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Posts Tagged ‘Reviewers’

Apple to iPad devs: on your mark, get set, submit!

Apple is alerting developers that they have just over a week to prepare iPad apps and get them submitted for review if they want them to be in the App Store on April 3.

Developers must build their apps using beta 5 of the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK and submit them by 5pm PDT on March 27 to get an initial review by Apple, according to an e-mail sent to developers this afternoon. Reviewers will run the apps on iPad hardware and e-mail developers with notes on the “readiness” of the app, and information necessary to submit the app for final review for inclusion in the App Store by April 3. Only apps that are submitted for the initial review process will have a chance to go on sale at the “grand opening of the iPad App Store.”

The crux of the problem is that most developers won’t have access to actual iPad hardware to test and debug their apps before they go on sale. Beyond a select few developers given early access under reportedly rigid security provisions, this is the only chance most will have for their app to run outside of the iPad Simulator unless they wait until after April 3 to test on hardware themselves. Unfortunately, that could mean giving competitors a big jumpstart.

The good news, though, is that iPad owners will have more than just Apple’s apps to choose from on day one. Also, developers have observed especially quick review times of late. This suggests that even in the worst case that some apps require an early fix, developers should be able to get it out to users with little delay.

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The New App Store Rules: No Swimsuits, No Skin, And No Innuendo

Over the last few days we’ve been tracking Apple’s recent decision to remove all sexual content from the App Store. It’s an alarming move on Apple’s part, if only because it shows that the company is willing to throw developers (and their livelihoods) under the bus without any notice at all. Now developers are left wondering: just what exactly is allowed on the App Store? As it turns out, the new policy may be even more restrictive than it first appeared.

Earlier this week, when Apple notified developers that their applications were being removed, it said that it was removing applications with “overtly sexual content”. That sounds like the ban only extends to apps that are little more than soft core porn. But we’re hearing from multiple developers that it actually means anything that could be even the slightest bit titillating in any way — including swimsuits and fitness outfits. In short, if your app has skin, it will probably be rejected.

One developer, who wished to remain anonymous, spoke to multiple App Store reviewers about the new policy. He was told, “there will be no more applications that are for any purpose of excitement or titillation”. He was told this included swimsuits — both bikinis and one-piece suits. Along with having dozens of his “sexy” apps removed, Apple also removed one that featured a popular fitness model in her workout clothes (the app was a marketing vehicle for the athlete’s line of protein powder). When he asked if the ban would also affect apps like Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit application, the Apple employee wouldn’t give a clear answer, but it was implied that the SI app would probably be removed as well.

Developer Jon Atherton, who is behind the popular application Wobble (which doesn’t actually include any sexual photos), also spoke to an Apple employee, and posted this list of rules to his blog based on what he learned:

1. No images of women in bikinis (Ice skating tights are not OK either)

2. No images of men in bikinis! (I didn’t ask about Ice Skating tights for men)

3. No skin (he seriously said this) (I asked if a Burqa was OK, and the Apple guy got angry)

4. No silhouettes that indicate that Wobble can be used for wobbling boobs (yes – I am serious, we have to remove the silhouette in this pic)

5. No sexual connotations or innuendo: boobs, babes, booty, sex – all banned

6. Nothing that can be sexually arousing!! (I doubt many people could get aroused with the pic above but those puritanical guys at Apple must get off on pretty mundane things to find Wobble “overtly sexual!)

7. No apps will be approved that in any way imply sexual content (not sure how Playboy is still in the store, but …)

As far as we can tell, Apple hasn’t spelled out its new policies anywhere (our request for more details has gone unanswered).  Keep in mind that these rules may not be set in stone — Apple is purposely vague about its policies, and they’re probably still changing.

These moves are pretty ridiculous given the fact that the iPhone offers a full set of parental controls — Apple should have just blocked the applications from view of anyone who wasn’t old enough to see them. But the real issue with all this, as I outlined yesterday, is how callous Apple is being with regard to the well-being of iPhone developers. It’s easy to paint anyone behind a “sexy” iPhone app as a scumbag, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of young men have iPhones, and they’re willing to pay a few dollars for sexy photos — it’s business. There are magazine empires that are built around this very principle.

The developer who I spoke to says that he’s spent the last year regularly speaking to Apple representatives, attempting to tweak his “sexy” apps to accommodate Apple’s constantly evolving standards. He was told things like (paraphrased) “a woman can be pictured in a bathing suit, but she can’t have her thumb on the suit’s strings” — because that would have been too sexually suggestive. He’d make the modifications and resubmit, oftentimes only to have another photo get called out for an equally bizarre reason. During these back-and-forths he was told that things would get better when the iPhone’s parental controls came out. And that was true for a little while, until Apple changed its mind.

After making around $30,000 last year from the App Store, he’s essentially lost his income.  And Wobble’s company, which was pulling in around $500 a day, is now making less than $10.  Apple gave these developers the green light to build “sexy” apps, and now that they’ve built businesses around them, it’s tossing them aside without so much as an apology.  To Apple, they’re expendable.

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Palm Pre Plus, Pixi Plus due January 25 from Verizon

Reworked versions of Palm’s touchscreen smartphones were unveiled today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Palm’s Pre, an impressive phone with a hidden QWERTY keyboard, and the slim, small Pixi, have failed to set the world on fire the way that Verizon’s Motorola-built Droid and the HTC-made Google Nexus One have done. Both phones will be available from Verizon on January 25th.

This is Palm’s chance to catch up a bit. But hands-on reviewers aren’t calling these phones major upgrades.

Palm has tech specs and photos up at Palm.com already, but Gizmodo zeroed in on exactly what’s changed between the original and Plus versions of both phones.

Pre Plus

• Navigation button removed from the bottom of the Pre’s front panel.
• Twice as much built-in RAM memory.
• 16 gigabytes of storage.
• Can be recharged on a Palm Touchstone cable-free charger pad.

Pixi Plus

• Wi-Fi added.
• Colorful cases available.
• Can be recharged on a Palm Touchstone cable-free charger pad.

[Pixi cases photo: Gizmodo]

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Let The Nexus One Marketing Blitz Begin

As you’ve probably heard by now, this morning Google finally officially announced the first Google Phone: The Nexus One. Plenty of reviewers and geeks are fawning over the new device, but some are proposing that it won’t even make a blip on the radar for your average consumer. In fact, earlier this evening the Wall Street Journal quoted one analyst as saying, “Unless [Google] gives it a big push with marketing dollars, which they are not, consumers aren’t going to know the phone exists.”

I don’t think anything could be further from the truth. Google is going to put its marketing muscle behind this in a very big way to ensure that consumer awareness persists long after today’s launch. Granted, the company says it is favoring an online strategy as opposed to television for its campaigns (which is why the analyst quoted above doubted its chances), but Google can still plaster the Nexus One all over the web.

It’s already started. Visit the YouTube homepage right now, and you’ll see a fairly prominent link to the Nexus One official YouTube Channel, which is loaded with how-to guides and video walkthroughs. Google is also running quite a few AdWords ads for keywords like “smartphones”, “phone”, “maps”, and “android”. That’s not hugely surprising, though it is worth pointing out that Google is purchasing ads that compete directly against some of its partners.

I suspect this is only the beginning. Don’t be surprised if we see ads for the Nexus One on Google’s famously spartan homepage (this would be a very rare move for the company, but it set a precedent with the Droid launch). Likewise, we’ll probably see small ads pop up on various Google products, the same way the company often prompts users to try out Chrome. And there will likely be a big push on third party publisher sites.

Google has a lot riding on this launch. Sure, it would be nice for the phone to be a popular device in its own right. But, as many have pointed out, it’s the disruptive distribution model that’s going to have the biggest impact down the line. Google needs to show that this new online distribution model is something that people are willing to actually use.

As it stands now, that’s going to be a bit of a challenge. Buying a cell phone online will be a pretty foreign experience to most people (at least in the United States). That isn’t to say it’s a difficult experience. It’s just different. And it’s going to require plenty of ads and hand holding to get people used to the process, because they won’t have a sales rep standing next to them to help.

Also, keep in mind that Verizon reportedly spent $100 million to market the Droid in 2009. I doubt Google anticipates that the Nexus One will actually beat Droid in sales in the short term (given Verizon’s thousands of retail stores versus Google’s online-only storefront that would be very difficult indeed). But if three months down the line the Nexus One still represents a very tiny sliver of Android’s market share, you can be sure people will start calling the ‘Google Phone’ a failure.

I reached out to Google to see if they’d offer any specifics about their upcoming marketing plans. Their spokesperson wasn’t willing to share much, but they did reaffirm that Google’s spending would be focused primarily online rather than on television:

Because the Nexus One is exclusively sold online, our marketing plan will heavily focus on online marketing to educate users on the benefits of the phone and the new way of buying it. We are using a broad range of Google online advertising tools, which we believe to be the best way to run targeted and measurable advertising / marketing campaigns.

Unfortunately, we are not going into detail on our specific marketing plans for the future.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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Prototype SATA 6Gbps SSD gets benchmarked: yessir, it’s hasty

We’ve already seen Seagate tout the speed advantages of its SATA 6Gbps hard drive, but it’s the 6Gbps SSD that we’re really curious about. PC Perspective managed to snag itself a Marvell prototype drive, and even though they could only test the read capabilities of it, the results are nothing short of titillating. Reviewers pitted the Marvell drive against Intel’s well-respected X25-M G2, and their (admittedly limited) testing led them to discover a 33 percent increase in burst performance over one of the quickest SSDs on the market today. In case you’re still not impressed, you should know that they also saw a 27 percent uptick in sustained read performance (compared to the X25-M G2) and a 175 percent increase over the aforementioned SATA 6Gbps Seagate HDD. Obviously it’s still too early to tell whether the 6Gbps SSD really is the best thing since the vacuum tube, but if these ultra-early results are any indication of what’s to come, we suggest you start packing those pennies away right now to finance your next storage upgrade.

Prototype SATA 6Gbps SSD gets benchmarked: yessir, it’s hasty originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OCZ’s Colossus desktop SSD gets reviewed: oh yeah, it’s fast

It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it? OCZ Technology’s Colossus is the outfit’s first in the desktop SSD space, and with capacities scaling as high at 1TB, it’s certainly tempting for performance junkies who just can’t pry themselves away from their tower. The benchmark-minded kids over at PC Perspective were able to get a drive in with final firmware a few weeks back, and they’ve pushed out a full review just prior to these things hitting retail en masse. Needless to say, all the numbers in the world won’t make this any cheaper, but for those willing to spend at least $3.24 per gigabyte on internal storage, there’s hardly a better option out right now. Reviewers found that read and write speeds seriously pushed the SATA 3Gb/sec limit, and the latter were “faster than on any SATA device tested to date.” Sadly, the lack of TRIM support and the inability for end-users to upgrade the firmware put somewhat of a damper on things, but if neither one of those tidbits bother you, pulling the trigger just might be the right thing to do.

OCZ’s Colossus desktop SSD gets reviewed: oh yeah, it’s fast originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Inside "MinWin:" the Windows 7 kernel slims down

As Windows 2000 was being developed in the second half of
the 1990s, Microsoft was firmly focused on building in as much functionality
as possible, in a play to push Novell Netware aside and establish Windows NT as
the operating system for the business world. When NT was released to manufacturing
ten years ago, it was well-received by reviewers, businesses, and enthusiasts
alike, and for much of the decade the OS has been considered by some to be the
pinnacle of Windows releases. Its headline business features—Active
Directory, Group Policy, Internet Information Services, Management Console,
Windows Management Instrumentation—have become industry standards. But most
importantly, Windows NT served as the technological basis for what can fairly be
described as the most successful and well-known software product of all time:
Windows XP.

But there’s always been a dirty little secret hiding underneath
that iconic field of green grass. From an engineering and security standpoint,
the foundation of Windows 2000 and Windows XP is absolutely horrible.

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Vrooooom! Start your car (and more) from your iPhone or iPod touch

Filed under: Accessories, iPhone, Holidays, iPod touch

TUAW reader Ethan pointed us in the direction of something new, cool, and available only for iPhone and iPod touch (take that, Palm Pre and Android phones!)

BestBuy has an exclusive on the new Viper SmartStart System, which can do a number of things for your wheels:

• Start your car with virtually unlimited range
• Warm your car in winter; cool your car in summer
• Unlock your car or truck
• Arm the alarm to protect your car
• Activate panic alarm to protect yourself
• Receive push-button status notifications

It uses a free iPhone app [iTunes link] to give you that remote love, like when you are visiting friends overseas and want to scare people by starting your car up while it’s sitting by itself in the airport parking lot. The developers also note that in the near future, a new release of the app will give you push notification if your car alarm goes off.

There are two versions available: a module (SmartStart VSM100 Module, US$299.99) for cars that are already equipped with compatible Viper starting systems, and a fully loaded package (SmartStart VSM4000 System, US$499.99) for the rest of us.

Some of the app reviewers have noted that you’re not only paying for the system and your iPhone bill, but there’s also a US$29 monthly GSM service bill that you’ll have to pay. However, if the money isn’t an object and you’re already clueless about what to get a loved one for Christmas, this might be an idea to consider.

TUAWVrooooom! Start your car (and more) from your iPhone or iPod touch originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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