iPhone - page 458

By Jonathan Zschau

Apple released the iPhone 3G on July 11th, 2008, which gives you early adopters just a few weeks before your one-year warranty runs out.

What does this mean? It means you should give your iPhone a good hard look to determine if it’s in your best interest to take your iPhone to your local Apple Store to try to obtain a replacement.

There are at least 18 well-known defects with the iPhone, all of which oblige Apple to replace the handset for free. All are detailed are over the next few pages, including ways to test your iPhone to make sure everything is functioning properly.

Issues that Apple considers grounds for replacement include hairline cracks, discolored screens, dead pixels, flakey WiFi, dodgy GPS and crackly speakers.

If your precious iPhone is suffering from any of these problems, read on to make sure you’re properly prepared before you head down to your local Apple store and get a replacement. Hurry, before it’s too late.

What it is: Kind of a ‘Sims lite’, set on a primitive island. Canned animations and environment changes can be triggered by touch-screen and motion gestures.

Why it’s good: To be honest, the first time Pocket God ended up on my iPhone, I didn’t think I’d play it much. It had charm, but after ten minutes I was done. However, the Bolt Creative team has now provided a staggering 17 updates to the toy, from new animations to fun minigames. Given that the game is only a buck and updates are free, it’s so far cost just over five cents per revision, and it’s safe to say that many of the updates have provided more than a buck’s worth of entertainment, let alone a nickle’s worth.

Where to get it: Pocket God costs $0.99 on App Store. If you decide to download, don’t read the instructions—just explore and find out what you can do with the island and its inhabitants. The game’s much more fun as a voyage of discovery than something to rush through in a few idle moments.

The first round of Palm Pre reviews are in — and they are generally very positive. The iPhone has a real contender, especially if the Pre comes to Verizon in a few months — a good smartphone on a good network.

The big three gadget reviewers — Walt Mossberg, David Pogue and Ed Baig — all give the Pre very positive reviews, with a few reservations.

Pogue is the most excited. “One of the world’s best phones,” Pogue says in his enthusiastic New York Times review. Pogue is very positive about the Pre, saying it’s a worthy iPhone contender, despite noting drawbacks like the lack of apps and poor battery life.

Ed Baig of USA Today also gives the Pre a thumbs up, but also notes the lack of apps and battery life. Nonetheless, he says the Pre “stacks up well against Apple’s blockbuster device, and in some ways even surpasses it… Palm has delivered a device that will keep it in the game and give it a chance to star in it.”

The big granddady of reviewers, the Wall Street Journal‘s Walt Mossberg, is the most measured, giving a positive review but saying Palm has some catching up to do, especially if the gen-3 iPhone is announced next week.

“The Pre is a smart, sophisticated product that will have particular appeal for those who want a physical keyboard,” says Mossberg. “It is thoughtfully designed, works well and could give the iPhone and BlackBerry strong competition — but only if it fixes its app store and can attract third-party developers.”

A new spy shot claiming to show the next-generation iPhone has emerged, and it appears to show a forward-facing camera.

If the spyshot does indeed show the new iPhone, a forward-facing camera would be a cool but surprising feature. Although high on many iPhone users’ wishlists — it would enable iChat videoconferencing from anywhere — the feature seems too Dick Tracy to be true, especially with AT&T’s bandwidth-challenged 3G network.

A forward-facing camera was mentioned in a recent Apple patent granted April 16 — although this doesn’t mean much. Apple patents everything, and a ton of patented features never see the light of day.

In April, I got terribly excited about Flight Control, an air traffic control arcade-oriented ‘management’ game. The premise is simple: drag aircraft to landing areas. The reality is an intense arcade game where game over is a blink of an eye away.

Recently, I’d heard rumors of updates. But with the original game such a fantastic, simple and polished production, there was the worry that it’d be ruined under a pile of new features. That worry went away on playing Flight Control 1.2, which keeps the original’s gameplay intact but introduces two new airfields and new craft.

