All Articles Tagged app store

Title says it all, and you know what? Good for Google. While the holier-than-geek community criticizes Apple’s admittedly adamantium grip on the iPhone App Store while raving about the “open platform” of Google’s Android, the harsh realities of internet existence — including malicious code and apps — means that no playground can be entirely free of adult supervision, lest it quickly degenerate into Lord of the Flies land. Says Computerworld (via Macrumors):

In the Android Market terms of service, Google expressly says that it might remotely remove an application from user phones. “Google may discover a product that violates the developer distribution agreement … in such an instance, Google retains the right to remotely remove those applications from your device at its sole discretion,” the terms, linked to from the phone, read.

Allowing all sorts of background and music/media Apps that Apple would never allow is a great move for consumers — and for putting competitive pressure on Apple to do likewise. Making sure they have some precautions in place, however, is a responsible move on Google’s part.

[This is a TiPb AT WORK App vs. App Review! Last week, it was the Instant Messenger Showdown, with BeeJiveIM squeaking out the victory. But which blog commenter won a copy of the winning IM App? mr. Hi-Definition Congratulations!

This week, the TiPb iPhone Forums voted on their favorite Task/To Do Apps, we took the top two, and now they're going head-to-head. But wait -- there's more! One of the forum voters has already won a copy of the winning App... Congrats coreymol! Want another chance to win? COMMENT BELOW! and make sure you leave a valid email address in the comment form -- it won't be made public, but it will be used to contact you if you win! Check out the full contest details, then grab your iPhone and get ready to get things done -- the TiPb AT WORK Task/Do To Showdown is on!]

I use my iPhone all the time. At work or play, it completes me. I have a few gripes (no sense beating the cut/copy/paste dead horse) - there are some glaring omissions that make it difficult for people to take the iPhone seriously for business or just everyday productivity.

Some kind of sync-able task or to-do list is such a basic feature, and fortunately, the advent of 3rd party apps have made it possible for developers to provide a plethora of apps to remedy this deficiency. The two apps that you folks in the forum picked for this TiPb AT WORK smackdown is Things and Appigo’s Todo. Users have given them both a 4-star rating in the App Store and, quite honestly, it’s a VERY close call to me.

Which of these two get-er-done apps are the best? How do they stack up? Read on!

Read the rest of this entry »

Yet another iPhone related lawsuit only this time it does not involve Apple… shocking isn’t it?

Coors beer company is being sued by Hottrix, creators of the strangely popular iBeer app for a cool 12.5 million for copyright infringement. The lawsuit alleges that Coors copied its iPhone application iBeer. Both Hottrix’s App and Coors’ iPint simply create the illusion of beer being poured out when a user tilts the handset as if the user is drinking it. The only major difference between the two apps is that iBeer costs $3 and iPint was free - it has been pulled from the App Store by Apple.

More or less, the lawsuit claims that iBeer was a success until iPint quickly stole it’s thunder by being offered for free. Stop and think about this, both Apps were released on July 11th so how is one to determine who really came up with the idea? Hottrix answer, this youtube video that was released back in August of 2007.

Why someone would spend 3 bucks on such a App, I have no clue. But Coors… come on, talk about a blatant rip off. Hottrix, 12.5 million? Seriously?

(Via Gizmodo)

Gizmodo brings word of what may be one of the higher profile, and more innovative Apps to hit the iTunes Store yet:

Developed by ambient pioneer Brian Eno and musician/software designer Peter Chilvers, Bloom explores uncharted territory in the realm of applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. Part instrument, part composition and part artwork, Bloom’s innovative controls allow anyone to create elaborate patterns and unique melodies by simply tapping the screen. A generative music player takes over when Bloom is left idle, creating an infinite selection of compositions and their accompanying visualisations.

I am the opposite of musical, so this one is beyond me, but if anyone out there gives this a whirl, please let us know how it goes!

MLB At Bat just announced a price cut that puts the price at a very affordable $2.99 (from $5) to get an impressive app with a slick interface and great features. Good deal, right? How thoughtful of you MLB to cut the price just in time for playoffs so us fans can get a taste of the action. WRONG.

Why is it a bad deal? Because you have to buy MLB At Bat again next year! The current version of MLB At Bat will expire after the end of the season which is in approximately the end of this month. Maybe even sooner. So if it’s worth it to you to spend money on an app that will be useless in a few weeks time, by golly do it! But for the rest of us, Sportacular should work fine.

Does anyone else think charging users every year is a little ridiculous? Maybe I’m still in shock over the 6th inning of the NLCS and a little peeved about this whole baseball thing but I just don’t find it good practice on MLB’s part-they need to highlight this aspect a little better. But maybe after Game 2, I’ll celebrate in utter jubilation by buying an app that will soon be worthless?

The MLB is again bungling this whole technology thing–remember they switched DRM for their videos back in 07 and users lost ALL previously purchased videos. DRM sucks but having things wrongfully taken away from you blows even more.

