By now you’ve probably seen the viral clip for the Nude It app originally posted at whoisthebaldguy.com (if you haven’t, brush off that cave dust and watch it now).
The clip shows a mind-blowing iPhone app being used that employs augmented reality to de-clothe unwitting victims being viewed through the iPhone’s camera. Seems like great idea, judging by the 650,000-plus hits the clip has garnered in the five weeks it’s been up on YouTube.
Cult of Mac spoke briefly with the the clip’s creator, Michael Krivicka, a video editor living in NYC.
When I saw this snap in the Cult of Mac Flickr pool, I wanted to find out more. Who is the owner of the little family of Macs old and new, and how did they end up on this desk?
We have an exclusive interview with one of the top people in the Apple story. I’d say they were number 3: the third most influential person in Apple’s history.
This is the first time they spoken publicly about Apple in many, many years. They have some good stories, a lot of fascinating insights, and a couple of surprises.
If you’re a Douglas Adams fan, there’s a point fairly early on during iPhone ownership where you realise that you’re holding in your hands the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is a nugget of information that hits you suddenly, rather like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon, wrapped around a large gold brick. Naysayers might disagree, but Apple’s handheld enables access to a mind-boggling array of information, via a friendly interface, even if it doesn’t have the words ‘don’t panic’ inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
It therefore only seems fitting that the Hitchhiker’s Guide books are finding a happy home on Apple’s device, the latest of which is Eoin Colfer’s sixth Hitchhiker’s Guide novel, And Another Thing... In the US App Store, the novel is available in extended form, bundling the digital and audio versions, video clips, “bits of brilliance from the first five books”, and a bunch of other extras (App Store link).
Mindy Stockfield, VP of Marketing & Digital Media for Hyperion Books and Stephen Saiz, Director, Marketing for Digital Publishing, Disney Interactive Studios, gave us the low-down on the thinking behind the interactive version, and Eoin Colfer added his thoughts on getting the guide on your iPhone.
A week back, my interest was piqued by Retina (App Store link), a 99-cent augmented reality app that aims to assist color-blind users. I interviewed developer Stefan Fürst of Media Atelier for some background on the app.
Cult of Mac: What was the inspiration behind Retina? Why did you decide to make it?
Stefan Fürst: The idea was born when my red-green blind bicycle buddy was talking in a very convinced way about his green bike he likes so much. He had been riding it for two years and had no idea it wasn’t green at all.
How does it work, and how did you decide on the interface?
The interface has been kept very simple to make it suitable for everyday use. The list of colors might look very short and inaccurate to non-color blinds—but to figure out if an object is green or red this works perfectly.
What feedback have you had from colour-blind users?
One of them made me to add the saturation indicator and told me that this helps him a lot.
In which ways do you think augmented reality apps will evolve in the future?
I believe that there are almost endless possibilities, but most uses would need higher processing power to make them run smoothly on an iPhone or other mobile device.
What are your future plans for iPhone apps?
Actually I am more of a Mac Developer, extending my desktop apps with iPhone helpers. I developed Retina for my color-blind friends and hopefully a lot of other people having problems in recognizing colors.
Having garnered some feedback from early Retina adopters, it seems there’s definitely interest in this kind of app, although Retina itself appears to have trouble with subtler colors, and it often claims it’s ‘too dark’ or ‘too light’ to make an assessment. However, for 99 cents, it’s worth a look for anyone severely color-blind wanting a quick and easy way to ascertain the color of things like clothing.
Canabalt's detailed pixellated graphics (zoomed here) draw you into the game.
With its simple tap-to-jump gameplay, high-speed scrolling and gritty dystopian atmospherics, Canabalt proved a hit Flash-based sensation when recently unleashed online. The game has now been released for iPhone and iPod touch—one of the first truly successful Flash-based games on the platform. We spoke to Adam Saltsman and Eric Johnson of Semi Secret Software about how the game came to be.
“Whilst I’d love it if Apple were looking at doing exactly this, I find it unlikely,” he says.
But Collingridge does think there’s huge opportunity in reinventing the ebooks as “digital books,” and that Apple’s tablet presents some interesting UI opportunities.
Every now and again, a game comes along that makes you feel like a ham-fisted idiot, as though you’re clawing at your iPhone or iPod touchscreen with all the grace of a lobotomised monkey wearing boxing gloves. But the game is so compelling and addictive, you play on anyway, getting killed approximately every ten seconds, going ARRRGGGHH and then having another go anyway. Eventually, you realise that it’s you, not the game. The game isn’t unfair—you’re just rubbish, and you need to learn how to improve, just like in the old days with the likes of Defender.
Squareball by Finn Ericson ($1.99/£1.19, App Store link) is one such game. The concept is simple: drag the levels left or right to ensure your ever-bouncing ball doesn’t disappear into a hole or hit red tiles, and collect all the green tiles before the timer runs out. With graphics akin to Atari’s Adventure in pseudo-3D and a fab soundtrack, this game’s had me addicted and loving it and hating it in equal measure since its day of release. Today, I interviewed its creator to find out how this retro-themed mix of Pong, Breakout and simplified Super Mario-style platformer came to be.
News of Apple’s refusal to allow 17+ app promo codes broke with this Cult of Mac interview with James Miller, Director of Marketing for Trichotomy Media. Naughty LOADED Dice, a foreplay game with a secret menu to dictate dice rolls, snuck past the Apple censors and made its way onto our iPhones and into our bedrooms.
In a recent email to Cult of Mac, Trichotomy Media attributed our coverage of the promo code refusal as instrumental in their reinstatement. To celebrate free love and free iPhone apps, we’re giving away a Naughty LOADED Dice promo code.
Just comment on this post with your favorite dictator, fascist, suppressor of freedom, book burner or other comment and you’ll be entered to win. Contest ends midnight, September 20th.
OK, so we’ve already established that the iPhone camera is capable of some pretty amazing photography, even if you don’t use one of the many fantastic photography-related apps available on the Store.
One thing I’ve not seen it used for to date has been action shots; but Oregon-based photographer Jared Souney has been putting his 3GS togooduse for just that.
I wanted to find out how he did it, so I asked him. Here’s what he said.
Apple’s been getting a lot of flak lately for its heavy-handed App Store policies – a direct consequence of its new-found status as a market leader, says author Graham Bower.
For years, Apple capitalized on its underdog status, able to skirt the rules because it was always coming in second.
But now that it dominates with products like the iPod and iPhone, it’s getting the same kind of grief that dogged Microsoft for years.
Bower, who lives in London, has just published a fascinating new book called Secondonomics: How Coming Second Can Be a Winning Strategy, which is about the advantages of coming second. Contrary to popular belief, winner doesn’t take all. Take for example what happens to the first penguin into the water versus the second. Which one gets eaten?
Apple figures large in Secondonomics. Bower argues that Apple has gotten a lot of passes because of its underdog status.
“The Mac has a big advantage over Windows because it’s the second most popular desktop OS,” says Bower. “It’s not targeted for viruses as much, and it’s not targeted for anti-trust cases. Can you imagine Microsoft getting away with hooking something like MobileMe so tightly into their OS?”
Hit the jump for a fascinating IM interview with Bower, who’s a smart cookie. Bower has a lot of insight into Apple, coming second, the challenges Apple faces as it becomes bigger, and Steve Jobs’s psychological need to be an underdog.
Back to 1980s gaming, when it were all (blocky) fields round here.
Being somewhat old of years and gray of hair, I remember the good ol’ days of gaming, before all this new-fangled 3D nonsense. Entire games would be smaller in size than a thumbnail JPEG, controllers didn’t have 56,000 buttons, and games weren’t always sequels to sequels to sequels to [that's enough of that---”Ed]
Clearly, I’m not the only one, because retro games are hot properties for all current gaming systems, and Apple handhelds are no exception. The App Store is peppered with clones and ‘tributes’ to ancient games, along with a slew of official remakes from the likes of Atari and Namco. Recently, though, Manomio—developers of Flashback for iPhone—went a stage further, aiming to bring an entire retro system to iPhone: the Commodore 64.
The build of C64 we played with was quite impressive. Although frameskipping was evident (which is no longer the case for C64 emulation on desktop Macs), the small selection of games sent over with the demo were perfectly playable. Surprisingly, the controls also worked nicely, which is quite a feat when you consider that the C64 was a distinctly ‘digital control’ platform, and that virtual joysticks don’t often work well on Apple handhelds.
