Category: I-phone

HP currently has the only printers on the market that provide a direct, out-of-the-box printing experience for iOS devices using AirPrint. AirPrint-enabled printers like the HP Photosmart Premium e-All-in-One are great for printing photos that you’ve taken from your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad 2, and now the company wants to give you a chance to win one of four HP printers.

Through July 15th, 2011, HP is sponsoring a photo contest for original pictures taken with a mobile device. Titled AirPrint Moments, the contest has relatively few entries at this time, so your chances of winning are relatively good (for now). The judges for the event are iPhonegraphers Colin Vincent, Greg Schmigel, and Sion Fullana, all of whom use iPhones for professional photography.

You can also choose to vote for your favorite iPhone photo, and if you get a lot of your friends to vote for your submission I’m sure you can improve your chances to win. Good luck to TUAW readers and let us know if you enter and win.

HP wants your “AirPrint Moments;” photo contest underway originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Open-source software is a beautiful thing. It’s free, community driven, and more often than not, incredibly useful. HandBrake, one of the best video converters around, is a classic example of great open-source software.

The Swiss army knife of video converters and a perennial TUAW favorite, HandBrake is a Mac users best friend. Using libavformat and libacvodec, it’ll take almost any video format or container you want to throw at it and convert it into something more useful. Want to convert a video for playback on an Apple TV? No problem. Open the offending video file, select “AppleTV” (version 1 or 2 depending on your model) from the preset list under “Apple” and click the “Start” button.

If you want to get a bit more involved than simply using presets you can tweak almost every video and audio conversion setting available. From bitrate, FPS and target size, to video and audio codec, embedding of subtitles and breaking-down the video into chapters, you can do it all with HandBrake.

HandBrake is available for the Mac, Windows and Linux, but on a Mac it’s 64-bit, multithreaded and will use all of the available resources of your modern Intel-based machine. That means conversions are fast and efficient. If you’ve got a video file and you need something to covert it then HandBrake is the tool you need. It won’t decrypt things, so if you’re trying to rip a DVD or something similar, you’ll need a tool to remove the copy protection first, but that video of your mate jumping the gate you shot won’t know what hit it.

Download HandBrake for free from the HandBrake Project website.

Continue reading TUAW’s Daily Mac App: HandBrake

TUAW’s Daily Mac App: HandBrake originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Those longing to use a US$3,000 camera lens with their iPhone 4s are in luck. Photojojo has released the iPhone SLR Mount, a spiffy way to mount Canon EOS or a Nikon SLR lenses to your iPhone 4.

A slot on the mount holds lens in place, and loops on either end await the click of your camera strap.

It sounds crazy, but it’s not. Huge numbers of people take photos with iPhones daily. Recent Flickr data suggests that iPhone submissions have dominated its pool of photos for a long time. It’s reasonable to offer a pseudo-pro option for a camera that people shoot with that often.

Of course, this isn’t the first SLR iPhone camera rig we’ve seen. This DIY rig got the job done, while iPhone DSLR looked promising late last year, but fell victim to design and cost issues.

Yet another SLR mount for the iPhone originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Since Apple announced the iAd mobile advertising service last year, the success of the service has been in question. Now Bloomberg is reporting that Apple is cutting rates for iAds by as much as 70% to attract marquee clients.

As noted in today’s post, Apple was initially charging clients US$1 million or more for an ad campaign that ran only in iOS apps that were designed to display the ads. Many of the initial clients, such as J.C. Penney and Citigroup, have abandoned iAd and are now spending their advertising dollars with services like AdMob, Greystripe, and Millenial Media that run on a variety of platforms.

As a result, Apple is apparently dropping the cost of ad packages down to as little as $300,000 when buying multiple campaigns to attract new advertisers and retain existing ones. This strategy appears to be working for the company, as Apple notes that they’ll be adding about 50 new iAd campaigns within the next few months.

Still, for many advertisers and advertising companies, there’s not much of a value proposition with iAd. Rob Norman, CEO of ad agency GroupM North America, noted that despite the sleek design of iAd, companies must account for the cost. He’s quoted by Bloomberg as saying “We’d all like to stay at the Four Seasons, but not if it costs $150,000 a night.”

Apple cuts iAd buy-in fees originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here’s a fun project. Artist Kyle McDonald’s “People Staring at Computers” photo collection features images of more than 1,000 faces, snapped as they gazed at Macs in New York Apple Stores. While looking at the images, it’s fun to wonder just what the users were staring at, though it’s impossible to tell. Some look delighted, while others seem perplexed and even concerned.

