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You are here in the archive: MyAppleMenu > 2011 > April
Marco Arment
Adam Berenstain, Macworld
Mother’s Day is fast approaching, but that doesn’t have to mean giving mom just another basket of flowers or a phone call (not that she’d mind either or both). With iPhoto ’11, you can design a beautiful and memorable custom card to accompany your other heartfelt messages. Here’s how.
Arnold Kim, MacRumors
Apple is working on a new feature for Safari in Apple's Mac OS X Lion that will bring a different kind of bookmarking functionality to the browser. Apple calls it "Reading List" and is meant to offer users a way to save pages for later reading.
J.d. Biersdorfer, New York Times
David Chartier, Macworld
Since Apple introduced stationery to Mail in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, a handful of shops like Jumsoft and Equinux have offered add-on stationery packs that offer a little variety from Apple’s slim selection. Now Equinux is going one step further with Mail Designer, a new tool that allows you to design and customize your own stationery for Mail.
Michael Harvey, Macworld
If you’re concerned about your privacy, it’s a good idea to clear the history when you’re done browsing. The downside is that you no longer have your history to find a site you may have stumbled upon, though you might be able to find that site again through Web search.
John C. Welch, Macworld
Josh Ong, AppleInsider
Ben Brooks, The Brooks Review
Regular readers know that I don’t put praise on things where it is not due — the MacBook Air is due all the praise I can heap onto it. I love this machine.
Kevin Fogarty, ITWorld
For a lot of IT managers – who may have been hoping the whole bring-your-own-technology thing and iPad tablets specifically would go away – the rest of this year is going to be put-up or shut-up time.
IT departments that haven't started projects to support, manage and run apps on and for wirelessly connected, highly mobile tablets are shooting themselves in both feet.
Josh Lowensohn, CNET
Adding to its lawsuits against Apple in three other countries, Samsung has filed another against the iPhone and Mac maker, this time in the U.S.
Brian X. Chen, Wired
What do you do after working for Apple, a company whose mission seems to be nothing less than disrupting entire industries? Easy. You start a company to create your own ding in the universe.
That’s the idea behind Push Pop Press, a digital creation tool designed to blow up the concept of the book. Frictionless self-publishing is a fertile new space, but this particular startup got a little help from former vice president Al Gore, whose exacting demands on an app version of his book Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis gave this would-be company its first real boost.
Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider
Apple's revenues and net earnings for the first calendar quarter of 2011 both beat the reported sales and profits of its rival Microsoft for the first time in recent history.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
When Isolator is running, everything but the frontmost application, the Dock, and the menu bar is dimmed—”tinted” in Isolator’s nomenclature—to help you focus on the active program. Switch to another application, and that application is immediately displayed at full brightness, with other programs faded to the back. You can adjust Isolator’s tint level, from very faint to completely opaque, and you can choose the duration of the fade action, although Isolator’s range of durations is small—even the “slow” setting is faster than I’d prefer.
Glenn Fleishman, Macworld
GPS is, in fact, rocket science at many levels. But the way in which Apple combines and supplements information from multiple sources to create a fast and accurate lock explains why to us as users it’s all “GPS” and just works.
Sam Felsing, Macworld
The updates add compatibility for a multitude of new cameras and lens profiles, add tethering support for three popular DSLRs, and fix a number of minor bugs.
Michael Kan, IDG News Service
Marco Arment
Chris Ward, TUAW
David Chartier, Macworld
OneNote Mobile 1.1 brings a handful of key improvements, including a streamlined signup process for new users, the ability to e-mail notes, and a redesigned interface to make it easier to switch between notebooks. Sync operations and overall app performance should also be a bit snappier.
Megan Lavey, TUAW
Bob Tedeschi, New York Times
Topher Kessler, CNET
Weldon Dodd, GigaOM
Jason Snell, Macworld
For a few years, I dreamed of buying a car with a snazzy nav and movie-playing system. But when it came time for us to buy, we didn’t get either the navigation system or the entertainment system. And Apple was the reason.
Dan Moren, Macworld
The best I can say is that I, personally, am satisfied with the answers Apple has given and the manner in which the company has ultimately handled the problem; while it might have taken a few days, Apple has produced a straightforward document that answered the common questions and lays out exactly how they plan to address the situation going forward.
Ina Fried, All Things D
Schiller said that it turned out there were a lot of unexpected interactions between the color of the device and various internal components. Also, like fair-skinned humans, white iPhones need a little more UV protection from the sun.
Jobs noted that the work Apple had to do to get the white iPhone ready has benefited the company more broadly.
Ina Fried, All Things D
“We’re an engineering-driven company,” Jobs said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “When people accuse us of things, the first thing we want to do is find out the truth. That took a certain amount of time to track all of these things down. And the accusations were coming day by day. By the time we had figured this all out, it took a few days. Then writing it up and trying to make it intelligible when this is a very high-tech topic took a few days. And here we are less than a week later.”
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS
The iPhone does transmit — in an anonymous and encrypted form that Apple cannot use to identify you or your position — the locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers back to Apple, where they are added to a massive crowd-sourced database. Apple used to rely on Skyhook Wireless, the firm that pioneered Wi-Fi positioning, but switched to its own network data gathering with the first iPad release, and with iOS 4.0 for all other devices.
The iPhone downloads and caches an appropriate subset of that database to aid in location calculations, and it’s this cached subset that is backed up in iTunes and read by iPhoneTracker, which accounts for the locations that don’t correspond with where you’ve actually been.
Ben Harvell, Macworld
With iPhoto’s book-creation tools, you can easily combine the best elements of photo albums, written diaries, and scrapbooks to create compelling and personal photo journals. Unlike a regular photo book or album, a photo journal takes your photographs and uses them to tell a story. The images are typically organized chronologically and combined with large amounts of text to create an extensive and coherent narrative.
Jay J. Nelson, Macworld
Apple's Address Book does a good job of printing labels and envelopes, but if your labeling needs extend beyond occasional use, a dedicated label application will pay for itself very quickly. SOHO Labels goes far beyond mere label printing, into the realm of scrapbook pages, name badges, disc labels, and more.
AppleInsider
Apple on Wednesday responded to growing concern over a bug in the iOS mobile operating system that powers the iPhone and iPad, informing customers that it is not tracking them and revealing that it will address the issue with a forthcoming software update.
Dave Caolo, TUAW
Phil Schiller said, "The white iPhone 4 has finally arrived and it's beautiful. We appreciate everyone who has waited patiently while we've worked to get every detail right," via a press release issued this morning.
Sam Oliver, AppleInsider
Apple on Wednesday officially announced that the iPad 2 will debut in Japan, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey and UAE this week.
Kirk McElhearn, Macworld
Many iTunes users not only don’t realize how powerful the program’s contextual menu is, but also may not even know it’s there. Since Mac users are less accustomed to contextual menus than Windows users, many don’t even know these menus exist. Here are 10 things you can do quickly and easily from the contextual menu.
Dave Caolo, TUAW
J.D. Biersdorfer, New York Times
Marco Arment
The problem here is similar to any other general app category with a lot of potential for customer dissatisfaction, like to-do lists and notepads: the features that I care about aren’t going to perfectly match the features that you, or anyone else, will care about. I could make my perfect weather app, but very few others would be satisfied with it.
Steven Sande, TUAW
Erica Sadun, TUAW
Apple just released the Snow Leopard Font Update. This fix addresses bugs encountered with OpenType fonts when displaying and printing documents.
Steven Sande, TUAW
Search speeds have been dramatically improved, so you can keep taking notes without worrying about waiting forever for search results.
Erica Sadun, TUAW
David Winograd, TUAW
Dan Frakes, Macworld
HazeOver is a clever utility with a lot of promise. With a few tweaks, it just may find its way into my workflow.
Vlad Savov, Engadget
Look, we all kinda, sorta know that Apple will finally admit it's springtime tomorrow and let the white iPhone 4 fly the nest. But in order to sell white iPhone 4s, you've got to ship them first, and one small Belgian retailer has just received its first batch of the mythical pale device and lined them up for some loving photography.
Kirk McElhearn, Macworld
Use these simple yet powerful tools to sift through your e-mail and apply changes to messages, filter messages into specific folders, forward them automatically, set off alarms, and more. Using e-mail rules is easy, and Mail’s interface lets you set up their conditions and actions with just a few clicks. Here are five essential e-mail rules that will help you take control of your correspondance.
Devindra Hardawar, Venture Beat
Dan Miller, Macworld
Michael Grothaus, TUAW
Philip Michaels, Macworld
Should you have an iMac of recent vintage that suffers from booting problems, help is on the way in the form of a firmware update from Apple. iMac Hard Drive Firmware Update 1.0, released Monday, promises to tackle a hard drive issue that prevented some iMacs from properly booting.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Kirk McElhearn, Kirkville
Sam Felsing, Macworld
Let’s be clear about one thing—2D Boy’s World of Goo HD is one of the best puzzle games for the iPad. With a recent update that makes this version of the app run on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and third- and fourth-generation iPod touches, it may be one of the best puzzle games in the App Store.
Samuel Gibbs, TUAW
Have you ever wished that you could fade out non-active windows in the background, leaving you to focus on the task at hand? HazeOver does just that in a simple and Mac-like fashion.
Pete Warden, O'Reilly Radar
As we mentioned in our original video, this was what we expected on the iPhone when we found the file, and it was the sheer scale and duration of the recording that floored us, along with how easy it was to access on your computer.
Jason Snell, Macworld
AppleInsider
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Launch Capster—it can run invisibly as a background-only application—and if you press the caps-lock key, intentionally or not, Capster pops up a Growl notification letting you know. Disable caps lock, and you get a Growl confirmation of that, too.
Julia Angwin And Jennifer Valentino-Devries, Wall Street Journal
Apple Inc.'s iPhones and Google Inc.'s Android smartphones regularly transmit their locations back to Apple and Google, respectively, according to data and documents analyzed by The Wall Street Journal—intensifying concerns over privacy and the widening trade in personal data.
Evelyn M. Rusli, New York Times
Evan Ramstad, Wall Street Journal
Samsung Electronics Co. said Friday it filed patent infringement lawsuits against Apple Inc. in Seoul, Tokyo and Germany, in apparent response to Apple's suit against it over trademark issues in the U.S. earlier this week.
The Samsung lawsuits don't directly respond to the Apple suit. Instead, they accuse Apple of violating patents covering cellphone transmission technologies.
Jonathan Seff, Macworld
iBooks 1.2.2 includes “a number of important stability and performance improvements” for playing video with enhanced books from the iBookstore, incorrect fonts being displayed, and navigational responsiveness.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
All you need to do is launch the Seamless app on your iPhone, tap a button, and it takes care of the rest: Your Mac fades out; your iPhone fades in.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Jeff Carlson, TidBITS
Looking at the backlog of iPad 2 orders (and the lines that still form at Apple Stores each morning), the numbers of people showing up to coffee shops with MacBook Airs, and the sheer tonnage of iPhones brandished everywhere, it’s clear that Apple is selling a lot of product and reaping fat profits.
But when you dig into the other numbers Apple released, you may be surprised to learn where, exactly, that profit is coming from.
Alex Levinson
Apple is not collecting this data. And to suggest otherwise is completely misrepresenting Apple.
Location services have been available to the Apple device for some time. Understand what this file is – a log generated by the various radios and sensors located within the device. This file is utilized by several operations on the device that actually is what makes this device pretty “smart”. This file existed in a different form prior to iOS 4, but not in form it is today.
AFP
Apple filed suit against Samsung last week because it had "crossed the line," a top Apple executive said Wednesday, but hopes to maintain a "strong relationship" with the South Korean company.
AppleInsider
Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook said the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan did not have a material impact on the supply or availability of components for Apple's iPad 2 or other products last quarter, and he also does not expect the situation to affect the company in the near future.
Topher Kessler, CNET
Josh Lowensohn And Elinor Mills, CNET
While acknowledging that there is no need to panic, the researchers noted that if someone gets hold of the device, they can access the unencrypted data. "Your cell operator has this information," they said in the news conference. Anyone who wants it has "to get a court order to get that from a provider. But now, all you have to do is lose your phone in a bar."
Shifty Jelly's Blog Of Mystery
Christopher Breen, Macworld
"Some day—hopefully not today—I shall shuffle off this mortal coil, and then what happens to my iTunes collection? Is there some way of transferring ownership of media purchased from Apple?"
Neil Hughes, Macworld
Retail employees were told this week via e-mail that they may not request days off between May 20 and May 22, AppleInsider has learned. It was said that store managers are "very excited" about those dates, but no other details are available.
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
Apple has never broken out numbers for individual iPod models when it reports quarterly sales results, making it difficult to determine just how may iPod touches Apple has sold since the device's introduction in late 2007. However, the number was revealed this week after the complaint filed in Apple's lawsuit with Samsung was posted to PACER. According to the filing, Apple has sold "over 60 million" of the iOS-compatible devices in three and a half years.
IDG News Service
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Today’s Gem, CmdVees, is a multiple-clipboard app, but its developer has taken a unique approach by making the software dirt-cheap and focusing on a specific use: copying several bits of text sequentially and then pasting those items, one after another, elsewhere.
David Chartier, Macworld
Though a couple of community-driven betas surfaced over the years, helping Quicksilver limp into compatibility with new versions of Mac OS X, a new team of developers has now picked up the reins, aiming to unify the disparate open-source branches and return the app to its former glory.
Andy Ihnatko's Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA)
Apple should treat this like a serious problem. I’ll be very, very pleased if I or anybody else can get a statement from them explaining what this file is for, and how the next iOS update will secure it.
Alasdair Allan, O'Reilly Radar
All iPhones appear to log your location to a file called "consolidated.db." This contains latitude-longitude coordinates along with a timestamp. The coordinates aren't always exact, but they are pretty detailed. There can be tens of thousands of data points in this file, and it appears the collection started with iOS 4, so there's typically around a year's worth of information at this point. Our best guess is that the location is determined by cell-tower triangulation, and the timing of the recording is erratic, with a widely varying frequency of updates that may be triggered by traveling between cells or activity on the phone itself.
Jeffery Battersby, Macworld
The necessary addition of label printing gives Bento 4 what it needs to make it a practical database application, while thoughtful enhancements to existing tools and features give it more depth than should be expected of such an inexpensive application. Combined, these features make Bento 4 the best consumer-oriented database you’ll ever lay your hands on.
Evan Narcisse, Time
Topher Kessler, CNET
While rare, sometimes after updating OS X either with an upgrade or with an intermediate patch users have found that an account on the system may no longer be accessible. This may be because the system refuses to accept an account password, or because the account no longer appears. While such problems may have you initially consider reinstalling OS X and restoring from a backup, you may be able to fix the problem without doing this.
Joel Mathis, Macworld
Developers of a new personal journaling app for the Mac are promising to restore the “pen and paper feeling” to the act of writing on your computer.
Jeffery Battersby, Macworld
Bento could and should be the best standalone database for your iOS device, unfortunately you still need a Mac to make it truly great.
Steven Sande, TUAW
If supplies of certain iMac models are any indication, a refresh of Apple's all-in-one iMac may be in the works. This would be the first update of the iMac line since July 27, 2010, when the Intel Core i3 / i5 / i7 machines first became available.
Simon Royal, Low End Mac
Josh Lowensohn, CNET
Following murmurs of Apple making changes to its App Store ranking algorithms to devalue the effect of downloads alone, new claims have been made that Apple is actively rejecting applications that include features designed to boost installations.
Nilay Patel, This Is My Next
Taken as a group, it feels like a remarkably solid case — Samsung can’t just up and countersue Apple with its own patents and hope to walk away with a handshake and a cross-license because of the various trademark, trade dress, and design patent claims. How the company decides to deal with those issues remains to be seen; there’s no question in my mind that Samsung designed TouchWiz to look and feel as much like iOS as possible, and then marketed it as such.
Stephen M. Hackett, Forkbombr
Kelly Hodgkins, TUAW
An internal memo suggests Apple is ending the US$30 MobileMe and iWork rebate program. According to the memo, Apple has told all resellers to end the program on April 18th. All references to the rebate must be removed by the end of that business day.
Sam Oliver, AppleInsider
Following a patent suit from Apple, Samsung has vowed to retaliate with its own legal action, and the South Korean electronics giant is said to be considering a counter-suit related to wireless patents.
J.d. Biersdorfer, New York Times
What’s the best way to transfer a copy of an Outlook Express address book on a Windows XP machine to a new Mac?
Pamela MacLean And Karen Gullo, Bloomberg
Robert Mittelstaedt, an attorney for the Cupertino, California-based company, today told U.S. District Judge James Ware in San Jose, California, that blocking iPod music downloads that used competitors’ software was intended to improve downloading quality for iTunes customers.
“Apple’s view is that iPods work better when consumers use the iTunes jukebox rather than third party software that can cause corruption or other problems,” Mittelstaedt said at a hearing.
Olivier Charavel
I ask myself why they took Tweetie’s sidebar and built their entire design around it without tweaking it or thinking about this kind of scenario.
David Winograd, TUAW
Dan Frakes, Macworld
A feature I’d love to see in iOS Safari is for the browser to open to a blank page whenever I tap the Safari icon directly. But until Apple adds such a feature, it doesn’t have to remain just another item on a wishlist—you can get essentially the same behavior, right now, using iOS’s Home-screen-bookmark feature.
James Galbraith, Macworld
What does the extra money buy in terms of performance?
Ina Fried, All Things D
In the latest intellectual property suit to hit the smartphone industry, Apple is suing Samsung, alleging the Galaxy line of phones and tablets infringe on a number of the company’s patents and trademarks.
Adam Berenstain, Macworld
Designers looking to build quick template-based sites may be better served by RapidWeaver. But if you’re looking for a powerful, affordable way to create more sophisticated sites, MacFlux 3 is well worth considering.
Kristian Vättö, Anandtech
Andy Ihnatko, Macworld
Collectively, the past month served as a reminder that a piece of hardware should only be replaced if it’s about to stop working (whether it’s worn-out or just not up to challenges that didn’t exist when you first bought it) or if the new one can transform the way you work. Otherwise, you’re just being a big, dopey consumer.
Michael Grothaus, TUAW
Nick Bilton, New York Times
The people I saw waiting outside the SoHo store mostly refused to answer questions about what they were doing. But one man, who looked to be around 40 years old and declined to share his name, said he could make up to $400 a day by purchasing and reselling the iPad 2. As I reported last year, this is more money than many Chinese immigrants make in a week.
James Galbraith, Macworld
If you own a mid-2010 MacBook Air, installing the 10.6.7 update may result in an unwanted decrease in the system’s graphics performance. We will continue to monitor this issue.
David Chartier, Macworld
Roman Loyola, Macworld
This article will show how to format a hard drive using Disk Utility, a helpful application that comes with every Mac. It’s easy, and takes a few minutes.
Neil Hughes, AppleInsider
A new class-action lawsuit takes issue with free iPhone games that feature in-app purchases, alleging that Apple's App Store makes it easy for children to rack up credit card charges without realizing they are spending real-world money.
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
The announcement many people seem to be waiting for is for Apple to tell iOS users they no longer need iTunes on the Mac or Windows. The announcement I’d like to see is for iOS users to no longer need to pay for MobileMe to wirelessly sync calendars, contacts — and any other small bits of data from apps from the App Store.
Joel Mathis, Macworld
Smasher, a program that automatically fixes font problems that can result in garbled text, has been updated with a redesigned user interface, improved support for Adobe CS 5, and a new range of font preview capabilities.
Michael Grothaus, TUAW
AppleInsider
Bryan Wolfe, AppAdvice
The “irrelevant trivia” game You Don’t Know Jack has arrived on iOS devices. It is a reboot of the popular PC game series, which first arrived on the scene in 1995.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
The update addresses just a couple of issues. It corrects a problem with blank or frozen video during FaceTime calls (potentially resolving a strange bug that some users have complained about) and it fixes an issue that prevented some international users from connecting to 3G networks using the iPad Wi-Fi + 3G. There’s some question as to whether or not it will also correct a problem experienced by some Verizon iPad 2 users in getting a 3G signal; Apple previously said it was investigating the issue, but gave no timeframe for a fix.
The update also includes a number of security-related patches, such as blacklisting fraudulent security certificates issued by Comodo, a patch for a vulnerability in QuickLook related to maliciously crafted Microsoft Office files, and several fixes for protecting against maliciously crafted websites.
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
Chris Grover, Macworld
Jay J. Nelson, Macworld
Flow 2 is a systemwide project management tool that functions as a workflow tracker, project manager, and revision keeper. Think of it as a beefed-up Spotlight focused specifically on the challenges facing creative pros. It tracks every file your project team creates, updates, moves, exports, or places into another document, and it can show you the relationships between them. It also tracks time spent on projects, provides unique tools for collaboration, and lets you roll back a document to any previously saved version.
Shawn Blanc
For me, what makes a good app great is the little things — the small areas where attention to detail was given and where something that could have been normal was instead made extraordinary.
Topher Kessler, CNET
Often when troubleshooting systems, you might wish to boot into Safe Mode to run in a minimized boot environment to test if a third-party extension or add-on is causing problems with your machine. In addition, booting to Safe Mode also runs some cleaning and maintenance routines on your system, which can help iron out problems.
IT.Enquirer
TextSoap has been the text cleaner of choice for many years. If you needed to quickly convert HTML into plain text or strip quotes from random sentences, TextSoap was the only application that was really up to the job. This application has now been upgraded to version 7, and it’s an upgrade more than worth the price.
Darrell Etherington, GigaOM
Major players in the online video business may still be reluctant to embrace AirPlay, but plenty of small developers are seizing the opportunity it provides to bring content from the mobile screen to the living room television.
Marco Tabini, Macworld
Let's take a look at the basic security features used by most web browsers. Understanding how these features work can make the web a little safer.
Dan Moren, Macworld
Looking to do some graphics work without all the bulk and expense of Photoshop? Flying Meat’s Eddy-award-winning image editor Acorn provides a lot of the functionality for a fraction of the price, and the latest update, version 3.0, adds even more in the way of features.
Chief among the new capabilities are layer styles, which let you non-destructively add effects to your layers. Don’t like it? No worries; you can just remove the effects without any damage.
Robert Scoble, Scobleizer
Joel Falconer, The Next Web
Despite that shortcoming, it’s hard to deny OmniFocus its place as top dog. Wunderlist is great for what it does, though, and for its price tag — but until one app or the other steps up, I’ll be using both apps to manage different types of tasks.
Kyle Baxter, TightWind
Topher Kessler, CNET
Whitson Gordon, Lifehacker
AppleInsider
Mac OS X Lion adds polish to the bundled Dictionary app, with new dictionaries and an improved multi-pane interface. The system also improves overall dictionary functions with enhanced Spotlight integration and multitouch support for inline text lookups.
Josh Lowensohn, CNET
Apple tonight took the wraps off Final Cut Pro X, a new version of its professional video-editing software that the company says is a complete rewrite of the 12-year-old platform.
Final Cut X is 64-bit application written in Apple's Cocoa. It sports a new interface, as well as features to speed up the editing process, including background rendering and the option to make edits as footage is being imported.
Apple says it will be available to users in June as a direct download for $299 and replacing the $199 Final Cut Express, and coming in at a steep discount compared to the company's $999 Final Cut Studio suite.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
With Arrange running, and the window you want to move or resize active, just click Arrange’s systemwide menu-bar icon or press its main keyboard shortcut. In the middle of the screen appears a grid of pre-defined window layouts—click one and the selected window is resized and repositioned to match that layout. Fourteen of these sixteen presets represent specific window sizes and positions: quarter-screen-size in the upper-left corner, half-size on the left, and so on. The other two let you zoom the window to fill the entire screen or center the window at its current size, respectively.
Dan Moren, Macworld
Most significantly, the e-mail, contact, and calendar application has added support for Mac OS X’s Sync Services, meaning you can now sync events, notes, and tasks with other Mac apps. However, Apple has moved away from Sync Services with the introduction of MobileMe’s revamped calendar system, so while you will be able to sync your Outlook calendars with your iOS device via iTunes, you won’t be able to do so over the air via MobileMe.
Joel Mathis, Macworld
Apps and services let you curl up with a good read on your Apple tablet.
Significantpixels
Over the last couple of years, the iPhone has greatly popularized the tab bar navigational model for mobile handsets. Apple has put together a design rationale for the tab bar in their Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) along with lots and lots of other information — they do however leave some question unanswered. Having worked with interaction and graphical design for iPhone applications during the last couple of years I’ve managed to pick up some lessons the hard way, and in this post I would like to share my thoughts on a couple of do’s and don’ts.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
It was a decade ago that Apple proved was seemed unbelievable at the time: that people would pay for music online. It simply had to be accessible and the price had to be right. They created that environment with the iTunes Store for music. And now they’re trying to do it for media with in-app subscriptions through the App Store. If publications stop resisting the changes, it may still work.
AppleInsider
Apple's next desktop operating system release will tone down much of the Aqua user interface and change how screen captures handle windows' drop down sheets.
MacNews
The other problem and probably the thing that has kept me from doing this sooner was not wanting to have to manage files between TWO "main" computers. I didn't want to be frustrated by not having the file I needed because it was on the computer I didn't have with me. This is when I started looking at today's solutions to this problem and I realized that this is very doable now with what's out there today! Here's how I solved this problem and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.
Mark Baard, Boston Globe
I was delighted to read (with help from my bifocals) about an app that turns the iPhone into a stealthy assistive device, enlarging the type on packages and pill bottles that we tell ourselves is getting smaller over the years.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
It’s quite easy to download books directly from Project Gutenberg to your iPad.
Samuel Gibbs, TUAW
The clever folks over at the Engineering Human-Computer Interaction Research group have managed to combine a feed from the front-facing camera, with a bit of software wizardry, to track the position of a person's head in 3D in real-time.
Steven Sande, TUAW
Ian Shapira, Washington Post
An early form of jailbreaking started shortly after Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007, but the practice has now evolved into a lucrative industry with millions of consumers. Some developers, meanwhile, are raking in tens of thousands of dollars in sales off their apps, technically called “packages,” “themes” or “tweaks” in jailbreak parlance.
Dave Caolo, TUAW
Laird has thrown the door open for software solutions. Now, you can stream music between Macs, to appropriately-configured consoles (like an Xbox), etc. ShairPort is built in Perl and C. Have fun, folks.
Alexbogusky's Posterous
Who does that? Has anyone heard that you should do that? It's actually quite weird if you try it.
Obviously, talking on speaker or with an earpiece makes sense as a precaution. But the radiation is not present just when you're on a call. It can be strongest when the phone is in your pocket and you're not on it. My phone just officially moved out of my pocket into my messenger bag.
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
GarageBand for iPad is easily worth a $5 investment, whether you want a mobile songwriting studio, or you just want to play around with making some music and learn a bit about different instruments. All of the program's separate functions can be duplicated with numerous separate apps of various quality and price, but there are none that combine all of its music-making prowess into one integrated app.
Jackie Dove, Macworld
Associated Press
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has finally agreed to participate in a book about his life.
Simon & Schuster announced Sunday that Walter Isaacson's "iSteve: The Book of Jobs" will be published in early 2012. Isaacson has been working on the long-rumored biography since 2009 and has interviewed Jobs, members of his family, colleagues at Apple and competitors.
Jackie Dove, Macworld
In a radical departure from its traditional 18-month upgrade cycle, Adobe has announced Creative Suite 5.5, a new mid-cycle update of its major creative applications. Substantial upgrades to InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Premiere Pro, and After Effects accompany a new SDK for Photoshop CS5.
Chris Matyszczyk, CNET
David Crookes, Macworld UK
Josh Lowensohn, CNET
In a statement by an Apple representative released to All Things Digital today, the company said it is aware that some iPad 2 owners with the Verizon 3G model are having connectivity issues and is investigating it. The number of those affected is "small," the company said.
AppleInsider
Mac OS X's bare bones text editor gets some attention in the coming release of Lion, adding support for vertical layouts for East Asian languages, as well as a graphical menu bar with font selection and text highlighting.
Ted Landau, Macworld
Such support is already available in at least one other third-party product: BusyCal. So you know it is possible to do. As such, I find it disappointing that, more than five months since the release of Office for Mac 2011, Microsoft could not do any better—especially for what Microsoft admits “has been one of our top feature requests.”
Dana Franklin, TUAW
On Wednesday, QuickPick 2.0.3 was apparently ejected from the Mac App Store, according to a tweet from developer Seth Willits. A day later, Seth tweeted that the app is still in the store -- as of this writing that's the case -- but update 2.0.3 had been rejected, increasing his confusion. Additionally, he mentions that an Apple rep told him that QuickPick would be "removed from sale," citing a "confusingly similar" argument. For now, the app is in limbo.
Michael Harvey, Macworld
Dave Caolo, TUAW
Apple has released Boot Camp 3.2 Update for MacBook Pro (early 2011). This update fixes issues with unexpected shutdowns as well as problems with Japanese and Korean keyboards.
Mike Curtis, Macworld
If all you want to do is stop-motion animation and need some tools to help you see what you're doing, this program will definitely get you there pleasantly. It is only if you are looking for truly professional level input and controls you will find this product lacking. I found iStopMotion 2.7 to be reliable and easy to use, but limiting for the kinds of professional production I'd like to do with it, and too expensive for what it does do.
Philip Michaels, Macworld
On Thursday, the Worldwide Leader in Sports announced a new mobile app that will let you stream live ESPN broadcasts to your iOS device—provided you’ve got the right cable provider.
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS
Lex Friedman, Macworld
I began my tour of iPad Facebook clients convinced that Mobile Safari would win again—that full access to Facebook’s Website from the iPad would remain my preferred way to poke people and post snarky comments on their walls. In the end, however, my Safari preference ended when I befriended Friended. It smartly uses the iPad’s screen real estate, eliminates ads and other Facebook cruft, and manages to feel more like an app than a Web browser—something none of its competitors can manage to do.
Ben Camm-Jones, Macworld UK
NetSupport has announced that its classroom instruction and monitoring software is now available for the Mac OS and Linux platforms. NetSupport Assist lets teachers control lessons from their terminals by providing them with a live thumbnail of each student's desktop.
Suzanne Kantra, Today
Dan Moren, Macworld
Laura Northrup, The Consumerist
The problem with having the latest, shiniest, newest gadgets is that when something goes wrong and that shiny gadget sells out, there aren't any others to exchange it for. That seems to be what happened to Nicholas, who bought an iPad 2 at Target, and shipped it off to Apple after had screen problems after only a few hours of use.
Bryan Wolfe, AppAdvice
Microsoft has released its free Bing for iPad app, the tech giant’s first native app for the tablet. The app offers a visually appealing search experience, making it a compelling alternative to Google search.
Bryan Wolfe, AppAdvice
As it stands, the integrity of very good apps can immediately be shattered because of one lousy update. After all, the negative ratings remain in the App Store forever.
Dan Knight, Low End Mac
Dan Frommer, Business Insider
Let us direct your attention to guideline 2.13, "Apps that are primarily marketing materials or advertisements will be rejected."
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
Outlook for Mac will soon be able to sync calendars, notes, and tasks with your iOS device. Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it plans to release Office for Mac 2011 Service Pack 1 (SP1) next week, which will bring the new syncing support to Outlook along with other stability and security updates to the suite. But while users will be able to sync their Outlook calendars to their iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches, they won't be able to sync them easily with Apple's own MobileMe service.
Dan Miller, Macworld
Bryan Wolfe, AppAdvice
Galen Gruman, Macworld
Nathan Alderman, Macworld
Firefox 4 isn’t the fastest browser, and its interface still leans more toward wonkishness than elegance. But when loading and browsing, it feels far fleeter to me than the increasingly sluggish Safari. Firefox 4 offers fast, fun, full-featured browsing with few compromises, and it’s well worth a try.
Josh Ong, AppleInsider
IT.Enquirer
Alexis Kayhill, Mac 360
Why not have your Mac tell you when to stop what you’re doing and do something else that’s worth your time and effort? That’s Harmony.
Charles Moore, Low End Mac
Dan Frakes, Macworld
And once you've used Divvy's grid to move and resize windows, OS X's standard methods of performing these actions feel a bit primitive.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Apple has just released the iAd Gallery app into the App Store. The (obviously) free download allows you to see how the elusive ads actually look and work on the iPhone. And while this may seem like a pretty good way for app developers to see what the ads will look like in their apps, the tagline almost makes it seem as if it’s for consumers as well: Great ads. On-demand. In your pocket.
John Herrman, Gizmodo
But for millions of others—those who are unable to see—the web is a wildly different place. Characters become sounds. Layouts are meaningless. Images are, at best, words, and at worst, blank spaces. And yet the blind browse the same internet as everyone else, every day. They use the same gadgets the sighted do, and happily. But how?
Adam Dachis, Lifehacker
Topher Kessler, CNET
Neal Augenstein, PBS
It's been more than a year since I packed away my laptop computer, digital recorders, microphones, cables and cameras, and began covering Washington, D.C. with only my iPhone.
Jenna Wortham, New York Times
Code By Kevin
Rather than continuing to see the App Store submission process as an obstacle that delays the release of new versions of my applications, and thus sales, I've come to regard the submission process as free, professional-level usability testing for my apps--a process that leads to substantial improvements in their stability and usability. I've never had this before with my apps, and I'm glad to have it now.
Susan Decker And Dennis Robertson, Bloomberg
Apple Inc. (AAPL) won a court ruling that throws out a $625.5 million patent-infringement verdict over how documents are displayed on a computer screen.
The trial focused on the Spotlight, Time Machine and Cover Flow features in Apple’s Mac operating systems. Cover Flow lets users scroll through album cover art when browsing for music in their iTunes libraries. The feature also works for documents, pictures and other material stored in a computer. Spotlight searches the computer’s hard drive while Time Machine automatically saves copies of files.
David Chartier, Macworld
If you didn’t foresee a band using the new GarageBand for iPad to record its next album, you might want to get your eyes (and ears) checked.
Christian Zibreg, 9 To 5 Mac
The free app requires a paid TrapCall service from five bucks a month. It lets you stop getting harassing phone calls by unmasking blocked and private phone calls. Developers claim it’s the only app in the world that can do this, speculating their workaround of the *67′s caller ID blocking feature is probably why it took Apple so long to review the app.
TJ Luoma, TUAW
If you do a lot of web browsing on the iPad, you owe it to yourself to spend $2 to see how much better browsing can be with iCab. I bet you'll find yourself wondering why Apple hasn't added a lot of these features to Safari. Maybe someday Apple will improve on Safari, but I don't ever expect to see integrated Dropbox support. That feature alone is worth $2 to me.
Anthony Caruana, ABC
Some people line up to see an entertainment idol, others do it for concert tickets. For Apple's fans it's a chance to own something that, in their view, is both art and tool. In times gone by, objects that were made to function well and look beautiful were made by people called artisans. Perhaps the devotion of Apple's fans is tied up with the desire for objects that have both form and function.
Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider
The new ad continues the series of iPad commercials that have focused on its capabilities, with little if any mention of its hardware specifications. However, the new ad strikes a new sentimental tone portraying the device as being natural and intuitive to the point where the underlying technology vanishes.
Bryan Wolfe, AppAdvice
The critically panned Color app for the iPhone/iPod touch has received an update. The photo-sharing app now includes improved navigation, updated icons, among other changes. But, will it be enough to quiet its critics?
Mike Elgan, Cult Of Mac
Apple crammed on-screen keyboards down our throats, and I complained about it. But I was wrong. Training the world to accept touch screens was the beginning of the software keyboard revolution.
Mel Martin, TUAW
Chris Dixon's Blog
Another platform, another way to game it.
Glenn Fleishman, Macworld
I had a mystery to unravel: why couldn’t her Android phone connect to a feature that’s been in Mac OS X for years, and which she’d used successfully before with other devices? What was unique about either the phone or the setup? And could I work through the technical answer in the style of a 1930s pulp-fiction detective?
Kelly Hodgkins, TUAW
Witness is a surveillance app that turns your Mac's camera into a motion sensor. The application runs in the background on your computer and will begin recording video or photos if motion is detected.
Matt Tinsley, TUAW
Ted Landau, Macworld
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Like many similar utilities, Moom’s goal is to make it easier to put windows in commonly used configurations—specifically, taking up exactly half or a quarter of the screen, or zoomed to fill the entire screen. But Moom’s standout feature is that it uses Mac OS X’s own interface for zooming windows: the green “zoom” button in the upper-left corner of every window.
Michael Grothaus, TUAW
Apple is set to open its first retail store in Arkansas. The store will be located in The Promenade at Chenal Mall in Little Rock, reports ifoAppleStore. While there is no hard opening date yet, all signs point to an October launch.
AppleInsider
In Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Screen Sharing morphs from a simple VNC remote screen viewer into a multiuser, Fast User Switching Remote Desktop solution similar to Microsoft's Terminal Services.
Dan Moren, Macworld
Have you ever suddenly realized that you’re sitting at your desk, working away, but yet something’s missing? At some point, you paused iTunes, and now all you’re hearing is the sound of silence—and I don’t mean Simon and Garfunkel. Thanks to Take Five, a new Mac app from the Iconfactory, you’ll never have to suffer through this terrible ordeal again.
Megan Lavey, TUAW
GarageBand has updated to 6.0.2, updating stability throughout the program and addressing support issues regarding projects that are imported from GarageBand for iPad.
J. Eddie Smith, IV, Efficient
Use it as a scratch pad – a temporary spot to hold numbers, bits of text, thoughts, or anything else that chips off during your productive process.
Minimal Mac
The concept is simple. Run it and it takes everything on the desktop and moves it into a folder with today’s date. A quick and dirty way to clean up your desktop…
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