Filed under: iPhone, App Store, SDK
iPhone App News Roundup: June 22, 2008
iPhone developers never sleep, since we're still getting a steady stream of news about upcoming App Store over the weekend. Here's the latest:- Alex Price over at The Mac Box has a few free "toys" that will be available at App Store launch. PhoneSaber turns your iPhone into a virtual weapon worthy of a Jedi, while NearPics uses Panaramio.com to find pictures that were taken near your present location.
- Meanwhile, Brian Tunning pinged us about NotepadSync, which consists of matching applications on iPhone and Mac to enter and edit notes. The notes are synced wirelessly to a central store, so there will be a $14.95 estimated annual cost for the service.
- Another ebook reader for iPhone, Books, is being readied for the App Store by a team of developers including three Zachs!
- Probably the coolest App Store contender I've seen so far is Nuance's Voice Search app. As you can see in this video, you speak your search criteria, it is sent to Nuance's servers for recognition, and then text-based criteria are pushed back to your iPhone to do a search. Thanks to Gunnar Evermann at Nuance for this tip.
- Andy Qua is a recent Mac convert and new father who has developed three games for iPhone -- CubeRunner (steer your iPhone through a landscape littered with cubes), iCave (fly a ship through a cave avoiding obstacles), and iNono (puzzle game for solving nonograms).
- Greg Bernhardt had info about GroceryZen, an app that simplifies grocery shopping by organizing recipes, items, and locations in the grocery store.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
hilken said 6:03PM on 6-22-2008
Dude, while I feel there will be very cool apps on the App Store at the opening day, I think we'll also see a lot of crApp!
NearPics? Who would ever want to use that??? It's just an excuse to use the location features of the iPhone...
Totally useless... At least it's free!
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Alex P said 4:29AM on 6-23-2008
Well yes, it's pretty much just an excuse to use the location feature, I made it to help me learn iPhone development, but it turned out to be really quite fun to use, so I thought I'd release it for free... why would you have a problem with that? :(
Keith Duncan said 8:12AM on 6-23-2008
One hopes that the crApps will be kept out of the store by Apple. We'll just have to wait and see.
Alex P said 10:29AM on 6-23-2008
Jeez, I just thought people might enjoy the apps I made for fun... can't you recognise that other people might like things you don't? It's not like I'm charging for them.
And do you really think after charging developers to join the program that Apple should then screw them over by creating an unlevel playing field by deciding what should and shouldn't be on the AppStore?
sng said 11:32AM on 6-23-2008
Alex P,
Don't take this personally. But this is why I think the fee to be in the store should be closer to $500 than $99. It's cool that you did something fun but I do kind of wish that things like this, that amount to a pretty cool "Hello World", would be kept to a minimum in the store.
Having said that. What are you working on that you think will knock our socks off?
Alex P said 12:24PM on 6-23-2008
I just have to disagree, there will be so many independently developed Apps that just wouldn't happen if the dev fee was as high as you want it... did you see the band app at the keynote? Wouldn't happen if it was $500.
I'm working on what I hope will be the best RSS reader on the iPhone... slightly worried someone will kick my ass at it, or just do it first, but I'm trying.
sng said 2:33PM on 6-23-2008
Alex P,
Naw. If you have an idea as good as the band app coming up with the 500 would be trivial. I figure if somebody who can afford an iPhone can't talk one or two people into floating them the cash when it would take less than 100 sales to pay them back and after that they get some cut of the profits on that first app then they're making a hello world app and I'd like to see the price of entry be a filter.
Hell, if the Books.app guys hadn't said they were going to write an SDK version I was seriously considering calling them and offering to pony up the dough and I would have been -happy- to give them $500 just to have the app for myself.
Friendly word of advice on a RSS app. Read about how syncing between desktop and mobile versions works for the NetNewsWire guys. I've been using it with the webapp version on the phone for a few months now and that is a -killer- feature. I'm happy you're doing this as competition is only a good thing. Good luck.
slapppy said 7:31PM on 6-22-2008
Simply awesome stuff. How can those iPhone clones compete when the apps store launches?? They can't. The great thing about it is that no more searching all over the place for amazing apps, its all going to be there on the iPhone/Touch for users to find.
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Andrew Pouliot said 7:55PM on 6-22-2008
Would it be possible to consolidate a list of announced apps into one page? It would be easier to browse and see what's coming that way.
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sng said 8:05PM on 6-22-2008
Cool. I'm very excited that they're going to make Books.app official. It'll be very interesting to see how they handle adding books and what, if any patches, they roll in from rubooks. Really looking forward to seeing any improvments and I hope they have a version I can pay for.
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quandmeme said 8:38PM on 6-23-2008
I simply must have something like books.app in a smart phone. How will non jail broken phones be able to synchronize files? Has anyone heard?
iPhoneinator said 11:09PM on 6-22-2008
i think that the voice search app would be good if instead of it converting your speech into a search the could convert it into text for to use in the SMS application. apple, in fact, should do that for their headphones that have the microphone on them. so you can talk instead of type.
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fishface said 12:25AM on 6-23-2008
that phonesaber sure does look lame
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Stephman said 10:40AM on 6-23-2008
With the Saber app, do you think we'll get a remake of the Star Wars Kid, but with an iPhone loaded with the Saber app instead?!
Please God, I hope not!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPj6viIBmU
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Steve said 12:02PM on 6-23-2008
That speech recognition app looks really cool. Along those same lines, I'm hoping for one of those music recognition apps (hold the phone up to a speaker for a few seconds, the phone sends the data up to a server, and returns info about the song).
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Nas said 12:06PM on 6-23-2008
Dude i think the nearpics and phonesaber apps will be pretty fun, albeit novelty. But they're free, what the hell are you complaining about? i mean if you don't like them don't install them it's as simple as that.
who are you to say what is crap and what isn't? its all subjective.
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Chris said 12:19PM on 6-23-2008
I'm totally buying groceryzen. There is a shopping list program for jailbroken iPhones but it pretty much sucks ass.
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