All Articles in Apps

Ah, the joys of public transportation. Nothing else quite compares to the stimulating experience of standing in the company of drunks and derelicts at a bus stop late in waining hours of Saturday night, waiting for a fuming smoke filled bus to arrive, concluded with sharing a body fluid-stained seat with the unwashed, unwashed masses. But enough about my college days.

If you happen to live San Francisco, a new service called MoMuni provides instant real-time access to bus or train routes and waypoints, right on your iPhone. Users can select the route and stop of the bus or train they’re waiting for and then determine how far away the next 3 are. What’s more, you can bookmark stops most often used, like commuting from home or work, for example, and access them from a tabbed interface. Nice.

Of course, once you board the bus… you’re on your own. One word: deodorant.

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It looks like Apple might have some web apps of their own that are perhaps going live very soon. Both the Register and the Boy Genius Report indicate that the ‘recent downloads‘ (RSS link) page of Apple’s points to a few iPhone web applications. It unfortunately looks like Apple has wised up, and removed the applications from their feed, but you can at least view the screenshots in all of their glory courtesy of tBGR. Although they’re in Apple’s download RSS feed, all indications point to this web app directory being simple repository for online web apps. That is, not web apps that are run from your iPhone, aka widgets.

Longtime forum member Cliff Maier (cmaier in the forums) just posted his sixth full game, making him long overdue for accolades on the front page. All of the games are simple, clean, and optimal candidates for boonies mode data URLs. All of the games are small and make excellent use of the fonts present on the iPhone; due to his careful programming, all of the games com in at around 80k (and even less for ThumbTrek). This is important, as it means that the games will still be eminently playable over EDGE networks.

• Tic-tac-toe with a twist
  Tic-Tac-Whoa, the first game, is a tic-tac-toe game that’s been amped up with bonuses, obstacles, treasures, and other fun stuff.
• Vegas Solitaire
  A simple and fun Vegas solitaire game. Each hand sets you back $52, and you earn money by applying cards to the foundation.
• Vegas Blackjack
  Just like it sounds, Blackjack with Las Vegas rules. This is the newest inclusion to his online arsenal of games.
• Jacks or Better Video Poker
  For those that prefer the slot machines, there’s the video variety of poker. Maier’s straightforward draw poker “Jacks or Better” type does not score single pairs that aren’t face cards. Best inclusion: the presence of the ‘Max bet’ option.
• Deuces Wild Video Poker
  Like Jacks or Better, but with deuces as wild cards. The game does not score hands less than 3 of a kind; if your hand is a single pair or two pair, you’ll lose the hand. I’ll admit that do I miss the ‘max bet’ option in deuces wild.
  
• ThumbTrek Port
  ThumbTrek is a port of a very old but popular Star Trek game from the 70s.

figure 1: the most important feature is highlighted

There’s another password manager on the scene, and this one looks to be the most secure version that I’ve seen. 1Password is a mac-only application, so there unfortunately isn’t a password manager I could securely recommend to Windows iPhone users yet. The application has a little button that sends an encrypted bookmarklet to Safari that you can then sync to your iPhone. You can open the bookmarklet and view your passwords with a master password that you assign within 1Password.

The bit that gives 1Password the nod above others at the moment is that the bookmarklet is encrypted with good cryptography. The blowfish cipher is a well-respected cipher by Bruce Schneier, one of the most respected cryptologists out there, and 1Password uses blowfish’s maximum key length of 448 bits within the bookmarklet. So, if you’re looking to store your passwords with heavy-duty security, 1Password might be worth your look.

I’ve claimed over and over that the iPhone is built to buy things from iTunes. One of the things that we should be able to buy from iTunes is programs. Games, if that’s your thing; mental diversions. I’m glad to report that 9to5mac.com says that it’s coming. Of course, they call it 3rd party development, which is kind of a misnomer. If it requires that a developer sign a contract and get Apple’s blessing just to get the development tools, it’s a lot more like 2nd party development. It would bring the iPhone and iPod Touch to feature parity with the iPod Classic and Nano, so I’m glad to see it, assuming it’s true (which I do).

figure 1: Spore, an example of a 2nd party game that could come to the iPhone

There’s no release date listed, so there’s no way to tell when it will be available. Safe guesses include after Leopard (more on that later this morning) and in January for Macworld 2008. Here’s the expected process of it all:

1. a partner of Apple thinks of an idea for an app. EA, for example, wants to write Spore.
2. EA submits it to Apple in a fancy proposal
3. Apple says “Okay, good idea” and gives EA permission and tools necessary to write Spore.
4. EA writes Spore
5. Apple digitally signs Spore and sells it on iTunes so it can’t be pirated
6. I buy Spore from iTunes or the iTunes Wi-Fi store and never leave the house again

In a nutshell, it’s more or less the same process that was used for earlier versions of iPods, except most of those games were done by Apple in-house. I gotta tell you, I’m sometimes half surprised that Apple doesn’t sell their own programs through iTunes, let alone 2nd party games and apps for the new iPod Touch and iPhone. I suppose that building that infrastructure takes more than 3 months, though; I’ll just have to be patient for it.

Speaking of rumors, here’s another bit of tittle-tattle to roll your eyes at. A site called 9to5Mac - apparently the site shuts down after 5 and heads to the nearest bar - claims that Apple is currently working with developers to bring application support to iPhone, available through iTunes. Sound plausible? Yes, it does. But then again, that was almost a given from the beginning, so it takes little creative imagination to fabricate such rumors.

