This Week's Sponsor:

Dropzone 5

Improve your Drag-and-Drop Workflow

Posts in iPhone

MacStories Weekly Game: Astronut

Yes, a Weekly Game on a Tuesday. It’s a day we’ll never forget, and the game we’re covering is so good I couldn’t help but play 3 hours with it last night and wake up early this morning to hit the Publish button.

Astronut by the Iconfactory is a game I was looking forward to. Since I saw the first shots on Dribbble, the promo video and I heard from people who were testing it that it was really great, I started waiting for the app to show up in iTunes with much anticipation. The app became available last night, and it’s free in the App Store. A clever move, as if you want to purchase extra “sectors” (level packs, or “zones”) you’ll have to complete a $1.99 in-app purchase. Which is totally worth it. Read more

iPhone 4 Not So Great At Grilling Contest

iOS, Windows Phone 7, Android…each one of them comes with its pros and cons, advantages and shortcomings. It is up to a user’s perspective and needs to find the best platform and device. So from the video you can watch below, it appears that grilling is a priority for this user, who decided to see which device between a T-Mobile G2, HTC Surround and iPhone 4 would survice the terrific grilling contest he set up.

The iPhone 4 doesn’t win. There’s no app for that. The result, however, might surprise you. Check out the video below.

AirPlay Disappears From iOS 4.2 GM on iPhone 3G

As noted by 9to5mac last night, AirPlay went missing on the iOS 4.2 GM for iPhone 3G. The feature was there in the previous betas and was working fine, allowing users to stream audio (no video to Apple TV yet, it needs an update) to AirPlay-compatible devices.

Apple apparently removed the feature when releasing the GM build on November 1st:

After speaking to multiple developers and users testing out the iOS 4.2 betas, we have determined that AirPlay did in fact work on the iPhone 3G at one point, meaning the AirPlay functionality was definitely removed from Apple’s two-year-old iPhone at its GM stage. The reason this is an issue is because Apple states, even on their own website, that AirPlay is supported on ALL iOS 4 devices.

Read more

Skyfire Makes $1 Million In First Weekend, CNN Interviews CEO

As noted by MobileCrunch, alternative 3rd party iPhone browser Skyfire did great in its first weekend in the App Store. Even though the app wasn’t exactly off to a great start (the developers had to pull the app as they couldn’t keep up with the server demand), it still managed to win the hearts of thousands of iPhone users who apparently needed a browser capable of playing Flash videos:

The company isn’t sharing exact numbers, but they did just tell me that their download numbers for their first weekend on the store were well over 300,000. At $2.99 a pop, that works out to one hell of a bounty. SkyFire isn’t walking away with that whole million, of course; Apple’s going to get their 30% cut, which brings SkyFire’s share down to somewhere between $600-700,000.

Read more

Friends for iPhone: “All Your Friends, In One Place”

We’ve been keeping an eye on Taptivate’s Friends (nèe Contacts+) for a few months. When I was shown a first preview of the app, I saw a rock-solid app for iPhone capable of aggregating all your contacts from Facebook and Twitter in a single interface. It looks like the guys at Taptivate have been working hard on making the app even better, and basing on the trailer that was posted earlier today it seems like we definitely have to wait for the app to show up in the App Store.

The trailer shows us that the app will be able to pull contacts from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace and your iPhone’s Address Book. You’ll also be able to check on links and photos posted by your friends, call them using a built-in dialpad, send updates to multiple social networks at once.

Check out the video below. We look forward to see if Friends by Taptivate will manage to reinvent our iPhone contacts. We sure hope so.

The Iconfactory Posts Astronut for iPhone Trailer, We Can’t Wait

Astronut app by The Iconfactory is a game we at MacStories are really looking forward to. What would you expect from the makers of Twitterrific and Ramp Champ? Absolute excellence. And it looks like Astronut will keep up with Iconfactory’s history of great software.

A trailer of Astronut is now online, and it was produced by my good friend Josh Hellferich (@Digeratii). From what we can see, the game looks beautiful and there’ll be a lite edition in the App Store.

We can’t wait.

A Stun Gun for iPhone

We’ve featured creepy iPhone and iPad experiments gone totally wrong in the past. Don’t remind me of that Japanese weirdo who used to eat off his iPad. For this reason I hope what we have here today is a spoof video, I don’t want to believe the stun gun dock accessory for the iPhone called the “Stun Fone” is real.

The guys you can see in the video below built this dock stun gun which you can use by pressing the volume buttons on the iPhone. No jailbreak required. While it’s fairly easy to build such an accessory and hack it to work with the standard iPhone keys – this looks just wrong to me. Read more

The Inception Of iPhone Decals

Available soon on Etsy, this iPhone decal is quite possibly the silliest thing I’ve seen in a while. Basically, it applies a standard iPhone UI sticker to the back of the iPhone, so it’ll look like you’re staring at the back of the device while you’re carrying it. People around you will see the screen, but you are looking at the screen.

See? Paradox.

[via The Next Web]

Hasbro Is Bringing 3D To The iPhone

In what looks like an effort to replicate what Nintendo is doing with the upcoming 3DS portable gaming device, Hasbro has unveiled an accessory called My3D that will bring 3D viewing to iPhones and iPods, the Associated Press reports. The device looks ridiculously similar to a pair of binoculars and users will have to insert the iPhone in it.

The My3D will retail at $30 and it seems that Hasbro worked closely to Apple during the development of the product. My3D-specific apps will be released in the App Store. Read more