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Posts tagged with "iPhone"

BlackBerry Messenger for iOS Coming On April 26? [Updated]

According to a rumor posted by BGR a few weeks ago, RIM was looking for a way to expand its BlackBerry Messenger platform to iOS and Android devices, with a release coming soon in the App Store. RIM apparently wasn’t happy about the hundreds of apps clearly inspired by BBM available for iPhones and iPads, and decided to develop a version of Messenger that doesn’t have all the features available to BlackBerry owners, but still allows iOS users to communicate with their friends and family. A compromise, that is, to have BlackBerry Messenger available on as many platforms as possible.

A poster on MacRumors Forums now suggests BlackBerry Messenger for iOS may be launching in the App Store on April 26. At a “social media conference” in Toronto, RIM’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie allegedly revealed that BBM and “other services” will come to the iPhone on April 26 through the App Store. Balsillie also confirmed that they plan to release an update “this summer” with a new notification system, which may or may not suggest RIM knows something about iOS 5 and the improved notifications Apple has been rumored to be working on. But, then again, it is unclear why would RIM know about such an important aspect of iOS and Balsillie’s statements might just be speculation on his side.

Looking back at BGR’s report, however, it sounded like the Android version was set to come out first:

Right now, we have heard that Android is definitely a go. But again, we’re not sure on timing, though our sources are confident that it will launch some time this year. RIM chose Android first because of the fact that it could develop and integrate something like this much easier with an open platform, but the plan is to build and deploy an iOS version at some point as well.

So it is possible that in the next few days an Android version of BBM will be unveiled, with the iPhone app scheduled for a late April launch. The rumor hasn’t been confirmed by RIM, but chances are they are really looking for a way to rise among the competition in the App Store (made of apps like WhatsApp, Textie and Ping) by releasing an iOS counterpart of BBM, which counts millions of users worldwide. [via TUAW]

Update: BGR now reports they have contacted RIM and, apparently, Jim Balsillie didn’t speak at any conference in Toronto this week.

RIM tells us that the story, reporting that BlackBerry Messenger would arrive as an app for Apple’s iPhone on April 26th, is false. “RIM did not hold a conference in Toronto this week, and Jim Balsillie did not speak at any event in Toronto this week.

Week Calendar 3.0 Is A Powerful iCal Alternative for iPhone

In the past months, I’ve taken a look at different calendar applications for the iPhone and iPad that aim at bringing more functionalities (either through particular interface approaches, extended Google Calendar support, or other features) to a device’s built-in calendar software from Apple. The iOS calendar app, a tiny version of iCal for the desktop, is fast and elegant and works just fine for most users, but sometimes you want or need more from a mobile calendar or agenda. For instance, the possibility to have more views available (rather than the List, Day and Month ones designed by Apple) or “do more” with events and reminders. And while I know most of MacStories readers are huge fans of Calvetica and Cloud Calendar for the iPhone and iPad, respectively, I’m pretty sure some of you have been looking for a slightly more “powerful” or, dare I say, “geeky” alternative to Calendar.app. If so, meet Week Calendar.

The name says it all: Week Calendar’s biggest feature is the weekly view that’s the focus of the entire experience and undoubtedly something that Apple’s calendar app really lacks. In the app’s weekly view you can pinch & zoom vertically or horizontally to show / hide hours and days, double-tap to focus on a specific event or rotate to landscape mode to gain an even broader view. Tapping on the top toolbar allows you to select a date to jump to, whilst selecting an event opens a desktop-like popup with related information. Tap on the popup, and you get to another screen with all the details you’ve entered and buttons to share, print (that’s right, AirPrint) or create a template off the event itself. You can edit an event at any time, and even display the assigned location on a map. Something that I really like about Week Calendar (well, weekly view aside): you can link contacts from the Address Book to an event. Like I said, everything’s pretty full-featured to offer a wide array of options and choices.

