Appletell

You all remember the Apple Pippin, the greatest biggest flop of a game system ever, don’t you?  Since then Apple has stayed relatively far away from the gaming market all together.  However, I believe some of there products have, coincidentally, brought them somewhat back into it.  Look at the iPhone and its accelerometer.  Those two devices together make a great pair for a handheld gaming system and developers have already begun to take advantage of that with games like Spore (in the keynote).  Still, I think there is yet one more product that could soon be a nice little gaming device, and that’s the Apple TV.

A recent patent filing by Apple suggest a 3D gaming controller for their Apple TV that would supposedly be much like the Wii’s system.  This would be great for casual gaming on the Apple TV.  Think about it.  This device was made to be put in a living room with a large HD TV and home entertainment system.  It has the iTunes Store on it with a full library of podcasts, etc.  Why not add games to that list of items that can be purchased with this device?  It already has everything it needs besides the most vital part, the games and the controller (Apple remote?).  With those two additions, I feel it could one day become a serious competitor to the Wii.  Now, this probably won’t happen anytime soon if at all, but it’s a possibility.  What do you think?

Recently, Apple has been stepping up in the business environment and has really begun hammering it home that they are ready to more aggressively enter this field.  With the new iPhone software to contain ActiveSync support for Microsoft Exchange and possibly more business geared features such as a camera for video conferencing, this move is no joke.  Furthermore, it was recently reported that according to a rumor from TUAW, .Mac will soon include “Full over-the-air syncing including calendars, contacts, and email (similar to Exchange).” What do both of these have in common?  They are very attractive offers for anyone involved in a high business position at a big or small company.  Apple has made their impression in the everyday consumer market and is now moving onto bigger goals.  A smart move, I may add.

By making their products better for a business environment, Apple is opening them up to a large amount of potentially new customers.  Many businesses have stuck with Windows as their main OS for years, and Apple has realized that.  By realizing that, they are now beginning to compete with it.  Most of their new products and updates have more features that are meant for business type people which can only lead to good.  Good on you Apple for taking a risk and putting your cards into this deck.  Keep on innovating, we all look forward to you having more of a presence in larger corporation settings!

When the SDK for the iPhone is launched at WWDC, it is going to be exhilarating.  Apple has given developers plenty of time to create useful and outstanding apps, and I expect there will be plenty of them.  For example, at the keynote, developers had already made Spore and an instant messaging client in only a couple weeks.  Also, third party developers that have been using Installer.app have also made extremely awesome and helpful apps in a short amount of time.  What does this all mean?  Excitement.  When this whole deal is officially released, there are going to be hundreds of apps released with it.  The functionality of the iPhone is going to skyrocket and it is going to be even more desired.  But the real question is what apps do you really want to see.

First and foremost for me, and probably many others, is some sort of iChat. This would be great to keep in contact with friends on the go and, not to mention, save me a ton of money on text messaging overage fees.  Another application I would love to see would be for voice recording.  Whenever I am on the go, I always end up thinking of something I want to remember.  It could be so easy just to record it in the phone rather than writing a whole note.  This could also be very useful for business people who need to record a quick interview on their phone for later.  Lastly, and more general, I would love to see some awesome games.  There are a lot of times where I’m bored in the car or on a plane and iPhone games would be perfect to pass the time with.  What do you want to see and/or waste your time with?  Games, productivity, educational?  Let us know in the comments!

There has been tons of rumors lately about what the new iPhone is going to look like and and what features it will have.  Sure, the iPhone is bound to be updated (or announced to be updated) in June at WWDC, but what about that little thing we call the iPod?  Can’t we give them a little loving?  What is the next iPod going to be like?  Unfortunately, it seems like this device has gotten lost in all the iPhone shuffle.  Well, let’s bring it back into the limelight, even if only for a little bit!  Keep in mind, I have no idea when they will be updated, but it’s always interesting to speculate on what they may look like and contain.

