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How to Change the Twitter for Mac Icon (And Others, Too)
Twitter for Mac is one of the great apps introduced alongside the Mac App Store. Since then, it’s been updated twice and the app’s icon changed (some would say for the worse) both times. Here’s how to change the icon back to whichever you like best.
1. Find Twitter for Mac in the Finder. You can do this by either looking for it yourself (it will most likely reside in [Your name]/Applications) or by right- or Control-clicking on Twitter in your Dock and choosing Options > Show in Finder.
2. Once you’ve located the app, quit it if it’s running, then right-click on the icon and choose Show Package Contents. This lets you look inside the app bundle to find the files it needs to run, so be careful about what you do as you explore. Next, navigate into the Contents folder, and then find the Resources folder inside that. You’ll see three .icns files — the 3D one from the latest update and two others.
3. If you try to change the files while they’re still in the application bundle, it won’t work, so drag the three files out onto your Desktop. Rename the 3D icon to Icon1.icns and then rename the icon you want to use as Icon.icns. Note that the file name is case-sensitive. Now drag the renamed icons back into the Resources folder. You’ll have to click “Authenticate” and type your password in order to overwrite the existing files.
4. The last thing to do is drag Twitter out of the Dock and relaunch the application. Your new/old icon should now show up, and all is right with the world again.
This method works with any application, not just Twitter. Just make sure that the icon you drag in has exactly the same name as the app’s existing icon, and you should be good to go.

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Apple Putting the Screws on Users to Upgrade?
Apple may be trying to make it harder for users to repair or upgrade their own hardware, according to iFixit’s Kyle Wiens. New iPhones and recent MacBook Pro and Air models are shipping with a new kind of non-standard screw securing the outside and battery cases of these products.

Since the screws aren’t readily compatible with any standard screwdriver that a user may have (unlike the Phillips screws they replace), users wanting to crack the case on their own devices and effect repairs at home will be out of luck. On the iPhone and MacBook Air, the new screws will make it harder to get any access to the internals of either device at all, and on the MacBook Pro, they protect the battery, making it even trickier to replace.

The new screw type, called “Pentalobe” because of its five-pointed design, is not proprietary (used and licensed by Apple alone), but it is something you’re unlikely to find just by rummaging through your toolbox or running down to your local hardware store. In fact, iFixit reports that there isn’t even a reputable consumer channel for the exact screwdriver Apple’s own technicians use to handle Pentalobe screws, so users will have to settle for best-fit solutions. You can see iFixit’s video explaining the screws at length below.

Note also that while early iPhone 4 models shipped with standard four-point Phillips screws, if you’ve had your phone serviced recently or are planning to, Apple’s service staff will replace those with the new Pentalobe versions while repairing the device. That swap makes this new screw look like a means to well, screw consumers.

There are two possible explanations for the new screws. First, there’s the line Apple will probably take, if the company comments at all (no response received as of press time): that the screws help prevent against potentially dangerous tampering that would do more harm than good. In other word, the “we’re protecting you against yourselves” argument.

The other explanation is the one that iFixit (which admittedly makes much of its money selling DIY repair kits for Apple devices) is convinced is the real reason: that Apple wants you to buy upgrades and replacements, so it’s making it as hard as possible to repair its products yourself at home. This is definitely in keeping with Apple’s current product design trajectory. The culmination of this new design philosophy seems to be the iPad, which offers no easy internal access, can’t have its storage or RAM upgraded. Apple is approaching the same model in its notebook line with the latest MacBook Air, which now also features the tamper-resistant Pentalobe screws in addition to non-upgradable RAM soldered to the logic board, and a non-standard implementation of flash storage that makes it very hard to replace.

Apple’s newest, more closed designs arguably allow them to make improvements in terms of battery life, system efficiency and physical device size, but they also sacrifice a lot in terms of a user’s ability to customize and repair the devices on their own. The use of these screws, however, doesn’t come with a functional benefit to offset its downsides. Is it a step too far?

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Evidence for iPad 2 Cameras Shows Up in iOS 4.3 Assets
Apple’s pre-release software betas are often a veritable treasure trove of information about what’s in store for devices in future hardware updates. iOS 4.3 Beta 2 is no exception, bringing strong evidence (via MacRumors) that the iPad 2 will indeed have at least one camera, and likely two.

The evidence comes via an image asset included in the new beta called “homescreenOverlayFaceTime~ipad.png,” which clearly shows icons for FaceTime, Camera and Photo Booth on the default iPad home screen. The image mirrors the one currently used in the iPad’s wallpaper settings, and is likely meant to replace it in the iPad 2.

