Filed under: Humor

Sometimes app developers will send me PR releases hoping I review their apps (thus increasing their sales). If I think it's a good app, or that my readers would like it, I do. Many times I don't, however. But I couldn't resist sharing this app with the rest of the world. Why? Not because it's a good app (I haven't even tried it), but because it is the worst-named app in the history of apps: Touch Teen Patti.

When I first read the name images of an app that featured photos the young and innocent teen Patti popped into my head. I imagined the Pedobears on the Chan sites going crazy over this app as they used their fingers to pinch and squeeze young teen Patti's various body parts. It wasn't just the name that caused me to shamelessly snicker like a thirteen year-old either. The PR release went on to contain a number of inadvertent, though sexually ambiguous, double entendres:

• "Teen Patti recently featured in a movie of the same name."
• "Teen Patti can be played with a minimum of 2 players but it's more fun with 4 or more players."
• "The AI will challenge the players to an extreme and test not only your luck but your skills on the table."

If you don't know (or haven't guessed) by now, Teen Patti is actually an innocent Indian card game that's similar to poker. When the devs made it into an iPhone game they decided to (appropriately enough) throw "touch" into the title -- probably much to the alarm of Chris Hanson and to the hopes of Pedobears everywhere. To the dev who wanted me to do a review of this app -- sorry, but I'm not into card games. However, with a name like "Touch Teen Patti," if you want to increase your sales, all you have to do is post a link to your app on 4Chan and your numbers will go through the roof.

Commenters note that "Teen Patti" in Hindi translates as "three cards."

The sad thing? The video might be a parody of iOS4 on the iPhone 3G, but it's definitely the truth on my end as well. Still tethered to an iPhone 3G at the moment, utilizing basic services such Maps requires a good minute of finger tapping and waiting for the OS to decide if it wants to launch the app or not.

Video creator adamburtle lamented on the same thing. He writes, "... it's not because my needs have grown. It's not because I've installed a bunch of laggy software. It's because Apple's firmware has become bloated, with respect to the processing power of the 3G iPhone."

Adam, I couldn't have said it better myself.

Of course, there's the easy answer -- upgrade to an iPhone 4. Then again, it may not be worth it. Let's see what Steve has to say on that tomorrow first. Otherwise, it might be worth just getting a cheap 3GS.

[Via MacStories]

When the news of Apple's Friday iPhone 4 press conference came out, a few of the TUAW bloggers were discussing what Apple might want to tell the assembled media. We put our heads together to come up with our best ideas, so please vote for your favorite or give us your take on what Apple will announce in the comments below.

Is that little 50' motor yacht of yours just not making your heart beat with joy any more? Do you need a new yacht on which to stretch your legs and get away from the paparazzi? Does it just bother you that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has a bigger yacht than you do (see photo above of his "boat" in Copenhagen)?

No need to worry! Just pull out your iPhone or iPad and install the new free Sunseeker Brokerage app -- it's free! -- and you'll have access to details about the entire line of new Sunseeker Motor Yachts, as well as over 200 pre-owned luxury yachts. The new boats section includes vessels from 48 feet in length to 170 feet, along with plenty of interior and exterior images and specifications. You can find your nearest Sunseeker office from the app, then fly your Gulfstream G550 to that location to finalize your customizations and sign the paperwork.

Of course, with the state of the economy being the way it is, you might have to tighten your belt and look at pre-owned vessels like that €18 million Leopard 46 Metre that is languishing at anchor off of Cannes. The Sunseeker Brokerage app lets you email questions about each yacht you're interested in, or email specs to your buddies. You can browse all of the vessels you're interested in while you're offline; the app can save info for any boats that meet your requirements.

Me? I think I'm going to hold out for that ISA 133 series -- it's a steal at only €10,800,000.

If you saw Thursday night's new episode of Matt Groening's Futurama on Comedy Central (and let's take a moment to relish those beautiful words, 'new episode of Futurama' -- mmm, yes), you got an earful of biting satire focused on the enthusiasm of a certain company's customers and their appetite for new, shiny things. As Engadget reported, the episode was unsparing in its portrayal of a world where underpaid laborers dealt with the toxic leavings of other planets' consumerist tendencies. Ouch.

Apparently, not everyone found it amusing. As Mac|Life's Roberto Baldwin noted, one of the clips from the show on the Comedy Central website has been selectively muted; when the Mom character says "Introducing the all-new eyePhone 2.0" in the original episode, now there is silence. Wouldn't you have liked to have been an eavesdropper on that phone call.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

Ah, the once mighty Power Mac G5. It used to be the envy of film editors and art designers everywhere. With a 1.6 GHz CPU, a whopping 256MB of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive, it was once the tower-iest of PC towers.

Just seven short years later, it's reduced to grating cheese in some nondescript office environment. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Actually it's just the case doing the grating -- you have to admit, with all of those tiny holes for ventilation, the case works pretty well. It does make a mess, though, and there's quite a bit of cheese still left on the unit. It may not be able to run 10.6, but the old G5 will spruce up your salad if you so choose.

Thanks, sivil!

I'm really happy that Apple is once again talking about why people will love the Mac when they finally escape from Windows. I had an experience over the last few days that reinforced my love affair with the Mac. Since many of you are also Mac fanatics, I thought you'd love to hear the step-by-step, agonizing situation I endured.

All I wanted to do was install a Wi-Fi remote-controlled webcam. Nothing spectacular. I had looked at a number of webcams on Amazon.com before settling on a rather inexpensive Chinese-made device. According to the vendor, the camera was "Apple Mac and Windows compatible," so I ordered it. It arrived quickly, and a glance at the manual revealed that I would need to use Windows to set up the camera prior to using it with an "Apple Mac." Since I always keep a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate running under VMWare Fusion for such emergencies, I felt this would be a quick process.

Yeah, right.

Fortunately for you, I've documented the installation procedure for posterity. Now you can enjoy my own personal vision of Hell. It's called using Windows.

Did you ever have one of those days where it seems like everyone is getting an email from Steve Jobs but you? Well, worry no more! The Joy of Tech has created the Steve Jobs Email Reply Generator. Using a series of drop-down menus, you can compose an email to Steve Jobs, like mine to the right. Then you can create Steve's reply and choose which device he sent it from.

Reading through all of the drop-down menu options is pretty funny. However, the thing that stops short of making this gag really funny is that you can't actually send the email to yourself (or any gullible friends). You can only look at it on the screen -- which kind of defeats the purpose of an "email generator."

Anyway, props to the talent at Joy of Tech, and thanks for reminding me how much I loved Mad Libs as a kid!

Got some time to kill at the office today? Steal some heavy weight paper from the supply closet and print out your very own Cubee cutouts of Mac and PC.

The cutouts are designed by Jay Hauf, and they work best when you download the 1482 x 1173 versions and print them on heavy stock letter paper. For video instructions on how to assemble your Cubees, see here.

If you get bored recreating all 66 Get a Mac ads, you can mix it up a little by downloading the Steve Jobs Cubee cutout (which, IMO, looks a lot like a square version of Stewie Griffin when assembled). Now, get back to work!

[via iPhoneSavior]

It's gotta be tough for a guy who designs the sexiest devices on the planet. No, not the million-dollar paycheck or the international fame and fortune. When you're one of the world's top designers, you must make sure your image portrays cool and sexy. If you're a built guy with a shaved head and an English accent, you've done a good job.

On the other hand, if you're wearing beige fleeces with huge collars and sporting a pretty wicked 'stache, you might have a problem convincing people that you, y'know, design some of the sleekest, sexiest devices on the planet.

Oh, how the Internet is going to make all of us have to relive our worse style decisions over and over. Gizmodo has dug up this video clip of Jonathan Ive talking talking about how a computer "can be sexy" circa 1999. You've come a long way, Jonny...

We love Peter Sagal and the gang, but they certainly jumped ugly with the iPad on this week's episode of NPR's quiz show Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me. In a segment of fake confessions from public figures, announcer Carl Kasell stood in for Steve Jobs and admitted "It's just a big iPhone without the phone."

Tell it to the NPR iPad app team, why don't you? They seem pretty excited about the new device... in fact, quite a few NPR listeners are potential iPad buyers, although you'd be hard-pressed to know it from the cranky comments on this post.

The funny business continued as Sagal skewered the iPad: "Fans of the new device say it is just a little more expensive than other computers that do a lot more things. But it has the advantage of being slightly more difficult to use. See, in a regular laptop, sending an email is no big deal. But on the iPad, it's a personal triumph over adversity." Spoken like someone who hasn't used one yet.

Just to put the icing on the cake, the contestant actually had an iPad in hand while she called into the show, leading Sagal to comment "Yeah, it's amazing; immediately we go from like, you know, posture of mockery to, ooh, you have one?" How quickly they turn. Of course, when he asked the contestant how she liked her iPad, she replied "I love it very much" -- but then when he pressed her on what she could do with it that she couldn't do before, she promptly admitted "Nothing." Oy.

This week's WWDTM features panelists Luke Burbank, Kyrie O'Connor and Adam Felber (a personal favorite). You can read the transcript here or just listen to the opening "Who's Carl This Time" segment, but we recommend subscribing to the weekly podcast.

P.S. Did you know that NPR listeners, compared to the average US citizen, are twice as likely to be Mac users? Intriguing.

With the iPad launch just two days away and new iPad news flooding the net almost every hour, we want to remind all our readers that today is April Fools' Day -- so take what you hear with a grain of salt. The web is already bursting with April Fools' pranks. Some of my favorites are:

Google Translate for Animals -- an Android app that translates animal sounds into human speech using Google's "animal linguistic database."

The Dharma Initiative Alarm Clock -- there's only two settings: one-minute warning and electromagnetic cataclysm mode.

Google Street View in 3D -- go to Street View on and Google Map and you'll see a 3D icon. Glasses not included.

Google Mobile Search "Where am I?" -- you'll be surprised to find where you are.

The iCade, iPad Arcade Cabinet -- Donkey Kong never looked so good.

Starbucks introduces the plenta and the micra - new coffee sizes for the modern appetite

Besides a day for pranks, April 1, 2010 is Apple's 34th anniversary. Apple was founded this on this day in 1976. Happy anniversary Apple!

When you compare the snow leopard that graces the front of the Mac OS X Snow Leopard box with the same picture that's in your Mac's built-in desktop pictures, you'll notice a very subtle difference... assuming you're running a version of Snow Leopard prior to 10.6.3, that is. In earlier versions of Snow Leopard, the big cat in the OS's desktop pictures has some slight flecks of blood on its lower jaw, and its lower teeth are also slightly visible. The same picture has been "cleaned up" for the front of the Snow Leopard retail box, as well as the install disc itself; the blood has been removed, and the snow leopard's lower teeth have been Photoshopped out. I guess Apple thought that the original image was a little too menacing for its marketing purposes?


Well, the sanitization has spread into the desktop pictures on the Mac, because after installing the 10.6.3 update, the snow leopard desktop picture in your Library/Desktop Pictures/Nature folder has been changed to match the "kinder, gentler" version on the retail box and install disc. When you zoom in really close, you can see that the Photoshop work they did on the poor cat's mouth when they hid its fangs was kind of a hackish job, too. Click "Read More" to see some closeups of the unkindness done to this noble carnivore.

There have been no shortage of jokes and sniggers about the "iPad" since it was announced, and it's getting more and more difficult to tell reality from a Saturday Night Live skit. Just the other day my non-technical wife asked me, in all sincerity, if "iPeriod" was a real Apple product (no, honey, just someone making a "joke" ... but there is an app for that.)

Apple isn't helping matters either. In the press release regarding the iPad's imminent arrival, Steve Jobs is quoted as saying the "iPad connects users with their apps and content in a far more intimate and fun way than ever before" and "[w]e can't wait for users to get their hands and fingers on it this weekend" in reference to the iPad's "revolutionary Multi-Touch™."

Really, Steve? Really?

The only people I expect to be this excited to get their "hands and fingers busy" over the weekend are teenagers who have just started dating.

Read on for more...