In an increasingly populous iPhone app universe, iUseThis may become a useful method for finding the sturdy trees in a deep dark forest of what some are calling “useless crap.”
Blogger Erica Sadun calls it “basically a Digg for iPhone apps,” but says, “[the] site shows early promise should it manage to attract a large enough user base.”
Via TUAW
I just installed the whopping 250-Mbyte iPhone 2.0.1 update, and it seems to fix most of the problems everyone complained about. Among the highlights:
As readers of this blog know, we’ve been a bit disappointed in Apple’s July 11 launches, from the mangled mess that is Mobile Me to the crashtacular iPhone OS 2.0 to the absurdly constrained supplies of iPhone 3Gs.
Fortunately, Apple might be turning the corner, at least on the iPhone OS, which shipped in a highly unstable form. Today, effective immediately, Apple has launched a software update for iPhone that promises to deliver, and here I quote, “bug fixes.” All that in a 249-megabyte download. That’s a lot of bugs, folks. I’d love to know how it affects your iPhone and iPod touch experience — particularly as it pertains to third-party app stability.
Launch iTunes and hit the update button to make it happen.
Via Gizmodo
Fans of Box Office, an iPhone lifestyle app that lets users leverage the GPS functionality of the iPhone to list theaters and movies playing within a user-definable radius (e.g. 10 miles) will be disappointed to find the application no longer available on Apple’s AppStore.
Metasyntactic, the developer responsible for the application, claims to have gotten no notification from Apple that the application had been pulled and has been unsuccessful in reaching anyone who could explain why it was taken down. “I’m in regular contact with all my data providers, and none of them have had an issue with my app,” he explained in a post on the MacRumors forum. “I’ve tried to contact [Apple] about the issue, but it’s been a complete dead end.”
The Box Office takedown comes on the heels of NullRiver’s NetShare roller-coaster ride on Friday, in which the app was mysteriously gone from the AppStore, then available again, and finally gone again, all with apparently no communication between Apple and the developer.
Via The iPhone Blog
The NullRiver tethering application we blogged earlier today is apparently still available on the AppStore through a direct link according to Cult of Mac sources.
No indication how long this may be the case, so if you are interested in the technology…
A select group of some 5000 beta customers in North America can now make and receive international VoIP calls through Skype, GoogleTalk, SIP, and many VoIP services for the cost of a local cell phone call with the RF Dialer from Ring Free Mobility, Inc.
Ask the developers behind RF.com, makers of the multi-platform calling service designed to enhance the phone capabilities of the iPhone, and they will tell you reports of the death of the web app are greatly exaggerated.
The SanFrancisco-based company’s application allows users to make Internet calls over their cell phone’s GSM network. RF Dialer is the first iPhone application that allows SIP URI calls, integrating with thousands of SIP-based VoIP telephone providers and IP-based PBXes (such as the popular open=source Asterisk PBX and Communigate Pro.), allowing business users to utilize their iPhone as a direct PBX extension.
Here’s how it works (after registering with RF, providing your email address, country of service, mobile carrier and Caller ID):
1. You dial a number, or enter a user name, SIP URI, etc., on the RF Dialer, and click “Call”;
2. Using any kind of data connection (Edge, 3G or WiFi — it doesn’t matter as it’s only a small bit of data being sent) and encrypted HTTP, the RF Media Server is sent a call request: your cell phone number, RF password, call destination, and calling service used (i.e.: Skype, GoogleTalk, your own VoIP provider, straight SIP calling, etc.);
3. Once it verifies your credentials, the RF Media Server now refreshes the web page on your iPhone and sends a JavaScript message that includes a link to directly call the RF Media Server (a cell phone call to your local RF number, now either in the US or Canada, depending on where you are);
4. The RF Media Server answers the call knowing it’s you through caller-ID; and immediately makes the connection to the desired call destination stored in its queue.
RF is currently in beta with customers in the US and Canada and plans to go live in Europe sometime in August.
