Category: I-phone

Apple’s wild success with unibody construction for all models of the MacBook appears to be having a negative effect on the competition in more than just reduced sales — the other vendors can’t get their hands on the CNC (computer numerical control) lathes that are required to make ultra thin magnesium-aluminum shells to encase the electronics of Intel’s UltraBook design guideline.

According to Taiwan-based electronics industry site Digitimes, Catcher Technology and Foxconn Technology both have more than 10,000 of the expensive CNC lathes used to make notebook chassis. These two companies are major suppliers to Apple, which means that companies wishing to make metal UltraBooks have to compete for capacity on those lathes. That’s a hindrance to high-capacity production, so many manufacturers are choosing a different material.

For the competition, it looks like RHCM (rapid heating cycle molding) based fiberglass is the solution. The fiberglass is mixed with plastic to create a material that is both tough, moldable, and lightweight, and the material is also about US$20 cheaper per laptop than the more expensive metal. While that doesn’t sound like much of a cost reduction for manufacturers, it boils down to an end-market price that can be as much as $100 cheaper.

The main beneficiary of the competition’s move to the RHCM plastic-fiberglass composite is Taiwan-based Mitac Precision, which apparently has the yield and production capacity to keep the UltraBooks flowing.

Apple’s hold on metal chassis supply chain hinders competition originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you love learning the details that explain how things work, then the HowStuffWorks app for the iPad is perfect for you. The app takes the best of the How Stuff Works website and packages it into a convenient, tablet-friendly format. It’s chock full of content and features and will keep you engaged for hours on end.

The app launches to the main screen which provides a preview of content. Included on this page are select articles, quizzes, and podcasts from the How Stuff Works website. A few informative and inspirational quotes are thrown in for good measure.

Tapping on the book icon in the top right toolbar takes you to the reading library. All the posts are organized by category which includes everything from animals to money to tech and science. Each article is as full-featured as the website version and often includes an image gallery and links to other similar content in this category. You can also tweet, Facebook, favorite, print or email an article that you enjoy. The ability to change the font size and jump from one part of an article to another easily from the menu bar is another handy feature.

Besides written content, the app lets you listen to podcasts and read quick posts from the hosts of each show. The shows include Tech Stuff, Car Stuff, and Stuff You Should You Know among others. Just like the articles, you can share these resources on Twitter or Facebook as well as favorite them. And the podcasts support Airplay so you can stream the media to your home theatre system.

Lastly, you have a quiz section that tests your knowledge of scientific topics. Each quiz logs your score and sends it to the iOS Game Center. If you get an answer wrong, the app will explain the correct answer which is a nice touch some developers forget to add.

The HowStuffWorks app is a perfect addition for those curious about the world around them. It’s not a quick read, but is a perfect reference for those times when you have 20 minutes or so to digest an article. The HowStuffWorks for the iPad is available for free, but it does include small banner ads at the bottom which some may find annoying. You can download the app using this iTunes link and check it out for yourself.

Daily iPad App: HowStuffWorks for iPad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been over a year since Square Enix announced it was porting Final Fantasy Tactics to the iPhone. Following a series of delays (that Square Enix tried to say weren’t really delays), the app has finally been released for the iPhone.

Final Fantasy Tactics is one of my favorite video games of all time, but I haven’t played it in about ten years. Seeing it come to iOS at last means I can finally revisit this game, with a translation much improved over the original. No more random “I had a good feeling!” Engrish-y translation errors? Yes please.

The game is a fairly large download at 457 MB, and at US$16 it’s probably one of the most expensive games on the App Store. If you already have a copy of the original PlayStation version or the remake for the PSP, the iOS version may not be worth the asking price for you. If you’re like me and remember this game fondly but don’t already have a copy, or if you’ve never played it before at all, $16 isn’t a terribly high price for this game. Final Fantasy Tactics has an epic gameplay length — I got well over 50 hours of playtime from the original — so while the price tag may seem high, Square Enix is right to price it at a “premium” over the typical $0.99 – $2.99 prices we see on the App Store.

Having said all that, however, I’m going to wait for the iPad version of Final Fantasy Tactics, which Square Enix says will be released this fall. In the meantime, many of Square Enix’s games are on sale to celebrate FFT’s launch — some are discounted by 50 percent or more — so check out the App Store if there’s a game you’ve been waiting for the price to drop on.

We’ll have a hands-on review of Final Fantasy Tactics for the iPhone soon.

Final Fantasy Tactics released for iPhone at last originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve covered GENWI before, but to recap: GENWI is a cloud-based (read: Web) app creation and management system for businesses. While there are numerous platforms and 3rd party services which will “wrap up” your content into a native app, GENWI does all of this on the web, and it’s a pretty compelling service.

You can also create HTML5 mobile apps, but the native app tool is likely more interesting to publishers. GENWI also allows you to update your content live via their tools. Pricing is US$99/month for web and smaller-screen usage, and you’ll need to have a developer account to publish these on the App Store. If you want to deploy an iPad app, however, the cost jumps to $499 per month. Be sure to see it in action below.

Video App Demo: GENWI originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Do you want the sleek, aluminum goodness of a new MacBook Air with awe-inspiring graphics performance? Then you’re in luck, because Village Instruments is starting development of a Thunderbolt-based version of their ViDock, an external graphics card enclosure.

The CEO of Village Instruments, Hubert Chen, put a post on Facebook last week to see how many customers would potentially be interested in such a product. In the post, Chen noted that the company would begin production if 50 people responded positively about the ViDock. As of today, there are well over 350 comments, so Chen gave the project a go-ahead.

The existing ViDock uses an ExpressCard interface to connect to a PCI Express graphics card enclosure. Thunderbolt provides about 4 times the amount of bandwidth as ExpressCard and performance should be excellent as a result.

There’s no word on when the new product will be out of the labs and available for sale, nor did Village Instruments provide a hint on pricing. The existing ViDock line ranges from US$199 to $279 depending on the model selected — power requirements for the graphics cards are the differentiating factor.

Village Instruments to develop external Thunderbolt graphics card originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mac Screen Rotate‘s goal is to bring a bit of iPad functionality to the MacBook Air by enabling you to hold the laptop on its side and have the screen rotate to a vertical orientation. While the site markets it as a way to “read” your MacBook Air like a real book, the result is cumbersome. MacBook Airs have just enough heft to where holding them in this position for any length of time is annoying.

Where a program such as Mac Screen Rotate comes in handy is if you’re wanting to show off a vertical photo, graphic design or spreadsheet. It would come in handy for certain niches that work in these particular fields and gives you a bit more room to show off a document without having to compensate for the narrow horizontal screen.

Then there’s also the fact that you can do this for free in OS X. Go into System Preferences and hold down the option and command keys while selecting the Displays tab. This reveals a rotation menu that allows you to rotate your screen. However, what it doesn’t do is rotate the trackpad’s functionality as well, which makes for awkward maneuvering indeed, and this is how Mac Screen Rotate sets itself off from the free offering. The developers of Mac Screen Rotate also detail the free process on their site, and kudos to them for doing this.

Does it work though? Yes, very well. The trackpad behaves as expected in vertical mode and recognizes most of the Lion gestures, though it’s very apparent that these gestures were made for a horizontal-oriented trackpad rather than vertical. The gestures work, but even with my small hand it was difficult to do some of the more complicated gestures.

If you fall into the niche that would most likely take advantage of this, Mac Screen Rotate is $4.99 with a 3-day trial, but is currently on sale for $3.99.

TUAW’s Daily Mac App: Mac Screen Rotate originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tired of expensive mobile phone contracts? Maybe you should move to Sweden, where mobile provider 3 Sweden is offering a half-off sale on a two-year contract for an iPhone 3GS.