The beachside resort is the first new airfield, adding water landings to the mix. Initially, this seems little different to the original game, but the number of craft ramps up rapidly and the revised landing layout is tougher than the original’s.

The real star, though, is the intense and absurdly tricky aircraft carrier level. Military jets move just a tad faster than anything else, and you’re soon not only juggling that, but also a surprising twist when you realise what happens to landing areas on a moving ocean… Frankly, we’ll be shocked to see 10,000+ landing scores on this map for some time to come.

Overall, this is a triumphant update—a classic iPhone game made even better. The fact that it’s still under a dollar [App Store link], for a game that betters most other handheld titles out there, just goes to show what great value Apple’s platform can be for gamers.

TIPS: If you’ve any tips for dealing with the new airfields and getting high scores, please post in the comments below.

Archie Comics are, for most kids in America, the very first comic books we ever read. Now, courtesy of Iverse, we can read them on our iPhones, in between generating fart noises and muttering “There’s an app for that, too.”

No word yet on whether or not you can shake to have Archie switch from dating Veronica to Betty and vice versa.

App Store link.

Via Comics Worth Reading

Kudos to Remy over at TGR for rounding up all the rumors about the next iPhone heading into WWDC with an easy-to-read infographic.

The legend lower right tells you what the probability of these changes will be from his point of view plus a source list of links for the rumors so you can decide for yourself.

We won’t know for sure until Apple’s worldwide developers conference kicks off June 8, but what do you think are the chances it’ll have a luminous logo (in this chart deemed “unlikely”),  improved camera (“very likely” ) and $199-$299 price points (“very likely”) ?

Via Device

Along with being a surprisingly versatile device for gaming, reading eBooks and surfing the web, iPhone is becoming an increasingly useful source of distribution for comics publishers. Late last month, ClickWheel, who’ve been in the comics-on-iPods game for a while, released Future Shocks: Part 1, a 99-cent collection of early Alan Moore stories, which was subsequently followed by part two. We caught up with ClickWheel Editor in Chief Tim Demeter for his thoughts on these apps and the market in general.

Cult of Mac: What are the Future Shocks apps and how do they work?
Tim Demeter: The Future Shocks apps are collections of early work from Alan Moore, digitally restored and formatted specifically for iPhone and iPod touch. The apps are entirely self-contained and once downloaded require no cell or Wi-Fi collection to read—you can access them anytime.

How do these apps sit alongside your ClickWheel app?
These are completely separate from our other app. The ClickWheel app is a reader for a multitude of streaming comics, some of which need to to be purchased from the ClickWheel site first. Each Future Shocks app is a one-time purchase. Once it’s downloaded you can start reading right away. Look for a change in how we handle downloading comics to iPhone once the 3.0 software is out there though.

What do you think of iPod touch/iPhone as a comics-reading platform?
We love it. ClickWheel began putting comics on iPods with the launch of the iPod video, so to say that these new devices have enabled us to take our vision of mobile comics to new levels would certainly be understatement. The nice thing about mobile comics is they provide the convenience and immediacy of web-comics while retaining the portability of printed comics. I don’t think printed comics will ever go away and I certainly don’t want them too but I wouldn’t be surprised if many monthlies go digital while the collections remain in print.

What advantages does the App Store bring a company like yours?
People know and trust the iTunes store and many people have a credit card stored in their account which makes impulse purchasing very much a reality. It also seems to be going through the same kind of growth that Amazon did. Back in the day, Amazon was just books. Now it’s just about everything. The iTunes store started as just audio but now it’s TV, movies and apps of all kinds. It’s quickly becoming a one-stop-shop for anything and everything digital and there’s a lot of value in that.

We’re now less than two weeks away from the keynote of Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, where Apple is widely expected to demonstrate a next-generation iPhone for the first time. I won’t run down all the anticipated features here, but suffice it to say that we’re looking at largely incremental updates on the hardware side: faster processor, more RAM, more storage, and maybe a programmable magnetometer to enable true turn-by-turn GPS. It will be the iPhone, but better — and almost certainly not a worthwhile upgrade if you already own an iPhone 3G, since it will also benefit from the release of iPhone OS 3.0.

