Category: I-phone

It’s not rare for Apple fanboys and girls to have more than one Apple device. Since the iPad appeared on the scene in April, there’s good chance that you’ll find an iPad and either an iPhone or an iPod in the well-equipped Apple home. So how do you keep all of those devices charged without turning your counter space into a nest of cabling?

XtremeMac has come to the rescue with the new InCharge Duo for iPad (US$59.99), a dual dock that not only provides the necessary 2.1 amps to charge the iPad, but can charge an iPhone or iPod with Dock Connector at the same time. Since your iPad has such good battery life, you can also use the InCharge Duo to charge up any combination of other iDevices while you’re using the iPad.

The InCharge Duo looks much nicer than some dual chargers I’ve seen and used. It’s a sleek dark grey unit with a tiny logo on the front and two small LEDs that provide charge status. It would be perfect for use in a bedroom, as the LEDs are dim enough that they won’t keep anyone but the most severe insomniac awake. Read on for details on how you can win one from TUAW.

TUAWTUAW review and giveaway: XtremeMac InCharge Duo for iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Yesterday I posted about how Apple had changed their review guidelines, and had decided to reverse their policy on third-party development tools.

Well, it didn’t take too long, and Adobe has already announced that they will be continuing development on their Flash CS5 iPhone packager. I know some Flash designers who were upset when they had purchased the CS5 edition for a small fortune just for iPhone support, and shortly thereafter found out that future support for the iPhone had ended.

Since this is only the beginning I think we can expect some more rapid application development tools to come out, I remember in the early days of the iPhone several had been announced that never came to fruition when Apple announced their disdain for third-party development tools.

If you don’t buy into Adobe supporting the iPhone packager (hey you’ve been fooled before) you can check out their official press release on the topic here:
Adobe Announces Continuous Development On Packager For iPhone

Don’t forget though, Apple announced they would no longer accept “amateur hour” apps which probably means 90% of the pre-existing flash games awaiting conversion won’t make it.

Thanks for reading, please share this using the buttons below!

©2010 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

.

Share and Enjoy:

While we all know the story of Psystar, the company that crashed and burned by loudly selling non-Apple Macintosh computers with OS X installed, a much quieter and more polite company named Quo Computer seems to be doing just fine. Their mission is to get computers that can run the Macintosh OS into as many hands as possible, and they go about it in a much more reasonable way.

Although their PR waxes eloquently about the virtues of using a Mac, Quo creates computers that can run any operating system, be it Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, or any combination of the three. In June of last year, they opened up a store located at 2401 West Main Street, Alhambra, California as a small mom and pop operation in a section of town that is going through revitalization. At the store, they offer classes including one on how to switch from a PC to a Mac. Their site speaks of getting free computers to low-income neighborhoods and offers to train teachers and work with them in order to get computers into more classrooms. They seem like nice people and not as litigious as some other company we know.

TUAWPsystar is dead. Long live Quo Computer originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 10 Sep 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

PopCap’s Dave Roberts spoke with TechFlash recently, and revealed that about 25% of the company’s profits are coming from the mobile division. You’d think that the iPhone would be a huge part of that (and it is), but it turns out the iPhone isn’t alone — Java/BREW versions of the games are also very popular for older wireless phones. In that sense, PopCap is a different iPhone game company — rather than depending on Apple and the App Store for profits, it’s a true cross-platform developer.

Roberts says the company is aiming for social gaming next — Zuma Blitz is going to be the next big push, and PopCap is very tuned in to the relationship between the iPhone and Facebook. “Our customers love it,” Roberts says about combining iPhone games with Facebook stats. “It is really sticky. It gets people excited about playing.” It’ll be interesting to see what PopCap does with Apple’s Game Center — presumably, they’ll include the functionality in their games sooner rather than later.

Finally, Roberts says that a lot of casual game companies have come and gone in mobile gaming, but PopCap has endured, mostly because they simply work hard on making great games, and selling those in as many places as possible. “We’ve made more money on mobile gaming than probably any other company except for EA, just by doing our thing,” he says. And as anyone who’s enjoyed a Plants vs. Zombies marathon will tell you, we’re glad they did.

TUAWPopCap making 25% of business in mobile space, sees future in social gaming originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Apparently there is an iPad game behind these crazy commercials, but we posted them mainly because they’re hilarious. The spot above will be familiar to anyone who grew up in the ’90s as a spoof of the old Crossfire commercials that took a mechanical board game way too seriously. You’d probably be forgiven for noticing that the game, Steve Young Football, which is an over the top wacky version of the sport itself, actually has a feature where you can network two iPads together for multiplayer. Pretty cool.

