Coming about one month after the much heralded first release of their client for the iPad, Applidium has just announced that they will be making their popular VLC video client universal as of the next update.
With all due respect, this was originally intended to be a gallery post dedicated to discovering the magic of MC Escher, a 99¢ app that brings users hi-res imagery of the artwork that’s decorated millions of dorm rooms and student apartments worldwide over the years. The app incudes two mindbending games as well, and for a buck, it’s got to be good value. MC Escher on the iPhone and iPad — how could you go wrong?
However, digging around for something to say about the Escher app, iFractal surfaced. It’s a free app that allows users to play around with renderings of the Mandelbrot and Julia sets of images derived from mathematical visualization theory. There’s also Fractals, a $2.99 app that seems to offer the same thing, with perhaps a finer manipulative granularity — but in the end, these apps warrant a gallery.
One of the last bastions of iPhone exclusivity in Europe has finally tumbled: Vodafone and O2 are now reporting that they will soon be offering the iPhone 4 in Germany, breaking the knuckles of T-Mobile’s long standing stranglehold on the handset.
It was pretty easy to see the writing on the wall in Germany that this was coming: earlier this year, T-Mobile’s “exclusivity” was downgraded from the exclusive right to sell all Apple handsets to the exclusive right to sell the iPhone 4. Pretty much every carrier in Germany has been offering the 3GS ever since.
It’s two days late, but late is better than never. GreenPois0n the jailbreak for iOS devices running iOS 4.1 is here. Unfortunately the first release is for Windows and Linux only, but the developers of the hack, Chronic-Dev, expect to release a version for Mac OS X soon.
The jailbreak supports iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, the third and forth generation iPod touch, and the iPad. Although it doesn’t presently support the second generation Apple TV at this time a future update will fix that.
The release of GreenPois0n follows last weekends surprise release of Limera1n by Geohot. Afterwards, Geohot and Chronic-Dev got together, so GreenPois0n now uses the same exploit as Limera1n. This cooperation saved Chronic-Dev’s SHAtter exploit for a future jailbreaking tool.
As far as I’m concerned the hacker cooperation can continue. I appreciate what they do for people who want out of Apple’s walled garden and I hope they continue to work together on future iOS hacking tools. You can download a copy of GreenPois0n for Windows or Linux by visiting www.greenpois0n.com.
If you use Posterous for posting stuff online, you might be interested in the new, free Posterous iOS app that’s popped up in the App Store today.
It’s got everything you’d expect to see in a mobile blogging tool. Namely: a big green POST button that’s everywhere in the app; no matter what else you’re looking at, you can always start a new post with one tap.
The Amazon iPhone app received an update Tuesday, allowing iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 users to scan barcodes anywhere and instantly compare prices on the scanned item at amazon.com.
Using the device’s camera, users of the free app can point at a barcode out in brick-and-mortar land and know within seconds whether Amazon has a better deal on offer.
This new TV commercial for Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 inspired me to write a script for this weekend’s Saturday Night Live. No, really!
WEEKEND UPDATE SEGMENT
Seth Meyers, Amy Poehler
SETH
Microsoft this week unveiled its long awaited Windows Phone 7 to compete with the Apple iPhone and Google Android phones. The company also released a TV commercial depicting a world of people so engrossed in their cell phones that they fail in their jobs, neglect their kids and ignore the sexual advances of their spouses. To which people in the commercial respond: “Really!?!”
Which brings us to a segment we like to call, “REALLY!?! with Seth & Amy.”
<Applause>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXkoIBDXwd8
Taking their iPhone Where No iDevice Has Gone Before, a father and son in Newburgh, NY recently took a weekend science project to new heights. Luke and Max Geissbuhler attached an HD Video Camera, iPhone and some styrofoam packing to a weather balloon, then launched their homemade satellite on a journey that lasted 72 minutes and climbed over 100,000 feet into the atmosphere!
Who knows what Hyundai intends on using this desk for, but I have to admit, I can imagine worse desks than a 70-inch, 1080p iPhone. It was on display at the Kintex show in Korea this week, for some reason.
