GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

Apple’s “There’s an app for that” slogan is so catchy that it’s endlessly parroted by the media, so it’s understandable why the company would request a trademark for the phrase. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently complied.

Just last week the U.S. PTO awarded Apple with the “There an app for that” trademark, which the Cupertino company filed for in December 2009. The trademark covers usage of the phrase in relation to retail store services featuring computer software and services.

In other words, the trademark won’t end the cheesy “There’s an app for that” jokes we see in blog posts and articles almost every day. (Glancing at the list below, you’ll see we’re guilty of the crime as well.) But it will prevent competing tech companies from pilfering the phrase for similar products.

Apple in 2009 started using the phrase “There’s an app for that” in TV ads to show off the multitude of apps available for iOS devices through its popular App Store, which opened July 2008. The App Store now serves over 250,000 apps for iPads, iPhones and iPod Touch devices.

From TUAW

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

IOS hacker extraordinaire MuscleNerd has successfully jailbroken the Apple TV, before many pre-orders have even been filled. This gives the user “root” access to the operating system, allowing them to install or tweak anything they like.

What MuscleNerd hasn’t figure out yet is how to actually get apps running on the AppleTV. Given that the set-top box has the same A4 processor found in the iPhone 4, iPad and iPod Touch, and is loaded with 8GB RAM, it shouldn’t be long before this is solved. Here’s a video showing MuscleNerd logging in to his AppleTV from a Mac via the terminal.

There is just one app installed on the AppleTV. Named Lowtide, it is the front-end you see when you use the device. Lowtide has already been loaded and run on the latest-gen iPod Touch

Where will this lead? Well, expect apps especially written for a jailbroken AppleTV to start popping up as soon as MuscleNerd and his colleagues work out how to run them. This could mean anything from Hulu+ to games. Imagine playing old Super Nintendo games on your big screen TV using your iPhone as a controller. Far-fetched? You can already do it on your iPad.

SHAttered AppleTV 2G [YouTube]

SHAttered iPod touch 4G (and AppleTV) [iPhone Dev Team Blog]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The new Apple TV could be Steve Jobs’ best sleight-of-hand trick yet.

During his modest introduction of the device, Jobs called the Apple TV “one more hobby.” But a closer look at the code and the hardware powering the Apple TV reveals that there’s a lot more going on under the hood than the CEO shared.

Interestingly, Jobs didn’t mention that Apple TV runs iOS, the same operating system running on its flagship product, the iPhone, and some other big hits the iPod Touch and iPad. And there’s more, too: The Apple TV’s software might already be jailbroken, and some hidden software should eventually allow you to share the Apple TV’s media with other iOS devices.

These secret ingredients could be the recipe Apple needs to shake up the television industry. For years, Apple executives have labeled the set-top box a “hobby” product because of its mild success compared to blockbuster sellers like the iPhone and iPod. Now that Apple TV has been revamped into a streaming rental service with an arsenal of stealth features, maybe Apple has a chance to change the TV business if not today, perhaps later.

“The most importanthint ofApple’s real ambitions in the living room come fromAirPlay, whichputs iPhones and iPads in the driver’s seat and makes theTVjust an outputdevice for theAppleecosystem,” said James McQuivey, a Forrester analyst, in a recent e-mail statement. “ExpectAppleto gradually push more and morein that direction, but as of this moment in 2010,Applehas not yet made asignificant play for control of theTV.”

Here, we round up the juicy tidbits we’ve heard about Apple’s mysterious new set-top box.

iOS and third-party app support

There’s more than enough evidence proving that the Apple TV runs iOS. Dispelling any doubts, Apple recently posted a build of iOS 4.1 specifically for the Apple TV.

This piece of information about iOS is important because of a new feature called AirPlay, which streams media from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch to the Apple TV. When Jobs demonstrated AirPlay, he only showed the feature working with an iPad’s built-in video player, photos app and music library. Now that we know Apple TV runs iOS, it’s likely that third-party apps such as MLB at Bat or ABC Player will be able stream media to the set-top box, too.

DaringFireball blogger John Gruber confirmed that an AirPlay button is showing up in the MLB at Bat app, and he adds that apps using the built-in media controller will be able to integrate AirPlay.

Long story short, you’ll be able to wirelessly stream media from some third-party apps straight to your Apple TV with an AirPlay button. AirPlay is shaping up to be Apple’s secret weapon to reshape home entertainment.

In addition to AirPlay, the fact that Apple TV is running iOS means that — in principle, at least — it may someday be able to run applications from the iTunes App Store. For now, that capability is not included in Apple TV, but the underlying operating system certainly supports it, so Apple might open a TV App Store in a future software update.

Jailbreaking hacks

Third-party app support will probably be limited for the Apple TV, but that’s where the jailbreakers come in. In the same way that we’re able to override restrictions on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch with a jailbreak, we should be able to run unauthorized apps on the Apple TV — something Jobs would never advertise, of course.

In fact, hackers already have a head start, because a tool called Shatter, which was used to jailbreak the newest iPod Touch, already works with the Apple TV, according to the iPhone Dev Team. That means we should be expecting hackers to code some unauthorized apps soon to unlock additional capabilities such as video-conferencing via your Apple TV.

On top of that, existing hacks for the old Apple TV should work, too.Dev Team memberWill Strafach explained thatthe new AppleTV OS seems to be a mashup of the old AppleTV OS and iOS, meaning “frappliances,” plug-ins that add functionality to the old Apple TV, should work as well.

‘Lowtide’ app

The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s Erica Sadun, a popular iOS programmer, took a close look at the Apple TV’s software and discovered that it runs an application called “Lowtide” the software containing the set-top box’s media interface.

Sadun dug deeper and found lines of code that suggest that Lowtide might eventually be extended to other iOS devices. In other words, you should be able to share media from the Apple TV to your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, whereas originally we thought we’d only be able to do the converse with AirPlay. This functionality would be comparable to a Slingbox or an EyeTV.

Lowtide isn’t readily available for Apple’s iOS mobile devices yet, but iOS developerDustin Howett has already managed to load Lowtide on an iPod touch running iOS 4.1, demonstrated in the video above. He recommended against doing it yourself, though, unless you plan on reformatting your iPhone on a regular basis just to turn it back into a phone.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Soon, thanks to the tireless efforts of the iPhone Dev Team, you will be able to install apps on your AppleTV. An upcoming Jailbreak tool, called SHAtter, has already been used to unlock the new Apple TV’s firmware.

SHAtter was used to jailbreak the newest iPod Touch shortly after its launch, and thanks to its iOS roots, the AppleTV is also susceptible to its power. The hack was carried out on the firmware restore download just been posted by Apple. This file, which contains the entire OS of the Apple TV, is an IPSW file, the file-extension for iPhone and iPad OS files.

So what’s inside? According to the Dev Team member Will Strafach, “the new AppleTV OS seems to be a mashup of the old AppleTV OS and iOS.” This, he says, means that existing AppleTV hacks (or “frappliances”) may already work. Frappliances are the plugins that add functionality to the original AppleTV. Also, all of the iOS software frameworks are present, which could allow hacks to enable video-conferencing, for example (if you could figure out how to hook up a camera) or even let you install the iPad Hulu app.

I suspect that Apple will add apps to the AppleTV in the form of channels, just like the Netflix “channel” that is there already. A jailbroken AppleTV, though, could theoretically run anything that will run on the iPhone or iPad. A final word from Strafach: “The most interesting thing about the new AppleTV OS is that all binaries are marked iPad-compatible. I do wonder what Apple is planning…”

SHAttered iPod touch 4G (and Apple TV) [Dev Team Blog]

@willstraf [Twitter]

Illustration: Charlie Sorrel

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

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Syncing data between a smartphone and a cable is a lousy chore (I’m looking at you, iTunes), but fortunately you can juggle a lot of your files in the “cloud” (i.e. wirelessly over an internet connection) with Dropbox-powered apps. As of today, these apps are showcased in a directory, which should really come in handy for smartphone users.

It can be a little tricky to explain, so take how I use Dropbox as an example: I read digital documents often. While browsing the web on my Mac, I’ll see a PDF I want to read later. I drag and drop the PDF into my Dropbox, and then on my iPad or iPhone I launch the Dropbox app. When I select the PDF, Dropbox gives me the option of loading the document with other third-party apps that are designed for PDF-reading such as iBooks or GoodReader. Choose an app and the file loads there instead, leaving the Dropbox app.

So basically, there are a bunch of third-party apps designed to handle different types of media that are using the Dropbox API to spare you the trouble of wired syncing or e-mailing yourself files. And Dropbox just today launched a showcase displaying which apps will cater to your wireless lifestyle.

Dropbox is available on several mobile platforms: BlackBerry, iOS, Android, Windows Mobile.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Apple’s newly relaxed iOS developer rules allowed third-party programming tools to be used to program apps for the App Store. However, the move didn’t do much for Adobe, who sells a tool that automatically converts Flash programs into iPhone apps.

Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen said during an earnings conference call that the revised iOS developer rules had a “muted” short-term impact on Adobe product sales, according toThe Wall Street Journal.

In other words, when the news broke about Apple’s new developer rules, programmers didn’t rush out to buy Adobe Creative Suite 5, which includesAdobe’s Packager for iPhone, out of excitement over the opportunity to code Flash apps that they could also sell to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch customers.

This is hardly a surprise. Every iOS developer I’ve spoken to has agreed that anybody serious about creating iOS apps is going to use Apple’s native SDK in order to get the best results. The people who would’ve wanted to create iOS apps using Flash were probably already Flash developers to begin with, hence the “muted” effect on sales.

That doesn’t go to say that the removal of the restrictions was trivial. When Apple imposed the ban on third-party toolkits (notoriously known as section 3.3.1 of the iOS developer agreement) it sparkedcontroversy among programmers debating about the implications on creative freedom in the App Store.

Also, there was some collateral damage incurred on creators beyond Adobe. For example, the app Scratch, which displayed stories, games and animations made by children using MITs Scratch platform, waspulled from the App Store.

John McIntosh, creator of the Scratch app, said on Twitter that he was stillawaiting a response from Apple on whether Scratch would be approved in the App Store in light of the new developer rules.

