AT&T releases free app to report network problems

AT&T has released an iPhone app called Mark the Spot to easily report problems with their network.

Wireless Customer Satisfaction Survey Indicates AT&T As Worst Carrier

New AT&T Ad Calls Itself The Nation’s Fastest 3G Network

5 gifts for the iPhone owner

Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, iPhone, iPod touch

The iPhone owner on your list loves her iPhone. Really loves it. Become an enabler and give her the gifts she really wants. Here are five great gifts for the iPhone owner.

WallDock - $25

iPhones need frequent charging and it isn't always convenient to connect them to your Mac. If Apple's own wall unit doesn't float your boat, check out the WallDock from Digital Lifestyle Outfitters. It plugs into any US wall outlet for cable-free charging. The top is cushioned so it won't scratch your precious and it supports a slew of devices, from the iPod classic to the iPhone 3GS. If you're traveling this season, just pop one in your bag and go.

Continue reading 5 gifts for the iPhone owner

5 gifts for the iPhone owner originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

5 gifts for the iPhone owner originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New York Times Profiles Apple’s App Store

The New York Times yesterday published a lengthy feature article on Apple's iPhone and the App Store, calling them a "game changer" in the field of telephony and mobile applications. While the article provides little in the way of new information, t...

Ven1 vid1 ja1lbreak1: Hands on with blackra1n

Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone, Jailbreak/pwnage

When it came time recently to jailbreak an iPod touch, I decided to take a look at George Hotz's BlackRa1n tethered solution. Unlike the Pwnage approach that creates a custom ipsw (iPhone software) bundle that you install via iTunes, the tethered approach communicates directly with your iPod or iPhone via the USB connector cable you use for normal syncing. That makes the tethered solution a very fast and easy-to-use approach, especially for units shipped with the 3.1.2 software installed.

Download the BlackRa1n tool for both Windows and Mac from the GeoHot site. Complete instructions are available at his Weblog. If you own more than one iPhone unit, make sure you unplug all but one from the system before you start the jailbreak. Launch BlackRa1n and click the "make it ra1n" button. Then be patient and wait as the software does its job, including replacing your recovery logo (normally a picture of the iTunes logo and the connector cable) with a vanity image of the software's author.

Be aware that the blackra1n jailbreak may present issues during reboot, forcing you into recovery mode and requiring BlackRa1n to launch properly. Hotz writes, "If your ipt2/3GS/ipt3 is rebooting into recovery after running blackra1n, this isn't a bug. It's a feature. You need to run blackra1n every time to boot it. This 'feature', called tethered jailbreak, is enabled by upgrades Apple made to the bootrom and the fact ipt3 uses nand flash." I did not experience this behavior on my iPod touch 2nd generation unit. It reboots without problem, and, no, it had not been jailbroken before.

Once the jailbreak has finished and your iPhone has rebooted, you can run the on-device version of the BlackRa1n software to install Cydia, the Rock store, and (for iPhones) the sn0w unlock that allows phones to be used with other carriers.

I found the whole process extremely easy to perform and would recommend it to anyone who had difficulties using Pwnage. The trade off, of course, is an easier install versus possible long-term reboot issues. It seems that my touch ducked the bullet on that one but that's only one experience among many.

Although BlackRa1n is free software, the author asks for donations to support this effort, so he can continue providing tools in the future. A donate link appears on his home page.

Ven1 vid1 ja1lbreak1: Hands on with blackra1n originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Ven1 vid1 ja1lbreak1: Hands on with blackra1n originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T’s new iPhone app conveys your disappointment in real time

AT&T's new iPhone app conveys your disappointment in real time originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 10:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Found Footage: How Sonoa’s proxy technology speeds up app loading

Filed under: Multimedia, Developer, Found Footage, iPhone, iPod touch

Before there were a ton of iPhone apps, there were iPhone web apps. You probably remember pointing your Safari browser to a specific URL to do something like post a tweet, check flight status or order something from an online store. Now that our iPhones can run a variety of native apps, web apps seem to be fading away (exceptions noted), but there is still a large need for information that can be pulled or pushed to those native apps.

Take, for example, the free TV Guide Mobile iPhone app [iTunes link]. In order to keep your iPhone populated with the latest info on what shows are going to be on which channels in your local area, the app needs to pull that data from a server. Previously, the data took a while to load, which was not only hard on the patience of users, but also on the iPhone's battery life. Enter Sonoa, a company that has created what they call the Mobile App Acceleration service.

According to Sonoa, mobile apps enabled with their on-demand proxy and caching technology load data about ten times faster, so an app that formerly took 15 seconds to load will now load in less than two seconds. As noted in a press release from the company,

"Sonoa's Mobile App Acceleration service provides intelligent caching, compression, pagination, and other network services optimizations to dramatically accelerate performance, reduce battery drain and improve consumer satisfaction for API and data intensive mobile apps. Sonoa leverages Amazon EC2 to enable mobile application operators to quickly and efficiently scale their apps to millions of consumers."

