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Cartier kerfuffle bags bogus bangles
Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
French jeweler / watchmaker Cartier provided some unexpected humor over the long Memorial Day weekend after the company filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Apple regarding two iPhone apps. The lawsuit and the quick response by Apple were covered by the Wall Street Journal in several posts and noted briefly in our weekend news roundup.

A small iPhone development shop, Digitopolis Game Studio, had created two apps -- Fake Watch and Fake Watch Gold Edition -- that showed the time on a choice of high-end timepieces. Among the "watches" were images of Cartier's luxury "Tank" watch. Although the free Fake Watch app had first appeared in January of 2009, Cartier apparently didn't notice until Friday, when lawyers representing the company filed suit against Apple for allowing the apps to be sold in the App Store.

Apple's response was quick; they pulled the apps from the U.S. App Store almost immediately. Cartier responded late Friday by withdrawing their lawsuit, stating that their "concerns had been addressed".

What do you think? Did Cartier have a valid concern that their trademark was being infringed upon or do you think they ought to spend more time chasing down the guys selling Cartier knockoffs in Times Square? Leave your comments below.
TUAW Cartier kerfuffle bags bogus bangles originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 25 May 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Take Control of Maintaining, Troubleshooting your Mac
Filed under: Books
Author Joe Kissell has been informing and entertaining Mac users for years through his books, TidBITS columns and Macworld articles. He's recently finished a pair of books for the Take Control ebook series that will help you learn how to keep your Mac running at its most efficient pace, as well as tell you what to do when something does go wrong.

In the first book, "Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac, Second Edition" (US$10), Joe describes actions you can take weekly, monthly, and annually to enjoy top performance from your Mac. He also tells you what not to do, illustrating tasks that take a lot of time and provide few benefits.

The second book is an update to Kissell's "Take Control of Troubleshooting Your Mac" (US$10). Joe's expertise really shines in this ebook as he tells you what to do with Macs that won't turn on, how to react when you're getting repeated kernel panics, and actions to perform when internet connections go down or printers are balking.

If you already own an earlier edition of either one of the books, you can get a discount on the upgrade. New buyers can bundle the two books for just $16 for a top-notch set of guides.

In the interest of full disclosure, TUAW blogger Steve Sande has written several titles for the Take Control series.
TUAW Take Control of Maintaining, Troubleshooting your Mac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 25 May 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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RetroMacCast interviews Rob Janoff
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Cult of Mac, Podcasts, Apple, Apple History
The guys over at the RetroMacCast sent us a link to their latest episode, featuring an interview with none other than Rob Janoff, the designer of Apple's old rainbow Mac logo. The interview starts a little less than halfway into the show, and it's cool to hear a voice right out of Apple's past.

They talk about the inception of the logo -- how Apple came to Janoff's firm and what they originally asked for in terms of a design. He actually had very little guidance when first creating the logo, and in fact hadn't seen any of Apple's branding or even heard of the company before he created the now-iconic image. He also talks about how lucky he was in choosing the image -- he saw it as a pretty obvious choice to use a picture of fruit for a company named after said fruit, but like any great logo, there ended up being layers of meaning behind that apple bite (or byte, as he points out).

Nothing really earthshaking in the interview (he hasn't had contact with Apple since, and even he says that the mythology behind the company has much more to do than just the familiar logo), but hey, if you're hanging out today during Memorial Day and need something interesting to listen to while barbecuing, you can tune in and learn a little bit about Apple's corporate history.
TUAW RetroMacCast interviews Rob Janoff originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 25 May 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Can you believe it? New Yorker cover done on iPhone app.
Filed under: iPhone, Graphic Design, App Store, iPod touch
Looking at the cover of the June 1 New Yorker Magazine it is pretty hard to believe that it was created with a US$4.99 app on an iPhone.

The app is Brushes [App Store] and it allows painting on the iPhone /iPod touch screen using your fingers and a variety of brush styles. If you have a Mac, you can export your work at resolutions up to 1920x2880. The app also saves a record of your brushstrokes and other actions and can replay them on your Mac. The artist who did the New Yorker cover, Jorge Colombo, obviously has impressive talent. You can see some of his other iPhone work here.

Colombo told the New York Times he loves the app because it "made it easy for me to sketch without having to carry all my pens and brushes and notepads with me, and I like the fact that I am drawing with a set of tools that anybody can have easily in their pocket."

This video will show you a stroke by stroke look at how the cover was created.

If you're looking for more info on this app try the developer site here. Another similar app at the same price is Colors, [App Store] which has also been responsible for some impressive artwork.

Wow. Just wow.
TUAW Can you believe it? New Yorker cover done on iPhone app. originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 25 May 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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CES expands iPod, iPhone exhibit space at next year's show
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Odds and ends, Other Events, Apple, Developer, iPhone, App Store

I'm lucky enough to be heading out to E3 next week, so I'll be puttering around the show looking for great iPhone apps and games to tell you all about, but it looks like CES might be the place to be for iPhone software in 2010: the show is going to expand the exhibit space for Apple's mobile platforms by 5x. We knew there was going to be a bigger iPhone/iPod related event there, but we didn't know it was going to be quite that big. Organizers say that the App Store's huge growth justifies the size of the event, but of course Apple's exit from Macworld (and that event's move to February, away from the Vegas CES show in January) didn't hurt either.

