Category: I-phone

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a sucker for wood and Apple products. The wonderful iPad cases from BlackBox and other companies have a great feel, adding a natural counterpoint to the metal and glass of our devices. Now a new company based in Boise, Idaho — Root Cases –is making and selling beautiful wooden iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro cases, and I had an opportunity to get my hands on several of the cases for review.

Design

Cases for electronic products are all about design — looking good, yet offering protection for your device at the same time. When you first open up the cardboard box containing your new Root Case, you’ll be pleasantly surprised — it comes in a wooden crate that is a work of art in itself. There’s also a business card, printed on 100% recycled stock, that lets you know that you’ve helped plant a tree in a non-logging location and gives you a 10% discount on your next order.

What’s inside the crate? A bit of excelsior and your case. The case is made out of either bamboo, walnut, wenge, or zebrawood, and is felt-lined on the inside. There are cutouts in the appropriate locations, of course. The iPhone 4 case also works with the iPhone 4S, as you’d expect, and weighs only .7 oz (20 grams) using the bamboo material. It’s a very nice looking case and really accentuates the design of the iPhone 4/4S. The iPhone 4/4S case retails for US$59, about a buck less than the TwelveSouth BookBook vintage case/wallet.

It’s the iPad case that is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, though. The one that appeared here at the TUAW Testing Lab was made out of silky-smooth walnut with a leather-like binding on one side. Unlike the BlackBox cases, which are more of a sleeve design, the Root Case for iPad 2 ($79) is a book-type folio case more like the DODOcase. Just think of a DODOcase made entirely out of beautiful wood and you have the Root Case.

The iPad case has another feature that set it apart from the DODOcase; strong magnets in the corners to keep the cover closed in transit. The magnets are only for that purpose, so don’t expect them to turn your iPad 2 on and off like Apple’s Smart Cover would.

The iPad Root Case is a little bit heavy (15.3 ounces or 433 grams for the walnut version), but it’s well worth the weight for the furniture-like finish and quality of the case. If there’s one complaint that I have about the iPad case, it’s that getting to the various switches and buttons can be a bit difficult as they’re recessed into the case.

Functionality

Both the iPad 2 and iPhone cases are beautiful, but how well do they protect your device? Well, I’m not going to wreck these lovely pieces of art to figure that out, but with both cases I’d say that they offer as much protection as most cases. There’s little or no internal padding in the cases, so a drop could theoretically damage your device as well as the case. If you’re more concerned about keeping your iPad from damage than good looks, then you might want to consider something like the LifeProof or OtterBox Defender Series cases.

Conclusion

Christmas will be here sooner than you’d expect, and I’d wholeheartedly recommend buying a Root Case for your favorite iPhone 4/4S or iPad 2 owner. If the recipient isn’t enchanted by the painstaking attention to detail in manufacturing or the warmth and solid feel of the wood, then you’re going to have a heck of a time finding a good gift for that person.

Root Cases beautifully protect your Apples and also plant trees originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wired does a little speculating over on the Cloudline blog about whether or not Apple’s redesigned Siri service actually counts as an AI. Technically, no, Siri’s not a real artificial intelligence. When you ask “her” something and she comes back with a witty answer, your iPhone doesn’t actually “understand” what you said in any meaningful way — it’s just identifying a set of words that you put together, and then outputting some data based on those words. Sometimes that’s movie times or nearby store locations, and sometimes that’s just a witty phrase that Apple engineers have programmed into the system.

But of course, while programmers have been creating these “chatbots” for years, Siri has an advantage in that it runs on the cloud; Apple is constantly updating Siri’s phrases and responses, which means that “her” answers will only get more appropriate over time. And while the system works as is, you have to imagine that Apple is collecting lots of information from it, including both what people are asking of Siri, and how they’re asking for it. The more Apple learns about how to deal with that information, the better Siri will get at providing the right answer at the right time.

That will make Siri “smarter” than ever. Until Apple hooks it up to an as-yet-uninvented thinking engine, it still won’t “understand” your queries in the same way that a real human would — or even in the way that a hyper-parallel quiz show competitor does. But for a lot of people, that doesn’t much matter. As long as Siri responds correctly and helpfully, that’s as good as many people need in terms of the payoff from artificial intelligence.

Siri and the possibility of artificial intelligence originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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.

