iPhone Novice

Dispatch from the iPad 2 front lines.... by Steven Sande

2011-03-11T12:30:00.000-08:00

11:45 AM (Steve Sande): I'm here at the Aspen Grove Apple Store in Littleton, Colorado, and fortunately it's warm and clear. I'm at about the 20th person in line, and my cohort in crime Erica Sadun just showed up.

It's a congenial group in line this morning. Apparently, the first person in line showed up at 11:30 AM yesterday. Most people in the line so far are optimistic that they'll get one, and the store manager is talking up people in the line to see how they're doing. There's even a "line host" passing out bottles of water, and we've heard that they'll be handing out sunscreen wipes soon.

The store will be closing between 3 and 5 PM, then re-opening at 5 PM to start sales. During that time, I'm sure that the iPads on display will be replaced with iPad 2s wearing Smart Covers, that a handful of iPad 2 cases will be hung from the wall display, and probably even a new window display will go up. We'll be doing some live video this afternoon, so keep tuned to TUAW.

1:30 PM (Victor Agreda): Victor's in line at the temporary Apple Store that was put up in Austin, Texas to handle the hordes of SXSW attendees who need their iPad 2 fixes. The first guy in line was there at 6:30 AM - much smarter than the fool who got to the Aspen Grove store at 11:30 yesterday!

iMovie for iPhone and iPad Now Available

2011-03-10T15:07:00.001-08:00

iMovie helps you turn the HD video you shoot on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch into a masterpiece worthy of the red carpet (or just the one in your living room). This fun, fast, feature-rich app is designed especially for Multi-Touch.

Shoot video on your device and it automatically appears in iMovie, ready for you to edit just the way you want. Simply tap to add video and photos, drag to trim clips, and slide to preview your project — you’ll have a four-star short film to share in no time at all.

Let your fingers do the fine-tuning. If you’re using iMovie on iPad, just pinch open any transition to reveal the Precision Editor — right in the timeline. It’s easy to see where one clip ends and another begins, so you can tap and drag to make advanced edits with pinpoint accuracy.

iPad 2

2011-03-10T09:10:00.001-08:00

The IPad 2
Posted on Thursday Mar 10, 2011 7:10 AM by Jason Snell
A year ago, nobody had an iPad. Then Apple sold 15 million of them in just nine months, creating a whole new category of technology product. The iPad may have become, in the words of Steve Jobs, "the most successful consumer product ever launched."

It turns out that a lot of people saw the iPad's appeal: it's a supremely portable device that's well suited for checking your e-mail, surfing the Web, playing games, reading books and other stuff you get off the Internet, and even for getting work done. Kids and the elderly have embraced it.

It's awfully hard to follow such a massive success, but that's the task set out for Apple's new iPad 2, which goes on sale Friday. At least the iPad 2 has this going for it: the original model caught the technology industry so flat-footed that only now are true competitors beginning to appear.

Those competitors will now face a new iteration of the iPad, one that's faster, smaller, and lighter than the model introduced a year ago-all while retaining the $499 entry price that has proven all but impossible for Apple's competitors to match. It's almost unfair.

A game of inches (and ounces)

Call it Jobs's Law if you like: The latest version of any Apple product is likely to be thinner and lighter than its predecessor. And so it is with the iPad 2. The size difference between the original iPad and the iPad 2 may seem slight, but that's only because we're dealing with such small products to begin with. But for products this small, every ounce and fraction of an inch counts.

The iPad 2 measures 7.31 by 9.5 by 0.34 inches, and weighs in at 1.33 pounds (in the case of the Wi-Fi-only version, that is-the AT&T and Verizon 3G versions are .01 and .02 pound heavier). That means Apple shaved .17 pound off the Wi-Fi version and .26 to .27 pound off the 3G version. The iPad 2 is also .16 inch narrower, .06 inch shorter, and .16 inch thinner than the original iPad.

A matter of small degrees, to be sure, until you consider the percentage change: the iPad 2 is roughly two-thirds the thickness of the original iPad, and 88 percent of its weight (83 percent when comparing 3G models). Pick up an iPad 2 after handling an original iPad, and you'll notice the difference right away. This is a lighter, thinner device.

In order to shave off that .16 inch of thickness, Apple has transformed the anodized aluminum back panel of the iPad. The original model's back panel was a frame with four flat edges and a gently curved back surface. The iPad 2 eschews the frame, opting for a single surface that much more rapidly transitions from curve to flat. (This has the effect of making the iPad 2 much less wobbly than the original when laid on a flat surface.)

Without those edges, the iPad 2's ports and buttons are now positioned on a curving portion of the back panel, rather than on its side. The feel is quite different, a bit like reverting the flat surfaces of the iPhone 4 to the curved back of an iPhone 3G. A few times I found myself struggling to insert cables into the iPad 2's dock connector at the proper angle because I was confused by the curve of the back panel.

The end result of all this slimming down is that the iPad 2 is easier to handle than the original model. In my review of the original iPad, I said it was "heavy enough and slippery enough that I found it difficult to hold in one hand." In fact, the original iPad turned out to be a product that really demanded a case of some sort, just to make it easier to handle.

The iPad 2 is easier to carry with one hand, and the decreased weight makes it easier to hold for longer periods of time. But if you're planning on using the iPad 2 to read a lot, you'll still find yourself propping it against your chest or setting it on a table-the tablet is still not light enough to hold in one hand for extended periods of time. (For that, you'll need something more on the scale of the Amazon Kindle 3, which is less than half the weight of the iPad 2.)

Eighteen variations on a theme

The original iPad came in six different variations-Wi-Fi-only and Wi-Fi/3G versions, each available with 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of storage. The product was such a hit that Apple apparently decided that even more variations would be better-as a result, there are 18 different versions of the iPad 2. It's a little crazy.

The storage variation remains: every model is available in 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB capacities. You can also choose an iPad with either a traditional black bezel or a new white bezel-which Apple insists will be available on day one, despite the company's failure in ever shipping the promised white version of the iPhone 4. That's six variations right there. Now multiply them by three, since the iPad 2 comes in a Wi-Fi-only version as well as two separate Wi-Fi/3G versions: one compatible with AT&T's GSM-based cellular network, and a different one compatible with Verizon's CDMA-based network. (Apple seems to be differentiating between the two by referring to the AT&T model as "3G with Micro-SIM card.")

The good news is that the iPad 2 costs just what the original iPad did. The base-model Wi-Fi editions cost $499 (16GB), $599 (32GB), and $699 (64GB). Both sets of Wi-Fi/3G models cost $130 more than their Wi-Fi counterparts. There's no price difference for white or black models.

What hasn't changed

Though it's thinner and lighter, the iPad 2, at a glance, looks very much like the original iPad. Its front is a sheet of glass over a bright 1024-by-768-pixel display surrounded by a bezel (again, now available in black or white) that's going to be necessary so long as humans grasp with opposable thumbs. The aluminum frame around the outside of the bezel of the original iPad has been reduced to a thin edge, almost entirely invisible, in the iPad 2.

The position of the iPad 2's buttons and ports are, likewise, more or less undisturbed. There's a sleep/wake button at the top right edge, a standard headphone jack at top left, a volume rocker and a sliding switch (configurable to lock screen orientation or mute alert sounds via the Settings app) at the top of the right side, a 30-pin dock connector port at the bottom, and a home button at the bottom of the front face. The iPad 2's built-in microphone is dead center at the top edge of the device-it was next to the headphone jack on the original iPad. Both 3G models feature a black plastic cutout along the top rear face in order to improve cellular reception; the AT&T 3G model also has a micro-SIM card slot along the top left edge.

Dual-core speed

The iPad 2 uses a new Apple-designed processor called the A5, which is making its first appearance on the scene. Apple is generally cagey about tech specs for products like the iPhone and iPad, but by all accounts, the A5 is a dual-core version of the 1GHz A4 chip that powers the iPhone 4 and the original iPad. The iPad 2 also has 512MB of RAM-twice that of the original iPad-and a 200MHz bus speed, likewise twice that of the original.

Because the A5 is a dual-core processor, Apple claims the iPad 2 can run at speeds up to double that of the original iPad. As with any dual-core processor, the key about "up to double" is that software must be optimized to take advantage of multiple processor cores, or that speed goes to waste. This is the first dual-core processor to appear on an iOS device, and it'll be interesting to see under what circumstances the A5 is noticeably faster than the A4, and when it's not.

But processor speed isn't the only part of the system that determines how it performs. Graphics performance has become a major component in determining how fast a computing device feels. And Apple says that the graphics performance on the iPad 2 is as much as nine times faster than on the original iPad.

So does the iPad 2 measure up to Apple's claims? Absolutely, though it's hard to determine whether the dual-core processor or the improved graphics performance deserve the credit. (Maybe the question is moot.) From the moment I started using the iPad 2 with familiar apps from my original iPad, I could tell that the system was faster. I thought scrolling through tweets in Twitterrific on my iPad was smooth as can be … until I scrolled through the tweet list on the iPad 2. Everything felt smoother, and items loaded faster.

Part of the speed boost, especially when I started to test performance in Safari, probably needs to be credited to iOS 4.3, which ships with the iPad 2 and includes a dramatic improvement to Safari's JavaScript engine. When I installed the golden master version of iOS 4.3 on an original iPad, performance improved as well. But even when both devices were running iOS 4.3, the iPad 2 was 1.6 times as fast as the original in running the SunSpider JavaScript test, and 1.9 times as fast as an iPhone 4 running the iOS 4.3 golden master.

In short, the iPad 2 is the fastest iOS device ever made, by a long shot. And it's not just an academic distinction: you can sense the speed when you use it, because everything's faster and smoother than it was on the original iPad.

Despite the boosts in processing power, Apple claims that the iPad 2 has the same ten-hour battery life as the original model. In nearly a week of use, I never saw a reason to disbelieve the claims. The iPad's all-day battery life, perhaps its killer feature, remains intact.

Cameras and FaceTime

The original iPad debuted just before Apple embraced video chat with its FaceTime software and added a front-facing camera to the iPhone. (It subsequently added both front- and rear-facing cameras to the iPod touch.) With the iPad 2, the company has brought two cameras to all of its mobile iOS devices.

