Apps
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.
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.
Wireless sync coming to the iPhone
Apr 26th
… but not from Apple.
The video below is a very quick demonstration of wireless sync for the iPhone. It’s so quick that it’s hard to believe. But both Engadget and MacRumors are pointing to this as real software… so we thought we’d at least mention it.
We here at CTA have been waiting and waiting for wireless sync capabilities for the iPhone. There’s really no reason it shouldn’t exist already. The developer of this software is actually using a standalone application that he claims will be available on the App Store in the near future. It also requires a separate piece of software available for the Mac and the PC in the near future.
To his knowledge, he hasn’t violated any of Apple’s rules or terms of the SDK. We’re a little skeptical but we’d pay a hefty price for the ability to wirelessly sync either way. Apple has been known to reject iPhone Apps because they too closely mirror upcoming features that are currently in development behind Apple’s closed doors. We wish the developer luck… for all of us.
Facebook Video Player for iPad
Apr 14th
CTA RATING: 
The name really says it all. Facebook Video Player for iPad is a new app from Kemal Taskin & Elma DIGIT@L. This app is — I mean this seriously — one of my favorite apps on the iPad. I guess I would consider myself a Facebook junkie but my wife is a lot worse so I don’t feel that bad. Love you, babe.
One of the biggest complaints about the iPad, iPhone and/or iPod touch is its lack of Flash. I’ve been brainwashed into thinking that Flash sucks by Apple (in truth, it really does… at least on the Mac) but so much of our lives are spent viewing Flash. This is not by choice. This is by some stupid necessity because of dumb industry standards. We’re really happy that the industry is responding well to the iPad and other Apple products. Countless websites are going flash free for HTML5 alternatives that are just as powerful and completely compatible with the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch… and in return, they’re compatible with many other mobile devices.
Contrary to popular belief, Flash has not become a standard for the mobile industry: very few phones have it. It’s no wonder that websites are throwing Flash out for other options. Every day, more people begin using their mobiles instead of their computers… every day people drive themselves insane by grumbling at websites that use Flash. So why is the transition so slow? Ask the website you’re reading, we don’t really know.
Facebook is one of the worst offenders in the anti-Flash campaign. Many websites are using the excuse that it would be difficult to offer the features of their Flash video players with HTML5. Facebook can’t use that excuse: it’s video player is probably the worst looking, least feature-rich video player on the web. Play, pause, volume and fullscreen. Wow. There is no reason for Facebook to still be using Flash for their videos when one developer could code the same player in HTML5 with very little effort. Boo!
Thanks to the new Facebook Video Player for iPad… I can watch videos on my favorite web browsing device. There really is nothing else like browsing the web on your iPad and my Facebook addiction is a little more than healthy. The app helps out by bringing up the regular Facebook website and allows you to browse like you would normally. Whenever you run across a video of your college roommate passing out while he’s walking down the street, just tap the video TITLE and the video will play. You cannot actually tap the video as that will just bring up a Flash error. Once the video opens, you can add it as a favorite for later viewing. The interface is a little awkward and not very intuitive, but it works and that’s what we really care about. The developer will be including a help video in the next version. In general, it’s really quite slick and definitely a sanity saver for the people (like me) who are obsessed with Facebook.
We did ask the developer about upcoming features and improvements for the app… this is what will be coming in the near-future releases:
- French, Italian and Turkish language support.
- Video Thumbnail Support: you’ll actually be able to click the thumbnail instead of the title.
- Help Video
- Video Download Manager: will allow you to save movies for offline viewing.
- Advanced Search
With those features, this app will be the easier way to watch Flash Facebook videos on your iPad. If you’re an avid Facebook junkie, this app is a must-have and definitely worth the $2.99 for the iPad version. You can also hop down the road a bit and grab the iPhone version for $1.99
- Facebook Video Player
- Facebook Video 2
- FBVideo Click for iTunes
Sorry for the default pictures, my iPad crashed and dumped the ones I captured. :/
iPad printing and new cost estimates from iSuppli
Apr 7th
AppleInsider did some casual reading of the iWork for iPad support documents… we’re not really sure why, support documents aren’t exactly thrilling material… but they found some interesting phrasing that is definitely worth mentioning.
