All Articles Tagged Software

Could last Friday have been any more massive for Apple? Following on the heels of slew of preparatory updates including OS X 10.5.4 and iTunes 7.7, the transition from .Mac to Mobile Me, and — oh, yeah — the highly anticipated launch of the iPhone 3G hardware (see Dieter’s review), Apple also dropped a little something called the 2.0 firmware. Available pre-baked in the new iPhone 3G, Apple didn’t spare the love for owners of the original iPhone 2G who receive it as well as a FREE downloadable upgrade, as do owners of the iPod Touch (minus the phone, camera, SMS, and GPS functionality, and the FREE part — $10 please).

The 2.0 firmware was first demonstrated back at the Apple iPhone SDK Roadmap event in March 2008 and immediately went through a very long, very public beta process where almost anyone could sign up and download it. In spite of the NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), during the 8 different betas released to developers, many new features that weren’t originally demonstrated still leaked out all of the interwebs. But did all of them?

Read on to find out!

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday we asked you “What’s the iPhone 3G Chip and When Will it Ship?“. Tuesday it was “What is the iPhone 3G Going to Look Like?“. Today we want to know what YOU think the iPhone 2.0 software and services are going to give us, and what surprises might they have in store?

Exchange ActiveSync and the AppStore are gimmes. Enterprise features are checked. Beta leaks are everywhere. And .Mac to Mobile Me — Don’t get us started! But what else will we get? MMS? Blogging? Mobile iChat? Universal home remote control? And what about the Holy Grail… cut and paste?! What do YOU think?

To give you some help, here’s a HUGE roundup of all the iPhone 2.0 software and services rumors. Epic-style. Because let’s face it, roughly 0.01 seconds after Steve Jobs pulled the first iPhone from his pocket back at Macworld 2007, and someone, somewhere, put aside their childlike sense of wonder long enough think: “Nice! What’s the next gen going to be like?”

Complementary, contradictory, obvious, confusing, all but confirmed or from left field via outer space, the rumors have flooded the internet ever since. It’s become almost impossible to keep track of them all.

Five days from today Steve Jobs takes Moscone Center stage for the sold-out WWDC keynote, and according to everyone and their newsfeed, announces the iPhone 3G. In eager anticipation, every day this week, TiPb wil be asking you to tell us what you think the next generation iPhone will be, from 3G to GPS, release dates to price points, colors to casings, 2.0 software to .Mac .Me services, and this weekend we’ll wrap it all up with a look into the WWDC/iPhone 3G Crystal Ball, and a roundup of the very best of YOUR predictions.

So come on, let’s get in on!

Read the rest of this entry »

The folks at Mozilla are still fuming mad over Safari-gate. The developers behind the popular open source browser Firefox stated flatly that no efforts will be made to port Firefox to iPhone, blaming Apple’s Gestapo-like restrictive software license.

So this means I can’t look forward to a browser that consumes half my memory and grinds to a halt on AJAX-heavy websites? Tragic.

Read

Fortune is quoting Microsoft VP of Specialized Devices and Applications Group (whatever the hell that is), who indicates the software giant may be open to developing applications for iPhone.

“It’s really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone, to the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in that environment, we’re actually in the process of trying to understand that now.”

The thought of Microsoft software running on iPhone is sobering enough, but even more so when you consider the company’s own mobile platform, Windows Mobile, competes directly with iPhone. Fear the fruit.

ReadVia CrunchGear

The Flash drama continues, with more twists and turns than a California highway. It looks as though iPhone may be getting native Flash support after all, if dragged kicking and screaming. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen spoke to reporters during a conference call…

“Well, you really believe that Flash is synonymous with the Internet, and frankly, anybody who wants to browse the Web and experience the Web’s glory really needs Flash support. We were very excited about the announcement from Windows Mobile–adoption of Flash on their devices–and the fact that we’ve shipped 0.5 billion devices now, non-PC devices. So we are also committed to bringing the Flash experience to the iPhone, and we will work with Apple. We’ve evaluated the SDK. We can now start to develop the Flash player ourselves, and we think it benefits our joint customers. So we want to work with Apple to bring that capability to the device.”

Do let’s pretend that Steve Jobs earlier comments were some kind of smokescreen intended to mask Apple’s true motives, while backdoor negotiations with Adobe unfolded. That makes sense, doesn’t it? No, I didn’t think so either.

Read

Steve Jobs might want to look in his rearview mirror, because there’s a hulking eighteen-wheeler barreling down the highway, belching thick black smoke, and crushing every vehicle in its path.

The software giant is working with long time rival Adobe to bring Flash player Lite (yes, THAT Flash player) to Windows Mobile devices, while simultaneously incorporating support for its own SilverLight technology. The move will give Microsoft a leg up over Apple, making its mobile platform more web 2.0 friendly in supporting these ubiquitous web animation and runtime environments.

Apple has valid reasons for eschewing Flash lite, so it claims, like poor performance and a not-so-much like a desktop experience. Even if valid, it’s never a checkmark in your favor when competing products support features yours does not.

Wake up, Apple. You’re in Micrsoft’s crosshairs now.

Read

Avi Greengart, Research Director for market research firm Current Analysis, says Adobe’s Flash player performs poorly on iPhone, in its current incarnation, proving more trouble than it’s worth.

“There is no question the iPhone delivers a compelling Web experience and there are good reasons to want Flash in there, but Flash Lite wouldn’t give you the Web experience you’re looking for.”

