THIS IS NO JOKE...DO NOT BUY THIS APP AND APPLE PLEASE REMOVE THIS FROM THE APP STORE....APPLE MUST MUST MUST START TO SCREEN THESE FAKE APPS AND RIDICULOUS SCAMS.

Dear Lee5279xx,

No, Lee, this is not a scam. The application clearly said what it did and—if you are telling the truth—you went ahead and clicked on "BUY." That's not a scam. That's you being a moron.

Still, you've got a point. After all the fuss about only allowing good quality developers into the iPhone application store, the whole thing is loaded with crap. Crap with no real functionality, crap with bad design, crap with horrible icons. Except a few quality applications, the screening process is obviously useless. The I'm Rich application is just an extreme example that highlights what's wrong with the store, no matter how good it is in other aspects.

Still, dear Lee5279xx, we hope you can cancel that charge. Dummy.

Lots of love,
j.

[Digg, Thanks Marius]

Dynolicious is an all-purpose automotive performance meter, utilizing the built-in accelerometer in the iPhone and iPod touch to record your driving characteristics. BunsenTech, the makers of the software, claim that it can record 0-60 times within .08 of a second, accurately estimate your current speed and monitor and record any directional G force. The system seeks to perform nearly every function of (much) more expensive dedicated monitoring units, which seems like an awfully tall order for a $12.99 piece of cellphone software.

Fortunately, bloggers more experienced with the dedicated units have dispelled fears that this app is a waste of money. Dynolicious can actually do what it claims, and presents its data in a useful and attractive way. Realtime speedometer graphing and skidpad display may not be much more than pretty toys, but a bevy of data analysis tools can properly process your driving after it's done. Entering your car's weight and estimated power even allows Dynolicious to fulfill its namesake, calculating actual wheel horsepower and drivetrain efficiency with surprising accuracy. Data is recorded for as many vehicles as you want, and car mods can be noted and taken into account over a course of multiple tests.

Some reviewers are scoffing at the $12.99 price, and others are pointing to the cheaper g-tac, though it only records straight-line performance and doesn't offer nearly as complete of a feature set. Perspective is important though, and considering the high cost of roughly comparable dedicated systems and the amount of money avid car tuners spend on their rides, the price is a veritable bargain. This is one of the most creative uses of the iPhone's hardware I've seen that actually delivers.

[Dynolicious, App Review Marathon]

There's another current SpeechCloud voice dialing app on the App Store, and even though it may be free, it's got an average rating of 2.5 stars and reviews saying that it's pretty lousy. We'd make like a petting zoo and pony up the $25 for a good voice dialing app if we really needed one. Oh, and don't pay attention to the lousy 1 star reviews on the site, all these idiots are reviewing the app based on its $25 price tag and not how well it's functioning. [VoiceDial]

There were a handful of multi-client IM apps available via Installer, my personal favorite being Fring, which also has the ability to do VoIP calls over Wi-Fi. You can count on Apple putting the kibosh on Fring in the App Store unless it drops the VoIP feature due to SDK guidelines, which is a shame.

Palringo on its own sports a nice interface (which is a little jerky at times, though), and it tosses all of your new messages via any client into a universal inbox in the bottom-left corner. Like the official AIM client, it vibrates on message receipts, even if your phone is locked (and Palringo is still active, of course, which is another thing the Jailbreak apps had on it). On other platforms, Palringo supports voice chat over its supported protocols as well (not VoIP)—that feature's not in the iPhone version yet, but is forthcoming says the devs. [Palringo, App Review Marathon]

As seen in the video, controlling Mario is fairly natural, though quick turns and exact jumps are difficult to execute (playing Mario with the stock controls is often worse, though). Bomberman sort of works, but in that case—and many others—the old touch control overlay is much easier. Obviously none of these games were designed with tilt control in mind, but a surprising number are at least playable. Add this to the pile of reasons we still want an active app black market. NES.app 2.3.0 with tilt control is available now in Cydia. [NES.app]

By the looks of it, it works fairly well, using the magnifying glass tool to drag out a selection, although it looks like it's difficult to place the cursor correctly since you're unable to drag through a line of text without making a selection.

