Category: I-phone

TUAW’s Daily App: World Series of Poker Hold ’em Legend originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 08:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The other day, I was innocently about to update a couple of apps on my iPhone when a message interrupted me asking — well, forcing me — to read an updated agreement for the iTunes store. No problem, I think to myself, until I scroll down and see that the agreement is 56, count ’em, 56 iPhone screens long.

Now I’m a pretty careful guy about reading the fine print, but I was mobile, and I either had to accept the agreement, or not get my updates.

Apple had another great idea. It would email me the agreement.

Huh? What’s the advantage? It will take just as long to read as an email as it does on the App Store page.

Apple is proud of making things easy for users. This Kafkaesque approach to getting users information about an updated agreement would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Why not give the reader a chance to read a summary of the changes? After all, the only reason for the new agreement is that some changes were made.

Continue reading Got time to spare? Read the iTunes store agreement

Got time to spare? Read the iTunes store agreement originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kindle for Mac was one of the apps we’d hoped to see when the Mac App Store launched, and it looks like we didn’t have to wait long. Amazon’s Kindle for Mac software has landed on the Mac App Store and currently sits at the fourth-most downloaded free app.

Kindle for Mac has been available for a while, and it’s always been a free download. The significance of it showing up on the Mac App Store — and so soon — is it signals that major players are taking the Mac App Store seriously. Of course, being a free app, it costs Amazon virtually nothing to distribute it through the Mac App Store. And given that the Mac App Store will ship on all future Macs, it’s practically a no-brainer for Amazon to make the choice to put their Kindle app — and the nearly one million Kindle e-books — right in front of Mac users.

What remains to be seen is if other major developers like Microsoft and Adobe will also add their apps to the Mac App Store. If they do, they’ll be giving Apple a 30 percent cut of their profits. That is, unless Apple cuts a better deal with them to get their major apps on the store. What is even more intriguing to consider — and this is pure speculation on my part — is now that Kindle for Mac is so easily available to Mac users, might Apple see the Kindle app on the Mac App Store as a threat to iBooks on iOS? After all, the Kindle software beats iBooks if only because it allows you to read books across all your Apple devices; Apple’s iBooks currently excludes the Mac. Then again, I can’t image that a lot of people read e-books right on their computer screens anymore now that tablets offer a superior reading experience. Still, I’m sure there are some Apple laptop owners that would like to see Apple fill this last iBooks software void.

Kindle for Mac lands on the Mac App Store originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This intriguing (and shiny!) M.C. Escher case was seen in the CES booth of one Lux Mobile last week. The custom case was made with over 18,000 Swarovski crystals and was apparently made in the good old US of A, “one crystal at a time.” Pretty snazzy, no? Lux Mobile does carry this case in a standard non-crystal form (and we’re told it’s a popular model), but that’s not nearly as fun.

One more note here: the custom-made crystal case on display above costs a whopping $3000 — just about six times the value of the iPad it’s actually supposed to hold. Check out a few more of Lux’s blinged-out iDevice cases after the break, including a pink Ed Hardy monstrosity that would keep Jonathan Ive up at night.

Continue reading Seen at CES: Blinged-out iPhone and iPad cases

Seen at CES: Blinged-out iPhone and iPad cases originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 04:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last year, I caught a top 10 list somewhere that listed the top movies ever with twist endings. All but one of them I’d already seen, that one being the critically acclaimed Korean film Oldboy, directed by Chan-wook Park. Seeing as it was available for streaming on Netflix, I pulled it up that night. Suffice to say, it has one hell of a twist ending, and I’ll warn you now that it’s… uncomfortable.

Oldboy isn’t the only movie on Park’s resume, though it’s arguably his most recognized. The director is adding yet another film to his IMDb page, and this one has a different sort of twist involved: it was filmed entirely on an iPhone 4. The film, titled Paranmanjang (“life full of ups and downs” in Korean) clocks in at about 30 minutes and was made on a budget of only US$133,000. Park says he took advantage of the iPhone 4’s small size and low price (relative to the project) to easily utilize multiple iPhones for many different camera angles.

I wonder what iPhone apps Park made use of in the recording of his film, other than the native Camera app. Would there be any reason he’d want to not shoot natively and do the full post-processing later on larger gear?

Paranmanjang is set to hit theaters on January 27 in South Korea.

Oldboy director Chan-wook Park shoots new movie on iPhone 4 originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Like the idea of having your iPhone with you in your car but looking for an alternative to a Bluetooth transmitter or cabled hook-ups? You may want to check out the Oxygen Audio O Car stereo deck, which basically turns your iPhone itself into your car stereo. Brought to our attention by Gizmodo, the O Car deck allows users to control all the regular car stereo functions like volume and tuning along with their iTunes library, internet radio station apps, GPS navigation, Google maps — and anything else one uses their iPhone for. By clicking the iPhone into the dock/charger (for both landscape and portrait use), it becomes a slick part of your car’s dashboard. Sure beats the look of your regular old standard car stereo deck, that’s for sure.

