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Win a copy of Hungry Shark 3 for iPhone
The guys at Future Games of London have just released Hungry Shark 3 for iPhone. The Hungry Shark series is one of my favorite games for iOS (you can read my review of Hungry Shark Trilogy for iPad here). Hungry Shark 3 pits Hungry Shark against shark finners, mad scientists and leaking oil rigs. The latest edition of the Hungry Shark series also adds full HD support for Retina Displays, more than 25 new types of food (fish, crabs and people) and Game Center support. Hungry Shark 3 for iPhone is a steal at 99 cents, but for our loyal TUAW readers, Future Games of London has given us five copies of Hungry Shark 3 for iPhone to give away for free. To enter the drawing, simply leave a comment for this post. As always, the official rules are below: Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older. To enter leave a comment on this post. The comment must be left before Saturday, February 12, 11:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time. You may enter only once. Five winners will be selected in a random drawing. Prize: Promo code for Hungry Shark 3 for iPhone (Value: US$0.99). Click Here for complete Official Rules.
iPhone passcode bypassed by security researchers
A group of German researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology report that they've cracked the iPhone's keychain system, allowing access to the passwords saved on any phone in just six minutes. By jailbreaking the target phone and installing an SSH app on it, the hackers found they could access any information on the phone that they wanted, without the need to input a passcode or any other form of security from the user. In other words, if they can get their hands on your iPhone, they have access to everything on the keychain, which includes any Gmail or Exchange accounts saved on the phone, as well as network, Wi-Fi and voicemail passwords, as well as the passwords on some apps. You can read the full report as a PDF online. The only solution that Frauhofer lists in the report is that any lost or stolen iPhone must require its owners to assume that all passwords included on the handset are compromised, and must all be changed and replaced as soon as possible. It's hard to think what Apple might be able to do about this -- as long as the phone can be jailbroken, this seems possible, and obviously Apple hasn't been able to stop jailbreaks in the past, for a number of reasons. On the other hand, this hack needs access to the phone itself, so if you don't lose your phone, you're still good to go.
EFI adds AirPrint to corporate copiers and printers
AirPrint is wonderful for those of us who can use it to print to home printers, but until now, the technology has been useless for most corporate copier / printers. That's all set to change now that EFI is providing support for AirPrint to its signature Fiery print servers. The PrintMe Connect software enables direct wireless printing from any iOS 4.2 mobile device. The software is free to download, and it works for printing to any Fiery-driven printer. According to EFI, "It is a software application that runs as a proxy on a Windows system to enable AirPrint printing for Fiery-driven printers with System 8/8e or later software version." AppleInsider notes that PrintMe Connect expands AirPrint to work with large format, high end and multifunction printers in the enterprise, and that there are more than 250,000 printers in corporate offices that will benefit from this free update. Up to this point, only HP has announced printers that are officially supported by AirPrint, so it's exciting to see that the iOS printing standard is now making it to the big leagues with EFI. Do you work in an office where your print jobs are routed through a Fiery print server? Let us know if your corporation allows you to use PrintMe Connect for printing from your iOS device. [via AppleInsider]
Navigation app sales and Verizon friendliness
There's a flurry of GPS related news today, so let's get right on with it. First, one of our favorite nav apps, Navigon, is having a pretty big sale to celebrate its milestone of 2 million sales worldwide. If you've been lusting after a Navigon app, there's a 4-day, 50% off sale beginning today. Regional versions for the US are $14.99. The US-Canada app is $29.99. The USA-only version is $24.99. Current users can take advantage of the promotion as well, with prices for in-app purchases of Traffic Live, Panorama View 3D and Zagat Survey for MobileNavigator iPhone at 25 percent off. On the TomTom front, that excellent nav solution is on sale for $34.99 for the US version. The US-Canada app is $39.99. The sale has no end date. TomTom also notes that new iPhone users on Verizon will be seeing a "connect to GPS" warning when they start up. TomTom advises users to just hit continue, and all will be well. The glitch doesn't affect your navigation and will be fixed ASAP.
