Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hey there, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Poulette. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor at how Stuff Works, and sitting next to me,
Speaker 1: as always is senior writer Jonathan Stricklandhi, HOWI everyone? Uh uh?
Speaker 1: Today we want to talk about some applications and these
Speaker 1: are very very very tiny applicate well, most of them
Speaker 1: are very tiny applications, just a few pixels wide by
Speaker 1: a few pixels high, right exactly. Um. In this case,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the iPhone UM. And a few months
Speaker 1: ago we probably wouldn't be talking about that, so uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we really wouldn't have had much to talk
Speaker 1: about because it was limited. But the with the birth
Speaker 1: of the iPhone three G, the next generation iPhone, they
Speaker 1: opened it up to everyone to create their own applications. Right.
Speaker 1: And when we say opened it up to everyone, there's
Speaker 1: some limitations there, but we'll get into that later. That's true.
Speaker 1: That's let's let's focus on the positive before we jump
Speaker 1: right into the negative. Well, the nifty thing about iPhone
Speaker 1: and in my case, the iPod touches the ability to
Speaker 1: use other applications. You're not just using it to make
Speaker 1: phone calls or shoot pictures who are listening to your music. Um.
Speaker 1: These third party applications can be anything. Um, there's a
Speaker 1: whole list of them. You have e books, you have
Speaker 1: productivity software, games, more games, still more games, completely useless,
Speaker 1: but still fairly entertaining. Distractions Yep, yep. For the iPhone,
Speaker 1: which has a GPS system, you can actually figure out
Speaker 1: where you are and get get maps, which is very useful. Um,
Speaker 1: calendar software, stock you know, keep up with your stocks.
Speaker 1: But let's let's let's let's talk about some specifics here.
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, we've got a lot of categories here.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, pick one of your apps to talk about.
Speaker 1: We can do a little back and forth and if
Speaker 1: that doesn't work and we'll we'll take it all right. Um. Well, Uh,
Speaker 1: one of the major categories we've got that both Jonathan
Speaker 1: and I agree is a very cool thing is music. Yes, definitely,
Speaker 1: And um, you know both of us use streaming internet radio. UM,
Speaker 1: and I know that Jonathan wanted it to talk about these,
Speaker 1: but one of my favorites, you asked, um, Pandora. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and both of us use that on our computers and
Speaker 1: I use it on my iPod Touch too. So if
Speaker 1: you're wondering what Pandora is, first of all, you need
Speaker 1: to get online and check it out. Absolutely, it is
Speaker 1: a really interesting especially you need to check it out
Speaker 1: before it goes away. Um. But it's a really interesting service.
Speaker 1: The idea here is that it's part of the Musical
Speaker 1: Genome project. And what the people behind Pandora have done
Speaker 1: is they have analyzed music. They take a music track,
Speaker 1: they listen to it, they analyze it, and when I
Speaker 1: say analyze, they write down essentially every single kind of
Speaker 1: aspect they can think of that describes that, um, that
Speaker 1: piece of music. It's kind of like tagging a photo, right,
Speaker 1: you know, you're tagging this piece of music, so that
Speaker 1: you're describing it in different ways, like what you know,
Speaker 1: what time is it recorded in, what kind of musical
Speaker 1: instruments are there? Is it a male vocalist, a female vocalist,
Speaker 1: is instrumental? What genre does it fit in? And what
Speaker 1: you would do is go to this service and put
Speaker 1: in a song or a music group that you like,
Speaker 1: and then the service looks for other musicians other songs
Speaker 1: that are similar to what your your your kind of
Speaker 1: your seed, the thing that you've planted to say, Like,
Speaker 1: for instance, I have a I have a I want
Speaker 1: to be Sedated radio station. So it's off of the
Speaker 1: Ramote song I want to be sedated. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of yeah, well I also want to be sedated,
Speaker 1: but there's a So what it does is it looks
Speaker 1: for other songs that are similar to that in some way,
Speaker 1: and it it can it can go pretty far. Like
Speaker 1: you can get some music that comes back that you're like,
Speaker 1: how the heck did this ever get linked to it?
Speaker 1: And it will tell you. So the iPhone application it
Speaker 1: does the same thing and allows you to access this
Speaker 1: great service and you get an internet radio station that
Speaker 1: you can shape. You can tell it if you like
Speaker 1: a song, you can tell if you don't like a song,
Speaker 1: and it won't play that song again. UM, And it
Speaker 1: builds a radio station based on your likes and dislikes,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's pretty darn nifty. I think that's true. UM.
Speaker 1: Speaking of tags, last dot fm, which is a competitor
Speaker 1: of Pandora's UM. They do things a little differently, but
Speaker 1: they also offer their own free Both Pandora and last
Speaker 1: dot Fm are free UM radio apps, and you can
Speaker 1: go buy a tag or buy an artist and listen
Speaker 1: to streaming music online. Um. Another one is a O
Speaker 1: L Radio. Uh. Those are those don't give you as
Speaker 1: much control, but you do have access to a O
Speaker 1: L's radio lists, and it's another free app. It actually,
Speaker 1: even though I've never been a big A L fan,
Speaker 1: a L Radio the little app is actually pretty nice. Um.
Speaker 1: And another pretty cool one is a Stitcher, which is
Speaker 1: also available online. You know, you don't have to have
Speaker 1: an iPod or iPhone to use it. Um. But it's
Speaker 1: sort of a talk radio version of this. It actually
Speaker 1: sort of stitches together streams of different material, Like you
Speaker 1: might get a news feed and you get something from
Speaker 1: Fox News and then CNN and then NPR, and they'll
Speaker 1: be all put together in one stream, and they're different
Speaker 1: genres in there, which is kind of nice feed not
Speaker 1: necessarily interested in the in the musical aspect in it,
Speaker 1: But there are plenty other music programs. I got two
Speaker 1: more that I'd like to talk about kind of figured.
Speaker 1: One is Shazam. This is actually a request I got
Speaker 1: a request from from a fan who wanted to hear
Speaker 1: a little bit about Shazam. So Shazam is this, uh,
Speaker 1: this app that allows you to identify a song just
Speaker 1: by holding your iPhone up to um speakers where the
Speaker 1: song's coming out of it. I'll analyze the song and
Speaker 1: tell you what the title is. So if you've ever been,
Speaker 1: you know, walking by a store, or you're in the
Speaker 1: car and the radios on and there's this great song playing,
Speaker 1: but you have no idea who does it or what
Speaker 1: it's called, this will identify it for you. And it
Speaker 1: even gives you a link so that you can purchase
Speaker 1: the song through iTunes, so that when you get home
Speaker 1: songs waiting for you, you can just sink it right
Speaker 1: up and there you go. You've got it on your
Speaker 1: iPhone now, which is that's pretty cool. And the other
Speaker 1: one is medomi Now Medomie. You don't even need to
Speaker 1: have a stereo system playing the song. It identifies the
Speaker 1: song based upon your humming or singing that song. So
Speaker 1: I thought I would test this out. You can actually
Speaker 1: test it out online, you know, regular computer, as long
Speaker 1: as you have a microphone. Right, as long as you
Speaker 1: have a microphone, you can visit the website Medomi's website
Speaker 1: and test it out. So I did. So here are
Speaker 1: the test results. The first title is what I sang.
Speaker 1: The second title is what it identified. So it started
Speaker 1: out pretty well because the first thing I sang was
Speaker 1: Weird Science by Oingo Boingo, and it came back as
Speaker 1: weird Science. It's like, okay, that's cool. So then I
Speaker 1: tried to Istanbul not Constantinople made popular by They Might
Speaker 1: Be Giants. That also came back positive. It's like two
Speaker 1: for two. But then things went a little south. I
Speaker 1: tried to land down Under. It came back as I
Speaker 1: Want to Hold your Hand, which you know, I like
Speaker 1: that song, but it's not the same one. And then
Speaker 1: I tried rocket Man and that came back is Runaround Sue,
Speaker 1: and then the Kicker I did Don't Fear the Reaper
Speaker 1: by Blue Oyster Cult, and I came back as the
Speaker 1: girl from hippan Ema. Yeah, so not flawless or my
Speaker 1: singing or the application. Not sure. Actually no, I know
Speaker 1: my singing is not flawless, but well you know it,
Speaker 1: uh and maybe because the only song you know is
Speaker 1: the Girl from Eponema, it could be. But Don't Fear
Speaker 1: the Reaper and the girl from Hippanema, Westly. Okay, you
Speaker 1: needed more cowbell? I obviously I had a fever and
Speaker 1: the only prescription UM. Moving on, Yes, I was going
Speaker 1: to talk about social networking, which is a very very
Speaker 1: popular category. Facebook is one of the you know, free
Speaker 1: downloads that's very popular. You could see a list of
Speaker 1: the downloads available for the iPhone on the iTunes store,
Speaker 1: whether or not you have them, just if you're curious
Speaker 1: to see what kinds of stuff, because there are literally
Speaker 1: thousands of these things on here. That's true. Facebook is
Speaker 1: very popular free when they the original version of it,
Speaker 1: I tried with my iPod and I wasn't crazy about it.
