Applications on iPhone

Get set for NFL's Super Bowl Sunday with these iPhone and iPod Touch apps for football fans

The NFL's exclusive deal with Sprint means iPhone owners are out of luck Super Bowl Sunday if they're looking for an official, all-encompassing app like baseball's state-of-the-art MLB At Bat. But never fear, football fanatics, there are still options out there for you.

GRAB IT: Sportacular (free; Pro version is $1.99) and Pro Football Live (free; Plus version is $1.99): When you can't get to a TV, these apps provide play-by-play and live in-game stats so you'll always know the score. Both apps let you talk trash with opposing fans and make your own predictions, but we're partial to Sportacular, which adds the rest of the major sports and provides push notification alerts to let you know what's going on in the game even when the app is closed. [iTunes links: Sportacular | Pro Football Live]

ESPN Radio ($2.99): ESPN has more than one useful app - ScoreCenter is a good alternative to Sportacular, if you're looking to experiment - but ESPN Radio is our favorite. You can't listen to the big game live on your iPhone, but you can listen to prognosticating pundits and frenzied fans all week long on ESPN's live radio broadcasts from more than a dozen major markets, including 1050 AM in New York, and stream more than 35 ESPN podcasts. To listen to WFAN, by the way, we use AOL Radio (free). [iTunes links: ESPN Radio | AOL Radio]

NFL SuperFan (free): This one's just for DirecTV subscribers with the NFL Sunday Ticket plan. But if you've got it, this is an absolute must-have, allowing you to watch select games live on your iPhone or iPod Touch. [iTunes link]

Weber's On the Grill ($4.99): Billed as "a mobile grilling companion," it's the perfect tool for tailgaters, with recipes and tips for a wide range of dishes on and off the grill - including desserts. It also includes a grill timer, and once you've chosen the dish you want to make, you can add the ingredients to the app's grocery-list section with a single touch. [iTunes link]

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The Shipley iPad Tweets

Wil Shipley is a very outspoken, and very talented mind, in the Macintosh community. He's the founder of Delicious Monster, creator of Delicious Library for the Mac, and for a very short period of time Delicious Library for iPhone until Amazon's API license killed that off.

Here's a recent set of tweets from Wil about the new iPad, and his concerns about the platform. I'd like to see him write about this on his weblog. You need to start at the bottom and read up.

I'm sure there are a lot of Mac developers worried about this, and other things. Some of us are just trying to write apps.

wilshipley

On first run, they should say, "This is UNSIGNED and could be dangerous. Do you know/trust this vendor?" This is already in Mac OS X.

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Jon L.'s iPhone in the NY Times – Weblogsky: Jon Lebkowsky's Weblog

I've been interviewed by the New York Times before, but usually for the technology section. Who'da thunk I would turn up in “Fashion and Style”? Katie Hafner included me in a piece called “When Phones are Just Too Smart.” She originally asked how I find iPhone apps, and I realized I have no one method – some I find online, some I find by searching the store for a particular kind of thing, or I might search for the app that goes with a specific service (like Yelp). Others I see friends using – like “Bowl” (Tibetan singing meditation bowls) and “Bloom” (Brian Eno's virtual musical instrument app), both of which I found via David Armistead.

I counted around 80 apps on my phone, and I use about 20 of those regularly. As Katie mentions, I found several Buddhist apps, including the very useful “Meditator,” a mediation timer. (Looking for the link, I discovered that Simple Touch Software also has an app called “Meditate.” Checking that one out, too.)

I'm really digging music apps, like Soma.FM's, and DJ Spooky's interactive app for his new release, “The Secret Song.”

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Posted in Culture, Technology.

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Mussolini iPhone app is best-seller in Italy - Times Online

Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors have protested to Apple over Italy's current best-selling iPhone application: a collection of the speeches of Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator.

Demand for "iMussolini", subtitled "The man who changed the history of our country", has risen to the point where it is being downloaded 1,000 times a day according to Luigi Marino, 25, its creator.

It is more popular than a video game based on the film Avatar and an X-ray machine app which "allows you to see your friends naked".

