iPhone - page 474

Photographer Pat St. Clair has a couple more panoramic images from Thursday’s big night for the Democratic Party at Invesco field in Denver.

Above is a still shot from his vantage point near the Jumbotron behind the media pavillions. St. Clair made it from three fisheye images stitched and interpreted usung PTGui Pro 7.8 on a McBook Pro. The original size image is here.

Go here for a dynamic four-image shot that captures the enormity of that historic evening.

Unlike St. Clair, I was in Denver without the benefit of a Press Pass or professional photographic equipment and struggled to capture my own memories with the rudimentary camera in my iPhone.

Judge for yourself the quality of the iPhone’s camera by clicking on the gallery thumbnails. Large pics and descriptions after the jump.

Via Flickr

Flickr user Danial Forsythe has taken matters into his own hands and found a way to manually refocus the iPhone’s camera. Long derided as a deficient feature of Apple’s popular handset, the iPhone camera’s default focal length is set to infinity, which makes for less-than-stellar close up shots. Forsythe has posted instructions detailing a way to open up the case, get the screen out of the way, flip the camera up, break the glue, adjust the lens, and plug the screen back in to check the focus.

If that sounds like more getting “under the hood” than you might be comfortable with, third party lenses and filters do exist to help you try and get more out of your iPhone’s camera.

Via Ars Technica

Third party iPhone application developers have taken to paying each other $1 in order to get around communication restrictions in the iPhone developrs’ NDA, according to a story in the LA Times.

By making themselves “subcontractors” to one another, they can discuss issues related to programming for the iPhone, communications Apple has sought to restrict through the Software Development Kit’s Non-Disclosure Agreement. Developers have bristled at the company’s refusal to let the NDA expire now that the iPhone is available on the commercial market, with many feeling Apple’s continued restrictions are stifling innovation.

UPDATE: You can fix the hole by remapping the “Home” button. In the iPhone’s Settings/General/Home Button, assign double clicking the Home button to “Home” — not “Phone Favorites.”

iPhone’s 2.0.2 firmware allows almost full access to your iPhone even when it’s under password protection, according to a report in MacRumors. Access can be gained through the “Emergency Call” keypad that appears on the passcode entry screen, allowing unrestricted use of Safari’s browser as well as access to Mail, SMS, Contacts, Maps and more.

Here’s how it works:

1. On the passcode screen hit “Emergency Call” button at bottom left.

2. In the Emergency Call screen, hit the “Home” button twice. You’ll be taken to the Favorites screen.

3. From there, hit the blue arrow next to a contact’s name.

4. You can now access all the iPhone’s functions by selecting their email address, homepage URL or address.

5. For example — hit the contact’s “Homepage” URL — and you are straight into Safari.

6.  Hit the email address, and you enter Mail. Cancel the message, and you have full access to the iPhone’s email.

Via MacRumors

Some iPhone owners continue to report an alarming bug in the device that causes 3rd party applications to crash or fail to load and makes media stored on the phone inaccessible. Calling it a “tragedy of monumental proportions” given that the phone just launched in 22 additional countries over the weekend, writer Jonny Evans reports in MacWorld UK the “well-known bug means none of my third-party apps work, and I can’t access any media held on my iPhone.”

Others have reported the issue and some have speculated on comments by Steve Jobs promising a fix for iPhone crashes by September. But so far, the true nature of the problem remains uncertain, with possible fixes and workarounds seemingly complex and sometimes ineffective.

“Frequent requests to Apple PR have yielded no response at all – and people inside the company dance around the matter, or so it seems,” according to Evans.

When I was researching material for a long article about third party development programs for the iPhone back in March, one of the most common complaints I heard from users and skeptics alike was leveled at the lack of cut and paste functionality on Apple’s groundbreaking mobile device. In July, Apple spokesman Greg Jowsiak basically said cut and paste was a low priority as far as the company was concerned.

