Category: I-phone

GigaOm has posted some interesting numbers about cable providers’ apps that allow subscribers to watch TV right on their iPads.

Time Warner Cable stated on its earnings call that its TWCable TV app has been downloaded more than 360,000 times in just under a month. Comcast’s XFinity TV app (out since November) has been downloaded a whopping 1.5 million times and Cablevision’s Optimum app had 50,000 downloads in just five days.

All signs are pointing to the fact that cable subscribers love to be able to stream their shows to the iPad. Now of course there are those pesky lawsuits from content distributors who are attempting to keep their channels off the iPad apps, but thankfully some cooler heads are prevailing.

With the impressive download numbers above suggesting people love viewing their cable TV service on the iPad, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before commercials start appearing that highlight a company’s iPad app as a feature of choosing one cable company over another.

Cable TV iPad apps prove popular with customers originally appeared on TUAW on Sun, 01 May 2011 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Blurb is best known for self-publishing books, but a new iPhone app expands the company’s scope to mobile storytelling. Blurb Mobile for iPhone and iPod touch allows you to take photos, video and audio from the iPhone, including from apps such as Instagram, Hipstamatic and Photoshop Express, and turn them into a visual book that can be shared via email, Twitter or Facebook.

Blurb is a free download and allows you to have up to eight images, a 30-second audio clip per image and a 10-second video clip per story with seven themes to choose from. An in-app purchase of US$1.99 will net you up to 15 photos, a 2-minute audio clip per image and three video clips up to 30 seconds each per story along with an additional eight themes.

The app itself is easy to use, and it’s very stable. After creating the slideshow, you can upload it to Blurb’s site for sharing. A very nice feature is that you can make changes to the slideshow; the app will update it to the same location on Blurb’s site for you, so you do not have to change any shared URLs. There are a few minor drawbacks, mainly that the text size for captions is much too big and obscures a good bit of the image when posted online.

Check out this test slideshow from a recent trip to New York City to see the app in action.

Blurb app creates multimedia stories on iPhone originally appeared on TUAW on Sun, 01 May 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yesterday TechCrunch author Roi Carthy hailed a new app that he claims is a “must-have” for every iPhone data user: Onavo, a data shrinking app for iOS. But the obvious potential privacy issues with Onavo went right over his head.

Carthy goes so far as to suggest Onavo is “the very first app one should install” on an iPhone because of its remarkable ability to shrink your data and save you money on your wireless data bill.

But is there a catch to using Onavo? Yes.

Onavo Privacy

While Onavo’s ability to shrink your data is certainly impressive, remember that if something is too good to be true, it probably is, and Onavo is no exception.

While Onavo does a fantastic job of shrinking your data — my own tests showed that Onavo reduced my data usage as much as 75 percent in some apps — it comes at a cost.

There is no monetary cost to using Onavo, as it is currently free, but you use Onavo at the expense of your privacy. To use Onavo requires you to route all of your data and personal information through a proxy so that it can be compressed.

Are you prepared to trust that Onavo, a previously unheard-of company, will handle all of the information you manage on your iPhone — your mail, your passwords, your credit card numbers — in a secure and responsible manner?

Although Onavo states in its privacy policy that it “will not store any content that you upload or download, such as message text, filled-in forms, and data that a website retrieved,” there nevertheless remain privacy concerns with Onavo.

Onavo still reserves the right to use certain “data in a manner that is attributable to you for a period of 6 months and will anonymize the data thereafter.” And they “may also share personally identifiable information with companies or organizations connected, or affiliated with Onavo, such as subsidiaries, sister-companies and parent companies.”

Given the recent outrage over Apple’s use of location data, you would expect iPhone users to be similarly concerned about sharing so much of their personal information with a small, relatively unknown company like Onavo.

Are you willing to trust Onavo with all of your important data?

Onavo Data Shrinking App May Pose Privacy Concerns is a post from Apple iPhone Review.

French blog Consomac sent us a heads-up that they’ve done a bit of digging in the current developer preview, searching for further evidence of the suggested Find My Mac feature in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and the fabled iCloud domain name. What they found was fascinating.