The app, which costs 79 Euro cents, contains audio, video and text of 100 speeches dating to 1914. Mr Marino said today that it had been downloaded 6,000 times since it was launched earlier this month, shortly before Italy marked Holocaust Remembrance Day and just days after Pope Benedict XVI paid a visit to the Rome synagogue.

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iWork for the iPad: Game changer for the software business

Amidst all of the positive and negative opinion pieces and postings which followed Apple's iPad announcement this week, the impact to software businesses are only starting to become apparent. I think Apple's announcement that iWork pricing will be $9.99 per app is significant.

It's game changing not for third-party ISVs already developing for the iPhone, since they're used to charging 99 cents to a few bucks for an app. For Mac software developers like OmniGroup, it'll be challenging. There is already a large Mac software ecosystem with apps priced in the $20 – $60 range. These ISV's have continued to charge such prices even while iPhone app prices dropped a zero, because the difference in functionality and screen size between a Mac laptop and the iPhone is significant. The difference in what users can do is significant.

iWork on the iPad is a laptop/desktop experience, suitable for the vast majority of home and many business users. And yet Apple dropped a zero on the pricing, basically. With a presentation program, word processor, and spreadsheet available for $10 each, or $30 for the entire productivity suite, how will third party ISV's charge $50 or $60 for an iPad version of their Mac software apps? Perhaps they can't.

The problem, of course, comes when iPad gains measurable market share, not when rabid Apple fans line up for first-day sales. Give it a couple of years, and there's a couple of million of these things floating around, and ordinary people buy fewer laptops and have iPads at home or for travel instead. They'll get used to buying iPad apps for a few dollars more than a pure iPhone app. They'll get used to being able to do 75, 80, or even 100% of what they used to do on their laptops or desktops (again, I'm talking about non-developers, non-IT professionals here).

And they'll start rebelling against the notion that a multi-touch capable, gesture controlled, “natural” feeling user experience should cost $10 or $20, but when they need to sit down at a laptop or desktop computer and go back to keyboard and mouse, the OLD experience should cost $50, $100, or more.

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iPhone turned fashion assistant, great apps for every style

Every fashion app you will ever need or want is right here, thanks to the Independent and their digging. We took which ones we thought would be best for the mobile iPhone carrying fashionista, have a look and decide for yourself.

Our first app is a bit of a “simulation”, have you ever wanted to go shopping at the hottest boutiques on the famous Oxford Street in the heart of London? For just $1.99 you can with the Shop View apps. A 3D tour of the shops and with links to their Twitter feeds and websites you get to enjoy the special sales like you really are right there.

Seventeen Magazine's Seventeen Fashion Finder app lets you shop for designer items, share them with friends, and even see what the stars are choosing. This one is free.

Want instructions and new patterns for crocheting? Maybe? Oh come on just try the ForgetMeKnit Lite app it's free.

For instant outfit approval, the Love It or Lose it app lets you send three pictures of an outfit, from wherever you are, to your friends or the apps online community for their you look hot approval before you buy.

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Diary of an iPhone Developer: The iPad

It's finally here! The new iPad is almost exactly what the rumor mill has been churning up for months but somehow seeing the thing officially announced still makes my jaw drop a little. Why? Because it opens up some new opportunities for iPhone developers without making them jump through a lot of hoops.

For starters, it runs iPhone apps out of the box. It's true that apps built for the 320-by-480-pixel iPhone 3.5-inch screen might look a little funky on the iPad's 9.7-inch lush 1024-by-768-pixel display. But this was a great move on Apple's part to avoid alienating 100,000+ mobile apps for release. Much in the way the Classic layer did for OS X and Rosetta did for the switch to Intel architecture, this was a logical way to bridge the transition while developers update their apps for the larger display.

Apple released the new 3.2 SDK beta to general developers today. I'm still in the process of downloading the whopping 2GB update (by comparison, the newest Android SDK is only 20MB) but a glance at the 3.2 API differences are, unsurprisingly, very iPad-oriented. A great number of additions are for text layout, which is great for e-book content; E-Ink won't hold a candle to this puppy as the new APIs should make the iPad perfect for displaying content exactly as it is in its print counterpart. Also, a lot of robust movie playback features have been added as well as a brand new class called "UIGestureRecognizer" which, as the name implies, expands upon the already stellar touch input libraries.

