Leander Kahney's Blog, page 1488

Steve Jobs Once Wanted To Turn Apple Into A Carrier And Use The iPhone To Destroy At&T

Steve Jobs's legacy on the mobile industry is uncontested, but instead of just changing the balance of power between handset makers and the carriers, Jobs's original vision was even more revolutionary: he wanted Apple to become a carrier using unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum.

According to venture capitalist and wireless industry legend John Stanton, "[Steve Jobs] wanted to replace carriers" from 2005 to around 2007.

"He and I spent a lot of time talking about whether synthetically you could create a carrier using Wi-Fi spectrum. That was part of his vision."

This obsession with replacing carriers lasted until 2007, when he abandoned the idea of Apple figuring out a way to harness unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum into a carrier of its own. But imagine what a different world we all could have been living in if Jobs had succeeded.

[via MacWorld]

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Published on November 15, 2011 11:40

You Can Get 120 Apps Inside One! But Do You Need To? [Review]

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AppZilla 2 is one of those jack-of-all-trades apps, squeezing 120 little mini-apps into one place.

Tap it, and it grinds open with a dramatic kzzzzzzrrr-tang sound. Inside, you see a springboard-within-a-springboard, with pages of apps to mess around with.

There's all kinds of stuff in there. Camera apps, sounds apps, word apps, joke apps, utilities apps. You name it, it's probably inside AppZilla. A bargain, right?

Here's the thing, though: in the time it takes you to hit the AppZilla icon, wait for AppZilla to do its kzzzzzzrrr-tang thing, flick to the AppZilla mini app that you want (assuming you can remember where it is), and open it – well, you might as well have just used a standard app. You'd probably have got to it quicker.

AppZilla's offerings are somewhat variable. Some are so simple you might find yourself wondering if you've missed something. The Bug Zapper, for example: is it really just a glowing blue thing that makes bzzzt noises? Yes.

Other apps are frustratingly cumbersome to use. Face FX lets you tweak photos of people's faces, but rather than simply touching and swiping, as you can with most similar apps, you have to use a drop-down menu to select the effect you want, move the target to the right position, and hit the "Apply" button. It requires too many taps, and sucks the fun out of making your loved ones look dumb.

That's not to say there's nothing useful inside AppZilla. There are some useful widgets: virtual dice, a metronome, a moon phase calculator, stuff like that. But a lot of them can be found elsewhere on your iDevice, on the internet, or on the App Store.

Let's face it: for a dollar, you've not got a lot to lose. And if your kids are pestering you for apps that do even one of the things inside AppZilla, it might make sense to get it for them. You might be better off working out the one or two functions you really need, and spending a dollar or so on apps that do just those things.

Rating: ★★½☆☆

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Published on November 15, 2011 11:35

Measure The Distance Between Two iPhones Using Sonic Blasts With Acoustic Ruler App

You're not going to exactly want to replace your tape measure, but as far as iPhone hacks go, this is about as cool as it gets: Acoustic Ruler allows you to measure distance up to 82 feet using a blast of pure sound.

Here's how it works. To measure anything, you need either two iPhones running Acoustic Ruler or a wired mic. If you have two iPhones, you just load up the app in both of them, move the two iPhones apart, and set one to be the emitter and the other receptor. The emitter iPhone will then send out a sonic blast, which the receptor iPhone will then convert into distance according to how long the sonic blast took to reach it, adjusting for variables like air temperature.

Don't have two iPhones? The app will still work as long as you have a wired mic handy, like the one in your iPhone earbuds. Sure, it will only be able to measure the distance between the end of your earbud cable and your iPhone's speakers, but that would still make for a pretty impressive parlor trick. "How wide is that nickel? Easy. Let me just pull out my iPhone and hit it with a sonic measuring blast!"

Acoustic Ruler Pro is available now on the App Store for just 99 cents.

[via TechCrunch]

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Published on November 15, 2011 11:19

Apple's Ban On Carrier 'Junkware' Could Cost Largest Japan iPhone Partner

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For Apple, the iPhone's clean desktop is simply an extension of its overall minimalist design. While keeping control of what apps appear on the smartphone makes fans of users, forbidding so-called carrier 'junkware' could be a deal-breaker for NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest wireless provider.

