demo posts

Last week at Macworld 2010, I had an opportunity to chat with Jim McKelvey of Square, the company that wants you to be able to take credit card payments for ... everything! TUAW has covered Square before, mainly discussing the big investors in the company including Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Digg's Kevin Rose.

Beginning in April, Square will be giving away a small card reader that plugs into the headphone jack of your iPhone, iPod touch, and eventually just about any device that has a headphone jack. You sign up for a service, buy an app to go on your device (it's estimated that it will cost just US$1.99), and then you can start taking credit cards for all of those daily transactions where you normally exchange cash. Square makes their money off of a small percentage fee, and even donates a penny to a charity of your choice with each transaction.

McKelvey was taking donations for the American Red Cross at the Square kiosk in order to demonstrate how the system works, and it was impressively simple. Square was created for the purpose of making it easy for anyone to take credit cards without the expense and hassle of setting up a merchant account with a bank and/or purchasing an expensive card-reading attachment for their iPhone.

The software captures signatures, pictures, and even the location where the transaction took place. My receipt for the $10 donation to the Red Cross had an embedded Google Map showing that I had made the purchase at Moscone Center. Check out the video for my interview with Jim McKelvey by clicking the Read More link.

We apologize for the low quality of the sound on this video.

I'm still skeptical about laser projectors -- while the technology is impressive, the practicality is still a little limited. And unfortunately, Microvision's demo of their SHOWWX projector here at Macworld 2010 didn't do much to change my mind. It's a nice little device -- it's almost exactly the size of the iPhone, and the rep told me that most of the unit is actually the battery -- and there are some good applications for it. But for the consumer market that Microvision really wants, the $500 unit (that will go on sale in March) is still a little too small in terms of scale and usability.

Just using the device, which will project clear images and video from an iPhone or iPod on a wall about three to four feet away (more or less depending on ambient light), you can tell that the idea of a microprojector is almost at the level where it could be really successful. As the rep said to us, the iPhone is a 1:1 device, and while many of us do use it to show pictures and video to each other, it's really only meant to show one person at a time. But the projector goes to a "1 to few" relationship instead, and that's a prospect that will be appealing to anyone who wants to show off business presentations, video, or pictures of family members to anyone else.

Musicskins was kind enough to show us around their booth on the Macworld floor, and while we expected to see the usual vinyl case stickers, what we found was actually pretty impressive. The 'skins, which are made for almost every accessory and device under the sun (the rep told us they add five to ten devices to their roster per week) are actually very durable.

For one thing, they're made to be removed and replaced as much as you want, so while attaching one to the back of your iPhone, you don't have to worry about making one minor mistake and having to stare at it every time you check Twitter. The skins themselves have little grooves on the surface, which we were told acted as air channels, so if you ever did get a bubble underneath, it's much easier to squeeze out.

But the most interesting part of skins like these isn't on the side towards the phone, it's on the side away. Musicskins is one of the biggest licensors of art for device skins, and as you can see in the gallery below, they've got all kinds of different famous and infamous licenses to stick on your iPod, iPhone or Macbook. They just recently made Apple history, too -- read on to learn how.

Want to check the charge on your electric car? There's going to be an app for that -- our friends at Engadget report that the upcoming Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid electric car will have an iPhone app that goes along with it. Features aren't firmed up yet, but ideas being passed around after a demo at last week's LA Auto Show include both setting up functions inside the car like scheduling when a charge happens (to take advantage of late-night power rates) and receiving notifications from the car, including when it's charged and/or when you forgot to plug it in for the night or other worrying situations like that. I'd love to even see an app that can track mileage from the car, or give you diagnostic information when something is wrong.

Obviously, this is pretty pie-in-the-sky at this point (and implementation is obviously tougher than coming up with ideas for it), but I'm all for it. With the advent of the iPhone and all of the things it can do, it's quickly becoming a one-stop shop for communication between all your various networks and appliances. Why not have your car text you when it needs something? Oh wait, I've got to go -- my car just texted me that it's lonely out there in the parking lot. Back in a bit.

