In case you were worried that it was just Apple love that got major news outlets on the iPad so quickly, you should know that the general sense of desperation (or is it their never ending sense of adventure?) pervading the likes of the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today has them building apps for the Galaxy Tab as well. The news comes courtesy of The Wall Street Journal, and has yet to be announced officially by the parties involved — though we have a hard time doubting any of it. It makes sense, of course: the big cost is producing content for a tablet form factor, not building the reader app, and the Galaxy Tab naturally won’t be the last of its Android kind. The WSJ and The Financial Times are also apparently some possible gets for RIM’s PlayBook, though less is known about those deals. On the Tab, The New York Times is supposed to be pre-loaded with some carrier’s versions of the device, and its app will be free until January of next year when The Times starts charging for its website.
We hate our remotes. Every electronic media device comes with its own remote. We lose them and can’t control our stuff without them. They break. We confuse them with each other. It’s too hard to do simple things. It’s way too hard to do hard things.
We ask too much of them. The batteries die, and they all take different batteries. They’re uncomfortable. They’re unresponsive. What we do with our hands doesn’t match what’s happening on the screen. And the software that’s on the devices that are controlled by the remote is frequently terrible.
And occasionally, as with Sony’s controller for its upcoming Google TV, the remotes just boggle the mind with their ugliness and complexity.
We’re not alone in disliking remotes. The preceding litany of problems comes from what readers told Consumer Reports in an article titled “Readers Dislike TV Remotes.”
Now we have an emerging class of internet-connected media devices with powerful software designed to make navigating TVs and movies easier. Google TV, Apple TV, TiVo and Roku join game consoles like Sony’s Playstation 3, XBox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii in providing multimedia content on the biggest screens in our house.
But however sophisticated the software, all of these devices still need hardware devices for us to control them. It’s quite likely that some of these devices won’t be dedicated remotes at all, but phones, tablets or other handheld media devices running apps. We might use these apps to control not just our TVs, but our entire house.
That’s one vision of the future of remote control.
Here, we want to examine the other side of the equation: dedicated hardware controllers. From traditional remotes to mini-keyboards, video controllers and devices that combine all three, here are 15 devices that offer you a glimpse of everything that’s good and bad about the current generation of remote controls.
Above:
Sony’s Google TV Controller
WIRED: Offers all the control you could want. Full QWERTY keyboard for text entry, which is essential for search — sure to be a key part of the Google experience. Raised buttons with different feel make it easier to use in the dark. It’s even got tab, control, number and function keys — not dependent on software to get it done.
TIRED: Sheer size of the thing will be a deal-breaker for some. In different shades of gray, it doesn’t look like a device from 2010. Too many buttons could be confusing or intimidating to non-expert users.
One moment it’s a phone in your hand. The next, it’s a full-fledged turn-by-turn nav unit with an active internet connection. What happened? These apps, is what. More »
Apple TV may not have native apps yet, but AirPlay provides a workaround to run apps on your TV — so long as those apps involve streaming video or audio.
Ars Technica’s Jacqui Cheng wasn’t able to try out video streaming to the Apple TV in full — that won’t be possible until iOS 4.2 ships in November — but in her extended review, she did unearth two important bits about AirPlay:
With iOS 4.1, you can already easily stream audio to the Apple TV, including audio from movie files;
With iOS 4.2, every iOS app using Apple’s standard audio and video profiles can stream to Apple TV. Not just videos in your iTunes library.
Some of these applications are no-brainers, like Netflix and YouTube. Since both apps run natively on Apple TV anyway, this might appear redundant; still, it’s nice to be able to seamlessly throw video from your phone to your TV in the middle of watching something, without having to start over and search for the same video again.
Other iOS apps add content that Apple TV doesn’t have. Ars Technica mentions sports applications like MLB At-Bat and local internet radio. You might be able to preview a movie you’re editing in the iPad’s iMovie mobile app on the big screen without plugging in.
Of course, applications that either don’t want their content streamed to Apple TV (like Hulu, perhaps) or don’t want to put in the work to reformat their video into H.264 will be left out — just keep your video and audio in a format that can’t be streamed. For others, there’s nothing else they have to do on the software or hardware side to make their applications AirPlay-compatible.
Google on Monday unveiled a new website preview of its Google TV service and announced content partnerships with HBO, CNBC, Turner Broadcasting and the NBA.
Each of these network partners will build custom applications with premium content optimized for the forthcoming Google TV, an internet-based television platform that Google first announced in May. The company still has not said when Google TV will be available to the general public.
