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Addicting Game Alert: Swipe Jump

Swipe Jump is one of the most addicting games I have ever played. Ironically, it is our first game of our new app company, Jmay Live. Swipe Jump is a simple game to play but beware it is not a coast in the park. The objective of the game is to travel as far as you can without dying. This is harder said then done. You start with 7 trampolines which help you bounce from platform to platform through the levels. Watch out for the Angry Birds that are lurking! Jump on a rocket and you will easily be able to fly through the level.

Try Swipe Jump out and let us know what you think. It is free in the app store!

Download here: SwipeJump.com/iTunes

More apps coming soon! If you have any ideas for an app you would like to see on the app store contact us!

Everyone Loves the New iPad

You might have been a little nervous a few weeks or so ago when Consumer Reports was talking badly of the new iPad, everyone was complaining about heat issues, and it seemed the battery wasn’t charging all the way. However, it would seem all these complaints were just a few big companies like Consumer Reports doing a bit of grumbling. Recent studies show that 98% of early iPad 3 adopters are satisfied with their new purchase.
ChangeWave Research conducted a survey of recent purchasers of the new iPad, and the satisfaction rate has been through the roof – higher, in fact, than any other Apple device before it. 82% of new iPad owners found that they were ‘Very Satisfied’ with the device, while 16% found that they were ‘Somewhat Satisfied”. In fact, the study also found that 89% of consumers said that there was no heat issue – it seems like a big deal was made of almost nothing.
The study also ranked consumer’s favorite features on their new iPad 3. 75% of buyers ranked the new Retina display as their favorite feature, while 20-22% believed that the new LTE speed options were the best. Overall, it seems as though the new iPad, despite it’s awkward name and heat issues, has been a huge success for Apple. Don’t let the surplus of iPad supply and lack of lines mislead you – the iPad 3 has been flying off the shelf, and consumers have been loving it.

4G Marketing Madness

By now, you might have heard a bit about the issues Apple has been having in Australia over the marketing of the iPad 3, and it’s ability to connect to 4G networks. Apple had claimed in Australian advertisements that the new iPad would be able to connect to 4G networks and take advantage of the fast data speeds. However, the mobile carrier in the country is not offering 4G with the iPad 3. Many consumers were agitated that Apple was marketing the iPad 3 as a 4G device, when there was no 4G capability available in Australia.

In response to customer dissatisfaction and some court action, Apple changed their marketing documents to remove all mentions of 4G connectivity. But now, Apple has gone even another step further, offering refunds to customers who feel deceived by their advertising. Seeing the effect in Australia, consumers in many other countries are following the trend – Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have all seen many complaints about false 4G marketing, as 4G is only offered in the US and Canada.

The iPad 3 seems to be getting a bit of a bad rap so far, not only with these complaints of misleading advertising, but also coming under fire with Consumer Reports claiming the iPad gets too warm, and others insisting that the battery doesn’t charge probably. However, these things appear not to be affecting sales so far, and Apple has been very on top of any issues that have arisen – always nice to see their quality customer support.

App Review: Angry Birds Space

Many of you have heard about the latest addition to the Angry Birds line, Angry Birds Space. After Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, and Angry Birds Rio, the series might seem a little worn out to you. The question is – is this latest Angry Birds worth the download, or is it just more of the same old thing?

Angry Birds Space is a lot like the Angry Birds we all know and love, with one killer twist – rather than sitting on the ground, your slingshot rests on a meteor or planet, and must be shot through space to destroy your classic enemies, the pigs. The trick is that now you have to deal with the forces of gravity as well. You generally shoot from one planet through space to destroy pigs in the traditional manner, except that the pigs are on a separate planet. Once your bird enters the planet’s atmosphere, gravity takes effect, sometimes swinging your bird around the planet several times before finally knocking over a structure. It adds a completely new element to Angry Birds that hasn’t been seen before.

