Category: I-phone

Welcome to the TUAW Holiday Gift Guide! We’ve sorted the treasure from the junk and are serving up suggestions to make your holiday gift-giving a little easier.

Well, another holiday approaches, and it’s time for me to survey the field of apps that will help get you from here to there in a minimum of time and hassle.

I surveyed these apps last year, and some things have changed for the better. Prices are lower, there are more regional options (so you can buy a map that fits where you might be driving), and the addition of multi-tasking in iOS 4 makes a big difference to how useful these apps can be.

I think one of the biggest changes from last year is that the apps are now so solid and full featured that I can’t think of a compelling reason to buy any of the dedicated GPS devices. With so many people using smartphones, I suspect these all in one GPS navigators will suffer diminished sales and interest.

Continue reading TUAW Holiday Gift Guide: iPhone GPS apps

TUAW Holiday Gift Guide: iPhone GPS apps originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mac App Store has software developers optimistic originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Steve Jobs showed up on my doorstep today…and he’s a lot smaller in person. Okay, no, not the real Steve Jobs, but his incredible lifelike miniature. Many of you probably remember the big uproar a few weeks back that Apple had about M.I.C Gadget, a blog about Chinese life and subculture, manufacturing a doll in the great one’s likeness. And now I can see why. After some very generous Christmas elves just sent me one of the coveted Steve Jobs dolls, I’m struck by just how lifelike it is.

Everything from the detail on the iPhone in his hand to the crow’s feet around his eyes are eerily realistic. More so, the quality of the figurine is, well… Apple-level. The paint job is stunning. The Apple logo base is precisely carved and solid in the hand. Steve’s glasses are made of wire frame and removable. Even the pattern in his New Balance shoes resemble the ones he actually wears.

When the doll went on sale for US$79.99, many scoffed at its price. But given it was limited to 300 units and the quality of the craftsmanship ended up being quite high, the company wasn’t asking too much for it in my opinion. Too bad Apple quelled the doll and it never made it to open market. Something tells me the ones that did escape Hong Kong are going to be selling for premiums in the years to come as this is sure to be one of the hottest Apple collectibles ever.

I’ve added a gallery below that shows off some of the intricate details of the figurine.

Steve Jobs, in doll form originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When it comes to jailbreaking, there’s probably no name as familiar to the development community than that of Jay “saurik” Freeman. Jay is the brain behind the Cydia App Store, and this morning he gave the attendees of 360|MacDev an overview of his upcoming jailbreak store for Mac OS X, cycript, and Cydia Substrate.

Currently, Cydia Installer has been used by about 10% of all iPhone users, or about 10 million devices. There are well over 30,000 packages available for iOS, and a lot of open source material can be downloaded from Cydia. He refers to Cydia as a store for things that are not apps, but extensions of what iOS devices can do.

Freeman felt that the same type of store would be useful for Mac OS X devices; the result is a Mac Cydia, which will be available “within weeks.” With today’s news that the Mac App Store will not support in-app purchases, something that is critical to the freemium app model that is so successful in the iOS world, a Mac Cydia might be just the web store for a number of Mac developers.

Before discussing the Mac Cydia, however, Freeman spent quite a while taking Apple to task for their horrible developer documentation and for the restrictions that are common in the Apple development world. He foresees many of Apple’s restrictions moving to the Mac App Store.

Developers who are interested in getting their products into Mac Cydia were told to contact an employee at patrick at saurikit.com for further details.

360 MacDev: Jay “saurik” Freeman on the jailbreak store for Mac apps originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Can’t afford to get that special someone an iPad or a gift card good for the purchase of an iPad? Don’t have a grandma that can quilt you an iPhone? Well, if your gift recipient happens to like spending time in the kitchen, they may appreciate this iPad Cutting Board. Laser cut from a chunk of hardy beechwood, it’s covered with app icons for random food products — an egg, tea, cheese, bread, butter — and what looks like an icon for a pharmaceutical company. Guess the creator wants to make sure you take your vitamins, too!

The iPad Cutting Board is available for €15 (US $19.85), which is a far cry from the price of a real iPad. Granted it won’t time a Thanksgiving dinner for them, but a cook who loves gadgets would definitely appreciate the thought.

[via Epicurious]

iPad cutting board a good gift for foodies and techies alike originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After millions of downloads of their popular game Angry Birds and a plan to take over the gaming world, Rovio is looking to get a little more from users; they now want to implement a mobile payment system inside the game itself. In an effort to grab a few more bucks from impulsive buyers/gamers they are launching Bad Piggy Bank, which with just a touch of a button will let customers make in-app game purchases without a credit card — the price of anything they buy will just be added to their monthly cell phone bill.

Rovio is based in Helsinki, Finland and is initially putting the payment system in place on Android with Elisa, the country’s biggest telecom provider, but expects to roll the service out worldwide sometime in 2011. While Apple allows users to upgrade ‘in-app’ from free to paid versions and the buying and unlocking of special features, I do question if they would ever allow something like Bad Piggy Bank to purchase other Rovio games without a link going back to the App Store.

However, I can say that if it were in place I would probably have bought every version of Angry Birds by now, since I cannot seem to stop playing it.

Angry Birds developers to launch ‘Bad Piggy Bank’ mobile payment system originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Some bands are bigger than others, it’s true, but stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before: a major British act, long absent from the iTunes store, has appeared with its full catalog for sale. No, it’s not The Beatles — it’s the delicious sounds of Johnny Marr and Morrissey in The Smiths.

If you came of age in the 1980s, The Smiths might be just as important to your musical upbringing as The Beatles were for a previous generation of rock fans. For me, this is a great chance to retire those ancient cassette copies of Meat is Murder and Strangeways, Here We Come.