See Also:

• Apple Eases App Development Rules, Adobe Surges
• Apple Answers Questions About App Rejections, Raises Others …
• Apple Rejects Kid-Friendly Programming App
• Steve Jobs Debates Developers Over Apple’s New App Policy

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Image from InformationArchitects.jp

In design and intent, the iPad is a focus-producing machine. Nearly the entire device is a screen, and every application consumes the entire screen. Information Architects’ new Writer app brings that same hyperfocused aesthetic to word-processing.

Writer is not, like Pages, a desktop publishing application. It’s not really even a textual editor, in the sense that it supports easy correction or rearrangement of already-typed text. When you put the application in “Focus Mode,” it doesn’t even have spellcheck or cut-and-paste. Instead, it’s all about textual production — writing this phrase, this sentence, this word at this moment. As the creators note, “the idea is to activate it when you get stuck, blinding out everything else.”

It’s not particularly customizable, but again, that’s the point. Don’t screw around picking out margins or a font. We’ve picked it for you — and it’s already optimized for your screen. There are a few smart additions, like Dropbox integration and a “reading time” feature that estimates how long it will take a reader to make their way through your text.

More features and tweaks are (naturally) promised for future versions, as is a desktop app. According to iA, it would actually have been easier to release the desktop application first, but the iPad offered something unique: “In spite of its passive character, the awkward keyboard, the stubborn iOS and its many other faults, the iPad has the power to drag you in and make you forget about the world around you.”

Version 1.0 dropped today and is available in the Apple Store for $4.99. With the iPad getting printing with iOS 4.2, there’s a good chance we may see see document production apps for iOS, each offering something distinctive, explode.

H/T to Liz Danzico/Bobulate.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

If you really, really have to have a physical, clickety-clackety keyboard to get your words onto a screen, the Jorno might be just the thing. The Bluetooth keyboard gives you the full QWERTY experience but folds up into a pocketable package. The keys themselves are just 15% smaller than full-size, big enough for touch-typists with accurate and not-too-fat fingers.

After key-feel, which you’ll have to try for yourself, the next most important specification is size. Folded out the Jorno is 8.5 x 3.5 x 0.3-inches. Concertinaed closed it measures just 3.5 x 3.5 x 0.9-inches, and all the time it weighs the same 8.8-ounces, including the li-ion battery which lasts a month.

A keyboard like this is clearly best suited to the iPhone, as fast typing is pretty easy on the iPad’s larger screen. With this in mind, the Jorno ships with a separate stand for phones. It will of course work with anything that uses the Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR standard, and Jorno has a photo of an iPad balancing precariously on the small bracket.

Small, add-on Bluetooth keyboards seem to be getting more popular, or at least more numerous, since Apple opened up its iDevices to allow them. I have a feeling that the multi-year delay in allowing these accessories wasn’t for technical reasons but for training purposes, to get us used to the soft touchscreen keyboards. It worked, too. You almost never hear griping about the iPhone keyboard anymore.

The Jorno can be pre-ordered now, for $100 (with $20 off until the end of October 2010).

Jorno keyboard product page [Jorno via Cult of Brownlee]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

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Apple TV image from Apple.com

There have been two mysteries about the new Apple TV. 1) Was it still running the old Apple TV’s “Back Row” version of OS X? 2) Just how small is its new pared-down hard drive? Mystery #1 has been solved: just like the iPhone and iPad, Apple TV is now running iOS 4.

This is important for two reasons:

1. Right now, there are no apps (and no app marketplace) for Apple TV. Now we know there could be — and not on some imagined next-generation device, but this one, in the not-too-distant future.
2. The new Apple TV could be amenable to the same jailbreaking techniques that have worked on the iPhone and iPad — so even if Apple doesn’t start a TV app store, someone could start their own if they’re willing to live on the wild side.

Both of these consequences, though, are still a teensy bit dependent on the answer to that other mystery. Until we get a teardown, nobody’s sure exactly how much storage the new Apple TV is packing. There might not be room enough to store a whole bunch of apps, even if you could sideload them through that teensy micro-USB port.

I’ll let Chris Foresman at Ars Technica explain how we know Apple TV is running iOS:

Apple stores configuration information about how various iOS devices can communicate with other devices over its dock connector in a file called USBDeviceConfiguration.plist. Entries in this file have revealed early evidence of new iPhone and iPod models, and an entry labelled “iProd” later turned out to be the first iPad.

An entry in iOS 3.2 was referred to as iProd2,1, and we suspected that it was likely an early prototype of a next-gen iPad. However, an updated configuration file in iOS 4.2b1 reveals the same numeric product ID is attached to an entry for AppleTV2,1, referring to the second major hardware revision of the Apple TV. This presents solid evidence that the new Apple TV is running iOS proper, instead of the other customized version of Mac OS X used for the previous onethat should save Apple from duplicated development effort.

So if Apple TV is running iOS now, why not announce it and invite people to start making apps for it? Wouldn’t that get everyone more excited about the relaunch of Apple TV? I could think of two reasons why they wouldn’t:

1. There’s no natural interface to run existing iOS apps on Apple TV: no touchscreens TVs, definitely no multitouch, no accelerometers, no camera, etc. Until one or more of those things change, or somebody writes some nifty code to make a remote control do the same thing, you can’t port apps over. If that changes, it’s off to the races.
2. The App Store is already fragmented; not all apps work on every device, or even the same device running different versions of iOS. Throwing Apple TV in the mix, with a bunch of TV-specific applications that might or might not work terribly well on the iPad or iPhone, just makes the store more confusing. And Apple’s trying to make its TV products, especially, as simple as possible.

Confirmed: ‘iProd 2′ is the new Apple TV (TUAW)

Source:wired.com

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Happy news for iPhone- and iPad-using fans of the $10 standard flavor of office/productivity suite Documents To Go: Yesterday, version 4.0 was released for iOS. The $15 Documents To Go Premium hit 4.0 last week.

These were the first updates of the application following Blackberry-maker RIM’s partial acquisition of Documents To Go creators DataViz. RIM had announced that it had reassigned the majority of the company’s employees to developing applications for Blackberry smartphones and the Blackpad tablet; this had cast some doubt on future updates of Documents to Go for other platforms.

Still, this may be the last major update Documents To Go will see for iOS. We can assume that 4.0 was mostly in the can when RIM bought DataViz’s assets early this month. If RIM does indeed let multi-platform development of Documents To Go slide, that creates an opening for many would-be/could-be competitors — including Microsoft Office.

DataViz keeps Documents To Go updates coming [MacWorld]

Source:wired.com

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Apple on Thursday published a set of rules about the types of content that aren’t allowed in the iOS App Store, answering questions that have been bugging software developers and customers for years while introducing some new ambiguities.

Still, it’s an important step. By publishing the guidelines, Apple mobile customers will be able to know what they can and can’t get on an iOS device versus, say, an Android phone. Also, third-party programmers will have a clearer sense of whether or not to invest in developing an app, whereas before they were subject to rejection without knowing what they weren’t allowed to do. However, some developers think parts of the guidelines could be more clear.

“By no means is what they put out today perfect,” said Justin Williams, developer of Second Gear software, who quit iPhone development last year. “There are some vague areas. Butcompared to where we were yesterday, it’s a big improvement.”

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has described the App Store as a “curated platform” that is regulated to ensure a high quality, secure experience for customers. iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch get third-party applications through the App Store, and Apple must approve any software before it can be sold through the store. Unless you hack your iOS device, the App Store is the only way to get additional native software.

The regulated App Store model deviates from the traditional experience of owning a PC, where customers can typically purchase and install any software that’s compatible with their computers. Critics have argued that by curating the iOS platform, Apple tightly controls the mobile devices that customers own as well as the developers who create software for them.

Additionally, by not publishing the guidelines on its iOS app review policy, programmers were left guessing as to what they were allowed to create, potentially putting a bottleneck on their innovation. Publishing the list of app review guidelines a step that Wired.com called for Apple to take in a previous editorial addresses this potential problem of self-censorship.

“Hopefully it will give developers increased confidence when starting projects,” said Jamie Montgomerie, developer of theEucalyptus book-reading app, which was approved by Apple after its controversial rejection. “I suspect there are a lot of interesting apps that were never made because people were scared of the approval process.”

Apple’s seven-page list of guidelines splits reasons for app rejections into 11 categories. Reasons for rejection range from technical to editorial offenses: Apps that crash will be rejected, for example, and apps that defame people in a mean-spirited way are rejected, with the exception of political satirists and humorists.

“We hope they will help you steer clear of issues as you develop your app, so that it speeds through the approval process when you submit it,” Apple said in a statement Thursday about the app guidelines.

The publication of the guidelines is a major step toward transparency for a company as opaque as Apple. Since the App Store opened in 2008, critics scrutinized the App Store for its undisclosed editorial guidelines, which resulted in seemingly arbitrary rejections of a wide variety of applications.

For example, Apple in 2009 rejected an app called Me So Holy, which enabled iPhone users to edit their self-portraits to look like Jesus Christ. However, Apple that year approved Baby Shaker, a game that involved shaking a baby to death. Apple later pulled Baby Shaker, admitting its approval was a mistake.

Because of its unclear app approval system, some developers gave up on making content for the App Store because they couldn’t be sure that an app would be a wise investment of their time and money. Second Gear developer Williams said he quit iPhone development last year because Apple didn’t disclose its policies.

“One of the big reasons I got frustrated was I didn’t like the black box review system, which is basically you’re submitting your apps to the review process and you have no idea what the review process is,” Williams said. “I think [Apple publishing guidelines] is a good step towards being more up front and honest about what the criteria is.”

However, Williams noted that there was still room for improvement, as several parts of the guidelines are still unclear. For example, one clause in the guidelines reads apps will be rejected if they duplicate functionality of other apps, “particularly if there are too many of them.” Williams said it was unclear how many is “too many,” and such vagueness could discourage developers from competing with other apps in the App Store.

It also remains a question as to whether Apple’s App Store is now allowing Adobe to join the iOS scene. In addition to publishing guidelines, Apple said in a press release that it was “relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to crease iOS apps, so long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This change was not detailed in Apple’s guidelines, but some are speculating that Adobe’s iPhone Packager,a tool to automatically convert Flash software into native iPhone apps, will be allowed — whereas before third-party app creation tools were banned. Wired.com’s Epicenter will have more to report soon on that aspect of Apple’s App Store revisions.