The new pricing makes a “3 Surf” package 99 krona or about $15.36 a month, with a more capable “3 Pott” package running 199 krona or around $30.68 per month. That cheap package gives you “free surfing” of up to 1 GB of data (more data at a reduced rate), but you need to spend .39 krona or about six cents per minute for voice. That would work great for me, since I rarely use my iPhone to talk to other humans anyway.

The other package includes a “pot” of service that can be spread around different services including voice, SMS, and MMS. There’s also free data with that package, but only up to .5 GB, after which your service is at a reduced speed.

Basically, as with most worldwide mobile carriers, there’s always fine print to look at. With 3 Sweden’s half-price sale with an iPhone 3GS, though, the impact on the wallet is less than what most of us have to put up with.

3 Sweden offers half-price sale on iPhone 3GS contract originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW,

It seems that every time I go to a website on my iPad or iPod touch I get pestered by these little popup windows (that look just like the native Apple push notifications) letting me know that xyz site has a native app, and offers to take me to the app store to download it. Not only do I not care about the app, the popups annoy the heck out of me! Is there any way to get rid of them, jailbreak or not?

Your extremely flustered nephew,

Kyle

Dear Kyle,

Auntie know precisely what you’re talking about, and those things seriously get on her nerves. That’s because you, as the user, can’t do anything about it other than by spoofing the user agent so the site doesn’t catch that you’re visiting on a mobile device.

It’s up to the site administrator. Site admins can and should turn them off. But they don’t, because there’s simply not enough public outrage.

So yes, you can jailbreak and universally set a different user agent using one of the many switcher tools to surf with Safari. You can also use a third party App Store browser with built-in user-agent spoofing on non-jailbroken systems. (Auntie really isn’t crazy about any of the ones she’s tried to date, so she doesn’t generally recommend third party browsers for day-to-day surfage.)

In the end, the root of the problem is that not enough people are calling, writing, and picketing against this widespread mal-de-web. If you know a website that does this, drop Auntie a note and she’ll try to create a Sites-of-Shame list over the next week or two.

With your help, we shall fight in the Web Browsers, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets…

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me fight the evil that pushes native app reminders originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Charlie Miller is a household name for those interested in Mac and iOS security. He was the first to hack the iPhone back in 2007, is a Pwn2Own veteran, and recently uncovered a battery firmware hack he’ll discuss at the upcoming Black Hat 2011 Conference.

Miller recently sat down with Tom’s Hardware and talked about security, cloud computing, hardware hacks and more. It’s a six-page interview, so get a hot cup of coffee, lean back in that lounger and prepare for a nice long read.

Charlie Miller discusses iOS security and MacBook battery hacking with Tom’s Hardware originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Let the office warfare begin. Tech toy manufacturer Dream Cheeky has released Mac software for its Storm O.I.C. and Thunder Missile Launchers. The “O.I.C.” stands for “Over Internet Control.” Now you can attack your cubicle competitors from six feet away or 6,000 miles.

The Storm can be controlled over the Internet by a simple messaging program. A side-mounted webcam lets you see who’s approaching your stuff. You can even authorized other users to take control. The Thunder Launcher is for local combat and features a 4-foot USB cable. Both devices shoot foam “Missiles” at least twenty-five feet.

Dream Cheeky says that they’ll be releasing Mac software for additional goodies in the future. Why do I think those launchers are something Dwight Schrute would own?

USB missile launchers from Dream Cheeky now Mac compatible originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We love a good App Store pricing story, and this one has a happy ending (mostly). Yesterday Wired picked up the scent of Autriv’s SignMyPad Pro, which has a rather breathtaking price tag of $99. Since the non-pro version of the PDF-signing app — which shares almost all its features — is only $4, why should the Pro version cost more than 20x as much? Not to mention that the PDF signing genre on the iPad, while not as crowded as some other sectors, still has a healthy suite of available apps ranging in price from $10 down to free.

