OK, so we’ve already established that the iPhone camera is capable of some pretty amazing photography, even if you don’t use one of the many fantastic photography-related apps available on the Store.
One thing I’ve not seen it used for to date has been action shots; but Oregon-based photographer Jared Souney has been putting his 3GS to good use for just that.
I wanted to find out how he did it, so I asked him. Here’s what he said.
Goggle’s Voice App undermines the one of the iPhone’s core functions — making phone calls, Apple said on Friday in a response to an inquiry by the FCC.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is looking into the rejection of the Google Voice iPhone application from the iTunes App Store. In an unexpected move, Apple has published its response to the FCC on its website.
Apple says the Google Voice app hasn’t been rejected at all — it’s still under review. Apple is taking its time because Google’s app replaces one of the iPhone’s core functions — making calls — with its own user interface and telephony functions.
“Contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application, and continues to study it. The application has not been approved because, as submitted for review, it appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail. Apple spent a lot of time and effort developing this distinct and innovative way to seamlessly deliver core functionality of the iPhone.”
In addition, Apple says the Google Voice app doesn’t make use of Visual Voicemail or the built-in Messaging app. And it may violate users’ privacy by uploading contacts to Google’s servers with no assurances the data will be used in “appropriate ways.”
Many had speculated AT&T was behind the app’s rejection, even though the carrier has denied it. Now Apple says AT&T has nothing to do with it.
Apple’s response also throws some light on the murky approval process, which has drawn fire for being secretive and capricious.
* AT&T has no role whatsoever in approving or rejecting apps. The only restriction is no VOIP over the cell network, which is why Skype and similar apps are WiFi only. Weirdly, Apple says it doesn’t know if the Google Voice App has a VOIP element.
* Apple has 40 full-time trained reviewers. Every app is scrutinized by at least two reviewers.
* There’s an executive review board (*cough* Phil Schiller *cough*) to oversee policy and procedure. The review board meets weekly, and deals with apps that present “new or complex issues.” Apple says 95% of applications are approved within 14 days, and the team is working like dogs.
“Apple generally spends most of the review period making sure that the applications function properly, and working with developers to fix quality issues and software bugs in applications. We receive about 8,500 new applications and updates every week, and roughly 20% of them are not approved as originally submitted. In little more than a year, we have reviewed more than 200,000 applications and updates.”
Apple’s full response to the FCC after the jump.
UPDATE: Both AT&T’s response to the FCC and Google’s have been obtained by Engadget. AT&T’s answers are pretty much in line with Apple’s version of events. AT&T “had no role in any decision by Apple to not accept the Google Voice application,” the company says. AT&T says it sometimes “has discussions” with Apple if an app presents the risk of network congestion.
Oddly, Google’s response to the question about its app’s rejection has been redacted. Very odd, when Apple is openly offering its story to the public. Why would the injured party hide its version of events? Smells fishy.
The most important thing about getting a new bike is making sure it fits right. It’s all the difference between pleasure and pain — and very possibly a pair of blown knees.
The Test Rides iPhone app is a specialized but handy “virtual bike fitting room” that measures you up for a new bike. It looks handy for figuring out whether that beautiful bike on Craigslist will actually fit you.
First you take a picture of yourself from the side — you’ll probably need help. You then mark your joints on the picture: knees, elbows and ankles. The App calculates your body size.
Then you input the dimensions of the bike you want to buy – the top tube, bottom bracket, crank length, etc — and the App tells you whether the bike is a good fit or not. This part is a bit of work. Many used bike listings do not include all the measurments, and even the amount of info online about new bikes is inconsistent. While a lot of manufacturers have all the data, some do not.
Still, if you’re about to buy a new bike and have most of the measurements, spending $5 on this app seems like a good precaution to make sure it fits right.
Have you heard of Posterous yet? It’s a free hosted blogging service, where the aim is to making the act of posting content as simple as possible.
Which means that posting-by-email is the primary interface. Send Posterous anything in a mail message – text, pictures, video, other files – and it tries to do The Right Thing with whatever it is, to make it work as a post.
And on the whole it works very well. I’ve been playing around with it recently and I’m impressed. I like the simplicity and the immediacy of it.
That might explain why I was excited to see today’s announcement of a Posterous iPhone app.
