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1) Incoming, outgoing Apple employees
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/incoming-outgoing-apple-employees/
Filed under: Apple Corporate, Software, Apple, Security
A few Apple employees played some musical chairs this week. Executive Pablo Calamera, who was in charge of MobileMe while at Apple, is off to work as the CTO of Thumbplay, a company that peddles ringtones and music to mobile devices.
HR shouldn't have to change the big "35,000 employed worldwide" sign, though: former Mozilla security chief Window Snyder was picked up by Apple this week. She'll jump in as a senior security product manager, a job that will take advantage of her work both at Mozilla and previously at Microsoft, where she worked on both Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Sure, she's got the experience, but has she ever worked for a company that does this for its incoming employees? Didn't think so.TUAWIncoming, outgoing Apple employees originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 [...]
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2) Apple tops Fortune's Most Admired Companies list again
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/apple-tops-fortunes-most-admired-companies-list-again/
Filed under: Apple Corporate, Surveys and Polls, Apple, iPadFor the third year in a row, Apple has topped the list of Fortune's Most Admired Companies. The list was based on a poll of 4,200 executives across the world's top companies, and by the highest margin ever, they picked the Cupertino-based "mobile device company" as the world's most admired brand. Obviously the millions of MacBooks, iPhones, and iPods played a factor, but it sounds like the iPad sealed the deal this year. BMW's CEO is quoted waxing poetic about Apple's brand power: "The whole world held its breath before the iPad was announced. That's brand management at its very best."
GE has actually had the most appearances at number one on the list, and Apple needs to stay high for two more years to take that record. But it's certainly possible -- if the iPad is as popular as expected, and Apple follows it up next year with [...]
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3) Nintendo not concerned about competition from Apple
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/nintendo-not-concerned-about-competition-from-apple/
Filed under: Gaming, Portables, iPod touchWhile Sony appears concerned about its eroding share of the mobile gaming market since the phenomenal success of Apple's App Store, gaming giant Nintendo isn't worried about Apple at all. In an interview with VentureBeat, Nintendo of America's Cammie Dunaway said that with 11.2 million DS units sold last year, and 125 million DS sales in total thus far, Apple's mobile platform isn't really a threat to Nintendo's dominance of mobile gaming. "Consumers are still finding fun with our products, and there is a lot of room to grow," Dunaway said.
Nintendo certainly has room to feel comfortable, at least for now. In terms of units sold, the DS has been the most successful gaming system in history, and the iPhone and iPod touch aren't even primarily focused on gaming. If anything, Apple's success in gaming came almost accidentally; it's only relatively [...]
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4) Big Developer News: Mac Dev Program reduced to $99
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/big-developer-news-mac-dev-program-reduced-to-99/
Filed under: Apple
After a many-hours outage, the Apple developer site is back -- and the changes are profound, at least on the Mac end of things.
On the iPhone side, users are required to update their profiles, take a rather obnoxious survey and agree to new terms [Developer credentials required for link]. Unfortunately, Apple needs to improve the default survey formatting. iPhone developer John Fricker points out, "If you go to My Profile you can take the iPhone developer 'survey' with better formatting."
But it's on the Mac side where the big news is. Apple has replaced the select and premiere memberships with a single-tiered, low-priced Mac Developer program. They write: We recently introduced a new Mac Developer Program that replaces ADC Premier, Select, and Student Memberships. If you are a current ADC member, you can continue to access your resources and benefits through the [...]
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5) Rumor: Sony developing PSP phone to challenge iPhone
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/rumor-sony-developing-psp-phone-to-challenge-iphone/
Filed under: Gaming, Portables, RumorsIn terms of sales, Sony's PSP has been getting trounced by the various incarnations of Nintendo's DS since day one. Despite the PSP's better graphics and flexibility as a mobile media platform, the DS has grabbed hold of the handheld gaming market and shows no sign of letting go.
Since the introduction of the App Store in 2008, a new mobile gaming juggernaut has emerged, seemingly out of nowhere -- the iPhone/iPod touch. With the forthcoming launch of the iPad, whose larger screen and more powerful CPU could make it a gaming powerhouse, it means there are now three very big players in the mobile gaming market... and Sony is in an untenable position already.
Sony is hoping to change that. According to a leak to the Wall Street Journal, Sony is hard at work developing a range of handheld products designed to compete directly with Apple's mobile [...]
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6) Paid app upgrades coming to App Store?
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/paid-app-upgrades-coming-to-app-store/
Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
Developer Fraser Speirs came across an unexpected iTunes dialog earlier today that could be a hint of a new, long-sought App Store feature: the ability to offer for-fee upgrades to apps, complete with discounts for those who bought older versions.
Up until now, App Store vendors have worked around the lack of a paid upgrade feature by offering different "versions" of their apps, but this has also meant there's been no ability to offer discounts to loyal purchasers of the previous version of the app, short of applying a temporary price discount to everyone and raising the price later on. Assuming this dialog box isn't a simple error (notice that it asks you to click OK, even though the button says Buy) and is an indication of the future direction of App Store purchases, it's indicative of far greater pricing flexibility for App Store vendors, [...]
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7) Daily Deals for March 4, 2010
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/daily-deals-for-march-4-2010/
Filed under: DealsWelcome to a all-mobile edition of the Daily Deals, brought to you by our friends at DealNews (but curated by yours truly).
Some people actually like using a stylus on their iPhone, and in some cases it may be preferable to a frozen sausage. Try out this retractable "universal" stylus at Overstock for just a couple of bucks.
How about a "traveling kit" for the iPhone 3G? Kit includes an FM transmitter, car charger, screen protector, and skin case. Under $12 with coupon code 'EFWS030125' (it expires March 7).
Some app news too:
Eco Punk, an action game for iPhone/iPod touch featuring deadly skateboarding rabbits with guns is free today.
Several iPhone and iPod touch applications available from the App Store have recently dropped in price. Each is the best deal we've seen on that title.
Aqua Forest for 99 cents ($7 off): an accelerometer-based puzzle game [...]
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8) 100 sci-fi stories in your pocket
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/100-sci-fi-stories-in-your-pocket/
Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App ReviewIf you're an unabashed science fiction fan it's probably worth taking a look at 100 SciFi Stories for your iPhone or iPod touch. The app is US$0.99. All the stories are in the public domain, and many are true classics. Other selections are less well-known, but worth a read.
You can adjust the text size, and when you relaunch the app, it picks up where you left off. Books you've already started are also marked on the contents page.
The developer claims future updates will include more books at no additional cost. You can scroll the pages continuously, or page by page. The app includes authors like H.G. Wells (of course) and S.P. Meek, George Griffith, Ray Cummings, Edgar Rice Burroughs and many others.
Are there any downsides? A few. When the app first came up I thought it had frozen at the splash screen, but I had to touch on the word [...]
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9) Enjoy background audio with MLB's At Bat
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/enjoy-background-audio-with-mlbs-at-bat/
Filed under: Multimedia, iPhone, iPod touchAs if I weren't excited enough to buy Major League Baseball's (MLB) iPhone app At Bat (here's an example of my previous gushing), they've added a new feature that makes it easy to listen to games while using other apps.
While Apple doesn't allow 3rd party apps to run in the background on the iPhone or iPod touch,* Silicon Alley Insider notes that you can listen to audio in Mobile Safari while using other applications. It's this trick that MLB exploited with At Bat 2010. With the tap of a button, At Bat will push an audio stream to Mobile Safari.
Note that MLB didn't come up with this trick, nor is their app the first to exploit it. ESPN Radio does it, as well as Scanner911 and FlyCast. Still, it's nice that MLB's devs acknowledged that some users might want to check email or hop onto Twitter while listening to game, and made it easy to do [...]
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10) iPhone dev center down today
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/iphone-dev-center-down-today/
Filed under: Developer, iPhone, SDK, iPad
Developers who try to log into the iPhone dev center, the Mac dev center or iTunes Connect this afternoon are being greeted with the traditional yellow sticky note or the Sorry! note above, indicating that some sort of update effort is underway. With the on-again, off-again release of the 3.2 beta 3 version of the SDK in late February, and the unconfirmed-but-likely launch of the iPad on March 26th, no surprise that there are fixes and finish to take care of on the site.
When it comes back up, we'll let you know; if you spot anything of consequence when it does, please let us know.
Update: It's back up. The big news is on the Mac side, with the introduction of the $99 price point for ADC membership.TUAWiPhone dev center down today originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:55:00 EST. Please see our terms [...]
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11) Google responds to Apple lawsuit against HTC
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/google-responds-to-apple-lawsuit-against-htc/
Filed under: OS, Software, Apple, iPhoneThere's one more player in the ongoing the Apple/HTC lawsuit announced the other day. It's Google, which yesterday admitted that it wasn't a party to the lawsuit, but that it would "stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it."
Lots of analysts and pundits have pegged the lawsuit as a direct shot across the bow from Apple at the Android OS (and the breakdown of patent claims that our colleagues at Engadget did seems to confirm that, with both old-school and wide-reaching patents matched up with brand new narrow UI claims), and it looks like Google will be coming to the rescue for its OS, if it has to.
What form that rescue might take, we don't know -- it's possible that Google could provide money, advice, or even lawyers to HTC if it feels that any part of its operating system might be threatened [...]
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12) Should you be building universal apps for App Store?
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/should-you-be-building-universal-apps-for-app-store/
Filed under: Apple, Developer, iPhone, iPod touch, iPadUniversal apps. They're the solution for delivering your iPhone OS application to both the iPhone and the iPad and having it run natively on each without silly make-do's like pixel doubling. It's a way to ensure that your app "fits" each platform, providing art and interfaces that match the target screen. Or, as Apple puts it, "Developers can now start planning for universal applications, allowing them to take full advantage of the technologies found on iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch with a single binary."
Right now, I've got a bug up my sleeve about the whole issue. I'm not convinced that it's the right solution for a lot of apps. Just because you *can* merge an iPhone app with an iPad app, and sell one product, you shouldn't -- unless the functionality is significantly the same for both platforms.
The thing is this: once you start [...]
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13) Life of Steve Jobs to be a play
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/life-of-steve-jobs-to-be-a-play/
Filed under: Steve Jobs
The Berkley Repertory Theater is producing a play titled The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.
The play will be a monologue monologuist piece that "dives into the epic story of a real-life Willy Wonka whose personal obsessions profoundly affect our everyday lives" The play isn't all roses in it's portrayal of Jobs, though. It follows the trail to China where millions toil in factories to create iPhones and iPods - something Apple has been under pressure for lately.
The play's monologue is written by and staring Mike Daisey. Daisey is best known for leaving Amazon to become an actor. In 2001 his book 21 Dog Years, an account of his time working for Amazon.com during the dotcom boom years, thrust him into the limelight
The play will run from January 14 to February 27, 2011 and is directed by Jean-Michele Gregory.
UPDATE: I have corrected the piece after [...]
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14) iPhone photo of "ghost" makes UK tabloids look foolish
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/iphone-photo-of-ghost-makes-uk-tabloids-look-foolish/
Filed under: Humor, Odds and ends, iPhone
It doesn't take much to make yourself look like a fool, but in the case of The UK's Sun and Daily Mail newspapers, they have to be feeling quite idiotic right about now. Perhaps not, as these tabloids have a history of running fabulous stories about celebrities, politicians, and the supernatural as a matter of daily business.
John Ware, a 47-year old builder, sent the newspapers a photo he had taken with his iPhone that allegedly showed a ghostly little boy dressed in turn-of-the-20th-century clothing, balefully looking at the photographer. You can see the little boy at the right side of the photo, standing in the foreground. The papers dutifully ran the story, with the Sun's example shown at the top of this post.
There's only one problem: as Macenstein pointed out, the same little boy haunts the US$0.99 iPhone app Ghost Capture. That's right [...]
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15) Apple pressuring music publishers over Amazon Daily Deal
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/apple-pressuring-music-publishers-over-amazon-daily-deal/
Filed under: Apple Corporate, iTS, Apple Financial, iTunesAmazon has used low-priced, exclusive "Daily Deals" to promote its MP3 store successfully, and Apple's not happy about it. In fact, the iTunes team is trying to talk publishers out of participating.
According to Billboard, participating labels entered into the program with Amazon in 2008 without paying a thing. It was simply meant to increase the store's publicity. Two years later, that's changed. An unnamed major-label head of sales told Billboard that "[the] promotion morphed into something where the labels make arrangements to provide an exclusive selling window with Amazon for a big release expected to do a lot of business on street date [the day the new release is available for general retail sales]."
Two years in, the labels are motivated to offer Amazon first dibs on major releases at a significant discount, and that's [...]
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16) Win an HP Officejet 4500 All-in-one printer from TUAW and HP
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/win-an-hp-officejet-4500-all-in-one-printer-from-tuaw-and-hp/
Filed under: PeripheralsIf you've been a TUAW reader for any length of time, you know that we love to give our readers a lot of swag. Sometimes it can be promo codes to some of the best apps in the App Store, other times it might be a collectible that you absolutely have to win. Today, we're happy to announce that you have a chance to win an HP Officejet 4500 All-in-one Wireless Printer. We highlighted one of these cool little printers during our Macworld coverage.
The Officejet 4500 All-in-one Wireless Printer is a slick unit that can print, copy, scan, and send color faxes. Like many HP products, it works very well with Macs and "those other computers," so if you can use it even if you haven't yet become a Mac fanatic like the bloggers at TUAW.
How do you get to win this sweet piece of multifunction love? It's easy. Just leave a comment below telling us which of the four functions [...]
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17) Dear John Makinson and Penguin, please don't "reinvent" books
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/dear-john-makinson-and-penguin-please-dont-reinvent-books/
Filed under: iPad"Reading literature makes you a more well-rounded individual." That's what an author told me once. Notice he didn't say "watching literature."
paidContent:UK has an article on a presentation Penguin Books' CEO John Makinson gave here in London on Tuesday. Makinson presented ideas on how publishers might approach Apple's iPad and the iBookstore. Makinson revealed "We will be embedding audio, video and streaming in to everything we do. The .epub format, which is the standard for ebooks at the present, is designed to support traditional narrative text, but not this cool stuff that we're now talking about."
"This cool stuff" includes turning books into applications with "online communities" for fans with live chat between readers and other multimedia effects. "The definition of the book itself is up for grabs," Makinson said. A copy of Pride And Prejudice might [...]
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18) Mac OS X's Automator: I learned it by watching you!
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/mac-os-xs-automator-i-learned-it-by-watching-you/
Filed under: Software, Productivity, Tips and tricks
Mac OS X's Automator has the ability to perform specific tasks from its given set of actions. For example, with a Finder-based action, you can batch move copy, move or rename files that fit a certain criteria. Similarly, image-based actions allow you to batch edit images, be it resizing, rotating or changing their file type (i.e., from JPG to PNG or vice versa).
However, there may be situations that call for more unique tasks to be performed. And this is where Automator's "Watch Me Do" feature may come in handy. It performs keyboard- and mouse-based actions based on your movements and inputs during a Watch Me Do session.
To initiate a Watch Me Do session, launch Automator and choose a template (you can incorporate it into an existing Automator workflow, service or app as well). Then, click on the "Record" button in the upper right [...]
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19) The most awesome iPhone stand ever made out of cutlery
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/the-most-awesome-iphone-stand-ever-made-out-of-cutlery/
Filed under: Accessories, Humor, iPhone, iPod touchThat headline is probably a bit of an overstatement, since this is probably the only iPhone stand made out of cutlery. ForkedUpArt of North Salt Lake, Utah, is actually selling two different stands. ForkHead, who you see standing at attention at your right, and SpoonHead, ForkHead's smarter brother.
tweetmeme_url = "http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/the-most-awesome-iphone-stand-ever-made-out-of-cutlery/" tweetmeme_source = "tuaw"
Sold through our favorite iPhone accessory store, Etsy.com, the ForkedUpArt iPhone stands can be customized if you want, and according to the artist, "I'm making these guys as fast as I can."
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gadgets/The_Most_Awesome_iPhone_Stand_Ever_Made_Out_of_Cutlery'; How much will one of these unique items put you back? About US$20, plus shipping. That's less expensive than some of the [...]
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20) Dear Aunt TUAW: Does size matter (when it comes to iPads)?
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/dear-aunt-tuaw-does-size-matter/
Filed under: Apple, iPadDear Aunt TUAW,
I am planning on getting an iPad WiFi+3G when they become available, but I am still undecided on which (storage) size I should get. I currently have a 16GB iPhone 3GS which comfortably, for now, holds all my media needs. While I have a lot of music and photos and some video I don't feel the need to have it all on my phone at one time.
Looking at what I store on my iPhone I think an iPad 32GB would more than fit my needs -- but will my media files be larger on the iPad with the larger format of the device? I don't expect that my iTunes songs will take up anymore than they do on the iPhone, but will the format of pictures and video take up more storage space? With AT&T increasing the download size limit over 3G it got me wondering if 32GB on the iPad will be more like a 16GB iPhone.
At this point I would be deciding between the 32GB and 64GB. [...]
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21) Interview with Zen Bound creators on iPad and iPhone games
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/interview-with-zen-bound-creators-on-ipad-and-iphone-games/
Filed under: Gaming, Apple, Developer, iPadAppAdvice has an interview up with Secret Exit, the folks who made one of the best iPhone games of last year, Zen Bound. They spoke not only about that game and how the iPhone turned out to be the perfect platform for them to start out on, but also about the iPad and what they're planning to do with it in the future.
Secret Exit echoes a lot of other developers in saying that it plans to make completely different apps for the iPad, not just upscaled or updated versions of iPhone apps. The hardware and the market, says Secret Exit, both call for completely separate releases.
They also say, however, that they're worried about iPad pricing. A bigger screen and more complicated layouts mean that the investment for apps will be bigger, and if only the most recognized brands can hold down a $9.99 price point, Secret Exit says that they may not be [...]
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