iPhone apps - page 59

Never one to rest on its laurels, Apple is piling on following its record Q3 with a big push for the holidays. Today, it launched its opening salvo for the season with “Gift” (above) and “Song” (after the jump). The former, in typical fashion, starts with something immediately relevant (using the Target app to get gift recommendations) before going off on tangents (photo editing, “Monopoly,” Zipcar?).

“Song,” meanwhile pretty much just goes full-on for the “There’s an app for that” mantra, touching on real estate, The Sims, Facebook, and Shazam. And honestly, in both cases, it’s pretty effective. There are more than 100,000 apps, after all, even if there’s no Google Voice. The campaign works because it’s welcoming and says you can find what you want to do easily. (via MacRumors)

Unfortunately, that selling point is actually pretty different from the real experience of using the App Store. Once you hit 100,000, discoverability becomes the killer app, not any single product within. This isn’t that big a problem yet (except for developers), but it will become an increasing one over time. What good are 100,000 apps when I struggle to use more than 10 on a daily basis?

Consider this: iTunes offers more than 10 million songs, but lots of users have several thousands of songs (I have nearly 5,000 and add more every year). Assuming that the average for a power user is around 2,000 songs per user, that rounds out to there being 5,000 songs to every one that most people download.

With apps, by contrast, there are 100,000, but I would guess most power users carry fewer than 30 on them at any given time (I’m actually closer to 20 beyond the initial set). That’s 3,300 apps per one download, a ratio that starts to get really dramatic as the app store grows toward a million choices but people install no more of them. It’s already pretty rough trying to break through as an obscure band on iTunes — it could get much worse as the ratio grows increasingly unfavorable for apps.

Fortunately, problems tend to highlight opportunities to innovate. Everyone knows that a more robust Springboard app is needed to help us sort through our many apps to find the one we want when we want it. Apple could also come up with new forms of App Store search to better surface apps better suited to you (imagine if Genius for Apps worked!), or it could take note of developers whose work you’ve enjoyed previously and recommend those. Moreover, Apple could even offer different ways to market oneself on the App Store. We’re used to bundling on the desktop side; why shouldn’t there by an iPhoneHeist next year to bring together rock stars with rising contenders on the fastest-growing platform ever?

The growth of the iPhone has been fascinating. OS 1.0 was about defining a new kind of mobile experience. OS 2.0 was about opening the platform to true development and making it more than just a product. OS 3.0 has been about fixing the most-requested problems, including MMS, copy-and-paste, and tethering (not that AT&T has implemented the latter). OS 4.0, it seems to be, would be an excellent time to figure out how one might actually benefit from owning a couple hundred different apps.

You know how the new amazing new augmented reality concept, in apps like Bionic Eye and Urban Spoon, have you blindly following the screen’s marker and bumping into people? Or the side of buildings? No? Fine, maybe it’s just me.

Point is, it’s usually easier to navigate to the nearest Starbucks with a map rather than AR.

But using AR to predict the future — hey, now that’s a cool idea. Sun Seeker does exactly that, estimating where the sun will be in the future. hold the iPhone up the sky, and an overlay displays the sun’s current position (usually not too difficult to find, even without AR) and its predicted path overhead.

If you’re not into AR, the app has a more conventional screen that provides a top-down overview.

Who will use this? Like the app’s iTunes Store page says, Sun Seeker is probably a great boon for pilots, architects, photographers and the like. Or residents of London or San Francisco. Sometimes it’s just good to know the sun is still there.

MagicHour is a world clock app with great information presentation.

In one screen, the app displays a wealth of info about time, daylight stages and moon phases in different cities. Edward Tufte would cream his pants. All world clocks should be like this.

Via tumbly.dotsar and Robot Wisdom.

MagicHour is $3.99 from the App Store.

LocFinder is an augmented reality app that boasts it will always let you see which direction is home or find your car, even if you’re halfway across the world.

LocFinder costs $0.99 on iTunes and while isn’t the first augmented reality app to tackle parking lot amnesia — we recently wrote about Car Finder — it sounds like a compass on steroids.

It has a bevy of features that may end those ping-pong SMS messages to set up a meeting, make stopping to ask for directions a non-issue even when you’re lost in Paris — or let you know exactly how far away you are from Cupertino at all times.

More on what it does with video after the jump…

There’s a lot to like about the iPhone’s App Store. The more than 100,000 programs within its occasionally strict boundaries offer a bevy of experience riches unmatched in the mobile computing space. But it’s also frustrating. Great apps get postponed or blocked altogether, while great ones like Skype have key features removed.