Living in a landlocked state I was never much of a diver. But if you are an active SCUBA diver, you may find Dive Log (and companions Trimix and Nitrox) useful. Dive Log (iTunes link) does what you'd think: it logs your dives. If you've never been diving this may seem trivial. Dive logs, however, are far from trivial, as they contain crucial data related to dives -- like how much weight you added to your belt in a given location. Dive Log will import/export your data in UDCF format, and offers full sync with Diving Log 4.0 (unfortunately only on Windows). Plus, the developers have a free app for backing up your logs, and you can import logs from MacDive.

Nitrox Tools and Trimix Tools (both iTunes links) are more specialized diving apps for the serious SCUBA guy or gal, who may mix their own tanks. I'm certainly not one of them, but the tools look sufficiently hardy for those folks, plus there's an online version of Nitrox here (for Safari) that will give you a taste of the app's capabilities.

iTreadmill (App Store link) is a pedometer app for your iPhone or iPod touch. I spoke with the developer, who demoed the app for us at WWDC. It looks nice, appears to perform well, and features a respectable number of ways to customize and tune the readings. Pedometer apps may not save the world, but if you're looking for something much less expensive than the Nike+iPod device, this will do in a pinch. There's also a Lite version (App Store link) if you want to try it yourself.

Are you attending WWDC? Do you have a Mac desktop or iPhone app you'd like to show the world? Well join TUAW on June 11 at the Metreon (the big silver building right next door to the Moscone, where Jillian's is housed), where we'll have a camera ready for your close-up. We'll have a small table near the movie theater, next to the sunglasses shop -- look for this guy (me). I'll be there from 10am to 2pm PST.

So far we've seen some really good stuff here at WWDC, although we can't talk about some of it just yet. But if you show us your app, we'll put it on TUAW over the coming weeks.

Don't forget to follow tuaw_wwdc on Twitter for the latest on where we'll be, just in case you miss us tomorrow.

Clayton Morris noted on his blog Sunday that iPhone 3G demo units have been removed from display at his local Apple store.

While it is not uncommon to see one or two displays missing for various reasons, Clayton noted that there were at least nine units missing from the main iPhone display tables. Couple this with reports from some Apple stores that they have additional staff scheduled for the next couple of weeks (starting today), and you have some pretty good signs that the new iPhone model might just be available today.

[via AppleInsider]

If you haven't yet tried Sway, the game from Illusion Labs and ReadyFireAim, now's the perfect time to do so. They've released a free version of the game that limits you to three levels and just two characters, but it's enough to try out the really unique control scheme. Back when I first posted about the game, I hadn't tried it yet, but it's now been on my iPhone for about a month, and it's excellent. Each of your thumbs is a "hand" on your characters (i.e., to grab something with your left hand, in game, you just touch your thumb to the left side of the screen), and then once you've grabbed something, you can swipe that thumb back and forth to sway the character around. It gets pretty complex, but practice makes perfect, and a few stages in, you'll be swinging from grip to grip with the greatest of ease.

The full version still costs $4.99, and if you enjoy the free version, I highly recommend it: there are many more characters that you can pick up and choose from, and the stages actually get really tough, as there's a lot of precise swinging that you'll have to do to explore the whole area and find everything there is to find. Sway might be a sleeper hit for the iPhone -- it took me a little while to figure it all out, but once I did, I found a control scheme that's delightfully original. If you haven't tried it out yet, definitely take advantage of the free version.

Our dear friend Erica Sadun has outlined one of Apple's more sticky App Store policies over at Ars Technica. There's been a lot of customer pressure, as we've said before, to put "try it" versions of apps on the App Store, and quite a few developers have done exactly that, by releasing a "Free" or "Lite" version of the paid app along with the real thing. But Apple has some pretty strict rules about doing so: every app on the store needs to be fully functional and stand on its own. You can leave out some levels of your game, for example, but you can't put a timed limit on it or remove features that are central to the app itself.

Of course, there's a grey area there -- what features are central to the app, exactly? But Erica boils it down to words: putting "Lite" or "Free" in the title are fine, but releasing "Demo" or "Beta" versions are not.

