System Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

iPad as desktop status monitor

by Brett Terpstra (May 25th, 2010)

Imagine this: you put your iPad into its dock next to your desktop (or laptop), and it transforms into a heads-up display of all the important stats from your machine. Maybe add some news and weather, and your "Today" list from your favorite to-do app. I'm sure there are a good number of people who ...

TUAW's Daily App: Captain Ludwig

by Mike Schramm (May 20th, 2010)

I've already exclaimed my love for Dizzypad, and Captain Ludwig is a game in the same vein. You're tasked with navigating a character (in this case, a little man) around a series of rotating platforms. However, while Dizzypad is more of an open-ended arcade game, Captain Ludwig adds some strategy ...

Gamesalad supports iPad game development

by Mike Schramm (Mar 30th, 2010)

The folks over at Gamesalad have announced that they're releasing iPad functionality on their super-simple game development platform. They've already offered an iPhone development service for just 99 dollars, and now their system will export games directly to the iPad in the same type of way. ...

VeriFone credit card reader gets deal to be in Apple Stores

by Mike Schramm (Mar 5th, 2010)

The Square credit card reader for the iPhone has gotten most of the buzz around here, especially after we saw that impressive demo at Macworld a few weeks ago. But VeriFone's competing reader has been given the green light by Apple itself: the unit has been granted a deal for shelf space. ...

TUAW redux: The future of iPhone OS and Mac OS

by Erica Sadun (Feb 26th, 2010)

One of the big topics of discussion yesterday in our TUAW back channel was this post from the New York Times Bits blog. In "Why can't PCs work more like iPhones," Bilton pointed out that the iPhone has given Apple a chance to build a new OS from the ground up. This is a familiar viewpoint to us ...

Adafruit shows off the Square dongle for credit card payments on the iPhone

by Mike Schramm (Feb 25th, 2010)

Adafruit is one of a few companies that has been chosen to test the Square dongle that automagically takes credit card payments on any iPhone. Even though we got to see it in action at Macworld, I think every look we can get at this thing is worth it, considering just how darn revolutionary it ...

Australian Broadcasting Corporation wants to be on the iPad

by Mike Schramm (Feb 19th, 2010)

ABC is making moves to bring their content to the iPad, but before you get all excited about seeing the Lost conclusion on Apple's tablet, let us point out that we're talking about the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, not the guys who write Jimmy Kimmel's checks. The down-under version has told ...

More eBook trouble for Amazon

by Mike Schramm (Feb 5th, 2010)

Amazon has run into more trouble with its pricing -- after Macmillan and HarperCollins, a third company has pressured the online book retailer to raise prices on their Kindle eBooks. This time it's the Hachette Book Group, and their CEO in an internal memo says that the company will switch to an ...

Kevin Rose demos Square payment system for iPhone

by Mike Schramm (Jan 19th, 2010)

Digg's Kevin Rose is the newest investor in this Square iPhone payment system that we've been seeing lately, and as you can see above, he's demo'ed the unit for everyone over on YouTube. It works as we've heard: there's just an addon that you plug into the iPhone's headphone jack, and then an app ...

Mac OS 10.6.3 to bring many fixes

by Dave Caolo (Jan 7th, 2010)

The release of Mac OS 10.6.3 moves closer as Apple has begun widespread testing of build 10D522. According to AppleInsider, this update focuses on stability and core components like AppKit, CoreMedia, Desktop Services, FileSync, Fonts, HIToolbox and more. The current build is 665.7MB in size. ...

iPhone credit card reader to be demoed at CES

by Mike Schramm (Dec 31st, 2009)

Coming this CES (which is actually next week): a complete credit card transaction accessory and service for your iPhone. If this thing works as expected, you might actually see it in more than a few places (think: street vendors that will take credit card payments). A company called Mophie is ...

OnLive claims to run gaming service on iPhone

by Mike Schramm (Nov 18th, 2009)

OnLive is a company that has been claiming to do the seemingly impossible -- they plan to set up a sort of "cloud gaming" console, where instead of hardware in individual houses (like we have now; you buy a console for your home), they'll have hardware over the Internet, and stream your game to ...

Secrets preference panel updated for Snow Leopard

by TJ Luoma (Nov 5th, 2009)

From time to time we have shared hidden settings in applications which can be used to "tweak" an app's behavior, such as forcing Snow Leopard's dictionary to reuse the same window or make the print dialog expanded by default. These settings are normally changed using the Terminal.app which can be ...

Aurora Feint devs share their social code in OpenFeint

by Mike Schramm (Feb 18th, 2009)

The folks behind the popular Aurora Feint series of iPhone games have decided to share their work creating a "social MMO" system on the iPhone with other developers. They've just announced a system called "OpenFeint," which other devs will be able to license and use in their own games. OpenFeint ...

In search of Push

by Mike Schramm (Feb 3rd, 2009)

Wherefore art thou, Push? Macworld has gone in search of the much-awaited iPhone feature that would let applications get their own notifications even while not necessarily active (so apps like Twitterific could have a little red number on them showing the number of unread tweets, and so on). But the ...