Category: I-phone

Those with a new iPhone 4S who want to install Google’s Voice app are out of luck for a while. Google was forced to pull the app after complaints about its stability arose. According to Google Voice Product Manager Vincent Paquet, there is a bug in the sign-in code that causes the app to crash immediately on opening. The bug only affects this most recent release and earlier versions of the app reportedly still work without error.

Google is fixing the error and will have a new version of the app available as soon as possible. As of the writing of this post, a Google search will pull up the information for the old version of the app. If you try to download this broken version via iTunes, you will receive an “The item you’ve requested is not currently available in the US store.” error.

Google has not provided a time frame for when its revised app will reappear. Hopefully, it can get a fast track through the approval process and return to the App Store very soon.

Google pulls Voice app from App Store to address stability originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Those with a new iPhone 4S who want to install Google’s Voice app are out of luck for a while. Google was forced to pull the app after complaints about its stability arose. According to Google Voice Product Manager Vincent Paquet, there is a bug in the sign-in code that causes the app to crash immediately on opening. The bug only affects this most recent release and earlier versions of the app reportedly still work without error.

Google is fixing the error and will have a new version of the app available as soon as possible. As of the writing of this post, a Google search will pull up the information for the old version of the app. If you try to download this broken version via iTunes, you will receive an “The item you’ve requested is not currently available in the US store.” error.

Google has not provided a time frame for when its revised app will reappear. Hopefully, it can get a fast track through the approval process and return to the App Store very soon.

Google pulls Voice app from App Store to address stability originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Modern Macs have pretty good battery life, but there are times when you can’t get enough juice to keep working without a power adapter. BatterySqueezer promises to help you extend your battery by throttling process that are running in the background.

The idea is that by reducing the amount of processing power demanded by applications that are not actively being used, it reduces overall CPU load. Reduced CPU load results in lower power usage, which in theory, should extend your battery life.

BatterySqueezer sits in the background ready to throttle programs when they’re not being used. Currently it supports four browsers, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari, as well as Reeder, Microsoft Office and iWork.

The throttled apps aren’t killed off entirely, but plugins such as Flash, animated adverts and any processes that are demanding are reduced to practically no load. This has another benefit other than extended battery life and that’s more free resources, which can be particularly useful on a low-powered Mac.

In anecdotal testing BatterySqueezer throttled Flash from some 30% of CPU load to about 3% with Chrome backgrounded. The result was very jerky Flash animations, but who cares when its in the background. As soon as Chrome was brought to the foreground, it was unthrottled and everything was normal. It also had the benefit of keeping my hot-running Mac cooler with noticeably reduced fan speed when multi-tasking. BatterySqueezer is one of those apps that will have different mileage for different people and setups.

If you’re trying to eek out as much out of your battery life as possible or trying to stretch out the resources of a low-power Mac, BatterySqueezer might just be the ticket and is available for US$3.99 from the Mac App Store.

Daily Mac App: BatterySqueezer originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For budding moviemakers who want to shoot cinema-quality 1080p video, the Canon 5D Mark II digital SLR camera is a favorite. It’s a lot less expensive (starting at around US$2,400 for the body alone) than a Red Epic-M (rock-bottom price of about $43,000). Now Robino Films is showing that the 1080p, 30-frame-per-second video capabilities of the iPhone 4S might be a new and really inexpensive low-end video camera for the next Stanley Kubrick.

The filmmakers took a Canon 5D Mark II and an iPhone 4S, mounted them on a rig for simultaneous shooting and then put the resulting video side by side for your viewing pleasure. They made sure that they were matching the exposure, shutter speed, frame rate (30 fps) and picture style as much as possible.

The results are spectacular, at least for the iPhone 4S. The image is a bit warmer than what you see with the Canon footage, and of course you have no way to change lenses on the iPhone 4S (well, you do have those fun lenses from Photojojo…), but it’s a remarkable example of just how good the video capabilities of the 4S really are.

Bumping the video up to full-screen on a 27″ iMac, I could see the difference between the 21.1 Megapixel sensor on the Canon versus the 8 Megapixel sensor on the iPhone 4S — some details seemed a bit fuzzy on the iPhone footage. Also, the rolling shutter of the iPhone 4S causes the digital billboards in the Los Angeles footage to have scrolling black lines on it. For those of us who just want to shoot some amazing vacation footage without carrying around a bag full of equipment, the iPhone 4S can’t be beat.

iPhone 4S / Canon 5d MKII Side by Side Comparison from Robino Films on Vimeo.

iPhone 4S video compared to Canon 5D MK II originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:00:00 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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For budding moviemakers who want to shoot cinema-quality 1080p video, the Canon 5D Mark II digital SLR camera is a favorite. It’s a lot less expensive (starting at around US$2,400 for the body alone) than a Red Epic-M (rock-bottom price of about $43,000). Now Robino Films is showing that the 1080p, 30-frame-per-second video capabilities of the iPhone 4S might be a new and really inexpensive low-end video camera for the next Stanley Kubrick.

The filmmakers took a Canon 5D Mark II and an iPhone 4S, mounted them on a rig for simultaneous shooting and then put the resulting video side by side for your viewing pleasure. They made sure that they were matching the exposure, shutter speed, frame rate (30 fps) and picture style as much as possible.

The results are spectacular, at least for the iPhone 4S. The image is a bit warmer than what you see with the Canon footage, and of course you have no way to change lenses on the iPhone 4S (well, you do have those fun lenses from Photojojo…), but it’s a remarkable example of just how good the video capabilities of the 4S really are.

Bumping the video up to full-screen on a 27″ iMac, I could see the difference between the 21.1 Megapixel sensor on the Canon versus the 8 Megapixel sensor on the iPhone 4S — some details seemed a bit fuzzy on the iPhone footage. Also, the rolling shutter of the iPhone 4S causes the digital billboards in the Los Angeles footage to have scrolling black lines on it. For those of us who just want to shoot some amazing vacation footage without carrying around a bag full of equipment, the iPhone 4S can’t be beat.

iPhone 4S / Canon 5d MKII Side by Side Comparison from Robino Films on Vimeo.

iPhone 4S video compared to Canon 5D MK II originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple introduced iCloud earlier this year, and its announcement kicked off a renewed interest in the iconic cloud logo. Articles espousing the icon’s Golden Ratio-based design and Apple’s attention to detail followed shortly. Though Apple undoubtedly chose this icon for its precision design, it’s likely that Apple’s design team can’t take full credit for the look.

A post by Scott Hanselman points out the cloud icon may have its roots in the Pictos 1 icon collection. Though it’s been modified some, the basic circular cloud design has been widely used. It appears on Microsoft’s ASP.net website and in many iOS weather applications. A very similar cloud design even showed up on a BBC weather segment almost thirty years ago. You can check out his post for even more examples of this cloud configuration.

iCloud prompts a look back at “cloud” icons originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:00:00 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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Remember just about two weeks ago, when some naysayers were sure that the iPhone 4S wasn’t going to sell because it wasn’t a totally new design and wasn’t that different from the iPhone 4? As you learned on TUAW this morning, Apple sold four million of the new phones over the weekend. Federico Vittici over at MacStories.net created a nice visual representation of just how successful the launch of the iPhone 4S really was.

How good a weekend was it? The iPhone 4S sold more units during its launch — four million — than the previous device launches put together. Those kind of figures make me wonder if part of the “delay” in the launch of the iPhone 4S was due to Apple simply trying to manufacture enough of the devices to be able to meet demand for the first couple of months.

If the number of Siri-related tweets over the weekend is any indication, Apple has a real winner on its hands with the iPhone 4S.

A visual representation of iPhone launches originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember just about two weeks ago, when some naysayers were sure that the iPhone 4S wasn’t going to sell because it wasn’t a totally new design and wasn’t that different from the iPhone 4? As you learned on TUAW this morning, Apple sold four million of the new phones over the weekend. Federico Vittici over at MacStories.net created a nice visual representation of just how successful the launch of the iPhone 4S really was.

