I met up with the guys behind iBackflip while at Macworld, and was impressed with their passion for design. Their first iBackflip was a pretty straightforward flip-down arm sling for the iPad. Using Velcro, it offered a basic black design and minimal extras. The new iBackflip Somersault, now available for pre-order, is a thoroughly updated version. At $99, I got to see one of the final versions, fresh from their factory.

The Somersault's main feature is the ability to position the iPad in front of you while being securely fastened to your body via an ample sling. The flip-down panel securing the iPad is no longer Velcro, it is a sturdy YKK zipper now, and the iPad is more securely fastened in its own pocket.

In addition to an iPad, the Somersault has room for an 11" MacBook Air, pockets for your headphones, ID, etc. and several loops on the shoulder strap. This is made of durable ballistic nylon in the USA and looks terrific. I can't believe they're only charging $99 for them, but I'm not complaining. Take it from someone who is a bit of a luggage/case nut, the Somersault is an excellent case for your iPad or small computer if you don't need to carry a full backpack and want a great deal on a quality on-the-go style bag.

Check out the designer giving a demo below.

iBackFlip Somersault available for preorder; watch creator explain improvements originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A silent update to the backend has introduced Genius recommendations for movies and TV shows to the Apple TV. No user action is required to access the new feature, as it's not part of a device firmware update. Instead, Apple has updated its own servers to send this information to the Apple TV from its iTunes Store equivalent.

Based on AppleInsider's screenshots of the updated Apple TV UI, this feature appears essentially identical to the Genius recommendation features already present in iTunes on the Mac and iOS devices. With access to your library and purchase history, the Apple TV can now recommend TV or movie content based on what you've watched before.

Apple TV now offers Genius recommendations for movies, TV shows originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you want to pass like Tom Brady from the comfort of your living room chair, then you should grab a copy of NFL Flick Quarterback for the iPhone. The app is a flick-style passing game that lets you take on the role of an NFL quarterback. The game isn't a full-fledged football simulation like Madden 2012, but a passing game as its name suggests.

Even though it focuses on only one aspect of the gridiron game, NFL Flick Quarterback is a lot of fun. You star as a quarterback of your favorite team and get to choose your jersey number. Your goal is to complete passes to receivers down field. Sounds easy until you throw in a defender or two who'll try to deflect your pass.

You throw the pass by flicking the ball out of the quarterback's hand. The faster and straighter you flick the ball, the harder and straighter your pass will be. Once the pass is in the air, you can swipe left or right to nudge the ball in either direction. The game is easy and enjoyable which makes it perfect for the casual iPhone gamer.

NFL Flick Quarterback is available for $.99 from the iOS App Store.

Daily iPhone App: NFL Flick Quarterback originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Seamus Blackley is one of the co-creators of Microsoft's original Xbox console, and he put together a really interesting team of old-school Atari game developers recently to make mobile games. Blackley's new company is called Innovative Leisure, and while the website isn't anything more than a groovy logo, the devs he's got on board make for a pretty impressive list: Ed Rotberg (who made Battlezone), Owen Rubin (Space Duel), Rich Adam (who worked on Missile Command), Ed Logg (the creator of Astroids and Centipede), Dennis Koble (who programmed Shooting Gallery), Bruce Merrit (creator of Black Widow) and Tim Skelly (who is also an old school game dev, though not with Atari).

The company is completely separate from Atari (which already has a pretty significant presence on the App Store), but the team has some money already and is reportedly working on prototypes and ideas for a first game.

It should be interesting. The mobile gaming market is filling up fast, but there's no question that these guys know how to make solid and interesting arcade games. We'll have to see what they can do with iOS and other mobile platforms.

Atari team rejoins to make mobile titles originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

No Flash? Click here to listen.

Daily Update for February 3, 2012 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you've ever corresponded with Apple Support (or any major customer support outlet, really), you might have seen that little notice at the bottom of the email that says any conversation included "may be privileged and may contain confidential information." Most of the time, that's just a weak move to try and cover up any issues that customer support may cause. But in Apple's case, they sometimes try to take it seriously. David Bowles is a blogger who had an issue with his Thunderbolt display warranty, and when he corresponded with Apple about it, he posted it on the Go Inside magazine website.

Just a little while after that, however, he received an email from Apple's tech support notifying him that they'd seen the "confidential" information posted online, and telling him that he should take it all down, under threat of "further action" (whatever that may be). After discussion with a support manager, Bowles eventually decided just to take down the correspondence from Apple (the rest of the post is still up, and TechCrunch is publishing the takedown notice), and that seems to have calmed the beast for now.

So what does this mean for the rest of us? Probably not much -- Bowles emailed the link of the blog post directly to the tech support crew, so even if Apple is searching the web for its emails being posted, it's unknown if the company would have found Bowles email post at all. And though the takedown email did threaten "further action," it's hard to guess just what that further action would be. Even if Apple really did want to keep these emails from being published (and they probably don't really care, otherwise they would go after TechCrunch), it's hard to say what kind of legal ground they'd be able to stand on.

In other words, much ado about nothing. As for Bowles, there's no news on if his Applecare warranty ever got fixed the way he wanted it, but his blogs sure didn't suffer for the attention.

Apple sends takedown notice about customer support email originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

FileVault 2 is a feature of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion that provides a way to encrypt a full disk drive so that it can only be used by those who know a password ... until now, that is. Passware, a company that makes forensic software used to recover lost passwords or open encrypted files to police and others, has announced that their Passware Kit Forensic 11.4 software (US$995) can extract the keys to FileVault 2 in an average of 40 minutes.

Password was able to recover data from FileVault 2 encrypted drives regardless of the length and complexity of passwords. Fortunately for Mac users, however, not only does the cracking require a relatively expensive piece of software, but it also requires that certain conditions be in place for the software to be able to extract the FileVault keys.

The Mac must be powered on and logged in; in other words, the FileVault keys must be in memory for Passware Kit Forensic to extract them. Passware can't extract encryption keys on static data, nor can it determine what the keys are before they've been requested as part of the log-in process.

