Tag Archives | iPhone

iPhone App Store Flirts With an NES Emulator, Briefly

Posted by Jared Newman on December 22, 2009 at 5:15 pm

For a brief period last night, iPhone owners without jailbroken phones had access to a fully-functional Nintendo emulator. I’m kicking myself for not spotting 9 to 5 Mac’s story sooner, but it looks like the app got pulled very shortly, maybe a couple hours, after the news broke.

The app was called Nescaline, and its creator is Jonathan Zdziarski, who wrote iPhone Forensics. The $7 app included several homebrew games, but also allowed users to download more games by pointing the app to the URLs of ROM files. On his Web site, Zdziarski says an Apple rep told him the app was removed because it was an emulator. “Ironically, Apple currently has several emulators in the AppStore, so I am going with the belief that someone (likely Nintendo) probably pressured them about this particular application,” he wrote.

He’s right about the App Store having other emulators, but it’s more complicated than that. Currently, it’s possible to purchase C64, which lets you play classic Commodore 64 games, but it only found permanent footing on the iPhone after some drama involving the app’s BASIC interpreter and the ability to hack into it. More importantly, C64 maker Manomio has the rights to the games it sells. Nescaline, by contrast, opened the door to illegal game downloads.

It’s certainly possible that Apple’s trying to avoid legal hot water — Nokia attracted some unwanted attention by advertising that capability on the N900 — but I also think Apple is inclined to reject NES emulators in order to protect the App Store’s business model. When you have games that can make $1 million per month, why give people a bountiful source of free, classic games?

Given that Apple and Nintendo are now competing, I think an official NES iPhone app is unlikely. As for why Nescaline was approved in the first place, I’m thinking it was a simple blunder. I doubt Zdziarski was the first developer to submit a Nintendo emulator.

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iPhone Growth Impressive Overseas

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 18, 2009 at 1:00 pm

While many are focusing on market share aspects of a report from mobile ad company AdMob today, there are some other interesting factoids within the report that I found especially prescient considering discussions I’ve been having with my friends lately.

Those partial to Microsoft have started to float the argument that Windows Mobile is still far more popular overseas, with Apple the also-ran in those markets. If we’re going to believe AdMob’s work, that’s probably not a very sturdy argument to make.

Since the iPhone and iPod touch are on the same platform, its somewhat difficult to gauge the true growth of iPhones overseas as they are not separated when it comes to detection (how these statistics are compiled). Either way Apple’s growth in some of these markets is very impressive, and should worry the fans of Redmond.

In Japan, the user base has grown by nearly 350 percent, followed by France which has seen a 300 percent increase. Australia, China, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands all grew by more than 200 percent during the year. More details of the report can be found in this PDF.

As should be expected iPhone growth in Canada and the US is lagging, although still up 100 percent. There’s a pretty straightforward and simple explanation for this: by far this is the most established market for the device as it has been here the longest.

I think these numbers are certainly beginning to put to rest the assumption by some in Microsoft that Apple can not compete outside of the US. Yes, Cupertino’s struggling mightily selling computers outside of its home markets — but apparently that’s not preventing people from picking up an iPhone.

When you add to this the data that’s showing Android’s doing well, like Colin Gibbs over at GigaOm is reporting, and data that shows RIM is also hitting its stride, you have to wonder if Microsoft really stands a chance to do much of anything in the mobile space.

Who knows, could we soon be talking about a “Halo effect” when it comes to the iPhone, too?

Caveat: As Technologizer reader John Baxter points out in the comments, we should take into account that some of these numbers on growth may be skewed due to the fact that these are emerging markets for Apple’s iPhone. Like the US and Canada, it’s probably fairly likely we’ll see a dramatic drop off in growth here too as the market saturates.

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Verizon’s Getting Ready for the iPhone, Just in Case

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 18, 2009 at 10:19 am

If the iPhone is really no longer an AT&T exclusive in the new year as many analysts are now suggesting and/or predicting, at least one carrier doesn’t want to get caught with its pants down. Verizon Wireless says it has made the changes it would need to make to its network in order to handle what would obviously be a new surge in data traffic.

Better to be safe than sorry, I guess?

Quite a surprising statement considering the company is spending quite a bit of money putting down Apple in its “Droid Does” ads that we’ve all been getting peppered with for the past two months plus. But in a way it’s not because Verizon has watched as AT&T’s network problems have become a serious liability to the company, “Operation Chokehold” notwithstanding.

