Macgasm

It may come as a surprise to most, but up until today Canadians were unable to purchase iPhone, iPad, and Touch applications from Apple’s AppStore using an iTunes gift card. Apple would let you buy music, movies, and videos using a gift card, but in order to purchase applications you had to have a credit card attached to your account.

It seems like Apple has finally gotten around to straightening out the mess up here in Canada. While the support page for iTunes doesn’t make mention of the new ability yet, we’ve got confirmation from some of our writers.  You’re now able to use gift cards to purchase applications.

We’ve still yet to find out if Canadian AppStore users can redeem coupon codes for Apps. Hopefully Apple has cleared up this problem as well, it’s pretty annoying having to manage multiple iTunes accounts (both a Canadian and US account). I’d personally love to do away with one of them.

Article Via iPhoneInCanada

Almost everyone uses Gmail, or so it would seem.  And why not?  Google‘s done a decent job of providing free web-based e-mail with a calendar, shared documents, an RSS reader—all in one place and across multiple platforms.  You can access multiple Gmail accounts from the iPhone OS native Mail app, and there’s a slick, full-featured mobile Safari interface.

iGmail greets you with a wild goose chase and a plea for cash.

Apparently someone thought that wasn’t good enough.

iGmail – when gmail meets iphone by Idemfactor Solutions is a free download from the App Store for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.

In brief, this app aims to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

The app presents you with… the mobile Gmail interface, with a couple of buttons positioned directly overtop of the menus.  There’s a button at the bottom to hide them, in case they interfere with navigation (which they do).  Before presenting you with a login, the app pushes you two consecutive popups, sending you back to the Home screen, through Settings (and there are more options in the Settings for this app than in the app itself), and back to the app.  I discovered that it is not, as is claimed in the first popup, necessary to go to Settings before continuing, but it did give me some idea of what the capabilities of the app were—that is, the “paid upgrades”.

There’s not much else to explain about the interface, since this app is basically a wrapper for the Gmail mobile Safari site.  The only good thing about that is that it saves me showing you a screenshot of the contents of my Inbox.

This may sound harsh, but I am amazed that this passed Apple’s App Store review process.  I’ve never been confronted with more pop-ups and… words in an iPhone app.  The iPhone interface is visual; these developers don’t seem to get that.  Even the “screenshots” in their App Store listing have extra labels (complete with hand-drawn circles and arrows) to explain everything.  If you have to do that much explaining, you have missed the point of creating an intuitive interface.  What they’ve done here is to take the Gmail mobile interface, add “features”, and somehow get it approved as an app.

You can blame the SDK in your app and still get approved.

What is interesting is the push notification feature (an in-app purchase—not part of the free app), which includes a handy feature to silence notifications for a period during the day (for example, when you are asleep).  Push notification seems like a good idea on the surface, but since push notifications don’t stack, if you have other apps that use push notification (Howl or Foursquare come to mind) the iGmail notifications are likely to go unnoticed.  Is that worth the price?

Frankly, unless iGmail has one feature you absolutely need (like using the shake gesture to switch to Google Reader), I don’t really see the point.  It tries to improve upon something that doesn’t need improving, and ends up being needlessly complicated.

Apple iPhone 4G OLED Screen?

The hype surrounding OLED screens, and more recently AMOLED screens, has been huge. Everyone’s excited about the potential these screens have, and their future is brighter than most people might realize.

But, according to Apple the technologies just aren’t ready for prime-time just yet. The reason they’ve left them out of the iPad, and the reason that they won’t appear in the upcoming 4G iPhone model, is that they don’t display text very crisply. Considering Apple’s been pushing iBooks and digital magazines on the iPad, it’s no real surprise that Apple Inc. would shy away from using a technology that would display anything but the best quality in those mediums.

It’s not the first time someone’s come out and said that OLED technologies are a little premature to be used in mobile devices. Back in February, Dr. Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate Technologies, did a head to head comparison between a Nexus One mobile and the iPhone 3GS. His findings were comparible to Apple’s. The LCD screen in the iPhone was far brighter than the OLED screen in the Nexus One.  The Nexus One also had significant artifacting and a lot of noise problems in some settings.

So don’t be surprised if Apple doesn’t announce an OLED screen for the upcoming iPhone. At the same time, I wouldn’t doubt that the OLED screens will find their way into iPhones at some point in the not too distant future, once Samsung works out a couple of the remaining kinks.

If you’re not sure what’s so great about an OLED screen, you may want to watch the video below.

Article Via AppleInsider

Many of us have seen the Microsoft Surface; it’s reminiscent of the old school sit down arcade games…you got the visual?? Good. Now think something more stylish.

Merel Technologies, a New York based company has built some impressive interactive touch screen (coffee) tables.

The company was just at TechCrunch Disrupt showcasing their mTouch table and they seemed to get some decent traffic and interest.

Image via: Merel Technologies

With object recognition, multimedia integration, social media connectivity and gesture recognition built directly into the unit, these tables are sure to have an interesting and probably successful early adoption for tech fans looking for that one thing that not everyone else on the block will have.

Check out this video of a quick specification rundown that the folks from CrunchGear put together:

I put the word affordable in quotes in the title of this post because, if you think about it, and if this is something you’re ready to jump into, the pricing structure isn’t all that bad. Merel Technologies currently has two models, a 32-inch for $3200 and a 42-inch model for $4200. About the same price as a high quality 1080p HD television, but with the table you can put your beer on it !

What’s really interesting is the inclusion of what Merel Technologies is calling their multi-touch app store, the mStore, which would allow users to download new applications and features directly into their table. Now that’s really cool!

Here’s another promo video direct from Merel Technologies showing more of the multi-user capabilities and web browsing:

My favorite part of this video – the game of Pong !!

So what do you think ? You impressed ? Check out more from Merel Technologies.

It’s on folks – start saving your extra dollars and cents…but bring your credit or debit card just in case (you remember that fiasco last week)

AT&T has made the announcement internally to their employees that vacations in June are not happening, and that a new device from Apple is coming out!

Look, this is in no way a surprise, with all the leaks, videos, and seemingly sloppy handling of the next-generation device. The real questions center around how soon after the June 7th keynote will the actual device be available for purchase. Also, how will the recently accelerated device trade-in policy work when we actually walk into an AT&T store.

For me personally, I’m “expecting” to get my new iPhone not necessarily at a reduced price, but essentially FREE since I’ll be at the end of my original contract. I’ll sound-off here to let you know my experience.

So who’s with me ? I’m certain most of you Apple fans will be listening closely to Steve Jobs during the keynote, wondering if there will be the infamous “One More Thing“, but  who’s also planning to be early in line for the next iPhone?

It’s been a long 4 years of not being able to “pwn” my brother at Counter Strike, and we’re finally a couple of steps away from him having to relive the pain that was so prevalent in his youth. I’m looking forward to it.

Valve has announced that Half Life 2 will be available on the Mac today (May 26, 2010), which is awesome news in and of itself. But, there’s something even cooler than the announcement itself, Valve has also recreated the classic 1984 commercial done by Apple. The theme fits in well with the series, and it has got us pretty excited to get playing again.

With Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) only a couple of weeks away, the excitement is building over the new iPhone 4G. We pretty much know what will be in the new phone; what we don’t know for certain is if the leaked prototype iPhone is what will actually be sold. With that said, Walmart is giving us something else to be excited about right before the new iPhone launches. Yesterday, they started selling the 16GB iPhone 3GS in the US for $97.00 with a 2 year contract from AT&T.

Matthew Tilmann of MacLife writes about the sudden lower price:

“Of course, one could only think that the price reduction is because of the upcoming holiday weekend.

“It is our commitment to always lead on price,” according to Mehrdad Akbar, the senior category director for Walmart.”

I don’t believe this has anything to do with the holiday or a commitment to lead in lower pricing. It has to do with the fact that Apple is no longer producing the 8GB iPhone 3G, and Walmart has replaced it with the 16GB iPhone 3GS. This was pretty much a given with the way Apple has been using the previous year’s iPhone as the $99.00 iPhone.  This is a great way to place the iPhone in every price point.

However, if you are currently in a contract with an iPhone 3G, and you are thinking about getting the 16GB iPhone 3GS, and you want to terminate your current contract by  paying an early termination fee, you will need to do this before June 1st.  Why before June 1st?  Well, AT&T is instituting a new policy on early termination fees for smart phones.  Currently you can pay $175.00 for the ETF.  After June 1st you will have to pay $325.00 for the ETF.  Unfortunately, AT&T suffers from a lack of transparency when it comes to how much you are paying them back for a subsidized phone.  So it’s hard to say if AT&T is sticking it to us, or they are recouping their losses.  I guess we’ll never know.

Apple is truly making the iPhone affordable for everyone by placing themselves in every price point.  I would like to see AT&T follow suit in this regard, by making the prices for their plans more competitive.  Unfortunately, this may not happen until the iPhone is on more than one carrier.  Personally, I would like to see AT&T adopt Sprint’s all inclusive plan for $79.00 a month.  For $79.00 a month you get voice, data, SMS, and MMS texting.  You can’t beat that plan.

Photo Credit: iPhone 16GB 3GS Black (Back)

Article Via MacLife

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