Category: I-phone

Earlier this week, Apple announced that developers should start submitting their Lion-ready apps to the Mac App Store. While Lion itself has been a no-show despite rampant speculation that it would launch today, Lion-ready third-party applications are starting to show up. OS X Daily spotted at least one app, WordCrasher, that’s been updated with Lion compatibility, and MacStories found three more.

App updates have included support for several Lion features, including full-screen mode, new Multi-Touch gestures, and support for Versions and Resume. Apple issued updates for several of its own apps earlier this week, including the entire iLife ’11 suite and Aperture.

While Lion was widely expected to launch today, current speculation points to next week as a more likely target. The “delay” (if you want to call it that, as no official launch date other than “July” was ever given) will be beneficial to developers, who will have more time to get their applications Lion-ready before the public launch.

Lion-ready apps start showing up in Mac App Store originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It has no built-in camera beaming video back to your iPhone, and it isn’t controlled via Wi-Fi. There are no augmented reality apps that come with it, nor is there (as far as we know) a way to hack the firmware. It only has two full-size rotors instead of four. Despite all of these shortcomings, Griffin’s upcoming AppPowered Helo TC may be a popular iOS accessory this Christmas season.

Why? The price. It’s much less expensive than the device that I’m comparing it to — the Parrot AR.Drone. Sure, for US$50 you’re not getting a lot (as there are plenty of these without iOS control on the market), and you have to slap an IR transmitter containing 4 AAA batteries onto your iPhone or iPod touch, but one-sixth of the price of the AR.Drone, you can still get the thrill of annoying your pets and significant other.

You can fly the Helo TC at night thanks to five LEDs, and Griffin thoughtfully provides extra rotors to replace those you break while learning to fly it properly. More info from Griffin Technology can be found in the press release below.

Griffin announces a $50 iOS-controlled helicopter originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This is one of the slickest iPhone 4 videos I’ve seen in a long time. A guitarist (justkylevids on YouTube) apparently wondered what it was like being inside his guitar while playing, so he dropped his iPhone 4 in with the video camera running and captured this incredible video.

The effect you see is mesmerizing, but not really representative of the way that guitar strings actually oscillate. Instead, it’s another example of how the iPhone 4’s rolling shutter can create some interesting photos and video. Still, it’s fun to watch.

iPhone 4 captures guitar strings in action originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nexercise has the noble aim of getting you more active. To do that, it offers rewards. Not just leaderboards and social rewards, but actual rewards in the form of discounts and things like Amazon gift cards. Sounds cool, doesn’t it? We met up with the high-energy and very pleasant CEO of Nexercise during WWDC to get a demo of the app and go through some of the features.

Basically you activate the app on your iPhone when you do some physical activity, and the more active you are, the more points you accrue towards getting rewards. Check the video below for a full walkthrough.

Video App Demo: Nexercise originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Smartphone cameras are quite versatile. Some people used them to take pretty pictures, while others use them for the recognition of a face, product or an object. LookTel has taken this idea of object recognition and used it as the cornerstone of a new app called Money Reader.

Money Reader uses your iPhone camera to identify dollar bills from $1 up to $100. The app is designed to let those with a visual impairment accurately count their money. The identification happens in real-time so users can quickly count or sort a pile of cash.

Besides its utility in counting money, LookTel is hoping to use this recognition technology to identify landmarks, recognize objects and read back text. It may also be used with GPS and maps to provide a voice guidance system for the blind.

The Money Reader app is available for US$1.99 in the iTunes App Store and is compatible with the iPhone (4, 3GS) and iPod Touch (4th Generation).

LookTel helps the blind count their money using an iPhone originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has made its first legal payout to an iPhone user after being accused of collecting and storing location data last year. A South Korean man is the recipient, apparently, of a settlement consisting of a whopping 1 million won, which only turns out to be about US$946 (as of this writing). Still, this is the first legally required payout on Apple’s part — the check was signed last month by Apple Korea, apparently.

There is also a class action lawsuit in Korea that’s attempting to get off the ground (though was stymied, apparently, by a site that went down under the traffic), and, especially with the news of this payout, there’s probably other legal action going on around the rest of the world as well.

Don’t be too quick to dial up that lawyer, though — Korea has some pretty strict data sharing laws, and collecting location information like this from users is clearly illegal there, whereas in the U.S. or other countries, the law might not be so clear on what companies can and can’t do with user data. It’s unlikely that this is the last payout Apple will make, but just because they paid here doesn’t mean they’ll be losing every judgement on this one.

Apple makes first ‘locationgate’ legal payout, less than $1,000 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I was up late last night building a Mac App Store scraper. In the process I discovered how to browse the store in Safari. Without further ado, let me share the geek.

It turns out you can spoof curl with the Mac App Store user agent to access its data. You’ll need to use Terminal for this trick, so if you’re uncomfortable with the command line, it’s sort of time to skip to the next post.

Still here? Good, let’s go.

First, grab and open New & Noteworthy page with the following commands:
curl -silent -A “iMacAppStore/1.0.1 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6.7; en) AppleWebKit/533.20.25” ‘http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewGrouping?id=29526&mt=12’ > ~/Desktop/foo.html; open ~/Desktop/foo.html

Conversely, just open the front page:
curl -silent -A “iMacAppStore/1.0.1 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6.7; en) AppleWebKit/533.20.25” ‘http://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/mac/id39?mt=12’ > ~/Desktop/foo.html; open ~/Desktop/foo.html

The front page doesn’t always want to open properly, but if you load another primary page like New & Noteworthy first, it usually loads the way you’re looking for.

Some will want to ignore the HTTP status that appears at the top of the webpage — but they’ll probably be using the App itself, so it shouldn’t be a problem for everyone else. Have fun!

Open the Mac App Store in your browser originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gartner and the market intelligence firm IDC have made their quarterly proclamation about PC retail shipments, and things aren’t too great for that market: Growth is much slower than expected, picking up only 2.3%, way off from the predictions of 6.7% or 12% growth made in the first quarter of this year. But even with the iPad and other tablets taking large bites out of the PC market, Apple’s Mac sales are doing well, with shipments jumping up as high as 14.7%.

Both of these numbers are shipments, not actual consumer sales, but still, the numbers have turned Apple into the third largest vendor of personal computers in the US, behind the lagging Dell and HP. In a press release, Gartner said that “the preliminary findings show Apple’s performance far exceed the industry average, partly driven by an iMac refreshment that attracted both consumers and buyers in the education sector.”

Good news for Apple, then, all around. That’s one of the wildest things about this company lately — even as the folks in Cupertino prioritize mobile computing and emphasize the iPhone and the iPad, Macs continue to grow more popular than ever.

Apple jumps to no. 3 in US PC market, even without iPad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With the imminent release of Lion, perhaps it’s time to clear out all those apps you don’t need anymore. AppTrap is an app up to the task, which integrates nicely into the OS X way of uninstalling apps.

We all know that the Mac way of uninstalling apps is just to delete them. The size of the preference files, settings and other cruft left behind is so small in comparison to modern disk sizes that you shouldn’t have to worry about them. But what happens when you want to clear out your hard drive properly after each uninstall? Installed as a Preference Pane, AppTrap runs in the background watching for when you trash an application from your Applications folder. It will then locate any files associated with that application and ask you whether you want to trash them as well, removing the need for you to hunt them down manually.

Other uninstaller apps that we’ve featured on the Daily Mac App before primarily work along the Windows way of uninstalling. Select the app you want to uninstall from a list of installed programs and hit delete. But AppTrap enables you to continue deleting apps the way Apple wants you to, without leaving all that cruft behind. It’s fast, effective and free.

If you install and delete loads of apps the Apple way, then the free AppTrap is a must. It’s downloadable from the developer’s site and supports Snow Leopard and the soon to be released Lion.

Thanks to hispidignoramus for the suggestion.

TUAW’s Daily Mac App: AppTrap originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The wonderful thing about software bundle offers is that they always have a couple of gems that you can pick up for a song. The current Mac SuperBundle, which lasts through Noon PDT on July 27, 2011 has a real diamond in it — Parallels Desktop 6.

For US$49, you get Parallels Desktop 6 and 9 other apps. Buying it from the Parallels online store, Desktop 6 would set you back $79.99 (you can get it for $50 on Amazon). The Mac SuperBundle also adds in the Food Network Recipe Manager ($40), the Lion-compatible Money 4 ($39), DVD Remaster ($50), Intego VirusBarrier X6 ($50), and four more apps.

If you’ve been thinking about setting up a Windows or Linux VM on your Mac, but haven’t decided whether to buy Parallels Desktop 6 or VMWare Fusion 3.1 ($80), or grab the free VirtualBox, this bundle might be your impetus to pick Parallels. Too bad they can’t toss a copy of Windows 7 into the bundle as well!

Parallels Desktop 6 (and 9 other apps) for $49 through Mac SuperBundle originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If the impending loss of MobileMe has you wondering how you will maintain and create websites, Sandvox is worth a look. It’s more powerful than iWeb, but still easy enough for most beginners. We took a look at Sandvox in May, and now the folks at Karelia are offering a pretty painless path to switch. iWeb users can get 25% off the US $77.00 toll through the end of this month. Just use the coupon code ‘iWeb Graduate’ when you purchase. Karelia also offers clear advice on how to transfer from iWeb to Sandvox.

Of course with MobileMe going away, you’re going to need a new place to host that site, and there are a lot of good alternatives that Steve Sande wrote about last month.

There’s more good news from Sandvox today. An update just released (version 2.1) is Lion ready, has some speed increases, and a boatload of fixes and enhancements. You can get details on the latest version here. iWeb isn’t dead of course, but with MobileMe going away next year, there’s no telling how long the application will be around.

Sandvox updated for Lion; Karelia wants to lure iWeb orphans originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Electronic Arts recently released an official version of Battleship for the iPad. EA kept the gameplay of the classic board game, but updated the graphics for the larger screen of the iPad. The iPad game has the look and feel of the electronic version of the game with several modes including classic, salvo, super weapons and multi-player. The multi-player mode lets you play against another iPad, iPod touch or iPhone via WiFi or Bluetooth.

The gameplay of each mode is classic Battleship. There’s a simple grid that you use to arrange your ships and fire on your enemy ships. You don’t have to keep track of the grid (no, E5 or A8 required), you just double tap to fire (or tap and hit the fire button) and the game fills in your hits and misses. Each time you or your opponent fires, there is an entertaining cut scene that shows the missile launching and landing on its target. This back and forth cut scene does slow down gameplay a bit, but you can turn it off if you don’t like it. A small set of sound effects add to the gameplay and is not overbearingly loud.

The two-player player mode is one of the best features and it works great. The gameplay with two players is almost the same as single-player, but you get to beat your friend instead of the game’s AI. The connection doesn’t drop and it’s as close as your going to get to the real thing without actually buying the original board game. Best of all, there are no game pegs or game boards to find and put away each time you play.

Overall, the gameplay on Battleship for the iPad is smooth and responsive. It never crashed and the multi-player connection only dropped once in all my trials. The Battleship for iPad game is available now for US$2.99 in the iTunes app store.

TUAW’s Daily iPad App: Battleship for iPad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Instagram (free) is a lot of fun, although it’s often criticized as being the “auto-tune for photography.” Google+ is the new social networking flavor of the week, so it’s natural that the two services should get together. Wired’s Gadget Lab has cooked up a recipe for more Instagram enjoyment by hacking a method of joining the two in unholy matrimony, as well as providing other fun hints.

Before I divulge their other hints, let’s get to the meat of the matter for those of you who are among the Google+ cognoscenti: getting your Instagrams to Google’s Picasa photo sharing site so they can be shared on Google+. Yeah, hopefully this is added to Instagram in the near future. For the present, this is how you do it, folks.

To have all of your future Instagram photos sent immediately to Google+, blogger Charlie Sorrel has you set up Instadrop, which automagically connects your Instagram and Dropbox accounts. Send a photo out on Instagram, and it shows up in a Dropbox folder named Instagram Photos. Next, pick up a copy of the free Picasa app for Mac. From the File menu, select “Add Folder to Picasa” and point it at your new Instagram Photos folder on Dropbox.

The next step is to have Picasa watch that folder all the time. There’s one fly in the ointment here — this means that if you want true real-time updating of Picasa / Google+, your Mac has to be up and running continuously. Go to Tools > Folder Manager in Picasa, select the Instagram Photos folder, and then tell Picasa to “Scan Always.” Finally, find the folder in the sidebar of Picasa, click on it, and then select “Enable Sync” from the Share drop-down in the main menu.

That’s it. Send a photo to Instagram, and through this complex chain of events the image eventually makes it to Google+, where it is re-shared and commented on by thousands of your friends and complete strangers.

Sorrel has some other great tips in the post, including using your “real” camera to take photos, transferring them to an iPad using the Apple Camera Connection Kit, and then zapping them to Instagram. He also recommends the $1.99 Instaplus app to have much more control over the camera and filters.

Sharing Instagram photos on Google+ automatically originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ben Patterson and his wife learned a hard lesson on using Find My iPhone after traveling to Manhattan’s East Village to visit a friend. After a lovely evening, they hopped from one cab to another as they traveled back to Brooklyn. His wife froze with fear when she realized her iPhone was missing. All her contacts, emails, photos and more were likely in the backseat of another cab and possibly in the hands of a stranger.

The couple fired up the Find My iPhone app on Patterson’s iPhone 4 and was disappointed to discover his wife’s phone was not being tracked. There was no way to find it, lock it or wipe it. Patterson remembered setting up the tracking service, but he never double-checked to make sure it was working. Now that the iPhone was gone, it was too late.

The pair followed the standard protocol for handling a lost phone. They called the cab company, but got nowhere since they did not have a cab number or any identifying information. Then they called AT&T and both deactivated the SIM card and reported the phone missing. She fired up an old iPhone 3GS and moved on.

Almost a week later, she received a phone call from an unusual number. She answered the call and was shocked to discover it was a sales associate from a local AT&T store. They had her phone! A young woman had found it in the back of the cab and returned the phone to the store. For once, it wasn’t technology like Find My iPhone that led to the return of a missing phone, but the kindness of strangers.

Finding an iPhone the old-fashioned way originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nerve Whiz (free, non-universal), an app developed by University of Michigan neurologist Zachary London, M.D., could lead to a better understanding of the anatomy of the peripheral nervous system.

Dr. London’s app goes beyond simple nerve charts. In fact, it can assist in examinations. For example, medical professionals can enter a patient’s presenting problems (muscle weakness, sensory loss, etc.) and Nerve Whiz will return a differential diagnosis with supporting pictures and diagrams.

Dr. London told Newswise how the app assists a professional’s diagnostic process: “Before you can figure out what is causing neurologic symptoms, you have to determine what part of the nervous system isn’t functioning normally. Neurologists call this ‘localizing the lesion…Nerve Whiz helps you localize by taking the information from your physical examination of a patient and synthesizing a list of possible anatomic regions which could be disrupted.”

He goes on to say that, if the app finds multiple possible answers, it suggests additional examinations that could help the physician “hone in” on the answer.

It sounds like a handy tool, made even more convenient by the small and portable iPhone. Nerve Whiz is currently popular among physicians, med students, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and anatomists, Newswise reports. In fact, it’s got a four-star rating in the App Store (as of this writing) and has been downloaded more than 30,000 times, according to the article.

Good on Dr. London! My own anecdotal evidence suggests that iDevices are popular indeed among medical professionals, as I’ve seen at least one during every medical appointment I’ve had over the past year.

Neurologist develops Nerve Whiz tool for iPhone, iPod and iPad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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