TUAWIt's alive: Intel Atom support returns to 10.6.2 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Building a great iPhone app

TUAWBuilding a great iPhone app originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

"Just this year alone in Chrome, there's tons of new stuff coming. Before this year gets over, we'll have 3 more announcements to make. Chrome for Mac will be ready, very close to launch."

TUAWChrome for OS X before 2010 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWGrowl at 1.2, with 64-bit support originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWThis just in: MacBooks are more reliable than netbooks originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

"What we've tried to do with Windows 7 - whether it's traditional format or in a touch format - is create a Mac look and feel."

TUAWMicrosoft manager admits to copying 'Mac look and feel,' MS denies originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWUpdated iPhone 3G, 3GS pricing and availability for Canada announced originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWiWork secret life as ZIP file revealed, includes PDF preview originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

• Fixed an issue with MKV playback over the network
• A problem with the media server crashing has been fixed
• Video playlists work again
• A new feature where downmixing 5.1 surround audio to 2.0 stereo audio has multiple dynamic range compression options. In other words, surround audio will not be as "quiet" when played through headphones.
• New handling of quitting/suspending commands that includes a new scheduling feature.

TUAWPlex 0.8.3 brings on the Snow Leopard love fest originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The latest release of VMware's top-notch virtualization software "Fusion" has been announced and some of the new features are definitely worth taking a look. For the uninitiated, virtualization is the act of simulating a guest operating system while running a host operating system. Put simply, it allows you to run Windows without having to reboot.

TUAWVMware Fusion 3 supercharged for Snow Leopard originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Courtesy molenlavapit.com

TUAWMac 101: Camera-specific application launching originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Photo courtesy of Jay Robinson

TUAWiTunes 101: Wrangle your iTunes LPs with Smart Playlists originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWiPhone OS 3.1 now enforces Exchange encryption policy, may block pre-3GS iPhones originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Important safety tip: Please read the instructions for TweetMyMac carefully, especially the part about creating a separate Twitter account for your Mac -- do not use your regular Twitter account, or anyone you follow will be able to control your machine.

We have previously covered some of the ways in which it is possible to remotely control a Mac at home or in the office. Most of our suggestions have required the use of Mail in order to process some rule and kick off a script or Automator action.

Alex P over at TheMacBox aims to change all of that. Enter TweetMyMac, the little program that lets you get screenshots, iSight snapshots, or launch a program through the use of Twitter. While the list of commands available is not currently as comprehensive as what your imagination can create with a little AppleScript or Automator whizzbangery, it is a good list and growing as well.

An obvious benefit of this approach is the ease of getting everything set up. In the past it took an AppleScript to call another Automator action or some other kludgey-at-best method to get things working. With TweetMyMac there is very little effort required for setup.

Another neat feature is that TweetMyMac will run a shell command. With a little scripting you can create your own custom commands. And using the previously-covered technique of sending tweets via the command line you can have your custom commands send information back to you as well.

Continue reading TweetMyMac: Remote control of your Mac via Twitter

TUAWTweetMyMac: Remote control of your Mac via Twitter originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWFront Row performance on the mini takes a dive with Snow Leopard originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWMac OS X, now HDTV-ready with 10.6 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWThe sordid past of Mac OS X originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I can be silent no longer. I have tried for nearly a year to love my Apple TV; yet every time I try to do anything beyond playing music with it, I begin to unconsciously claw my eyes out. I think that Apple TV is the worst product I have purchased that has come out of Cupertino -- and in many ways, one of the worst products I have purchased at all. Read on for the sordid details of my hate-hate relationship with my Apple TV.

Continue reading Confession: I hate my Apple TV

TUAWConfession: I hate my Apple TV originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In yesterday's earnings announcement and subsequent analysts' call, Apple reported another record-breaking quarter; the company posted its "best non-holiday quarter [in terms of] revenue and earnings." This is pretty impressive given, as Engadget points out, what some consider the "worst recession since the Great Depression." Specifically, Apple's books (not that kind) are reporting revenues of $8.34 billion with a take-away profit of $1.3 billion; the bump from the year-ago quarter in earnings per diluted share takes us from $1.19/share in Q3'08 to $1.35 in Q3'09.

In the midst of these impressive numbers, Apple's CFO Peter Oppenheimer is optimistic. Apple is expecting revenue in the range of $8.7 billion to $8.9 billion for the current quarter, forecasting an increase in Mac sales as we enter the back-to-school shopping season. This is a safe bet, given Apple's "best ever" line of current MacBooks. For Q3'09 Apple sold 2.6 million Macs -- 1.75M of them were laptops, per Macworld -- representing a 4% increase in units sold over the year-ago quarter. The laptop rush continues to swing the balance of Apple's CPU sales towards the MacBook Pro line; laptop units sold jumped 13% year over year, while desktop sales dropped almost 100K units (849K vs. 943K) against Q3'09.

Ignoring the subscription-based accounting methodologies for both iPhone and Apple TV, Apple's non-GAAP revenue was a staggering $9.74 billion with net income of $1.94 billion. In order to allow for future free updates to the products, Apple uses subscription based accounting for iPhone and Apple TV; revenue from iPod touch & iPod, Macs, software and accessories is fully recognized when the products are sold. This approach "parcels out income from iPhone and Apple TV sales over a 24-month period."

Apple also sold 10.2 million iPods and 5.2 million iPhones, representing a 7% decline and 626% increase over the year-ago quarter. This fact is significant because the decrease in iPod sales indicates that the iPhone is now cannibalizing its older siblings in the "traditional" (shuffle, nano, and classic) family of iPods. Apple is also quick to point out that the entire market for traditional MP3 players is declining.

While the increase in iPhone sales does seem quite impressive, it is worth noting that the iPhone is available in many more countries than it was a year ago (although the 3GS is only in 18 of the 80 markets so far). I would be interested in knowing if iPhone sales increased domestically or if these numbers are completely driven by international success. Another interesting metric will be to compare iPhone sales this quarter to sales in Q3'10. With a similar sampling of countries the numbers should make for a better comparison. Although, I will go ahead and jump the rumor-gun and say I think that next year's iPhone is going to be a bigger improvement vs. the current model, as compared to the 3GS vs. the 3G; for this reason iPhone sales will continue to increase.

Again the question of netbooks was presented and again Apple suggests that the netbook is currently a sub-standard computing platform with a poor user experience. If we consider that Apple had at one time said they were not doing a video iPod, then it is pretty likely that an Apple netbook is in our future.

Apple's third-quarter results are very strong and the stock is up substantially in early trading today. This should be great news for anyone holding any AAPL in their portfolio especially given the close for Q2'09 was a mere $121.51. I think Apple is doing a great job and as an investor myself, I am pleased with the results -- as is the rest of Wall Street.

TUAWApple Q3'09 results: breaking records, not taking names originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Welcome back to Mac 101, our series of posts aimed at novice Mac users and veterans who like the occasional refresher.

If you've owned a Mac portable for any length of time, chances are pretty high that you have had your Mac wake up while stowed away in a carrying case. You know the drill as well as I do. As soon as you open your bag of choice, a wave of heat rushes up to your face. And that's when you realize your Mac isn't sleeping and your battery is now mostly dead.

For our friends who are new to the Mac or who may have never used the sleep mode you might be asking yourself why it is important. For road warriors who office at Starbucks or just those that are energy conscientious, it is actually quite impressive functionality. Sleep mode is a low power, energy-saving mode that your Mac uses to extend the life of both batteries and displays. While it's more useful for mobile machines, Sleep mode is available on both portables and desktops.

Sleep mode on the Mac is very similar to system standby in Windows. It is is almost always successful at saving my battery life so when I'm on the road I don't have to worry about opening my Mac to a dead or dying battery.

How does one take advantage of all of this sleepy goodness? Well, there are several ways, some of which depend on your personal configuration. The most common method for putting your Mac portable to sleep (no, not like that) is simply by closing the lid.

Pressing the power button results in a dialog box with buttons for sleeping, restarting, or shutting down your Mac -- click Sleep, or press the S key to select the Sleep button. You can also change your system preferences to make the power button sleep your Mac with a single press.

Simply choosing "Sleep" from the Apple menu will also send your Mac to dream-town. Another neat trick: if your Mac has an infrared (IR) port you can use your Apple Remote to put your computer to sleep. Hold the Play/Pause button to put your Mac to sleep and push any button to wake it back up.

As it turns out, Sleep mode does not always work as expected. If you've had trouble with your Mac waking up without your being aware, you're not alone. In fact, there are several reasons why your Mac might wake up in transit without warning. Apple has even seen-fit to create a support article on the very subject. Three of the more common causes of sleep failure (besides Caffeine) are:

1. External hard drives not properly dismounted prior to sleeping
2. Bluetooth devices (such as a portable mouse) waking the Mac up
3. An active application preventing sleep such as iTunes or QuickTime

Regarding external hard drives, I have found that a drive needs to be unmounted & unplugged prior to putting your Mac to sleep. This prevents the majority of sleep issues caused by external hard drives. Another good idea is to disable the "Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer" checkbox in Bluetooth System Preferences. A simple step with a powerful outcome -- no longer will your portable Bluetooth mouse awaken your Mac from its slumber.

While some people may not find Sleep mode a key bit of functionality in their Mac, many have found that it is absolutely indispensable.

For other awesome beginner tips, visit our Mac 101 category.

TUAWMac 101: Sleepy success for the portably inclined originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Recently, the question came up of how to automatically "tweet" a birthday message to a friend or loved one on their special day. After thinking on this question for some time I finally came to a solution. As it turns out, intrepid TUAW blogger Dave Caolo wrote a Mac 101 article all about attaching AppleScripts to iCal events. Additionally, Brad Linder over at Download Squad put together a nice little tutorial for posting to Twitter via the command line.

It wasn't obvious at first, but these two articles together formed a dynamic duo of birthday tweeting proportions. If, dear reader, you are interested in setting up a system for sending out some birthday tweets then follow along as we travel the mysterious world of iCal events and command line tweeting. Read on for a somewhat technical tutorial on how to set up some pre-scheduled tweeting goodness. (If you're looking for a service to take care of all this for you, here you go.)

Continue reading Use iCal to tweet automatically

TUAWUse iCal to tweet automatically originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you've seen a string of notifications pop up on your screen and then gracefully fade away, you've probably seen Growl; it's the open source & popular system-wide framework that allows applications to let you know when something happens. For instance, a Growl notification might appear to inform you of a newly-arrived email, new mentions on Twitter, a change of song in iTunes, or a download completing in Safari or Transmission.

The notification itself is a customizable pop-up that can also include an auditory notification as well. Growl is very flexible; it allows you to choose exactly which events trigger a notice, or pick a particular notification style for a specific event. Growl includes support for hundreds of OS X applications and is one of the first items I install on a new system.

Probably the only feature that could make Growl even more awesome is if it were to support forwarding notifications to an iPhone or iPod Touch running 3.0 via the new Push framework. Enter iPhone application Prowl (iTunes link), it is a Growl client for the iPhone that sends your Mac's Growl notifications out to your iPhone. Read on for my experiences and thoughts on the first Growl application for the iPhone.

Continue reading Push Growl notifications to iPhone with Prowl

TUAWPush Growl notifications to iPhone with Prowl originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWExpanding Apple's Pro line of 'Books originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

• $1,699US: 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB DDR3 RAM, GeForce 9400M graphics, 250GB HDD
  
• $1,999US: 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB DDR3 RAM, GeForce 9400M + 9600M GT graphics, 320GB
  
• $2,299US: 2.80GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB DDR3 RAM, GeForce 9400M + 9600M GT graphics, 500GB HDD

• $1,199US: 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR3 RAM, GeForce 9400M graphics, 160GB HDD
• $1,499US: 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB DDR3 RAM, GeForce 9400M graphics, 250GB HDD

• $1,499US: 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR3 RAM, GeForce 9400M graphics, 120GB HDD
• $1,799US: 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR3 RAM, GeForce 9400M graphics, 128GB SSD

TUAWUpdated Mac laptops unveiled at WWDC 2009 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWApple stores roll out revised One to One support & training program originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 03 Jun 2009 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWTweetie 1.2, now with love for video originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 27 May 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWPsystar files for Chapter 11, tucks tail between legs originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 26 May 2009 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

"Eucalyptus has been rejected by Apple, for the absolutely outrageous reason that one of the books you can search for and download from Gutenberg is Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana. Not only can anyone load and read this exact same book on any iPhone using MobileSafari, but it's also available through other e-book readers already in the App Store."

TUAWRejection: Apple hates (certain) books and whistling originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 21 May 2009 18:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading We get it, Windows means cheap hardware

TUAWWe get it, Windows means cheap hardware originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 18 May 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWMac 101: Geodata copying in iPhoto originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 16 May 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWWe [heart] Icons really does [heart] icons originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 09 May 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

"Beginning today, all submissions to the App Store will be reviewed on the latest beta of iPhone OS 3.0. If your app submission is not compatible with iPhone OS 3.0, it will not be approved."

TUAWBreaking News: No new app submissions unless they run on OS 3.0 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 07 May 2009 17:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWPirated iWork contains botnet trojan, breaks hearts originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWApple Q2'09 results round-up originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Steve Jobs impersonators take over NBC on Chuck and 30 Rock

TUAWSteve Jobs impersonators take over NBC on Chuck and 30 Rock originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWNew iPhone ads appear, bring joy and good cheer originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 08 Apr 2009 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWiTunes drops all DRM, adds variable pricing originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAWiPhone developers get Ivy League edu-mu-cation originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading iPhone OS 3.0: Dreams really could come true

TUAWiPhone OS 3.0: Dreams really could come true originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gallery: Video Monkey: dead-simple video conversion

Continue reading First Look: Video Monkey swings in to save the day

TUAWFirst Look: Video Monkey swings in to save the day originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.