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.

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.

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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.

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.

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Yesterday, Amazon introduced Kindle Direct Publishing Select (KDP), featuring a multi-million dollar seed fund. KDP Select allows authors to earn royalties by lending out their books through Amazon's Prime Kindle Owners Lending Library.

Authors who choose to participate will share in a US$500,000 pool per calendar month, apportioned by the number of titles lent. To participate, they must pledge to make their titles exclusive to the Kindle Store for at least 90 days. In return, they have a monthly chance at a portion of that half-million dollar pot.

On the whole, iBooks revenues and market share seem to lag behind those of Kindle. That holds true even though the audience that prefers to purchase through iBooks is passionate and visible. One reason for this is Apple's limited deployment. The Amazon ebook store offers readers on nearly all mobile and desktop platforms -- even letting readers get at their books with just a browser -- while Apple's iBooks are currently limited to iOS, without even a Mac client to improve the reach.

KDP Select provides a strong incentive to pull books from Apple's store, particularly books from independent authors. In some ways, it's like iAds for ebooks, providing a revenue stream for material that is otherwise free to access. Borrowers who like and want to keep the books they borrow can return and then pay for a permanent copy, offering a further win for all parties involved.

Amazon has pledged $6 million for 2012, as well as an initial $500,000 for December 2011. Money will be divided on a strict market share basis, regardless of the book's royalty option. (Amazon offers two royalty programs that return either 70% or 35% of a book's sale price, and may involve delivery fees.)

This program will appeal particularly to small independent writers who do not have strong sales reason to remain in iBooks, the Nook store, and other vendors like Smashwords and Lulu. By stepping back those markets, and giving Amazon an exclusive, Amazon will gain a much larger catalog.

I decided to test KDP Select with my short Kindle Fire ebook, a topic that seemed naturally native to the Amazon ecosystem. Will it match the revenues from the AppStore with iAds? I somehow doubt it, but I did want to give it a try.

From here, it now becomes a gold rush as to who can and will best market their books for lending popularity. A book that gains buzz and traction this way can not only draw from a bigger portion of the seed pot, but also lend the Amazon catalog a bigger cachet. The negatives, of course, are that Amazon's expanded catalog will likely include a much larger collection of material that will continue to struggle to find an audience.

On the whole, Amazon has tried to corner the market for small indie book writers. You can upload a Microsoft .doc file to KDP in minutes, and have the book go live within days. With iBooks, you must establish a vendor account, apply for ISBNs, and wait weeks for your ePub-validated books to pass review. The iTunes Connect reporting system is slow and hard to use in comparison with KDP's user-friendly updates.

Is KDP Select a shot across iBooks' bow? I strongly doubt that the iBooks business model relies on cornering the small independent market, and I also doubt that any larger publishers will agree to exclusivity without a guaranteed income vs. a shot at a royalty pool. So why did Amazon go this way, and why did they choose to demand exclusivity?

My guess is that they are hoping to mine an ever growing pool of Kindle-aires, authors making their names and reputation on the Kindle book store. KDP Select is as good a program as any to help the market decide who the next winners will be, and to grow a stable of Kindle-exclusive authors from the ground up.

Update: Indie Pub Smashwords says Amazon is showing their predatory spots with KDP Select.

Amazon introduces $6 million Select program for exclusive Kindle authors originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Amazon introduces $6 million Select program for exclusive Kindle authors originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whether you're ready for it or not, the holiday season is upon us. One week from today, many of us in the US will be pushing ourselves away from the Thanksgiving dinner table, sated and ready to do some serious shopping on our iPads. To get you ready for the holiday of turkey, football, and giving thanks for what you've got, here are five apps that are sure to get you in the holiday spirit.

iCookbook 2.0

Part of the Thanksgiving tradition is cooking up an amazing feast for family and friends. iCookbook (on sale for US$4.99) has recently been updated to version 2.0 and it's now the app to have in the kitchen.

This universal app has always had thousands of recipes for you to try out, but it's going to be your cooking buddy from now on. The developers at Publications International recently added voice commands to the iPhone version -- you can now avoid touching your iPad or iPhone screen with those greasy hands by speaking commands to move to the next step of a recipe, start or stop a timer, and more.

