So we’ve had a collection of free iPhone ringtones for a while. The idea is that we think it is ridiculous to have to pay for new and interesting ringtones — they are just ringtones!
We’ve added a feature to that page where you can subscribe to the ringtones as a podcast feed.
There’s a trick to it, though. iTunes doesn’t show .m4r files through its iTunes store listings. So when you look at the subscription page, all you see is the sample .mp3 file. But when you subscribe to the feed in iTunes, you will see all of the .m4r ringtones in your iTunes Library, Podcast, MacMost iPhone Ringtones list.
The great thing there is that you should be able to control which ringtones you download rather easily through your iTunes podcast subscriptions screen. Then, you can automatically get new ringtones when we add them. In addition, if you set up your iTunes/iPhone settings properly, the ringtones will automatically transfer to your iPhone and be available to be used as ringtones.
We just added two new iPhone Games to the free iPhone games section of the site: Poker Solitaire and Astro-Blobs.
Poker Solitaire is a card game where you place 25 cards in a 5×5 grid to make 10 vertical and horizontal poker hands. You get points based on how good the hands are.
Astro-Blobs is a version of the Flash game at GameScene. The original game dates back to the early days of Flash, but the gameplay is well suited for the tap interface of the iPhone.
Setting aside MobileMe’s launch problems, I have to say I’m very disappointed with MobileMe.
Sure, it is push email to the iPhone. But only for me.com email addresses. As a business owner with my own domain(s), I want to use my own email address. There are several ways to do this with MobileMe, such as forwarding all my email to my me.com email address, but none of them allow me to easily reply to an email from my business address. This makes MobileMe email essentially useless to me.
Once email is out of the picture, the other features fall flat. Push calendar and contacts are nice, but they don’t really get me anything that syncing my iPhone doesn’t. iDisk is essentially the same as before, which makes it marginally useful to me. But since I produce media when making the fun games at GameScene.com and other sites, 20gb is not enough for a backup solution.
The most useful feature for me is the photo gallery, which is the same as the old .Mac. The ability to publish photos from iPhoto quickly and easily makes the $100/year cost worth it. But the photo gallery is still not all it could be. I’d love the ability to publish to a gallery directly from my iPhone camera roll. Right now I either have to email a photo, or sync with my Mac and use iPhoto to move an image to the gallery.
So, ways that .Mac could be great:
1. Allow me.com to automatically get email from another account, and also reply to emails using a reply-to of our choice.
2. Increase storage enough to back up a standard drive with system, applications and documents.
3. Allow us to access documents on the iDisk via our iPhone. You can already read Word, Excel, PowerPoint, iWork and PDF files in emails on your iPhone. Why not have a iPhone Documents directory on your iDisk where you can see these documents as well.
4. Instead of emailing photos to a photo gallery, allow iPhone camera roll photos to go directly there.
5. Add a Web-based blogging system, similar to Blogger.com or WordPress.com. Right now, the only option is to use iWeb and it isn’t easy or very functional.
I could go on. I can think of dozens of ways that MobileMe could be better, and none of them should really increase the fixed costs on Apple’s side. In fact, if I was in charge I’d position MobileMe to compete as a social network as well.
Playing around with the iPhone App Store this week got me thinking about Apple’s revenue streams. It seems that now, in addition to hardware, Apple makes a lot of money through digital downloads: music, movies, TV shows and now software.
In fact, Apple started digital distribution of iPod games a while ago in the iTunes Music Store. But only a small number of titles are available, and the development process includes making a direct deal with Apple. But the iPhone developer process is open to just about any serious developer. There are at least 500 titles available.
So, now that the iTunes Music Store delivers iPhone and iPod software, why not Mac software?
This should be an easy addition, and the pieces are probably already in place. Apple could start with their own applications, like iWork, and then let third-party developers get in on the act, with Apple taking its 30 percent cut. I’d bet developers would jump at the opportunity to distribute this way given that most software stores still ignore the Mac platform.
Come to think of it, they could do this on Windows. The iTunes Music Store, and even the iPhone App Store inside it, works in iTunes for Windows. Apple could become the largest distributor of Windows software.