Speaker 1: The newer version is uh, it's pretty nice. It gives
Speaker 1: you access to the Facebook applications um. But there are
Speaker 1: other things that uh take advantage of the iPhones unique abilities,
Speaker 1: like looped um, which is again another application that's online
Speaker 1: on your computer, but it uses GPS, so it's a
Speaker 1: combination GPS enabled I guess um social networking service. So
Speaker 1: you could say, well, hey, I'm in downtown, I'm near
Speaker 1: this bar, you know, and your friends might meet you there,
Speaker 1: or somebody might say, you know, hey, are you so
Speaker 1: and so and say no, I'm not. How did you
Speaker 1: find me? How did you know where I am? Exactly? Um.
Speaker 1: But a very unique application for the social networking capabilities
Speaker 1: of the iPhone is something that one of the presidential
Speaker 1: campaigns is doing this year. There is an application called
Speaker 1: Obama for America and whether or not you're a fan
Speaker 1: and we'll vote for him. There someone created an application.
Speaker 1: It allows you to make calls based on the people
Speaker 1: in your address book. It stinks with the iPhone address
Speaker 1: book and you can go ahead and dial people in there,
Speaker 1: so you can make calls for the campaign. If you're
Speaker 1: a supporter, Um, you can find events in your area. Uh,
Speaker 1: latest campaign news, things that speeches that he has made.
Speaker 1: You know, where is he now? That that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And I have the feeling, um, that you're going to
Speaker 1: see more and more candidates taking advantage of this in
Speaker 1: the future, you know, especially considering organizations like Twitter and
Speaker 1: and you know, Pounds and some of the others are
Speaker 1: being used as campaign tools just by the the average person.
Speaker 1: You know, people are posting things and hey, um, you
Speaker 1: know the candidates have their own Twitter accounts, but uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think you might see specialized applications like
Speaker 1: the one that Obama's campaign has come up with this year.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a different way to use these things
Speaker 1: because it is so specifically geared toward, you know, an event. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting that that politics is kind of catching
Speaker 1: onto this whole viral marketing thing that things like the
Speaker 1: movies and and and advertising has been on. They've been
Speaker 1: on to this for a few years and actually like
Speaker 1: a decade now and politics is just now catching up
Speaker 1: and um, and yeah, the iPhone is becoming a tool
Speaker 1: for that kind of thing. And and you were talking
Speaker 1: about social networks, we should also mention there are other
Speaker 1: ones that you can access through the iPhone, including LinkedIn
Speaker 1: or or Twitter. There are many Twitter just like there's
Speaker 1: just like on your desktop, there's there's dozens of Twitter applications. Tumbler. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of Tumbler applications. And of course if
Speaker 1: you have if there's a brand new site that that
Speaker 1: you haven't yet found an application for in the iPhone, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, rest assure that will be one eventually.
Speaker 1: And second of all, it has a version of Safari
Speaker 1: on it, which is Jonathan's favorite web browser. But you
Speaker 1: can you can visit the web and that's a built
Speaker 1: in application too, So um, that's that's pretty cool. You can,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have to wait for the application
Speaker 1: or if you're prefer like I used it the New
Speaker 1: York Times application for a while to check out the news,
Speaker 1: but I actually like the mobile web page that they use,
Speaker 1: so I I got rid of the application and just
Speaker 1: go to the New York Times. I've seen that in
Speaker 1: several reviews actually, where where in there are cases where
Speaker 1: the application really just kind of replicates your experience of
Speaker 1: going to the website, which seems kind of silly when
Speaker 1: you've got the browser built into the device in the
Speaker 1: first place. But we'll probably see less of that as
Speaker 1: time goes on, as people begin to really grasp the
Speaker 1: best way to leverage the iPhone and not just try
Speaker 1: and make a you know, replace something that it can
Speaker 1: already do. Um. And there are some neat apps that
Speaker 1: that turned the iPhone into something other than what it
Speaker 1: already is, you know, beyond just a phone. Um. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got a couple I'd like to talk about. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: there there's you mentioned e books, there is there's applications
Speaker 1: to turn your iPhone essentially into an e book reader
Speaker 1: like books for example. That's an application that lets you
Speaker 1: do that. But there are others as well. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: there's a there's an application called remote which turns your
Speaker 1: iPhone into a remote control for iTunes and for Apple TV.
