There are plenty of iOS apps for forecasting the weather, but few of them carry the weight of The Weather Channel itself — and now the cable channel’s own App Store entry has received a slick update, at least for the free version.
The Weather Channel has announced the availability of a major redesign of its iOS app for the iPhone and iPod touch. Available today in the App Store, The Weather Channel version 5.0 offers a simpler user interface and a visually stunning design for a more personal weather experience.
“Our new app is more relevant — whether it’s showing a beautiful image that displays your local weather or allowing you to save your own personalized home screen image, it’s more about the weather and content that matters to each consumer,” said Cameron Clayton, executive vice president of digital product at The Weather Channel companies. “We’ve made changes based on consumer feedback to engage users through a deeper and more emotional weather experience.”
The update, which borrows a lot of style from the iPad-specific version, marks the first major redesign of the app since 2009, featuring an immediate view of weather conditions that conveys the feel of the weather and offers increased personalization and social integration with iWitness, Twitter, Facebook and email.
The only problem with the new version is that The Weather Channel isn’t saying anything about its paid, ad-free version, The Weather Channel Max, which has yet to receive the new coat of paint. That means weather junkies will have to choose between a slick new design populated by ads, or the tired old UI without them. Here’s hoping TWC will rectify the situation soon for its paid app users!
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The United States International Trade Commission (ITC) issued a preliminary ruling yesterday regarding Motorola’s October 2010 complaint against Apple. Administrative Law Judge Thomas B. Pender reviewed the four patents Motorola claimed were being infringed and found that Apple was only infringing on one (U.S. Patent No. 6,246,697). However, as Motorola lawyers like to point out, “it only takes one bullet to kill.”
According to Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents, “both parties will appeal the parts of the ruling that are unfavorable to them.” Mueller goes on to state that although it seems unlikely at this point, if this preliminary determination continues on to become a final ruling, it could result in an ITC enforced import ban against Apple, which “could be enough to prevent Apple from importing any iPhones and 3G-capable iPads into the United States.”
Check out our awesome lawyers in action! (image credit: Gigjets)
An important component to be clarified is if this ruling could apply to new Apple products, such as the iPhone 4S, that use a Qualcomm baseband chip. Cupertino may have a separate defense for those products that could exclude them from the ruling, and it is not clear if the Qualcomm chips can even be included by Motorola in the patent coverage. Motorola has not been able to get the courts to view the Qualcomm chip as part of the patent yet, despite several attempts.
Which is part of the reason why Apple brought an antitrust lawsuit against Motorola in February specifically regarding potential claims that Motorola might make against the iPhone 4S. Apple is claiming to be a third-party beneficiary to a license agreement between Qualcomm and Motorola, and is therefore protected against any litigation. On Monday, the United States District Court for the Southern District of California set a date of July 5 to determine if this lawsuit by Cupertino can proceed, or if it will be dismissed.
Bloomberg reports that Apple stung Samsung in court yesterday, and Samsung is going to have to write some checks. U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal ruled in San Jose, California that Samsung violated court orders by failing to produce documents in their patent-infringement case with Apple.
Samsung had been ordered by the court to produce documents mentioning Apple features and designs, and so far hadn’t given them up. Judge Grewal noted that there was some burden on Samsung to produce the documents in time, citing the “compressed case schedule and the numerous claims at issue,” however he finally sided with Apple and ruled that the burden “does not negate Samsung’s obligation to comply with no fewer than two court orders specifying the production of documents that reference Apple’s products.”
This is worse than library late fees by a lot.
The ruling against Samsung is going to be costly, as it includes some of the monetary sanctions Cupertino sought, but denied others. The ruling will not block the sale of any Samsung products, though, and the exact amount of the damages was not stated in the court filings. Regardless, odds are there will be several zeroes on the check, and that has got to sting in the middle of ongoing litigation.
Adrian writes the weekly Law & Apple column for MacLife.com. Follow him on Twitter, or subscribe to him on Facebook.
Austin-based developer Twisted Pixel has demonstrated an uncanny knack for creating wholly original and distinctive play experiences, and one of its best recent creations — last year’s Xbox Live Arcade download, Ms. Splosion Man — is coming to iPad and iPhone this sunny summer via a reworked and expanded port that adds more than touch controls.
Twisted Pixel announced the upcoming release on the first day of the PAX East gaming convention in Boston this weekend, and while it had a playable build of the game available at its booth, it wasn’t representative of what to expect from the final release. Jay Stuckwisch, 2D artist and community manager at the studio, explained that the PAX East build was a rough demo essentially ported over from the Xbox Live Arcade version of the game, and that the final release will include unspecified “new gameplay functions” that will be revealed prior to its expected sunny summer release.
