Articles by Rene Ritchie
So, many of us felt a a great disturbance in the force when the selection of characters included with the original Lightsaber Unleashed (formerly known as PhoneSaber) were tied to the simultaneously released Force Unleashed video game rather than to the original Star Wars movies we all (should!) know and love.
No Luke. No Yoda. No Obi-wan.
Well, Lightsaber Unleashed has just hit 2.1 and with it comes the ability to rectify this disturbance, provided you’re willing to do it yourself. Not only can you make your own Lightsabers, mixing handles and colors for the perfect shade, but you can take a photo or choose from a photo album picture to make your own entire character — complete with fields for names and bios!
Major improvement to an already geek-favorite app!
Gallery after the jump!
Forbes.com (via TUAW) is claiming Ziphone jailbreak author Piergiorgio Zambrini has found a way to crash the iPhone (and other computer systems, according to Zambrini’s own website) using specially crafted video files:
The bug Zambrini found is in the audio portion of Apple’s video format. Knowing the bug exists, someone could write a program that incorporates the bug into a video file and trigger a crash whenever an iPhone attempts to run that file. The bug, which is located in a shared code library that is used across most Apple operating systems and some Linux ones as well, doesn’t appear to cause any permanent damage, but immediately sends the device into a panic that leads to a lengthy reboot.
Since it crashed the device and not just the app, one security expert quoted feels it’s a kernal vulnerability that’s been discovered. Zambrini, who paradoxically claims to have both applied for a job with Apple’s security team, and that working for Apple is not his goal, is apparently exploring the vulnerability as a way to inject malicious code.
Lovely.
Howsabout next time we be a little more responsible and keep the information confidential, alerting only the OS makers involved, giving them a reasonable amount of time to patch the problem before we put real world end-users at risk by alerting bad guys to potential exploits, b’okay?
Mark Jardine and Paul Haddad of Tapbots are the breakout designers and engineers behind Weightbot (iTunes link), one of the most original user experiences released on the iPhone App Store to date. Continuing the iPhone blog’s behind-the-scenes look at iPhone application development, Mark and Paul were kind enough to take time and discuss their ideas on interface and interactivity, and how what more we might expect from Apple’s next generation mobile platform.
TiPb: How was approaching the iPhone interface for this App different than how you would have approached an interface for another platform?
Mark: It was really different coming from a web design background. 320×460 isn’t a lot of space to work with and then you have to factor in the huge difference in input devices. A person’s finger is a lot less accurate than a mouse cursor. At the same time, I wasn’t designing a website so I was freed from a lot of rules and conventions I’ve been following over the past 8 years. So my initial approach was pretty simple. If Weightbot was an actual physical device, how could I make it usable and fun at the same time?
Paul: The thing I found challenging about dealing with the iPhone interface is that users want a silky smooth and yet the iPhone and iPod touch are both very slow compared to any modern Mac. I spent a lot of time juggling things around in order to get a consistent 60 fps for all the various animations within Weightbot. Coming from our current Multi Gigahertz, Multi Gigabyte and Multi Core world where for the most part you don’t have to worry about performance to a platform like the iPhone where every cycle and byte counts is a big change.
We’ve asked this before: do iPhone WebApps have a future? Sure, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, and even Apple to some degree are all racing to own what many think will be the next paradigm shift in platforms: the cloud.
But when Steve Jobs announced WebApps as the first iPhone development environment back at WWDC 2007, the silence was deafening. Sure, many innovative games, utilities, and optimized RIA (rich internet applications) emerged — and Apple keeps track of them on a completely non-iPhone optimized directory, but the moment the iPhone SDK was released, the momentum shifted near-instantaneously. (Even the Facebook 2.0 App managed to trump their previously dominant iPhone WebApp).
TiPb uses the WPtouch iPhone Theme to present a better experience to iPhone browsers. After all, even in light of Apple’s “just the internet”, they have encouraged these types of sites through their developer guidelines, and have snuck in code into iPhone OS 2.1 to allow full screen WebApps that hide the “chrome” (interface, including URL and search boxes, buttons, progress bars, etc.)
One of our readers, Christopher, also sent in word of his iWebKit tools, which seek to make it faster, simpler, and easier to develop and deploy iPhone websites.
So is there’s still a time and a place for both? Is that time shortening and the place getting smaller for WebApps on the iPhone? Or will they ride the same tide as Microsoft Office for the Web 2009 (or whenever it ships) and surge ahead again, allowing native Apps to enjoy only transient dominance?
Bottle Rocket sent us word of two new App Store releases, Proxy Pal ($1.99) and Wings ($0.99). One lets you glide over virtual scene-scapes, the other might just help people outside the US actually access Hulu! (Purty please?)
Wings brings the fun, excitement and relaxation of flying to everyone, not just pilots. Wings’ flight visualizer and virtual worlds have the most beautiful terrains and environments available on the iPhone. Tailor your flying to have fun or just relax and enjoy the scenery. Play your own music from your iPhone or choose one of the built-in tracks. Go searching for distant valleys or the endless river. Do barrel rolls and spins or keep it simple and just float along. Make Wings your own personal flying escape. This is a fun and entertaining time-passer for anyone and is 100% safe for kids. Both relaxing and fun, Wings is the best way to get away.
Proxy Pal provides working proxy server sites so that you can always access your go-to pages. New proxies are added weekly and automatically updated when you launch Proxy Pal. Works worldwide in any country so stop surfing on your Edge/3G network when you’re right in front of a computer that blocks your favorite site. Use Proxy Pal and get back on that high-speed connection. Mark your favorite proxies as “best pals” to use on Facebook, MySpace, eBay, Google, Craigslist, YouTube, ESPN, CNN, LinkedIn, Hotmail or any other web site. Never be caught again on a computer at work, the library or school without a proxy that works.
One of the highest profile iPhone games to state, EA’s Spore, retails on the iTunes App Store for $9.99. Now, however, you can also get a “free” version, Spore Origins Lite Edition (iTunes link). The catch? It’s teaser consisting of 1 level. Since Apple doesn’t (yet?) have a model for demoing apps (”try” instead of “buy”), it’s likely the only thing developers can do to give potential buyers a real preview. They hope, after one or a short number of levels, you’ll be hooked enough to pony up the bucks for the full blown version.
How’s this working? Well, Spore Origins Lite is not in the iTunes App Store Top 10… Pac Man Lite, which uses the same model, sits at number 5 in the free listings as of this posting, but it’s full blown counterpart in nowhere to be found among the top 100 paid Apps.
What does this tell us? That people would rather pay nothing for a Lite edition than something for a full game? Or is it simply that the whole App ranking mechanism still broken?
Have you downloaded any free “Lite” Apps? And if so, how many have convinced you to move on up to the full version?
iPhone OS 2.2, Turn-by-Turn GPS Navigation, Google hearts the iPhone, and more. Listen in!
Apple Insider is reporting (via CNet) that Apple has hired away Mark Papermaster, IBM’s VP of Microprocessor Technology Development.
When Apple bought Palo Alto Semiconductor (PA Semi), and reportedly signed licensing agreements with ARM and PowerVR, we kinda sorta suspected Steve Jobs was getting serious about spinning his own custom systems-on-a-chip for the iPhone and the greater iPod platform.
Hey, if they can switch from Intel integrated to Nvidia chipsets to support their Core 2 Duos on the Macbook line, they can certainly role their own mobile brains, right?
IBM is suing on the grounds of a no-compete clause, which has historically been worthless in California (which is likely why IBM is suing in New York!)
TiPb, of course, doesn’t really care about no frivolous lawsuit. We just want to see what kind of “screaming” fast new iPhones we can has next year!
Happy Halloween, especially to our younger readers who’ll likely all be dressed up as iPhones or mini-Steve Jobs’.
Ready to get your trick or treat on? Several readers (and vendors!) were kind enough to share in their Halloween iPhone suggestions:
- Courtenay wants us to take a look at BatRest, a Halloween’y iPhone stand.
- Ken says iHalloween – Sound Collection will make for a creepier time.
- Damien offers up Halloween Boxto spook up your iphone.
- Tammy Chan thinks Sonic Vox will make you sound like a nightmare.
- And Serena drops the whole bag of candy, recommending YPMobile, Flashlight, Weatherbug, Photobucket, and Halloween Sound Machine
To no one’s surprise, but perhaps to a few’s disppointment, Apple may have denied entry to the iTunes App Store to Opera Mini. Says the New York Times (via Daring Fireball):
Mr. von Tetzchner said that Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser.
Opera doesn’t state what the terms of rejection were, be it “duplicative functionality” like PodCaster, they dared touch Steve Jobs’ sacred dock, or whether they were trying to parse JavaScript against the terms of the SDK. Whatever the reason, however, there remains uncertainty for developers and a deafening lack of justification from Apple. (Perhaps even more ironic, given Valley Wag’s assertion that Opera was once considered by Apple to be the iPhone browser!)
For those not familiar with Opera Mini, on the Windows Mobile, Palm, and even Blackberry platforms that have been woefully under-served by the likes of Blazer and Pocket IE, Opera Mini has become one of the first things installed in a desperate attempt to get at least something closer to the actual internet on their devices (though this is changing with the likes of Android, and devices such as the Blackberry Thunder). Opera has also found a niche in embedded systems (e.g. video game platforms).
However, Opera Mini pre-crunching all data on their own servers before shipping it to handsets sets off a “Gibsonian response” in my central security core, so while it wouldn’t appeal to me on the iPhone, I would prefer to reject it myself rather than have Apple do so perfunctorily on my behalf.
What about you? Anyone seriously bummed there won’t be Opera for the iPhone any time soon?
