If you haven’t had enough of word based tile games for your iPhone, Kalimat is ready to take on Scrabble and Words With Friends as your go to game of choice. While I’m personally not a fan of the OpenFeint ecosystem in general, I was able to anonymously create a new profile with a gamer name to play online. Kalimat is interesting not because of differentiation in run of the mill gameplay, but because of its additional remix mode. Remix mode is interesting because there’s a timer (no casual thinking / cheating here), and you can swap out one letter per turn. The speed based gameplay is pretty wicked, and I thoroughly enjoyed this. There is also an additional secret tile (kind of like landing on a bonus in Jeopardy… okay it’s nothing like that) that awards you an additional fifty points. The Ali Baba can change the game at any time, so you’ll always want to be thinking of high scoring words to stay ahead. Kalimat supports multiple users, and the game board itself is easy to use with simple drag and drop controls. If a player drops a word on the board you’re unfamiliar with, you can look it up in the dictionary or simply chat with your opponent. For $2.99 in the App Store, Kalimat is a refreshing alternative in the word-game genre.
Kalimat Takes On Words With Friends; Remix For Speed Play
The Best PDF Reader for iPad, PDF Expert, Now Available on iPhone
I am a huge fan of PDF Expert on the iPad: developed by Readdle, I choose PDF Expert when I need to read documents on my iPad (and now iPad 2) because the app’s fast, has a nice interface, can import things from Dropbox and other online services and, most of all, has support for annotations / text notes / highlights / signatures and forms. Put simply: it’s great. And now it’s available on the iPhone, too.
First off, a complaint: I don’t like the fact that the iPhone version is sold separately at $9.99 and it’s not an universal app. Considering the similarities between the two versions, PDF Expert should become a universal app priced, perhaps, at a slightly higher price. PDF Expert for iPhone is basically a “mini” version of the iPad counterpart, and by “mini” I mean that it just fits on the smaller screen. All the features of PDF Expert for iPad have been ported over: highlights, notes, annotations, forms, online services, fast engine. It’s really the same app, working on the iPhone’s screen.
If you already own PDF Expert for the iPad, you know it’s a great app. So if you would like to have it on the iPhone as well, you’ll have to spend $9.99 again. If you don’t have PDF Expert, make sure to read my initial iPad review and then choose carefully between the two versions because it’s not a universal app.
Apple Wins First Round of Patent Battle Against Nokia
According to Reuters news agency, a US panel has said that Apple didn’t infringe any patents from Finland-based cellphone company Nokia. The 5 patents claimed by Nokia in the past months included mobile phones, portable music players and computers.
A judge at the International Trade Commission, which hears many patent cases, said that Apple did not violate the Nokia patents.
In the past months, the two companies fired back at each other with a series of lawsuits. In September 2010 Apple sued Nokia in the UK over 9 cellphone-related patents the company had purportedly implemented in their products, and sued again in January challenging one of the seven patents filed by Nokia in its lawsuit against Apple in Germany. Indeed, had previously sued Apple in the U.S., U.K., Germany and the Netherlands over 37 patent infringements claiming that Apple “owed it royalties for using Nokia technology that allows such basic mobile tasks as sending email or downloading applications”.
More specifically, Nokia sued Apple in May 2010 over five patents related to “enhanced speech and data transmission, and antenna configurations that improve performance and save space” that, according to the Finnish company, Apple implemented in their iPhones and iPads. Before that, Nokia had filed a lawsuit in October 2009 accusing Apple of infringing 10 patents and demanding royalties for more than 51 million iPhones sold since then.
We’ll update this article with more information as details surface in the next hours.
Bloomberg reports a statement from Nokia:
While we don’t agree that there has been no violation, we’ll wait to see the details of the ruling before we decide on any next steps,” said Laurie Armstrong, a spokeswoman for Espoo, Finland-based Nokia.
Apple has a “no comment”:
Kristin Huguet, a spokeswoman for Apple, said the Cupertino, California-based company had no comment. The judge’s reasons will be released to the public after both sides have a chance to redact confidential business information.
Fring for iPhone Now Lets You Switch Between Cameras, Has In-App Purchases
After a series of updates that brought fullscreen video calling with “dynamic quality” and cheap calls to landline and mobile phones, the latest version of video calling + IM service fring for iPhone, released earlier this week, allows users to switch between the rear and front-facing cameras. Like in Apple’s FaceTime, you can switch cameras with the tap of a button and show your friend on the other end what’s around you and what are you looking at.
Another new feature of fring 1.2 is the possibility to purchase fringOut credit using your iTunes account. The developers have complied to Apple’s terms and have enabled in-app purchases as the easiest way to buy additional call minutes without even leaving the app.
This update also includes bug fixes and “improved battery efficiency”, but it’s no universal yet. We don’t know if the fring developers are planning to release an iPad 2 version, but we think it’d be perfect to extend the service to other iOS devices. You can find fring for free in the App Store.
#MacStoriesDeals - Friday
If you didn’t already know, we’ve set up a new twitter account for Deals, it’s @MacStoriesDeals. We’ll tweet the daily deals there as well as exclusive weekend deals too. Help spread the word! Here are today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!
Apple Releases Xcode 4.0.1
Together with iOS 4.3.1, a few minutes ago Apple released an update for its development application Xcode, which reaches version 4.0.1 and adds a number of bug fixes and stability improvements. Xcode 4 was released on March 9th.
First off, Apple fixed a bug in the installer that caused the app to hang at 99% complete, never finishing the installation process. Apple also fixed another error that prevented indexing of projects, and another one that didn’t allow developers to have automatic downloads of documentation from Apple’s servers.
You can find the full changelog below, and Xcode 4.0.1 in the Mac App Store or Apple’s website.
- Improved Assistant editor logic when switching among different file types
- Fixed a bug in “Install Xcode.app” that hangs at 99% complete, never finishing
- Fixed a bug that prevented indexing of some projects
- Fixed a bug related to nil settings in the Core Data model editor
- Fixed a bug that prevented automatic download of iOS documentation
- Fixed a bug in LLVM GCC 4.2 and LLVM compiler 2.0 for iOS projects
- Additional bug fixes and stability improvements
Apple Releases iOS 4.3.1 [Direct Links]
Apple just released iOS 4.3.1. It’s available now in iTunes if you check for updates. The new version of iOS fixes graphic glitches for iPod touch 4G owners, resolves issues when authenticating with enterprise services and other bugs when activating and connecting to cellular data networks. iOS 4.3.1 isn’t available for the Verizon iPhone.
Screenshot of the changelog below, direct links after the break.
New York Times 3.0 for iPhone Released: Now With More Content
The official New York Times app for iPhone was updated yesterday to include a series of new features and more content, bringing it at the same level of functionality of the iPad version, last updated in December 2010. The new version 3.0 doesn’t make any mention of the NYT’s upcoming paywall implementation or Apple’s in-app subscriptions, with the App Store description still reporting that New York Times for iPhone will be “free until early 2011”. We assume another update will be released shortly, to enable the paid subscriptions that the NYT is about to launch for its website, smartphone and tablet apps.
Navigation has been improved, enabling swipes to switch between articles – only on the iPhone 4. The process is quite smooth overall, and definitely helps navigating the app with touch. The app itself got more content thanks to the addition of blogs, which are now part of regular coverage. As for breaking news, those of you who care about being alerted in real-time can now enjoy the new push notification system that will alert you of major news events even if the New York Times app is closed or running in the background.
Whilst sections can still be accessed from the rightmost tab in the bottom toolbar, a new Favorites tab next to it allows you to bookmark sections and save articles you want to read later. We would like to see some sort of online sync with the iPad app, where sections and articles that you bookmark on the iPhone are automatically imported on the iPad, and vice versa. The UI is elegant as usual, and now the app is even more “visual” thanks to the addition of photos and videos within articles. These photos and videos got their own section as well (which can be bookmarked) and they play just fine using Apple’s default media player, although I haven’t been able to test their support for AirPlay streaming yet.
All in all, The New York Times 3.0 for iPhone is a nice update with lots more content and the interesting idea of Favorites, but we know the app will soon go under another update to enable the paywall. Or perhaps the functionality has already been built into the app and the developers are just waiting for March 28 to flip the switch. In the meantime, you can get the app for free here.
GV Mobile for Google Voice Comes Back with Huge Update
There was a time last year when Apple eased its policy on Google Voice applications for the iPhone, and many users were waiting for the official Google Voice app to come back to the platform. But before the official client, a popular third-party one came around and quickly became many users’ favorite way to access the VoIP service from iOS: GV Mobile. The app, an unofficial client, was installed by thousands of people but eventually fell down in the charts due to the release of the official GV application by Google, which was also updated multiple times in the past months to work on the iPad and iPod touch. GV Mobile, on the other hand, was never updated. People even forgot about it.
GV Mobile is coming back today with a huge update that will surely convince many loyal Google Voice users to give it a try once again. Version 2.0 is a complete redesign with a plethora of new features, optimizations and bug fixes. It’s still sold at $2.99 in the App Store.
The new GV Mobile has a new beautiful user interface with dark menus and popups, it’s got push notifications (finally) and picture messaging. You can now text to multiple recipients (up to 5), search and browse all your GV folders you’ve created in the webapp. There’s a lot of other stuff in this update, such as the comeback of spell check and favorites, support for GV actions (read/unread,star/unstar,spam,block,archive/unarchive) and more call methods. Everything’s been revamped, redesigned and refined for this update.
You can find GV Mobile for iPhone here. If you’re serious about Google Voice, you should try it even if you like the official app.