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 companies' best intentions regarding working conditions at contract facilities, and the incessant pressure to innovate and squeeze costs out of the process.

Fairness, though, requires a few reminders. There's social and political argument over the ultimate value of sweatshop labor conditions in developing countries, with the pro-sweatshop side citing enormous economic benefits for countries that can capitalize on an inexpensive and inexhaustible labor force. Even if you buy the hypothesis that cheap labor isn't necessarily good for China, it's true that Apple isn't the only Foxconn client by a long shot, and the electronics manufacturing sector may actually be one of the brighter lights for worker's rights in China. Nevertheless, the company's high-profile and highly profitable products combined with its longstanding penchant for product secrecy have made it a lightning rod for "Applerousing" activism and anger.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, the man most responsible for assembling Apple's supply chain into a strategic advantage for the company, reportedly sent a very strongly worded email to all Apple hands, noting that "any suggestion that we don't care [about the welfare of workers in our supply chain] is patently false and offensive to us.... accusations like these are contrary to our values. It's not who we are." In addition to the company's annual Supplier Responsibility Reports and auditing programs, Apple has recently taken another couple of steps that put it out in front of other consumer electronics firms; it released its supplier list for the first time, and it's the first sector company to join the Fair Labor Association. These changes should, in theory, make it easier for third parties to look into workplace issues within the Apple supplier universe.

You can get a very different take on the relative impact of Apple's policies, and the human cost of making insanely great products for entirely sane prices, by spending an evening at the Public Theater in New York City with monologuist Mike Daisey watching The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. Be warned, however, that it is not so easy to leave the show with the same nonchalance about Apple's products and their origins as you might have when you arrive.

The first thing that audience members will notice as they take their seats before the start of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is the cubical and spare set. With rectangular frames in a back LED wall and a glass/chrome desk atop a glass platform, there's a definite echo of a familiar retail aesthetic; it's as if the designer was instructed "Make it look a little like an Apple Store, but don't spend much."

The mood is also evoked, carefully, with sound. The music playing before the show includes both the OS X Leopard post-installation track "Exodus Honey" and Jonathan Coulton's geek anthem "Skullcrusher Mountain." Coulton's song even gets a nod during the monologue itself, when Daisey refers to Apple as a company full of "mad geniuses" who, after Steve's involuntary departure in the 1980s, could finally realize their plans to combine a monkey with a pony.

The next thought, as the show begins: Mike Daisey is a large, loud, sweaty dude who sits in a chair and talks at you for two hours. Although this may sound like a rough session of detention with an angry phys ed teacher, or an afternoon with your conspiracy theory-obsessed uncle, the performance Daisey delivers is heartfelt, intelligent and ultimately completely watchable. His show, which was excerpted on the January 6 episode of the public radio program This American Life, recounts both his decades-long fascination with Apple, including the unforgettable arc of the late co-founder Jobs, and also Daisey's half-cocked but surprisingly effective gonzo investigation of labor conditions at Foxconn and other electronics manufacturing contractors in the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Referring to his handwritten notes as he goes -- the performance is extemporaneous, so there is no canonical scripted text and the narrative has evolved over the 18 months that the show has been touring -- Daisey wants to make one thing abundantly clear. If you cut him, he would bleed six colors. To establish his bona fides as a true member of the Apple faithful for a civilian audience, he claims that sometimes after a show he relaxes by "field-stripping my MacBook Pro into its 43 component parts," cleaning each one before reassembling the laptop. "It soothes me," he purrs, stroking his chest with his fingers.

While I don't know that many Mac geeks who relax by taking apart their MBPs, it's evident from Daisey's frequent, coherent technical asides that he isn't putting on airs (or Airs). His heartfelt memories of his family's first computer (an Apple IIc, considered so pricey that it merited its own "computer room") will resonate for plenty of TUAW readers of a certain age. I may have been the only audience member who involuntarily nodded and muttered "yes, of course" when Daisey shared his favorite Mac of all time, but that was only because his choice, the compact yet powerful (for its day) SE/30, was so obviously right.

It's Daisey's love for all things Apple that makes his perception of the company's fall from grace all the more stinging. Starting with the inadvertent leak of several testing photos taken on the iPhone assembly line, Daisey's curiosity about the process and the people behind Apple's products drove him to research the circumstances of where all our stuff comes from.

In 2010, Daisey traveled to southern China and literally drove up to the gates of the massive Foxconn plant in an effort to talk to production line workers; he was in country shortly after the cluster of Foxconn employee suicides and during the incident when a Foxconn employee died of exhaustion after a multi-day workshift. He posed as an American industrialist to gain access to other companies' facilities (including dormitories with beds crammed to the ceiling), and also met with labor rights activists and workers who, despite enormous legal and personal risks, have tried to form labor unions in Chinese factories.

Daisey's recounting of his conversations with these workers is sometimes poignant and often shocking. He met laborers exposed to the neurotoxic solvent n-hexane (now banned from Apple's supply chain, but originally used as an iPhone screen cleaner) who now shake so badly they cannot hold a teacup. He spoke with underage workers outside the plant gates, although follow-up investigations by This American Life indicated that the hiring of minors is far less prevalent than it once was and that Foxconn is relatively well-positioned on that score (some independent organizations dispute this, noting that audits are easy to deceive). Daisey's own translator wonders if all these people can possibly have been through what they say, expressing shock that so many tell the same stories of mistreatment, forced/unpaid overtime and bad working conditions.

As Daisey has performed this piece around the country over the past two years, he might have been considered a lonely voice in the wilderness. (TUAW interviewed Daisey at Macworld Expo 2011, while he was performing the show in Berkeley, CA.) Circumstances have changed quite a bit since he began, however. The radio broadcast was a turning point in the show's reception, according to a flyer handed out by ushers after the performance; it was the most downloaded episode in TAL's history and, Daisey's flyer claims, was heard by many Apple employees and their families. This created what Daisey's sources call "a morale situation" within the company, and he asserts that this internal circumstance was a factor in Apple's subsequent decision to join the FLA and open its supply chain to additional scrutiny.

It may not be as simple as Daisey wishes for Apple to effectively address the condition of a massive Chinese labor force that, in the final analysis, does not actually work for the Cupertino company. His suggestion of a 'dividend for change,' where Apple would directly invest five billion dollars of its cash reserves into the supply chain, would certainly be worthy of a company founded by a Zen-loving college dropout who urged customers to think different -- but it's surpassingly unlikely. Still, public awareness and action on the question of humane labor overseas (whether contracted by Apple, HP, Asus, Sony or any other company) will make a difference in the months and years to come. As Daisey says in his online response to Apple's recent moves toward further supply chain glasnost:

If Apple would spend less energy finessing its public image, and instead apply its efforts to real transparency and accountability, it could be a true leader for the electronics industry. Apple today is still saying what it said yesterday: trust us, we know best, there's nothing to worry about. They have not earned the trust they are asking for."

Mike Daisey's monologue The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs continues through March 4, 2012 at New York City's Public Theater. The show runs approximately two hours and is performed without an intermission. Tickets and information: http://www.publictheater.org

Mike Daisey's "The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" is funny, forceful agitprop originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When you think Microsoft, you think "big." Especially from the perspective of Apple's long-time customers and loyalists -- those who remember the rough times in the 1990s, when Microsoft's US$150 million investment helped keep the company from fiscal ruin -- the idea of corporate behemoth-ness is paired irrevocably with Redmond's mastery of the Windows ecosystem.

It was Microsoft's dominance of the computer industry that led a federal judge to declare that the company had "monopoly power" in 1999. Correspondingly, the revenues and profits generated by the Windows juggernaut equate to the biggest of big money. At least, pretty big money.

In responding to Ed Bott's ZDnet article about the relative distribution of profits among the various business lines at three tech leaders (Google, Microsoft and Apple; Bott's point was that Google's cash comes almost exclusively from advertising, while Apple and Microsoft have more balance), MG Siegler noted that the pretty pie charts were missing a key piece of context. Apple's revenues and profits may weigh heavily on the iPhone, it's true, but what's not apparent from the side-by-side comparison is the scale.

It's not just that Apple is doing better than Microsoft in revenues, profits and market cap. It's not just that Apple earned and kept more than twice as much as Microsoft did in the holiday quarter. It's that the most successful Apple product, considered as a standalone business, is larger than Microsoft all on its own.

No, that's not a typo. In the quarter ending December 31, the iPhone rang up sales of more than $24 billion. All of Microsoft's businesses -- Windows, Office, Xbox, enterprise, consumers, the whole shebang -- chalked up almost $21 billion in revenues. Yes, Microsoft's strongest quarter for business sales may not be the one where IT purchasers are more focused on Christmas vacation than server upgrades. But it's still a breathtaking fact, and a striking transition from a decade ago.

[Hat tip to Business Insider]

Microsoft's $21B in quarterly revenue is nice, but it's no iPhone originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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 build removes the patch to the ImageIO code that was included in the original version; this, apparently, was the cause of the breakage. 10.6.8 users can download the new version from Apple's site or via Software Update.

[via MacDailyNews]

Snow Leopard security update revised to fix Rosetta issues originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 04 Feb 2012 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's not a good thing when a simple point release of Apple's desktop OS causes a flurry of error reports with a central theme of "I just installed the 10.7.3 version of Lion and now nothing works." Last night and this morning, threads began popping up on Apple's support forum and elsewhere indicating that a flaw in the 10.7.3 delta updater is resulting in app crashes with a characteristic "CUI CUI CUI" overlay on some interface elements.

While it should be noted that there are plenty of reports of users updating with no issues whatsoever, there's no denying that for those affected this is a painful and unfortunate bug. It's especially awkward for users who don't have a bootable backup or another machine to help the recovery process, because it leaves your Mac pretty much unusable.

The good news (mostly) is that it should not be necessary to resort to Time Machine or other data restores to get back into working condition. Tipsters on the Apple boards and a helpful walkthrough at OS X Daily recommend using the OS X 10.7.3 Combo Updater to resolve the problem. (If that link comes up 404, it's a Safari quirk; just reload.)

If you can boot your Mac into Safe Mode -- just hold down Shift during startup until the desktop or login window appears -- then you should be able to download and install the Combo Updater and proceed normally. If you can't get running in Safe Mode, you have a few options; with a second Mac running Lion or a visit to the Genius Bar, you can mount your machine in Target Disk Mode and install the combo update directly.

You also can take advantage of Lion's Recovery Partition, which should be present on any machine where 10.7 was installed by the conventional process. Holding down the R key at startup will boot you into Recovery, where you can then reinstall Lion. The 10.7.3 combo update should be downloaded and installed normally as part of the recovery cycle. Do not erase your drive or restore from Time Machine, it is not necessary. The only thing that you should need is a fresh install of the OS X system, which will not impact your data or applications.

While Lion is a lot more 'recoverable' than past versions of OS X thanks to the Recovery Partition and the ease of retrieving purchased apps from the Mac App Store, a self-inflicted foulup like this one reminds us all that Apple makes mistakes (sometimes really bad ones -- remember the iTunes version on Windows that ate music files?) and that the only sane pre-upgrade policy is to have solid, tested backups.

The other point that bears repeating is sometimes harder for us to internalize, but it's equally valid. If your livelihood depends on your Mac (or your iPhone, or iPad, or PC) working as expected, installing any updates in the first day of availability is just plain dumb. Production machines need to be boring, predictable and unsurprising -- so leave them alone for days, weeks or months if necessary to make sure that any patches and 'improvements' you want to make don't leave you twisting in the wind on a deadline, or tearing your hair out over data loss.

Thanks to Matthew and everyone who sent this in.

OS X 10.7.3 causing CUI errors for some, Combo Update recommended originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Back in early January, wireless optimization firm Arieso released a report on the bandwidth usage profiles of various smartphones and other devices. It noted a surge in download and upload usage for the iPhone 4S, moving the new phone ahead of the iPhone 4 and various Android devices to take over the top spot for smartphone bandwidth consumption. At the time, coverage by Reuters and Bloomberg (reiterated by several sites, sorry to say, including TUAW) put the onus for this bump in the pipe on one of the marquee features of the 4S: the voice-controlled digital assistant, Siri.

[Arieso's CTO Michael Flanagan spoke about Siri's role in bandwidth usage in a video interview with Bloomberg back when the report was released, and while he doesn't exactly pin all the blame on Siri -- he says the usage is due to increased utilization of 'cloud services' -- Siri does come in for some of the blame. It's not nearly as emphatic as subsequent reports would have it. Video embedded below. -Ed.]

Fast forward a few weeks: an op-ed from Paul Farhi in the Washington Post dives back into the Arieso report, recycling the charge that Siri is singlehandedly responsible for pumping up the load on America's cellular networks and degrading data service for everyone. (Farhi stopped short of blaming her for fluoride in the water and the rise of reality television.)

This time, however, some consideration of the facts in evidence led us to question his (and our) original conclusions; we know that the math around Siri's data usage just doesn't add up to a consequential amount. We also reached out to Arieso for a copy of the full report, which the company happily and promptly provided.

Now there's another voice weighing in, and it belongs to someone who's in a position to know what's what: former Siri board member Gary Morgenthaler. He wrote a guest post for Forbes's web site that thoroughly debunks the notion of Siri as a bandwidth bandit. Siri actually uses only small bites of wireless data, as tested by Ars Technica and backed up by Morgenthaler's inside info.

What does Morgenthaler suspect might be at play in the 4S bandwidth numbers? He's careful to couch it as speculation rather than assert it as fact, but the addition of iCloud to the iOS service mix is a likely culprit (especially since buyers of new phones are more likely to set up Apple's cloud service than users of older models, who may be slower to update to iOS 5). Other possibilities include iTunes Match, Photo Stream, or simply the wider chunk of image data captured by the iPhone 4S's improved camera. As Mel noted earlier, the 4S also supports faster 3G downloads than the earlier models.

There's only one issue I saw in Morgenthaler's response, but it's an important one. Morgenthaler suggests that Arieso committed a logical error in citing Siri as the cause of the 4S results:

Arieso presents no data to support their claim that Siri causes the increase in iPhone 4S data usage. Most likely, Arieso committed a logical fallacy which, in grammar school, was called "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" - that is, "after the fact, therefore, because of the fact." In other words, Siri is new and associated with the iPhone 4S; therefore, it must be the cause of this increased traffic. It's an appealing argument, but it doesn't hold water.

That's also an appealing argument, but he may be pinning the propter hoc on the wrong donkey. Even a cursory review of the Arieso report is sufficient to discover that it does not mention Siri at all. When it comes to the cause of the iPhone 4S's download hunger, in fact, the report makes it very clear that it's too soon to draw any specific conclusions (emphasis mine):

The iPhone 4S showed an increase of 176% in downlink data volumes over the iPhone 3G. Since the downlink-to-uplink data volume ratio was almost 7-to-1 on average for the devices under study, this downlink increase of 176% corresponds to a larger total volume of data than a 220% uplink increase (discussed in the last section). As noted earlier regarding the increases in total numbers of data calls, it remains a topic for further study to characterise the root cause of this downlink data volume increase.

Arieso's research never said Siri was completely to blame, at least not in so many words; it's not clear whether a company representative said something to Reuters to encourage this conclusion in CTO Michael Flanagan's interviews he does say that Siri is part of the issue, but that conclusion is clearly not backed up by the report itself. Did the firm make an effort to correct the record, or was there a calculation that the Siri-related media attention would be more valuable than getting the accurate information out? We don't know, but we've reached out to Arieso's PR folk for comment. It begins to look less like an error of logic and more like a calculus of publicity.

Meanwhile, we're left with the unavoidable conclusion: The Washington Post and Paul Farhi picked a fight with Siri for something she does not do, picking up the "Siri is a data guzzler" concept from the original coverage -- but not from the actual data. Hanging the 4S bandwidth bulge on an innocent intelligent assistant may be great for headlines, but it looks to be wrong on the facts.

Siri VC Morgenthaler weighs in on iPhone 4S bandwidth badmouthing (Updated) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Before two years ago, we didn't yet know much about the hypothetical Apple tablet device, prescient leaks and rumors aside. We didn't know for sure which OS it would run (although we were pretty confident it would be iOS and not Mac OS X). We didn't know what it would cost -- the WSJ hinted at pricing near the $1,000 mark -- and we didn't know what it would look like. We certainly didn't know what it would be called, even though there were strong suggestions; apparently the Mad TV writers and some Dubai architects had some good sources.

We couldn't have guessed that our most extravagant estimates of sales would prove to be woefully meager. We could not foresee that Apple's tablet would come to dominate its own category in a manner similar to the iPod's remarkable run through the 2000s, and contribute to a level of financial success the company has never seen before (and that few companies ever have).

We didn't imagine that both consumers and businesses would gravitate to the iPad's flexibility and power, with enterprise customers adopting it at a breakneck pace. We probably could have anticipated a revised and updated version months later. And we did not expect that case polishing operations at two iPad suppliers would suffer deadly explosions, deepening concerns and questions about workplace safety and employee treatment at the factories owned by Foxconn, a manufacturing partner to Apple and scores of other electronics companies.

What we did know, in early 2010, was who would be introducing it to the world. Below, a video clip of Steve Jobs announcing the iPad.

iPad announcement anniversary: January 27, 2010 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Everyone loves a winner, and when it comes to the top 12 finalists in the Original iPhone Film Festival (OIFF), the decision about who should get the golden trophy comes down to all of you. This year's 12 finalists in the competition (co-hosted by video site Dailymotion) are facing off across four categories to see who's got the best clip.

All of these entries are built from footage captured exclusively on iOS devices, and they're a lovely showcase for what's possible with the iPhone 4S's new camera. The voting for winners continues through next Wednesday, and the final tally will be announced live at Macworld | iWorld on Thursday the 26th of January.

Best of luck to the finalists -- now get out there and vote!

Last week of voting for Dailymotion/Original iPhone Film Festival finalists originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's time again for the TUAW Talkcast! We'll be live on our usual TalkShoe meeting place, podcast fates and bandwidth permitting, starting at 10 pm Eastern time.

This week, we're looking ahead to the Apple NYC event focusing on the world of education. Hitting the books could have a whole new meaning before the week is out; we'll be talking with our in-house experts on all things iBooks, the lovely and talented Steve Sande & Erica Sadun (co-proprietors of Sand Dune Books) to get a sense of what Apple might have hidden away in its backpack.

We'll also run down the week's news out of the CES show in Las Vegas, where our tireless trio of correspondents did their level best to touch every iPad case and accessory on the floor. (Yes, they packed plenty of hand sanitizer.)

As always, the show only gets better when we have you as a part of it! To participate, you can use the browser-only Talkshoe client or download the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the Talkshoe Web button on our profile page at 4 HI/7 PDT/10 pm EDT Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines: dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8. We'll get started as usual around 10pm ET, which is 7pm PT.

If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Blink, Zoiper or X-Lite SIP clients, and if you have SkypeOut credit you can use Skype to call. Snow Leopard Mac users and earlier can use the built-in VoIP connector in the TalkShoe client, but Lion users are out of luck (it requires Rosetta). Talk to you tonight!

Talkcast tonight, 10pm ET: Textbook case originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The mainland China launch of the iPhone 4S hasn't gone as planned in Beijing, according to reports from Bloomberg, MIC Gadget and other sources.

When massive lines of people waiting overnight in sub-freezing temperatures at Apple's flagship Sanlitun store in the capital city began to cause crowding problems -- and when Apple employees and Chinese security personnel realized that the vast majority of the queued would-be buyers were scalpers looking to purchase & then resell the in-demand phones -- the store opening was delayed. Angry linewaiters began chanting for the store to open, eventually throwing eggs at the store facade.

Now the announcement has apparently been made: no more queuing, and no iPhone 4S sales at the Beijing flagship store today. Other stores in the capital and in Shanghai apparently had no such crowd control issues, and China Unicom sent text reminders to subscribers that they could order the iPhone 4S for free home delivery.

Update: The New York Times reports that Apple has officially suspended in-person sales of the 4S at its China stores, although phones are still available from China Unicom.

[via MacRumors]

China launch of iPhone 4S goes awry as crowds overwhelm Beijing flagship store (Updated) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As Richard said sharply a few weeks ago, there really hasn't been a rush to plenty when it comes to Thunderbolt storage options from third-party vendors. That's apparently about to change for the better, as a slew of top-tier manufacturers are announcing products at this week's CES extravaganza.

The fine folks at LaCie (makers of the Thunderbolt Little Big Disk HD and SSD models) are planning some serious storage: a multi-drive unit that will support up to 8 TB, for one, and a standalone eSATA adapter for another. The cleverly named 2Big Thunderbolt drive and the eSATA unit will ship in the first quarter of 2012, or so it's said.

When you think Elgato you probably don't think storage (more like TV capture or video compression), but the company has long experience with writing storage drivers for the Mac; their coders were behind the Mac support for the VST Firewire drive introduced in 1999. (Ah, the memories.) Now the German firm is adding Thunderbolt to the product line with the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD, a solid-state storage unit similar to the LaCie SSD Little Big Disk but $200 cheaper in the 240 GB capacity (USD$700 vs. $900, but as our commenter points out below, the LaCie unit is actually a RAID set of two SSDs for speed & includes another Thunderbolt port). Shipping in February, the Elgato drive will offer blazing fast external storage in both the high-capacity model and a 120 GB ($429.95) size. Moreover, the Elgato drive will be bus-powered, which means no additional power brick to manage.

OCZ is also jumping into the Thunderbolt SSD fray with a full set of capacities from 128 GB up to a terabyte (!) model, with pricing and ship dates to be determined. OCZ's drives have a solid reputation for internal laptop use, so the external models should be worth a look.

The vaporware beast of the bunch, the long-awaited Belkin Thunderbolt dock, now has a firmer ship date (September 2012) and a price of $299. That sounds steep, but the combination of USB ports, Firewire, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet and audio-out should be quite compelling for MacBook Air owners looking to get more flexible. The Belkin dock first appeared in prototype form at the Intel Developer Forum in September 2011.

[hat tip 9to5Mac]

Elgato, LaCie, and OCZ announce Thunderbolt storage options at CES 2012 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 09 Jan 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

On this slow-start Monday (the official observance of the New Year's Day holiday in the US, in case you were wondering why everything was moving like molasses), we have AllThingsD's Kara Swisher to thank for a neat tidbit of possible Apple news. The Dow Jones site is reporting that Apple is planning a media-related event in New York City this month.

What would this "not large-scale" but still supposedly important event be? It's not about the next iPad revision, say ATD's sources, nor is it likely to be the hypothetical full-featured, large screen Apple TV announcement -- although Apple SVP Eddy "Mr. iTunes" Cue is part of the event team.

It could be a partnership with a content company, similar to the News Corp/The Daily launch event. It could be a product announcement regarding live-TV streaming moving onto iTunes and the existing Apple TV, with happy network folk standing beside Tim Cook. Or, since we are getting into the Jetsons era, maybe Apple is introducing the Mr. Fusion. One thing's for sure, it's not a thermostat. At least, probably not.

Rumor: Apple media event slated for January? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 02 Jan 2012 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you're eager for the possibilities for a fully app-enabled Apple TV, the jailbreak hacker geniuses are right there with you. Last week saw some proof of concept demonstrations from Steve Troughton-Smith and @TheMudkip, featuring native applications running on the iOS-based settop device.

The input mechanisms are a bit wonky at the present stage -- without a touchscreen, the devs need to use a combination of VNC, touchpad and keyboard inputs -- but remote support is on the way, they say. Troughton-Smith has released a UIKit library for other developers to play with, and the first third-party demo (a weather radar app) is apparently working now.

Now there's a nice high-def video demo, seen below, via MacDaddyNews, that gives a better sense of the capabilities of this hack. While some apps may appear sluggish, that's an artifact of the control scheme; the final product should be nice and snappy.

Jailbreaking the current version (4.4.4) of the Apple TV got easier last week, as the free jailbreak tool Seas0nPass was updated to allow an untethered jailbreak of the device. A jailbroken Apple TV can use third-party plugins such as XBMC, NitoTV or Plex.

Proof of concept: iOS apps on jailbroken Apple TV originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

There's two possible explanations for why Engadget's tipline was heating up this morning with emailed complaints about iPhone alarms not going off as scheduled on New Year's Day (first reported last year and fixed in iOS 5), but we haven't heard a peep about the problem.

Explanation #1: The vast majority of TUAW readers sporting iOS 5-eligible devices (everything after the 2nd-gen iPod touch and the iPhone 3G) have already updated, and the ones who haven't don't depend on their on-device alarm clocks.

Explanation #2: TUAW readers like to do New Year's Eve up good and proper, and are still all sleeping it off.

Either way, we wish you a happy 2012, free of handy excuses for oversleeping like "My iPhone didn't wake me up!"

iPhone alarms work fine on 1/1 and 1/2, if you update iOS originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 01 Jan 2012 12:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The UK's New Year's Honours list is out, and there's a familiar (well-muscled) figure on it. Apple's design lead Jonathan Ive has received the honorary title of Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE).

Ive was honored as a Commander of the British Empire in 2005, but now he can legitimately call himself "Sir Jony." Ive is a 19-year Apple veteran and has long been considered one of the company's key leadership assets, with Steve Jobs referring to him as a "spiritual partner." His design sensibility and expertise has shaped Apple's aesthetic; visitors to Hamburg's design museum can still see examples of every Ive-designed product on exhibit through the middle of next month.

Congratulations to Sir Jonathan!

Correction: While the title itself is referred to as an honor (or honour), it is not "honorary" in the sense used to refer to an honorary degree or title.

Jonathan Ive gets a knighthood originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 31 Dec 2011 01:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Japanese writer Hayashi Nobuyuki has written a thoughtful article on Steve Jobs and Japan, covering both the professional and personal influences that helped shape Jobs's path through life and with Apple. The piece has been translated into English, and it's worth a read.

Jobs considered himself a practicing Buddhist most of his adult life, and was a student of the Sōtō Zen monk Otogawa Kōbun; Otogawa even served as the "spiritual advisor" for NeXT. Apparently, Jobs's enthusiasm for Zen study once led him to threaten to retreat from the world and ensconce himself in a Sōtō temple in Japan.

Jobs's affection for Japanese culture and cuisine even led him to 'bend' his strict vegan diet when it came to sushi; he was a frequent customer of the Kaygetsu restaurant in Silicon Valley, and he relished the raw fish delicacies in dinners with family and colleagues. When Jobs learned that the restaurant was set to close this year (which it did, two days after Steve's death in early October), he approached the restaurant's chef with a job offer. The same dishes that Steve enjoyed are now featured on the bill of fare at Apple's campus cafeteria.

Thanks Rick!

photo by Mike Tex | Flickr CC

Steve Jobs's long and complex relationship with Japan originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 30 Dec 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

You've got to feel for Frank G., who shared this story of holiday woe on the WWW Artist's Consortium mailing list. He ordered a Verizon iPhone 4S, and received it, but when he tried to activate it -- no joy.

Frank spent an hour and a half on the phone with Verizon tech support in an effort to activate, until they finally sussed out the problem: the phone wasn't allocated for Verizon. Rather than attaching to Big Red's CDMA network as it should, the phone was apparently set up with a GSM SIM that thought it was intended for one of Vodafone's overseas networks. We know the 4S is a worldphone but this is a bit much, no?

Frank returned his phone to a New Jersey Verizon retail store, where they confirmed that indeed the phone was improperly provisioned; unfortunately now he has to wait a couple more weeks for his new device (although maybe he shouldn't have had to wait; see below). The store techs reportedly said that at least 10 other people had come in with the same issue that day.

It seems like we would have heard more commotion about this problem if it was truly widespread, but let us know: have you gotten a mismatched Verizon iPhone this holiday?

Update: A source inside Apple retail (also in the Mid-Atlantic region) says this issue has been cropping up recently, but not all Verizon outlets are dealing with the issue like the one Frank visited. The source reports about a dozen cases of customers coming in with Verizon-ordered, GSM-provisioned phones. The local Verizon stores are refusing to assist the customers, instead referring them to the Apple Store's Genius Bar (sans appointment) for help. "This is Apple's fault; they are the ones that need to fix it" is the party line from Verizon, according to those customers.

Meanwhile, commenters Ben, Josh and Sean recommend calling AppleCare's help line for assistance, or trying a restore of the phone via iTunes. In past circumstances with misprovisioned devices, the restore process was adequate for getting the phone back on track -- sometimes after two or three tries.

Update 2: Oh man, we just got Frank's full story directly from him -- and it's not a pretty tale for VZW's customer service, especially considering that Apple may be able to reprovision the phone over the air. Read on for the gory details.

I bought the iPhone 4s at the West Long Branch, NJ Verizon store.

I first spent 30 min with [VZW's] level 1 support on the phone. After 30 mins of trying to activate the phone, she says I need to bring the phone back to the store to get it "upgraded". I asked her if it is a hardware or software issue (since if it was a software issue, I might be able to fix it via some support website... the store is a long drive in holiday traffic). She had no idea what she was saying and was getting frustrated at me. That was not a good customer experience.

Then she puts me on hold for 5 min and comes back and says I was right. I can update the phone with the help of her support guy.

The guy comes on the phone and we spend a little over an hour trying all sorts of resets, reconfigs, with and without iTunes updated, with and without the SIM plugged in the phone, etc. He was a competent guy, but finally relented when we saw the Vodaphone NL as my carrier. He said that these phones seem to be AT&T phones, and I had no choice but to go back to the store.

I drive to the West Long Branch store. The tech (Danny) is very competent, but says I need to repurchase the phone. I have to return the existing one and repurchase another one. However, I used my $100 off gift (from Verizon) on my old phone; which was an incentive for me to buy the phone. Danny and a support manager on the phone both said that $100 discount could no longer be honored; it would have to be applied on my bill. I was constantly told that Apple was at fault, which, IMO, is amateur. The customer should not be concerned about the vendor's supply chain or OEM/reseller agreements. I am dealing with Verizon, not Apple.

So now I have to repurchase the phone at a higher price and get reimbursed with a credit. This is a problem. I get my phone charges reimbursed by my employer. I send them a copy of my bill to get reimbursed. The $100 credit will be confusing to the accounting department of my employer and will delay my reimbursement since I will have to spend the time to explain it, etc. There's no doubt my reimbursement will be delayed next month.

Then when I finally complete all this paperwork, he tells me "You will get your phone on Jan 13." So now I have to wait another 2 weeks for the phone! This is now going beyond absurdity.

So now, I've spent over half the day screwing around with a mistake that Verizon made and it has cost me nothing but aggravation. I should never have bought the iPhone in the first place.

Note this was my day off from work.

Also check how long I have been a customer. It's over 15 years. No good customer of any vendor should have been treated like this.

Some Verizon customers received GSM-provisioned iPhones [Updated] originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 30 Dec 2011 09:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

There's no rest for the weary in retail this year, but at least on Christmas Day most of the shopping frenzy was online and not in line. IBM's Smarter Commerce unit, which tracks 500 online stores (but not Amazon, the largest, and probably not Apple's store either) told the AP that Christmas Day online shopping increased by 16.4 percent year over year.

It's not clear if that number represents the number of individual transactions or of unique purchasers, but IBM did say that the dollar amount of online purchases made via mobile devices was up a whopping 172.9 percent over last year. Moreover, IBM exec John Squire reported that almost seven percent of all online purchases on 12/25 originated on a single device: the iPad.

Seven percent of all transactions isn't bad for a platform that hasn't yet celebrated its second birthday, but the iOS slice of mobile e-commerce is a lot wider than that. According to a report released last week by retail insights firm RichRelevance, the overall dollar share of online purchases made from mobile devices has doubled over the past eight months and now stands at 3.74% of sales spending online. Of that chunk of cash, 92% of the December purchase transactions originated on an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad (up from 88% in April 2011).

Think about that for a moment. Nine out of every 10 mobile transactions recorded by RichRelevance in December came from an iOS device; since RichRelevance, like IBM, can't see into Amazon or (probably) Apple's sales data, the true ratio could be somewhat lower or higher, but still. Even the average dollar value per order is higher for iOS than for Android ($123 vs. $101 in December), and both mobile platforms walloped the $87 AOV for desktop browser orders. As GigaOm noted, the volume of mobile transactions seems to spike on holidays and weekends, when shoppers are less likely to be sitting at their PCs.

RichRelevance says it analyzed more than 3.4 billion transactions to arrive at its results, including data from 10 out of the 25 largest web retailers. Both Apple and Amazon hold their sales data very close to the chest, but you can bet that both companies are also mining through their records and coming up with similar conclusions -- shopping on mobile devices is growing fast, and iOS is leading the way and/or lapping the field.

[via Business Insider & GigaOm]

Photo by Ramberg Media Images (CC)

Online shopping gets iPad surge on Christmas Day, iOS dominates in December originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Boxee project has come a long way from its humble origins as a fork of the Xbox Media Center, bringing easy video playback and a couch-to-screen UI to the Mac, then later to Windows and Ubuntu, and now to the company's own dedicated Boxee Box hardware (soon to support live broadcast TV). There's a solid ecosystem of app developers making themselves at home with Boxee.

The company is releasing version 1.5 of its desktop app for Mac, Windows and Ubuntu this week, featuring many of the improvements that will be appearing in the Boxee Box firmware early next year, but there's a caveat. This will be the final release of Boxee's desktop build; future development efforts will be focused on the Boxee Box hardware and on tablets like the iPad. The 1.5 version will be available for download on Boxee's site through the end of January 2012, which gives the Boxee team a bit of time to take down the "roll your own" section on the Boxee site.

For Mac HTPC devotees who will now be looking for a Boxee alternative, the Plex project is also partially built atop XBMC, along with a proprietary server component; there's even a Plex iOS app available so you can watch on iPad. Of course, the parent XBMC app is still going strong, and a beta build of version 11.0 Eden came out just last week. Both Plex and XBMC are also now supporting jailbroken Apple TVs for playback. Plex requires an Intel Mac running 10.6 or higher, while XBMC continues to support PowerPC Macs along with Intel models.

[via GigaOm]

Boxee Mac media player reaches end-of-life with new version originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The goose is cooked, the cookies crumbled, the wrapping paper thrown away and the relatives released to their neutral corners. Finally, you can get down to the post-holiday fun of setting up your new iPad, or transferring your data from your old PC to your new Mac! Unfortunately, the end of a long day of cooking, eating, drinking and merry-making might render your personal IT skills a bit less than optimal. Whatever shall we do?

We're here to help. Got a pressing Mac, iPhone, iPod or iPad setup question? Wondering how best to arrange your iTunes store accounts, chat with Siri or configure iCloud? Leave a comment here, hit us up on our Ask TUAW Twitter account, or swing by our Facebook or G+ pages. We may not be able to answer all the questions, but we'll help as much as we can.

TUAW Help Line: holiday gift questions & answers originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 25 Dec 2011 20:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

From all of us at TUAW to all of you who celebrate it, our heartfelt wishes for a very merry Christmas. It's also Hanukkah this week, so best holiday wishes there too. Belated blessed Solstice? Early Kwanzaa & New Year's regards? We wish it all for you.

In the holiday spirit, we'd like to take this opportunity to let you know about some of the other wonderful things that our contributors have been up to this year.

Erica Sadun, Steve Sande, Michael Grothaus and Dave Caolo have all collaborated on various Apress books in the "To The Max" series, including the most recent title Taking Your OS X Lion to the Max. Erica and Steve also produced the ebook Talking to Siri, and Erica's iOS 5 Developer's Cookbook will be appearing in a revised edition in January.

Mike Schramm's new short story & essay collection The Shape of Teeth is now available, and you can find him on Twitter as well. Mel Martin's biography of filmmaker Samuel Bronston is on sale at Amazon. TJ Luoma's essays and posts can be found on his site, and Megan Lavey-Heaton's web comic Namesake is also online. Richard Gaywood's other writing can be found at Action at a Distance and Objection: Salad!

On the app front, Erica's apps are available in the iOS App Store. Michael Jones's Kiosk and Tremors are both in the Mac App Store. Brett Terpstra's Marked and his other projects like NValt are also downloadable.

Thanks to all of you for reading!

TUAW wishes you a Merry Christmas originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 25 Dec 2011 12:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

You know who you are. It's Christmas Eve, your stockings are yet to be hung with care, and there's a dismayingly large gap in the "gift gotten" column of your personal Nice list -- or maybe you haven't figured out what the last three days of Hanukkah are going to look like when it comes to gift exchanges. Don't panic; we're right there with you.

While physical gifts may be more difficult (though not completely impossible) to get at this stage, the intangible options are still on the table. Some of the best ideas for late gifting were summed up this week by Andy Ihnatko in the Chicago Sun-Times and Chris Breen at Macworld, so be sure to check their lists (twice, even).

If you've got a pair of giftees on your list who are craving new cellphones -- or, more to the point, slightly previous-generation cellphones -- MacRumors notes that Best Buy stores are running a special 2-for-1 deal on the iPhone 4 32GB model, today only. Apple no longer has the 32GB iPhone 4 on the product list, so this is an inventory dump; still, it's an inventory dump that works in your favor. Both phones need new 2-year contracts.

The growth in the installed base and reach of iOS devices means that you no longer have to head for a specialty retailer (or an Apple store) to get compatible accessories. Every local Radio Shack, Walgreen's, CVS, Staples or Rite-Aid carries iPhone and iPad accessories, albeit often cheap and crappy ones. An extra pair of iPhone-friendly headphones or a set of iPad screen covers would make a dandy 'light' gift, and an SD card or Bluetooth mouse could make the holiday brighter.

As Chris Breen's story points out, sometimes the best gift is the one you give of yourself. Assisting a family member with app updates, backup setup or remote access configuration might help them all year long. Making sure that Logmein or iChat are properly configured for remote support can also save you aggravation and travel time later on when that new Mac starts behaving oddly. You can always send a pretty email certificate that your relatives can print out and stick up on the wall for quick reference.

The list of digital-only gifts is, of course, very long -- Andy I's story cites most of the usual suspects, including of course gift certificates for all the nicest places. He points out that a Flickr Pro account is ideal for shutterbugs, and that while Spotify doesn't offer gift subscriptions, streaming music competitors Rdio and Pandora both do; so does Netflix, for that matter.

Andy also noted something I knew long ago but had forgotten: you can gift an entire iTunes playlist, even if you don't own all the songs in the list. Just drag tracks directly from the iTunes store listing into the playlist, then under the Store menu in iTunes, choose 'Share Playlist...' -- you'll get a dialog offering to publish or gift the playlist. Keep in mind that gifts of individual tracks or full playlists are only redeemable in the country of purchase; you can't do iTunes gifts for far-flung overseas family.

Finally, there are the gifts that really keep on giving: learning opportunities and charitable contributions. You could simply send some dough to your recipient's favorite cause, but the fun of giving might be enhanced by one of these charitable apps.

For the Mac or iOS user who wants to expand their horizons and sharpen their skills, there are plenty of solid last-minute additions to place under the virtual tree. Both the Amazon and Apple ebook stores include instructional titles like the Missing Manual, Apress or Take Control offerings. (New Mac OS X 10.7 Lion users might particularly appreciate this one.) For visual learners, it's easy to get great tutorial content from vendors like lynda.com, covering a wide range of creative computing topics. This year's crop of screencast content is particularly rich for Apple's new Final Cut Pro X, with great courseware from Larry Jordan, Manhattan Edit Workshop and Izzyvideo among others.

As you scramble to find something perfect at the last second, take a mindful moment to breathe, relax and enjoy your blessings with your family. Of course, thanks to the honey-voiced hypnotherapist Andrew Johnson, there's also an app or two for that.

Holiday Gift Guide: Procrastinator's Edition originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 24 Dec 2011 19:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Fans of vintage arcade games know that the popular and free emulation tool MAME (stands for "Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator") can be used to recreate the experience of classic coin-op and console videogames on PCs, Macs and jailbroken iOS devices.

The catch, of course, is that in order to run the old games you need a copy of the game ROM code; said copies are essentially unavailable via legitimate licensing (except for a few Exidy games). The other catch is that full-scale emulators aren't particularly welcome on the iOS App Store; the ones that have made it through the review process are careful to lock down the ability to run arbitrary third-party programs.

That's why it was more than a little bit surprising to see iMAME show up in the App Store this week. The game emulator (which, if you judge it by its splash screen, seems to be a straight-up clone of the jailbreak-only iMAME4All app) plays the ten Exidy legit games as one would expect. The unsung trick, however, is that by using a file transfer tool like PhoneView or iExplorer, it's trivially easy to throw in additional ROMs and have iMAME spin them up. (I've been playing Track & Field for days and still haven't gotten past the long jump.)

It seemed too good to last, and sure enough it was. Running arbitrary emulated code is an App Store no-no, and as of 1:30pm today the iMAME app is no longer available in the US store. Sad news for everyone who ran out to buy a discounted iCade cabinet for the holiday.

Commenter Spencer points out that he & at least one other developer have built patched versions of the jailbreak-only iMAME4All project that will compile in Xcode and install on properly provisioned, un-jailbroken devices. This only applies, however, to active participants in Apple's $99/year iOS developer program; otherwise there's no way to install the patched app.

Arcade emulator iMAME punted out of App Store originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I'm a big fan of the Skitch screenshot/annotation tool on the Mac; while there are countless ways to make and share quick image captures, Skitch combines the features I need most often with an accessible and friendly interface. The original 2007 beta lingered in pre-release form before finally going 1.0 last year, and the Skitch platform was acquired by Evernote back in August 2011.

Starting today, that same Skitch goodness is available for free on the iPad. Skitch for iPad lets you quickly crop, annotate and share images, or save them to Evernote for remembering. You can start with a camera shot or library image, a blank canvas, or built-in tools to capture maps and websites.

Interestingly, the Skitch team used to be part of Plasq, the publisher of Comic Life -- which made the leap from Mac to iPad back in May of this year.

Evernote's Skitch image annotation tool arrives for iPad originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As noted here & here last week, the Israeli business daily Calcalist has been tracking the story of Apple's purported buyout of the flash/DSP technology company Anobit. Today the site reports that the deal is good to go, and that Anobit's employees are being told of the new ownership. To put an exclamation point on the transaction and the possible expansion of Apple's R&D efforts to a new facility near Haifa, the official Twitter account of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a welcome to Apple today. In the odd-coincidence department, today is the 15th anniversary of Apple's 1996 acquisition of NeXT and the return of Steve Jobs.

Given the reported US$500 million price tag on the acquisition (Apple 2.0 notes that's more than the inflation-adjusted price Apple paid for NeXT, and may represent the largest single purchase by Apple of another firm), the value Apple places on moving Anobit's technology in-house must be pretty high. GigaOM laid out the case for ownership last week; since Anobit's tech makes cheaper flash memory reliable & long-lived enough for high-end devices, it's a key capability for Apple's light and portable product line. Anobit's engineering is already adding to Apple's product line via inclusion in the iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air -- that graphic up there comes from Anobit's news page, and even with the logos filed off the gear it's pretty obvious what those 'mystery products' actually are.

While 2011 hasn't seen many big Apple acquisitions of smaller companies, 2010 was extremely busy by comparison. After buying LaLa at the end of 2009, last year's shopping list included SIRI, Poly 9, Intrinsity, C3 Technologies, IMSense, Quattro Wireless and Polar Rose. Apple also sold off Agnilux to Google in 2010. Apple's fiscal year 2011 ended in September with the company reporting over $81 billion in cash and marketable securities, which is the very definition of "war chest."

If Apple does expand its R&D facilities to the Haifa area, it's another bit of good news in a remarkable week for Israel's Technion university. The technical institute, which anchors Israel's version of Silicon Valley, is also partnering with Cornell University to launch New York City's future 'superschool' and technology incubator on the city's underdeveloped Roosevelt Island.

Calcalist: Apple to buy Israeli company Anobit originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's time again for the TUAW Talkcast! We'll be live on our usual TalkShoe meeting place, podcast fates and bandwidth permitting, starting at 10 pm Eastern time.

Given the calendar alignment this year, with both Christmas and New Year's Eve falling on our normal Sunday chatterbox timeslot, this may be the final regularly-scheduled talkcast of 2011; I won't rule out a show on Christmas night, or one on a special day/time during the week of 12/26, but I think the 31st is pretty well booked up.

That means we're going to take this week to reflect and share: we'll review the top ten stories of the year gone by (including the obvious and tragic #1), consider what we're thankful for (and what we could have done without), and go over our Santa-baby wishlists for Apple in 2012. We'll welcome some special guests from The Loop and TiPB, raise a glass of good cheer, and all that jazz.

As always, the show only gets better when we have you as a part of it! To participate, you can use the browser-only Talkshoe client or download the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the Talkshoe Web button on our profile page at 4 HI/7 PDT/10 pm EDT Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines: dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8. We'll get started as usual around 10pm ET, which is 7pm PT.

If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Blink, Zoiper or X-Lite SIP clients, and if you have SkypeOut credit you can use Skype to call. Snow Leopard Mac users and earlier can use the built-in VoIP connector in the TalkShoe client, but Lion users are out of luck (it requires Rosetta). Talk to you tonight!

Talkcast tonight 10pm ET: Reviewing the year that was originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 18 Dec 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The concept is well-worn. The character is familiar. Even the final joke is telegraphed. But there's no way around it: this Santa Siri TV ad is a winner.

Apple ad: Santa Siri hits the airwaves originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 18 Dec 2011 15:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Funny thing about video cameras: you can spend an arbitrarily large amount of money on them, if you want. The line between the kind of equipment used exclusively by professionals and the stuff you might find in the gear bag of a weekend Scorsese has become so blurred that an $8,000 Canon HD camera no longer seems completely inappropriate for an Amazon wishlist.

Well, maybe that's a trifle exaggerated; the high-end Canon, Sony and RED Digital Cinema cameras are certainly out of reach for even the most dedicated hobbyist. (We can dream.) Nevertheless, with prosumer & consumer cameras converging in the $1,000+ range and Flip-style compact HD devices found for less than $100, which ones should you focus on if your post-production process includes editing in iMovie? (For an overview of cameras for the Mac user, see our Cameras gift guide here.)

Apple's consumer editing app, part of the $49 iLife '11 suite (but available as a $14.99 standalone buy from the Mac App Store, and shipped with every new Mac today) has a lot more in common with the company's flagship editing tool than it used to. Final Cut Pro X has moved closer to iMovie's editing metaphors and control approaches, compared to Final Cut Pro 7, so that the transition up to the $299 FCP X from iMovie is a smaller jump now (the previous midrange editor, Final Cut Express, has been discontinued). Both programs are fairly agnostic about what kind of source material they'll work with, too.

Older versions of iMovie were happy to work with DV cameras and some tapeless models, but they were picky; some would work only with specific settings, and some not at all. iMovie '09 noticeably expanded its camera support, as it included an import/transcode option for the AVCHD recording format; it didn't work on PowerPC machines, but on Intel Macs it did the job by converting the AVCHD footage to an editable native format, the Apple Intermediate Codec. This opened up the camera landscape dramatically, but it meant chewing up quite a bit of hard drive space for the transcoded video clips (AIC is a beast when it comes to drive space, gobbling 50GB per hour of footage -- see Divergent Media's hilarious blog post on editing in native formats) and also plenty of time to convert the video before editing. The import also needed to take place directly from the camera.

Now we have iMovie '11, which has camera fever; it works with scores of them. So many models are friendly with the current version of iMovie, in fact, that Apple's replaced the static support chart from '09 with a filtered list that allows you to search by storage media, recording format, manufacturer and more. All of the cameras on this list should be supported well, and there are footnotes indicating any gotchas (for instance, iMovie doesn't handle 1080p60 footage, even though some of the listed cameras do). Just like '09, to handle AVCHD content iMovie '11 will transcode it to AIC before editing; also, like its predecessor, it requires you to import directly from the camera for AVCHD.

So which cameras should you choose? My suggestion is: follow the format. AVCHD cameras are popular and readily available, but because of the transcode requirement they will definitely slow you down when working with iMovie -- even with a fast and capable Mac you would be hard-pressed to turn around a family cocktail hour highlight reel before the Cool Whip hits the pumpkin pie after dinner.

Instead, look for cameras that support H.264, MPEG-4, HDV or iFrame formats. The iFrame format is actually just a special case of H.264, locked to 30 frames per second, progressive scan mode and 960x540 resolution. That's lower-res than both common HD formats (720p = 1280x720px, 1080p = 1920x1080px) but still looks quite good on high-def TVs and conforms to the 16x9 HD aspect ratio. The smaller frame size helps keep the files manageable, although you'll still burn through your memory cards faster with iFrame than with conventional compression. About 42 minutes of iFrame video fit on an 8GB SD card, versus almost 2 hours of 720p MPEG-4 video, as the iFrame format reduces or eliminates predictive frames to make editing faster and less resource-intensive.

iFrame support in a camera manufacturer's product line serves another purpose; frankly, it's a kind of shibboleth for identifying the companies that are willing to at least make a gesture in the direction of Mac-specific capabilities. That's not to say you'll get better service or more clueful iMovie tech support from Panasonic than you would from other vendors, but consider this: historically, one of the best ways for the Mac-using community to show its support for compatibility efforts from vendors (back in the dark days where Mac support was neither a given nor a likely circumstance) was to vote with its dollars. Nowadays the buying power of Apple users is orders of magnitude more than it ever was, and every OEM out there knows it, but it still doesn't hurt to look carefully at who's making the effort to play nice.

I'd recommend sticking to flash memory as a storage medium, rather than an HDD-equipped camera. Although the larger onboard storage capacity of a hard drive-based camera may be tempting, it's going to be heavier and more battery-hungry than an equivalent SD-based unit, and you can't pull the drive out of the camera. SD cards are cheap enough now to make it economical to stock up on them -- and the MacBook Pro, 13" MacBook Air and iMac all sport SD slots for rapid import of footage (at least for non-AVCHD content, as you will have to connect directly to your camera for that).

When it comes down to specific models, there are so many variations of features, format and style that it probably pays to visit your nearest camera retailer or Apple store and play with a couple of units before making a final choice. Personally, I've been using the Flip-style Panasonic HM-TA1 for a year, and I like it a lot; it's cheap, it takes great video (including this iMovie-edited TUAW interview with Jeff from Voltaic Systems), and it's relatively indestructible. Drawbacks include a rather odd USB connector and a seeming inability to charge from anything other than my computer. It also speaks native iFrame, which is very handy for rapid turnaround projects. The TA1 has two successor cameras with larger screens, the rugged HM-TA20 and the stylish HM-TA2; both are worth a look.

Panasonic also bought the camera business that used to be Sanyo's, so the popular Xacti brand of handgrip-style cameras come under the big P's umbrella now. The HX-DC1 and DC-10 models both support iFrame, with a handy flip-out screen and 12x zoom; the more expensive DC-10 adds higher still-shot resolution, intelligent scene exposure control and a full-quality max zoom setting (the DC-1 lets you flip a switch to go between 1x-6x zoom range and 2x-12x). The DC-1 can be found for less than $180, and it should not disappoint; the DC-10 is going to be $260 or more if you can find it, as it sold quite well during the early part of the shopping season.

Moving up the quality line to full-featured HD cam models, Canon's Vixia cameras consistently get great reviews and deliver great quality. You will pay for what you get; the Canon gear is not cheap, but you should decide how much your lucky shooter will be using the camera and figure out if it's worth the investment. (They will love you for it.) Sony's pro and consumer cameras also deliver a lot of bang for the buck.

If your beloved shutterbug is equally interested in still photography along with the video jones, it might be worth considering a still-centric camera as a video device. I have a Canon S95 point-and-shoot which works excellently for clean, 720p24 video, although like many P&S models it cannot adjust the optical zoom during a video shot. That's a bygone restriction in the successor S100 model, which allows optical zoom and adds a 1080p mode to boot; also, the presence of the newer unit will help lower the price of the S95 now. If your gift recipient craves an interchangeable lens system for a compact camera, the two Nikon 1 models look extremely tempting; both support iMovie-friendly H.264 files, interchangeable lenses (including all traditional Nikon lenses, with an adapter) and add the ability to intermix still captures with movie recording on the fly. (Note that many still cameras will import video to iPhoto or Aperture rather than iMovie, but it's easy to get to from there for editing.)

Of course, Canon and Nikon's still camera lines go way beyond the point & shoot universe. Canon's EOS-7D, 5D Mark II and forthcoming 1DX set the benchmark for HD video-capable SLRs, and if you've ever seen the kind of astonishing footage that comes off these suckers you'll know why (and you'll also know why the 7D body starts at $1,200, never mind the lenses). The 5D MkII shows up on Apple's iMovie compatibility list, though oddly not the 7D; still, if you're even considering getting an SLR for video use, save a few dollars for FCP X too. For all things SLR/video, don't miss Philip Bloom's idiosyncratic and delightful site (his story of demoing the Canon cameras for the denizens of Skywalker Ranch is unforgettable).

Don't forget, too, that some of the most convenient cameras for iMovie are already bundled inside Apple's bestselling smartphone and music player. The iPhone 4S and the iPod touch are dandy for iMovie video capture, when you need the camera that's already in your pocket. After all, the best camera is the one you have with you.

If you do decide to go with a camera that defaults to AVCHD video, it should be noted that you aren't strictly limited to iMovie's built-in conversion routine, although that's the least-effort approach. Shedworx makes the $39.99 VoltaicHD converter app, which transcodes AVCHD content into other QuickTime formats. Divergent Media's ClipWrap can 'rewrap' the AVCHD content (or HDV, or other formats) into an edit-friendly bundle, with optional transcoding; it's $49.99. If you'd like to roll your own converter, there's the open-source hdffxvrt script, which does AVCHD transcoding via the ffmpeg library.

There's a lot more that goes into great moviemaking than a great camera. Sound, lighting, a solid tripod; even the iMovie missing manual might make a wonderful gift for the filmmaker in training. (By the way, there's a Joby 20% off sale on all GorillaPod models through midnight PST on December 19, so get cracking!)

If you've got a favorite (or feared) gear recommendation for iMovie '11 shooting, share it in the comments below. Happy holidays!

Holiday Gift Guide: iMovie-friendly video cameras originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 18 Dec 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Israeli business publication Calcalist reported this week that Apple plans to site an innovation center (translation, original here) in the northern Israel city of Haifa, close to the country's leading technical university. The site points to a visit by Apple R&D VP Ed Frank to the area, and also notes that Apple appears to be in talks to acquire chip technology firm Anobit. We noted the Anobit deal murmurs on Tuesday.

The Anobit acquisition would be in line with Apple's other buyouts of companies like PA Semi, as it continues to pull critical chipmaking IP and capabilities in-house to ensure that mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad have the purpose-built silicon they need (and, not coincidentally, that competitors have a harder time getting those crucial parts). Anobit's technology concerns flash memory; Apple's devices use the lion's share of worldwide flash production.

Haifa's mayor, Yona Yahav, sounded more hopeful than certain when asked about the company locating its first non-Cupertino R&D center in his area: "The future arrival of Apple in Haifa would be a very great celebration and we would embrace them in the city." It's possible that the press push on the R&D center is just wishful thinking at this point, but if Apple does build out a facility there it would be in good company. Intel, Yahoo, IBM and other international tech firms have offices there, taking advantage of the talent pipeline coming from Technion. The Israeli technology institute is a rival to top US computer science schools like MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, but also maintains tight ties to the high-tech Israeli military establishment.

[via Reuters & MDN]

Haifa may host Apple innovation center originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 18 Dec 2011 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

From one-person shops to giant enterprises, if businesses agree on anything right now it's "iPad Yay." The Apple tablet hasn't even reached the terrible twos yet, but it's clearly making its presence felt across countless verticals and different industries. For at least a couple of mobile professional writers (who might have been termed "ink-stained wretches" in times gone by), the iPad's capability as a writing tool has led it to largely replace their laptops for day-to-day work.

While consumers may be the drivers behind most iPad sales, chances are that the iPad-toting professional on your gift list is using his or her iPad for a combination of personal enjoyment and work tasks, so why not find a gift that supports and extends the biz savvy of everyone's favorite quasi-computer? Here's our brief list of gift ideas that you could conceivably write off on your taxes.

Cloudy Days

If your business iPad user is a sole proprietor or running a small business, they don't have to compromise about getting big-biz-level enterprise tools anymore. The same Google Apps or Box.com infrastructure that supports huge corporations can be theirs for a modest investment. Consider gifting a pro Dropbox account (50 GB is quite a bit of room to maneuver), or going with Box or Egnyte for more sophisticated file services & sharing. (Dropbox's Teams product is great, too, but requires more coordination with other colleagues.) Maybe a Pogoplug account, or a subscription to one of 37 Signals' highly-regarded services? If your businessperson is already a user of 37 Signals' Backpack business collaboration tool, the $9.99 Pouch app makes their iPad a fully-featured Backpack client. Another collaboration platform, Pagico, just released its official iPad app last week.

Then again, what we want from the cloud, often as not, is access to the files we have sitting right there on our computer at the office or at home. With the free Polkast service and iPad app, business users can quickly get to their PC or Mac storage over local networks or remotely as long as the computer is on. It's not the sort of thing that BigCorp IT departments find particularly appealing, but for a lean and mean solo operation or small team it might just do the trick. Speaking of big IT, the pricey ($29.99) but indispensable LogMeIn Ignition client makes it easy to remotely control one or hundreds of remote computers from the iPad's screen. If your gift recipient has to keep tabs on a lot of PCs, Ignition is a wonderful gift.

Hardware

Given that the iPad is mostly self-contained, unless your recipient is asking for specific accessories or gear there's not much to add to the list that is business-specific. The two notable exceptions come under the "input" and "output" departments.

For text-heavy users, a wireless physical keyboard may make the difference between frustration and joy. The Zagg and Logitech keyboard cases get a thumbs-up from Technologizer; our fearless leader Victor votes for the AmazonBasics Bluetooth keyboard, which at $44.90 is $25 cheaper than Apple's wireless compact keyboard.

While the folding Jorno keyboard remains vaporgear, Logitech is now shipping its $129.99 fold-up keyboard for the iPad 2, and I have to say it looks awfully tempting. Almost any Bluetooth keyboard will work reasonably well with the iPad, so if your giftee has a preference it should be honored.

As for output, it's all about presentation. Give your road warrior the $29 VGA and/or $39 Digital AV Adapter HDMI adapter cables and they'll be ready to hook up in the office or at a client, wherever there's a projector. Both adapters support mirroring with the iPad 2, so the full interface of the iPad can be shown on the screen.

Of course, anyone who's going to be tossing their iPad into a backpack or laptop bag will need a cover. Apple's Smart Cover does a fine job on the front, and there's a fair assortment of matching shells for the back. The choice may come down to personal (or professional) style.

Presentation & Meeting Apps

Speaking of presentation output, what busy professional doesn't have to throw down a few slides now and then? The unquestioned king of the hill when it comes to iPad-driven presentations is Apple's sleek and straightforward $9.99 Keynote -- in fact, you can't really go too far wrong by bundling all three iWork apps for the new iPad user. Still, Keynote is less effective if your giftee isn't Mac-based on the desktop side; the fidelity of PowerPoint file conversions is what I'd call 'adequate.' The QuickOffice Pro HD suite does a slightly better job of keeping PPT files (not PPTX, so be sure to save down) looking the way they should, although neither product supports all the fonts, animations and transitions you'd get from your laptop when presenting. Of course, with QuickOffice you get all three productivity functions in one app. (If you really truly need the full fidelity of PowerPoint 2010, keep reading.)

You can't always present in person, so don't forget the remote meeting apps. Fuze Meeting HD and WebEx for iPad both made Apple's Rewind list this year, and both are effective for video conferencing alongside content-centric presentations; Fuze even lets you upload presentation content from your iPad to the service on the fly, and run the meeting completely PC-free. Your iPad owner may already have a business account with a distance meeting service, so keep an eye out for the official app that matches their platform. Note that WebEx's tool does not support Training Center or Event Center programs, so if those features are important to you be sure to let them know. If your decks are already in the cloud with SlideRocket, the company's iPad viewer app is a must-have (and free).

The way things are headed, it's not out of the realm of possibility that your iPad owner might show up for a meeting where there's no projector, but where every other attendee has his or her own iPad. In that case, the tool to use is Condé Nast's Idea Flight. This "follow along" presenting tool works just as if you had handed out copies of your deck to 14 people -- but they can't flip ahead without permission, so they won't spoil your big reveal. Idea Flight ties into LinkedIn for contact sharing, meaning you'll never have to suffer the shame of not remembering the name of the next person at the conference table.

For unforgettable and unusual presentations, step away from the slide metaphor and go flying away with Prezi. While you need to author your 'cosmic zoom' presentations using the company's Flash-based web tool, the iPad viewer app works great for downloading and showing these wild and head-turning media experiences. Not every bit of dynamic content will play on the iPad, though, so be sure to leave time for experimentation.

If you need to be able to show PDFs and other documents in a pinch, the most flexible (and one of the oldest) apps in this category is GoodReader. While its interface has been variously described as "idiosyncratic," "quirky" and "unique but not in the good way," the power and flexibility it offers are unmatched. It's worth having on any business-use iPad just for all the various use cases it covers and the number of other apps you won't have to buy. The latest version adds AFP filesharing support and auto-sync, so Mac users with shared folders can automatically have a set of files copy over to GoodReader without intervention for reading/review on the road. GoodReader also supports nearly every cloud storage service imaginable, from Box to Dropbox to Google Docs to WebDAV. This app would be a bargain at $15, but at $4.99 it's a steal.

Travel & Expense

There's no way your iPad owner is going to shine at that big pitch meeting if they don't get there on time and on budget. Fortunately the iPad makes a killer travel assistant (and not just because you can play Madden or watch movies on it). For booking air travel, the indispensable Hipmunk app makes finding the least-agonizing itinerary as simple as tap and go (Kayak is also great for complex searches). Once you're booked, Tripit for iPad gives clarity and coherence to your travel plans, allowing you to keep flight schedules in-line with hotel, car and other bookings.

There are scores of expense-centric apps on the App Store, and I wish I could recommend a task-specific tool, but sad (or glad) to say I don't have to go any further than my Swiss Army app for all things remembery, the free Evernote app and cloud service (premium subscription optional). Forget the fact that all your notes and tidbits are handily synced to the cloud for easy access no matter where you roam; that's just the start. Evernote's astonishing OCR abilities on your sync'ed image-based notes mean that handwritten comments on receipts, boarding passes or hotel bills actually get recognized and indexed alongside the printed text.

Once you've had the experience of jotting a client name or a project code onto a restaurant bill, snapping a picture of it with the iPad 2's camera for Evernote to digest, and then searching back at the office for that client name only to have your scrawl-adorned note pop right up... well, I'll tell you, it's magical. This capability to do IRL tagging on the fly with nothing more than a ballpoint pen is one of many features that keep me perfectly happy with Evernote. For $55, you can gift a year of Evernote's premium service (though the free version is nothing to sneeze at), and get a snazzy t-shirt in the bargain. Evernote can even help you maintain your gift list and plan your holiday celebrations.

Notes & Text

Having mentioned Evernote enthusiastically, there are plenty more options all over the store for text-centric tasks. The multitalented Notability gives equal time to those who prefer writing by hand, while also supporting keyboard input, PDF annotation, audio recording and cloud synchronization; it's on sale for $0.99 this week (usually $4.99). If you prefer a more minimal notes app that includes the sound-to-text timeline, check out SoundNote. Meteor Notes also adds some interesting features to the party. The free or $1.99 (lite vs. pro) app delivers a familiar folder paradigm, easy search and organization plus Dropbox sync.

Of course, the iPad's onboard Notes app is capable of syncing with iCloud, Google mail or Exchange, and there's always Apple's Pages app. But then again, Evernote.

Remote Access & Virtualization

Aside from the aforementioned LogMeIn Ignition, there's no shortage of solid remote access clients all over the App Store. Wyse's $14.99 Pocket Cloud Pro/free Pocket Cloud gets my personal thumbs-up after Ignition, but really they all work quite well (Mel is a fan of Edovia's Screens app, for $19.99). If you're trying to do a presentation in a PC-specific app (such as PowerPoint 2010) and you haven't been able to get it quite right in SlideRocket or Keynote, using a remote access tool is a great way to deliver a high-fidelity experience.

When it comes to remote access to virtual machines, Parallels & VMware have slightly different approaches. For your own personal VMware Fusion setup, VMware recommends using any capable VNC or RDP app to access a running VM. For the company's big-iron infrastructure setups of virtualized desktops, however, you can use the free VMware View app with VMware's new PCoIP connection protocol to easily and securely get a full desktop experience, including 1080p output and a 'Presentation Mode' option that turns a display-connected iPad into a sleek trackpad/keyboard combination -- but that depends on corporate support of a View server. (Wyse's Pro version of Pocket Cloud also supports connections to VMware View, and VMware is also doing View clients for Android, Windows and Mac.)

Parallels is happy to offer you a $4.99 (soon to be raised) iPad app that supports remote control of the company's virtualization app on the Mac; this is a solid way to get quick remote access to your virtual machine, assuming your Mac is online and accessible (it should also work with the PC versions of Parallels Desktop, although I haven't tested that). There is a twist, however; you can use the Parallels app to 'pop the stack' and actually control the host Mac system in addition to the virtualized system. This could get confusing!

Above and Beyond

There are obviously thousands of business-centric apps and millions of ways the iPad can be employed where you're employed; if we went through all of them, that would be enough material to write a book. Or two. Since there's no time for that, here's a few more biz-friendly app finds.

The Marketcircle suite of apps (Billings, Daylite) play extraordinarily nicely between the Mac apps that help run the business CRM and other functions and the mobile pros who need that data in a hurry. The Canadian company has gained a reputation for strong service and customer dedication, and if the businessperson on your gift list is looking for a Mac-friendly CRM solution with a good iPad story then they should be running for Daylite.

If your scheduling and meeting-invite needs are more you against the world, the tough-to-search-for, great-to-find cloud calendaring service Doodle has an app that's currently iPhone-optimized; we hope it makes it to the iPad soon, but in the meantime the company has just added an iCal connector that allows users on Intel Macs to sync their iCal schedules up to Doodle quickly and easily.

Project management? Merlin. Business intelligence & visualization? Roambi. Mind mapping? iThoughts HD or MindJet. So many gifts, so little time!

If you've given or gotten a great app for business on the iPad, share it with us all below in the comments. Happy holidays!

Holiday Gift Guide: iPad apps & accessories for business originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 17 Dec 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When it comes to creating innovative apps to address municipal, environmental or social issues, the answer increasingly comes down to crowdsourcing. The public problem-solving site ChallengePost serves as a platform for innovative ideas from developers, working in areas as varied as the NYC subway system, the city's data feeds or the Surgeon General's Healthy Apps initiative.

In a recent app challenge on the site, the US Department of Health and Human Services asked developers to address the issues of sexual assault and dating violence among college-age women. With nearly one in five women reporting a sexual assault while in college, effective intervention strategies are critical to make sure that young women can get out of potentially abusive situations -- and reach out for the help they need when they need it.

The competition resulted in two winning apps, both of which are now moving into the development phase. OnWatch, the first winner, is a customized version of the existing subscription-based personal alerts app WatchMe 911. WatchMe 911 is free to download from the App Store and offers different pricing levels depending on the features you need.

OnWatch/WatchMe puts a comprehensive set of assault prevention resources into one app. The app includes options to call friends, alert contacts to your location, send SMSes automatically if you don't cancel them at a predetermined time, and more. The app's design isn't obfuscated in any way, so someone watching your phone will know that you're calling for help (or broadcasting your location); this might serve as a deterrent.

The other winning app, Circle of 6, takes a much simpler approach to the challenge of communication in a potentially dangerous situation. It asks you to select six trusted contacts that you could call on for assistance if you found yourself in trouble. Once they're in place, a tap on the center button gives three clear options: Car, Call or Chat.

The car button means "come get me" -- it sends out an SMS with your location and a pickup request, asking for assistance getting home safely. The Call button also sends an SMS, but asking for a return call to interrupt a worsening encounter. The Chat button requests advice and information, which will also link to resources on sexual assault. Since Circle of 6 doesn't telegraph its function through its UI the way that OnWatch does, the app can be used surreptitiously even in situations where a potential assailant is keeping an eye on the phone.

[In an unfortunate coincidence, the Circle of 6 app shares its name -- but not its subject matter -- with a book about the murder of an NYPD officer in the 1970s.]

Circle of 6 is the work of a four-person team led by Brooklyn-based filmmaker Nancy Schwartzman, who screens her documentary The Line on college campuses and leads an initiative to help end sexual violence. The app project is looking for grant funding now, and the team hopes to have a working version up on the iOS App Store by February, with Android and other platforms to follow. For more information on the project, you can check out the Circle of 6 Facebook page.

If you've spotted an app that you think addresses a social issue or point of concern in an innovative way, let us know in the comments or send in a tip.

[via NY Daily News & the Bellingham Herald]

Brooklyn filmmaker working on app to help prevent sexual assault originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 16 Dec 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Last week, Japanese blog Macotakara reported that Apple hosted its "Made For iPhone" (MFI) technology summit in Shenzen, China (translated version). The conference last week, including 2,000 accessory makers and OEMs, featured Apple's announcement of a new certification chip for MFI accessories and future support for AirPlay over Bluetooth 4.0.

Only 2 percent of the MFI-licensed peripherals on the market use the Bluetooth version of the iPod Accessory Protocol, according to the story, which was introduced in iOS 5. Apple plans to help manufacturers accelerate the development of compatible devices, and grow the AirPlay device ecosystem by 7x by promoting the MFI program.

Bluetooth 4.0 (or Bluetooth Smart) has optional lower power requirements that make it a better fit for always-on remote peripherals, but at the moment the only Apple mobile device that supports 4.0 is the iPhone 4S; Macs with the new Bluetooth stack include the current Mac mini and MacBook Air.

The Verge reports that the article may have been misinterpreted from the original Japanese; the site's sources say that AirPlay is not headed for Bluetooth 4, but will remain a WiFi-only connection for now. The process of authenticating and linking an AirPlay device, however, may get easier; 9to5Mac's Seth Weintraub points to the Bluetooth 3.0 HS+ spec, which uses a hybrid of Bluetooth for negotiation and a colocated 802.11 (WiFi) connection for bandwidth up to 24 Mbit, more than adequate for music streaming.

[via AppleInsider, MacRumors]

Apple accessory developer conference pushes AirPlay, Bluetooth originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Fire up your updaters, campers, because there's a prize inside -- in theory, anyway. iTunes 10.5.2 has appeared on the iTunes direct download page, but it's not yet showing up in Software Update, and the KB article covering the update is now 404ing. Reader Chasapple also points out that the Apple security updates page is having a bit of an issue, too; it's not displaying. Dropping the trailing slash in the URL helps though. :)

Nevertheless, if you're going to download it now, 10.5.2 should be offering the following changes and improvements:

Several improvements for iTunes Match

Fixes a distortion problem playing/importing some CDs

Enjoy!

Thanks Brian!

iTunes 10.5.2 available for direct download originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Early this morning, while thousands of NYC commuters trudged by, mostly unaware and uninterested, a modest band (about 100 at 8 am) of diehard Apple fans congregated in a long underground corridor waiting for the opening of the Grand Central Terminal store. The grandeur and architectural majesty of the station's main concourse and the massive staircase leading up to the new retail outlet were invisible from the utilitarian and bare Northeast Passage, where security personnel and store employees kept the line waiters out of the main flow of pedestrian traffic.

Gallery: Grand Central Terminal Apple Store opening

Grand Central serves as the terminus for the Metro-North commuter railroad and a hub for several subway lines, but despite its role at the heart of the "city that never sleeps" it actually does close for a time every night; from 2 AM to 5 AM, the building is inaccessible to the public. That meant that the 12 or so folks who were actually waiting to get into the store at 10 AM Friday had to step out to the sidewalk for three hours. That's some dedication right there.

Here's a video visit with Jacob, who held the first spot in line.

His wait, and the wait of hundreds of others who eventually joined the line before and after the opening (including a mom & two sons from New Jersey who made a day trip of it; Harrison, the 13-year-old, is an iOS and Mac developer), found ample reward with cheers and high-fives from the red-shirted Apple staff lining the staircase and the store floor. See below for video clips of the opening moments; the main GCT concourse was full of people watching the spectacle.

The store itself covers a huge swath of the terminal's balcony, with most of that real estate dedicated to systems & iOS device sales, workshops, Genius Bar support and other high-touch activities. Accessories and software occupy only one small hideaway, two flights above the main sales floor.

Weekday hours will be 7 AM to 9 PM, and you can safely bet that the commuter rush hours will be packed solid -- but midday and early afternoons should be pleasant enough in the store, with plenty of room to spread out. The store may also take some of the shopper load off of the 5th Avenue store, which is just over a mile away.

Unfortunately the store launches with some controversy already in place, as the New York Post reports. At least two inquiries are pending regarding Apple's deal with the Metropolitan Transit Authority, concerning the lack of revenue sharing for the store (a contingency of other rental deals in GCT).

Here's Philip Elmer-Dewitt's linewalk video -- you can see me at about the 39-second mark, waving.

Thanks to Rich Rose for the countdown video.

A grand opening for the Apple Store at Grand Central Terminal originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Last week, Erica and Victor shared a hack for transferring the URL of an open webpage from your computer to your iPhone via the intermediary of a QR code. It's easy and quick, but as is often the case our astute commenters pointed to a slew of alternative solutions to tackle the same problem.

The suggestions were wide-ranging and clever. There's Ansible, Handoff and MyPhoneDesktop; there's NotesForLater, SendTab and SiteToPhone. All are worth checking out, and depending on how you like your content shared (in an app, in email, with or without push notifications, using a browser extension or via a bookmarklet) you'll find a solid fit. But the one that specifically caught our eye -- and had the most commenter recommendations -- was the AirLink bookmarklet.

AirLink is dead simple to set up and use. Just visit the site to install; you'll get a pair of bookmarklets, one for your desktop browser and one for your device. These bookmarks are 'twinned' to each other permanently, so at any time thereafter all you need to do is activate the bookmarklet (on either side) to send the active URL to your device or to your computer. On your iPhone, you can bookmark the URL or add it to the home screen for instant access. It's free, it's easy and it works great.

The AirLink bidirectional bookmarklet is the work of the young German developer Phillip Schmitt. You can follow the ongoing development of AirLink on the tool's Twitter feed.

Photo: Flickr CC via Cliff1066[TM]

Quickly share website addresses to your iPhone with AirLink originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple's modern desktop OS is famous for its feline monikers -- Panther, Tiger, Leopard/Snow Leopard and Lion, among others. But what about the other Apple operating system, iOS? While the code names for those versions aren't used in the public branding and promotion of the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad family the way Mac OS X leans on Lion, they still exist, and there's still a pattern to them.

iOS developer Steven Troughton-Smith tweeted the full list of iOS code names over the weekend, and while they might seem a bit random they actually have one thing in common: snow. Alpine, Kirkwood, Timberline, Telluride and the rest are all ski resorts in the western US. Does Scott Forstall enjoy some time out on the slopes?

These names are certainly cute, but they also have a dark side. The 'Alpine' code name was used as the default SSH password for earlier builds of iOS, and users who jailbroke their phones but didn't bother to change the password found themselves susceptible to a potentially malicious SSH worm.

[via TiPB]

Photo by laszlo-photo (cc)

iOS code names head for the hills originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 05 Dec 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's time again for the TUAW Talkcast! We'll be live on our usual TalkShoe meeting place, podcast fates and bandwidth permitting, starting at 10 pm Eastern time.

When the tech news cycle goes into holiday hibernation mode between Thanksgiving and New Year's, we often see the emergence of some offbeat stories that catch fire in the mainstream & Apple-centric press faster than you can say "Siri, where can I get a vasectomy?"

This week provided two great examples, with the "Siri bias" tempest and the somewhat more serious (but still deeply overcovered) Carrier IQ phone 'spying' story. We'll touch on these & much more tonight during our freewheeling hour of fun.

To participate, you can use the browser-only Talkshoe client or download the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the Talkshoe Web button on our profile page at 4 HI/7 PDT/10 pm EDT Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines: dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8. We'll get started as usual around 10pm ET, which is 7pm PT.

If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Blink or X-Lite SIP clients. Talk to you tonight!

Talkcast tonight: The silly season originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 04 Dec 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Whether your iPhone has been with you for years or you just picked one up this weekend during the holiday shopping rush, you're facing the same problem either way: getting it to stay where you put it, in the car or on your desk. Scores of companies offer lots of different "stick it and forget it" solutions to this challenge, but one newcomer is putting together some innovative and attractive products for iPhone car/counter mounting -- and doing it entirely in the USA, from design to hands-on manufacturing.

Insanely Great Products' launch line includes six different mounting/stand solutions, all but one involving a powerful suction cup to attach the iPhone (or other flat-back device) to the mount. The Jack (image, right) and the Scooter are designed for desktop use, while the Willy (top image) and the Traveler can serve either in the car or in stationary settings.

The light and flexible Clip-n-Go combines the suction cup with a customized binder clip for easy air vent attachment of a cased or naked phone, while the anodized aluminum Norm uses the same binder clip with side arms to hold a case-free phone to the dashboard vent.

While the products are affordable (most of the line costs between US$10 and $20, with the aluminium Norm coming in at $35) they're set apart from most of the accessory market by their made-in-the-USA pedigree. IGP was founded with the intention of doing all manufacturing domestically; currently, all the products are assembled by hand (from US-sourced materials) in the company's Menlo Park facility.

In fact, every IGP employee spends at least part of every day filling customer orders by making products themselves. This agile/all-hands manufacturing process is intended to help keep the entire team connected to the products; IG is also able to create customized or branded versions of all the items in the line, on request.

It might seem a bit presumptuous for any new enterprise to call itself Insanely Great, but in this case the company at least comes by it honestly. IGP's marketing lead/co-founder Richard Ford spent several years at Apple in leadership roles on the product teams that built most of the Internet underpinnings in Mac OS 9. The other co-founder, company president Jeff Osborn, was formerly a VP at mega-ISP UUnet.

For today, Cyber Monday, the company is offering 50% off three of its products -- the Jack, the Scooter and the Willy -- as long as you buy them in blue (the Monday blues, so clever) rather than the full line of colors shown above.

Insanely Great launches made-in-USA iPhone accessories with Cyber Monday deal originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As is its custom, the Earth continues to spin on its axis while many of us in the States are working off our turkey and stuffing comas with a solid nap/some football on TV. That means that the expected Apple Store discount offers for Black Friday are already up and running in parts of the world where Friday coincides with now.

The Apple Store Australia's discount page gives a solid preview of what US customers should expect tomorrow: about 10% off most-wanted products like the iPad, iPod touch and MacBook Air. While these discounts are certainly welcome, you might find as-good or better deals at Amazon, MacMall or big-box retailers; you can also check in with our pals at Dealmac for the latest savings.

Happy shopping, and happy Thanksgiving!

[hat tip to Macgasm]

Apple Store Black Friday discounts already live... in Australia originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 24 Nov 2011 16:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Late on Friday, Macworld's Jason Snell discovered that the new 4.1 version of virtualization tool VMware Fusion had a special talent. Up until 4.1, Fusion would refuse to install non-server versions of Snow Leopard and Leopard into a virtual machine, since Apple's licensing for those OS builds did not include a virtualization option. Only the server versions of 10.5 and 10.6 were legit for VM use; for 10.7, Apple moved to allow virtualization of either client or server.

In the new Fusion build, however, client versions of 10.6 and 10.5 are OK for installation in a new VM; the install tool just prompts you to make sure you're license-compliant.

While a Lion virtual machine is pretty useful, a Snow Leopard VM has something Lion doesn't have: the Rosetta PPC compatibility option, letting users run older applications that rely on PowerPC code. For some apps (Quicken Deluxe being the primary example), that's a workable way to keep them compatible for the time being.

It wasn't clear from the Fusion 4.1 release notes whether VMware had sought Apple's permission to make this adjustment to the install process, and I asked the Fusion team for comment. Earlier this evening, in a blog post, the company announced that the licensing check for Leopard Server and Snow Leopard Server (the only legitimately virtualizable versions of 10.5 or 10.6) was left out of the 4.1 build of Fusion. A subsequent update is likely to restore the checking routines that prevent the installation of non-server 10.5 and 10.6 OS versions.

In the meantime, Fusion 4.1 remains a downloadable update for the virtualization app, which normally retails for $79.99 but is currently on sale for $49.99. A 30-day demo download is also available.

Fusion 4.1 support for pre-Lion, non-server OS X is a mistake, says VMware originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 21:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Shopping season is here, with a vengeance. The circulars and sales sheets are popping up like discounted weeds, and while most Apple products aren't eligible for steep discounts at retail, the big chains do find a way to make it worth your while.

US retail giant Target has posted its two-day discount flyer online already, and among the doorbuster deals (starting at midnight Thursday night/Friday morning) is a $195 8GB iPod touch, while supplies last. "But that's what they always sell for!" you say. True, but for this promotion Target is throwing in a $40 store gift card, lowering the effective price of the iPod to $155 assuming you can find $40 of other things you want to buy at Target. (There's always light bulbs and batteries.)

Update: Target has sweetened the pot with an iPad 2 deal. Buy a Wi-Fi+3G iPad 2 and get a $75 Target gift card. This offer is good starting at midnight Thursday night.

Electronics and Apple gear megastore Best Buy is not to be outdone, advertising a similar deal for its doorbusters on Friday, but with a $50 gift card instead. Best Buy stores also open at midnight the day after Thanksgiving, because why the heck wouldn't you want to be at Best Buy in the wee hours of the morning trying to focus on which 3D TV has the better picture?

Apple generally does not reveal its discounts for Black Friday until a bit closer to showtime, but last year's deals may serve as a guideline for what to expect later this week.

Interesting side note from the Target circular: check out the price on this Acer netbook. Yes, for about the same net cost as the iPod touch, you can have an entire teensy computer.

[via Dealnews]

Target, Best Buy post Black Friday deals: $195 iPod touch with gift card rebate (Updated) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.