The app is also awesome for those who may be tired of squinting at recipes, since it now has a "Prepare mode" that provides an enhanced display of a recipe for easy viewing. Have a TV in or near the kitchen? Great, since the app now has AirPlay support as well. If you're not thrilled about having your iOS toy in the messy kitchen while you cook, you can print your recipes to any AirPrint-compatible printer.

iCookbook 2.0 provides free updates monthly as well as special recipe packs that are available through in-app purchase.

Cocktails HD

Sometimes the holidays can be a bit stressful with all of the family dynamics, and you want nothing more at the end (or beginning) of the big get-together than a good stiff drink. That's where Cocktails HD (sale priced at $0.99) comes in handy.

It comes loaded with over 600 drink, wine and food recipes, a complete guide to bar tending, and new drinks are added on a regular basis in free updates. The app can also be handy for drinking games (please drink responsibly, though!), with a "random shake" mode that displays random drink recipes with a shake.

If you do over-imbibe, do not drive. Instead, use this bonus app -- Taxi Magic (Free) -- to get a ride home or call a taxi for Uncle Bob, who just started dancing the lambada with the Christmas tree.

College Football Scoreboard Plus

It may be considered a little rude to be eating your Thanksgiving feast in front of the TV, so here's a way that you can keep up on the latest college football scores without committing a social faux pas.

College Football Scoreboard Plus ($0.99) gives you up to the minute scores of all the games, schedules of what's coming up next, news about your favorite teams, and even a scrolling ticker of scores.

It's perfect for sneaking a peek at what's happening -- just put the iPhone in your lap and keep looking pensive, and they'll just think you're reflecting on the meaning of Thanksgiving.

Black Friday by BradsDeals

While the guys may be in their tryptophan-induced daze after chowing down on a pound of turkey, the ladies are probably scheming for the Black Friday shopping on November 25. One way to plan on getting the best deals is to use an app like Black Friday (free) by BradsDeals.

The app (2010 version shown above) lets you plan out your shopping itinerary by store and product, and includes a ton of Black Friday ads for most major retail chains. Get those deals all lined up for Black Friday, and you'll be ready to get up at 3 AM to start your annual shopping assault.

Gratitude Journal

The oft-forgotten part of Thanksgiving is the "giving thanks" piece. Regardless of your religion or lack thereof, it's a good time to think about being grateful for what you have and helping those who aren't as fortunate.

A few years ago, I did a review of an app called Gratitude Journal Your Positive Thoughts ($0.99). The idea is that each and every day, you just write a short note about what you're grateful for. It doesn't have to be anything incredibly earthshaking -- maybe you're grateful that a friend called you, that you're healthy, or that you ate a really good meal last night.

By looking over the good parts of your day, this app can really provide a way to focus on the positives in your life and make you happier. Gratitude Journal also includes nice quotes that will help to keep feeling positive about life in general.

5 apps for Thanksgiving originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

5 apps for Thanksgiving originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tim FitzRandolph joined Disney Mobile's gaming team from the lowest rung possible: The Quality Assurance department. Game testers often work long hours on early versions of unfinished games, and FitzRandolph's first job was no exception.

"I studied film studies and nothing to do with games, and also studied the Japanese language. And I had lived in Japan for a couple of years, so I was fluent in Japanese," he remembers in a recent interview with TUAW. "I didn't know what to do, and I settled down on a job listing on Disney for QA testing on an upcoming game, and they wanted someone bilingual. That was actually my kind of thing, my way in the door. I got to work on this game called Spectrobes, which was a DS game that Disney created with a team in Japan, so they needed someone to help do the testing and translate the bugs and communicate with the dev team."

But FitzRandolph was also working on his own titles, continually trying to get into actual game design at Disney. When the App Store was announced, FitzRandolph decided to try and make his own iPhone games. One of those games was eventually picked up by Disney and became the very popular Jelly Car series. And FitzRandolph's second, original game for Disney Mobile, in the position he eventually earned as Game Design Director, is the critically acclaimed and top grossing puzzler Where's My Water.

It took a little while for FitzRandolph to join Disney's mobile gaming department, however. From his position as a go-between for the US and Japanese devs on Spectrobes, he first got offered to go work on the console version of the Toy Story 3 game in Salt Lake City. He says that position taught him a lot, but Salt Lake City didn't turn out to be the place for him.

"I didn't really enjoy living in Salt Lake very much, so I came back to California," he says. "And somewhere in that timeline I had also pitched the idea of doing a sequel to Jelly Car, which I had made on my own time as like a hobby project." FitzRandolph had been working on Jelly Car on his own for a while, and says it was first concieved as a project in Microsoft's XNA development system for the Xbox. "I was like, maybe I can try making a physics system that would sort of create a custom car, just experiment. When I got it working, I just did a lot of experiments with it, but I didn't really have an idea for a game. Except for making a little test for a car, create a little object to do the physics work. So I thought you might have a little object and you can make obstacles and get across gaps and stuff like that."

When the App Store finally opened up on the iPhone, FitzRandolph says he felt it might fit the system that he'd made, so he went out and bought an iPod touch to develop on. "I got it working on the iPod touch, and it worked well enough." He then showed it around Disney, and when he pitched the idea of a sequel to the mobile division, which was looking for games to make at the time, Disney agreed to make and publish the title with him.

FitzRandolph says it was exciting to have a famous company like Disney working on something he'd created himself, but that it was a little overwhelming as well. "I had never thought about what was Jelly Car, like what are the rules or style or whatever. In the first round of assets, I'd look at it and say that doesn't look like Jelly Car, and they'd ask what it was supposed to look like. I'd not really thought about that stuff, because it had always been this really personal thing. But it was really exciting, and it's really cool to be a part of that."

FitzRandolph's team not only finished up Jelly Car 2, but then went on to make Jelly Car 3, both of which did well for Disney. And after that, he and the team (which they call "Creature Feep," after a problem many devs will find familiar called "feature creep") started thinking about what to make next. They wanted to make a physics puzzler, given how popular those have been on the App Store, but coming up with the actual gameplay involved a lot of brainstorming and iteration, says FitzRandolph.

"We had a whole bunch of ideas, and at some point along the line, it kept coming back that water, water was very fresh and people hadn't done a lot of physics around water," he remembers. "But it was also really successful in that we all know how water splashes and flows and it might be fun to make a puzzle game around that." The team put together a prototype based around diverting the flow of water with touch controls, and of course that eventually became Where's My Water. "People liked it, really loved the prototype, and then we got enough response on that that we started making the actual game."

The other elements of the game, involving a cute backstory about underground alligators who need water to take a shower and stay clean, came later on. "We basically realized that this stuff was directly connected to earth and dirt, and there were a lot of little gameplay cues that we felt like were going to be hard to explain," FitzRandolph says, "so we stopped and brainstormed about the story and what the visual elements could indicate." The team wanted to use the water to fill something underground, perhaps to a certain line, but struggled to figure out what logically would need water in that way. "What kind of things could we fill up underground? A bathtub would be cool but that doesn't make any sense underground. Well maybe it does," laughs FitzRandolph, "What about alligators living under the city? And it sort of snowballed from that."

Where's My Water has done really well for Disney, so much so that the company says it has found a new official Disney character in Swampy the Alligator, probably the first time Walt Disney's legendary studio has taken IP directly from an iOS game, instead of the other way around. FitzRandolph says coming up with a strong character was part of development, but not just because Disney wanted IP. "We wanted to come up with a really good character that had a lot of personality -- it brings a lot of life to the puzzles. But also hopefully will have a big enough world that we might want to do a story about it that's not just our game, also in another format."

"We were concerned," he adds, "that maybe alligators in general are not the most cuddly animals, but we felt like hopefully it will work out." And so far, it has, as the game still continues to do well on the App Store.

What's next for FitzRandolph and his team at Disney? He says they're still working hard on new content for Where's My Water. The game has just recently gotten a big new update, "and we have plans for several more of those, so we're all coming up with new gameplay, new levels, and things like that. Especially as the game continues to do well," he says, "we want to continue to support it." Presumably he will eventually release another title, but right now it's all followup on the current release.

As for FitzRandolph, he says he's happy to be doing what he's doing. Disney Mobile obviously appreciates having him around these days, making hit games for them, even if he did first get his foot just inside the door of the QA department.

Where's my Water creator goes from QA to hit game designer at Disney Mobile originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Where's my Water creator goes from QA to hit game designer at Disney Mobile originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One new feature of OS X Lion that is sure to win both fans and foes is the ability for apps to go full-screen. Apple teased us with this last year when updates to several of the iLife apps -- iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand -- brought the ability to take over the entire screen of a Mac with a single click. Now in Lion, more of the standard Mac apps are full-screen apps. After using Lion and these apps for a while, my feeling is that full-screen apps are a good idea, but in the initial OS X Lion implementation they're inconsistent.

How do full-screen apps work? You can tell when you're in one thanks to the double-ended arrow up in the upper right-hand corner of the app window. With a click, the app takes over the entire window on your Mac. That's right -- the menu bar and dock are nowhere to be seen. The app also gains its own Space and is accessible through Mission Control. If you need to get to the menu bar, moving your cursor to the top of the screen reveals it again. Want to get back to a normal window? Just press the Esc key on your keyboard and you're there.

What apps are full-screen enabled at this time? As mentioned earlier, iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand got the full-screen treatment last year. Safari, Mail, iCal, Preview, DVD Player, QuickTime Player, and Photo Booth have also been updated to take advantage of full-screen.

Using these apps at the same time in full-screen mode is wonderful. You're focused on the task at hand, but when you need to jump over to another full-screen app, one quick gesture brings you to Mission Control where you can swipe over to the other app; a left-right swipe can switch you as well. It's quick and seamless, and especially on a small-screen Mac like an 11.6" MacBook Air, it's a wonderful way to work.

I love what Apple did with Photo Booth, which of course is probably the most popular app for people who are trying out Macs in Apple Stores. When Photo Booth goes full-screen, the photo window is framed by beautiful wood and a red velvet curtain. It's much more exciting than the boring windows we've seen for years.

So what's with iWork? At least at the time this post was written, Keynote, Pages, and Numbers were full-screen, but didn't use the double-ended arrow to jump into that mode. That seems very inconsistent, but it wouldn't surprise me if an update was on the way to add the Lion-specific full-screen capability to iWork.

Other Apple apps that aren't full-screen happy include FaceTime, iChat, Address Book, iTunes, the Mac App Store, Chess, Dictionary, iDVD, Image Capture, iWeb, Stickies, TextEdit, and pretty much all of the Utilities. I was only able to find a handful of third-party apps that went full-screen (Pixelmator is a perfect example), but they didn't properly create their own Spaces. That indicates to me that developers have a way to go to provide consistent support of full-screen mode.

From my point of view, full-screen apps make a lot of sense, as they make the best use of available display real estate. While some apps can seem somewhat absurd on a large 27" display, it's nice to be able to concentrate on one application and not have anything else get in the way. When you want to slip over to another full-screen app, one or two quick gestures gets you there easily. As more and more apps become available in full-screen mode with support for Spaces, I think we'll see full-screen apps hitting their stride.

Lion's full-screen apps: Some hits, a lot of misses originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Lion's full-screen apps: Some hits, a lot of misses originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[Note that all opinions and assessments of FCP X expressed here are Matt's own, not TUAW's, and that any misconceptions or misunderstandings of FCP X features represent Matt's hands-on first reactions. -Ed.]

So I really, really did not believe that FCP X would be "iMovie Pro." But I have to say, my friends, I was far too optimistic. Apple has thrown us squarely under the bus. Somebody at Apple decided that making professional editors happy was just too damn much trouble, and that a much simpler program would allow them to fire 80% of the engineers and lose only 10% of the customers.

If you thought no multicam was the problem, you're thinking way too far ahead for this program. How about no split edits? No roll? No subclip?

There is, in fact, a way to mark a perfectly good in and out point, contrary to rumor. But what if I told you that you could change the speed of a clip to 50% or 25%, but not anything in between?

Heck, I can't even find a way to do an overwrite edit.

[As noted by commenters and by ScreenCastsOnline producer Don McAllister, both overwrite edits and intermediate speed adjustments are in fact included in FCP X -- as Matt acknowledges below, citing the challenge of working through FCP X's documentation. Keep in mind that this series is documenting Matt's opinions and reactions over the course of several days, and that first impressions can be incorrect and revised over time. -Ed.]

I should confess at this point that I've never used iMovie. I've been editing for twenty years, on linear systems, and then Avid, and then Final Cut. But I'm guessing that if I were a regular iMovie user, I wouldn't feel so awfully lost in this program.

It turns out, of course, that all of these basic features are in the program, but the documentation isn't very well written. You'd think that if they were going to radically change the way we edit, they'd throw us a lifeline and walk us through it. In fact, when I looked up split edit, it proposed a really Byzantine five-step process involving a ripple trim. It only takes three with a rolling trim. Of course, in FCP 7 it only took one step. That's not promising.

My intention was to take this project I have coming up that has very little deadline pressure, it's only two minutes long, it's not that complicated. I thought I'd do that in FCP X and that way I'd learn where the gotchas were and where this program's limitations were.

Now I doubt we're going to get that far. I don't think that I could cut the simplest project I've done in the last ten years on this program. Not because it would take too long, as bad as that would be, but because it is simply not possible.

There's definitely going to be a revolution in post-production, dudes. It's the one where the masses pull Apple off the throne and cut its throat.

I'll keep reading the docs and playing around. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and realize this was all a really bad dream, and actually it's as brilliant as an iPod. But don't hold your breath!

Part II coming up... Learning the Ropes.

First-Person Final Cut Pro X, Day One: Completely at Sea originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

First-Person Final Cut Pro X, Day One: Completely at Sea originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Some readers have been managing two Apple IDs on purpose and are now frustrated about the fact that Apple is restricting logins for automatic downloads. Others have only just discovered that they have two IDs. Most of them have already contacted Apple, only to be given the same answer without exception: Apple will not consolidate Apple ID accounts.

One of the Frequently Asked Questions About Apple IDs is "I have multiple Apple IDs. Is there a way for me to consolidate them into a single Apple ID?" The answer: "At this time, Apple IDs cannot be consolidated."

The optimists will interpret "at this time" as meaning that this could change in the future. The word "cannot" is also open to interpretation. I suspect Apple's intended meaning is "there is no mechanism in place to do this" rather than "it would be impossible for us to do this if we really wanted to." After all, assuming that the apps are still available, it seems like it would be a relatively straightforward matter of "gifting" the apps from one account to the other. However, if that has to be done manually for each person facing this issue, it could be quite time-consuming.

I discovered that I had inadvertently created two Apple IDs not long after the iOS App Store appeared. One of the nice things about the App Store has always been that you could re-download purchases free of charge. While checking my email one day, I realized that I had been billed twice for the same application. I contacted Apple's usually excellent iTunes support (since the App Store was brand new, there was no separate App Store support channel yet), and I informed them of the mistake. The customer service person replied that she could not see a duplicate charge and asked me to forward both receipts to her. That was when I realized what had happened. The usernames were identical, except that one ended in "@gmail.com" and the other was the same username, but without a domain name. (You may recall Marco Arment wrote about this problem regarding Instapaper accounts, indicating it was responsible for "[m]any of Instapaper's top support issues.")

When I realized what had happened, I contacted Apple support again, asking if they could merge my accounts. The answer I was given was not just "no" but 'absolutely not, under any circumstances ever.' While I am paraphrasing the support rep's response, that captures the spirit of it. I asked nicely, I complained, I sent separate requests hoping to get someone else, and I have asked again periodically whenever it occurred to me to do so. The answer remains a resolute and unwavering "no."

Apple has no obligation to take any steps to correct my stupidity. Regardless of how much money the company has made or how much cash it's sitting on, at the end of the day, I am a grownup and responsible for my own actions. Because I did not pay close enough attention to what I was doing, I brought this on myself. [Users with MobileMe accounts that conflict with their Apple IDs may have created them completely without realizing it; see threads here and here. -Ed.]

Music purchases through iTunes were easy enough to solve: I upgraded to "iTunes Plus" whenever possible, which removed the DRM. Unfortunately there is no equivalent for App Store purchases. Since I realized this shortly after the App Store opened, I have been able to avoid repeating the mistake and only had to repurchase a few apps. However, my Apple Support Profile shows almost all of my Mac/iOS hardware as belonging to one Apple ID, and all of my App Store purchases belong to the other Apple ID. It is a minor annoyance, at most, for me.

Others have not been so fortunate, and with the advent of iCloud, the problem seems to be looming ever larger for some people. Obviously, we have no way of knowing how many people are faced with it, but given the size of the iTunes and App Store customer base, even a small percentage represents a significant number of people.

Could Apple change this policy?

It would seem so. From the outside looking in, it does not appear to be an insurmountable technological problem, but more one of record-keeping; addressing it would clearly help a small-but-not-negligible number of Apple customers.

Do I expect Apple to change this policy? No, I don't. The company seems to have dug in its heels on this issue early on, and I have no reason to think that the policy will change now. We can only speculate as to why Apple enforces this hard-and-fast rule; a strong suspicion voiced by Mike Rose on this topic is that Apple's licensing agreements with content owners (music labels and movie studios in particular) have some sand in the gears when it comes to merging or splitting content libraries.

[It's also possible that Apple cannot afford to get bogged down in exception handling and legal vagaries across 50 states and scores of countries when, for instance, a brace of divorce lawyers call and request that a 20,000-song iTunes library be split up between their clients' accounts. Much simpler to have a consistent answer of "We can't do that, sorry." -Ed.]

On the other hand, I did not expect Apple to intervene in the Lodsys issue or back down on subscription pricing, and the unveiling of iCloud would probably be the best time for Apple to change this policy--if it ever will.

If you think Apple should change this policy, you might be inclined to send a politely-worded message through the proper channels. And, no, emailing Steve Jobs directly is not proper channels. On the other hand, I cannot tell you exactly what the proper channel is. I looked at Apple's Feedback Page, but there is no feedback channel for the App Store, which seems very odd. I also looked at the links for iTunes, iPad, and iPhone/iPod touch feedback, but none of them lend themselves to giving App Store feedback.

The Apple ID FAQ does not offer any way to contact Apple about your Apple ID. Nor does the Apple ID support page. Nor does the Apple ID site or the Apple ID recovery page.

Finally I found the iTunes Support page, which has a section titled "iTunes Store Account and Billing." If you select that, and then "Managing your Account," that may be the most appropriate route to give feedback.

And remember: the person who will read your message will not be in a position to change the policy (even if you did hear that your best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who did get her Apple IDs consolidated), so state your case politely and succinctly in order to let your voice be heard, and then move on. If Apple changes the policy, great. If not, well, then you're no worse off than you are today.

Customers with multiple Apple IDs frustrated by Apple's "no consolidation" policy originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 Jun 2011 08:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Customers with multiple Apple IDs frustrated by Apple's "no consolidation" policy originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 Jun 2011 08:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This handy app lives in your menu bar, providing quick access to your many appointments across calendars (including iCal or Outlook 2011). Fantastical supports incredibly rapid and natural full-text entry for appointments, making it easier than ever to get your events where you need them. It looks great, works well and is definitely worth your time. Read on for the full review.

Note: tomorrow I'll post a review of a competing product, Today by Second Gear Software. Then, on Thursday, we'll do a head-to-head shootout between Fantastical and Today.

Gallery: Fantastical 1.0 for Mac

Continue reading Fantastical improves the Mac desktop calendar experience

Fantastical improves the Mac desktop calendar experience originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 17 May 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Fantastical improves the Mac desktop calendar experience originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 17 May 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Love Apple gear? Like math? TUAW's Doing the Math series examines the numbers and the science that lie behind the hardware.

The contentious subject of Mac security has been back in the news in recent weeks following the emergence of a fake antivirus package called MacDefender (also known as Mac Security and Mac Protector) that managed to steal a number of users' credit card details, and a new piece of "crimeware" called Weyland-Yutani BOT which allows non-technical hackers to easily create password grabbing webpages that specifically target Mac browsers.

This prompted a fresh round of "the Mac is under attack! Malware will drown us all! Exclamation!" blog posts, followed by the usual backlash against them. On the alarmist side, Ed Bott wrote "Coming soon to a Mac near you: serious malware", predicting doom, gloom, and dogs and cats living together.

The case for the defence was eloquently made in an article entitled "Wolf!" by Mac uber-blogger John Gruber where he simply collected assorted "Mac malware is inevitable" quotes from prominent analysts... going back to 2004, and all clearly unfulfilled in the sense of widespread attacks or exploits in the wild. Bott responded with a thoughtful post where he made a more reasoned case that malware for Macs really is inevitable in the long run, regardless of how inaccurate previous predictions have been.

So who's right, and who's wrong? Is it time to run to the hills or are people just sounding the gong of panic unnecessarily? In this post I'm going to try and dive a little deeper into the issues surrounding Mac malware, hypothetical and real, and separate the headlines from the facts.

Continue reading Malware, Macs, and crying wolf: Doing the math

Malware, Macs, and crying wolf: Doing the math originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 14 May 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Malware, Macs, and crying wolf: Doing the math originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 14 May 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Music piracy rose to epidemic levels at the beginning of the 2000s (although, according to Wired, those days are now over). There were many causes of this growth in piracy -- high speed internet access, easy-to-use P2P software -- but perhaps the biggest accelerator of music piracy was two-fold: the emergence of devices that allowed us to easily copy and then consume music (namely CD-burners, and then MP3 players) away from the computers we downloaded them on, and the reluctance of the record industry to embrace new technology.

In other words, once people had the hardware for consuming digital music, the record industry failed to give listeners the digital music they wanted at a reasonable price and in an easy-to-access centralized location. The same factors that lead to mass music piracy are now in place to disrupt another flavor of media -- comic books. The excitement and media attention around Free Comic Book Day yesterday shouldn't deceive anybody about the fact that there's trouble around the corner.

Why is the comic book industry set for a piracy tipping point? After all, people have been able to illegally download comic books on the Web for years. Why should it suddenly accelerate? One factor: the iPad.

Before the launch of the iPad, people who illegally download comic books read them on their computers -- compared to a printed comic book, a decidedly inferior experience. However, with the advent of the iPad and the tablet form factor that closely mimics a comic book, Apple's tablet is liberating illegal comic book downloads from the computer monitor and allowing them to be consumed in a much more appealing and natural way.

I first noticed this last year when I was talking to a friend who was complaining that his local comic shop was out of a specific issue of a comic book he wanted. I suggested to him that he buy it through Marvel's iPad app. However, Marvel's app didn't offer the issue in question. That's when another friend asked what issue the first friend wanted. The next day, friend #2 emailed him a CBR (Comic Book Archive) file containing a pirated copy of not only that issue, but every Marvel comic that shipped that week.

Continue reading Publishers' choice: Will the iPad be the hero or villain of the comic book industry?

Publishers' choice: Will the iPad be the hero or villain of the comic book industry? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 08 May 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Publishers' choice: Will the iPad be the hero or villain of the comic book industry? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 08 May 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Back in the mists of history -- probably the late '90s or early '00s -- I remember reading a blog post. I'm afraid I have been unable to find it again, so you'll have to take my reminiscing on faith (but please leave a comment if you know what I'm talking about). This post dissected and analyzed a collection of freshly granted IBM patents which, taken together, painted a picture of the future of personal computing that has stayed with me ever since.

In essence, they called for each person to be carrying around a personal "computing core" -- a device we'd recognize today as a modern smartphone, although it was close to science fiction back then -- that could be docked into a variety of shells to become other devices, such as a laptop or a desktop. While Apple's PowerBook Duo subnotebooks were designed to transform into desktop computers when docked with their base units, they didn't quite meet the pocketable part of the 'computing core' definition.

I was reminded of this recently when reading Anandtech's review of the clumsily-named Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101. If you're unfamiliar with it, the Eee Pad looks, at first glance, like Yet Another Identikit Android Tablet, as it has very similar specs to the rest of them -- Android Honeycomb software, dual core NVidia Tegra 2 system-on-a-chip processor, 1 GB RAM and so forth.

The Asus, however, has two key things in its favor. Firstly, for the baseline Wi-Fi/16 GB configuration, it's $100 cheaper than the iPad. Secondly, it works with a $150 laptop dock accessory that turns it into a netbook.

Continue reading Docks, transformers, computing cores and taking it all with you

Docks, transformers, computing cores and taking it all with you originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 05 May 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Docks, transformers, computing cores and taking it all with you originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 05 May 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The new iPad front-facing camera features VGA quality video at 30 frames per second, which is the main camera people will use during FaceTime chats, but presumably the iPad 2 FaceTime program, like the iPhone 4 FaceTime, will support camera rotation. The rear camera on the iPad features HD-quality video at 720p resolution.

No word on whether a Windows version of desktop FaceTime is in the works.

iPad 2 cameras set for FaceTime originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iPad 2 cameras set for FaceTime originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Ask TUAW: Presidents Day Edition

Ask TUAW: Presidents Day Edition originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Feb 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Ask TUAW: Presidents Day Edition originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Feb 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Eric Schmidt stepping down as Google CEO originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Eric Schmidt stepping down as Google CEO originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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My earliest steps towards a paperless office actually came a few years ago, when I went to electronic statements for my banks and credit cards. However, up until the beginning of 2010, the filing system for my business consisted of big binders or folders into which I would slip the printed copies of those statements along with a ton of other paperwork. Now, as the statements come in my email as PDFs or are downloaded from the bank or credit card company website, I save them directly into special folders in my Dropbox.

Continue reading The paperless office: How to get there (and a discount e-book offer)

The paperless office: How to get there (and a discount e-book offer) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 15 Jan 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The paperless office: How to get there (and a discount e-book offer) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 15 Jan 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You can also contact those people sending you the attachments and ask them to change the format they use when sending email to you.

Continue reading Ask TUAW: Outlook 2011 attachment problems, Apple TV alternatives, deleting apps and more

Ask TUAW: Outlook 2011 attachment problems, Apple TV alternatives, deleting apps and more originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Ask TUAW: Outlook 2011 attachment problems, Apple TV alternatives, deleting apps and more originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Ask TUAW: MacBook Pro cleaning, Mac maintenance, streaming video and more

Ask TUAW: MacBook Pro cleaning, Mac maintenance, streaming video and more originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Ask TUAW: MacBook Pro cleaning, Mac maintenance, streaming video and more originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Ask TUAW: Canceling Mobile Me, iPhone backups, playing Windows media files and more

Ask TUAW: Canceling Mobile Me, iPhone backups, playing Windows media files and more originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Ask TUAW: Canceling Mobile Me, iPhone backups, playing Windows media files and more originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When iLife '11 was announced, I was quite excited to hear there was an update to iPhoto, and even more surprised to learn my local Apple Store had the software in stock the day after the "Back to the Mac" event.

The feature list for the latest version of iPhoto is impressive, and since I do so much photography it seemed a no-brainer to get it. New features include:

• Full screen mode
• A direct link to Facebook for posting comments and pictures
• New slideshow templates
• New book designs
• Enhanced templates for emailing photos
• Letterpress Cards for sending to family and friends

For US$49, with GarageBand '11 and iMovie '11 in the mix in addition to iPhoto, I was ready to buy iLife. Let's go over the changes, then deal with some of the ugly truths.

Continue reading Review: iPhoto '11 is a very mixed bag

Review: iPhoto '11 is a very mixed bag originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 29 Oct 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Review: iPhoto '11 is a very mixed bag originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 29 Oct 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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