Pogoplug Mobile: Cloud Free Media Streaming for iPhones, iPads, and Androids

By Cody Fink

Pogoplug Mobile takes aim at cloud streaming services that charge monthly or yearly fees for serving up streaming media, such as Amazon’s Cloud Drive & Cloud Player and iTunes Match. While Amazon has been pretty generous in giving you lots of free storage right off the bat, and iTunes Match will only cost $25 a year once it launches, Pogoplug Mobile takes your entire media library and makes it accessible through the Internet for a one time fee of $79. While the upfront charge could save you money in the longrun, you still need the upstream bandwidth and a media library stored on an external hard drive or SD memory to take advantage of its streaming capabilities.

The downside to Pogoplug Mobile is that you’ll have to use Pogoplug’s proprietary media library apps on your iPhone and iPad, meaning you won’t have music synced to their default locations as you’d have with iTunes in the Cloud. The upside, however, is that you’ll have access to your entire media library including music, movies, and pictures without having to store that content locally. Media access doesn’t necessarily require a mobile device either — Pogoplug will make available your entire library from the web if you log on from an office or campus computer. Provided you own lots of content not available in the iTunes Store, Pogoplug Mobile might be a great alternative if you want to free all of your indie artists from your home network.

Pogoplug Mobile is currently available for $79 in the United States and on pre-order for €59.99 in Europe.

iPhone 4S Example Pictures

By Cody Fink

You’ve read the iPhone 4S review. Of the two standout features, the camera is the easiest to showcase. What amazes me is that anyone can pick up the iPhone 4S and snap a good picture. With patience and a photographer’s eye you can snap *great* pictures. It makes taking photographs fun.

Past the break, you’ll find lots of example images covering various scenery that should give you a good idea about what the iPhone 4S is capable of. I’ve tried not to touch up any of the photos, but I can’t promise that I’ve accidentally inserted one or two enhanced images. Scroll through, enjoy, and let us know what you think.

iPhone 4S Review

By Cody Fink

iPhone 4S: MacStories Review

It’s been over a year since Apple launched the iPhone 4, and in the meantime Apple has been busy preparing iOS 5, iCloud, getting deals for iTunes Match, and integrating voice technology into their next generation smartphone. iOS 5 has already captured 25 million users in less than a week as iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch owners update their devices to take advantage of free syncing technologies and a revamped notification system. Apple’s iCloud recently went live, syncing data, contacts, and other information between Macs, iOS devices, and Apple’s servers. Hardware remained in Apple’s sights as well — the iPhone 4S launched with brand new guts and was available in white from day one. It’s been a very busy year for Apple, but you’re all here for one reason:

What’s the iPhone 4S like?

You Have Your iPhone 4S: Now Put a Ringtone on It

By Cody Fink

The iTunes Tone Store. Rings. Alerts. Tones.

While you might not be able to replace Siri’s voice with GLaDOS (yet), you do have control over how your iPhone notifies you of incoming calls and messages. New to iOS 5, the iTunes Store includes a special tones store where you can purchase new tones starting at $0.99 for alerts, and $1.29 for popular ringtones. The tones available feature everything from Star Wars sound effects to your favorite music from the 90s.

Instacast 1.4: This Is What iCloud Can Do

By Cody Fink

Instacast with iCloud

If you have a day job and had just started upgrading your iOS devices when you got home yesterday evening, it’s likely haven’t even spent a few hours with iCloud yet. The premise is pretty amazing, even if the initial majority of it is between iOS devices. If you think automatically syncing spreadsheets and documents across iCloud from your iPad to iPhone is cool, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Beyond document syncing, iCloud opens up a world of added convenience that wasn’t available previously. Just think about being able to sync your Angry Birds progress between devices. But we can take that even further. What if we could sync something like RSS feeds between devices? Now you’re thinkin’.

Instacast goes beyond simply syncing your lists of podcasts. It remembers to update which episodes you’ve marked as played, it remembers to add new podcasts you’ve subscribed to across devices, and it even remembers what episode you were listening to. The last item is the magical part: it syncs track position and loads that episode you were listening to in the now playing window if you pause the podcast and want to pick up from another device later. Resuming a podcast is as simple as tapping the up arrow after a refresh. Now this? This is amazinger.

This is one of the best use cases for iCloud. Instacast syncs lots of data to keep everything in sync. While there’s not much I can add beyond Martin’s blog post on Vemedio, the wow-factor can’t be emphasized enough.

