A TUAW staffer recently asked if there were a way to snapshot the exact same region of the screen over and over at timed intervals without buying third-party software.

There is, but it depends on your comfort with the command line. If you're experienced in Unix scripting, read on. If not, you may want to investigate standalone screen-capture apps instead.

I pointed him to /usr/sbin/screencapture. This built-in OS X utility allows you to specify a screen region to capture. For example, to capture a 50x200 rectangle starting at the point 200, 200, you'd say:
% /usr/sbin/screencapture -R"200,200,50,200" ~/Desktop/foo.png
You can easily apply a Unix shell script to create numbered output files. Unix commands will also enable you to sleep and repeat the capture requests over time.

The utility is Retina-ready. Since it captures in points (and not pixels), the results are twice as big in each dimension when run on Retina systems.

Timed command-line screenshots originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 20 May 2013 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Spark Inspector (US$39.99 single-license) offers an exciting new development tool. Targeting devs looking to refine their user interfaces, it enables you to interactively tweak view properties like frames and layers.

The app centers around an Interface Builder-like experience, with familiar-looking attribute and size inspectors. If you're comfortable in Xcode 4, you'll easily find your way around this tool.

In addition, it provides a custom layer inspector -- one that could (and, honestly should) inspire Apple. It enables you to update layer attributes like shadows and transforms, while viewing the results in real time.

Perfect for devs who otherwise write their interfaces in code (I am guilty as charged), it breaks out of the tweak-build-run loop that takes up so much time and energy in the normal development day. Instead, you apply your tweaks within the app itself, adjusting the interface until it looks just right.

This is the point at which Spark Inspector displays its one big weakness (keep in mind that it's still in development). Instead of producing an updated XIB (which would be okay) or PaintCode-like Objective-C output suitable for re-integration to your apps (which would kick ass), you take responsibility for transferring values back to your Xcode project.

Honestly, It's not a huge deal -- especially when your tweaks change a constant from say 50 to 58.5 -- but it's something that could be a killer feature in future updates. For now, you make notes of what values worked best for you. And no, there's no "bookmark this UI for later comparison" option either, another thing I would have liked to have seen.

One of Spark Inspector's nicest features is its 3D extrusion display. This pushes views out in parent-child hierarchies, letting you explore and select items with more tangible visualization than you get in IB.

Spark Inspector also offers a notification inspector, which may be useful for some devs. If you're already writing your UIs from code, however, you probably know how to set up a listener that logs notifications.

Setup is easy. There's a setup assistant for configuring Xcode projects, or (if you're paranoid like I am) add both the SparkInspector and libz frameworks to your dev builds, making sure to enable the -ObjC flag in Other Linker Flags. Include the SparkInspector header as such:

and enable the inspector in your application delegate, typically in application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:

Make sure you test using the simulator, and not (as I first tried) on device. The standalone Spark Inspector app (DMG) must be running. As soon as your app hits the "enable observation" stage, it seamlessly connects to the inspector, and you're ready to test and tweak.

For forty bucks, this promises to be a valuable tool that many devs will benefit from. If you'd like to kick the tires before you buy, there's a free 30 day trial available on the Spark Inspector website. If you do decide to buy, you purchase directly from the vendor.

DevJuice: Spark Inspector offers real time iOS interface inpection originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 18 May 2013 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

On Wednesday, Apple sold its 50 billionth iOS app. TUAW was there keeping track of the excitement and monitoring the iTunes store. Many of our colleagues and readers used this contest as an opportunity to stock up on numerous free apps, to test and explore.

Were you one of them?

What apps did you download and which ones do you love? Here at TUAW, most of our choices were word of mouth -- Megan downloaded Moves while I gave the Target app a try. I managed to convince Steve Sande to pick up Enigma.

Sadly, none of us won.

What about you? Did you discover a really great app while trying to win the prize? Drop a note in the comments and share your discoveries. And take part in our little poll. We're curious as to how many times people "entered" with the intent of winning big.

View Poll

Weekend Poll: What apps did you discover via the 50 billionth download contest? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 May 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In a new post at his Steamclock Software blog, Nigel Brooke writes how Apple has added new Objective-C-to-Javascript bridging to WebKit:

"This new API supports straightforward embedding of the JavaScriptCore interpreter into native Objective-C projects, including reading and writing variables and object members with appropriate type coercion, calling methods on JavaScript objects, and directly binding Objective-C objects into JavaScript."

The API performs its bridging using Objective-C protocols, enabling you to bind JavaScript calls to Objective-C implementations. If you'd like to give the tech a test, Brooke has posted a working sample project at github.

Hat tip iOS Dev Weekly

DevJuice: Apple's ObjC-JavaScript Bridge originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 May 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

On a recent trip, I found I had failed to add copies of my auto-resizing drop tools to my travel MacBook Air. My droplets allow me to convert images to TUAW-standard sizes, namely 225 pixels for small images and 456 pixels for banner images. (See? Information you never thought you'd need to know.)

What a lot of people don't realize is that OS X offers solutions for these kinds of basic image tasks.

First and foremost is Preview. This app is simply terrific. Yes, I know, Apple took some really helpful utilities like Link Annotation out of the app on its road to Mountain Lion. (Time? Feature trimming? It's hard to say.) Even so, Preview is the best app on your computer that nobody uses enough.

Preview offers a surprising tool suite that combines a little bit of Photoshop and a little bit of Acrobat into one app. In addition to annotating PDFs, you can rotate and crop images using Preview's Tools menu. You have access to lasso selection, color correction, and image fitting, among many other features.

At one point Steve Sande and I threw around the idea of writing an entire book on Preview (there's plenty of interesting material in there!) but ended up deciding against it. Unfortunately, demand leads sales and too few people know how powerful Preview can be.

To resize an image, choose Tools > Adjust Size or click the resizing icon you see at the top-right of this post's main image. The icon looks like an arrowed line in a square box. An Image Dimensions panel slides into view, as you see here.

Select the new width you want to use, making sure the small icon next to the two text fields remains in the locked position. This ensures that the height and width scale proportionately, so the resulting image is sized just right.

Preview isn't the only resizing solution on your Mac, however. The "sips" command line tool offers another take on image processing, one that's especially convenient for scripting and batch processing.

For example, if you want to resize an image to fit a given width, you can ask it to resample to the pixel count you supply. Here's how you might do that.

% sips --resampleWidth 225 input.png --o output.png

You can also perform many of the same tasks as preview. For example, you might rotate an image clockwise by 90 degrees:

% sips -r 90 input.png -o output.png

or convert a file from PNG to JPG format:

% sips -s format jpeg input.png -o output.jpg

OS X also supports related based on "folder actions". These refer to AppleScripts that you attach to folders, so when you drop items into the folders, they run those scripts. It's easy to take a peek at some of the system-supplied actions.

Create a new folder on your desktop. Control-click or Right-click it and choose Services > Folder Action Setup from the contextual pop-up menu. Select a pre-built script like "Duplicate as JPEG" or "Rotate Left" and click Attach. Finish by checking "Enable Folder Actions". Your new folder applies the attached script to any file you drop into it.

If you're an intrepid system-modding type, you can expand these script choices by adding items to ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts. (The system supplied versions all appear in /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts).

Scripts are built around a standalone Image Events application, found in /System/Library/CoreServices. This app provides a "faceless background application" that wraps sips for AppleScript scripting. Apple has documented Image Events as part of its developer library, and its docs point to this external website that details how you integrate scripting with image manipulation requests.

I'll leave the rest as an exercise for the reader, but a bit of Googling will turn up already-built image solutions ready for testing.

Here at TUAW, we regularly use these for image resizing -- and they're exactly the bits I forgot to pack on my trip.

So did I get my work done while gone? You bet I did. And a big part of that reason is how sips and Preview enable you to step up to image challenges without any third party software needed.

Got some OS X image processing tips? Share them in the comments.

Preview, sips, and more: OS X image processing tools originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 16 May 2013 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Last week, after Adobe announced its move to a subscription-based cloud plan, our own Kelly Hodgkins asked me to look at software alternatives for some Creative Suite apps.

We know that none of these apps provide a full replacement for Photoshop or Illustrator. What she asked me to do was to spend time, hands on, to get a sense of what kind of options were out there.

For Photoshop, I looked primarily at Pixelmator (US$14.99 "sale" price, but it's been on "sale" since November 2012) and Acorn 4 ($29.99), with a glance at the donationware GNU Image Manipulation Program, GIMP.

I quickly discovered that GIMP is not in the same class as Pixelmator or Acorn. Both Pixelmator and Acorn have seriously targeted ex-Photoshop users, creating tool suites intended to seduce that audience. GIMP just isn't competitive in that way.

You can tell this in the key equivalents added to both Pixelmator and Acorn -- they responded properly to many of the Photoshop-standard text shortcuts I tried such as G for gradient, M for marquee selection and W for the magic wand. On the whole, Acorn seemed to support more shortcuts -- such as 0 through 9 for transparency and Command-Shift-I to invert the selection, but both apps have the sense of Photoshop users in their DNA.

In terms of general interface design, Acorn stood out. I found its toolbar easiest to understand and its adherence to Photoshop norms the strictest. It also achieves the most OS X-like look and feel. Both apps got OS X, in elevating interaction beyond Adobe's prosaic implementation. But Acorn's fine details are palpably superior.

Both GUIs were polished and stylish, although I wish both apps would offer bigger font choices for older and visually impaired users. Acorn's visuals were generally larger except for teeny tiny font choices in palettes. I found the Acorn toolbar much easier for recognition tasks.

In power, however, I lean towards Pixelmator. Although both tools have recently undergone major upgrades, I found the Pixelmator toolset more extensive than Acorn's. There were almost always extra options on the Pixelmator side that I did not find (or, at least, not easily find) on the Acorn side.

I rely on community support for my photo-editing needs. Whenever I need to figure out how to do anything in Photoshop, I turn to Google and the thousands upon thousands of how-to articles and videos found there. During my testing, I set myself common tasks like building buttons or blurring backgrounds in Acorn and Pixelmator, and quickly found myself searching for how-to answers on the web.

While both developers have provided superb how-to support pages on their sites, Pixelmator offers a far larger existing support community. To give a sense of that, the Google results for "glossy button in Pixelmator" include videos and how-to articles from a variety of sites and vendors. The first three include a link to pxm-tuts.com, a Pixelmator support page, and ehow.com.

Compare that with the results for "glossy button in Acorn." These start off with a Flying Meat support page, followed by a bunch of acorn-shaped vector links, finishing with tutorials for Photoshop, Illustrator and GIMP.

If you're looking for a knowledge-base of solutions that you can use today, Pixelmator has the edge.

On the whole, I was terrifically impressed by both apps. While I generally preferred Acorn's look and feel, Pixelmator's feature set and passionate userbase should not be overlooked.

Pixelmator and Acorn: economic, practical image editors originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 14 May 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The other day Echofon 1.7.0 mysteriously appeared on the OS X App Store, upgraded to support the 1.1 Twitter API. We contacted the developers to find out if this was a courtesy update or if Echofon was back in development.

We're delighted to relate that a spokesperson has confirmed:

Sorry for the delayed response and thanks for your inquiry. We brought Echofon Mac back due to the overwhelming user demand for it. We intend to continue to keep our
users happy and satisfied with the product.

Speaking as a long time user, I'm very pleased with this news. Original developer Satoshi Nakagawa agrees. He tweets, "Echofon for Mac 1.7.0 works beautifully :)".

It's back. It's on the Mac. Echofon aficionados rejoice! originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 11 May 2013 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Yesterday, Adobe introduced Creative Cloud, an on-line subscription based suite with $49.99 monthly charges that moves into the Creative Suite subscription space first started back in 2011. Existing customers of CS 3 to CS 5.5 and academics will pay $29.99 per month.

Both Adobe and Microsoft are exploring subscription models in place of buy-once-then-use purchases. This has a number of us here at TUAW looking around to see what apps we might want to jump to as we move away from our premium products into the current marketplace.

Although I am fond of Adobe Photoshop Elements, the consumer-priced version of Adobe's flagship photo editor, it's an app with walls. I accomplish far more using Photoshop and the other Creative Suite products, items I have spent years upgrading at considerable expense.

Like many other Adobe customers, I live in the hazy world that stretches between Pro apps at one and and Consumer grade at the other. I've purchased CS because the consumer products aren't powerful enough for my needs, but I'm certainly not a full time "creative" who thinks of the suite as merely an incidental purchase.

As a rule, I have upgraded as infrequently as possible, stretching out my purchases over as many years and operating systems as possible. I live very low on the Adobe consumer hierarchy, trying to eke out whatever time I have left with my CS 4 suite. It's time now to seriously look at alternatives.

On the photo editing side of things, we propose three candidates.

• Acorn ($29.99) is on sale throughout May. Called the "Image Editor for Humans", it comes with great word of mouth and growing buzz.
• At just $14.99, Pixelmator's price point can't be beat. This "inspiring, easy-to-use, beautifully designed image editor" has somewhat mixed reviews on the Mac App Stores, but those who love it seem to do so passionately.
• GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, has a lock on price. For years, this free app has been a stepping-stone app for people who didn't yet have the cash for Photoshop but who wanted access to powerful image editing.

As for the rest of the suite, we TUAWians mostly use Acrobat, Illustrator, and InDesign:

• With Acrobat, you need look no further than Preview for an app that offers many similar features. Power users, however, may want to consider PDFPen Pro, a product we've covered in the past, which offers extensive PDF editing features.
• Illustrator users will find a variety vector drawing solutions for OS X including Vector Designer, Intaglio, Sketch, and EazyDraw. TUAW recently looked at EazyDraw.
• For page layout, Apple offers both Pages and iBooks Author. Swift Publisher from Belight seems to offer good word of mouth as well. Speaking of pages, both iWork and Apache's OpenOffice provide promising alternatives to Microsoft Office.

GigaOM recently posted an excellent list of their take on Adobe Creative Suite alternatives.

Got another alternative vendor to suggest for Creative Suite or Office products? Drop a note in the comments with your suggestion. TUAW will be reviewing many of these alternative apps over the coming weeks.

Consumer alternatives to Adobe Creative Cloud: practical software choices originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 May 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Clash of the Coders drew to its climax Saturday night as teams presented their projects and a good time was had by all.

In the end team Raisin' Elevens took the crown, laying claim to geek victory for the next year (plus an extremely generous equipment purchasing allowance). They created an app-testing utility that enables developers to evaluate the way users interact with their product.

Intended primarily for in-house use (although it could possibly be sold to third party developers sometime in the future), their project, Krendler, provides cross-platform interface recording.

Although superficially similar to products already out there on the market, Krendler's automatic web integration and beautiful view visualization truly set the app apart.

Well done to team Raisin' Elevens: Mark Dalrymple, Gregg Rothmeier and Steve Sparks.

Team Daedalus did not disappoint, although they just missed the crown and squeaked into second place. Their brilliant device management system is (cover your eyes, TUAWians) an Android-based solution for tracking test units.

Unplug any unit from the board and it immediately prompts you for your name. You type it in and the unit checks out in your name, with an associated web service tracking and monitoring that loan. Not sure who grabbed that Galaxy note? The Daedalus project had that covered.

My favorite part of this system, is how it offered a plug-to-sync simplicity. Plug the unit back, and it automatically checks back in. Brilliant. Team members included Chris Stewart, Eric Jeffers and Darren Pottinger.

In third place were the Wynners. (Yes. I tried to dock them five points for that name, but it didn't take.) Brian Hardy, Zac Stewart and Paul Turner created a OpenCV-based system to scan already-used crossword puzzles and transform them into ready-to-play versions. If you've ever been stuck on an airplane with a partly filled-in puzzle in the back of the flight magazine, you'll understand these developers' pain.

The scanned interface was ultimately beautiful and polished.

I want to mention two other teams of note:

"Team Edward" (Yes, I know) delivered one of the least sparkly (see what I did there), yet ultimately most important projects. Perhaps a bit overlooked, this team created an app to scan a web domain and produce an intelligently collected list of important words, phrases and names. You can then feed that list into a generation system to provide beautiful and exciting navigation tools. We only got to see the beginnings of what looks like a really promising project.

Finally, Team Spazberry Pi delivered the "we are such Apple geeks, we live and breathe and bleed in six colors" that most TUAW readers will be waiting for. They created a ginormous 4-foot-tall joystick that ran a game, where flying nerds had to fight off NSZombies.

No puns were spared.

Erica reported from Big Nerd Ranch's Clash of the Coders, the shop's annual internal developer challenge.

Big Nerd Ranch Clash of the Coders: The winners revealed originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 May 2013 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As the teams battle away on the Clash of the Coders, ideas are quickly becoming reality as developers are hard at work on their projects.

Some projects are, admittedly, utilitarian. Now is a great opportunity for devs to create in-house tools for use during the rest of the year. In a shop that caters to Android as well as iOS development, tracking and managing dozens of Android variations can prove a big challenge, as BNR works to create apps for many-shaped phones and tablets.

Other projects are all about the fun. One team is building a giant joystick, another electronically scrubbing already-started crosswords from the backs of those on-line airline magazines.

One of my favorite projects, however, is less technological than inspirational. The Carter Center has been monitoring the eradication of the guinea worm, a parasite that's been documented throughout human history. A Nerd Ranch team is working on an app to promote awareness.

In 1986, when the center first started its campaign there were 3.5 million cases reported across Africa and Asia. By 2012, that number had dropped to just 542. "Guinea worm disease is poised to be the next human disease after smallpox to be eradicated," writes the Carter website.

The team's app offers background, support links and -- if they manage to pull it off -- a countdown clock that reflects the success on the war of the guinea worm over time.

Do any of the teams have a lock on the win? It's still too early to tell.

Big Nerd Ranch Clash of the Coders: Projects originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 May 2013 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

One of the nicest things about hanging out with coders is the exposure to their pet personal projects. Brian James Turner at Big Nerd Ranch has been working on a new take on lock screens.

Hosted at github, Turner's project transforms the iOS lockscreen from a series of memorized numbers or letters into a logical sequence of choices.

Each challenge screen is randomly generated. Instead of a number grid or password entry field, you see a set of geometric objects.

You enter your password by following rules. "For example, my passcode might be small green, triangle," he explained. If you tap a small object followed by a green one and then a triangle, the system lets you in.

It's a novel take on a familiar challenge, and there's never "one" right answer. Even if someone is looking over your shoulder, it will be hard for them to duplicate the reasoning. For example, was the first choice small, green or circle?

In the current proof of concept, an overlooked three-choice sequence represents up to 27 possibilities. This complexity expands as the password grows longer and the shape and color vocabulary expands, providing ever greater levels of lock screen security.

Erica is reporting this week from Big Nerd Ranch's Clash of the Coders, the shop's annual internal developer challenge.

Big Nerd Ranch Clash of the Coders: Rule-based lock screens originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 May 2013 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Big Nerd Ranch has conducted iPhone development courses all the way back to the very beginning, when the App Store first launched in 2008. Doing so had its challenges.

At that time, Apple had imposed a nondisclosure agreement on all developers, with little indication if and when it would ever be lifted. As a registered developer, Big Nerd Ranch had to comply with Apple's rules.

Under the terms of this agreement, developers could not discuss details of the OS and the SDK -- a limitation that challenged any business based on development training.

BNR CEO Aaron Hillegass devised an insane, brilliant and counter-intuitive solution. Leveraging a little-known clause in the agreement, he conceived a way to make an end-run around the letter of the law while still holding classes.

He hired his students.

Each student signed an agreement promising to deliver one (1) line of code to Hillegass upon completion of a week of on-site consultation. In return, he paid each student a sum of $1 and spent that week teaching them the basics of iPhone development

As contractors, students were entitled to discuss project details with their employer, and he was able to freely instruct them.

At the end of the week, Hillegass issued certificates of completion... and paychecks.

Erica is reporting this week from Clash of the Coders, BNR's annual internal developer challenge.

Big Nerd Ranch Clash of the Coders: How BNR smote the NDA originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 May 2013 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Founded 12 years ago, Atlanta's Big Nerd Ranch is well-known among the Apple developer community as a prime source for corporate and individual training. Created to provide professional services for Apple technologies, its mission has grown to include both contract programming as well as instruction for Android, iOS, HTML 5, Ruby on Rails and Windows 8.

Recently merged with Atlanta's Highgroove Studios, BNR is about to kick off its second Clash of the Coders in-house event. Highgroove was a Ruby-on-Rails studio specializing in building back-ends for apps like Words with Friends.

Clash of the Coders is a private affair, established to allow trainers and developers to take time away from working on other people's solutions and invest in their own creativity.

I was invited to take part in this year's events as an observer and an honorary participant, to explore what goes on behind the doors when Big Nerd shuts down for three days to devote itself to coding mayhem.

It looks like it's going to be a lot of fun, and a lot of hard, intense development. Founder and CEO Aaron Hillegass explains, "We shut the company down and team up so we can do significant amounts of programming in those three days."

For a lot of developers, the ability to work a project from start to end is a precious one. "Programmers who are working for other people can get frustrated when they don't have time to do experiments and push things beyond the demands of the client. We wanted to create space for that deeply satisfying form of creation."

Charles Quinn, Highgroove founder and BNR co-owner adds, "A lot of developers work at being good consultants -- they spend their time doing one part of a system, but there's always a desire there to work on all parts of the system from idea to marketing, seeing that concept all the way through."

"It's really really fun," Hillegass corrects him, "but more importantly we learn a lot. We learn what we're capable of, we learn about these technologies and, most importantly we learn what our employees want to work on."

I'll be checking in throughout this event, to share a little window into the developer world from those who live it.

Big Nerd Ranch Clash of the Coders: Innovation, fun, inspiration originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 May 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Richard Williams is an Oscar-winning animator, with an extensive history in the film business. His well-reviewed Animator's Survival Kit (US$22 on Amazon) is currently in its second edition. For a mere $959.50, you can pick up a 16-DVD boxed set showcasing all the material covered in the book.

Now, the survival kit series has finally arrived on the iPad. For $34.99, you can pick up an app that teaches core principles of animation combining both text and video into a single product.

At 882 MB, this is a big app, offering a hybrid of written explanation and interactive experience. In many ways, this app feels like an iBook -- embedded videos, the integrated sliding table of contents, but it's presented with a style that's all its own.

The design is sumptuous. You skip directly to the coverage you're interested in, whether it's running and walking or timing and anticipation -- the book / app covers all the basic principles of animation. There you find page after page with detailed explanations, embedded video links and color commentary (delightfully, this is often literally the case) that guide you through understanding how concepts transform into drawings over time. It's very well put together.

I particularly loved the embedded visits to his studio. Williams discusses topics, introducing them to the reader with a great deal of charm. For example, "Why does this app have so many pages on walks? Walks are the hardest thing to animate well." He then goes on to discuss how important it is to practice movement and how walks form the testing ground for most animation.

The book is filled with great advice. It's hard to go to any page and not learn something. Whether it's picking the correct foot to start walking ("It's unnatural to start a walk with the farthest foot from the direction we're going") to expressing speech ("The thing is to think of the word shapes and phrases, not of the letters"), the book offers Williams' years of experience, produced in a way that's sure to engage.

I can't imagine an audience who won't love this app. From school kids, just growing an interest in drawing to retirees, this book / app is perfect for anyone looking for a wonderful excursion into a new topic or attempting to expand their craft.

Want to look before you buy? There's a free sample app for you to try out, before committing to the full purchase.

Daily iPad App: Animator's Survival Kit moves to iPad, brings in-depth look at drawing essentials originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

WWDC sold out in just minutes this year. As iOS developer Josh Avant put it, "Next year, tickets are going to sell out before they even go on sale."

Many developers were greeted by server errors, failed purchases and the "Sorry, tickets are sold out" banner.

Others, like Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software, were able to place an order. In the end Jalkut decided to cancel his ticket, stating, he was "[v]ery conflicted, but it ended up feeling too exclusive for me."

In a move that was seen as a boost to fairness, developers were given a day's warning about sale time. This enabled people around the globe to set their alarms and schedule their visit to Apple's developer site.

Unfortunately, the high demand for the "golden" tickets meant that distribution was both chaotic and random. The overloaded system presented bugs, as reported by various parties on Twitter.

"I never once got anything but an error page," said developer David Green. "Apple seriously needs to change how they handle WWDC tickets, that went beyond unfair and into untenable."

"It timed out on me when I submitted the purchase," agreed developer Scott Yelich.

So why not switch to a less intense lottery system? Sure, the results are still random, but distributing purchase requests over a week or month surely would avoid the technology-based limits created by so much demand at a single moment (not to mention sleepless nights caused by time zone differentials).

Did you snag a ticket? Or were your attempts unsuccessful? Drop a note in the comments and share your story.

Think WWDC needs fixing? Here are TUAW's proposals from last year.

DevJuice: Does WWDC need a lottery system? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Although the social component and Apple-staffed labs are two important reasons for developers to attend WWDC, early access to tech briefings has long been a motivating force for buying that expensive ticket.

Today, it looks like Apple introduced a major change into their oversubscribed WWDC demand by offering video session feeds for all registered devs -- that appear to be during the conference. On the "more" page, Apple writes:

"Can't make it to WWDC? We'll be posting videos of all our sessions during the conference, so Registered Apple Developers can take advantage of great WWDC content."

This is really great news, if I'm reading that right as "during the conference" referring to when they post versus "videos of all our sessions during the conference" referring to what they post.

If so, what this does is ensure that devs, no matter what time zone and budget they're working with, will have quick access to the same conference material as attendees. Sure, WWDC is going to sell out quickly again this year, but at the same time, many people who might have been camping out overnight with a credit card and a phone -- especially those overseas -- will have a great alternative track option.

Between the videos and the pre-announced registration time, it looks like Apple has made important and welcome changes that respond to the realities of their post-iPhone / iPad world.

Hat tip fpillet

Apple announces WWDC video feeds for developers originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Timebar ($2.99) has got to be one of the wackier utilities I've come across but it's one that may deserve to find a loyal audience.

It works like this: You pull down the menu, set a stop time and an optional audio alert. Click "Start" and boom, the menu bar at the top of your screen transforms into a progress bar. A blue line moves from right to left, providing a visual indicator of the time remaining.

Now, honestly, this app may not be for everyone. I found the moving bar at the top of my screen gave me a migraine (not a joke migraine, an actual migraine migraine), but I doubt this kind of motion sensitivity will affect most users. If you, like me, have carefully disabled every animation detail on your desktop (no bouncing icons, thank you, no window zooms), the app may not be right for you.

I thought it offered a cute idea and implementation. I particularly liked its "snooze" option. It's not expensive, and it's very easy to use.

Timebar: Turn your menu bar into a countdown timer originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We've received direct word and noted on Twitter that that Mike Culbert, a longtime Apple hardware engineer, has passed away after battling cancer. According to his friends, he was a "brilliant engineer, a wonderful human being." He will be missed.

Culbert began working at Apple over 25 years ago, ending up as VP of Architecture. His contributions include numerous patents for many iPhone and iPad innovations that we now take for granted. These include iOS video screen rotation, power saving patents, the ambient light sensor, digital content escrow for iTunes purchases, and more. He was also a key player on the Newton development team.

We at TUAW send our condolences to his family and friends.

Thanks Maurice. Newton Photo by Blake Patterson.

RIP Mike Culbert, iOS and Newton pioneer originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 21 Apr 2013 22:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

For years, iUI has been the gold standard of iOS web development. Dating back to 2007, iUI was initially created by Joe Hewitt to simplify the development of iPhone web apps using an iPhone-style look and feel. It's been stuck at its 0.4 release for some time.

Developer Remi Grumeau has been active in the iUI community. He writes, "iUI is not even now what I (and others) would like it to be ... this library has been hacked back in 2007 with iPhone only in mind."

He decided to move away from the iUI "brand" and build something new: Emy, the "Efficient Mobile web librarY." Supporting HTML5 syntax, custom transitions and many other features, this new MIT-licensed library is available at his github repo.

He adds,"The quick and lightweight vanilla code concept remains, but that's pretty much it. HTML syntax is different; core files have been highly changed; plugins, extensions and themes are not compatible (yet ported)."

The switcher's guide details the reasons behind the library and the way you can move your development to Emy. You can run a simple interface demo from Grumeau's own site.

DevJuice: Forget iUI. Say 'welcome' to Emy for web-based cross-platform mobile dev originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Popup Window (US$5.99) provides an organizer utility for your desktop, enabling you to stick folders onto the edges of your screen and fold them in and out on demand. I loved the idea of this app although I ran into several problems when actually using it.

The app is meant for anyone who needs to balance easy folder access with the desire for a clean workspace. Drag a folder to the edge of your screen and it transforms into a tiny spring-loaded tab. Click the tab and the folder opens and closes using a clever accordion effect.

Unfortunately, material from the Popup Window does not necessarily act in the way that native folders do, as you can see in the following video where I attempted to drag to Imgur.

The developers wrote, "Popup Window imitates Finder file dragging, but of course Popup Window is not Finder. Unfortunately, we can't change how Safari works. Sorry." They pointed out that drag and drop does work with Dropbox, which I confirmed.

I also encountered problems with aliased folders (they did not work at all) and some folders on external drives. I'm not entirely sure what was going on there, but here's the screenshot. I suspect some of this is due to App Store limitations.

Popup Window shows early promise with a really intriguing underlying idea. I look forward to seeing the app mature over time.

Popup Window for OS X originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Apr 2013 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We don't care that the falling phones are CG animated; we don't even care that they have a hypothetical NFC patch on the back. This is a great video that put a smile on our faces.

We offer it to you as today's No Comment. It's done by the same studio that inadvertently fooled an NYC TV station with an iPhone 5 concept video last year.

Hat tip: Sachin Argarwal

No Comment: Cool iPhone dominoes animation originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

People love the idea of the Pebble watch. It's an iOS-compatible display that sits on your wrist, so your iPhone can stay in your backpack, purse, or pocket. It's a great way to keep light track of your notifications, and what's going on in your life. It is, however, not a particularly good match to bike riding, where constantly checking your watch for fine detail might end up with a bad case of road rash, small screaming children who you just hit as you checked your inbox, or even the less dramatic wobblewobbleohdear.

For years, bikers have used small handle-bar mounted computer systems to keep track of their speed, cadence, heart rates, and distance -- among other OCD-friendly metrics. In the more recent past, vendors have produced iPhone mounts, so you can watch all this data directly as you bike.

This also has several negative side effects. First, keeping the screen on and well lit kills your battery quicker than Steve Sande goes through nachos at a Rockies game. Second, when your bike goes down, your iPhone goes crash, and there are few insurance policies generous enough to cover the case of "Oh, I stuck my multi-hundred-dollar-phone onto my bike handlebars" with good humor.

Enter the Wahoo RFLKT. It's a Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) display that mounts to your bike and keeps your iPhone out of the way. It offers a way for your favorite apps to keep you supplied with data while you ride. Tuck your phone in your sleeve, your back pocket, or your pannier, and you're ready to go.

I assumed the RFLKT would blow my cheap Avenir bike system out of the water. Turns out the reality is much more nuanced.

Let me start with the hardware. The RFLKT is about a quarter of the size of an iPhone 5, so it's about double or more the size of most bike computers. It can be mounted to stem or handlebars. It has a low-energy screen, runs off a coin battery and in theory can be removed from that mount every six months or so to change that battery. (In practice, I completely stripped the pop-out section and could not, for the life of me, get that darned thing off my bike. I basically ended up destroying the back, using the manufacturer-supplied metal pry bar.)

I first ran the RFLKT using the free Wahoo-supplied app. In my preliminary outing, I quickly realized how much I wanted to go back to my standard exercise app of choice, Runmeter. That's because of several things. First, none of the output selections really appealed to me. I like to see current speed, max speed, elapsed time, current time and I couldn't get that on one screen. Second, the app kept making rookie mistakes -- and I knew they were rookie mistakes because I've written GPS apps. These are things that Abvio's Runmeter has long long since figured out and fixed.

By rookie mistake, let me give you an example: max speed. When working with GPS, you often lose sync. The quality of the data you receive can vary all over the place, from accuracy within miles to within tens of meters. You have to keep this in mind as you calculate the current speed.

When you bike, you earn your max speed. You "walk" that bike up the big hill using your granny gear and you soar down like an eagle. (In my case, that eagle is fat, slow, and middle aged, but it's still an eagle, damnit.) Your max speed should reflect that.

With the Wahoo software, I was doing 43 MPH while trudging along on the flat. I may be a persistent cyclist, but I am not a good one and there's no way I live in Lance Armstrong territory, even in my most addled cold medicine dreams.

While Wahoo was delivering the right hardware, it wasn't giving me what I needed in terms of software. The second I returned from my initial test ride, I started googling to see if I could use Runmeter with the hardware.

Fortunately, I was within days of Runmeter's releasing their new RFLKT support. I contacted Abvio and they set me up with their latest version, complete with RFLKT integration. This is just a $4.99 in-app purchase for Runmeter Pro (which is what I use), Cyclemeter, and Walkmeter owners.

I should warn you that Runmeter is clearly an app written by engineers instead of artists, but it's one that has served me well for years and one I'm wildly enthusiastic about. It does everything I need in terms of tracking my exercise. With RFLKT, it let me select one of about a dozen pre-designed templates and customize it to show exactly the statistics I wanted to see.

Sure, the menus to do this tweaking were a bit antidiluvian, but if you're a tech geek to start off with, you shouldn't have too much trouble picking and customizing one of the choices shown here.

I had to reset the RFLKT (there are instructions right inside the settings of Runmeter on how to do this), enable Bluetooth Sensors, and upload my custom screens. It wasn't particularly painful, although it did take some time to figure my way through the menus.

Using a RFLKT display isn't exactly like using a bike computer. You gain some things, you lose others. Take speed for example. Because of the GPS sync problem, your Runmeter speed will always lag unless you use an external sensor. That means you can be flying down that mountain and still register 7.7 MPH for a while. For speed and distance measures to be accurate, they need a wider range of sampling time.

Side by side, my Avenir bike computer knew my speed changes as they happened. I found myself referring to that much more often for MPH versus the RFLKT monitor. You can, however, integrate other sensors into the Runmeter/RFLKT experience to fix that.

If the Runmeter app can integrate with the sensor (they have posted a list here), you can add it to the RFLKT display -- this includes digital speed and cadence from Garmin and Bontrager, negating any issues of GPS sampling. You can also add heart monitors, giving you some extra performance feedback.

Regardless of speed, the distance portion of the solution was wicked accurate. There's no need to measure your tire or estimate its pressure and multiply the circumference to calculate how far you've gone. Need to go 3.7 miles? The RFLKT/Runmeter combination gets exactly that. It's brilliant. Other measures like date and time and max speed are also super-precise.

I have no intention of buying new sensors so I found that I liked having both displays -- traditional and RFLKT on my bike, even though I had to sacrifice one of my night-riding lights to fit it there. I have small girlygirl handlebars, which don't offer a lot of real estate. I also had to pad the RFLKT with not one but THREE layers to get it to fit the bar and stay firmly mounted.

Speaking of displays, I really do wish the RFLKT offered a lip the way my Avenir does, giving a little shade and offering glare protection. The RFLKT is pretty obviously a 1st gen device, and I expect it to evolve to be a little cleaner, and less boxy over time, but even as is, I really fell in love with it.

On Monday, I had a chance to sit down and talk with Steve Kusmer of Abvio, the man behind Runmeter to talk about RFLKT, its technology and how the app has integrated itself with display. The relationship is longstanding. "Wahoo has provided the technology we've used for over two years to access Bluetooth devices. With the RFLKT, Wahoo provided the hardware, a wonderful design point, and we built from there. We've been demoing the RFLKT since September and just now released support in our software."

The RFLKT took a lot of its design influence from the Palm Pilot. "It had to run on a simple battery and last forever. The RFLKT works with a coin cell battery, can be alive for months if not a year, and powers down on idle, when nothing is being used. Plus, it uses BTLE with minimal bandwidth. It has buttons and it's programmable. It's very simple but effective."

Kusmer talked about integrating the device into riding. "Once I put the RFLKT on my bike, it becomes a different experience. It's providing a lot of value that enhances my experience."

Making Runmeter work with the device helped leverage the app's underlying features. "We've been spent more than four years deployed -- started back in 2008, and we have spent a lot of time on the underlying data architecture for storing and displaying application data. It's very hard to do this right. One spike of data and your Max Speed is toast. We went through a year or more of iterations on trying to figure out the heuristic so bad GPS data doesn't whack your data.

"We love RFLKT because we could take our data architecture and match up with anything you want to do on RFLKT. We can display 148 different statistics -- from your current speed to your previous interval average heart rate --- all readily accessible during your rides on the RFLKT."

What you get in the end is a terrific combination of software (from Abvio) and hardware (from Wahoo) and one that I was really happy using. You can pick up a RFLKT for $130 at Wahoo. Runmeter is free with a $4.99 in-app upgrade to Pro, and another $4.99 in-app upgrade for RFLKT support. Cyclemeter and Walkmeter are $4.99 each.

RFLKT and Runmeter: It's basically Pebble for your bike originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 14 Apr 2013 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

On Friday, T-Mobile finally launched its iPhone line, offering some great deals along the way. Did you hop over and place a request for an iPhone 5? American customers now have more service choices than ever. From Cricket to Straight Talk, Virgin to Sprint, you can now shop plans, devices, and options more than ever before.

How are you making your choices? Is T-Mobile's appealingly inexpensive basic plan winning your heart? Or do you need more sophisticated choices and premium features? Do you need truly unlimited data? Or is a high-allocation with a cap enough for your needs? Are family plans important? Or do you depend on tethering? What feature is driving your choice of carriers?

Join in this poll and then add your comments about what matters most to you from your iPhone plan.

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Weekend Poll: Are you switching to T-Mo? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iOS/OS X internals guru Gwynne Raskind tipped me off to a much better way of creating associated object keys.

Until now, I've been doing this:

static const char nametag_key;
return objc_getAssociatedObject(self, (void *) &nametag_key);

Turns out there's a much easier and better way. That's because Apple's selector implementation uses a fixed address. That means you can declare a property, for example:

@property (nonatomic) NSString *nametag;

and then use that property's selector as the key:

return objc_getAssociatedObject(self, @selector(nametag));

It's way cleaner, requires no extra static variables, and according to Gwynne, "It's absolutely safe and rather cutely self-documenting in current runtimes -- and for the foreseeable near future, no question."

Could this eventually break? Gwynne tells me that Apple would probably have to implement a completely new ABI for that to happen.

DevJuice: Better Objective-C associated objects originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Fifty years ago in 1963, Ivan Sutherland first demonstrated Sketchpad, one of the most important contributions to the field of Computer Science. Long before Apple, the Lisa and Xerox's Alto, a constraint-based object-oriented graphical system was developed and demonstrated.

Today's video was pointed out by Charles Choi over on his Notes from /dev/null blog. He writes, "Sometimes you're told something that happened some time ago. You stash that date in the back of your mind only to recall it much later in life, surprised and chagrined at the time that's passed since you last thought of it... Today I recalled Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad, arguably the most significant Computer Science Ph.D. thesis ever. I had the fortune in the mid-'90s to watch a rare videocassette recording of Alan Kay describing Sketchpad for a computer graphics course taught by Randy Pausch. Fast-forward to today and the video is only a YouTube search away."

Looking at that video, it's just amazing to think of that kind of tech in 1963.

Blast from the GUI past: 50 years after Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad first debuted originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Actions (US$3.99, with free Mac or Windows client) provides a really nifty tool for anyone who wants to fine-tune their workflow. It provides a soundboard of pre-programmed and customizable actions that live on your iPad and work on your computer.

You tap items on your tablet's screen; they trigger actions on your PC. It's basically a macro system that lives on your iPad. If you're familiar with any scripting apps like Keyboard Maestro or Quickeys, Actions will be instantly recognizable. Just install and pair to a desktop app that provides the OS integration.

Instead of assigning trigger keys, you work with a visually appealing iPad interface with simple customization and large, friendly buttons. Add your iPad to a stand, and you have one-tap access to many desktop features.

Although this app will help anyone who wants to bring repetitive actions to an easy-to-access interface, it brings an especially good match for anyone who works with kids with gross- and fine-motor skill deficits. The large buttons, and easy-to-recognize colors and symbols offer a wonderful synthesis of opportunity.

In my testing, I did find some minor quirks -- for example, the Apps folders were not searched on my attached external drives. That made launching installed-on-secondary-drive-Xcode a bit of a challenge. Plus searching through my extensive apps list would have been helped by a scroller of some kind, not just a standard table. I would also have liked an obvious way to switch off the interface sounds for office use.

For the most part, I think people are going to love Actions for iPad, however. It's innovative, fun and useful. The graphics are beautiful and the app is well-thought-out.

Actions for iPad: Automating your computer from the iPad originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Some Xcode challenges seem to crop up repeatedly. Today, I thought I'd share a few solutions that you might find helpful to integrate into your workflow.

Challenge: When you move an Xcode project to a new folder, all your file references die.

Solution: Avoid those red "can't find" file references by changing the way each group defines its location. If you're pulling in a suite of code from another folder, select it and open the File inspector (View > Utilities > Show File Inspector). Choose "Absolute Path" from the Path pop-up.

Now, when you move the folder, those files remain fixed to the original location. You won't "lose" them in the update.

Challenge: Your project is jam-packed with groups and subgroups and you want to find a file in your project.

Solution: Start with File > Open Quickly (Command-Shift-O). Enter enough text to locate the file name you're looking for.

Once you find the right name, for example "BezierFunctions.m", select the name and click Open. The file now appears in the workspace editor.

Right-click within the editor and choose Reveal in Project Navigator from the contextual pop-up. Presto, Xcode finds that file for you, opens its parent group or groups, enabling you to manage the file and within its group setting.

Challenge: You're using a function or type and want to quickly reference the original declaration.

Solution: Move your mouse to the item in-code, and Command-click. Xcode immediately jumps to the original definition file.

Alternatively, press the Option key. The cursor switches to "?" and a dashed highlight appears under the item name. Click to reveal a pop-up menu. Choices on this menu vary, depending on whether the selected item is custom or system supplied.

In this screenshot's example, you can click on BaseGeometry.h to open the file that declared the POINT_IS_NULL macro, providing an equivalent result to command-clicking.

The option-click trick also offers more info in addition to the move-to-declaration option, particularly for system-supplied items. Yes, you can jump directly to the CGPath.h header file using this little trick, but you can also read a description summary or hop to the class reference document.

DevJuice: Three useful Xcode tricks originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We've been hearing from various delighted developers this weekend responding to Apple's redesigned provisioning portal. And yes, you can now delete many (not all) App IDs from the portal.

The newer the ID, the more likely it seems to be that you'll be able to select it, configure its settings and click that all-too-welcome delete button.

Did it work for you? Drop a note in the comments. Me? I've been happily weeding many apps out this weekend.

DevJuice: Provisioning portal redesigned, allows deletion of some App IDs originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 07 Apr 2013 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As I've been working on a new book on iOS Quartz Drawing, I've been using PixelCut's PaintCode app pretty heavily. Today, a new PixelCut tool just hit the Mac App Store. WebCode (US$49.99) generates JavaScript+Canvas, CSS+HTML or SVG code on your behalf.

If you've used PaintCode, WebCode will feel immediately familiar. Similar tools and same panes make the new app very much like the original. Instead of generating Objective C, however, you're presented with ready-to use Web source.

The app just debuted, so I have only played with it a little bit. WebCode, I should note, supports Photoshop PSD import as part of its base features -- no in-app purchase needed.

DevJuice: WebCode premieres, generates JavaScript+Canvas originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Apr 2013 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iBook Lessons is a continuing series about e-book writing and publishing.

The important thing about e-books is this: the reader matters a lot less than the content. Over time, I've found myself using iBooks less and less and less, as I now turn almost exclusively to Kindle for my iPad reading.

There are several reasons for this. First, I can read my Kindle content on nearly any platform you can think of. Second, Kindle books are cheap. The same tech e-book that costs $36 on iTunes may show up up for $16.20 on Amazon.

Amazon is deeply invested in the "reader thing". Last week, they acquired Goodreads, a popular site for sharing reviews and recommendations. The press release quoted Amazon VP Russ Grandinetti, who said

"Amazon and Goodreads share a passion for reinventing reading. Goodreads has helped change how we discover and discuss books and, with Kindle, Amazon has helped expand reading around the world. In addition, both Amazon and Goodreads have helped thousands of authors reach a wider audience and make a better living at their craft. Together we intend to build many new ways to delight readers and authors alike."

You can anticipate that Amazon will start incorporating Goodread's net of recommendations into their reader hardware and software sometime in the near future.

In the absence of an OS X iBook reading tool, some developers are tentatively testing out the waters. Latest to the scene is developer NeoMobili, whose Bookinist website just recently went live. I've signed up to get notified when they launch, and hopefully I'll soon get a chance to test out the promised public beta.

Obviously, third parties will not be able to provide reading capabilities for DRM'ed e-books, providing another strike against buying them from the iBookstore instead of Kindle.

No one is ever going to argue that Amazon has set new standards of excellence for their software. My OS X Kindle app is functional at best, ugly at worst. But in the end, it's the book that you're reading that creates the end-user experience, not how prettily the pages turn.

iBook Lessons: Why the Kindle App is still the best reader on iOS originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

OCRKit (US$59.99) has a useful goal: converting photos into searchable PDF files (also RTF, HTML and text). You drag in photos, it produces documents. It couldn't be simpler to use.

An app like this lives and dies by virtue of of its precision, however. Unfortunately, OCRKit did not shine in comparison tests. I created a number of samples and ran them through OCRKit as well as a free online converter tool (newocr.com).

OCRKit consistently produced more errors in its output than the online tool, although the same kinds of errors challenged both approaches ("bLock" vs. "b1ock" vs. "block," for example, or "redcolor" vs. "red color," or "*" vs. "+").

I would have expected the paid tool to outshine the free one but, surprisingly, it did not. This flavored my overall impression about the software.

I did like the app's output. OCRKit combined the scanned image visuals with the interpreted text. It made it easy to search for text and find it within the context of the original document. The product's output is something many users will find of value.

Here is this post, after screenshotting it and passing it through OCRKit. It's been converted to an OCR PDF, enabling me to create selections from the scanned image. The selection you see is not in the original screen shot. It's me selecting the text in Preview from the output PDF.

And here is the text I selected, after copying and pasting that selection to TextEdit:

I created a number of test samples and ran them through OCRKit as well as a free online converter tool (newocr.corn).

OCRKit app has good idea, so-so results originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Today, I got a peek at a little utility that converts iTunes URLs to more readable App Store versions. From developer Moshe Berman, Fasten automates the process Apple described in QA 1633.

I found the app easy to use and a great timesaver. Berman tells me that it's in the review queue as I write, but he's still deciding on the price. For a buck or two, it's a handy thing to have around. It does one thing, but that one thing is pretty useful.

DevJuice: Preview of Fasten dev utility originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 31 Mar 2013 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Over the past year, things seem to have slowed down at Apple. OS upgrades have spaced out. The iPhone seems to have stabilized to a fairly consistent product -- the 4, 4S, and 5 aren't markedly different, other than a small bump in size. OS X has become more a matter of bug fixes, smoothing and refinement, than new features. So where's our big wow?

It's not that Apple really needs innovation at this point. Its stable of products has a continued high demand, and consumers are responding to channel inventory in a gratifying way.

Most of Apple's newest products have been upgraded in subtle but important ways, but "subtle" doesn't always feed the public's perception of innovation and revolution. So does Apple need that innovative push right now?

The competition, certainly, has not stood still. From handsets the size of baby dolphins to low-cost high-definition tablets, the market is trying to find new device expressions. Where does Apple stand in all this? You tell us.

Join in our poll and then drop your opinions into the comments section, and tell us where you see Apple innovating over the next few years.

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Weekend Poll: What rate, innovation? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 29 Mar 2013 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Markdown (US$9.99, iPad only) by David Sparks and Eddie Smith, offers a terrific introduction to the Markdown plain text-to-HTML conversion spec.

Originally created to provide an easier way to produce web content, Markdown is now an indispensable tool for developers and bloggers.

This intro text surveys Markdown and offers a reference and tutorial for both those who are new to the technology and those who want to improve their Markdown skills.

The core subject is actually quite small, so the authors have wisely focused on the bigger picture -- how do you use Markdown on various platforms and tools.

The book consists of text (130 pages) and screen casts (with over an hour and a half of video and an hour of audio interviews). Yes, the download is enormous -- 850 MB.

The book is well-organized and clearly written. The videos were pertinent and helpful -- they felt as if I had taken home my own little personal tech conference.

Markdown is not, in and of itself, a big topic. You can easily search for and find cheat sheets. If you're that kind of person, this isn't the book for you. What this field guide offers is a really pleasant introduction from experienced experts, who give you a warm and knowledgeable overview of the topic with a lot of depth. I don't think anyone will regret the purchase price of 10 bucks.

The book is available in both OS X and PDF formats from the author website. I reviewed only the iBooks version.

TUAW Bookshelf: Markdown by David Sparks & Eddie Smith originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The MacBook Pro has always represented the best of business computing. With its powerful processors, superb screen sizes, and now Retina display, it's the belle of Apple's showroom.

The MBP with Retina display has had a rougher time of things, however, than the standard-issue debutante. Screen ghosting, heat problems, battery deficiencies, and UI lags, this past year has been anything but magical for Apple's flagship business product.

What are your thoughts on the rMBP? Best thing Apple has ever made? Or a problematic product with growing pains? Join in this poll and then share your comments explaining your thoughts.

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Weekend Poll: Retina MacBook Pro originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 23 Mar 2013 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

On paper, the Nectar Power system is both awesome and ludicrous. This is essentially a keychain-dongle USB power solution for super-sized keychains. You carry it around and charge your iPhone or other USB devices as needed.

Let's start with the ludicrous, which is the price. The unit is now available for pre-order from Brookstone and will retail for (wait for it...) US$300.

Individual "power pods," used to generate the power, will cost $10 each. An extended warranty adds another $40 for two years, or $50 for three years. Gift wrap alone adds another $7.

So why are we so ridiculously excited about this? It's simple.

First, there's the technology. The Nectar is a butane-powered Solid Oxide Fuel Cell solution. It's like we really are living in the future. Each pod can supply power for about a dozen full charges, or as the product site says, about two weeks of power without outlets.

Second, there's the size factor, which is impressively small. The gadget is a slick-looking chrome and black, with a satisfyingly Brookstone design aesthetic.

But most important, the one thing that really makes this the device for any would-be James Bond type, is that it allows you to go completely off grid for extended periods of time without having to attach a solar grid to your backpack. Gilligan and the professor wouldn't have to make power supplies out of coconuts.

The Nectar Power system looks like a sleek, slick solution for people who have the money and aren't afraid to use it as both a beautiful and practical toy.

We can't wait to try it out. The Nectar ships Sept. 11, 2013.

Nectar mobile fuel-cell power system now available for pre-order originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac Hacks ($19.99 e-book, $24.99 print, $27.49 combo) by Chris Seibold is packed with fun and useful OS X-themed tips for anyone looking for non-obvious ways to get more from their Mac.

Like Seibold's earlier Big Book of Apple Hacks, Mac Hacks offers ways that technically savvy readers can better take charge of their system. This volume is current, and its tips are specifically compatible with OS X Mountain Lion.

From nondestructively partitioning drives to building Mountain Lion installers on flash drives, Seibold has collected a lot of useful information into his book.

When you buy a book like this, you're essentially purchasing a condensed collection of ideas. I encourage you to stop by the O'Reilly site and look at the Table of Contents for the book, which is packed with "Oh, I didn't know you could do that!" ideas.

The book is a great gift for any Apple geek in your life. Just remember that the content tends to skew more "experienced" and less "noob."

TUAW Bookshelf: Mac Hacks originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple has posted a warning on their developer news site that they will no longer accept apps that reference the unique device identifier, starting May 1. It writes,

"Starting May 1, the App Store will no longer accept new apps or app updates that access UDIDs. Please update your apps and servers to associate users with the Vendor or Advertising identifiers introduced in iOS 6."

This move follows almost a year after Apple began enforcing the initial deprecation.

In related news, Apple will no longer accept pre-Retina apps starting on May 1. All App Store apps must be built to support iOS devices with Retina displays as well as the iPhone 4" family.

DevJuice: Apple will no longer accept apps that use UDID calls starting May 1 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 21 Mar 2013 21:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We've all been there. Out, carousing, maybe having too good a time, when suddenly it hits. Not in our wallet, no ... where it really counts. Our iPhone is wasted as we are. Its battery icon flickers with a hint of the red in our bloodshot eyes.

Surely no white night can end well with a phone that isn't working. So what do you do? Find an outlet and hope you've brought an adapter? That's so 2009 of you.

Instead, turn to a friend. With ChargeBite, you transform your phone from a meek and mild Xander into a merciless power-thirsty Vampire (before-he-got-boring) Spike. Just hook your iPhone to a couple of "volunteer" phones; it will begin to leech power from the donors, and soon (for variable levels of "soon"), you'll be able to call again.

The indiegogo site says that with two powered devices, your iPhone charges as fast as if it was attached to a USB port, or in about an hour or two.

We can only imagine the awkward conversations as you wait for your phone to charge while not one, but two "volunteers" impatiently sip their lattes and wonder if they'll ever get to work on time. There's also that embarrassing feeling when you leave fully charged up, knowing that both of those lovely people now have to find someone else to suck power from.

ChargeBite is the first "social" charger. Instead of bringing a small plug, ChargeBite truly allows you depend on the kindness and amperage of strangers. After all, sharing phones is gross, but sharing current, well, that's not quite as gross.

By the way, as of publication time ChargeBite has just 4 backers for a total of $80 ... but there are 47 days left in the campaign to get the $45,000 needed for it to go into production.

Brother, can you spare a charge? ChargeBite goes indiegogo originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 21 Mar 2013 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Last year, if you didn't have a personal Apple rep calling you at 5 AM to help you register for WWDC, you may have relied on a service like WWDC Alerts.

Tokens developer Oisin Prendiville decided to go a little more entrepreneurial this year. Offering an alternative to WWDC Alerts, his site will limit subscribers by charging a nominal €1 fee to sign up.

This way, Prendiville writes, the site won't be "overloaded with requests that would result in potential notification delays like with http://wwdcalerts.com last year."

Prendiville is happy to be bribed. "It's not entirely democratic," he writes. "Queue skipping is allowed by paying more!"

And what about potential disasters? "Should something go terribly wrong and the notifications don't get to you before tickets sell out, I'll return your money."

You can find out more about the WWDC 2013 Notification notification service at the https://gumroad.com/l/wwdc website.

And, oh look, the second week of June is still clear over at Moscone.

DevJuice: WWDC '13 alert service now accepting customers originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.