Time traces

When Apple launched its new App Store earlier this summer, the assumption was that scads of businesses would develop applications for their iPhone-toting customers. Although there are more than 60 apps in the App Store’s Business category, virtually no big-name companies have bothered to cough up one of their own. Since Apple plans to make at least 40 million iPhones in the next year, many of which will no doubt end up being used in the workplace, what’s the holdup?

Nick Halsey, vice president of marketing at business intelligence (BI) vendor Jaspersoft, says it’s simply not worth the bother. “Our business users are using Safari to deliver JasperReports to them on their iPhone. While the effort to write the 100 lines of Java code to build an iPhone app is minimal, it’s just not needed.”

Halsey says Jaspersoft would be willing to create an iPhone app in response to customer demand, but there hasn’t actually been any yet. However, he says it’s likely that someone from within the user community will choose to make and submit an app on his own “as a fun project.”

Chuck Dietrich, VP of Salesforce Mobile, says his company, Salesforce.com, has a different take on the usefulness of iPhone apps. Realizing that mobile professionals won’t want to take the time to haul out a laptop and boot it up simply to look up a customer’s order history, Salesforce Mobile provides the same information-and more-with less hassle.

Before launching its app, the company prioritized feedback and ideas from the user community to develop one that includes more than 60 percent of the features customers want most. While users can still access client information via the iPhone’s native browser, Salesforce Mobile is a targeted app designed specifically for the mobile professional. “[It] allows iPhone users to access Salesforce CRM applications and more than 70,000 Force.com custom applications right from their iPhone,” says Dietrich.

Dietrich sees iPhone apps as part of the natural evolution of mobile devices in the workplace. “From a historic standpoint, the mobile revolution began in the’90s with the mass adoption of mobile phones as a primary means of communication. Soon, mobile e-mail became a way of life in the enterprise. As consumers and professionals became more familiar with mobile devices, and as mobile devices became more like mobile laptops, end users increasingly desired and expected to be able to do everything from the mobile devices that they could do from their desks.”

BI firm Oracle also couldn’t pass up an opportunity to design an app specifically for the iPhone. Oracle Business Indicators lets users access their company’s business performance information and manipulate the data based on what’s most convenient for them.

Lenley Hensarling, general vice president of application development at Oracle, says, “It’s not meant to replace a dashboard and analytical apps that have a whole bunch of drilldowns, but rather to give you handy access to core sets of metrics. We wanted to make usage and availability ubiquitous, and let users tailor the information to exactly what they want to see.”

Indicators also makes use of the iPhone’s native tools. “Since we support [the iPhone's] alerting mechanisms, you don’t have to go hunting for information. You’ll get alerted when data crosses a threshold that you or someone else has set.”

Although Apple is famously picky about who gets access to the iPhone Software Developer Kit (SDK), Hensarling says developing an iPhone app was easy as pie. “The cool thing is that you’re actually developing in Cocoa and the Mac OS environment, so in terms of the development environment, it’s very mature and complete.” He says they also never felt constrained during the development process because rather than try to shoehorn an app made for the desktop onto the iPhone, the team instead built Oracle Business Indicators from the ground up.

Salesforce’s Dietrich agrees that building an iPhone app is a smooth process. “Thanks to the iPhone’s robust development environment, we were able to develop, test and deliver Salesforce Mobile for the iPhone, all in less than three months,” he notes. In fact, the process was so painless, the company plans to develop additional apps in the coming months. ” Salesforce.com and Apple will continue to work closely to iterate and expand the breadth of functionality of Salesforce Mobile for the iPhone to expand the ways that enterprises can use Salesforce CRM and Force.com applications to improve the way they work.”

Still, Jaspersoft’s Halsey remains unconvinced. He says there is a greater demand for Web apps that can be accessed anywhere, regardless of device or browser. He points to the growing trend toward cloud computing as evidence. “What’s more interesting to us in the enterprise, and where we see customer demand, is for Web 2.0 tools for reporting and analysis as well as for collaborating on making BI tools better,” says Halsey.

Mix Yahtzee and Poker on the iPhone and what do you get? MotionX Poker, a clever and beguilingly addicting dice game for the iPhone and iPod touch that will only set you back US$5.

In MotionX Poker, you play against the house (a computer-controlled opponent) as you try to “roll” the best poker hand you can using five specially painted dice. The six-sided dice each have a nine, ten, jack, queen, king and ace engraved on them, and you have three shakes of the dice to figure out your hand. You can hold any or all of the dice in between each roll–so if you come up with three aces on your first roll, you can hold them and then try to get five of a kind with your last two throws.
Poker rules have been modified, obviously, as you’re only dealing with six possible “card” combinations. But it’s challenging, regardless, and you have to keep some of the realities of “dice poker” in mind. In classic card poker, for example, a full house (a hand that contains three of a kind, plus a pair) beats a straight (five cards in sequence). But because the probability of getting a straight is lower in dice poker, a straight beats a full house. A tutorial mode at the beginning of game play will show you the ropes.

The accelerometer of the iPhone (or the iPod touch, if that’s your mobile device of choice) is taken into account here, too. A flick of the wrist is all you need to get your dice rolling. And if you’re using an iPhone, specifically, you’ll feel the device buzz and vibrate as if the dice were rattling around inside. (You can turn this option off, if you don’t want to waste your battery, but where’s the fun in that?)

As you get better and better you’ll get rewards, including new sets of dice and gems. As your winnings increase you’ll also get to unlock high rollers’ tables, where the stakes are much higher–as are the rewards.

MotionX Poker is compatible with any iPhone or iPod touch running the iPhone 2.0 software update.

[Peter Cohen is Macworld's Game Room columnist.]

Best Buy will become the first retail chain outside of Apple and AT&T to sell the iPhone in the U.S., an Apple spokesperson confirmed for Macworld on Tuesday.

First reported by AP, Best Buy will begin selling the iPhone on September 7 in 970 full-size stores and 16 smaller Best Buy Mobile stores. Apple began selling Macs and iPods in about 170 Best Buy stores during the fiscal third quarter, for a total of 570; it hopes to be up to about 600 stores by end of summer.

When purchasing an iPhone through Best Buy, your AT&T account will be setup in-store, making the process very similar to what you would experience at an Apple or AT&T retail store.

Apple retail stores have been a boon for the company, allowing more people around the U.S. and the world to experience the Mac, iPod and the iPhone. Apple’s retail stores saw $1.44 billion in revenue in the last quarter alone.

On July 11 Apple updated the iPhone, releasing the iPhone 3G, iPhone software 2.0 and the App Store. iPhone 3G sold more than one million units in the first three days it was available. The App Store saw similar success. Launching with over 500 applications available for download, Apple had more than 10 million application downloads in the first three days.

For more Mac news, visit Macworld. Story copyright Mac Publishing, LLC.

Google recently launched a new translation tool for iPhone that turns your device into a free (plus data costs) and very good pocket translator. That got me thinking though — Google has the technology, and ability to make this application far better than any other pocket translator, and a lot more useful than it is already.

[image from Google]

It’s no secret that Google launched 1-800-GOOG-411 to build their speech recognition capability. In fact, they have already implemented the fruits of their trained speech recognition engine in YouTube for political videos — but why does it have to stop there? Imagine being able to speak a phrase in English, and have it automatically translate it for you rather than having to type it? It could work the other way around too — when translating into languages with completely different character sets, why not have it speak it for you? Down the road, perhaps it wold be interesting to have your device listen to a conversation and provide real-time conversation logs in the language of your choice.

Mobile translation devices have the ability to change, and significantly improve the way we communicate with each other. Mind you, machine translation is far from perfect, but it’s getting better, and if anyone can create a way to make every language 100% understandable by everyone, it will be Google.

If executed properly, Google Translate for mobile devices could very well become the non-fiction version of a babel fish.

I have been a T-Mobile USA customer for over six years now and have four mobile phones and my T-Mobile @Home Talk Forever phone as my fifth family plan line. I read on the Washington Post that T-Mobile is apparently planning to launch a mobile phone application store similar in functionality to the Apple iPhone App store. This plan may be just what they need to actually do something ahead of other wireless carriers since they lag behind in wireless 3G data and number/variety of available high end smartphones. They do however have good coverage (I have never had a dropped call), the Sidekick, great customer service, and unique offerings with the @Home services.

One of my questions is, What phones would the application store be available for? T-Mobile USA has BlackBerry devices, Sidekick devices, Windows Mobile devices, Java-based devices, and custom environments from Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung. They were also one of the first to support the Open Handset Alliance (aka Android) and may be the first carrier to launch with an HTC Android device (I think they really need to be in order to bring subscribers to their network). The experience could vary widely depending on the mobile operating system that the applications would be available on and I think they may focus on the higher end smartphone market where people tend to buy 3rd party applications rather than just ringtones. Apple makes it look easy, but they have just the iPhone to support and it has a large display and powerful operating system to power the application store on the device itself. The T-Mobile store may or may not be available on the device in addition to a desktop access point.

There are other software stores, like Handango, that power other carrier’s mobile application stores on devices like Windows Mobile, but I don’t think there is a good cross platform store yet available and this could be where T-Mobile steps up and differentiates itself. This will not be an easy task and adding something like this will significantly increase the customer service demands as people buy applications and have issues.

There is a T-Mobile devPartner community site that looks well designed and has lots of information and tips for developers looking to support T-Mobile’s devices. The site mentions the t-zones catalog as a place to showcase applications and also states, “In the coming weeks, T-Mobile will be offering new ways to go to market.” I look forward to seeing what T-Mobile has to offer in the way of application distribution.

Only a month ago Apple released the iPhone 3G, but analysts are already expecting another big announcement from the company next month. Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, expects Apple to announce redesigns of its iPod line this fall, just as it has for the past three years, as well as changes to the MacBook and MacBook Pro.

But if you’re one of the thousands who are salivating over the imminent release of the MacBook Touch, keep dreaming.
According to Apple watchers this design is too far fetched from what we might actually see from Apple.

In a research note, Munster points out Apple’s MacBooks have not had a serious redesign update for 2 years and the MacBook Pro hasn’t changed for about 2.5 years. He also notes that when the MacBook was redesigned it really wasn’t that different from the PowerBook G4 that came out almost 5.5 years ago.

That’s lead Apple prognosticators, Munster included, to expect revolutionary changes to the Apple laptop line. This may seem far fetched, but just a few weeks ago Apple reportedly sent out a note to retailers to stock up on various MacBook and MacBook Pro stocks, which usually means that Apple is getting ready to announce a change to those lines. Added to this is the earnings call last month where CFO Peter Oppenheimer hinted at a future “product transition.”

Munster also expects the low-end MacBook to drop to the $999, perhaps to make it more competitive with the ever diminishing price point on Windows PCs.

For the iPod Munster says an increase in storage capacity for the Nano and Shuffle, and possibly a redesign of the iPod Touch or a $199 pricetag to bring it inline with the iPhone 3G.

But what about those other rumors that are flying around, like the MacBook Touch? Not likely, says Munster, predicting that a Touchscreen MacBook is at least two years away. But Munster did predict a new MacBook Air in 2009.

And that other rumor? You know, the iPhone Nano that was reported in the Daily Mail? Well, as Harry McCracken, former editor in chief of PC World, put it on his Technologizer site, “There are Apple rumors that ring true. There are ones that sound like they might be true. And then there are the ones that have a whiff of fantasy about them.”

The iPhone Nano, with its touchscreen on one side and a dialing wheel on the other seems like all fantasy to me as well.

Twitter is a fun service that lets you keep in touch with your friends and other people you only wish you knew. Like many people, I’ve come to rely on it as a backchannel that keeps me in touch with my colleagues and friends in ways that e-mail and instant messaging simply can’t. And since the iPhone was first released, I’ve used Web interfaces to Twitter to read and post Twitter items, known as “tweets,” when I’m on the go.

With the release of the App Store, there are now several native Twitter clients for the iPhone. All of these programs show immense promise as well as numerous warts.

The Iconfactory’s Twitterrific is my favorite Mac client for the Twitter social-messaging service, and the new iPhone edition of Twitterrific is my favorite of the first generation of iPhone apps.

Twitterrific displays tweets from your contacts and lets you send tweets. The program includes integration with twitpic.com, so you can take a photo (or pick one from your photo library) and the program will automatically upload it and embed its URL in your tweet. An embedded Web browser lets you tap on user names or hyperlinks and view the contents without having to switch out of the program and into Safari.

The program’s interface is excellent, combining simplicity with solid functionality. A series of slide-out “hint” screens appear for new users, cleverly helping to teach you how the program works. But I found the program’s large single-tweet view to be mostly a waste of time.

Although Twitterrific provides me with 95 percent of what I use Twitter for, there’s still plenty of room for the iPhone version to grow, especially given the tough competition of several excellent iPhone-optimized Twitter web interfaces, most notably Hahlo. Twitterrific can’t display all the messages from a given friend; also, it doesn’t let you filter tweets to only see your direct messages, messages replying to your tweets, or a list of your own recent tweets. The program’s scrolling also feels sluggish. (A forthcoming update will improve the program’s scrolling speed.)

Tapulous’ Twinkle is a strong competitor to Twiterrific, but its colorful interface (bright yellow, blue, and gray word balloons on a dark starscape background) is distracting and harder to read than Twitterrific’s.

Twinkle’s best trait is its location awareness. When you post to Twinkle, other Twinkle users can see what city you’re tweeting from. And a tap on the Nearby button lets you see tweets from Twinkle users near you, which is pretty cool. However, I wish I could opt to view tweets only from nearby users I follow, and there’s no way to block nearby users whose tweets you might find distasteful. (Tapulous says such a method will be available in a forthcoming update.) Because Twinkle’s location-savvy functionality works via a proxy server run by Tapulous, only Twinkle users can appear in the Nearby list, and only other Twinkle users can see what city you’re tweeting from.

