iOS Devices

As most of you probably know, Snow Leopard is the next version of Mac OS X, and is going to bypass major new features, and instead will focus entirely on stability and speed. Of all the choices Apple has made as a company, I respect them the most for this decision. Leopard had some pretty big bugs when it launched, and while it is generally stable now, it still could be improved. Snow Leopard will be the perfect springboard to make the OS speedy and stable in the years to come, and it also will be highly compelling for Windows Vista users to switch over from the dark side.

As I have said many, many, many,many times before, I have had some serious bugs with iPhone 3G: so serious that I, the most avid of fanboys, have considered switching to a cheap flip phone for a month or so, until the bugs are ironed out. During yesterday’s daily 5 hours without a phone, I was thinking about Snow Leopard for Mac, and then it hit me: maybe we’ll see it on iPhone 3.0 first? After all, iPhone is running Leopard, and was running it before the desktop version came out, so wouldn’t it make logical sense for iPhone to get Snow Leopard sometime early next year? If it got Snow Leopard, it undoubtably would make the phone much more stable, which isn’t just welcome at this point: its needed. Also, it would be great for speed, as I’ve noticed the startup time is extremely slow now, as are application load times. 

What do you think? Will the iPhone 3.0 Software be Snow Leopard? And if so, will we see it on the iPhone before Snow Leopard comes out, or after? Sound off in the comments.

Michael is a teen blogger for 9 to 5 Mac, and has his own blog, Mac Soda.

As August nears its end, and September approaches, a few thoughts pop into peoples heads. For some it may be the end of summer, for others the beginning of school. However, for most of the people reading this site, new iPods is the reaction. Undoubtably we will see updates next month: but what exactly will come? Here are my predictions…

1. iPod Shuffle: At 49 dollars, its hard to imagine the price dropping anymore. However, I’m sure we will see some sort of an updated design, definitely thinner, and while a screen is possible, its unlikely. More space, and thinner are what to expect here.

2. iPod Nano: Some say touch, others say click wheel. I say both. I believe that just as the iPod Touch didn’t kill off the Classic, the iPod Touch Nano won’t kill off the Nano. The iPod Touch Nano will be extremely thin, and will sport a 2.5 inch screen, with prices starting very cheap (99-149?). Expect 4-8 GB of space. As far as the click-nano is concerned, I believe it will stay fat, add more space, and will come in multiple colors, as 9 to 5 Mac claims. While some are interpreting this as more than one color on the frame, I have a feeling they will be able to change colors, as Apple has a patent for this, and because it would be awesome. Prices should drop in line with the Touch Nano, and space should be boosted.

3. iPod Classic: Thinner, Cheaper, Bigger Hard Drive. Yawn. This is probably the Apple product I care the least about.

4. iPod Touch: GPS should be added. Maybe a camera and speakers and a mic to go with the iPhone. 64 GB of space is possible. While some may think that’s crazy, Steve Jobs said that the iPod Touch will always have more space than the iPhone, so if people expect a 32 GB iPhone, a 64 GB Touch has to come first. I also expect it to be thinner (if that’s even possible: that thing is so thin!), and perhaps sport a plastic or aluminum back. That chrome back scratches too much for my liking as it is now. I also would like to see volume buttons to match the iPhone. Expect a substantial drop in price: As it is now, It doesn’t make sense to pay 499 for a 32 GB Touch, and 299 for a 16 GB iPhone. I’d expect all price points to drop 100 dollars (or at least 50).

5. PowerBook G5. Two Button Mouse. Beatles on iTunes. Steve said he expected them in early 2008, and time’s running out. Remastered catalog, DRM-Free, All albums available immediately plus a new “special” album of some sort (Greatest hits type thing). Paul McCartney Performs at event.

6. iTunes 8.0. iTunes really is in need of some sort of a refresh, a new way to organize and view content. I don’t know what it will be, but I’m sure it needs to come. It’s long overdue in my opinion.

7. iTunes Movie Rentals become 48 Hours. If Australia has it with the same movies, we will get it too. 

