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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Hardware, Software, Features, Internet, Apple, TUAW Interview, Developer, iPhone, SDK

TUAW interviews OpenFeint's Peter Relan, Net Jacobsson, and Jason Citron

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Jun 25th, 2009

Danielle Cassley and Jason Citron are the folks with their names on Aurora Feint, but as Danielle told us in an interview a while ago, Peter Relan is the real mastermind behind the growing Feint empire. Not only did he put the two together in an idea lab, but he's one of the driving forces behind the OpenFeint enterprise. Under his oversight, the Feint folks have swelled to become one of the major forces behind iPhone gaming (and thus, behind the iPhone's app ecosystem itself).

Netanel "Net" Jacobsson is a newer addition -- he's previously worked with Sony Ericsson on their mobile devices and Facebook on their own growing app empire, and now he's arrived at OpenFeint to help them use the lessons he's learned at the biggest online social networks around on their social software. Get the sense of how big this is yet? Relan, Jacobsen, and Citron all have pretty big ideas about where iPhone gaming is going, and as 3.0 comes down the pike and introduces a whole set of new features from Apple, they're in the best seat they can be in to do exactly what they want to do.

TUAW sat down with the three last week, and chatted about iPhone 3.0 and why it's such a big deal for developers, how they're going to approach microtransactions (carefully), and what's coming next for OpenFeint now that they've rounded up a whole stable full of developers implementing their backbone. Click "read more" to continue.

Continue reading “TUAW interviews OpenFeint's Peter Relan, Net Jacobsson, and Jason Citron”

Tags: aurora-feint, engaged, engagement, facebook, future, gaming, in-app-purchase, interview, iphone, iphone-3.0, jason-citron, mafia-wars, mechanic, microtransactions, net-jacobsen, openfeint, peter-relan, pocket-god, push-notification, social, social-networking, software, tuaw

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Apple, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

Rumor: Apple working towards putting background processes on the iPhone

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on May 18th, 2009

Apple's push notifications sure are neat, but they aren't the brass ring for developers on the iPhone. That, so far, would be background processes. And while Apple has said that background processes would just be too much of a drain on the iPhone's battery, that doesn't mean they don't want them, too.

Ars Technica reports that Apple is still trying to figure out a way for certain apps to do it. There's two options laid out here: one is user-based, in which the user actually approves certain apps to run in the background, with the consequence (if you do choose to enable that) of lower battery lifetime. The second has Apple approving apps for background action, allowing certain developers to run based on limits of "resource usage such as RAM or network bandwidth."

Obviously, there are pros and cons to each plan -- giving the power to the user means they will be able to choose when the battery is drained (on a particularly busy day, for instance, or when the iPhone is plugged in), but it also means that users will have the ability to crash their own phones (allowing too many background processes could cause issues). And of course, while leaving the choice in Apple's hands will make sure background processing is only used in the "right circumstances," we all know how great Apple is at app approval.

Ars concludes on the same point that I would: if background processes are really going to make a difference, they'll likely rely on a future iteration of the iPhone, as the one we've got now is just not built to run apps all the time, no matter who chooses them. Even if Apple is working out a way to run certain apps in the background, they are almost certainly spending more time beefing up the iPhone hardware as well.

Tags: apple, ars-technica, battery, battery-life, iphone, network-bandwidth, push-notification, ram

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Software, Apple, iPhone, SDK, iPod touch

In search of Push

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Feb 3rd, 2009

Wherefore art thou, Push? Macworld has gone in search of the much-awaited iPhone feature that would let applications get their own notifications even while not necessarily active (so apps like Twitterific could have a little red number on them showing the number of unread tweets, and so on). But the Push system was "pulled" (still makes me laugh) from the 2.1 firmware during the beta phase, and as you probably know by now, it's still not on your iPhone.

Unfortunately, there's no official news on the subject (Apple hasn't canceled the service completely, as far as we know, but would they really tell anybody if they did), but Macworld has a few ideas: it could be that Apple has abandoned the system, thinking that it didn't really help as much as they thought it would, or Apple is still working on it, or Apple is working on something even better. Which one of those you decide is true probably depends on what you think about Apple in general, so we'll let you make your own guesses on that.

But we will say this: we're near the end of the known roadmap for the iPhone, and people are already talking about a new version of the hardware. If we don't see an update on Push in the next refresh, it's probably likely that the only thing the notification system will be pushing is daises.

Continue reading “In search of Push”

Tags: apple, beta, development, firmware, macworld, push, push-notification, pushing-daises, roadmap, system

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Software, Apple, iPhone

Push pulled from latest iPhone firmware beta

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Aug 19th, 2008

AppleInsider says that Apple has yanked the Push notification framework from the latest version of the iPhone 2.1 firmware beta. Push got a lot of play during WWDC -- it's a service that will send information to the apps on your iPhone as needed (tweets, for example, will just come rather than having to refresh Twitterific all the time), but apparently Apple doesn't think it's ready for the stage yet. They've wiped it from the beta, claiming it needs "further development," and haven't given any indication of when it might return.

Here's hoping it gets back in there before the expected release sometime in September, but then again, it's not like Apple should be taking any new chances with features right now. From Mobile Meh to iPhone activation problems, Apple's got to make sure that any more widescale releases go as swimmingly as they possibly can.

[Via Engadget]

Tags: 2.1-firmware, beta, iphone, iphone-apps, push-notification, twitterific, wwdc

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