July 2009
Oh! This is very cool. Tap Tap Tap shows how to turn off the double alerts you get from text messages if you don’t acknowledge them right away.
The plain text version: Settings → Messages → Repeat Alert → OFF. Sweet!
Via @panache.
June 2009
The Mobile Web is Different Than the Regular Web
Eric Andersen writes on the new Volkswagen iPhone mobile web site:
I opened Safari on the iPhone and typed in vw.com/cc – you know, just to see what pathetic joke of a web site would be presented… and BAM! A beautiful, simple, obviously mobile version of the site loaded immediately. whimper
Somehow (duh, research), VW knew exactly what I wanted to see… three big buttons for clicking—‘Our Cars’, ‘Find a Dealer’ and ‘Assistance’. One of these buttons was absolutely pertinent to my immediate need of seeing the CC. clicks ‘Our Cars’
I have to agree, and not just because I’m an obsessed VW owner.
The site is not only gorgeous, it gives a great iPhone interface to the same content you can get on the main website. Okay — you can’t order a car online, but you certainly can get a dealer on your phone very quickly. And the Assistance button gets straight to the point:
It appears that if the site is well done, I can set aside my insistence that mobile developers always leave a way out. Well done, VW.
Via @shawnblanc on Twitter.
May 2009
March 2009
Amazon is now offering an iPhone Kindle reader — giving away the razor, only to make money on the razor blades:
Amazon says it has been working on the software for months, and sees it as a gateway to get people interested in buying a Kindle.
Watching Twitter (especially @dsandler’s commentary) to see initial impressions is illuminating. The real-time feedback on an app’s release is really something to see.
Via TUAW and Download Squad.
January 2009
A Review of Two Things: One For the Mac and One For iPhone
Shawn Blanc’s impressive review of Things for both the Mac and iPhone finally inspired me to pick it up and give it a try.
I don’t know if it will work better than my Field Notes notebooks, but I’ll let you know how Things works out in a few weeks.
December 2008
TJ Luoma sidesteps a common problem with the iPhone’s autocorrect:
During an amazingly boring and poorly led meeting today, it occurred to me that I might be able to work around the “ducking iPhone” issue by creating a contact with this name.
The iPhone uses your list of Contacts as possible auto-complete or matching when you type. This makes sense, if you have someone’s name in your address book, you may very well find yourself typing it one day, and occasionally iPhone will even offer to correct my spelling of people’s names.
And that seems to correct the ducking problem.
November 2008
In case you’re looking for a great way to watch US election returns tonight (but are away from the TV), the New York Times’ election dashboard looks great on an iPhone:
Via Daniel Jalkut.
September 2008
Wil Shipley: Let the Market Decide
Wil Shipley has an excellent post on what the App Store should be, but isn’t:
Customers win because they can choose whatever software they like, regardless of whether Apple “approves” of their choice or not. Apple wins because developers aren’t alienated and don’t all go develop for Android, and so Apple has the device where all the innovation is happening. And developers win because the obviously cool apps will be featured by Apple and get tons of his, but even if their app isn’t “blessed” by Apple, if it’s a neat enough idea it’ll become popular on its own, through word-of-mouth.
The whole post is well worth your time.
What Happens When You Let a Complete Stranger Hold Your iPhone
Shawn Blanc shares his iPhone. Hilarity ensues:
I very much wanted to say ‘no’, but I like to think of myself as a nice guy; sharing is caring, you know? I slowly pull it out of my pocket and as I’m hesitantly passing it over the empty chair my first thought was, “Is she going to steal it?”
But my second thought was, “If she does try to run I could totally take her.”
Tilt Scrolling in Instapaper Pro
Adam Lisagor, on Instapaper‘s implementation of Tilt Scrolling:
It’s such a simple idea: exploit the power of the iPhone’s accelerometer as an alternate means to control scrolling on the vertical axis of a page.
(Via Cameron.)
The whole thing is worth a read, but I found the following especially interesting:
Almost as impressive as the feature itself is its introduction in the brief promotional page included in Instapaper Free. A simple description of the feature is accompanied by a large green button linking to a demonstration video that opens and plays from within in Mobile Safari. Like everything else in this application, it’s well thought out and concise.
The ways in which developers are finding to make money off their applications continues to amaze and impress me. This is a great example of the Free/Pro model, with a useful free application, but a really desirable pro version.
Well done, Marco. Well done!
Instapaper is available at the App Store in both Free and Pro versions. The Pro version is $9.99. The Free version is, uh, free.
August 2008
Mike Lee’s firing (“invited to resign” means “you’re fired but we’re not going to pay unemployment”) from Tapulous on Monday continues to ripple through the iPhone development community. John Casasanta writes:
The vultures are out and and they taste blood. The iPhone’s one of the hottest things around right now and there’s little sign of its popularity letting up anytime soon. And the venture capitalists want in… badly. The fact that the iFund™ exists is overwhelming evidence of this.
It’s a good cautionary tale about accepting VC funds and the effect on the iPhone development industry, especially since the iPhone is the new hot platform. If you have a good product, don’t sell yourself short.
How hidden charges doubled my iPhone bill
Ryan Block, on the unexpected charges ($86.64 worth of ‘em) in his post-iPhone 3G AT&T bill:
… it also comes down to doing plenty of pre-purchase consumer diligence and not leaving anything to chance, right? Still, overall experience: poor.
(Via Jacqui Cheng.)
Return to the Great Underground Empire
Blake Patterson writes over at Touch Arcade on the new Frotz Application available for the iPhone:
Frotz for the iPhone is a port of the popular Frotz Z-machine interpreter that was created in 1995 and is available for a great number of platforms. Frotz is capable of playing most Z-code files out there (version 6 and above, which allow graphics, are not supported at this time). Frotz comes bundled with a number of public domain IF titles, with more accessible through a download repository integrated into the application. Users are able to specify other download repositories if they wish.
I agree with Blake when he says:
Some of the best games I’ve personally ever played are text adventures. Don’t knock it ’till you try it.
Frotz is a free download from the App Store.
Every once in a while, I stumble upon nicely-done mobile sites on my iPhone that I wouldn’t have found otherwise. The NBC Olympics site is one of those. Easy to navigate (though stories could use a “Next >>” link) and full of actual relevant, updated content — the schedule pages are particularly useful — it’s a worthwhile site for the next two weeks.
I note that it’s missing an Apple Touch Icon, though. One flaw, but easy to forgive.
Update: Apple Touch icon added, and the videos work really well!
I came across this stunning blueprint for iPhone web designers. I’ve found I can do reasonable sketches in my Field Notes notebooks (16 squares down, 11 across, add .5 on top for the menu bar), but this looks great for presenting ideas to a client.
(Via Jorge Quinteros.)
Ars Technica: MobileMe "not up to Apple standards"
Interesting.
In an internal e-mail sent to Apple employees this evening, Steve Jobs admitted that MobileMe was launched too early and “not up to Apple’s standards.” … “It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store,” he says. “We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.”
Add me to the agreeing chorus on that particular sentiment. Three launches at once, and not one of them executed well? It’s not been a good month for Apple deployments.
The article goes on to talk about the MobileMe team reorganization, which is a sad reality in cases like this. I hope it’s enough to get the product turned around, because it holds a lot of promise.
Dysfunctional App Store reviewers
Marco Arment:
I can’t keep repeating this enough. Nearly every paid app has an unfairly low star-rating average because they all get a bunch of low-star reviews from people who haven’t even tried them complaining about the price.
