There are a countless number of tip calculators in the App Store, but what sets Billr apart from the crowd is that it offers a way to quickly and fairly split a bill, including tax and tip. By fairly, I mean that instead of an even split, each member of the group only pays for the items that they ordered and tax and tip on just those items.

As someone who often orders inexpensive entrees and water with my meals in an effort to save money, there is nothing more annoying than when the guy who ordered lobster and 3 cocktails announces that we’re just going to split the bill evenly because it’s easier that way. Well, now that guy can shut up and pay his fair amount, because with Billr for iPhone, calculating everyone’s share is quick and easy.

Upon launching Billr, you select how many people are in your party then move right along to entering the price of the items that each person ordered. The layout of the UI is perfect for quick entry. The bottom half of the screen remains as a keypad and the top half of the screen displays a scrollable list of tickets for 4 people at a time.

Next, you enter either the percentage or dollar values of the tax and tip and Billr instantly does the rest. It will display up to 8 tickets at a time with the exact dollar amount owed by each person. You can then pass your phone around for people to see their totals, or you can send the results via SMS or email.

The only thing that’s missing is the ability to add items, like appetizers, that can be split between multiple people. It’s already an awesome app, possibly the best tip calculator currently available, but if the folks at Billr add this feature, it will be the perfect tip calculator app.

$0.99 – Download Now

An updated “micro dock” would make room for bigger batteries, 4G radios, and other components far more important to the iPhone and iPad in a PC free world.

We’ve heard that Apple is getting ready to ditch the dock connector as it’s currently sized and implemented on iPods, iPhones, and iPads. The reason isn’t anything political, like a new desire to conform to an outdated micro-USB standard, but typically Apple: to save space inside the iPhone 5 for what are now more important components.

There are some precedents for this. Apple switched from the very common mini SIM card to the then very uncommon micro SIM card for the original iPad. They took the antenna out of the core package and put it around the edge in the iPhone 4. They had 10 hours of battery life they wanted to hit. They had a Retina display and its backlight. They had an HSPA radio. They had 802.11n Wi-Fi. They had a bigger camera sensor. They had a lot of power-hungry components, and they needed space to hold them and power them, so they switched to a smaller SIM and kicked the antenna to the outside.

The dock connector as it exists now is a relatively big component that takes up, while not a lot of space compared to the entire assembly, a lot of space compared to the difference between mini and micro SIM.

4G LTE radios also take up a lot of space. Apple has waited on better, smaller chipsets, and won’t be going to a form-factor the size of the Galaxy Nexus or Nokia Lumia 900 any year soon, but every square millimeter they can save inside the device will matter.

The importance of the dock connector has also changed. When the iPhone 4 was released, iOS was not yet PC free. There was no iCloud. There was no AirPlay. There was no Bluetooth 4.0.

The 30-pin dock handled all syncing and data transfer, including backups, music, movies, and other media, all car and other connections, even video-out dongles. Over the years it changed slightly, most significantly the change from FireWire to USB-only charging, but up until now it did all the heavy lifting.

Up until now. Backups are easier and better over iCloud. Wi-Fi sync can handle even large media files, if not as quickly, still relatively painlessly given their average frequency. Video and screen mirroring just bean straight to the Apple TV. Accessories can connect and interact over the air. The iTunes app tether has been appreciably cut, so the timing to cut down on the dock connector might never be better.

Apple has also reduced the size of connectors in their Mac line, going to the PCI Express and Mini DisplayPort based Thunderbolt connector almost across the line (Mac Pro the lone holdout).

iOS devices probably can’t go Thunderbolt since they doesn’t use PCI Express architecture, but that doesn’t mean the dock port can’t get smaller, doing everything it still needs to do in a PC free world, and saving Apple precious space inside the iPhone 5 package.

(I’m saying iPhone 5 because we haven’t heard a specific timeline. iPad 3 is a much bigger device which may not be facing the physical size constraints of the iPhone yet. iPad did get the micro SIM first, however, so it’s possible Apple could be looking to debut a newer, smaller dock connector on that device first. We just haven’t heard anything specific about it and so think iPhone 5 is more likely.)

Apple probably won’t go micro-USB either, because it’s not faster and not Apple’s style.

A smaller dock connector — a “micro dock” if you will — certainly sounds possible.

Not all current accessories would be compatible, of course, even if Apple offered an adapter dongle. It would upset as many customers as it would thrill. But Apple had never been afraid to ruthlessly jettison the past for a better future. Just ask the floppy drive, and now the optical drive and FireWire port.

