Category: Software

Apple has posted details on a new full-time position at its Cupertino headquarters for an iPhone Software Engineer who will join its newly created Maps team. On the job description web page, Apple says it wants to “…take Maps to the next level,” and “…rethink how users use Maps and change the way people find things.”

The current Mapping technology in the iPhone relies heavily on Google Maps, but some tech–pundits think that’s a relationship Apple is keen to see come to an end. After all, Apple and Google aren’t exactly on great terms any more. In fact, Apple’s relationship with former best-buddy Google has been demonstrably deteriorating over the last 12 months. So, on the surface at least, it seems Apple is distancing itself further from the search giant both with the creation of its own in-house Mapping team and, back in October, the acquisition of PlaceBase, a rival mapping service to Google Maps.

A little more from the job description highlights how Apple wants to implement creative new functionality in Maps as well as its desire to include its partners in the process.

The iPhone has revolutionized the mobile industry and has changed people’s lives and we want to continue to do so. We want to take Maps to the next level, rethink how users use Maps and change the way people find things. We want to do this in a seamless, highly interactive and enjoyable way. We’ve only just started.

As an engineer on the Maps team, your responsibilities will range from implementing low-level client/server code to implementing high-level user interfaces. You’ll be responsible for implementing new and innovative features, fixing problems and enhancing the performance of Maps. You will work closely with the other engineers on the Maps team, other iPhone and iPod touch teams as well our partners in other companies.

So how might PlaceBase and a new in-house Maps team change how users use Maps on the iPhone?

PlaceBase offers far richer aggregation and visualization of geo-specific datasets than is currently available on Google Maps. For example, imagine you’re planning on buying a house and have a property already in mind. Like Google Maps, PlaceBase can show you the usual aerial views you’re accustomed to seeing but can also display other valuable data, too, such as local crime reports over the last five years, or the demographic distribution of the neighbourhood, or perhaps the latest performance scores of local schools. What’s more, the datasets can be customized.

Some have interpreted the PlaceBase acquisition — and this job posting — as evidence that Apple is taking definitive steps to distance itself from Google. It sounds plausible; Google’s Android OS for mobile phones definitely treads on Apple’s toes, and that whole Voicegate fiasco isn’t over yet. Google’s forays into web browsers and operating systems doesn’t exactly foster amity between the two companies, either.

I suspect Apple wants to bring PlaceBase data visualisation to its already-exemplary Maps application. Yes, it uses Google Maps, but it works. And as it says in the job posting, Apple thinks it’s “…the best mapping program on any mobile platform.” If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?

Let’s return to the example from above; imagine you’ve viewed the property but you’re not impressed. Back in the car your real estate agent tells you he has another place in mind he thinks you’ll like. So you reach for your iPhone and fire-up Maps. You do a quick search on the new address and, using a filter you customized earlier, you see the neighbourhood overlaid with color-coded blobs indicating crime rates in that area. You switch to another filter; now you’re looking at the average home-insurance costs for the area, and they’re all way too orange and red for your liking.

There’s no reason this sort of Map “filtering” can’t be monetized, either. The Maps application itself could ship with some basic “fun” filters but offer specialized plug-ins via the iTunes store. Third-party developers would jump at the chance to exploit rich data visualization by plugging-in to a native API, freeing them from the expense and difficulty of building similar functionality from scratch.

While this job posting is specifically for an iPhone developer, there’s no reason to suspect the lessons learned here in the coming months won’t influence other geo-aware software from Apple; iPhoto and iMovie spring to mind, but OS X itself also exploits some (basic) geo-awareness when selecting the appropriate time zone in the Date & Time preference panel.

As social networking services get more geo-savvy (Twitter, Brightkite and FourSquare are obvious examples, but Facebook can’t be far behind) and as mobile devices and laptops start packing-in GPS chips as-standard, it makes sense for Apple to offer a world-class geo-aware range of products that exploit our desire to not only locate ourselves but also discover meaningful, customizable data about our surroundings. That, to me, is the most likely “next level” of Map usage Apple is talking about.

Ever since I began my quest for the ultimate minimalist Mac experience, I have failed to find an elegant and stable way to control iTunes without using the built-in controller. I thought the solution was in Bowtie, but, unfortunately, that app only provides elegance. After some time it becomes unresponsive. An update will supposedly be released soon, but my patience ran out.

Thankfully, I discovered SizzlingKeys, a simple, free way to use hotkeys to control iTunes. Although it isn’t as customizable as Bowtie.app, it still gets the job done without stealing any scarce real estate or eating up the processor. When you use a command, a tiny floating window appears to show you the currently playing song along with its album art.

As you can see in the screenshot below, I chose to use the Command and Option keys to initiate each basic control. If iTunes isn’t running when you use a command, SizzlingKeys can open it automatically.

The screenshot below is from the floating window options. Each time you control iTunes using SizzlingKeys, a lightweight window appears for a few seconds to show what song is playing before fading away.

