Banana Glue

Die neue iPhone-4-Kamera knipst erst seit 1.5 Monaten Bilder meines Alltags, hat jedoch die DSLR auf Kurzreisen bereits mehrfach ausgebremst. Nichtsdestotrotz benötigt es für die Veredelung des schnellen Schnappschusses weiterhin gute Software. Bereits ewig verfügbar, hier jedoch nie ausführlich vorgestellt, ist Hipstamatic (1.59 €; App Store-Link). Unter dem Slogan “Digital photography never looked so analog” schraubt der kleine Plastik-Fotoapparat per In-App-Kauf verschiedene Objektive sowie unterschiedliche Konfektionierungstypen von Rollfilmen auf. Was Hipstamatic aus gewöhnlichen Bilder herauszukitzeln vermag, zeigen 60.000 Flickr-Uploads. Diacarta (1.59 €; App Store-Link) ist eine extrem ‘spezielle’ Empfehlung aus der ‘ToDo’-Kategorie. Visuelle Icons strukturieren dabei – abgestimmt auf eine Uhrzeit – die Aufgaben des jeweiligen Tages. Ohne Import-Funktion, iCal-Anbindung oder erweiternde Konfigurationen ist die App wenig ernst zu nehmen, bietet jedoch über seine optische Gestaltung ein enormes Maß an Intuition und Übersichtlichkeit, von dem sich Things, Omnifocus und Co. noch eine dicke Scheibe abschneiden können. Glyph-O-Rama (kostenlos; App Store-Link) lehnt mit mehr (zu kopierenden) Sonderzeichen und ASCII-Kunst an Neven Mrgans Glyphbord an. Screetch (2.39 €; App Store-Link) ist ein liebevoller Tetris-/Lumines-Klon, der in Russland mit Hilfe von den farbigen M&M-Schokolinsen erdacht wurde. Read More

iNet is incredibly handy. I needed a list of the MAC addresses of all of the devices on my network. It's a fairly tedious process that requires a lot of copy and pasting and a lot of poking around in network settings. Then, I remembered I had iNet Pro on my iPhone. I fired it up, ran a scan, and then emailed myself a nicely-formatted report that listed all of the devices. Later, my satellite Internet went down. Every couple of minutes, I launched iNet and had it run "ping" against www.google.com to see if the connection was back up. I've used it to see if my wife's iPhone was on the network (a good way to see if she is awake) and to remember the static IP address of a network printer at my office. iNet Pro can run port scans (offering a custom set of ports to check or letting you run your own) and show you a list of Bonjour services that are available for each computer. If you have any computers set to use Wake On Lan, iNet can send the necessary signal. I haven't used that feature but Apple improved upon it in Snow Leopard and explains how to determine if your Mac supports Wake On Demand. There are several versions of iNet available. The basic iNet Network Scanner is $0.99 (all prices USD) and iNet Pro is $4.99. The website includes a handy guide to the iNet and iNet Pro Feature List (PDF), which explains the differences. You can upgrade from iNet to iNet Pro as a $3.99 in-app purchase, so if you aren't sure that you need everything the Pro version does, you can start small without worrying that you're going to cost yourself more by not buying the Pro version right away. The developer also offers iNet Wake On Lan (WOL) and iNet Portscan, each for $1.99. It's important to note, though, that iNet Pro contains both WOL and Portscan capabilities. If you really only need those particular features, you can save a couple of dollars by purchasing only what you need. However, the Pro version is still only $5. Read More

