Josh
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Homepage: http://www.cocoatouchapps.com
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Posts by Josh
iGroups: social networking the Apple way
Mar 20th
A newly revealed patent suggests that Apple is working on social networking for the iPhone platform that will integrate with the operating system and make sharing your information with other iPhone OS users as simple as being in the same location. Gizmodo is quick to point out that the number of patents we see actually make it to production are very small, but the potential here is still very impressive.
The patent suggests that iPhone users will share bluetooth tokens to connect to nearby iPhones which will allow you to share photos, text, contact information — potentially limitless options. Even if you’re out of range of the initiating group member, you can daisy chain the information to a relatively infinite distance as long as you’re close enough to someone in the group. Apple uses a rock concert illustration in which the band initiates a group and can connect to the farthest listener as long as there are group members in between them.
We seem to have a recurring theme here with many of Apple’s inventions… education. The iPad could redefine how we do text books, and this iGroups patent could redefine how lectures are shared in the classroom. Think about it: with iGroups, a teacher could potentially simulcast his presentation, notes, even the week’s assignments to every student in the room. That would be pretty impressive.
We tend to think practically, but the social networking potential is still huge. There are many apps out there that connect people in certain locations — think Foursquare or Yelp — but those applications lack one crucial argument: not everyone has them. The user base is strictly limited to people who have installed the application and opened it at their current location. If Apple built a feature like this into an OS, we’d see the death of Foursquare and the beginning of a social networking monopoly, at least for iPhone OS devices. If Apple did with iGroups as they did with iTunes (platform independence) they could take over the world… no?
Not everyone wants to open an app every time they go to the bar, not everyone even wants to toy with an iPhone all night, but we could very easily see this become a trendy thing to do and destroy all chance of normalcy in social interactions. Want to talk to a girl tonight? Don’t man-up and walk over to her, casually say “hello” via a bluetooth message.
Cocoa Touch Apps t-shirts available
Mar 19th
Before we go and get a lot of these printed, we want to gauge the market for such a shirt. Please head over to the T-Shirts page in the navbar and enter your information. If you want one of the t-shirts right now, it’s $25 plus shipping. If we get enough response to order these in bulk, we’re hoping to make them 15-20 bucks a pop. If you have other t-shirt suggestions, we’d love to hear them. We’ve partnered with a t-shirt printing company here in Denver, and we’re more than willing to entertain other designs. And yes, we can get these to you before the iPad launch on the 3rd.
Developers, submit your iPad apps now… seriously, go.
Mar 19th
Apple sent out an email this morning to all of the developers in the App Store giving them the green light on their iPad apps. It’s a very interesting move… most developers haven’t even seen an iPad and have only been able to test their apps in the iPad simulator. TUAW’s Erica Sadun presents an interesting point of view, explaining that “the simulator uses many Macintosh frameworks and libraries, offering features that are not actually present on the iPhone. Applications that appear to be completely operational and fully debugged on the simulator may flake out or crash on the device itself. You simply cannot fully debug any program solely by using the simulator and be assured that the software will run bug-free on the iPhone.”
We’ve recently heard that Apple shipped several key developers iPads but has a 10-page contract about its use, storage and other restrictions so that information doesn’t leak out. While that’s great for those developers, it’s really showing Apple’s lack of connection with everyone else. The iPad simulator is not perfect; even the current iPhone simulator has its issues… so what makes Apple think that releasing applications without testing them on hardware is a good thing?
Well, the review team will test the apps on hardware, and that makes it good enough. If you submit your app now, the review team will test it and hopefully approve it for the launch of the iPad App Store (we’re guessing April 3rd, obviously). Developers are at a huge disadvantage here. If the review team finds an error when the app is running on hardware, they’ll deny it and tell the developer to fix it and re-submit. That’s not going to work well… at all. First, the app could run just fine in the simulator. Second, how are you supposed to replicate a hardware error without hardware?
Do we really see an alternative? No. There have to be apps available on launch day, but we’re not too excited about running glitchy apps for the first couple of weeks while developers fix the unexpected errors.
I Got Control releases yet another iPhone remote accessory
Mar 19th
…but we really like it thus far.
The IRB1 iPhone Remote Control is one of the most polished remote interface addons we’ve seen for the iPhone. It doesn’t do anything over WiFi and actually plugs into the dock connecter. There’s no built-in battery, it just uses the iPhone’s power to function. The companion iPhone app looks well designed, well, sort of. Some of the visual design choices seem questionable, but we’re glad the developers put more focus into the capabilities of the device than the aesthetics.