Speaker 1: So if you have an Apple TV, you can use
Speaker 1: your iPhone to actually control the your Apple Apple TV remotely. Um.
Speaker 1: Then you have things like there's a graphic calculator application
Speaker 1: that lets you plot functions if you uh so choose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're all kinds of educational things like flash cards and
Speaker 1: language you know, language tools holp you learn new languages
Speaker 1: to those are the same sort of category. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: a Mandel brought let's you plot Mandelbrot sets. That's a
Speaker 1: little Jonathan Coulton shout out there for any Joco fans.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know you can actually get that that
Speaker 1: application and see what Joco was singing about. It's it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Actually, Um, there are tons of these. Uh,
Speaker 1: did you have any other useful ones you wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about before you jump into the silly ones? Actually, yes,
Speaker 1: there I have a couple. Um. One of those is
Speaker 1: uh sort of a favorite of mine. Um, been a
Speaker 1: fan since the max switch to S ten of the Omnigroup.
Speaker 1: They used to make applications for the next operating system
Speaker 1: and migrated and one that they have UM for the
Speaker 1: iPhone is called omni Focus. It's actually for the Mac too,
Speaker 1: but UM, the omni Focus is a productivity application. UM.
Speaker 1: But it is you know, it helps you organize yourself
Speaker 1: and keep yourself straightened out, which I need a lot
Speaker 1: of help with. UM. Yeah, UM, you know, just because
Speaker 1: I was gonna not come to the podcast session today,
Speaker 1: you know, he's just anyway. UM, But omni Focus is
Speaker 1: a really really cool one. UM. There are lots and
Speaker 1: lots more of them out there. I just happened to
Speaker 1: be an omni fan. UM and this other one, and
Speaker 1: this was probably the first of what I expect will
Speaker 1: be many. UM. When I switched to the iPod Touch,
Speaker 1: I was kind of bummed out because you know, when
Speaker 1: I plugged in my old style hard disk iPod, I
Speaker 1: was able to use it as a hard drive. So
Speaker 1: if I had, um, I'm in grad school right now,
Speaker 1: if I had a paper that I needed to be
Speaker 1: working on and I wanted to take a look at
Speaker 1: it at lunchtime, UM, at work, I could, you know,
Speaker 1: plug my my iPod into the computer and take a
Speaker 1: look at it. Well, you know with this one, I couldn't.
Speaker 1: And I was going, why did you know? How come
Speaker 1: Apple took that away? Well they did. But there are
Speaker 1: other applications that are bridging the gap. And Avatron makes
Speaker 1: one called air Sharing UM and you can use it
Speaker 1: use air sharing to upload and download files wirelessly, uh
Speaker 1: to your iPod or iPhone. And it's really useful because
Speaker 1: you can, you know, for example, uh, some I've got
Speaker 1: some free e books that I downloaded, and you can
Speaker 1: you know, move them over and look at the PDFs
Speaker 1: without having to get the third party application. And so
Speaker 1: I can you know, transfer papers or articles or ideas
Speaker 1: for podcasts or stuff like that and use that on
Speaker 1: my iPod in that way. And it's wireless, which is
Speaker 1: also very cool. Cool. Yeah, And there are other productivity
Speaker 1: software things we can touch their their tons and tons
Speaker 1: of ASO has an application on their yah, every note
Speaker 1: has an application. I'm using every note right now though
Speaker 1: I'm using it on my laptop, not on an iPhone,
Speaker 1: but I I should. Uh, I just want to throw
Speaker 1: this out. We're going to talk about some silly stuff
Speaker 1: but just as a bridge if you wish. Um. And
Speaker 1: I'm not really going to get into a whole lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, but games. One of the cool things about
Speaker 1: the games in general on the iPhone and iPod is
Speaker 1: the fact that they take advantage of the accelerometer, which
Speaker 1: is uh, the thing that allows the iPhone to switch
Speaker 1: views from barzon landscape to portrait or you know, the
Speaker 1: the we remote to sense what you're doing and use
Speaker 1: your remote as a putter or a lightsaber or whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: so you can. They have a lot of driving games
Speaker 1: like pole Position or chromag Rally another long time Mac
Speaker 1: favorite um and you basically steer your car by tilting
Speaker 1: the iPod or iPhone. Very cool stuff, just the fact