With the amount of data being synced, there are some things to remember about Instacast’s iCloud sync. Geeks will immediately try, two devices in hand, to see how instant syncing is. If you don’t allow Instacast to get its data in the cloud, you may run into conflicts where your impatience could overwrite the changes you wanted to save. I imagine this is more true for big podcast libraries. You treat it like you treat Tweet Marker — it’s all designed to be very casual. With that said, syncing shouldn’t take five minutes, but I wouldn’t expect it to be split-second instant. A pull-to-refresh will sync changes down from iCloud while uploading takes place automatically.

Instacast 1.4 has a new audio engine inside for iOS 5 compatibility, bringing back scrolling titles on the lock screen (a bigger deal if you were an early iOS 5 adopter) and adding Apple TV support for AirPlay. If you want to get caught up on what Instacast does and how great it really is, check out our previous reviews.

You can read more about the 1.4 update on Vemedio, and download the update for free from the App Store (it’s only $1.99 for new customers).

Safari 5.1.1: iCloud Ready, Performance Heavy

By Cody Fink

For persistent fans, it’s the features you likely already know about that make Safari a keeper. While I could blabber on about how Safari’s design far outpaces Google Chrome or Firefox in terms of both good looks and usability, Safari’s main assets are simply iCloud related.

The Reading List, revealed as a hidden side pane coated with a fresh paint of white linen, syncs saved websites to your iOS devices almost instantly over iCloud. Added to Safari earlier this year, Reading List is a sort of quasi-replacement for bookmarks. Bookmarks are useful for certain things: recipes, websites with code snippets, or perhaps a photography tutorial you came across online. References. But for things like articles and news you intend to read later, saving those pages as bookmarks often means they’ll be forgotten about and get lost in the clutter. Reading List attempts to alleviate this problem. If you’re reading an article in Safari on the iPad on the train and need to jump off at the next stop, you can save the page to the Reading List and it’ll be available on your iMac once you reach the office. I’ve always said it wasn’t an Instapaper killer — it’s a temporary container for items I want to read now, but am expecting some sort interruption during. Instapaper items are of course read in the evening, either on the iPad or Kindle. Talking about bookmarks, those get synced over too.

One feature I do want to see in the future is the ability to sync open tabs across OS X and your iOS devices. This seems like a no brainer to me, especially if Apple can work their magic in remembering what tab you had open and your page position.

Outside of iCloud, it’s the same ol’ Safari you’re used to. Safari 5.1.1 includes a slew of stability fixes and improved javascript performance, alleviating a lot of the bugs introduced with Lion and 5.1. Still, there’s room for improvement. More importantly, Apple needs to kill automatic tab refreshing. There’s just no need for it on a desktop OS.

Safari has a warm place in our hearts as Mac users, but the recent iOS-ificiation of the browser is turning away once loyal fans. The animations are fluid, page sliding is unique and thoughtful, and iCloud integrations carry over bookmarks and ‘read later’ items for consumption on any device of your choice, but it’s the automatic tab reloading and poor performance that overshadows great features for fear of lost productivity. I was hoping that Safari, improved in 5.1.1 with several bug fixes, performance enhancements, and iCloud integration, would be worth returning to to take advantage of everything Apple has to offer between iOS and the desktop. Unfortunately, the basic problems (or perhaps principle) of Safari’s mirroring with iOS features remain.

Apple’s Cards Makes Sending Memories Simple and Easy

By Cody Fink

Send beautiful letterpress cards to your friends and family with your iPhone or iPod touch via Apple’s Cards, the surprise app unveiled last week during the iPhone 4S keynote. Cards, now available on the iTunes App Store, features a series of thankful, seasonal, celebrational, and travel templates which you can browse via a carousel. New cards slide into view as you navigate the app with your finger, with incomplete cards being saved to a drafts area which can be accessed through the navigation bar.

Presented cards are customizable, enabling users to change the title information, the inside of the card, and the envelope before sending their card for $2.99 within the United States, and $4.99 internationally. Unique edit views make the customization process feel on par with the editing techniques seen in iWork. Pictures can be taken on the fly or chosen from your photo library, then cropped and resized on the card face. Text can be completely rewritten for a personal touch on the inside of the card you’ve chosen, allowing you to personalize messages for a truley unique card.

Cards is a free download in the iTunes App Store.