This goes further than the PC and the iPhone. Apple already distributes to living rooms via Apple TV. So with digital downloads, Apple is taking on Blockbuster and NetFlix, they are already dominating retail music stores, and they could soon be challenging retail and online software stores. Apple could be the next Amazon.com, but for digital products only, which is probably the most profitable type of product — at least from a distribution standpoint.
So I still have my old iPhone. As I have plans to develop some iPhone Apps, it seems to make sense to keep it around. I could use it to test my Apps, without causing any problem in my new iPhone, which I rely on for communication.
Once you write off the phone as “worthless” it suddenly becomes extremely valuable. I pulled the SIM card out, to make sure there is no confusion in the system, and I am able to use WiFi to surf the Web, check email, play videos, etc. I can also use all the Apps I installed, and sync with iTunes to put must on there. It is essentially an iPod Touch with a camera and a mic. And that, in itself, is a very nifty device. If a Skype. application ever arrives, it could become my main office phone. Right now, it can be a Pandora streaming music box. I can use it as a voice recorder. I can pass it around the room with the Band App and someone can play drums while I play piano on my new iPhone. I could even use it to complete replace my alarm clock — I can set alarms, have it play music, check the news on the Web, and even my email.
The bottom line is that this old iPhone may just be starting its life as a cool gadget, not ending it.
So, with about 500 iPhone Apps available, you’d think we’d have a little of everything. But there are plenty of duplicate applications, like Sudoku, and tons of Apps that just mimic what we already could get from Web sites.
Here are some iPhone Apps that I thought someone would make for the launch, but they just aren’t there:
1. GPS Gadget: Just a geeky read-out of your location in latitude and longitude, maybe with a little memory so you can track a path. Basically, what a GPS device did 10 years ago, before they had maps. It would come in real handy for hiking and GeoCaching.
2. USB Keyboard: The iPhone has a dock, which goes to USB, which can then go to a USB keyboard with a little cable adjustment. It would be great to bring a super-thin Apple keyboard along and take notes at meetings and conferences without dragging along the MacBook.
3. Skype VOIP: I know they can’t make this work over 3G for legal reasons, but it should at least be available for WiFi. Another app exists that has you pay for calls. Yuck.
4. iPhone Camcorder: You should be able to record video with your iPhone’s camera.
5. Telnet/SSH: Every Webmaster gets a little uneasy when they are out of reach of a way to access their server through ssh. The “Terminal” application was my favorite on the SideKick, even though I never used it. I just liked knowing that I could get in if I needed to. There could also be a ton of uses for this very simple App.
When I started making the video today about the iPhone lines, I wanted to find both people that were upgrading from an existing iPhone and people that were getting their first iPhone. I thought it would be hard to find the later. I mean, if you find it worthwhile to wait in line for an iPhone, wouldn’t you have already had one 6 months or a year ago? Shouldn’t the line people be the early adopters?
But no, the opposite was true, I had to try really hard to find someone who had an iPhone already. Most of the people, inclusing those at the front of the line, were buying their first iPhone. So that meant that of the 500 or so people that waited in line all day last year, perhaps only a handful came back for another line. At the same time, Apple did a good job of hyping this launch, to get the new users onboard.
A geekier reason may have been that iPhone 2007 users may have wanted to wait to update their old iPhones to the 2.0 OS before they deactivated. That was my only hesitation on buying a new iPhone right away.
Update: Cali and Neal from Geek Brief told me the same was true for their line.
So I spent some time this afternoon playing Super Monkey Ball, Band, and trying out some of the other apps. Super Monkey Ball looks great and runs smoothly. It is a tough game because of the way you control movement. As a gamer, I’m not so sure I like the idea of the challenge being in how you can control movement. I prefer strategy or reaction time.
Band is interesting, but I got bored with it quickly. It may be more fun if there are a few people who have it and you can “jam.” Or, it may grow to be an excellent app once more instruments are added and perhaps there is a better system for saving and editing music. I’d love to see a desktop version so you could start composing on your iPhone and then polish it off on your Mac later on.
