Arguably the best soccer game on any console, the much anticipated Pro Evolution Soccer is now available on iPhone and iPod Touch and boasts a unique ‘true flow’ control system, unrivalled realism and official UEFA competitions exclusive to Pro Evolution Soccer 2010. But does it compete with other big soccer games already available in the App Store?
As seen at last week’s WWDC, iMovie for iOS looks like nothing else out there when it comes to mobile video editing. The Tidbits blog has posted some more details about what you can expect, and unfortunately, there’s some limitations on what you can do with iMovie.
The bad news is that for right now, it’s iPhone 4 only, with iPhone 3GSs needing not apply because of the lack of A4 processor. Don’t expect it on the iPad until Apple’s tablet gets a camera, though.
There’s more bad news: right now, you can’t export projects to iMovie on the Mac for giving your edits some more advanced finesse. iMovie for iPhone exists in its own little vacuum for people who want to quickly edit a movie on the go. If you want to edit your iPhone 4 footage on your Mac, you’ll need to start from scratch, at least for now.
While iMovie for iPhone is likely to be locked to next-gen iOS devices, I imagine Apple will eventually integrate the software with the desktop suite and bring it to the next-gen iPad and iPod Touch. Either way, at $4.99, iMovie for iPhone looks like a steal of an app.
If you’re a developer itching to deploy any one of iOS 4’s 1500+ new APIs, good news: Apple has started accepting iOS 4 apps for submission.
There’s not much more to say, except for a personal plea to developers to get a move-on, since I want some multitasking apps to test come June 21st. And if you’re the developer of Skype or Reeder, that goes double for you.
We’ve known for some time that the iPhone and iPod Touch are not as secure as we would like them to be — and unfortunately the same can be said about the new iPad. The lack of built-in encryption leaves our personal data on any of these devices at risk. Luckily for iPhone and iPod Touch users third party vendors are supplying apps that help fill some of these gaps in security. One such app, which was popular on the Palm OS platform, is SplashID from SplashData, Inc., which stores all your passwords, logins, and banking details.
A few days after Tweetie for Mac was named a winner in Ars Technica’s design awards for best Mac OS X software, Tweetie and Twitter for iPhone developer Loren Brichter has said that an iPad version is in the works… and he soon plans to get back into the update cycle for Tweetie for Mac as well.
Rhythm-based gaming isn’t new to the App Store – for a while now, there have been several games that offer players the ability to play along and ‘jam out’ to their favorite music. However the largest, most successful game in the genre is Guitar Hero. With huge success on pretty much every console available, the biggest music video-game franchise has finally found its way on to the iPhone and iPod Touch, and my God does it rock!
Cupertino’s got a lot of flack for their prudish stance on adult-oriented applications on the App Store, with Steve Jobs himself famously saying that if revolutions are about freedom, than the iPad is revolutionary because of its freedom from porn.
Regardless about how you may feel about Apple censoring the content an adult can consume on a device that he owns, though, at least Apple’s not going to be alone in ridding their app marketplace of all adult content: Microsoft plans to do the same thing with their Windows Phone 7 Marketplace when it launches later in the year.
Randy Ubillos, Apple Chief Architect of Video Apps, has just taken the stage to show off iMovie for iPhone, claiming it’s one of the most exciting things he’s ever worked on.
What’s iMovie for iPhone about? “Record HD video and edit with beautiful transitions and titles, all on the device you carry with you every day,” says Ubillos.
Once you bring up the app, you quickly get a list of all the project you have, and can just tap on a project to get into the editing environment. Clips are viewed along the bottom of the display: rotate the phone to landscape and you can record directly into the timeline, or choose from existing clips, which are dragged in. Pinch to change the scale of the timeline.
Photos can also be added, as well as transitions (entered with a scroll box) and even titles. The new camera records geolocation information and gets picked up automatically by iMovie and put into the screen as an option.
You can also add music tracks to your video from your iTunes library.