“Absolutely, I think we could handle it,” Verizon Wireless CTO Anthony Melone told BusinessWeek in an interview. Now, lets not get the story twisted here: Melone is not saying there is any deal yet, but its pretty much common knowledge that the two sides have at least discussed possible partnerships in the past.

Verizon has gone the opposite way of AT&T over the past several years in investing in network infrastructure, spending about $19 billion on the network itself over the past three years. As Gizmodo points out, AT&T’s spending since the iPhone launch on the network itself has actually decreased.

With Verizon readily talking about it’s iPhone readiness, I wonder if T-Mobile USA will start making overtures as well. The carrier has been mentioned much more often recently as a logical next carrier for the device, as it would take minimal changes (adding TMUS’ 1700MHz band to the 3G chip of the iPhone) for it to work.

Going to Verizon — and CDMA — requires a much more involved rework of the device. Going to be an interesting 2010 in iPhoneland, that’s for sure.

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The Tech Media’s Complete Loss of Rationality

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 17, 2009 at 9:21 pm

I have been sitting here watching in disbelief over the past few days, feeling somewhat embarrassed about my profession at large.  Much of the tech media that has been tripping over themselves to treat Dan Lyons’ satirical movement to bring AT&T’s network to its knees as something akin to the Boston Tea Party — a defining moment that affects real change.

It’s been called by some as a “grassroots movement.” Another says that this, and I quote, “should be big lesson to any company about how social media is changing customer relations.” Others are lashing out at Lyons himself, calling him irresponsible for using his blog for exactly what it is, a satirical look into the world of Apple. To say the amount of bloviating on this topic has been astounding would be an understatement.

Earth to the media: Dan Lyons is a satirist, not Che Guevara!

Lets be clear here: there is absolutely no evidence that “Chokehold” will be anything more than a blip on AT&T’s daily graphs of data traffic. All of the hype surrounding the event has been manufactured by the tech media itself — and unfortunately, by some who have a large readership and lots of influence — and not by Lyons himself. If anything, I believe Mr. Lyons has been unfairly attacked and criticized for something that we have all essentially foisted upon him.

Remember that Facebook group we talked about in our initial coverage? It’s only up to 3,800 members — way smaller than other protest groups which have effected real change. If we are going to gauge participation by social media, we should look to Twitter too. A cursory look shows a lot of discussion, but its exactly that — talk. Call me skeptical, but its very hard to get an actual effective protest together. People are just too lazy these days, frankly.

If this is even in the least bit successful, we shouldn’t thank its creator. Rather, we should blame the tech media for making a huge deal out of a joke. Have we become so desperate for news that we’re practically manufacturing an event?

No, I’m not denying AT&T’s network sucks. In a lot of the country it does. But its not that bad that its going to bring hordes of people to the point of streaming their hearts out at 12 noon pacific tomorrow in some wild attempt at sabotage wireless data style. It’s just not going to happen. It’s time that the tech media takes a step back, and turns the hype machine off. Our readers deserve more than this.

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Fake Steve Jobs Spurns Real AT&T Protest

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 16, 2009 at 12:35 pm

It started out as a joke for Dan Lyons, known to us all as “Fake Steve Jobs,” but it has now taken on a life of its own. Operation Chokehold was supposed to be a fake protest that would attempt to take down AT&T’s network by overloading it, according to a post on Lyon’s site. It was meant to look as if it was real, but Lyons apparently was saying it in jest.

His fans apparently want to make it real, however. A Facebook group has been created urging people to do what Lyons suggested — run a data intensive application on the 3G network for a full hour on Friday at Noon PST — and currently sports about 1,600-plus members. The media is having a field day with it (heck look at us, we’re even covering it), and AT&T is peeved.

Check out this statement from the company to Apple web log Cult of Mac if you think they’re just blowing this off:

“We understand that fakesteve.net is primarily a satirical forum, but there is nothing amusing about advocating that customers attempt to deliberately degrade service on a network that provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers. We know that the vast majority of customers will see this action for what it is: an irresponsible and pointless scheme to draw attention to a blog.”

Maybe AT&T needs to take a bit of a pill — why give this publicity as I doubt this will amount to anything — but who knows with the way their 3G network runs. I guess if this does happen, we’ll find out if that report from Mr. Turner on AT&T’s network issues we blogged about in October was actually true, no?

