Articles by Rene Ritchie
Chris from Mobiletech Addicts let us know that, as previously reported, O2 is coming through with the iPhone unlocks. Once their web form is submitted, they send a text (it took all of 15 minutes form him), then:
I put in a Vodafone Sim Card into the phone and fired up iTunes, a couple of minutes later and the [above] message appeared.
Congrats UK residents, you’re free at last!
(Now if only Rogers Canada would find a pair and do likewise right…)
Add Vimeo to the list of YouTube, Ustream, and Stickam — sites and services making H.264 versions of their content available for iPhone and other mobile platforms either via the web or via apps.
We won’t beat that drum too loudly right now, but H.264, and the new video tags in standards-based HTML5 are where we truly hope the web is headed. No reason a service that prides itself on quality shouldn’t get there first.
It’s only staff picks for now, but we hope they keep going and get the whole catalog done. There’s nothing we’d like better than to be able to embed Vimeo on this site without readers — justifiably — complaining that it’s not iPhone compatible.
[via Android Central]
After submitting a minor .1 bug fix for Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.1 [Free - iTunes link] for iPhone and iPod touch, longtime Mac developers Rogue Amoeba waited for what they assumed would be a routine App Store review. Three and a half months, three rejections, and the unsuccessful intervention of a champion at Apple, the app is finally in the store, but the developer has decided the process is too odorous to continue with the iPhone platform.
Don’t stop us just because you’ve heard this before over and over again.
The issue this time was Rogue Amoeba discovering the type of Mac and exact application that was being used as audio source, and displaying the corresponding Mac OS X-provided image of the machine and icon for the app.
Though standard — intended — behavior on the Mac, Apple’s App Store policy branded this a trademark violation and they requested it be changed. Rogue Amoeba assumed the request was erroneous and tried resubmitting, tried escalating via email, even had a champion inside Apple try help get it through. In the end, the App Store policy was an immovable object, and Rogue Amoeba had to remove the Mac and app icon images. Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.1 was then approved and placed in the app store.
(And during the whole process, Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0, buggy as it was, and using the exact same artwork Apple had issue with in 1.0.1 was left untouched in the App Store for users to download and use).
In the future, we hope that developers will be allowed to ship software without needing Apple’s approval at all, the same way we do on Mac OS X. We hope the App Store will get better, review times will be shorter, reviews will be more intelligent, and that we can all focus on making great software. Right now, however, the platform is a mess.
The chorus of disenchanted developers is growing and we’re adding our voices as well. Rogue Amoeba no longer has any plans for additional iPhone applications, and updates to our existing iPhone applications will likely be rare. The iPhone platform had great promise, but that promise is not enough, so we’re focusing on the Mac.
Add our voice to the chorus: fix. this. More after the break…
Join Rene, Chad, Dieter, and the Cell Phone Junkie, Mickey Papillion, for iPhone vs. Droid, AT&T vs. Verizon, Jailbreak SSH attacks, the week in apps, and your questions live! Listen in!
It looks like not only is Apple’s iPhone profit share soaring, but its market share has shot up to 17.1% (up 4.2% for the year) as well — if you believe Gartner. That still places Apple behind Nokia with a still-dominant 39.3% (down 3%) and BlackBerry maker RIM at 20.8% (up 4.9%), but well ahead of the next biggest group “others” (which must include Palm?) at 13.1% (down 7.8%).
Smartphones in general remained strong, growing 12.8% compared to a dismal 0.1% growth for the mobile phone market in general.
Gartner has previously predicted that Android will overtake the iPhone by 2012, however, so we’re fairly certain Apple’s focus on margins won’t be changing just yet…
[via MacRumors]
Ho-ho-hold on a minute, Verizon — AT&T’s not finding much to laugh about in those new anti-AT&T iPhone “map for that” commercials that show a teensy, tiny blue GSM/HSPA 3G footprint compared the ginormous country painted CDMA/EVDO red. In fact, AT&T is amending their original lawsuit to include those new misfit toys, Santa’s workshop, and blue Christmas ads.
