Navigon, makers of MobileNavigator [iTunes link] let us know that they’re now running a:
special Thanksgiving promotion for its iPhone navigation app striving to help drivers avoid this year’s holiday traffic congestion. For 10 days only, (November 20-30) NAVIGON’s iPhone app, MobileNavigator will be on sale for $69.99 instead of $89.99 providing a $20.00 savings. In addition, NAVIGON’s Traffic Live feature is also on sale for $14.99 instead of $24.99.
If you’ve been waiting to pull the trigger, and price was your concern, how’s this deal do ya?
Gameloft — and other developers according to Gameloft — are cutting back on development for Google’s Android platform due to the “weakness” of the Android Market. According to Reuters, Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said:
We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like … many others. [The Android Market] is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue.”
Ouch. Harsh words. Meanwhile, with iPhone generating 13% of Gameloft’s revenue (400 times more than Android), we’ll no doubt see plenty more on the iTunes App Store.
While we’ve heard developers and pundits talk about the business advantage of the iPhone before, and while Android’s numbers may be rising and soon, in the short term the bigger houses like Gameloft might just stick with where the money is.
When Google first mentioned ChromeOS, we figured it was their reaction to launching Android, then seeing Palm come out with webOS, and smacking their heads — they could have done that with V8! (What, too nerdy?)
Lame JavaScript rendering engine jokes aside, the very traditional Android never really seemed like the OS Google should, or even wanted, to give to the world. ChromeOS does. (For those unfamiliar, when I guessed what it would be before the unveiling yesterday — Brin and Page booting Linux which then auto-started the WebKit-based Chrome browser — that wasn’t a joke. It’s really what I — and many others — thought they’d do, and pretty much what they did. Casey at Android Central has a bigger write up on it if you want the details).
A little while ago we posted about Apple’s new use of a static analysis tool to find private API calls and reject the apps that make them. Rather than Storm8 or Unity this time, however, it’s formerFacebook developer Joe Hewitt’s pioneering Three20 framework that’s getting caught.
One popular open source framework, Joe Hewitt’s Three20 (linked here on DF back in March), played a bit fast and loose with private APIs, and so now there are numerous developers with apps getting flagged for private API calls made from the Three20 framework. This Google Groups thread [link] covers the problem and the work that’s being done to create a branch of Three20 that’s free of private API calls.
Gruber also links to RogueSheep, whose Postage app has gotten caught via Three20, and has some suggestions to help them help Apple help them avoid getting rejected for unintended private API calls in the future:
Making the static analysis tool available to developers would indeed be helpful. But I suspect it wouldn’t work in terms of game theory. Honest developers could make good use of having access to the tool, to help ensure their projects are free of private API violations. But dishonest developers would use the tool to figure out ways to slip private API calls past the checker. Parrish’s second request, for Apple to run the tool against submissions far sooner in the review process, strikes me as a good and reasonable one.
Magellan recently announced they are releasing a GPS car kit of their own and it already has hit the FCC. Like the much anticipated TomTom car kit, the Magellan will give the iPod touch and first generation iPhone GPS capabilities as long as you are using the Magellan GPS application. [iTunes Link] This particular car kit is crammed with some nice features:
Fully adjustable mount that works with any skin or case
Rotates for both portrait and landscape use
Enhances signal with built-in GPS receiver
Noise-canceling speakerphone
Bluetooth hands-free calling
Amplified speaker for clear, powerful sound
Works with any GPS application (Unless you are using a iPod touch or first generation iPhone – you then must use the Magellan application)
Currently no price has been announced but you can expect the Magellan car kit to hit stores before the end of the year. Those of you in the market for a GPS car kit now have one more option available to you. Decisions decisions…
Steve Jobs sent a curt reply to The Little App Factory, telling them it was not a big deal for them to change their Apple trademark-infringing, iPodRip product name.
Rewind: iPodRip was software designed to pull media off an iPod (no, not for piracy, but to recover files in the event you lost them on the host machine). Apple’s lawyers complained. The Little App Factory’s John Devor wrote a plea for help. Jobs responded in typical fashion.
Long story shorter: iPodRip has been renamed iRip.
Bigger picture: Yes. Steve’s back, baby! The curtreply has returned!
Sony is planning to launch their answer to iTunes, offering music, movies, books, mobile apps, and more… sometime in the future. No, they haven’t announced a date yet, but given their portfolio of PS3, PSP, Sony Reader, and how more and more is being integrated into their Bravia televisions, while the MP3 player market is dwindling, convergent devices are on the rise. (Of course, they’ll need to fix their smartphone offerings and get them integrated into their own platform as well –hello PSPhone, can you get to that already?)
It sounds like a great idea, and makes perfect sense for Sony to evolve as a media giant. The only problem we see? Yeah, sony. At every turn, they’ve gone for closed and consumer-hostile, and while you can succeed with one of those, you can never succeed with both. ATAC auto-DRM’ing your music, Sony CDs installing Root Kits, UMD’s on PSP, it’s a miracle (of money and will) they got Blu-Ray established.
If you’re going to copy Apple, Sony — and in this case we hope you do — copy it as closely as you can. Have liberal DRM with 5 (or more) devices that can be authorized, content that can be transported between devices. In other words, make it as consumer friendly as possible, even if it scares the traditional Big Media out of you.
[Business Week - thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
Google continues to optimize their websites for the iPhone (and Android, and webOS), this time giving Google News the bump. Says the Google Mobile blog:
This new version provides the same richness and personalization on your phone as Google News provides on desktop. Our new homepage displays more stories, sources, and images while keeping a familiar look and feel. Also, you can now reach your favorite sections, discover new ones, find articles and play videos in fewer clicks. If you are an existing Google News reader on desktop, you will find that all of your personalizations are honored in this mobile version too.
If you read Google News on your iPhone, let us know if you like it, and if you like it better than the regular version you got yesterday.
Regarding that picture making its way across the internet, the one at Microsoft’s invitation-only Mobius event where Big Redmond discusses their secret plans for all things Microsoft and Zune, and heartless bloggers show up with Apple Mac hardware…
Yes, that’s our very own editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn hard-left in the pic, and he assures us, even as we tease him, the machine mix was close to 50/50 and many were running Windows virtual machines (they needed to sync their Zunes, after all!)
(And no, there were no reports of Ballmer snatching iPhones at this event, sadly no reports of iPhones at the event at all…).
Our good friend Phil over at sibling site WMExperts got his geeky hands on Opera Mobile 10 beta for Windows Mobile and did what any self-respecting editor would do — took it one on one with the great one — Safari. Well, technically Safari running on last year’s slower hardware, the iPhone 3G (as opposed to the much faster iPhone 3GS), but it’s not a final build of Opera either. The results?
Opera Mobile 10 beta isn’t quite as good as Safari on iPhone 3G, but it’s getting there. Hit the link above to see Phil’s video, then come on back here and let us know what you think.
