Macgasm

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.

There’s a reason why I’m not a gamer: good games are addictive.  Sometimes, however, I let my guard down and a game slips by.  GodFinger, from ngmoco, is one of those rare games; it’s available for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad as a free download from the App Store.

Play God? Okay.

GodFinger gives you a little world to hold in the palm of your hand.  At first, the world isn’t very exciting.  Then you find your first follower, praying for rain.  Before you know it, he is building a farm that you bought in the Awe Store (the in-game general store) and you are whisking him away at the tip of your finger to rest around the campfire.  As you play, you gain experience and new abilities: the ability to cause floods, cast lightning, raze the earth with a firestorm, and move mountains.  Your power (mana) is regenerated by the loving worship of your followers, who begin cropping up at regular intervals.  At its basic level, this is a resource-balancing game: gold, mana, followers, and buildings.

Buildings take time to build, and followers take time to rest.  Luckily, time passes within the game even after you close the app—the game is stored online, so things are happening, changing, and evolving even when you’re not watching.  You can set the game to send you push notifications of important events, so that you can take care of situations as they arise.

There’s also a social aspect to GodFinger. Over the Plus+ network, you can connect with other friends who are playing the game, populating the space around your world with their worlds.  You can even visit their worlds, and are encouraged to “enchant” their followers, to mutual benefit.  You can name your followers after your friends.  The game also gives you the option to post achievements to Twitter and Facebook, but I don’t want to become one of those people.  This isn’t Farmville.

Followers: very, very cute. Oh look, there's Josh.

Worst (or best) of all, your little followers are sickeningly cute.  They call out to you gently when they need rain or sunshine.  They chant “OM” as they worship around the totem pole.  They burp when they drink.  They scream when you drop them from a height, or accidentally set them on fire.  They snore when you put them to bed in their little tents.  They cheer for you when you gain a level.  You get attached to them.

The app is free, but the developers have an interesting revenue-generation model within the Awe Store.  You can purchase mystic power (Awe) for real money, and trade it in for gold, which you can then use to buy more buildings or decorations.  Thankfully, it’s not necessary to have a successful game—you don’t have to spend money to play, but if you really get into the game and have the disposable income, the option is there.

GodFinger reminds me distinctly of Populous (an old DOS game); in both games you rally your followers around a totem pole, unleash natural disasters that require different levels of power, and raise and lower land.  I have described this game to friends as a cross between Populous and a Tamagotchi, with maybe a little of LucasArts’ Afterlife thrown in.  The addiction potential is very high.

Addictive though it may be, it’s by no means perfect.  Maybe I’m just too good at it, but the game doesn’t seem hard enough.  For a resource-production game, I expect to worry about running out of money, or mana, or have followers get angry enough to break things.  It’s apparently possible for skeletons to get up and walk around, terrorizing the countryside, but I haven’t seen any; perhaps I don’t kill enough of my followers off, or leave them dead for long enough.

Why is she happy that I can burn her more effectively?

There are also some technical limitations, particularly when moving followers from place to place; sometimes they just don’t want to be picked up, and other times you end up with a chain of four that you didn’t intend to move.  Too often, the animation sticks when you reach the edge of the screen.  I imagine these problems are less evident on the bigger display of the iPad, or with the faster iPhone 3GS.  It is also a big power drain, presumably because the display is always on.

Also, and I don’t know if it’s just that I’m too dense to find the option to turn them off, the tips are annoying after the first few days of play.  Yes, I know that is a stack of gold.  I am aware that the follower bent over, not moving, is exhausted.  Please free up the display real estate and let me figure the obvious out for myself.

The fact that I’ve been continuously playing it for weeks, and managed to hook Macgasm’s own Joshua Schnell into joining me, should tell you just how much fun GodFinger is.  It’s addictive, it’s pretty, and it’s interesting.  It requires a lot of attention to start with, but after a while you can leave it alone for most of the day and it will do its thing with minimal intervention.

Of course, you won’t be able to resist checking in on your followers.  They are cute, after all.  And they need you.

Finally, with everyone watching, Twitter is releasing an official iPhone app.

This has been expected since their purchase of Atebits, developers of Tweetie and Tweetie 2.  In fact, Tweetie 2 users should see the new Twitter app as a “free update” for the Tweetie 2 app in iTunes (even though, as of this writing, the link is not yet live).

Yes, I tried the US App Store too.

As a Twitter user since August of 2007, Tweetie 2 (and before that, Tweetie) has been my Twitter app of choice on the iPhone for a long time.  The user interface, reliability, and support for multiple accounts are key factors in that decision (although lately I’ve been flirting with the TweetDeck app).  In my opinion, Twitter got it right when they acquired Atebits.  Twitter aficionados on the iPhone will have a robust, full-featured app, unlike the official Twitter for BlackBerry app.  No need for beta testing; the app has been tested on the open market for well over a year.  You could say that Twitter, true to Twitter philosophy, “crowdsourced” their app.

Tweetie 2 cost $2.99 when it was available; the Twitter app will be free.

Some questions remain to be answered: Will there be a significant difference from Tweetie 2?  Does this app signal the impending appearance of Twitter ads?  Will an official Twitter app kill competing apps like Echofon?  Most importantly, will there still be amusing sound effects?

As soon as it’s installed, I’ll be test-driving Twitter for the iPhone, and I’ll let you know.

Adobe has published a surprising response to Apple’s quite thorough rejection of Flash on the iPhone and iPad.

Rather than address any of the technical points that Jobs raised as reasons not to permit Flash on its mobile devices, Adobe chose an entirely different approach: an appeal to human emotion.

“We love Apple.”

Adobe <3s Apple: BFF or stalker?

What?

Apple sent you a breakup letter, and you sent back a love note?  Really, Adobe, that’s a little creepy.

No, this is seriously their campaign: We Love Choice, with a Stallman-esque plea to let people use whatever technology they want (i.e. Flash) to produce content for whatever device they want (i.e. the iPhone and the iPad).

After I stopped laughing, I read through the details of the letter again.

The main point of Adobe’s letter is that “markets” should be “open”.  They state that “the best way to compete is to create the best technology and innovate faster than your competitors.”

That’s quite true.  Probably the worst way to compete is to attempt to force a company to work with your technology (when they’ve given you reasons why they don’t think it’s technically possible), and then claim they’re infringing on people’s freedom of choice.

Adobe says it believes in freedom of choice for developers, content owners, and consumers.  They must feel they’re on really shaky ground if they’re resorting to stirring up emotion with talk of love, beliefs, and freedom.  They may be right. Apple consumers aren’t complaining too loudly about the lack of Flash on Apple’s mobile devices; it seems they’ve already made the choice.

The issue here is not openness of a market, it’s suitability of content for a device.  Apple says there are technical reasons to not run Flash on its mobile devices.  I would like to see Adobe present a compelling technical argument for Flash’s suitability for the iPhone OS, or at least directly address one of the six points in Thoughts on Flash, instead of trying to make this look like a moral decision on Apple’s part.

Messy, public breakups are just plain ugly.  Adobe’s not doing itself any favours by drawing this one out.

Article via AppleInsider

It’s about time that the Wikimedia Foundation came out with their own Wikipedia Mobile app (available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch in the App Store).  There have been “unofficial” Wikipedia apps for the iPhone available for a while now (Wikipanion, for example) that provide different application interfaces to Wikipedia, with extra features like being able to send Wikipedia links to Twitter (when someone asks you a question they could look up themselves, I suppose) or browse content offline.

Nearby. I thought I was in a more exciting area of town…

None of these frills are available in the Wikipedia Mobile app.  It’s basically an application front-end to the Wikipedia Mobile site.  This isn’t a bad thing; on the contrary, its cleanliness and simplicity make it more useful than a more heavily-featured app.  With Wikipedia, the importance is being able to find what you want quickly.

The advantage that the Wikipedia Mobile app has over others I’ve tried is speed.  I was particularly impressed with the speed of the search; it suggests completions even faster than the App Store or iTunes apps, leading me to believe that there is a local cache of search terms.

Unfortunately, the speed does not hold for the “Nearby” feature; at least not the first time I launched it.  This was more than a GPS delay; I was concerned that the app might have crashed.  When it eventually showed signs of life, it did locate me correctly and provided a map (and list) of articles about local points of interest.  I would definitely use it when travelling to a new city.

It’s also possible to search in languages other than English (I tried Japanese), even with the English keyboard, which is useful if you can read another language—sometimes Wikipedia articles from the non-English sites have more detail or different information than the English articles do.

Edamame: it's what's for dinner

I’m mildly surprised that the app doesn’t provide any editing functionality—not that anyone really wants to edit Wikipedia “on the go”, but it would be interesting to have the option in the official app, considering the lack of other bells and whistles.