Blogger and Technologizer contributor Dave Zatz really takes it to Lyons though (and I’m paraphrasing):

It’s a spiteful and selfish act …. spearheading a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against one of the largest US communications networks may also attract the sort of attention he’ll be less pleased with … (Dan Lyons) is a professional journalist. And this is a call to action in the real world, not the ‘fake’ one.”

Not sure that I would go to that extent. While it was stupid, I would not call it spiteful or selfish. Lyons just didn’t think this one through before releasing it to the masses. As much as we can make jokes out of AT&T’s shoddy 3G service, for some its actually enough that all they would need is a call to action to vent their frustrations through something like this. In any case, I HIGHLY DOUBT it would be able to get to the level where it would actually do any damage. It ain’t the 1960’s — we’re too lazy to protest these days.

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Older iPhones Get Video Recording With New App Store Adds

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 15, 2009 at 1:42 pm

Recording video on your iPhone is no longer a luxury of just the folks with jailbroken phones or an iPhone 3GS. Apple has approved two separate apps this week in the App Store — Camcorder and iVideoCamera — both retailing for 99 cents. Unfortunately, there are memory considerations with these older models, so don’t expect much. Regardless, its a nice addition.

Camcorder (which is only available for a limited time at the 99 cent price) allows for the recording of videos at a 320×426 resolution. But don’t think of doing anything with these videos: currently Camcorder only allows for the recording and playback of the videos from within the application itself and nothing else. You can get to the videos somehow through peering through your iTunes data backups, but that takes some knowledge and patience.

Another downside according to TUAW are meager audio recording and a frame rate that is described as “slow.” Then again, how many cell phone videos have you seen that looked like they were shot with a Mini DV cam, so I do digress.

The second app, iVideoCamera, allows for more functionality on what you can do with your videos, however it comes with the tradeoff of even poorer recording quality and time constraints (160×213 resolution, 3 frames per second, and one minute maximum recordings). The ability is there though to save videos to the camera roll or share them to Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. The company behind the application, Laan Labs, says improvements to frame rate and longer recording times will be coming in a future update.

I haven’t seen anything on whether recorded videos in the camera roll then become available to send as MMS. If anybody has tried this, I think our readers (and myself) would want to hear about it. Occasionally, I’ve gotten the urge to send a video to somebody, but since I only have a iPhone 3G that’s not possible at the moment directly through the phone.

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Needed at Apple: One Good Game Designer

Posted by Jared Newman on November 16, 2009 at 4:36 pm

Apple’s cooking up something related to video games, and needs a jack of all trades game designer to get the job done.

Apple appears candid in the job ad. The company wants someone to work on “interactive multimedia experiences” (read: video games) on the iPhone and iPod Touch. The right person must be a “passionate gamer” with three years of industry experience, at least one shipped AAA title and knowledge of a few programming languages, among other skills.

Normally, I wouldn’t care much about job openings at Apple, but this particular posting has me wondering, “Why?” Apple only sells four in-house apps on the iPhone and iPod Touch, and just one of them, Texas Hold’em, is a game. My understanding is that the App Store is primarily a hardware seller for Apple, and with so many third-party games available, it just doesn’t seem worthwhile for Apple to compete.

The Apple Blog’s Liam Cassidy, however, has an intriguing suggestion: Apple’s really looking for someone to develop in-house games for the still rumored Apple tablet. That’ll give the company something to show on stage if and when the large touch screen device is revealed.

In a way, it makes perfect sense. Apple’s tablet is shrouded in secrecy, so imagine the risk of handing off early development to a third-party publisher. All it takes is one well-connected game journalist to blow the story wide open. It might not even come to that — look at how New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller may have slipped up by referring to the “impending Apple slate” during an internal speech. Better to keep development under wraps in Cupertino.

Still, there’s a big hole in I can’t reconcile: If Apple’s only looking for someone to create demo fodder, isn’t this more of a temp job than a full-time position? Indeed, I can’t think of any reason for the existence of this position that doesn’t have at least one good counter-argument. Even the idea of Apple developing a gaming console seems far-fetched and silly.

Whatever the job is, I have a feeling the new hire will be signing a thick NDA upon arrival.

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Call for “Real” iPhone Game Reviews is Almost a Bribe

Posted by Jared Newman on November 13, 2009 at 6:21 pm

judgment-day-war_2Supposedly fed up with “the tide of fake App Store reviews,” iPhone game developer G5 entertainment wants your honest opinion, and plans to get it by giving away free games.

