Tag Archives | Apple. iPhone

Klipsch’s Apple-Friendly Headset

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 21, 2009 at 9:15 am

Klipsch HeadsetWhen Apple released the voice-controlled third-generation iPod Shuffle back in March, lots of folks understandably fixated on the fact that Apple had moved the controls to the earbud cord, making it impossible to use the Shuffle with third-party headsets. Apple said that it would license the design to other headset manufacturers. And today, Klipsch announced the Image S4i headset, which sports a microphone and the on-cord buttons needed to control the Shuffle. Available in August, it’ll sell for $99.99–twenty-one bucks more than the Shuffle itself. I’d love to know how many Shuffle owners there are out there who are serious enough about sound to invest more in a headset than they did in their audio player.

Of course, Klipsch says the S4i provides a superior experience–it’s got sound-isolating earbuds and a 360-degree microphone, among other features. And the headset also works with some fancier Apple products: the iPhone 3GS, second generation iPod touch, fourth generation iPod Nano, and the iPod Classic 120GB.

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Quickoffice for iPhone Does File Attachments

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 20, 2009 at 11:40 am

QuickofficeFor everything that’s amazing about the iPhone, there are still some things about it that are amazingly limited. One example: The sandboxing of third-party apps has meant that there’s been no way to edit documents that folks send to you as e-mail file attachments.

Today, Quickoffice released an update to its $12.99 iPhone office suite–the only real suite for the iPhone–with support for attachments, letting you edit Word and Excel attachments. Apple hasn’t un-sandboxed anything–Quickoffice came up with a workaround. Once you’ve verified the e-mail addresses you use with your iPhone, you can forward an e-mail with an attachment to files@quickofficeconnect.com. Once you do, it’s available within Quickoffice for editing. And if you need to e-mail the edited version as an attachment, you can.

It’s not as simple as if Apple simply provided the hooks for Quickoffice to grab attachments, and you probably won’t want to use it for sensitive documents, since the process involves e-mailing files to an external address. But it works quite well–it’s sort of an elegant kludge, and it makes Quickoffice for the iPhone much, much more useful. Actually, it makes the iPhone more useful, period. The new version of the suite also provides support for universal Cut and Paste, offers better spreadsheet formatting, and lets you shake the phone to undo.

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I’m an Ex-XM Subscriber

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 6, 2009 at 6:54 pm

iPhone XM RadioLast week, I was thinking about replacing the XM satellite receiver in my car with my iPhone 3GS.  Now the deed is done: I called XM this afternoon and canceled my service, more than five years after I first became an XM fan. From now on, nearly all the audio I listen to in my car will be piped from my phone. (I do listen to local NPR stations, and may continue to do so via Plain Old FM Radio at least part of the time.)

I enjoyed XM enough over the years that I’m not leaving as an unhappy camper, even though the last couple of years were pretty dang rocky–the service kept raising prices (it now charges $18 a month for what was once $10) and dropping stuff I liked to listen to (Harry Shearer, all of MSNBC). But I don’t want to fiddle with two separate devices in my car, and when I had to make a decision, I opted for the iPhone. It gives me tens of thousands of radio stations for the cost of my AT&T data plan. Plus customizable “radio” from Last.fm, Pandora, and Slacker. Plus a bevy of podcasts. Plus audio books. Plus all my own music. Given all that, I’m willing to live with the fact that it’s not as convenient a car radio as my XM Xpress receiver was. Did I mention it also does GPS navigation and lets me make phone calls?

Some folks have reported having trouble canceling satellite radio or being offered cheap or free service as an enticement to keep the account. I had to wait a half hour on hold to speak to a real person, who offered me a $77-a-year deal if I’d reconsider–but one that would only kick in when my current subscription ended next March, and would then extend to March, 2011.

In other words, even though I told him I was canceling because XM was too expensive, he suggested paying the same rate for eight more months, then continuing to pay for another year beyond that. I declined the offer; he canceled my service.

