News
Full category list for displayed posts: News, iPhone, iPhone Apps
1:21 pm, November 6th, 2009, Nicole Martinelli
Programmer John Carmack helped bring Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake into the world.
Getting his games on the iPhone was not so easy.
“My relationship with Apple has been long standing, but it’s a roller coaster ride,” he told web site Kotaku. “At the highest level of Apple, in their heart of hearts,” Carmack said. “They’re not proud of the iPhone being a game machine, they wish it was something else.”
However, the popularity of gaming on the iPhone has forced Apple to think different(ly).
And, now that former collaborator Graeme Devine has gone to work for the iPhone Game Technologies division, iPhone games may get the respect they deserve.
Carmack calls Devine his “man on the inside…a real developer and I understand everything he is saying.”
Via Kotaku
Posted by Nicole Martinelli in News, iPhone, iPhone Apps | 3 Comments »
12:02 pm, November 6th, 2009, Ed Sutherland
Credit: el frijole/flickr
Apple is the defendant in a number of lawsuits, the latest from Nokia. However, a bizarre lawsuit has appeared, naming the Cupertino, Calif. company and ‘Sex in the City’ actress Sara Jessica Parker in a lawsuit claiming the two attempted to steal trade secrets involving the iPhone, iPod and iTunes.
The lawsuit brought by Miami, Fla. resident Franz A. Wakefield claims after a 1989 meeting with Parker, the self-described “trade secret and copyright owner” “made a trade secret deal” with Parker to commercialize the iPod classic, nano, mini, shuffle, video, touch and photo, along with iTunes and the iPhone. As part of the deal, Parker supposedly would get 2 percent of gross revenue. Wakefield, who claims he named all of the products 20 years before their release by Apple, asked the FBI to watch over his security, according to the lawsuit.
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Posted by Ed Sutherland in News | 8 Comments »
11:29 am, November 6th, 2009, Ed Sutherland
Credit: William Hook/Flickr
With hackers feasting on the iPhone, Apple appears to be looking for a new sheriff. The Cupertino, Calif. company is advertising for an “iPhone Security Manager” passionate about understanding security exploits. The move may be aimed at the latest round of jailbreak software released on the Internet.
Appearing Oct. 16 on Apple’s Web site, the ad seeks “a very technical and hands-on leader, someone with a passion for understanding security exploits and coming up with innovative methods to create secure platforms.” The chief goal for the new security chief: to “set the roadmap for the iPhone OS platform security.”
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Posted by Ed Sutherland in News | 3 Comments »
10:05 am, November 6th, 2009, Nicole Martinelli
Pssst: If you want to get in on the iPhone app business, there’s one for sale on eBay.
The starting bid for JBMJBM, LLC. — an app factory with 87 approved ones so far — is $100,000 and ends Saturday, Nov. 14
Top-selling titles include Friday Night Lights, iSpy Game, iReferee, iSexyRef (pictured above, which helps muddled sports fans remember the rules), iSexyRef2, Pro Rodeo Fan, Sit Up Counter and Shake 2 Count.
Buy the developer out and you get 87 applications currently listed on iTunes plus all application assets which include source code files, website files and all collateral.
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Posted by Nicole Martinelli in News, iPhone, iPhone Apps, iPod Touch, iTunes | 4 Comments »
9:38 am, November 6th, 2009, Ed Sutherland
AT&T and Apple may be preparing a pre-Christmas launch of a $99 8GB iPhone 3G in response to the Droid, according to unconfirmed rumors. “One source said this was AT&T’s way of combating the DROID madness,” wrote BGR, citing two unnamed sources.
The report comes as Verizon launches its family of Droid Android-based cell phones meant to compete with the iPhone from AT&T. The recently-announced Droid Eris will cost $99 and use Android 1.5 rather than Android 2.0, the latest version of Google’s handset operating system.
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Posted by Ed Sutherland in News | No Comments »
5:53 am, November 6th, 2009, Giles Turnbull
Those crazy MacHeisters are at it again, and this time the deal is even harder to resist.
The first ever MacHeist Nano won’t cost you a penny. You can download, without charge, fully licensed copies of ShoveBox, WriteRoom, Twitterific, TinyGrab, and Hordes of Orcs. If 500,000 people take part (which I think is a pretty safe bet), they’ll throw in a copy of Mariner Write as well.
Sweet deal? I reckon. All of these are great apps. What’s the catch?
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Posted by Giles Turnbull in News, Software, Top stories | 10 Comments »
1:01 pm, November 5th, 2009, Leander Kahney
If you liked Wednesday’s interview with Apple ad man Ken Segall, just wait until you see what we’ve got coming next week.
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.
Can you guess who it is?
Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, Interviews, News | 34 Comments »
12:01 pm, November 5th, 2009, Ed Sutherland
Apple today opened the first of a series of stores planned for Paris. The first, located near the famous Louvre art museum, coincided with the release of the Musee du Louvre iPhone app showcasing among other exhibits, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
The Paris store, first reported in 2008, includes a 7,700-square foot two-story layout with diamond-shaped windows.
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Posted by Ed Sutherland in News | 1 Comment »
10:29 am, November 5th, 2009, Ed Sutherland
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was named “CEO of the Decade” by Fortune Magazine. The magazine calls the 2000s “the decade of Steve.”
Despite surviving a very public death watch, being tossed out of his own company in the 1980s and what Fortune calls “his own often unpleasant demeanor,” Jobs “has transformed American business.”
Apple’s come-back under Jobs spans 2000, when the company was worth $5 billion through today’s $170 billion valuation, edging out even the mega-bucks of Internet giant Google. In August, Apple reported having $31.1 billion in cash, a record for a technology company. Over that period, the Cupertino, Calif. company has become involved in music, videos and cell phones.
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Posted by Ed Sutherland in News | 3 Comments »
9:23 am, November 5th, 2009, Ed Sutherland
The Droid provides Verizon Wireless a ‘more credible alternative’ to Apple’s iPhone, according to Walt Mossberg, a technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
“Like the iPhone, the Droid is really a powerful handheld computer that happens to make phone calls,” Mossberg wrote at All Things Digital. After testing a review version of the Droid, the Wall Street Journal writer told readers the Motorola-made device using Google’s Android 2.0 software has some advantage, as well as disadvantages to the iPhone.
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Posted by Ed Sutherland in News | 7 Comments »
6:52 am, November 5th, 2009, Nicole Martinelli
The mystery object in Monday’s contest is a Quadra 700. (Yes, the image was flipped in an effort to make it a slightly more challenging).
Winner named after the jump.
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Posted by Nicole Martinelli in News | 2 Comments »
6:28 am, November 5th, 2009, Nicole Martinelli
Virgin’s new Flying Without Fear app — an interactive guide to easing panic — left us with a few questions that we got answered by Mickey Beyer-Clausen, who co-developed the app for Mental Workout.
CoM: Can you use the app during take off and landing?
MBC: Unfortunately, passengers cannot use any electronic device – including the iPhone in airplane mode – during take-off and landing but the app is developed to prepare users for flight whereby making the brief “no electronics” period at the beginning and end of the flight more manageable.
The panic button is intended to be used during the flight when turbulence is encountered or other events occur which make the user uncomfortable.
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Posted by Nicole Martinelli in News, iPhone, iPhone Apps, iPod Touch | 11 Comments »
1:44 am, November 5th, 2009, Leander Kahney
Is this Steve Jobs driving a tank in a classic Apple TV spot from the late 1990s? That was the rumor at the time: Jobs was making cameos in Apple commercials.
Ken Segall, the TBWA ad man responsible for naming the iMac and Think Different, reveals the truth after the jump. He also shares some rare behind-the-scenes photos he took during the filming of this commercial and another from the same era.
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Posted by Leander Kahney in Advertising, Apple, News, Steve Jobs, Top stories | No Comments »
5:22 pm, November 4th, 2009, Giles Turnbull
Some readers might remember the fuss a few weeks ago, when Snow Leopard came out and people noticed that it did something screwy to the way files behave.
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Posted by Giles Turnbull in How tos, News, OS X, Software | 2 Comments »
4:59 pm, November 4th, 2009, Leander Kahney
Kyle Wiens, the CEO of iFixit, is launching an online community focused on fixing high-tech products rather than throwing them away.
Best known for its awesome teardowns, the Mac-oriented repair company iFixit is launching a online community devoted to fixing high-tech products, rather than tossing them away.
“The world has a problem with rapidly consuming devices and tossing them aside, ignoring long-term environmental impact,” said iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens on the company’s blog. “With your help, we are going to change that. I’m confident that we can change our culture of ephemeral ownership.”
Currently in private beta, iFixit Answers looks like a cross between a forum and a wiki. In a blog post announcing the launch, Wiens outlines four points that should be of interest to all publishers focused on building productive online communities:
- It’s important that posts get more useful over time. It’s not uncommon for a traditional repair forum response to become the canonical source for an answer to a problem, only to get outdated and stagnant as technology changes.
- It’s important that we recognize expertise. It matters if the author of an answer is a professional technician, or has helped 200 people fix their problems.
- It’s important to make helping people fun. There’s a rush that comes from helping someone solve a tricky problem, being recognized by people for the research you put into a question before asking it, or testing your hardware diagnosis mettle against others.
- And most important, we need to close the feedback loop between the people answering questions and those asking them. Repairing things is uniquely tangible — when you use a solution proposed by someone, you know for a fact whether or not it worked. Finding out that the answer you gave someone actually fixed their problem is one of the greatest feelings in the world.
It’ll be very interesting how iFixit makes good on these points. The future on online publishing is nurturing community, and Wiens has nailed some of the key points. We’ll be keeping a close on the project.
To sign up as an Answers beta tester, add your name to the list.
Posted by Leander Kahney in Cult of Mac, Media, News, Web | No Comments »