FaceTime should work as it does on the iPod touch with the new iPad, letting users make video calls to others with iOS devices with front-facing cameras, or to those with FaceTime for Mac installed on their computers. Photo Booth, which Apple has yet to release on any iOS device, will presumably work like the desktop app that ships with OS X and allow users to snap photos of themselves using a front-facing camera and then apply various effects to the resulting image. Filters like Mirror, X-Ray and Kaleidoscope have already been found in the iOS 4.3 beta.

The inclusion of a separate Camera app is what suggests Apple will go ahead and include two cameras instead of just one. It’s true that it could just be for use with the front camera, but I’d suggest that Apple would’ve stuck with just the Photo Booth app if it were only including a front-facing camera. And evidence aside, a lack of a rear-facing camera, no matter how practical, would be ammunition for Apple’s competition in the tablet space. Plus, Apple couldn’t sell the ability to switch between front and back cameras as a value-add feature for FaceTime.

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OneNote for iPhone Review: Overly Simple Note Taking

Yesterday, Microsoft launched its first Office app for iOS, a mobile version of the digital notebook application OneNote. If you’ve never heard of it, it may be because you’re using the Mac version of Office, which lacks OneNote, greatly reducing the usability of the iOS app.

Microsoft asserts that “78 million PCs in the U.S. have OneNote,” which, while not the same thing as having 78 million users, is still impressive. But the pool of potential overall Microsoft Office users from Mac and PC is more impressive still. Having tried OneNote, I’d suggest it may be the “practice” Office iOS app for Microsoft, before the team attempts to bring in that larger user base through Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps. But unfortunately that “practice” feel doesn’t help the OneNote succeed as an app in and of itself.

OneNote requires an active Windows Live account to work at all. A Windows Live account allows automatic syncing between OneNote on an iOS device and Windows Live SkyDrive, which then can be synced with OneNote in Office (which, remember, is only available in the Windows version). There are no other way (like email) by which to send notes from an iOS device to a Mac or PC, so cross easy syncing off your list with OneNote.

After logging in once to Windows Live, the admittedly gorgeous OneNote Home screen appears, but looks can be deceiving. On the left, the Home screen shows a list of “notebooks,” which act as directories for your notes. Unfortunately, you can’t create notebooks in OneNote for iOS. You must use OneNote in Office, or use the OneNote web app at windowslive.com. On the left are the contents of the Day-to-Day notebook broken down into sections. Think of sections as those little colored tabs on pages you might divide a physical notebook with. You can’t create or modify these in OneNote for iOS, either.

OneNote does perform well when it comes to actually taking notes, though. While OneNote can be used in landscape mode, you won’t have much screen real estate to keep track of what you’re doing. OneNote works much better, and looks just great, in portrait mode. As seen above, OneNote has options for both bullet lists and checkbox lists, as well as integration with the iPhone camera. The camera option is especially nice, as you can take a picture and have that be the subject of its own note. Apple needs to “borrow” that feature for Notes in iOS 5.

Unfortunately, even note taking in OneNote can at times be frustrating. Wouldn’t it be great if those ring binders on the left of the note indicated a potential action, like turning a page for the next or previous note? Instead, the only way you can get to different notes is by forever going back and forth through lists.

OneNote for iOS is free, for now, but Microsoft makes no promises about the future. If you want to be help encourage Microsoft to develop Office apps for iOS, get it now. If you want a full-featured notes app that really works, there’s Evernote. It’s free, but the premium service at $45 per year significantly increases what the app can do. For Mac users with limited needs, especially those with MobileMe, Apple’s Notes remains the best basic note-taking app. As for OneNote, for now it’s little more than an extension of the Windows application, better for viewing notes than actually creating, organizing, and sharing thoughts.

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Screencast: How to Create iPhone Ringtones for Free
One of the best things about the iPhone is how easily you can set your own custom ringtones. Creating those ringtones from music from your own library is incredibly easy, too, and doesn’t require any paid third-party software. All you need is Garage Band and iTunes. Check out the screencast below to see how you can make your own ringtones from virtually any song in under five minutes.

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Getting Around Apple's AirPlay Limitations
Some of Apple’s technologies stop just a little short of greatness. That’s where third-party applications come in to complete the picture (and the sound). Airfoil helps extend Apple’s AirPlay on Macs and iOS devices, and a brand new app called AirView improves AirPlay’s video playback abilities.

Airfoil for Mac. At the core of this solution is Airfoil 4.0 (free trial, $25 full version). It’s a simple application that would probably do better as a System Preference pane. The interface is quick to master: Just pick an audio source, and select where you would like that audio source to be heard. In addition to supporting playback of your iTunes music library, Airfoil will also stream audio content from almost any application on either Mac or PC, including system audio and any attached audio device. I tested this with the microphone attached to my Apple Cinema Display, as well as a Samson C01U USB Microphone attached to my Mac, and in both cases it worked well.

Airfoil Video Player. One thing you’ll notice right away when playing back video files is that the sound timing is off — way off. This is due to the buffering technology Airfoil uses to keep all audio outputs in sync. You can still play videos on your Mac and listen to them on your external audio system. Included with Airfoil is a custom video player that keeps the soundtrack in sync with the video playback. It supports web-based content like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube, as well as any most video file formats and DVD playback.

Airfoil to Airplay. Airfoil will transmit to any existing AirPlay device, like the Apple TV and the AirPort Express. It also supports any third-party hardware that uses AirPlay, like Denon’s new AVR-4311CI. You can select either one or many destinations, and Airfoil will ensure that audio playback remains in sync from room to room.

Airfoil Speakers for Mac, Windows and Linux. There are companion apps from Rogue Amoeba that turn any Mac, Windows or Linux machine into a destination that for Airfoil audio. Unfortunately, these apps can’t make any of these platforms AirPlay speakers, so playback only works using Airfoil as the source.

Airfoil Speakers Touch. The icing on the cake is this free App Store offering that enables all iOS devices to also become destinations for Airfoil audio. Like Speakers for Mac, Windows and Linux, the Touch version doesn’t make iOS devices accessible through AirPlay, but it does allow for remote playback access to your iTunes music library, something you can’t do using Apple’s current AirPlay implementation. Using the Apple Remote app to control iTunes on your computer, and setting Airfoil to broadcast to your iOS device, you can have complete access to your entire iTunes library, bypassing onboard storage limitations. Airfoil even supports background audio on your iOS device. Unfortunately, you need to be on the same local network as your Mac for this to work.

AirView. This one isn’t part of the Airfoil suite, but it’s worth checking out if you’re interested in the video side of AirPlay. It’s a free app that you can install on any iOS device, where it serves as a receiver for AirPlay video. So, for example, you could play back a video on your iPhone 4 using your iPad. It probably has the most potential as a way to stream your iTunes video library from your Mac to your iPad on a local network quickly and easily, though you’ll need to initiate playback on your Mac before you can control it in the AirView app. The streaming quality is fantastic, though.

Third-party solutions aren’t perfect, but once things are all up and running, everything sounds (and looks) just fine. One of the main hurdles is in initiating playback remotely. Reemote for Airfoil for $2.99 in the App Store provides a workaround for that solution, but an all-in-one solution would obviously be better. In any case, until Apple improves AirPlay itself, these apps are the best bet for fixing the feature’s deficiencies. Any other AirPlay-augmenters you’re using? Let us know in the comments.

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Apple's App Store Growing Up With Playboy for iPad
According to Hugh Hefner, Playboy is coming to the iPad starting in March. And that’s not just a big screen conversion of the watered-down app currently available on the iPhone and iPod touch. No, it’s the fully uncensored magazine, both past and current issues.

Hefner revealed the news about the iPad on his Twitter account, where he tweeted the following:

@hughhefner
Hugh Hefner
Big news! Playboy–both old & new–will be available on iPad beginning in March.

January 18, 2011 6:22 pm via TwitterrificRetweetReply

In later tweets, he assured multiple followers that the magazine would be uncensored, and that back issues as well as current editions spanning the magazine’s entire run would be available for download. Hefner didn’t announce pricing or whether subscription plans were in the works. Many expect that Apple will introduce a digital subscription mechanic for iOS publications to coincide with the arrival of Rupert Murdoch’s dedicated iPad newspaper The Daily, however. The Daily was supposed to launch this Wednesday, but has been reportedly been delayed a few weeks.

If Playboy does indeed arrive on the iPad with full nudity intact, it’ll mark a significant change in App Store policy. Apple has seemed intent on keeping even relatively innocuous depictions of nudity or brazen sexuality out of its app marketplace. Last June, it censored illustrated nude images in comics based on James Joyce’s Ulysses and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest. Sure, you could probably debate whether or not the nudity in those cases has a solid artistic motivation, but it’d be very difficult to have the same kind of discussion about Playboy.

The App Store isn’t completely without nudity, however. UK-based tabloid, The Sun, managed to somehow get its “Page 3 Girl,” who is depicted topless, through Apple’s vetting process in its iPad application. And this wasn’t just an oversight that Apple eventually corrected. In November 2010, The Sun introduced Page 360, a feature that lets you rotate the Page 3 girl, providing a 360-degree view of the model.

Perhaps Apple is moving forward with the Playboy venture after realizing that having nudity in the App Store through The Sun hasn’t been met with global public outrage or a boycott of the platform. The fact is, Apple has built a very robust parental control system during the past few major upgrades, and, as many have been quick to point out, the iPhone’s browser easily provides all the adult content anyone could ever dream of having access to.

Playboy is a good place to start if Apple is indeed planning to test the waters further with sexually suggestive material. Its depictions of nudity are fairly innocuous in terms of the spectrum of adult material, and it also offers some solid editorial content. If the public reacts poorly, it can easily pull the plug, but I think the platform is ready for this step, especially if Apple is serious about becoming a major magazine purveyor on the international market, where nudity in print is not at all uncommon.

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Apple Conference Call: 6 Things You Should Know
Unlike last quarter, Tuesday’s conference call regarding quarterly results did not include a cameo by iconic CEO Steve Jobs, who announced a leave of absence on Monday. In fact, his name didn’t even come up in a question, and that’s one of six things Apple watchers should know about Tuesday’s call.

1. The Steve Work Ethic

Considering the turbulence Apple faced Monday and Tuesday, it’s difficult to imagine that every analyst would choose to not ask questions about the impact Jobs’ medical leave of absence would have on the company, yet none did, at least not directly. However, one question was posed about “long-term planning” about products.

“In my view, Apple’s doing the best work ever,” said COO Tim Cook, adding that the company was “very happy” with the product pipeline, and then he said this:

“The team has an unparalleled breadth and depth of talent and innovation that Steve has driven in the company, and excellence has become a habit, and so we feel very confident about the future of the company.”

Present or not, the influence of Steve Jobs still guides Apple.

2. Apple and the Dragon

When queried about how Apple can manage to sustain the insane growth of the present and the past, the answer that came up repeatedly was Asia, specifically China. The company stated that years ago Apple identified China among emerging as its “top priority” and the results are “absolutely staggering.” China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan generated some $2.6 billion in revenue for the quarter, quadrupling performance over last year. The number of visitors and sales at Chinese Apple Stores exceeded those of every other store, including flagship stores in the U.S. and Europe.

Besides China, sales in Japan were up 83 percent year over year, with strong growth for the Mac: up 56 percent. Korea was also singled out as being very receptive to the iPhone, and Japan was mentioned as well, but clearly, China is the focus of new markets for Apple going forward.

3. The Mac Is Back

Actually, it never left. For a jaw-dropping 19 consecutive quarters, the Mac has grown faster than rest of the PC market. For the most recent quarter, the Mac achieved 23 percent growth, compared to a meager three percent for the rest of the industry. Apple sold more than 850,000 Macs in retail Apple Stores, and once again, for nearly 10 years, “about half” of those purchasing Macs were doing so for the first time.

As to what people were buying, the biggest sellers were the MacBook Pro and the new MacBook Air. Apple executives described the Mac as a “phenomenal” part of their growth. That growth included 2.9 million laptops sold, representing 70 percent of Macs sold during the quarter. Consumers loved new features like “instant on” and the speed of solid-state drives according to Apple. Look for SSDs to migrate to other Mac portables soon, most likely with faster CPUs from Intel.

4. The Unstoppable iPhone

After selling more than 14 million iPhones from July through September, Apple topped that by selling more than 16 million iPhones during the holiday quarter, and they could have sold more. More than six months after launch, the iPhone 4 is still supply-constrained, and Apple executives have no idea when supply and demand equilibrium will be reached.

It almost certainly won’t be this quarter, with the launch of the Verizon iPhone. In fact, a question regarding expanding sales of CDMA iPhones to countries like China was only partially deflected. While Apple is “always looking for opportunities,” it was implied that current iPhone supplies preclude any major expansion in the short term. For the first time, Apple may be looking at an iPhone that sells out across the model year.

5. Other Tablets Still Suck

Trash-talkin’ Steve Jobs may not have been there to put the smackdown on competing tablets, but Tim Cook filled those shoes admirably. According to Cook, competing tablets currently fall into one of three categories:
1. Window tablets that are “big, heavy, expensive, and have poor battery life,”and that require input devices like a stylus. Consumers are simply “not interested.”
2. Android tablets that, by Google’s own admission, run an OS not designed for tablets in sizes that are “less than reasonable,” failing to provide a “real tablet experience.” They are “scaled-up smartphones” and Apple is ”not concerned” about them. I wouldn’t expect a 7-inch iPad this year.
3. Vapor. That would be tablets previewed at CES or earlier, and possibly the BlackBerry PlayBook, though RIM was never mentioned.
6. 160 Million iOS Devices Sold

To put that number in perspective, the number of iOS devices passed 100 million last June. In September, that number was 120 million, and now it’s 160 million. By the time the next iPhone launches in June or July, it will be at least 200 million, perhaps as many as 250,000 million.

That’s the takeaway from this quarter’s conference call: six facts worth remembering.

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