Category: I-phone

Making money with mobile healthcare applications takes much more effort than most developers expected. mHealth apps normally do not get into the app stores’ top ranking lists and thus do not receive high download numbers.

But there are working business models for the mHealth applications. Within the mobile health app category revenue won’t be generated through app stores. More and more mHealth app publishers have understood that they have to adapt their business model accordingly. Turning away from the “normal” pay-per-download models to practices like charging for medical service (call a doc) or sensor based models.

Sensor based business models seem to have particularly caught the attention of mHealth app publishers over the last 6 months. The idea behind this model is not to sell an app but to use the app to promote the sales of a sensor. Revenue will be generated outside the app store.

Here are some examples to highlight this trend.

• Health and Wellness Monitoring tools combine fitness-related equipment to track pulse, calories, running speed, heart rate, or use sensor-devices to monitor weight control, fetus observation and eye testing. Target groups for these products are fitness and health-conscious users aged mainly between 35 and 45 years.
• Chronic Condition Monitoring tools monitor health conditions like heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, asthma and obesity. They generate revenue from selling a sensor-device with a free application. Target groups are healthcare providers, medical personnel and chronically ill people between 30 and 50 years.
• Diagnosis Tools are mainly targeted at professionals, who increasingly demand more portable and easy-to-use devices for easier communication with patients and peers.
• Educational and Motivational Tools monitor habit patterns (e.g. sleep monitoring via app/device) or serve as useful didactic instruments for science education (e.g. portable microscopes).

Traditional health care service providers and especially medical device manufacturers should be aware of these trends and start to connect to the smartphone world.

To find a detailed overview of mHealth business models please see our Mobile Health Market Report 2010-2015.
Or take a look at more mobile healthcare research from research2guidance.

About research2guidance:

research2guidance is a Berlin-based market research company specializing in the mobile industry. The company’s service offerings include comprehensive market studies, as well as bespoke research and consultancy.

 

This is the “Soundplay” example. There are many ways to implement the sound in iPhone. I am going to show you the simplest way to play the sound.

Step 1: Open the Xcode and create a new Xcode project using View base application template. Give the application name “soundplay”. As shown in the figure below:

Step 2: Expand classes and notice Interface Builder created the SoundplayViewController.h and SoundplayViewController.m class for you. Expand Resources and notice the template generated a separate nib, SoundplayViewController.xib.

Step 3: In this application, we need to add two frameworks.So select Frameworks -> Add -> Existing Framework -> then select AVFoundation.framework and AudioToolbox.framework.

Step 4: We need to add sound files in the Resources folder. Give the name of the sound files “play.wav”.

Step 5: Open the SoundplayViewController.h file and we have to add IBOutlet UIButton *Soundstart to display the button and mention two IBAction to perform the given action. So make the following changes in the file.

Step 6: Double click the SoundplayViewController.xib file and after that make the following changes.
A) Open the view window, first drag the RoundRect Button from the library and place it to the view window and select the button.

B) Connect File’s Owner icon to two button and select “View”.
Once this is done, save the SoundplayViewController.xib file, close it and go back to the Xcode.

Step 7: Open the TableViewViewController.m file and make the following changes in the file.

Step 8: Now build and run the code and view the Output in the Simulator.

You can download source code from here SoundPlay

Hippo, birdie, two ewes,
Hippo, birdie, two ewes,
Hippo, BIRDie, two ew-wes,
Hippo, birdie, two ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwes!

Here we go again! It’s the first birthday of our own iPad, the little tablet that could. It’s seems like that little guy has just been around forever, but really it’s only been a year. Look how far we’ve come! In that time we’ve seen millions of stork deliveries make millions of people happy the world over. We even have a new sibling in the family, the iPad Mark II. Today we even celebrated with a slate of TUAW meetups worldwide to celebrate, and we’ll (hopefully) get reports from attendees (aside from me, that is).

Keep in mind that when you come for the show, you are invited to stay for the aftershow, and TUAWTF is never recorded for a very good reason.

Your calls and questions help us make the show the best it can be, otherwise I’m just talking to myself! To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or download the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the Talkshoe Web button on our profile page at 4 HI/7 PDT/10 pm EDT Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (yay for free cellphone weekend minutes!): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 — during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8.

If you’ve got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free X-Lite or Blink SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk to you tonight!

Photo by extraketchup | flickr cc

Talkcast tonight; 7PM PT/10PM ET: Happy Birthday iPad Edition! originally appeared on TUAW on Sun, 03 Apr 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s an old joke that goes, Why don’t analysts look out of the window in the mornings? So they’ll have something to do in the afternoon. Turns out, that’s wrong — they actually spend their mornings on the phone calling every Verizon store they can find (registration required).

OK, full disclosure: some journalists think that they and analysts do remarkably similar jobs, except that analysts have the cojones to add a few zeros to their bill at the end of the day. But it has to be admitted, calling 150 Verizon stores to ask, “Say, how’s that new HTC Thunderbolt selling compared to the iPhone?” takes, well, quite some time.

And writing up the conclusion, too, that must have taken a while. “61% of the stores that we contacted said they sold an equal amount of both phones, 11% said they sold more iPhones (principally in the Southeast) and 28% of stores had sold more ThunderBolts.”

The research was done by BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk, and he admits it’s not a very scientific study – the salespersons to whom he spoke “did not have access to actual sales figures and their response was based on their own experience.” But, he adds, “they were not much hesitation in the response [sic].”

So, a shiny new smartphone released two weeks ago is outselling one that’s been available for getting on for a year on AT&T and nearly three months on Verizon? Could it be that those who crave speed picked up the latest, greatest smartphone which runs on the faster network in preference to the older model? Well, 28% of those asked in an unscientific survey did, anyway. Perhaps.

[Via Business Insider]

HTC Thunderbolt vs. Verizon iPhone sales tales based on anecdotal evidence originally appeared on TUAW on Sun, 03 Apr 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Like most people, I thought the iPad Smart Cover was pretty cool, but it bothered me for two reasons. First, I think it’s too expensive, especially in leather, and second, it didn’t really protect the iPad, just the screen.

I knew it was a matter of time before there were options, and this week I was sent a Yoobao Products Executive Leather case from US distributor XenGadget. The case sells for US$34.95, which is a reasonable price given how the case works.

The case is real leather, protects both the back and front of the iPad 2, and even has the magnets that allow the iPad to shut down or turn on when the case is closed or opened. The case comes in three colors: black, red, and light brown. It has a built in kickstand, and you can orient the case for a low or steeper angle for use.

Continue reading A fully protective iPad 2 case that emulates the Apple Smart Cover

A fully protective iPad 2 case that emulates the Apple Smart Cover originally appeared on TUAW on Sun, 03 Apr 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It got mocked for its name, and for the “magical and revolutionary” marketing machine behind it. Critics called it “just a big iPod touch” and wondered what it might be good for. Customers, meanwhile… well, after a year of the original iPad and just three weeks of the iPad 2, the gadget that defined the tablet market of the 21st century shows no signs of slowing down.

Apple’s history of flat computing concepts goes back decades, but it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that the rumor grind really began to churn in earnest. Remember those patents about multitouch screen controls? Yes, that’s early 2006, and it almost looks like the guy’s got a Smart Cover on his tablet. Ah, the memories.

After the run-up to the January 2010 announcement and April launch, the iPad took on the world. Today, in honor of iPad Year One, you can take on your fellow TUAW readers at our first worldwide meetup! Come to your local 2pm meetup for some iPad multiplayer gaming, meet your fellow readers (and maybe a TUAW staffer or two), and an all-around good time. We’ll be doing some live streaming and even maybe a bit of swag. Hope to see you there!

Happy Birthday, iPad! Come out to celebrate originally appeared on TUAW on Sun, 03 Apr 2011 12:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Baseball season started this week, and things are already off to a rip-roaring start, with the Yankees in first place. My Cubs are, well, losing as I write this (Dempster’s grand slam on Friday didn’t help my fantasy baseball team, either). We’ve already reported that the terrific MLB apps for iPhone and iPad have been updated this year, but now Major League Baseball is offering an even better deal: buying either of the apps for iPhone or iPad (or Android, if you happen to have that kind of phone) gets you a free MLB.tv trial through the month of April courtesy of automotive sponsor Volvo.

I like the MLB.tv service. I didn’t go for it this year (at least, not yet), but I subscribed last year and really enjoyed watching my Cubs games out of market here in Los Angeles, as well as pulling up all of the HD game videos on my iPhone (and even the PS3). The only drawback of the service for most people is the price (it’s at least $99.99 for the entire year), so this trial is great. You basically get to watch a month of baseball games from all over the league for free.

If you haven’t been sold on the apps yet, maybe this free trial of the TV service will change your mind. Speaking of the apps, you can definitely use them without the video service; you still get updated scores, standings, and radio broadcasts without any extra subscription charge. You can find the MLB.com At Bat 11 apps on the App Store right now.

MLB offers free MLB.tv trial during April for buying app originally appeared on TUAW on Sun, 03 Apr 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has released its first iPad 2 television commercial. Titled “We Believe,” the ad has sentimental narration reminiscent of Apple’s old Think Different ads. The narrator states, “This is what we believe: Technology alone is not enough. Faster, thinner, lighter…those are all good things. But when technology gets out of the way, everything becomes more delightful…even magical. That’s when you leap forward. That’s when you end up with something like this,” while shots of the iPad playing video, reading books, typing an email, creating a Numbers document, and using GarageBand for iPad play in the background. The ad has been posted to Apple’s YouTube page and on Apple.com.

Apple airs first iPad 2 television commercial originally appeared on TUAW on Sun, 03 Apr 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the past we’ve given very positive reviews to both FLUD and Pulse as standalone apps. Both are innovative, attractive and just plain fun to use on the iPad and both have made the transition to iPhone.

The two readers are so similar to each other that it’s hard not to compare them and wonder which is the best. Today we’ll answer this question by tearing them both apart feature by feature to see which app is ultimately superior. Let’s get started!

Main Interface: Browsing Sources

The most obvious aspect of the two apps to compare is the interface. As I mentioned above, both attempted to be a new way to consume news and social content but in their attempts to be unique they actually have a lot of similarities, especially in their iPad versions. I think the necessary downsizing to the iPhone forced a little more differentiation in this area as the two development teams went about the task in different ways.

Pulse News Mini

Pulse News Mini looks almost exactly like it’s larger iPad brother, just scaled down. Each news source is separated into a horizontal strip which can be swiped to browse through.

News stories are presented as a small thumbnail with a title at the bottom. The text here is quite small to be sure but plenty large enough for my fairly young eyes to see without trouble, older audiences might have a different opinion. At max, you can view nine different stories at once in three different categories.

Your content in Pulse is separated into multiple customizable tabs, the default two being Top News and Social. You can switch tabs simply by tapping the next one in the menu or an arrow that appears at the bottom of the stack of sources within that tab.

FLUD Mobile

FLUD takes a more drastic approach in scaling down its news reader for the iPhone. On the iPad, FLUD is setup very similar to Pulse’s horizontal strips of content for each source. On the iPhone, each source is it’s own card that takes up the majority of the screen. Rather than scrolling down to browse the sources and across to browse the articles, here you swipe across to browse the sources and scroll down to browse the articles.

As with Pulse, each story is represented by a thumbnail and a title overlay, this time with the additional heart icon thrown in for adding favorites. The thumbnails are pretty small in card view but you can tap the fullscreen button to enlarge a particular source to take advantage of the entire screen. From here, article thumbnails are larger than that of pulse and presented in a two-wide format, which means you can view six at once (you can see eight titles if you have the scroll just right).

Apart from swiping in the card view to change sources, you can also filter the sources by topic (Business, Creative, etc.) by tapping on the categories button at the bottom of the screen.

Winner: FLUD

This one was tricky to judge. In all honesty, Pulse’s interface is far more efficient. It lets you view more stories from more sources in a smaller space. However, efficiency is not always equivalent to effectiveness.

After spending a lot of time in both apps, I found the FLUD interface to be much cleaner and more intuitive. The Pulse interface is still great, but it looks and feels cluttered by comparison. Sure, you can see more articles at once but that means the previews are a lot smaller than those in FLUD. There’s also much more vertical scrolling in FLUD, which will always feel more natural than horizontal scrolling.

Ultimately, it comes down to your preference. I liked the consistency of viewing articles within a given source but if you’re looking for a better way to quickly sift through all your feeds simultaneously, Pulse is definitely going to be a better option.

Viewing Articles

The article viewing in the two apps is very similar, with both bringing up a simple full-screen view of the article. However, the execution is just different enough to give one an edge over the other.

FLUD

The FLUD article view is the simpler of the two, showing only the contents of the article and a few buttons at the top. The design is super attractive and very typography-driven.

The default article view here is a simplified, clean version of the article. To view the actual web page containing the article, you tap the circle in the top menu and choose web view. The heart at the top allows you to “Love” the article or share it via Twitter, Facebook or email.

Pulse

Pulse again takes a little bit more of a cluttered route. Here you also see a simplified version of the article and can tap on the article title to view the original web page (it took me a while to figure that out).

Further, Pulse has a little dock overlay at the bottom of this screen that allows you to scroll through the source by thumbnail just like back on the home screen. Alongside this are a few social sharing icons, which are almost the same as in FLUD with the welcome addition of Instapaper.

Winner: Pulse

Here, Pulse’s slightly more cluttered approach pays off with some nice features. Both FLUD and Pulse allow you to simply swipe in article view to proceed to the next story, but only Pulse has the little hiding thumbnail feature, which is much better for intentional navigation.

However, I do think that the social icons are needlessly hiding article content in Pulse. These are positioned much better in FLUD and don’t eat into your article text. I wish the same was true of Pulse, but the cool thumbnail feature and the addition of Instapaper more than make up for it.

Adding Content

The final point of comparison will be the system in place for adding content to the apps. They’re both pretty good out of the box but the real potential for each can only be seen when you begin to populate them with the content that you read on a daily basis. Let’s start with FLUD.

FLUD

To edit content settings in FLUD, you tap the little wrench in the top right. This takes you to a screen where you can delete and rearrange current news sources. Tapping on the “Featured” tab brings up a quick list of FLUD-friendly feeds from various categories. This contains several popular sources such as Fast Company, Fortune, Fubiz, Gizmodo, Wired, ESPN, etc.

There’s also a search feature where you can locate all kinds of additional feeds and most importantly, Google Reader Integration, where you can quickly add your favorite RSS feeds that you’ve already worked hard to compile.

The sources you add display as cards just like the default sources, though they may or may not contain image previews. Also, those that aren’t featured sources can’t be manually categorized so that they respond to the filters. I added Six Revisions and Smashing Magazine, but these popped up in the “Other” category instead of the “Creative” category.

Pulse

With Pulse, you add content by tapping a blank page or the little “+” icon at the bottom of a populated page. This brings you to a tabbed screen just like we saw for FLUD with four options: Featured, Browse, Search and Google Reader. Pulse seems to have a ton of built-in sources to choose from, particularly under the “Browse” menu.

One great feature here is the ability to add links from your Facebook feed, at least it would’ve been great if I could’ve gotten it working (nothing but authentication errors). The iPad version of Pulse also throws in a feed containing links for your Twitter feed, but that’s strangely missing here. The social integration is my favorite part of the iPad app, too bad the iPhone version seems to have screwed it up so bad.

Beyond adding content, Pulse gives you a fantastic system for organizing it. Tapping the gear icon in the upper left brings you to an outline view of all your pages and their respective sources. Here you can rearrange your sources, delete any unwanted feeds, add to a page and even name your pages.

