All Articles in Apps

[This is an iPhone blog App vs. App review! Last week, we ran our Google Earth vs. Earthscape showdown, with Google Earth scoring the win. But which commenter won an iTunes gift certificate? Congratulations musicobsession! Want your chance to win the winning app this week? Comment below!]

Have you ever had a song running on infinite loop in your brain but can’t quite place the name or artist? What about those times you are in a store or in your car and you hear a song that you really like, but you have no idea what the name of the song or artist is? Fortunately, there are two excellent FREE apps for your iPhone, Shazam and Midomi, that can help you name the song and artist, watch the music video, and even buy the song. How do they compare? Read on for App vs. App, music tagging edition!

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Apple is still heavily promoting the App Store in their latest iPhone ad — and given the staggering number of Apps and even more staggering number of downloads, with good reason.

The latest focuses on restaurant random-finder Urban Spoon, and perhaps to appease the UK overseers, the ad now cops to having the “sequence shortened”. Dieter finds this “disappointingly normal”:

…what was so awesome about the initial commercials is they showed some speed, instruction, and fun just by showing you the interface.

So scratch the speed, but you can still shake some fun.

Back in September, TiPb posted a few articles in regards to Apple becoming a major player in the hand held gaming wars. We faced off the iPhone against Sony’s PSP and Nintendo’s DS.

The main question to be answered is should Sony and Nintendo be worried? I’d say yes, indeed they should be worried. Business Week seems to feel the same way as well. Some of their points are right on key with what we had to say back in September (see the articles linked above). While that is no doubt a coincidence, here is what they had to say:

Now look at Apple’s advantages over competitors. Apple already has more titles for its games than both of the other two combined. And aside from the free ones, games on the App Store sell at prices ranging up to $9.99 and sometimes a little more. Compare that with the $20 to $40 for Nintendo DS games and the $10 to $40 for games on the PSP.

Fully agrees with what we said, doesn’t it? How about this one?

And with Apple selling via iTunes, there are no costs associated with the distribution of physical media. All games are downloaded directly to the device. And in the event the game is buggy, the developer can easily issue an easy-to-download fix. The developer gets 70% of the sale and Apple keeps 30%, with no one else to get in the middle. Nintendo and Sony partners have to worry about shelf space at stores, shipping, returns, defective merchandise, and even the occasional shoplifter.

Also a good point that we stressed a few months back. With the holiday season fast approaching, it should be mighty interesting to see just how the hand held gaming wars works out.

For more gaming coverage from TiPb be sure to check out these articles.

(Via Business Week)

While we wait for an “official” iDisk app from Apple, the folks over at Quickoffice have released a free app for the iPhone called MobileFiles. This app is different from our recent post about Box.net. This app is used strictly to access your MobileFiles on the go. There is lots to talk about this app, but what I like the most is that when you access a file from your MobileMe account, it saves it locally for you to access later; without being online. You can even go in and manage what files you want to keep locally or not. Here is a high-level list of things you can do with Mobilefiles:

• Add multiple MobileMe accounts
• Add multiple MobileMe public folders
• View almost any type of supported file
• Built-in file manager
• FREE!!!

Quickoffice is also working on an office client for the iPhone as well. Others that have jumped in the document editing area are Documents to Go and Microsoft. Who will be victorious? I can’t wait to find out. Do yourself and favor, and if you have a MobileMe account, don’t wait, download this awesome app now!

Gallery after the jump…

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UPDATE:

The New York Times gets clarification from Opera (via Daring Fireball):

“We stopped the work because of the prohibitive license,” to Mr. von Tetzchner wrote in an e-mail.

Turns out it was an internal project.

ORIGINAL POST:

So we, along with half the interwebs, picked up a paraphrased comment by Opera’s president that pretty much indicated Apple had rejected popular mobile browser Opera Mini from the App Store.

Well, John Gruber over at Daring Fireball did some digging and found out that it just ain’t so:

My understanding, based on information from informed sources who do not wish to be identified because they were not authorized by their employers is that Opera has developed an iPhone version of Opera Mini, they haven’t even submitted it to Apple, let alone had it be rejected.

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!

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Easy Relax (Free Version) Forum Review by cjvitek. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum!

Ahh….relaxtion. The often unachievable goal of most adults (especially during the weekend). With the increasing stress of our lives, is it any surprise that huge numbers of “relaxation aides” have appeared on the market. Massagers, aroma therapy, ambient noise generators - all trying to help us relax.

Well, now the iPhone has gotten into the game.

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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.

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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?

Since our last Apps for Less post, price drops worth mentioning have been far and few between. Well today we finally have a notable mention for you. Especially if you are a fan of IM clients…

Today is the final day to get the best IM application available on the iPhone, BeejiveIM (iTunes Link), on sale for $3.00 off the normal price for $12.99. While that is still not the price you’d like to pick it up at, it’s better than the normal price of $15.99. So if you were waiting for a price drop be sure to head into the App Store today!

Once again, the sale ends TODAY! This is the IM client to get, you get what you pay for and you won’t be disappointed with this app. And if you are still on the fence, be sure to check out Dieter’s first look and Casey’s BeeJive vs. Palringo review showdown.

(Thanks to Mr. Hi-Definition for the tip!)