TUAW's Daily App: Devil May Cry 4 refrain
This is part of Capcom's holiday sale for Valentine's Day (which is probably also intended to target some new Verizon customers), but Devil May Cry 4 refrain is a pretty good port of the console action game anyway. It features a character named Nero fighting with both guns and a big sword through all kinds of demonic baddies, with the standard Devil May Cry action combos building up as you play along. Unfortunately, like most of these games, buttons are merely overlays on the touchscreen, so really dedicated action gamers may not enjoy the lack of tactile controls. But if you like this action genre at all, DMC4 refrain is a pretty solid version, albeit obviously scaled down for Apple's platform. The fact that it's on sale for US$0.99 will probably help seal the deal. Devil May Cry 4 refrain also has Retina Display graphics and full Game Center integration, so it's a full-fledged title to play through. If this doesn't float your boat, don't forget about all of the other sales going on. There are lots of high-end titles out there that you can buy for just a buck right now.
Capcom and Sega join Valentine's Day sales on the App Store
Two more big companies have joined the flurry of sales popping up around Valentine's Day next week. Sega has jumped in with prices dropped on plenty of its titles, from US$2.99 down to 99 cents. Capcom has also joined the holiday celebration, bringing Street Fighter IV down to the incredibly low price of just 99 cents. As crazy as these deals are (and they are crazy, even though we saw lots of them in one form or another over the holiday season last December), I expect even more to show up by the end of this week. You don't have to look far to see why this is happening. EA led the charge with a huge 99 cent sale last quarter, and as a result, it showed record numbers both in terms of sales and profits. Both larger and indie game developers have seen that trend happen, so they seem to be forming a consensus of how to make big money on Apple's App Store. First, release premium games at a premium price, usually $9.99, especially when extremely popular franchises are ported over. Then drop the bottom out of the prices once that initial audience has sold through -- and when a new audience appears, like the Verizon iPhone owners this weekend -- conquering the charts and rocketing the numbers. We'll have to see how well that works over this weekend. Back during the last holiday sales, EA was pretty much on its own, and other developers had to catch up. This weekend, more companies are on top of the price drops; as a result, we might see fewer sales per company. But as always, it's an experiment, and when sales drop like this, we customers end up getting great games for super cheap.
Learn to draw with an iPad
Learn to Draw Digital Sketchbook is a pretty interesting app that teaches you how to draw in step-by-step lessons. You select from the provided drawing tools, follow the spoken and text instructions, and you're on your way. You can also dive into the app and draw freehand to apply your skills. You can draw on different types of "paper" and vary the size, pressure and hardness of the drawing tools. Drawings can be saved to your photo library or emailed to friends. This is the kind of creative use of the iPad that I really commend, and it's nice to see a clever and highly educational approach to learning. One note: the app only runs in portrait mode. There may be some good reasons for that, but since I keep my iPad in a case that is oriented to landscape, I would have liked the option. I don't know much about drawing, but I was able to turn out some passable sketches after going through the lessons. The app is from Walter Foster, a company that has been publishing art instruction books for decades. Best of all, the app will get you started for free, but if you want to move much further, you need to get some in-app purchases of additional lessons that cost anywhere from US$2.99 to $6.99. The quality of the lessons is high, and the app is handsome and well organized. About the closest I get to art is landscape photography, but for someone just getting started in sketching, this app is worth a look. You can check the gallery for some screen shots. %Gallery-116154%
Verizon iPhone hands-on: better calls, slower data, the iPhone experience you know and love
If you've been living on an island somewhere, you might not know that Verizon Wireless now has the iPhone 4. It's available starting tomorrow from Apple and Verizon retail outlets, as well as both companies' web stores. However, as I'm an existing Verizon customer, I was able to take advantage of the pre-order that took place last week. Thanks to that and to staying up until midnight to order, I now have the new Verizon iPhone in my hands and have had a chance to use it for about 48 hours. Naturally, in addition to using it for my everyday smartphone needs, I've also done some testing and comparisons to its AT&T counterpart.
