NBC may not need no steenkin’ iTunes, but that doesn’t mean they’re prepared to ignore the legion of iPhone/iPod touch users out there. Hence, they’ve decided to make two of their most popular shows, The Office and 30 Rock, available to those on Apple’s mobile platform. In order to watch the free episodes, you just need to go to NBC’s site on your device, hit Video, and then Full Episodes.
All NBC has really done here is format their shows as iPhone-compatible QuickTime files. However, since they’re using the 3GPP codec to make the shows load faster (and they still, over Wi-Fi, do not load very fast), the quality is not very high. Also, this is downloading, not streaming, so while you can play the video before the entire file is downloaded, if you want to pause in the middle and go do something else, you’ll have to start the whole process over again. Also, the episodes are divided up into smaller segments, meaning you’ll need to load up multiple files. All of which makes it impractical to use this as a solution for downloading files to watch while offline. On the flipside, well, you get what you pay for.
Should you wish, you can access the files from your Mac via the same User Agent spoofing trick we discussed on MacUser for getting onto AT&T’s Wi-Fi hot spots, but you’ll need to poke around a bit to find the file name for the videos. though, given how poor the resolution is, you’re way better off just streaming them for free from NBC’s site or from Hulu.
And here I was complaining that I couldn't watch TV on my iPhone. Seems my pleas have been heard: the BBC has announced plans to bring support for its iPlayer service, which streams free episodes of BBC television shows, to the iPod touch and iPhone. You know what this'll mean? I can watch free episodes of Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Ashes to Ashes (Keeley Hawes, swoon) wherever I am.
Or, well, I could if I lived in the UK, since the service is only available to residents. Blast! BBC Worldwide is apparently working on an international version of the player (woo hoo), but there's no timeframe on when that'll be available.
iPlayer is currently using Flash for its video content, but if it's going to be supported on the iPhone/iPod touch, that seems to indicate some form of QuickTime—probably using the same H.264 codec that the YouTube app uses. Of course, with the iPhone SDK supposed to drop in the next week or so, we can all freely speculate about whether the iPlayer service will be a native app or not (cue dramatic music).
Imagine you're out buying an Audi A4. Such is the premise of one of Apple's two new iPhone commercials, available on their website as of this morning. One, Cars, focuses again on the iPhone's capability for bringing the entire Internet to your iPhone so you make sure you always get the best deal. Admittedly, it does a nice job of showing off the iPhone's web-browsing interface, including the interface for using drop-down menus, but really, this is ground we've trod before.
The second ad, Facebook, deals with using your phone to surf MySpace. Okay, fine, to surf Facebook. Steve Jobs showed off the Facebook web app last year at WWDC as an example of a great app built with the "SDK" available at the time. Nothing new exactly, but those kids today—they sure love the Facebook.
So, great. Surfing Facebook and car shopping. Two things I personally never, or at best rarely do. Then again, I've already got an iPhone, so I guess I'm hardly the target demographic. Interesting, however, that Apple has apparently shifted back to the "How To" style ads from the personal testimonials we'd seen more recently. Maybe they were tired of taking flack for that pilot ad.
Alan Luckow felt like he'd made too many trips to his local Apple Store to fix an iPhone annoyance. Specifically, the iPhone's handset stopped working and he could use it only when wearing his earbuds or Bluetooth headset.
Rather than make one more trip, he came up with a solution of his own. You can view his entertaining and likely helpful solution here.
Warning: His solution (and the solution he uses) looks safe enough, but Apple's Warranty Department may feel differently. In short: You're on your own.
Remember Bob from the iPhone guided tour (real name: Bob Borchers, senior director of worldwide iPhone product marketing)? Well, if you'd been missing his calm, reasoned delivery explaining all the features of the iPhone, never fear: Bob is back.
Apple's posted a new guided tour video that goes over the features introduced in iPhone software 1.1.1 made available today. The bulk of the video focuses on the marquis addition to the iPhone: the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. The iTunes store is actually pretty straightforward; I already purchased an album with no problem. Bob also gives a quick overview of custom ringtones in iTunes.
