Jasonified.

At home I have a fairly typical Apple media setup - iMac, external storage, Apple TVs dotted around the house + iPads etc.

When playing media across devices via iTunes, specifically films and TV Shows, you can “continue playing” or “start from the beginning” and iTunes will (sometimes) maintain the state across these devices for you.

It strikes me that with iCloud and the proliferation of “cloud services” for bookmarking and state management, this should be much easier, more reliable, and simply *better*.

I like the idea of playing a game on one device, moving to another (where I have the same app and iCloud state management selected) and picking up where I left off.

What about writing some markdown in Byword on the iPhone, switching to the iPad, opening Byword open and the cursor is where I left it (or even finding it open, ready an waiting when I slide to unlock).

Imagine writing a tweet in Tweetbot, opening the photo browser and realising the image you want to post is on your iPhone and hasn’t synced via photo stream. No problem, just unlock the iPad and there’s Tweetbot, not only open, but showing the photo browser with your tweet sitting, ready to post underneath.

We have “resume” for movies, tv shows and for books within apps like iBooks and Kindle.

Why not everything else?

Mobile developers who offer in-app upgrades are current facing a potential patent dispute (and licensing issue) with Lodsys, a group that is claiming patent infringement.

The specifics of the patent deal with in-app upgrades and applications that are downloaded with limited features and offer the ability to “upgrade” to the full version *within* the application.

This usually consists of hitting a button in the app that invokes a transaction via the iOS in-app purchase API and at this point features in the App are “unlocked”. In some instances this can mean downloading new content (such as new levels etc)

Developers who offer in-app upgrades and purchasing are clearly worried about this whole affair but there are a couple of options available to them which would avoid breaching this patent.

1. Separate applications. In essence a developer would create multiple versions of it’s application in the AppStore. Each app would have a separate ID and cost.

Users could be prompted to download the new app from the Appstore thus bypassing the in-app purchase.

The downside of this solution is it would clog the AppStore with multiple versions of the same app.

2. Mini-apps that “unlock” features in a main app. I haven’t checked this against the Apple developer agreement but basically this would work by having a main application which includes ALL the features people can purchase on it’s initial download.

The additional features are hidden and locked when the application is installed.

To “upgrade” users are directed to NEW, separate applications in the AppStore each of which would offer a particular upgrade.

Each “mini app” would be purchased as a NEW application install (thus bypassing the in-app upgrade patent) and when launched they would make an HTTP call to the main app (e.g mainappUID://<VALUE>) passing some sort of token across that would “unlock” the features of the main application. 

Obviously there could be some security issues here in encrypting the URL key to ensure it can’t be called manually from say Safari but technically this should be possible.

Hope this helps!

Refering to an item in The Wall Street Journal that Apple is working on a smaller, cheaper version of the iPhone due this summer:

“One of the people, who saw a prototype of a new iPhone several months ago, said the new device is intended to be sold alongside the current line of iPhones and would be about half the size of the iPhone 4.”

Hold on, a person saw the prototype said it “would be about half the size” ?

Surely if they saw it then there is no “would” about it, the new device “is half the size”

I call bullshit.

In a recent tweet I mentioned how I believed that location based services are going to be very “last year” and the new next big thing will be proxmity/vicinity services. In other words location puts you in a place and proximity puts you in a room, on a floor, outside a shop, next to a device etc.

(btw I’m not saying location itself is dead it’s just the first part of a process to enhance the offering - you need proximity for the detail)

Just now my Boxcar push notifications for twitter (which should work on my iPad and iPhone) were only coming through on the iPad and it got me wondering….

…wouldn’t it be neat to have a proxmity preference setting that said “I’d like to get push notifications but this is my preferred device (or my preferred device is the one I’m using/looking at) and if another device is nearby and has the same push settings, only display them here”

So, I can have my push notifications set on BOTH my iPad and iPhone but my (soon to be invented and make me millions of pennies) proximity system would ONLY notify me on my preferred device so I wouldn’t get multiple “pings”

One step further is to use my soon to be not invented or patented “proximity chip” (which would be fitted to a watch, ring, embedded under the skin etc) to detect *which* device I’m closest to and ONLY show the notification on that one!

Going further what if we ditch the ship and use a device with a camera that is kinect/3D/face aware which could throw it’s two pennies worth in, telling other devices that IT is the closest thing to me because I’m looking straight at it and so popup the message there.

Now that’s a future I can live in.

Note: Credit to RazorianFly for note on this today - my version requires less steps and doesn’t require you to use the primary iTunes machine.

If you’ve just upgraded to iOS 4.2 on your iPad or iPhone and you’ve suddenly lost any videos or music from your Videos/iPod app then there’s a quick and easy fix.

For this to work you should have an iPhone/iPad that shows it has Videos and Music available (in the about page or via iTunes) but non-show up on the device.

1. Connect to ANY computer running iTunes 10.1 (so doesn’t have to be your main syncing machine) and ignore any sync/wipe options (hit cancel)

2. Click on the device name, expand it and go to Music/Videos

3. Double-click/play a track/Movie/TV Show

4. Now go back to the device, go into Videos/iPod and you should get “Updating Library”

5. Bingo, music and videos restored.

So Twitter finally rolled our push notifications for their iOS clients yesterday.

After waiting for “digital decades” (real world months) for Twitter/Tweetie to embrace push we have the finally ability to be notified via a pop-up message whenever anyone mentions us or sends us a message.

But wait, what about re-tweets? More importantly what about actually getting push notifications?

Up to now I’ve been using Boxcar to make up for the lack of push notifications on Twitter for iOS and it works perfectly. It’s almost instantaneous and not only covers entry level notifications like mentions and messages but also Re-tweets, new follows AND lets you know when you’re added to a list.

Since last night I’ve been running Boxcar on the iPad and Twitter with Push on the iPhone and the fact is Boxcar wins hands down.

In most cases Twitter either lags behind Boxcar or notifications simply don’t arrive and whilst Boxcar continues to light up with Re-tweets Twitter remains in its dozy slumber.

Add to this the fact that Boxcar can be fully configured with “Quiet times”, sounds and customisable notifications and the obvious question is why did Twitter bother?

(Oh and where’s the delete option in Twitter for iPad?)

Just a quick post to help anyone that’s getting this. If you’re running Titanium Developer on OSX for iPhone development and you’re seeing a “Loading…” for the SDK dropdown that appears to hang forever, there’s a simple fix.

Delete the project, NOT the folder just the entry in Titanium then re-add it.

Worked for me

Despite what you may think of the Apple Appstore and their closed policy, you have to love the fact that every day there’s an new app or app update to download which could be a game changer.

Today it was Quickoffice 3 which up until now has been good but has relied on you copying files over via local wifi OR accessing email attachments via a seperate email address forwarded from your regular email. It sort of worked but wasn’t seamless and totally practical.

Today however the game changes. Quickoffice 3 now supports MobileMe, Google Docs, Box and DropBox and suddenly the iPad is looking WAY more interesting.

The fact I can now access my work schedules, proposals, expenses etc via dropbox AND edit them on my iPhone is cool enough but imagine all using in a screen over four times larger.

Forget iWork, Quickoffice have just made the iPad way more attractive as an inbetween device which I could use to edit documents with greater comfort and clarity on the move.

My finger is ready, where do I sign?