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Tag: iPhone

  • GameDock Could Turn Your iPhone Into a Console

    It’s clear that traditional gaming on a smartphone is frustrating. Games that need more than a tap or a swipe have to overlay controls onto the touchscreen, meaning that gamers will have their fingers hovering over much of the game. The newly released Max Payne for iPhone is a good example of this.

    Solutions to this problem are beginning to roll out in the form of Bluetooth controllers, some of which have holders for a iPhone or iPod. However gamers might as well get an older handheld gaming system for all the cost and poor design of most of them. Thankfully, elegant solutions, such as the Ringbow, are beginning to solve this seemingly intractable problem.

    Chris Jorgensen and Andi Greisel decided to come at the problem of touchscreen gaming from a different direction. Jorgensen states that the iPhone is too slick for some games and that the iPad is too large for on-screen controls. To solve this problem, he and Greisel have created the GameDock, a dock for iOS devices that turns them into home consoles. The GameDock can be connected to a TV, and will allow gamers to play iPhone games on their TV using up to two USB controllers.

    The pair have started a Kickstarter campaign to raise the money to manufacture the GameDock. They claim to already have all of the technical issues worked out, and are promising to ship early-bird GameDocks to people who pledge $100 or more. Those who pledge $150 or more will get a “retro” USB controller that looks exactly like a controller for the original Nintendo Entertainment System.

    Watch the video below to see Jorgensen and Greisel pitch the GameDock and describe where their inspiration for the device came from:

    The one thing that is not made clear in the Kickstarter pitch is whether the GameDock will allow users to play any game they have on their iPhone. Will players be able to use usb controllers to play Max Payne for iPhone, for example? While it is stated that the GameDock is compatible with existing iCade games, a broader functionality could help set it apart from other touchscreen gaming solutions.

  • iPhone 5 Rumor: New iPhone Getting In-Cell Touchscreen Technology

    Back in April we told you about rumors surrounding the new iPhone’s touchscreen technology. According to the report, Apple would be using in-cell touchscreen tech in the new iPhone. This technology combines the two layers of the current iPhone’s display – the touch-sensitive glass panel and the LCD display – into one, resulting in a significantly thinner display. A few days later an analyst confirmed the rumors, saying that the new iPhone will be over a millimeter thinner than the iPhone 4S.

    Now there is new information that offers more support for the new iPhone’s in-cell display. According to Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White, Wintek has been reporting a significant drop in sales of its display technology. Wintek is a major supply partner for Apple, supplying components for the displays in many of Apple’s iOS devices, including the iPhone. White suggests that Wintek is “ramping down certain programs” because they are “losing market share in key next generation Apple products.”

    In other words, Apple won’t be using Wintek’s components in the next iPhone. While that doesn’t necessarily mean that Apple will be going with in-cell technology, specifically, it does imply that they’ll be making some kind of changes to the display. In-cell is a prime candidate for that.

    [H/T: MacRumors]

  • App Store Bug Causes Newly Updated Apps To Crash

    Sometimes in life, the littlest things can be the most exciting. When you’re young and living on your own for the first time, you get a little thrill out of checking your mail and seeing stuff addressed to you, even if it’s junk. When you got your first email address (all the way back in 1997 for me; get off my lawn), getting email was great. Nowadays, checking the App Store on your iPhone and discovering you’ve got updates is nearly always fun (especially when it means new levels for Angry Birds).

    Except when it isn’t. Numerous reports have been coming in since yesterday that certain recently-updated apps have been crashing on launch. The earliest report came from Instapaper developer Marco Arment. According to a post on his blog, he was “deluged” with support messages following Apple’s approval of an update to his app. It seems the app would crash immediately after launch. Users tried deleting and reinstalling the app clean, and the same thing happened. Arment began investigating and found that his own archived copy worked just fine. He ultimately concluded that the App Store’s copy of the app had gotten corrupted somehow, and that the corrupted copy of the app was causing the crash. Within a couple hours Apple put up a functional version of the app and the problem was resolved. For users who installed the bad app, though, the only solution is to delete and reinstall it.

    Arment is clearly annoyed about the situation in the post. He encourages developers with non-critical updates ready to go to wait a few days:

    Because if this happens to you, all of your most active users, the people who will install updates within hours of them becoming available, will be stopped in their tracks. They’ll think you’re careless, incompetent, and sloppy for issuing a release that doesn’t work. And they’ll leave you a lot of angry 1-star reviews.

    Because it seems that Instapaper isn’t the only app affected by this problem. The App Store has apparently been releasing corrupted copies of dozens of apps. Arment has compiled a list based on user reports:

  • GoodReader
  • Readdle Scanner Pro
  • SmartScan+OCR
  • Angry Birds Space HD Free
  • Lords & Knights
  • The Early Edition 2
  • Gaia GPS
  • Meetup
  • Pair
  • Redshift
  • Flick Soccer
  • iBike Moto
  • Please Stay Calm
  • Pinball Maniacs
  • Lucky Slots
  • Stack the States
  • Gluddle
  • Qwak
  • Bunker Buster
  • MemoryBrands
  • Threadnote
  • Checkout Helper
  • Metronome+
  • Cocktailpedia
  • Phoster
  • Melodies Pro
  • MoPho
  • TEDiSUB
  • FlattrCast
  • iCoyote Europe
  • @View
  • Huffington
  • Tap’N Ride
  • Dosecast
  • Stat E&M Coder
  • SMARTReporter (Mac)
  • PDX Bus
  • CommBank Kaching
  • CincyMobile

    • That’s 39 apps in all. While Instapaper is working now, it’s not clear whether Apple has gotten the others fixed. If you have any of the apps on the list and have downloaded the most recent updates, you should check to make sure it’s working on your phone. If they’re not working, try deleting and reinstalling. Apple may have gotten them fixed, in which case you should get a functioning app. If you have any of the apps and they work, you might want to wait a few days before downloading any updates, otherwise you risk getting the corrupted version and having to delete and re-install the app.