Printing directly from iPad is not currently available
For years now, we’ve been waiting for a built-in printing solution for the iPhone… and with the iPad’s “productivity” it seems like a pretty big oversight. Currently, you’d have to sync documents back to your computer via iTunes or a wireless transfer like AirSharing if you wanted to print them out. Definitely not as productive as Apple would like.
Wireless printing on a device isn’t going to be easy. Perhaps that’s why it took Apple so long to roll out a proper solution. You’re definitely going to need a networked printer or possibly one that’s hooked up to your AirPort Extreme. Printing, in general, is a complete mess with every device requiring different drivers to function. Apple tries to limit the complexity in the Mac OS by pre-installing the most common drivers out there. That solution would be impossible on the iPhone OS: the pre-installed drivers can take up a lot of space, up to 6GB depending on your settings. Some are suggesting that they’ll limit the printing abilities to a few generic options in order to avoid problematic drivers for the device. Mac users can print on a device without the proper drivers if you just use the generic print settings… and it usually works well. If you’re trying to do more complicated color printing, it may not work as well as you’d hope.
Printing for the iPad and iPhone OS will prove to be a revolutionary change to the iPhone OS as we know it. It’s not going to be easy.
On a different note, iSuppli has updated their cost estimates for the iPad. The base model costs Apple $260 to make instead of their original quote of $220. This isn’t a huge shocker: most pre-release estimates are off by a similar margin. iSuppli attributes the difference to a few different things: the LCD, the multitouch controllers, and the A4 processor. Each one of those components were a little more expensive than they originally expected but that doesn’t mean much for investors. If you look at it, Apple is charging double their costs on every device. They’re making about $250 from each 16GB, $310 from the 32GB and $350 from the 64GB. Factor in the premium of 3G that will appear at the end of the month and profit goes up by $100 for each device. Wow.
We’re not saying that Apple shouldn’t make money, but they should really consider dropping the Wi-Fi version and selling the 3G at the Wi-Fi price. At a cost of $30, we don’t see a good reason to charge an additional $130 for 3G when you’re already making at least $250 in profit from each device. Is it Greedy? Yeah, a little bit. Will Apple really drop the prices? We definitely wouldn’t count on that.
The iPad doesn’t break the bank, but the apps do.
Apr 6th
Paul Miller, we hate you… not really. We’ve been putting off this post until this evening so we could give it the full attention it deserves. During our evening rounds, we spotted this post over at Engadget. Thanks, Paul. We want to be a little more blunt with our writing but at least we know that we’re not alone.
One thing that we’ve noticed since the introduction of the iPad App Store: app prices are ridiculous. We’re not saying that developers don’t deserve to be paid for their efforts, but the trends that are dominating the App Store need… to… stop… now. There are a few different ways that we’re getting screwed, so here goes.
Most everyone was expecting apps to go “universal” so they could run on your iPad or your iPhone/iPod touch. Our worst criticism of the iPad App Store is that most developers decided to avoid that model completely. There are a few who decided to go universal with their apps — one being Oceanhouse Media, the developer responsible for the Dr. Seuss books and one whom we’ve written about in the past — and to all of you who have gone universal… we THANK you.
Other developers, including the ones who build the games in the graphic to the right, have decided that we have to pay for the same content twice. Take a look at the graphic — click it to make it larger — and you’ll notice that developers are choosing to double their app prices for the iPad. Most developers are going more than double… we’ve seen some apps that started at $0.99 and are now selling for $9.99 on the iPad. That’s outright ridiculous.
Let’s look at Fieldrunners… we paid more than the current $2.99 iPhone pricing for the app to begin with and have purchased all of the expansions for more playability but yet, we still have to pay another $7.99 for the exact same application. Granted, the iPad app has prettier graphics, but there’s no difference in the gameplay: no more spaces, no more towers… nothing. They do have a new map listed as coming soon, but they’ll probably charge us to play it when it’s released. Awesome.
