Tag Archive for 'iPhone'

Why iPhone 3G S Doesn’t Suck Like You Think It Does

Published on June 21, 2009 in Tech and iPhone. 0 Comments Tags: , .

My wife wanted my iPhone 3G so I couldn’t hold off on upgrading until next year so I trotted down to the Apple store at 5:30 AM to wait in line this past Friday. Lots of people have called the 3G S a marginal upgrade since there was no aesthetic change but it’s actually a significant upgrade. Although I wanted a new design, it makes sense to redesign every could of years instead of every year and I was glad to continue using my existing accessories.

iPhone 3G S got a storage bump. Thirty-two gigs of flash memory makes for a handy iPod with plenty of storage for my music (those with large music collections might find this cramped, but it’s double that of the old high end iPhone). Apple also added a significant processor upgrade (Anandtech has already gone in depth so I will not) and iPhone 3G S has 256MB of memory, up from 128MB in the original and iPhone 3G. These upgrades make for a “snappy” UI experience. It’s noticeable. The GPU was also upgraded, which will make for better looking games as soon as developers take advantage of it (that will not take long) and smoother frame rates with existing games. The phone comes preloaded with the iPhone 3.0 software (thoughts here) — it’s good. Although the phone supports 7.2 mbps HSPA, AT&T’s network doesn’t. They’re rolling it out, though, so hopefully it’ll help despite reports that show otherwise.

Apple threw in a 3.2 MP camera and added support for video recording. I was a bit miffed at video recording being a 3G S only feature as it could have been added to existing iPhones as well (via software, don’t give me that processor too slow crap..older candy bar phones record video fine). Apple also added speech reco via a voice command interpreter (dial, play music, etc.). This should also have been possible via software (again, candy bar phones). At the end of the day they needs to sell hardware so I understand the business reasons but I’m not a fan. Basically, Apple changed everything on the inside of the phone, added a bunch of software features, and called it the 3G S. If you have a first generation iPhone, this is a must-have upgrade. If you are on an iPhone 3G, it’s a toss-up but I’d spring for it.

iPhone 2.0 Proximity Sensor

Published on March 18, 2009 in iPhone. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Want to turn on the proximity sensor (shuts off the screen when something is close to the phone — e.g. phone is in pocket)?

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setProximitySensingEnabled:YES];

Similarly, it’s pretty easy to shut it off:

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setProximitySensingEnabled:NO];

That’s about all you can do with it, for now. I’m not sure if 3.0 will give the ability to read values from the sensor or not , which is what I really want. I need to dig into those docs.

Thoughts on iPhone 3.0

Published on March 17, 2009 in iPhone. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I watched a few liveblogs on iPhone 3.0 (namely gizmodo’s). I must say that I had high expectations going into the event, given the state of iPhone OS 2.0 (pretty good but not quite there).

iPhone has been one of my biggest thrills and disappointments at the same time. On the one hand, it ushered in a new era of innovation in mobile computing. No more crappy WinMo UI or Symbian UI. On the other, it lacked the simplest features that most Moto and SE flip/candybar phones feature:

  1. Bluetooth file xfer
  2. Blutooth tethering
  3. A2DP
  4. Almost anything else Bluetooth
  5. MMS

And it definitely lacked features that WinMo has had for years:

  1. API access to almost anything
  2. Multitasking (WinMo did it with 200MHz processors and crappy batteries so surely Apple can)
  3. Copy and paste!

Well, Apple fixed most of that today. They showed off a lot of new features in iPhone 3.0, many of which should have been there in version 1.1. I’m generally pleased by Apple’s announcements.

What’s coming in iPhone 3.0? Well, take a look at all of the stuff I wanted above — you’ll get most of it. Here’s the skinny — consumers get:

  1. Copy and paste!! (FINALLY!)
  2. A2DP (stereo bluetooth audio — wanted this for 2 years)
  3. Bluetooth tethering if AT&T allows it (I’m sure they will for a healthy $30 a month or some such fee)
  4. Spotlight – search for stuff in Apple apps or use it as a launcher to find apps
  5. MMS
  6. CalDav calendar support (also a must for me!)
  7. Notes sync

There’s more, but that’s all the cool stuff. Did Apple forget the devs? Nope. We get a lot of cool new toys too, some of which would have been nice a month ago when return7 started work on its next app (currently in beta):

