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Filed under: Apple

Approximately one hour after uploading his new application update to iTunes Connect, Bristol-based iPhone developer Rob Jonson of Hobbyist software got the surprise of his week: an official Apple green light. His latest update to his VLC Remote application had been approved and was ready for sale. VLC Remote allows you to control a Mac- or Windows-based VideoLAN playback client from your iPhone, basically duplicating many of the features you’d get from a standard Apple Remote.

His update wasn’t complicated. “It was a simple problem,” he told me over the phone this morning. “One of the buttons stopped working because of a stupid error. I missed a break in a case statement.” So he uploaded his bugfix at about 11 PM local United Kingdom time.

Just before midnight, he checked his e-mail before heading off to bed. The Apple approval was sitting in his in-box. A recent update, submitted last week, had taken only a day to receive approval. “With 24 hours, I was very impressed. But one hour? I couldn’t believe it. Clearly Apple has changed the game.”

“It’s awesome,” he said. “It makes me less scared to put out an update. ” As Jonson explained, updates used to involve a two week process. During that time, you didn’t “…want to do any more work until it [went] through. You [made] yourself do something else in the meantime” like switching to another project development, to allow time for Apple to finish processing the submission. “Now, I know I can have it sorted out very quickly, it’s so much easier for me to improve my app.”

He contrasted Apple’s new response times with Palm’s, which continues to introduce long delays between app submission and review. “If a user finds a bug, and I fix it, I have to send a request to cancel the update before I can submit a new update.” This is similar to Apple’s policy of developers self-rejecting an app submission, but takes more work. You must wait for the cancel request to process. “Palm hasn’t got the update process sorted yet for its app store.” With Apple, he can now submit his updates and know that they will be handled promptly.

For now, Apple’s excellent turnaround time means two things. First, it’s going to greatly improve the ability of developers to deliver bug updates in a timely manner, without being burdened by long delays that cause development downtime. Bug fixes will reach users sooner and the App Store ecosystem will improve as a consequence.

Second, it’s going to speed the process of developer entry into the iPad arena. Shorter turn-around means that iPad-specific apps will start filling App Store shelves without the kind of months-long ramp up that was needed when iPhone apps first debuted. With just sixty days between iPad announcement and the first units expected to hit the shelves, Apple’s rapid app review promises that developers can put their iPad goods in the hands of consumers nearly as soon as the iPad starts shipping.

Shorter review times are a great move on Apple’s part and a win for all parties: developers, customers, and Apple.

TUAWiPhone devsugar: App Store approval in…one hour? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows/Mac/Linux: If you’ve been using the recently released Boxee Beta media center but found it to be a bit on unusable side of buggy (at least one Lifehacker writer felt that way), good news: Boxee just released an update to Boxee Beta, and while the update doesn’t have any new features, it’s overflowing with bug fixes (over 500 resolved issues in total). A few highlights among the fixes:

• Significantly improved video quality of our DXVA support
• Regained support for older graphics cards (pre-2.0 pixel shader) which was broken after move to DXVA
• Improved file scanning performance
• Playlist playback of internet video streams was sometimes using the music player instead of the video player

If you’re still not familiar with Boxee or the Boxee Beta, check out our first look at Boxee Beta.

One of our favorite little Mac utilities, the iTunes controller Bowtie has just hit version 1.0! Bowtie lets you easily control iTunes with customizable shortcuts, view album art and automatically send songs to Last.fm (and mark songs you love and songs you want to ban). Even better? There’s now a Bowtie iPhone app that you can control using Mac or Windows!

A Customizable iTunes Controller

When Bowtie first hit the scene in the Fall of 2008, it was a simple, themeable iTunes controller. If you’ve never used an iTunes controller like CoverSutra or Ecoute, you’re missing out. Simply put, it’s a really nice way to customize your iTunes playback experience, plus you can modify how album art and playback information is displayed on your Mac desktop, so when iTunes is minimized, you can still see what’s playing and rate, skip or view album art.

