Tag Archives | Apple. iPhone

Political Caricature? There’s No App For That

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 9, 2009 at 8:24 am

John McCainI long ago gave up on trying to cover every weird rejection of an application intended for Apple’s iPhone App Store, but this one merits quick mention. Tom Richmond, the excellent caricaturist whose work appears in MAD these days, has blogged about an app he co-created. It’s a guide to senators and members of congress that lets you look up any elected official by GPS or Zip code and get some basic information about him or her, including contact info. Useful, no?

Well, it also includes a depiction of each public servant as a bobblehead doll, using Richmond’s caricatures, and you can bobble their heads by nudging them with your finger. Pretty clever, and no more offensive than any other well-done example of political cartooning. But it apparently ran afoul of an App Store regulation that forbids apps which “Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.”

The rejection doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. Actually, we already knew that Apple doesn’t like apps that have fun at the expense of public figures: an app called Someecards with snarky, topical e-cards only got accepted after its creators edited out cards that Apple didn’t like like. The rejection of Richmond’s app, Bobble Rep, seems to suggest that even gentle humor of the sort that this nation has enjoyed for, oh, its entire existence is beyond the pale.

As TechCrunch’s MG Siegler reported, Google’s Android folks took note of Someecards’ woes, reached out, and invited the company behind it to create an uncensored Android edition. Maybe Bobble Rep will go Android, too. But does anyone out there want to argue that Apple shouldn’t take a deep breath and permit these apps onto the App Store? Isn’t political humor a positively American activity?

I mean, how is Bobble Rep different from the item below, which the iTunes Store cheerfully offers–except that it’s an iPhone app, not a Will Ferrell movie?

You're Welcome

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Verizon Wireless: The iPhone is a Misfit Toy

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 8, 2009 at 3:39 pm

Once again, Verizon is bashing away at the iPhone in a commercial–one that places an animated iPhone lookalike on the Island of Misfit Toys from the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special:

For entertainment value and diligent recreation of the Rankin-Bass studio’s stop-motion puppetry style, this ad gets an A. I do wonder, however, just how effective a marketing strategy it is to paint the iPhone as an unloved loser–we’re talking about a gizmo with astounding levels of consumer satisfaction. The Droid is a nifty phone overall, but it has a long way to go before it matches the iPhone’s sales stats and consumer approval.

Of course, the real message of this ad is pertinent and straightforward: Verizon has far more 3G coverage than AT&T. Wonder whether AT&T will feel like suing over this spot, too?

Verizon also has a couple of other Christmas-themed AT&T-attacking commercials, which you can see over at Engadget. The gist is similar, but they’re nowhere near as amusing as this one…

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iPhone Tethering on AT&T: One Year and Counting

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 6, 2009 at 6:24 pm

iPhone CalendarExactly one year ago, on November 6th, 2008, I was siting in the audience at the Web 2.0 Summit when AT&T Mobility President Ralph De La Vega shared good news from the stage: The company would “soon” be permitting iPhone users to tether their phones for use. I assumed he was a reliable source and blogged the glad tidings.

I also assumed that “soon” meant a matter of weeks or a month or two, so it was startling when Apple announced that iPhone OS 3.0 would support tethering seven months later and named 22 carriers who would be ready on day of launch–and AT&T was not among them. The carrier merely said that it would support tethering at some unspecified date–which turned out not to be early August. Most recently it’s said that it needs to upgrade its network and that “We expect to offer tethering in the future,” which falls short of a promise that it will ever do so.

All along, of course, some folks have tethered their iPhones via hacks, software  that runs only on jailbroken iPhones, and even a program that was very briefly available on Apple’s App Store. But they’ve risked the wrath of AT&T, since tethering violates the carrier’s current terms of service.

As far as I know, nobody at AT&T has publicly explained what its president was doing whipping up excitement for tethering when allowing it without time-consuming infrastructure improvements would have been imprudent. But it seems likely that it now wants to go to extreme measures not to get anyone’s hopes up until it’s absolutely, positively sure that tethering is ready to go. I hope that day comes soon.

