’s almost too loud; high-pitched notification sounds from apps like Tweetbot definitely have a piercing effect on my eardrums with the alert volume turned up all the way, which was never an issue with the quieter iPhone 4. The obvious upshot of the louder speaker is it’ll be easier to hear ringtones and other sounds when you’re in an environment with lots of ambient noise.

Despite that increase in overall volume, the speaker in the iPhone 4S also seems to produce sounds with higher clarity than the iPhone 4’s speaker. Audio that used to overdrive the iPhone 4 speaker and make it sound “clippy” now sounds much clearer on the iPhone 4S speaker. Music and games sound much better on the iPhone 4S, but the improved speaker clarity also means some ringtones or other media may actually sound worse than on the iPhone 4. For example, I sourced some of my custom ringtones from low-fidelity mp3 audio files; while they sounded fine on the iPhone 4 speaker, the flaws in recording quality are much more obvious on the iPhone 4S speaker, with very audible background hiss in some cases.

Audio playback through both the iPhone 4S speaker and attached headphones produces a much less trebly sound than the iPhone 4. Music playback quality on the iPhone 4S also sounds subtly improved even through the included Apple-branded earbuds. Based on these sonic differences in music playback between the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, I suspected the iPhone 4S had a different audio processor; information in iFixit’s teardown confirmed that though the audio codec chip is from the same manufacturer (Cirrus Logic) as the iPhone 4, the part number for the iPhone 4S is different. It’s likely the updated audio codec chip is also part of the reason the iPhone 4S speaker sounds clearer than the iPhone 4.

Your personal tastes may vary from mine. It’s possible we could review the same hardware and come to entirely different conclusions about whether the iPhone 4 or 4S sounds “better” over headphones. There’s no mistaking the improvements in sound quality through the built-in speaker on the iPhone 4S, though; it sounds markedly improved compared to the iPhone 4.

Bluetooth 4.0

The iPhone 4S is the first iPhone to support Bluetooth 4.0, a low-energy Bluetooth spec that allows devices to sync via Bluetooth while consuming far less power than traditional Bluetooth devices. This low-power version of Bluetooth doesn’t support voice — headsets and other voice devices still have to transmit over one of the higher-power specs — but it does support transmission of data from other peripherals like heart rate monitors, watches, and input devices like keyboards or game controllers.

The applications for health and fitness-related gear are virtually endless. As of now, many third-party accessories require a proprietary receiver to send data to an iPhone, or else they transmit via one of the older, more power-hungry Bluetooth specs. Using Bluetooth 4.0 would allow these devices to communicate directly with the iPhone, without the need for an intervening dock connector dongle, and such devices could have tremendously increased battery life compared to those currently on the market.

One example of a device that could greatly benefit from Bluetooth 4.0 is Jawbone’s Up health monitoring band. The Up monitors a great deal of user health data, but syncing that data to the iPhone requires plugging a connector into the iPhone’s headphone jack. Using Bluetooth 4.0 could theoretically allow a device like the Jawbone Up to be in constant communication with the iPhone 4S without the need for users to sync data manually.

Another possible implementation of Bluetooth 4.0 would be a wristwatch that can display certain kinds of information transmitted to it from a synced iPhone (notifications, for example), and send basic commands back to it, such as controlling music playback. This has been a popular dream of geekier users ever since the current iPod nano debuted; once it became clear the nano could be used as a watch, people almost immediately leapt to the next-level idea of using the nano to control another device and/or display data transmitted to it.

Not many Bluetooth 4.0 devices exist on the market as of yet, but expect to see a lot of them hitting the market once the standard becomes more widely adopted. The low-power spec allows devices powered by standard watch batteries to run with lifetimes measured in months to years rather than the hours to days of battery life current devices get.

Video Mirroring

The iPhone 4S is the first iPhone to support mirroring to an Apple TV via AirPlay, at 720p resolution. It also supports video mirroring or video out at 1080p resolution via Apple’s Digital AV Adapter or VGA Adapter, the same connectors that allow for 1080p mirroring on the iPad 2. Video mirroring to an Apple TV will make it much easier to share content with people sitting nearby, and it also has great applications for gaming.

None of these features are anywhere near as headline-grabbing as Siri, but the minor details that you might not even notice are often where Apple’s products excel. The iPhone 4S is no exception.

Six iPhone 4S features you may have missed originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has released the first build of 10.7.3 to developers. According to AppleInsider, testers have been encouraged to focus on iCloud document storage, iCal calendars, Mail, and Address Book — all services closely tied to Apple’s cloud-based service.

