software - page 51

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.

Windows XP and Vista users who update to iTunes 7.7 — the version required to access the App Store — receive a complimentary control panel applet for Apple’s MobileMe online sync and storage service, and some are not happy about it.

Some PC users have been surprised to notice a “MobileMe Preferences” panel in their new version of iTunes, which makes no mention of installing additional software in the Software Update notice used to download iTunes. Users who are not already MobileMe subscribers are taken to an Apple marketing site with details about the service when they click on the “Learn More” button under a “Try MobileMe” heading in the control panel.

Apple’s decision to include the MobileMe pitch with iTunes without telling users caught the attention of Stopbadware.org, an anti-malware advocacy group founded by Google Inc., Lenovo Group Ltd. and Sun Microsystems Inc., which complained in April when Apple bundled Safari 3.1 into a Software Update notice to Windows users who had not previously installed the browser on their systems. Apple subsequently agreed to separate updates for already-installed programs from offers to install new software.

Maxim Weinstein, manager of Stopbadware.org., stopped short on Monday of calling Apple’s newest move a repeat of the Safari incident. “We haven’t had an opportunity to look at it, so we don’t have a formal evaluation,” he said. “But our guidelines require and the [user] community expects that when an application installs new or different functionality that users are notified and able to consent to that.”

Via Computerworld

Walter Mossberg, the Dean of MSM technology writers, has pronounced MobileMe “way too ragged” to be considered reliable.

His frank and unsentimental review of Apple’s web services product goes beyond the launch difficulties that have kept Apple’s support forums humming with angry subscribers and which prompted the company to extend members’ $100 annual subscriptions by 30 days last week. Citing his experience in extensive testing and interaction with Apple’s support team, Mossberg chronicles a list of half a dozen problems that make the service tedious, sluggish and unpredictable.

Apple engineers blame Microsoft Outlook quirks for issues related to calendar and address book synching and say they are working on fixes for other problems.

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.

Via Gizmodo

The iPhone Dev Team released its Pwnage jailbreak tool for iPhone over the weekend. Despite the tool’s inability to unlock iPhones for use with unapproved phone carriers and decreased demand for “illegal” apps in the light of Apple’s own AppStore, enough curious parties overwhelmed Dev Team servers and forced mirror sites into service to satisfy iPhone’s teeming masses still yearning to break free.

The tool jailbreaks and unlocks older iPhones, and jailbreaks iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touches but “We only support the 2.0 firmwares,” according to the Dev Team’s blog.

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.

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

One of the AppStore’s hottest downloads has more than 500 reviews and a 1.5 star average rating, which has to be bad news for someone.

We got a press release yesterday from uLocate Communications touting the succes of its GPS navigation app for the iPhone, WHERE, free software downloaded more than 125,000 times in its first weekend. A quick check on the WHERE product page in iTunes tells a different side of the story.

“Doesn’t work,” Worthless” and “Just keeps crashing” are the kinds of reviews that get a developer working on an update right away, though other users seem to be having no problems and love the application, with one fan reporting, “I feel that I’ve missed too much in life already because Where wasn’t available before.”

As we reported Monday, some developers are pointing the finger at Apple, claiming the 2.0 firmware is unstable and causing their apps to crash. Apple, of course, has little to say on the matter thus far and seems content to let the waves of elation and frustration that have accompanied the AppStore’s big splash settle out on their own.

The good news for users of software such as WHERE, is that at a cost of “free” deciding it’s not worth the hassle costs no more than a little wasted time, something Apple’s early adopters seem to have in abundance.

Veiosoft plans to release software on July 28 that will unleash more of the computing power inside Apple’s wireless handhelds. The $7 program distributed through the AppStore will allow any Mac, Windows or Linux machine to recognize an iPhone or iPod Touch as a volume when the handheld is registered to the same network, allowing transfer of data files between machines with drag and drop ease.

Using Finder and Bonjour, DataCase makes upload applications and server configuration unnecessary to move files between computers or take important data with you on your handheld. Macs integrate seamlessly with your handheld using Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) connectivity, while Windows and Linux computers are supported through HTTP and FTP.

The program supports up to 16 different volumes on the iPhone or iPod Touch, each configurable with read/write/browse permissions. Those concerned about the security implications of makng data so portable should be pleased to know files can me made invisible and alerts set to require authentication before allowing a connection over the network.

Many have felt the iPhone’s true innovation lies in portable computing and DataCase looks ready to begin delivering on that promise.

Thanks to blogger Cory Bohon at The Unofficial Apple Weblog, we bring you news that Mac Mix has some serious discounting available on bundles of Mac software. You can choose your own mix of titles from a set of 28 productivity, web tools, image & video, system enhancement and entertainment packages. Discounts range from 10% off any single title up to 75% off a bundle of twelve. The 500th purchaser will receive all 28 titles for free.

Apple reports over 10 million applications downloaded from the AppStore in its first weekend, according to a press release issued by the company today. There may be discord brewing between the company and developers of the applications being distributed in the AppStore, however, as blogger Bret Terpstra writes for The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Many applications from the App Store are crashing frequently, according to Terpstra, and some veteran developers are pointing the finger at Apple, claiming crash logs indicate a “growing consensus that Apple has released a highly unstable “final” version of the 2.0 firmware.”

Last.fm iPhone Demo from Toby on Vimeo.

I was rather effusive in my enthusiasm for the launch of intelligent music radio application Pandora on iPhone. It symbolized, more than anything, that Apple was perfectly willing to let people listen to music on the device without the company’s blessing — some of the time anyway.

Tonight, Last.fm launched its own iPhone app, and it’s a doozy. The video demo speaks for itself, but I’m quite impressed with the events integration and the detailed information. I’ve been a bigger fan of Last.fm than Pandora for some time, not least for the huge amount of information on bands that it has to offer. Additionally, the social networking features are very cool — being able to e-mail any track to a contact? Genius. It’s available through the App Store now.

Sadly, it won’t Scrobble the tracks you listen to in the main iPod application, except after a sync with iTunes, nor will it keep playing while you browse on Safari, but those are technical impediments on Apple’s part. Altogether, it’s an impressive effort. With Pandora and AOL Radio, it has officially made the iPhone superior in every way to a satellite radio — unless you care about Howard Stern. This is the true future of radio, and it’s finally on the right platform.

Via Digg.

Apple confessed to problems making the transition from .Mac web services to its highly anticipated MobileMe product, according to MacWorld, but the service may be up and running this morning after yesterday’s rocky rollout.

A statement posted earlier today to the Apple website read “”The MobileMe transition is underway but is taking longer than expected. Please refer to the official System Status to the right for current information on the availability of MobileMe services. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

But as you can see from the screenshots below, we finally have a log-in page and access to our me domain. The servers are running very slow at this writing. Stay tuned for updates; your mileage may vary.

Access to the account page behind the following secure screen

Was met with a Loading wheel that I gave up on after 5 minutes

But I was able to get to my Gallery

Though not my mail. I have confidence Apple engineers will work out the kinks.

Image via CNet

The new iPhone OS 2.0 software has been unlocked and jailbroken, according to Gizmodo blogger Jesus Diaz.

After taking months to crack the code on last summer’s inaugural release, the iPhone Dev Team has opened the gates to unsigned software on the iPhone 3G before its US debut. The Pwnage tool that will allow unofficial carriers access to the phone and give users full read/write access to the filesystem to enable installation of unofficial, “jailbreak” applications is “imminent,” according to CNet, though no firm release date has been announced.

Of the more than 500 applications unleashed during the AppStore launch today, none shows more promise for the iPhone’s future as a vital development platform than the amazing client for Internet radio station Pandora. It can play your personalized radio station over the air — even on EDGE. New music that isn’t in your iTunes library, playing anywhere that you have a signal.

There are a few of reasons why this is significant. First, it’s available for free but is supported by audio advertising, and if you get a subscription to the service, you can get rid of the ads altogether. That’s important, because Apple hadn’t made it at all clear that it was offering developers any business models other than outright purchases or complete giveaway. (Greg at Pinchmedia had a great article about iPhone business models a few weeks ago that I recommend for further reading if you’re curious.)

Second, though, Pandora’s application is a clear sign that Apple is going to be far less defensive of its role as media provider for the iPhone than it has been on the iPod. Think about it: Apple is allowing another company to play music in a dedicated application on the iPhone. Let me repeat that in bold: Apple is allowing another company to play music in a dedicated application on the iPhone! And the app even mimics the look of the iPhone’s music player! Seriously, I’ve never been more surprised by Apple in my life. On Tuesday night, I literally said Apple would never allow something like that to happen — too threatening to iTunes. And yet, here we are.

The presence of mobile Pandora for iPhone could, at its best, start to change how people think about both the iPhone and, especially, the iPod touch. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, he called it a cell phone, a widescreen iPod and an Internet device. Though it was clear that the release of new third-party apps today would make it so much more, the fact that Apple has made room for someone else to deliver media to the iPhone really announces to the world that it is a platform for other companies to make money. And I have to confess that until today, I didn’t think it could be; I wasn’t sure Apple would make the iPhone more like a Mac and less like an iPod. Apple isn’t keeping out potential threats — it’s hoping that their work will help them sell more hardware. And that’s a level of openness the company has never had before.

Of course, this isn’t all new-found maturity for Apple — it helps that Pandora for iPhone directs you to iTunes over-the-air when you want to buy one of the songs that you like. Still, this is an incredibly positive sign for the iPhone going forward.

