Bitterwallet exclusive - the Nintendo 3DS, yesterday
Back in March we reported on the spankatronic wundergizmo, the Nintendo 3DS with its glasses-free 3D gaming experience. It’s due to be launched to the industry in a week’s time at the E3 gaming expo, and available to the public after that.
Not only would the 3D gameplay have the potential to create a new platform for developers, but Nintendo may be looking to introduce their very own app store for the handset. According to Electric Pig: “Capcom COO, Haruhiro Tsujimoto, says his firm is fired up about making 3D games for the Nintendo 3DS but it’s the prospect of an app store that’s really got it excited. He says: “What we’re looking forward to is the offering of a new business model.”
“Nintendo has been in the hardware business for a long time and I believe they are looking closely at Apple’s recent success.” His comments came just after he lavished praise on Japanese mobile network NTT DoCoMo which has its own iTunes App Store-style service.”
Whether such an app store would mean on-demand purchasing, or an open-platform for developers – or both – isn’t known. Of course it may not happen at all; Nintendo and games developers would think twice before blowing up a market already established and worth billions, and plenty of games are currently of a size that’d be irritatingly slow to download.
iPhone apps – how do the world’s greatest developers come up with the apps that have wasted our time, money and precious lifeforce revolutionised our lives? Here’s how Apple staff decide what apps they should offer on their devices. Or it might be another fratboy video in the style of The Office. Quite well done, though:
We know, you’re sick beyond the back teeth of Apple, iPhones and apps, but even the staunchest of critics will allow this exception. In fact, to pacify you further, we’re not even going to dribble on with an opening paragraph and just let the pictures tell the story:
We were disappointed to discover the app had nothing whatsoever to do with New Order, despite the titles. And if it all looks suspiciously like a half-arsed to-do list wrapped up in a lot of cosmic bollocks, that’s because it pretty much is. But with a beard. Don’t all rush at once.
So the good news for iPhone loving music chums is that the Spotify app has now been approved by Apple and will be available in the App Store shortly. This means you’ll be able to compile playlists on your desktop or your iPhone – choosing from millions of songs – and then cache them offline so you can effectively keep any 3,300 songs on your handset at any time.
The bad news is that to use the app, you’ll have to subscribe to Spotify’s Premium service at a cost of £9.99 per month. Although this means you can enjoy music on your desktop app at far higher quality (320kbps), access to exclusive tracks and none of those bleeding Kate Moss ads, it’s going to cost you £120 a year. And unless Spotify have done some extraordinary deal with Apple by which it can operate as a background app, you can’t do anything else with your handset while music is playing. That, frankly, is a complete pain in the arse.
So on the one hand you have access to millions of tracks on your iPhone or iPod and you never need bother with iTunes again, and on the other you’re £120 out of pocket. So which is it to be? Vote, comment and let us know. And if you’re not an iPhone fanboy, chances are you’ll pay the same price if and when Spotify is released for your handset, so don’t be shy and vote too:
It’ll be denounced by moral crusaders as yet another sign that the end of civilisation is nigh – an iPhone app called Cannabis that lets you locate dealers in your area. Obviously it only provides details of registered suppliers for medicinal reasons, and not where you’ll find Little Vince to tap him for a couple of ounces:
Having said that, it then goes on to provide details of coffee houses in Amsterdam and contact details for legal representation if you find yourself in bother with the law. “Our goal is to put the power of cannabis change in your pocket!” Amen to that.
Palm once said it had no interests in taking on Apple over the iPhone – the Pre will attract a different type of consumer, they said. So it’ll be interesting to see not only how Palm markets the Pre once it reaches the UK in the Autumn, but what sort of apps will be available to buy for it. Yes, for a phone that isn’t challenging the iPhone, they’re doing a decent job of suggesting otherwise.
But then the Pre isn’t the iPhone, is it? One key aspect of the handset’s operating system is that it can run background apps, something the iPhone should be able to do, but can’t. Gah. It’s simple features like this that open up a whole new world of apps to developers, and now they have their chance to create them – the Software Development Kit (SDK) for the Pre is now available. By the time the handset is available in the UK, the Pre App Catalogue should be rammed to the rim with apps.
What everyone is waiting to see, however, is whether Palm make a better job of managing their App Catalogue than Apple do of the App Store. Plenty of developers are considering giving up on Apple because of their inconsistencies in policy, the lack of communication and an endless list of problems and queries besides.
There’s also a opportunity for Palm to better manage the type of content available. For example, will Palm filter submissions so that their catalogue doesn’t fill up with 30 different shades of iFart? Some sort of quality threshold would be an ideal way to distinguish the App Catalogue, but that would potentially hurt Palm’s profits – apps that appeal to the lowest common denominator can also sell very well. How brave will Palm be in the months to come?
Real life, eh? It’s alright, but there’s something missing. For some of us, it’s love and cheap hookers. For others, it’s wealth and a sense of security. That’s where augmented reality steps in. These mobile applications look at the real world through the camera of your smartphone, then display the image with a overlay of details, images and directions. It’s Reality 2.0, but only if you’re a new media marketing wanker that thinks up phrases like that.
