In the world of iPhone apps, there are generally three categories of quality:

• Crapware that you throw away a few minutes after downloading
• Moderately useful software that you keep around but use a few times a week
• Daily tools that become a key part of your iPhone experience

With the release of Loren Brichter’s much-anticipated Tweetie 2 for iPhone, however, I think it’s time to establish a new category: “iPhone software better than anything Apple.” In fact, I’m willing to go so far as to claim it is the single-best app ever written for the platform. It’s incredibly useful, smooth as butter, innovative in design and features, and just works as you expect that it would. It’s as if it sprung, fully formed, from the skull of the iPhone, as if to say, “This is how it should work.” Not only has Tweetie 2 raised the bar for mobile Twitter clients, it’s raised the bar for mobile software.

I’ve been playing with it non-stop since its release yesterday, so there’s a lot of ground to cover. I’m going to break this review into three major categories: Interface, Features, and Magic. Hit the jump to see it all. There’s so much to talk about!

On my blog a couple of weeks back, I wrote the article More proof the iPhone App Store destroys people’s understanding of good value, highlighting rampant idiotic reactions to Loren Brichter having the audacity to charge three whole dollars for a complete rewrite of his stunning Twitter app Tweetie. Patrick Jordan referred to Tweetie 2’s price-point as a “very,very,very Bad Call,” (his emphasis), suggesting it was “spitting in the face of existing Tweetie users”. My thinking: You’d pay more than three bucks for a crappy sandwich or a luke-warm beer in the pub. But, apparently, three bucks is too much of a ‘reward’ for the hard work a dedicated indie dev has put into a leading and brilliant product.

The dev of Alchemize has clearly had enough of this kind of attitude. On the TouchArcade forum, he reveals that his company has received an astonishing 3400 emails in one month moaning about the price of his three-dollar game. Although its Puyo Puyo-style mechanics won’t win too many awards for originality, Alchemize is a fairly good game, and one that would set you back considerably more on competing platforms. To that end, the dev’s now upped his app’s price to an eye-watering $39.99 in protest at people constantly complaining about paying a few bucks for a videogame.

It’s pretty clear that something needs to be done regarding App Store pricing and value perception, because the race to the bottom is hurting many developers. Apple’s recent ‘top grossing’ chart doesn’t really help. Personally, I like Eucalyptus dev Jamie Montgomerie’s suggestion that the App Store should split its chart in two, along the lines of British 8-bit videogames during the 1980s and early 1990s, offering separate ‘budget’ and ‘full price’ charts.

Alchemize is available on the App Store, and really isn’t worth 40 bucks; but it’s probably worth a shot at three, after the 12th.

As more and more U.S. iPhone users become fed up with AT&T, some are seriously starting to consider using Apple’s iPod Touch as a full-time phone.

Trouble is, the Touch doesn’t have cell phone radio. But pair it with a personal WiFi router, like Verizon’s MiFi, and a service like Skype, and the Touch might be a viable full-time VOIP phone.

CoM reader Alex Bowles’ contract with AT&T expires in January, so he seriously looked into replacing his iPhone with an iPod Touch and Verizon’s MiFi. Here’s what he found.

Famous iPhone hacker George Hotz (better known as GeoHot) claims to be working on a tool that might revolutionize the current jailbreak scenario! Called blackra1n, the tool promises to jailbreak all  existing iPhone and iPod Touch devices with 3.1.2 installed in just a matter of seconds, according to GeoHot. However, it will NOT unlock the device, enabling it to be used with different GSM carriers worldwide.

Currently, jailbreaking an iPhone or iPod Touch is a complex and time-consuming process, requiring the creation of custom firmware, entering several different modes, etc. There are separate tools for different devices and different firmware versions. Not only this, each generally requries you to follow a different procedure. It’s a pain.

But with blackra1n, jailbreaking promises to be a few simple clicks for any iPhone or iPod Touch.

The last tool released by GeoHot was purplera1n, a simple solution, which allowed iPhone 3GS users to jailbreak any OOTB (out-of-the-box) phone with firmware version 3.0 with a single click. The procedure was simpler and less painful, compared to DevTeam‘s offerings, which required you to choose between several different options. But purplera1n contained a few bugs that forced him to kill the project after the release of firmware update 3.0.1.

However, blackra1n will be quite different from purplera1n because it is based off a completely different exploit, GeoHot says. GeoHot expects to release the tool really soon although, after dealing with some technical obstacles. Hopefully, it will be out this weekend.

Hotz is a 21-year-old hacker who is famous for unlocking the first iPhone ever soon after its debut in 2007. After a break, he recently made a comeback to the iPhone scene with the release of his jailbreak and unlock solutions for iPhone OS 3.0 that offered tough competition to the DevTeam.