The jixt of this statement, as we’ve known for some time, is that Adobe’s Flash Lite player comes with a high resource overhead, taxing the processor as well as battery life. Or so Apple claims. Forces are at work behind the scenes to develop a more optimized solution to bring native Flash content to iPhone users.

Much as I sometimes lament the absence of Flash, I don’t see it as a crucial feature. So long as some method exists for scraping content from YouTube, as it does now. That said, having no Flash support is yet one more missing feature that Apple haters will use as fodder for flinging rotten fruit at the device.

Read

Apple and RIM are on a collision course as the two companies go toe to toe vying for enterprise messaging market share. RIM has long held the corporate high ground with its dominant BlackBerry Enterprise Server technology and ubiquitous handsets. But Apple is sending iPhone to business school, adopting Microsoft Exchange support that is certain to give Apple the competitive advantage it needs to challenge RIM’s BlackBerry industrial complex.

This puts Apple in a unique position. Until now the company has narrowly focused its product strategy at consumers, not business. Apple and enterprise go together like Dairy Queen and Lactose intolerance, but iPhone has achieved the kind of sweeping success and brand awareness that makes it marketable to business customers, given the right pedigree of tools.

The combination of iPhone’s consumer appeal and business smarts could produce a perfect storm for Apple. Will it be enough to topple RIM?

Read

Response to Apple’s release of an iPhone SDK has been overwhelming; literally. Since it became publicly available yesterday, Apple’s developer website has been swamped with user registrations and download requests. I personally have made numerous attempts to download the SDK, all unsuccessfully. If that’s any indication of the frenzied bustle of app development we might expect, I’d say we can expect a torrent of iPhone applications in the coming months. Bring your umbrella.

Read

Angry verbs and adjectives are flying from iRate iPhone users brewing over the revelation that a site claiming to have a leaked SDK and working in partnership with Apple, was in fact a hoax intended to generate traffic and a some laughs. It’s getting lots of the former, but very little of the latter. The person behind the hoax site, Tiny Code, perpetrated this caper by posting what he alleged to be “leaked” information, then later pulled down the information, at the request (so he claimed) of Apple’s attorneys, and even redirected the site domain to point to Apple’s server.

In a forum post on MacRumors he confesses to his crime and then blames the blogosphere for picking up the story in the first place…

Overall I just apologize. I do not expect forgiveness and I definitely understand the posts following this to be nothing more than bashing. Just know than when I posted that information I had no intention for attention or otherwise, it was simply an excuse to stop publishing to the repo; seemed like a good one at the time.

Yeah, and I thought about faking my own death to get out of paying taxes. Seemed like a good idea the time. Well I forgive you, Kelly. But you’re still a tool.

For everyone else, look on the bright side; the SDK is coming despite this juvenile hoax, so keep the candles burning. It will get here when it gets here.

Read

What feature request has been on the lips of every iPhone user since the idolized gadget first came galloping out the gate? I’ll give you a hint, it starts with the letter “F”, and is the same thing your inebriated Uncle Frank does at family get togethers after knocking back one too many martinis. Of course, I’m talking about Flash.

GearLive claims that Apple will be announcing Adobe Flash for WebKit (aka mobile Safari). There have been rumors to this effect for some time, but with the blessed arrival of the much anticipated SDK now only days away, this seems plausible. Still, I wouldn’t start bookmarking YouTube.com on your iPhone just yet. Let’s wait for Apple make this rumor a reality.

Read

iPhone wielding Slingbox owners will soon be able to view their favorite smutty Spice Channel content on iPhone screens, if rumors are true. A site that goes by the charming name Electric Pig (I prefer my swine without rectal power adapters thank you very much) claims to have spoken with one of the higher ups at Sling Media, who went on record as saying that a version of its popular Slingplayer for mobile devices is in development right now.

Sweet. Now I can watch all my favorite episodes of Gilligan’s island while driving down the freeway. Zoom Zoom.

ReadVia MacRumors

C|Net’s French website is reporting that an upcoming Firmware update, to be released by Apple as early as Saturday, will include two added features that enable the iPhone to act as a USB Flash Drive when docked with a PC or Mac, and includes Voice recorder capability. Which means you’ll be able to throw out all those thumb drives littering you desk, as well as that ridiculously obsolete handheld voice recorder.

Aside: I’d like to know how C|Net France came by this seemingly “insider” information. The whole things seems very dubious, but we’ll see what happens tomorrow.

Read

Leopard sales are off to a honking strart. According to Apple the company sold a prodigious 2 million copies of the new OS in the first weekend since its official launch at 6:00pm on Friday. Several thousand Mac fanboys (and girls) stood in long lines, similar to those witnessed during iPhone’s launch, eagerly waiting to grope Apple’s new kitty-clad OS. How many copies were sold to Microsoft’s Research lab? Oh, we’ll have to wait for the next version of Windows to see what features Microsoft’s bovine borrows from Apple’s feline.

Astonishingly l was not among the rabble. I’m saving my spare change for the purchase of a MacBook Pro, which will come with Leopard pre-installed. As General Patton once said… “I never pay for the same real estate twice.”

Read the press release after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ambrosia Software has released an update to its popular custom ringtone software, iToner, now supporing iPhone firmware 1.1.1. If you’re already a user, download the update now. If you’re not, well… download it anyway.

ReadSource