While a greatest-hits compilation from The Smiths was previously available, the band’s Ping page announced the rest of the releases earlier this week.

Thanks to reader Eric for the heads-up.

iTunes welcomes The Smiths originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bad news for members of the newspaper industry that expect to use digital media to save their print editions. A recent survey from the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) shows that iPad owners are more likely to read news on their iPad than a printed newspaper. RJI surveyed over 1,600 iPad owners and asked them about their usage habits, especially as it concerns reading and news consumption.

Not unexpectedly, 84.4% of iPad owners primarily use their iPad to follow breaking news and current events. As a result, newspaper subscriptions, once the staple of the newspaper industry, are being cannibalized by the iPad. Slightly more than 30% of iPad owners do not subscribe to a newspaper, preferring to consume news on their tablet device. Of the 931 respondents that have a newspaper subscription and read an hour’s worth of news each day on their iPad, more than half (58.1%) intend to cancel their newspaper subscriptions within six months. A growing 10.7% have already canceled their subscription and have switched to iPad-only reading.

This is not the first time we have seen similar headlines. James Murdoch, head of News Corp’s Asian/European operations, confirmed that iPhone and iPad apps were “much more cannibalistic” than websites when it came to newspaper subscriptions. This deleterious effect is seen even at big-name websites like the Wall Street Journal and the Times of London.

While this trend may ultimately curtail print editions, it also creates a new distribution method for those newspapers willing to move out of their comfort zone. Several large newspapers, including the WSJ, The New York TImes, and the London-based City A.M., are making that transition and have released iPad apps. Those that have not embraced the iPad may be encouraged to adopt this medium when Apple rolls out support for subscription-based pricing, a feature expected to debut in iOS 4.3.

[Via Macworld]

Survey finds iPad negatively affecting print media originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With the launch of the Mac App Store about a month away, many developers are preparing their apps for distribution in a whole new way. However, they’re finding that the store won’t offer all of the features of its iOS counterpart, at least in its initial release. Specifically, Game Center and in-app purchases aren’t supported.

9to5 Mac reports that Apple has informed developers of the news with two curt messages: “Note: In app purchases are not available for Mac OS X apps” and “Note: Game Center is not available for Mac OS X apps.” That’s too bad, as in-app purchases could have offered interesting revenue options for Mac OS X developers, and it would be fun to have games of Flight Control HD for the Mac (our review here), for example, count towards one’s Game Center rankings.

Still, this doesn’t mean those features will never be a part of the Mac App Store. We’d rather see Apple exercise the restraint necessary to get the initial release right than cram in everything.

Mac App Store won’t support Game Center, in-app purchases originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome back to another edition of our weekly Q & A column, Ask TUAW. Each week this column will appear with questions and answers. If you have questions for the following week’s column, drop them in the comments, and I will do my best to get to them.

When asking a question, please include which machine you’re using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we’ll assume you’re running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don’t specify). If you’re asking an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad question, be sure to note which model and version of iOS you have.

For this week we’ve got a new batch of questions about how to stream video from a Mac, proper laptop cleaning, finding applications easily, Mac maintenance and more.

Julie asks

I’m new to the Mac after switching from Windows. Are there any maintenance tasks like defragmenting the hard drive I should perform to keep it running smoothly?

Continue reading Ask TUAW: MacBook Pro cleaning, Mac maintenance, streaming video and more

Ask TUAW: MacBook Pro cleaning, Mac maintenance, streaming video and more originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Folks over at College Humor has launched their own app for the iPad which is now available in the AppStore for free. This official CollegeHumor app for iPad makes is very convenient to access their massive library of original sketches, cartoons, and series.

CollegeHumor App Description

With the official iPad CollegeHumor app, you’ll never be more than a few taps away from our massive library of original sketches, cartoons, and series. Stay up to date by checking out the newest videos or catch up with some of the all-time most popular. With loads of fresh videos every week, we guarantee this app is dock worthy.

Download CollegeHumor App for iPad

You can download CollegeHumor app for iPad from the AppStore for free. [iTunes Link]

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Just a quick post to share a sneak peek video of Glyph Designer. Glyph Designer is another game development tool following in the foot steps of Particle Designer. A tool that I’ve used for some time and that I describe in my book is Hiero. This is a Java based tool that allows you to […]

If your a regular reader of the blog you’ll know that a good friend of mine, Tom Bradley, is my partner in developing tools such as Particle Designer and Glyph Designer. He was also a technical reviewer on my book. Well, he has been burning the midnight oil and completed his first action game, Snowtel, […]

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The undeniable success of mainstream social networks like Facebook and Twitter have inspired many of us to come up with our own concepts for online communities. As of now, there are a variety of ways that one can go about building their own niche community website. Many of these are hosted services like Ning, which are typically very easy to use but limited in features and customization options.

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360|MacDev is underway in Denver, Colorado, and it’s starting with a bang. While many developer conferences begin with a boring, bland, and somewhat cookie-cutter keynote, this morning’s keynote was a NSFW — but definitely memorable — talk laced with dirty jokes by Mike Lee (at right).

Mike has done a lot of coding on some of the more popular software for Mac and iOS, including Delicious Library and Tap Tap Revenge, and is famous for his insightful talks on software design.

The talk, entitled “Dirty Jokes and Code,” was more than just the jokes, though. Through applicable off-color jokes, Lee essentially taught the attendees a lot of the important facets of how to produce apps that are incredibly useful and usable for buyers. Whether it was a rant against overuse of splash screens, a warning about errors in localizing software, or how one little issue can cause a user to go ballistic, Lee got his point across to the attendees.

Continue reading 360 MacDev Keynote: Mike Lee’s “Dirty Jokes and Code”

360 MacDev Keynote: Mike Lee’s “Dirty Jokes and Code” originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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