The second spot, after the break, is just as hilarious, this time spoofing the old My Buddy commercials (oh man, the memories). Steve Young Football is available for $4.99 on the iPad, and just 99 cents on the iPhone, and no matter what the game is like, it’s pretty much worth giving them the buck for the entertainment you’ll get from these videos.

[via Joystiq]

TUAWSteve Young Football for iPad ads spoof 90s commercials originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

GetGlue users who have iPads have a reason to get happy today — there’s an official GetGlue iPad app available in the App Store. We talked about the Glue social network and iPhone app when it debuted a few months ago, and Glue is now quite popular. It’s great to see the GetGlue app on the big screen now, and you can even get a special “iPader” sticker (one of the common bonuses for achievements in GetGlue) for using your iPad to check in.

The free app does an outstanding job of utilizing the extra real estate on the iPad display, and makes it much easier to follow what your friends are watching, reading, or thinking about. As noted in a phone call about GetGlue that I participated in yesterday, the new app allows for a more immersive conversation with friends.

In other GetGlue news, the company has reward partnerships in place with FOX, HBO, Showtime, PBS and Universal Pictures. The FOX deal is brand new, and there will be special rewards for fans of the popular Glee and Bones series. Later in the month, GetGlue and FOX will be providing incentives for fans to watch two new series premieres for Raising Hope and Lone Star.

HBO has placed a lot of special GetGlue posts on their website, and fans can get exclusive stickers for influencing friends or dropping comments. The network is planning on special incentives for the new Boardwalk Empire and Eastbound and Down series, encouraging users to get stickers for watching the trailers and checking in during each episode. PBS is planning on joining in on the fun when they provide special rewards to viewers of new mini-series this year who check in while watching the shows live.

It should be a fun fall TV season, and GetGlue is there to add to your enjoyment.

TUAWGetGlue goes iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

My “love” for the original Apple TV is well-documented. I purchased a 40 GB model not long after the device hit the market, and found it not to my liking. I hated how I had to slowly sync everything to the device, it had little space to begin with (yeah, I know I should have just swapped out the HD for a bigger model), it ran hot, and the UI was never up to Apple standards in my humble opinion.

So, with a new Apple TV on order for arrival later this month, I decided to take a look at the innards of the old device while also trying to recover a bunch of media that I had stored on the ATA drive in the old Apple TV. My idea was that I’d pop the unit open, take some pictures for posterity, disconnect the old drive, hook it up to my iMac with a cable that I use for recovering data from older machines, and then create a disk image of the content I had stored on this Apple TV. Follow along as I take this little geek journey — you might want to do this with your old Apple TV as well.

TUAWTearing apart an old Apple TV just for the heck of it originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

I recently expressed surprise that Apple has dipped into the world of HDR (high dynamic range) photography. It’s a great upgrade for the camera, and will help users get better pictures if they use the feature wisely and at the right time.

Megan Lavey has just done a nice summary of what the Apple HDR feature can do, and it’s worth a look. So what about the HDR apps that were already available for the iPhone? How does the Apple version stack up to what are probably the two best paid HDR apps? Has Apple made the paid apps irrelevant?

To test them all I took some pictures in challenging sunset lighting giving me bright skies and deep shadows. It’s the kind of mix of light and dark that HDR is designed to help with. I also captured some images in bright morning sunlight with moderate shadows.

TUAWApple HDR head to head with two top competitors originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

As a gamer and productivity fetishist, I’ve been anticipating EpicWin for iPhone since we first saw the app’s trailer. It aims to enhance the drudgery of a to-do list with elements of a fantasy role-playing game like World of Warcraft, thereby adding a bit of fun to your daily tasks. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now and, while it’s fun in a I’m-gaming-while-I-should-be-working way, EpicWin feels unfinished. The developers have promised (and delivered) new features via updates, but EpicWin still feels like an internal beta. Here’s what I found.

Choose your character

Like many fantasy role-playing games, the first thing you’ve got to do when launching EpicWin is create your character. There are five to choose from, all familiar to the genre: a dwarf, a warrior priestess, an “undead” skeleton warrior, a male warrior and, oddly enough, a living tree. Think of a happy-go-lucky Ent and you’ll get the idea. The first three are free; the others can be purchased in-game.

TUAWTUAW review: EpicWin for iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Isn’t it nice when siblings get along? Here’s an idea for using a dead, hollowed-out Newton Message Pad as an Phone case. Case hacker Charles Mangin has had success with other projects, like the Mac Plus G4, the Mac mini stuffed into an Apple Disk II floppy drive and the iNewt. So far he’s only completed a “sketch” of the project, but given his past work, we’re sure he can pull it off.

This mod will obviously add a lot of bulk to the iPhone (and destroy a Newt), but who cares? The whole point is the fun and marriage of the old and the new. Plus, there’s something oddly “right” about that image, no? Though it is funny to think Apple once released a stylus-based handheld, given Jobs’ current feeling about that mechanic.

