Apple’s current practice of rejecting certain applications at the final hurdle - submission to the App Store - is disastrous for investor confidence. Developers are investing time and resources in the App Store marketplace and, if developers aren’t confident, they won’t invest in it. If developers - and serious developers at that - don’t invest, what’s the point?
You have to wonder if Apple wants the App Store to be a museum of poorly-designed nibware written by dilettante Mac OS X/iPhone OS switcher-developers and hobbyist students. That’s what will happen if companies who intend to invest serious resources in bringing an original idea to the App Store are denied a reasonable level of confidence in their expectation of profit.
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That said, Apple is now selecting for anti-competitive reasons. It came to light today that an app that will deliver a capability I really, really want was rejected by Apple because it replaces a feature in Apple’s own software. The app is called Podcaster and it would allow one to update podcasts directly on the device over wifi. I sync my iPhone to my Mac Pro - should I have to go home to put a new episode on my iPhone? I’d buy that app in a heartbeat.
Do you want a store in which every app in the “Productivity” category is a to-do list manager? That’s exactly what you’re going to get because, without some a priori assurance that your idea will be accepted, the only way to know what Apple likes and dislikes is to look at what’s already on the store. Clearly Apple can’t get themselves enough of those ticky boxes, so why not do “your take” on a list of text cells and checkmarks? Much safer bet than inventing something new.
I’m reading lots of complaints about the new iTunes 8 update causing horrific problems on Windows machines, including widespread reports of STOP errors, aka the Blue Screen of Death.
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An even bigger problem is Apple’s attitude toward its Windows customers. These additional software packages and drivers are being installed with no disclosure and no consent. A pile of software, including the troubled MobileMe service, is also being installed and enabled at startup on Windows machines, even where the user has no MobileMe account and, for that matter, no mobile device.
Apple’s Get a Mac ads love to tweak Microsoft for its frequent crashes. Someone from Apple needs to look in the mirror and realize that they’re the problem in this case.
MacRumors has a story on Pull My Finger, an iPhone App that plays a variety of fart sounds. The demo video shows that the app is clearly well done for what it is — it even vibrates the phone while it toots — but Apple rejected it:
We’ve reviewed your application Pull My Finger. We have determined that this application is of limited utility to the broad iPhone and iPod touch user community, and will not be published to the App Store.
With all the absolute crap that has made it into the store, which includes apps based on nothing more than sample code from Apple’s SDK, it seems ridiculous for Pull My Finger to be rejected on these grounds. The current number one app in the store is Koi Pond, which is utterly useless but extremely well-done.
One developer we consulted about the issue noted, “consumers are being scammed by [PC] OEMs on a large scale. OEMs will encourage customers to upgrade a 2GB machine to 4GB, even though the usable RAM might be limited to 2.3GB. This is especially a problem on high-end gaming machines that have huge graphics cards as well as lots of RAM.”
“Microsoft even changed the way the OS reports the amount of RAM available; rumor is, due to pressure from OEMs,” the developer told us. “In Vista and prior, it reported usable RAM, while in SP1 they changed it to report installed RAM ignoring the fact that much of the RAM was unusable due to overlap with video memory.” And so many PC users are installing 4GB of RAM in their PCs and thinking that it is being used by the system, when in fact it is no more beneficial than if the RAM were simply poked halfway into the CD slot.
De 27-jarige Eric Wijngaard uit het Friese dorp Waskemeer is een van de tien winnaars van de Android Developers Contest. Hij wint 275.000 dollar voor zijn programma Picsay, een applicatie om effecten aan foto’s toe te voegen.
Google schreef in november vorig jaar de prijsvraag uit om ervoor te zorgen dat er alvast wat 3rd party applications voor Android zouden zijn als de eerste telefoon met het mobiele besturingssysteem zou verschijnen. “Ik had nog nooit een mobiele applicatie geschreven, dus het leek me wel spannend”, vertelde de winnaar aan Tweakers.net. “Eigenlijk wilde ik liever voor de iPhone ontwikkelen, maar die sdk was toen nog niet uit.”
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Hij weet nog niet wat hij gaat doen met het prijzengeld van omgerekend bijna 187.000 euro. “Ik heb een eigen bedrijf waarin ik kan investeren. Ik wil eerst zorgen dat Picsay goed gaat draaien op Android-telefoons. Ik wil eigenlijk Picsay ook geschikt maken voor de iPhone. Dat is goed mogelijk, denk ik.”
translation:
27 year old Frisian developer Eric Wijngaard won $275,000 in Google’s Android Developer Challenge for his ‘PicSay’ application.
In an interview with a Dutch website he says he likes Google’s SDK but “What I really wanted to do was develop an iPhone app. The iPhone SDK wasn’t out yet, though.”
Asked what he would do with the cash, his response was “I guess I could invest it in my software company, but first I want to port PicSay to the iPhone.”
