Dive into OS X

Oosah’s iPhone App Extends Storage to 1TB

admin — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:44:21 +0000

Oosah is a free, online media service that lets users store, organize and manage their photos, videos, and music in one place. Users can upload media content from their computers and digital cameras to Oosah and access their content on other sites (such as Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and YouTube) directly from their Oosah account.

Today, Oosah is releasing its new iPhone application today, turning your iPhone and iPod Touch into a mobile desktop computer. Oosah therefor has launched a new Website that can be accessed through your iPhone. http://m.oosah.com. Oosah iPhone application takes advantage of iPhone’s unique interface, enabling users to drag-and-drop media content from their iPhone.

The benefit of having access to your documents and files is that an application such as Oosah effectively extends the storage capacity of your mobile device to 1TB.

FULL Video Recording and Streaming for Your iPhone 3G

admin — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 09:03:44 +0000

Apple’s all-new 3G iPhone weakest feature is probably its camera, which is nearly unchanged from the original model. Not only is it the same fixed focus, 2 megapixel camera (which was a bit behind the state of the art a year ago and now found in most low-end cellphones currently available in the market), but it also still uses the same very basic camera software. It still lacks video recording and still uses a touch screen button that make snapping a photo a bit difficult, particularly if you’re attempting to take a shot that includes you in the photo. You can also forget video conferencing or even video capture.

Video Recording

One of the newest application for the iPhone is “iPhone Video Recorder”, developed by Dreamcatcher. This application allows iPhone users to record video in compressed mp4 format, at 15fps video capture rates. The iPhone Video Recorder nabs both video (at up to 320×412 resolution) and audio. You can purchase Video Recorder for $19.99. After purchase, you will get unlimited time for recordings and the enabled custom signature option.

Another product is Cycorder, from the developer of Cydia, Jay Freeman . Cycorder took a minimalistic design approach to his recorder with the focus on real-time compression. Cycorder does not have audio recording at this time, but since it’s only a first release, we won’t be surprised to find it in the future. And Cycorder is FREE!

Both recorders are respectable entries into video recording for iPhone. The two developing teams took a different approaches for each. Cycorder beats Video Recorder hands down on the real-time compression capability and video quality. On another hand, Video Recorder is truly a full-feature recorder for iPhone.

Video Streaming

Two recently released applications allow iPhone users to stream live video from their iPhone’s camera to the Web over a 3G or Wi-Fi connection: Qik and Flixwagon.

These 4 applications come with a catch: Users have to “jailbreak” their iPhones to install them. This means a customer will have to download some software that will enable an iPhone 3G to install applications that are not approved by Apple. While it’s not illegal to jailbreak a phone, it does void a user’s warranty. Additionally, any handset with these applications could potentially be rendered useless by a future firmware update.

Is the iPhone spreading like a virus?

admin — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 13:21:25 +0000

On August 22, Apple will start offering the iPhone 3G for sale in many countries. Here’s a list of the countries that are expecting launches that Friday:

Argentina
Chile
Colombia
Czech Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Estonia
Guatemala
Greece
Honduras
Hungary
India
Latvia
Lithuania
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Romania
Slovakia
Uruguay

Russia will also be getting the iPhone 3G in October. Apple struck a deal with the country’s largest mobile provider, MTS, which has nearly 84 million subscribers.

Apple has nearly doubled its potential market base with the addition of 21 countries, to a total of 660 million potential subscribers. Odds are good that if even a small percentage of that base opts for an iPhone, Apple will easily exceed even its own sales expectations.

Jailbreak your iPhone

admin — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:03:46 +0000

When you don’t want to depend solely on the official App Store to get your iPhone 2.0 applications or you want full access to your gadget, you need to hack or “jailbreak” your iPhone or iPod touch. And less than two weeks after the iPhone 2.0 launch, it’s easier than ever to do with your new device. There are two east to use programs available for jailbreaking your iPhone:

Pwnage for Mac users
WinPwn for Windows users

Head to the respective websites for further directions on jailbreaking your iPhone.

There’s also a third, instance fast way to jailbreak your iPhone or iPod Touch. Here’s how it work:

Point your Safari browser (the one in iPhone/iPod Touch) to jailbreakme.com
Read the instruction first. Scroll to the bottom and click Install AppSnapp.
Safari will load, then closes itself and return to home.
Wait 1 minute or more, do not launch any application at this stage.
Your iPhone/iPod Touch will then be locked. Slide to unlock and you’ll noticed a new Installer.app being installed.