Don't look for any official iPhone or iPod setups at CES -- Apple says that trade shows aren't a huge part of their marketing plan any more. We can't really blame them; they already have their own events whenever they want, well-attended and well-covered by the press. But this show will probably be a nice opportunity for iPhone developers. There's a lot of apps out there, and every chance developers get to show off to the press will probably be welcome.

TUAW CES expands iPod, iPhone exhibit space at next year's show originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 25 May 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Apple building server farm, secret lair in North Carolina
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Odds and ends, Xserve, Apple
As Mike mentioned in the news roundup yesterday, word is going around that the corporate overlords at Apple are planning to build a massive server farm in the state of North Carolina within the next decade or so. How do we know? Because the company is working on getting a few nice tax breaks to go along with the deal, eventually worth about $46 million if Apple fulfills their end of the agreement. Their end of the agreement being a huge investment of a whopping $1 billion (that's over 333,000 Xserves, if that is indeed what they're installing -- and we bet not) into an economy that could probably use it. What exactly will go in there? We aren't sure -- lawmakers say the investment is worth it, and obviously Apple isn't showing their cards.

[Note: the $1B investment figure is not an upfront number, but rather a total investment over the first 9 years of operation. -Ed.]

But the facility, once up and running, will start by employing at least 100 people, so that's a nice start. Google has apparently gone through the same deal with North Carolina recently, though their deal was a little smaller: $600 million investment for a server farm that opened last year.

More backend for Mobile Me? More power for the App Store or a project like it? A giant building full of Cubes running 24 hours a day? Or something we haven't even dreamt of yet?
TUAW Apple building server farm, secret lair in North Carolina originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 25 May 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Weekend news roundup, no talkcast this week
Filed under: Odds and ends, TUAW Business, Podcasts
It's a quiet weekend here at TUAW HQ, as most of our US-based team is enjoying a well-deserved break over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Since everyone's drinking mojitos by the pool, we're not doing a talkcast tonight (sorry!), but you can grab last week's show (featuring host Christina "C-Mac" Warren and the rest of the usual suspects) direct from Talkshoe or subscribe in iTunes.

Here's a quick update on some of the stories making Mac and iPhone news this weekend:
- Daring Fireball's John Gruber weighs in on the upcoming iPhone refresh rumors, citing informed sources who tell him that the CPU and RAM upgrades for the next-generation handheld will deliver impressive performance boosts, making this year's model up to twice as fast as the iPhone 3G. He also backs up the expected addition of a magnetometer and a video-capable improved camera (alongside the long-rumored video editing tools on the phone). You can see a thorough roundup of the state of iPhone rumors over at Wired's Gadget Lab. Perhaps the upcoming iPhone refresh is behind the expected ramp-up in distributed support hiring noted earlier this week.
- Kwame Jones discovered a preliminary interface for renting and purchasing movies & TV shows on the iPhone and iPod touch, which should be loads of fun even though it will be limited to WiFi connections.
- MDN and other sites have noted a North Carolina effort to get Apple to build a major server farm in the Tarheel State, with up to $46 million USD in tax incentives available if the company reaches a $1B investment threshold in nine years. Seems a shame that lawmakers declared the scuppernong grape as the official state fruit a few years ago, doesn't it.
- Glenn Fleischman from TidBITS pointed out that the UVA freshman computing survey is out again, showing more impressive gains for the Mac platform year-over-year. UC Davis shows a tripling of share for the Mac over the past three years.
- In a very quick turnaround, Cartier sued Apple for two iPhone apps that it claimed ripped off its products -- and then promptly withdrew the action. Nicely done.
- The First Ascent team, videoblogging their way up Mount Everest using solar power and MacBook Pro laptops, reached the summit earlier this week. Congratulations!
- The long-admired Windows photo app ACDsee finally released a Mac beta this week; it's worth a look.
- More photos and inside views from the Zurich Apple Store opening via ifoAppleStore.
Got something that's too good not to share? Give us a tip!
TUAW Weekend news roundup, no talkcast this week originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 24 May 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Eucalyptus for iPhone gets a new lease on life
Filed under: Bad Apple, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
Eucalyptus [App Store] has been finally allowed to appear in the App Store after being rejected by Apple. The e-book reader for the iPhone and iPod touch was rejected because a person could get sexually oriented books like the Kama Sutra, even though the book is in the public domain and freely available on the web.

The program author let us know the US$9.99 app was approved late last night. He said, "Earlier today I received a phone call from an Apple representative. He was very complimentary about Eucalyptus. We talked about the confusion surrounding its App Store rejections, which I am happy to say is now fully resolved. He invited me to re-build and submit a version of Eucalyptus with no filters for immediate approval, and that full version is now available on the iPhone App Store."

"Since my previous post, I've been so pleased with the overwhelmingly positive articles, blog posts, comments and tweets - and also the emails from those of you who felt so strongly about the issue you wanted to contact me directly. They were all much appreciated. Thanks for all the support. It's been a roller coaster of a weekend!"

The controversy over this app once again points out how crazy the Apple standards for applications are. Dozens of fart apps are fine (not to mention apps that thoroughly infringe other companies' IP or steal their graphics) but an e-book reader that simply loads public domain books was verboten. It doesn't make any sense, and further, the situation doesn't seem to be improving. Developers are left to try and get publicity to embarrass Apple into being a bit more sensible.
TUAW Eucalyptus for iPhone gets a new lease on life originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 24 May 2009 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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