1st Impressions

The iOS 4 update was just released and I installed it on my iPhone 3G (now for sale) to check it out.  Give yourself plenty of time for this one.  The  update takes a lot longer than a traditional backup.  The installation warned that it might take up to an hour, and they mean it.  The backup alone took 40-minutes.  It then went though a restore, a verification of the restore, and then a restore of the firmware.  This process took another 8 minutes.  Once the iPhone re-started (another couple of minutes), it had to restore everything from the backup.  One odd thing to note is that this restore message was displayed on some water-drop wallpaper that the 3G is allegedly incapable of. LOL

After the 5-minute restore of whatever it was doing, it then reset yet again and started in on the restore of all my installed apps.  I was 66-minutes into the process when the first of two post-app-install reset occurred and still had another restore of applications process to go through.  This second “Restoring iPhone Applications” process took considerably longer.  I was an hour and forty minutes into the process before that completed and it started in on my music and videos.  With about 6GB of audio books on my phone, that took a while as well.  All told, the entire process took much closer to two hours (actually over by 15 minutes) than the one hour I was warned to expect.  And, once the process finished, it did not re-connect to iTunes, the phone locked up, and I had to manually reset it.

Out of the box, I have to say that I am disappointed (but not surprised) that Apple refused to allow 3G owners to have access to wallpaper and “multitasking”.  I know the hardware is capable of it because the jailbroken phones do it.  Sure, there is a performance issue, but that should be the decision of the user, not Cupertino.  Saying that the hardware is incapable of something while it can be demonstrated to work is inexcusable.  It’s a small issue though as my days with this unit are coming to a close.

Of the other options, there are some that will have no impact on me whatsoever.  For example, the mail improvement won’t really effect me as I only use one mailbox and use a third-party Gmail app for that.  Support for iBooks is another thing that I won’t use.  I just don’t read much any more.  If they were to add better support for Audible books, that would be a different story.  While I like the ability to create playlists, the audio content on my iPhone is basically books and doesn’t change a lot so I won’t be using that too much.

What I do really like is the folders, options to search the web or Wiki from the search screen, character counts on text messages (if I can figure out how to get them to show up even when the settings option is checked), and persistent wifi connections.  The spell-check is a great improvement as well.  I can’t tell you how many times I hit one of the wrong keys in the keyboard sequence of “UIO” on the keyboard.  ”List” more often than not becomes “Lust” or “Lost” though, so the spell-check isn’t going to pick that up.  I’m also looking forward to checking out the camera options.  I can also see myself using the new ability to gift an app.  Any takers?

Here are the full features list from the Read-Me that is part of the install:

Hacker Evolution 2010 reminds me of the one time I went to a casino.  I could not figure out how the games were played and quickly lost interest.  The premise probably isn’t that complex, but it is just different enough to confuse me.

The goal of the $0.99 game is to hack the computers being shown on the screen using either a direct hack or a virus.  You start out each level with a certain number of viruses for attacks and a firewall level that reflect the strength of the servers you can hack.

The key to this process, and what is smarter than I am, is that if you don’t do these attacks in the right order and bounce your attacks off of the right servers, you run out of viruses and firewall and can’t go any further.  To make this more frustrating, there is no “restart” button on the screen.  You have to exit out to the menu and start a new game.

The game offers a couple of pages of help.  But, contributing to my confusion, the text is fairly small and I can’t read it.  I think the game would really benefit from a tutorial level that walked the user through a level.  I don’t believe the game is complicated.  I like a game that is a challenge.  The addition of a short tutorial and/or some larger text in the help section would help with the understanding though.

Overall, I’d probably give the game a score of a B.  It isn’t as addictive as other puzzle games I’ve played, but should offer multiple hours of challenge for a reasonable price.  If you want to check out the concept, Hacker Evolution Lite is a free version of a similar title from the same developers and should give you a good idea of game-play.

There has been a lot of talk lately about which is better, the iPhone 4 or the Android. tYe only problem with this comparison is that the folks involved in these discussions are usually compairing apples to oranges. By that I mean that they are usually dealing with 2 out of 4 different variables: Apple’s IOS, the iPhone 4′s hardware specs, the Android OS, and any number of phones running on the Android OS.

