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- Apple Introduces Cross-border Shopping, for Some
Up until today, Apple customers have only been able to ship products bought via Apple’s online stores to addresses located in the country of the store they’re ordering from. I say up until today because as of now, that’s no longer the case.
Now if you wanted to give your friend in Mexico an iPod for his birthday, all you have to do is opt for Cross Border shopping from Apple.com. There are currently 20 countries available for international delivery.
While the list does include France, Italy, Spain, UK, and Mexico, one notable absence is Canada. I mean, seriously, we’re right here. Mexico gets the nod, but we’re left out in the cold (excuse the pun)? Well, life isn’t fair, and a list of 20 means a lot of other countries are probably feeling left out as well, so I’ll swallow my national pride and move on.
Shopping internationally is easy, but easier if you speak the language of the country you want to ship to, because you have to shop at the international store of your choice in order to place your order. That means you’re also billed in the international currency of the store you’re shopping at, with the conversion rate from USD being determined by your bank at the time of the actual transaction. That means that buying the entry-level Mac mini for your friend in the UK right now would cost you US$735, and I’m not sure how the taxation works on that. Definitely not a way to take advantage of the generally cheaper U.S. pricing.
If you don’t speak the language of the store you want to buy from (say, British, for example) you can call Apple directly and they’ll help you with your order in the language of your choosing. At this time you can only use a credit card to pay. Not sure if this will really catch on in a big way, but there must be some market out there for it if Apple’s already gone and done it.
Переслать - OnLive Will Make a Hardcore Gaming Machine Out of Your MacBook
The Game Developers Conference for 2009 is just underway, and already there’s some big news which has particular relevance for that rare and frustrated breed, the Mac gamer.
I’m a Mac gamer myself, and have pretty much given up the OS X side of things and just decided to do all my gaming in a Windows Boot Camp partition. My days of option-booting may be drawing to a close, however, thanks to a new venture that could make gaming a lot more democratic, much to the dismay of hardware manufacturers.
The service in question is called OnLive, and it will basically offer game streaming to whatever machine you happen to have. You can either get it via a very small set-top unit that attaches directly to your TV, or through a desktop software client. That’s when the magic happens. OnLive uses server farms to do all of the heavy lifting for your computer, so that your resources aren’t important. That means my Eee PC can handle Crysis, though I would never actually use that tiny machine for gaming. More importantly, my MacBook and my Mac mini can both handle Crysis without breaking a sweat. Which means I’m belatedly glad that I didn’t spring for that MacBook Pro or Mac Pro desktop.
I can hear your concerns, because mine were the same. This sounds too good to be true, right? Won’t it suffer by being only a marginal company, lacking support? No and no. Kotaku and Time have both actually tried out OnLive, and found it far from lacking. In fact, both reported impressive results. Apparently, OnLive avoids lag using patented video compression and compensation algorithms that result in a very smooth, extremely playable gaming experience, despite the fact that it’s actually content streaming from the cloud.
And do they have support? Oh boy, do they. Check out this quote from Kotaku’s coverage:
The best part? It already has serious buy-in from major publishers, including EA, THQ, Codemasters, Ubisoft, Atari, Warner Bros., Take-Two, and Epic Games. Oh, and 2D Boy.
So publishers are behind it, but considering the threat it represents to both console (the set-top peripheral costs less than a Wii) and PC gaming manufacturers, you can bet that a lot of hardware folks will be dead set against it. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of defense they can mount.
OnLive is set to launch late in the year, with an external beta planned for summer. It’ll probably be a subscription-based service when it does launch, so some might object to not actually owning any games, but considering the rate at which I grow bored of most, it seems like the perfect set up for me. I see a future where I’m playing Mass Effect 2 on the highest graphics setting without so much as a hiccup on my Mac mini. Please help make this a dream come true, OnLive.
Переслать - Unlocked iPhones for Sale in the UK Thanks to Play.com
I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later, now that it is possible to unlock the iPhone for use on any GSM carrier, but Play.com is now officially offering a sim-free version of the 16GB iPhone for sale on their website without having first unlocked it from O2. According to Play.com, the offer is completely above board, and takes advantage of EU regulations which ensure the availability of sim-free mobile phones to all networks.
This news isn’t to say every barrier is now removed from any UK resident owning an iPhone. There’s still the little issue of cost, and with the iPhone that’s actually not a little issue at all. Play.com is selling the sim-free version for £599, which works out to about $882 U.S. dollars (using today’s conversion rate). That’s a heck of a lot more expensive than the $599 no-contract AT&T model we’ve been hearing about lately. But can you really put a price on freedom? I sure can, and it’s a lot less than $900.
Unfortunately, I don’t really have a choice. There are no import options for North American customers, so over on this side of the pond we’ll have to stick to paying out the nose on eBay for less-than-legit alternatives. Still, I can’t help hoping that this is only the beginning of a loosening of the locked-down distribution model of the iPhone. I understand that Apple can’t be seen willfully encouraging sim-free sales, in the interest of keeping their carrier partners happy, but there’s nothing wrong with quietly giving up the goods when someone like Play.com points out a legal necessity, is there? Of course Canada, where I live, has the most draconian cellular racket in this or any other hemisphere, so I shouldn’t hold my breath.
Переслать - Password Management Roundup: 5 Apps to Keep Your Passwords Safe
Let’s say you’re trying to take over the world and bring all governments under your control. You have to keep records of all this stuff on your computer, of course. Now what if your plan is almost foiled because you chose a stupid password like the Egyptian variant of your Greek name? That’s not very smart, is it? You may be the World’s Smartest Man, but you may still want to look into password management software for your Mac to help you choose good, strong passwords and keep them organized.
In my business, I need to keep track of logins for clients as well as for my own use. I keep all my client information in Daylite forms or notes, where it’s linked to all the other information about that client. But what if you just want to keep passwords secure? And what if you want to share those passwords between machines? Or what if you want your password manager to integrate into your web browser? Or keep that info with you on your iPhone? Well then, here are five password management solutions for the Mac that may work for you.
1Password
I have been avoiding using a password management app for a long time. I guess I was a little suspicious of them, or reluctant to trust one app with all that info. I bought 1Password last year, and now I’m a total convert. The desktop app integrates directly into Safari and Firefox, as well as other browsers like Camino and apps like NetNewsWire. The plug-ins help you to capture login information as you enter it, or generate strong passwords as you create logins online. You can also quickly fill out logins and other forms with personal information like your address and/or credit card information that you store in 1Password. This integration with Safari and Firefox is what has me sold on 1Password. It’s so easy to use that I don’t notice it and I love that I don’t have to leave the browser to pull up my passwords like I do with the other solutions.
The iPhone app syncs with the desktop over Wi-Fi as long as both devices can see each other on the same network. The iPhone app implements a browser inside the app to enable auto-fill. You can also sync javascript bookmarklets to Safari that will launch in Safari on the iPhone and auto-fill your password on sites in the native browser. While this isn’t as secure as some other choices, it does make it possible to avoid having to switch back and forth between the password app and the Safari browser on your iPhone to type in a username and password manually.
You can sync your password file between multiple Macs by using the Mac OS X Keychain and MobileMe syncing (not recommended) or by using file-based syncing with Agile Keychain format (recommended). Instructions for file-based syncing using a couple of solutions are provided on the Agile Web Solutions web site.
1Password is $39.95 for a single user license or $69.95 for a five-license family pack. The iPhone app is free. There is a Palm OS app available as well.
SplashID
SplashID has been around a long time and is very well respected in Palm and Windows Mobile circles. The desktop app for the Mac provides password generation and syncing with the SplashID iPhone app. You can create items with custom fields and set the labels as you like. Several types are provided to group and organize items. You can launch web sites from within the app and it will auto-fill the form on the page (at least with Safari). It doesn’t capture login information from the browser like 1Password does.
While I was using it, I found myself missing the Safari and Firefox plugins from 1Password. The variety of items that you can store compares favorably, but I think the interface is a little rough. The iPhone app will sync with the desktop and includes a strong password generator. If you want to sync your info between your Mac and a Windows Mobile, BlackBerry or Symbian device, this is your only choice.
SplashID Desktop can compare entries between two password databases and sync the results to both copies.
The cost for the desktop app is $20. The iPhone app is $9.99. There is a free Lite version of the iPhone app that is limited to 15 entries to try it out.
Password Wallet
Password Wallet works with your desktop and iPhone. The desktop interface is minimal and unobtrusive. Some may like the narrow window used to list items stored in the wallet file. You can also keep multiple wallet files, each with their own master password, if you have need for that feature. Clicking on a URL will open the page in the default browser and hover a window with auto-fill options over the browser. This works great for launching sites from within Password Wallet, but I still resent having to leave the browser to start that process. Seriously, once you’ve tried 1Password’s method on the desktop, there is no going back.
The Password Wallet iPhone app implements its own browser in the app to enable auto-fill. If you want to use Mobile Safari, you’ll have to switch back and forth.
The Password Wallet desktop app is $20 and the iPhone app is currently free.
Wallet 3
Wallet is one of the most polished desktop apps on the Mac. The user interface is very accessible and will look familiar to anyone who has used Address Book on the Mac. It follows the same three-column layout with large “+” buttons at the bottom of the first two columns and an edit button below the third. You can create custom folders in the first column to group entries, but an entry can only belong in one group. You can use the notes to tag entries as the search bar will look in there along with other fields.
The desktop app will auto-fill login forms for your default browser if you launch the page from within Wallet. The iPhone app syncs with the desktop app through MobileMe. If you don’t have a MobileMe account, you are out of luck for Mac-to-Mac syncing. iPhone syncing can still be accomplished over Wi-Fi.
The Wallet desktop app is $20 and the iPhone app is $3.99.
KeePassX
KeePassX is an open-source GPL project that is available for Mac, Windows and Linux. There is no iPhone app and there is no integration with web browsers on the Mac. Still, the databases are compatible between different platforms so KeyPassX is a good solution if you need to copy your password database around for access from different systems. It’s also free, which could be a huge plus for some.
1Password is for Me
1Password is definitely the best solution for my needs. It lets me capture login information in the browser itself, I don’t have to leave the browser to use auto-fill, and I can use it for web forms that need other information like my home address or credit card (I’m still not using the credit-card section; old habits, I guess). The iPhone app will do auto-fill with an embedded browser or the native Safari browser with the javascript bookmarklet (less secure but more convenient). If you need BlackBerry or Windows Mobile support, check out SplashID. Wallet works great if you have MobileMe and KeePassX is perfect for those that want to keep their password database in sync across platforms.
If you’ve been holding out for something like RoboForm on Windows, 1Password is as close as it gets — at least until RoboForm finally fills this Senior Mac Developer position they’ve had open for a while now.
For the next versions of these products, I would love to see a tagging feature so I can keep a taxonomy of tags for entries rather than just free-form notes. I would also like to to see a system where an entry can belong to multiple groups so I could file an entry under both a client name, a project, and a service provider, though tagging would accomplish the same thing.
What password management app do you use?
Переслать - WeatherCal Adds a New Trick to the Bare Bones Lineup
WeatherCal may be a one-trick pony, but it is one nice looking pony all the same. This $10 release from Bare Bones Software marries weather data and iCal in a very elegant utility.
In a nutshell, WeatherCal creates calendar events in iCal with the five-day forecast for any location around the world. It starts out by finding the location in your “Me” card in Address Book, but you can add more locations by typing in the city and state or zip code. For locations outside the United States, you use the city and country (or city and province in Canada). Once you’ve added the location to System Preferences, WeatherCal will create a new calendar in iCal for that location and then inserts events for the next five days that show the forecast.
Data is provided by Weather Underground and the calendar events include a link to get more details on the Weather Underground web site.
Weather data is refreshed every hour to keep the forecast up to date.
Pro Tip: When entering a new location, you can also use airport codes.
There is no limit on the number of locations, but there might be a practical limit as iCal seems to have refresh problems with more than 10 calendars or so.
Rich Siegel, founder of Bare Bones Software, said that the idea came from one of their developers, Steve Kalkwarf, who simply had a flash of inspiration to solve a problem of personal interest. They had a look at a prototype around the office and decided that it was actually pretty cool. Rich also said that Weather Underground was great to work with and provided WeatherCal with a worldwide feed so they could address the needs of customers outside the U.S., which was a design goal from the start.
Bare Bones Software took some extra steps to deal with non-English characters like å, ä, and ö. You can type in “Luleå” or “Lulea” (in Sweden) and WeatherCal will find it either way. In my own testing, I found that the Russian text “Нижний Новгород” is not recognized, but the strict English transliteration “Niznij Novgorod” does work. I am used to some other transliteration schemes for Russian, but it’s a quick matter to get used to the way the data is formatted by Weather Underground. Users outside the U.S. will have to learn the English spelling or transliteration for their locations, but since this is essentially a one-time task, I suspect it will not be too onerous. If you have questions about a particular city, you can always go to the wunderground.com and browse through their maps and city listings to see how it is listed there.
There are other solutions for getting weather info on your Mac (dashboard widgets, etc.), but there is a nice practical advantage in having this info in local iCal calendars. Subscription calendars in iCal do not sync to MobileMe, but local calendars do carry over. Because your five day forecast is in a local calendar, WeatherCal provides a way for you to see the weather you are interested in checking on all your desktops, iPhone, iPod touch, and online at me.com.
Another practical reason was outlined by beta tester Jan Moström of Sweden:
Although I have other weather forecast applications on my Mac I tend to use WeatherCal the most … since I already have my calendar open.
The license allows you to install WeatherCal on any Mac that you own, but if you are syncing iCal with MobileMe, it is probably best to install the utility on one machine and let MobileMe sync the iCal data to the other Macs.
Pro Tip: If you are tracking a few locations, in Leopard you can create a Calendar Group (I named mine “WeatherCal”), and place all your forecast calendars in there. That way you can turn all your forecasts on and off with one click.
If you’re a big iCal user, then this utility is a really nice solution to having the weather forecast handy. There is a real benefit to having the weather info right where you schedule outings and activities in iCal. I really like how it is implemented as a local calendar so that it can sync to MobileMe. For $10, WeatherCal solves a particular problem with the polish that one would expect from Bare Bones Software.
Переслать - App Review: Daniel X — Clichéd Alien Hunters Don't Come Cheap
App Quick Stats
Increasingly, geeky pasttimes are seeping into the mainstream. Like creatures in a Neil Gaiman story, the boundary between the dimension of the fantastical and the land of the normal is blurring. And with that blur, faithful adaptations of heroes and villains have made the leap to the world of movies.
That means that in addition to Spider-Man, regular folk are suddenly familiar with the likes of Dr. Manhattan, Coraline and Hellboy. What’s more, graphic novels are showing up on our iPhone screens. Scrollmotion’s latest app, Daniel X, brings to us the adventures of a teenage alien hunter with a vivid imagination.
Creating The Hero
“Daniel X”’s backstory is a little different than that of standard comic book fare. Created by author James Patterson, it’s not part of the Marvel or DC stable; there’s no rich history or über fan cult of longtime readers, either. He’s a completely fresh character, seemingly designed with a teen audience in mind.
Although Patterson has found success with the “Daniel X” series, he’s also written a stack of celebrated books, several of which have made the transition to film, too. Yet despite all this, Patterson kicks off “Daniel X” with little more than a hackneyed genesis of our soon-to-be hero.
Back when Daniel was knee high to a grasshopper, his father was an alien hunter. One ill-fated day, a particularly irate alien decided that he’d do a spot of murdering and Daniel’s folks were, due to all the alien-hunting stuff, fair game.
Much like various X-Men, Harry Potter, Batman, Spider-Man and an array of other heroes, Daniel X ends up an orphan before discovering his superpowers. Poor Daniel. For a character with so much potential, it’s a shame he had to wind up on the wrong side of a particularly unfortunate cliché.
Although the kid happens to be from Kansas, it seems that he’s stationed in Tokyo, apparently a hub of alien criminal activity. Plus, he has super strength, super agility, the power to imagine things into existence and the ability to morph. Apparently the author also has the power to morph things, too, as he’s managed to transform the entire graphic novel into one massive cliché.
