Apps

It is estimated that one in ten iPhones out there are jailbroken. That is, their software is modified to run apps Apple doesn’t want you to know about. For the vast majority of remaining 90 percent, however, jailbreaking is a borderline underground thing and a big no-no. And who can blame them? Apple was vigilant about jailbreakers and it got a little help from AT&T, too, until federal regulators last summer declared jailbreaking legal. Still, many people didn’t get the memo.

That’s why Jay Freeman, also known as Saurik and the man who created Cydia, an unofficial app store for unsanctioned software, set out to educate those not in the known about the benefits of jailbreaking. Saurik sat down with Robert Scoble at the Mobile Connections conference who produced the above video. Would you free your phone from the clutches of curated App Store now that you’ve learned about the benefits of jailbreaking? Meet us in comments.

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[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/22872265 w=670&h=377]

Today, a beautiful new interactive e-book hit the App Store. Entitled “Our Choice”, it is notable not just for its amazing interface but also because Apple board member, former US presidential candidate and Nobel prize winner Al Gore is credited as author. Not surprisingly, the book is basically a sequel to the Apple Keynote-heavy Inconvenient Truth as it too focuses on the effects of pollution, climate change and global warming.

What really impresses though is a high degree of interactivity and rich media features, courtesy of the innovative new digital publishing platform dubbed Push Pop Press. “Our Choice” can be yours for five bucks. The universal binary weighs in at 52.8MB and scales up nicely to iPad’s 1024-by-768 pixel resolution. See guided tour video below:
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App Store developer FutureTap just revealed that they have received their first crash report from an iOS 5 device. This means that Apple is currently field-testing their next-generation mobile operating system that runs on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with applications from the iOS App Store. The application apparently crashed in iOS 5 due to the MKUserLocationBreadCrumb. Developer Will Strafach (Chronic) let us know that this API relates to the iOS maps and location functionality.

This could possibly mean that Apple changed up some map and location APIs in iOS 5, causing issues with map-based applications built for current versions of iOS 4. iOS 5 is expected to take on some new cloud-based features and will be officially unveiled at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference in early June. Apple is expected to release iOS 5 in September alongside the fifth-generation iPhone. Thanks, Peter Silie!

Update: FutureTap sent us the below screenshot of their iOS 5 hits. Their WhereTo application has seen five iOS 5.0 and four of the hits come from AT&T HQ. This means that both Apple and their largest carrier are actively testing the new operating system before its early June preview. The AT&T-based device(s) is the iPhone 4 (iPhone 3,1) and the hit from Apple HQ comes from a first-generation iPad. We don’t learn much, but at least we now know that iOS 5 will seemingly not require the dual-core A5 processor in the next iPhone and iPad 2.

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The headline won’t shock anyone following the mobile space, although there’s more to it than meets the eye. A Distimo survey, relayed by TechCrunch, shows the Android application store rocks more free programs than Apple’s App Store. Utrecht, Netherlands-based Distimo counted 134,342 free items on Android Market versus 121,845 freebies on the App Store.

Even though Apple’s store was the slowest growing mobile bazaar  in March 2011, it still leads in terms of quantity and remains the most vibrant app community on the planet. The number of App Store items is approaching the 400,000 milestone (Distimo counted 367,334 apps). At current 16 percent growth rate, however, Android Market will overtake Apple’s store in app volume five months from now.

Also interesting: iPad submissions grew 12 percent in March to 75,755 apps, with an average daily revenue nearing a cool $400,000. As any iPad owner knows, a larger canvas commands premium prices ($5.36 on average for an iPad app). Another tidbit: Distimo expects BlackBerry App World to overtake Nokia’s Ovi Store by the end of next month. Some insight and more pretty charts after the break.

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The blogosphere is abuzz this morning with Apple’s official response to the Locationgate scandal. While the company’s powerful PR machinery is in full swing trying to dodge the bullet, we have pinpointed a rather interesting line in Apple’s document entitled “Q&A on Location Data”. Before we dive into that – and for those who didn’t get the memo – Apple has confirmed a database residing on the device that contains anonymized data generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby WiFi hotspots and cell towers.

They use it to “help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested”. Storing a year’s worth of data was a “bug” that will be fixed with a forthcoming iOS update. “We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data,” the company wrote. But Apple may be planning to use this crowd-sourced information to release a new traffic service in the future, quite possibly a turn-by-turn traffic service. Apple itself alluded to this in the document:

Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.

What might this service be like? Read on…

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A reader sent this in. He was apparently able to make iPad-only GarageBand run on an iPhone 4 using a hack that requires a jailbroken device. It involves transferring the GarageBand application with changed metadata to an iPhone 4 via OpenSSH. “Surprisingly, it didn’t crash as much as I expected it to do”, he writes.

It obviously isn’t the perfect solution because as GarageBand for iPad isn’t formatted for a slightly lower iPhone 4 resolution but it works well enough. Check out a couple of screenies after the break.

Thanks, Zecharias!

