iPhone - page 353

With baseball season nearly upon us, now is the time to download MLB’s brand new iOS app. MLB.com At Bat went live in the App Store for free this morning with some great features and better pricing options.

Instead of having to pay $30 for the separate iPhone and iPad apps like last year, MLB is offering a free, universal download with a season-long in-app subscription for $14.99, and there’s more options available.

These days, the App Store is where it’s at. And if you don’t act fast, you may miss your opportunity to learn how to build an iOS app from scratch! This deal ends tonight at Midnight PST, so make sure to check it out.

If you have a great idea for an iPhone or iPad app, the only thing that’s stopping you from getting it out there is the actual coding of the app itself. But what if you’re the “idea person” and not a coder – and you have no desire to be one? It’s a pretty extensive process, and as you’re learning how to code you could be letting valuable time slip away – not to mention the fact that someone who CAN code might beat you to the punch. And while outsourcing the coding is an option, that’s often a costly approach – and a lot of back and forth between yourself and the coder that slows the process down even more so. So…what to do?

Well, this latest offer by Cult of Mac Deals is just what you need to get your app idea from vaporware to “actualware” with absolutely no programming. Period. And for a limited time you can save 80% off the regular price to boot – as it’s only $99!

Sprint has released an app in the App Store that let’s its subscribers watch on-demand TV from the iPhone. Sprint TV lets users access the most popular cable TV networks live over 3G and WiFi. The service includes many popular channels for free, and there’s a total of 40 paid packages available.

Some people will use any excuse to go green, just like some nerds will use any excuse to wear a Darth Vader mask. So umm, why not just satisfy both parties at the same time and make a breath-powered iPhone charger that looks like it should be worn by Lord Vader or Bane? The AIRE mask is a silly looking contraption designed by Joao Paulo Lammoglia to recharge iPhones using the power of your lungs. Utilizing tiny wind turbines the AIRE mask converts your deep sighs and frenetic breaths into usable electricity to power your iDevice.

There is certainly no shortage of Photography apps in the iOS store that promise to do magical things to your snapshots. Users can turn their photos into vintage looking pictures via Instagram, transform faces into comic book art with Halftone, or do weird things with Percolator, but this latest app is a bit different from all the rest. Pxl is a new app available for iPhone and iPad that transforms pictures into cool pieces of abstract art.

Despite RIM’s reassurances to developers at this week’s Mobile World Congress, the mass exodus of its government customers continued as another U.S. federal agency announced that it would ditch BlackBerry in favor of the iPhone. The agency in question is The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which announced that it will be abandoning the BlackBerry and RIM services beginning this month.

As the agency revealed its plans, RIM attempted to cast a softer light on the situation by playing up it’s overall standing with the U.S. government.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Snapily is an app that lets you snap 3-D photographs with your iPad or iPhone, and then view them with 3-D specs. You can even order 3-D lenticular postcards from the app and have them sent to your home. It would be amazing: if it worked.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — What if you could swipe your credit card and then — moments later — have the transaction details appear on your phone. Better still, what if all of your payments could be organized in a beautiful app, an app which could actually make managing your money fun. This service now exists for your iPhone, and it’s called Boku.

If you’re a fan of the official Twitter for iPhone app, get ready for ads. As an app that remains in the App Store’s top 10 list for social networking, Twitter for iPhone is used by millions of people. Twitter is monetizing those eyeballs with “Promoted Tweets,” “Promoted Trends,” and “Promoted Accounts.”

Starting really soon, you’ll start seeing promoted tweets from brands you follow in your timeline.

Over the last few weeks, third-party iOS developers received a lot of heavy venom from the Internet after reports surfaced that apps are accessing users’ address book information without users’ permission. It appears that the situation is worse than first thought and that apps can access more than just address books without notifying users. Photos on iOS devices are also susceptible to apps once a user has granted an app permission to their location information.

Determined to acquire sea legs before the America’s Cup breezes into San Francisco in 2013, I’m learning to sail. Well, learning is a big word. Mostly trying not to get smacked by the boom and checking out the porpoises.

The Bay Area is known for its challenging waters, so I figured it’d be a good place to test out DryCASE, which vacuum seals your iPhone into a waterproof pouch that you can wear as an armband or around your neck.

Oh those clever bastards at Apple are up to it again. Sitting back in their glass spaceship palace in Cupertino acting so coy as they unleashed their trickery on the world in the form of a simple invite . Right as Google’s Eric Schmidt was taking the stage at Mobile World Conference to talk about how awesome his company’s Android platform is, Apple completely distracted the entire internet by sending out invitations to their iPad 3 event.

Mere coincidence you say? Bullshit. Apple usually sends out invites exactly 7 days before the date of a keynote, but today they broke tradition and sent the invites out 8 days before the event just to screw with Google.

Do you want to rock? Well get ready to enjoy your favorite Justin Bieber tunes in crisp, clear, audio HD, because according to a new rumor, Apple is hard at work developing a new audio file format that will offer adaptive streaming to provide high- or low quality files to iCloud users based on their current bandwidth capacities. Apple’s new format could mean users will have the ability to download high-definition audio to their iOS device via iTunes Match.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Prowling the showfloor for scoops on the second day of Mobile World Congress, we happened to stop by the Windows Phone 7 booth, where we discovered that just hours before, an original first-generation iPhone beat a top-of-the-line Windows Phone in one of Microsoft’s very own challenges. Oh, delicious hubris!