That means that as long as you turn off automatic login, you should be safe. To turn off automatic login on your FileVault 2-encrypted Mac, go to System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Options and make sure that "Off" is selected from the drop-down. The other tip to keep you safe? Turn off your laptop while traveling so that the Passware software cannot be used to hack into it.

There's one other good piece of news; hackers need to get to the contents of memory through a working FireWire or Thunderbolt port, so the Passware process does not work via remote access. Likewise, those older MacBook Airs that only have USB ports are safe from this method -- commenter Thomas Brand on the Brooks Review notes that "Thunderbolt and FireWire access data directly from the system bus allowing the exploit. USB goes through the CPU."

Yes, FileVault 2 encryption is vulnerable. But with a few easy, common-sense steps, mobile Mac users can keep their data safe anyway.

Apple FileVault 2 encryption cracked, but don't panic originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Super Bowl is just around the corner which means it's time to get ready for the big game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots. Rather than our usual five apps, I couldn't contain myself and, instead, put together five categories of apps that'll set you up nicely for food, football and fun this coming Sunday.

Official NFL and Team Apps

if you want to learn more about the Patriots's offense and the Giants's defense, then you should download each team's iOS app. The Giants have a free app for the iPhone, while the Patriots have chosen to go iPad-only with a magazine-style app. The Patriots Football Daily app has a free 7-day trial followed by a paid subscription.

The NFL also has a suite of apps to commemorate the game. Each Super Bowl XLVI app is filled with statistics, images and more about current and past Super Bowl match ups.

Party Prep and Post-Game Pictures

The best part of the game (besides the commercials) is spending it with family and friends. You can use Red Stamp to prepare your guest list and send out party invitations. Once you know who is coming, you can use 170,000+recipes from BigOven to start cooking for your crowd. When the party is over, you can use Pic Collage to assemble your pictures and share them with your party attendees.

Social Apps That'll Let You Share The Game

Part of the fun of the game is sharing it with others. Now that social apps are a dime a dozen, you can share your thoughts and comments with the world, not just your friends in the room. Besides Facebook and Twitter, you can use Football Connect to play along with the game and talk trash with your friends. If you want to know what other NFL Pros are saying about the game, then check out NFL Pro Tweets which will give you a stream of tweets from players who are watching from the sidelines.

There's also IntoNow, a social app from Yahoo that gives you content exclusively for the game while tracking the TV broadcast. The app includes a StatTracker, a way to share the play-by-play action and a sports news feed from Yahoo. If you tag the Super Bowl using the IntoNow app and watch the Pepsi Max ad, you can enter the Pepsi MAX for Life sweepstakes.

Apps For Watching and Listening To The Game

For the first time, the NFL will stream the Super Bowl over the internet. If you're a cord cutter, you'll finally be able to watch the game on your MacBook Air. If you're going to be mobile, then you'll want to download Pro Football Radio Live. You won't be able to watch the game, but the app will let you listen to it live. If you are a Verizon Wireless customer, you can download the NFL Mobile app. It's free to download and requires a US$3 daily or $10 monthly subscription to watch the video streams. The Super Bowl will be broadcast live over Verizon's airwaves on Sunday, so make sure you have the app, an Internet connection and some cash to watch the game.

Football-Themed Games

While you wait for the big game, you can fill your time with football-themed games like Pocket Passer QB, a natural football throwing game with several fun mini-games. If you prefer to be a kicker instead of a quarterback, then NFL Kicker might fit the bill. It's a flick-style game that lets you hone your field goal kicking skills. Lastly, there's NFL Pro 2012 from Gameloft, a full-fledged football game that lets you become a gridiron champion.

Five apps for Super Bowl Sunday originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The news just keeps getting better for Apple in the mobile phone business. Just yesterday, IDC reported that the company is in third place in terms of worldwide mobile phone sales. Today, Asymco analyst Horace Dediu announced that with a relatively small piece of the pie (IDC said 6 percent of market, Dediu says 8.7 percent), Apple is pulling in a whopping 75 percent of profits in the industry.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Apple 2.0 notes in an analysis of Dediu's numbers that out of the top eight manufacturers, only five are showing meaningful profits. Samsung has about a 16 percent profit share, while "Nokia, Research in Motion, and HTC are just scraping by. Motorola, LG and Sony, which bought out Ericsson last month, are still in the red."

As Elmer-DeWitt points out, this is for all mobile phones, not just smartphones. And these numbers are for the worldwide market, not just the United States. He concludes that "This doesn't bode well for the manufacturers who have hitched their wagon to Google's Android or Microsoft's Windows Mobile 7."

Apple rollin' in the dough: 75% of cell phone profits originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

An incremental release for iBooks Author has been released with changes to the program's EULA. The update is 143.50 MB, which seems pretty hefty for a EULA change.

The change is an important one though, clarifying that Apple has rights over the format a book is in, not the content. If someone wants to charge a fee for an .ibooks formatted file, that document can only be sold or distributed through Apple, and that work will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple. The restriction does not include works distributed in non-.ibooks formats (such as the Kindle), as TUAW's Erica Sadun previously discussed.

iBooks Author 1.01 out with updated EULA originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Several OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard users are reporting that Power PC-coded apps no longer work after applying Security Update 2012-001.

The Apple support boards are full of stories about Rosetta apps crashing when any command is selected from the menu bar. Complaints seem heaviest from those running older versions of Microsoft Office, Quicken, FileMaker and Photoshop. Some users have recommended unofficial workarounds for the problem (attempt at your own risk), and it isn't known if Apple will fix the issue.

Rosetta was deep-sixed in Lion, but was working fine in Snow Leopard until the security update was issued on Wednesday. Rosetta was introduced in Mac OS X 10.4.4; the code-translation layer allows apps that require a PowerPC Mac to operate on Intel-based Macs.

Meanwhile, this week's Lion update had its own share of issues, with a number of users seeing strange graphics on screen and getting caught in a loop where applications would not close or re-open. Fortunately, it seems that applying the 10.7.3 combo update fixed the issue for many users.