Apple in Europe may unlock your iPhone if you have pay off your carrier contract, one blogger has discovered.
Olly Farshi of TheAppleBlog.com didn’t have to jailbreak or run ultrasn0w to unlock his iPhone.
He simply asked his carrier to unlock his iPhone 3G after paying off a two year contract. The carrier, Finland’s Sonera, submitted the request to Apple and the next time Farshi synced with iTunes, the software had him install an official carrier update.
Then iTunes displayed something rarely seen: an official message saying his iPhone had been officially unlocked. See the screenshot above.
“Regarding Sonera, think of it as a less-repugnant version of AT&T,” Farshi writes. “As the exclusive distributor of the iPhone over in Finland, Sonera has turned out to be a somewhat benevolent carrier.”
He continues: “Going the legit route was a much more painless process than using a proxy SIM or the Dev Team’s unofficial unlock. Also worth noting is that, unlike some of the illicit approaches, this unlock is permanent: I’ll be able to keep updating the iPhone’s OS without losing the ability to use any carrier SIM in the device.”
No word on whether AT&T will do this. Has anyone tried?
BTW: It is possible to buy factory unlocked iPhones for $1,000+.
UPDATE: This now looks like a Javascript alert buried on a webpage, not a push notification. See below.
The iPhone’s Push notification system may be vulnerable to spam and malware popups.
CoM reader NyxoLyno Cangemi was using NetNewsWire RSS reader on his iPhone when what appears to be a push notification for anti-virus software popped up. See the screenshot above.
The popup message says his computer has “vulnerabilities and threats” and needs an immediate virus scan.
The popup is a notorious “rogue anti-virus” message, designed to trick naive websurfers into surrendering credit card details to fake anti-virus vendors. The unsuspecting websurfer see the message, follows the link and buys fake anti-virus software that steals their credit card number and installs malware.
The website URL in the iPhone popup points to a known rogue site, safeonlinescanv4.com, according to security firm MacAfee’s SiteAdvisor service.
The iPhone 3.0’s push notifications allow messages or alerts to be pushed to the user — incoming IM messages or new e-mails, for example. Apple billed the system as an alternative to battery-draining background processes. NetNewsWire for the iPhone does not offer push notifications. I’ve contacted the developer, NewsGator Technologies, for comment.
Have spammers and spyware frauds found a way to spam iPhones using push notifications? Anyone else seen this?
UPDATE: I asked CoM reader Cangemi what he was doing when the message popped up. Cangemi says he was browsing a folder of links, not any particular site, which was showing a list of headlines from his Sirius radio RSS folder. “I was scrolling through the list at the time it happened, which leads me to believe it was a push notification and could have occurred no matter what I was doing,” he says. In the comments, reader Matt J. reports he got a similar popup while using Safari, which again suggests push.
NewsGator Technologies forwarded an email from NetNewsWire’s lead developer, who also says it looks like a push notification.
He says: “I haven’t seen this before. NetNewsWire doesn’t use the push notification system. But other apps do, and a notification can appear in front of any other app. So I have no way of knowing where this notification came from. Another possibility is that he’d gone to a web page in NetNewsWire that has a JavaScript alert that put up that popup. It would be great to know exactly what pages he’d visited, but I realize it’s hard to find out after-the-fact.”
As Cangemi says, he wasn’t visiting a particular page, but browsing a folder of links. So it looks like push notification is the culprit.
UPDATE 2: In the comments readers Michael Weisman and DerekS say it’s more likely a Javascript alert dialog. “The default buttons on a push notification are ‘Cancel’ and ‘View’ where ‘View’ would launch the pushed-app,” notes DerekS.
“NetNewsWire has an integrated browser for reading stories,” notes Weisman. “This probably was designed to come up when the user navigates away from a page, so it popped up after the user went back to the story list. Also, the push notification system has a ton of security. The whole thing is encrypted, and the user needs to approve an app before it will even send them. There is no way for an app to send malicious notifications without your approval.”
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.