Mobile phone carrier Orange Poland admitted today that it hired actors to stand in line for the country’s iPhone debut.
“It was a part of our marketing strategy, the concept was thought up at Orange Poland,” the company told the Associated Press. “The aim was to ‘warm up’ the atmosphere around the launch of the iPhone.”
Here you go. [appears to be down for now, we took link down until we can revive the poor wounded server]
We’ll be releasing a more official announcement soon, but we wanted to get the tool out there. We sincerely hope you enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed making it
Update 1: Just to clear up some confusion over what this actually does: yes, it jailbreaks and unlocks older iPhones, and jailbreaks iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touches. We only support the 2.0 firmwares.
Update 2: It looks like there aren’t enough TCP ports on that server, so _BigBoss_ has generously offered to mirror it.
Update 3: If you get Error 1600 from iTunes (or if you see in your log a failure to prepare x12220000_4_Recovery.ipsw), try: mkdir “~/Library/iTunes/Device Support” ; if that directory already exists, remove any files in it. Then re-run PwnageTool.
So guys, below is a link to the video of the upcoming PwnageTool 2.0
Many many hours have gone into this and now it should be as easy enough for your grandmother to use.
We’ve added lots of new features, including 2.0 support, spotlight file indexing of .ipsws, canned websearches, installer custom configuration, custom root partitions and various other things that you’ll see on the release. Release date is soon although not this weekend. So check out the video, hopefully it will hold you off until we release.
Retail employees have received instructions on how to activate iPhones, and are given special instructions to let the customer bond immediately with their iPhone.
We performed this disassembly immediately following the iPhone launch at 12:01 July 11, 2008, New Zealand time. That’s 5:01 AM, July 10, Pacific time for those of us who aren’t islanders.
Onder grote belangstelling is vrijdag om middernacht de eerste iPhone in Nederland verkocht. Meer dan achthonderd geïnteresseerden en een grote schare journalisten hadden zich rond die tijd verzameld voor de deuren van de winkel van T-Mobile aan de Lijnbaan in Rotterdam.
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De gelukkige eerste bezitter is de 47-jarige Edwin Driesen uit Den Haag. De man had sinds donderdagochtend 9.30 uur staan wachten op het mobiele kleinood. Op de vraag wat hij thuis als eerste met zijn iPhone ging doen, luidde het nuchtere antwoord “opladen”.
Kennelijk geen vaste Apple-klant, anders had hij wel geweten dat Apple graag ziet dat dingen direct uit de doos te gebruiken zijn, en dat z’n iPhone dus met een (bijna) volle batterij uit de doos zal komen. Maar hij verdient bonus punten met de droogheid van het antwoord…
On Windows, Acrobat reader has been a piece of utter crap for quite a while now. And now it sucks on Mac OS just as much. (Where, I have to admit, I’ve been keeping it off my machines, since Mac OS understands pdf very well by itself, thank you very much)
Apple sells Mac OS X just as it retails music: it markets both products toward premium buyers at reasonable prices rather than attempting to force thieves to pay for a product they only want to steal. Microsoft failed in the music business with Windows Media because it tried to do just the opposite: force everyone to pay through the nose for expiring subscription music by using egregious DRM. Microsoft couldn’t force the thieves to stop stealing, and premium customers weren’t interested in being treated like thieves.
Nokia has bought up the bits of Symbian it didn’t already own and is chucking the OS into an open-source foundation along with the S60 UI layer, accompanied by Sony Ericsson and DoCoMo, who are throwing in UIQ and MOAP(S) respectively.
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Those members will have to cough up at least $1,500 a year, but that’s chicken feed to companies such as AT&T and Vodafone, which have come on board to endorse the more open Symbian platform.
Good move. Let’s hope it works out. Apple could use the competition.
But, just for fun, let’s say you bought an 8 GB iPhone the day they were released for $599. Months later you got an Apple Store gift certificate for $100 when the price was cut, meaning you’re effectively out only $499 (yes, assuming you were going to buy something from the Apple Store anyway). Now, you turn around and sell it on eBay for $400.
Your total cost for that 8 GB iPhone?
$99 plus tax.
The Macalope doesn’t know about you, but he’s trying really hard to feel like a sucker and it’s just not working.
In another study by Rubicon Consulting, the firm asked iPhone owners “When you got your iPhone, what model of mobile phone, if any, did it replace?” The findings are quite interesting. Unsurprisingly, many of the replaced models are high-end smartphones like Windows Mobile phones (14%), Blackberries (13%) and Palm (7%) devices. However, almost a quarter (24%) of respondents upgraded to their iPhone having previously owned a Motorola RAZR.
