Category: I-phone

The app was a standalone Webkit browser. When used to visit a site with Flash video, the app presents a thumbnail. When tapped, the video is transcoded on Skyfire’s servers to HTML5 and streamed to the device. Note that Flash games won’t work and Hulu has blocked Skyfire, as it wants people to sign up for the $10/mo. Hulu Plus.

During its short stint of availability, Skyfire became the third most-downloaded paid app. Good luck getting the server demand worked out. You can watch a video of the app after the break.

Ed. note: Download Squad got a hands-on with the app before the servers turned to molten slag and the app was pulled.

Continue reading Skyfire pulls iPhone app from App Store due to overloaded servers

Skyfire pulls iPhone app from App Store due to overloaded servers originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 04 Nov 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s good news for owners of the new MacBook Air. Boy Genius Report has reportedly obtained a memo stating that a fix is coming for that machine’s display issues.

Several users report that colors are fading light to dark repeatedly after the machine wakes from sleep. Apple has not acknowledged the issue formally, but the memo obtained by BGR suggests that its engineers are aware of it and working on a fix. Expect to see it in a forthcoming software update.

If this issue has been driving you batty, hold tight. We’ll let you know when a software update is available. Speaking of the MacBook Air’s display, it’s quite a piece of work, as TechRestore recently discovered.

[Via AppleInsider]

Report: Fix for MacBook Air displays coming originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 04 Nov 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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That didn’t take long. Shortly after the Apple TV was successfully jailbroken, someone has gotten Plex up and running. For now, it’s quite buggy (see a video after the break) and limited to video, which means no photos or music. But hey, it’s running!

Plex is a media center for the Mac, and pulls content from several online sources, like Netflix, Hulu and Major League Baseball as well as local iTunes and iPhoto libraries.

About a week ago, we saw a 3rd party app for the jailbroken Apple TV that displayed the weather. Let us say good work to the industrious folks who are getting this done.

[Via 9to5 Mac]

Continue reading Plex running on a jailbroken Apple TV

Plex running on a jailbroken Apple TV originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 04 Nov 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has hired Elliott Peters, a senior vice president and head of digital legal affairs at Warner Music Group, as the “…corporate attorney director for iTunes Europe and Internet services, based in Luxembourg, where he will manage the European legal team for iTunes and MobileMe services,” according to a WMG internal memo obtained by Billboard.

The memo, sent by Paul Robinson, WMG General Counsel, states that “…Elliott [Peters] has had a hand in almost every major WMG digital deal” since becoming the company’s “first digital lawyer“ in 2003, though Peters has been with WMG since 2000.

With Peters’ reported experience, and we can only assume, strong connections and relations with the major music label players, it’s not too far a stretch of the imagination to suggest that he will be a key asset to Apple in the love-hate relationship that seems to exists between Apple and the major record companies and labels.

One of the first things that comes to mind is the supposed cloud-based iTunes, which has been steadily rumored for quite some time now. Could Peters be set to play a key role in helping Apple get a subscription-based, music streaming service off the ground?

Regardless, Peters is due to start working for Apple next month.

For the full memo, click here.

[via MacDailyNews]

Warner Music Group executive joins Apple originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 04 Nov 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s only been half a year since its introduction, but the iPad has already become a major player in the field of assistive technology, helping disabled people communicate. A number of studies are underway (and many more are in the planning stages) to offer much-needed data on the effectiveness of the iPad and other iOS devices in this area. A few days ago, The New York Times ran a piece about the implications of the iPad to the disabled community.

The Times tells the story of Owen Cain, a victim of a degenerative disease called spinal muscular atrophy. He acquired the disease as an infant, and there is no known cure for it. Although his parents bought him a number of computer devices to make his life more pleasant, they were all failures — until he met the iPad.