Brian X. Chen is author of an upcoming book about the always-connected mobile future titled Always On, due for publication Spring 2011. To keep up with his coverage in real time, follow @bxchen or @gadgetlab on Twitter.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Apple on Wednesday morning released a minor update for its mobile operating system iOS 4, which includes bug fixes and a new photography mode.

Apple last week said iOS 4.1 would address a proximity-sensor issue in the iPhone 4 and sluggish performance on the iPhone 3G, among other flaws.

In terms of features, iOS 4.1 introduces Game Center, a social network for iOS gamers, as well as high dynamic range (HDR) photo processing, which Wired.com demonstrated last week.

The update is compatible with the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, as well as every iPod touch except for the first-generation model. A few iOS 4.1 features are not available on some of the older devices.

To download iOS 4.1, connect your iOS device to your computer’s USB port, then launch iTunes. Under the device menu, select your iPhone or iPod Touch and click “Check for Update” and follow the on-screen instructions to install the update. Make sure to back up your data first!

In the mean time, iPad owners can’t get iOS 4 just yet. Apple said it would release iOS 4.2 in November for the iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone, unifying the devices into one tidy OS.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

If you’re planning on showing off your awesome gaming skills with Apple’s new Game Center, you’d better have a nice new iOS device to play on. Apple has released compatibility details for the fancy high-score table, and you’ll need to have an iPhone 3G or 4, and second-gen iPod Touch or better.

Game Center was demoed by Steve Jobs at last week’s iPod event. It’s kind of a social network for gaming, allowing you to compete against your friends and compare results on the leader-board, and even invite people to play multiplayer games head-to-head. Right now the most common way to taunt your friends is to share your results via Twitter or Facebook, but that requires a log-in for each and every game.

Of course, that old iPod might not have the guts to actually play some of the more demanding games available, but at least you can excuse yourself when you limp in at the bottom of the league-table by blaming your old, weak iPod’s stuttering frame-rate.

Game Center [Apple]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

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Abvio’s trio of motion-tracking iPhone fitness apps have been updated with a major new feature: they know when you stop.

This information isn’t used to detect the lazier amongst us, but to give more accurate readings of your times and average speed. The three apps, Cyclemeter, Runmeter and Walkmeter, now use GPS signals to detect when you stop moving. They then “roll back your elapsed time to when the stop started,” adding this chunk of time to a new “stopped time” counter. This means that when you next get stuck at the traffic lights (or stop for a beer), you won’t see your average speed

It’s a useful feature, and one that is curiously lacking on almost all other apps in the store. It joins some other neat options, too. First is the new calendar-sharing function, which automatically adds your workouts to your calendar, from whence they can sync across the cloud. Better is the integration of the iPhone’s inline remote, which can be used to stop and start the timer with the phone still in your pocket.

But perhaps best of all is the apps’ ghost-mode, which will project your previously recorded runs onto the map so you can compete against yourself. This, I don’t have to say, is lifted straight from Super Mario Kart and is quite awesome.

The apps cost $5, but it appears that you can just buy one and use it for cycling, running or walking (aka running slowly). Available now.

Abvio product page [Abvio. Thanks, Lori!]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

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The iPhone gets all the hype, but the iPod Touch is Apple’s second weapon of mass consumption constituting nearly 40 percent of the company’s mobile device sales, according to a report.

Apple has sold 45 million units of the iPod Touch over its lifetime out of the 120 million iOS devices shipped overall, according to estimates by market research firm Asymco. That’s a hefty number relative to the 60 million iPhones Apple sold through June and the 3.2 million iPads sold to date.

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPod Touch, he called it “training wheels for the iPhone.” The phoneless, contract-free device has easily found an audience: younger people who likely can’t afford hefty smartphone plans but still crave the iOS experience. A study in 2009 found that 69 percent of iPod Touch users are between 13 to 24 years old, whereas 74 percent of iPhone owners are older than 25. The study also found that iPhone owners were generally wealthier than iPod Touch customers.

In a separate post, research firm Asymco questioned why other manufacturers haven’t produced “clones” of the iPod Touch to compete with Apple like they have with the iPhone and the iPad.

“If cloners are rushing to copy the iPad, why not its smaller incarnation?” the company asked.

It’s a worthwhile question. In terms of features and price, the closest competitor to the Touch so far has been the Zune HD, which some observers criticized for having a poorly executed launch. When Microsoft released the Zune HD in September 2009, the device included a few applications handpicked by Microsoft staff, but the platform was not open to third-party developers to offer additional software. In other words, there was no app store to compete with Apple’s gigantic iOS ecosystem. Other than music and video playback capabilities, it was unclear on day one what else the Zune HD could do.

Meanwhile, there are rumors that the Zune HD will be overhauled with Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Phone 7 operating system, which will launch with an app store. Perhaps then the Zune HD might rise as a serious contender to the Touch.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Apple is preparing to announce a major revamp for the Apple TV and upgrades for the popular iPod Touch in an event scheduled for early September, according to a report.

Citing two anonymous sources, Bloomberg claims that Apple will hold a special press event on Sept. 7 in San Francisco to introduce the new products along with a new iTunes rental service for TV programs, as Wired.com’s Epicenter reported Tuesday.

