Josh
This user hasn't shared any biographical information
Homepage: http://www.cocoatouchapps.com
Jabber/GTalk: carr.jd
AIM: piano08man
Posts by Josh
iPhone Exchange Accounts broken with iOS 4
Jul 8th
I do a lot of consulting when I’m not writing online… sometimes my consulting takes over my time and keeps me from writing a lot: see the last month on CTA. iOS 4 has been the bane of my existence for the last week with all of my clients who are using exchange accounts for contacts, calendars and email.
No one really knows what happened, but everyone knows that iOS 4 is terrible for exchange clients. Devices running iOS 4 can bog down the exchange server, completely stop syncing, sync sporadically… the list goes on. The “Apple-recommended” fix for this is listed in a Support Article. The article contains a link to an updated configuration profile for iOS 4 devices. Apple doesn’t explain exactly what the new configuration profile does but the rumor is that it just extends the amount of time it can ping the exchange server. Does that sound like a fix? No, not really.
None of my clients have seen reliable exchange syncing with iOS 4 and the updated configuration profile didn’t really fix anything… maybe it’s a little more stable… but it’s definitely not fixed. It looks like we’ll be waiting for an OS update before we actually see a real solution here. For anyone who’s using ActiveSync on the iPhone: stop yelling at your IT guy or gal, it’s not his or her fault.
iPhone 4: a worthy upgrade
Jun 24th
For those of us who have been a little busy lately (sorry about the lack of updates), we probably don’t know as much about the iPhone 4 as we’d like. Here’s a little list of stuff that’s new.
The new Retina Display has a super-high resolution and pixel density that won’t be that obvious at first, but if you take out your original iPhone, iPhone 3G or even the 3GS, you’ll notice a difference right away… if you have good eyesight.
The camera now takes even better pictures and shoots 720p video. It also has a flash. Every picture we’ve taken seems to be much, much… much nicer than the iPhone 3G or the 3GS.
The processor is quicker and it has 512MB of RAM (double the 3G and 3GS).
Overall, the iPhone 4 will prove to be zippier and nicer in many aspects, but there are still a few features that we’re a little surprised about.
The whole phone is made of glass. Glass that will break. It’s supposed to be harder than sapphire crystal, but it’s definitely still breakable. You’ll want to pick up one of Apple’s Bumper cases or a full-fledged case for it. Repairing them won’t be cheap.
The reception has been somewhat of an issue, but it’s not replicable on every device. Basically, depending on how you hold the iPhone 4, you might be able to decrease your cell reception or even get to a no service situation… not good. I’ve not been able to replicate it on any of the demo phones at the Apple store, but there’s definitely enough phones having this problem to mention it.
There may be yellow spots on your iPhone screen, but we don’t see that as a reason to worry just yet. Supposedly, there’s an adhesive on the screen assembly that might not be fully evaporated before you take the phone out of the box. Just use the iPhone for a couple days and the spots will probably go away.
That’s nothing that will keep me or anyone else here at CTA from buying the device… but as a heads up, it may not be smooth… but it’ll definitely be worth it.
WWDC Apple event next week
Jun 1st
If you’ve been living under a rock, you probably don’t know that on June 7th, Apple will be launching it’s World Wide Developer Conference with a keynote from CEO Steve Jobs. The 4th generation iPhone is widely expected to make its debut on Monday. While no one is sure what we’ll be seeing on Monday, we’ve heard rumors of Apple TV updates to rival Google’s introduction of Google TV… and possibly some other hardware updates.
Either way, we’re hoping to see the iPhone take a turn towards complete shock and awe. We won’t be covering the liveblog this time through… sorry! Might we recommend MacRumors, TUAW, Gizmodo, Ars Technica or Engadget. Recently, Ars Technica’s liveblog has been outstanding. We’ll still be covering the news as we are available… so check back here for timely recaps of the morning’s events.
Apple integrates Rotten Tomatoes into iTunes Movies
May 20th
Here’s something that no one expected to see: most of the popular movies in iTunes have Rotten Tomatoes reviews integrated directly into the movie’s information page. The picture above comes from the Avatar info page. We found a few movies like Sherlock Holmes (great movie, definitely worth seeing) didn’t have the tomatometer just yet. We expect that it’s still a feature that’s rolling out to all of the movies… we just discovered it today.
