Macgasm

Clearly the sniper is a lefty, who’s completely sick of dropping calls when he holds the device in his left hand. In case you didn’t jump straight to the video, a group of guys decide that the iPhone needs to be shot at, with live bullets.

I have no idea how people come up with these things.

The phone holds up a lot better than I thought it would, and it’s pretty surprising to see that the device doesn’t explode into dust on impact. Still, one of these things won’t be saving your life any time soon.

Bloons is a game by Ninja Kiwi that I discovered online…quite a long time ago. I also wasted quite a few hours on this game, so when I saw it in the app store I wasn’t less than enthusiastic. Super fun game.

In the game, you are a monkey with darts (you can play with a certain amount of darts each level like par on a golf course, or with unlimited…but give yourself a challenge!) and you need to pop a certain amount of balloons. The higher the level, the more obstacles there are – whether it’s wood, rubber, or metal blocks to somehow get through to bust these balloons. There are bonus balloons that will give you an extra dart, set off a bomb of thumbtacks, shoot three darts at a time, shoot lasers, etc.

The graphics are fun, the music is happy, and the game is addicting. At only 99 cents, you seriously need to grab this for your iPhone. Definitely one of my fave apps. How long will it take you to clear all the levels?

On Thursday morning my friend and I got in line at 3:00am at the Apple Store for the iPhone 4.  I had made my reservation at my local Apple Store; consequently, due to AT&T’s server debacle, I was only able to reserve one iPhone 4, when I needed two.  That’s why I was there so early in the morning to jockey for a spot in the first come first serve line.  My plan of attack was that I would go in the reserve line while my friend waited in the first come first serve line.  Long story short, I was able to get my reserved iPhone 4, plus I was able to get my wife’s iPhone 4 at the same time.  So, by 8:15am I walked out with two iPhones, and my friend was happy we didn’t have to wait.  However, this is not about my experience waiting in line for the iPhone 4, but my initial impressions of the iPhone 4.

I would like to preface the following by telling you that my impression of the iPhone 4 is based off of my experience with the iPhone 3G.  I did not own the iPhone 3GS, so I can’t really compare that to the iPhone 4.

Performance

First off, I just want to say how impressed I am with the performance of the iPhone 4.  Everything is so much faster on the iPhone 4, from websites loading incredible fast, to the apps simply responding with little to no wait time.  A good example of this is the “We Rule” app.  On my iPhone 3G, it could take up to a minute for the app to load, and once it did, it would take forever to move around on the screen.  I also noticed that typing on the iPhone 4 is like typing on the iPad.  It is so responsive with no lag time.

Battery Life

The battery on the iPhone 4 has exceeded my expectations.  On my iPhone 3G, the battery would last till about lunch time, at which time I would have to charge my iPhone 3G so that it would last the rest of the day.  My iPhone 4’s battery by lunch time showed that it still had 70% of the battery remaining.  I know that the iPhone 4’s battery is larger than that of the iPhone 3G, but I will not have to worry that my iPhone will die on me half way through the day.  Since we’re talking about the battery, I would like to now focus on the iPhone 4‘s antennas.

Antennas

Apple has done an excellent job with placing the antennas on the outside of the iPhone 4.  I am getting better 3G signals in places where I got either poor or no 3G signal, which is a plus in my book.  However, since the iPhone 4 launched on Thursday, a lot of people have been complaining of dropped calls when holding the iPhone 4 in their left hand.  Personally, I haven’t experienced the drop call issue.  I noticed in certain weak signal areas when I hold the iPhone 4 in my left hand that my signal will decrease; however, it increases quickly when I move my hand away.  Also, in stronger signal areas, when I hold my iPhone 4 in my left hand and cup the antenna, I get no 3G signal loss at all.  Apparently, Apple will be releasing iOS 4.0.1 as early as Monday to address this issue.  I’ve been reading a lot about this issue, and it appears to be a hit or miss thing.  There are people like me who are not experiencing this issue at the same level as other people are.  In any event, I would be an un-happy camper if I were having these antenna issues.  With that said, let’s move on to the iPhone 4’s cameras.

Camera

The iPhone 4 has two cameras — a rear 5-megapixel still camera as well as a front-facing camera.  The rear camera is a video camera as well.  The one thing that I am very excited about on the iPhone 4 is the same thing that has left me somewhat disappointed.  I’m talking about FaceTime.  I’m excited for the fact that I can make a video call with FaceTime and have some great video quality.  However, I’m disappointed that I have to use Wi-Fi to achieve this.  The initial call is made with your 3G connection, but then it switches to Wi-Fi when you activate FaceTime.  I put the blame for this squarely in AT&T’s lap.  In the past four years they have not been able to keep up with Apple’s iPhone customers’ data needs.  I know if any other cellular company had exclusive rights to the iPhone they would be experiencing the same issues.  However, I feel that they would have done something about it by now.  Anyways, I digress.  I find FaceTime to be a great feature added to the iPhone 4.  I also like the fact that I can record a video from my iPhone 4, and then edit it in iMovie and upload it to MobileMe or YouTube.

I have only had the iPhone 4 for three days, but I am more than pleased with it.  As I said earlier I had the iPhone 3G and it was slow and outdated.  The iPhone 4 is a breathe of fresh air.

Photo Credit: New iPhone 4 Details, Features & Specs

Alphonso Labs, the company behind Pulse, the awesome, yes awesome, news reader that has taken the Apple iPad by storm, is about to launch something pretty darn cool — Pulse for the iPhone is coming soon.

Now, for those of you following much of the Apple technology news, you will recall that during Steve’s Keynote for WWDC 2010, he prominently showed off Pulse to the room packed with devoted developers; then, interestingly enough, later that day, there was an “issue” with the New York Times feed being fetched by the app and before you know it Pulse was out of the App Store. After a few hours of everyone shrugging their shoulders and blurting out a concerted WTF ?!, Pulse was back…and we’re all very happy for that.

Here’s the scoop. I have Pulse for the iPad and have almost completely standardized it as my default news reader (I still sneak over to Early Edition every now and then).

However, I’m very excited to hear that a version of Pulse is coming for the iPhone. Especially since I have a new iPhone 4 which is blazingly fast and I can’t wait to see how the Retina Display feature and speed boost work on the iPhone version.

Check out this sneak peek video of the iPhone version in action and leave your comments below with your initial impressions.

According to the team at Alphonso Labs, they have completed the app and it is in the queue awaiting App Store approval.

Now, as long as this is a universal app and doesn’t require me to purchase another copy since I already own the iPad version – all will be well. If not, there will be a strongly worded update to this post. Hint, hint.

Follow the Alphonso Labs team on Twitter here.

Kudos where it’s due — Engadget had a brilliant idea, tearing apart their iPhone 4 and replacing the case with white replacement parts. They’ve managed to pull apart their phone, using iFixit’s tear down model, and replace all the black parts with white ones.

They’re a lot braver than I am, but if we had access to the iPhone 4 up here in Canada, we’d probably give this little Do It Yourself (DIY) modification a try. But, until we’re graced with an update, we’re going to have to live vicariously through Engadget this time.  Actually, now that I look at it again, that black button seriously detracts from the whole experiment.  It might be worth it to just wait for the white iPhone 4 to ship directly from Apple.  I’m way too likely to lose important screws to pull this off successfully.

Check out their mod. It’s pretty cool.

Article Via Engadget

I know. The title doesn’t make much sense to us either, but those are the words uttered by Steve Jobs over the weekend, in an email sent to a consumer who was asking questions about the iPhone 4 reception problems. Precisely put, Steve said, “There is no reception issue. Stay tuned.” If there was ever a definition for double speak, this would be it. If there wasn’t an issue, there wouldn’t be a need for a patch, and we wouldn’t have to stay tuned, would we? Since the release of the iPhone 4, a lot of people have been noticing signal problems when they hold the phone in their left hand.

These terse emails from Steve are starting to get a little bit annoying, if they are actually being sent from him—and that’s a pretty big if.

What he probably meant to say was, “this isn’t a hardware issue, and we’ll be patching the problem with a software update in the next couple of days.” We’re reading between the lines, but it’s pretty evident what he means, considering there’s speculation that iOS could be getting an update as soon as today (Monday, June 28, 2010). If true, that would bring iOS to 4.0.1. There’s no word if the patch would bring with it other fixes, but we’re suspecting the proximity issue would also be closed up.

Article Via Boy Genius

Photo Credit iDesk

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A lot of people were lining up yesterday for access to the iPhone 4, so it probably doesn’t come as a surprise to most that Apple managed to sell a ton of phones yesterday—approximately 1.5 million. There’s no real surprise here that Apple’s iPhone 4 is in demand, but what be a little bit more telling is whether the sales continue on this torrential pace after all the problems that were reported yesterday.

The iPhone 4 broke the one million mark in half the time it took the 3GS, but the 3GS phone never had discolored screens, connectivity issues, and proximity sensor problems. That’s a lot of problems for one device, and only time will tell if the general public is going to take their chances on the device.

To be fair, details have trickled in that the first two major problems listed above seem to both work themselves out. The discoloration issues seems to be disappearing with time, and the dropped calls are starting to be linked to shoddy 3G reception around the US—not exactly unheard of on the AT&T network.

As for the last problem, the proximity issues seem to be happening when people accidentally pull the phone away from their ear, and then touch the hangup button with their cheek. This one sounds like an easy software patch though, so I won’t be too worried about it just yet.

So what do you think? Will the iPhone 4 continue to sell as quickly as it did on launch day, or are these little problems going to start dissuading would be buyers from purchasing the phone? I know it’s got me second guessing myself.

Article Via TUAW