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Alexandra Chang, Macworld
The latest version adds full support for OS X Lion features, along with the ability to share themes with others, track your writing progress, and more.
AppleInsider
Steven Sande, TUAW
Chris McVeigh, Macworld
This amazing app helps you create computer-based tutorial videos by recording your screen activity (along with narration), which you can then share online with friends and fans.
Steven Sande, TUAW
Auto Pause pauses tracking when you stop moving, then starts up the timer again when you begin running again.
Ryan Faas, InfoWorld
This Mac management guide will help you extend your existing support strategies to Mac workstations, and provide tips and techniques for embracing Macs as they become more prevalent in your business environment.
Steve Alexandra, Arizona Daily Star
The larger point is that consumers who just paid several hundred dollars for a tablet computer shouldn't also have to buy new USB connectors or wireless printers - they should be able to use the technology they already own.
Dave Girard, Ars Technica
It's not a Photoshop clone, it's not dumbed down, it has vector tools, good (if buggy) type handling, and it's laid out in an uncluttered way that means a lot to those for whom this program is intended. Nice touches make this an easy app to recommend for image editing on the cheap, but what it lacks, even within this context, makes it just shy of great.
Chris Rawson, TUAW
Apple has kicked its iPhone 4S ad campaign into high gear with three new commercials featuring Siri, the new 8 megapixel camera, and integration with iCloud.
Fraser Speirs
When iOS first appeared, it was a smartphone OS. Today, with the iPad, it's much more than that. To be an "ambitious" iOS app, I think you need to be doing one or more of the following things.
Mona Simpson, New York Times
But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.
Michael Gartenberg, Macworld
It's easier to get in shape with your iPhone and iPod to help you out.
Matt Neuburg, TidBITS
TinkerTool is a brilliant one-window application that presents itself as a series of panes, rather like System Preferences, each pane providing checkboxes or other interface for throwing undocumented under-the-hood switches in your system and in some Apple-provided software, such as the Finder and Safari. It customizes itself automatically to the particular system and version you’re using, so the options you’ll see are always the right options. And, like TidBITS, it takes a conservative stance; its only options are those that have been determined to be safe and useful.
Don Southard, MacStories
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Ted Landau, Macworld
If you’re willing to stray from Apple’s recommended path, you can auto-sync between Macs and iCloud—without any need for a web browser. You do it via the Mobile Documents folder—an iCloud-based folder on your Mac that works a lot like Dropbox.
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
Why not the same thing for TV channels? We’re seeing the beginnings of this, with iPhone and iPad apps like HBO Go, Watch ESPN, and the aforementioned Bloomberg TV+. Letting each TV network do their own app allows them the flexibility that writing software provides. News networks can combine their written and video news into an integrated layout. Networks with contractual obligations to cable operators, like HBO and ESPN, can write code that requires users to log in to verify their status as an eligible subscriber.
AFP
Singapore's SingTel has developed an application to rival the voice-activated Siri on the iPhone 4S that is sure to go down well in the island state -- because it can understand "Singlish".
Farhad Manjoo, Slate
Texting-while-driving laws are unclear, inconsistent, and spottily enforced. Here’s how to fix them.
Patrick May, San Jose Mercury News
While Apple's (AAPL) new digital darling is quite adept at putting your calls through or setting up lunch appointments, Siri still requires some good old-fashioned finger-work on your part. For starters, activating her requires you to push the iPhone's home button, which might worry some law-abiding motorists. But California Highway Patrol spokesman D.J. Sarabia says the problem with cell-phone legislation is that you can ask "ten of us in law enforcement and you'll get ten slightly different interpretations. I'd say that holding down the start button for two seconds until she comes on probably doesn't violate the law. But then it's one of those subjective things that in the end a judge will have to rule on.''
In the meantime, when in doubt, keep your mobile conversations with Siri to a minimum, says Sgt. Trent Cross with the California Highway Patrol. "You shouldn't be using Siri or playing with your lap dog or putting on makeup while you're driving," says Cross. "Lives are lost when people get distracted. That's why we highly discourage drivers from doing anything except driving while they're driving."
Jeff Carlson, Macworld
Megan Lavey-Heaton, TUAW
If you need a solid text-based IM client with updates handled through the Mac App Store and syncing, Trillian is a good way to go.
Chris Rawson, TUAW
"Apple Lossless Audio Codec sources are available under the Apache license," according to Mac OS Forge, and the project "contains the sources for the ALAC encoder and decoder."
Jeff Carlson, TidBITS
I will admit that duplicating a document and then saving it later does make some conceptual sense. But why is there the delay between creating the duplicate and saving it to disk? Why doesn’t Duplicate open the new window and automatically, quickly, let you choose how to save it?
Macworld
To loop back around, you need to release Tab and press it again.
Whitson Gordon, Lifehacker
In Safari for iOS 5, just press and hold on the "new tab" plus sign on the right, and you'll see a menu of your recently closed tabs. Nifty!
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet
Spreaker (free) just went live in the App Store this morning and it does for audio what Twitter does for text (and YouTube does for video): it makes it easy to share audio content across social networks.
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
Financial media and data company Bloomberg today launched a new Bloomberg TV+ app for the iPad, offering free, ad-supported live streaming of the financial news channel.
Graham Spencer, MacStories
A big drawcard for many will be Pixelmator’s new drawing tools that make it easy to create, combine and edit vector shapes easily. A new ‘Shape Settings’ palette also makes it simple to adjust the shadow, stroke and fill of a vector shape. A new healing tool in Pixelmator 2.0 features content-aware fill technology so that it is easy to remove ‘objects’ from a photograph and make it appear as though it was never even there.
Arnold Kim, MacRumors
Adobe has launched the Universal iOS app and Mac app for Carousel this evening. Carousel is Adobe's cloud storage service that allows you to access your entire photo library from all your devices.
AppleInsider
Apple on Wednesday issued EFI Firmware updates for its Thunderbolt-equipped iMac, Mac Mini, Macbook Pro and Macbook Air computers, as well as minor updates to QuickTime for Windows and iPhoto.
Josh Taylor, ZDNet
Apple's new iMessage application, which bypasses carrier SMS services in favour of data, raises questions about police ability to intercept messages, according to James Espie, product manager for applications at Vodafone.
As companies such as Apple and Skype increasingly take on functions that were traditionally the domain of telcos, they were not taking on the same regulatory obligations as telcos, Espie said at the Planet of the Apps conference in Sydney today.
Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet
The 350+MB update to the popular photo management software addresses an issue that could cause iPhoto to quit unexpectedly on Macs with the 3ivxVideoCodec plug-in installed.
Arnold Kim, MacRumors
iOS developers TwoLivesLeft have just released an interesting new app called Codify, which brings touch based programming to the iPad.
Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet
Apple has released MacBook Air EFI Firmware Update 2.2 which fixes issues with the current-generation, (mid 2011) MacBook Air related to Thunderbolt Display compatibility and Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode performance.
Users Illusions
Three Guys And A Podcast
Jordan Golson, MacRumors
Steven Sande, TUAW
Publisher Condé Nast is reporting that subscriptions for the digital editions of its titles have jumped 268 percent since Newsstand was released on October 12, 2011.
Technochocolate
iMessage, one of the headlining features of iOS 5, has a peculiarity with handling multiple recipient messages that you should keep in mind.
Jason Kottke
I don't know, it's really confusing how the same company, especially one that had such strong design leadership, could produce something as beautifully spare as iOS and something as cheesy as the Game Center app.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Ben Camm-Jones, Macworld
A Trojan targeting computers running Mac OS X which can be used to launch DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks on websites has been discovered.
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
Users adding products to their shopping cart are now presented with an option of whether to have their order shipped or made available for pickup. Customers can search for their closest Apple retail stores based on zip code, although options are obviously limited with the pilot program currently including only three stores: San Francisco flagship, Stonestown, and Chestnut Street.
Joe Kissell, Macworld
Even when you know the basics of searching in Lion’s Mail, sometimes an email message you clearly remember stubbornly stays lost. If a Mail search doesn’t display messages that you know it should—and you’ve ruled out user error such as selecting the wrong mailbox, or choosing a header instead of message contents—there are several possible causes. Which solution to use depends on whether errors occur searching message contents (the body of your message) or headers (the contents of the To, CC, BCC, From, and Subject fields).
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
I'll cut to the chase: Nike+ on the new iPod nano was not particularly accurate for me on speed or distance, but the poor speed calculation is likely because of the inaccurate distance estimate.
Jared Erondu, Macgasm
This voice control module from ThinkGeek lets you control Apple’s Siri from up to 50 feet away. In addition, it has an embedded speaker that amplifies Siri’s responses.
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
Christopher Breen, Macworld
So yes, there’s an issue, but its consistency can’t be counted on. In the meantime, if you really need to focus on a subject and your iPhone seems incapable of it, give the screen a very gentle tap to focus.
New Relic
Christopher Breen, Macworld
My hope is that not only can I describe how I went about troubleshooting the problem, but call upon others who have experienced poor battery performance to comment here so that we may be better able to pinpoint common issues.
Macworld
Nathan Alderman, Macworld
If you plan your novels with military precision, Mariner Software’s StoryMill 4.0.4 could be the right ally to launch your literary assault. However, writers who engage in a more freeform approach might find the program’s data-heavy approach confining, and those craving even more power and functionality might not find it here.
Macworld
Alexandra Chang, Macworld
The app aims to enhance users’ reading experiences with notes—embedded directly into the pages of an ebook—from authors, experts, and Subtext community members; and rewards points to users who contribute to the discussion.
Brent Simmons, Inessential
I’m not an RSS reader developer any more. But if I were, I’d start looking for an alternative syncing system right now.
Adam Dachis, Lifehacker
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
Apple today released MacBook Pro Video Update 1.0, a new software update designed to address freezing and other video issues on the company's Mid-2010 version of the 15-inch MacBook Pro.
James Allworth, Havard Business Review
Jobs was profoundly influenced by the Innovator's Dilemma — he saw the company he created almost die from it. When he returned to Apple, Jobs was determined to solve it. And he did. That "subtle difference" — of flipping the priorities away from profit and back to great products — took Apple from three months away from bankruptcy, to one of the most valuable and influential companies in the world.
Sue Halpern, New York Review Of Books
Money and magic numbers couldn’t save Steve Jobs, and according to Rothberg, “it will probably be twenty years before we understand cancer the way we understand HIV.” If that happens, what Jobs and his medical team were trying to accomplish—tailoring treatment to the individual attributes of both the patient and his particular disease—will become commonplace. Once again, Jobs was playing where the puck was going to be, only this time he got there too soon. It remains to be seen if, twenty years hence, we will have the kind of society and the kind of health care system that lets the rest of us follow.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
PadInTheCity is a company offering up an intriguing proposition: Rent a 3G iPad while you happen to be touring around the city of Madrid, Spain.
Graham Spencer, MacStories
Apple has also tweaked the design of the Smart Covers with all the leather models now featuring a “color-matched microfiber lining”.
Tony Bradley, Macworld
Apple’s iCloud is a nice tool for keeping contacts, calendar items, and other data in sync between my iPhone and iPad, but what about keeping everything synced up with my Windows PC?
Joe Kissell, Macworld
The easiest way to find something is to type one or more words in the Search box and see what shows up in the message list—you need not even press Return. By default, Mail looks for whatever you typed in the contents of all your messages. However, you can narrow down your searches in several ways.
Jim Dalrymple, The Loop
Apple on Monday updated its MacBook Pro line of notebook computers, adding faster processors and graphics cards.
Tom Cheredar, Venture Beat
Not Haruki
Koudansha, the largest Japanese publishing house, has just defaced the new Steve Jobs biography by modifying the original cover and adding superflous headlines (with a cover strip).
Nick Wingfield, New York Times
Something unexpected has happened at Apple, once known as the tech industry’s high-price leader. Over the last several years it began beating rivals on price.
Arnold Kim, MacRumors
Apple has posted a video from the Steve Jobs memorial/celebration held on Apple's campus on October 19th, 2011. The 80 minute video is available on Apple's site. All of the retail stores were closed during the event so that everyone could watch.
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
neilkodner.com
I decided to take a closer look at what people are saying about Steve Jobs, as a whole. Looking at how the site updates, it appears to use Ajax to retrieve and display new messages. Using Chrome’s developer tools, I monitored the requests it was making to get the new messages.
Raymond Jepson, Core77
The genius of Jobs and Apple wasn't the product. It was the vision, the process and the people.
Roy Furchgott, New York Times
In iTunes, click on “Purchased” in the left sidebar. In the lower right hand corner, it says “Download Previous Purchases.” Click that.
Macworld
Ian Betteridge, Technovia
Janet Maslin, New York Times
Mr. Jobs, the brilliant and protean creator whose inventions so utterly transformed the allure of technology, turned those childhood lessons into an all-purpose theory of intelligent design. He gave Mr. Isaacson a chance to play by the same rules. His story calls for a book that is clear, elegant and concise enough to qualify as an iBio. Mr. Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” does its solid best to hit that target.
Chris Rawson, TUAW
Press and hold the iPad 2's power button to elicit the "Slide to Power Off" slider -- but don't slide the control to actually turn it off. Next, close the Smart Cover over the iPad's display to put the device to sleep. Finally, open the Smart Cover and click Cancel on the power off screen. From there, the iPad will present whatever was last running before you locked it.
Ted Landau, Macworld
That’s correct. There is no automatic syncing between Macs and iCloud. If you later edit the document on your Mac, your changes are not automatically updated to the copy on iCloud.
Glenn Fleishman, Macworld
Joel Mathis, Macworld
An indispensable tool for anyone who uses their tablet to jot down notes.
Chris Rawson, TUAW
Jim Dalrymple, The Loop
Steven Sande, TUAW
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
Thanks to iOS 5’s step-by-step activation process, Apple’s made it pretty simple to get started; but just in case you need some extra help, we’ve put together a comprehensive guide for activating your new iPhone, transferring data from your old phone, and some suggestions for exploring your 4S’s new features.
Ben Popken, The Consumerist
"About three stores down, an Apple employee raced after them and explained that the manager was going to make an exception and let them in. When they were let in the store, they were the only customers in the place and every one of the employees stopped what they were doing as my daughter approached the register."
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Apple has just announced the new iOS 5 Tech Talk World Tour, which will take place in nine cities this year.
Dan Moren, Macworld
While Apple would probably prefer you buy alert sounds from the Tones section of the iTunes Store, with a little time and know-how you can make your own custom tones from any song or sound. Here’s how.
Michael Rose, TUAW
Dragon Recorder is a free and straightforward voice recording app designed to pair with the company's transcription software; on the Mac, that means the $150 MacSpeech Scribe application. You can use Recorder to record your voice (only yours; Scribe and its Windows sister product are speaker-dependent) on the go, and then easily transfer the recordings via sync or Wi-Fi browser sharing for later transcription.
Topher Kessler, CNET
The second reason for Safari mode is its main purpose, which is to provide a means for the system to be used without potential damage or access to your data in the event your system has been stolen.
Apple
John Cox, Network World
A new iOS app from Brainshark lets Apple iPad users accurately view full-blown PowerPoint presentations on the tablet.
Dancho Danchev, ZDNet
Security researchers from F-Secure have spotted a Mac OS X malware that disables Snow Leopard’s XProtect.plist antivirus signatures updates.
Aayush Arya, The Next Web
GLONASS stands for Globalnaya Navigazionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema (or “Global Navigation Satellite System” when translated from Russian) and is Russia’s alternative to the United States’ Global Positioning System (GPS). Its network comprises of 24 satellites that achieved full global coverage as recently as the beginning of this month.
Joshua Schnell, Macgasm
Remember The Milk Blog
Brendan Wilhide, Macworld
SOHO Organizer 9 is a useful tool for any small business looking to consolidate paperwork or information in one place. It may not include all the bells and whistles of more expensive organization software but SOHO Organizer 9 strikes a useful balance between features and easy-of-use.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
Arnold Kim, MacRumors
Apple has updated their Steve Jobs page on their site to reflect many memories, thoughts and feelings that people have submitted about Steve Jobs since his passing.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Yes, Apple missed with their earnings today. It’s the first time in a long time that has happened. Some are suggesting that hasn’t happened since 2002. That’s big news. But it’s also masking even bigger news: Apple’s expectations for next quarter.
Topher Kessler, CNET
FairerPlatform
Andrew Cunningham, AnandTech
Jordan Golson, MacRumors
TiPb
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
But those still hoping for a merging solution may be able to continue holding out hope, as Tim Cook appears to have reached out again, this time in a phone call to a customer in Luxembourg, once again noting that Apple is working on the issue.
Philip Michaels, Macworld
The company announced Tuesday that it logged $28.27 billion in revenue and $6.62 billion in net profit for the three-month period ended on September 24. That’s an increase of 38 percent in revenue and 54 percent in profit from the year-ago numbers.
Wall Street may be less thrilled: analysts were looking for the company to post earnings of $7.39 a share and revenue of $29.69 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. Still, Apple’s results came in ahead of the forecast chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer offered in July, when he told analysts to expect earnings of $5.50 per share and revenues of $25 billion during the fourth quarter.
Ian Sherr, Wall Street Journal
Apple plans to close some of its retail stores for at least an hour Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the matter, a gesture that coincides with the company’s planned celebration of co-founder Steve Jobs’s life at its headquarters.
Glenn Fleishman, Macworld
Dan Frakes, Macworld
This free System Preferences pane, currently in beta, lets you easily disable the Resume feature for particular applications. Just click the Add (+) button, choose the application to be added, and click Open. If the chosen app is currently running, quit it and then launch it again for the change to take effect. It’s that simple.
Dave Caolo, TUAW
Users can now edit events and notes within Fantastical, and changes are immediately synchronized with iCloud.
AppleInsider
According to Apple, the software update addresses an issue that required a small number of Apple TV units to be connected to iTunes in order to complete last week's 4.4 update.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Adam Dachis, Lifehacker
Wunderlist is a simple and beautiful to-do app that's very easy to use and understand. In terms of features, it sets somewhere in the middle between the minimalist to-do apps and the apps with every feature imaginable. This gives Wunderlist a healthy amount of focus. It just handles your tasks, and its feature set revolves around making adding and managing those tasks easier.
Josh Wright, Macgasm
Once purchased, you simply activate the contract free phone via iTunes. You are immediately presented with a message announcing the successful unlock and you can be on your merry little way.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
What’s most exciting about iTunes 10.5 is that—thanks to iCloud and wireless syncing of iOS devices—you should have to sit down in front of the application far less frequently.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
So, if Apple won’t provide a solution and you’re unwilling to risk a repetitive stress injury, where do you turn? To your computer.
David Sparks, Macworld
Dave Johnson, PCWorld
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Instapaper 4.0 deserved a proper look at all its new features, as it’s a major update that clearly shows how Marco Arment — who’s working on Instapaper full-time — really believes in Instapaper as the better way to read articles on the web. Everything is better in Instapaper 4.0: design, speed, social features, footnotes and dictionary definitions. Instapaper 4.0 improves on almost every aspect of the previous iPad version, while retaining the same basic concept that made the iPhone app great.
Apple
Apple® today announced it has sold over four million of its new iPhone® 4S, just three days after its launch on October 14. In addition, more than 25 million customers are already using iOS 5, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, in the first five days of its release, and more than 20 million customers have signed up for iCloud®, a breakthrough set of free cloud services that automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and push it to all your devices.
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
Aside from Apple's servers being overloaded with MobileMe account transitions, some are having issues reconciling Apple's assumption that every user has a unique Apple ID and that every Apple ID is used for just one person.
Matt Neuburg, TidBITS
To me, iOS 5 (from the programmer’s point of view) is a natural development, based largely on Apple’s own observation of the ways in which programmers have pushed at the boundaries of what the framework was readily permitting them to do; it’s an evolution, a coherent growth, gently expanding the programmer’s range of abilities while continuing to respect the conventions that have made iOS such a hotbed of great apps.
Chris Hulbert
An unashamed apologist’s perspective on the loveliest language i’ve worked with.
Geoffrey A. Fowler, Wall Street Journal
The creators of Siri put "deep thought" into the personality of their software, says Norman Winarsky, a co-founder of the company that was bought by Apple for $200 million in 2010. Siri was born out of an artificial intelligence project at SRI International, a research institute.
Siri has two distinct systems at its heart. One listens and translates what customers are saying, the other interprets the meaning behind the request and responds. It's in that last part where the sass comes in.
Peter Delevett, San Jose Mercury News
Friends of Jobs contacted prior to the proceedings were loathe to comment about the event -- either due to the extraordinary security measures or simply because it was a day for the technology industry to mourn its own.
Kate Holton And Poornima Gupta, Reuters
Apple Inc's latest iPhone looks set to become its bestselling device ever, and one reason appears to be disenchantment with rival smartphones.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
The simplest answer is one that has played out time and time again over the past several years: Apple did it right.
Glenn Fleishman, The Seattle Times
Apple has reached a point with iOS where it can't provide features that make you want to tear your clothes off and run into the streets with joy. But it can smooth down the rough edges, freely borrow from its competitors' best innovations, and make you have to think even less about how you manage your device, and just let you use it.
Rob Cortez
Whether you are an iOS developer or not, after playing with Siri for 5 minutes, you can’t help but think “this thing is going to be incredible once other apps can plug in to her power.” Great in theory, but not in practice.
James Surowiecki, New Yorker
In giving up a little control, Jobs found a lot more power.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet
Joshua Brustein, New York Times
Matt Neuburg, TidBITS
In my experiments, applications such as TextEdit and Preview did not vanish from the Command-Tab switcher the moment they were windowless and backgrounded. But they did eventually vanish from the Command-Tab switcher (and the Dock, if they weren’t a permanent resident there). So while the timing may have been changed, the basic behavior has not; and the basic behavior still seems to me to be just plain wrong.
Jeff Atwood, Coding Horror
As a consumer, I like that Apple is perfectly willing to throw its software developers under a bus to protect me (or, more cynically, Apple itself). But as a software developer, I'm not sure I can cope with that and I am unlikely to ever develop anything for an iOS device as a result. If you choose to deliver software in the Apple ecosystem, this is simply the tradeoff you've chosen to make. Apple developers serve at the pleasure of the king.
Arnold Kim, MacRumors
Early testing and reports from iPhone 4S users seem to show that the signal drop from tightly gripping the iPhone has been diminished or even eliminated.
Wall Street Journal
Apple Inc. has invited some of Silicon Valley's biggest names to a memorial service for Steve Jobs Sunday, Oct. 16, according to a copy of the invitation and several invitees. An Apple spokesman said the Sunday event is a private service.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
The good news is that you can continue to share an Apple ID for iTunes purchases with your family while maintaining individual, separate iCloud accounts. And the even better news is that Apple totally approves of your doing so, so you needn’t feel guilty about it.
Ted Landau, Macworld
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Many customers are finding out for the first time that Siri, the voice assistant Apple announced and demoed at the Let’s Talk iPhone media event last week, has some limitations outside the United States.
Arnold Kim, MacRumors
Having Siri enabled while your phone is locked allows for you to continue to have hands free usage of your phone, even when in a locked state. Apple does offer you the ability to turn Siri off on the Lock Screen, if you prefer more security over convenience.
Chris Rawson, TUAW
Unsurprisingly, it seems Apple has prioritized US and European-based pre-orders while leaving folks in the Southern Hemisphere in the lurch.
Charlie Sorrel, Wired
Not only is Siri shaping up to actually be as good as its hype, but it turns out the Apple and Siri engineers have tucked some excellent easter eggs inside — so many, in fact, someone has already started a Tumblr to catalog them all.
Pete Davison, GamePro
Ian Harper of Hungry Shark developer Future Games of London claimed that larger, more profitable publishers were effectively "buying their way up the charts" by making use of Cost Per Install marketing programs.
Marco Arment
When the cleaner wipes it out, it appears that the app has failed and deleted their data. And customers won’t know that it’s an iOS 5 behavior — they’ll understandably blame the app developers. Even though it’s not our fault, it’s certainly going to become our problem.
There needs to be a file storage location that behaves the way Caches did before iOS 5: it’s not backed up to iTunes or iCloud, it’s not synced, but it’s also never deleted unless the app is deleted.
iFixIt
Graham Spencer, MacStories
Now with iOS 5, developers that are developing Newsstand apps can deliver a new “souped-up” push notification that informs their app (rather than the user as push notifications normally do), that a new issue is ready to be downloaded. When a Newsstand app receives such a notification, it can download in the background if the device is on WiFi. The main limitation here is that each app can only send 1 of these push notifications per day, so at the moment developers cannot develop newspapers that deliver both a morning edition and evening edition – although I suspect this might change eventually.
Jeff Carlson, TidBITS
Now that iOS 5 is out, we can focus our spotlight on stuff that we feel is cool, overlooked, or both.
Matt Brian, The Next Web
Rui Carmo, Tao Of Mac
And Apple took away that magic, bestowing it solely to iPad 2 owners and leaving my hindbrain and fingers pointlessly swiping every now and then.
Patrick Ness, The Guardian
By nearly any definition, Whitehead is a literary writer of impeccable credentials. A MacArthur grant recipient, he's been shortlisted for both a Pulitzer and a National Book Award. He's written serious historical and contemporary fiction, but in a surprising move, he has now turned his hand to that most ubiquitous of modern phenomena: zombies.
Chris Herbert, MacStories
Adam Satariano, Peter Burrows And Brad Stone, BusinessWeek
As the person in charge of Apple’s mobile software division, he oversees the iOS operating system, which runs the iPhone and iPad, devices that account for 70 percent of Apple’s revenues. At 42 he’s the youngest senior executive at Apple. He may also be the best remaining proxy for the voice of Steve Jobs, the person most likely to channel the departed co-founder’s exacting vision for how technology should work.
Dustin Curtis
Yet another one of those design decisions that you don’t really appreciate until you see someone doing it wrong.
MacNN
BBEdit, from Bare Bones Software, is a robust text editor that can perform many coding functions. Although it is easy to use, it has many complex features. It can open almost any length document, provides custom color-coding, and offers multiple find options.
Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times
A quick glance might not convince you that Apple’s changed much of anything. And yet this is probably the most fundamental shift Apple has made to the iPhone and the iPad since the company begrudgingly conceded that maybe allowing third-party developers to write apps for these things might be a good idea after all.
Peter Cohen, The Loop
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Included in the 10.7.2 update is Safari 5.1.1, which adds the aforementioned iCloud support, along with a variety of other improvements. JavaScript performance is improved up to 13 percent over Safari 5.1, and Apple says that various hangs and excessive memory usage are addressed, too.
Ben Brooks, The Brooks Review
From the OTA Delta updates to iOS itself, to iCloud, to WiFi sync — this is the stuff that really makes iOS devices feel magic.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
The update removes trust for any and all security certificates from hacked certificate authority DigiNotar, and drops support for certs with MD5 hashes and updates TLS to version 1.2 to improve security of SSL connections.
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
Cody Fink, MacStories
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Dave Caolo, TUAW
This update offers a number of changes, including iOS 5 compatibility and the ever-popular "stability and performance improvements."
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
iOS 5 has hit the stage, and eager users everywhere are getting ready to upgrade their devices. If you’re concerned about the upgrade process, or simply want to know all your setup options before making the big switch, let us help you upgrade your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to iOS 5 with this step-by-step guide.
Shawn Blanc
But now, with iOS 5 and iCloud, we no longer need the USB cable.
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Ben Brooks, The Brooks Review
As an idea it is great because now you can finally see all those past notifications. Except what the Notification Center really points out is that Apple had it right all along: old notifications truly are irrelevant and tend to be clutter.
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
We're talking significantly revamped notifications, Twitter integration, wireless sync, iCloud, home screen improvements, and more—so many, in fact, that we can't address everything buried within an app or setting in a single review. What we will do, however, is talk about the major updates as well as those tidbits that interest us the most after having used the OS. We did run across a few nitpicks here and there that we hope Apple addresses in future updates. Overall, though, we think it's worth upgrading to iOS 5.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
AirPort Utility lets you manage your Wi-Fi network and AirPort base stations—including AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme, and Time Capsule—from your iOS device. The app allows you to configure base station and network settings, including advanced features like security modes, wireless channels, and more. It also provides a graphical overview of your network, a list of clients, and information about your external Internet connection.
Casey Johnston, Ars Technica
While some initial reports suggested that the owners of the Sprint iPhone 4S might be able to pop a local GSM microSIM into their phones while abroad and avoid Sprint’s roaming charges, Sprint denies that that is the case.
MacSparky
1. Turn off e-mail badge.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
The app, which requires iOS 5, lets you find your friends by geolocating their iOS devices—presuming your friends have granted you access to that data.
See Also: Hands-on: Find My Friends is Apple's Google Latitude, by Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica.
Dan Moren, Macworld
It seems like every time a major software revision comes along, it’s described as the “biggest ever.” In the case of iOS 5, though, that might not be hyperbole—there’s hardly a part of Apple’s mobile operating system that isn’t altered in some way by the latest update.
Don’t think that this is just change for change’s sake, however. By and large, iOS 5’s changes are for the better, spackling a number of shortcomings and gaps in functionality that have existed since day one.
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
This is the easiest product review I’ve ever written. The iPhone 4S is exactly what Apple says it is: just like the iPhone 4, but noticeably faster, with a significantly improved camera, and an impressive new voice-driven feature called Siri.
Jason Snell, Macworld
So if you’re a Sprint or Verizon iPhone 4S customer traveling internationally, you can buy a pre-paid micro-SIM card with dramatically cheaper rates for data and voice calling, rather than pay for international roaming offered by U.S. carriers to their existing customers.
Jason Snell, Macworld
In the end, the iPhone 4S follows Apple’s recent trajectory of iPhone releases: It’s an object of some appeal to people who last upgraded their phones a year ago, and over the next year a great many of them will find it worthwhile to upgrade to the iPhone 4S. But to all those people who’ve been hanging on to their iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS, the wait is over: It’s time to upgrade without any hesitation whatsoever. The iPhone 4S has speed, a great camera, some cool voice-recognition features, and the same beautiful industrial design that was introduced in the iPhone 4. It’s destined to be immensely popular. The S, in this case, seems to stand for “sure thing.”
Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal
The iPhone 4S is one of Apple’s less dramatic updates, but, when combined with the Siri, iOS 5 and iCloud features, it presents an attractive new offering to smartphone users. Some may be content to skip the new hardware and just enjoy the software and cloud features with older models. But those buying the phone will likely be happy with it.
Jim Dalrymple, The Loop
You can look at each of the items that Apple will release in conjunction with the iPhone and be amazed with how innovative each one of them are. When you put them all together in one product like the iPhone 4S, you have an incredibly successful product that other companies just can’t compete with.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
When I ask Apple this, they’re vague in their response. They note that some people say it stands for “Special” or “Super”. Others say it’s for “Speed” — much like the iPhone 3GS, the successor to the iPhone 3G. Or maybe it’s “Storage” (this is the first iPhone with 64 GB option — and with iCloud storage). Or “Sprint” (this is the first iPhone to run on that network in the U.S.) Or perhaps it’s for “Speech” or “Siri”. Either of these last two would get my vote. The point is, the “S” can stand for any number of things depending on who is using the device. Here’s all I know for certain: this is the best iPhone yet.
TJ Luoma, TUAW
Good news for those who pre-ordered the iPhone 4S: If you did not get a chance to order AppleCare+ with your iPhone 4S, Apple is extending your eligibility.
Ryan Tate, Gawker
"That's what I wear," he said. "I have enough to last for the rest of my life."
Glenn Fleishman, Macworld
Sidekick isn’t the perfect solution for automatic settings updates, but between recognizing where you’re at and letting you manually change groups of settings, it avoids most of the tedium of adapting your Mac to your current spot.
Marcus Zarra, Cocoa Is My Girlfriend
One of the nice things about developing software for OS X is all the “freebies” we get out of Cocoa. For example, when we are building a UI with text input we get undo support for free! How cool is that?
Likewise, when we are working with Core Data, it also has undo support built right in. Every NSManagedObjectContext has a NSUndoManager that we can use. However there are some situations where the default undo support is insufficient. In this article we are going to walk through one such situation.
Megan Lavey-Heaton, TUAW
iTunes 10.5 introduces iCloud to the software along with automatic downloads. You can also download previous music, TV, app and book purchases again at no additional cost. Some previous purchases might not be available because they are no longer available through iTunes.
It also adds Wi-Fi syncing, which automatically syncs an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with iTunes any time they're both on the same Wi-Fi network, one of the key features of iOS 5.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Terry White
Ron McElfresh, NoodleMac
How about if you could bring the Mac’s Menubar to the mouse pointer, regardless of where the pointer is on the screen? No more reaching across the screen to the Menubar. The Menubar comes to you.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
Kirk McElhearn, Macworld
Arnold Kim, MacRumors
Apple has announced that they have received over one million iPhone 4S pre-orders on the first 24 hours.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Stupid Apple Rumors
Tabatha Southey, The Globe And Mail
MacGasm
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
Normal people don’t buy brand-new $700 smartphones each and every year. In the U.S. they buy them on two-year contracts, and they don’t shop for new ones until their old contracts are over. So the iPhone that the 4S needs to present a compelling upgrade for is the 3GS, not the 4. And the iPhone 4S absolutely smokes the 3GS. It’s crazy better than the 3GS. 2009 3GS buyers who skipped the iPhone 4 — which I’m guessing are most of them — ought to be delighted by the iPhone 4S.
Bill Eccles
The motion is beautifully imperceptible, just like a real watch. It’s stunning.
Sam Oliver, AppleInsider
Apple on Friday began taking preorders for the iPhone 4S, and also revealed its next-generation handset will be sold unlocked and contract-free in November starting at $649.
The unlocked iPhone 4GS will only work on supported GSM networks, like AT&T in the U.S. But it will not work with any CDMA carriers, including Verizon Wireless or Sprint.
Cody Fink, MacStories
AppleInsider
David Chartier, Macworld
Reeder has a unique style while still feeling Mac-like, especially on Lion (thanks largely to Reeder's iOS roots). A flexible interface, a great out-of-box experience, and customizability made it my go-to Google Reader client from the first days I used it.
IT.Enquirer
It still has some features that are rough around the edges, as well as some behaviours that I find odd (but that could also be personal taste), but it’s certainly a good HTML editor, with 95% of the functionality you require.
Steven Levy, Wired
As product after product emerged from Apple, each one breaking ground and changing our behavior, Steve Job’s reality field actually came into being. And we all live in it.
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
Late last night, long hours after the news broke that he was gone, my thoughts returned to those grass stains on his shoes back in June. I realize only now why they caught my eye. Those grass stained sneakers were the product of limited time, well spent. And so the story I’ve told myself is this:
I like to think that in the run-up to his final keynote, Steve made time for a long, peaceful walk. Somewhere beautiful, where there are no footpaths and the grass grows thick. Hand-in-hand with his wife and family, the sun warm on their backs, smiles on their faces, love in their hearts, at peace with their fate.
Jason Snell, Macworld
My last question to him was—and this was just after the “interim CEO” days—how long he felt he’d stay at Apple. He paused to contemplate for a minute. Then said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Well, you know what the song says. We’re all just renting time here on planet Earth.” His tone seemed very different from the rest of the interview, and I actually appreciated that he was so philosophical about it. Who can say what the future holds?
Peter Kafka, All Things D
Lauren Crabbe, Macworld
As the sun set over San Francisco on Wednesday, locals and tourists alike traveled to the city’s flagship Apple Store on Stockton to pay their respects to the man who helped shape it all.
Walter S. Mossberg, Wall Street Journal
But there was a more personal side of Steve Jobs, of course, and I was fortunate enough to see a bit of it, because I spent hours in conversation with him, over the 14 years he ran Apple. Here are a few stories that illustrate the man as I knew him.
Pree Release
Macworld
AppleInsider
Philip Michaels, Macworld
Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and its CEO through a period of record growth and innovation for the company, has died. He was 56.
Jobs is survived by his wife Laurene Powell and four children, and his sister, Mona Simpson.
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Federico Viticci, MacStories
The iPhone 4S is a good phone because it’s based on the iPhone 4. But the 4S has got some new stuff that has been made possible by its new hardware, and it will make for a more pleasant experience thanks to iOS 5, for a simple reason: Apple understands that hardware and software together drive innovation and customer satisfaction, not specs alone.
Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times
During the Tuesday media event, Apple didn’t manage a Secretariat-style breakaway from the other phone makers. But they showed themselves to be ticking along in fine stride and showed no signs whatsoever of tiring.
SHawn Blanc
I can’t put my finger on why exactly, but this statement and its slide stood out to me as one of the most strategic and purposeful slides of the event. Perhaps it’s a way of stating the fact that even though the iPhone is selling at an astronomical rate, it still has an enormous market to penetrate. Perhaps this slide was a banner to Wall Street and everyone else saying, we’re doing great and we are nowhere close to slowing down, nor are we running out of track“.
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Steven Sande, TUAW
AppleCare+ ($US99) must be purchased at the same time that you buy your new iPhone, and covers up to two incidents of damage due to handling errors. For each of those incidents, Apple will extract a $49 service fee, but that's a lot less expensive than purchasing a whole new iPhone.
Jordan Golson, MacRumors
Cards is an iOS version of the greeting card-maker built-in to iPhoto, but with a twist -- instead of printing and shipping cards to the user, who then has to buy stamps, address and mail the cards -- Apple takes care of printing, mailing, and postage and sends the card directly to the recipient, with a push notification going to the senders iPhone upon delivery.
Don Southard, MacStories
Chris Rawson, TUAW
Thus far it appears to be available only in the UK Apple Store, and at £8.00 it seems fairly inexpensive as far as Apple's accessories go. It will be available on October 14.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Apple’s new iPhone 4S doesn't look all that different on the surface from the iPhone 4 it replaces. But the latest iPhone unveiled by Apple at a press event Tuesday promises an improved processor, new wireless system, and more powerful camera, along with voice control capabilities.
The feature is called Siri, based on the voice-activated app that Apple bought in 2010. Forstall described it as “your intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking.” Forstall asked the iPhone 4S what the weather is like today, and the phone gets to the meaning behind his words, displaying a weather forecast. He asked, “What time is it in Paris?” and Siri responded with a live clock. “Wake me up at 6 a.m.” instantly set an alarm clock for early tomorrow morning.
Jonathan Seff, Macworld
In this year’s update, Apple will make the nano’s multitouch display easier to navigate by using larger icons. The 1.54-inch nano screen will now display a single icon at a time; you’ll swipe the screen to switch icons.
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
Following its preview at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference in June, iCloud has received an official debut date—October 12—at Tuesday’s Let’s Talk iPhone Apple event. It replaces the company’s oft-maligned $99 MobileMe service, offering a central online repository for your mail; contacts; calendars; music, TV, app and book purchases; photos; documents; and backup—all for free. In addition, Apple introduced a new app called Find My Friends, for connecting with friends and family.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
If you’re hungry for new insights into iOS 5, though, Forstall may have left you disappointed; there was little in his presentation that wasn’t discussed back in June—save for the October 12 release date.
Alexandra Chang, Macworld
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Jason Snell, Macworld
J. Eddie Smith, IV, Practically Efficient
Good software is virtually free, regardless of its purchase price, because the payback dwarfs the investment. If your time is worth something, you’d be rational to pay hundreds of dollars for applications you use every day.
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Grazing 2.1 is a must-have if you’ve been looking for an alternative iOS browser capable of sending webpages as push notifications back to the Mac. If you don’t care about push notifications, at $1.99 you’d still get a fine, stable browser with lots of functionalities, support for multi-touch gestures, and an elegant UI.
Topher Kessler, CNET
Terry White, MacNews
TextExpander allows you to create shortcuts that expand out to the full text that you type on a regular basis.
Federico Viticci, MacStories
One of the biggest new features of Growl 1.3 is the Rollup window — from a first look, it appears to be Growl’s unofficial response to Apple’s Notification Center for iOS. Because Growl keeps working even while you’re away from your computer, the Rollup window will collect the notifications you’ve missed in a single place, allowing you to review them later.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Dave Caolo, TUAW
The Express Purchase Counter is for customers who walk in knowing exactly what they want.
Michael E. Cohen, TidBITS
Nonetheless, the adoption of Pages, with all of the work we had to do to get there, is beginning to pay off for us: we are able to produce new Take Control books and revise existing books more quickly and efficiently than ever, and with more attractive results for the EPUBs. Not bad for a few dozen hours of hard thinking and research, and with a word processor that costs less than $20!
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Trackballs are a bit of a niche market—in my experience, you either love them or dislike them, and far more people are in the latter category than the former. But for those of us who are trackball fans, Kensington’s Orbit Wireless Mobile Trackball is the first one I’ve found that’s compact enough to take on the road while still being good enough to make me want to bring it along.
Dave Girard, Ars Technica
I think it's safe to call Parallels Desktop 7 the winner here. Despite the incredible gains in VMware's 3D performance, it's still harder to find a scenario that favors VMware Fusion, whether for performance, features, or the interface.
Jason Snell, Macworld
Here’s hoping Apple finds a way to keep our Macs secure, while allowing OS X apps to remain as powerful and innovative as they’ve been over the last decade. Mac users deserve both security and power—and the Mac App Store should be a showcase for the very best that Mac software developers have to offer.
Andy Ihnatko, Macworld
Can AppleScript and Automator have any future on an operating system where every app is surrounded by an impenetrable steel shell of distrust?
The Mac must never, ever become a consumer product like the iPad, saddled with artificial limitations in the name of safety, reliability, and tidiness. If Apple refuses to give us the 21st-century equivalent of HyperCard, why can’t they at the very least treat AppleScript and Automator like the gems that they are?
Warren Buckleitner, New York Times
How quickly can you build a fish out of Legos? How about a ship, or a tree? Lego: Life of George, available in stores tomorrow, lets you test your pattern-matching skills under pressure, providing you have a camera-equipped iPhone or equivalent, and a free app called Life of George which is your blueprint, timer, progress tracker, and — most interestingly — your judge.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.