“Choices” seems to be a prerogative of Week Calendar: from the main screen, an iPad-like popover lets you switch between 7 different views: List + Search, Day, Week, Month, Year, Agenda, and Today. The “Go to a Day” shortcut lets you manually enter a date to open. Switching between sections and views felt fast and highly responsive to me, although I have to say I’ve only configured the app with two calendars: my personal one, and US Holidays. The app comes with this kind of optional, built-in subscriptions that you can activate from the Settings. Speaking of which, there’s a lot of stuff to choose from in there: from Time Zone support and “Week starts at” to an auto-coloring system for events with a specific title, you can stay assured the option you’re looking for has been implemented in Week Calendar. I can see how many will prefer the simplicity of an app like Calvetica, but sometimes an application for “nerds & power users” is more than welcome. Other features of Week Calendar that impressed me for the quality of the implementation were fullscreen support (you can activate it with a single / double tap and choose what UI elements to hide), possibility to cut and drag & drop events in any view for easy re-arrangement and TextExpander integration.

Week Calendar is an app that needs to be used for weeks – even months – to be fully appreciated. There’s so much stuff to play with, configure and customize it’s not really easy to fit everything into a single article – plus, I believe all these options have the added value of turning the app into a completely different experience depending on how you use calendars. So, head over the App Store now and buy Week Calendar 3.0 – at $1.99 it’s possibly the most “serious” calendar app for iPhone I’ve seen so far. Read more

#MacStoriesDeals - Tuesday

If you didn’t already know, we’ve set up a new twitter account for Deals, it’s @MacStoriesDeals. We’ll tweet the daily deals there as well as exclusive weekend deals too. Help spread the word! Here are today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot! Read more

Official Vimeo iPhone App Now Available

Popular video service Vimeo finally released its long-awaited iPhone app in the App Store, it’s free and, from a first quick test, it seems packed with functionalities. Vimeo fans have been asking for months (years?) to have the possibility to browse videos in a native interface and upload media directly from their devices, but Vimeo delivered more than expected and it definitely appears the wait was well worth it.

Besides letting you browse Vimeo sections, your videos, likes and tags, the Vimeo app packs a full-featured video editor that allows you to record new material and edit it with transitions, titles, audio and video trimming support. The UI is quite polished and elegant, and the app feels responsive although not just as fast as Apple’s iMovie. The fact that Vimeo, however, managed to release an uploading tool that’s also a movie editor with lots of functionalities is just great. You can combine videos together and control volume levels, add music or your own recordings from the iPod library and decide whether videos should be saved to the camera roll or uploaded to Vimeo. The Project Summary panel in the video editor gives you additional details on the video you’re editing, such as the total amount of clips you’ve inserted, duration and resolution. Even pinch to zoom is supported. Furthermore, the Vimeo app gives you control over the quality of the uploads – you can send raw footage or edited videos in SD or HD off to the service’s servers. Last, uploads can be paused and resumed. I love this feature.

The “My Stuff” tab in the bottom toolbar lets you watch your video inbox, likes and watch later queue – perfect if you usually save a lot of videos for later from the desktop browser and you want to watch them on the iPhone whenever you want. Your own videos come with the stats you know and love like daily views, likes and comment, and you can also manage those videos by sending them to a specific group, channel or album. Sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress, Email and SMS is supported, too.

The Vimeo iPhone app looks like a real gem, and I’ll be testing it with my iPhone videos throughout the week. It’s pretty clear however that lots of work went into this app, which brings the complete Vimeo experience to the iPhone with a sweet interface and several features previously only available on the desktop web browser. You can find Vimeo for iPhone in the App Store. More screenshots below. Read more

Amazon Cloud Player Doesn’t Work On iOS — But It’s Not A Flash Issue→

Amazon Cloud Player Doesn’t Work On iOS — But It’s Not A Flash Issue

On Android devices, Cloud Player works by way of the Amazon MP3 app. This app does not exist on the iOS platform because it would compete with Apple’s iTunes Store. Presumably, Amazon could make another stand-alone app for Cloud Player or include it in one of their other Amazon iOS apps, but Apple new platform rules on subscriptions make this a bit murky (Amazon’s Cloud Drive is free for 5 GB but costs a yearly fee for more storage).