Although the iPhone can bring carriers a flood of new customers slurping up data like it's going out of style, all that gravy doesn't come without a few lumps. In the case of NTT DoCoMo, its president and CEO Ryuji Yamada finds Apple's demands "difficult to swallow," according to the Wall Street Journal (registration required.)

The problem with carriers not having access to a phone's desktop is they cannot add services that generate revenue. In NTT DoCoMo's case, that means no i-mode email or an e-wallet for shopping via your smartphone.

For Apple, there may not be an incentive to give the Japanese carrier access to the iPhone desktop. The Cupertino, Calif. tech giant already has deals with the country's Softbank and KDDI carriers to sell the iPhone 4S. Landing the nation's largest wireless carrier could go a long way to chipping away at Samsung's lead in Japan. But the most powerful reason for not giving into a carrier this time is that it gives an opening for future wireless firms to ask for the same deal provided NTT DoCoMo — and there goes the clean iPhone desktop and the downward slide.

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Published on November 15, 2011 10:26

Amazon Drops Price Of '2010′ Apple TV; Is A 2011 Upgrade Coming For Black Friday?

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Great spot by 9to5Mac: Amazon just dropped the price of the Apple TV by $10 to just $89.99; they've also rechristened it the '2010′ model.

Could Amazon know something the rest of us poor suckers don't? Is an updated 2011 Apple TV incoming in time for Black Friday? If so, don't expect much besides a bump to an A5 chip: if Apple were to, say, bring Siri to the Apple TV, they'd definitely make a big fuss over it in an event.

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Published on November 15, 2011 10:18

TinyUmbrella Updated To Support Backing Up iPhone 4S And iOS 5.0.1 SHSH Blobs

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Even if you're not a jailbreaker, TinyUmbrella is a great little app that allows you to save your iPhone, iPod touch or iPads SHSH blob files locally. What is the actual use of such a technobabble practice? Simple: if you have your blob files stored locally, you can downgrade your iDevice to an earlier version of iOS; useful if your iPhone gets hit with a bug in the latest version of iOS, or an app you can't live without stops working.

If you are running iOS 5.0.1, you might want to head on by TinyUmbrella's official website and grab the latest version: it's been updated to slurp down the latest version's SHSH blob files.

TinyUmbrella's programmer Notcom has a caveat, though. Even though you can store an iPhone 4S's blob files locally with the new version of Tiny Umbrella, there's no known way to restore them, so don't expect to be downgrading your iPhone 4S anytime soon.

Even though there is still no working solution for restoring 5.x on iPhone 4S I have released a 5.01.00 so you can at least save 5.0.1 SHSH. I have added tentative support for at least saving 5.0.1 SHSHs for iPhone 4S but as of now we are unable to use them fully. As soon as more information is available I will update.

You can grab the update for Mac here. For instructions on extracting your device's SHSH blobs, check out our previous how-to.

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Published on November 15, 2011 09:51

OS X Lion May Have Stalled, Stuck As Third Most Popular Mac OS [Report]

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Photo by Elsie esq. - http://flic.kr/p/a6fAmb

Just how popular is OS X Lion 10.7, compared to its predecessors? "Lion's adoption has been less than stellar," says one online ad firm. Yet the figures don't seem to jive with other Internet surveys, as well as Apple's. Who's right? As often is the case, it depends on who you ask.

Although Apple used Lion to migrate many iOS behaviors and features to the Mac, just 16 percent of users have adopted the desktop software, according to ad service Chitika. Introduced in July, the OS is the third-most-popular version of the Mac software, behind 10.6 Snow Leopard (56%) and 10.5 Leopard's 22 percent.

Adoption of 10.7 has slowed during September and October to a fourth that of August, the company claims. This appears to run counter of Apple statements that Lion sold 6 million copies in early October, almost twice that of 10.6 when it was released in 2009.

For many users, the one major difference Apple took with 10.7 is the delivery method. Instead of selling physical installation DVDs, the Cupertino, Calif. company offered Lion as an iTunes download. Like Snow Leopard, Lion was also not compatible with older Power PC-based Macs.

Another metrix firm, Net Applications, disputes the Chitika figures. According to the California firm, Lion has 26.4 percent of Macs, making it the second-most-popular OS, as of October. Snow Leopard is still No. 1, but with a lower 52.1 percent, while Leopard ranks No. 3 with 16.5 percent of the market.

However, like Chitika, Net Applications also notes a slowdown in adoption. Although the firm reported an 11.5 percent adoption rate increase in August, the number was nearly cut in half by September, growing just 4.5 percent. By October, adoption rose by only 4.5 percent, Net Applications claims.

The different ranking could be attributed to Net Applications' methodology, which puts more emphasis on Internet users in China than U.S. online Mac owners. Because there are more Internet users based in China, one Chinese Internet user could statistically overshadow one U.S. user.

How do you feel? Have you upgraded to Lion? Let us know in the comments.

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Published on November 15, 2011 09:12

Shine On You Crazy iPhone: Pink Floyd Releases Their Own iOS App

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Making an album of new songs seems to be too much like hard work for bands these days. It's so much easier to pay some developers to make an app instead.

Rock legends Pink Floyd are the latest to jump on the appwagon, with This Day in Pink Floyd, a retrospective of sorts. There's no music involved, unless you count a "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" ringtone.

What you will find inside this app is a double-concept-album's worth of trivia, anecdotes, factoids and quiz questions.

There are also song notes for every track on every album – something that might be nice to flick through while you're listening, perhaps. But do you really need to know the setlist for an obscure gig they played back in the 70s? One for the fans.

Here's a promo vid:

(Via The Guardian.)

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Published on November 15, 2011 09:08

Encrypt Your USB Flash Drives, External USB Drives Or SD Cards [OS X Tips]

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Mac OS X Lion introduced the world to FileVault 2 Apple's solution to full disk encryption. It is one of my favorite features in Lion and it is definitely a welcome addition to Mac OS X. Just about anyone can use it to encrypt the startup disk on their Mac, but more importantly they can use it to encrypt their USB thumb drives and SD cards. Why is that important?

It is important because USB thumb drives and SD cards are small enough and easily lost. If they are encrypted, you don't have to worry about whether the content they carry falls into the wrong hands.

Before we start, a very important thing to know is that you should not do this on any of these devices that contain data you want to keep, since your USB thumbdrive or SD card will be completely erased. If you must use a particular device with data on it, you'll need to copy or back up that data to another drive first, then copy it back later.

The first thing you need to do is insert the USB thumb drive or SD card into your Mac. Afterwards, find the Disk Utility app in the /Applications/Utility folder on your startup drive and launch it. You'll see something like this:

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In the example above, I've selected a USB thumb drive by clicking on it in Disk Utility. Once selected, I then clicked on the Erase tab.

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I changed the format type to Mac OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) using the drop down as shown above and then I entered a name, but I could have accepted the default — Untitled.

Click the Erase button to completely erase and encrypt the device using FileVault 2. You'll be prompted to enter a password before the drive is actually formatted. Once you do so the process begins so and be sure you aren't using something with data on it you care about. In a few minutes or less you'll have an encrypted blank drive or SD card ready for you to use, but with a few caveats:

It is only compatible with a Mac running Mac OS X Lion. It is not compatible with Windows or any other operating system. You'll need the password you selected in Disk Utility to mount and use the drive on your Mac. If you loose the password you won't have access to the data on the drive or SD card.

Although there are some limitations the trade offs are reasonable if you are concerned about protecting your data and if you are worried about loosing something as small as an SD card or thumb drive.

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Published on November 15, 2011 06:06

Apple Fixes Mid-2010 MacBook Pro Freezing With Video Update

[image error]Apple has issued a video update for its 15-inch MacBook Pro that addresses a freezing issue users some users may be suffering with the mid-2010 model. The update also fixes a bug that presented users with a blank screen when they attempted to watch a video on their machine.

This is the Snow Leopard version of the update Apple released three weeks ago for OS X Lion users. It weighs in at 51.45MB and can be downloaded via Software Update, or from Apple's website. You'll need Mac OS X 10.6.8 to install it.

This update addresses an issue where MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2010) computers may intermittently freeze or stop displaying video.

In a support document accompanying the fix, Apple explains the issues affecting some users in more detail:

Apple has determined that a small number of MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010) computers may intermittently freeze or stop displaying video on the built-in display or on an external display connected to the MacBook Pro. In this situation, you may also see a restart warning message before the video is lost or the display turns black or gray. Affected computers were manufactured between April 2010 and February 2011.

Has Apple's update fixed these issues for you?

[via MacRumors]

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Published on November 15, 2011 02:38