If you currently use the Wikipedia mobile site from your iPhone, this app will enhance your experience without changing what you’re used to.  It’s also perfect for those who only occasionally use Wikipedia.  If you already use another app to access Wikipedia, and you like it, there’s no compelling reason to switch.

Of course, the standard warnings apply: Wikipedia consists of user contributions; citation needed or no, never rely on it as an infallible source.

First there were online catalogues, then there were online stores, then there were mobile web stores. The logical next step, of course, is apps that are mobile stores.

The Best Buy app, available for iPod Touch or iPhone free from the App Store, is just that. When it comes to a retail consumer electronics powerhouse like Best Buy, you can expect them to either be at the forefront of new technology, or lagging sadly behind. Thankfully, in this case, it’s the former; not that there’s anything particularly advanced about an online store app, but it’s nice to see it done simply and well.

What a nice smile… and bright background.

The splash screens that welcome you to the app have that “it was funny the first time” cheesiness about them, and unfortunately the Best Buy brand colour scheme (blue, yellow, and white) looks awful on a lit screen. Thankfully once the content is loaded, Best Buy knows enough to push all of its branding out of the way and let you look at the product and the price.

You can do pretty much anything in the app that you would do in the online store; search by product description or by SKU, sort by price or popularity, view pictures and product specifications, add items to your shopping cart, and then buy them. Current specials and sales are highlighted, as well as whether an offer is particular to the website or applies in-store as well. The app also includes links out to the RewardZone and IdeaX sites (that open in-app) as well as IdeaGiftr, Best Buy’s gift suggestion service. Nothing seems to be missing.

A "Where's Waldo" reference? Seriously?

Maybe you’re like me, and you like to touch what you’re buying if it’s going to cost you more than one week’s pay. The app has a store locator built-in, which loads store locations quickly. It’s GPS-based, but allows you to override your location (by zipcode), which could be useful if you’re discussing a purchase with someone in a different city (for example, a relative buying a MacBook).

While I was reviewing the app, an update was released, including the ability to scan QR codes from Best Buy flyers. It’s about time; QR codes have been used like this in Japan for years, but the trend is only catching on in North America recently. I’ve personally had little success reading QR codes with the iPhone 3G using other apps due to camera resolution; the 3GS may perform better in this regard. Unfortunately, I don’t have a Best Buy flyer on which to test this feature.

QR Code integration: finally!

Canadians beware: although the Best Buy app is available for download in the Canadian App Store, it is only useful in the US; all prices are in US dollars and for American stores and the American website only. Searching for nearby stores (without enabling the zipcode override) brings up an unhelpful blank white screen. Since this isn’t specified anywhere in the app or the Canadian App Store (except in every single one of the comments), it could be considered misleading. If Best Buy doesn’t have a Canadian version in the works, they should just withdraw the app from the Canadian store to avoid confusion. It looks bad.

The Best Buy app gives you the complete online shopping experience within an iPhone app. There’s nothing missing, and it’s faster than trying to access the website in Safari. It’s a must for regular Best Buy shoppers, and I would expect everyone would find it useful during the holiday season.

Last week, Steve Jobs let loose with a scathing statement on why Apple mobile products (the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad) will never use Flash. Consisting of six points detailing why this is, and repeating it several times, it reads a little like Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Adobe has reportedly filed a complaint against Apple under US antitrust law. The New York Post reports that the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice are currently trying to decide who would handle the antitrust probe. If it turns out to be the DOJ, Apple could eventually be fighting criminal penalties under the Sherman Antitrust Act. Either way, such an inquiry is bound to drag on for years.

Let’s put our personal feelings about Apple and Adobe aside for the moment: Adobe is claiming that Apple is engaging in unfair, anticompetitive practices by refusing to support its products on its mobile platforms. What Adobe would need to prove is that Apple is seeking to establish a monopoly, or that it is unfairly blocking competition.

Not exactly a monopoly…

So, is Apple seeking to establish a monopoly? Well, as of February, Apple had managed to capture only 25% of the smartphone market share in the US. That doesn’t sound like a very secure monopoly. The iPhone is clearly behind RIM’s ubiquitous BlackBerry, and faces competition from devices running on Google’s Android platform, not to mention a well-established base of Palm products. It’s still a competitive field, with plenty of room for everyone. Adobe makes it sound like Apple’s the only game in town, when they’ve already made plans to roll out Flash and AIR to Google Android devices.

