Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"On Tuesday, Apple posted iPhone Update 2.2.1. Apple said the update fixes problems with the stability of Safari and a problem with images saved from e-mail."

This update applies to original iPhones as well as the 3G.

"Hellfire is an exciting helicopter combat game that takes you on a worldwide tour of duty. Climb aboard your helicopter gunship and take on 16 missions of adrenaline-fuelled combat action in a global theater of war."

It's a new game in the iTunes store, and looks like it might be fun based on what I saw in this you tube video. While I'm not a big fan of the controls on the iPhone/iPod Touch, I do love shoot 'em up games. It would be a lot easier though, if one of these gets the support it sounds like it deserves.

"An e-book submitted to Apple's App Store has been approved after the author removed language that apparently offended Apple. CNET's David Carnoy wrote a book called Knife Music last year, and attempted to submit it to the App Store as an e-book. Apple rejected his application for containing "objectionable content," which appeared to be a couple of uses of that four-letter word that starts with F."

Having never read any of the documents pertaining to submissions to the iTunes App Store, I was a little surprised by this. The author apparently wasn't, said the words didn't materially change the story, and removed them. I understand that it is their store and they can set up the guidelines however they wish, but I wonder why they didn't label it with the explicit tag (like they do for music and podcasts) and let it go at that?

"Mesa Dynamics and CardStar have announced CardStar for the iPhone/iPod touch, its latest mobile application for personal card management."

This looks like a slick program, perfect for those of us with a lot of reward card or club cards. There was a tutorial online showing you how to input your cards to your iPhone by scanning them, but I could never get them to look right. This program from CardStar, available now in the iTunes Store, could be just the ticket. I can never seem to find the cards when I need them, but I always have my iPhone.

"A Lethal app for your iPhone! OK, the headline is a bit misleading. This app won't kill you; in fact, it's designed to inform you about dangerous situations in your vicinity."

Lethal bases your danger level on several geographical factors (lethal wildlife, crime, disease, and disaster probabilities), and lets you know the best option, ie get out now! I wonder if it factors in that the use of this diverts your attention to your surroundings, so if there was something dangerous coming your way, you might not know it until too late?

"Apple's iTunes Store is almost completely DRM-free, and will be entirely DRM-free from spring," Nate Lanxon reports for CNET. "This means files downloaded from iTunes work on heaps of devices that aren't from Apple."

Just make sure the music you are now able to share doesn't end up on a file-sharing network, because the DRM-free files contain your email address used when you purchased the music. Maybe this was a payoff to the RIAA, who knows, but it is the one warning in the article. The rest of the article is a pretty good summation of what iTunes Plus means to the average consumer. I love the fact they are doing this, will make my sharing of files (at home only among family of course!) so much easier.

"In the online social networking space you've got your big guns: MySpace, to a lesser extent Twitter and for business users, LinkedIn. Facebook is also extremely popular and now, Facebook's client for iPhone and iPod touch has been updated to version 2.1."

This update requires the iPhone 2.2 firmware update to work but is supposed to mean fewer crashes, quicker loading of the inbox and improved sync time among others. I've used the Facebook application for some time. The crashes have been irritating so I've been looking forward to this update.

"Just a reminder as Macworld Expo heads into the home stretch, the iPhone/iPod touch travel application HearPlanet is available for free this week only."

Interesting application that has audio tours of over 230,000 locations. Normally $3.99 USD from the iTunes Application Store, it's free at least until tomorrow, the last day of Macworld.

"Apple Inc. is cutting the price of some songs in its market-leading iTunes online music store to 69 cents and plans to begin selling all tracks without copy protection."

Started over 6 years ago, the iTunes Store has become the go-to place for music. Read more...