Proximi is planning on releasing its own proof-of-concept videos which further illustrate how their method could be used system-wide (how they will do that under the developer NDA is unkown). But first, the truly interesting question is whether MagicPad will get the stamp of approval from Apple and make it out to the App Store. They've said they don't care, but whether they let a 3rd party app tease what's in such high demand will be the true test. It looks like it's using an unorthodox email system (CAPTCHA??) to email notes as well, which probably lessens its chances. [Apple iPhone Apps]

And here's the original video demonstrating Tenori-On's seemingly infinite capabilities:
[Pakl.net]

The only hitch is you can't email the clips out from the phone, but how often do you actually need to keep your quick audio notes? Just break out the headphones, transcribe, delete. Done. [Ed. Note: I love emailing the clips from my Olympus digital voice recorder so I can email them to India and have them transcribed overnight.] Quality and range won't match a dedicated recorder, but definitely get the job done—I was able to hear my voice well enough to transcribe talking quietly from the other side of a 12-foot room. There are a couple other voice recorders in the store, but at $1.99 we're liking QuickVoice. [QuickVoice, Our Favorite Apps, App Review Marathon]

In the meantime, remember these things:
1) We do not pull data from your contact list before notifying you. There is now a notification in-game when this is done. And it is only done on the community page by YOU pressing the submit button.
2) We never store your contact list on our web server.
3) All data sent over the wire is now completely encrypted.
4) No contact data is saved on your phone's hard drive anymore. This has been removed.

Sounds good to us. [Aurora Feint]

If you've played Super Monkey Ball, you know that the EA folks are right when they told us the iPhone devs still have a ways to go before they can tease statistically accurate data out of the acceleromters for precision control of a game. The same problem unfortunately applies to A-Level. Right now, every reasonably level surface in my house is registering around -2 degrees off-center when a measurement is taken in landscape mode. When you tilt the phone straight up to measure with the bottom, the orientation of the accelerometers shifts, and the inaccuracies EA was talking about become apparent as it swings to the opposite side of the spectrum—around +6 degrees off-center.

A simple re-zero button will help this app immensely—allowing you to take quick comparative readings that aren't as susceptible to error. The developer, Posimotion, says this is on the way—but until then, hold on to your old, non-virtual level.

UPDATE: As many of you have noticed, one of the iPhone SDK demo apps is a similar moving-bubble level. While that doesn't preclude someone from releasing what is in itself a potentially useful app (I just used it tonight while moving some furniture around, actually), charging the 99 cents is indeed a little galling.

[iTunes Store via Gadget Lab; Giz's iPhone App Review Marathon]

The Price: $9.99

The Verdict: Tetris isn't exactly the most ambitious project for a company like EA Games. That's probably why the company's iPhone port is just, well, overdone. A good Tetris implementation - one that would have been wildly successful on its own - wasn't enough for EA, who've loaded this port up with so much crap that it sometimes doesn't even run. EA obviously wanted to use a bit of the iPhone's rendering capabilities, but the graphics are gaudy to the point of distraction. Starting or resuming a basic game takes quite a while because of the layers of menus and loading screens, and the secondary gameplay modes and Magic Mode tools will be ignored by most. On our 3G iPhone, the app would often freeze at startup, a problem that has been reported elsewhere among iPhone and iPod owners. An update is forthcoming that should address stability issues as well as introduce a feature that allows you to draw your upcoming shape directly.

These inspired features, though, are sullied by the showy, buggy execution. Anyone looking for a simple, clean port like Tris (from the jailbreak days. See you soon, Tris...) should probably pass on this $9.99 monster as you can expect a decent competitor to pop up at a lower price point, if not for free. Also, there are already web apps that offer a traditional (though gestureless) Tetris experience in your browser that don't have a 40 second startup time. One more sticky point: if you exit out of the game to check email or take a call and return, it will save your game state. But to start playing again you have to sit through 10 seconds of the intro movie. Freaking annoying and a waste of battery.

[iPhone App Marathon Review]

Said one anonymous, and pissed-off App Store developer:

“As a developer myself with my own game on this list, I am extremely disappointed that these companies have essentially tried to step all over everyone else in order to promote their products, particularly Jirbo, Inc. who decided to put a space in front of all of their games’ titles. I would imagine that as a consumer, these tactics would be equally perturbing as they screw up the integrity of the store.”

Crafty, cheating or just plain smart? What say you?[Macenstein]

The whole thing feels like having iTunes in the palm of your hand. Once you authenticate your remote by entering a four-digit code—the iPhone or iPod touch needs to be in the same wireless network—it's all a matter of opening the application and starting to surf your iTunes library.

There are five sections on the remote:

Playlists
Here you have access to your personal playlists, just like in iTunes. This includes the smart playlists as well. All changes in iTunes are reflected in real time on the remote, just as you would expect.

Artists
This is a browser view by artist, which looks identical to the one on the iPod.

Albums
Same as Artists. Here you can see the artwork, streamed directly from iTunes.

Search
The search engine is a little bit weird but works great. It's live, so when you start writing, the results start to appear on the screen. However, you can't click directly on the list. When you are done writing whatever you're searching for, you click on the result list and it activates. Then you can scroll through it, with all your results neatly organized by Albums, Artists and Songs.

More
Here you will find access to the rest of the media in iTunes, from audiobooks to music videos and, of course, movies.

You can associate several libraries to the remote. There is a Settings button on the top left corner. When you click on it, you can Add Library and also turn on the Stay Connected option, which is listed under Performance. I don't know if this is related to Wi-Fi power consumption or just to the fact that, while being always connected, you won't need to reconnect after your iPhone wakes up.

There are no delays in the operation so far. Everything works fast and smoothly. Now, the only thing I want is having playback on the iPhone. Not just control iTunes remotely, but actually accessing the media from the iPhone or iPod touch, via Wi-Fi or 3G network. That would be the key to avoid having too little space: get an unlimited data plan and just access everything on your computer remotely. We can only hope that this is what Steve & Co. have in mind for the next version.

Agreed, some of these apps will offer different functionality for doing a similar task (dare we say you get what you pay for?.) But do we really need three different "tip calculator" apps? Is people's grasp of maths really that bad?
[BBG]

The App Store works great on the iPhone 2.0. Fast. Beautiful interface. Simple. It's localized, so you will require an account from the iTunes country you are accessing from (my Spanish iTunes account didn't allow me to download things from the App Store in the UK).

I'm installing the AIM client now. Doing video. Keep checking back.

6:28EST

The installation was flawless. The icon appears on your iPhone screen instantly and you can see a progress mini-bar showing how much is left. Over wireless, AIM for iPhone installed in a few seconds. Another video coming up now.

6:38EST
The navigation is very easy. The whole mechanism is more straightforward than Installer.app. You just use the store to buy things and the updates are presented on a dedicated screen. At the beginning I looked for a place to uninstall applications but nothing was there. The answer is simple: just go into the iPhone home screen, hold an icon for a few seconds and the X to delete the application will appear, just like when you add a web page to the homescreen.

6:47EST
Apparently some readers are reporting that some applications are not available in certain countries in the iTunes App store. I've yet to find this problem in the iPhone App Store, though. If you want me to try any apps, let me know.

7:04EST
I'm downloading applications left, right and center, including the new iTunes Remote application.

7:16EST

The search engine does it by keywords, apparently. New video on all the sections coming in a few minutes.

7:35EST
Here's how you uninstall any application on the iPhone. It couldn't be more simple.

7:39EST
Going to buy an app now. Probably Monkey Ball, but ping me with tips in AIM if you think something is better.

7:50EST
Second part of the walkthrough.

8:13EST
I've downloaded Monkey Ball but it's not working on my iPhone classic. Going to back it up to iTunes. Video of this coming up now.

The backup process started automatically as soon as I connected it, but it's taking a long time to complete.

8:52EST
Sorry for the delay, but I've been playing with the iPhone remote control and other apps. This is just too much fun. Feels like Xmas money. The quality of some of these applications is just amazing. A post on the purchasing process, which works exactly as the free stuff, one-click and install, is coming up in few minutes.

9:29EST
Here's a brief clip on the purchase of Monkey Ball. Very simple as I said, one click. It took ages to install because apparently it is really big.

Stay tuned for the Remote hand-on.

10:39EST
The remote hands-on is live here.

The app works, I'd guess by sending the closely matching accelerometer data back to the Tapulous server, where they're matched in the cloud and info is swapped. There is no actual device-to-device connection—but that is still ridiculously cool. Tapulous is also planning to release Tap Tap Revenge and Twinkle as free downloads at launch. [Tapulous via Boing Boing Gadgets via Lifehacker]

If it works like iPod games and iTunes music, you'll be able to mail them around just fine, but once you get around to actually playing them, it'll prompt you for the correct iTunes account tied to this piece of software. On the other hand, if you can somehow strip the Fairplay DRM off of it, that means free Apps. We know they exist for music, but we're not sure about iPod games. Does this also mean that if people create games without DRM, you'll be able to directly import them into iTunes, bypassing the store entirely? [Gabe Jacobs via Gadgets on the Go]

• Stunning, console quality graphics

• Twelve beautifully crafted tracks

• The famous Crash Bandicoot cast of characters

• A host of weapons, items and power-ups

• Fully configurable controls

It's not Mario Kart, but it will do until Apple merges with Nintendo. [Polarbit — Thanks Virginie]

For the 29% of apps that will need to be actually purchased, the average price was a pretty reasonable $2.29. But since Apple ultimately foots the bill for distribution through iTunes and those costs can be most directly recouped through software sales, it may (ironically) not be the software developers who want to charge for iPhone apps, but Apple instead. [AppleInsider]

They have solved notification without resorting to background processing by adding Push Notification services, which save battery life and solves performance issues. The notification service works over the wireless and the cell networks.

For users, they have added contacts search, iWork document support including keynote, MS Office documents (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, likely in the same way Mac OS X does it,) email bulk delete and move, image saving from email, the much-anticipated scientific calculator (for those people with pocket protectors) which automatically turns on landscape mode, parental controls.

They have also expanded the international languange support, as expected, adding many latin language plus two forms of Japanese and two forms of Chinese, with finger-based drawing of characters.

Enterprise users will also be able create and distribute apps on their own intranet with authorized iPhones. The apps will only work on those iPhones, and they're synced via iTunes.

• Super Monkey Ball. Ethan Einhorn from Sega presented the game. The gameplay is very smooth, and they developed 110 stages in just 8 weeks after their original announcement. Now it is available for $9.99.
• eBay has also developed a dedicated auction application for the iPhone—available from the store for free—not a Web app, but the real thing.
• Loopt, a dedicated application that uses CoreLocation services to find people near you.
• A dedicated TypePad client will also available for free, with some really cool stuff.
• The Associated Press is also delivering a news channel, a dedicated app for the iPhone that can handle photos, news, and video from their network, as well as giving you a way to send them tips.
• Enigmo, one of the two games from Pangea, they have ported from Mac OS X. Also $9.99, like Super Monkey Ball.
• Cro-Mag Rally is the other game, which took them three days to move to the iPhone in rough form. It uses the accelerometer to drive, turning the iPhone around. Like Enigmo, is $9.99.
• Mark Terry, an independent developer from England, showed Mow Cow, a cool music application which allows you to basically have a band in your pocket. A beautiful application.
• Major League Baseball also showed a dedicated baseball application, capable of showing stats, results, and video. Looks amazing too.
• Modality is a medical-oriented application, which allows you to see anatomical images and really zoom in.
• MIMvista, another medical-oriented application which allows access to scans and reports in real time over the air.
• Xavier Carrillo Costa, from Digital Legends Entertainment, presented a God of War-like game, with dramatic images and graphics. Really stunning.

iPhone SDK Downloads Top 250,000

New App Store Available in 62 Countries

SAN FRANCISCO, June 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple(R) today announced that downloads of its iPhone(TM) SDK (Software Development Kit) have topped more than 250,000 since its launch on March 6. The iPhone SDK provides developers with the same rich set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and tools that Apple uses to create its native applications for iPhone. Apple today also announced that its amazing new App Store will be available in
62 countries bringing a breakthrough way for developers to wirelessly deliver their applications directly to iPhone and iPod(R) touch users around the world. Users can download applications wirelessly and start using them immediately.
"Developer reaction to the features, power and simplicity of the iPhone SDK has been incredible," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "We are seeing some truly amazing native apps from our developers and think users are going to love the breadth and depth of the applications available from the App Store."
Leading developers such as AOL, Cisco, eBay, Electronic Arts, Epocrates, TypePad, Salesforce.com and Sega have demonstrated impressive native applications developed using the iPhone SDK.
"The SDK allowed us to build a groundbreaking new AIM client in record time," said Kevin Conroy, executive vice president, AOL. "The platform's elegance and ease of use has inspired our developers to create innovative new web and SDK based experiences for iPhone and iPod touch."
"The iPhone SDK has given us an excellent set of tools and APIs to create mobile extensions for FIM's entire portfolio of web brands including MySpace, IGN and Photobucket in the near term, and other properties such as FOXSports.com down the road," said John Smelzer, senior vice president of Mobile for Fox Interactive Media. "The popularity of the iPhone, along with the high demand for applications, gives us an amazing opportunity to create ground-breaking mobile experiences."
"Cocoa-touch is a compact and robust application framework that handles all the heavy lifting for developers so they can concentrate on building their applications in record time with the legendary Apple finesse we've come to expect," said David Krantz, president of YELLOWPAGES.COM. "iPhone has been a game changer since it launched, and the availability of our YELLOWPAGES.COM application on the App Store is going to make a great device even better."

"As mobile developers with primarily J2ME and BREW experience, we were up and running with the iPhone within two weeks," said Jonathan Backer, manager of Mobile Engineering, The Walt Disney Company. "The hardware is stable and full-featured, while the software development tools are intuitive and represent a level of polish rarely seen in the mobile arena."
"Since the launch of the iPhone we have seen a steady rise in traffic to the MLB.com mobile site so it made perfect sense to develop a rich client application for the App Store," said Adam Ritter, vice president, Wireless Major League Baseball, Advanced Media. "Our development staff was excited to work on an iPhone application and reported that the SDK was robust and straight forward and contained helpful development tools. All combined we were able to expedite our development and deliver an application we know baseball fans will enjoy."

Pricing & Availability
The free beta iPhone SDK can be downloaded at developer.apple.com/iphone/program. Membership to the iPhone Developer Program is available worldwide. Developers set the price for their applications — including free — and retain 70 percent of all sales revenues.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its
award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

NOTE TO EDITORS: For additional information visit Apple's PR website (http://www.apple.com/pr/), or call Apple's Media Helpline at (408) 974-2042.

(C) 2008 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, iPhone and iPod are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE Apple
-0- 06/09/2008
/CONTACT: Simon Pope, +1-408-974-0457, simonp@apple.com, or Jennifer Bowcock, +1-408-974-9758,jennifer.b@apple.com, both of Apple/
/Web site: http://www.apple.com /
(AAPL)

It goes without saying that the service won't work over Edge, and will almost certainly not place calls over 3G data, but considering how much of the day many people spend drenched in Wi-Fi, iCall has some serious minute-saving potential. iCall should be available as soon as the official App Store is up and running, and will likely be just as free as the desktop client. The makers sound confident that they will be listed in the app store, which provides additional confirmation that VoIP services won’t be totally barred from the platform. See below for a Starbuckian demo.
[iCall]

• Beta only with final coming at WWDC?
True - Today's SDK announcement was beta, and though it's available today to anyone who wants to try it out. They can even run the iPhone Simulator on their Mac. The iPhone 2.0 software isn't going to be out until June at all, unless you happen to be a "selected developer or enterprise customer."

• Free through Apple Developer Connection?
Not exactly - It's a free beta for anyone, but Apple launched the iPhone Developer Program which will charge developers $99 per year for the right to publicly release iPhone apps, and distribute them via the new App Store.

• Mac OS only (because of XCode)?
Yes... and no - The SDK runs mainly on the iPhone itself, with a very cool new Cocoa Touch multi-touch interface. There's a debugger and an iPhone simulator that run only on the Mac, but theoretically you can develop without either Mac or PC. (OK, that sounds like a dodge: No, nothing Jobs mentioned today works with Windows.)

• Camera access?
Yes - During the SDK briefing, they said "Image picker will allow you to grab images from the camera/iphone library."

• EDGE and Wi-Fi for data?
Yes - Among the Core Services are Net Services and Networking options, as well as something called "Core Location," which will let developers create "location-aware" apps.

• Bluetooth 2.0 open?
No - Sorry we don't have more of a backstory there.

• Flash support?
No - Jobs' preemptive trash-talk stuck.

• Dock connector for accessories blocked?
No That is to say, "Yes, it is blocked" - We're being told that dev for docks is not available at this time. Fingers crossed for the future!

• iTunes as application hub/Apple as app picker?
Yes, sorta - There's an iTunesy App Store which can be used both over-the-air on the iPhone (or iPod touch) itself, or sideloaded via a Mac or presumably a PC, via iTunes.

• Unfettered freeware?
No - Here's one for the smashing block: Free software will be available, but only through the App Store, where programs will be edited for content.

[Apple iPhone SDK Launch on Giz]

It looks a lot like installer.app, but with icons. It's got top 50 apps and search. The apps will automatically update programs, like installer.app.

On the developer side, developers pick price, and get 70% of the revenue. There's No credit-card or hosting fees. Free software will be supported, too, but porn and other raunch will be omitted. [Apple SDK Live Blog]