MobileViews Blog

Category: Apple

  • Smule’s Magic Guitar for iPhone is fun. But, it needs “strings” IMHO

    Smule’s CTO & co-founder, Ge Wang, makes it look easy in the video embedded above. But, Smule’s new Magic Guitar, presents challenges even if you know how to play a real guitar.

    I found I wanted to see actual guitar strings to give an indication of where fingers should rest while waiting for song notes to appear. The app is designed for the iPhone and iPod touch. It doesn’t scale for play on an iPad.

    The app has achievements, badges and leaderboards to let you compete with friends if you like. Smule says that the app’s songbook offers a huge catalog of legendary artists including The Rolling Stones, Coldplay, KISS, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Sublime, Credence Clearwater Revival, Santana, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Styx, Poison, Bruno Mars, Train and more. The app is free and comes with a couple of free songs. In-app purchases of song packs range from $2.99 to $9.99.

  • New Netflix iPad user interface in the 2.0 update

    Netflix 2.0 for iOS brought a new user interface for iPad users. The Continue Watching feature looks like the most useful new feature. It can be scrolled horizontally to see ten of mostly recently viewed videos. Each one has an indication of how much of the video was viewed if it was not watched to completion.

    A top 10 recommendation list and the Instant Queue follows. Rows of categorized recommendations follows the first three standard lists.

  • INRIX Traffic for iOS battery draining issue? INRIX provides clarification and a 3.5.1 update workaround

    INRIX Traffic is a free app for iPhone and iPad that uses traffic information from fleet vehicles and individual app users to provide near real-time traffic information. If you take a look at the comments for the app, you’ll note what appears to be a lot of irate users because of what appears to be a battery drain caused by using the app.

    INRIX’s PR firm sent out this email to explain the situation:
    (more…)

  • OneNote for iPhone: Need to pay $4.99 for more than 500 notes. No sign of iPad version

    Running OneNote for iPhone on an iPad results in a message telling you that an iPad version of the app is available. Unfortunately, there is no sign of it in Apple’s iTunes App Store. It might have been better if Microsoft had made the app a single universal one.

    The missing iPad app will probably be resolved in a few days. However, more troubling is that the free OneNote for iPhone app now has a 500 note limitation. You have to pay $4.99 for an in-app purchase to get past the limit. I wonder if this is a wise move for Microsoft given the ability of other most established cloud notebook services and apps like Evernote and Springpad.

  • Xbox LIVE iOS app released. Oops! I already broke it 🙁

    Microsoft Director of Programming for the Microsoft Xbox Live Larry Hyrb (aka “Major Nelson”) announced just hours ago that:

    Introducing the official Xbox LIVE iOS App

    So, I downloaded and installed the free app on my iPad. But, oops it is already broken. When it gets working on my iPad, it is supposed to do the following:

    • Read and send messages to friends
    • Manage your friends list, invite new friends
    • Read and Edit your full LIVE profile (name, bio, motto)
    • Change your avatar features/items with the avatar closet
    • View and compare your achievement progress with friends

  • Flipboard for iPhone Released

    Flipboard is now a Universal app that runs on the iPhone as well as the iPad. I think people who started using it on the iPad will need a bit of relearning to do to get comfortable with it on the iPhone. But, that said, it is great to be able to quickly scan through interesting links provided by people I follow on Twitter and Facebook. Now, if only Flipboard could help me sort through my messy Google+ stream.