Tip of the Iceberg
Above and beyond the core story, the app itself isn’t a total disappointment; the technology is impressive. Designed by Scrollmotion, their engine, entitled Iceberg, is custom-designed for playing back exactly this sort of content.
The app opens with a tutorial — as you drag your finger across the screen, a watermelon explodes. Dragging back rewinds the fruity detonation. The control mechanism is novel and feels like you’re leafing through frames of a film.
There’s an automatic mode, too. Tapping the screen reveals a control menu, allowing you to set the speed of playback, alongside a play/pause button.
Using Iceberg, the graphic novel’s artwork has been brought to life. Reading “Daniel X” feels less like a comic and more like scrolling through scenes in a cartoon: The camera pans across each shot, bringing the characters to life as speech bubbles pop into existence and gracefully fade away.
The artwork seems to be painted as opposed to inked. It has texture, which, when combined with the kinetic nature of Iceberg, makes Daniel X’s adventure seem less humdrum and a little more exciting.
Iceberg Issues
There are, however, several enjoyment-impeding issues with the software worth pointing out. The inertia, when dragging pages, is incoherent — a small drag can seemingly whizz through several frames, or sometimes a big drag squeezes just a tiny bit of movement out of one panel.
Plus, switching to automatic mode can be frustrating. Even at the slower speeds, speech bubbles can zip past, with barely enough time to digest Patterson’s corny dialogue.
The iPhone screen also dims while the app is running and as there’s no settings menu within the app, there’s no way to stop this happening. What this means is that when reading “Daniel X” in automatic mode, you’ll find yourself having to tap the screen every few minutes to wake it up again.
Summing Up
The screen sleeping issue is irritating; it detracts from any opportunity to become engrossed in the experience. But then, the same could be said of the story and dialogue, too.
Patterson’s writing is downright awful. The dialogue is tired — we’ve heard it all before, but by arguably better comic writers — the story is predictable, the journey it takes us on more like a boring cruise than a narrative roller coaster.
Furthermore, at $9.99, the price is a serious shocker. In fact, it’s like Scrollmotion decided that since “Daniel X” is devoid of any effective narrative trickery, they’d throw in their own plot twist of sorts by charging $10 for the app.
I understand that a great deal of work — and as such, cost — went in to developing the app engine, licensing Patterson’s uninspired graphic novel and, most evident of all, taking the accomplished artwork and creating vibrant cartoon-esque scenes. I really do get it.
However, if an app is so costly to develop that it’s set at an unrealistic or prohibitive price point, then somebody is being greedy or unrealistic, or both. Whatever the reality is, speculation aside, there’s a lot of fun to be had from the App Store, much of it at significantly lower prices than that of Daniel X.
This is potentially good tech and yet it’s filled with vapid content, certainly not worth the price tag. I want to support graphic novels making the leap to a fresh medium but this is poor content at a baffling price and as such, should be avoided.
Переслать - Apple Bluetooth Headset Discontinued: What's Next?
It probably wasn’t Apple’s best-selling or best-loved product of all time, but it was tiny and cute. And you could see the rather sub-par battery life dwindling away to nothing via a perfectly integrated indicator in the iPhone’s status bar. But I never had one, opting instead to use my Sony Playstation BT device.
I’m talking, of course, about Apple’s Bluetooth headset, which has been discontinued and as such is unavailable for purchase from the Apple Store online.
Apple might just be leaving the market to those who specialize in the field, which is becoming quite crowded, but they might have something else up their sleeve as well, considering the auspicious timing of the item’s removal from the catalog. iPhone 3.0 has only just been announced, and counts among its new features support for A2DP Stereo Bluetooth connectivity. Could Apple be working on a headset that makes use of this new protocol to deliver not only wireless talk, but wireless stereo headphone functionality as well?
I think they might be, if only because of the precedent they’ve set with their Remote app following the release of the iPhone 2.0 SDK. I expect them to lead the app charge once again, except that given the nature of the feature additions with iPhone 3.0, they’ll have to do one better. I suspect that means they’ll show off the full capabilities of peripheral-specific applications, and a stereo Bluetooth headset is the perfect candidate. They can build in an equalizer app for controlling stereo sound to the headphones, and show the other side of things as well, by allowing hardware buttons on the headset to perform customized functions when used with the phone app, or with iTunes.
Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but it does seem odd that Apple would completely abandon the iPhone Bluetooth headset market when they’ve just introduced expanded possibilities in that very area. June is stacking up to be quite the month either way, but an Apple Bluetooth stereo headset would definitely make my day (and take away some of the sting of becoming outdated when they announce a brand new iPhone).
Переслать - Lots of New Apple Hardware Hinted at in iPhone 3.0 Code
When it comes to speculation about hardware, I like going to the code. Code doesn’t have “sources,” questionable or otherwise, and if something turns up there, you can be relatively sure it isn’t a ploy to deceive you (unless we’re being subtly manipulated, but that’s a conspiracy theory for another time). The recent iPhone 3.0 beta release includes code references to five as-yet unreleased products, four of which were spotted by Stephen Troughton-Smith, the same developer who unleashed tethering while playing around with his iPhone’s carrier bundle file.
Troughton-Smith discovered references to an “iPod3,1,” “iPhone3,1,” “iFPGA,” and “iProd0,1,” all of which are new additions to a property list file that has previously been found to reference existing products (”iPhone1,1″, “iPhone1,2″,”iPod1,1″,”iPod2,1″) that use mobile OS X as their operating system. In addition, Boy Genius Report found another reference to “iPod2,2″ which is confirmed by MacRumors. Back in January, we told you about another new product, “iPhone2,1″ mentioned in the same reference file, and it is still present, even though we haven’t seen a hardware release to correspond with the reference.