We’re actually excited about the partnership. We use Rotten Tomatoes all the time to check out what movies are worth seeing. We find ourselves agreeing with the ratings quite often and have begun to trust it for our movie-going experiences. We’re happy to see that Apple included the feature. It may even help them rent more movies. We hate the average iTunes reviewer in the iTunes Store… some we like. Most of them just want to complain about something stupid and don’t leave anything of substance… that’s why we exist. We try and do legitimately helpful reviews and very often work with the developer. We’ve even helped some developers improve their apps before our reviews went live. Like us, Rotten Tomatoes has a tendency to have more accurate reviews and ratings than anything we’ve found in the iTunes Store. Now that it’s integrated, that may change. Shoot. Apple, remove it, please?
Anyways, we welcome it to the iTunes Store and may your movie favorites be considered fresh and not rotten.
Simplify Media was purchased by Google. Crap.
May 20th
For those of you who remember Apple’s acquisition of lala, you’ll most likely remember that Google wasn’t too happy about it. It seems that Google and Apple are going to be fighting over the music market in the near future. Today, during the Google I/O conference, Google announced the acquisition of Simplify Media and will use it for their upcoming music services. It doesn’t come as much of a surprise after Apple bought lala from underneath the proverbial Google nose… but that doesn’t mean we’re happy about it.
While Google’s new music services are still in development, it’s entirely probable that Mac and iPhone users will never see the fruits of the Simplify Media labor. Google has been expanding its knowledge in the world of applications and operating systems in preparation for their Chrome OS. Especially since the advent of Android, Google has been less and less interested in supporting other platforms and more interested in securing their place in the modern world.
They’re doing a great job with it. Maybe someday we’ll create a sister site dedicated to the Android platform… maybe not.
Either way, we’re not too stoked that Simplify Media’s innovation was snagged by Google and no longer available to the masses. We’ve kept close tabs on the company since it first came to the iPhone. We got to know some the employees pretty well over chat. Here’s hoping we get some benefit out of the deal.
Game Center isn’t coming in iPhone OS 4.0
May 19th
We’re pretty sure that this hasn’t been addressed by the mass media just yet, so we thought we’d fill you in. OpenFeint and Plus+ have some hope for prolonged existence: Apple’s latest release notes explain that Game Center is not coming to iPhone OS 4 when it’s released. The software is merely there for developers to try it, test it and critique it. It specifically says in the release notes to play with it, but don’t submit any apps that support it on iPhone OS 4.0. There’s even a little blip about it in the publicly available support notes.
We’ll start the rumors here: It’s entirely possible that Apple will scratch the Game Center idea completely before they even release it. The initial idea was met with opposition, questions and anything but user support. Sure, some developers like the idea of social integration within their games, but that exists already with OpenFeint and Plus+… so it begs the question: why would Apple even care to step in as a player? We can’t think of a single good reason to put time and effort into Game Center… maybe some sort of combination with iAds? OpenFeint and Plus+ have been around for a while, they know what works and what doesn’t. Apple has no clue about social gaming. If anything, Apple should do what they do best: buy someone out. Better yet, get out of the social gaming industry. It’s definitely not their area of expertise.
Either way, we shouldn’t expect to see anything until “later this year.” We’re guessing a back-to-school release with new iPods.
If you haven’t heard by now, iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 4 came out late in the day on Tuesday. We still have spots available for our Beta test program. We’ll let you know about our experience with Beta 4 in the next couple days.
The cake is a lie: Steam comes to the Mac
May 14th
If you consider yourself a gamer and a Mac user, your world became instantaneously better on Wednesday. Valve officially released the Steam client for Mac. Through today, you can actually get Portal for free. Portal is Valve’s unique and challenging first-person puzzel shooter: it’s a great way to introduce yourself to the Steam platform. We spent a couple hours and hammered our way through Portal so we could get back to our achievements. Most of the more modern games have been updated with Cloud syncing (game progress is saved no matter what computer you’re on) but it had been so long since we’ve played Portal that there was no record of our saved games. Our achievements were thankfully still there.
Portal, Peggle Deluxe, World of Goo — those are just some of the titles that we purchased a while back on one of the PCs in the house. They are guaranteed to work with a new feature called “Steam Play.” If you purchase it on one platform it will be free for you on any other platform as long as the game is compatible. We picked up the Indie pack of games, a great buy for $20… we also picked up Braid (a completely unique platformer).
