Developer ID is the name Apple’s giving their “trusted developer” system for deploying secure, tamper-safe non-Mac App Store apps to OS X. OS X Mountain Lion includes the option, along with Mac App Store only and all apps, regardless of source, as part of their Gatekeeper feature.

The Mac App Store is the safest place for users to get software for their Mac, but we also want to protect users when they download applications from other places. Developer ID is a new way to help prevent users from installing malware on their Mac. Along with Gatekeeper, a new feature in Mountain Lion, signing applications with your Developer ID certificate provides users with the confidence that your application is not known malware and has not been tampered with.

Get your applications ready for Gatekeeper today. It's easy to get started with Developer ID using the automated certificate request tools in Xcode 4.3 or the Developer Certificate Utility.

While this is Mac-only for now, and I’m hard pressed to imagine Apple bringing it to iOS any time soon, it’s an interesting approach that allows for a lot more flexibility for developers, variety for users, and security for the platform all at the same time.

While an official option to sideload apps onto the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad would no doubt be popular with those who jailbreak, there don’t seem to be a lot of apps on Cydia, the jailbreak store, that Apple would allow unto iOS even via Sideload. For example, anything that modifies the core OS system would likely still be prohibited, making the entire concept pointless on iOS.

Can anyone think of a likely use case, or examples of iOS apps, that Apple would actually allow to be sideloaded but not allow in the App Store?

Withings is a simple, beautiful way to keep track of your weight and BMI right on your iPhone or iPad and achieve your health goals!

The Withings Wi-Fi Body Scale brings new, highly mobile technology to bear on an age old task — keeping track of your weight over time. We’ve had scales in one form or another for years. The old analog scales that you stepped on and watched the needle move across the numbers in joy or horror. The big, white doctor’s scale that they tapped into place to measure both height and weight. The digital scales with the big red numbers that held your hopes in their flashing lights. Those all measured our weight, but they didn’t keep track of our weight. We were left to scribble or type in the measurements on our own, and as we all know, the requirement for manual recording creates a remarkable point of failure.

Withings does all that heavy lifting for you. You set it up, step on it, and it records everything you need, and sends it to your iPhone or iPad for easy tracking at any time. And it isn’t just limited to tracking your weight. It can track your whole family.

The set up part is easy and the instructions clear and concise. There’s some assembly required, mainly attaching the little plastic feet. Then you plug in the scale to your computer over USB, setup the Wi-Fi connection, create a Withings account, and you’re good to go. Each Withings scale can handle up to 8 family members or users, and for privacy reasons each can have his or her own account.

Once you’re set up, just start using it as you would any traditional scale. Now, it does take a while to give a reading, sometimes a little too long. It measures your BMI (Body Mass Index) as well as your weight. Though these aren’t the most accurate types of BMI readings, the consistency and convenience easily overcome those concerns.

Since this is an online product, Withings of course has all the social sharing options you’d expect. You can choose to share with no one, or if you so choose, with your doctor, personal training, or even the entire world via Twitter. While I supposed public sharing might encourage you through peer pressure, it’s not something I’d ever turn on. Smartly, privacy is well considered overall by Withings. For example, you may see people Tweeting their Withings weight, but it’s not enabled by default.

Withins also works with a good variety of other, popular health and fitness apps and services, including Fitbit, Gym Technik, Run Keeper, Weightbot, Endomondo, their own WiScale app, and many others. Along with goal setting — and an understand of how to set realistic, attainable goals — this helps you keep yourself accountable, stay motivated, and get healthier.

The good

• Makes tracking your weight and BMI a breeze
• Supports up to 8 users with good privacy controls
• Accessible from iPhone, iPad, and web
• No subscriptions or recurring costs
• Works with many other popular services and accessories
• Stunning looking

The bad

• Not the most accurate form of BMI measure
• Costs more than a regular scale (obviously)

The conclusion

If you care about tracking your weight and your BMI, then the Withings Wi-Fi Body Scale is absolutely the best way to do it. It’s easy to set up, stunningly good looking, and interfaces not only with your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, but with a lot of other popular health and fitness services and equipment as well. Taking care of yourself is hard enough. Eat right, sleep right, and exercise hard. Let Withings take care of keeping track and keeping you on track.

$159 – Buy now

[Note: Amazon looks to be temporarily out of stock, you can also shop directly at Withings and checkout using Amazon and other methods.]

