If you own a PlayStation 3 and want a convenient way to keep track of your friends and trophies on your iPhone or iPod touch, look no further than PS3 iTrophies v2.4 [ $1.99 - iTunes Link]. PS3 iTrophies is a feature-filled application and hands-down the best companion piece for your PSN online account.

• View your PSN profile
• View your trophy data in real time with no need to sync manually.
• Compare trophy stats with any of your friends.
• View your friends list, see who’s online and what they are currently playing.
• Friends trophy leaderboard to see how you stack up with your complete list of friends.
• Provides YouTube videos to show you exactly how to get those trophies you’ve been having issues with.
• Settings menu that allow you to remember/forget sign in details, clear image cache, change your default log in screen, etc…

We’ve been using iTrophies for the past week and can honestly say no other PlayStation application in the App Store comes close. For more information about iTrophies and future updates please check out the iTrophies website.

Video after the break!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Quick Review: PS3 iTrophies v2.4 for iPhone and iPod touch

Apple today announced their Q1 2010 financial results, covering the all-important holiday quarter, with 8.7 million iPhones sold, and a 55% increase in iPod touch sales. Total revenue was $15.68 billion, and cash-on-hand is now approaching a whopping 39.8 billion! Says CEO, Steve Jobs:

"If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it's surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we're really excited about."

Way to iTablet tease us there, big fella.

During the conference call that followed, CFO, Peter Oppenheimer and COO, Tim Cook revealed:

• 17 new carriers for the iPhone, including Bell Canada, Telus Canada, Orange Canada, China Unicom, Korea
• iPhone “very strong” in Japan, Australia, UK, Germany
• Business users ranked iPhone #1 in satisfaction according to JD Power
• 70% of Fortune 100 businesses piloting or deploying iPhone
• New accounting methods mean $25 of iPhone revenue deferred for “updates”
• Apple defended AT&T, said they have higher broadband usage than any other carrier, great experience for many customers, and have shared with Apple plans to improve problem cities
• 2.7 million iPhones in channel, including in-transit, invoiced to carriers, demos.
• 200,000 iPhones activated in China. Ramping slowly to ensure customer experience.
• Nothing on Nokia lawsuit.
• 90% of iPhone Apps approved in 14 days. Apple wants to protect privacy, prevent porn, defend children. Most frequent cause of rejection is bugs in app.
• Cook: Noise about App Store frustration may be higher than reality (orly?)
• Could anything equal Mac, iPod, iPhone for Apple? Wait for Wednesday!
• iPhone 3GS features accelerated corporate adoption (hardware encryption?)
• Adding carriers in existing countries earned incremental growth.
• Quattro Wireless was acquired to provide developers, especially those who develop free apps, a seamless way to earn money.
• iTunes/App Store still run just above break even, Apple reinvests revenue to maintain and improve customer experience as it scales.
• Japan iPhone growth 400%, Asia Pac iPhone growth 500%
• On Google: Apple competes with Google in some areas, works with them in others.

For more from the conference call, check out TiPb’s live coverage!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

8.7 Million iPhones Sold in Q1 2010 — Apple Financial Results

Apple will be releasing their Q1, 2010 financial results later today, and following up with their traditional conference call at 2pm PT/5pm ET/10pm GT. A Q&A with analysts will follow (and we hope they’ve all taken Matt Deatherage’s advice).

TiPb will be covering the event live, right here in this very post. So, to observe, comment, and enjoy along with us, bookmark this page and come back and join us at start time!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple 2010 Q1 Financial Results Conference Call Live Blog

How crazy is the Apple hype getting? See the CNBC screen shot above. Yeah, about that crazy.

More as this develops, though likely we’ll update as part of the Q1 2010 conference call coverage.

[Thanks Icebike for the tip]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

CNBC: Trading of Apple Shares Halted

A MacRumors reader snapped the above pic of Apple getting the poster art in place for their upcoming “Come see our latest creation” event, set to kick off this Wednesday, Jan. 27 at 10am PT, 1pm ET, 6pm GT. TiPb will be live meta-blogging the event right on the homepage, and we’d be pleased as punch and pie if you joined us for our usual commentary and color.

Meanwhile, the net is fair exploding with iTablet leaks, rumors, and leaky rumors. Here’s a sampling:

• New York Times has created a “Reader Application Division”. No reason. [9to5mac]
• New York Times is also working closely with Apple to prep a version of the newspaper for a large screen device. [MacRumors]
• Other publishers are also talking about Apple’s tablet. Apple’s been aggressive in trying to get deals done using an “agency model” to compete with Amazon/Kindle. They’re cutting out intermediaries and going straight to the publishers. Critical content mass likely won’t be reached until mid-2010. Won’t cost anywhere near $1000. [9to5mac]
• Historical looks back at both FingerWorks multi-touch technology and the history of the Apple tablet initiative [AppleInsider]
• A look at Apple’s multitouch and user interface patents, and what they may mean when taken together [LukeW]

Only 2 days to go!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

2 Days to iTablet Roundup! Less than $1000, Publishing Deals, Patents and Technology

TiPb loves to give back to our readers with our give aways, so why not give away my personal favorite Twitter app in all of the Apple App Store, Twitbit!

Our good friends over at High Order Bit have been generous enough to share 10 FREE copies of their Twitbit application to give you! If you want in on the action, all you have to do is visit this thread in our iPhone forums and leave a single post telling High Order Bit what feature you would like to see added to the already feature filled Twitbit!

Contest starts now and ends Wednesday, January 27th at 12pm PT. And remember, promo codes require a US iTunes App Store account (Apple’s rule, not ours!) Good luck!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb Give Away: 10 FREE Copies of Twitbit for iPhone!

Daring Fireball has an interesting post up regarding the continued lack of a Flash Player for the iPhone, and the reasons why Flash support for the iTablet/iSlate/iPad is unlikely:

I'll leave the last word to Apple COO Tim Cook, who a year ago said, "We believe in the simple, not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution."

Flash is owned and controlled by Adobe.

Gruber breaks it down into several broad strokes.

• According to Apple plugins in general, and according to sources at Apple, Flash in particular, is the leading cause of crashes on Mac OS X.
• In order to make a 64-bit version of Safari on Mac, Apple had to create a new plugin architecture because Adobe (still) only makes 32-bit Flash and since Apple has no control of the Flash code, they have to work around it.
• Flash is the only remaining major web technology that’s proprietary and controlled by one company, which is not good for the web, and if Apple can’t control something, they’d rather it be non-proprietary.
• Flash performance on Mac OS X is poor compared to QuickTime. Adobe would like to address this via direct hardware acceleration, Apple would rather developers use the existing, higher-level QuickTime APIs.
• Flash is used as a runtime, which Apple doesn’t support on the iPhone.

I’ll add two more things to this list, especially applicable to the iPhone:

• Flash is an increasingly large target for malware attacks. While Apple is slow to respond to zero day exploits, Adobe is as well. The idea that Apple would have to wait on Adobe to patch an iPhone exploit is likely not appealing to Apple. Imagine how long iPhone firmware updates would take then?
• Flash is privacy hostile, allowing sites to store “Flash cookies” which can restore deliberately deleted browser cookies and otherwise track user data. That Adobe still doesn’t better inform their users, and relies on an obscure website to provide controls is troubling to say the least. (That page is supposed to contain site-specific permission for Flash to access webcams. Mine contains entries for major online media sites and e-commerce stores).

Apple believes control helps them create the best user experience. It’s incredibly frustrating at times, but it’s how they’ve built their business and arguably attained some of their success.

I don’t believe for one moment Apple is pushing open standards over Flash for altruistic reasons. In this instance, however, their reasons happen to coincide with what’s better for the web. They’re also are one of the few companies powerful and popular enough to push HTML5 video.

The iPhone and quite possibly the iTablet are their best shot at doing that.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Politics and Practicality the Reason for no Flash Player on iPhone… and iTablet?

Marco Arment has a fun post up today about designing for AMOLED (active matrix light emitting diode) screens, currently used for Google’s Nexus One, and something many hope Apple adopts for the 4th generation iPhone and — even though cost and supply prohibitive — the upcoming iTablet/iSlate/iPad as well.