Other features covered in the update are the ability reorder cities in Weather and stocks in Stocks, the display of the Apple Bluetooth Headset's battery life in the menubar, double-clicking the home button to bring up favorites or iPod controls, and the ability to double-tap the spacebar to insert a period and a space. I had some trouble with viewing Mail attachments in landscape, but I think that's because it only works if the attachments are not displayed inline, as most images are; I sent myself a message with a PDF, XLS, and DOC attached, and those worked as advertised. I don't have the equipment to confirm how well TV Out works, but I can confirm the existence of Widescreen and TV Signal options in Settings -> General -> iPod, along with a switch for Closed Captioning.
Bob glosses over several other new features, such as the fact that speaker phone and receiver volumes are louder, alert volumes now match your ringer volume, and the ability to turn of EDGE data when traveling internationally (under Settings -> General -> Network; note that this does not seem to deactivate the GSM radio).
According to Bobbo, there are plenty of other new features in the update; the only I noticed that Bob didn't mention was the ability to change the alert sound when you get a new text message—but, for some bizarre reason, only text messages. You can't change the new email, new voicemail, or calendar alert sound. What's up with that, Apple?
Watching video on the iPhone is a joy: the screen is vibrant and crisp. But if there's one major problem with video on the iPhone, it's the lack of storage space. Even an 8GB iPhone can only hold a few movies at a time, especially if you also want to store music and photos.
The folks at Embraceware have pointed out one way that you can work around this problem. If you happen to have a lot of movies stored on your home Mac, you can enable Web Sharing on it and then watch your videos on the iPhone by accessing them via Safari (as long as said movies are in an iPhone-compatible video format). They give you a step-by-step set of instructions for doing just this.
Supposedly this method works pretty smoothly on a local network, but if you want to access those videos from anywhere, you'll have to do a little more tweaking on your network setup (port forwarding and firewalling, for example). Also, you'll probably find pretty quickly that performance isn't as good, especially for long, high-quality video files.
Given this a try? Let us know how it's worked for you.
[via Digg]
On Friday I wrote about syncing iPhone with multiple computers. Reaction was... interesting. Some believed me, others didn't. So I thought a quick video might demonstrate what I'm talking about. And so I made one.
The video shows me syncing my iPhone with three different computers, for different data types. A Power Mac G5 stores my iPhoto library, a Mac mini stores my music and videos, and my MacBook stores my contacts, calendars, bookmarks, and podcasts.
Click on the image above to see it -- on your iPhone OR computer.
For those of you that have an iPhone, watching it get mutilated is painful to watch. For those that don't, it's a riveting entertainment experience. So, to horror some and delight others, the good folks at Blendtec have added a new installment to its "Will it Blend?" series (in which it has someone blend common objects) -- the iPhone.
The video goes pretty much just like you'd expect it to, with the iPhone being ripped to shreds, followed by its battery exploding into black liquid goo, and a dangerous, metallic smoke being emitted from the blender. So, if you're an iPhone-hater (though if you are, I don't know why you're reading this blog), check out the "Will it Blend?" iPhone video (also on Youtube) to lighten up your mood a bit.
[via digg]
Over the weekend, you might have seen Shawn King's video report from the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York. Big crowds, big excitement -- a carnival-like atmosphere with cheering Apple Store employees.
We've got the B-side of that experience today, courtesy of Macworld assistant editor Brian Chen. Last week, Brian was dispatched to an AT&T store in Colma to pick up an iPhone for the office; he also took along his trusty video camera and filed this video report.
The crowd is, shall we say, more subdued than the one outside the Fifth Avenue store. Nevertheless, it's a pretty funny report, especially as the mood evolves from excitement to boredom to regret to relief. We thank Brian for his efforts and hope that he took the time to get a bite to eat at the Honey Baked Ham store right next door to the AT&T outlet.
Of course, if Brian were looking for a livelier crowd, he might have steered clear of Colma. With much of the city limits set aside for cemeteries, the number of people living in Colma are far out-paced by the number of people buried there.