Priced at US$349, the O Car has pre-amp outputs, FM/AM preset station options, puts out 4 X 55 watts of power (max) and supports the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 4. While it is seemingly a little pricey, it’s a neat implementation for in-car iPhone use. I have been using my iPhone to listen to Pandora streaming in the car via a wired connection, but my phone always ends up somewhere on the passenger-side floor when I take a corner too fast. Having the ability to click it in place right on the dash would be a welcome addition to my car. Of course, I could just install an in-dash iPad for even more features, but my Mini Cooper doesn’t really have that kind of space.

[via Gizmodo]

Oxygen Audio’s O Car deck turns your iPhone into a car stereo originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Your iPhone just got a little bit smarter thanks to some help from Google. As reported by MacStories, a new version of the Google Goggles component of the iPhone Google Mobile App is available for downloading, and this update does something pretty impressive — it can help you solve those pesky Sudoku puzzles you love to torture yourself with. By using Goggles to take a picture of the puzzle you are working on, you can now take all the hard work out of figuring out the answers.

In addition to the new Sudoku-solving abilities, this update also can scan any printed advertisement and return web results for whatever product or service the ad is for. Goggles can now recognize print ads “appearing in major U.S. magazines and newspapers from August 2010 onwards”, a major upgrade from the way it worked in the past when it just enabled users to search the web by taking pictures with their mobile device.

I have been using the Amazon barcode scanner and Red Laser on my iPhone for what seems like forever, and Google Goggles’ ability to scan and look up any ads I am interested in seems like another helpful feature to do my comparison shopping with.

Click on Read More to check out video of Google Goggles solving a Sudoku puzzle.

[via MacStories]

Continue reading Google Goggles for iPhone recognizes ads, solves Sudoku puzzles

Google Goggles for iPhone recognizes ads, solves Sudoku puzzles originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Way back in November, we featured a video from ThinkFast LLC starring the Sleeve360 for iPad. This case has an adjustable back hand strap that provides a comfortable one-handed hold on the iPad, and allows the iPad to rotate a full 360 degrees.

In the video, you can see an iPad spinning freely, and I’m sure that when we see the Sleeve360 at Macworld Expo, that’s how they’ll be attracting people to their booth. As I noted in the original review, this case is perfect for iPad users in the healthcare profession or any other business where it’s useful to have a way to one-hand an iPad while standing.

After a few months, the Sleeve360 is out of testing and into production, and ThinkFast was kind enough to send one for testing and to give away to a TUAW reader. Check out the review and find out how you can win a Sleeve360.

Continue reading TUAW takes Sleeve360 iPad case for a spin — literally

TUAW takes Sleeve360 iPad case for a spin — literally originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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On our way around last week’s CES ShowStoppers event (where we met up with none other than T-Pain), I was surprised to see that Real Media had a booth. They were big time back in the days when RealPlayer ruled Internet streaming, but these days, I haven’t seen much of them around. Turns out they’re still kicking, though — in addition to the streaming services, the company has been running an acquired arcade site called GameHouse (basically the successor to the old RealArcade), and that division has been releasing games on one of our favorite platforms: the iOS App Store.

Sure enough, the popular Sally’s Salon game is a GameHouse title, and Tiki Towers is another popular title from the company. We were shown two new iPad games from GameHouse — the first was called Bad Air Day, and it has a pretty nauseous premise. You play as a cartoon elevator bellhop in a hotel with a farting problem, and as your little guy cuts the cheese, it’s the player’s job to swipe the touchscreen and direct the green gas around. Aside from the bathroom premise, the game has some interesting almost physics-based gameplay, as you need to clear the gas past the customers and into a ceiling fan, or onto a fart fairy who actually likes the smell.

The other game we saw was Table Twister, a word game with rotating letter tiles on a table, that requires up to four players to drag the tiles off and create words as quickly as possible. Both were simple, but fun, and pretty polished — GameHouse seems to know what its doing after quite a bit of iOS experience.

“Games is a core business” for the company, the representative told us. As I said, I was surprised to see the old familiar Real logo (and those of us who counted on web streaming years ago can still see it spinning in our dreams and/or nightmares) at the show, but it’s interesting to know that the company is growing well on the iOS platform.

Real Media’s GameHouse division finds a home on the App Store originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intamac was probably one of the least consumer-facing appointments we had at last week’s CES conference in Las Vegas — the company develops and supports home monitoring systems, mostly for other businesses (security companies and telecommunications companies) rather than actual consumers. But it was still an interesting meeting, and if nothing else, showed us just how much the iPhone has changed all kinds of businesses around the world.

Intamac’s home monitoring systems are used for all kinds of purposes — not only does it have products that can monitor video or motion, but it’s developed ways to remotely monitor a home’s temperatures and energy usage as well, and use all of those devices for things like making sure an elderly relative is moving around OK, or that guests are staying out of restricted areas. The systems can even do things like text-to-speech, or contact you on email or social networks when something happens at the house.

All of these things are controlled via Intamac’s system, which was originally designed to work with a browser-based app. But recently, the company released an iPhone app, and the representative told me this was a sea change in the way their business has worked. Customers are using the iPhone app (and other smartphone apps) in droves, and what Intamac is seeing is that usage of the iPhone app is actually determining company strategy these days. “This is certainly driving us,” they said.

