If you have a secret love affair with shoulder padded t-shirts (that you wear around the house when no one’s looking), and you instinctively roll up your sleeves when you put on your favourite blazer jacket (and don’t get why people look at you funny), then here’s an app for you.
Back in June Akai Professional released SynthStation for the iPhone / iPod touch, and we got excited. Very excited. Why? Because we love synths, especially when they are the old school type (cue Terminator soundtrack). And it just so happens to be that Akai has got a rather large name for itself when it comes to synths, especially the old school type. So we decided to take a closer look. You know, any opportunity to lay down some ominous beats over a sea of warm pulsating analog synth.
SynthStation is an all-in-one mobile music creation setup. It comprises of three virtual analog synths sonically tailored for melodies, chords and bass lines respectively. To go with your texture, there’s a comprehensive and customizable drum kit, too. Add some awesome sounding synth effects, a sequencer, on the fly input and tweaking, a mixer to pull it all together and you’ve got yourself a package that Thom Yorke may even appreciate for his next solo project.
TUAWCount The Beats: Akai brings the analog synth to your iPhone, and more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Booyah has released an iPhone and iPod touch version of its Facebook game, InCrowd, and it’s now available on the App Store. The app, like the very popular MyTown, uses location check-ins to create a game around social networking. But unlike MyTown, this app was originally released as a Facebook game. Booyah originally started InCrowd as its first Facebook venture, but it’s now bringing the game back to the iPhone, where it’s presumably more comfortable at development. But the Facebook and iPhone versions work together (in fact, you need a Facebook account to play it), so check-ins on either platform can be seen in the app.
As for the game itself, it’s exactly the kind of thing that’s very popular among the huge tween audience for Facebook games — there’s a cartoonish avatar that can interact with friends socially, and checking-in to certain places earns the avatars popularity and status. There’s a microtransaction element as well — interacting uses energy, and if you don’t want to wait for a refresh, you can spend 99 cents to get more. Standard social gaming stuff, although Booyah is pretty good at putting it together by now.
Booyah remains a company to watch in the social gaming space — it doesn’t seem to have had quite the success it wanted on Facebook, but the company is flexible enough to switch a game like this over to Apple’s platform without skipping a beat. We’ll have to wait and see whether or not the free app gains MyTown’s level of adoption, however.
TUAWBooyah releases InCrowd for iPhone and iPod touch originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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According to a report from Touch Arcade, the previously iPad-only Mirror’s Edge will become available for purchase this evening on iPhone and iPod Touch, alongside Telltale’s first “pilot program” release, Puzzle Agent. Given Faith’s reduction in size from iPad to iPhone, the price for Mirror’s Edge will be dropping accordingly from $9.99 to $4.99.
Puzzle Agent will also carry a $4.99 price point, staying in line with the pricing for other Telltale Games on iDevices. Both games are confirmed to be available via the iTunes App Store right now in some international territories and are expected to arrive in the US App Store around 11PM ET tonight.
Mirror’s Edge and Puzzle Agent slide and sneak onto iPhone tonight originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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For many people on the go, a full charge on their iPhone just isn’t enough to get them by. Oh sure, they could hunt around for a standard wall outlet or plug into their laptop, but that’s not always possible. So, they might carry a portable battery pack, like the splash Intense. But for green-minded folks, maybe something more sustainable?
The Frostfire Mooncharge is a solar-powered, portable charger for your iPhone 4 that attaches directly to the back of your device. Fully loaded up with the power of the sun (or via USB), it will power your iPhone for an extra 315 hours on standby and provide up to 27 additional hours of music, 10 hours of video, and five hours of talk time. From no charge at all, 20 minutes of sunlight will fill its battery pack to provide five extra minutes of calling or 50 minutes of standby power.
A few negatives for this device, right from the start, are: 1) it appears extremely bulky, and there’s no reported weight for the device, 2) its name is sadly misleading, and therefore 3) we have to leave our caves and brave daytime sunlight to take advantage of its full potential.
[via MacStories]
TUAWMooncharge solar charger for iPhone 4 won’t charge via moonlight originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Honestly, I don’t even believe this one, but it’s our responsibility as an Apple news site to keep you updated on the latest rumors, so here you go: A Mexican tech site is reporting that a Telcel executive says there will be a new version of the iPhone 4’s handset released as soon as the end of September.
Marco Quatorze, Telcel’s Director of Value Added Services, says that the iPhone 4 will soon go on sale in Mexico with the same hardware as everywhere else, but that as of September 30th (which is purportedly when the free case deal ends), Apple will be releasing brand new hardware for the phone that will fix the seam in the outer band that causes reception issues.
Anyone who’s been paying attention to the issue knows that story’s full of holes — not only does Apple already consider the whole “Antennagate” issue solved, but it’s extremely improbable that they’ll update the hardware so soon and for that reason. It’s much more likely that the company would just extend the free case program rather than update the hardware before the planned cycle. Plus, as we heard from Apple specificially, “Apple has not made an announcement regarding iPhone 4 pricing or availability in Mexico.” Let’s get the phone on sale before we start talking about updates.*
It’s possible that this is just an error in translation. If you want to get a little paranoid, we might even guess that Mr. Quatorze is trying to keep Mexican customers from buying another cellphone, hinting that there are better phones coming just around the corner. Either way, we’re only posting this rumor here for due diligence — it’s extremely unlikely we’ll see a new iPhone 4 in just over a month.