Autriv’s jefe, Justin Esgar, may be familiar to TUAW readers as the former face/voice of our Ask TUAW videos, so we checked in with him to get the developer’s side of the story. It turns out that the key improvement between the $4 standard and $99 pro versions of SignMyPad is the ability to embed the iPad’s GPS location and timestamp into the PDF metadata along with the signature; Autriv developed this feature specifically to support a request from a major financial industry client.

While in theory the custom version could have been delivered through enterprise distribution instead of the App Store, apparently it was easier and quicker simply to mark up the price of the GPS-aware version and let the corporate client buy the copies it needed. The app remained in the store at the $99 price point from then on.

Obviously, not everyone wants to geo-tag signed PDFs, but for those professionals that do need the capability (real estate brokers, lawyers, architects, etc.) it could be worth the investment. As far as we can tell, there isn’t another tool, iPad or desktop, that includes this feature, so SignMyPad Pro has a case to make for its value in the market.

Value propositions aside, however, Autriv isn’t taking the Wired story lying down. Justin has posted a rabble-rousing video on the company’s site, and at the same time lowered the price of both SignMyPad versions for today. The standard version has dropped down to 99 cents, and the Pro C-note version will cost you just $9.99. If you’re eager to sign your PDFs with the added power of geotagging, today would be the day to pick it up.

$99 iPad app dinged by Wired, drops price 90% for the day originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ITC Chief Administrative Law Judge Paul Luckern has stepped down from his position after 27 years of service. This departure is notable as Luckern presided over the patent complaint filed by Kodak against Apple.

In January, Luckern issued an initial ruling that Apple did not infringe on Kodak’s patent for image preview. This early win for Apple was surprising as Kodak had collected over US$900 million from LG and Samsung in licensing fees for this same image preview patent.

The final decision on this complaint has been delayed twice and is now scheduled for the end of August. With the departure of the presiding judge, the outcome of this case is uncertain and could swing in favor of Kodak. Such a reversal would be a huge win for the imaging company as licensing fees from this complaint could climb as high as $1 billion.

ITC judge presiding over Kodak-Apple patent case retires originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A recent Ofcom survey suggests the iPhone is the favorite handset among adults in the UK, while the BlackBerry is preferred by teens. Almost one in three (32%) UK adults with a smartphone rock an iPhone and 37% of teens carry a BlackBerry.

The survey of 2,073 adults and 521 teenagers doesn’t address the reason why teens prefer a BlackBerry, but it likely has to do with the lower price of the handset and the ease of texting associated with a full, physical QWERTY keyboard.

Apparently, both teens and adults with a smartphone love to use their handset. About 37% of adults and a whopping 60% of teenagers claim they are “addicted” to their smartphone.

[Via BBC]

iPhone preferred by adults, BlackBerry by teens in the UK originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bandito is an iPhone-based aggregator for music news that has a twist. Instead of a mass-produced feed, the app scans your iTunes library and delivers you personalized news based on the artists you listen to most.

On first launch, the app asks for permission to scan your iTunes library. Once you agree, the scan takes less than a minute and you’re presented with a list of blog posts and reviews about your favorite bands. If you want to stay current with music happenings, there’s also a “Hotlist” containing news about the top bands and artists.

The app includes a viewer so you can read the news right inside the app which is a nice touch. There’s also an option to open the article in mobile Safari and email the link if you want to share the info with friends. There’s no social network integration so sharing via email is the best you’re going to get.

Bandito does exactly what it says, but the results you get may vary. If you have a library of older songs, the news you receive could be several years old. More contemporary listeners will enjoy the benefit of receiving the information that’s only a few days or a few weeks old.

The app is a joint project between the Public Radio Exchange and The Echo Nest, a music intelligence company whose music engine powers apps from MTV, the BBC and more. Bandito is available for free from the App Store. A $1.99 in-app upgrade will give you unlimited news, reviews and blog posts.

[Via Mashable]

Daily iPhone App: Bandito scans your music library to deliver personalized music news originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ZeptoLab has released the Cut The Rope’s sequel dubbed “Cut The Rope: Experiments” for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Given the huge success of Cut The Rope, a sequel doesn’t come as…

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