  • Apple App Store Reviewers Look At Penises All Day

    By most accounts, Apple’s App Store is pretty awesome. Introduced in 2008 with the iPhone 3G, the App Store allowed third party developers the chance to put their software in the hands of iPhone users. It spawned the famous “there’s an app for that” campaign, and made mobile software development a huge industry.

    Of course, it hasn’t all been sunshine and roses. Apple has caught some serious flack over the App Store over the years, much of it from developers complaining that Apple was too secretive about what made an app acceptable. Though improvements have been made in recent years, the App Store approval process has often seemed arbitrary and confusing. The tendency has often been to assume that Apple has people at some office in India or somewhere similar, attributing the apparent lack of common sense in some App Store rejections (and approvals; anybody remember the Shaken Baby app?) to cultural or linguistic barriers.

    It turns out, though, that that’s not the case at all. In fact, Apple’s app review team is a handful of people in an office in Cupertino who look through app submissions all day. According to Mike Lee, former Apple engineer, Apple is extremely picky about who it lets on the team. He told Business Insider that the team is drastically understaffed. The reviewers have to wade through an enormous number of submissions. That, he said, is why the occasional bad app slips through, or the occasional good app is rejected without any apparent reason.

    He also said that these poor folks are forced to spend far more time looking at pictures of male genitalia than anybody ought to. According to Lee, the review team spends significant amounts of time “sitting there looking at things that may or may not be dicks all day long.” Lee went on to describe the problem in vivid terms. Which is to say that he was apparently going for some sort of record for using the word “dicks” the most time in a single paragraph:

    It’s a very serious problem, trying to filter out things that no one is there to see. Somebody has to sit there and filter out all those dicks. You can’t let all those dicks get through. You have to err way on the side of safety. You have to have people sitting there looking at things that may or may not be dicks all day long. Apple refuses to farm stuff out to massive groups of people. They insist on having actual smart, educated, well-trained people doing the job. So that means they have to have some of their actual employees sifting through a pile of dicks. The only way to deal with it is to set the bar so far away from dicks so that even a picture of a cucumber gets blocked by accident. Because if you don’t, you have people spending hours and hours of conversation on whether something is a pubic hair. It’s a huge waste of time.

    So, there you have it. The next time you find yourself getting frustrated with the App Store review process, it may help to take a few minutes and remember that the reviewer responsible for rejecting your app may just have been tired at the end of a long work day spent wading through pictures of other guys’ junk.

  • iPad Mini: Apple’s Suppliers Ramping Up Production?

    Yesterday we told you about a Bloomberg report claiming that Apple was planning to launch a 7-8-inch iPad before the end of the year. As with many other rumors, the report – which cited “two people with knowledge of [Apple’s] plans” – suggested an October launch for the device.

    Now new information has surfaced that appears to corroborate those rumors. According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple’s supply chain is gearing up to begin producing the iPad Mini, as it’s usually called, in September. Citing “[o]fficials at the component suppliers,” the WSJ says that Apple is telling the companies in their supply chain to get ready to mass produce the device. They also corroborated reports from a few months ago that LG Display and AU Optronics were producing screens for the new iPad.

    With an iPad Mini Apple would be taking aim at a market they have so far left untouched. Shortly after the original iPad released, Steve Jobs famously said that the iPad’s 9.7-inch screen was the lower limit for a satisfying tablet experience. The thriving low-end tablet market, which is populated with devices like the Kindle Fire and, later this month, the Nexus 7, would appear to prove him wrong. Currently tablets like the Kindle Fire are the closest thing to real competition Apple has in the tablet market, of which it controls a significant majority. Yet they do so well precisely because they, in a sense, don’t compete directly with the iPad: they’re smaller and priced significantly lower. A 7-inch, $250 iPad Mini could prove to be a major game-changer in the low-end tablet market.

    While rumors of an iPad Mini have been around almost as long as the iPad itself, they’ve been picking up in intensity in recent months. Indeed, more and more it’s looking like Apple really does have a smaller tablet in the works, and that they really will be releasing it later this year. Whether they release it in October, however, remains to be seen. On the one hand, that would allow them to take advantage of the holiday shopping season, which could net them a significant chunk of the 7-inch tablet market very quickly. On the other hand, it would compete directly with the new iPhone, which will also be releasing around September or October.

    At any rate, at this point it looks like the question to ask about the iPad Mini is no longer “if,” but “when.” And, of course “How much and where do I get in line for one?”

  • People Actually Liked That Zooey Deschanel iPhone Ad

    A few months ago, Apple debuted a couple of new iPhone 4S ads that centered around the use of Siri and featured the high-powered celebrity presences of Samuel L. Jackson and Zooey Deschanel. Jackson used Siri to help prepare dinner, while Zooey used Apple’s voice assistant to…check the weather?

    The Zooey Deschanel ad, in particular, was the punchline in quite a few jokes – mainly because the actress chose to ask Siri if it’s raining while standing right beside and open window. The ad even spawned a couple of parodies, one notable one coming from Conan O’brien.

    You remember the ad, right? I still see it quite frequently on the tube. If you’re unfamiliar, check it out below:

    Well, according to new data from TV analytics company Ace Metrix, audiences actually responded to the ad, silly or not.

    The Zooey Deschanel “It’s Raining” ad came in 8th place in their list of top 10 most effective TV ads of Q2. The list is based on the company’s “Ace Score, which…

    Ace Score is the measure of ad creative effectiveness based on viewer reaction to national TV ads. Respondents are randomly selected and representative of the U.S. TV viewing audience. The results are presented on a scale of 1-950, which represents scoring on creative attributes such as relevance, persuasion, watchability, information, attention, etc. This list is comprised of the highest scoring new television advertisements to have first aired nationally between April and June of 2012.

    So, viewers thought the Apple ad was pretty persuasive, relevant, and watchable. Take that, haters.

    Last quarter, Samsung’s ad for the Galaxy Note (which you may remember targeted Apple fanboys) held the top spot. This quarter, it’s another Samsung ad that reigns supreme – but it’s not for a smartphone. It’s actually an ad called “For Your Big Life” that markets one of Samsung’s french door refrigerators.

    “Notable this quarter was both Samsung and Apple’s continued aggressiveness and excellence on the creative front,” said Ace Metrix CEO Peter Daboll.

    I guess Zooey Deschanel is just that damn lovable, to offset the admittedly ridiculous “is it raining” question. Google may have to bring in some equally bubbly star power for their just-announced Android Jelly Bean voice search (which looks to be competing with Siri just fine when it comes to functionality).

  • iCloud Web Portal Getting Notes, Reminders, Find My iPhone Upgrades

    You may recall that back in May Apple briefly put up a new beta version of the iCloud website. This beta version hinted at some of the features that would be coming to iCloud with the launch of iOS 6 later this year, including web apps for Notes and Reminders. The iCloud beta page appeared to have been made live by mistake, though, as it disappeared rather quickly.

    Now, though, the new iCloud beta site is back, complete with clues about what Apple’s planning to do next with iCloud. If you navigate to the website, beta.icloud.com, you’ll see a page very similar to the one that was up back in May, just with some shuffled icons (see the lead image above).

    Unfortunately, you have to have a developer account to sign into the beta version of the iCloud web portal. I, alas, do not have a developer account. Fortunately, though, the good folks over at iJailbreak do, and they were able to get in and play with some of the new features. This is what the control panel for iCloud Beta looks like when you sign in:

    iCloud Beta Control Panel

    As you can see, there are quite a few features that aren’t there in the public version, most notably Notes and Reminders. For comparison, here’s the control panel for the public version of iCloud:

    iCloud Control Panel

    You may also have noticed in the beta version that the Calendar and Find My iPhone icons have beta tags on them as well. Apparently Apple is working on some updates for those, including a battery percentage indicator in Find My iPhone.

    There’s no hint as to when these new iCloud features will be rolling out to the rest of us. Mountain Lion is right around the corner, so the likeliest answer is that these updates will go public when it releases, though it’s possible they’ll be out sooner (or later).

  • iPhone Explodes On Camera In Nokia’s Backyard

    As great as our gadgets can be, they also come with their own little inconveniences. Maybe the network signal cuts out just as you’re about to make an important call. Maybe the battery dies right before the good part of that movie you’re watching or book you’re reading. Maybe your smartphone catches fire in your pants.

    While that last one may seem like a joke, it turns out it’s not. In fact, exploding phone stories are not so uncommon these days. Back in November there was the Australian couple whose iPhone began to smoke and glow on a flight to Sydney (shoddy repair work appeared to be the cause). Then there was the Galaxy S III in Ireland that caught fire and dripped molten plastic all over the inside of its owner’s car.

    Now it seems to have happened again, and this time it was caught on video. According to the Finnish news site Kauppalehti (Google Translation), 17-year-old Henri Helmisen and his father were getting out of their car in a parking lot when Henri’s phone began to emit a massive cloud of smoke. He quickly dropped the phone and backed away. As it finished smoking, his father walked over and picked it up to inspect it. The incident was recorded by CCTV cameras in the area where they were parked:

    Kauppalehti also got a picture of Henri’s iPhone after the incident. The phone is a bit of a mess, to put it mildly:

    iPhone Catches Fire. Again.

    The phone was about three months old when this happened, and according to Helmisen it was working just fine right up until it started spewing thick smoke out of his pocket.

  • iPad Mini, Refreshed iPad Coming In October?

    What are the odds that Apple would release another new iPad, the much-rumored iPad Mini, and the new iPhone all in the same month? Pretty good, according to Pacific Crest analyst Andy Hargreaves. In a recent note to investors, Hargreaves predicted that Apple will launch a 7.85-inch iPad Mini and a thinner, lighter update to the new iPad, and kill the $399 iPad 2 at the same time.

