Category: I-phone

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I recently upgraded to iOS 5 on my 3GS. Oddest thing happened yesterday. I am sitting on board a jet in NH waiting to take off for Atllanta. I pull up Find My Friends to see where a few people are at and it shows me on the tarmac at the Atlanta airport. Thinking it might be an app error, I pull up Google Earth and it showed the same thing. I was on a Delta flight with wifi but had not connected to the network. I felt like I was in a Star Trek time warp. Any thoughts?

Your loving nephew,

Chad

Dear Chad,

Auntie thought this might have to do with the plane’s onboard WiFi system, so she turned to Uncle Steve to explain the situation. Steve replies, “Just because your iPhone wasn’t connected to the network doesn’t mean it wasn’t using the airplane’s Wi-Fi for geolocation. I had the same thing happen on a cruise last year. The ship had a home base of Port Canaveral, Florida, so all of the onboard networks were set so that any device locally thought they were sitting at port in Florida — even when we were in St. Petersburg, Russia!

“Chances are that all of Delta’s aircraft Wi-Fi systems are set to show Atlanta as their “home base” location and that’s what you were seeing. Bizarre, isn’t it?!”

Auntie hopes this helps explain what may have happened.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Why am I in Atlanta? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Along with the iPhone 4S jailbreak, the iPhone Dev Team has also shown an iPad 2 iOS 5 jailbreak. The Dev-Team has posted a short demo of the very preliminary iPad 2 jailbreak running iOS 5 firmware….

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iPhone 4S is Jailbroken! Yes, you read it right. MuscleNerd confirms that the Dev-Team has achieved a very preliminary iPhone 4S jailbreak. He has posted a screenshot of Cydia running on iPhone 4S,…

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We recently had an article about how Android is now beating iPhone in terms of app downloads as well as market share. Once thing the iPhone completely destroys Android in is support. Recently Michael Degusta did a little research one how many Android devices were on the current version of the OS. It did not come as a surprise to see iPhones were all on the current version, what was kind of baffling is the poor support Android appears to get. Here are some of the details:

• 7 of the 18 Android phones never ran a current version of the OS.
• 13 of 18 stopped getting any support updates before they even stopped selling the device or very shortly thereafter.
• At least 16 of 18 will almost certainly never get Ice Cream Sandwich.

So why doesn’t Android get updated in the same fashion as iOS?

That’s a very good question. Obviously a big part of the problem is that Android has to go from Google to the phone manufacturers to the carriers to the devices, whereas iOS just goes from Apple directly to devices. The hacker community (e.g. CyanogenMod, et cetera) has frequently managed to get these phones to run the newer operating systems, so it isn’t a hardware issue.

The article is quite interesting and worth the read.

Source: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

I’ve previously mentioned the Appirater library designed to enable you to quickly get more ratings for your apps by providing users with a pop-up asking them to rate your app at the time of your choosing.

One of the drawback’s of Appirater is that there are issues with app switching.

This new library works automatically with app switching, and provides a few more options, and a cleaner interface.

There’s also support for Mac Apps.

The library is known as iRate from Nick Lockwood, and you can find the Github repository along with detailed usage instructions  here.

—

Site Updates:

Updated the iOS 5 tutorial page with a guide on utilizing ARC on Xcode, and a short tutorial on using the new text input feature in UIAlertView’s.

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

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The blogging team here at TUAW has pretty much seen every type of iPad bag, sleeve, case, and cover that has been developed since the first iPad hit the streets last year. Now a New York-based company that is well-known for nautically-themed gear, Sailor Bags, is selling a fun iPad Sleeve (US$27) that will have you dancing the hornpipe.

Design

What makes this sleeve so different from the rest of those bazillions of sleeves we’ve covered so far? It’s made of sailcloth, a very robust and rugged material that can keep your iPad protected from bumps, drops and liquid splashes.

