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Consumer Reports retracts iPhone 4 commendation

Tuesday, 13 July 2010

Consumer Reports pulls its iPhone 4 recommendation: Consumer Reports in the US says the iPhone 4 has a design flaw with the antenna that adversly affects reception, and cannot recommend buying the iPhone.
The leading consumer magazine says the “death grip” reception problems are not software related, as Apple earlier claimed, and cannot be fixed with an update.

Four new iPhone apps highlight FaceTime: In each ad, two people use FaceTime to discuss incredibly important news.

PayPal app: If you have a PayPal account, you can perform all the core functions via a $6.49 app: sending and requesting money, transferring funds and checking your balance. About the only functions missing are those that relate to account settings.
And there’s also the cool bump-to-pay function that PayPal introduced a few months ago that transfers funds between two iPhones bumped together, similar to the way Bump transfers contact info between two iPhones. Cult of Mac likes it.

Star Trek communicator app: The newly reimagined Star Trek Original Series Communicator ($4.19) for iPhone is packed full of the kind of classic stuff Star Trek fans drool over. In addition to a hidden, functional dialing pad that accesses the iPhone’s address book to make calls, the app includes several sound bites featuring Captain Kirk, one says; “Two to beam up, Scotty.”
Looks good too, going by the screenshots (pic).
(I use the Star Trek COmmunicator sound as my phone ringtone, but I did that without this app. It's great for cutting through environmental noise.)

BMW and iOS for in-car systems: If you are picking up a BMW in 2011, you'll notice a new level of iPhone and iPod integration – see this video. BMW's iDrive interface is like using Windows, apparently, although commenters say it's better than Mercedes Benz's.
Myself, I have an old Toyota with a 'finger-and-thumb' interface.

Google takes on App development: Google has made a move to democratise app development, introducing new software anyone can use to build something they might want to call an App. App Inventor For Android is a new Google Labs program for Windows, OS X, and Linux that lets users build their own apps really easily, as detailed in the video above. 
It's available only as a closed beta at present.
Android Market is about to hit a milestone symbolic of Google closing the gap with Apple, raw stats indicate. At the current rate, the Android store should reach 100,000 total apps before the end of July, and as of now is already over 90,000. The rate of growth is now high enough that AndroLib estimates over 15,000 apps were added in June alone, says Electronista.