All Articles in iPod

Technically motor vehicles, we suppose, as people who can still afford to fill up the honking huge gas tanks on trucks and the like get their fair share of iPhone/iPod love as well, as Ars Technica reports that integration has now hit a majority level of 58%.

Proprietary dock port notwithstanding, Apple’s dominance of the music player — and now music phone — market has no doubt driven (ha!) the adaption. More egalitarian-ly, USB integration has hit 33%, with an even higher rate of increase. Says Jeff Smykll:

When my significant other bought her new Scion XD earlier in the year, one of the things she was really excited about was the iPod integration that came standard. The unit is pretty slick: the iPod can be controlled from the steering wheel, the information about the currently-playing song is available on the head unit, and the iPod’s playlists can be traversed using the stereo’s knobs.

Pretty slick. Now we have to decide if we’re going to spend our recession-dwindled savings on a car with iPhone integration… or similarly priced Macbook Air. Oh, why do you test us so, Apple?!

A colleague of mine just sent me this, along with the screenshot above:

Every time I try to update my iPod Touch I get this message. I do the help about and it says 7.7.1.11 is installed. Looks like it’s in a loop.

Anyone else getting 2.1 for the iPod Touch yet? Anyone else stuck in a loop? Let us know!

Was Kevin Rose right? Is the Analyst-busting 8-Ball now batting 500? Could there be any more speculation about something that’s close-to, but not quite an iPhone?? Engadget Spanish (via MacRumors) has seen the usual pre-Special Event hype, and raised the first “in the wild” case leaks:

The case is by Hama and is a Sport Case specifically labeled “for iPod nano 4G”.

While notoriously secretive Apple managed to shock the world with the iPhone in 2007, things have been a tad more leaky ever since, with the “fatty” Nano, MacBook Air, and even iPhone 3G details all getting out before Jobs could utter a single Boom!

Not many were thrilled with the Nano 3G prior to holding it in their hands, and not many seem thrilled with the advance peaks at the 4G either (calling it Zune-like — ouch!). Personally, I’m not sold on the design yet either, but I’ve learned the hard way you don’t ever count Jonathan Ive out.

What do you think? Hawt or really not?

Internet superstar Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, Pownce, and Revision3 has a… er… spotty record at best when it comes to iPhone speculation. Still, we give him full marks for getting back on that rumor horse once again. This time, Kevin’s saying he knows that sometime before the end of September we’ll see:

• Firmware 2.1, debuting on the iPod Touch (which will get a minor facelift).
• iTunes 8.0 with “new features and functionality” he can’t get into.
• Price drops along the iPod line to keep them competitive with iPhone’s $199
• Rounded wide-screen nano, back in candy-bar form factor
• Mac OS X 10.5.6 to feature Blu-Ray support.

Rose, who’s locked in a battle with Barak Obama and Leo Laporte for the crown of top Twitter’er, asks that we follow him there, or on his own platform, Pownce, for more updates.

Our take? Last year’s big pre-holiday Apple event introduced the iPod Touch, which debuted the new 1.1 firmware, including the WiFi Music Store, so that’s quite possible. iTunes 8.0 is more opaque, however. If App Store integration wasn’t a big enough marketing excuse to make the full point jump to iTunes 8.0, what would it take? (7.0, for example, added CoverFlow and iPod Games).

iPod price drops before the biggest selling season of the year make sense, as Apple dropped the iPhone $200 at last years event. Likewise a new Nano.

Blu-Ray support — if it’s to include BD movie playback — is a bigger nut to crack, however, because the short sighted industry killers in Hollywood demands HDCP DRM compliance (i.e. hardware enforced, digital rights managed copy protection) over the full path, from player, through cables and graphic cards, into the monitor — and in the OS. This caused a bit of an internet brouhaha when Microsoft “caved” for Vista. Laptops and the iMac would be far easier to implement, but is there business advantage enough for Steve Jobs to feel like doing it?

(via MacRumors)

The iPhone might be the best iPod ever, but as Steve Jobs keeps saying, if no one else can compete with Apple, Apple will compete with itself. Witness a number of new iPod rumors that have just surfaced.

First up, iPhone Atlas brings word of a new iPod Touch. Seems the latest developer deep diving in the upcoming iPhone 2.0 code, in addition to cut and paste, has discovered strings for what looks like iPod Touch 2,1. To give perspective, the original iPhone and iPod Touch were 1,1, while the iPhone 3G is 1,2. A jump to 2,1 then looks to be an upgrade quite a bit more significant than what the iPhone just enjoyed. A replacement? An additional model? A twice-sized iTablet? And what will this mean for the similarly Mobile OS X powered iPhone?