The service is available to developers and content providers for US$3,000 to $5,000 monthly. For companies or publishers like Roundbox, creators of the TV Guide Mobile app, Sonoa is a cost-effective way to cache and optimize the large quantities of data required by the app, and thus accelerate the app's overall load time for end users.

TUAW wants to know -- what's the maximum amount of time you're willing to wait for an app to load? Are there any apps that you've deleted from your iPhone because of long wait times? Leave your comments below.

Found Footage: How Sonoa's proxy technology speeds up app loading originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Found Footage: How Sonoa's proxy technology speeds up app loading originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Review: Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor had earned lots of acclaim and deservedly so. The developers at Tiger Style Games have created a purely fun iPhone game perfectly suited for the touch interface.

Apple’s Lala Acquisition was all About Streaming, or Talent, or Pay Model…

Apple snapped up online music streaming start-up Lala, and now attention has turned from the what to the why, with three areas of focus: the streaming itself, the talent behind it, and/or the bundled pay model that financed it. For those catching up, Lala scans a user’s hard drive for music, then allows them to stream that music over the internet, from anywhere, desktop or mobile. In other words, cloud-based iTunes.

Apple PR’s Steve Dowling sheds little light himself:

Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plans.

The traditional “source familiar with the matter” told Reuters:

Apple recognizes that the model is going to evolve into a streaming one and this could probably propel iTunes to the next level.”

While the New York Times is hearing, from “one person with knowledge of the deal”:

This person said Apple would primarily be buying Lala’s engineers, including its energetic co-founder Bill Nguyen, and their experience with cloud-based music services.

Some have also mentioned Lala’s payment system, which might handle bundled transactions more cheaply for Apple than iTunes’ current system. Still, regardless of the reasons, like the PA Semi and PlaceBase purchases, it will be interesting to see where Apple goes with Lala. Any guesses?

[via MacRumors]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple’s Lala Acquisition was all About Streaming, or Talent, or Pay Model…

Dungeon Hunter RPG for iPhone

In Gameloft’s Dungeon Hunter [$4.99 - iTunes link] for iPhone and iPod touch, you play a prince whose bride dies on your wedding night. In sorrow you decide to resurrect her. And as anyone who’s ever watched Buffy could tell you (or could have told the developers), this is a recipe for disaster.

Anyway, she becomes evil (duh!), kills you by way of thanks, and then proceeds to wreak havoc on the world. But here’s where it becomes an RPG — you, the prince, get a second chance to make things right.

The graphics in Dungeon Hunter are beautifully rendered. They are clean and crisp and allow you to fully immerse yourself in the fantasy environment. Load times, however, are extremely long. I have a 3G but if you have a 3GS it may not be that bothersome. Loading occurs not only when you begin the game but also each time you zone into a new area during the game.

Dungeon Hunter begins by asking you to choose between three different classes: warrior, rogue or mage. Though some people may enjoy the game enough to play it again using another type of character class, I doubt many would find the storyline compelling enough to go through the same stages again.

There are also five fairies which join you throughout the game. Each of these fairies gives you access to a different element of magic. The elements are: fire, air, water, earth and lightning. You can only choose one fairy to accompany you on your quest at a time.

Sorting through your various magic items can be a difficulty in RPG games. Dungeon Hunter has each magical item color coded so that you know how many magical properties it has. Items written in white have no magical properties while those in gold have 4.

Likewise, RPGs can be cumbersome and take a long time to learn character movements and spells. I found that the controls to the game were very intuitive and the manner of moving your character easy. The story is well developed and the quests are not overly difficult. If you are looking for a lot of difficult puzzles to figure out, you won’t find them here. However, if you want a fun, beautifully rendered RPG for your iPhone or iPod touch, give Dungeon Hunter a try and let us know what you think!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Dungeon Hunter RPG for iPhone

New York Times Gives Sweet Front-Page Love to iPhone App Store

The New York Times had a huge, gushing, front-page-of-the-business-section story this weekend about the iPhone App Store titled Apple’s Game Changer, Downloading Now.

Now the App Store, with over 100,000 apps and 2 billion downloads is a runaway success, no doubt about it, but given the continued problems with developer relations and capricious approval processes, seeing Apple Senior VP of Marketing Phil Schiller, and VP of iTunes Eddy Cue, attack public relations via the New York Times, and not help restore faith the developers via a come-to-jesus-phone open and honest airing of grievances and non-opaque plans for improvement just comes off as… awkward (and perhaps a tad insulting). And the New York Times — really? If you don’t have the guts to go for the story and ask the tough questions of Apple, who’s left?

Anyway, here’s what we did get from the Apple brass:

There’s a 24″ (20 LED screen) display in the lobby of 1 Infinite Loop displaying 20,000 top-selling app icons, and each time one is bought, its icon jiggles and ripples the adjacent icons. Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

First up, Schiller says the review process is a necessary evil to ensure customers trust that apps won’t crash their iPhones, steal their data, or contain illegal content, and that most apps just sail through the process. They received 10,000 apps a week.

“I absolutely think this is the future of great software development and distribution. The idea that anyone, all the way from an individual to a large company, can create software that is innovative and be carried around in a customer’s pocket is just exploding. It’s a breakthrough, and that is the future, and every software developer sees it.”

“I think, by and large, we do a very good job there. Sometimes we make a judgment call both ways, that people give us feedback on, either rejecting something that perhaps on second consideration shouldn’t be, or accepting something that on second consideration shouldn’t be.”

“We care deeply about the feedback, both good and bad,” he says. “While there are some complaints, they are just a small fraction of what happens in the process.”

“Our goal is very simple: We want to have the best platform for applications that there has ever been on any product. We know we’re not perfect, but we know we’re better than anything else that has been and we want to keep improving it.”

Apple is typically considered to be a perfectionist when it comes to aesthetic and experience, however, so a “good enough” argument is hard to process — that small fraction should be keeping Steve Jobs up at night.

The Times does mention the controversies and offers some developer comments about apps almost a year in limbo, and large gaming companies being treated the same as hobbyists. They also cover the jailbreak alternative. When it comes to Cue, however, we get:

“A rocket ship is even too small of an analogy. We’ve been able to leverage a lot of our iTunes technology for the App Store. But it’s completely different. We’re reviewing all of those apps. We really don’t have to review each and every song.”

Apple told the Times they’re “trying” (?) to increase the number of reviewers and streamline the process.

Check out the full article, which also features RIM/BlackBerry, Palm, Microsoft, and Google’s take on the App Store and apps in general. And let us know what you think!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

New York Times Gives Sweet Front-Page Love to iPhone App Store

Source Speaks to Apple’s Motivation Behind Lala Acquisition

In case you missed it, Apple acquired a streaming music service called Lala Media late last week. The acquisition has generated the obvious speculation about what Apple might do with a streaming music service. Apple's official response was, of c...

AT&T Releases “Mark the Spot” iPhone App for Network Quality Feedback

AT&T has released a new iPhone app called AT&T Mark the Spot [Free - iTunes link] intended to allow customers to send in real-time, location-specific feedback about dropped calls, coverage gaps, or other network problems, have occurred.

AT&T is committed to providing its customers with the best network experience possible.

This application will help contribute towards this goal and its utilization is greatly appreciated.

AT&T is often criticized for poor signal quality and network availability when it comes to the iPhone, is this a positive sign that they’re trying to make things right?

[Thanks Keith and Gregg for the tip!]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

AT&T Releases “Mark the Spot” iPhone App for Network Quality Feedback

Found Footage: The iPhone-controlled, solar-powered Arduino tank

Filed under: Hardware, Open Source, Found Footage, iPhone

Are you the type of person who likes to handcraft your Christmas gifts? This year, perhaps you can make someone's Christmas Day just a little bit brighter and happier when they unwrap their very own iPhone-controlled, solar-powered Arduino tank.

As you can view in the video above, the tank is pretty impressive in its current form; it could be used to strike terror into the hearts of unsuspecting senior citizens or small animals. It was built by Chris Rojas, a Colorado-based geek who used the iPhone TouchOSC app [US$4.99, iTunes Link], various parts from SparkFun including XBee modules and robot kits, and the Arduino open-source electronics prototyping platform to create this cool little tank. The tank can be charged by exposing a belly-mounted photovoltaic panel to the sun.

Maybe it's just me, but I'd love to see one of these modded out with a spinning saw blade, lasers, and maybe a paintball gun... What would be your accessory of choice for your iPhone-controlled tank?

[via Cult of Mac]

Found Footage: The iPhone-controlled, solar-powered Arduino tank originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Found Footage: The iPhone-controlled, solar-powered Arduino tank originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple to Skip Intel Arrandale? Demands Alternative Chip?

BrightSideofNews claims that Apple is refusing to accept Intel's upcoming mobile Arrandale chip which incorporates Intel's integrated graphics chipset:

According to sources close to the heart of the matter, Apple allegedly refused to ...

iPhone orchestra at the vanguard of smartphone music-making push

The relationship between cellphones and music has almost always been a quirky one, producing bouts of the surreal punctuated by an occasional flourish of the sublime. Latest to join the melodic fray are Georg Essl from the University of Michigan and his "mobile phone ensemble." Each of the participating students has designed a noise-making app for his or her iPhone, which is used in conjunction with the built-in accelerometer and touchscreen to make (hopefully beautiful) music. Though we may consider this a gimmick for now, Professor Essl is most enthusiastic about the future prospects of utilizing smartphones to make music with legitimate aspirations. The debut performance of this newfangled orchestra is on December 9, or you can check out a preview in the video after the break.

[Thanks, Ry]

Continue reading iPhone orchestra at the vanguard of smartphone music-making push

iPhone orchestra at the vanguard of smartphone music-making push originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 03:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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