What XM didn’t offer me was the one thing that might have kept me around: An iPhone-only subscription at a competitive price. (The $12.95 Sirius XM wants for online listening is too much given that it’s the same as the base rate for satellite listening, for a lineup that lacks much of the service’s signature programming and has dozens fewer channels.) I’ll bet I’m not the only XM defector who might have stuck around for a decent iPhone plan…and if it ever offers one I might be back. But for now, I’m ex-XM.

I’ll let you know how my iPhone-as-a-car-radio experiment goes. I already know I like the three customized 1960s stations I’ve created with Slacker a lot more than XM’s Sixties on 6…

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iPods With Video Cameras? Sure. iPods With Projectors? I’m Skeptical.

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 6, 2009 at 10:27 am

iPod CameraJudging the accuracy of Apple rumors may not be a cakewalk, but one technique is surprisingly effective and obvious: Ask yourself if past Apple history suggests that a rumor sounds like something the company would do. By that measure, the current rumors about iPod Touch and Nano models with built-in video cameras sounds entirely plausible. The iPhone 3GS‘s camera shows Apple has invested in video-recording hardware and software. It’s gradually been turning every iPod except for the screenless Shuffle into a video device. And given that a high percentage of people who want iPods own them by now, Apple could use a strikingly new feature with wide appeal to tempt them to upgrade.

On the other hand, I’d be surprised if concurrent rumors about Apple getting ready to build projectors into iPhones and iPods are the real deal. Projectors may be getting tinier, but they aren’t yet teensy enough to cram into a phone or MP3 player that’s as thin as the ones Apple likes to make. And how often would a real person want to project an image from an iPhone or iPod in the real world? Not all that often, surely. Apple history shows that it’s not all that interested in adding exotic features that won’t be used much, and is almost never the first company to embrace a new technology. (It tends to cheerfully sit on the sidelines while other companies make bleeding-edge products that are noble in their ambitions but frustrating in practice.)

I’m not saying that there will never be Apple handheld devices with built-in projectors, but I don’t think we’re a couple of months away from seeing them. And a couple of months from now is almost certainly when Apple will announce its new lineup of iPods. Any guesses (or wishes) about what the Fall 2009 lineup of iPods will involve?

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Critical iPhone SMS Vulnerability Revealed

Posted by David Worthington on July 2, 2009 at 8:00 pm

Yesterday, security researcher Charlie Miller gave Apple a good pantsing at the SyScan conference in Singapore. Miller, who is the author of “The Mac Hacker’s Handbook,” revealed that the iPhone allows remote code installation and execution through SMS, a security hole that Apple is working to patch up.

That means that a hacker could potentially turn the iPhone into a remote tracking device by exploiting its microphone and GPS capability, or do whatever else he or she pleases.

Software that runs devices like the iPhone is complex, and there is always going to be a Charlie Miller who can uncover defects. However, Apple has been sharply criticized for lacking a company wide, holistic approach to secure software development. Vulnerabilities will continue to slip by its engineers, placing iPhone user’s personal information and privacy at risk.

The iPhone 3.0 update contained 46 security patches, but it did not address against the SMS vulnerability that Miller discovered–that fix is on its way (likely to be wrapped into the iPhone 3.1 update).

I expect that this SMS vulnerability is just the tip of the iceberg, and we will continue to see more like it until Apple upgrades its security practices.

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iPhoneys!

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 1, 2009 at 10:21 am

iPhoneysOver at Cult of Mac, Leander Kahney has a post on fake Chinese iPhones, which started out terrible and are getting…well, they’re still terrible in many respects, but you might mistake one for a real iPhone at first glance. At least until you turned it on and tried to do anything with it.

These aren’t like the pseudo-iPods I took pictures of last year, all of which imitated Apple’s MP3 players with great energy without quite claiming to be iPods. Today’s fake iPhones are genuine counterfeits (is that an oxymoron?), and even come in knockoffs of the distinctive Apple box.

