John Brownlee - page 233

Beta 3 of the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK has a couple of great new interface features, including the ability to close background apps through a hold-and-close method similar to the way deleting programs functions on the operating system, but I think I like the new media player widgets best.

In the latest beta, if you load the multitasking interface you see a new set of widgets that sit in the dock to control iPod playback. The widgets include three buttons for track navigation (Play/Pause, Track Back, Track Forward), a shortcut to launch the iPod application, and a software orientation lock which serves the same function as the iPad’s hardware switch. Accessing the widgets is as simple as swiping left on the dock.

Very slick, but what interests me most is the possibility of further widget sets. If third-party developers can program their own widgets to control background apps from the dock, multitasking on iPhone OS 4.0 is just going to rock. Skype widgets anyone? My guess is that’s just what Apple has in mind, and the screen orientation lock will be the one standard icon

In what might charitably be called the most toothless and limp parody this side of your dentureless grampa doing a timely Grover Cleveland impersonationation right before nap time, Ellen DeGeneres went on her talk show on Monday to poke fun at the iPhone 3Gs.

Ellen’s hilarious gag? When she wants to send a text message, she can’t do it through the “Maps” application. The punchline? The iPhone’s hard to use!

If you took the plunge on the Spirit jailbreak over the weekend, no need to wait for AT&T to fulfill their long ignored promise to bring data tethering to the iPhone in the United States: the MyWi App will turn your iPhone into a wireless 3G modem right now.

The app costs $10 on jailbroken iPhones and it looks pretty simple: you just launch the MyWi app, flip the “WiFi Tethering” switch to “On” and then you can connect any WiFi-capable device to your iPhone.

This would be a great way to make your iPad WiFi 3G capable while saving yourself $130 bucks. If you want to try MyWi, you can grab it now through Cydia.

[via Gadget Lab]

Apple’s iPad might have sold one million units in just a month, but that’s not impressing Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who thinks that the iPad’s touch-only input approach will ultimately lose to pen-based tablets… at least with students:

“Microsoft has a lot of different tablet projects that we’re pursuing. We think that work with the pen that Microsoft pioneered will become a mainstream for students. It can give you a device that you can not only read, but also create documents at the same time.

While I agree there’s a place for styluses with tablet computers (and, in fact, wish Apple would officially release a pressure-sensitive one for use with the iPad), Jobs is ultimately right: if uses have to reach for a stylus then a touchscreen device is a failure. I don’t think that changes whether you’re a casual user or a student.

The real reason Gates is saying styluyses are necessary for touchscreen devices has more to do with the fact that Windows 7, the operating system Microsoft would like tablets to run, was designed with mouse input in mind. A stylus does a better job at simulating a mouse than a finger, and Windows 7’s stylus support is more robust than its hatchet job multitouch. I wonder if Gates will change his tune when Windows 7 catches up with the iPhone OS, at least when it comes to touch.

Unlimited wireless data plans usually have invisible quotes around them. Although you’d be forgiven if, like Noah Webster, you thought that “unlimited” meant “not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity or extent,” mobile carriers usually define it as meaning less than 5GB of data per month. Does AT&T’s unlimited iPad 3G data plan have a similarly illogical definition of “unlimited?”

Not so far, according to Zach Epstein over at Know Your Cell. He’s pumped 31GB of data over AT&T’s network over the past few days, trying to see at what point Ma Bell will cut him off. They haven’t yet.

“If I can hit 100GB without being shut off by AT&T, I think it will be safe to say that users can consider the $29.99 iPad data plan to be “unlimited”. Considering I’m currently at six times the 5GB soft cap placed on smartphone data plans after just two days of usage, things are looking good,” writes Epstein.

I don’t know about that: it’s just this sort of data usage that is going to cause AT&T to clamp down on their iPad data plan. Still, for now, at least, rest assured that your iPad 3G can be used to pump a truly sick volume of data.

Dropbox, the indispensable document syncing app for the Mac, PC and iPhone, has now come to the iPad, thanks to an update that makes the program universal across all iDevices.

Don’t expect anything different: all the core functionality is the same, including the ability to access, edit, sync, download, upload and share files with others through Dropbox. The iPad version does look better than the iPhone app, though, and comes with a useful dual-pane mode.

If you’re a Dropbox user, you can grab Dropbox for iPad now for free over on iTunes.

[via Gizmodo]

Reversing their long-embraced policy of buying other companies rarely, Apple’s been on a shopping spree the past six months with the acquisition of Quattro Wireless, Lala, Intrinsity and Siri. What’s behind it?

Bloomberg has an interesting overview of Apple’s evolving acquisition strategy. What it comes down to, at the end of the day? Staying ahead of Google in the mobile space.

