Category: I-phone

I actually picked up Skies of Glory a while back, but it wasn’t until I finally nabbed my iPhone 4 this weekend that I got to see it running in its full, well, glory. Skies of Glory is a World War II air combat simulator — it walks a nice line between simulation and arcade, as you don’t need to worry too much about controlling the plane (the iPhone’s accelerometer is used to great effect), but you’ll still need to keep your bearings to take out enemies. It’s challenging, but spending the time to get your plane lined up is actually pretty rewarding, not to mention that it’s awesome to see a fully implemented air combat sim on the iPhone.

The game’s model will probably rub some folks the wrong way, but there’s actually plenty of content for free. The game itself is a free download, and includes a tutorial mission, a first combat mission, and a set of dogfights, along with the ability to play multiplayer over WiFi. After that (and it will take you a good evening to finish that content), you can buy extra planes and mission packs with in-app purchases, just a couple of bucks each. Or if you want to go a more traditional route, you can buy a Battle of Britain app for US $6.99, which has planes and mission packs already included.

Either way, Skies of Glory is worth checking out. I wouldn’t say it rivals flight sims on other platforms — it doesn’t have the graphical glitz of a game like HAWX on consoles, and it definitely doesn’t match up to super professional flight sims on the PC. But on the iPhone, especially running at full speed on an iPhone 4, it’s pretty impressive.

TUAWTUAW’s Daily App: Skies of Glory originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Along with the desktop version of Ping, you can also utilize Apple’s new social network on your iPhone. It’s actually proven to be my favorite method of using the service.

However, Apple does make it a bit difficult. At this time, you can’t activate a Ping account from your phone — it must be done through iTunes 10. Otherwise, you’ll get the lovely message as seen in our screenshot gallery. Once you get Ping activated, it integrates nicely with the existing mobile iTunes.

Read on to see Ping in action on the iPhone, or check out the gallery.

TUAWiPhone 101: Using Ping on your iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One of the things that was widely rumored to appear but ultimately absent from Apple’s music event last week was an extension of song previews on the iTunes Store from their current 30 seconds to 60 or even 90 seconds. According to CNET, we can blame the Byzantine licensing arrangement of the music industry (surprise, surprise).

Apple had a deal worked out with Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), all four major record companies, and a contract with American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) that never limited preview lengths in the first place. Apparently that still wasn’t enough to increase preview lengths, because CNET says the National Music Publishers Association objected and basically said, “No, you have to make a deal with us, too.”

All of which just makes me wonder: how many different licensing associations does this cash cow industry need, anyway?

The music industry giants gave up a lot of their power (and money) to Apple in the mid-2000s, and it seems they’ve learned their lesson. Unfortunately for us users, this obstructionism means we end up losing out on neat features. As CNET notes, the current mini-battle over song previews is likely just a warmup for the headliner bout: Apple’s predicted music streaming service.

Music industry execs already tried to get Apple to pay “performance fees” for its 30-second song samples; I can imagine Steve Jobs’s response to that one was something like maniacal laughter followed by a hearty “No.” If Apple does finally manage to get 90-second previews pushed through, it could be a good sign for its music streaming aspirations.

[Via MacRumors]

TUAWExtended iTunes song previews delayed, licensing may be to blame originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 01:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s new social network, Ping, has been around for about a week now, and all of the pundits have had their chance at weighing in on what Apple got wrong and right. And what’s the result? Not bad, but not great — more than a million people joined the network in just 48 hours. That’s not terrible at all, but it’s a far cry from the millions of people who actually use iTunes, presumably every day. Apple’s success in this area, in other words, isn’t going to come easy.

The company has already had to put in a little more work. In addition to all of those members, the network was also hit by spam early on, with fake accounts for people like Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive, plus links that led off to contact-stealing scripts and other trouble like that. Apple has already cracked down on most of the offenders, but clearly it was an issue early on that they didn’t foresee.

The interface has already been updated a bit — Apple has added “back” and “forward” buttons to the service, to match the rest of the in-app browsers in iTunes. I still maintain that Ping won’t reach its full potential until you can actually “like” songs and albums in your personal library, so hopefully a few more updates and tweaks are on the way.

TUAWPing reaches a million, attacked by spam originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Drop that curling broom and get downloading! Reader Jacques writes in to let us know that the Canadian edition of the App Store has begun accepting iTunes gift cards as payment for app purchases, a policy change that seems to have quietly taken effect back in June of this year.

You may recall (or maybe not) that Canada’s iPhone-toting population was previously shut out of using gift cards for apps, although the reasons why aren’t entirely clear.

Congratulations, Canada, and enjoy.

TUAWIn Brief: Canadian App Store allows gift card purchases originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Blogger asymco did a little calculating from last week’s announcement numbers, and has hammered out a rough estimate of just how many of each iDevice are floating around the world today. According to Steve at last week’s event, there are 120 million iDevices total in the world, and we already knew from SEC filings that 59.6 million of those were iPhones. The current number of iPads in the hands of customers around world is 3.2 million, which (with estimates for the past month on both of those devices added in), means that there are likely 45.2 million iPod touches around. That’s 37.7% of iOS devices at large — not as big as it used to be, as the iPad’s arrival shook things up a bit, but still a very significant total.

It’s somewhat surprising to me that the touch is so popular, given that the iPhone and the iPad have gotten most of the press for iOS. But then again, it makes sense — the iPod touch, as Jobs himself joked during the event, is like an iPhone “without the contract,” and it’s the cheapest of all the devices. While it’s lacking a bit of functionality, iOS, the main selling point, is still there and running, so all of the super popular apps like Angry Birds and Doodle Jump are able to be bought and played. It makes a lot of sense that the iPod touch would be so popular — maybe what’s surprising is that Apple has waited until now to update it with the iPhone 4’s big features as well.

TUAWiPod touch makes up 38% of iDevices shipped originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The good news is, the Safari 5.0.2 update fixes a passel of bugs and outstanding security issues. The bad news: like all Safari updates, which replace the underlying Webkit framework used by many Mac OS X apps to render HTML, this 39 MB update requires a restart. There’s also a 4.1.2 update for users still on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

Apple’s notes on the update say that it “contains improvements to compatibility and security” including:

• Fixes an issue that could prevent users from submitting web forms
• Fixes an issue that could cause web content to display incorrectly when viewing a Google Image result with Flash 10.1 installed
• Establishes an encrypted, authenticated connection to the Safari Extensions Gallery

Thanks to Carlos, Joachim and David for sending this in.

TUAWSafari updated to 5.0.2 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone developers report that Apple’s Game Center has finally gone live. Formerly limited to a sandbox-only development environment, accounts and friends that were created for the sandbox will not apply to the live production system on Apple’s servers. Game Center is now prompting for new credentials — and developers are sharing usernames on Twitter. Older accounts and friends were wiped out yesterday to prepare for the live system.

The server is reportedly having some start-up issues including connectivity and crashing issues, but developers who were limited before are now able to create full accounts and full-on matchups. Currently Game Center is live in 4.1, which we expect to arrive soon. Developers can submit Game Center applications to iTunes Connect using the 4.1 GM seed.

Once the app and iOS 4.1 are available we’ll have a full review.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

TUAWGame Center is live… mostly originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Stop us if you’ve heard this one. Apple releases the iPhone 4, and the tremendous demand from customers keeps store shelves bare. That’s the case in Australia, where suppliers Telstra, Optus and Vodafone Hutchison Australia are struggling to keep up.

As online stores generate increasing backlogs, shipping times increase. As of this writing, most customers are being asked to wait between two and three weeks for their orders to arrive. It’s beginning to wear on shoppers and store owners alike. “Even one to two weeks, or up to three weeks, waiting time is not ideal,” said an unidentified representative from Vodafone Hutchison Australia.

Meanwhile, Apple is sending out fresh supplies weekly. “Shipments of the iPhone 4 continue to be made,” an Apple rep told The Australian. Supplies were strained in the US for quite a while after launch, but Apple seems to have finally caught up, as customers can now find iPhone 4s in Apple Stores and AT&T stores.

The whole thing reminds us of Monty Python’s Cheese Shop sketch, in which a hungry patron is trying to buy cheese from a shop that doesn’t have any:

Shop owner: “[Our cheese shop is] the finest in the district.”
Customer: “Explain the logic behind that conclusion.”
Shop owner: “Well, it’s so clean.”
Customer: “It’s certainly uncontaminated by cheese.”

Here’s hoping our friends down under get their cheese iPhone 4s soon.

[Via MacDailyNews]

TUAWAustralian carriers feel heavy burden from iPhone 4 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re feeling nostalgic and have US$250 burning a hole in your pocket, perhaps we’ve found the iPhone dock for you.

The iRetrophone Skyliner, designed by artist Scott Freeland, is a retro-style iPhone dock (compatible with 3G, 3GS, and iPhone 4) within a custom-designed, old-style desktop telephone. The iPhone connects via a standard connector within the dock, providing charging power and a working handset — yes, the handset works.

Combine this dock with the aptly-named iRetroPhone iPhone app, and your iPhone retro-izing is complete. But for $250? They lost me there.

[via iPhone Savior]

TUAWRetro new iPhone dock has pricey, film noir feel originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TUAWiWeb updated to 3.0.2 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’ve been having problems with the Apple MobileMe iDisk app, or even if you haven’t noticed anything weird, it’s a good idea to get the latest update. The newest version (1.21) fixes a problem opening Keynote files in some circumstances on the iPad. Rotated images now show in the correct orientation, and there are the usual unspecified ‘stability and performance improvements.’

Meanwhile, the Find My iPhone app has been bumped to version 1.01. The updated app supports the new iPod touch and fixes some translation issues in French, German and Japanese. There are also ‘various bug fixes.’

The apps work on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, so check the app store for the free updates pronto.

TUAWMobileMe iDisk app and Find My iPhone updated with bug fixes originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TUAWReview: Griffin Loop for the iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intuit is preparing to release QuickBooks 2011 for the Mac on September 27th with some great new features like multi-user support (finally!), mileage tracking, and more. We had a chance to explore this new version with William Lynes, QuickBooks product manager. It’s quite Mac-like, and I suspect it will be a welcome update for QuickBooks users.

The marquee feature of this update is multi-user support. “It was our number one request,” Lynes told us. Many customers have experienced the frustration of wanting to work in QuickBooks, only to be denied because another user has a certain file open. Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. Fortunately, QuickBooks 2011 fixes all of that.

TUAWQuickBooks 2011 to add multi-user support, more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I admit it. I’ve always thought that the Nike+ shoe sensor thing was kind of lame. Even though I actually do own the right shoes, I never thought it worth while to pick up the optional pedometer sensor just so I could take advantage of the built-in iPhone feature.

I know that there are people out there who really loved using the Nike+ features on their iPhone but I’ve much preferred using other tracking apps and skipping the shoe tie-in.

Now, several years after GPS debuted on the iPhone 3G, Nike has finally made the move to shoe-less positioning. For $1.99, you can pick up a copy of Nike+ GPS. The reviews on the iTunes site have been generally positive, but it’s clear that this is a slick yet limited application.

TUAWRun app updates: News on the Nike+, Runkeeper, and Runmeter fronts originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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