Digitimes is reporting… what many others have been rumoring about the next gen iPhone and it’s camera. 3.5 megapixels, according to their “market sources” are bound to get bundled in if/when Apple shows off new iPhone 2,1 hardware at WWDC this year.
What’s even more fantastical is that a 5 megapixel camera is also rumored to be on its way to another Apple product this year. New iSight for the built-ins? Heh. That’s no fun. Gotta be for the next next gen iPhone 3,1, right? Or the iTablet? iNetbook? iYaiyai?!
Okay, my first thought was “finally, they’ve figured out how to use the iPhone to power optic blasts!”, so I was ready to strap one on, grab the rest of the X-Men, and go take down known BlackBerry Storm user, Magneto.
Alas, turns out that while optic blasts didn’t make the final release, this new cable does support using the iPhone with a set of Vuzix 3D headgear. With more and more video making the leap to 3D, no doubt this opens the iPhone up to watching those leaps in even more realistic — and scarier — ways.
Not sure I’m ready to strap on a visor for my next plane trip though. How about you? Can’t wait for Monsters vs. Aliens or Avatar, or are you holding fast until they can just beam the stuff straight into your brain?
Z. O. M. F. G. And Dieter just wanted to control little lego robots. Humph. This here GeekMyRide so much closer to Skynet and the Matrix and Cylons… and to think our little iPhone will be the elegant, buttery-interfaced controlled to our post-apocalyptic machine overloads. Sweet.
The car’s webserver provides a password-protected web interface optimised for full-screen display on an iPod Touch or iPhone running the SOPODS full screen web browser. The web interface has three screens: 1) Control, which provides a top-down view of the car with buttons for start, stop, lock, unlock, accessory power, and boot release; 2) Telemetry, which displays real-time data acquired from the engine management system such as RPM, vehicle speed, coolant temperature, throttle position, etc; and 3) Location, which uses a Google Maps mashup to display the current location of the vehicle on a map using current GPS data.
We seen both mobile players, QuickOffice and Docs2Go announce upcoming Word and Excel editing suites for the iPhone, but rumors of the king of the desktop doc jungle, Microsoft itself, entering the space remain just that: rumors. For now. TechCrunch has the latest:
I’m here at the Web 2.0 Expo keynote, where Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft Business Division, hinted that we may be seeing Microsoft Office make its way to the iPhone some time soon. After his interviewer Tim O’Reilly caught him on the comment, Elop backtracked a bit, stating “not yet, keep watching”. But it’s clear that an iPhone version of Office is on his mind.
So, do we need Big Redmond to give us Office for iPhone, or are the already-announced mobile players enough? Could they provide something no one else outside of Microsoft ever could? Like… Clippy for iPhone?!
As it stands, many of you have been craving some Slingplayer action on your iPhones. Well the good news is you are about to get it, the bad news is you may be paying more than you originally thought.
Engadget has posted that folks with older Slingboxes must upgrade to newer hardware in order to be able to stream content to your iPhone. And to make matters worse, this upgrade is technically not needed! Yup, the good people at Sling have decided that for everyone who wants to use Slingplayer Mobile on their iPhone, you can dish out some extra cash on some fresh hardware at home as well.
the company just posted up a page saying that owners of every older SlingBox save the Slingbox PRO will have to upgrade to a Slingbox SOLO or Slingbox PRO-HD in order to stream to iPhones. Yes, this is totally ridiculous: we’ve been told that the limitation is purely money-driven and that previous builds of the iPhone client worked just fine with older Sling hardware
Ouch, there you go, the only reason you may have to upgrade is pure corporate greed. This is surely a shot below the belt to current owners of older Slingboxes. So what do you say, will this prevent you from using Slingplayer Mobile on your iPhones or is it time for you to upgrade? We are curious…
Hackers vs. hackers. FreeHacks vs. AdHacks vs. PaidHacks. Jeremy covered the state of iPhone piracy yesterday, and while the argument over apps rages, the Jailbreak and potential unlock sitch could become just as confusing. Witness the Dev Team’s Cat. Bag. Mouse. post which warns against using “unofficial” (according to the Dev Team) versions of, er, the unofficial (according to Apple) iPhone jailbreaking QuickPwn:
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT THE UNOFFICIAL QUICKPWN RELEASES IS THAT IF YOU USE THEM, YOU WILL KILL YELLOWSN0W, POSSIBLY FOREVER. That’s because QuickPwn, by its very nature, requires you to already have accepted Apple’s official IPSW, along with its baseband update. If you do that, you will (possibly forever) lose your ability to software-unlock your iPhone 3G.
As to what the Dev Team itself is up to… check out the rest of their post.
The fine folks over at Longtail Studios have been gracious enough to offer up a couple (2) promo codes for TiPb readers eager to get their submission holds on the hot new iPhone game, TNA Wrestling [iTunes Link]:
Get ready to experience Total Nonstop Action anytime, anywhere! Once players create their own custom wrestler, they can jump into the ring against 15 TNA greats, including AJ Styles, Kurt Angle, Samoa Joe and Sting, and compete in eight different match types such as Tag Team, Iron Man, Gauntlet and Lumberjack. The goal is to make it from unsigned rookie to TNA World Champion, while unlocking new moves, forging ring alliances, creating rivalries and making decisions outside of the ring that will affect what goes on inside of it.
Go grab it now. Or if you want a shot at the give away, well.. Cue the entrance music, make your way down the aisle to the hexagonal ring that is the TiPb App Forum and try to pin it down for the 3 count!
Dieter managed to score an awesome video walkthrough of the Palm Pre’s app launching functionality and a look at some of the apps themselves. We’ve joked about how the Palm Pre, supervised by the guy who helped build the iPhone, developed by engineers who helped program the iPhone, felt more like a branch of the iPhone sometimes than a linear descendant of PalmOS.
Turns out we were wrong. To be joking. You swipe horizontally to switch Home Screens, just like the iPhone (though you can scroll down vertically as well to jam more apps on each screen). You hold your finger down and then move to reposition apps, just like the iPhone (though they don’t do the jiggle dance). They even seem to be a little bit laggy and slow to launch at times, just like iPhone 2.0 was! (Though these are widgets, not native apps, so that’s really more of a concern at this point).
Palm, I love ya. I had PDA’s going back to the Visor, smartphones going back to the 600. You left me, I didn’t leave you, remember? So now I found a new phone, and seriously, dressing up just like it isn’t the way to win me back. You gotta be yourself, the new you not a new version of it.
Don’t get me wrong, I really dig your Synergy, that touchstone charger, and that awesome alert system. Gold. But Apple didn’t make that first big iPhone splash by holding up something that worked like a BlackBerry or a Treo. They didn’t show off a Nokia-style experience. They made something new and instantly iconic. Copying the iPhone’s UI and interactions to this degree isn’t recognizing that Apple nailed the multi-touch paradigm for all time. It’s not surrendering the default behavior. It’s just copying Apple’s experience when you should be creating the next generation Palm experience.
Maybe you should have stuck with Palm leadership, engineers, and innovation?
iPhone Live! hits the nets again tonight (Wednesday, April 1) at 8pm EDT/5pm PDT.
Pre-show will start about 10 min. before if you want to drop by early. With iPhone 3.0 Beta 2 being released yesterday, more next gen iPhone rumors coming every day, and WWDC now officially dated, we’ll definitely have lots to talk about (maybe over that new Skype app!).
Have any specific questions? Anything you really want us to talk about? As always, we’ll take your chat questions live on the show, or leave them for us any time in the comments below, or send them to @theiphoneblog on Twitter.
First we had Crackulous, and now as is the case with any sort of media today, piracy is running rampant. It is something that is bound to happen no matter how many ways are created to prevent it. DVD’s, CD’s, Satellite TV, Video Games, and now iPhone applications. According to Wired.com nearly 20% of all the App Store apps have been pirated and are now available. One torrent file of 5.4 gigabytes worth of apps, 808 cracked apps to be exact, was recently floating around on the web. It’s all out there to grab… but it doesn’t make it right and no we won’t tell you where.
Wired.com interviewed a creator of one of these pirated app web sites:
“We want people to think of these as trial apps since Apple doesn’t allow trials of apps before purchase,” said “Omar,” one of the creators of the site, who refused to disclose his real name to Wired.com. “It’s Apple’s fault for not putting up a trials system.”
Has “Omar” ever really been on the App Store lately? There are lite versions all over the App Store and that rests in the developers hands whether or not they want to make that available, but certainly that is not Apple’s fault. Right? Either way, this is getting out of control just a bit, I mean you have pirates pirating other pirates now!
So who really is to blame for this piracy gone crazy in the App Store? Apple? Developers? Let us know where you stand on this one!