Wow. This is incredible. There’s just nothing like this out there right now. It’ll be available on the App Store for just $4.99.
[images via GDGT]
Eliciting a resounding “What the f***!” from a member of the WWDC audience, Zynga just took the stage and announced that the irritating Facebook phenomenon Farmville played by 35 million users a day is now coming to the iPhone.
It makes sense, actually: recent updates to Facebooks’ privacy settings, making it harder for apps to spam you, has seen Farmville lose millions of users in a month. It also makes sense because We Rule already proved how strong the concept of a Farmville clone on the App Store could be, at least as far as making money off of micro-transactions to hurry things along are concerned.
Oh, and say goodbye to withering crops! Push notification is fully supported.
[image via GDGT]
Netflix is already available on the iPad, but as the recent revelation that the iPad executable was a universal binary implies, it’s coming to the iPhone too.
The iPhone version uses adaptive vidfeo playback, and allows for seamless switching between 3G and WiFi networks. It’s coming this summer, and it’ll be free.
I guess they got around the performance issues, at least on the next-gen iPhone.
[image via GDGT]
Apple wants people to know they’ve gotten a lot better about App Store approval, and Steve Jobs has just given some numbers to prove it.
About 15,000 apps are submitted every week in thirty different languages. Jobs claims that an astonishing 95% of these apps are now approved within seven days.
What about the apps that aren’t? Jobs doesn’t want us thinking censorship: rather, the more common reason is that it doesn’t function as advertised, with the second most common reason that it is pulling from private APIs.
The third most frequent reason? “They crash. If you were in our shoes, you’d be rejecting apps for the exact same reasons.”
The point of this section of the keynote is clearly to make sure people don’t think Apple’s censoring. “Sometimes when you read some of these articles, you may think other stuff is going on,” Steve notes. True enough!
I wonder how much of that 5% is made up of jiggling boob apps, though.
It’s time for our weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.
This time, we review 10 Pin Shuffle Lite, Air Video, Air Video Free, Cliffed, Dubble, Escape Board (iPad), Giana Sisters, Instapaper Pro, Iron Horse, Racecar (iPad), Sky Force, and Sky Force Reloaded.
What’s better than a snarling dirtbike, burnin’ rings of fire and a sarcastic stuntman in an Evel Knievel jumpsuit? Exactly — nothing. Add hot 3D graphics, cool audio and some smart, funny writing, and you’ve got an iPhone full of contusion-forming, bone-shattering fun. At least, for a half-hour anyway.
Apps that use GPS to peg a user’s location on a map are nothing new — but an app that works with the user’s own maps — of say a college campus, airport terminals or the sprawling San Diego Zoo — now that’s a pretty neat trick.
Snap + Map by FogTechnologies is a $2 app that lets you does exactly that, by superimposing your GPS location onto a user-defined map — either downloaded in the form of a pdf or from a picture taken with the iPhone’s camera. The app calibrates the iPhone’s GPS receiver with the map by asking you to enter your current location, then move a short distance and enter it again. Of course, much of this app’s usefulness depends on the iPhone’s somewhat spotty GPS capabilities.
Brilliant idea though — especially for ephemeral locations like Burning Man, where I can totally envision this app saving my life during my next visit; possibly quite literally.
Take Smule’s Glee or I Am T-Pain popstar-forging apps, strip away the Auto-Tune (and some of the polish), stir in a little Simon Cowell and bam — you’ve got Music Idol, a dollar-app that creates a virtual American Idol community on the iPhone, complete with the ability to rate other would-be star’s performances.
The app — which has also been formatted for the iPad — gives users the ability to upload 20-second performance, then show off their talents through the app’s searchable database or post clips to the user’s Facebook page. The developer claims a 2000-member user-base (culled partly from an earlier version of the app called Riff Raters).
While the Smule apps are collaborative in nature, this one seems like more of a way to introduce the world to your unique talents — or perhaps invite a hailstorm of abuse. Either way. to prod talent in the app’s direction, the developer is giving away $10 iTunes gift cards every week.
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Maker of diabolically intricate pixel-art extrordinaire, the phenomenal eBoy has just released his first iPhone App. Called FixPix, it’s a simple, slightly nauseating but completely addictive puzzle game: you use your iPhone’s accelerometer to tilt cut-out portions of an image back and forth until they perfectly line up, bringing you to the next stage. You can grab it now for only $2.
According to Apple Insider, Apple has started to cull programs on the App Store that offer Dashboard-like widgets to the user.
The most tangible evidence of the purge comes from Developer Russell Ivanovic, whose MyFrame app was removed by Apple for including widget support.
Going straight to Steve Jobs, Ivanovic received this reply: “”We are not allowing apps that create their own desktops. Sorry.”
Apple Insider speculates that this might be preparation work for Apple to introduce their own widgets in iPhone OS 4.0, although surely we’d have seen some evidence of that in beta form by now.
An equally valid reason Apple may be shutting dashboard apps down is because of their strict ban against interpretive code, which is essentially what a widget is.
Less than a week after its long overdue update allowing VoIP calls over the iPhone’s 3G connection, nearly five million people have already downloaded the latest update to the popular Skype App from iTunes.
Of course, that’s five million people who are going to go absolutely bonkers when Skype starts inexplicably charging for 3G calls at the beginning of next year.
According to Skype, they are charging to make sure they can maintain quality on Skype-to-Skype calls, but I can’t help but wonder if the long delay in bringing 3G calls to Skype was a roadblock placed by AT&T, who — rightly — see a 3G capable Skype as a threat ti their minutes business… especially once iPhone OS 4.0 comes around and enables VoIP multi-trasking.
iMaria is a virtual girlfriend app billed as your very own English play pal. But the developers struggled with the “hot Brit chick,” concept seeing as the virtual girl is in fact embodied by Playboy model Maria Eriksson, who is Croatian. (More at her NSFW site.)
So, well, at least she’s great to look at, right? Sure, but a come-hither look and perma-tousled hair is about as far as you’ll get with iTunes enforced no-porn rules.
She’s been iDubbed to have a “cute English accent,” and your interaction with her hinges around some pretty banal activities: should she cook for you? Or should you take her out? You can then choose what you eat, too. She does look pretty suggestive peeling those potatoes for your English stay-at-home meals but is that’s about it.
As a former Londoner myself, I can give you clear advice from the outset: don’t take your car into London. It’s slow, expensive, and bound to end up a frustrating experience.
My iPhone has become more than just a cell phone — it is really useful and frankly indispensable. It wouldn’t be without the plethora of apps available, but not just any app will do so when I find a good one I like to write about it. Minibooks for Freshbooks is one of those apps. It is a full-featured iPhone invoicing app that makes invoicing my clients fast and easy. If you are a freelancer or contractor – and in these days of unemployment, who isn’t – Minibooks takes the pain out of asking your clients for money.
If you’re dreaming of Netflix for your iPhone, good news: you’re just a jailbreak away. Hacker Knisitruck says that the existing Netflix iPad app is secretly a universal binary and can be easily ported to the iPhone with a few simple steps.
If you’re a fan of games like Minigore or Guerilla Bob, then developers GameLab have a treat in store for you – Pirate’s Treasure for iPhone and iPod Touch – boasting stunning 3D graphics, all-out blasting mayhem and bosses too massive to fit on the screen, this game will certainly keep you entertained!
Skype’s been teasing us with the promise of this for a while now, and we postulated they’d add the feature after Apple revealed iPhone OS 4 would include background VoIP — and yesterday it finally arrived: Skype’s iPhone app now works over a 3G network.
Calling all Star Trek fans out there: The iPhone 3Gs has a universal translator — Jibbigo. Speak into your iPhone in any of the five supported languages, and the iPhone speaks the translation back.