I’m not thrilled about Twinkle’s reliance on a Tapulous server as a mediator between your iPhone and Twitter. Yes, that approach lets Twinkle include some clever non-Twitter features such as location-based services, but only for other Twinkle users. When Twitter is down, you’ll still be able to send Tweets–but they won’t go to Twitter until it comes back up. Likewise, if Twitter is up and the Twinkle server goes down, you could be cut off from the rest of the Twitterverse. And I found it a little disconcerting that Tapulous’s TwinkleKing account, who I don’t follow on Twitter, was able to send me spam about Twinkle-related contests and the like. You can’t block those TwinkleKing messages.

Stone Design’s Twittelator is in many ways the polar opposite of Twitterrific. Twitterrific’s interface is terrific for reading your friends’ timeline and posting tweets, but it doesn’t let you dive deep into the features of Twitter. Twittelator, in contrast, has a much less refined interface, but supports every Twitter feature imaginable.

From Twittelator, you can view your friends timeline, your own timeline, your replies, your direct messages, the timelines of other users, the friends of the people you follow, you name it. You can search for text on all of Twitter. If you tap on a friend’s icon, you immediately see all their Twitter stats.

If Twitterrific could improve by adding a bit more functionality, Twittelator could benefit from a dramatic tightening of its interface. I found the layout of its main tweet list a bit strange, with numerous small items that were difficult to tap on, and tweet text isn’t as readable as I’d like. Yet it’s actually the least dense of the three programs, forcing you to scroll more.

Twittelator’s most bizarre feature is its “Emergency icon,” which according to Stone Design lets you “create a Tweet with a map of your current location.” The latest update to the software allows you to hide the button, which is a good thing. Twitter’s great and all, but if you’re in trouble, sending an automated tweet about it via a button that’s easily pushed by mistake doesn’t seem like it should be high up on your list of options.

Macworld’s Buying Advice

Twitterrific is currently the class of the Twitter client apps on the iPhone, but it’s got stiff competition close behind. What Twitterrific lacks in features, it more than makes up for by getting the interface and most important parts of Twitter–reading and posting tweets–right.

Twinkle is a lot of fun and quite innovative, showing how location information adds to the richness of Twitter. If only Twitter supported location information in a useful, native way–I’m not thrilled about Twinkle’s use of an intermediary server, nor the inability to block unpleasant people who might be near you. Its interface could also use a bit of toning down, at least as an option.

I’m mightily impressed by all of Twittelator’s features. If you’re someone who frequently surfs around your friends’ timelines and the public Twitter timeline, it’s a better choice than Twitterrific. If most of your Twitter time is spent reading your friends timeline and posting tweets, it’s not.

The good news is, all three of these programs are free, so you can download them for yourself if you’re not sure about which one is right for you. (Unlike Twinkle and Twittelator, Twitterrific’s free version is supported by occasional ads in the tweet list. You must buy the US$10 Twitterrific Premium to block those ads.)

And if you haven’t updated your iPhone to version 2.0 (or don’t want to download a lot of iPhone apps and risk stability problems), don’t fear. Hahlo remains an excellent, full-featured Twitter client that works right within Safari.

All apps reviewed in this round-up are compatible with any iPhone or iPod touch running the iPhone 2.0 software update.

In a move to help companies follow their sales and perhaps calm some disgruntled iPhone developers, Apple is now providing daily statistics that can be downloaded or viewed on the Web.

Several developers Macworld spoke with confirmed receiving the stats, which gives them sales per day or per week, broken down by country of sale and SKU. While the sales stats are helping, they aren’t quite where developers want them yet.

“It’s definitely more useful than no data (which was ridiculous), but the reports are a bit sparse at the moment,” said one developer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

For instance, the developer said that if you want the total sales of a particular product on any given day or week, you have to manually add up the sales from every country.

With such stiff competition in the App Store, developers want the sales stats to adjust pricing or generally track how their applications are doing.

The new reports are certainly a step in the right direction for Apple in working with its iPhone developers.

Speck on Tuesday announced their PixelSkin cases for the iPhone 3G. iSkin has announced its new DuoBand for the iPod nano, and Ivyskin is offering its iPhone 3G XyloT3 case.

The textured PixelSkin cover for iPhone comes in seven colors. The Xylo Touch-Thru (T3) case is a hard shell case that lets you touch and still register your touches on the iPod’s screen. It uses “Surface Xylo Wave” (SWX) technology that pass over the touch screen panel without interference. It costs US$34.99.

The iSkin DuoBand for iPod nano 3G costs $39.99. It’s aimed at athletes and others who want to carry their iPod nano on their arm, and it’s designed to enable you to slip your iPod nano in and out of the band without removing it from the protective silicone case. It’s available in red or black.

The PixelSkin costs $24.95. Made of silicone, it’s form-fitting for the iPhone and has slightly thicker corners to protect the device from bumps and scrapes. A textured tile pattern gives you something to grab onto, and the case offers access to all ports, controls and sensors. It comes in black, white, purple, pink, yellow, blue and green.

For more Mac news, visit Macworld. Story copyright Mac Publishing, LLC.