TUAW's Daily App: Captain Puzzle
Captain Puzzle is a colorful puzzle game in the vein of Bust a Move (which itself is on the App Store, by the way) and Snood (ditto). As Captain Puzzle, you throw little colored balls at similarly colored villains; when you are able to get three of the same color touching, they'll disappear and give you points. The 50 levels are set up Angry Birds-style, with each level requiring you to chase down three stars, challenging you to collect them all as you play along. The game offers both OpenFeint and Game Center integration, but unfortunately, there's just the one mode to play through; it'd be nice to see an endless mode or even a multiplayer mode added in eventually. But the basic gameplay is there, with some fun objective-based twists on the old Snood gameplay. The superhero theme makes for some fun graphics and nice music. Captain Puzzle is available on the App Store now, on the iPhone for US$0.99.
Verizon iPhone causing fragmentation of iOS apps? We've got the real story
Sometimes, when journalists and bloggers hear something that sounds like a scoop, they rush to publish the story before anyone else can get it. Unfortunately, that sometimes has repercussions. Yesterday, I was talking to ZDNet's James Kendrick at the TeleNav Waypoint event in Cupertino when he mentioned that he had just posted a story about fragmentation in the iOS market. The story suggested strongly that there were changes between the AT&T and Verizon iPhones that would require some developers to create individualized versions of their apps for each carrier. His conclusions were based on a question he had posed earlier in the day to TeleNav personnel, asking why the company had created a Verizon-only version of their iPhone navigation app instead of just re-branding the AT&T Navigator app. The answer from Telenav execs was that they believed it was due to hardware differences. I also overheard that comment and found it quite disturbing. Shortly after Kendrick's post went live, TechCrunch's MG Siegler wrote a sharp-tongued but insightful response, iPhone App Fragmentation FUD Is Looming. In his post, Siegler decried Kendrick's story as "complete nonsense" based on his observation that all apps he had personally tested on the Verizon iPhone -- including a number of GPS-centric apps -- had worked fine. This seemed like a story that could be rapidly resolved one way or another with a bit of targeted reporting. Our beat writer for the navigation app market, Mel Martin, quickly jumped in (at 10 at night) and emailed numerous contacts in the mobile nav sector to see if they had run into any issues with their apps working on the Verizon iPhone. The unanimous answer? No.
TUAW's Daily App: Super Soviet Missile Mastar
Hail, comrades of Unofficial Weblog of Apple! Our kind and generous comrades at gaming developer The Behemoth (crafters of the great Castle Crashers entertainment for Xbox Live) have blessed the people of Mother Russia with a free iOS arcading game, available at the current time in your stores of Apps. Super Soviet Missile Mastar allows you to guide secret missile of Russian destiny past American helicopters, capitalist pig birds and disgusting Western airplays towards missile's final landing place on soil of dirty United States. Game is very simple, but as charming as hot chocolate vodka on cold USSR's winter's day, with extremely retro graphics and music to cheer you on to people's victory. And speaking of people, the game also has full Game Center integration, so you and other comrades can band together over leaderboards and "ments of achieving." Fly on, Russian missile of doom! Universal app is a free download for all who believe in power of Mother Russia! Thanks to comrades at Behemoth for free distraction from standing in bread lines, and great glory to USSR and her peoples!
Louis Vuitton launches iPhone app
We've posted about Louis Vuitton's iPhone and iPad cases before -- they're the ones that are needlessly expensive, and often overly gaudy. But the luxury accessory company has a new initiative around Apple products: it's launching an iPhone app for travelers called Amble. The app makes use of the company's City Guides information to provide guidance to any number of locations of interest in whatever covered city you happen to be in. There's a social element as well, allowing you to share or browse locations sent across through social networks or from friends. And in-app purchases (from $10 to $15) allow for access to the actual City Guides information for cities like Paris or New York. The app itself is free (making it the cheapest thing Louis Vuitton has ever produced), and it's available on the App Store right now. Of course, unless you really need these specific guides for some reason, there are probably other iPhone apps that will do the same thing (I like and use the Yelp app a lot for finding information about places while traveling). But if you can't afford that $1000 iPhone case, you can at least wrap your iPhone in something made by LV.