If we accept that the RAZR was first and foremost a fashion phone, then the Rubicon findings are at first a little peculiar. While it is logical that a smartphone user would be attracted to a feature-rich device like the iPhone, why have so many iPhone owners migrated over from a single handset model which had virtually no technical merits to speak of? As a feature phone, the RAZR’s functionality was indistinguishable from the raft of other feature phones on the market at the time. It is true that the RAZR sold enormously well, but not to the extent that 24% of the US phone-carrying public had one.
The iPhone and RAZR share a common feature and is why a disproportionate number of RAZR owners have moved in Apple’s direction. It is a feature that has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with style. The RAZR was an iconic device in terms of its design and this was its primary appeal to consumers. When looking to upgrade 18 months later, many RAZR owners now want to move to something equally stylish and the iPhone fits this bill. And while consumers may have purchased their RAZR subsidised, they have been willing to pay full price for the iPhone to continue owning a phone strong fashion credentials.
One of the biggest revelations at WWDC was quietly unveiled in a session on Friday morning entitled “Building Native Look-and-Feel Web Applications Using SproutCore.” While Apple maintained high security during the entire NDA-sealed WWDC session, the secret of SproutCore is out because it is an open source project and people can’t stop talking about it.
As Apple’s public schedule for WWDC explained, “SproutCore is an open source, platform-independent, Cocoa-inspired JavaScript framework for creating web applications that look and feel like Desktop applications. Learn how to combine SproutCore with HTML5’s standard offline data storage technologies to deliver a first-class user experience and exceptional performance in your web application.”
Mudak on Minnesota Senate Recount: Challenged ballots: You be the judge Whatever else is true, Minnesota law would count this as a vote for Franken, even if they did it wrong.
One very important thing we shouldn't overlook is that the Republican Party tried all sorts of dirty tricks to convince potential Democratic voters either not to vote or to vote incorrectly, so it may not be purely voter stupidity. In Philadelphia, they were passing out brochures that said that, due to anticipated high turnout, Republicans should vote on Tuesday and Democrats should vote on Wednesday. *shrug*
John on Minnesota Senate Recount: Challenged ballots: You be the judge Well, three ways to look at this one I think:
1. It is pretty clear where the intention was since the machine's optical registration box was circled next to just one candidate.
2. This is a failure of the user interface. I read a similar discussion about web forms that are too strict about how user entered data is formatted. This form's interface, requiring the voter to fill in a small oval to cast their vote us clearly too strict.
3. This is being used as a mechanism to disqualify voters who are either too stupid to follow instructions, or too lazy to read them.
I'd say count the vote, and fix the user interface to be simpler and more tolerant of human impreciseness!
Roland Hesz on Yugo, 1953-2008 Yes, that's what I read too, so far Neelie Kroes holds out on it. I hope she can thwart the "oh, fuck capitalism, we are LOOSING!" movement.
Roland Hesz on Converting Dead Mormons into Homosexuals It is hilarious. What the Mormons declare is "Hey, God is Powerless!" and the Jews and Catholics who reacted with such a panic they did send the clear message "God is Powerless!".
How hilarious.
John Sinteur on Yugo, 1953-2008 you may want to time-stamp that comment, that zero may change to EUR 50b any second now.
News: 1, 2, 3.
Roland Hesz on Yugo, 1953-2008 So far the EU is sending 0EUR to help car manufacturers. It is still debated whether it's needed or not, however Germany stated that they will help Opel. But Germany is not the EU.
That's the current status of the car bailout in Europe.
John Sinteur on Yugo, 1953-2008 Have you seen how much money Europe is sending to struggling car manufacturers, including subsidiaries of GM?
Maarten on Yugo, 1953-2008 "We"? I didn't know you were going to help out! That's sweet of you.
Bill L. on Big Three CEOs Flew Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds I've never, n-e-v-e-r had to be at an airport 2 hours early. I've often wandered in with less than 40 minutes to my flight. Are we guessing that they have lots of luggage to check in and haven't bothered to check-in electronically?
Southwest, business select, one way, out one day and back the next, is $176 X 12 = 2,112. Not exactly 12 grand. 12k only pans out if you assume they "have" to travel first class.
The shortest flight listed is about 1 hour and 24 minutes. Ohh noes! How will they avoid spilling the corporate beans for nearly an eternity!
Are we to think that all the execs traveled on the same plane? Jet-pooling?
John Sinteur on Big Three CEOs Flew Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds You're forgetting one major cost factor: public image. This story is all over the news. At the cost of two or three extra hours, their image could have been one of real "cost-sensitve" CEO's.
Isn't that really worth it?
And any CEO not aware of public image is too stupid to be in that job.
Jason on Big Three CEOs Flew Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds How much time is lost by the GM representatives when they have to check in for a flight two hours early, or when the GM representatives are not to talk about business during the flight due to insider trading concerns?
The question is what is lost? When 12 people fly on a private jet it costs about $20,000. When 12 fly commercially to DC it costs about $12,000. Is a $8,000 savings worth the time lost?
Isn’t it really worth it in the long run?
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