Dear Aunt TUAW,

Is there any app you know of that i could use to turn down the volume of individual/specific apps on my Mac without turning down the whole of the system.

If you've ever used it on windows seven then you'll know how useful it is.

Any apps you could recommend. i'm willing to pay (but not that much - just in case apple introduces its own solution?)

Your loving nephew,

Ben

Dear Ben,

You'll want to take a look at Audio Hijack Pro from Rogue Amoeba. With it, you can hijack each application you want to adjust and apply a filter (Auntie imagines "gain", with the gain turned down) to tweak the sound levels. You can read more about using Audio Hijack Pro for per-application volume tweaks in this write-up.

Rogue Amoeba's Paul Kafasis explains, "While Audio Hijack Pro is geared as a recording tool, we've seen lots of users taking advantage of it for audio adjustment as well. Once an app is hijacked, Audio Hijack Pro provides fantastic control over the audio output. The Mute button is handy for temporarily silencing annoying apps, and the Effects area provides all sorts of power. The Gain slider found there makes it possible to turn audio down or up. As well, plugins like Double Gain can amp things up further (helpful on laptops with weaker speakers), while the 10-band equalizer is nice to have in all sorts of apps which lack their own."

Holding your breath for a 10.8 or 10.9 feature direct from Apple? Kafasis told Auntie, "It seems rather unlikely Apple is going to add this - it's been a desire since 10.0, and has never been added."

Audio Hijack Pro offers a free trial period so you can experiment before buying.

Best of luck,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me adjust app volume originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 24 May 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I read Uncle Steve's write-up about posting an iWeb site to a Dropbox folder.

It's a great blog post and neat trick! But it's using the Public folder... Is there a way to use a non-public folder to do the same?

Your loving nephew,

Seb

Dear Seb,

Auntie is fond of Kissr.co, not just because of its name, of course, but because it makes setting up a website on Dropbox super easy.

Just register for a name, and use Uncle Steve's save-from-iWeb secret techniques, and boom, you'll have a full website running from your Dropbox in no-time. If you want a custom domain, Kissr offers those for a small charge.

If you're more interested in wikis than blogs, take a look at WikiPack. It's a markdown-powered Wiki service that also serves from Dropbox. (And Uncle Brett consulted on the project!)

Auntie has tried both services (albeit, just poking around, no serious testing) and both seem to offer practical, portable, usable solutions.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: How do I post a website on Dropbox? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 May 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iBook Lessons is a continuing series about ebook writing and publishing.

Talk about rookie mistakes! We finally discovered the reason the iPad-only iBooks Author version of our Mountain Lion ebook got stuck on its way to release: we hadn't submitted a custom sample along with the full ebook.

Every iBooks Author submission requires a sample book for paid book accounts: "[A] custom created sample...is required for all Multi-Touch books offered for sale in the iBookstore" For further details, Apple has a support article about publishing requirements here.

So we went ahead and created our sample. To do this, you duplicate your book to a new project and then delete all non-sample content.

Removing chapters is easy: select them, click delete. It's a little more complicated for in-sample chapter-text. You must edit the actual content. Make sure you delete the text and images you want gone, and then trim away any remaining pages.

It took us a number of tries to get this right because we thought we could delete pages directly by selecting them and clicking delete. You can't. Pages only represent layout, not content, and our undeleted content kept popping back at us until we figured this bit out.

Once the project was trimmed down to size, we saved it and exported it to an .ibooks author file. We then bundled the full and sample versions up through iTunes Producer and re-submitted to iTunes connect.

The multi-touch book went live in the store instantly upon uploading the sample version.

One of the reasons this process went as quickly as it did is that Apple has apparently been conducting its own internal audits, finding books that have been submitted to the iBookstore but that haven't gone live yet.

Support requests like ours trigger a list of issues that need addressing. We now wish that we had contacted Apple sooner, rather than falling into the "we have no control or say in this process" mindset. Of course, Apple could have simply sent a robo-email telling us that the iBook needed a sample rather than making us wait two weeks to find our mistake.

Deciding what to include in our sample led a bit of debate. We weren't sure whether to include an entire section (which we weren't sure would work out of context) or bits and pieces from all over the book. In the end, we settled on distributing our preface, which includes overviews of each of our chapters and our intro-video, which welcomes readers and explains the purpose of the book. For a larger book, we think we might have gone with a full sample chapter instead.

We couldn't find much online discussions about choosing material to include in a sample. (We're used to Amazon and iBooks deciding that for us from our EPUB.) To this end, here's what we felt would be relevant to creating sample content:

• It should reflect the writing style of the authors, to give readers a sense of the flow and pace of the text, and answer the question "Does this author's voice match the way I want to read?"
• It should reflect the contents, showing readers some of the scope that the book covers, "Am I interested in this material? Does it have compelling utility?"
• If the book has a particular flow, for example lessons, it should showcase that style, "Can I follow along the way this book is teaching me based on this sample?"

Beyond those few thoughts, however, our immediate push was to get a sample created and submitted. I'm sure if we had spent a little more time and effort, we could have expanded these ideas further; maybe if we ever get around to writing "iBook Lessons" as a standalone book, we'll flesh this out.

For now, we got past a hurdle we weren't aware even existed, and learned an important lesson about being proactive with support requests. Hopefully our rookie mistake will save you some wasted time and effort.

Do you have thoughts about creating ebook samples to share? Or examples of your own rookie mistakes? Drop a comment and let us know.

iBook Lessons: Book samples and rookie mistakes originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 May 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

On paper, Laser VR sounds like one of the worst product ideas ever: you need to buy an iPhone, a laser pointer, and a Pico projector just to get started, but darn if we here at TUAW aren't drooling over the prospect.

An iPhone provides both the graphics generation piece, which is piped through a cable to a small projection system (low end projection systems now start around US$125), and the computer vision system that aligns itself to the projected image and interprets the laser pointer position for gaming.

As the following proof-of-concept video shows, while niche, the prospect of gaming on your wall could be super-cool.

Laser VR: Projector + computer vision + laser pointer = fun! originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 May 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iBook Lessons is a continuing series about ebook writing and publishing.

Last Autumn, after Apple launched the iPhone 4S, Steve Sande and I wrote Talking to Siri. It took several weeks to move through Apple review. Throughout all that time, people kept asking us, "Aren't you going to offer an iBooks version?" and we were all, "Patience, all in the fullness of time." The fullness of time, in that case, was almost a month.

Since then, Apple has made major internal changes that have sped up the approval process for both books and applications. Last week, Steve and I submitted Pitch Perfect, our new book about communicating with blogs. It was greenlit in hours.

Hours.

To get a sense of why we were so stunned by this, compare and contrast with another book we submitted several weeks ago: Getting Ready for Mountain Lion. It's a short how-to that discusses how to prepare your computer for the coming upgrade.

Our EPUB version went live just about the time Pitch Perfect did. (Yes, your votes did matter.) The iBooks Author version, the one with the video introduction and the pretty page layouts, is still in review, about three weeks after we first submitted it.

So what's an author to do? With Amazon, you can usually count on a book making it through review in a few days. Our quickest turn-around (for Pitch Perfect, incidentally) was several hours. We submitted midday, and it was live before we finished the workday. Our longest was over a weekend. I don't think we've ever exceeded 72 hours with Amazon review.

With iTunes, however, all you get is a status: "Not on 32 stores". As with application review, there's no indication that lets you know where the book is in its progress to the iBooks store and what might be holding it up.

Because we have the zen attitudes and relative attention span of three year olds, we decided to contact iTunes and submit a support query to a rep. We wanted to know how the book was doing and when we might expect it to be approved.

The problem with the "Contact us" option in iTunes Connect is that there are few ways to actually contact Apple. Most choices lead you to a FAQ page rather than a contact form. We discovered that obvious choices like "Manage Your Books > Book Status > Checking Status" got us nowhere.

After some digging, we finally discovered "Content Status Inquiries > Unknown Issue", which finally allowed us to submit a request about a "Content Status error". Our book had been in review for several weeks, which we felt was a reasonable "status error" as far as we're concerned. We filled out the form and shot it off. About a week later, we've still never heard back.

Now, be aware that working with iBooks Author material comes with a warning that quality assurance can take "up to 2 weeks" to process, depending on a book's complexity. Our Mountain Lion book isn't particularly complex and we exceeded that 2 week period early last week.

For now, we're repeating mantras like "It will pub when it pubs" and "Be a leaf in the Apple iBooks wind, traveling without complaint or direction", but it would be awfully nice if we had access to a little more feedback during the process.

