Don't expect lightning speed from this quick demo, and note the bonus tapping that the spiffy cursor provides. We're not going to run out and try it, but we're glad enough to watch someone else do it. Good work, Hexxeh.
NBC isn't the only broadcast company that's fighting Apple on 99 cent iTunes rentals -- apparently Time Warner doesn't want in on the plan, either. That's according to its CEO Jeff Bewkes, who told a conference of media executives in London that Apple is underselling television content by providing cheap rentals to customers. "How can you justify renting your first-run TV shows individually for 99 cents an episode," he asked, "and thereby jeopardize the sale of the same shows as a series to branded networks that pay hundreds of millions of dollars and make those shows available to loyal viewers for free?" The argument seems to be that if Apple offers 99 cent rentals, there's no incentive for syndication on other networks. Why would you watch cable reruns when you could load up old shows whenever you wanted for just a buck?
Of course, Bewkes is assuming that people will watch cable reruns rather than Netflix or other streaming services on offer already. By the time he comes around to singing Apple's tune, that syndication market worth "hundreds of millions of dollars" might not be doing so well.
But Bewkes is holding his ground -- he says that before he makes a deal with a provider like Apple, it'll have to bring something new to the table: "These new entrants must meet a few criteria: They must provide consumers with a superior TV experience, and they must either support or improve the overall economics that funds and creates the programming in the first place." That's a lot of "musts" -- Bewkes may spend too much time looking for his own perfect solution before Apple's setup passes him by.
The US $0.99 app is rated pretty highly by users in the App Store, and is described as having "a light-hearted and funny view of the world."
The Minister, for her part, says that "Italy is a beacon in the world for its history, culture and style, and as a citizen and minister, I cannot allow that our country is discredited by the use of a criminal organization as its testimonial." But Italy isn't the only country with a less-than-complimentary description. The app describes Germany as "Beer, discipline and autobahns."
I can't see a lawsuit in a case like this getting too far, but the publicity probably won't hurt the app any, either.
CineTap for Netflix (US $0.99) is the newest and nicest Netflix management app I've seen so far. It won't replace the Netflix
app, since you still need to have that installed to instantly watch movies. But CineTap adds some great features to the experience that the Netflix app doesn't include. The app is amazingly fast and absolutely gorgeous, taking full advantage of the iPad's screen real estate. Instead of lists, it uses posters to represent movies that can be scrolled left or right, or if you tap the Show All button, the line expands to fill the screen with posters that can then be scrolled up or down. In Show All mode, you'll see 20 posters plus a navigation bar in landscape mode, or 25 poster in portrait mode with an optional navigation bar that covers up some of the posters, which is no big deal since it's easily dismissed.
In the iPhone's built-in Clock app, setting a recurring alarm will cause it to trigger an hour early every time if you're running iOS 4.1, iTunes 10.0.1, and live in a Southern Hemisphere country that's just gone over to Daylight Saving Time (which, for now at least, just means New Zealand). It's also been affecting US users in Indiana since late June because of the weird time zone situation in that state. For some reason, non-recurring alarms aren't affected; so far, changing recurring alarms to non-recurring is the only thing that's fixed the problem.
Standard Time doesn't start in the US until November 7, which is right around the time that iOS 4.2 is supposed to come out. Since this bug is probably something that can only be addressed by an iOS update, and since a relatively small portion of iOS users will be affected, I won't be surprised at all if Apple sits on this bug until November and bundles the fix into iOS 4.2. Meanwhile, Australian iOS users in territories that observe DST will have something to look forward to: unless this gets fixed before October 3rd, their alarms are going to start going off an hour earlier, too.
Most Microsoft users should be very familiar with Notepad, the lightweight and simple text and HTML editor that comes free with Windows OS. Some users use it to write XML, while others use it as a scrap pad. Many users, however, probably never use it at all. This basic application is simple to use but [...]
CCAnts, which is previously known as TVAnts, is a P2PTV application that allows TV channels via Internet. Developed in China, CCAnts (TVAnts) is one of the few Chinese P2PTV client that been fully translated in English. Due to lack of development, the popularity of TVAnts have been slowly dwindling, especially so after it changes name [...]
Valve has released another Steam Play Mac title, and this time it's Garry's Mod, the wild sandbox physics editor that uses assets from Half Life 2 to create whatever you want. The mod is probably most famous for its Rube Goldberg-style creations, but it's also very handy for machinima and other graphic model design as well. It's not so much a game as a way to just create all kinds of wacky machines and computer characters, and have them interact in whatever way you'd like.
If you already own it for the PC, then you own the Mac version as well, so you can head into Steam on OS X and download away. If you don't own it yet, Steam has a 50% off discount up right now, so you can pick it up for just $4.99.
And no, because I'm sure you're wondering, there's still no Left 4 Dead. Soon, we hope. Soon.
Pocket God is still rolling along -- it was one of the first big original iPhone games out there, and more than any other title on the App Store, Bolt Creative has been able to both keep the app popular with constant updates and content additions, and even license the app elsewhere in the form of comics (and presumably other media, if they can swing it).
Here's another example of that -- Bolt posted this video Steve Jobs' favorite new singer songwriter Jonathan Mann (he of the extremely awkward iPhone Antenna song played at the Apple event a while back) singing a new tune about the game and its fans' constant requests for updates and new content. The song was commissioned to show off the new Dance Pack content, which lets your little islanders boogie down for 99 cents.
It's cute. We've heard this from the Doodle Jump folks as well -- one of the best things that App Store developers can do for their apps is provide a string of content updates, as those both keep current fans interested, and do well to drive new purchases of the app. Of course, it sounds like Bolt is a little stressed out over all the requests, but the app is doing so well that they have to be happy with it.
Here's another entry in our "Five Apps For" series, which identifies five iPhone/iPod touch apps that fill a specific niche, appeal to a particular crowd, or cover an area of interest. Enjoy!
As an aging child of the 70's and 80's (I'll be 40 in January), I'm feeling nostalgic for the past while cozying up to my own mortality. Call it a mid-life crisis, regression or what have you, but I'm thinking about the old days. This Etch-a-Sketch iPad case kicked the process into high gear and got me thinking about contemporary versions of the games I used to love.
After scouring the App Store, I found the selection sadly lacking. Every app I found (with one notable exception) resembled its ancestor only superficially. Still, I present them for your consideration. Here are five apps for nostalgia.
Speak & Spell
Who remembers typing out bad words with the good old Speak & Spell from Texas Instruments? I don't mean the 1986 model with that poseur membrane keyboard, but the '78 model with big chunky keys and that unforgettable voice: "That is incorrect. The correct spelling of...."
While there's no actual Speak & Spell app in the app store, there is Remix DJ : Speak EZ (Free). Its UI closely resembles that of the Speak & Spell and includes all of the original sounds, including that very same voice; over 200 samples in all. It's meant for DJs to use as a virtual instrument (you can't play any of the old Speak & Spell games), but for free it's still fun to hear the old sounds. Remix DJ: Speak EZ is compatible with iPhone and iPod touch.
NBC isn't 
What Country
Here's another entry in our "