iPhone apps - page 61

When people talk about classic gaming, they usually rattle on about really simple, playable games that are challenging but that a five-year-old could conceivably master. Such people were clearly traumatised by text adventures (now referred to using the rather loftier term ‘interactive fiction’) and have therefore removed them from memory.

These games were primarily text-based, with you solving puzzles via verb-noun parsers. As time went on, adventures gradually became increasingly complex and elaborate, with Infocom arguably leading the genre to its height.

Sadly and perhaps predictably, text adventures eventually got a thorough kicking. In the words of Richard Harris: “Graphics came along and the computer-using portion of the human race forgot all about 500,000 years of language evolution and went straight back to the electronic equivalent of banging rocks together—the point ’n’ click game,” which, he argues, signalled the arrival of the post-literate society.

But via the magic of the internet, interactive fiction clings on, and apps for playing the Z-machine format are commonplace. Frotz is one of the best, and it now exists as a free iPod app. I interviewed its developer, Craig Smith, to find out what he thinks of interactive fiction and why he brought Frotz to Apple handhelds.

What it is: A simple puzzle platformer in which you play Jeremiah the Frog, a cheerful fellow trying to escape Satan’s curse by turning floor squares red and green with his hops — all to the music of brilliant indie rock outsider Daniel Johnston.

Why it’s cool: Didn’t you read the description? Ah, well. The play control is smooth and easy to pick up, the graphics are beautiful and cartoony, and the soundtrack is amazing. I’ve only been playing for five minutes, but I’ve already heard “Some Time Spent in Heaven.” Better still, Jeremiah is based on a mural Johnston painted in Austin, Texas, who cheerfully declares “Hi, How Are You?” to people on the campus of the University of Texas. But it’s a good game whether you know that or not.

Where to get it: On the App Store, of course. Link. It’s only 99 cents for a limited time.

Via FingerGaming

Apple announced today that there have been 2 billion downloads from the App Store. But how many of those were paid, and how may were free?

The mobile advertising firm Mobclix claims its app analytics shows that paid apps represent 77.3% of the App Store, while the other 22.7% of apps are free. However, far more free apps are downloaded than paid.

“For app developers, this means it’s much harder to get your paid app discovered,” the company says.

The App Ranking section of Mobclix’s website reveals some other interesting App Store tidbits.

While there are 20 categories of apps in total, for example, the two most popular categories — Games and Entertainment — account for more than a third of all apps in the store. Together, the Games and Entertainment categories make up 35% of all apps.

At the other end of the scale, the smallest five categories — Social Networking, Photography, Finance, Medical and Weather — account for only 6.2% of the App Store.

The site also lists the most popular apps in the 20 different categories.

Did you know that Pee Monkey Toilet Trainer is the most popular book on the App Store?

More here.

The number of apps downloaded from the App Store has passed a cool 2 billion, Apple said on Monday.

That’s means the App Store is growing like a weed. In late April, Apple announced the App Store hit one billion downloads, and 1.5 billion three months later in July — on the store’s first birthday.

The latest 500,000,000 mark took just two-and-a-half months to hit. That means about 6 million apps are being downloaded EVERY DAY. That’s a pretty mind-boggling number.

In addition, the number of apps is now 85,000 from 125,000 developers, Apple’s press release said.

Apple’s full press release after the jump:

At the giant Tokyo Game Show, everyone’s freaking out about Apple, the New York Times reports.

Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are more worried about Apple and it’s new iPhone/iPod platform than the worst recession in decades, the Times says.

Apple’s recent foray into video games — with the iPhone, the iPod Touch and its ever-expanding online App Store — is causing as much hand-wringing among old industry players as the global economic slump, which threatens to take the steam out of year-end shopping for the second consecutive year.

The industry sees a big shift to casual gaming on cellphones and other handhelds, rather than expensive, overpowered consoles. Consumers are buying $0.99c games, rather than dropping $50 on big, blockbuster titles with multimillion dollar budgets and massive development teams. Of the 758 games debuted at the show, 168 are for cellphone platforms, the most ever.

Some game developers say Apple’s App Store is the biggest recent breakthrough in gaming, and the industry is better off trying to find new business models rather than new consoles.

“We are going to move away from a market where it’s the hardware that fights against each other,” one developer said during a presentation. “We are going to be moving to an era when different software stores fight against each other.”

