Tag Archives | Apple. iPhone

Apple’s iWork Apps Arrive on the iPhone

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 31, 2011 at 11:18 am

WWDC doesn’t start until Monday, but the news is overflowing into this week. Apple has announced that its iWork iOS apps–Pages, Numbers, and Keynote–are now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch as well as for the iPad. All three apps are now dual-platform ready, so if you’ve already shelled out the $9.99-per-app price for the iPad editions, you can get them on an iPhone at no extra price.

They haven’t quite shown up in the App Store on my iPhone yet, but I’m looking forward to trying them and comparing them to the two big players in iPhone office suites: Documents to Go and Quickoffice. The best thing about the iPad version by far s is that the user interfaces are so nicely tailored to the iPad; I’m curious to see how Apple reworked them for the iPhone’s screen size and resolution.

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The WWDC Keynote is a Go–and It’s About Software

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 31, 2011 at 11:04 am

We pretty much knew this already, but now it’s official: Apple’s WWDC event next week will begin with a keynote on Monday. The big news at the keynote will be OS X 10.7 Lion. And the next version of iOS. “And iCloud, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.” Steve Jobs will host the keynote. (Okay, that part we didn’t know.)

Last week, one site said that it had learned that Apple’s UK PR team was urging journalists over there to make the trek to San Francisco for the event. That site came to the “obvious conclusion” that Apple must have been planning to announce the next iPhone at the keynote. I never understood what was so obvious about that conclusion. New hardware is neat, but the biggest opportunity for any phone or tablet platform to make great leaps forward lies in in its software and services. So WWDC has the opportunity to be a huge deal even if not a single new device is announced.

I’ll have more thoughts between now and Monday morning, but in the meantime: What features would you like to see in Lion, the next iOS, and/or iCloud?

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White iPhone Kit Purveyor Settles With Apple?

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 26, 2011 at 8:46 pm

Apple appears to have reached a settlement with a young entrepreneur who capitalized on the Cupertino company’s failure to release the white iPhone by selling conversion kits. How’d 17-year-old Fei Lam do it? By dealing with Foxconn himself, getting the parts on his own.

This obviously rankled Apple quite a bit, and the company had a private investigation firm send him a letter accusing him of being in receipt of stolen goods. Lam did not back down, and hired a lawyer.

It took until yesterday for Apple to file a lawsuit against Lam and his family, but it concurrently took the step of filing a request for dismissal as well. This could mean that the two sides have come to an agreement. It should be noted that the dismissal was filed “without prejudice,” legalese for meaning that an acceptance of the request would give Apple the option to refile if it decided to do so.

Given that the white iPhone 4 is now a reality, I doubt Lam has any reason to start his business anew. Then again, if Apple can’t make a future device in a highly coveted color, all he needs to do his give his buddies at Foxconn a call…

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Lark, the iPhone “Un-Alarm,” is About to Ship

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 24, 2011 at 12:35 pm

At last September’s TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, a startup called Lark unveiled Lark Up, a $99 wristband “un-alarm” that vibrated to wake you up, thereby avoiding disrupting anyone else who happened to be in bed with you. It came with a charging station that let your phone double as a bedside clock. And…it never shipped. Instead, the Lark folks found additional funding for their idea and decided to fast-forward to what would have been their second-generation upgrade. That version–called just plain Lark–was announced (re-announced?) at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York today, and will soon go on sale at Apple Store retail locations, which are adding health and wellness sections.

The new version of Lark retains the silent alarm feature, but it’s beefed up features for monitoring your sleep patterns, incorporating input from a Harvard instructor who studies sleep and making it more of a direct competitor to a gizmo called Zeo. The wristband transmits data back to your phone via Bluetooth, letting you can use your phone to log when you feel asleep, when you woke up, and just how restful (or restless) your slumber was. And a Lark Pro version provides you with a more detailed analysis of your sleep habits based on seven days of data, with advice about how to improve them.

