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- Reporting for Duty: Apple's iPod Touch
The iPhone may be taking steps toward breaking into big business, but its little brother is already well on its way to becoming a career soldier. Apparently the iPod touch is becoming quite the staple for U.S. soldiers working in Iraq, partly because it’s such a versatile device capable of replacing and/or augmenting many items in a soldier’s standard kit. The touch is also a relatively cheap piece of hardware considering its usefulness, at least when considered in the context of military hardware.
Cost is not the only advantage the iPod touch has on the battlefield. It’s lightweight, durable (though for military deployment, they usually get some kind of special sheath to add to their in-built resilience), familiar to soldiers, and customizable. According to one Army official in Baghdad (via Newsweek), they also apparently have yet to be hacked by opposing forces. I can picture the new “Get a Mac” ad now, with John Hodgman getting hacked by an insurgent.
The main reason the iPod touch is so handy is its versatility as a development platform. As the App Store ads claim, “There’s an app for that,” and that includes things like translation, tactical mapping, networking/communication, surveillance, image recognition and ballistics calculation. Gun mounts and touch control mean that soldiers can do all of these things while keeping a hand or hands free for other activities and devices, some of which might save their life.
With military action becoming more and more a technological affair, expect to see the combat role of the iPod touch grow even more. Future iterations could prove even more useful, and ordinary consumers might benefit, too. If Apple adds hardware features to make the device more appealing for military use, the rest of us could reap the rewards. I’m thinking a camera and additional types of wireless antennas would be top priority from a military standpoint, and I’m sure consumers wouldn’t complain either.
Переслать - Apple Netbook Rumors Gain Momentum Once Again
If sheer consumer will alone could ever put a piece of hardware into production, then the Apple netbook would’ve been made a hundred times over by now, and in some ways it has, thanks to DIY hackintosh machines. Rumors of the real thing are gaining steam once again, and at this point I’m beginning to wonder if Apple can afford to break the hearts of their loyal following without sending even more of them into the loving embrace of the Dell Mini 9.The latest rumors come from the Chinese-language tech and business blog the Commercial Times (as translated by DigiTimes), which is reporting that Foxconn Electronics (also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry) has already signed a deal with Apple to put their upcoming netbook into production. Foxconn is already responsible for making the iPhone 3G and potentially components for the upcoming iPhone 3.0 as well, so it makes sense that Apple would go back to them for this type of device if one is indeed in the pipeline.
Added to earlier rumors of a 10-inch touchscreen being manufactured for Apple, the picture that emerges is of a device that might prove a little more expensive than most were hoping for, though at this point Apple has teased desire for a tablet/small form factor device to such an extreme level that people will probably overlook a $200 premium just to get their hands on the thing. I still don’t see them confusing customers by pricing it too closely to the MacBook line, so look for something between $599 and $799, depending on options and upgrades. That would put it close to the Mac mini, but the products differ enough that they could avoid cannibalizing sales.
Переслать - Tweetie: Now in Tasty Mac Desktop Flavor
Get your tweet on and shake your verbs, Tweetie — the much-celebrated iPhone Twitter client — has hit the Mac OS X desktop.
As regular readers will know, I adore my iPhone and I’m an avid tweeter. A few months back, I weighed the options and, despite there being an array of free alternatives, the iPhone version of Tweetie, available for $2.99, was my favorite Twitter client.
Over on Twitter there’s been some serious buzz surrounding the release of the desktop version of Tweetie. Available now, either for $14.99 or as a free ad-supported version, Tweetie for Mac blends a streamlined user interface with a host of essential features, including multiple account support, threaded conversations, URL shortening and image uploads.
From iPhone to Desktop
Every seasoned Twitter user’s stream is more akin to a flood of data: names, links, descriptions, useful posts, phatic musings and more. Opening Tweetie for the first time, the most immediately noticeable and pleasing aspect of this desktop application is the streamlined interface.
The main Tweetie window takes up but a slither of screen real estate. Along the left of the window are the main navigation icons, including avatars for shifting through multiple accounts, and shortcuts to view @replies, DMs and more.
The top of the Tweetie window displays exactly where you are in a given thread — incredibly useful as a visual aid when drilling down through conversations and replies. The main body of the Tweetie window contains your stream, filtering out different information depending on which section you’re in.
Minimal & Sleek Looks
Tweetie’s streamlined approach to presenting and navigating the Twitterverse is also applied to the application’s aesthetic styling. Where Twhirl is garishly on-brand and Tweetdeck is a visual overload, Tweetie’s visual style is, despite the vast quantity of information, minimal and sleek.
Only the most essential icons are on display (other functions are accessed via right-clicking) and clicking through icons to navigate to different sections causes tweets to swish and slide around in an incredibly satisfying way.
Individual tweets keep the visual clutter to a minimum. Alongside the message itself and @reply button, the user’s profile picture and name is presented. Setting aside the @reply button, clicking a username within the message body takes you to that user’s stream, alternatively, double-clicking the profile picture takes you directly to the user’s Twitter stream.
When new tweets arrive, Tweetie’s OS X menu bar icon glows blue, while within the app, updated streams are marked with helpful blue dots. Of course, it all seems so obvious, but that’s because navigating Tweetie is intuitive — allowing you to breeze through conversation threads with ease.
It’s worth noting that the ad-supported free download of Tweetie drops an ad into your stream every hour. The ads genuinely don’t intrude or impede your tweeting: They look good and appear rarely, for $14.99, though, you’re able to order a registration code to disable them.
Getting The Message Across
At the bottom left of the main Tweetie window is the compose button. It seems odd to place the button for such an oft-used function so out of the way from the main application interface. Although you can access the same function via the Command-N keyboard shortcut, the tiny button feels totally disjointed from the actual application.
The tweet composer opens up in a separate window, meaning that the integrity of Tweetie’s sleek ‘n’ chic design isn’t impacted. Plus, you’re able to focus on writing your 140 character musing without distraction from the main stream.
The composer window also packs in a broad range of tweet-enhancing features. For starters, users with multiple accounts can select from which account they would like to send the tweet. If your tweet is over 140 character, Tweetie offers to post via Twitlonger. Plus, via a dropdown menu, you’re able to automagically shorten URLs or add an image.
The latter function can also be accessed by simply dragging and dropping an image into the compose window. When you click the Post button, Tweetie will then upload the image to a Twitter image hosting service — you can choose from Imageshack’s YFrog, TwitPic, Twitgoo, or Posterous.
The selection of URL-shortening services to choose from is excellent. All the usual suspects are there — TinyURL, Is.gd and Tr.im — but there’s also feature-rich Bit.ly and URL-squishing newcomer Diggbar.
Bit.ly is my shortener of choice, however there’s no account integration for the service. This means there’s no simple way for me to track a specific link and gather stats such as number of visitors over a given period. Although I’m not as familiar with Diggbar, I’d imagine that users of Digg’s fledgling URL shortener may be hankering for account integration, too.
There are a few outstanding issues with tweeting, though. For starters, prolific tweeters may be dismayed to discover that there’s no drafts functionality. Furthermore — and this is a major issue for me — there doesn’t seem to be a method for deleting tweets once you’ve posted them.
Navigating the Twitterverse
Finding your way through the torrent of tweets is rendered effortless with Tweetie. Alongside the intuitive click and double-click features mentioned earlier, it’s also possible to navigate the Twitterverse via a variety of keyboard shortcuts — a real time-saving boon for power users.
Hash tags are clickable, too, instigating an immediate search for the tag. The search section also incorporates trending topics, however it’s executed in an incredibly obtuse way — clicking the magnifying glass icon on the search page brings up a list of currently trending topics. Clicking one of the topics in the list instigates a search. For such an important feature it’s all but hidden and clunky to access.
There are also a few other features missing which, although I tried, it was difficult to adapt to life without them. For starters, there’s no refresh button on the main tweet stream. As such, users hoping to refresh regularly will find it frustrating to have to use the Command-Shift-R shortcut, or simply wait for an auto-refresh.
I was also surprised to discover that Tweetie doesn’t support groups, allowing you to place users in different categories and filter through your tweets. It’s a feature that, when viewing and organizing your contacts in such depth, would have been perfect for the desktop version of Tweetie.
Moving on, the way in which Tweetie renders profile pages follows suit with the rest of the app with a clear design, integrating core features with a couple of useful twists. Stats such as updates, favorites, followers and bio are all on display, accessed in more detail via a quick click.
Clicking the cog icon on the profile page opens a menu with options to @reply, DM, or follow the user. Most useful, though, is that Tweetie clearly tells you if this user is following you. Such an unexpected feature, yet so obvious in retrospect and, especially for social networking via Twitter, inherently useful.
I’ll Get Back To You
The mentions page, represented by the @ button on the left side of the Tweetie interface, works just like Twitter’s own mention page — grabbing any instance of your @username from the Twitterverse. You can even double-click a message to view the conversation thread in full, however this feature seems a little haphazard. It’s still not entirely clear to me when Tweetie will actually display a conversation thread; sometimes a double-click just loads that single message on its own.
Although there’s a reply button on all tweets, there are no dedicated buttons for DM, repost or favorite. Instead, right-clicking the message body brings up a menu with a variety of options: reply, repost, copy link to tweet, direct message, mark as favorite and open in browser. This isn’t ideal, though, as it’s preferable that frequently used functions — such as DM and repost — have a dedicated button.
