Official iCreate Blog > iPhone

  So, after all the excitement of the announcements on Monday we’ve now got to sit about and wait for everything to become available. Here’s what we’re looking forward to most:

iPhone - Obviously

Its not the 3G capabilities that are going to make this device extremely successful, its the brilliantly low new price (who can argue with £100?) and of course the App Store…

The App Store

This is where all the action is going to happen. iPhone users will be able to get all of the new games, productivity tools ad other cool things through here. Those apps that are under 10MB in size will be able to be downloaded directly onto the phone, the bigger ones will have to be done through iTunes. We’ve heard on the grape vine that as many as 70% of the applications on the store will be free! There is an upper ceiling on the size of apps, they can be no bigger than 2GB.

Best of the Apps?

Super Monkey Ball is  one of the best looking apps so far announced and of course with it being controlled by the accelerometer its even cooler. There will be over 100 levels to choose from and four monkeys  to  use.

And finally…. Mobile Me

This is the replacement for .Mac and this re-branding is an attempt to get those iPhone users who are still  tied to their Windows Machines to get involved in the email account business without wanting to be associated with Macs. We didn’t see that much of it at the keynote but as soon as we can we’ll have a proper look at it in the magazine as we  will with all the new releases. So excited…

There has been a veritable explosion of iPhone rumours this afternoon as WWDC approaches. Both Engadget and Mac Rumors have new posts with new details. There have been claims from eastern manufacturers saying that there will be a smaller iPhone with a 2.8inch screen as well as the possibility of a tablet like device that will have a 7inch screen.

Without wanting to be massively smug, iCreate did predict an iPhone family of products in the last issue of the magazine and this latest batch of rumours seems only to be confirming our prediction.

Of course we’ll all have to wait until Monday to find out whats really been going on at Cupertino.

It really can’t get here fast enough.

www.macrumors.com

www.engadget.com

I thought I’d share a little iPhone tip that you may or may not find useful. 

If, like me, you listen to a lot of music on your iPhone you probably find yourself stopping, starting and skipping tracks using the button on the headphones. 

For those who don’t know, here are the facts:
One click: Pauses currently playing music. One click (when paused): Resumes music playback. Two clicks: Skips current track.

The annoyance I’ve found is the way in which the headphone button becomes unresponsive after the music has been paused for a little while and the iPhone heads back into regular standby mode. 

This often happens when I’ve been listening to music and use the headphone button to pause while I talk to someone.  Usually, by the time I’ve finished talking, the button doesn’t resume playback because the iPhone has gone into standby mode.

So, a cunning plan for those who carry their iPhone in their pocket. Find the home button on your device (either inside your pocket or through your chosen garment) and double click it. You will now find the button on the headphones will work again and you wont need to remove your phone from your pocket to start playing music again. 

Simple yet effective. 

I admit it. I bought an XBox 360.

Well come on, until Apple really goes for it and launches a games console (not the Pippin!) I didn’t have much choice. I had a Wii for a while (because it seemed the most Apple-esque choice) but it didn’t quite cut it against the next-gen breed. 

So…I’ve had this Microsoft product in my home for a fortnight now. All has been good and, I hate to say it, I’ve enjoyed using it. I bought the top of the line Elite model and a bunch of games and, despite it looking like a VCR or some kind of high tech shoebox, things have been fine.Today I come home looking to settle down for a quick game of Call of Duty and what happens… the disc drive is emitting some kind of buzzing sound and no game can be read. I knew the last 14 days had been too good to be true.

Online I hop and, lo and behold, literally hundreds of people have had this problem if not thousands. Apparently it’s my fault. I should have made sure my XBox was kept cool and rested on its side!

What the @$%&!? 

There are some things I don’t need to be warned about. I know the coffee in my cup is hot and I know that smoking kills.What I didn’t know was that if you position an XBox in one of the ways it’s built to sit/stand it will break. I also didn’t know that if you allow an XBox to heat up to anything close to room temperature, it’ll break.

So Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is sitting out in Vegas at the moment complaining that the MacBook Air is too heavy, he’s moaning about the iPhone price, always dissing Apple. Ok Steve, at least when Apple brings a product to market, “It just works”. The bastard child of Sloth from The Goonies and an albatross can blindly tout Vista as a revolution and Windows Mobile as groundbreaking but can he honestly say that any of his products really face up to actual use and tests of functionality?

I’ve had a MacBook for two years. No faults. An iMac which I’ve had fixed once in 5 years of ownership and an iPhone thats been dropped, knocked and had a cigarette put out on its screen and it still works, still looks great. All of the above run Mac OS X by the way. Any problems with that? No. Even after upgrading to the latest OS which (unlike Microsoft’s effort is better than the previous version).

I’ve had an XBox less than half a month and its stopped working.

Another admission: I’ve owned an XBox before. The original model. What happened to it? The drive broke. Then the HD. Then some kind of video fault developed. All within one year.

I’m the idiot here. I naively thought that, as much as its operating system is a pile of the proverbial, Microsoft had its games devision nailed and would certainly have been committed to more stable hardware after many issues with the original XBox model. Man was I wrong.Knock it together, fire it out to the masses, pay the price when a huge percentage of the products fail.

The guy who sold me my XBox tried to push me onto a PS3, citing the “hundreds” of returns he’d been plagued with since he began stocking the XBox 360. I wish I’d listened to him. I wish I’d taken his advice, given my money to another company that cares about the end user, cares about products standing the test of time and cares about quality.As we well know, Microsoft is not a company on that list. 

I’m the sucker for thinking things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

So, to Evil Steve (Ballmer): Screw you, your stupid dancing antics, your sweating and your mangled vocal chords.

To Good Steve (Jobs): It’s time to bring out yet another device to shame the morons at Microsoft.

Alright, you lot? We’re talking protection today, not the kind you need on the mean streets where I’m from, but protection for your beloved Apple gadgets. So, the two products I’ve got for you are from PDAir, one for your Al Capone (iPhone) and the other for your fishing rod (iPod).

The first, called the Pouch Case for iPhone will set you back £14 and it’s not for the timid. Be proud, you own an iPhone – so wear it on your belt as a beacon of your technology bling. If you love your iPhone and want everyone to see you displaying it proudly about the hip, then you need this case. Premium leather, white stitching and a belt clip provide all the ingredients you’re gonna need. If you prefer to be subtle then you can remove the belt clip, but there’s not much chance it will fit in your sky rocket (pocket). This is a good all rounder that’ll stop you scratching the iPhone should you get in any scrapes or scuffles.

JFTB rating: Nugget – Score – Pony - Bullseye – Monkey

The next offering from PDAir is their originally named iPod Nano Case and it will set you back £12.50. In my opinion this is the best case they make. Flip cases are a bit hard to manage on the bigger iPods – there’s no cool factor when there’s tons of leather and plastic flying about while you’re trying to navigate menus on a packed tube train. On a small and compact case they’re actually very lemon-tart (smart). This nano flip case is excellent. It may look like one of those key rings that holds a picture of your cat, but it actually holds some swanky technology. Nice.

JFTB rating: Nugget – Score – Pony - Bullseye – Monkey

For more information on PDAir cases check out their website at www.pdair.com

This is a weekly column that I will be writing for iCreate so watch this space for more. You may get to hear from me on the podcast too…. Laters.

   
Not content with having us wander around seemingly jabbering to ourselves when making a phone call on the iPhone headset, Apple has yet another confused look-provoking feature to share. 

Games are coming to the iPhone in June thanks to the recently released SDK (Software Developers Kit). Not just point and click stuff, not just Tetris, games that require shaking, rotating, twisting and flipping. The accelerometer in the iPhone is incredible when you’re looking at pictures or websites and need to quickly rotate the screen and now this impressive technology is being harnessed to make the device the “Wii of handheld gaming”. The iPhone is not a toy, stop it, stop it, stop it! 
 
Picture the scene: 

9.45: Hop on the bus, plug in iPhone headphones and listen to the latest iCreate podcast. A couple of suppressed giggles garner some strange looks from other public transport users but nothing to worry about.   

9.50: Podcast is getting going but I’m interrupted  by a phone call. Click the button on iPhone headphones to receive call. “Hello?” I say, apparently into thin air. Most assume I’m singing along to Lionel Richie.  


10.00: Finish chatting away while appearing to still listen to iPod with no discernible telephone anywhere nearby. It was a friend informing me that the new iPhone App store is available with games and really cool third-party apps. I fire up Safari. 


10.20: Successfully download Super Monkey Ball for iPhone. It’s a primate in a ball that must be rolled, Marble Madness-style, to the end of the level. The controls? You guessed it - accelerometer.


11.30: Level one completed. Successfully navigated the ape in a ball by tilting the iPhone. Imagine how stupid you look playing tennis on a Nintendo Wii and multiply it by ten. Then imagine doing it in public. 


10.35: Game’s getting harder, motions more frantic. Concerned onlookers fear some kind of fit from the guy talking to himself a few minutes before. I bought this iPhone to look cool! 


10.40: Bus arrives outside office. Police & Ambulance are waiting. Apparently someone with a “regular” telephone tipped them off.   


So what’s next? Default ABBA ringtones? A voice-activated unlock feature that requires you to sing the first four bars of Build Me Up Buttercup? Apple, this is the coolest piece of technology ever to be produced, please don’t reduce it to a plaything. Perhaps that’s why they announced the Microsoft Exchange support for iPhone at the same time, to balance the lightweight, consumer extras with heavy business power tools. Then again, that’s Microsoft technology and when have those guys ever been cool? 

Let’s just hope that beyond the games studios, some truly brilliant third-party apps for iPhone are in the works that don’t make us look like morons when using them. Either that or the popularity of the phone will grow by such a degree that swinging your arms and legs about and talking to yourself in public will become the norm.  

Smug Ben and his iPhone. He may take some pride in being the first to post from his cool phone but he paid for his and I, being the super cool dude that I am, did not.

That makes me the real winner….