Most of the TV applications announced today are either news-oriented or offer specialized interfaces for content. NBA Game Time follows basketball news and highlights; HBO Go will be a special on-demand portal for HBO subscribers that appears to be separate from whatever on-demand offerings are available through one’s cable provider; CNBC Real-Time augments the news channel with personalized stock tracking and news; and Turner will provide a big-screen, new-interface version of its website content from TBS, TNT, CNN, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim.
Other Google TV applications include Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, The New York Times (which appears to be mostly video- rather than news-driven), VEVO’s music video service, Pandora, Twitter, and of course, Google’s Chrome web browser (with Flash 10.1 support) and an HDTV-optimized version of YouTube called Leanback. Additional and forthcoming applications will be available through Google’s Android Market beginning early next year.
Google TV’s overhauled website offers a tour and feature list, including TV search, use of an Android smartphone or iPhone as a remote control, and the ability to “Fling” websites, video and audio from your handset to the television. It also spotlights its hardware partners, Sony’s Internet TV and the Logitech Revue set-top box, with an option for notification when more products become available.
Android may be climbing the charts when it comes to market share, and the Market may be quickly approaching the 100,000 apps mark, but the whole thing is hardly a global proposition. As of earlier this week, paid apps were able to be purchased in just 14 countries, submitted by developers of just nine nationalities. That changes now, with Google adding 20 countries to its list of approved submitters, meaning developers living in 29 nations are eligible to submit paid apps to the Market. Over the next two weeks the purchasing of those apps will be flipped on for users in 18 countries, 32 in all that will have the “buy” button enabled — music to the ears of Java app developers everywhere. Which flags are newly embracing app capitalism? We have the lists waiting for you below.
Come one, come all — let’s gather and act shocked, shall we? It’s no secret that Google’s Android Market is far easier to penetrate than Apple’s App Store, which is most definitely a double-edged sword. On one hand, you aren’t stuck waiting a lifetime for Apple to approve a perfectly sound app; on the other, you may end up accidentally downloading some Nazi themes that scar you for life. A curious team of scientists from Intel Labs, Penn State and Duke University recently utilized a so-called TaintDroid extension in order to log and monitor the actions of 30 Android apps — 30 that were picked from the 358 most popular. Their findings? That half of their sample (15, if you’re rusty in the math department) shared location information and / or other unique identifiers (IMEI numbers, phone numbers, SIM numbers, etc.) with advertisers. Making matters worse, those 15 didn’t actually inform end-users that data was being shared, and some of ’em beamed out information while applications were dormant. Unfortunately for us all, the researchers didn’t bother to rat out the 15 evil apps mentioned here, so good luck resting easy knowing that your library of popular apps could be spying on you right now.
Update: A Google spokesperson pinged up with an official response to the study, and you can peek it after the break.
Update 2: Looks as if the full study (PDF) has been outed, with the 30 total apps named. Here they are: The Weather Channel, Cestos, Solitaire, Movies, Babble, Manga Browser, Bump, Wertago, Antivirus, ABC – Animals, Traffic Jam, Hearts, Blackjack, Horoscope, 3001 Wisdom Quotes Lite, Yellow Pages, Dastelefonbuch, Astrid, BBC News Live Stream, Ringtones, Layer, Knocking, Barcode Scanner, Coupons, Trapster, Spongebob Slide, ProBasketBall, MySpace, ixMAT, and Evernote. Thanks, Jordan!
Something as simple as changing your Android phone’s wallpaper or downloading a ringtone could transmit personal data about you, including your location, without your knowledge.
Sound farfetched? It’s not: About 15 of 30 randomly selected, popular, free Android apps sent sent users’ private information to remote advertising servers and two-thirds of the apps handled data in ambiguous ways, say researchers.
The researchers at Duke, Intel Labs and Penn State University, created a tool called TaintDroid that identifies apps transmitting private data to distant locations. TaintDroid monitors how applications access and use your location, microphone, camera, phone numbers in your contact list. The tool also provides feedback once an app is newly installed, letting you know if the app is transmitting data.
“This automatic feedback gives users greater insight into what their mobile applications are doing and could help users decide whether they should consider uninstalling an app,” says Peter Gilbert, a graduate student in computer science at Duke University who’s working on the project. The TaintDroid program isn’t publicly available yet.
The latest data supports a study published in June by mobile security company SMobile Systems that found 20 percent of the then-available 48,000 third-party applications for the Android operating system provided sensitive or private information to outside sources.
