Bursting the iPhone bubble

Posted Aug 27th 2008 4:00PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Apple, Developer, iPhone, App Store, SDK

John Casasanta has written up a pretty damning condemnation of the vulture venture capitalists (VCs) hovering around the iPhone's App Store lately. While many developers are smelling a lot of potential in the iPhone and its SDK, VCs are smelling lots of money, and unfortunately, as was apparently the case between Mike Lee and Tapulous recently, sometimes those smells lead the two in different directions.

It's not that there isn't money to be made in the App Store -- there are some great programs coming out of there, and those programs are certainly worth paying for (even if a lot of them are offered for free anyway). But Casasanta describes a situation where venture capitalists are willing to pay out in spades even for shovelware, and in that kind of environment, no one profits. Not the VCs and developers who lose their money because no one wants their crappy programs, not the consumers who have to sort through a flood of terrible apps, and not the platform -- the Mac, as Casasanta says, is thriving because of the quality of the software, and the iPhone (though it will likely always be a popular phone) will thrive as a platform for the same reasons.

Casasanta's solution is for the developers to do things on their own, and that's a possibility everyone has to consider for themselves. Even well-funded developers can create valuable pieces of software. Whether you receive funding from a VC or from your own bank account, the focus while developing should always be on quality. And any developer pushing out 100 apps by the end of the year (as Casasanta's VC asked) lacks that focus.

Favorite iPhone apps: Robert's take

Posted Aug 27th 2008 3:00PM by Robert Palmer
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone, App Store

Control pads for gaming on the iPhone

Posted Aug 27th 2008 2:00PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Hardware, Developer, iPhone

Ever since games first started running on the iPhone, the issue of controls has always been at hand (so to speak). While the multi-touch screen allows for some very flexible control schemes, it doesn't provide any tactile feedback, and so more delicate controls like a directional pad or buttons aren't always doable (not to mention that they often take up valuable screen space).

Enter the iControlPad, a device that wraps itself around your iPhone and provides some tactile controls to software (we posted about it back in May, but we're closer to seeing an actual release than ever). Touch Arcade's got more on how it works, and pictures of another rumored device (though no manufacturer is mentioned). Button presses are delivered via the serial port, and jailbroken apps already support the pad, with full code and SDK support to come.

Pretty interesting -- iControlPad wants to sell theirs for less than $30, and of course if the idea takes off, they'll have some competition (maybe even from Apple?). The iPhone is already a great gaming device -- would a button-based peripheral make it even better?

Favorite iPhone apps: Schramm's take

Posted Aug 27th 2008 1:00PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Freeware, iPhone, App Store

As you might imagine, my iPhone is more littered with games than useful stuff like Steve's or Victor's. Sure, I've got Twitterific and NetNewsWire, but my most-used apps are of the video game variety.

The game that's most grabbed me so far is Aurora Feint. When it was first released, I didn't get much out of it, but since it's been updated a few times, Aurora Feint has turned into a pretty deep puzzle/RPG. There have been some security scares, unfortunately, and the game's "MMO" promises haven't yet come to fruition. But for sheer matching puzzle gameplay (it's similar to the great Poker Smash on Xbox Live), it's probably the most addictive game on the App Store.

My second favorite is Characters (I originally wrote about it on WoW Insider). If you play World of Warcraft and have an iPhone, this is the closest thing you'll find to an official Blizzard app. It lets you see every bit of information on the Armory in a very nice-looking iPhone app format. We're still waiting on Blizzard to provide us with an iPhone version of the in-game Auction House or mailbox, but until then, this is a great way to look up the WoW characters of folks you meet.

And finally, I've been really impressed with Midomi (and also the similar Shazam), a music recognition app. Hit the app, let it listen to a song you're hearing (or even you singing the song or saying the lyrics), and it'll tell you exactly what that song is. And once you've find it, you can listen to it, find it in iTunes or on Youtube, or see band pictures and reviews. Midomi is the kind of app I've never had on any other devices I've owned, and yet I've put it to great use a few times.

Honorable mentions go to Freeverse's (renamed) Moto Chaser, which is consistently the game that most impresses people playing with my iPhone; Trism, which turned out to be an excellent game, and Frotz and Sketches, both of which I've written about here before.

