New iPhone ad: Family Travel

Filed under: Odds and ends, iPhone

If you've been watching TV over the last few days (and who hasn't, with that USA / Canada hockey game and the tsunami coverage), you may have seen the latest in the series of iPhone ads.

The ad, titled "Family Travel," features a voice-over by a Mom who gushes that "It's unbelievable how much better family trips have gotten..." as she demonstrates using the Southwest Airlines app to check in on a flight from Denver to LA, finds a restaurant for the family (Heidi's Brooklyn Deli) in the C concourse at Denver International Airport with Gate Guru, makes sure that she has entertainment for her kids in the form of "Finding Nemo" loaded in the iPod app, and then turns off the living room lights at home with the Schlage Link app.

For those of you who are sticklers for advertising accuracy, note that Southwest flight 1403 is not an actual SWA flight between DEN and LAX and that the restaurant list for Concourse C at Denver International Airport is actually a mashup of restaurants located throughout Denver International Airport. All of the apps are free, although Schlage Link does require a monthly subscription and appropriate Z-Link hardware on the home front (similar to the Christmas tree ad from the holidays).

New iPhone ad: Family Travel originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

New iPhone ad: Family Travel originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Best of Smartphone Experts, 28 Feb 2010

Nexus One coming to Verizon on March 23rd? Sprint to get HTC Legend, AT&T to get HTC Desire? HTC Supersonic or Incredible shown off on video	CrackBerry Turns Three Years Old! Lots of Contests to Celebrate! CrackBerry Podcast 048: MWC Debrief and Lots of BlackBerry Talk Ultimate BlackBerry Twitter Client Roundup – The Conclusion.
Nokia and Symbian still have significant lead in smartphone market share Ovi Maps 3.04 beta update released Symbian^4 videos appear, is the UI good enough to compete?	Palm Updates Guidance and CEO Letter to Employees on poor sales webOS 1.4 Changelog Leaks, it arrives for some phones; we see webOS 1.4 screenshots before it’s released on Sprint and then Verizon Improved webOS Facebook App on the Way?
Apple Execs Speak: Jobs on what keeps him up at night, Cook on saying “no”, Schiller on sexy apps Should Apple TV Switch to the iPhone OS? Should the Mac? iPhone SDK 3.2 Shows iPad Camera (Again), Camera Flash and Zoom, Video Chat, Wallpaper Choices	First Windows Phone 7 Series prototype device unveiled Skype for Windows Mobile is discontinued WiFi Remote Access an amazing little app

Keep your eyes peeled on CrackBerry.com this week as they unleash a slew of contests for their third birthday – they’ll all be listed here!

Best of Smartphone Experts, 28 Feb 2010 is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

iPhone Gaming Startup ngmoco Acquires Freeverse

Grooveshark iPhone App For Online Music Streaming Released On Cydia; After It Was Rejected By Apple

Sunday Fun Photoshops: If iPad is a Big iPhone, What’s a Big iPad?

A little Photoshop fun with the idea that if the iPhone grew into the iPad, then the iPad is just waiting to grow into… Well, see above.

[BeGeek.fr via Gizmodo, thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Sunday Fun Photoshops: If iPad is a Big iPhone, What’s a Big iPad? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

TiPb Gear — Pogo Sketch for iPhone (Macworld 2010)

Live from Macworld 2010, Rene and Leanna talk with Peter Skinner of Ten One Designs about their Pogo Sketch stylus for the iPhone… and iPad!

Watch along after the break and let us know what you think! (Especially if you came from PalmOS or Windows Mobile!)

TiPb Gear — Pogo Sketch for iPhone (Macworld 2010) is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Review: Guerilla Bob for iPhone

When choosing from thousands of apps in the Apple App Store, Guerrilla Bob has one distinct advantage: it has an awesome name. Once downloaded, Guerrilla Bob doesn’t disappoint. From its great opening sequence to its intuitive gameplay, Chillingo has created a terrific shooter.

Apple iBooks Vs Kindle iPhone App

Winner Of iTunes Contest Thought Call From Steve Jobs Was A Prank

iPhone users come in all ages but probably live near a big city

Filed under: Surveys and Polls, iPhone, iPad

The end of this week has brought a little flurry of information about the differences between iPhone and Android users. First up, Admob has released the results of a survey that says the iPhone is twice as popular as comparable smartphones in both young and old demographics. Unfortunately, we can only guess as to why (it would be a little more interesting if either age showed a preference for one phone over another), but it seems the iPhone has yet another remarkable trait: appealing to users of all ages. No wonder Apple is jumping in on the iPad -- they really do have a pre-release audience.

But they can't sit on their laurels for too long -- according to a report at Myxer's Boombox (via Fortune), the Android OS is picking up the pace, especially in what city folk call the "flyover states." Android use of the program has actually surpassed iPhone users in Montana, the Dakotas, and Arizona and New Mexico, and the numbers are close in the Midwest, including Kansas and Missouri. That's interesting -- that could have something to do with the distribution of Apple retail stores, or maybe just more urban center dwellers are drawn to the iPhone. DC seems to be the exception, as Virginia and Maryland are much more Android, but otherwise, if you're in a state with a big population center, odds are that you own an iPhone. Fascinating.

iPhone users come in all ages but probably live near a big city originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iPhone users come in all ages but probably live near a big city originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Review: Ingenious for iPhone

Ingenious may be the perfect name for this puzzle game from developer United Soft Media Verlag, because you pretty much have to be a genius to master it.

Steve Jobs: Birthdays, Awards, Contest Calls, Shareholder Meetings, and iPhone 3.1.2

Apple CEO Steve Jobs turned 55 this week according to TUAW, so we’ll start off by wishing him a healthy, happy, peaceful, and prosperous birthday! What do you get the man who gave us the Apple II, Mac, Pixar, iPod, iTunes, Apple Retail, iPhone, and iPad? Well, a couple of awards aren’t a bad place to start…

MWC and Jim Henson Awards

While neither Apple, nor the iPhone were at Mobile World Congress, Macworld reports Steve Jobs still won their award for “Mobile Personality of the Year”. (Stephen Fry accepted on his behalf).

Macworld also tells us Jobs received a Jim Henson Company Award/Celebration Honor for reflecting “the core values and philosophy of the legendary Jim Henson and the company he founded.”

Calling all iTunes $10K Winners

While not winning awards, Steve Jobs has been personally calling the winner of his own contests — in this case the man who won the 10 billionth iTunes song download. Rolling Stone got the details:

Sulcer first thought was that he was being pranked. “He called me and said, ‘This is Steve Jobs from Apple.’ I said, ‘Yeah right, I have a son that loves to play tricks and he does that every now and then — calls me and imitates somebody.” After three or four times of asking “Come on now, who is this,” Sulcer realized that his caller ID read simply “Apple,” and only then did he believe that he was the winner of the contest and a $10,000 iTunes card.

Apple Annual Shareholder Meeting

Jobs also ran Apple’s annual general meeting, fielding questions in classic style according to Business Week. On why Apple needs a $40 billion war chest:

“We know if we need to acquire something — a piece of the puzzle to make something big and bold — we can write a check for it and not borrow a lot of money and put our whole company at risk. The cash in the bank gives us tremendous security and flexibility.”

In defense of Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, now resigned from the Apple board:

“Eric conducted himself as a board member appropriately and recused himself whenever discussing matters that might involve conflict.”

Macworld caps it off with a response on what keeps him up at night:

“Shareholder meetings,” Jobs quickly quipped, before giving the meeting a cold splash of reality.

“Apple requires stability in the world. People aren’t going to worry about which laptop to buy if they can’t afford dinner, can’t afford to send their kids to school, can’t afford textbooks. There are things much bigger than us that are out of our control. So we try to just do the best we can.”

iPhone 3.1.2

Amazingly, Steve Jobs managed to do all this, according to 9to5mac, while still rocking iPhone 3.1.2. That’s the older version of the iPhone OS updated a couple of weeks ago to 3.1.3. (We too were hoping he at least would be on iPhone 4.0 by now!) This was determined by looking at the email headers in a response he sent to an Apple customer concerned about developers let go on the Final Cut Pro Team:

No worries. FCP is alive and well.

Steve Jobs: Birthdays, Awards, Contest Calls, Shareholder Meetings, and iPhone 3.1.2 is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Phoenix Wright, Hexen II coming to the iPhone

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Apple, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

Good news for fans of good games: the terrific DS courtroom simulator (which, trust me, sounds much less fun than it actually is) Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney is coming to the iPhone, and Slide to Play has posted some hands-on video. The game takes the two DS screens and stacks them on top of each other rather than converting the game into a landscape version, so it's basically a straight port of the DS game. It'd be interesting to see a more iPhone-specific version of the game (maybe something that uses the camera or the accelerometer to show off evidence in the courtroom), but we'll take just the port, too -- if you haven't played any of the Phoenix Wright games but enjoy a good adventure yarn, you're in for a treat. The game should be out "soon."

Hexen II is on its way to the iPhone as well, and Touch Arcade has a few screens and video of that one. I was much more of a Quake fan, but Hexen, with its medieval setting and RPG elements placed in the same game engine, had its share of followers back in the day, too. Unfortunately, Vimov doesn't yet have the rights to Hexen II -- they're just working with an open-sourced version of the engine. To actually release the data on the App Store, they'll need to make a deal with Activision, so we'll have to wait and see if that can happen before you can start hacking and slashing through the world of the Serpent Riders again.

Phoenix Wright, Hexen II coming to the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Phoenix Wright, Hexen II coming to the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Apple Reinstates Wobble iPhone App After Suggestive Images Were Removed

Adobe CEO Blames Apple’s “Walled Garden” Policies For Flash Deadlock

TiPb Gear — Fastmac/UMEE iV Plus TV Remote for iPhone (Macworld 2010)

Live from Macworld 2010, Leanna and Rene talk with Maksim Loffe, co-founder and CEO of UMEE about their TV remote software and FastMac’s remote case for iPhone, the iV Plus.

Watch along after the break!

TiPb Gear — Fastmac/UMEE iV Plus TV Remote for iPhone (Macworld 2010) is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Final Fantasy And Final Fantasy II For iPhone Released

ngmoco’s We Rule for iPhone hits Canadian App Store

Once again, a new ngmoco’s game has hit the Canadian App Store first — this time it’s kingdom-builder We Rule [Free with in-app purchases - iTunes link]. Hey, there’s no Hulu or Google Voice in Canada, so fair’s fair!

Like all recent ngmoco games, We Rule leverages the social gaming element via their Plus+ network, and has in-app purchases for “Mojo” which basically speed up things like growing crops and building homes, so you can pay if you don’t want to wait. In this case, Mojo can run from $0.99 to for 1 to $49.00 for 800. You don’t have to buy it, you just have to be patient if you don’t.

It seems like you do have to log in to play, however, which is handy since you can keep one game going over multiple devices (like your iPhone and iPod touch, as long as they’re logged in to the same Plus+ account), but if you don’t care about that and just want to launch and play on your own, it’s an step you can’t skip.

No doubt ngmoco is doing what they do best here, taking a popular category of game and making it their own — and making it excellent for the iPhone OS platform. If you’re a fan of these types of farming, kingdom building games, you’ll likely be a big fan of We Rule.

Again, Canadian only for now, though @ngmoco is giving away codes to allow early US access on Twitter. If you download it — or score a code — let us know what you think!

Ton’o pictures and a video… after the break!

ngmoco’s We Rule for iPhone hits Canadian App Store is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

TUAW redux: The future of iPhone OS and Mac OS

Filed under: OS, iPhone, iPad

One of the big topics of discussion yesterday in our TUAW back channel was this post from the New York Times Bits blog. In "Why can't PCs work more like iPhones," Bilton pointed out that the iPhone has given Apple a chance to build a new OS from the ground up.

This is a familiar viewpoint to us here on TUAW. Last year, I asked whether the future of the Mac OS would turn out to be the iPhone. In my write-up, I pointed out that the iPhone OS was built from scratch to work with Objective C 2.0 with its properties and other modern language features. Its API, far from being cobbled together, showed ever increasing design maturity without the weight of heavy backwards compatibility concerns. I concluded that Apple might take a lesson from the iPhone OS and consider offering a ground up redesign for Mac OS X, at least in terms of core OS principles.

In his post, Bilton considers how Mac OS X might integrate iPhone OS features into its user experience, suggesting a possible Front Row-like overlay layer, running an iPhone OS interface. The goal would be to craft iPhone-style GUI simplicity onto the desktop experience, so that users could move seamlessly between their mobile and desktop worlds.

But as much as we believe that Apple is heading cautiously in the direction that Bilton suggests, the TUAW consensus is that a desktop OS needs far more structure and, at the same time, flexibility than what the iPhone OS offers.

Continue reading TUAW redux: The future of iPhone OS and Mac OS

TUAW redux: The future of iPhone OS and Mac OS originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAW redux: The future of iPhone OS and Mac OS originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Valve’s Steam Heading to the Mac?

A forum thread has been generating some buzz around the Mac web by suggesting that Valve will be porting their Steam platform to the Mac. Steam is a digital distribution system for PC games -- essentially an PC game App Store. A Mac versio...