The cameras in the iPad 2 are essentially the same as those in the fourth-generation iPod touch: it's nice that they're there, but they're not particularly impressive in terms of quality. The front-facing camera is the same one used in the iPhone 4 and the iPod touch, offering only VGA resolution (640 by 480 pixels). It's grainy in low-light settings, but is perfectly serviceable for its intended purpose, which is video chat.

FaceTime works on the iPad 2 much like it works on the iPod touch; in the Settings app you log in with an Apple ID and set an e-mail address to use as your FaceTime "number," so people can call you. From the FaceTime app, you can call people in your contacts list and set favorites. (FaceTime on the iPad is, like FaceTime on the iPhone 4, supported only over Wi-Fi connections.)

Once you've connected, the iPad's larger screen definitely exposes the low quality of FaceTime video (whether it's caused by the low-quality camera or the intense bandwidth required by a live video chat, or both, is debatable). Still, the video is good enough to be usable. The iPad's size, however, makes it a bit ungainly as a FaceTime device. It's hard to have a long conversation while holding the iPad in your hand. Propping the tablet on a tabletop or in your lap works better; propping it up with Apple's Smart Cover in typing position gave my interlocutor a nice view of my ceiling fan, while putting it in the Smart Cover's movie-viewing position made me hunch down in order to get in the frame.

The rear camera on the iPad 2 appears to be identical to the one found on the iPod touch. (It's positioned just beneath the sleep button on the back side of the device, creating a challenge for iPad casemakers everywhere.) Apple touts this camera as being "for video," and there's a reason: as a still camera it's about seven-tenths of a megapixel, with poor performance in low-light conditions. But it's capable of shooting 720p HD video and, in well-lit environments, the quality is decent.

I'm not sure I'm ever going to hold up the iPad 2 and use it as a video camera, but it does work-and most important, you can use that camera from within FaceTime, so you can shoot video of your kids crazily running around and send it all back to grandma.

Pick your 3G network

Apple's relationship with Verizon Wireless in the United States continues to deepen. The first sign of an alliance was when Verizon began selling iPads in its stores, bundled with a MiFi wireless router. Then came the Verizon iPhone 4.

Now, at last, there's an iPad that can use Verizon's cellular data network without needing to tote around some other piece of tech. This means that iPad 2 owners can choose between AT&T's (generally faster) 3G network and Verizon's (generally more reliable) 3G network. That's the good news. The bad news is, iPad 2 buyers will need to decide up front which network they want to use-there are separate models for each network, so once you've bought a Verizon iPad 2, there's no way to switch it to use AT&T's network (or vice versa).

The iPad 2's connection to AT&T's network has been upgraded from the original iPad models. Like the iPhone 4, the iPad 2 supports AT&T's HSUPA/HSDPA system, which will result in faster 3G transfer in areas where that protocol is available. I managed a 2.2-mbps upload rate and a 1.1-mbps download rate from my house, comparable to the speeds I saw from the iPhone 4 on AT&T's network. (Apple didn't provide us with a Verizon-compatible version of the iPad 2 for review, but its transfer rates will likely be similar to those on the Verizon-compatible iPhone 4-generally slower than AT&T's.)

If you live in a place where both carriers offer good coverage, then deciding which model to buy will prove to be an interesting challenge. The data plans offered by the two companies differ, though they're generally competitive with one another. If you don't use much data, AT&T has an advantage with its $15-a-month plan for 250MB of data. If you use more than 3GB per month, Verizon becomes the better deal. In between, it's a toss-up. (AT&T also offers a post-paid plan that can be added to your phone bill and offers better overage rates.)

If you travel internationally, the AT&T iPad is a better deal, since it uses the GSM standard that's more widely in use internationally. And since the iPad is an unlocked cellular device, you can buy a foreign micro-SIM card and save a bunch on data rates by not paying AT&T's expensive roaming charges.

Then there's the question of whether you need to buy an iPad 2 with 3G at all. Many smartphones-including the iPhone 4-have a Wi-Fi-based hotspot feature that lets them share their Internet connections with other devices. Verizon and AT&T charge $20 a month for the feature, which comes with 2GB of data. (AT&T's plan requires a user to also be on the $25 a month Data Pro plan.) Two gigabytes for $20 is a pretty good deal when compared to the iPad 3G plans (other than AT&T's ultracheap 250MB plan). So if you, your iPad, and your iPhone (or other smartphone with a personal-hotspot feature) are seldom parted, you might be better off saving the $130 and buying a Wi-Fi-only model.

There are a lot of variables here, clearly. But once you've chosen your iPad 2, you're locked in, so it's wise to consider your options before you buy. The good news is, if you spend $130 for a 3G model, there's no contract to sign and you're not required to buy a data plan-so the extra cost of the 3G-equipped iPad might not be too much to spend if you aren't sure and want to keep your options open. You'll still have to pick between Verizon and AT&T, however.

One final wrinkle to the 3G buying decision: Only 3G iPad models come with GPS capabilities. There's a good reason for this-iOS devices use something called assisted GPS to dramatically decrease the amount of time it takes for the devices to determine their location. (Despite the name, this is not some sort of phony GPS-the assisted just means that the devices look for nearby cellular towers to get a general fix on their location, which prevents a minutes-long GPS scan that would be required on a GPS device without the cellular assist.) In any event, if you dream of using your iPad as a jumbo GPS navigation console, you'll absolutely need a 3G model.

Smart accessories abound

With the release of the iPad 2, Apple is also releasing several accessories related to the iPad 2.

Most notable is the Smart Cover, available in either leather ($69) or polyurethane ($39). A Smart Cover magnetically adheres to the side of the iPad 2 and protects the front, locking and unlocking the iPad when you open and close the cover. It's pretty nifty, and it sets the bar pretty high for all future iPad 2 accessories. To read a whole lot more about it, be sure to read my iPad 2 Smart Cover review.

But there are other accessories: the $39 Apple Digital AV adapter finally lets capable iOS devices display HD video on HDTVs, and even lets the iPad 2 mirror its own screen on an external display. (Read on for details, or see our full review.)

There's also a new $29 iPad 2 Dock, which I wasn't able to test. Like the original iPad Dock, it allows you to set your iPad upright in portrait orientation and charge, sync, or even play audio- or video-out. Now the bad news: The iPad 2 and the original iPad's dock connector are different enough that accessories that tightly fit to the hardware won't be compatible with the new model, so you probably won't be able to reuse many of your iPad accessories if you buy an iPad 2. Apple also seems to have discontinued the iPad Keyboard Dock entirely. (No great loss, in my opinion-you'd be better off with a dock or a case and the excellent $69 Apple Wireless Keyboard, a combination that allows you type in either portrait or landscape orientation, rather than the forced portrait orientation of the Keyboard Dock.)

A video breakthrough

One of the most pleasantly surprising features of the iPad 2 is its improved support for HDTVs and HD video. A combination of iPad 2 hardware upgrades, a new adapter from Apple, and updates to the iOS share the credit, but the end result is great news for both entertainment and education.

On the entertainment side, the new Apple Digital AV Adapter lets the iPad 2 spread its wings. With this adapter, the iPad 2 can output high-definition video at resolutions up to 1080p, as well as Dolby Digital surround sound, all served via a standard HDMI cable that the owner of any HDTV will be familiar with.

I played back several HD video files on several different HDTVs via the iPad 2 and the HDMI adapter, and the video quality was excellent. The inability to output HD video has been a sore spot on the iOS since the release of the original iPad, but now that it's here, it looks (and sounds) great.

Exclusive to the iPad 2 that will be hailed by educators, presenters, and anyone else who has ever wanted to show off their iPad's screen to a large crowd: video mirroring. When connected to the HDMI adapter, the iPad 2 will display a duplicate version of the contents of its screen on an external monitor. Want to demo an education app via a projector or HDTV for a classroom full of kids? The iPad 2 makes it possible.

In mirroring mode, the iPad's interface is crystal clear. It looks great. Because the iPad's video interface is a 4:3 aspect ratio, you'll find black bars on the sides of the TV when in mirroring mode. The bars grow even wider if you put the iPad in portrait orientation, but the image of an iPad 2 in portrait mode still looks good-albeit smaller-on an HDTV.

On a few TVs I tried, however, I needed to adjust the video settings in order to display the entire picture. It depends on how your TV set frames HD content; my advice is to fiddle with the video settings until you get a picture that pleases you.

For the record, the iPad 2's mirroring mode and its video-out mode don't fight with each other. If an app supports direct video output to an external display, the iPad stops mirroring and switches to that mode. In addition to the Video app, there are lots of other examples: Keynote uses the external display as a presentation screen, for instance.

The software story

The iPad 2 arrives with a new version of the operating system that powers the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This version, iOS 4.3, is hardly earth-shattering, but does offers a few nice new features.

Third-party apps can now take advantage of streaming video via AirPlay, the system that lets iOS devices stream audio and video to various devices, most notably the second-generation Apple TV. The Videos and iPod apps can now connect to Macs or PCs running iTunes via the Home Sharing system, meaning-at long last!-you can stream music or videos from any Mac or PC in your house to your iOS device, elsewhere on your local network.

In iOS 4.3, the slide switch on the iPad can be put to use in one of two ways: It can either function as an orientation-lock switch, as it did when the iPad was first released; or it can function as a mute switch for alert sounds, as it did upon the release of iOS 4.2. In iOS 4.3, users can choose either behavior via the Settings app. Now can't we all just get along?

There are a bunch of other additions to iOS 4.3; stay tuned to Macworld.com for our full report on iOS 4.3, which is forthcoming.

Along with the new version of the operating system, Apple is introducing two apps as a part of the iPad 2 launch. One, iMovie, is an update to the existing version of iMovie that runs on the iPhone 4 and iPod touch. The other, GarageBand, is an all-new app for the iPad. Both apps are excellent, showing off the power of the iPad, the iOS, and, specifically, the iPad 2.

It's interesting that for the original iPad launch, Apple showcased three $10 iWork apps: Keynote, Numbers, and Pages. It sent a message that the iPad could be used for productivity, not just for consumption. And in the intervening 11 months, we've seen all sorts of interesting productivity applications released for the iPad. (Along with lots of games.) The iPad app ecosystem launched strong and has continued to grow, making it one of the iPad's biggest advantages over competing tablets.

This time out, Apple has launched its new iPad with a pair of $5 creativity apps. What's the message? In the case of iMovie, it's clearly tied to the existence of the iPad's cameras. Now you can shoot video with the iPad (ideally the HD-capable rear-facing one) and then edit it right within iMovie. Apple's also enabled a video workflow that starts with video shot on an iPhone 4, and then ends up being transferred to an iPad 2 for editing. For more of my impressions after spending a few days with iMovie, check out my hands-on with iMovie for iPad.

GarageBand for iPad is an almost breathtaking achievement. At times it feels more responsive than GarageBand running on the late-model iMac on my desk at work. Strumming its "smart guitars" made me almost feel musical, and I was able to create a (terrible) cover version of Fountains of Wayne's "Hey Julie" in about 30 minutes, complete with vocals, guitar, bass, drums, and organ. My nine-year-old daughter was entranced with the app as well.

GarageBand for iPad isn't as full-featured as the Mac version, but neither does it feel like a toy version. It's a real app with a lot of real power, and I'd imagine that it will become madly popular in schools and garages everywhere. For more information, check out my first look at GarageBand for iPad.

Both apps do suffer from one of the great failings of the iOS: difficulty in getting files in and out and moving them around. To move an iMovie project from the iPhone to the iPad, for example, you've got to (1) export the file on the iPhone, (2) connect it to a Mac, (3) go to iTunes, (4) click the Apps tab, (5) scroll down, (6) click on iMovie, (7) click on your project, (8) click Save to put it on your hard drive; and then you have to (9) detach your iPhone, (10) attach your iPad, (11) click on it in iTunes, (12) click on the Apps tab, (13) scroll down, (14) click on iMovie, and then (15) drag your project back into iTunes.

Apple, there's got to be a better way. Maybe in iOS 5?

Should you upgrade?

Let's say you are one of those 15 million people who bought an iPad last year. Now there's a new iPad. Should you dump your old one and get a new one?

Though the iPad 2 is an improvement on the original iPad in numerous ways, it's still an evolutionary product, not a revolutionary one. If you're happy with your current iPad, there's no reason to dump it just because there's a shinier, newer one. (This is not to say that millions of people won't do just that. I mean: shiny!) If you've invested in iPad accessories such as a dock or case, keep in mind that you probably won't be able to use them with the new iPad.

Of course, if there's someone in your family who has been clamoring for an iPad, now might be the time to buy an iPad 2 and hand down the old model to them-or, if you're really nice, give them the new iPad while you soldier on with the classic model.

If you've become a major user of FaceTime or other video-chat apps on your iPhone or iPod touch, upgrading to an iPad 2 makes more sense, thanks to the integrated cameras. People who want to bestow an iPad on an older friend or relative who is a bit reluctant to use technology can now add video chat to the mix of features that make the iPad a compelling device for the older set.

Anyone who gives demonstrations of iPad apps-in seminars, classrooms, or boardrooms-will want to get an iPad 2 immediately just for the video-mirroring feature. If you're an iPad-toting presenter, it'll be worth the investment.

Finally, if you live somewhere with great Verizon reception and you're stuck with an AT&T iPad, trading up the Verizon model is worth considering … but you might want to also consider adding a tethering plan to a Verizon smartphone and deactivating your existing iPad's monthly service.

Macworld's buying advice

The iPad was a huge hit, vastly surpassing anyone's expectations for it. (In my review last year, I set a ceiling for success at 10 million, meaning my most optimistic estimate was still five million iPads short.)

It's hard to bet against Apple these days. The company is on a roll, not only in terms of sales but in terms of product design. Less than a year on from the original iPad, the iPad 2 is an improvement that doesn't divert any of the iPad's powerful momentum. It's the original iPad, only more so-even smaller, even thinner, even faster than before.

If you're one of those people who practices remarkable feats of self-discipline when it comes to buying first-generation hardware products, it's time to celebrate: the second iPad is here, and you can finally slake your thirst. By waiting, you'll end up with a faster, lighter product with the same great price and battery life-and with two video cameras and video-mirroring capabilities, to boot.

For Apple's competitors in the tablet-device market, the iPad 2 is a bucket of water to the face. After more than a year of struggling to catch up to the original iPad, here's a new model that addresses many of the iPad's deficiencies, dramatically improves its speed, and doesn't cede any ground on price, features, or battery life. The iPad 2 raises the bar Apple set a year ago-and it's time for the rest of the industry to scramble again to catch up.

For everyone else, the iPad 2 is a triumph, an iPad that's even more iPad than the original. And the original one was really good. The first iPad was a bolt from the blue, a device that defined an entire category, and a tough act to follow. The iPad 2 follows it with aplomb.

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iOS 4.3 spotlight: Message alerts options

2011-03-09T15:40:00.000-08:00

Aside from major features like Personal Hotspot and iTunes Home Sharing, iOS 4.3 also brings some subtle changes to the way message alerts work. The settings for the Messages app now allow you to have alert tones repeat up to ten times at two minute intervals, which will come in handy if you're away from your iPhone for awhile and miss a text.
Most of the 17 new (iPhone 4-only) text tones introduced in iOS 4.2have been retooled. These new tones were quite lengthy before iOS 4.3, with some of them seeming more suited to a ringtone than a text message alert. 11 of the tones have been dramatically shortened and/or sped up -- including Noir, which I thought was short enough to begin with -- while six tones remain at roughly the same length they were before iOS 4.3.
Most tones are now less than a second long, and they sound much less overdriven, too; several of the new tones were so loud in iOS 4.2 that they sounded distorted through the iPhone 4's speaker. That's no longer an issue now as far as I can tell.
Another subtle change that you might not even notice at first: vibration alerts for messages have been changed up. Before, new messages had the same, brief vibration as the new mail alert. As of iOS 4.3, new text messages will instead give two sharp and quite noticeable vibratory pulses.
We're unsure if the new tones have made it to the iPhone 3GS as of iOS 4.3; they weren't available on the older iPhone in iOS 4.2, so chances are they're still iPhone 4-only.

iOS 4.3 spotlight: Message alerts options originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 09 Mar 2011 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

New MobileMe Calendar. Now Available to All Members.

2011-03-09T11:58:00.000-08:00

The new MobileMe Calendar is now out of beta and available to all members. We'd like to thank everyone who took part in the beta for helping to make this the best MobileMe Calendar yet.

To start using the new calendar (see system requirements below), sign in tome.com/calendar, click "Upgrade now" in the lower left corner of the Calendar web application, and follow the instructions. If you have already been using the Calendar beta, you don't need to do anything.

Here are the highlights of the new MobileMe Calendar:

The best calendar service for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
The new MobileMe Calendar works great with the built-in calendar app on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch by always keeping it in sync with your Mac or PC. New events or changes are automatically pushed to your iOS 4 devices so your calendar stays up to date. If you schedule a meeting on your device, that's pushed everywhere too.

Share calendars with family and friends
You can easily share your calendars with one or more MobileMe members to keep everyone on the same page. For example, create a shared calendar called "Family" for weekend activities. You can allow the person you're sharing a calendar with to edit events, and you can set up email notifications to tell you when they make a change.

Publish a calendar for a group or team
The new MobileMe Calendar lets you share a read-only public calendar, perfect for publishing an events calendar such as a soccer team schedule. After setting it up, you can send the team members a link to view the calendar on their iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC.

Event invitations with RSVPs
You can also invite guests to an event from MobileMe Calendar. Just add their email address to the event (they don't have to be a MobileMe member) and your guests will get an invitation email they can respond to directly by clicking a link. Your event then automatically updates, making it easy to track RSVPs right in your calendar.

New web application
MobileMe Calendar includes a new web application at me.com with great-looking calendar views. You'll find redesigned day, week, and month views, as well as a new list view to make scanning your events easier. The new web application works best with Safari 5, Firefox 3.6, and Internet Explorer 8.

Please note these system requirements for the new MobileMe Calendar:
iPhone or iPod touch: iOS 4.1
iPad: iOS 3.2; iOS 4.2 (coming in November) required for push calendar updates
Mac: Mac OS X Snow Leopard version 10.6.4
PC: MobileMe Control Panel version 1.6.3 and Outlook 2007 or 2010

If you meet these system requirements, sign in to me.com/calendar to upgrade. For more information about the new MobileMe Calendar, please read this FAQ. For assistance setting up Calendar, please check MobileMe Help or visitwww.apple.com/support/mobileme for online chat support.

iPad 2 vs. Xoom vs. Optimus Pad vs. Galaxy Tab 10 vs TouchPad vs BlackBerry Playbook

2011-03-05T17:31:00.000-08:00

Make your choice....

Video Apple Doesn't Want You To See...

2011-03-05T16:25:00.001-08:00

iPad 2 Smart Covers inspired by Japanese bath tub lids?

2011-03-05T14:47:00.000-08:00

veryone following the iPad 2 announcement is aware of the new Smart Covers for the iPad 2. These flap-like covers attach to the iPad using a magnet and have an accordion-style look. The covers, amusingly enough, also resemble a style of Japanese bath tub lids!

The resemblance is so uncanny that the unveiling of these new cases caused a flurry of bath tub lid comments among Japanese Apple fans (our Rick Martin points to Asiajin's note that the caption above translates as 'Completely Identical,' a common Japanese web meme similar to the English 'Separated at Birth'). Makes you wonder how many unsuspecting Westerners will be the target of quiet snickering when they whip out their Smart Cover-adorned iPad 2 the next time they are in Tokyo.

via: www.tuaw.com

It's Finally Here... #iPad2

2011-03-02T11:00:00.001-08:00

http://www.apple.com/ipad/

All New Design...

iPad is now 33 percent thinner and up to 15 percent lighter. You’ll feel the difference when you pick it up. And when you just can’t put it down.

Superfast graphics.
Go, gamers, go.

With up to nine times the graphics performance, gameplay on iPad is even smoother and more realistic. And faster graphics help apps perform better — especially those with video. You’ll see it when you’re scrolling through your photo library, editing video with iMovie, and viewing animations in Keynote.

2 Cameras

Share big laughs with friends and family over FaceTime. Film your life in HD. And put a twist on your snapshots with Photo Booth.

MobileNotifier is a great start to what iOS notifications should be

2011-02-28T19:41:00.000-08:00

It amazes me at what you can do with a Jailbroken iDevice these days. Peter Hajas and Kyle Adams have created another brilliant reason to jailbreak your iDevice.