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Many people have skipped on the opportunity to purchase one of The New York Times subscriptions in order to enjoy unlimited access to articles via smartphones, tablets and the web. I know I haven, but that didn’t stop me from fighting that paywall with a bunch of workaround solutions. Most are clunky, however, like searching for articles on Twitter, and limiting.

As a result, folks generally give up upon hitting the paywall after using up their allotment of twenty articles the newspaper generously gives away each month. But you needn’t despair, for the ultimate hack has been sitting right in front of you all along. Read on…

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It was an update day yesterday for Apple. Having released an updated version of MobileMe Control Panel for Windows that added compatibility with the new MobileMe Calendar backend in Outlook for Windows, Apple also unleashed Snow Leopard Font Update and iPhoto 9.1.2.

The former, available as a standalone installer here, contains fixes for Snow Leopard 10.6.7 that “address issues displaying and printing certain OpenType fonts”, per Apple’s release notes. iPhoto 9.1.2 comes with a new card theme and a bunch of fixes highlighted right after the break.

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Outlook users on Windows who have problems syncing their calendars with the new MobileMe Calendar web app will want to grab an updated MobileMe Control Panel for Windows, released yesterday. Version 1.6.6 of this tool provides compatibility with the new MobileMe calendar back-end in Outlook (Microsoft Outlook 2003,  2007 or 2010 (32-bit)  required for calendar sync). “This update fixes issues and improves reliability for the new MobileMe Calendar in Outlook”, Apple wrote in release notes.

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TweetDeck, a popular cross-platform Twitter client based on Adobe AIR technology, has received a complete overhaul to address a number of user complaints. The app’s rebuilt from the ground up and packs in a number of new features, including all major Twitter capabilities such as old and new style retweets, favorites, sending updates, direct messages and searching.

TweetDeck’s column-based dashboard is now more flexible as you can create columns consisting of multiple sources like Facebook feeds, Twitter timelines, direct messages and more. Go past the break to learn more about new features.

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If jailbreaking is your thing, you’ll be delighted to learn about a simple hack that lets you run purchased iPad apps on your iPhone 4. Plus, folks waiting to free their iPhone 4 from the clutches of their carrier can sigh a collective breathe of relief as Dev-team goes live with an updated Ultrasn0w tool that supports iOS 4.3.2 carrier unlock.

Ultrasn0w 1.2.2, which does not include any new baseband support, will unlock your iPhone 4 or 3GS running the latest iOS 4.3.2 firmware, allowing you to take your device to any 3G GSM carrier. It requires a jailbroken device with 06.15.00 baseband so you’ll probably want to use a tethered jailbreak for iOS 4.3.2. Upon downloading and installing the Ultrasn0w 1.2.2 tool from Cydia, you need to reboot your device using the normal “slide to power off” prior to running the unlock (detailed guide).

But how about running iPad apps on your iPhone 4? Read on…

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A reader tipped us that Apple may have cut older versions of iTunes that are compatible with G3 Macs out of the iTunes Store. The iTunes Store used to work fine on iTunes 8.2.1, our tipster writes, but as of recently the store would refuse to open. Even though the jukebox software continues to operate normally on these machines, clicking the iTunes Store in the lefthand column puts up a warning to upgrade to iTunes 10, as seen in the above image. Our tipster explains:

Trying to go to the store’s home page, or searching the store, simply brings this page up again, although the ‘My Account’ page (accessed by clicking your email address in the top right) works fine.

While both iTunes 9 and 10 work on G4-powered Macs, they marked the end of the road for owners of decade old G3 Macs. iTunes 8.2.1, which can still be downloaded from Apple’s site, is the last version that supports G3 processors. “Looks like I’ll be using Amazon MP3 in the near future”, our tipster wrote. Of course, this could also be some kind of a temporary glitch. Is there anyone out there with a G3 Mac and iTunes 8.x who can corroborate this finding?

Thanks, Alex W.!

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Big publishers tend to do massive discounts ahead of important holidays and this coming Easter is no exception. Electronic Arts announced their second annual Easter games sale, with over thirty iPhone, iPod touch and iPad games seeing their priced reduced to just 99 cents. These are triple-A releases that cost from five bucks up, most of them around ten bucks. The full list of discounted iOS titles is available below. Some of the notable price cuts that caught our attention include iPhone games Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, Dead Space and The Sims 3 plus Scrabble for iPad and more. The deal is valid through this weekend.

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The iPad 2’s A5 processor not only is a speedy, dual-core chip, but also works to provide nine times the gaming performance of its predecessor, A4. So, what’s Apple to do for their best-selling gaming phone? Give it the A5 chip with remarkably better gaming performance. We have already discovered, in the iOS 4 SDK, that Apple is bringing the A5 chip to the next iPhone, and now we have heard Apple is going to push this gaming performance and speed as one of the next-generation iPhone’s major marketing points.

Apple isn’t taking the next iPhone’s A5-power lightly.  They already have select developers working on versions of their iPhone applications that take full advantage of the next-generation iPhone’s speedier and much more powerful hardware. These developers, seemingly from high-level gaming outfits, have been given what is essentially an iPhone 4 but with an A5 processor instead of an A4. The device itself is virtually identical to the iPhone 4, and there is no way anyone can tell it’s not an iPhone 4 based on the phone’s exterior.

