Hasta La Gadget!

It’s been less than a year since Apple launched the iPhone App Store, but now virtually every mobile OS is showcasing its own take on the mobile application storefront. How do they all stack up?

The first thing you’ll notice about these efforts—coming from such traditionally competitive companies as Palm, BlackBerry, Nokia and Microsoft—is just how similar they all sound. App World? App Catalog? App Market? Mobile Marketplace? This outward likeness actually runs pretty deep—these stores are advertising uncannily similar feature sets, for both users and developers:

Although it might not evident in the feature-by-feature breakdown above, there are two distinct kinds of app store: The primary store, which is the first and only source of an OS’s apps (see Apple), and the secondary store, which is built around an existing stock of third-party apps, and with preexisting developers in mind (see BlackBerry, Microsoft, and Nokia). It’s a combination of these different lineages and divergent policy choices that make the smartphone app store experience so varied.

Apple’s iPhone App Store
At least for now, the App Store is the standard by which all others are judged. Beyond that, it’s given us a rough guide for what works. With a $99 dollar developer’s fee and a novice-friendly SDK, the barriers of entry for an iPhone developer are fairly low. Distribution, payments and to a large extent marketing are managed by iTunes, which iPhone owners are necessarily familiar and comfortable with.

And, of course, there’s the iPhone: This store may only serve one handset (and its very similar nonphone brother), but it’s a wildly popular one. This makes the app store uniquely attractive to developers, because it provides access to the largest uniform app-buying market in the world. Microsoft can argue that Windows Mobile 6.5 will connect developers to x gajillion different customers through y zillion different handsets, but this variety is a curse: Handsets have different resolutions, processors, 3D hardware, input types and basic feature sets. A motion-sensing 3D game with a GPS social networking feature won’t work on a lot of WinMo handsets, but a 2D, keypad-controlled Asteroids clone won’t make a developer rich.

But the App Store is far from perfect. Apple, like all App Store owners, has the final say in what gets listed, delisted or banned, and they aren’t afraid to remind us of this. Along with the typical risque/racist/infringing content prohibitions, Apple enforces strict and often limiting rules against apps that compete with the iPhone’s native set—iTunes, Mail.app, Safari to name a few—and apps that their partnered carriers aren’t too fond of, i.e video streaming and tethering apps. Now, all these rules are showing signs of loosening with OS 3.0, but as long as the App Store is the sole source of iPhone apps, any rules will seem like too many rules—especially if you’re accustomed to a totally unregulated system like Windows Mobile 6.1’s. Hence, the gray market.

Android App Market
This second major entrant into the app store race represents a consciously different approach than Apple’s, but not in that many ways. Immediately, we see a lot to compare: A single-handset userbase (at least for now), low costs for developers and a presence as the primary—though not sole—source of apps from Day One.

But the App Market is a different breed than the App Store. Most importantly, it’s not the only place you can get apps. Google has been much more lenient about what they allow in their store since the beginning but in the rare case that they don’t approve of an app, as in the case of tethering apps earlier this month, you can just go download an .APK file and sideload it onto your G1 anyway. This is a healthy middle ground for everyone involved; Google doesn’t alienate users by destroying entire categories of apps, but isn’t forced to come into conflict with carriers because of overly liberal policies. Google has also made their Market more friendly to consumers, with a no-questions 24-hour return policy.

Great! Then why is the App Market so underwhelming? Well, the G1 wasn’t exactly a runaway hit, and the store got off to a slow start. Paid apps weren’t made available for months after launch, and when they arrived they didn’t benefit from the convenience and familiarity of a storefront like iTunes. Moreover, there’s no guarantee that things will change that much in the coming months—more handsets from more manufacturers will boost Android’s user numbers, but will lead to the WinMo-style toxic fragmentation that Apple so adamantly avoids.

BlackBerry App World
Matt took a dive into the newest mobile app store, and found it agreeable, but not spectacular. RIM’s is the beginning of this “secondary” app store concept, and it shows: You’ll be hard-pressed to find anything here that wasn’t previously available elsewhere. It is simply an aggregator for existing applications.

This was a given, as developers have been cranking out BlackBerry apps for years now. But App World was a great opportunity for RIM to give the lethargic dev community a shot in the arm. Instead of doing that, they’ve made the store almost hostile to would-be app writers.

Listing your wares in App World costs a hefty $200, which gives you the right to upload 10 apps, but doesn’t come with any new SDKs or development tools. The payment system is PayPal, which is clumsy to use and a pain to set up. A minimum non-free price tier of $2.99, probably intended to filter out spammy apps and cover PayPal’s transaction fees, discourages developers from even trying to make simple, useful apps, eliminating the $.99-to-$1.99 sweet spot that has been central to Apple’s success. App World feels like an afterthought, and a reluctant one. UPDATE: It should be noted that the 70% dev revenue share figure in the chart is incorrect, and has been update to 80%—a marked advantage over the other stores.

Windows Mobile Marketplace
With Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft will introduce the Windows Mobile Marketplace. So far, their announcements have shown an awareness of the pitfalls of both Apple’s and RIM’s approaches: They’re emphasizing non-exclusivity and app approval transparency, a 24-hour return policy and wide device support, but also making sure to get big-name app and game developers on board to ensure that users actually have something new to look forward to at launch.

On the developer side, it’s a mixed bag. As in every other store, the dev take-home is 70% of each sale, but the listing fees aren’t great. $99 gets you five apps a year, but anything beyond that will cost an additional $99. I’m sure this will help vaccinate the Marketplace against the fart app epidemic that Apple has proven so prone to, but it’ll do so at the expense of potentially useful free and $0.99 apps—again, a crucial price range. One important factor that’s still TBD is the payment system. Microsoft says they’ll support both credit card payments and carrier charges, but hasn’t yet said how that’ll look. In both cases the process will need to be as seamless as possible.

Nokia Ovi Store
You probably haven’t heard much about this store, set to debut within a month, but it’s kind of a big deal for the 40m+ Symbian S40 and S60 users that it’ll serve apps to. It’s planned to shoehorn into Nokia’s new Ovi app suite, which we were introduced to with the XpressMusic 5800, and provide a go-to source for not just apps, but ringtones, wallpapers, and basically everything else that you might have found in a 2001 vintage carrier WAP store.

There has been a decided lack of fanfare surrounding this launch, probably because there just aren’t that many Nokia smartphones in the US. But its success or failure will be informative: It will be the most open of all the app stores. For the time being, there is no developer fee, and app listings are free and unlimited. You can easily publish tons of different kinds of content—Flash Lite apps, Java apps, Native S60 apps, multimedia uploads and others—which will be subject to a vetting process that Nokia has assured will be minimal. As Nokia-averse Americans, we can view the Ovi Store as an experiment in laissez-faire app-mongering—a multi-handset, mixed-media, unfiltered feed of Symbian content.

Palm App Catalog
And finally, we have Palm’s App catalog. This is the store we know the least about, but that is already set for a different course than all the others. At launch, the only handset it’ll serve will be the Pre—though Palm has indicated that other WebOS handsets are inevitable. It’ll be the first—and likely exclusive—source of WebOS apps, and developers will be furnished with a solid, though fundamentally limited, SDK.

Palm’s still-vague plan for the App Catalog will no doubt be central to the success or failure of the Pre, but we can make an educated guess at what to expect, assuming that Palm doesn’t get taken over by idiots in the next couple months: Palm will vet the apps thoroughly, provide an in-house payment system, and make development simple and cheap (previewed Mojo SDK apps have shown great promise). The end result will probably look something like the iPhone App Store, but with one huge difference: there will be no local natively running apps—the Mojo SDK doesn’t provide for that, just for what amount to turbocharged, locally-stored web apps. Granted, these web apps will have privileged access to some of WebOS’s core functions, but it’s doubtful that high-end gaming, as we’ve seen on the iPhone, will even be possible on the platform. These limitations (along with WebOS’s multitasking advantages) will affect the nature and quality of the apps that are listed in the store much more than the Catalog’s policies, though exactly how, we’ll have to wait and see.