If you've ever felt frustrated with the way your iDevice displays notifications to you of messages and alerts, then this jailbreak tweak will have you jumping for joy. MobileNotifier beta v3 is a free open-source, complete rewrite of the iOS notification system.

MobileNotifier moves any notifications to the top of the screen rather than completely over your app, also granting you the ability to ignore these pop-ups without keeping you locked out of your current activity. If you want, you can even store them away for later, all of which can be viewed by double tapping your home bar (Task Switcher). These pending messages are displayed in the area above the task switcher, and even on the main lockscreen. Pretty smart if you ask me :)

Haven't jailbroken your iDevice yet? Now might be the time.

The app will be available in Cydia for FREE! Yes I said FREE. Kyle says it will be "free forever". :)

While still in Beta, it should be near completion soon! Stay Tuned!

For those eager to jump right in, here is the Beta repo: http://phajas.xen.prgmr.com/repo

Check out Peter's blog for more information. peterhajas(dot)com - blog

via: ModMyi

March 2nd 2011 mark your calendars...

2011-02-28T19:17:00.000-08:00

Is this it?? iPad 2

2011-02-26T14:44:00.000-08:00

What do you guys think???

Apple iPad 2 to debut March 2 in San Francisco, report says

2011-02-23T06:36:00.001-08:00

Apple's next-generation iPad -- unofficially known as iPad 2 -- will be unveiled March 2 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, according to a report.
The Cupertino-based tech giant has sent out no invites as of yet, but the News Corp. website AllThingsD reported Tuesday morning that it had confirmed the date and location.

The first iPad was revealed at a media event, also at the Yerba Buena Center, by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Jan. 27, 2010, and hit stores last April. So far, Apple has sold more than 15 million iPads.
The report offered no word on whether or not Jobs will attend the unveiling of the next iPad.
In January, Jobs announced he was taking an indefinite leave of absence to deal with health issues. Jobs remains CEO, but has handed most of his day-to-day duties to Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook.
Jobs did attend a dinner with President Obama last week, along with a handful of other California tech leaders.
The iPad 2 is widely expected to be thinner and lighter than the current version and add new features such as a front-facing camera for video chatting using Apple's FaceTime software, as well as a possible SD-card slot and camera on the back for shooting video and photos.
Officials at Apple and the Yerba Buena Center were unavailable for comment Tuesday.
Whenever it arrives, the iPad 2 will face a much more competitive market than when the first iPad hit retail outlets.
Google is rolling out its first version of its Android operating system designed for tablets -- called Honeycomb -- Thursday on the Motorola Xoom. By the end of the year, Honeycomb is likely to be on dozens of tablets.
Hewlett-Packard also showed off its HP TouchPad recently, running on its HP WebOS software, and Research In Motion is prepping to release the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet soon as well.

Via: http://www.latimes.com/

iPad 2 March 2nd??

2011-02-22T12:21:00.001-08:00

Not much news today..

2011-02-14T12:49:00.001-08:00

Happy Valentines day and to all a good night!!

Verizon iPhone is now available online #Retweet

2011-02-09T01:12:00.000-08:00

The Verizon iPhone is now available for online orders, both atApple's site and Verizon's. Pre-orders were available last week to existing customers, some of whom have received their iPhones already, but online orders are now open to everyone.

If you'd rather buy a Verizon iPhone 4 at a brick-and-mortar store, it'll be available on February 10. My guess is there'll be some pretty long lines (and limited quantities) at your local Apple and Verizon stores, so buy online if at all possible and stay warm.

Carrier choice for the iPhone is nothing new in my part of the world, but I'm still pleased it's finally come to my old stomping grounds in the US. If you're just now joining the Cult of iPhone (one of us, one of ussss...) here's an introduction to the iPhone ecosystem; we also have aniPhone 101 series tailored to beginners.

Greenpois0n Jailbreak now works for Windows Users

2011-02-08T16:00:00.000-08:00

We announced the greenpois0n jailbreak for iOS 4.2.1 over the weekend. At the time, the jailbreak tool only worked on Mac. It didn't take long for the Chronic Dev Team to update the tool to now support Windows. This means you can jailbreak your Verizon iPhone using either a Mac or Windows.

As always, make sure you know what you're getting into when you jailbreak your iPhone. You should definitely read the documentation included with greenpois0n before you alter the way your iPhone works. The instructions for executing the jailbreak are pretty straightforward and you shouldn't have much trouble, even if you're new to the jailbreak world.

New Google Translate app for iPhone #Retweet

2011-02-08T15:33:00.000-08:00

Google has released Google Translate for iPhone, a native iOS app that allows you to “speak to translate” in 15 different languages, with output support for up to 50 languages. Simply speak into your iPhone and the app will translate your speech into a number of different languages, even reading the text aloud for you:

Translate text between 57 languages
Translate by speaking the text instead of typing it (15 languages)
Listen to your translations spoken aloud (23 languages)
Display translations in full screen mode to make it easier for others nearby to read
Star your favorite translations for quick access even when you’re offline
Access your translation history even when you’re offline
Spell out the translation of non-Latin script languages (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, etc..) in Latin characters to read it phonetically (e.g. Pinyin, Romaji)
View additional dictionary results for single words or short phrases

Google Translate was previously available for iPhone but only through a webapp interface. With Google switching to a fully native version this lets users access a few additional features not available in the HTML5 version. It’s pretty fun to use and it would make a great sidekick if you’re traveling to a foreign country where you aren’t familiar with the native language.

Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments below!

Louis Vuitton Launches iPhone App #Retweet

2011-02-08T01:27:00.000-08:00

We've posted about Louis Vuitton's iPhone and iPad cases before -- they're the ones that are needlessly expensive, and often overly gaudy. But the luxury accessory company has a new initiative around Apple products: it's launching an iPhone app for travelers called Amble. The app makes use of the company's City Guides information to provide guidance to any number of locations of interest in whatever covered city you happen to be in. There's a social element as well, allowing you to share or browse locations sent across through social networks or from friends. And in-app purchases (from $10 to $15) allow for access to the actual City Guides information for cities like Paris or New York. The app itself is free (making it the cheapest thing Louis Vuitton has ever produced), and available on the App Store right now. Of course, unless you really need these specific guides for some reason, there are probably other iPhone apps that will do the same thing (I like and use the Yelp app a lot for finding information about places while traveling). But if you can't afford that $1000 iPhone case, you can at least wrap your iPhone in something made by LV.

WWDC 2011, iPhone 5? iOS 5? to be announced June 5-9? #Retweet

2011-02-07T15:02:00.000-08:00

Moscone Center has a “Corporate Meeting” scheduled for June 5 – June 9, 2011 which looks to be the only period long enough to fit in Apple’s annual WWDC(World Wide Developers Conference) event where iPhone 5 and the final version ofiOS 5 would likely be announced. Of course there’s always the possibility of misdirection or last-minute shuffling so until Apple opens up registration we won’t know for sure. Still, it’s something.

Given the typical keynote structure, we’d then be looking for Steve Jobs (or an assortment of Apple execs including Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, Scott Forstall, etc.) to take the stage on Monday, June 6, a year and a day following the iPhone 4 announcement in 2010.

Yeah, the Verizon iPhone has barely started launching, we haven’t even gotten aniPad 2 announcement or iOS 5 beta preview yet, so it’s a little early to be dreaming about iPhone 5 but still…

Go Watch the KeyNote!!!!

2009-06-08T20:04:00.001-07:00

While Apple will no doubt post a high quality version in their iTunes podcast feed in the next couple of days, if you absolutely have to watch the WWDC 2009 Keynote address — where Apple introduces the iPhone 3G S — right now, the streaming QuickTime version is available for your enjoyment.

Go watch it at Apple.com!

iPhone 3g S!!!!!

2009-06-08T17:01:00.001-07:00

It's no big surprise, and John Gruber even got the name right.

Apple announced the new iPhone 3G S today, featuring faster processor speed, built-in video capture and editing, voice dialing and voice command, built-in compass, and of course it will be running iPhone 3.0. There's a much better camera in the iPhone 3G S as well. Here are the details:

Price (new): 16GB -- US$199, 32GB -- US$299
Capacity: 16GB or 32GB
Case color: Black or White
Dimensions: 4.5 inches x 2.4 inches x 0.48 inches (115.5 mm x 62.1 mm x 12.3 mm), 4.8 oz. (135 gms)
Camera / Video:

3 megapixels
Autofocus
Tap to focus
Video recording, VGA up to 30 fps with audio
Photo and video geotagging
iPhone and third-party application integration

Cellular and Wireless:

UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz)
GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
Wi-Fi (802.11b/g)
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

Location:

Assisted GPS
Digital compass
Wi-Fi
Cellular

Power and Battery

Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery
Charging via USB to computer system or power adapter
Talk Time: 3G - Up to 5 hours, 2G - Up to 12 hours
Standby time: Up to 300 hours
Internet use: Up to 5 hours on 3G, Up to 9 hours on Wi-Fi
Video playback: Up to 10 hours
Audio playback: Up to 30 hours

Leaks Leaks Leaks Everywhere!!!

2009-05-31T17:22:00.000-07:00

www.umpcfever.com [Google translation link] has posted what just might be the first pictures taken of the next generation iPhone… taking pictures. Highlights include the new auto-focus, both how it looks in action and the results of photos taken with it compared to the original iPhone 2G. The new digital compass, and a CPU log are also featured, along with some other new features we’ve already seen from 3.0 running on current iPhone 3G hardware.

Are these for real? We’d guess all of this was merely surfaced in iPhone 3.0 on iPhone 3G… except the iPhone 3G doesn’t have a digital compass and it’s camera doesn’t auto-focus. So, either it’s a combo-ruse, or we have just seen the first images of the next generation iPhone in the wild.

A few more pics below, hit up the source article for all of them…

Something is Leaking at Best Buy!!!

2009-05-15T17:26:00.000-07:00

PhoneArena (via Engagdget) was sent a tip that Best Buy has 3 mysterious new product SKU’s listed in their system as “PROJECT CHARLIE”. Why is this important and what does it have to do with iPhones?

ZOMG! We’re 3 weeks before WWDC here people! Everything is iPhone!

Okay, in all fairness, Best Buy is one of the very few big iPhone retailers (aside from Apple, AT&T, and Walmart) and even if they have no direct info from Apple, they could be prepping themselves for a similar launch as last year (iPhone 3G in 8GB, 16GB Black, and 16GB white).

But for the Lost fans among us — 3 SKUs, for the 3rd gen iPhone, 3 weeks beforeWWDC and iPhone OS 3.0? Cue creepy music

UPDATE: Our friend Phil over at WMExperts, throws in a plot twist: what if they’re new Windows Phones?!

SlingPlayer Wifi Only WTF

2009-05-13T06:29:00.000-07:00

According to our friends at Gizmodo, the SlingPlayer app for iPhone will finally be hitting the App Store sometime today or tomorrow. We caught a glimpse of the app at Macworld earlier this year and were quite impressed. At the time Sling promised that streaming would be available over EDGE and 3G, although AT&T has since released a statement saying that "Slingbox, which would use large amounts of wireless network capacity, could create congestion and potentially prevent other customers from using the network."

I would not spend $30 on this unless it works over 3g!!

Rumors.. iPhone Video Camera Coming??

2009-04-07T17:59:00.000-07:00

MacRumors has scored the scoop, showcasing what looks to be actual screen-shot caliber evidence of video recording in iPhone 3.0, and other information showing digital compass technology and voice control coming as well.

Most of these rumors have been around for a while, especially the camera and video recording bumps. A digital compass, like the Android G1 uses to automatically rotate Google Street View when you physically turn the device around, would likely require the next gen iPhone hardware pretty much everyone expects to see come WWDC in June anway. Voice control, especially voice dialing, would be another box checked off the old “missing features” straw-man we — and everyone else — likes to batter about.

With lots of exciting new features still being “discovered”, what other goodies will 3.0 code diving reveal?

Who Needs AT&T??? Google Voice Coming Soon..?

2009-04-07T17:54:00.000-07:00

iphone 3.0 receives Video over MMS

2009-04-01T17:24:00.000-07:00

BGR, prompted by a forum post on MacRumors, has tested out some iPhone 3.0functionality and…:

We’re happy to report that you can receive and play videos over MMS just fine

Sure to be a hit with the MMS lovers, though also likely to once again inflame the “no-video-recording-on-iPhone” frustraterati!

iPhone 3.0 beta 2 is available to developers

2009-03-31T20:28:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, iPhone OS 3.0 beta 2 was released to developers. The big news is that push notifications and in-app purchasing followed this release, giving developers a chance to try them out. Engadget has reported on significant instability with beta 1, so here's hoping that's been improved.

There's also good and bad news with this release. The good is that MMS and tethering are supported in beta 2. The bad news is that Apple asks developers not use them. It's like owning a Ferrari without wheels.

If you're a developer, you know how to get this. Let us know how it goes, and have fun.

DirecTV app now live in app Store....

2009-03-30T14:59:00.000-07:00

DIRECTV for the iPhone is now live in the iTunes App Store. Features include:

Search for any television show up to 14 days in advance
Browse programs by channel or date & time
Get program information instantly, including description, length and rating
Record a single episode or an entire series
Program Pay Per View movies to be recorded and ready to watch anytime
Record to any DIRECTV DVR in your home

Any DIRECTV iPhone users giving it a try? How’s it working for you?

[Via Engadget Mobile]

Safari 3.0 16x faster than Safari 2.2.1!!!

2009-03-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

We mentioned yesterday that iPhone OS 3.0’s Mobile Safari Browser was being reported as faster than the current iPhone OS 2.2.1 version. Now Ars Technica has run the numbers and the results are pretty impressive. Check out their full report for all the details, but this sums it up nicely:

According to our sources, the 3.0 beta still has some stability and speed issues, so that makes these results that much more impressive. While the overall average gives the iPhone 3.0 beta a 300 percent speed advantage, some of the individual tests show 6x, 8x, or even 11x improvements—the bitwise “AND” function even runs 16x faster than in the current version of Mobile Safari.
via theiPhoneBlog

Check out a Creative Mind at Work

2009-03-29T06:49:00.000-07:00

iPhone 3.0 in detail...

2009-03-23T21:17:00.000-07:00

Just like January 2007 when Steve Jobs held up the first iPhone at Macworld and showed the world full screen multi-touch, and March 2008 when Jobs, along with Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall stood up at the Apple Town Hall and unveiled iPhone 2.0 and the App Store, this week Forstall and Greg Joswiack dropped iPhone 3.0 and… what exactly?

Let’s take a walk through the first beta release of the software and find out together. Of course, this being a beta, come this “summer” when the final release version is made available to consumers (free for iPhone users, US$9.95 for iPod touch users), things could be a tad different. This is the way things are now, with the first beautiful, buggy beta into for developers to test Last year there were 8 betas between the first and the final release. Who knows how many there will be this time, and what may change between now and then. So don’t take this as full feature review, just a preview.

What Hasn’t Changed

We have a very full plate here with 3.0, so we’ll start by clearing off what we can — and it isn’t much. Best as we can tell, this is what hasn’t changed from iPhone 2.2.1:

Maps: While the SDK got a shot of Google Maps goodness in the form of imbed-able tiles and controls, it appears the app itself hasn’t gotten any additions this time around.
Weather: Still unchanged from iPhone 1.0. Still no HTC TouchFlo 3D style animations, no landscape mode with more/different information. Nada.
Clock: Also unchanged from 1.0, also no landscape mode.
Calculator: Upgraded back in 2.0 for landscape scientific mode, calculator doesn’t sport any additions this time around.
iTunes Store: Aside from reports saying the 10MB limit on 3G podcast downloads doesn’t currently seem to be in effect, iTunes Store looks the same to us.
Phone: Also nothing new, far as we can tell.

Home Screen

At first glance the SpringBoard app behind the iPhone 3.0 Home Screen seems identical to earlier versions. Sure, the Stocks icon has had a make-over and, for some unfathomable reason, it appears a rogue designer snuck in and added diagonal pin stripes to the backgrounds of several icons, including Messages, Phone, and iPod, but not much else looks different… tiny dots that signify your additional app screen (and yes, the limit is still 9 home screens total). There’s now an equally tiny magnifying glass icon to the left of them…

Spotlight

On the Mac, Spotlight is the system-wide indexing and search feature that allows you to find files by scouring through metadata and text strings. Apple re-purposes the name and icon here for a new, system-wide iPhone search feature that serves up Contact names, App names, iPod media file names, Email headers (from, to, and subject), and Calendar event names.

You can access Spotlight from the main/primary Home Screen by swiping from left to right, or by clicking the Home Button. When on the Spotlight Screen, you can return the main/primary Home Screen by swiping back from right to left, or clicking the Home Button again. (Yes, clicking Home will toggle you back and forth between those two screens).

Spotlight starts with a blacked-out screen with a search box on top and the portrait keyboard on the bottom (no landscape mode for Spotlight thus far). As you type, results begin to popular, narrowing as you refine your search term. At any point, you can tap on a Spotlight search result to launch the app and/or take you to the resulting content within an app.

Hitting the Search button on the keyboard will slide it away and give you full screen results. Or almost full screen. Since Spotlight is integrated into SpringBoard, the Dock is revealed along with the results so you can quickly launch any of your four docked apps (Phone, Mail, Safari, and iPod still being the defaults) as well.

Messages

Messages replaces SMS as the top left-most app on the Home Screen, and is renamed to signify the addition of MMS (multi-media messaging service). It allows, in the case of the new iPhone OS 3.0 software, for pictures, vCards (contacts), audio, and location to be sent using the Messages interface to any other smartphone or feature-phone that supports MMS and those file types.

The details of MMS vary carrier to carrier. Not all carriers seem to have MMS enabled on their end yet, some do, and some error out. Not all 3.0 iPhones on all carriers seem to surface MMS functionality yet either. For example, some installs show a camera icon to the left of the text entry field for selecting a picture, while on others it’s completely absent. Whether this will eventually become uniform or not on release, or whether it will still vary from carrier to carrier depending on which choose to support it, we have no idea (though we obviously hope for the former).

When the camera icon is there, tapping on it will bring up a requester asking you to select between Take Photo, Use Existing, or Cancel. Take Photo brings up the Camera app while Use Existing launches the Photo picker. The picture is then shown, thumbnail-sized, inside a typical bubble.

Perhaps due to carrier issues, we’re also unable to determine at this time whether you can initiate an audio, vCard, or location message from within the Messages app, or whether those have to begin with Share buttons in Voice Memos, Contacts, Maps, etc. (If you have the answer, drop us a comment).

The new, system-wide Cut, Copy, and Paste service has also been introduced into Messages. It works in a similar way to the implementation in the Notes app, and we’ll cover it more fully there. One difference is that double tapping a previous SMS will give you the Copy popup allowing you to duplicate the entire contents of the SMS to the clip board. Tapping on an empty text entry box will launch the Paste popup, so you can stick the text back down in an message of your own. If the entry box already contains text, double tapping will select the closest word, and double tapping an holding will select the closet word and popup the loupe. See Notes for more on how all this works.

Messages also now includes line-item deletion and forwarding. Tap the Edit button at the top right, select the messages you want, as many of them as you want, and then hit the red Delete button at the bottom, or the blue Forward button beside it. Edit still isn’t the most elegant name for deletion or forwarding, mind you, but the functionality is consistent with the Mass Edit feature introduced in Mail in 2.0.

Lastly, Apple has also answered the call for pervasive landscape-style keyboards, and Messages is one of the text-entry apps that received it. For those who want a Cadillac-wide typing experience, enjoy!

Calendar

Calendar appears largely unchanged within the app itself. No landscape rotation for week view, no week view of any kind. What changes there are occur in the plumbing and are — somewhat counter-intuitively at least for us — hidden entirely away inside the Preferences app. That’s a shame because they’re rather significant: support for CalDAV and Subscribed Calendars.

Once added via Preferences, however, here’s an example of how Subscribed Calendars look:

Photos

The Photo app receives an update in the form of integration into the copy and MMS systems. Now, when in the Gallery view mode (where pictures are tiled in four columns of thumbnails), tapping on the Action button at the bottom left corner will no longer slide up a menu, but will place three buttons along the bottom: Share, Copy, and Delete.

Tapping on a thumbnail will select it (or de-select it if it has previously been selected). Selected photos are labeled with a red check mark icon in the lower right corner, and number of photos selected is reported in parenthesis and continuously updated beside each of the three buttons.