So, what do you think?  Is that old scroll wheel out of fashion?  Will they eventually all have wifi and Safari?  Are they all going to contain some sort of touch screen?  These are all good questions to ask, and with the way Apple keeps its secrets, any of those could be just as possible as the next.  I strongly believe they will all have some sort of advanced touch system, whether it be the actual screen or just adding multi-touch to the scroll wheel.  Apple has learned a lot from both the iPhone and iPod Touch about multi-touch displays, and the consumers seem to love them.  Furthermore, I think they will all be capable of wireless connectivity.  Even if it’s not Safari, Apple could possibly even add a more simplified iTunes Store to normal iPods.  This would be a great way for Apple to sell more songs and users to find even more music.

Now let’s talk more hardware.  With flash memory get cheaper everyday, will the new iPods move to flash?  I hope not.  Well, at least not now.  The Classic and its 160GB are great for people who have a ton of music as well as some movies, and I don’t believe hard drives are dead just yet.  Going along with my multi-touch theory, I also believe the new iPods will get larger screens to make them more able to support that feature.

What are your thoughts? Let them fly in the comments!

Graphic via [Gadget Reviews]

Since its introduction by Apple on January 9th, 2001, iTunes has become one of the most popular music library organization apps ever.  It started off simple and eventually became what it is today, a place not only to organize files, but to shop, learn, and watch.  With so much growth, large deals, and new features in the past few years, it makes me wonder where iTune’s place will be in the future.  When digital sales take over physical media, will it be because of iTunes?  Will iTunes one day start a revolution in how we purchase and handle all of our DVDs, music, and TV shows?  Or will iTunes eventually slip away into the past and be replaced by a whole new app or movement?

With the direction iTunes is headed now, it seems like it very well could be the driving force behind moving totally to digital sales for some.  It has one of the biggest music selections available anywhere, allows you to rent movies, releases new DVD titles the same day as hard copies, and contains all sort of other media, such as podcasts and TV shows.  With only a couple more deals and updates, iTunes could soon be the place to go for all of your media.  This would almost completely eliminate the need for physical media.  Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t think this will happen anytime very soon, but it is possible.  But what would seal the deal for moving completely to digital media?

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By analyzing the metadata in uploaded pictures, Flickr is able to see which cameras their users are taking pictures with.  When it comes to the camera phone market, the iPhone now tops that list.  What does this mean?  Is the iPhone that popular or does its software just make it easier to get the pictures on your computer than most other phones?  If you ask me, it’s the latter.  With the iPhone also being an iPod, people have to sync it a lot more than normal phones, which makes it more common to also take the photos off and put them on your computer and to the web.  Another reason the iPhone may top this list is because of third party apps available through Installer.app that allow users to easily upload pictures to Flickr right from the phone itself.  Finally, people are able to email photos directly to Flickr from the device.

However, although the iPhone does make it easier to upload the photos in the first place, I think it also gives users more of a reason to.  Despite having such few megapixels and failing in low light situations, the iPhone camera takes much better pictures than I’ve ever taken with any other phone.  When held still, it takes pretty crisp photos with nice color.  The only thing that would make the camera better, besides more megapixels of course, would be more features.  A zoom would be nice, especially if Apple added some off those quirky Photo Booth effects.  What do you think?

What are your top feature for camera improvement in the 3G iPhone?

There are tons of rumors about Apple’s upcoming second generation phone.  So many that I sometimes don’t know which ones are legit and which ones are not.  Who do I believe?  Who has the right insiders?  It’s time to stop the rumors and start some pure speculation.  Here is what I hope to see with the next iPhone that may be less obvious than some features (3G):

1) A video camera. Video conferencing on an iPhone would not only be awesome, it would be a great draw for business people.  I’m sure Apple will include this is the next release, and they better.  With how often iPhones need to be synced for music, contacts, podcasts, etc, it would be awesome to be able to take videos off of the device.  These videos would be perfect for sites like Flickr Video and maybe even YouTube. Another adaptation of the video camera many people are looking for is support for online streaming services such as Qik (a service that allows you to stream live video from your cellphone).

2) Camera features. The camera on the iPhone isn’t the greatest I’ve used, but it’s up there.  However, it would definitely move up a few notches with some extra features.  Apple should add a zoom, some more control over lighting features such as white balance, and even some Photo Booth effects.  For me, that would set the camera apart from others and make the next iPhone that much better.

3) Dictionary.app. This one is sort of small, but I would absolutely love to see a Dictionary widget on the home screen.  Sure I could just add dictionary.com to my home screen but a built in Dictionary and reference would be extremely useful.  Also, there could be a lot more flexibility with the user interface than from a website and load times could be improved.

4) Openness. Give it to other carriers Apple!  It kills me to see the phones growth hindered by its carrier.  I know a lot of people have simply switched carriers and other have just jailbroken their phone, but people shouldn’t have to take these steps.  I imagine the sales of the device will skyrocket even more once AT&T’s exclusivity deal is up.  There is still the slight chance that iPhone 2.0 will not fall under the same deal with AT&T as the first version, however, which would be great.

What do you really want to see on the next iPhone?

Let’s face it, Apple gets a TON of publicity.  So much so that some sites has made feeds that exclude all articles dealing with Apple.  This article will discuss two things dealing with all this publicity, why it happens and what it does for Apple.

Why does this happen? Apple makes their hardware and software themselves for the most part.  This means every time one of these products gets updated, there is news about it.  With so many products, many updates are bound to happen, which means more publicity.  Also, Apple knows how to market a product efficiently and increase the publicity even more.  They make the announcements of the devices they create huge and develop tons of hype.  All this hype around the device causes it to be heard about all over the internet, news shows, etc which is bound to lead to good things.  But, what are those goods things?  Read on to find out.

What does it do for Apple? Publicity brings customers and customers bring money.  And behind every sale there is, obviously, money.  With so much hype around all of their products, even people not in the tech field are bound to hear about them.  Heck, even my local news station was reporting about the iPhone.  All these potential customers seeing these great products causes them to look more into and, in some cases, even buy it.  Apple has mastered this and is why their market share continues to increase.  People hear so much about their products that they begin to get curious, just what Apple needs to drive a sale.

What are you thoughts?  Is this publicity good for Apple, or just annoying?

A Gizmodo Reader has reported that they have received their Open Computer from Psystar and they included a video clearly showing the boot of the machine. My conclusion? Money wasted. Psystar is making money off of the OSx86 project, and this is something you could do yourself in a day.

The boot sequence shows a few ugly black screens, typical of a Windows PC boot, followed by the Mac white startup screen. There are absolutely no benefits to buying an Open Computer right now. Eventually after they have proven themselves, it might be a good opportunity for non-computer savvy people to get their hands on a pseudo-Mac, but to me that seems to be quite a small niche.

This would be a phenomenal product if it were genuinely a Mac, but as it stands, this is simply a neatly packaged Hackintosh. It CANNOT be updated, an enormous caveat, it isn’t a Mac through and through, as evidenced by the ugly boot screens, and overall is something that can be accomplished with a cheap PC and a day on the OSx86 project (not that we endorse that...)

One last thing to note: Purchasing it with Leopard is a waste of $129. They will send you a shrink-wrapped retail version of Leopard, probably just purchased from their local Apple Store. It cannot be used to reinstall Leopard onto your Open Computer, begging the question, why sell it?

More [Gizmodo]

Facebook chat is a little awkward… it’s stuck in the browser, and even if popped out, it still runs in Safari. By closing the window, or moving to a new tab, you close your chat. Fortunately, Mac OS X makes it easy to run Facebook Chat separately from Safari. Here are the two easiest ways:

Web Clip in Dashboard
Simply navigate to Facebook, use the chat menu to pop out the chat in a new window, and choose “File > Open in Dashboard.” Then, arrange it as you please. I chose to make only my buddy list visible, so I can easily check who is online before starting to chat. When I wanted to chat, I either went to Facebook, or resized the widget to show the chat.

Fluid.app
This method is the better one for someone who wants to do heavier-duty chatting. First, download the free and awesome Fluid.app at http://fluidapp.com.  Then, launch Fluid, and type the following address into the field:

http://facebook.com/presence/popout.php

Give it a name like “Facebook Chat,” and save it. There you go! You now have a native Facebook Chat application.