iMac Shipments Running Low Ahead of Refresh?

AppleInsider reports that Apple has begun advising third-party retail partners of impending shortages of the company's iMac models, suggesting that a refresh of the company's popular all-in-one desktop line may be in store for the near future...

Comex To Release Spirit Like Tool To Jailbreak iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS And iPod Touch 2G/3G Soon

Review: Well Said for iPhone

If you're at a loss for words, this handy collection of quotations is a worthwhile addition to your iPhone or iPod touch.

Apple Targeting Small Business Customers at Retail Stores

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is rolling out a new retail store program designed to appeal to small business customers, encouraging them to adopt the company's Mac platform for their operations. The program involves the hiring o...

NOVA gets Retina Display and Gyroscope support

Gameloft’s NOVA has just received one awesome update; high-res retina display support and the ability to use the gyroscope (looks like Gun Range proved useful after all) for iPhone 4. First let’s talk graphics…

This game looks absolutely amazing. Color. Crispness. It’s all there. No aliasing problems, things just look great. Now for the not so great news, the Gyroscope.

I have been playing with the NOVA update for the last couple of days and for the life of me, I can’t seem to feel comfortable using the gyroscope in conjunction with the traditional controls. Sure, the gyroscope is precise. Sure you can pivot in a circle and the game will rotate with you. But when it comes to playing in a firefight with aliens, it is hard to be using the traditional controls to pan while using the gyroscope to aim. Perhaps I just don’t have the reflexes of my youth, but I found the experience frustrating. Thankfully you can turn the gyroscope controls off. This was just my experience, how are you liking the update? Let us know in the comments!

[$4.99- iTunes link]

NOVA gets Retina Display and Gyroscope support is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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FacePlant brings quick FaceTime chats and video voice mail to the iPhone 4

Filed under: iPhone

By now, everybody who owns an iPhone 4 knows how cool FaceTime is. They're also probably frustrated with the fact that a) you need to make a call at least one time in order to verify that a friend has an iPhone 4 and can actually do FaceTime chats, b) you can't see when friends are on Wi-Fi and ready to talk, and c) you can't leave them a video message when they're off a Wi-Fi network or have their phone turned off.

An upcoming free iPhone app, FacePlant, hopes to change all of that. FacePlant is from the same folks who brought you 12seconds and Rally Up, so they had the necessary savvy to supply both the video messaging piece and the social networking feel that FacePlant provides.

Here's the concept: you sign up for a free FacePlant account, which consists of your name and iPhone 4 number. The app goes through your contacts list, and if there's anyone in that list who is registered with FacePlant, they show up on a list of contacts. If they're ready and willing to talk, their name shows up surrounded by a bright orange bar; if they're offline, their name is outlined in gray. Tapping an active (orange) name displays a dialog that asks if you want to make a FaceTime call, a voice call, or leave a video message.

Continue reading FacePlant brings quick FaceTime chats and video voice mail to the iPhone 4

FacePlant brings quick FaceTime chats and video voice mail to the iPhone 4 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

FacePlant brings quick FaceTime chats and video voice mail to the iPhone 4 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T announces 26 percent earnings growth for Q2, $4b profit

There may be plenty of tales of intrigue behind the scenes, but it looks like AT&T is still doing alright when it comes to raking in the cash -- it's now announced a 26 percent increase in earnings for the quarter that's just ended. In terms of hard numbers, that translates to a profit of $4.02 billion (up from $3.2 billion a year ago), and $30.8 billion in revenue, which is actually up just 0.6 percent over the previous year, although that modest gain is partly attributed to AT&T's sale of Sterling Commerce to IBM for $1.4 billion (which is not included in its results). Other notable stats include 3.2 million iPhone activations for the quarter (a company record), 1.6 million "organic net adds" in wireless subscribers for a total of 90.1 million, and the company's first ever billion-dollar revenue quarter for its U-verse services -- all of which led AT&T CFO Rick Lindner to say that the company is "pleased, pleased across the board." Full press release is after the break.

Continue reading AT&T announces 26 percent earnings growth for Q2, $4b profit

AT&T announces 26 percent earnings growth for Q2, $4b profit originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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devsugar: Accessing an iPhone camera capture session

Filed under: Developer, iPhone

With the imminent demise of UIGetScreenImage, a number of readers have asked me how they can use the newer AVFoundation approach to access screen data in their iPhone applications. I went ahead and built some sample code that, when I'm finished messing with it, will be part of chapter 7 of my revised cookbook. I have uploaded the current version to github. It consists of a simple helper class that allows you to start and stop a capture session.

You can request an image from this helper (namely, the last captured image from the buffer), which in this example is loaded into a central image view at the end-user's request. You can also ask it for a view with an embedded preview, using the current session. The example project adds that preview to the navigation bar.

I threw this example together pretty quickly, and as always, I welcome suggestions and improvements.

devsugar: Accessing an iPhone camera capture session originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

devsugar: Accessing an iPhone camera capture session originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Safari Autofill Security Issue Permits Access to Personal Information

Earlier this week, The Register detailed a security vulnerability found in Apple's Safari Autofill feature that could enable malicious websites to extract users' personal information from their Address Book entries. The security researcher, ...

Review: NASA Lunar Rover for iPhone

NASA Lunar Electric Rover Simulator is a friendly, easy-to-master, free game by NASA. Designed more to educate than entertain, NASA Lunar Electric Rover Simulator makes it look like just about anyone could pilot a rover.

Glide extends the iPad, converts Flash on the fly

Glide OS, a "Web operating system," has arrived on the iPad as an HTML5 Web app. It lets users clip Web content, edit documents, and even play Flash video files thanks to some clever conversion tech.