Users report Rosetta problems after Security Update 2012-001 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Motorola scored a victory against Apple today when it won a permanent injunction against the company's iCloud and MobileMe push email service. According to FOSS Patents, the injunction is "preliminarily enforceable," which means Motorola can enforce the ruling right away by posting a 100 million euro bond. Posting a bond and enforcing this ruling is risky, though. If Apple appeals and wins, then Motorola will be liable for damages from enforcing this injunction early.

If enforced, Apple must disable the push email portion of its iCloud and MobileMe service. Customers in Germany affected by this injunction will have to turn off push email and configure their mail clients to pull down emails periodically. This permanent injunction resulted from a complaint filed by Motorola in April 2011. Apple has the right to contest this ruling and will likely file a formal appeal with the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court.

Apple and Motorola scuffle over iCloud and push email originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I would like to run Mac OS X 10.6.7 off a RAM disk, for better performance/security while browsing the World Wide Web (I don't want to save the image with all those gnarly cookie crumbs to disk).

I understand that a family living down the street from me is able to run Linux from a RAM disk -- can you help me out?

Your loving niece,

Emily

Dear Emily,

Auntie immediately consulted with Unkie Mike after receiving your letter. He responded as follows:

Running OS X off a RAM disk isn't supported (and hasn't been on the Mac for a long, long time -- since Mac OS 9, in fact). Linux is a different beast.

You can run a browser in private or 'incognito' mode if you're concerned about security, or use a virtualization tool like Parallels or VMware to run a virtual Mac on your Mac. However, to run 10.6.7 virtualized you'd need the server version (expensive).

You can get most of the performance benefits of a RAM disk with an SSD boot drive, which we've covered on the site.

Further, Unkie uncovered the following information from a post on the MacRumors forum. Attributed to a "former Apple Employee," this seems to describe why RAM disks are a poor match to OS X.

That thing is snake oil, as are the vast majority of ramdisk products on OS X. Designing a ramdisk that works well on OS X is remarkably difficult because backing a block device into wired memory causes the contents to be double buffered above it in the Unified Buffer Cache.

For transient data on systems with no VM pressure, what will happen is the file is created, the object backing it sits in the UBC, it might get synched to disk, but unless you are running low on ram it stays in ram as well. That is why you see no speed increases, all you are doing is eliminating the background asynch writeout, and you are wasting a lot of ram to do it. More importantly, if you are actually creating a wired ram disk you are eating a ton of kernel address space which can be an issue if you have a lot of memory (large page tables) or several video cards.

Getting back to your actual issue, it sounds to Auntie as if you're looking for a secure browsing solution rather than a RAM disk boot solution. For that, take a look at this Macworld hints post that shows you how to store your Safari cache on a RAM drive.

Hope this helps.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Can I boot from a RAM disk? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Earlier today, Apple was forced to remove the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 (not the iPhone 4S), and all 3G iPads from its online store in Germany. This injunction was short-lived as Apple appealed and the German court suspended the ban.

The company told Slashgear, "Apple appealed this ruling because Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago." It also confirmed that "All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale through Apple's online store in Germany shortly."

According to FOSS Patents, the original removal was the result of a German court ruling in favor of Motorola that was handed down in early December. In this decision, the Mannheim Regional Court said Apple violated telecommunication patents owned by Motorola. Motorola had the option to enforce the ban by posting a 100 million euro bond and it appears that the company took this step earlier today.

[Via FOSS Patents]

Apple resumes sales of 3G iPhones and iPads in Germany originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple stepped up its legal campaign against Samsung by expanding its Australian lawsuit to include 278 new claims which cover 22 patents and ten devices. The original suit, filed last year, targeted only the Galaxy Tab 10.1, which Apple claimed violated less than five of its patents.

Samsung lead barrister Neil Young spoke to The Australian, and said Apple "enormously" expanded its legal claim against Samsung. He confirmed the Korean company was given "days notice" of this expanded claim and may need until mid-May to prepare properly for its defense.

Last December 2011, the case took a turn in favor of Samsung when a judge overturned Apple's injunction banning the sale of the Galaxy 10.1 tablet. Samsung was able to obtain this reversal just in time to catch the end of the holiday shopping season.

[Via The Next Web]

Apple expands Australian lawsuit against Samsung with 278 new claims originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dave Caolo and I were chatting this morning about iBooks and spelling. "It's not my daughter's favorite subject," he said, "and I'm looking for a way to make it more appealing to her." He asked if there could there be any way to incorporate spelling quizzes into iBooks via Author.

The answer is, unfortunately, not clearly yes. That's because iBooks Author assumes that all interaction will be by multiple choice. That means you can create interactions to choose from common misspellings and from homonyms, but can't solicit freeform text entry.

That gives rise to the kind of interaction you see below. The shortcomings are apparent. For example, you cannot define any item that isn't tied to a specific location (so you can't create a pool of misspellings without destinations). If the reader switches the order of the two misspelled words (here Tale and Flour) those are marked wrong as well.

So I hopped into Dashcode and built a widget that would solicit a correctly spelled word and embedded it into an Author project as follows. This turned out to be a failure. Although the embedded audio prompt worked fine (albeit in a separate interactive element), widgets do not run in-line and iBook's interpretation of the widget hid my embedded checker button.

This might be due to my subpar Widget construction, or I may simply be running into iBooks 2 limitations.

So how can you expand iBooks for spelling? This post tells you where I am to date. If you have a better solution, drop a note into the comments. And if you are an expert Dashboard widget engineer, please ping me offline. I'd really love to test out the possibilities and limitations of this tech.

iBooks Author Challenge: Adding spelling quizzes to iBooks originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Optimal Layout is a great utility that fundamentally alters the way that I interact with my Mac. In short, it gives me the ability to use my keyboard to quickly change between windows.

That might sound like what you're been doing with ⌘ + Tab, but there are a few important differences. The first is that you can choose not only which app you are switching to, but also which window in that app. Optimal Layout can even switch you to specific browser tabs in Safari or Google Chrome.

You can use the mouse with Optimal Layout, but it works especially well for those who prefer the keyboard. Type ⌘ + Option/Alt + F and it will bring up a list of available windows. Start typing and it will match window names. When you find the one you want, simply press Return. This is especially great if you are on a Mac with a small screen or working in multiple full-screen apps, because you can switch between them without using ⌘ + Tab to find the app you want to use.

Optimal Layout is more than just an app/window switcher, it also lets you control the location of windows on the screen with your keyboard. You can maximize (full screen minus the Dock and menu bar), half-screen, quarter-screen, or center any window via the Optimal Layout UI, without bringing that application forward. Just type to find the window you want, and then press the keyboard command for where you want that window to go. Or you can use the menu bar controls (which can also be hidden, if you don't want them to appear) to control the front-most window. If that's not enough, there is even a grid that Optimal Layout can show you and help you position all of your windows on your screen if you need to see multiple windows at once.

The best way to understand Optimal Layout is to see it in action and try it yourself. There is a 94-second screencast on the Optimal Layout homepage, and a few other short screencasts on the support page. There's even a trial version available so you can try before you buy.

Optimal Layout is US$14 and is available on the Mac App Store or directly from the developer. It support Mac OS 10.5, 10.6, and 10.7.

Friday Favorite: Optimal Layout brings app switching and window controls to your fingertips originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Two of the things that enchanted me most at Macworld | iWorld 2012 was the Jot stylus and a preview of Readdle's Remarks app. I've spent the past week looking at different note-taking apps to use with my new Jot Pro while waiting for Remarks to come out. The preview held not one, not two, but three TUAW writers enthralled as the Readdle folks showed it off. Does it live up to the hype? It really does.

I have two specific tasks for any note-taking app for the iPad - it should handle the hand drafts I do of comic strips, and it should handle a PDF workflow I've developed for my day job. In both areas, it excelled. In handwriting mode, Remarks edges out Note Taker HD in responsiveness when it comes to using a stylus. It's able to keep up with my quick cursive without the stylus petering out, which is an issue I've had with other apps.

Handling documents is a sheer joy. You can drag and drop documents onto each other to create new folders, and you can also create subfolders as well. Page scrolling within PDFs is smooth, which is an issue I had with Note Taker HD. Normal gestures for zooming in and out can be used, but make sure to use two fingers to swipe when moving pages in editing mode.

One of the neat things about Remarks is that PDF annotations you add can be edited in Preview or Adobe Acrobat reader. I added a couple of objects to my test PDF, emailed it to myself on my Mac and was able to change the objects there, then edit them again once I sent them back to my iPad. You can quickly add and delete pages from the PDFs, but you can't combine them.

There are a couple of things that I wish Remarks had. The wrist guard isn't accessible in normal page mode, so you have to zoom in every time you want to annotate something (annoying if you're like me and tend to rest your arm on the iPad). I also love Note Taker HD's "staple" feature, which lets you combine two PDFs or documents. It's been handy for attaching copies of my completed pages at work to my notes. I've been told that Dropbox and other cloud app support is coming within the next week, along with improvements to an already splendid rendering engine.

For US$4.99, Remarks for iPad has become the go-to note-taking app on the iPad for me. If you've been wanting to try one out, this is a great app to begin with.

Daily iPad App: Remarks for iPad tops the class in note-taking apps originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I almost didn't bother telling you all about this, because the circumstances around this release really rub the wrong way. But for gamers who've been waiting to play id games' latest, Rage, on the Mac, the Campaign Edition of the title is now available on the Mac App Store, for US$39.99. The Campaign Edition includes all of the extra equipment from the original Anarchy Edition of the game, along with a whole bunch of extra missions and content to play. If you've wanted to play Rage on the Mac, this is it.

So why am I so annoyed by this release? Because it's a port of the game, done by Aspyr Media. I don't have anything personally against Aspyr, but why has it taken us this long to get this game ported over to the Mac? Why can't we run the game natively? id games made a big show of the title being able to run cross-platform originally, and in fact the company released a version of this game on iOS, using the native engine, even before the main title was out. Yet here we are, five months after the game's PC release, getting a second-class version of the title on Mac.

Even worse, the game isn't compatible with Steam -- it's not available as a SteamPlay title (which means PC owners on Steam won't have access to the Mac version), and the Steamworks cloud save service doesn't work with the game either. However, Aspyr will be happy to tell you that Rage is available on its proprietary GameAgent store if you'd like to buy it there.

In short, while getting Rage and all of these extras for $40 might seem like a good thing for players, id games is doing this all wrong by going with Aspyr. This game should have been running natively on the Mac on day one, and it should be available on Steam. Having it available through the Mac App Store is nice, but seeing it released as an Aspyr port this late in the game doesn't say much for what id thinks of Mac gamers.

Rage Campaign Edition now available on the Mac App Store originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

One of the iPad's first regular periodical publications (if not the first one) The Daily launched a year ago. It's been a fairly rocky year. Originally, the Rupert Murdoch-funded app hoped it could get at least half a million subscriptions to keep its publication going; a few months ago we heard that there were 120,000 daily readers, and now Mashable says the paper boasts 100,000 paid subscriber. Despite not nearly reaching its original goal, The Daily still seems to be rolling on.

Publisher Greg Clayman says that when the app originally launched, the goal was to make an experience unique to the tablet. That's why The Daily began only on the iPad and has only recently added content on the Android platform, via the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Clayman says that while the company has kept its choice of platforms slim, The Daily has been delivering on its promise to break news; it was the first to report on the story of Paula Deen having diabetes and Alec Baldwin wanting to run for mayor in New York. Clayman says that The Daily is still headed for profitability "over the next couple of years," which he says is actually better than most traditional publications.

The Daily might not have the readership that it hoped to have, but a year into its existence Clayman seems optimistic about the publication's future. "We now have a fully baked, fully functional app CMS, and a large, engaged readership," he says. "A year ago we were asking how to build the boat. Now it's about understanding the best way to steer the boat."

The Daily celebrates a year with 100,000 paid subscribers on iPad originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I'm a Mac IT professional, and often find myself configuring, troubleshooting, and optimizing wireless networks.

In the past I used AP Grapher to graph wireless strength and find competing Wi-Fi networks as I walk around my clients' offices. This allows me to pick the best channel to use with the least competition, troubleshoot wireless strength, and find the optimal location for my hardware.

In Lion, AP Grapher has gone from unstable to unusable. I've found that it hasn't been updated since 2007.