People are already comparing Apple’s impending situation with the 1998 Microsoft antitrust suit. Then, the accusation was that Microsoft, by shipping Internet Explorer with every copy of Windows, was making it very difficult, on purpose, for Netscape (the dominant web browser at the time) to compete. That doesn’t sound like what’s going on here; rather, Apple is declining to take the extra business that Adobe claims Flash would bring them.

It’s almost as if Adobe wants Flash to be the new IE: an unmarketable product riding on the back of a successful one. It certainly can’t survive on its own.

If Flash were as intrinsic to the mobile web experience as Adobe claims it is, Apple’s decision not to support it would be suicide—as opposed to an attempt to establish a monopoly. Adobe would also be too busy rolling out Flash support to the three-quarters of smartphones that are not made by Apple to worry about it.

But that’s not the case, because Steve Jobs is right. Flash is too bulky, too bloated, and too processor-hungry to be anything but a drain on the iPhone platform. Mac and PC (Windows, Linux, or otherwise) users already know that Flash is a processor hog, and the quickest way to crash your browser (Mac users: keep Activity Monitor open; if Safari freezes, you can kill the Flash plugin independently and keep working), or worse, hang your entire system. Can you imagine what that would do to a small, battery-powered device?

Adobe's passive-agressive note to iPhone users.

The problem with Flash (and AIR) now is the same as the problem with Java in the 1990s. Being portable across every system, especially when real-time graphics are involved, means taking advantage of as much processor power as you can grab. These software technologies were all designed in the hopes that hardware would evolve to run them without choking. But Apple’s business model isn’t planned obsolesence; they want the iPhone you buy today to still be useful three years from now. With Flash installed, it wouldn’t even still be useful today.

Antitrust laws exist to protect the consumer from one company forcing another company’s competing product off the market through unfair practices. Adobe’s having trouble keeping Flash competitive (or even relevant) as it is. They’re resorting to the last-ditch tactic of trying to get Flash onto the iPhone and iPad by legal decree, rather than on its own merits.

That’s dirty pool.

It would be a gross misuse of public funds for either the FTC or the DOJ to treat this complaint as anything but the nuisance action it is. Adobe, for their part, should pour less resources into fighting with Apple and concentrate on reworking Flash and AIR so that they are marketable products.

No free rides on the Apple cart, Adobe.

Dear Adobe: when you’ve been standing on the highway for this long with your thumb out and nobody has stopped to pick you up, you should realize that you’re not getting a free ride, and it’s time to start walking.

The St. John’s Telegram reports that Apple has rejected an iPhone game based on the Canadian seal hunt due to “objectionable content.”

iSealClub, developed by Matthew Smyth of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, would have let iPhone gamers club cartoon seals, using the iPhone’s accelerometer to control the clubbing action. But Apple rejected the game for inclusion in the App Store.

Seal: to club, or not to club? Photo: Mike Baird

With games such as Real Trophy Hunting (where you hunt other game, such as deer and bears) and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (which permits you to shoot police officers) already available in the App Store, one wonders what Apple considered sufficiently “objectionable” about the clubbing of seals to reject the app.

Oh, right: The seal hunt is an international political issue.

Due to an extensive media campaign by environmental and human-rights groups (like the Sea Shepherds), the Canadian seal hunt has been condemned by foreign governments, to the point where the European Union has banned the import of seal products in protest. Public opinion in Canada is split between those who believe the traditional seal hunt should be protected for cultural reasons, and those who believe it is a barbaric practice that should be stopped for humane reasons.

Smyth acknowledges that he chose to develop his first game based on the seal hunt as it’s of local interest (the seal hunt is a significant part of the Newfoundland economy) and because it would attract attention. He notes that, in the game, the player is penalized for clubbing baby seals (that still have their white coat), just as hunters are in real life.

Apple has neither confirmed nor denied that the political nature of the game was taken into account in its decision. Although the exact process Apple uses to decide which apps make it to the App Store and which don’t is somewhat of a mystery, it’s highly doubtful that Steve Jobs personally has a hand in the process. Still, for a game that, whatever the intention, tackles a sensitive political issue, one wonders if the vegan CEO may have been directly consulted.

PETA seems to think it’s possible, and sent Jobs a box of vegan-friendly seal-shaped chocolates to congratulate him in joining the ranks of world leaders condemning the seal hunt.

So it’s okay to eat chocolates shaped like seals, but not to club their cartoon representations. This is a very fine line, apparently.

In any case, for the time being at least, iPhone gamers will have to content themselves with shooting woodland animals and police officers, and leave clubbing seals to the professionals.

Photo Credit: Mike Baird