Category: I-phone

Magic Defenders isn’t new, but it has claimed a lot of my iPhone gaming time lately. It’s a tower defense game, so if you like that genre, odds are that you’ll like this one.

Instead of building towers, you play the game as a mage that’s casting spells against waves of attackers. The game cycle has you casting spells using mana, killing attackers to earn XP, and then using that XP to upgrade your spells to kill attackers more quickly, earning more XP, and so on. It’s a lot of fun and considering that the game has a few different heroes to play through and level up across three invasion episodes, there’s plenty of content to explore. Blazing down enemies is very rewarding, as is learning how the various spells work together. You can slow enemies down with one spell, for example, freeze them in place with a second, and then nuke them all down with a third.

The game’s great on the iPad, too, but the drag-and-drop spell interface makes it easy on any iOS device. And at 99 cents on the App Store for a universal version, Magic Defenders is one of the best bargains out there that you might have missed the first time around. If you like tower defense games or ridiculously addictive game cycles, it’s definitely worth the buck.

Daily iPhone App: Magic Defenders originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I first took a look at the Skobbler crowd sourced GPS app for iPhone back in June of 2010. I found it uneven in quality, but it was free, and if you weren’t going to spring for one of the big boys like Garmin, Navigon or TomTom it was worth a try.

Skobbler has now been updated, and it costs US$0.99. The app has been renamed GPS Navigation 2. Your dollar gets you US and Canada maps in a universal application that adds local search, a “take me home” option, integration with your contacts and iPod playback while navigating. The maps are from OpenStreetMap, kind of a Wikipedia for mapping. Using the map requires a data connection, but you also have the ability to download maps at prices ranging from $5.99 for North America, Europe, and Australia to $3.99 for places like Italy, Ireland, the UK, France and Germany.

How does it work? It’s still a mixed bag. The maps are clear enough, but operation is quirky. You get a 3D map, but if you scroll to the right it suddenly turns 2D. Scrolling left doesn’t get you the 3D map back; you have to hit a “back” button. As I drove, I didn’t always see my car centered on the map, and I often drifted off screen. Navigating back home was a complete failure, as I was told to turn onto a street that did not connect to where my house is.

The app advertises local search. I tried “grocery store.” Nope. Pizza? Zip. Pizza Hut? Uh-uh.

I tried some non-residential addresses and they worked fine, and the voice for turn-by-turn directions was audible and pleasant. The app provides a female voice with a soothing British accent.

There are some other inexpensive nav apps. Motion X GPS Drive comes to mind at $0.99, but features like voice directions cost extra and are subscription based. Waze is a free, crowd sourced nav app, and it gets consistently good reviews.

If you aren’t about to buy a more expensive navigation app, and you feel lucky, this app might be worth a look. The GUI has been considerably improved from the older version, and the added features are nice. On the other hand, if it can’t get you home, it’s really not a good investment, even at $0.99. Screen shots are below.

Skobbler updates its $0.99 nav app with mixed results originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Winterboard for iOS 5 is now available for download in Cydia. Saurik has officially update Winterboard with iOS 5 compatibility. You can download Winterboard for iOS from Cydia. Winterboard is a…

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The guys over at WebHostingBuzz.com have posted an excellent infographic that takes a look at how consumers are using mobile technology as well as where they use it and what the future holds.

Infographic: The State and Trends of Mobile Internet by WebHostingBuzz

 

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 19, 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 04:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s all about speech on the iPhone 4S, from the systemwide dictation features to the inscrutable but very helpful Siri assistant. The fine folks at Nuance (suppliers of some of the underlying IP that powers the 4S voice savvy) have made a big move into the mobile space; the company already has a suite of iOS apps that cover several speech-related functions.

There’s Dragon Dictation for text entry, Dragon Go! and Search for finding what you need, Dragon for SalesForce to work with your CRM system, two Dragon Medical apps for search and recording, and the Dragon Remote Mic app that turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a networked microphone for the company’s desktop dictation apps (Dragon Dictate for Mac or NaturallySpeaking for Windows). Now there’s another member of this growing family: the Dragon Recorder app.

Dragon Recorder is a free and straightforward voice recording app designed to pair with the company’s transcription software; on the Mac, that means the $150 MacSpeech Scribe application. You can use Recorder to record your voice (only yours; Scribe and its Windows sister product are speaker-dependent) on the go, and then easily transfer the recordings via sync or Wi-Fi browser sharing for later transcription.

Of course, you could use the built-in Voice Memos application to achieve much the same result, but you wouldn’t get the Wi-Fi sharing feature. Then again, if you’re planning to do a lot of mobile dictation, I’d recommend picking up Irradiated Software’s drop-dead easy DropVox for $1.99 — forget transferring your files by sync or by click, they’ll just show up automatically in your Dropbox folder ready for transcription. (There’s no step 3.)

It remains to be seen how much of an impact the new on-device dictation capabilities will have on the pro-level dictation and transcription software market, but if you’re already a MacSpeech Scribe user then it’s worth giving Recorder a try… that is, if you’re not already feeling silly talking to Siri.

Dragon adds Recorder app for time-shifted desktop dictation originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 23:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When the original iPad was released last April, Glasshouse Apps released The Early Edition, one of the first styled RSS readers for the device. Much like Flipboard and some others, The Early Edition gathered your feeds into a self-curated “magazine.” It was nice, but The Early Edition 2 (TEE2) is a huge improvement.

A complete UI redesign, gesture support, Google Reader sync (as well as in-app feed additions) and a fun sharing function make TEE2 a pleasure to use. Here’s my look at The Early Edition 2 (US$4.99) by Glasshouse Apps.

Overall UI

Glasshouse went with a newspaper theme. When you first launch the app, a rolled newspaper appears on a hardwood background (reminds me of my days as a paperboy). A progress wheel spins as the app updates your feeds. Once that’s done (it was quick over Wi-Fi for me; I was unable to test 3G), your paper “unfolds” and the front page is presented.

Its appearance will be immediately familiar to anyone who’s seen a newspaper during the last 100 years or so. The app’s title is written in script across the top with the current date just below it. Blurbs from the first three articles can be read, and photos will appear as they’re downloaded. Kudos to the Glasshouse team on keeping this initial download nice and snappy. I subscribe to an insane number of feeds and watch as well over a thousand images download (you can track their progress on the front page). Yet, the app’s performance never suffers.

Unique to the front page is the “Sections” section. If you’re using Google Reader as TEE2’s source, the sections correspond to any folders you’ve set up.

To read an article, just give it a tap. The black-and-white layout keeps everything legible, as does the optional style override (more on that later). Additionally, three font size options let you choose the size that’s right.

The second page of each issue offers several handy features. A “trending words” feature lists terms that appear frequently; tap each for a list of the top articles. Saved searches offer additional content customization and the Sync Stats let you know the last time the app performed a sync with your RSS source(s). The remaining pages offer individual articles, sorted by topic. This is where the fun begins.

Cool features and other UI goodies

Three super-cool features of TEE2 include the Browse Menu, the Clippings Menu, sharing options and the Toolbar. Each offers a fun and darn attractive way to interact with your news. Here’s a look at each.

The Toolbar remains hidden until you need it, which is nice. To produce it, swipe down anywhere on the screen (just not the very top, as that will reveal the iOS 5 Notification Center). The chestnut-brown Toolbar offers access to the app’s preferences, brightness settings, help files and sync progress notification.

Among the more interesting options is the Featured Feeds list. Just tap the spotlights icon in the Toolbar and the app “flips over” to reveal a list of suggested feeds across several categories, like Mac + iOS, Business, Entertainment and more. Tap any category to reveal its sources and check those you’d like to subscribe to.

The Browse Menu is also pretty cool. Tap the Toolbar’s list icon to produce a list of your defined sections and feeds. Each displays an unread count and an optional star rating. Starred articles go into the clippings file.