*As noted in the comments here, on the iPhone 4 Mexico post and on Apple’s own site, the iPhone 4 is available in Mexico, but Apple has yet to provide us with an actual statement to that effect.
[via MacRumors]
TUAWRumor: New iPhone 4 handset at the end of September originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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As the Atlantic storm season heats up and US East Coast residents warily eye Hurricane Earl’s projected path, the team at Kitty Code has put their flagship iPhone app — Hurricane 3.3 — on sale for US$1.99 through September 5. The separate iPad version, Hurricane HD, remains priced at $3.99. We’ve checked out both the mini and mega versions previously.
There are scores of hurricane-related apps on the store, so if the Big Kahuna isn’t to your liking you have some other options too. Stay safe!
TUAWIn Brief: Hurricane for iPhone on sale originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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I like this idea a lot — developer Daniel Hellerman is working on an app for the App Store that will interface with a Windows client to control Blizzard’s StarCraft 2 real-time strategy game. The RTS Gameboard for StarCraft 2 is an app, downloadable starting in September on the App Store (assuming it’s approved by Apple), that will purportedly let you control your units and buildings through the iPad and iPhone’s touchscreen interface. The app promises “mini-map control, detailed unit statistics, and easy touch access to the games most important hotkeys and macros.”
Sounds good, right? Too good to be true, probably — unfortunately, the app only works with a Windows client running on the game’s PC, so this won’t work if you’ve been playing StarCraft 2 on your Mac (although Boot Camp should work ok, assuming the app does what it is supposed to). And then there’s Blizzard Entertainment — while it’s definitely interested in Apple’s iOS platform, it’s not quite so hot on allowing third-party programs that access and control its games. If Blizzard follows past precedent, the odds of this reaching the App Store (especially in a paid form) are slim to none.
But we’ll see — while we’d much rather have Blizzard release a port of the original StarCraft on the iPad, a half-step like this might be fun, too. Hellerman says the app is due out by September, so we’ll see if he can beat all of the obstacles that seem to be in his way.
[via Mashable]
TUAWComing soon: StarCraft 2 controlled with your iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The image above was shot by Jason Mullins with his iPhone 4 on a flight from London to Guernsey. The weird black lines you can see are actually distorted, disconnected copies of the propeller blades, but this isn’t a Photoshop hack; this was how the image came out of the phone.
Virtually all consumer grade digital cameras, including cell phones, do not take the picture instantly when you push the shutter button. Instead, they quickly scan over the CCD CMOS sensor from the top left to the bottom right, like the electron beam in an old CRT television. This is called rolling shutter capture. This scanning process is fast, but sometimes it’s not fast enough. If you angle the device just right and take pictures of fast moving or rotating objects, you can create all sorts of weird and funky distortion effects. You can see more like this in the rolling shutter Flickr group.
(Thanks to Jason for letting us reproduce his shot; he’s put a few more pictures on Flickr from the same flight.)
[Post updated to correct CCD vs. CMOS sensor used in the iPhone.]
TUAWRolling shutter effect can make stunning iPhone photos originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sure, there are any number of phones with dual SIM card slots, most of them built for Asian markets, but the iPhone 4 is about the furthest thing from dual SIM: in fact, it doesn’t even have one Big Person SIM to call its own. Luckily, USBFever has a hacktastic solution to this problem (a followup to their iPhone 3G version), with a new $30 case that can host dual full size SIM cards on the back of an iPhone 4 (entombed in some classy clear plastic, naturally), while running an adapter to the iPhone 4’s micro SIM slot. You can then switch between the two SIMs from the iPhone’s own settings menu, though unfortunately you can’t rock both SIMs simultaneously. Looking for a more DIY approach? Bust out your X-Acto and check out our SIM resizing guide!
Dual SIM iPhone 4 case gives your multiple personality disorder a new lease on life originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We know, half of you aren’t even going to read past the headline before you start angrily banging away about Apple’s admitted antenna gaff and the still-not-totally-fixed proximity sensor, but we’re urging you to look deeper. Think harder. Critique your criticisms. In all seriousness, Apple’s iPhone 4 garnered more attention (negative or otherwise) than any other phone released this calendar year, and for good reason — in fact, Apple itself had to hold an emergency press event just to announce what could’ve been announced in a PR blast: everyone’s getting a free case. That said, Cupertino has still managed to move millions of units in just a few months, and that demand doesn’t seem to be dropping off at any significant rate. If you’re one of the lucky (or unlucky) ones that have managed to procure Apple’s latest iPhone, we’re overly anxious to hear your thoughts on changing it. How would you have addressed the antenna issue? Would you have preferred a less drastic departure from the 3GS form factor? Would you have offered more colors than white and black? Thrown in Bluetooth 3.0 for kicks? Go ahead, the floor’s yours — just don’t abuse it, cool?
How would you change Apple’s iPhone 4? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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