Winner: Pulse

The previous two categories were close calls and leave a lot of the choice up to personal preference, this choice is crystal clear though. Pulse kicks butt in the area of adding and rearranging the content. The implementation of the tabs system is genius and really allows you to make the app your own.

I would definitely like to see the Facebook bugs fixed and the addition of a Twitter feed, but FLUD doesn’t have either of these anyway so it’s hard to discount Pulse too much for them. Ultimately, you’re getting more options, sources and customization features in Pulse.

And the Winner Is…

The basic math here dictates a winner: Pulse. As I said above, the two apps were neck and neck with browsing feeds and reading articles, but Pulse blasted far ahead for the win in the area of customization.

To be honest, there is a lot that I like about FLUD better than Pulse. I like the app’s personality, the way it feels and looks. I also like using the card view to browse through sources. In the end though, FLUD is a designer-friendly casual news experience while Pulse is a powerhouse of content consumption opportunities.

The good news is that both apps are completely free so there’s really no reason not to use them both, but they are admittedly fairly redundant, even in their built-in content. If you have to pick one, and love customization as much as I do, download Pulse.

What Do You Think?

Now that you’ve seen my assessment of both apps, respond with your own feedback. Who do you think prevails on each of these three points and who comes out as the ultimate winner?

Point-by-point comparisons aside, also let us know the most important factor: which one do you really use more? Regardless of logical arguments this is really how we cast our votes for one app over the other!

The apps that we’ll discuss today are a hot topic. People on both sides of the argument have strong, outspoken opinions and each make good points.

Ultimately, the question boils down to whether or not it’s acceptable for people to build and distribute iPhone apps that are meant to facilitate the breaking of a law without getting caught by the police. Intrigued? Read on!

Criminal-Friendly Apps

News anchors all over the world simply love stories about the dangers of technology gone horribly out of control: cell phones cause cancer, Y2K will kill us all, Facebook addiction melts people’s brains; you know the sort. Normally such stories merit little else than a rolling of my eyes, but a recent surge or reports on one particular area has caught my attention and I believe it merits some discussion.

There is a crop of apps arising across devices, including on our own beloved iPhone, aimed at helping you avoid getting caught in an unlawful act. You can try to spin them however you want, but let’s be honest, the point of these apps is to show you where the cops are so you can run in the other direction.

To my knowledge, there are two categories of these. Interestingly enough, the first has been around for quite some time and didn’t seem nearly as controversial as the second. Perhaps for good reason, perhaps not. Let’s briefly check out these two categories.

It’s important to note that the distinction isn’t quite as clear as I make it below. In truth, these two categories overlap, with many of the apps below covering both areas. However, the marketing for the apps often leans to one side or the other.

Speed Traps and Red Lights

We would all love to say that we are good law abiding citizens who drive the speed limit at all times. This of course is a laughable statement. In Phoenix, where I live, the typical flow of traffic on major highways is consistently ten mph over the speed limit at any given time, unless there is an obvious police car or speed camera, in which case the average speed is usually ten mph under the limit.

Unfortunately, we tend to see the police as the problem or even the bad guys in the situation. Sure, we’re all breaking the law, but everyone seems to be doing just fine with it so there’s no need to bring in any enforcement. When I lived in St. Louis, it was common courtesy to flash your lights at oncoming drivers to inform them that you recently passed a police car taking radar. Rather than looking to make the roads safer, we considered ourselves better people for having the decency to help our fellow drivers not get caught exceeding the speed limit.

In the age of mobile technology, this same spirit of community has led to iPhone apps that allow you to report any speed trap sightings, whether it be a police officer on the side of the road with a radar gun or a fixed speed/red light camera that will photograph you in the act and mail you a ticket.

