Category: I-phone

We’re looking at apps that aren’t games this week, and today’s selection is Any To Do. It’s a little pricey, but might be worth it for the right user. I use the excellent 2Do on my iPad, but Any To Do is nice as well.

While it lacks a little bit of the syntactic sugar that 2Do has, it does use a very interesting quadrant view. Basically, your tasks are charted as Urgent, Important or not Urgent or Important. You can see a view of all of your tasks laid out according to those criteria. Most to-do apps chart tasks by date due or time entered, but I do like how Any To Do lays them out, so at a glance, you can see tasks that need to get done right away, or that take precedence on your list.

Another big bonus is that Any To Do will sync with Evernote. Of course you can set up notifications and reminders for your tasks, set up repeated tasks, or send things out to Twitter, Facebook, or another calendar.

Any To Do places less emphasis on organization than other similar apps. It’s built more for creating priorities and lists of what you need to do. And of course, that’s a great function for someone looking for a very tasked-based to-do system.

Any To Do is available in the App Store for US$5.99 on the iPhone or $8.99 on the iPad. That’s relatively price, but again, it’s a pretty targeted app, and that quadrant view is something I haven’t seen before. There are lite versions to look at, too, if you’re not sure how it might work. If it sounds like the kind of task-based app you need to keep yourself moving on various projects and work, definitely give it a look.

Daily iPhone App: Any To Do originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

When we began hearing about Apple’s iCloud, a lot of the TUAW staffers thought the same thing — why doesn’t Apple just buy Dropbox? After all, it works the way that a lot of Apple fans think cloud storage should intuitively work. Well, a story by Forbes staffer Victoria Barret spills the beans on a story we never knew about until now: Apple did try to buy Dropbox in late 2009.

There’s a great story that will be in the November 7 issue of Forbes talking about the startup story of the latest Silicon Valley success, and how in December 2009 Steve Jobs invited Dropbox co-founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi to a meeting in Cupertino. Jobs made a pitch to buy the company, which Houston promptly nixed. Jobs then “told them he was going after their market,” while Houston “peppered him with questions.”

We all know the outcome, with iCloud having gone live this last week as a would-be competitor to Dropbox. But Dropbox has done rather well, with 50 million users, one new user signing up each second, and revenues expected to hit $240 million for the year despite the fact that 96% of users don’t pay a thing for the service. The company was recently valued at $4 billion, and raised $250 million in capital to grow Dropbox into an Internet powerhouse.

Houston’s not too worried about the competition from iCloud and Google’s rumored Drive product. The company recently signed an agreement with HTC to add Dropbox as the default cloud storage service for its Android phones, is planning on signing up six more phone firms soon, and is looking at working with PC and TV makers next.

We’ll see what happens over the next few years with Dropbox, and whether or not Houston’s decision to turn down Jobs in 2009 was a smart move or regrettable choice. Check out the video below for a taste of the Forbes article on Dropbox and the Apple connection.

Forbes: Apple tried to buy Dropbox originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The portrait of Steve Jobs that has been a fixture on Apple’s homepage since his passing is iconic. It tells you just about everything you need to know about the man — his intensity, determination, intelligence, the fact that this is a great man from whom great ideas spring, and the fact that he’s a man you challenge at your own peril. It’s the photo that will be on the cover of his biography, and it’s likely to be one of the main images that represents him throughout history.

According to PDN Pulse, Albert Watson took the photo back in 2006 during a shoot for Fortune. Having heard of Jobs’s reputation as a demanding man, even when it came to photo shoots, Watson did a great deal of preparation and research for his session with Jobs. Steve was bemused that Watson was shooting with film instead of digital, but he agreed when Watson said he didn’t feel digital was “quite here yet.” “We’ll get there,” was Steve’s reply. The photo session with Watson was relatively low-key compared to other Jobsian sessions; Jobs gained notoriety as a “nightmare subject” among photographers, mostly because of how much control he demanded over shoots.

As for the portrait itself, Watson told Steve to give the camera almost 100 percent eye contact and “Think about the next project you have on the table.” Watson also told Steve to think about times when people had challenged him. Much of 2006 was filled with rumors of the supposedly forthcoming iPhone; virtually every pundit in the universe expected it to be a huge flop, and that was assuming Apple even had the “guts” to challenge the mobile handset industry in the first place. It’s easy to imagine that Steve was thinking about the original iPhone when the shutter snapped, in which case the “visionary” quality of the portrait seems even more appropriate. Steve Jobs knew he was about to change the world — again — and it comes through in this photograph.

Watson says Steve told him it was his favorite photograph of him. It’s easy to see why.

