iPhoneRoot.com

19 percent of all game developers are writing for the iPhone and iPod Touch, according to a new study from Game Developer Research. It is more than twice as high as for the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS and results in 3/4 of all mobile game developers writing for Apple’s gadgets.

Developers claim their choices of platform dictated by the level of market influence and ease of writing code. The cost of development and the ability to port code are important too.

The transition to the iPhone is evident through the number of ports. While many companies are producing original titles, games like Civilization Revolution and Assassin’s Creed series are actually Nintendo DS versions modified to use the touchscreen and the better performance of Apple’s devices.

[via]

A few days ago Epocrates Inc., the developer of mobile software for healthcare professionals, revealed a new study of more than 350 clinicians who were asked about their opinion about iPad. The results were stunning – 9% said they will buy an iPad when it will be available, another 13% plan to purchase one in the first year. That means that one in five physicians will likely have an iPad in a year.
Epocrates Inc. also announced that it intends to improve clinical reference applications so it could run on iPad.

By optimizing our software for the iPad, we are capitalizing on the larger screen real estate and interactivity provided by this sophisticated device. We are committed to providing the most productive experience at the point of care, keeping physicians informed and focused on the patient rather than searching for answers.

- said Epocrates SEO Rose Crane. The company’s software has more than 275,000 subscribers among physicians in America and over 900,000 worldwide.

As time passes by, more hospitals look at potential of the iPad. One San Francisco program even aims to use tablets to provide charts, X-rays, notes and prescriptions to hospital workers at the touch of a finger. That looks like a whole new way of enforcing last technologies to make our life better.

The official Mobile Spectator Guide for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games is now available for iPod Touch and iPhone. It can be downloaded for free from the App Store.

This application is a location-aware schedule that details more than 2,000 sport and cultural events taking place for 17 days between February 12 and 28, 2010.

Read the rest of this entry »

Government officials are worried about iPad’s popularity, as it may prove a threat to national network infrastructure. And we’re all informed by Steve Jobs that iPad will be available with AT&T unlimited 3G-internet access for only 30$.  Government warned that the device can bring wireless network to a standstill as new users may overload wireless networks. The director of scenario planning for the federal government’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative Phil Bellaria said that with iPad’s release modern networks will be overburdened by a data flow they were not built to handle.

… We must make sure that network congestion doesn’t choke off a service that consumers clearly find so appealing or frustrate mobile broadband’s ability to keep us competitive in the global broadband economy.

In addition to that, analysts predict Apple can sell 2 million to 5 million units in the first year.

Apple has improved their new iTunes Preview service by activating in-browser previews for iPod and iPhone applications.

iTunes Preview was launched by Apple in November. It worked for those iTunes links, which used to simply open the application. Before that your browser would open a blank page and prompt you to open the link with the iTunes application. Now you are also able to view screenshots, changelogs, descriptions and reviews for iPod Touch and iPhone applications.

Besides, last month Apple also started using QuickTime to offer 30 second song samples encoded in 44.1 AAC 300+ kbits/second.

After the iPad announcement the pre-orders for the Joojoo went up, said Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan in an interview with SGEntrepreneurs. Though he did not reveal any actual numbers, Chandra did drop some interesting details. He hinted that his company will soon announce a partnership with a “major mobile phone player”, which has a “significant” market share in Southeast Asia. This “player” will also probably take care of the Joojoo manufacturing cost. And yet there is no information about the shipment date for the Joojoo, which still stands 8-10 weeks.

The Joojoo is a Linux-based tablet PC designed for Web surfing by the TechCrunch resource. Some photos from the official site are listed below.