I have tested other Mac stumbler applications, but have yet to find one that works with Lion. Most crash on launch and others don't reliably detect wireless networks.

Can you recommend a Mac application for graphing my wireless strength and recording info about competing wireless networks?

Thanks!

Your loving nephew,

Aaron

Dear Aaron,

Auntie asked around and it looks like iStumbler will be your best bet. Note that it's currently at its 100 GM Candidate 3 beta stage of development. Another suggestion is the open source KisMAC.

You might also want to try out the Wi-Fi diagnostics app that's bundled with Lion's Core Services.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Special thanks to Fraser Hess, Adrian Burgess, Alex Patsay, Harris Kleyman, Alex Sebenski and Julian Kussman.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me find a WiFi stumbler app for Lion originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The pocket version of Ticket to Ride by Days of Wonder is among the best board game adaptations for the iPhone, and it's just gotten better with asynchronous multiplayer support. Now you can start a game with friends through Game Center, and take turns back and forth across the Internet. The experience is similar to popular multiplayer games like Words with Friends and Hero Academy.

This free update also expands the game's local multiplayer mode, so that users on the same Bluetooth or Wi-Fi network can play across devices. Ticket to Ride for the iPhone and iPod touch is available for US$1.99 in the App Store, while the iPad version is priced at $6.99.

Days of Wonder notes that Ticket to Ride has been extremely popular. It has sold over 350,000 copies, and a new online game is begun every four seconds on average. The game is definitely excellent, and the success is well-deserved.

Ticket to Ride Pocket adds asynchronous multiplayer originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple held an all-employee Town Hall meeting a little while ago after the earnings call, and The Verge is reporting that Apple CEO Tim Cook took quite a bit of time during the meeting to point out Apple's charitable contributions to the world. He said that Apple has given $50 million to Stanford hospitals, and over $50 million to the Project RED effort (to help fight AIDS in Africa), making Apple that fund's largest contributor.

It seems as if we've found one big difference between Cook and his legendary predecessor: Cook wants to make it clear that he's serious about giving, and letting people know about it. Cook has also pushed for an employee donation matching program at Apple, so he's got a history, even in his short tenure so far, of endorsing strong charitable contributions.

Of course, all of that said, $100 million is still just pocket change for a company that has almost $100 billion in the bank. But every little bit counts, we suppose.

Tim Cook focuses on charity during Town Hall meeting originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple conquered the smartphone and tablet market, and it may be turning its sights on the gaming market next. According to a report from MCV, Robin Burrowes, the Xbox Live marketing manager for EMEA, has left Microsoft to join Apple. Burrowes will supposedly take over marketing for the App Store in Europe. Apple hasn't commented on this report, so this is still a rumor.

If this is true, Burrowes will become the third high-profile gaming hire to join Apple in the past year. Apple also grabbed Rob Saunders, former PR and communications boss for Nintendo, and Nick Grange, the previous PR head for Xbox.

Does this mean Apple is taking a new direction in gaming? Probably not. We'll likely see an increase in marketing for iOS games as a result. There may also be an increased emphasis on iOS as a gaming platform to replace portables like the Nintendo DS. Portable gaming is on a downward slide, and, as MacStories recently points out, Nintendo needs to overhaul its business before the iPhone and iPad steal it away.

[Via Macgasm]

Former Xbox Live marketing exec may join Apple originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Although they haven't exactly explained how school systems or parents are going to pay for iPads or other tablets for every student, the US government is pushing a new initiative to move from standard printed textbooks to digital textbooks within the next five years. While it's good to see that a focus on digital textbooks is finally at hand, it's going to take more than a press release, five years and a "playbook" to make the transition happen.

According to an AP news release, "Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski on Wednesday challenged schools and companies to get digital textbooks in students' hands within five years."

In an interview, Duncan asked, "Do we want kids walking around with 50-pound backpacks and every book in those backpacks costing 50, 60, 70 dollars and many of them being out of date? Or, do we want students walking around with a mobile device that has much more content than was even imaginable a couple years ago and can be constantly updated? I think it's a very simple choice."

To school systems that are battling drastically decreased budgets and trying to replace or repair crumbling infrastructure, it might not be such a "simple choice." Likewise, there doesn't appear to have been much (if any) thought on how parents or schools systems are going to replace equipment that is broken or lost by students, or how to pay for digital devices to be refreshed every three to five years.

Wednesday's announcement comes just two weeks after Apple's education event and the launch of iBooks textbooks. The company is perfectly placed, both in terms of the iPad hardware platform and iBooks Author creation tool, to benefit from a move to interactive and easily updated electronic textbooks.

The government released a 67-page "playbook" promoting the use of digital textbooks and offering guidance to school systems who want to make the move. At the current time, about US$8 billion is spent each year on traditional textbooks for K-12 school kids. With an Apple educational discount, that could pay for more than 17 million iPads each year. If Apple, as rumored, brings down the price of entry into the iPad market by selling the iPad 2 alongside a future model, more devices could make it into the hands of students across the nation.

On the other hand, switching to digital textbooks means more than just acquiring hardware and buying textbook apps. In many cases, the curriculum provided by a school district and even the methods used by instructors to teach students must change as well. The educational five-year plan is a noble goal; it's just not very realistic.

US government wants schools to embrace digital textbooks originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

No Flash? Click here to listen.

Daily Update for February 2, 2012 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Learning a new language can be challenging, especially when you're not in an environment where that langue is predominant. Lingibli is an iPhone app that'll bridge that gap by helping you learn vocabulary and basic phrases from native speakers. The app will teach you the top 100 words which comprise the bulk of conversational language.

Lingibli lets you select from a list of common words or phrases. The words are listed individually and include several related expressions. For example, the Spanish language pack includes the word for computer, ordenador, and phrases like "turn on the computer" (encienda el ordenador). The phrases are organized into categories which cover topics like time, numbers, eating and getting help. This phrase list would be extremely helpful for someone who is traveling.

When you select a word or phrase, you can listen to a native speaker pronounce it clearly and properly. They speak with the correct emphasis and talk slowly enough for new learners to understand. This audio component is the key to learning how to speak each word or phrase properly and Lingibli handles it very well.