These have been in development for several months since the onslaught of the iTunes App Store, but the first big player to launch is in Holland for the G1 Handset. It’s called Layar and it looks not unlike this:
Unfortunately the results you see in the augmented reality appear to be sponsor-led, with Layar securing deals with local companies for their content to appear. That presumably means there are huge gaps in the type and breadth of information available, until further companies pay up at least. What would make the app invaluable work is a version that has both general sightseeing information with information scraped from a database likes Travelwiki and the ability to view a Yellow Pages of nearby businesses and details. Then the app would be useful even when you’re not looking for a house to buy or an ATM.
A UK version launches later in the year, and an iPhone app for the 3GS is also on the cards.
Yes, it’s true! We can scarcely contain our excitement! The App Store is one year old on Saturday, so to celebrate we’re throwing a street party and you’re all invited! Can’t get along? Then no doubt you’ll want to organise your own to celebrate. Here are some hints to get you started:
Get together with some neighbours and plan the party. Share out the tasks; don’t try and do it all yourself. There’s an app for that. Quite a few, actually.
Decide where the party is going to be. It’s best to get together in somebody’s garden, driveway or house, but try and choose somewhere you can steal a neighbour’s wifi to download new apps.
Think about the food and drink. Do you want a BBQ or sandwiches and cakes? After all, we all love apps but we can’t eat them!
Think about the ages of your neighbours. How are you going to occupy them? Is anybody good at face painting, for example? Of course they’re not. They’ll only look like an sad lonely tiger that doesn’t own an iPhone. Best to share yours and let them play a new game from the App Store.
Go round to see your neighbours the weekend before and give them a final reminder of what you’re planning. Try and make sure you don’t have too many duplicate apps between you, or you’ll spoil the fun of comparing countless pages of crap you’ve bought and never used.
It’s been literally minutes since we last mentioned the iPhone. Vince has started rocking back and forth, Andy is screaming into his hands and threatening to kill again – going cold turkey isn’t easy. So thank baby Jesus for today’s iPhone post that’ll restore both sanity and intense tissue usage to the BW office. What’s more, it’s a trip back to the days of your childhood with this cracking Commodore 64 emulator app, which lets you play your favourite games of yore:
The app has been rejected from the App Store because of a technicality, which is a shame because Bruce Lee with a virtual joystick looks tremendous. And Bombjack! Bloody Bombjack! Aces. Come on folks, sort it out and get it in the store. And let’s have Jet Set Willy while you’re at it, too.
You love Apple. You love iPhones. You love iPhone apps. You love them so much you bought the I’m Rich application for $999 and still have realised what a prize twat that makes you. You have hundreds of the little bastards in your phones, to the point you’ve no more screens to display them on. Yet you keep buying iPhone applications, deleting the old ones as you go.
But you’re not the only one. There are thousands of you. Millions of you. So how does all that stupidity look from Apple’s point of view? When 50 million iPhone users are pissing money up the wall on virtual fart machines and animated Chuck Norris kung-fu video games, what do they see?
Unveiled at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco on Monday, the television that Steve Jobs has fitted to his bedroom ceiling. The 20 cinema displays display the 20,000 best selling apps – when one is purchased, it oscillates in a highly pleasurable manner. It’s the sight of a metric fuckton of money raining into Apple’s bank account every second:
For videos of this pleasure-pumping technology at work, check out Apple Insider.
Here in the Bitterwallet offices, we all enjoy fine manes of lush, thick hair. Admittedly, they’re not always on our heads, but we’re men enough to live with a mature hairline.
That said, if you’ve got a full head of hair, there’s no doubt whatsoever you’ll want to keep it. There’s an app for that. No, really. Stop laughing. Hair Clinic is an iPhone app that’ll ensure you’ll never wish for a syrup fig, and what’s more it costs a mere £2.39 – you can’t even buy decent styling product for that price.
How does this scientific-techno bollocks work, then? In their own words…:
HAIR CLINIC generates various types of inaudible high and low frequencies to promote circulation around hair roots under the head skin and as a result, hair roots can be provided nutrition normally. That process improves the function of hair roots and the condition of hair. And then you will have healthy abundant hair.
Easy as that, then. If phrases such as “It’s not late” and “head skin” haven’t made you wonder whether it’s undergone strict medical testing in the UK, then we’re looking for gullible monkeys test subjects to try the app for us. Get in touch. You’re worth it.
Not all actors are stupid lumps of meat. Some are quite clever, and some even like computers and stuff, just like normal people. Greg Grunberg, who plays brain-meddling copper Matt Parkman in Heroes, had an idea for an iPhone app, but was just the right side of geeky to not know how to build it. He found some people that did, and the result is Yowza!!.