“Contrary to the image presented in the Verizon ads, our wireless network is pervasive,” said an AT&T spokesman. “It covers over 300 million people, or 97 percent of the U.S. population. Our fastest, or 3G, network covers approximately 233 million people, or 75 percent of the U.S. population….[Verizon's] use of white space is misleading.”
In other words, AT&T is saying Verizon’s 3G coverage of mountains and lakes is impressive for the fish and eagles, but they think they have the humans and their “cities” covered just fine, thanks. (Though, again, NYC and SF might disagree…)
Digital Daily has the whole, amended, complaint for your reading pleasure. Let us know your take.
It’s not an iPhone-like slab, but it does ditch the Palm Pre slider (and Wi-Fi!) for a Centro-esque front-facing webOS form factor, and Dieter over at PreCentral.net has the full Palm Pixi Review up to prove it. His take?
The Palm Pixi is a tiny smartphone with enough features and elegance to woo even the most die-hard feature phone user, but current Pre owners will want to stick with what they have.
We’re figuring that will apply to iPhone owners as well, but for new buyers, could it be enough for Sprint and Palm to compete with a $99 iPhone 3G, and all its apps, on AT&T? Check out the rest of the Palm Pixi review and let us know what you think.
So if you’ve jailbroken your iPhone, installed SSH, and still haven’t changed your password from the default despite our previous warnings about Dutch Ransomers and Australian Rickrollers? Maybe you thought those were just funny (as seen in this video from iPhoneMVP) and not worth worrying about? Well now things have gotten more serious — there’s a new attack making the rounds that just plain steals your data.
Same method of attack, the bad guy scans the local network for insecure SSH on Jailbroken iPhones, and when it finds it, begins to copy your contacts, messages, email, events, photos, media, etc. This could, of course, include passwords, financial data, and those pics you never got around to deleting…
If you haven’t already, go change your SSH password now. If you need help, go to the TiPb iPhone Forums and get it. Just secure your iPhone.
[Intego, thanks to everyone who sent this in]
We’re huge security proponents here at TiPb, and that typically means recommending 1Password on the Mac and RoboForm on the PC. 1Password’s iPhone app has been available for long time already, providing on-device and Mac-synced bliss. Now, finally, RoboForm for iPhone [FREE - iTunes link] is here as well.
It’s a first release, and it’s not quite feature complete yet (on-device editing is a priority and coming soon), it requires an online account for syncing (a local Wi-Fi option to sync with the PC client would be nice as well), and there are some bugs (no 4 character master passwords — though you really should be using much, much longer master passwords!) security is so important we wanted to let you know about it right away, or if you already know about it, we wanted you to let us know how it was working for you.
Joe Hewitt, the developer who saw the Facebook App for iPhone and iPod touch to version 3.0, and the cusp of 3.1 (which promised/threatened push notifications), has thrown us the Twitter-equivalent of a curve-ball:
Time for me to try something new. I’ve handed the Facebook iPhone app off to another engineer, and I’m onto a new project.
Just to be clear, he’s staying with Facebook, just no longer working on their iPhone app. Does it have anything to do with his dissatisfaction with the iTunes App Store approval process?
According to the quote he gave TechCrunch, it did:
My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies. I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer.
(Hit the link above to read the rest of it). Some are no doubt happy to see such a high profile developer quit the App Store over the review process. Hey, we’ve complained about it quite a bit as well. Still, with the current process Hewitt was able to give us a pretty darn good app up to this point. Was it frustrating? No doubt it was, but many of us face frustrations on the job. The web is free, but it’s also often far from a premium user experience. Apple has thus far decided managing the App Store is, in their opinion, the best way to ensure their users’ experience (not just their noisy tech-blogging-and-commenting users’ experience, but the kids and moms and casual users as well). That the implementation remains capricious is another matter — one they need to be fixed and now. That the App Store should by all divine right and reason be as open as web development, however, is just another opinion, another option, and certainly not any more right or reasonable “just because”.
In any event, on behalf of TiPb, we thank you, Joe for all your hard work and the awesome app you’ve given us to date, and wish you well on your future endeavors.
And to the new developer, here’s wishing you the best, and the best for future versions of the Facebook app as well!
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