To make the language learning process fun, you can also use Lingibli as a game. Customers can visit the company's website and print up a sheet with QR codes. The codes contain common words that you can paste around the house. Lingibli has a built-in QR code scanner that'll identify the word and speak it back to you. If you have kids, you can hand them your iPhone and send them on a language-scanning adventure.

Lingibli is available for free from the iOS App Store. The app supports 19 different languages including Arabic, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Slovak, Finnish, French, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Turkish. Each language pack costs US$4.99 or you can buy all of them for $24.99.

Daily iPhone App: Lingibli originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Take that, Apple! Avid has just released an iPad iMovie competitor called Avid Studio. The US$4.99 app is a scaled-down version of Avid's pro video editing tools.

Avid Studio features a timeline and storyboard, plus some iPad-friendly gestures so you can scale images and videos. You can arrange your edits on the timeline for special effects like picture-in-picture.The app also offers 3D animations and transitions, and video tracks can be composited.

Avid Studio lets you export a project to the Avid Studio app for the PC via iCloud, and you can share your finished project via YouTube, Facebook or email. Videos not shot with the iPad camera can be imported with the iPad Camera Connection Kit.

While Avid's new iPad app is clearly a consumer tool and not a pro video editor, it does show some commitment from the company to Apple's platforms, and may serve as a 'gateway drug' for pros who are considering the Avid suite as an alternative to Final Cut Pro X. The initial poor reception for the release of Final Cut Pro X for the Mac last summer, which dropped many features and angered several professional customers, has provided an opening for alternative products.

Avid (and also Adobe, with its Premiere Pro product) stepped into the FCPX breach and offered discounts to FCPX users who wanted to switch to the pro products on the desktop. Avid's desktop suite runs only on a Windows PC and costs $169. Final Cut Pro X is $299 and requires an App Store-friendly version of Mac OS X.

Apple updated FCPX this week to bring back some features that were lost in the FCP7 to FCPX transition, but I think some video professionals and serious hobbyists feel the momentum is swinging away from Apple. [Award-winning editor Walter Murch isn't among the naysayers, at least not anymore. -Ed.]

Avid Studio for iPad will be $4.99 during a 30-day introductory period, and $8.00 after that. The app is a 30 MB download, and requires an iPad running iOS 5.0 or greater. Apple offers its own iOS version of iMovie for $4.99, which has been generally well reviewed.

Gallery: Avid Studio

Avid Studio takes iPad video editing to the next level originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In just five short years, Apple has become the third largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world. International Data Corporation (IDC), as part of the continuing Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker survey, noted that the overall mobile phone market is still growing despite a major decline in numbers for low-priced "feature phones."

Despite fierce competition from both Apple and Samsung, Nokia retained its spot as the leader in mobile phone shipments. The company is transitioning from the Symbian OS for smartphones, having recently launched the Lumia line of Windows Phone-powered smartphones. IDC notes that Nokia's worldwide distribution and manufacturing presence will make it difficult for other companies to knock the Finnish company from its perch on the mobile phone throne.

Not surprisingly, Samsung was the number two manufacturer, selling more than 300 million phones in 2011. The company's Android smartphone line and new Windows Phone smartphones, along with a growing line of feature phones, inched Samsung even closer to Nokia's coveted number one spot.

Apple jumped from third position after being in fifth place in the previous quarter. The third-place finish is the highest ever for Apple, and the strong launch of the iPhone 4S was listed as the primary reason that the company leapfrogged over competitors LG and ZTE in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Rounding out the top five were Korean manufacturer LG, which has seen a drop in sales for the last year. Chinese vendor ZTE almost took over the fourth place position, moving from low-cost feature phones to increasingly powerful smartphones. ZTE has recently entered the North American market with Android and Windows Phone-powered smartphones.

The most fascinating number, however, was the year-over-year change in shipments. While arch-rival Samsung saw a 17.6 percent change in sales volume over the previous year, Apple saw a whopping 96.2 percent increase. Apple now has 6 percent of the total mobile phone market based on 2011 unit shipments; recall that Steve Jobs noted during the 2007 introduction of the iPhone that he'd be happy with a 1 percent share.

Apple becomes world's third largest mobile phone manufacturer originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Last year, we looked at Doodlecast for kids from zinc Roe. It's an iPad app that lets your kids record themselves talking while they draw on the screen. The app records both the audio and the drawing and combines the two into a single video. My kids loved Doodlecast and continue to fill my iPad with narrated drawings. With Doodlecast Pro, the developers took this underlying technology and used it to create a consumer version of the app.

Similar to the kids version, Doodlecast Pro lets you simultaneously record both your voice and your drawings on the iPad screen. Instead of doodles, it's meant for creating basic presentations and mocking up images. I could easily see an interior designer mocking up a picture of a room or a landscaper drawing out rough plans for an outdoor project. It would also be perfect for teachers who can mark a problem wrong on a student's quiz and whip up a Doodlecast video that explains why the answer is incorrect.

Anyone with video editing experience will appreciate the simplicity and efficiency of Doodlecast Pro. The first time you launch the app, you're presented with an open slate to create a Doodlecast. There's a set of tools that let you draw, erase and use a pointer to single out objects on the screen. You can also swap out the plain background with one from your iPad's photo roll.

When you're ready, you can hit the record button and start your narration. You can pause the recording at any point, make changes and resume right where you left off. When you're done recording, you can save the file to your Photos, share it via email or upload it to YouTube.

The app makes it so easy to create and share a short video with images and audio. I can't imagine doing it manually with a standard video camera, a microphone and Final Cut Pro. It would take you an hour manually, ten minutes with Doodlecast Pro. It's also very flexible. You can use it to whip up a quick video to send to a co-worker or take time to do some planning and produce a presentation your could send to a client.

Doodlecast Pro just landed in the App Store for US$3.99. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Daily iPad App: Doodlecast Pro originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

For the past few weeks, I have run into a problem with links to Apple.com coming up 404 "not found." Specifically, these have all been links to pages on http://support.apple.com/. For example, this morning I did a Google search for 10.7.3 combo. One of the first results was a link to http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1484 which came up 404.

Here's where it gets interesting: the link is only 404 in Safari. It works in Google Chrome and Firefox. If you reload the page in Safari (⌘ + R), it will load as usual. As if that wasn't strange enough, once it has loaded correctly, subsequent visits to pages at http://support.apple.com/ work fine... for a while. Then I will see the "We're sorry" page again.

Several TUAW staff members have been seeing this bug for a few weeks with Safari in 10.7.2; unfortunately, it is not fixed with 10.7.3. Fortunately the "workaround" is fairly simple: if you get a 404 page on support.apple.com, try reloading the page, or just use a different browser. You'll need to do so if you're downloading the combo update to fix install issues with 10.7.3.

Safari users seeing random '404 not found' on valid support.apple.com pages originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's not a good thing when a simple point release of Apple's desktop OS causes a flurry of error reports with a central theme of "I just installed the 10.7.3 version of Lion and now nothing works." Last night and this morning, threads began popping up on Apple's support forum and elsewhere indicating that a flaw in the 10.7.3 delta updater is resulting in app crashes with a characteristic "CUI CUI CUI" overlay on some interface elements.

While it should be noted that there are plenty of reports of users updating with no issues whatsoever, there's no denying that for those affected this is a painful and unfortunate bug. It's especially awkward for users who don't have a bootable backup or another machine to help the recovery process, because it leaves your Mac pretty much unusable.

The good news (mostly) is that it should not be necessary to resort to Time Machine or other data restores to get back into working condition. Tipsters on the Apple boards and a helpful walkthrough at OS X Daily recommend using the OS X 10.7.3 Combo Updater to resolve the problem. (If that link comes up 404, it's a Safari quirk; just reload.)

If you can boot your Mac into Safe Mode -- just hold down Shift during startup until the desktop or login window appears -- then you should be able to download and install the Combo Updater and proceed normally. If you can't get running in Safe Mode, you have a few options; with a second Mac running Lion or a visit to the Genius Bar, you can mount your machine in Target Disk Mode and install the combo update directly.

You also can take advantage of Lion's Recovery Partition, which should be present on any machine where 10.7 was installed by the conventional process. Holding down the R key at startup will boot you into Recovery, where you can then reinstall Lion. The 10.7.3 combo update should be downloaded and installed normally as part of the recovery cycle. Do not erase your drive or restore from Time Machine, it is not necessary. The only thing that you should need is a fresh install of the OS X system, which will not impact your data or applications.

While Lion is a lot more 'recoverable' than past versions of OS X thanks to the Recovery Partition and the ease of retrieving purchased apps from the Mac App Store, a self-inflicted foulup like this one reminds us all that Apple makes mistakes (sometimes really bad ones -- remember the iTunes version on Windows that ate music files?) and that the only sane pre-upgrade policy is to have solid, tested backups.

The other point that bears repeating is sometimes harder for us to internalize, but it's equally valid. If your livelihood depends on your Mac (or your iPhone, or iPad, or PC) working as expected, installing any updates in the first day of availability is just plain dumb. Production machines need to be boring, predictable and unsurprising -- so leave them alone for days, weeks or months if necessary to make sure that any patches and 'improvements' you want to make don't leave you twisting in the wind on a deadline, or tearing your hair out over data loss.

Thanks to Matthew and everyone who sent this in.

OS X 10.7.3 causing CUI errors for some, Combo Update recommended originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Flipboard added another feature to its popular social stream and news reading app that'll please international users. Announced earlier this week, the company will be sending out three new Content guides for readers in Australia, Canada and the UK and Ireland. Folks in those countries will soon receive news that's custom-selected for those regions. These areas will join China, France, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, which already have local recommendations.

If your iPad's or iPhone's region is set to one of the countries mentioned above, then you will automatically receive your local guide. To switch back to the original, un-filtered content, you'll have to set your device's country location to the United States. That's somewhat inconvenient, but Flipboard says it will soon let you choose your country from within the app.

Localized Flipboard Content guides available for UK, Ireland, Australia and Canada originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Image: Shutterstock.com

The next time you go to an Apple store, you should resist the urge to fire up Photo Booth and snap a photo of yourself gazing into that MacBook Pro. If you don't, you may find yourself part of an art exhibit like the one created by Irby Pace. According to a Wired article, Pace is a Master of Fine Arts student at the University of North Texas who created an Apple store-inspired gallery exhibit called Unintended Consequences.

The art work includes images Pace retrieved from display devices in a handful of Texas and New York City Apple stores. Pace began his project by visiting Apple stores, locating images left on a device and manually emailing the pictures to himself. Eventually, he figured out a way to dump a large number of them, over 1,000 pictures total, directly to his iPad. After combing through the images, he picked several striking snapshots, enlarged them and compiled them into an exhibit.

While his method may make some people uncomfortable, Pace doesn't think he did anything wrong. He argues, "the people [in the images] consciously left the images behind for anyone to see, or to take." He also did it under the noses of Apple employees who didn't seem to notice what Pace was doing. "None of them seemed interested at all in what I was doing," says Pace, "One employee in New York questioned what I was doing but I told him that I was merely comparing the products."

Pace's actions are similar to those of Kyle McDonald who used spyware to capture images of people looking at Apple computers in NYC retail stores. Unlike McDonald who took images without people's consent, Pace only took the files. The customer snapped the pictures and left them behind for someone like Pace to see and, as he would argue, take. Whether Pace has the right to these abandoned photos is questionable, but that's not stopping him from showing the exhibit. His work, Unintended Consequences, is slated to be shown next week at the Cora Stafford Gallery in Denton, TX.

Apple Store customer photos become part of art exhibit originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you're a Photoshop user, you're likely aware of the editor's new "content-aware" tools that let you magically replace or erase items in your photos. iPhone users who want a similar tool on their handset should take a look at TouchRetouch by Adva-Soft. TouchRetouch is a simple tool that lets you highlight an object in a photo and either erase it or clone it in a few easy steps.

The app lets you load an image or grab one with your camera. Once you have the photo opened, you can zoom in on the object you want to remove or clone. You can use the brush or lasso tool to select the object and the eraser to tidy up your selection. There's a zoom window in the corner of your image that helps you fine tune your selection. If you make a mistake, there's an undo and redo. Once your object is selected, you can click the "Start" button to remove it.

The app works best on objects that are small and not too close to other objects. A perfect example is the photograph of my yard, shown above, that I took after a day of light flurries. It's a nice winter shot that's marred by an unsightly tote in the yard. It took me less than five minutes to highlight the tote, remove it and save the image shown below. If you look closely at the image below, I also removed two snow statues built by my children. You can see some slight blurring where they were removed. For the record, those were not unsightly. I just wanted to see how well the app performed.

Overall, TouchRetouch is a nice companion app for digital photographers. It's not as robust as Photoshop's content-aware tools, but it's perfect for a mobile device. It's lightweight and does a decent job removing items from a photo, but it's not perfect.

At times, the app crashed and I had to restart. Other times, it slowed and I had to close the app and re-open it. When you re-open the app, it saves your progress, so you start right where you left off. These glitches usually occurred when I loaded up the full resolution image. When I worked with a lower resolution picture, the performance was improved.

If you've got 99-cents in your pocket and you take lots of photos, TouchRetouch is worth grabbing from the iOS App Store. It does a suitable job removing unwanted items in photos, especially those casual snapshots you want to send your friends or upload to Instagram.

Daily iPhone App: TouchRetouch originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I'm excited about this one -- Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective was one of the best mobile games on the year that didn't appear on iOS in 2011, but the wait is over: Though it's been on iOS in Japan for a little while, the game is finally coming to the App Store on this side of the world this evening. As of tomorrow, you'll be able to pick up Ghost Trick on your iPhone or iPad, no matter where you are. The game itself will be free, so you can play through the first two levels for no charge, and after that you can buy the rest of the content with an in-app purchase.

Ghost Trick is a fun one -- you play as a ghost detective who needs to solve crimes by inhabiting inanimate objects, like possessing phones to listen in on phone calls, or moving objects around to convince the living to move as well. It's a really great title that not a lot of people have picked up to play, so definitely give this one a look tomorrow when it's out.

Ghost Trick sneaks onto iOS tomorrow originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Do you think you have what it takes to be an air traffic controller? Before you're responsible for hundreds of lives, you should test your flight controlling skills with NASA's latest iOS app, Sector 33.

Sector 33 is a game similar to Flight Control from Firemint, but a bit more realistic. You are a controller in charge of flights into SFO via Modesto, California. Your job is to navigate the flights along their flight path and merge them into a single flight stream with the correct spacing. You can change the speed and the flight path for each plane to avoid collisions.

The game follows standard flight rules, so you can't let the planes get too close. At the same time, you have to keep planes close enough together so they hit their targets at the correct distance. To make things even more difficult, there are obstacles like thunderstorms that can get in your way.

The game has several levels that let you control up to five planes at a time. The better and faster you fly, the more points you earn. You get points for each level you complete and points for different certification levels. Points are tallied inside the game as there is no Game Center support.

The game play is much different from Flight Control. In Sector 33, things are much more controlled. There's a set path for the planes to follow and a standard solutions for each level. The game plays more like a puzzle than a free-form game like Flight Control which lets you fly planes in any direction you want. The graphics are basic and, though it's not an accurate representation, the game has the look and feel of a radar system.

If you're interested in planes and flying, you should check out Sector 33. It's a universal app that's available for free in the iOS Store.

Daily iPad App: Sector 33 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple has apparently complied with a recent ruling by the Italian government that the company did not do enough, when selling its extended one-year warranties in stores, to let customers know that its products already came with a two-year warranty, as per consumer laws there. The company has posted an official message on its website in Italy, designated a "Communication to Protect Customers," that outlines exactly what rights customers have to that two-year warranty, and that the Apple Store pushed its paid warranty onto customers anyway.

It's unknown, however, whether Apple will pay the around $1.2 million fine that Italian authorities have levied against the company for this behavior. This notice could be Apple trying to get out of paying the actual money. So far there's no indication that fines have been paid, or even that the company has changed its tactics in Italian stores. We'll have to see what actions the government takes after this.

Of course, if the government does pursue fines against Apple, $1.2 million is about as "drop in the bucket" as it gets for a company with $98 billion in the bank. If Italian authorities do pursue this further, it might be easier for Apple to just write a check than worry about it for too long.

Apple features 'communication to protect consumers' in Italy originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple announced earlier this week that the former CEO of UK electronics chain Dixons, John Browett, was being appointed to the head of retail in Cupertino, but since then, there's been some rumbling among those interested that Browett might not have been the best man for the job. Dixons hasn't exactly been a huge hit in the UK lately, and the pick of an old school retail head for Apple's very progressive retail division seems like it might have been a mistake.

But Tim Cook doesn't believe so. The new Apple CEO says as much in an email sent to blogger and photographer Tony Hart. In the email, published in a post about why Hart loves Apple, Cook says "John was the best by far." To answer the critics claiming that Apple went backwards hiring an old electronics retailer head for their stores, Cook says plainly that Browett's "role isn't to bring Dixons to Apple, [it's] to bring Apple to an even higher level of customer service and satisfaction."

Well now. Aside from the actual news about the appointment, that certainly sounds like a CEO who's making decisions and standing behind them. Obviously that might backfire in the future, but if the most recent releases are any indication, Apple's future in Tim Cook's hands looks very secure.

Tim Cook defends Senior VP of Retail appointment originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I just got notice from Apple that the store in the Old Pasadena retail district is re-opening this weekend, after an almost yearlong expansion project. The company even opened a temporary store a little bit down the street from the location, as it worked to expand the main store, adding a second level and lots more space for showing off Apple's products.

But apparently the work is all done: The store will reopen this Saturday at 10 a.m., and the public will be able to enter and see what changes were made. Apple also says that the first 1000 customers to the revamped location will pick up a commemorative t-shirt, so come out early if you want one of those.

The original Pasadena store dates back to 2003, and given the fact that it's so old and out here in California, it could be considered one of Apple's most important locations. I'm looking forward to seeing what the new store is like this weekend.

Apple Store in Pasadena reopening this weekend originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.