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Last night I was treated to a security demonstration. Cryptography Research director Pankaj Rohatgi pointed a cheap, standard TV antenna at an iPod Touch several feet away, running standard RSA encryption operations.

On the screen of his oscilloscope was a sound-wave generated by his custom software showing distinct troughs at semi-regular intervals. These troughs, and their accompanying flattish peaks, represented the ones and zeroes of the private keys used in every secure communication we make today, sucked right from the iPod. With no further cracking required, all of your private operations can be read as if in plain text.

How is this done? From the electronic noise generated by every microchip as it goes about its processing duties.

https://youtu.be/W0ABfj0ydPA

I don’t consider myself to be a terribly vain individual, but one of the main reasons why I hate using FaceTime is because I’m forced to look at my self-portrait if I want to see the person I’m talking to. My double chin always decides to make an appearance whenever my sister and niece send a FaceTime request, and half the time I just angle the camera away from my face.

Maybe if I were wealthy and cared more about my wrinkles and extra flab I’d call up Dr. Sigal to fix my FaceTime face, because apparently that’s his specialty. No, this isn’t an article from the Onion. Dr. Robert Sigal is a Washington DC-area plastic surgeon who specializes in reassembling human faces so that they’ll look better while video chatting.

If you’ve read the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, you may remember that Apple’s board was initially very hesitant to give Jobs a green light about creating Apple’s retail stores. A decade later, the stores have been an amazing success with hundreds of outlets around the world. They have also become the most profitable retail outlets in America.

Research company RetailSails ranked the country’s top retailers using the common retail metric of annual sales per square foot. Apple nabbed the top spot with sales averaging $5,647 per foot – nearly double high-end jeweler Tiffany and Co., which came in a distant second.

Although the war will rage on for a few more years, Apple just scored a major victory in their legal war with Motorola Mobility in Germany. In December 2011 Apple lost a preliminary injunction with Motorola and faced the possibility of having their 3G-enabled products, like the iPad and iPhone, barred from Germany. However, a recent decision by the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court has ruled that Motorola can not enforce their injunction against Apple while the appeals process is underway, meaning Apple is free to sell their products in Germany until the appeal has been resolved.

Popular video service Vimeo has updated its iOS app with full support for the iPad. Previewed at CES earlier this year, version 2.0 of the app includes a native iPad UI and updated iPhone layout. You can shoot, edit and share videos from your iPad and browse content in a gorgeous interface.

A recent study of finance chiefs at over 200 companies revealed that one in six expect the job of CIO to be gone within five years. More than twice that many (40%) expected that IT will eventually be folded into the finance department. This highlights the impact of trends like BYOD, the consumerization of IT, and the growing importance of cloud services.

As IT departments struggle to deal with an ever-increasing influx of iPhones, iPads, Android devices, and other “consumer” technologies, this raises big questions. Would handing management of IT over to a CFO with limited technical experience help or hinder Apple’s position as a business vendor? Would that drive BYOD programs or inhibit them? Would this ultimately be beneficial to most employees at a company?

It’s been rumored that Apple is looking to rid future iPhones of their traditional 30-Pin connector in a move to save space, but we have no idea what Apple would replace it with to handle the charging and syncing of iOS devices. iCloud has given us the ability to completely cut the cord for syncing, but recharging the device would still require a cable. Or would it? Thanks to some newly invented hi-tech fabric, it looks like future iPhones may possibly be charged using body heat in the not too distant future.

The iPhone is ranked as the top smartphone in the United States, and with sales on the upward trend worldwide, one would think that there’s no stopping Apple’s magical handset. As it turns out, the iPhone has a “crutch” that’s key to its success: carrier subsidies.

It’s common practice for U.S. carriers to subsidize a phone to make it more affordable for the average consumer. The trick is that customers get locked into a two-year contract. While Apple profits and carriers take an initial hit off the subsidized model in countries like the U.S. and U.K., less expensive Android devices are dominating markets where consumers pay full price for their new phones.

Although Android has an overall lead over iOS in smartphone marketshare, there are IT departments that remain hesitant on the platform. Unlike the iPad and iPhone, which are beginning to be seen to be as business tools rather than consumer-oriented entertainment devices, most Android phones have yet to prove that they offer a business feature that can’t be found on other platforms. Samsung’s newly announced Galaxy Beam smartphone may be the first Android phone to solidly offer something powerful and unique for business users.

The Galaxy Beam is Samsung’s new handset that includes a 15-lumen pico projector. Although Samsung’s press release for the phone offering a lot of personal entertainment uses, this is a device that has clear business potential.

Popular web reading platform Readability has confirmed that it will finally be launching its native iOS app in the App Store on Thursday, March 1st. The release comes after Readability was rejected by Apple for not complying with the App Store’s in-app purchase guidelines.

When the iPhone and iPad app becomes available to the public later this week, users will be able to read and share web articles that have been beautifully reformatted for a mobile reading experience.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — As a company, Nokia has embraced Windows Phone as their long-term smartphone strategy, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some Symbian execs rattling around inside the company, and today, they’ve given us the PureView 808, a Symbian-driven smartphone with a laugh-out-loud claim: a 41 megapixel camera.

Does it really have that many megapixels? It seems so. Does it take nice pictures? Absolutely. But there’s a lot more going on here than just megapixels, and it’s doubtful anyone with an iPhone 4S will be clamoring for one.