Like many of the other Sailor Bags products, the cool iPad Sleeve is made in multiple colors — a bright red, a sea blue, and plain old white. The material is manufactured by Sailor Bags to be less stiff than the sailcloth used for boat sails. The company notes that the bag will acquire a patina with age and “personality all its own.”

Unlike many of the sleeves and bags that we review, the Sailor Bags sleeve actually comes with a lifetime guarantee. Whether that’s for your lifetime or the lifetime of the sleeve is a legal question I’m not going to answer, but basically they say that if the sleeve “wears out of underperforms in any way, just return it. We’ll repair or replace it for free.” That’s pretty darned good.

There’s a nice zippered pocket on the outside of the sleeve for holding sync cables, your Camera Connection Kit, or other small accessories. Both of the zippers appear to be made of a nylon material to provide a good water-resistant seal, and they opened and closed smoothly.

The inside of the sleeve is lined with a microfiber material to keep from scratching your iPad, and the sleeve has just enough foam padding to insure adequate protection in the case of a drop or bump.

Functionality

I’m not sure why, but I really like this relatively plain-looking sleeve. Perhaps it has something to with the solid construction, or maybe I was a sailor in another life, but I quickly became fond of the Sailor Bags sleeve. It provides a lot of protection while not trying to be too high-tech or fancy, and the wide diagonal stitch marks in the corner add a very nice sailing touch.

The price is definitely right (at least for the base cost; custom embroidery adds $12 to the total) and the sleeve would make an awesome Christmas gift for the iPad owner on your list. Just add up to two lines of embroidered love to that sleeve, and you’ve given a gift that someone will remember for years to come.

Conclusion

I was pleasantly surprised by this iPad sleeve from a manufacturer that up until now hasn’t been a player in the Apple accessories market. With this sleeve cradling my iPad 2, I don’t think I’d feel uncomfortable taking it to a beach or laying it on a chaise lounge next to a swimming pool. If I had a sailboat, my iPad would be wearing the Sailor Bags iPad Sleeve every time it went aboard. You don’t need to be a sailor to love this iPad sleeve, though, and I’m giving it my highest recommendation.

Sailor Bags iPad Sleeve adds a nautical theme to your favorite tablet originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The African nation of Zimbabwe has suffered greatly over the past due to the policies of president Robert Mugabe, but there’s a glimmer of hope for the future of the country. Apple and the government of Zimbabwe have entered into a joint venture to distribute solar-powered iPads to rural schools in the country.

The announcement was made by Zimbabwean minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture David Coltart, who met with Apple employees in Paris yesterday. In his Facebook post, he noted that he had a “Great meeting with Apple today in Paris — unveiled a fascinating new ‘School Box’ which will take iPads to the most remote rural schools – using solar power and micro projectors we will be able to bring computerized teaching aids to the poorest schools.”

Coltart mentioned that the first pilot programs could start early in 2012. Coltart said “I am very excited that Zimbabwe is collaborating with Apple int his groundbreaking use of technology to advance educations in the most remote schools. If we can get it to work in Zimbabwe I am sure it will spread to poor schools throughout Africa – and beyond.”

As noted in Newsday Zimbabwe, most rural schools in the country lack even basic infrastructure. The Mugabe government had previously donated “several computers” to schools as part of a rural computerization project, but they have either been stolen or were never used due to the lack of electricity.

Computerworld’s Jonny Evans reported on the story today with some speculation the School Box (containing the iPads and solar charger) might act as a femtocell device, sharing a 3G broadband connection among students. Evans quotes analyst firm Gartner as stating that “Where the One Laptop Per Child [OLPC] and mini-notebook fell short in delivering true computer-aided curriculum, the media tablet can deliver if schools build them into a larger ecosystem emerging around digital textbooks.”

Between the idea of using solar power to reduce or eliminate electricity costs, replacing costly printed textbooks with electronic textbooks, and using the very popular iPad devices, perhaps Apple is hitting the education market in developing countries with the right product at the right time.