“We use the right technology for the task at hand,” according to RF founder Marcelo Rodriguez. “The calls we facilitate are transmitted via the carriers’ voice network. Our users have mobile access to Skype, GoogleTalk, MSN, Yahoo, etc., and the carrier is reimbursed for that access. It’s a perfect partnership.”
Apple began providing registered software developers daily download statistics this week that point to the “game changing” success of the AppStore distribution model.
Eliza Block, the part-time developer behind a popular iPhone crossword application shared a few days worth of her statistics with 9to5Mac that highlight the revenue opportunity for iPhone application developers.
Block’s 2Across app, which sells for $5.99 and has lately been listed as an Apple “Staff Favorite” on the iTunes AppStore, earned her nearly $2000 a day in the last week of July.
While there’s no way to predict whether hers or any other application can sustain that kind of momentum, the news should be enough to send many a coder scurrying to get up-to-speed with Objective C.
Apple abruptly disabled NullRiver‘s NetShare in iTunes yesterday without explanation to the developer or its customers. The application, developed by the team behind Installer.app, allowed iPhone users to share their phone’s EDGE or 3G connection with a computer, a process called “tethering,” for which AT&T typically charges other smartphone customers an extra $30 per month. NetShare was briefly available in Apple’s AppStore for $10 but a current search for it returns a “no longer available” message and the developer’s website posts a message saying “We’re updating our site…”
Via MacRumors
Now that the AppStore has reached the milestone of 1000 iPhone applications on offer, the timing for the return of PerversionTracker could not be better.
Be sure to consult their incisive reviews of all the worst tripe at the AppStore before you blow your savings 99¢ at a time.
Picture messaging, text-based messaging and, soon, vocal instant messaging over the iPhone’s data connection come to the AppStore with Palringo’s Rich Messaging Service (RMS), a free application supporting over a half dozen popular messaging services to help you stay connected to your contacts without the need to switch between applications or use Web-based messaging.
Billions of people already use instant messaging on their home and work computers to communicate with each other. “Palringo adds vocal instant messaging and picture messaging and has put IM on the iPhone–that’s a great combination,” says CEO Kerry Ritz, stressing the program’s minimal data load. One megabyte is sufficient for Palringo to send/receive the equivalent of about 4,500 SMS messages, send/receive about 32 picture messages or send/receive as much as 15 minutes of vocal instant messages.
Available worldwide, Palringo lets conversations incorporate people from across the globe, on any mobile network or connected PC or Mac, which could make it very attractive for multi-national corporate users and extended family use.
Apple has posted a job opportunity for a position it calls “iPhone Security Engineer.” An “exceptional individual” will get the chance to “have a major impact on Apple’s embedded operating system products,” according to the job posting.
Job requirements and useful experience include “passion for developing “proof of concept attacks, industry exposure to and knowledge of OS security and UNIX internals” and “involvement in reverse engineering and security communities.”
The company appears to be taking seriously recent criticisms of its nonchalance toward patching iPhone security holes and its less-than-full-embrace by the enterprise community.
Who says crime doesn’t pay?
Via Ars Technica
A number of third-party iPhone application developers are unhappy with continuing restrictions imposed under the Nondisclosure Agreement (NDA) they signed when they joined Apple’s Software Developers Program.
Perhaps some innocently assumed once the AppStore launched their iPhone applications into the wild the terms of the NDA would magically disappear. Others may have simply failed to read the document they were signing.
In any event, a few have put together a website to express their frustration. Be aware the link may be NSFW, depending on your place of employ. The argument seems to be that inability to talk freely with one another about their challenges and successes hampers the advancement of the platform, though, we’re guessing Apple’s legal department thought of that one before drawing up the document.
Via TUAW
AT&T Research Labs is testing a web based application that will bring limited voice control functionality to the iPhone. The so-called Speech Mashups, based on AT&T’s WATSON speech recognition engine, is a web service requiring high-speed wireless access to the internet in order to allow voice control of certain functions, such as entering text into web forms. The service appears to fall well short of meeting the demand for voice dialing, expressed by many as a must-have feature in a mobile phone.
