Category: I-phone

It’s been a big week of announcements from Mindjet. The company’s flagship Windows version of MindManager is due to be updated on September 22, along with the launch of its free cloud collaboration & worksharing service Mindjet Connect. Social project tracker Cohuman has also joined the Mindjet stable via an acquisition, giving teams better tools to stay tuned in with their shared tasks.

For mindmapping on iOS devices, Mindjet’s iPhone and iPad versions now have an all-new price of free, down from US$8.99 for the iPad version. They offer binary file support with both the Mac and PC desktop MindManager apps, easy Wi-Fi and Dropbox file sync, and quick brainstorming/map creation.

The Mac version of MindManager is now fully Lion-compatible, although if you were running it on Snow Leopard prior to upgrading your OS you’ll need to reset your preferences before updating to the latest build; instructions are here.

Mindjet iOS apps now free, cloud service around the corner originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You love the idea of port replication off your high-speed Thunderbolt port, but you haven’t got a cool grand lying around to put towards a brand-new Apple display. Yes, we know, first-world problem of the highest order; fortunately, though, it looks like Belkin will soon be coming to your aid.

The accessory company merited a spot in a Thunderbolt display case at the Intel Developer Forum with its unannounced and not-yet-scheduled Thunderbolt Express Dock, where Daily Tech spotted it. With a Gigabit Ethernet jack, passthrough Thunderbolt, three USB ports and one Firewire 800 port, it should provide enough additional connectivity to make anyone feel more jacked in.

Unfortunately, as with most things Thunderbolt, we don’t know when you’ll be able to buy it or how much it will cost.

[via MacRumors]

Belkin previews Thunderbolt dock at IDF originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve covered TestFlight before, and I recently started using it to test a top secret app for AOL*. If you’re a developer who wants to reduce the friction of testing beta apps for iOS, you absolutely must check it out. It makes beta distribution of your app a drop-dead simple process by leveraging a native TestFlight app and whatever beta you wish to deploy. Yesterday TechCrunch noted that version 2 of the service is rolling out, with even more goodies for developers.

What goodies? Many of the additions involve getting user feedback, a somewhat large hole in the otherwise awesome service. There are also hooks for crash reports and “check points” to monitor actual use in the app. TestFlight now also supports enterprise accounts so you can deploy your beta to as many devices as you need (provided you have an Enterprise developer account with Apple, of course).

While TestFlight is free for developers, they are reserving the right to start charging for some of these new features. I think that’s a smart move. Things like check points are immensely valuable to developers who create complex apps, but less so if your app has a very basic feature set. It’s also good for them to start monetizing this service so it persists — as of right now it is absolutely a best of breed service that all iOS developers should consider.

*Feel free to guess what I’m testing in the comments. I’ll never tell! Well, I’ll have to eventually.

TestFlight offers new SDK, adds feedback and enterprise support originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The good news: There’s finally an app for Turntable.fm. The bad news? You’re probably not going to get to use it. Turntable.fm still requires you to be invited via Facebook by someone who is already using the service. This is probably a good thing from a scale point of view, but I think Turntable.fm may have worse things to worry about when it does open the floodgates.

Turntable.fm is a mix between streaming music service, chat room and ultimately, videogame. If you try to be a DJ, you’ll enter a room and essentially compete against other DJs to have your playlist selections played in the room. You can, of course, simply listen and vote as a lowly listener, but for people looking to waste hours of time at work the real challenge is producing a great playlist and not getting booted. There are “gamified” perks within the service as well, like new avatars to unlock using a points system.

Turntable.fm has been quite popular with the tech set, and as announced at TechCrunch Disrupt today, it’s raised $7 million in its latest round of funding. Apparently Turntable.fm turned down some offers in a gambit to get Fred Wilson of Union Ventures to sit on its board (which he will do). What’s rather interesting is that several celebrities have invested in this latest round, possibly hinting that Turntable’s popularity could be spurred by some high-profile users. But we’ll see if investors like Jimmy Fallon show up to strut their stuff.

The iOS app is a faithful recreation of the website, shrunk down into portable size. CNET has a great how-to on getting started and does a good job of explaining the ins and outs of Turntable.fm overall. About the only thing you can’t do in the app is monkey with your profile and avatar. Check out the app on iTunes here.