Though the build apparently lists no known issues, Apple typically releases multiple test builds to developers before making OS X updates publicly available. OS X 10.7.2 was released a little over a month ago and brought iCloud support to the Mac.

Apple releases 10.7.3 to developers originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I know we’ve covered djay quite a bit this year but this update, coming soon, is a pretty huge one. We were lucky enough to get a sneak peek at djay 4. I happen to like djay, which is available for iOS and Mac, because it reminds me of when I first used Premiere — version 4 on an 8500. Except instead of going from cutting film on a big machine to editing video pixels, you’re taking physical vinyl record spinning and scratching and translating it to digital audio. Djay takes a complicated setup and physical skills and turns them into a software interface, with digitized shortcuts for dummies like me. Djay, as a simulation of a dj’s turntables, is nearly perfect. There’s no substitute for actually touching vinyl, of course, especially if you’ve seen masters of the art and I’m not saying djay is magically going to make mashups. Djay does have its place for pros and amateurs alike, with some practice (and natural talent, one hopes). The tools, already strong to begin with since launch, just got a lot better in version 4.

Check out our previous coverage of djay to get the basics. The new features are impressive for live and recording artists. Here’s a look at some of them.

Updated UI and Lion, iCloud integration

The UI looked great already, but now everything is on one screen, easily accessible, with better graphics than before and fullscreen support in Lion. There’s a light and dark library mode so dj’s don’t go blind queueing up songs. iCloud support is for the Mac App Store version and iOS versions of djay, allowing sync of all user generated metadata like cue points, edited BPM, etc…

Harmonic awesomeness

One of djay’s coolest features has been the ability to analyze a song and match another’s beats for mashups. Version 4 for the Mac adds impressive key detection that can distinguish between major and minor keys. You can even filter your entire iTunes library by key so it’s easier to make a mashup to begin with (see the photo below, which allows you to pick a key). Note that this will take a while depending on your iTunes library, and crank your fans up depending on your Mac, so djay allows you to limit the analysis to a single playlist if you like. Further, you can adjust a song on the turntable, pressing a button to match the key of song A to song B just as you would the tempo.

While no harmony matching is perfect, I found the results were more than acceptable. Provided you know what you’re doing, djay is a powerful mashup generator. There’s a built-in recording manager, but the .m4a files djay creates can be accessed in Finder and simply added to iTunes so you can play your music on your iDevices.

DJ support

Live dj’s are going to love djay 4 even more. There’s a full “MIDI learn” system now so you can program djay to work with your gear, enhanced controller support (you can tweak just about everything), and you can export play history as PDFs. There’s also more control over pre-cueing, and a mic with echo and pitch controls… But that’s not all!

I could see using djay just as a replacement for iTunes if you routinely dj parties at your pad (bachelor or otherwise). The Automix feature was great before, allowing djay to choose songs, spin them up, crossfade between them or match on beats. Now you can manage your queue as well — which is also handy if you have to take a break as a dj. Just line up what you want in the queue window and djay will handle it. When you want, you can drop easily into another playlist and keep going.

But if you are a real dj that likes to spin records and uses samples and effects, djay has improved support for both. There’s a handy sample manager which allows you to sort and use them on the fly, and there’s a Live Sampler. The Live Sampler allows you to record a sample any time, just by holding down the mic button in the in the sample bank’s sample list. As you have six sample banks available at once (and practically unlimited samples behind each button, although you’ll need to toggle between them) this give you ample opportunity to play around. Or be annoying, depending on your expertise level.

The Live Sampler section of the UI switches around, depending on what you need. There’s also a bounce loop mode that lets you set up simple repeating sections which are easy to toggle on and off by using a button up top near the record button. New to version 4 is the enhanced bounce loop mode which is basically a set of shortcuts for 1/16 up to 2 second loop times. If you’ve ever heard what sounds like a record skipping? Well now you can do that in easy increments by just pressing on a button. It’s great.

FX control

djay 4 adds some awesome realtime audio effects to your arsenal. These aren’t replacements for a full keyboard or sampler, but they are super handy and fun to use. Standard FX include a couple of effects banks, which each have the requisite flanger, echo, reverb, phaser and whatnot. Then there’s the Instant FX, which are presets like Twist which back the music up while applying audio effects or crush which sounds like a bit crusher with added effects. Then there’s my favorite, the 2D FX pad which allows you to control multiple parameters in realtime, with your finger. Whatever you chose in the fx bank earlier will appear here, and you can tweak the parameters by sliding around a small box with your finger (trackpad) or mouse. I’m sure a real dj could do amazing things with this.

The future?