But I also keep asking myself an ugly question: If the company still seems to be having trouble dealing with the quantity of data being consumed by iPhone users who can’t tether, what does that say about the chances that it’ll allow them to hog even more bandwidth via their laptops anytime soon?

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Verizon’s Droid and the Importance of Pinching

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 4, 2009 at 7:33 pm

Android CrabWhen I compared the Verizon Droid to the iPhone 3GS last week, I said that the Droid didn’t have multi-touch input–based on the fact that I’d used it a lot and encountered no instances when it did. A commenter said that the phone did indeed support multi-touch, and I tweaked my item. Essentially, the phone is capable of multi-touch; it just chooses not to use it.

Today, Rob Jackson of Phandroid pointed out that the Android image editor Picsay uses multi-touch, and serves as proof that the Droid can do it. He’s right, and Picsay shows the power of controlling your phone with more than one finger at a time. As with iPhone applications, it lets zoom in and out of images by pulling and pinching them. It’s wonderfully fluid–at least as good as the iPhone’s multi-touch.

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iDon’t Think the Droid’s iPhone Attack Will Work

Posted by David Worthington on November 1, 2009 at 10:42 am

droiddoesVerizon is spending a lot of money advertising its upcoming Droid smartphone. It’s everywhere–from commercials on TV to bills posted on construction sites. But I question whether the iPhone-mocking focus of the ad campaign can generate broad appeal.

The ads target the iPhone’s shortcomings, such as its lack of a camera flash and the rigid application development limitations imposed by Apple. They include statements about the iPhone such as “‘iDon’t have a real keyboard,” “iDon’t allow open development,” and “iDon’t run simultaneous apps.'” Those points resonate with me, because I’m a member of the tech punditocracy.

The question is, does the average user care about things such as open development? I’m an iPhone owner, and Apple’s draconian policies don’t really affect my overall experience. There are still plenty of apps to choose from. I haven’t met too many disaffected iPhone users, probably because the user experience–while imperfect–is pretty great.

Beyond the jailbreaking crowd and some grumblings about Google Voice, I have never heard anyone complain that he or she didn’t have all of the applications that he or she wanted on the iPhone. Verizon’s clumsy wording doesn’t help either. The message would be more effective as something like “iDon’t permit all the apps you want.”

Verizon’s playful advertising campaign keeps the Droid fresh in my mind, and initial buzz on the device is favorable. I might consider buying it when I need a new device. However, that would involve switching carriers, and would leave much of my iTunes music library orphaned. My music, video and phone are all-in-one now, and I do not want to have to carry around a separate iPod.

I chose to buy Apple’s DRM music format, as well as to be locked into AT&T’s network. Aside from some intermittent dropped calls, and poor reception in areas that Verizon fully covers, I’m happy with my decision. If I’m a hard sell, I’d venture that people who don’t care about things like running simultaneous apps aren’t really getting what’s so special about the Droid.

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The T-Grid: Verizon Droid vs. iPhone 3GS

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 28, 2009 at 5:43 pm

So Verizon’s Droid is official, and officially arriving a week from Friday.  I’m smart enough to know it’s pointless to call any phone an iPhone killer, or even a potential iPhone killer–and that competing with the iPhone is much more about software and overall integration than it is about hardware specs. (If you could kill the iPhone through trumping its specs, it would already be a goner.) But the Droid does pack better specs than the iPhone 3GS does in many areas–including its screen, which has well over twice as many pixels. It runs the promising Android 2.0 OS. And it’s on a network that doesn’t provoke much in the way of squawking from customers. In short, it’s the most formidable Google rival since the Palm Pre.

I have a Droid in hand (lent to me by Verizon) and will report in with a hands-on report soon. But as is my wont, I’m going to begin with a features comparison. Note that the information that follows mostly doesn’t take third-party applications and products into account.

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Lala for iPhone: Soon, Hopefully!

