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TheAppleBlog
TheAppleBlog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
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Appigo Notebook: What Notes Should Have Been on the iPhone

As a writer, I find having a notebook on hand very useful. Long ago, that used to mean carrying around a bulky paper volume and a pen, which was somewhat awkward and not the most space conservative solution. I moved on to a Palm Pilot, which was marginally better, but that usually still meant dragging out the old IR wireless keyboard, too. Despite its amazing folding abilities, that keyboard still took up more space than the paper notebook.

Finally, after so many years of fumbling with any number of clumsy devices, both high and low tech, the iPhone came around and brought with it the prospect of ditching those cumbersome things once and for all. The built-in iPhone Notes app offered basic utility, but the iPhone 2.0 firmware brought with it the promise of better, more robust third party apps. Notebook ($4.99, App Store), from developer Appigo, is one such app.

Appigo Notebook allows you to go well beyond the options available in Notes. Your notes are organized under Notebooks, hence the title, which you can create, edit, and delete. Above your list of notebooks are two permanent master categories, All and Unfiled. All give you access to any note, regardless of category, and Unfiled contains notes not attached to any specific notebook.

You can also change note formatting, including font type and size, which is good, because I absolutely hated the default Trebuchet option. Rotation is supported, as is landscape typing, which is a big plus in a note app, since the extra screen real estate it affords works well with my meaty thumbs.

Autotext entries come in handy, allowing you to insert things like the date, time, or bullets. Any note can also be marked as private, which, depending on which settings you select, could make it invisible, password protected, or masked. I don’t know what nefarious purposes you mights use this for, being far too virtuous to need this kind of thing.

I can already hear you all asking, “Yes, but does it sync?”. In fact, it does, and with Toodledo.com, no less. A Toodledo.com account is free, and I prefer it to desktop syncing, for the same reason I prefer Remember the Milk to Things: your synced information is available anywhere. It also supports searching the fulltext content of your notes for keywords, which is also useful once you start accumulating a ton of information. And if you have Appigo’s other iPhone app, Todo, you can create a new task from a note’s contents using the share button.

Really, Appigo Notebook is as fully featured a note-taking app as I could ask for on the iPhone/iPod touch, short of supporting text-to-speech dictation, which isn’t something I’d probably use that much anwyay. I can finally put the pad and pen to rest, hopefully for good this time.

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Apple Replacing 17-inch MacBook Pro Batteries In-Store

Apple has posted information about their battery replacement service for the new 17″ MacBook Pro. Their latest notebook released offers a new industry standard in performance (up to 8 hours use on a single charge), but comes at the expense of a user-replaceable battery.

Apple notes that the battery in your MacBook Pro is a consumable item, requiring replacement at the end of its useful life. Replacement of a battery which has been consumed via normal use is not covered under warranty, but if battery life suffers from a hardware defect you will be eligible for a free replacement.

The replacement can be done same-day providing you’ve booked an appointment at your local Apple Store. Mail in options are available, taking 3-4 business days. Apple seems to be making it very easy to swap batteries at the end of their useful life, minimizing criticism for the non-removable battery in their latest professional notebook.

How Much?

Apple has published a simple chart which shows the different price for the battery replacement in different countries worldwide:

The USD price is around $50 more than purchasing a replacement/extra battery for a 15″ MacBook Pro — not a terrible deal considering the extra life which you’ll have benefitted from. The price of the replacement battery includes installation of your new battery and environmentally responsible disposal of your depleted battery.

The battery replacement would seem to be a very simple process, though Apple does note that you should ensure you have a backup of your data and aren’t responsible for any data loss which occurs during the replacement process.

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HockeyGPS Aims to Locate Cool Spots Nearby

I’m a big hockey fan — cheering on the Colorado Avalanche and playing whenever I get the chance. So when HockeyGPS (free) came out for the iPhone and iPod touch, I had to give it a try.

The basic idea behind the app is that it will locate nearby hockey facilities of any kind, or in the words of Hockey Science & Technology – the developers of the app:

Easily find and navigate to locations such as hockey arenas, skill development or training centres and retail locations selling hockey equipment, skate sharpening services, hockey memorabilia and so much more.

This sounds great, and even offers the ability for you to add local resources that may not be included in the database yet. The concept has some merit, but unfortunately, HockeyGPS is pretty rough around the edges out of the gate.

The user interface, always a hot topic for Apple folks, is horrendous. (To be fair, the icon is actually decent.) There’s a text entry box for searching which you leave empty in order to get all results. I’d have opted for a button that just said something like, “Hockey Nearby” but that’s probably just me.

The best looking part is the results listing screen, but once you touch a result to see the details, it degrades awful quickly. The result details page looks like an HTML iframe, and moves around if you touch and drag. You can call the facility, open Safari for the website, or have it mapped in the iPhone Google Maps application. The screen for entering your own spots for inclusion in the database is equally sparse and unappealing. To top it all off, the screens are sluggish to respond to your touch!

So the look and feel aren’t there, but could be saved by good content. Sadly, there’s no redemption here either. Where I live in Denver, CO, I get the surrounding ice rinks (both recreational and professional), but nothing more. I was hoping to find some new hockey stores that I hadn’t yet known about. But it appears that HockeyGPS is relying almost completely on user input for their useful content. I suppose it’s a good way for store owners and camps to get their presence out there, but that’s assuming they know this application exists, and they can muddle through the interface for submission.

I appreciate what the folks at Hockey Science & Technology are trying to do here, I really do. Maybe after some spit and polish in the design department, and some individuals who are glutons-for-punishment take the time to enter relevant data, HockeyGPS will be a useful application. But as it stands now, even the price tag of ‘free’ in the App Store may not be enough for people to latch onto this one.