Fake iPhones seized from LA warehouse
Police in the port of Los Angeles have seized what they say is over $10 million worth of counterfeit Apple devices from a warehouse. The fake iPods, iPhones and iPod touches were reportedly brought in from Asia recently, and they were supposedly going to be sold around CES this past year, duping customers into thinking they were buying real Apple products for cheap. Not that cheap, though -- the cops also reportedly found receipts in the warehouse, along with other stolen and counterfeit merchandise, that pointed to the whole facility bringing in around $7 million in profit. Two brothers have been arrested, and the two of them face a total of four felony counts for the sale of counterfeit goods. The seizure was the result of an ongoing stolen cargo investigation that had the Port Police looking around warehouses in Los Angeles and Vernon, CA late last year.
Mobile version of iTunes Store gets Genius recommendations
The desktop version of the iTunes Store has had Genius recommendations for quite some time, but the feature has been missing from the iPhone/iPod touch version of the Store -- until now. Tapping on the "More" tab at the bottom of the iTunes Store app will reveal the usual options, with a new option for Genius recommendations. Just like on the desktop version, you'll be able to view recommendations for music, movies and TV shows based on your purchase history. You can preview recommendations and rate them "thumbs up" or "thumbs down." Results for music recommendations can be filtered to show songs or albums, and you can also filter results by genre. Just like the recent introduction of search filtering in the iPad's App Store app, you don't need to download anything to start using the new Genius features. All the necessary changes have already been made on Apple's servers, so you can start tapping away and previewing Genius recommendations on your iOS device whenever you're ready.
How the iPad and iPhone shift reading habits
Read It Later is an Instapaper-style platform for saving and tracking various things to read online, and they recently released some interesting information about iPad and iPhone reading over on their blog. The line for when people save articles is pretty constant no matter what hour of the day you're talking about -- we're pretty often browsing for and discovering new things to read all of the time. But when you look at the graphs about when people retrieve those articles on their mobile devices, you see some interesting trends. The iPhone graph, seen above, has lots of little peaks in it, but those peaks come at "in-between" times -- when we're eating some breakfast, traveling via commute or about to go to bed. That's fascinating -- according to this data, the iPhone is really a whitespace device, providing productivity when we don't have access to anything else. And the iPad graph is interesting as well -- as you can see on RiL's page, it sees most of its activity later in the evening, when we're on the couch just relaxing. And there's one more little bit of interesting data -- users who own an iPad are apparently doing less reading on their computers during the day. In other words, they're saving articles specifically for iPad time, because apparently they prefer to do more reading on the iPad itself. Remember, these are brand new categories of devices, and it's really crazy to see how they're changing our habits so quickly. [via TechCrunch]
iAds more effective than TV advertising, Nielsen finds
Nielsen is reporting, according to the results of a new survey, that Apple's iAds for Campbell's soup products were more than twice as effective as television advertising for the same product. Nielsen says that customers who saw ads for Campbell's in Apple's operating system were five times as likely to recall the brand name, and three times as likely to remember what the ad said. The iAd audience said they were likely to purchase the product five times more than the television audience. Now, Nielsen admits that there could simply be demographic differences here -- the average television audience just may not be as engaged in the brand as the average iAd audience. But either way, results like these are good news for Apple's advertising platform, which we've heard anecdotally has been struggling a bit. Not only are developers not seeing the returns they'd like from the platform, but Apple has missed out on a few big deals with advertisers as well. Results like these show that iAds definitely have a reason for their premium pricing, even if it is a matter of just making sure both audiences and advertisers are coming from the right angle. But premium priced products sold to a certain type of customer? Fortunately, Apple knows a little bit about how to do that.
Xcode 4 posted to developers, pulled, may hint at 10.7 beta release
Apple apparently posted the gold master of Xcode 4 this morning -- that's the final pre-release version before the final version is eventually offered up to the public. Unfortunately, just as soon as the new version of Xcode went up, it was pulled right back down again. Reports from developers who saw the release's Read Me say that it apparently listed Mac OS X 10.7 Lion as a requirement to run, and as you probably already know, that version of the OS isn't actually available yet. So one of two things is happening here: either there was a typo in the documentation, and Apple just meant that Xcode 4 requires 10.6, or Xcode 4 really does require a version of Lion, and a beta of that operating system will be available to developers soon. At any rate, we do know Xcode 4 is officially on the way. Apple's Developer Tools evangelist says on Twitter that we can expect it out very soon. The new version will bring a single-window UI for developers of Mac and iOS apps and a bunch of other new features for them to play with. Stay tuned, devs -- there'll be new goodies on Apple's dev portal soon enough.
