After Apple’s announcement of FaceTime during the WWDC 2010 keynote, we knew it was only a matter of time before talk of Skype video chat would arise. Just two days later, an insider at Skype has told Pocket-Lint that they “would welcome the opportunity to work with Apple” when it comes to bringing Skype video calling to the new iPhone 4 scheduled to release on June 24.

It’s clear to us at Skype that mobile video will become increasingly important to our customers in the coming year. We would welcome the opportunity to work with Apple to bring mobile video calling not only to our many millions of Skype users on iPhone around the world, but also to the countless more making video calls on desktops, TVs and other connected devices.

Skype has further clarified to Engadget that they are not interested in using FaceTime directly, rather to work with Apple to enable Skype video calling on the iPhone 4.

We are not considering FaceTime as a technological platform for video calling in our own products. However, given Apple’s statement about FaceTime being an open platform, we are looking forward to see how it unfolds. We look forward to working with Apple to make sure the millions of users of Skype on the iPhone get the best possible experience when it comes to video calls on mobile devices and beyond.

Skype has also made it clear that they do not have any short-term intentions of enabling Skype video calling on the iPhone but want to see “how this process unfolds.” The interest and desire to do so, however, is clearly evident.

FaceTime only allows video calling between iPhone 4 users. Skype video would open this up to anyone with a Skype account on any device including desktops and laptops. Working with Skype to make this happen will only make the iPhone 4 more appealing, and we can only hope that Apple agrees.

Does Skype video calling sound enticing to you? Would you use it more than Apple’s FaceTime? Any predictions on when we may see something like this actually unfold? Sound off in the comments below!

Skype bringing video chat to iPhone 4? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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

Do you want your iPhone apps sharpened up for iPhone 4’s Retina Display? iPhone 4 has a whopping 960×480 screen which is literally 4 times (twice vertical, twice horizontal) the pixel size, but the same physical size, as previous generation iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3GS. That’s a density of over 300dpi — print magazine quality. Existing apps will just seamlessly use 4 pixels on the iPhone 4 compared to 1 pixel on previous gen iPhones, so they’ll look identical.

In fact, fonts — and if you built your app in Xcode, UI elements — will automagically be rendered at the new 4x sharpness, so they’ll look better.

To truly take advantage of the new display, however, developers and designers will have to go back to the drawing board (or paint program) and make new, higher definition graphical elements like icons, textures, and other artwork.

For some developers this won’t even be a question — they love their apps and they want to make them look as good as possible. They’re already getting this done. For others, especially for those with older, catalog apps somewhere in the longer tail of the App Store sales cycle, they may not be sure the effort is financially justified (especially given the 100,000,000 existing, lower res, iOS install base).

So we’re curious what our readers, developer and user alike, think? Do you want to see nothing but ultra-sharp apps on your iPhone 4? Do devs need to do it immediately? Wait for the next update? Focus on new apps only? Go back and retrofit old apps? How important is it to you?

Do you want your iPhone apps sharpened up for iPhone 4’s Retina Display? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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

We did a special edition of iPhone live! on Monday, so we can use that shows time-slot to catch up on iPad live!, right? Join us tonight at 8pm ET/5pm PT, 1am BST to find out!

We’ll be wrapping up WWDC, figuring out what iOS means for iPad, and more!

http://www.tipb.com/live/

DON’T FORGET OUR CONTEST!

We need new theme music, make us a kick-apps, copyright-free theme and you’ll win fabulous prizes!

Chat with you soon!

iPad Live! Tonight at 8pm ET/5pm PT (1am BST) is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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

Slacker Personal Radio 2.0 is now in the iTunes app store, along with its great new local caching feature (hello new AT&T capped data plans!), and to celebrate Slacker wants to give away five (5) one-year subscriptions to their premium Slacker Radio Plus service (and they’re throwing in five (5) 3-month subscriptions for runners-up as well).

It’ll be the perfect thing to run on a new iPhone — and oh, yeah: TiPb’s giving away an iPhone 4 as well.

If you want to win, download the Slacker Personal Radio app from iTunes, try it out, and then leave a reply in our iPhone Contest Forum and tell us what music you’re caching on your iPhone.

Give away: Slacker Personal Radio Plus streaming music with local iPhone cache is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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

WWDC 2010 day two saw sessions jump into high gear as developers learned more about Game Center (which is comforting considering it was strangely MIA from the Keynote) and what’s going on with that monster 960×640 retina display on the new iPhone 4. Apple also handed out some polished aluminum cubes by way of app awards, and I got to sit down with some terrific app developers. (And yes, we’re giving away an iPhone 4).

Today is TiPb’s last day at WWDC [sniffle] so if you’re a developer email us at news(at)tipb(dot)com and drop on by, say hi, and amaze us with your apps. We’re trying to fit in as many as possible.

iPhone 4/iOS 4

• Who wants to win an iPhone 4 from TiPb?
• iPhone live podcast #103 – WWDC 2010
• Apple posts WWDC 2010 keynote video stream, iTunes download
• iOS 4 device compatibility – can your iPhone and iPod touch be upgraded?
• Will you be spending some FaceTime with iPhone 4?