In searching through Lion’s strings for references to Find My Mac, iCloud or MobileMe, they came up with the localized strings seen in the image: “Complete your Castle upgrade,” and “Click OK to open System Preferences and complete your upgrade from MobileMe to Castle.”

Now, as much as we’d love to see Apple’s email, calendar and cloud storage offering converted into an ABC romcedural starring the delightfully geeky Nathan Fillion, that might not go over so well with everyone. As Consomac’s post suggests, the likeliest explanation for this string set is that ‘Castle’ is a code name for the next-generation online service offering from Apple. Said online service, naturally, is what we suspect the iCloud domain will be used for in the next OS version — and chances are we’ll see it in action at WWDC.

Thanks to Sylvain for the tip.

Rumor: Evidence for a Castle in the ‘iCloud’ for Lion originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 30 Apr 2011 18:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The blogging crew here at TUAW headquarters frequently gets inspiration from emails that we receive from developers and hardware manufacturers. As a perfect example, the inbox the other morning contained some information about an upcoming iOS app that syncs to a Dashboard widget. Fellow blogger Erica Sadun said she wouldn’t touch the app, since “Dashboard causes me to break out in hives,” and Kelly Guimont asked “does anyone use the Dashboard for anything?”

That got a lively discussion going on behind the scenes about whether or not Dashboard is even relevant anymore. As an Apple consultant, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked the question “What’s that little speedometer icon for?” by new Mac owners who were afraid to click the Dashboard icon in the Dock. When I’ve shown those clients what Dashboard is all about, they seem underwhelmed. For me, I haven’t used Dashboard since I set up my 27″ iMac last year. Kelly mentioned that she has a delivery tracker and the Apple Remote Desktop widget installed, but that she “has yet to use” the latter. Most of the blogging team echoed those sentiments.

Continue reading Dashboard: Irrelevant in the age of iOS or gaining new life in Lion?

Dashboard: Irrelevant in the age of iOS or gaining new life in Lion? originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 30 Apr 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Typically, whenever something goes wrong with a company or its products and services, the company will try to head off a media free-for-all by releasing a brief statement that usually does only two things: it acknowledges that a problem exists and promises more information at a later date. But as Jason Snell at Macworld notes, Apple doesn’t work that way. He notes that Apple’s response to the so-called “locationgate” issue was almost identical to its reaction to “antennagate” last year.

Instead of doing what everyone expected them to do, which was acknowledge the location tracking issue and promise a fix, Apple let the media have a field day for a week before releasing its official statement. Meanwhile, as Apple silently investigated reports of users’ locations being stored on iOS devices and relatively easily accessed from their Macs after a backup, the media spent a week bellowing out various hysterical pronouncements with half-baked arguments supporting sensationalistic headlines, like the New Zealand Herald’s Warning: iPhones can spy on you. At the same time, lawsuits ensued, Senators piled on, and even South Park got in on the action.

Continue reading How Apple does damage control

How Apple does damage control originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AppleInsider is reporting that Apple will release new iMac models next Tuesday, May 3. Citing “people familiar with the matter” who have “continually provided accurate information,” AppleInsider states that the next iMacs will sport second-generation Intel Core i5/i7 chips and a Thunderbolt port. It could not be confirmed at this time if the new iMacs will feature changes to the display sizes.

AI also states that its sources said the early morning hours of May 3 at Apple Retail stores will be a “visual night” which means that the new iMacs should be on sale the day they are announced. “Visual night” is the term when Apple retail employees stay through the night and change merchandising and display planograms in the store in order to prepare a new product for sale. In this case, the older iMacs will be removed and replaced by the newly announced models.

AppleInsider’s sources seem to agree with earlier reports from Cnet that new iMacs will ship in April or May. The iMac line was last updated on July 27, 2010.

Rumor: Apple to release new iMacs on Tuesday, May 3 originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 30 Apr 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A member of the TUAW team recently received an email from RunKeeper saying that RunKeeper Free will no longer be supported. At first glance that might seem like fairly bad news, but it now appears that RunKeeper Pro has been re-branded as just plain “RunKeeper.” Contrary to earlier reports that the iOS app would be free only through January, RunKeeper’s price has stayed at $0 since December 30.

