Jan 03

Apple’s New Year’s Resolution Should Be to Fix the iPhone Alarm

Posted in: Phones, Today's Chili

As the new year was rung in, iPhone alarms remained curiously silent.

Apple has confirmed an iOS bug that left the iPhone without functioning alarms on the first of January. Multiple tests on the iPhone alarm showed that it failed to go off when the digital calendar rolled over from Dec. 31, 2010 to Jan 1, 2011.

Apple spokesperson Natalie Harrison told Macworld that the the bug had been officially recognized, and would fix itself on Jan. 3.

“We’re aware of an issue related to non-repeating alarms set for Jan. 1 or 2,” Harrison said. “Customers can set recurring alarms for those dates and all alarms will work properly beginning Jan. 3.”

However, some iPhone customers in Asia and Europe said they were still experiencing alarm malfunctions as of Jan. 3, according to Reuters. Also, some U.S. customers said on Twitter this morning that their alarms weren’t working.

“This is why I missed the gym this morning,” tweeted Rik Nemanick, a Saint Louis resident.

Apple claims the alarm issue has only affected non-repeating alarms — meaning if your alarm is set to go off at the same time “every Monday,” for example, it should have worked today. However, for those who set a one-time alarm for this morning, some may have experienced the malfunction.

If you’re paranoid about sleeping in late, the quick fix for the issue is to set recurring alarms. To set repeating alarms, launch the Clock app, hit the + sign to create an alarm, then tap Repeat and choose the day(s) you want this alarm to go off regularly.

The alarm code in iOS seems to be pretty buggy. This latest problem follows a bug that caused alarms to sound an hour late when both Europe and the United States flipped over from daylight saving time at the end of the summer.

An unreliable alarm clock is a frivolous bug, but it’s particularly embarrassing for Apple, a company that prides itself for fine details of its products. Here’s hoping that Apple issues a complete rewrite of its clock app whenever it releases the next iPad or iPhone.

iOS bug prevents New Year’s alarms [Macworld]

Photo [Eflon / Flickr]

Updated 10 a.m. PST with reports of people still experiencing the alarm issue, as well as instructions on how to fix the alarm.

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Jan 03

Apple: iPhone Alarms Broken Until January 3rd

Posted in: Phones, Today's Chili

Apple has confirmed an iOS bug that left the iPhone without functioning alarms on January 1st 2011. As the New Year was rung in, iPhone alarms remained curiously silent.

Apple spokesperson Natalie Harrison told Macworld that the the bug had been officially recognized, and would fix itself on January 3rd. “We’re aware of an issue related to non repeating alarms set for January 1 or 2. Customers can set recurring alarms for those dates and all alarms will work properly beginning January 3.” Harrison told Macworld.

The alarm code in iOS seems to be pretty buggy. This latest problem follows a bug that caused alarms to sound an hour late when both Europe and the U.S flipped over from daylight saving time at the end of the summer.

Today is the third, and judging by the fact that The Lady made it out of the house on time this morning, iPod Touch alarms are working fine. On the other hand, she has a curious habit of leaving recurring alarms running on my iPod Touch, waking me at all sorts of odd hours, so it could be that.

iOS bug prevents New Year’s alarms [Macworld]

Photo [Eflon / Flickr]

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Dec 30

The 19 Most Wired iPhone and iPad Apps of 2010

Posted in: Apple, ios, ipad, iPhone, Phones, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili

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Apple’s iOS App Store hit the ground sprinting two-and-a-half years ago, and it hasn’t slowed down. In 2010, programmers unleashed a plethora of high-quality apps for the iPhone and its brand-new big sibling, the iPad.

For Apple’s tablet, many of the most impressive apps focused on the reading experience. That’s not surprising, because what better to do with that big, beautiful screen? And for the iPhone, we saw some clever apps that made excellent use of the handset’s always-on data connection, geo-awareness and camera.

With 400,000 apps crowding the iOS App Store, it’s tough to choose what’s worthy of a space on your screen. Here are Wired staff’s picks for the best iOS apps of 2010. There may be a lot of useless apps out there, but these are worth downloading.

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Dec 30

Android Malware Surfaces in Chinese App Markets

Posted in: Android, apps, Google, Phones, Today's Chili

A new Trojan horse aimed at Android devices has recently surfaced in China.

Named “Geinimi,” San Francisco firm Lookout Mobile Security says the Trojan is “the most sophisticated Android malware [the firm has] seen to date.”

“Geinimi is effectively being ‘grafted’ onto repackaged versions of legitimate applications,” most of which have been games, the firm says. The apps are then sold in Chinese third-party Android app markets. Affected apps will request permissions “over and above”  those requested by the legitimate version of an app.

“Users should make sure that the program is asking for permissions appropriate to the app,” a spokesperson from Lookout told Wired. “If the program is asking for your IMEI or your location, and it has nothing to do with the app’s function, that’s a big red flag.”