AT&T’s long-awaited MMS update for the iPhone is finally ready. Just plug your iPhone into iTunes and hit the “Check for Update” button.

You should get the dialog message above, saying: “An update to your carrier settings for your iPhone is available. Would you like to download it now?”

Hit “Download and Update” and wait a few seconds. The update is done is a jiffy. Then go to your iPhone and launch the Messages app. There should be a little camera icon to the left of the text input box at the bottom. Hit it, and you’ll be able to send pictures or video with your text messages. Try it: it’s a lot of fun.

PS: Some users are reporting they have to manually reboot their iPhone after installing the carrier update.

TomTom’s Car Kit will be priced at $119.95 when it is introduced next month and will be compatible with all iPhone models, the company said in a brief statement on Friday.

Earlier this week, it looked like the Car Kit might also include the iPhone app. But TomTom’s statement now makes it clear that the Car Kit will be sold separately from TomTom’s $100 app, bringing the total price to $220 — the same as a dedicated GPS unit.

TomTom’s GPS system is getting pretty good reviews — Gizmodo gives it a B+ — although the mount kit might raise that grade if it amplifies the app’s voice instructions as promised.

TomTom’s statement reads in full:

TomTom announces today that the TomTom car kit for the iPhone will have a recommended retail price of EUR 99.99 or USD 119.95.

The TomTom car kit will be available this October and will be sold separately from the TomTom app. It will be compatible with the iPhone 2G, 3G and 3GS.

All further details on the car kit will be made available soon.

It’s Friday and it’s time for our weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.

Under review this week: Arkanoid, FlipTime 2.0, Shockwave, Squareball and Monster Pinball.

In a strange city and need to find the nearest Hooters? A new iPhone app, Bionic Eye, has got you covered.

Designed for the iPhone 3GS, Bionic Eye is an augment reality app that overlays information about nearby points of interest over the iPhone’s camera. Hold the camera up to the building in front of you, and thanks the iPhone’s GPS and compass, the screen is overlaid with little virtual signs that say what’s inside. It also includes virtual signposts showing the way to the nearest subway station or Starbucks coffee shop.

A demo of the app surfaced in July, when the app was called “Nearest Subway” and pointed to nearby subway stations.

It’s now available in the App Store for $0.99. Versions are available for the U.S., U.K., France and Tokyo. And as well as public transit, the app points to a range of POIs, including fast food restaurants, WiFi hotspots, chain hotels and Apple stores.

The app covers all US cities and doesn’t need an active WiFi or 3G internet connection. More than 100,000 POIs are contained in the app’s 2.9MByte database. However, information about subways in the U.S. is restricted to New York, Washington, and Chicago (and you buy the info from within the application).

Bionic Eye — U.S.
Bionic Eye — U.K.
Bionic Eye — France
Bionic Eye — Tokyo

Hit the jump for a video of the app in action.

Dublin launched a bike sharing scheme on Sept. 15. Sponsored by French ad giant JC Decaux, locals can pick up the bikes around town, then leave them at one of 40 stations. The first half hour is free.

The trouble? Firm Fusio thought it’d be nice to have an iPhone app, available gratis on iTunes, telling would-be cyclists which stations had bikes available and how many. The Dublinbikes app used a mashup of Google Maps and data from the official Dublinbikes Website.

JC Decaux sent a nastygram to Fusio threatening legal action, and the App was pulled Sept. 23 from iTunes.

The story sounds depressingly similar to StationStops, the app that ran into trouble with NY transport authorities by publishing available public schedules.

It may not be over yet, however: politician Paschal Donohoe, a declared iPhone user, called on Dublin City Council to intervene.

“The new bike scheme will depend on bikes being available, when and where people need them,” he said in a statement on his website.  “A new application for iPhones provided this up-to-the minute information on where the bikes were located.”

“We should be encouraging innovation for the sake of the economy, not stamping it out.”
In the meantime,  there are already a couple of mobile web alternatives to the killed bike sharing app.