Bowtie 1.0 has received a big overhaul on the backend. It uses less memory, connects to Last.fm in a new way and is fully extensible in the future. The one big difference is that search — a much-loved feature in the alpha and beta releases — has been removed. Search was great because you could search for a song from Bowtie and start playing it. Unfortunately, as the developer says, that created some performance problems, led to crashes and was just buggy. The feature will be coming back, but when it does, it’s going to work the right way.

Bowtie is still ultra themeable (you can create your own themes by reading this guide), which is one of the things that first drew me to the app. I like being able to customize my desktop and lots and lots of designers have created some pretty awesome themes. You can check out MacThemes and Iconpaper to get more skins.

Bowtie for iPhone

The newest edition to the Bowtie family is Bowtie for the iPhone. With this iPhone app, you can control the music playing on your iPhone or iPod touch using Bowtie for Mac or the Bowtie iPhone Controller for Windows.

Why would you want to do that? Here’s a scenario that isn’t unfamiliar to me: Say you have some really badass speakers that have an iPhone connector dock. You like to plug your iPhone into the dock to pump music through your living room or office or whatever. However, the big problem is when you want to change tracks or pause the music. Rather than walk to the device to manually change what’s playing, why not use your computer?

It’s really nice and it works incredibly well. Check out these screenshots, which show how what you select in Bowtie will play or pause what’s playing on your iPhone or iPod touch.

Bowtie for the iPhone is 99¢ in the App Store. It’s a pretty cool program if you ever find yourself using your iPod or iPhone as a music player. Another thing to note — Bowtie for iPhone will work with the iPad on day one. The developer says that other iPad-centric features will be added too.

Bowtie for Mac and the Bowtie Remote for Windows apps are free. All three apps are available now.

Do you use any iTunes controllers? What’s your favorite? Let us know!

Tags: apple, bowtie, iphone apps, itunes, mac, software

Windows/Mac: DeSmuME is a featured-packed Nintendo DS emulator capable of playing ROMs and homebrew software, one that also offers extra features unavailable on a traditional DS.

DeSmuME emulates all the functionality of the DS including the buttons, touchscreen interface, and even the Wi-Fi connection. You can simply play your ROMs and homebrew apps, but in addition to playback, you can take screenshots, create movies from your gameplay, load cheat codes, and save your game state. That allows you to save any game at any time, even if the game doesn’t support profiles or saved games.

DeSmuMe is freeware and available for Windows and Mac. Check out NDS Homebrew for a variety of homebrew games and applications.

Originally posted 2009-10-04 18:25:24. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Filed under: iPhone, App Store

If you’re one of the people who has, according to Adobe’s John Nack, run the total number of downloads of the Photoshop.com Mobile [free, iTunes Link] app to 6.5 million, then we have information you need to know. Of course, you may have already checked the App Store app to find the update to version 1.1.021 of Photoshop Mobile for iPhone, but if you haven’t then you should mosey on over to the App Store Updates and it should magically appear for you.

The new version of the Photoshop.com Mobile app adds a new sharpen tool, more photo borders, and (for U.S. users only) playback of videos hosted on Photoshop.com.

You’ll need to be running iPhone 3.0 or later on your device to enjoy using Photoshop.com Mobile.

TUAWAdobe updates Photoshop Mobile app for iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been a long, long while since we’ve seen any life from the OMAP4 labs at Texas Instruments, but with the sudden resurgence of the tablet, now seems just about right for the company to start showcasing the platform’s prowess once more. TI is expected to have a mind-bending showcase at Mobile World Congress later this month, but Slashgear was able to get a sneak peek at what’s to come at the outfit’s Dallas office. The device you’re peering at above definitely piqued our interest, as it’s some sort of twin-screened handheld that can actually support a third independent display courtesy of an integrated pico projector module. We’re told that OMAP4 will bring along dual 1GHz ARM A9 cores, patently ridiculous battery life figures (145 hours of MP3 playback with a 1,000mAh battery) and support for 1080p output via HDMI. Naturally, TI has no intention of ever bringing this piece of hardware to market, but it’d certainly love if some other firm stepped in and did so. Here’s hoping we’re overrun by potential suitors in Barcelona — given that the show kicks off on Valentine’s Day, we’d say the timing would be just about perfect.

TI’s OMAP4 prototype drives three independent displays without breaking a sweat originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Firefox: If you’ve ever been annoyed by having to do repetitive actions on a web site with no way to automate them, DéjàClick can help. Record and playback browser-based actions with DéjàClick and skip tedious future clicks.

DéjàClick is a Firefox extension offered by AlertSite a company that specializes in software designed to monitor web sites and alert the site owners if specified processes are not occurring properly—essentially using automated script “robots” to go test out things like the search function and the checkout process. DéjàClick is their free offering for non-commercial use to allow users to record their own browsing and play it back to automate processes later on.

Any time there is an instance where you have to actually interact with the browser—as oppose to using a bookmark to jump somewhere in a site or a login tool—you can use DéjàClick to record yourself performing the actions and store that recording as a script. Every time you visit that site or interface again you can execute that script and save yourself the hassle. Check out the company site here or visit the link below to grab the extension.

Technology has played an important role not only in getting relief to those affected by the Haiti earthquake, but in getting information out about how the quake affected the island nation.

CNN contributes a new series of immersive information visualizations in these 360 degree panoramic videos, where you can completely control the camera’s view during playback as well as zoom in and out.

Shot over the last week in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince, the videos are powered by technology from Immersive Media — the same company that helped power much of Google’s Street View.

Have a look at the interactive videos at full size and let us know what you think.

[via Gizmodo]

Disclosure: Mashable has a syndication partnership with CNN.

Tags: cnn, haiti, haiti 360, interactive video, panorama, social media, video

One of the most-needed missing features in the Google Wave preview rolls out this week: user access permissions.

Now, rather than everyone being able to edit everyone else’s blips in a total free-for-all, the creator of a wave can add users and groups and give them either full access to edit everything, or read-only access. The binary choice is still too limiting, but GOOG says that “Reply only” access is on its way.

To limit a contact’s access to a blip you created, click on their icon on the top of the wave and choose “Read only” from the drop-down, as shown. You can give both individual users and groups read-only access; though individual access permissions trump that of the groups. (For example, if the public group has read-only access, you can grant a single user full access to edit, even though that person’s part of the group.) You can only set permissions for waves you have created.

Along with this first iteration of access permissions, the Wave team also added a “Restore” button to Wave’s playback feature. If a wave gets destroyed beyond easy repair, you can use playback to roll it back to a former version of itself.

Even though this means quite a bit of revision to the book, it’s great to see Wave evolving into something much more usable. I’ve also updated the Wave vs. the Rest chart to reflect this new feature.

Smarterware is Lifehacker editor emeritus Gina Trapani’s new home away from ‘hacker. To get all of the latest from Smarterware, be sure to subscribe to the Smarterware RSS feed. For more, check out Gina’s weekly Smarterware feature here on Lifehacker.

Filed under: Audio, Software Update

Two pieces of Apple’s Logic Studio suite for Mac, Logic Pro and MainStage, have been updated today and the new versions are available immediately through Software Update or the links below.

The Logic Pro 9.1 update includes support for 64-bit native mode, compatibility with 64-bit Audio Unit plug-ins, and support for file names over 32 characters long. According to the update notes, samples are now mapped correctly when using the “Contiguous Zones” opetion in the EXS editor. The full release notes are available for viewing here.

MainStage 2.1 also includes 64-bit native mode and compatibility with the 64-bit Audio Unit plug-ins. Other fixes and improvements include better compatibility with MainStage 1.x documents, improved recording when using the Loopback plug-in, and multiple playback plug-ins in the same group now sync reliably. Full release notes are available here.

Enabling 64-bit native mode for both applications requires Mac OS X 10.6.2 or later.

[A tip of the studio professional hat to TUAW reader samw for letting us know about the update]

TUAWLogic Pro and MainStage updated, now 64-bit friendly originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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