All of this is nothing new. Mac bloggers talk about this all the time. But I think I’ve also pinpointed exactly why such minor complaints are so painful. It’s called the Entertainment Category of the App Store.

For those unfamiliar with its seedy contents, the Entertainment Category is sort of a catch-all for all kinds of applications that don’t have a good home elsewhere in the App Store. Here’s a chart I made to illustrate the problem:

Yes, despite the fact that the entertainment category does include some legit apps, some of which are great (Pocket God, Emoji, and Movies spring to mind), it is, for the most part, a giant blue Pac-Man of lame softcore porn devouring all in its path. And it’s impossible to find anything actually entertaining there. Which is a disaster. It’s a disincentive to develop something good (who can compete against Naughty Hotties?), and that means that it inevitably gets worse over time.

Transport in Switzerland not only runs on time, but you can buy tickets with your iPhone.

The latest version of the SBB mobile app lets travelers buy e-tickets for trains and all public transport, so you can get off the train in Lugano and catch a bus for Mendrisio without missing a beat.

Users first register with the railway company site to buy tickets via credit card for trains and buses, including day and bike passes.

The app, offered gratis on iTunes, comes in German, French, Italian and English. It also offers timetables, a “take me home” GPS function and has a crowd predictor so you know when to stop in a cafe and wait for the next one.

Tim Langdell‘s back, and this time he’s mad(der than a bag of spanners). Today, Nalin Sharma’s Killer Edge Racing is the victim. The short version: like with Mobigame’s Edge, Langdell claims Nalin’s game is riffing off Edge’s ‘famous’ marks; additionally, Pocket Gamer reports that Langdell’s moved to register Killer Edge Racing and Killer Edge Racers, despite Killer Edge having its roots back in 2005, way before Edge Games claimed to be working on a racing game of its own. (It’s since released Racers—and the word ‘released’ is used here in its loosest possible sense—see ChaosEdge for the full story. But given that Racers is a redressed PC game from a liquidated company and is ‘released’ on home-burned DVDR and is not on iPhone, there’s no possibility of confusion.)

Of course, Apple will continue to hide behind the DMCA in these cases, saying it’s doing what it’s doing for legal reasons. But as this case and the one regarding StoneLoops! of Jurassica show, Apple’s going to start looking foolish if it doesn’t implement some kind of robust background check and a longer process of investigation/arbitration/settlement prior to yanking a game. A dispute policy is utterly essential, but the one currently in place is clearly open to abuse.

Here’s hoping Sharma manages to get his game back on the App Store without compromising the brand he’s been using for five years, and that EA’s case with Langdell next year reaches a conclusion that satisfies the indie developers regularly under fire from his trolling actions (oh, and the 15-year-old girls on DeviantArt he steals artwork from to advertise his games that don’t actually exist).

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

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.

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.

I really like Stacks on my Mac. Stacks makes it fast and easy to find files, folders and apps right from the Dock. It makes managing a Mac pretty slick with all sorts of little UI tricks. That’s why I recently gave MobileStack a go on my jailbroken iPhone.

I must say that it lives up to the challenge of making an interface that is intuitive and user friendly enough for the small iPhone screen. In fact, it’s definitely the best excuse to jailbreak.

New on the app store is Car Finder, a clever app that leads back to your parked car using augmented reality.

The app uses the iPhone’s camera to overlay the direction of your car and how far away it is. The app relies on the camera and a digital compass, and is  compatible only with the iPhone 3GS  running 3.1 or later.

Car Finder is available on the App Store for $0.99.

Via iClarified.

The App Store, not even two years old, has crossed the 100,000 mark for apps available to iPhone and iPod touch owners, Apple announced Wednesday. The milestone comes less than two months after the Cupertino, Calif. company said users downloaded more than 2 billion apps.

In September, the App Store reached 85,000 available applications.

Warning: This method no longer works. To jailbreak the latest firmware, check out greenpois0n/limera1n/Pwnage Tool

George Hotz a.k.a GeoHot has released blackra1n RC3, which is an update to a 1-click jailbreak that adds activation options and an add-on blacksn0w, which unlocks latest iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS baseband version 05.11.07. To use blacksn0w, make sure you have this new baseband (check under Settings –> General –> About –> Modem Firmware) and if not, then update to a stock 3.1.2 firmware.

It is pretty easy to use and worked perfectly with my iPhone 3G. Besides the tool, there’s a blackra1n application that gets automatically installed on the iPhone after jailbreak, which gives you option to install Cydia and some other alternatives like RockYourPhone and the ‘sn0w’ option to use blacksn0w unlock solution as well.

Please note that if you have an iPhone 2G, you can still jailbreak using blackra1n but blacksn0w will not unlock for you. You must use BootNeuter available in Cydia for that purpose. Also, if you purchased an iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch (any capacity) in October or later, there is a high probability that you have a new model. Blackra1n currently performs only a tethered jailbreak for these new devices, which means you need to use blackra1n every time you boot the device, otherwise all your jailbreak data gets wiped.

Here’s see how it works.

GeoHot, creator of the famous blackra1n jailbreak tool has now released blacksn0w. Blacksn0w is a full fledged software unlock solution for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, having baseband version 05.11.07 found in firmware version 3.1.2. Unlocking the phone enables you to use it with any carrier in the world.

This means if you have older firmware, you can now upgrade to a stock 3.1.2 and still have the ability to remain unlocked. Blacksn0w also enables the tethering option on these iPhones for you to share the data connection with a laptop or desktop computer.

The blackra1n application for iPhone installed as a result of the blackra1n jailbreak process then allows you to run blacksn0w and finally unlock the phone. However, those who already have the old version of blackra1n application installed on the iPhone can upgrade to the latest version by selecting the new ‘ra1n’ option inside the application. After installing the updated version, tap ‘sn0w’ in the application to unlock. For those who used the DevTeam’s PwnageTool to jailbreak, blacksn0w will soon be available on Cydia.

To accompany blacksn0w, there is a new hacktivation feature added to blackra1n, which activates the iPhone to be used without the iPhone specific plans from carriers like AT&T, O2 etc. But, if you have an officially activated phone already, this won’t interfere. The update to blackra1n tool also makes it  a lot faster, enabling it to jailbreak the iPhone / iPod Touch in just 15 seconds. It also adds support for Mac OS X Tiger and PPC Macs along with the existing Windows and Intel Mac support.

Please note that if you have an iPhone 2G, you can still jailbreak using blackra1n but blacksn0w will not unlock for you. You must use BootNeuter available in Cydia for that purpose. Also, if you purchased an iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch (any capacity) in October or later, there is a high probability that you have a new model. Blackra1n currently performs only a tethered jailbreak for these new devices, which means you need to use blackra1n every time you boot the device, otherwise all your jailbreak data gets wiped.

The new version of blackra1n is available to download at blackra1n.com

Check out our guide on how to jailbreak and unlock using blackra1n and blacksn0w here.

Virgin Atlantic Airways recently released an app for flying phobes. Called Flying Without Fear it’s modeled on the company’s brick and mortar course which they claim has a 98% success rate.

What do you get for $4.99? Well, a reassuring message from Mr. Hot Air Balloon
Sir Richard Branson himself, plus relaxation exercises, answers to fear-based questions, fear therapy and a handy inventory of on-board noises so you know everything’s ok.

Whoopie Goldberg recently got her wings back after an airplane hiatus of over 10 years thanks to the Virgin course:

“The program works, I was a skeptic. I hadn’t flown in 13 years but after doing their program, I understood that while my fear was real, there were many things I didn’t know or had misinformation about, which they were able to clear up. So what happened? I now fly. It’s that simple.”

While not everyone can attend Virgin’s £199 ($326) full day course, it’s worth wondering whether an iPod app can substitute the real thing.

I once had a co-worker for whom flying was a real drama — he ended up in such a state he regularly had to be taken off planes and usually booked multiple times before able to stay aloft in the friendly skies — and I don’t know if passengers more than a little discomfited by air travel would benefit by a few reassuring words and games.

Hearing his story, I also wonder if you’d be able to use the app during take off and landing, which seemed to be the critical moments.

ReelDirector is a mobile movie-making app that brings iMovie-like video editing to the iPhone.

With ReelDirector, you can trim clips, add text and transitions, and even edit different clips together. Currently, the iPhone’s built-in video editing capabilities are limited to just trimming clips. With this app, you can forget those limits.

ReelDirector is pretty easy to use. It has a huge feature list, which makes it possible to do most of the stuff that you do on iMovie, natively on the iPhone.

• ‘Stitch together’ different pieces of clip using the ‘drag and drop timeline’ interface similar to Apple’s built-in clip editing UI.
• Make simple edits and preview these edits easily.
• Choose from a variety of transitions to add or change for each separate clip.
• Add Text watermarks with different styles and several different positions.

Briefly, it’s a great utility to create short family clips or beautify some worthy moments. ReelDirector is currently available for $7.99 on the AppStore and is currently at the 60th position amongst the Top Grossing Applications.

ReelDirector is developed by a group of developers at nexvio, which specializes in producing such innovative Video and Image editing solutions for the iPhone platform.

UPDATE: Oops. Sorry for the embarrassing headline typo. Fixed.

Leaping way, way ahead of competitors, Apple has approved more than 100,000 apps for the App Store, according to App Shopper, an app tracking site.

By contrast, there’s 246 apps for Windows Mobile, which has been around for six years, and about 96 apps for the Palm Pre (see Palm’s list of WebOS applications). Google’s Android,which is probably the iPhone’s strongest competitor, has about 10,000 apps, according to recent estimates. Google has yet to release official figures.

Apple in August said there were 65,000 apps. It took just another 10 weeks to approve more than 35,000 apps. (Apple has approved more than 100K apps, but the number actually available for download is slightly lower: about 93,000)

I recently came across orbit, which is one of the best navigation options available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I have an iPhone that has over 100 applications and it’s definitely a pain to get to the applications on the last page. I can always put the useful applications on the first page but at this point, I have just stopped arranging them. This is when Orbit enters the scene. Instead of swiping across all these pages, it lets me jump to a particular page quickly using simple tile view, saving me a lot of time. That’s the reason it’s one of my favorites.

As I noted a couple of weeks ago, I want a way to view all my iPhone apps on my iPhone, not just through iTunes. I review lots of iPhone apps and am a keen iPhone gamer. When apps vanish into the void, I forget they’re there (and so Spotlight isn’t much use), and it’s absurd that I can only delete apps in the void when using iTunes. I should be able to do this with just the device.

On Twitter earlier today, I said “iPhone now has 14 pages of apps (via cunning bug exploitation); time to do a major ‘review and delete’ session,” and people have asked me how I did this. Hat tippage must go to British games journo Stuart Campbell and web dev Dayanah, who independently discovered the exploit I now use, although the process of how to take advantage of it appears variable. In my case, it’s roughly as follows:

1. Ensure the device’s home screens are all totally full, and that Voice Memos is the last app on the final one.
2. Drag an app from one screen to the next, thereby ‘bumping’ Voice Memos into the void.
3. Download an app to fill the space left from app-dragging in step 2.

Voice Memos, irked at being bumped, should now make its way back to your first home screen, and you should have a brand-new second page. If you’re lucky, the new page will also include apps previously in the void. If not, reboot and these things will happen. Rinse and repeat the process to get more pages.

One warning: this is only a temporary solution. Open your device in iTunes and select then the Applications tab and your extra pages will probably vanish. In my experience, the same happens during a sync. However, as a means of accessing ‘hidden’ apps between syncs, it’s better than nothing, until Apple gets its finger out of its butt and finally provides a means of viewing more than an arbitrary number of apps on its mobile devices.

Are you seated comfortably? Then we’ll begin.

Once upon a time (1998), there was a company called Mitchell Corporation, and it created a game called Puzz Loop, and there was much happiness and rejoicing. The fun-filled game enabled you to shoot coloured marbles at a relentless stream of incoming ones, aiming to create chain collisions of like-coloured marbles, which subsequently vanished.

Like all good action puzzlers, lots of companies were upset because they hadn’t thought of the idea first, and so they went ahead and created their own versions. For example, in 2003, there was PopCap Games with Zuma, and then in 2005, Luxor by MumboJumbo.

For a time, all the Puzz Loops of the world lived happily in Videogameland, until the day they all decided to move to iPodWorld. There, they met Stoneloops! of Jurassica, and MumboJumbo decided to become a great big jerk and have Stoneloops! of Jurassica booted out of iPodWorld.

Stoneloops! of Jurassica might have had a a stupid name, but MumboJumbo’s real problem was that Stoneloops! of Jurassica was wearing a really similar T-short to Luxor, and therefore asked the Big Bad Apple to stamp on its rival’s head until it was dead and buried. And no-one lived happily ever after.

The end.

