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How Else Do You Think We’ll Get to Star Trek?

Aviv — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:06:46 +0000

Forget everything you’ve heard about the iPad. Put aside all the caveats and seemingly major flaws that people are floating around, and think about what Apple’s really doing here. If you don’t quite get it, don’t worry, it’ll eventually click.

A tablet computer, a beefed up iPhone, a touch screen slate, the iPad, whatever you call it, this device’s magnitude won’t be entirely realized for a few years to come. The ambition behind this single device is huge. What Apple’s trying to do here is momentous, it’s unmatched and whether you like it or not, it’s going to change the way you compute.

When you watch movies like Star Trek or recent phenomenons like Avatar, you see conceptually magnificent user interfaces. You see rich and robust screens and characters interacting with them in ways we could only dream of. With the swipe of a finger, the flick of a wrist, or some motion in your arms, you have the power of a fully embraced suite of technologies. This is conceptual immersive computing that we have never experienced as a species, let alone something we can begin to understand, comprehend or imagine being worked into our daily lives.

It’s no secret that Steve Jobs loves Star Trek. When asked about the future of computer input on stage at the All Things Digital conference in 2007, Jobs responded with, “Ya know, just give me Star Trek.” He was talking about the way the characters interacted so fluidly with the technology around them. The way that technology interfaces and responds elegantly with the people controlling it. Computers are depicted as natural elements, organic structures baked into the core of any room or ship. Quite the opposite from the desk, mouse, keyboard and monitor combinations we currently use.

If you don’t think Apple is trying to make Star Trek or Avatar style computing a reality, then you haven’t fully grasped what the iPad brings with it.

Let’s get one thing straight. As it currently stands, only one company has the potential to invent, deliver and actually execute these high-level, infinitely complex scenarios. No other company on earth has multi-touch technology like Apple’s, let alone the ability to combine that software with highly optimized hardware and now custom silicon. This is the trifecta of the future.

The iPad is Apple’s first attempt at bringing this technology outside of a handheld device and into general computing. We’re talking about extremely powerful gestures, motions and finger swipes to accomplish tasks that had previously only been done through the combination of a keyboard and a mouse.

Just like the old saying goes, “You can’t build Rome in a day.” For Apple, the iPad is the first brick in this Star Trek-like Colosseum of technology. Imagine the iPhone as the gravel, and now you’re beginning to grasp how monumental this device is. We still have a very long way to go, but this is the foundation. It can’t be rushed, it can’t be hurried and you can bet Apple is going to make billions of dollars while increasing the company’s bottom line along the way.

A completely immersive computing experience. As conceptually realized by James Cameron in the film Avatar.

It’s impossible to go from where we are today, to a fully immersive world of touch-screen technology. The general public would be lost, and the most technically savvy computer users would feel alienated by such a rapid change in computing. It would never happen, it can’t happen, and if it did, it would be by one of Apple’s competitors as a rush to beat the competition. However, Apple knows that this is extremely valuable. It’s the holy grail of computing as far as we can see it today. This absolutely cannot turn into Windows Mobile. For all the proprietary downfalls that the company brings with it, the way they get behind open standards (banning flash from nearly everything they do), should come as a relief to the general public. For the people that actual develop applications and pieces of software for our computing platforms, open standards are a way of life. We live and die by them. If Apple wasn’t the largest player in the paradigm shift to touch computing, I’d feel a bit nervous, anxious and kind of unsettled to not know what’s coming. With Apple, we know we’re in good hands. They value healthy competition, and it’ll be done right.

To the nay-sayers, give it some time. Just pretend this is the first iPhone and keep whining about copy-and-paste.

Amazon Releases Kindle For iPhone Application

Dave — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:24:13 +0000

Following on the heels of the Kindle 2’s recent debut, Amazon has released a free Kindle application for the iPhone and iPod touch that will give users access to their vast e-book library.

Dubbed “Kindle For iPhone,” the application will allow consumers to purchase and read Kindle books through an interface that the company describes as simple and easy-to-use. Amazon notes that there are “hundreds of thousands” of e-books that can be wirelessly transferred to the device of your choosing. Unfortunately magazines and Newspapers are not currently supported.

Primary features of the application include:

• Buy a Kindle book from your Mac, PC, or iPhone using a Web browser and wirelessly transfer the books to your iPhone
• Read first chapters of any book for free before you buy
• Download the Kindle books you already own for free — they are automatically backed up on Amazon.com
• Adjust the text size, add bookmarks, and view the annotations you created on your Kindle device

The application also comes coupled with Whispersync, allowing users the ability to seamlessly revert back and forth between your Kindle and Apple handheld, while maintaining bookmarks and reading locations synched between the two devices.