With his arms in slings, Owen was able to touch an icon on an iPad and run Gravitarium, an inexpensive app that plays soothing music while displaying colorful stars. It doesn’t take lot of strength to swipe a page or tap a button on the iPad — certainly less than if a device had hard buttons. Now, Owen is using Proloquo2Go to communicate, reading books such as Alice for the iPad (shown in the video after the break), and his repertoire of app-enabled abilities is growing. Interacting with the iPad has improved Owen’s life to a large degree.

Continue reading iPads bring accessibility to the disabled at a far lower cost

iPads bring accessibility to the disabled at a far lower cost originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 04 Nov 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A beta version of Skype 5.0 for Mac has been released, and it includes not only some new features like group video chat, but also becomes more Mac-like by putting all of the information and controls in one window. The existing Skype client scatters windows hither and yon; one for chat, one for a list of contacts, and so on.

The Mac Address Book is now integrated with Skype, so you no longer have to keep a separate contact list for the app. Adding new contacts is much simpler than before, requiring just a search and single click to include them in your list of Skype users. To dial people directly or send SMS messages, there’s now a floating dial pad that appears when needed. A new sidebar in the all-in-one window features your contacts and contact groups, as well as providing access to recent conversations.

But the biggest feature so far is group video chat. All participants in a Skype group video chat need to have Skype 5.0 or greater for Mac or Windows running on their machine. It appears that you can chat with up to three other people. There’s also a “push to talk” feature that can be enabled to require you to push a certain key combination (Control-Option-Command-Up Arrow) to speak. When you remove your fingers, you’re automatically muted. Frankly, I think they could have used something a bit more simple than that key combo.

A video discussing these features is on the next page.

Continue reading Skype 5.0 for Mac Beta is now available — includes group video chat

Skype 5.0 for Mac Beta is now available — includes group video chat originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 04 Nov 2010 10:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When talking iPad with enterprise users, one of my favorite show-off apps for the iPad is MeLLmo’s Roambi. It’s a little hard to explain what it does, but once they see it in action, they know they want it. Roambi (free on the App Store, pro/enterprise plans available) gives you instant, easy dashboards for your data on your iPad, and it lets you share your numbers in striking visual form.

With the free Roambi plan, you can quickly import your Excel or CSV data into the app and pick from four dashboard displays: CataList, PieView, SuperList, and Trends. In the pro version (US$99/user per year via the Google Apps Marketplace) you can add connections to Salesforce CRM and Google Docs for live online updating; the ES3 enterprise version gives access to high-end business intelligence systems from SAP and IBM, along with device-lock security and remote data wipe options to protect your key info. The enterprise version also provides access to Flash/browser versions of the same dashboard displays, in case you need to show your stuff sans iPad.

The graphs and dashboards themselves are a visual treat. You can easily drill down into your data with a few touches, or bring up a trendline or sparkline to make a clear point. If you’ve got a view you want to return to quickly, you can bookmark it for instant access; you can also easily send screenshots of a particular view.

It’s not an app for everyone, but if your day includes explaining numbers to others, you need to give Roambi a shot. It’s also available in a free iPhone edition.

MeLLmo’s Roambi delivers business intelligence on the go originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 04 Nov 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At its core, Ponk plays a lot like Dr. Mario or Tetris. You have different colored balls falling from the top of the screen, and you’ve got to line them up with balls of the same color to make them disappear and score points. But Ponk takes its touchscreen placement very seriously — touch not only comes into play as you actually maneuver the pieces into place, but you can also do things like freeze the screen to move already-dropped balls around. Something like that would be tough to do with traditional controls, but on a touchscreen, you’re just dragging and dropping.

There are three different gameplay modes to mess around with, and Game Center achievements and leaderboards to fight on as well. For just 99 cents on the App Store, Ponk is a satisfying puzzle/action game with a nice full feature set. Give it a shot if you want to try something new with the old dropping-block genre.

TUAW’s Daily App: Ponk originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 04 Nov 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yes, we know, another day and another iPhone/Verizon rumor — but this one comes with a photo and a rather interesting backstory.

