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Hongli Lai, Phusion
It is unfortunate that we have to declare OS X’s default compiler as being broken. We do not recommend its use.
OS X Daily
Jessica E Vascellaro, Wall Street Journal
The cat-and-mouse game between the Bay Area's legion of mobile developers and app kingmaker Apple Inc. is heating up.
BBC
Mr Ive, who can now style himself Sir Jonathan, has been made a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE).
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
We may not have heard much about patent licensing firm Lodsys in recent months, but independent app developers are still working together to fight the patent bully. The Appsterdam Legal Defense team—a growing group of iOS developers pooling their ideas and resources to fight back against Lodsys—has continued to take steps to protect themselves from the kind of litigation brought by Lodsys and its apparent parent company Intellectual Ventures since they formed in August. But although progress has been made over the last five months, there's still a long way to go before indie devs feel protected.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Dan Frakes, Macworld
From managing windows to opening apps, from tweaking Lion to perfecting photos, these inexpensive applications and add-ons will help you get the most out of your Mac without blowing your budget.
The Telegraph
Charlie Le Quesne was trying out the iPhone 4S at a Tesco store in Coventry when it told him: "Shut the f*** up, you ugly t***."
Someone had entered the obscene seven-word phrase as the user's name, so the phone blurted it out when it answered a question.
John C. Welch, Macworld
The Mac mini with Lion Server is a real improvement on an already solid performer. In its target market (companies with up to 200 users), it is an outstanding performer and is also a capable utility server in a wide range of usage needs. The Mac mini server is not a good choice if you need hot-swappable components or redundant power supplies in a single box, but the Mac mini server’s cost allows you to achieve redundancy in other ways. While the standard configuration is an attractive setup, consider paying the extra money for SSDs, since they add considerable performance for the price.
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
Peter Burrows, Bloomberg
Now, as rulings start coming in, it might be time for a détente that helps Apple maximize the value of its patents, said Kevin Rivette, a managing partner at 3LP Advisors LLC, a firm that advises on intellectual property. When courts side with Apple and impose bans on infringing products, competitors can often devise workarounds; in cases where Apple doesn’t win import restrictions, it would be better off striking settlements that ensure access to a competitor’s innovation, he said.
Dwight Silverman, Houston Chronicle
If you want to protect your new prize and get the most out of it, there are some other things you'll want to do.
Adam Dachis, Lifehacker
Jordan Kahn, 9 To 5 Mac
Most of the improvements for speed are noticeable when booting up and switching between Windows and OS X apps. We had IE, Paint, and Windows Media Center open in Windows 7 using Coherence mode, Safari, and Text Edit open on Lion when things started to slow down. With those expected issues aside, it is a major update and certainly takes advantage of Lion to the fullest.
Macinstruct
Most events logged by the firewall are completely harmless. There's no reason to be concerned about 99% of the events in the log, unless you're experiencing connectivity problems on your Mac.
Kirk McElhearn, Macworld
If the app’s minimalism agrees with you, you may find that the Mac version’s similar simplicity frees your mind from the many confusing features in traditional word processors, and the many distractions on your Mac, letting you do what a tool like this is designed for: writing.
Wind On A Leaf
Interestingly, Annette said she didn’t miss having a notebook at all (the kind that needs a battery and a startup jingle, not the kind bound with a useless slinky). She can’t wait to get to college and, while she hasn’t settled on a major, she doesn’t see a notebook in her future. “If I end up needing to do a ton more typing in college than I do now,” Annette said, “I might get a wireless keyboard.”
Macworld
It’s that time again when Mac users make their New Year’s resolutions. How about a simple pledge to keep your computer clean? I’m not talking about deleting cache files or removing old apps you no longer use. I’m talking about your Mac’s screen and keyboard, or its dusty, grungy innards. It’s not difficult to do, but keeping a clean Mac can help it run smoother, and keep you from getting sick as well. Here are a few ways you can keep your Mac looking new and fresh.
Lindsey J. Bertomen, PoliceOne
I tested two Nuance products that I'm pretty sure will be absolutely profound to those who don't already use them: Dragon NaturallySpeaking Version 11.5 Premium Edition and MacSpeech Scribe, a personal transcription software package designed for Mac OS X.
Joshua Schnell, Macgasm
By dropping the email into iCal, you’re able to schedule in time to complete the task like you would any other event. The extra-cool thing about doing this is that iCal will create a link to the email in question so that you can reference the original email when the time comes to do something about your email.
Adam Berenstain, Macworld
Whether you’re looking for an easy-to-use iWeb replacement or a more sophisticated program with more powerful features for you and your site’s visitors, a host of applications is available for every skill level and budget. Here are some of the highlights and how current iWeb users could find them useful.
Basil Salad Software
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Press Command-Option-A to produce Safari’s Activity window. In this window you’ll see the name of the video followed by the word YouTube. In the list of links below look for an entry of several megabytes that appears to be loading. Option-double-click on it and it will download to your Mac as an flv file. As mentioned earlier, you can then play this file with a third-party tool. Unfortunately, you can’t download MPEG-4 files using this method. For those files, turn to Firefox or a third-party tool.
Macinstruct
Did you know that you can turn your Mac into a wireless router for your home or office?
Jason Snell, Macworld
A “vast phishing attack” that attempts to capture the credit card information of Apple customers was launched on Christmas day, according to a report from Mac security-software company Intego.
Will Shanklin, Geek.com
With the gargantuan popularity of Apple’s iOS devices, many long-time Windows users are making the switch and buying Macs. If you’re new to Mac OS X, you’ll probably be immediately happy with how smooth, intuitive, and attractive the UI is. You may not, however, be so happy with Mac gaming. While it’s been improving lately, gaming has long been OS X’s Achilles’ heel. We’ve compiled a few tips to help you to rise above those limitations.
Electronista
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Lex Friedman, Macworld
It's not as hard as you might think to start backing up your Mac today.
Time Code
Nick Spence, Macworld UK
Scrivener is an essential writing tool designed to bring order and simplicity to the creation of often-complex long-form prose – from novels to dissertations. Think of it as a digital shoebox to collect your thoughts and ideas, research and notes, video and audio material and more all in one logical, non-linear place.
Mark W. Smith, Detroit Free Press
Dave Greenbaum, GigaOM
So you finally convinced your friends and family to retire their PC in favor of a Mac with a Christmas gift. Now, you have to deal with being the training wheels for a new operating system. You can avoid some of the hassles that go along with that, and ease the transition for new Mac users with these simple steps.
Blue Lotus Blog
The “.DS_Store” file is an abomination and must be stopped. You know what I’m talking about. I regularly rant about how this annoying file gets in your way, dirties things up and just screws with your stuff in general. Today I decided to do something about it.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Jonny Evans, Computerworld
Michael E. Cohen, TidBITS
If you want to copy your iPhoto library to another Mac, or to another user account on the same Mac, disconnect it from your Photo Stream first. Although Photo Stream can connect to multiple Macs, it gets confused when you move an already-connected iPhoto library among Macs.
Iljitsch Van Beijnum, Ars Technica
As a podcast addict, I'm excited to see so many good ideas in this area. Unfortunately, those ideas are spread over many different applications, which are all still a bit rough around the edges. Still, I have no trouble saying it's worth spending a couple of bucks on any of these four apps for anyone who is more than the most casual of podcast listeners—and those people should probably just use Stitcher. But Pocket Casts and Instacast seem to be the strongest contenders at this time. However, the ability to manage large number of episodes on the computer is also compelling, so I'm not banishing iTunes from my podcasting life just yet either.
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
Ron McElfresh, Mac360
Jonathan Zschau, Cult Of Mac
Dan Moren, Macworld
The idea of sharing one’s locations evokes strong reactions, and Apple’s done an adroit job of addressing the concerns that many have about such technology without rendering its app completely toothless. Find My Friends may still not be for everybody, but for those who use it, it turns out to be not only handy but surprisingly fun.
Marc Weber Tobias, Forbes
What consumers need to understand is that there are actually four different versions of the iPhone 4S: Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and Apple. Only the Apple phone, available from their stores or on-line, is fully unlocked and can be used on any carrier. The other phones are permanently locked and cannot ever be used on another carrier in the U.S. Even if you spend $800 for an unlocked phone as I did and dedicate it to a single U.S. carrier, you are locked into that carrier forever if you want to keep using the iPhone. Neither Apple or the other carriers will fully unlock your carrier phone.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Completing those three steps—wiping, deactivating your old SIM, and then activating a new one—ensures that your iMessages will get sent only to you and your iOS devices, and not anywhere else.
Chenda Ngak, CBS
The Recording Academy is awarding the co-founder of Apple with the Trustee Award, which honors non-performing contributions to the music industry.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
The app will now natively support two-finger swiping gestures on your MacBook (or Magic Mouse or trackpad, if you have one of those running). That means that without extra add-ons, you can now swipe two fingers forward or back to browse through your history, in addition to the other usual gestures available to most apps, like using two fingers to scroll and so on.
MacNews
Bob Tedeschi, New York Times
It’s a bit of a voyeuristic activity, opening up an image of someone else’s phone and scrolling from page to page, checking out their apps. I got a jolt out of it, and it made me take a second look at a couple of the apps that I’d given up on long ago.
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
Many users taking advantage of the Complete My Album program obviously already do so within the previously-imposed 180-day window as they decide that they like certain songs enough to purchase the entire album. The lifting of the restriction will, however, still be of use for those who decide much later that they want to upgrade.
Eugene Huo, Macgasm
The recent App Store update that caused havoc with devices running iOS 3.1.3 has been resolved, and Apple has fixed whatever the problem was.
Joel Mathis, Macworld
The ease of iPhone gift giving depends on a few things: Your relationship to the recipient. The wireless carrier they’ll use. How much you’re willing to spend. We address many of those issues in our iPhone buying guide. But when it comes to giving someone an iPhone as a gift, one question is the most critical of all: Do you already share a wireless phone “family” account with the gift-getter?
Dave Caolo, TUAW
You can buy individual issues or subscriptions, which will be delivered to the device when available. Note that the magazines and newspapers are limited to the iPad.
Karl Hodge, Macworld UK
With a significant and streamlined menu redesign complementing WriteRoom’s more modern look, there’s just one feature missing. iA Writer includes markdown features; a way to format your document on the fly without shortcuts or menu access. WriteRoom doesn’t. However, if you can live with that, WriteRoom’s still a contender.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
Ron McElfresh, Mac360
Mike Schramm, TUAW
Randy Murray, First Today, Then Tomorrow
I have a feeling that other retailers will not be able to understand how powerful this is. If you treat your customers with respect, if you don’t treat them as stupid, and if you give the appearance that you trust them, they, we, will relax. And we’ll buy things without hesitation. I need this, I pick it up, I pay for it on the go, I walk out with it, it’s mine.
Even now, I’m not so much impressed with the technology as still pleasantly aglow with the feeling that Apple trusted me and everyone else in the store. And I’m feeling that old evangelical fervor, as I did years ago when I wanted to tell everyone about the Mac. Now I want to drag people into the nearest Apple Store, have them buy something, and walk out.
Richard Lawler, Engadget
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
Alison Flood, The Guardian
A parody of the classic children's bedtime story Goodnight Moon, dragging the simple tale into the modern age by replacing moons, kittens, mittens and bears with iPads, e-readers and a "huge LCD Wifi HDTV", is taking off in America this Christmas.
Jared Erondu, Macgasm
So the next time you want to alert users of an update, just send them a URL that’ll open the App Store and go directly to the updates page.
Nick Spence, Macworld UK
Under good reception conditions, Elgato’s EyeTV Mobile is a great way of watching and recording Freeview on your iPad 2. And as analogue signals are switched off across the UK, reception should improve as digital signal strength increases. For now, however, local reception issues could dictate if this dinky TV tuner is the right choice for you.
Kirk McElhearn, Macworld
Lex Friedman, Macworld
While Photo Booth’s feature set is still pretty simple, there are a few power user tricks to the software that may help you get more out of it.
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
It now appears, however, that Apple may have run out of refurbished first-generation iPod nano units and may now be shipping out current-generation units as replacements. Several users have reported over the past few days that they have received emails acknowledging shipment of their replacement device's and checking the serial numbers of the replacement devices on Apple's support site has shown them to be sixth-generation models.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Michael Grothaus, TUAW
Michael Baumgardt, Macworld
The callout, outline, and conditional styles tools are essential features that will greatly improve productivity, and ShapeMaker is a wonderful, visually creative addition. I rarely say this, but working on my first eBook with QuarkXPress 9.1 was a lot of fun, and that by itself justifies an upgrade for me.
Jenna Wortham, New York Times
It is hard to begrudge Apple for wanting to give its employees a break. But the App Store freeze at Christmas, and the crunch time leading up to it, underscore Apple’s power in the world of mobile apps and the lengths developers are willing to go to meet its demands.
In short, Apple is a powerful gatekeeper, and for more than a week it is keeping the gate closed.
The Dong-A Ilbo
Extraterritoriality is applied to Android Market and App Store as they are operated by their headquarters in the U.S. Both companies have branches in Korea but they have nothing to do with mobile app store services, saying this is why Korean e-commerce law does not apply to Android Market and App Store.
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
Apple today released a new commercial for the iPhone 4S ahead of the Christmas holiday, showing Santa using Siri to find such information as directions and weather, search for an email with his "naughty or nice" list, and hear an email from Mrs. Claus reminding him to "go easy on the cookies".
M Saraswathy, Business Standard
Chris Smith, TechRadar
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
Neil Bennett, Digital Arts Online
Its price will keep it out of the reach of most users – though it’s well worth the cost if you can stretch to it – and while Thunderbolt can certainly deliver power, the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt SSD has to be plugged into the mains. Even so, its blistering performance alone makes it a winner.
Arnold Kim, MacRumors
Whitson Gordon, Lifehacker
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
See also: Apple Refunds iTunes Match Purchases For International Users After Premature 'Launch', by Chris Rawson, TUAW.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
If tests indicate that the graphics chip is on the way out but the MacBook can carry on an otherwise productive life—and be seen via a vnc connection (discussed later)—using it as a server is an excellent idea.
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Michael Burns, Macworld UK
Lightroom or Aperture users will find this suite a useful addition to their image-editing toolset if they don’t have Photoshop, or at least a recent version of it. Most creatives will also welcome the options offered by FocalPoint and PerfectPortrait, though some of the other components are a bit mixed in their appeal.
Amit Agarwal, Wall Street Journal
Cody Fink, MacStories
Macworld
Here are our favorite iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps from the past year.
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
Some unlucky iPhone owners are beginning to discover that, despite their best efforts to remove all information from their stolen phones, thieves and unsuspecting buyers are still able to send and receive iMessages as the original owner—even after the device is registered under a new account. Almost nothing seems to work—remote wiping, changing Apple ID passwords, or even moving the old phone number to a new phone—and users are becoming more than frustrated that thieves are so easily able to pose as them.
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
Apple rolled out an update for Logic Express, with version 9.1.6 of the digital audio workstation promising a variety of fixes and app stabilization.
Joshua Schnell, Macgasm
This makes no sense to me. Does it make sense to you? Did you know that ribbon was a button? If it is, it sure doesn’t look or act like one.
Rob Beattie, Macworld UK
Synths, effects, sequencing, recording, editing and mixing in a single package.
Adam Dachis, Lifehacker
Lex Friedman, Macworld
So Muppet Mail isn’t perfect. But it’s a lot of fun to play with. Whether you send lots of Muppet-themed greetings or just enjoy Muppetifying your friends’ faces, the app packs in plenty of fun. At least, it does to moi.
Steven Sande, TUAW
Microsoft has just released an iPhone app for access to the free Microsoft SkyDrive cloud storage service. SkyDrive for iPhone (free) should make Windows users who have documents stored in the cloud happy.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
June Yang, Today
One disabled student went from being uninterested in drawing, to winning a card design competition. Others have learned better control of their behaviour and have improved their communications skills.
These remarkable changes were observed after just six months of a special pilot project conducted at Towner Gardens School (TGS), run by the Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore (MINDS), which caters to children with learning disabilities and developmental delays.
At the heart of the program is a device that many of us are familiar with and use on a daily basis - Apple's iPad.
Macworld
Emily Steel And Jessica E. Vascellaro, Wall Street Journal
Facing challenges winning over customers for its iAd mobile advertising service, Apple is softening its approach as it loses ground to Google Inc. in the fast-growing mobile-ad market.
Having originally asked marketers to commit to spend at least $1 million—an amount later dropped to $500,000—Apple is now discussing ad deals with a minimum commitment of just $400,000, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Michael Rose, TUAW
Alexandra Chang, Macworld
Jonathan Seff, Macworld
On Monday, Apple updated its iTunes software to 10.5.2, with unspecified fixes for problems with iTunes Match.
Mark H. Anbinder, TidBITS
Tonya Engst, TidBITS
With the release of version 1.5 of the iOS reading app iBooks, Apple has made a few welcome changes aimed at enhancing your reading experience. None are earthshaking (unless you need the white-text-on-black, as people with certain vision problems do), but if you are an iBooks user, the release is a good excuse to take a moment to learn more about iBooks. Let’s look at what’s new in iBooks 1.5, and make sure you know the nuances and special tricks.
TJ Luoma, TUAW
Glenn Fleishman, Boing Boing
At least in making these font trades in iBooks 1.5, Apple has somehow empowered some group within the company to make more appropriate decisions regarding type. If we're lucky, that power will spread further, and we can regain a richer typographic history in modern clothes.
Sharon Zardetto, Macworld
The Option key is the unsung hero of the keyboard. Since the earliest days of the Mac, it has provided access to special font characters; revealed alternative commands in menus; and let you Option-drag to create a copy of something, such as a Finder icon or a graphic selection (from MacPaint to Photoshop CS5!). Its capabilities have only increased with time, so it’s always worth pressing Option to modify a click or drag, just to see what might happen. Here are five of my favorite Option-key tricks.
Apple
Zack Whittaker, ZDNet
Unless Apple can secure a stay until a higher regional court can hear an appeal, the iPhone smartphone and iPad tablet could be barred from being sold in Europe.
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS
Hang on a second, isn’t Apple’s own iCal in Snow Leopard a CalDAV client? If iCal could connect to the CalDAV-based MobileMe, why can’t it connect to iCloud? The short answer is, it can; Apple just doesn’t make it easy.
Peter Bright, Ars Technica
Haavard's conclusion is that there is a pattern of behavior here; that Apple is trying to disrupt the standards process with its patent claims. He references the touch specification in particular—this is plainly an area where Apple has lots of expertise and interest in the technology, but the company opted out of working on the specification. If Apple had worked on the specification, it would have had to disclose sooner and offer licensing, and Haavard believes that avoiding this commitment is why Apple refused to work on the specification.
Erica Sadun, TUAW
Have you ever wanted to look in your own ear? Or at the nape of your neck? Or behind furniture? If you own an iPhone 4S and an Apple TV, you can wirelessly beam the picture from your camera to your large screen TV.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
If Lion’s autocorrecting a word that you’d prefer it simply leave alone, let it make the correction, then fix the word so that it’s spelled the way you’d prefer again. Next, Control-click (or right-click) on the word in question, and choose Learn Spelling from the contextual menu that appears. From now on, Lion won’t autocorrect that word any longer.
Ask Different
Jason Kincaid, TechCrunch
Put another way, Apple appears to have transferred its patents to the patent troll Digitude, though it first routed them through a shell company that shares the same office as Digitude’s lead investor and Chairman. Further evidence of the relationship between Apple and Digitude can be found on the ITC’s own website, where a list of files relevant to the lawsuit can be found. Many of these files are marked confidential, but it appears someone mistakenly left the file names intact. One of which is “Digitude-Apple License Agreement”.
Mark Milian, CNN
The Santa Monica store episode also illustrates Apple's unusually covert way of doing business. Interviews with almost two dozen people familiar with Apple Store negotiations say the Cupertino, California, company sometimes employs uncommon legal tactics, refuses to name itself in public documents and hearings, and has sworn city government officials to secrecy.
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.
Shara Tibken, Wall Street Journal
Apple Inc. opened its latest retail store Friday in New York's historic Grand Central Terminal to hundreds of eager shoppers from around the country who had been waiting in line for as long as a day.
Apple said 2,500 people were waiting in line before the opening, and the store had nearly 4,000 visitors before noon.
Topher Kessler, CNET
Arnold Kim, MacRumors
Apple has posted a new TV ad on their YouTube page promoting The Beatles on iTunes.
Dan Moren, Macworld
In all, BreakTime is a simple app, and one that works perfectly for me. I can’t make any claims as to its long term benefits on your health, but I do appreciate being reminded not to sit and stare at my computer all day.
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
Matt Tinsley, TUAW
James Galbraith, Macworld
It only works with Thunderbolt-equipped Macs, but for those who can use it, the LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Edition 240GB SSD packs a big performance punch in a small package.
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
Twitter 4.0 for iPhone lacks the surprise, delight, and attention to detail of a deserving successor to Tweetie, offering instead a least common denominator experience that no one deserves.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
The microblogging service unveiled a new version of its online interface Thursday, with a focus on simplifying the design and making the service easier to use. The new look will roll out on the website in the next few weeks, but it’s available now at Twitter’s mobile website, along with a just-updated Twitter app for iPhone.
James Galbraith, Macworld
After testing dozens of scenarios, we found that—for the most part—the two available bi-directional 10Gbps channels in the MacBook Pro (Late 2011) were more than able to keep up with the demand of multiple storage devices on a Thunderbolt daisy chain. However, if you add multiple displays to that chain, the throughput of some drives can be severely limited.
David Pogue, New York Times
The world is teeming with charging docks that also play their music. It shouldn’t have taken so long for someone to create a dock that also plays the photos and videos.
Topher Kessler, CNET
Ankur Gupta, Smoking Apples
J.d. Biersdorfer, New York Times
Joshua Schnell, MacGasm
Microsoft has just unleashed an Xbox LIVE application for the iOS. If you’re a hardcore gamer, and need to know how your achievements are holding up while on the go, you can now track and compare achievements from your iPhone or iPad (iPod touch too).
Dan Moren, Macworld
Piezo is designed for users who want to quickly and simply record some audio, whether it be from a microphone or from one of your Mac’s apps.
Joshua Schnell, MacGasm
Sparrow has been updated to version 1.5 today, and amongst other tweaks, the update brings with it the ability to sync your attachments to the cloud with support for Dropbox and CloudApp.
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
Sharon Zardetto, Macworld
Jackie Dove, Macworld
In its 1.0 incarnation, Adobe Carousel, though promising, has a way to go to appeal to a broad base of photo-oriented consumers and professionals. While its current, basic set of functions work quite well, Carousel has more of an Adobe Labs look and feel to it than a polished product. And, it's too expensive for what it currently offers. You do get a 30-day free trial, so I encourage you to try it and see whether it suits your needs before committing to a paid subscription.
Kirk McElhearn, Macworld
Dragon Express does exactly what it claims to do, and does so very well, at an affordable price. Never before has this quality of speech recognition been available to Mac users at such a low cost. While the limitations of Dragon Express will certainly dissuade anyone who wants to perform a lot of dictation—those users are better off with Dragon Dictate—it provides a handy, easy-to-use way to dictate occasional texts and transfer them to your applications.
Tracey Lien, Kotaku
It’s easy to think of them as an overnight success: a studio that burst forth fully-formed with the single goal of dominating the iOS market with a series of fruit-slicing, jetpack joyriding, monster dashing games they’d prepared earlier. It’s also easy to be wrong. While many believe Halfbrick only came to exist after the release of the critical and commercial iOS hit Fruit Ninja, the Brisbane studio has been quietly working on games for almost ten years. This is a story about how everyone now knows who they are.
Brian Bergstein, Technology Review
When Chris Cheung and Thomas Heermann, two middle managers at the software company Autodesk, first showed off their new iPhone drawing app, they got some skeptical looks. Why would anyone want to doodle on that tiny screen? And what could a $2.99 app matter to a company with around $2 billion in annual revenue?
Two years later, Autodesk's SketchBook apps for phones and the iPad are best-sellers that have been downloaded seven million times. It doesn't add up to a huge amount of revenue: perhaps $15 million. But there's more than money to this innovation story. With its first consumer hit, Autodesk now has more customers than it did in all its previous 29 years combined.
Macworld
Chris Rawson, TUAW
Flipboard, the popular personal magazine app that's been tremendously successful on the iPad, has been updated to a universal version that now also works on the iPhone and iPod touch.
MacNews
Once installed the program will take all the log entries and sort them attractively by program (and associated icon) as well as by date. You can then use the icon to hone in on the specific information you want.
Jenna Wortham, New York Times
Apple declined to comment on its decision to add emoji, but it was most likely driven by a global standardization of the format last year that was meant to ensure that a picture of a cute cat will still look like a cute cat on a different phone in a different country. The move has put emoji on the radar of many more iPhone and iPod Touch owners.
Jonathan Seff, Macworld
Mel Martin, TUAW
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Version 1.0.1 of the app includes improvements spanning three areas: text entry, postal address verification, and the checkout process.
Chris Rawson, TUAW
Horse Says Internet
Robert McMillan, Wired
Apple is a company that builds stuff for consumers. Macs. iPods. iPhones. iPads. Though these devices may show up inside businesses, the company rarely promotes them for corporate use, and it has slowly pulled away from the few products it does sell to businesses. Its XServe servers died a premature death this past January. But for some reason, Apple is pushing the iPad into hospitals, playing against its well-polished image as the world’s most successful consumer gadget company.
Afshad Mistri is Apple’s secret weapon in a stealth campaign to get the iPad into the hands of doctors. And it’s a campaign that seems to be paying off.
Jeff Carlson, TidBITS
I often listen to music on my iPad, but I forget that the iPad can listen as well. I discovered this recently when my brother-in-law recommended a TV show called “From the Edge with Peter Lik.”
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Jamie Zawinski
Ever since MacOS 10.0 was released, text fields have supported Emacs bindings for the single-character Control commands, showing that there were people inside Apple (and, presumably, NeXT) who were right-thinking and sensible.
But some time late in the 10.6 release cycle, and continuing into 10.7.1, the binding for Ctrl-K ("kill to end of line") became broken.
Jeff Carlson, Macworld
From its emphasis on speedy outline creation to its ability to work deeply within outlines without having to pass it off to the Mac, OmniOutliner is a well thought out implementation of how to build and work with outlines, not just hierarchical lists.
Anthony Frausto-Robledo AIA, Architosh
Macworld
The best Mac hardware and software of the year.
Harry McCracken, Technologizer
And it was one specific thing about the iPad that made it so useful on the trip: I could use it for ten hours at a pop without worrying about plugging it in.
Sharon Zardetto, Macworld
Kirk McElhearn, Kirkville
Aaron Tan, Techgoondu
Katherine Rose, The Guardian
Photographer Katherine Rose put the phone's camera through its paces to see how it would fare in comparison with the Canon 5D mkii she uses professionally.
Ramblings On Librarianship, Technology, And Academia
I understand that Apple is trying to position the iPhone as the phone that's great for people with disabilities (which to Apple means "blind people"). I just wish they were willing to make the effort to let us buy the thing. This whole process has been time-consuming, draining, degrading, and ultimately fruitless.
Ted Landau, Macworld
Cody Fink, MacStories
MarkdownMail allows you to draft and compose HTML emails on your iPhone or iPad using the Markdown markup syntax.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Inpaint is a one-trick pony, but it’s very good at that trick, especially considering the $4 price tag. It’s a nifty tool for Average Joes and Janes who want to clean up their snapshots.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Here’s how to master Siri’s nuances, turning it from a parlor trick to impressive productivity tool.
Kirk McElhearn, Macworld
Here's an overview of the different types of microphones you can use with speech recognition software, how they work, and what might be the best mic for the way you work.
Peter Cohen, The Loop
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
Tweaking iOS 5 and its power management software is the likely fix, but with so many areas of the operating system to examine, it may take Apple more time to iron out the problem that it had originally intended.
Andrew Harrison, PC Advisor
Cookie from SweetP Productions is a great way to keep the flood of incoming cookies under control.
Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica
In response to our question, Apple tells us there is only one device running iOS 5 that still runs Carrier IQ, and it's the iPhone 4. Other devices running iOS 5, such as the iPad, the new iPhone 4S, and older iPhone models updated to iOS 5 have had Carrier IQ stripped out. But Apple says it has never used Carrier IQ to record keystrokes or personal messages.
Dan Moren, Macworld
Megan Lavey-Heaton, TUAW
Mophie is recalling the Juice Pack Air for the fourth-generation iPod touch. Affected models will have the first five digits of the serial number be between TR113 and TR120. Mophie said a small number of those units might overheat, causing the plastic to deform and damage the iPod touch.
Josh Wright, Macgasm
Apple has finally confirmed the grand opening date of its highly hyped retail store in Grand Central Station in NYC. The confirmation comes by way of a message displayed on the now famous flip style ticker display out front of the new location.
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS
Siri can be useful, and is a whole lot of fun to demo, but it’s unreasonable to read anything more — certainly not Apple corporate policy — into Siri’s successes, failures, and little asides.
Derrick Story, Macworld
By using iPhoto as the dam, and Aperture as the final destination, you can enjoy the benefits of Photo Stream without drowning in a deluge of snapshots.
Nilay Patel, The Verge
Although references to Carrier IQ were found in iOS, Apple says "most" of its products don't support Carrier IQ as of iOS 5 and it'll completely remove it in a future update.
Jenna Wortham, New York Times
Apple said Wednesday that the apparent inability of Siri, the virtual assistant in the iPhone 4S, to retrieve information about abortion clinics and women’s health services in some areas was not intentional or deliberate.
chpwn blog
Carrier IQ, the now infamous “rootkit” or “keylogger”, is not just for Android, Symbian, BlackBerry, and even webOS. In fact, up through and including iOS 5, Apple has included a copy of Carrier IQ on the iPhone. However, it does appears to be disabled along with diagnostics enabled on iOS 5; older versions may send back information in more cases. Because of that, if you want to disable Carrier IQ on your iOS 5 device, turning off “Diagnostics and Usage” in Settings appears to be enough.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
So the trick is to alter your library in such a way that iTunes Match no longer sees these tracks.
Sharon Zardetto, Macworld
Help tags—those little yellow rectangles of information that pop up when you hover your cursor over something—do more than just provide the name and function of a button on a toolbar. Use them to find the full name of an abbreviated file name, to get a quick summary of a help topic, and more. Here are five of my favorite tricks.
Samuel Gibbs, TUAW
Memo is basically Stickies with iCloud and password support.
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