iPhone Applications

Screenshots of the long-awaited Sirius XM iPhone app have surfaced in a shareholder meeting presentation. The title of the slide is "Launching Apple iPhone/iPod Touch and Smart Phone Applications," indicating that a release is on its way for multiple platforms.

The application follows Apple's rejection over two months ago of the uSirius StarPlayr. The same streaming Sirius XM radio stations available to subscribers on the web will be available on the iPhone.

Amazon's free iPhone Kindle application has received an update with several improvements to make the app more user-friendly. Many of the features were expected by users in the first release, as they are typical to many iPhone apps.

Here are the changes:

Users can read in portrait or landscape mode.
Gesture (pinch) to zoom images in books.
Select alternate background and text colors to improve reading comfort in low light conditions.
Tap on either side of the screen or flick to turn pages.

The clever people at onOne Software have brought the cable release into the 21st century. For users of Canon EOS digital SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras, there are already a few options for remote control.

Using DSLR Remote on the iPhone or iPod Touch may require more hardware, but the feature set is impressive for the price. Settings such as shutter speed, white balance and aperture can be controlled, along with the camera shutter.

Only one month after the initial release of push notification, Apple has invited iPhone OS 3.0 developers to participate in high-volume tests of the system. If all goes well, push notification is expected to be operative for general users with the release of iPhone 3.0.

Push notification saves the iPhone battery by allowing apps to receive information without actually running in the background. Recent reports have indicated that Apple is considering allowing a limited number of apps to run in the background, however this taxes iPhone resources.

Wouldn't it be great if every time you jumped to the iPhone home screen Pandora kept streaming music? The only application that Apple currently allows to run in the background is the iPod, however if recent reports are correct, this could all change.

Pandora is just one example of how useful allowing apps to run in the background could be. Another likely use would be keeping an instant messaging chat connected. Rumors have been swirling about just how Apple would implement background processing considering the limited resources of iPhone hardware.