Things haven’t been completely smooth with the software: we have noticed a few weird glitches with overlays, some strange browser-like errors, a few crashes and a game install error that had us restarting our machine and trying again. Not too shabby for Valve’s very first release on the Mac. Most of it, we’re guessing, is the fact that Valve’s moved everything over to a webkit-based system… one that probably hasn’t been tested rigorously. Either way, it’s not stopping us from playing our games — the games have been completely flawless. We’ve spent several hours playing Braid, Portal, World of Goo, and Galcon Fusion… none of the games have glitched at all.
Each Wednesday, Valve will be releasing new games into the Mac-compatible section. If you don’t see something you want right away, give it a few days… it just might show up. We can’t wait to get some of the other Valve software ported over: the Half-Life series, Team Fortress… gaming on the Mac just took a u-turn on the road to perdition.
If you do end up playing Portal, just remember that the cake is a lie.
10 things you need to know about @Square for iPhone
May 11th
This morning, I logged into my squareup.com account to find out that my card reader status is now set to “in the mail.” Awesome. What am I talking about? Here’s a quick little explanation… we’ll get into our list after the break.
Square is a portable credit card reader that will work with many mobile devices… most importantly: the iPhone, iPad and even the iPod touch. You can view and download the application by clicking the [iTunes Link]. Basically, it allows the everyday person to accept credit card payments on the go. If you’ve ever used PayPal, imagine the same experience using your credit card: it’s much more secure, right? Yep. Sell that couch securely with a credit card. Offer customer on-the-spot payments for your consulting work. Let your friend pay you back with plastic. It’s 2.75% for a swipe and 3.5% for a card number entered manually. Square also takes a 15 cent cut from each transaction on top of that fee. That’s a pretty good deal for wonderful mobility. The best part is this: it never stores customer information on the device… everyone can feel completely secure during the transaction thanks to the modern technologies of data encryption.
The whole process in itself is not currently rainbows and roses. We’ve done a lot of research. We’ve been reading through and discussing information with people on the forums and have gone over and over the Terms of Service. The ToS is probably the most down-to-earth ToS we’ve ever read… read it for yourself if you’re interested. Click the “Continue Reading” link to see the 10 things you need to know. It’s a list of the top ten questions (and answers) we’ve come across since we fell in love with Square.
iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 3 now available
May 5th
For those of you who aren’t “in the know,” Apple has released its third beta of iPhone OS 4. If you’ve been messing with previous betas, you’ll realize that the builds have been anything but stable… until now. Beta 2 had some weird issues with Wi-Fi and the Camera Roll: those appear to be fixed and Beta 3 is relatively stable. We haven’t had any apps crash on us all day. Apple did run into a problematic issue with Xcode in the initial release of Beta 3 but that has since been resolved.
We’re really enjoying the new beta and have had great success with it thus far. Here are a few of the new features that other sites have mentioned: iPod playback controls now show up in the multitasking interface, you can close out of multiple apps at once from the multitasking interface, and the obvious fix of the Wi-Fi and Camera Roll issues.
We’ve run into a few quirks with some of our third-party applications but we’re sure that they’ll be fixed once we can actually get ahold of 4.0-compatible applications from the developers. We can’t wait to use some of our apps with the background APIs that Apple opened up in the beta. Other than that, there’s nothing blatantly obvious about the new beta. If you are a developer and have access to Game Center, feel free to add me as a friend… even though there aren’t any games to play it’s fun to pretend. My alias is “joshcarr.”
For those of you interested in signing up for our CTA Beta program, now seems like the perfect time. We can’t wait to introduce you to some of the new things we have brewing here at CTA. Click the Beta tab in the menu bar to sign up.
iPhad touch Video Wrap Up: May 5, 2010
May 5th
We’ll do our part to spread the video fun that people have had with the iPad as of late… but we’re going to do so all at once. Instead of filling our homepage with mindless posts about the way people are destroying, praising or criticizing their iDevices, we figured that we’d throw them into a feature that we’ll update from time to time.
If you’re not familiar with our term “iPhad touch” it’s the obvious combination of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Fair warning: despite Steve Jobs’ best attempt to rid the internet of Flash, many independently hosted videos still use it. Some of these videos may not work on your iPhad touch.
In this edition of the iPhad touch Video Wrap Up we’ll see some morons microwaving their iPad, more morons using it as a skateboard, a genius who installed his iPad into a kitchen cabinet, an edited version of the iPhone 4.0 OS keynote and finally: Ellen’s semi-humorous (not really) iPhone commercial parody that had Apple asking her for an apology. Click the “Continue Reading” button below to see all of the videos.