It's too bad Apple hasn't fleshed this out more -- everything we've heard about how people are buying these apps shows that if customers have a chance to try the app, they're much more likely to spend money on it later on. But right now, developers have to keep up two different versions, and they have to dodge the pitfalls of deciding what goes in each one, while keeping them both "fully functional."

Everyone in the Apple community is eager to see Phil Schiller deliver tomorrow's keynote address at Macworld Expo. While we're uncertain as to what he'll do, we know that he won't be leaping onto an inflatable mattress while holding a laptop. Because he's already done that.

At Macworld Expo '99 in New York City, Phil demonstrated a Tangerine iBook's wifi capabilities and accelerometer by falling from a significant height onto a small mattress below, thus ushering him into "The Demo Hall of Fame." It might not have been the Mother of All Demos, but still pretty cool. Way to take one for the team, Phil!

Click below to watch the video.

[Thanks to the folks at thinkingbricks for pointing this out]

Around here, we used to call her "the unstoppable Erica Sadun" -- well, not to her face, but sometimes when she wasn't paying attention. The Queen of the iPhone Hackers has leveraged the undocumented video-out features in the iPhone 2.2 SDK, in cooperation with the clever folk at Freeverse Software, to produce the first playable demonstration of an iPhone game that displays on an external monitor. The one-off build of Moto Chaser plays best on a 2nd gen iPod touch (since it's got the fastest base hardware) and uses the device accelerometer for steering. On an HDTV, it outputs a respectable 20fps at 640x480.

Erica's post at Ars goes into the details of the work that Bruce Morrison and his team at Freeverse did to bring this custom build to rapid fruition, and it notes that this is in no way a product at this point; it's just a tech demo, although an impressive one. I had the opportunity to see this build in person earlier today at Freeverse's offices, and the surprising thing is how natural it seems to use the iPod touch as a game controller for big-screen play. With a less-intensive offering (a quiz or music guessing game would be ideal) and a design that takes advantage of the iPod's screen for simultaneous content display... well, I'd be game for that.

Video embedded in the 2nd half of the post. Check it out, and let us know what your dream game would be for a video-out setup from your iPhone or iPod touch.

Marco over on the Instapaper blog (which, of course, is the blog of the app Instapaper), posted a really interesting commentary recently on a subject we've been following since the beginning: App Store pricing. As we've said before, it's a strange thing -- developers want higher prices so that they can put more effort into making iPhone apps better. But customers have a perception already that anything above $5 in the App Store just isn't worth it.

So Marco offers his take: he's been selling an app in the store for $9.99, and it's going just fine. He has tips for how developers can sell their own apps for a higher price, and he settles on some good compromises for everybody: deliver a real value with your app (as economists know, an app is worth what people are wiling to pay for it, so if you produce an app that is worth $10, people will happily spend that much). Respect yourself as a developer, and don't cower to cheapskates (some people won't be happy with anything, even when it's free). And perhaps most importantly: offer a free version.

That last one may be the key -- our own Michael Rose was sold on Instapaper only when he tried it out. More and more, I'm thinking that it was a major mistake on Apple's part not to allow developers to easily offer demos and upgrades in the same app -- people are willing to spend money on an app that's worth it, but not if they aren't sure, and trying it goes a long way to making sure. I'm not in favor of app store developers banding together to raise prices, but Marco is right: if you make an app that's worth $10 and put it on the App Store for $9.99 (with an easy way to demo it out), people will come and buy it.

Our good friends at Freeverse are having a 30% off sale, one of their biggest lately, this week on almost everything in their catalog, from the tower defense game Horde of Orcs to the award-winning Lineform. The sale lasts through October 7th, and to get the discount, just put "MONTYMAIL" in as a coupon code during checkout. If you've been thinking about picking up one of their apps or games, now's the time.

Unfortunately, none of the discounts work for any of their iPhone apps, but they did just drop the price on MotoChaser, one of the best accelerometer racing games available (and featured in the commercial above, on the "funnest" iPod ever), down to $4.99. It's too bad that there's no demo available, but I can tell you that as these accelerometer racers go, it's a good time.