A few weeks ago we reported that Apple removed every FaceTime mention and graphics from its Saudi Arabia website. It could have been a cosmetic tweak, website refresh - or it could have been the sign that Apple was having difficulties with FaceTime and Middle Eastern carriers.
With a support document available here (as noticed by SaudiMac), Apple just confirmed that the Middle East won’t get the magical FaceTime. Read more
There was a time when getting an AR (Augmented Reality) app approved by Apple was practically impossible. They didn’t want the iPhone camera to be used for other purposes than, well, taking pictures, and developers couldn’t display additional information on the camera screen. Eventually the App Review Team revised its rules and now, especially after Apple’s outing with the App Store Guidelines, Augmented Reality apps are featured in the App Store. Read more
The latest rumor making the rounds of the internet is the same one we’ve been hearing about for years: an iTunes subscription-based music service. Both the New York Post and CNET are reporting that Apple is considering a subscription music service; the New York Post also reports (be careful, they have a history with rumors) that the latest plan hatched in Cupertino’s black labs wants music execs to agree on a monthly service that could have a tiered pricing model ranging from $10 to $15. The report doesn’t tell us how much music would be included in each tier, and whether this subscription is meant for local content or cloud access. Read more
I haven’t used FaceTime that much until now, mainly because none of my friends managed to find an iPhone 4 with 3 Italia. Last night, though, I found out that two of them bought one earlier this week (“finally”, they said) and 2 hours ago I got a call from my town’s 3 store about the availability of the 32GB model for my girlfriend. This means that starting tomorrow I’ll use FaceTime a lot. An awful lot.
Thanks to a free app called “FaceNow”, the FaceTime experience will be a lot faster and easier to setup. Read more
According to AppleInsider’s daily Mac availability tracking service, most of the retail stores AI tracks have run out of MacBook Air stock. Nearly every retailer has run out of the low-end Air model, and their sources suggest a new model may come as early as next week. Read more
On the internet, some words are often overlooked. When something becomes “popular” or even a “trend”, the original concept is abused and misinterpreted. It happened with “interface”, it happened with “geek” and “hipster”, it’s happening with “curation”.
Curation: “The act of curating, of organizing and maintaining a collection of artworks or artifacts”
Curation #2: “The manual updating of information in a database”
With Apple’s “curated” App Store platform, geeks and casual users have started using the term “curation” in their parlance to refer to a collection of items regulated by terms and strict rules. With 250.000 applications and stories of rejections, curation suddenly became an internet-wide topic of interest for the everyday iPhone user. This is not what curation is all about. Read more
It’s not easy to build an alternative iPhone camera app: many tried, most of them failed, the one I loved was removed and the developers never got back to us. It’s not easy because Apple’s default camera application requires literally two taps to snap a picture, and there you have it in your camera roll. Where many developers failed is in simplicity and user approach: they promoted their app as the “best camera app for iPhone”, and they stashed 300+ features in it, making it impossible to use for the average iPhone owner.
So either you build an app for professionals (almostDSLR comes in mind), or you create something different. The latter option is exactly what the Instagram developers got right: they built a simple app to take pictures and make them prettier, and they wrapped it up with social features in order to create a brand new community around Instagram. A camera app with a social network inside it? The cool thing is, this could singlehandedly redefine the concept of “simple camera apps” on the iPhone for the months to come. Instagram is that good. Read more
Finally, I’ve been waiting for this: with a post on the official company blog Google has just announced that the Google Mobile iPhone app has been updated to include support for Google Goggles, the free service that allows you to search by taking pictures. An iPhone version of the popular Android-only service was first announced in June.
The app isn’t available yet in the US Store (I guess it’s still propagating). Check out the video below.
Update: the app is now live in the App Store. Update #2: I took a quick test, the app works great. Check out my screenshots below.
I remember when the iPad came out in April I sat in front of my MacBook and watched all the videos of new apps I could find on Youtube. The Yankees were getting a new shiny Apple tablet and I was not - but then eventually I spent some bucks more than I would expect and bought one from the US. It’s been a great companion ever since. Among the apps I was desperately looking at on Youtube there was one that caught my attention: Weather HD. Read more