8. (Complete Dream) NBC Back on iTunes. I highly doubt this will happen, but I’m posting it because I want it to come so badly. From Flipping Out, to The Office, to Heroes, they have some of the best content available, and iTunes needs it.

So those are my predictions: sound off in the comments.

Michael is a teen blogger for 9 to 5 Mac, and has his own blog, Mac Soda.

 Oh looky-look – some bright spark has created a comparison video they claim illustrates the difference between the kind of ‘Net access speeds promised for the iPhone 3G in advertising and the real world speeds people get.

So take a look and share your thoughts, people…

 See here. The musical geniuses who brought you such timeless classics as S.O.S. and Burnin’ Up performed today at the Apple SoHo. Meanwhile, hundreds of teenage girls (and apparently one guy), who think its crazy to wait in line all day for a phone, waited all day in line to listen to a horrible, direct-from-Disney group sound even worse in person (if that is even possible). Due to the popularity of the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, and High School Musical, I have come to the conclusion that teenage girls have it hard-coded in their DNA to have no taste in music. If you’ve looked at the iTunes Top 10 lately, you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about: there currently are two Jonas Brothers songs, a Demi Lovato song, a Miley Cyrus song, and now, a David Archuleta song. The good old days (which I wasn’t around to see), when bands like The Beatles were popular with teenage girls are over, and the days in which bands like the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus are popular are just beginning. Check out this video which perfectly shows just how bad these current singers are. The Jonas Brothers covered Hello Goodbye, and this video shows both the Beatles version and the Jonas version side by side, to show just how poorly the Jonas Brothers covered it. Funny joke, right? Apparently not. Commenters are actually taking the sarcastic question that was stated in the video seriously! A few sample comments…

"i think both versions are great but personally for me i like jb a little bit better..but they are both great"

"in my opinion the jonas brothers did better but im not sayin the beatles are bad i just like the way jonas brothers did the song"

"JONAS DAHHHH AND SOMETHING IMPORTANT (mermaids r real!!!)"

"jonas brothers are 100,000,000 millions times betters"

"i liked jb’s version better cuz it wuz fast and upbeat!!"

Unfortunately, this horrible, obnoxious music will continue to be produced, unless these companies, primarily Disney, take a stand and start producing good music for all of these kids to listen to. One of these companies is Apple. Apple is considered to be a very hip company in the eyes of the same kids who buy the Jonas’ music. From iPods, to laptops, to iPhone, to Photobooth, Apple isn’t just desirable to geeks and fanboys… teenagers really like it too. Therefore, Apple is in a unique position, especially with the huge iTunes installed base, to decide what’s cool, and what’s not. Instead of using this advantage to promote music of actually quality, they instead are feeding right into the Disney trend, and promoting bands like the Jonas Brothers non-stop, from iTunes Home Page Ads, to Miley Cyrus being on the staff favorites, and now to the Jonas Brothers performing at an Apple Store. While part of me is sure this shameless advertising has to be because of Jobs’ ties with Disney, another part of me finds it hard to believe that Jobs would want to promote such low quality music, no matter how much it benefitted him financially. He has said many times how much he likes The Beatles and Bob Dylan, so why would he let The Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana ascend into stardom? Anyways, I’ve blabbed enough about this: what do you think? Could this slowly creep up and overcome the record industry, destroying good music once and for all? Or am I overreacting to a dinky little concert in NYC? Sound off in the comments.

Michael is a teen blogger for 9 to 5 Mac, and has his own blog, Mac Soda. 

Remember when we told you (OK BGR told us to tell you) that Radio Shack and Best Buy were getting the iPhone soon?  Guess what?  Best Buy announced today that they will be selling the iPhone come September 7 at almost 1000 locations throughout the US.  They will be the first 3rd party retailer to sell the iPhone (unless you count Carphone Warehouse in the UK and every corner bottle-o in some place called ‘Australia’).

Shawn Score, president of Best Buy’s mobile division, says, "We think we’ll have a good supply for our customers."