Zimbabwe government, Apple in joint education venture originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:30:00 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 October 27, 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’m not a professional chef, but I love to cook and serve up 30 plates of food each day. Like many amateur cooks, I struggle with recalling the differences between sauteing and braising and what makes a roux, a roux. That is why I was so excited to see The Professional Chef land on the iPad. Created by John Wiley & Sons and the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), the digital version of the chef’s ultimate bible contains 1,200 pages filled with cooking information. There are 100 videos, 850 recipes, 175 figures, and 750 photographs of food. There’s so much content packed into its 36 chapters, it’s almost overwhelming, but in a good way.

The app uses Inkling, an interactive learning framework for the iPad, to organize and present its content. The app was designed as both a learning tool for professional chefs and a reference guide for amateurs. Besides its wealth of food information, The Professional Chef includes quizzes to measure your mastery of the content and a searchable glossary to help you brush up on your cooking terms. And if the glossary isn’t enough, you can also access Google and Wikipedia from within the app. There’s even a virtual notebook that’s useful for storing bookmarks, highlights and other content you want to review.

The Professional Chef has a social component which includes a note-taking and discussion feature that lets you share your thoughts with others. These social features are great for chefs that want to share what they know or have discovered about the techniques in the book. They also fit in perfectly with a classroom scenario. Students can add notes and discussion topics to content within the book and then view responses left by the instructor and other students. You’ll have to create an account to access the social portion of the learning network, but you can login using your email or Facebook account.

The interface is clean and very usable. You can tell the designers spent a lot of time organizing even the smallest details, like the navigation bar on the left which shows your relative location within the book and within a chapter. There’s also an adjustable font size so you can pick one suitable for reading close up and another for when you are using the iPad book in the kitchen. This attention to detail makes using The Professional Chef a pleasurable experience.

What really sets this iPad book apart from others is its stunning content. The cooking and food information is very well organized into discrete chapters and each chapter is subdivided into individual topics. My favorite is the chapter on cooking eggs which is broken down into frying, poaching, scrambling, omelets and more. Each individual sub-section has a high-res picture of the topic, a comprehensive description of the food item and details on how to cook it.

Most sections also include a short video that demonstrates the cooking technique. The video isn’t from your typical homegrown cooking show either; each one is a high quality production that makes the recipe or cooking technique look stunning. The video of the fried eggs will leave you wishing every meal was breakfast.

Best of all, the book covers more than just recipes. It contains cooking information and buying tips so you can learn how to identify the right type of food, select the freshest item and discover the best way to prepare it.

The 36-chapter Professional Chef costs a pricey $49.99, but you do get a wealth of cooking information for that money. Value-wise, I think it’s worth it to get all that information packaged into one iPad app, but the casual chef who doesn’t need all this information may not agree. Those who prefer not to buy the whole book can purchase individual chapters for $2.99 each, and the soup chapter (Chapter 14) is available for free.

You can purchase The Professional Chef from the App Store or check out a demo on Inkling’s website.

Daily iPad App: The Professional Chef originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s recently released Photo Stream feature for Mac OS X and iOS already has some competition. Adobe has released its Carousel app and service for Mac and iOS, and from the initial buzz about Carousel, it might be a formidable competitor to Photo Stream and iPhoto.

The Mac and iOS apps are free, but since your photos are stored in the cloud, you will need to purchase a subscription for the app. You can use the full version of Adobe Carousel at no cost for 30 days, after which you’ll need to spend $5.99 per month or $59.99 per year. That’s the introductory cost — if you sign up after the introductory period (we don’t know when that will end, by the way), the price goes to $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year.

The subscription lets you upload any of your photos to a library in the cloud, where it can be instantly viewed on your iPad, iPhone or Mac. Apps for Windows and Android are forthcoming from Adobe as well, although no date has been set for their release. Once you’ve created your library, you can crop, rotate, adjust exposure, and make corrections to the photos from any of your devices. There are also “Looks” or themes that may be applied to your photos to create a certain mood.