And I'm still waiting for two things: some great persistent pet gameplay (Wil Shipley, what happened to all of those ideas?), and some great location-based MMO gameplay as well. There's good stuff out there, but we're still just getting started in the App Store.

iPhone 3Gs now outnumber originals

Posted Aug 27th 2008 11:00AM by Steven Sande
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple Financial, iPhone

Blogger Michael Arrington at TechCrunch pointed out an amazing, yet somewhat obvious, thing yesterday -- at some point next week, the number of iPhone 3Gs in use around the world will exceed the number of first-generation iPhones.

The statistics are astounding:

• 6 million original iPhones were sold in about one year
• It took 74 days for the first million first-generation iPhones to sell
• A million iPhone 3Gs were sold the first weekend they were on sale
• Sources estimate anywhere from 750,000 - 800,000 iPhones are being made each week
• Apple is on track to sell more than 40 million iPhones in the next year

This is all happening despite concerns about iPhone 3G network connectivity and battery life. If you're not an iPhone App developer now, you might want to consider signing up to join the gold rush!

[Via MacDailyNews]

Favorite iPhone apps: Steve's take

Posted Aug 27th 2008 8:00AM by Steven Sande
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone, App Store

Well, Victor took away part of my thunder with his pick of Texas Hold 'Em, but I have three other frequently-used iPhone apps in mind.

Twitterrific is my first choice. I love Twitter and formerly used the awe-inspiring Hahlo web app on my iPhone, but there's no native Hahlo app...yet. So for the time being, Twitterrific is what I use to blast my tweets out to the world. If native Hahlo ever appears, Twitterrific gets nixed immediately. So much for loyalty, eh?

My second fave is DataCase. Yeah, I've tried a bunch of the others, but DataCase is still (in my opinion) the best little app for shooting files to my iPhone and then sucking them down to another Mac. I've even had it work with Windows. The interface is not my favorite, but I can put up with a lot for functionality.

Número tres is NetNewsWire. This is the iPhone companion to NewsGator (Mac) and Feed Demon (Windows). Although NetNewsWire received low reviews in the iTunes App Store, I've found it to be very useful for my RSS needs and have no complaints. And the price is right - FREE!

App Store Links --
Twitterrific (free, US$9.99 for an ad-free version)
DataCase (US$6.99)
NetNewsWire (free)

Favorite iPhone apps: Victor's take

Posted Aug 26th 2008 9:00PM by Victor Agreda, Jr.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone, App Store

I've been noodling around on a hand-me-down iPhone with no service for over a week now and I find a few apps keep me coming back again and again. Over the next week or so, each of us with an iPhone or iPod touch will tell you our favorite or most-used apps.

1. ShoZu - OK, I use this maybe a little less than AirMe, but only because I don't use the iPhone as a cell phone. AirMe is great when you're out and about and need to send a pic instantly (to Flickr, in my case). ShoZu is like AirMe on steroids, minus the instant upload. That's a good thing, in fact. If you're a big fan of blasting your photos and text posts to a bunch of services at once, ShoZu is ideal. There are over a dozen services it'll hook into, and you can set up a "CC" list so whatever you upload pushes to several places at once. We'll put this through the wringer soon and give more details in a full review.

2. Texas Hold'em - Like Steven said, this is a port of the iPod version. But I have to give Apple a lot of credit for showing everyone how to make use of the iPhone's features. Tip the iPhone over and you see a top-down table view, throw your cards into the pot to fold, etc. There's a lot of polish on this and it is much cheaper than playing the real thing with my card sharp buddies (none of whom have mortgages, apparently). Mike Rose notes his one big gripe with this Hold'em, in contrast to the classic iPod version: no way to have your own music play in the background while you rake in the chips.

3. ToDo - From our very own Erica Sadun comes this super-simple app that's just a "to do" list for you GTD or listmaking freaks. Aside from the simplicity of the app itself, the badge on the app icon is really handy if you're trying to stay on top of things and only need a glance to see what is pending. One would think Apple could do this with iCal to-do's, but apparently creating a great poker app is an easier task. Perhaps they can use ToDo as well?