There are a plethora of these type of apps in the App Store. Here’s a quick list of just some of those that I found with a quick search:

• Trapster speed trap alerts
• NMobile: Speed Traps
• SpeedTraps Live
• iRadar USA: Offline Speed Traps and Cameras
• yongLocate: Speed Trap Alert
• RadarActive Speed Traps
• Phantom Alert
• Fuzz Alert Pro
• SpotACop Basic

Interestingly enough, most of the chatter that I heard when these apps starting hitting the scene was fairly positive. We all hate getting speeding tickets and here’s a nice new collection of apps that is truly aimed at helping people save money by avoiding these little incidents. The large majority of positive reviews for apps like Trapster proves that plenty of iPhone users out there think this is a great service.

DUI Checkpoints

The apps that have been getting a ton of media attention more recently are those that use the same user-driven cop-reporting methods above, but this time they’re for avoiding DUI checkpoints. This time, developers have hit a nerve.

We may try to justify our speeding habits with a quick, “everyone does it” speech, but most non-drunks are in agreement that drunk driving is a completely unacceptable danger to society. I personally felt immediately angered upon hearing of these apps. Not only are we suddenly helping dangerous drunk drivers not get caught punished before they kill someone, we’re actually giving them something to play with on their phones as they attempt to drive while intoxicated!

A few of the apps specifically aimed a DUI checkpoints include Buzzed, Tipsy, and Checkpointer.

Can DUI Apps Be Good?

Interestingly enough, the descriptions of the DUI checkpoint apps make it seem like the creators of these utilities either truly believe, or at least want you to believe, that they are trying to make the roads safer. They provide explicit warnings that you shouldn’t drive drunk and some, like the app shown above, even provide taxi service integration to encourage you to get a ride.

Supposedly, the hope is that you’ll see a DUI checkpoint and instead of taking a different route to get home, you’ll realize that drinking and driving is a bad idea and call a cab to bring you home.

I can’t say how most people use these apps because I simply don’t know, however, this does seem to be a little bit like a slight of hand that makes an inherently bad app seem not only acceptable, but downright morally commendable.

After all, without the app, you’re left thinking that there could be a DUI checkpoint anywhere. With the app, you get a false sense of security that as long as you avoid the little dots, there’s no reason not to drive home as long as you can manage to walk to your car without falling down too many times.

A Double Standard?

It’s definitely interesting to view the public’s perception of these two goals. Both are aimed at enabling citizens to break the law without getting caught, but for the most part, people seem to think DUI apps are evil and that speeding apps are useful. The media attention definitely seems to be tipped towards the DUI side.

Admittedly, I can’t deny that driving drunk is a worse offense than following the flow of traffic at a speed above that which is posted. I would like to point out though to anyone using a speed trap app while complaining about DUI apps, that the same arguments apply for both apps. If people decide that one should be banned, it would seem to me that both have to go.

Will These Apps Be Banned?

There is a widespread call for mobile app store owners, or even government officials, to remove DUI checkpoint apps. RIM has already given in to this pressure and removed one such app from their store.

Ultimately, I’m not so sure public databases that help us all break the law are the greatest things for society. But that doesn’t mean I think the apps should be banned by the government because I’m also not sure how it could (or if it should) be seen as illegal to share information as public as the obvious location of a police car. A slightly related precedent exists though in old school radar detectors, which have been banned in many states.

Further, at this point it seems that, like government officials, Apple is in a tight spot. They already receive lots of bad press for overzealous censoring, but now they’re being scolded for allowing apps like this to make it through the review process.

Which road should they take? If they ban the apps they’ll catch flack for cracking down on developers yet again and if they do nothing it looks like they’re encouraging drunk driving! This is definitely not the best PR position to be in. I imagine they’ll simply attempt to ignore the situation and plead ignorance for as long as possible.

What Can You Do?

For those of you who are appalled at the presence of these apps, I see two possible ways to put up a fight aside from the obvious filing of complaints. The first is passive, don’t download the apps. By doing this, you submit your vote to Apple and the developers that these apps aren’t good for the community. The same applies if you approve of them, every download tells Apple that their is another person who thinks the apps should be allowed.

The second, more devious idea that was recently suggested to me is to encourage your friends and family to download the apps and flood the systems with faulty claims. They all rely on users to report sightings, so if you want to make drunks avoid your neighborhood, simply lie and say that the place is buzzing with cops. It’s a temporary solution to be sure, but you’ll probably smile a lot while you do it.