Via Wap Review

Every now and again, a game comes along that makes you feel like a ham-fisted idiot, as though you’re clawing at your iPhone or iPod touchscreen with all the grace of a lobotomised monkey wearing boxing gloves. But the game is so compelling and addictive, you play on anyway, getting killed approximately every ten seconds, going ARRRGGGHH and then having another go anyway. Eventually, you realise that it’s you, not the game. The game isn’t unfair—you’re just rubbish, and you need to learn how to improve, just like in the old days with the likes of Defender.

Squareball by Finn Ericson ($1.99/£1.19, App Store link) is one such game. The concept is simple: drag the levels left or right to ensure your ever-bouncing ball doesn’t disappear into a hole or hit red tiles, and collect all the green tiles before the timer runs out. With graphics akin to Atari’s Adventure in pseudo-3D and a fab soundtrack, this game’s had me addicted and loving it and hating it in equal measure since its day of release. Today, I interviewed its creator to find out how this retro-themed mix of Pong, Breakout and simplified Super Mario-style platformer came to be.

This prototype iPhone nav system mounts on standard bike helmets to help get cyclists where they’re going.  Devised by Tokyo iPhone app developers  Ubiquitous Entertainment, it runs on an original app that in addition to using the iPhone’s compass and GPS maps can also receive push notifications from Twitter (via TwitBird Pro) or phone calls with A2DP.

The head mounted device (HMD) is retractable, and as you might expect, the screen is a little jiggly during ride. Test cyclist Sho checked out the map while stopped or at traffic lights, not while pedaling. The HMD was so light it was secured with scotch tape; in later trials the iPhone was stuck in a pocket to avoid potential tumbles from the helmet.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1AzailvJB0
As an urban biker sick of pulling out maps or trying to check Google maps on my phone, I love this idea,  though I would stick to keeping the phone in a pocket to avoid worry about someone snatching it and the perils of sudden showers.

Via Make

Google says categorically that Apple has rejected its Voice app for the iPhone. Apple denies this, saying several times that the app is still under consideration. Apple has said this in official documents submitted to a government inquiry by the FCC, and most recently today in a statement to the press.

Someone is lying. Who is it?

Well, the test is quite simple:

Apple has responded to Google’s charge that Phil Schiller rejected Google’s Voice app: “We do not agree,” says a spokesman.

Apple says it has NOT rejected the Google Voice app and continues to evaluate it. In a statement, Apple PR says:

“We do not agree with all of the statements made by Google in their FCC letter. Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application and we continue to discuss it with Google.”

Earlier today, Google unredacted its response to the FCC, claiming that Phil Schiller had personally killed the Google Voice app in a phone conversation in July.

Who’s lying?

As reader Steven points out below, a good test is whether Google’s app is available in the app store — which it is not. “Until the application does appear in the App Store, we can all say with 100% certainty that it has been denied,” he says.

Apple’s Phil Schiller personally rejected Google’s controversial Voice app, new documents reveal.

Schiller rejected Google’s VOIP app because it “duplicated the core dialer function of the iPhone,” Google said in documents released on Friday. The documents were published by the company and the Federal Communications Commission, which is investigating Apple’s rejection of the app.

Google’s version of the story directly contradicts Apple’s version of events. According to Apple, the app hasn’t been rejected; it is still under evaluation.

But according to Google, Schiller personally told Alan Eustace, Google’s senior vice president of engineering and research, that the app had been rejected during a phone call on July 7.

“It was during this call that Mr. Schiller informed Mr. Eustace that Apple was rejecting the Google Voice application…” Google says.

Curiously, the revelations didn’t come to light until today because Google kept parts of its response to the FCC secret to protect “sensitive commercial conversations” between the two companies.It decide to relax its request after Apple published its response and groups requested the info under the Freedom of Information Act, Google explains in a blog post.

Google’s full response to the FCC’s questions about the rejected app are here (PDF).

It’s Friday and it’s time for a weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.

This week, I review Smart Maps – Brussels, Who’s Buying, Tasks – Tick If Off, Pac-Man Remix, FortuneBall, Mr.AahH!! Lite, Space Invaders Infinity Gene, A Quest of Knights Onrush, Power Toppler, and CrunchUrl.

AT&T is bringing Multimedia Messaging to the iPhone on September 25. But if you can’t wait ten days or so, here’s how to get it now.

It’s Friday and it’s time for our weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac. Except this article didn’t show up last week, due to me ending up in Belgium, so this time it’s a one-off, extra-special iPhone Fortnightly Digest!