But the world hasn’t stood still. For the first time since the announcement of the original iPhone, there are legitimate competitors all around, many of them even approaching Apple’s thinking in creating a holistic ecosystem of supporting software, third-party development and services. There are three big threats to the rise of the iPhone right now: Palm Pre, mass availability of Android, and the Zune HD platform. Hit the jump to get the full story.

Chinaontrade.com, an electronics wholesaler based in China has just made available for purchase what it purports to be authentic parts for the new iPhone. Don’t get too excited — it’s just the internal screen bezel and the screen, which is an ordinary LCD instead of a sexy OLED. And it’s literally impossible to tell if these are new in any way — you could tell me that these were for the original iPhone, and I would believe it. Doesn’t mean that they aren’t legit, just that they reveal nothing exciting about the new iPhone and might squash some dreams, too. Still: Only $73.40!

China Ontrade via iPhone Ticker via Gizmodo

AT&T is promising more and faster bars. CC-licensed photo by daBinsi (Vegas).

Hot on the heels of the faster iPhone expected this summer, AT&T is promising to double the speed of up its 3G network.

AT&T on Wednesday said it is bumping its 3G network to support HSPA 7.2, which offers download speeds up to a peak of 7.2 Mbps, which is double its current capacity.

The rollout will begin later this year, AT&T says. The company also promises it will “introduce multiple HSPA 7.2-compatible laptop cards and smartphones beginning later this year.”

One of the smartphones is likely Apple’s next-generation iPhone. Apple is expected to introduce a faster iPhone that will support HSPA 7.2. The new iPhone will also likely have a faster processor, which will be better able to handle the faster data stream, quickly updating content like web pages and maps.

Microsoft will release a Web-surfing, HD-video-playing, multitouch Zune in the fall to compete with the iPod touch — and the hardware actually looks pretty cool. But as Apple well knows, the gadget is one thing, the software and services are another.

Sporting a sexy metal case, the Zune HD will have a 3.3-inch, 480 x 272 OLED capacitive touchscreen display (16:9 widescreen); a built-in HD Radio receiver, and WiFi. The “HD” refers not to the touchscreen, but the HD radio and HD out (720p), though that’s only available with an optional cradle. Pricing was not released, and release is “early fall.”

“There’s a lot here that MSFT is doing well, especially when it comes to the hardware,” said Interpret analyst Michael Gartenberg on his blog.

San Francisco’s No Starch Press has posted a big chunk of it’s popular My New iPhone book on Scribd for free, plus is selling it cheap as a PDF.

No Starch has a new version of Wang’s iPhone book coming out with the release of iPhone OS 3.0 this summer. In the meantime, the publisher is making about 50% of the current version of the book available for free.

“We have this content ready to go, but with the OS 3.0 release looming, it didn’t make sense to print and ship a book just to have it go out of date in a month,” said Leigh Poehler, No Starch’s sales manager. “It also didn’t make sense to hoard this information. So we’re making the content available to people via Scribd.”

No Starch is no stranger to experimenting with digital formats. In 2008, the publisher made available copies of my Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod books on the Bittorrent file-sharing network (which saw tens of thousands of downloads).

More recently, No Starch has posted several samples of its books on Scribd, including an excerpt from its “Manga Guide to Databases,” which has been read over 9,600 times). But this is the first time it has given away such a large chunk of a book and let Scribd sell the full PDF (for $9.95).

Hit the jump to read a chunk of the book.

What it was: A trackball-controlled arcade classic, released by Atari in 1984. You had to guide your marble through six perilous courses. Think Super Monkey Ball’s granddad, with a penchant for Escher and isometric projection, minus the monkeys.