Still, I was able to get a sense for how the game will control on iOS devices. In the side-scrolling game, you play as the titular heroine, a science experiment gone wrong who has the ability to explode herself up to three times between recharges to blast upwards and outwards through challenging stages. In the iPad version at PAX East, you used a sliding directional pad to move left and right, plus you could swipe upwards to climb a ledge once dangling from the edge, while tapping elsewhere would make you ‘splode. The frame rate ran a little slow on the build, but Stuckwisch noted that the level was quickly ported just to give fans an idea of what to expect, and that the game would be fully optimized for the platform.
Luckily, Twisted Pixel has some very good company for its first iOS release — it’s being assisted on the project by Iron Galaxy Studios, the Chicago-based company that brought Scribblenauts Remix to the App Store last fall. And with luck, it won’t be the last we see of Twisted Pixel on the App Store; last year’s The Gunstringer for Kinect could work splendidly on a touch screen device. But Ms. Splosion Man is the studio’s iOS focus for now, and we can expect what will likely be a universal release to launch this sunny summer.
It’s rare when an app in the Android Market gets a feature that its iOS counterpart doesn’t have (especially a coveted one), but for the past month, Dolphin users on Android have been navigating their browsers with Sonar, the latest innovation for one of the most feature-rich mobile options around. But rejoice, iPhone users – the wait is over.
Dolphin Sonar – available as a .99 in-app purchase within the existing Dolphin Browser app – lets you control the browser without lifting a finger. Powered by the same technology that allegedly makes Siri so smart (but thankfully not limited to the iPhone 4S), Sonar pretty much blows Siri out of the water, at least as far as Safari is concerned. Where the Siri-Safari tandem is limited to basic Google searches, Sonar can negotiate a number of commands; and since Nuance’s Dragon Mobile SDK is under the hood, it’s surprisingly accurate.
The Sonar interface (also Siri-like) launches with a quick shake of your phone and is instantly ready to listen. A series of helpful horizontal scrolling commands helps get things started, and they all work as advertised: “New tab” and “close tab;” “Twitter Mac|Life” or “Facebook Mac|Life” (to specifically scan the social networks for people talking about us); “eBay iPhone” to search eBay for iPhones; or “Watch Steve Jobs keynotes” to round up YouTube videos. Sonar responded quickly to each of our queries and rarely missed its mark.
Dolphin links Sonar functionality with its own features, too. Saying “Speed Dial” brought up our favorites list and “add bookmark” worked, too, though we still needed to finish the process with a tap. MoboTap says that there are commands to move up and down the page, but we couldn’t figure those out in our pre-release version.
Non-iPhone 4S users may feel like the shackles have been lifted, but even somewhat seasoned Siri users should find Dolphin Sonar to be a sound improvement over Safari’s voice-activated features. The Sonar function is available now for Dolphin Browser on iPhone.
This past weekend, roughly everyone (everywhere) downloaded Angry Birds Space. Well, at least 10 million people did, but that’s still quite the figure. While a huge shadow was cast by the massiveness of Rovio’s franchise — or is that the space station it built with all that money — there were still plenty of noteworthy headlines in the iOS gaming world.
The Phantasy Star Online series has long been a hit with gamers since its initial release on the Sega Dreamcast, though its also spent much of its life on the PC. Now it’ll share the role-playing action with mobile devices, including the iOS platform, with Phantasy Star Online 2 (via Andriasang). The mobile versions of the game will enjoy a slightly stripped-down experience and will only loosely connect to the PC version. But for the price of free, its hard to complain. Sega aims to make its money back via micro-transactions for items, and you can look for the the massively multiplayer app this winter.
The popular port that revitalized a genre just keeps getting better. Triple Town, the media darling matching game from Spry Fox, is getting an update that includes two new maps. The first of the new lands is called City on a Lake, placing water in the way of your movement, while the second bears the title, Peaceful Village — but bears no bears, giving you the opportunity to focus on solid matching. The only catch to the update is that you must have bought the in-app purchase for unlimited turns. If you haven’t yet, grab it now — it’s on sale for .99.
Fans of the old Mad Magazine should start getting giddy. The classic Spy vs Spy series appears to be heading to an iOS device near you. A teaser for the title was released recently, and while it doesn’t state any information explicitly, it does attach longtime iOS-centric studio Robots & Pencils as the developer. One would imagine a studio best known for its work on iOS wouldn’t move away from the platform for a major property launch. This won’t be the first time Spy vs Spy has been in game form, but the series hasn’t been on an Apple device since the Apple II. Lets hope they improved on the graphics!