APP OF THE WEEK
Pinball Fantasies: First-rate update of 4-table Amiga pinball. More intricate than Dreams, but a bit less fun. 4/5 $5.99 https://is.gd/2rNSH
KRYZER: Stylish, great-looking, great-sounding, but terminally dull basic shooter with Head On overtones. 2/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/2kYfK
Solitaire (Fat Head Apps): Bare-bones Solitaire. Iffy graphics & feature-light. Sol Free much better. 2/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/2mIKj
Mixed: Anagram game with ongoing/timed modes. Has problems with mixes that have multiple solutions. 2/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/2mITf
Tase-A-Hippie: One-joke app, which lacks a joke. Just prod to ‘tase’ a static cartoon beatnik. 1/5 Free https://is.gd/2mJ1U
Ask Happy Buddha: Rub fat guy’s tummy, ask ?, shake, get answer, wonder why didn’t get free Magic 8-Ball app. 1/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/2mJaz
Eurosport: Sports news app. Lots of content, mostly looks good, and works well, but a bit crashy. 4/5 Free https://is.gd/2oonU
Ten Pin Championship Bowling: Good-looking, fun bowling. Let down by ball sometimes having a mind of its own. 3/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/2qha6
Lots of junk and mediocre stuff this week—one-‘joke’ apps in particular are really wearing thin—but three apps stand out from the crowd. Eurosport offers a pretty good means to get at regularly updated European sports news and standings; Ten Pin Championship Bowling, while having a ball that sometimes seems to do its own thing, is a fun game and made by industry legend David Crane (Pitfall!, Little Computer People); and Pinball Fantasies proves that you don’t need gloss to create a great game. A loving and careful update of the 1992 Amiga classic, Pinball Fantasies eschews modern cartoon-like or 3D pinball for tables instead packed with features and missions. It might not look terribly modern, but it plays brilliantly, and its four tables offer plenty do to. If I’m honest, I prefer the simpler tables from prequel Pinball Dreams, but Fantasies is still a must-have iPod game for pinball aficionados, and I await Pinball Illusions with bated breath.
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New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority wants to derail an independent iPhone app that publishes train schedules for violation of copyright.
Called Station Stops, the $2.99 app available on iTunes, is the work of commuter Chris Schoenfeld, who also writes the blog of the same name.
The app provides the timetable of the Metro-North Railroad for regularly-scheduled trains departing and arriving from Grand Central Station.
The MTA provides its schedules to Google Transit, but doesn’t release the data publicly.
To build his app, Schoenfeld did it the old way — by entering data manually from the published public schedule.
Schoenfeld, who has often been critical of MTA service, got a nastygram from MTA lawyers ordering him to stop presenting himself as an official service — and pay licensing fees for the schedules.
The MTA reckons the developer owes them a share of profits from the app, back pay the licensing fees. And a $5,000 non-refundable fee.
Schoenfeld’s not interested in ponying up. His sensible David versus ham-fisted Goliath story received a lot of sympathetic local news coverage — but that didn’t stop the MTA from asking Apple to take down the app on Aug. 14.
As of this writing, Station Stops is still for sale.
As one station stops blog reader, Karen Cavanaugh commented:
“I always use Station Stops to check the train schedule when I visit my daughter in Hoboken, NJ. I never think of it as an “OFFICIAL” website. I’ve been to the official website and it’s awkward.”
You have to see this to believe it. Above is a demo video of Paris 3D, a tourist guide to France’s beautiful capital city in photo-realistic 3D.
It looks absolutely stunning. The detail is unbelievable. Here’s a massive virtual city on your iPhone — right down to the gargoyles. There’s even people and vehicles — plus their shadows! — for added realism.
You can zoom in to particular streets or buildings, or zoom out to get a global view of the city’s layout. Tap on a building to get a data sheet on the structure, which includes the building’s history, photos, and where appropriate, phone numbers or opening times (like a museum).
Type a destination, and you zoom across the 3D city to see it.
You can to highlight particular categories of buildings — hotels and restaurants, for example, which show up color coded on the 3D map, making them easy to spot in a global view. The app is GPS-enabled, so you just tap a button to get directions. Street names are overlaid.
Performance looks fantastic. It renders better than Google maps. The demo looks like it was filmed on a iPhone emulator running on a developer computer. But if performance is as good on a real iPhone, it’ll be killer.
The app has just been submitted to the iTunes App store and should be available soon pending Apple’s approval.
The developer, Newscape Technology, claims it took twenty man-years of R&D over a four year period to develop, and is the first in a series of city guides.
Move over Google Maps!
Apple will to sell a massive 50 million iPhones a year by 2011, Wall Street analyst Toni Sacconaghi says.
In a research note on Wednesday, the Bernstein Research analyst said Apple will achieve this just by holding onto current market share and adding new countries and carriers.
Sacconaghi’s predictions are in line with estimates from a RBC report on Tuesday, which also estimates 50 million iPhones in 2011. Apple has sold 26 million units since the iPhone’s debut in 2007. Sacconaghi estimates Apple will sell 20 million in 2009.
* More smart phones: Smart phones will grow 27% a year in 2010 and 2011, Sacconaghi says.
* More carriers in more countries: Apple could add 11 million units by adding Verizon Wireless in 2011 when the exclusive AT&T runs out. Plus more carriers in existing markets will add 3.5 million in European and 4 million in Asia.
* China: Sacconaghi estimates a deal with China Unicom is worth 2.9 million iPhones in 2011; and maybe 6 million if Apple also adds China Mobile.
The numbers could be even bigger if Apple adds pre-paid iPhones and WiFi-only iPhones, Sacconaghi says. He notes 75% of the global cellphone market is prepaid.
At this point, it’s hard to get excited by every amazing new iPhone app that comes down the pike. Even augmented reality has started to feel boring, and it isn’t even allowed on locked-down iPhones yet.
But man, does Cadence have me excited. Basically, it figures out the average tempo of your iPod library, then creates playlists by different BPM speeds so you can easily browse your music by pace. Watch the video at their site (not embeddable, unfortunately). It’s amazing, and a totally new experience.
And it’s something I’ve been looking for. I’ve never had my whole 25-gig music library on a single handheld device before, and I’ve found it’s hard to take advantage of so many songs and artists. I’ll inevitably stay in my comfort zone if I don’t discover what I’ve been missing — and Genius doesn’t help, it regurgitates the same 20 songs every time I use it.
This has that potential, if it’s smart enough to pick a random song within each tempo. I’m excited to use this, and I hope Apple has the sense to approve it. This is not duplicate functionality.
If you’re lucky enough to live in Pittsburgh, you can report stuff like potholes, graffiti and other everyday annoyances straight to city hall via an iPhone app called iBurgh.
Peeved Pittsburghers first download the app, gratis on iTunes. First time users need to fill in name, phone number, email and home address — stored automatically for logging future complaints.
Users snap pics of traffic gridlock, abandoned cars or whatever. The photos are geotagged and sent immediately to the city complaint hotline 311. Officials hope that if enough people use the app (they already get about 200 rants a day) they’ll have a cluster map of trouble areas to plan for future maintenance and repairs.
There were a few snafus as iPhone wielding citizens tried complaining via smartphone when the service debuted yesterday — a server restart was necessary at one point — but at least one user managed to report that pothole successfully.
It’s the first app available on iTunes from a Carnegie Mellon spin-off whose other product was mobile video technology for sports events, called “yinzcam” that let users at hockey games pick what to zoom in on with their iPhones.
Via AP
Apple is leading cellphones into a “new world order,” says one Wall Street analyst, and will clean up as smartphones become a big fat chunk of the overall cellphone market.
RBC analyst Mike Abramsky on Tuesday upped estimates for Apple, RIM, and Palm as smartphone sales take off — and Apple in particular will benefit selling 50 million iPhones.
Abramsky says smartphone penetration will be a whopping 35% of the global cell phone market by 2012 (504 million units). Apple and BlackBerry maker RIM will dominate, but Palm will be along for the ride too (if it survives the short term) because of its pretty good WebOS software.
Abramsky forecasts:
Apple: FY11 estimates $50.3 billion revenue (18% year-on-year growth) on 49.3 million iPhones. Price target upped to $250 from $190.
RIM: FY11 estimates $21.2 billion revenue (32% y/y growth). Price target $150 from $100.
Palm: FY11 estimates $3.2 billion revenue (52% y/y growth). Price target $25 from $18.
Report: Silicon Alley Insider.
UPDATE 3: The iPhone email issue looks like a real bug and not a settings issue after all. CoM reader Paul Taylor ran through the procedure described below, and all the email he ever deleted on his iPhone is still there going all the way back to the iPhone’s purchase in 2007. Says Paul:
I read your post ” Update x2…..” with interest because I was appalled to discover this problem in mid June and reported it to Apple after having no success correcting it (nor did three Apple ‘Geniuses’ one of whom was characterized by his peers as “The iPhone Genius — if he can’t fix it no one can.” He couldn’t). I sent it off to Walt Mossberg on August 3rd to see what his efforts might produce but have seen nothing to date.
