Every week I will be bringing you what I think are the week’s biggest stories and articles. Let’s get started, after the break!
2008: Yearly Archive
While many iPhone devs probably haven’t struck it rich (just as many of the apps flooding the store haven’t yet been strike-it-rich worthy), quality products that find an audience are still proving to be massive income sources for some developers reports Fake Steve Real Dan Lyons in Newsweek:
Greenstone, 41, has been writing games for Apple’s computers for 21 years. But he says he’s never seen anything like the iPhone apps phenomenon, which this year will deliver $5 million in revenue for him. “It’s crazy. It’s like lottery money. In the last four and a half months we’ve made as much money off the retail sales of iPhone apps as we’ve made with retail sales of all of the apps that we’ve made in the past 21 years—combined.” Business is so good that Greenstone won’t even bother writing for the Mac anymore.
Daniel wrote in to let us know the obvious: Apple rejected iBoobs from the App Store. Duh or d’oh, we guess, depending on your point of view. Did the dev think Pull my Finger made this okay? Cheer or jeer the video if you have to.
Tapbots developer Paul Hadda, whom TiPb interviewed a while back and whose awesome WeightBots app has just hit version 1.2, made a nasty discovery when searching the App Store: keyword spam:
I searched around for other high profile apps and found quite a few developers have chosen to SEO optimize their app description. So first we have apps naming themselves with blanks at the beginning to take advantage of alphabetical listing in the store. Then we have apps going from Free to Paid to take advantage of the top 100 list. And now this SEO hack, what’s next?
Since astroturfing and mechanical turk paid ratings are already taken, we’re betting “you may have already won…” scams, but who knows?
[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]
I’ve just barely scratched the surface of the BlackBerry Bold (PIN PING! No, not literally Kevin!), as my initial preview video shows (MAIL PING! Thanks for the tips, Bla1ze!) and already have to figure out my full, final review (SMS PING! Will have it up Monday, Dieter!)
I’m figuring out the “fake buttons” (MMS PING! Ha! Funny Moran sign guys!) and the spellchecker (MESSENGER PING! Yeah, you can still out type me…)
Hang on… Holds down power button. There, now maybe I can finish this post!
So here’s the thing: TiPb’s main purpose is to service you, our readers. What if any questions might you you have about the Bold. What would you like to see better explored? Compared more directly with the iPhone?
Let me know in the comments and you’ll also get another chance to win our iPhone 3G prize pack.
(And remember to head on over to our sibling sites for more chances to win a Blackberry Bold, Palm Treo Pro, WinMo HTC FUZE, and Android G1!)
Note: Off-topic comments may be deleted. Post legit questions only please
Frenzic Forum Review by cjvitek (For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum!
A new game….just what the iPhone needs!
Actually, a little side note. I approach my iPhone as mostly an entertainment device. So while I will find, use (and review) useful productivity, utility, or lifestyle apps (or other categories) by far the category I am most interested in is games. I would guess that at least 70% of my downloads are games. Anyway, on to the review.
The iPhone can play 3D games and pump out high quality video like almost no other handset on the market, but when you’re not gaming or watching video, when you’re just using apps or doing old-school computing, all that power goes to waste, right?
Well, maybe not for much longer.
PowerVR from Imagination is the graphics and video processor core inside the iPhone (and other mobile devices), and we mentioned earlier in the week that it’s now confirmed Apple is a mega-licensee of the technology moving forward.
Now Apple Insider reports that Imagination is looking for OpenCL engineers.
While OpenGL is the open source competitor to Microsoft’s proprietary DirectX graphics technology (the stuff that drives all those 3D games), OpenCL (Wikipedia link) has recently been open sourced by Apple for leveraging that power for mainstream computing tasks. And Imagination integrating OpenCL means Apple’s desktop OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard might not be their only OS to benefit…
Hello GPU accelerated general iPhone processing! Hopefully this means regular old applications, from data bases to web code processing will soon be snappier, and more powerful.
Um… now please?
The fallout from Steve Jobs’ no-show for Macworld 2009, and Apple’s pull-out from all future Macworlds continues.
- First up, Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek asks if Apple is ditching Macworld for CES. While many saner minds drafted up lengthy retorts, Daring Fireball nailed the one-punch-kill: “No.”
- Daring Fireball also gives it’s own perspective, that he not busy being born is busy dying: “Traditions are comforting. But comfort, I think, tends not to breed innovation. It can be hard to tell whether you’re staying the course because it’s the right direction, or because you’ve dug yourself into a deep rut.”
John Siracusa of Ars Technica suggests Apple’s exit from Macworld is part of their “fearless” DNA: “Though painful and jarring in the short term, these kinds of moves are a big part of what makes Apple great. While other companies are paralyzed with indecision, or cling relentlessly to what has worked in the past, or are seduced by sentimentality, Apple is busy murdering its darlings. Though such dramatic moves often appear foolhardy to its more cautious competitors, Apple usually has the last laugh, working through the initial pain to find itself in a much better position down the road—a winning position.”
The Weather Channel Forum Review by cjvitek (For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum!
Okay, I am sort of a weather junkie. I didn’t used to be, but when I moved to Florida (with hurricanes), and the weather was directly related to my research activities, I became a little but of a junkie. Not as bad as some, but definitely more than most.
That’s why I was a little disappointed with the iPhone default weather application. Sure, it gave you temperatures…but what if I wanted more! I tried the Weatherbug program, and that was okay…but I still found myself going to the Weather Underground site often. Then I found The Weather Channel program.
Read on for the review, after the jump!
So you say you updated to the latest Mac OS X 10.5.6 and wanted to jailbreak or unlock. Well the update severely hindered your ability to do that. The Dev-Team says it is a simple kernel bug and not a specific countermeasure by Apple, never the less, there is still a work around.
It’s a pretty straight forward fix actually, first you need to have administrator privileges. Then download the script file . Got it? Good, now continue on for the detailed instructions after the break!
Apple has had more success than anyone marketing multi-touch as of late — we give you, the iPhone. But how far can even Apple push this technology? Right to the line? Past the line? Apple Insider sheds light on a new patent application that might just be way over the line:
portable multi-touch skins that can be wrapped around three-dimensional objects such as an iPod or steering wheel to provide addition GUI interfaces for those objects that can be configured via the touch skins themselves.
Too. Many. Jokes. Flooding. Blogsphere.
Apple envisions people using them to control music on steering wheels, or on tennis rackets for instruction. We’ll let you entertain yourselves with your own predictions, b’okay?
[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]
Cursed I tell ya. Not “Steve Jobs’ isn’t keynoting Macworld cursed, (though Dieter clearly blames me for that anyway!) Cursed in that not only did UPS hold CrackBerry Kevin’s beloved BlackBerry Bold hostage for nearly a week (”it didn’t make it on the plane” — what, it decided to go bar hoping first?!), not only to BIS take days to start working (”oh, you wanted BlackBerry BIS — no, I wanted iPhone BIS?!), but then I — a rabid iPhone enthusiast — had to endure my first completely non-touch screen device! Cursed!
Did I survive? Could I even use the tic-tactile little BlackBerry beastie? Check the video above to find out, then drop a comment here for your chance to win an iPhone 3G, or post on my comment thread over in the CrackBerry.com forums and you may just win a BlackBerry Bold! Prize details after the jump…