In fact, you can change your images as many times as you like without worry, as the original photo is maintained without changes in perpetuity. Once you’ve made your changes, you can share the photos by inviting friends and family to look them via the app, and others can even add photos to your library. Sharing to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler can also be done with a tap or click.

It does not appear that Adobe Carousel supports RAW format — at this time, a release note says that you can “import, edit, and share all your JPEGs, the most common file format for photos.” Your photos don’t have to stay in the cloud; at any time you can download them for use in other apps or services.

TUAW will have a full review of the apps in the near future. In the meantime, be sure to watch the video below to get an idea of what the Carousel team intended the app to do, and how they’ve accomplished their goals.

Adobe releases Carousel app for Mac, iOS originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here’s the latest news from the front in the battle between Samsung and Apple: Apple is victorious in a skirmish in Italy.

Samsung was attempting to block the iPhone 4S release in Italy, which is scheduled for November 4, saying that the new phone infringed on two patents that the Korean manufacturer holds. In the courts in Milan, Italy, judges turned down Samsung’s request, but agreed to requests by both manufacturers to submit more evidence to support their positions in the dispute.

After yesterday’s hearing, Apple is planning to release the iPhone 4S on schedule next Friday. This was the latest in a series of small, yet important, victories for Apple in the ongoing intellectual property war.

Samsung loses attempt to ban iPhone 4S sales in Italy originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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China’s fascination with all things Apple continues to grow, as evidenced by the recent release of the Steve Jobs biography in the country. According to an article by Chris Chang of M.I.C. Gadget, all 250,000 Chinese edition copies of the book were sold within a day of its release. Somewhere, Steve is smiling at this amazing reception of the story of his life.

M.I.C. Gadget found many photos and videos posted online showing crowds waiting outside of bookstores — if one didn’t know better, you’d think they were waiting in line for the release of the latest iPhone or iPad. As the Chinese website notes, “Steve Jobs is widely respected and admired in China for his innovations, while his products are considered fashion symbols by the locals.”

The displays that were created for the books were just this side of fanatical. As you can see in the photos above as well as in the many other photos in a gallery with the M.I.C. Gadget post, bookstore owners took pride in creating many shrine-like displays featuring posters of Jobs, the Apple logo, and words spelled out with the books. Retailers even gave away t-shirts and cards emblazoned with Jobs’s image to people who had waited patiently in line.

For an idea of the crowds at Chinese bookstores for the Walter Isaacson biography of Jobs, be sure to watch the Chinese-language video below.

Jobs biography draws huge crowds in China originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’ll bet a lot of us have fought the Mac wars in our own companies. I won some, I lost some, so it’s especially gratifying to see Forrester Research urging IT to get over itself and enthusiastically support Macs in the enterprise.

A new report from the research company, authored by senior analyst David K. Johnson, turns the already-stale conventional wisdom about integrating Mac OS machines into enterprise operations completely on its head. Mac-enabled employees are actually the HEROes of business, says Johnson — Highly Empowered and Resourceful Operatives. This 17% slice of the enterprise workforce are the ones who work longer, give more effort and actually push innovation forward.

The report is pricey if you’re not a Forrester subscriber, but it’s extensively quoted at Fortune’s Apple 2.0 blog. One of the most powerful statements in the report is that Mac users forced to use Windows laptops find the PCs are “slowing them down.”

“Time is the only thing that these fierce competitors can’t make more of. Many of today’s corporate PCs are saddled with management, backup, and security agents that can bog down a PC. Employees want their PCs to boot in 10 seconds, not 10 minutes, and they don’t want to have to get a cup of coffee while opening a 20 MB spreadsheet in Excel. They’re drawn to uncluttered Macs — especially those with solid-state drives, which are more responsive and boot in seconds.”