The DM section breaks with Tweetie’s overall styling. First, there’s an instant messenger-style conversation overview page, displaying links to all your active DM-exchanges in chronological order. Clicking through brings up an iChat-style page, featuring back and forth tweets in text bubbles. It looks strange and certainly feels out of place but, setting aside the aesthetic, works correctly.
Summing Up
Tweetie’s success is that it simplifies what could be a complex experience — dealing with a Titanic stream of incoming information and interacting with a multitude of other users. Just like its little brother on iPhone, the application is visually streamlined and loads quickly.
There are drawbacks though: there’s a missing refresh button, no method for deleting tweets, the compose button needs to be integrated more clearly with the overall design and, although it’s not essential, the next version of Tweetie will ideally incorporate organizing contacts in to groups.
But these few issues don’t impact on the overall experience of Tweetie, an app that incorporates a wealth of features for the seasoned tweeter and yet is inviting and easy to pick up for Twitter newcomers. Twitter users looking for a well-designed, feature-rich client should certainly download Tweetie today.
Переслать - Apple Stays the Course With New "Get a Mac" Ads
Not one to be baited into a direct reprisal of Microsoft’s latest “laptop hunter” series of commercials, Apple is firing back in their own way with the release of four new installments of their “Get a Mac” ads. The Get a Mac ads, in case you haven’t seen them (how’s life under that rock, by the way?), star John Hodgman and Justin Long as human representations of a PC and a Mac, respectively. The four new installments are the first to be released since Christmas, when animated versions meant to resemble Rankin/Bass classics like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” came out.
“Biohazard Suit” features Hodgman wearing just that, and Justin Long asking why. The ad targets the vulnerability of Windows systems to viral attack, and though it doesn’t mention it by name, conjures up the recent “Conficker” worm that has infected over 3 million PCs and whose ultimate purpose is not yet clear. Apple is playing it very smart by just repeating in televised form the same arguments Mac users have been using to convince their PC friends to convert for years. 
“Legal Copy” has PC claiming to be easy to use, which causes a growing amount of legal copy to appear across the bottom of the screen with each similar additional claim he makes. This one again mentions the virus susceptibility of Windows, and seems to sort of be a response to Microsoft’s recent “I’m a PC and I’m 4 and 1/2″ ad, since it rebuts claims of simplicity.
“Stacks” deals not with the OS X Leopard feature as you might expect from the name, but with PC searching through huge stacks of photos one by one for pictures of his friend, at which point Mac tells him about iPhoto’s new facial recognition features. Personally, I think this is one of the best ads in this series so far, because it emphasizes a positive point about OS X instead of just noting what you won’t get by avoiding Windows. iPhoto’s Faces technology is just the kind of thing that would appeal to most computer users but that people who aren’t regular Apple customers might now know about.
Finally, “Time Traveler” presents a glimpse of Windows’ future. PC travels through time to the year 2150 to see if PCs have finally become as stable and hassle-free as Macs. This causes future PC to freeze, answering the question. This one seems more forward-looking than most, and might be a subtle advance jab against Windows 7.Honestly, I found this batch fell kind of flat compared with previous episodes in the same series, but at least they’re not just plain misleading like the latest from Redmond.
Переслать - Security Exaggeration or Real Threat: Is This the End of an Apple Era?
Security scares seem to be coming up all too frequently for Mac users these days. First, there was the devastatingly fast hacking of a Mac thanks to a Safari exploit at PWN2OWN, and now the first-known botnet to exploit OS X appears to have been activated, according to two security researchers at Symantec. If true, it means the sense of security and superiority that so many Mac users maintain over their PC-using counterparts might be coming to an end.The botnet is a result of users having downloaded and installed pirated copies of iWork ‘09 way back around the time of its initial release. Accompanying those pirated versions was a trojan called iServices, a variant of which was also packaged with a pirated copy of Adobe Photoshop CS4. iServices remained dormant until just recently, when it was implicated in at least one Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Though the install base of the trojan is at present not large enough to pose a major threat, the researchers warn that this is likely only the beginning.
Symantec researchers suspect that software piracy will only trend upwards as the economic crisis continues, which is a very good thing for opportunistic hackers. The easiest way for them to distribute their malicious code is via pirated programs, since they aren’t QA’d or regulated in any real, consistent way. And if Macs continue to increase their presence, hackers will begin more and more to target OS X users, because it makes financial sense from their standpoint to do so.
In response to the report, network security firm McAfee, another anti-virus maker, spoke up. They claim that there’s nothing new about the iServices trojan that wasn’t already apparent and active in January, and that it represents only a low level of risk now, just as it did then. In other words, they think Symantec is blowing things out of proportion. Not that they’re saying you should just relax and pretend nothing’s wrong. Far from it.
Instead, the solution offered by both the Symantec team and McAfee is the one you’d likely suspect: install anti-virus software in order to protect your computer. And it may be the best solution, although after years of running both Windows and Mac machines without any virus protection that wasn’t built into them, and with no major issues to report at this time, I’d say that safe and intelligent browsing (i.e., don’t download risky pirated files) is still your best bet for avoiding these kinds of attacks, Mac or not.
Переслать - Thanks to TheAppleBlog Sponsors!
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Переслать - IDC Numbers: Apple's Doing Just Fine, Thank You
Here’s a piece on IDC’s PC Tracker numbers for the first quarter of the year. They’re quite revealing when you look at them soberly.
The first thing you have to do, as I’ve argued before, is pull Apple out of the “PC” mix, so Apple (Mac) can be compared against all the others (PC). Comparing Apple’s figures to an overall figure that includes Apple’s totals makes no sense.
In the U.S., we can pull Apple’s figures from the PC total and come up with 13,835 for 1Q ‘09, and 14,297 for 1Q ‘08, for PCs. Some quick math shows that to be an overall Y/Y drop of 3.23 percent.
Apple’s figures, as the number 4 vendor, show a drop of 1.22 percent.
Right off the bat you can see PC sales dropped 2 percent more than Macs. It would be hard (impossible, really), based on these numbers, to say that Apple was doing anything but better than the PC industry. And the real story goes even deeper than that.
Consider this:
- Lots of noise is made over HP’s and Acer’s gains, but clearly these have come at the expense of Dell and “Others.” You can’t change the fact that overall the PC industry is down over three points.
- Millions and millions of netbooks have been sold, without which the PC figure would be worse. Why does this matter? Ultimately unit sales mean nothing, what matters is profits, and netbooks are even more razor-thin than cheap laptops.
- Speaking of cheap laptops, those are practically being given away. The deals at HP and others are so “good” right now that there’s even less money in it for the vendor.
- Apple, meanwhile, dropped by a much smaller amount than the PC industry.
- A good portion of the quarter Apple didn’t even have their latest models available, being launched in March.
- Apple did not have to rely on a “netbook” to drive its sales; profit margins are still good.
- Apple also did not have to rely on giveaways or free upgrades.
I realize the above figures are U.S.-only, but it’s where IDC has provided detailed Apple figures. Besides, it’s silly to think that globally this overall trend for Apple will be different. Especially since — as PC supporters frequently point out — Apple is a smaller player on the global front.
And, no, I’m not saying a year-over-year drop is a good thing. Of course it isn’t. I’m saying it’s all relative, and one must consider the conditions under which the drop occurred.
The bottom line is this: For all the ranting and raving by analysts about lowering prices in this economy, which PC vendors have done, Apple has continued to produce quality Macs at good profit margins and still dropped less than the PC industry.
Переслать - Nintendo and Sony "Freaking Out" Over Apple iPhone
If you go and do something like found Electronic Arts, which then goes on to be one of the dominant forces in video games worldwide, people tend to take notice of things you say. Yesterday in an interview with Venture Beat’s Dean Takahashi, Trip Hawkins, EA founder and current Digital Chocolate executive, said that Nintendo and Sony are probably “freaking out” over the rampant success of the iPhone as a gaming platform.
The threat of the iPhone to Sony and Nintendo, and their PSP and DS(i) respectively, is not the number or quality of games available for the platform, but rather the value proposition it represents from a business standpoint. According to Hawkins:
The iPhone is by far our most effective platform. We make as much money with these games on one device as we do putting a game on 100 different cell phone platforms. Between the iPod touch and the iPhone, I think the platform is freaking out Sony and Nintendo.
So it comes down to a question of investment vs. return, as does any sound business decision, gaming industry or not. If Apple can tip the scales sufficiently in their favor, the repercussions for the gaming industry could be immense. It could mean smaller dev teams, a quicker turnaround and or/development cycle, and less focus on branding and franchises (casual games succeed based on mechanics, not mascots), all of which could eventually affect not only mobile gaming, but the home console industry as well.I’m not sure I like where this is going. Yes, I like playing Bejeweled 2 on my iPhone, and I’ve been known to enjoy a number of other games as well, but I just started playing GTA: Chinatown Wars on my DSi, and it reminded just how much catching up the iPhone has to do when it comes to gaming. The iPhone definitely offers a better gaming experience than any phone I’ve ever owned, but for real gaming, nothing beats physical control keys and buttons. I can’t even express the difference in words, but if you’re at all a gamer, you probably know what I’m talking about.
I’m hoping developers and studios don’t lose sight of this with all those dollar signs in their eyes. By all means, continue to develop for the iPhone, and do the most with what the platform offers, but don’t turn to it exclusively. Casual gaming is great, but for it to become the primary focus of the industry would be like all musicians turning their efforts to country because it sells best. I pray neither of these things ever happens.
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