Innovation Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Fortune says Apple tops them all!

by Mel Martin (Mar 4th, 2011)

This tidbit of news is not a surprise, but it's sure nice to see. For the 4th straight year Fortune says that Apple is the world's most admired company, as it "continues to set the bar high for high tech companies across the board." Citing nearly doubled profits from a year ago, ...

Bump adds music-sharing upgrade

by Mike Schramm (Nov 15th, 2010)

Bump is an older app on the App Store that allowed you to "share" contact information with another local phone not actually by Bluetooth, but by simply placing the two phones near the same location, and then sharing the information across a wireless network. Now, Bump is apparently adding a new ...

Apple awarded new patents

by Matt Tinsley (Sep 3rd, 2010)

This past week, Apple had a host of new patents officially approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office. From streamlining the way images are rendered to preventing the accidental opening of applications, a large chunk of the patents seem to relate to the ways that a user interacts with a device. ...

TUAW's Daily App: No, Human

by Mike Schramm (Aug 30th, 2010)

No, Human is an intriguing little morsel of gameplay for both the iPhone and the iPad. The clever premise is that humans are planning to go out and explore the Universe, and the Universe, in turn, has decided that's not a good idea. So, you're actually playing against humans, lobbing fiery ...

MyTown adds product check-ins

by Mike Schramm (Jul 26th, 2010)

Booyah's very popular MyTown app has updated again, this time bringing some more innovation to the "check-in" idea. Instead of just checking in to locations, the app will now "check-in" to various products with the iPhone's camera. So when you use a certain product, you can use the camera to scan a ...

Low-tech testing on a high-tech iPad

by Mike Schramm (Apr 2nd, 2010)

Here's a little levity on the eve of the iPad launch chaos tomorrow. We're going through release after release today of all of these iPad apps, and after browsing page after page after page in the App Store, it's sometimes easy to forget just how much work went into each one of these things. The ...

Macworld 2010: MyFrogz cases, designed by an iPhone app

by Mike Schramm (Feb 15th, 2010)

There were a lot of case vendors and manufacturers at Macworld, and we didn't have time to run around and talk to all of them (not to mention that most of them aren't all that interesting anyway). But we did make a stop by the iFrogz booth, because we'd heard about something interesting they're ...

Gowalla announces shared trips

by Mike Schramm (Feb 1st, 2010)

There's a growing battle lately on the App Store over "check-in" apps -- Foursquare, Gowalla, and MyTown have all seen big gains in users lately (and a few other contenders have been roaming the periphery), and it looks like we're starting to see some innovation in the mix. Gowalla recently updated ...

Yelp updates with check-ins, Foursquare not happy

by Mike Schramm (Jan 19th, 2010)

Location-based social networking on the iPhone is a tough game to play, apparently -- the popular Yelp app [iTunes link] has recently updated to version 4.0, and along with a friend finder, hooks to Facebook and Twitter, and an updated version of their augmented reality Monocle feature, they've ...

Businessweek puts Apple at top of Most Innovative list

by Mike Schramm (May 28th, 2009)

Businessweek has posted a list of what they call the top 50 most innovative companies in 2009, and guess who is sitting right at the top of the list. Sure enough, it's our favorite computer maker -- according to the survey, taken by "senior executives around the world," Apple is number one, and the ...

Braid comes to the Mac

by Mike Schramm (May 21st, 2009)

You have to admit: for all of the gaming woes that the Mac faithful has suffered, there's fortunately never been a shortage of great indie games for us to play. Aquaria made it to our platform, World of Goo appeared pretty early on, and now Braid, Jonathan Blow's terrific deconstruction of Super ...

The Bacterial Orchestra uses the iPhone to create "viral music"

by Mike Schramm (May 19th, 2009)

This is really wild: what you see above is an example of "viral music" -- it's part of an upcoming music festival that's taking place in Sweden, and it features a circle of iPhones that are both listening to and playing a very abstract kind of "music." Each one is picking up audio from its ...

Fast Company Magazine ranks Apple #4 of 50 innovative companies

by Mel Martin (Feb 20th, 2009)

With most business trends heading south, Apple continues to get recognition from customers and the press. Today, Fast Company Magazine put Apple in 4th place among the top 50 most innovative companies. The article cites the iPhone, the App Store, the unibody construction of the new laptop line, ...

Five ways the App Store will change the world

by Mike Schramm (Jul 11th, 2008)

There are historic days, people. The App Store went live, and all of a sudden, we're drowning in new things for the iPhone. But it's not just a big deal for iPhone owners -- this is a huge day for society and technology in general. While there have been lots of PDAs, and lots of apps to run on them, ...

USA Today: iPod is lifechanging

by Erica Sadun (May 23rd, 2007)

USA Today recently chose 25 inventions they felt had changed people's lives in the last 25 years. Along with cell phones, laptops and DVDs, USA Today chose iPod as their #8 life changing gadget. It has, they suggest, reinvented the way people walk down sidewalks. Presumably before the iPod, no one ...