IMEI is short for International Mobile Equipment Identity, the internationally-used, unique identity number used by many phones.

Lookout hasn’t yet established an intent for Geinimi, though the firm claims the Trojan is “the first Android malware in the wild that displays botnet-like capabilities.” The firm claims that it’s “botnet-like” because it hasn’t yet seen the command server communicate back to affected devices, a Lookout spokesperson told Wired.

The firm has evidence that Geinimi is being distributed only through third-party Chinese app markets. Lookout hasn’t seen any Geinimi-compromised apps in the official Google Android marketplace.

Lookout released an update to its own Android antivirus app, which it says will protect users against Geinimi.

Photo: alachia/Flickr


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Dec 30

Former Employee: Nokia-Windows Phone 7 Rumor Is ‘Loony’

Posted in: Microsoft, nokia, Phones, rumors, Today's Chili, windows phone 7

Don’t believe the recent gossip that Nokia and Microsoft are hooking up to make a Windows phone. A former employee of Nokia claims it isn’t happening.

On his personal blog, Watts Martin explained that a partnership between Microsoft and Nokia isn’t even close to happening, because it’s unlikely Nokia would cede control of an OS to a third party. UPDATE: Martin left Nokia earlier this month, Wired has learned.

“There is no guarantee of that at all, because it is stark raving loony,” Martin wrote. “A lot of the reporting on Nokia I’ve seen seems to miss a fundamental fact: they are, in their fashion, just as insistent on control over their ecosystem as Apple is.”

Nokia has been a diehard supporter of Symbian, an open-source operating system that’s a decade old. For years, Symbian has been the worldwide leader in smartphone OS marketshare, but some analysts say it could soon be dethroned by Google’s Android OS, which has a more modern user interface and several manufacturing partners.

“Market share is an existential threat to Symbian, it imperils the very existence of the platform,” said Gartner analyst Nick Jones. “And the main reason Symbian is losing share is the user experience which isn’t competitive with Apple or Android.”

Eldar Murtazin, editor in chief of Mobile-Review editor, claimed last week that Microsoft had begun talks to make Nokia-branded smartphones running the Windows Phone 7 OS. The bleak outlook for Symbian got the tech press wondering if such a partnership would be likely.

Martin’s answer to that question would be a firm “No.”

“Nokia really does have their OS strategy figured out, and it’s a good one,” he said. “What they don’t have figured out is user experience design…. The good news for them is that over the last year they’ve started to take all those problem seriously. The bad news is that they needed to have been taking them seriously in 2007.”

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Photo of a Samsung phone running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7: Mike Kane/Wired.com


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Dec 30

Skype for iPhone Now Supports Video Calls

Posted in: ipad, iPhone, ipod, Phones, skype, Software and Operating Systems, Today's Chili, video, VoIP

Skype now does video-calling on iOS devices. The new update to Skype’s iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch app, version 3.0, allows users to make video calls between their iDevices, as well as with desktop computers — in other words, with any other Skype user. The calls can be placed over both Wi-Fi and 3G.

To make and receive video calls, you’ll need to have an iPhone 3GS or better, and you must be running iOS4. If you have both front- and back-facing cameras, you can use either. The 3GS can only, obviously, use the rear cam, since it doesn’t have a front-facing camera.

And if you have an iPad or a last-gen iPod Touch? You’re not left out, even though your device doesn’t have a camera. You can still receive video calls, but of course you can’t send any video.

Skype has a big advantage over FaceTime, Apple’s own video-calling app, as pretty much everyone already uses Skype. FaceTime requires a camera-equipped iPhone or iPod Touch, or a Mac running beta software. And it only works over Wi-Fi.

This is big news, especially for people wanting to replace computers with iPads. If a camera-equipped iPad goes on sale this year, as expected, then people like my parents could ditch their hard-to-administer PC for an iPad.

There is still one limitation to Skype’s iPad version of the software. This update, despite adding video, still requires you to pixel-double the app to get a full-screen view. Hopefully Skype’s next update will bring us video in the iPad’s full, native resolution.

Skype 3 for iPhone – With Video Calling [Skype Blog]

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Dec 29

The 10 Most Significant Gadgets of 2010

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Notebooks, Phones, R&D and Inventions, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili

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When this year began, we were feverishly speculating about an Apple tablet, looking forward to 3-D TV sets, and optimistically waiting for the end of the cable companies’ cruel grip on our wallets.

We had to settle for one out of three. While manufacturers did release a handful of 3-D TVs, there’s just not enough content (either on cable or Blu-ray) to justify purchasing one yet. The heavy, expensive glasses you need to buy don’t make the proposition any more attractive, either.

And as for getting all our video from the sweet, ever-flowing bounty of the internet? Sure, we still do that — when we’re at work. But at home, internet TV is still struggling to stand on its own. The gadget we’d pinned our hopes on, the Boxee Box, is unfinished and buggy. Google TV is hampered by the unwillingness of the TV networks to play ball. Apple TV remains locked into its own little iTunes-centric world.