    The when the new iPad was introduced in March, the iPad 2 got a significant drop in price to $399. While the cheaper iPad has proven extremely popular, there is speculation that its popularity may come at the expense of the new iPad. If so, then killing off the cheaper iPad 2 makes a great deal of sense for Apple financially.

    The other parts of Hargreaves’s predictions, though, are a bit tougher to swallow. Specifically, the part about the new iPad getting a refresh is unlikely in the extreme. Apple has held very closely to a 12-month product cycle for iOS devices, and that cycle has worked extremely well for them. Apple isn’t likely to launch in October a better version of the tablet they launched in March. That’s not a money making strategy, it’s a piss-off-the-customers strategy. Any rumor about Apple re-launching a product before it’s 12-month cycle is over goes straight into the “I’ll eat my hat” file.

    As for the iPad Mini, most of the rumors we’ve heard so far do put it in October – assuming it ever launches at all. The only problem with that is the new iPhone. If the iPhone were still on its June/July schedule (which means it would’ve been launched at WWDC three weeks ago), then an October launch for the iPad Mini would make perfect sense – it’s far enough away from the iPhone that many of the people who want both can get both, and it’s excellently positioned for the holiday shopping season.

    The problem, though, is that the iPhone is now on an autumn release schedule, thanks to the delay of last year’s iPhone 4S (though Apple hasn’t officially confirmed this, they did announce a fall release of iOS 6, which will certainly be launching alongside the new iPhone). At Hargreaves’s $299 price point – which fits well with the rumors we’ve heard so far – the iPad Mini and the new iPhone will be direct competitors. Many people will want both, and for most it will be an either-or purchase decision, not a both-and. In other words, an iPad Mini and the new iPhone would cannibalize each others’ sales if they launch at the same time. A lot of people who would get the new iPhone will decide to hold off for another year and get the iPad Mini instead, while those who need a new iPhone will forego the iPad Mini.

    While rumors about the iPad Mini seem particularly strong lately, it’s important to remember that they’re just that: rumors. Rumors of a smaller iPad have been around since the launch of the original iPad. While it’s probably true that Apple has the iPad Mini in their labs, it’s by no means certain that they’ll ever release it. And if they do release it, it doesn’t make much sense that they’ll do so in such a way as to interfere with their flagship product.

    You can read Hargreaves’s note in PDF form here.

  • Apple Wants To Make Autocorrect Less Comical

    Most iPhone users have a bit of a love-hate relationship with autocorrect. Designed to make typing on Apple’s touchscreen keyboard easier by fixing your mistakes for you, autocorrect often has exactly the opposite problem. Misspell a simple word in just the right way and autocorrect may replace it with way out of left field.

    Case in point: the lead image, which is a screen capture of a conversation I had with my wife a couple years ago. To this day I have no idea what misspelling of “bedtimes” led autocorrect to turn it into “beatings.” To be fair, most of autocorrect’s screwups are a little less alarming. But some are even more perplexing – for example, I also can’t figure out why when I type “forthe” (accidentally omitting the space) autocorrect assume’s I must be trying to type “Goethe” instead of “for the.” Or why half the time it turns “so” into “do.” At any rate, autocorrect has been the source of many a laugh, the cause many a misunderstanding, and the but of many a joke. There are even whole websites devoted to it, the most popular of which being Damnyouautocorrect.com.

    Apple, it seems, is not unaware of autocorrect’s failings, and has just filed a patent application for technology that would improve autocorrect’s ability to identify what you’re trying to say. The patent application, published yesterday (but filed in December of 2010) covers “[t]echniques to automatically correct or complete text” using “[a] string and keyboard timing information associated with entry of the string” to correctly determine the user’s intent. This technology would also detect the user’s average typing speed and incorporate that data.

    In other words, with this technology your iPhone would note the exact time of each keystroke on its keyboard and, taking into account your typing speed, make determinations about whether to autocorrect or autocomplete, and about what suggestions to offer when autocorrecting. For example, in my “Goethe” example above, the iPhone would detect my typing speed and recognize the fact that the pause between the r and the t is longer than the average pause between letters in the same word, and would figure out that I meant to put a space there and simply missed the spacebar. Then, presumably, it would realize that I meant to type “for the” instead of assuming I was actually talking about an 18th/19th-century German poet and playwright.

    Of course, this is a patent application, so there isn’t the slightest indication of when we might expect to see this sort of technology implemented. Nevertheless, the fact that Apple’s working on this is quite encouraging, especially for the more fat-thumbed among us.

  • How The iPhone Changed The Smartphone Industry

    How The iPhone Changed The Smartphone Industry

    Five years ago today, Apple’s first iPhone hit stores. Many in the tech world thought that it would be a flop. For one thing, it was ridiculously expensive. For another, it was something no one had ever really heard of before: a smartphone targeted primarily at consumers, rather than business people. Everybody knew that the smartphone market was a business market, especially Research In Motion, makers of the iconic BlackBerry.

    Five years later, RIM is in its death throes and Apple’s fifth-generation iPhone, the iPhone 4S, is the most popular single gadget on the planet. In fact, in five years the iPhone has sold 250 million iPhone and raked in $150 billion in revenues. While Google’s Android platform has emerged as a strong competitor – and even taken a larger chunk of the market – the iPhone remains the single most popular smartphone in the world.