App Store links --
ShoZu and AirMe
Texas Hold'Em
To Do

[thanks for the copy editing Dave!]

WinMo mag suspends publication; will publish iPhone Life

Posted Aug 26th 2008 3:00PM by Steven Sande
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, iPhone

In a rather surprising move, the publishers of the top Windows Mobile monthly magazine, Smartphone & Pocket PC, have announced that they're suspending publication. What's even more interesting is that they will be publishing a quarterly iPhone-oriented magazine titled Smartphone magazine's iPhone Life.

Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine publisher Hal Goldstein noted in a blog entry that the reason isn't that sales of Windows Mobile devices are plummeting -- on the contrary, almost 20 million Windows Mobile devices were sold during the last Microsoft fiscal year. It's just that advertising support from Windows Mobile manufacturers, cellular carriers, and developers has dropped significantly.

It appears that they are expecting big things from the iPhone market and advertisers, as they will be publishing the quarterly iPhone mag in paper and online versions. My personal speculation is that they realize that with all the venture capital going into iPhone development, there will be a lot of developers who will want to buy ad space to flaunt their products.

Do you think this move is indicative of a larger trend that may spell doom for Windows Mobile? Voice your opinion in the comments!

Apple expected to beat the Street in September quarter

Posted Aug 26th 2008 8:00AM by Steven Sande
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple Financial

We recently reported on Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster's expectations of phenomenal iPhone sales over the next year, and now he's back with more happy Apple news!

As reported on Macsimum News, Munster looked at preliminary July sales results from NPD Group, did some extrapolation, and came up with numbers showing that both iPod and Mac sales could beat Wall Street's expectations for the quarter ending September 30, 2008.

Munster's prognostications show Apple selling 2.7 - 2.9 million Macs, which is up 28% year-over-year from the same period in 2007 and beating Wall Street's expectations of 2.65 million units. He also expects iPod sales to hit 10.7 - 11.2 million units, which is slightly above Wall Street's 10.8 million unit guesstimate on the high end.

If Apple happens to hit the high end of these estimates (2.9 million Macs, 11.2 million iPods, 4.1 million iPhones, and a 32% gross margin), Munster calculates that Apple could post earnings per share in the range of $1.19, much better than the Street estimate of $1.11.

TUAW will definitely be following this monster news during the earnings call in October.

[via Macsimum News]

Wired iPhone reception survey results

Posted Aug 25th 2008 1:00PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Surveys and Polls, iPhone

Wired has published the results of the iPhone reception survey they were running, and clearly Antarctica needs way more coverage. But they also pulled a lot of useful data out of places where people actually live, and it probably doesn't surprise you.

3G performance is slow almost all over, especially in cities where the 3G service is getting overloaded. If you want to have fast speeds, hang out in Germany and the Netherlands -- those folks had the fastest speeds (and it's no coincidence that the 3G network there has three extra development years on its American counterpart). The worst reception is apparently in Australia, as Optus and Virgin users had their iPhones chugging along at just 759 Kbps.

What can we draw from this? Just like those Swedish scientists told us, it's the service, not the phone. But you know what Mark Twain said about statistics, so just in case you want to draw your own conclusions, Wired has kindly made a Google Spreadsheet of all the data available to anyone who wants it. Anyone want to try putting together that heatmap?

Techie Swedes prove iPhone 3G reception is "normal"

Posted Aug 25th 2008 10:30AM by Steven Sande
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Wireless, iPhone

Blogger Thomas Ricker over at our sibling site Engadget posted an interesting blurb early this morning. Curious about whether or not iPhone 3G is as bad as urban legend seems to make it out to be, engineers at Bluetest in Gothenburg, Sweden, tested it against a Nokia N73 and a Sony Ericsson P1.

The results? Although the P1 was slightly better at receiving signals and the N73 a little bit better at sending signals, the difference between these two popular 3G phones and the iPhone 3G was negligible. The degreed antenna engineer performing the tests pronounced the 3G's capabilities as "completely normal."

