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Here's an article written by Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus. He is leading authority on Mac OS X, the author of more than 50 books including iPhone For Dummies 3d Edition, and a Mac consultant, troubleshooter, and trainer. Visit his Web site at www.boblevitus.com; e-mail comments to doc@boblevitus.com. Read his article below.
With more than 85,000 applications available for the iPhone and iPod touch, there is almost certainly an app for whatever it is you love. I've been working on a new book that will feature descriptions of the best apps in more than a dozen categories and have been spending a lot of quality time testing various ones. Here are a few that really impressed me:
I love to read, so a couple of my very favorite apps are Comics and Stanza, which are both free. Comics gives you access to a huge comic book library-store, plus a great interface for reading them. It comes with over 50 free comics, with thousands more available for a buck or two.
Stanza is an award-winning app for eBooks. The Stanza store lets you choose from more than 50,000 contemporary books at prices well below the printed versions, plus access to another 50,000 free classics and recent original works.
You'll never run out of reading material with one or both of these on your iPhone or iPod touch.
I also like to shoot digital photos and movies with my iPhone 3GS, so I am enthralled with ReelDirector ($7.99) and Photogene ($2.99). ReelDirector is a way-cool video-editing app for your iPhone 3GS. You can rearrange clips on a timeline, choose from 27 beautiful transitions, add fade-in and fade-out effects, and create great-looking titles and credits. Photogene ($2.99) helps you improve digital photos with a terrific array of useful tools such as cropping, sharpening, color and gamma correction, exposure and contrast controls, straightening, rotating, cartoon text bubbles, special effects like pencil, sepia-tone, and heat-map, plus a sweet selection of frames in a variety of shapes and sizes. And both apps feature thoughtfully designed user interfaces that make using them easy and fun.
I love music and played The Beatles: Rock Band on my son's Xbox until my fingers bled. So it's no surprise that I'm totally hooked on the RockBand iPhone app ($9.99). If you've ever played the Beatles or any of the other Rock Band games for Xbox, PS3, or Wii, the iPhone rendition is just like them but on a smaller screen.
There are lots of knock-offs of Rock Band in the App store but none of them is as polished and fun as the real thing.
Finally, though the 2009 baseball season is drawing to a close, the MLB.com At Bat app ($9.99) rocks. With streaming video over WiFi or 3G, multiple camera angles, live audio feeds, condensed games, and more, it's a must-have for baseball fans.
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The move will signal the end of O2's exclusive deal with Apple to carry the iPhone in the UK. Orange says that more than 250,000 people have pre-registered their interest in the device so far.
But consumers hoping that the end of the exclusivity agreement will spark a price war between network operators will be left disappointed, with tariff pricing, contract periods and handset costs similar between the two operators.
For example, a 32GB iPhone 3GS handset will cost £96.50 on Orange's £44.04 per month, two-year contract; on O2, the same handset costs £96.89 on a £44.05 per month, two-year contract. That means Orange customers will pay just 39p less for the device than O2 customers, and will save a penny per month on the cost of their contracts.
However, Orange said it offered a "cheaper point of entry", with the 8GB iPhone 3G, the predecessor to the iPhone 3GS, available for free on a two-year, £29.36 per month contract; on O2, the cheapest tariff for this device on a two-year contract is £34.26 per month. It means that users signing up with Orange will save £117.60 over the life of the contract.
Vodafone is also due to start selling the iPhone from next year, and some customers say they will wait until then to see if Vodafone offers more competitive pricing.
"Uninspired with Orange's iPhone tariffs," wrote one person on Twitter. "I'll be wrapping the 3G in cotton wool and waiting for the best deal on the new iPhone in June."
"It's not the price war we were expecting so we hope Vodafone shakes things up," said Andrew Lim, an analyst with mobile phone comparison site Recombu.
All Orange contracts come with "unlimited" data use, which is designed to allow people to take advantage of the high-speed internet connections and full web browser available on the iPhone. However, there is a fair usage cap of 750MB of data use per month, although most users are unlikely to reach that figure.
Orange says that existing customers who want an iPhone will be prioritised, although the company says it is "confident" in its stock levels and that "there won't be a supply issue".
“Since we announced the iPhone on Orange we have already seen more than a quarter of a million customers register their interest on our website," said Tom Alexander, chief executive of Orange. "We will be matching their enthusiasm with a 3G mobile broadband network that covers more people in the UK than any other operator, a commitment to deliver the best 3G experience on the iPhone and best-in-class applications and plans.”
O2 has been criticised in recent months for outages in its data networks that have left iPhone users unable to make or receive calls. Some iPhone users have been so disgruntled with the quality of their network connection that they say they will switch to Orange in the hope of more consistent data connectivity.
Orange will be selling the iPhone in a number of stores, including Carphone Warehouse, Orange shops, and Phones4U. Carphone Warehouse said that by the end of the year, they expect to have sold more than one million iPhones since the device first went on sale in the UK in November 2007.
The iPhone 3GS is the latest device in the range, and has a touch-screen, three-megapixel camera with video-recording functions, a digital compass and voice control. Users can choose from more than 85,000 applications available through the iTunes App Store and download them on to their device.