How good a weekend was it? The iPhone 4S sold more units during its launch — four million — than the previous device launches put together. Those kind of figures make me wonder if part of the “delay” in the launch of the iPhone 4S was due to Apple simply trying to manufacture enough of the devices to be able to meet demand for the first couple of months.

If the number of Siri-related tweets over the weekend is any indication, Apple has a real winner on its hands with the iPhone 4S.

A visual representation of iPhone launches originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The gray market in China is amazing. No sooner does a new Apple product appear on the scene in the US and Europe than buyers snap up a lot of the devices, and they magically appear on the gray market in China. Sure enough, the iPhone 4S is already selling in China — unofficially.

Computerworld is reporting that the iPhone 4S is now selling in Beijing at prices around US$2,000. One vendor, who was selling the devices in Beijing’s Zhongguancun electronics markets, was selling the 32 GB model for 13,000 yuan (about $2,043 as of this writing) and the 16 GB edition for about $1,729. The vendor noted that the phones came from Australia and the US — the former could explain why TUAW blogger Chris Rawson still doesn’t have his iPhone 4S in hand.

The phones are sold without a contract and are unlocked. Another vendor apparently had the 16 GB version available for “only” $1,391, and expected that the prices would fall by about $100 in the next week.

Why the tendency to pay through the nose for gray market Apple products in China? Apple usually doesn’t deliver the newest products in China for months, so consumers jump at any chance to get the latest and greatest. As we reported before, almost half of the iPad 2 sales in China have come from the gray market.

iPhone 4S selling for big bucks on Chinese gray market originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After facing setbacks in Germany and Australia, Samsung is striking back at Apple by filing an injunction request for the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 4 and the iPad in Japan. Samsung filed the injunction based on one patent the company holds for HSPA connectivity and three it holds for UI design. The three UI patents cover the airplane icon for airplane mode, aspects of home screen customization and an on-phone method for browsing apps on sale.

Samsung also filed an injunction request in Australia claiming Apple’s iOS devices violate three patents it holds for WCDMA and HSPA connectivity. Australia is a hotbed of legal action between the technology giants. After several legal volleys and an attempt by Samsung to reach a compromise, Apple was recently granted an interim injunction against Samsung that bans the sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the country. This legal victory is a major setback for Samsung and could cause problems for other Android handset makers as the patents are broad and can extend to other devices.

Samsung seeks iPhone 4S sales ban in Japan, Australia originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 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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After facing setbacks in Germany and Australia, Samsung is striking back at Apple by filing an injunction request for the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 4 and the iPad in Japan. Samsung filed the injunction based on one patent the company holds for HSPA connectivity and three it holds for UI design. The three UI patents cover the airplane icon for airplane mode, aspects of home screen customization and an on-phone method for browsing apps on sale.

Samsung also filed an injunction request in Australia claiming Apple’s iOS devices violate three patents it holds for WCDMA and HSPA connectivity. Australia is a hotbed of legal action between the technology giants. After several legal volleys and an attempt by Samsung to reach a compromise, Apple was recently granted an interim injunction against Samsung that bans the sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the country. This legal victory is a major setback for Samsung and could cause problems for other Android handset makers as the patents are broad and can extend to other devices.

Samsung seeks iPhone 4S sales ban in Japan, Australia originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Those with a new iPhone 4S who want to install Google’s Voice app are out of luck for a while. Google was forced to pull the app after complaints about its stability arose. According to Google Voice Product Manager Vincent Paquet, there is a bug in the sign-in code that causes the app to crash immediately on opening. The bug only affects this most recent release and earlier versions of the app reportedly still work without error.

Google is fixing the error and will have a new version of the app available as soon as possible. As of the writing of this post, a Google search will pull up the information for the old version of the app. If you try to download this broken version via iTunes, you will receive an “The item you’ve requested is not currently available in the US store.” error.

Google has not provided a time frame for when its revised app will reappear. Hopefully, it can get a fast track through the approval process and return to the App Store very soon.

Google pulls Voice app from App Store to address stability originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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