RunKeeper arrived on the App Store in January 2009 at a price of US$9.99. The app always maintained a great deal of popularity even at its higher-than-average price, mostly because it’s packed with well-thought-out features. RunKeeper is a cornerstone of my own fitness regime when I go for my daily bike rides, and between that app and Lose It! I’ve managed to drop 16 pounds since January. So popular was RunKeeper that it wound up as one of the top-grossing apps of 2010, so it’s curious to see the app now permanently fixed at free.

RunKeeper does offer RunKeeper Elite, a subscription-based service to expand the app and website’s functionality, so it’s possible the developers are counting on bringing in revenue solely through subscriptions from now on. We’ve reached out to RunKeeper for their comments on the app’s current status, but we haven’t heard back yet; if RunKeeper does give us additional info, we’ll either update this post or write a followup.

Meanwhile, the takeaway from all this is iOS users interested in improving their fitness now have a powerful, free tool at their disposal… and those of you still rocking RunKeeper Free on your iPhones now have no reason not to upgrade.

RunKeeper Pro goes free, RunKeeper Free goes bye-bye originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 30 Apr 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This is the latest installment in TUAW’s Top 3 Apps; click the link to see other interviews.

I ran into Axel in Las Vegas back in January, as CES and the Adult Entertainment Expo overlap. Yes, Axel is an adult video auteur, but that’s not all. The son of Lasse Braun, who helped legalize pornography in Europe, Axel has a Ph.D in psychology and is a member of MENSA.

He’s also a big fan of Apple products and was very excited to show off his white iPhone (this video was recorded in January, remember). He installed the white mod himself, which means he’s pretty handy with a screwdriver as well.

This video was recorded outside a very loud club (obviously), and the reason Axel forgets Shazam at the end? My iPhone crashed on the first, perfect take. We had to do multiple takes to get his 3 apps recorded, possibly a wider shot-to-screen ratio than some adult videographers are accustomed to.

Video is on the next page.

Axel’s top 3 apps?

Words with Friends

More Cowbell

Shazam

Continue reading Top 3 iPhone apps: director Axel Braun

Top 3 iPhone apps: director Axel Braun originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 30 Apr 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While GSM-iPhone owners have had the pleasure of an untethered jailbreak for the latest iOS iteration, 4.3.2, Verizon CDMA-iPhone owners haven’t been so lucky — until now.

Sn0wbreeze 2.6.1, a Windows-only utility brought to you by the folks from iH8sn0w, is now able to install an untethered jailbreak for the Verizon iPhone running iOS 4.2.7. But what about all those Mac-owning Verizon iPhone users who want in on the untethered action?

No problem — simply jailbreak with redsn0w as per normal, then head to Cydia and install the Verizon Untether for 4.2.7 from the http://cydia.pushfix.info repo. Quick, simple and now without the need to connect to your computer to reboot.

[via BlogsDNA]

Verizon iPhone untethered jailbreak now available for iOS 4.2.7 originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 30 Apr 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon has dropped the price of its top-selling MP3 tracks to $0.69, according to The Los Angeles Times. That’s a 20-cent drop from its previous $0.89 price. The move by the Internet retail giant is seen as an attempt to knock Apple from its perch as the top distributor of music in the world. Currently Apple’s iTunes store has a 70% market share, while Amazon is a distant second at 10%.

The LA Times article also highlights some facts about the effect of price changes to music in the iTunes store since last year. In 2010 Apple raised the prices for most new songs in the iTunes store to $1.29, up from $0.99. However, that price increase slowed music sales growth considerably.

In 2009 when the average music track cost $0.99, digital music sales grew 8% in one year. After the raise to $1.29 per track, digital music sales only grew a meager 1% in 2010. Of course, it’s not Apple to blame for the price rise, but the music studios who insisted on a higher per-track average price.

It’s unclear who is eating the cost of Amazon’s price reduction, but an NPD Group analyst questioned whether a $0.69 price for hot songs will actually increase Amazon’s market share, or if the price will just create a platform for “opportunistic cherry pickers.”

