AppleTalk Thursday #15

Hello folks and welcome to another edition of AppleTalk Thursday. Let’s see what is happening in the world of Apple this week!

iOS 4.3.1 Update

Last Friday Apple released the update to the iOS 4.3. Among the fixes is indeed the battery issue on the iPhone. Since updating the 666MB update for my iPhone (yes, I know it is a creepy number), I have noticed a great improvement in the battery life on my iPhone 4.

WordPress optimization for iPad

Automattic Inc., the company behind WordPress has partnered with Onswipe to make blog viewing on the iPad a more pleasurable experience. With the help of Onswipe’s plug-in, viewing a WordPress blog looks very similar to FlipBook. In-fact this blog is now viewed this way on the iPad after I downloaded the plug-in and installed it. Let me know what you think!

Skype Mac Design Contest

Skype has announced a contest for a design for its upcoming Mac release client. I really like this because Skype really designs an ugly interface for the Mac side. The grand prize is an 11” MacBook Air, iPad 2, and a one year subscription to Skype’s Unlimited World Extra calling service. There are also runner up prizes such as an iPad 2 and AppleTV and CSS3 for Web Designers.

Apple working on a TV?

Here is an interesting tidbit about Apple possibly looking at making their own TV. Given last week’s news that they may license AirPlay to TV makers, I am not really putting too much stock into this story, but who would have thought Apple would make a phone one day.

Digital Locker Roundup: MobileMe, Amazon Cloud Player

Another bit of speculation about the upcoming MobileMe revamp and possible digital locker service costing $20 a year. If you saw the news this week of Amazon’s new Cloud-based storage, this would be the new MobileMe service right in the ballpark. Course maybe Apple is working out deals with record labels first before launching the service and not releasing the service before a deal is in place.

5-1 Connection Kit for iPad

Check out this little dongle device! Tired of unplugging one device and plugging in another? This may solve that issue and the $45 price is not too bad considering it is like a Swiss Army knife for the iPad.



Course if you just need an HDMI and USB dongle, your in luck too although the price is a bit steeper at around $73 US, oh did I mention it is only available in Japan?




WWDC What to Expect...and What not to Expect

Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference sold out within hours after tickets went on sale earlier this week. If you were one of the lucky ones to buy a ticket...you may not see the iPhone 5, but it sounds like you will see some really cool stuff in both OS X 10.7 Lion and the iOS 5 with deep voice command integration. When I first heard that, I pictured my iPhone talking like the late Barry White, but there is more to it than that and a Fall release of an iPhone 5 would make sense if it were to be an LTE capable device.

Personal Hotspot put to the Test

Finally today, Steven Sande of The Unofficial Apple Weblog decided while attending a trip with his wife who was attending a conference at a hotel, decided to utilize the new Personal Hotspot feature in his iPhone instead of paying for the hotel fee of $11 a day for WiFi. You can read his review of it here.

iOS App Reviews

Pocket Casts ($1.99) - I had grown frustrated with a bug in the iPhone that was displaying incorrect artwork for podcasts. They would display music genius like artwork for example. Even after the 4.3.1 update the issue remained. Than after posting about the issue in the GSPN Community page under Help, I Got a Mac, I came across Podcast Answer Man #200 where Cliff Ravencraft discussed how much he loves this app called Pocket Casts. So I took a chance and spent the $2 and you know what? He is right! First, you can have it scan your iPod app on the iPhone for all your subscribed podcasts and adds the feeds to the app and will show the latest 2 episodes per show in the download window, if you need more episodes, just select on the Show All Available Episodes to list and download each one.

Another cool feature is it will send push notifications and list a badge number for new episodes available for download...something the iPhone or iPad can’t do. You can even stream the episodes without downloading and save space on your iOS device. After using it for a day, I went ahead and downloaded all the episodes I have in iTunes and than un-synced podcasts to my iPhone to save space and I now use Pocket Casts to listen to my podcasts. Note although you can use it on the iPad, it is not a universal app meaning you will have to expand it 2x to get full screen on the iPad but hopefully they will update that part in a future release. Oh, and it will work over not just WiFi, but 3G and EDGE too.

Here is a video of how it all works.

<iframe src=“http://player.vimeo.com/video/20643630?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0” width=“400” height=“225” frameborder=“0”></iframe><p><a href=“http://vimeo.com/20643630”>Pocket Casts App Demo.</a> from <a href=“http://vimeo.com/nathanswan”>Nathan Swan</a> on <a href=“http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>

Vimeo (FREE) - I have come to really love Vimeo, unlike YouTube, Vimeo is HTML5 which means videos will play on iOS devices. Well, now they have an iPhone app which allows you to both view and record videos and edit your recorded videos. Pretty cool stuff, maybe not as feature rich as iMove for iPhone but considering it is free, that is nothing to sneeze at. My only issue is it did crash on me a few times but that is expected on a product first release. Sure an update will patch that issue.

QR Reader (FREE) - One thing that was promoted a lot at PodCamp Nashville was QR Codes. This feature was born on the Android, but it has grown to other devices and I have found a lot of reader apps for the iPhone, but this is a nice basic free one that can scan QR Codes and display their meaning within the app. Now I want to design one for my website to place on a business card.

Well, that is going to do it for this week’s AppleTalk Thursday. See you next week for more exciting Apple news.