Friday, September 7, 2007

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) (7 сообщений)

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The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
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  • TUAW Best of the Week

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    What a week for Apple fans. After a slow Labor Day, we got a huge midweek event, new iPods, and what turned out to be the week's biggest story: the iPhone is now $399.

    MobileChat iPhone AIM Client Debuts
    Started off the week with not one but two IM iPhone betas.

    MarsEdit 2.0
    Red Sweater's blogging client gets a new interface and Flickr integration

    Mass-media messup: NBC doesn't get the iTunes store
    Nik tells us why the peacock should leave the pricing to Apple.

    Ask TUAW: External Front Row, iSight mirroring, booting from an external HD, and more
    You ask, we answer, and you don't even have to pay an extra buck just to read it for 30 seconds on your iPhone.

    The Beatles: whatever
    Scott doesn't care if the Beatles showed up on Wednesday or not.

    Metaliveblogging "The Beat Goes On" event
    What's the next best thing to being in Moscone West? Reading our commentary about it.

    iTunes: Free Wednesday
    Featuring Dave Matthews and The Pick Up Artist (not the same person).

    iPhone ringtones on the cheap
    Get all of the ringtones, with none of the price.

    Apple screwed you. So now what?
    The most useful thing we posted all week.

    Bye, bye HiFi
    Apple's speakerbox gets an inconspicuous farewell.

    Found Footage: Quicksilver Google Tech talk
    Sure, Quicksilver's creator isn't the best public speaker, but if you're interested in UI design at all, this is a must-see.

    Apple giving early iPhone buyers $100 credit
    Steve gives some back. Thanks early adopter whiners!

    iTunes 7.4 breaks iPhone hacks
    A speedbump (albeit a very, very small one) for iPhone hackers.

    Why did Apple drop the price?
    We consider the reasons behind this week's biggest surprise.
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  • Installer.app locks out PXL package

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    Lots of drama in the iPhone development community since last night, and it all revolves around a decision that "lg," the developer of Installer.app, made to remove PXL from its list of installable applications. PXL is another package manager for iPhone (open source, while Installer.app is still free, but currently closed source), that works with either Breezy, iBrickr (for Windows), or any other PXL manager. A little while back, the PXL guys decided that the easiest way to get their packages onto the iPhone was to actually run through Installer.app, but lg, last night, apparently decided that he didn't want them doing that, and locked them out of the application.

    And that, according to many iPhone developers, is not cool. The creators of NES.app, in response, have pulled their application from Installer.app completely, posting a notice on their site that "NES.app will no longer function from Installer.app or other third-party package installers that we believe are not trustworthy/secure. You will need to remove these tools to use NES.app."

    TUAW spoke with drudge, the developer who originally wrote the package for PXL in Installer.app, and he makes it clear that this is a bad move for the iPhone community. "We need to grow and learn each step of the way," he told me in an email. "Releasing closed sourced apps at this stage in the game doesn't help anyone." But the problem, according to drudge, isn't that Installer.app is a closed source application. "The only problem is it is a centralized management system... meaning "lg" has the final say in what happens with any package." And when lg decides, as he did last night, that someone's out, everyone suffers.

    lg has not commented on what happened yet, as far as we've heard. At this point, it sounds like everyone involved is trying to work towards a solution, and get the PXL package back in Installer.app (the alternative would be for PXL to create their own Installer.app type of program). As drudge also told us, "The community is only 2 months old so for developers to be taking sides... makes it harder on iPhone users and developers."

    Thanks, drudge!

    Update: They've reached a solution-- NullRiver (lg and the folks behind Installer.app) are going to create their own open source library for package management. Since PXL was created because Installer.app was closed source, another open source solution means PXL will likely not exist any longer.
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  • Does Apple want to sell TV shows for 99 cents?

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    The Apple/NBC drama continues with this latest report from Variety. Sources tell Variety that Apple proposed to the studios that TV show prices on iTunes should be lowered from $1.99 each to $.99, to which NBC said, 'No thanks!' NBC is pushing for 'flexible pricing' meaning that new shows would cost more than older shows which makes sense to me if the prices are reasonable (i.e. not $4.99 for new shows) and this scheme is actually already in place in the iTunes Store.

    What?! I thought Steve was all about one price or nothing, I hear you say. Yes, that would seem to be the case if one looks only at TV shows and music, which account for most of iTunes purchases but one shouldn't forget that Apple also sells movies . Newly released, or hot, movies cost $14.99 to download while older movies cost just $9.99. Oh, the confusion a buyer must feel when faced with these differing price points!

    I predict that in the near future all the studios (including NBC) will agree to sell their shows via iTunes with new shows getting $1.99 an episode and with older shows going to $.99. That way the newer downloads won't compete with DVD sales, and the older stuff will suddenly become more appealing.

    Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
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  • How not to download iTunes Store tracks or previews for Ringtones

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    We've just received word via Engadget that you may not use iTMS-purchased music or previews as ringtones.

    Engadget's awesome Nilay Patel addressed the issue this morning, clarifying that although you can legally install ringtones ripped from your personal CDs, iTMS tracks and previews are off-limits. He writes that the iTMS EULA prohibits the use of downloaded files as ringtones, probably due to its contracts with the music industry. Music ripped from CDs, however, are not derivative works and do not infringe copyrights.

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  • Create your own iTunes-compatible ringtones

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    iTunes 7.4 makes it especially easy to add and sync ringtones with your iPhone--without having to pay for a third-party installer. TUAW reader Arnold Kim passed along a link to this fabulous MacRumors post with a method attributed to "Cleverboy" and Nicholas "Drudge" Penree sent me additional instructions.

    It goes basically like this: iTunes uses the m4r file extension for Ringtones. If you copy an AAC file from your library and rename it from .m4a to .m4r and then add it back to iTunes, the program reads it back in as a ringtone rather than a normal library track. You can then sync it to your iPhone. I've tested this with both an MP3 that I converted to AAC and with a track I purchased from the iTunes store. They both worked.

    The secret lies in making sure the name change happens properly. This isn't a big problem on Windows. On the Mac though there are protections in place to keep you from renaming the file extension--this isn't to keep you from making ringtones. It's to keep you from hurting your files. So either do the rename in Terminal or select the file you want to rename and open the Info window. Scroll down to the Name & Extension field and change the extension to m4r there.

    At this time, the m4r items do not appear in your Library. You can only see them when you select an iPhone in the sources list and then click on the Ringtones tab.

    In other news, the download-free-iTunes-previews trick seems to be dead until further notice.

    Further notice: Okay, I got the preview trick fixed but it's..trickier. You've got to download the iTunes pages as if they were webpages and then extract the URLs from the page source. I'll write this up if there's any interest. Let me know in the comments

    Update: Use this technique only for tracks you've copied from your personal CD collection.

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  • Nokia and Apple both target price drop searchers (Updated)

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    In among all of the furor about the big iPhone price drop yesterday, there is, of course, marketers trying to ply both sides. Nokia was first with the Google ad you see above, in the results page for "iphone price drop"-- they called out early adopters and tried to lure them to something called Mosh, apparently some kind of social network. I really doubt any iPhone users would join a Nokia social network, even if they were unhappy about the price drop, but nice try Nokia.

    And then Apple came up with a little plan of their own. As you can see on the right, they wrote their own "late adopter" Google ad, cheering on folks who purposely waited for an iPhone price drop (like yours truly-- OK, it was so much on purpose as it was being cheap, but still).

    Now, most of the tipsters who let us know about this (thanks everyone!) were pretty unhappy that Apple so clearly targeted folks who waited, but that whole $100 rebate thing probably eases the pain a little bit, eh? Can you really blame these marketers for seeing a clear demographic and driving for it?

    UPDATE: Cory O'Brien emailed us and let us know that Apple didn't place this ad, he did. Read his whole story at his blog.
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  • Big Bang releases web-based iPhone Sudoku

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    Gallery: Sudoku

    A few weeks ago, PopCap released Bejeweled for iPhone. Today, Freeverse follows their lead, releasing iPhone Sudoku. The game brings the same great Big Bang interface you've come to expect and love. Sol is this game's host, with all his fire-filled glory. The game is relatively easy to play, although I find the buttons a little small in portrait mode and the screen needs continual scrolling in landscape mode. That aside, a big thank you to Freeverse/Big Bang for this nice gift.

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