The iTunes Store – now available everywhere
Macworld has just finished and to be honest, the keynote was a bit underwhelming. The BBC has declared that Apple fizzled out, iPhone Central believes iPhone news was a no-show for Expo keynote, and our own Steve Litchfield thinks that the iPhone is in stasis.
While there may have been no new hardware announcements (where art thou, iPhone Nano?), the iPhone isn’t really about the hardware. Its main pull is the software, and the ecosystem in which it operates.
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The App Store on every page
Forgive this beginner’s tip if you’re a hardened iPhone user and thought about this many months ago… BUT….
As we all know, the App Store is just about the best thing since sliced bread. In fact, it’s probably the best thing since bread, full stop. But its icon is on the first applications page only, meaning that you’ve got to get back to this in order to have your weekly/daily/hourly addict’s fix of App Store goodness.
OK, so with the v2.2 firmware update, Apple gave us a single keypress on the Home button to get back to the first applications page easily, but what if you were really enjoying the apps on your 9th page? You’ve then got to laboriously scroll back again, page by page.
Now this isn’t another rant about the flatness of Apple’s application menus, but a tip about increasing the visibility of the App Store.
App Review: Seadragon Mobile
Rather amazingly, created by Microsoft, Apple arch-rival in the operating system business, Seadragon is a graphical demo from one of Microsoft’s fringe labs. It has been implemented first on the iPhone because of the latter’s market-leading graphics capabilities (e.g. the hardware graphics acceleration). No doubt other mobile platforms will follow as and when the hardware catches up. Although labelled a demo, there’s still a huge amount here of interest – and it’s all free.
Seadragon Mobile
![App Review: Ocarina [Updated]](http://www.allaboutiphone.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/ocarina.png)
App Review: Ocarina [Updated]
I’m not sure how many app reviews we’re going to be doing on this site, but one’s things important: highlighting the ones that we think are interesting, especially when they take the iPhone experience in unforeseen directions.
In that vein, Ocarina fits the bill perfectly. When the iPhone was released, the potential of the platform was evident. But even when third-party applications finally came on the scene, I never expected to find an application that turns my phone into a wind instrument!
Laurent Denoue asked me to review his iPhone app 
App Store – Help, I want my life back!
You know, once the iPhone App Store got to a few hundred applications, I sat back and thought “Well, that’s a decent selection, it’s getting up to the speed of other handheld platforms and, hey, there are some nice apps here to keep me occupied.”
Once the App Store got to a few thousand applications, I started to get worried. “Whoa there, this is starting to get seriously overwhelming. I’m only just keeping up and I already have more applications than I’ll ever need…”
Then the App Store (last week) hit 10,000 applications, with new apps now arriving at the rate of over 50 a day. At which point, as someone who likes to feel like I’ve got a handle on a software scene, I’m really panicking. “Stttooooppppp!! This is a deluge and great apps are being missed right, left and centre – even trying to keep up is taking over my life – and I want it back!”
9 App screens - 144 apps!
The traffic colours on the iPhone’s Google Map
Consider this a bit of a Saturday morning throwaway post 
This may be a case of “duh”, but since traffic data for England went live on the iPhone’s Google Map, I’ve been badgered to find out exactly what the road colour scheme means. I had a quick look at traffic on a desktop Google Map, and saw:
As far as I can tell, there is no black and red indicator on the iPhone’s map, just red. So we’re left with:
- Green: 45mph+ (Billy Whizz)
- Yellow: 25mph+ (just about cruising)
- Red: 0mph+ (going nowhere fast)
There’s also grey which, according to Paul Stamatiou, indicates no data available. By the way, there’s no traffic data available yet for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland…
Three reasons to jailbreak: Backgrounder
James wrote recently that “Background push notification is Apple’s solution to the problems created by refusing to grant multi-tasking to 3rd party applications.”
I think push notification is a great idea, as it avoids running apps in the background, and thereby draining the battery. Plenty of applications will benefit for from this, such as RSS readers having new stories quietly pushed, with a pop-up or icon badge change to alert the user. However,
- As of firmware 2.2, Apple haven’t yet turned push on
- Push just isn’t suitable for many applications
Take Tuner – an internet radio app. Push notification is pointless in this context where, for example, I just want to listen to the radio while I compose an email. At the moment, this is impossible – unless you jailbreak and install Backgrounder.
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Three reasons to jailbreak: PdaNet
Yesterday, I looked at the good reasons for jailbreaking your device, and introduced Cycorder. Today, I’m going to look at an app that allows you to use the data package on your iPhone with a laptop.
(2) PdaNet
Almost all the other phones I have owned (a) will allow you to tether a computer. This means that the computer can use the phone’s data connection to access the internet. This is accomplished through either Bluetooth connection sharing, or by making the phone into something of a wireless router that the computer can connect to.
Not so with the iPhone. It’s not built-in, and the only app to allow tethering – Nullriver‘s NetShare – only made a brief appearance on the App Store before it was pulled.
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Three reasons to jailbreak: Cycorder
I’m posting more and more reviews of applications to this site (a), and so far they’ve only been from Apple’s official App Store. But you can jailbreak your iPhone; jailbreaking allows you to massively expand the potential use of your iPhone, beyond the limited functionality currently granted by Apple. If you do decide to jailbreak, I’d recommend Pwnageto do so, following the tutorials at iClarified (b). You will gain you deeper access to not only the device’s hidden filesystem, but two more unofficial “app stores”, Cydia and Installer (c).
Most of the applications available in Cydia and Installer will not be allowed in the official App Store. They may contravene Apple’s (somewhat opaque) store policies, or run in the background, or not have a graphical interface, etc. The majority of applications are free. Many are ported Unix apps that are open source, and some are commercial applications. I’d like to highlight three free apps that I think are so good, it’s worth you taking the time to jailbreak your iPhone.
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