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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.

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A while ago I wrote about four websites that need iPad apps: Facebook, Mint, LinkedIn, and Google Docs. Facebook stepped up to the plate, and now an official Mint.com rep has confirmed publicly what two Mint employees had told me in private a while ago: the Mint.com iPad app is coming soon.

In a tweet posted October 11th, Mint mobile designer Jaanus Kase said “the @mint iPad app is nearly done and will be out very shortly.” He followed that up three days later with a posting on Mint’s satisfaction forums which states that the next Mint app will be universal (both for iPhone and iPad) and that it will require iOS 5, which is one of the reasons the company could not release it before now.

Also, for those of you with iPhone 3G units, the new Mint app will not work since the maximum iOS on that device is 4.2.1. However, Kase states that Mint will continue to support its current iOS app for those running iOS 4.

LinkedIn and Google Docs? The spotlight’s on you now.

Hat tip to reader Tim B.

Mint.com iPad app “will be out very shortly” originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fantastical by Flexibits has been updated to version 1.1, which offers a slew of new features. Users can now edit events and notes within Fantastical, and changes are immediately synchronized with iCloud. There’s a lot to like about this new version, including behind-the-scenes bug fixes that make the whole experience more enjoyable. Here’s what’s new in Fantastical 1.1.

At last, you can edit events within Fantastical! This is the feature I’ve been waiting for, and I’m glad to report it works. To edit an existing event, simply double-click its listing in Fantastical. An edit window pops up, ready to accept your changes. You can edit notes in the same way.

The other major change is full iCloud integration and near-immediate synchronization of data. Previously, Fantastical required you to launch iCal (or have it running hidden) for sync with a MobileMe calendar. Now that’s changed, thanks to iCloud and Fantastical’s CalDAV integration. In my testing, events created in Fantastical showed up on my iPad by the time I launched the calendar app.

Several smaller changes further improve the Fantastical experience. For example, new events now automatically set the start date to the selected date on the calendar, with is a nice time saver. Multiple all-day events are grouped by calendar and sorted by event name, and Outlook events are color-coded by category.

Fantastical has been one of my favorites since I first reviewed it in May. It’s out of the way when I don’t need it, and quick when I do. Now that I can use it to edit tasks and notes, I probably won’t look at iCal very much at all. Fantastical 1.1 is available now from the Mac App Store for US$19.99.

Fantastical 1.1 offers editing, notes, full iCloud support originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wired does a little speculating over on the Cloudline blog about whether or not Apple’s redesigned Siri service actually counts as an AI. Technically, no, Siri’s not a real artificial intelligence. When you ask “her” something and she comes back with a witty answer, your iPhone doesn’t actually “understand” what you said in any meaningful way — it’s just identifying a set of words that you put together, and then outputting some data based on those words. Sometimes that’s movie times or nearby store locations, and sometimes that’s just a witty phrase that Apple engineers have programmed into the system.

But of course, while programmers have been creating these “chatbots” for years, Siri has an advantage in that it runs on the cloud; Apple is constantly updating Siri’s phrases and responses, which means that “her” answers will only get more appropriate over time. And while the system works as is, you have to imagine that Apple is collecting lots of information from it, including both what people are asking of Siri, and how they’re asking for it. The more Apple learns about how to deal with that information, the better Siri will get at providing the right answer at the right time.

That will make Siri “smarter” than ever. Until Apple hooks it up to an as-yet-uninvented thinking engine, it still won’t “understand” your queries in the same way that a real human would — or even in the way that a hyper-parallel quiz show competitor does. But for a lot of people, that doesn’t much matter. As long as Siri responds correctly and helpfully, that’s as good as many people need in terms of the payoff from artificial intelligence.

Siri and the possibility of artificial intelligence originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:00:00 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 October 17, 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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.

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Samsung goofed when it included a modified screenshot of the iOS maps application (above right) in one of its promotional pieces. The promotion shows a Samsung Android handset with Google Maps that unfortunately is not the Android version. It has a rounded text entry box and teardrop push pins that are found in an older version of iOS maps. This particular shot appears to match a three-year-old Flickr image (above left) that’s used in a post by Laura Scott at BlogHer.

Samsung is fighting Apple tooth and nail over accusations that its Galaxy lines of devices copy the design of the iPad and iPhone. The Korean company is not helping its cause with high-profile blunders like this.