What usually happens is that someone who has drunk too much of Steve Jobs’ Kool Aid (to the point that they would chose a hand crank rotery phone so long as it has an Apple logo on it) gets their hackles up whenever someone so much as mentions Android and then steps up on their pedistal to preach the merits of Apple while calling down fire & brimstone on those who break the 11th commandment by blaspheming the name of Steve Jobs and worshiping the pagan god called Android.

So…. let’s look at a few of the talking points involved in this debate.

1) When the iPhone (or iPod touch) first came out one of the biggest selling points was the multi touch screen and the interface for accessing and opening programs. (I have to admit that yhus was what motivated me into getting a 3G when was first teleased…) Since that time however, that hardware spec has just about become the norm. That being the case, I think that this issue is a tie.

2) Now let’s look at the OS. Lifehacker recently compared both both operating systems from the perspective of a power user (aspects such as tethering, battery life, multitasking, and such) and, while close, the Android devices beat out the iPhone 4 by a score of 13 to 11 with a tie in 4 catagories.

One of the catagories in which Apple beat out Android was a little misleading however. That catagory is Battery Life. While the battery life of the new iPhone is superior to most Android devices currently on the market, you need to bear in mind that not only does battery life vary between different Android devices, but many of them are designed for easy battery replacement by the user so carrying around a spare battery is not a bad idea.

3) Another area that needs to be compaired is app availability. While it had been a week or two since I looked at any statistics the iPhone clearly has more apps available at the present. One stat I read a few weeks ago stated that the Android market place had roughly 20% as many apps as those in iTunes but was growing much faster. I can vouch for that as I shop the iTunes app store almost on a daily basis and have noticed a drop in new iPhone apps recently as the developers are spending their time converting current iPhone apps over to HD apps for the iPad instead of developing fresh apps as often as they once were.

4)One thing that has to be considered us the fact that you can coount on a coiple if things happening on an anual bases – new TV series being released in the Fall and Apple revealing a new iPhone in June. with only one Apple iPhone model being released a year they have to really push the envelope as far as technology goes whereas HTC, Motirola, Samsung, and others are releasing new Android models almost on a monthly basis. While the iPhone 4 may arguably be the best phone on the market at the time it was announced, by the time it is actually released 3 short weeks later there are already going to be Android phones ready to compete head to head against the iPhone 4 and there are still 11 more months in which mire competitors will be released. while I pnln on upgrading to an Android phone as soon as the dust settles in another 3-4 weeks, I also look forward to seeing what else will hit the market between now and when the iPhone 5 is announced in another year.

5) The final but one of the most important areas that need to be explored when comparing Apple to Android is the philosophy behind how open the access is to not just the hardware APIs but the OS itself. While some feel that the tight grip Steve Jobs has on the release of apps makes the iPhone a better device because they are tested and pretty much guarenteed to work well with existing apps, I believe that it has mote to do with Apple wanting a cut from every iPhone application that is sold and not due to any concern Steve has regarding application comparability.

Developers of Android apps, on the other hand, can make better and more powerful apps because they can write code that can take advantage of every aspect of both the hardware and the software.

Apple, on the other hand, not only wants you to pay $200-300.00 (with a 2-year commitment to a crappy celluler carrier as well as a mandatory $30 a month for a data plan) but then they want to control everything you install on it. That is like you purchasing a computer and installing an OS made by Microsoft and not only being forced to use Internet Explorer but only being able to install software sold by Microsoft.

While there is nothing wrong with using Intermet Explorer or Micresoft Offics, Bill Gates would be in huge trouble if Windows 7 refused to allow you to install other Internet browsers such as Chrime or Firefox and then go so far as to block access to Google Docs.

the Feds already busted Microsoft for simply setting up Windiws so that Inyernet Explorer was installed as the default browser. Why then is Apple allowed to get away with activity that is much mote like a monopoly in nature. if you know the answer to that question then I would live to hear it…

There has been a lot of talk of late about which is better, the iPhone 4 or the Android. The only problem with this comparison is that the folks involved in these discussions are usually compairing apples to oranges. By that I mean that they are dealing with 4 different variables : Apples IOS, the iPhone 4′s hardware specs, the Android OS, and any number of phones running on the Android OS.

What usually happens with many opinions is that someone who has drunk too much of Steve Jobs’ Kool Aid (to the point that they would chose a hand crank rotery phone so long as it has an Apple logo on it) and then get their hackles up whenever someone so much as mentions Android.  They then step up on their pedistal to preach the merits of Apple, while calling down fire & brimstone on those who break the 11th commandment by blaspheming the name of Steve Jobs and worshiping the pagan god called Android.

So…. let’s look at a few of the talking points involved in this debate.

1) When the iPhone (or iPod touch) first came out, one of the biggest selling points was the multi touch screen and the interface for accessing and opening programs. Since that time however, that hardware spec has just about become the norm. That being the case, I think that this issue is a tie between the two platforms.

2) Now let’s look at the OS. Lifehacker recently compared both the both operating systems from the viewpoint of a power user (aspects such as tetheribg, battery life, multitasking, and such) and, while close, the Android devices beat out the iPhone 4 by a score of 13 to 11 with a tie in 4 catagories.

One of the catagories in which Apple beat out Android was a little misleading, however. That catagory is Battery Life. While the battery life of the new iPhone is superior to most Android devices, you need to bear in mind that not only does battery life vary between different Android devices, but many of them are designed for easy battery replacement by the user so carrying around a spare battery is not a bad idea.

3) Another area that needs to be compared is app availability. While it had been a week or two since I looked at any statistics, the iPhone clearly has more apps available at the present. One stat I read a few weeks ago stated that the Android market place had roughly 20% as many apps as those in iTunes, but was growing much faster. I can vouch for that as I shop the iTunes app store almost on a daily basis and have noticed a drop in new iPhone apps recently as the developers are spending time converting iPhone apps over to HD apps for the iPad instead of developing fresh apps as often as they once were.

4) The final but one of the most important areas that need to be explored when comparing Apple to Android is the philosophy behind how open the access is to not just the hardware APIs but the OS itself. While some feel that the tight grip Steve Jobs has on the release of apps makes the iPhone a better device because they are tested and pretty much guarenteed to work well with existing apps, I believe that it has more to do with Apple wanting a cut from every iPhone application that is sold and not due to any concern Steve has regarding application comparability.  What started out as an emphasis on what was best for users and the user experience has turned into what is best for Apple and their hold on market share.

UPDATE: PC Magazine recently ran a new article on this topic as well.  According to the numbers shared there, and ones Steve Jobs conveniently failed to point out in his keynote, Apple shipped 8.75 million iPhones last quarter.  Google activated 9 million devices in the same time period.  Not quite the “we rule the world” picture from Steve’s slideshow.

Developed by G5 Entertainment, Virtual City is a city simulator is a similar mould to that of Sim City and Transport Tycoon, but without the complexity of the aforementioned games. Players can choose to play single session missions or opt for a more engaging long term campaigns across an extensive sandbox environment.

In Virtual City, players build and develop the city of their dreams, whether suburban utopia or bustling metropolis. Virtual City players begin by choosing from dozens of residential homes and industrial buildings, and the possibilities from there are limitless. As their cities grow, players can produce and transport goods, create mass-transit systems, and entertain their city’s residents with parks, cinemas, stadiums and events. In order to keep the city safe and its citizens happy and healthy, basic services like health care, public safety, waste collection and recycling must be planned and administered.

Virtual City combines a robust city-building simulation with intuitive, easy to understand controls. First-time players will have no trouble learning how to play, while more experienced gamers will find enough depth and variation to keep them enthralled for hours. Trade with neighboring cities and accomplish the construction of landmark buildings like Marina, Train Depot, and Spaceship Launch Pad. Help troubled cities get back to prosperity, deal with economic downturn, population crisis, and consequences of natural disasters. Achieve balance between key parameters of your success: Time, Income, Environment, Population, and Happiness. Play over 50 challenging levels, and unleash your inner mayor in Free Play mode on 5 large sand box maps.

Look for a full review soon and the release in the app store in the upcoming weeks.

Tower Defense games in the iTunes are a dime a dozen. As one of the more popular genre of games available for the iPhone, I myself have several on my iPhone.

Another favorite game, and one that, to my knowledge, has consistently been among the top sellers in the iTunes store, is Pocket God. It is a unique game that allows you to play God and and get some sadistic pleasure out of tormenting the residents of some small island.

I don’t know the name of the developer who came up with the idea for Babel Rising, but, by marrying the best parts of both games, they have what is sure to be a reall winner on their hands.

The concept is simple. you play God and, following the story from the Bible’s Old Testament, use your might to stop the humans from building a tower to teach into heaven.

Now, before going any further, I have to admit that my conservative Christian upbringing made me initially uncomfortable playing at being God. But, after thinking about it for a while, I decided that God did the same thing (although confusing languages isn’t as much fun on the iPhone as balls of fire or flash floods…LOL) so I am just trying to follow the philosophy of WWJD…

When you play the game for the first time you are automatically given six different weapons to choose from. Another one is available for free from the in-app store. At the moment there are an additional two weapons for purchase, both for $0.99 each. As you use the weapons, each of them require a “recharge period” with the time period being determined by the power of the weapon.

Like so many games out there, the game allows you to track your scores and compare them to others using Open Feint.

Babel Rising, marketed by BulkyPix, is available for the low low price if $0.99 and is well worth it. It is for sure a game that will remain in my phone for ages to come.

I have a couple of promo codes for the game and will give them to the first two people that email me (use “Babel Rising Promo Code” as your subject ) with the scripture reference from the Bible where the real tower of Babel was destroyed. I can be reached at dreaton(at)gmail.com

Every once in a while an app comes around that causes you to sit back in awe at the incredible depth of the application – especially when it comes at the low price of $0.99.  Diabetes Companion is just such an application.

This might seem like a rabbit trail, but stay with me for a moment. You can go into any pharmacy in the country and pick up a pair of fingernail clippers for less than a buck – but if you ever find yourself in a desperite need for one, how many of you wouldn’t gladly pay 5 times that amount in order to be able to take care of a hang nail or an ingrown toenail?

That is exactly the feeling I had when I began to explore the depth if this application. Even though it costs less than a buck, the value of the application and the benefit you will get from it is worth far more than that. I even started feeling guilty at experiencing such a great app for such a low price.

The application could have easily been divided into several different apps and each sold seperatly but the developer instead made this into one robust and yet very easy to manouver application.

The first of major components of the app is nutritional information on the foods you are eating, as well as  hundreds (if not thousands) of diabetic friendly recipes. For example I did a search on “pork chops” and the result was the nutritional info on 633 differently prepared pork chops and 711 recipes for fixing them.

The next major component contains links to a wealth of information on diabetes, including everything from tips on how to help children with diabetes, glucose monitoring, and even pets with diabetes.

The final and yet probably the most useful portion of the app is the ability to not only track your carbohydrate intake, but also how it affects your blood glucose level, and the amounts of both fast snd slow acting insulin that you use to control it.  Just as important is the ability to track the levels over different periods of time (daily, weekly, and monthly) and generate reports that might reveal important trends not only to you but to your endocrinologist as well.

And to think that you can get all this for less than a dollar. If I were diabetic, then this would rapidly become the most used app on my iPhone…

NDrive USA is an app I’ve had on my review list for a couple of weeks now.  I’ve used in in an extensive and exhaustive house hunt, and it was the very use of the app (and reason for it) that was causing the delay in getting the review done.  I was feeling guilty for not getting the review out sooner, but then saw something today that made me think the timing could not be better.

NDrive is a HUGE app.  Weighing in at 1.78 GB and a normal price of $32.99, the app does everything a GPS app would be expected to do.  But the app just made my Must-Have list.  Why?  Because the first 1 million downloads will get it at $2.99.  You can read more about the special promotion here.  If you don’t have  a GPS in your vehicle and don’t already have a turn-by-turn GPS app for your iPhone, you’d be crazy to let this steal of a deal pass you by.

Now for the review.  NDrive did a great job in locating places I was going to check out in my house hunt.  It is a very complete and complex app.  Being unfamiliar with these types of apps, there was a bit of a learning curve in using it.  The thing that threw me off initially was that I could not get it to take/find addresses.  I was trying to stick in an address in the same format as I would write it out.  But the iPhone app wants your address in the same way that the Post Office looks at it…from the largest geographical area down to the smallest.  You start out giving it the city, then the street, then the number.  Once this concept clicked,  was quickly using the app to get from place to place.

The only true issue I had with NDrive was hardware related rather than software.  Obviously, the iPhone is going to pick up better GPS accuracy in the open.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a convertible and medical issues require me to recline as much as possible.  This led to inaccurate locations and directions unless I put the iPhone near the windows.  When I say “inaccurate”, I don’t mean that it was telling me to turn left when it should have been a right.  It would tell me to “turn left ahead” and I’d already be at the intersection.  So, for best results, I’d suggest using this app with one of those windshield mounts like what a typical GPS would have.  If you put them both in the same location with the same access to the sky, NDrive provided every bit as good of a navigation experience as the built-in system in a much more expensive Lincoln Navigator that I was in on one of my “testing” days.

In case you need any further incentive to get such a comprehensive app for such an incredibly low price, check out the app features:

- Fully functional SIGNPOSTS AND INFOLANES
- Embedded store-inside-store to allow an easy download of extra features to your Application
- Highly effective search engine and fast calculations derives benefits such as fast and easy calculation of alternative routes and re-routing
- Car, Pedestrian and Adventure Mode
-ADVENTURE MODE will guide the way while trekking, bike riding, off-road in cars, on boats and even on light aircrafts
- Simple and intuitive user interface
- MULTI-TOUCH TECHNOLOGY with gesture recognition for menu, zooming, tilting and panning will enable you to control and display maps easily
- POIs (Points of Interest) and favorites with phone/fax number, description, email and website address
- UNLIMITED NUMBER of customizable favorite’s entries and user defined categories
- Search and navigate to city centers, street names and numbers, crossings, postal codes, favorite places, recent locations, coordinates and nearby POIs
- Advanced itinerary with multiple waypoints which enhanced planning
- Keyboard available in either ABC or QWERTY mode
- Integration with iPod, offers listening to music while driving
- Automatic Day/Night mode
- Sound and visual alerts for desired and fixed maximum speed limits
- Automatic Portrait/Landscape display mode
- Free access to the NDRIVE COMMUNITY where sharing POIs with other users anywhere in the world is possible
- Search Online from your NDrive application using search engines like GoogleTM to find additional POIs in any location
- Actual and complete map of the USA (March 2010)
- OVER 1,500,000 POIs representing restaurants, gas stations, tourism attractions, hotels, landmarks, etc.
- Precise voice instruction and full interface language support for: English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch and Portuguese.

Before reviewing this application (and telling you how to get a free code for this app) let me vent for a moment about how Apple chose to once again stick it to the little guy (the untold number of independent iPhone developers out there) and pull their app based on nothing more than the self-serving request from a larger company whose app is free – and worth what you paid for it.

In this case, the app in question is one that was released several months ago as Facebook Ultimate. It was the brain child of a Facebook lover that, like so many previous users, was totally dissatisfied with the watered down official Facebook app that was on the market. The application, despite the $2.00 price tag associated with it, was initially very successful (even at the initial $2.99 price) because it filled a void left by missing features in Facebook’s own app. It quickly drew a large fan base and sold very well. That popularity spiked when the iPad was released – that that is where the problems began.

You see, despite the fact that the icon for the app used a different font, was in italics, used a different shade of blue, and was well documented that it was totally independent from Facebook, many new iPad users, in their frenzy to set up Facebook on their new toys, paid for and downloaded this application before realizing that it was not identical to their online Facebook experience. After plopping down hundreds of dollars on their fancy new iPad they felt somehow “cheated” by spending less than what it costs for an espresso for an application that, if they had spend any time with, they would have realized that it was far superior to the free one. Instead of blaming their own illiteracy, they complained that they had been misled.

The end result was that Apple not only pulled the app off their store shelves (both iPhone and iPad versions), but Facebook went the additional step and stopped the app from accessing the same APIs that they willingly allowed other apps to access. The reason they gave was, “trademark infringement and affiliation.” What is confusing and obviously hypocritical is that there are numerous other apps using the exact same Facebook iconic “f” on the blue background and at least a dozen apps still in the store with the word Facebook in their name. The developer was forced to change the name and icon for the application to “Ultimate Social Networking w/ Chat & Video.”

While that might be a small price to pay to get your application approved (or re-approved) by Apple, the app fell from #7 to totally off the charts because iTunes shoppers can no longer easily find the application when searching for something to replace the piece of crap released by Facebook. Unsuccessful apps are allowed to have “Facebook” in their name, but if someone produces a superior product, even when Facebook has no iPad app of their own, they get punished for it.

If Apple had integrity in this matter, they would have recognized that the some folks that buy a $500 toy within hours of its release with no actual experience with it are going to make the same kind of rush decisions with apps for it. If Facebook had done the right thing, they would retire their own bare-bones app, purchase this one from the developer, and release it as the official version.

So… what is it that Facebook really had an issue with? It certainly wasn’t a lack of revenue since their app is free. No – the problem was simple: this application “out-“Facebooked” Facebook. Here are just a few of the features that makes this app so great:

- Dual facebook accounts
- Powerful rules engine
- Define your own spam rules
- Chat
- Video uploading AND playback
- Picture decoration (watch the video)*
- Slideshow (watch the video)*
- Google-like search
- Notification page with content preview
- Mark posts/notifications as read/unread
- Global/Multi-album picture view
- Copy and paste
- Multi-color and b/w emoticons
- Landscape keyboard
- Text flipping
- Fast photo upload
- Save pictures to your iPhone

Links to multiple Instructional videos as well as details regarding the apps story are found at http://ultiapp.com/

The one feature that really makes this app pay for itself in a hurry is the time it saves the user. The sorting provided by the incredible and powerful rules engine and the ability to mark posts as having been read (thus keeping you from having to see them again) save me a great deal of time. I, for one, do not care if you have lost a sheep or are growing carrots in your garden. I also don’t always have the time to weed through hundreds of posts to find out what my family has to say or what is going on at work. With the rules engine in place, your posts get sorted and categorized each time you open the app (something that can take a few seconds depending on how many posts are unread.

So… if you would like to give this application a try for either the iPhone or iPad, give me a shout. Find me on Facebook and simply request one. I have three promo codes for each device (the iPhone as well as the iPad) and they will be given to the first ones that respond. I am the only David Eaton from Atlanta Georgia with the following caricature as my icon:

Area Calculator is the definitive app for any kind of area measurements.  It does one thing, and does it extremely well.  It has 25 different shapes in 5 different categories.  Choose your shape of choice, provide at least two of the measurements, and the area is calculated for you.  It’s just that simple.

I would put this app in a specialty category.  It isn’t something that everyone needs.  It isn’t the latest addictive game.  There is no flash or sizzle.  It’s a tool, and if you need one in your toolbox, this is a $2.99 well spent.

Besides offering the measurements, the app has an information screen that allows you to send ideas and questions to the very responsive developers.  For example, I suggested the ability to enter measurements in feet and inches.  The developers immediately responded that they were already working on that and it may very well make it into a new release that is coming shortly.

Overall, I’d probably give this utility a 9 out of 10.  The only reason it doesn’t get a perfect score is that it is one of those apps that you don’t use on a regular basis and, as such, is probably going to be a bit pricey for some budgets.  For the carpenter or student that needs to quickly measure areas though, there isn’t a better solution out there.