Application support is coming, folks. We know that. Apple is presenting the evidence at our very feet with the release of firmware update 1.1.1, which now employs digital signature encryption for any executing code. A security measure that lays the groundwork for application deployment. The only question is how liberal and open Apple will be with platform development. It’s a given that iTunes will be the distribution channel for iPhone software, just as it is now for iPod games. But will Apple allow anyone to write code for iPhone? Or will it be an exclusive members only club? We’ll have to wait and see.

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The New York Times has a neat article on third party applications and how the iPhone is currently the only device on AT&T’s network that doesn’t support them. The article has some good things to say about Palm too, which I always welcome. The big gist of it is how Jobs’ quote from a January Newsweek interview doesn’t jive with reality:

“You don’t want your phone to be an open platform… You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.”

Whereas the reality of the situation is that Cingular/ATT welcomed development on every single other phone they had on their network, whether it be Java/J2ME, PalmOS development, Windows Development, or Flash Lite / whatever. This is backed up by Mark Bercow, Senior VP of Development at Palm. Talk about your David vs. Goliath situations here; I feel like Steve Jobs’ famous reality distortion field just failed for a second or something. But, there’s another quote that the Times dug up that I’d forgotten about from his video conversation with Walt Mossberg at the All Things D conference in July:

“This is a very important trade-off between security and openness. We want both. We’ve got good ideas, and sometime later this year, we can open it up to third-party apps, and keep security.”

The more I think about this quote, the more I think he’s talking about widgets here. You only really have to worry about a widget’s security if there’s a browser bug or exploit, and HTML/CSS/AJAX is definitely open. He probably doesn’t want to open up a full native SDK until the software and hardware platforms are stable and proven, much like he did with the original Mac series. That is, if he wants a full native SDK available to the public at all.

There are a few other interesting tidbits from the article that I can’t help but mention:

1. Two-thirds of Treo owners have purchased 3rd party apps
2. Ten percent of Treo owners have purchased 10 or more 3rd party apps
3. AT&T has a website to get developers on all of their development platforms except the iPhone.

Ars Technica has sources that indicate that Apple is prepping Mobile Safari to run applications and web pages offline. You know, widgets. These widgets will use the same technologies as the AJAX web apps that are out there now — HTML, CSS, asynchronous Javascript and XML, cookies, etc., but with the added bonus of a little extra local storage. Maybe some javascript functions that allow you to access the actual API of the phone for contact / calendar integration and the like will make it as well.

figure 1: the Widget manager from OSX 10.4. The iPhone has been destined for widgets. Note the similarity of this on the iPhone (figure 2)

figure 2: The bottom bar on the iPhone. Note the similarity. I do not think the similarity is accidental. Why would the iPod Touch have a different bottom bar?

Apple is working on a Google Gears-like system to cache online applications for use in mode, or other situations where the network is not available. Their expected timeline for announcing or delivering this is January. In case you’re new to the Apple world, January is code for Macworld Expo, the same Expo in which Jobs announced the iPhone.

Lastly, their source indicated that Apple is not currently working on a native SDK for release to the general public, and that AJAX Web apps are going to be the way to go. Ars Technica’s Apple source has expressed some frustration in that:

“You can’t write [bleep]ing [bleep] in that…. Jobs is a control freak and doesn’t want people messing with perfection.”

He’s not alone in his frustration. You can practically read the spittle over at gizmodo. Jesus Diaz is so pissed he’s replaced every outbound link in his article with another link that links back to Gizmodo. Macworld.co.uk meanwhile is confusing Javascript with Java. There won’t be Java on the iPhone. Jobs confirmed that maybe a day after he announced the iPhone in January.

Speaking personally, I know that it’s not the same as having native applications. But, I am glad that there will finally be some mechanism for apps beyond the data URL trick and bookmarklets. I’ve long said that I expect some sort of 3rd party app, whether it be widgets or native. Frankly, I’d much prefer native, and that’s part of the reason that I’ll likely never update my hacked 4GB iPhone (I need it for screenshots and the like), but widgets can do a lot of what many, if not most, people want, and I eagerly look forward to that on the 8GB iPhone.

Ambrosia Software, makers of iToner, a software program used to put ringtones on an iPhone, have announced that they are still working on fixing iToner for firmware version 1.1.1. They expect to have an update Real Soon Now:

“it’s our job to make iToner continue to function as a product… and we think we’re going to be able to do just that. Very shortly we will be beta testing iToner 1.0.3 which we believe will bring iPhone OS 1.1.1 compatibility to iToner.”

And wireless positioning firm Navizon, who had a nice cell tower triangulation software bit called, cough, Navizon (discussed here), announced that though they’d give back refunds to users that upgraded to 1.1.1, they’re still alive and kicking and will continue efforts for users that are running firmware 1.0.2.

Apple has posted their Human Interface Guidelines (HIG, PDF link) for programming for the iPhone. What this means is that they’ve completed the rules and guidelines for how they expect you, the iPhone user, to interact with applications on the device. It also means that now that they have interface guidelines, they can begin focusing on building the software they need for native third party applications and not web applications. Yes, I said it; worst of all, I believe it. Even worse, I think this is the big news of the weekend, even more than bricked iPhones. You’ll have to brave the cut for why.