Tesco Mobile have some interesting new tariffs for the iPhone including a stingy 12 month contract at £20/month, and an “unlimited” 24 month contract at £60/month.
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Flash CS5 to Build Native iPhone Apps
October 6, 2009 – 8:37 am
Adobe have announced that their upcoming Flash CS5 software will allow developers to export native Apple iPhone apps. It doesn’t look like it can’t use native iPhone UI widgets, so the vast majority of apps will probably be games.
MonoTouch would still be my choice of alternative iPhone developer platform. C# over ActionScript, .NET Framework over AIR APIs. Version 1.1 of MonoTouch has added support for interacting with SOAP web services, and Microsoft has even ported their XNA Framework for creating games to MonoTouch.
Apple Rejects Healthcare Reform App
September 30, 2009 – 8:37 am
iSinglePayer, an iPhone application that advocates for single-payer health care reform was rejected from the App Store by Apple because it is “politically charged.” The application displays charts and bullet points about single-payer health care systems, and it allows users to call members of congress. iSinglePayer even calculates your local congressperson using GPS, and displays the amount of money donated to each congressperson from the health sector.
Fine, but then why does the App Store include apps such as the Drudge Reader and Conservative Talking Points?
Vodafone Confirms iPhone in 2010
September 29, 2009 – 11:51 am
Now Vodafone has struck a deal to sell the iPhone:
Vodafone and Apple today confirmed that they have reached agreement to bring iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS to the UK and Ireland in early 2010.
Rumours are that the deal was only agreed late last night after the Orange announcement.
Orange to Sell iPhone, Ending O2 Exclusivity
September 28, 2009 – 8:10 am
Orange UK and Apple have reached an agreement to bring iPhone 3G and 3GS to Orange UK customers later this year.
Not surprising given the recent rumours, and it looks like they’ll have the 3GS too. No indication of pricing, but hopefully more competition means we’ll start seeing more discounts on iPhones.
Ninjawords Dictionary: Censored by Apple
August 5, 2009 – 8:03 am
John Gruber from Daring Fireball writes about the ridiculous process Ninjawords had to go through to get their dictionary app approved on the AppStore.
Ninjawords for iPhone suffers one humiliating flaw: it omits all the words deemed “objectionable” by Apple’s App Store reviewers, despite the fact that Ninjawords carries a 17+ rating.
Apple censored an English dictionary.
The Edge of Reason
August 4, 2009 – 8:54 am
Simon Parkin has written a very detailed article for Eurogamer on the on-going legal battle between Mobigame and trademark-troll Timothy Langdell over Mobigame’s iPhone game Edge.
New Developments in Foxconn Employee Suicide Case
July 24, 2009 – 10:23 am
The New Yorker has some new twists on the suicide of a Foxconn employee over a lost iPhone prototype.
The Sourthern Daily claims to have viewed surveillance footage of the interrogation, and they show no signs that he was beaten or locked up.
Foxconn Employee Commits Suicide After Losing Prototype iPhone
July 21, 2009 – 4:21 pm
Last Thursday, 25 year-old Sun Danyong committed suicide after a fourth-generation iPhone prototype he was responsible for went missing.
This sounds like something straight from The Onion, but the rest of the article has a very grave tone:
On Thursday, July 9th, Sun got 16 prototype phones from the assembly line at a local Foxconn factory. At some point in the next few days, he discovered that one of the phones was missing. He suspected that it had been left at the factory, but couldn’t find it. On Monday, July 13, he reported the missing phone to his boss. Then, that Wednesday, three Foxconn employees searched his apartment — illegally, according to Chinese law. Accusations are flying that Sun was detained and physically abused during the investigation, although this has not been substantiated (possible evidence: there’s this somewhat garbled and potentially faked instant message exchange from Sun shortly before his death).
What is known: On Thursday — a little after 3 a.m. according to surveillance videos in the apartment building — he jumped out of a window in his apartment building to his death.
iPhone 3G S UK Pricing
June 9, 2009 – 9:05 am
Across the pond, the new iPhone 3G S has kept the previous iPhone 3G price points of $199 and $299. The old 3G has been reduced to $99 as a budget option. This is what Apple has traditionally done with new products.
But in the UK, according to new O2 pricing, the iPhone 3G 8GB has remained the same price, while the two new 3G S models are even more expensive. If you want an 18-month contract at £35 per month, it will cost you £184.98 for the 16GB, or a whopping £273.23 for the 32GB, on top of the contract price.
If you want a contract free iPhone 3G S, it’s £440 for the 16GB, and £538 for the 32GB. That’s over double the cost of the equivalent iPod Touch.
I thought we were rid of Rip-off Britain.
Brushes App Boost from New Yorker Cover
May 28, 2009 – 4:25 pm
A recent cover painting for the New Yorker by Jorge Colombo boosted sales of the Brushes iPhone application to 2700 in a day.
On Monday, Mr. Sprang said the application had its highest selling day since it was first released into Apple’s App Store in August, with 2,700 copies at $4.99 apiece flying off the virtual shelves.
“That’s even bigger than when Apple featured the application on iTunes,” said Mr. Sprang, who estimated that on average the application sells roughly 60 to70 copies each day.
Stanford iPhone Course Resources
January 23, 2009 – 12:47 pm
Stanford University’s iPhone course has finished, and the resources for the course have been posted online. Included are the lecture slides as PDFs and code examples.
They’re probably not much use to experienced iPhone developers but might be a good starting point for anyone new to Cocoa and Objective-C.
