If I had to make a list of the top ten features I thought would be included in the iOS 4.1 update, HDR photography would not have been on it. HDR really came out of the blue, and one developer told me he was ‘shocked’ to hear that the feature was included in the next iPhone update.

Let’s back up a minute. HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography is a method where pictures are taken at different exposures and combined into one image. Since the iPhone and most monitors can’t really display the full light to dark range of the image, the HDR software tone maps the picture, so you see details in the shadows and don’t blow out the highlights, such as a bright sky. HDR images are controversial. Some people hate them, and think it produces garish pictures. Others love the flexibility to shoot pictures in challenging lighting conditions.

I like to use HDR at times when shooting landscapes, and recently documented a photo trek where I was able to use HDR apps on the iPhone.

TUAWiOS 4.1 with HDR built-in comes as a shock to HDR app developers originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Billboard has announced that it will be giving awards out for iOS music apps (of all things). At the Music App Summit on October 5th, Billboard will choose winning iOS apps in six different categories, from Best Artist App and Best Music Creation App to Best Branded Music App. You can find the full list of nominees after the break, and there are some recognizable names on there, including a Phish touring app, TUAW favorite I am T-Pain, and the now Disney-owned Tap Tap Revenge.

Winners will be announced at the summit, and they will be selected by a panel of judges that includes (not kidding about this) MC Hammer and a bunch of CEOs and marketing folks. It seems silly (and let’s face it… it is), but Billboard is a big deal in the music industry, and this means that the dinosaur-like recording giants are at least starting to notice the effect that apps have on artist profiles. Plus, it’s good to see LaDiDa get a little more attention — I liked that one.

TUAWBillboard nominates music app awards originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you have a secret love affair with shoulder padded t-shirts (that you wear around the house when no one’s looking), and you instinctively roll up your sleeves when you put on your favourite blazer jacket (and don’t get why people look at you funny), then here’s an app for you.

Back in June Akai Professional released SynthStation for the iPhone / iPod touch, and we got excited. Very excited. Why? Because we love synths, especially when they are the old school type (cue Terminator soundtrack). And it just so happens to be that Akai has got a rather large name for itself when it comes to synths, especially the old school type. So we decided to take a closer look. You know, any opportunity to lay down some ominous beats over a sea of warm pulsating analog synth.

SynthStation is an all-in-one mobile music creation setup. It comprises of three virtual analog synths sonically tailored for melodies, chords and bass lines respectively. To go with your texture, there’s a comprehensive and customizable drum kit, too. Add some awesome sounding synth effects, a sequencer, on the fly input and tweaking, a mixer to pull it all together and you’ve got yourself a package that Thom Yorke may even appreciate for his next solo project.

TUAWCount The Beats: Akai brings the analog synth to your iPhone, and more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A few months ago, Twitter announced that they had acquired Tweetie and the web (I refuse to use the word “blogosphere” because it is a stupid word) exploded with predictions that they had effectively killed off the market for 3rd party Twitter applications by offering a free alternative.

With the release of Twitter as a universal app that now includes iPad support (read the official announcement here) I feel confident that the reports of the death of 3rd party Twitter applications have been greatly exaggerated.

The UI for Twitter for iPad is, without question, unlike any other Twitter application that we’ve seen. Opinions around the TUAW offices differ on whether this difference is “awesome” or “an abomination.” I definitely range towards the latter end of the scale, and judging by most of the comments of people that I follow on Twitter, the initial reaction is definitely one of “too busy” and “over designed.”

This is in sharp contrast to Twitterrific, which just released a major update for the iPad and iPhone where the Iconfactory made dramatic simplifications to the app, while retaining the most important features for the most users. (Craig Hockenberry talked about those changes here.)

TUAWOfficial Twitter app updated for iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has jumped into the social media pool with both feet by introducing Ping to iTunes 10. Since this is brand-new, we’ll show you how to set it up and start pinging your friends. Whatever that means.

After installing iTunes 10, you’ll see the Ping button. Click it to enter your Apple ID and begin the process of creating your profile. It’ll pull the information stored on the account, like name and address, but fortunately you can edit it. You can add a photo to represent yourself as well. There are many PhotoBooth-style filters available, so have fun playing around.