Pretty amazing from the same research group that warned companies in 2008 to stay well clear of the Mac. “Unless your market is a niche business group, Windows is the only desktop you need support.” Even now, 41% of the enterprises that Forrester surveyed don’t even support Mac clients getting access to web-based corporate email, much less welcome the Mac in as a full-fledged IT citizen.

Now the tide has turned, with more and more Mac laptops making inroads into the most productive corners of the enterprise PC landscape. Forrester says, rather emphatically, “Stand in the way (of letting Apple in), and you will eventually get run over.”

If you want to part with US$499, you can buy a copy of the report and leave it in your boss’s inbox.

Forrester does a 180 on Macs in enterprise, finds most productive staffers = Mac users originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The iPhone 4S is the first iPhone to land at Sprint and sales are better than expected. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse confirmed that early sales of the iPhone 4S have beaten internal estimates and the phone is bringing new customers to the struggling wireless carrier. Hesse wouldn’t divulge actual sales numbers, but did confirm the iPhone 4S is the fastest-selling smartphone Sprint has carried.

This successful launch comes with a hefty price tag. Sprint has entered a four-year agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone and is paying the Cupertino company a hefty subsidy of US$200 per phone. Over the four-year period, the iPhone will cost Sprint an estimated $15 billion. Sprint hopes to compensate for this large upfront cost with a block of new subscribers who will stay for a longer period of time and subscribe to an expensive monthly voice and data service plan. Even with these new subscribers paying upwards of $60 per month, Sprint won’t balance its iPhone budget until sometime in 2015.

[Via Reuters]

iPhone exceeds Sprint’s expectations originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I ditched Photoshop for Pixelmator about a year ago, but there were a few things missing in Pixelmator which caused me to fire up Photoshop once in a while. I also recently bought Aperture in an effort to better organize and retouch photos I started taking on my new Canon Rebel. Pixelmator 2 fixes many omissions which had me reaching for Photoshop, and in some ways is better than Aperture. Read on to learn about a few features I checked out in the short time I tried out the update.

Lion Support

Full screen is great, but when dealing with images I think full support for Lion’s autosave and versioning will really hit photogs and designers in the sweet spot. I also dig how Pixelmator has eschewed floating palette-mania for inline toolbars that appear when various tools are selected.

Text tool

Oh, finally we have some control over text! Here’s a great example of the toolbar appearing in a document (image) window when needed, and it’s really helpful. No clutter, no moving things around, just the tools you need to tweak the tool you’re using.

Anyway, the Text tool finally has the fine control over text alignment, adjustment and placement that was sorely lacking before.

Vector Shapes

Mercy me, there’s a vector set of tools in Pixelmator at last. Create shapes, use a proper pen tool and editing tools, etc. I’m not going to say Pixelmator matches Photoshop here, because there are still some tricks you can’t do with paths in Photoshop that are still missing from Pixelmator, but the addition of vector shapes keeps me from launching something else just to add a simple shape that I can easily scale.

Smudge, Sponge, Red Eye and Healing

Smudge does exactly what you’d expect, and works great. Sponge allows you to saturate and desaturate areas of your image, and it works well also. But photographers will be stoked to use the excellent red eye feature, and even more excited by the smart healing brush.

I actually think red eye and healing work better in Pixelmator 2 than in Aperture. One thing I can definitely say: the responsiveness is better in Pixelmator. If you have ever been aggravated by Aperture’s crummy pinch-to-zoom and scrolling when dealing with the red eye and healing fixes, you’ll be happy to know that Pixelmator is “like butter” by comparison. Apple needs to optimize Aperture (or fix the bugs!) fast.

Mac App Store

Pixelmator 2 is on the Mac App Store for a lowered price right now ($29.99), and I gladly bought it even though I had the non-MAS version. Why? Because totaling up every penny I’ve spent on Pixelmator in the few years I’ve been using it is still about 10% of what Photoshop will cost you. There’s hardly a better value out there, especially if you work with pixels on a daily basis.

Pixelmator 2.0 released with new tools, content-awareness, Lion support originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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