Posted By Brandon on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 under General | 3 Comments
5
Aug
Provocative title no?
Caution: Brandon Mini-Rant Coming.
First off, let’s start this one with the obvious… MobileFailMe. I’m not going to beat this one to death, because well frankly, I don’t use it. But, given the amount of issues they’ve had it hardly seemed timely to light off a good rant and not mention the fact that this was such a HUGE FAIL. I mean come on. Jobs had to come out and basically admit they made huge mistakes and that the service is not up to snuff. I personally have the money sitting right here and I want to get on the MobileMe bandwagon… but I won’t won’t bother buying into it (and I own a Mac) until it comes with a whole lot less …
Next up … iPhone 2.0/2.0.1 - the most recent definition of head up the you know what. Apple made a vital mistake - they told us long in advance what date 2.0 was coming out, and come hell or high water the product was going to launch. There’s no way Steve was going to
Last night, a very interesting app appeared in the AppStore. It’s name was NetShare, a utility from Nullriver that allowed you to tether your iPhone’s internet connection to your computer.
Many people, including myself, were quite surprised that this made it past the AppStore sensors. While AT&T offers tethering for many of it’s 3G devices, iPhone is not one of them. It didn’t seem like an app like this would go down well with them, and apparently, it didn’t. About 18 minutes after NetShare arrived on the AppStore, it was taken down. You could still see it when you searched for “netshare,” but if you selected it, you received a message notifying you that “The item you requested is no longer available.”
This brings up many questions. Was NetShare supposed to be there in the first place? Did it slip by Apple’s AppStore guards? Did AT&T make Apple take it down? Was the word “lawsuit” possibly involved? Nobody knows. The app was also taken down from Nullriver’s site. I have asked them to comment, but no response yet.
While it was available, NetShare cost $9.99. Using a SOCKS5 proxy, the app allowed you to use your iPhone’s EDGE or 3G connection on your Mac or PC. Several users were able to grab the app in the time frame in which it was available, and they report that it works wonderfully. Anyone that did manage to get their hands on it can see a tutorial here.
UPDATE: Nullriver has issued this response to those who contacted them about the app:
We’re not quite sure why Apple took down the application yet, we’ve received no communication from Apple thus far. NetShare did not violate any of the Developer or AppStore agreements. We’re hoping we’ll get some feedback from Apple tomorrow. Sorry to all the folks that couldn’t get it in time. We’ll do our best to try to get the application back onto the AppStore if at all possible. At the very least, I would hope Apple will allow it in countries where the provider does permit tethering.
UPDATE #2: It looks like NetShare is now available again in the AppStore. Grab it while you can, because who knows when it may disappear again. Also, use at it your own risk for now; we still have no word on whether or not this violates your carrier’s terms of service.
UPDATE #3: Aaaaaand, it’s gone, again! Very early this morning, NetShare was yanked again. Nobody, including Nullriver, has heard anything from Apple or AT&T. Until we do, be sure to now download any large files or use the internet too much on a tethered computer, as it’s smart to try and stay below AT&T’s radar.
Like most of you I’m checking out reviews for nearly everything iPhone App related and this one was just too funny to not pass along. Needless to say I’m just gonna skip this one altogether.
“I’m not sure how this app got up to number three in the rankings. I suppose it is amusing for a bit—attempting to draw something that looks decent or cool—but it loses its charm very quickly. Perhaps a toddler would be more amused by it; (un)fortunately I don’t have access to one at the moment.”
Posted By Lincoln on Monday, July 28, 2008 under General | 5 Comments
28
Jul
A while ago, we wrote about a way to shorten the time that your iPhone running the 2.0 software takes to sync. In this method, you cancelled the part of the sync in which your iPhone was backed up. While this most certainly does improve sync times, you won’t be happy with yourself when you’re forced to restore your iPhone and you don’t have that backup.
However, iPhoneFreak has discovered another way to improve your times. By default, diagnostic data from your iPhone is sent to Apple every time you sync. (This data does not contain any personal information, only crash logs and the like.) Apparently, this takes a good bit of time as well. Follow the steps after the break to disable this.
Posted By Lincoln on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 under General | 2 Comments
23
Jul
One of the nifty features of the 2.0 software is taking screenshots by pressing the Home and Lock buttons at the same time. There are lots of ways to make use of the feature: screenshots for an app review, capturing your home screen to show to your friends, or grabbing a page in Safari to look at later.
However, there’s one quite useful feature of it discovered by James1292 on the Apple Discussions board. It’s a way to crop photos on your iPhone, a feature that has been frequently asked for. It’s simple to do; just zoom in on the portion of the image you want to crop, and take a screenshot. There will then be a new image of the area you selected. Of course, this won’t result in the highest quality image, (quality will decrease as you zoom further) but it’s a start.