Because purchased items will be linked through an Amazon account, those using the iPhone app will need to make new purchases through the browser or a Kindle itself, which can then be pulled into the application the next time that it is launched. The application can be found here (iTunes link).

Turn-by-Turn iPhone GPS Gets Demoed (w/Screenshots)

Dave — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:10:38 +0000

Turn-by-turn GPS functionality has been an exceedingly sought after feature since the launch of the iPhone 3G itself. It now appears that the Slovakian company, Sygic has developed a native iPhone application that does just that.

Images courtesy of The iPhone Blog

Making its debut at this year’s Mobile World Congress, this turn-by-turn GPS application comes complete with voice prompts, points of interest, support for multiple countries, and memory stored maps. The iPhone Blog notes that the the Sygic application uses TeleAtlas maps as a base and appears to function with relative ease and speed.

Sygic claims that they are planning to submit the application to Apple’s App Store, as they do not intend to release it solely as only a jailbreak app. Yet we may have to cross our fingers and hope that it gets accepted as Apple’s SDK prohibits such useful functionality. As we’ve previously reported, Apple’s iPhone SDK terms have strictly blocked turn-by-turn GPS. “While Apple may be developing their own solution, Apple’s vice president of Hardware Product Marketing Greg Joswiak described voice-based, turn-by-turn navigation apps as “complicated.” – Although he did explain that the hardware inside the device was “very capable.”

Apple Says ‘Over 15,000′ Apps in the App Store

Christina — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:53:02 +0000

Exactly one week ago, stories broke that Apple’s App Store had passed the 20,000 application mark. Yet Apple has just sent out an email claiming “over 15,000″ apps, not 20,000.

Recent reports claimed there were over 20,000+ apps, but Apple highlights 15,000

When word first broke about the app count, it was based on apptism.com’s app tracker. Contradicting reports from AppShopper explained that at the time of reports, the app store count hadn’t reached 20,000 quite yet because of apps that had been rejected. A few days later AppShopper’s app counter rolled through 20,000.

But now this email from Apple, where they claim “Over 15,000 apps. One amazing iPhone.” Why wouldn’t they take advantage of a big number like 20,000? Are they saving it for another email, perhaps a front page spot on Apple.com? It would’ve only taken a few minutes to graphically change that 15,000 to read 20,000 and update the email system, so what gives? Does anybody really have an accurate count of the apps in Apple’s app store? Well, besides Apple?

App Store Wars: Taking the Fun Out of Flatulence [U]

Aviv — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:04:33 +0000

After we ran a story about two competing applications, NJection Mobile and Trapster, another iPhone developer has stepped up to expose what he sees as unethical and immoral tactics being used by his competition.

Air-o-matic makes Pull My Finger (iTunes link), which sells for $0.99. Competing developers InfoMedia Inc, make iFart Mobile (iTunes link), which also sells for $0.99. In a nuthsell, Air-o-matic is accusing InfoMedia of unethical tactics used to gain traction in the app store, which they are in turn profiting from.

Adversely, as VentureBeat has pointed out, Infomedia has now asked a federal judge in Colorado to determine that “pull my finger” as a phrase, does not fall under common trademark laws. Infomedia’s Joel Comm attempts to explain the situation on his personal blog, and has made the legal papers publicly available (PDF). Keep in mind this is from one side of the argument.

What Apple can do about situations like this remains unknown. After all, business is business and reviews can’t necessarily be moderated by humans unless they are proven to be fake. Directly slanderous motives such as writing negative reviews on what is seemingly a third party site (when it’s not), should definitely be punishable. Since Apple has chosen to run the App Store like a high scale application boutique with which they choose what happens, they should be able to intervene when spamming, and unethical behavior is accused, not after it has already been proven.

Air-o-matic’s legal team has sent letters to both Apple and InfoMedia in the hopes that this gets sorted out. We don’t mean to open Pandora’s box with these reports, however, unethical and slanderous behavior in the App Store should be brought to light, especially when people are profiting from it.

~~The video below explains everything from Air-o-matic’s point of view. They are speaking in the video (turn up speakers) as they explain the alleged unethical tactics used by InfoMedia.~~ The video has been pulled due to the ongoing legal tussle.

Update: Air-o-matic got in touch to share their side of their story too. Good timing, the video below was made prior to the story going public, we saw it… But it was then pulled due to confusion and guidance from lawyers. Air-o-matic in general didn’t want to risk both apps getting banned and this hindering their business further. However, after recent allegations from both sides, they’ve gone ahead and made the video available to view. Here’s a direct link to “their side of the story.”

Apple Planning a Retail Store Restructuring to Spotlight Software

Dave — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:18:00 +0000

Apple’s retail stores will soon undergo some interior layout changes as the company plans to put a stronger emphasis on customer education and software.

