TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Spacetime Studios has hit a pretty crazy milestone, even in the ever-more-massive world of iOS and mobile gaming. The company's MMOs on the iPhone, Android, and Chrome platforms have hit a total of 100 million play sessions, which means people have loaded up and logged into Spacetime's titles more than 100 million times. They're not...

South African President Jacob Zuma seems to be a big fan of the iPad. About a year ago, a photo was tweeted just prior to the 2011 State of the Nation address showing Zuma preparing his speech on an iPad. This year, as you can see at right, President Zuma is using his "indispensable" iPad again for the address. He appears to like the...

Dear Aunt TUAW, I find myself in an interesting position. I am going to be traveling for several weeks within the US. I have my iPhone on a grandfathered unlimited data plan and a wifi iPad 2. I would like to be able to use my iPad while away not only for FaceTime but also general use and even using my slingbox. I would rather keep my...

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To...

Another company you've probably never heard of before today is after a slice of Apple's pie. This time it's Swiss company SmartData, who claims Apple is willfully infringing its patent on a "modular computer" with the Apple TV, iPhone, and Remote app. As noted by Electronista, SmartData doesn't seem to produce any products or have any...

There's finally some good news in the music business, but don't get too excited, it's not that good. Warner Music reports (before we hear about the full industry sales from 2011) that its sales were steady last year, at $780 million. In this case, steady is better than a drop, which is what most of the music industry has seen lately....

The iPhone has always had a robust market for used handsets, with even older models still getting rather good returns for their former owners. Priceonomics has done a study of the used smartphone market and compared the depreciation in resale value for the iPhone versus Android and BlackBerry handsets. Unsurprisingly, the iPhone holds...

Apple's been going back and forth in German courts over the Samsung Galaxy Tab, suggesting it "borrows" a few too many features from the iPad, but the latest ruling has fallen in Samsung's favor. A German court has now decided that the Galaxy Tab has "clear differences" from the iPad, and thus can be sold in that country. Note, also,...

Slightly over a dozen protesters from Change.org and SumofUS delivered a petition signed by more than 250,000 people to the Grand Central Terminal Apple Store today. Both organizations are urging Apple to improve working conditions at factories run by its overseas suppliers, particularly Foxconn's massive facility in China. CNET...

The Loop is reporting that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is taking RIM BlackBerry devices off of the list of officially supported mobile devices. What's taking the place of the trusty old BlackBerry? iPhones and iPads running iOS 5 and newer versions of the mobile OS. While a February 3rd memo from NOAA...

Whoa! As of this writing (noon EST) Apple stock has reached a new high of US$493.85, which is a record share price. It also gives the company a market capitalization of $465 billion, which exceeds the combined totals of Google and Microsoft. Apple passed Microsoft in Market Cap back in May of 2010. At the current price, Apple is...

So, your Family Truckster is loaded with sixteen cup holders in various places. Since you already have a place to stash your hot coffee while driving, wouldn't it be nice to use one of those cup holders for something really useful, like holding your iPad or iPhone within arm's reach? Satechi yesterday delivered the SCH-121 Cup Holder...

Have a bit of time? Want to learn more about Steve Jobs' life than you were able to dredge up reading the Walter Isaacson biography? All you have to do is read the 191-page 1991 FBI background investigation of Jobs that was done when he was being considered for an appointment to the President's Export Council. The file also include...

Google is in the process of acquiring Motorola and its 17,000 patents. Everyone from analysts to tech pundits are wondering if the search company will adopt the handset maker's aggressive patent litigation strategy. Legal experts criticize Motorola for violating the terms of FRAND, which requires patent holders to license...

If you're tired of tower defense games, I don't blame you. Feel free to skip this post, but let me say this before you go: I wouldn't spotlight yet another tower defense game if it wasn't special. That's why Spice Invaders has made the cut. The standard tower defense tropes are in place. Build and upgrade towers with spells and...

John Paczkowski of AllThingsD is claiming that Apple will hold a press event in the beginning of March to announce the new iPad, which he calls "iPad 3" (noting that might not be its official name). Paczkowski expects the announcement to take place in San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where Apple has held several other...

Slidevana is a curious thing. This US$69 bundle offers a set of professionally designed slides. These templates map out the kinds of data most speakers want to communicate, providing specific elements you can customize. Called "Dark," this first release includes a clean presentation style that would feel at home at any boardroom or...

Although discontinued for consumer sales last July, the plastic MacBook remained available for sale to educational institutions as a (relatively) low-cost option for schools seeking portable Macs for students. If you were wondering how long that would last, wonder no longer; seven months later, Apple has ceased distributing the MacBook...

iOS developer David Stanfill of Napkin Studio has been looking for a better way to demo his iOS apps during online meetings, as well as to record live videos of the UI as the apps run. (We've rigged up various hardware approaches to do this, although none of them reach the highest quality standards.) Well versed in video compression,...

PopClip is a lightweight Mac utility that improves your ability to work with text. It sits in the menu bar and gives you an iOS-style popup that lets you cut, copy and paste text. You can also search for the selected text, open text links, correct spelling, and more. It's a real time saver once you get accustomed to using it. That's...

Apple has released three EFI Firmware Updates for 2010-model Macs, including the iMac, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro. This update enables Lion Internet Recovery on those older Macs. Introduced in OS X Lion alongside the mid-2011 updates to the MacBook Air and Mac mini, Internet Recovery enables access to disk repair or OS X Lion...

For Mac repair shops, enterprise tech support teams, and consultants who need to wipe all data off of hard drives before selling or recycling old Macs, there's now a fast way to erase those drives without tying up a machine for a long time. WiebeTech has a new device called the Drive eRazer Ultra (US$249) that promises to make cleaning...

That didn't take long. Only a few weeks after Apple's iBooks Author app debuted, template publisher Jumsoft began shipping Book Palette (US$2.99), a collection of ten professionally designed templates for iBooks Author. I had an opportunity to try Book Palette, which is packaged as a Mac app. Once installed from the Mac App Store and...

The design wizards at Twelve South have come up with another unique and useful accessory for Apple gear. This time, they're introducing the HoverBar (US$79.99), a mounting clamp and flexible bar that floats an iPad 2 (or several) next to your iMac or Apple monitor. The HoverBar can be clamped onto the upright of an iMac or Apple...

Soon after the 10.7.3 update to OS X Lion, people started finding subtle differences in the pointer icons for OS X (hat tip to Daring Fireball). Specifically, the link, grab, copy, and screenshot pointers have all been updated with slightly new iterations for the first time since OS X 10.2, released in 2002. The link pointer features a...

If you're looking for coverage of working conditions at Foxconn and other Apple manufacturing partners, there's plenty to go around. The drumbeat of sharply critical stories continued today with CNN's interview of a Foxconn worker; this follows a scathing New York Times story from late January that explores the gulf between electronics...

Do you want to share files easily and quickly? Then take a look at Droplr, which has been around for some time and recently hit the Mac App Store in an improved version 2. Droplr is free and easy way to share images, documents and other files. You can run it from a web browser or the Mac app which lives in your menu bar. To share a...

As noted yesterday, many of the users who updated their OS X 10.6 systems with Apple's most recent security patches found themselves unable to run PowerPC legacy apps via the Rosetta compatibility layer. Today a new version of that update (Security Update 2012-001 v1.1) is now available, and it should resolve the issues. The latest...

I met up with the guys behind iBackflip while at Macworld, and was impressed with their passion for design. Their first iBackflip was a pretty straightforward flip-down arm sling for the iPad. Using Velcro, it offered a basic black design and minimal extras. The new iBackflip Somersault, now available for pre-order, is a thoroughly...

If you've ever corresponded with Apple Support (or any major customer support outlet, really), you might have seen that little notice at the bottom of the email that says any conversation included "may be privileged and may contain confidential information." Most of the time, that's just a weak move to try and cover up any issues that...

FileVault 2 is a feature of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion that provides a way to encrypt a full disk drive so that it can only be used by those who know a password ... until now, that is. Passware, a company that makes forensic software used to recover lost passwords or open encrypted files to police and others, has announced that their Passware...

An incremental release for iBooks Author has been released with changes to the program's EULA. The update is 143.50 MB, which seems pretty hefty for a EULA change. The change is an important one though, clarifying that Apple has rights over the format a book is in, not the content. If someone wants to charge a fee for an .ibooks...