[via Gizmodo]
This isn’t a 3GS tarted up by Colorware, it’s the “iPhonc,” a little no-name Chinese cell phone looking to capitalize upon a bit of brand confusion with a stolen Apple logo (albeit, one with a reversed stem) and the elimination of a single stroke from the product name’s typeface.
I would be curious one day to pick the brain of one of these iPhone knock-off designers. They really are ingenious. If only they used that same ingenuity to design capable smartphones instead of dancing around trademark infringement.
[via 9to5Mac]
The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both agree that a CDMA iPhone is coming to Verizon in January, and their agreement on the matter has one of Apple’s strategic leaks written all over it. But when the iPhone comes to Verizon, will it be boasting 4G mobile internet speeds?
Don’t count on it, says Steve Cheney of Techcrunch, who reports that the Verizon iPhone to debut in January will be unable to access Verizon’s LTE network.
No matter how much you might dislike Microsoft and all its creations, you have to admire their pluck for calling in none other than Stephen Fry for today’s Windows Phone 7 launch event.
Fry is well known as an ardent supporter of all things Apple, but that reputation is to some degrees a creation of Fry’s own fans.
The thing is, he doesn’t just support Apple and OS X; he loves all technology, and like most of us prefers to use the best stuff he can get his hands on. “I’m all for biodiversity in the smartphone market,” he says.
People who have been desperate to turn friends into badgers – your prayers have finally, finally been answered.
Because for you, Badger Face is likely to be the best dollar you’ve ever spent on an iPhone/iPod touch application with turning-people-into-badgers functionality.
For the rest of us? Well, for the rest of us, Badger Face will make us momentarily double-take as we browse the App Store for amazing stuff. It will make us choke on our badger burgers as we read the app description. Badger Face is simultaneously the weirdest thing we have seen this week, and it is this week’s Best (Badger-Related) Thing Ever.
Who knows what will come next? The user comments suggest Dinosaur Face, but why stop there? What about Panda Face? Squirrel Face? Unicorn Face? And for A-Team fans, Face Face?
Love your MacBook’s MagSafe adapter? Good news: it might be coming to the next iPhone or iPad.
The most notorious iPhone knock-off at all is the Meizu M8, a cheeky doppelganger that looks virtually identical to the iPhone before you dive below the surface into the excremental ocean of its software: a custom-shelled version of Microsoft Windows CE 6. Meizu CEO Jack Wong has been cheekily shining Apple on about the Meizu M8’s more-than-subtle likeness to the iPhone for a while now, having laughed as recently as last month that the new iPod Touch looks just like their upcoming Meizu M9II Android smartphone.
Wong’s probably wishing he’d kept his mouth shut now. According to Wong, Meizu is now being forced by Cupertino’s lawyers to stop selling the M8… and it might be enough to put the company under.
Halloween is Big Business in historic Salem, Massachusetts. It’s now High Tech too. For the 29th Haunted Happenings Celebration, the annual festival of witches, ghosts, and fall in New England, the town has created a new Haunted Happenings App for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
The app features info about the Festival Calendar of Events, local attractions and museums, restaurant and retail listings, and directions on how to get to Salem (tip: plan ahead and leave time). Users also have an opportunity to purchase tickets for some events and attractions directly from the app.
Let the Frightful Fun Commence! [via boston.com]
One of our favorite iOS apps this week is Gordon Ramsay’s Cook With Me, which features 52 mouth-watering recipes, with simple to follow steps for cooking up gorgeous dishes.
Esquire‘s new magazine app for the iPad is another featured this week: see the World Trade Centre being built, complete with information on how it all will happen.
We also have an amazing new painting application for the iPad!
Slide-on iPhone 4 do cause scratches and cracks on the device’s glass back, the vast majority of readers reported in a poll we ran on Friday.
Almost 75 percent of repondents said their iPhone 4 has been scratched, cracked or otherwise damaged by a slide-on case. Only 26 percent said they’d had no problems.
The poll was prompted by a report Ryan Block in GDGT that Apple is actively investigating slide-on cases before it turns into a PR disaster like Antennagate.
The results are at total surprise to me. I’d not heard of the issue before Friday, and I’ve used several slide-on cases with my iPhone 4 without problems.