AT&T net income up on smartphone additions

AT&T reports a 26 percent increase in net income, driven by mobile additions.

AT&T Activates 3.2 Million iPhones in Q2 as New Customer Draw Slows

AT&T today announced its financial results for the second quarter of 2010, noting activations of 3.2 million iPhones during the quarter, a new company record. The strong iPhone 4 release at the very end ...

iOS 4 features: Search the Web, Wikipedia

While iOS 3 (iPhone 3.0) introduced Spotlight search for on-device information like contacts, songs, and apps, iOS 4 examples Spotlight to search the Web and Wikipedia as well.

From the main home screen, just swipe to move left to Spotlight, or click the home button to toggle to it, and start typing your search. You may see the aforementioned local results start to pop up but you’ll also see a Safari icon saying Search Web and a curiously blank icon saying Search Wikipedia.

Tap those and Spotlight fades, Safari comes up, and you’re off and searching the internet.

Already familiar with this? Then let us know if you’re using it and how it’s working for you. Any advantage to just going straight to Safari or tapping open a Wikipedia app?

For more features, see our complete iOS 4 walkthrough.

iOS 4 features: Search the Web, Wikipedia is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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True cost of Apple control: no carrier bloatware on iPhone

We often accuse Apple of being too controlling when it comes to the iPhone, but sometimes that control benefit the end user — for example preventing the kind of carrier bloatware being foisted on the iPhone that Wired says is being foisted on the new Android devices from Samsung and HTC. Examples include trial versions of subscription services like MobiTV, GoGo Flight Internet, Where, Nascar, Football, and others.

“It’s different from phone to phone and operator to operator,” says Keith Nowak, spokesman for HTC. “But in general, the apps are put there to meet the operator’s business and revenue needs.”

[...] But bloatware isn’t a feature in all smartphones. AT&T hasn’t piled extraneous software onto Apple’s iPhone.

No, AT&T hasn’t piled extraneous software onto Apple’s iPhone because Apple won’t let them. As Wired themselves profiled recently, any attempt by AT&T to dictate anything iPhone related to Apple would be rebuffed and — if needed — “escalated to Steve” who may then “scream at Ralph”.

At the D8 conference Steve Jobs said many companies mistakenly believe the distributors (retailers, carriers, cable providers, etc.) are their customers. Apple believes end users are their customers and in this case they don’t seem to care a wit what the carriers want.

Google’s model, by contrast, is incredibly carrier-centric. Their customers are the carriers. Their prime consideration is to get more and more manufacturers and carriers to make and carry more Android devices. That’s why their open source license is Apache — a license that ironically leaves their source open to carrier control up to and including the ability to close things out. Manufacturers and carriers can do pretty much anything they feel like including adding non-removable bloatware, locking out side-loading, preventing rooting, etc. And yeah, you can hack your way around it but you can also jailbreak an iPhone. That’s fine for power users. For mainstream users, not so much.

(Sadly, the single Android handset Google did control, the Nexus One, is being taken off the market.)

So we iPhone owners can get upset when Apple occasionally messes up and doesn’t approve an app until there’s an outcry, or sticks stock and weather apps on the iPhone we’d rather hide away, but does anyone think the iPhone user experience would be better if Apple were more open and the carrier was given complete control?

[Wired]

True cost of Apple control: no carrier bloatware on iPhone is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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TUAW’s Daily App: Pilgrim’s Punch Out

Filed under: iPhone, App Store

Comic-Con starts in San Diego today, and I'm down here wandering the aisles, looking for geeky gear and cool games. Scott Pilgrim is already one of the stars of the show, with the excellent comic series having finished up, a new console game coming out soon, and of course the Michael Cera-enhanced movie in theaters in a few weeks. To celebrate, NBC Universal has released this free retro Punch-out game starring the characters from the movie. It's not quite as good as the upcoming console game, but it's an amusing little retro distraction that fans of the movie will get a kick out of.

The app's also connected up for Comic-Con -- it's got news and updates straight from the convention floor, and there is a trailer and gallery from the movie to unlock. Yes, it's adware -- if you have no interest in the movie, there's not really a reason to download the app. But if you're already interested in Scott Pilgrim and want a little more fun from the franchise on your iPhone during Comic-Con, definitely check this one out.

TUAW's Daily App: Pilgrim's Punch Out originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAW's Daily App: Pilgrim's Punch Out originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T activates 3.2 million iPhones in Q3

Hot on the heels of Apple’s 8.4 million iPhones sold in Q3, AT&T announces a record-breaking 3.2 million of those were activated on their network. Their churn levels were lower than ever as well, 1.01 percent postpaid churn and 1.29 percent total churn, and the all-important ARPU (average monthly revenues per subscriber) up 3.4 percent.

On June 24, AT&T began offering iPhone 4, the most powerful iPhone yet. Preorder sales of iPhone 4 were 10 times higher than the first day of preordering for iPhone 3GS a year earlier. For the full second quarter, AT&T iPhone activations totaled 3.2 million, the most quarterly iPhone activations ever. Approximately 27 percent of those activations were for customers who were new to AT&T.

27 percent new to AT&T, going into the 4th year of exclusivity? Yeah, that’s probably why they stick with that “I hate you, don’t leave me” borderline relationship with Apple.

And all this with iPhone 4 demand still exceeding Apple’s supply, and the white iPhone 4 still waiting on a limited, late July launch.

[Business Wire via TechCrunch]

AT&T activates 3.2 million iPhones in Q3 is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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