Glympse is a great way to share your location
Somehow we missed telling you about Glympse, the great little free app that lets you tell others where you are in real time. To get started, download Glympse to your iPhone and accept the terms of use. There are no accounts to set up or anything else to fiddle with. When you're ready to share your location, enter an email address or search your contacts. Select a contact, email or text message number and set a duration you'd like the person to be able to see your location. Seconds later, your recipient receives a link. If they are on a laptop or PC, they will see you on a Google Map -- it can be street or satellite view. Your icon will be moving in near real time, and your speed will be displayed. If you have selected a destination, it will show up on the map as well. It doesn't get easier than that. If the other person has Glympse on their phone, they have the option to have the app's built-in map display your location. If you want to cut off a viewer before their allotted time is up, you can "expire" them. You can send your location to multiple people, which they can view simultaneously. I've used the app to let people know that I'll be late for a meeting or to display my position in traffic. You can also share your locations to Facebook or Twitter. %Gallery-115655%
Mel Martin: The Daily through the eyes of one journalist
I've spent most of my life in the news business, both in reporting and management. Given that, something like The Daily is of high interest to me, both as a new media observer and as a voracious news consumer. From where I sit, The Daily looks pretty good. It's attractive, has some depth and has a varied mix of news. The creators clearly understood that providing news in the digital age isn't just about moving static content to a tablet, but using the features the tablet includes to enable video, audio, animation and graphics in a way simply not possible with something delivered on a piece of paper. I think the pricing is right. At $0.14 an issue, versus Time Magazine at $5 an issue, it seems a reasonable toll. If I were the New York Times, Washington Post or others planning expensive web editions, Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp, just ruined my day. Today feels a bit like the day in the 80s when I first saw a CD-ROM filled with thousands of text files. It was something different that had the power to change the way we consume information. I'm just as excited to see how media companies will respond to The Daily. Apple is finally helping the process along by allowing subscriptions from the App Store. This way, more media companies will join the battle for subscribers. It isn't clear what kind of money Apple is extracting from publishers, and we don't know for sure Apple is giving media companies subscriber information, but I think it is likely Apple will report something -- we just don't know what. The change of terms in the iTunes Store, released today, says that Apple may ask for permission to provide some of your personal info to publishers for marketing purposes. The new terms aren't very specific as yet, but it's clearly a change from the old policies that is enabling things like The Daily to go forward.
Macworld Expo 2011: Altigen Communications' iFusion handset
Whenever you meet up with anyone at big conventions like last week's Macworld 2011, you eventually ask what they've seen lately that's cool. Everyone wants to know what the hottest item on the floor is, the most interesting thing to see or check out at the show. Last week, more often than not, my answer was the iFusion from Altigen Communications. Like the iRetrophone, the iFusion is a full-scale handset with an iPhone dock on it, and it works via Bluetooth with your iPhone to either let you speak through the handle or have a speakerphone conversation. Altigen is a huge phone provider, and it also has an official business phone app on the App Store that allows for separate intranet extension dialing (and a bunch of other business-based features), but it decided to build and sell this handset just for the heck of it. iFusion works with any app that supports Bluetooth, including the built-in Phone app, Skype, Line2 and any others. There's even a USB cord in the back, so the phone can also sync through the handset. I got to play with it at Macworld, and iFusion is nice and strong; it's a little light, but very durable and well-made. Altigen told me that it was aiming for an Apple aesthetic with the device, and while it doesn't quite get there, it does look good. iFusion is US$169 and will be available for sale in April. I bet there will be plenty of businesses aiming to buy a bunch of these, but I wouldn't mind having one for my own home. I haven't owned a landline for years now, and it would be nice to have a handset again.