Tapping on Share button will let you send the photos via Email or MMS, Copy will place them on the clipboard, and Delete will trash them.

Camera

Camera gets a minor tweak, replacing the Camera Roll icon with a tiny thumbnail of the last photo taken.

YouTube

The big news for the YouTube app in OS 3.0 is account integration. You can now enter your YouTube login information for access to your Subscriptions and Playlists.

Stocks

The Stocks widget is still powered by Yahoo, and still lists your favorite stocks on top and a handy graph at the bottom. You can now swipe across that handy, however, to change it into a news feed or a more detailed set of information including opening price, high, low, volume, P/E, market cap, 52 week high, 52 week low, average volume, and yield.

Rotating Stocks to landscape mode now expands the graph to full, wide screen mode. But there’s more: youch a point on the graph and you get the exact price for that day, touch a second finger somewhere else on the graph and you get the difference in value between those two days (delta).

Notes

Like messages, Notes benefits from the several system-wide, or at least multi-app wide improvements in iPhone 3.0. The first is the pervasive landscape keyboard:

The big thing, of course, is Cut/Copy and Paste. It works similarly — though not identically — across all applications, so we’ll do the heavy lifting here. To start, double tap on some text. That will highlight the word and pop-up buttons for Cut, Copy, and Paste (the last of which only appears if there’s text in the clipboard). You can also tap on an empty area to pop-up buttons for Select, Select All, and Paste. (Select highlight the closest word to the current cursor position).

If you want to change the length of your selection, grab one of the blue dot handles on the top left or bottom right of your current selection and drag them in or out to add or subtract text. As you move the handles, a magnifying loupe will appear, similar to the round curser placement loupe that dates back to iPhone 1.0. This one, however, is a wide, rounded rectangle and lets you more precisely adjust your text selection.

Selected text can then be cut out or copied to the clipboard, or replaced by pasting over text from the clipboard. Text can also be pasted at the current cursor location by double tapping to bring up the Select, Select All, and Paste pop up.

If at any time you either type or paste something in by mistake, Apple has added a gimmicky but semi-cool undo feature — just shake your iPhone to call up an Undo, Redo, and Cancel dialog.

(Note: While the Mail app, discussed below, gets similar Cut/Copy and Paste functionality, so do most 3rd part App Store application that use standard text input controls. Awesome).

Settings

As always, many of the small, yet more numerous changes Apple delivers in new firmware versions are tucked neatly away in the Settings app.

General Settings, Network will apparently allow for Tethering to be enabled for those with carrier who choose to support it. Not surfaced in the current 3.0 Beta 1,MacRumors reported that some enterprising developers had found it and got it working none the less.

Their screen captures show options to enable Tethering for USB and/or Bluetooth, and when tethered, the Home Screen with a blue Internet Tethering band across the top, similar to the green band that currently denotes an active phone call.

General Settings, Restrictions now provide more in the way of Parental Controls. First off, iPod has been removed from the top menu and Location has been added. A secondary menu has now been added below to provide more granular control over iPod content, allowing you to select which country/region ratings you use, and then set Music & Podcasts, Movies, and TV Shows. Control for Apps is at the very bottom.

General Settings, Home increases the options you can assign to a double-click of the Home button from Home, Phone Favorites, and iPod to include Search (epic win for mobile accomplishers) and Camera.

A sub-menu for Search Results allows you to check on or off what types of information are called up in a Spotlight Search, including Contacts, Applications, Music, Podcasts, Video, Audiobooks, Notes, Mail, and Calendar.

General, Keyboard, International Keyboards (or General, International, Keyboards) now includes Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Malay, and Thai. Good news for people in those regions eager to get their iPhone on.

Settings, Mail, Contacts, Calendar, as mentioned previously, hides the new LDAP (contacts directory), CalDAV, and Calendar Subscription, features under Add Account, Other.

Settings, Safari includes options for the new AutoFill feature, and a submenu for choosing who’s Contact Info you want to use for the fill, as well as an option to allow Names & Passwords to be stored and AutoFilled, and a button for Clear All to wipe the AutoFill database clean. This, at least, gives us some control as to whether we want the security of not storing and filling our passwords on a device that could be lost or accessed without our approval, or the convenience of saving us a lot of typing.

Likewise, the new anti-Phishing Fraud Warning can be toggled on and off. Keeping it on, of course, provides some level of safety when encountering malicious websites made to look like ones we trust, intent on stealing our login info and/or credit card data. Of course, no list of Phishing sites is ever complete or completely up to date, so keep surfing safely.

Settings, Messages now, of course, includes an MMS Messaging On/Off toggle.

Settings, iPod gains a toggle to enable the Shake to Shuffle option that Apple debuted with the latest generation iPod shuffle.

App Store

In the minor but good tweaks department, Apple has again changed the way screen shots appear in the App Store. Now, you get full screen shots, side by side, with the ability to swipe through them. You can see additional screenshots on each side when more are available backward or forwards. (Similar to how you swipe through multiple Safari tab pages).

The other changes to the App Store, as they pertain to users, aren’t currently visible in the beta as they depend on two new functions rolled out to developers: In-App Purchase and Subscription Purchase. By way of example, if you previously wanted commercial E-Books, a developer had to wrap a reader app around each E-Book, and then sell each E-Book as a separate app on the App Store. This led to dozens upon dozens of apps that were just more books, or otherwise variations on the same functionality with different content.

With 3.0, a developer can now sell you an E-Book Reader app, and inside that app, they can sell you the individual E-Books. If you choose to buy another E-Book, the same type of iTunes confirmation and password requester will pop up as when you buy a stand-alone app, and the same iTunes-side billing and processing happen.

This can also work to buy additional levels or extra content in games, and theoretically map packs for navigation apps, etc.

Yes, Apple just invented the $0.99 scaleware model. Buy the low-price of entry into version, and if you like it, buy more. It’s not a demo, it’s not shareware, but it does let developers do low cost of entry content for users to try before the buy… more of it.

Why $0.99? To avoid user confusion, Apple won’t let developers sell additional content to apps they gave away for free. If you want to charge more later, you have to charge at least something up front. Otherwise, “free apps stay free.”

Subscriptions, for their part, seem to work just like In-App Purchases, with the pop-up advising you are purchasing X issues of Y content for Z dollars. (e.g. 6 months of iPhone Monthly for $1.99).

(Note, the following are screen captures from the iPhone 3.0 Sneak Peek event, not screen shots from live beta apps).

Although not strictly an App Store update, Apple also announced (again) their Push Notification Service. What does this do? Let’s say you’re running a 3rd party IM (instant message) client on iPhone 2.0. When you exit the app, you no longer know if you’re receiving more messages. (Sure, there are work around over SMS and Email, but the app itself is dead to you).

With Apple’s Push Notification Service, if you close that same app in iPhone 3.0, anytime someone sends you a new IM, an alert will be sent from the developer’s servers (yes, they’ll have to keep a session open for you on their end), to Apple’s Push Notification Service (PNS) servers.

Apple’s PNS server will have a constant TCP/IP connection to your iPhone (yes, they’ll be keeping connected to you, like they already do for MobileMe push if you use that service). Once they get the alert from the developer, they will “push” it out to your iPhone 3.0.

PNS currently supports 3 kinds of alerts: badges (like Mail uses to show you unread messages), custom sounds (like a beep or bell or anything already built into the app by the developer), or modal message boxes (like the kind that pop up to tell you your battery is at 20%).

Apple isn’t making any promises on up-time for the service, and any new service will have delays and downtime — and Apple was quick to point out even SMS isn’t 100% reliable when asked about it. What PNS doesn’t solve, however, is the lack of good notifications on the iPhone, and applications that require multitasking for something other than notification (i.e. streaming internet radio apps).

Imagine if 10 apps try to push out 10 alerts at the same time, how will Apple manage those on your device? Will you have to “cancel” or “accept” 50 modal message dialogs, or be hit by a cacophony of 30 random sounds? We don’t know yet, but hopefully Apple will address this.

Streaming internet radio apps, however, seem to still be out of luck with this solution…

Among the 1000 new APIs Apple announced which will make the next generation of apps so exciting, including zero-hassle peer-to-peer networking, embed-able Google maps, and iPod library access, what really stands out is Accessory Integration.

With this new functionality, future apps can directly interact with accessories via the 30-pin dock port or Bluetooth. Apple showed off an equalizer app for a stereo, an app for an FM tuner, a diabetes interface for a medical test device, and a blood-pressure interface app. This has the potential to do for mobile accessories what the App Store did for mobile applications. Big.

Email

The changes to Email are very similar to the changes to notes. You get the wide keyboard when you rotate to landscape orientation.

You also get the same Cut/Copy and Paste functionality with a couple notable exceptions. First, you get support to copy rich text formatting (bold, italic, html). Second you can also paste pictures you may have copied from the photo app. We’re not sure if there’s a limit to the amount of pictures you can send via 3G from the iPhone in a single mail yet, but we’ve received 9 in one shot so far. If anyone has reached a hard limit, let us know.

Lastly, Spotlight lives inside Mail to, just like it did inside Contacts with OS 2.0. Scroll up slightly inside a mail box and you get the search input and buttons letting you choose between From/To/Subject/All. As an added bonus, you can also go beyond the local store and “Continue Search on Server…” for Exchange 2007 or later, or for IMAP installations that support it.

Safari

Mobile Safari gets the Cut/Copy and Paste love from Apple as well, although it works a little differently here than it does in Mail or Notes. Perhaps because double-tap is already used for zooming, and maybe due to restrictions in text selection already established by the zooming method (which reads HTML tags to determine the block size for zoom), Safari can’t select specific words or strings of words for Copy. Instead, you hold your finger down on some text (as you would in other apps to trigger the magnifying loupe) and the entire paragraph of text is selected (everything within the P, and perhaps DIV and other similar containers).

Sites that don’t properly format (i.e., use several BR, or line-break tags to simulate paragraphs) are now exposed for their shenanigans by confusing the Copy mechanic, resulting in entire reams, or even pages of text being selected. (For shame!)

Instead of blue dot handles at the top/beginning and bottom/end of the selection, Safari initially gives us blue dots center on all sides, and they can be pulled up or down to select previous or following text blocks respectively. Again, lack of proper HTML formatting can reduce the reliability (so coders, fix your stuff!)

If you move the handles around inside some paragraphs, you’ll get the same top/left, right/bottom text string selectors, and magnification loupe, that you find in Notes, and that will let you pick specific words within the paragraph. This doesn’t seem to work on all paragraph blocks yet (Apple.com didn’t seem to work, Google search results did), so this may also vary depending on the specific HTML tags wrapped around the content, or it simply may not be a finished implementations yet.

Why are we only discussing Copy and not Cut or Paste? Those last two aren’t implemented for read-only text like a web page, nor does Cut/Copy Paste seem to work yet in text boxes, but that could still be forthcoming.

Updates to Safari don’t end there, however, as Apple has also (yes!) given us the option now to open links in new pages (the iPhone equivalent of tabs). Tap and hold on a link, and a menu pops up with the link path listed on top, and the option to Open the link (in the current page), Open in a New Page, or Copy to the clip board. As this is the same gesture used to allow Image Save in iPhone 2.0, if the link happens to be a picture, Image Save is rolled right into the same menu as a an additional option.

As mentioned above in Settings, if you choose to enable it, Safari will also AutoFill form fields based on your Contact info, or the Contact info of your choosing (set up in Settings), and as a separate option, passwords you’ve previously entered as well.

Lastly, and also as mentioned in Settings, Safari will try to protect you from Phishing sites if you enable it, presumably consulting an continuously updated blacklist of sites, presumably the same as recently implemented on the desktop Safari 4 Beta.

iPod

Stereo Bluetooth is in the house! Once paired to an A2DP device (similar to current blue tooth phone headset pairing), a Bluetooth icon appears to the right of the volume slider, and an Audio Source selector will let you choose from available devices.

(Note: this seems to work in apps like Pandora as well, bonus screen shot included below!)

For audio podcasts, the seemingly useless repeat and shuffle buttons have been replaced with an email icon on the left hand side, and a speed counter on the right hand side. The email icon will reportedly allow you to send an iTunes Link for the podcast (similar to how you could previously email YouTube video links).

The speed indicator on the other hand, shows x1 during regular playback, and we presume it might show x2 etc. as Apple has previously allowed you to “speed up” talk-heavy content like Audio Books.

Where the Genius button would be on music tracks, we now have a circular backwards arrow with a 30 in the middle, which allows you to jump back in 30 second intervals.

Variable media scrubbing now lets you put your finger on the position indicator at the top, and the buttons change to a text message reading “Slide your finger down to adjust the scrubbing rate.” Do so and the speed that you scrub though the file changes. Displayed in place of the track info, options so far include half speed, quarter speed, and a fine grain speed.

While these controls would also be much appreciated in video, right now implementation is not there, or is incomplete. Movies and TV shows have the same Done and Full/Fit to Screen controls as previous OS, as do video podcasts in landscape view. In portrait view, video podcasts gain the mail link and media scrubber, but retain the shuffle control.

As mentioned in the Settings section, Shake to Shuffle is also now available in the iPod app.

Voice Memos

Following iTunes and App Store, Apple’s third new built in app since launching the iPhone is also it’s first non-Store-front. Voice Memos is relegated by default to the second Home Screen page, alongside the separate Contacts app, and as the name suggests, it records audio.

(Remote and Keynote, though from Apple, aren’t built in to a firmware update and require download or purchase separately from the App Store.

The app, from icon to main screen, pays homage to an old-style microphone (though, unlike Calculator, we don’t believe it’s one ever manufactured by Braun…). The bottom has buttons for Record and (a rather non-intuitive-looking stack of three horizontal lines for) Voice Memos that have previously been recorded. In the middle is a sound level meter.

Tap Record to begin and the Record button becomes Pause, the More button becomes Stop, and the top of the screen flashes red to show you you’re recording and the duration of the recording.

When you’re finished recording, the More page shows Voice Memos in a similar fashion to Visual Voice Mail in the Phone app. Tap a Voice Memo to play or pause it, toggle Speaker on or off, or use the buttons along the bottom to Share (via email or MMS) or Delete.

You can also tap the blue circles at the far right of each recording to slide into an Info screen where you can further tap to slide across to a Label screen pre-populated with tags including None, Podcast, Interview, Lecture, Idea, Meeting, Memo, and Custom. Choosing Custom slides another screen over where you can input your own Label names.

Back on the Info screen, tapping on Trim Memo slides up a bare-bones editing interface for taking off any unwanted content from the beginning and/or end of your recording. Interestingly, Apple chose yellow for trim slider and Trim Voice Memo action button.

Share on the Info screen does the same thing as the Share button on the Voice Memos screen. Convenience through repetition?

Conclusion-ish

There’s really no place for a conclusion here, as Apple has concluded the iPhone 3.0 software and released it to the public. That will come this summer. Until then, we’re again impressed not only by Apple’s continuing ability to evolve the iPhone platform and provide those updates (again, free of charge to iPhone users, $9.95 to non-subscription accounted iPod touch users), but for the easy and consistent way in which they’re doing it. Likewise, providing the beta to developers early on helps ensure consumers will eventually get a more solid, more compatible release (if not with 3.0, then with 3.0.1 shortly thereafter). The features are excellent improvements, and the Dock and Bluetooth Access could be transformative, if not on to the level of 2.0’s App Store, than at least beyond what we’ve seen in that space to date. We’re really looking forward to the final release of 3.0, and will update our walkthrough as it continues it’s path to general availability.

Note on Using Beta Software

Unlike iPhone 2.0 Betas, where access seemed much more limited and leaks were few and far between, 3.0 seems to be on every iPhone users want-now list. Also, unlike 2.0 when many devs were seasoned pros, now Apple is touting thousands upon thousands in the program, some seemingly happy enough to enable 3.0 access for the general user base.

However, betas are intended for developers to test and report back on. They’re not as stable, not as snappy, not as feature-complete and anyone trying to use them as a production OS on their main (or worse, only) device is likely to have something less than an ideal experience. People trying to use it as such may wish they could go back to 2.2.1 almost as much as they wished for 3.0. Think thrice before taking the plunge.

[Thanks to everyone who contributed screenshots and descriptions for this walkthrough] via iphoneblog

iPhone 3.0 Revealed!!!!

2009-03-19T17:35:00.000-07:00

iPhone 3.0 OS Guide: Everything You Need to Know

By Jesus Diaz, 2:08 PM on Tue Mar 17 2009, 308,328 views

iPhone 3.0 OS, the next generation operating system for the iPhone, iPod touch, and whatever Apple device comes next. New features, new apps, here you will find all the information you need.

This just in: a hands on tour, impressions and gallery of screenshots of the new OS donated by our helpful readers.

NEW IPHONE OS 3.0 FEATURES

The new iPhone OS 3.0 adds over 100 new features including—at friggin' last—cut and paste.

• Copy & Paste text. When you double-tap over text, you will get a "cut, copy, and paste" bubble dialog. Double-tap again and a "paste" bubble will appear if there's anything stored in your clipboard.

This works across applications. You can expand your selection points using your thumbs and, if you accidentally paste something you didn't want to paste, just shake your iPhone to undo it.

• Copy & Paste photos. You can also copy and paste photos. Now you will be able to select multiple photos by tapping the action button, copy some of them, and paste them in an email, ready to send.

• New Spotlight. iPhone OS 3.0 will allow you to search across the entire information contained in your device, no matter where, as soon as the information is supported it. If an application is written to support the new Spotlight, its data will also be available in the search.

In this screenshot you can see Spotlight bringing results from your address book, maps, your iPod, and apps in your springboard.

• Search in Mail, Calendar, and iPod. These Apple applications have specific search interfaces. The search in Mail doesn't support the message content yet, but it supports searching in IMAP servers—that will save a lot of time logging into Gmail.

• 3G Tethering. This feature will allow you to connect your iPhone 3G to a laptop, to use it as a modem to access the internet. Carriers still have to sign-off on it, and probably charge more for it. None have announced it yet.

• Landscape keyboard. Apple has added the landscape keyboard mode to other applications, like Mail, SMS, and Notes.

• Multimedia messaging. A big one to send rich content to people without mail-enabled telephones: The new MMS function will allow you to include everything, from images to sound to vcards (no word on video, however.) Personally, I find these usesless having email, but some people seem to want it.

• Support for new calendar types. In iPhone OS 3.0 you will be able to subscribe to calendars on the web using two protocols: CalDAV—supported by Google and Yahoo—and subscriptions via the .ics format—which is what Apple uses in iCal.

• Improved stocks application. The stocks application now allows you to read related news, so you can enjoy yourself learning about the latest market scandals, stock crashes, and executives getting bonus packages from government aid while their companies sink into hell. Thank you, Apple.

• Stereo Bluetooth A2DP audio. You will be able to pair your iPhone 3.0 with a stereo Bluetooth A2DP device, like headphones or speakers.

• Note syncing with iTunes.

• Automatic login in Safari. The new version of Safari will remember login credentials, so you won't need to introduce your username and password again while accessing Scoreland your work intranet.

• Shake to shuffle music. If you are in your iPod application, you just need to shake it to start the shuffling mode. Hopefully this will be optional for sports people out there.

• Wi-Fi auto-login. In case you have a subscription to a paid hotspot, your iPhone or iPod touch will autolog into it.

• Anti-phishing. Mobile Safari now can warn you against malicious sites trying to scam you.

• Extended parental controls. Adult content filters can now be applied to movies, TV shows, and applications, in addition to web sites and music (porn apps, here we come).

NEW APPLE APPLICATIONS

Apple will include new widgets in the new version of the iPhone operating system:

• Voice memo application. Obviously, allows you to record voice or any other sound, so you don't forget any idea or want to play FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper.

• Send and receive files. A dedicated application to exchange files between iPhones or iPods touch.

NEW THIRD PARTY APPLICATIONS FEATURES IN IPHONE OS 3.0

The new iPhone OS 3.0 adds 1,000 new APIs to extend the capabilities of new applications.

• Peer-to-peer ~~Wi-Fi~~ Bluetooth connectivity. A new API will allow for two iPhones to connect directly—peer-to-peer—via Bluetooth ~~Wi-Fi, without needing any Wi-Fi network~~.

They will be able to discover each other using Bluetooth, and then start a ~~Wi-Fi~~ connection transparently.