Still something you still wanna know? Send any questions about app stores, SDKs or the finest in fart-app technology to tips@gizmodo.com, with “Giz Explains” in the subject line.

When they said “Tuesday,” they meant it. Not long ago, the clock struck midnight in the Land of the Rising Sun, and sure enough, the bona fide Skype application (v1.0.0.63) for Apple’s iPhone has gone live. It’s absolutely free to download, and early reports from Japan have been pretty stellar in regard to sound quality. We’re fully expecting it to roll out elsewhere as Tuesday (March 31st) arrives in various time zones, so make sure you (and at least one Skype buddy) stay up late to try ‘er out. [Warning: iTunes read link may not work for all time zones yet.]

[Via Engadget Japanese]

Filed under: Cellphones

Skype for iPhone goes live in Japan originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Heart monitors for cellphones have definitely been around, but a new option is about to surface for AT&T customers. The service, which will be offered up starting April 21st by MedNet Healthcare Technologies, will somehow let patients monitor their own heartbeats and automatically send that information to their cardiologists using Bluetooth-enabled phones. Reportedly, the information will be sent out to a central monitoring center, which then transfers the data to the doctor. As expected, there will be a monthly fee for the service (exact pricing has yet to be disclosed), and doctors must also be signed on to receive the information. Sounds good and all, but seriously, good luck getting your M.D. to be attentive to your every data dump.

[Via textually]

Filed under: Cellphones

MedNet app monitors heartbeat, transfers data to cardiologists originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 28 Mar 2009 23:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re still filing this away in the rumor folder for now, but we’ll be honest — this is totally believable. GigaOM has it on authority that a bona fide Skype for iPhone client will be launched as early as next week, and with CTIA kicking off on April 1st, we’d say the timing is just about ideal. Of course, we’ve already seen a variety of alternatives for bringing Skype and other VoIP apps to Apple’s darling, but by and large, they’ve been supremely unimpressive. There’s no word on pricing (we’re crossing our fingers for free) or any other tasty tidbits, but you can bet we’ll be keeping an ear to the ground for more.

Filed under: Cellphones

Skype for iPhone coming soon? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you left this week’s Apple event a little underwhelmed, it’s because most of 3.0’s new features have been available via Cydia and the App Store. Here’s how to enable iPhone 3.0‘s biggest additions today.

Since many of iPhone 3.0’s features were deliberately blocked by restrictions in the official SDK, for several of these apps, you’ll have to jailbreak. But don’t you just love that we already have the definitive tutorial on jailbreaking your phone to hold your hand through the process? That said, a lot of these features are available via free and paid apps in the App Store too.

So start with jailbreaking, then get yourself downloading these apps to get that fresh 3.0 experience before the software even drops.

Cut and Paste: Clippy (Cydia, Free while in Beta)
Apple’s ridiculously delayed cut and paste solution looks slick. Slicker than Clippy, the best unofficial C+P solution, which still gets the job done though. One limitation is that you can only reliably copy and paste where you have access to the keyboard (so grabbing web snippets other than URLs is tough), but if you’re staying in the main text-input apps, it works. Copying text from web pages is technically possible now, but it’s extremely buggy and crashes Safari.

GPS Turn-by-Turn: xGPS (Cydia, Free)
iPhone 3.0 is totally fine with turn-by-turn GPS apps, as long as you bring your own maps to the table (Google’s can’t be used due to licensing issues). xGPS does use Google’s Maps, and does turn-by-turn brilliantly with active GPS tracking.

Tethering: iPhoneModem/PDANet (Cydia, Free)
We’ve got you covered with another detailed tutorial on tethering your iPhone to your Mac (with iPhoneModem) or Windows machine (with PDANet). Keep in mind, the iPhone has always supported tethering—iPhone 3.0 simply brings an official software tool to do it, but it’s still up to the network carriers to enable the feature (and set the pricing). Tethering via these jailbreak solutions works in the meantime, but be careful with how much data you use to not raise any eyebrows at the Death Star.