Once you’ve jailbroken your iPhone, you can run everything you want!

New copy and paste system on Apple’s iPhone

admin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:58:16 +0000

One of the common complaints about Apple’s iPhone–and one that did not get solved with the launch of the iPhone 3G–is the lack of a copy-paste function. An independent developer, Zac White, has developed a copy and paste system called Open Clip that works across applications on Apple’s mobile device.

OpenClip is not an application for the iPhone that can be installed. Rather, it’s an open source framework that developers can integrate within their apps, giving them copy / paste functionality with other participating apps.
OpenClip uses a technique developed by Zac White. It utilizes a shared space on the iPhone. Applications that use the OpenClip framework can access this common area to write to and read from, allowing copy / paste between participating apps.

The main question is: will developers implement the framework when there’s speculation that Apple will be implementing its own system in the future? As pointed out in the FAQ, Apple has stated that while copy and paste is on its to-do list, it’s not a high priority, making it unclear just how long users will have to wait.

Some people give away $1,000 for nothing!

admin — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:43:20 +0000

According to a story in the LA Times eight people had almost $1,000 to burn on the useless iPhone application “I Am Rich” made by Armin Heinrich from Germany.

Armin Heinrich’s application does mainly nothing: The program loads a screen saver onto the Apple iPhone to remind users and alert others that the user has money to throw around. The “status symbol” does nothing but load a ruby red icon on the home screen, with the subtext “I Am Rich.” When the user activates the program, a large, glowing red gem appears. That’s all.

The “I Am Rich” application had a $999.99 price tag, the highest amount a developer can charge through the App Store. That’s one heck of a high cap for mobile software!

Apple removed application from the App Store. The application is still available on Armin Heinrich’s site.

Apple released Aperture 2.1.1 today!

admin — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:18:52 +0000

Apple’s first-ever professional digital image-editing tool Aperture generated a lot of buzz when it was first announced. It aimed to solve the photographer’s workflow dilemma by providing a single application that performs sorting and cataloging, raw conversion, basic image editing, Web page generation, printing, and archiving. The program provides exceptional, unique tools.

Apple released Aperture 2.1.1 today.

This update supports general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues. Aperture 2.1.1 is a free update and is available via the Software Update application or as a download at the Apple Support Web site.

iPhone 2.1 is coming

admin — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:21:05 +0000

Just weeks after shipping, the iPhone’s second-generation software is getting a makeover with improved GPS functionality and background push capabilities.
The iPhone will be capable of turn-by-turn GPS tracking, meaning it can track the direction a user is heading in, as well as the speed of motion.

Apple released a beta of its iPhone 2.1 software to developers this week, fixing some of the shortcomings that reviewers and users had pointed out.

That’s not all. Apple has also issued a new SDK for the iPhone, though the new SDK can’t be used to publish applications to the App Store.

Apple’s new product is the iTablet!

admin — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 22:57:30 +0000

During Apple’s Q3 2008 Earnings conference call with analysts, Apple’s Peter Oppenheimer (CFO) and Tim Cooke (COO) both mentioned a “product transition”.

Someone tells me that Apple will announce a 12 or 13-inch tablet in the fall of this year. Most likely in the September or October time frame. It will run the full Mac OS X and have a slot loading SuperDrive, an “iPhone-type” GPS chip and an Intel Core Duo processor.

The Apple iTablet PC rumor has been around for a long time. Lots of people think they would love a big iPhone type device to surf the web. They have to wait some little time!

MobileMe has failed!

admin — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 21:51:48 +0000

Everybody knows that Apple’s new push data service has failed but nobody knows what has been fixed already. Until now… Steve Jobs has asked an Apple worker to write a posting on the apple website every other day or so to let everyone know what’s happening with MobileMe.

The day we launched MobileMe, we had a lot more traffic to our servers than we anticipated, with the result that access to the web versions of the MobileMe applications — Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, iDisk — was temporarily unavailable.

Strange, an surge in traffic at an unexpected level? With the world waiting for months for this service, what did they expect?

The team has also fixed over 70 bugs including one that was preventing MobileMe IMAP mail folders from syncing correctly between the web app and Mac OS X Mail or Outlook, plus others correcting display issues in Calendar and in general enhancing the performance of our web apps.

It looks that MobileMe launched as an unofficial beta. We don’t know the severity of all these bugs - Apple has no transparency on these kinds of issues - so it’s hard to evaluate fully and fairly. But this is not the Apple way of doing. That’s for sure.