No surprise then, that third party workarounds for the missing tool began to emerge, with one fashioned by student developer Zac White among the more promising. Unfortunately, Apple has placed new roadblocks in the path toward letting you cut and paste text on your iPhone, according to White.

No word yet from Apple on whether cut and paste has been re-prioritized in-house.

Via AppleInsider

Track your progress toward cleaner living, or at least breathing. Every body needs somebody.

Cyan games has announced that it has a three-person team working to port Myst to iPhone, a no-brainer decision that should finally provide something like a killer app game for the device. Way back in the early 1990s, Myst was briefly Mac exclusive, and it typified everything great about that era’s multimedia focus. It was HyperCard-based, it used CD-ROM, and the graphics were gorgeous. And now it’s making a comeback. Can’t wait.

Cyan via Wired

iHologram – iPhone application from David OReilly on Vimeo.

The above video, “iHologram,” by animator David O’Reilly, is a fake. The awesome idea of using the accelerometers in the iPhone to manipulate a real-time animation is a great idea, and might even be possible in the right hands. But the video was made by pre-rendering the clip and then moving the iPod touch in time to show the right orientation.

O’Reilly explains:

The iHologram app was not real. It was an illustration of an idea I had which I believe could work with the technology (combining anamorphosis and motion sensing). Unfortunately I’m just an ideas person, and I can show how things should look, but I’m no hardcore programmer.

I’d be happy to collaborate with a developer or studio who want’s to make it happen, I’m bursting with ideas for the interactive world, but right now all my attention is on filmmaking.

My aim with this was to tackle the problem of 3d viewing in an original way using current technology, not fool anyone”¦ so for those who doubted but still supported it, respect. I hope it inspires some talented programmers out there.

Get cracking, iPhone developers!

Hulger’s P*Phone handset comes in Black, Red, Pink & White, with iPhone adapter.

We held a caption contest last week in which we asked readers to play photo editor and come up with an appropriate caption for the image below, with the winner to receive a Hulger P*Phone handset, with iPhone adapter, in the color of their choice.

The response was so great, we picked four winners! Read their excellent captions after the jump and click through to Hulger’s 20% discount URL that lets every Cult of Mac reader win this one.

iPhone speed tests conducted through TestMyiPhone initially appeared to confirm our report earlier today suspecting the upgrade to 2.0.2 firmware may have had a negative effect on 3G connectivity, according to a site administrator. Closer looks at the data in response to a Cult of Mac request leave the question of causation unresolved, however.

“[We] did make a new file to get the average upload/download for both 3G and EDGE,” reports the admin, adding, “this is much more accurate and based off just the last 24hrs.” And there does appear to be a decrease in comparison with historical data comprising the over 175,000 3G and EDGE tests done on the site.

But closer inspection of 3G and EDGE test trends over the past week show no correlation related to the 2.0.2 release on Monday.

In response, then, to the question that has the internet buzzing over 2.0.2’s effect on 3G connectivity, whether it fixes bugs that have been widely reported, if only by anecdote, or whether it has actually made things worse for some users, we can fall back on the old quote attributed to Mark Twain. The one about there being three kinds of lies in this life: lies, dammned lies, and statistics.

The iPhone 2.0.2 upgrade seems to have caused a significant drop in download speeds, according to statistics gathered by the Test My iPhone website.

The site, which allows iPhone users to test their iPhone’s download and upload speeds, shows that speeds for iPhones tested in the past 24 hours are significantly slower than the average speed in tests done prior to Monday’s release of the 2.0.2 firmware upgrade.

Prior to the upgrade, the average iPhone download speed is 2227.93 kbps (averaged from nearly 600,000 total speed tests made at the site).

But in tests made over the past 24 hours, the average is just 1429.31 kbps.

That’s a decrease of nearly 36 percent.