What we’d like to see: Although there were, at the last count, 46 billion iPhone ‘marble rolling’ games, most of them suck, and none hold a candle to Mark Cerny’s Atari classic. Since other Atari games have made it to iPhone relatively intact, there’s no reason why Marble Madness couldn’t make an appearance, perhaps with the choice of of tilt-based controls or a virtual trackball, as per our mock-up above. How about it, Atari?

UPDATE: iPhone gaming website Slide to Play reports that a tilt-controlled Marble Madnessis due on the App Store “in the next couple of weeks” and will include bonus tracks, content and modes. No trackball, alas.

Consumer Electronics Show (CES) organizers have supersized the iPod and iPhone showcase at the January 2010 event. The next iLounge Pavilion will offer over six times the floorspace dedicated to Apple accessories and software sellers, from 4,000 square feet to 25,000 square feet.

In a press release, Jeremy Horwitz, Editor-in-Chief of iLounge.com and co-sponsor of the iLounge Pavilion said the 525% space increase is due to the surge in iPhone and iPod touch popularity from the App store. It also probably has to do with Apple’s decision to pull out of Macworld and Macworld’s move to February.

Signed up companies so far include Griffin Technology, Scosche, Incase Designs, iSkin, Incipio Technologies, Jaybird Gear, MusicSkins and AAMP of America.

Via MacWorld

iPhone applications and the increasing popularity of smartphones, driven especially by growth in the developing world, pose the greatest threats to the long-term relevance of mobile search engines such as Google and Yahoo, according to a report Monday at TechRepublic.

Jason Hiner, Editor in Chief of the widely read technology web portal, argues that a personal experiment he’s undertaken using his Apple iPhone leads to the inescapable conclusion that “trends [in mobile computing] add up to bad news for Google in mobile search because it translates into fewer people needing its search engine,” offering several pertinent examples of his own behavior in addition to statistics about the growth in smartphone use over the past year that bolster his thesis.

There’s little argument that iPhone changed the mobile phone game entirely with its arrival on the scene two years ago, as all the major mobile handset makers have since come to market with their versions of touchscreen smartphones to compete with Apple.

In addition, Apple revolutionized the environment for mobile software development by creating the App Store, which both provided a brand-new arena for software developers to work in and suggested a model for distribution that had previously been limited to the distribution of entertainment titles through the iTunes music store. Apple’s competitors Blackberry, Google (Android) and Microsoft (Windows Mobile) launched App Store-like marketplaces in response.

But does all of this development, do all of these trends in mobile computing spell the eventual end for search as a relevant tool on mobile platforms?

Certainly Google’s voice search functionality adds to its relevance and appeal on a mobile device, but as Hiner argues convincingly, limitations of mobile device screen sizes and challenges related to typing on small handsets do make traditional desktop search functionality far less appealing in the mobile environment.

What do you think? Do you use Google less on your iPhone? Should Google be worried about the trends in mobile computing as a great threat to its core search product? Let us know in comments below.

The cover of the June 1, 2009 edition of the New Yorker magazine will feature art composed completely on an iPhone for the 1st time, according to multiple reports Monday.

Artist Jorge Columbo used the iPhone app Brushes to “fingerpaint” a street scene of people gathered by one of the city’s iconic hot dog & pretzel carts, elevating art on the iPhone to yet one more level of acceptance few could have imagined when Apple’s mobile device first came to market less than two years ago.

Hit the jump for a video made with the Brushes companion app Brushes Viewer showing just how Columbo used Brushes to create his work.

Who says Apple doesn’t listen to customers? Thanks to a public outcry, Apple has reversed course and accepted the Eucalyptus eBook reader into the iPhone App Store.

The web erupted in outrage last week when developer Jamie Montgomerie’s eBook reader was rejected by Apple because it allowed readers to download the Kama Sutra from Project Gutenberg — which Apple deemed “inappropriate sexual content.”

But on Sunday Montgomerie received a call from Apple. The Apple representative chatted with the developer about his app and invited him to resubmit it.

“We talked about the confusion surrounding its App Store rejections, which I am happy to say is now fully resolved,” Montgomerie wrote on his blog.

The application is now available for purchase from the App Store for $10. A small victory for common sense.

Via Macworld.

David Leibowitz is a veteran fine art photographer who’s lately been making some pretty amazing art using his iPhone.

Based in NYC, Leibowitz’s pictures of the city look like a French Impressionist painted the scenes (hit the jump for more pictures). There’s nothing to indicate they were made using his iPhone and about $40 worth of apps from the App Store.

Leibowitz has a long history of using digital tools to make art. He started in the ’80s with a Polaroid camera. He’d hand manipulate the emulsion to create photographs that look also look like Imrpessionist paintings. But now he’s discovered the iPhone, and the results are not your typical iPhone art.

Hit the jump for some of Leibowitz’s latest pictures and an interview explaining how he makes iPhone art.

With WWDC09 now just weeks away, rumors and predictions regarding what Apple may reveal at the highly-anticipated, sold-out developers conference in San Francisco are sure to spread like a California wildfire.

Anyone interested in being on the right side of such talk would do well to consider the logic and analysis out Thursday from John Gruber, the well-placed author of the blog Daring Fireball, who isn’t prone to talking about things he doesn’t know a little something about.

Citing “information from informed sources,” Gruber believes the processor in the next-generation iPhone is going to be the kind of upgrade to make people crowd around and go, “ooooh!” He looks for Apple’s processing secret-sauce to better the speed of current iPhones by 1.5 times, similar to the bump in performance experienced when Mac users got hands on machines with the first batch of PowerPCs, or PC users moved from 486 to Pentium machines.

Follow after the jump for more of what Gruber expects and how likely his expectations are to be met.

Gnh! That’s pretty much the sound we made, surprisingly loudly, on reading Gruber’s ‘Regarding Eucalyptus’ post. The gist? App Store idiocy strikes again! The specifics…

It seems Apple, not content with plumbing the depths by rejecting Tweetie for a rude word being in the day’s Twitter trends, has now rejected an e-book reader, because you can potentially read ‘objectionable’ content on it. Gruber sums things up nicely, calling this the “shittiest and most outrageous App Store rejection to date, and that’s saying something”, and we agree wholeheartedly.

As Gruber notes, Apple’s got a bug up its ass regarding the fact that you can read Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana on Eucalyptus. (Won’t somebody think of the children?) However, you can read this on a few other apps, too—you know, apps like Kindle and Stanza and, er, Safari. So Apple had best get ready to kick those off the iPhone for warping our fragile little minds.

But there’s more! What makes matters even worse is on reading the developer’s blog, it’s pretty clear the approvals process is even more broken than we all thought. Had Apple made a mistake and rectified it (see: Tweetie), fine… Dumb, but fine. Here, though, it’s pretty clear Apple keeps rejecting the app again and again for precisely the same utterly asinine reason. When the developer argues his case, it’s like shouting at a brick wall— a particularly dumb brick wall.

Far be it for us to say that perhaps ‘reversals’ for Tweetie and the NIN app actually came from Apple caving to dreadful publicity. But, hell, if the way to get a perfectly good app into the App Store is for a whole bunch of blogs to kick up a fuss and show, yet again, how the App Store approvals people seemingly have the combined intellect of a drunk, lobotimized woodlouse, we’re happy to do our bit.

iPhone game developers must contend with an arguably small but extremely dedicated and fast-moving population of app pirates on the voyage to the Land of iPhone App riches, according to iCombat developer Miguel Sanchez-Grice, who suggests giving away free “lite” versions of an app could be the most effective strategy for the smaller developer.