On photographing Steve Jobs originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

If you think the new iPhone 4S is just the same old iPhone a report in DigiTimes may have you thinking again.

The publication quotes an IHS analysis which looks at some key under-the-hood changes in the new iPhone beyond the obvious faster processor, antenna redesign and addition of the Siri software.

Wayne Lam, a senior IHS analyst says the iPhone camera is a 5 lens system, a first for any smartphone. The new camera is getting raves from users, and comparisons show it’s a very high quality implementation for both still photos and high definition video.

The report also praises the fact that the iPhone 4S can operate on multiple carriers using different cellular systems and frequencies. Here in the US, the same phone can work on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. “No other handset OEM produces a single device for multiple operators and for multiple geographies on this scale.”

IHS also highlights other changes to processors and architecture in the iPhone 4S. It adds up to a significantly different user experience that is not obvious when just looking at the new iPhone but pays some big dividends for iPhone 4S owners.

Report highlights iPhone 4S design changes originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

If you like Infinity Blade on your iPhone or iPad, then you’ll probably love Infinity Blade FX. That’s the arcade version, which is apparently being introduced to arcades across the country very soon. You can see video of the game in action, and it looks — well, like Infinity Blade. Though it’s obviously on a bigger screen, the gameplay is essentially the same, even extending into multiplayer across two different machines. The whole concept of bringing an iOS game (designed for a platform that’s very private and portable), and turning it into an installed arcade game (a platform that’s very public and not portable at all) is a weird one, but in this case it might work.

That touchscreen is 46 inches, by the way, so it’s not a cheap endeavor, even if we haven’t yet heard how many tokens it’ll take to play this thing. If you want to give it a shot, apparently it’ll start appearing at Dave and Buster’s round about the end of this month. That, or you could just go buy it on iOS right now.

Infinity Blade coming to an arcade near you originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Apparent Corporation today announced Doxie Go, a new member of their portable scanner family and the first to allow scanning without a computer.

The US$199 scanner won’t ship until late November, but there are plenty of reasons to get excited about Doxie Go. To start with, the scanner no longer requires a computer. If you’re on the run somewhere and need a quick scan of a document, you can grab it and store it on the Doxie Go. The device has a 600-page memory, and you can use USB flash drives or SD cards for more storage. The scanner can grab a full color page in less than 8 seconds.

Once you’re returned to the vicinity of your Mac or PC, Doxie Go plugs into your computer and synchronizes the scans. Yeah, it’s not “really” wireless, since you’ll still need to connect it to something via USB to retrieve and use the scans.

When you’re ready to sync, Doxie Go launches the Doxie 2.0 software (included) and your documents, receipts, or photos are moved to your computer. In December, Apparent will release a $39 accessory for transferring scanned documents to your iPad or iPhone. If you use an SD card to store your Doxie scans, you can also use the Apple Camera Connection Kit to move those scans to your iOS devices.

The Doxie 2.0 software can create searchable PDFs through the included ABBYY OCR capability, and sync to Evernote, Dropbox, Google Docs, and other cloud services. Scanned items can be “stapled” together to combine them for a specific purpose. Check out the press release below for more information.

Doxie Go cuts the wires, scans to Mac, iPad, and iPhone originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Algoriddim has updated djay for iPad ($19.99), djay for iPhone ($.99) and djay – David Guetta Edition ($7.99) to take advantage of iOS 5 and iCloud, and it’s great to see these apps already taking advantage of iCloud integration. Some of the new features for this update include:

• iCloud integration. All of a user’s per-song settings created on one version of djay are synced to other devices running iOS 5.
• Professional audio FX. A number of realtime audio effects were introduced including bit crusher, echo, high-pass and low-pass filters, flanger, gate and phaser. There’s several control panes that allow for instant sound effects and customization.
• Audio copy/paste. Allows sounds created in other music apps to be utilized by djay
• Enhanced AirPlay, sorting and other features.

If you haven’t tried djay yet, check out TUAW’s in-depth look at the iPad version. There’s also djay for Mac, which has a demo version available through Algoriddim’s site.

djay updated to take advantage of iCloud integration originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The portrait of Steve Jobs that has been a fixture on Apple’s homepage since his passing is iconic. It tells you just about everything you need to know about the man — his intensity, determination, intelligence, the fact that this is a great man from whom great ideas spring, and the fact that he’s a man you challenge at your own peril. It’s the photo that will be on the cover of his biography, and it’s likely to be one of the main images that represents him throughout history.