As with any proper dj software there are shortcuts for just about everything. There’s even multitouch trackpad control, with keyboard modifiers to do things like pitch-bending on the fly. Not only that, but the trackpad is 1:1 multitouch, so use two fingers and where you touch it mimics on the screen.

What’s exciting about apps like djay (and why I like to cover them) is that, like Premiere once did for me with video editing, they make a formerly cumbersome and complex method of expression slightly more accessible. Of course, Premiere and other digital NLE’s didn’t make one a better video editor, just as there were plenty of desktop publishing atrocities in the 80s (thanks, Print Shop!), but programs like djay make the tools of aspiring dj’s more accessible, more affordable and in some ways more powerful than their real-world counterparts.

A dj that I know (who has a fancy music degree as well) saw djay and remarked that it was all too easy for kids to just pick it up and make simplistic mashups. I argued that this was a good thing, in the end, because just as with video, people will tend to watch (or listen to, in this case) what they feel is best. If they like sucky mashups, have at it. By contrast, the guy behind this saw djay and immediately saw how he could incorporate it into his musical workflow.

I think any tool that gives you this much power but makes using it fun deserves a look. Djay 4 is an impressive app on its own. Couple it with the iOS versions and you’ve got even more fun, and both are what I would consider pro-level tools at a great value. If you’re itching to get your hands on djay 4, you can sign up here for updates.

Our exclusive preview of djay 4 for Mac originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This video was sent along by reader Danny B, and while we’ve seen a few works of art paying tribute to Steve Jobs, we haven’t really seen one made live in real time like this. Just trust me — you can watch the video below, and I think it’s fascinating how the art goes from just a few brush strokes on the wall to the iconic image of Apple’s genius.

Aaron Kizer is the artist, and the painting was done at an event in Kentucky called the 11th Hour Live Music and Arts Show. As you can hear at the very end of the video, the event was also “hosted” by what might be a very familiar voice to those of you who own iPhone 4Ss.

Painting a Steve Jobs tribute live originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Some of you may remember CardMunch before LinkedIn acquired it earlier this year. The app lets you scan business cards and add them to a contact list. It uses Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service and an actual human to do the optical character recognition needed to translate the image into text. Now that LinkedIn has been working with the developers for the past few months, an updated version complete with LinkedIn profile integration has been released.

Besides its tie-in to LinkedIn, the updated app has a fresh, new UI and improved support for the iPhone’s camera. It also lets you add notes to each business card so you can remember where and when you met this new contact. Best of all, the app, which used to cost US$2.99 and 25 cents per scanned business card, is now available for free.

[Via TechCrunch]

CardMunch app adds LinkedIn profiles originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Arthur D. Levinson has been named chairman of Apple’s board of directors. Levinson has been a co-lead director of the board since 2005, and he is also chairman of Genentech. At the same time, Disney president and CEO Bob Iger has also joined Apple’s board of directors; together, he and Levinson will both serve on the board’s audit committee.

“Bob and I have gotten to know one another very well over the past few years and on behalf of the entire board, we think he is going to make an extraordinary addition to our already very strong board,” said Tim Cook, who called Disney’s CEO “a great fit for Apple.”

Iger’s appointment to Apple’s board appears to further cement the ties between the two companies. As CEO of Pixar, Steve Jobs was Disney’s largest shareholder.

Arthur D. Levinson new Apple chairman, Disney CEO Bob Iger joins board originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:00:00 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 15, 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just coincidentally, I decided today to pull up some Sting on Spotify and listen to some old tracks. Turns out the musician released a big box set called Sting: 25 Years a few months ago, featuring three CDs worth of his songs, both old and remastered. And just recently, to go with that set, he’s also released a companion iPad app, featuring concert footage, interviews, lyrics, handwritten notes from over the years, and lots of other biographical notes and info. You can even use AirPlay to send content to your TV while using the app, so that’s pretty cool. Sting performed in New York to announce the app recently, and 9to5Mac says he performed “Fragile,” dedicating the song to none other than Steve Jobs. The app looks pretty comprehensive, and thanks to some corporate sponsors, it’s a free download, though a big one (442 MB).

Pink Floyd also has an app out — this one’s a universal build called “This Day in Pink Floyd,” and as you might imagine, it offers up news, song notes, and trivia about the classic band, with new content delivered every day. There’s also an exclusive music video, some special Pink Floyd wallpapers, and even a “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” ringtone. That app is $2.99.

Great to see some classic musicians like this really delivering some interesting content via the App Store. Neither app has any of the musicians’ actual music in it for you to listen to (though they both allow you to play music directly from your own device’s library), but as an ancillary reference, both of these are really solid.