Repeating previous rumors about Apple TV, Bloomberg said a new version of the device would cost $100 and include a smaller hard drive, as it will be designed primarily for streaming content from iTunes. Other reports have claimed Apple would rebrand the device iTV and ship it with its mobile operating system iOS, which could potentially mean the television device will have an app store to enhance its functionality.

Bloomberg’s report also claims Apple will announce an upgraded iPod Touch, sporting a high-resolution display like the iPhone 4. Previous rumors add that like the iPhone 4, the next iPod Touch will include dual cameras.

For several years, Apple has held an annual September event devoted to iTunes and iPods. It would make sense for Apple to unveil a new Apple TV at this year’s event, because a TV-streaming media service would likely be accompanied by a new version of iTunes capable of online storage.

It’s also likely that Apple will release a software update for iPad customers, iOS 4, which will bring multitasking capability, among other features, to the popular tablet.

Photo of Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone 4 at WWDC 2010: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

A pair of software updates from Apple have patched the rather dangerous security hole that allowed any website to run arbitrary code on the iPhone and iPad. The hole was exploited by hacker Comex to allow users to jailbreak their iOS devices just by visiting a website and tapping a link.

The hack actually used two exploits. One used a corrupted font in a PDF to allow any code to be run on your device. The second leap-frogged the first and allowed that code to get super-user, or root, privileges, letting it install anything, anywhere on the system.

Comex’ hack opened up your iPhone an allowed you to install non-App Store apps on it, but the security hole could have been used to do almost anything to your phone. To Apple users, used to the almost impregnable fortress that it Mac OS X, this is terrifying.

Two fixes are available: iOS 4.0.2 for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and iOS 3.2.2 for the iPad. Users who didn’t upgrade their iPhone’s to iOS 4 can rest easy. Your device is not affected. And what happens now when you visit JailbreakMe.com? You see the screen above, and the jailbreak will no longer work.

The update is available now via iTunes.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Not only does a “death grip” cut into your phone’s ability to connect, it also increases the amount of radio-frequency radiation it’s pumping out.

Now you can see exactly how much more radiation your head is absorbing, with an app that estimates the RF output of your smartphone in real time.

Israeli mobile software company Tawkon Monday released a video that shows its app measuring the impact a “death grip” can have on a mobile device’s radiation. Using the app, an iPhone 4, BlackBerry Bold, and Google Nexus One all show a significant increase in RF radiation when held tightly in the user’s palm.

That’s to be expected: Whenever a cellphone has difficulty connecting with a cell tower, it increases its RF output in order to maintain the connection. Anything that interferes with that connection — be it a death grip, stepping into an elevator, or locating yourself in a low-signal area — will increase any phone’s RF output.

So is Tawkon suggesting that the infamous “death grip” can actually be detrimental to the user’s health?

“Tawkon doesnt advocate that the death grip is necessarily unsafe, because final answers on the health ramifications of mobile phone usage wont be known for decades, until researchers have had that time to track long-term usage and impact,” Tawkon co-founder Amit Lubovsky told Wired. ”However, recent studies do indicate a health impact of mobile phone radiation on mobile phone users, especially on people whose usage is termed excessive and cumulative. Until the long-term studies are concluded (decades from now), Tawkon believes consumers should have the right and ability to minimize their exposure to mobile phone radiation.”

Most ongoing studies cannot yet draw a causal link between cell phone usage and physical disorders, and Tawkon should know, since the company follows many of these studies.

The World Health Organization’s Interphone study, <a href="http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2010/pdfs/pr200_E.pdf
“>released in May, could draw no causal link between glioma/meningioma and cell phone use. However, it noted, “There were suggestions of an increased risk of glioma, and much less so meningioma, in the highest decile of cumulative call time, in subjects who reported usual phone use on the same side of the head as their tumour and, for glioma, for tumours in the temporal lobe.”

A 2009 study from the Environmental Working Group measured the radiation from more than 1,200 mobile phone models. While the EWG study could not draw any conclusions as to the risks of mobile phone use, it did provide the beginnings of the group’s database of mobile phones and their emissions.

Currently, the group ranks the Motorola Droid, iPhone 3GS, Google Nexus One, BlackBerry Bold 9700, and Samsung Instinct HD as the top five most radio-emissive phones. All of them, however, fall within the FCC’s acceptable SAR (specific absorption rate) limit of 1.6 watts per kilogram (1.6 W/kg).

The Tawkon application gets all its information about the phone’s radiation from the cellular protocol stack that manages the baseband modem.

“We use this information in the form of different RF parameters extracted from the device itself,” Lubovsky said. “We then take into consideration the proximity of the phone to the user –for example if the phone is held against the users ear or on the users lap– to help determine the actual exposure level at any given time.”

“As part of the production procedure we have, each device goes through a long calibration process in an RF lab prior to its release to make sure that our measurements meet the actual values,” he continued.

Tawkon is only available on the BlackBerry platform via App World, Mobihand, and Handango, but not on Android or iOS as shown in the video.

“It works on the iPhone but were waiting for Apple approval to make it publicly available,” Lubovsky said. “Android is expected to launch very soon.”

