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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

Are Hot Apps Crashing iPhones?

One of the AppStore’s hottest downloads has more than 500 reviews and a 1.5 star average rating, which has to be bad news for someone.

We got a press release yesterday from uLocate Communications touting the succes of its GPS navigation app for the iPhone, WHERE, free software downloaded more than 125,000 times in its first weekend. A quick check on the WHERE product page in iTunes tells a different side of the story.

“Doesn’t work,” Worthless” and “Just keeps crashing” are the kinds of reviews that get a developer working on an update right away, though other users seem to be having no problems and love the application, with one fan reporting, “I feel that I’ve missed too much in life already because Where wasn’t available before.”

As we reported Monday, some developers are pointing the finger at Apple, claiming the 2.0 firmware is unstable and causing their apps to crash. Apple, of course, has little to say on the matter thus far and seems content to let the waves of elation and frustration that have accompanied the AppStore’s big splash settle out on their own.

The good news for users of software such as WHERE, is that at a cost of “free” deciding it’s not worth the hassle costs no more than a little wasted time, something Apple’s early adopters seem to have in abundance.

About the author

Lonnie Lazar

Lonnie Lazar is a writer, musician, web designer attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

Email the author | Read more posts by Lonnie Lazar.

5 comments

    [...] Apps Crashing iPhones? Jump to Comments Are Hot Apps Crashing iPhones? [...]

    My buddy texted me asking which downloads I had tried and he suggested Where so I loaded it. Couldn’t get anywhere with it and asked him if he had gotten it to work. “No”, was his reply, “it just looked cool and I figured you could get it to operate correctly”.

    After reading the reviews on it (as of last friday), I decided free was too much for it and quickly dropped it off the phone. Where, should be called NoWhere.

    Short answer = Yes.

    It’s too bad. The app is pretty cool when it works and it seems to work much better now.

    I have the ipod touch w/ the 2.0 software, and about twice a week the thing will crash when I push ANY application icon to run.

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