All Articles in Apps

First up, with the previous rejection of Gmail client MailWrangler, Engadget says another app which also dares to “duplicate features” found in a Dock App (Apple’s own MobileMail) has actually been accepted into the App Store. Did BdEmailer slip through the cracks? Or is this a sign of inconsistency on Apple’s part? Hot on the heels of the controversy surrounding Google’s Advance Voice Search using non-public API’s, developer confidence in the approval process might drop even further…

…Though Ars’ own Erica Sadun reveals the story of one developer who, after initially having their App rejected by Apple, tried and tried again, and without making a single change to the app, had it approved the second time around. Embarrassing for Apple, if the policies really are that inconsistent.

Speaking of embarrassing, Wired reveals that one developer actually got Amazon’s mechanical turk involved in paying for reviews. Users who get $4 — $2 to “buy” the app, and $2 in bonus for leaving a 5-star review.

Lastly, Erica Sadun is back to remind us that, with the release of iPhone OS 2.2, the NDA is now lifted regarding that firmware, and the public dumping can begin! Any guesses as to what goodies will be found?

Aurora Feint Forum Review by cjvitek (For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum!

[Ed- Aurora Feint 1: The Beginning, is FREE in the iTunes store. Aurora Feint 2: The Arena is now available for $7.99 and if you head on over to the forum, and ask Chris and Matt, we might just get a review up for that soon too! Meanwhile, here's Chris' review of the original to whet everyone's appetite!]

This is an extremely interesting game that tries to combine elements of a puzzle game with elements of an RPG game.

You start with a map screen. From there, you can go to the mine (the puzzle game), the store (to use your tiles for skills or tools), the smith (to actually obtain the tools), and the tower (to actually learn the skills). You need to start with the puzzle game, and once you start to gain levels and tile,s you can move to the other areas.

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Conor sent us a note about the new game from Redwind Software. They’re coming from a .Net background, and this is their first attempt at Cocoa Touch and the iPhone, and it seems from the video they’re embracing the differences whole heartedly!

Movie Challenge is a trivia/quiz style game at its core, but so much more when examined in detail. Rather than the simple question after question after question, leveling up to meaningless levels that seems to be the norm in most trivia games on the platform we have strived to provide more. There are multiple categories, multiple game types, accelerometer action, touch screen drag and drops, power ups and the list goes on.

If you’re a movie trivia buff and you decide to meet this challenge, let us know how you do!

Remember that rumor from MacWorld Sweden about iPhone MMS? That Telia was going to launch their own App for the iPhone? Turns out there is an MMS App launching and Telia will offer it, though it actually originates with Mobispine.

Mobispine AB (MOBS) the market leader in delivering mobile solutions to operators announced the availability of the world’s first true Multimedia Messaging (MMS) for iPhone. Mobispine is now offering a “white label” MMS service for iPhone to global operators. This new and innovative service will increase revenue per user (ARPU) and generate profits for operators.

So will there be an AT&T branded MMS App in the US? Rogers in Canada? O2 in the UK? Etc.? Will some carriers opt not to get involved? If so, do we then hate on them rather than Apple? Or should things like MMS not depend on carriers or 3rd parties, but be baked right into the OS? (Or should MMS just be left to die so Email can inherit the mobile future as well?)

(Thanks to Tobbe for the tip!)

UPDATE: iPhone dev extraordinaire Erica Sadun investigated over at Ars and found the following: Google is both linking to Private Frameworks and using unpublished APIs. While the latter is likened to jaywalking, the former is apparently a ban-worthy offense. Yikes. Check out her complete investigation for more. And now that it’s public, the question shifts to what if anything Apple will do about it? Cave to Google over a killer feature and betray the confidence of other developers, or yank Google’s app, alienating a huge (if guilty) partner and likely creating another furor among users?

Original post:

Is Google using private (i.e., not publicly available via the official iPhone SDK) APIs to create the silky-smooth “raise the phone and talk” activation for their new Advanced Voice Search feature in the update Google Mobile App? That’s the latest question Daring Fireball’s been looking into, and here’s what they’ve found so far:

If you use something like the command-line strings utility to examine the UIKit framework, you can see that there’s an undocumented (and therefore private to Apple) method named proximityStateChanged. And if one were to strip the FairPlay DRM from the current Google Mobile application binary — which, of course, you wouldn’t do, because you’re not supposed to strip FairPlay DRM, but I’m just saying if one were to do this — a class dump of the application binary would show that Google Mobile does in fact implement proximityStateChanged.