Sadly, the public at large has yet to experience the app, because Apple unceremoneously rejected it, citing issues regarding its built-in BASIC (App Store apps aren’t allowed to launch executable code), and, presumably, ignoring the fact that Frotz—a Z-Machine interpreter—has been happily living on the App Store for ages, despite there being no practical distinction between it and C64.
Stu from Manomio was kind enough to offer his thoughts on this and other issues surrounding C64, along with talking about why Manomio developed the app in the first place, and why the organization considers it important to fully license content for the App Store (a position that, ironically, puts them at odds with at least several dozen rip-off apps already for sale for Apple handhelds).
Butterfingers? Nick Mangold photo courtesy examiner.com
Nick Mangold, a 6’4”, 300-pound offensive lineman for the New York Jets, talked to uberfan Angel Navedo about, among other things, why he loves the iPod Touch but prefers a Blackberry to the iPhone.
The salient bits:
Do you consider yourself tech savvy?
Nick Mangold: I like to. I don’t know where I measure up to everyone else, but I like to believe I’m gadget and tech friendly. I’m a Blackberry guy.
AN: That hurts my feelings.
Nick Mangold:(Spots my iPhone) But I’m an iPod Touch guy! The iPod Touch is awesome. I think it’s a great device for games and messing around. But for dealing with emails and everything, I pick Blackberry—with the actual keyboard and everything—hands down. I can bang out a page-long email while I’m sitting, doing whatever. Touch screens, you know, I got fatter fingers. It’s not my thing.
AN: It definitely took some getting used to for me.
Nick Mangold: I’m just not a touch screen guy at all. I love it for playing games and stuff, but I keep them separate. If that requires me to carry two different things, I live with it.
The interview caught my eye after spending an afternoon thumbing on a number of keyboards in the quest to finally put my beloved first-gen smartphone out to pasture.
Not an Apple customer by kneejerk, the contract nonsense with the iPhone got me testing the Blackberry and a bunch of Nokias. And leaving empty handed, for the moment.
Along with being a surprisingly versatile device for gaming, reading eBooks and surfing the web, iPhone is becoming an increasingly useful source of distribution for comics publishers. Late last month, ClickWheel, who’ve been in the comics-on-iPods game for a while, released Future Shocks: Part 1, a 99-cent collection of early Alan Moore stories, which was subsequently followed by part two. We caught up with ClickWheel Editor in Chief Tim Demeter for his thoughts on these apps and the market in general.
Cult of Mac: What are the Future Shocks apps and how do they work?
Tim Demeter: The Future Shocks apps are collections of early work from Alan Moore, digitally restored and formatted specifically for iPhone and iPod touch. The apps are entirely self-contained and once downloaded require no cell or Wi-Fi collection to read—you can access them anytime.
How do these apps sit alongside your ClickWheel app?
These are completely separate from our other app. The ClickWheel app is a reader for a multitude of streaming comics, some of which need to to be purchased from the ClickWheel site first. Each Future Shocks app is a one-time purchase. Once it’s downloaded you can start reading right away. Look for a change in how we handle downloading comics to iPhone once the 3.0 software is out there though.
What do you think of iPod touch/iPhone as a comics-reading platform?
We love it. ClickWheel began putting comics on iPods with the launch of the iPod video, so to say that these new devices have enabled us to take our vision of mobile comics to new levels would certainly be understatement. The nice thing about mobile comics is they provide the convenience and immediacy of web-comics while retaining the portability of printed comics. I don’t think printed comics will ever go away and I certainly don’t want them too but I wouldn’t be surprised if many monthlies go digital while the collections remain in print.
What advantages does the App Store bring a company like yours?
People know and trust the iTunes store and many people have a credit card stored in their account which makes impulse purchasing very much a reality. It also seems to be going through the same kind of growth that Amazon did. Back in the day, Amazon was just books. Now it’s just about everything. The iTunes store started as just audio but now it’s TV, movies and apps of all kinds. It’s quickly becoming a one-stop-shop for anything and everything digital and there’s a lot of value in that.
Apple’s been getting a lot of flak lately for its heavy-handed App Store policies – a direct consequence of its new-found status as a market leader, says author Graham Bower.
