iPhone - page 407

This slinky little number is the Sinjimorou Sync Stand, a low-cost stand for iDevices of various shapes and sizes.

Fring – the popular video chat and VoIP application for iPhone and iPod touch – has just been updated to introduce group video calling with up to three other people. It’s the first application in the App Store to offer this feature, and it’s completely free.

To use Fring for video calling, you will obviously need a compatible device, such as the iPhone 4, the iPad 2, and the latest iPod touch. Fring is also available on compatible Android devices and supports cross-platform communication, so you can call and video chat between iOS and Android. The application works over 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi.

Fring uses a feature called ‘Dynamic Video Quality’ (DVC) that automatically and continuously adjusts your video call quality to match your connectivity; which its developers say provides you with the best audio and video quality possible.

If you’ve tried the new group video calling feature, let us know what it’s like in the comments.

A crash report received by iOS developer FutureTap reveals that Apple is currently field testing the next major release of its iOS firmware using third-party applications from the App Store. In a message posted to Twitter, FutureTap discloses a crash log from a device running iOS 5.0:

Just received the first iOS 5.0 crash report. MKUserLocationBreadCrumb sounds interesting.

FutureTap followed up the message with a screenshot (above) of the crash log, highlighting the “MKUserLocationBreadCrumb” API. MKUserLocation is part of the iOS MapKit Framework, which is used to find your device’s current location; while the “BreadCrumb” element is said to indicate a new tracking feature.

It’s possible the new feature has something to do with the new mapping technology that Apple revealed it was working on in a press release yesterday, however, this isn’t expected to appear as a finished product for another couple of years.

While there’s nothing major here, this crash report reveals – unsurprisingly – that Apple is readying its iOS 5 firmware for its announcement at WWDC in June. We will probably see its release alongside the fifth-generation iPhone – expected this fall.

[via AppleInsider]

Car manufacturers are finally developing better ways to hook your iPhone into your car.

Check out this video demo showing how BMW is integrating the iPhone into car entertainment systems.

Patched in through BMW’s iDrive system, the iPhone can can be used to play music, web radio, or send updates and messages to Facebook and Twitter.

“This suite of technologies allows smartphone features — the things people really love on their smartphone — to be integrated in a safe, easy-to-use way in your BMW,” says BMW Technology Group senior engineer Rob Passaro in the video.

“The great thing about this is, as Apple updates new features on its iPod, we get it automatically. You don’t have to go to the dealership to get these functions in your car as soon as they are available.”

Check it out:

The white iPhone 4 is finally going to be released tomorrow after nearly a year of questions, speculation, and overall doubt. The real questions is, are you going to buy one? Please participate in the poll below. There are plenty of choices to choose from, so the results should be interesting!

[polldaddy poll=4980606]

Happy voting!

Gameloft is famous for using hugely popular games as the inspiration for some of its iOS releases. For example, Modern Combat 2 is not too dissimilar to Modern Warfare 2; N.O.V.A. bears some resemblance to Halo, and Starfront’s similarities to Starcraft are uncanny. As a keen iOS gamer, I like this. Though some game developers are beginning to offer iOS versions of their most popular releases, some still aren’t, and I admire how Gameloft offers a substitute to some of my favorite console and PC games.

Gameloft’s latest release is called Order & Chaos Online – and is their iOS answer to World of Warcraft (WoW). It just hit the App Store and comes with a $6.99 (universal) price tag. That’s not too bad for an iOS game, but you’ll also need to pay a subscription fee. You get three months free when you first login, and to continue playing after that you’ll have to pay $0.99 per month, $1.99 for three months, or $2.99 for six months.

Order & Chaos Online is a true real-time, full 3D massively multiplayer online role playing game, or ‘MMORPG’. It features a vast fantasy world for your to explore with thousands of other players from around the world. When you begin the game, you use the character creation system to cuztomize your hero.

Apple has today issued a press release and finally confirmed the launch date of the white iPhone 4. It will be available beginning tomorrow, April 28th, from Apple’s online store, its retail stores, AT&T and Verizon stores, and select Apple authorized resellers.

It was also be available from various carriers in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, and the U.K.

Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president – who confirmed in a tweet that the device would launch this spring – said in the press release:

The white iPhone 4 has finally arrived and it’s beautiful. We appreciate everyone who has waited patiently while we’ve worked to get every detail right.

