weekinreview

As you may already know, our Week In Review was on a brief one week hiatus, but don’t worry because it is back and better than ever.  Well, at the very least it is back!

iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5

sdk

iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5 was released out of nowhere, considering that Apple usually was releasing beta versions exactly every two weeks.  At this point, no one really knows why Apple chose to release beta 5 early, but what we can tell you is that Apple has decided to test all submitted applications to the App Store on iPhone OS 3.0, and they will continue to do so.  Unlike past beta releases, beta 5 seemed fairly uneventful, except for the removal of the ability to tether and send MMS messages.  The last noteworthy item from iPhone OS 3.0 is that it supposedly is able to enhance photos without any hardware changes.

That’s what you get with BOGO

iphone-blackberry

The big news this week was that RIM’s BlackBerry Curve was able to steal the top spot from the iPhone on the U.S. smartphone sales chart, but considering Verizon was offering BlackBerry phones as buy one, get one, it was really no contest.  It’s hard to say when the iPhone will reclaim its rightful place on top of the sales charts, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt sales if the rumor that the next-gen iPhone will contain a magnetometer ends up being true.

It’s alright Trent, we understand

rejected

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor went on a bit of a tirade this week when an update to his popular free application, nin: access, was rejected by Apple because of objectionable content.  His very public display of anger must have done the trick, however, because not only was the application approved by Apple only days later, but it was approved unchanged.  It just drives home what we already knew: Apple’s approval process is busted, and rock stars really do get special treatment.

Bringing out the big guns

nfsu_screen

EA dropped a whole bunch of big titles at the App Store like Need for Speed, American Idol, Star Trek, and even an odd The Sims 3 adver-game titled SimSampler.  Gameloft also released one of their highly anticipated titles, Terminator Salvation, while Dark Horse Comics created their very first series of applications based on the Terminator universe as well.  But that’s not all of the film-based content that were released this week, because Paramount together with Freeverse released Top Gun for the iPhone.

GPS and Sirius XM Radio rumors

sirius

TomTom is now rumored to be increasing its efforts on bringing a turn-by-turn GPS application to the App Store.  A vague job listing indicates that a company from Amsterdam is in need of an iPhone developer to help work on a navigation application.  Hmm, I wonder what that could be?  Sirius XM Radio is also rumored to have an application in the works, but instead of being months off, it is supposedly only weeks away.  We will believe it when we see it.

Other noteworthy releases

lyrics

The classic game Myst was released at the App Store, coming in at a whopping 727MB.  Twitterrific 2.0 was finally released, bringing Iconfactory’s much-loved Twitter application back into contention.  ngmoco released a brand new gameplay trailer for Roland 2, showcasing the snazzy new 2.5D graphics the title will be sporting when it is released this summer.  Finally, Lyrics was released to the App Store, which is an application that is able to find song lyrics for over 700,000 songs.  The application also contains a nifty Easter-egg that allows you to turn off that ridiculous profanity filter.

The rest of the news:

Columns:

Reviews: