software - page 50

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.

August is back-to-school month and in the era of increasing glasnost between Apple and its prime competitor up in Redmond, WA, students can save 30% on Microsoft’s Office 2008 for Mac until September 8th with the purchase of any Mac at Apple resellers and Apple retail stores across the US.

A full list of participating Apple resellers is available at Microsoft’s website. Click on the “Save Now” link.

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.”

Yesterday we were all set to post about the MobileMe mail server crash and ask how it is new boss Eddie Cue hasn’t already fixed Apple’s troubled web services division in the week or so he’s been on the job.

Then the servers came back up.

All MobileMe mail users were only affected for a couple of hours, but it appears there were sporadic outages for some customers throughout the evening and continuing into today. Steve Jobs has promised to have the service ship-shape by the end of the year, but that’s four and a half months of potential bumpiness that can’t be good for Apple’s PR.

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!

Technorati Tags: iphone, i am rich, kottke

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

Adding to recent criticism charging Apple with inadequate attention to security concerns, Consumer Reports takes the company to task for the lack of phishing protection in Safari. Among seven common online blunders that can “ruin your computer or invite identity theft,” thinking your Mac shields you from all risks comes in at #5, according to the report.

Citing a State of the Net survey that says Mac users fall prey to phishing scams at about the same rate as Windows users, CR recommends Mac users ditch Safari for Firefox or Opera until Apple builds phishing protection into its flagship browser.

Man, Apple is really trying to make things right today. First, the company released iPhone OS 2.0.1, which everyone seems to agree fixes virtually everything wrong with the prior release (except cut, copy, and paste, of course), and now, it comes to light via Ars Technica that Steve Jobs himself apparently sent out an e-mail announcing the reorganization of the Mobile Me team, saying the internet services suite is “not up to Apple’s Standards.”

The new leader of a combined internet services team will be Eddy Cue, the current iTunes honcho. Jobs noted that the company intends to make Mobile Me into “a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.” That might be possible, but I’m beginning to wonder if the computer side of the equation will ever offer the true Push syncing that was originally promised. Web and iPhone are there, but not the local client apps.

But it’s good to see that even this high-flying Apple crew can admit its mistakes. It was never a good idea to try to launch Mobile Me, the App Store, iPhone OS 2.0 and the iPhone 3G on basically the same day. Is it any wonder that all four of those major hardware, software and service launches experienced some growing pains? Had Mobile Me merely offered over-the-air iPhone syncing at launch, as Jobs suggests in his e-mail, the rest of the suite could have been saved for a 2009 launch with a Snow Leopard Mail and Calendar combo optimized for Push. Let’s hope Apple really takes this to heart — iPhone software development had a negative impact on the launch of Leopard, and the quadruple launch of July 11, 2008 messed up, well, everything. Let’s get some discipline and make the best technology products in the world even better!

Image via Fail Me is More Like It

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, mobile me

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:

• Everything runs much faster. Could be my imagination, but feels nice!
• Typing is much faster. No more keyboard lag.
• Infuriatingly sluggish Contacts app now loads fast and scrolls smoothly.
• Syncing is much speedier. No longer backs up every app! TTF.
• Google Maps app seems much faster. Loads quick, smoother scrolling and zippy zooming.
• Overall, update procedure is pretty quick: It installs entirely new firmware, but songs, movies, contacts and other data is left untouched — so there’s no 45 minute restore to suffer through.
• NetShare app is not deleted. My copy of NetShare works fine after the update. Be sure to sync everything, including apps, BEFORE updating. BoxOffice also seems to sync correctly, according to reports on other sites.

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 released Security Update 2008-005 yesterday, fixing a DNS exploit others began work on nearly a month ago. With an increase in reported instances of malware and trojan horses targeting OS X systems, Apple has lately been widely criticized for being slow to move on security vulnerabilities, especially with respect to the iPhone.

The DNS fix is among 13 items updated in yesterday’s security release, which is available through Software Update and at Apple’s web site.

Via MacWorld.

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

Click the image to view VMware’s Fusion demo on YouTube.

The good folks at VMware have IT Pros all over excited about the new Beta 2 release for its Fusion 2.0 virtualization software. According to our very own Leigh McMullen, this release is important “because it is the dominant virtualization technology in IT Shops, allowing us to create VM’s on our Macs as a “Lab” machine, that we can later run in production, (or take a production image, and run it on our Macs for experimentation).”

Additional goodies in the new release (which is a free upgrade for users of Fusion 1.x) include Leopard Server Virtualization – Yes, Parallels could already do that, but they charge over a thousand bucks for the version that can – and support for Ubuntu Unity mode – which is a FIRST as far as we know.

Check out our gallery of screenshots below:

If you are a Mac Boot Camp user and ever wished you could easily re-allocate free partition space between Mac and Windows, Paragon software’s latest offering may be just what you’ve been looking for. A free, pre-release version of Camp Tune promises to let users redistribute free space between Macintosh and Windows partitions in minutes without data loss, adding free megabytes to partitions on either operating system quickly and easily.

While Leopard’s Disk Utility supports partition resizing, a Boot Camp partition cannot be re-sized without erasing it (although you could back it up first and restore it after re-sizing). Camp Tune’s disk image must be burned to a CD or DVD, creating a bootable Linux-based Disk which Tom Fedro, president of Paragon Software Group – Americas, says “helps remove the barriers between the Windows and Mac operating systems.”

After a rocky three weeks since the official launch, Apple’s MobileMe service got an all-green status update Tuesday night. In a message to subscribers the company said it has established a dedicated chat line for anyone with ongoing problems related to MobileMe mail, the final piece in what the company calls “this new ambitious service” to become fully operational.

The status update also described a newly discovered bug which caused some MobileMe users to lose contact and calendar data on their iPhones, though the integrity of the data on their Macs and with the MobileMe “cloud” was unaffected.

Apple posted a resource for getting data restored to affected iPhones as well.

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.