Apple is fearless when it comes to driving the future. And the dock connector might be next on their list.

For a few years every hot new hero phone that hit the market was dubbed “iPhone killer” and lavished with link-bait praise for a week or so, until users hit usability walls, and the link-baiters were on to the next, hot new “iPhone killer”.

Nothing killed the iPhone, of course. It couldn’t be killed. It wasn’t only a smart phone, it was a great phone that was smartly conceived and executed.

Nothing makes that more clear that the fact that it’s gone on to sell more in each incarnation than all incarnations before, and it’s spread from a single U.S. carrier, AT&T, to become the best selling device on all 3 of the major U.S. carriers, including Verizon and Sprint. (And to be blamed for the misfortunes of the 4th largest, T-Mobile, the only major carrier without an iPhone in their lineup.)

Gimmicks like screens-as-buttons, sliding keyboards, Adobe Flash support, “openy” ecosystems, etc. didn’t work. Not for the BlackBerry Storm or the Palm Pre or any individual Nexus or Droids. Competing based on feature lists and spec sheets, in any form, didn’t work.

The Pepsi challenge

So now we’re on to the “Pepsi challenge” phase of counter-programming. It’s a classic bit, where you define the terms of the comparison to get the result you need. Pepsi is sweeter so in small amounts, like taste tests, more people will choose it. You put a sprinter in a marathon, or vice versa, and you pretty much know how it will net out.

Samsung is the obvious place to start. They’re absolutely the smartest of Apple’s competitors at the moment. They realized there would be a market for people who wanted an iPhone or iPad, but not from Apple, or not running iOS. So they made their products look as close to iPhones and iPads as possible, and made as many of them as possible to fit that segment. Too many, perhaps. (Motorola, who makes decidedly not-iPhones that are also not-iPhone looking, hasn’t fared as well in the market.)

The latest Samsung commercial, for the Galaxy Note, puts it head-to-head in challenges against a hapless iPhone user who sadly, doesn’t seem to have an app handy for any of that.

The Galaxy Note has a huge screen with a stylus, and comes packaged with software to support just the kind of map-annotating, head-cutting-off tasks requested by the host. (You can download apps and buy a stylus for the iPhone, but the average user probably won’t have either immediately available.)

Microsoft’s recent “Smoked by Windows Phone” series is similar.

Windows Phone has excellent Facebook integration (and damn fine camera software); iPhone has none. You can get a Facebook app but the iPhone’s built-in social sharing options are limited to Twitter (and iMessage if you want to count that).

Both of these campaigns are designed to get potential Apple customers to at least consider getting something other than the iPhone. To try Pepsi instead of buying coke by default. They’re not aimed at Apple Store shoppers — you can’t buy and Android or Windows Phone there — but carrier store and big box store shoppers, who they’re hoping will at least consider alternatives before walking out with an iPhone.

And that’s an important battle for individual Android device makers, and Windows Phone in general to make. Especially as they increasingly battle each other for unit share.

While Android collectively is the market leader, there are so many Android devices on the market that it’s hard for any individual one to stand out, or to stand out for more than a couple weeks. (The top 3 selling smartphones in the U.S. are iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, and iPhone 3GS — the latter of which is only available on AT&T)

Also, the obsolescence curve for Android devices is brutal, and that’s not good for the profitability of each individual phone and the manufacturer who makes it. (Making 10 million of the exact same phone is typically a lot cheaper, per unit, than 10 thousand.)

Samsung is far better when it comes to obsolescence than Motorola has been of late, but their totally undisciplined when it comes to dilution. Instead of releasing only one or two carefully planned, carefully marketed devices, intended to sell in those tens of millions, they’re putting out up to a dozen devices, at quarter-inch screen intervals, some like the Note that may not sell more than the tens of thousands.

Who does number 3 work for?

Microsoft’s problem is even worse.

Carriers have to carry the iPhone. Dealing with Apple, who won’t give them any control, is a huge pain in the ass, but they simply have to do it if they want sales and profitability. Sprint mortgaged the company to get it, customers demand it, Apple still can’t make it fast enough. It’s a given.

Carriers want to sell Android. Google lets them do almost anything with it, including integrating all their value-added features and services, and while it doesn’t make as much money for them as the iPhone, it’s nowhere near as expensive either, and satisfies the not-iPhone market almost completely.