    Recent data released by comScore shows how much the iPhone has grown in its five year lifespan. The data shows, among other things, that with the iPhone Apple effectively created the consumer smartphone market in 2007 (just as they created the tablet market in 2010 with the iPad). On the original iPhone’s launch day in 2007, just a hair over 9 million people owned smartphones – most made by BlackBerry or Palm. Five year’s later over twelve times that number – 110 million people – own smartphones. In fact, according to comScore, by the time we’re ringing in the new year six months from now, a majority of American cell phone owners will be smartphone owners (thanks, no doubt, to a big boost from the new iPhone, set to launch in the fall).

    Five Years Of The iPhone

    One interesting aspect of the iPhone is its tendency to evoke in customers a desire to buy the latest version every year, rather than wait until their current phone conks out. In fact, according to comScore’s data, almost three quarters of current iPhone users are using one of the two most recent versions of the device – the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S:

    Five Years Of The iPhone

    The iPhone’s demographic has changed somewhat over the last five years, as well. As with most gadgets, the first iPhones were bought by young-ish middle class men with higher than average disposable income. In 2007 61% of iPhone owners were men, 55% were between 25 and 45, and 48% made over $100,000 per year. In every respect but income, those curves have evened out considerably. Now 47% of iPhone owners are women, and 54% are outside the 25-45 age range. The only place where the demographics have remained the same is income – while more lower-middle class people are buying iPhones now, 42% are still in the $100,000+ income range

    Five Years Of The iPhone

    The iPhone and other smartphones – i.e., those running on the Android platform – are continuing to grow rapidly. In fact, in the last year or so they have even begun to eat into the low-end feature phone market, creating significant problems for companies like Nokia and Motorola, both companies that made their names selling quality, affordable feature phones. While the smartphone may never hit 100% market saturation, it will certainly continue to draw closer to it over the next few years. All thanks to a device that Bloomberg said in 2007 would “sell a few to [Apple’s] fans,” but would never manage to “make a long-term mark on the industry.”

  • Chrome For iOS: Hands-On With Google’s New Browser

    Chrome For iOS: Hands-On With Google’s New Browser

    Yesterday Google announced the much-anticipated iOS version of their popular Chrome browser. In just hours the universal app had rocketed to the top of the Top Free Apps list in the App Store and a jailbreak tweak had shown up in Cydia allowing users to make Chrome the default browser (something Apple prohibits).

    So, maybe you’re wondering what all the fuss is about? If so, then you’re in luck, because I’m about to show you exactly what all the fuss is about. The short version is this: all the features that make the desktop version of Chrome so great have made the jump to Chrome for iOS. What’s more, they’re bundled up in a really slick and easy-to-use interface.

    When you first open up Chrome for iOS, you’re prompted to enter your Google password. This signs you into all your Google services – Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, etc. – on the browser. This also enables browser sync, giving you access to any tabs you have open in Chrome on any other device – desktop, iPad, Android device, whatever. After that you’re given a quick demo of how Chrome works. Once that’s done (or you’ve skipped it, which is an option), you’re prompted to put in your first URL and/or perform your first search:

    Google Chrome for iPhone

    Once you’ve got a few tabs open, the issue becomes switching between them. Fortunately, this is pretty easy. What’s more, the interface is actually kind of fun. There are two ways to switch between tabs. If you’ve only got a few tabs open and you know how far apart they are, you can just swipe back and forth (see the image on the left, below). You have to start swiping all the way at the edge of the screen (right or left), otherwise Chrome will think you’re trying to interact with a tab’s contents.

    The second way is to tap the little tabs box in the upper right corner of your screen (see the image on the right, below). Here you’ll see all your open tabs laid out like a deck of cards. All you have to do is flip through them until you find the one you’re looking for. You can also close tabs from this screen. Again, you have two options. The more mundane way is to tap the little X in the corner of the card. The other way is to simply swipe the tab to the right or left. It will be thrown off screen, closing it. The results are the same either way, of course, but swiping it is a little more fun.

    Google Chrome for iPhone

    As noted above, Chrome for iOS includes browser sync. Any tabs you have open on any other device running Chrome are automatically made available to you here. To access them, just tap the folder in the lower right corner of a blank new tab page:

    Google Chrome for iPhone

    As you can see, you can also access your bookmarks and recently closed pages from the same toolbar at the bottom of the screen. Your mobile bookmarks are kept in a separate folder from your desktop bookmarks.

    So much, then, for Chrome on the iPhone. What about on the iPad? Well, Chrome for iPad is a lot more like what you’re used to in Chrome for desktop. The iPad’s screen real estate is much more like what you’d find on a desktop or laptop computer, which means that Google didn’t have to worry about being quite so economical with their space. Your tabs are back at the top of the screen. If you get a bunch of them open at once, they’ll eventually spill off the side of the screen. You can swipe back and forth across the tab bar to get to the ones you can’t see.

    The new tab page looks a lot like what you see on the desktop version. It includes a list of your recently closed pages, as well as providing access to your bookmarks and the tabs you have open on other devices. Unlike the desktop version, there’s no access to the Chrome Web Store (yet?).