Analyst Wolf says he believes that Apple is catching up with demand. "Supply is coming on board."

Best Buy says it has a national exclusive on the iPhone (outside of Apple and AT&T stores) through Christmas. The retailer has Apple Macintosh sections at 600 of its stores.

Adding to in-store customer waiting time is a new, longer procedure to activate the iPhone that has made the buying process much longer.

Questions that arise:

• Will Apple be able to meet this demand?  Aug 22 will double the footprint of countries with iPhones including India
• Will there be trained Apple techs onsite to help?  Buying an iPod is kids play compared to registering an iPhone
• Will this cheapen the iPhone experience?  When 1/3 of the US (Best Buy customers) has an iPhone, it doesn’t feel quite as special does it?
• Radio Shack…*ahem* got anything to say?
• Anyone think Apple will have any trouble getting rid of 10 million iPhones this year?  How about 20 million?

 Hey, Luther Here…Just thought you should know that the Jonas Brothers are performing at the Apple Store in SoHo, NY tonight at 8:00. If you get a chance check it out. I went to see Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway last month at the Apple Store. If you go, leave now because I was on line all day, and was lucky enough to be second. Good luck! 

This week’s free app of the week is a game that hooks you from the beginning to the end. It makes you want to download new songs, and play it all day long. Hey that rhymes! This week’s free app is Tap Tap Revenge. You may have heard of it…it was on the top five downloaded free apps a while ago. I just thought I should revisit it.

Tap Tap Revenge is a fast-paced (when on hard) game that tests your rhythmic skills. I must say, This game is loads of fun. It is a game that can be played anywhere, even though you will draw attention to yourself! I’ve played it on the train and have had groups of people stare at me, and wonder why my hands were having spaz-attacks. Trust me. It’s totally worth it!

To play, you simply choose a level, and a song. It’s pretty self-explanatory after that. If you still need guidance, be sure to use the included tutorial track. You just have to tap through the circle beats, and shake your phone in the direction of the oncoming arrows.

The only cons: This version lacks the feature that allows you to use your own music from your iTunes library. Also, all the tracks sound like techno club beats. Tap Tap Revenge even allows you to download extra tracks, and is definitely a game you should try out. I must warn you, once you try it, you won’t get rid of it!

A few months back, the iPhone overtook the 5 megapixel Nokia N95 as the most popular cameraphone on Flickr.  Even though it looks like there was a slight hiccup since then, *gasp*, the iPhone appears to be widening the lead.  As Flickr (Yahoo!) is a fairly international company with an international userbase and iPhone’s global distribution is just starting to approach that of the Nokia N95, we expect that margin to widen, even with the iPhone’s relatively paltry 2 megapixel, flashless camera.  Also 3G helps with the uploading, right?

Perhaps that GPS camera tagging feature is also making a difference?  See full Flickr stats here.  Notice that Nokia as a brand still owns the cameraphone category, just no single device of theirs is competing with the iPhone.

Update: Mobile Fotos seems to be the winner in the mobile Flickr photo updater category…if you are into that sort of thing.
digg_url = ‘http://9to5mac.com/flickr-iPhone’;

Stumble It!

After the numerous ominous warnings last week not to update iPhone 2.0 software because "there might not be a way to ever unlock then new baseband"…there is a way to jailbreak iPhone 2.0.1.  Pwnage tool 2.0.2 was released early this morning by the all night working iPhone Dev Team.

At this point, it is almost no longer news…is it?  …the cat and mouse game goes on and on…

Notes from Team Dev:

 NOTE: THE UPDATE OPTION FOR CUSTOM RAMDISKS IS NOT YET SUPPORTED FOR USE WITH ITUNES, SO FOR THIS RELEASE OF PWNAGETOOL USE THE RESTORE OPTION.

Please ensure you ONLY download and use the tbz file – as we warned yesterday the re-compressed unauthorized .zip files cause problems with certain parts of the release.