While these references may indicate new products, it’s worth taking a step back and considering what else they may signify. First, it’s likely that some might represent internal testing devices that will never see the light of day. Even though we consistently make much of potential new products, it’s easy to forget that Apple is testing hardware prototypes in its labs all the time — the company does, after all, pride itself on innovation, is dependent on it to maintain the bottom line.
So just because there is an “iPhone2,1″ and an “iPhone3,1″ mentioned, don’t expect to see two radically different devices released come summer. They might just be two generations of prototypes that will become “iPhone2,1″ in the final code when the device is actually released. Likewise, Ars Technica points out that the “iFPGA” could be something that uses a field programmable array, and not meant for wide release since it lacks the numbering scheme of the others. The “iPod2,2″ might be a minor update to the iPod touch, while the “iPod3,1″ is probably the next generation in early testing.
That leaves the mysterious “iProd0,1″, which is just begging for speculation. It’s unique in that it breaks from both the iPod and iPhone name schemes, which would have those hoping for a tablet or large-format iPod touch-type device salivating. Unfortunately, it could also just as easily be something being tested internally that will never see the light of day, but here’s hoping.
Переслать - The $899, 17-inch iMac for Education: Still Here, Always Has Been
News “broke” over the weekend via a leak from Apple itself that the company still offers the low-end iMac model with a smaller, 17-inch screen, though it is available exclusively for education customers. The news came via the Apple eNews for Education newsletter for March, although clicking the “Buy” link from the iMac page does not reveal the option to buy a 17-inch model, at least not in the U.S. education store where I attempted it. It’s still there, but you may have to try to get a quote for a bulk purchase as an educational institution to find it.
Maybe it’s because the iMac is so tricky to find that the story got picked up so quickly over the weekend, and by so many different outlets, but readers were quick to point out that the “news” of a possible $899 iMac was in fact not news at all, since the model has been available at that price point since 2006. In fact, rather than being the deal of the century, the iMac priced at $899 is actually probably one of the least appealing value propositions available from Apple, unless you want an old white plastic model to keep sealed in a box in the hopes that it will become a priceless collector’s item in 20 years time.
This story was picked up by everybody, including Gizmodo, MacRumors and Engadget (although Giz and Engadget have taken it off of their main site; Giz link leads to their Australian site), among many others, as such serving as yet another example of how susceptible Apple news reporting is to manipulation, even if the original “leak” was not intentional. At least MacRumors didn’t immediately try to backpedal to avoid embarrassment. Mistakes in print are not so easy to undo. Tech publications: Admit it when you screw up, instead of trying to go back in time and erase any evidence of a less-than-perfect track record.
This example also shows pretty clearly what we can do to reduce our susceptibility to manipulation. The answer? Take five seconds to fact-check before you hit the publish button. Ours is admittedly a fast-paced news cycle, but artificially and unnecessarily so. In fact, nothing we report has dire consequences, if you really think about it, so hanging on to a story in the interest of accuracy will better serve readers than publishing mistaken information at a break-neck pace.
Переслать - Cha-Ching Touch Finally in App Store
If you follow Midnight Apps on Twitter, you know it’s taken the better part of a month. But they’ve finally navigated the App Store approval process, and Cha-Ching Touch is now available for purchase via the App Store. We gave an early look at Cha-Ching Touch (that is, the version available for iPhone or iPod touch) about a month ago, in case you missed it.
For $2.99 (introductory price, in the App Store) you can track your purchases and budget on the go, always knowing what your cash flow situation looks like. Cha-Ching Touch brings extreme usability and a lovely user interface to your finance-tracking tasks, adding the ability to add locations to your payees, to make point-of-sale entry that much simpler. Cha-Ching Touch will also sync with the (currently in beta) desktop version of Cha-Ching 2 (scroll down the page a bit), so your dollars and cents should all add up at the end of the day no matter what device you’re using.
Переслать - Fuel Added to Apple OLED Netbook/iPhone Rumors
Earlier I referenced a report by Australian news site Smarthouse's David Richards saying Apple is close to launching a touchscreen "netbook type" computer according to unnamed Asian sources.
Richards is now citing sources at Korean OEM components supplier LG who tell him not only will Apple soon launch new OLED notebooks and flat panel monitors but also a new iPhones and iPod touches to be released later this year with OLED screens made by LG, which last year secured a multibillion dollar deal to manufacture displays for Apple.
Another SmartHouse anonymous source claims Apple already has a working prototype of a new netbook-type laptop to be manufactured in Taiwan with an LG-supplied OLED screen.
What’s So Great About OLEDs?
So what’s the big whoop about OLEDs? Well, if you’re not familiar, the acronym stands for “organic light-emitting diode” technology, which some have been predicting for more than half a decade now will eventually displace LCD displays for computers and flat-panel televisions. The technology is also sometimes called light emitting polymer (LEP) or organic electro luminescence (OEL).
OLED technology could theoretically enable fabrication of display screens 1,000 times thinner than a human hair using organic light-emitting diodes that can be printed on a sheet of plastic and should be cheaper to manufacture — costing only an estimated 60 percent as much as LCDs to produce.
Fast and Energy-Efficient
British OLED developer Cambridge Display Technology (CDT), now a subsidiary of Sumitomo Chemical, was founded in 1992 as successor to a project started in the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University in 1989, when it was discovered that ‘organic’ LEDs could be made using conjugated polymers. CDT specializes in what it calls polymer light emitting diodes (P-OLEDs), claimed to have several intrinsic advantages over liquid crystal devices.
- It is an emissive technology: it emits light as a function of its electrical operation.
- Its displays consist of polymer material manufactured on a substrate of glass or plastic, and require no additional elements such as backlights or filters.
- The technology is very energy efficient and lends itself to the creation of ultra-thin lighting displays that will operate at lower voltages.
Because LEP technology eliminates the viewing angle dependence of conventional LCDs, other benefits include:
- More addressable lines (higher level of multiplexability)
- Response time is fast (sub-microsecond), switching occurs at low voltage (5V), and the intensity of light is proportional to current.
- Higher contrast
- Less critical operating margins
- Reduced temperature sensitivity
- Larger displays possible
A more technical explanation of how P-OLEDs work can be found here.
Brighter, Clearer, Wider Viewing Angles
In summary, P-OLED benefits include brighter, clearer displays with viewing angles approaching 180 degrees, simpler manufacturing, offering the potential for cheaper, more robust display modules, and ultra-fast response times allowing full color video pictures even at low temperature.
CDT calls its screens light-emitting polymers (LEPs) — a type of plastic that can be charged to change color speck by speck. LEPs generate their own light, making them thinner and lighter in weight as well as more power-efficient than conventional LCD flat screen displays. They also have higher contrast with richer colors, offering superior quality images that can easily be viewed from wide angles. Additionally, LEP materials can be dissolved into solvents allowing deposition using ink-jet printing on glass or plastic substrates, thus providing a potential manufacturing advantage that could significantly change the way displays are produced and open new markets and opportunities for lower cost displays on flexible substrates that can conform to curved surfaces. CDT hopes LEPs can eventually be made from plastics soft enough to allow them to be rolled up.
Greater Range Of Colors and Blacker Blacks
LEP’s also eliminate the need for heavy, expensive display backlights, color filters and energy-wasting polarizers used in LCD displays, as well as complex multi-shadowing techniques for depositing small molecules, since color is generated directly on the LEP’s front focusing phosphors. OLED pixel colors have a greater range of colors, gamut, brightness, contrast (both DR and static), and appear correct and unshifted even at viewing angles approaching 90 degrees from dead-on and while LCDs can’t render true black due to their backlight dependence, an “off” OLED element produces no light and consumes no power, giving black blacks. Contrast, brightness, and color are retained at relatively wide angles of view.
The main OLED caveat has been limited lifetime of the organic materials used to make them, especially blue polymer OLEDs which have typically had a lifetime of around 14,000 hours (5 years at 8 hours of daily use) when used for flat-panel displays, which is less than one quarter as long as the projected service life of screens made with LCD, LED or PDP technologies (approximately 60,000 hours). CDT has reported more than tripling the lifetime of its blue polymers, but they still lag far behind the longevity of conventional technologies.
$500M R&D Funding From Apple
The Smarthouse report says LG intends to increase R&D investment by 25 percent and that recently Apple paid the Company over $500M up front to support new monitor and display technology, also noting that sources claim that while recent OLED screen testing on notebooks attracted “body oils and sweat” when a finger was constantly used on a screen, LG believes that by adding a layer in the manufacturing process that they can eliminate “finger marking.”
However, and OLED info site cautions that while this rumor thread is getting interesting, “It’s hard to believe that LG would actually release such information about a huge customer such as Apple, so we’ll have to wait and see…”
Apple always does its utmost to keep us guessing, but it appears that OLEDs are a technology whose time is arriving and looks like Apple may be in the vanguard of bringing another technological innovation to market.
Переслать - Weekly App Store Picks: March 21, 2009
It’s the weekend, traditionally a time for quiet contemplation of the freshest iPhone releases, welcome to the App Store Pick.
Hang on there one moment though because before we run headlong in to a stack of apps, we’ve got but a few moments to look at the latest happenings on TheAppleBlog this week.
First up, Neil Gaiman’s creepy Coraline just hit the App Store in eBook form. It’s available to download now for $5.99 but we’ve got four Coraline promo codes to giveaway. If you’d like to bag yourself a copy of Coraline, just drop a comment at the end of this post (and make sure to leave an address for us to email the code to), we’ll dish out the promo goodness on a first come first served basis.
Over in iTunes, HD movies are now available for sales and rental too. It’s great that we can reap all the benefits of HD via download, however the price point, $19.99, seems super expensive and thus utterly ill-considered to me. In other film-related news, in a rare publicity move, Apple has opened an official Twitter account, specifically for new trailers, check it out at twitter.com/itunestrailers. Those who doubt the account’s authenticity should check out the Apple Trailers site which now sports a Trailers on Twitter link.
None of this matters though when we consider the real Apple news this week: the long-awaited über-happening that was Apple’s iPhone OS 3.0 event; and though they may be Jobless, that didn’t stop a flurry of rumor-mongering activity and excitement focused on the unveiling of the latest iPhone software update, arriving this Summer.
For me, it didn’t disappoint, while there’s still no mention of Flash coming to the iPhone, cut/copy/paste will finally arrive, as will MMS and push. There’s also an array of awesome new features beyond those must-haves. For instance, there’s the iPhone’s new Spotlight page — it brings search to the iPhone — meaning you can simultaneously hunt through contacts, messages, mail and music.
For developers, there’s some serious potential for advanced apps that the iPhone update’s APIs will bring. In particular, access to the iPod library for apps — potentially bringing an added dimension and layer of interactivity to our music collections: think Tap Tap Revenge creating new levels with your iTunes music library.
Moving on to the app picks, this week I’ve been looking at Nimbuzz, Yamanote Soundrop Lite, iGamesDev and Cardsnap.
Nimbuzz (free)
Over at GigaOm, Om Malik mentioned that he’s looking forward to checking out Nimbuzz, a super communication app that touts just about every major IM service, alongside VOIP too. On first look this app is undeniably impressive — setting up is quick and easy, even providing a degree of control over the buddy list — essential for users with tons of contacts over several services. The app looks and sound great too, even — quite unexpectedly — flipping in to landscape mode when needed. For me, and I suspect many others, this is an essential download and has already taken pride of place on my Home screen.Yamanote Soundrop Lite (free)
I’ve got a soft spot for absurd apps that seem to slip in to the App Store, created by developers who seem to have no notion about who their target demographic might be. I think this is a good thing — it shows that there’s still a spirit of fun floating amidst the dirge of quick-buck, sound-fx apps and useless business tools. This app plays the music from various stations on what I think is a Japanese train-line. With its absurdly long twinkly melodies, this app is useless and cute and, as such, made me smile.iGamesDev (free)
The concept behind this convoluted game of cards is fantastic. The app is intended as a witty critique of the iPhone game development. The game itself, though, is crazy complicated — resembling something more akin to The League of Gentlemen’s Go Johnny Go Go Go Go, with its nonsensical myriad rules. Unfortunately, the game ends up being amusing only because it’s ironic that this iPhone game about iPhone game development is so poorly coded.Cardsnap ($9.99)
I’m always interested to know if the expensive apps are actually worth it or if the price is simply the developer’s wishful thinking. Cardsnap — an app for snapping images of business cards which are then processed server-side and synced to your address book — isn’t really worth the price but I imagine business-folk will buy it anyway. The big issue is that the iPhone camera immediately fails when it comes to taking pictures of business cards. The idea is great but the iPhone just ain’t up to it yet.That’s all from the App Store for another seven days. I’ll return during the week with TheAppleBlog App Review and, as always, on Saturday with my Weekly App Store Picks.
In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?
Переслать - App Review: Streaks — Rewarding You for Repetitive Behavior
App Quick Stats
A calendar specifically designed for tracking your goals, Streaks aims to join the pantheon of excellent iPhone productivity apps.
Both the touch and the iPhone, the latter in particular, are ideal platforms for productivity tools. The connected nature of the pocketable Apple devices means we can be grabbing all sorts of data about our daily lives — processing, tracking and taking action.
This latest productivity app, Streaks, is an interesting offering in that it totes only one feature — tracking a repeated task on a day-to-day basis. The objective in using the app seems to be to motivate the user in to staying on course and so gives a serious boost to productivity.
Winning Streak
Once installed, Streaks takes moments to configure — you simply name your first calendar and then get tracking. Naming and creating new calendars is as simple as tapping the in-app settings icon and adding a new calendar.
Essentially the app is designed for those times in life when you need to ensure you’re repeating one task — the same task — on a daily basis. I wanted to make sure I work on my album everyday and also setup another calendar to encourage me to tweet on a daily basis.
I tested Streaks by tracking my Twitter use (ensuring I try to tweet on a daily basis), although more common uses could be tracking your daily run or exercise, a daily study or revision regime, or even as an aid for quitting smoking.
Each task you wish to track is given its own dedicated calendar. Each day, you simply load up the app and mark the calendar (by tapping today’s date) to indicate you’ve completed the task. The app gets exciting when you start to generate various stats related to each task.
Task Statistics
Displayed prominently on each calendar is the current streak and the longest streak. It’s a nice touch that highlights the app’s usefulness as a motivational device. Stats geeks can delve further in to the sea of numerical goodness via the list icon at the top right.
The in-depth stats screen provides further detail for the current and longest streak — displaying specifically which month/day the streaks began and ended. There’s also a potentially handy readout of past streaks, perhaps useful in showing when you may have been at your most productive.
Looks & Features
The app looks great, and yet take a closer look and you’ll see it’s incredibly light on features. The lack of features is a good thing, though; it’s less convoluted and therefore allows for the user to be much more focused on their tasks rather than grappling for control of the app.
The settings menu provides access to basic calendar management and the choice between two themes: Paper and Chalkboard. The Chalkboard theme seems a tad gloomy in comparison to the former, however it’s still a definite plus to be able to choose between two skins.
When first trying the app, it wasn’t immediately clear as to how to swap between multiple calendars. After much tapping, dragging and pinching, I discovered that simply dragging the current calendar up the screen slides the next one in to view — not so intuitive, but quite satisfying in practice.
Another nice touch to Streaks is the use of icon badges. Streaks will actually display the current streak on your primary calendar as a number on the app icon. It’s a great way of keeping the user informed and engaged with the app even when it’s not in use.
Quotidian Quest
The developer claims that the app can be used in less than two minutes, intended to be used daily. I wouldn’t disagree with this — it is indeed very simple to use — however I wonder if there’s enough meat on the bones of this concept to hold the target audience’s interest.
I’d imagine that the kind of person who uses Streaks feels that they need a tool to help them in becoming habitual about completing certain tasks. These people might just be busy, or they might be prize procrastinators, whatever the case, they need that extra boost when in comes to integrating certain tasks in to their daily routine.
It seems somewhat odd, therefore, to further convolute someone’s daily routine by adding in another tool, and thus another task — that of using Streaks — to simply keep score of the various objectives the user has.
There are also several improvements that I’d like to see in future updates to make it truly enhance a daily routine. Specifically, Streaks should do more to take advantage of the iPhone’s connectivity — mailing the user with congratulation notes on successful long streaks and nudging the user if they’ve stopped focusing on a specific task.
Summing Up
The app’s aim is admirable — in essence it makes you feel good for staying on track with a given daily task — and its execution is undoubtedly charming. It’s just that, despite the concept’s excellent execution, this clearly isn’t a tool that will prove effective for everyone.
However, there are going to be those that could certainly do with tracking tasks in this very specific way. And, for those that could use a tool like this, I think Streaks could potentially be a wonderful motivational device.
Переслать - Thanks to TheAppleBlog Sponsors!
We’d like to say thanks to this month’s sponsor of TheAppleBlog:
- WunderRadio: Wunder Radio provides access to thousands of streaming Internet radio stations and on your iPhone or Windows Mobile Phone.
- Mozy: Back up your photos, music, and files with Mozy for as low as $4.34 per month.
Переслать - HD Movies Now For Sale in iTunes
Blu-ray took another today hit as Apple announced that it will be offering HD movies for sale (iTunes link), rather than just for rent. That means consumers can download HD quality movies directly into their iTunes library, for use on their computers or Apple TV, or TV-connected Mac mini, if you happen to be me. This probably explains why Blu-ray support hasn’t been forthcoming in recent hardware updates coming out of Cupertino.
Don’t get too excited, though; you don’t get much of a price break for giving up physical media. HD movies on iTunes cost $19.99, which, barring new releases, isn’t that much of a discount from Blu-ray prices. And the file sizes are likely enormous, so plan on either upgrading your internal or moving that iTunes library to an external drive in order to accommodate them.
Launch titles for the service include “Punisher: War Zone,” “Bangkok Dangerous,” and some movies that are actually worth buying, like “Transporter 3.” A number of pre-orders are also available, including the wildly popular teen vampire love story, “Twilight,” and the latest Bond installment, “Quantum of Solace.” The movie files will play no problem on your Apple mobile devices, too, although in standard definition.
I should point out that HD movie purchases are not yet available in the Canadian or UK stores (the only two international stores that I checked so far), and Apple hasn’t released details as to when they might be made available. Currently in the Canadian iTunes store, you can only buy HD TV shows using Apple TV, though the UK store has them available for computer and Apple TV users. I really hope they don’t plan on running the same scheme for HD movies here in Canada as they do for TV shows, because I refuse to be bullied into buying an Apple TV when we don’t have access to most major American network content.
Переслать - Elgato Releases Turbo.264 HD Video Convertor
Elgato is a company synonymous with television and video hardware products for the Mac. Today they announced the availability of Turbo.264 HD, a hardware conversion tool that offers a fast way to encode video between formats or move video off your HD camcorder.
Many different software tools exist for converting video on the Mac, ranging from QuickTime itself, to more advanced solutions such as HandBrake. Depending upon the Mac hardware you’re running, these software solutions may mean an extensive wait for converting video — particularly if you’re doing so at HD resolution. Hardware encoders such as the Turbo.264 HD can take the load off your Mac, and dramatically speed up the process.
Main Features
Convert between any and all formats
The main features and selling points of the new hardware encoder fall into four different categories:
- HD Camcorder Support — Provides far quicker conversion to a viewable desktop video format. The example provided by Elgato is that where it used to take over an hour to make a 15-minute movie, it now takes less than 20 minutes.
- Accelerate TV Export & Video Conversion — Either between video formats, or from the EyeTV recording software
- Preview & Trim Video Files — You can directly edit video before commencing a conversion or import.
- Suitable for all levels of knowledge — Default profiles allow converting for your iPhone, YouTube or HD. Alternatively, you can create custom video output profiles by adjusting size, aspect ratio, overscan, frame rate, data rate and more.
Software Interface
The software interface for Turbo.264 HD seems remarkably simple — important for a fairly technical process such as video encoding. It ensures that an average user won’t be confused when opening the application, while also offering a wealth of more advanced conversion options for power users.
After adding videos to convert, you can select a particular quality setting for each, ranging from “iPod Small,” all the way through to full 1080p HD. Obviously, the higher the quality chosen, the longer the encoding process will take.
Adding Video & Selecting Encoding
Once you’ve got the conversion going, a progress window shows how far along the current video is, along with how many other videos are still queued for processing. Also interesting is a reading which displays how many Frames Per Second are currently being converted:
Encoding Progress
Who Needs It?
It seems that there are two types of users who could benefit from purchasing a Turbo.264 HD. First are those who simply convert a lot of video, or regularly record live TV to move onto a portable device (or iTunes). If you regularly find yourself checking your watch while the fan whirrs away on your laptop, this could be a real time saver. It’s also particularly useful if you’re a big YouTube fan, as videos can be exported for uploading to the web (and even automatically uploaded to YouTube, if desired).
The other users are those who own a HD camcorder and would like a faster way to move their video off it to a usable desktop format. Doing this through an external device, such as the Turbo.264 HD, can make it a much more enjoyable process, rather than one which seems to take an eternity. It integrates in the background with iMovie or Final Cut Pro, so you can still benefit from all the great video editing features of those apps while enjoying improved exporting performance.
Pricing and Availability
The Turbo.264 HD is currently on sale for $149.95 and requires Mac OS X 10.5.6 Leopard. You can pick one pick one up directly from Elgato, and shipping starts on March 23.
If you don’t require HD functionality, the older model can still be picked up for $99 from the Apple Store.
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