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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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Goodbye 2008, Welcome 2009
Well, it’s 2009. The last year people can wear those ridiculous “200X” glasses. How unfortunate.

2008 turned out to be the biggest year in TAB’s four year history. The main event being that we joined the GigaOm family. It was an outcome I had in no way planned or pursued but it turned out to be exactly what we needed to step things up.

2009, I’m certain, has a few tricks up its sleeve and I’m excited about where TAB is heading.

Thanks so much for being a part of this. We hope your 2009 is full of new year’s resolutions that you actually follow through with. But even if you don’t, we’ll still be your friend.

Love,
TheAppleBlog

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WWDC 2008 Winners: Where Are They Now? — Squirrel
When French student Axel Peju wanted to use his Mac to track his finances and manage a budget, he couldn’t find an application to meet his needs, so he created his own. He developed Squirrel, a personal finance program for the Mac (and soon, the iPhone). It’s full of features to help you save and spend your money wisely, and won a design award at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference this summer for Best Student App.

As part of a series of posts that take a look at the where the 2008 WWDC winners are now, I caught up with Perju recently to ask him what it was like to receive the award, how he ended up at the conference, and what the future holds for the Squirrel project. Here’s what he had to say.
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Macworld Town Hall Meeting
Today, IDG World Expo (the folks behind Macworld), announced that they will be holding a Town Hall Meeting at next week’s show. The meeting will be held on Wednesday, January 7 at 5PM PST in Moscone’s Gateway Ballroom, room 102.

All Macworld attendees are free to and encouraged to attend as IDG will be taking the feedback given there to help shape future Macworld events.

A few weeks back it was announced that Macworld 2009 would be Apple’s last. With the annual keynote given by Steve Jobs being the highlight of the event, this has put the Macworld Expo in a bit of a predicament. Why attend when Apple won’t even be there?

Paul Kent, VP and GM of Macworld, acknowledges that things will change, but is optimistic. "While there is no question that Macworld is going to evolve and change in 2010, the fundamental importance of the event remains the same: the unique ability to put exciting new Apple-related products directly into the hands of users and to inspire those users to put their products to work in new and innovative ways,” he says.

How would you change Macworld now that Apple will no longer be attending?

If you’ll be going to Macworld this year, be sure to plan your schedule with our Macworld SCHED.

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Analysis of a Rumor: Large Format iPod Touch

As you may or may not be aware, TechCrunch reported yesterday that a larger format, 7 to 9-inch iPod touch was in the works at Apple and would arrive by next fall. They claim to have received the information from three seperate, independent sources, one of which is said to have actually handled a prototype of the device.

TC’s sources say that Apple has been working on a large format device internally for a while now, but that they were not sure how the public would receive such a device, and whether there would be sufficient demand to justify production. The success of the App Store is said to be the tipping point that finally pushed them to pursue it seriously.

This rumor has quickly been taken up by many, if not all, of the major Apple blogs on the web. And for good reason. Looked at in context, it actually has a lot going for it.
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Books-As-Apps: Cutting Out the Clutter
Over the holidays, I ended up reading an awful lot using my iPhone/iPod touch. I started with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, just to determine whether or not I wanted to cough up ten bucks to go see the Brad Pitt movie, and then, since I enjoyed it, I downloaded and read a number of other F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories. To do so, I used Stanza, because it’s a great app, well designed and well maintained, and because the books are free under the Life +50 license. Which is not to say I won’t ever purchase an ebook through Stanza, just that I haven’t yet had cause to.

What I don’t think I will ever do, though, is buy an individual book application. To me, that would be like buying individual albums as independent applications instead of through iTunes. Why would I opt to have a thousand different icons on my desktop, one for each album, when it would be far easier, more organized, and more sensible to keep them all in one place, i.e., my iTunes library. The same applies for electronic books. How is it beneficial, to anyone besides publishers and developers, to have discrete applications for individual books?
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Daily Apple: Clear iPhones, Historical Resistance, Dumb Apple
See Inside Your iPhone - It’s a case mod that lets you in on the secret of your magical phone. iCustom is making these clear plastic cases for the iPhone, but apparently the mod is only available in Russia, at least for now. Any Russians out there keen to do this? I can’t see why you would be.

