I may have stumbled upon my favorite iPhone app of the year. You see, lately I've been looking for a good GPS iPhone app; my Garmin is now three years old, and doesn't have lifetime maps, so it's becoming increasingly useless - in fact, it now consistently tells me the wrong way to go more often than not. Initially, I thought I would upgrade and get a better GPS, but it's also annoying to carry around a bunch of gadgets when my phone does so much already. Hell, it's already replaced my iPod (for the most part), Nintendo DS, guitar tuner, notepad, alarm clock, camera, and TV remote - why shouldn't it replace my GPS, too? Garmin sells a GPS iPhone app, but it's $40, over 1GB in size, and as far as I can tell it doesn't have map updates, either.

Enter Waze. It's a free app, which comes with fully featured turn-by-turn GPS navigation, real-time traffic reporting and police speed traps (user-generated), alternative routes, and a bunch of social incentives to keep people generating the traffic tips. It's also available on Android and Blackberry.

For me, it's a perfectly practical app: I plug my iPhone into my car stereo, and the voice prompts will dim my music down a bit and tell me where and when to turn. It will reroute me if it knows there's traffic ahead, but it also adjusts itself based on my traffic patterns - if I take a certain route to work every day, it will learn my preferences. You can adjust how often it gives you voice prompts as well. Every morning, I turn it on and it calculates the fastest way for me to get to work based on current traffic patterns, which saves me time every single day.

Being that the app is only 18MB in size, it uses your cell phone data plan to stream its maps and traffic data, and initially I was afraid that it was going to eat up my data plan. Turns out I have nothing to fear - on a 45-minute trip it only uses about 1MB of cell phone data.

The only bad thing I can say about the app is that I had a hard time figuring out how to save my current location (you just hold your finger down on the location on your map to save it). I should also mention that the reason it works so well for me is that I have my iPhone plugged directly into my stereo; it'd probably be annoying to have to listen to it through the iPhone's internal speaker. Still, I couldn't be happier with this free app, and I would say it's a necessary part of any smartphone. Check out Waze.com for more info and some informative video tutorials.

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Today I upgraded my turn-of-the-century iPhone 3GS for the new-hotness iPhone 4S. One of the first things I was looking forward to was playing Infinity Blade on my iPhone - my 3GS was too sluggish to play it properly and I have only ever played it on my 1st-gen iPad. Which means I've never really had the luxury of playing this game "on the go". However, I had a pretty good chunk of the game completed on the iPad (I'm currently at level 42) and I didn't want to start all over again. Since the game doesn't support any sort of cloud-based game saves, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

First of all, you will want to sync and back up both devices so that you don't get all mad at me if you screw this up.

Download the free iExplorer (formerly "iPhone Explorer"), which works on both PC and Macs. Next, plug in your iDevice that has the game save you want, and open iExplorer. Navigate to Apps > Infinity Blade > Documents and you should find a file called "SwordSave.bin", which is the game save file. Drag the file to your desktop (or somewhere else that's handy) and unplug your iDevice. Plug in the iDevice that you want to play the game on, and this time move that "SwordSave.bin" file to the same directory. Viola! The next time you open the game it will be exactly where you left off on your previous iDevice.

Keep in mind that in order for this to work, both iDevices need to be attached to the same Apple ID, and that this whole process may not be necessary if you are simply upgrading from one iPhone/iPad to another generation, since they should transfer everything over for you when you activate your new device.

This was so easy that I'm going to go through my iDevices and start making backups of my game saves (keeping in mind that some saves are different file types - ".bin" vs ".dat", etc) in case something goes wrong in the future. I've heard that cloud saving is a part of iCloud, but I am not sure if it's being fully implemented yet - and with game saves only being about 30kb in size, it makes sense that something so tiny and precious should be backed up a more securely.

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I realize that this is old news, but I can't help but be incredibly impressed with the newest iteration of Apple TV. It takes some of the best non-gaming aspects of current gaming consoles and puts them together into one nice package. Plus, it's a representation of a new direction from Apple; one that relies solely on streaming and not on storage. Here's what I like best about it:

1. It's 80% smaller than the previous version, and with a sleek black finish. It also has no fans so it'll be nice and quiet. Even the back of the device is elegant; all you need is an HDMI cable and you're set.

2. Aside from its looks, it packs a lot of web functionality. You can stream Netflix, Hulu and YouTube onto it, and hopefully they'll allow access to their movie trailer archives - I couldn't find anything about it on their site, although their Front Row desktop application supports it, so why shouldn't Apple TV?

3. Their rental system seems just right - $1 for TV episodes (which means you'd only pay $10-14 to watch most HBO/Showtime seasons), and $3-5 for movie rentals. This might be a little pricier than, say, having Netflix discs delivered, but the price for this instant convenience is fair. I like that the rental service includes trailers and Rotten Tomatoes reviews, allowing viewers to get a taste of what they're getting into. If renting isn't your thing, you can still buy and watch movies from the iTunes store (although you'll have to stream them from your computer to the Apple TV).