Apps

• Twitterrific gets simpler, better for iPad – TiPb at WWDC
• Line2 brings iPhone, iPad calls into 21st century – TiPb at WWDC 2010
• TomTom talks iPhone, iOS 4 multitasking – TiPb at WWDC 2010
• Apple Design Award winning iPhone and iPad apps from WWDC 2010

TiPb at WWDC 2010 – day two round up is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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

This year’s WWDC 2010 Apple Design Awards were a decidedly iPhone and iPad-centric affair, yet the winners still manage to run an amazing gamut from fun to foodie, creative to informative. Without further ado, here are the ADA.

• Doodle Jump [iTunes]
• Financial Times [iTunes]
• Brushes for iPhone [iTunes
• TabToolkit for iPad [iTunes]
• Articles [iTunes]
• 20 Minute Meals [iTunes]
• Star Walk for iPad [iTunes]
• Real Racing [iTunes link]
• Pinball HD [iTunes]

Congratulations to all the winners, all the nominees, and all the developers and apps that were submitted. Now what do you think, any surprises?

[Ars]

Apple Design Award winning iPhone and iPad apps from WWDC 2010 is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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

Twitterrific is the grandaddy of iOS Twitter clients — it existed on the iPhone before there was an SDK and was in the App Store on launch day, and again for iPad launch. Twitterrific has evolved from a reader-centric experience to a feature-full client and back to a highly focused app.

Craig Hockenberry, a principle at Iconfactory, the driving force behind Twitterrific, spoke to me at WWDC 2010 about getting Twitterrific ready for the iPad and how that process re-informed what will be going into (and perhaps coming out of) Twitterrific 3.0 for iPhone.

And no, Tweetie becoming the free Twitter for iPhone isn’t slowing them down. (You can read more on that from Craig and Iconfactory collaborators David Lanham and Ged Maheux)

Hockenberry has also taken a turn as author, with his iPhone App Development: The Missing Manual now available from O’Reilly. It takes you through the process, from SDK signup to Xcode and Objective-C, to deploying an app. It’s a treasure-trove of experience and insight for developers — aspiring and veteran alike.

Videos after the break. (Huge apologies to everyone, especially Craig, for the annoying wind noise — I greatly underestimated it during filming)

[Twitterrific homepage]

YouTube link

YouTube link

Twitterrific gets simpler, better for iPad – TiPb at WWDC is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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

Palm has a stellar, non-interuptive, non-”choose it or lose it” notification system, and according to our sibling site PreCentral.net, the man who designed webOS notifications has left for Apple:

The man who “Invented the non-intrusive banner notification system used in webOS” and also did all sorts of other work for the OS, Rich Dellinger, is leaving Palm to return to his earlier employer, Apple, as a Senior User Interface Designer.

Does this mean iOS 4.x or iOS 5 will be getting better notifications? They’ve likely been working on that long before now, and who knows what Dellinger will be assigned to, but since notifications remain one of the few sore sports in iOS, we’re very much hoping it does and the sooner the better.

And let’s top that off by asking what kind of notification system you want to see in iOS? Palm and Android both do it well, how could Apple do it better? Simpler?

Father of webOS notifications leaves Palm for Apple is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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

Peter Sisson, founder and CEO of Toktumi talks Line2, their premium, business-optimized calling solution for the iPhone and iPad (with optimized iPad UI coming soon). While many forms of communications have leapt forward in the digital age, our telcos have been content to keep telephony in the relative dark ages. Line2 is one of several services hoping to pull them kicking and screaming forward, with both cell and VoIP based solutions.

Currently you can conference call over VoIP — which is really nice on an iPad — with full call waiting and real SMS functionality. With iOS 4 VoIP will work in the background meaning apps like Line2 could just be first-class telephone solutions (and strangely carriers don’t seem to be as afraid of this as they used to be).

Line2 competes with free-as-in-Google voice by offering a more user-centric app, with lots of features and a focus on customer care. They’re US/Canada only at the moment but will be expanding into the top 7 international iPhone markets soon and especially for business users, they think their offer will be compelling. (Enough that Peter suggests a MiFi rather than device data plan might just be the way to go forward…)

Check out the video interview after the break!

[Line2 on iTunes]

YouTube link

Line2 brings iPhone, iPad calls into 21st century – TiPb at WWDC 2010 is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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

Tom Murray, SVP of Marketing, TomTom sat down with me to discuss their turn-by-turn navigation app for the iPhone. Announced at WWDC 2009, over the last year TomTom has managed to get the app to where all its core functionality is in place and they can give iPhone users a really first-class tool to get them from point A to point B. Now, with iOS 4 and its multitasking API for location, they can start getting them in style.

Since TomTom does everything from owning their own maps to selling their own devices, they’re uniquely positioned do things like crowd-source changes in roads or analyze patterns in routes and get that fed back into their system so their 40 million users can share local wisdom whether they’re improving their daily commute or driving in a new city for the first time.

With the iPhone, Apple is providing the device (and the GPS) but TomTom still offers a car kit to supplement and extend the built-in hardware. (I asked if the existing car kit would be compatible with the just-introduced iPhone 4, but they hadn’t had a chance to get their hands on it yet so they’re waiting to whether it fits, whether it requires an adapter, or whether some reengineering will be in order).

No word on an iPad version yet, unfortunately, but turn-by-turn navigation on smartphones is still growing. With free-as-in-Google and open source map apps now on the scene, TomTom is investing in the quality of their service and the trust in their data.

Check out our video interview, after the break!

[TomTom on iTunes]

YouTube link

TomTom talks iPhone, iOS 4 multitasking – TiPb at WWDC 2010 is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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