Speaker 1: that they've taken advantage of that stuff. And there are
Speaker 1: big name games on here to like a Star Wars,
Speaker 1: The Force Unleashed, um, Spore the sport Origins I think
Speaker 1: it is, which is the basic sort of a paired
Speaker 1: down version of Spore. And you're going, you know, these
Speaker 1: are not simple Tetris clones. No, it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: turned the iPhone into a legitimate portable gaming stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really is. It's it's a little stunning actually I
Speaker 1: wasn't expecting that when I when it. Anyway, so can
Speaker 1: we get into the Google Yay? Okay, so my first
Speaker 1: my first entry into the goofy is the virtual Zippo application,
Speaker 1: and it's here's the sad thing. It's not even the
Speaker 1: most highly ranked virtual lighter application on iTunes. There are
Speaker 1: other higher ranked virtual lighters. And all it does is
Speaker 1: display an image of a lighter which you can then
Speaker 1: flick open and light. And it's just it's just a
Speaker 1: picture of a lighter. I mean, it's for those people
Speaker 1: who want to go to a concert, but at the
Speaker 1: concert then you has a really strict fire code, I guess.
Speaker 1: So when the free bird comes up, you can just
Speaker 1: light up your iPhone and hold it up in the
Speaker 1: air and just be a huge dork. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to go that route, we can talk
Speaker 1: about I beer, which is which is two? Is the
Speaker 1: virtual lighter application free or does it actually cost something?
Speaker 1: Because ibeer is um beer and that's true actually, but
Speaker 1: not nearly is satisfying, although I guess it depends on
Speaker 1: what kind of beer it is. Um I beer is
Speaker 1: basically shows you a beer on your iPod. And this
Speaker 1: is another application that takes advantage of the accelerometer because
Speaker 1: as you tilt it, you know, to quote unquote drink it, um,
Speaker 1: it goes away and it tilts, and you know the
Speaker 1: liquid tilt. There's also I milk. By the way, there's
Speaker 1: I milk. So that sounds like a condition if you're right,
Speaker 1: If I don't, I don't recommend googling that. But but no, no, wait, um,
Speaker 1: the the developers of I beer Um, which is I
Speaker 1: think hot tricks, actually have a twelve point five million
Speaker 1: dollar lawsuit pending against Cores who came out with a
Speaker 1: version called I Pint Wow and uh they sued him
Speaker 1: and they removed the application from the store. So okay,
Speaker 1: well I got another one for okay, Hello Cal, Hello Cal.
Speaker 1: It's a picture of a cow and when you touch it,
Speaker 1: it says move. I'm gonna have to download that. Congratulations. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they'll give you hours of entertainment. Not many
Speaker 1: people know that polette has the same sort of entertainment
Speaker 1: threshold as your average two year old. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: since I have had a two year old, would like
Speaker 1: to say that my two year old has a more
Speaker 1: sophisticated said. Now she's five and has a much more sophisticated. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that that goes back to a free Verse,
Speaker 1: who makes some of my favorite Mac games. And I
Speaker 1: have purchased Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab for the iPhone or
Speaker 1: iPod um and they have sim Stapler and Jared Stapler
Speaker 1: go ahead, go ahead, and Stapler is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite Mac applications ever. Actually both of them are. Sim
Speaker 1: Stapler is a picture of a stapler and if you
Speaker 1: touch it at Staples and it keeps a count's just
Speaker 1: calling Milton's and Jared Butcher of song he sings this.
Speaker 1: I can't remember now, it's been so long, Argentina. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's something like that. I've seen this one. I didn't
Speaker 1: write it, and it you know it, only you have
Speaker 1: to hear it to believe it. Okay, Well, how about
Speaker 1: the game Hold On? You heard this one't? Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: So here's the game. There's a button on the that
Speaker 1: appears on your your screen and it says hold. And
Speaker 1: the way you play is you put your thumb on
Speaker 1: it and you hold the button. And the way you
Speaker 1: win is that you hold it for longer than you
Speaker 1: held it previously. It just tracks how long you hold
Speaker 1: the button down. So you know, like going for three days.
