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Since I’m bored and wide awake at the moment, I thought I’d make full use of my iPhone. I rarely use the WordPress App, but after realising today how great the iPhone is as a Netbook replacment, I thought I’d start using it to it’s full potential. Not only have I been listening to my favourite Music, I’ve been playing some great Games. Titles like Chop Sushi, Rogue Planet, Bejeweled, Rock Band, Monkey Island, the list goes on. It’s no wonder manufacturers are chomping at the bit to get their ‘AppStores’ up and running. I recently downloaded the new (and free) Photoshop App, a very cool program that enables cropping, rotation, along with a whole host of visual filters and user adjustable colour balance. Pictures can be shared effortlessy to your favourite online Social Networking sites, whether it be Twitter, FaceBook or Flickr, the iPhone has the power and finesse to keep you up to date at any time. Anyway, enough of my rambling and enjoy the view I’ve had nearly all day (picture edited with Photoshop before you ask!)

With the announcement that Apple are to stage an event on Tuesday 17th March to showcase the upcoming version 3.0 of the iPhone OS, everyone is left wondering if this means a new iPhone is also on the way.

It happened last year..

This time last year Apple did a similar thing. They held an iPhone OS 2.0 software roadmap event on the 6th of March. During this event they unveiled the new OS to the public, showcasing some of it’s more impressive features. The update was dated for a June 2008 release. Around the corner was Apple’s next big event, WWDC 2008, here they officially announced the iPhone 3G, and told us it would come with OS 2.0 installed.

Repeat performance?

This year the OS 3.0 event is taking place slightly later in the month, but the fact it is taking place at a similar time is interesting. Is this going to be a yearly focus? I certainly hope so. Website iPhoneFootprint have worked out possible dates for this years WWDC based on bookings taken by the Moscone Centre. The two possibilities are May 16th-22nd and June 6th-12th. The latter of which seems to be the more likely choice. So this keeps everything in a similar time frame to last years goings on, but is there any evidence yet of a new iPhone?

CSI Cupertino..

So all we really have to go on is dates. What other evidence has cropped up? Well, earlier this year we were treated to some ‘leaked’ pictures of a new iPhone casing, supposedly showcasing a new metal back, akin to the iPod Classics. Then just a few days ago we heard news of O2 UK planning on cutting the iPhone prices in May. When you put all the circumstantial evidence together, it sure does seem like a new iPhone is imminent.

Pump it up, while your feet are stompin’, and the jam is pumpin’, ahhheeeem

Apple released iTunes 8.1 on Wednesday to coincide with the release of the new iPod Shuffle. Initially we expected Genius to spread it’s wings to accommodate Movies and TV Shows, this didn’t happen. Why Apple pulled it at the last minute remains to be seen. What we were promised though was a much quicker iTunes, obviously support for the new Shuffle, CD ripping in iTunes Plus quality, Autofill for any manually managed iPod, and lasty, iTunes DJ. The last addition being my focus for this article.

Can we really all be DJ’s?

Not quite. Apple have revamped the Party Shuffle playlist, and renamed it iTunes DJ. So what makes it so different? Well the ability to ‘Request songs’ via an iPod Touch or iPhone with Apple’s Remote [iTunes] app. Once you start playing a song in iTunes DJ, you can then open the Remote app on your iPhone or iPod and connect to the Library. You don’t need to have paired your device with iTunes for this to work. Once connected, you’ll see the current song, and also a list of upcoming songs. At the bottom of the screen is a nice fat ‘Request song’ button, hit this and you are taken to a scrolling list of the host machines entire Library. From here you can browse by the usual methods, Artist, Albums etc, or even Search. Once you find a song you fancy, select it, and this will bump the song up to be played next in the DJ queue. If another song is then requested before the intial request has been played, the newer request will be queued behind the first.

Selecting DJ Library then shows 'Now Playing' screen

After choosing a song, it's bumped up the list!

