Apple To Go With Bluetooth 4 Rather Than LTE?

Apple’s interest in LTE technology has been the subject of much discussion — but a new rumor says that Apple may instead look to the next generation of Bluetooth technology for short-range communication. According to ITProPortal, Apple’s new MacBook Airs and Mac Minis are the first mainstream devices to push Bluetooth 4, a protocol which includes ”Bluetooth Low Energy” or BLE, a way for gadgets to use substantially less power for small amounts of communication.

ITProPortal thinks that Apple could use BLE instead of NFC for things swipe-to-pay, transferring contact details, and other low bandwidth activities, and then switch to full power for normal Bluetooth usage — which could all be done via a single chip rather than needing a separate NFC one.

Adobe retracts incorrect statements about OS X Lion Flash performance

Georgia really wants Flash support on the iPad, with the option to toggle it on and off as she so chooses, and I’ve said in the past I’d like a Flash Player app (Flash is technically more than just video, but 90% of the time people talk about wanting Flash they just want their videos.) But [stuff] like this really makes me question if I even want that. When OS X Lion debuted earlier this week, Adobe quickly blasted off a blog post saying Apple had killed hardware acceleration and Apple was to blame for poor Flash performance in Lion.

And fair enough. It’s not like Apple provided a beta process, with a preview release in early June and a GM candidate several weeks ago. It’s not like major developers like Adobe didn’t have time or opportunity to get the beta, get it running on as many Macs as possible, and figure out any issues before the public release. So what did Adobe do?

The final release of Mac OS X Lion (10.7) provides the same support for Flash hardware video acceleration as Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6). The previous “Known Issue” described in a tech note suggesting that video hardware acceleration was disabled in Lion was incorrect and based on tests with a pre-release version of Mac OS X Lion that related to only one particular Mac GPU configuration. We continue to work closely with Apple to provide Flash Player users with a high quality experience on Mac computers.

“A” pre-release version, “only one particular Mac GPU configuration”?! And based on that they blast Apple in a blog post that gets wide pick up? Nice.

The retraction is classy but Adobe’s failed to innovate or improve Flash for much of the last decade. It’s the IE6 of plugins. In 2007 people complained about the lack of Flash on the iPhone and blamed Apple — when there was no version of Flash that could run on the iPhone. Now, 4 years later, there’s still no decent Flash for mobile, only various levels of beta that work only for Flash video, and even then are hit and miss at best (PlayBook and TouchPad both have serious firepower behind them and even they don’t approach a consistently great user experience for Flash.)

So either the Flash technology is great and deserves to continue, and is just taking longer than anyone would like to get there, or it was a proprietary filler, like ActiveX, that was clumsy but useful, and has reached its limits. Either way, my advice to Adobe remains the same — shut up. Stop bitching, stop blogging, and ship a great version of Flash for mobile. And for Mac. You’ve had a decade for the latter and almost half that for the former.

[Adobe blog]

Cut the Rope’s Om Nom breaking into digital comics soon

Today at Comic-Con, ZeptoLab has announced a partnership with Ape Entertainment to develop a digital comic series featuring Om Nom. If you’re a fan of the popular game Cut the Rope, you’ll be familiar with, Om Nom. He’s the one everyone fell in love with when Cut the Rope was originally released.

“It’s an amazing opportunity to work with ZeptoLab on one of the app world’s most addictive and successful games,” said David Hedgecock, CEO of Ape Entertainment. “The comic book series is shaping up beautifully and we are making something that we know fans of Cut The Rope and fans of good entertainment everywhere are going to absolutely love!”

Angry Birds has spawned a brand beyond the original video game. Looks like Cut the Rope just might as well. What’s next, a toy line? 3D movie?

Sid Meier’s Pirates! now available for the iPad, well shiver me timbers!

Sid Meier’s Pirates! has just been released for the iPad and it is one of the games from that past that should bring a smile to the face of anyone over 30. Originally released in 1987, this was the first game to feature Sid Meier’s name in its title to attract fans of Sid’s other games; which were mostly flight simulators at that time. The iPad version released today has updated graphics but still has the great game play of the original.

All hands on Deck! Sid Meier’s Pirates! is an exciting high-seas adventure that allows buccaneers to helm one of 27 fully customizable ships as they descend upon unsuspecting ports of call to amass a motley crew of seafaring bandits. As a fearless Pirate Captain you will collect hidden treasure maps, undertake daring missions and courageous rescues, and swiftly hand out pirate-style justice to local braggarts at every port. The wild call of the ocean will lure you back to sea where they’ll encounter enemy pirates and engage in mind-blowing open sea battles unlike any other game before on the iPad.

