The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

The newest Get A Mac, ad from Apple will take over the front page of a number of sites this month. Created by TBW\Media Arts Lab, the ad takes over the page as PC chases switchers through various switcher-cam displays.

Thanks to Ivan for sending it in, and Ads of the World for hosting it.

Irene's Spirit [US$1.99, iTunes Link] puts a fortune telling spirit into your iPhone or iPod touch (with the exception of the first generation iPod touch) as long as you're running OS 3.0.

Forget the Magic 8 Ball or Ouija Board. That's kid stuff. Irene doesn't use a 20-sided die or easily pushable planchette to give you an answer. Her answers come from the other side. The other side of what I'm not so sure, but who cares when she is dead accurate. She will make you wonder if ectoplasm will void your warranty.

I had my son ask Irene a question and he totally lost it when she told him the name of his dead grandfather. After two more passes, he got skeptical and figured out what was happening. I should have stopped while I was ahead.

Yes, it's an illusion.

I was very impressed with the best tutorial system I've seen in any app. Being an instructional designer, I know that chunking instruction and requiring feedback periodically is the best way of transferring information. Irene's Spirit is a textbook case of how to get it right.

With a bit of practice, operating the illusion is easy and distracting your audience is helped by lot of vibration noise and weird looking scrolling screens that look like something out of The Matrix.

I thought that it was a well designed, easy to learn trick that will be a hit at birthday parties, but only good for one or maybe two questions before we more skeptical grownups get wind that something's up. I had a good time with it as a casual app, and really think it's worth a look.

Take a look at this video and see Irene in action.

We loved Triazzle 3.0 [iTunes Link] when it came out in July, but with winter nearly upon us it's time to dust off the sleigh bells and dreidels because Triazzle Holiday [iTunes Link] is here in a new seasonally-inspired version. This slightly cut-down version of the US$2.99 app sells for US$0.99, and runs on any iPhone or iPod touch running OS 2.2.1 or higher.

Triazzle is a puzzle game where you are given a sectioned triangle board and 9 (down from 16 in the full app) smaller triangle pieces that fit in the larger triangle like a jigsaw puzzle. The pieces are moved to the board and rotated to get the proper orientation, when all nine are in place, you have won. The rub is that many pieces can look maddeningly similar and there is only correct solution to each puzzle. So even if it looks right, you can be wrong. When you are right, you are rewarded with an animation and the match counter increments.

This version of Triazzle is chock-full of holiday lights, Santa Claus, Christmas trees, Dreidels, Nutcrackers, and a litany of other things to make you think of the holidays. The game has 4 difficulty levels ranging from one for kids to level 3, which is really quite difficult. Animated hints are available along with an option invoking the Triazzle Tiki Gods to solve the puzzle for you.

What sets Triazzle Holiday apart from just about anything else is its craftsmanship. Every screen is more gorgeous than the next, and the level of detail of the graphics can leave you breathless. If the visuals get too complex you can choose to display simpler backgrounds to make things easier to see. You can also adjust whether or not snow will fall, and you can set the volume level of music, ambient sounds, and game sounds.

Music is a large part of the game. Right after the splash screen you are advised to use headphones. Drag them out of the closet for this one -- it's worth it. The music is wonderfully recorded and reproduced using such favorites as Jingle Bells and the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies from The Nutcracker Suite. In addition there is a lot of original music, including a spirited Klezmer number backing up a game full of Dreidels.

Triazzle Holiday will only be available through the holiday season, so get your copy now, put on your headphones, and immerse yourself in this impressive game.

In a previous post about offshore iPhone chargers, a few astute TUAW readers mentioned Monoprice.com as a good source for chargers, connectors, and computer, TV and audio cables. In searching their site, I found a real deal.

The Monoprice Backup battery pack is the simplest of devices. When your iPhone or iPod is running low on juice, just plug this battery pack into the 30 pin connector. You can then either keep running with a fairly large dongle hanging off the bottom of your device, or wait and the battery pack will charge your device in 3.5 hours according to Monoprice (or about 2.5 hours according to my tests).

Yes, there are a lot of battery backups that do this, but how many are sold at US$14.50? You read that right, only US$14.50, and for that you get pack with a capacity of 2200 mAh.

For comparison, the capacity of the iPhone battery is 1150 mAh, so this battery should be able to charge your device twice. Due to my ignorance of the vagaries of electricity, mine winds up charging the iPhone about 1.75 times, which isn't bad at all.

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We did a fairly extensive rundown of eBooks for the iPhone/iPod touch in August; you can take a look back if you're new to the eBook universe for Apple's mobile devices.

BookReader [iTunes Link] , a US$4.99 app for devices running OS 2.21 or higher, has just joined the crowded eBook market -- but it brings little to the table to recommend itself. The app when first run looks beautiful. You are shown a wonderfully rendered bookshelf which looks very similar to the one found in Classics [iTunes Link], but a bit more nicely rendered, showing the spines of books instead of covers in a scrolling list.

Impressive, but now what? I really had no idea since there were no instructions on how to operate the app either in the app, or on the Readdle site. This, as I've often said, is a major downfall of many of the apps in the store. It would be fine if it were an adventure game, but not at all acceptable in something offering utility that you would like to get at quickly.

The only documentation in the app is a cursory explanation of one of three methods of getting content into the app -- connecting via Wi-Fi and WebDAV to your computer in a fairly arcane manner. You connect to an external server and provide an app-created numeric password. From there you can add books to the server folder... or so they say, but they don't go as far as saying how. I added books to the server, and they never showed up in the app. I was left stranded on the Wi-fi access page and didn't know where to go from there. Now I know that I'm missing something minuscule, but that's exactly my point; there wasn't enough given to me to allow me to complete the task.

The second method of acquiring content is through Readdle Storage. You need to set up an account on the Readdle site which gives you a free 512 megabytes; larger amounts of storage are available for purchase. Once you set up an account, it works fine, but unless you know what to do, you may not find it on your own. You can easily add documents to Readdle Storage and they do show up in the app.

Many documents, unfortunately, don't look very attractive. Anything that started as a .pdf document winds up looking like garbage since all the graphics are gone, and the formatting is stripped out. The list of formats that BookReader handles is also lacking. It doesn't understand some very popular formats such as Kindle, MobiPocket and Microsoft Word's .DOC as do other apps such as Stanza [iTunes Link]. DRM is not supported, but that's par for the course in the eReader market.

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Proloquo2Go [iTunes Link] is not your usual iPhone/iPod touch app. It turns the mobile device into a full augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device. According to the AAC Institute, an estimated 2.5 million Americans are speech disabled to the extent that they experience significant difficulty being understood by other people. Reasons vary, but are often the result of congenital illness or ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease). 75% of people using AAC devices have ALS.

One alternative is learning how to use sign language, but that requires both adequate sensory motor ability of the user and a knowledge of sign language expected in the listener. It's a solution that helps some, but not all.

When signing is not available or appropriate, using an AAC device may well be. AAC devices use combinations of symbols, words, sounds and technology to allow people without functional vocal abilities to communicate. The cost of such devices range from around US$3,500 to US$8,500 for something about the size of a Speak and Spell.

In contrast, the Proloquo2Go app has a price of US$189.99. If someone is in the market for an AAC system, it is one of the biggest bargains in the entire App Store for any iPhone or iPod touch running OS 2.1 or higher.

Proloquo2Go took the uncommon route of using existing hardware to run a complex AAC system. It's nearly impossible to describe the use of the system through words, though I'll try, but I'd suggest you check out some detailed videos walking you through the process in some depth.

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It was freezing this morning as the Manhasset Long Island, NY Apple store opened for business. Employees wearing T-Shirts (they weren't allowed to wear coats), ran up and down the waiting line of hundreds of people both pumping up the crowd and trying to stay warm. The enthusiasm was contagious as orange shirted people shouted out that the store would be open in 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, and then the doors opened to seemingly dozens of Apple workers handing out T-shirts and applauding loudly as each new group of 20 people or so were let in the huge glass doors. The first 1,000 people were handed black T-shirts that said 'Manhasset' on the front and 'Designed by Apple in California' on the back.

The store is free standing and much larger than the one at the Walt Whitman Mall, my usual Apple store. The front and back of the store are glass walls and there is plenty of open space. Hopefully this store will take some of the burden off of the other Long Island stores which are usually crowded and have multi-day waits to get an appointment at the Genius Bar.

If you're in the area, check it out at 1900 Northern Blvd, Manhasset, NY.

When I opened my iPhone 3GS, I was surprised to find that the power adapter was nothing but a little 2-prong AC plug (I live in the US) that allowed you to plug in the standard USB to 30-pin connector to charge the phone.

I wanted to get a spare; checking online told me that the Apple Store wanted US$29 for the little plug, which just seemed like too much for too little, so I went shopping.

On eBay I found a bunch of auctions based in Hong Kong selling what looked like the exact same thing for anywhere from under around $2-4, and they often included the USB cable to boot.

I ordered four from a vendor and after a few weeks received them. They looked perfect, right down to the little green dot -- but none of them worked. They might start charging, but after a few minutes the iPhone would beep a few times and I would be informed that "this accessory is not compatible." And so it went for all four pieces. After sending some pictures back and forth and reading a few emails containing a combination of surprise and amazement from the vendor, my money was refunded.

Undaunted, or maybe just dumb, I went back to eBay and found another vendor that claimed to be selling, "100% Brand New Original OEM Charger and Original OEM USB Cable for iPhone/iPod" for around US$4. I just checked eBay and found this same vendor raising the price to US$10 in one auction and lowering it to $US.01 in another.

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Ever since I first saw heads-up-displays in science fiction movies like The Terminator, I knew that I had to get my hands on one. How neat it would be to get instant information on anything about anything in my field of vision?

Well, just as the iTablet won't be the Knowledge Navigator, the new buzz-phrase of the year, augmented reality, won't give me Terminator eyes. Such is life.

I tested out a pretty decent augmented reality app called Robotvision [iTunes Link], and for US $0.99 what you get, if you have an iPhone 3GS running OS 3.1 or better, is quite cool. Will it solve your problems, cure the common cold, or tell you anything that more established apps won't? Not really. But tossing a buck on a neat novelty is not unheard of in the iPhone 3GS world.

This one does more than most. First you tell it how widely to search and then, if you're in a highly populated area, you can set up a category ranging from ATMs to Travel Destinations. For the most part, I didn't fool with this since being in the suburbs, I can't be too picky.

Run it and the camera shutter opens. Moving the iPhone around, I found Cousin's Pizza, only 8432.1 miles away. Hmmm. The setting was for 5 miles. Wait, I guess it needed to be calibrated by doing the calibration figure eight wave of the phone. It seems that a lot of GPS apps require this.

OK, much better. It found a bunch of places but they were all stacked on top of one another. No big deal, since when you touch one, you get a screen like the one in the picture. The closest place is displayed first and the right and left arrows take you back and forth through the stack. While an item is in the front pane, you can call them, see them on a map (by cleverly pointing the iPhone to the floor, which invokes Google Maps, but all the stick pins aren't really any clearer than the AR view... maybe less so). You can also hit the Bing button where there might be a review or more information.

The problem is that the direction it puts you in is not quite accurate. It might get you to a nearby corner, but not to the butcher shop itself. I don't think we can slight Robotvision on this, since the not quite pin-point accuracy of the iPhone 3GS GPS has already been talked to death.

What else can this bad-boy do? You can see who is sending tweets in the area you specified, read the tweets and see how far the tweeter is from you. Not enough? Wait, there's more. You can find people in your area who use Flickr, and view their gallery. This doesn't work too well. I set the default for 50 miles and found no one. Then I set it for 25 miles and found one person with a gallery of 10 pictures. I live 30 miles from NYC, so I can't blame it on the boonies. You still want Ginsu knives? Okay, hit the Wikipedia button and see if anything in your range is listed. If so you'll get a bit of text and the option to go to Wikipedia to read more.

I don't know if AR will change the world, or be as successful as either New Coke or the iPod. But I'd suggest tossing a buck at this one. You are guaranteed 20 minutes of awe and then maybe some time to reflect on what you have, once the novelty wears off.

Check out this video for a tour and let us know what you think about this or the idea of augmented reality in general.