When Apple releases an update, those participating in the hacking festivities have to decide whether or not to upgrade. With the iPhone 1.1.1 update, we got a slew of new features including home button double-click, the double space shortcut, additional SMS notification tones, and the iTunes Wifi Music Store to name a few. This makes it harder for hackers to lag in their upgrading.

So, now, it’s up to the hackers. They’ll get back to work on breaking into the iPhone and iPod Touch. That goes without saying. And as the dance continues, Apple will need to continue to push out new features and provide other compelling reasons for users to upgrade their device software.

So, the reason hacking matters is because it’s good for users. And not just for the intrepid users who are making use of the hacks. Hacking puts pressure on Apple to provide compelling reasons, i.e. new features, for users to upgrade, and that is good for all users.

[I]t does look like a true, calls-over-WiFi VoIP client for the iPhone could be just around the corner.

In my opinion, this is precisely why Apple is so aggressively guarding the iPod Touch from hackers.

The quality of VoIP and the ubiquity of WiFi in many areas makes this a clear choice. It’s not just about the price difference between the iPhone and iPod Touch (which is likely only a minor consideration if you’re considering one or the other). I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t jettison an AT&T relationship (and its associated bill, of course) for a free or dirt cheap VoIP option.

This may relate to VoIP explicitly, but I see it more as a general rule of protecting their interests. In the wake of yesterday’s flurry of applause for Amazon’s new MP3 sales service, I can precisely see where Apple wouldn’t want a native version of Amazon’s Downloader for iPhone or iPod Touch as that would put at risk their most long-awaited feature for any iPod as well as the cash cow that is the home base iTunes Store.

In this respect, I see a certain degree of paranoia coming out of Apple. Maybe it’s a result of dealing with music and movie publishers. (I would also add mobile phone companies to that list.) Whatever the reason is, it’s unbecoming of Apple.

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

MobileiChat

This is the one that seems to make everyone’s list. My main reason for wanting this is that I want my chat transcripts to sync back to my Mac. This can’t be done easily with Meebo or any of the other chat apps to my knowledge. I don’t think I would use this that often, but when I do, I’d like it to sync my transcripts back.

iScrobbler

This is the one place where I don’t really care about the mechanism. What I want is iPhone to post the listening I do from iPhone to my Last.FM account. The standalone app on Mac OS X is iScrobbler. On my MacBook, however, CoverSutra handles my Last.FM postings. I don’t care how it gets done, but this needs to happen. And in the background, please people.

Shopping

Earlier today, David Chartier posted his desire for a shopping app for iPhone. I, too, would like to see a shopping app, and I would like to see a feature that would make it a native app exclusively: barcode scanning. Delicious Library brought barcode scanning to the Mac via iSight. It would be steak sauce to scan the barcode with the iPhone camera for even faster searches.

Jumsoft Money (or similar)

This is the one app that would actually make my life better. The others are nice, but this one is where life starts to actually improve. Some sort of way to manage financial transactions while on the go would be choice. Jumsoft Money is my app of choice for this on my MacBook, so I’d like to see a mobile version of it so that my data would sync back to home base.

Skitch

This is one that can’t be passed up. I love Skitch. The UI is very intuitive, so much so that you might actually miss some of the features like how easy it is to crop a picture. But Skitch is essentially fingerpainting. A few small buttons or a popup list for switching tools, a size selector like the desktop version, and two buttons for save and clear is all that would be needed for hours of fun. Then, the user could publish their creations to .Mac Web Gallery or Flickr.

Those are the apps that I have found myself wanting over the past two plus months of life with iPhone. Where have I missed it? Let me know in comments.

There is a new sort column for purchased tracks that can be converted to ringtone. Of course, this won’t show for songs not purchased from iTS, so if you have much non-iTS music in your library, sort on this new column in your Purchased playlist to get an accurate picture.

There are of course other solutions for making ringtones, but unless you bought it from the iTS and it’s ringtone capable, no editing in iTunes. ¹

When you click on the bell icon next to a song that is ringtone enabled, you will be presented with a panel below the song listing, i.e. where the Mini Store shows up if you haven’t disbaled it, similar to this:

There is a lot of powerful stuff going on here. The top pane is the audio of your track. The blue selection is what would become your ringtone. Also in the selection are simple checkboxes for fading the ringtone in and out. The pane below the audio contains the track information to the left, a control for the time delay when looping (In my brief tests, 0.5 second gap is great.), a preview button, and then a button to cancel or buy the ringtone. Everything you need.

Editing your ringtone is as easy as dragging the blue pane around. Seriously, that’s it. Move the starting point by clicking anywhere inside the blue selection area and dragging to your desired position. Change the length of the ringtone by clicking and dragging the edge of the blue pane or using the resize handle on the bottom right of the selection area. Preview and adjust as necessary. Once you are satisfied with the result, click Buy to purchase the modified audio as a ringtone.

Here’s the rub: You are purchasing your modified audio and not a “ringtone right” to the song. If you create another ringtone from another section of the same song, you’re going to have to pony up another buck (You see what I did there?) for the new ringtone. So, Apple (and the record companies) are potentially receiving $.99 for the same song many times over. Not a bad racket if you can keep it to yourself. But as for me and my house, we will make our own.

I almost stopped reading Mike’s post. I enjoy his writing, but the length was off-putting. I stuck with it though, and this, the very last nine words of the post was the reward. Truth. Profound truth.

(Via motherfucker.)

Well, not so fast my friend. As this Macworld article notes, there is a bit of a glitch in getting this working. Read about the glitch at Macworld. Their workaround is a bit kludgy, but it certainly works.

But there has to be a better way, right? I’m glad you asked. In iPhoto ‘08, make a web gallery from an event. When the configuration options pop up, be sure to select “Allow photo uploading by email” and “Allow visitors to upload photos.” (Don’t worry, you can disable this later if you want.) Click “Publish” and let it do its thing. Now, on your iPhone, select a photo to upload. Bring up controls if they aren’t visible already and tap the Share button on the lower left. Select “Send to Web Gallery.” Now you should see your Web Gallery listed. Select it and then craft your posting email in the resulting window.

At this point, it is safe to disable visitor uploads in the Web Gallery properties in iPhoto. Subsequent Web Galleries created in iPhoto do not need to go through this process; you may create them without visitor uploading enabled. Now, your Web Galleries should be good to go on your iPhone. Comments welcome.

UPDATE: It looks like my suspicion about the cause of the problem is correct. Poor iTunes just got confused…

I keep my iTunes library on an Airport Disk, which works great but is most definitely the source of my problems here. Anyone who keeps his or her iTunes library on an external disk knows that if you don’t have that disk available, iTunes can’t sync it with a connected iPod. No brainer, right?

Well, with a regular iPod, this just means that nothing gets pushed out to iPod that isn’t available on the local disk. With iPhone, it ends up being a little more sinister.

Here’s the sequence of events, and it is entirely replicable.

1. I synched my iPhone in the beginning with a couple of playlists on iTunes.
2. I made changes to those playlists in iTunes and created a couple more for iPhone.
3. I synched iPhone with iTunes after making these changes. Changes indeed push out to iPhone.
4. Connect iPhone to Macbook while away from home network.
5. iPhone syncs playlists from step one back into iTunes! This also obliterates the playlists I created in step two, and the music available on iPhone reverts to the stuff that was available in step one.

This is a critical bug that has bitten me more than once now. If you are experiencing this issue on your setup, please leave a comment here or trackback from your own site.