With widespread reports of 3G connection issues, the drop in download speeds seems to indicate that instead of fixing connectivity problems, the 2.0.2 update has actually made things worse. However, there could be several reasons for the speed decrease — from meteorological conditions to a spike in traffic on AT&T’s network.

The speed decrease may simply be  a bug in the site’s reporting tool. The average global download speed and the average upload speeds are the same: Both are 2227.93, which looks fishy.

We have contacted the site for further information, but have yet to hear back from them.

Apple released the 2.0.2 firmware for the iPhone a couple of days ago with cryptic release notes indicating “bug fixes.”

By yesterday afternoon, however, it seemed the company may be playing whack-a-mole with some issues, including widely reported 3G reception problems, and that disaffected users may be waiting until September for another shot at stable functionality across the iPhone product line.

Steve Jobs has written at least one iPhone customer, admitting that up to 2% of the iPhones out there could be suffering from “a known iPhone bug” that crashes 3rd party apps and will be fixed in the promised September 2.1 firmware release.

One thing is certain, with millions of iPhones now in the stream of commerce and credible expectations of Apple selling another several million in the next four months, if things are really broken the problem will soon move beyond a couple hundred complaints on Apple’s support forum.

UPDATE: I just downloaded the 2.0.2 update myself, and overall, it does seem an improvement. Backup is now much quicker — less than a minute with my 16-Gbyte iPhone 3G (which has about a dozen third-party apps installed). Apps seem snappier. The Contacts app, which was annoyingly slow, now loads instantly and scrolls smoothly with no lags. Keyboard also seems much better. It used to hangup occassionally, especially in Mail, but so far no lags at all (however, many people report that the lag gets progressively worse until a hard reset). It’s too early to tell if 3G reception problems are fixed — but then I’ve not had consistent problems. It’s always been unpredictably spotty.

With widespread complaints of iPhone 3G reception issues, you’d think Apple would say whether the latest iPhone software update — version 2.0.2, released Monday afternoon — addresses connectivity problems.

But no. In inimitable Apple style, the release note for the 2.0.2 update says simply that it includes ‘bug fixes.” Nothing more. Thanks Apple. So helpful.

To top it off, 2.0.2 apparently doesn’t fix 3G reception. According to commenters at Apple’s discussion forums, 3G reception is just as bad, and in some cases, worse than before.

“I was getting none-to-2 bars on 3G here in my home, stationary position,” reports commenter Jettergear. “After the 2.0.2 I am getting nothing but a solid NO SERVICE.”

However, it’s not all bad. Others say that the painful lags with the onscreen keyboard and scrolling are much improved.

“The phone is A LOT snappier now,” reports commenter alangsam. “Contacts works much snappier. Email is much snappier – almost instant. SMS is almost instant. Overall BIG improvement.”

Gerry Purdy, a veteran mobile analyst with Frost & Sullivan says the next generation or two of Apple iPhones will have to adapt to different user requirements as Apple builds the franchise to address its growing audience. In a recent report to clients, he cites the many shifts Apple made in the iPod family to cater to different users, saying we can expect it will do the same with the iPhone.

Specifically, Purdy sees the phone being spun into separate consumer and enterprise models, with the consumer device focused on multimedia and ease-of-use features, while enterprise customers will get a phone that offers more ways to work with data and interact with enterprise services.

In all models, Purdy recommends that Apple add a small infrared (IR) transmitter so that future iPhones can be used as a universal remote in the home, a micro scanner so that all 1-D and 2-D bar codes can be easily read (useful for both consumers and enterprise customers), and a Near Field Communications (NFC) chip so that all iPhones can be used at retail to ‘swipe’ by credit card payment terminals. He agrees software would be necessary to make these three additions work properly, but sees the App Store and Apple’s iPhone development partners provide multiple solutions to those problems.

Another recommendation he has for all models is that Apple ‘open up’ the iPhone by adding a microSD slot that would allow users to add peripherals or more storage.