Consider the clippings to be a collections of favorite articles. To access it, swipe up from the bottom of the screen. The newspaper will disappear and a box of your favorited articles appears. It looks great, in keeping with the rest of the app. Have I mentioned that The Early Edition 2 is very pretty? Because it is.

Sharing

Speaking of pretty, prepare for some serious eye candy. TEE2 goes all social on you with its sharing feature. To share an article, tap the share button in the article-specific toolbar (available when reading an article full-screen). A “Shared Copy” stamp appears on the article, and a manila envelope UI slides into place, offering to share the article with Twitter, Instapaper, Facebook, Delicious or Read it Later. Once you’ve set these up, just tap Send and off it goes.

Gesture support

Who has time to tap buttons? TEE2 offers some sweet gesture support. Swipe left-to-right with two fingers to bring up the Browse Menu. Swipe up to produce the Clippings UI (though you can’t swipe again to put it away) and swipe down to reveal the main Toolbar. Finally, swipe left-to-right on an individual, full-screen article to dismiss the style override and read it as it appears on its parent website (I much prefer the ad-free style override).

The Early Edition 2 will be available from the App Store on October 20. Note that this is a separate purchase from The Early Edition, and requires iOS 5. In my opinion, it’s absolutely worth it. The app looks fantastic, has a clever and engaging UI and is plenty fast. Plus, those who don’t use Google Reader aren’t out of luck, as you can switch to standalone mode and add feeds a la carte style. I recommend you check it out and curl up with a good read.

Early Edition 2 rebuilt, offers Google Reader sync, UI changes, more originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At the end of August, we ran a review of the Stem Innovations iZON Remote Room Monitor. It’s a sleek little Wi-Fi webcam that looks like it was designed in Cupertino, and includes an iOS app for setup and monitoring of the device. The iZON can be triggered by motion in a room, and then send video up to a private YouTube account for you to view. That iZON feature was recently used by a woman from Boynton Beach, Florida to catch a burglar (a neighbor) who was stealing her medication.

The woman thought someone was taking prescription drugs from her, so she purchased an iZON, set it up with her iZON, and captured video of her neighbor entering her condo and taking the drugs. The victim called the local police, and with the help of the iZON video, they were able to arrest the perpetrator.

It’s a very cool story about an innovative product that the elderly victim was able to set up and use without assistance: a testament to the ease of use of iOS and the iZON device and software. Enjoy the video clip below.

iZON webcam and iPhone catch a thief in the act originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Siri, Apple’s beta voice recognition assistant for iPhone 4S, has gotten a lot of press recently about its snark and humor, but that’s not why a lot of us are growing to love this clever bot. For many of us at TUAW, Siri provides a really simple way to accomplish tasks on our iPhones.

Here’s a quick run-down of the favorite Siri features for those of us fortunate enough to have access to a new iPhone 4S.

Erica Sadun: “Wake me up at 7:15 AM”

Everybody has to wake up at some time in their lives, and Siri makes it so easy to set alarms. You don’t have to decide until the last minute, and you don’t have to set up complicated repeated schedules. You just tell Siri when you need to wake up tomorrow and the assistant handles the rest. It’s so obvious and so simple, and Siri does it so well.

Mike Rose: “Tell my wife I am on my way home.”

Not everything in life needs a phone call. A simple message gets the job done, especially when you have an inconsistent schedule. Letting Siri help your spouse know that you’re on the way is an easy fix for marital harmony. Bonus: If the person you’re trying to contact is an iMessage user, the ping will go out via Apple’s free service; if not, it’ll go as a conventional SMS alert.

Steve Sande: “What’s 1920 divided by three?”

When I need to scale videos, I can just say something like “480*456/640” (480 times 456 divided by 640) and get my answer. Siri means I don’t have to start typing everything into a calculator.