Via Listening Post

The iPhone 2.0 firmware update is available from Apple, according to both The Unofficial Apple Weblog and MacRumors. Though a check at the page devoted to the AppStore in Apple’s iPod Touch section indicates the firmware is “coming soon,” MacRumors found this link to the firmware in Apple’s xml files.

WARNING: before you go clicking on that link and downloading the firmware to your iPod Touch or your first gen iPhone, note that the firmware will wipe your device on install.  Apple posted the following notice:

“Normally if you choose to update, the iPhone or iPod touch software is updated but your settings and media are not affected. If your device currently has a software version prior to 2.0 (1.x) and you are updating to software version 2.0 or later, all data on your device will be erased in order to perform install the new software. In this case, iTunes will offer to create a one-time media backup of your device depending on what content is on your device and what content is stored in the iTunes Library you are connected to. You should ensure that you have enough free space on your Mac or PC to accommodate a backup that matches the capacity of your iPhone or iPod touch (4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, or 32 GB) if you proceed with the this backup.”

We recommend you wait a few more hours for the “official release” of the 2.0 firmware. As “Auntie TUAW” noted, it’s not a good idea to go poking around on Apple’s servers to download random files for installs. Keep checking the Official Release link for updates.

Whenever you upgrade an operating system, you inevitably end up leaving a few old friends behind—faithful applications that, for whatever reason, no longer work on your new system of choice. With Leopard, losing Mail.appetizer was a particularly painful wrench, but the current beta now plays nice with Apple’s latest and greatest.

What Mail.appetizer does is save Mail users time. Mail’s Dock icon merely lists the number of new emails, but Mail.appetizer provides a resizable and customizable notification window that enables you to glance at the first few lines of each incoming email. Usefully, the window provides controls, enabling you to mark an email as read, delete it or open it in Mail.

What elevates Mail.appetizer from being merely very handy to being utterly essential is the level of control you have over the notification window’s content. The most obvious settings are all present and correct: the time each message appears for, the window transparency level, font settings, and so on. However, you can also restrict notifications to specific Mail accounts and fine-tune which aspects of messages are shown, including quotation levels and header titles. You can also decide whether Mail.appetizer hides when Mail is active and if it should open messages in separate windows or in the main Mail window.

It’s attention to detail that lifts Mail.appetizer to the dizzying heights of a Cult of Mac Essential award, and although the current release has a couple of niggles (a clash with GrowlMail and not marking as read items deleted using the notification window), it nonetheless comes very highly recommended for all Mail users.

Mail.appetizer provides various options for changing the way its notification window works.

Further information

Manufacturer: Bronson Beta
Price: free
URL: bronsonbeta.com/mailappetizer/beta/

Apple’s web services product, formerly known as .Mac, becomes MobileMe tonight, sometime between 6pm and 12am Pacific Time. A major overhaul to the $100 per year service will let subscribers manage email, calendar and contacts, pushing new data and changes automatically to desktop, laptop and mobile devices. Photo sharing features and disk space on Apple’s webservers let members store and share large files.

Apple produced a handy guided tour video and staff writer David Chartier posted a comprehensive piece on the details for Ars Technica today.

Of the more than 25,000 developers  who applied to Apple’s iPhone developers program, 4,000 were admitted, according to a story in Fortune. Apple set a July 7 deadline for those accepted developers to submit their applications for inclusion in the inaugural launch of the iPhone AppStore, expected to coincide with the worldwide debut of the iPhone 3G in two days.

We bring you now 12 interesting Apps to look for. Descriptions and screenshots after the jump.

Boingo, the popular wireless hotspot provider, has released a lightweight application for Macbooks running OS X 10.4 and later. According to internal usage reports from airport Wi-Fi networks operated by Boingo,   Wi-Fi connections from MacBooks and PowerBooks have been increasing steadily. As of January 2008, nearly 20 percent of airport usage comes from Mac laptops, an increase of 30 percent since January 2007.

“With our GoBoingo! software for MacBooks, you are now just one click away from enjoying Wi-Fi service at hotspots around the world,” said Dawn Callahan, vice president, consumer marketing, Boingo Wireless.

The lightweight authentication tool automatically determines whether a hotspot belongs to a Boingo roaming partner and helps users log on to the Internet with their Boingo accounts in a single click. Less than 1 MB, the tool installs quickly and stays in the background until the Boingo member needs to log into a Wi-Fi network.

In the first of a new series covering overviews of collections of Mac ‘stuff’, we present our favorites from the slew of apps vying for a place in your menu bar.

iStat menus 1.3

($free) islayer.com
There are loads of system monitors available for the Mac, but few hold a candle to the flexibility, good looks and usability of this beauty. With almost no effort, you can bung usage statistics for CPU, memory, disks and networks into the menu bar, along with fan, temperature and Bluetooth information. Drop-downs then provide access to extended data.