Speaker 1: That's that's the extent of that game. You heard it here, folks. Uh.
Speaker 1: Also cow toss cows. Yeah, as another there's there's like
Speaker 1: a fascination with cows on the iPhone, but it's a
Speaker 1: picture of a cow. We have the cows, the virtual lighter,
Speaker 1: and the beer. This is going in a very Yeah.
Speaker 1: When they get to cow tipping, then they'll be speaking
Speaker 1: my language. But no cow toss you do you There's
Speaker 1: a little picture of a cow on there, and you
Speaker 1: can drag the cow down and when you let go,
Speaker 1: it flings the cow into the air. The end. Um.
Speaker 1: You know most of the applications for the iPhone or
Speaker 1: do you have some? I have one more? Okay, this one,
Speaker 1: this one just drives me nuts. Okay. Psychic move. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what psychic move does is that has a picture
Speaker 1: of a being on it and you are supposed to
Speaker 1: put your iPhone or iPod down on on a table,
Speaker 1: stare at the coin and try to make it move
Speaker 1: using your psychic powers. And then, um, I haven't actually
Speaker 1: used this, so I don't know if the coin ever moves.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think a clever thing to do is
Speaker 1: to program it in so that at random intervals it
Speaker 1: does move, thus convincing you that you do indeed have
Speaker 1: psychic powers. It says that one of the claims on
Speaker 1: the application is that it will improve your psychic ability
Speaker 1: to the point where you can improve your gas mileage
Speaker 1: car out of your iPhone, but of your car. All right, yeah,
Speaker 1: just let's throw that one in there. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: but we'll wrap this up without how what we talk
Speaker 1: about a little bit about some of the applications that
Speaker 1: did not make it into the app store or made
Speaker 1: it in, and then we're subsequently kicked out. Well, I
Speaker 1: was gonna segue into that by pointing out that most
Speaker 1: applications on for the on the app Store are either
Speaker 1: free or they cost very little. Um. A lot of
Speaker 1: them are some of them, uh, A couple of them
Speaker 1: omni focuses one. Uh, there are a couple others. Dictionaries
Speaker 1: or those are you think you might think, well that's
Speaker 1: kind of pricey. Well, there are others that are, you know,
Speaker 1: simply testing out the limits of what they can they
Speaker 1: can do. And this one was actually pulled. It was
Speaker 1: called I Am Rich. Oh yes, it cost nine dollars.
Speaker 1: It was iPhone bling. Yes, it was. It didn't really
Speaker 1: do anything, showed a picture of a jewel on your screen,
Speaker 1: which supposedly would be an advertisement to everyone around you
Speaker 1: that you were both rich and gullible. Yes, apparently, And
Speaker 1: I think a couple of people bought it. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was at least one case where someone bought it and
Speaker 1: then recanted, saying that I'm not sure if it was
Speaker 1: a he or she. I want to say he, uh,
Speaker 1: I thought I didn't realize thought it was all a
Speaker 1: joke and didn't realize it was for real until he
Speaker 1: or she was a charge. And um, I think that
Speaker 1: was pretty much the beginning of the end for that app. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think Apple said, you know what, I can
Speaker 1: foresee a lot more of these sort of cases popping
Speaker 1: up where people are morbidly curious and then regret it instantaneously.
Speaker 1: Talk about buyer's remorse. Yeah, no kidding, Um, but they are.
Speaker 1: Most of the there's actually a website. It was very elegant.
Speaker 1: Most there's actually a website called the iPhone Application Graveyard,
Speaker 1: which is very interesting because I had been aware that
Speaker 1: there were a couple apps that that Apple had pulled
Speaker 1: from the store. Um. Most of them were things like Tris,
Speaker 1: which is a Tetris clone. Uh, and Tetris was copyright
Speaker 1: violation Tetris. The makers of Tetris, you know, asked him
Speaker 1: to remove it, which he did, um uh. But there
Speaker 1: are others, um. The big one was Podcaster Podcaster and
Speaker 1: Maile Wrangler, both of which were basically doing they they
Speaker 1: apples had they interfered with the functionality or you know,
Speaker 1: when they were deplicate of existing applications. And the Podcaster one,
Speaker 1: the interesting thing here was that it actually did something
Speaker 1: that the iPhone can't really do on its own. It
Speaker 1: not only lets you listen to podcasts, it lets you
Speaker 1: download them directly over the WiFi network onto your iPhone,
Speaker 1: which is something that that Apple it doesn't duplicate a
Speaker 1: function because Apple doesn't let you do that. True, well,
Speaker 1: I mean you can't you can't buy music or applications
Speaker 1: direct and have them, you know, downloaded directly, but not podcasts, right.