We love our communities! Each of our individual sites — Android Central, CrackBerry.com, iMore, WPCentral and webOSNation — has its own incredibly passionate and knowledgeable community of forum users. Each has its own strong identity and we never want to compromise that. Which is why we went with Mobile Nations as our community network brand. It allows us to continue to respect the culture of our individual communities while continuing to push all of the sites forward and making it more welcoming for users who switch between platforms to find their way into another Mobile Nations site. All combined, we truly are the United Nations of Mobile!

Help Us Improve Our Forums: We want to continue to make our communities even stronger. We’ve put together ten quick questions that will help guide us on that mission. Whether you visit the forums often or just casually lurk, we want want to hear from you. The survey will only take a minute or two, tops. Thanks for participating!

Take the Survey!

Screens VNC, the best designed, easiest to use VNC app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, recently went 2.0 and now handles remote computing better and faster than ever before. Even better — we’ve partnered with Edovia Inc to put both the iOS and Mac versions of Screens VNC into the hands of 5 lucky readers! That’s $50 worth of apps for each winner!

For a chance to win, just leave a comment below! The contest begins now and ends Sunday, March 4 at midnight PST.

$19.99 for iPhone and iPad – Download Now

$29.99 for Mac – Download Now

The quest to get thinner, stronger, faster, and healthier with iMore and Mobile Nations heads into the home stretch!

Week 4. Everything comes down to this. We’ve tried to eat better. We’ve made it a point to exercise. We’ve worked to get stronger and go farther than ever before. And now we’re bringing it all together.

We don’t stand at a crossroads of technology and health and fitness anymore. We’ve blown past it. Technology is everywhere, all around us, all the time, and we can use it to help us achieve goals more easily and better than ever before. Our phones aren’t just phones — they collect the data around us, aggregate it, and report it back to us. They allow us to monitor our progress and hold ourselves accountable. They enable us to to share our progress and engage the power of the community to keep us moving ever forward.

Cases in point — I took a look at P90X, the best boot-camp style consumer workout available on the iPhone. Gary shared his favorite iPhone apps for cycling, the ones he uses to stay fit and have fun. Leanna offered up Pocket Salsa for iPhone, if dance workouts are more your thing. Ally took a look at Weight Watchers Barcode Scanner and Fooducate to help keep your nutrition and eating on track. And Andrew took a look at a great bunch of iPhone apps and accessories for jogging and running.

But back to week 3! Of course, we’re setting reasonable, attainable goals, and we’re going to take advantage of our awesome community to make sure we attain them. As always we’re running everything through our Health and Fitness Forum to keep us focused, keep us accountable, and keep us keeping on!

Oh, and we’re still giving away an iPad 3, an Xbox 360 Kinect, and more!

• Weekly drawings for an iPod nano. We’re giving away 4 total, one each week!
• Grand prize drawing for an iPad 3 IOU! (You’ll get it when Apple launches it!)
• Bonus prize drawing for an Xbox 360 Kinect (Check out [ZEN and TECH](http://www.zenandtech.tv/xbox) for details).

So hurry up and jump into our new Health and Fitness Forum now and pick your goal for week 4.

For today only, the iMore iPhone Case Store has the Incipio EDGE PRO Hard Shell Slider Case for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 on sale for only $15.95! Get them before they’re gone!

Get the Incipio EDGE PRO Hard Shell Slider Case for iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 now!

Focusing on accessibility and innovation, the Incipio EDGE PRO Hard Shell Slider Case features a convenient two-part sliding design. Simply remove the bottom cap to dock your iPhone 4S, AT&T iPhone 4, or Verizon iPhone 4 in most any docking station for quick and easy charging.

A rugged polycarbonate material provides excellent protection around the back, sides, and front rim of the iPhone 4S, AT&T iPhone 4, or Verizon iPhone 4. With full access to your screen, this case makes the perfect choice for protection and functionality.

The EDGE PRO features an upgrades camera hole ring that diffuses your camera’s flash for high-quality photos without case interference. A large cutout on the side of the case allows you to control the volume with ease.

Features:

• Rigid polycarbonate frame
• Upgraded camera ring diffuses flash
• Complete access to all ports and controls
• Slim, form-fitting design
• Lightweight, 0.8 oz.