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Oh man. If the LiveRider is anywhere near as good as it looks, then it’s going to sell roughly one zillion units. It’s a hardware/software combo that turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a cycling computer, and it looks pretty hot.

First, the hardware. It comprises a frame-mounted sensor which cable-ties onto the chainstay and senses speed and cadence via magnets attached to the wheel and crank. This beams its info via 2.4 GHz RF to a dongle plugged in to the iPhone. The iPhone itself sits snug in a shock-absorbing handlebar-mount.

You then fire up the free companion app and get access to all the usual data: speed, cadence, calories burned and so on, but on the big screen and in easy-to-view color. If you have GPS in your iDevice, it will also use that to let you know where you are.

My favorite feature is called “Chase Rider”, and it is like nothing so much as the ghost-driver feature in Super Mario Kart. It will remember past rides and play them back so you can race against your own best times. Neat.

The whole setup weighs in at just 3-ounces, and costs a very reasonable $100. You will, of course, need to supply your own iPhone (everything fits except the first and last iPhones). Available now.

LiveRider [New Potato Tech]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Attention wannabe supervillains: Putting your own, personal satellite into orbit is not such a far-fetched idea after all. Interorbital Systems, which makes rockets and spacecrafts, created a kit last year that lets almost anyone with a passion for electronics and space build a satellite. The $8,000 kit includes the price of the launch.

The company is now ready to launch its first sub-orbital test flights in California next month.

“$8,000? That’s just the price of a cool midlife crisis,” says Alex “Sandy” Antunes, who bought one of the kits for a project that will launch on one of earliest flights. “You could buy a motorcycle or you could launch a satellite. What would you rather do?”

The hexadecagon-shaped personal satellite, called TubeSat, weighs about 1.65 pounds and is a little larger than a rectangular Kleenex box. TubeSats will be placed in self-decaying orbits 192 miles above the earth’s surface. Once deployed, they can put out enough power to be picked up on the ground by a hand-held amateur radio receiver. After operating for a few months, TubeSat will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up.

“It is a pico satellite that can be a very low cost space-based platform for experimentation or equipment testing,” says Randa Milliron, CEO and founder of Interorbital Systems.

About 20 kits have been sold and 14 more are in the process of being handed over to customers, says Milliron.

Once the bastion of NASA and commercial satellite services, space has now become the final frontier for the do-it-yourselfer next door. Several companies are developing space products that range from orbiting payloads to lunar landers. The burgeoning private space industry has even spawned companies planning space hotels. And last month, SpaceX, a company founded by Tesla and PayPal’s Elon Musk, successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket into orbit.

TubeSat is different because it lets and hobbyist engineers and astronomers build the satellite themselves. Each TubeSat kit includes the satellite’s structural components, a printed circuit board, Gerber files (essentially blueprints), electronic components, solar cells, batteries, transceiver, antennas, microcomputer and some programming tools.

“It’s not as easy as building a little car model from a hobby shop, but it is doable with a soldering iron and a little practice,” says Antunes. “A single person in their basement can build this satellite.”

A fully built satellite must be returned to Interorbital Systems, which will launch it into space.

TubeSat could be used for applications such as biological experiments, testing of electronic components in space, or video imaging from space.

It doesn’t always have to be a scientific experiment. Antunes’ project, called ‘Project Calliope,’ will use magnetic, thermal and light sensors to detect information in the ionosphere and transmit the data back to earth in the form of sound. That sound is almost like space music, he says.

“Just like people have taken ambient sound and used it in music, artists can take this and create something out of it.” says Antunes.

Antunes, who got his personal satellite kit a few months ago, says he the equipment for Project Calliope is almost ready but he still has to put together the kit.

“I need a DIY person to make the boards, get the extra electronics, add the instruments and hook everything together,” he says. “The project management takes much longer than the technology.”

Once the TubeSat satellite is ready, Antunes hopes to start testing the equipment for his Project Calliope to ensure the electronics can withstand the rigors of space, including the shaking during launch.

“A lot of off-the-shelf electronics does well in space because you don’t have to worry about about water or weather,” says Antunes. “But it still has to be tested for vacuum, shielded from the sun and the cold.”

And after all, if the launch fails, Antunes isn’t worried. Interorbital Systems has promised him a free second attempt.

Photo: NASA’s ICESat/ NASA

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Mozilla’s Firefox Home iPhone and iPad app has been approved by Apple and is ready to grab from the App Store. Yes, you read right. Firefox is ready to use on iOS devices, but it’s not quite what it seems.

Firefox home is little more than a way to sync your Firefox desktop browser history, bookmarks and open tabs to your iPhone. It will also work as a browser, but instead of the slow, annoying Gecko rendering engine it uses the same speedy built-in webkit engine as Safari.

It also takes a lot more setting-up than the built-in solution. To sync bookmarks with desktop Safari, you just check a box in iTunes. By contrast, to get Firefox Home working you need to follow a ten-step plan, involving installing sync plugins into desktop Firefox, making up passwords and inventing a “secret phrase”. Worse, you get this caveat in the instructions: “Note: The initial sync may take up to 24 hours.”