Speaker 1: So this was this was one of those issues where
Speaker 1: I mean, it's still there's still a lot of people
Speaker 1: on the blog is sphere talking about this because it's
Speaker 1: it's one of those that's showing that there may be
Speaker 1: some trouble in paradise. But other other applications were pulled
Speaker 1: for what what appeared to be more obvious reasons. One
Speaker 1: of them was called slasher. It basically had a hand
Speaker 1: holding a knife, and when you use the accelerometer and
Speaker 1: make the slashing motion, it screamed yeah uh is. Also
Speaker 1: there was also a pull my finger, oh yes, which
Speaker 1: is you know, well, yes, it would make it flatulent
Speaker 1: sound if you were to pull the virtual finger and
Speaker 1: it was pulled a rejected. Rather, it wasn't pulled, It
Speaker 1: didn't make it into make it. It was rejected because
Speaker 1: Apple said it had limited utility. I guess it just
Speaker 1: didn't have that massive amount of utility that virtual Zippo has.
Speaker 1: That's that I'm just saying. Actually, if you go to
Speaker 1: the developer's website, not that I have, you can find
Speaker 1: the there. There are several different fart noises that they
Speaker 1: were using in the the app, so basically when you
Speaker 1: touched the finger, they would make a different Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that's expanded utility. Yeah, well you know, well you
Speaker 1: got that and you got hello cow. Yeah. Yeah. Consistency
Speaker 1: is all we ask there. Then there's the the extra
Speaker 1: expanded utility of the jailbroken iPhone um stuff like there's
Speaker 1: actually a MAIME emulator multi Arcade Machine emulator for iPhone
Speaker 1: for jailbroken iPhones. I'm pretty sure Apple would probably consider
Speaker 1: that a copyright issue and would probably never let it
Speaker 1: on the store. And there's a there's a whole host
Speaker 1: of problems that come once you jail break your phone.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's some good things that you can do
Speaker 1: with it, but it makes things like updates much more difficult,
Speaker 1: especially if you don't want your phone bricked. Um And,
Speaker 1: and there's also that the wonderful story about how Apple
Speaker 1: has a kill switch feature where theoretically what they might
Speaker 1: be able to do is uh to put an app
Speaker 1: on a list that says, uh, this app is malware
Speaker 1: and needs to be eradicated, and then through an update
Speaker 1: they can tell all the different iPods and iPhones connected
Speaker 1: to their system delete this application. And even if it
Speaker 1: was something that you had to pay for, it could
Speaker 1: go by by now. Whether or not they'll use it
Speaker 1: as another matter, but that's got some people kind of
Speaker 1: worried about what the future of the app app store
Speaker 1: and apps in general on the iPhone. It's really gonna
Speaker 1: be Yeah, yeah, that's true. Um One, last one I
Speaker 1: was going to mention is uh something called net share
Speaker 1: by Nell river Um. It was pulled from the app
Speaker 1: store because it violated a T and T S terms
Speaker 1: of service. Allowed you to turn your iPhone into a hermodum,
Speaker 1: essentially so you can plug it in I guess, and
Speaker 1: use it as a modem for the computer and not
Speaker 1: so much with the okay, right, well, we talked the
Speaker 1: heck out of this time. Oh my goodness, I think
Speaker 1: that we might have broken a record on this one.
Speaker 1: And the sad thing is there are thousands that we
Speaker 1: didn't even mention. Right. Well, well we'll have to We'll
Speaker 1: have to save that for another podcast or six. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't wait till we get into the Android ones.
Speaker 1: I hope we'd like to read more about the iPhone.
Speaker 1: We have How the iPhone Works, which is live right
Speaker 1: now on how stuff works dot com. That's right, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk to you again soon, good bye. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Let us know what you think. Send
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