According to analyst Brian Marshall, Apple “learned a good lesson with AdMob.” Apple let the acquisition process linger too long, allowing Google to outbid them. Instead, they had to settle for “second-fiddle Quattro.”

It’s not new that international data plans are pecuniary disembowleings, so it’s natural that AT&T’s official pricing for the iPad would be for the sadomasochistic only. Expect to spend as much as $200 a month for a slice of bandwidth exceeded by many App Store video games, or just a couple of downloaded iTunes albums.

According to the Wall Street Journal, industry insiders are predicting that Apple will cave on the terms of the iPhone 4.0 SDK rather than be dragged into an antitrust battle over them.

What you see here isn’t World of Warcraft running natively on the iPad, but rather WoW streamed through the Gaikai online gaming service, which allows you to play games within your browser using HTML5 and their server streaming technology. In other words, it’s a thin client.

I imagine this is pretty maddening to play — WoW depends on a mouse and keyboard — but if thin clients get big enough, developers will start programming for iPad-based input, even for non-native games. As a reformed WoW addict, I hope to god that doesn’t happen: I don’t need another reason to start back up.

If you’re interested in the possibilities here, you can sign up for Gaikai’s private beta here.

[via MacStories]

Steve Jobs is very serious about HTML5 being the future of the web, and in Jobs’ view, H. 264 is an integral part of that formula. Google and Microsoft agree: they’ve committed to MPEG LA’s video codec as the new standard for online video. That puts the three biggest players all in the same corner when it comes to H. 264.

But Opera and Firefox aren’t fans of the standard. Instead, they back a codec called Ogg Theora, which is royalty free and open source, while H. 264 is closed source and only royalty free until 2015. Their fear is that mass adoption of H. 264 will cause MPEG LA to “flip the switch” on royalties five years down the line, leaving companies no choice but to pay exorbitant licensing fees.

So why isn’t Apple on board with Ogg Theora? Apple fan Hugo Roy wrote Steve Jobs over the weekend, asking him about Apple’s backing of the H. 264 standard. Jobs informative and surprisingly length reply follows:

It’s just a matter of course for any new Apple product to be vivisected down to its very bolts and each part catalogued by the Internet’s gadget coroners, but no one does a better job at it than the boys over at iFixIt, who have already torn down the iPad 3G.

Take out the trusty old ex-acto knife and whittle down your T-Mobile SIM cart just right and you can cram it right into your iPad 3G’s medulla oblongata. Jailbreak with Spirit and you can then use your iPad to send SMSes, provided you’ve got some command line skill. Who said there was no reason to jailbreak your iPad?

[via 9to5Mac]

Last year, accessory LUXA2 released the H1-Touch stand for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which allowed you to position your handset on your desk like a miniature monitor. It looked great, but wasn’t particularly useful.

I don’t think the same can be said for the LUXA2 H4, a larger version of the same stand for the iPad. The reason for that is mostly because it allows you to easily position the iPad as a monitor when paired with a Bluetooth keyboard… and unlike the official Apple dock, the H4 has a swiveling mount that allows you to easily rotate your iPad from landscape to portrait orientation and back again.

The H4’s got a few strikes against it — those holding prongs, while keeping the iPad secure, don’t look very good — but all in all, it looks like a great solution for anyone who does a lot of typing or video watching on their iPad. $50 will get you one.

Just a friendly Cult of Mac reminder that if you haven’t already pre-ordered an iPad 3G, and if you aren’t already elbowing Greg Packer for elbow room at the front of the 5th Avenue store lines, Apple’s official retail stores will all be closed from 4pm to 5pm today to prepare the staff for the imminent launch of Apple’s mobile broadband capable tablet. 17:00:01 is the earliest you’re possibly going to snag one unless UPS Santa pays you a visit before then.

Here’s what we’re curious about: how many of you are intending on picking up an iPad 3G after work today? If so, please let us know how you get on in the comments. We’d also be interested if the intermittently available iPad WiFi is more readily available in the retail stores now that the 3G is available.

Anyway, that’s it: the last first-gen iPad release date. Except for us poor suckers in the rest of the world, that is, but hell… we don’t count.

[via 9to5Mac]

I’m surprised that they were still a contender, but according to Forbes, Apple has just reached a milestone: they’ve just passed Motorola as the largest phone maker in the United States.

Cupertino’s already got a history of stepping down on app developers who use Apple’s own app icons in their software, so clearly they are protective of their assets, but now words comes that Apple has filed trademark motions on a number of its official app icons.

None of them are new, so there’s no forthcoming features of future devices to spy here. Each icon is marked by a description as well as a list of colors, and an image of each app icon has been submitted in the huge size of 1000×1000 pixels, which means that Apple shouldn’t have to re-render any of them for the next decade to come.