Sanchez-Grice ‘s shooting tank game was immediately popular on the App Store thanks to coverage in gaming and gadgetry venues, which came about because of its resemblance to Combat for Atari and Wii Tanks games. The developer said he considered the nature of the pirate challenge prior to launching his 99¢ app. and while he chose a path very civilly inviting pirates to support his work by buying a legit copy of the app after reaching level 5 of the 20 level game, he understood he could only hope to “maybe convert a tiny fraction of those users into sales.”

His experience with the pirate community showed hacked versions of his game in use at an astounding ratio of more than 5:1 over paid apps in the first week of release, with cracked apps being posted to Twitter within 30 minutes of the official game going live on the App Store.

“The goal behind launching an app isn’t thwarting pirates, it is getting users and generating sales,” Sanchez-Grice  wrote, suggesting game developers “leave the ‘making a point’ anti-piracy measures to the big guys.” With competition so fierce for getting noticed in the App store, he concluded “any attention is good attention.”

In the end, the first-time developer concluded the best strategy for dealing with pirates may be creating a free “Lite” version to give away alongside a more fully functional and fulfilling paid version.

“I think the best solution is to create a version akin to a lite version of the app for pirates. It is no good to shut off access to your app completely, but it also doesn’t get you very far to give away the core value you are offering to the paying user.”

UpNext 3D NYC iPhone App from Danny Moon on Vimeo.

The 3D NYC iPhone App from UpNext is unbelievably cool. It renders Manhattan in 3D, allowing you to zoom up and down the city streets, in-between buildings, finding places to eat and things to do. The rendering is amazing — see the video above.

It overlays the subway map and crowdsources popular destinations. All this for only $2.99 from the iTunes App Store. Worth buying even if you don’t live in NYC.

Location based software applications in Blackberry’s new App World store are four times more expensive than similar titles in Apple’s App Store, according to a Skyhook Wireless report released Wednesday.

The company’s Location Aware App Report (PDF), a monthly survey of titles available in the online stores of mobile handset manufacturers Apple, Blackberry and Android, found the App Store offers a greater percentage of paid to free apps across a wider variety of title categories than either Blackberry or Android.

With over 35,000 apps in the App Store at the time of the survey (around 10,000 having been added since), and 2,300 of them location aware, Apple’s average price for a paid location aware app was $3.60. In contrast, the average price for a location aware app from Blackberry’s App World store was $13.60, while bargain-basment titles could be had from Android’s Market at an average price of just 84¢

The survey results are skewed in that Apple’s App Store has been open nearly a year, while Blackberry’s App World is only in its second month of operation. On the other hand, in its first six months of operation, the App Store saw more than 800 location aware apps released, while Android’s Marketplace produced fewer than 200 in its first two quarters.

For now, location aware software developers have shown a clear preference for Apple’s iPhone platform, even if some seem to believe the Blackberry platform might support quite a bit more revenue per title.

Source: DisplaySearch 2009 Touch Panel Market Analysis

Thanks to the success of the iPhone, touchscreen technology will see explosive growth in the next few years.

The touchsreen market will nearly triple in the next few years, growing from $3.6 billion now to $9 billion in 2015, predicts a new report by market research firm DisplaySearch.

“With the success of the iPhone, the touch panel market has entered a dramatic new growth phase.,” the DisplaySearch report said.

The report predicted big growth in projected capacitive touchscreens — the technology used in the iPhone and iPod touch.

“Projected capacitive touch screens have increased substantially and become the second biggest touch technology following closely behind resistive touch,” the report said. “About 27 touch screen suppliers manufacture it. Not only have more resistive touch screen manufacturers moved to produce projected capacitive, but projected capacitive technology has evolved to single layer or film type, and can serve sizes larger than 100-inches.”

Whoa  — a 100-inch iPhone in 2015.

Mobile phones and smartphones will be the most popular application of touchscreens, but they will also be the primary interface for media players, navigation devices, and games. More than 40 percent of mobile phones will have touchscreen interfaces by 2015, the report predicts, up from 16 percent now.

Touchscreens will also become popular in applications like retail, ticketing, information kiosks, and education and training terminals, the report said.