There’s a lot to be happy about in iPhone OS 4. Like multitasking, and threaded inboxes. So why doesn’t it feel right? More »
Mama always said that downpours followed Spring showers, and sure enough, the Apple news has been flowing hot and heavy overnight. For starters, an IEEE Spectrum report has people talking once more about Intrinsity; if you’ll recall, rumors flared up earlier in the month about Apple nabbing said company, similar to the way it acquired P.A. Semi way back in the naughties. Now, it seems that round two of those whispers are gaining steam, with some analysts suggesting that without Intrinsity’s expertise, there was simply no way the silicon within the iPad could’ve been pushed to 1GHz in time for launch. In related news, we’re also hearing that Cupertino is interested in acquiring ARM Holdings, and considering just how much business Apple pushes ARM’s way, it’s not illogical to imagine Apple wanting to just bring ARM in-house. If the deal went down, Apple would obviously hold a huge amount of control over whether or not ARM chips ended up in rival products, and if it yanked those Cortex slabs out from the market place, you can bet there would be a mad scramble to create a competitive portfolio to serve those suddenly chip-less product makers. Finally, a new iPhone OS 4 (beta 2) video has surfaced, giving the world a solid look at a new circular side-swapped animation that occurs when switching apps — head on past the break to check it out, and give those links below a visit for more of that succulent nitty-gritty.
Continue reading Apple rumor roundup: Intrinsity behind the A4, ARM being eyed
Apple rumor roundup: Intrinsity behind the A4, ARM being eyed originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 07:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Color us unsurprised, but it’s still notable to hear that Adobe is stopping investment in its software’s capability to port content over to iPhone OS. The company’s great hope on this front, Packager for iPhone, will still ship as part of Flash CS5 as planned, but beyond that Adobe is essentially giving up on Apple’s mobile OS until further notice. In spite of being repeatedly rebuffed by Jobs and company before, the Flash maker had kept up hope that it could sway (or nag) Apple into validating its wares, but the final straw in this relationship seems to have been Apple’s dev tool lockdown. So what will Adobe do now? Principal Product Manager Mike Chambers tells us that Android is doing kind of okay and his company will shift its attentions to it and other mobile platforms. Of course, we’re just giving you the cleaned up version — for the full finger-pointing diatribe against Apple, you’ll have to hit the source link.
Update: Right on cue, here’s Apple’s terse response: “Someone has it backwards–it is HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and H.264 (all supported by the iPhone and iPad) that are open and standard, while Adobe’s Flash is closed and proprietary.”
Adobe halts investment in iPhone-specific Flash dev tools, has another dig at Apple (update: Apple responds) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 03:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We’ll be honest with you — it literally pains us to write this. If you’re the queasy type, we’d probably suggest scrolling on down and continuing about your day. For the hardcore still with us, the story goes a little something like this: a Denver-area man headed out to his local Apple store to pick up an iPad for a colleague (read: not even for himself), and in an interview, he admits to not even really understanding the fascination with Apple’s new product. After doing his good deed and plopping down the plastic, he casually curled the strings atop the Apple bag around his hand as he headed for the exits. Unfortunately, a pair of thugs met him along the way, yanking the bag, the iPad and all of the flesh surrounding his pinky finger as they bolted for a getaway. Currently, police are investigating surveillance footage in hopes of tracking down the crooks who pulled off the stunt… and, uh, a bit more than they likely bargained for. Video after the break if you’ve still got the stomach.
[Thanks, Chris]
Continue reading Thieves snag iPad from buyer, yank a finger off while they’re at it
Thieves snag iPad from buyer, yank a finger off while they’re at it originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Hey there, got any Objective-C experience and a desire to help out a budding young company? You’ll wanna hit that source link right quick, as Boxee is presently on the search for a Lead iPad and iPhone App Developer who will be responsible for starting the company’s Mobile Applications team. It’s no secret that Boxee is keen to get its media streaming software out on any and all hardware possible, and iPhone OS presents the company with an ever-expanding audience for its wares. Additional job requirements include a minimum of a year’s professional development experience and that you’ll have previously developed an app for the iPhone, though that last bit’s not exactly a high hurdle to overcome. We like the added note that Android dev experience is “a plus,” which suggests to us that the Mobile Apps team will eventually be spreading its wings beyond Apple’s mobile OS as well.
[Thanks, Abed]
Boxee seeks iPad and iPhone app developer, bigger slice of Apple pie originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Apr 2010 06:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Now, we’ve all been concerned about recent updates to the iPhone dev agreement — you haven’t been sleeping and your parents are, quite frankly, worried for your sanity. And it’s a heady subject: “what is the fate of PhoneGap in the wake of the iPhone OS 4 beta SDK?” Well, worry no more, little one — it seems that Jesse Macfadyen, a contributor to the project, pinged Apple to make sure that users of the mobile development platform wouldn’t find their apps rejected simply for using the tool. As you remember, the agreement states: “Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine” (and of course HTML and CSS are cool), so PhoneGap — which indeed sticks to HTML, CSS and Javascript — is totally safe. Now developers can get back to having their apps rejected for any number of other silly reasons.
[Thanks, Bea]
PhoneGap framework fine for App Store development, sez Apple originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Apr 2010 03:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Apple dropped iPhone OS 4.0 on us last week in a big way, and we spent plenty of time breaking down and exploring the details. But, there are apparently a few gems left to be discovered, like dedicated support for in-car use — possibly even with an Apple-branded mount of some sort. When put into this mode the iPhone generates a simple menu that’s fed over video output (demonstrated after the break) while the handset becomes a remote control… which may or may not be a good idea as more and more states ban cellphone use of any kind while driving. The developer hooks for such functionality appear to be in the iPhone API and, while it’s all rumorsville at this point, Apple would be blind to not try and cash in on the auto integration market — even if it is a little late to the party.
Continue reading iPhone OS 4.0 paving way for Apple-branded car kit?
iPhone OS 4.0 paving way for Apple-branded car kit? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Apr 2010 08:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Controversy erupted around a change Apple made last week to its iPhone developer agreement, and now even company CEO Steve Jobs has waded into the fray.
A new clause in the iPhone developer agreement (clause 3.3.1) stipulates that iPhone apps may not be written with anything except Apple’s approved programming languages, including Objective C and C++. The rule would effectively ban apps that were written on third-party platforms, such as Adobe Flash, and subsequently converted into native iPhone code.
Apple and its supporters claim that the policy change will ensure long-term quality of apps in the App Store, while critics argue that Apple is attempting to hold software developers hostage in order to stifle the growth of competing platforms such as Google Android.
“It’s an obvious lock-in strategy,” said Greg Slepak, CEO of iPhone development house Tao Effect, in an interview with Wired.com today. “They are locking [developers] in by making it difficult to convert their applications from a different platform. I think that is not a smart move. It’s going to piss people off or drive developers away.”
Slepak was mad enough about the policy that he wrote Jobs directly to complain. Over the weekend, the CEO replied.
“We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform,” Jobs wrote in an e-mail response to Slepak’s inquiry about the new clause.
Jobs is alluding to the traditional desktop environment, in which operating systems such as Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows support software coded with various third-party platforms. Some argue that compatibility issues caused by third-party platforms, such as Adobe’s Flash, can cause bugs in an operating system that are beyond the control of the creator of the OS. Indeed, Jobs has a number of times made clear his hatred for Flash, calling it a buggy platform responsible for frequent browser crashes in Mac OS X.
The consensus among the programming community is that the biggest target of clause 3.3.1 is Adobe, which today released its CS5 software, which includes a feature that automatically converts Flash software into iPhone apps.
Adobe is well aware of the implications of the new iPhone developer agreement, and one of its employees last week issued a colorful response.
“The fact that Apple would make such a hostile and despicable move like this clearly shows the difference between our two companies,” wrote Adobe’s Flash evangelist Lee Brimelow. “Go screw yourself, Apple.”
And Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch ridiculed Apple in a video published by All Things D over the weekend, in which he predicted future versions of Apple’s developer agreement would require programmers to “build applications by typing with one hand and swinging a chicken above your head.”
