I’m just going to come right out and say it. If you own an iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone, and you play the guitar, you should invest in an iRig (seriously, you can thank us later). The iRig guitar accessory from IK Multimedia, and the accompanying AmpliTube iPad and iPhone software, are really a treat to use. The basic premise of the product is this: you hook your iRig adapter up to your iDevice and guitar, you then hook up the output of the iRig to headphones or an amp, you fire up the AmpliTube software and begin to tinker with the plethora of effects, amps, mics, pedals, and cabinets the software puts at your finger tips and start to jam. You can layer effects and change amplifiers and cabinets to get the exact sound you want from your guitar with the flick of a finger. Want to play a little Rage Against the Machine on your Taylor acoustic ax? Not an issue. One of the coolest features we found was the ability to use your iDevice’s accelerometer to control a Wah Wah pedal. How one would successfully “Wah” while simultaneously playing is sort of beyond us… but it is still a really cool use of the accelerometer.

The unit was designed and works best with an electric guitar, but in out testing we found it worked really well with pretty much any 6-string with a decent pickup. The iRig retails for $39.99, requires iOS 3.1.3 or higher (see compatibility chart here), and is a ton of fun. If you have someone in your household who is learning how to play the guitar, the iRig might not be a bad investment for you either. Couple the device with a good set of headphones and your guitar playing n00b can channel their inner Kurt Cobain without rattling all the windows in your place. You can check out a video of Richard Fortus from Guns N’ Roses going to town with his iRig after the bounce. Let us know what you think.

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You know how we reported on FaceTime probably linking up with emails instead of just phone numbers? It looks like it’s coming true, and possibly as soon as this month or next with Apple’s next iPod-focused event. There is a new option to initiate FaceTime calls from email addresses in the latest iPhone 4.1 beta 3. There’s a shot of the button above basically showing how simple this would be, in theory. No idea how Apple will plan to address multiple devices with the same email address, but we’re sure they’ll figure something out.

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Google has introduced new location-aware advertising for iPhone and Android handsets. Advertisers will now have the ability to select a “location extension for display” option that will serve up their ads based upon a user’s GPS coordinates. Ads will appear within mobile applications and mobile browsers and will allow users to get mapping and contact information for businesses that are within the immediate area. This feature is pretty cool once you get over the creepiness of Google sending ads to you based upon your device, the context of your mobile usage, and now your location.

[Via Tech Crunch]

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That’s right, folks. iOS 4.1 beta 2 for iPhone has just Apple’s developer site. We’re diving into it, but let us know if anything pops out at you, alrighty?

Citigroup confirmed publicly that its Citi Mobile iPhone application has a major security flaw. The Citi Mobile application is used by Citibank customers to manage their bank accounts from their iPhone or iPod Touch. The application reportedly stored sensitive information — including account numbers, payment information, and security access codes — in a hidden file on the user’s phone. This file may also have been transferred to a PC if a user synced his or her phone with their machine. Before panic overtakes you, there is no indication that these files have been compromised by any known exploit. Nonetheless, Citibank is telling its customers to upgrade to the latest version of its application which deletes these hidden files. The updated version was released on July 19th and is available for download from the App store.

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Last week, we reported on a tip that one of our Apple sources provided us: Apple was planning to ramp up shipments of iPhone and iPad orders to those currently on waiting lists. We’ve been receiving tips all morning saying that customers who were on these waiting lists — not expecting to receive their items for weeks — have started getting notification that their iPads or iPhones will arrive in a few days. Additionally, a close friend of mine ordered an iPad with an estimated ship date of August 3rd, and the iPad was delivered today. Who else is finding the same thing?

Nuance has just released an updated version of its free Dragon Dictation application for the iPhone and iPad that brings typeless social networking to the iPhone OS and iOS-using masses. In addition to the previous SMS and email support, Dragon Dictation 2.0 now allows you to post to twitter or update your status on Facebook merely by speaking to your mobile device. The latest version also pastes your dictated text directly into the device’s clipboard and can auto-save text when a phone call interrupts your oh-so-important dictation. So Dragon Dictation users, rest those fingers and start talk tweeting… we all know how difficult it is to type 140 characters.

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It took just over a month for iOS 4 to rack up 50% of iPhone traffic according to metrics from online advertising firm Chitika. Chikita has compiled data from over 9 million impressions from Apple devices on its advertising network and calculated that iOS 4 edges out iPhone OS 3.x.x, 50% to 49% respectively. Taking the top spot amongst OS 3.x devices with 29.87% of overall traffic is OS 3.1.3 , which is the latest firmware version prior to iOS 4 and the final version for the original iPhone. Interestingly enough, the latest 4.0.1 firmware update has only been adopted by 10% of iOS users in its first week of availability which suggests that iPhone users are not in a rush to apply this much ballyhooed signal strength software fix.  

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Burlington, Mass-based company, Nuance, is bringing its duo of popular speech recognition software to customers in the UK. Nuance’s popular Dragon Search and Dragon Dictation have been submitted to Apple’s App Store and are awaiting approval for distribution in the UK. Both titles are currently available for free in the US and boast of combined downloads that approach 37 million. Dragon Search gives Android’s voice-to-text search a run for its money by providing  iPhone owners with the ability to query popular search engines and social networks with their voice. Nuance’s other title, Dragon Dictation, brings dictation capabilities to Apple’s iOS platform and has been very well received. If all goes as expected, the two Nuance software titles should appear in the UK App Store soon.

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Well, that rumor from earlier was definitely correct, folks! Apple has iPhone OS 4.0.1 ready to go through iTunes. Let us know if this is anything more than the graphical signal representation fix and the formula to calculate the bars to display, ok?

Thanks to our tipsters!

One of our reliable Apple connections (not Jason Burford) just let us know some pretty fantastic news. It’s been widely assumed that Apple will start to roll out their FaceTime real-time communication protocol to more and more of their mobile devices (and possibly their computers), but until now, we’ve been in the dark on how this will actually work. After all, there are no phone numbers to call on an iPod touch or iPad. Here is how we have been told FaceTime will work on non-iPhone devices:

It’s actually pretty simple… Your Apple ID will be registered with your device/s, and that will allow other Apple devices to start a FaceTime call using your email address. Apple will also reportedly make use of push notifications to deliver these incoming FaceTime connection requests as we have been informed there is a push notification detector tied into the FaceTime frameworks in the new iPhone OS 4.1 beta. We’re not sure how Apple will handle an iPod touch trying to connect to a FaceTime session on an iPhone as it seems Apple would still require you to use the iPhone’s phone number, at least that’s how it seems currently. In all reality though, we’re pretty confident Apple will make a straight forward and unified way of talking to every eventual FaceTime-enabled Apple device or computer, and it might be an Apple ID, or possibly something else down the road.

Rumors have started to fly around the internet about an iPhone 4 recall, and this got us thinking… while we think a mandatory recall is very unlikely (as the iPhone 4 isn’t much of a safety concern), this is now a no win-situation for Apple.

When accounts of the iPhone 4′s reception woes first began to surface — shortly after the device’s release — Apple instantly denied the problem. We heard things like, “There is no issue,” and “All phones have some signal degradation depending on how you hold them,” and so on. Apple’s initial strategy seemed to be to deny the existence of an issue.

After the initial wave of consumer complaints came some expert testimony. People with RF engineering backgrounds and fancy degrees began stating that due to the way the iPhone’s antenna is engineered, grasping the phone “incorrectly” could cause the RF emission from the antenna to convert into heat, thus losing or diminishing the signal. To this Apple’s response was the admission of a “shocking” software error that causes your iPhone 4 (and presumably all other iPhones) to display the wrong number of “bars” in your signal meter.

Now, onto the latest — and perhaps most damning — round of critiques. Consumer Reports, a highly respected company in the United States, has confirmed through laboratory tests that the root issue with the iPhone 4 is a design problem with the antenna. The findings have resulted in the iPhone 4 receiving a “not recommended” rating from Consumer Reports, even though it otherwise tested as one of the best smartphones on the market. This morning, a member of the Consumer Reports team was on CBS’ The Early Show, demonstrating to Harry Smith how to “fix” your iPhone with a piece of duct tape. Ouch.

So here Apple sits. The Cupertino company first denied the antenna problems then admitted to there being some sort of software problem that had to do with reception perception. Meanwhile, the rest of the iPhone universe – lovers and haters alike, as well as Consumer Reports – has come to the conclusion that the issue with the iPhone 4 is definitively hardware and design related. So what about some sort of voluntary recall?

Occasionally, if done properly, a voluntary recall can earn a company some good will with its customer base. However, for Apple, that ship has long since sailed. Apple is going to release some sort of software patch for the iPhone 4, and if that doesn’t remedy the issue, here are Apple’s options.

1. Do nothing. Stick with the stance that there is no antenna issue with the iPhone 4, remind users that holding all smartphones a certain way will cause signal degradation, and deal with the impending lawsuits. Refute the concrete evidence and try to ride out the public relations nightmare.
2. Do some sort of voluntary recall of the first wave of iPhone 4′s. By doing this it would be admitting that, at best, the company was wrong and did not fully understand its own product, or at worst, it lied to its customer base. Deal with the backlash, and still potential lawsuit, and move on.

These are the choices that Apple has left itself through its management (read: mismanagement) of this situation. Neither option is all that appealing, and it leaves Apple with a pretty unenviable decision.

What’s better than giving away one iPhone 4? Giving away two of them, obviously. We saw that some of you didn’t like that the winner of the iPhone 4 actually already had purchased one for himself (unbeknownst to us), and since we value every single one of you out there, we thought it would be fair to do another giveaway. That’s right, we’re giving away one more iPhone 4, and the rules are basically the same. Here are the official contest rules:

• To officially enter into the giveaway, drop a comment below explaining how badly you want a new iPhone 4 and why!
• If you use Twitter, shoot us a follow! Our username is @BGR.
• If you use Facebook, become a fan of our BGR Facebook page.
• We’ll run the giveaway for a little over a week, until Wednesday, July 21st at 11:59PM
• Please enter once and only once, multiple entries will disqualify you

Good luck. Again!

Tech Crunch is reporting that Tapulous, the company behind Tap Tap Revenge for the iPhone and Tap Tap Radiation for the iPad, has been acquired by Disney. Details are sparse but according to the leaked information, Bart Decrem, the founder of Tapulous, is expected to join Disney as a VP. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed — anyone care to guess the closing price on this presumably lucrative deal?

UPDATE: It’s now official. Click here to check out the press release.

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One of our readers has a pretty interesting story to share. It is one that involves his passion for Apple products, an Apple engineer, Steve Jobs, and reported problems with the iPhone 4′s antenna placement. Let’s call the person talking to Apple and Steve Jobs “Tom”… Tom recorded a video which he posted on YouTube. That video demonstrated the iPhone 4′s now well known issue of signal degration when being held mostly on the left lower side of the phone. Apparently, Apple noticed the video, and reached out directly to Tom. While talking with Apple, Tom was informed that Apple doesn’t consider this an issue, and that anything online is just “rumor hysteria”. Apple also asked Tom not to post further videos.

Tom followed up by emailing the Apple engineer and Steve Jobs directly. Below is the email thread broken down. We have verified the email headers and information, and believe this exchange to be 100% legitimate.

Updated…

First email:

[Apple engineer name redacted],

When we spoke, you would not tell me that there is a fix for this phone?

A friend just sent me this: http://www.bgr.com/2010/06/29/leaked-apples-internal-iphone-4-antenna-troubleshooting-procedures/

I assume there is no fix then. If this is legit, I have lost all respect for apple and just want to go back to Verizon and get a nice Android phone. And don’t tell me they have the same issues, all our co-workers with Androids are just mocking us right now…. “Hey, I am going to go in the basement and continue my call. You can use my office on the 2nd floor so you can get a signal”. You are going to kill your brand over one product. Apple is coming off arrogant and rude. If there is no fix just tell people so they can return their phones. We have work to do. I have bought just about every apple product made in the last 20 years  and this is the 1st time I am ashamed to be a MAC fan.

This is just  sickening,

[Tom]

Here is Steve Jobs’ reply:

No, you are getting all worked up over a few days of rumors.  Calm down.

Our reader’s response:

I am really insulted… “Calm down”…. “rumors”… What arrogance. This is will be marked as the begging of the end of Apple. Seriously, DO THE RIGHT THING. I just had dinner with 3 people who had iPhone 4s we all cant make calls without dropping. There is no rumors it is reality.

Steve Jobs counters:

You are most likely in an area with very low signal strength.

Our reader again:

Stop with jackass comments. I have has every iphone made. They all had a bad signal but this is the so much worse X3. The whole country is is in a “low signal strength” in reality… all but apple campus and your house it seems? AT&T maps are a joke. I am in “excellent” to “good” coverage and on my iPhone 1, Iphone 3G, and my iPhone 3Gs, I could  at least make a telephone call. After all, it is a phone. Iphone 4…. 5 bars….. touch the phone… ZERO bars call drops.

Steve. IT DOES NOT WORK! Geezzz I hope this this is not really you. Are we on a different MHz? I have yet to see an iPhone [4] work in Richmond when you hold it in your hand. It is not “isolated”. I was a big fan. But I am done.

Steve responds once again:

You may be working from bad data. Not your fault. Stay tuned. We are working on it.

Sent from my iPhone

And lastly, Tom emails in again:

Retire, relax, enjoy your family. It is just a phone. Not worth it.

What are your thoughts on this one? Is Tom in the right? Did he get a little too aggressive with his emails? Do you believe Steve Jobs when he says Apple is actively working on it?

UPDATE: The last line in the email exchange was actually not said by Mr. Jobs; rather it was by “Tom.” We corrected it as soon as we were made aware.

UPDATE 2: Added email header information and full exchange..