The request is reflected in iTunes

Your right to vote!

Onto another cool feature within iTunes DJ, voting. As I just mentioned the request feature works well enough in it’s own right. By turning on voting though, it gets even better. Everytime a song is requested it receives a vote, you can also hit the heart icon next to any song in the upcoming list to give it a vote. Songs with more votes jump the queue, simple as that!

This is a nice little refresh by Apple. Party Shuffle had gotten very stale to be honest. When it was first introduced I used it quite a bit, but with every subsequent release of iTunes I found myself using it less and less. Eventually it got demoted  from the main Library sidebar, down to the Playlists menu. iTunes DJ gives it a new lease of life, and I can’t wait for the iTunes Partay to begin! Any questions feel free to leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. In the meantime, fire up Software Update, and get downloading.

Since the App Store opened there’s been a flurry of games added every single day. I’m sure you would all agree, many games are cheap and nasty. Now I’m not disrespecting any particular developer out there, because I know how hard it is to code these apps. But a lot are merely tech demos showing what the iPhone is capable of, without any real depth to their gameplay. Prices have been constantly falling since the store opened, can anyone remember paying £5.99 for Super Monkey Ball? I can.

Up steps Chop Sushi, I bought this game towards the end of January, and basically spent the whole of February playing it! Whenever you boot up the game it gives you the option of whether or not to enable sound, I find this a very nice touch, especially if you fancy listening to your own tunes while playing, instead of the ingame music. What immediately hits you once the game has loaded is it’s excellent presentation, menu’s are slick, colourful and well laid out.

The Game Modes consist of ‘Adventure’ ‘Quick Battle’ and ‘Challenges’. Obviously Adventure is the main quest which takes you to a variety of islands where you battle against odd looking characters. By beating them, you release them of their Demons, and they become Shop keepers who will sell you Challenges and Recipes. You use Fish as the games currency. You can either catch your own fish (at start of every island) or you can earn Fish ingame by matching three or more in a row. Challenges can be bought using Fish, and come in Easy, Medium or Hard difficulties. Challenges involve matching all the Sushi onscreen in a predetermined amount of moves.

Onto the main game then, it works by matching three or more of a kind. But the way you match the Sushi is a bit strange to get use to at first. When I first started I expected it to be along the lines of Bejeweled, merely swapping pieces around. It’s a bit tougher than that, and requires a lot more careful planning if you are to pull off combos to earn extra turns.

Take the picture above, I can line up four green blobs (Wasabi’s) by picking up the stray one and sliding my finger to the right, this sends it all the way to the end of the row, and shuffles everything else to the left. Because I made a line of four, I automatically get given another go, which is very handy! Whenever you line up three or more Wasabi it takes health power off your opponent. You win the match when your opponents health is depleted, likewise, you lose if he clears your health. The orange coloured Fugu build up your experience points, the more you collect, the higher the experience multiplier is at the end of each match. You may notice from the screenshots there are Stones mixed in with everything else. These cannot be matched, but once you run out of moves, instead of the game ending, these Stones all crack open revealing more Sushi, Fish, Fugu or Wasabi!

So why do we need the Sushi? Well, once you’ve won a couple of matches you slowly get introduced to Recipes. These consist of Boosts, Traps and Specials. If you activate a Boost ingame, it has a negative effect on your opponent. If you activate a Trap, it has a negative effect on you. You activate the Recipes by matching up Sushi in the order and amount shown on the tabs to the left of the screen. Sometimes you will find there is no other move left but to activate a Trap, and this puts you out of luck!

Graphically the game is a joy to behold, excellent artwork is backed up by great character design and nice animation. Sound wise the game is very quirky, personally I find the battle music to be very catchy and am sometimes left with it stuck in my head all night. It’s very much like the soundtrack to a Bruce Lee film!

Overall there enough lasting appeal to make this game well worth the £1.79 asking price. Compared to many games on the App Store, this is packed full of enough Levels and Challenges to keep you occupied for weeks to come. This is easily one of the best puzzlers on the iPhone, so I am awarding  it my App of the month award for February, go buy it! [iTunes Link]

If you would like to ask anything about the game that I may not have fully covered in the review, don’t hesitate to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

MacRumors and iPodObserver have both posted what they believe are pictures showing the case of the yet to be announced third generation iPhone. Judging by the images the casing appears to be made of metal and favours a more grippy, matte finish, reminiscent of the latest iMacs. This is welcome news for many I’m sure you’ll agree. I have to say I preferred the more solid and grippier feel of the original iPhone to the current version. I’m kind of sad there is no sign of a hole for a camera flash. If these pictures are real it will be interesting to see how Apple plan on getting around weak signal issues. Anyway, check out the pics below.

Thanks to iSteamPhone for sending out my T-Shirt, I got it safely today and am really pleased with the design. Incase you haven’t seen it before, this design was initially taken from the ‘Exploded View’ iPhone T-Shirt. This image was then transformed at the hands of Kevin Tong and is selling on iSteamPhone.com

I also ordered one of the limited edition posters, but that hasn’t arrived so I’m starting to worry I made it in time with my order, as only 100 are being made!

daVinci stylee!

As the Macintosh celebrated it’s 25th birthday yesterday, I found myself wondering what it would’ve been like to have never used a Windows based PC. I didn’t get into computers properly till I was about sixteen. I’d always owned a Games Console but my parents could never afford to by a household PC. Once I’d finished High School I decided to go to College to do a Computers A-Level, that’s when my parents managed to buy me a Pentium 200MHz system to help me with my College work. I remember getting it delivered and my Dad said there was no other room in the house to keep it, except for my bedroom, result! Things went from there and within a week or two I signed up for an AOL Free Trial that got me online for two months, I never looked back. My A-level work actually suffered from the fact I had my own PC because I’d end up staying on it all night and either being late, or falling asleep in College. To cut a long story short I went from 1996 to 2004 owning various PC’s that I built myself.

What made me Switch? One answer, iPod…

3rd Gen iPod was a big influence

In 2003 after much dallying I decided to get myself an iPod. I had a friend who was into Apple in a big way and he kept telling me it was brilliant taking his entire music library on the go. I’d owned various portable CD players in the past and always thought it was annoying having to choose a CD quickly before leaving the house, why couldn’t I just hit shuffle like I did on my PC? I got myself a brand new 3rd Gen iPod that had 15GB of storage. I loved the way the four control buttons lit up red and still miss this even today (I was expecting the click wheel to light up on my iPod Video but sadly it didn’t). I managed persuade another one of my friends to get an iPod and we both then had Apple in our minds. If they could make a music player that works this well, syncs effortlessly with your computer, has a simple yet powerful interface, uses innovative control wheel to let you scroll through your music, then what were their computers like? What was their operating system like? That’s when we started paying attention, thats when we started researching on the internet, visiting the Apple website to check out their products, and most importantly, watching the Keynotes. By the time 2004 came there was still that little something stopping me from switching, but then on August 31st, I got pushed over the edge, big time!  It was Apple Expo in Paris, hosted by Phil Schiller (Big Phil!) and I wasn’t really expecting much. I remember my friend texting me “have you seen the new iMac!?”

iMac G5 20" 1.8GHz

I hadn’t, but scurried online to check it out. The love affair began here. For days after the Keynote all I did was check the specs, watch the advert over and over, and think of a way I could afford one. I sorted out a deal with another friend, he was after a new system and bought my PC for a good price. I scrimped together the rest of the money to finally order this twenty inch beauty. When it arrived I got home from work and was so excited I couldn’t even open the box. When I did I couldn’t believe how big the screen looked. I remember my Dad waxing lyrical about the screen quality and he knew nothing about computers. It was unlike any computer I’d ever owned, it was a work of art. Now was the real test, could I use it, would I like using it, and would I miss Windows? I have to admit, for the first week I did miss Windows. I suppose if you use anything for the best part of 7 years then a change will feel weird. I was lucky to have a friend who had owned Macs for years though, and he helped me along the way. If ever I couldn’t do something I’d done in Windows, I learned that on a Mac it could be done, just differently and usually better. Programs I used in Windows always seemed to have a Mac equivalent. I started playing with iLife ’04 and realised this is what I’d been missing. Everything just worked, everything seemed integrated, even 3rd party apps all shared the same look, they all fit together, it started feeling right.

So from there my love for everything Apple began, and it still lives on to this day. I have owned many Apple products since 2003, and I still own a fair few now! I am a very nostalgic person, and just wish I got into Apple sooner. I wish I was there from 1996, I wish I was there when Steve Jobs came back. But all I can do now is feed my  thirst for the past, and eBay is a very good place to do that. iMac G3′s, iMac G4′s, maybe a Classic Mac, I don’t know what is next, but I know I’ll never stop buying Apple.

My Apple Timeline

2003 – iPod 3rd Gen 15GB (Sold)
2004 – iMac 20″ 1.8GHz (Sold)
2005 – iMac 20″ 2.1GHz with iSight camera (Sold)
2006 – iPod 5th Gen 30GB (iPod Video)
2006 – iMac G3 Graphite 600MHz
2006 – iMac 20″ 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (Sold)
2007 – Apple iPhone 8GB (Sold)
2007 – iPod Nano 2GB Black (Gave to my Brother)
2008 – Mac Mini 1.83GHz with 20″ Apple Cinema Display
2008 – AppleTV 160GB
2008 – Apple iPhone 3G 8GB
2008 – Time Capsule 1TB
2008 – MacBook 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo (Sold)
2008 – Unibody MacBook  2.4GHZ with Backlit Keyboard

When Apple released the 2.1 update for the iPhone they told us that one of the new pluses was “vastly improved battery life for some users”. I own an iPhone 3G and have the 3G disabled because there is no signal for it in my area. So theoretically my battery should have be lasting a similar length to that of my older, first gen iPhone? Right? Wrong! Prior to the 2.1 update my newer iPhone would barely last a day, and I’d find myself coming home from work with the 20 or even 10 percent warning popping up. Some days if I used GPRS for a while my battery would go at work!

iPhone 3G battery last longer with 2.1 update

Since updating to the latest firmware however, my iPhone 3G is now back on par, if not better, than my old iPhone. So what have Apple done to improve things? I can only suspect there was bug in the 2.0 firmware that caused loop cycles to occur in the background, as was sometimes a problem with jailbroken iPhones.

AppleInsider report that there have been a few discoveries in the latest beta of the next iPhone firmware update. Apple have been quite secretive about features added to their beta updates lately. What has been unearthed so far seems positive though

• Google Maps Street View (as demoed by the new G1 Android phone)
• Groundwork for emoji icon support.
• Ability to turn auto correct off on the keyboard (hurray some say..)

No sign of the promised ‘Push notification’ system that Apple told us would be introduced mid-September then? What about turn by turn GPS? Come on Apple, surprise us!

Unknown to me, Facebook have released their latest update for the iPhone. The App Store on my phone didn’t notify me of this update at all and it wasn’t until I synched my phone tonight that iTunes told me there were three updates to download. So Facebook 2.0.. well it adds loads of things to be fair, it finally takes it past the old Web App in terms of features.

Facebook 2.0 takes it to the next level

* Notifications view
* News Feed view
* Comment on Status messages
* Accept Friend requests
* Photo Tagging
* Photo Captioning
* Post Photos on Walls
* Inbox Search
* Message attachments

Above all the app is supposedly quicker, and far more stable, especially if you have a huge amount of friends.