Quality Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Apple wins patent rights to new curved glass process

by Mike Schramm (Dec 26th, 2012)

Apple has been granted patent rights for a new process using high temperatures to shape and mold a curved glass casing, similar to the one currently on newer Samsung devcies, as opposed to the very flat screen found on the iPhone 5. This exact patent doesn't have a huge influence on Apple's ...

Apple, others in talks to improve quality of music downloads

by Mike Schramm (Feb 22nd, 2011)

CNN reports that Apple is in touch with record labels to try and improve the quality of the downloadable music it sells on iTunes and elsewhere. Currently, the MP3s sold on iTunes are formatted as 16-bit files, but under the new proposal, they'd be upgraded to 24-bit files, which means the files ...

New Apple VP to address product quality

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Jul 22nd, 2010)

If you thought Apple wasn't serious about quality you haven't been paying much attention for the past decade. In addition to making better hardware every year (with the exception of iBook keyboards), Apple has now promoted Jeff Williams to Senior VP of Operations; he'll be working alongside Tim Cook ...

Iris suspends development, users can upgrade to Acorn for free

by Mike Schramm (Mar 18th, 2010)

I never actually used Iris (my image editor of choice is still Pixelmator), but the one-window image editor released a few years ago certainly had its share of fans. Unfortunately, those fans may be disappointed to hear that Iris' developer, Nolobe, has suspended development on the app. Nolobe's ...

GDC 2010: Backflip Studios' year in the App Store

by Mike Schramm (Mar 11th, 2010)

He revealed that a full $1m in that actually came straight from ad sales -- he's made deals with AdMob and other companies to put ads in his popular Paper Toss app, and he uses those ads both for straight revenue, as well as to promote his own games (more on that later in the talk). Farrior offered ...

Developer quacks about 'minimal user functionality,' but it's not a new rule

by Mike Schramm (Mar 2nd, 2010)

Since the early days of the App Store, it's been a virtual Wild West out there -- people can release apps that do whatever they can imagine, from a virtual cowbell to a mirror, silly as the functionality may be. Still, there has always been a (very low) hurdle for the least an app can do; once ...

Apple shifts focus from sales to quality in China

by Mike Schramm (Jan 26th, 2010)

There was quite a bit of discussion from Apple yesterday about their sales in China (you can see that in our liveblog from yesterday afternoon), and AppleInsider points out that Apple is changing priorities over there, from straight up sales to brand quality. Tim Cook said yesterday that Apple ...

Attention to Detail: What we love in an app

by Erica Sadun (Nov 21st, 2009)

Software. It doesn't matter if it's for a Mac or for an iPhone. There are certain qualities we just love, that make an app really stand out to us. As a rough approximation, we call it "Attention to Detail" but there's a lot more going on than just looking at tiny details. It's about understanding ...

Apple's quality dwindling: My MacBook Pro sob story

by Cory Bohon (Aug 1st, 2008)

When faced with the dilemma of upgrading my iBook G4 in June, I started looking for a replacement that would have the same performance as my Intel iMac. I decided upon getting a MacBook Pro 15". With money in hand, I eagerly clicked the "buy now" button on Apple's website. Little did I know that I ...

Save space on your iPhone by re-encoding movies and TV shows

by David Chartier (Aug 11th, 2007)

If you encode your own video for watching on various devices and you're looking to save every last MB on your iPhone, it could be worth your time to re-encode at least some of your larger files with more conservative settings. While I, for example, have been copying the iTunes Store's settings and ...

AP disses Apple TV

by Erica Sadun (Apr 5th, 2007)

Peter Svensson of the Associated Press likes the look of Apple TV as a gadget but declared that its video output came up short. "It's as if Apple had introduced an iPod that sounded like a cassette player," he writes. Svensson downloaded a copy of Pirates of the Caribbean from iTunes and declared it ...

"Why first generation Apple products suck"

by David Chartier (Jun 3rd, 2006)

Gundeep Hora at CoolTechZone has taken a critical eye to what some consider are Apple's recent and rocky 1st generation product launches. The article utilizes two examples - the iPod nano scratch issue and MacBook heat complaints - to illustrate what Gundeep argues is Apple's faulty process of ...