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With the economic crunch harshening everyone’s mellow, we here at TiPb are all about saving money for our faithful readers! Every week we will bring to your attention a few apps from Apple’s Official App Store that are on sale or have dropped in price. Now keep in mind we have not tested all of these apps so we can not vouch on the quality of them all, but what we can promise you is we will weed out the poorly rated apps and only present to you the better ones.

The first app worth mentioning is Aqua Forest - Powered By Octaveengine Casual, has dropped in price to $0.00 from $7.99. This one is for a limited time only so go grab it!

A great game worth checking out, Enigmo, has just dropped $3 in price to $1.99. Definitely a app worth a look.

For the racing fans out there, Moto Chaser, is at a price that can not be beat at $.99 down from $4.99. GTS World Racing is now $2.99, down $5. Not too shabby. And both were recently featured in our App vs. App TiPb GRAND PRIX, so check out the reviews there!

iTip is nice to have handy while out to dinner, and it’s now FREE, not a bad price no?

We will keep an eye out for for more price drops worth mentioning and if we missed one, please let us know!

Update: Wide Email developer Patrick Barry comments below that, according to Macrumors, FOUR landscape email front-ends popped up on the App Store last night, including his own.

We are finally getting closer and closer to the perfect iPhone no? If Apple will not give it to us, 3rd party developers are our only hope. (Whether it is via jailbreaking or Apple’s official App Store.)

TouchType (iTunes Link) is a new app available now in the App Store for the low price of $.99 — a small price to pay for those of you just craving some landscape email action. Now all that is left is some SMS landscape love.

Here’s a brief overview of how it works: Open the application and you get a landscape mode keypad, get your email groove on, tap the send button and it automatically sends it to the email application. Type in the email addresses and you’re all set.

Is it ideal? That depends on you. It may be, may not be… but it is just one step closer to the perfection we all seek.

[Rene: And if you're asking how this slipped by the Apple rejection police when MailWrangler got given the boot... Our guess is Apple is fine with an App handing off text to MobileMail to send, just not doing the sending/receiving themselves...]

A new application, Backgrounder, is now available for jailbroken phones! This allows you to run official App Store apps in the background. Yes, you can now listen to music while you are in your favorite App Store app!

With Backgrounder, you don’t have to log into a secure shell session. You don’t have to perform black magic. You just press and hold the home key while running any application. After a few seconds, the Backgrounding Enabled pop-up appears. Release the home button and go about your business. Backgrounder automatically returns you to SpringBoard. To quit the background application, re-launch it from SpringBoard, then press and hold Home until the Backgrounding Disabled pop-up appears.

Why Apple has not allowed apps to run in the background is beyond me. At first I thought that maybe the iPhone couldn’t handle a few apps running at the same time so Apple rightfully did not allow it… well after trying this new app, which is only available to jailbreakers via Cydia, it is more than obvious that the iPhone indeed can handle apps running in the background.

So Apple when will you learn if you don’t give us what we want, we eventually just take it…

So are you finally going to jailbreak your phone now? We’ve got step by step instructions up to Jailbreak the iPhone 3G for both Mac OS X and Windows PC users, and for the original iPhone 2G. Jailbreakers UNITE!!! Argh!!!!

[Via Ars Technica]

Brian passed on this tip from Kevin Doel. Looks like Tetris is being ever-zealous in broadly defending their “look and feel” trademarks:

Phunkware’s Shaker game is being pulled from the market in about 5 hours. The Tetris Company contacted Apple claiming the game is too close to Tetris for comfort.

If this is legit, and you read this post in time, and the FREE game at all interests you, walk — don’t run — to the App Store and grab Shaker now!

Daring Fireball has posted an interesting article that focuses on trust-issues developers have with Apple’s current App Store approval process. In a pod-shell, they can’t depend on Apple not to reject Apps they’ve invested time and money on, hence they are reluctant to develop the kind of Apps that require time and money, which are typically just the kind of innovative, mind-blowing Apps we really, really want them to develop and Apple not to reject. While DF’s solution is both simple and profound, it’s an analysis of just why Apple may have rejected PodCaster and MailWrangler, the two Apps whose rejection made manifest this developer fear:

The theory is that there is an unpublished rule that Apple — and in this case, where by “Apple” I really mean “Steven P. Jobs” — will not publish third-party apps that compete with or replace any of the four apps in the iPhone’s default “dock”: Phone, Mail, Safari, and iPod.

Why?

And so my guess is that while there may not be any logic, there’s at least a notion, if only in Jobs’s mind, that these four apps are sacrosanct because they define the iPhone. Everything else, both from Apple and from App Store developers, is piffle, secondary to those four apps.

While I remember there being another issue stated for MailWrangler’s rejection: that it didn’t allow users to edit their account information, it’s impossible to know at this point whether or not fixing that and resubmitting it to the App Store would have gotten the developer any further (though I hope he at least tried?)

What do you think? Could a lot of the current App-angst be traced back to Apple’s (and Steve Jobs’) holding the iPhone dock applications sacred? And if so, if they clearly stated in the SDK “Thou Shalt Place No Apps Before the Them”, would that go anywhere towards calming developer fears, or only increasing their frustration?