Angry Birds also brings back some old birds, while adding some new ones. It has a bird that accelerates when tapped, a bird that splits into three, and a bird that can change direction in mid-air, to name a few. It also brings back the summonable eagles, however this time the eagle will explode into a black hole on command, another new feature. Apart from that, everything remains the same – similar strategy and point system that you know and love from the old Angry Birds.

This game is one that would have had a lot of potential a year ago, before there wasn’t quite so much Angry Birds everywhere – with the movie, stuffed animal spinoffs, and legions of different games in the App Store. However, it’s still a solid game, and one that I could easily recommend to someone. It’s not a must-have, but if you’re looking for a fun game and don’t feel overdosed on Angry Birds yet, it’s definitely worth your time to check it out.

iPads for Everyone

Every time Apple launches a new iDevice, lines are out the door with people dying to get their hands on the new product. Most of the time, if you haven’t pre-ordered the day it was announced, or if you aren’t one of the first people in line, you could be waiting weeks to months to get one of Apple’s newest product for yourself. However, there’s been a change in the way things happened this time. For the first time since the original iPhone, there are plenty of iDevices to go around. I’m talking, of course, about the newest Apple toy, the “new” iPad – known informally as the iPad 3. You could order your iPad today and receive it within one to two weeks, whereas a year ago the line might be a month and a half long to grab the iPad 2. That’s a big shift in availability. But what exactly does it mean?

Well, for those of us who are interested in Apple news and rumors, it can mean only good things. To maintain this trend of adequate supply, Apple will likely need to start the manufacture of iDevices earlier than they have in the past – otherwise we run into the shortages we know and love (hate) from the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4. The benefit of this is more time for details and specs to leak. If Apple starts production of the next iPhone two months earlier than it started production of the iPhone 4S, we have two extra months in which information to leak about the new devices – and who doesn’t like that? This could be the reason we seemed to know so much about the iPad 3 before it launched – it was essentially confirmed that the iPad would have a faster graphics processor, a Retina display, and a similar form factor to that of the iPad 2.

Hopefully this trend of early production and adequate supply continues, providing us with leaks of many iDevices to come.

iPod Nano to sport camera?

In a patent uncovered by PatentlyApple.com late last year has a sketch of the iPod Nano with a cutout exactly where the camera hole is in the spy shots. This shows that Apple has at least explored the idea of a camera in their latest version of the Nano, but did not intend to release the camera model at all.

Do you believe that these spy shots are legitimate?

Apple to unveil iPad 3 on March 7th

The Verge and The Loop broke the news yesterday that Apple sent invites for the iPad 3 keynote and introduction that we have all been waiting for, likely with a lot of anticipation. The press conference is March 7 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco at 1 A.M. PST. The three app icons each hold subtle causes and clues. The Maps shows the Infinite Loop, which is the location of Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino. The calendar displays the date of the keynote, Wednesday March 7, and the what is conveyed through the Keynote app icon.

This news officially exposed CNBC’s report calling for a March unveiling in New York City as grossly inaccurate. True to Apple’s form, the invite teases with an iPad close-up shot featuring a finger touching upon the Calendar icon. The tagline reads:

We have something you really have to see. And touch.

From 9to5Mac

Both the wording (“something you really have to see”) and the image (can you discern the individual pixels on iPad’s display?) would appear to confirm the long-standing rumors of an ultra high-resolution Retina Display (2048-by-1536 pixels), reportedly the key selling point of the device. Also interesting is lack of the physical home button—assuming the close-up was meant to depict iPad 3 in portrait orientation. Some fans also took to Twitter to note how Apple unmistakably sent out invites just as Eric Schmidt was delivering his Google keynote talk at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Sources expect that the third generation iPad will likely run on a dual-core A5X processor including an improved graphics engine. The A5X will likely be a minor upgrade over the A5 processor and not the major upgrade an A6 processor would likely be.

