One of the reasons owners of the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS have been waiting for a jailbreak for iOS 4.1 is to enable the iPhone 4’s impressive HDR functionality on their older handsets… a hack which is already available for jailbroken 3G and 3GS users on the iOS 4.1 beta through a Cydia app.
It looks pretty likely, though, that these users won’t need to jailbreak their devices to enable HDR functionality… Apple seemingly intends to add HDR in a software update coming down the line.
Sega have been working hard throughout 2010 to bring Sonic 4 to the iPhone, which they confirmed back in May would be coming to the iOS. Today they have announced an official release date of October 7th!
Sega have ported two of their Sonic the Hedgehog games to iOS to date, and these have received mixed reviews. Some people love them for bringing their favorite childhood hedgehog to their palms, while others are disappointed with them for providing slow, jumpy gameplay, and a poor control system.
I’m very much looking forward to Sonic 4, and I’m hoping these issues will be ironed out in Sega’s latest port. Touch Arcade have been lucky enough to get their hands on a nearly complete build of the game at E3 in June, and they were blown away by it.
Interestingly, the release date of Sonic 4 for iOS means that the game will be available in the App Store before it arrives on any console; it won’t arrive on the Wii until October 11th, the PlayStation 3 until October 12th, and the Xbox a day later on the 13th.
The new iPod nano’s diminutive size keeps inspiring geeks worldwide to a variety of hacks. News today from Japan of the iSpeck’s ability to fit nicely inside the display slot on an old Sega Dreamcast VMU.
The Sega buttons do not control the iPod (yet?) but it’s safe to say this case offers good drop protection, and the headphone cord coming out the side doesn’t look as dorky as with an iWatch.
More photos and videos of the making on the vendor’s original Japanese website. [via TUAW]
There are a few Essential Apps that handle themselves so well on the iPhone they quickly eclipse the website they evolved from; apps that, once installed on the iPhone, completely replace their browser-based ancestors.
Essentials Yelp, The Weather Channel and Twitter clearly fall into this category. But Facebook’s app is different. It doesn’t just replace — it hooks.
If you’ve been one of the many people who has expected Apple to drop Google as the default search engine in iOS due to the escalating rivalry between the iPhone and Android handsets, think again. According to Business Insider, Apple and Google have just agreed to extend the deal that makes Google search reign supreme on iOS devices.
The news comes from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who revealed the extension in a recent interview with Charlie Rose.
About a month ahead of America and Europe, New Zealand clocks fall an hour back when they switch to Daylight Savings Time on the last Sunday of September. Apparently, though, New Zealand iPads and iPhones are proving a tad overzealous when it comes to falling back this year: numerous iOS users are reporting that since yesterday’s switch, their alarms are going off an hour early. Given that Kiwis were already having to wake up an hour earlier than they were used to, that’s quite a rude awakening.
This week’s must-have iOS games include the awesome new Real Soccer from Gameloft, which features gorgeous high-definition graphics optimized for the retina display. We also have their long-awaited Gangstar sequel, Miami Vindication, and some seriously addictive gameplay in ngmoco’s We City.
Check out a few of our favorite games from the past week after the break!
This week’s must-have iOS apps include Napster’s new music streaming application that provides access to over 10 million of songs on your iOS device, Google Voice calling with GV Mobile+, and a media player that supports pretty much every codec out there!
Check out a few of our favorite apps from the past week after the break!
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAWqUtR9QIM
Are you the owner of an iPhone 3G who is disappointed that you can’t run deathmatch with friends through Apple’s new match making service, Game Center? A jailbreak and some hacking could get you up and running, if you’re feeling bold.
Over at Redmond Pie, Taimur Asad goes through the process of getting jailbreak running on an iPhone 3G… which is (coincidentally for this experiment) the only iPhone that can currently be jailbroken under iOS 4.1 right now.
Apple’s Find My iPad feature strikes again, this time a cross-country escapade with a happy ending. It begins when Southwest traveler Curtis Cogdill left his iPad on the airplane when traveling from Sacramento, Calif., to Portland, Ore:
After some discussion as to whose fault it was, Cogdill used his iPod Touch and Apple’s Find My iPhone MobileMe app to locate the iPad. While the family was in Oregon, the iPad had taken a cross-country trip to Orlando, Fla.
“You could zoom all the way in,” Cogdill said. “You could tell it was sitting where an airplane would be sitting at the terminal.” [CNET]
But the story doesn’t end there. The wayward iPad soon took another journey. While tracking his iPad, Cogdill watched as his beloved iSlate left the airport and traveled to a nearby home.
Lost, then found, then stolen – what a day.
Fortunately the story has a happy ending. A Southwest supervisor, along with the police, recovered the iPad soon after the rightful owner contacted the airline. The family is happy with the outcome, and MobileMe likely has another lifetime subscriber.
[via CNET]
Earlier this month, a member of the Chronic Development Team announced that he had discovered an exploit that would allow any iOS device currently on the market to be jailbroken forever, no matter how Apple patched it through software. Christened “SHAtter,” the exploit is widely anticipated, not only because it will allow versions of iOS 4.0.2 and above to be jailbroken, but because the only way Apple can fix it is through hardware. Once SHAtter is released, all current iOS devices will essentially be jailbreakable forever.
Here’s a warning, though. The SHAtter jailbreak still isn’t out, which means that any website or program claiming to be capable of jailbreaking a device running iOS 4.0.2 or above is likely a scam unless it was released by the Dev Team themselves… and chances are, it’s something much worse.
According to security researcher Costin Raiu at the Kapersey Labs, there is a new exploit in the wild that is being circulated as greenpois0n, a purported iOS 4.0.2 or above jailbreaking tool. Instead of actually jailbreaking iOS devices, though, it instead steals your passwords.
It’s easy to forget after the remarkable ease of August’s JailbreakMe exploit that jailbreaking your iOS device is actually a complicated process and not one that should be conducted by amateurs. As always, remember that the only real source to trust when it comes to jailbreaking your iPhone is the iPhone Dev Team… and unless they have released a tool directly to jailbreak your device, you should stay far, far away.
Last week, Twitter announced a serious overhaul of their website. It might mean diddly to iPhone users though, who usually access Twitter through any one of a growing heap of mobile Twitter apps — all of which are equipped with a vastly superior set of features compared to Twitter’s site (at least, currently).
Now, I’ve always held that selecting a Twitter app is a highly subjective, personal process, kind of like picking out a bicycle saddle — you just sort of squish around on it for a few days and see if it feels right. Personally, I currently tend to favor HootSuite over any other Twitter app, even though I’ve installed, and sometimes use, half a dozen or so others. But one Twitter app has foisted itself to essential status: Twitter’s own official app. And it’s above the rest for one key reason, really.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pCRh7gcAOs
iOS 4’s introduction of app folders is a welcome addition to the operating system in that it’s a fantastic tool to use to wrangle a large app library, but it only takes a few minutes of playing around with the functionality to discover its sad limitations… which in my case rests mostly with the folder systems’ inability to support multiple pages in folders, or folders nested matrioshka-like inside one another.
That’s why I’m so excited about FolderEnhancer, a Cydia tweak for jailbroken iOS 4.1 devices that adds a host of new tweaks to the default foldering system, including sub-folder hierarchies, pages and moving multiple icons at a time.
Sure, this isn’t for everyone, but I’m envisioning a happy future in which my multiple overflowing games folders are united and subdivided into meticulously delineated genres. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed for free: all of the best Cydia tweaks lately have had price tags attached.
Starting in November when iOS 4.2 drops, we’ll finally be able to print directly from the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad through AirPrint. At the beginning, AirPrint will mostly only work with printers shared on your network, but eventually, AirPrint-certified printers will appear that can sense nearby iOS devices out-of-the-book.
In the meantime, though, we’re going to have to settle for some printers kludging iOS printing… namely by assigning each printer an e-mail address to which documents can be sent for printing through your iPhone or iPad’s built-in Mail.app.
HP’s just announced three such printers: the HP Envy e-All-In-One, which will cost $249 and do the whole smorgasbord of home printing duties including printing, copying and scanning; the HP OfficeJet Pro 8500A Plus, an all-in-one office inkjet with wireless connectivity; and the HP PhotoSmart eStation, which costs $499 and is capable of printing photos of up to 9600×2400 dpi, and comes with an optional (blargh) Android tablet.
They’re all attractive printers, and they are all technically “AirPrint-compatible” in that when AirPrint rolls down the software update pipeline, they’ll at least be shareable from your Mac. If you want a truly AirPrint compatible printer, though, best wait for a spell longer.
Over the years, Napster has pupated from an illegal peer-to-peer music sharing network to a streaming audio subscription service, and today marks another surprising evolution in a brand that has, over the past decade, meant all things to all men: it’s now an iPhone app.
10-4, you heard that correctly: Apple has finally approved Napster on iTunes as a free application. Weighing in at just 1.8MB, Napster will stream over 10 million songs to you on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, provided you’re willing to give a Hamilton a month to Napster LLC (which the App Store listing proudly reminds us is “a Best Buy company”) for their Napster plus Mobile Access subscription.
Okay, it’s not the long delayed U.S. launch of our favorite streaming music service, Spotify. None the less, it’s great to see so many options for streaming your music start hitting the App Store, and I think it heralds great things for Apple’s own entry into the Cloud: clearly, whatever Apple’s got planned, they don’t think existing services like Napster or Spotify are a threat. iTunes Live, when it comes, is going to do things we didn’t even know we wanted.
Like a time travel scenario where you meet your own grandfather as a child, enthusiasts working with the Einstein Newton Emulator project have ported the Prodigal PDA to the iPhone. The current implementation is only available as source code and runs a bit slow, but is an actual working version of NewtonOS complete with handwriting recognition and familiar input gestures.
Your choice of smartphone may tell more about you than you realize. Various sources are reporting on a Nielsen Mobile Insights survey about mobile phone usage; among other findings: iPhone users prefer chicken, while Android owners love ribs.
[coupons.com] examined its mobile coupon usage from the different platforms and came up with some staggering results. Did you know that women’s body wash coupons were routinely used by iPhone owners while men’s body wash was often purchased by Android owners?
If that doesn’t floor you, you should know that iPhone owners buy baby products 42 times more than Android users. Google OS users are more apt to use pain-relief coupons though, probably because of the headaches of using Android’s multimedia player. [intomobile]
According to the Wall Street Journal additional details from the survey reveal that a higher proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds use Androids than iPhones, BlackBerry users tend to use their phones more for business purposes than entertainment, and iPhone users tend to be more affluent and better educated.
I’m not sure whether this is more useful as flame-bait or marketing demographics, but it’s fun!
[via Digg]
It was common knowledge that Apple’s new AppleTV was running some sort of variation of iOS under the hood, especially since it uses the iPhone 4 and iPad’s A4 CPU for silicon horsepower, but TUAW has confirmed it: the AppleTV is an iOS device, and therefore jailbreakable using existing techniques… although since there’s no local storage, I would imagine any AppleTV jailbreaking would mostly focus on improving functionality by beefing HD output up to 1080p.
Much as I love Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series of tongue-in-cheek horror films, and much as I have tried to emulate my virtues after that of its protagonist Deadite slayer Ash Williams, I have never found any of the myriad efforts to translate Army of Darkness‘ appeal to the video game form to be worth anything besides a derisive snort.
So I feel a little foolish getting so excited by word coming from Backflip Studios that they will be releasing a game based on Army of Darkness to the App Store early in 2011.
There’s almost no details so far, except that it will be a tower defense game, which is a surprising but remarkably appropriate choice, and you can expect several hours of Bruce Campbell’s snarling, macho and downright hysterical catch phrases as you blow hole after hole through the medieval dead with your trusty boomstick. Don’t bone this up, Backflip!
There’s an interesting change in the way iOS 4.2 handles orientation lock on the iPad… one that indicates a curious design backpedal on the part of Cupertino.
Previously, orientation lock on the iPad was handled with a physical hardware switch on the side of the device, but in iOS 4.2, it has been repurposed as a physical “Mute” button, with the orientation lock achieved the same way it is on the iPhone 4 or iPod Touch under iOS 4: through the multitasking tray.
It’s a minor but significant change that, I suspect, portends the elimination of the mute/screen orientation button on the second-generation iPad. For famously minimal and streamlined Apple, a physical mute button doesn’t make a lot of sense on an iOS device that isn’t a phone.
[via MacRumors]
Once Apple announced its own baked-in Game Center for iOS, OpenFeint — the previous go-to mobile social gaming network — seemed to lose a bit of its luster, but the guys Aurora Feint seem to have a plan and they’re falling through with it: starting today, OpenFeint is now available on the Android operating system.
But Aurora Feint’s strategy in dealing with Game Center isn’t to abandon iOS. Oh no: this news is very relevant to iOS gamers because now that OpenFeint is on Android, you can now take part in cross-platform multiplayer games, achievements, leaderboards and friending in Fruit Ninja, MiniSquadron, Super Slyder, The Moron Test and Tic-Tac Toe… with fifteen other titles to follow this month.
At the very least, the relevance here to iOS gamers is they now have twice as many people to play Tic Tac Toe against… I just can’t wait for iOS vs. Android OpenFeint deathmatch tournaments.
It turns out we didn’t need to wait for the Dev Team to jailbreak iOS 4.1 after all: if you’ve got a jailbroken iPhone 3G or 3GS running the iOS 4.1 beta, all you need to do is download the HDR Camera Enabler through Cydia from the ModMy repository to enable high dynamic range snaps on your last-gen iPhone.
Presumably, this same tweak will also work with the Dev Team’s official iOS 4.1 jailbreak, which has yet to be released. Unfortunately, for right now, it’s 4.1 beta only, though, making it available to only a very small subset of jailbreakers. If you want to give it a shot, though, Redmondpie has a series of good tutorials on how to jailbreak the iOS 4.1 beta on the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 3G.
Well that didn’t take long. Steve Jobs quipped that the new iPod nano would make a good wristwatch, and last week brought news of the first iPod nano watch band. Now several contenders are offering products for sale.
And the iWatch was born. And it was Good.
Provided you’re willing to look like a geek with a headphone cord dangling from your wrist when you listen to music.
iOS 4.1’s ability to take high-dynamic range photos has been a much buzzed about new feature particularly to amateur photogs looking to maximize the quality of their casual smartphone snaps, but Apple does not appear to have gone it alone: according to some excellent research done by MacRumors’ Eric Slivka, it appears that Apple acquired a small, Cambridge-based company called Imsense to bring the feature to an iPhone near you.
Before being bought by Apple, Imsense did business in a technology called “eye-fidelity” which used software algorithms to remap image tons in order to produce nearly instantaneous Dynamic Range Correction in both standard and HDR photos. While the iOS 4.1 implementation of HDR is done in the classical fashion of blending three separate exposures into a single image, Imsense’s Eye-Fidelity algorithms appear to be used in iOS 4.1 to further spruce the resulting image up and make the colors pop.
It seems surprising that Apple could make any move to buy a company and not immediately be found out, but it appears that the acquisition went down under everyone’s nose back in July, with three Cupertino officers named directors of Imsense on July 15th, 2010. Could Apple once again be getting a tight grip on the secrecy they’ve lost handle of over the past year?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGmRKSds9OY
Proving a thing or two about making the most of what you have – unlike Microsoft – Amazon has come out with a cute ad poking fun at using the iPad in bright sunlight, and its premium price to boot.
I’m an iPad fan, but I will admit the little Never-Say-Die eReader does win on these fronts…
[via Digg]