Apple Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Weekend Poll: What apps did you discover via the 50 billionth download contest?

by Erica Sadun (May 17th, 2013)

On Wednesday, Apple sold its 50 billionth iOS app. TUAW was there keeping track of the excitement and monitoring the iTunes store. Many of our colleagues and readers used this contest as an opportunity to stock up on numerous free apps, to test and explore. Were you one of them? What apps did ...

MacBook Air supply dwindling as WWDC approaches

by Mel Martin (May 17th, 2013)

It's clearly not the best time to be looking for a MacBook Air -- 13-inch versions are in especially short supply. The reason for the shortage will be obvious to those who follow Apple closely: it's almost time for the Apple World Wide Developer Conference starting June 10, and Apple is likely ...

Apple's 50 billionth app contest winner saved up five app purchases

by Steven Sande (May 17th, 2013)

Brandon Ashmore, a 21-year-old from Mentor, Ohio, has a lot to smile about as the winner of a US$10,000 gift card from Apple for being the person who downloaded the 50 billionth app from the App Store. Ashmore told NewsChannel5 in Cleveland that he had saved up five apps to download onto his ...

DevJuice: Apple's ObjC-JavaScript Bridge

by Erica Sadun (May 17th, 2013)

In a new post at his Steamclock Software blog, Nigel Brooke writes how Apple has added new Objective-C-to-Javascript bridging to WebKit: "This new API supports straightforward embedding of the JavaScriptCore interpreter into native Objective-C projects, including reading and writing variables ...

Tim Cook talks about US-made Mac with Politico

by Kelly Hodgkins (May 17th, 2013)

Last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that Apple was bringing production of an existing Mac line to the US. Cook shared some additional details on the project in an interview with Politco that was published yesterday. Besides being assembled in the US, many of the components will be produced in ...

Apple's Retina display aids accessibility

by Steven Sande (May 16th, 2013)

Macworld blogger Steven Aquino wrote a fascinating piece today on how Apple's Retina display technology has helped him -- a legally blind individual with extremely low vision -- to be able to enjoy Apple's products as if he had no vision limitations at all. Aquino says that he had used the ...

Apple to re-locate flagship store in San Francisco

by Steven Sande (May 16th, 2013)

Attendees of Macworld/iWorld and WWDC have always known that if they needed an Apple fix during their conference stay, they could walk over to the Apple Store at the corner of Stockton and Ellis streets. The SFGate blog is reporting that the company has submitted plans to open a new flagship store ...

Preview, sips, and more: OS X image processing tools

by Erica Sadun (May 16th, 2013)

On a recent trip, I found I had failed to add copies of my auto-resizing drop tools to my travel MacBook Air. My droplets allow me to convert images to TUAW-standard sizes, namely 225 pixels for small images and 456 pixels for banner images. (See? Information you never thought you'd need to ...

Apple announces 50 billionth app download, contest winner

by Dave Caolo (May 16th, 2013)

Brandon Ashmore from Mentor, Ohio hit the App Store lottery yesterday by downloading the 50 billionth app to be served by Apple's App Store. Namely, it was Say The Same Thing by Space Inch that allowed Brandon to collect his prize, and what a prize it is: an App Store gift card with US$10,000 on ...

Daily Update for May 15, 2013

by Steven Sande (May 15th, 2013)

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 ...

Siri update prompts users to be brief

by Mike Schramm (May 14th, 2013)

Apple's voice interaction system Siri has been updated, this time specifically to ask users to keep it short. Siri's system doesn't deal well with longer user queries, so if you happen to ask something that's just too long for Siri to deal with, she'll interrupt you, giving you a quote from a ...

Apple job postings suggest iWork team is growing

by Steven Sande (May 14th, 2013)

Just when you think that Apple has decided to totally ignore iWork, along comes news that the company has added job postings for a number of positions on the iWork team. The last official release of the iWork suite -- Pages, Numbers and Keynote -- is telling: the name of the suite is still iWork ...

T-Mobile raises iPhone down payment amount

by Steven Sande (May 13th, 2013)

The launch of the iPhone 5 on the T-Mobile USA network last month was greeted with a lot of fanfare and a new pricing structure -- customers could pick up a 16 GB iPhone 5 with a US$99.99 down payment and then make 24 payments of $20 to purchase the phone outright. TmoNews reports that the down ...

Steve Jobs interview wins a former nay-sayer's respect

by Kelly Hodgkins (May 13th, 2013)

Sometimes all it takes is a moment of time and an open mind to change your opinion of someone. In a recent column at Forbes, Drew Hansen, a management expert specializing in hyper-growth startups, writes about Steve Jobs and how The Lost Interview movie changed his view on the Apple ...

NY State attorney general asks smartphone manufacturers to help combat theft

by Steven Sande (May 13th, 2013)

Smartphone thefts are running rampant -- especially in New York City -- so much that the practice of grabbing the expensive phones is being referred to as "Apple picking." Bloomberg announced yesterday that New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman has sent letters to executives at ...