If At First You Don’t Succeed
December 1, 2008 – 1:49 pm
Then try and try again, at least with submitting your iPhone application to Apple’s App Store.
Apple Drops iPhone NDA
October 1, 2008 – 3:24 pm
the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software.
NetShare Added Then Removed
August 1, 2008 – 10:03 am
Nullriver released their NetShare application onto the iTunes App Store last night, only to have it removed only a few hours later.
It’s surprising that this app was approved in the first place, since AT&T typically charge an extra $30 per month to allow tethering use in the US. Upon investigating the terms set out by other telecos, O2 UK say:
You may not use your SIM Card in any other device, or use your SIM Card or iPhone to allow the continuous streaming of any audio / video content, enable Voice over Internet (Voip), P2P or file sharing or use them in such a way that adversely impacts the service to other customers of O2 or The Cloud.
Which seems to restrict the use of streaming audio and video content, something which the built-in YouTube app allows you to do, along with Last.fm radio streaming app. However what it doesn’t explicitly forbid is the use of a tethering application to allow you to access the internet through another device, as long as the SIM card is still in your iPhone, so with O2 UK there is nothing to stop you using NetShare.
If, like me, have your iPhone unlocked and on another network such as T-Mobile UK, they may have even less restrictions. From T-Mobile’s web’n'walk fair use policy:
This plan comes with a fair use policy of 1GB a month. We’ll monitor how much you send and receive each calendar month so that we can protect our network for all our web’n'walk customers. If you use more than your fair use policy amount, we won’t charge you any more, but we may restrict how you can use your plan, depending on how often you go over your amount and by how much.
Which seems to allow everything, as long as you keep within the 1GB fair use policy. As Apple has exclusive contracts with one teleco for each country the iPhone is being sold, it is possible for them to restrict NetShare to only countries that allow tethering apps. The chance of the app appearing back on the App Store is small though, which begs the question, why was it approved in the first place?
WordPress Client for iPhone
July 23, 2008 – 6:24 am
WordPress for iPhone allows you to post to and edit your WordPress blog from your iPhone. But without any form of copy & paste, it makes writing even the most trivial post insanely difficult.
I would also like to be able to view and edit the most recent comments too.
PwnageTool Unlocks iPhone 2.0
July 21, 2008 – 9:48 am
If you’ve been using an original, unlocked iPhone with a SIM from an “unofficial” provider, then you haven’t been able to upgrade to the new 2.0 firmware because, well, it would lock your phone. You’ve had to sit by twiddling with the old 1.1.4 firmware while been reading reviews of the fantastic new applications and all the new things you can do with them.
The new firmware has been out for over a week now without a released unlock tool, although videos of a proof of concept unlock have been floating around the internet.
This week, the iphone-dev team finally released their long anticipated PwnageTool that’s capable of unlocking the original iPhone with 2.0 firmware. Infact it’s quite clever in that it takes the official firmware, and transforms it into a jailbroken and unlocked version that you restore with iTunes!
The process is pretty straightforward, but still not without pitfalls which could be hard to dig yourself out, so I’ve made some notes of problems I’ve had during the unlock, so you don’t have to:
- You’ll need three other files along with PwnageTool to unlock your phone, the two bootloaders and the original firmware. PwnageTool should be able to find those automatically after you download them.
- If Safari extracts the original firmware to a folder, drag the
iPhone1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw.zipfile from the trash to your desktop and remove the .zip from the end of the filename. - PwnageTool might fail when it tries to enter DFU mode (also known as recovery mode). Don’t worry, manually put your phone in recovery mode by having the iPhone plugged into your computer, holding the home and power button for seven seconds, and then releasing the power button (but still holding the home button) and wait for iTunes to report that your iPhone is in recovery mode.
- I would use Expert mode to stop PwnageTool from replacing the Apple boot logo with their stupid pineapple.
- To restore your cracked firmware, hold alt/option when clicking the Restore button (shift in Windows) and then you can browse to the file you want.
PwnageTool is for Mac users only, but if you look hard enough, you can find a pre-cracked firmware that you can just restore with iTunes on Windows.
Ars Preview of OmniFocus for the iPhone
June 15, 2008 – 5:55 pm
Ars Technica have a preview of the upcoming OmniFocus app for the iPhone.
Ken told us that OmniGroup’s plan for the iPhone version of OmniFocus was not to be merely a companion to the desktop version, and since day one has planned a standalone version of OmniFocus. That means that, unlike some other projects, OmniFocus for the iPhone allows its user nearly the full spectrum of capability you expect from such an application. This includes adding, deleting, and editing tasks, organizing and prioritizing those tasks, and marking tasks as complete.
It also discusses how OmniFocus will feature tight integration with iPhones core components.
Ken showed us an example of a task he added, “Go to GameStop to buy a game,” and had associated a place name of “Gamestop” to that task. In his example, you could be out running other errands with free time, sort all your tasks by location and then sorts them by their physical proximity to your current location. Assuming there was a GameStop close by, it might appear at the top of the list. The team has also made it simple to retrieve driving directions to that location as well.
Sony Ericsson Announce XPERIA X1
February 11, 2008 – 1:52 pm
Could this be the first true iPhone killer? Although I’ve had bad experiences with Windows Mobile devices in the past, if Microsoft pulls it’s finger out on this one and creates a competitive operating system to OS X on the iPhone, this could be the one.
New 16GB iPhone and 32GB iPod Touch
February 5, 2008 – 2:15 pm
The proposition of a 16GB iPhone is very tempting indeed, but unfortunately it carries a price premium over the already expensive 8GB iPhone model of $100.