You’ll also find a wide range of users, from young and old to customers and, in one case at least, an Apple Store employee. The whole thing reminds me of those photos of people about to place their order in a restaurant.

The question here is, how did McDonald get Apple Store display Macs to shoot photos for him? According to ifoAppleStore, he used a bit of software that “he slipped onto Macintosh display computers at Manhattan Apple retail stores.” Later, he configured other machines to randomly display some of the captured images, much to the befuddlement of shoppers and workers alike.

It was a fun project and a very contemporary one. Now, more than ever, we spend huge amounts of time staring at little, glowing boxes.

Clearly an evolutionary leap is imminent. Cue Also Sprach Zarathustra.

People Staring at Computers from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo.

Artist uses Apple Store customers as his subjects originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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On July 6th, Apple held a private briefing in London for enterprise users of Final Cut Pro. Of course, one of the main topics of discussion was Final Cut Pro X (FCP X), which has been receiving a lot of flak from unhappy pro users since its release on June 21, 2011. It appears that Apple will be addressing many of the complaints from creative pros in the near future.

Some fascinating tweets were sent out by @aPostEngineer during the briefing, and then summarized by Alex4D.

1. FCP XML in/out is coming via 3rd party soon…no FCP 6/7 support project support coming ever it seems…
2. Ability to buy FCP7 licenses for enterprise deployments coming in the next few weeks…
3. FCPX EDL import/export coming soon…
4. FCPX AJA plugins coming soon for tape capture and layback…capture straight into FCPX [events].
5. XSAN support for FCPX coming in the next few weeks…
6. FCPX Broadcast video output via #Blackmagic & @AJAVideo coming soon…
7. Additional codec support for FCPX via 3rd Parties coming soon…
8. Customizable sequence TC in FCPX for master exports coming soon…
9. Some FCPX updates will be free some will cost…

The most interesting part of this string of tweets is the second one, which points out that Apple will be working out a way for existing FCP 7 enterprise deployments to purchase additional licenses for the older version. This should make some video professionals happy, as they had been upset by how Apple had discontinued sales of Final Cut Pro 7 before the pros had a chance to get used to FCP X.

Apple may allow additional FCP 7 enterprise licenses originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW,

I am in love with my iPad 2 and am eager to turn my upcoming trip to the beach into a working vacation. I find the that the PDF support in iBooks leaves a lot to be desired. Which is unfortunate, as I have spent a lot of time uploading a lot of PDFs into my iTunes to have them handy when I want to get work done. Is there a PDF annotation app out there that can access the PDFs I have stored in iBooks? (I realize that iBooks can’t actually display PDF annotations, at least at present, but if I could at least quickly import PDFs into another iOS app, that would be a start.)

Your loving nephew,

Josh L.

Dear Josh,

Your problem is that you’re reading PDFs in iBooks instead of Good Reader, PDF Expert, or any of the other multitudes of wonderful PDF clients that can display and edit annotations.

Unfortunately, no, you cannot directly share PDFs out from iBooks to other applications but you can import them in iTunes when you’re home at your computer using the device Apps tab. That’s the “direct” answer. There is, however, a sneakier solution that gets around iBooks’ “Roach Motel” mentality (i.e. documents check in but they don’t check out).

If you really need to transfer those PDFs when on-the-road, you can use iBook’s built-in e-mail sharing to send a copy to yourself and then use your iPad’s “open in” feature from Mail to send the PDF to the app of your choice.

Another good solution is to place all your PDFs into Dropbox/Box.net/Cloud app/Google Docs etc to ensure that your files can be accessed, read, and edited from all your devices.

The reading experience may not be as lovely in these other apps, but you’ll be able to get your work done.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me read and annotate my PDFs originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Although Internet forums are the illegitimate offspring of the old dial-up Bulletin Board Systems and the Web, I find myself using them a lot. Whether I’m checking with fellow cruise enthusiasts over at Cruise Critic or looking for tips about hardware issues over in the MacRumors Forums, these online discussion groups can be a lot of fun and educational as well.

Tapatalk (US$2.99, universal) works with all of the standard forum software, including the big two names, vBulletin and phpBB, to bring iPad ease of use to forum participation.

Since the iPad first shipped last year, I’ve found it difficult to use many of the forums because of some incompatibilities with Safari. For example, I had to discover by accident that I could scroll a text entry field by using a two-finger swipe, a “feature” I then passed along to my forum-frequenting wife. That still didn’t make using forums a pleasure…

The way I found out about Tapatalk was through the aforementioned Cruise Critic forums. As I entered the forums one day, a pop-up appeared telling me about Tapatalk, which I promptly purchased. Since then, I’ve been using Tapatalk to easily navigate my way around forums and I think it has actually resulted in an increase in my forum activities.

Tapatalk requires that the forum operator enable mobile access from the server, but once they do (and over 16,000 forums worldwide are already set up this way) you can use the app to enjoy your forums. Not only does the app include a way to automatically log into forums that you frequent, but there’s a search tool for finding new Tapatalk-compatible forums. Once you’re found them, it’s easy to register from the app to participate in a new forum.

If you’re a forum moderator, Tapatalk includes a way to delete, unapprove, lock, or stick posts. For the rest of us, it’s a breeze to add photos from the iPad’s Photo Library, maps, or links to any forum post.

Tapatalk has very good ratings on the App Store and for good reason — it’s a well-executed app that makes forum participation from an iPad easy and fun.

TUAW’s Daily iPad App: Tapatalk originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple said it will issue a patch that will close a PDF hole in iOS. Though this security hole is well known by iOS owners, it made headlines recently when the German government issued a malware warning about this “critical weakness” in Apple’s iOS operating system. As it has done in the past with other security issues, Apple will release an update in the coming weeks to close this hole.

Those that jailbreak their iOS devices will want to avoid this update. The exploit that Apple will patch is the same one used by Comex in jailbreakme, an online jailbreak tool. Ironically, those that want to close this exploit now can do so using this jailbreak tool. Just jailbreak your iOS device and install a security patch from Cydia.

Apple to patch PDF vulnerability in iOS originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon partially embraced iOS by adding support for the iPad to its web-based Cloud Player. The tablet version of the web app looks and performs just like the desktop version. It lets you view your songs by title, album, artist or genre, play your songs in normal, shuffle or repeat mode, and create and listen to playlists. You can even add songs to your collection by purchasing new music via the Amazon MP3 store.

Amazon also added unlimited music storage for both its free and paying customers. Customers who purchased a Cloud Drive subscription can upload as many MP3 and AAC files as they want. Free Cloud Drive users have unlimited storage for MP3 files purchased through the Amazon music store, but the upload of personal music is still limited by a 5 GB cap.

Amazon Cloud Player now supports the iPad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has officially served 15 billion downloads from its popular App Store, the company announced via press release this morning. With more than 200 million iOS device users around the world, that means that each customer has downloaded 75 apps on average. Of course, this makes Apple’s App Store the most popular of the lot…by a very wide margin.

Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, expressed gratitude to Apple’s customers in this morning’s press release, saying, “Thank you to all of our amazing developers who have filled it with over 425,000 of the coolest apps and to our over 200 million iOS users for surpassing 15 billion downloads.”

Congratulations to Apple and the App Store team. That’s quite an achievement.

Apple announces 15 billion App Store downloads served originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Wall Street Journal has served up another batch of iPhone rumors after its (ahem) daring claim earlier that the next iPhone will be “thinner and lighter” than the iPhone 4. While the iPhone 5 (or iPhone 4S) is rumored to feature an eight-megapixel camera and will almost certainly have the same A5 processor as the iPad 2, it’s otherwise likely to be broadly similar to the iPhone 4 in most respects.

According to “a person briefed on Apple’s product plans,” Apple initially planned to launch the next iPhone during the summer as it has in the past, but the device wasn’t ready and was pushed back to September. The same person claims Apple is working on a cheaper iPhone with an edge-to-edge screen. The most interesting rumor claims the 2012 iPhone will be a major redesign featuring “a new way of charging the phone.” 9to5 Mac theorizes this may be similar to the Pre’s Touchstone wireless charging, which uses inductive charging to top up the battery without needing to plug the phone in.

Thus far rumors about the iPhone 5 have been fairly inconsistent, and as we’re likely at least a year away from the sixth-generation iPhone’s launch, any rumors about it shouldn’t be taken too seriously at this point. Still, Apple made “cutting the cord” a hallmark feature of iOS 5 in terms of data syncing, and if the iPhone 6 does feature inductive charging, it may be the first iPhone you’ll never have to plug in.

2012 iPhone rumored to feature new charging method originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Two Worlds is an RPG series for consoles that’s had a few releases already, but this game for iOS only uses the same setting and assets as those titles. As you can tell from the title itself, it plays very differently from the third-person RPG. It’s a castle defense game of a sort, but rather than building towers, you build out your army and forces, tasking your little soldiers with fighting incoming waves of bad guys.

The game plays sort of like the very popular Battleheart, though instead of directly controlling your troops, you’re only placing them on the field in various spots available. You might put two melee fighters up front, for example, a priest behind them, and then two archers in the back to pump out ranged damage. As you fight, you win gold, and then can spend that gold to build more troops, upgrade the ones you’ve got, or even cast spells to heal your troops or attack the enemies.

The game is simple but really fun, and the polish is actually really impressive. Controls are not explained well, but the icons are clear enough that after a few rounds with the title, you will know what does what. And pitting two powered up soldiers and a hardcore fire mage against a wave of incoming baddies is very rewarding, once you’ve gotten to that point.

A recent upgrade added a few much needed tweaks, including Game Center integration and some various difficulty levels, and it also dropped the price of the game to just US $4.99. And that’s not a bad price at all — it’s a little more expensive than most iOS games, but this is a quality experience. There is a lite version, though, if you doubt the price, but for castle defense fans, those who enjoy the Two Worlds series, or just anyone who enjoys a good fantasy-based tower defense game, this one’s definitely worth checking out.

TUAW’s Daily iPhone App: Two Worlds II Castle Defense originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There may be a thousand great ideas in your mind that you would like to convert into an app – you’ll find it difficult to keep your spirit up after realizing that the development will cost a lot more money than you are able to bring in.

So what to do?

Reaching out for investors and trying to persuade them of your app idea? You could do that, but I assume you actually would rather prefer to concentrate on the product instead of running after the money. Wouldn’t it be more convenient to show your idea to the crowd and let literally anyone who likes your app concept put little and medium amounts of money in it? That’s what appbackr, the wholesale marketplace for app developers, has been made for.

The crowd wants to be part of it

The idea of crowdfunding in general hasn’t been invented by appbackr, of course – rather does every share market function on the concept of many people acquiring portions of something by their investments. However crowdfunding hasn’t been very common so far when it comes to more every day things which haven’t to do with the business world in a narrower sense. That’s what Kickstarter’s mission was when it was founded in 2009: offering people a place where they could raise funds from the crowd for any of their products in the fields of art, design, games, music and writing.

Apps need backrs

While Kickstarter covers a wide range of topics, appbackr is completely focusing on the mobile app market. Here’s how it works for you…

… being a developer:

1. Submit your app concept to appbackr, providing them with some basic information like screenshots / mock-ups and what the app will be about.
2. Above that you’ll have to define how much money has to be raised at least to fund the app development. It’s done within minutes.
3. As soon the submittal has been approved by appbackr, it goes live in appbackr’s marketplace section.
4. From now on any person who likes the idea of your app can buy a convenient number of copies at a wholesale price (persons who do this are called “backrs” what explains appbackr’s company name).
5. Depending on the amount of wholesale copies they’ve purchased backrs get the revenue of the corresponding amount of sales when the app is published and sells.
6. As soon as all backrs have got their return according to their number of wholesale copies purchased, all sales taking place afterwards are completely yours – until the end of time.

… being anyone who likes apps and wants to participate in their success:

1. Visit the appbackr marketplace to look for apps that are worth being funded.
2. On the app detail pages you’ll find all relevant questions answered: How much funding does this app need? What’s the minimum amount of money I have to spend? Who else is backing that app? And, probably most important: What will be my return on investment?
3. If you find the app worth being funded, you just buy your wholesale copies by PayPal. As long as the app’s reserve goal hasn’t been achieved, you won’t be charged.
4. You’ll receive your return when the app goes live and sells. Backrs are either in a queue one after another (based on which one purchased copies first, second, etc.), or they get paid simultaneously based on the percentage of their copies.

Well, that’s pretty much it! Got curious? We appreciate your thoughts on appbackr – just leave your comment here, visit us on appbackr.com, follow us on @appbackr oder like us on Facebook!

Torsten Weindl markets appbackr, a wholesale marketplace for app developers as well as for anyone who likes to fund an app and participate in its success. Before appbackr Torsten’s been running his own affiliate business in Germany since 2003 and worked as an Online Sales & Content Manager for Amazon.de.

You have probably noticed this in a few apps such as the Twitter app – you swipe a cell in a UITableView and it then disappears revealing new content.

I’ve come across a UITableView replacement that provides this functionality complete with animation effect so you can provide the impression that the user is uncovering hidden content.  Overall it is a very cool effect, and is great for those times when you only want the cell to a lead to a small amount of content rather than navigate to an entirely different view.

The library is TISwipeableTableView from Tom Irving and comes with a sample project demonstrating how implement the library.  It can be found on Github here:
https://github.com/thermogl/TISwipeableTableView

I can think of several places where this library would have been useful wish I’d found it earlier!

[via John Muchow]

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