When you Google “iPhone apps”, this website comes up as the top hit. When you view, the page, you see an offer that reminds you of MacHeist; a bundle of the “top 10 iPhone apps”, that all go for a price of $24.95, which the website calls “a steal”
However, there are quite a few interesting things about it, if you look deeper. First of all, you are required to jailbreak your iPhone to use these application, and the website does not state this on the home page or state that you cannot install the apps with the consent of Apple. Also, in order to jailbreak the iPhone, the website sells ZiPhone, a freeware jailbreaking app. Also, there are two interesting apps in the bundle; a screenshot app and a VNC app. Taking screenshots is supported in the 2.0 firmware, and there is a free VNC app in the AppStore. Hmmm.
The website also contains a lot of improper grammar, and the link to the “Live Chat” does not work. There have been customers of the website that have lost their money and not received the bundle. I advise you not to buy these applications and to avoid the website.
Posted By PatrickJ on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 under General | No Comments
22
Jul
But under the hood, MobileSafari 2.0’s performance is hugely improved over 1.1.4. Everything related to web surfing feels faster, and in side-by-side comparisons using my wife’s iPhone running 1.1.4, web pages consistently load faster on 2.0, both via Wi-Fi and EDGE. This has nothing to do with the new iPhone 3G hardware — this is about dramatic performance improvements on original iPhones upgraded to the 2.0 OS …
The results are obvious. WebKit JavaScript performance has improved steadily and significantly in just one year, with a huge jump between 1.1.4 and the new 2.0.0.
John Gruber at the excellent Daring Fireball site has done some benchmark testing of the MobileSafari browser on the iPhone, comparing the performance under the latest 2.0 software to previous firmware - and seeing major speed improvements under 2.0.
John’s article also points out that this speed gain is not only felt in the Safari browser on the iPhone, but also in many other apps that make use of their own built-in WebKit browsers - like NetNewsWire, Twitterific, and many others.
My own feeling so far is in line with these tests - browsing and page loading does seem a fair bit faster under the new firmware. What do you all think? How are you finding the browsing experience / performance on 2.0?
Posted By PatrickJ on Monday, July 21, 2008 under General | 2 Comments
21
Jul
Nate True - creator of Tap Tap Revenge and old-school iPhone hacking guru - has posted a set of detailed instructions for tethering with the iPhone 3G - so that you can make use of its 3G speeds as a modem for a laptop or similar.
The process requires a jailbroken iPhone 3G, involves a relatively lengthy set of steps on both the iPhone and a desktop browser, and is not for the faint of heart for sure. It is also absolutely against the terms of your AT&T contract and doing it could leave you exposed to data overage charges!
If you’re cool with all of the above warnings and keen to give tethering a crack, check out Nate’s step-by-step guide HERE …
I’m in the middle of a road trip from Florida to New York and have finally had a chance to put the 3G iPhone’s GPS and Google Maps combination to the test. And I’ve got to say - considering that this was not designed or promoted as a "GPS Navigation Tool" - it’s not terrible at it — if you give it a chance. No, it won’t tell you when to turn, and no, it won’t re-route you when you make a wrong turn - but it does do the majority of what you’d want a GPS Navigation system for, and a few things that a proper GPS system doesn’t.
Posted By Lincoln on Friday, July 18, 2008 under General | 1 Comment
18
Jul
WeatherBug is an application that gives more location-based weather information that the standard weather app found on iPhones and iPod touches. To get weather for your current location, you can either enter your zip code or have WeatherBug use the GPS or Triangulation features to locate you.
Once you have set the location, WeatherBug displays lots of information, including the current temperature, wind >speed, weather alerts, and High and Low temperatures for three days (these can be tapped for even more information). There is also a tab at the bottom of the screen that shows radar for your area, using Google Maps as the background. You can also browse through pictures that were taken in or near your selected area.
There are a few improvements to the app that could be made with future updates, such as displaying information for more days than three. Also, the photo browser could include more photos, as well as ones that were taken closer to your location; some of the ones that I was shown in were in Virginia and Ohio, and I live in West Virginia. However, the app has not crashed once or rebooted my iPhone, so stability gets a good rating. All in all, WeatherBug is a very nice, useful little app.
On the surface, little has changed, but look closer and you will see that with the launch of iPhone 2.0 software to go with the new 3G device, the iPhone has become less a mobile communications handset and more a pocket computer. — The Telegraph
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Last night, a very interesting app appeared in the AppStore. It’s name was NetShare, a utility from Nullriver that allowed you to tether your iPhone’s internet connection to your computer.
WeatherBug is an application that gives more location-based weather information that the standard weather app found on iPhones and iPod touches. To get weather for your current location, you can either enter your zip code or have WeatherBug use the GPS or Triangulation features to locate you.