Pink Floyd, Sting release biography apps originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tim Cook may not be the charismatic Apple CEO that the late Steve Jobs was, but at least to the business world, he’s much more apt to meet and work with the chief information officers (C.I.O.’s) at enterprises than his predecessor ever was.

The New York Times reported today that Cook is “known to be far more at ease meeting with the C.I.O.’s Mr. Jobs once so memorably disparaged” by mentioning them as the gatekeepers in corporate “orifices.” As TUAW readers may recall from the Apple Q4 Earnings Call on October 18, Apple now boasts of 92 percent of all Fortune 500 companies testing or deploying iPads, with the number jumping to 93 percent for iPhones.

The Times post quotes Rich Adduci of Boston Scientific, a medical device manufacturer that will have deployed 4,500 iPads to field sales people by the end of the year, as saying “What they’ve done in the past few years is really started thinking in a deeper way what the enterprise needs.”

Some of the big enterprise wins that are described in the article include the deployment of 42,000 iPhones by Lowe’s, 1,400 iPads for Alaska Airlines pilots, 11,000 iPads for the merged United and Continental Airlines, and an interesting use case for Siemens Energy technicians. Those techs climb 300-foot towers to service wind turbines and the company has found that the iPads are perfect for this work — they’re instantly on, they’re light, and the cameras in the iPad 2 make it easy for the techs to send pictures to a tech support group. While only 350 techs currently have the devices, Siemens Energy expects to have about 5,000 within five years.

The post notes that Apple’s secrecy about upcoming products tends to rankle corporate types, who want to see a five to ten year roadmap of where vendors intend to be. The companies that are making the best use of the Apple technology are aware of the fact that the company is “not an enterprise company.”

Tim Cook has met with corporate customers more often than Jobs did, doesn’t tend to insult those customers as Jobs did, and appreciates the needs of enterprises. But he doesn’t deviate from Jobs’ view that consumers are the priority for Apple.

NYT: Cook may be more enterprise-friendly than Jobs was originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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FaceTime, at the time of its availability, required a WiFi connection. However, FaceTime over 3G was enabled with a Cydia tweak back then. Some of the iOS 5 builds had FaceTime over 3G enabled by…

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While in general, the new iOS 5.0.1 operating system appears to be working well enough for prepaid phone services and most iPhones, other users are not as happy. It seems there’s a new Apple glitch in town and this time it’s affecting some mobile devices running off the iOS 5.0.1 system. The primary glitch appears to impair the use of the Contacts app, making some users’ address books forget names when trying to call or text. The iOS 5.0.1 was released under the expectation of fixing other glitches, including the low battery life problem that has effected iPhone 4S users. Not only has the new release not universally fixed the battery bug, it’s added new headaches for Apple and its customers.

So far the new glitch has only appeared for Verison 4S users who used the ‘over the air’ method of installation in order to update to iOS 5.0.1. Originally the OTA upgrade was considered one of the improvements of the new system, but it seems that the iTunes install alternative works better, at least as far as avoiding the new bug. The tech sites The Startup Foundry and Redmond Pie have offered a couple potential fixes to the problem but it’s unclear how reliable these solutions will be in the long run.

Users are reporting still other bugs, including dropped Wi-Fi, cellular network connection problems and microphone glitches. It’s unclear whether these flaws are pre-existing are particular to the new firmware. Apple’s only comment so far has been that tests will have to be conducted in order to get to the root of the newest bugs. They were unclear as far as a timetable for when users might expect an official fix.

Despite these problems, iOS 5.0.1 boasts multiple improvements for mobile devices. Among these are a return to the Multi-Tasking Gestures on the original iPad, improved functionality of Cloud Documents, and better voice recognition for Australian users giving dictation. But while these upgrades may garner smiles from iPad users and Australians, for people who can’t properly access the contacts in their address books, a more rapid jump to 5.0.2 may be in order.

With more than 500,000 apps available in the iOS universe and around 18 billion downloads it’s unlikely Apple’s operating furnace will lose heat anytime soon, but the recent rash of bugs does not bode well for a company competing in one of the biggest growth industries in the world.

There is some great news for anyone interested in learning iOS app development from instructors at Stanford University without actually being a student at the school. Stanford is now offering their course iOS 5 focused iPhone Application Development classes on iTunes U.

Throughout this course students will develop several iPhone and iPad apps that help automate tasks in their day-to-day life including games and social networking apps.

Before taking the iPhone Application Development class there are two prerequisites you must complete, Programming Methodology and Programming Abstractions, which are also available on iTunes.

This is a great opportunity for anyone interested in developing iOS apps and is definitely worth checking out.