A German appeals court has issued a temporary ruling that prevents Motorola (currently in the process of being acquired by Google) from enforcing a ban on Apple iPhones and iPads based on what may be FRAND-absuing terms. Bloomberg reports:

"At the current state of the proceedings, it is to be assumed that Motorola Mobility would violate its duties under antitrust rules if it continues to ask Apple to stop the sales," the court said in a statement.

FRAND patents are considered essential to standards-based implementations of technology, and in exchange for a patent becoming part of a standard, they’re expected to be licensed to anyone and everyone under Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms.

Apple, which is suing many other companies based on non-FRAND (i.e. proprietary) patents, has been counter sued by Motorola and Samsung based on FRAND patents, something the European Union is now investigating.

It’s probably too soon to tell how big a blow this is for Motorola, though Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents thinks it could be a deal breaker, especially in terms of how much value it takes out of the Motorola acquisition for Google:

Motorola was hoping to gain near-term leverage against Apple and Microsoft through the aggressive pursuit of injunctive relief based on standard-essential patents. Google, which was totally in agreement with MMI’s litigation strategy, was hoping to buy that leverage for $12.5 billion, and Germany was a key part of that plan because its legal system places a relatively high burden on implementers of standards invoking the FRAND defense. In fact, Google’s public statement on the post-acquisition use of MMI’s patents proposed the German approach to FRAND as the way forward for the whole world. With today’s ruling, Googlorola’s strategy has failed even before the companies have formally merged. This is such a major blow to Google’s patent strategy that, from a mere shareholder value point of view, it should now give serious consideration to the possibility of coughing up the $2.5 billion break-up fee agreed upon with MMI’s board of directors and walk out on this deal. After all, that $2.5 billion payment would be an affordable subsidy for the only totally Google-aligned company among the major handset makers. But in all likelihood, Google will nevertheless try to close the deal, if only to avoid a colossal embarrassment for its CEO and other decision-makers.

This doesn’t affect Motorola’s other cases against Apple, including the non-FRAND win on pager sync patents that forced Apple to stop providing push email for German iCloud and MobileMe users.

Source: Bloomberg, FOSS Patents

 

Mercedes Benz has announced that its new A-Class range of cars will have a new infotainment system which will be centered on the iPhone 4S and Siri. The new system will be announced and demonstrated at the Geneva Motor Show; which takes place next month.

Thanks to a new “Digital DriveStyle App”, developed in-house, together with the “Drive Kit Plus for the Apple® iPhone®”, drivers can now access all the key content of their Apple® iPhone® through the in-vehicle display and enjoy safe and convenient operation of the device via the Controller on the center armrest. The attractive ‘look’ is ensured by the revolutionary user interface design. In a further world premiere, Mercedes-Benz will enable access to the voice-based intelligent companion Siri™ in the vehicle. This allows natural speech input, without the need for specific commands, to send messages, select music tracks and check the weather forecast or stock prices, as well as to make appointments. All the iPhone® integration functions can be used even with the entry-level Audio 20 system.

This is the first time that a car manufacturer has incorporated Siri into its vehicle entertainment system and it is certainly a welcome step. The ability to control functions using the car’s built in microphone and noise cancelling technology would be a big help to the success rate of Siri’s understanding in the car. The new system will be launched initially in Europe with the new Mercedes Benz A-Class vehicle. It should also roll out in the autumn of 2012 for the B, C and E-Class cars.

Source: autoblog

If there's one thing iMore loves even more than iPhones and iPads, it's giving cool iPhone and iPad accessories and apps to our awesome readers. This week we have…

Jawbone Jambox

• Rachel Perkey

$200 iTunes gift certificate

• fxt107

Mujjo fisheye lens

• Bill Johnson

Earloomz Bluetooth earpieces

• Amoody
• Billie W

Hundred Pushups for iPhone

• MetsFanVI
• Michael S
• Ofir
• Patty G
• Sir Brian

Sudoku Seasons for iPad

• Jamie
• Memori
• Ron Green
• Schuthrax
• Tamtam

More chances to win

Contest winners will be contacted throughout the week. Didn't win anything this time? Never win anything? We know how you feel! Luckily, we have tons more chances for you to win, so hurry up and enter everything!

Marc, Seth, and Rene iterate about OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, how to balance security with convenience for user permissions, and Google Chrome for Android, and interrogate Michael Flarup from Robotcat and Pixel Resort. This is Iterate!

• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

• OS X Mountain Lion
• Back to the iPad: What Apple should take from OS X Mountain Lion and give to iOS 6
• iMessage and Poor User Experiences
• Address Book tagging
• iOS 6 and privacy: How Apple should draw inspiration from Android for better app permissions
• Google Chrome for Android… tabs on top!

• Michael Flarup of Robocat and Pixel Resort

Hosts

• Marc Edwards (@marcedwards) of Bjango
• Seth Clifford (@sethclifford) of Nickelfish
• Rene Ritchie (@reneritchie) of iMore.com

Feedback

• Email: podcast@iterate.tv
• Twitter: @iteratetv
• Facebook: Iterate page

If you’re one of the best-of-the-best-of-the-best in mobile design for Android, BlackBerry, iOS, webOS, or Windows Phone, we’d love to get you on the show, or if you’ve found a drop-dead gorgeous app on any platform and really want us to talk about it, contact us and let us know.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Adobe’s much anticipated Photoshop Touch for iPad has hit the App Store. With Photoshop Touch you’ll be able to use many of the popular Photoshop features such as layers, selection tools, adjustments, and filters to create impressive images. You can also you the iPad’s camera to fill in layers with the camera fill feature.

One of the features demoed by Adobe back in October was the Scribble Selection tool which allows you extract part of your image by simply drawing over the the desired area. Combined with Refine Edge, you can even select fine details like hair.

Other features include Facebook integration that allows you to view comments from within the apps, inspiration galleries, and AirPrint support. The maximum image resolution is 1600 x 1600 pixels. It’s important to note that Photoshop Touch requires an iPad 2 and iOS 5.

There are a ton of tutorials built right in to get you started. If you pick this one up, please be sure you share your images in the iMore Photography forum!

$9.99 – Download Now!

Apple has just released a new iCloud-themed commercial aimed to show the advantages of their push and store network. The commercial begins with an iPhone user tapping “Use iCloud”, then buying an album. Cut to an iPad where the music automagically downloads as well. Cut to a MacBook Air and the music is also downloading there.

An iPhone user snaps a picture of his (going by the thumbs!) daughter, and it shows up in Photo Stream on an iMac and iPad.

An iPhone user drags a calendar appointment down and it’s instantly reflected on a MacBook Air and iPad.

An iPhone user installs Flipboard and the iPad installs it as well (sorry, no Mac App Store parallel downloads).

An iPhone user adds a contact and it gets added on the MacBook Air. iBooks popular an iPhone and an iPad. Photos fly from iPhone to iPad to MacBook Air.

Automatic. Everywhere. iCloud.

Interesting that only the iPhones initiate action in the commercial, and there’s no human involvement with either the iPad or the Macs. Nor are any MacBook Pros, Mac Minis, or Mac Pros shown. Or any iPod touches. Or Siri.

Makes for a great commercial, though.

iTweak looks to be a lightweight, web-based jailbreak app store set to compete with Cydia and, from what we understand, will allow you to install applications from the web app directly onto your jailbroken device.

Developed by @roktheworld27 and @mtamermahoney, the description reads as follows:

Welcome to iTweak! iTweak is one of the best places to get all of your Tweaks, Themes, Utilities and more on your jailbroken iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad! We serve as an alternative to Cydia, and the Apple App Store. For more information on multiple different topics, such as security information, our Mac and PC clients, or how to use iTweak, please tap ‘More Information’ below.

It looks as if users will have logins just as they do through Cydia. We don’t know what type of payments will be supported or how that will be handled as of yet.

There were jailbreak app store before Cydia, and competitors that have sprung up in the past. They either seem to fade away or get acquired. We’ve also seen rumors of other web based jailbreak app stores in the recent past that haven’t come to fruition just yet.

We’ve got our own issues with Cydia and some good competition may be a great thing for the jailbreak community. The developers of iTweak plan on a launch within a month or so’s time, and we’ll update you as soon as we hear more.

In the meantime check out the screenshots below, and let us know — are you interested in a Cydia alternative? And if so, is a web based app store like iTweak a plus or a minus in your book?

More: iTweak Store, @itweakstore, @roktheworld27 and @mtamermahoney, via @applecpugeek