Here come the puzzle pieces. Verizon has been beefing up on staffing recently, including what’s believed to be a near doubling of the service staff assigned to handle number porting requests. All around the iPhone-lovin’ world, the expectation is that we’ll hear an announcement before the end of the year with a hardware launch in early 2011. (Compare and contrast Big Red’s stance on Windows Phone 7.)

Now we hear from a VZW insider that training notices have been sent out to customer service personnel describing an “Iconic Device” that will be available for pre-order on November 9, 2010. The device is expected to be in very high demand, and the training goes on to cover how to handle the pre-orders as they come in. Our source even came through with the internal display you see above.

Update: Reader CJ points out that the Motorola Droid Pro is scheduled to be available for pre-order on the same day, with a similar Iconic Device identifier. The screens might be referring to the same device launch, but they might not.

Is it a mortal lock? No, but Apple does like to announce things on Tuesdays. We’ll see.

Verizon iPhone announcement rumored to hit on November 9 originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 03 Nov 2010 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Commentator Andy Ihnatko took the stage at this week’s MacTech conference here in Los Angeles today to give the conference keynote. In his talk, Ihnatko spoke about the upcoming new version of OS X, Lion, and specifically three different features of it.

First, he talked about the Mac App Store, and what he thought would be the outcome of Apple bringing an App Store system to its desktop platform. Then, he spoke about what he called “unitasking,” and how focusing on just one task at a time both changes the way computers work and the way we do, and finally he mentioned Apple’s changing hardware, and how the new MacBook Air embodies Apple’s ongoing curve in hardware creation and production.

First up was Ihnatko’s opinion on the Mac App Store so far, and he said that though he’d been “trying to get upset about it,” he actually liked the idea. “The good news,” he said, is that “Apple really doesn’t care about” developers. Instead, it cares about users, and from users’ point of view, the Mac App Store is actually a great idea. Though developers may have issues with it, Ihnatko said that anything that allows more than the around 200,000 (he estimated) Mac users out of 40 million to actually purchase and use apps will end up being a good thing.

Continue reading MacTech 2010: Andy Ihnatko on the coming of Lion

MacTech 2010: Andy Ihnatko on the coming of Lion originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 03 Nov 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has apparently notified developers that it is now accepting submissions for the upcoming Mac App Store. An email to devs from Apple has links on how to set up an iTunes Connect account and the associated certificates. Developers can send apps in right now to have them ready for the approval process for the new Mac App Store. There’s no word yet on which developers are jumping on this, but I’m sure we’ll find out when the store goes live soon which developers took advantage of this opportunity right away.

And when we say soon, we mean it — Apple originally said that developers would be able to start submitting apps in November, and, true to their word, here we are on November 3rd. Apple also said that the Mac App Store would be live within 90 days from the Back to the Mac event a couple of weeks ago, so there’s every reason to think it should be live within the next few months. Stay tuned — this should be fun.

Apple now accepting submissions for Mac App Store originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 03 Nov 2010 20:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair is right, 2011 is going to be the year an avalanche of iPhones and iPads sweep the globe. Blair released a forecast on Tuesday predicting that Apple will sell 100 million iPhones in 2011. He’s basing those numbers on the fact that Apple thinks it will have a 100% increase in YOY iPhone sales in 2011. Since Apple produced 48-50 million iPhones in 2010, that means a production run and supposed sell-through rate of 100 million iPhones in 2011. “While this number can change and adjust downward or upward based on demand,” Blair said, “we believe it is incredibly bullish that Apple feels it is possible that they could see nearly 100% year over year growth for iPhone in 2011 as this would mean that exiting 2011, Apple would have approximately 10% share in the global handset market.”

Blair also believes that Apple will sell 48 million iPads in 2011. His prediction is based on supply chain checks that Apple plans to produce 45-38 million iPads in 2011 (up from 13.5 million in 2010). Blair believes that the second generation iPad — which he speculates will have a FaceTime camera and thinner, unibody form function — will drive the explosive iPad growth.

