The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) http://www.tuaw.com The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) http://www.tuaw.com/media/feedlogo.gif The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) http://www.tuaw.com en-us Copyright 2008 Blogsmith, LLC. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/Apple announces deadline for Design Awardshttp://www.tuaw.com/2008/05/06/apple-announces-deadline-for-design-awards/http://www.tuaw.com/2008/05/06/apple-announces-deadline-for-design-awards/http://www.tuaw.com/2008/05/06/apple-announces-deadline-for-design-awards/#commentsFiled under: ,

Apple has announced the submission deadline for the Apple Design Awards (ADA). The ADA take place every year during the World Wide Developer Conference, and recognizes the best efforts in several categories including user experience, overall application, student project and more.

Previous winners include Coda (best user experience 2007), CSSEdit 2.5 (Best Developer tool, 2007) and Comic Life (Best New Product for Mac OS X, 2005).

New this year is the iPhone category, which should be very exciting. The deadline for the 2008 ADA is May 12.
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]]>adaapple design awardsAppleDesignAwardswwdcDave Caolo2008-05-06T10:00:00+00:00WWDC early registration pricing extendedhttp://www.tuaw.com/2008/04/29/wwdc-early-registration-pricing-extended/http://www.tuaw.com/2008/04/29/wwdc-early-registration-pricing-extended/http://www.tuaw.com/2008/04/29/wwdc-early-registration-pricing-extended/#commentsFiled under:

Save, save, save! Deals, deals, deals!

An email from Apple is making the rounds this morning with the announcement that early registration pricing has been extended to May 9th. Sign up between now and then and save $300US. Yippee!

WWDC '08 will take place between June 9-13 in San Francisco, CA. There are more than 150 sessions scheduled, including the new iPhone track.

As usual, anticipation (and rumors) abounds as visions of iPhone 2.0, the App Store and more tease us all. Oh, and if you happen to run into Woz, console him on his recent breakup.
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]]>developers conferenceDevelopersConferenceeventswwdcDave Caolo2008-04-29T12:00:00+00:00Entries open for Apple's 2008 design awardshttp://www.tuaw.com/2008/04/17/entries-open-for-apples-2008-design-awards/http://www.tuaw.com/2008/04/17/entries-open-for-apples-2008-design-awards/http://www.tuaw.com/2008/04/17/entries-open-for-apples-2008-design-awards/#commentsFiled under: ,

Every Mac developer wants a small, softly glowing cube -- as long as it's not made from unstable isotopes or anything like that. The Apple Design Awards 2008 entry period has now begun; with competition in seven categories this year, including two for the iPhone, it's going to be fun to see what bubbles up to the top at WWDC.

Applications in the following areas can be uploaded and entered before 5 pm May 12:
  • iPhone Developer Showcase
  • Best iPhone Web Application
  • Best Mac OS X Leopard Application
  • Best New Mac OS X Leopard Game
  • Best Mac OS X Leopard User Experience
  • Best Mac OS X Leopard Graphics and Media Application
  • Best Mac OS X Leopard Student Product
Winners get plenty of goodies: WWDC tickets and travel, MacBook Pros, Cinema Displays, iPod touches and iPhones, and (far and away the most valuable) a free mini-booth to exhibit at Macworld Expo 2009. See Apple's official site for all the rules and regulations, and best of luck! (Yes, that's the developer team of 2007 ADA winner Panic giving a full-on geek salute there in the winner's circle. Seems like they're pretty pumped.)
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]]>adaapple design awardAppleDesignAwarddeveloperwwdcMichael Rose2008-04-17T09:00:00+00:00WWDC '08 sessions postedhttp://www.tuaw.com/2008/04/02/wwdc-08-sessions-posted/http://www.tuaw.com/2008/04/02/wwdc-08-sessions-posted/http://www.tuaw.com/2008/04/02/wwdc-08-sessions-posted/#commentsFiled under: ,

Apple has posted a listing of the sessions which will be offered at this summer's World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco.

There are three tracks to choose from: Mac, IT and new this year, iPhone. Of course, the Mac track has the greatest number of sessions available, and poor IT is dead last.

Early bird registration has begun, so purchase your ticket and make your hotel reservations. And if you're an iPhone developer, we're really waiting to see what you come up with.
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]]>iphoneitmacworld wide developers conferenceWorldWideDevelopersConferencewwdcDave Caolo2008-04-02T22:00:00+00:00WWDC Student Scholarship Info Postedhttp://www.tuaw.com/2008/03/31/wwdc-student-scholarship-info-posted/http://www.tuaw.com/2008/03/31/wwdc-student-scholarship-info-posted/http://www.tuaw.com/2008/03/31/wwdc-student-scholarship-info-posted/#commentsFiled under:

If you're hoping to go to WWDC on a student scholarship, better get applying soon. The deadline is fast approaching. Get those applications in by the 10th of April. Scholarship winners will be notified by email by the end of April.

The WWDC scholarship offers a free ticket to WWDC with complete access to all tech sessions and special events, saving you somewhere roughly in the neighborhood of $1600. (We previously wrote about the scholarship here.)

What's more, there's usually an all-day event just for student developers plus a career fair where you can meet hiring managers from many Mac development companies.

Thanks Joseph Agreda

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]]>ScholarshipsStudentsErica Sadun2008-03-31T12:30:00+00:00Apple announces WWDC 08 dateshttp://www.tuaw.com/2008/03/13/apple-announces-wwdc-08-dates/http://www.tuaw.com/2008/03/13/apple-announces-wwdc-08-dates/http://www.tuaw.com/2008/03/13/apple-announces-wwdc-08-dates/#commentsFiled under: , ,

With the iPhone SDK announcement last week, some of us here at TUAW were expecting a Worldwide Developer Conference date to be announced. Thankfully, the world has been put to rights, as Apple has now announced that WWDC will run from 9th - 13th June at San Francisco's Moscone Centre (West Hall). With three tracks (iPhone, Mac and IT) if you're a developer or IT Pro this is probably a conference you'll want to be at -- and students are encouraged too, with Student Scholarships usually available.

Whilst the ticket prices are forthcoming, it'll Tickets get you 5 days of sessions, Apple engineers, (likely) a Steve Jobs keynote and plenty you can't talk about. With the arrival of the iPhone SDK, we'd wager this years conference is frankly going to be a little popular (what with the full public release likely to arrive around the same time) so it might be prudent to book at your earliest convenience.

Pricing for this year's WWDC is US$1295 for a single ticket, US$5180 for 5 tickets (saving you $1295). Apple are also offering combined packages of ADC membership and a WWDC membership.
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]]>tweet-thisworldwide-developer-conferencewwdcwwdc08Nik Fletcher2008-03-13T16:58:00+00:00The case of the missing resolution independencehttp://www.tuaw.com/2007/11/01/the-case-of-the-missing-resolution-independence/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/11/01/the-case-of-the-missing-resolution-independence/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/11/01/the-case-of-the-missing-resolution-independence/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , , ,

What the heck happened to resolution independence?

In Gruber's review of the Powerbook a few years ago, he trumpeted the coming of a feature long evading the Mac faithful, a resolution independent interface. Others at the time expected the same thing to appear in Leopard: UI elements that were completely independent of the screen's resolution, and, finally, a fully scalable interface, and freedom from whatever screen you were working on. Higher resolutions without squeezing down the UI elements. And as we got closer to Leopard, more and more word went around that OS 10.5 would have it. At WWDC 2006, some developers even confirmed it. And Apple even filed a patent to get it done.

Except now it's November, Leopard is out, and resolution independence is nowhere to be found, at least at the user-accessible level. What gives?

Continue reading The case of the missing resolution independence

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]]>confirmationdetective-tuawdevelopersindependenceleopardmacworldon-the-caseresolutionresolution-indpendencerumorstruthultraportablewwdcMike Schramm2007-11-01T15:00:00+00:00EA officially backs off of Mac releaseshttp://www.tuaw.com/2007/08/16/ea-officially-backs-off-of-mac-releases/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/08/16/ea-officially-backs-off-of-mac-releases/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/08/16/ea-officially-backs-off-of-mac-releases/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

Shame on you, EA! Shame! Back at WWDC, you promised to release four of your franchise games simultaneously on PC and Mac in July. But July came and went, and we saw (and played) nothing.

And now EA has told Apple Insider that Mac faithful shouldn't have held their breath on those promises-- Madden 08 was the big release on Tuesday, but while it did appear on PC, the Mac version has been officially delayed until "September or October" (which means late December, in videogame-release-speak). Additionally, even EA doesn't know what's going on with its own games-- they claim that Battlefield 2142, Command and Conquer 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Need for Speed Carbon are all in stores, but when asked which stores they were actually in, EA didn't have an answer.

I can't say I'm surprised-- for all the talk at WWDC, the Mac isn't quite the platform of choice for most game makers, and who knows who would have actually bought any of those games on Mac if they had been released (I wouldn't have). But the fact is that EA stood on stage at WWDC, and got lauded for it. Don't talk the talk if you can't walk the walk, Electronic Arts.
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]]>appleinsiderbattlefield2brokencommandandconquereagamingharrypottermac releasesMacReleasesmaddenneedforspeedpromisesMike Schramm2007-08-16T22:30:00+00:00WWDC Lost Episode: Daniel Jalkut from Red Sweater Softwarehttp://www.tuaw.com/2007/07/31/wwdc-lost-episode-daniel-jalkut-from-red-sweater-software/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/07/31/wwdc-lost-episode-daniel-jalkut-from-red-sweater-software/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/07/31/wwdc-lost-episode-daniel-jalkut-from-red-sweater-software/#commentsFiled under: ,

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play



Digging through the archives we came upon the lost tape of WWDC: an interview with Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software. Red Sweater sells MarsEdit and Black Ink, among other apps. Daniel was kind enough to talk WWDC, iPhone and show us around Black Ink, a very nice crossword app.

NOTE: Sorry about the interlacing issues!
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]]>daniel jalkutDanielJalkutdevelopergamesmarseditred sweaterRedSweatersoftwarewwdcwwdc07Victor Agreda, Jr.2007-07-31T20:00:00+00:00WWDC Video: Unity 2.0 sneak peekhttp://www.tuaw.com/2007/07/06/wwdc-video-unity-2-0-sneak-peek/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/07/06/wwdc-video-unity-2-0-sneak-peek/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/07/06/wwdc-video-unity-2-0-sneak-peek/#commentsFiled under: , , ,


The gang from Over the Edge gave us a sneak peek of two new features in Unity 2.0: a cool terrain tool and real-time dynamic shadows. Check out the video, but also check out their page of all the other features coming soon to Unity.

[Note: we'll have all these WWDC videos available for direct download soon!]
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]]>3dgamegame designgame developmentgame engineGameDesignGameDevelopmentGameEnginejoystiqover the edgeOverTheEdgeunityunity3dvideogameVictor Agreda, Jr.2007-07-06T16:30:00+00:00The Leopard Roadmaphttp://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/25/the-leopard-roadmap/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/25/the-leopard-roadmap/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/25/the-leopard-roadmap/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

With all the hype surrounding a little device known as the iPhone, its sometimes easy to forget that Apple actually makes some other stuff too -- including a world-class operating system now currently known as OS X Tiger version 10.4.10. And unless you've come to the Apple fold only for the iPhone, you probably also know that Apple is currently working to bring the next version of its terrific operating system out into the world.

This upcoming version, known as OSX 10.5 (aka Leopard) was one of those things discussed rather thoroughly at the recent World Wide Developer's Conference -- in addition to that other big thing coming out next Friday. And now, thanks to Mac Scoop, there's more information about the future roadmap of Leopard, its upcoming milestones and its eventual release. Among the details, its reveled that Leopard is expected in August to achieve a feature-full build -- where the various features of the OS are "frozen" and finalized with no more to be added.

Next, Leopard will move towards final candidate status in September where developers have stopped including new features into the OS and instead, focus on testing it in various ways. Finally, after four to six weeks of testing, Leopard will then move to Gold Master status to prepare for its expected release date in late October. With all the iPhone talk around the net and at recent Apple events, its nice to hear a little about Apple's other plans. Don't get me wrong, I want an iPhone. But I'm first and foremost an Apple computer user and am glad to see that in the rush to become the king of consumer products, Apple doesn't seem to be forgetting about its millions of loyal customers who were there before it made iPods and iPhones.
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]]>applechris ullrichChrisUllrichleopardosxsoftwareChris Ullrich2007-06-25T08:00:00+00:00TUAW at WWDC 2007: Interview with Wolf Rentzschhttp://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/22/tuaw-at-wwdc-2007-interview-with-wolf-rentzsch/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/22/tuaw-at-wwdc-2007-interview-with-wolf-rentzsch/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/22/tuaw-at-wwdc-2007-interview-with-wolf-rentzsch/#commentsFiled under: ,


Wolf Rentzsch is another Mac developer so devoted to his craft that he comes to WWDC just for the fun of it. Wolf loves code so much, in fact, that he started C4, an "indie conference for indie developers." Scott sat down with Wolf to talk about Mac dev work, his own work, iPhone and C4.

NOTE: This should be the last of the "Perpendicular Subject" series, we hope you've enjoyed the side views!
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]]>c4developerinterviewvideowolf rentzschWolfRentzschwwdcwwdc07Victor Agreda, Jr.2007-06-22T19:00:00+00:00WWDC Video: TUAW interview with Brent Simmonshttp://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/21/wwdc-video-tuaw-interview-with-brent-simmons/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/21/wwdc-video-tuaw-interview-with-brent-simmons/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/21/wwdc-video-tuaw-interview-with-brent-simmons/#commentsFiled under: , ,


Brent Simmons has earned a spot in our docks for years now with NetNewsWire, perhaps the premiere RSS reader on the Mac. But Brent loves developing Mac apps, and he's a big fan of the platform in general. Funny how that works. Mr. Simmons was kind enough to sit and chat with Scott about the WWDC keynote, his competition and some cool new features in NNW3.
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]]>brent simmonsBrentSimmonsnetnewswirenewsgatorwwdcwwdc07Victor Agreda, Jr.2007-06-21T08:00:00+00:00CocoaHeads 2007 audio availablehttp://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/20/cocoaheads-2007-audio-available/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/20/cocoaheads-2007-audio-available/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/20/cocoaheads-2007-audio-available/#commentsFiled under: ,

During WWDC some well-known Mac devs got together at the Apple Store in downtown San Francisco for CocoaHeads at WWDC 2007. Their topic was "Going Indie" with presentations from Daniel Jalkut (MarsEdit) on payment processing, Gus Mueller (VoodooPad) on day-to-day development, and Wil Shipley (Delicious Library) on marketing. Afterwards they were joined by Brent Simmons ( NetNewsWire) for questions and answers afterwards. Now the audio from those presentations has been made available by Steve Weller and Alien Orb software.

If you're interested in independent Mac software development, it's worth a listen.

[via GusMuller blog]
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]]>CocoaHeadsMat Lu2007-06-20T17:00:00+00:00WWDC07: Bust or Boon?http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/20/wwdc07-bust-or-boon/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/20/wwdc07-bust-or-boon/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/20/wwdc07-bust-or-boon/#commentsFiled under: , , , , ,



It's not often I agree with Paul "Argue Cuz I Can" Thurrott, but sometimes he hits the proverbial nail on the head: In one sentence on his blog, Internet-Nexus, Thurrott sums up the WWDC keynote snooze-fest that wedgied some of the Mac community: "And now we know," say Thurrott, "that OS X is as mature an OS as is Windows and, in the end, there's really just not much you can do beyond the evolutionary stuff." If you ignore the "as mature as Windows" bit, you see the inarguable logic: OS X is a beautiful, powerful, and mature operating system. It's feature-rich, stable, and could easily be considered the best operating system on the market today. So why mess with a good thing?

WWDC keynotes are no longer about announcing revolutionary new features of Mac OS X, for the simple fact that we're all revolutioned out. OS X has reached its prime: it does what needs to do, plenty more, and any major revisions could wind up doing more harm than good. So now it's all about the tweaks, the "evolutionary stuff," as Thurrott calls it: refining the Finder, cleaning up the interface, fixing the tedious quirks that have plagued the OS from day one, etc. Jobs can't get on stage anymore and wow the audience with drool-y features like Exposé.

One could easily argue that the keynote was fudged. Jobs may have the power to take even the most mundane and make it sound world-changing: but when (most of) the material is genuinely bland, and uninteresting, and expected, even His Jobness himself can't save it. Maybe the problem here is that Apple doesn't realize it can't wow the general public with the minor OS X tweaks anymore -- that instead, if it wants to publicize the hell out of its WWDC keynotes, it should focus on pro hardware upgrades, on maybe a few new software features that might turn heads, on the new markets Apple's posed to commandeer: mobile, web, etc.; on only the stuff worthy of a Jobsian appearance.

From what I'm hearing, with few exceptions, developers loved WWDC. It's all about the sessions, the learning experience, the dev networking. The keynote, on the other hand, is for the public, for the tech-ignorant media: and this year's WWDC failed to recognize that.

[Update:] Already a reader, theodorelee, makes a point I should've mentioned: I'm referring to the end-user perspective, not the dev perspective. Leopard (like Tiger) is full of drool-worthy developer features. Would be remiss to not mention that.
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]]>leopardpaul thurrottPaulThurrottwwdcwwdc keynoteWwdcKeynoteDan Pourhadi2007-06-20T13:00:00+00:00Video: Inside Delicious Generationhttp://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/18/video-inside-delicious-generation/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/18/video-inside-delicious-generation/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/18/video-inside-delicious-generation/#commentsFiled under: , ,


Here's a distillation of demos seen at Delicious Generation. This time we're trying something a little different and using Viddler, a service that will reportedly allow you to interactively bash the quality of the video as it plays (no need to mention the interlacing, we see it). Oh, you can leave constructive, useful comments inline as well. So if you're a developer and you'd like to explain what we're seeing, that's good, because the mic at the party wasn't really getting audio past the crowd noise.
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]]>delicious generationDeliciousGenerationdemopartywwdcwwdc07Victor Agreda, Jr.2007-06-18T17:00:00+00:00Video: Wii Transferhttp://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/18/video-wii-transfer/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/18/video-wii-transfer/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/18/video-wii-transfer/#commentsFiled under: ,


Click To Play

We've covered Wii Transfer before, and Riverfold has a nice video demo as well, but we couldn't pass up the opportunity to see the new version in action.

Oh, and here's a link to the .mov version.
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]]>riverfoldwiiwii transferWiiTransferVictor Agreda, Jr.2007-06-18T12:00:00+00:00Non-transparent mod for Leopard's new menubarhttp://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/15/non-transparent-mod-for-leopards-new-menubar/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/15/non-transparent-mod-for-leopards-new-menubar/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/15/non-transparent-mod-for-leopards-new-menubar/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

If you've seen any pictures or movies of Leopard's (mostly) final UI in action from this week's WWDC events or the new Leopard section at apple.com, you've probably noticed that Apple has introduced a new design to their menubar, Desktop and Dock (watch the video to see these new toys in action). The new Dock features an updated design with some eye candy that some might find more useful than others, while the menubar has gone semi-transparent in an effort to place more emphasis on an uncluttered desktop and allowing users to feature their favorite photos and desktop images.

As usual, when an OS maker dabbles with revamping some of their most standard UI conventions, not everyone will want to hop on the train for a ride. Peter Maurer and the crew at Many Tricks (makers of apps like Butler, Service Scrubber, yFlicks and more) are apparently so uninterested in taking a trip with the transparent menubar that they produced what is quite possibly the first non-transparent menubar hack for Leopard. Being that I am but a lowly professional blogger, I have no copy of Leopard on which to tinker with this mod, but given the historic quality of work from Maurer and Many Tricks, I would imagine it's written well, and the source is even provided for those who would like to have their way with this modification.

Now that we've seen the true Leopard in action and a mod for part of its UI has appeared less than a week after the unveiling, it will be interesting to see how the rest of the Mac community - particularly the developers who have the power to make modifications like this - will lay down their opinions through work like Maurer's.
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]]>interfaceleopardmacmany tricksManyTricksmenubaros xOsXpeter maurerPeterMaurerpransparencytransparentUIDavid Chartier2007-06-15T21:20:00+00:00Apple.com has new Spotlight interface for searchhttp://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/15/apple-com-has-new-spotlight-interface-for-search/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/15/apple-com-has-new-spotlight-interface-for-search/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/15/apple-com-has-new-spotlight-interface-for-search/#commentsFiled under: , , ,



While it was hard to miss that Apple.com received a complete redesign with this week's WWDC events, the finer points of the site's new functionality are now coming into the, erm... spotlight. Eagle-eyed TUAW readers have been commenting and reporting on a number of interesting new enhancements to apple.com's abilities, such as the horizontal sub-navigation that Gruber mentioned on some of the product sites (try apple.com/mac to get an idea).

A really cool new (and long overdue) feature to searching Apple's site is more or less the web-based equivalent of the Spotlight interface. As you can see, the search box is pinned to the top right of ever page at apple.com now, and running a search produces near-instant results in a drop-down menu style interface. A 'View all search results' option at the bottom of that menu displays the page I snapped for this post, complete with a more robust and categorized list of search results that can be expanded and collapsed, helping you find just what you need far more quickly. The site even appears to be using cookies to store a recent list of your searches, keeping them always accessible at the far right of this search results page.

Altogether these are some very, very welcome new tools for searching Apple's exponentially growing product, information and support material. It should be noted, however, that the last update Apple made to their discussion forum still holds true, and that includes its own powerful search tools; this spotlight UI seems to apply only to the rest of apple.com.
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]]>appleapple.com/websitecategoriesleopardrecent searchesRecentSearchessearchsitespotlightwwdcDavid Chartier2007-06-15T17:15:00+00:00Video: a tour of Skitchhttp://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/15/video-a-tour-of-skitch/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/15/video-a-tour-of-skitch/http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/15/video-a-tour-of-skitch/#commentsFiled under: ,


Click To Play

Skitch is the latest app from the boys of Plasq, makers of the hugely popular Comic Life. If you've never seen it in action, take a few to check out the simple yet powerful interface.
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]]>comic lifeComicLifeplasqskitchVictor Agreda, Jr.2007-06-15T09:00:00+00:00