DF posits three possible explinations: 1) No one at Apple noticed the private API usage, 2) Apple noticed but turned a blind-eye, or 3) Apple approved the use of a private API. Citing sources, DF claims #3 to not be the case, and perhaps that’s why Google promoted the feature so heavily, and stirred up interest so high Apple would feel pressure to approve it (though we wonder if Steve Jobs’ Apple ever feels that type of pressure?)

By contrast, DF states #1 is not without precedence, while #2 would be grossly unfair to other developers, and either way, users may suffer if Apple makes changes to their private APIs (which is one of the reasons to keep them private after all).

So what do you think? Which scenario is most likely? And what would you rather, that developers (Google or not) use officially unsupported features if it means better apps but also apps that might just break when the next firmware drops?

I love me some crossword puzzles. You can keep your silly Sudoku, I played enough logic games getting my philosophy major from a department that didn’t go for them crazy postmodern language games (seriously, the folks at St. Thomas love them some logic). I love having crosswords on my smartphone because it’s the perfect ‘quick game’ app: you can spend two minutes or twenty on them, there’s many new and free ones available every day, and they fend off cognitive decline in old age (Seriously, speaking of Catholics, look into the “nun study“).

Anyway, point is I want my crossword puzzle app to be awesome. So this week’s App vs. App is crosswords. Today’s contestants: 2 Across (1.2.2) by Eliza Block and Crosswords (1.13) by Stand Alone, Inc. Which one will better serve your word-puzzle fetish? Read on!

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To all of the Nintendo Zelda fans out there, this one is just for you. Smule has the number one paid app in all of the App Store currently with Ocarina. [iTunes Link] For $.99 you can really impress the ladies while playing songs from your iPhone/Ocarina!

Ocarina users are able to hear and see the origin of live performances and share their melodies with others around the world. In less than two weeks since the Ocarina launch, Ocarina users have listened to more than three million melodies, have generated over two hundred musical scores and have shared their creations here: Ocarina forums.

So there you have it folks, if you are a Zelda fan be sure to check this one out along with some performances in the below YouTube links.

Video 1

Video 2

And if any of our loyal readers can crank out song like this please let us know. We’d love to check it out!

Nelson wrote in to tell us a little about WaKi SNAP!, a new game now available in the iTunes App Store:

WaKi SNAP! was created as our first project for the iPhone and we wanted to create something that used the touch capabilities of the iPhone in an innovative and immersive way…basically, something that allows two players to both enjoy the game on the one phone at the same time, which is different to the majority of the games out there.

We wanted to make something that was fun, simple to play, and almost universally known by both children and adults. The challenge was also to keep the interface as clean and minimalist as possible so that there was little clutter and the main focus was on displaying the graphics of the cards in as large a size as possible. Thus, WaKi SNAP! was born!

If you check it out, be sure to let us know what you think!

Update: The App Store is now pushing out the update. Enjoy!

NOTE: If you don’t see the microphone icon immediately in the top right corner, tap the Settings button at the bottom right, and switch the slider to “Enabled”.

Original post:

Well, it’s definitely later than last Friday, but it doesn’t look like anyone, including Apple, delayed this long: Google’s Mobile App (iTunes link) now includes the much talked about Advanced Voice Search feature… sorta.

According to Jeremy, iTunes isn’t pushing the update yet, and you actually have to delete the app first if you’ve already installed it in order to get the latest, greatest, chattiest version on your iPhone. (Yup, you read correctly, this isn’t a new App, but an update to Google’s existing iPhone search App.)

Of course, I don’t have an iPhone right now, but if you do, try it out, ask it just how tall Everest really is, and let us know what kind of response you get!

And for you privacy advocates out there, is the coolness factor of this enough to give Skynet, er… The Matrix, um… Google access to your voice ID?

(Thanks to Trevor, Josh, Craig, Bob, for sending this in!)

You work with numbers all day long, your Macbook lacks the numeric keypad… Frustrated much? I’m sure that can be very inconvenient, that is until now.

Balmuda has just released their solution to your dilemma, Numberkey. [iTunes Link] The price to this solution is a small price to pay, coming in at $1.99. For that you get your ever so priceless numeric keypad. And for all of your who have OCD like myself, it will match your style of keyboard on your Mac. Whether it’s white, black, or silver – Numberkey has you are covered.

To get set up you first need to download and install Balmuda’s Mac software. Then head to the App Store and download Numberkey, turn on WiFi on both your Macbook and iPhone, and you are good to go.

It is also important to note, this is for Macs only, sorry Windows faithful!

Enjoy!

[Via Technabob.com]