Note that your photo won’t go live until Apple approves it. Mine took a good 20 minutes to show up, and others have said the same thing. Just be patient, it’ll get there.

Click below to read more.

TUAWiTunes 101: How to set up Ping originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You saw them in the keynote today, now watch them again in the privacy of your own home: the new iPod touch and iPod nano television ads are live on Apple.com and on Apple’s YouTube channel. “All kinds of fun,” indeed.

(If you’re a fan of NBC’s Chuck, like some of us are, you may appreciate that Cake’s Short Skirt/Long Jacket — the show’s theme song — is featured in the new nano ad.)

[via MacRumors]

TUAWNew iPod commercials now on Apple.com and YouTube originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Have you been waiting all day for iTunes 10 to go live? It finally has. Although the download page remains a little spotty, this direct link seems to work fine for downloading. We’re installing our version right now and will update with fun iTunes facts as we discover them.

Happy Pinging, everyone!

Update: Windows link to supplement the OS X one above. And an x64 link as well. (Thank you to everyone pitching in in the comments!)

Update: See our gallery of installation and setup screenshots.

p.s. Hey, we’re on Ping! Come share our awful musical tastes (Erica Sadun, Steven Sande, Victor Agreda, Dave Caolo, etc)! And let us share yours!

TUAWiTunes 10. It lives originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sometimes you roll along, having a pretty good day… and sometimes, you just want a giant worm to rise up out of the ground and destroy everything. Super Mega Worm is for that second type of day. (You’ll have to find something else for the first — Doodle Jump, perhaps?) It’s a game where you control a gigantic worm on a 2D field. You use a slider (or the accelerometer) to direct it through the soil and up onto the surface of the Earth, where puny little humans await their inevitable destruction. The game is funny in a morbid way; you end up cheering for the little worm as it grows (and learns new abilities) over time, and eventually, you’ll find yourself reveling in the destruction of the human race.

Quality pixelated graphics and excellent sounds help immersion a lot, and the control scheme is surprisingly fitting for the kind of movement that the worm does. There’s even a little mini-game in jumping off of various vehicles into the atmosphere and exploring the game field in both directions. Super Mega Worm isn’t really a title for the faint of heart; even though the graphics are pretty retro, things get gory fast. But if you’ve ever found yourself laughing at or cheering for the monster in a horror movie, Super Mega Worm will probably dig its way into your free time. The game is US$2.99 on the App Store right now.

TUAWTUAW’s Daily App: Super Mega Worm originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The public servants at the FCC are earning their keep today, favoring us with several PDFs full of lovely, detailed images of both the internal and external design of the soon-to-ship iPod touch.

Check out the gallery below for several of the pictures, and consider how much nicer it will be when you actually have the new hotness in hand.

[via Engadget, their video hands-on of the new iPod is after the break]

TUAWFCC dissects the new iPod touch originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Booyah has released an iPhone and iPod touch version of its Facebook game, InCrowd, and it’s now available on the App Store. The app, like the very popular MyTown, uses location check-ins to create a game around social networking. But unlike MyTown, this app was originally released as a Facebook game. Booyah originally started InCrowd as its first Facebook venture, but it’s now bringing the game back to the iPhone, where it’s presumably more comfortable at development. But the Facebook and iPhone versions work together (in fact, you need a Facebook account to play it), so check-ins on either platform can be seen in the app.

As for the game itself, it’s exactly the kind of thing that’s very popular among the huge tween audience for Facebook games — there’s a cartoonish avatar that can interact with friends socially, and checking-in to certain places earns the avatars popularity and status. There’s a microtransaction element as well — interacting uses energy, and if you don’t want to wait for a refresh, you can spend 99 cents to get more. Standard social gaming stuff, although Booyah is pretty good at putting it together by now.

Booyah remains a company to watch in the social gaming space — it doesn’t seem to have had quite the success it wanted on Facebook, but the company is flexible enough to switch a game like this over to Apple’s platform without skipping a beat. We’ll have to wait and see whether or not the free app gains MyTown’s level of adoption, however.

TUAWBooyah releases InCrowd for iPhone and iPod touch originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In case you’re just getting off of work, just waking up, or your plane just landed after a 15-hour flight, here’s all of today’s Apple news condensed into one quick post:

• Steve Jobs looked good at today’s event, which was attended by Steve Wozniak. Steve J. did a nice shout-out to his “partner in crime” at the beginning of the presentation.
• Jobs announced that there are now 300 Apple Retail Stores in 10 countries, with new stores opening in Spain soon. The Apple Stores get more than 1 million visitors combined on some days — the primary reason why the company dropped their presence at Macworld Expo.
• Other stats — 120,000,000 iOS devices, 230,000 new iOS activations per day (not including updates), 6.5 billion downloads from the App Store, 250,000 apps on the App Store.
• iOS 4.1 will be out next week, featuring fixes for the proximity sensor, Bluetooth, and iPhone 3G issues. There will also be support for HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos, the ability to upload HD video to other devices (Apple TV) over WiFi (this is known as AirPlay), 99¢ TV show rentals, and GameCenter. The latter will bring a new level of interactive gaming to the platform.
• In November, we’ll see iOS 4.2 for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. This adds printing support, AirPlay, multi-tasking, and folders (among other features) to the iPad.

TUAWA roundup of today’s Apple news originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wow! We have a lot to talk about today on TUAW TV Live. There’s so much to talk about that two of us are going to be chatting it up on the show this afternoon. Mike Rose is joining me to talk about the new iPods, the updates to iTunes, Ping, and that new Apple TV. As usual, you can join in on the discussion — we’d love to see how you feel about the new product lineup for fall.

Now it’s time to get on with the show! To join in from your Mac or PC, just go to the next page by clicking the link at the bottom of this post, and you’ll find a live stream viewer and a chat tool. The chat tool allows you to join in on the fun by asking questions or making comments.

If you’re driving somewhere and would like to watch TUAW TV Live while you’re stuck in traffic, please don’t — keep your eyes on the road! However, if someone else is doing the driving, you can watch the show on your iPhone by downloading the free Ustream Viewing Application.

iPad users haven’t been forgotten, either, as you can tune in to TUAW TV Live on your iPad! That link will send you to a non-Flash page, although you won’t have access to our chat tool.

TUAWTUAW TV Live: The Apple event aftershow with Steve and Mike originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are lots of disgruntled people in the UK this evening, following Apple’s announcement that the new Apple TV, retailing for $99 in the US, will cost… £99. If you subtract our sales tax (which is always quoted upfront, unlike in the US) that’s the equivalent of $128, a rather excessive 28% hike. We’re used to paying a premium for Apple goods here — the graph above shows how much more expensive we are across all the new iPods and the entry level iMac and 15″ Macbook Pro — but it’s normally around 7-10%. Continental Europe fares no better. The French store’s Apple TV page show a price of 119,00 €, which works out to $128.

Apple is perhaps feeling a little defensive about this; all its new iPod pages on the UK store have little notes next to the price. For example the iPod Nano 8Gb page states “£129.00 (Includes £25 VAT, duty and levies)”. Certainly, Apple have been criticised for European price hikes before, sometimes deservedly and other times less so, and this tagline suggests it is sensitive to that and wants to stress that in Europe prices are quoted inclusive of sales tax and have an import duty charged.

None of that explains the anomalous price of the Apple TV though. Considering that us folk back in the Old Continent also don’t have access to that tasty, tasty Netflix streaming, this really does make the Apple TV look like a significantly poorer deal east of the Atlantic.

TUAWWhy is the Apple TV so expensive in Europe? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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During this morning’s event, Steve Jobs tossed out the factoid that the iPod touch was trouncing traditional handheld gaming, claiming that the system had sold more than Nintendo and Sony’s portables combined. If, like us, you thought that meant Apple had sold more devices than traditional game makers, then Steve was wrong — he mentioned in the same event that Apple has shipped 120 million iOS devices, and while that’s very impressive, it’s not quite as big as the 125 million Nintendo DS systems the Japanese company had sold around the world as of January. That doesn’t even count the 62 million PSP units Sony has sold worldwide. In terms of gaming devices sold, Apple has a long ways to go.