Clearly, rights infringement is a big concern on the App Store. However, Apple should not be placed in the position of having to nuke a product on the basis that it’s like another one, when the rival making the complaint rips off existing and older IP. If Mitchell Corporation had thrown a hissy fit, it might have had a point, but it didn’t. This incident, however, is the equivalent of TAITO getting the likes of Reflexion pulled from the App Store due to it being somewhat like Arkanoid, while Breakout owner Atari looks on, puzzled. However, TAITO hasn’t done this, because, unlike MumboJumbo, it hasn’t lost its marbles. [You’re fired—Ed.]

We’ve reported before about the legal spat between Mobigame, makers of fine indie game Edge, and Tim Langdell, who appears to make his money by suing anyone daring to use the name Edge in a videogame, and makes rather spurious claims regarding how he ‘spawned’ almost any major property with the word ‘Edge’ in its title, including Edge magazine by Future Publishing, Marvel comic Edge, and, er, 1997 Anthony Hopkins movie turkey The Edge. (He’s also laughably stated in the past how he has come to an ‘understanding’ with a guitarist of a very popular rock band.) TIGSource has a great overview of the madness.

Edge returned to the App Store recently, and Langdell will next year be battling EA, a company that’s had enough. Rather than just dealing with issues relating to EA game Mirror’s Edge—Langdell started advertising a game called Mirrors (a game by) Edge, which still doesn’t exist, and yet was in no way an effort to promote mark confusion—EA’s aiming to have Langdell stripped of all his Edge-related marks.

EA’s documentation cites numerous examples of Langdell filing out-of-date and falsified specimens, and the fact Edge Games isn’t a viable commercial concern. (ChaosEdge offers running commentary regarding Langdell’s so-called commercial concerns—a Mythora ‘reissue’ they bought from Edge Games was a home-made burned disc; and despite Langdell claiming its game Racers had sold out, the second purchase ChaosEdge made days later had an order number only one higher than their pre-Racers order.) Last month, company spokesman Jeff Brown said: “While this seems like a small issue for EA, we think that filing the complaint is the right thing to do for the developer community.”

Sadly, Langdell still won’t back down. We today heard Mobigame’s Edge is again under threat, with Apple giving the company five days to respond to yet another threat from Langdell. If you’ve an iPhone or iPod touch, get in there fast, because chances are that Edge is about to vanish yet again, and it may take an EA battering in court next year for Langdell to finally stop harassing indie developers.

Edge is available on the App Store for $4.99. It’s really good, so go and buy it before it’s too late.

If you’re a Douglas Adams fan, there’s a point fairly early on during iPhone ownership where you realise that you’re holding in your hands the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is a nugget of information that hits you suddenly, rather like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon, wrapped around a large gold brick. Naysayers might disagree, but Apple’s handheld enables access to a mind-boggling array of information, via a friendly interface, even if it doesn’t have the words ‘don’t panic’ inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

It therefore only seems fitting that the Hitchhiker’s Guide books are finding a happy home on Apple’s device, the latest of which is Eoin Colfer’s sixth Hitchhiker’s Guide novel, And Another Thing... In the US App Store, the novel is available in extended form, bundling the digital and audio versions, video clips, “bits of brilliance from the first five books”, and a bunch of other extras (App Store link).

Mindy Stockfield, VP of Marketing & Digital Media for Hyperion Books and Stephen Saiz, Director, Marketing for Digital Publishing, Disney Interactive Studios, gave us the low-down on the thinking behind the interactive version, and Eoin Colfer added his thoughts on getting the guide on your iPhone.

Condé Nast announced that it will launch a digital version of men’s mag GQ on November 18 in tandem with the print issue.

The digital version available on iTunes will cost $2.99, half of the newsstand price, and there’s no word on whether snail mail subscribers get a discount. Condé says digital GQ be a perfect clone of the dead tree GQ, right down to the ads.

If you want to meet with Apple tech evangelists to discuss your iPhone apps —  get a move on.

Dates for the second iPhone Tech World Tour were announced yesterday; spots are already scarce.
The full-day conferences, free but with a limited number of participants, kick off in San Jose on October 29.

There’s still space in Silicon valley, but London (Nov. 11) New York (Dec. 1) and Tokyo (Dec. 15) are already full.

Sessions include user interface design essentials, working with core data, testing and debugging your iPhone app and something new: adding “in app” purchase to your app.

To end your day with Apple, there’s even a wine and cheese wrap-up. (If you go, send us pics.)
You’ve still got a chance to hobnob with Apple and other devs in Seattle, Toronto, Bejiing, Paris and Hamburg.