According to PDN Pulse, Albert Watson took the photo back in 2006 during a shoot for Fortune. Having heard of Jobs’s reputation as a demanding man, even when it came to photo shoots, Watson did a great deal of preparation and research for his session with Jobs. Steve was bemused that Watson was shooting with film instead of digital, but he agreed when Watson said he didn’t feel digital was “quite here yet.” “We’ll get there,” was Steve’s reply. The photo session with Watson was relatively low-key compared to other Jobsian sessions; Jobs gained notoriety as a “nightmare subject” among photographers, mostly because of how much control he demanded over shoots.

As for the portrait itself, Watson told Steve to give the camera almost 100 percent eye contact and “Think about the next project you have on the table.” Watson also told Steve to think about times when people had challenged him. Much of 2006 was filled with rumors of the supposedly forthcoming iPhone; virtually every pundit in the universe expected it to be a huge flop, and that was assuming Apple even had the “guts” to challenge the mobile handset industry in the first place. It’s easy to imagine that Steve was thinking about the original iPhone when the shutter snapped, in which case the “visionary” quality of the portrait seems even more appropriate. Steve Jobs knew he was about to change the world — again — and it comes through in this photograph.

Watson says Steve told him it was his favorite photograph of him. It’s easy to see why.

On photographing Steve Jobs originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

If you think the new iPhone 4S is just the same old iPhone a report in DigiTimes may have you thinking again.

The publication quotes an IHS analysis which looks at some key under-the-hood changes in the new iPhone beyond the obvious faster processor, antenna redesign and addition of the Siri software.

Wayne Lam, a senior IHS analyst says the iPhone camera is a 5 lens system, a first for any smartphone. The new camera is getting raves from users, and comparisons show it’s a very high quality implementation for both still photos and high definition video.

The report also praises the fact that the iPhone 4S can operate on multiple carriers using different cellular systems and frequencies. Here in the US, the same phone can work on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. “No other handset OEM produces a single device for multiple operators and for multiple geographies on this scale.”

IHS also highlights other changes to processors and architecture in the iPhone 4S. It adds up to a significantly different user experience that is not obvious when just looking at the new iPhone but pays some big dividends for iPhone 4S owners.

Report highlights iPhone 4S design changes originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Like to read? Got an iPhone or iPad? You really ought to have Marco Arment’s US$4.99 Instapaper, which just got an upgrade to version 4.0. Instapaper’s free web service allows you to flag stories to ‘Read Later’ with a single click, and you can always get your complete reading list via the site. For reading on the go, however, the cached stories in the app are ideal.

The Instapaper app now features an iPad-specific article list interface; it swaps out the simple headline-by-headline scroll for a more spacious grid arrangement, complete with the first few lines of the story. The iPhone version has been streamlined too, with story excerpts, bylines and site information clearly visible. iOS 5 users get true hardware brightness control, making it easier to read under varying lighting conditions.

Instapaper wants to let you know what your friends are reading, so now in addition to the stories flagged by your Instapaper-specific social connections, you can also browse all the linked stories posted by your Twitter and Facebook friends or by the Tumblr microblogs you follow (Arment is a founder and former CTO of Tumblr). For Instapaper subscribers who choose to fork over $1 a month to support the service, the app now includes full-text search of all the articles you’ve ever saved to Instapaper — downright handy. You can see the full list of new features at Arment’s blog.

If you’re only using Instapaper via the website, you’re not getting the full-on experience. There are very few apps that have made themselves a home on the front screens of both my iPhone and iPad, and even fewer that rate a spot in the app Dock for both devices. Instapaper has been firmly lodged there since version 1, and I don’t anticipate pulling it out anytime soon.

Daily iPad App: Instapaper 4 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

After the market close today (4pm Eastern), Apple will announce quarterly earnings for its 2011 fiscal fourth quarter. Apple’s fiscal year ended on September 25 (roughly aligned with the US federal government’s fiscal year), which means that the all-important upcoming holiday quarter is actually Apple’s Q1 of 2012.

As usual, the earnings guidance ($25 billion in revenue, $5.50 earnings per share) provided by Apple at the start of the quarter is likely to be almost comically conservative; Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Apple 2.0 provides an overview of the results forecasts, and comes up with an estimated “whisper number” built atop the educated guesses of the non-pro analysts with the most consistent track record. The results, by their lights, should be somewhere north of $30B in revenue and $8 EPS. The psychological milestones of a non-holiday quarter with four million Macs and ten million iPads sold are almost certainly going to be passed as well.

At about 5pm ET, the company’s executives will hop on their quarterly analyst call to discuss the results. We’ll be here for live commentary and consideration, so set a reminder below and join us!

Note: TUAW does not provide financial or investment advice.

