As we noted last week, Navigon has provided details on a significant update to their MobileNavigator app for iPhone. Version 1.5 of MobileNavigator adds the following:
3D terrain views
3D panorama view ($9.99 extra)
In-app connectivity with Facebook and Twitter
In addition, the company has added “My Routes”, which analyzes your driving habits, patterns, location and time in order to provide “up to 3 routes clearly dispalyed in map with ETA and distance/drive times for all three.
The update is free to current Navigon MobileNavigator owners. Navigon is also offering MobileNavigator for $69.99, a $20 savings, through February 15th. Also part of the promotion, the real-time traffic add-on is priced at $19.99, a savings of $5.
There have been quite a few “thief alarm” apps in the App Store for a while now, claiming to protect the contents of your iPhone from being seen by the prying eye. But a fairly new addition to this cadre of apps caught our eye the other day when it jumped to the No. 1 spot for free entertainment apps in the App Store.
In this installment of “Does it Work?” we take a look at the No. 1 selling free entertainment app, “Burglar Alarm…Free!,” which claims to provide you with some extra security by detecting any movement with your iPhone when you’re not around.
Think “Burglar Alarm…” will work? Check out our assessment after the jump.
Apple has started sending out surveys to a number of iPhone developers in order to judge their happiness with the app store. 2009 saw a large number of very vocal complaints against the app store, its slow wait times and inconsistent rulings. The survey asked questions like
Please rate your level of satisfaction with each of the following aspects of the Application submission process (using iTunes Connect).
Please rate your level of satisfaction with each of the following aspects of the application review process (using iTunes Connect).
Please rate your level of satisfaction with the length of time it takes to get updates available on the App Store.
Developers are also being asked “What’s one thing could Apple do to make the iPhone Developer Program better?”.
Hopefully this is indicative of Apple’s move to making the app store a more efficient business.
File this under “great ideas finally realized”. The ZoomIt SD Card Adaptor lets your iPhone interface with an SD card, and through a free app, you can view images and send them to email, Flickr and Facebook; listen to music; watch movies; and read documents.
The company is taking pre-orders right now, but the price isn’t cheap. Picking up the adaptor will set you back $59.95, though the company is throwing in a 4GB SDHC card with the first 250 orders. The device is expected to ship in April.
It’s great to see a device that attempts to open up some of Apple’s lockdown on the iPhone, though I would be surprised if this doesn’t violate some of the SDK rules. Isn’t that why Stanza recently got in trouble with Apple, for allowing users to move files across USB?
An Apple job posting spotted by MacRumors has prompted some to think that there might yet be room for video in the iPad. The job is with the Interactive Media Group as Performance QA Engineer, iPad Media.
The listing puts a large amount of weight on the importance of still photography and video:
The Media Systems team is looking for a software quality engineer with a strong technical background to test still, video and audio capture and playback frameworks. Build on your QA experience and knowledge of digital camera technology (still and video) to develop and maintain testing frameworks for both capture and playback pipelines…[f]amiliarity with and interest in photography, video as well as media file formats is highly desirable…[g]ood solid knowledge of photography, various video and audio media formats.
Given that the iPad doesn’t currently have a camera, and that the job listing specifically mentions both photography and the iPad, it does seem to suggest that Apple is looking at putting a camera in the device.
The Apple Store is down worldwide leading to speculation that it will come back online with new products. Most are predicting an update the MacBook Pro line, but it’s not a guarantee that we’ll see any major changes to the product line. It’s still too early for pre-orders for the iPad, but you never know. Stay tuned.
Update: Apple has released Aperture 3. No sign of updated hardware.
iPhone repair website iResQ have posted photos that they claim are from repair kits for the fourth generation of iPhone. The case is about a quarter-inch longer than the original, but the screen is the same size. There’s also a reflective spot near the top of the front panel, which iResQ posits is for the proximity sensor.
In response to skepticism about the parts’ origin, iResQ have said
Here are the things that we know: a) The phone has not been released yet. Until it is, Apple could change the product design or the parts we have acquired could be prototypes. Since we don’t have an actual fourth-generation iPhone in our hands, we have no way to know for sure. b) We obtained this part as a sample from a reputable source. They have been reputable up to this point, and have provided genuine parts for us in the past.
Credit Suisse analyst Bill Shope has said that the iPad price might drop if the tablet doesn’t draw in the crowds. The WSJ is reporting that even though the iPad was priced low to begin with, Shope has said that Apple will respond with price cuts if interest isn’t high enough, based on Shope’s meetings with Apple execs.
Apple did drop the price on the original iPhone just a few months after launch, and offered early purchasers $200 in Apple credit to make up for it, which shows they are not completely adverse to changing prices if a device isn’t meeting expectation. It remains to be seen how well the iPad will do at launch.
Tapulous, makers of the insanely popular Tap Tap franchise, have unveiled a new game: Riddim Ribbon. The first iteration of the app will contain music by the Black Eyed Peas. The game seems more than a little influenced by PC/Zune game AudioSurf, in that it takes music and creates a racing game based on it, forcing you to dodge oncoming obstacles in order to keep the sound flowing.
Riddim Ribbon takes the music/racing combination a step further, and remixes the music depending on what path you take in the race, joining together different mixes of each song into a congruous whole.
Riddim Ribbon: Black Eyed Peas will set you back $2.99 with three bundled levels, and additional song levels will go for $1 each.
Electronics marketplace Retrovo have put together some numbers about the lead up to the iPad, if it lived up to to the hype, and if people were planning on picking one up. They polled 1000 random users before the announcement, and 1000 after, and compared the results.
While Retrovo is painting the general public as disappointed, the graph above shows that the big increase is in people who have heard of the iPad and are not interested in buying one, where there’s a massive drop in people who haven’t heard of it. This reflects the fact that more people were made aware of the device. The number of people who think they want to buy one tripled from 3% to 9%.
That said, the second chart is a bit more clear on the matter, as significantly more people feel they don’t need one. However, even if they don’t need it, they might want it.
The other issue is of who the tablet is marketed for. There’s a relatively strong opinion in the blogosphere right now that the iPad will actually be very good for people who don’t use the computer very often, and want a simple device that’s intuitive to use. If that does end up being the case, then that’s hardly the market segment to fill out surveys on a gadget blog.
What do our readers think? I’m a bit of a fan of the device, as I think it would be great to read books and comics on, and I think my emailing grandmother might find it useful. However, it doesn’t have what I need in terms of functionality for me to pick one up on day one. Do you think you’ll get one? For yourself? For someone else? How do you think you’ll use it?