Apple has posted their usual streaming QuickTime video of “Come see our latest creation” iPad introduction keynote. It will probably apper soon on Youtube and a downloadable higher resolution version will be avaliable quite soon. But if you just have to watch it now here’s the link:

• Apple Special Event, January 2010

Here are the official iPad photos from Apple. On one of them you can see iPad WiFi+3G model – it is with a black horizontal bar on the top. Let’s watch the gallery:

Read the rest of this entry »

Users can run all different applications on iPad. Here is a photo gallery of Apple apps running on iPad. You can see familiar iTunes, iPod, Safari, Contacts, Maps, Photos, Mail, Youtube, AppStore, Notes and Calendar. The is a also new one called iBooks. Take a look:

Read the rest of this entry »

Apple’s finally announced the iPad (Apple Tablet). It is perfect for tasks like browsing, email, photos, e-books and videos. It’s a half-inch thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds (680g), with a 9.7-inch capacitive touchscreen IPS LCD display and it’s running a custom 1GHz Apple “A4″ chip developed by the P.A. Semi team. The 10-hour battery life and a month of standby is quite exciting.

There will be devices with 16, 32 and 64GB. All iPads will get a 30-pin Dock connector, a speaker, a microphone, Bluetooth, 802.11n WiFi and optional 3G, as well as an accelerometer and a compass. There’s also a keyboard dock, which connects underneath in the portrait orientation. iPad supports up to 1024×768 VGA out and 480p composite out through dock adapter cables. There is a camera attachment kit that lets you import photos from your camera over USB or directly through an SD reader.

The device is managed by iTunes, just like the iPhone and iPod Touch. iPad can run iPhone apps: either pixel-for-pixel in a window, or pixel-doubled fullscreen. Developers can also target the new screen size using the updated iPhone OS SDK, which is available today.

The 3G version runs on AT&T and comes with new data plans: 250MB for $14.99 and an unlimited plan for $29.99 a month contract-free. Activations are handled on the iPad, so you can activate and cancel whenever you want. Every iPad is unlocked (!) and comes with a GSM “micro-SIM”.

The price starts at $499 for 16GB, 32GB for $599, and $699 64GB. Adding 3G costs a $130 per model, so the most expensive model (64GB / 3G) is $829. The WiFi-only model will ship in 60 days, and the 3G models will come in 90.

UPDATE: The 3G version will also have A-GPS.

Here is our live blog from Apple’s event:

Read the rest of this entry »

We all love humorous Apple’s “Get a Mac” ads featuring John Hodgman and Justin Long as ‘PC’ and ‘Mac’. The site AdFreak has compiled all 66 TV spots that have aired during Apple’s Get a Mac ad campaign.

You can watch all of them here.

Here is the first one that began airing on May 2, 2006:

Apple has issued invitations for a media event scheduled for 10:00 AM Pacific Time on January 27th. The event will be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and the invitation’s tag line reads “Come see our latest creation.”.

Apple certainly will present a new product. This might be iTablet, iPhone 4.0, iPhone HD… or something completely different. Stay tuned!

Here is how invitations to such events looked like in the past:

Read the rest of this entry »

Apple today posted two new iPhone commercials to its ad gallery and also began airing them on prime-time television. Here is a list of applications, that are used in these videos:

Song
- Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals [App Store, $7.99]
- Credit Card Terminal [App Store, $0.99]
- Facebook [App Store, Free]
- The Sims 3 [App Store, $6.99]
- Redfin Real Estate [App Store, Free]
- Shazam [App Store, Free]

Gift
- Target [App Store, Free]
- ColorChange [App Store, $2.99]
- The Snow Report [App Store, Free]
- Monopoly Here & Now: The World Edition [App Store, $4.99]
- HotelPal [App Store, Free]
- Zipcar [App Store, Free]

Watch the videos:

Read the rest of this entry »

U.S. Patent & Trademark Office has published a new Apple patent on a removable module designed specifically to add new features to the iPod Touch.

The Apple device can read the circuit cards (ICCs), the chip cards, memory cards, and even the SIM card. The operation is not simple and is not quite clear. Maybe some day we will ba able to use SIM cards in iPod and SD in iPhone?

via ispazio