Data collection practices in apps are increasingly becoming a major privacy issue for consumers. In July, a mobile security firm called Lookout identified a free wallpaper Android app, Jackeey, that allegedly gathered data about its users, including their phone numbers, carrier subscriber identifiers and phone number of their voicemail accounts. The app then sent the information to a website based in China. The Jackeey app is estimated to have anywhere from 1 to 4 million downloads.
The new Apple TV could be Steve Jobs’ best sleight-of-hand trick yet.
During his modest introduction of the device, Jobs called the Apple TV “one more hobby.” But a closer look at the code and the hardware powering the Apple TV reveals that there’s a lot more going on under the hood than the CEO shared.
Interestingly, Jobs didn’t mention that Apple TV runs iOS, the same operating system running on its flagship product, the iPhone, and some other big hits — the iPod Touch and iPad. And there’s more, too: The Apple TV’s software may already be jailbroken, and some hidden software should eventually allow you to share the Apple TV’s media with other iOS devices.
These secret ingredients could be the recipe Apple needs to shake up the television industry. For years, Apple executives have labeled the set-top box a “hobby” product because of its mild success compared to blockbuster sellers like the iPhone and iPod. Now that Apple TV has been revamped into a streaming rental service with an arsenal of stealth features, maybe Apple has a chance to change the TV business — if not today, perhaps later.
“The most important hint of Apple’s real ambitions in the living room come from AirPlay, which puts iPhones and iPads in the driver’s seat and makes the TV just an output device for the Apple ecosystem,” said James McQuivey, a Forrester analyst, in a recent e-mail statement. “Expect Apple to gradually push more and more in that direction, but as of this moment in 2010, Apple has not yet made a significant play for control of the TV.”
Here, we round up the juicy tidbits we’ve heard about Apple’s mysterious new set-top box.
iOS and third-party app support
There’s more than enough evidence proving that the Apple TV runs iOS. Dispelling any doubts, Apple recently posted a build of iOS 4.1 specifically for the Apple TV.
This piece of information about iOS is important because of a new feature called AirPlay, which streams media from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch to the Apple TV. When Jobs demonstrated AirPlay, he only showed the feature working with an iPad’s built-in video player, photo app and music library. Now that we know Apple TV runs iOS, it’s likely that third-party apps such as MLB at Bat or ABC Player will be able stream media to the set-top box, too.
DaringFireball blogger John Gruber confirmed that an AirPlay button is showing up in the MLB at Bat app, and he adds that apps using the built-in media controller will be able to integrate AirPlay.
Long story short, you’ll be able to wirelessly stream media from some third-party apps straight to your Apple TV with an AirPlay button. AirPlay is shaping up to be Apple’s secret weapon to reshape home entertainment.
In addition to AirPlay, the fact that Apple TV is running iOS means that — in principle, at least — it may someday be able to run applications from the iTunes App Store. For now, that capability is not included in Apple TV, but the underlying operating system certainly supports it, so Apple might open a TV App Store in a future software update.
Jailbreaking hacks
Third-party app support will probably be limited for the Apple TV, but that’s where the jailbreakers come in. In the same way that we’re able to override restrictions on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch with a jailbreak, we should be able to run unauthorized apps on the Apple TV — something Jobs would never advertise, of course.
In fact, hackers already have a head start, because a tool called Shatter, which was used to jailbreak the newest iPod Touch, already works with the Apple TV, according to the iPhone Dev Team. That means we should be expecting hackers to code some unauthorized apps soon to unlock additional capabilities such as video conferencing via your Apple TV.
On top of that, existing hacks for the old Apple TV should work, too. Dev Team member Will Strafach explained that “the new AppleTV OS seems to be a mashup of the old AppleTV OS and iOS,” meaning “frappliances,” plug-ins that add functionality to the old Apple TV, should work as well.
‘Lowtide’ app
The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s Erica Sadun, a popular iOS programmer, took a close look at the Apple TV’s software and discovered that it runs an application called Lowtide — the software containing the set-top box’s media interface.
Sadun dug deeper and found lines of code that suggest that Lowtide might eventually be extended to other iOS devices. In other words, you should be able to share media from the Apple TV to your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, whereas originally we thought we’d only be able to do the converse with AirPlay. This functionality would be comparable to a Slingbox or an EyeTV.
Lowtide isn’t readily available for Apple’s iOS mobile devices yet, but iOS developer Dustin Howett has already managed to load Lowtide on an iPod touch running iOS 4.1, demonstrated in the video above. He recommended against doing it yourself, though, unless you’re ready to reformat your iPhone on a regular basis just to turn it back into a phone.
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