Shortly after Apple’s recent iPhone/iPod display table overhaul, the company will ready the third major interior design change to its brick-and-mortar locations. ifoAppleStore notes that these changes have included wood floors and the transition to a stainless interior in September of 2006. According to the upcoming plans, Apple will put hardware on the back-burner of their marketing strategy to focus the spotlight on software and the various digital features of Apple’s product lines. This correlates well with how Apple’s recent marketing of iPhones and iPod touches seems to have a heavier focus on the 20,000 applications that are now at the users fingertips, over promoting the actual devices themselves.

Upon entering the restructured floor space, customers are said to be greeted with a front section of the store dedicated to promoting “Why You’ll Love a Mac.” The correlating signage and literature will note the advantages of Macs over PCs. It is also said that the next section of the retail space will concentrate on the iLife suite of applications and how the software can assist in the user’s everyday digital lifestyle. Additionally a third section of the interior makeover will focus on the iLife suite of applications. The layout restructuring is said to begin taking effect as early as next week, yet could be several weeks for staff training and display changes.

iPhone Developer Makes $600,000 From Clever Artillery iPhone Game

Aviv — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:39:01 +0000

Apple’s App Store can indeed be a strange place to do business. Even though the store has become a behemoth with over 20,000 apps available and 500 million apps downloaded, the success stories are few and far between when compared to how many developers are grinding away.

The latest comes from an iPhone developer named Ethan Nicholas. A while back news broke that Nicholas’ application, iShoot (iTunes link), was becoming far too lucrative to go unnoticed.

Coupled with the release of a “lite” version of iShoot, and the lucky benefits of hitting the Top Paid App spot in iTunes, Nicholas experienced just how much of a lottery the app store can truly be. The lite version went live on January 3rd, 2009, and less than ten days later, the full version of iShoot skyrocketed into the number one spot on iTunes with nearly 17,000 downloads. In other words, Nicholas was netting around $21,000 a day for the $2.99 application after Apple’s 30% slice was taken out. At the time Nicholas was working at Sun Microsystems, and had developed iShoot in his spare time, although he was planning on quitting. “I’m still in shock,” Nicholas said, “I’ve given my two week notice at Sun Microsystems. I’m gonna do this full time now.”

Ray over at the iPhone Savior helpfully got in touch with Nicholas to check in and see how he was doing, both with the application and reeling from the success he’s recently been blessed with.

I contacted Ethan to track his progress since quitting his full time employment with Sun Microsystems after iShoot reached number one. To date, his tank artillery game has sold 320,000 units, netting Nicholas well over 600K dollars, while his free version of iShoot Lite has been downloaded in excess of 2.4 million times since it went live on January 3rd. Of that number about 13% decided to pay $2.99 for the iShoot app, averaging $23,000 a day in profit after Apple takes their 30% cut. An impressive pull with the App Store hosting over 20K titles to date.

Nicholas goes on to explain that he hasn’t changed his life much since this all happened. “I haven’t changed my lifestyle at all. I’m living as modestly as I was before iShoot took off,” Nicholas told iPhone Savior by phone. “My car is a 15 year old piece of crap with 140K miles on it and I’m gonna drive it until it falls apart.”

When asked if he was working on any new games, Nicholas was nice enough to share that his upcoming titles would be mostly 3D and were “already fairly well mapped out.” Additionally, he explains that iShoot version 2.0 should be released in a few weeks. “My goal with my new games is to reach number one by creating incredibly awesome games. I’m not going to produce shovelware,” Ethan said.

App Store Count: 20,000 Applications and Growing [U]

Aviv — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:27:02 +0000

Apple’s App Store has recently passed the 20,000 application mark. While Apple recently showcased that half a billion apps have been downloaded since the App Store’s launch, the ratio compared to how many applications are actually available is quite interesting.

The application count tracker at apptism.com (hat tip TUAW), recently surpassed the 20,000 mark. When compared to the 500 million apps downloaded, the 20,000 number is important, yet we’re quite surprised it took so long to reach this mark. Especially given the abundance of fart apps, flashlights and to-do lists in the App Store.

Apple’s App Store has a been a source of heated debate since it was first unveiled. While issues get incredibly heated, Apple remains silent for the most part. Still, there’s no shortage of opinions or developer suggestions when it comes to how Apple should run the App Store, but whether Apple is listening or not remains relatively vague. Either way, 20,000+ applications in the App Store and 500 million+ apps downloaded are staggering numbers.

Update: AppShopper.com explains that their app count is at 19,457 when factoring in applications that have been removed from the app store. While their overall count may be 500 apps shy of 20,000, it shouldn’t take too long for that number to rollover to 20,000+ “approved” applications.

Japanese iPhone Application Turns the Device into a Full-Blown Web Server

Dave — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:36:14 +0000

A new iPhone application called, “ServersMan@iPhone,” which recently launched in Japan’s App Store, turns the device into a comprehensive web server.

Developed by Tokyo-based venture company, FreeBit, distinguished for delivering their network platform to numerous VNO/ISPs, the new application allows your iPhone to act and appear as any common web server would. Once installed, internet connected PCs can access the device device to upload or download files through the browser or can additionally make use of the webDAV protocol. If both the iPhone and PC are on the same network, you can connect directly, yet if they are on different networks, FreeBit’s VPN software can appropriate the connection.

The application itself is noted to be a quick “Personal Data Center” and is characterized for having a simple and intuitive user interface. The company notes that one can setup a complete server environment in a mere 5 minutes without the need to read any instructional documentation.

Supported by the iPhone and 2nd generation iPod touch, the application can be used as a portable storage network, that can be accessed over both WiFi and 3G networks. A “Cloud Switch” feature automatically determines the relationship between the original terminal and access network to find the best and fastest route.

Serverman@iPhone supports the following file formats:
• iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote)
• Microsoft Office ( Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• PDF
• HTML
• Source Code ( Javascript, XML, CSS)
• Logs, video, audio, images.
Additionally, by touch or shaking the device, you can manipulate files in an intuitive operation.

ReadWriteWeb notes that the name “ServersMan” is said to be influenced by Sony’s iconic “WalkMan” as FreeBit has lent an invitation to Sony’s former CEO Nobuyuki Idei to join the firm as a business advisor. The application is currently only available in Japanses App Store, yet an English version is expected to make an appearance in March.

App Store Improvements: Is Apple Listening?

Aviv — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:51:02 +0000

Since the App Store first launched, it has been met with heated backlash by many, joyous praise by others, and the inability to be matched by any of Apple’s competitors. Even though the App Store, and the business model surrounding it are great, the development community continues to brainstorm ways to make it better.

The bottom line is that Apple owns the App Store. As hard as it may be to face, Apple can pick and choose how to run the store, what applications to allow, and what gets rejected. It’s for this particular reason that the App Store has been met with such voracious criticism. However, without a devoted development community cultivating and populating the App Store, it would not have reached such levels of success so fast. Of note, the App Store recently passed the 500 million mark for downloaded apps.

As the current market evolves, Apple’s App Store will need to grow and adapt new practices better served to suit the community. Developers and consumers alike have interesting ideas on how to better the App Store, increase usability and overall deliver a more diverse experience. “A way for developers to address feedback/reviews in the app store would be great. Newegg allows its product manufactures to connect with reviewers to improve their services and products,” explains Shannon Atkinson from Njection, developers of Speed Trap finder app Njection mobile.

As the San Francisco Chronicle recently explained, Apple has in fact responded to some concerns over visibility in the App Store. They have added categories such as Staff Picks and What’s Hot, New and Noteworhty lists, and increased the lists to 100 applications per category.

“The challenge is discoverability,” said John Poisson, founder and CEO of Tiny Pictures, which recently released its Radar mobile picture app on the iPhone. “You can’t count on your apps being visible because there are too many apps.” We’ve been hearing requests for most recent week and most recent month categories for quite some time now. While the addition of new categories is welcomed in some scenarios, it’s a fine line between clutter and actually improving the ability to find new applications.

An iPhone developer who opted to remain nameless, refuses to concentrate his efforts on the iPhone until Apple releases concise iPhone development guidelines. “Until we get a clear set of development guidelines that states exactly what features are explicitly banned, we remain hesitant to dump significant money into any iPhone specific project,” the iPhone developer explains. “We will continue to develop for other mobile platforms, but nothing iPhone specific until we receive guidelines.”

Speculation over the the app store going social can be found sprinkled through forums and publications. Beyond simply sending recommendation links to friends, incorporating the iTunes genius and allowing highly targeted sharing between apps is something some are wishing for. “I’m really looking forward to something like what Xbox Live does, where your friends or your contacts can see what you’re playing,” said Walton, who has sold more than 250,000 copies of Retronyms’ Recorder app. “It’s like an automatic word-of-mouth recommendation.” Additionally, the idea of micro-payments or subscription services is something Walton says he’d like to see.

Analyst Jack Gold from J. Gold Associates expects Apple to incorporate many developer suggestions over the next 18 months. However as of now, he believes there is no real threat from any of Apple’s competitors, and we agree. Aside from needing new features and ways to discover applications, Apple needs to open up and be more vocal on how it’s dealing with potentially unethical scenarios, the issue of apps questionably being banned, and long-standing missing features such as background notifications.