What Do You Think?

Where do you weigh in on this situation? Do you think it’s bad to use an app to tell others about the presence of a speeding camera? If not, does that justify the same system being used for DUI checkpoints?

Also, based on your opinion, should Apple ban all police-spotting-related apps? And does the government have any business in this situation? We want to hear your opinions!

The Sims is a juggernaut in PC gaming and continues to hold the title of best-selling PC-based game throughout its three revisions over the past ten years. The Sims 3 is the current flagship game and iPhone app within EA’s The Sims division. That was nearly two years ago, but EA later followed that up by releasing a new version of two of the expansion packs released for PC and Mac.

The iPhone game is not a port of the PC game, but a different experience optimized for Apple’s mobile devices. We’ll look at the base game and it’s two expansions, World Adventures and Ambitions, in today’s review.

Create-a-Sim

The game starts with the familiar requirement to create a sim, the avatar you operate within the game. Each version of the game comes with a different selection of clothing options to outfit your sim with but depends on the theme of the game (vacations, for example, in World Adventures).

The tools included are robust and are essentially mobile versions of the majority of tools available in the powerful PC game. Lacking is the ability to use the Create-a-Style tools that The Sims 3 saw as a flagship feature. Instead, you are limited to a selection of basic colors for hair and other re-colourable elements.

The attire options are a bit lacking, but the variants of each kind of clothing item make up for it. This experience doesn’t match up to it’s PC counterpart, but this is expected at a fraction of the price. The app does bring across a few flagship features such as the trait system.

Customization is afundamental feature of The Sims 3 and EA’s attempts to integrate this into a mobile platform is modest. The clothing options are minuscule in comparison to the power of the PC efforts, but the integration of traits and persona are surprising.

Gameplay

Another missing feature is the seamless neighbourhood effect we see on the original game. This allows your sim to visit various locations around the virtual town without loading screens, a world away from the experience on mobile. If you want to move around Sunset Valley – the aforementioned town – you need to go to the pavement and view a loading screen first. This town has many different locations and changes depending on which version you’re playing. All of the locations are relevant to the theme of the game.

The execution of your sim’s everyday actions is very different in that everything seems dummed down. The options available don’t seem as plentiful as the equivalents on PC, but seem enough for the mobile arena.

One feature that’s very prominent is the wishes system, whereby your sim conveys personal requests to you to complete. Starting out, one of my sims asked me to “find a job using the computer” and I got the option to promise this as a goal. To complete this goal, all I needed to do was head over to my metaphorical (since at start I don’t have one, nor have the funds to buy one) computer and choose “Find a Job”.

You’re probably familiar with the general gameplay of The Sims franchise and the game just keeps going on like this. Eventually through the rabbit-hole careers your funds will increase, you’ll buy more things to interact with and you’ll meet more people.

Social encounters and interaction build up and you can develop relationships with non-playable sims in the game. This leads onto the ability to grow your sims’s social life and, in the Ambitions revision, produce offspring to extend your virtual ancestry.

World Adventures

World Adventures is the first expansion pack to The Sims 3 and takes your sims to new, foreign locations. The iPhone equivalent also boasts this theme, allowing sims to take flights to Egypt, China and France (the locations used in the PC version). Locations are not unlike the base game but are effectively skinned with new locals and places to visit. Tomb exploration at the various locations is not very complex with mini games replacing most of this process, a disappointing addition that takes away a large proportion of the fun on a desktop.

There are a handful of mini-games including one whereby you combat airsickness during your travel to one of the three locations. This isn’t as fun as any of the other elements, but, luckily, you can upgrade to a first class ticket to avoid it.

Unfortunately, while this is fun, it’s nothing compared to the base game’s functionality. It just feels like a skin over the top, complete with generic slideshow whilst “touring landmarks”.

Ambitions

Ambitions, as a PC game, was a much better received expansion pack by some diehard fans. As a mobile version, it also makes up for the lame efforts in World Adventures as, just as you’d expect, the Ambitions game expands on the career options available in the game.

Instead of living by yourself, with little interaction with the outside world, due to an incoherent lack of a full town, you can extend and breathe in the virtual world. A pleasing addition is the ability to generate a family through the production of offspring (a development on the relationship system).

Graphics

The Sims 3 doesn’t see the same level of powerful graphics that its counterpart enjoys. Instead, edges seem sharp and crude which is uncommon, even on some rival iPhone games. It’s not the best from a character/environment view. The mobile gaming space has changed a lot since the original game’s initial iteration so there’s space for improvement on EA’s part.

However, the user interface doesn’t endure this same, harsh graphical level and seems a lot more refined and enjoyable.

Closing Thoughts

The Sims 3 is a great time waster and a nicer alternative to it’s predecessor, The Sims 2 (not available on iPhone). The gameplay is not as plentiful as it’s PC counterpart but that is to be expected due to the graphical demands of it’s full blown equivalent.

The graphics seem to be the only other let down, which were acceptable back in 2009 but not so much as the mobile arena has expanded. Powerful devices warrant better graphics, which are just not evident in any of these three games.

Yet, for a few bucks, it’s a pleasing purchase which you’ll probably not regret. I recommend starting out with the original game. Budget iPhone-goers can be forgiven for skipping the minimal, paid upgrades.

Tickets to Apple’s 2011 Worldwide Developers Conference (the yearly event where Apple tells us about all the goodies coming up) recently went on sale, and within 10 hours, they were all gone. At $1,600 a pop, that’s definitely not bad news for Apple.

However, developers all over immediately began complaining that tickets shortages are more due to a poorly run event than a great one. As evidence, it seems many of the tickets went to scalpers, not serious attendees, and are now showing up on eBay and Craigslist for upwards of $4,000 in some cases!

In today’s poll, we want to hear your reaction to this event. Are you one of the would-be ticket buyers who now doesn’t get to go? Or are you at the other end of the spectrum and not at all interested in the conference? Let us know in the poll on the right and then leave a comment below if you have any ideas for how the event should be handled in the future.

As a result of what will always be remembered as the worst release week in the history of the App Store, try as we might we were unable to find a single new game worth playing for you. We’re very sorry.

On the bright side, there’s always the option of resorting to past titles or playing board games. We also recommend knitting if you need to relax.

…Yes, we’re kidding. Happy April Fool’s Day, everyone. Click through to have a look at some truly great new titles that we’ve discovered this week!

What Have You Been Playing?

We hope you enjoy checking some of these fun games out, and as always we’re eager to hear what you’ve been playing this week, so pop into the comments and let us know.

And, of course, if you’ve got any fun April Fools pranks you want to share as well, we won’t mind!

We ran into “Karaoke Wizard” and writer for Ars Technica Chris Foresman at Macworld Expo, and asked his favorite 3 iPhone apps. He told us the ones he uses the most:

Enjoy Sudoku

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Plants vs. Zombies

Each weekend we bring you the top 3 iPhone apps of people from around the world. Stay tuned next week to find out what people are using on their iPhones.

Top 3 iPhone apps: Chris Foresman originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 02 Apr 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple.pro has posted an image which it claims is the rear casing for the next iPod nano. The purported casing shows a hole which would house a rear facing camera. Apple.pro has a history with iPod nano rumors, as they were the first to post an image of a small touchscreen which later made its way into the sixth-generation iPod nano that debuted last fall.

As noted by MacRumors, when the sixth-generation iPod nano was unveiled, many loved its new form factor, but some lamented over the loss of the camera which was found in the fifth-generation iPod nano. If Apple.pro’s image is legitimate, it looks like Apple is trying to combine the best features of the two previous nanos into one. MacRumors does note that the camera hole would be obscured by the current clip on the iPod nano, but it’s likely that Apple will just narrow the clip to make way for an unobstructed camera view.

Rumor: Seventh-generation iPod nano to add rear-facing camera originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 02 Apr 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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