Marc Flores tweeted this video’s awesomeness and we tend to agree — EveryDay Looper [$4.99 - iTunes link] – Les Ramens is a whole lotta iPhone musical goodness. But don’t take our word for it, check it out after the break and let us know what you think!

YouTube link

Thursday Fun Video — EveryDay Looper – Les Ramens is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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It’s not the Apple Store, but 9to5Mac is reporting that Apple’s iPhone SDK developer portal, developer.apple.com is down:

We are busy updating the site. Please check back soon.

We know it won’t be new MacBooks, so any guesses as to what it will be? We’ll update as soon as we know!!

developer.apple.com/iphone Down! is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Dieter, Chad, Mickey (The Cell Phone Junkie), and Rene discuss the Apple vs. HTC patent lawsuit, iPad release rumors, the next-generation iPhone, and all the week’s news. Listen in!

Credits

Thanks to the the iPhone Blog Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat!

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You — iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge

TiPb Live #89 — Apple vs. HTC is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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UPDATE: Or not, as this dialog’s been around for a while as per 9to5Mac’s @llsethj. Sad now.

ORIGINAL: Developer Frasier Spears posted the above “curious” iTunes dialog to Twitter. It appeared when he hit “Update All”. We have no way of knowing exactly it means, but we’re hoping it means upgrade pricing is finally coming to the app store.

As background, one of the problems still facing developers has been the inability to offer paid upgrades. Either they had to give away new versions for free, or they had to create new apps with no way to discount the price to existing users.

That’s led some developers to slow down or stop making major improvements to their apps (since they can’t count on upgrade revenue), and it’s led to backlashes when releasing new versions as new apps.

In an ideal App Store, developers could choose to give existing users a discount when they upgraded.

UPDATED: Upgrade Pricing Finally Coming to App Store? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Cult of Mac reports that Apple has begun removing apps from the iTunes App Store that scan for Wi-Fi access points. It looks like these apps are being removed due to their use of private APIs, which is prohibited by the iPhone SDK agreement. This would make it similar to the recent removal of apps that misused the iPhone camera DCIM folder to store and exchange documents.

There’s been some suggestion, however, that list reflects a policy change from Apple closer to the recent removal of sex-based apps.

Our speculation is that Apple has either added the Wi-Fi private APIs to their static analysis tool, or has just finally gotten around to checking for them. That would make it appear like a new policy when it’s actually the originally agreement finally being enforced.

Some developers believe long term lack of action by Apple equals tacit approval for private API use. Those beliefs likely have to start changing. When Apple makes an API public, they’re guaranteeing that developers can use them and have faith Apple won’t break them (and the apps built on them) in a future update. Private APIs are the opposite — Apple can and will change them at any point, breaking apps that try to use them when they shouldn’t. In some cases Apple is working on public versions of private APIs and will release them in future versions of the iPhone OS. In other cases they aren’t — sometimes for security, other times just for proprietary reasons.

In either case, this isn’t the first and likely won’t be last set of rejections. While we feel for developers, we feel more for users who may have come to depend on the functionality of these apps.

If you’re a developer who’s dealing with this and have a better take on the situation, please let us know!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Apple Removing Wi-Fi Scanning Apps from App Store is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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For all TiPb readers who have dreamed of having their very own home theatre, we now have a solution for you and all that is needed is your iPhone, shoe box, and 1 to 2 hours of your time.

It’s a pretty clever idea, check out the videos after the break!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Home Theatre Setup Using Your iPhone and Shoe Box is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Anyone surprised that games are way more popular on the iPhone than on competing plaforms? Mplayit has put out some interesting stats, not only on what apps are popular with their Facebook sharing users, but what kinds of apps are popular on the various platforms they monitor. While on Android and BlackBerry, non-game apps account for 83% and 67% of popular titles, on the iPhone they’re only 36%. That leaves 64% for games.

That might be a concern, frankly, if the numbers weren’t north of 150,000 leaving plenty of room for great productivity, utility, social networking, and other apps in addition to the increasingly good games. Embarrassment of riches indeed.

Check out the graphic above for the full breakdown. Time for Android and BlackBerry to get their game on, or does Apple really enjoy the lead Steve Jobs keeps saying they do?

Games Way More Popular on iPhone than Other Smartphones is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Vlingo 2.0 for iPhone [Free with in-app purchase - iTunes link] brings an all new, all prettier graphical user interface to the table, as well as Email and SMS Paste dictation — as an in-app purchase.

The new UI looks great and more importantly, works great. The icons are big and easy to hit and helpful tips are littered everywhere. You can tap to start recording and tap again to stop, or just hold down, talk, and release. For the various situations where you need to use voice instead of typing — like while driving (if it’s legal in your region!) — that kind of ease of use is priceless.

With the free app you get Maps, Search, Social (Facebook and Twitter), and Voice Dial. As mentioned, the Email and SMS Paste dictation are via in-app purchase. Note, it’s called SMS Paste because, unlike with Email, Apple won’t allow apps to send SMS so it just copies your text and launches the Messages apps. You have to paste the text and then hit send on your own. The Email and SMS Paste options are $6.99 separately or $9.99 if purchased together. Whether they’re worth or not depends entirely on how important voice email and SMS dictation are to you right now.

TiPb got our hands on the final version a couple of days early so we had a chance to try it out for a while already. All in all, Vlingo 2 works about as well as you’d expect a voice dictation app to work — usually quite well, with hilarious tragedy on occasion. It does learn, however, so if you enunciate well and keep at it, your results should improve.

I liked it enough to buy the App Store version on release along with the Email and SMS Paste bundle. It’s bleeding edge technology that should get better and more elegant in the future. And I’m a sucker for the the Star Trek-style apps.

Screen shots and video after the break! If you try it out, let us know what you think!

YouTube link

Vlingo 2.0 for iPhone Brings Voice to Email, SMS is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

While Apple vs. HTC is getting a ton of press this week (TiPb a culpa!) the New York Times blogs provides the above graph to show us it’s just another strand in the growing web of mobile patent pugilism.

Although patent litigation is not new in the technology world, these suits, specifically around mobile, point to the drastically changing mobile landscape. Lawyers I spoke with explained that mobile technology was still in its infancy and these large computing companies were trying to stake their claim to the future of computing.

So far only Microsoft, Google, and Palm have remained uninvolved. (That’s actually quite a list of prominent names, isn’t it). Meanwhile:

Apple was sued by the Taiwanese company Elan Microelectronics over alleged infringement of touch-screen patents. Nokia went on a lawsuit spree, suing Apple, Samsung, LG and a variety of other mobile handset companies. Kodak sued several companies over patents related to the companies' digital-imaging technology.

And, of course, the aforementioned Apple vs. HTC. Here’s our question, and it’s one we’ve asked before — does it matter to consumers? Are we spectators watching Godzilla battle King Kong, or are we the city folks running for our lives as buildings drop around us?

Beyond Apple vs. HTC: Who’s Suing Who? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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AT&T CEO, Randall Stephenson, has been quoted in saying that the Apple iPad will be a “Wi-Fi driven product” so no customers should be concerned with poor 3G data. But it did not end there, he also went on to say the following.

“My expectation is that there’s not going to be a lot of people out there looking for another subscription.”

All of the above really makes those of us here at TiPb scratch our heads. Are those the type of statements you expect to hear from a company ready to successfully sell iPads in their corporate stores across the country? Or would you think AT&T’s CEO would really want to hype up the product with positive comments to try and spark more 3G data subscriptions?

Your thoughts?

[Via TUAW via Reuters]

AT&T Not Banking on Selling 3G Data Plans for iPad? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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