  1. Proximity sensor API (yay! we can be hot shots like google now and boy do I have a kick ass app idea using this)
  2. Peer-to-peer discovery/ip connection ala bluetooth+bonjour (it’s 1-to-1, not n-n)
  3. Accessories can access the dock connector or hit the phone via bluetooth — can dream up so many cool robots w/ this now
  4. Google maps API (can’t be used for turn-by-turn)
  5. Official blessing for turn-by-turn (Garmin, give us some love..please!)  but bring your own maps
  6. PUSH NOTIFICATIONS! Hi, welcome to not September 2008. Better late than never, though. I must say, I prefer either backgrounding or some runner that calls some standalone script in an app that’s limited to 10 seconds or so of execution time…but this’ll do. :)
  7. VOIP Service of some sort for apps (not sure how this’ll work but here come the 10 million walkie-talkie apps..they’ll be the new ToDo app)
  8. Access to the music library on the phone
  9. Easier audio recording
  10. Upsell on paid apps (basically makes it easy to do things like episodic content for users)

Once again, there’s more, but those are the highlights. Did I get all of the answers I wanted or everything I wanted? No. Did I expect to? Not so much. I think Apple’s done a pretty good job of appeasing the fanboi (and the !fanboi) in me, though. Will be excited when/if they announce a new iPhone later this year.

Edit: give me tethering.

PunchClock Demo Vid

Published on December 15, 2008 in iPhone and return7. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Check it out here. What do you think?

Marketing an iPhone App

Published on November 10, 2008 in Apple and iPhone. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

This post will have at least one follow-up, depending on the result of the “CastCatcher debacle.” Also, it’s probably a bit of a rant so skip to the next to last paragraph if you don’t want to hear about Apple behaving like the Microsoft of the late 90s.

Mobile apps are a strange beast. Users don’t want to pay much (<$5 in most cases), but they want a desktop application’s worth of functionality. Maybe the rationale is along the lines of paying less for something “physically” smaller (i.e. a mobile app fits in your pocket since it’s on your phone unlike the desktop version of Quicken). Until Apple’s iPhone and App Store, your best bet was to buy directly from the developer, through Handango or similar. This sucked. It was a major pain, support was shoddy at best, and you had no idea what you were getting into.

Today, Apple’s App Store eases the distribution pain for developers and gives users trust that the apps they purchase are worth it (screenshots, reviews, etc. all help). It doesn’t solve the support problem, but at least it makes it easy for a user to buy my apps. Cool.

There are some issues with the App Store, though. Some have been addressed, like the review system being open to anyone. You can now only review an application if you’ve purchased it. Other issues, like lengthy delays for Apple’s “approval” haven’t. This delay, though, is manageable. I can deal with waiting a week so Apple makes sure my application isn’t going to take over the world. No problem.

The first major pain of marketing an iPhone app is Apple’s closed policies. Apple prevents developers from releasing competing software on their platform. It’s all very reminiscant of the troubles Microsoft had with IE being bundled with Windows and the United States DOJ. I’m not entirely clear on how Apple gets away with it when Microsoft was unable to. Maybe it’s Steve’s good looks. It’s Apple’s platform, after all, so I won’t fault them even though I disagree. What is a problem, however, is the inconsistency of Apple’s app reviews. One of return7’s applications was just rejected for “using too much bandwidth.” We were asked to neuter the application by turning it into a WIFI-only streaming application. Two things come to mind: that’s total bullshit and I wonder if Apple is going to add streaming functionality to iTunes in iPhone in 2.2 or 2.3. There are at least seven other streaming applications I can think of, off hand, that aren’t subject to this limitation on the App Store. Also, three prior versions of CastCatcher have already been approved. The streaming code is shared among all versions, save for minor bug fixes and feature additions (like Icecast support). The latest version of CastCatcher does not use more bandwidth than many other version and most likely uses LESS bandwidth than most other streaming applications since it does not load its list of stations from an outside source. Bandwidth consumption is strictly based on the streams a user wants to listen to. CastCatcher’s rejection seems like some sort of mistake. Apple has generally been helpful in the past so this was pretty shocking to me.

The second pain is the actual marketing part. Assuming you can get your application on the App Store, you have to make sure it’s an immediate hit or it’s unlikely you’ll make enough money to make it worth your while. You need a well-designed (and built!) application with a leg up on competitors. Originality helps too. Advertising on the App Store probaby pays off in a big way, but I’ve not looked at the costs or tried it so I can’t help there. An alternative is AdMob but I’ve only heard that it’s expensive and I know from experience that the company is not generally responsive (where’s the $250 credit you promised me 2 months ago?) so the return may not be worth it unless you have an application with very high sales. If you fail to make the top 100 list, or at least have a popular application, you’ll be doomed to the 5-15 sales per day grave yard. Bad times.

So what happens now? I suppose it depends on whether or not Apple lets us release the latest version of CastCatcher (we’d really like to get this update in the hands of our users).

More to come.