The device launches 10 months after it was first announced, with various manufacturing issues rumored to be the cause of the delay. Apple’s official statement will finally spell the end of white iPhone 4 rumors. Oh, Lord, what a wonderful day.

ipswDownloader is a great new tool that makes the process of finding and downloading iOS firmware releases incredibly simple. Developed by Vitaly Parovishnik, and available for both Mac and Windows, the app supports every iOS device there is – including AppleTV – and features iOS firmware from version 1.0.1.

What’s great about ipswDownloader is that once you’ve selected your device and the firmware version you want to download, it provides additional details on the release that jailbreakers in particular will find incredibly valuable; such as the baseband version, whether the firmware can be jailbroken and unlocked, and the size of the download.

ipswDownloader is completely free to download and use. The full list of supported devices can be found after the break.

As a massive fan of first-person shooter games, I’m always looking for great iOS shooters that will help me get my fix when I’m away from a console. Thankfully, the App Store is home to some great FPS games from developers such as Gameloft, EA Games, Treyarch and Villain.

Our latest app list is a collection of the best FPS games in the App Store – check them out after the break!

No matter how harmless this whole iPhone tracking feature may be, some people still aren’t happy about it. While many of us have brushed it off and chosen to ignore what seems like something blown way out of proportion, others have decided to take things a little more seriously.

Now dubbed ‘Locationgate’, the issue has been the subject of class-action lawsuits and government investigations. But surely if users are really concerned about their iPhone tracking their every move, they can just turn location services off, right? Wrong.

The Wall Street Journal has revealed that even with location services disabled on the iPhone, the device continues to collect and store users’ location data with the help of cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots. This isn’t a dirty little secret, however; this is well within the rights of every cell phone maker. But what’s interesting, is that Apple seems to lie about it.

Now this is cute – and it likely won’t last. Society6 studio Burb is offering a Steve Jobs in Carbonite case for the iPhone. Very touching. Keep your iDevice clean and snug with the essence of Apple retained.

Available for iPhone 4 and 3G/3Gs, $35. Act fast, Apple’s next Cease & Desist is likely on the way…

[via TUAW]

This week’s roundup of must-have iOS games includes the second episode in a series of five Back to the Future games from Telltale – with a brand new story for Marty and Doc.

We’ve also got Real Racing 2 HD – which has just been updated to feature dual-screen gaming, allowing you to connect your iPad to your HDTV and enjoy the ultimate racing game at 1080p.

Final Fantasy III also makes our list of favorites. This 90s classic has been around on the iPhone for a few weeks, but it now features new and improved 3D visuals and story sequences exclusive to the iPad.

Find out more about the games above and check out the rest of this week’s must-have’s – including Bunny the Zombie Slayer and NBA Jam – after the break!

Mowing the lawn is the outdoor equivalent to vacuuming your carpet: it has to be done regularly, and most people put it off. But now you don’t need a riding mower with dual-cupholders to impress the neighbors while being slovenly. Husqvarna has just introduced an iPhone app for remote deployment of their Automower robotic lawnmowers with GPS Communication Units.

The Automower works by following a thin wire laid on or under the grass. Using SMS Text Messaging, you can display the location of your mower on 
Google Maps, tell your machine when to start and stop, return for a charge, or check current operating status. There’s also a GPS Theft Tracking feature in case your mower ventures too far away under somebody else’s control. Would that be called Find My Lawnmower?

Doing yardwork from the couch gets my vote! Or it would, if I had a lawn…

[via TG Daily]

Everybody freaked out this week about the discovery that iPhones store location history in an unencrypted file. Congressional grandstanders Al Franken and Ed Markey demanded that Steve Jobs explain himself. Matt Drudge used his Caps Lock key to write a screaming headline about it. Gimme a break.

The whole “LocationGate” scandal is a non-issue, as far as I’m concerned. It’s just a lot of noise about a potential privacy breach that buries the real privacy violations happening every day.

Go here to read the whole story.

This week’s selection of must-have iOS apps features a brand new social news experience called News.me. Created by Bit.ly, with backing from The New York Times, this app shows you not just what your friends are sharing, but also what they’re reading.

