Testing Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Silverback now available

by Giles Turnbull (Jul 25th, 2008)

UK web development team Clearleft has released its web site usability testing application, Silverback. In short, Silverback turns a Mac into a portable usability testing laboratory. What used to require a complicated and cumbersome set up involving several computers, a video camera, and lots of ...

10.5.2 makes your WoW go faster

by Mike Schramm (Feb 11th, 2008)

Our good friends over at WoW Insider (disclaimer: I'm a lead over there) have unlocked one of the first secrets about 10.5.2 (which dropped today in Software Update): it'll make World of Warcraft play faster. After hearing that the patch made reader Jason's Mac play faster, WoW Insider's Adam ...

Testing the iPhone's fake GPS

by Mike Schramm (Jan 28th, 2008)

Mac|Life has a pretty neat breakdown of just how the iPhone's faux GPS work (or doesn't work, depending on the situation). Long story short, the Locations feature is pretty darn close-- unless you really do need GPS. On average, it seems like triangulation put the guessed location (represented by ...

Rumor: Apple using 1.1.2 internally

by Erica Sadun (Oct 10th, 2007)

A blue-and-green birdy is tweeting in our ears, this time telling us that iPhones running 1.1.2 firmware have been spotted in the UK during Apple training sessions. Is this good news or bad news for the hackers? Well, it's hard to tell but clearly if 1.1.2 is already in use, it hasn't been patched ...

Up to 3GB of RAM in the Mac minis

by Mike Schramm (Aug 18th, 2007)

Reader John L kindly dropped us a tip that Other World Computing has upped their Mac mini memory upgrades up to a whopping 3GB of RAM. And in fact, if you really want a Mini that flies, they'll even squeeze 4GB under the hood, even though they say the Mac Mini can't really handle that much. The ...

Iowa school district to use iPods for standardized testing

by Erica Sadun (Feb 28th, 2007)

The Muscatine Journal reports that the Louisa-Muscatine School District in Iowa will start using iPods as part of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. Special-education students will use the iPods to allow them to work on their tests at different rates, while still providing a standardized administration ...

Rogue Amoeba offers teaser and sign-up to test new mystery app

by David Chartier (Feb 26th, 2007)

Oh Paul Kafasis, you clever Rogue Amoeba. What with your two-punch post of a teaser and sign-up offer for a new mystery app dubbed "AHT." What could this new app from the makers of Audio Hijack, Fission, Nicecast and Airfoil be? Is AHT simply a code name, or an acronym? Will AHT complement Rogue ...

Test your MacBook for random shutdowns

by David Chartier (Aug 28th, 2006)

Some MacBook owners around the web are reporting a 'random shutdown' issue, where the machine will - as you might guess - seemingly shutdown at random; either during work or patiently idling for your next command. If you haven't experienced this issue yourself yet but are still concerned about it, ...

PC World welcomes Apple to their charts

by David Chartier (Apr 17th, 2006)

In a move that's causing many to check out their window to see if the sky is falling, PC World has laid out a welcome mat for Apple's hardware into their Top Power PCs testing charts, thanks to Boot Camp. So far, no Macs have made the charts due to some policy quirks (they typically only test stock ...