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Daily Apple: Crazy Fake Steve, Atomic Mini, Knife Music, and 4G

Dan “Fake Steve Jobs” Lyons Goes After CNBC Tech Analyst - Wow, I don’t know if you saw this, but it was good television. Dan Lyons basically goes crazy, but he’s actually calling it like he sees it.

Intel-based Atom Mac Mini to Appear in March - Beware the Ides of March, for they could bring under-powered Mac Minis to the masses. They’d be based on Nvidia’s new Ion platform, which also uses the GeForce 9400M graphics card found in unibody aluminum MacBooks.

“OS X” Getting Trademarked Without “Mac” Before It - OS X. Just OS X. It makes sense, but it’s strange that until now Apple hasn’t found a need to do it. Ars thinks Apple wants to apply OS X to more than just Mac, and they’re probably right. iPhones, right? Perhaps beyond, as well.

“Knife Music” Finally Available After Bad Words Removed - It washed its mouth out with soap, and now it’s made it into the App Store via Apple approval. David Carnoy, the book’s author, decided the censoring required didn’t significantly affect the content of the story. Play me that sweet, censored Knife Music, Carnoy.

Stopwatch App Looks, Works Great - If you can get past the app’s Japanese-only description, this app turns your iPhone and iPod touch into a very effective stopwatch that’s accurate to the 100th of a second. It’s free, too, so the price is right.

One-chip 4G Radio From Infineon Might Make It Into iPhone - It’s called the SMARTi LU, and it’s the first single-chip solution to support Long Term Evolution (LTE) for 4G connectivity. It also supports 3G and 2G/EDGE standards, so it’s backwards compatible. Sounds like a good bet.

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Track Your Finances On the Go: Mint.com Comes to the iPhone

Mint.com turned out to be a near perfect solution for my financial needs. To understand why, I’m going to give a little background.

I used to obsessively enter every single receipt into my financial software of choice and track all my expenses. I knew exactly how much money I had in my account at any given moment.

A few years ago, I decided I was tired of this slavish devotion to my computerized checkbook, the annual upgrade costs were getting tiresome, and my bank’s online services were improving to the point where I felt comfortable using those every day (being able to pull images of cleared checks still makes me stop and think how cool the internet is). I just wasn’t feeling it anymore, and I let go.

A few $34 fees for overdrafts this year, and I realized that I needed to keep a little closer tabs on things. Enter Mint.com.

Mint.com’s Award Winning Online Service

Mint was born out of Aaron Patzer’s personal frustration with existing money management software that required too much effort to categorize and organize transactions to get a good view of his own spending. The engineer in Aaron took over and he decided to build some software that would make the whole process easier.

Mint.com moved into public beta in September 2007 after nearly two years of development and won a prize at TechCrunch 40 last year as the best new web application. After getting a private beta invite in 2007 (Thanks, Mike!) I fell in love with the service almost immediately. The Mint.com service is completely free and is supported by the ability to recommend alternate financial services (low-interest credit cards, etc.) that might offer some benefit to the user. The goal is to support Mint by helping users save money.

Mint.com tries to eliminate all the configuration and manual tedium of managing your money. It does this by sucking in transactions from your accounts and credit cards (Mint has multiple security audits and certifications to help you trust them with your login information).

Once the transactions are loaded the real beauty of Mint is realized. Mint uses their software to automatically figure out what category the expense should be assigned and builds your reports automatically. You can get current balances for all your accounts, transaction reports, and nice pie chart graphs that highlight your spending. Mint isn’t a direct replacement for Quicken because it doesn’t have features to look forward to upcoming expenses and export tax information for income tax preparation. It does recognize patterns in past spending though and help remind you of upcoming regular bills and manage budgets based on spending in different categories.

Their patent-pending categorization technology and the ability to match users with financial services that will help them save money has led to a few awards from major publications and several glowing reviews.

Because the Mint.com web site is flash-based, all this goodness hasn’t been available on the iPhone. At least until now.

Mint.com, on the iPhone

The Mint iPhone app (FREE) was released a few weeks ago in the app store and it gives you access to many of the features of the web site. You can get an overview of your accounts, check your balances, and see the transaction history for each account.

You can see how you’re doing against the budgets you’ve set for different categories.

You can also see your cash flow reports that show where you are spending money for the current month.

Unfortunately, the reporting on the iPhone is still very limited compared to what is available on the web site (which, again, uses Flash to present all the pie-chart eye candy).

One big omission is the lack of reports for investment accounts, which would be really useful to check during the day from your iPhone. The other major shortcoming of the iPhone app is that you cannot assign categories or edit merchant names in transactions as you can through the web site.

Limitations Aside…

Still, despite these limitations, the iPhone app is a very useful companion to the Mint.com website. I prefer the native iPhone app to a web app because the power of Mint really comes from being able to navigate quickly — check spending by category, check budgets, check cash flow, get a quick glance at transactions. I am able to get a quick feel for what’s happening with my accounts. I also really appreciate the various alerts that Mint generates to let me know when unusual transactions appear in my accounts.

If you’re an obsessive Quicken user, then Mint.com might not be the right fit for you. But for everyone else, I highly recommend that you check out this free service and use it to get a better handle on your financial life. Once you have your accounts connected to Mint.com, head to the app store and download the free iPhone companion app so you can keep tabs wherever you are.

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Mini DisplayPort Could Become Standard

DisplayPort got a big boost as a video connection standard when Apple decided to use it across its entire notebook line.

Of course, being Apple, they couldn’t use it as is, and instead introduced the Mini DisplayPort version, which was more compact, and, sadly, would also require special adapters to be purchased by MacBook owners. Now version 1.2 of the standard is poised to bring some improvements that will likely make it more attractive to consumers and manufacturers alike.