You are looking at China’s next iPhome. It was found lost in an electronics shop in Beijing, camouflaged to look like the real iPhone 4G. We got it. We disassembled it. It’s totally fake, and here are all the details.

Although individuals have already demonstrated working hacks of Apple’s iPad, it seems like it’s taking them forever to actually release a working jailbreak… and if you’re an iPod Touch owner, it seems like it’s been even longer since the first working, untethered 3.1.3 jailbreak was demonstrated, only to never be released.

It looks now like everyone has something to look forward. According to the iPhone Dev Team’s blog, they intend on releasing an iPadjailbreak sometime soon after the iPad 3G goes on sale.

When Apple acquired music streaming service Lala year, almost everyone assumed that iTunes’ tenth iteration would find Apple’s music syncing software re-envisioned as a service which allowed users to stream their tunes from anywhere without actually having their musics locally stored.

That’s still a safe bet , especially as Apple phases out their older iPod models and shrinks down the footprint of 3G SIM cards to be installable in even the smallest chassis. But it did raise a question: would existing Lala customers be left high and dry by the Apple buyout?

No, as it turns out. While Lala has just announced that their service will be shutting down on May 31st for good, with no new users accepted. Lala’s going the extra mile by converting any money spent on streaming music into iTunes credit. That counts even if you have unused Lala credit. How generous.

Want to know when you’ll be sliding through the orange hued inkwell of a counter-gravitational portal on your Mac? Eager to know the date when you can start the fight against the insidious Combine under OS X? Fanatic about headshotting bile-spitting zombie after zombie within the safehouse of Snow Leopard? Keen to whack a bald, minigun-toting fat man in the back of the head with a baseball bat while cracking wise to him in a Brooklyn accent?

Sure you are, and when Valve gets around to releasing Steam for Mac, you can do just that through native Source-engine ports of games like Left 4 Dead, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal just by downloading them through their games delivery service. And just when are they planning on releasing Steam for Mac to good gamers across the world? We now have a date: May 12th.

Most laptops and portable media players have pretty terrible bass, no matter how great their audio may otherwise be, but subwoofers aren’t exactly easily luggable devices. Digivoid’s latest device attempts to shore up your iPod and MacBook’s weak vibes.

The Zo Personal Subwoofer is a small gadget about the size of an iPod Nano. All you do is plug it into your device’s headphone jack through a supplied mini-stereo cable. You then plug your headphones into the Zo for improved sound, which is itself powered by an internal rechargeable battery.

According to DigiZoid, the Zo Persona Subwoofer offers bass that’s the equivalent of a 12-inch subwoofer. That seems like a little bit of a stretch to us, but if you’re interested, you can pick up a Zo to supplement your iPod’s bass for just $99.

The iPhone perhaps does not have the native tele-dildonic abilities of more prolifically vibrating devices like the Nintendo Wiimote, but if you’ve ever looked at your beloved handset and wished that love could be exhibited in a deep muscular rubdown, there’s an app for that… along with a $5,999 chair.

The Human Touch Connect is your typical Brookstone-esque massage chair, with the added ability to be controlled through the Internet, Bluetooth or any iPhone OS device. Use the app and you have access to a full library of massaging programs like the Coccyx Blaster or the O-Ring Loosener, although be wary of using the triggering the latter setting without a waterproof iPhone case.

Today, Patently Apple revealed a whole slew of new multi-touch gestures that Apple might introduce in new products and software updates, most of which are detailed in the image above… which, incidentally, looks like the pictogram instruction set for the secret high five that was in vogue my senior year in high school, and which I could never pull off without the tendons in my wrist rolling up like a window shade.

Patently Apple’s post also indicates a neat new iPod technology which is unrelated, but plenty cool: automatic adjustment of music tempo based on your performance. For example, if you’re flagging on the hill, the tempo increases, while if your heart is about to explode, it slows on down. Looks like a smart evolution of Apple’s current Nike partnership to me.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyx7U7TH2bQ

This fantastic proof of concept video by the guys over at Magic Jungle Software demonstrates their forthcoming game, Chopper 2, being output from an iPad to a 42-inch HDTV, with an iPhone or iPod Touch used as the game’s controller.

It looks incredible, but perhaps more interesting is Distorted Loop’s take on the video, which is that this would be a fantastic direction for a relaunched Apple TV to take: an audio-visual, app-running console hooked up to your television that can be controlled by an iPhone, iPod Touch or even a “future low-cost touch sensitive remote control” that would ship in the box.

A product like that would not only finally realize the wasted potential of the Apple TV product line, but put Apple on track to compete with the likes of the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as furiously as the iPhone currently competes with the Nintendo DS.