Most significantly with OLEDs, power consumption is greatly reduced when displaying black or very dim colors, so a dark layout option is even more beneficial than with LCDs.

Another consideration is that the blue subpixels have the shortest lifespans, a problem that has always plagued OLEDs and is one of the biggest reasons they're still rarely used.

Armant’s tongue-in-cheek solution? To go old school, Apple II ancient CRT-style green on black. Not that we’re not nostalgic (I rocked that green screen for many years on my Apple II), but here’s hoping AMOLED technology gets better with blues before iPhone developers have to go retro with their text, yo.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone AMOLED Screens to Bring Back Apple II-style Green on Black?

While TiPb’s been wondering just what happened to iPhone 3.2, app analytic company Flurry reports that it’s been undergoing testing since September… on the iTablet! Engadget sums up:

Flurry is saying that it’s detected around 50 devices on Apple’s Cupertino campus that have the “characteristics” of a tablet, running a new version of the iPhone OS numbered 3.2. How? Around 200 different apps with Flurry’s tracking code were downloaded and used on these mystery devices — mostly games, followed by entertainment and media apps — and Flurry first noticed this new device in October, with numbers picking up in January. Unfortunately, Flurry hasn’t said what these mysterious tablet characteristics are, so we don’t have much to go on.

While rumors suggest we might just see iPhone 4.0 announced this Wednesday as part of Apple’s iTablet/iSlate/iPad-centric “Come see our latest creation” event, they also suggest the iTablet itself won’t ship to customers sooner than March, and iPhone 4.0 may only get released to developers in beta. If that means a general release for iPhone 4.0 in June/July like previous years (and as opposed to March with the iTablet), there will have to be some compatibility update for the iTablet (and maybe iPhone and iPod touch) in the interim, and iPhone 3.2 is as good a name as any, right?

If iPhone 3.2 is released any time soon, however, we wouldn’t hold our breath for anything other than iTablet compatibility and maybe some tweaking of Apple’s built-in apps (like iTunes LP/Extras support). Any API or other substantive changes would require a beta period for developers. Now if 3.2 is announced for March (with immediate beta) and 4.0 for June/July, then that’s a different story…

UPDATE: 9to5mac followed up with Flurry and heard back from Peter Farago , VP of Marketing. Farago confirmed that they’d seen iPhone devices running OS 4.0 but those left the Cupertino campus whereas the tablet device did not (for secrecy reasons?). Also, the types of apps being tested (news, books, games) matched what they believed a tablet device would run. Read the complete statement via the link above.

What do you think?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Updated: Flurry Analytics Show iTablet Running… iPhone 3.2?!

No one outside the contract signers at Apple and AT&T know for sure when US iPhone exclusivity ends, but HotHardware is stirring up a storm with the rumor that it ends this Wednesday, at Apple’s “Come see our latest creation” event:

According to an inside source close to the going-ons involved in all of this, a new tablet of some sort may not be the only thing on deck for next Wednesday though. We have been led to believe by an inside source that AT&T will lose their iPhone exclusivity on the same day

Yeahbuwhy?

Inside of AT&T, we are hearing that the iPhone is causing more trouble than ever before. On some level, having the iPhone is hurting AT&T’s image. Because they are the only company to carry it, and it’s such a data hog, it’s largely to blame for AT&T’s network troubles. [...] The iPhone itself doesn’t really handle the switch from 3G to EDGE very well, so calls that are in-progress tend to fail whenever the 3G bands aren’t optimal and the phone attempts to step down to EDGE.

They claim AT&T is tired of the bad press and will let other networks share the burden while AT&T introduces new phones from other platforms (hello Android and webOS?) in order to compete.

The follow on rumor, of course and as always, is that Verizon will then start to carry a CDMA-friendly version of the iPhone 3GS and the new iTablet.

No comment from AT&T yet, but anyone buying this?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Crazy Rumor-de-Jour: AT&T iPhone Exclusivity to End this Wednesday, Verizon iPhone, iTablet “One More Thing”?