By far, the app I like the best is Pandora. Pandora is the Web site/service that plays music it thinks you will like based on feedback. I’ve been a user for a while, and I love the commercial-free “make your own radio station” idea. Now that it works on the iPhone, oh boy. That’s the end of radio for me. I even tried it in the car on the drive home and it played song after song over the Edge network without missing a beat.
I was a little please and also disappointed in AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). This is basically iChat for the iPhone, as you can use your AIM account or your .Mac (MobileMe) account. It just seemed very buggy. And I used an AIM account at first, and the only way I could figure to switch to my .Mac account was to delete the App and re-install. Likewise, Twitterrific seemed unfinished. I can’t seem to get it to display the most recent tweets when I start the App. It is still easier just to go to Twitter.com on the iPhone and get what I want faster.
Looking through the App Store, I saw a lot of junk. There were Apps for $1 that really didn’t do much. There were others, like the FaceBook App that did LESS than the equivalent iPhone-formatted Web site. So what’s the point?
Breaking news: once you have downloaded iTunes 7.7, which is available via software update, click on this special link in Safari and iTunes should launch and take you right to the app page for the iPhone Remote application. You can even download it, though I guess we will have to wait for iPhone 2.0 software to install it.
You can then use the navigation at the top to go to other sections of the App Store.
1. Headphone jack. The new iPhone will have a flush headphone jack. This means you can plug in any standard headphone or speaker device without a $10 adapter. You know, the adapter you discover you left at home just after you get to the airport.
2. 3G. Well, this is a given. You should get twice the download speed on Web pages, videos and email.
3. GPS. Now you will really know where you are. But I can’t wait for the 3rd party apps that will be built around this. I’m sure it will rival expensive GPS devices in functionality before long. Geocaching may go mainstream.
4. Better battery life. I expected battery life to suffer with 3G, but it looks like we’ll have more battery life than every before.
5. Lots of countries: Friends in Canada and Australia will finally be able to get one, as well as lots of other countries.
6. A scientific calculator in iPhone 2.0, which means there will be no more reason to have a piece of hardware called a “scientific calculator.”
7. Lots of free iPhone apps. I predict that a majority of iPhone apps will be free, cool gizmos created by hobbyists. Something new to discover every week, most likely.
8. Bulk delete for email. Sounds silly, but this eats up a lot of my time.
9. MLB.com live game updates. This is one of the primary things I use my iPhone for right now, via Safari. A dedicated app would be great, as long as there isn’t a subscription fee attached.
10. The price. For $199, a lot of people will start coming over to the iPhone.
Live Updates, local San Francisco times:
10:05 — Steve Jobs takes the stage as the keynote speaker. Al Gore is in the audience (Apple board member).
10:08 — Announced that the new version of Mac OS X will be called “Snow Leopard.”
10:10 — Talking about iPhone 2.0, starting with the success of the SDK beta program.
10:10-10:25 — Talk about the SDK, similar to what was presented 3 months ago about how the SDK works.
10:27 — Sega to demonstrate Super Monkey Ball, updated with full features. Will be available at launch of iPhone App Store for $9.99.
10:30 — Ebay to demonstrate iPhone app.
10:32 — Loopt is demonstrating using a location-based social network app.
10:35 — TypePad demonstrating blogging application. App will be available for free from the App Store at launch.
10:37 — Associated Press application.
10:40 — Pangea Software, demonstrating two Mac port games: Enigma and CroMag Rally. $9.99 each.
10:44 — Mark Terry is showing an app named “Band” which turns the iPhone into a musical instrument.
10:47 — MLB.com (Major League Baseball) demonstrates “At Bat” — live game box scores and stats.
10:50 — Modality with medical software that helps med students learn.
11:52 — More medical application software from Mimvista.
11:56 — Digital Legends entertainment shows a fantasy adventure game, Krull. Ready by September.