Of course, it’s a lot easier for a Chinese factory to crank out a piece of hardware that looks more or less like an iPhone than it is to write an operating system that behaves more or less like iPhone OS. So the iPhoneys run Linux, with a home screen that mimics the one on the iPhone. But all they manage to plagiarize from iPhone OS is some of its surface detail.

Here’s a video demo of one from MacMedic:

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Learning to Leave Satellite Radio

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 30, 2009 at 4:44 pm

iPhone XM RadioI’ve been making noises about the idea of retiring my XM satellite radio receiver, canceling my account, and using my iPhone as an audio device in my car for a while now. The more XM charges and the less I like its programming, the more tempting the idea becomes. Now I’ve finally gone and taken a necessary step: figured out a workable way to pump my iPhone’s audio through my car stereo.

This was surprisingly difficult, which one reason why I’ve dawdled as long as I have. My car is a 2004 Mazda3, dating from an era in which cars didn’t come with iPhone integration and even mundane AUX ports were rare. (I did pay extra for a six-CD changer…which I ended up using maybe four times.) I went through an array of wireless FM transmitters for both my various iPods and my various satellite radios, and even the best ones were staticky hassles. I also spent more than $100 and a considerable amount of time on a fancy-schmancy kit that connected my iPod to my Mazda stereo system–it sounded greated, but caused the iPod to have some sort of digital nervous breakdown that rendered it unusable.

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Are You an HP Calculator Geek? There’s an App for That.

Posted by Jason Meserve on June 26, 2009 at 4:05 pm

HP 12C CalculatorIf you hate the iPhone’s built-in calculator and long for your old HP calculator with its programmable goodness and fancy built-in algorithms, you can now download three classic apps from the iTunes App Store to emulate the HP 12c, HP 12c Platinum, and HP 15C.

The new apps give you all the functionality of your trusty hardware version with some new features such as a tip calculator that shows up when the phone is in portrait mode. Most of the advanced features of the calculators can be accessed by rotating the iPhone into landscape mode, and the cheat sheet formulas found on the back of the hardware counterparts can be accessed by tapping on the HP logo to “flip” the calculator over.

Even better, things run a little faster given the iPhone’s far superior processing capabilities. The hardware calculators run on a 4-bit processor and can’t even make phone calls.

HP fans will have to pony up a little dough for privilege of turning their iPhone into their favorite HP calculator. The HP 12c is available for $15, the HP 12c Platinum is $20 (which is due in August), and the HP 15c is $30. Before you complain, a hardware version of the 12c costs $69.99 while the 12c Platinum is $79.99. HP no longer makes the 15c, but you can find them on eBay with prices starting around $130.

I am just waiting for Texas Instruments to make an iPhone version of my old TI-81 graphic calculator. I could plot out a mean sine wave with that baby.

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Should Original iPhone Owners Ditch Apple for a Pre?

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 26, 2009 at 12:09 pm

Palm Pre vs. ApplePreThinking has noticed that Sprint is running ads for the Palm Pre directed at the earliest of iPhone adopters–the folks who bought first-generation iPhones two years ago, and whose contracts are therefore starting to end. (Or will be in a few days–next Monday is the second anniversary of the iPhone’s introduction.) The ads correctly point out the Pre’s multitasking and Sprint’s all-inclusive $99 service plan as reasons to consider a Pre. They also mention Sprint’s 4G network, which is a tad odd given that the Pre doesn’t support it.

The ads inevitably bring to mind Palm investor Roger McNamee’s amazing prediction that “not one” original iPhone user would still be using an iPhone within a month of the AT&T contract coming to an end. Sprint will presumably be quite happy if even a smallish percentage of first-gen iPhone owners switch. But would doing so be a rational move?

Sure, for some folks. I’d at least consider the possibility myself if I had an old iPhone and my obligation to AT&T was nearing its end.

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