httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvo2g7RkVSo&feature=player_embedded
Things to do over the weekend with your brand new iPhone 4, or Apple’s most fragile and shatterable handset yet? Why not strap it to a few helium balloons and send it off for a little jaunt along the troposphere. They weren’t entirely stupid, though: recovery of the iPhone 4 seems to have been assured by a long length of fishing wire.
[via TUAW]
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It’s Independence Day Friday, and let’s face it, after a week of iPhone 4 reception controversy, we’re all a little tired, so let’s all take a moment to chuckle over this: Futurama‘s 31st Century parody of the Apple Store and the iPhone.
Here’s my iPhone 3G. It’s a bit scratched and a bit cracked, but it still works just fine. At least, it did until I upgraded to iOS4.
The update turned my reliable friend into a pain in the backside. Simple things, like swiping between springboards or calling up the virtual keyboard, suddenly took an age.
In short: iOS4 on a 3G was painful.
I’m not the first to notice this, of course. You can find discussion threads about it all over the net, and a post by m’colleague Adam Rosen from earlier this week.
Quite a few kind Cult readers responded to that post with their own suggestions and comments, and I’ve been trying some of those in the last couple of days.
In an extraordinarily thorough review of the iPhone 4, Anandtech has gone into the reception issues of the iPhone 4’s antenna in the greatest depth yet.
Mapping the bar representation of the signal strength against the actual signal strength, Anandtech found that over 40% of the signal strength is represented by 5 bars. You need to love over 40dB of signal to go from five to four bars, but only 10db to go from four to three.
On average, the iPhone 4 loses 26.4dB of signal when tightly held in your hand, and 19.8dB of signal when held naturally… a significant jump over the 3GS when it comes to signal degradation when held, thanks to Apple’s decision to allow the iPhone 4’s antenna to come in direct contact with human skin. Since over 40dB of signal strength is measured in the fifth bar, that means that if you’re in an area of great AT&T service, you might not notice a drop at all… but it’s still happening. If you’re in an area of worse coverage, though, the signal drop will be dramatically visible.
The iPhone 4’s widely reported reception problems is the carcass, and the buzzards have been circling for awhile, but the first just dropped down for the feast: the first class action lawsuit against Apple and AT&T has just been filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, and predictably, it focuses on the iPhone 4’s antenna.
The claims are that Apple and AT&T were guilty of general negligence when it comes to the iPhone 4’s reception issues, with Apple specifically guilty when it comes to a defect in the design, manufacture and assembly of the iPhone 4. Additionally, Apple is cited for a breach of warranty, while AT&T and Apple both are accused of deceptive trade practices, intentional and negligent misrepresentation and fraud by concealment.
The lawsuit was filed by Ward & Ward, PLLC and Charles A. Gilman, LLC. on behalf of Kevin McCaffrey, Linda Wrinn and a number of other iPhone 4 users… and it’s not likely to be the last one filed, since the same firm that sued Facebook and Zynga is said to be looking into their own suit.
This is one design decision that is turning into a major headache for Apple, whether the iPhone 4 has a design flaw or no.
These guys were all unveiled at this year’s CES, but earphone-maker Etymotic doesn’t pop out products very often — their still-popular er6i earbuds have been around since 2004 — so when no less than four Etymotic goodies are hitting stores within the space of a month, we sit up and take notice.
Apple released an update today to its MobileMe Gallery application for the iPhone & iPod Touch which brings it up to version 1.1.1.
The update features “various bug fixes” as well as the ability to download your photos in a higher resolution when using the iPhone 4 over Wi-Fi.
Despite these improvements, this little app still leaves much to be desired. Apple are yet to develop a way in which you can manage your photo galleries from your iPhone & iPod Touch. Currently you can only view or upload to galleries you have already created on you computer, and you cannot create or delete galleries from within the app.
As well as this, MobileMe Gallery is still not a universal application, so although it will run on the iPad as most iPhone apps will, it’s not yet been built for the iPad’s larger screen.
Particularly in the Crayola colors, JayBird’s retro-styled Bluetooth headphones look quite attractive to me in a PlaySkool kind of way. They pair with your iPhone through a tiny little dongle and even feature side-mounted control buttons for cycling through your iPod’s music collection without digging it out of your purse, as well as an integrated mic perfect for making phone calls.
They’re a bit pricier than I want to spend on a pair of over-the-ear, foam-covered headphones at $99, but when all is said and done, I still like the style quite a bit.
This is something of a pro tip, but if you have an original 2007 iPhone dock, time to dust it off: DVICE has found that it actually works better than Apple’s new, custom-fit iPhone 4 dock.
The explanation is all about looseness: although the iPhone 4 dock perfectly fits the handset, it’s actually just a bit too tight, making the handset difficult to remove from the cradle with just one hand. The original iPhone dock has none of these problems.
Don’t have an original iPhone dock? Check the eBay listings to pick one up for a song?