Of course, online polls are far from scientific surveys. In fact, most commenters on the post report that they’ve had no problems. If you read the comments and ignore the poll, you’d get the impression that there isn’t an issue, or that trapped dirt affects all cases and all phones — not just the iPhone 4.
The results are interesting because it was unclear how widespread the issue was — it certainly didn’t seem mainstream. But as Block pointed out this morning, Apple is trying to preempt the issue before it becomes a public relations nightmare. More here: Following up on yesterday’s “Glassgate” story.
This week’s must-have iOS games features Sega’s latest Sonic the Hedgehog 4 that many of us have been eagerly awaiting. It’s been described as the best Sonic for iOS yet, with improved controls, smoother gameplay and a genuine Sonic feel.
Another of our favorites is Chillingo’s Cut the Rope – the addictive puzzle game that knocked Angry Birds off the top of the paid charts this week. It combines realistic physics with simple, precise touch controls to create a wonderfully challenging puzzler.
Black Pegasus is the latest Modern Combat 2 game from Gameloft, and also features in our favorites this week. Its console quality graphics together and excellent production make it one of the most impressive first-person shooters to arrive on the iPhone.
We also have some classic ZX Spectrum gaming!
iPhone users are twice as likely to be influenced by the Tea Party than voters who carry an Android or Blackberry phone, according to a new online poll by Zogby/463.
In addition, iPhone users are twice as likely to believe that Sarah Palin “speaks for them,” and 60 percent predict a Republican takeover of Congress this year.
Let’s face it — for a multi-purpose device heavily weighted toward music, the iPhone’s music-player interface is crap. Dealing with those tiny buttons crammed onto the bottom of the screen is bad enough under most conditions, worse for meaty-fingered users and infuriating when the iPhone is docked or when movement is involved.
Enter Quick-Tunes, a $1 app that replaces the iPhones native chintzy soft controls with a big, meaty, attractive buttons. It also adds cool additional functions around the main play/pause button that let the user play more songs from the same artist, genre or album.
in case you missed it, last month saw the debut of Golf Vision Green Analyzer, an app that uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to calculate the perfect putting angle to sink a ball on the green; just measure the slope angle at the hole and at the ball by laying the iPhone on the ground, then set the green speed, and the app does its magic calculations and overlays the premium angle graphically over a still photo of your view to the hole.
Skeptical? That’s ok, the developers have just released a free version to try before considering the $5 full version. Unfortunately, the free version uses a generic photo to overlay the calculations on, and more importantly, only allows for slope measurements at one end, so results may not be as accurate as with the full version.
Cheap Chinese knockoffs of the iPhone 4 are a dime-a-dozen, but this new handset runs Android 2.1, Google’s ever-improving mobile OS.
It’s actually a dual-boot phone. It also runs Windows Mobile 6.5 (yuck!). It has a 3.6-inch capacitive touch-screen with multi-touch controls. It comes with 512MB of RAM and includes a 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus.
It costs about $257, which is a bargain. It might be worth looking for one of these on eBay. The ability to run Android is a game-changer for knockoffs. For the first time, the software won’t totally suck.
Slide-on cases may be causing big problems for the iPhone 4, GDGT reports. It seems grit and other particles can become trapped between the case and the iPhone 4’s glass back, causing scratches, cracks and even shattering the glass. According to sources inside and outside the company, Apple has locked-down a team of engineers to investigate the problem before it turns into another PR disaster like Antennagate.
It’s unclear, however, how widespread this problem is. Or even if it is a problem. I have an iPhone 4 and have used several slide-on cases. I haven’t had issues with scratching or trapped dirt.
So, please help us, is this problem? Don’t forget, this is specifically about scratches caused by slide-on cases — not scratches in general.
[polldaddy poll=3887923]
In the iPhone world, the phrase “cat and mouse” brings to mind just one thing: the perpetual struggle between the iPhone Dev Team and Apple when it comes to hacking iOS devices to run unsigned code, commonly referred to as a jailbreak.
Most recently, it seemed like the mouse had managed to drop a ten ton anvil on the cat’s head with the SHAtter exploit, a jailbreaking technique which will work on all iOS devices that is only patchable by Apple through hardware. If what’s going on in the Android landscape is anything to go by, Cupertino might soon regain the upper hand.
