Tuesday, January 29, 2008

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) (13 сообщений)

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The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
http://www.tuaw.com
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  • Dude, where's my UK 'Get a Mac' ads?

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    Have you seen this commercial? If you are in the US, probably not as it's a "Get a Mac" commercial from the UK. Chances are, you probably won't be seeing any more of them, either. On the UK Apple website, the Get a Mac ads have been taken down to reveal just a web page displaying reasons to switch.

    It's no secret that the Apple's UK ads have been under fire, and the ads haven't been showing as frequently on TV in the UK. What do you think, should Apple rethink their marketing plans in other countries? Be sure to sound off in the comments!
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  • XcodeTemplateFactory

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    You know what they say about those who can't code, they blog about those that can. It is in this spirit that I offer up XcodeTemplateFactory. If you don't find yourself using XCode on a regular basis I'll save you a few moments and tell you to stop reading this post now. Check out the MacBook Paper again. Funny, right?

    Ok, are they gone? Good, it is now just me and you, dear developer! Now, you'll get a whole lot more out of XcodeTemplateFactory than I will, but it is my duty, as an influential and powerful blogger, to point you in the right direction. You're probably swimming in a ton of XCode projects, and every time you set up a new one you curse the sky because you must keep setting the same things over and over again. XcodeTemplateFactory lets you keep a special project which is set up just the way you like, and from which you can deploy new projects. All the projects deployed from the template are set up just like the original. It'll save you time, and it won't cost you a dime (that rhyme was also free).

    XcodeTemplateFactory is a free, open source utility from Hog Bay Software, makers of TaskPaper (which I quite enjoy).
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    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://www.tuaw.com/2008/01/28/xcodetemplatefactory/#comments



  • Jobs reassures Apple investors

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    With Apple's stock plummeting from just shy of $200 to $130.01, as of closing today; AppleInsider is claiming to have gotten a copy of Steve Jobs' letter to investors that he issued last week. In the letter, Jobs urged investors to "Hang in there."

    "Wow... what a remarkable last few days," Jobs said. "Our stock is being buffeted around by factors a lot larger than ourselves."

    Jobs went on to say that he believed in Apple's fundamentals. He highlighted Apple stores, Apple's focused strategy, and forthcoming products as reasons why people should worry too much about Apple's stock. Apple does have $18 billion in the vault, as it were, so the company can certainly weather some rough quarters.

    Jobs is currently the second largest Apple shareholder, behind only Fidelity Investments, with a reported 5.54 million shares. He has, no doubt, been hit hard by the recent happenings on Wall Street; but then again, who hasn't been?
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  • Testing the iPhone's fake GPS

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    Mac|Life has a pretty neat breakdown of just how the iPhone's faux GPS work (or doesn't work, depending on the situation). Long story short, the Locations feature is pretty darn close-- unless you really do need GPS. On average, it seems like triangulation put the guessed location (represented by the blue pin in the pictures) off from the actual location (represented by the red pin) by about .5 miles.

    Which is great if you just want to know where you are (which is what it was designed for, obviously). But not so great if you're actually trying to do something you'd need GPS for (like geocaching). Two drawbacks here -- I've been trying the Locations feature around Chicago, and I've found that if I try it more than once, or am moving, the app picks up a little better on where I'm at. Also, I've been in Chicago, and Mac|Life is in San Francisco, so it would be interesting to know how this works out where we might really get lost-- out in the country, farther away from cell towers.

    Still, while it's not as precise as real GPSers might like, the Locations feature is pretty amazing for what it is. Your iPhone doesn't know exactly where it's at, but it knows close enough to get you where you're going.
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  • Fraggles and Farscape come to iTunes!

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    OK, this is cool. Starting today, properties from the The Jim Henson Company are coming to iTunes. The complete first seasons of Farscape and Fraggle Rock are available now for $1.99 an episode. According to the company's press release, the entire series should be available on the site in the coming months.

    Now, I never watched Farscape, but as a television addict, I was pretty familiar with the various controversies over home video rights and for the show and how difficult it is to find on DVD. I can only guess that legions of Farscape fans will be happy to be able to download first season episodes from iTunes.

    As for Fraggle Rock, well, this is something I can get behind. I remember watching the show on HBO at a very early age and the theme song still makes me smile. Fraggle Rock is actually the only "Muppet" property not owned by The Walt Disney Company (in 2004 The Jim Henson Company sold the rights to The Muppets and a few other properties to Disney), and as a result it's trek to DVD has not been as drawn out (though in the US we're still only up to season 3), but despite my general feelings about buying TV shows on iTunes, I will totally indulge in the nostalgia of the Fraggles.

    Now that the TV season is pretty much at a standstill (we have Project Runway and American Idol, but that's about it), watching 25 year old Muppets sing songs or watching a beloved Sci-Fi show on the Mac or Apple TV is a bit more enticing than watching the emergency season of Big Brother.
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  • Why isn't C&P on the iPhone yet?

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    A site called Sven on Tech claims to have word straight from an Apple "source" as to why there isn't cut and paste on the iPhone. Apparently, and get this, they just haven't figured out how to implement it yet. In other news, the Apple TV will be a success, as soon as Apple figures out how to implement that, too.

    Yeah, in case you haven't guessed yet, I don't buy it. I'm not sure who this "source" is (and there should be an unwritten rule of journalism that anyone who wears a nametag at a convention booth doesn't get to count as a "source," unless they're talking about nametag news), but if someone from Apple says that implementation was the only reason they haven't put copy-and-paste on the iPhone, then either they're lying, or they're just plain too full of themselves. Let's not forget, despite their achievements, that this is the company that created the worst error message implementation known to man -- the iPhone won't be a failure if the copy and paste is a little more complicated than most other functions. They haven't figured out how to implement it? Surely they've seen this-- they know it's possible.

    But here's why my reasoning falls down: I can't think of another reason Apple would keep it off the iPhone. Do they think people don't need to cut and paste? Is the RIAA expanding their fight against copying music to copying and pasting everything? Does Steve just never visit any sites besides Apple.com and thus never have to copy and paste anything? I don't buy the "implementation" argument but I don't, unfortunately, have a better one to put in its place.

    [Via Mac Rumors]
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  • Tour all of Macworld 2008 in less than five minutes

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    Two weeks ago the world was a-twitter with speculation as to what in the world Apple meant by "Something is in the Air." Of course, if you tuned in to our talkcast, you heard a pretty good tip on that score, but the next day El Steve-O dropped a shiny-new, paper-thin, slightly-underpowered (depending on your needs) portable in our collective laps.

    So as we bid adieu to TUAW's complete Macworld 2008 coverage, we'd like to point out you can relive the magic in several ways. First there's the video in this post, with a frantic run-through of the floor, interviews, booths and more. Second, there's our Macworld 2008 tagged pages. And lastly, our Macworld 2008 summary page, nicely organized into manageable chunks so you can find what you need quickly. We're still uploading all these videos to the various video places around the web, and as we update individual posts, we'll update the Macworld 2008 page too.

    The next big event for us will be WWDC (whenever that happens to be, but last year it was June 11-15). Of course, TUAW will be there, interviewing developers and hopefully hosting another fun meetup. Stay tuned!

    [music by cdk]
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  • 130 Great photos from Macworld and 2 ugly ones

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    Gallery: Macworld 2008 in pictures


    If you've got the time, we've got the pixels. Relive the glory of Macworld 2008 even if you weren't there with our 132 pictures from the show, featuring:
    • Pics from the Ars Technica/Gizmodo party
    • Pics of the Modbook
    • Lots of show-floor pics featuring tons of vendors
    • A shot of team TUAW in our temporary HQ at the Marriott
    • Images of Mac luminaries, possibly one of them slightly inebriated
    Some are blurrier than an Engadget spy photo, and some are NSFW (where NSFW = Not Safe for Wallpaper). Enjoy!
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  • How much wood would a woodchuck chuck to make a bunch of press kits?

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    Gallery: Macworld press kit waste


    In the press room at Macworld there was a little foyer with alphabetized buckets where you could pick up press kits from the various vendors. This is an exercise in wastefulness, as many of the press kits are glossy folders filled with photocopies and CD's.

    Now, I realize the coordination required to put all this on a single DVD or USB drive would be immense, so I'm not blaming Macworld/IDG here, but surely there's got to be a better way. I've made a gallery of the leftover press releases, CD's and cases I was left with-- and I didn't even take everything! I also had to discard all the covering folders for what I did grab, because I didn't want to pay $60 extra for the additional weight in my luggage (no kidding, it was like an extra 10 lbs. of junk). Sadly, that stuff got trashed in my hotel room, and I'm sure it didn't get recycled. Maybe next year the dream of a "paperless" Macworld can be realized...
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  • Download YouTube videos with Tooble

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    There's plenty of YouTube applications out there, but walking around the Macworld show floor a mere ten days ago, I came across Tooble: another (free) application that allows you to download your favourite YouTube videos to your Mac. Now, before people shout-off that Google could feasibly break the app by changing URLs, the developers were quick to point out that the application uses the fully-supported and entirely-ToS-valid YouTube and gData APIs to grab the videos.

    The software, written (incredibly) by high-school students is going to remain free for the YouTube version. There's also mention of a paid-for version supporting other sites currently slated to appear later this year (Metacafé being one site mentioned) along with a Windows version too.

    I've been playing with Tooble since the show, and I've found it incredibly reliable. Testing it both when downloading 40-minute epics such as the Steve Jobs Macworld Boston 1997 Keynote, or the truly insane -- don't try this at home -- skiing down Europe's longest escalator, the application handled them both with aplomb.
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  • Rumors: iPhone Application Key reportedly leaked

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    Last night, an anonymous tipster pointed us to this Austin Heap webpage that purportedly reveals the iPhone's secret Application SDK key. Another tipster, also anonymous, then tipped me to iPhone "Elite" developer Zibri's blog, that shows the same key. So what does this mean? Since all iPhone applications must be properly signed for iTunes to process them and for the iPhone to load them, this key suggests that hackers are closer to creating compliant IPA application bundles for home-brew iTunes distribution. With the proper key, developers can create and distribute applications that load through iTunes without Apple's blessing.

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  • Keep your bookmarks in sync with BookIt

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    I have an admission to make: I change browsers on a fairly regular basis (normally, I'm found swapping between Camino and Safari in short succession as I struggle to find a nirvana between the two of them). But what to do with my favourites? Some people I know like to keep browser favourites separate, but I can't stand that. If anything, I've yearned to be able to simply use the same bookmarks (and keyboard shortcuts for Bookmark-bar items) on all the browsers I possibly can.

    That's where Bookit comes in handy. There's three options: Manage, Migrate or Restore. You can manually edit bookmarks, and compare them to a 'master' set (in my case, Camino); Migrate will allow you to take a browser's bookmarks, and completely over-write existing bookmarks on any other browser (or overwrite a synchronised copy of your Bookit bookmarks on .Mac), while Restore will allow you to retrieve a previous configuration. With only Safari able to synchronise bookmarks via .Mac, the ability to do so with Camino and Firefox is a welcome relief for those of use who don't (always) use the default OS X browser.

    I've used Bookit on three of my Macs around the home and office, with the application working perfectly in bringing my bookmarks across to all of them. Given that the application costs just $12, if you're working with multiple browsers, favourites and machines, I'd highly recommend Bookit.
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  • TUAW Responds: Adding a Stand-Alone Contacts Application to your iPhone

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    I can't tell you the number of readers who have written in asking for a stand-alone iPhone Contacts Application. It's not something that I particularly was trying to solve for myself (I don't mind tapping Phone then Contacts) but this morning, I stumbled on a simple way to accomplish this on your 1.1.3 iPhone.

    This is, I'm afraid, right now a command-line only solution although it's relatively easy to automate. Someone from modmyifone should be along any second to offer an Installer-based solution. Here are the steps:

    Update: I'm hearing from readers that "Customize" an iPhone app has done this for previous iPhone releases. Hopefully they'll have a 1.1.3 solution out soon. In the meantime, you can follow my steps by hand if you like. It's not difficult.

    Continue reading TUAW Responds: Adding a Stand-Alone Contacts Application to your iPhone

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