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This has been a busy week or so for the App Store, so I thought I'd chime in with my observations, as a user and developer.
First, Apple took a major step forward toward enhancing the structure of the App Store, by adding Keywords. Now, when developers submit apps, they must include 100 characters of keywords that will be part of the approval process. Before, Digital Chocolate, a game developer, had the word "ea." as in the abbreviation of 'each', repeated several times in their descriptions. The result was, searches for "EA" as in EA Sports, returned only Digital Chocolate apps! EA complained, and Apple listened.
Since updating the iPhone OS is pretty automatic, you don't likely need to be reminded. But in case you haven't yet installed the latest update, you should. This great article in TidBITS explains what the vulnerability is and why it's essential that it be fixed. Otherwise the bad guys could exploit it and do bad things such as disable your phone, steal your data, make calls, and send text messages.
The Temporary Internet Files folder contains a kind of travel record of the items you have seen, heard, or downloaded from the Web, including images, sounds, Web pages, even cookies.
With some 65,000 apps, it's hard sometimes to find the ones that will meet your needs the best. And it's sometimes hard to sort through the App Store reviews to determine whether the app is worth your time and/or money. Two resources can help. One is the website 148Apps, which has just been selected by PC magazine as one of the top 100 websites, and will appear in the Undiscovered Tech category. This site has great reviews of apps, but also five very helpful Top 148 Apps lists: All time Top Apps, Free iPhone Apps, Free iPhone Games, Top Paid Apps, and Top Paid Games.
During the discussion of my article on YourTube, an excellent plug-in for downloading videos from YouTube, I’ve been asked in a HowardForums thread about the other two, free(!) solutions, the AppStore-based (read: no jailbreaking needed) iWoopie and the Cydia-based MxTube.
In the following, I thoroughly compare these two apps to both each other and YourTube.
Generic pros / cons of the three YouTube downloaders
In today’s updates of the Web browser roundup and the 3G S tidbit article, I’ve elaborated on the following:
- Getting and using a brand new download manager for Safari. It’s not quite the level and quality of iCab Mobile 1.6, but still usable.
- Whether the rumored heat buildup issue really makes the iPhone 3G S useless on hot summer days.
Finally, I’ve also elaborated on some additional experience with games like UniWar and NFS: Unlimited on the 3G S.
If you're out an about and want more information on a product or if you want to compare the online price with the store price, you can quickly and easily get that info using the Cyclops app. It uses your camera to snap the barcode and then returns the information from Amazon. And it's free. It got a lot of bad ratings, but that seems to be partly because people tried to use it incorrectly or on an older phone. For now it only works with the camera of the new iPhone 3GS.
In the following review, I elaborate on some subjects not available in other reviews (e.g., that of Engadget, Gizmodo) etc. I also provide some updates to my previous, iPhone 3G-specific battery consumption benchmarks and stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)-specific bug reports.
As you’ll see, there are a lot of other goodies the new model offers, not just the ones listed in the reviews published so far. And, unfortunately, there’s also a (deliberate?) downgrade: the quality of the screen.
I was on Arthur Ave (the Little Italy of Bronx, NY) recently with my best friend and we decided to have lunch at this little restaurant we happened to walk by, Emilia’s. Neither of us had eaten there before so we thought we’d give it a try. It was beyond amazing. We decided to add it to our Contacts so that we’d remember it for future reference. Now we are both at an age that we knew that we wouldn’t remember the name of the restaurant 10 minutes later, but we would remember that it was in the Bronx. Just for the heck of it, my friend did a Spotlight Search using the term “Bronx” and nothing showed up.
I want to thank everyone for participating in the contest (and especially to ViTO for sponsoring). Our winners appear after the break with instructions for claiming your free copy. If you missed it or didn’t win, go check out the winning Star Walk celestial viewing application (it’s only 5 bucks)--now with digital compass capability. If you did win a copy, we ask that you post a short review in iTunes and on our comment section here. Read on for my mini-review, contest rules and instructions, etc.
Winners:
FateCreatr
Steve
DrJohn
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