4. With more people buying nice home audio systems, I like the fact that you can easily stream and browse your iTunes library on your TV. I can see this working well in a party setting.

5. $99! This is the ultimate impulse buy price point. I already have an Xbox 360, PS3, and Mac Mini connected to my TV, yet I'm still tempted to drop a Benjamin (or 10 Hamiltons, it still works, trust me) for one anyway. no comments

Even though I initially had a hard time swallowing its price tag, I bought an iPad a few weeks ago. I bought the cheapest version (16gb WiFi-only, $500) for two reasons: I don't plan on storing large amounts of video and music on it, and since I have an iPhone there's no way I'm paying for a 3G plan twice. For the first week I struggled to find a place for it in my gadget library - when would I use this iPad and not my iPhone or computer? - but once I finally worked out the iPad's strengths (and weaknesses), it's become an essential part of my day. Here are five reasons you should want the iPad, and five reasons why you might want to pass on it.

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Look, I'm a patient guy. When you tell me that something I like is coming out I will patiently wait without turning into some forum troll crying about release dates. But some of these iPhone apps need to come out soon or I'm going to burn a kindergaden to the ground. 

Netfilx and Gamecenter for iPhone were announced alongside the iPhone 4 months ago. Where the hell are they? Almost half of the features I was excited about for iPhone 4 are still not on my device! Can we get those sometime soon? JUST GIVE ME THE RELEASE DATE!... Also: Hulu. Give me my Hulu Plus Pass already, you butt horns.

Next up: Games. One of the awesome new improvements of iOS 4 is that you can use the iTunes music library on your phone in games and apps. The very next day that this feature was discovered Elite Beat Agents and Audiosurf should have been announced. People, LISTEN. These games need to come to iPhone. They are perfect for the device. The fact that they're not available, or even announced yet.... again, the kindergarten.
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I come to you today with two suggestions. First, make it a point to regularly check the website Appshopper.com. They are constantly announcing apps for the iPhone and iPad that are on sale, and if you are looking to get some goods on the cheap, that's your spot. There is always something that has been temporarily made $.99, or better yet - free. Put that in your faves and click it.

My next suggestion is to download that app "Appzilla." If you can get past the stupid name, you'll find one mega-app that contains all those little ones that you wanted to try, but didn't want to spend money on, like Battery Life, Dice Roll, Coin Flip, Fake Call and Text (my current faves), and a ton more. It's not free, but at only a buck and a continually upgrading library, your ROI will only improve. Definitely check it out. no comments

Check out Google's homepage today. That's one of the more awesome things that I've ever seen. The fact that it's actually playable (after you let it sit for a few seconds) makes it even greater. no comments

A lot of people didn't think it would happen (including myself), but Apple has approved the Opera Mini browser for the iPhone. I can't wait to try it out; as much as I like the iPhone's native Safari browser, I can't help but feel that it could be improved upon. The Opera Mini app, once live, will be available for free.

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Our very own Easy Mode contributor Giang stayed with us over this past week, and his ridiculously awesome photography skillz (demonstrated here) inspired me to finally take the plunge and get one of those digital camera things that have detachable lenses (DSLRs to the rest of the world). If you're curious about doing the same, here is my story.

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I just finished following Engadget's iPhone OS 4.0 Event Liveblog, and here are the most significant features they announced:

1. Multitasking - basically, you double-click on the homescreen to bring up all the apps that are open at once. Since apps can run in the background, this means you can get Skype calls even when the app isn't open, or listen to Pandora while doing something else. This is pretty cool.

2. Folders - this will allow you to put multiple apps into one folder, and it will name it for you based on the apps you add into the folder (or you can name it yourself). This now allows you to put over 2,000 apps on your iPhone at once. I used this on my old unlocked iPhone a little bit, but to be honest, I would forget what apps I had in folders and ended up neglecting them. We'll see how this works out.

3. Enhanced Mail - unified inbox (good for me, since I have four accounts that I regularly check), organize email by thread. Sounds good to me.

4. Game center - Apple's own social gaming network. Basically, Xbox Live for the iPhone. This is huge, because it basically will lay waste to current networks like OpenFeint and the Plus+ network. It's going to have a friends list, matchmaking, leaderboards, and achievements.

5. They mentioned a couple other items offhand, like bluetooth keyboard support (YES!), spell checker, customizable homescreen wallpaper, 5x digital zoom, manual focus for videos, and the ability to create playlists.

The new OS will be out this Summer on 3GS. The 3G will have most of the features, but not all of them (they specifically said multitasking will not be on the 3G). It also is coming to the iPad this Fall, which is good news considering how much processing power the iPad has. Overall, most of what I was hoping for is coming to the iPhone soon, and I'm excited. no comments