iLife & iWork ‘09 Made Just For The iPhone

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Tomorrow is the big day. Supposedly the last BIG Macworld for some time to come. Macworld has been great to us Apple lovers over the years, giving us some major product launches. In particular the sole purpose of this website, the iPhone. We all love the iPhone, and since many of us have either been long time mac users or converted after buying the iPhone, we love our Macs. Since the iPhone came out Apple hasn’t made much of their software  work together that well with the iPhone. There is of course iTunes, the big bad manager of all your media and the one that talks to your iPhone to sync it up. But when it comes to Apples software suits, iLife and iWork, there isn’t much to be said about the two working together.

Apparently though there is hope for this. According to some new rumors iLife and iWork may be going partly to “The Cloud” as many like to call it. The Cloud simply refers to the internet as a whole since if you use a web app nothing is really stored on your computer. In my humble opinion I don’t think Apple can go completely to “The Cloud” with it’s software suits. I still love having access to these programs when I don’t have internet access. It presents many problems but many benefits as well. If iLife and iWork became web apps, users of either operating system could access them since they only rely on the web browser. At the same time like I said requiring internet access to use the apps. Then would Apple charge a monthly fee or yearly fee to use them? I prefer to pay once for the apps and get unlimited use from them. 

The biggest advantage people see coming from the apps being web apps could be the inclusion of the iPhone in the scheme. Right now I can’t see how Apple might work the iPhone into the iLife/iWork mix completely, but there are some aspects where access to these apps from the iPhone would be awesome. Let’s talk about two of the big ones I see benefiting from an update.

#1 Access Keynotes/Pages documents from your iPhone.

Imagine being able to plugin your iPhone into a projector and grabbing your Keynote presentation from Keynote, or even just creating a Keynote on your iPhone. I don’t know how it would exactly work out, I’m not a visionary like that, but I’d like to be able to use this! As for Pages what if you forgot to email a paper to the teacher/boss, but luckily you have access to your Pages documents and can export it to Word and send it to your teacher/boss. Just in time so you don’t bomb the paper!  Same thing goes for Numbers documents. The only thing I see being a problem is the pain of the smaller screen and text input.

#2 Watch Your iMovies From Your iPhone

This is where most of the speculation resides in iLife. iPhoto already works pretty well with your iPhone. You can view your galleries, with a MobileMe account of course, from your iPhone. This would be something new though with iMovie. iMovie ‘08 already allows you to easily publish to YouTube which then works on the iPhone. With an update iMovie could offer a more direct route to your movies. I don’t see it allowing you to edit a movie through your iPhone. What a pain that would be, haha, especially when trying to edit HD movies. That wouldn’t go over well in ”The Cloud.” I imagine something similar to iPhoto’s special iPhone gallery. This would of course be included in your MobileMe fees, Apple is always looking for someway to add value to it’s $99 MobileMe package.

Overall, as you can tell, I’m a little lost with what Apple is going to do with it’s software suits iLife and iWork. Especially if they are moving them to “The Cloud.” Tomorrow will bring us answers though. Maybe it’s just that I can’t see any good reason to do it. Perhaps besides giving access to Windows users. I always have friends asking me if there are programs similar to iMovie or Garageband for Windows, I just tell them to get a Mac. I’m having an even harder time imagining any big benefit or relevance of this move to the iPhone. The iPhone makes for one great viewing device, it isnt so much a good editing device. I can’t see myself using my iPhone for editing photos, movies, or keynotes. The screen and input gestures make it a little too slow for my liking, but this is where I turn the conversation to you. If iLife and iWork do have elements go to “The Cloud” what do you see it being?

Shazam For Your iPhone

Well I hope everyone is enjoying their day off and the start of a NEW YEAR! With that said I should wish everyone a Happy New Year! I enjoyed my New Years Eve celebration and hope yours was just as good. There are definitely great things to come in 2009, and particularly from the iPhone. Of course Apple is going to bring us many goodies in 2009, one of which I’m hoping for is a new iMac. Besides that though we’ve already been through the iPhone Nano rumors not only ONCE, but TWICE. So what will Apple do in the new year is anyones guess!

As I thought to myself today, what would be great to make a video about, it dawned on me that I’ve never reviewed an app called Shazam! Man, if you are an iPhone/iPod Touch owner and you don’t have this app then you are REALLY missing out. So before I even talk about head to the App Store with this LINK, and download it before you read any further. Shazam is a very simple app but such a great one at the same time. Shazam, like it’s name suggests, magically will identify any music that you hear but don’t recognize. Just for instance imagine this situation with me… Your in a coffee shop just hanging out with some friends, and since coffee shops are soo hip they put on some CD you’ve never heard before but immediately dig the sound of it. We all know you are too shy to ask the barista who this artist is. Or perhaps you are trying to play it cool and act like you know who it is. You pull out your iPhone and open up Shazam, hit Tag Now and Shazam will record a clip of sound from the iPhone. It then, with some kind of voodoo, recognizes the song and sends you the song name, artist, album, and some links to listen to the song on YouTube, iTunes Store, Email the link, etc…

It’s seriously one of my favorite ones to play with, and I use it all the time. I’ll be in Old Navy and amidst all of the noise it can hear the music and identify it for me. Which is one of the surprising things about the app. It can hear through the background noise surprisingly well. It doesn’t get it in every situation, but it has a very high success rate. I wish this app or something like it could have been available when I still listened to the radio. I’d always hear a song and wonder who in the heck was singing this song. The DJ’s hardly ever said what they were playing so it was hard to discover music.

Thanks to Shazam though it’s no longer a problem. I’m sure many other people can agree with me on this. Shazam is one of the most popular apps in the app store, and it’s completely free too. This app is so good I’ve even made another video for you all to watch today. Just check it out below, and again click through to watch it in HD!

Thanks for reading, and leave a comment for the new year. Enjoy the video…

How To Skateboard On Your iPhone

Here comes another game review straight from me to you, consider it a late Christmas gift as I try and round out the stuff we cover on this website a little more evenly. Now that YouTube supports HD video I’m making one to show you how awesome this app is, and really when I say awesome I mean it. This is one of the greatest apps I’ve come across so far since the launch of the app store. Admittingly, I don’t do near enough browsing through it to really find those gems, but thanks to a friend of mine I came across this app. As a sidenote, if you ever have a great app you want to tell me about DO IT! This app has already provided me with hours of entertainment, and even though it is slightly hard to master at first it isn’t frustrating to play. It goes by the name TouchGrind.

You may be wondering right now, “Why is it named TouchGrind?” Well it could be a rollerblading game, or it could be a biking game, what about even a power tool game? Those are all close but no cigar. Do you remember perhaps about 8 or more years ago these things called “Tech Decks?”  They were these miniature skateboards that you could pretend to skate on by using your fingers. I know I was probably in 6th or 7th grade when these became very popular, and I had a good collection of probably 8 of these Tech Decks hiding in my desk. At the time we didn’t have the accessories that came out later for Tech Decks, like the parks and stuff. We just used our books or chairs for our skateparks, hah. 

Needless to say, when I first saw this game that was the first thing that came to mind was Tech Decks. I’m a skateboarder myself and love it when I’m able to get out and skate on a beautiful day. I used to get out every single day and skate, but once again responsibility strikes. I get cooped up inside doing work or trying to get good grades in school. Thankfully though TouchGrind let’s me pretend im outside skateboarding, and honestly I’m better in TouchGrind than I am in real life haha.

TouchGrind is very addicting to play. As soon as I went through the tutorials and learned the controls, which is very important, I couldn’t put it down. Funny thing is, even in the middle of typing this up I stopped and played a little bit. Just goes to show, it really is addicting. The graphics in the game are very good and look incredibly real. One of the things they boast about the game is it’s physics engine and I must say it has a good one. The board reacts to your flicks and gravity as if it were a real board. This is definitely what makes the game fun and challenging.

The game’s main menu is reminiscence of any good video game. The choices are similar to any game of this nature, mainly Tony Hawks series of video games. You have a wheel that has options on it as you can see in the picture below. You must rotate the wheel with your finger to choose other options. To the right of it is a description of the current option which helps explain what you are doing the first few times you are in the game. As a beginner I would choose the warm up option first until you get the hang of the game. Then after that move to the jam session. Once you are ready to unlock boards try your luck in a competition and see how high a score you can get. My skill has peaked so far at about 160,000. I’m getting better though because I want to unlock the boards that are at 1,000,000 points. How people get these scores, I have NO IDEA!

Like I said the gameplay is VERY fun, and there isn’t any justice I can do to it unless you get the game yourself and play it. I did try to capture it in a video so do check it out below. If you’ve played this game let me know what your opinion is on it. Now watch the video. Click through to watch it in HD on YouTube.

 

Macworld ‘09, Time For The iPhone Nano?

As any good and faithful Mac fan, we’re all gearing up for Macworld ‘09. It almost seems to many that Christmas and the New Year are second best to the biggest Mac conference of them all. Macworld has been the platform for many, and I mean MANY, product launches from Apple. I’ve been around long enough to live through four Macworlds, which seems crazy to me but I know many of you have witnessed many many more than I ever will. Sadly, this year will be the last year that Apple participates in Macworld.

Apple seemed to be the only reason to have a Macworld in the first place. They used to have two Macworlds a year up until 2004, then IDG decided to do the show once a year. Worse thing is, is that people used to look forward to the keynotes, or Stevenotes, as they were called. Steve Jobs isn’t even going to be there this year to give the last Keynote presentation either. It’s a rough blow to an old tradition, but Apple makes bold moves like this when it needs to. There will be plenty more “Stevenotes” for a few more years to come.

Rumored this year though is something that I personally am not excited for. That’s right, it’s the iPhone Nano rumor and it’s back again. It’s raging across the internet and for some reason it won’t die! I first talked about the iPhone Nano HERE in this article. As you can tell I’m not in favor of an iPhone Nano. For one I just don’t understand the need for an iPhone Nano, and secondly I have a hard time finding where Apple would justify creating an iPhone Nano. Apple is pretty picky about it’s product lines and adding a product like an iPhone Nano would further confuse users and complicate their product line. But you never know with Apple. I don’t see the iPhone Nano being popular, but Apple has released dud products before. Anyone remember the cube, or what about the Newton? 

So what is it that people are saying about the iPhone Nano? Apparently there are already case makers that have the dimensions of the phone and are producing cases for the iPhone Nano. It’s obviously very important to be one of the first, if not the first, to market with a new case for a product like this. Apple never releases these kind if specs ahead of time, but if the product is real Apple contracts out to factories to make the iPhone Nano parts. Therefore they have the specs and that must be how a case maker gets ahold of the dimensions of the iPhone Nano. Still to me it’s up in the air. In my opinion, Apple has other tricks up their sleeve for Macworld and Apple themselves has fabricated the iPhone Nano rumor as a decoy. Hah, or maybe that’s just me wanting other products at Macworld besides an iPhone Nano. Only time will tell…

Thanks gadgetzone.nl for the picture

Now it’s your turn to let me know if you agree with me, or think I am completely wrong. Is the iPhone Nano a good idea, or is it DOA?! Like I said we’ll see when Macworld comes and Phil Schiller starts the keynote. Until then weigh in with your opinion.

App Store Bringing Dead Apps Back To Life?

The app store is something we blog about all the time, not only here at iPhonenuts.com, but millions of other blogs talk about the app store time and time again. Today is no different, ha. The app store has been a gold mine for TONS of developers, not to mention a great place for me to find things to blog about and review. I believe the app store is well past it’s 100,000th app by now and probably going to break a million in no time. Needless to say, the app store and the policies that follow have been giving countless people, developers and normal folks, headaches since it’s inception. 

One thing I like about the app store is that it’s always evolving. Apple knew it couldn’t possibly foresee all the issues that would arise, and does it’s best at addressing the issues brought to it’s attention. Mainly we’ve all seen the issues us consumers brought fixed very promptly. For that Apple get’s a big high five from me. The first issue with the app store came from certain developers naming their apps in such ways that they would be listed first. Such as adding an underscore _, or number 1, to the beginning of your app. This would automatically list you high up in the store. Apple quickly took care of that.

Soon after there were complaints coming from developers about the policy, and how random it seemed that Apple would deny certain apps, but allow others that had the same functionality. Such was the case with a certain podcasting app. It would let you download the popular podcast Diggnation over the air and onto your phone. But when one app was denied existence the developer spoke out on this injustice. His app was denied because it provided functionality that the iPhone already had. That was the ability to download podcasts straight to your iPhone. I believe shortly after this was all fixed and everyone went home happy.

Secondly there was the issue of developers wanting to send promo versions of apps to people. The only way that existed at that time was for the developer to pony up the money and send a iTunes credit for the price of the app. He’d have to send this to bloggers and to the press if he wanted his app reviewed. Just imagine if your app was priced at 9.99 and you had to send it to atleast 200 bloggers and 300 journalist. Pretty costly just after one version of the app, beware of publishing new version. Again Apple took care of this and now allows developers to send promo codes to bloggers and the such. Something I’m still waiting on you developers to do! Haha, wink wink say no more.

Finally we arrive at today’s biggest issue developers were having with the app store. It’s quite the ironic story as well, it goes like this. Apple was starting more and more to deny apps that provided little or no functionality in ways that Apple deemed fit. The poster child of this case is an app called iFart. Apparently at first Apple was not allowing any app like this in their pretentious app store. Nobody would want to buy an app that turns your iPhone into a fart machine. Apparently though, Apple was WRONG! iFart has been, and currently is, the top paid app in the app store. 

This just goes to show that Apple is listening to developers and to us, it’s loyal fans. When we start to scream and kick about something we want, it seems Apple will revise itself and give it to us. Now, are there any other issues that you see with the app store that Apple hasn’t fixed yet? Voice your opinion here and sooner than you know it Apple will fix the issue.

BONUS: App Graveyard

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