Next up, iLounge says the next iPod Nano will shed its “phat” and grow tall again to accommodate an iPhone/iPod Touch wider-screen aspect ratio of 1.5:1 (bumped from the current 1.33:1). iLounge — and almost everyone else who picked up the story — headlined the form factor as “Zune-like”, for obvious link… er… attraction purposes. Well played!

Also, while rumors have swirled over multi-colored iPods being introduced in the next generation, which harken back to marketing mishaps like the Flower Power iMac of yore, MacObserver reveals a new Apple patent application for “computing device with dynamic ornamental [i.e. color changing] appearance”. Though supremely awesome in concept (Predator-like chameleon camo class awesome), iLounge claims any rumors of multi-colored iPods coming this year are inaccurate. Instead, each model will sport its own anodized aluminum skin, much like the old iPod Nano.

Lastly, Apple Insider says Apple is advising resellers to stock up soon, as iPod shortages this way come. Clearing out stock in preparation for another Special Event this autumn? The last one not only debuted the iPod Touch, but a new iPhone Firmware which included the WiFi Music Store, so we certainly hope so!

Macnn/iPodnn (via The Inquirer) reports that unlike CoreLocation, which gives access to the Google Maps-like location-based services, Apple’s new iPhone SDK will be providing absolutely no access to iPod functionality or the onboard iTunes:

Any functionality related to music playback is inaccessible by the iPhone SDK, a new report claims. While the SDK allows access to many other functions of iPhone and the iPod touch, such as dialing, the camera and Internet access, The Inquirer writes that any components connected to iTunes are off-limits, preventing developers from accessing one of the most popular features of the phone

While this could be an anti-competitive move meant to keep VLC off the iPhone — or to protect consumers from the horror that would be RealPlayer Touch… — it may also cripple any Guitar Hero, Rockband, or iPod-style Phase gaming. (Unless Harmonix and other big game developers like EA are granted that oft-mentioned “special dispensation”…?)

Did it used to about the music, and Apple’s now telling us to just “sl@g off!”? Or are you happy they’re keeping developers’ tone-deaf mitts off your shiny (i)tunes? What do you think?

What does the iPhone lack? Besides the obvious — 3G, Office Doc editing, the ability to actually make julienne fries — what the iPhone lacks is games. Real, on-board games. Some of this pain is mitigated by the fact that you can get web-based games (including some great iPhone games by our very own forum member cmaier). Still, though, do you know what the most popular video game on the planet is?

Solitaire. Because it’s built into Windows.

So getting native games on the iPhone is a Big Deal because people are much more likely to form an affinity with a device if they can play a game or two on it. I speak from experience — the most painful part of leaving the PalmOS for me is still the fact that I can’t find a crossword application as good as stand alone’s. Add the love for the iPhone to love for a device with games and you’ll start seeing people getting buried with these little guys.

…All of which is to say that seeing that Apple is extending their trademark to include handheld gaming strikes me as a good sign. Sure, as MacRumors points out, this doesn’t mean much — Apple’s been making games for the iPod Classic for awhile now. Still, though, we need games, Apple, please please release a couple when you announce the SDK. Or announce that partnership with EA that we’ve been hoping for.

Coda: Another reason we need native games (to say nothing of apps): stuff on the web disappears. For example, I just realized that Duck Hunt has shuffled off this series of tubes mortal coil.

This could be cool. Sean Heber of Spiffy Tech is going to release one 3rd party native iPhone app per day in November. Though he might have a spot of help on one or two days, for the most part it appears that he’ll have to do most of this herculean effort himself.

If you’ve hacked your iPhone or iPod Touch, look for the “App-A-Day” source.

It all depends on what the app ideas are. If the app’s purpose is to show a pumpkin on the main screen, it could suck. Even if it does suck, it’s still a herculean effort.

There’s now an instant method to get third party apps on your iPhone (firmware 1.1.1 only). The same methond works on iPod Touch. I have to say, this is by far the easiest method of hacking the iPhone that I’ve ever seen. This method, which relies on the iPhone TIFF vulnerability, is also incredibly simple to use; much more so than the previous AppTapp installer method for iPhone 1.0. Since it relies on a buffer overflow, I expect this method to stop working as soon as Firmware 1.1.2 is released, which could be any day now.

All you have to do is point your iPhone browser at jailbreakme.com, confirm the wish to jailbreak, read some stuff, scroll down, select ‘Install AppSnapp’, wait for Safari to quit, and wait. Your iPhone or iPod Touch should restart automatically, and when it’s all done, you’ll have Installer.app ready and willing for you to install 3rd party apps!

This method of installing 3rd party apps doesn’t require any computer software, you just have to go to the website on your iPhone browser and follow the instructions. Again, the site makes efficacious use of the TIFF exploit that’s been talked about before, so if using a security vulnerability to install software freaks you out, don’t go to the site I’ve posted after the cut.

Conversely, f you think that using a buffer overflow to install software is awesome, 31337, or k-rad, there’s a link for you and your iPhone after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

While I was gone at CTIA, there’s been a bunch of things that have happened that I didn’t get time to properly write about. So today, we’ll have a bit of an iPhone news smörgåsbord. There’s been a fair amount of news, a fair amount of not-news, and some of the things that I’ve been reading are just plain wrong.

Apple Dealing with Film-Makers Directly for iTunes
Apple has sidestepped some of the major studios for some films, opting instead to deal directly with film-makers. This could be a sign of things to come — it would be great to not have to report every major film-studio or TV channel contract tiff.

Apple iPhone Dev Center
Apple has created a web site devoted to developers that are interested in putting their programs on the iPhone. Apple is calling it the iPhone Dev Center, and it’s a repository of tips, tricks, and guidelines to follow should anyone want to make an iPhone web app. It’s also probably a list of instructions that one would have to follow to get listed as a featured application on Apple’s web app listing.

Molson Reveals iPhone on Rogers in January?
For any Canadian readers, Molson ran a contest that had an iPhone as the prize. They had a disclaimer on the iPhone prize, stating that it couldn’t be activated on the Rogers network until January. So, odds are pretty good that the iPhone will be out in Canada in January. Molson has since pulled the language for the contest, saying they have no idea when anything is coming out ever. And they never had any idea. (images below via Electronista)

Is the iPhone Running Leopard?
There’s an article at Wired that delves deeper into Jobs’ open letter about 3rd party applications on the iPhone and the connection to Leopard. One of the tidbits that Jobs talks about briefly is signing applications, and Wired has a good look into what that would mean for 3rd party iPhone apps. And, there’s some discussion whether the iPhone is based off of Leopard or not: “It’s not known for sure at this point, but all indications are that the iPhone is a Leopard-based device,” as stated by Carl Howe, analyst at Blackfriars. It clearly is. Witness the uname -a of my laptop on 10.4 vs. the uname -a of my iphone:

The important bit there is the kernel version. Apple releases the OSX frameworks to correspond with kernel versions of darwin for every version of OSX. The iPhone has been running Leopard (9.0) since it came out in June. My 10.4 laptop is running darwin 8.10.0, which corresponds to 10.4.10.

iPhone Security Faults
Meanwhile, there’s been a rash of complaints about the iPhone’s security. You may have seen headlines that compare the iPhone to Windows 95, for example. It’s of course, a loaded comparison, made for sensationalism. You could just as well compare the iPhone’s security to Windows 98, Windows ME, or Windows XP if you’re logged in as an administrator (which is everybody — you can barely run Office as a limited user). But, Windows 95 gets the headline. Since the iPhone is made of UNIX, user separation is built-in, expect apps to run as something other than administrator/root/super-user when the SDK update comes out. Perhaps earlier; we can’t know as Apple isn’t commenting. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that ‘run as root’ is a good security model. It’s so bad, it’s not even a security model.

iPhone de-bricking: re-virginizer tool available
The Elite team posted a re-virginizer tool that people can use to restore the ability to upgrade. This tool locks the iPhone with the proper bits in place on the iPhone radio; some of the free iPhone unlock tools wrote stuff to the iPhone baseband radio that was invalid; this led to bricked phones when it came time to update the firmware to 1.1.1.

AT&T Upgrading Core Network
Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, was interviewed recently and he talked about many things concerning the iPhone and AT&T’s network. Their core should make for faster downloads for anything that uses AT&T’s networks, wired or wireless. That means us: anyone using an iPhone should see a smidgen of a benefit, but the real help comes when we’re using 3G fast internet iPhones.