Continue reading How the iPhone has influnced Intamac’s connected home services

How the iPhone has influnced Intamac’s connected home services originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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XtremeMac had a suite at the Bellagio (my favorite hotel on the Strip, I think) for last week’s CES conference, and I stopped by to check out their latest lines of accessories and cases for the upcoming year. My favorite product in the booth is pictured above — it’s a speaker dock called the Tango TRX that features a removable dock that can be unattached from the sleek speaker. It’s Bluetooth-enabled for streaming audio directly from your iDevice, and there’s a free universal app that will let you control the speaker with a virtual remote.

The Tango TRX is shipping soon, and will be available for $179.99. The other dock they were showing was the Luna SST, a bedside stand with a detachable speaker that will actually send two alarms out to the two separated speakers (so a person on one side of the bed can supposedly wake up without bothering the other). The Luna also has an app that can be used as a clock face, or even set alarms or settings on the device while docked.

I also saw a new line of InCharge chargers — there are auto-based chargers coming that will allow you to not only charge your iDevice in the car, but also plug in an aux cable or charge another USB device. XtremeMac is also introducing an iPhone case called the InCharge Mobile, that serves as both a 2300 milliamp battery and a relatively thin case with a kickstand for just $79.99.

Finally, I was walked through some of the cases that XtremeMac offers, all pretty standard affairs. I was told (not the only time that week) that black is by far the number one color for case sales, and that while customers will say they want different colors and will judge a brand based on many colors, in the end they mostly choose black for their own phones. Cases are mostly a matter of taste, so it turned out that what I learned about case buying was more interesting than any of the actual cases on display there.

XtremeMac shows off new docks and chargers at CES 2011 originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An anonymous tipster who works at a Best Buy store let us know this morning that he was informed by his Apple rep that the Apple section of the computer department will be going through a transition sometime this Spring to allow more products to be displayed. At the same time, the stores will get a Genius Bar, up to this time a fixture only at Apple Stores.

If this is true, this marks the first time that Apple has expanded some of the trademark features of the Apple Stores to other retailers. This, and the earlier report today about a Mac setup section in Apple Stores, seem to mark a renewed commitment to customer service by Apple.

Rumor: Best Buy stores to add more Apple products, get Genius Bars originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While Apple has made great gains in the environmental friendliness of its products, manufacturing and facilities, the U.S. Green Building Council (GBC), a “non-profit community of leaders working to make green buildings available to everyone within a generation,” has identified its retail stores as ripe for improvement. Apple earned the group’s low “certified” ranking, but it wasn’t due to poor design or implementation.

The group’s tool is the Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design, or LEED standard, which measures a building’s performance across five aspects of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality. Unfortunately, Apple’s stores failed to qualify for certain points, contributing to its low ranking. For example:

• Sustainable sites: Apple won points for for site selection and density, but was unable to earn points for protecting habitats since Apple Stores don’t include a lawn, yard or other landscaping.
• Water efficiency: Again, Apple loses out on possible points towards innovative wastewater technology as its stores lack any significant landscaping.

Elsewhere in the test, Apple scored well in indoor environmental quality (its most compliant category) and poorly in the materials & resources and innovation & design process categories.

You’ll find more information on the LEED for retail standard here. Congratulations to Apple for receiving certification; hopefully there will be opportunities to gain a higher ranking next time.

Apple Stores certified by US Green Building Council…barely originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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On a day where the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down by US $38.20 and the Nasdaq composite is nearly flat, once again, AAPL is bucking the trend and going straight up. At this writing Apple stock is at $342.05, (a new intra-day high) and bouncing. So far the stock is up $5.93 or 1.76 percent on moderate volume. I’m sure that this is at least partially due to the anticipated Verizon (VZW) announcement tomorrow. Surprisingly enough, Verizon is about flat for the day trading at $36.01 or up only $0.08 so far. If the Verizon announcement goes as we all hope, I can see this continuing, but who knows?

So if you’ve got ’em, hold ’em.

Apple stock rises to over $342 intra-day originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Users of Apple’s iWork.com public beta received an email this morning with an “important service message” about new features and enhancements to the service.

In the email, Apple notes that it’s now possible to play back Keynote ’09 presentations on the web with videos and animations. Over 15 animations work as expected, and video, hyperlinks and audio are all usable in the presentations. This new capability provides a way for iWork.com users to display Keynote presentations in such a way that they can be viewed by anyone running the most recent version of Safari on a Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. On the iOS devices, swiping the screen advances slides. To see a demo of a Keynote ’09 presentation on the web, click here.

Apple also announced new publishing options for public sharing and private online storage of iWork ’09 documents. Documents can be uploaded for private storage and then accessed from anywhere, while documents can be shared on social networks using a public link created by iWork.com. For those who wish to embed presentations into websites or blogs, iWork.com will now create an embed code.

The service is still free of charge during the beta program, and it’s unknown whether Apple will charge for the service when it comes out of beta. It’s also uncertain if this new capability is part of a buildup to a rollout of the long-awaited iWork ’11.

iWork.com beta adds Keynote animations, presentation embedding originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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