12:01 — Announced “push” notification ability for applications as a substitute for running processes in the background. So after an application is quit, the user can still get push messages and sounds sent to their iPhone. It will be a unified service for all developers. Available in September, seeded to developers earlier.
11:03 — Jobs back, announcing new features for iPhone: Contact search. iWork document support, including keynote. MS PowerPoint too. Bulk delete of messages. Save email images to photo library. Scientific calculator. Parental controls. More languages. Character drawing for asian languages.
11:07 — iPhone 2.0 available in July. Free for iPhone users. $10 for iPod Touch users.
11:08 — iPhone App Store. Free apps are free. Pay apps give 70% to developer. Available wirelessly in more countries. Apps less than 10MB can be downloaded through mobile networks. Others through WiFi.
11:10 — Enterprise developers can distribute apps to only their users by authorizing iPhones in their enterprise to run those apps. Distribution can be internal to their organization.
11:11 — Can also use ad hoc distribution to distribute apps to 100 iPhones. Used for college classes.
11:12 — Mobile Me: brand new service through Apple. MS Exchange for the rest of us. Push information up and down to all devices. Will use me.com for Web-based client, Mac and PC. Uses iCal, Mail and Address Book too. Works with iDisk too. Anything updated/added on one device will update on all devices instantly.
11:26 — 60 day free tried for MobileMe. MobileMe replaces .Mac service. All .Mac services still there. All .Mac users automatically updated to MobileMe. Early July.
12:27 — Jobs talking about iPhone. Sold 6 million iPhone before running out.
12:29 — 3G network, enterprise support, 3rd-party application support, more countries, more affordable.
12:30 — iPhone 3G. Plastic back, flush headphone, jack, improved audio.
12:32 — Faster data downloads. Jobs demonstrates 3G speed vs. old iPhone and N95.
12:35 — Battery times: stand-by time: 300 hours, 2G talk time: 10 hours, 3G talk time: 5 hours, 3G browsing: 5-6 hours, video: 7 hours, audio 24 hours.
12:37 — GPS. Will be able to track as you move on a map.
12:39 — Countries: 25 as goal: Mexico, Canada, Australia, China, Japan, 29 in Europe, 15 in South America, 8 in Asia/Australia. 70 counties in next few months.
12:43– Price: $199 for 8GB, $299 for 16GB. White version available too.
12:45 — Rollout on July 11 in 22 countries.
One of the rumors for next week is a re-launch of .Mac, Apple’s ISP-like service. While there isn’t much fuel behind this rumor, it does make sense as .Mac is ripe for change.
So, basically, here is what .Mac currently does:
The problem is that most of these can be done on other services for free. Sometimes better. But each of these services has the potential to be a best-in-class with a little improvement.
What I would really like to see is all of these tied into each other in a social network-like interface. One reason to not post photos to .Mac in favor of Flickr is that people use Flickr like a social network — checking in on their friends’ photos. On .Mac, it is like posting to your own isolated site. No one will know you posted new photos without getting a reminder from you.
But what if .Mac worked like FaceBook, but with a Apple interface. You could post photos, blog entries, status updates, audio and video etc. And people in your social network would see it. Maybe people in other social networks would too — for instance if you could link your FaceBook account to your .Mac account. Or have an automatic Twitter message sent out.
So that is my wish for .Mac. Improve everything slightly. Then tie it all together and connect everyone.
We’ve mentioned and reviewed products from OtterBox at MacMost before. I like them, not just because their product protects my iPhone on a daily basis, but also because they are located just north of Denver, the home of MacMost.
You’ve probably heard of the tornadoes we had last week. Nasty. And not too far from OtterBox, as it turns out. They made out OK, but homes in the area were lost. They decided to help out their neighbors. They will donate 10% of online proceeds from sales in June 2008. So if you have been thinking about better protection for your iPhone, June would be a good time to purchase from OtterBox.
After blogging about a music video that used the Mac OS interface, MacMost viewer Ian wrote in about Scientific American’s 60 Second 60 Second Science video podcast which also uses Mac OS in an interesting way.
Most of the news in the Apple world in the last few days has been about the iPhone being out of stock both online and in Apple stores. The general wisdom points to this being an indicator of a new iPhone model coming out soon. For weeks now, there have been rumors that a new iPhone model will be released at the WWDC on June 9.
But there could be other explanations as well. This could simply be a manufacturing oversight on Apple’s part. They simply ran out of iPhones. Or, it could be a planned shortage, designed to boost demand. Sort of like the strategy everyone believes that Nintendo uses, controlling the supply of the Wii.
Or it could be something in the middle. It could be that a new iPhone model is coming out, but that it isn’t a 3G iPhone, but simply one with more memory.
It does seem to be a bit early for Apple to run out of stock if they don’t plan on releasing another iPhone until June 9. Some are speculating that a new iPhone is coming out but that it will actually come out before June 9, perhaps even in the next week or so.
None of this really fits into an obvious pattern that Apple has followed before. So perhaps, later this week, the iPhones will reappear in Apple stores with no explanation. We will never know the cause of the shortage.
But if that were true, why would Apple list the iPhone as being out of stock? Instead they would list the iPhone as simply shipping in 2-3 weeks or something like that. Then they would fill orders as they received more stock.
It does seem a bit early for Apple to come out with a completely new hardware for the iPhone. A release on June 9, would mean a second generation of hardware in less than a year. Plus, the main new feature rumored to be in the second-generation iPhone is the ability to communicate with faster 3G networks. But the reason this wasn’t in the original iPhone was because there was no low-power chip available to communicate with 3G networks. I would have thought that we would have heard rumors of a chip manufacturer delivering a new low powered 3G chip to Apple before this happened.
Adding to all this is the fact that Apple seems ready to roll out iPhones in some new countries. If the original iPhone is truly at the end of its life, then they surely won’t use that in these new markets. Which means a second-generation iPhone must be just around the corner.
I’m going to go out on limb and say that the iPhone shortage is caused by all the factors above. On the one hand, Apple didn’t make enough first-generation iPhones. But, they don’t mind a shortage as it will increase demand. This also prevents people from buying old iPhones just when a new iPhone is about to come out, which could lead to returns and exchanges.
Here’s a fun music video someone made completely using images from the Mac Desktop like Dashboard Widgets, iMovie, iTunes, text windows, and so on. The song is “Again & Again” by The Bird & the Bee. The artist that made the video is Dennis Liu. I particularly like how the video ends.
I was thinking about the new Pystar Apple clone computer. I guess the only advantage I can think of for buying this machine is price. Nothing is offered that you couldn’t get from Apple for a few more bucks. And the price is only marginally better. I think the low-end machine is about $400, but this doesn’t include leopard which will add another $130. And it also doesn’t include iLife which will add another $80. Then the box is about the same price as a Mac mini, though it still has a better video card.
But then there is the issue of support. Just the other day I was working on an iMac G5 trying to make a DVD. I was using iDVD and I kept getting an error message. I figured a way around the issue, but if this had not been an Apple Computer but a Pystar computer than I would never have known if the issue was due to the software or the fact that I was using a non-Apple Computer.
I imagine a lot of things like this will happen to people with clones. An external drive won’t work, or some software won’t launch, or the system will crash, and they won’t know whether this is a problem that can be solved by Apple, Pystar, or neither. It will be frustrating.
I imagine Windows users go through this all the time. When something doesn’t work they don’t know whether it is Microsoft’s fault, the PC manufacturer’s fault, or maybe the company that built that particular piece of software.
Actually, I’ve run across this before with PC games. The computer, the operating system, the game, the video drivers, and perhaps other drivers as well, were all made by different companies. So what do you do when the game suddenly crashes? All you can do is hope that somebody else has had the same problem, has figured it out, and has posted a fix.
I’d imagine the success of the Pystar computer will hinge on good support forums. If Pystar users stick together and help each other, they can make the experience tolerable enough to be worthwhile. That is, of course, if Apple doesn’t step in and stop Pystar before it’s too far off the ground. Either way, I’ll stick with my Apple made Mac.
Sometimes it is useful to know what IP address you appear to have to the outside world. For instance, to use Leopard screen sharing, you usually need to know the IP address of the machine you wish to connect to. Or, someone may restrict access to a Web site or file sharing service to only a small list of IP addresses, and you need to tell them your IP in order from them to add you to the list.
You can sometimes find this by going to your System Preferences, Network settings and looking at your status. But it may show you the IP address on your local network, which may start with a 10.0 or a 192.168. This won’t help a computer from the outside world know where you are.
But when you surf the Web, every Web server and page knows what IP address you have. So all you need to do is go to a Web page like this one, and it will tell you:
Your IP Address is:
You can bookmark this page to use in situations where you need to quickly figure out your IP address.
It’s no big revelation that Mac fans love rumors. There are several sites dedicated to Apple rumors that get more traffic than sites dedicate to actual Apple news. I guess we just like to daydream about the computers and gadgets in our near future.
But this obsession with rumors makes it easy for lots of bad information to get out there. How many Apple rumors in the past 10 years have turned out to be slightly off, or completely wrong? There are several origins to Apple rumors.
First, there is the old whisper-down-the-lane phenomenon. Person A, at an event, with no real facts, speculates that Apple will come out with a touch screen Mac. Wouldn’t that be neat? Person B is listening to them, then repeats this to person C. Person C assumes that person B has heard this from a good source, and so starts spreading the rumor.
A second source of Apple rumors is: thin air. I believe there are people out there purposely starting rumors they know not to be true. All you need to do is come up with a reasonable rumor that many people want to see come true. In many cases, artists create fake images or videos to support a rumor. Fortunately, these are easier to call out as fakes than a single bit of information.
I don’t think it is the rumor sites that are behind these false rumors. In fact, they are the victims.
A third source of Apple rumors is our misunderstanding of how Apple works. For instance, every time they file a patent, we assume it will become a product. A company like Apple is researching all sorts of things, and they are sure to patent everything they think is patentable. But it certainly doesn’t mean that they will ever build it.
Also, rumor pundits frequently forget that Apple sometimes announces products way ahead of time, like the iPhone. So a rumor that product X will be coming out in August, may actually be somewhat correct, except that product X will be announced in August, but not released until December.
Of course these three sources are for false or misleading Apple rumors. A fourth source exists: actual facts. These are the rumors that come true. A lot of times this comes from Apple employees or the employees of stores that resell Apple products. For instance, a new iPod would appear on a Best Buy computer system the day before release. Unless it is that specific, it is usually only partially correct. For instance, just before the iPhone release, there were a lot of rumors about the iPhone. All were right in that Jobs did announce an iPhone at MacWorld, but no one got the specifics right.
So the next time you hear a juicy rumor about Apple, remember these potential sources and don’t believe everything you read.
Note: We actually round up and link to rumor stories at our MacMost Apple Rumors page. Here you can quickly see who is writing about each rumor and what they are saying.
So in news today, NBC Universal chief digital officer George Kliavkoff said he thinks that Apple should have iTunes checking your iPod for pirated content.
As an engineer and programmer, I’m scratching my head at this. How is this supposed to happen?
Recognizing that a piece of media has DRM on it is easy. DRM is additional secure information attached to media. But without DRM, you just have raw media. In other words, audio or video in a standard format like mp3 or mp4.
You can only assume that if a piece of media doesn’t have DRM, that it must be illegal. But you can purchase DRM-free music from a variety of sources, including Amazon. You can also import music from CDs in non-DRM format. You can do the same with video, though companies like NBC like to think you can’t.
So, if you are like me, you don’t pirate media, and you also don’t support those who use DRM. So I only buy music from sources that are DRM-free. Mostly, I buy CDs. So how does NBC think iTunes can tell the difference between my legal DRM-free mp3s, and illegal mp3s? They can’t.
I hope that Kliavkoff said this as part of some sort of strategy to justify NBC’s absence from iTunes, and allow them to come back to iTunes soon. Because otherwise, it just shows that NBC has someone in charge of this that doesn’t understand technology.