The person who chose to share this information with us calls it the ‘iPhone 4S’, though the device itself only has typical Apple prototype nomenclature.  He also shared that the device spends its evenings in a safe in the company’s offices.

To be clear: these prototype iPhone 4S devices are not necessarily the next-generation iPhone. These phones are simply prototype units for developers to get ready for the new phone, rumored to be launching in September. The next-generation iPhone may end up looking just like the iPhone 4 (iPhone 3G-iPhone 3GS sort of thing) but we cannot confirm this. If the next iPhone does end up looking like the iPhone 4, we would assume that Apple would pack in more than just an A5. Probably an 8 megapixel camera, a world phone Gobi chips, and a few other things to spice up the package.

The operating system running on these phones is a version of iOS 4 that supports the next-generation hardware, and this may be why we found the iPhone 5 with an A5 chip in the iOS 4 SDK at all. If past history repeats itself, the fifth-generation iPhone will ship with Apple’s fifth-generation mobile software, in this case iOS 5. iOS 5 will be announced at Apple’s WWDC conference in early June with a rumored launch in September of this year. If anything, this news backs up claims that the fifth-generation iPhone will have an A5 and that Apple is taking gaming very seriously.

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Commenting on Andy Inhatko’s article on iOS storing user’s location data, Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber reveals that iOS storing user’s location information is in fact a bug. The bug comes down to a consolidated.db being in place. This file is supposed to store a user’s recent location information to work with iOS and iOS applications, but, due to a bug, does not delete older location information.

I don’t have a definitive answer, but my little-birdie-informed understanding is that consolidated.db acts as a cache for location data, and that historical data should be getting culled but isn’t, either due to a bug or, more likely, an oversight. I.e. someone wrote the code to cache location data but never wrote code to cull non-recent entries from the cache, so that a database that’s meant to serve as a cache of your recent location data is instead a persistent log of your location history.

Gruber “wagers” that the bug will be fixed in a future release of iOS, and we tend to agree with him. We’re unsure as to why Apple is yet to comment on this issue. If you are worried about your privacy and want to block this bug, a free jailbreak utility has been released to do so.

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RockmeIt, a desktop browser available on Macs and PCs since last November, just hit the App Store last night (it was one we glossed over because of the earnings). If you’ve used the desktop version, expect quite a different mobile experience. RockmeIt is a browser focused on social media, which is all the rage these days in mobile.

Similar to the Skyfire web browser, RockmeIt lets you log into your social media accounts like Twitter and Facebook to stay on top of things while browsing the web. It’s also got a built-in RSS reader and it syncs everything seamlessly with your desktop. The app packs in a bunch of useful features, like saving articles for offline reading, rich sharing features and so forth. More features, screenshots and a video introduction after the break.

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Noted jailbreak developer Ryan Petrich has released a new jailbreak-only utility tonight named untrackerd, which promises to block iOS and Apple’s ability to log your device’s location information. Petrich’s application comes in light of a new discovery that Apple’s mobile operating system tracks iOS device’s longitude and latitude. That location information is then stored on your computer’s hard drive and can later be accessed by just about anyone with the right computer skills or software. Untrackerd is available for free on the Cydia jailbreak store. Thanks, Will.

Untrackerd’s description in Cydia:

This package installs a daemon (process that can run in the background) to clean consolidated.db file) No new icons are added to your homescreen. There are no options to configure.

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The game that knocked Angry Birds and Tiny Wings off of the top slots in the App Store games chart.

What is this with the App Store and bird-themed games, huh? First Angry Birds sat atop the App Store games charts, then Tiny Wings came along and now we have Air Penguing, a Gamevil-branded feather-themed time killer. It’s currently #1 paid app in the App Store games category in the US, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Russia. I just bought it and played it for like half an hour. Here are my initial impressions…

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Crackle’s “It’s On!” moniker could refer to Location Services which the application asks to turn on the first start up.  The problem is that Crackle, even when closed, leaves Location Services on, which could drain the battery.  Users have to go into Setting/Location Services to deny it access manually (below).

We’re waiting for that bug to be squashed and also an Airplay option in an upcoming update (but otherwise it is a pretty solid way to get Sony content).
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As developer Firemint promised a month ago, racing game Real Racing 2 HD is now live on the App Store with support for real 1080p video output that lets you enjoy action on your big screen in native 1920-by-1080 pixel resolution, without upscaling. It’s a first for iPad 2 and a testament to the power of the A5 chip. TouchArchade got a chance to test out this feature and they walked away impressed with the overall polish and frame rates. Check out a video demo right after the break…

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Even though estimated iPad 2 shipping times are better than they were following the gizmo’s launch, the online Apple Store still has a three-week wait on the iconic device. Buying it from third-parties is a time-consuming process as a lot of calls need to be made in order to figure out best iPad 2 availability at your nearby retailers. Why not save yourself valuable time and let an iPhone app search for the device for you? Yes, there’s an app for that. Read on…

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