The new SDK makes it easy to create distinct iPhone and iPad UIs over the same app and features a new iPad Simulator that helps you debug and view your UI before you can even get your hands on the device. The SDK also includes APIs to allow developers to utilize external displays attached to an iPad.

Am I disappointed the iPad doesn't run desktop OS X? Sure, it would have been interesting to run Photoshop on an iPad, but the choice to go with an augmented iPhone OS was clear: The iPhone has one of the best best mobile OS's out there and the iPad is very much a mobile device. It is truly a computer built for consumption rather than creation. Still, it will be interesting to see the sorts of "creation" style apps that developers will come up with. I expect that the painting app we saw demoed at the announcement, "Brushes," is just the beginning.

Reprinted with permission from PC World. Story

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Max Tech: Apple iPhone Applications Will Simply Amaze You

In the world of mobile phone technology and multimedia gadgetry, the iPhone is considered to be one of the most amazing devices ever made. In fact, ever since it was launched in the market, people started going crazy about it. Besides, with all the amazing applications, it changed the way people see personal computing devices.

Indeed, the iPhone is considered to be the first and the true personal computer where you will be able to do all sorts of things in one small and neat package.

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"Real" OS X Apps on the iPad, Are You Crazy ?!?!?

I'm posting this from my iPhone, so I can't be bothered to name names, but trust me when I tell you, there are a lot of people criticising Apple for basing the iPad off the iPhone OS, rather than making it capable of running Macintosh applications by using a touch-enabled version of the version of OS X that runs on Mac desktops and laptops. I understand the impulse, but these people are either crazy, or they just aren't thinking things through.

Let's get one thing out of the way right up front. There is just no damn way to profitably sell a device that matches the price, performance and portability of the iPad that also runs existing Mac apps. This will change in the future, but it's just not something that can happen this year.

There are many reasons for this, but it really starts with the fact that modern Macs use Intel CPUs and Intel CPUs just aren't as power efficient for a given level of performance as the ARM CPU in the iPad, iPhone and other mobile devices. So, an iPad that runs existing Mac apps would have to have an Intel CPU, and so would have shorter battery-life, which hurts portability.This could be compensated for with a larger battery, but a larger battery would be heavier, which hurts portability and add expense which would already be higher, because intel CPUs cost more than ARM CPUs.

So on the hardware side, price and weight are two strikes against an iPad that runs Mac apps, but that is only half the problem. The bigger problem is software.Mac apps are built to be run on fairly powerful computers that are capable of multitasking and which people use a mouse and keyboard to interact with. There are a few implications of this.

First, there is a good chance that existing OS X apps, designed to run on powerful hardware, would be both slow and power hungry on an iPad becuase acceptable performance and efficiency on a iMac or MacBook could be completely unacceptable on an iPad. This is on top of the inherent power-efficiency disadvantages of compatible hardware.

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New Release: SnowCover Pro 1.0, gesture-based playback controls on your iPhone lockscreen [Jailbreak Apps] — Just Another iPhone Blog

there's now a version 1.1 of SnowCover Pro with an extra corkboard theme, though it's a little buggy right now, so I'd suggest you wait until February 1st to try the app out. Version 1.1 keeps telling me I have a cracked copy (Untrue - I bought the app myself) and the volume indicator takes about three seconds to show up. Hoping for a quick fix tmr, but you can follow @EyeDevs on Twitter for more info.]

SnowCover Pro was released to the Cydia masses yesterday for a mere $0.99. The app changes the way that album art is displayed on your lockscreen and even adds gesture-based controls for playback. I've only played with the plugin for a day, but it feels right at home on my 3GS. It's very fast, stays invisible when I'm not playing music, and the controls are simple, but flexible.

Installation involves a quick purchase on Cydia, the application of a Winterboard theme (for the cool crystal CD case effect), and then a respring. One intelligent extra touch is the ability to add a “dim delay” to the lockscreen, so you'll actually have time to enjoy the sight of your album art before your iPhone goes back to sleep.

The original SnowCover was pretty bloody difficult to find and download on the MacThemes forums (download links kept going down and author was hard to reach), but this Pro release is a lot more accessible, and it's lovely to have these gorgeous new visuals and controls right on my lockscreen.

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