For many, the gloss finish on a MacBook Pro’s screen can become irritating. Although Apple stepped in to allow MacBook owners with 15.4-inch screens to swap out for $50 the displays for a matte finish, that option wasn’t available for owners of the 13-inch Macs – until now. TechRestore will “repair” your MacBook Pro’s glossy screen for $200.

“Send in your MacBook and [TechRestore] will rip out the screen and replace it with a matte one , and because the screen no longer has the glass panel, you also get a matte-black bezel, complete with holes for the iSight camera and LEDs,” according to Gadget Lab.

TechRestore says it will send your MacBook back within 24 hours and with a 1-year warranty.

[Via Gadget Lab and TechRestore]

Adobe has announced the release of Photoshop for your iPhone or iPod touch – although the software is closely tied to Adobe’s Photoshop.com photo hosting and sharing service.

Iomega has released the StorCenter ix2-200, a squat-looking NAS that includes built-in remote torrent transfers and support for Apple’s Time Machine. The $270 (1T) product also lets you download data to any Bluetooth phone – along with a number of “green” features.

“Based on EMC’s world class enterprise storage and security technologies and featuring a completely new sleek, sexy industrial design, the new network device will be the easiest-to-use NAS appliance on the marketplace today,” according to Iomega.

The ix2-200’s features “appeal to the movie-downloading, home-server-building, tofu-eating, lazy ass in you,” according to Gizmodo.

What struck us most is the built-in support for torrents. No computer is needed – download the files on the road with your Bluetooth mobile. The NAS also includes support for up to five security cameras that can be monitored from your iPhone.

[Via Gizmodo and Iomega]

We close the week with a familiar trio: MacBook Pros (2.66GHz 17-inch screen), more MacBooks (13.3-inch 2.4GHz) from the Apple Store, and the iPod touch ($149 for an 8GB). Along the way, we also offer a laptop case for your MacBook, plus the MyPlaylists app for your iPod touch or iPhone.

For details on these and other bargains (such as 40GB Apple TVs), check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Microsoft’s “Pink” phones, a Zune-like response to Apple’s iPhone, is on the verge of collapse, as the company ignores advice coming from the increasingly disgruntled team of Danger employees. The key mistake, according to leaks is the software giant’s demanding a firewall between the Pink program (also known as the Zune Phone) and Windows Mobile and Zune projects.

According to AppleInsider, Microsoft’s isolation of the Danger team prevented the engineers and others to pass along lessons learned while developing Danger’s Sidekick. Since acquiring the smartphone maker in 2008, Microsoft has seen most of the Danger team either be fired or walk.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ircH4hwjx60

If you’ve ever wondered what the point of those flashlight apps are, wonder no more: they are kick-butt investigation tools.

The next time you need to crawl down a 150-foot electrical conduit and don’t have a flashlight —  your iPhone can light the way, a recent episode of CSI reminds us.

In a cheesy bit of iProduct placement, the actor hands his iPhone-cum-flashlight over to the guy who will have to brave the crawl space saying “There’s an app for that.”

There are a bunch of these apps on iTunes, most are free, ranging from Funny Flashlight to myLite (also has strobe effects), with jokey descriptions like “Are you scared of the dark?”

Has anyone found the flashlight app handy — aside from helping solve heinous crimes?

Via Art of the iPhone

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.

Under review this week: Edge by Mobigame, Concertimatic, Juiced, Formula 1 Live Racing Free, Dude, FTP On The Go, Mr.AahH!!, Pinch n Pop!, iSplume, Edge by Mobigame Lite. As always, all id.gd links are to the relevant App Store page.

It seems everywhere you look – on the street, on television and online – another iPod or iPhone is being produced or sold. Supply of flash memory has hit a 1.3 percent shortfall and is expected to drop to 3.3 percent below demand during the important Christmas period. Once again the blame is being laid at Apple’s doorstep.

“NAND flash supply has reportedly become tighter as major chip producers Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, Micron and Hynix Semiconductor favor demand for Apple devices,” DigiTimes writes on a report from DRAMeXchange.

This isn’t the first time Apple has been blamed for a shortage in NAND memory. In September a “serious shortage” of flash memory was reported, causing makers to curtail production to everyone but Apple. At the same time, Apple unveiled new flash-based iPods, including a 64GB iPod touch and an updated iPod nano with video ability.

If you’re still not convinced about the need for regular backups, maybe talking with some Snow Leopard users will. The Apple support boards are buzzing with reports of Leopard users finding data zapped.

“Users start their Macs up as normal only to find they’ve logged in as ‘Guests’ on their machine – with all the files and data held on their Mac in their own user account seemingly deleted,” according to 9to5.

