The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

• The battery is only 6% larger than that of the iPhone 3G, so increased battery performance probably comes from better hardware and software efficiency.
• There is an additional antenna connection near the dock connector. iFixit isn't sure what that's for right now, but they'll continue to investigate.
• According to the iFixit guys, the new screen does seem slightly easier to clean, thanks to its oleophobic technology.

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I'm a big music fan, and I spend a good portion of my day listening to an iPod or iTunes because music helps me concentrate and stay motivated. I have a pretty extensive music collection, but I also enjoy streaming music services like Last.fm and Pandora to find new music, listen to a mix of related artists, or just play something random. My problem with streaming services is twofold: I don't like having to have a web browser open and I like to be able to easily switch songs, pause playback or even go back to iTunes. For Pandora, the excellent PandoraJam that Scott covered a few years ago is a great option, but until today, I hadn't had any luck finding a good Mac Last.fm client.

SweetFM is a new Last.fm client that offers up a seriously sexy way to listen to your favorite Last.fm stations on your Mac. Here are some highlights:

• You can pause songs mid-stream and resume playback
• Unlimited song skipping
• Compatible with both the Apple Remote and the media keys on your Mac Keyboard. I love this because it makes it really easy for me to skip ahead, stop or pause without having to pull up the app window.
• Album art support from both Last.fm and Amazon.com
• Mark songs as loved, banned or add them to a playlist
• If you subscribe to one of the Last.fm pay plans, you can play your loved tracks
• Easy access to tagged stations, artist stations and your library
• Direct access to buy songs
• Export tracks to iTunes: you can do this with all tracks or just tracks you "love," and the MP3 file that is coming from the Last.fm server is automatically added to a specific iTunes playlist.
• Acts as a regular iTunes controller when not streaming

I've been playing with the app on and off all day, and I'm really, really impressed. One of the things that annoys me about Pandora is that I can't see what songs are next in the queue. Sometimes you just want to skip ahead. With SweetFM, I can see up to 4 upcoming tracks from the menu bar. That's seriously nice.

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Recording support for the talkcast is provided by Call Recorder from ecamm networks.

This is just becoming stupid. For the past year, we've heard from developers who have had their apps rejected from the App Store for the silliest of reasons. You know, the app might allow someone to access content that could also be accessed through Mobile Safari, it might display an Old-English translation of the Kama Sutra, or include potentially adult language; but this rejection wins the "most asinine rejection ever" award: Because we said so.

Meet Craig Robinson. Craig is an artist and illustrator. For the last ten years, he's been creating these extremely cool Minipops, tiny pixelated renditions of celebrities and musicians. Check out Radiohead and The Office (UK). These creations have built up a nice fanbase, and Craig even published a book, aptly titled Minipops, in several countries. When Yahoo! Music launched a few years ago, Minipops were featured.

So Craig and his friend Matt decided to create a Minipops iPhone app -- essentially a portable version of the Minipops collection, along with some clever commentary for each illustration and the chance to "guess" what each image represents. The app was rejected from the store under the guise of being potentially offensive. This was shocking, but the guys persevered and resubmitted the app. Once again, rejected. Originally, Craig thought it might have been his sometimes sarcastic commentary that was the offensive part, but the second e-mail made it clear that they found the pixelated illustrations themselves offensive.

Keep in mind, these illustrations are very, very cute -- and if anything, flatter the people they represent more than anything else. Plus, these illustrations have been published not only in Craig's own Minipops book, but used in various other media as well. A book about Michelle Obama will even feature the Minipops of the Obama family.

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Update: The Agile Web Solutions guys have been nice enough to extend beta invites to another 100 TUAW readers. Those that don't make it into the first round, don't worry, the guys said they will be putting you on a waiting list and accessing that over the next couple of months, so with any luck, everyone can get in on the fun! Check out http://switchersblog.com for details in the coming weeks. Once again, send an e-mail with the subject "I want my 1P3 beta!" to 1P3Promo [at] agile [dot] ws!

I am a huge fan of Agile Web Solutions's 1Password. It's always one of the first applications I install on a freshly formatted Mac, and I use it countless times a day to manage my logins to various web sites, forums, shopping sites and more. I used to be really, really bad about using the same few passwords for every login, but the strong password generator coupled with support across browsers (and on the iPhone and iPod touch) makes it easy for me to have distinct and secure logins all over the web.

Last night, the Agile Web Solutions team released the 2.9.19 beta (with support for Safari 4), and if you subscribe to the 1Password newsletter, you know that 1Password 3.0 is gearing up for testing before being released later this year.

We've got some juicy details about what to expect in 1Password 3.0 and a chance for current 1Password fans to get in on the private 1Password 3.0 beta! Read on...

Gallery: 1Password 3 beta

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• iLife Support -- this is for iLife '09, iWork '09 and Aperture 2 users and it addresses some memory leaks, custom folder issues with Media Browser and maintaining the correct image date when importing from iPhoto to Aperture.
• iDVD gets an update to fix an issue where iDVD is unable to add a title/comment to an image. Recommended for all iDVD 7 users.
• iMovie now supports 720p AVCHD Lite cameras and camcorders and some other issues.
  
• iPhoto -- some fixes to publishing to MobileMe, Flickr and Facebook, slideshow playback and location GPS in emailed and exported JPEGs See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3532
• Digital Camera RAW update -- RAW support for iPhoto '08, iPhoto '09 and Aperture 2 for various Canon, Nikon and Olympus cameras.