If we were to upgrade all four of those applications, we’d spend $50 between the iPhone and iPad versions… and that doesn’t include the in-app purchases. Let’s make it $60+. Four apps > 10% of the device cost. Not okay. We’re unfairly attacking Fieldrunners here. Most developers suck just as bad as Subatomic Studios. PopCap, we really expected better from you… in fact, we expected better from all the developers. We definitely expected better from Apple.
As Paul points out in his post on Engadget, developers are not solely responsible for this BS. Apple still hasn’t given us a way to properly demo an app that we’d like to purchase. Sure, developers can do a free version and make their money in-game, but that business model gets annoying. We, just like everyone else, would like to see a demo of the full apps we’ll be purchasing (please make it mandatory for all paid apps). If we can’t see what it’s going to do, we’re definitely not going to spend $9.99 to find out. $0.99 was a reasonable waste if we don’t like the app… but $9.99 is going to keep us from buying a lot of apps.
We’re not sure what to think about “Things.” It looks like a complete waste of money. $9.99 for the iPhone app, $19.99 for the iPad and $49.99 for the desktop version. $70 bucks is a lot of money to stay organized with one app. Cough.
What can we learn from this? Doubling your app price is stupid. Charging your loyal customers twice for the same thing is stupid. Thinking we’ll support your ridiculous prices is stupid. Get the hint?
We like most of the developers out there, but you’re going to get bad reviews and fewer sales if you leave your prices where they are now. The iPad isn’t a “premium” device. It’s supposed to be mobile computing for the masses. Suck it up, lower your prices, write good software and let us buy it from you.
iPad technical specifications
Apr 5th
We’re huge fans of the guys and gals over at iFixit.com — they’re incredibly quick with their teardowns and have given us a look into the hardware of the newest Apple device. Our editor, Josh Carr, runs Rocky Mountain Mac Repair and is very thankful he doesn’t have to crack one open without knowing what to expect.
Sifting through their teardown, there are some things we love and some thing that we really didn’t expect. Here’s a list of the notable specs:
- 2 large batteries inside to give it the advertised 10 hour battery life. 5 times the charge capacity of the iPhone 3GS
- Shares the same lift-out display style as the iPod touch.
- You’re gonna need a Torx set that goes to T4 if you want to open this one up. Normally, Apple stops at T6.
- The display cable mirrors that of a laptop unlike the iPhone and iPod touch.
- Cortex A8 series processor within Apple’s custom A4 SoC. The RAM is part of the SoC.
- Only 256MB of RAM… really? (We’re having an SNL moment here.)
- 3G Version will have GPS. This is new to us, we were hearing cell tower triangulation before.
- An impressive speaker assembly under the hood… similar appearance to the unibody MacBook speakers.
- The rumored camera hole looks nothing like it did in the “early prototype” photos and houses the Ambient Light Sensor.
- Don’t expect a super-cheap glass replacement on this; it will be much easier to just replace the glass and midplane assembly at the same time. What does that mean? You wouldn’t need to replace the LCD unless you broke that too, but the glass won’t be as easy as the current iPhone.
- There’s no real note on LCD manufacturer. The eIPS LCD may have been a bunch of hooey.
So, huge battery, smaller Torx screws, laptop display cable, GPS (3G only), cool speakers, no camera… but what about the SoC? Well, honestly, we’re really disappointed. Obviously, Apple wanted to go cheaper to make it more affordable for the masses, but this device is seriously lacking the “wow” factor when it comes to processing power. We can tell that the iPad is faster than the iPhone just by using it, but the difference is a lot smaller than we expected. It’s using the same generation Cortex processor as the iPhone 3GS but clocked to 1GHz instead of 600MHz: a nice speed increase. It’s also using the same graphics processor, the PowerVR SGX 535. The RAM is a very disappointing 256MB but appears to be a step up from the iPhone RAM. According to AppleInsider, the speed improvements are related to the faster processor and a theory that the RAM is reading and writing data in “64-bit chunks.” We’re also wondering about Apple’s decision to stop at 64GB… we think that 128GB was completely obtainable, but the current pricing structure would have put that near $1000 — a little steep for an iPod touch on mushrooms.