The RedEye was the first, and its new Mini is the cheapest universal remote option at $49 but isn’t shipping until Spring. It also plugs directly into the headphone jack… we think it would be all too easy to break that off, so we’re a little hesitant to go that route. There are other options like a case from Power A and a similar dongle from New Potato Technologies but this one appears to give us the most bang for the buck — $69.95.
The IRB1 comes with 40,000 IR codes built into the iPhone app and can learn the functions from your remotes if they’re not available in the database. The company explains that learned commands are incredibly small — 1MB of data represents about 800 codes. It can also function as your Apple Remote for iTunes and Front Row if you’d like. Amusingly enough, it has a “Take Control” function that lets you do just that if you’re out at the bar and want to switch channels. We’re not exactly sure how the feature works, but it’s a great way to make your table happy… and get thrown out of a bar. 
Anyways, the company is showing the units are in stock, so grab one and let us know what you think. We’ve contacted the company for a review unit so we can put it to the test. We’ll hopefully be doing a review of each of the listed devices above so that we can help you decide what device would be best for your home theater setup.
Update: the developer is shipping us a review unit. We’ll have a full writeup in the near future.
No more screen protectors from Apple
Mar 17th
It’s surprising, but we see several possible explanations to the banning of screen protectors for the iPhone, iPod and Mac. You’ll still be able to buy them from the manufacturer, other chains or local companies, but it looks like the ban from Apple retail and online stores will happen by May.
In communications with vendors that have been ongoing for “some time now,” according to one company, Apple has said that it will remove both film-only solutions from its stores, as well as any case or other accessory that includes film protection as part of its package, such as cases that include film screen protectors. According to sources, the ban will impact all forms of screen film, including completely clear film, anti-glare film, and mirrored film, regardless of whether the purpose of the film is protective, decorative, or both.
So, what’s getting the axe? It looks like every screen protector for the iPhone, iPod, and potentially the iPad. This appears to include laptop protectors like Marware’s Protection Pack but we’re still left to wonder how far this ban will go?
Several sites have guessed that it’s related to the high return rate of the screen protectors mostly due to user error. When I worked at the Genius bar, all of the Genii refused to install the protectors because of the rare occurrence that we’d mess one up. It’s impossible to take it off and do it again. So, if you suck at it, the store eats that product. I’ll back this explanation: the return rates on the screen protectors were off the chart compared to every other product in the store… maybe Apple doesn’t want to deal with it any more. It could have been costing them more money than they made off of the products.
Others speculate that is has something to do with Apple’s superiority complex. They don’t want customers to think they have to buy a screen protector in order to keep their devices scratch-free. I don’t really buy into this explanation because that means every Apple product doesn’t need any protection and will last forever right out of the box. Yeah… right. I repair several iPhone screens a day because my customers rarely realize how fragile it truly is. Buy a case for your iPhone, your iPod touch, your future iPad, and even your laptop. The extra protection provided by a Speck product will definitely help your laptop stay nicer, longer. However, it won’t make it drop proof — so don’t go overboard.
Over-confidence is our last possible scenario. Cases make people feel secure… people who use cases or screen protectors are far more likely to haphazardly care for their devices. While we realize it’s unlikely, we think Apple may be pulling these products to avoid the “I had a screen protector” argument. Most of us know that this argument is completely moronic, but you’d be surprised at the number of people who blame Apple for faulty products when they “took the necessary precautions.” Yes, it does seem stupid… but you’d be surprised how unintelligent people can be when it comes to caring for their devices.
Our condolences to the manufacturing companies; this will probably be a huge hit on the sales of their products.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, hope you like our festive coloring.
150,000 iPad pre-orders in the first 3 days
Mar 17th
We haven’t pre-ordred our iPad yet, have you? Forbes is reporting that the iPad accrued some 150,000 orders over this past weekend. It’s heavily decreased since the first three days, but we could expect to see 500,000 pre-ordered units by the time it releases on April 3rd. We’ll be there to cover the launch (more details on this soon) and we hope we’ll actually be able to pick up one ourselves. Is anyone else debating between the base model and the 3G versions? We don’t really want to wait…
Analysts are expecting the iPad to sell one million units 2 weeks after it ships. That looks to be a pretty generous number to us. The first iPhone sold one million units after 74 days. It took the same amount of time for the Motolora Droid to hit that mark. We’d say it’s possible, but we’re not placing any bets.
We’ve also noticed that the iPad power adapter and the iPad keyboard dock have been delayed until May. A quick check to Apple.com — it obviously ships with a power adapter, you just won’t be able to purchase a secondary adapter right away. We’re not too worried about the lack of the keyboard dock: it seems like a pretty stupid idea to us. Give us a regular dock, let us use a bluetooth keyboard. Problem solved. We have an aluminum keyboard just waiting for our iPad. Anyone see a problem with that solution?
iPhone: so good, Microsoft employees can’t resist
Mar 17th
Yeah, you read that right: approximately 10,000 Microsoft employees are using iPhones. We’re not too surprised by this information. People know what good phone software truly is… and that’s not Windows Phone. Even with the upcoming Windows Phone 7, we may see a lot of people scrambling for their hidden iPhones after its release.
Nothing is final yet, but it looks like Microsoft has decided to kill multitasking from the Windows Phone 7 release… they’ve also taken copy and paste. Maybe we’re missing something here, but wasn’t Microsoft very vocal about the lack of these two features? Windows Phone 6 has both multitasking and copy and paste. So what’s up with the disappearing act?
If the new Microsoft mobile OS does ship without those features, it’ll make a pretty big argument for an iPhone. Considering the rumor that iPhone OS 4.0 will have multitasking (the 3GS hardware is more than capable of it), it seems like a very strange move for Microsoft to chop such crucial features from their new OS. The 10% of Microsoft employees hiding their iPhones will surely increase; maybe Steve Ballmer would swallow his pride and go to an Apple Store?
We’ll never say that the iPhone is the perfect mobile device, but it’s pretty close. We can’t wait for iPhone OS 4.0 to come out… and we really hope that it lives up to our expectations. However, here we are close to the end of March, and there’s still no talk of a 4.0 beta. Is Apple closing the door on developers for the time being? Could we still see an official release this summer? With the amount of people in the developer program, information leaks out very easily; we’ve even obtained access to betas just to see what’s new. Would Apple limit the beta to a select few developers? We hope not, but still wouldn’t put it past them. Let’s forget about OS 3.2 and just move straight to 4… sound good, Apple?
Cocoa Touch Apps and it’s new server
Mar 12th
We’ve finally completed the transfer to our new server. Sorry for the ridiculous downtime recently. We’re hosted with a great company now that should easily be able to handle all of the traffic we’re generating. We’re going to start getting back to the content now that the back end is up to speed. Please check back regularly as there will always be new stuff added to the site. As always, if you have suggestions or feedback just hit the email icon in the sidebar to the right. We are here to bring you the best Apple content without the mediocrities of the mainstream blogs. Thanks.
Josh — CTA Editor
Steamy hotness you can’t resist
Mar 9th
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No, it’s not anything above PG… it’s the fact that Valve is officially bringing their Steam platform to the Mac in April (in beta). They’ve also acknowledged that every new Valve game will release simultaneously on the Mac and PC. We’ve already voiced our opinions about this transition in previous posts but here’s a quick recap.
- Steam will be the first major game distribution platform to come to the Mac.
- It currently dominates the PC gaming world.
- Games like Half Life, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Portal will all be making their way to the Mac.
- This opens up tremendous development opportunity for all of the companies who have been hesitant. Valve’s commitment to release cross platform will help convince other developers to do the same.
- This will finally bring mainstream quality games to the Mac… yes, there’s been some, but Mac gamers have had very limited choices in games for quite some time.
Thank you, Valve. Now we can use our 27 inch iMac screens for something besides creativity.
Let the Steamy speculation begin
Mar 3rd
Great news for the Mac gaming world today… Valve has scattered images around the mac blogosphere teasing us with Mac-like artwork with a caption that says “In anticipation of an upcoming announcement from Valve.”
This. Is. Huge.
We talked about the possibility of a Mac version of Steam (Valve’s distribution platform) last week. We didn’t have much go on, just a few Mac user interface pictures within the latest beta version of Steam. Today, Valve threw caution to the wind and gave us all images to drool over. It appears as though the feud between Apple and Steam is over. Sweet.
Valve is coming to the Mac. There is not doubt about it. That means Steam is coming to the Mac. That’s the only way Valve distributes its software. No more World of Warcraft for us, we might actually see real gaming titles come to our platform of choice. We’re not say that WoW isn’t a real game, but we can only spend a certain amount of time playing the same game over and over again.
There is no estimated release date, but considering the effort poured into these images, we’d expect it to be soon. Very soon.
- Steam for Mac
- Half Life for Mac
- Portal for Mac
- Team Fortress for Mac
- Left 4 Dead 4 Mac
- Half Life 2 for Mac