Reminder: Apple fourth quarter FY11 earnings announcement today originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Algoriddim has updated djay for iPad ($19.99), djay for iPhone ($.99) and djay – David Guetta Edition ($7.99) to take advantage of iOS 5 and iCloud, and it’s great to see these apps already taking advantage of iCloud integration. Some of the new features for this update include:

• iCloud integration. All of a user’s per-song settings created on one version of djay are synced to other devices running iOS 5.
• Professional audio FX. A number of realtime audio effects were introduced including bit crusher, echo, high-pass and low-pass filters, flanger, gate and phaser. There’s several control panes that allow for instant sound effects and customization.
• Audio copy/paste. Allows sounds created in other music apps to be utilized by djay
• Enhanced AirPlay, sorting and other features.

If you haven’t tried djay yet, check out TUAW’s in-depth look at the iPad version. There’s also djay for Mac, which has a demo version available through Algoriddim’s site.

djay updated to take advantage of iCloud integration originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

France telecom operator Orange has teamed up with France’s Ministry for Higher Education to offer subsidized iPads to French university students for €1 a day. The deal comes at a time when iPads are becoming recognized as a boon to students in the classroom partly due to the educational apps and textbooks available for the devices.

The Orange France offer allows students to sign up for a 2-year deal in which they pay €30 a month for a 16GB iPad 2 Wi-Fi+3G. Students can also opt for a 12-month plan with the same device for €34 a month. In addition to the iPad, students also get 1 GB of free data a month as well as unlimited data for emails (and attachments) and also unlimited data on Orange’s Wi-Fi hot spots.

French students can take advantage of the offer by going to www.proximamobile.fr or www.orange.fr and verifying their student credentials.

iPad subsidy offers lure student customers in France originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The portrait of Steve Jobs that has been a fixture on Apple’s homepage since his passing is iconic. It tells you just about everything you need to know about the man — his intensity, determination, intelligence, the fact that this is a great man from whom great ideas spring, and the fact that he’s a man you challenge at your own peril. It’s the photo that will be on the cover of his biography, and it’s likely to be one of the main images that represents him throughout history.

According to PDN Pulse, Albert Watson took the photo back in 2006 during a shoot for Fortune. Having heard of Jobs’s reputation as a demanding man, even when it came to photo shoots, Watson did a great deal of preparation and research for his session with Jobs. Steve was bemused that Watson was shooting with film instead of digital, but he agreed when Watson said he didn’t feel digital was “quite here yet.” “We’ll get there,” was Steve’s reply. The photo session with Watson was relatively low-key compared to other Jobsian sessions; Jobs gained notoriety as a “nightmare subject” among photographers, mostly because of how much control he demanded over shoots.

As for the portrait itself, Watson told Steve to give the camera almost 100 percent eye contact and “Think about the next project you have on the table.” Watson also told Steve to think about times when people had challenged him. Much of 2006 was filled with rumors of the supposedly forthcoming iPhone; virtually every pundit in the universe expected it to be a huge flop, and that was assuming Apple even had the “guts” to challenge the mobile handset industry in the first place. It’s easy to imagine that Steve was thinking about the original iPhone when the shutter snapped, in which case the “visionary” quality of the portrait seems even more appropriate. Steve Jobs knew he was about to change the world — again — and it comes through in this photograph.

Watson says Steve told him it was his favorite photograph of him. It’s easy to see why.

On photographing Steve Jobs originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Like to read? Got an iPhone or iPad? You really ought to have Marco Arment’s US$4.99 Instapaper, which just got an upgrade to version 4.0. Instapaper’s free web service allows you to flag stories to ‘Read Later’ with a single click, and you can always get your complete reading list via the site. For reading on the go, however, the cached stories in the app are ideal.

The Instapaper app now features an iPad-specific article list interface; it swaps out the simple headline-by-headline scroll for a more spacious grid arrangement, complete with the first few lines of the story. The iPhone version has been streamlined too, with story excerpts, bylines and site information clearly visible. iOS 5 users get true hardware brightness control, making it easier to read under varying lighting conditions.

Instapaper wants to let you know what your friends are reading, so now in addition to the stories flagged by your Instapaper-specific social connections, you can also browse all the linked stories posted by your Twitter and Facebook friends or by the Tumblr microblogs you follow (Arment is a founder and former CTO of Tumblr). For Instapaper subscribers who choose to fork over $1 a month to support the service, the app now includes full-text search of all the articles you’ve ever saved to Instapaper — downright handy. You can see the full list of new features at Arment’s blog.

If you’re only using Instapaper via the website, you’re not getting the full-on experience. There are very few apps that have made themselves a home on the front screens of both my iPhone and iPad, and even fewer that rate a spot in the app Dock for both devices. Instapaper has been firmly lodged there since version 1, and I don’t anticipate pulling it out anytime soon.

Daily iPad App: Instapaper 4 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments