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John Gruber, Daring Fireball
There’s one question at the top of the list, the answer to which is the key to answering every other question. That question is this: If you already have an iPhone and a MacBook; why would you want this?
Andy Ihnatko, Macworld
Andy Ihnatko recommends you buy Comicraft fonts on New Year's Day, when they'll be only $20.10 each.
AFP
A US appeals court on Wednesday upheld the dismissal of a class action lawsuit filed against Apple Inc. which claimed the iPod was defective and could cause hearing loss.
Reuters
Nokia's latest patent strike against Apple underscores the changing dynamics of the cell phone market, with the sector leader no longer holding the whip hand over rivals in terms of product development.
Tony Craine, Macworld
If you weren’t already overwhelmed by the colossal array of choices available on Internet radio, maybe you will be soon. Rogue Amoeba has released Radioshift 1.5, an update to its Internet radio player/recorder software. Version 1.5 can pull in thousands more streams than its predecessor.
Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu
The highlight of this year has to be: I bought an iPhone. I even switched telco, abandoning the phone number I've been using for more than one decade. And for the first time in many years, I can no longer remember own phone number. (I can still remember the telephone number I've had during the brief college years too.)
The low-light of the year? My MacBook broke. After my wonderful vacation with my family, I've returned home to a laptop that refuses to start up. And since this is right at the time after spending a ton of money on hotel and shopping and food and meeting Mickey Mouse, I went the 'practical' route and ordered a MacBook with a large hard disk, rather than the MacBook Air that I want but do not need.
But the biggest story of the year, at least for me, is that Apple is still the company with all the interesting stuff. (Google ranks up there too.) From the continuing improvement of Cocoa to the increasing support for HTML5, these interesting building blocks are what motivate me to learn and explore new things. I've also started a new hobby project just so I can say I am still a programmer. :-) All the way from, well, Mac Toolbox, OpenDoc, QuickTime, and Games Sporkets, Apple is one company to watch for cool new stuff. Some technologies have succeeded, some have not. But all are interesting.
Here's wishing Apple to continue to be interesting. Have a happy new year eve, and I hope to continue serve you, dear reader, well.
Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu
This website will be dark until Jan 2010, as I wind down the year for a short vacation and some down-time.
Unless something really big happens between now and Dec 31st, there will not be any updates to this website.
Have some holiday fun, and see you in the new year.
CIO
Apple has made it work for the iPhone, but can that model be expanded to cover the world of desktop PCs?
Ryan Kim, San Francisco Chronicle
With the economy ensnaring rival computer-makers, Apple Inc. sailed ahead. When makers of smart phones increased their efforts to catch the iPhone, the Cupertino company maintained its innovation edge. And when CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs stepped aside for almost six months for what turned out to be a liver transplant, Apple barely skipped a beat.
It was that kind of year for Apple.
Sam Schechner And Yukari Iwatani Kane, Wall Street Journal
CBS Corp. and Walt Disney Co. are considering participating in Apple Inc.'s plan to offer television subscriptions over the Internet, according to people familiar with the matter, as Apple prepares a potential new competitor to cable and satellite TV.
Jin Hyun-joo, The Korea Herald
With the iPhone's popularity surging in Korea, its maker Apple is under growing pressure to have the games offered at its online store rated by Seoul regulators.
Martha C. White, New York Times
Downloadable applications for the iPhone, Blackberry and other smartphones are fast becoming indispensable among business travelers who use their phones to help them organize and navigate trips with little more effort than a few taps on a touch screen. And looking ahead, technology experts envision tools that will be, in effect, personal concierges — handling everything from reservations to reimbursements.
AppleInsider
Apple Monday afternoon released a firmware update for its new 27-inch iMac that aims to fix flickering graphics issues that have plagued some users.
Dan Frommer, Business Insider
Christian Zibreg, Geek.com
A revamped layout sports an all-in-one design collecting all the relevant tidbits of information on a single page, including meta data, iTunes Store links, image galleries, and videos, in addition to cool desktop-like controls.
Dan Moren, Macworld
It’s altogether possible that you haven’t yet taken advantage of the 3GS’s Voice Control features, and while it may not allow you to command your iPhone to produce a cup of “tea, Earl Grey, hot,” there are still plenty of tricks up its sleeve.
Gabriel Madway, Reuters
iPhone app developer Tapulous says its sales have approached $1 million a month, providing fresh evidence of the growing success of start-ups designing programs for Apple Inc's mobile device.
AppleInsider
While nearly 95 percent of iPhone users have upgraded to iPhone 3.0 or greater, only 55 percent of iPod touch users have done the same.
D.C. Denison, Boston Globe
Apple Stores, first launched in 2001 to considerable skep ticism in the retail industry, have turned out to be one of the company’s biggest success stories. In less than nine years, Apple’s retail operations have grown to 280 stores in 10 countries. For the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, the stores brought in $6.6 billion in revenue, adding $1.4 billion to Apple Inc.’s 2009 profit. During that time more than 170 million customers strolled through the stores, boosting the average single-store annual revenue to $26 million.
And the primary component of Apple’s winning formula, according to retail analysts: customer service.
Matt Marrone, New York Daily News
New Yorkers with iPhones and iPod Touches are a common sight on the subways. You won't, however, see them check the MTA map or ask a conductor for directions - at least not if they've downloaded some of our favorite iPhone apps for straphangers.
Joseph Menn, Financial Times
More than 2bn downloads later, the app phenomenon that has fuelled and fed off the iPhone’s success not only appears more significant than that blockbuster product, it might prove to be the most important thing Apple has ever created.
Henry Blodget, The Business Insider
I think the App Store has the chance to make the iPhone the dominant mobile development platform, which could create awesome Microsoft-like value over the next decade. So in terms of the potential, I agree.
Jason Stamper, New Statesman
Whatever Apple throws at its customers, they come back more evangelical than ever.
Jessica Reaves, New York Times
Mike Nourse, a co-founder of the Chicago Art Department, has reconciled his love/hate relationship with iPhones by creating an art class around the phone.
David Kaplan, PaidContent
While Condé Nast is taking a more measured approach to distributing digitized versions of its magazines through the iTunes App Store, Hearst has already decided to put a new electronic edition of Esquire for sale each month on what is increasingly becoming Apple’s virtual newsstand.
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
Although Mac clone maker Psystar has turned off the lights at its Web site, the firm is not shutting down permanently, the company's lawyer said today.
Jim Dalrymple, CNET News
The education-specific channel of its iTunes Store, launched in 2007, has reached a new milestone, recording more than 100 million downloads, Apple told CNET on Friday.
Rob Griffiths, Macworld
If you use the Page Up and Page Down keys to flip through files in TextEdit and other applications, learn how to also move the cursor location while doing so.
AppleInsider
Pesky would-be Mac clone maker Psystar said Friday it plans to close shop immediately, this following a definitive court ruling earlier this week preventing the company from shipping Apple's Mac OS X operating system on its third party systems.
Joe Kissell, TidBITS
I would like to share with you a tiny personal frustration in the hope that by doing so, I can eventually eliminate it. The frustration is that in nearly every Mac-related book and article I write, the Powers That Be require me to add cumbersome extra words - over and over again - to explain how to click one of the buttons on your mouse (or trackball or trackpad).
Ed Bott, ZDNet
And now an upstart open-source developer claims that Apple is actively trying to block its widely used multimedia playback program, VLC.
Nicole Martinelli, Cult of Mac
Apple’s latest iPhone ad revisits that old holiday chestnut “The 12 Days of Christmas” with a lucky smartphone owner breezing through the rigors of the season with a few effortless finger scrolls.
Jay J. Nelson, Macworld
TypeStyler X's breadth and depth of its typographic features and constant visual feedback make it perfectly suited for teaching many aspects of graphic design
Jonathan Seff, Macworld
There's a lot of misinformation floating around about the iTunes/iPod/iPhone ecosystem. Here's a truthful look at a few of the more popular notions out there.
William Porter, Macworld
For an awful lot of users, including users with advanced document-production needs, Nisus Writer Pro is a solid and very satisfactory alternative to Word.
Roy Greenslade, The Guardian
Newspapers, national and regional, are going iPhone app crazy. Apple must be overjoyed. It will surely encourage people to discover the wonders of their mobile product, or, in their terms the "iPhone experience."
MacNN
Production on a 64-bit VLC for the Mac has been put on hold, and VideoLAN warns that unless it can secure more developers, Mac support may be ended with the release of VLC 1.1.0.
Jonathan Seff, Macworld
On Wednesday, Apple released Digital Camera Raw Compatibility Update 2.7, designed to extend RAW image compatibility for Aperture 2, iPhoto ’08 and iPhoto ’09.
Roy Furchgott, New York Times
The adaptation of the iPhone to military use is somewhat unusual, as technology more often trickles from the military to the consumer market. But this is a rare case of consumer hardware and software concepts being adapted for military use.
Ted Landau, The Mac Observer
I can hardly wait to see what Apple has in store for the next decade.
Luke Wroblewski, Functioning Form
Apple's online store certainly played a role in this achievement as retail sales data shows that Mac sales were up 21% year-over-year in the months of October and November. So it's interesting to note that Apple's primary online sales channel (Web-based checkout) was redesigned during this time.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
The days of recording a podcast with your MacBook's microphone are over. Look to these tools to help improve your sound. Tweet
Karen Gullo, Bloomberg
Apple Inc. won a federal court order preventing Mac computer clone maker Psystar Corp. from selling copies of Apple’s operating system or products that circumvent technologies that control access to the software. Tweet
Gizmodo
"Apple has these moles working everywhere, especially in departments where leaks are suspected. Management is not aware of them," he told me, "once they suspect a leak, the special forces—as we call them—will walk in the office at any hour, especially in the mornings. They will contact whoever was the most senior manager in the building, and ask them to coordinate the operation." Tweet
Glenn Fleishman, TidBITS Tweet
Darrell Etherington, The Apple Blog
Even if this particular app isn’t outstanding right now, this approval sets a terrific precedent for App Store policy. If iVideoCamera is allowed access, then in theory there’s nothing stopping Cycorder from coming in from the cold, so to speak, and being offered through legit channels. Tweet
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
The $64,000 question, though, is whether PastryKit is something Apple intends (or that a team within Apple hopes) to ship publicly. It seems like a lot of effort to build a framework this rich just for this iPhone User Guide, so I’m hopeful the answer is yes. Perhaps something integrated with the next major release of Dashcode? And, perhaps with integrated UI layout tools, along the lines of Interface Builder?
Here's hoping that Apple will not hesitate to allow web apps to cannibalize native apps. Tweet
Dan Moren, Macworld
Some have suggested that the reduced emphasis on descriptions may be Apple’s way of dealing with the oft-abused field, which some vendors pump full of search terms and extraneous information. Tweet
John C. Welch, Macworld
Apple’s smallest server is a great fit for a large range of needs. Tweet
Jeff Porten, Macworld
The Wall Street Journal sees competitive moves in recent acquisitions by Apple and Google, but it also fits their existing strategies. Tweet
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
If it’s the iPhone’s fault, not AT&T’s, why aren’t iPhone users around the world having the same problems as those here in the U.S.? Tweet
David P. Reed, IP
Measurements of latency on ATT's network in several cities (not using an iPhone, but a 3G modem) do not bear out the claim by Randall Stross, the NYT reporter, that it's the iPhone's air interface. Tweet
Chris Holt, Macworld
Bioshock was the breakout first person shooter of 2007 and has become arguably the most anticipated port to come to the Mac platform this year. Tweet
Ben Jones, TorrentFreak
Audio DRM has all but dissapeared from MP3s. Apple said earlier this year that there would be no more DRM on music available via the ITunes music store. However, as prolific writer and blogger Cory Doctorow has found out, they still require DRM on their Audiobooks. Tweet
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
Apple has delayed shipping new 27-in. iMacs until it can figure out the cause of flickering screens and other display problems, according to reports from authorized resellers. Tweet
Randall Stross, New York Times
Despite evidence that suggests Verizon provides superior cellphone service, an independent assessment proves otherwise. Tweet
The Invisible
In placing the close button on the right, Google have assumed that in the majority of cases, users are going to be wanting to close the most recently opened tabs first (likely to be the ones to the far right of the tab group) and have accordingly placed the close button on the right. Why? Because not only does this give the user the ability to close a number of tabs in one go without moving the mouse pointer (which Safari does not), it also means that the app does not need to exhibit the ever-so-slightly less normal behaviour of the ‘delayed resizing’ in the most-common case. Tweet
Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOM Tweet
Alexander Vaughn, App Advice
It seems like the idea is to make the App Store more graphical. The app icons are bigger and the screenshots are more prominent. If you have a Multi-Touch trackpad/mouse you can now also swipe through them a little bit like on the iPhone. Tweet
Dan Moren, Macworld
A handful of recent app approvals suggest that Apple is now approving iPhone apps that use previously forbidden private APIs. Tweet
Dan Frakes, Macworld Tweet
AppleInsider
The battle between cell phone makers Apple and Nokia escalated Friday, as Apple announced that it has filed a countersuit alleging the Finnish company has infringed on 13 patents. Tweet
AppleInsider
After various claims of iTunes 9 sync causing crashes and other issues with some iPods, Apple is reportedly looking into the matter for a potential fix. Tweet
Erica Ogg, CNET News
College courses teaching how to make and market applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch are on the rise. Tweet
Franklin Pride, Inside Mac Games Tweet
Thomas Fitzgerald
Having had the mouse for about two weeks now I would find it very hard to go back to my old mighty mouse. It’s just so natural and feels like an extension of your hand. By comparison the mighty mouse now feels bulky and uncomfortable. This certainly is a triumph of engineering for Apple and hopefully they can finally put the “Apple can’t make a good mouse” meme to bed once and for all. Tweet
Steve Wood, Educators' News Tweet
Jessica E. Vascellaro And Yukari Iwatani Kane, Wall Street Journal
Google Inc. and Apple Inc., which have long thrived without treading on one another's turf, are vying to acquire some of the same Silicon Valley start-ups and developing products that put themselves in more direct competition. Tweet
MacNN Tweet
Edible Apple Tweet
Larry Dignan, ZDNet
Streaming is coming around. And it’s even possible that subscription services will gain popularity. If Apple were to simply copy Microsoft’s Zune Pass subscription model it would have a hit. Tweet
Giles Turnbull, Cult of Mac
Eastgate Systems has just announced Tinderbox 5, a major update to its venerable note-taking application. “Note-taking” hardly covers it, though. Tinderbox is uniquely flexible and adaptable, in a league of its own when compared with all the other OS X notebooks. Tweet
Doug McLean, TidBITS Tweet
Victor Agreda, Jr., TUAW
Be patient, be aware, come prepared -- do those things and your unfortunate trip to the Genius Bar may not be in vain. Tweet
Jay J. Nelson, Macworld
Font sharing across platforms, and even between previous Mac operating systems, can be tricky. Here are some of the problems you might encounter and some suggestions on how to solve them. Tweet
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
More streaming video apps, capable of broadcasting live over 3G networks, are coming to Apple's App Store, even as AT&T continues to blame iPhone users for hogging network bandwidth. It seems that AT&T wants to let you have your cake—and charge you full price for it—as long as you don't eat it all. Tweet
Macworld
We nominated, we debated, and then we whittled the list down to these: the 23 best Mac products of the year. Tweet
David Pogue, New York Times
Overall, this is an amazingly fast, impressively accurate 1.0 effort. It has plenty of room to grow; right now, it’s bare-bones and simple. Tweet
Aaron Back, Wall Street Journal
Sales of Apple Inc. iPhones in China appear to have picked up after a sluggish start, with the U.S. company's Chinese partner saying it has sold more than 100,000 of the iconic smartphone since its official launch Oct. 30.
The sales figure, reported by China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. on Thursday, still puts iPhone sales in China -- the world's largest wireless market by subscriber accounts -- well behind other big markets. In the U.S., Apple sold 270,000 iPhones in the first 30 hours after it first went on sale there in 2007. Tweet
Kev Geoghegan, BBC
With more than 8.5 billion downloads and counting, senior director of iTunes Europe Oliver Schusser discusses the challenges of the coming year. Tweet
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
The Ustream Live Broadcaster has just gone live in the App Store tonight and yes, it allows you to stream live video from the iPhone to the web. And yes, it even works over a 3G connection. And yes, it’s awesome. Tweet
Preston Gralla, Computerworld
The just-released beta of Google Chrome for the Mac follows the same design principles that Google uses for its own site design -- the browser is stripped-down and fast, with few features to get in the way of the Web pages you browse. It is nearly identical to the PC version, but because it is in an earlier phase of development, it lacks some significant features. Tweet
Brian X. Chen, Wired
How do you educate a generation of students eternally distracted by the internet, cellphones and video games? Easy. You enable them by handing out free iPhones — and then integrating the gadget into your curriculum. Tweet
Nick Mediati, Macworld
Symantec's newest version of its Norton Online Backup launches today, and with it comes a little help for cross-platform users, thanks to the addition of Mac support. Tweet
Joachim Bean, TUAW Tweet
Steven Sande, TUAW Tweet
Rich Mogull, TidBITS Tweet
Mashable Tweet
MG Siegler, TechCrunch Tweet
AppleInsider
A new study of mobile device usage has found that the iPod touch is gaining in share, and suggests that the media player could eventually transition youth to the iPhone. Tweet
Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu
There will be minimal updates until Dec 10, 2009 (Thursday), as I will be away for work. Tweet
Jenna Wortham, New York Times
Philip W. Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, has immense power over iPhone applications. Which apps are on his personal iPhone? Tweet
Jenna Wortham, New York Times
The popularity of Apple’s app model has reached a fever pitch. Tens of thousands of independent developers are clamoring to write programs for it, and the App Store’s virtual shelves are stocked with more than 100,000 applications. Apple recently said that consumers had downloaded more than two billion applications from its store.
“I absolutely think this is the future of great software development and distribution,” Mr. Schiller says. “The idea that anyone, all the way from an individual to a large company, can create software that is innovative and be carried around in a customer’s pocket is just exploding. It’s a breakthrough, and that is the future, and every software developer sees it.” Tweet
Tech Dirt Tweet
Chad Skelton, The Vancouver Sun
The reality is that, in my experience, the vast majority of what I do on my computer -- write, use spreadsheets, surf the web -- is exactly the same whether I do it on a PC or a Mac. And as more and more of what I do with my computer is through web browsers, the difference is becoming evening smaller. Tweet
Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet
I don’t know about you, but my iPhone has completely replaced my clock radio. There’s just no reason to have an alarm clock on my nightstand when I charge my iPhone there every night. Tweet
Rob Griffiths, Macworld
While OS X provides some Services to send e-mail based on selected files or e-mail addresses, there’s no global “I’d like to start a new e-mail message” command. But with just a bit of work, and an AppleScript from Mac OS X Hints reader Wout Mertens, you can create your own command to do just that. Tweet
Lex Friedman, Macworld
St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants is suing Apple, claiming that the iPhone infringes upon several digital camera patents. Tweet
Jeff Porten, Macworld
Some fear, uncertainty and doubt is being spread over malware access to iPhone data. It's true, but it's not particularly news. Tweet
Ethan Smith and Yukari Iwatani Kane, Wall Street Journal
Apple Inc. acquired online music company Lala Media Inc., possibly signaling an expansion of the computer giant's music strategy.
Palo Alto, Calif.,-based Lala lets users pay 10 cents for permanent access to "Web songs" that can be streamed via a Web browser but cannot be downloaded to a user's computer hard drive or to portable players like iPods.
Is Apple buying the technology, the people, or, perhaps, the contract and relationship that Lala already have with the big music labels? Tweet
Scott Kleinberg, Chicago Now
If you are in the market for a new mouse, get a Magic Mouse. You won't be disappointed. Tweet
Matt Peckham, PC World
If the App Store continues to swell at its current rate, how will users be able to discover great new apps among all that volume? Tweet
MacRumors
Apple has quietly upgraded its Mac Pro offerings, adding the option of a 3.33 GHz quad-core processor and adding the ability to configure both the quad-core and 8-core models with 2 TB hard drives, doubling the machine's total build-to-order hard drive capacity to 8 TB. Tweet
Rik Myslewski, The Register
Apple's App Store police have again exhibited a brush with common sense, and allowed another iPhone app to display previously forbidden images of Cupertino hardware. Tweet
Rob Griffiths, Macworld
If you find yourself wishing for more PDF editing features than you get in Preview, or if you’ve got a need for OCR conversion of scanned documents, PDFpen is an excellent tool for the job. Its abilities compare well with Acrobat Pro, and yet PDFpen comes in at roughly a tenth of the cost. There are a couple of rough edges, but nothing that detract too much from the program’s PDF editing skills. Tweet
Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times
I’ve been using the new Magic Mouse for a couple of days now and I can happily say that Apple’s curse is over. Apple has finally designed a practical and useful mouse that’s better than the cheapest hunk of plastic from the Microsoft pricelist. Tweet
Matt Wilson, San Jose Mercury News
Apple Inc. is one step closer to building a second campus in Cupertino after waiting eight months for city planners to rezone its 7.78-acre property on Pruneridge Avenue to allow office use. Tweet
Dan Moren, Macworld
Apple released the two updates, Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 1 and Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 6, on Thursday. Both include a number of security fixes for the cross-platform technology, with the Leopard update being the heftier of the two, weighing in at 122MB. Tweet
The Mac Observer
SmileOnMyMac announced the immediate availability of TextExpander 2.8 on Thursday. The update for the abbreviation auto-expander added improved support for using snippets in Gmail and other Web-based tools. Tweet
Owen Fletcher, IDG News Service
China Unicom has sold just five iPhones through a big online retail site in the two weeks since it opened the virtual store, the latest sign that the handset is suffering in China from its high price and lack of Wi-Fi. Tweet
Craig Grannell, Cult of Mac
James Thomson of PCalc fame noted late yesterday on Twitter that the App Store’s again updated the way it deals with app sorting: “Looks like sort by release date in [the] App Store only sorts by original release date now, not update date. Say hello to page 342 of Utilities…”
Looks like you'll need to release a different app altogether (like Tweetie 2) to get noticed? Tweet
AppleInsider
Less than 24 hours after its $2.675 million settlement with Apple was revealed, Psystar has removed all of its unauthorized machines equipped with Mac OS X for purchase from its online store. Tweet
Brian X. Chen, Wired News
Apple won’t be able to collect until the appeals run is complete, and sometimes this process can take years. Psystar has said it will appeal to Judge William Alsup’s ruling, which found Psystar guilty of violating Apple’s copyrights. Tweet
MacNN Tweet
Apple
DLA Phillips Fox, founded 145 years ago, is one of Australia’s largest legal firms, providing services in 29 countries around the world. With iPhone in the hands of almost every partner in the 1,300-person firm, they can offer faster, more flexible responses to their clients’ legal needs. John Dockett, general manager of IT, says choosing iPhone was “one of the smarter things we ever did.” Tweet
The eBook Test
What I do think is that if we were able to overhear conversations at Apple, we’d be able to tease out the things that make that company do what it does. But we don’t need such eavesdropping power, however, because we can also derive Apple’s principles from its actions. Tweet
John Paczkowski, Wall Street Journal Tweet
Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek
Apple has long been one of the staunchest defenders of intellectual property. Psystar would have done well to brush up on its Steve Jobs history. Tweet
Robyn Weisman, TidBITS
Given the lack of inter-app communication in the current iPhone OS, the capability to use TextExpander touch seamlessly via its SDK within at least some apps makes obvious sense from a SmileOnMyMac perspective. Tweet
Sang Tang, TUAW Tweet
MacNN
Created by early Twitter pioneer Jack Dorsey, the self-titled service currently uses a scanning dongle that attaches to an iPhone, iPod touch or notebook through the 3.5mm headphone jack. The add-on scans a credit card and processes the payment through an online system without having to use a relatively expensive commercial card reader and service. Tweet
Dan Knight, Low End Mac
After nearly 10 years with a mac.com email address, it's time I stopped renewing my $99/year MobileMe subscription. Tweet
Sharon Zardetto, Macworld
Here's how to get the most out of Apple's built-in tool. Tweet
Sang Tang, TUAW
One of the neat things about Mail.app is rules. Rules will perform a specified action if a certain condition is met. These actions include moving, copying, and setting the color of a message, as well as automatically replying, forwarding, and redirecting a message. Tweet
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
The impassioned pleas of one developer e-mailed to Steve Jobs resulted in a quick reversal of his app's rejection. The launch of the app today is the first known approved app that can stream live video directly from one iPhone to another, and the first approval for an app with known use of private APIs. Apple's change of heart came "directly from the top," and is a sign that real change in the App Store approval process is in the works. Tweet
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Airlock unlocks your Mac when you approach it, and locks it again when you walk away, using the magic of Bluetooth to detect your proximity by looking for your iPhone (or later-gen iPod touch). Always assuming you don't forget your phone at your desk, of course. Tweet
John Brownlee, Cult of Mac
The issue seems to be widespread amongst Mac Pro owners, who simply can’t get the Magic Mouse to play nice with their machines. Pair a Magic Mouse with a Mac Pro and your experience will be rife with stuttering cursors and suddenly lost connections… a situation made even more frustrating because the device works without a problem when connected to other computers. Tweet
Juliet Ye, Wall Street Journal
A month after the iPhone’s somewhat tepid official launch in China, the iPhone made its debut in South Korea over the weekend, with 65,000 pre-orders taken. By way of comparison, carrier China Unicom said a few days after its launch that 5,000 iPhones had been sold. The company has not released updated figures since. Tweet
Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune
Needham & Co.'s senior analyst explains how Apple outgrew the PC market seven fold. Tweet
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
Apple and Mac clone maker Psystar agreed Monday to settle a 17-month lawsuit that will effectively stop Psystar from preinstalling Apple's Mac OS X on the Intel-based computers it sells.
It may not prevent the small Florida computer maker from selling Mac clones, however. Instead, Psystar laid out an argument that would shift responsibility for installing Apple's operating system onto its customers. Tweet
Hunter Skipworth, Telegraph
The Apple iPhone presented a bit of a dilemma to the Japanese tech crowd. It closed the once monumental gap between the western world and Japanese mobile phone technology. In fact the iPhone pretty much surpassed it. But for some bizarre reason the Japanese never jumped on the iPhone trend like we did. Perhaps simply to smite Apple for toppling their handset dominance? Who knows... It may very well have been because the original iPhone didn't offer to the Japanese market what they look for in a handset; useless functionality, terrible ergonomics and a big enough area to stick glitter and general Japanese twinkliness to. Tweet
Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet
While there’s no single app that’s going to be perfect for every situation, here are a couple of my favorite apps right now for storing, editing and reading files. Tweet
AFP
Apple's top selling iPhone made its debut in South Korea Saturday with experts saying the iconic smartphone is likely to serve as a wake-up call for an IT industry basking in an isolated market. Tweet
James Galbraith, Macworld
The quad-core iMac may among the fastest Mac models. But the 27-inch all-in-one desktop might be at risk for a feature that Mac users will not find as impressive—a cracked display. Tweet
Cliff Joseph, Macworld UK
Fusion 3.0 is an impressive upgrade that will appeal to anyone who needs to run Windows software on their Mac, or to ‘switchers’ who need a little help moving from a PC to the Mac. It’s not perfect – the 3D graphics support is still rather erratic – but the slick interface and improved performance ensure that it now feels even more natural running Mac and Windows programs alongside each other. Tweet
Larry Dignan, ZDNet
Apple’s Mac sales on Black Friday were either a little off the pace set a year ago or moving briskly off the shelves with the help of discounting, according to analysts. Tweet
Christopher Breen, Macworld
What you need to do is create an encrypted space on all or a portion of that drive and then move the files you want to protect into it. You have a number of ways to do that. Tweet
Perry M. Chan, Straits Times Tweet
Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post
Both Microsoft and Apple have updated their operating systems this year. Windows 7 represents a bigger improvement relative to its predecessor, the widely disliked Windows Vista, while Apple's Mac OS X Snow Leopard has been somewhat disappointing in practice. But the Mac's core advantages over Windows persist. Tweet
Jason Kambitsis, Wired Tweet
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.