But perhaps the best trick iStat menus has up its sleeve is the Date & Time module, which offers many more settings than Mac OS X for displaying the date and time in the menu bar. It also offers a handy option for bunging a set of user-configurable world clocks in the drop-down, an implementation that manages to better the competition. The fact that iStat menus is free means you’re a bit strange if you don’t at least check it out.

All the times in the world, at your fingertips, with iStat Menus.

iTunesMenu 0.1

($free) programmerslife.co.cc
With the alumin(i)um Mac keyboards, Apple finally provided built-in system-wide iTunes controls, thereby placing dozens of iTunes controllers on to the ‘soon to be redundant’ list. However, when you’ve hundreds of CDs that have been ripped to iTunes, chances are you won’t know every track that pops up. iTunesMenu cunningly commendeers some menu-bar space for displaying the current track, and you can mess about with the preferences to include the artist and album name, too. Growl notification and scrolling support also exist, along with the option to define system-wide hot-keys for common iTunes controls. We’d love to also see iTunesMenu display the current track’s rating, but aside from that minor shortcoming it’s fab.

Check Off 3.8

($free) checkoffapp.com
With everyone and his dog rattling on about Get Things Done (GTD) processes and applications, it’s a wonder anyone actually does get anything done. By the time you’ve learned how to use applications and rigorously apply procedures, entire days have been sucked up by trying to be more efficient, which has resulted in many a Mac user being harshly beaten by the giant no-no stick of ironic doom. Check Off keeps things simple–it sits in the menu bar, and enables you to create a list of labelled things to do. Once you’ve done a ‘thing’ you can check it off (bonus points, Mr. Developer, for actually using a sensible name for your app!).

It’s simple, it does the job, and we like it. And Version 4’s due soon, so pop over to the developer’s website and offer your two cents regarding the feature set for the next major release.

ASM 2.2.7

($15) vercruesse.de
Time to show our age (or experience, depending on your point of view). Back in the days where OS X was just a glint in the mailman’s eye, there was no Dock. App-switching was instead done via a menu at the top-right of the screen. Old-hands often tearfully think back to those halcyon days, wishing nostalgia could replace the present day–at least when it comes to switching apps. ASM makes such dreams come true.

If you’re thinking “that’s great, granddad, but really what is the point, you old fart?”, we’ve some wise words for you, young whippersnapper. First, it’s irritating how the Dock’s apps can’t be ordered outside of launch order, unless they’re permanently housed. ASM enables you to list open apps in alphabetical order. Furthermore, ASM can dim hidden apps, and force single-application mode (auto-hiding everything else when you switch apps) or ‘Classic Window Mode’, which brings all of an application’s windows forward when one is clicked.

Simple WindowSets 2.0

($12.95) hamsoftengineering.com
If you regularly work on projects requiring a bunch of Finder windows, you’ll know how much of a pain it can be to set them up every time. Also, Finder isn’t the most stable of apps, and one quick crash is all it needs to take with it your careful planning. This latest release of Simple WindowSets does away with such problems, enabling you to define window sets based on currently open Finder windows and restore said sets from its menu-bar extra’s drop-down. Usefully, existing sets can be updated, and preferences settings enable you to append or replace on-screen Finder windows with a selected set. Simple WindowSets doesn’t currently play nice with smart folders, but that’s our only niggle and it’s therefore an essential download.

Isolator 3.3

($free) willmore.eu
A bit of a leftfield choice, this one, but it’s useful for the easily distracted, like your correspondent. Having grown increasingly used to WriteRoom’s ‘block out all distractions’ display option, it’s interesting to see another app provide similar focus for any application, and once installed, Isolator does just that. Click on the menu-bar icon and all background apps are hidden behind a user-definable level of blur and darkness. Another click and normality resumes. Options for system-wide hot-keys, Dock-hiding and the ‘clickability’ of dimmed windows and icons ensure this application is on the right side of the ‘configurable but simple’ line.

Isolator helps you focus on your work by displaying background apps in fuzz-o-vision.

So, that’s our half-dozen menu-bar wonders. What do you think of our selection? Do you have any favorites of your own that you think we should have covered? (We already hear Butler uses grinding some axes!) Let us know in the comments!

Apple has issued a July 7 deadline for third-party developers hoping to have their applications considered for inclusion in the AppStore launch expected this month, according to iPhone Atlas.

Applications will continue to be accepted after the deadline but are not guaranteed to be included in the AppStore debut. The AppStore is expected to open with the release of 2.0 firmware to coincide with the launch of the iPhone 3G on July 11.