D.C. Store Meets Resistance From Historical Society - Nothing disrupts your attempts to stay firmly planted in the past like a big old Apple store popping up and obstructing the view of ancient brick buildings. Two preservation societies are blocking Apple’s move to their Washington D.C. site, on the grounds that the design won’t fit in with the timeless surroundings.

The App Store Pricing Vortex - Another essay on app store pricing, this time from Inside iPhone, to go with the one we talked about in an earlier article. The conclusions here are similar, but the analogy the author uses to paint a picture of what’s happening in the app store is particularly effective.

Apple Appears Twice On Forbes’ Dumbest List - Two, count’em, two spots on Forbes’ Dumbest Moments in Business list for 2008. The offending incidents? Allowing the “I Am Rich” app to make it into the app store, though not for very long, and the Bloomberg/CNN Jobs is dead debacle. The second one isn’t their fault, but I’m sure they’re not pleased with the double appearance.

Jobs Getting Worse, Or Not - Gizmodo started quite a ruckus today, including at least one anecdotal incident of stock sell-off, by publishing this article about Steve Jobs’ declining health. CNBC says otherwise, but I’m not sure who to believe anymore.

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Zephyr: Throw Your Creativity to the Wind
As seems to be the trend with Smule’s iPhone applications, their point may not be immediately clear. With many App Store offerings, “enjoyable time waster” could be the point, but that’s not always enough for some people. There were those who didn’t see the point of Twitter when it was in its infancy (myself included), yet now it is a legitimate vehicle for information dispersion, adopted by all sorts of businesses and personal users alike. But I digress. Suffice it to say, I would almost describe the concept of Zephyr as Twitter, only created with doodles rather than text.

While Ocarina left Smule fans who owned an iPod touch out in the cold (due to the requisite microphone for input), Zephyr comes along with its wispy snowflake drawings that are strictly touch-based and available for either device. The ‘ink’, you see, is actually made up of snowflakes of varying size and shape. As you draw on the screen of your device with your finger, a tune akin to wind chimes accompanies the resulting picture.
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Learning to Love Technology: My Wife and the iPhone

As I think it goes with most geeks, our better half (yes as a matter of fact, some of us have girlfriends and wives!) usually isn’t the most technical of people.

My lovely wife can use a computer just fine, but she’s not the type of person who considers that technology can be leveraged to make her life easier — I guess that’s where I come in. So when I passed my original model iPhone down to her, it wasn’t received with the excitement that I would have hoped. A few months under her belt with the iPhone on her belt, she’s really getting into the concept that it makes her life easier.

As long as it could dial numbers and remember a couple of her regularly-called contacts, my wife didn’t care what the phone looked like or the functions it had. So when I bestowed my iPhone upon her, it lacked the fanfare that I would have hoped for. But I pressed forward and began to demonstrate some of the features that I thought would make taking care of the kids and the household and everything else in her busy life, as simple as remembering to bring the phone with her at all times. It wasn’t a smooth transition — there were some scratches and bruises (to my ego) — but these days, she actually loves her iPhone!
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Plan Your Macworld 2009 Schedule

At this past year’s SXSW one of the most popular “tools” used by attendees was a web app called SCHED. It was immensely helpful in figuring out what events were offered, who was going, and if you wanted to go.

I’m excited to announce that this is now available for Macworld 2009 courtesy of TheAppleBlog.

If you’ll be attending Macworld next week, this web app is the perfect way to figure out your schedule for the week. Best of all, it’s free. Nothing to pay for, no ads, nothing. Just pure, schedule goodness.

Some nifty features worth noting:
- Create custom schedules - Create an account and create your own personalized schedule that you can hook directly in to iCal.
- Search - There are hundreds of events. Using the search feature you can narrow that down significantly
- Most popular - Find out what events are most popular
- Group calendars - Create group calendars on the fly like so: http://macworld09.theappleblog.com/shpigford,gtmcknight,chirag
- Mobile Safari Version - Just go to http://macworld09.theappleblog.com on your iPhone/iPod touch and get an optimized version.
Hopefully we can pull together a TAB meetup…which of course will be on our SCHED.

Go check it out: http://macworld09.theappleblog.com

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The Ultimate Mac Browser Roundup

If any one application is near and dear to almost every Mac users heart, it is the web browser. With more applications becoming web based, and web applications becoming more complicated, the browser’s appearance, feel, and most of all performance become even more important. 2008 has been a big year for web browsers, with Firefox 3, Safari 3.1, and several massive improvements in javascript performance. 2009 is poised to be even more impressive in browser achievements, with new versions of most browsers in the works, and the promise of a new player with a big impact, Google Chrome.

Each browser was run through the industry standard Acid3 and SunSpider tests.

If you are looking for choice, performance, feel, or appearance, at least one of the 16 browsers below should fit the bill.
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Quad Core MacBook Pro On the (Macworld) Horizon?
You may or may not have forgotten about the MacBook Pro’s larger self, the 17-inch model. Following its conspicuous absence from the lineup of new laptops announced at the notebook event which took place this past October, news came that Apple had not forsaken the bigger-screened version, but that its release was delayed due to production issues. Well, we’ve yet to see the 17-incher appear, but now it looks like there might’ve been good reason for the prolonged absence.

APC today is suggesting that the recently released (just yesterday, in fact) low-cost quad-core processor from Intel, the Core 2 Extreme Q9000, might have something to do with Apple’s hold out. That’s right, the theory is that Apple could be prepping its first quad core notebook using the chip, which, as APC points out, does work out well on paper, if you consider the chip’s price point and Apple’s apparent acceptable margins. For the sake of comparison, consider that Acer has already announced a gaming laptop with a $1,799 price point using the chip.

At this point, the theory is just that, a theory, based on the timing of Intel’s release and the continued presence of an old machine at the top end of the MacBook Pro line. It is, however, a sound theory that holds up to scrutiny. The timing couldn’t be more perfect for a Macworld announcement, and it’s impossible to conceive that Intel didn’t tip its hand to Apple earlier about this development, and the timeframe for its release. The new price point of the quad core processor would allow Apple to stay under the dangerous $3,000 mark.

Apple could also be planning to offer multiple models, splitting the 17-incher into two basic configurations, one with a dual, and the other with this new quad core chip. That would account for the rumors that circulated before Macworld that internal Apple pricing sheets were showing more models than were released at the October event. Taken together, all the clues lead me to believe that we’ll almost certainly be seeing this in the flesh (in the aluminum?) come Macworld.

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Daily Apple: Thumbs, Cart Before Horse, Jobs Props, More Space, Cheaper, Served Up
We Invented The Thumbnail - Apple, along with Google and Microsoft, are facing another patent holder in yet another legal battle. This time, a Michigan-based company is claiming to have a patent pending on image previews for files and programs, aka thumbnails, which are used in Apple’s Finder and Cover Flow technologies.

Real (Fake) iPhone Nanos! - Rumor has it Apple will be introducing a new, smaller, cheaper version of the iPhone, which has already been dubbed the iPhone Nano by many. It remains to be seen whether or not the leaked cases and dubious looking photos will prove accurate, but there’s already a copycat out there. Pick yours up now in Thailand.

Jobs One of Best Head Honchos, Say Employees - That’s according to a survey by Glassdoor, asking employees to anonymously rate their top bosses. Nearly 300 people filled out the survey, and Jobs placed second, with a very favourable 90 percent. Maybe its his approachable taste in attire?

32GB iPhone at Macworld? - Add another rumor to the growing list surrounding Macworld. This one claims that the upper limit of iPhone storage will finally follow its iPod touch cousin, and double in size to 32GB. Not, by any means, a far-fetched possibility, but also not yet backed up by any reliable sources.

$99 iPhone, Courtesy AT&T - No, it didn’t arrive at Wal-Mart, who just started selling the iPhone at a $2 discount, but AT&T is selling the 8GB model, refurbished, for $99 dollars from now until the end of December. Of course, that’s still with a contract, so don’t go totally crazy.

Apple Home Server at Macworld? - Another Macworld rumor, this time regarding a possible home server-type upgrade for the Time Machine lineup. Check the details in-depth via the link over at 9to5mac.

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iPhone Developer Too Cheap to Buy Icons [UPDATED]
It may be the season of good-will, but one naughty iPhone-developer has decided to play the role of Scrooge in the iTunes App Store.

Movies, created by French developer, Olivier Bernal, went live at the App Store on December 19. The app, retailing at $2.99, allows users to grab essential information on the latest box-office releases.

The icon for Movies clearly features a watermark from iStockphoto, a royalty free image library, implying that rather than purchase the master image, Bernal has pilfered the preview sample.

This particular iStockphoto license (including the ‘Electronic Items for Resale’ addendum) is available for 115 credits. At 95 cents per iStockphoto credit, this would be a one-off cost of $109.25. Bernal would therefore need to generate only 37 sales of Movies to cover the cost of the image license.
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Apple's Got a War Chest of Cash

I’m not going to lie to you — this is going to get geeky. Not run-my-mac-from-the-command-line geeky, but more pocket-protector-and-green-visor geeky. I am an accountant after all. That being said, someone asked me the other day what the big deal was with Apple’s war chest.

For those who don’t know, Apple is currently sitting in Cupertino with a cool $12 billion in the bank. And if you throw short-term investments in the pot, Apple has quick access to $25 billion. That’s a TON of money — especially for a company with $32 billion in revenues. As a comparison, HP has about $15 billion in cash and $118 billion in revenues.

I began pulling Apple’s financial statements to see what I could find out about Apple’s “war chest,” as it’s being called, and found out some interesting things. But first, a quick lesson in financial ratios.
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Rolando: Taking iPhone Gaming to the Next Level
Rolando has arrived, amid murmurs that it may be the best game out for iPhone and touch. And with compelling gameplay, awesome artwork and foot-tappingly funky music, it’s certainly my favorite game of the year.

Alongside being the season for frivolity and festivity, it’s that special time of year when the game industry ramps up the release schedule and hustles all the latest would-be hits out their studio doors and on to our computer and console screens.

Looks as good as it plays (cartoon finger not included)

This year, sat next to the DS and PSP, a new contender has joined the handheld race: with the iPhone being touted as a proper platform for gaming, the App Store is bursting at its digital-seams with fresh-faced gaming delights.

One of these bright young things to arrive at the App Store is Rolando, a puzzler-cum-platformer created by London-based game studio HandCircus. The publishers, ngmoco, seem to specialize in releasing weird, wonderful and compulsively fun gaming experiences: the kind of games which play just as good as they look, and they look appetite-whettingly delicious.
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NVIDIA Killed My 2007 MacBook Pro

In mid 2008, amid growing evidence, NVIDIA acknowledged that a significant number of its previous-generation GPUs (graphics processing unit) and MCPs (media and communications processors) for notebooks are failing at higher-than-normal rates. For readers who are not aware of this story, TheAppleBlog covered this piece of news back in October.

Three weeks back, I was personally afflicted by this problem. One fine morning, after arriving at the office of a client, I took my mid-2007 MacBook Pro out of my bag and proceeded to fire it up. The MBP never got past the startup chime; there was only a blank, black screen. I took the usual troubleshooting steps: resetting the PRAM and the SMC, booting from the OS X installation disc and from an external hard drive, and finally, plugging in an external display…all to no avail. It was then that my suspicions turned to the NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT graphics card in the MBP, even though I had not ruled out a misbehaving hard drive.
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Task Management With Things

The latest application from Cultured Code is Things, a task organizer and to-do list manager for Mac and iPhone. It centers around the ideas encompassed in Getting Things Done (GTD) and makes it easy to break down and organize tasks.

Far from being a straight forward To Do list manager, Things provides separation between tasks due now, scheduled for a future date, postponed indefinitely, or completed. Comprehensive features make searching and organizing your tasks a piece of cake.
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Weekly App Store Roundup: Dec. 27, 2008

This week I pick my 12 favorite apps of the year as we lead 2008 around the back and shoot it’s face off, while gently beckoning a fresh-faced 2009 through the front door.

Just because it’s the holiday season, doesn’t mean Apple news stops happening. Quite the contrary in fact because this week we got all existential with Psystar’s ever-more-fantastical litigation, waxed lyrical with the creators of 12seconds.tv, and even chucked in a special Mac-themed gift — from us to you – for good measure.

Seeing as it’s not just the end of a week but the end of an entire year, I thought a special year-end Roundup was in order. Below I’m bringing together some of the best apps I’ve featured over the year and a few that I didn’t have space to mention. (Note, those looking for my Twitter app recommendation should check out my 12 Twitter Apps article.)

This year, I’ve been looking at Evernote, Harvest, Urbanspoon, Locly, Klick, iPolaroid, Backgammon Online, Cookie Bonus Solitaire, BeatMaker, FourTrack, Stanza and Palringo.

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Keep Your World Together With Firefox

About seven months ago I made the decision to sell my Macbook and use only my iMac. I love this decision and I don’t regret it, other than one small issue…portability. This isn’t a huge issue but since I do quite a bit of traveling it does cross my mind once in a while.

Traveling without my iMac isn’t to say I go without a computer. I typically am given a loaner, or have a personal computer I am allowed to use on such trips, which is one of the reasons I decided I didn’t need my Macbook. However there is a catch, the computers I use are typically Windows machines. So how do I make the constant switch between the two machines without my own files, applications, or preferences? One simple application…Firefox.

One of the main issues I have with using a strange laptop is my hindered freedom when it comes to installing and customizing applications. However I was given Firefox to work with, which if used properly can be one of the most versatile and practical applications you can have installed. So how can you make Firefox bend over backwards for you?
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Daily Apple: Gesture Patents, 10.5.6 Danger, Hobo Justice, iPrint, & Brighter Pics
Old Dog, New Tricks Via Multitouch - I remember crudely wrestling with swipe gestures on my various Palm pilots over the years. It wasn’t perfect, but I did appreciate the quick delete function that a backwards stroke of the stylus resulted in. Apple may be working on putting in some similar gesture controls in upcoming firmware updates, or so some recent patent applications would seem to indicate.

10.5.6 Could Break Your Pro - At least one user got the awesome Christmas gift of a broken MacBook Pro this year, courtesy of Apple themselves via the recent 10.5.6 update. Apparently, the update ran his battery to zero, necessitating a restart. Upon restart, the Apple logo would briefly appear, followed by black screen. Eventually, he found a fix, but it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t fun.

Homeless Sue Apple - Because it’s easier not to care when you’ve got those white earbuds in, this homeless group are suing Apple. Not, obviously, real, but I have to admit I read quite a bit before I caught on. I can’t be blamed, I’m experiencing serious turkey coma.

iPrint for iPhone Prints to HP Printers Wirelessly - I had some fun amazing my relatives with HP iPrint over the holidays this year. My grandmother was getting genuinely freaked out, since I kept surreptitiously snapping photos and then sending them to the main floor printer, located right behind her head. Of course, without a flash, most of those photos were indecipherable, but the ones that turned out definitely impressed.

Xenon Flash for iPhone - Speaking of the iPhone’s lack of camera flash, this case from Snapture can provide yours with a hardware one, good for a thousand uses. It uses Xenon, just like fancy-pants car headlights.

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Fixing Poor Laptop Ergonomics
Got a MacBook for Christmas? I’ve used laptop computers almost exclusively for a dozen years now, and they’ve been great, but for day in, day out, workhorse duty the standard laptop configuration does have serious ergonomic deficiencies.

If you position the computer high enough for comfortable and ergonomically healthy viewing angle to the screen, your wrists will be cranked down in unhealthy ape-hanger mode, stressing soft connective tissues, including the troublesome carpal tunnel where the brachial nerves pass through your wrists to your hands.
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Apple and Microsoft: The Difference in OS Sales Models
In a previous article I discussed Apple's approach to cloning and how far they should go in shutting down that business. This led to the question "why can't I just buy Mac OS X and install it on any hardware I want?", which led to a pretty typical answer that the boxed OS X is sold as an upgrade, not a new (or full) license. This answer is sometimes challenged, and brings up the idea of what an "upgrade" is in the Mac world as opposed to Microsoft.

This is not an Apple vs. Microsoft argument. It simply attempts to outline the difference in each one’s approach to OS sales, and why each uses the sales model it does. Rather than claim one is "right", I believe each is right for the business model it supports.

Where Apple may be handicapped in terms of perception is that Microsoft's approach is well-known and understood. Microsoft could point out that ~95 percent of the planet probably "gets" their model. Apple, for all their recent success — so much so that many Apple fans forget they're still a drop in the Atlantic in terms of global market share — employs a different approach that, when viewed through Microsoft's, might seem a bit strange.
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My Top 5 iPhone Apps of 2008: A War of Attrition
It was a long, drawn out, brutal affair. Finally, after many months, five apps have emerged victorious, and earned a long-term place on my iPhone’s home screen. There are a lot of apps that I’m initially impressed with, and which actually work really well, or have interesting features, but it takes something special for me to actually continue using one beyond an initial honeymoon period. A lot of the apps that meet this criteria end up helping me work, or distract me from work, but in a lasting way.

5 - Last.fm [Free]

This one is sure to provoke cries of “What about Pandora?”, “Pandora FTW”, etc. The sad fact is that Pandora doesn’t work here in Canada. The site now only supports U.S. users, so we’re out of luck. But we still have Last.fm, and despite the fact that some claim its recommendation engine isn’t nearly as effective, it works well enough that I can plug it in and forget it for an entire day of work, and still be guaranteed a short list of artists to look up, too.
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One Juicer: Managing the App Store Beast
There are many ways to keep on top of app releases. You could, for instance, just visit the app store on your iPhone and sort the lists by release date. You could also try AppSniper, an application designed solely with keeping tabs on iPhone releases and pricing. Or, you could go with a web or RSS-based solution, like AppShopper. Personally, I use a mix of all of the above, but I still feel like there’s something missing.
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Freestyle Vocabulary Learning With Keep Your Word

Keep Your Word, produced by Bamboo Apps is a tool for those learning a new language. It allows you to build your own dictionary as new words are discovered, classifying and grouping the terms exactly how you want to, while helping you learn a large vocabulary through various exercise modes.

Features

As someone who seems to lack the talent for learning new languages, I was interested to see how this app could help me to grasp the basics of a foreign tongue. The first thing to note is that Keep Your Word isn’t a tool to teach you a language from scratch. The application functions more as a learning aid as you learn a language elsewhere, allowing you to gradually categorize and build up a dictionary of vocabulary.

Far from being solely a database of words, you are able to create smart groups, add ‘tags’ to easily categorize sets of words and tell the application when you have successfully memorized a word. The main selling point is the collection of ‘exercise’ tools to assist in learning vocabulary. These consist of flash cards, quizzes and the ability to print word lists.

When first opening the application, I was a little disappointed to find a lack of pre-built dictionaries or word lists. The idea of needing to create an entire dictionary for yourself from scratch seemed daunting to say the least. Fortunately, Bamboo Apps have developed Words Parade in conjunction with Keep Your Word, allowing you to easily share and download pre-built dictionaries. At present, only a couple are available — Basic Mandarin and Cantonese — though I foresee more languages being added in the future.

If a comprehensive collection of different languages are gradually added, this has the potential to really take the application to a new level.
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Mac 101: Photo Booth Tips
When’s the last time you played with Photo Booth? I’m guessing you and your friends had some raucous laughs with it when you first got your Mac, and then haven’t done much with it since. Well I’m here to suggest you bring it out of mothballs and check out a few things that you may not have known before. (Oh, and if you have kids, let them at it and it’ll keep them busy for hours!)
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X-Plane Helicopter & Airliner for iPhone

Laminar Research has recently released two new versions of its X-Plane flight simulator for the iPhone and iPod touch; X-Plane Airliner and X-Plane Helicopter. Each can be purchased for $4.99 from the App Store — around half the price of the standard X-Plane game for iPhone.

X-Plane Background

X-Plane is an innovative application when compared to other flight simulators, as it uses a concept known as blade element theory. Rather than using lookup tables for determining the specific way an aircraft behaves, blade theory assigns independent values to every single element of an aircraft. This makes the software suitable for hardware such as the iPhone as it scales easily. Each download clocks in at under 10MB (incredibly small for a flight simulator).

X-Plane is capable of modeling complex aircraft designs easily, including helicopters, rockets, the Harrier Jump Jet, and the NASA Space Shuttle. There are three versions available for iPhone at present; the standard X-Plane release, X-Plane Airliner, and X-Plane Helicopter. This review will be focusing on the latter two versions which joined the line up in the last couple of days.
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Daily Apple - Update Updates, FFXIII: Awkward Controls, Copywrong, Check Means Yes, & The Vatican
Glitchy 10.5.6 Update Gets Improved - A week after its initial release, Apple has updated their, ahem, update, making it significantly less glitchy. People were experiencing problems with Bluetooth and Mail.app, among others. I jumped the gun, and I haven’t had problems yet, but I don’t generally use Bluetooth, so who knows if I’m fine or just blissfully ignorant.

Square-Enix Brings Game to iPhone/iPod Touch, Forget It Has Touch Controls - Maybe you noticed the new Square-Enix game, Final Fantasy: Crystal Defenders, now available in the App Store. Maybe you, like me, looked at the screenshots and thought “What the heck is that?”. That, apparently, is your on screen joystick, which you use to control the cursor, which controls the characters.

Psystar Lawyers: Maybe OS X Doesn’t Even Exist! - Not quite there yet, but they are claiming Apple didn’t properly copyright the operating system, making it fair game for anyone to use it on any machine. It’s only a matter of time before they claim none of us ever really existed at all.

MobileMe Online Apps Updated - Some much needed updates arrived for the online portion of MobileMe today. One of the most significant updates? the “Keep me logged in for 2 weeks” checkbox now actually does something.

Vatican Backs iPhone App - Yes, iBreviary has received the official Vatican seal of approval. It’s a $0.99 app designed by a Reverend and a web designer that allows users to load a number of different prayers and prayer books. No word yet on Pull My Finger’s still pending application for Papal support.

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12seconds.tv Interview

12seconds.tv is a boot-strapped startup that has been a labor of love for the three founders, Sol Lipman, Jacob Knobel, and David Beach. A host of other characters have helped along the way, influenced by promises of burritos, but the small group hasn’t taken any outside money.

The project was conceived in January, launched in July, and now has an iPhone app ready just in time for the holidays. They got some attention from a write-up on TechCrunch in July and have built a loyal and passionate community of over 10,000 users.

I had a chance to talk briefly with Sol Lipman the other day about the launch of 12seconds for the iPhone and ask about the path they took to get to this moment. It’s clear that 12seconds.tv was built with a lot of passion from both the founders, their friends and colleagues that helped out, and the growing community of users.
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SimCity: Create a Bustling Metropolis on Your iPhone

EA dropped SimCity ($9.99) for the iPhone recently, and I actually almost missed it. I was still buzzing over Hero of Sparta and I Love Katamari, both of which are also recent releases.

Of course, I had to put everything on hold and take a crack at SimCity, since the PC versions of the game had occupied so many of my youthful hours. Plus, I was pleased with Spore Origins, so EA had already begun to earn my trust on the iPhone platform. I really hoped they wouldn’t throw that relationship out the door with as precious a title as SimCity.
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Don't Expect Mass Enterprise iPhone Adoption in 2009
The iPhone has a lot of potential for enterprise use. It’s a powerful device, and it supports Exchange synchronization, and more and more, businesses are integrating Apple computers into their current IT loadout. Still, BlackBerry dominates the business market. Especially in more traditional corporate climates, the impetus required for a shift to Apple’s device isn’t there. At an organization I recently left, they were just undertaking BlackBerry adoption, and cautiously at that. Suggesting an iPhone solution would’ve been greeted by blank stares. Some involved in approving purchasing decisions wouldn’t even have known what one was. Yes, it is possible to be that insulated.

I still used my iPhone for work purposes, but not in a way that was fully integrated or supported by our in-house IT. It’s the type of thing that Forrester Research’s Michele Pelino sees as becoming more prevalent as we move in to 2009. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) like the one I mention, according to Pelino, will see more of the iPhone, since their IT infrastructure is less strict, and open to a hodge podge of solutions supplemented by employees’ own equipment. Because of this, she sees iPhone adoption climbing to as much as 10 percent among SMBs.
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VirtualBox 2.1 Adds Support for Hardware Virtualization On OS X
Christmas has come early for users of VirtualBox, a free and open source virtualization solution from Sun Microsystems. Version 2.1 is a huge upgrade to the product as it includes VT-x and AMD-V hardware virtualization support on OS X and full VMDK/VHD support — including snapshots — putting it on par (at least from a hardware perspective) with Parallels and VMware.

This release also includes support for 64-bit guests on 32-bit host operating systems and experimental 3D acceleration. Networking performance has been boosted and there have been many smaller bug-fixes and enhancements.