[Via AppleInsider and Jeremy Philippe]

Samsung supposedly uses screenshot of Apple Maps app in promo originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A while ago I wrote about four websites that need iPad apps: Facebook, Mint, LinkedIn, and Google Docs. Facebook stepped up to the plate, and now an official Mint.com rep has confirmed publicly what two Mint employees had told me in private a while ago: the Mint.com iPad app is coming soon.

In a tweet posted October 11th, Mint mobile designer Jaanus Kase said “the @mint iPad app is nearly done and will be out very shortly.” He followed that up three days later with a posting on Mint’s satisfaction forums which states that the next Mint app will be universal (both for iPhone and iPad) and that it will require iOS 5, which is one of the reasons the company could not release it before now.

Also, for those of you with iPhone 3G units, the new Mint app will not work since the maximum iOS on that device is 4.2.1. However, Kase states that Mint will continue to support its current iOS app for those running iOS 4.

LinkedIn and Google Docs? The spotlight’s on you now.

Hat tip to reader Tim B.

Mint.com iPad app “will be out very shortly” originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It seems as though Apple is designing a lot of new Mac and iOS features from the perspective of people whose internet access is the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Photo Stream is a perfect example. The feature, built into Apple’s new iCloud service, automatically uploads photos taken on any of your devices to iCloud, which gives you near-instant access to them on all of your devices.

It’s a great feature, and it’s already streamlined the process of getting photos from my iPhone onto my iPad and Mac. But it was only this morning that I realized with grim horror what might happen if I imported 8 GB of RAW files from my DSLR into Aperture. With Photo Stream’s default settings, those multiple gigabytes of data would be uploaded to iCloud automatically — and since I live in an area with strictly metered data and very expensive internet access, a single import session in Aperture could cost me dearly.

Fortunately, both Aperture and iPhoto allow you to disable automatic uploading very easily. Go into the preferences for whichever application you’re using and select the Photo Stream pane. Once there, uncheck the box next to “Automatic Upload.” As easily as that, your photo manager of choice will no longer send hundreds of photos into the cloud the next time you connect your digital camera.

The followup question you must be asking now is, “That’s great, but what if I want some of my imported photos to go to Photo Stream?” Fortunately, Apple made it easy to manually upload photos to Photo Stream. Just select the photos you want, then drag them to the Photo Stream item in the sidebar. You should see a green plus sign when you hover over Photo Stream. Release the photos, and they’ll be uploaded into the cloud.

Whether you’re trying to avoid massive data charges or simply don’t want hundreds of photos clogging up your Photo Stream all at once, it’s quite fortunate that Apple has made it so simple to disable automatic uploading and manage your Photo Stream uploads manually instead.

Mac 101: Disable automatic uploads to Photo Stream originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:00:00 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 October 17, 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:20:00 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.

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There are all manner of medically-based uses for iOS devices (the iPad in particular) if you are a medical professional, so it was just a question of time before patients themselves got in on the act (brace yourself, we get all bureaucratic up ahead). According to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the FDA has drafted a document titled Guidance for Industry and Food and Drug Administration Staff – Mobile Medical Applications which is a first pass at attempting some standardization and looking at regulating the data and communication requirements of apps like this (for example, having a glucose monitor that can sync readings to your iOS device).

Particularly for a condition like diabetes, which requires tracking and (sometimes frequent) monitoring, it’s very handy to have all that data available quickly and easily. Having an official stance, even in draft, is a big step forward. From the JDRF:

Once the information is on a smartphone, diabetes management will become more discrete while at the same time opening up a world of opportunity. You could view glucose levels, determine insulin requirements and make dosing decisions, track your treatment, and share all of this information seamlessly with the people that help with and matter most to your care. You could send alerts and alarms automatically to parents or caregivers, and receive helpful advice when needed.

If this is something you’re in favor of, or better yet, could actually use, now’s your chance to add your voice to the encouragement. Here’s the catch: You only have until October 19th to have your say. You’ll find feedback on the JDRF post that you can use as an example to work from. If you or someone you know could benefit from this, take a moment and fill out the comment form. Who knows? Your comment may be the one that puts it over the edge and turns this draft into reality.

FDA drafts Mobile Medical Applications document originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 18 Oct 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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