Analyst: Apple to sell 100 million iPhones, 48 million iPads in 2011 originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 03 Nov 2010 21:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By now it’s no secret that the iPhone 3G’s performance suffered tremendously following the iOS 4 update. Soon after widespread reports of stuttering, freezing, and crashing, Apple said it would “look into” the problem. A month went by with no relief for iPhone 3G performance issues, but Steve Jobs himself promised a software update was coming “soon” — and “soon” turned out to be a couple weeks later. With the release of iOS 4.1, the iPhone 3G’s performance issues under iOS 4 finally disappeared.

Those two months or so were hell for iPhone 3G owners, but reports (and our own personal experiences) indicate that the 4.1 update resolved most, if not all performance issues. That’s not good enough for California resident Bianca Wofford, however, who is filing a class action lawsuit against Apple over the iPhone 3G’s performance. Her claim? “In essence, Apple knowingly and intentionally released what it called a system software ‘upgrade’ that, in fact, made hundreds of thousands of the Third Generation iPhones (sic) that were exclusively tethered to AT&T data plans ‘useless’ for their intended purpose.”

Let’s ignore for the moment the lawsuit’s issue with terminology (the iPhone 3G is the second-generation iPhone) and concentrate instead on its core claim. Wofford’s lawsuit alleges that Apple knowingly and intentionally released an OS update that would render the iPhone 3G and 3GS “useless” in order to pump up sales of the new iPhone 4. That particular theory got thrown around quite a bit on the internet during the early weeks of the iPhone 3G under iOS 4 debacle, but does the claim hold up? Well, maybe… but only if you think Apple’s “evil geniuses” have intellects comparable to Wile E. Coyote’s.

For more juicy bits from the law brief itself (hat tip to Wired), grab your tinfoil and click “Read More.”

Continue reading Lawsuit pending over iPhone 3G’s iOS 4 performance issues

Lawsuit pending over iPhone 3G’s iOS 4 performance issues originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 03 Nov 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony’s Free Realms MMO is now available on the Mac. It was promised that it would be earlier this year, and sure enough, you can now download and play the free-to-play online game for yourself on Apple’s platform. The port is courtesy of Transgaming, but the game’s not all that tasking, so you should be good to go. And while the aesthetic of the game is pretty kid-friendly, it’s actually a lot of fun — besides the usual combat and leveling, you can do things like kart racing and crafting throughout the world as well.

And speaking of games on the Mac, Civ V has gotten a ship date for the Mac. It will be coming to our favorite platform on November 23rd, according to Inside Mac Games. So you can pretty much tell your family and friends to leave you alone for Thanksgiving — there will be no time for turkey or cranberry sauce when China and the Germans need conquering. Good luck with that one!

Free Realms now available for Mac, Civ V gets a date originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 03 Nov 2010 19:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The New York Times for iPad app has received a much-needed update. The first version, introduced in the middle of October, replaced the older free Editor’s Choice app, which only had a small subset of Times content. This new version is free but only temporarily, as the newspaper intends to start charging sometime in 2011.

I’ve been using the full content version since it came out. It crashed frequently, enough to make the app unappealing, and ultimately unusable. Today’s update is not plagued with the aggravating crashes of version 1, but it is still far from perfect.

It’s great to have the full content of the paper, along with slide shows and videos, but there is absolutely no search function. That, I think, is a pretty important feature when you are dishing out all this content. As before, the app is slow to start. In my tests, it takes from 6-10 seconds before it displays anything at all. I realize it is pre-loading a lot of content, but I think the programmers need to work on getting the app to respond faster. There are some other strange issues. While reading page 3 of a section the app jumped back to page 1 while I wasn’t even touching the screen. Huh?

While reading this morning’s election news, I was struck that the same images and slide shows appeared on many pages; I even saw the same image twice on one page. No self-respecting editor would put a newspaper together that way, and there are surely some clever options the developers can use to stop this visual overkill. I like the Times, and I wish them well with this app, but it must improve before they start charging people. Check the gallery to see the superfluous graphics.

New York Times iPad app gets bug fix but still somewhat flaky originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 03 Nov 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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