Jamie's Tech Tutorials

Flight Control App Review

Jamie — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:57:17 +0000

Enjoy!

What Eric Schmidt Was Really Trying To Do

Jamie — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 20:17:01 +0000

A lot has happened over the summer concerning Google CEO and Chairman and x-apple board member Eric Schmidt. It had seemed that the two companies where going from good freinds, to rivals. Apple had the iPhone and the iPhone OS, Google had the Android. Apple had MobileMe, Google had GMail. Apple had iWork, Google had Google Docs, Apple had Safari, Google had Chrome, and what really pushed the envelope too far was that Apple had OS X, and Google was working on the recently announced ChromeOS. Now, here’s what I think Eric was really up to. I beleve that dispite being CEO of Google, He is working to push Apple’s products to be the best they can be. There’s never any need for improvement or innovation if you’re the best there is, and nobody is challenging that.

When Google put it’s Android platform out there, it forced Apple to innovate, improve, and find new ways to make sure the iPhone was simply better than everything else on the market. I believe that one of the main reasons the Apple made the App Store was not just to appease users and developers, not to compete with Windows Mobile, S60, and Blackberry’s Side loading apps, It was becasue they knew that Android would come out of the gates with the App market, and if they didn’t beat them too it, they’d be done for in the mobile market. Because of Android, the Apple pushed internal software desighners and engeneers to make the iPhone the best platform it could possibly be. This is one of the reasons competition is so good for the consumer. The other? Competition drives prices down. Do you think the iPhone would have stayed competitive at it’s original $599-on contract price tag while the T-Mobile G1 launched later at $179-on contract? Hell no. If it wast for Google pushing Apple to stay ahead of the curve, then the G1 would most likely been relesed as a crappy version of the Touch Pro, running Windows Mobile, and would not have been a threat whatsoever. If it wasn’t for Google trying to release a competitive OS to iPhone OS, I’d bet anything that the iPhone would still be floating around with a pretty hefty price tag on it, and not be the $99 for 8GB it is right now. Guess who I think was the driving force behind the idea “Lets make a consumer smartphone OS that can compete with the iPhone”? Google C.E.O. and Chairman Eric Schmidt. Eric has done most of the competition making on the mobile platform, but read on to how he might of pushed Apple into the tablet/netbook market.

Snow Leopard has been found to be an extremely touch friendly platform, with the larger, seemingly finger freindly keyboard, the touch-and-hold for single application exposé, the bigger icons in the stacks with a scrolling bar to see the apps that don’t fit on the screen, and then the 512×512 icons, a step for the OS to be resolution independent (can run on any resolution). The main reason I think Apple is going into the smaller, cheaper computer market, is because right now, Every single netbook runs Windows XP, which is now close to an 8-year old OS. In comparison to those of you who’ve been running on a macintosh since the dark ages, you had just gotten OS X 10.1 Puma from apple, and where running it on your iMac G3′s (the blue ones), iBook G3′s (the coloured ones) and Power Mac G4′s. XP by no standards is a new OS. I havn’t seen an iBook G3 running anything for years (I don’t venture into peoples basements looking for their iMacs and Power Macs), but we still see NetBooks that come off the production line today running XP. So, Netbooks have been computers apealling to the tight budget, light users, who don’t use it enough to be bugged about the ancient OS, and don’t want to spend the money for a full sized computer running Windows 7, and that a market that Apple doesn’t want to be in in the first place. Apples market is selling high end, beautiful hardware with a fairly substantial margin of the productduct’s selling price being pure profit, and budling it with their smooth OS, desighned to run on their hardware and their hardware only. But with Google’s ChromeOS, many professionals who need a small, light computer with a relatively new OS, especially someone like a blogger who is on the go a fair bit, might turn to a netbook running chrome, rather than Apple’s current lightweight notebook, the MacBook Air. Apple needs to compete with google chrome when it comes out, and by starting to make your operating system today simpler and more finger-friendly, as a result of this, your OS is simpler for everyone to enjoy, building on one of the many reasons people choose Macs over PC’s. When Google chrome starts popping up on Netbooks, you can almost surely expect either a massive price drop on the MacBook Air, or more likely we’ll see Apple’s Tablet/Netbook that has been in the making for years.

Although Google competes with them in many other areas, few of them are are actually targeting demographics, for example, GMail targets a younger demographic, who don’t necessarily need a whole lot of features, and just want to send emails around to their freinds every once in a while for free, while MobileMe targets professionals, who are willing to spend $99 a year for push Email, Contacts and Calendar, and 10GB of space in the cloud, as well as features like Back To My Mac, and Find My iPhone.