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AT&T has confirmed that multimedia messaging capabilities will come to the iPhone a few days late, on Sept. 25 — just after the end of summer — bringing to an end months of waiting and speculation.
The service will be available with a software update on the launch date. The update will arrive for customers as a download from iTunes. The feature will only be available for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS users.
“It was important to give our customers a positive experience from day one,” AT&T said. “We support more iPhone customers than any other carrier in the world so we took the time necessary to make sure our network is ready to handle what we expect will be a record volume of MMS traffic. We truly appreciate our customers’ patience and hope they’ll understand our desire to get it right from the start.”
AT&T officials said they have been working for months to prepare their systems and network for MMS capabilities on the iPhone, which is expected to bring a great deal of additional bandwidth the the wireless provider’s network. Officials have admitted that the additional bandwidth consumed by iPhone users has been taxing on their data infrastructure, thus the delay in MMS support.
Source : AT&T to begin enabling MMS on iPhones Sept. 25th? It could happen
If this happens, Good news right?
A mobile iPhone and iPod touch version of of popular banking software iBank has been released by Developer IGG.
iBank is a stand alone application which allows users to keep track of their daily spending and account balances anywhere. The application's feature allows the users to transact, track spending, check account balances, and sync iBank for Mac.
For Mac users, iBank are able to sync in multiple devices over Wi-Fi, MobileMe, or any WebDAV server. However, iBank Version 3.5 is required to be sync with Mac.
The Mac OS version of iBank costs $59.99 on the developer's website. The download (demo version) includes 75 transaction trial period.
iBank on iPhone contains some key features of the software. This includes the memorized payee list, split transaction support, and multi-currency support. Expect even more great features in the future because currently Version 1.0 is available for iPhone. If you currently own iBank 3.5 for Mac, the iPhone version is a must buy.
iBank is available in the App Store for $4.99.
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Apple’s new iPhone 3G S will go on sale June 19.
The new iPhone comes in 16GB and 32GB versions and will set you back $199 and $299, respectively. You can check whether you qualify for the upgrade here. However, Apple’s Web site seems to be buckling under the stress at the moment.
Here’s a rundown of the major hardware changes:
Speed
The iPhone 3G S comes with a bevy of new features including a speed boost of up to 2X on everything from viewing email attachments to launching applications. Probably the biggest improvement you, the end user, will notice is how fast Web pages load.
The new iPhone hardware builds upon a massive increase in javascript performance in the new software of iPhone OS 3.0. Combined, the two advancements should make the web even more accessible than it was before. If you upgrade from an original iPhone, the improvement should be even more astonishing.
It also allows for the 7.2 Mbps HSDPA standard, which means even faster 3G is supported. The iPhone 3G S should also allow for better 3D gaming as it includes hardware support for the OpenGL|ES standard.
Video and Camera
Phone 3G S shoots 30 frames per second VGA video with a 3 megapixel camera that allows you to tap anywhere on the screen to focus on a particular object. You can even scrub through the video and trim to just the parts you want and then share the video on YouTube or MobileMe.
People have been asking for this feature since day one. Now you can have it, no jailbreaking required.
Personally, I expect the ability to trim videos to revolutionize the quality and ubiquity of cell phone videos. Nobody wants to share a 4 minute video on the web when the last 20 seconds are the only bit worth watching.
Also, the new camera features autofocus and auto white balance while also allowing you to macro focus up to just centimeters away from an object. This means apps can really make use of text and photo recognition software. Expect these types of apps to really start to take off with the new hardware too.
Voice Control
While other phones have been voice dialing for years, iPhone has been sorely lacking. There have been apps which have tried to fill this gap, like Google’s Mobile App, but Voice Control looks to be the official answer.
You can activate Voice Control by holding the home button and then dial anyone in your address book. You can also play a song from your iPod too by saying, for example, “play songs by Queen” or “play playlist Top Rated.” You can even activate the Genius feature by saying “play more songs like this.”
Compass
A built-in magnetometer, or compass, had long been rumored to be in the works for the new iPhone. While iPhone 3G’s GPS is good, a compass adds one very important piece of information to users - direction. The built in map app, for example, will reorient according to the direction you’re currently pointing.
This should make navigation just a little bit easier.
Battery
The battery in the iPhone 3G S lasts somewhat longer. While talk time 3G is about the same (5 hours), if you chat on 2G your talk time improves from 10 to 12 hours. Using the Internet on 3G is about the same too (5 hours), while surfing the Internet on Wi-Fi improves from 6 hours to 9 hours. Video and audio playback will also see improvements - video playback goes from 7 to 10 hours and audio goes from 24 to 30.
Nothing amazing here but certainly some decent improvements.
Anti-Grease Support
Your fingerprints should have a harder time making the iPhone ugly thanks to a special coating on the exterior of the device. Now you can be greasier than ever. Oh happy day!
Nike + iPod
The iPhone 3G S also includes support for the Nike + iPod sensor. So if you buy a Nike shoe plus the sensor, it will communicate directly with your iPhone and provide you tons of information about your workout.
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For specification comparison between iPhone 3G S and iPhone 3G click on this link.