Have you dealt with long review times with iBooks? How did things work out for you? Drop a comment and share your story.

iBook Lessons: The long and short of ebook submission review times originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 May 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you're someone who does a lot of work on the road, and needs to reference PDF source material, you'll find that QuickSearch PDF (US$4.99) from Olive Toast Software is the tool you didn't realize you needed. It has one job to do -- to help you find information inside large PDF files -- and it does that job well.

You type search terms into a text field, and QuickSearch PDF finds every occurrence, in every document that's been added to it. It lets you flip through each match until you find just the information you need. It's a great way of finding information for someone who wants to search, read, and get the heck on with their life.

As the name suggests, those searches are extra fast but it's the interface design that shines. QuickSearch PDF lets you tap arrows on each side of the screen to flip from one match to the next, always showing the PDF content in context. You can also scan your finger along the page index at bottom of the screen to move rapidly through all the hits.

Once indexed, searching is super-fast. It can take some time to index large files, so prepare to be patient when loading new PDFs. Getting those files indexed can take several minutes.

Unfortunately, the search field is also the field used to show indexing progress, so while you can search as it indexes (you'll only find matches in the already-indexed material), you won't be able to see how close the indexing is to being done unless you clear the search field.

Another small criticism is that you can't set where the indexing starts. If you're on a business call and you need to access elements towards the end a non-indexed book, you'd do better pulling that PDF into iBooks. Once indexed, QuickSearch PDF provides a far better search experience but for material that you're waiting on processing, it can be quite slow. That's a minor quibble, because I can't imagine that the number of times you've loaded a new file and have to wait for it to finish indexing pops up all that often.

The only way to load documents at this time is to drop them into iTunes or use "Open in" from another app. And if you already have ten other PDF reader apps (as I do), the Open In option may not show QuickSearch PDF as an option (See Open Radar for details of why this is an unacceptable iOS bug. Submit your bug report to Apple).

QuickSearch PDF does not yet support external APIs like Dropbox or Google Drive. The developer tells me that he's planning to add this support in soon. I look forward to that because I'd much rather drop files into Dropbox and do my management from there.

Those issues aside, QuickSearch PDF is a terrific app, and one I wish were available on OS X as well. The app fully gets how people want to quickly find and use information. This app isn't about book reading -- it's about locating details quickly, effectively, and simply. It does that, and it does it well.

QuickSearch PDF Reader provides powerful fast text searches originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 May 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When it comes to evaluating the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is form factors.

Recently, rumors have been swirling about possible iOS device form updates. You may have read about 7" iPads (or, possibly, a 7" relaunched iPod touch) and iPhones with mighty 4" screens, both of which would certainly throw monkey wrenches into the world of app development.

That's because each time Apple adds a new form factor into the mix, apps need to update to restyle their designs. They must meet both the physical form factor and the intrinsic aspect ratio. Each time this happens, universal apps grow bigger and space on your device grows smaller.

So do you think you see Apple moving forward on either one? Are these, as often, simply groundless speculation and spitballing? Or do you think either rumor has legs?

You tell us. Place your vote in this poll and then join in the comments with all your analysis.

Full disclosure: Certain TUAW staffers have ongoing bets with certain MacObserver staffers about a possible miniPad, with lunch riding on the outcome.

View Poll

You're the Pundit: Are we going to see form factor changes? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 20 May 2012 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

All the little fishies
in bottom of the sea
wish that they were swimming
in my G5 Mac PC

Or for the geekier devs among you: Joy to NSFishies in the G5 PC, @selector(joy:) to you and me...

Video of the case conversion follows for your delectation.

[via Gizmodo]

G5 Mac "Pro" (sic) receives Macquarium treatment originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 18 May 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Today, beloved leader Victor pointed me to this write-up over at Tidbits. Although Joe Kissel's experience with quite so many devices (nine, I believe) falls a bit into the extremes of iOS/OS X use, the problem of dealing with distributed alarms is a real one: a single reminder can set off alerts all over the home or office. Surely, there's got to be a better way to focus alert attention.

Victor asked if I could brainstorm some geek solutions up that might help coordinate reminders with multi-device deployment (I won't even try to figure out "how to deal with bosses who remind you about too much stuff with shared calendars"). The idea is to let users choose reminder strategies across several devices: Macs, iPads, iPhones, etc.

The strategy brought up by Kissel was to add "do not disturb" buttons and slight time offsets to alerts. The opt-in would allow you to disable alerts either per-device or per-Apple ID. The offsets would allow users to respond to a dialog, allowing them to accept the reminder and disable triggers on other devices. The only slight problem with the time offsets approach is determining which device gets priority.

You can imagine being in bed, exhausted, sleepy and hearing a slightly long symphony of beeps that finally arrives at the iPhone on your bedside. Being able to prioritize a device (e.g. "always alert this iPhone first") would certainly help.

I also started thinking about activity -- and, specifically, giving priority to any device experiencing touches and mouse and key interaction (e.g. "always alert active devices first"). An active use pattern generally links to a human presence -- the likely target of a reminder. It's an easy way to connect alert reception to an audience.

Devices could trigger in order of most recent use, with the reminder ending once a user taps an acknowledge key. In the worst case, the reminder lasts 9 times longer than it did originally, but in the best case, only the most active device is triggered. Per Apple ID, of course. Your partner's devices would have its own alert chain.

But that doesn't take location into account . If your devices are idle but in distributed locations, say one at home, and one at work, which takes priority? Perhaps you'd want both to ring because there's no a priori knowledge of your location. Or maybe you'd want it to alert at work first and then home (e.g. "prioritize work").

And at home? If you have a device downstairs and another upstairs, they may seem to be at the same location-to-detection algorithms, but you certainly would want to be reminded of lunch no matter which floor you're on. At the same time, you'd think devices could potentially figure out they're clustered together.

What if Apple, in addition to slight time delays, could listen to hear alerts from triggers they know would happen on a related device in their Apple ID family (e.g. "listen for duplicate alerts")?

You might be able to skip the active "Okay I get it" button then. Devices could actively suppress extra alerts by listening for ones in their vicinity. The problem again, would be if two Apple IDs were linked to similar reminders but didn't share calendars explicitly.

For this, Apple could build in a "coordinate my alerts with..." option and harmony would once again reign in the land of the multi-device family.

Beepocalypse: How Apple could improve multi-device reminders originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 17 May 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Note to readers: I failed to add a "do not pub yet" note onto this post the night before last. It was inadvertently published during our overnight before it finished research and editorial review. The post is much the same with clarification added about how and when the hotkey ban is due to go into effect, and clarifying exactly what functionality we believe is going to be forbidden in the MAS going forward. I also removed specific application names that may be affected by this change.

Editor's Note: I stand behind this story due to the evidence we received, but unfortunately it is evidence we cannot share publicly. While many have claimed our story is untrue, I can tell you that due diligence was practiced and, based on the evidence we received, what was indicated by Apple stands as written. Several clarifications have been added to this story, but all I can tell people is that either Apple is unsure of what hotkey functionality is in this case, or something has changed very recently in such a way as to negate what was said previously by Apple. Therefore, we'll have to wait and see. If further evidence appears to refute what we have written, we will publish a standalone clarification. After all, it is Apple's store to do with as they wish, which includes applying policy as they see fit, or changing policy at any given time.

As I write this, I just got off the phone with a colleague. He just now is realizing that [as far as the Mac App Store is concerned -Ed.] Apple may be end-of-life-ing all those great little hotkey shortcuts that used to let us bring an app to the forefront and do something.

Apps use hotkeys to let you jump to what you want to do while you work on what you must do. Apps can set a system-wide hotkey to trigger an action or event, even when the app itself is not foremost (or is resident in the menu bar). They're on the way out of the Mac App Store as Apple paves the path to safer, more consumer-oriented computing.

Apparently, Apple will allow hotkey apps that are already in the Mac App Store before June to offer only bug fixes after that. New sandboxed apps and any apps that add features (i.e. non-bugfix releases) will not be allowed to support hotkeys.

TUAW has been told that Apple will be rejecting all MAS apps with hotkey functionality starting June 1, regardless of whether the new features are hotkey related or not. Basically, if you're developing one of those apps, an app that assumes you can still add hotkeys, don't bother submitting it to the Mac App Store. [Note that as far as we know this only means systemwide hotkeys, not isolated-to-your-app keyboard commands -- the latter would obviously kneecap OS X and the Mac App Store rather dramatically. -Ed.]