HTC Touch HD 2

Jamie — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 03:03:51 +0000

So, here’s somthing today that caught my eye. Its the sequel to the phone HTC relesed last year, the orrigionl Touch HD, its the Touch HD 2. According to Engadget and multiple other sources, this thing will be running Android. If any of you thought the Hero was good looking at all, I suggest you check these picks out. This thing is a beauty!

So what do you think of it? Its devenetly got more of a classic HTC Touch-series look too it, but this thing is stunning, and with Android and Sense UI (even though the mockup doesnt have it, we can only assume it’ll ship with the new Sense UI), this phone could very well be the next step forward in the Android scene. I can’t wait for this to hit the markets.

gpSPhone for iPhone

Jamie — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:38:11 +0000

The Official gpSPhone Wiki

Enjoy!

AT&T iPhones Get MMS Sept 25th

Jamie — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:18:33 +0000

So, AT&T just broke their promise of having iPhone MMS live by “late summer”, but I’m sure most users aren’t going to get that worked up over a couple of days. Even though I’m not an AT&T subscriber (I live in Canada, we’ve got Rogers, both MMS and Tethering where live within hours of the 3.0 launch) I’m glad this is here, as I don’t have to listen to American iPhone users bicker all day about how AT&T sucks because they don’t have MMS. Personally, I don’t use MMS, but I do tether quite frequently, and we all know what would happen if AT&T let us tether, as if their network wasnt under enough stress with the iPhone alone. There’s not alot to talk about for this announcement, but horray for AT&T! They’ve almost got technology working that the rest of the world had working fine 5 years ago when the first camera phones came out. HIP HIP HORRAY!

The Zune: How Microsoft Killed It’s Own Product

Jamie — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:20:12 +0000

Microsoft announced that they are going to end the “Classic” Zune line in favor of the Zune HD. That means that you have until stock runs out to get the last non-touch Zunes. Now, we all know too well that the Zune HD may be a very worthy iPod Touch competitor, but just because some people think you can compete head-to-head with Apple’s iPod Touch doesn’t mean that you should just scrap all the other lines. One of the great things about the Classic Zunes where that they have tonnes of room for Music, Photos, and Movies, and that the screen, especially on the Zune 120, is much bigger than it’s Apple Counterpart, the iPod Classic. Ever since the iPod Video was first released, the biggest drawback everybody saw was the “How on earth am I supposed to watch movies on this tiny screen?” Apple has now released products like the iPod Touch, with bigger screens for movie-watchers, as well as the new iPod Nano, but even as far back as 2006 the Zune had a 3-inch screen, wich was much bigger than the iPod Video’s at the time. What will happen very quickly, is that if the Zune HD isnt what it has been hyped up to be, which in all likelihood, it won’t, the ending of the rest of the Zune line will leave Microsoft nothing to fall back on in the MP3 player business. At least while Windows Vista flopped, Microsoft continued to support and sell the dated Windows XP. With nothing to fall back on in the MP3 player business, Microsoft’s Zune like will likely trickle to an end, and, much like their failed networking hardware line they there is just too much competition in this market for Microsoft to survive with a product that is similar to products that have been offered by companies for two or more years now, and storage capacity that’s only mediocre compared to what’s out there, and what will come September 6th. Microsoft isn’t inovating at all, let alone on the scale it needs to to stay competitive in this market. I’ll call it now, the Zune product will become extinct within a year.

Review: Things for Mac and iPhone

Jamie — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 02:05:14 +0000

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swf-fXGLgDA]

Enjoy!

Is Jailbreaking Still Worth It?

Jamie — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:28:33 +0000

Now that 3.0 and the 3GS has been out for a bit, with its bundle of new features, such as Tethering and MMS (If you’re lucky enough not to be on AT&T), Video Recording (iPhone 3GS Only), among other things, one might ask “Are there reasons to jailbreak, now that we have so many of the “Jailbreak Only” features built seamlessly right into the OS?”. Well, the answer is, yes. There are still a slew of reasons to jailbreak your iPhones, and I’m going to go over a bunch of them.

1. Unlock. Even as most peoples first gen-iPhones’ contracts are up, there’s still no way to reliably unlock it (Sim Chip mods are not the most reliable things in the world) without jailbreaking. Even though Apple has given up on locking the dev team out of the first gen iPhone, They still havn’t given us a way to unlock it. Thats why the Dev team does it; though means of Jailbreaking. Anyone who wants to use their carrier locked iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3GS on another carrier must turn to the jailbreak world if they want to unlock it.
2. Skinning and and Tweaking with the UI. Apple still likes us to make our iPhones look exactly the way they want to. Fortunately, you can tweak with the way your Background looks, (No, not the lockscreen wallpaper, but you can change the black void behind all of your apps too) your App icons, battery icons, Status bars, Lockscreen slders, and more with Winterboard. With an assortment of other apps, you can tweak with other elements of the UI, like what it says for your carrier with apps like MakeItMine, and much more.
3. Apps like GV Mobile. There are tonnes of apps that get rejected out of the App Store. Every once in a while you get a great one come over to Cydia, the jailbreak version of the App Store. GV Mobile isnt the only app to make the jump over. There are tonnes of apps that have gotten rejected from the App Store.
4. Emulators. There are great apps thanks to ZodTTD that give us Console Emulation. You’ve can play GBA games on gpSPhone, Old School GB Colour on Gameboy4iPhone, Playstation 1 on PSX4iPhone, and NES on Nate True’s NES app.
5. Enabling all the stuff AT&T’s disabled for us. You can enable MMS and Tethering, get your SlingPlayer, Skype, and other WiFi only apps to run on 3G/EDGE, and manny more restrictions taken off that AT&T so kindly put in place. There are a couple of apps on Cydia that do this wonderfully

What do you think? Is Jailbreaking still worth it?

App Store Problems: The Approval System

Jamie — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:52:33 +0000

The Two sides of the story:

The Consumer Side: Consumers for the most part, enjoy the protective wall of the App store approval system. It keeps stuff like harmful malware away from the majority of the 10+ million iPhone users, and lets in the majority of applications without problem. For the most part, the app store is a pretty sweet solution for most of the consumers. As much as they’d love Google Voice, the built in Phone and the third party skype apps will do them just fine.

The Developer Side: Apple has an extremely opaque app approval process, and many apps get rejected for stupid reasons, and things like updates for apps that are already in the store get rejected. Apple needs to do something about it’s app approval technique, and take the variability out of the app store approval process.

First, there needs to be solid guidelines as to what can and can’t be in the store. In these set rules, there have to be as few gray zones as possible. This way, Developers can know basically if their app will be approved or not before they even start writing the code for it (unless the rules change half way through the course of writing the app).

Developers also need to have a way to communicate with apples app reviewers. If developers know that there app was rejected because it contained X,Y,and Z content, and this could be either fixed by changing
A, B, or C, or removing said XYZ content, then i think app developers would be a lot happier than they are now, when they get an email saying their app was rejected for mature content, and they have no idea what the app reviewer was thinking at the time of rejection.

Apple needs to put in a schedule for app reviewers, and open up that information to the developers. Apple needs to send out a message shortly (within 1-2 days) of the app submission saying “Thank you for submitting X app for review. X app will be reviewed on X date, and if it is accepted will be added to the app store shortly after. Thank you”, so that developers know when to expect it to be reviewed, and when to start complaining again about the surprisingly long app review process.

Lastly, If an app is still rejected, and the developer fells he can not change his app to the extent that it meets the App Store guidelines, Apple should let the developer post the App on the internet, in a format that could be downloaded either to the computer and then Synced to the iPhone or downloaded directly from the iPhone’s browser to the iPhone itself. This would not only make developers happier, but would please consumers and stop some of the incentive to jailbreak iPhones. Apple could warn that 3rd Party apps may harm the phone, and that apple does not support iPhones with problems caused by unsanctioned 3rd party applications downloaded off the web, but if they made it possible for iPhones to do that rather than the users having to jailbreak their iPhones to get unsanctioned apps, the iPhone would sell better, and be a much more attractive platform to developers.

If Apple could implement all of that stuff, Developers and Consumers alike would be much happier, and it would end 99% of the app store criticism that we have now. Apple can fix this, and if Apple values the iPhone and App Store business, they will.

Push Notifications and Twitter: Where it needs to go.

Jamie — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:51:39 +0000

Recently a bunch of Twitter clients for the iPhone have enabled push notification for certain things. If i were to desighn a Twitter App myself, here’s how it would implement Push.

1. Include all messages in your push notifications. I don’t need to know how many specific @replys and DM’s I have, Ill get to them when I’ll get to them, regardless of weather or not an annoying bubble pops up on my iPhone screen. Personally, I read alot more of the tweets that the people I follow put out there than the DM’s and @replys. I’d love to get a push notification whenever anyone I follow tweets somthing

2. The bubble may be a practical solution to IM push notification, but in my mind, no other app feild has implimented it that well. For a Twitter client, I dont want to read every tweet as it comes through, there are people tweeting way to often and it would be far too interuptive if I was trying to do somthing else. I’d love it if they just quietly put another tally on the Badge, on top of the icon. That way, when im scanning over my springboard, It’ll tell me how many unread tweets there are waiting for me.

3. Make a nice UI, don’t have your main selling point the fact that it implements Push notification well. we’ve seen how the early push adopters have still sold worse than the UI favorites like Tweetie. If you can create an app with a killer UI, and that implements Push well, people will buy. Look how Beejive IM sold, even as it used to have that hefty $16 price tag on it (it’s now down to $10). That may seem like a tough job, but we’ve all seen what wonders iPhone developers can create. Get crackin Devs!