Retina Display for iPad confirmed

Last week, MacRumors reported that they were able to get a 9.7 inch display that was claimed to be for the iPad 3, confirming through microscopic analysis that the display offers twice the linear resolution and 4 times the total number of pixels as the iPad 2.

iFixit’s comparison of iPad 2 and iPad 3 display pixels

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0PfcA4WcfNA

From MacRumors

We’ve since shared the display with our friends at iFixit to see if they could power the screen and otherwise take a closer look at it. Unfortunately, with the different connector on the new display, iFixit was unable to directly hook the display up to the guts of an iPad 2. Meanwhile, efforts to map the pins of the two displays in an attempt to jury-rig the iPad 3 display were believed to be too substantial to undertake with the limited time and no guarantees of success. iFixit was, however, able to confirm our findings of an ultra-high resolution display that quadruples the number of pixels over the previous-generation iPads.

In this new video overview of the iPad 3 display, iFixit confirms the higher (2048×1536) resolution, the modified connector, and tweaked retaining clips as compared to the iPad 2 display.

Apple is expected to announce their next iPad on March 7th and is expected to sport a Retina Display, an A5X or A6 processor and a thicker design to compensate for the new display and battery.

Apple preparing 30-pin replacement

iMore is reporting that Apple may be beginning the transition away from their standard proprietary 30-pin dock connector in order to find something that is more compact in the very near future.

An updated “micro dock” would be able to make room for a bigger battery, 4G radio, and other components that are much more crucial to the iPhone and iPad in a PC free world.

As the website points out, Apple has been working hard to shrink the other components in their iOS devices. Apple has been one of the first to adopt the micro-SIM card and has even proposed to use an even smalled SIM card design so they could make even thinner devices.

From MacRumors

As iMore points out, the current dock connector isn’t huge, but as devices continue to get smaller and thinner, every little bit counts.

Moving away from such a ubiquitous connector, however, would be walking away from an enormous ecosystem of existing 3rd party products. Still, Apple’s constant desire to make smaller/thinner designs will naturally put pressure on the size of all their components. Apple’s recent move to PC-free computing with iCloud syncing may have also diminished the importance of the dock connector.

Editor-in-Chief Rene Ritchie for iMore says that the report came from a very solid source.

The cost of building an iPhone

An Asymco analyst published an interesting report recently which tries to find out what it costs Apple to pay for the manufacturing of each iPhone. Because of the iPhone, Apple has become an even bigger company than it was just with the Mac.

From iDB:

Dediu uses a number of resources, including manufacturing information that has recently come to light thanks to ABC’s “A Trip to the iFactory” documentary, to determine what Apple spends building each iPhone, from parts to shipping…

For starters, Horace says that Apple’s average revenue per handset is $650. So if the company’s [reported] profit margin on the iPhone is 55%, that means that its COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) is around $293 per phone. But where does that money go?

Well around $200 of it goes to BOM, or bill of materials. That’s how much Apple pays for all of the iPhone’s parts like the display, the cameras, the hard drives, etc. That leaves roughly $93 left to cover transportation/warehouse costs, manufacturing, and warranty (the cost of a returned iPhone) expenses.

Of the $93 dollars, the analyst believes that Apple begins to spend about $12.50 and 30 on the manufacturing of each phone. He determines this by using the details in the ABC Foxconn report:

• There are 141 steps involved in building each iPhone, which require about 24 hours to complete
• Of that 24 hours, 6 to 8 hours is spent installing and testing software, leaving about 17 hours for actual assembly.
• Given that factory workers earn about $1.78/hr, 17 hours would equal $30 in labor costs

But there’s a good chance that each iPhone spends some of that 17 hours in automated operations, or sitting idle, waiting for the next process to begin. So Horace does the math, estimating that if each of the 141 steps takes 3 minutes, then human hands will only touch the iPhone for about 7 hours. Once again, at $1.78 per hour, that equals about $12 in labor — thus the $12.50 – $30 estimate.

So what do you think?