The lone voice dialing application available on the AppStore appears to be Speechcloud Voice Dialer, whose 300+ commenters have thus far given it a 2.5 star rating.
The AT&T Labs chart below shows the complexity of delivering its web-based Speech Mashups solution, though, with the prevalence of speech recognition capability so widespread among other mobile handset manufacturers, we wonder what it is about Apple’s device that has made voice dialing such a difficult hurdle to clear.
The WordPress app for iPhone has just gone live on the iTunes App Store. Here’s the direct link to the WordPress app.
The app allows WordPress blogs to be edited on the iPhone and iPod touch, online and off.
It supports blogs hosted at WordPress.com and self-installed blogs (2.5.1 or higher).
There’s all the features you’d expect for mobile blogging — but best of all, there’s an auto-recovery feature that recovers posts interrupted by phone calls. Let’s hope it works.
More details here on the iPhone WordPress site.
An upskirt warning poster in a subway station outside Tokyo. Photo by Jeff Epp.
The iPhone 3G in Japan has a special feature unique to that country: The camera always makes a conspicuous “shutter” sound when a picture is taken, even when the phone is set to “silent” mode.
The loud shutter sound is supposed to deter voyeurs from taking sneaky pictures up women’s’ skirts — or down their tops.
In Japan, upskirt and downblouse shots have become increasingly popular with the advent of high-resolution camera phones.
As a result, all cell phones sold in Japan make a conspicuous shutter sound, or say the word “cheese” when a snap is taken, according to Nobuyuki Hayashi, a tech reporter based in Tokyo.
On almost all new cell phones, the camera shutter sound can not be muted, Hayashi says.
“Some manufacturers have even put louder shutter sound,” he reports.
The shutter on the first iPhone sold in Japan could be muted in silent mode; an anomaly that many wondered whether Apple would correct in the iPhone 3G, Hayashi says.
Apple did: The shutter sound cannot be turned off, even in silent mode, Hayashi says.
Software engineer Satoshi Nakajima, the lead architect of Microsoft’s Windows 95, picked up a Mac for the first time two years ago.
He was so impressed, he says he’ll never touch a PC again.
Satoshi loves Apple products so much, he started a company in April, Big Canvas, to develop for Apple’s iPhone platform full-time.
“We have chosen iPhone as the platform to release our first product (for) several reasons,” explains his company’s website. “We love Apple products… You need love to be creative.”
Based in Bellevue, WA — right next to Microsoft’s home turf of Redmond — Satoshi spent nearly 14 years at Microsoft, serving as the software architect of Windows 95 and 98. He also oversaw the development of Internet Explorer 3.0 and 4.0. While at Microsoft, he developed the third largest portfolio of intellectual property of any employee at the company, according to his bio.
Last week, Satoshi released his company’s first iPhone application, Photoshare, a free, social networking app for sharing pictures with the iPhone.
Photoshare is like Flickr for iPhone photographers. The downloadable Photoshare app allows users to upload pictures to Photoshare’s website, and then share those pictures publicly or privately — without any required registration or the need for a computer.
We spoke with Satoshi about the pleasures of writing software for the iPhone SDK and got some of his thoughts about Apple’s UI, its distribution model for iPhone apps and the future of handheld communications.
The interview continues after the jump.
Via BoingBoing
Perhaps AT&T employees in New York were so overwhelmed by the amount of business they did this week, they went time out of mind, or began speaking in tongues.
Check back last week for more iPhones.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster says because Apple “knocked it out of the park on the first weekend” supply chain shortages could force iPhone 3G customers to scramble to find a phone or delay their purchase into August, when beefed up orders should replenish supply.
Apple’s iPhone availability tool indicated yesterday just over 25% of the compnay’s 188 US retail stores had any models of the iPhone 3G in stock, with the most-hard-to-find 16GB model in black available in only 18 stores countrywide. Only 13 stores reported all three models on hand, while the apparently least-popular 16GB model in white could still be found in 46 stores.