Purdy would like to see an iPhone “nano” that retails for $99 and an “extreme” version of the phone with an 8 megapixel camera and 32GB of storage for $499.

“What’s fun about doing a product roadmap for another company is being able to pretend that you’re working for them and that you’re in charge of Product Marketing,” Purdy says, adding, “of course, Apple’s Product Marketing team might feel differently about what they believe customers want and what they plan and will offer over the next year or two.”

The iPhone can help you test your political savvy, have some fun and get ready to cast your ballot in the Presidential election with the $0.99 game Fit 2 Vote, available now at the AppStore. With updated quotes coming out every two weeks, the game presents you with statements made by one of the two candidates, which you identify by tilting the iPhone to the left for Obama, to the right for McCain. Once you’ve answered 50 questions correctly, you’re deemed Fit 2 Vote.

Via Switched

Apple makes products people just can’t keep from trying to make better. Whether these “mods” actually improve the inventions coming out of Cupertino is a matter of some debate, but the latest one for iPhone makes the Apple logo on the back glow like it does on a Macbook. If you speak or read Russian you can learn more at gPda.ru.

Via Sizlopedia

Sega’s Super Monkeyball made news this week for racking up the most sales among paid apps in Apple’s first month of business with the AppStore, a tsunami of consumer love amounting to $30 million in new business for Apple and its third-party iPhone application developers. But a report at Gizmodo says “the best implementation of iPhone tilt control is conceptually identical to a seven-year-old Game Boy title, which itself was based on the old wooden marble-in-a-labyrinth puzzles that have been around since, well, who knows?”

After all the novelty and hype have settled on the iPhone gaming front, will we continue to see the platform as something as revolutionary as Apple’s cadre of evangelists would have us believe it is? The Gizmodo report points out that, as least with respect to games that rely on the iPhone’s accelerometer to make things interesting, “A portable gaming device that…can make sensitive games like Crash Bandicoot Racing and Monkey Ball almost unplayable” isn’t truly portable and in fact may be little more than an impressive, elaborate gimmick.

Via Gizmodo

Developer Cyrus Najmabadi, the man behind the iPhone app Box Office, which disappeared from the AppStore earlier this month, has apparently kissed and made up with Apple.

In a post to an Ars Technica forum last night, Najmabadi (who posts under the user name Metasyntactic) said, “I got an apology [from Apple] for the length of time it took to respond to me. I’m very happy by this turn of events, and I’m glad that apple will be letting me stay in the store.”

The reasons behind Box Office’s disappearance from the AppStore remain a mystery, though some speculate it may have had something to do with trademark conflicts, which may have in turn prompted the name change. The app is still listed in the AppStore under the name Box Office, though a search for “Box Office” will not get you to it. To find the app, you’ll have to search by Najmabadi’s name or by “Now Playing.”

Via Ars Technica

Some iPhone application developers have taken to using Apple’s iTunes gift certificates as an effective, if cumbersome, means of getting copies of their apps in to the hands of reviewers and other key feedback agents. While Apple allows limited ad hoc distribution of apps outside the AppStore, that even more arcane method of getting apps into the ecosytem is better suited for beta testing than it is for getting feedback on a release-stage product.

John Cassanata, director of MacHeist and co-developer of a suite of new apps for the iPhone says, “I’ve heard rumors of being able to do it using coupons in the future,” but has thus far relied on sending out iTunes gift certificates to get the word out about his products. “It’s a pain to do since I have to do them one at a time,” he adds, “[but] it’s still less than the cost of putting out a press release through a national news wire. And it’s more personal so the response rate has been good so far.”

Image via Flickr

Boosted no doubt by the surge of sales in the iPhone 3G over the past 30 days, Apple’s phone is now the most-used cell phone camera used to shoot pictures posted to the popular photo-sharing site, Flickr.

Via Ars Technica

Steve Jobs told the Wall Street Journal users downloaded over 60 million iPhone applications and rung up sales of close to $30 million in the first month the AppStore was open for business.

While many of the iPhone applications available at the AppStore are free, paid apps such as Sega Corp.’s $9.99 Super Monkeball game helped bring in nearly $9 million to the top ten developers selling apps on the store. In all, Apple will distribute over $21 million in revenues from the 70% cut of sales developers make for software sold through the AppStore.

Jobs said the early results point to the success of Apple’s strategy to invest in the AppStore as a means of differentiating the iPhone among competitors in the smartphone handset market. He speculated on a potential $1 billion marketplace, saying, “I’ve never seen anything like this in my career for software.”

“Phone differentiation used to be about radios and antennas and things like that,” Jobs said. “We think, going forward, the phone of the future will be differentiated by software.”

The Apple CEO also confirmed reports of a “kill switch” in the iPhone’s software that would allow the company to remotely disable software users had previously paid for and installed on their phones. He argued that Apple needs it in case it inadvertently allows a malicious program — one that stole users’ personal data, for example — to be distributed to iPhones through the App Store. “Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull,” he said.

Via The Wall Street Journal

Go ahead. Watch the clip. You “deserv” it. Then download the cracked version here.Via TUAW

In the wake of last week’s NetShare takedown, the fizzle this week with Box Office, and the it-might-be-a-crime-if-it-weren’t-so-funny debacle of I Am Rich, third party iPhone developers are starting to clamor for more, well, actually, any transparency from Apple about the process for approving and disapproving listings in the AppStore.

Many really wish the NDA would just go away, or at least apply only to developers whose applications remain unreleased, but that’s not likely to clear Apple legal. We do think it’s not unreasonable, however, to ask the company to be more responsive to requests for information about the approval and rejection process.

A mobile applications development author has discovered functionality in iPhone 2.0 software that would allow Apple to blacklist and remotely disable iPhone applications on users’ phones. While the company already retains control over third-party iPhone apps through its certificate signing program, this more targeted system gives Apple the ability to kill specific applications and effectively places all iPhones under potential surveillance as long as they have an active internet connection.

iPhone 2.0 (as well as the updated iPod touch firmware) uses its CoreLocation framework to point to a secure website that appears to contain at least placeholder code for a list of “unauthorized” apps, according to iPhone Open Application Development author Jonathan Zdziarksi.

“This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off,” he says. “At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down.”

Via AppleInsider

Ladies and gentlemen of the Cult, I bring you bad news: As of 2:18 p.m. Pacific yesterday, I Am Rich is no longer available from the iPhone AppStore. At the behest of VentureBeat and many other bloggers, Apple has yanked a brand new app in the prime of life. Yes, I know. It’s tragic. Never again will you get to spend $1,000 NOW JUST $999.99!!1! for an utterly useless program that just displays a red gem to flaunt your wealth to passersby.

Now, I Am Rich was obviously intended by author Armin Heinrich to be either a joke or a piece of art, and it wasn’t particularly successful as either. It’s sort of one-note, you know? But its removal actually reflects an extremely obnoxious habit that Apple has had as of late: they’ve been pulling apps, including the extremely popular NetShare and Box Office, neither of which appears to violates Apple’s SDK (not that anyone knows, thanks to the blanket NDA…)

Jason Kottke puts it well:

Excluding I Am Rich would be excluding for taste…because some feel that it costs too much for what it does. (And this isn’t the only example. There have been many cries of too many poor quality (but otherwise functional) apps in the store and that Apple should address the problem.) App Store shoppers should get to make the choice of whether or not to buy an iPhone app, not Apple, particularly since the App Store is the only way to legitimately purchase consumer iPhone apps. Imagine if Apple chose which music they stocked in the iTunes store based on the company’s taste. No Kanye because Jay-Z is better. No Dylan because it’s too whiney. Of course they don’t do that; they stock a crapload of different music and let the buyer decide. We should deride Apple for that type of behavior, not cheering them on.

Hear, hear!

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