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Apple warns of crackdown on App Store rankings manipulation

touchmyiphone — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 03:30:00 +0000

Apple has issued a reminder to developers that it will not tolerate use of third party services to manipulate app rankings in the App Store. "When you promote your app, you should avoid using services that advertise or guarantee top placement in App Store charts," the reminder states. "Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulating App Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do so on your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Program membership."

This reminder could very well be in response to a well-trafficked post in Touch Arcade where an iOS developer revealed that an ad network guaranteed his app placement in the top 25 apps in exchange for $5000. This third-party service allegedly employs bots to automatically download the targeted app multiple times, automatically increasing the app's ranking and granting the app greater exposure to potential human downloaders.

8 of the top 25 apps were allegedly developed by clients of this bot service. If true, this represents a serious problem to the legitimacy of App Store rankings, and it's therefore no wonder that Apple is reminding developers of its aggressive stance on the issue.

Apple warns of crackdown on App Store rankings manipulation originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Halliburton dumping BlackBerry, switching to iOS

touchmyiphone — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:00:00 +0000

RIM's star just sank a bit closer to the horizon. Halliburton, a household name in the energy industry and once a BlackBerry bastion, is dumping RIM's platform and switching to iOS. The company once relied heavily on RIM's platform, but after evaluating RIM, Windows Phone, Android, and iOS, Halliburton has settled on switching to Apple's platform.

"Over the next year, we will begin expanding the use of our mobile technology by transitioning from the BlackBerry (RIM) platform that we currently use to smartphone technology via the iPhone," the company said. Halliburton representatives confirmed to AppleInsider that only 4500 of the company's 70,000 employees still use BlackBerry devices, so the transition probably won't take as long as it might have a few years ago.

According to AppleInsider's sources, Halliburton actively engaged with Apple in its transition. Halliburton is far from the first company to do so; Clorox ditched the BlackBerry last year, and 92 percent of its employees replaced it with an iPhone.

RIM's platform was once synonymous with business communications, but that status has slowly eroded since the iPhone's introduction. While corporate IT spent the first few years after the iPhone's introduction scoffing at the device, quarterly reports from analysis firms like Good Technology show that iOS has penetrated enterprise markets in a way that even the stodgiest of companies can no longer afford to ignore.

Halliburton dumping BlackBerry, switching to iOS originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Siri may be iPhone 4S-only because of noise reduction tech

touchmyiphone — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:30:00 +0000

Siri has been in widespread use for four months, but so far Apple's "personal assistant" is still only available on one device, the iPhone 4S. We speculated that there weren't any technical reasons Siri couldn't work on some of Apple's other devices, and the jailbreak community later proved us right by porting Siri to the iPhone 4.

AppleInsider did some digging and discovered there may be a technological reason Apple's kept Siri an iPhone 4S-only feature: noise reduction. The iPhone 4 incorporates noise reduction circuitry from a third-party vendor called Audience, and that circuitry lies separate from the A4 chip on the iPhone's logic board. The newer processor in the iPhone 4S (and possibly the iPad 2) incorporates a newer version of this noise-reduction circuitry within the A5 chip itself, reducing overall cost.

Audience's noise reduction chip works similarly to how the human brain processes audio. By sampling audio from multiple sources (the iPhone's main microphone and the noise-cancelling mic), the Audience chip is able to filter out background noise and deliver only the user's voice, just like how your brain filters out noise in a crowded room to focus on a person talking to you.

The newer noise reduction circuitry in the A5 chip is better at "far-field" noise reduction than the circuits in the iPhone 4. Essentially, the iPhone 4S can achieve the same or better noise reduction when held at arm's length that the iPhone 4 gets when held directly in front of a user's mouth.

The implications for Siri use are obvious -- because of its less advanced noise reduction circuitry, Siri wouldn't function nearly as well on an iPhone 4 in an even moderately noisy environment unless you held it up to your ear and talked directly into the microphone. Despite having an A5 processor (and possibly including the newer noise reduction circuitry), Siri might not function well on an iPad 2 either, since the iPad 2 doesn't have a noise-cancelling microphone.

Apple's product perfectionism often leads to scenarios where features that might technically work on a product wind up excluded because they don't work perfectly. I've run into this a few times with older gear; my old PowerBook G3 had no technical barriers to running OS X Panther or Tiger, for instance, but because it didn't run anything newer than OS X Jaguar well, Apple artificially restricted the device to Jaguar. Similarly, jailbreakers discovered ways to get video capture working on the iPhone 3G, but the results were rather lackluster compared to the officially-supported video recording on the iPhone 3GS and above.

Even if Siri technically works on Apple's older iOS devices, if its performance doesn't work to Apple's satisfaction, we may never see Siri ported to the iPhone 4 or current iPads after all.

Siri may be iPhone 4S-only because of noise reduction tech originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW: Why does Siri read smilies as colons?

touchmyiphone — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I love Siri. I'm surprised at how much I actually use it beyond the gimmicky stuff. Texting while driving (through my car's Uconnect system) is so handy.

One thing I've noticed is that when I dictate a message, add a smiley face and have her read it back to me, she says, "Have a nice day colon comma." The odd part is that she has written :-), which is colon hyphen right bracket. Is this a glitch or does a hyphen and right bracket together equal a comma? I was never good at grammatical math.

Your doting nephew,

Damien

Dear Damien,

Ah, bless Siri. She's such a changeable creature. Auntie used to love when Siri would read out "Brr, it's cold" as "Bee. Arr. Arr. It's Cold". Thanks to Apple's live data center updates, Siri now responds "Burr" instead of "Bee. Arr. Arr."

The smiley-face being read back as a colon is similar. It's simply a text-to-speech glitch that Apple may eventually improve. You can report any bugs to Apple directly using their Bug Reporter online website.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Why does Siri read smilies as colons? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SkyLight combines iPhones and microscopes

touchmyiphone — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:15:00 +0000

We've seen lots of photo accessories that let you add filters and lenses to your iPhone, but SkyLight is the first to let you add a full-fledged microscope. It's a platform that attaches to a microscope and aligns the phone's camera with the eyepiece. You can view the microscope image on your phone and take photographs. It's perfect for classroom usage, for researchers who need high-quality images in their published papers and for clinicians who can take a photo and send it off for analysis.

SkyLight started as a Kickstarter project that reached its $15,000 funding goal last month. It was available for a preorder price of US$60 and will ship in March. It includes a generous five for one incentive plan that'll donate one SkyLight to global health or educational purposes for every 5 SkyLights purchased. You can read more about the accessory and its inspiration at the SkyLight website.

[Via Springwise]

SkyLight combines iPhones and microscopes originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Daily iPhone App: Star Marine Infinite Ammo

touchmyiphone — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:15:00 +0000

Glitchsoft's oddly-titled Star Marine: Infinite Ammo (more on why that's weird in a moment) is both good at bad. First, it's good at heart. Star Marine: Infinite Ammo is a Contra-style run-and-gun title that has you controlling a soldier on a spaceship among other environments. Your job is to fight through hordes of aliens and escape. The action is great and fans of the old Contra game will find a lot to enjoy.

However, Star Marine has a few unfortunate issues. First of all, the controls are a little more wonky than they should be. For example, the action often gets fast and furious. When things heated up in Contra, you could duck and jump out of the way reliably. Star Marine's touch controls, by contrast, don't always get you where you need to go. I got hit by several stray bullets and alien flyers because the controls weren't quite as tight as they should be.

Repetition is also an issue. While the environment options eventually expand, the first few levels are basically the same hallways and enemies over and over. An enjoyable boss battle becomes drudgery after you've done it several times.

The freemium-style in-app purchase system doesn't help, either. When you discover a gun you haven't unlocked with gems you've collected, you just plain don't get it. Plus, the gems come way too slowly. If this was a freemium game, the rate might be acceptable (and I fully expect it to drop to free at some point), but for the current price of US$1.99, it's too slow.

I've got one more complaint. For a game called "Infinite Ammo," there's only one gun I found that was truly infinite. Everything else, including weapons you can buy, health packs and special attacks, are limited.

Despite those issues, Star Marine: Infinite Ammo can be fun. There's even a Boss Rush and Survival Mode to enjoy after you've finished the main campaign. I don't know that I'd recommend it at the $1.99 price, but this game seems made to be discounted, so keep an eye out for it. At a slightly cheaper price (or maybe if the freemium system is tweaked to be a little more forgiving), Star Machine: Infinite Ammo has a lot more going for it.

Daily iPhone App: Star Marine Infinite Ammo originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Study: iOS apps crash more than Android apps do

touchmyiphone — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 19:30:00 +0000

Mobile OS crash analysis firm Crittercism (Really? Who's naming this stuff?) has posted the chart above, which shows that as a percentage of crashes overall, the latest version of iOS claims the highest total. In fact, many versions of iOS show a large percentage of crashes, and clearly iOS overall seems more prone to have an app crash rather than Android.

Of course, there are quite a few qualifiers here. This data has been normalized, so we can presume that this isn't just a quirk of the numbers: There are likely more crashes happening on iOS devices than Android devices, and not just because there's more iOS apps being used (Crittercism says it monitored about 215 million app launches across all platforms, and there were three times as many launched on iOS, but again, this chart shows a percentage of all app launches).

So why more crashing? Crittercism suggests it's because iOS 5.0.1 had just released, while the latest version of Android had not yet arrived, and the new OS was causing more issues than usual in Apple's system. I would also suggest that iPhone users (who have likely paid more for their phones) tend to overtax their devices -- keep in mind this is just an app crashing, not the full iOS, and we've all done that once or twice, right? And as you can see, there's a fair amount of crashes on older iOS phones, which means customers might be running newer apps on older hardware, almost always a recipe for disaster.

At any rate, interesting figures. With so much more usage on iOS devices (both from skilled and not-so-skilled developers, and users of both types as well), it's not that surprising that there are so many more crashes. Have crashes on iOS seriously affected your user experience?

Study: iOS apps crash more than Android apps do originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Study: iOS apps crash more than Android apps do

touchmyiphone — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 19:30:00 +0000

Study: iOS apps crash more than Android apps do originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola wants 2.25 percent of Apple sales to license patents

touchmyiphone — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 22:00:00 +0000

The ongoing patent spat between Motorola and Apple has reached an interesting crossroads. Just recently a German court granted an injunction against sales of many of Apple's 3G-bearing products, including older model iPhones and the iPad. That injunction held for less than a day, however, pending further review of Motorola's claims against Apple.

Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents found new information that suggests Motorola has offered to end the patent dispute and license its wireless patents to Apple -- in exchange for 2.25 percent of Apple's sales. It's unclear whether this is a percentage of all Apple revenues or, more likely, a percentage of sales of devices which contain a 3G antenna and therefore potentially fall under the umbrella of Motorola's patent claims. In either case, Mueller finds the 2.25 percent shakedown "excessive," and it only takes a glance at Apple's latest quarterly earnings statement to see that Apple finds it pretty excessive, too.

Revenue from iPhone sales, in aggregate since 2007, amounts to just under US$93 billion. Motorola's cut of those revenues would have been nearly $2.1 billion over those years. Since the iPhone sales juggernaut shows no signs of slowing down, Motorola's cash pile would only grow bigger over time -- and those numbers don't include sales of the Wi-Fi + 3G iPad, which Motorola also claims falls afoul of its patents.

What makes this move seem even skeevier is that Google is in the process of trying to acquire Motorola, meaning that if Motorola succeeds in its claim against Apple, Google would eventually be collecting a patent tax on the iPhone and 3G iPad.

Apple has filed motions to obtain information from several other handset vendors, including Nokia, HTC, LG, and Sony Ericsson, presumably to find out how much they're paying in royalty fees to Motorola for the patents in question. If it turns out that Motorola is demanding more from Apple than it's demanded from those other companies, the judge in the patent case is going to want to know why.

Motorola wants 2.25 percent of Apple sales to license patents originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Former Apple employee recounts how Jobs motivated iPhone team

touchmyiphone — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:00:00 +0000

Bob Borchers used to be an iPhone product marketing engineer for Apple. Part of the team that brought the first iPhone to market in 2007, he's now a venture capitalist with Opus Capital. Borchers recently gave a talk to students at a California school talking about the thought processes that were involved in the iPhone's development.

Borchers says that Steve Jobs didn't have a specific device in mind, but instead gave the team a mission: create a phone that people would love so much that they'd never leave the house without it. Borchers believes that Apple has been so wildly successful with the iPhone because the company focused on fundamentals -- breaking the rules, but in an exceptionally well manner; paying attention to details; and making people focus on the relationship they have with their device.

Jobs wanted the phone to be revolutionary, the best iPod the company had ever designed, and allow users to access the internet easily from a pocket-sized device. What the iPhone has become -- a device with downloadable apps, GPS capabilities, video and photography features, and voice integration -- wasn't part of the original concept.

Borchers noted that the original iPhone almost shipped with a plastic touchscreen, but Jobs was concerned that the plastic would scratch if users put the phone in a pocket with keys and other metallic items. The team improvised, convinced Corning to re-start production of the abandoned Gorilla Glass, and the iPhone has had a fairly scratch-resistant display since day one.

Apple's obsession with product packaging was mentioned by Borchers, who said that the company spends "way too much time" on presenting products, but he conceded that it is ultimately worthwhile to do so since it communicates the special nature of Apple products to consumers.

With future "insanely great" products in the pipeline, we can only hope that the Steve Jobs obsession with details remains part of Apple's DNA.

Former Apple employee recounts how Jobs motivated iPhone team originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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