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 23, 2009 at 11:26 am

Lala LogoA little over a year ago, I wrote about Lala’s extremely nifty music service and mentioned a version for the iPhone which the company said would be available soon. I couldn’t wait to use it…but “soon” never arrived.

But it sounds like “soon” may come…soon. Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk reports that Lala expects its iPhone app to be available in the iTunes App Store by the end of the year. It’s contingent on Apple approving it, of course, and I can’t quite tell from Eliot’s story whether Lala has already submitted the app or just expects to do so shortly. But it sounds like it’s Lala for the iPhone with all the goodness I saw back in 2008: The ability to buy streaming-only songs for a dime apiece and downloadable ones at cheap prices–and to stream music that’s already in your library from Lala’s servers for free.

Lala told Wired that the app will also cache the last few hundred songs you’ve listened to on the iPhone, which would help address the one major limitation of music streaming: It doesn’t work when your device isn’t connected.

Lala’s been in the news a lot this week: On Wednesday, it announced an app that lets Facebook users give Lala music to their pals, and it has news coming next week that reportedly involves its music showing up in Google results.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as a music service that’ll make everybody happy all the time–at least not until someone comes up with one that lets you stream or download all the music you want and keep it forever for free. But between iTunes and Sirius XM and Rhapsody and Slacker and Pandora and umpteen other services, iPhone owners have access to more music via more types of services than users of any other handheld device. Now if Apple would just make it possible to listen to music delivered via non-Apple apps in the background while you’re using other apps…

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Sonos’s All-in-One Connected Speaker System

Posted by Dave Z on October 20, 2009 at 8:54 am

I’ve been talking to the Sonos folks for years. And everyone I know who owns their connected music system absolutely raves about it. Yet, I’ve never joined in given the steep price of entry (starting at ~$1000) and BYOS (bring your own speakers) requirement. Fortunately, Sonos has been listening and their new all-in-one S5 ($400) begins shipping next week.

In what’s become an annual tradition, I recently met up with Sonos CEO John MacFarlane to take a look at the new product. The S5 is a bit larger than the Bose SoundDock II ($300), weighing in at about 9lbs. But it packs in so much more, including the the components for the Sonos mesh network to stream DRM-free iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody, etc with sound that John says “crushes” Bose. He went on to tell me that their primary focus with this all-in-one unit was nailing audio quality, going as far as consulting with Skywalker Ranch on performance. While I’m no audiophile, the full-bodied music emanating into a crowded Marriott lounge sounded quite good. And, in terms of volume, I have a feeling Sonos could have overtaken the room had we cranked it. (The S5 houses 5 speakers, including a sub woofer.)

The target audience for the S5 is music-loving iPhone or iPod Touch owners, who would use their handheld (and the free Sonos app) to control their entire Sonos infrastructure. (Although, one could optionally pick up a dedicated Sonos controller, starting at $250.) And John alluded to support for a pair of additional mobile platforms coming next year.

Sonos

The S5 provides integrated WiFi functionality yet, to maintain high availability audio streaming, Sonos units will only talk to each and hardwired connections. So, for true wireless freedom, many potential S5 owners will need to pick up a Zone Bridge ($99) to take the whole thing airborne. Given current networking reliability and my own experiences streaming video wirelessly (high def, no less), I’m not sure this is necessary. So while Sonos will indeed control the horizontal and vertical to ensure the music never stops, I wonder if this additional hardware requirement does more harm than good in providing another barrier to entry.

Of course, there are many ways to crack the home audio streaming nut. Some have AppleTV connected to a home theater system which is controlled via Apple’s iPhone remote while others cling to their aging Squeezeboxes. Not to mention, there are scores of nice, affordable iPhone/Touch speaker docks and clock “radios” these days. However, for my current minimalist gypsy lifestyle, Internet radio habit, and desire to keep my phone available as a phone, the portable Sonos S5 may be the proper solution to stream audio around my place. I only wish it could speak directly to my wireless router.

(This post republished from Zatz Not Funny.)

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