[via SplatF]

Turntable.fm iPhone app now in the App Store, but the service still isn’t fully open originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The very first pitch I got at TechCrunch Disrupt was from the Israeli founders of Doweet, a simple but ambitious iPhone app. Doweet ties into Facebook to share and discuss real life events. Why? Well, the purpose isn’t exactly clear other than some rather bold marketing speak purporting to “revolutionize the way we do things together.” I’m not sure about that, but here’s what Doweet does.

First, you’ll connect the app to your Facebook account. Next, you’ll add friends using Doweet… except that in my case (and probably 99% of all cases) none of my friends were using Doweet. User adoption, as with all social apps, will be a hurdle. Then you’ll start creating “Doweets” which are just events, really. It may be that you’re hosting a party, or maybe just going to the park, etc. but the concept is that you’ll create an event and add some Facebook friends. You can use an in-app commenting system to discuss the Doweet. If someone adds you to a Doweet you’ll get a notification (you can, of course, turn off notifications). That’s almost it, but not quite.

Perhaps the more powerful, slightly hidden ability of Doweet is the ability to create groups and add them to a Doweet. In Options you can even manage your groups. Unfortunately, the utility is still limited to people using the app. It would be much better if this somehow had a web component to lower the barrier to entry. The company plans to add this and Android compatibility, which may drive adoption.

Still, it seems to me the utility is somewhat limited. Tying the app to Facebook makes some sense, but that means you are limited to people who are your “friends.” For businesses, that won’t work. Personally, I’m more inclined to email a group of people about an event and “discuss” it in a thread than within an app. There are some apps similar to this, most of which have more features or a better focus (like finding bars or restaurants or adding value by ratings and reviews).

Doweet is free, so you’re not risking anything by trying it out, but it seems to be a solution in search of a problem. Until its userbase gains critical mass, I don’t see a lot of use in this app, noble though its goals may be.

Doweet aims to make real life activities more social originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Build a Train is a train simulation application for young children from one to six-years old. I happen to have a few kids at home and tested it out initially with my four-year-old.

The Build a Train game is optimized for children. It has large buttons, bouncy background music and bright, colorful graphics. The child begins the game by choosing their train, cars and map before entering the track. There’s a variety of trains that you can build and ten different maps.

Five of the maps are available at the start and the other five can be unlocked by earning points within the game. Additional bonus content like helicopters can also be unlocked. Points are earned just by playing the game and within ten minutes, my daughter had enough points to buy a new map.

After you pick your train and map, the game opens to the track and the train is pushed to the track. The train is put in motion with an on/off switch and the speed is controlled by a slider on the side of the track. The speed adjustments are perfect. The child can make the train go really slow or super-fast which is the speed my daughter prefers.

Each track has several switches that the child can tap and change the direction of the train. Besides your standard circle, some of the switches direct the train off the screen or into a tunnel. My daughter squealed with delight when her train disappeared off the screen and re-appeared on the other side.

To amuse your child, there’s also a train whistle and a bell on the side that the child can tap whenever they want. The only problem I encountered is demand for the game. My six-year old couldn’t help but touch the screen when his little sister was playing the game. When I turned it over to him, he was equally enthusiastic about playing the game, but disappointed he didn’t have his own profile. Even my two-year old enjoyed tapping away at the game, though he had no idea what he was doing. He just liked the sounds and the movement of the trains.

After watching my children play the game over the course of a few days, I can honestly say that Build a Train is an entertaining app for younger children. It would be great for car rides or anytime you want to entertain your children with an imaginative game instead of a movie.

The Build a Train app is available for both the iPad and the iPhone. The gameplay is the same, but the iPad version is better for younger children as the large size of the screen makes it easy to tap the controls. Build a Train only costs $1.99 which is very reasonable for a child-friendly game of this caliber.

Daily iPad App: Build a Train originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fortune has posted a brief profile of Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of operations. Describing him as “Tim Cook’s Tim Cook,” Fortune’s piece notes that Williams joined Apple in 1998 as head of worldwide procurement and was responsible for a US$1.25 billion deal with flash memory manufacturers that helped make the iPod nano a (very successful and very lucrative) reality.

Williams is primarily responsible for Apple’s supply and production process, so he has close ties to Apple’s overseas partners, including Foxconn. Now that Tim Cook has been promoted to CEO, Williams has taken over some of the duties Cook managed as Apple’s Chief Operations Officer. Apple’s supply and procurement logistics are the unsung heroes of the company’s success, and some analysts have noted that while other companies may scramble to copy the look and feel of Apple’s devices (with varying degrees of success), Apple’s supply chain is going to be much more difficult for competitors to emulate — assuming they even can.

Fortune’s profile of Williams makes him sound like a smart and capable guy that Apple’s fortunate to have on its payroll. And it underscores the fact that Apple’s success over the past decade hasn’t been all down to one man, but rather a huge team of intelligent, dedicated, hard-working men and women.

A look at Jeff Williams, Tim Cook’s right-hand man originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’m here at TechCrunch Disrupt checking out the startups and have stumbled upon a few interesting companies. Bizness Apps has been around for a short while (they didn’t launch here, as some companies have) that aims to provide a simple, web-based app building system for small businesses. It’s not exactly a template system; Bizness Apps provides a series of functional components which you can plug in to an app and deploy using HTML5, or put on the App Store or Android Market.

I was pretty skeptical about Bizness Apps, as it harkened to the days of website templates, when anyone could charge a law firm thousands of dollars to do about 30 minutes of data entry and blorp out a website. Bizness Apps, on the other hand, works much better if you have design skills and can put together something attractive. Better yet, if you happen to be heavy on design and light on code, Bizness Apps offers a white label solution so you can essentially resell their product to clients. Or, if your restaurant was dumb enough to pay someone to build you an all-Flash site that can’t be accessed by the majority of smartphones out there, Bizness Apps can fix that quickly (but doesn’t “port” your Flash site).

There are, in fact, templates at work here, but they are only a starting point. Bizness Apps knows its market and has created templates for small businesses who typically need a simple feature set: restaurants, bars/clubs, law firms, realtors, gyms and radio stations (plus a longer list inside the web tool).

Of course, you can take those and morph them. The features you will add will vary, but the list of what’s available is impressive and useful, and includes things like push notifications, GPS coupons, counters, galleries and CRM tools. Plus, they are adding e-commerce solutions from Volusion, Magento and Shopify. If you’re looking to add purchases to your app, these are pretty good solutions. That said, this feature list is far from comprehensive.

How much does all this cost? To get started, it’s $39 a month for an iPhone app. If you want to make that app for Android, iPad or in HTML5, you’re looking at an additional $10 per month for each deployment target. So, if you’re a restaurant wanting to deploy to iPhone, iPad, Android and HTML5 you’re looking at $69 per month. Not bad, but the value should be weighed against how much it would cost to build a HTML5 site to begin with and deploying it using a basic web host.

Yes, there’s something to be said about having a native app, but is it worth the additional cost to your business to have this app? The advantage of Bizness Apps is the ease-of-use and targeted features. Still, I spoke to a developer who initially lost business to them only to have some clients come back when they discovered they wanted more custom features. Luckily you can try Bizness Apps for free and see if it’s right for your business.

Bizness Apps makes simple mobile apps for your small business originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As part of the MobileMe transition to iCloud, several of MobileMe’s features are being discontinued, including iWeb hosting, Gallery, iDisk, and a handful of syncing services. An AppleInsider reader emailed Apple CEO Tim Cook to complain about the deprecation of iDisk and syncing services for application preferences and keychains.

Instead of receiving an email response, the reader allegedly received a phone call from Cook’s office saying that while those services aren’t currently planned to be making the transition to iCloud, “Apple is open to it if there’s enough feedback on the subject.”

There’s no way to verify the legitimacy of this phone call, but it does align nicely with a trend we’ve been noticing since Tim Cook took over as CEO — Apple seems a bit more open to serious consideration of user suggestions and criticisms than it’s been in the past.

Apple allegedly ‘open’ to restoring discontinued MobileMe features originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here on the Daily Mac App we love apps that do one thing really well. Today’s app is no exception.

Go2Shell is a tiny little 0.3MB app available for free from the Mac App Store that has the potential to speed up your work-flow if it involves Terminal. Go2Shell simply launches a Terminal session with the current folder you’re navigating in Finder, or the folder that Go2Shell is located in, open for work. It even supports iTerm, iTerm 2 and xterm if you’re not a fan of Apple’s own-brand Terminal.

It’s so simple, it’s almost beautiful and if you happen to have to modify files in Terminal, or any other similar task, Go2Shell could be just ticket to save you time. The best way to use Go2Shell is to drag it onto your Finder toolbar and from there launch it whenever you’re in the desired directory.

If you need something a little more advanced you should check out one of our previous Daily Mac Apps, DTerm, which gives you hotkey access, and a floating entry form into the Terminal session.

Go2Shell is a great free download from the Mac App Store that does one thing and one thing well. So if you’re a Terminal guru (even the app’s preferences are accessed through the command line) then give Go2Shell a whirl. You might like it.

Daily Mac App: Go2Shell originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has filed motions to stay two of the many back-and-forth patent lawsuits between it and Motorola. Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents has a rundown of the entire legal argument, but the gist is that Apple claims the terms of the acquisition deal between Google and Motorola mean Motorola no longer has the authority to assert its patents against Apple.

Mueller notes this is an interesting tactic on Apple’s part, but he refrains from passing judgment on the validity of Apple’s argument pending Motorola’s response. If the stay is successful, one potential outcome is that these two patent suits may not go forward until after the Google-Motorola merger, which would make the suit Apple v. Google instead.

Apple and Motorola have several other patent suits against one another which are still going forward.

Apple files motions to stay two Motorola patent lawsuits originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has added a new “Quick Reads” section to the iBookstore, promoting short, inexpensive titles. The collection includes everything from manuals to short stories, each selling for US$5 or less.

Amazon has featured short (typically 5,000 words or so), inexpensive titles as “Kindle Singles” for some time at approximately the same price point. It’s unclear if Apple’s Quick Reads are a direct response to Amazon’s efforts, for if it’s experimenting with brief, low-cost titles.

If you’ve got an iPad and an inclination towards a book you can finish in a sitting, you might find one to suit your fancy there.

Apple adds Quick Reads section to iBookstore, promotes short e-books originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s no secret that customers are eagerly awaiting the next iPhone. It’s another thing to support that theory with some empirical data.

Philip Elmer-Dewitt points out a survey conducted by ChangeWave last month. The group queried 2,200 potential iPhone customers and found that 31% of participants said they were very/somewhat likely to buy the iPhone 5. That percentage exceeds a similar measure of iPhone 4 pre-launch demand of 25%.

Additionally, 66% of current iPhone owners surveyed said they intend to buy the new version. More than half of Sprint and T-Mobile customers surveyed — 54% and 53%, respectively — said they are significantly/more likely to buy an iPhone if those carries offer it.

As for the iPad, it’s hot for back-to-school. Participants in ChangeWave’s survey who intend to buy a tablet overwhelmingly indicated interest in the iPad, as seen below.

Survey shows iPhone 5 anticipation is high originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I think that Halfbrick’s latest title, Jetpack Joyride (formerly known as Machine Gun Jetpack), is one of the best games I’ve played this year, and apparently I’m not the only person who ran to pick it up — the game has earned over 350,000 downloads in the short time it’s been available. To celebrate, the company is dropping a new free update for the game today, featuring a brand new vehicle called Mr. Cuddles (which happens to be a fire-breathing dragon), a “fruit jetpack” based on Halfbrick’s popular Fruit Ninja title, and a new skin featuring “Honest Phil,” a character designed after Halfbrick’s real-life Chief Marketing Officer Phil Larsen.

All of those items are available in the game’s in-app store, where you can buy them with coins picked up in the title itself (or extra coins bought via in-app purchase, if you don’t want to put the time in, and have some extra money sitting around). Jetpack Joyride itself is available as a universal app for just 99 cents — if you haven’t checked it out yet, you definitely should.

Jetpack Joyride hits 350k downloads, releases free update originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AppleInsider reports that some TV studios are beginning to add closed captioning to their shows on iTunes. As of this writing, captions are showing up on “Sons of Anarchy,” “New Girl” and “The Secret Circle.” The update is limited to episodes from the current season of these shows.

Apple TV has offered closed captioning for many movies for quite some time, and Netflix, which is available through Apple TV, does as well. To enable closed captioning on the Apple TV, go to Settings > Video. There you’ll see the option to toggle the service on or off.

In the past there have been complaints about the small amount of material that is subtitled on Netflix and on the Apple TV. The captioning has to be provided by the content creator, unfortunately, so Apple and Netflix can’t do much about it.

By the way, Lion also supports closed captioning in movies, videos, podcasts, QuickTime content and the DVD player.

Closed captioned TV episodes appearing in iTunes originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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