Email Multiple Photos: Emailpix (App Store, $3)
There have been several official apps touting multi-photo emailing, but for the most part they’ve been sloppily implemented. Emailpix does it fairly smoothly, though, and gives you a choice of resolution to send to save time. Granted, it takes a while, and emails are sent from Emailpix’s server, so you may not want to use it for your nude self portraits.

Bluetooth File Transfer: iBluetooth (Cydia, Free 15-day trial)
iBluetooth lets you pair with your computer to send and receive files. It’s kind of buggy, but does work (try setting up a PIN code if you can’t get your phone to pair initially).

Universal Search: Search (Cydia, Free)
It doesn’t search your applications or your iTunes music like the 3.0 version, but Search is great for the most valuable searching situation: email. It also searches contacts, notes, SMS and the web. If you have a ton of apps, consider pairing Search with QuickGold, a Quicksilver-like app launcher that can also search your contacts, SMSs and Safari history in addition to apps.

Accelerometer Controls: mCoolPhone (Cydia, Free Trial/$3)
The “shake to shuffle” feature in OS 3.0 is kind of lame, and while mCoolPhones can’t touch your iTunes functionality, it lets you assign shake events to various other phone functions, like answering calls.

Notes Sync: iPhoneNotes (Mac-only desktop App, Jailbreak required. Free)
To pull off native notes sync, make sure you have OpenSSH installed on your jailbroken phone and grab iPhoneNotes, which will import all of your notes and also sync back any text file you have on your computer.

Background Apps/Push Notifications: Backgrounder (Cydia, Free)
iPhone 3.0 will attempt to solve the multitasking problem by providing a long-awaited framework for push notifications, which will allow apps to get your attention when they’re not running. But it stops short of true background multitasking, which most Cydia apps are capable of (especially services like SSH). You can use Backgrounder to force official App Store apps to keep running even when you switch away to another app. It’s great for keeping IM apps open and signed in while you do other things.

Landscape Keyboard: iRealSMS (Cydia, €10) and EasyWriter (App Store, Free)
Ah, the beloved landscape keyboard. In iPhone 3.0 it’s coming system-wide (finally), but you’ve been able to get one in the most important typing apps (email and SMS) for a while. For email, try the free EasyWriter App Store app, and for SMS, there’s iRealSMS, which also adds a number of other features for hardcore texters like quick-replying and advanced sorting.

MMS: SwirlyMMS (Cydia, $8) and Get MMS (App Store, $4)
MMS is a major hole, and its implementation via unofficial apps thus far has been shoddy. The best is SwirlyMMS, but even that doesn’t work very well with AT&T’s MMS provider, which most people will obviously be using. But if you’re not on the Death Star, give Swirly a try.

Get MMS, on the other hand, makes receiving MMS messages via AT&T’s annoying web interface a little easier. It takes a screengrab of the login and password AT&T sends, and lets you save the attached video or photo.

Voice Memos: Epiphany (App Store, $2)
There are a million and a half voice recorders in the App Store, but we love Epiphany, which buffers its recordings and only goes back in time to grab the important parts when you tell it to. It can’t send the clip via MMS like iPhone 3.0 will be able to, but it will easily sync with your computer via wi-fi.

Adding Features Still Missing From iPhone 3.0:

Video Capture: Cycorder (Cydia, Free)
The biggest thing Apple still has yet to add into iPhone 3.0 is video recording. Thankfully, Cycorder is incredibly capable.

Flash: iMobileCinema (Cydia, Free)
iMobileCinema is a deep, deep beta plugin for Safari that supposedly enables Flash videos for a few sites. Its major compatibility claim though, with Google Video and YouTube, is moot because Apple’s YouTube app catches these URLs and plays them fine. A good project to keep an eye on though.

So as you can see, the majority of iPhone 3.0’s feature additions are already needs that have been addressed by third-party devs. Of course, most of these apps will not be as elegant as Apple’s native solution, but it shows that iPhone 3.0 is largely about catching up.

The jailbreak world is big. If you know of any apps not covered here that address any of these features, please let everyone know in the comments. Additional research for this post by Nick Ellenoff