About 18 percent of Mac users have upgraded to Snow Leopard since its release August 28, we reported earlier this month.

So, a month ago, I wrote a post proclaiming iTunes LP to be the first digital album good enough to criticize. I would like to revise that assessment. It is, instead, the first major content misstep in the history of the iTunes Store.

At launch, Apple had six albums available in the format, which basically marries lyrics, album artwork, ad video content to your collection of AAC files. Scratch that, there were five albums and one musical comic book. It seemed like too little, but it was a launch — there were hardly any apps on the App Store when it came out, too. A month later, however, things have scarcely improved. We’ve gone from six offerings in iTunes LP to 13.

So what could be the problem? As it turns out, it’s the business model. According to Gizmodo, an indie record label owner asked Apple what it would take to get some of his albums available in the LP format. Apple’s reported answer? Be a major label. Seriously. Read on.

Apple has just released a new firmware update, version 3.1.2 for the existing iPhone and iPod Touch range, which contains no new features but fixes an important issue with cellular network reception. The new software fixes dropped cell connections until the iPhone is restarted, according to Apple.

However, it looks like the update does contain a new baseband version in order to fix the issue, therefore if you have an unlocked iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS, do not update until there is confirmation from a trusted source, like the iPhone DevTeam. If you’re planning to jailbreak, you should wait as this firmware version is currently incompatible with the latest jailbreak tools. But updates will soon be released to resolve the compatibility problem, according to the iPhone DevTeam.

The complete-ish list of changes, according to Apple’s cryptic update notes, is as documented below:

• Resolves sporadic issue that may cause iPhone to not wake from sleep.
• Resolves intermittent issue that may interrupt cellular network services until restart.
• Fixes bug that could cause occasional crash during video streaming.

Clearly, it indicates no new features, unless there are some hidden ones. ;)

To download the new firmware for your iPhone, select the model below to download it directly from Apple’s server or open iTunes and click iTunes –> Check for Updates in the menu bar.

• iPhone
• iPhone 3G
• iPhone 3GS

A negative review of the Archos 5 Internet tablet by gadget blog T3 may provide an opening for Apple’s rumored tablet. Unlike the Apple tablet, expected to launch in January using the iPhone operating system, the Archos 5 tablet is powered by Google’s Android – a concept that “just doesn’t add up.”

“This is essentially the Archos 5 media tablet with an OS reskin. Think the Toshiba TG01 and its reskin of Windows Mobile,” T3 wrote.

We start off with a trio of Mac-related deals: 80 percent off on iPod touch cases (along with another discount on MP3 accessories) and a bargain on a universal windshield mount for your iPhone or iPod. (While it is not as slick as a Kensington model we profiled earlier or the DIY “Cop Dash Cam”, it is just $4) Our trio of top picks is rounded out by a USB adapter allowing Mac owners to use SATA hard drives.

For details on these and other items (such as the Netgear 5-port Ethernet switch), check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the break.

There are no big announcements from Apple today. No new products, nothing special happening. But it’s a special day nonetheless.

Because today, the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg has finally declared Windows a match for OS X.

Many of you will know that Walt’s opinions are widely read, and are likely to sway a lot of people in their computer-purchasing decisions.

In recent years, he has consistently said that Mac OS X is a better choice than Windows, either XP or Vista. But with the imminent release of Windows 7 (on October 22nd), that comes to an end.

The New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) gave the green light to Station Stops, an app with handy time tables, after having it yanked from iTunes for intellectual property claims against the developer.

Station Stops, which costs $2.99, is back in the Apple store this week.
It’s a major victory for the developer/blogger/commuter Chris Schoenfeld, who saw his work pulled from iTunes in August and on the receiving end of a nastygram from MTA lawyers.

The app provides a timetable for the Metro-North Railroad for regularly-scheduled trains departing and arriving from Grand Central Station.
Schoenfeld ran into trouble with the MTA because although they provide schedules to Google Transit, they do not release the data publicly. To build his app, Schoenfeld did it the old way — by entering data manually from the published public schedule.

More on how the MTA saw the light after the jump.

If you were around when Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda made American cultural history in 1969 with “Easy Rider,” you may have noticed the announcement about the iBike Rider, an iPhone case and more for motorcycle riders. While quite a stir was made about helmet-mounted GPS, or the handlebar iPhone case and even the iPod bike charger, the iBike Rider is for hog-owners.

The iBike is a weather-proof case for $42 but also offers the option of piping iPhone conversations directly into your helmet for an added $85. The one drawback: the iBike currently ships from France.