APPS OF THE WEEK

TonePad Pro: Addictive grid-based musical toy. Many editing/sharing options. Ringtone exports a tad distorted. 5/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/36AZt

FlipTime: Cute clock/calendar akin to old-style airport/train station boards. Lsc. & portrait modes. No alarm. 4/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/2NJnC

Terminator: Death Valley 1: So-so ‘humanoid killer robots’ vs contemporary ‘human cannon fodder’ comic. Nice UI. 2/5 Free https://is.gd/2JTvQ

Remix David Bowie – Space Oddity: Simple but limited multitrack ‘mixing’ of a famous Bowie track. 3/5 $1.99 https://is.gd/2LtRo

Adrenaline: 32 basic, quickfire ‘blitz’ games. Sometimes fun but would benefit from much shorter level times. 3/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/2Qryw

Leaves: Tranquil leaves-based toy. Slightly iffy 3D and physics, but calming, and fun for a short time. 2/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/30cmL

Score-Em: Virtual scorecard app with varied graphics and relevant audio. Works fine, but throwaway in nature. 2/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/32bBx

Gem Ninja: Mindless prod-based tile-match game. OK for a free time-waster, but not worth paying for. 2/5 Free https://is.gd/32cQy

Looptastic Electro Edition Lite: Loop remix tool. Fantastic UI, varied audio stems, and ten loops to play with. 4/5 Free https://is.gd/34Hp2

StarTime: Vibrant, bold Star Trek-like clock. Optional random sounds & can run iPod music in background. 3/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/39xOi

Since this column didn’t happen last week, it’s only fair to highlight FlipTime, which would have been ‘app of the week’ last week. It’s one of those apps that shows you don’t need something that’s all-singing and all-dancing to make an impression. Instead, charm sometimes goes a long way. All FlipTime does is show the time and date, sporting a visual appearance like those old-fashioned flip boards you’d see at railway stations and airports. Sounds are optional and the numerals are bold enough to see at a distance. Aesthetically, it’s also the nicest iPhone clock I’ve seen.

TonePad Pro is this week’s favourite. It’s been described as iPhone musical crack elsewhere, and it does have a certain addictive quality about it. Again, it’s a simple app—this time, you toggle grid spaces to play notes in an ever-repeating loop. However, this time it’s the attention to detail that wins through, the developer having provided plenty of options for editing, saving and sharing your creations. The Pro version is ad-free and enables you to email ringtones that can then be dropped into iTunes and synchronised with your iPhone. But if you don’t care about ringtones and ads, the free version of TonePad is just as good.

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iTunes 9 and OS X for iPhone 3.1 brought a bunch of refinements, but one strikes me as odd: along with charts for paid apps and free apps, we now have one for ‘top grossing’ apps.

It’s pretty clear this an attempt to appease developers, increasingly annoyed at the rush to 99 cents on the App Store. But here’s the thing: will anyone care? I can’t see too many consumers rushing to see which apps have grossed the most and make buying decisions based on that. ‘Top grossing apps’ also sounds pretty ugly—not really what you’d expect from Apple.

That said, there’s definitely a need to push apps with slightly higher price-points more prominently. Higher-priced apps (and I’m talking maybe $5 and above, not the likes of $50+ sat-nav apps) enable longer development periods, often leading to richer end products.

I wonder whether the App Store should instead have taken a leaf out of the 1980s games industry—at least as it was in the UK. Around 1985, publishers started toying with ‘budget’ videogames, selling cheap, relatively throwaway titles at £1.99, with full-price games being four or five times more expensive. Such publishers typically advertised less, and developers of full-price games started to get antsy. (Sound familiar?)

The solution then was simple: the chart was split. So you had a ‘full price’ chart and a ‘budget’ chart. One might argue this would only serve to push people away from high-price apps, but it would also provide a mechanism for highlighting stuff that’s unlikely to be crap. And ‘full price’ or ‘premium’ certainly sounds a whole lot nicer than ‘top grossing’.

I’ve been a gamer since the very early 1980s, and have owned more systems than you can shake a stick at. A year ago, I happily penned an article for this very site, suggesting iPod gaming was a crock of shit. And you know what? I was dead wrong… absolutely, painfully, utterly, astonishingly wrong. The fact is, iPod is the most exciting platform for gaming we’ve seen in years.

I’ve been poking around iTunes 9 since yesterday evening (UK time), and there’s some good (app management), some bad (stability issues) and some “beaten repeatedly with an ugly stick until unconscious” ugly (most of the UI, the hideous column nav). But one thing with the App Store refresh within iTunes 9 just baffles me: the lack of wish-lists for apps.

As shown in the pic, access a song’s menu and you get to add the item to a wish-list. With an app, you can merely ‘tell a friend’. I’m sure owners of the many websites that provide wish-list functionality for the App Store are breathing a collective sigh of relief, but it strikes me a strange and inconsistent that Apple’s not enabling users to store a list of interesting apps for later purchase.

When it comes to mobile banking, iPhone users are way ahead of the curve.

While half of iPhone users already check in with their bank from their smart phone, it’ll take another five years until other kinds of cell phone owners do the same, a study said.

The 2009 Mobile-Banking and Smartphone Forecast by San Francisco-based Javelin Strategy & Research found that although half of all current cell phone owners have access to some form of mobile banking, it’s only caught on with iPhone owners. (No doubt the app plays a big part in the revolution — one US bank recently developed one to allow customers to photograph their checks and deposit them via iPhone.)

The firm expects it’ll take until 2014 for 45% of non-iPhone owners to connect with the bank via phone.

iPhones gave AT&T the highest number of mobile bankers, while Verizon Wireless has the lowest penetration for banking on-the-go among major U.S. carriers.

“Just as the iPod changed the music industry and their business models, our data shows that iPhone users are changing the banking industry by leading the way in monitoring and managing finances through mobile devices,” said Mark Schwanhausser,  a Javelin analyst.

If you have a Google Voice account, you can make free VoIP calls on your iPhone. You’ll need to sign up for an account at Gizmo.com and download the free Fring app for your iPhone, but after that you’re done. You can make free outgoing calls to (up to three minutes) and receive unlimited incoming calls through Google Voice.

Hit the jump for instructions.

Spotify’s iPhone app has just gone live on the iTunes app store. But us poor Yankees are SOL. It’s available in Europe only — for now anyway.

The app is available here for free from Apple’s App Store, but requires a premium Spotify account to work at a cost of about £9.99 (about about $16) a month.

Neither the app nor Spotify is available in the U.S., but plans are afoot to bring the highly-rated service across the pond. It is set to come to the U.S. sometime later this year, or maybe next, pending licensing agreements with the record labels, and advertising deals that support the free service.

Because Spotify’s streaming music service is such a threat to iTunes, it was possible that Apple might somehow disable the iPhone app. Apple has disapproved of apps that replicate core iPhone functions, like Google Voice. While there is no indication yet that Apple cripples threatening apps, it doesn’t approve them. Apple perhaps doesn’t see the Spotify iPhone app as a threat while it is restricted to premium customers.

But Spotify’s app doesn’t seem to have any restrictions, except one imposed on all third-party apps — it can’t run in the background.

Spotify’s streaming music service has taken the world by storm with a music library that rivals iTunes — about 6 million tracks — and an interface to match. It’s dead easy to search, build playlists, and find new artists. It’s basically iTunes in the cloud — but free (with the occasional ad).

Spotify’s iPhone app adds a very important feature: it can cache full playlists to be played offline. You can store up to 3,333 songs — that’s 10 days constant listening — and they will play when the network goes dark. The offline caching service allows tracks to be played anywhere offline: on airplanes, in subways or even when traveling overseas to avoid roaming charges.

Official screenshots of the app and a video of it in action after the jump.

The iPhone Spotlight search feature has been improved yet again.

Universal Search, a jailbreak app from Efiko Software, takes searching with Spotlight to a whole new level. With this add-on installed, Spotlight can access mobile search sites and generate location-based results all from within the Spotlight search window.

Universal Search’s smart input monitoring allows the user to enter a phone number or url directly into Spotlight and options to call, text or visit the url pop up in the results. It also searches Google Maps and mobile sites directly rather than going through a search engine’s web results.

Search sites include Wikipedia, Google Maps, Twitter, CNN, ebay, IMDb, flickr, and ESPN.

Universal Search is available for $4.99 in the Cydia Store.