Features:

• Take the helm of 27 ships and customize them with assorted ammo, cannons and other upgrades


• The classic adventure by renowned creator Sid Meier, re-imagined for the iPad to take full advantage of touch controls


• Use the iPad’s touch controls to parry, counter and effectively out duel your opponents into submission with lightning quick moves onboard ships, in taverns, and even in the exclusive Governor’s mansion


• Challenge and pursue the most famous pirates in history, including Blackbeard, Captain Kidd and Henry Morgan

The game is available for the iPad only. The iPad 2 also has some additional features; such as the ability to “Piratize” your own photograph, improved game graphics and additional video effects. This one is definitely the one to accompany me on my upcoming summer vacation!

[$3.99 – iTunes link]

 

 

 

Facebook to Revamp Its App Following Significant Criticism

You don’t make it to 750 million friends without a few critics. Thankfully for Facebook, those critics are only expressing negativity over a buggy iPhone app. Over 65% of reviews on the App Store for the Facebook app are unanimously unfavorable, rating the app one stars out of a possible five. The other 35% are not all that enthusiastic either, with only about 15% awarding the app five stars. After three years of updates providing minor improvements, the current version has an average rating of two stars. Ouch.

The main reasons for the backlash users have been citing are for issues with data being retained between updates, crashes, and most importantly how messages and notifications randomly fail to appear. Through my (admittedly too often, but who is not addicted to Facebook?) usage of the app, I can attest to the latter three being real annoyances.

With Facebook’s recent plans of bringing the social networking service to 2,500 feature (read: dumb as opposed to smart) phones coming to fruition a little over a week ago with the “Facebook for Every Phone” Java app, there has been a growing dedication to making Facebook accessible on every device. But with 750 million people using the latest-and-greatest version of what started out as The Face Book in a Harvard dorm room, who can blame them?

Spokesman Derick Mains is aware of the criticism and bugs users are experiencing, promising a “new app” in the near future. He refuted claims that Facebook has been “neglecting” it, saying that they “are fully committed to offering our iPhone users the best possible Facebook experience and have been innovating on the platform since its launch four years ago.”

Tens of millions of people will be happy about the better-optimized, less problematic iPhone app since there are currently a staggering 84 million active users. It does not take more than a guess to realize that Facebook is easily one of the most popular apps and certainly manages to keep users compelled to check it daily more so than most others.

We couldn’t imagine Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg anywhere else but staring at iTunes refreshing the reviews once the new update is released a la The Social Network.

[partially via onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/07/facebook-users-give-iphone-app-thumbs-down.html');" target="_blank" href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/07/facebook-users-give-iphone-app-thumbs-down.html">Los Angeles Times]

Young Leukemia patient granted wish to make iPhone game

A nine year old boy has developed his own iPhone game and it is now available in the App Store. Owain Weinert has pre-B Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia and one of his wishes was to develop his own iPhone game. He asked the Make-a-Wish Foundation, who did what they do best and made his dream a reality.

The game he developed with 4^th & Battery is called Allied Star Police. It was released yesterday and already has a few 5 star ratings. You take command of the Allied Star Police and it is your responsibility to blast your enemies in the side scrolling all action shooter!

“My brother can’t stop playing it, my dad can’t stop playing it, and neither can I,” Owain said. “This started off as a dream of mine and now my friends and people all over the world can play my creation.”

It is a free game and a universal binary too; so works with the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Give it a try and show your support for this very talented young boy!

[Free – iTunes link via Cult of Mac]

 

miCal for iPhone updated and on sale!

miCal – missing Calendar, by entwicklungsschmiede UG & Co KG, has been updated with optimized loading times and user defined repetition of appointments.

The app captures new appointments directly and is easily synchronized with existing calendars like Outlook, Google, Exchange or Facebook Events. The origin of various appointments can be traced at any time via color-coding. MiCal stores a suitable title for each event, a detailed description, a from-to-time and a possible repetition. Furthermore, an alarm may be set to alert the user through a beeper or via e-mail.

Update includes:

I really like miCal. It’s different and packed full of features. The danger with jamming an app full of features is clutter, but the developers have done a great job with miCal and the organization of the UI works and looks great.

miCal is on sale for $0.99 until Sunday. Screenshots after the break.

[iTunes link]

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.