AT&T company spokesman Wes Warnock said Tuesday their 1,200 retail stores are also nearly out of the iPhone. “As we’re able to start restocking our stores, we will do so as fast as we can.”
Via Macworld
Intego has announced a free upgrade for users of its VirusBarrier X5 security software to eradicate malware from the iPhone and iPod touch. The company has been at the center of news regarding the rise of “trojan horse” malware targeting OS X since at least 2004, the subject of ongoing debate among computer security experts about the risks of malicious software and computer viruses infecting Apple systems.
Earlier this month reports of Apple’s having neglected its mobile platform in releasing security patches to fix exploits discovered in the OS X desktop caused some to wonder whether the opening of the AppStore might also open the door to software that could harm an iPhone or iPod touch. Apple has promised to use its gatekeeping role to screen malware from the AppStore, though, as Intego’s press release mentions, users “jailbreaking” (unlocking) an iPhone or iPod touch can install applications not pre-certified by Apple, increasing the risk of stumbling into harm’s way.
Thus far, the only harmful scripts or programs identified targeting OS X have required the inordinately reckless cooperation of users to open their systems and invite an attack, so the real risks are yet minimal. But as Macs begin to surpass double digits in desktop market share and Apple’s mobile OS continues to advance among handheld users, the prize for black-hat software developers grows ever larger. Perhaps Intego, makers of what MacWorld calls the “gold standard” of Macintosh anti-virus software, will one day rival Norton.
Via Flickr
If you see someone whipping out an iPhone at the next table or across the room at your next social gathering, chances are you’re looking at a member of the modern leisure class. When the iPhone made its debut last summer, people camped out in front of Apple stores across the United States to be among the first to experience Apple’s groundbreaking communication device. When Apple updated the phone and released its next gen gadget in more than 20 countries last Friday, again Apple retail stores and cellular provider outlets around the world received hordes of customers clamoring for the new phone — and Apple sold a paper million of them in three days.
Five days into the launch, all models of the phone were sold out in 21 states in the US and people were still lined up, waiting upwards of three hours to buy a phone in markets where they were still available. Steve Jobs called public reception of the new iPhone “stunning.”
Who are these people? A technology analyst for Piper Jaffray, Gene Munster put out a report this week estimating numbers and interests of the early adopters of iPhone 3G based on a survey done with 280 people waiting in line to buy the phone in New York. Earlier this year, another trends analyst, M Metrics published a report saying iPhone users tend to do more entertaining things on their devices such as watch video and visit social networks than those who own other smartphones. AdMob similarly confirmed that, at the time, iPhone users were still a relatively small part of the overall mobile phone market in the US, though, according to Munster’s research the percentage of iPhone users is growing.
A look at what’s popular on Apple’s iTunes AppStore sheds more light on the pursuits of iPhone users: every single one of the top ten free and paid applications downloaded from the AppStore in its first week in business — more than 10 million, according to Apple — is a game or entertainment/social networking application. That is, except for the free Weather Bug coming in at #8, which, I’ll surmise people may be looking to for confirmation of their plan to spend the day at the beach or somewhere equally leisurely.
Apple has big plans to storm the beachead of Microsoft’s hold on the Enterprise market and sure enough, the Mac moved past Acer into 3rd place among PC makers in the US market during the 2nd quarter of this year. But Apple’s share of the desktop market remains below 10% and the iPhone’s initial integration efforts with Exchange have run into significant headwinds at the Enterprise level.
For now, it seems pretty obvious the iPhone is a darling of those with time to spare.
Just the other day, Boy Genius Report discovered that it had been visited by a few folks whose web browsers identified them as users of a yet-unreleased iPhone OS 2.0.1. Given the timing, it looks pretty clear that Apple will soon push out the update, which should mainly address bugs. Thank heavens — the OS needs it.
It appears that the iPhone software has some big issues to resolve. In addition to the boneheaded syncing scheme Lonnie highlighted a few minutes ago, every one I know who has installed the new OS onto their existing iPhone or iPod touch has noticed significant downgrades in performance and stability. I don’t have a 3G, and all my associates have the previous version or a touch, so I don’t know if these issues plague the new phone or not.
The worst of these problems is that the iPhone now fairly frequently won’t allow users to answer the phone when the screen is locked. When you get a call, the familiar “slide to answer” graphic pops up. But when you actually slide your finger to the right, the button gets stuck, and the phone locks up completely. At that point, the home button does nothing, the Hold button does nothing, and you basically need to perform a hard reset.
And that’s bad. Any time you have a phone that works well at everything but making phone calls? You need to take care of that problem NOW. Anyone else experiencing stability issues?
Via BGR.
Image courtesy Mushroom
The backup/synch process for iPhones takes a really long time and may turn out to be worthless for restoring a bricked device, according to emerging reports.
Blogger Erica Sadun wrote the other day about her frustrations with Apple’s synch and backup protocols in the iPhone 2.0 firmware and wondered why on earth she has to wait for entire applications to backup every time she synchs her phone with iTunes, instead of having iTunes backup only changed Document and Library data.
Writer Rob Griffiths also complains, “I can connect my phone, let it run a full backup and sync, disconnect it, let it sit on the desk for three minutes, then connect it again”¦and get hit with another hour-long backup cycle.”
And what’s worst is the local backup may be useless for restoring an iPhone to its as-configured state after crashing due to application instability or glitches in the 2.0 firmware. If this is a real problem, Apple’s millions of iPhone customers juggling their tens of millions of AppStore downloads will be letting us know quite soon, but as Griffiths writes, “the current implementation of backup in iPhone 2.0 seems very broken.”
In case you missed Pete’s snippet from yesterday, the iPhone’s Mobile Safari web browser looks very capable of bringing the full web on to the iPhone, outranking some popular desktop browsers in critical standards support testing.
In tests devised by the Web Standards Project to help developers ensure their work can reach as wide an audience as possible, Mobile Safari blew IE7 out of the water on compliance with support for CSS and even scored higher than Firefox 3 in testing for components vital to “Web 2.0″³ functionality.
Looks like those faster 3G download speeds could be worth something after all.
Via Paul Beesley
Given that Loopt, the location-based social networking service, was among the blessed few companies allowed to show its iPhone apps at the introduction of the iPhone 3G, a whole lot of iPhone users downloaded the program after the launch last week. And many got upset with its default privacy settings.
But that doesn’t really matter — YouTube user Incruentum has put together a dance mix to “Caramelldansen” that allows us to revel in the spectacle of CEO Sam Altman’s shirt, instead.
Thanks, Antony!
Enterprise customers remain largely unimpressed with Apple’s efforts to promote the iPhone as a tool for business. While hordes of consumers worldwide are willing to stand in line for hours to buy one of the touch screen gadgets, business customers are proving a more wary audience. The disconnect could be a crucial indicator to the company’s future direction.
The shortcomings of Apple’s first generation configuration tool for the iPhone bear all the hallmarks of Apple’s long-standing lack of understanding for the needs of enterprise customers, according to eWeek. Problems with security and application delivery call into question the company’s ability to create an effective solution in-house that can serve the needs of its largest customers. As it stands, the iPhone might be effectively integrated into small business environments, but the tools as currently structured lack the security and remote reach large deployments require.
Apple is rumored to be coming out already – possibly this week – with fixes for Exchange support, which has been declared by some a complete mess. A whole host of features Windows Mobile users are used to seem to be missing or inadequate, according to a review in Mobility Today, and even Apple itself has backed away from its original claim that “”Push happens automatically, instantly, and continuously” via MobileMe, which Apple promotes as “Exchange for the rest of us.”
Apple’s simultaneous worldwide release of new hardware, a major firmware update, a complete overhaul of its web services product and a significant effort toward enterprise configuration must be applauded as a swing for the fences. And the fact that everything has not gone smoothly should come as no surprise. As ever, it will be interesting to watch where the company goes from here.