Apple generally holds an iPod and iTunes event, where they announce the new iPod family, every September. However, the rumors are pointing towards a mid-August event this year instead.

The MacMagazine today received information from a reliable source within Apple about a new event to the press that the company was planning to soon. Although the schedule cite the source as somewhere around 14 and 16, we bet our chips on a Monday or Tuesday – that is, 16 or August 17.

We’ve already seen evidence of a new iPod touch with a front facing camera for FaceTime and a new rear camera with flash. In addition to these expectations, the source claims that Apple will deliver information about iOS 4 for the iPad as well as release iLife ‘11.

Apple has never discussed iLife during their fall iPod event, so why would they this year? Perhaps they will introduce a new music application to the suite that integrates with the iPod and iOS 4.

What do you think? Will we actually see an event in just a matter of weeks and what will be discussed? Sound off in the comments below!

[MacRumors]

Apple to host iPod, iTunes, iOS 4 event in August? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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

YouTube Link

Birdbrain for iPhone [iTunes Link] is an app that aggregates your Twitter statistics such as followers, following, blocked, and several other variables into one app.  It also shows you differences in how many followers you’ve gained or lost.  You can also see the specific people that have started following you or stopped following you.  Clicking on a user will also allow you to view certain statistics about that user.

If you’re someone who likes to keep track of your statistics on Twitter, Birdbrain could prove to be very useful to you. I could see this app being helpful for companies who want to use Twitter as a marketing tool and track trends. On the same token, I could also see it causing problems where people now have a way of knowing exactly what users have stopped following them (let the Twitter fights commence).

When you open the app for the first time, it’ll grab initial info from Twitter. So at first, you can’t see past information such as the last 7 days or last 24 hours. When you open the app in the future, it will begin to congregate past statistics and show you the differences.

The overall layout of the app is pretty slick. It’s incredibly easy to figure out and very user friendly. One thing I wasn’t sure of was how the app loaded your statistics. I wasn’t sure what happens if you don’t open the app for a week or so? Are the 24 hour statistics still accurate or what is it loading it from? That’s what had me a little confused. It definitely doesn’t load your statistics in the background.

I could also see some users wanting push notifications. Getting push notifications for when users follow or unfollow you would be a nice added feature but that would require Birdbrain to poll the Twitter servers quite often in order to aggregate and push the information. I could see that being a little overkill. Personally, I wouldn’t really care to see notifications of when someone stopped following me, but I wouldn’t mind having notifications for when someone starts following me. Then I’d disable the emails Twitter sends me.  There’s also a mentions tab within the app, which will congregate all your mentions and keep a running total of how many times you’ve been mentioned on Twitter.

Overall, it’s a decent app that does what it says it will. If you’ve been looking for a way to monitor your Twitter statistics more closely, this app could be what you’ve been looking for.

Pros

• Nice interface

• Shows a nice amount of statistics

• Seems to be really accurate

Cons

• Push notifications would be a nice addition

• Takes a few days to start aggregating information

Birdbrain for iPhone – App Review is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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

The TiPb forums are naturally a great place to talk, commiserate, celebrate, get help, and offer advice to your fellow iPhone users. In order to create a new thread of your own or reply to any of the existing threads, you must be a registered member. Becoming a member is easy and free so if you haven't already head on over and register now!

• Those of you who the the iPhone 4 probably have already ordered your free case and if so, have you received it yet?

• There is no question that the battery life on the iPhone 4 is superb. In the following thread post up a screen shot of the best battery stats you have obtained – iPhone 4 Battery Life: Post a usage screenshot.

• Do you use iPhone games on iPad? Chad can never decide which iOS device he wants to game on. He likes the bigger screen but he feels it takes longer for iPad versions to come out he’s not sure about buying the same game twice. How do you feel?

• Dieter, Mike, and the folks back at SPE HQ have given the forums, blog, and store an clean new look and feel. What do you think of it?

See you in the forums!

Free case from Apple, Battery life, Gaming on iPad vs iPhone,New TiPb Look – From the Forums is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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

Apple has begun filing patent applications for 1st party (i.e. Apple produced) iOS apps that include screen drawings of well known 3rd party (i.e. independently produced by developers for the App Store) apps.

Is Apple trying to steal the hard work and shatter the good will of App Store developers? Is Apple merely showing how App Store apps could hook into future Apple apps/hubs? Is it something in between?

Let’s take a look after the break…

[Venomous Porridge, Thanks Dev for the tip!]

Venomous Porridge originally posted the image up to and this commentary:

one of the diagrams in Apple's patent application for a travel app is a direct copy, down to the text and the positions of the icons, of an existing third-party app that's been available on the App Store for years.

I can't see how this is even close to OK.

The image is chilling for developers, especially since it doesn’t appear like Apple contacted them to let them know they were using it, and doesn’t appear to really explain the context of the usage in the application. That Apple would use an exact rendering of an existing app, when they could easily make their own, far more defensible artwork, is curious. That they show it clearly labeled as “Where To?” is more than curious.

FutureTap, the makers of Where To? said they did not have any deals in place with Apple for the patent and posted the following:

We're faced with a situation where we've to fear that our primary business partner is trying to "steal" our idea and design. So how to deal with that? — As some of you know, we've always been more than grateful for the platform Apple created. And, in fact, still are. However, we can't ignore it if the #1 recognition value of our (currently) only app potentially is under fire.

This is where a lot of coverage has ended to date. A few excellent comments have kept it moving forward, however. Macro Arment of Tumblr and Instapaper added:

Is it possible that Where To is being intentionally and innocently used as an example of a related app as an inconsequential portion of the much larger and more complex patented concept that wouldn't interfere with it?

Brian Ford adds:

The other clue that this isn't about an underhanded attempt to patent the Where To app is that various pictures showing several completely unrelated app designs are all used to describe this same patent. None of the other drawings are consistent.

Venomous Porridge subsequently updated with a second post

I think it's more likely that the people involved in drawing up this patent simply didn't think about the message it would send to developers. I'm sure it's not Apple's practice (or intention) to plunder the App Store submissions bin for new things to patent. But there remains a conflict of interest in Apple acting as the sole steward of the iOS software universe while also filing patents in areas that have long been staked out by third-party developers. If those developers suddenly get cold feet toward submitting innovative apps for fear of their ideas suddenly appearing in Apple's patent filings, it will be hard to blame them.

Which is pretty much how this reads. Apple is the giant in their forest and sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally they’ll step on the far, far smaller villagers who inhabit it. If enough villagers pick up torches and pitchforks and make enough noise, the Apple giant might pause, shrug, say “my bad” and be try to be more careful for a while, but it will always be the giant in their own forest.

It would behoove Apple none the less, especially since developer relations have been tense over the years, to try and create a preemptive strategy in terms of reaching out and assuaging developer fears. If they’re going to include Where To? or other app screens in their patents, create a process where that’s noted in draft and the developer is contacted and given context.

Ultimately it doesn’t look like Apple is being evil here, just inconsiderate.

Regarding Apple including 3rd party app screens in 1st party app patent filings is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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

We Farm for iPad is a real-time farming game by ngmoco. If you’re familiar with We Rule, We Farm is very similar except that your are building a farm instead of kingdom.

As with most ngmoco games, you must have a plus+ account to play. If you don’t have one already, signing up is simple. When you first start playing We Farm, the game takes you through a little tutorial which is pretty helpful.

The goal of We Farm is to raise money and build your farm. You raise money by growing crops, raising animals, and receiving and placing orders with friends. Almost everything you do yields experience points. As you level, more items are available for purchase; higher level buildings will output more money. You will also be able to upgrade your farm as you level which gives you more space and gives you a nicer looking farmhouse. You can also turn on notifications to alert you when certain tasks are complete. However, they do not work for me. I’ve asked around and apparently I’m the only with this problem.

There are two currencies used in We Farm. The first is gold and is what you make doing various farm tasks and buying items. The other is Gro. This is used to instantly complete tasks like growing crops, building buildings, fulfilling an order, raising animals, and increasing your animals’ happiness. You earn Gro every time you level and is also available as an in-app purchase.

My biggest complaint of We Farm is animal raising. To make your animal happy, you have to periodically “pet” it. Each pet increases the animal’s happiness by 5%. The happier your animal is, the better chance he has of winning a prize at the fair. Once you win a prize, your pen/coop/pasture becomes available for your friends to place orders at. This means you make a lot more money from it. The problem is that if you have an animal that takes 2 hours to raise, you must come back every 6 minutes during that 2 hour period to get the happiness to 100%. This is an unrealistic expectation in my eyes. Of course, you can get around this by using Gro, but We Farm doesn’t provide enough Gro to use it on all animals before needing to spend real money. However, the happier your animal is, the less Gro it takes to bring him to 100% happiness, so my strategy is to pet my animals as much as I can, then use grow at the end to bring it to 100%.

Another small complaint I have is that there isn’t a way to quickly return to your own farm when visiting someone else’s farm. I’d like to a small icon to tap in the corner of all farms that quickly takes to your farm.

All in all, I enjoy playing We Farm. However, you must like time management games to have fun with this one. I have been impressed with the performance of the app; it runs smoothly, I’ve never received a memory error (a common problem with We Rule), nor has it ever crashed. So if you’re a fan of these types of games, check out We Farm – it’s free!

Screenshots after the break!

[Free - iTunes link]

Pros

• Good performance
• Fun
• Easy to tailor around how much you want to play

Cons

• Can’t quickly return to your farm when visiting someone else’s farm.
• Animal petting requirement for a ribbon is unreasonable
• Push notifications not working (for me)

We Farm for iPad – app review is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been spotted outside of flour + water, a little Italian restaurant in San Francisco.

Kim, the young man in the photo, is a huge Apple fan from Sweden and just happened to get in line at flour + water behind Steve Jobs. Steve politely declined Kim’s request to take a photo with him, but when the last available seat was taken by the customer in front of Steve, Kim’s friend captured this photo as Mr. Jobs was leaving. Kim was quite excited, to say the least.

[TechCrunch, flower + water]

Steve Jobs != flower + water is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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

As part of their constant tweaking of all things App Store, Apple has added a section to the on-device (i.e. on iPhone or iPod touch) App Store that’s called “try before you buy”.

Here’s the deal, on the Featured tab, under New, there are series of 4 banners at the top. If you’re in the US, the bottom right one now says Free on App Store. Tap on it and you get a list of New and Noteworthy, Try Before You Buy, and Our Favorites.

Tap on Try Before You Buy and you get a listing of free or lite versions of popular apps you can sort by Featured, Popular, and Release Date.

So, it’s not like the Android Marketplace where you can sample any app and get a refund if you hate it; it’s really just the same content repackaged in a new way. However, the new packaging will probably be helpful to users looking for just those kind of free, sample apps.

Note: I’m not seeing it in the Canadian App Store yet.

[9to5Mac, image via Engadget]

iPhone App Store gains “Try Before You Buy”. Sort of. is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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