Amazon offering top-selling MP3 tracks for $0.69 originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 30 Apr 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Reuters reports that an International Trade Commission judge sided with Apple in a patent fight brought on by Elan Microelectronics Corp. Elan alleged that that Apple had infringed on one of its multitouch patents and used technology from the patent in the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Yesterday the ITC judge ruled in Apple’s favor, stating there was no violation of Elan’s patent. When the case began Elan had asked the judge to bar all iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches from being sold in the United States. Though this is a win for Apple, the judge’s decision will not be final until the full International Trade Commission decides to uphold or reject the decision in August.

ITC judge rules Apple did not violate Elan multitouch patent originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 30 Apr 2011 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hear that? It’s a big sigh of relief from Mac users everywhere. In the latest Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Preview Developer Build, Apple has scrapped the switch/slider tabs that were borrowed UI elements from iOS.

As you can see from the image above, Apple has chosen to move away from the Aqua interface of Snow Leopard (and previous versions of OS X) and moved towards a more toned-down appearance. When Lion Developer Preview 2 was released, Apple replaced aqua tabs with slider tabs. For example, in the second tab bar above, when the user clicked on “General” the white tab over “Privacy” would slide over to “General.” This UI element can be found in many app settings in iOS (think of the familiar “ON/OFF” switches).

Many developers felt the switch tabs were confusing for users, and it seems that Apple has listened to them. In the third build, Apple has gone back to the depressed tab functionality (the last tab bar in the image above). I guess Apple found out that just because something looks cool and works well in iOS doesn’t necessarily mean the UI element should be translated to the desktop.

Apple scraps iOS-like slider tabs in latest Mac OS X Lion build originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 30 Apr 2011 02:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MacRumors has discovered a new Safari feature that will compete with Instapaper and ReadItLater in the latest Mac OS X Lion Developer build. The feature, called Reading List, allows users to save web pages for later reading. It’s represented in the toolbar by the eyeglasses icon to the right. Currently the feature is inactive, but Apple does offer a description of it:

“Reading List lets you collect webpages and links for you to read later. To add the current page to your Reading List, click Add Page. You can also Shift-click a link to quickly add it to the list. To hide and show Reading List, click the Reading List icon (eyeglasses) in the bookmarks bar.”

As MacRumors points out, Apple’s implementation looks to be partly based on HTML/js, which off the bat wouldn’t allow for synchronization between devices. However, if Apple plans on adding the popular functions of services like Instapaper and ReadItLater into Safari, it’s very likely that they will add syncing features as Safari for Mac OS X and iOS are tightly integrated. The image below shows you how items will be displayed in your Reading List.

Mac OS X Lion feature ‘Reading List’ to compete with Instapaper and ReadItLater originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 30 Apr 2011 01:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Recently I have been using a relatively new cross platform  programming tool called Monkey (from Blitz Research, developers of popular programming environments Blitz Basic, Blitz Max, and Blitz 3D), and have been asked by a few people what I felt about the programming tool.  In particular I have been asked how it compares to other cross-platform programming SDKs supporting iOS — namely the Corona SDK.

First off, Monkey really is not so much a programming SDK like the Corona SDK as much as it is a code translator.  It does have it’s own programming language which is very similar to Blitz Max.  When you code with Monkey you have access to the iOS SDK directly and can exploit every feature, and library created for that SDK easily.

This probably sounds a little too good to be true as Monkey also supports Flash, HTML5, Xna, Windows, Windows Phone 7, Android and Mac programming. In some ways it is — as Monkey is somewhat rough around the edges at this stage.  I’m not sure if I would recommend anyone developing for iOS to use Monkey if they don’t already have an understanding of how to program with Xcode and the iOS SDK — at least at this stage — as you will have to create your own “glue code” to use features such as Game Center.  Monkey will likely never have official libraries for these “single platform” features which is why I recommend an understanding of using the official SDK.

If you want an in-depth comparison of Monkey vs. the Corona SDK you can check out this message board thread here.  In my opinion they are really different beasts.. Corona is more mature at this stage (making it easier to use, and as far as programming languages go I much prefer Lua to the BlitzMax type syntax used by Monkey), but Monkey has the ability to use anything within the iOS and Android SDKs along with more programming targets and the ability to export Xcode projects directly can be very useful.

You can check out Monkey on the official website here (you can try it out with the HTML5 target here — the total price including all other targets is currently $120 USD).

Read More:  iPhone Dev News

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