Ilium Software Blog

Behind the Scenes at Ilium Software

iPhone, iPad and iPod touch

The Revolutionary iPhone App Store

by Ellen

More and more of the analysts and commentators are starting to realize predict that the coming iPhone Application Store will be as revolutionary for third-party software sales as the iPhone has been for smartphones.

Despite the analysts’ bad track record for mobile market predictions in general, I think they’re right about this one. There will be a huge advantage to having the App Store on the device, supported by the maker of the device and the OS.

Microsoft and Palm have been missing this for years. They’ve relied completely on third-party stores. There’s been no major advertising of the availability of software for Palm or Windows Mobile phones. There’s been very little promotional activity, and not much effort to raise users’ awareness of the fact that they can buy software.

Apple’s already changed this, and the store’s still 3 weeks away. [Read more…] about The Revolutionary iPhone App Store

6 Best iPhone Tips

by Ellen

iphone.jpgYes, the iPod Touch is very easy to use right out of the box. But I’ve been frustrated, both by the on-screen keyboard and by using it as an mp3 player while I was walking. And I thought – it’s supposed to be easy to use; I must be missing something. So I poked around, and found some slightly hidden features that really helped.

I figured everyone else knew these already, so wasn’t going to publish them, but it turned out that wasn’t true, at least around here. So in case anyone else might benefit from them, here are the 6 most useful things I’ve learned about using an iPhone or iPod Touch. In the tradition of top 10 lists everywhere, they’re in reverse order, so you might want to read bottom-up if you’re impatient.

Update: the 2.0 version of the iPhone and iPod Touch software changed some of these. I’ve made a few changes, below. And I’ve put all the tips here, as well, which I may be a little better about maintaining.
[Read more…] about 6 Best iPhone Tips

The Apple Time Warp

by Ellen

First and only Newton Developers’ ConferenceCleaning out my Big Drawer of Geeky T-Shirts (the new one that came out of my recent Google visit just refused to fit), I ran across my original Newton Developers’ Conference t-shirt. I’m pretty sure there was only the one conference, and yes, I was there. As the shirt says:

A smart step for Newton.
A giant leap in technology.

And a long time ago.

I think that if Apple pulls off the iPhone/iPod Touch third-party apps the way they might (and I know that’s an “if”, not a given), they’ll do what they tried to do 15 years ago with the Newton – make a PDA that’s really mainstream. And, no,
[Read more…] about The Apple Time Warp

eWallet for iPhone

by Marc

iphone.jpgYep, as you have already heard, Ilium Software is definitely supporting the iPhone. In fact we’ve planned to support it for quite some time, but until the SDK went public we wanted to keep it quiet. As I mentioned over at JustAnotheriPhoneBlog, we actually started work on eWallet for iPhone earlier this year and have made significant progress. It’s a very exciting opportunity for us because we’re big fans of the iPhone. We feel that Apple really “got it right” in their design and user interface and the SDK announcement proves that they’ve followed the same philosophy when it comes to the support of 3rd party applications.

With that said, I’d like to take a minute just to answer some of the questions we’ve been getting about the iPhone and our support of it.

1. Will you still support Windows Mobile?
Absolutely. Just because we believe in the iPhone doesn’t mean we’ve lost faith in Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile does a lot of things really well, and it offers users a lot of flexibility. It’s an excellent platform and you will continue to see Ilium Software’s products developed for Windows Mobile.

2. What does this mean for the eWallet Companion web application?
Nothing will change here either. We’ve had a fantastic response to the web application and the philosophy that drove us to develop the eWallet Companion remains true. People aren’t content to wait until they are sitting in front of the “correct device” to get to their information. People want their information available all the time, wherever they go, regardless of the device they have in front of them. The eWallet Companion does exactly this and for that reason we fully intend to continue supporting its development.

3. Will you be developing ListPro, NewsBreak, DockWare, etc. for iPhone?
We’re definitely developing eWallet for iPhone. As for the others, I’d say “don’t be surprised if you see a strong and wide-ranging iPhone offering from Ilium Software.” We’ve got a lot of great applications and we think all of them would make fantastic iPhone products.

4. Will you make a Mac version?
I’m not allowed to give you a definite answer on that one yet, but as some technical types might already know, the iPhone and the Mac run very similar software. I’ll leave it at that for now. 🙂

5. What about the Touch?
At this point I see no reason why we won’t offer our applications on both the Touch as well as the iPhone.

6. When will it be available?
We expect to have eWallet for iPhone ready for you when the App Store goes live in June.

7. Will you let me know when you have iPhone software?
Absolutely! Just fill out this form to let us know that you’d like to be notified when we have an iPhone version of the software.

Thanks to everyone for their interest! We’ve been getting lots of emails asking us about this and its very exciting to know that as you guys move to new devices you want us to come along! We’ll do everything we can to make sure that we’ll always be there to help you find and organize your most important information!

Thanks for Asking

by Ellen

iphone.jpgYes, we absolutely plan to have our apps on the iPhone just as soon as we can. Like everyone else, we’re very excited about yesterday’s announcement. And no, I have no idea right now how we’ll pull it off. But I never do.

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