I had performed all the exercises described in your post (after doing thorough searches of all mailboxes on my Mac Pro and my ISP server to be sure the particular emails were NOT there.
BTW – with regard to the ‘Remove’ settings, ALL deleted emails back to the purchase of my original iPhone in 2007 were still there, so the day / week / month settings are immaterial, at least in my case. The problem apparently has always been present, the new search feature merely exposed it.
The only relief (not fix) I have found so far, has been to first make sure unwanted emails have been stripped from all mailboxes, then do a “Restore” on iTunes. The relief is short lived — the ’emails that wouldn’t die’ are gone, but all email deleted following the restore begins to collect anew.
UPDATE: The iPhone email bug that caused such a fuss yesterday is not a bug but a configuration issue, says knowledgeable CoM reader Dr. Harry K. Zink.
If you properly delete your emails, this does not happen – i.e. remove the email from both SENT and INBOX, after which you need to go into the TRASH folder, and manually select the messages, and select DELETE again. This applies to IMAP, ActiveSync and MobileMe accounts. POP accounts are affected by this, but only because they are configured to retain deleted mail for a period set in ‘settings’ for that account — if you set it to one day, and wait 36 hours, the messages are also gone.
This is a function of the way IMAP and especially POP mail leave mail in the Deleted Items folder, or Trash folder, for the duration specified in the settings — it seems most users never bothered looking in their settings (the default is to keep deleted messages for a month before they auto-delete – you can also set it to a day, or manually delete instantly).
Furthermore, this does *not* apply to ActiveSync accounts, where a deletion is instant and complete (thus corporate kids can stop the sweating and heavy breathing – Apple’s got your back), and neither on MobileMe accounts (you know, Exchange for the Rest of Us). On IMAP accounts, if you manually delete it from the trash, the messages are gone as well. It’s POP accounts which have this issue.
So for the most part this is being blown terribly out of proportion – not by the original guy who discovered this, but by all ruminants and regurgitators, particularly those who are too lazy to properly investigate something like this.
To change the “Remove” settings for POP accounts:
1. Go to Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars
2. Select the account you want to modify
3. Go to >Advanced. Under the “Deleted Messages” heading, you’ll see the “Remove” setting. Choices are: after a day, a week, one month or never.
Screenshots after the jump.
Apple is aware of the iPhone email bug CoM first reported yesterday and will likely issue a fix in iPhone 3.1, the next major update of the iPhone/iPod OS.
“An internal tipster has provided us with proof that Apple is fully aware of this issue and will probably be including a fix in iPhone OS 3.1,” says Gizmodo.
Meanwhile, it appears the bug is limited to POP email accounts, not IMAP accounts. It is probably a Spotlight caching issue. Spotlight on the iPhone/iPod creates local copies of emails, which aren’t deleted when the originals are.
There seems to be several ways to fix the bug. Sometimes, simply waiting works; the message cache is eventually cleared. It’s also possible to erase the cached messages by loading and reloading them several times, according to Richard from 148Apps.
“From my messing around with email, the message actually disappears after viewing it a few times. At first I thought the email disappeared after deleting it a few times but I simply viewed the messages about 3 or 4 times and it disappeared.”
Instructions for configuring your iPhone POP accounts to delete email after jump:
Never use your iPhone for incriminating or embarrassing emails you might not want others to see.
CoM reader Matt Janssen has just found a bug in the iPhone’s 3.x software that allows deleted email to be retrieved.
In other words, the iPhone and iPod Touch’s Mail app doesn’t properly delete email. Erased email messages can be easily retrieved using a simple search with the iPhone’s built-in search tool.
“Obviously this is could be a major security issue if you think you deleted something from your iPod but it’s not really deleted,” says Janssen. “You can still search through messages that are deleted. And this isn’t messages that are just recent. I found some messages that are over three or four months old.”
The bug could reveal embarrassing email sent or received by cheating spouses, or messages that kids don’t want their parents to see. It’s present in the software for both the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Janssen has made a video to demonstrate the bug. In the video, Janssen creates an email in a standard POP account, sends it to himself and then deletes it. The message appears to be gone from his inbox, but he’s able to retrieve it using the iPhone’s Search function. Janssen has to search for the deleted message twice. On first try, the Mail app crashes and sends him back to the Home screen. But on the second try, the message is retrieved and displayed. It even retrieves messages that are deleted from the server.
“Hopefully Apple will fix it in some later releases,” says Janssen.
TomTom’s much-anticipated car navigation software for the iPhone is finally available on the App store for $99.99.
The software wowed at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference in June by proving the iPhone could be a platform for industrial-strength software like a turn-by-turn navigation system.
TomTom’s app offers the usual GPS features: route planning, turn-by-turn voice instructions, 6 million points of interest, and auto re-routing if a turn is missed.
But it also boasts tight integration with the iPhone, including pinching and zooming of maps, automatic rotation between portrait and landscape modes, and tight integration with the iPhone’s contact list (tap a contact and the software finds the quickest route to them).
The App also includes TomTom IQ Routes, a smart route-finding feature that recommends routes based on popular driving patterns.
Be warned: the App and it maps weigh in at a whopping 1.21GB. And at $99, the software is more expensive than rivals like CoPilot Live ($34.99), Sygic Mobile Maps ($39.99) or Google’s free Map app; but it doesn’t require a monthly service fee, like AT&T’s Navigator, which adds $10 a month on your phone bill as long as you use the app.
An optional car mount kit (pricing has not yet been announced) includes iPhone charging, a GPS-boosting antenna, a speaker for turn-by-turn instructions, and a microphone for hands-free dialing and Voice Command. The mount kit can be used in horizontal and landscape orientations.
The TomTom app is compatible with the iPhone 3G and 3GS. It is available on iTunes in four versions:
TomTom US & Canada – $99.99
TomTom Western Europe – $139.99
TomTom Australia – $79.99
TomTom New Zealand – $94.99
What it is: iRealBook is an iPhone and iPod Touch compatible version of the iconic Real Book, a venerable “fake book” that has been the music bible for jazz musicians and vocalists for many years. A repository of chord sheets for some 700+ Jazz standards, Jazz classics, Latin and Brazilian classics and more, the Real Book has long been an indispensable tool for professional Jazz artists and students alike.
Why it’s cool: iRealBook (iTunes link) improves on the paper copy by providing chord charts of every song in the catalogue, each of which can be easily transposed to any key. Where the physical copy of the Real Book provides only sheet music with standard notation in the originally written or recorded key, this iPhone version gives players easy-to-read, chord-based notation that fits on a single screen, in extra large fonts that make the sheets easy to read in both profile and landscape modes. It even offers a “Night View” with white text over a black background that makes charts legible on darkened bandstands. Songs in the catalogue can be browsed by style or composer when a user is stumped for ideas, and the developer, Massimo Biolcati invites requests for additions to the database.
Where to get it: iRealBook is available on the iTunes App Store for $7.99 and is worth every penny for the jazz and standards aficionado who wants to have the critical oeuvre at hand on the go.
Hit the jump for screenshots.
If a Japanese warlord from the Sengoku period had an iPhone, this is the case they’d protect it with. It’s handmade with special lacquer and gold dust, takes a craftsman four weeks to make, and costs a cool $1,000. It’s so special, it has its own protective case — that’s right, a case for the case.
Japan’s SoftBank BB has just started offering a series of five handmade iPhone cases called the Japan Texture line.
Designed with the help of a historian, the cases are inspired by the rich pageantry of the Sengoku period (1467 to 1615).
Each case comes in a swank wooden box, and includes a historical booklet and its own protective pouch.
iPhone 3GS users are significantly more satisfied with their device than Palm Pre users are with theirs, according to two reports published Friday by industry analysts RBC IQ / ChangeWave.
82% of iPhone 3GS users reported being “very satisfied” with the performance of their device, while just 45% of Pre owners reported as high a degree of satisfaction. 38% of users said the iPhone 3GS exceeded their expectations, whereas only 18% of Pre users were similarly surprised by the awesomness of their purchase.
Other interesting data points unearthed by the August surveys included news that more than 40% of iPhone 3GS buyers upgraded from prior versions of the Apple smartphone. Among first-time iPhone buyers, 18% switched from Motorola, 11% from Nokia, 9% from Research In Motion, 8% from Sanyo and 6% from Palm.
The 3GS may have bright holiday sales prospects as well, with nearly three in five respondents (57%) indicating they are likely to purchase the iPhone 3GS for someone else in the future.
Not surprisingly, AT&T was at the top of the list of things iPhone 3GS users dislike about the phone, with 55% of users citing it as a negative factor; only 8% of Pre owners reported complaints about Sprint, currently the exclusive network for US users.
Released in June to high praise and glowing reviews, the Pre was dubbed the smartphone most likely to challenge iPhone’s domination of the market segment. It would appear the Palm engineers have quite a bit more work to do on that score.
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.
APP OF THE WEEK
QuadCamera: Top serial-shots ‘toy’ camera with vivid effects and various layouts. Would like higher output res. 5/5 $1.99 http://is.gd/2bzLs
iPolygon: Top-notch twist-based Breakout, played from within a polygonal shape. Three different modes. 5/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/2afgK
Whoiser: Efficient client for accessing whois info. Spindly font, but good landscape view & mail ability. 3/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/2atfA
OldCamera: Mono camera effects. Great results, but prefs a bit awkward & you can’t use pics from Photos app. 4/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/2bAet
ToyCamera: Like OldCamera but with vintage/saturation colour effects. Randomiser a nice touch. 3/5 $1.99 https://is.gd/2bAFr
Critter Crunch: Action puzzler, resembling a souped-up single-player Magical Drop. Fun & plenty of depth. 4/5 $1.99 https://is.gd/2fk82
DrawRace: Top-down racer. Draw racing lines before races start. Good concept/multiplayer; frustrates quickly. 3/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/2gGGE
Although some people still stamp their angry little feet while moaning that Apple handhelds aren’t ‘proper’ games consoles, developers don’t care. Most complaints seem to stem from the lack of tactile controls, but this week’s batch of games shows how a decent developer can get around such perceived shortcomings.
iPolygon is essentially Breakout, but played from inside polygonal shapes, and the twist-based mechanic is more fun and makes for more frantic gaming than the typical approach seen in most clones and evolutions of Atari’s ancient coin-op. Similarly, DrawRace takes Super Sprint and makes you draw your route before the race starts and then watch the outcome. I found it pretty frustrating in terms of difficulty, but there’s no getting away from the innovative nature of the app.
However, my favourite apps of the week instead deal with another iPhone shortcoming: the rubbish camera. I’m stuck with a 3G for now, and the camera isn’t great. But with some apps installed, it becomes an interesting ‘toy’ camera, along the lines of a Lomo. Of this week’s trio of apps, all from Takayuki Fukatsu, QuadCamera is my pick. The app takes four to eight shots in quick succession, applying user-defined effects while it does so, and although output resolution is lower than I’d like, there’s no denying how much fun the app is. (Long-time Cult of Mac readers will know that Giles agrees.)
I suspect that even when I get my mitts on a 3GS with its video capabilities, I’ll still be drawn to the low-tech charm of QuadCamera.
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If you’ve been inspired by David Hockney’s iPhone paintings or the New Yorker cover, you know that doodling on your device can be more difficult than it looks.
At least if you want results that don’t completely suck.
Enter a blog called fingerpainted.it, headed by freelance web designer Benjamin Rabe. He and a band of 11 creatives, including prolific iPhone artist Matthew Watkins, share tips, artwork and tutorials.
The how-tos show just how much dexterity and thought go into these mini-masterpieces; Luis Peso’s demonstrative cat sketch in the above Layers app tutorial has about seven steps.
A lot of the art is done with the Brushes app, but artists use a variety of tools including Layers, Jackson Pollock, Kandinsky Lite, Photofx. The tutorials show you how to start with Kandinsky, move to Pollock and end up with something entirely different, like this vibrant iPhone work by Patricio Villarroel.
While there are plenty of places to ogle iPhone art — flickr groups especially — fingerpainted seems to give the most info on how to get from art-icapped to art.
Sling Media has submitted an update to its groovy SlingPlayer Mobile app for iPhone that promises, among other things, true 16:9 widescreen support and, in markets not saddled with an exclusive AT&T service provider’s agreement, TV streaming over 3G.
Slingbox owners with DISH Network will also be able to navigate using a touch-supported native browser, instead of pushing through the TV-standard browsing screen being streamed in by the current version of the app.
Of course, the upgrade must first be approved by the App Store review overlords, and by now it’s well known what a capricious bet that can be. Sling Media has submitted a version for use outside of the US that would allow for streaming over a 3G connection, according to reports, and it’s no certainty Apple will approve such functionality for its customers abroad, either.
What is certain is that, regardless what Apple may feel about streaming TV over 3G, the specter of AT&T’s exclusive service agreement in the iPhone’s largest market effectively prevents US consumers from realizing the full potential of Apple’s inventiveness.
There are two things that really piss me off about iPhone… Actually, that’s a huge lie. There are loads of things that piss me off about iPhone, but two things in particular make me want to HULK SMASH. The first is that you can’t back-up individual app data. Delete Peggle from your iPhone, reinstall and you have to start from scratch. Clearly, whoever decided on that gem went to ‘cheapskate DS games without battery back-up’ school.
The other issue is that it’s a major pain in the arse (or ass, if you’re American) to rearrange apps on your device’s home screens. The current ‘drag everything about’ system was clearly designed for hardware where it wasn’t possible to download fifty billion apps. And although Spotlight in OS X iPhone 3.0 enables you to find apps within the mess, you shouldn’t be using text-based searching to find apps on such a tactile, touch-based system.
What we’d like to see is this:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wfv0OJ1oMQ
If you can’t be bothered to watch that, it shows an iTunes interface for dragging and dropping apps about, the organisation of which would then sync with the device itself. Rumours suggest this functionality might appear in iTunes 9, but I remember similar things being promised before.
A press release I received this morning about ShareAppScreen made me hope that someone had somehow managed this, outside of Cupertino. I was hoping for magic beans: someone to have figured out how to rearrange iPhone screens using a widget. What I got was baked beans—a widget that’s awkward to use and that doesn’t realise that different iPhones actually have different apps pre-installed. And when you’re done, it can share your screens with your friends, but not with your device, sadly.
Overall, it’s better than using something like Photoshop for testing app arrangements, but other than that, it’s a case of ‘roll on iTunes 9’.
UPDATE: Check out purported screenshots of iTunes 9 showing social networking integration from German blogger Tobias Bischoff after the jump.
The coming version of iTunes 9 will feature social networking on steroids, and Apple may be developing a standalone social networking application as well, if an account Tuesday from Boy Genius Report proves accurate.
Citing a “a pretty reliable source” named Lindsey, the site reported over the weekend that iTunes 9 would feature “some kind of Twitter/Facebook/Last.fm integration” along with Blu-Ray and functionality to visually organize and arrange iPhone and iPod Touch applications.
The source appears to have described Apple’s plans further, saying the company is working on a separate “Social” application it plans to release at some uncertain future date. The app would integrate with iTunes to let users broadcast what music they are currently listening to, permit sharing of music with people on their network (but um, iTunes lets you do that now), connect with friend’s friends, and update all of their online statuses at the same time.
It’s not hard to imagine Apple would be working on social networking, since it’s pretty much the biggest trend on the Internet today. It will be interesting to see what the company’s take on social communications looks like, especially in the light of the fact that social networking capabilities are among the more compelling aspects of LaLa — a competing music distribution outlet CoM reported on previously.
It will also be interesting to see just how much “broadcasting” and “sharing” music labels and artists rights organizations such as ASCAP and BMI are going to stand for in the brave new social world that appears to be just over the horizon.
Here’s a game that 3D Realms has actually shipped. Duke Nukem 3D, the classic first-person-shooter from the mid ’90s, is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
3D Realms is famous of course for not shipping games. It’s follow-up to Duke Nukem — Duke Nukem Forever – has been promised for more than a decade, earning a top slot on Wired.com’s Vaporware awards year after year.
Duke Nukem 3D is a simple port of the 13-year-old game. It’s pixely and low res — but who’d want it any different? The controls are a little difficult to master, according to reviews on iTunes, which are generally favorable. Players are reveling in gaming nostalgia.
No word on whether the hookers, sex shops and bare-breasted strippers are still in the game though.
Duke Nukem 3D currently costs $2.99, a “One Day Launch Special.” No word on how much it will cost tomorrow.
Buy from the iTunes App Store.