It's not just press-to-switch apps that are feeling the pressure of the future. Many cross-app scripting utilities and macro programs already can't step foot in the App Store and will have to fight for a space on your computer under Mountain Lion's GateKeeper. The Quickeys macro program I've depended on for decades is still limping along for the moment in its creaky 4.0 build, but I don't expect it to last more than a year or so.

OS X 10.9 or OS Xi, whichever comes after Mountain Lion, isn't about to let an app completely redefine the user keyboard. Those macros that let me use Emacs keys regardless of app, and that let me launch all my most-used apps with one combination...I know they're next to die.

I've seen the future and it is iOS. Apple is moving solidly and confidently towards consumer computing and away from mollycoddling the power users. The company knows where its profits come from and power users ain't it. The iPad -- with its simple interface, strong security, and dependability -- has set the standard for what's next.

For all the moments when I want to rage against the coming of the Nanny OS, I know it's on its way. I've lived in iOS now for 5 years. I've played in the sandbox, I've grown to know the sandbox, I've come to accept the sandbox.

I'm not super thrilled by it, but you can't deny the reality. While there's no indication Apple intends to prevent the sale of apps with [systemwide] hotkey functionality outside the App Store, it is clear Apple is working to simplify the user experience within the Mac App Store, and that means "power user" utilities are at risk.

Goodbye hotkeys, macro programs, end-user customization, and all the detritus of operating systems that were full of holes to crawl into and dumpsters wherein to dive. The new, clean way of computing is on its way. It may be a lot less fun but it's gonna sell a hell of a lot of Macs.

Thanks, Gwynne Raskind for providing feedback during the writing of this post.

"Nanny Computing" and the future of OS X originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 17 May 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dear Aunt TUAW,

Ah, the problems of modern romance. Since I broke up with "her" (and yes, I know you were saying she wasn't right for me) getting rid of all the remants of the relationship has not been easy, especially "her" digital footprint.

She loved her music. So she would bring her iPod to my house and sync it leaving a whole bunch of songs I'll NEVER play again that were purchased under her Apple ID. How can I find them, delete them and finally be ready to move on with my life?

Your favorite but knucklehead nephew,

Mark

Dear Mark,

When in doubt, there's usually an AppleScript solution to everything. Doug's Scripts offers one called "track down purchases" that scans your library, looks at the file for each song, and retrieves the apID purchase account for the track. It then builds individual playlists that sorts the songs by account.

Be aware that you may encounter snags for homebrew recordings such as those from GarageBand, because the script expects to encounter standard iTunes tracks. If so, you may want to temporarily remove those while running the AppleScript.

Let Auntie know if that does the job for you.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me sort iTunes Music by Apple ID originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 16 May 2012 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iBooks Author is an amazing tool for laying out and publishing ebooks to iTunes. Unfortunately, the application creates books that are only readable on iPads. You trade off fantastic page design (via Apple's proprietary .iBooks format) for a much smaller potential reading audience.

When you want readers to be able to peruse your book on iPhone, you'll need to go with EPUB format instead. For all its faults, Pages still offers the best tool for creating compliant iTunes EPUB submissions that pass submission validation.

Steve and I have been hard at work on a couple of books, preparing them for submission to Amazon and iBooks. Our workflow starts with writing and editing in Microsoft Word.

This allows us to use Word's collaboration and revision tools to produce a file that can be submitted directly to Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. For all that we yell and complain about Word, it's still the most powerful tool in our arsenal for manuscript preparation.

From there, we move to Pages where we mark out sections (Inset > Section Break, File > Save). This is an important step we've learned. Sections allow us to use images throughout our entire document. Otherwise, images are limited to 11 megabytes of unencoded data per section (or "chapter" in Apple's documentation). Pages omits those extra images during EPUB creation. Careful section insertion bypasses that issue.

From Pages, we export to EPUB taking care to check our primary metadata: publication name, author credits, and genre. Once exported, this is where a great new tool from Apple becomes part of our flow. Book Proofer (now available from your iTunes Connect author account) allows you to sync and preview EPUB files.

Just as iBooks Author lets you sync and preview iBooks files, Book Proofer does the same for EPUB. Drop a book onto the wooden shelf at the top of the app, select a device to sync to, and it opens in iBooks, ready for inspection. Unlike the iBooks Author version of this functionality, Book Proofer syncs with all iOS devices, not just iPads.

Be aware that you still need to have iBooks open on-device as in the iBooks Author version:

Once synced and open, we check for formatting issues, inspect our images to make sure they all made it through EPUB conversion, and perform a final sanity check. From there it's time to make any final metadata updates in Calibre before we submit to iTunes and begin our weeks or months long wait for approval.

While Apple's iBooks Author has received all of the attention in the press lately, the company also deserves a lot of credit and kudos for developing Book Proofer as a tool for working with EPUB files.

iBook Lessons: Using Book Proofer to preview EPUB files originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 16 May 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When it comes to evaluating the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is Mountain Lion.

During the Q2 financials, Apple told us it would debut "late summer," but some sites insist we may see it earlier. Sure, everyone wants to get started using OS X 10.8 as soon as possible, but when do you really see it launching?

You tell us. Place your vote in this poll and then join in the comments with all your analysis.

View Poll

You're the Pundit: When will Mountain Lion launch? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 15 May 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I want to buy "A Dance with Dragons" as an eBook and I am hesitating between buying it for Kindle or iBooks, the reason being the Kindle version will be available on my Mac, my iPhone and my iPad. Is it possible to do the same if I buy it for iBooks or will I be "stuck" with reading on my iPhone and iPad?

Your loving nephew,

Andre

Dear Andre,

Although Auntie is looking forward to iBooks for Mountain Lion, she's not holding her breath either. Apple hasn't announced it.

The practical answer is that Kindle books can be read anywhere: from Macs to Windows, Linux to Android, iOS to webOS. Plus, Kindle books can be loaned. iBooks is iOS-only.

So yes, if you buy it for iBooks, you'll be "stuck" reading on your iPhone or iPad, which isn't a horrible thing for most people but keeps you from reading it on your Mac.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Where should I buy my George R. R. Martin fix? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 15 May 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Perian has been a steadfast friend on my computer for years. With Perian, nearly any video format I throw at QuickTime simply works. Perian has been a wonder. It supports AVI. It supports DivX. It supports MKV.

It's been one of the best and most useful tools I have had access to and invariably the first thing I reinstall after any upgrade.

And now, according to a statement by its devs, it's reaching the end of the road.

Today, the Perian dev team announced that the software will no longer be updated. They will release all the source code to Google Code or Github, but the team is moving on.

We here at TUAW give them a well-deserved round of applause for the excellence of their effort, and their contribution to the OS X community. Perian will be missed. Thank you to Chris "Growl" Forsythe, Graham "Adium and Fire" Booker, Alexander "ffmpeg" Strange, and Augie "mecurial" Fackler, as well as everyone else who contributed in the past.

For now, Perian continues to work with OS X Lion. From here, however, it's unsure whether it will make the leap to Mountain Lion. Check out NicePlayer, which remains in development.

The dev team is no longer accepting contributions and requests that you send any money in their honor to Ronald McDonald House, Child's Play, or the EFF.

Goodbye Perian. You were amazing.

Perian posts end of life notice. Mac video enthusiasts weep. originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 14 May 2012 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In April, AT&T ended a policy of offering data feature packs to its lowest end Pay as You Go plans (specifically, the $1/day and the $0.10/minute plans). At that time, TUAW was told by an AT&T spokesperson that customers on those plans could still pay a pay-per-unit (PPU) rate for data, approximately a penny for 5Kb, if I have my numbers right.

Although most users would not welcome paying $1536 for a 750MB movie, PPU data would allow them to at least check their email on the go, albeit at a more expensive rate than they'd been used to.

Yesterday, TUAW started hearing that users were unable to access PPU data on their handsets. We are unsure if this is because users need to update their configuration profiles or if the PPU system itself is experiencing difficulties.

I personally tested on my 3GS handset with both 3G and Edge access (10c/minute GP01 plan) and was unable to access the Internet at all.

TUAW has contacted AT&T and asked for them to look into the matter. If and when they reply, I will update this post.

Are you able to access PPU data on your PayGo phone without opting into monthly plans? Let us know in the comments.

Pay-per-unit appears to go MIA on AT&T for some iPhone users originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 May 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Today, I got to try out Juggernaut: Revenge of Sovering (Free) from Mail.ru. A freemium-style RPG game, it offers a polished feel and good production values, especially in the audio track. In the short time I have had with the app, game play mostly consists of bashing enemies and using spells and armor to defend.

I have yet to find much subtlety for strategy and it's clear from the start that the game's raison d'etre is to sell in-game coins and crystals. That said, it's not bad for older kids so long as they keep out of your iTunes account and are okay with highly sexualized game imagery. Adults will probably get bored fairly quickly with the fights.

However, gameplay isn't really why I liked this app as much as I did. I was mesmerized by the deeply accented narrator who could barely speak English. His strong Eastern European tones have won my heart. One of the devs, Alex Patsay tells TUAW that in one of the voice-over versions there were "lifeless desserts" instead of "deserts."

The app itself is fine, I suppose, but the narrations are a delight unto themselves. "When shadows crapped upon the land" and "Land whipping of their noble sons."

If you decide to download, be aware that the app is nearly a half a gigabyte in size.

Juggernaut: Revenge of Sovering first look originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 May 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple pushed a new Apple TV update (5.0.1) today. Primarily a bug fix, the update addresses the following issues:

• iTunes previews - Previews for movies and TV shows from the iTunes Store can now be viewed in HD.
• AirPlay - Fixes an issue that caused some iOS apps to have trouble connecting via AirPlay.
• Home Sharing - Improves the reliability of Home Sharing connections.
• Netflix - Addresses an issue affecting Netflix login and navigation.
• Stability and performance - Includes fixes for issues affecting stability and performance.

You can update your Apple TV by selecting Settings > General > Update Software on your unit.

Apple TV firmware update 5.0.1 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 May 2012 18:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Delighting and surprising are hallmarks of the Apple user experience. Imagine my response then when today, while working in iBooks Author, I discovered than in iBooks 2, I could pinch a landscape page and it would jump me to the table-of-contents view.

Steve and I are converting our Pitch Perfect book into iBooks Author format. That means we have to jump between presentations and orientations quite a lot to make sure each page layout works properly.

Discovering this one simple trick transformed a repetitive task into one that was just a little bit simpler, a little less onerous. It put a smile on our faces and once again reminded us how much pleasure can be found in fine design details.

What are some tiny interaction options that have surprised you in iOS? Share them in the comments.

Little delights: Pinching a page in iBooks Author originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 May 2012 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Are you one of the many devs who miss Xcode's "Fix and Continue" feature? Apple removed "Fix and Continue" in Xcode 4. This option allowed you to patch your binary with updated code, as you ran and debugged it.

Well, there's good news. Developer John Holdsworth has released Injection for Xcode. It's an OS X application that lets you inject those same code changes into running applications for development and debugging. It works with both OS X and iOS apps, including those running on devices.

It works by allowing your classes to be recompiled selectively as class categories. These are loaded at run time via bundles, and override your originally compiled code. So you can modify, enhance, and adapt your code during run time and tweak elements on the go.

Holdsworth has been working with this feature for quite a long time. He writes:

In London there were two banks which embraced NeXT for developing front office trading systems in an age before even windows 3.1. The hardware was only just up to it however and build times where at three quarters of an hour so we started using this means of patching the app using bundles rather having to relink the whole thing.

I asked him to fill in some of his background about working with Apple and NeXT technology. He responded:

I first encountered NeXT in 1989 at IRCAM the computer/music research institute in Paris where I fell in love with Objective-C. It's great to see things coming full circle with all this memory managed stuff, and C++, such a half baked language falling away.

How ironic that it should be a mobile device which paved the way. If you ask me the closest we've been to Object-Oriented Nirvana is Smalltalk, and Objective-C is pretty close to that.

Steve visited one day spinning the reality distortion field about the new "autorelease" mechanism. Quite the mystic.

My only other claim to fame was when the Apple purchase of NeXT came through I sent him an email enthusing greatly and got a reply saying "Thanks John, a Merry Christmas to you and your family."

Been a disciple ever since. Shame I didn't buy the stock.

Unfortunately, Apple has been a bit squirrelly about letting Injection into the OS. Holdsworth first hoped to start selling Injection on the Mac App Store back in February. Apple has been sitting on the app for months, failing to give it a thumbs up or down.

Do you want to help out? Drop Apple a note at appreview@apple.com and ask them to expedite approval on Injection for Xcode (App number #id498448895).

Until then, Injection for Xcode is available on Holdsworth's personal site. It offers a two-week trial period and costs US$9.99 (individual license) or $25.00 (corporate) after that. Licenses are issued per-machine.

To purchase, the app guides you through PayPal (via a web view) after the trial period.

DevJuice: Injection for Xcode originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 May 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

For a buck, Animated Color Messages from SSA Mobile can add a certain flair to your iOS Messages conversation. It's a simple app to use.

You choose a font, a text color or background pattern, or even a typing animation, and the app constructs a gif for you, pastes it into the system keyboard, and offers to hop you over to Messages.

There, you create a new message, paste, and send it.

The app couldn't be easier to use and a quick store search shows this app category is fairly popular on the store. As these things go, Animated Color Messages was easy enough to use, did what it promised on the package, and offered a range of choices to customize with.

It was a tiny bit of a pain to keep jumping in and out of Messages to compose, send, read, and reply, but the app did the best it could to minimize that pain.

I actually felt the app would be improved with fewer choices and more focus on recommended style combinations. As it is, there's a lot of fonts, tons of colors, and more textures than you could shake a stick at. Joining these into well-designed suggestions could add a way for the app to stand out more tangibly amidst the competition.

The target audience for this app appears to be tween girls.

Animated Color Messages pops your Messages text originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 May 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAW Dev Juice talks with Mac developer Lyle Andrews, who agreed to discuss his real-world experience launching applications. He'll be sharing tips and hints about practical app promotion skills.

I want to thank you for taking the time to talk to me and to TUAW readers. The reason I asked you here was because I think you have a really compelling story to tell and tips to share. You're a small developer who's achieved some exciting success in Apple's App Stores, yes? Can you tell us about your background and your products?

Yes, I've been coding since I was 12, have been through 14 languages, have a degree in philosophy, and am a veteran of the dot.com wars where I ran over 60 projects including a dot.com startup and a Fortune 500 web deployment. My project history can be seen here.

I've been moving into consumer software development and have two large projects in the works, Ynnis Myrddin, an interactive film about Merlin, and MetaView, a 3D market vizualizer.

When the Mac App Store started operations I decided to write a few small apps to learn its dynamics: Tempest - a video lightning screensaver, Fireworks HD, another screensaver, and Network Logger, an active network monitor. Network Logger is currently selling in the top 6%, Fireworks HD in the top 2.5% and Tempest! in the top 2% of their categories on the US store.

I first came across your work when I reviewed your Fireworks app just before New Years. Can you share how that process of pitching and reviewing worked from your end and talk about how the TUAW review affected your sales?

Getting Fireworks HD reviewed by Apple was straightforward compared to getting the first screensaver on the store, since the App Store doesn't sell screensavers directly. I tried numerous ways around this restriction, including zipping up the saver and storing it in a shell app's bundle or having the app download the saver.

After half a dozen rejection cycles one of the Apple reviewers took pity on me and suggested adding a download link that the user could click on in the app. This puts the onus of responsibility on the user, gives them control, and with that approach I was able to get approved and onto the store.

Being very much a developer I have the classic indie tendency to just keep coding and sit around wishing that someone was promoting my apps full time. This does make the exposure the App Store affords very attractive. I do occasionally send out press releases and hold free promotions on the store.

For Fireworks HD, I knew getting some exposure for New Year's Eve was important so I emailed an editor at TUAW about the possibility of a review right after Christmas. I saw that as a win/win since that was the app on the store most appropriate for New Years' Eve at the time. Fireworks HD was named Mac App of the Day on Dec 27, 2011 and the sales rank responded immediately and dramatically, moving from around rank #100 up to #4 in Top Paid Entertainment within a day.

On New Year's Eve itself Fireworks HD was on the Top 10 Entertainment charts of 13 countries. Over the next few weeks Fireworks HD trended down as expected but happily ended in a higher average range which has persisted for five months to date.

Can you tell me about some of the strategies you've used in-store for helping your apps stand out from the competition? I know you mentioned something about icons when I first started talking to you about doing this interview. What other suggestions do you have?

I anticipated your question, so here is a very long list of suggestions.

Pop out. Your icon has to pop out. Look at the primary category you will be listed in, imagine you are in the top 200, what similarities or appearance trends can you find in the app icons, and how can you break them in a way that draws attention and invites a click. A number of people have told me that they clicked on Network Logger just because of the icon. Something about it just makes you want to click it whatever it leads to.

Keep it short. This indicates that you are confident that the customer is going to like your product if they are interested in general. It shows you feel like you don't have to say that much to make the sale. This is true with new clients as well as products.

A long description starts to feel like an apology after awhile. However, some things are complex and merit a longer description. Conciseness is the actual metric. How can you say the most with the least words?

Keep it Plain. Plain descriptions with minimal self-praise and adjectives are trusted more by App Store customers than overinflated rhetoric.

Focus on Strength. Best in class in some way? Definitely say so. If nothing is the best, should you be aiming higher? This is true for Fireworks HD, it is in some ways a silly app I built to test out the store, but if you need beautiful 100% realistic HD fireworks for your event that don't repeat in sequence and work when no network connection is available, there is nothing better available for Mac than Fireworks HD.

Be a master of the obvious. While there are many great naming strategies, if you can name a product after its product category, you have a home field advantage. With "Network Logger" for instance, the genus is instantly obvious, the customer just needs to know the species. They click, they are coming to see you, you are the category, the sale is yours to lose.

Don't sweat bad reviews. They are going to happen, if an app has merit it will tend to sell anyway and time will equalize things. Tempest has been in the top 10 in Spain in Paid Entertainment for many weeks despite having only two reviews there, both 1 star.

Follow or lead the market, either way know which you are doing. Leading the market is much more challenging, and can be much more rewarding. Can you come up with a way of systematizing a part of the raw unordered universe and create a new class of human activities? If you succeed your glories will be sung in Valhalla. Following the market can be safer and is often more lucrative. Can you rethink a better way to handle a common human activity?

Use resonance awareness. There are some things you just know are going to resonate with a particular audience, fireworks, lightning, beaches, white rounded kitchen appliances...resonance awareness is really a diverse skill set it pays to hone. We know Steve Jobs actively developed this skill set throughout his life.

Understand need. You need their need. What fundamental emotions are driving the user as they use your software? A desire for order? Curiosity? Love? A desire to conquer? Every activity has a number of emotions that are commonly associated with it. Knowing what your audience is experiencing and wants to experience emotionally is the foundation of an evolving relationship. It's not just woven into the advertising, the product is built around it.

In conclusion, these things are all simple in theory, but if the execution sounds simple, think again. The student sees the simple and thinks it simple, the master sees the simple and thinks it profound. I hope one day to be such a master myself.

There's been a lot of negative talk over the last few years about the App Stores being too saturated, that small guys can't make a living at it, that there's no room to break in. What would you say to that?

I would say that oversaturation is bound to happen given the gold rush mentality, but overall the App Stores have been really empowering to smaller developers and that virtue will be recognized if one persists. The bar is higher now and development and marketing effort have to reflect that.

The App Store gets far more traffic than my own web sites and provides more than just sales exposure; the review system has sort of opened up a dialog between me and my customers that wasn't there before.

There are a lot of nasty reviews on the US App Store but internationally they are much more measured; they all make you tougher (better at taking criticism), and your app better.

Being able to say you have apps on the store also has a certain social cachet these days that's valuable in personal and professional situations and that opens up new opportunities.

Lyle, thank you so much for taking the time to talk today. I'm hoping that your experience and your insights will help inspire other developers, especially those just getting started.

And if you're still reading this post and you like this kind of developer-centric coverage, please let our editorial team know. Drop a note and tell TUAW that you care about dev topics.

DevJuice: Promotion from the Trenches originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 09 May 2012 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Look around out there. Netbooks are not only ubiquitous, they have basically conquered all of reality.

Before you do a spit take and start saying words that are unsuitable for TUAW's family friendly audience, let me remind you of Apple's iPad introduction. Steve Jobs laid out the plan for how the unit would operate: as a middle ground between laptops and mobile phones, it would allow people to browse the web, check for email, enjoy media, play games, and read.

In other words, Jobs was introducing netbooks for the rest of us.

Reimagining the form factor but not the functionality brought the netbook into huge demand (and basically put paid to the more traditional keyboard/screen layout). For a few hundred dollars, people could do all the basic computing they want while on the road, with insanely great battery life, and with an OS that's built for serial unitasking, in a super-comfortable form factor.

Basically, Apple built a better netbook and it triumphed.

This kind of appliance computing experience hides complexity from the user with minimum compromise. The user experience allows people to do certain tasks slickly, simply, and effectively. The focus isn't on ultimate flexibility, it's on convenience. Netbook computing is all about the appliance experience -- it does its job and just that job.

The result was that the iPad exploded. The demand for it showed a basic truth. People liked a simple unit that even a baby or cat could operate. They could still all do the core tasks they had done on standard computers, but they could do it on the go without any training and with a unit that fit into the crook of their arm.

The big question that remains is: What next? Can Apple migrate its iPad/netbook lessons to other platforms? Could we see an appliance desktop or notebook next? As I wrote in an earlier post, I think we're likely to see a computer that adapts to its situation -- on the road or at home or in the office. But while we've seen the mobile side of this story, how might home computing change? Will OS X take netbook lessons from the iPad?

Some readers responded to my last post by suggesting that anyone incapable of fully operating OS X should not be using it. But when has Apple left potential customers on the table? Why shouldn't they re-jigger OS X (or a version of OS X) to create the same kind of netbook experience demonstrated by Steve Jobs at the top of this post? After all, those tasks are what most people do.

Sure, there are professional users as well who would not benefit from appliance computing, but there are plenty more currently struggling away on Windows who could easily make the jump to a simplified iMac (or even Apple TV) if the choice were offered to them.

Netbooks and the iPad taught us this: if the hardware is affordable, light, easy-to-use, and helps people accomplish their core tasks, the customers will be there to buy them.

TUAW Deep Thoughts: How netbooks conquered the universe originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 08 May 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

App Store. Android. Amazon. If you're a developer, there are lots of possible venues competing for your attention. So which one is worth your time and energy? I turned to Avatron Founder and CEO Dave Howell for the answer.

Avatron makes Air Display, a popular app that allows you to use a mobile device like an iPad or phone as an extra display for your computer. When you're on the road, it's nice to be able to offload a Twitter stream, for example, onto a secondary screen so your laptop can be dedicated more to your work.

Air Display is now available across a number of platforms, including the following stores:

• Apple iOS App Store (iOS)
• Apple Mac App Store (Mac)
• Google Android Market (Android)
• Amazon Appstore (Android)
• Samsung Apps (Bada)
• Intel AppUp (Windows netbooks)

Given the time investment, the overhead, and general work involved in developing cross platform, where has Avatron seen its strongest sales? You won't be surprised by the answer: in the iOS App Store.

Like many other developers, Avatron has found that the App Store delivers customers and product interest in ways that other platforms have been unable to match. Howell lays out the sales as follows:

iOS App Store: Strong sales

Mac App Store: 1/10 of the sales of the iOS App Store

Android Market: 1/2 of the Mac App Store sales

Samsung Apps: 1/5 of Android Market

Amazon App Store: 1/10 of Android Market

Intel AppUp: "4 copies in over an entire year" and Howell bought one of those copies.

Each store has its strengths, weaknesses, and quirks, but Howell is clear about one thing -- No matter how we App Store developers complain, "iOS is the most painless of the bunch. And this is coming from a developer whose latest iOS app was pulled by Apple without any credible justification."

Avatron retired Air Dictate this January. "Our most recent submission of Air Dictate did not break any rules, or use any private APIs," Howell said, discussing the background of that situation. "Apple pulled it because it bizarrely claimed that apps that "relate to Siri" are infringing Apple's Siri trademark or copyright. I sent them the email addresses to three Apple IP lawyers so the app review team could get a tutorial on what exactly trademarks and copyrights are, but my helpful suggestion have proved fruitless so far."

Compared to other stores, however, Apple's App Store offers the simplest road to market and the best logistics. "The latest move by Google requires Android Market sales to go through Google Wallet. No more PayPal, Zong, or Boku. And now Android Market is called Google Play," Howell explained. "I can't keep up with the thrashing. And Google still offers no way to give out promo codes, or even to purchase a copy of an app for somebody else. Apple's way, way ahead in this kind of logistics."

Howell pointed out that Amazon remains US-only. "Amazon does let us buy gift cards for people, which is nice. As long as they're in the US and they don't mind getting their apps through Amazon Appstore. Amazon's review process is no faster than Apple's, and strangely it's much slower to get an app approved for Amazon's own Kindle Fire than for other devices. So their own customers get our apps later than everybody else."

Despite low sales in Samsung Apps and Intel AppUp, Howell reports that the recruiting process and submission was pleasant enough.

So should you invest time going cross platform? Hopefully Avatron's experience gives you a hint as to the market possibilities.

If you like this kind of developer-centric coverage, please let our editorial team know. Drop a note and tell TUAW that you care about dev topics.

DevJuice: Should I develop cross platform? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 08 May 2012 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's been a couple of weeks now since I learned that AT&T hated me.

Okay, maybe not personally, but certainly they hate the way I use data.

If you haven't been following along with this story it goes like this. I received a text from AT&T, telling me that my US$5 autorenewal data package was boosted from 10 MB to 50 MB. I rejoiced but my glee was short-lived.

Shortly thereafter, readers tipped me off about the bad news: AT&T was about to cancel my autorenewal, insist that I pay an extra $25/month (at least) for a voice service package I didn't want or need. My current data would no longer roll over, which is why I was paying $5/month to begin with. It wasn't about 10MB, it was about keeping my data balance active.

I'm an iOS developer. I try to have live SIMs around for testing during development on my non-contract devices.

Until April 30th, I could spend $100 per year and have a SIM that provided data and voice for light usage. It was exactly what I needed.

Then AT&T changed its policy.

"Customers on certain GoPhone voice plans ($2/day and the $0.10/min option) need to subscribe to a monthly plan in order to use a data package. (Customers on those two plans can still pay a PPU rate for data, of course...) Qualifying monthly plans are the $50 Unlimited Talk & Text nationwide plan for GoPhone smartphones and the $25 Unlimited Text with 250 minutes nationwide GoPhone plan. "

Translated into English, this means: "Unless you pay another $25 a month for a plan you do not need and will not use, coughing up an additional $300/year, your simple and affordable data-enabled SIM is toast."

Great.

So what am I doing? For now, I'm letting my extra SIMs go dark and I'm using my 4S's data exclusively. Meanwhile, I'm trying to wrap my head around why it's so important for carriers to kill a la carte data. It just doesn't make any sense to me, especially when AT&T continues to offer similar plans (admittedly for $15/month not $5/month) on the iPad.

So did AT&T's policy change hit you? How are you taking it and what do you plan to do in response? Let me know. Share in the comments.

AT&T kills cheap data. I'm still cranky. originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 08 May 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Sharp eyed TUAW reader Michael Roberts noticed something intriguing when he logged into iCloud today. What seems to be a notification pop-up appeared at the top of the iCloud.com webpage. Several TUAW staffers confirmed this behavior.

Currently using stand-in values ("Default Title" for "English" and "English - This is test message description" [sic]), it looks like Apple is getting ready to introduce some hot new integration into their web services.

iCloud to debut notifications? TUAW confirms mystery iCloud feature originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 08 May 2012 12:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

During an interview with CNET, AT&T's mobile business CEO Ralph de la Vega revealed the company would soon introduce a family data plan. This would allow customers to buy a sharable data bucket, letting that purchased bandwidth be used across multiple devices.

de la Vega told CNET that he was "very comfortable" with the plan being developed and that he knew how the plan would be structured. He did not offer any details on pricing, timing, or bucket sizes.

Verizon is expected to offer a family data plan soon, possibly this summer.

[via The Mac Observer]

AT&T considers "Family Plans" for wireless data originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 08 May 2012 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When it comes to evaluating the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is print-on-demand.

Everybody's doing it. Amazon does it. Lulu does it. Even Apple does it -- so long as what you're printing is a photo book.

So why haven't we heard a peep about iBooks Author (iBA) print-on-demand? Wouldn't it be nearly as easy to produce an iBA project as a photo one? So what's the hold up?

We think that iBooks Author offers a perfect opportunity for Apple to extend its already excellent POD services to a new group of customers. They could easily extend their current meant-for-iBooks templates to a variety of more printer-friendly options.

Sure they'd have to change the pricing model, add more pages, allow black & white printing, and implement other changes that reflected the difference between heirloom photo collections and a standard print book. We get that, along with the big set-up overhead that would be involved. But think of how awesome it might be.

So why have we heard not a whispered rumor? Is this a no-go area for Apple?

You tell us. Place your vote in this poll and then join in the comments with all your analysis.

View Poll

You're the Pundit: Could Apple introduce iBooks Author print-on-demand? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 08 May 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A recommendation by Chris Forsythe pointed me to Dave Wooldridge and Michael Schneider's book "The Business of iPhone and iPad Development: Making and Marketing Apps" (Apress, 2011).

A practical primer on creating your business plan, the book offers advice on topics diverse as protecting your intellectual property and why testing and usability is crucial for app success.

It's an easy read (admittedly a little choppy in the writing at times) but I found it full of valuable advice, especially for anyone who is thinking about entering the App Store ecosystem but hasn't jumped in yet.

You'll find coverage about competitive research and being realistic about what it takes to succeed in App Store. From pricing your app (free or not), monetizing free apps (iAds and other in-app opportunities), to Freemium models (leveraging in-app purchase), a large part of the book centers on understanding how to sell. A final series of chapters covers marketing issues, like creating pre-release buzz and press releases.

If I have any criticism, it's that the authors sometimes went a little too technical (there's actual code in the book and their intro recommends a programming background) for a general business text. The advice here is perfectly valid for people hiring tech personnel, not just one-man dev shops. There's also a bunch of lists that seem to be there to increase the page count rather than offer a practical value to the reader and the ebook table of contents was set up in an odd way (you have to click on page numbers, not section names). Those are minor quibbles.

I wish the authors had spent more time on the strength of the book (creating a business plan) and less on technical implementation details. That said, there's plenty of good, solid advice and you should not be scared away from purchasing this title if you're not a programmer.

[Full disclosure: Steve Sande and I are writing Pitch Perfect, which talks about how to pitch your app for reviews and has some (but not much) topic overlap with this book.]

TUAW Bookshelf -- The Business of iPhone and iPad Development: Making and Marketing Apps originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 07 May 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Normally we turn to the TUAW Brain Trust for your opinions about hot topics in the news and your predictions about the future of tech. Today, we're switching things up. Instead of asking about where things are going, we're asking you about strategy.

Here's the situation: Like many authors, TUAW blogger Steve Sande and I have fallen in love with Apple's iBooks Author page layout tool. When writing our book about preparing your computer for the upcoming 10.8 OS X upgrade, we decided to create an iBA version for iBooks and a standard Kindle edition for Amazon.

Although frustrating to use at times (it's still early days in iBooks-ville, such as where's the "Split into new chapter at this point" option?), we loved the look and feel of what iBooks Author produced. It's slick, it's hot, it's yummy. We uploaded our product last week using the nifty in-app "Publish to iBooks" feature.

Then people started asking us: "What about us iPhone users? Don't we get to read the book too?" You see, here's the problem: iBooks Author doesn't do iPhone. It's an iPad-only product.

And there is the heart of our dilemma. Should we invest the time, the extra ISBN, and the extremely high annoyance overhead to convert our Kindle version to an iBooks-compliant ePUB via our old creaky copies of Pages? (We mean it about the annoyance. It's a huge pain.)

You tell us. We're going to go with your advice. We're giving you a poll and the comments are open for your opinion. Should ebook authors make an end-run around iBooks Author to create iPhone-compatible ePUBs that reach a wider audience or are we wasting time and effort on a format that can never really compare to the iPad experience?

View Poll

You're Our Editor: iBooks Author or ePub for the iBooks store? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 06 May 2012 12:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

For whatever reason, many Amazon authors seem to be under the impression that you can only create a proper table of contents for Kindle Direct Publishing on Windows, not the Mac.

Having just uploaded our newest book (Getting Ready for Mountain Lion) to Amazon, Steve Sande and I have invested a lot of time learning the quirks of KDP and its tools, as well as those for iBooks (but more about that in another post). For any of our readers who are also budding authors or publishers, we'll be sharing what we've learned in a TUAW series called "iBook Lessons."

We thought we'd share our KDP Table of Contents strategy with you to help reduce the hair-pulling and frustration associated with document preparation. Here are the steps we use in Microsoft Word 2008 and 2011 to create our TOC.

1. Create a fresh page and add Table of Contents text line, formatted with your favorite header style.
2. Move your cursor just to the left of "Table". Choose Insert > Bookmark. Call the bookmark toc and click Add. This creates a bookmark before the title, named in such a way that KDP's automatic conversion tools will recognize it as the start of your Table of Contents. All the Kindle hardware and apps will be able to use it as well.
3. Generate a temporary TOC, so you have an outline to start working with. Move to under your Table of Contents header to a new line. Choose Insert > Index and Tables > Table of Contents. Uncheck "Show Page Numbers".
4. Click Options. Choose which heading styles you wish to include. If you use custom styles (e.g. H1 instead of Header 1) make sure to add a level for those as well. Typically, most ebook TOCs use either just H1 or H1 and H2. Your call. Click OK to finish options. Click OK again to generate the contents.
5. Select the entire TOC, cut it, and paste it into TextEdit to be your guide to the next step.
6. For each entry in the TOC, locate the start of that section in your manuscript. Set your cursor to the left of each section title. Again, use Insert > Bookmark to create a bookmark at that position. Name each item with a meaningful (and easy-to-recognize) tag.
7. After bookmarking your entire document, return to the initial Table of Contents section. Paste the text from TextEdit back into your document as simple, unlinked text.
8. For each item on your list, select the entire line: i.e. every word, not just clicking to the left of the name as you did to set bookmarks. Then choose Insert > Hyperlink (Command-K). Choose the Document tab, and click the Locate button to the right of the Anchor text field. Choose the bookmark you wish to link to, and click OK.
9. Repeat for the remaining TOC entries.

Once you've finished adding bookmarks and hyperlinks, save your work. Go to KDP and upload the file (you may want to create a testbed skeleton book entry just for this purpose). Download the .mobi file it generates and try it out on the Kindle Mac app and/or any Kindles or iPads/iPhones you have on-hand. Amazon's Kindle Previewer app is also available for download from KDP, and provides simulated views of your ebook on iPhone, iPad, Kindle, Kindle DX, and Kindle Fire.

Always make sure you test each link to ensure that the bookmarks are placed properly. Also test the Table of Contents button in-app and check that it jumps you to the TOC correctly.

Best of luck in your ebook / iBook publishing efforts, and look forward to more tips about publishing here on TUAW.

iBook Lessons: Creating Amazon KDP tables of contents on MS Word for Macintosh originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 05 May 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Landon Fuller of the Plausible Labs cooperative has just updated simlaunch, a github project that allows you to create iOS Simulator application bundles that launch from the desktop.

This utility helps developers to share builds for testing, for promotion, and for fun that run on the Mac without need for hardware, special signing permissions, or ad hoc provisions.

Although I contributed to the original project, all the updates were performed by Landon and all kudos and thanks should be aimed in his direction.

Simlaunch is released under the MIT license (which is similar to BSD).

DevJuice: Sim Launcher updated originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 03 May 2012 18:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I've got my golden tickets to WWDC but this is my first time traveling to Oz. Do you have some suggestions for what I should pack and any tips for dealing with things once I'm out there?

Thanks a bunch!

Your loving nephew,

Arthur

Dear Arthur,

Auntie turned to two of her favorite nephews for advice. Oliver Drobnik of Cocoanetics offered her an extremely practical list.

His suggestions include

• A camping chair if you plan to queue from 6 am for the keynote and some friends (or make some) that will save you your seat or place in line when you need to step out.
• For MacBooks without Ethernet: the USB Ethernet LAN adapter, A power adapter for your Macbook with a US-plug converter, possibly a 10W USB adapter to charge iPad and iPhone with independently from MacBook, and an iPad/iPhone loaded with all your done or in-progress apps that you want to show off to your colleagues, apps that you want to schedule a design review for, and apps that you want to speak to the app review team about.
• Business Cards with your Twitter account on it and possibly a promo code for your best apps
• Some good questions and possibly example projects to ask the Apple engineers in the labs, CATiledLayer, iCloud with CoreData, etc.

Auntie notes that you'll want to bring along a sweater or jacket for that campout (it gets cold out there). Plus, you can purchase a folding chair once you get there. One less thing to pack. Here's Yelp's report on drugstores near Moscone. Auntie has purchased her chairs at Walgreens. Consider donating your chair to a worthy local before heading home.

As for business cards, TUAW's favorite vendor for high quality cards is moo.com (You can get a discount if you're an about.me customer).

Nephew Chris Forsythe of the Growl Project recommends that you consider loading a clean OS X and Xcode install via VMWare or Parallels. That way, you can do the labs at WWDC without affecting your dev workspace.

Finally, Auntie recommends that you pack some sucking candy (helps keep your ears from popping on flights, make sure to bring along enough to share with everyone), some deodorant (be thoughtful to the other 5000 geeks standing in line with you), and that you call Auntie on your cell during the keynote so she can listen in.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

p.s. Auntie's nephew Rudy points out: "If you plug your laptop power brick into the power strip, hogging multiple outlets, you will be unplugged by your fellow conference goers." Bring the corded adapter and consider purchasing one of these.

Dear Aunt TUAW: I'm going to WWDC. What should I pack? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 02 May 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When it comes to evaluating the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is AppleScript.

"AppleScript is a bit like Office Space's Milton Wadams. It's put upon and underappreciated, but then again probably going to be moved to the basement soon." -- Victor Agreda

Ah AppleScript. What a curious artifact it is, lingering on as it does into the Mountain Lion age, long after its inception as a natural-language inspired developer automation language. First debuting in System 7, AppleScript allows apps to control one another to script repetitive tasks.

Apps declare scriptable actions that they support (for example, you can tell iTunes to create playlists, to rename tracks, and so forth) and AppleScript lets you build short programs to perform these actions as if a user were interacting directly.

In today's Sandboxed world, where apps need to schedule playdates, carry ID cards, pass Gatekeepers, and request privileges, AppleScript is something of a living fossil. It harkens back to the Wild West days of "anyone can do anything, so long as it's between consenting apps." It seems to me that AppleScript is due to meet a natural end.

It's not as if the language were a joy to use. At best, it was painful. "Nothing exemplifies self-hatred better than AppleScript!" "Beat me, whip me, make me write AppleScript" and so on. There are dozens of ways to do any task in AppleScript and nearly all of them are just a quick typo away from being wrong. It offers a very frustrating development environment.

"AppleScript is one of the most interesting word puzzles ever. Nothing like trying to guess the right verbs and nouns each time" -- Richard Goodwin

At the same time, it is deeply convenient -- a way to add extra functionality to your Mac and perform complex tasks with a simple entry point. I still have dozens of scripts on my Lion Mac that I use on a near daily basis -- from resizing images for TUAW posts to signing apps for iOS testing.

As useful as AppleScript is, I cannot see it moving forward much further. Already, the Mac App Store has ruled out most AppleScript based submissions that control one app from another (Incidentally, this killed my QTSkipper utility, which allows you to perform 30-second TiVo-like jumps in QuickTime). So does AppleScript-based automation continue to have a future on the Mac?

Lex Friedman of Macworld wrote up a pretty good summary of the situation a couple of months ago. He discusses the various ways scripts operate and how Mountain Lion will treat each scenario.

But this doesn't address the bigger question: in a post-PC world, does AppleScript-style automation really deserve a place on our computers? That's much harder to answer, especially as Apple moves away from scripting, the command line, and other relics of hard core nerdism to a consumer-centric focus that places its emphasis on seamess computing.

I'm not sure tomorrow's Macs will have room for that kind or level of customization, and if so, then we're looking at one of the longest lived, powerful, and most convenient aspects of the Apple world reaching a natural end.

For all that AppleScript drives me crazy, I would greatly miss it if it were to have to go away.

Is AppleScript at its end? You tell us. Place your vote in this poll and then join in the comments with all your analysis.

View Poll

You're the Pundit: 50 Shades of AppleScript originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Remember The Fly? That's the one where Jeff Goldblum tries to teleport but instead gets his genes all mixed up with a fly.

"[T]he Telepod computer, confused by the presence of two separate life-forms in the sending pod, merged him with the fly at the molecular-genetic level."

Look at Lion/Mountain Lion and iOS; it's easy to see that the two operating systems are growing closer together, starting to converge. If you're willing to put on your crazy hat (tinfoil is optional), you might consider the following thought experiment. What if Apple consolidates the two into a dual-mode OS that supports both mobile and desktop use?

Developers have seen OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion pick up numerous mobile features like Game Center, Reminders, and Notification Center. Apple is implementing an iOS-like sandboxing approach to application development with high levels of permission requirements. Apple is integrating share sheets (a UI metaphor that helps users route data from one app to another using a centralized delegation mechanism) in a manner similar to iOS.

Even Xcode, the bulwark of traditional "general computing," is being assimilated. Starting this spring, Xcode is now available only through the App Store, distributed in a compliant sandboxed app bundle. When even the main developer IDE for the Mac is subject to the onslaught of the future, Apple's transformation of the Mac OS has few obstacles ahead of it.

Sure, Tim Cook has warned us about the fate of the toaster fridge. "I think anything can be forced to converge," he said last week during the Apple Q2 financials call (referring, in this case, to Windows 8 Metro). "The problem is that products are about trade-offs, and you begin to make trade-offs to the point where what you have left at the end of the day doesn't please anyone. You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user."

I don't think Cook's statement rules out a unified OS that adapts, depending on the user's situation, instead of forcing users into a single UI for mobile and desktop access. Under the hood, there's already very little separating the core technology of OS X and iOS. I also think Apple is smart enough not to force desktop users into an interface better suited for use on the road, and vice versa.

The key isn't creating a chimera that tries to please everyone and suits no one. Instead, I think Apple is capable of delivering a satisfying computing experience that works in multiple environments. Call it "situational computing."

It's not as if they haven't explored this arena before. Add in the ever growing importance of AirPlay, which allows interfaces to be wirelessly mirrored outside one device to another display, and iCloud, which sublimates data out from any single device and syncs it to all your computing platforms, and you're diving into an amphibious core technology, one that can adapt to sea or land as needed. (To stretch a metaphor to near-breaking.)

In many ways, OS X is "too much computing" for a great proportion of Apple's consumer audience. A simplified user interface would suit many needs, and cover nearly everything users need to accomplish -- although I do believe they need more sophistication than an iPad currently offers.

It's just that OS X Lion and Mountain Lion is a bit of overkill. Yes, OS X (and going back to Mac OS 9) offers Simple Finder, but even dropping most of the complexity of the file management environment doesn't change the inter-application experience, which remains fully OS X complex.

iOS as it currently stands, however, will never be a perfect solution for students creating research papers. It's designed for serial unitasking, not the multiple research threads and tasks of academic work.

Hopping between a text editor and Safari is horrific, and even good apps like Daedalus Touch or Writing Kit at best provide Frankensolutions. In fact, most creative work requires app-to-app switching: creating pictures in Photoshop, editing text in Word, updating spreadsheets in Numbers, and presentations in Keynote.

I trust that Apple can create a multi-windowed version of iOS, simplifying the need for a multitasking interface. I also believe Apple can leverage wireless ways to treat every monitor as a potential extra screen.

This display outreach feature already exists with Apple TV and AirPlay in current iOS deployments. So why not extend it to all Macs and all displays? The third party Reflection app, which I have been using a great deal since it debuted, provides a hint of the possibilities.

That's because AirPlay isn't just about mirroring. It's also about adding extra screens. You already see this in a few games like Real Racing and Bartleby 2. The device acts as the controller, and the AirPlay destination works as a secondary screen.

These apps represent just the start of where the technology might take off, especially if Apple introduces a hardware touch-based Apple TV. I should mention that the hardware TV is a possibility that I'm a bit dubious about; others here at TUAW believe in it a lot more than I do. I'm happy to be proved wrong.

But think about taking AirPlay to the next level, passively expanding its functionality to offer to transfer control to your iMac or Thunderbolt Display when your iPad comes in range of AirPlay Bonjour services.

Imagine redirecting iPad computing to your home screen while sitting at your desktop, with your data and your application state travelling back out with you as you once again hit the road, courtesy of iCloud. Imagine a slide-in laptop shell that transforms the iPad's retina display back to desktop/laptop mode for more intense work sessions when needed.

The thing is this: I don't see any big roadblocks preventing this vision from being implemented today, with current tech and current software capabilities. It's as if all the pieces are there already, just waiting for Apple to give the signal to go and productize them.

Sure, Cook has warned us away from Toaster Fridges. But do you think Apple has made a habit of developing Toaster Fridges ever? I trust Apple. And I think they could easily go in this direction, delivering high quality consumer technology.

When Apple says "No", we hear "maybe." This is not the first time we've gone to the Apple dance. It is classic Apple. They make fun of some tech (netbooks, tablets, whatever) and then they create the definitive version of that device, building something that redefines the market forever.

Sure, this entire post is wild speculation -- but remember this: the capacity for implementing this kind of development path is already there. There's nothing I've discussed that's groundbreaking or would require huge R&D. Will iOS and OS X merge into OS Xi? Maybe. Can they? Definitely. Perhaps Apple will surprise me and deliver this unicorn? Possibly.

What do you think? Jump in and leave a comment with your thoughts.

The road to OS Xi: Where iOS and OS X suffer a teleporter accident and merge originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 29 Apr 2012 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When it comes to evaluating the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is Apple operating systems.

In Steve Jobs' road map when Lion was first presented, he discussed what would later be known as the "Post PC" world. He talked about including lessons from iOS in the new operating system, and highlighted how consumer-centered products were the future.

Now, with Mountain Lion, that convergence grows stronger. With OS X 10.8, many iOS core features like Game Center, Notifications, and Reminders, have made the jump over to OS X, joining the Mac App Store and natural touch scrolling as mobile-inspired developments.

Are the two operating systems set to merge even more? Most minds think yes. But how close will they go? Is a single OS on the horizon? Or will the fear of toasterfridges keep them distinct?

You tell us. Place your vote in this poll and then join in the comments with all your analysis.

View Poll

You're the Pundit: Are iOS and OS X headed on a collision course? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 28 Apr 2012 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When it comes to evaluating the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is WWDC.

When Tim Cook takes the stage and introduces new products and roadmaps, what announcements are you looking forward to most? Are you a hardware person? Or is the software what you're waiting to hear about?

You tell us. Place your vote in this poll and then join in the comments with all your analysis.

View Poll

You're the Pundit: What are you looking forward to at the WWDC keynote? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

WWDC sold out pretty quickly yesterday. So what do you do if you want to be part of the dev scene that week? IndieDevLab to the rescue. Monster Costume devs Kyle Kinkade and Nate True and JailbreakCon's Craig Fox quickly started organizing a way for iOS and OS X developers to gather together outside of Moscone.

Offering a community-powered lab space, IndieDevLab will provide power, high-speed wi-fi, air conditioning, and peer support. Located just a few blocks from the Moscone center, Kinkade scored a perfect location to allow devs to meet up, Tweet up, and get their development on.

A three-day hackathon re-mix event will add spice to the festivities.

Kinkade tells TUAW tickets will go on sale at 12PM Pacific. "We want to make sure that West Coast developers have all the time they need to sleep in," Kinkade added pointedly.

If you want to get in on this, make sure to register right away. WWDC is not the only event that's will be in big demand. Tickets are $129/day with a $8 fee. Early bird tickets are just $99.

IndieDevLab offers community space near Moscone if you didn't get a WWDC ticket originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I just got the nicest surprise on my iPhone. I don't know how long this has been going on, but my AT&T Pay as You Go feature packs just got much, much better. If you're a PayGo customer for an old iPhone like I am (I use PayGo with my 3GS), your $5 now buys you 50MB.

Here's a quick comparison of the old and new allocation amounts.

If you want to learn about putting a PayGo SIM into your GSM iPhone, hop on over to this older post that describes all the details.

Update: Looks like bad news along with the good. I have not seen this myself. This screen shot is courtesy of @techclimb. I cannot confirm this policy change but I've reached out to AT&T for comment.

Here's the message I received today:

Further Update: An AT&T spokesperson confirms: "Yes, customers on certain GoPhone voice plans ($2/day and the $0.10/min option) need to subscribe to a monthly plan in order to use a data package. (Customers on those two plans can still pay a PPU rate for data, of course...) Qualifying monthly plans are the $50 Unlimited Talk & Text nationwide plan for GoPhone smartphones and the $25 Unlimited Text with 250 minutes nationwide GoPhone plan. "

Cheap data just got cheaper at AT&T [Updated with bad news] originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dear Aunt TUAW,

Is there a way to change Siri's spelling of my name at the end of an email? I would like it to print out "Gerry" and not "Jerry," but I can't figure out how to do it. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Your loving nephew,

Gerald ("Gerry")

Dear Gerry,

That's actually a really hard request, since you're asking Siri to replace a known well-enunciated name with an alternative spelling. The only way Auntie can figure out how to handle this is to spell out the name during the dictation. "Gee. Ee. Ar. Ar. Why." This creates an upper-case presentation that may work well enough for you, e.g.

It's Auntie's considered opinion, however, that you'd probably be better off simply adding your name to your normal signature, e.g. "From Gerry. Sent from my iPhone" or similar. You can edit this in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, > Signature.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help Siri call me Gerry originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.