Apple Launches ‘iTunes Movie Trailers’ for iOS

By Cody Fink

No, not a website! Apple has released an app to preview upcoming movies in the vein of Movies Now. Featuring the same previews you’d find at iTunes Movie Trailers on the web, the iOS app allows you to preview beautiful movie posters, find movies at local movie theaters (either by theater or by movie), and check on upcoming releases by previewing a built-in calendar. Per trailer, movie details can be reveleaed that contains the cast and synopsis for the films you’re interested in seeing. You can tweet or email to share, or add the film to your favorites for later recollection.

You can download the universal application from the iTunes App Store for free. More screenshots past the break.

iPhone 4S Review Roundup

By Cody Fink

What’s the overall consensus of the iPhone 4S? Photos are noticeably superior to the iPhone 4, Siri works well (though has some limitations), and the phone itself is a whole lot faster thanks the A5 chip. Combine that with the dual antenna (the first of its kind) that’s eliminated previous problem areas for the reviewers, and we have a spectacular upgrade.

Brian X. Chen:

And then there’s the antenna. Now that metal band surrounding the iPhone contains two antennae for your cellular services, and when you’re on a call, the handset will automatically switch to the antenna that’s pulling a stronger signal.

From my experience, talking on an iPhone 4S on AT&T sounds noticeably clearer than it did on past iPhones I’ve owned. In areas with good reception, the handset still hasn’t dropped a call. And no, I haven’t experienced any degraded call performance when holding the phone “the wrong way.”

David Pogue:

Speech recognition. Crazy good, transformative, category-redefining speech recognition.

Apple won’t admit that it’s using a version of Dragon Dictation, the free iPhone app, but there doesn’t seem to be much doubt; it works and behaves identically. (For example, it occasionally seems to process your utterance but then types nothing at all, just as the Dragon app does.) This version is infinitely better, though, because it’s a built-in keyboard button, not a separate app.

M.G. Siegler:

Apps that used to take a longer time to perform a task — applying a filter in Camera+, for example — now work much faster. More generally, every app seems to load quite a bit faster. The best way to see this is to load the Settings app that is built into iOS. On the iPhone 4, it can take up to 3 seconds to load. On the iPhone 4S, it loads in less than a second. And the 4S is faster at switching between apps when multi-tasking.

Jason Snell:

The iPhone 4 antenna issue probably garnered more attention than the true scope of the problem deserved. Lots of cell phones have attenuation issues. In more than a year of heavy iPhone 4 use, I’ve rarely changed how I held the phone in hopes of getting a better cellular signal. It happened, yes, but no more than a half-dozen times. Still, I am happy to report that it seems that Apple has eradicated this problem entirely. If you shied away from the iPhone 4 because of attenuation issues, it’s safe to go back in the water.

Jim Dalrymple:

One thing I particularly noticed was the animations when launching and switching apps. When an app is launched or closed, it is supposed to zoom in or out — this wasn’t always evident in previous versions of the iPhone.

The iPhone 4 would sometimes show animations, but a lot of the time, an app would just appear.

The increased performance of the iPhone 4S is great news for developers. They have been pushing the envelope of Apple’s hardware, releasing more complex, graphics intensive apps that require this power.

Joshua Topolsky:

The iPhone 4S took some of the nicest, cleanest photos I’ve ever seen from a mobile device. If you’ve ever thought about using a phone as a replacement for your point and shoot, feel free to start taking that concept seriously. The 4S produced crisp, balanced, colorful photos that were surprisingly low-noise and never over-saturated.

Vincent Nguyen:

The result is video you might not think has been filmed on a phone. One of the issues users often experience when filming on their handsets is jerkiness in the final clip, with the quest to make a lighter smartphone also creating one which is too easy to move around in video mode. Apple’s digital image stabilization does a great job of smoothing things, though, without leaving things over-processed. Add in the on-device editing – either basic trimming as standard, or using the optional iMovie for iPhone app – and the iPhone 4S proves itself more than worthy of a place in the photographer’s pocket.

Walt Mossberg:

The system understands multiple, colloquial forms of a question. I asked, “Will the weather get worse today?” and Siri answered, “I don’t think the weather is going to get worse” and displayed a weather chart. You can check stock prices, addresses, map directions and much more. It also answers in a friendly fashion, saying things like “Coming right up” or “I’m not sure what you said, Walt.” And it has some cute answers built in. When I asked it “What’s the best phone?” it said, “Wait… there are other phones?”

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