Mobile Apple Me

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, iDevice Apps, Mac Software, Internet / Websites, Reviews

Developer: Logitech
System Requirements: Mac OS X, Windows XP/Vista/7
Review Computers: Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook, Intel Core2 Duo Dell D630, Windows XP SP3
Price: Free
Availability: Out now
iPhone App: Touch Mouse
Mac/PC Program: Touch Mouse Server

If ever the words “Killer App” were appropriate, it would be to describe the Logitech Touch Mouse. Ever been frustrated that the mouse is just out of reach when you are kicked back watching YouTube? Or do you have your laptop hooked up to the TV, and you are just too far from the keyboard? Logitech’s Touch Mouse app solves both problems handily. By turning your iPhone, iPod Touch, or, in just a few short months, iPad into a WiFi mouse or keyboard, couch potatoes and Hulu watchers the world over can now change up their media without getting up.

The Touch Mouse app is free via the iTunes store, and so is the required companion Touch Mouse Server software from Logitech’s website (see links above for both programs).  The Server is really just a small application (315 KB) that listens on your laptop/desktop via WiFi for the Touch Mouse App and establishes a connection with each device. To establish this link, only three simple steps are required.

1. Double click the server application on your desktop
2. Make sure your iPhone OS device is connected to the same network, then launch the Touch Mouse app.
3. Find the desired device in the Touch Mouse app menu, and voila.

You get a full screen, virtual, multi-touch trackpad that functions handily in either portrait or landscape orientation.

In addition to the trackpad, the Touch Mouse includes up to three buttons at the top of the trackpad, replicating a left, right, and center click.  Sound effects can be enabled/disabled to provide feedback for button clicks.  Supported multitouch gestures are roughly equivalent to the first multitouch trackpads Apple introduced on their laptops, with two finger right clicks and two finger 360º scrolling.  When you are ready to type, the virtual keyboard functions in both landscape and portrait modes, and includes special keys for Command, Option, and Control.  In portrait mode, the keyboard includes the three trackpad buttons, though these are missing from the landscape layout (due to space constraints, but it is still possible to mouse with the keyboard active).

The Touch Mouse experience is not quite like mousing with Apple’s latest glass multitouch trackpads, but it is more than adequate for a majority of uses.  The experience is much like controlling a computer via a VNC—slightly slow, but not jumpy.  If anybody remembers the original Macintosh mouse, it feels very similar…there is a slight lag, but tracking in general is smooth enough to allow easy selection making.

The multitouch features really shine when it comes to highlighting text, where tapping and holding the left mouse button and dragging the pointer with another finger is required.  Single clicks are easily achieved without using the mouse button (the virtual trackpad may be tapped just like a regular one), though double clicking was somewhat challenging.  The sensitivity is so high that it is easy to accidentally move the mouse when attempting a double tap; using the left click button proved an easier way to double click.  Right clicking can be achieved either via the right click button or via a two-finger tap (for those preferring the tap method, be aware that you will need to spread your fingers slightly).  Tapping with two fingers held close together generally caused a scroll rather than right click to be recognized.  Kudos to Logitech for including a preview box when using the keyboard so you can see what you are typing on the iPhone’s screen, even if your computer is too far away to read the text.

What is there not to like about the Touch Mouse?  Not much, really.  For occasional typing to search for YouTube videos or log into facebook, the keyboard is more than sufficient.  Extensive typing would be difficult, not just due to the small size of the iPhone’s keyboard, but also due to the lack of spell checking/autocorrection in keyboard mode.  Logitech has chosen not to implement the iPhone’s standard keyboard autocorrect, so you have to watch the preview window carefully.  As a feature request, a Bluetooth connection option would be very nice.  When on the road, it is not always possible to connect to WiFi, so watching a movie in a hotel room will still involve getting up and walking over the the computer.  Apple should take notice, because an iPad version of this supporting full Magic Mouse-style multitouch would be amazing (and a great tie-in to the AppleTV). 

Full Story » | Written by Aaron Kraus for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, iDevice Apps, Originals

The most romantic day of the year is just a week away. If you want to express your love in the digital style, these applications will help you to be the romantic that you should be. Let’s walk you through your enhanced romance.

Valentines Countdown

Seller: Energize
Compatibility: iPhone or iPod Touch
Requirements: OS 1.3 or Later
File Size: 9.8 MB
Price: Free
Age Rating: 4+

Holidays can be easy to forget, but if you forget this one, you may be up the creek. If you are not good with dates, this application will help you to stay on track. Just be aware that it comes with all of the cutesy bells and whistles you would expect from a Valentines day application. Expect to see cute teddy bears and deep red backgrounds, and hear sappy music. On the bright side, you can turn a lot of that off in the options menu.

Be warned, though, that this app will not be able to do anything for you if you leave the shopping to the last second.

Buy Valentines Countdown

Love Songs - The 100 Greatest of All Time

Seller: Meleodo
Compatibility: iPhone and iPod Touch
Requirements: OS 2.1 or Higher
File Size: .5 MB
Price: 1.99
Age Rating: 12+

What is a romantic day without a romantic soundtrack? If you want to have the perfect mood music, or make your intended an amazing mix, this application will help you to find the exact songs that you need. The songs can be streamed through your phone for free if you have access to wi-fi or a 3G connection. You can use this application to jump right to the iTunes page to make the songs a part of your collection forever.