But Steve can’t have been that wrong — he said that the iPod touch had sold more than Nintendo or Sony combined. He can’t be off by over 60 million, right? It’s more likely that he meant software sales. There have been about 718 million DS games sold in the system’s history, and about 252 million games sold on the PSP. And there have been 6.5 billion downloads of iOS apps so far (with 1.5 billion of those being game and entertainment apps). When you compare the numbers that way, yes, Apple is far outselling Nintendo and Sony in terms of game sales. But of course, iOS apps tend to be much cheaper than Sony and Nintendo’s software (if not free), and gamers could probably argue all day about the difference in average quality of the two platforms.

Either way, Steve was stretching the truth a little bit on that stat. Apple has done a terrific job making inroads on portable gaming (some of it even without planning to do so), but the Cupertino company has a little way to go yet before it starts really competing with the established console manufacturers.

Update: A few commenters suggest that Apple has sold more iPod touches than both other systems combined recently, as in the last quarter or so. But the other two devices are a few years older than the oldest iPod touch, so that doesn’t seem like a great comparison either. Again, Apple has made really incredible strides into handheld gaming, but the company isn’t quite overwhelming its competitors in this market yet.

TUAWiPod touch outselling PSP and DS in games, not systems originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has announced the next generation iPod Touch 4G at today’s special event. The new iPod Touch 4G specs are pretty similar to that of iPhone 4.

Full iPod Touch 4G technical specs after the jump…

iPod Touch 4G Specification

Display

• 3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen Multi-Touch display
• 960×640-pixel resolution at 326 pixels per inch

Graphics look incredible on 960×640 Retina Display. Which means games are even more immersive on the highest-resolution iPod Touch screen even made.

Processor

• Apple A4 Processor

The A4 chip – the same technology as of iPas and iPhone 4 helps giving a gaming experience like no other. It also makes iPod Touch more powerful and more power efficient.

Sensors

• Three-axis gyro
• Accelerometer
• Ambient light sensor

The new, built-in, 3-axis gyroscope on iPod Touch gives you fantastic pitch, roll and yaw. Rotation around gravity and extremely precise position information.

Capacity

• 8GB, 32GB or 64GB flash drive

Size and weight

• Height: 4.4 inches (111.0 mm)
• Width: 2.3 inches (58.9 mm)
• Depth: 0.28 inch (7.2 mm)
• Weight: 3.56 ounces (101 grams)

Wireless

• 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (802.11n 2.4GHz only)
• Bluetooth^® 2.1 + EDR
• Maps-location based service
• Nike + iPod support built in

Cameras, photos, and video

• Video recording, HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio
• still photos (960 x 720) with back camera 0.7MP
• VGA-quality photos and video up to 30 frames per second with the front camera
• Tap to control exposure for video or stills
• Photo and video geo tagging over Wi-Fi

Battery and power

• Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery
• Playback time
  • Music playback time: Up to 40 hours when fully charged
  • Video playback time: Up to 7 hours when fully charged
• Charging times: Fast charge in about 2 hours (80% capacity), full charge in about 4 hours.

Audio

• Frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz
• Audio formats supported: AAC (8 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), HE-AAC, MP3 (8 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, 4, Audible Enhanced Audio, AAX, and AAX+), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV
• User-configurable maximum volume limit

TV and video

• H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
• MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
• Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format
• Support for 1024 by 768 pixels with Dock Connector to VGA Adapter; 576p and 480p with Apple Component AV Cable; 576i and 480i with Apple Composite AV Cable (cables sold separately)

Input and output

• 30-pin dock connector
• 3.5-mm stereo headphone minijack
• Built-in speaker
• Microphone

iPod Touch 4G will be released after a week loaded with iOS 4.1 firmware.

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Also checkout:

• iPhone 4 Specs
• Download iOS 4.1 GM
• Download iTunes 10