The iPhone app from Chipotle, the restaurant chain best known for its burritos, is an interesting mix of simple design, e-commerce functionality and location tools. Digging into the app’s development reveals three aspects that could prove useful for businesses and programmers pursuing their own mobile paths.
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Spring is in the air and March is a perfect time for all you sports fans out there to get your daily fix with the release of CBS Sports March Madness [iTunes Link - $9.99] and MLB.com At Bat 2010 [iTunes Link - $14.99].
For the full list of features to both of these great sport applications, follow us after the break!
CBS Sports NCAA March Madness is a great buy for anyone who can not get enough of their collage hoops. Not only does it provide you with live streaming video of 63 games over EDGE/3G and Wi-Fi but it also provides all of the following great features.
MLB.com At Bat 2010 is more of the same great baseball application from the 2009 season so you can still listen to the audio of every game in the regular season and postseason live, get scores and highlights, get push notifications, live streaming video (blackout restrictions apply), etc… They’ve even went ahead and added some brand new features for 2010.
If you pick these up, let us know what missing features you’d like to see included (if any) in the comments below!
CBS Sports NCAA March Madness and MLB.com At Bat 2010 Now Available for iPhone is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
Spring is in the air and March is a perfect time for all you sports fans out there to get your daily fix with the release of CBS Sports March Madness [iTunes Link - $9.99] and MLB.com At Bat 2010 [iTunes Link - $14.99].
For the full list of features to both of these great sport applications, follow us after the break!
CBS Sports NCAA March Madness is a great buy for anyone who can not get enough of their collage hoops. Not only does it provide you with live streaming video of 63 games over EDGE/3G and Wi-Fi but it also provides all of the following great features.
MLB.com At Bat 2010 is more of the same great baseball application from the 2009 season so you can still listen to the audio of every game in the regular season and postseason live, get scores and highlights, get push notifications, live streaming video (blackout restrictions apply), etc… They’ve even went ahead and added some brand new features for 2010.
If you pick these up, let us know what missing features you’d like to see included (if any) in the comments below!
CBS Sports NCAA March Madness and MLB.com At Bat 2010 Now Available for iPhone is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) petitioned NASA (an iPhone developer – iTunes link) under the Freedom of Information Act to provide them with a copy of Apple’s iPhone SDK License Agreement, and have gone through and provided both a link to the agreement (an older version, provided at the time of the request) and some analysis of what it contains.
For those not familiar with the document, it contains the legal terms a developer must agree to before they can develop for the iPhone platform. Since the EFF and Apple have been duking it out over Jailbreaking for a while now — the EFF wants Jailbreaking to be made an official exception to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and Apple has opposed that move — the EFF thinks the SDK agreement is particularly interesting at the moment.
The major points brought out and up by the EFF include:
The EFF is none to pleased at the one-sided, gate-kept, stifling terms of the SDK Licensing agreement and good for them. And good for us as well. The way we look at it we need the opposing forces of Apple Legal and the EFF always pushing for more on both sides. Apple’s going to want to protect themselves as much as possible and the EFF is going to want to show us every way they’re doing it so if we don’t like it, we can voice our concerns as well.
We’ve used the analogy of restaurants before. The iPhone is Apple’s boutique, haut-cuisine eatery. They set the menu. You can’t go there, demand a burger, and then throw a fit when they tell you they don’t serve it. (Well you can, but you’d be nuts — Apple’s not in the business of serving burgers). Instead of Gordon Ramsey you get Steve Jobs crafting your dining experience, and if you go there, that’s what you should expect — to trade control for ease of use (as opposed to Google where you trade privacy for free service). However, the EFF making sure the ingredients are what we’re told they are, and that the kitchen is kept clean and compliant with local ordinances — that’s good for us, and ultimate it’s good for Apple.
Check out the EFF article, take a look at the agreement, and let us know what you think.
[Thanks to Fassy for the tip!]
EFF Uses NASA to Out iPhone SDK License Agreement is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
Following on Daring Fireball’s suggestion that iPhone 4.0 might bring the Calculator, Clock, Stocks, Weather, and Voice Memo to the iPad, The Loop Insight argues that it might just be iPhone 4.1 instead:
Phone OS 4.0 will include lots of new features, just like you would expect to see from Apple. However, It doesn’t make sense for Apple to unify the two operating systems for 4.0 with the timeline they are working with.
Rather, I expect Apple to release OS 4.1 in September or October. It will not only address issues with the 4.0 release, but also unify the operating systems.
iPhone 4.0 would presumably hit with the 4th generation iPhone (not to be confused with an iPhone 4G for LTE which is likely 2012). For the last two years, new iPhone software has been released as beta at SDK preview events in March while new iPhone hardware has been debuted at WWDC in June. New iPod touch hardware has followed in September, typically with updated software.
If Apple sticks to this pattern, the above does indeed make sense as getting as many users — iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch alike — on the same version of the OS is better for Apple, better for developers, and better for users.
For us, we’ll take it one step at a time and wait for that iPhone 4.0 sneak preview…
iPhone 4.0 in June, “Grand Unifying” iPhone 4.1 in September? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
Live from Macworld 2010, Rene and Leanna talk to Sean Lindo, Marketing Manager for Box.net about their iPhone app [Free - iTunes link], integration into QuickOffice, and the power of the cloud.
Watch along after the break and let us know your thoughts!
TiPb Apps 4.2 — Box.net for iPhone (Macworld 2010) is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber suggests that bigger, iPad versions of the built-in iPhone Stocks, Calculator, Weather, Clock and Voice Memo were scrapped by Steve Jobs:
It’s not that Apple couldn’t just create bigger versions of these apps and have them run on the iPad. It wasn’t a technical problem, it was a design problem. There were, internally to Apple (of course), versions of these apps (or at least some of them) with upscaled iPad-sized graphics, but otherwise the same UI and layout as the iPhone versions. Ends up that just blowing up iPhone apps to fill the iPad screen looks and feels weird, even if you use higher-resolution graphics so that nothing looks pixelated. So they were scrapped by you-know-who.
Gruber was responding to theories that these apps would instead be offered as App Store downloads, or could be part of some secret widget dashboard implementation. In other words, that it’s a design issue, not a technical issue.
However, new UI that would make the iPad an amazing bedside clock (how’s that for a Lock Screen), or show Stocks with a variety of graphs and related news and data, or weather for several days and cities at once, certainly seems possible for Apple’s UI wizards. Perhaps they simply lacked time to re-do the apps for the already extended April 3 release date?
Perhaps they’ll appear on the iPad in some re-imagined form this summer with OS 4.0, but when the iPad ships next month, there won’t be versions of these apps. At least that’s the story I’ve heard from a few well-informed little birdies.
Speaking of which, any little birdies hear anything about an iPhone 4.0 sneak preview event yet? Or is everyone just focused on getting the iPad out right now?
DF: iPad Stocks, Calculator, Weather, Clock, Voice Memo Apps Scrapped by Steve Jobs is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
I already mentioned I’m on my way to GDC 2010 to cover the iPhone panel, and that iPhone gaming is getting big, so it’s interesting to see CNET reenforce just how big it’s getting:
strikingly absent among those 18 [Mobile Gaming] panels are any that deal with game development specifically for the iPhone. And why? Because for the first time, the GDC advisory board decided that Apple’s smartphone is an important enough platform to warrant its own summit. And it filled quickly.
Simon Jeffrey, vice president of social applications for leading iPhone game developer Ngmoco says:
“The iPhone is now recognized as a leading platform that’s independent from the mobile. People are specifically naming the iPhone as a threat to their businesses. Nintendo said the iPhone is taking customers away from [its popular] DS handhelds.”
The cost of entry is lower than Microsoft or Nintendo, and it’s getting more and more popular while still maintaining its cool factor.
While Android and Windows Phone 7 Series will bring the competition (and perhaps Palm as well), right now the iPhone is riding high on its head start.
iPhone No Longer “Mobile”, Big Enough to be Own Gaming Platform Now is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
Cameron Daigle’s “is the iPad just a big iPhone” user interface presentation from PodCamp Nashville. Note, the second slide is a gigantic “NO.”
[via Daring Fireball]
Cameron Daigle’s “Is the iPad Just a Big iPhone?” UI Presentation from PodCamp Nashville is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
While I was busy enjoying the subtler UI details, AppleInsider noticed that last night’s iPad commercial debut showed what might be some of the pricing inside the new iBooks Store:
The commercial showed Sen. Edward Kennedy’s “True Compass: A Memoir” for $14.99, the novel “I, Alex Cross” by James Patterson for $12.99, and “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Journey to Change the World… One Child at a Time” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin for $7.99.
For comparison, “True Compass” currently sells for $19.25 for the Amazon Kindle, “I, Alex Cross” costs $9.99, and “Three Cups of Tea” costs $7.19.
Whether or not that was final, or merely mocked up pricing for the commercial, remains to be seen.
TUAW also notes a New York Times button at the bottom, presumably to access a special New York Times Bestsellers section of the iBooks Store.
Lastly, 9to5Mac notes the My Documents button at the top left of of the Pages iWork touch app (good for PC users?). And — gasp! — another smudge that’s likely still not a camera.
So, did the iPad commercial do it’s job and make anyone more interested in picking up a magical, revolutionary new piece of gear on April 3?
iPad TV Commercial Shows iBooks Pricing, NYT Best Seller Button, My Documents, Smudge/Camera is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
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