Tuesday August 3
 
16:34
 
I Can Has Cheezburger FREE Clock

A few days ago I quietly launched the FREE version of the highly rated I Can Has Cheezburger Pro Clock, aptly named I Can Has Cheezburger FREE Clock. Both apps are universal so they work on iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. According to AppAnnie, on the day of release Cheez FREE was in the top 25 of Entertainment iPad apps in the UK – not bad.

The PRO version has an average rating of 4.5 stars. Here are some of the glowing reviews:

★★★★★ Jessicole
This is is love.

★★★★★ zeb mcbride
Get it! – If you like the site, get the app. Well worth the price.

★★★★★ DJMitchell
Awesome – The best app ever!

★★★★★ leilah
So worth it! – Only app I’ve paid for

★★★★★ Poteytedgggt
=D – Heelarius!!! Ma favrit app!!!

★★★★★ sequelcmfr
Hilarious app! – So worth it!

★★★★★ CONCEPTWII
SUPER – LOVE THIS!!

★★★★★ HeThatCometh
Excellent… – Good job on the updates. They fixed all my issues. I wish more developers were as expeditious and paid as much attention to user feedback.

★★★★★ swivel38
Finally a great lolz app!!

★★★★★ Harry B Ahlus
HOOOORRAAAYY!!! You got my 5 stars & my appreciation for being understanding and quickly responsive to us. I use your app all the time.

★★★★★ Ikatiecullen101
Good Stuff – This is a good app. I didn’t like it at first but now I LOVE this app :)

★★★★★ news hog
Great diversion – If you enjoy the Cheezburger network, you can’t go wrong with this app.

★★★★★ Tpr311
Awesome app – I had lol cats and decided to upgrade. Worth every penny.

Click here to try the FREE version or click here for the PRO version of I Can Has Cheezburger Clock. For Android, search Android marketplace for the “I Can Has Cheezburger Pro Clock” – there’s no free version since Android users get a 24 hour free trial anyway.

Thursday July 1
 
14:07
 
New Kindle DX and why the colour change is important

The start of new Amazon’s new Kindle launches is here…

• Price drop from $489 to $379
• 50% better contrast ratio, making it easier to read
• 9.7-inch e-ink display
• New black “graphite” colour (see my notes on this below)
• Free 3G international wireless
• No computer required
• Shipping July 7th

For me, the two negatives about the Kindle 2 are the contrast ratio and the white border. Since the e-ink background in the Kindle 2 is grey, the white border is actually distracting – reminding you that the e-ink “paper” is not as white as it could be; reminding you of the low contrast. I don’t think the graphite colour looks as good, but I’m sure it will help the perception of contrast and make it easier to read.

The Kindle 3 has got to be on the way now. At the current price of $189, the Kindle 2 is $190 cheaper than the new indle DX. I predict the Kindle 3 will have WIFI and 3G versions at price-points of $125 and $175, but we’ll have to wait and see.

For what it’s worth, for me I would always get the 3G version over the WIFI version. One of the things I love about Kindle is the automatic syncing across devices – I can read a book on my iPad at home, then take the train to work and continue reading on my iPhone or Kindle, and the iPhone or Kindle will “know” where I finished reading on the iPad. You don’t appreciate that until you experience it.

Get the new Kindle DX International 2 here.

Important: Amazon still sells the white Kindle DX. This is the old model, without the screen improvements. Kindle DX Generations:

• 1st Generation: Kindle DX (US only)
• 2nd Generation: Kindle DX International (White)
• 3rd Generation: Kindle DX International 2 (Graphite)

Hopefully Amazon has plans to remedy this – it’s confusing to have the old and new models on sale at the same price, and the description for the white model doesn’t make it clear the screen is the old screen. I’m not going to link to the White version because I don’t want people buying it by accident!

Update: The white (old) DX is now $359, which is $20 cheaper than the new DX at $379. For just $20, you’re better getting the new DX.

Update 2: The smaller Kindle 3 is now available in the UK and USA. It comes in White and Graphite versions with 3G+WIFI and Graphite with WIFI only. I’ve ordered a Graphite 3G+WIFI version and I’ll be reviewing it with particular emphasis on the contrast difference between it and my previous White Kindle 2.

What can you read on Kindle? Check out these pages:

• Kindle bestsellers
• Popular Kindle new releases
• Top FREE Kindle books – even famous authors give away free books. I get a lot of my reading FREE by watching this list.
• Trending: Movers and Shakers in the Kindle eBook charts

Wednesday June 30
 
11:31
 
Apple & Softbank shocker!

In Japan there are 3 main mobile phone networks – Docomo, AU, and Softbank. Of the 3, Softbank has the worst reception. Guess which network Apple chose? Yup, Softbank.

Japan is the only country in the world where the iPad is locked to a particular carrier.

It’s always been assumed that this was due to an Apple/Softbank tie-in, but not according to Softbank:

At Softbank’s annual shareholder meeting in a grand Tokyo auditorium, Mr. Son fielded a question from an investor about whether Softbank is worried that Apple may use another carrier in Japan to sell its products. He said while there is no binding clause keeping Apple tied to Softbank, he is pleased to be able to play a role in getting these products out to as many consumers as possible.

So there we have it – Apple locks us to Softbank for fun. Most likely, Docomo refused the iPhone at first and so Steve has locked down the iPad to “punish” them.

Monday June 28
 
15:49
 
Kindle 3?

Amazon just updated their iPhone and iPad Kindle applications to include audio and video. Along with the price reduction on the Kindle 2 (which I reported here), could this be another signal that the Kindle 3 is coming in August?

From Engadget:

No, Amazon didn’t just release a new Kindle capable of doing full motion video with embedded audio. Instead, Amazon just updated the content for the Kindle app running on Apple gear that gives a few books an inject of multimedia. For example, Rich Steves’ London Kindle Edition with audio/video features walking tours with Rich doing the narration while Rose’s Heavenly Cakes features video tips for… you guessed it, making delicious cake. Unfortunately, we’re only seeing about a dozen titles classified as “Kindle Edition with Audio/Video” so it’s hard to tell if the move is a first step in a wholesale Kindle change or just a toe in the water to gauge interest. We suspect the former, given enough time and publisher interest.

Check the latest Kindle price here – you never know, it might fall again soon!

Thursday June 24
 
10:41
 
Why the iPad is an unfinished product

Yes, the iPad doesn’t have iOS 4 – but that’s not the only thing that makes it feel like an unfinished product. iPad OS 3.2 definitely feels rushed out the door. Here’s why:

1. Lack of international keyboards

I’m British, but as well as English, I speak, read, and write Korean and, to a lesser extent, Japanese. One of the reasons I bought an iPhone was for Korean and Japanese support. I was flabbergasted to discover the lack of Korean on the iPad – and not just Korean, there’s no Thai, Hebrew, Polish… the list goes on.

With Mac OS X and iPhone both having full international support, I never even contemplated that the iPad wouldn’t have them.

2. An unfinished App Store

You know that swipe thing – part of Apple’s lovely touch interface? Here’s a list of my iPhone apps displayed in AppStore on the iPad:

How do you get to page 2? Do you swipe? No, you have to touch the arrow buttons – and then the animation swipes the page. Way to break your own interface conventions, Apple.

Now look at this page:

I’m in the Updates section. Now if I want to go out of this and search for an app – say, Beer in Korea – how do I do it?

To search for an app, I have to click “Featured”, “Top Charts”, or “Categories” to get a search box – and the search box doesn’t actually search the category I’m in, it searches everything. There’s ample room at the bottom of the screen for a search box or even a search button – why is finding search so unintuitive (but then if I want to redownload something, I have to “buy” it again – possibly the most unintuitive piece of interface design ever.)

And as for apps, Apple’s own Remote, Texas Hold ‘Em, and even the new iTunes Connect application don’t run as native apps on iPad. Would it really have taken that long to convert Remote?

3. The built in jobs are a hatchet job

Ok, so I knew it was not iOS 4 – but the given that the mail interface had to be completely redesigned, I at least expected a unified mailbox. I hoped for more than one exchange account. And I was longing for the ability to get a pop-up (like a push notification) when mail arrived (that’s not in iOS 4 either, sadly).

The iPod app? It feels like something you’d expect on a chiPad. Click on Songs or Artists or Albums and it kind of behaves as you expect – but click on Genres and you’re faced with a pop-up showing all the songs of that genre, with no way to filter further.

All I can say is that it’s a good job I didn’t get the 64GB version of the iPad. I have my music split into British, Korean, Japanese, Thai, etc – the popup for each would have hundreds or thousands of entries. Even on the iPhone, clicking on a genre brings up a list of artists in the genre.

And where is the visualiser? How much fun is it to be presented with this when I’m listening to an album?

4. It only has 256MB

Back when OS X came out, I bought the first redesigned iBook with OS X. I supported Apple with the OS X launch. A year or so later they upgraded OS X to take advantage of video ram, making the OS more responsive. My iBook didn’t support it and started to run like a dog.

I bought the iPhone 3G before the “Cut and Paste” OS 3 upgrade. It was beautiful to get cut and paste, but it came at a huge price – random 10 second delays when you least expect it. Yes, the Apple dog had come back, and this time it was definitely a bitch. Thankfully iOS 4 goes some way to putting down that animal.

Being bitten again was my biggest fear when buying the iPad – and lo-and-behold, a week or so after I bought it, news leaked out that the iPhone has 512MB of memory.

I expect that there will be a new iPad at some point with a camera – that doesn’t really bother me. It the screen is updated to a retina screen – something that I don’t think will happen in the near future – that doesn’t really bother me either. But if iOS 4 runs like a dog on the iPad because it only as 256MB, I will be seriously annoyed.

My only hope is that enough people have the iPad and are holding onto the iOS 4 “autumn promise”, that if it doesn’t run well on the existing iPad, it will be a publicity nightmare for Apple and people will abandon the platform.

That aside, to use Safari and for it still to be refreshing pages when you return to them – seriously Apple, what were you thinking putting just 256MB in the iPad?

As for the screen – will it come to the iPad? 1024 x 2 x 768 x 2 would be higher resolution than most computer monitors, and expensive. If Apple has to update the iPad to the retina screen because the iPhone has been updated, does it follow that it needs to update its MacBooks too? I’m not convinced we’ll see a retina iPad any time soon – I suspect a camera will be first.

5. It only has 11,000 apps

Were you sold on the “it can run your iPhone apps” line? I was. And then I tried running my iPhone apps. After less than a minute, I started deleting every iPhone-only app off the iPad.

The iPhone emulator just sucks. If you could run two iPhone apps side my side, then I could see the use – but unless it’s something which I would die without, I can’t see anyone seriously using an iPhone app on the iPad, especially since most people already probably have iPhones. I’d rather run the app in my iPhone.

And from the 11,000 iPad apps that are available, so many of them have human interface crimes to humanity, it sometimes makes me cringe.

The iPad AppStore actually reminds me a lot of Android Market. On the iPhone, if I want something then, yes, there will be an app for it. On Android and iPad, there are still glaring holes. There’s still not a Twitter client as good as Twitbird on iPhone (Twitterrific is the only one that comes close).

6. WIFI

Come on Apple – it’s months after the iPad was first released, and it still has WIFI issues? In my case, if I leave WIFI on, the iPad will eventually start popping up “Password please” boxes and fail to accept the correct password. The only solution is to reboot the iPad.

What’s the good news?

Don’t get me wrong – I do like the iPad. It just feels unfinished.

The good news is that with the exception of #4, all of the above is software related – at least, I hope #6 is software related – and as long as software upgrades dont screw the performance of the machine – see #4 – they can all be fixed. The iPad could, some day, become a finished product.

There are a lot of things right about the iPad. Battery life is phenomenal – I can leave the iPad in standby all night and it wont even consume 1% of battery. Using Mocha VNC to access my home PC is a joy. And when I’m at home, for quickly picking up and checking mail or a website, I now grab the iPad instead of my laptop. It doesn’t replace my PC, but it’s useful – and, of course, as a developer it’s essential to me.

I even find myself reading books on the iPad more than I read them on my Kindle. In fact, with the iPad for coffee shops and at home, and the iPhone for reading on the subway, the only use for my Kindle is when reading in bright sunlight. It’s not all bad news for Amazon though – I am using the Kindle software, because it doesn’t lock me into the Apple platform.

So there are good things about the iPad, and as a developer, the lack of applications is actually a bonus – because it makes your applications stand out. Search for “lose weight” and my application Diet Cakes is in the top 6 for iPad apps – it’s on page 9 on the iPhone apps list (but I have just made it iPhone compatible – originally it was iPad only.) When someone buys an iPad – as 3,000,000 people have done – they want apps, so this isn’t a bad thing.

And as well as exposure – the iPad offers exciting new opportunities. While I’ve still to fully take advantage of the iPad’s features, I already love using my app Beer in Japan on the iPad more than on the iPhone.

The iPad definitely has to mature. Apple has not yet got the OS right, and developers – like me – are still learning how to write for the iPad. I just hope that Apple doesn’t cripple the iPad’s performance before it becomes a finished product.

My iPad apps: Diet Cakes, Start The Day With POWER, Flickr Clock Photoframe, FailClock (with Engrish too!), and Cat Fun and Dog Fun – lolcats and loldogs. The universal Beer in Japan app is currently awaiting Apple approval. iPad versions of my other iPhone apps will follow soon. This post is also featured on my mobile app development blog.