Other favorite requests:

• Where is [name of friend]? Siri is savvy about the Find my Friends feature of iOS 5, so you can bypass a lot of tapping and scrolling by simply asking it where your buddy is hanging out — see the screenshot above, where I tracked down Mike at work. Whether you’re trying to meet for lunch or arrange a handoff for critical/secret documents, speed is key.
• Will it be cold tonight? The Siri query parser is smart enough to pick up on relative comparisons when it comes to weather, so if you ask about cold/hot, nice weather, or “do I need a sweater/jacket/umbrella?” it’s got you covered.
• Note that I spent $15 on lunch. Right now, you can only use the “note in” syntax to add items to the default Notes application, and it would be even more powerful if you could link to Evernote or Simplenote; still, you can’t beat the sheer convenience of getting those tiny tidbits of info recorded with a single tap & chat. (Notes will, of course, sync to your iCloud account.)
• Remind me to buy milk when I leave the office. Geofenced reminders are a great new iOS 5 feature, and Siri understands references to your location just fine. The result: an incredibly fast and easy way to set up location-based alerts that tell you what you need to remember, when you need to remember it.

What are your favorite Siri features? Let us know in the comments.

What is your favorite Siri command? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s another understudy episode this week on TUAW TV Live, since Steve is currently playing nurse to the recently operated upon Mrs. Steve. This means if you didn’t get enough of the Doc Rock and Kelly show on the Talkcast Sunday, now’s your chance to stock up.

We’ll be discussing the news of the week, and since it’s Kelly and Doc Rock, we will also veer wildly off topic. I know we don’t have a topic, but we’ll find one so we can make sure we get off it. I also have it on excellent authority that to ease this transition, at least one host will be wearing a hat.

Below, you’ll find a Ustream livestream viewer and a chat tool. The chat tool allows you to participate by asking questions or making comments.

If you’re driving somewhere and would like to watch TUAW TV Live while you’re stuck in traffic, please don’t — keep your eyes on the road! However, if someone else is doing the driving, you can watch the show on your iPhone and join the chat by downloading the free Ustream App. It’s a universal app and is wonderful on an iPad, both for viewing and participating in the chat.

We’ll start at about 5 PM ET, so if you’re seeing a prerecorded show, be sure to refresh your browser until you see the live stream. For those of you who are not able to join us for the live edition, you’ll be able to view it later this evening on our TUAW Video YouTube channel and as part of the TUAW TV Live podcast viewable in iTunes or on any of your Apple devices.

No Flash? Check out the YouTube channel or podcast listed above or click here.

TUAW TV Live NOW: Understudy Week! originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You would think the fourth U.S. iPhone 4S carrier would be T-Mobile. But, because of network incompatibility, it’s not. It’s actually C Spire Wireless, formerly known as Cellular South, a CDMA regional carrier that most people probably haven’t heard of unless you happen to live in Mississippi or parts of Alabama, Florida and Tennessee.

It’s not surprising that Apple is starting to push the iPhone toward regional carriers now that the exclusive deal with AT&T is a distant memory. As stated during Tuesday’s earnings call, CEO Tim Cook said he wanted to get the iPhone 4S out to as many people as possible, even though the question of carrier expansion was deferred. Cook said that the smartphone market would eventually absorb the handset market, and the best way to do that would be to expand to these smaller carriers.

Which regional carrier could we see the iPhone with next in the U.S.? My theory is that it’s Cricket, a CDMA carrier owned by Leap Wireless, which I became familiar with when I was in Arizona. The company began expanding its network in 2010 and added nationwide 3G data roaming a year ago today. I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually saw the iPhone 4S land with these guys. Who would you like to see acquire the iPhone?

C-Spire to become 4th U.S. iPhone 4S carrier originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has updated its US iPhone 4S tech specs page to say that the new devices supports GLONASS positioning systems. GLONASS stand for Global Navigation Satellite System and is the Russian version of GPS that was developed in the 1990s. According to Wikipedia, the GLONASS system fell into disrepair in the 90s as the Russian economy sank, but in the last decade the system has come back with Russia launching its 24th satellite last year, giving GLONASS coverage to every inch of Russian territory.