    Google Chrome for iPad

    To create a new tab, all you have to do is tap the menu button next to the omnibox. Doing so gives you a drop-down list of options, including accessing your bookmarks, creating a new tab, creating a new incognito tab (more on that in a minute), going to the app’s settings, and more.

    Google Chrome for iPad

    Switching between tabs works a little differently on the iPad than on the iPhone. For starters, the easiest way to do it is to simply tap the tab you want to go to in the tabs bar at the top of your screen, just like you would on the desktop version. If, however, that mundane approach doesn’t tickle your fancy, you can also swipe between tabs. With the iPad, though, nothing really moves. When you start swiping (again, all the way from the edge of the screen), the contents of all the tabs are grayed out and individual tabs are highlighted. Simply keep dragging your finger until the tab you want to see is highlighted, then stop.

    The omnibox works pretty much exactly the way you’re used to from the desktop version: you just start typing and it brings up a mix of URLs and search results it thinks you might be typing.

    Google Chrome for iPad

    Chrome for iOS also, of course, brings the notorious Incognito Mode to your iOS device. You can create a new incognito tab from the menu mentioned above. Chrome for iOS doesn’t mix your incognito tabs and your regular tabs. Instead it groups them together, allowing you to switch between the two by tapping the toggle in the upper right corner of the screen.

    Google Chrome for iPad

    So, then, that’s Chrome for iOS. If you’re a Chrome user on your desktop, you definitely ought to pick this up. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t allow it to be set as the default browser. Fortunately, as previously mentioned, the Cydia tweak BrowserChooser lets you change iOS’s default browser.

    Chrome is a universal iOS app, which means that the same app will work on your iPad or your iPhone. It’s available now as a free download from the iOS App Store.

  • Chrome For iOS Tops The App Store Charts

    Chrome For iOS Tops The App Store Charts

    Well, that didn’t take long at all. Mere hours after hitting the App Store, Google’s brand new Chrome browser for iOS has shot to the top of the charts. The app is currently sitting in the #1 spot on the list of top 25 free iOS apps, and it doesn’t look like it will be going anywhere any time soon.

    Google announced Chrome for iOS yesterday during the second keynote of the Google I/O 2012 conference. Fans of Google’s popular desktop browser have been clamoring for a mobile version for quite some time. Android users got their wish earlier this year with a beta version of Chrome for Android. The iOS version hit the App Store a few hours after the keynote. The Android version in Google Play left beta around the same time.

    Google Chrome is a universal app, and it’s currently available in the iOS App Store for free. As of now it has 3698 ratings in the App Store, with a score of 4.5 out of 5 stars.

  • Severe Weather Alerts To Be Sent Via Text Soon

    Severe Weather Alerts To Be Sent Via Text Soon

    A little over a week ago we brought you news that the iOS 6 beta included the option to turn certain kinds of government issued alerts on and off. There were two basic kinds of alerts that you could receive: AMBER Alerts, and more generalized emergency alerts (which presumably include things like severe weather). Of course, not all phones – not even all smartphones – have this kind of option. In fact, most don’t. While there are weather apps for most smartphones that will perform a similar function, they don’t always work as advertised.

    With that in mind, the National Weather Service has struck a deal with all four major carriers to begin bringing severe weather alerts to smartphones using SMS messages. According to Yahoo!News, the alerts will be less than 90 characters long, and will be completely free. All customers on each of the carriers will be signed up automatically, though you have the option to opt out if you want (why would you want to?).

    Each of the four largest carriers in the country – AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon – are participating in the program. Three of the four currently offer the service everywhere, while AT&T only has it in Washington, D.C., Portland, Oregon, and New York City. Most smartphones on the carriers’ networks will be able to receive the alerts, though iPhone users will have to wait until the fall – presumably for the release of iOS 6, or possibly the new iPhone.

    Considering how many fewer people listen to live radio or watch live, local TV these days, it’s getting harder and harder for the NWS and other agencies to disseminate emergency information quickly. Programs like this will allow people to get emergency information over channels that were previously unavailable.

  • Jailbreak Tweak Lets You Make Chrome Your Default iOS Browser

    Yesterday we told you that Google had announced Google Chrome for iOS during their second Google I/O 2012 keynote. Many iPhone users – myself included – have been wanting an iOS version of Chrome since Google unveiled the Android version earlier this year. Fortunately, it is exactly as awesome as we had hoped it would be. Unfortunately, it suffers from the same problem that plagues every other third party browser in the App Store: Apple doesn’t allow iOS’s default browser to be changed. So as awesome as any browser is, you’re stuck still using Safari for a lot of things: links in emails, apps, text messages, and such will all still open in Safari.

    Unless you jailbreak your phone, that is. Scarcely had the dust settled from Google’s launch of Chrome for iOS when a new jailbreak tweak hit the Cydia store. BrowserChooser was created by Ryan Petrich, and has one simple purpose: to change your iPhone or iPad’s default browser. And, like many single-purpose apps, it does it very well. Using the tweak is ridiculously easy: once you install it, you simply go into the Settings app and find BrowserChooser, which will be on the first page along with your other jailbreak app and tweak settings. When you tap it, you’re taken to a list of all the supported browsers you have on your iOS device. I only have Chrome and Safari, but the tweak also supports Opera Mini, iCab Mobile, Dolphine Browser, and Atomic Browser (sorry, Yahoo Axis). All you have to do is tap “Google Chrome” on the list, and you’re done.