If you choose to download the file  PwnageTool_2.0.2.tbz from anywhere else apart from these mirrors then check the SHA1 sum, AGAIN – ONLY DOWNLOAD THE TBZ! 

MIRROR LIST

• stevenlu.com
• forty2blog.de
• ZippyShare 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noZcgSTmDA4&color1=11645361&color2=13619151&hl=en&fs=1]

Look at this. I have never seen an application that I’ve wanted more than this since the app store launched. Basically it allows you to use the phone as a multi-touch aid for Logic and ProTools. I would have got this in a second: I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted multi-touch displays for sound mixing in Logic and Soundtrack Pro… and this would fit the need perfectly! Except… it costs 150 dollars. The liteversion costs 40 dollars! Most lite versions are free! Unfortunately, this means that it won’t be on my phone anytime soon.

Here’s hoping a free knockoff comes sometime soon! 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jVNlkNNHlk&color1=11645361&color2=13619151&hl=en&fs=1]

What do you think of the earphone plug on the top? Yeah, Apple might change that…

Thanks to TUAW

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewwRM4hNlkc&hl=en&fs=1]

 There’s lots of focus on enterprise applications and games when it comes to iPhone software, but its professional creative users who form the Apple heartland – and musicians have always been familiar with the platform, so we’d like to introduce you to ProRemote, THE iPhone application for pro musicians, and their crew.

ProRemote runs on the iPhone and iPod touch that uses your existing wireless network to control professional audio products such as Digidesign’s ProTools and Apple’s Logic Music production systems.

The software offers users either 8 channels (light edition) or 32 channels of remote control with real-time colour metering and 40mm touch sensitive virtual faders. Up to 8 faders can be controlled simultaneously.

The full version includes a dedicated transport view that allows users to do audio scrubbing/shuttling, set markers (memory locations) and control many advanced aspects of the transport as well as basic play, record, and return to zero.

"I created ProRemote to make it simple to maintain the creative train of thought while remotely controlling and adjusting pro audio products during the recording process," said Alex Lelievre, Principal Computer Scientist/Owner Far Out Labs. "The combination of the iPhone SDK and the revolutionary iPhone and iPod touch devices met my development needs perfectly helping make the vision of what I wanted to create a reality."

Why is this useful? Imagine you are recording your own guitar part, laying down a melody on your keyboard, whatever, and suddenly get gripped by an idea to improve the results, which will require walking out of your booth and over to your computer. Now you can do it from where you are.

The software communicates using its own highly optimized proprietary protocol to ensure smooth delivery of real-time data over a Wi-Fi link. The Server component has been streamlined for use with CPU intensive digital audio applications and will not interfere with professional sessions.

ProRemote costs $149.99, with a Lite version available for just $39. The software is available at the App Store.

 True or false, this year or next, whatever – the rumoured iPhone nano story just won’t go away, and now it looks like at least one third party developer’s working away at products custom-built for such a device.

The Daily Mail this week broke news that Apple plans to introduce a smaller, less well-featured iPhone nano, proposing this would appear in time for Christmas and would be made available to O2’s pay-as-you-go customers.

Naturally, a chorus of derision met this report, with Apple watchers rejecting the whole notion of such a plan – ‘why would Apple want to cannibalise iPhone 3G sales?’, they asked?

Perhaps because with a billion handset per year mobile industry, there’s space for many different configurations of device. Just how many different models of Nokia phone exist, for example?

Clearly, in order to fully penetrate the mobile phone market, Apple needs to rush to diversify its available products, before the iPod halo begins to fade, as that particular arm of its business operations begins to slow down.

Widely quoted as dismissing the iPhone nano claims, Lehman Brothers analyst Ben Reitzes explained that while he believes Apple is working on a lower-end iPhone form factor, he didn’t think it would arrive until Spring 2009. Well, what’s a few months delay? The results the same; Apple plans to diversify its range.

Does it really make sense for Apple to delay such diversification? There’s looming economic doom, a credit crunch, and a wave of competing products (many of which look a little like iPhones in a desperately dull repetition of imitation and flattery) all heading to ship at Christmas.

What’s the best way to bite competition? Undercut on price, innovate on features, surprise in execution (and plant a few rumours to keep competitors guessing.)

Latest evidence to emerge now claims accessory maker, Digital Lifestyle Outfitters (DLO), has been working on a nano-styled iPhone dock since 2006…they even have a patent for it…

The iPhone nano is going to happen. The only questions are when it will appear, what it will offer, what shape it will be, and what it will be called. And in any case, we’re expecting at least one nano-natured MultiTouch device to appear pretty soon, the iPod nano touch (or touch mini, or whatever the product marketing teams decide to call it).

"At a recent party to celebrate developer Joe Hewitt’s latest release of the Facebook application for the iPhone, friends treated Hewitt to champagne and a cake decorated with, naturally, an iPhone running Facebook. Of course, moments later, pictures of said cake showed up in partygoers’ news feeds and were ‘automagically’ displayed on their iPhones. And you doubted the power of technology to change the world for the better…."

Thanks to Valleywag.

The LA Times blog is reporting that the infamous, limited edition "I am Rich" application was purchased by six Americans, one Frenchman and one German.  That’s right.  These guys gave the developer, Armin Heinrich, a total of $5,600 dollars and Apple $2,400 for what effectively is a 320×480 pixel Photoshopped picture of a jewel.

Is it Art?…

We could bring up the discussion of whether this is a study in exclusivity in the digital world and a harbinger of things to come…however, it is just too stupid to to put it through scrutiny.  It really is too bad that giving $1000 to the WWF or a charity doesn’t give people that same kind of buzz and recognition.

According to the LA Times:

Apple apparently had some problems with "I Am Rich". After initially approving it for distribution, the company has since removed it from the store. Heinrich, a German software developer, has yet to hear back from Apple concerning the removal. "I have no idea why they did it and am not aware of any violation of the rules to sell software on the App Store," Heinrich said in an e-mail with The Times today.

In the e-mail, Heinrich said there seemed to be a market for the program. "I am sure a lot more people would like to buy it — but currently can’t do so," Heinrich said. "The App is a work of Art and included a ‘secret mantra’ — that’s all."

Ugh..Any opinions on this out there?  Is this the begining of something bigger?  Does the fact that it is digital and a 100% exact replica can be made easily and copied millions of times for no cost mean it really isn’t that valuable?  Like music and video?

O2 wasn’t the only company to benefit from the ‘unprecedented demand’ that met the release of the iPhone 3G – some competitors saw benefit too, as interest in mobile phones shot up.

Orange chief executive, Tom Alexander, described the weekend of the iPhone launch as "the best trading weekend of the year so far," thanks to the iPhone on O2.

"People were excited by the product, came out to shop and found other great deals on the high street. Everyone has benefited from the iPhone."

It may be the chief exec is simply playing nice – recent weeks have seen a rumour and its subsequent retraction claim Apple plans to allow Orange to share the O2 limelight in offering the iPhone in the UK.

Denying this, O2 has simply pointed out that it has a multi-year exclusive deal for the device in the UK, the first year of which has not yet elapsed.

Orange does carry the iPhone in France, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland and other markets.

 Apple Insider has dug up a patent from Apple that has tremendous potential. Essentially, it would allow a user to have unlimited space on their iPods by streaming media from their computers remotely. I see this as the future, but the future has to wait on one thing: fast internet. As I’m sure you know, America’s internet speeds are way behind that of other countries, and our standards are much lower as well. When we wake up (or everyone takes the lead of FIOS), I believe this has huge potential. Combine this home streaming with a remote sync, and you have a recipe for success. Long term, when internet speeds are unbelievably fast, I could envision an iPod with zero internal storage. This would cut prices greatly, and at the same time, only limit you by the amount of space on your computer.

This probably won’t be coming anytime soon, and even if it does, it won’t be very useful. For know, we can just hope for these.

Michael is a teen blogger for 9 to 5, and has his own blog, Mac Soda.