Before GLONASS, the iPhone only supported assisted GPS. There’s no word from Apple yet if the iPhone 4S will take advantage of both systems simultaneously on a world wide basis to give users more accurate positioning data. Also, at this time only the US iPhone 4S page has been updated to note GLONASS support.

Apple confirms GLONASS support for iPhone 4S originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A new interview with the CEO of Softbank, Masayoshi Son, seems to indicate that Steve Jobs did indeed work on Apple products right up until his last day of life. While talking to the US Ambassador to Japan, Son said that during a meeting on the day of the iPhone 4S announcement, he was speaking with Apple CEO Tim Cook, who apologized because he had to excuse himself. “Oh Masa, sorry I have to quit our meeting,” Cook reportedly said. “He said, ‘My boss is calling me,'” claims Son. Cook also said Jobs was calling specifically because he wanted to talk about the company’s next product, which we haven’t yet heard about.

PC Magazine speculates that product was the iPhone 5, but whatever it happens to be, it appears Jobs was thinking about Apple right up until the end. That definitely fits everything we know about the man, who pushed for quality in his company and his products no matter what. It looks like we haven’t seen the last of Steve’s legacy just yet.

Steve reportedly worked on Apple’s next product until his last day originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers at Georgia Tech have worked up a proof-of-concept demonstration of using an iPhone 4’s accelerometer as a keylogger. After setting the iPhone near a computer keyboard, the device’s built-in accelerometer and gyroscope were able to decipher entire sentences “with up to 80 percent accuracy.”

Similar keyloggers have already been developed using microphones, which sample vibrations far more frequently than accelerometers. However, nearly all phone operating systems ask a user’s permission before granting applications access to the built-in microphone, which limits the utility of a keylogger.

Apps don’t currently ask for users’ permission for access to accelerometers and gyroscopes, which raises the remote possibility of iPhones or other accelerometer-equipped devices spying on keyboard inputs without users being the wiser.

“The way we see this attack working is that you, the phone’s owner, would request or be asked to download an innocuous-looking application, which doesn’t ask you for the use of any suspicious phone sensors,” said Henry Carter, one of the project’s researchers. “Then the keyboard-detection malware is turned on, and the next time you place your phone next to the keyboard and start typing, it starts listening.”

The keylogger software works by detecting key pairs — detecting individual key presses turned out to be too difficult and unreliable — and by comparing paired accelerometer events against a built-in dictionary, the software can decipher keypresses with startling accuracy. Our own Mike Rose has coined “thump phreaking” to refer to this spying technique (after Van Eck phreaking, which uses CRT or LCD emissions to reconstruct the screen image) and it’s as apt a term as any for what this software does.

It must be mentioned that this is only a proof of concept and not an actual attack that’s out in the wild. The researchers themselves admit that this keylogger was difficult to build, and it’s easily defeated by something as simple as moving your iPhone more than three inches away from the keyboard. That having been said, the technique is very James Bondian, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if something similar to this turns up in a forthcoming spy thriller or Batman movie.

Proof of concept: iPhone captures keystrokes via ‘thump phreaking’ originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers from F-Secure warn that a variant on a trojan discovered in September, which masquerades as an Adobe Flash Player installer, now exists and is capable of disabling OS X’s built-in malware protection.

OSX/Flashback.C disables the auto-updater component of XProtect, which means the system’s built-in anti-malware application no longer looks for updates to its malware definitions. This essentially holds the door open for future malware to invade the system unimpeded.

F-Secure provides instructions for removing OSX/Flashback.C if your system has already been compromised. For the truly paranoid, you can also bypass the auto-update process and force your Mac to update its malware definitions manually.

Since OS X malware authors seem to be employing fake Flash Player installers as a delivery vector, it’s worth mentioning that you should only download Flash Player from trusted sources. Adobe’s website is a good place to start. You could also remove the plug-in version of Flash Player altogether, essentially zeroing out your risk of being exposed to the OSX/Flashback trojan variants; the Google Chrome browser includes a bundled Flash Player if you need to view Flash content.

[Hat tip to Ars Technica]

Trojan variation disables Mac malware protection originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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