    BrowserChooser Google Chrome iOS

    There is one notable thing that BrowserChooser doesn’t do: it doesn’t change “Open In Safari” menu buttons. So if, say, you’re browsing reddit in Alien Blue and want to open a link in Chrome, you still have to tap “Open in Safari.” You’re just taken to Google Chrome instead.

    The only catch is that BrowserChooser isn’t in any of the default Cydia repositories. You have to add Petrich’s repository manually. That’s pretty simple, though. In Cydia, tap the “Manage” tab at the bottom of your screen, the “Sources” button. From there tap “Edit” in the top right corner, then “Add” in the top right. Then just put in the address for Petrich’s repo – rpetri.ch/repo – and you’re done. Cydia will refresh, then you search for BrowserChooser, and install it (it’s free, by the way).

    Of course, BrowserChooser isn’t the only jailbreak tweak that lets you change your default browser. Browser Changer has been around for quite some time, and supports a whole lot more browsers. Chrome, however, is not one of them, though that will probably change in the not-so-distant future. So if you’ve already got Browser Changer and love it, then you might as well stick with it for however long it takes for the developer to get Chrome support added. If, on the other hand, you want Chrome as your default browser now, then check out BrowserChooser.

  • Jelly Bean Voice Search Vs. Siri: A Video Throwdown

    Earlier this month during their WWDC 2012 keynote, Apple unveiled iOS 6. With it came some significant improvements for Siri, including some general (and much needed) performance improvements and the ability to request sports scores, movie statistics, and more.

    Not to be outdone, on Wednesday Google announced Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The newest version of Google’s mobile operating system is getting its own spate of awesome updates, including offline voice typing and much more. One of those new features in Jelly Bean is Google’s own answer to Siri: Google Voice Search. Much like Siri, Google Voice Search lets you speak a variety of requests and commands using natural language.

    Now, full disclosure, I’m a bit of an Apple fanboy. I love my iPhone 4S. And my iPad, and my MacBook. And the ginormous iMac I get to use every day at work. I even love Siri, for all her flaws. That said, even I thought Jelly Bean and Voice Search looked pretty darn cool during the keynote. But the big question is, how does it compare? How does Jelly Bean compare to iOS 6? How does Voice Search do against Siri? Samsung’s S Voice did okay, but Siri generally performed better. Surely Voice Search can’t be that much better than S Voice, so at best it will be a tie, right?

    Well, the good folks over at TechnoBuffalo Got their hands on an iPhone 4S running iOS 6 beta 2 and a Galaxy Nexus running the developer preview of Jelly Bean and did what any self-respecting nerd would do: they put them in their own little Thunderdome to see which voice activated personal assistant is better. Even better, they filmed it:

    So yeah, there you go. Apple fanboy that I am, I have to admit that Siri, bless her heart, pretty much got smoked. Siri did all the same things, and for the most part it did them well, but it also did them noticeably slower. When it came time to search the web Siri asked first, taking a lot of extra time, while Voice Search realized that the only place to get pictures of pygmy marmosets was the internet, and so launched a web search automatically. What’s more, it did it without leaving the voice interface and switching to a browser.

    The bottom line is that while Samsung’s S Voice looks and feels a lot like a cheap Siri knock-off, Voice Search is a genuine competitor – and in this test, at least, performed a lot better. Much as I hate to say it, it’s your move, Apple.

  • Google Offers Offline Editing and Drive for iOS

    Back in April Google introduced Drive, a safe place for us to save, share, and create all kinds of thing. Today, at the Google I/O conference they introduced a couple things we’ve all been waiting for.

    The first thing is Drive for iOS. Now there’s a Drive app. for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. So Apple fans can finally take advantage of the service.

    The next great thing is offline editing of Google docs. That’s right, you can work on stuff offline. When you finally get reconnected later, everything will automatically update and be saved. Apparently they are also working on getting the offline editing available for spreadsheets and presentations at some point in the future future.

    The catch with the offline editing is you need the most recent version of Chrome, so you’ll need to check that out too. In case you didn’t know, the drive app for Android has already been available for a couple weeks. It’s with getting.

    Here’s what Google said on their Doc’s Blog:

    With the Drive app, you can open PDFs, photos, videos, documents and anything else stored in your Drive while you’re on the go. You can also search all your files, add collaborators to documents, and make files available offline to view them even without an internet connection. For blind and low-vision users, the app also works great in VoiceOver mode. Learn more about what you can do with the app in our Help Center.

    Get Drive in the App Store for your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 5.0+ and visit the Play Store to get the latest on your Android phone or tablet.

    So, there’s a couple of new features you can try out, and it’s great news if you’re an Apple fan, because you can finally take advantage of Drive. They didn’t mention when offline editing would be available for some of Google’s other products, but hopefully it will be arriving in the coming months.

  • Google I/O: Google Announces Chrome For iPhone, iPad

    Google has just announced that they are bringing their Google Chrome browser to Apple’s iOS devices. The app will be available for iPhone and iPad, and is expected to hit the App Store later today.

    Chrome for iOS brings many of the most popular features for Chrome’s desktop and Android versions to Apple’s iOS platform. Chrome includes the omnibox, which allows you to conduct web searches or enter URLs in the same box.