The debate over the policy change continued to carry on this week. Louis Gerbarg, developer of GLsoft.mobi, published a blog post in which he elaborated on and defended Apple’s stance. He drew a hypothetical scenario in which 20,000 iPhone apps coded with Flash crashed because of a bug in Adobe’s CS5 tools. In that situation, Apple would have to defer to Adobe to fix the problem. As a result, Apple would cede some control of the iPhone platform to Adobe, and Apple’s efforts to innovate could be slowed down.
“We don’t want to be in a situation where in order to fix a bug we’re waiting for Adobe to give us a new seed of Flash,” Gerbarg told Wired.com in a phone interview.
Tao Effect’s Slepak disagreed. He explained that in the context of the iPhone’s sandbox system, conversion frameworks are designed to link against Apple’s iPhone APIs and compile properly with Apple’s tools. And even if Apple wished to push out major innovations for the iPhone platform, Apple wouldn’t be able to radically change its current APIs, because that would break all iPhone apps that use those APIs. Therefore, it’s unlikely Apple would radically change its APIs , and the concern about a third-party such as Adobe keeping up is moot, Slepak said.
“Every iPhone developer is linking against Apple’s stuff, and Apple still has to make sure that stuff doesn’t change too much,” Slepak said. “The argument here that Apple would have another burden to share with some other company — I don’t think it’s a very valid argument.”
Matt Drance, owner of iPhone development company Bookhouse and a former Apple employee who helped evangelize the iPhone platform, said he believes Apple is attempting to safeguard its iPhone OS. He noted that several third-party platforms — such as Appcelerator, Monotouch and now Flash CS5 — are offering iPhone-app-conversion tools that could gradually erode the quality of the platform by attracting the “lowest common denominator” of programmers.
“Every couple of weeks there’s a new person popping up who’s going to potentially skew the development landscape,” Drance said. “I don’t think there’s anything cynical about it at all. I think Apple feels genuinely threatened by these toolkits.”
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Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.com
Now nearly three years old, Apple’s first-generation iPhone will no longer be compatible with future upgrades of the iPhone operating system, according to Steve Jobs.
Apple previewed iPhone OS 4 last week, which will deliver multitasking and other improved features to the latest iPhones and iPod Touch devices. The older iPhone 3G will run OS 4, but some features, such as multitasking, will not work due to hardware limitations, according to Apple. Noticeably missing entirely from the discussion was the original iPhone.
We suspected that the original iPhone would not run OS 4 at all, and Jobs confirms our assumption in an e-mail he sent to a customer inquiring whether Apple would continue to support the original iPhone.
Jobs’ reply is terse as usual:
Sorry, no.
Sent from my iPhone
And there you have it. Original iPhone owners began receiving a lesser iPhone experience since iPhone OS 3.0, which delivered multimedia messaging to the newer iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, but not the first-generation iPhone. And now Apple has ceased supporting the original iPhone with OS upgrades altogether. The original iPhone is officially obsolete. Three years ain’t a bad run, though.
iPhone OS 4 releases this summer for the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch. iPad owners will be able to download OS 4 in fall.
A hat tip to MacStories for originally reporting this e-mail exchange.
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Photo: Mac Users Guide/Flickr
Now that the iPad is out and iPhone OS 4 has been announced, it looks like Steve Jobs is taking a little time to catch up on his email — in addition to taking up the new SDK rules, it appears he’s very tersely confirmed what we sadly suspected all along: the first-gen iPhone won’t get an upgrade to iPhone OS 4. That makes a certain amount of sense, given that Apple’s subscription accounting model for the original iPhone only booked free upgrades for 24 months, but really, that’s just paperwork — we don’t see why Cupertino couldn’t at least allow for an iPod touch-style paid upgrade, especially since the upgradeable iPhone 3G runs essentially the same hardware. And let’s not forget that first-gen iPhone owners paid more or less full price for their devices, so if this is true, Apple’s summarily dead-ended a $400 phone just under three years after it launched. Of course, none of this is officially confirmed yet, so anything can change — we’ve pinged Apple for comment and they haven’t responded yet, but we’ll let you know what we find out.
[Thanks, Tanzeel]
Steve Jobs apparently says original iPhone won’t be upgraded in the future originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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