One of those improvements is the possible standardization of the Mini DisplayPort form factor, which could be a definite boon for MacBook owners, since the market for adapters would become much more competitive. Apple currently offers a free license for the Mini DisplayPort standard, but it has the right to refuse this license to anyone for any reason. Were it to become an official standard supported by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), any manufacturer could use it, without Apple’s say so.

That’s not all that’s in store for the promising young standard. Version 1.2 should also bring twice the available bandwidth, allowing for 3840×2160 resolution on a single screeen, two at 2560×1600, or four at 1920×1200, and support for 3D video playback.

More bandwidth could also be used for USB support, allowing the DisplayPort connector alone to power and run displays with built-in cameras like the iSight, and with integrated USB hubs. That would mean that a monitor like the 24-inch LED Cinema Display wouldn’t require a separate USB cable connection.

Support for functions beyond display is a definite advantage, but, as MacUser points out, DisplayPort brings with it the built-in DRM that’s responsible for the HD playback woes of new MacBook owners. Broader use of the standard should expand the list of supported monitors, so this problem could be somewhat mitigated by the time revision 1.2 arrives.

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Five Background Apps for Your MacBook

Throughout the course of the workday, I open and close dozens of apps on my MacBook. There are five tools, however, that I keep running continuously in the background on my laptop. They’ve got small enough footprints that I don’t have to worry about using up precious CPU and they’re so handy that they’ve found a place on my must-have list of MacBook apps.

Jiggler

Sometimes I use my MacBook as a secondary computer while working on larger projects on my iMac. When I’m using the laptop to play DVDs, stream music through iTunes, or monitor emails and IMs, it drives me crazy when it suddenly goes to sleep. I used to reset the energy saver options, but I would always forget to change them back. Now I use Jiggler, a tiny freeware app that keeps your screen saver from activating or your computer from going to sleep.

AppTrap

Ridding yourself of an application you no longer use is as easy as dragging it from Finder into the Trash. Unfortunately, sometimes associated files and other cruft linger and take up space. It’s usually not a big deal with smaller apps but if you’ve ever tried deleting Firefox or a similarly large set of files, you know it takes forever to flush out all those leftover bits in hiding. When you activate the free program AppTrap, it runs quietly in the background until it’s needed (or until you turn it off). Now when you drag an app to the Trash, it will ask if you want to also delete the associated files. It’s quick, easy, painless, and I love it. This is a particularly useful tool to have on hand if you like to try out lots of different software and find yourself installing — and uninstalling — all kinds of apps to tweak your system.

Keyseer

I love keyboard shortcuts, AppleScripts, and anything else that makes routine computing chores easier. Keyseer is a freeware app that activates AppleScripts through assigned key combinations. It comes preloaded with commands that open the Documents folder, connect to Apple.com, and so on. I can also add my own AppleScripts whenever the mood or need strikes.

Growl

Like most people who spend their day online, I receive a constant stream of information throughout the day via instant messenger, email, and RSS. Each app comes with its own notification system which, frankly, gets unwieldy after a while. Since I can never remember if the foghorn sound means I have new mail or an incoming Skype call, I use Growl to manage notifications across all apps. It works natively with services like Adium, Twitterific, and NetNewsWire, and there are plugins available for other popular tools like Mail.app and Camino.

Undercover

The thought of losing my MacBook fills me with dread. I’m smart enough to not keep sensitive information on it, yet I’d hate to lose it anyway. Undercover won’t keep my MacBook from getting stolen, but it does give me a fighting chance to get it back. This $49 app has a two-step process to theft recovery. First, the software will send screenshots of my laptop back to me, along with external IP addresses and router information. It even takes pictures of the user via the internal iSight camera. Essentially, it captures everything going on with my computer so I can piece the data together and figure out where it is. Next, it will mimic hardware failure by darkening the screen to the point that it eventually becomes unusable, prompting the thief to (hopefully) take it to a Mac shop for service or try to resell it. At that point, a screen saver activates to let everyone know the Mac is stolen. If your Mac never surfaces, Undercover will refund your money in full.

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In His Stead: A Look at Tim Cook and What He Means for Apple

By now, you’ll all have heard about Steve Jobs’ decision to take a temporary leave of absence in the face of growing health concerns, and you’ll also likely have have heard that Apple COO Tim Cook will be stepping in as acting CEO while he’s away. In the wake of the significant losses Apple’s stock prices have taken, it’s understandable to want to take a closer look at just who Tim Cook is, and, more importantly, at what he’ll mean for Apple with Jobs sidelined.

Despite definite personality differences (Jobs is animated while Cook is generally cool and reserved), most accounts agree that Cook will not bring any major changes in management style to the company. According to a statement to Bloomberg.com by former Apple employee Mike Janes, who was in charge of the online Apple Store for five years, Cook has in fact already been running the company for many years, while Jobs has been the public leader.

Tim Cook’s Background

Cook joined Apple when things were not looking so bright for the computer company. He is credited with having helped turn the company around following his arrival in 1998, when he helped to correct manufacturing inefficiencies that were taking a big chunk out of Apple’s bottom line. Prior to Apple, Cook boasts an impressive resumé, with stints at Compaq and IBM.

Known for his boundless energy, Cook is a dedicated cyclist, and sits on Nike’s board of directors. Sitting on another company’s board is another trait he shares with Jobs, and the two are the only Apple executives to do so.

Cook is no stranger to filling Jobs’ shoes. He did so in 2004 when Jobs left for over a month to undergo treatment for pancreatic cancer. This time around, the situation is more grave, owing both to the proposed length of Steve’s leave, and to the perceived seriousness of his medical condition. We suggested yesterday that there may be more to this issue than meets the eye, and, judging by Wall Street’s reaction, many others tend to agree.

So What Does He Mean for Apple?

So what will Tim Cook mean for Apple this time around? All evidence suggests that he is a “stay the course” kind of guy, as befits an interim CEO. That’s all well and good, but when you’re Apple, you depend on a certain amount of dazzle, mystery, and intrigue to maintain your brand image and promote growth. Keeping the ship on an even keel is fine for a month or two, but over the course of six months, you risk becoming boring.

From now until June, Cook’s moves will be highly scrutinized. I don’t necessarily predict stunt moves and events, but I do expect some kind of hardware unveil, and possibly Snow Leopard’s introduction, between now and then, in an effort to recapture some momentum. The lackluster Macworld keynote, with its exhaustively detailed iLife ‘09 review, might’ve had some major reveals taken out at the last minute to save some wow factor for Cook to bring out while Jobs is away.

Make no mistake, this is an audition for Cook. An audition for Apple shareholders, stakeholders, and likely, for Jobs himself. How well he performs will likely determine whether that “interim” ever gets dropped from his title, and possibly, the future of Apple as a company.

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Lightspeed 3.0 & Web Store 2.0

One of the announcements coming out of Macworld last week was the upcoming release of Lightspeed 3.0, an update to the Mac Point-of-Sale software.

Lightspeed is a complete POS solution that covers both front counter and back office retail needs, and one of the few that runs natively on the Mac platform. I took an interest in this release because I used to own a small retail store and I know first-hand how painful Windows POS software can be.

Point-of-Sale the Macintosh Way

Lightspeed is clearly inspired by the iTunes interface and incorporates the familiar left-hand source/navigation list with the details screen on the right, and even a cover flow view of your products. The design choice is meant to connect the POS with the perceived elegance and sophistication of the Mac platform that motivated retailers to choose to purchase a Mac for their shop in the first place. If a boutique owner is buying a (relatively) expensive iMac to be on display in your store, this software will match the look that they are trying to create with their aluminum, black and glass hardware.

And just as you would expect, there is an iPhone web app for Lightspeed that lets you check in on how your shop is doing even when you manage to get away.

What’s New in 3.0

The big changes in version 3.0 are a new interface for the front counter to pick products and build orders, a button mode that is optimized for touchscreens, and better multi-site support. The new interface lets you build a list of products for an order and then “park” that order in the sidebar if you need to switch to another customer, or just to wait for the customer to make up their mind.

A greater number of features are available directly from the POS interface and the sidebar is customizable to match the way your store works. The button mode is there for retail locations where a touch interface would work well. You can buy an iMac customized with a touch sensitive screen by TrollTouch or another vendor and eliminate the (visible) keyboard and mouse on the counter.

All these interfaces leverage key Apple technologies like Core Animation to make a really beautiful and polished piece of software. The multi-site support allows for cross-store sales and returns, and gift cards that can be used at any store. The system will also push inventory descriptions and SKU numbers from a central site to the other stores so you can reduce duplicate administration efforts.

Another small, but significant, change is the added support for debit cards and PIN pads. The fees to accept these cards are often cheaper for retailers and a great convenience to customers. I saw a demo running at the Macworld booth with a fancy Hypercom pad with custom graphics displayed on the pad, just one more detail that helps create a very slick look for your retail store.

The final release date for Lightspeed 3.0 has not been set, but we should see it ship in the first quarter of 2009.

A Whole New Web Store

While Lightspeed 3.0 is still several weeks away, Web Store 2.0 should be ready much sooner in conjunction with a planned 2.8 release of Lightspeed.

Web Store 2.0 has been rebuilt from the ground up to use an SQL backend with PHP. The speed improvements over the previous flatfile-based approach are significant. The biggest change is in the customer-facing web interface.

The web interface has nods to the desktop POS software with drag and drop for products to the shopping cart, a number of animations, and a very sophisticated look. All the buzzwords are covered and the feature list has been greatly expanded to cover wish lists, cross-sell suggestions, online account management, order history, real-time credit card processing, real-time shipping calculations, and more. The demo I got at the Lightspeed booth was really impressive. You can build a great looking web store right from the inventory you’ve already entered in the desktop POS software.

You can choose to have Xsilva host your web store or you can use your own web hosting company as long as they provide MySQL, PHP5, and the required libraries. Xsilva wanted to make it really clear that they are not trying to lock anyone in to their hosting service, but they did want to make it easy for their customer to get online with SSL certificates and all that is needed to launch a site.

Build Your Retail Empire with Lightspeed

Lightspeed pricing starts at $749 and the Web Store license is an additional $899. The upgrade to Web Store 2.0 will be free for users that have a support and upgrades subscription.

If you are looking for new POS software, then Lightspeed is an excellent choice for the Mac user. If you already run Lightspeed, then the 3.0 upgrade will be interesting if you use it for front-counter sales or for multiple locations. For those people running Web Store, the new 2.0 version is just head and shoulders above the previous 1.x releases. You’ll love what you can do with your online presence and the sophisticated look that Xsilva gives you right out of the box.

If you have decided to run your store on the Mac platform, then you will certainly appreciate how Lightspeed works in a familiar way and supports the aesthetic of Apple’s carefully designed hardware.

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Daily Apple: Makeover, Market Loss, Marriage, Make-Believe

Marble Interface To Be The New Face of OS X? - According to MacRumors, Snow Leopard could bring a facelift to OS X, one which bring a more consistent look across the operating system. They don’t name their source, but they do cite John Gruber as a corroborating piece of evidence.

Apple PC Market Share Slips to Acer - A drop of 1.5 percent from 9.5 to 8 in the fourth quarter of 2008, as compared to the third quarter, found Apple losing ground to computer maker Acer. Did netbooks have something to do with the slide? Yes. Definitely, obviously, most assuredly.

For Your Wedding? Seriously? - It’s a neat cake, there’s no denying that. The care that obviously went in to such a faithful reproduction is obvious. But is it really the cake you want to have when you’re celebrating one of the most important days of your life? Apparently yes, for some.

Apple Losing Its Education Appeal? - Not the usual news bite, but rather an extended essay on why Apple may lose its position of grace in the education market if it, and the economy, keep going the way they’re going.

Wired Removes Hackintosh Video After Apple Asks - At first, CNET jumped the gun and was calling “Suit!” They haven’t gone that far yet, but Apple did send a letter to Wired asking them to remove the video they’d created detailing how to to turn your netbook into a hackintosh.

4GB iPhone Coming Soon, According to Ever-Imaginative Analysts - It might happen, right? After all, “checks indicate” it. Via the “build rates.” Sounds rock solid to me.

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Jobs' Stepping Down May Be More Than "Temporary"

Has today’s news that Steve Jobs is stepping down temporarily as CEO come as the proverbial nail in the coffin?

Back in September 2008, Steve Jobs humorously addressed the accidental release of his obituary by Bloomberg by revealing a slide that read, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” The slip up by Bloomberg hit hard as seemingly a culmination of many concerns over Jobs’ health were coming to a head. In recent weeks, we learned that he would not be delivering the ‘Stevenote’ at the MacWorld Expo, and days later he addressed the public with news of his ‘hormone imbalance.’

Jobs cited the time off from preparing for the Macworld Expo Keynote was to be spent with his family. One theory is that he was so tied up in tests to figure out the root of his health problems that he didn’t have the time (or the energy?) to handle the monumental task in San Francisco last week. Another [scarier] theory is that he’s concerned enough about the outcome of said tests, that spending time with loved ones finally won-out over his obsession with work. A week ago I would have gone with theory one…but today, theory two feels like it may hold water.

Following the news today, I can’t help but feel somewhat betrayed by Steve’s open letter last week, concerning his condition. Was it his duty as the leader of a heavily traded public company to come clean to stockholders and fans alike? Part of me says yes, and another feels it’s his own business to deal with, despite the media’s constant barrage on the subject. Regardless, he chose to make a public statement, and now one week later, he is stepping down. We’ve seen Steve’s poker face before (how many years did he deny rumors of an iPhone, for instance?), so last week’s letter could have been a bold-faced lie. But releasing a statement out of the blue like that doesn’t seem the platform for such trickery. Rather, it’s my feeling that with such a rapid turn around from then to now, I can’t help but wonder if things have really just taken a drastic turn for the worst.

Over the four years since his bout with a form of pancreatic cancer, he’s been well enough to run our beloved computer company, but has almost constantly been scrutinized for a non-healthful appearance. Can the seemingly fragile state of Steve Jobs’ health be brought back around completely in the next six months for him to return as he and Apple have announced? I read some thoughts on Jobs’ health, written by a MD, and one part in particular stood out: treating the symptom is basically a bandaid, while treating the cause is the ultimate goal. If we do see Steve Jobs back in the big chair later in 2009, I would bet they’ve only treated his symptoms, and not the more serious cause. While I certainly hope my guess is wrong, six months seems awfully short to undo four plus years of deteriorating health.

As a person, I hope for the sake of he and his family that he gets better. Obviously it would be best if he can concentrate fully on that, and not on the well-being of Apple. I would love to see Steve Jobs back on the job later this year — believe me, I hope my thoughts on this news are very, very wrong — but feel like his announced leave of absence is meant to ‘gently’ ease the business (and stockholders!) into a post-Jobs Apple world.

Mr. Jobs has easily demonstrated his ability to see the future of technology, and plan for it. During the second coming of Steve Jobs, he’s managed to revitalize Apple with beautifully designed hardware and software, create a digital media juggernaut in the iTunes Store, and has surely laid the groundwork for much more revolutionary technology from the company in coming years. I’m confident that such a forward-thinker would not have neglected plans for his eventual stepping-down. I’m confident that Apple will survive a world, post Jobs, whether that’s six months from now, or six years from now. My hopes are obviously for the latter, and then some.

From all of us at TheAppleBlog, good luck to you and your family Steve. May your recovery be an easy one.

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Jobs Takes Leave for Health, Tim Cook Made Acting Apple CEO

In a move that will no doubt have blogs, investors, and other news and media afire with renewed rumors regarding the exact nature of his condition, Steve Jobs has just elected to take a leave of absence from his position as CEO of Apple, Inc. He will be replaced by Tim Cook, who will act as interim CEO in his absence.

This news comes on the heels of Jobs’ absence at the Macworld Keynote, where he was replaced by Phil Schiller, and a letter from Jobs personally addressing the rumors surrounding his health and claiming that the issue was a hormonal imbalance, which was easily treatable.

The leave of absence will last until the end of June of this year, during which time Tim Cook will be in full control of the company’s day-to-day management. Trading of Apple (AAPL) stocks was halted immediately upon the release of the news. The trade freeze will give Apple some time to mitigate the negative effect of the news on share prices, but they will undoubtedly drop.

The following letter, posted by MacObserver.com, was sent from Steve Jobs to Apple employees, and explains the reasons for his temporary departure:

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.

I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

Steve

Jobs appears to remain optimistic, and won’t keep his hand out of things altogether, which is good news for the company. We here at TheAppleBlog wish him a speedy recovery.

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iPod Touch: The New Age Gameboy

It's a device that originated while most of today’s tech generation were just learning to walk, and it took the world by storm.

Of course I’m talking about Nintendo’s Gameboy. The nice monochromatic display, the flat gray casing, and who would forget the monolithic size of the device… but all this aside, the Gameboy completed us. Today the iPod touch has grown into a device synonymous with personal entertainment, productivity, and practicality. However the iPod touch has a few extra features that set it a bit above the Gameboy competition.

Back in the day it was a child’s dream to have a Gameboy, whether it was being used in the home, on the road for those family trips, or as a means of playing Tetris against your buddies at recess. It was an incredible device for its time.

When I was eight my Gameboy was my pride and joy, there wasn’t much else. It is sad to say but I feel the same about my iPod touch. Some would argue that they are totally different devices and thus incomparable. In retrospect however, the Gameboy changed the portable market just as the iPod touch and iPhone have done.

The Gameboy set the stages for portable gaming, they were among the first mass produced portable gaming consoles in color, later they allowed people to play against their friends wirelessly, now with the DSi releasing next year, you can take photos and browse the Internet. Given the iPod and Gameboy families are fundamentally different, it is still safe to assume that the Gameboy and iPod families have certainly started sharing the same side of the street.

The Gameboy is still highly regarded as a gaming system and this will hinder its sales among older more adult crowds simply because the Gameboy or DS is still regarded as a Gaming device that has a built in Calendar, Browser, and touch screen sensitivity. However when a shopper purchases an iPod touch or iPhone they are thinking that this is a device that can play music, browse the Internet, and it can also play games.

The portable gaming market has long been in need of an overhaul if they are looking to compete with the iPhone. One of the primary reasons for this is the iPhone’s untethered existence. Unlike the leading portable gaming consoles, there is no need for cartridges, a charger, or even money (aside from the cost of the device). In all practicality it wouldn’t be all the difficult to actually own an iPod touch or iPhone without a computer, since you can buy and download directly to the device. This feature is key in developing future technologies for portable gaming, and because of this fact I believe the next generation of portable gaming is going to adopt many similar features as to those of the iPod touch and iPhone

The iPhone has laid the groundwork for the next generation of portable gaming, and as a result the lines between the cell phone market’s “mobile gaming” and true portable gaming are starting to blur.

So in conclusion how do you think the iPod touch and iPhone have changed the portable gaming market, or do you think they are two separate entities that should not be compared?

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iPhone Nano Spoiling Pre's Party?

Despite what seems like hundreds of case manufacturers jumping the gun and offering iPhone Nano cases for pre-order, the Macworld keynote last week came and went, and there was no Nano to be seen.

The cellphone world did get a shakeup, but not from Apple. Instead, news arrived from the unlikely source of Palm that a brand new, touch capable smartphone with an equally brand new operating system would be coming soon to a provider near you. I’m talking about the Pre, in case you missed it.

The Pre, whose niche is not yet exactly clear (it isn’t a dedicated multimedia phone, nor is it really a powerful business machine, according to AllThingsD), will be available in the “first half of 2009,” according to Ed Colligan, Palm’s President and CEO. Now, I’m pretty sure they were hoping to have the time to themselves, but it looks like they might be out of luck. Chinese business newspaper Economic Daily News is reporting that two of China’s chip manufacturers will be taking on contracts from Apple to produce iPhone Nano chips. If the newspaper is correct, the orders will be placed in March, with a June rollout date in mind for Apple’s new baby smartphone.

Were Apple to actually stick to this rumored timeline, they would significantly harm Palm’s buzz. First of all, Apple has the hype factor going for them. They need only drop an invite for a special event and the press will be salivating. Second, the iPhone Nano could strike where the Palm Pre is most vulnerable, namely on price point. Colligan has hinted that the Pre will not be cheap, and the Nano will clearly beat the iPhone 3G on pricing, so it’ll be more attractive to those still sitting on the smartphone fence.

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First Look: Daylite Touch

At the Macworld Expo last week, Weldon Dodd and I spent about an hour with Alkyhan Jetha (AJ), the CEO & President of Marketcircle, makers of Daylite, Daylite Touch and Billings. It was a real treat to spend time with AJ as both Weldon and I learned quite a bit about Daylite Touch.

At the beginning of the interview, AJ explained how Daylite started as a tool that they built to better manage their own consulting business. Eventually they realized that the solution they developed for themselves might be valuable to others trying to manage their businesses on the Mac platform. Sure enough, Daylite has become an invaluable productivity tool for many Mac users.

The decision to bring Daylite to the iPhone was easy. AJ said that they downloaded the iPhone SDK within minutes of it appearing on Apple’s web site (one of their engineers just happened to be on the developer page when it dropped) and everything stopped at Marketcircle while they started working on what would become Daylite Touch. A year later, the effort involved in bringing Daylite Touch to market is evident.

Upon initial viewing of the app, it was amazing to see how Daylite Touch is really a deep companion to the Daylite product line. It has the majority of the functionality of the main application and honestly adds functionality that Apple missed when building the iPhone.

As a smartphone and mobile device user for the past 10 years, one thing Apple missed is not providing an aggregated at-a-glance look of today’s appointments and tasks. Further, previous experience with Windows Mobile devices showed me that having a screen with an aggregated view of my current day is critical in telling me what I need to do next.

Home Screen

Well, with mighty praise, Marketcircle nailed this functionality in Daylite Touch with their Home screen. Here is an example:

In the Home screen, Daylite Touch shows me my appointments and meetings for today and tomorrow, as well as letting you know of any tasks that need completion. Further, the Next tab, visible on the right-side of the screen, gives you one-touch access to the details of your next appointment including the location and contact details. Tapping phone numbers will place a call and tapping addresses will launch the built-in Maps application on the iPhone for directions and so on.

Objectives

Objectives is an aggregated view of your Daylite Projects, Opportunities, Pipelines and Notes. Here, you can navigate the different components and edit them with full fidelity. One feature I really appreciated during the demo was the ability to filter by category (as a user of Daylite, this is very powerful). Users can also delegate any item here to other users of Daylite.

Here is an example of a project and its related notes:

Contacts

Contacts is an aggregated view of both your contacts and organizations. This simplified view provides a single list of all your phone contacts. Within the next version of Daylite (3.9), you’ll be able to specify exactly which contacts and organizations you want to sync with your copy of Daylite Touch.

What makes this especially valuable is that some folks only want specific contacts on their phone. A weakness with MobileMe is that all of your contacts are synced to the iPhone whether you like it or not.

If you do want to sync all of your contacts with Daylite Touch, there is one caveat. If you have over 500 contacts, you will see them displayed 100 at a time (with standard iPhone pagination). AJ said this was a performance issue that will most likely not be resolved by the time Daylite Touch is available in the Apple App Store.

Calendar

You would think that the Calendar component is just another Calendar app competitor. Well, it isn’t. Daylite Touch’s calendar is much richer than the functionality that Apple’s Calendar provides. Similar to the Calendar app, you can view appointments and meetings via a list, the current day or the month.

What’s not in this screenshot is that when you turn the iPhone on its side, Daylite Touch uses the accelerometer to display a week view of your appointments. This is just fantastic.

Also, you can quickly add an appointment via multi-touch. Essentially, users do not need to go into another screen to create a new appointment. Watching AJ perform this task was enjoyable because it was intuitive — it just made sense to create appointments this way.

Synchronization

Synchronization has been completely rewritten for Daylite 3.9 (required for the Daylite Touch Server). Under the hood, OpenBase has been replaced with PostgreSQL. Moving to the more modern, opensource database should provide faster and more stable syncing with offline databases and more reliable connections for Daylite Touch.

A lot of engineering effort has been placed into designing Daylite Touch to only tranmit small packets of data and to gracefully respond to a loss of an internet connection, or an interruption from a phone call. The iPhone app will pick up where it left off and resume syncing as soon as a connection to the Daylite Touch Server is restored.

Pricing and Availability

Daylite Touch will require Daylite 3.9 (a free upgrade for existing users) and a new Daylite Touch device license for each device that will sync with your database. The pricing for these new device licenses has not been set, but AJ said that you can expect them to be competitive with similar apps on other mobile platforms. Reading between the lines, this is not going to be a 99 cent app, or even a $9.99 app, but probably closer to $99.

As an aside, the move to PostgreSQL on the backend also means the end of the ridiculous need to enter all the user licenses on every computer. You will be able to manage all your licenses on the machine that you designate as the Daylite Server.

AJ says to expect Daylite Touch in the first quarter of this year. Given what Weldon and I witnessed at Macworld Expo, its safe to say that we were reasonably convinced that many Daylite and non-Daylite users will install this application. Frankly, it is one of the first complete applications available for the iPhone. Well done Marketcircle, well done.

At a possible ~$99 price point, would you still purchase Daylite Touch? If it’s not worth it to you at that price, at what point would it be?

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Third Party Web Browsers Appearing in the App Store

Having prevented the listing of any web browser apps in the App Store since it’s launch, the past 24 hours has seen Apple begin to authorize this type of application on a widespread basis. The company has been reluctant to sell any applications competing with those found on the iPhone by default, such as Safari, Mail and the iPod app.

The applications in question would seem to have been submitted several months ago, and the bulk approval today marks a shift in Apple’s policy towards this area. These new applications include:

Edge Browser (Free) - A full screen browser with no intrusive toolbars.

Incognito ($1.99) and Squeaky ($3.99) - ‘Stealthy’ browsers, which doesn’t record any browsing history.

WebMate: Tabbed Browser ($0.99) - The first ‘tabbed’ browser for the iPhone

Shaking Web ($1.99) - Aims to assist in reading web pages through a technology to compensate for the movement of your hand.

This ongoing approval of browser-based apps is likely to continue over the next few days. It’s great news for Apple fans, as a whole new range of functionality can be introduced to your mobile browsing experience. It remains to be seen whether this will encourage mobile browser releases from competing developers such as Firefox and Opera. Whether any of the browsers approved over the past few days offer a real potential replacement to Safari is debatable, but releases from Firefox and Opera could really push Apple to innovate their own mobile browser at a faster pace.

Many hope that this change of policy will carry forward to areas such as email — an area where the iPhone is arguably not making the most of the technology available. Personally, I feel that any extra competition to keep Apple on their toes is a great thing.

What are your thoughts? Are there any other areas for which you’d like to see Apple relax the restrictions placed on developers?

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Why Apple's NVIDIA GPU Extended Service Program is Inadequate

A tip of the hat to fellow TheAppleBlog contributor Clayton Lai in his recent column NVIDIA Killed My 2007 MacBook Pro, and the people who commented with similar tales of premature hardware failure woe, for finally convincing me to cross the late 2008 MacBook Pro off my short list of candidates for my next system upgrade.

Clayton’s ‘Book fell victim to what evidently is a not uncommon defect in the NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT graphics processor units in May 2007 and Early 2008 revisions of the MacBook Pro, combined with a simultaneous hard disk issue which rendered the machine unbootable. The good news is that Apple came through with a repair that involved replacing the entire logic board under a recently announced extended service program for these models even though Clayton’s computer was out of warranty. The bad news is that it seems many owners of these MacBook Pro models are experiencing similar difficulties to such a degree of frequency that Apple announced in October:

“In July 2008, NVIDIA publicly acknowledged a higher than normal failure rate for some of their graphics processors due to a packaging defect. At that same time, NVIDIA assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected. However, after an Apple-led investigation, Apple has determined that some MacBook Pro computers with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor may be affected. If the NVIDIA graphics processor in your MacBook Pro has failed, or fails within two years of the original date of purchase, a repair will be done free of charge, even if your MacBook Pro is out of warranty.”

Apple and NVIDIA stepping up and taking some responsibility for this defect is a good thing as far as it goes, but it almost certainly does not go far enough. There seems not much probable cause to believe that (a) this problem will not eventually afflict most examples of those MacBook Pro models if they are used long enough, and (b) that once repaired there’s any guarantee of the issue not repeating itself after the two-year extended service eligibility or even three years of maximum AppleCare extended warranty coverage.

I expect my computers to provide reliable service much longer than two or three years. My present main workhorse Mac is a model originally debuting in September 2003, and I have a couple of more than eight year old Pismo PowerBooks in daily service as well, none of which have ever been troubled with hardware defects. With devices costing as much as Apple notebooks do, one should expect nothing less.

An extended service program more along the lines of the seven-year one Apple implemented for the PowerBook 5300 and 190 models back in 1996 after that model proved plagued with a constellation of hardware and software problems including bad motherboards, power and circuitry problems, inadequate AC power adapters, enclosure issues like flimsy display screen hinges, power adapter plugs and trackpad buttons that broke, would be more in order,

In 2004, Apple announced a more modest three-year Extended Repair Program for G3 iBooks manufactured between May 2002 and April 2003, with Apple CFO Phil Schiller acknowledging that “We have determined that a small number of iBooks introduced in 2002 have a display problem caused by a component failure on the logic board.” Unfortunately, numbers weren’t all that small, and I had readers report that logic boards in their G3 iBook G3s had serially failed two, three, even four times.

Arguably, this GPU issue with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT equipped MacBook Pros is as bad or even worse than the PowerBook 5300 troubles. I bought a 5300 in late 1996. At about the 4 1/2 year mark it developed the loose power adapter jack, broken trackpad button and screen hinge issues, and the entire case plastics were replaced by Apple for free under the extended service program. I’m happy to report that the old 5300 provided eight years of useful service, the first three and a half for me and the remainder as my daughter’s high-school and university freshman year computer. We still have it and it still works. I’m wildly pessimistic that there will be very many May 2007 through September 2008 MacBook Pro’s that will still boot and run come the year 2022. People who purchased these machines deserve better.

Personally, I’m now of a mind that my next system will be a MacBook unless I can scrape up the scratch to get one of the new unibody 15″ MacBook Pros, whose NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT GPUs we hope will not be afflicted with a similar issue down the road.

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Daily Apple: Surrounded, Nebraska, Psystar & Songsmith

MPEG Surround Support May Come to iTunes - It’s not in the bag, but Ars is reporting on it, so it must be more than the usual rumor chaff. They’re a class act, right? Anyways, they’re reporting that support for MPEG Surround, which has been around for quite some time, might finally make it to iTunes via official means.

Nebraska State Senate Goes a Little Air Crazy, Budget Wild - Well, they didn’t agree unanimously about it, but Nebraska state senators will have around 70 brand new MacBook Airs to play with thanks to a recent equipment purchase. At least one naysayer felt they were spending too much. Response: But they’re just so cool!

IR Control Via Your iPhone - One thing I miss about my Palm Pilot is NoviiRemote, the app which allowed me to hide and forget about my thousands of remote controls. The iPhone can’t do the same thing, since it doesn’t have IR. But now it does, via an IR widget and app developed by University of Toronto students. Way to go hometown team!

Cost of New MacBook Pro Battery Replacement Revealed - Not too steep, when you consider how much it costs just to buy current replaceable batteries. Don’t like the exchange rate for CDN $, though.

New Line of Argument for Psystar - Switching horses once again, this time sort of back to their original position. They claim that once they bought the copies of OS X legally, they’re allowed to resell it on their machines, and to say otherwise is to violate the Copyright Act.

Microsoft Offers Songsmith to Challenge GarageBand - A new music creation app from Microsoft is trying to take on Apple’s GarageBand, since their products have a history of coming late to Apple’s niches and doing well (Zune, right?). Songsmith does offer the interesting feature of coming up with musical arrangements that go great with your terrible crooning.

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DRM Still Strong With Apple, Just Different

Many hailed the removal of digital rights management (DRM) from the vast majority of iTunes track, a move announced and acted upon last week at the Macworld trade show.

The removal applied to 90 percent of Apple’s library, and plans are to extend it to the rest in short order. Many suspect that record labels agreed to going DRM-free after iTunes agreed to be more flexible with its pricing options, moving from 99 cents per song, to between 69 cents and $1.29.

What many might not realize, however, is that this isn’t an open invitation from Apple to go totally nuts and start freely copying, sharing, and distributing music like crazy. It’s called “Social DRM” and it makes sure there’s a little bit of you in every iTunes Plus file you download via your iTunes Store account. That little bit of you isn’t your sparkling personality or winning charm, either. It’s your email address, and it’s hard coded into each and every purchase.

The purpose of including the email address is to track anyone who might get the bright idea of uploading their library to, say, a torrent site, thus stepping well into the realm of the illegal. Social DRM, in this regard, may actually be about preventing piracy, something which is not necessarily true about traditional forms of DRM, depending on who you ask.

In case you forgot, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has a nice list of examples of why Apple’s still very much in the DRM game, even if it has relaxed a bit in the music department. Among the most suspect uses: the authentication chip in newer model iPods and iPhones that third party manufacturers are required to buy a license for.

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Safari RSS Security Vulnerability Comes to Light
If you have Safari, on either Windows or OS X, you could be open to malicious attacks whereby users can gain unauthorized access to files on your hard drive.

That’s according to a new tech note from developer Brian Mastenbrook, who has taken matters into his own hands while we wait for an official fix from Apple. And good thing, too, since this vulnerability is apparently nothing to sneeze at, as attackers can easily get their hands on sensitive information stored in cookies, emails, etc.

Even if you don’t use Safari as your primary browser, you could still be at risk, if you haven’t selected a different default feed reading application. That means you, OS X users. If you’re a Windows user and you don’t use Safari as your default browser, you should be in the clear.

Here’s the fix for OS X users:
1. Open Safari and select Preferences… from the Safari menu.
2. Choose the RSS tab from the top of the Preferences window.
3. Click on the Default RSS reader pop-up and select an application other than Safari.
There’s currently no indication of when Apple will issue a fix, but they are aware of the problem, so keep an out for a Software Update coming soon.
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