The included dock recharges the wristband and lets you prop up your iPhone or iPod Touch as a clock. It doesn’t include a dock connector, but there’s a USB port in back that lets you charge your device by plugging in your own cable. It’s an Apple-only setup at the moment, but an Android version is in the works.

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Verizon: “iPhone 5” Will Compete with AT&T for Global Coverage

Posted by Matt Peckham on May 20, 2011 at 3:07 pm

I noticed this story late last night, basically another ‘iPhone 5’ tease that’s even bigger news from where I sit than whatever newfangled whatsits Apple’s tucked under the hood: global Verizon iPhone support.

The tipster: my wife. She wants a phone she can take on business trips abroad (like the U.K., or more recently, the Middle East). But the phone has to be all things. It has to work across the pond, but also in her tiny northwest Iowa hometown. Actually out of town a couple miles to where her parents’ farmhouse sits, nestled behind a tower-blocking hill, flush with trees, cows, and a compost pit. Lest you think we’re asking the moon for cheese, Verizon’s had bumper voice and data coverage across the area for years, while—nothing against them otherwise—AT&T offers neither.

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An iPhone Battery Case That’s Also a Universal Power Pack for Portable Gadgets

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 16, 2011 at 12:52 pm

My first impulse is to compare Third Rail Mobility’s new Smart Battery and Slim Case to Mophie‘s Juice Pack, the best-known name in iPhone battery cases.Third Rail’s system does, indeed, provide an alternative way to extend an iPhone 4’s battery life. But this clever system goes way beyond that. I tried a review unit provided by the company.

The case itself looks pretty much like any nice two-piece snap-on black iPhone 4 case, except:

  • The section below the dock connector is a bit taller than usual and sports a Micro USB connector;
  • There’s an area on the back with electrical contacts.

The contacts on the case’s back are there because you can connect the battery there like a backpack. It’s a 1250 MaH unit, so it should come close to doubling the standard life of the iPhone’s own 1420 MaH battery. You can simply use the phone with the battery in place–it looks a little strange, but I found it comfortable enough in the hand–or attach the battery only when you need it, such as when the iPhone’s own battery is about to croak.

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The Era of One-Size-Fits-All Products

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 7, 2011 at 12:10 pm

I stopped using Google’s Chrome as my primary browser today. I did so with regret, and hope to be back. But in recent days, some of the Web sites I use most–WordPress.com, Twitter, and Facebook–have stopped working properly in Chrome. I’m uncertain of why, but the most likely explanation is that they’re reacting badly to the newest version of Chrome, which, like all Chrome updates, was installed automatically on my computer. So I’m switching for the time being to Safari, where all those sites behave like they should.

There are plenty of arguments for auto-updates of the type seen in Chrome. For one thing, they’re a good way to stomp out security vulnerabilities as quickly as possible, as widely as possible, once they’re discovered. But they also make it harder for anyone who’d rather decide for himself or herself when to move to a new version of the browser. (For the record, it’s possible to shut off auto-updating, although it’s not exactly obvious how to do it.) Basically, Google appears to think that everyone should use the current version of Chrome (except for bleeding-edge types: they should use the current beta). It’s not going to make things easy for those of us who’d prefer to opt out.

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Will Over-the-Air iOS Updates Render iTunes Irrelevant?

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 5, 2011 at 11:55 am

Yesterday, there was news that Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” may be delivered through the Mac App Store. That may not be the only delivery method for updates that Apple may soon be changing. 9to5Mac reports that Verizon and Apple are working to bring over-the-air updates to iOS 5 after its release this fall.

The site’s sources could not confirm if the Cupertino company was working on a similar deal with AT&T.

Given that Android already does updates in this manner, the basic idea is nothing new. But it does take iTunes further out of the equation, long a necessary evil for iPhone owners (and now, iPadders too). Once updates come over-the-air, there’s almost no reason anymore to sync.

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