So that leaves the Apple tablet. If you’d told us in December 2009 that we’d be using the word “iPad” every day without giggling, well, we would have giggled at you. But there it is: There’s no getting around the fact that the iPad, silly name and all, has completely and successfully redefined what a “tablet computer” could be.

But the iPad was far from being the only big gadget news of the year. E-readers, cameras, and even exoskeletons made huge strides in 2010. Here, then, are the 10 gadgets that were most significant in 2010.

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Dec 27

Apple Doesn’t Want Coders Messing With iPhone Buttons — Sometimes

Posted in: Apple, apps, iPhone, Phones, Today's Chili

Apple can’t stick to its own rules with the gigantic iOS App Store.

The company recently approved an iPhone camera app that carries a special feature: the ability to snap a photo by pressing the physical Volume button rather than tapping the touchscreen. Oddly enough, about four months ago Apple banned a top-selling iPhone app for including the same “volume-snap” functionality.

In August, Apple rejected the photo app Camera+ when it included a volume-snap feature, because changing the behavior of the iPhone’s external hardware buttons was strictly prohibited.

“Your application cannot be added to the App Store because it uses iPhone volume buttons in a non-standard way, potentially resulting in user confusion,” Apple told Camera+ developer Tap Tap Tap in its August rejection letter. “Changing the behavior of iPhone external hardware buttons is a violation of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement.”

Following the rejection, Tap Tap Tap hid the volume-snap feature as an Easter egg inside the app and hinted that it could be enabled by visiting a URL in the Safari web browser. That led to Apple slamming the ban hammer. After four months in the penalty box, Camera+ returned last week with the volume-snap feature removed.

So it’s inconsistent that the app Quick Snap got the green light in the App Store, explicitly promoting the volume-snap feature that Apple strictly forbade (see screengrab above).

“Why choose the soft or full screen shutter when you can use VOLUME BUTTON as the hard shutter button on your iPhone?” Quick Snap’s iTunes description reads.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hosting more than 300,000 apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, Apple’s App Store has drawn criticism for some of its rules regulating the content and functionality allowed inside third-party apps. Apple only three months ago published guidelines listing reasons why apps get rejected from the App Store.

But with the case of Camera+, it’s evident that disclosing guidelines hasn’t solved one of the App Store’s major problems: App Store reviewers are not consistent with enforcing the rules, and therefore censorship still seems arbitrary.

I’ve argued in the past that arbitrary censorship in the App Store is detrimental to creative freedom — an issue poised to grow as Apple continues to expand as a major media publisher.

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Dec 27

8mm Vintage Camera is Hipstamatic for Video

Posted in: apps, iPhone, Phones, Retro, Today's Chili

IPhone photographers get all the retro-licious fun. Apps like Hipstamatic and Instagram let you mess with your pristine digital pics and make them look as if they came from a low-quality plastic camera from communist-era Eastern Europe. Now videographers can join in the image-degrading hijinks, with 8mm Vintage Camera.

The app does exactly what you’d expect. It adds dusty, speckly artifacts to your footage, and you can shoot through a variety of virtual lenses (flickering frame, light leak and color fringing, for example) and capture the video onto one of several “films”. You can also add random jitter and movement to the movie, as if the projector was having trouble keeping the film fed neatly through its gate.

All the effects happen in real time, so you see on-screen exactly what you are recording. There are modern touches, too: you can light up the iPhone’s flash whilst recording, and the familiar touch-to-focus feature is in there. Exporting options are good, too. ITunes sharing is supported, as is email and saving to the camera roll, but you can also send movies straight up to YouTube.

Best of all, the app is just $2. Sure, my $800 Micro Four Thirds camera might shoot great-looking, hi0def video, but this looks like way more fun.

8mm Vintage Camera [iTunes via iPhoneography]

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Dec 27

Unity Turns Coffee Table into Universal Remote

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, bluetooth, Phones, Today's Chili

Place the handsome Unity box on your coffee-table, download the companion application from the App Store, and you can control your TV, DVD player and pretty much anything else in your living room, direct from your iPhone.

The black, cylindrical Unity seems a lot like the soft, rubber Peel which we saw a few weeks ago. Both allow you to remote-control any IR gear you have, but while the Peel hooks into your home’s Wi-Fi network, the Unity uses Bluetooth. And while the Peel is a system that learns your tastes and breaks down the entire concept of channels, the Unity is a flat-out nerd-fest.

Once you have told the Unity app which devices you own, you can flip channels using on-screen keys. But then the fun begins. Central to the Unity are “actions”, step-by-step instructions that execute with a single touch. So one press can fire up your home-theater gear, switch the TV to the right channel and start the movie playing. The one thing it won’t do is make the popcorn.

Unity also has one other big advantage over the Peel: You can buy it. While the Peel is still little more than vapor (and a free app), the Unity can be had for $100.

Unity product page [Gear4 via Macworld]

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