You’d think the alternative would be to simply launch an HTML based web-app at this point. @GlennF points out that Safari can support background audio with iPhone 3 software as well, though Siegler reminds us the audio player simply doesn’t work. I worry that the lack of support for iOS devices at launch is a huge missed opportunity, especially when you could have directly insulted Apple by playing on their own turf. Now, the talk won’t be about that Amazon launched cloud based storage and streaming, but that they aren’t on the most popular media devices at launch. I’m under the presumption that Amazon wants a native app in the App Store (but can’t), but then again we’re talking about the same company that requires Android owners to install the Amazon Appstore in eight steps. Thankfully for the Amazon MP3 app, it only takes one.

On the upside, 5 GB (then 20 GB for a year if you simply buy an album) of free cloud storage is incredibly generous, and I suspect John Gruber might be right about the development of a tablet or phone to coexist with a new media ecosystem (see the 8-Steps link above).

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This Music Video Features iPhones with FaceTime

After the music video shot entirely using the iPad 2’s cameras, here comes another one – this time from Canadian band The Blue Stones – which features a couple of iPhone 4s and FaceTime. The video itself was recorded using an HD camera (you can tell from the 1080p option available in the Youtube embed), but band members had the idea to add a unique geek twist to the whole concept, and play the song back recording everything via FaceTime.

Duct tape was used to cover the FaceTime UI on the iPhones (pretty much like movie directors constantly modify the iPhone’s on-screen interface to maintain the “fiction” effect) and, overall, the result is interesting. If only because it shows how much popular iOS devices have become over the years and how FaceTime video quality is far from perfect most of the times (unlike Apple’s webpages suggests in the screenshots).

Check out the video below. [via TUAW]
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#MacStoriesDeals - Monday

If you didn’t already know, we’ve set up a new twitter account for Deals, it’s @MacStoriesDeals. We’ll tweet the daily deals there as well as exclusive weekend deals too. Help spread the word! Here are today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!

Read more

WWDC To Be Software Focused, No iPhone 5 Launch?

There is speculation today from Loop Insight that this year’s WWDC, to be held from June 6 , will not include any new hardware announcements – namely the iPhone. Apple said in its press release earlier today that WWDC ’11 will  focus on unveiling “the future of iOS and Mac OS.”

Based on information from his sources and the focus of the press release, Jim Dalrymple believes that this means more than just a strong focus on iOS and OS X, but a complete focus on the software driving Apple’s hardware forward. The iPhone 5 has, until now, largely been expected to launch as previous iPhones have, during the WWDC launch. Dalrymple contemplates that instead of a new iPhone taking stage it would be Lion, which is set to launch around WWDC and the ever-important iOS.

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Eavesdrop: Share Your iOS Music Library Over WiFi & Bluetooth

When I was in high school, I remember we didn’t have iPhones with wireless sharing capabilities or music streaming apps like Pandora and Spotify. But we did have some iPod Classics, and sharing headphones with friends asking you to listen to your “new songs” was normal. And sharing headphones was annoying: you were forced to mess with cables, you didn’t get the full quality of a song, you always ended up with broken earbuds after a few days. Though, like I said, that was normal.

We have better ways of listening to music nowadays: streaming aside, we have portable Bluetooth speakers like the Jambox and iPod nanos that fit in every pocket and are relatively cheap. Eavesdrop, a new app for the iPhone released a few days ago, aims at taking the whole “local music sharing with your friends” concept a step further by enabling you to broadcast your iPod.app library over WiFi and Bluetooth. Read more