We wish Charles good luck and hope he’ll ping us when the project is complete.

[Via RickMacMerc]

TUAWApple Newton to be reborn as iPhone case originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

For most iPhone owners, it seems like AT&T is deaf to our complaints about signal quality. It appears, however, that griping loudly and repeatedly to the company does have an effect.

I live in the suburbs south of Denver and my signal quality is pretty good. However, whenever my wife and I have gone to Colorado Rockies baseball games in the last few years (we’re season ticket holders), we’ve had awful service at the ballpark. Although the signal strength indicator would show five bars, it was impossible to do much of anything with our iPhones or iPads. Even trying to send out text messages would fail, and attempts to use the MLB At-Bat app in the ballpark were laughable to the point that I didn’t purchase the app for the 2010 season. What was even more frustrating is that AT&T is a ballpark advertiser at Coors Field, so you think they’d want their service to be excellent.

TUAWCase study: Griping about signal quality can produce results originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

This video has been around for quite a long time, but my guess is that you haven’t seen it. It posits how future computers will used for education and literacy. Watching it you’ll be taken by how much they got right and how other concepts got short shrift. One surprising thing is that it focuses almost totally on voice input and doesn’t mention the concept of a touch screen interface. Instead it displays a trackball-type device with four buttons that doesn’t presage multi-touch devices. A good deal of the footage was taken from 1987’s Knowledge Navigator video which got a lot more play at the time.

Project 2000 includes interviews with:

• Steve Wozniak on the start of computing in education and personal agents
• Diane Ravitch, the past director of the Encyclopedia Britannica, on using computers to motivate students and the challenges of adult literacy
• Alan Kay on computer simulation and visualization
• Alvin Toffler, most known as the author of Future Shock, on text translations
• Ray Bradbury on a variety of subjects

The most talked about topic is hypermedia, the most integrated concept in modern computing and a major building block of the World Wide Web which was six years old at the time, however the WWW isn’t mentioned. Oops my mistake. The World Wide Web starting with the Mosaic browser didn’t happen until 1993.

This is illuminative viewing and if you haven’t seen it, I’d recommend you do so. The differences between what the speakers saw as the future and how things turned out is quite enlightening.

Thanks Eric for sending this in.

TUAWFound Footage: Project 2000 from 1988 on the direction of computing originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Engadget reports that Apple has opened its AirPlay technology to a third party, BridgeCo. BridgeCo is the maker of JukeBlox, a network streaming technology that’s embedded into its partners’ audio products and equipment to allow wireless audio streaming. And, it just so happens, according to BridgeCo’s website, that the JukeBlox platform will play nicely with Apple’s AirPlay technology.

What does this mean in layman’s terms? It means that any audio equipment manufacturer that integrates BridgeCo’s JukeBlox technology will be able to stream music from iTunes or iOS devices running iOS 4.2. This is the first time Apple’s has opened up its iTunes software to a third party. In fact, CNBC reports that “BridgeCo worked with Apple on its AirPlay.”

According to a blog at BridgeCo’s website, it is currently partnered with audio equipment manufacturers DENON, iHome, JBL, and B&W, to name a few, with “many more coming.” Not so coincidently, these brands are also mentioned on Apple’s official AirPlay website as featured partners.

However, there’s one piece that’s left to fit into the puzzle. Marantz is listed as a featured partner on Apple’s official AirPlay website, but there is no mention of Marantz on BridgeCo’s partner list. Maybe it’s just a question of time. Regardless, all this wireless audio streaming talk certainly bodes well for getting your music around the house.

Update: Reader Leo notes in comments, and Dion via Twitter, that Marantz is a sister company of Denon; both are owned by D&M Holdings, along with other premium audio brands like McIntosh and Boston Acoustics.

TUAWWith AirPlay, Apple opens iTunes software to a 3rd party originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

This little video shows off what most of the augmented reality features we’ve seen so far look like; they’re cool, but not all that practical or useful. The idea is supposed to be an ad campaign for Panasonic’s 3D televisions, so they gave away special AR shirts and a free iPhone app. If you find one of the shirts in the real world, you can point the iPhone app at it, and instead of just the AR code, you’ll see an actual animated animal sticking its head out, framed in a Panasonic television.

It’s a cool effect, but of course, it’s totally cosmetic. You can’t actually interact with the animals at all (other than simply taking pictures through the viewfinder and sending them off on Twitter). And it’s an ad for a separate piece of tech, so it’s nothing to actually do with the iPhone or even Apple. But still, every experiment with AR gets us closer to using the technology for something really interesting.

[via Dvice]

TUAWPanasonic’s iPhone-powered augmented reality T-shirt originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments