Macgasm

With Apple’s introduction of video recording with the iPhone 3GS last year combined with the HD video recording in the iPhone 4, it makes sense that such a great platform for video would eventually get a full-fledged video editing app. Today, Apple has released iMovie for the iPhone 4 in the app store for a mere $4.99.

This app will be great for doing quick edits on the go, and then sharing them on YouTube, but iMovie for iPhone is far from perfect. As it stands now, you can’t sync your iMovie project to and from your computer, but you can sync your finished product.

If you’ve tried out iMovie for iPhone, be sure to tell us about your experience with it in our comment section. We want to know how you like it.

Here are the official features straight from Apple:

Made for Multi-Touch.
• Tap to add or record video right into your project.
• Drag to trim the lengths of video clips and photos.
• Pinch to zoom the timeline and get a closer look.
• Slide to scrub through the video in your project.

Give it a theme.
• Choose from a selection of themes including Modern, Bright, Travel, Playful, and News.
• Each theme includes a matching set of titles and transitions – plus its own soundtrack.
• Instantly change themes or swap themed elements in your project.
• Titles and graphics automatically update with location data from your video.

Add music and photos.
• Select from included music that matches each iMovie theme, or select from your own song library.
• Enable ducking to automatically lower the volume of background music and highlight audio from video clips.
• Add photos from your own library, or take a picture and drop it into your project.
• Customize each photo with a unique “Ken Burns” panning effect.

Share your movie.
• Export your movie in one of three sizes: Medium, Large, or HD.
• Share your movie on the web in a MobileMe gallery or on YouTube.
• Send your movie to friends and family in an email or via an MMS message.
• Easily sync your movie back to your computer.

Photo Credit: iMovie by Apple

We’re not joking. If you hold your iPhone with your left hand, much like I do, you might notice a lot of dropped calls. Early adopters are noticing that the seam in the new iPhone 4 case gets covered up by left handed peoples palms. The result, dropped calls because the signal strength drops. We’re taking this one with an entire tablespoon worth of salt considering AT&T is notorious for dropped calls and crappy signal strength, but if anyone in an international market notices the same problems we’d love to hear from you.

This could be a huge deal breaker for me — being left-handed and all. So the next time anyone laughs at me when I complain about being a lefty in a righty world, please remember this moment.

It looks like some of the iPhone screens are turning up defective. It’s probably a small number of phones, and the manufacturing problem is probably a result of turning out a bazillion of these phones over the last month, but it’s still no excuse. With demand so high, it might be a while until users can get their malfunctioning phones replaced.

What’s it look like? The “defect” is yellow blotchy spots on your screen. It’s still uncertain if the yellow spot will disappear after normal use, but in some cases, Apple store employees have been replacing the phones on the spot. So you know that huge supply of iPhone’s that are available in the Apple store? They might be shrinking a little bit because of this problem.

Rumors are also circulating that it could be a bonding problem between the glass and screen, which could explain why the yellow spots may be disappearing slowly for some.

Article Via MacRumors

Image Credit 9to5 Mac

After getting multitasking on my phone, one thing became pretty clear right off the bat. It’s great that I can now listen to pandora, surf the internet, answer my phone, and stay connected to chat programs all at the same time. It’s what we asked for, and it’s exactly what we got. In hindsight, I’m not sure that I want it, at least in its current iteration.

It didn’t take me long to realize that I’m going to be terrible at shutting down my applications that are running in the background. Open, open open, close, close, close. Forget long enough and you have seven programs running all at the same time, draining your battery life, increase your data usage, and kills the response time of your phone.

To start, you have to enable your multitasking tray by hitting the home button twice. From there, you have to tap once and hold, until a minus sign pops up. Once that little glorified push notification icon comes to life, you then release the tap, and tap again to close out the application, simple enough. But, the problem isn’t how easy it is to close out an application, it’s how often I’m going to forget to close out programs I don’t need any more. For the last three years it’s been handled for us, and now it’s our responsibility to make sure the applications have closed out entirely.  Sure, iOS will close out applications if it realizes the phone’s resources are running in short supply, but who knows when that might be.

There needs to be a philosophical shift here, at the consumer level. On the whole, consumers don’t move too quickly.

A quick aside about MultiTasking

Before we dive deep into geekery, we need to take a moment a think about this from a typical consumer experience on the iPhone. For four years now, Apple’s been conditioning us to close an application by pushing the home button. Much like Pavlov’s dog, it’s become second nature to us, and now the less than geeky public, who were used to Apple’s procedure for closing an app, has to figure out a completely new way of closing applications.

The solution

Even after knowing that applications are running in the background, I find myself forgetting to close applications. If i’m having a hard time, others are surely having hard times. What can be done to combat the backlog of application running on the iPhone? Noam Bardin from Waze thinks he has an answer, and after speaking with him, I agree whole heartedly.

The challenge is falling directly on the shoulders of developers, but once he expanded his ideas for me, it made a ton of sense. Letting the application determine when a program should close, and at what point, will help solve the problem. For instance, Waze is a GPS application, and like most of us know, GPS applications can be huge resource hogs, and now that they’re able to run in the background, things are only going to get worse. What Noam suggested was using algorithms to determine whether or not an application should continue running in the background. For his specific application, he recommended determining the speed that a phone is travelling at, whether or not the phone is idling, or if the phone loses its GPS signal to determine if a consumer should be running his program.

So, if you’re parked at a restaurant for more than five or ten minutes, the application would close out, and your system resources would be restored. Run away apps would no longer be around to slow down your phone.

Now that’s a smart move. The application is available in the appstore for free, but an updated version with this new functionality is awaiting approval. It has been submitted, so it’s only a matter of time until we hear if Apple will endorse the idea.  We’ll keep on top of the news as it develops.

I’m hoping they do, because the less I have to manually manage my multitasking the happier I’m going to be with my iPhone.

McAfee Family Protection is a $19.99 parental control application available for iOS, but not optimized for the iPad. This application goes above and beyond the built-in parental controls in iOS, and allows for much more granular control.

Once you disable your child from being able to use Safari or download any other application, McAfee Family Protection will be the only web browser available. You will now be able to manage the websites your child can view, and you are able to see a log of every site they attempt to access.

If they’re on Twitter when they should be studying, you can turn off the ability to browse during that time period. Best of all, you can use the built-in geolocation in the iPhone to let you know where your kid is when he or she is trying to use the internet.

This seems like a no brainer for parents of children with iPhones. This way they get to have all of the benefits of their iDevice without all the filth and time-sinking the internet has to offer.

If you’d like to see all of the features, here is the complete list:

URL & Search Filtering
o Automatically blocks inappropriate web pages
o Filters inappropriate sites in search results
o Protection from exposure to adult content

Location Tracking (while browsing)*
o Tracks physical device location while browsing

Usage Monitoring & Reporting
o See browsing and location history
o Logs visited pages, dates, times, duration
o Review blocked URLs with one click

Control & Customize from everywhere
o Online management portal
o Access via Internet or mobile device
o Manually add or remove blocked web pages
o Remotely disable browsing altogether

Uncompromised Browsing
o Works just like Safari
o URL and Search bar
o Tabbed browsing
o Pinch, Zoom, Resize
o Landscape view
o Manage bookmarks
o Email URL-links
o Animated content
o Save images
o Copy and Paste
o Cookies, Java Script, etc.

Uncompromised Connectivity
o Supports WiFi, 3G, EDGE Networks

*Using cell tower triangulation; feature accuracy may vary, and may not function in all areas.

Article Via MacWorld
Photo Credit: McAfee

Today, DC Comics launched their very own iOS app. Based off the ever-popular ComiXology ($1.99 USD) app, DC’s offering will allow buying, organizing, syncing, and reading of digital comics just like Marvel’s app.

Take a look at this section of official description:

With the official DC COMICS App, you can download and enjoy great comic books from our current weekly offerings plus our vast, legendary classics library. Powered by ComiXology, this app enables you to take advantage of the unique Guided View reading experience or enjoy the pristine, classic full page view. What’s more, you’ll be able to conveniently manage and read your entire collection anytime, whether you’re at your desk computer, laptop or on the move using your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Experience the amazing world of DC Comics wherever you are!

If you’ve been dying to get your Batman fix, here is your chance. Of course, DC titles will also be available through the ComiXology app. If you love comics and Apple devices, you’re a very lucky person. Single issues will rage between $1 to $3 from the in-app comic store. Grab this app, and nerd out!

Are you stoked about this release? Maybe this app disappointed you. Let us know in the comments, or you can hit me up on Twitter if you’d like.

Article Via MacWorld
Photo Credit: DC Comics

You can look at the App Store in two very distinct ways. The first suggests that developers are making money, and that the largest digital bazaar on the planet is paying out for developers who make games good enough to gather a broad following. The second way of looking at it is that unless you’re one of the top developers in the market, there’s a good chance that your application won’t garner much attention, and you’ll probably end up giving it away for free.

The tale of two tones

Gizmodo is reporting that 81% of applications on the App Store are free, while every other source on the internet is writing that 19% of the applications are not free. Sure the numbers mean the same thing, but both numbers imply very different things. The first implies that no one is making money on the AppStore, while the later implies that some people are making coin by developing for the device.

I’ve been noticing the tone shifting on some major blogs these days, so I thought this might be an interesting way to point out to readers how writers can mold an article to change your perspective on a topic with language they choose to employ.

Where’s the truth lie?

Somewhere in the middle obviously. Headlines are growing more deceiving by the day, and a lot of people get their news from headline snooping. It’s another reason that getting your news from multiple sources is important in todays information society.

It’s obvious that people are making money by developing for the iPhone, but it’s been apparent for a long time that the gold rush might be over. Over night success for developers is long gone, and the old adage of “first to the market” rings true again. That doesn’t mean that people aren’t looking for the next great product, it actually means the opposite. There’s a barrier to entry now, if your application is terrible no one’s going to notice it, but if you make something ground breaking, you’ll reap the rewards.

How much is Apple making?

We suscept that Apple isn’t making that much at all, and that the App Store is the second incarnation of the iTunes store. Selling music isn’t what Apple’s making money from these days, but selling iPods and iPhones is, and having access to a huge library of content helps drive those sales. The App Store is no different. Sure, Apple would prefer to be making money, and sure, they have a vested interest in making sure the developers are getting paid so they continue to develop for Apple’s platforms, but Apple’s more focused on selling the hardware that connects to the platforms. If an awesome app is being given away for free or for a price, either way Apple’s selling the consumer an electronic device.  A prime case in point is iPad sales, and the number of iPad applications that carry a price tag— of the 10,000 iPad apps that are available on the App Store, over 78% of them carry a price tag.  So where are we now?  Apple’s trying to right a ship that’s sailed a little too far in the wrong direction.  We can see the emphasis they’ve been placing on paid content in the iPad store, so claiming that Apple’s not making much money from the AppStore is still a little premature at this point.

First, the reality distortion field is to be expected at any Apple event, let alone one where Steve Jobs presents a new product. We’ve come to love it, and it makes the event even more fun to be a part of, but we know that truths are being stretched a little. So it’s not surprise to us that the iPhone 4 is already collecting scratches for some of the “A-list” reviewers out there.

The gorilla glass might be stronger in a laboratory, but it probably won’t come out untarnished from a fall or a slide across a bar top in a dingy pub. It’s going to get dinged up, and we were certainly expecting it to have problems. It might not crack as easily, and it’s going to be stronger, but it’s not an indestructible material, expecting it to be is a major oversight.

Treat your iPhone like any other electronic device that you own and it’ll last you a long time, but if you treat it like crap, it’s going to get scratched. I don’t have one scratch on my iPhone 3G glass, and it’s been glass-protector free since the beginning. The difference here though is that the back of the iPhone 4 is glass, and we have a very small sample size to know if the iPhone 4 is going to have scratching issues. It could be a design defect in the phone, or it could be that Mr. Topolsky managed to unknowingly place his phone on a bed of rocks.

Either way, this stories going to be kicking around for a while until more people get their hands on the iPhone 4, you might want to brace yourself now for the potential backlash, if this phone scratches easier than it’s supposed to.

Article Via Engadget