Never one to miss an opportunity for adulation, Atebits founder Loren Brichter managed to get the new version of his superlative Twitter client Tweetie through the App Store over the Thanksgiving Holiday. And oh, boy, it’s a doozy. Download here (iTunes link) for $2.99 if you’ve somehow held out thus far.
Basically it implements every new feature that has shown up on Twitter in the six weeks since Tweetie 2 dropped — but better: Lists, new-style ReTweets, and GeoTags. It also throws in a ton of bug fixes; having used it all day long, it seems as solid as the previous iteration, if not a bit faster. Loren even threw in TweetStream break indicators to let you know when you’ve missed out on a few hours of your friends’ navel-gazing. All told, it takes the best Twitter experience on any platform to the next level without a hitch.
I said awhile ago that Tweetie 2 was the best iPhone app. I retract that now. Tweetie 2.1 is.
I’m probably not anything like the target demographic of the Harry Potter: Spells iPhone game. Even so, a chance at reviewing an app that leverages the iPhone’s motion sensing abilities to let me turn my friends to stone was too good to pass up.
Unfortunately, Warner Bros. has taken an ambitious idea and executed it without much thought to gameplay.
Techcrunch’s Michael Arrington has written a nice essay giving thanks this Thanksgiving — to Steve Jobs.
Arrington rightly points out that our world would be very different if Jobs hadn’t returned to Apple 12 years ago. Mobile phones would still be horrible, computers would still be ugly and the music industry would have collapsed.
“… What would our world look like without him? We’d likely still be in mobile phone hell. Chances are we still wouldn’t have a decent browsing experience on the phone, and we certainly wouldn’t be enjoying third party apps like Pandora or Skype on whatever clunker the carriers handed us. Even if you use an Android, Palm Pre or newer Blackberry today, you must thank Apple for pushing open the doors to mobile freedom. Think back to the phone you had in 2006, and then tell me you don’t love Apple for the iPhone alone (yes, I’ve moved on, but the iPhone was the genesis).”
I’m with Arrington. Let’s give thanks for Steve Jobs.
Microsoft says that a filter and human buffer are stopping inappropriate tweets from being displayed in monitors in Saks Fifth Avenue windows in New York.
The Twitter stream which broadcasts on one of the world’s busiest shopping streets had been flooded with “Get a Mac!” messages, but Redmond spokespeople say they are not going live.
Microsoft sent seattlepi.com this statement (emphasis ours):
This holiday, Saks Fifth Avenue and Windows 7 are working together to bring the magic of the season to life. For the first time, the legendary Saks Fifth Avenue’s holiday windows are powered by Windows 7. As part of this campaign, there are three Microsoft Windows on 50th Ave that feature video monitors displaying a live feed of people’s holiday wishes for the season shared via Twitter and from kiosks in store.
The windows are the private property of Saks Fifth Avenue. As such, there are filters in place to make sure that in opening them up to Twitter feeds we had content that was appropriate for the general public to view and was within the holiday theme. This filter includes any attempt to spam the windows with negative commentary that is not in the spirit of the holidays. The windows have not been hijacked.
Here’s the thing: if you look at the #holidaywindows, if they filter out “Mac” messages as inappropriate, there’s almost nothing left.
So we need your help, CoM readers: if you’re in New York and happen by the Saks window display on 50th Ave, send us pics.
An iPhone application developer has upped the ante on criticism of Apple’s App Store approval policies with apprejections.com, a website devoted to collating “all the known examples of rejected Apps.”
Adam Martin, CEO of UK-based Red Glasses, makers of three iPhone apps (and a software development start-up with a curiously thin web presence), created the site earlier this month to document and share all known examples of “what is actually rejected” from the App Store — and he pulls no punches in his critique of Apple’s process for deciding which apps and updates make it onto the iTunes App Store.
“Apple has a secret, undocumented, unquestionable, random process for deciding which applications to “allow” onto the deck,” claims Martin on the site. Ironically, his own BrainGame Summation (iTunes link) app had an update rejected this week for using a common workaround to bugs in the official Apple APIs; the worrkaround previously appeared to pose no approval problems but has apprently been the basis for several recent rejections.
“Apple point-blank refuses to document the criteria – or even to discuss the matter on anything except a case-by-case basis,” Martin writes, though he does allow that “in most cases, rejections [are] perfectly reasonable, and/or Apple had officially warned developers “don’t do this; we won’t allow it”.
But the site does take App Store gatekeepers to task for being, among other things, “unskilled staff [who] are given a technical tool (the secret static-analyer) [sic] which they don’t understand – but trust 100%, [causing them to] reject apps that haven’t done anything wrong, but which the tool (incorrectly) flags.”
Martin acknowledges that the fledgling site has only just gotten started, but writes that he’s “been following reports on app-rejection for over a year,” and aims to catalog everything unusual and unfair about the mysterious process for joining the 100,000 (and growing) iPhone apps available now on iTunes.
It’s now gone from “easy” to “tricky” to avoid having your App rejected by Apple, according to Martin.
At 8:00am ET tomorrow, the CoPilot Live turn-by-turn GPS navigation app will go on sale for $19.99. The app is normally $35 and has got generally good reviews. Gizmodo calls it the best cheap GPS app (it has some quirks, but what do you expect for $35? I mean $20?).
The app features pretty 3-D maps, text-to-voice directions and monthly map updates. Maps are stored locally on the iPhone/iPt (weighing in at about ~1.3GB), which means no blackouts in the boonies.
The sale lasts all weekend. The app is fully functional, the company says, and there’s no additional fees for updated maps.
The iLingual app is clever translation software that speaks foreign phrases with video of your mouth saying the words. Launch the app, snap a picture of your mouth (or someone else’s) and hold the iPhone in front of your mouth. The software animates your mouth to make it look like you’re actually talking French (or German and Arabic). Well, sorta.
Either way, it’s a lot of fun and it’s free (sponsored by the Emirates airline). Great way to break the ice with the locals, who always appreciate tourists trying to speak the language. Watch the app being tested in Paris in the video above.
Before the iPhone beget the iPhone case, speakers were probably the most-often added accessory for computer systems. But the MacBook has stereo speakers – they just need a bit more bass in the form of a subwoofer. BassJump from Charleston, SC-based Twelve South provides that extra audio oomph, but in a definitely Mac way.
Are you looking for an Apple laptop for under $1,000? The Apple Store has a 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro starting at $999. Do you want to keep that brand-new iPhone shiny and secure? There is a 90 percent discount on select iPhone cases. Finally, yes, there is an app for that – and it may be among those with lower prices. Check out the App Store listings below for specific titles.
As always, for details on these or other bargains, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.
Back to Books: Mac-less students Lucy Ramsdale and Paige Eversden. @Southern Times Messenger
Australian police are after an organized gang they believe is behind 80 Mac thefts from schools.
Nearly 80 Apple computers (laptops and desktops) have been ripped off from 15 schools in the state of South Australia this year, along with a number of screen projectors for a total loot count police place at about $90,000 ($100,000 AUD).
Thieves wore gloves to eliminate fingerprints and knew exactly how much time they had to get in and out — in one case only swiping half of the MacBooks available. The thefts took place at suburban schools, in one case a Christian K-12.
“At times there are individual computers taken but they’re more opportunistic thefts,” Chief-Inspector Dennis Lock told local papers. “The short time it took for the thieves to steal the computers before security arrived indicates this was a more planned, organized and coordinated attack.”
