There is no doubt the iPhone has presented an unparalleled opportunity for amateur developers. In many ways, the iPhone is the perfect platform for small independent developers. The machine is relatively simple compared to a computer or modern videogame console. Apps for the iPhone are usually on the small scale targeting a very specific function. Steve Demeter (pictured above), made a small fortune of $250,000 selling his iphone game Trism in the App store. He did not have to worry about distribution mediums as all iPhoneapps can be downloaded from iTunes. Apple might take 30% but that is much less than what most publishers end up with. Don’t think about quitting your job to pursue iPhoneapp development just yet however as the market is becoming quickly saturated. The amount of iphone game apps has just jumped from 900 to 1500 in the last 2 months!
It has been confirmed now that the Blackberry Storm will be arriving in stores November 21 with a price of 199 (gee I wonder how they settled on that number). This will be RIM’s first smart phone without a physical keyboard. Its touchscreen is different from the iPhone’s touchscreen in that the Blackberry Storm’s touchscreen will depress slightly to give it a better range of feedback as it can discern from a hovering point or a click action. It is being marketed as a direct competitor to the iPhone which has been stealing a lot of business away from the Blackberry in the smart phones market.
Remember those Southwest Airlines commercials in which they put different people in various awkward situations. If we were any of those characters in those type of situations, I am pretty sure we would all try to find a way to bail ourselves out. Take for example Sarah Palin in her interviews about foreign policy. I am pretty sure if she had a “Get out of Jail” free card, she would most definitely use it. Well a company named Magic Tap has developed a new application for the iPhone aptly called “Fake Call”. What the application does is it programs the phone to produce a fake ringtone and a display a fake phone call to you. You would be able to program any name such as “Mom” or “John McCain” or whatever you want to be displayed as the person who is calling. Unfortunately, there is nobody on the other line. With this application, we now have a way to get out of horrible dates, out of the house, or whatever the situation calls for. The application is available at the Apple App Store and it should cost you under a buck to get.
Many market watchers, video game fans and analysts are beginning to take more and more notice of the Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch lumbering towards the mainstream video game scene. Apple has many advantages that should have Sony and Nintendo join Microsoft in concern. For one thing, games on the iPhone are downloaded which eliminate the need for distribution mediums and shipping costs. This greatly reduces the price of games to about 5-10 dollars for the more expensive ones (which is a huge step down from the 20-40 dollar cost of Nintendo and PSP games respectively). The iPhone has already been shown to be an excellent mobile platform on such titles as Force Unleashed and Spore as well. Combine that with Apple’s established customer base growing daily and there just might be a new sheriff in town…
Word on the street is… the latest Macbooks have made it harder for would be jailbreakers. Users have reported issues when trying to use the Pwnage tool on their brand new Macbooks. Specifically, the Macbooks will not recognize their iPhone or iPod Touches when trying to boot in DFU mode, which is a critical part of the process. The current going theory is that the problems stems from a new version of iTunes that is specific to the new Macbooks. Whether or not this problem will eventually find its way into the next version of iTunes is still in question. One way to bypass this conundrum is to make the firmware on an older system and restore the phone to its jailbroken state.
Remember back in the day during high school, the number one game that teenagers loved to play was Dope Wars on their TI-83+ Scientific Calculator. Well apparently, the game is now coming to the iPhone with a new GPS-enabled feature. The game is entitled Drug Lords and with the GPS system, the game allows iPhone users to locate other “Drug Lords” in the area and to calibrate their drug prices according to the local market. WOW! Check this video out:
Firmware 2.2 is due for release in November and once again promises to fix most of the issues concerning the current version. While I admit the iPhone 3G still has a lot of bugs to be fixed, I can’t help but feel that on some level, Apple is doing this on purpose. There are rumors going around that the latest iPhone firmware 2.2 screens have revealed an effort by Apple to get more customer feedback for the app store. By crunching out firmware updates one after another, Apple can keep control of the phone. Any unlock can theoretically be nullified with the next patch…
It has also been rumored that Google streetview will be available, along with transit schedules and walking directions
What is better than two things we really love put together. In this case, we all know here at Inspiretech, we love Apple products and cars. The only problem with these pictures is that the car is a Hyundai. But oh well, still pretty sweet.
The first Facebook app was a great app. It was one of those must-haves for anybody with an iPhone and a Facebook account. Well now 2.0 is here and it is better than ever. I just downloaded the app and it is absolutely miles ahead of the previous one. The new features include:
Chat
News Feed
People Search
Notifications
Address book search
Friend requests
Photo Tagging
And much much more! You can now basically do everything you can on Facebook sitting behind a computer! There really isn’t a reason to log in from your computer anymore! My only small complaint so far is that I had to do a soft reset before the app worked properly, but that goes most apps out there anyways! This comes highly recommended