Sony’s new Crackle application offers a library of over 100 great movies and TV shows, such as The Da Vinci Code, Ghostbusters, Seinfield and Spider-Man – all of which are completely free to watch.

RockMelt also makes this week’s must-haves – a web browser that seamlessly integrates social networking and syncs with RockMelt on your computer.

Find out more about the applications above, and check out the rest of week’s must-haves – including Seamless, Photosynth and FindOne – after the break!

Apple may be prototyping an iPhone 5 with a tapered design, a larger 3.7-inch screen and a gesture-sensitive Home Button.

This is according to the ex-Engadget crew at the new “This my Next” website, who whipped up the mockup above to illustrate the various rumors they’re hearing.

• New design: Apple is testing several prototypes (we all know this) and one of the leading candidates for the iPhone 5 is thinner than the current iPhone 4 and looks “more like the iPod touch.” It has a teardrop shape – thinner at the bottom than the top, like the new MacBook Air.
• Gesture-sensitive Home Button: The Home Button will be bigger and will understand a gestures. “Our sources say that gestures are definitely coming in a future version of iOS,” says
• Larger screen: the screen will go up to 3.7-inches, not 4-inches as rumored. It will keep the current resolution, dropping pixel density goes from 326 to 312, but will still be a Retina Display (it’s still above 300ppi).
• No Bezel: Screen will be edge-to-edge, occupying the entire front of the iPhone. That means no bezel (or almost no bezel).
• Hidden earpiece & mouthpiece: The earpiece and sensors are behind the screen itself.
• Inductive charging: It may or may not have wireless inductive charging. Crystal ball is cloudy.
• NFC: Likewise it may or may not have NFC.
• Global radio chips: It’ll be based on Qualcomm’s dual GSM/CDMA Gobi chipset, which means it’ll work on a ton of GSM and CDMA networks worldwide, most importantly in China.

Joshua Topolsky warns, however, that none of this is set in stone: “Keep in mind that this info isn’t fact — we’re getting lots of threads from lots of places and trying to make sense of the noise. The versions of devices our sources are seeing could be design prototypes and not production-ready phones. Still, there are strong indications that Apple will surprise a public that’s expecting a bump more along the lines of the 3G to 3GS — and this is some insight into where those designs might be headed.”

Looks like the white iPhone 4 is just about to be released.

One customer in the UK was able to buy a 16GB white iPhone 4 from Vodaphone, and an internal memo from BelCompany in the Netherlands says the near-mythical handset is being released next week — Wednesday, April 27th.

In addition, retailers in Europe are getting supplies of the iPhone with “do not open until April 27” stickers, says 9to5Mac.

It is not clear, however, if that is the worldwide launch for the white iPhone 4. But it certainly looks like it.

Apple does a pretty good job at being an environmentally conscious company. It seems like towards the end of every keynote, Steve Jobs expounds on what Apple is doing to lower the carbon foot print of their products. To celebrate Earth Day the guys over at Geekaphone created a really great info graphic to show just how eco-friendly the iPhone is. Packed with neat little facts, like how the iPhone 4 reduced emissions by 18% where as the iPhone 3G increased emissions by 22%, the big graphic is worth a look for anyone who wants to grasp the picture of their cellphones impact on the environment.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaNALBJ39LA&feature=player_embedded

BMW’s Connected Drive program has been all about increasing communication in your car, now you can control your iPod Touch or iPhone and some of its applications using the same Apple interface on the car’s console screen.

Watching the video above where the driver uses Pandora is like a jaunty little requiem for commercial radio. Once your device is in the cradle, you can access your music library or the apps and control the volume using either the radio, the steering wheel or the iDrive Controller.

Other apps you can control from the car include what one reviewer called a “minimalist” integration of Twitter and Facebook.  It may not look great, but it sounds like it may come in handy while on the road, since the app can pull your location and destination from the navigation system then post an update telling all and sundry you’ll be there in 15 minutes.

They’ve been talking about it for at least a year, the BMW Apps are available on cars made from March 2011 on and SUVs rolling off factory lines from April 2011.

What’s next? BMW say they are in talks with other app makers, so you’ll be able to do stuff like make restaurant reservations and buy movie tickets from your car.

Via Autoblog

Finally, Apple is dragging one of the many copycat hardware makers into court for copying Apple’s brilliant ideas.

Or…

Apple joins in on the lawsuit frenzy to win in the courts instead of competing on features, price and user friendliness.

What are we to make of Apple’s recent lawsuit against Samsung? Is Apple right? Did Samsung “slavishly copy Apple’s innovative technology, distinctive user interfaces, and elegant and distinctive product and packaging design”?

What’s the likely outcome? Why Samsung? Why now?

The legal mumbo jumbo surrounding cases like these make them boring as hell. But the impact of this turn of events could be far reaching, and affect the future of computing and mobility.

What you need to know is that while this lawsuit seems narrow and specific — targeting a handful of Samsung devices for copying the iPad and iPhone — it’s really a warning for industry at large, and about the entire iOS family of products, from wristwatches today to desktops tomorrow and everything in between.

This is not about the iPad vs. the Tab. It’s about Apple’s very unique approach to everything vs. everyone else’s business-as-usual — and it’s about the future of computing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS1iXdqOVC8&feature=player_embedded

With the Flock browser going the way of the dodo, there’s really only one social-media-enhanced browser left: RockMelt. And yesterday, they released an iPhone version of the browser.

RockMelt is pretty handy for those of us who like to post news and blog posts straight to our Facebook and Twitter feeds from the web on our iPhones. It also functions as a basic newsreader, and It’ll sync with the browser’s Mac version so you can access bookmarks and posts that have been tagged with its “View Later” feature. Best of all, it’s free.

San Francisco is launching a pay-by-iPhone scheme for parking.

Called SFpark, the pilot program starts in early May. The SFPark app, free to download, helps you find parking and pricing information from your iPhone. Users pay $0.45 for every transaction and the system charges different rates depending on demand in the area with prices ranging from $2.00 to over $4.00 an hour.

Beginning in early May, parking prices will be incrementally raised or lowered in SFpark pilot areas based on demand. Rates change no more than once a month and only in small increments.

The pilot includes 6,000 of San Francisco’s 25,000 metered spaces and 12,250 spaces in 15 of 20 city- owned parking garages. It will cover eight neighborhoods including Civic Center, Hayes Valley, the Financial District, SoMa, the Mission, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Fillmore and the Marina.

Are you willing to pay extra for the ease of paying by iPhone?

Via ABC

The iPhone tracking issue that’s causing a big privacy stink isn’t new and isn’t really tracking users, says an iOS forensics researcher.

It’s actually a data file that is used internally by the iPhone to do things like geo-tag photos, and it’s been in iOS for a long time (in a different form).

What’s new is a nifty extraction tool called iPhoneTracker that pulls the data off your hard drive and makes a striking map out of it. iPhoneTracker was released this week at O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference, causing a huge outcry about privacy and prompting U.S. Senator Al Franken to write to Steve Jobs.

In addition, the file has become more accessible than it used to be because it’s now used by third-party apps that require location data.

“It is not secret, malicious, or hidden,” writes Alex Levinson, an iOS forensics researcher.

Senator Al Franken (D-MN) wants answers about the iPhone’s undisclosed tracking features.

As reported, the iPhone and 3G iPad secretly record your location as you travel around and sync it with your computer. It appears to be a serious violation of privacy. It was first disclosed by security researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warren at O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference.

Apple hasn’t yet explained the matter, prompting Sen. Franken to publish an open letter to Steve Jobs demanding answers.

Sen Franken wants to know why Apple is collecting the data; how it is collected; what it is used for; why it isn’t encrypted; if the data is shared; and why consumers aren’t asked before the data is collected.

Here’s the full text of Sen. Franken’s letter to Jobs:

Perhaps you caught our recent review for the killer iOS photo app, FX Photo Studio. If you didn’t rush out and buy it right away based on the stunning (cough, cough) examples in the accompanying gallery, or – heaven forfend – on the basis of its five stars, then here’s your chance to get it on your device for FREE.

Just go to Cult of Mac’s Facebook page and like us before midnight Friday PST (that’s about 36 hours from the time of this post) and you’ll be entered into a drawing for one of six free download codes for FX Photo Studio for iPhone and iPad.

That’s it. If you already like us on Facebook (yay!) you’re already entered, so don’t feel the need to “unlike” and then “Like” again to get in on this awesome opportunity.

Winners will be notified of their bounty and good fortune during the day on Friday.