O2 has had exclusive rights to sell the iPhone in the UK for a couple of years, but now its rivals are lining up to start selling it too. The big question is: will any of them offer a better deal?
So far, the answer seems to be “No”.
Philip Dow, the developer behind Journler, has announced that work on the app is at an end. While he will continue to provide support for users, there will be no new releases.
In a brutally honest and open blog post, Philip spells out precisely what brought an end to Journler – its own success.
Apple does an excellent job of making all its products look beautiful, and these latest new products are no exception. Even the inside of the new MacBook is lovely.
I’d like to add my congratulations to those of the many TidBITS readers who’ve wished Adam Engst and his team all good wishes on reaching their 1000th issue this week.
I’ve been reading TidBITS for as long as I’ve used Macs, and consider it one of the finest, best-written, and most useful Mac publications around.
What separates it from the crowd is the way each and every article is carefully and lovingly assembled. Much thought is given to every detail, and there’s plenty of detail to think about because TidBITS articles never skimp on covering a news item or a software review from every possible perspective.
You know, when you start a TidBITS software review, that it will be balanced and well researched. You know that when you’ve finished reading it, you’ll have a good idea of that product’s potential value for you or your business.
There’s also a feeling of genuine warmth from the TidBITS writers and readers alike; discussion there is reasoned, sensible debate. Forum users will go out of their way to help one another. It’s a breath of fresh air.
So congratulations to all at TidBITS on 1000 issues of your superb email newsletter; here’s looking forward to the next 1000. And 1000 more after that.
Back in July this year, I wrote a short scribble on my personal site listing a handful of ideas for iPhone apps.
The first was something I called “Supermarket Spotlight”, and it was described thus:
“Like Spotlight on your Mac, but for supermarkets in meatspace. You tell it that you’re in Tesco in Trowbridge, then start typing in the product you’re after. It tells you: ‘Aisle 12, section 2, top shelf, on the right if you’ve got your back to the cash tills.’ Either that, or it simply does the augmented reality thing and takes you there, beeping louder as you get closer, like a geiger counter.”
I never expected anyone to actually make it.
When iTunes 9 came out, a lot of people (myself included) were delighted to see a new feature that allowed you to re-arrange the apps on your iPhone’s screens using your desktop computer.
Hooray, we cheered. No more tedious dragging of little wriggling icons from one screen to another. Now we can put our apps where we want them to be, and never have to worry about them again.
Wrong.
It turns out that using this feature in iTunes 9 is a complete waste of time, thanks to the way the iPhone OS works. Here’s why.
The art of automata is all about making beautiful mechanical objects out of wood and other materials.
When Murtaza Lakdawala discovered automata, he also got inspiration for a neat project: a hand-cranked rotating stand for his iPhone. And this is the result.
Adobe has announced the release of Photoshop for your iPhone or iPod touch – although the software is closely tied to Adobe’s Photoshop.com photo hosting and sharing service.
There are no big announcements from Apple today. No new products, nothing special happening. But it’s a special day nonetheless.
Because today, the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg has finally declared Windows a match for OS X.
Many of you will know that Walt’s opinions are widely read, and are likely to sway a lot of people in their computer-purchasing decisions.
In recent years, he has consistently said that Mac OS X is a better choice than Windows, either XP or Vista. But with the imminent release of Windows 7 (on October 22nd), that comes to an end.
Swedish design firm Ocean Observations has created this interesting mock-up of an Exposé-like feature for the iPhone.
Ken Clark’s post about using Dropbox for iPhone to automatically import photos to Yojimbo is a wonderful pointer to new possibilities, and got me thinking about a few that can’t be done yet – but could be, if future versions of Dropbox add one or two features.
Ken’s trick depends on a little bit of Applescript to make it work. But not everyone knows Applescript, which is where another app called Hazel comes in handy.
Finally, the team at Dropbox have released a native iPhone app. And it’s pretty awesome.
OK, recently exhibited at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. (Huge version of this.)
When does an operating system UI element become a work of art? Is it when Artie Vierkant replicates it many times over and makes it into a huge print? Or was it art in the first place?
Orange is to start selling iPhones in the UK “later this year”, ending O2’s exclusive reseller deal with Apple.
Orange already sells iPhones in several other countries.
Conor Maples broke the news to Twitter users first thing this morning. Mobile Entertainment predicted that the exclusive deal would end about about this time back in August.
Orange is saying nothing yet about prices and contract tariffs, nor has the company pinpointed a launch date. It has put up a web page where people can register their interest.
O2 has had the exclusive deal since 2007 and generally done a decent job of it, although it has been criticized for poor data network reliability and high prices for tethering and roaming. A little bit of competition is probably going to be a good thing.
Now this looks interesting: Blasted is a Menu Bar app that quietly tracks what you’ve been working on – all the files you’ve created, opened, or modified recently – and makes them available when you need them via an unobtrusive icon.
If you haven’t encountered Reevoo before, go and take a poke around it now. It’s a UK-oriented customer reviews site that’s managed to aggregate an impressively large database of real comments from real people about real products.
And the iPhone version of the site is incredibly useful when you’re out at the shops trying to track down the best product at the best price.
There has been far too much stuff about minimalism on Cult of Mac recently, and it’s time we had a revolution.
This fantastic rotating iPhone dock is made entirely of Lego. It’s the work of Steven Combs, a long time Lego and Mac enthusiast who runs web sites for adult fans of Lego and fans of technology generally.
Here’s a video showing the rotating mechanism in action:
I wanted to know a little more about hacking Macs with Lego add-ons, so I bombarded Steven with a few questions. And here’s what he said.
Social browser Flock might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it comes with some social web smarts built-in, and some of these can be put to use in cool ways.
What is it? It’s one of my all-time favourite Menu Bar apps, and was recently updated to work with Snow Leopard. I’m delighted to have just re-installed it after a spell of trying to live without it.
The app is called I Love Stars, and I prefer it over ever other iTunes helper I’ve tried. And I’ve tried quite a few.
Big thanks to raneko on Flickr for creating this delightful video reminder of what life used to be like.
Yes kids, back in the Dark Ages, before the Coming of the Internet, your mums and dads used to use computers like this. Before your cloud-based storage and your Dropbox accounts and your Evernote applications and your mythical GDrive – before all of that, we used floppy disks.
They were awful, awful things.
This video shows you why. And also demonstrates quite nicely why, on his return to Apple after the years of exile at NeXT, Steve Jobs ditched floppy drives as soon as he possibly could. The rest is history, and in some cases, rodent cages.
What is it? It’s Notational Velocity, one of the best and yet most overlooked note apps for OS X. You should download it immediately.
Why it’s cool Because if you want to store text notes, many hundreds or thousands of them, and then be able to search through them at lighting speed, there is no faster or simpler way of doing it.
iTunes 9 has neat little new feature: it will automatically import any music or videos you throw into a specific folder.
That folder is called “Automatically Add to iTunes”, and after installing iTunes 9 you’ll find it tucked away inside your “~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/” folder.
Cult reader Gary Gale recently blogged about his positive experience of using an iPhone as an electronic boarding pass during a flight from Amsterdam to London.
Here’s a short screencast showing the basic function of iTunes 9’s new app management tool for iPhone and iPod touch.
It’s interesting to compare and contrast this with this app manager concept that we featured here on the Cult back in February.
Most iPhone owners I know have never bothered to sort their apps into any sort of meaningful screen-by-screen arrangement, simply because doing so was too much hassle. This tool will change that, I think, and encourage people to create screenfuls of apps sorted by category.
Have you tried re-arranging your apps yet? What do you make of it?