Wotsit arl aboot? Retailers and restaurants use a CMS to add offers onto the application’s database, which combines with the iPhone’s GPS to display vouchers relevant to wherever you happen to be. The vouchers are displayed as barcodes which are then scanned at the till. Here’s Grunberg to tell us more:
Of course, the app will only be successful if a significant number of retailers pick up on the application, and users get into the habit of eyeballing their iPhone while they shop. That’s a pretty big ask, but the big man seems confident. Currently Yowza!! is only available in the US, but there are plans to launch it overseas very soon.
iPhone app developers have a list of issues with Apple’s procedures as long as their code. The bulk of them centre on the lack on consistency in the clearing of an application for sale, and the lack of dialogue if and when Apple find fault.
On the one hand, Apple have processed over 35,000 apps since last July; last month saw another 7,200 apps make their way into the already rammed App Store on iTunes. But the tireless efforts of staff behind the scenes to keep on top of submissions is no excuse as far as developers are concerned. Incorrect use of icons, badly designed interfaces, abuse of copyright, apps that crash without fail – for every app with a glaring error that’s knocked back, another finds its way into the store.
But then there are the apps which should never have been cleared the App Store in the first place. Yesterday, Apple withdrew Baby Shaker, a game in which the player had to quiet crying babies by shaking them to death:
Unsurprisingly, there are more than a few people asking why the hell Apple cleared it for sale in the first place. It was submitted by a company called Sikalosoft, and first appeared on Monday but was withdrawn yesterday. Sikalosoft’s website is barely a homepage and all reference to Baby Shaker has been removed.
There are now over 25,000 applications on the iPhone, and while most of them are as useful as chip pan fat for whores, there are a few that stand out. If the developers themselves don’t release a demo on YouTube, you can always rely on somebody else to do it for them. With that in mind, here’s a sift through some of the hundreds of apps released recently. Some are good, some are shit, frankly:
iBone – the Pocket Trombone (£1.79)
No, stop it right now, it’s not that sort of app. It’s a virtual trombone that allows you to accompany songs with a flick and slide of your finger, or by blowing across your iPhone. Judging by the interface you need to know something about music to put it to good use, but there are also scales you can practise if you’d like to learn.
Make Money Online (£2.39)
“My name is Sven Schöne and listen. I live in this dump and wear sweatbands like it’s 1987, but I don’t care. What you say? Listen. Look at Oogle, it’s full of free resources. Scams. I want to show you this programme called Make Money Online. All it takes is a small investment from you, I give you a list of bookmarks you could find by using your eyes, but then I could not get rich, yeah? My company is called iJokeEntertainment, but I am serious, yeah? It took me one and a half years to put this together, even though the App Store has been around just nine months, yeah?”
Tap Tap Coldplay(£2.99)
Tap Tap Revenge is often cited as one of the best and most popular applications for the iPhone. Well now they’ve gone and spoilt it by releasing a version dedicated to the descending star of Coldplay. And they’re charging you £2.99 for the pleasure. Good on them. At least we have the nasal, bedroom-bound tones of reviewer NJ Devil Fan to stop us topping ourselves while our ears scab over in disgust. Oh.
Do you remember life before Sky+? Dark days, my friend, dark days. When you had to suffer television in real time, wasting precious hours watching programmes you had no interest in, just to kill time before The World’s Strongest Man started? Do you recall ferreting through newspapers for details of your favourite programmes, or having to set a video recorder like a commoner?
No more. Hard-disk recording changed the way we consume televisual entertainment for good, and Sky+ led the mainstream charge. No more eyeballing crap of no interest – just flick through the EPG, set to record, fast forward through the ads – sorted. So what if it occasionally clips the end off your favourite show, or mysteriously forgets about the Series Link you added last week – the good far outweighs the bad.
When Sky released its mobile application for accessing the EPG a couple of years ago, it was akin to witchcraft. Now, an iPhone app that does the same doesn’t seem nearly as impressive, but trust us – when you realise you’ve left the house without recording the series finale of 24, you’ll be grateful.
If you haven’t done so already, you’ll need to set up an account at sky.com/remoterecord to use the app, and it’ll only work on the iPhone and 2nd generation iPod Touch that has the v2.2 firmware update. The reviews for it so far are mixed, with several people reporting the app crashes constantly, but expect any glitches to be ironed out in future updates.
Palm once said it had no interests in taking on Apple over the iPhone – the Pre will attract a different type of consumer, they said. So it’ll be interesting to see not only how Palm markets the Pre once it reaches the UK in the Autumn, but what sort of apps will be available to buy for it. Yes, for a phone that isn’t challenging the iPhone, they’re doing a decent job of suggesting otherwise.
Not all actors are stupid lumps of meat. Some are quite clever, and some even like computers and stuff, just like normal people. Greg Grunberg, who plays brain-meddling copper Matt Parkman in Heroes, had an idea for an iPhone app, but was just the right side of geeky to not know how to build it. He found some people that did, and the result is 
Do you remember life before Sky+? Dark days, my friend, dark days. When you had to suffer television in real time, wasting precious hours watching programmes you had no interest in, just to kill time before The World’s Strongest Man started? Do you recall ferreting through newspapers for details of your favourite programmes, or having to set a video recorder like a commoner?
feral trolley of the week