It looks pretty official at this point that whatever measures Apple is going to take in fixing the iPhone 4’s reception problems, free bumper cases isn’t going to be one of them. Just in time, then, comes this quick and easy guide on how to use silicone modeling clay to make your own cheap bumper, which will not only protect it from a shattering fall, but also prevent the glass surface from getting scratched on tables and the like. Extend the sugru a little farther over the iPhone 4’s antenna danger spot at the lower left corner and that should help minimize dropped bars when you’re gripping your iPhone 4 as well.
If you’re hoping to get some sort of solution for your iPhone 4 antenna woes by calling up tech support, think again: Apple’s internal procedures when it comes to the iPhone 4’s reception have been leaked, and officially, there’s no problem with the iPhone 4 antenna unless there’s signal problems when you aren’t holding it.
What’s been rumor, speculation and a good way to fill blog space is now…well, still all of the above; but the rumors are beginning to sound more and more like hard fact — that Verizon has bagged the iPhone.
Just days after the iPhone arrived at Apple stores, and one day after on the same day it hit AT&T’s outlets, Bloomberg News says “two people familiar with the plans” claim that Verizon will begin selling iPhones next year in January. The two sources spoke anonymously; not surprisingly, neither Bloomberg News nor anyone else running the story has been able to get an official comment from either Apple or Verizon.
If you are squeamish or faint of heart and love all things Apple you just might want to skip reading this post, but on the other hand if Freddy Krueger is your friend and all the gut wrenching destruction of his movies are for you then keep reading. We’ll take a look at three videos that show Apple’s latest gadget the iPhone 4 getting blended, microwaved, and shot.
We’ve received some comments from iPhone 3GS users that their battery life after the iOS 4 update has declined. This can in most cases be attributed to poorly written apps or apps that don’t support the multitasking feature introduced in iOS 4. Are you experiencing this problem? Have you identified an app or some other reason for the decline in battery life on your iPhone 3GS? Tells us all about it in the comments.
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Apple’s accidentally hinted at the existence of iWorks for iPhone a few times in the past now, but these blurry images over at 9to5Mac are the first plausible look at the software, demonstrating a beta of Pages for iPhone running on an iPod Touch.
Sure, this kind of image is something that could be easily spoofed by a programmer with a jailbroken iPhone, but I suspect that it’s legit: with iMovie for iPhone, Apple has already demonstrated itself to be ready to start porting over their desktop apps to iOS.
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As a film, Michael Korbel’s Apple of My Eye is schmaltzy enough that it might make you want to puke out a kidney. The plot can best be best described thusly: old man walks down street with granddaughter, looks into a window, hallucinates for thirty seconds about being a lilliputian riding a toy train.
“Grampa? GRAMPA?” the alarmed girl asks as her dead-eyed grandfather wobbles back and forth, clearly in the throes of a ministroke. “Let me tell you a story!” he cries. The film ends just before the little girl’s inevitable response: “Oh, great. I’m sure it’ll be a humdinger.” *eyeroll* “Let’s just get you back to the assisted care facility, okay?”
Pretty putrid. In fact, if it weren’t filmed with an iPhone 4 and edited with iMovie for iPhone, I’d tell you to watch something more interesting. But it was, which makes Apple of My Eye impressive, tacky though it may well be. If anything, it just goes to show how good the iPhone 4’s video capabilities are… at least when wielded by professional cinematographers under ideal lighting conditions.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6L07nPrjzo&feature=player_embedded
Don’t have an iPhone 4 but still want to use iMovie for iPhone? There’s no real reason it can’t work on the likes of the 3GS, and so it does, with a little jailbreaking.
The hack’s easy enough. If you’ve got a jailbroken iPhone, you just edit the info.plist file of the app and change the “Minimum System Version” to 3.0.0 and “Front-Facing Camera” to False. Launch the app again and you’ve got the ability to edit videos on your last-generation iPhone, seemingly without much performance degradation.
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If you haven’t already played Giana Sisters, you’re missing out! It’s one of the best platform games on the iPhone & iPod Touch and I highly recommend you try it. If you share my love of Giana Sisters, you too will be pleased to hear that a HD version is making its way to the iPad soon, according to Touch Arcade.
Originally released in 1987, The Great Giana Sisters was first developed for the Amiga, Atari, Commodore 64 and other consoles of the era. It was quickly pulled, however, after running in to legal trouble with Nintendo due to its similarity with Super Mario Bros. The game was reborn in 2005 when it was renamed simply Giana Sisters, and made its way on to mobile phones, and a few years later, the Nintendo DS.
Today, 5 years on, Giana Sisters is one of the best platform games in the App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and Touch Arcade have reported today that its developers, Bad Monkey, have sent them a bunch of screenshots for their upcoming HD version of the game. You can check them out and find out more info here, or read Touch Arcade’s review of the current game here.
If you can’t wait until the iPad release on 9th July, you can find the iPhone & iPod Touch version in the App Store here.
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Although usually the model of reasonableness and imperturbability, Downfall’s Adolf Hitler is none too happy with the iPhone 4’s reception problems. It’s enough to make a Nazi an Android fanboy!
As they are wont to do, the guys over at iSuppli have ripped apart their pretty new iPhone 4s, done some math and figured out how much it cost to make.
What’s the damage to Apple? The 16GB iPhone 4 costs $187.51 to put together in hardware costs alone, with the fancy new Retina Display costing $28.50 per unit, the A4 CPU costing $10.75 and the new gyroscope only coming in at around $2.60./
Needless to say, there’s a lot more money spent on every iPhone 4, including marketing, design and manufacturing, so this isn’t a complete view of how much profit Apple is looking at per device, but I still always find this stuff fascinating, like taking my dental records down to a pawn shop and seeing how much I could get for my fillings.
Steve Jobs just can’t seem to make up his mind. Just a few days after he tersely told a customer that people experiencing rampant reception issues with their iPhone 4 that people were “holding it wrong,” Steve Jobs has written to another Apple customer, saying “There is no reception issue [with the iPhone 4]. Stay tuned.”
Isn’t that a bit of a contradiction? Even if a forthcoming iOS 4.0.1 update does fix the reception issues, that still implies there wasan issue. Plus, why do we need to hold it in a specific way if there’s no issue whatsoever?
More interestingly, what are we “staying tuned” for if there’s no issue with the iPhone 4’s reception at all? A placebo? If you want one of those to work, Steve, you’re not supposed to tell the patient.
The mouse has once again darted around the cat. Just a few days after the official release of the iPhone 4, userland has once again managed to find its way around Apple’s updated security measures to jailbreak the handset and get root access to the device.
Don’t expect to do this yourself for now: because the exploit uses remnants of Apple’s own code, it can’t be released to the public just yet, and it’s possible the forthcoming iOS 4.0.1 update might put a kibosh on this particular jailbreaking strategy.
But if you’ve got dreams of high-res Cydia apps dancing in your head, be patient and keep waiting for Dev Team Christmas.
Read more at Redmond Pie
I was gutted to find this morning that my brand new iPhone 4 didn’t work with my beloved TomTom Car Kit — the best automotive cradle/charger for the iPhone, bar none.
The iPhone 4 fits in the cradle OK, but it doesn’t charge. Discovering this filled me with disappointment. I love the TomTom Car Kit (which costs $100 but is well worth it). It holds the iPhone just where I want it for navigation and music. It charges the iPhone, and boosts the GPS signal when using TomTom’s excellent navigation app. And it doesn’t move, even if I clumsily bash on the iPhone’s screen with my big sausage fingers.
So I’m delighted there’s a simple and inexpensive fix for the charging issue — a small strip of velcro.
As Engadget tipster Ben Peacock Martin Alaniz discovered, you cut a small strip of velcro (the soft side) and stick it to the back of the Car Kit cradle, just behind the dock connector.
There is no need to attach anything to the iPhone itself. The velcro acts as a cushion holds the moving part of the cradle flat, pushing the Car Kit’s electrical contacts against the iPhone’s. Simple and cheap.
Here’s a video showing how it works:
What it is: Auto Verbal Pro (iTunes link) is handy, if not quite full-featured augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) software that gives non-verbal people an inexpensive tool to communicate using an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.
Why it’s cool: Other high-end AAC solutions such as Proloquo2go (iTunes link) cost well upwards of $100 while Auto Verbal Pro hit the iTunes store a couple of weeks ago at 99¢. The introductory price won’t last long but even when NoTie Software kicks its offering up to $30 it will still be a bargain for the help it can bring to people with autism or other conditions that make it difficult for them to communicate verbally.
With over 100 pre-programmed icons in its intuitive interface, Auto Verbal Pro makes it easy for a non-verbal person to say basic phrases such as “I am tired,” or “I am OK,” and things such as numbers, days of the week, shapes, colors, food items, animals and so on. There are 10 icons which can be custom programmed to utter more complex phrases, such as “This software is the bomb, isn’t it?” and a text entry field in which any phrase can be typed and played through the device speakers. Users can choose between large and small buttons, which can be very useful to the visually impaired or fat-fingered, and between male or female sounding computerized voices in low-fi or hi-fi quality.
While great strides have been made in recent years developing software to speak for us, Auto Verbal Pro showcases some of the limitations that persist. The built-in low-fi voicings are certainly intelligible but lack any kind of nuance or expressiveness. Hi-fi voicings are even more intelligible and slightly more expressive, but they require WiFi Internet access in order to work, since the files live on NoTie’s servers. When a custom or typed phrase is called on to use a hi-fi voice, the software connects to NoTie and plays back the sounds using QuickTime, which results in clunky, irritating delays. Where no Internet access is available, the program defaults to the low-fi voicing.
All and all, this is useful and potentially even quite amusing software; with good reason it quickly jumped into the Top 5 Paid Medical apps on the iTunes App Store.
Where to get it: Auto Verbal Pro (currently English-only, but with French, Spanish, and German versions planned) is available on the App Store for a limited time at 99¢, after which its price will jump to $30. It’s well worth investing a dollar now to see if it’s something that could be useful to you or someone you care about.