For its latest release, Judgment Day War, G5 is looking for reviews in exchange for a chance to win one of its earlier games. Before submitting your review to the App Store, you send it to reviews@g5e.com, along with your App Store user name, and the developer picks the 50 reviews that it deems most “interesting.”

I’ll note that the press release skillfully avoids defining what an “interesting” review might entail, lest that definition be interpreted as “thumbs up.” It doesn’t say whether overly negative reviews and enthusiastically positive ones will be judged equally, but there isn’t any encouragement to stay fair and balanced either.

Fake App Store reviews aren’t unheard of. In August, MobileCrunch ran an exposé on Reverb Communications, whose staff was caught writing positive reviews of clients’ games (Reverb insisted that the reviews were written on the staffers’ own time, based on their own experiences, and said that if Reverb didn’t like the games to begin with, “we wouldn’t take them on as clients.”) Other instances abound, as reported by BusinessWeek.

Are G5’s tactics as sleazy as the rest? Not quite, because the developer isn’t soliciting positive opinions and directly compensating for them, but something about it still stinks. If G5 really wants to contribute to an App Store that’s free of fraudulent reviews, it can do its part by butting out.

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Eliminate Pro: Is This the iPhone’s Quintessential Shooter?

Posted by Jared Newman on November 3, 2009 at 7:54 pm

eliminateproA new game called Eliminate Pro surfaced in the iPhone’s App Store yesterday, and it finally delivers everything the iPhone’s OS 3.0 update and faster 3GS model were supposed to provide.

Eliminate Pro is a free-to-play first-person shooter. The plot is minimal — you’re a test subject at a weapons development company — and the play is basic, pitting you against a few other players in simple deathmatch arenas. You need at least an iPhone 3G to play, but you get better map rendering on the iPhone 3GS. Graphically speaking, the game has a solid presentation and looks a bit like Quake 2 in terms of detail.

But what’s most interesting about Eliminate Pro is the business model, made possible with OS 3.0. There aren’t any ads, and it never costs you anything to play, but if you want to gain experience points and in-game currency for buying and upgrading gear, you’ll need “energy.” You only get enough energy for roughly a half dozen rounds, after which you’ll either need to buy more with real money or wait for about four real-world hours. A basic unit of energy costs $1 and lasts you for another half dozen rounds or so, though you can buy the stuff in increments of $10 or even $40.

So this is the iPhone’s new free app with in-game purchases model, but does it work? Sort of. I’m happy to keep the game on my iPhone, but I’m not tempted to buy more energy. The cost to keep earning experience and credits is simply too high — games go fast, so you could easily burn through $10 in a day — and there’s no option to pay once for all-you-can-play. The controls also need more customization, as I couldn’t quite get comfortable enough to achieve the lightning-quick response needed to feel like I’m playing a legitimate first-person shooter.

But for now, this is as good as it gets on the iPhone (disregarding Doom Classic and Wolfenstein 3D, which get special classic status). Eliminate Pro uses a business model that’s in line with the iPhone’s dirt-cheap economy, and it’s perfectly serviceable for a few minutes of fun. It may not be a great game, but it’s a good snapshot of where iPhone gaming stands right now.

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AT&T: Our Network is Fine, Thank You

Posted by Ed Oswald on October 28, 2009 at 11:15 am

att_header_logoSpeculation over the causes of AT&T’s network issues moved back to the forefront this week when a researcher speculated that the way the carrier had configured its network was the cause of its troubles. In other words, it ain’t the iPhone’s fault.

The research and idea was first presented by Brough Turner, a 25-year veteran of the communications industry. Turner’s work was republished by several media outlets (including us), and again put AT&T in the now familiar position of damage control.

Well, the carrier is none too happy about having to defend itself again. “The AT&T wireless network is designed and engineered to deliver the highest possible levels of capacity and performance. Our standing as the nation’s fastest 3G network is validated by multiple third-party testing organizations on the basis of millions of drive tests annually,” the carrier said in a statement to Technologizer.

What about Turner’s accusations of configuration issues? AT&T says there is no basis in fact for his research. “We believe that recent online speculation regarding AT&T wireless network configuration settings is without foundation. Allegations in these posts regarding packet loss network settings are incorrect,” spokesperson Seth Bloom said.

Back to the drawing board for those trying to figure out what’s going on with the “nation’s fastest 3G network” I guess.

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