Monthly Archives: December 2009
Our favorite iPhone games of 2009
The first full year of the App Store is coming to a close, and so let’s take a look back at our favorite games of 2009. Note that these aren’t best-selling, most important, or even the best games of the year — we’ll leave those lists to other sites. But these are our favorite games — the games we played this year that we feel stand out as our favorite experiences on the App Store.
The list begins after the read more link below, and be sure to agree, disagree, or share your own favorite games as usual in the comments.
iPhone credit card reader to be demoed at CES
Coming this CES (which is actually next week): a complete credit card transaction accessory and service for your iPhone. If this thing works as expected, you might actually see it in more than a few places (think: street vendors that will take credit card payments). A company called Mophie is planning to show off an add-on that works with an app to deliver credit card payments through Square, a payment service recently started up by Jack Dorsey, a Twitter alumni. This is one of a couple such systems that will be vying to fulfill the function (and probably take a few cents from each transaction for their troubles), but so far all we’ve really got is demos, no actual releases planned.
But maybe we’ll hear more at CES. There’s all kinds of applications here — a solid, working implementation of a service like this could end up being extremely popular for anybody that regularly needs to conduct transactions out in the field.iPhone credit card reader to be demoed at CES originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Can’t find the apps you need? Of course there’s an app for that.
If you’re like me, you find it impossible to keep up with the constant stream of apps being written for the iPhone and iPod touch. As a result, you wind up missing some useful or fun apps that you would buy if you just knew that they were in the App Store.
Searching the App Store using iTunes doesn’t work very well, and there are plenty of sites that review apps (including TUAW), but there are so many apps out there that finding what you want can be a matter of luck rather than skill.
That problem has largely been solved with Appsaurus [iTunes link], a U.S. $0.99 app that can quickly focus on what kinds of apps you like and make decent suggestions for new apps to try or buy.
Apple, censorship, and cogs in the wheel: the Dalai Lama is expunged from Chinese App Store
It’s being reported by PC World that Apple has begun censoring iPhone applications that contain any reference to the Dalai Lama in the Chinese App Store. At least five applications that contain references to the Dalai Lama have been banned: three of the apps – Dalai Quotes [$.99, iTunes], Dalai Lama Quotes [$.99, iTunes], and Dalai Lama Prayerwheel [$.99, iTunes] – contain quotes by His Holiness, while a fourth, Paging Dalai Lama [free, iTunes] tells users where he is currently teaching. A fifth app called Nobel Laureates [$.99, iTunes], details information about all the Nobel Peace Prize winners since the prize began in 1895. The Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
If you don’t know much about the Dalai Lama, there’s a great documentary you should check out called 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama [iTunes]. The filmmaker poses some tough questions to the Dalai Lama about today’s world and the individual’s place in it, as well as presenting the viewer with an excellent biography of this remarkable man. In May of 2008 I had the honor of seeing the Dalai Lama speak in London. He’s a wonderful person with an infectious laugh (and he even sounds like Yoda – no joke, check out my videos here). If his laughter doesn’t win you over, perhaps the fact that he’s a spiritual leader who loves and embraces technology will.
The 12-hour iPhone app
Gizmondo has an interesting story from David Quinlan, a coder who decided sit down over a weekend with a few friends to crank out an iPhone app. It’s an excellent read, not only for the little quirks and tips about organizing a collaborative project very quickly (they sketch out features and then prioritize them, and use Dropbox to keep all the files in the right places), but for the sheer push of how you actually go from idea to concept to code and finally to released iPhone app.
I won’t say it sounds easy — these guys had a good amount of experience at development and releasing software even before they started work on this app, and if you sit down with Erica’s book and hope to release your very first piece of code after just a weekend of solo work, it’s not going to happen. But it definitely sounds possible — the iPhone’s development platform is relatively easy to pick up (especially if you’re already experienced with coding in other languages), and Apple’s release process is open to anyone willing to spend the $100 to become an official developer.The 12-hour iPhone app originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
How to Stop the iPhone from opening iPhoto
I love iPhoto. I use it for most of my photo editing. The thing I don’t like about iPhoto is how it opens each and every time I connect my iPhone to my Mac.
What strikes my as plain silly is that, since the introduction of the iPhone two and a half years ago, Apple has not built in an option in the iTunes iPhone status window to disable the automatic iPhoto launch every time you plug in your iPhone.
If you want to take control of this behavior, and you’d prefer to stick with Apple’s built-in tools (rather than take advantage of the free and easy Cameras prefpane) there is good news: there’s a simple way to disable this ‘feature’ and it doesn’t involve command line stuff.
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