Here you can see what my floating window looks like against a dark desktop background. You also get a tiny icon indicating what command was triggered. In this example, I paused the music.

There is a $5 pro version with additional features, but they are not necessary for casually listening to music.

The App Store is known for a few things, including the sheer volume of apps available, the tremendous success it’s brought some independent developers, and, most notoriously, for the constant stream of rejections that it issues with remarkable frequency. Now one scorned developer has taken it upon himself to make sure a record of the worst among those rejections is kept.

AppRejections.com is a simple blog that tracks App Store rejections, mostly via user submissions. It also points out the blatant hypocrisy of some of Apple’s rejection policies, highlighting what look an awful lot like different standards for higher profiles devs and studios (read: cash cows).

For example, the most recent article at the time of this writing is about how Star Wars Trench Run was accepted despite containing a huge image of an iPhone, something which has been a pretty boilerplate reason for rejection of apps put out by much smaller studios and independent devs before now. In fact, Apple put out a blanket ban on the use of the exact bitmap which features prominently in Trench Run’s control layout help screen.

It’s early days yet for the blog, with only 14 posts thus far, and it isn’t much to look at, but the idea behind the site is a fantastic one. Accountability is severely lacking in the App Store approval process, and till now, efforts to track and analyze rejections have been scattered at best. Despite the stock template look of AppRejections.com, site creator Adam Martin, himself an iPhone developer from the U.K., is doing a great job of tracking down and soliciting stories of Apple running afoul.

Martin also tracks what apps get let back into the App Store, and why, and also what the implications are for users who managed to grab apps that eventually got pulled before that actually happened. It’s a truly comprehensive approach to the problem of Apple’s pell-mell review policy. If you’re a dev who has a story to share, head on over to the site and let Adam know what exactly happened. The more points of data he can collect, the more complete a picture he can paint of App Store injustice.

If Martin can keep it up and create a really thorough record of Apple’s various hypocrisies regarding App Store management, it’s possible we’ll see some kind of change eventually, owing to a shift in public opinion, or increased rancor from the developer community. Do I think that’s the most likely outcome? No, but one can hope.

Apple said it was going to allow independent content producers open access to the tech and process behind iTunes LP and iTunes Extras, and it has done good on that promise, as TUAW reports. Today Apple has created a dedicated page on its website that offers devs interested in the format “everything you need to know to create a rich, interactive experience around your music and movies. All right in iTunes.”

For those who may have missed it, Apple introduced the iTunes LP and iTunes Extras rich media formats for albums and movies when it released the latest major update to iTunes, version 9. Both LP for music, and Extras for movies, package extra content with a customer’s purchase, including videos, behind-the-scenes info, commentary and more.

There was some speculation shortly after the launch that Apple was purposely keeping the enhanced formats closed, and letting only major labels in on the party, in exchange for a $10,000 per album/movie admission charge. Apple denied the allegations, and it turns out it wasn’t lying.

Anyone who wants to can now head over to Apple’s site and check out three documents that should help even well-motivated amateurs work their way through the creation of the new value-add formats. There’s a template for both, and also a template how-to document that provides step-by-step instructions about how to create your LP or Extras.

For now, each and every artist and label that wants to create either an LP or an Extra for their album or movie will have to go through a manual submission process. And that’s only if you’re able to submit at all. The submission process is currently limited, with Apple directing people to contact their label or studio reps to see if they have access. Apple intends to have automated, electronic submission in place in the first quarter of 2010, but until then, most people will probably be stuck creating without any real hope of publishing.

It’s been a double-edged sword, this no-Flash-on-the-iPhone business. On the one hand, we don’t get the complete Internet. On the other hand, the web pages we do get are less likely to crash or drag-along at a snail’s pace. And really, who wants to see yet another “Smack the monkey” banner ad?

Just as we bemoaned the lack of MMS functionality, some of us complain endlessly about the absence of Flash support on the iPhone. But following a demonstration at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference, it looks like we may see that software giant’s Flash competitor, Silverlight, appearing on the iPhone in the not too distant future.

Reporting for Betanews.com, Scott Fulton writes:

It was an impressive demonstration, once they got it working: H.264 video streaming wirelessly (and slowly, at least during the caching sequence) using Microsoft’s Silverlight video streaming, to an Apple iPhone… You’d think Apple would have stood firm against Microsoft at least as aggressively as it has against Adobe, if not more so. How did this happen? We asked Microsoft User Experience Platform Manager Brian Goldfarb last week at PDC 2009, and the answer was a huge surprise…followed by some caveats. But it contained these four amazing words: “We worked with Apple.”