    While Chrome for iPad makes excellent use of the tablet’s screen real estate, the iPhone has to be a bit more conservative. Chrome for iPhone’s tabbed browsing experience mimics the pages format of Safari for iPhone. With Chrome, though, switching between tabs is a bit simpler. All you have to do is swipe from side to side to switch from one tab to the next.

    Chrome for iOS also includes incognito mode. A button in Chrome for iOS’s menu bar allows you to toggle back and forth between Incognito Mode and normal browsing.

    Perhaps most importantly, Chrome for iOS syncs across all your devices. That includes both your tabs and your login credentials. That means that you can start reading a news article or looking a restaurant’s menu on your computer – be it a Mac, PC, Chromebook, Android device, or all of the above – and pick it back up on your iPhone or iPad. You can select any open tab on any device running Chrome.

    Chrome for iOS, along with Google Drive for iOS, should be available in the iOS App Store later today. It’s likely to be a universal app, and should be free to download

  • iPhone 5 Rumor: New iPhone Facing Battery Problems?

    Apple may be encountering supply issues with the battery for the new iPhone, according to recent reports. The new iPhone is expected to launch this fall with a larger display, metal rear panel, and several internal upgrades, including 4G LTE connectivity.

    Now it looks like there may be problems with the device’s battery. Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White recently discovered an article in the Chinese news media. According to AppleInsider, he summarized the contents of the story in a note to investors. According to the report, only about 30% of the batteries that are rolling off of assembly lines are meeting Apple’s standards for the new iPhone’s battery. The manufacturer is reportedly working to get the issue sorted out quickly enough to keep iPhone’s production schedule on track.

    Speaking of production schedules, White also says that he expects the iPhone to launch in September. Most rumors have put the release in October, a full year after the launch of the iPhone 4S. On the other hand, White has a pretty good track record, so he may be right about a September launch after all. He emphasized that he didn’t expect the battery issue to impact the iPhone’s launch schedule.

  • iQuick Tweet Lets You Tweet From Notification Center

    When Apple took the lid off of iOS 6 at WWDC 2012 two weeks ago, they showed off several new and exciting features. When iOS 6 launches in the fall it will include a brand new Maps app with turn-by-turn navigation, major improvements to Siri, Facebook integration, and more. One of these new features is a pair of buttons in Notification Center that allow you to quickly post to Twitter or Facebook.

    For the moment, though, those of us without access to the iOS 6 beta release are forced to admire these new goodies from afar. While some of them are available as Jailbreak tweaks, users who aren’t willing to jailbreak their phones are still out of luck. Fortunately, one app developer found a nice workaround that lets you get your hands on one of iOS 6’s new features right now.

    Launched shortly after iOS 5 brought Twitter integration to the iPhone, iQuick Tweet is a very simple Twitter app that does exactly what the name says (and not much else): it lets you tweet quickly and easily. And now it lets you tweet from the Notification Center, too. No jailbreak required.

    How is this wonder accomplished, you ask? Simple. Whenever you close iQuick Tweet, it generates a notification. When you tap that notification in the Notification Center, it takes you to the app. Since tweeting is pretty much all the app does, the notification becomes a de facto “Tap to Tweet” button:

    iQuick Tweet Notification

    Now, the astute observer will notice that my Notification Center doesn’t quite look like yours. That’s because my phone is jailbroken (the tweaks you’re seeing are NCSettings and Zeppelin, which lets you customize your carrier logo). But again, iQuick Tweet doesn’t require you to jailbreak your phone. It’s a perfectly legitimate App Store app. It also works on an iPad (which isn’t jailbroken):

    iQuick Tweet Notification

    iQuick Tweet is a universal iOS app. It’s available in the iOS App Store for $0.99.

  • Facebook Planning To Fix Painfully Slow iPhone App

    It has been said that Twitter and the iPhone are kind of like peanut butter and chocolate: two awesome things that weren’t made to go together, but compliment each other so perfectly that you’d almost think they had been. A good Twitter client – and there are lots out there – amplifies this effect. The same should be true of Facebook. Unfortunately, though, Facebook’s iPhone app has often failed to be as awesome as it should be, sometimes making the Facebook experience on the iPhone slow and frustrating. At times, Facebook users have been driven back to the mobile web version of Facebook, simply because it works better.

    If you’ve used the Facebook app, you know what a hassle it can be sometimes. Random connection errors, painful slowness, failure to show likes or comments or new posts quickly. They all add up to a situation where the worst enemy of Facebook’s success on the iPhone is Facebook’s own app.

    Fortunately, that may be about to change. According to a blog post by the New York Times’s Nick Bilton, Facebook is making plans to launch a new “blazing fast” iOS app. Citing “two Facebook engineers,” the Times claims that the current Objective-C/HTML5 hybrid app has been rewritten entirely in Objective-C (the programming language used to code iOS apps). Bilton claims to have gotten his hands on the new iPhone app, and reports that although it looks exactly the same, it’s gotten a major boost in speed thanks to the rewrite.

    It’s not clear when the new app will hit the App Store. Bilton’s sources said it would be rolling out “this summer.” Considering how much time I spend staring at that “Loading” spinner, here’s hoping it’s sooner rather than later.