[Via Gizmodo and iBike Rider]

Remember when E-Ink was introduced in the late 1990s? Speculation on its uses mostly centered on how the technology would change publishing. Although e-book readers from Sony and Amazon employ e-ink for their displays, we haven’t seen applications for everyday electronics such as hard drives – until now. Western Digital announced its My Book Elite and My Book Studio USB will offer e-ink displays.

The displays – part of a 12-character screen – help label the hard drives’ contents. What is intriguing and turns a ho-hum story of hard drives into a gadget phenom is that the e-ink displays can be read even when the HD’s power is off. This makes the Western Digital hard drives different than the boatload of other storage devices using LEDs that go blank when no juice is flowing.

With all the warnings about your TV’s “ready” light and other so-called ‘electricity vampires,’ E-Ink may have stumbled into a profitable area. But you may want to hurry if you want one of the hard drives. “Everyone is going to want this,” according to CrunchGear.

The E-Ink Western Digital drives come in two flavors: a Firewire and USB My Book Studio ($300 for up to 2T) for Mac users and a $280 USB My Book Elite.

[Via CrunchGear, Gadget Lab and Western Digital]

Mid-week Mac deals come from the Apple Store, that is offering refurbished Mac Pro Xeon 2.93 GHz and 3.2 GHz workstations. Also on tap: more 8GB iPod nanos (the previous version), plus continued sales on iPod and iPhone case, including the ChiTek Metallic Slim Fit Case.

For details on these and more items (such as new App Store freebies), check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Earlier this year, we ran several articles about Mobigame‘s excellent iPod game Edge getting a legal smackdown from Tim Langdell, owner of Edge Games. Over time, his claims to the Edge marks have, according to commentators, become increasingly dubious and troll-like, to the point where internet sleuths have clubbed together as ChaosEdge to provide a legal fund for Mobigame and information repository that built on the investigative work of TIG Source.

Recently, EA filed suit against Langdell about an entirely different Edge trademark spat, but, to aid indie devs, EA aims via the suit to obliterate all Langdell’s Edge marks, making the world safe for people to use the word ‘Edge’ in the title of a videogame without someone who had a company that was marginally famous in the 1980s popping up and having a major hissy fit.

Possible upshot? Edge is back in the App Store ($4.99 US/£2.99 UK). Somewhat like what you’d get if Marble Madness was built from cubes, and then a load of other cracking gameplay components were added, Edge is a top game for iPod touch and iPhone. And while we hope it’s around for good this time, we strongly recommend you go and buy it right now, just in case it vanishes again.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNUcD-FXgDI

GymFu has carved itself a niche on Apple handhelds, coming across like an affordable Nike+ for crunches, push-ups, pull-ups or squats. CrunchFu was also an app of the week on this site recently.

A criticism of the suite of apps has been the built-in ‘Fubot’ robot, which counts your reps and barks instructions, sounding like an angry, dispassionate Dalek with a sore throat. As of today, GymFu reports that you can switch out the voice for one of the alternatives from the ‘Sarge and Missy’ voice pack. Of those voices, one sounds like an angry drill instructor and the other resembles a schoolmarm. (Cult of Mac leaves it to you to decide which one is which.)

Initially, GymFu users can grab the voices for the princely sum of ‘nothing at all’ by sending a message to Twitter of Facebook via a GymFu app. “We’d originally intended it as an in-app payment but then we came up with a better idea; why not reward users for tweeting about us from within the app?” says Jof Arnold of GymFu, noting that other companies have tried rewarding uses for inviting friends, but GymFu’s enabling users to write whatever they want. He adds: “There’s nothing quite like getting shouted at in aggressive pseudo-army tones to inspire you to squeeze out some more reps,” and Cult of Mac agrees this is certainly better than being yelled at by a Dalek.

GymFu’s apps are available on the App Store, and are currently a buck cheaper than usual at $2.99 each (or £1.19 in Brit-o-land, and €1.59 in the Euro zone).

If you read the crime logs, you’ll know the best place to snag an iPod at a five-finger discount is from a parked car. (Often an unlocked one).

Teen Tyler J. Peglow in Bay City Michigan is charged with picking off iPods from a parking lot. He got caught with four in hand by police who tased him and brought the 18-year-old before a judge.

Peglow, however, also managed to pick his spot poorly: proximity to the courthouse meant that he ended up in front of the judge whose iPod he nicked.

“I told him, ‘You might want to ask another judge to review your status because I think you stole my iPod,’” Circuit Judge Joseph K. Sheeran told local papers.

The teen will go before another judge Oct. 12.

“The lesson here for people is to lock your cars,” Sheeran said. “The overall lesson for people who engage in this activity is that they will be caught eventually. In this case, justice was swift.”