This testing equipment is similar to that used by the FCC and mobile phone manufacturers to make sure that their phones are able to properly send and receive signals without interfering with other devices. These tests only tested the iPhone 3G hardware. There are other factors involved as well, including the device firmware and software.

I personally haven't found the iPhone 3G's reception to be any better or worse than my original iPhone. How about you? Leave a comment!

Analyst: 45M iPhones in 2009

Posted Aug 22nd 2008 3:00PM by Steven Sande
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple Financial, iPhone

Despite issues with the iPhone 3G -- less-than-stellar battery life, dropped calls, crashes, etc. -- stock market analysts are very bullish on Apple's product.

BusinessWeek reported that Piper Jaffray tech analyst Gene Munster is forecasting sales of 13 million iPhone 3Gs in 2008, and a whopping 45 million on 2009. That's considerably higher than what other analysts are proposing, which is in the range of 11 million in 2008 and "only" 26 million in 2009.

The BusinessWeek article also mentioned Apple's new production goals point to 40 to 45 million handsets between now and August of 2009, which fits into Munster's forecast nicely. Of course, supply is only half of the picture. Demand for the 3G depends on Apple and carriers fixing issues quickly, decent rate plans from carriers, and killer apps in the App Store.

As Apple rolls into large and previously untouched markets such as Russia and China, forges deals with other retailers such as Best Buy, and works with developers to bring hot applications to the App Store, we'll see how the forecasts compare with reality.

How accurate do you think the projections are? Share your opinion in a comment.

Orange pays Polish actors to line up for iPhone

Posted Aug 22nd 2008 12:00PM by Dave Caolo
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone

Here's an odd story. When the iPhone launches in Poland today (8/22), there will be long lines at Orange retail stores. In fact, it's guaranteed.

Reuters is reporting that Orange has hired actors to queue up at "...twenty stores" on Friday to spark in interest. Before you say, "That's crazy," consider that many Americans were willing to sit in line for a week. For free.

Perhaps Orange is trying to pad a potentially lukewarm reception to high-priced plans. For example, the base iPhone plan will cost 195PLN ($45) per month and will offer users 150 minutes of talk time plus 500MB of data.

Clever marketing or dirty pool? And what happens when the next actor in line reaches the counter and doesn't buy anything?

Cyan porting Myst to iPhone

Posted Aug 22nd 2008 9:00AM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Multimedia, Software

An employee of Cyan Worlds (proprietors of the legendary Myst series of games) has announced that they will be porting the original Myst to the iPhone. Apparently it's an "outside-funded" project -- though who might be funding it isn't yet clear -- and is apparently proving to be an "interesting and fun" project with a small team of just three people. No word yet on how it might work (or work differently) from the original, but the classic puzzle/exploration of Myst is good gaming no matter what platform you're playing it on.

Starting with the NES emulator, the iPhone was following the evolution of gaming pretty well -- at least until the App Store started mixing things up a bit. After Myst, I think we're right around Wolfenstein and Doom at this point -- those were available jailbroken, but it's about time we get an FPS officially as well. Carmack, you interested?

[via TouchArcade, which is strangely down as of this writing]

Transgaming to use SecuROM for Cider games

Posted Aug 21st 2008 10:00AM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Apple, Security

As if Mac gaming needed more problems getting off the ground. Transgaming has proudly announced that in the future, their games will include Sony's SecuROM digital rights management software. They don't mention which games will be getting the extremely restrictive DRM (that some folks have compared to malware), but we're guessing all of them, which means the Mac version of Spore will be on that list, as well as those upcoming Ubisoft titles, and anything else produced with the Cider technology.

Bummer. Why is it a bummer? Because all the evidence we can see actually shows that DRM hurts sales. While Transgaming is obviously proud of this decision, claiming that SecuROM will help them prevent piracy and unauthorized copying, most of the evidence shows that piracy will happen in spite of, and sometimes even because of restrictive DRM setups like Sony's. Transgaming is making a serious mistake here -- they want to protect their games, which is fine. But choosing DRM, especially SecuROM, as a way to do it is a mistake. It'll cause more problems for the company and their users before it prevents piracy in the way they think it will.

[via IMG]

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