Where does Windows Phone fit in? The carriers don’t need to sell it because there’s nowhere near iPhone level customer demand. They don’t want to carry it because Microsoft won’t give them anywhere near Google levels of control. So Android remains their preference.

What’s the market for the number three cola company?

There’s probably a hope inside Microsoft that there will be a large enough segment of not-iPhone customers who either also don’t want Android, or try Android, are dissatisfied, and want a not-iPhone not-Android phone. They might also hope carriers want to hedge against Google and, rather than simply fork Android the way Amazon has done — Verizon vOS DROID KRAZR MAXX! — they’ll come to Windows Phone.

The chances of any of that happening are slim. The Galaxy Note is interesting but ultimately a niche product; like Schrodinger’s device, neither tablet nor phone, with no clear market. Windows Phone, especially the Nokia Lumia 800 and 900, are absolutely gorgeous but are caught between the customer-favorite iPhone and carrier-favorite Android with not much space left on the shelf. (Especially given Microsoft’s continued, flabbergasting desire to pin their mobile brand to Windows and not just release it as Xphone 720, Halo Edition.)

A piece of the iPhone

We’ll probably see more of these commercials for a while, especially when the inevitable Galaxy S III comes to market and Microsoft revs up the Windows 8 machine later this year.

But here’s the thing — none of these marketing ploys, none of these devices will matter unless and until Samsung, Microsoft, and any other would be competitor does what Apple did:

Make a great phone that’s smartly conceived and executed.

When we start seeing these commercials, and it’s the Lumia 1000 that Samsung is gunning for, or the Nexus Megatron that Microsoft is playing catch-up to, that’s when the market will have changed.

Until then, we’ll just keep seeing everyone and their phablet desperately trying to get a piece of the iPhone.

What would an iPhone 5 look like if Apple’s design department turned to the Magic Mouse for inspiration? That’s the question ciccaresedesign attempts to answer with this sleek, curved iPhone 5 concept rendering.

It’s got the glowing Apple logo, so it would naturally sell like hotcakes, but it also looks like there’d need to be too many concessions to ever make a design like this practical. Can you imagine it weeble-wobbling on any table, desk or flat surface you put it down on? (They show it screen-down, like a Magic Mouse, but that makes my heart skip a scratch-fearing beat.)

Still, Apple has done the Braun/Leica inspired design for 2 generations now, and that means the next should sport a makeover. The iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S were decidedly flat, barely extruded rounded rectangles. But Apple believes design is about how something works, not how it looks. How would an iPhone 5 need to work? Bigger battery for 4G LTE, slightly larger screen to provide more ample room for content?

The only way to predict the look for iPhone 5 is to figure out the goals of Jony Ive and Apple’s design team.

Check out the rest of the renderings via the link below.

Source: ciccarese via 9to5Mac

T-Mobile had a rough final quarter of 2011, and openly pointed the finger at iPhone 4S launches on AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon as the cause. Total revenues at T-Mobile were $5.2 billion, down from $5.4 billion in Q4 2010, and customer losses amounted 526,000 for the quarter, compared to a 23,000 customer loss at the same time last year. Here’s some of the more detailed financial information.

• Adjusted OIBDA increased by 4.3% year-on-year to $1.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011, adjusted OIBDA margin improved 2 percentage points year-on-year to 31% in the fourth quarter of 2011
• Branded contract losses improved through the third quarter of 2011, however the launch of the iPhone 4S reversed this trend to a branded contract customer loss of 706,000 in the fourth quarter of 2011
• Strong branded prepaid additions of 220,000 in the fourth quarter of 2011, primarily due to continued success of unlimited Monthly 4G prepaid plans
• Service revenues down 2.7% year-on-year to $4.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011, due to branded contract customer losses and revenue effects from the shift to unlimited Value plans
• Branded contract ARPU increased $2 year-on-year to $58 in the fourth quarter of 2011, mainly driven by an increase in data ARPU
• Branded Data ARPU increased $2.70 year-on-year to $16.50 in the fourth quarter of 2011
• T-Mobile USA is reinvigorating its challenger strategy, which includes a major network modernization plan to launch LTE in 2013
• On December 20, 2011 T-Mobile USA's proposed sale to AT&T, Inc. was terminated; due to the termination of the sale near year-end, T-Mobile USA's annual impairment assessment of indefinite-lived assets is still ongoing

It’s a little crazy that a single phone can put this much of a dent into a carrier, but T-Mobile has been bottom of the U.S. carrier food chain for some time now, and with the AT&T deal completely fallen apart, there’s going to be no easy way out of the slump. I’d love to see an AWS-capable iPhone, namely so I could use one up here in Canada on Wind Mobile, Videotron, or Mobilicity 3G networks, but if T-Mobile can’t offer Apple enough customers to make it worth their while, then I don’t see it happening any time soon.

Source: T-Mobile

For today only the iMore iPad accessory store has the BodyGuardz Armor Carbon Fiber for iPad 2 on sale for only $14.95. That’s a whopping 50% off!

Shop BodyGuardz Armor Carbon Fiber for iPad 2 now!

Looking for a product to protect your device from scratches and add style? Look no further. The BodyGuardz Armor Carbon Fiber is designed to custom fit your iPad 2. It offers the tough carbon fiber protection, but smooth to the touch.

Installation is simple and, when removed, the BodyGuardz Armor Carbon Fiber will not leave any sticky residue. Each skin is very thin and will not add bulk to your device. The BodyGuardz Armor Carbon Fiber is tough and durable, and you can be assured that your device is protected.

Features:

• Strong PVC Based Film
• Carbon Fiber Textured Film
• Custom-Designed for iPad 2
• Very Thin with No Added Bulk

The other night, ABC’s Nightline got a peek into Foxconn’s manufacturing facilities and shed some light on how the iPhone, iPad, and other Apple products are made. The main angle was to investigate the humanitarian conditions of the factories, and though there were certainly some interesting findings, there are a few details that Apple and Foxconn wanted to clarify. The first was regarding Zhou Xiao Ying, who deburred Apple logos from iPad casings. It was suggested that she goes through 6000 units a day, but it’s actually half that.

"In manufacturing parlance this is called deburring. Her line processes 3,000 units per shift, with two shifts per day for a total of 6,000. A single operator at Ms. Zhou's station would deburr 3,000 iPads in a shift."

The other correction was about Foxconn not paying their employees enough to merit income tax. Foxconn’s explanation on that particular was a little more roundabout.

"We have over 75 percent of the employees in the category of earning at least 2,200 RMB ($349/month) basic compensation standard. That means they are earning 13.75 RMB ($2.18) per hour. If they work overtime on the weekend, they will earn 27 RMB ($4.28) per hour. In order to reach 3500 to be taxable, they will have to work 47 OT hours to reach 3,500. If the overtime hours are in weekdays, they have to work around 63 hours per month to reach that level of salary to be taxable. Your statement is only true when applying to the entry-level workers while over 75 percent are already over the probation and earning more than 2,200 RMB basic salary."

There was also some additional commentary detail from the Fair Labor Association about the flow of conversation before Apple decided to join the group.

“The discussions began in April 2007 but stalled in March 2008. We then resumed them in April 2009 and decided to do a small pilot survey so that Apple could get an idea of how our tools might add value to their program. That pilot led to a second activity that I believe contributed to the decision to join the FLA at the end of 2011. I, of course, cannot speak for Apple but I do believe that the decision to join was probably taken some months before (and therefore well before) the New York Times articles.”

The report was definitely an eye-opener. If you’ve got 15 minutes, be sure to take a look over here.

Source: ABC

The Zooka Wireless speaker bar is a cool Kickstarter project that aims, though a mix of Bluetooth technology and cool design, to bring high quality audio to your iPad.

Just last night on iPhone and iPad Live I went on another rant about how Apple is paying a lot of attention to iPhone, and maybe iPad, cameras, but almost none to iPhone and iPad speakers. I still have to cup my hand and crane my ear to hear anything in an even moderately noisy room. Apple has to pay some attention to music lovers at some point — they invented the iPod after all! — but until then, Zooka looks like a great alternative.

Zooka promises 5 times the sound of the iPad speaker and comes in a variety of colors including orange, yellow, blue, brown, gray, and black — and a glow in the dark special edition. It will run for 8+ hours on a single charge of its lithium ion battery, and is made out of medical grade silicone so its light and resilient.

While it looks made for the iPad, it will work with any device that has Bluetooth, including the iPhone, iPod touch, your Mac or Windows PC, and even has 3.5mm jack for non-Bluetooth devices.

The Kickstarter project is already funded but there’s still 24 days to go if you want to get in at the startup price.

Check out the videos below (bonus points for the Veronica Mars song!) and if you like it, head on over to Kickstarter to pledge. I know I can’t wait to try it out.

Source: Kickstarter via TUAW

Apple has been working with musical artists and their sound engineers to offer up the highest encoding practices possible for submissions to the iTunes Store, and has now begun to showcase some of that work, launching a new “Mastered for iTunes” section on the iTunes Store.

Apple currently makes use of the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) codec for music compression and while, to the average listener, these files may sound great, to audiophiles, sound-engineers and the artists who create the music, they’re not getting the full array of sound that they intended for you to hear. Most recently, the likes of Neil Young, Dr. Dre and even Jimmy Iovine, head of Interscope-Geffen-A&M have all gone on record as not being in favor of the sound quality listeners are getting when purchasing music. The Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) codec used by Apple and various other digital media service providers, causes quality loss during the conversion from the 24-bit 192kHz original recording. By the time consumers actually get the file, you’re only receiving as little as three percent of the original 192kHz quality.

With the launch of the Mastered for iTunes section, Apple is now transitioning from their original methods of taking the CD masters and encoding them to the 256kbps iTunes Plus files, and is instead asking publishers to submit the full high-resolution 24-bit/96kHz files so they may be the base file for encoding. To help with the transition for music publishers, they’ve also released a white paper documenting the changes and advising how to go about the process of submissions as well as providing new mastering tools to go along with it.

In the end, the ultimate goal here is to have everyone obtain the highest quality audio files possible from the iTunes Store. Neil Young noted previously that he had been working with Apple on this change prior to the death of Steve Jobs and since then, there hasn’t been much word from Apple. Now, with the roll out of the new encoding standards and the Mastered for iTunes section, we know why Neil hasn’t heard any word from Apple. They were busy making it all happen behind the scenes.

Source: Mastered for iTunes, white paper, via Ars Technica

“The Mujjo fisheye is a great little novelty lens that’s cute, small, easy to carry, and a lot of fun to play around with, especially for kids.”

The Mujjo fisheye lens is an incredibly inexpensive way to try out fisheye photography on your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad — or almost any smartphone or tablet. A fisheye lens is designed to take extremely wide-angle pictures, so wide that it becomes almost spherical for still photographs. That means, however, you can get a lot more content — people, scenery, etc. — into a shot than is possible with a standard lens. It also means that pictures are often warped to almost comical levels. But that’s really the point.

With this Mujjo, it’s not about the quality of the glass or the “I can’t believe it’s a camera phone” pictures — it’s about having fun. If the best camera is the one you have with you, and your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad is what you have with you, that’s great, but it can also get a little boring at times. That’s where the Mujjor fisheye comes in. It’s not for high-end photographers (they’ve already got lenses that cost more than the iPhone!), but for people who want to experiment, add a little spice, and switch things up from the regular old Camera app shots.

It’s also adorable. Available in green, blue, white, red and black, the Mujjo fisheye comes with a stretchy, bungee style cord that lets you easily attach to a keychain or anywhere convenient so you have it with you and don’t need to worry about it getting lost. It attaches to your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad with a gummy type adhesive that keeps it reasonably well attached without leaving unsightly residue on your precious mobile device.

To take a fishey picture, just stick the Mujjo onto your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and use the built in Camera app or any App Store app you like — Instagram would be a really fun choice!

You’ll notice right away that you can fit a lot more into the picture, even if it’s massively distorted. Video is a little different, however. Because the iPhone 4S crops the capture size down to 1080p, and the iPhone 4, iPad 2, and iPod touch 4 crop it down to 720p, you only get the middle of the fisheye effect. That makes video look much less warped than photos but still fits much more in the frame.

Again, it’s not a high end lens, it’s just a lot of fun to play around with, a great way to get started to see if you like specialty lenses, and something especially fabulous and inexpensive to let kids play around with.

The good

• Inexpensively priced
• Cute design
• Highly portable
• Works with any smartphone or tablet

The bad

• Sticky backing needs to be kept clean from lint and dust
• Not a high quality lens

The conclusion

The Mujjo fisheye is a great little novelty lets that’s cute, small, easy to carry, and a lot of fun to play around with, especially for kids. It works with the iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, or any smartphone or tablet, and is a cheap way take your mobile photography in a new direction.

It’s not for pros, but it is for anyone just starting out, and would make a great novelty gift, stocking stuffer, loot bag treat, or just rainy day surprise.

€9.95 – Buy now

For more on iPhone photography, check out:

• How to take better pictures with your iPhone
• Photography help and discussion forum

Giveaway

We’ve got some Mujjo’s to give away! Leave a comment below telling us what you’d like to photograph with a fisheye and you’re entered for a chance to win!