This opens a lot of possibilities. I doubt they will allow you to pass music, but you would probably be able to pass any other information, as well as directly communicating between applications in the two devices. One example: A pets game that allows two dogs to play with each other.

This feature could be combined with push notification, so your iPhone may receive a note from another iPhone, inviting you to play a game one-on-one.

• Browse remote content. While the built-in iPod application doesn't allow you to browse songs in other people's iPhones or iPod touch, third-party applications will allow you to do that, according to Apple's Forstall.

• Use your iPhone/touch to control peripherals. A new API will let you use your iPhone or iPod touch as a control to your accessories. In this example, the iPhone is being used to equalize the sound in a loudspeaker.

However, the applications are endless. Johnson and Johnson is releasing LifeScan, an app that connects to a glucose monitoring device. The application can even alert other people automatically, in case something is wrong.

There other less serious apps, like creating the most perfect sex device ever (NSFW).

• Maps inside other applications. New applications will be able to use Maps directly, which is now an API.

• Turn-by-turn directions. Developers will also be able to create turn-by-turn applications using the GPS information from the iPhone and combining it with their own maps, without depending on 3G connectivity or Google.

• Push notification finally coming. Hopefully this time it will be true. Push notification means that your iPhone OS 3.0 applications will finally be able to receive messages from the intarwebs automagically, so you can have an Instant Message application and have your iPhone vibrate or make a sound when a new message comes in, even if the application is not running.

• Voice communication in applications. iPhone 3.0 applications will also be able to access a Voice over IP service. This means that you will be able to chat with other users while playing against them in a game, for example. This won't use the telephone, but the internet over a Wi-Fi connection.

• Rumbling. Games—or any other application—will also be able to rumble, like your console joystick.

• Audio recording. Audio recording will also be possible from third-party applications using a standardized API, instead of custom workarounds.

• Access your music from applications. Future applications will also be able to access the iPhone/iPod music library. This means that applications will be able to play your own music while they run.

NEW FEATURES IN THE APP STORE

The new OS will also offer an enhanced App Store, opening new possibilities for developers and consumers.

• Subcriptions to apps.
• Purchase additional content for apps, like new cities for a city guide application.
• Purchase additional levels for games.

Basically, this will allow developers to sell more things on top of their apps, and to consumers to expand their experience with those apps.

• This will work straight from the applications, so you can purchase new things through the software itself, even while it still goes through the App Store internally.

PRICE

iPhone OS 3.0 will be a free upgrade to all iPhone users, including the first generation (not all features will be supported in the first generation, like Stereo Bluetooth support). iPod touch users will be able to but it for $US9.95.

If you dare, you can sign up for the beta here.

Copy and Paste is coming in iPhone 3.0

2009-03-16T10:08:00.000-07:00

Here's a short video from SXSW with DiggNation hosts Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose, where Rose goes through a laundry list of iPhone 3.0 features that will allegedly be announced tomorrow during the Apple Press Event.

Jailbreak!!!!!! Bluetooth file transfer available!!!

2009-03-12T17:52:00.000-07:00

UPDATED: iClarified has posted an extensive how-to for getting iBluetooth setup on your jailbroken iPhone so you can enjoy a little Apple-unsupported OBEX Bluetooth file transfer.

If you give it a try, let us know how it works for you.

ORIGINAL: [See comments and then move right along...]

Thanks to Antonioj for the tip and the screen shots, more after the break…

iPhone 3.0 revealed on March 17... cant wait...

2009-03-12T17:40:00.000-07:00

Apple announced an iPhone event today where they'll be giving "a sneak peek at the iPhone OS 3.0 software."

Gizmodo suggests this might coincide with the unveiling of a rumored touchscreen tablet based on the iPhone, but we'll see for sure on March 17th. Got a feature you'd love to see added to iPhone 3.0 (*cough, copy and paste, cough*)? Let's hear about it in the comments. [Gizmodo]

Dont ever try to replace iphone screen yourself....

2009-03-12T17:31:00.000-07:00

Always remember to Treat your iPhone with Care..

2009-03-04T15:14:00.000-08:00

Tim Colburne plugged in his iPhone 3G to his computer’s USB port and left it to charge. Three hours later, it caught fire. The above is an aftermath pic.

Colburne writes on his blog: “The fire started in the space between the lead and the phone and resulted in a couple of pins fusing together.

Although the main functions of the phone are apparently unaffected, the device won’t connect to the computer which means I can neither charge it nor transfer data. Result: one dead iPhone.”

Colburne reckons very few iPhones go up in flames, he was able to find one other similar incident on asite from Sweden in 2008.

Anyone else?

And if your iPhone did go into meltdown, how did getting a replacement go?

Via A Roman Thought

Kindle for iPhone...

2009-03-04T15:11:00.000-08:00

Yes, folks, I was one of the ~~suckers~~ eager buyers of the 2nd edition of the Kindle. My pain is your pleasure, though, as you can get some early screenshots of the app already loaded up with books via Whispersync.

As you may have just read in our previous post, Amazon has just released Kindle for iPhone for free in the App Store (iTunes link), you cannot buy Kindle books directly from the app. Instead you can purchase inside Mobile Safari, from your desktop, or from a Kindle

The text is nice and readable (and you can resize as well). The app keeps a “page metaphor,” meaning that instead of being able to scroll up and down, you swipe left and right to switch pages. A single tap on the screen bring up a menu to give you back, bookmark, text-size, and a sync button to sync your last page read with a Kindle.

The Whispersync tech works exactly as advertised — books purchased show up as “Archived” and you can then download them directly to your iPhone

via the iPhone Blog

WatchMen iPhone game coming soon?.....

2009-03-02T19:48:00.000-08:00

I love massively multiplayer online games, I love my iPhone, and I love Watchmen, the genre-defining graphic novel series of the late '80s (of which, I'll brag, I have a whole set of first edition copies) that's very soon to be the first movie blockbuster of 2009. That's why the news, over at our sister site Massively, that all of my loves were coming together in what's meant to be aWatchmen-branded MMO game for the iPhone made my day.

Watchmen: Justice is Coming will have 3D environments, customizable avatars, and thousands of players interacting in the game at the same time. Massively's got some video from G4 showing off the app, put together by the apparent newcomers Last Legion Games. Unfortunately, while the concept is lofty (they've got a long-term vision for improving the game based on player feedback), the gameplay itself looks like clunky adware -- the kind you might expect from Warner Bros. and the iPhone deals they've come up with so far.

So we're reserving judgment on this one until we can give it a try, and fortunately we won't have to wait long -- the devs say they've lined up the game for release later this week, right along with the movie. That timing doesn't impress us either -- usually, when a game and movie release simultaneously, one's been hurried to make the deadline, and trust us, it usually isn't the movie. It's Watchmen on the iPhone, so it's hit two of three bases with us already. But it'll need to bring a good game, too, if Last Legion is hoping for a home run.

iTunes iPhone App Management concepts... I need this..

2009-03-02T19:20:00.000-08:00

One of my biggest annoyances with my iPhone involves the difficulty of managing my applications. Springboard, the iPhone application that actually displays the different pages of apps, clearly wasn't designed with the intention of managing so many apps. I've long thought, like with other aspects of organizing content on the iPhone, that app management should be possible in iTunes.

Apparently I'm not alone, because this video by svdomer9 shows a nice mockup of how such an iTunes-based app management scheme might work. I really like the idea in general, though I would suggest that there also ought to be a kind of well at the bottom which would hold the applications until they've been assigned to a specific page. Naturally, it would be nice to see a bit more sophistication on the iPhone side as well so that it would be easy to go directly to a given screen (via the roller interface, perhaps) as well as directly send Apps to a given page (e.g. a pop-up menu that would appear when you hold your finger on an App for a few seconds).

Whatever the particulars, it seems that we need something like this on the iPhone going forward. If you had Apple's ear, how would you do it?

[via @pogue]

Pretty Awesome Game... Is this Really on My phone?

2009-03-01T09:06:00.000-08:00

Over the past two weeks, the App Store has seen its fair share of good quality games creating some waves among gamers, Aqua Moto Racing (iTunes link) being one of these games.

Aqua Moto Racing offers racing with an unprecedented sense of speed on the platform. With state of the art handling and graphics this game truly puts your Jet Ski riding skills to the ultimate test. Race in the beautifully rendered American locations; Emerald Bay, Everglades and Long Beach Port. Start off with participating in a Championship for beginners. Perform stunts and keep a tight line around the buoys to power your boost. Collect medals in the Time Trial mode by beating set target times. Register a profile and compare your race results with friends all over the world. Race against Aqua Moto Racing Lite World Records through Ghost Play.

I know most of you are probably thinking we have more than enough less than stellar racing games available in the App Store. Hopefully Aqua Moto Racing is a good sign of things to come. Where most of the other racing games have failed, this gem of a game succeeds. With good graphics, great control, virtually no slow down, no crashing, etc… This game is a keeper.

Quick Tips

2009-02-27T16:00:00.000-08:00

A single point of success for new iPhone users, and for veterans who know new users and need a quick and helpful place to point them. This time Tekzilla Daily went and did the heavy lifting for iPhone beginners, with a quick how-to video showing Apple’s multi-touch gesture for “swipe to delete”.

In any app that supports it, such as email, SMS, or iPod, you can simply touch the item you want to delete, briskly swipe your finger horizontally across the item, and a red “delete” button will appear allowing you to banish the item from your iPhone forever.

It can be a little tricky at first. Too slow and you might open or launch the item instead. Too quick and it may ignore you. But after a few tries, you should be happily ditching anything you no longer feel the need to keep with you.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog.

TV.com (app) - CBS and Showtime Streaming on your iPhone

2009-02-27T15:49:00.000-08:00

How bout CSI Miami full episodes streamed to your iPhone, legally... for free? CBS Interactive's TV.com give you just that. There aren't a ton of shows up yet (at least not full episodes), but CSI, Star Trek (the original!), and Gossip Girl (you know you've seen it) are all there.

TV.com (its an app, AND a website!) allows you to create "feeds" of shows you'd like based on keywords. You put in a few shows you like or terms, and the app creates a specialized feed of content you'd enjoy.

I'm sure more full shows will be coming quickly.

The app works over WiFi or 3G, and is available now for the low low price of free in the AppStore.

AppStore via Gizmodo