VirtualBox has support for a wide range of guest operating systems and there is an extensive number of live, pre-built images (VDIs) that are ready to run.

If you only have occasional need to run Windows, Linux or alternative operating systems but do not want to pay for a full VMware or Parallels license, VirtualBox is a great alternative.

Be sure to check out their Mac-specific forums if you run into any quirks or difficulties. I’ve found the community to be very helpful and responsive and run a few flavors of Linux in VDIs primarily to be able to take them anywhere (VirtualBox is cross-platform). While it does not have as extensive of an integration between the guest and host systems and there is no support for OS X virtualization yet, VirtualBox is a solid product with a promising future.

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Scroll Different — Mouse Engineering Moves Up Top
Mouse technology has advanced a lot over the past two decades. The Apple Lisa-derived mouse with its DE-9 connector and thumb screws that attached it securely to my first Mac, a 1988 Mac Plus, was a pretty crude piece of engineering, with an analog ball of course, and a noisy, long-travel, somewhat stiff single button. Everything that came after that was an improvement.

However, most engineering effort with computer mice has been directed toward I/O interface (ADB, USB) and tracking sensor (optical, laser) advances and more recently wireless technologies (RF, Bluetooth), as well as improved ergonomics. Multi-button mice with scroll wheels became the standard configuration (although not with Apple mice) in the mid-’90s, popularized by Microsoft’s IntelliMouse Explorer, but with a few exceptions like the minuscule trackball on Apple’s 2005 Mighty Mouse, scrolling hardware technology didn’t change much between 1996 and 2006 when Logitech unveiled its MicroGear Precision Scroll Wheel.
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Daily Apple: Flash, Code-Fueled Rumors, Netbook Guide, Fonts, & Book-Banning
Flash Comes to (Jailbroken) iPhones (Sometimes) - Not, probably, what most people are looking for in terms of Flash on the iPhone, but if you’ve already jailbroken, it might be worth a look. Apparently buggy, but provides more Flash than the current, non-jailbroken iPhone does, that much is certain.

iMac, Mac Mini Rumors Get a Little More Backing - This recently unearthed evidence is probably a heck of a lot more dependable than unnamed sources. It comes from code strings from the version of OS X currently running on new Macbooks, and it refers to iMac9, 1 and Macmini3, 1. Current models are referred to as iMac8, 1 and Macmini2, 1. Apparently they’ll use the same Nvidia chipsets as the unibody Macbooks.

Brew Your Own Apple Netbook - In case you don’t believe the hype that we may see a netbook at Macworld, and/or you’re just tired of waiting, 9to5Mac posted this handy compatibility guide. Not that we advise this sort of funny business, but if that’s how you roll, hey, that’s how you roll.

Better Font Management - I’m not a huge fan of Apple’s own native Font Book application. Yes, it’s far better than the Windows control panel, but it could be better. Better like Fontcase. The program is now in a limited beta, but you can get access by signing up for the developer’s newsletter. Not too steep a price.

Apple Bans Book - Just when it looked like they were lightening up, what with all the farting you can now emulate via your iPhone, they go and ban a book. The reason for the book’s rejection was “objectionable content”, since it contained an f-bomb. The book is a detective thriller written by CNET reviewer David Carnoy called “Knife Music”. Yes, that is really what it’s called.

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12seconds.tv Brings Video Recording to the iPhone…Sort Of

12seconds.tv has just launched a new iPhone app ($0.99) in the App Store that allows you to output video files from your iPhone and share them with your friends on the web. It’s just not the video that you had in mind. This clever little app lets you take three photos, or pick them from your photo library, and then add a voice note over a nicely animated slideshow, complete with Ken Burns effects.

The name of the service comes from the maximum length of any video, just 12 seconds, no more (and no less either, at least from the iPhone app). The videos are uploaded to the 12seconds.tv community site where you and your friends can view them, link to them, or embed them in a web page.

The 12seconds iPhone app has a very different feel from staring into a webcam. The ability to select the photos and have some control over the composition of the video before recording the audio creates some distance between the author and the video. The result is something that still feels intimate and personal, but has a stronger sense of telling a story, even in 12 seconds, than you might get from talking into the camera.
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