Buy Love Songs - The 100 Greatest of All Time

Valentines Day Recipes

Seller: Aimfre Ltd.
Compatibility: iPhone or iPod Touch
Requirements: OS 3.0 or Later
File Size: .5 MB
Price: .99
Age Rating: 17+

Making a meal at home can be romantic and intimate…not to mention that you get to stay away from all of the crowds and long wait times, neither of which is exactly what you want to be doing with your date night.

This application gives your over 140 choices that you can mix and match. Yes, that does include a nice selection of drinks that can keep you both happy. Your choices are broken up into categories that make planning simple. That way you don’t plan for four different starters (unless you wanted to).

Buy Valentines Day Recipes

iKarmasutra Lite

Seller: Naim Cesur
Compatibility: iPhone and iPod Touch
Requirements: OS 3.0 or Higher
File Size: 1.2 MB
Price: Free
Age Rating: 17+

If all is going well by the end of your evening, this application will be in use. It provides you a sampling of positions that you would find in this age-old tome of love, along with some handy descriptions.

Granted, the lite version only has 10 positions, but odds are you will not need more than that in one evening anyway.  If you decide that you enjoy this application, there is a paid version with more options.

Buy iKarmasutra Lite

Full Story » | Written by Katie Gatto for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad, iPhone Competitors

A recent update to Google’s Nexus One phone brings a feature Android users have been waiting for for quite some time now. While it won’t be available for all Android phones, Google’s phone will now support multi touch, including the popular pinch to zoom functionality of the iPhone. Support for this feature will be extended into the browser, photo gallery, and maps applications.

The update also improved upon existing features and added other news ones, but multitouch has certainly shadowed those for now. Up until now, Google’s applications haven’t supported it at all, making them more difficult to work with when compared to the iPhone. Now that Google has brought their phone up to par, the competition may become ever closer.

As we see Google and Apple getting more and more competitive with each other in the mobile phone business and app marketplace (and maybe mobile ads, someday), it’s getting interesting. While Apple was the first to have an App Store, and while that App Store is far more extensive than any others, Google is making progress slowly but surely. Minus the extremely fragmented (and in some cases, lacking) hardware, Google is getting closer and closer to proving, once again, that open eventually catches up in comparison to Apple’s closed marketplace.

To see who will come out on top, tune in next week (or next year… or longer), folks.

Via TechCrunch

Full Story » | Written by Josh Holat for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Section: Apple Business, iPhone / iPod touch / iPad, iPad, Originals

If you’re a regular reader of Appletell, you’re likely to be quite a tech-savvy person. You probably know your fair share of technology news, and while you may not want to purchase every device that comes from the Cupertino HQ, you can certainly understand and appreciate them. Despite there being a huge following behind Apple, when put into perspective, it doesn’t seem that big at all. In a poll of 1,000 British people reported by the BBC, for example, 20% of them had never even heard of Steve Jobs, with another 10% on top believing he worked for a trade union.

Let’s focus in on the new Apple iPad. If you’re anything like myself, you’d love the device and are thinking about your options to purchase one once it’s released. Sure, I maybe don’t feel like I need one, but it’s a definite want. This is, again, a belief that is not shared by everyone.

If we look into healthcare, it seems that professionals in that sector are certainly looking for a portable touch-screen computer, but the Apple iPad wasn’t quite what they were looking for. The results of a survey conducted by SoftwareAdvice indicate 34% of 178 healthcare professionals were “very likely” to purchase a tablet in the near future. What they wanted from such a device however, didn’t quite fit the iPad’s specification list. They’d love to see a wide selection of medical software, resistance to water and dust, a fingerprint scanner, and voice-to-text dictation, to name a few. While there are quite a few high-quality medical applications on the App Store, because they were built for the iPhone and iPod touch, they are not as powerful as a healthcare professional may need on a day-to-day basis. The Apple iPad certainly looks the part, but I wouldn’t feel too confident if it was dropped into water, or was left in a dusty environment for too long. It seems that, for now, Apple isn’t winning the battle for the healthcare sector.

For the general consumer electronics market, it appears that even more people aren’t entirely satisfied with Apple’s entry into the tablet market. According to surveys conducted by Retrevo.com held over the weeks before and after the Apple media event, 26% of people had heard rumors about the device, but had no interest in making a purchase. After the iPad was announced the percentage of those not interested in buying rose to 52%, with the number planning to buy the device being only 9%. Before and after the launch, around half of the people surveyed felt they had no need for a tablet device, the figures being 49% and 61% respectively.

Of course, with different people, you would get entirely different results. But it’s certainly interesting to see such high numbers of people showing little or no interest in the Apple iPad. Still, I doubt these surveys will worry Apple too much. They will have their target audiences firmly in place, and I’m sure the figures will justify the device’s success after its launch.

Just out of interest, you’ve at least thought about buying the Apple iPad, right?

Read SoftwareAdvice.com and Retrevo.com

Full Story » | Written by Ed Parry for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »