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- Smule turns you into T-Pain
Filed under: Gaming, Humor, Software, Odds and ends, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
God bless Smule. I panned their Ocarina app way back, but since then they've pushed right along without me, releasing idea after idea on Apple's App Store. And I think that, though the Leaf Trombone didn't really capture my attention, this one might finally be the big winner in my book: they've released I am T-Pain, an app that will automatically Auto-tune you into the style of some of the rapper's top songs, with more purchaseable within the app. There's even a "freestyle" mode, complete with a few unreleased background tracks to jam with -- as you can see above, all you do is talk into the iPhone's mic, and you can autotune the news or whatever else you want. Shawwwwty!
Silly? Maybe, but they're going to sell a million of these, and given that Smule's apps tend to be easy to pick up and fun to play with, even people who aren't familiar with T-Pain's work will probably get the app just to sing a few bars to see what it sounds like (you can also send those messages off to Facebook or email as well). And Smule is moving right up into the iPhone 3.0 era: the app comes with four songs, and there are four more available to purchase in-app, along with even more (and more popular: Kanye's "Good Life" and the Lonely Island's "On a Boat" track are due out soon) songs coming, complete with lyrics and auto-tune settings and timings in the future.
Maybe you're laughing. Maybe you think this is dumb, and you've already had enough of auto-tune on pop radio, and don't really want it in your iPhone, too. But trust me on this one: Smule is a company that's made silly music experiences on the iPhone extremely popular, and having T-Pain's tunes and auto-tuning abilities (officially from the company behind the pro version, too) available in this app is going to make it big, no question. The app's available right now for $2.99, so pick it up if you're feeling the beat and want to sing, even if you can't. Yeahhh-eeeyeaahh-yeah.TUAWSmule turns you into T-Pain originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 04 Sep 2009 01:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sponsored Topics: iPhone - App Store - Apple - Smule - FacebookПереслать - DirecTV NFL Mobile: The most expensive free app in the world
Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App Review
DirecTV, which I love dearly and which supplies signal to eight screens in my house, has just announced the NFL Mobile app [iTunes link] which doesn't go live until September 13th (although you can download it now). Once working, the app will let you watch live streams of all NFL Sunday Ticket football games, including the Red Zone channel. The Red Zone channel changes from game to game as the ball gets inside an opponent's 20 yard line while a narrator explains just what's going on.
The app also will display scores, statistics for players and teams, as well as video clips and highlights from each game. So far there has been no word as to whether video streaming will be available on 3G as well as Wi-Fi, but we'll know soon enough.
This is wonderful news for football fans who are already jonesing during pre-season, but it's not all hearts and flowers. For the privilege of using this free app, you need to plunk down $379.95 for programming. The NFL Season Ticket will run you $299.95 but that's not good enough to run the app. Additionally you'll need to toss in another $80 to buy the SuperFan package which gives you games in high-definition, stats and the Red Zone Channel, making the NFL Mobile app the most expensive free app in the world.
As I haven't seen the streaming yet, I can't comment on how good it might be, but I'm very encouraged due to the amazing implementation of the DirecTV Scheduling app [iTunes link], that Mel Martin covered upon its release.
I really love this app. It's much easier to use than the often arcane DirecTV web site for scheduling programs. Searching for programs is a snap. Just type in a few letters and all matches come right up. From there you can decide which receiver you would like to have record the show, set the recording, and even record a season pass which grabs every instance of the show according to rules you set up. Rules include recording only new shows, new and repeats, etc. It can also be set to 'record if possible' meaning that if shows are already set at that time they have precedence over your request, or to 'definitely record' which gives your newly searched show precedence over your record queue.
The only glitch I found isn't in the app, but most likely in the DirecTV system itself. If you have a DirecTV box running the TiVo OS, you cannot record season passes. My DirecTV 10-250 is one of these, but it's getting long in the tooth and doesn't record hi-definition shows from the MPEG-4 transponder in any event. More modern DirecTV OS machines like my DirecTV 20-700 will record season passes and anything else you can throw at it.
If you have DirecTV and an iPhone or iPod touch, you need to go and download the DirecTV app. With all the added functionality, you'll feel much better about paying your monthly bill.
Here are some pictures of both apps.
TUAWDirecTV NFL Mobile: The most expensive free app in the world originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sponsored Topics: iPhone - Apple - NFL Sunday Ticket - IpodTouch - TUAWПереслать - Xcode 3.2 Daily Tip: Upgrading Xcode
Filed under: TUAW Tips, Developer
For those about to code, we salute you.
Developers: are you ready to upgrade your new Snow Leopard install to Xcode 3.2? The Xcode installer package appears in your Snow Leopard disc's Optional Installs folder. Double-click the mpkg file to open the installer and begin the installation process.Xcode 3.2 offers a number of really great new features, several of which will be highlighted in upcoming daily tips. Standouts include the new built-in static code analysis, the two new LLVM compiler front ends (GCC 4.2 and Clang), and the new Build Results window.
Until you install, you may run into problems using the standard C compiler from the command line. (It threw errors about not finding <stdio.h>, etc.) This despite the fact that I had already re-installed the iPhone SDK.
Once I upgraded to the new Xcode, and rebooted, the command line cc started working again. The reboot step seemed necessary because cc didn't work until I did so. There might have been a less extreme alternative I'm not aware of to use instead. (If you know of one, please let me know in the comments!)
You'll need to re-install your iPhone SDK packages as well. Make sure you download the SDK versions that were built specifically for Snow Leopard. The iPhone dev center provides both Leopard and Snow Leopard SDKs for each of its standard and beta distributions. Install these packages after upgrading to Xcode 3.2. I did not and ran into trouble with project creation (as well as the already mentioned command line cc) until I finally got the install order corrected.
Thanks go to hatfinch for his help.
TUAWXcode 3.2 Daily Tip: Upgrading Xcode originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sponsored Topics: Snow Leopard - Apple - Xcode - TUAW - IPhoneПереслать - Mac 101: Getting to know the menu bar and menu extras
Filed under: Mac 101, Snow Leopard
More Mac 101, our ongoing series of tips for those new to Mac OS X. One of my favorite things to do when I see someone else's Mac is to see what "Menu Extras" they use.
Menu Extras live in the menu bar at the top of your screen, over on the far right-hand side. As you add more third-party software to your Mac, you will probably notice more and more items showing up there.
If you open System Preferences and type "menu bar" you can find 12 different Menu Extras you can "show" in the menu bar, but one of the most popular and useful is the AirPort Menu Extra. In Snow Leopard, the-already-quite-handy AirPort status icon became a lot more powerful and informative. Apple has posted a page explaining the various meanings behind AirPort status icons.
Generally speaking you ought to see only a few of these: an empty icon (AirPort is turned off), grey curved lines (AirPort is on but not connected), or 1-4 black lines indicating signal strength of the Wi-Fi connection. New in Snow Leopard is the "animated" AirPort icon which appears when AirPort is searching for wireless access points or waiting to be assigned an IP address. (If you are seeing a different icon, check out the page from Apple.)Since we're looking at the menu bar, here's another tip: option-click everything. Several menu extras, especially ones from Apple, have additional features/information which you can access if you hold down the alt/option key while clicking on the icon. Here's what happens when you click vs option-click several menu extras from Apple (several of these are new and/or improved in Snow Leopard):
Volume: a regular click will reveal a slider to adjust the volume but an option-click will show a list of input and output devices to choose from (similar in function to Rogue Amoeba's SoundSource, which was recently updated for 10.6 compatibility).
MobileMe: a regular click shows time of last sync, option to sync now, and option to open the System Preferences panel for MobileMe. However option-click shows a wonderfully detailed list of every item MobileMe knows about, as well as when it last synchronized succesfully. It also offers Sync Diagnostics, Reset Sync Services (something I still have to use far too often, but less frequently than in the past) and a few other options.
Bluetooth: a regular click reveals basic settings and "paired" devices. An option-click adds a "Bluetooth Explorer" and "PacketLogger" (two "pro" options that you may never need, but are helpful for troubleshooting) as well as showing the version number.
AirPort: a regular click will show available networks and a few basic options, but an option-click shows several bits of information about your current Wi-Fi connection; however, most people will probably just be interested in the Channel and Security.
The basic point is this: feel free to option-click around. If the particular menu extra does not have any "hidden features" to show, it will still show the regular options even when you option-click. You won't hurt anything.
Final menu extra tip: if you want to remove a menu extra from the dock, you can try dragging it while holding down the command key. If that doesn't work, look in the application's preferences for an option to show or hide its menu bar item.
Once you have mastered the basics, you may want to explore some more powerful third-party menu bar items.
TUAWMac 101: Getting to know the menu bar and menu extras originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sponsored Topics: Snow Leopard - Apple - Mac OS - Mac OS X - Unofficial Apple WeblogПереслать - Snow Leopard: Apple ships old, security-compromised Flash plugin with new OS
Filed under: OS, Bugs/Recalls, Bad Apple, Security, Found Footage, Snow Leopard
It's not that we have anything against the Flash plugin for Mac browsers. Well, other than the fact that it's crashy, and slow, and makes our laptop fans spin up like we're doing wind tunnel testing for the Air Force. But other than that, we have nothing against it -- and it's lovely that the new 64-bit version of Safari in Snow Leopard can isolate Flash-related stalls and hiccups from the main browser process for enhanced crash protection. Very nice.
Unfortunately, as pointed out initially by Graham Cluley over at the security and anti-virus vendor Sophos, the version of the Flash plugin that Apple bundles with Snow Leopard is old. It's the 10.0.23.1 version, old enough that it has some notable vulnerabilities versus the currently shipping 10.0.32.18 version. You can check which version of the plugin you have by visiting this Adobe check page. Even if you had the current build on your machine before upgrading to Snow Leopard, the upgrade process replaces your Flash with the vintage Flash instead -- poor form! Cluley recommends, and Adobe concurs, that the best thing to do is head over to Adobe's download site and get the most up-to-date version instead.
It's understandable that Apple had to lock down a version of the Flash plugin for inclusion in the OS golden master, but if you're gonna do that then you've got to provide an integrated method for users to update to the current build when the time comes (like, say, via an OS-wide Software Update utility). Downgrading user security while upgrading OS versions is a rotten way to run a railroad.
[Side note, does Cluley's narration in the video above make you wonder if, just maybe, he's moonlighting as Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw over at The Escapist? NSFW!]
Thanks to everyone who sent this in.TUAWSnow Leopard: Apple ships old, security-compromised Flash plugin with new OS originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sponsored Topics: Snow Leopard - Apple - Unofficial Apple Weblog - Graham Cluley - Operating systemПереслать - Breaking News: September 25 for MMS on the iPhone
Filed under: iPhone
Hot off the proverbial presses. Finally, AT&T has a date for MMS! The word came to me a few minutes ago from Brad Mays of AT&T.
The date is September 25th, which does indeed fall a few days past the official end of summer. It was important to give our customers a positive experience from day one. We support more iPhone customers than any other carrier in the world so we took the time necessary to make sure our network is ready to handle what we expect will be a record volume of MMS traffic. We truly appreciate our customers' patience and hope they'll understand our desire to get it right from the start.
The service will be enabled with a software update on the launch date. Customers can obtain the update from iTunes, just like all other iPhone updates.
As for tethering, by its nature, this function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upgrades are in place before we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect. We expect to offer tethering in the future.
He also added some comments on the network in general:
The unique capabilities and high usage of the iPhone's multimedia capabilities required us to work on our network MMS architecture to carry the expected record volumes of MMS traffic and ensure an excellent experience from Day One. We appreciate your patience as we work toward that end.
We're riding the leading edge of smartphone growth that's resulted in an explosion of traffic over the AT&T network. Wireless use on our network has grown an average of 350 percent year-over-year for the past two years, and is projected to continue at a rapid pace in 2009 and beyond. The volume of smartphone data traffic the AT&T network is handling is unmatched in the wireless industry. We want you to know that we're working relentlessly to innovate and invest in our network to anticipate this growth in usage and to stay ahead of the anticipated growth in data demand, new devices and applications for years to come.
Reminder: MMS will only work on iPhone 3G and 3GS models.TUAWBreaking News: September 25 for MMS on the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sponsored Topics: iPhone - Apple - Smartphone - Multimedia Messaging Service - TUAWПереслать - Gamesalad aiming to bring their development system to the iPhone
Filed under: Gaming, Software, Freeware, Developer, iPhone, App Store, SDK
Here's yet another interesting take on the burgeoning App Store environment. A company called Gendai Games has a game creator IDE/app called Gamesalad, designed to let you put together rapid prototype-style games for the Mac. They've been doing this for a while, and they even let you export your games out to the 'net using an online portal. But here's the kicker: they're also planning to let you take those games right out to the iPhone.
Their roadmap page talks about downloading to a test iPhone straight from a Mac, but presumably, they'd either have their own app on the App Store in which you could play your games, or even output it to some sort of wrapper app that you could then release on the App Store yourself. Their press release says they will allow for games "to be sold and marketed on the App Store," and that seems to us like there's compensation involved somehow, either through their portal, or through Apple's setup.
Very interesting. Unfortunately, most of this is forthcoming -- their development environment is available for a free download right now, so you could start working on creating your masterpiece right away if you want, but you'd have to wait until sometime "in the next few weeks" to see what iPhone features they have planned. Part of the iPhone's draw as a programmer's platform is that it's relatively easy to develop for, and an environment like this promises to make it even easier and more accessible. Whenever you have a low barrier of entry to development, release, and sales, you end up with two things: a market possibly flooded with junk, but on the other end, lots and lots of creativity.TUAWGamesalad aiming to bring their development system to the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sponsored Topics: iPhone - AppStore - Apple - TUAW - Gendai GamesПереслать - TomTom car kit delayed until October
Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store
Since its release in late August, the TomTom for iPhone [iTunes Link] application has received a lot of attention. When the application was first debuted at WWDC, it became one of the first products to combine both hardware and software for the iPhone. The car-kit (which provides a separate GPS module for enhanced positioning, connections for audio and iPhone charging capability) was expected to be released alongside the app.
More information was then leaked after TomTom's car kit was seen on the FCC website.
It looks like TomTom has decided to delay the release of the car kit until October to "deliver the highest quality innovative product." In a small note on their website's FAQ page, TomTom announced:
The TomTom car kit availability was originally planned for this summer. But we have decided to take some extra weeks in order to deliver the highest quality on this innovative product. So, the car kit will become available this October on www.tomtom.com.
TUAWTomTom car kit delayed until October originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sponsored Topics: iPhone - appstore - Apple - TomTom - TUAWПереслать - OpenFeint introduces multiplayer, Flick Fishing goes Plus+
Filed under: Gaming, Freeware, Developer, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
The battle of the social gaming services on the iPhone continues. OpenFeint's latest weapon is multiplayer -- they're working on a way for games developers on the iPhone to quickly include multiplayer (it doesn't actually say real-time, so we'll assume it's the mix of ghosting and turn-based multiplayer that they talked about in their interview with us) in their games. They're asking interested developers to sign up to the open beta program, and they'll start rolling out the functionality soon. Even though it seems early in the process, it's a pretty cool idea, and it could definitely serve to set OpenFeint apart even more from the other services trying to attract developers to their social and multiplayer features.
Speaking of social features, Freeverse told us a little while ago that they were going to use ngmoco's Plus+ for their games, and apparently they've now integrated the popular Flick Fishing with the service. The additions allow for leaderboards, in-game achievements, and multiple profiles and saves on one iPhone, so you can compete with your friends on other iPhones or right there on your own. Flick Fishing was already an excellent game, and with the added social functionality of Plus+, it's worth heading back out onto the water to compete and compare your games with your friends.
As I've said before, having multiple companies competing for these social functions is turning out to be a real boon for consumers and developers alike. All of these services are able to bring out a lot of cross-game features that developers by themselves would have taken much longer to put together on their own.TUAWOpenFeint introduces multiplayer, Flick Fishing goes Plus+ originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sponsored Topics: iPhone - appstore - Apple - IpodTouch - TUAWПереслать - New York Times calls iPhone the 'Hummer of cellphones'
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone
Why? Because the iPhone sucks up network bandwidth on a rather massive scale. The article, available online, tells a story most iPhone users already know.
AT&T was unprepared for the massive assault on the 3G network from phones that stream audio and video, and surf the web at a rate far higher than other smartphones.
The piece quotes AT&T Wireless exec John Donovan saying "It's been a challenging year for us. Overnight we're seeing a radical shift in how people are using their phones... There's just no parallel for the demand."
That won't make AT&T customers any happier. A recent survey by Pricegrabber found that 34% of those that responded say they aren't buying an iPhone because it is on AT&T. Many current customers say they'd like to be anywhere but AT&T with their iPhone, but it's likely that a mass migration to Verizon or some other carrier might cause the same problems there.
One issue is that AT&T just isn't communicating very well with customers who are paying a boatload of money for data and text messaging. AT&T could easily (but not happily) drop rates a bit, or eliminate or reduce the high charges for texting. They could apologize to customers for the flood of dropped calls and lack of 3G service in big cities like New York or San Francisco.
Instead, there is stoic silence. No guidance on tethering or MMS release dates, nor communication of any kind really. AT&T already has a pretty big PR problem, and they seem determined to make it worse.
I contacted AT&T today about tethering and MMS, especially since the New York Times article says AT&T is 'postponing tethering.'
The response, from Michael Coe at AT&T, says they have never specified a date for tethering, and when I asked again about MMS there was simply no reply. Update: AT&T has just responded with an MMS date. Quoting Brad Mays of AT&T Wireless:
The date is September 25th, which does indeed fall a few days past the official end of summer. It was important to give our customers a positive experience from day one. We support more iPhone customers than any other carrier in the world so we took the time necessary to make sure our network is ready to handle what we expect will be a record volume of MMS traffic. We truly appreciate our customers' patience and hope they'll understand our desire to get it right from the start.
The service will be enabled with a software update on the launch date. Customers can obtain the update from iTunes, just like all other iPhone updates.
As for tethering, by its nature, this function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upgrades are in place before we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect. We expect to offer tethering in the future.TUAWNew York Times calls iPhone the 'Hummer of cellphones' originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sponsored Topics: iPhone - Apple - AT&T - Multimedia Messaging Service - San FranciscoПереслать - Mac 10.6 comes with license to kill
Filed under: Developer, Snow Leopard
The name's Leopard... Snow Leopard... and how I wish it was 10.7 instead of 10.6 so I could extend these hokey James Bond allusions further. That said, it is closer than the truth than you may think. Apple has given Snow Leopard a license to kill... but this doesn't have anything to do with espionage or even spyware (pardon the pun). Instead, it has everything to do with Apple's desire to make the shutdown process faster.
One of the systemwide refinements tells us that "Snow Leopard is up to 80 percent faster when shutting down." If you've ever waited impatiently for your Mac notebook to shut down while your flight was boarding or at the end of the day when you are anxious to get home, Apple is looking to reduce that frustration.
Towards that end, Snow Leopard allows developers to mark their applications as "clean" or "dirty" -- not that kind of dirty!
Here's an example of what "clean" vs "dirty" means in this context: imagine you have been working in Pages, but all of your documents are saved (or maybe you've closed all the documents but Pages is still running). Pages can mark itself "clean" which is similar to saying "I'm ready when you are!"
Now imagine that you are working in Pages, and you've saved your file, but after you saved it you made some additional changes. Perhaps you have several documents open and unsaved, or you've got a Preferences dialog open. If you look at the 3 circles in the top-left corner of the window, you'll see that the one of the far left has a hole in the middle which goes away when you save the file. If any of those situations are true, Pages is considered "dirty," the programmatic equivalent of "Just a moment please!"
When the user tells the operating system to shutdown (not just sleep), the operating system will look to see which applications are "ready to go" and applications are still looking for their metaphorical keys. The ones that are ready? They get killed, and killed hard.
It's like the difference between telling an app to "Quit" versus "Force Quit." If you ask it to Quit, it is going to check to see if it needs to do anything before it does. If you tell it to Force Quit, it's just going to go away.
If you are familiar with the Terminal, you may have used 'kill' to stop some process from running. Usually if you want to 'kill' an application nicely, you send 'kill -TERM' ("software termination signal") which says "OK, clean up your things and let's go!" However if you find that something refuses to stop, you might use 'kill -9' which is referred to as SIGKILL, described as "non-catchable" and "non-ignorable." This is like picking up your child and carrying him or her away because it is time to go now with no questions asked. Applications which mark themselves as "clean" are telling the operating system: "You can use 'kill -9'/Force Quit on me without worrying about losing anything."
How much longer does "Quit" take compared to "Force Quit"? Maybe only a second or two, maybe a fraction of a second. But if you have a lot of applications running and the majority of them can skip that time, it helps the overall speed of the shutdown. Think of it like this: imagine you had a bunch of family members over and you were trying to get everyone out of the house to go to a restaurant: young kids, a couple of older aunts and uncles, and maybe grampa. You've probably asked something like this: "Does everyone have everything they need? Kids, did you go to the bathroom? Uncle Joe, did you get your coat and hat? Grampa, do you have your sweater in case it's too cold?" Even if everyone says "yes" it took longer than if you said "Let's go" and everyone replied "We're all ready!"
Is this a "sexy" feature of our newest cat-themed operating system? Not at all, but it is one of those "little details" that makes life a little easier as a Mac user: a little faster, a little more attention to detail, and exactly the sort of thing Apple promised to pay attention to with Snow Leopard.
(Big tip o' the hat to John Siracusa's epic Snow Leopard review at Ars Technica for bringing my attention to this feature. I look forward to John's operating system reviews almost as much as I look forward to the operating systems themselves.)
photo via flickr creative commons: danzen
TUAWMac 10.6 comes with license to kill originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sponsored Topics: Snow Leopard - Apple - Operating system - Unofficial Apple Weblog - Ars TechnicaПереслать
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