Tapulous COO Andrew Lacy sat down to talk with us just before the release of the software, both about how he thinks consumers will react to the new business model, and what's next for Tapulous and this series that has come so far already. Tap Tap Revenge 3 should be in the App Store very soon -- it's available for 99 cents, with extra music packs at six songs for $2.99, or two songs for 99 cents.

It may have lost a bit of luster compared to the chrome, glass and steel of Apple's nearby retail stores (one within easy walking distance, in fact), but there's no denying the draw of New York City's original Apple emporium, the delightfully idiosyncratic Tekserve. Featured on an episode of Sex and the City, the venerable Mac repair and retail shop maintains its own clientele and distinctive look as the possibility of yet a 4th NYC Apple store looms large.

Not to take anything away from the city's other indie Mac shops; we love them dearly, but they often find themselves overshadowed by the Big T. Since my office is roughly equidistant from both the W. 14th Street Apple Store and Tekserve (although, now that I've checked, I realize I'm slightly closer to Mike Volchok's Mike's Tech Shop -- noted for next time!), I decided to go old school today when I picked up my copy of Snow Leopard, and I snapped a few iPhone pics of the store while I was there. Enjoy!

If you've been trying to upload a picture from your iPhone to a MobileMe gallery, and are getting the message "Unable to connect to MobileMe" message you're not alone.

The problem appears to be related to a bug in user name recognition. Apple has published a KB article dealing with the issue. The problem seems to be triggered if your member name is in mixed case, or if it is in all caps. MobileMe requires the user name be in all lower case letters, although the same rule does not apply to passwords.

Apple suggests you go to your iPhone settings, and under account info make sure your name is all lowercase. If not, a visit to the KB article would be advised. The fix is simple: just delete and re-enter your account details, getting your member name in a form Apple will like. When the bug is fixed, this workaround won't be needed.

Apple needs to continue to pay close attention to MobileMe. My perception is it has become generally more reliable since the ugly launch in 2008, but the support page still reports a few new glitches per week. Lately I've noticed a few mail outages/slowness and difficulty getting to my iDisk.

A couple of months ago I wound up in Paris and received a surprising direct message via Twitter from a young employee at Visua Mobile. Having nothing better to do in the City of Light, I wound up at their offices. I'm often suspect when a "mobile" development company rings me about their iPhone stable. Just like my tea, I prefer my developers steeped in Apple. Well, Visua Mobile is certainly made up of Apple fans. Just check out the gallery of their offices to see what I mean.

Visua's raison d'etre would be iPhone apps. To my astonishment, none have been runaway hits. They are beautifully designed and generally work well (some 3.0 bugs crept up). Visua gained some noteriety around their app, Fracture, that would make the iPhone screen appear broken when pressed. But they make a host of already-approved apps, including Celebrity, which features a special magazine cover just for TUAW fans.

We snuck past the line into the glass cube, and got some pictures of the well-behaved crowd downstairs in the 5th Avenue store who were buying and activating their phones (and also checking out the new MacBook Pro lineup while they were there).



Erica's in line at the Cherry Creek Mall in Colorado and sent us a few quick snapshots.



If you want to catch every moment of launch day, take a look at Cnet's liveblog from around the country.

Good morning! All day today we'll be updating with reports from iPhone 3G S purchasers around the country, both here and on Twitter. So far the lines seem modest and activation is reportedly going smoothly. Victor notes that AT&T store lines are short where he is and if you are not the primary account holder on your cell plan, you have to go to AT&T anyway to upgrade.

Morning schedules and slow subways kept me from the 7 am store open at 5th Avenue (since Apple moved it earlier from 8 am due to AT&T opening its stores at 7), but by 7:30 the line was still active and purchasers were beginning to emerge. NYPD reports that about half the barricaded area was full at 7 am.

Every other year for the last 7 years, Shawn King of the Your Mac Life podcast has given the Apple faithful a chance to go on a pilgrimage to 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, the location of Apple headquarters.

As part of our continuing coverage of Macworld Expo 2009, Christina Warren and yours truly hopped on the bus along with about 30 other alpha geeks to visit the Mecca of Macdom and pick up some Apple swag at the Company Store. Former TUAW blogger and Realmac Software PR Ninja Nik Fletcher joined to take photos.

I dropped some spendolas on Apple gear, including a logo hat, long-sleeve black mock tee, polo shirt, and three big coffee mugs. C-mac, being the resident TUAW fashionista, bought an Apple notebook (the kind with paper sheets in it), a couple of pens, a navy hoodie, a knit cap, two caps (one knit, one military), and a short sleeve tee.

There were several prize drawings on the ride home, and I won an 8GB blue iPod nano courtesy of a "Secret Santa." Suh-weeet!

It's too late to join this year's Tour de Cupertino, but keep your eyes and ears open before future Macworld Expos to see if Shawn is planning another trip. Check out the gallery below.

It's no secret that we've been looking forward to Rolando probably more than any other game on the App Store, and now that it's here, we can safely say it doesn't disappoint. From the beginning, Rolando has shown tons of potential as a completely original game that shows off just why mobile game developers should see the iPhone as a dream platform, and creator Simon Oliver has brought that potential to bear in an amazing puzzle/platformer.

There's almost nothing to not like here -- the graphics are colorful and run perfectly, the writing is simple and witty, and the gameplay is not only fun from the beginning, but creatively builds itself over time. Just like any great platformer should, every single level delivers a new way of thinking about the tools you're given, and even when you've conquered the whole game, there are multiple reasons to go back and play again.

TUAW got a copy of the game a few days ago (it's out on the App Store today for the first time since its announcement back in July), and since then we've saved Rolandos aplenty, worked our way through most of Rolandoland, and been charmed endlessly by the App Store's first real, original classic.

Sketches was one of the apps I picked up the very first day the App Store opened -- in fact, it was the first I ever bought, and I bought it as a mistake: Apple's one-click shopping bit me for $7.99 (the app has since dropped in price to $5.99). But it turns out, as a mistake, it was a fortuitous one, because it's one of the apps I've been most impressed with. There are a few other "Paint" style apps floating around the store nowadays, but Sketches is worth the price of admission for doing exactly what it says: letting you easily and quickly draw whatever you want on whatever you want.

The quantity of options in a simple app like this are surprising. Choose from six different kinds of backgrounds, including photos shot with the phone's camera, existing album photos, a solid color, a webpage pulled from an in-app browser, a map of your location or a library of six included backgrounds.

Next, select from a bevy of colors and line thickness for drawing or the provided clip art. Finally, save the sketch in the app, export it out to your photo album or send it to Twitter. And even as you use the app, more fun appears -- there's a cool Etch-a-Sketch-like shake feature to erase what you've drawn, and the zoom button can move you in close for even more detail.

Text input is missing (and reportedly will be included in a later version), but as a quick sketch creator (you won't be designing the Mona Lisa with this, more like circling something on a map or pic before a quick upload to Twitter), Sketches is a really fun, very professional app. LateNiteSoft has it up to 1.2 so far, and even though I had no intention of buying it when I pressed the "Buy App" button without thinking (weren't we all a little feverish when the App Store first dropped?), I don't regret my purchase one bit.

If you've got the time, we've got the pixels. Relive the glory of Macworld 2008 even if you weren't there with our 132 pictures from the show, featuring:

• Pics from the Ars Technica/Gizmodo party
• Pics of the Modbook
• Lots of show-floor pics featuring tons of vendors
• A shot of team TUAW in our temporary HQ at the Marriott
• Images of Mac luminaries, possibly one of them slightly inebriated

Some are blurrier than an Engadget spy photo, and some are NSFW (where NSFW = Not Safe for Wallpaper). Enjoy!

I love playing with TextMate themes. I tend to get bored easily, and besides a proclivity for dark backgrounds that impair readability, I'm always up for variety. That's why I'm pleased to see TM Themes, developed by Garrett Bjerkhoel, hit the TextMate theme scene. The site is starting out with a small collection of themes, but features a simple interface with rollover and full previews, a rating system, comment option and theme uploader. Hopefully it will become a good source for coders to find means of expressing their individual creativity, a trait which many don't realize is innate to the coding species.

The TextMate wiki offers a large collection of user-contributed themes, and there are other collections as well. For the most part, though, the themes are found individually across the web. It's fun to see collections coming together and TextMate fans providing services like this for other users.

I didn't buy an iPhone, but I was lucky enough to run down a few features on one this weekend. Sadly my camera wasn't up to macro video on a backlit device (silly Casio), but I did manage to snag a few pics that give a little peek into the average operation of the iPhone.

A couple of things caught my attention while playing. Yes, it was designed by angels. But it was heavier than I thought it would be, given previous descriptions. That's glass and battery folks, make no mistake. As usual, Apple's engineers have balanced the thing so it doesn't feel awkward. Typing wasn't bad, and the mantra "trust the keyboard" is true. The balance and weight feels good in your hands as you type, unlike some smartphones I've used. However, you can't flip the keyboard while typing. That caught me completely unaware. I called up a new Safari page, and when it went to type in the URL, I had meant to try thumb-typing. But you have to back out of the keyboard first, which wasn't exactly intuitive. In fact, it reminds me of old frustrations with modal dialogs in pre-OS X days.

Another curiosity was bringing up the movie playback interface. Initially I had trouble activating stuff easily because I was using a light touch. The Apple fanboy in me was afraid to poke the glass too hard, I suppose. But once you realize this was designed to take the kind of abuse an old boxer like C.K. might dish out, you realize the thing is pretty tough. Clearly this is also to prevent accidental brushes from bringing up controls, but I had to be told how to bring up the playback stuff (you don't just touch the screen). One neat trick: playback of embedded QuickTime content goes fullscreen. That was a nice touch.

From what I was told, Notes don't sync with anything! Sure, the new page flip is cute and the trashing a note eye-candy is cool, but what's the use of this? I guess it's a compelling reason to upgrade to Leopard, since it'll most likely sync with Mail's new Notes feature. Plus, there appeared no To-Do mechanism. That, for me, is a big problem. I'm constantly setting timed reminders. Without that, a lot of my GTD functionality is broken on the iPhone.

Almost everything else really was butter. Tasty, salty butter. The Timer, for example, is a dream for parents. It is incredibly easy to set for variable time-outs, or those inevitable "just 5 more minutes!" But the killer app has to be Google Maps. It's no Garmin GPS thing that'll talk you through your next stop, but it does a great job of providing you with relevant, important information when you need it. And it does this so easily I found myself giggling at the novelty.

You can tell Apple was testing how tight they can get manufacturing with those nano's before they made this thing. The space around the SIM slot is minute. Sure, you can't use a lot of headphones with the thing, but if you look at the construction, there's not a lot to do about that right now. The owner of this unit had it in his pocket, with keys, most of the day. And not a scratch was to be seen. They're definitely using a better coating these days!

Aside from a few inadequacies, everything works like magic and is truly a revelation to use, much like the first Mac. Be sure to check out the gallery with more commentary on the apps I tried out (including the nifty Calculator). After only 20 minutes, I'm in love. The battery died, however, with timely reminders, so I ended my love affair until my current phone contract expires.

While Pourhardi is camped out an hour ahead of me in Chicago, and will inevitably get his iPhone first (Grr!), I'm sitting here with an Optimus Prime sized iPhone display sending out its reality distortion field from above my head. There are about 10 people in line so far, and I've been able to snap some photos of our band of merry geeks. I'll keep updating the gallery as the day goes on, so check back often to make sure you're up on all the excitement that goes on in a suburban mall.

If you're planning on stopping by this particular store, come up and say hi. I'll be podcasting off and on with various people, maybe even you! I'm first in line and wearing my Daring Fireball t-shirt.

It may not be the flagship New York city store anymore, but Apple Store Soho maintains a quiet elegance that cannot be overcome by any gigantic glass cube. TUAW reader 'ZoomZoom1' swung by the store last week to snap a few pictures of the iPhone presales displays, including an interesting t-shirt worn by a store staffer.



Thanks ZZ1