Introducing the iPad with these technical specifications could limit its potential in the near future. It currently gives developers a platform to showcase more graphically demanding applications, but new iPad apps will need to run on the first generation even if hardware advancements take place in the next generation.
If you look at the iPhone, many apps obviously run better on the 3GS than they do on the first generation, but they’re still the same applications. At this point, all apps are compatible with every iPhone (minus GPS requirements) and there hasn’t been any indication of first generation iPhone incompatibility. No offense to the 1st gen owners out there, but we hope this doesn’t continue much longer. Applications should advance right along with the hardware. We fully expect to see speed bumps in the rumored “iPhone HD” but, under the current SDK restrictions, developers will still need to write their apps with the 1st generation in mind. The current processing power of the iPad will limit developers when they look at the next generation. It would have been nice to see the iPad appear with a little more oomph (more RAM at the minimum) so apps aren’t restricted to the power of the first generation.
The iPad makes everything look great from a performance standpoint, but the real truth is this: Google’s Nexus One has more oomph under the hood than the iPad… the same goes for other smartphones out there. We were hoping for 1GB of RAM in the iPad and 512MB of RAM in the next iPhone. Even if that amount of RAM isn’t necessary in a mobile product, Apple has decided it’s unnecessary for the next year at minimum.
Check out iFixit’s new beta program they’re launching when you visit the site; it looks awesome. We’ve already signed up as Rocky Mountain Mac Repair… if you’re a techie, you should too.
Explicit apps and iAds from Apple: iPhone OS 4 on its way.
Mar 26th
Earlier this evening, several sources reported a few interesting tidbits about Apple’s intentions for the coming weeks. It looks like Apple is continuing work on the rumored “explicit” category for applications. They’re also said to release a new product called “iAds” (the name appears to be pure speculation) on April 7th.
Let’s hit the explicit category first… we’ve been very vocal about the content that Apple approves and then denies access to the App Store. We hope you haven’t forgotten about the App Store Boob War that happened last month. We still haven’t seen many of those applications make it back into the top 25, 50… or even back into the App Store at all. Maybe Apple is trying to figure out a way to make it work. Their dictatorship is costing a lot of those developers money at the moment; the sooner we see an explicit offering the better. There’s obviously no guarantee here, but the fact that there are [Link opens iTunes] links to such a category within iTunes is very promising.
Now for the iAds. Has anyone thought about the implications of an announcement on April 7th? Come on! Not that hard. We all know that iPhone OS 3.2 is going to show up on our machines any day now, and we also know that Apple hasn’t gone a year without releasing an iPhone SDK for a new version of the OS before the next revision of the device. They’re running out of time. What MediaPost suggests is just an unveiling of a new advertising system for the iPhone OS — we believe they’re looking in the wrong direction — will most likely be the developer build of iPhone SDK 4.0. Why?
It’s easy. First, as we mentioned above, Apple hasn’t gone a year without a new build of the OS since its announcement. Second, said announcement needs to be before the next release of the device (potentially July). Third, to release a completely new ad scheme to the iPhone OS would require a completely new build of the OS. There’s no way developers and news sources missed something this big in the 3.2 SDK… it’s just not possible. We, along with everyone else, are assuming that Apple will be using their January 2010 purchase of Quattro Wireless to integrate a custom ad system into the iPhone OS. We’re all for it. If you can make my ads intuitive and informative, then I might actually use them. As it stands, ads are cumbersome, annoying, and intrusive. We’ll leave it up to Apple’s marketing and user interface gods and goddesses to re-define and give structure to the mobile advertising industry. Someone needs to do it, why not Apple?
So, explicit content will be making its way to the App Store soon — and — we may see iPhone OS 4.0 as soon as April 7th. We knew that Apple couldn’t go through the Spring without doing something in addition to the iPad. We’re thankful.
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