I make part of my living as an Apple consultant, so one of the first thoughts that went through my mind on Wednesday when I first saw the iPad was "would I be able to use that to help support my clients?" After a bit of thought yesterday while waiting for files to be loaded onto a new server I was installing, I think the answer is a resounding yes. Usually when I'm visiting my clients, I lug along a computer bag filled with various tools along with my MacBook Air. The rest of the time, I'm either in my office with my iMac, or away from a Mac enjoying myself. Unfortunately, Mac issues tend to arise at the worst possible times, and so there are many situations where I only have my iPhone available for support. One of my tricks of the trade is to talk with clients while looking at their Mac screens using a remote support tool, and the iPhone screen has always been too small to be useful. When you're trying to control someone's computer through Jaadu VNC or some other remote control software, screen real estate is very helpful. I can see using the iPad for remote support in many situations where an iPhone just won't work. The iPad would also be useful for reading technical documentation while on-site. I have many support documents saved in PDF format and saved into my Dropbox; they'll be much easier to read on the iPad screen than on my iPhone. Likewise, when I've tried to pull up support info from a number of websites with my iPhone, I've found reading the support articles to be nearly impossible. With the built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi, the iPad is going to be useful as a very portable device for troubleshooting wireless networks. Apps such as the US$4.99 iNet Pro network scanner [iTunes Link] will work on iPad right off the bat, so they'll find a place on my iPad home screen. Of course, there are some things you'll never be able to do with an iPad. For example, it's sometimes helpful to start up another Mac in Target Disk Mode and run a utility on a laptop to check for disk issues on the ailing Mac. Since the advent of the MacBook Air and new MacBook, some of the lower-end laptops don't even come with the requisite FireWire port to allow this type Read More

by on 11. Dec, 2009 in The Sensors in your iPhone An informative talk on the sensors in the iPhone given at the Where 2.0 Online Conference of 2009. Command Guru Webcast reality TV featuring Aaron Hillegass leading ten devs/designers — including friend-of-the-site and creator of the icon-set that’s part of our holiday giving bundle Eddie Wilson — in week long, from scratch, product sprint. Rejections: A gentler hand? Two rays of hope: Phil Schiller Shares What’s On His iPhone Apple’s senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing shares what his favorite applications are on his iPhone. iPhoneFlow New curators have breathed new life into our link blog. Plus, we use it as a radar for this column. Subscribe to the iPhoneFlow feed or follow iPhone flow on Twitter! Three rumors rich on details rumors on the Apple Tablet: CNN’s Apple Tablet Set For Spring Launch; Oppenheimer’s peek into Apple’s supply chain (PDF); and this from the LA Time’s Books Section. Ratings Scam Gets Almost 1% of App Store Pulled A prolific iPhone developer Molinker has had all of their apps — more than 1000! rumored to be 1% of all apps in the store! — yanked for scamming the review system. 2009 Best App Ever Awards presented by 148Apps The second annual Best App Ever Awards reviews the best iPhone applications of the year. You can start nominating apps now. Google Confirms Goggles for iPhone Google steps into the “augmented reality” space with their own application “Google Googles”, currently for Android, but with an iPhone application coming soon. iPhone Developer News from Apple Apple has created an news feed for iPhone developers. You’ll definitely want to add this to your RSS reader. Malware Could Grab Data From Stock iPhones At a talk on iPhone privacy in Geneva a Swiss iPhone developer demonstrated how a malicious application could gain access to your personal data on a non-jailbroken iPhone. Postabon is the love child of Foursquare and Groupon Postabon is a location-based service allowing users to tag and share deals found while out and about. An iPhone application is now available. HootSuite for iPhone The populate desktop Twitter client now available on the iPhone. iSimulate 1.5 released Now featuring compass support and full UIKit support, including previously absent scrolling and keyboard capabilities. Send us your tips for next week’s column! Email team -at- mobileorchard.com Holiday Giving: Support Mobile Orchard and receive 1,000,000 push Read More

Either Apple’s app reviewers are in the holiday spirit, or this is a sign of good things to come.  According to AppleInsider, Apple approved an update to developer Vimov’s iSimulate app even though it was using a private API, something that has always, and still is, against the company’s rules. Under normal circumstances, and in recent past, Apple’s reviewers would reject an update, or an app in general, that contained a non-public API.  This time, however, Vimov’s update was approved even with the non-public API still intact.  It’s not as if Apple’s reviewers missed the inclusion of the API, it’s that they decided to give the developers a chance to remove it in the next update while still allowing the updated version of the app to remain in the App Store. Thank you for submitting your update to iSimulate to the App Store. During our review of your application we found it is using a private API, which is in violation of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement section 3.3.1; “3.3.1 Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.” While your application has not been rejected, it would be appropriate to resolve this issue in your next update. The non-public API that is included in your application is UITouch._touchFlags. Please resolve this issue in your next update to iSimulate. Apple’s reviewers have been known to reject apps over the most minute oversights, so this is definitely a surprise.  This approach allows stable and necessary updates to be issued even though a small mistake has been made. Vimov is obviously thrilled that the update made it through the process even with the non-public API, and they intend to address the issue in their next update, just as Apple has asked. In related news, we recently received a tip from Wolfgang Dahmen regarding the use of Apple-owned icons in iPhone apps. Apparently iNet Pro – Network Scanner was recently updated with icons that look identical to Apple products, something the company has frowned upon in the past.  Maybe Apple is finally easing up on some of its ridiculous restrictions and it isn’t just holiday spirit after all! Read More