Once you have managed that, everything is automatic, and the iPhone app refreshes every time it is launched. It could be very handy for quickly moving the web-page you are viewing over to your iPad, but otherwise it seems kind of clunky. Still, it is at least free, unlike Safari. Wait. No. What?

How to set up Firefox Home on your iPhone [Mozilla]

Firefox Home [iTunes]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The major new feature of Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 4, is multitasking. What took the company so long? Apple claims it was waiting to get multitasking just right before unleashing the feature for twashe iPhone. Meanwhile, the Android OS and Palm Web OS have supported multitasking just fine for over a year.

However, each platform handles multitasking quite differently. Let’s take a closer look at how each mobile OS’s multitasking works.

Apple iOS 4

How you use it
When you press the Home button twice, Apple’s iOS 4 displays a “drawer” allowing you to switch between apps. The drawer shows your most recently used apps. This is similar to the “alt-tab” functionality we’re accustomed to on traditional PCs.

What’s going on
When you leave an app in iOS 4, it’s not actually closing (unlike previous versions of the OS). Instead, it’s going into frozen, suspended animation, sitting inertly in the background. So when you relaunch an app, it opens instantly to pick up from where it left off before you “closed” it. That behavior allows you to switch between apps very quickly a feature called Fast App Switching, which is the core functionality of Apple’s iOS multitasking. (TidBITS has an excellent in-depth explanation of Fast App Switching.)

Fast App Switching isn’t all iOS 4 multitasking does, as there are a few exceptions for specific types of apps. Apple allows apps that play audio, connect with voice-over-IP or use location detection to run quietly in the background while one thread is still active. So that’s why, for example, you can leave the Pandora app, and the music will still be playing in the background while you check your e-mail. Likewise, you can leave Skype while on a VoIP call, and you won’t hang up on your buddy while you’re browsing Safari, for example. Third, you can leave a mapping app or a fitness tracker like RunKepper and come back to it, and it’ll still have a lock on your location.

It’s up to third-party app developers, of course, to tell their apps to behave this way with the new iOS 4 software development kit.

Another sort of background activity iOS supports is push notifications, which keeps a specific internet port active while the iPhone is in hibernation, so you can receive e-mails, instant messages and alerts even when the screen is off. These alerts pop up on the screen in the same way as an SMS on the iPhone.

Wired: Fast App Switching is indeed fast and stylish, avoids draining battery. All apps are constantly running inertly, so you can quickly switch between them all.

Tired: Only allows a single application thread to continue running; only certain kinds of activities are allowed to run in the background. Push notifications scream for your attention at the center of the screen.

Android OS

How you use it
Hold down the Home button and a tray appears showing the apps running in the background. Switch to another app and it instantly opens.

What’s going on
Android’s multitasking behavior is by far the most complicated to explain.

In Android, when a user switches to another application, the app you switched from doesn’t shut down: Its process is kept around in the background, allowing it to continue working (e.g., for downloading web pages in the background while doing something else), and come immediately to the foreground if the user returns to it. If the smartphone is running low on memory, Android starts killing off unnecessary processes to free up resources.

If a user later returns to an application that’s been killed, Android re-launches it in the same state as it was last seen, by keeping track of the parts of the application the user is aware of, and restarting them in the last state they were seen in. This last state is generated each time the user rotates the screen or leaves the application.

There are two basic components to control what apps can do in the background. Apps with “broadcast receivers” go into the background and wait to go off in an event, such as an alarm going off at a certain time, or if you receive a notification from Google’s server for getting a new message in Gmail. The other background component is called a “service,” which instructs an app to perform a task such as music playback or turn-by-turn navigation for a certain amount of time in the background. It’s up to the third-party app developers to embed these components in their apps to behave these ways in the background.

Wired: Apps can stay fully functional while running in the background. Notification tray makes it easy for apps to give you information without interrupting what you’re doing. Users don’t have to manually quit apps when memory is running low: Android does that for you.

Tired: Getting multitasking to work just right is a lot of work for developers.

HP WebOS

How you use it
The HP (formerly Palm) WebOS displays apps as “cards.” Each card acts similar to a tab in a desktop web browser. You move between activities using gestures (swipe forward, swipe back, hold to readjust the positioning of the cards), and when you’re finished with an activity, you can throw the card off the screen to quit the application.

What’s going on
WebOS allocates resources (memory, processor cycles, network access) to each card based on requests from the cards. The System Manager prioritizes the card in the foreground when allocating resources. Apps in the background are placed in a semi-dormant state, and their access to services is restricted.

If an application that the user isn’t currently interacting with wants to get the user’s attention, the app can display information in the notification area at the bottom of the screen. The information sits in the dashboard until acted on or closed. (Therefore, you can do something in a foreground app while dealing with a notification, whereas on the iPhone a push notification shows up in the center of the screen interrupting your task until you close it or leave your current app.)

Activities in the background do not have access to certain battery-intensive services. For example, apps cannot access accelerometer data and their frequency of network access is reduced. Third-party games are paused in place when moved to the background, reducing both their CPU load and memory consumption.

Wired: The card interface is neat, and it feels very natural to switch between apps. Notifications appear at bottom of the screen, not interrupting your current task.

Tired: After launching a specific number of apps that reach your memory limit, you can’t launch anymore, and you have to manually quit an app before launching another.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews