Gaming company Polarbit is the grandfather of iPhone racers. Raging Thunder was among the first racers to hit the iPhone. Reckless Racing was released soon after and now it's back as Reckless Racing 2. This is a full update to the isometric driving title. The gameplay is similar to other top-down titles like Death Rally, though more realistic. Think of a fun game with a hardcore driving elements to set your expectations.

Career mode lets you climb the competitive ladder, upgrade parts and advance in the the Performance Index. The driving is more traditional than Reckless Racing. You'll still make powerslides and jumps, but you can also follow the driving lines closely and advance technically. Online and offline multiplayer modes are available, as are ghost runs and leaderboards.

Reckless Racing 2 is an excellent update from a developer who loves racing games. It's currently US$4.99 for a universal version, which might be more than you're willing to spend. Fortunately, Polarbit is generous with the sales, so keep an eye out for a price drop.

Daily iPad App: Reckless Racing 2 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When you think of notable, early Apple employees, you think of the big names like Steve Wozniak, Andy Hertzfeld, and John Sculley. Beyond these key names are a multitude of lesser-known people who played a crucial role in the early years of the company. One such employee is Jerry Manock, who worked on the Apple II, the Disk II, the III, and Lisa before joining the original Macintosh design team.

Manock worked closely with Steve Jobs during his tenure at Apple which stretched from 1977 to 1984. He worked with Steve Wozniak on the Apple II. While Wozniak developed the logic board and internal hardware, Manock was responsible for much of the design of the Apple II. Manock's also know for his choice of Pantone 453, the light beige color that characterized Apple's early computers.

Manock now lives in Burlington, Vermont with his wife and family. He has his own design firm and teaches product design courses at the University of Vermont. He recently talked about these early years with Seven Days,a local arts-oriented newspaper that's available in Vermont and online.

Manock only had kind things to say about Steve Jobs in his interview. He fondly recalled a time that Jobs recognized Manock for his early contributions to Apple during an annual meeting. Manock attended the meeting unannounced and Jobs spotted him in the audience. He also has some strong criticism of today's design methods that use computers and not hands-on time with the actual materials. You can read the rest of the interview at Seven Days's website.

Early Apple employee Jerry Manock remembers Steve Jobs originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today, Donkey is available for the iPhone. It's a fun example of an 8-bit game with chunky graphics and super simple action. Tap to change lanes.

Take it from an old fogie: Donkey is fun and worth US$0.99. You wouldn't have your precious Zelda without it.

[Via Gizmodo]

Bill Gates's original PC game now on iPhone originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OS X has a neat text-to-speech engine that'll read back what you write. You can start and stop TTS from the contextual menu or launch it using a keystroke that you set up in the Speech section of the System Preferences. Most of the settings for TTS are buried in the System Preferences which is inconvenient when you want to change a setting on the fly. If you need more flexibility than what OS X offers, you should take a look at Text2Speech. Text2Speech is a no-frills utility that uses OS X's underlying engine to read your text back to you.

The app gives you fine control over OS X's TTS engine in an easy-to-use UI. Once you paste your text into the app, you can change the voice that's speaking, change the speaking rate in small increments, and toggle the speech on and off with ease. It also tells you the character count of the passage, which is useful if you're writing a paragraph for a character-limited text box.

Text2Speech works well, with one caveat. When you start the TTS, it always starts at the beginning which is a minor annoyance. It would be useful if the app would let you choose the starting position. It would also be helpful if it remembered your position when you stop it in mid-passage. Despite these drawbacks, I still use Text2Speech every day. I find the convenience of being able to change settings on the fly outweighs these detractors.

If you want to try it yourself, Text2Speech is available for free in the Mac App Store. There's also a Pro version for US$3.99 that'll export your text to iTunes as an audio track or to your drive as an MP3 or AIFF file.

Daily Mac App: Text2Speech lets hear what you write in record time originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has released two new iPhone 4S ads on its YouTube channel, "Rock God" and "Road Trip." If they haven't already started airing, they should be popping up as TV commercials soon.

"Rock God" follows the adventures of a teenager who uses Siri to find a guitar, learn how to play chords (very cool -- I didn't know Siri could do that), and invite girls over to watch him play. At the end, he sheepishly asks Siri to call him "Rock God" -- ever obliging, Siri agrees to do so.

The second ad shows a couple taking a cross country trip from the US East Coast to the West Coast. Along the way, they use Siri to get directions, find restaurants, and look up info on points of interest. I found this ad a lot more effective because it reminded me of all the interstate trips my wife and I would take in the States, and thinking back to those trips I have to admit that Siri would have come in very handy.

Apple's ad campaign for Siri and the iPhone 4S is exactly the kind of advertising I always wished the company would switch to during the years its "Get a Mac" campaign dominated the company's message. Instead of spending time poking fun at the competition the way Apple's mid-2000s Mac ads did (and Samsung's current ads do), these Siri ads simply show normal people using Apple's products in normal situations and how the products can enhance people's lives.

Both videos are embedded below.

Two new iPhone 4S ads highlight everyday Siri usage originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hacker group SwaggSec took a swipe at Foxconn when it broke into the company's servers. The group stole login information and documents, both of which were promptly leaked to the internet. SwaggSec claimed the information would let individuals place fake orders using accounts from Dell, Apple, IBM and Microsoft. As soon as the hack was publicized, Foxconn shut down its servers and pulled down its website.

Though SwaggSec does mention Foxconn's poor working conditions in a letter it posted on pastebin, this was not the reason for the attack against the manufacturer. The group says it hacked the company for the "hilarity that ensues when compromising and destroying an infrastructure." The news of this hack hit the internet at the same time protesters, upset with inhumane factory working conditions, were gathering outside Apple stores in London, New York, San Francisco and other stores worldwide.

[Via Electronista]

Foxconn server hacked, CEO's password revealed originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We covered Cupidtino a little while ago. It's a dating site for Mac users who are looking for love. Given its purview and the fact that no web service is complete without an iPhone app, Cupidtino has released an iPhone app for single Apple fans.

I kid but it's actually pretty nice. You can browse user profiles, your own, send messages and read the latest Cupidtino news. There are no standout feature but it's cleanly designed and runs well. What more do you need from a dating app?

There is one catch. You must pay Cupidtino's monthly subscription to read messages sent to you. But it's less than US$5 per month, which is nominal for those who absolutely must date an Apple fan. All other features are free. I can't guarantee that you'll find a date (my luck with dating apps is as bad as my luck at finding a date in real life), but as an app, Cupidtino works great.

Daily iPhone App: Cupidtino originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Slightly over a dozen protesters from Change.org and SumofUS delivered a petition signed by more than 250,000 people to the Grand Central Terminal Apple Store today. Both organizations are urging Apple to improve working conditions at factories run by its overseas suppliers, particularly Foxconn's massive facility in China.

CNET reports the event was relatively low-key -- there were more people present covering the event for the media than the number of protesters who showed up -- and Apple Store employees seemed well-prepared when they accepted the big box of signatures.

The group claims the same petition will be delivered to Apple's San Francisco store later today as one part of a global action also involving stores in Bangalore, London, and Sydney.

At press time, it was unclear if the protesters were wearing clothing manufactured in the USA, or if they plan similar protests at Best Buys, Walmarts, Gamestops, or the headquarters of Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, HP, Dell, or any of the other retail outlets and consumer electronics companies who also heavily employ Chinese labor to build their products.

Apple Store employees accept petitions from protesters originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Loop is reporting that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is taking RIM BlackBerry devices off of the list of officially supported mobile devices. What's taking the place of the trusty old BlackBerry? iPhones and iPads running iOS 5 and newer versions of the mobile OS.

While a February 3rd memo from NOAA Chief Information Officer and Director for High Performance Computing and Communications Joseph Klimavicz noted that support for BlackBerrys will continue until May 12, 2012, it does not say when the government organization will actually start providing workers with the new Apple devices.

According to the memo from Klimavicz, NOAA will now support employees with iPhone 4 and newer smartphones running iOS 5 or later, as well as iPad 2 or newer tablets running iOS 5 or later.

NOAA drops BlackBerry, embraces iPhone and iPad originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whoa! As of this writing (noon EST) Apple stock has reached a new high of US$493.85, which is a record share price. It also gives the company a market capitalization of $465 billion, which exceeds the combined totals of Google and Microsoft.

Apple passed Microsoft in Market Cap back in May of 2010. At the current price, Apple is comfortably ahead of Exxon Mobil, which has a market cap of about $400 million billion.

Just yesterday we reported that Apple had gained $100 in share price since Steve Jobs died last October, but those numbers are already outdated.

Apple stock soars, company worth more than Google, Microsoft combined originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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