Zum Jahresende kommt noch einmal so richtig Bewegung ins iPhone-Geschäft. Der Hardware-Markt zieht gewöhnlich kräftig in der vorweihnachtlichen Stimmung an. Es gehört nicht viel Risiko dazu, auf abermals steigende Quartalszahlen für Q1 2010 zu setzen. Einen Ausschlag werden dafür mit Sicherheit auch die Länder geben, in denen das iPhone neu gestartet ist. Der chinesische Mobilfunkanbieter China Unicom gab bekannt, das seit der iPhone-Veröffentlichung am 30. Oktober über 100.000 Geräte abgesetzt werden konnten. Das ist für den dort gigantischen Mobilfunkmarkt keine überragende Zahl, entgegen den ersten drei Verkaufstagstagen mit lediglich 5.000 Geräten jedoch eine erhebliche Steigerung. Aufgrund der hinlänglich beschriebenen Problemen im dortigen Vertrieb (Schwarzmarkt, kein WiFi, etc.) verwundert diese Zahl jedoch nicht. Besser scheint es in Südkorea zu laufen. Der dortige Betreiber KT konnte alle seiner 60.000 Vorbestellungen absetzen und damit für das dortige Q3 2009 einen Marktanteil von 15-Prozent erwirtschaften. Auf dem Stand heraus, sehr beachtlich. Ähnlich vielversprechend kündigt sich der Verkaufsstart vom iPhone in Israel am heutigen, ersten offiziellen Tag, an. Die Mobilfunkanbieter Cellcom (Orange) und Pelephone (Bezeq Israel Telecom) versuchen dabei neben den geschätzten 80.000 ‘freien’ iPhones, die bereits im Land betrieben werden, Verträge mit einer Mindestlaufzeit von über zwei Jahren zu verkaufen. Die Erfolgschancen dafür sind nicht abwegig, da Israel anscheinend eine der weltweit höchsten Quoten für ‘mobile phone penetration‘ besitzt. Aber auch in Punkto Software scheint sich die festliche Stimmung auf das iPhone durchzuschlagen. Nachdem immer mehr ‘Augmented Reality’ den App Store seit Firmware 3.1 ungehindert stürmen (darf), lockerten sich in letzter Zeit (anscheinend) die Bedingungen für die Verwendung von markenrechtlich geschützten Apple-Bildern. Im Zuge des Dramas um Rogue Amoeba’s ‘Airfoil Speakers Touch’-Anwendung (kostenlos; App Store-Link), die sich über das Netzwerk der ausgelieferten Apple-Symbolbildern bediente, kündigte sich der Kurswechsel bereits an. Am heutigen Morgen schafft es ein Update des Netzwerk- und Bonjourscanners iNet Pro (3.99 €; App Store-Link) von Linnart Bäker in den App Store, der die entsprechenden Symbolbilder direkt in die Anwendung einarbeitete. Und damit finden die guten Nachrichten noch kein Ende. In den letzten Tagen überraschte Apple mit der Freischaltung von zwei Video-Streaming-Anwendungen, die auch über das UMTS-Netz funktionieren. Zwei Kriterien, die zuvor als absolute Tabus galten. Extrem ungewöhnlich fällt dabei auf, dass die Ustream-App auch ein Videobild vom iPhone Classic und 3G-Gerät abgreifen darf. Mit Rückblick auf die bisherige App Store- und Vermarktungs-Politik kann es sich hierbei eigentlich nur um einen Fehler handeln… Der ebenfalls populäre Mitbewerber Qik im Streaming-Geschäft veröffentlichte am heutigen Read More

We develop innovative applications for your Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Click on the icons on the right side for detailed information about a specific application. Listed below are our latest news. Have a nice day, and thanks for visiting. 18 May, 2009 We got so much and very positive customer reviews on KickStart. Thank you. We will post some of them on our website soon. Read More