OK, quick recap for those of you who don’t know what Silverlight is all about. Silverlight was launched by Microsoft in 2007, and provides a toolset developers can leverage to build rich multimedia and interactivity into websites. In this sense, it’s like Adobe’s venerable Flash. But unlike Flash, Silverlight content is based on a flavor of XML which means…well, it all gets very nerdy from here on in, so I’ll stop there. The take-home message is that, for the most part, Silverlight is a more modern, powerful and less crash-tastic alternative to Flash. It’s also more standards-compliant than Flash, depending on who you get to build your Silverlight web apps, and that matters a lot in an age when more and more of what we do happens in the browser. (Before I get flamed in the comments, please note — I didn’t say Silverlight is standards compliant — it’s just less horrible than Flash. And yes, I do realize that’s hardly a ringing endorsement.)

It’s precisely the browser technology in the iPhone that helped make Silverlight video streaming a possibility. Brian Goldfarb told Betanews:

“The promise of Silverlight is that it’s a cross-device, cross-browser, cross-platform solution, and it works the same on Macs as it does on Windows. The iPhone is a unique scenario. We talked to our customers…and they said, ‘Look, we just need to get our content there, and it’s mainly in the media space like broadcasting, and we want to put it on the iPhone.’ They have a great solution for that; if you’re surfing the Web, and hit YouTube and hit ‘Play,’ it’ll play your video because [Apple] created an environment where they can safely play media, and they’re comfortable with that.

Goldfarb is talking about the native YouTube app found on every iPhone. The YouTube app sorta helps, but usually only for YouTube-hosted video. Want to play videos hosted elsewhere? Good luck. Some H.264 QuickTime-encoded videos will play, but as you likely already know, it’s all a bit hit-and-miss.

“So we’ve worked with Apple to create a server-side based solution […] and what we’re doing is taking content that’s encoded for smooth streaming and enabling the content owner to say, ‘I want to enable the iPhone.’ The server will dynamically make the content work – same content, same point of origin – on the iPhone. We do this with the HTML 5 tag, in many ways.”

And there’s the magic bullet right there. Silverlight works because (in conjunction with Microsoft’s Internet Information Services technology found on Windows Servers) it exploits HTML 5’s native video support — and Mobile Safari is a decent HTML 5-compatible browser. All the video encoding trickery is taking place on the remote server; it identifies when an iPhone is requesting a video stream and bundles it into a format the device can handle.

Silverlight-powered streaming video on an iPhone – image from Betanews.com

Although Goldfarb says Microsoft “worked with Apple,” he elaborated on the degree of that collaboration. Turns out, it wasn’t a lot; ”We did all the work. We just made sure Apple was comfortable with it.”

Could this represent a potential lesson to learn for Adobe? Despite the enormous market penetration of the Flash player technology (Adobe claims 99.7 percent of browsers are capable of displaying Flash content) it’s widely criticised for being an antiquated, less-than-optimal platform for delivering multimedia. (Except, it seems, in L.A. Have you noticed how many Hollywood Studios doggedly insist on building their movie websites entirely in Flash?)

Who would have thought that the best solution, and lead runner in the race to provide non-YouTube video streaming for the iPhone, would be Microsoft? There’s something about that which is almost… poetic.

It can’t beat the recent free Mac Heist giveaway (what could?), but a new Mac software bundle does offer a lot of good applications for a steeply discounted price. The somewhat awkwardly named MacGraPhoto bundle provides seven graphics applications for the same amount that one alone would normally set you back, $39.99.

The seven apps are all new to me, but they seem to have garnered favorable reviews and even some official accolades from Apple itself. They also cover quite a range, meaning that no two really duplicate the functions or features of the others. Here’s a brief rundown of the apps you get in the bundle.

• GraphicConverter – Does what it says. You can open basically any image file, and then save it as another. You can also do some light editing, organize your photos, run a slide show, and automate your image processing to make working with large batches of files easier.
• Picturesque – Provides a lot of easy, 1-click or simplified image enhancement abilities. Great for those who don’t have the patience or time to learn more advanced programs like Photoshop, or who want really quick turnaround times for time sensitive activities like blogging.
• ImageFramer – Add frames to your pictures. A little weird, in my opinion, but if you’re looking for something different for your photos, this could be it.
• Funtastic Photos – Photo correction and enhancement which automatically preserves your original. Also packs a number of sharing features, and a rich print layout system.
• Graphic Designer Toolbox – Combine building blocks to create crazy new graphic effects and images. You use the unique interface to marry various elements together in a non-destructive process that is both deceptively simple and incredibly deep. Weird but cool.
• DrawIt – A vector image editor and drawing app. Tons of shapes are included in the default set, and there’s support for user-created ones, too. A nice little app that will have you creating Mac-friendly icons and more with relative ease.
• HoudahGeo – Add geolocation data to your photos. HoudahGeo lets you specify information like latitude, longitude, altitude and viewing angle in an image file’s EXIF, XMP or IPTC tags.

All of the apps included in MacGraPhoto have apparently been Apple Staff Picks except for Graphic Designer Toolbox, which won a Think Different award for graphic image editors. At the very least, you’ll probably shave a few steps off of your current process for doing light image editing by picking up the bundle. Plus, if you tell three people about the deal and they buy the pack as a result, the price of your purchase is refunded and you get it free. The bundle pricing expires in a little over five days.